Speech by Judge Harry S. Truman, Dedication of the Bethesda Monument to the Pioneer Mother

Dedication of the Bethesda Monument to the Pioneer Mother. Apr. 19, *29. The National Old Trails Road Association, ladies and gentlemen, has helped the Daughters of the American Revolution to finish a Memorial to the woman who made this country great, -- the Pioneer Mother. It was the grand old pioneer mother who made the settlement of the original thirteen colonies possible. She came to Virginia in 1609; she came to Massachusetts in 1620 and after that to all the colonies, thus making their settlement a permanent undertaking. When that great and fertile plain, west of the Alleganys needed set- tlement, she went with the hearty pinneers who made an empire of it. She crossed the ssissippi and she went to Oregon and California. She made this country what it is by being the hearty morther she was and producing sons and daughters to make it great. It is exceedingly appropriate that the Daughters of the American Revolution should have originated the idea and it is also proper that the National Old Trails Association should have helped them to carry it out. It was over the old trails that those wonderful women made their treck to the Ohio valley and from there to Louisiana territory and the great westo The Old Trail started here, or some where not far away. The first road from Baltimore to the west was laid out over the trail *xking taken by Braddock and Washington in the French and Indian War. It is yet the best and shortest road from here over the mountains and to the west. From 1750 to Revolutionary times those good women were going over that trail to the head of navigation on the Ohino and down that great river to Kentucly, Ohio, and Indiana.