Ohio History Journal

WASHINGTON AND OHIO.*

E. O. RANDALL, LL. M.

The many-sidedness of Washington presents an unfailing

field of study in his character and career. His varied accomplish-

ments, in each of which he was facile princeps, again and again

quicken our interest in and increase our admiration for the fore-

most figure in American annals. So glorious was he in the "pomp

and circumstance" of the War of Independence, and so wise and

potent was he in the arena of our national awakening, that we are

apt to think of him merely as a soldier and a statesman.

He was far more. He was eminent as a "man of affairs."

He was not a college-bred man, but he was trained in the "school

of life" and in its broad curriculum he came in contact with

many phases of effort calculated to peculiarly prepare him for

the work of his manhood. The qualities displayed in the spheres

of soldiery and statesmanship were discovered and developed

in his early experiences in the frontier wilderness. Washington

was a graduate of the forest. His first tutors in the art of war-

fare were the tribesmen of the backwoods of the Ohio Valley.

The school of his diplomacy was his unique service, while yet

a lad, in the romantic and picturesque plays made by England and

France for racial supremacy in the Northwest. The loci of these

ambassadorial contests were chiefly on the banks of the Ohio.

Thus Washington's introduction to events military and political

was on the advance line of western civilization.

Undoubtedly Washington received much of the breadth of

his views and the keenness of his vision from his life amid the

rugged mountains, the ample plains and the sweeping rivers of

the primeval West. He was pre-eminently an expansionist. As

a boy he looked down from the heights of the Alleghany range

and beheld the empire of the Ohio Valley and the glories thereof.

Long before the Revolution and years after he looked to pos-

sibilities of the vast domain bounded by the Great Lakes, "the

* The substance of this article appeared in the Ohio Magazine for

February, 1907.

(477)

478       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

beautiful river" and the "Father of Waters." He planned for

its development and assiduously strove to create the channels

which should connect the commerce of the East with the products

of the West. It was the prospective future of the Ohio Valley

that made Washington a surveyor, an engineer, a promoter of

western real estate and one of the largest land holders of his day.

The events that unite Washington with the Ohio country

were as romantic as they were resultful. The Ohio country was

to be the arena for the bitter and prolonged struggle of the Latin

and the Saxon competitors for the acquisition of an American

empire.  The adventurous and chilvalrous Frenchman first

dominated the Ohio by the right of discovery and exploration.

Under the patronage of the luxurious and ambitious Francis I,

who, as the politicians phrase it, "viewed with alarm" the lodg-

ments the English and Spanish were making in the New World,

Jacques Cartier, in the beginning of the Sixteenth Century,

navigated the hitherto unknown waters of the broad St. Lawr-

ence. Others followed until Champlain, "the father of New

France," planted the colony of Quebec (1608) on that rocky

height which was to be the Gibraltar of the kingdom of the

Gaul in the newly discovered world. Champlain's associates

and successors pushed on across the Great Lakes and down the

rivers of Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin, till their frail but plucky

canoes, carrying the fur trader and the Jesuit priest, embarked

on the swift majestic current that whirled them on to the mouth

of the Mississippi. From the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of

Mexico the banners of the Bourbons proclaimed the sovereignty

of France. All this while the Anglo-Saxon, from time almost

immemorial the inveterate foe of the Latin, was slowly but surely

securing a firm foothold on the rugged coast of the Atlantic

and preparing to measure strength with his old-time enemy for

the conquest of the West.

The Alleghany mountains were not to be the barriers to

his onward march. The Anglo-Saxon has always been a reacher-

out and taker-in. He has always been a land-grabber and a

land owner, and in extenuation, be it said, a land improver.

The discoveries of the dauntless Cabots preceded the landing

of Cartier, and in 1607, just one year before the foundation of

Washington and Ohio.                 479

Quebec, the Jamestown (Va.) colony became the first permanent

English settlement in America. It was thus a neck and neck

race between the Gaul and Teuton for the American stakes.

Under the charter of 1609 the Jamestown company "became

possessed in absolute property of lands extending along the sea

coast two hundred miles north and the same distance south from

Old Point Comfort, and with the land throughout from sea to

sea."  It is familiar history how  other colonial settlements

followed under various forms of charter and patent; how many of

these royal grants called for land from the Atlantic to the un-

known limit on the West and how these colonies' claims often

conflicted and overlapped. The English settlers on the barren

Atlantic shores began to look with longing eyes to the vast ex-

panse, the land of promise, "flowing with milk and honey," beyond

the Alleghanies, the domain claimed by France. Virginia was

the center that attracted the most enterprising English colonists,

and she sent forth the most venturesome settlers into the great

Northwest, the Virginia colonists being advance skirmishers in

the westward pioneer emigration. Virginia's claim of territory ex-

tended west to the Mississippi river and north to a line covering

most of what is now Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. The territory

between La Belle Riviere, as the French poetically called the

Ohio River, and the waters of the placid Erie, was to be the

storm center of the conflict that in its finality was to determine

not merely the relative careers of these two peoples, but the

destiny of the world.

FIRST OHIO COMPANY.

By the year of 1748 the plucky Pennsylvanians and the

belligerent Virginians had worked their way to the eastern foot-

hills of the last range of mountains separating them, from the

coveted country. Many a bold straggler had already scaled the

boundary heights and had ferried the dividing river to seek his

luck in the fertile valleys of the Tuscarawas, the Muskingum,

the Sandusky, the Scioto and the Miamis.

"Where's the coward that would not dare

To fight for such a land?"

Washington and Ohio.               481

Colonel Thomas Cressap, Lawrence Washington, Augustus

Washington, George Fairfax and others, "all of his Majesty's

Colony of Virginia."

These enterprising gentlemen petitioned the king "that his

Majesty will be graciously pleased to encourage their under-

taking by giving instructions to the Governor of Virginia to

grant to them and such others as they shall admit as their as-

sociates a tract of 500,000 acres of land betwext Romanettes and

Buffalo's Creek on the south side of the River Aligane

(Allegheny), otherwise the Ohio, and betwext the two Creeks

and the Yellow Creek on the north side of the River or in such

other parts of the west of the said mountains as shall be adjudged

most proper by the petitioners for that purpose, etc." This land

lay, in modern geography, in the Ohio Valley between the Monon--

gahela and Kanawha Rivers. The land might be chosen on either

side of the Ohio. A portion the company proposed to secure

was "in the present Jefferson and Columbiana counties of Ohio

and Brooke county of West Virginia." The conditions of the

grant were that two hundred thousand acres were to be taken up

at once; one hundred families were to be "seated" within seven

years and a fort was to be built by the grantees as a protection

against hostile Indians.

The king readily assented to this scheme, as it was represented

to him by the Lords of Trade "that the settlement of the country

lying to the westward of the Great Mountains in the Colony of

Virginia, which is the center of all his Majesty's provinces, will

be for his Majesty's interests and advantage, inasmuch as his

Majesty's subjects will be thereby enabled to cultivate a friend-

ship and carry on a more extensive commerce with the nations

of Indians inhabiting those parts, and such settlement may like-

wise be a proper step towards disappointing and checking the

encroachments of the French by interrupting part of the com-

munication from their lodgements upon the Great Lakes to the

River Mississippi, by means of which communication his Majesty's

plantations there are exposed to their incursions and those of the

Indian nations in their interest." In plain terms this Ohio grant

severed the chain of the French claim uniting the St. Lawrence

with the Mississippi. This location was further selected, "that

Vol. XVI - 31.

482       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

water communications between the heads of the Potomac and

the Ohio might be available for transportation." Although the

grant was never issued as planned and directed, the managers

of the Ohio Company proceeded in anticipation of its realization

and established stores at Wills Creek (Cumberland, Md.) and

opened thence a road across the mountains to the Monongahela,

and they further prepared to erect a fort at the confluence

(Pittsburgh) of this river and the Allegheny. Two cargoes of

goods suitable for the Indian trade were ordered from England

and an explorer was secured to prospect the lands. As Thomas

Lee, who took the lead in the concerns of the Ohio Company,

died almost at the outset, the chief management fell upon Law-

rence Washington, elder half brother of George.

THE FRENCH EXPEDITION.

At these activities of the Ohio Company, the French author-

ities at Quebec began to take notice. Evidently something must

be doing; As a prelude to more effective measures, a sort of

curtain-raiser to the coming drama, the Marquis de la Galisson-

iere, commander of all New France and the country of Louis-

iana, directed that the Chevalier Celoron de Bienville, with proper

escort, proceed to the Ohio country and pre-empt the same in

the name of France. This expedition was a characteristic spectac-

ular performance. In June, 1749, Celoron, De Contrecoeur and

De Villiers being his chief subordinates, embarked from Montreal

in a flotilla of twenty birch bark canoes, conveying a detachment

of two hundred French officers and Canadian soldiers and some

sixty Iroquois and Abenake Indians. This picturesque outfit

pushed its way up the St. Lawrence, across Ontario to Niagara,

around the roaring falls of which they shouldered their canoes,

re-embarking on the waters of Lake Erie. Thence they ascended

Chautauqua creek to the lake of that name, over which they

paddled to the mouth of Conewango creek, which skurried the

little fleet into the broader current of the Allegheny. At this

point, now known as Warren (N. Y. ), a halt was made and at

"the base of red oak on the south bank of the river 'Oyo' " (Ohio),

as the Allegheny was then called, and of the Chanongon (Co-

newango), the party buried a plate of lead some eleven inches

Washington and Ohio.                483

long and seven wide, on which was engraved in formal French

words, an inscription that Celoron, in behalf of the King of

France, took renewed possession of the Ohio River "and of all

those which fall into it and of all territories on both sides as far

as the source of said rivers, as the preceding kings of France

have possessed or should possess them." As an additional clincher,

a tin sheet was tacked upon the tree setting forth a "Process

Verbal," bearing the arms of France and certifying that a plate

had been there buried, etc.

Having thus literally "nailed down" the title of France, the

band of medieval Gauls and western savages, drawn up in military

array, shouted "vives" for their king and then, re-entering their

canoes, resumed their journey and at the forks of the Allegheny

and the Monongahela floated down the majestic current of La

Belle Reviere, upon which its discoverer, La Salle, had floated three

quarters of a century before. The leaden plate burial ceremony

was encored at the mouth of French creek (Pa.), Kanawha in

West Virginia, the Muskingum and Little Miami rivers in Ohio.

At the mouth of the Great Miami, then called the Riviere a la

Roche, the last metallic "nota bene" was sunk and the little navy

of bark gondolas turned their prows northward and ascended

the Miami, to the mouth of Loramie creek, then the site of Pick-

awillany stockade and the village of the Piankashaw band of In-

dians, whose chief, because of his gaudy attire, was known to

the French as "La Demoiselle." The English called him "Old

Britain," as he was friendly to their interests. After extending

to Demoiselle much French palaver and more substantial per-

suasion in the shape of fire water and gun powder to wean him

from the British friendliness, Celoron burned his battered canoes,

that had transported his command up the Miami river, and thence

with Indian ponies he picked his way across the divide and along

the River St. Mary to the mouth of the Maumee, where was

located the French fort Miami. Here pirogues were secured

and the journey continued down the river to Lake Erie, Lake

Ontario and the place of their departure, Montreal, which was

reached in the middle of October.

The expedition had occupied four months and traversed "at

least twelve hundred leagues." Celoron had faithfully discharged

484      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

his errand. The Ohio Valley had certainly been placarded as

the property of France, and due warning had been given all

British intruders to "keep off" the domain of his Majesty King

Louis XV. But Celoron in his diary was compelled to admit

"that the nations (Indians) of these countries (traversed) are

very ill-disposed towards the French and are devoted entirely

to the English." This circuit of Celoron was little else than a

quixotic comedy, a passing show in the trappings of mock war,

amid the wild scenery of savage inhabited country. It was soon

evident that it would require lead in some more potent form than

buried inscriptions to exclude the undaunted Virginians.

THE ENGLISH EXPLORATION.

The Celoron "claiming with confidence" expedition aroused

the attention of the Virginians and Pennsylvanians.  George

Croghan, one of the most conspicuous figures in western annals

in connection with Indian affairs for twenty-five years preceding

the American Revolution, had trading posts at various Indian

towns on and west of the Ohio. He was the agent of the Province

of Pennsylvania to distribute presents to the Ohio Indians and

keep them friendly to the colonies. In the fall of 1750 Croghan

and one Andrew Montour, another diplomat for the Quaker

colony and familiar with the Indian tongues, were dispatched

by Governor Hamilton of Pennsylvania to the Ohio country to

checkmate Celoron's expedition. At the same time the Ohio

Company of Virginia summoned from his home on the Yadkin

the intrepid backwoodsman and Indian expert, Christopher Gist,

and employed him to proceed across the Ohio country and ex-

amine the western country as far as the Falls of the river

(Louisville); to look for tracts of good land; to mark the passes

in the mountains, the courses of the rivers and to observe the

numbers and strength of the Indians and make full report to the

Company. It will be noted that this expedition was no ceremonial

and fantastical claim for the king's domain. On the contrary

it was a characteristic Anglo-Saxon prospecting tour for land.

The Ohio Company, with Lawrence Washington at its head, was

the first western real estate explorer and boomer.

Gist and his companions set out from Shannopin's Town

Washington and Ohio.               485

(site of Pittsburg) and struck west across the Ohio country to

Beaver creek, Elks Eye creek and on to the Indian town on the

Muskingum, where he fell in with the party of Montour and

Croghan, who had preceded him and over whose quarters floated

the British flag. Thence the explorers continued west across the

center of the (Ohio) state to the Shawnee town of old Chillicothe

on the Scioto. They later camped at "Great Swamp," head of the

reservoir, now Buckeye Lake; thence proceeded to the Twigtwee

town on the Big Miami, the Pickawillany headquarters of the

Piankashaw King Demoiselle, or "Old Britain." Gist's company,

with as much pomp as possible, entered this Indian capital flying

the British colors, as Celoron had entered a year and a half

before under the French flag. Imposing councils were held in the

chief's wigwam; many speeches were delivered and presents

distributed by the English agents to the Redmen. In the midst

of these parleys a legation of French Indians, bearing aloft the

French colors, arrived from Detroit. The rival French and Eng-

lish embassies vied with each other to impress and influence the

Indian chief and his people. The counter ceremonies lasted

many days. "Old Britain" gave the hand of friendship to the

English, from whom he received most bountiful largess of purse

and promise. The French envoys, outdone in diplomacy, struck

their colors and withdrew.

Croghan and companions returned overland to Pennsylvania

and reported to the provincial assembly. Gist returned by the

Miami to the Ohio and threaded his way through the wild and

beautiful backwoods of Kentucky to his home on the Yadkin,

which he reached in May, 1751. He made a full report to the

Ohio Company, the first detailed account of any white man's ex-

plorations across the present Buckeye State.

And now the plot for the possession of the Ohio country

begins to thicken. In June, 1752, the Indians met Gist and the

Virginian agents at Logstown on the Allegheny and in spite of

French intrigues and blandishments made a treaty whereby the

Ohio Company was permitted to make settlements on the Ohio

and build a fort at the forks of that river, the strategetical entrance

to the Ohio Valley. Gist began the survey of the Ohio Com-

pany's lands and removed from the Yadkin to Shurtee's creek

486       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

on the Ohio just below the forks. The plans of the Ohio Com-

pany were progressing swimmingly. Pennsylvanian traders were

scattering themselves over the Ohio country, planting posts and

cajoling the Indians. The sheets of tin and plates of lead had

proven futile scarecrows against the aggressive Saxon. It was

time to strike blows, and Celoron Bienville, now commandant

at Detroit, sent the fearless Langlade, with French officers and

one hundred and fifty Indian warrior allies in a "fleet of swift

darting canoes," up the Maumee to destroy the British Indian

quarters at Pickawillany. The attack was made in June, 1752.

The stockade fort was plundered, many Miami Indians killed,

the English traders taken captive and poor "Old Britain" mur-

dered, boiled and eaten. It was the first bloodshed, on Ohio soil,

in the racial contest for the Ohio country.

Meanwhile Duquesne, Governor of New France, hastened to

fortify the French settlements and cut off the English on the

east. Under his directions, in the spring of 1753, a force of

French troops and allied Indians proceeded from Montreal,

reached the harbor of Presque Isle (Erie) and there built a fort.

Advancing into the interior, a fort called Le Boeuf was erected on

Le Boeuf creek, a branch of French creek, and at the mouth of

the latter, as it empties into the Allegheny, another fort was built,

called Venango. They purposed pushing on to the forks of the

Ohio and there establish their main fortification.  Governor

Dinwiddie, now a member of the Ohio Company, and therefore

zealous of English interests, not only from patriotic motives

but also from pecuniary ones, accepted the challenge of Duquesne.

GEORGE WASHINGTON.

While the French and British powers were "scoring" for

the opening struggle in the conquest of the Ohio valley and the

great west, he who was to be the most conspicuous figure in the

prelude and the unrivalled hero in the subsequent drama, was a

mere boy tramping the almost untrodden backwoods of Virginia

and Maryland, expanding his lungs with the mountain air, tough-

ening his muscles with mountain climbing, learning precious

lessons from the preceptor, Nature, acquiring the physical

prowess, the powers of endurance and self-restraint and the

Washington and Ohio.                 487

mental alertness that so admirably fitted him for the duties that

later crowded thick upon him. That boy was George Washington.

He was a typical product of the rough wilderness plus the innate

nobility of character and genius of mind with which nature

endowed him.

A century before Celoron and Gist traversed Ohio the Wash-

ingtons had left the mother country and settled in Virginia;

and their immediate descendants, in the male line, were men of

large and powerful physique, resolute and persevering tem-

perament, dominant, if not violent, disposition, not averse to war,

religious in the Church of England way, thrifty and aristocratic.

Into this family came George in 1752, at Wakefield, Westmore-

land County, Virginia, his mother, Mary Ball, being the second

wife of his father, Augustine Washington, who, at his death

in 1743, left large land estates. To Lawrence, elder son by his

first wife, Jane Butler, the father bequeathed Mt. Vernon and

two thousand five hundred acres, with slaves, iron works, mills,

etc. In the event of Lawrence's death without issue, this property

was to pass to George. It subsequently so passed. To Augustine,

second son by the first wife, the father left the Wakefield estates;

small allotments were made respectively to Samuel, John and

Charles, younger full brothers of George, and to Betty, his own

sister. To George was devised the farm on the Rappahannock

and portions of land on Deep Run.

Thus George, at the age of eleven, became a landed pro-

prietor with most flattering prospects. Like many of his youthful

companions, he might have made a profession of being a "gentle-

man," which meant going to Oxford for an education, returning

to Virginia and spending life in fox-hunting, cock fighting, slave

bossing and rum drinking. George was better inclined and better

advised. He reserved himself for higher pursuits. Dame For-

tune, ever looking for subjects worthy her favoritism, supple-

mented his common-sense and high-mindedness. His two half

brothers made excellent matrimonial alliances. Lawrence mar-

ried Anne, daughter of William Fairfax, proprietor of Belvoir,

a plantation in the neighborhood of Mt. Vernon; Augustine won

for his bride Anne, daughter and co-heiress of William Aylett,

Esq., of Westmoreland County. George, for some years after

488       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

the death of his father, spent his time alternately at Wakefield,

the home of Augustine, and at Mt. Vernon, the home of Lawrence.

Both these elder brothers were refined and dignified men; the re-

sidence of each was the abode of colonial culture and the resort

of the best Virginia families. George therefore had unusual

opportunities of acquiring the sentiments and manners of "good

society," but he was early made to understand that he was not to

grow up a genteel loafer. He must do something in the aid of

his own support and that of his mother.

His brothers looked with disfavor upon the luxurious and

loose life of the younger sons of the Virginia planters. Yet to

engage in trade or work as a clerk was not to be considered;

for the scion of a wealthy family that would not be tolerated.

He would loose caste with his class. His respectability must be

preserved, and so the choice of a vocation was the perplexing

question. Inclination and opportunity combined to open him the

avenue in accord with his aptitude and one that would best

qualify him for the lofty stations awaiting him. While abiding

with his brother Augustine at Wakefield, he attended the nearby

school of Oak Grove, kept by a Mr. Williams. George here

discovered little taste for Latin, history or literature, but great

fondness for mathematics. With youthful zest he accompanied

his teacher when the latter surveyed some meadows on Bridge's

creek. It was the realization of his predilection. Working out

a mathematical problem, staking off the bounds of unmeasured

land, tramping the woods in all their primeval splendor, offered

a mingling of labor and delight that charmed the boy. He would

be a surveyor. Moreover it was a gentleman's business, in great

demand and incidentally a lucrative one.

Mr. Williams arranged that George be permitted to further

inform himself by attending upon Mr. James Genn, the official

surveyor of Westmoreland County. After some years' residence

with Augustine at Wakefield, George took final leave of school

and transferred his home to that of Lawrence at Mt. Vernon,

when it was definitely to be decided what he should do for a life

calling. He could easily have made his own choice, but he was

only fifteen and the elder brother was the arbiter. The father-

Washington and Ohio.                489

in-law of Lawrence, William Fairfax, was cousin to and business

agent of Thomas, Lord Fairfax of Fairfax County, and one

of the largest land proprietors in the Virginia colony, his estates

numbering a million five hundred thousand acres. His vast do-

main lay between the Rappahannock and Potomac rivers and

extended over the Blue Ridge mountains, comprising, among

other lands, a great portion of the Shenandoah valley. At Mt.

Vernon Lord Fairfax was a frequent and welcome guest, and

there he came in contact with George Washington. A great

friendship sprang up between the wealthy, scholarly, blase,

bachelor lord of sixty and the young boy, just entering his

teens and wrestling in his earnest, frank, enthusiastic way with

the problems that confronted him on the threshold of life. Lord

Fairfax approved the boy's selection of surveying as a profession.

It was honorable and profitable. He could at once set up the

apprentice in business in the opening of his lordship's vast lands.

So choice and chance made George Washington a surveyor.

Through the influence of his benefactor, Lord Fairfax, George

was made a Surveyor of the County of Culpeper and a little later

William and Mary College gave him a surveyor's commission.

It was in the spring of 1748 that the young surveyor with George

Fairfax, James Genn, a pack horse and servants, entered upon

his first important service. Through the melting snows and the

swollen streams they wended their way through the Ashby's Gap

in the Blue Ridge mountains into the Shenandoah valley, near

where the river of that romantic and historic name joins the

Potomac. What a magnificent scene met the enchanted gaze

of the appreciative youthful surveyor - a grand panorama of

delectable hills and expanding valley cleft with the winding river,

and all clad in the white cloak of winter and overhung with the

azure arch of heaven. It was Washington's introduction to the

splendors of Nature. He describes in his diary, of that trip,

the joy of outdoor life, the giant trees, the sweeping streams,

camping in the wilds of the forest, sleeping in the open air on the

ground with leaves for a bed and a bear skin for wrappings;

shooting the wild game for food and his "agreeable surprise at ye

sight of thirty Indians coming from war with only one scalp."

Washington and Ohio.                491

Ohio Company and the coming struggle between France and

England for the Ohio valley. The chain of forts established by

the French from Lake Erie to the Ohio must be broken in twain.

Virginia must send an envoy to present the claims of the Colonies

to the Ohio valley and to warn the French that further advances

by them would be met by force of arms.

WASHINGTON A DIPLOMAT.

The youthful Major Washington was chosen as that envoy

by Governor Dinwiddie on the advice of Lord Fairfax, who said,

"Here is the very man for you; young, daring and adventurous,

but yet sober-minded and responsible, who only lacks opportunity

to show the stuff that is in him."  The first diplomatic errand

of Washington was to champion the cause of England against

the pretensions of France. In October, 1753, accompanied by

Christopher Gist, as guide and Van Braam as French interpreter

and one Davidson as Indian interpreter, for the Indian was the

third and intervening party to be reckoned with in this conflict,

Washington set forth from Wills creek (Cumberland, Md.).

They passed the forks of the Ohio, where Washington had ad-

vised the erection of a fort, and arrived at Logstown, being there

received by Tanacharisson, the Indian chief known as the Half

King, because of his semi-sway over several tribes, and who was

predisposed toward the English. The Half King, White Thunder,

Guyasutha and two or more other chiefs, joined Washington's

party, and thence this singular embassy of savages and Saxons

proceeded seventy miles north to Venango on the Allegheny, where

Washington beheld "with anger and shame" the flag of France

flying over the fort. Here the party met Captain Joncaire, half

Indian and half French, bitter enemy of the English, who dined

and wined the English embassy after the frontier fashion, and

sent it on to Fort Boeuf on French creek, where was stationed

Legardeur St. Pierre, the French representative envoy in this

unique international negotation.

There was much diplomatic sparring, lasting several days.

The clever, wily and talkative St. Pierre persisted in the claims

of France; the temperate and cool-headed Washington presented

the message of Dinwiddie, protesting against the intrusion of

492      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

French forces into the Ohio valley, "so notoriously known to be

the property of the crown of Great Britain." St. Pierre was gen-

erous with French hospitality, and there was unstinted "flow of

soul," while the Indian delegation was purposely plied with "heap"

fire water to persuade them to France. Strange and unique inci-

dent in the wild forest of America - the dispute between the Ro-

mance race and the Saxon stock for the title to a new and almost

unknown world, while the savage child of the forest, the original

and only rightful possessor of the land in controversy was buf-

feted to and fro as were he a mere football in the game !

Through the cold of the midwinter, beset by frozen streams,

treacherous Indians and many perilous dangers, Washington and

Gist returned to Williamsburg. The answer of St. Pierre was

unyielding. But Washington had courageously and sagaciously

performed his duty, and while "the elder French officers were

rather amused that a boy should be sent on an errand that might

bring about a war," his report was printed and read not only

in the American colonies but throughout England. He was the

hero of the hour. The unflinching old Scotch Dinwiddie was

through with Indian sprees and French speeches. The Virginia

House of Burgesses was summoned, a militia force called for and

Washington made a lieutenant colonel, with command of three

hundred men, with order to march to the forks of the Ohio,

whither the fiery Governor, anticipating the action of the colony,

had already sent Captain Trent to erect a fort. While Washington

was getting his troops recruited and started from Wills creek,

Trent's soldiers began their task of building a fort, when suddenly

a large fleet of canoes and batteaus, carrying several hundred

French and Indians under command of De Contrecouer, swooped

down the Allegheny and appeared before the astonished Vir-

ginian fort-builders. The English, a mere handful in comparison

with the enemy, fled precipitously, and, though they had been

first on the ground, the French seized the coveted spot, en-

larged and completed the fort and called it Duquesne.

Washington and Ohio.                493

WASHINGTON A SOLDIER.

It was in April, 1754. Trent's retreating soldiers joined

Washington's force, "a half shod, half dressed, vagabond crew,

but mostly hunters and good shots," which trudged over

the old Indian trail, Nemacolin's Path, thereafter known as

Washington's Road, toward the juncture of Redstone creek and

the Monongahela, where the Ohio Company had built a store-

house. Washington had to make haste slowly, as he must build

bridges, corduroy the swamps and cut wider the narrow forest

thoroughfare. Nearing the Youghiogheny River, he was in-

formed a French force was advancing to meet him. Picking out

broad open space, free of large trees, "a charming place for an

encounter," he erected a crude stockade and called it Fort

Necessity. He pushed on with a half hundred soldiers to meet

an almost similar number of French and Indians under De

Jumonville. The encounter was a backwoods, semi-savage skir-

mish, but notable because the first bloody conflict between the

two hostile nations and the first battle for Washington. It was

his "baptism of fire," in which for the first time the future hero

of two long-drawn wars heard the enemy's bullets whizz around

him and felt that strange exhilaration of danger and excitement

engendered in the clash of arms and din of battle. The surveyor

boy had been transformed into a soldier. His little army won

the fight, De Jumonville was killed, with ten others, and many

of his force were made prisoners. Washington returned to Fort

Necessity, where a week later he was attacked by De Villiers,

half brother of De Jumonville, with a mixed band of French

and Indians from Fort Duquesne. The assailants were too many

for the Virginia rangers, and at midnight, amid a pouring rain

that put out all lights, save one candle that flickered and sput-

tered as it tried to dispel the dark, Washington signed terms of

capitulation and the next morning, July 4-memorable date in

later times-the victor of a few days before marched out of the

little fort, with drums beating and colors flying, an honor that

the doughty Washington had snatched from the disgrace of de-

feat. It was his first and last experience of the humiliation of a

capitulation, though he was soon again to taste of defeat.

494       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

England now took the war in dead earnest. No more back-

wood squabbles and Indian bushwhackings! His Majesty King

George would send a few chosen battalions to America and clean

up this affair without further childsplay. And so General Ed-

ward Braddock arrived with two picked regiments. He possessed

the experience and training of forty-five years in the wars of

Europe. He was a jolly, roystering vivant, noted as a soldier

for his courage and discipline. He was egotistical and conceited

to the British limit and started with his choice troops from

Alexandria for Fort Duquesne. He boasted it would be an

amusing occupation for a few days to dislodge the French from

the Forks and put an end to their absurd claims. He scoffed

at proffered assistance from the Virginia militia or its officers,

but condescendingly invited Washington to accompany him, more

as a companion than otherwise, but with the rank of captain and

nominal member of his staff. With his thousand Irish veterans

and an equal number of colonial militia, Braddock advanced

through the ravines and wooded hills along the route of Wash-

ington's road toward Fort Duquesne. That march and its ter-

rible sequel is more than a thrice told tale. The confident, and

braggadocio Braddock, "a stranger both to fear and common

sense," haughtily spurned all advice from  Washington-how

could an American backwoods boy instruct a veteran of sixty,

with the experience of two score years in the campaigns of

Europe? Braddock approached within a few miles of the fort,

and then stupidly stalked into the ambuscade too well laid by

the Indians and Canadians under the French commander, De

Beanjeu. Suddenly yells and war-whoops resounded on every

side, terrific sounds never before heard by his majesty's soldiers,

while a deadly fire poured into the British platoons, drawn up

"spic and span" as if in holiday dress parade. They could not

return the attack, for the enemy were partly secreted behind

trees and skulking amid the weeds and brush. The British sol-

diers huddled together like frightened sheep, were panic-stricken

and powerless and broke in wild rout. They were mowed down

like grass before the scythe. Braddock was mortally wounded,

and, dying in the precipitate retreat, was buried by Washington

beneath the middle of the road, that the trampling feet and roll-

Washington and Ohio.                 495

ing wheels might conceal the grave of the rash and disgraced

general. Washington had two horses shot under him and four

bullets passed through his clothing. The Indian chief, Guyasatha,

subsequently testified that with deliberate aim he fired time and

again at the Virginia officer, but could not hit him; he "bore a

charmed life."

Such was the result of that hot July day, 1755. England

was astounded, the colonies were paralyzed. It was not till

three years later, in the fall of 1758, that Fort Duquesne was cap-

tured by the expedition, several thousand strong, under General

John Forbes, "an able man, honest, brave, and without ostenta-

tion," and so inflexible in purpose that he was nicknamed the

"Head of Iron." One division of his army was under the com-

mand of Colonel Washington, who was foremost in the advance

upon the French stronghold and who, in the dusk of a November

evening, amid a sweeping snow storm, marched into the blackened

debris of Fort Duquesne, which had been blown up, burned and

deserted the day before. The commanding gateway to the Ohio

valley was at last the trophy of the triumphant British regulars

and colonial militia. The French chain of forts had been severed

forever. From the ashes of the French a new British citadel

arose, to be know thereafter as Fort Pitt. It was the closing

scene, on the western frontier, of the French and Indian War,

which terminated a year later (1759) on the memorable heights

of Abraham, before the battle-battered walls of Quebec, in the

tragic and dramatic defeat of the intrepid Montcalm by the in-

vincible Wolfe, who, as he entered the siege, presaged his vic-

torious death upon the field by repeating the lines of Gray,

"The paths of glory lead but to the grave."

Canada, the Ohio valley, the Mississippi basin, the American

empire, passed forever to the possession and domination of the

Saxon.

WASHINGTON ON THE OHIO.

Washington had passed his apprenticeship in the art of war-

fare, and he had learned his lessons, it is to be noted, west of the

Alleghanies. And, now that "grim visaged war had smoothed

496       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

his wrinkled front," our hero, emerging from the strife renowned

and honored, hastened from the smoking ruins of Fort Duquesne

to yield to the smouldering flames of love. He was married to

Mrs. Martha    Custis, a youthful widow, "rich, fair and

debonnair," and for many years quietly followed the pursuits of

peace in his happy Mt. Vernon home, cultivating his ample acres

and keenly watching the fates as they spun the threads that led

to the great war that should exalt him to the heights of earthly

fame. To the bitter disappointment of the colonists, whose sac-

rificing and loyal aid had enabled England to become the undis-

puted master of the unopened West, the stupid and selfish mother

country proclaimed that the Ohio valley should be reserved for

the Indian occupants and be closed to all colonial settlers. No

one so clearly perceived as did Washington the folly of that pol-

icy and its inevitable fatal results. He knew the West, its limit-

less and invaluable resources, its requirement for the overflow

of colonial immigration and the necessity of binding it by com-

mercial intercourse with the New England settlements, lest, if

isolated therefrom, it might become independent. His hopes

foreshadowed the solidarity of the country into one indissoluble

union. In the very year of the Treaty of Paris (1763), sealing

the settlement between France and England, Washington or-

ganized the Mississippi Valley Company, for the purpose of lo-

cating and securing western lands. The articles of the associa-

tion in the handwriting of Washington and signed by himself,

John Augustine Washington and others, are now preserved in

the Congressional Library.

The Company dispatched an agent to London to obtain the

concessions desired, but the excluding policy of the mother

country as proclaimed in the Quebec Act of that year (1763)

rendered the efforts of the Company unavailing. Washington

steadfastly maintained that the Ohio country was within the

charter limits of Virginia, and therefore not within the effective

operation of the Quebec Act exclusion. The position of Wash-

ington in this matter was both political and personal-no less

public-spirited, we may be sure, because also self-interested. He

was a western land-holder from the start. The invested in-

terests of his brothers in the original Ohio Company opened the

Washington and Ohio.              497

subject to his study. In 1754, when Dinwiddie instigated the

expedition for the seizure of the Forks of the Ohio, he offered

as an inducement to volunteers bounty lands beyond the moun-

tains. Washington, as chief officer of that campaign, became

entitled to the largest allotment of such land claims, and in addi-

tion he purchased other claims assigned to officers and soldiers

under him. He had the prophetic eye and the thrifty hand in

business, as in politics. He foresaw the future development and

rising value of the western domain no less than the portend of

events toward dire differences with the mother government.

It was in the fall of 1770 that Washington made his mem-

orable prospecting journey down the Ohio, an event slightly no-

ticed, if not entirely ignored, by the chief historians, as it pre-

sents little relationship to his subsequent political or military

career. That trip was significant as evidencing Washington's

deep and continuing interest in the West and his realization that

the lands on and beyond the Ohio were to be the Eldorado of the

colonial emigration. The lands south of the Ohio were to be

apportioned in satisfaction of the Virginia soldiers' claims issued

by Dinwiddie. Land offices would soon be opened and locations

selected. Moreover, just previous to this year (1770) a com-

pany formed in London and headed by Thomas Walpole, with

associates both English and American, Benjamin Franklin and

John Sargent being among the latter, petitioned the crown for

a grant of a large portion of the vast country on the Ohio which

had been ceded to the king by the Indian nations at the Treaty

of Fort Stanwix (1768). It was proposed to create out of this

grant a new province or government west of Virginia.

The extent of the territory asked for, included southern

Ohio as far west as the Scioto. This Walpole grant was con-

ceded in 1772 and included and absorbed the grant previously

made to the Ohio Company. The new province was to be called

Vandalia, with the capital at the mouth of the Kanawha river.

Before the scheme was perfected all proceedings were annulled

by the American Revolution. Washington keenly watched the

progress of this project, and it was in his mind when he under-

took his observation tour on the Ohio. With a companion and

two or three servants he reached Fort Pitt by horseback, stopping

Vol. XVI.- 32.

498       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

on the way to view some six thousand acres located for him

"near the Youghiogheny." After being entertained several days

by Colonel George Croghan, then resident near Fort Pitt, the

party embarked in a large canoe and were afloat upon the "Ohio,

pearl of the Western forest sea."

WASHINGTON IN OHIO.

Washington's diary of the trip is fraught with interesting

comment and description concerning the scenery, character of

land, fertility of soil, Indian habitations and their disposition

towards the whites.  Frequent stops and encampments were

made on both sides of the river, those on the Ohio side especially

eliciting our attention. "We came to the Mingo Town, situated

on the west side of the river, a little above the cross creeks. This

place contains about twenty cabins and seventy inhabitants of the

Six Nations." Was it the first time Washington stood upon the

soil of the Buckeye State-

Ohio, first born of the great Northwest,

Nursed to thy statehood at the nation's breast.

the state that later was to give the Nation by birth or residence

six successors to the office he was first to fill? Captina Creek.

memorable later in the annals of Chief Logan, he describes as "a

pretty large creek on the west side, called by Nicholson (his

guide and interpreter) Fox-Grape-Vine, by others Captina creek,

on which, eight miles up, is the town called Grape-Vine Town."

On the opposite side, in Virginia, Washington, ten years later,

owned "a small tract called Round Bottom, containing about six

hundred acres." Other Ohio landings were made, notably at the

mouth of the Muskingum, which river, he says, "is about one

hundred and fifty yards wide at the mouth; it runs out in a

gentle current and clear streams and is navigable a great way

into the country for canoes."

Again, "We came to a small creek on the west side, which

the Indians called Little Hocking." The terminus of the trip was

the juncture of the Great Kanawha, about the mouth of which

Washington became possessed of a ten thousand acre tract and

Washington and Ohio.                499

which in 1773 he advertised for sale or lease, suggesting among

other advantages of its location, "the scheme for establishing a

new government on the Ohio" and contiguity of these lands "to

the seat of government, which, it is more than probable, will be

fixed at the mouth of the Great Kanawha." On the return up

the river when the party reached the Ohio Bend, Washington

sent the canoe and baggage around by water, while he and

Captain Crawford, as Washington says in his diary, "walked

across the neck on foot, the distance, according to our walking,

about eight miles." This walk was across Letart township,

Meigs county. They entered the canoe again and continued on

to Mingo Bottom, now in Jefferson county, two and a half miles

below Steubenville, where they remained three days.

Washington advocated a plan to connect by canal the James

and Great Kanawha rivers, separated at their sources by a port-

age of but a few miles, as he also urged the connection by arti-

ficial watercourses of the Potomac and Monongahela.

This Ohio voyage occupied some two months, giving the

prospector a thorough and practical knowledge of the Ohio river

and adjacent lands. Eventually Washington became the possessor

of some thirty thousand acres on or closely contiguous to the

Ohio, three thousand of which were on the Little Miami within

the present bounds of Ohio. This holding he describes in an ad-

vertisement to sell, published in the Columbian Mirror and Alex-

andria Gazette, February 20, 1796, viz., "On the Little Miami,

upper side, within a mile of the Ohio, 830 acres; about seven

miles up to said Miami, 977 acres, and ten miles from the mouth

thereof, 1,235 acres. Total on the Little Miami, 3,042 acres."

These lots he further states "are near to if not adjoining (the

river only separating them) the grant made to Judge Syms

(Symmes) and others, between the two Miamis; and being in

the neighborhood of Cincinnati and Fort Washington, cannot,

from their situation (if the quality of the soil is correctly stated)

be otherwise than valuable." The Miami property is enumerated

in his will, which designates some fifty thousand acres in the

western country, aggregating a valuation, at that time, of nearly

half a million dollars.

Washington's knowledge of and interest in the Ohio country

500      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

was surpassed by no contemporary. His real estate possessions

presented a water front of sixteen miles on the Ohio river. It

was from their commander that the veteran Revolutionists learned

definite knowledge of the beauty and richness of the west, and

through his "booming" of that section, was it, that thousands

sought homes in the new empire beyond the Alleghanies; and at

times he seriously contemplated removing his home to his lands

washed by the waters of the beautiful river. In the dark hours

during the "storm and stress" of the struggle for independence,

the daunless General kept in mind the vast domain of the West

and looked to it as a safe refuge for the colonists, to which they

might retreat and where, protected by the natural barriers of

lake, river and mountain, they could set up their republic, if the

armies if the king should drive the American rebels beyond

the Alleghanies.

But the rebels drove the enemy into the sea, and hardly had

the terms of peace been heralded before the victorious leader

brought before the authorities of Virginia, Maryland and Penn-

sylvania the schemes of interior navigation and his life-long

projects of uniting the James and Kanawha rivers and the Po-

tomac and Monongahela and the southern and northern rivers

of Ohio, by which artificial arteries of commerce and transporta-

tion the lakes and the Ohio and the latter and the Atlantic would

be indissolubly welded.

In 1784, Washington again traversed the land between the

proposed canals, and the year following the legislatures of Vir-

ginia and Maryland authorized the formation of a company for

the consummation of these practical and patriotic plans. The

organization was called the Potomac Company and Washington

was made its president. It began work, when it was overshad-

owed by the national enactments of the Ordinance of 1787, cre-

ating the Northwest Territory, the formation of the new con-

federated government and the Ohio Company settled at Marietta.

Washington's knowledge, at first hand, of the Ohio country

served him and his infant republic beyond estimation. No one

could have more intelligently or sympathetically directed the ex-

peditions of Scott, Wilkinson, Harmar, St. Clair and Wayne.

The boundary lines of Ohio, first carved from the Northwest, as