USA > Ohio > History of Ohio; the rise and progress of an American state, Volume One > Part 31
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formation of the company and its history are fully set forth in the writings and letters of Franklin as edited by Jared Sparks. The promoters desired to buy from the Indians a tract of land west of the Alleghanies, and south of the Ohio and north of North Carolina-a tract to include some two million four hundred thousand acres. This was two years previous to the Fort Stanwix Treaty. That treaty changed the situation and conditions of operation, for after that treaty the company must deal with the crown authority, which had come into possession of the land desired. The company was to consist of seventy-two shareholders. It was to establish a new colony or province to be called Vandalia, with a form of govern- ment like that of Massachusetts Bay Colony. The prospective capital was to be located at the mouth of the Great Kanawha and Sir William Johnson was to be the governor.
Dr. Franklin proved, as might be expected, an able and persistent lobbyist for the company before the London authorities but vigorous opposition was en- countered. Colonel George Mercer, agent for the Ohio Company of 1748, was likewise in London urging the claims of that company, whose desired territory was largely covered by the proposed Walpole Grant. Again the bounty lands promised the Virginia officers and soldiers by that province for their services in the French and Indian War would be swallowed in this Walpole Grant. Washington, personally interested in the Ohio Company and the distribution of the Virginia bounty, a distribution in which he was entitled to receive a large portion, was opposed to the Walpole Grant and
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maintained its success would give a fatal blow to the interests of Virginia. More potent than all, the Crown Ministry objected to the project because it was the studied policy of the Board of Trade to prevent western migrations and restrict the settlers to the eastern sea- board, so that they would be within easy control of the royal authorities and continue beneficial to the commerce of England.
But the Walpole Company persisted and Dr. Frank- lin most vigorously championed the company's claims, and wrote and published an exhaustive pamphlet "The Advantages of a settlement upon the Ohio in North America," regarded as one of the ablest docu- ments emanating from that author's prolific pen. The promoters of the company proposed to give for the territory desired, nearly all of what is now Kentucky between the Great Kanawha and the Scioto, as much in money as the Crown had given for the entire terri- tory purchased of the Iroquois at the Fort Stanwix Treaty. The Walpole Grant would be a good bargain for England. The opposition to the Grant was simpli- fied when-in 1770-the Ohio Company was merged into the Walpole Company, stock in the first company being accepted for shares in the second. This disposed of the Ohio Company.
An agreement was also made by the Walpole Com- pany with the officials of the Virginia Colony whereby the land bounty claims of the Virginia veterans were to be protected. Thus after several years of strenuous effort the Walpolers seemed to have secured the right of way and in 1772, their petition was granted by the
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Board of Trade and sanctioned by the King. But before the company could enter upon the realization of its plans the political troubles preliminary to the American Revolution put an end to further proceedings in the Walpole and other western land schemes.
Speaking of the events in the period just covered, George Bancroft, in his "History of the United States," has this to say: "No one had more vividly discerned the capacity of the Mississippi Valley, not only to sustain commonwealths, but to connect them with the world of commerce, than Franklin; and when the ministers would have rejected the Fort Stanwix Treaty, which conveyed from the Six Nations an inchoate title to an immense territory southwest of the Ohio, his influence secured its ratification, by organizing a power- ful company to plant a province in that part of the country which lay between the Alleghanies and a line drawn from the Cumberland Gap to the mouth of the Scioto. Virginia resisted the proposed limitation of her jurisdiction, as fatal to her interests, entreating an extension of her borders westward to the Tennessee River. It would be tedious to rehearse the plans of the colony; the hesitations of Hillsborough; the solici- tations of Botetourt; the adverse representations of the Board of Trade; the meetings of agents with the beloved men of the Cherokees. On the seventeenth of October [1770] two days after the death of Botetourt, a treaty, conforming to the decision of the British Cabinet, was made at Lochaber (South Carolina), confining the Ancient Dominion on the northwest to the mouth of the Kanawha, while on the south it extended only to within six miles of the Holston River.
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When in the following year the line was run by Donel- son for Virginia, the Cherokee chief consented that it should cross from the Holston to the Louisa, or Ken- tucky River, and follow it to the Ohio. But the change was disapproved in England; so that the West, little encumbered by valid titles, was reserved for the self- directed emigrant."
But during the years that Washington, Johnson, Franklin and others were projecting great western land companies, home seekers were crossing the mountains and dotting the forests with clearings for settlements. This the Ohio Indians viewed with an uneasy and jealous eye, and "did not scruple to say, that they must be compensated for their right, if people settled thereon, notwithstanding the cessions by the Six Nations."
Of these early settlers on the lower Ohio, one of the most remarkable and romantic was Daniel Boone, the "prince of pioneers," some of whose most thrilling adventures occurred in Ohio. This intrepid hero of frontier life and Indian warfare was the son of good old Quaker parents, who first lived in the Schuylkill Valley of Pennsylvania, where Daniel, with numerous brothers and sisters, was reared amid most primitive surroundings. Indians were his boyhood companions. He was early schooled in all the arts and hardships of backwoods experience. He was "an ardent lover of the wild woods and their inhabitants, which he knew as did Audubon and Thoreau." He was a "dead shot," a fearless rider, knew the forests as the sailor knows the seas, and had nerves that never quailed and muscles supple and tough as steel. Few
DANIEL BOONE.
The greatest of all pioneers and Indian fighters, as he appeared in the later years of his life. Taken from an original portrait by Chester Harding, painted from life when Boone was over eighty years of age.
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
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nur Buring the years that Washington, Johnson, Franklin and others were presecting greet westem Jand copanies, honti wokens wele trounng the mountaine and dotting the fosaw will dearings for settlements. This the Ohio Tullins viewed with an uneasy and Inkus eye, sod Pdld not seraple to say, that they inut be compenlited for their night, if people settled roon, noluthuitanding the cessions by the Six
( these early settlers on the lower Ohio, one of tost removable and romantic was Daniel Boone, "prince of oneers, " some of whose most thrilling Arrivares ceemired in Ohio. This intrepid hero of Tuler life And Indian warfare was the son of good Quaker paimti, who birit lived in the Schuylkill Voury of Peniylvania, where Daniel, with numerous Whirs and avuses, was reared amid most primitive
Indiana were hie boyhood companions. Il & girly actosled in all the arts and hardships W ladowoode empirience. He was "an ardent lover J far wid woods and their inhabitants, which he Lom . did Awayson and Thoread." He was a "drad shot, " a failles ilder, knew the forests as the sailor Mow the feet and liud nerves that never quailed -d muscles supple and tough as atoel. Few
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OF AN AMERICAN STATE
of the western frontiersmen ever possessed the hardi- hood, strength, patience, perseverance and love of solitude that marked his character. His powers of endurance almost surpass belief.
When Daniel was in his eighteenth year the family moved to a claim on the north fork of the Yadkin. It was the year 1751. Here Daniel continued, for four years, his training in the school of nature, when the adventurous boy, with other North Carolina compan- ions, became a Provincial recruit in Braddock's army. Boone was the wagoner and blacksmith of his company, and says Thwaites, "his was one of those heavily laden baggage-wagons which, history tells us, greatly impeded the progress of the English and contributed not a little to the terrible disaster which overtook the column in the ravine of Turtle Creek, only a few miles from Pittsburg." From that disaster Boone had a hair-breadth escape, but he possessed more lives than the proverbial feline.
To Boone's home on the Yadkin, came many rumors of the rich soil, game-filled forests and El Dorado op- portunities in the untrodden Kentucky wilderness. It was in the winter of 1768-9, just after the Fort Stanwix Treaty, that one John Finley, a fur-trader and Indian fighter, one who, as early as 1752, had navigated the Ohio as far as the Falls and had later tramped the Kentucky fastnesses for many a year, came to the Boone cabin on the Yadkin, to see Daniel whose com- rade he had been in Braddock's ill-fated army on the Monongahela and for whom he had ever had a fraternal feeling. Finley's glowing description of the Kentucky land aroused the ardor and envy of Daniel and with
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
Finley and two other kindred fortune-seekers-one being John Stuart, brother-in-law of Boone-the jour- ney was made across the mountains, along the streams and through the trackless forests until the party reached the waters of Red River, a tributary of the Kentucky River.
Here for nearly two years the hunters penetrated the forests, scaled the mountains, paddled the streams, fished and hunted, prospected locations for settlement and endured hardships and perilous adventures in endless variety. Twice they were made captives by Shawnee Indians from across the Ohio River and twice they narrowly escaped with their lives. John Stuart never returned from this journey, being killed by the Indians, but Boone found his way back to his family on the Yadkin and in 1773 sold his Carolina holdings and with his wife and children and many companions took that long journey to his home newly chosen in the far west. He was the typical hero of the ever advancing vanguard of civilization, pushing on to the unbroken wilds as the settlements followed in his wake. With the quality of dauntless daring he was kind- hearted, humane, devoid of malice and possessed the most unflinching adherence to honesty and fair dealing. He died at the ripe age of eighty-six:
"In action faithful and honor clear,
Who broke no promise, served no private end,
Who gained no title and who lost no friend."
Volumes have been written recounting the life and unprecedented adventures of Daniel Boone. His fame spread to other lands and his simple, rugged character,
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and the forest life led by himself and companions brought forth a tribute in the rolling rhymes of Lord George Gordon Byron:
Of the great names which in our faces stare, The General Boone, back-woodsman of Kentucky, Was the happiest amongst our mortals anywhere; For killing nothing but a bear or buck, he Enjoy's the lonely, vigorous, harmless days Of his old age in wilds of deepest maze.
Crime came not near him-she is not the child Of solitude; Health shrank not from him-for Her home is in the rarely trodden wild,
Where if men seek her not, and death be more Their choice than life, forgive them, as beguiled By habit to what their own hearts abhor- In cities caged. The present case in point I Cite is, that Boone lived hunting up to ninety; And what's still stranger, left behind a name For which men vainly decimate the throng, Not only famous, but of that good fame
Without which glory's but a tavern song- Simple, serene, the antipodes of shame,
Which hate nor envy e'er could tinge with wrong; An active hermit, even in age the child Of Nature, or the Man of Ross run wild.
'Tis true he shrank from men even of his nation, When they built up into his darling trees,- He moved some hundred miles off, for a station Where there were fewer houses and more ease; The inconvenience of civilization
Is, that you neither can be pleased nor please; But where he met the individual man, He showed himself as kind as mortal can. He was not all alone; around him grew A sylvan tribe of children of the chase, Whose young, unawaken'd world was ever new, Nor sword nor sorrow yet had left a trace On her unwrinkled brow, nor could you view A frown on Nature's or on human face; The free-born forest found and kept them free, And fresh as is a torrent or a tree.
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RISE AND PROGRESS OF AN AMERICAN STATE
And tall, and strong, and swift of foot were they, Beyond the dwarfing city's pale abortions, Because their thoughts had never been the prey Of care or gain; the green woods were their portions; No sinking spirits told them they grew grey, No fashion made them apes of her distortions; Simple they were, not savage; and their rifles, Though very true, were not yet used for trifles.
Motion was in their days, rest in their slumbers, And cheerfulness the handmaid of their toil; Nor yet too many nor too few their numbers; Corruption could not make their hearts her soil; The lust which stings, the splendour which encumbers; With the free foresters divide no spoil; Serene, not sullen, were the solitudes
Of this unsighing people of the woods.
CHAPTER XX. WASHINGTON'S OHIO JOURNEY
T HE many-sidedness of Washington presents an unfailing field of study in his character and career. His varied accomplishments, in each of which he was facile princeps, again and again quicken our interest in and increase our admiration for the foremost figure in American annals. So glorious was he in the martial events 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 curri- culum he came in contact with many phases of effort calculated to peculiarly prepare him for the work of his manhood. The qualities later displayed in the arena 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 warfare 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 north- west. 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.
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
He was preëminently an expansionist. As a boy he looked down from the heights of the Alleghany range and beheld the kingdom of the Ohio Valley and the glories thereof. Long before the Revolution and years after he looked to possibilities of the vast domain bounded by the Great Lakes, "the beautiful river" and the "Father of Waters." He planned for its development and assiduously strove to create the chan- nels 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 landholders of his day. The events that unite Washington with the Ohio country were as romantic as they were resultful.
The Washington Brothers were among the foremost to promote the original "Ohio Movement." We have already seen how Lawrence and Augustine Washington, with Thomas Lee, Thomas Cresap, George Fairfax and others, "all of his Majesty's colony of Virginia," organized the Ohio Company in 1748. These enterpris- ing gentlemen petitioned the King, "that his Majesty will be graciously pleased to encourage their undertaking by giving instructions to the governor of Virginia to grant them and such others as they shall admit as their associates a tract of five hundred thousand 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 said mountains as shall be adjudged more proper by the petitioners for that purpose, etc."
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This land lay, in modern geography, in the Ohio Valley between the Monongahela and the Kanawha River. The land might be chosen on either side of the Ohio. A portion of the land the company proposed to secure, was in the present Jefferson and Columbiana counties of Ohio, and Brooks County of West Virginia. It was this Ohio Company and the prospecting tour of its agent, Gist, that was a factor, indeed the main one, to precipitate the French and Indian War, the contest of the Latin and Anglo-Saxon races for the fair prize of the Ohio country, the empire of the West.
In the spring of 1748, the year this Ohio Company was projected, George Washington, then a lad of sixteen, entered upon his career as a backwoods surveyor of lands embraced in the vast estate of Lord Thomas Fairfax, cousin of William Fairfax, the father-in-law of Lawrence Washington, then resident at Mt. Vernon. George Washington had already been made a surveyor of the county of Culpeper and had received a surveyor's commission from William and Mary College. Through the melting snows and along or across the swollen streams, in the season mentioned above, Washington, George Fairfax, son of William Fairfax, James Genn, a professional surveyor, a pack-horse and servitors, wended their way through Ashby's Gap, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, into the broad and panoramic valley through which runs the river called by the Indians, Shenandoah, meaning in their tongue, "the daughter of the Stars."
The party entered the broad Valley of Virginia, where it is bounded by the Blue Ridge range on one side and the North Mountains, a stretch of the Alle-
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ghanies, on the other. What a magnificent scene met the enchanted gaze of the impressionable and appre- ciative youthful surveyor! It was Washington's in- troduction to the splendors of nature, and his initiation to life in the wilderness. This experience is set forth in his diary, which at that early day he began to keep, a practice he continued without interruption till his death. This first of his journals has been published "verbatim et literatim, " and it may be added "spella- tim et punctuatim," revealing the fact that George was a better surveyor than speller. This interesting little volume, edited by J. M. Toner, lies before us as we write. The diary, though largely a monotonous record of his surveys, is enlivened by flashes of youthful sentiment-even poetry-and bespeaks also the per- sistency and earnestness that always characterized him.
The youthful diarist entered with keen enjoyment and ready adaptation into all phases of outdoor activity for there it was that like Jacques in the forest of Arden, one
"Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything."
On this surveying trip, he learned the arts and practices of backwoods life, he came in contact with the Indians and their domestic habits and methods of warfare. He was schooled in courage, self-command, perseverance and endurance. It was a primitive, rough and tumble existence that-in the shadows of the Shenandoah forest-but it was a priceless preparatory school for the future hero of Valley Forge and Yorktown. In an early date in his journal he makes a memorandum indicating that he was engaged to survey certain lands
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for the Ohio Company, but there is no later word that he really did this. The employment by Lord Fairfax monopolized his services. But it was this surveying commission of nearly two years' duration, with its educating features, plus the influence of his own family and the Fairfaxes, that caused Governor Dinwiddie to first appoint the youthful Washington one of the four adjutant generals of the Virginia militia, with the rank of major, and subsequently to select him as the diplomat who should proceed upon the delicate and daring mission of meeting the French embassy at Venango on the banks of the Allegheny, to confer concerning the conflicting rights of France and England to the Ohio country. The embassy on that errand we have described. The French and Indian War ensued. Washington's part therein ended with the taking of Fort Duquesne by the expedition of Forbes. From the smoking ruins of that fort, Washington hastened 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 there- after he quietly followed the pursuits of peace in his happy Mt. Vernon home, cultivating his ample acres while keenly watching the fates as they spun the threads that wove the tangled web of war-a war that should exalt him to the heights of earthly fame.
No one so clearly perceived, as did Washington, the folly of England's policy in the Quebec Act. He knew the west, its limitless and invaluable resources, and the necessity of uniting it by commercial inter- course with the New England and southern settlements. In the year of his retirement from the army (1759),
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Washington was chosen a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses and he brought privately to the members of the assembly a plan for improving the Potomac and connecting it with the Monongahela by means of a canal, thus opening a waterway from the Ohio to the tide-water of the Atlantic. Besides interesting himself in a public way in the unfolding of the West and in the construction of means of outlet for its untold wealth, Washington devoted his efforts to the personal acquisition of western lands. In 1760 a reorganization of the Ohio Company was unsuccessfully essayed- unsuccessful because of conflicting claims of parties seeking western lands. In 1763 we found him the chief promoter of what he named the "Mississippi Land Company." About this same time was in- augurated the scheme called the "Walpole Grant," which Washington regarded as inimical to his interests and to those of Virginia, and which therefore met his adverse efforts.
The Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768) put an end to the land companies then lobbying at London for grants of land by the Crown. And now Washington turns his attention to the bounty claims of the French War veterans and enters into negotiations with Governor Botetourt and later with the latter's successor Lord Dunmore. In 1754, when Governor Dinwiddie in- stigated the expedition for the seizure of the Forks of the Ohio, the prelude to the approaching French War, he offered-as has been noted-as an inducement to volunteers, bounty lands beyond the mountains. Washington, as chief officer of that campaign, became entitled to the largest allotment of such land claims
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and in addition he purchased other claims assigned to officers and soldiers under him.
Years before this, however, there had entered into life association with Washington, in his land projects, one who became his friend and companion and who was to remain close in his confidence and favor until that relationship should be terminated by his tragic and historic death, on the banks of the Tymochtee, in the heart of the Sandusky Valley. This was none other than William Crawford, whose acquaintance Washington made while employed in the survey of the lands of Lord Fairfax in 1748-9. A firm compan- ionship between these two was the natural logic of events. At the outset they had much in common. Crawford was born the same year as Washington (1732) in what was then Orange County, Virginia-now Berk- eley County, West Virginia. The youths were of the same mold in stature and form, and possessed of similar temperaments. Crawford was above six feet in height, and in point of strength and activity a very athlete. While surveying in the vicinity of the Crawford home- stead, which became for a while the headquarters of the surveying party, George and William met and the friendship, praiseworthy on both sides, was the result. Crawford at once joined Washington in the surveying enterprise and acquired the art, which he thereafter followed, as a vocation along with farming, until war commanded his services. In 1755 he accepted a com- mission as ensign and with Washington fought under Braddock in the latter's disastrous engagement. His bravery brought him a lieutenancy and for three years he was engaged, on the Pennsylvania and Virginia
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