PA Walk News Release - Updated March 15th, 2009
This spring, Ron Brownsberger of Stouffville, Ontario, plans to replicate the migration of his great, great grandfather from Manheim, PA, to Ringwood, ON, Canada. Georg Braunsberger, along with his wife and six children, left Pennsylvania after April 6th, 1826, from a farm three miles north-west of Manheim and travelled to Canada arriving in Ringwood, Ontario, before June 22nd of the same year.
Ron and his wife Margaret presently live within a few hundred feet of that Ringwood farm. The 520 mile route will follow country roadsides through Pennsylvania and New York State and along walking paths in Ontario beside the Niagara River and around the end of Lake Ontario to Ringwood which is about 25 km. north of Toronto.
Brownsberger will be accompanied by his wife who will drop him off at his starting point each morning, drive two miles ahead and return to meet him as he walks to the car. Averaging four two-mile walks each day, the trip will likely be completed in about 65 days.
The pioneers did the trek in less than 75 days, probably with the help of several horses and oxen. Accounts of the travels to Canada in the early 1800’s relate experiencing torrential rains and having to take apart the wagons to traverse swamps or to build bridges where fords could not be found to cross rivers. Ron and Margaret will be at the homes of friends or relatives in Ontario, and in B&B’s in the States making the trip vastly more comfortable.
He plans to leave the Manheim homestead, 1605 Shumaker Road, on Monday morning, March 30th at 10 a.m., and arrive in Ringwood on June 11, at 4 p.m. on the Millard bridge near the Ringwood homestead.
The walk, which Brownsberger is calling “The Trail of the Susquehanna” Walk, is in support of the Schulich Heart Centre at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto. He would be delighted to raise $25,000 or more for new equipment for the Centre from contributions to the walk. Donations and pledges at, for example, $1. per mile from fifty people or groups would achieve this goal. Go to http://www.sunnybrookfoundation.ca/ and click Events, click “Trail…” for information on how to contribute. No funds raised will go to trip expenses.
For more about the Trail of the Susquehanna Walk, see the March 7 issue of the Stouffville Sun-tribune, or contact at ron.brownsberger@gmail.com .
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