It's not really a myth. It's more of a curiosity that will be discussed on this page.
Bedford County Day has always been celebrated on the 9th of March ~ hasn't it?
Well actually ~ No.
The Act erecting Bedford County out of Cumberland County was passed by the General Assembly of Pennsylvania on 9 March 1771. That is a fact that is unquestionable.
But what most people since 1772 to the present day have probably not thought about is that it is very doubtful that anyone in Bedford County ~ on March 9, 1771 ~ would have known that it was officially a new county. It is doubtful that anyone would have celebrated becoming a new county on the 9th of March 1771.
It must be remembered that the Act erecting Bedford County was proposed, discussed, voted on and passed in a building located in Philadelphia ~ not in the five year old town of Bedford, nor in the Cumberland County seat at Carlisle.
The exact day on which the Act was passed ~ 09 March ~ would not have been previously designated. Bills were brought up for discussion and passage when they happened to be. A schedule guaranteeing that any particular bill would be discussed and passed on any set date wasn't distributed on the 1st of January each year. That means that no one would have known to be ready to ride between Philadelphia and Bedford to deliver the news that the Act was passed on any particular day.
It has been estimated that a man riding on horseback in the 1770's could average between twenty and thirty miles each day. Philadelphia is approximately two hundred miles from Bedford, which means that in addition to taking time for resting, a rider would take between a week and ten days to travel between the two locations.
The Act erecting the new county was passed on the 9th, but in 1771 there were no telephones. There were no radios. There were no televisions. And there was certainly no internet. There wasn't even any telegraph. So there was no means of communication between Philadelphia and Bedford other than by post rider and newspapers and other printed materials, which needed to be carried by post riders. So the quickest that anyone in this frontier region would have received the news that the county was erected would have been seven to ten days after a rider started out at Philadelphia. If a rider started out that very day, the 9th of March, he would have arrived in the village of Bedford between the 16th and 19th of March.
The prospective officials in Bedford County certainly may have known a few days in advance that the General Assembly intended to vote on the Act, and they might have been prepared so that as soon as the news came to them, they could act on pending cases. But when they woke up on the morning of 9 March 1771 it is very doubtful that they knew their county would come into existence later that day.
An interesting item was recorded in the records of Cumberland County on 25 March (16 days after the 9th) ~ Michael Feathor, a resident of Bedford Township, was appointed to serve as a constable by the Cumberland County Court. If everyone knew that Bedford County had been erected on 9 March, why would the Cumberland County Court appoint a constable in the new county on the 25th? Perhaps the people in Cumberland County were not even aware that a new county had been erected out of its western half until weeks later.
