Ohio History Journal

GEORGE WASHINGTON'S INTEREST IN THE

OHIO COUNTRY

BY C. B. GALBREATH

February 22nd will be the bicentennial anniversary

of the birth of George Washington. We are apt to

think of him as a stately, heroic figure, far remote from

us in time and space. Two hundred years is a com-

paratively brief period in the life of a nation. Only

four generations have passed away since the death of

Washington. Many are now living who read in the

newspapers at the time the announcement of the death

of the last soldier of the Revolution.

Washington was born in Virginia, the "Old Do-

minion," which, prior to the Civil War, bordered on our

own State, and he was so interested in the region where

we now dwell that he made a journey thither years be-

fore the minute men at Concord Bridge

"Fired the shot heard round the world,"

and the bell on Independence Hall "proclaimed liberty

throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof."

Washington's interest in the vast primeval wilder-

ness that covered the Alleghany Mountains and the

regions beyond is traced by one historian to the counsel

of his mother in 1747, given to dissuade him from a life

at sea where his brother had found a romantic career

She directed his thought "to those darkling forests that

stretched illimitably away to the westward of their

Virginia home."1

1 Hulbert, Archer Butler, "Washington's Tour of Ohio," Publications

of the Ohio Historical and Archeological and Historical Society, Vol.

XVII, p. 432.

(20)

22       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

brother Lawrence, he succeeded to his office as adjutant

general of a military district in Virginia with the title

of major. He entered upon the study of tactics to fit

himself for service against the French and Indians who

were threatening the western border of the Common-

wealth.

He early became a thrifty lad and manifested a de-

sire to become a landed proprietor.  At the age of

sixteen years he acquired five hundred and fifty acres of

"wild land" in Frederick County, Virginia, and paid

for it with money earned as surveyor. Two years later

he bought a farm of four hundred and fifty-six acres,

and in 1752 purchased another tract of five hundred and

fifty-two acres. Before he was twenty-one years of age,

he had through his own efforts become the owner of

1,558 acres. Here is conclusive evidence of his early

ambition to become an extensive land owner.²

In 1753 Washington was chosen by Governor Din-

widdie of Virginia to carry an important message to

the French commander at Fort LeBoeuf, twelve miles

south of Lake Erie in Pennsylvania where Waterford

now stands. Another man had been sent on this mis-

sion and had failed.  The appointment appealed to

young Washington's pride. With his party on horse-

back, including French and Indian interpreters and

Christopher Gist, the famous explorer and backwoods-

man, he set out on the last day of October in that year

on the long journey through Western Pennsylvania.

The mission was successfully accomplished. On the re-

turn journey the party was overtaken by the bitter cold

and drifting snows of winter. It was impractical for

2 Woodward, W. E., George Washington, the Image and the Man,

pp. 82-93.

George Washington's Interest in the Ohio Country  23

the entire party to proceed. Washington and Gist faced

the rigorous weather, the dangers of the primeval forest,

the skulking savages, and returned on foot to deliver

the message of the French commander to Governor Din-

widdie. The promptness and intrepidity with which the

mission was accomplished favorably impressed the

Governor. This exploit has at times been likened to

"carrying a message to Garcia."

In the French and Indian War, which promptly fol-

lowed, Washington's first important military services

were in the Upper Ohio Valley at the Great Meadows;

in the disastrous campaign of General Braddock; and

the expedition against Fort Duquesne, changed in name

to Fort Pitt after its capture by the British.

It is a significant fact that Washington's entire mili-

tary experience, prior to the Revolution, was in the

Upper Ohio Valley.

He was early attracted to western lands as a profit-

able investment. After the close of the French and

Indian War the lands east of the Mississippi and south

of the Great Lakes were transferred to the British and

Washington at this time was a royal British subject.

He was interested in the Ohio Company; he was one of

the organizers of the Mississippi Company which sought

to obtain from the Crown of Great Britain a grant of

2,500,000 acres of land "on the Mississippi and its

waters." Four months after the organization of this

company the British Ministry issued a proclamation

that put an end to grants of western lands for purposes

of settlement. This annoyed but did not discourage

Washington. He continued to seek information in re-

24       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

gard to lands already granted and to acquire them as

he was able.

John J. Ingalls in his colorful and somewhat ironic

oratory once said that George Washington was a pa-

triot; that there could be no doubt in regard to that.

"This did not prevent him," said Ingalls, "from seeing

a good thing far off." "The location of the National

Capital near his patrimonial estates did not diminish

their value." The inference here is that he used his

great influence to have the Nation's Capital located near

his plantations. Over against this suggestion we may

place the historic fact that he served eight years as

Commander-in-Chief of the Revolutionary Army with-

out salary and that he renounced his claim for Virginia

bounty lands amounting to 23,333 acres. He gave to

the American cause in salary and lands the equivalent,

at the lowest estimate, of $150,000. Truly it may be

said that his was a patriotic and unselfish service.

But he knew a good thing when he saw it and he

saw it afar off. He saw it over the Appalachian Moun-

tains in our wonderful Ohio country. In his early

military service he had traversed the Monongahela and

the Allegheny valleys. He had seen these two rivers

unite to form the beautiful Ohio. But he had not ex-

plored its valley to the westward.

On October 5, 1770, Washington set out on his

journey to this valley. At this time the territory north-

west of the Ohio River was an unsettled and unorgan-

ized wilderness. This journey was commenced almost

four years and seven months before the opening battles

of the Revolution and five years and nine months before

the Declaration of Independence.  British authority

George Washington's Interest in the Ohio Country  25

was then supreme in the Colonies and George Wash-

ington was a British subject. His purpose in this west-

ern journey was to get first-hand information in regard

to lands along the Ohio, which he was to view for the

first time, although he had heard and read of them.

He reached Fort Pitt October 17.

His journey down the Ohio and return is described

in the preceding contribution by Dr. Guy-Harold Smith

with special reference to encampment sites. Dr. Smith,

Department of Geography in the Ohio State University,

has devoted time and scholarly care to the map and the

text. Every known source of information has been con-

sulted.  The result is highly satisfactory and strictly

reliable. The suggestion of Dr. Smith that the camp

sites should be marked is commendable. Where the side

of the river is not definitely known, markers appropri-

ately inscribed should be placed on both sides.

This journey left a lasting impression on the mind of

Washington. The exigencies of the Revolution, its

trials and its triumphs, did not change his high estimate

of the Ohio country. In 1784, one year after the sign-

ing of the Definitive Treaty of Peace with Great Britain,

he made the following entry in his diary:

Into this river (Ohio) * * * Big Beaver Creek, Muskin-

gum, Hockhocking, Scioto and the two Miamis, in its upper

region and many others in the lower pour themselves from the

westward through one of the most fertile countries of the globe.3

The region here described, in this bicentennial year,

is our own Ohio, and this tribute was paid by George

Washington after he had led the Revolution to triumph,

bade farewell to his fellow officers and retired for a brief

3 Hulbert, A. B., Washington and the West, pp. 87-88.

26        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

period to Mt. Vernon and private life. He had not yet

been called to the Presidency of the young Republic.

In this same year, 1784, he wrote to Governor Ben-

jamin Harrison of Virginia a letter in which he pro-

posed a system of water transportation for the Ohio

country, which should join the Ohio River and Lake

Erie. Forty-one years afterwards the first shovelful of

earth was raised in the construction of the canals which

meant so much in the early development and progress

in Ohio.

Washington was not a dreamer but he had a vision.

He had faith that the Ohio Valley would in time call

to it a large population. When the proper preliminary

steps were taken by Congress he felt assured that this

favored region would, in his own language, "be settled

faster than any other ever was," that imagination could

not measure the development of this inland empire.

After the organization of the Northwest Territory,

the establishment of the first permanent settlement at

Marietta and the election of Washington as President

of the United States, he found frequent occasion to ex-

press his abiding faith in the future of the region that

he explored in his earlier years. Of the settlement at

Marietta, he said:

No colony in America was ever settled under such favorable

auspices as that which has just commenced at the Muskingum.

Information, property, and strength will be its characteristics.

I know many of the settlers personally, and there were never men

better calculated to promote the welfare of such a community.

To the end of his days he watched with sympathetic

interest the development of the Northwest Territory

and especially that portion which has become our home

state.