The Explorer

The story of Cooling Springs begins with the Swiss explorer and humanitarian Franz Michel, son of the Lord of Ralligen, Switzerland. In 1704, Michel (the German mee-KEL) became the first European to explore deep beyond the English settlements along the 13 Atlantic coast colonies when he trekked far west of the Maryland colony's Chesapeake Bay. Michel's 1704 map of western Maryland here, annotated with modern place names, is the oldest known map of the region. His exploration went as far as the headwaters of Virginia's Shenandoah River, three ranges deep into the Appalachian Range, and opened western Maryland and the Shenandoah Valley to settlement beginning in the 1720s. On his expedition, Michel scouted the location where today's Cooling Springs was founded by his son Andrew in 1768.

Frantz Michel and his wife Anna lived at King William, the colony he founded in 1702 in Virginia. In 1709, he took British citizenship and by 1718 had become Francis Michael, American. Francis spent his career rescuing European religious and war refugees, including, Anna, by the thousands, and arranging their transport to six colonies that he established for them along the East Coast. His most successful was the beginning of the Pennsylvania Dutch Country.

His story is told in Cooling Springs owner Peter Michael's prize-winning biography, First Explorer. Francis is Peter's fifth-great-grandfather. See the Links page here.

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