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Tension in the Ohio Valley. Unlike the peaceful advance of settlement into the Valley of Virginia, occupation of trans-Allegheny West Virginia proceeded amid considerable peril. French and Indian claimants contested nearly every move by the Virginia settlers into the area. The claims of both England and France to the Ohio Valley, of which trans-Allegheny West Virginia was a part, rested upon principles recognized by international usage. England based her claims upon the discovery of the New River by Batts and Fallam, an extensive fur trade in the region, and settlements along remote tributaries of the Ohio, such as the New and the Greenbrier. France asserted rights emanating from the alleged visit of La Salle in 1669, far-flung trading operations, and settlements in the Illinois country.

In 1742, during King George's War, two Virginians, John Howard and John Peter Sailing, perhaps in anticipation of the opening of trans-Allegheny lands, set out for the western country. Howard, who apparently lived on the South Branch of the Potomac, and Sailing, then living on the New River, ascended the South Branch and moved westward by way of the New and Coal rivers. At Peytona, on the Coal River, they observed outcroppings of coal. They continued to the Kanawha and followed that stream to the Ohio, where they constructed a bullboat, which carried them on to New Orleans.

Whether Howard and Sailing had any official or semiofficial sanction for their journey remains unknown, but skeptical French officials took no chances. They arrested the entire party. Sailing managed to escape and make his way back to Virginia. His journal probably provided much of the information on western Virginia used by Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson in their famous map of 1751. Not so fortunate, Howard and the other men were sent to France and put on trial. The court cleared them of any criminal charges, whereupon they went to London and faded into obscurity.¹

With her own claims to parts of the Ohio Valley at stake, Virginia took the lead in asserting the rights of England. Her contention that the Iroquois, or Six Nations, had ceded their right to territory west of the Allegheny Mountains in the Treaty of Lancaster of 1744 suggests that even then she was ready to embark upon an aggressive policy in the Ohio Valley. In the wake of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, which ended King George's War but proved no more than an armed truce, both Virginia and France stepped up their activities in the Ohio Valley.

The Virginia Land Companies. Convinced that settlements were essential to control of the Ohio Valley, Virginia as early as 1745 turned to the policy that had proved successful in peopling the Valley of Virginia. She offered speculators one thousand acres of land for each family they settled west of the Allegheny Mountains and allowed them four years instead of the customary two to meet their requirements. By the end of 1754, Virginia had granted more than 2,500,000 acres in the trans-Allegheny region, about 650,000 of them in West Virginia. Only three of the recipients, the Greenbrier, Loyal, and Ohio companies, however, achieved any noteworthy success.²

The Greenbrier Company came closest to fulfilling its agreement. Its members included John Robinson, Sr., the Speaker of the House of Burgesses, John Lewis, a prominent Valley landowner, and others with political influence and experience in settling frontier areas. In 1745 the company received one hundred thousand acres in the Greenbrier Valley. By 1754 Andrew Lewis, its surveyor, had laid off more than fifty thousand acres.³

The Loyal Company, with a grant of eight hundred thousand acres in 1748, consisted of forty prominent Virginians, including Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson. Its guiding spirit was Dr. Thomas Walker of Albemarle County, who moved to Wolf Hills, the present Abingdon, about 1748. On March 6, 1750, Walker and five companions undertook a search for lands for the company. They passed through Cumberland Gap and into central Kentucky and missed the rich Bluegrass region by only about a day's journey. Walker and his men returned home by way of southern West Virginia and the Bluestone, New, and Greenbrier rivers. By 1754 the Loyal Company had seated about two hundred families on its lands, mostly in southwestern Virginia, but a few apparently settled along the New and Bluestone rivers in West Virginia.

Much closer to the heart of the international conflict in the Ohio Valley was the Ohio Company of Virginia. Organized by Thomas Lee and including Thomas Cresap, Augustine Washington, and George Fairfax among its members, it sought a grant of five hundred thousand acres of land in 1747. Governor William Gooch declined to authorize the grant, but yielded after the company carried its case to the English Privy Council. The company received two hundred thousand acres with the stipulation that it settle one hundred families within seven years and build and garrison a fort for their protection. Once it had complied with these terms, it might have an additional three hundred thousand acres on similar conditions. The Ohio Company never specifically located its lands, and its only settlement, of eleven families, was in the vicinity of Redstone, Pennsylvania.

In its quest for land, the Ohio Company dispatched Christopher Gist, a competent North Carolina surveyor and explorer, on two expeditions. On the first, undertaken in 1750-1751, Gist proceeded from the residence of Thomas Cresap, at Oldtown, Maryland, to the Forks of the Ohio, now Pittsburgh. He then followed a circuitous route through Ohio, Kentucky, and southwestern Virginia to a point near his old home on the Yadkin River in North Carolina. On the second expedition, he explored both sides of the Ohio River from the present Pittsburgh to the mouth of the Kanawha. He moved up the Kanawha, where he found excellent lands, and then turned back toward the Ohio and proceeded northward by way of Mason, Jackson, Wood, Pleasants, and Tyler counties.

In the early summer of 1752 Virginia cemented her claims to trans-Allegheny lands by the Treaty of Logstown with Delaware, Shawnee, and Mingo chiefs. Representing her at the conference, held about eighteen miles below the Forks of the Ohio, were Lunsford Lomax, Joshua Fry and Colonel James Patton, a prominent Valley of Virginia landowner. Gist was present to speak for the interests of the Ohio Company. In the Treaty of Logstown the Indians reluctantly accepted the interpretation of the Treaty of Lancaster of 1744 by which Virginia claimed trans-Allegheny lands south of the Ohio River in western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky.

Early Trans-Allegheny Settlements. Following the end of King George's War in 1748, settlers began a cautious advance across the Alleghenies. Their most important moves were into the Greenbrier Valley. Among the first were Jacob Marlin and Stephen Sewell, who resided at Marlinton. According to tradition, they disagreed over religion, and decided that Marlin should remain at their cabin and Sewell should live in a hollow tree as a means of preserving their friendship. Indians later killed Sewell on Sewell Mountain, and Marlin returned to the Valley of Virginia. Sewell was one of eighteen persons who received a grant of land between the Greenbrier and Monongahela rivers in November 1752, and it seems likely that he and Marlin were land prospectors rather than bona fide settlers.

At the beginning of the French and Indian War, about fifty families evidently lived in the Greenbrier Valley. In 1750 Thomas Walker reported several “plantations” and asserted that prospective settlers had already purchased much of the land from the Greenbrier Company. Most of the settlements lay on Muddy, Howard, Anthony, Spring Lick, and Knapp creeks and in the area known as the Sinks rather than along the river itself. Prominent pioneer families included those of John Keeney, James Burnside, Thomas Campbell, Samuel Carroll, Archibald Clendenin, Andrew Lewis, Lemuel Howard, James Ewing, Patrick Davis, William Renick, Felty and Matthias Yocum, and George, Frederick, and John See.

Other pioneers crossed the Alleghenies to the headwaters of the Monongahela. In 1753 Robert Files and David Tygart, for whom Files Creek and the Tygart Valley River are named, settled near Beverly, either on or near the Seneca Trail. The following year Files, his wife, and five of their six children were killed by Indians. A surviving son warned the Tygart family, and together they escaped to settlements on the South Branch of the Potomac. Five years later Delaware and Mingo Indians killed Thomas Decker and other settlers at Morgantown. Meanwhile, in 1756, Gabriel and Israel Eckerlin, ascetic and pacifistic settlers at Dunkard Bottom, on the Cheat River, fell victim to Indian attacks. Settlements beyond the Alleghenies were clearly beyond the perimeter of safety in the 1750s.

French Countermoves. After King George's War, France also began to reinforce her claims to the Ohio Valley. Recognizing the Ohio Valley as a significant political and economic link between Canada and Louisiana, the Comte de la Galissoniere, governor general of Canada, took steps to gain the support of the Indians of the region. In 1748 he dispatched an expedition of about 230 Canadian militiamen and Indians to the Ohio under the leadership of Pierre-Joseph Celoron de Blainville. The expedition descended the Allegheny and Ohio rivers. At prominent points along the route, Blainville buried lead plates with inscriptions asserting the right of France to the Ohio Valley. One plate was later found at the mouth of Wheeling Creek and another at the mouth of the Kanawha. Blainville found numerous English traders but no inclination in the Indians to desert them.

Determined not to lose the Ohio Valley by default, a new governor-general, Marquis Duquesne, in 1753 sent about two thousand Troupes de la Marine and Canadian militiamen to build a road from Lake Erie to the headwaters of the Ohio and to construct forts at strategic places. Captain Pierre-Paul de la Malgué, sieur de Marin, whom Duquesne placed in charge of the work, pressed forward so relentlessly that he and nearly four hundred of his men died. The show of power by the French, however, impressed the Indians. They began to sever their relations with the English, with whom they had already become dissatisfied. By the end of 1753 no Virginia or Pennsylvania traders remained in the Ohio Valley. Moreover, Forts Presqu'Isle at Erie, LeBoeuf at the mouth of French Creek, and Venango at Franklin, Pennsylvania, prevented further English penetrations south of Lake Erie.

Virginia and the Burden of Empire. In Robert Dinwiddie, Virginia had a governor whose boldness and determination matched those of the governors-general of Canada. Believing that the time had come for a showdown in the Ohio Valley, Dinwiddie in October 1753 took imperial affairs into his own hands. He sent George Washington to Fort LeBoeuf with a message to Jacques le Gardeur de Saint-Pierre, the French commandant in the Ohio Valley, charging France with encroachment upon English territory and calling upon her to withdraw. The courtly Saint-Pierre received Washington with becoming dignity, but he denied that France had violated English territory. He declared that France intended to remain in the Ohio Valley.

With uncommon perception for a man only twenty-one years old, Washington concluded that the Forks of the Ohio, at the present Pittsburgh, held the key to control of the Ohio Valley. Convinced that Washington was right, Dinwiddie in January 1754 dispatched Captain William Trent and a work party of thirty-seven men to build a fort at the Forks of the Ohio. In April, Washington, with 150 men drawn largely from Frederick and Augusta counties, set out to provide a garrison for the fort On the way, Washington met the work party returning home. It reported that a large French force had come down the Allegheny River, taken possession of their partially completed structure, and begun building their own fortification, Fort Duquesne.

For reasons that remain obscure, Washington proceeded on to the Forks of the Ohio. Warned of his approach, Claude-Pierre Pecaudy de Contrecoeur, who was in charge of French forces there, ordered a detachment of thirty-three men under Ensign Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville to intercept the Virginians and warn them to leave. During the night, however, Washington, with about forty militiamen and Indians, surrounded Jumonville's camp. In an attack at daybreak, Jumonville was killed, and the surprised French surrendered. In anticipation of French retaliation, Washington hurriedly threw up a small defense known as Fort Necessity at Great Meadows, near Uniontown, Pennsylvania. On July 3,1754, the French assaulted the little fort and forced Washington to surrender. They allowed the Virginians to leave, but they made Washington promise not to attempt further fortifications in the Ohio Valley for at least a year.

The victorious Contrecoeur boasted that with Indian support he would drive the English from the trans-Allegheny country. Reports began to circulate among the Virginia settlements that France intended to establish her defense perimeter along the crests of the Alleghenies rather than the Ohio River. Rumors that four hundred Frenchmen were being assembled to construct forts on the Greenbrier, New, and Holston rivers produced alarm in border settlements.

The Braddock Campaign. Convinced that Virginia alone could no longer deal with the French threat in the Ohio Valley, Dinwiddie appealed to London for help. The British government responded by sending General Edward Braddock and two regiments of British regulars to Virginia. With 1,400 Redcoats and 450 Virginia militiamen, Braddock set out for the Forks of the Ohio by way of

Fort Cumberland and Nemacolin's Trail, a path marked out by the Indian guide who had accompanied Washington to Fort LeBoeuf nearly two years previously.

Braddock faced serious difficulties. He lacked Indian allies, and Virginia supplied a disappointingly small number of militiamen. He had to clear a road for transporting his artillery and moving heavy freight wagons. Moreover, his successes with European military tactics rendered him incapable of adapting to modes of fighting in the American wilderness. Worse still, his underestimation of the strength of French forces at the Forks of the Ohio and his reliance upon the element of surprise proved disastrous. On July 9, 1755, Braddock himself was surprised when he was less than ten miles from Fort Duquesne, and his army was cut to pieces. Braddock was mortally wounded in the attack.

The failure of the Braddock expedition laid border settlements of West Virginia wide open to attack by the French and Indians. In late August 1755, bands of Indians attacked the Greenbrier settlements. They killed twenty-five people, took two captives, burned eleven houses, and slaughtered or drove off about five hundred cattle.⁴ Survivors fled across the Alleghenies to the Valley of Virginia. They did not return until 1761, when the Greenbrier region once again seemed safe from attack. Similar conditions prevailed in the upper Potomac Valley. Scores of terrified residents on Patterson Creek, the South Branch, and even the Cacapon River, left for the Shenandoah Valley rather than face annihilation. In October 1755, George Washington, who had been placed in charge of all Virginia militia, visited the region. The scenes of desolation and bitterness of the people over the lack of adequate protection so discouraged him that he contemplated resigning his command.

The Sandy Creek Expedition. No abatement in the perils to the West Virginia frontiers could be expected until the French were driven from the Forks of the Ohio and their control over the Ohio Valley Indians was broken. Although the Virginia General Assembly appropriated forty thousand pounds for defense, Dinwiddie had no illusions that Virginia forces could dislodge the French from their position. After months of steadfast opposition to any expedition against Fort Duquesne or into the Indian country, he finally yielded to a popular clamor and authorized a strike against the Shawnee villages in Ohio. Upon the recommendation of George Washington, he named Major Andrew Lewis to lead the expedition. At Fort Frederick, near Ingles Ferry on the New River, Lewis assembled about 340 men, of whom between 80 and 130 were Cherokee warriors.

From the time that it left Fort Frederick on February 18, 1756, the Sandy Creek Expedition, as the move was known, encountered nothing but difficulty and disappointment. Rugged terrain and streams swollen by incessant rains impeded the march by way of the North Fork of the Holston River, Burkes Garden, the upper Clinch, and the Big Sandy River. On February 29, the men crossed the flooded Big Sandy sixty-six times within fifteen miles and had to abandon several packhorses. By March 3, rations had to be reduced to one-half pound of flour per man and whatever game could be killed. With most of the packhorses worn out, morale among the men gone, and desertions increasing, Lewis held a council of war on March 15. Despite his entreaties to continue, the officers voted to abandon the expedition and return home. Organized in haste, inadequately supplied, and dependent upon raw frontier militiamen averse to military discipline, the expedition did nothing to alleviate the distressing conditions on the frontiers.⁵

Grim Days on the Border. About the same time that remnants of the Sandy Creek Expedition began straggling back home, the General Assembly took steps to bolster defenses on the upper Potomac. It authorized a chain of twenty-two forts extending from the Cacapon River to the South Fork of the Mayo. It stipulated that nine of the posts should be built in present West Virginia, on the Cacapon, the South Branch of the Potomac, and Patterson Creek, and that 1,045 of the 2,000 men designated for garrison duty be assigned to them. Meanwhile, on April 18, Indians killed Captain John Mercer and sixteen men at Fort Edwards on the Cacapon River, and crumbling defenses there threatened to expose the Shenandoah Valley to attack. Militiamen ordered to the South Branch sometimes disappeared surreptitiously, and some companies fell apart before the time for departure. Before the summer ended, Indians had made several attacks in the vicinity of Fort George on the South Branch, assaulted Fort Neally on Opequon Creek, and engaged settlers and militia in the bloody battle of The Trough. Most of the attacks, however, involved isolated families, such as that of Samuel Bingaman, who killed eight of his assailants before he lost his own life.

In spite of fears that the upper Potomac frontier might collapse and expose the Shenandoah Valley to attack, settlers on the South Branch held their ground. In recognition of their fortitude, a council of war held at Fort Cumberland in April 1757 recommended that additional troops be posted on the South Branch “in order to preserve that valuable Settlement—to induce the people to plant a sufficiency of Corn; and to prevent by that means, the vale of Winchester from becoming the Frontier.”⁶ The South Branch residents remained even after Indians in the spring of 1758 killed Captain James Dunlap and twenty-two men at Fort Upper Tract, killed or captured thirty persons at Fort Seybert, and burned Fort Warden.

The Changing Fortunes of War. For the West Virginia frontiers, the storms of war subsided almost as quickly as they had gathered. The relief came partly as a result of the new and vigorous leadership that Prime Minister William Pitt instilled into the British war effort in 1757. In North America, Pitt laid the groundwork for eventual triumph by advancing such young and capable officers as James Wolfe, Jeffrey Amherst, and John Forbes to high rank and entrusting them with crucial assignments. In 1758 the British launched major campaigns in the Saint Lawrence-Great Lakes area and achieved signal successes in the capture of Louisbourg, which guarded the eastern approach to Quebec, and Fort Frontenac.

The campaign directed against Fort Duquesne in the fall of 1758 had immediate effects on the West Virginia frontier. A British army of six thousand men led by Forbes far outmatched French forces at Fort Duquesne, which had been depleted to provide troops for other fighting fronts. Convinced that he could not withstand an assault by Forbes's army, the French commandant ordered his men to blow up Fort Duquesne and withdraw up the Allegheny River toward Canada. Forbes immediately occupied the strategic position taken from the Virginians four years earlier. Indian tribes of the Ohio Valley began to sever their ties to the French and to seek peace with the British. The fall of Fort Duquesne relieved the pressure on the West Virginia frontiers, and almost at once a few intrepid settlers began to cross the Alleghenies.

Wolfe's capture of Quebec, the great bastion of French military power, in 1759 and the fall of Montreal the following year sealed the French fate in North America. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 settled with finality the question of control of the Ohio Valley, where the nine-year conflict between England and France had begun. Trans-Allegheny West Virginia was to be English. But the Shawnee still claimed the land, and much blood would be shed before settlement could proceed with peace and safety.

¹rhe background of the Howard and Sailing expedition is discussed in Fairfax Harrison, “The Virginians on the Ohio and Mississippi in 1742,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 30(April 1922):203-22.

²Descriptions of these grants are in H.R. McIlwaine, Wilmer Hall, and Benjamin J. Hillman, eds, Executive Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia, 6 vols. (Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1925-1966): Vol. 5, 172-73, 195, 206, 231, 258, 282-83, 295-97, 377, 409, 426-27, 436-37, 454-55, 470. For a summary, see Otis K. Rice, The Allegheny Frontier: West Virginia Beginnings, 1730-1830 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1970), 34-38.

³There is no single account of the Greenbrier Company, but useful information can be gleaned from several secondary works, including Patricia Givens Johnson, General Andrew Lewis of Roanoke and Greenbrier (Blacksburg, Va: Southern Printing Company, 1980), 16-19.

⁴Reston's Register of Persons Killed, Wounded, or Taken Prisoner…, Draper MSS, 1QQ83, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison (Microfilm in West Virginia Division of Archives and History, Charleston). See also Elizabeth Cometti and Festus P. Summers, eds., The Thirty-Fifth State: A Documentary History of West Virginia (Morgantown: West Virginia University Library, 1%6), 51-56.

⁵Albert H. Tillson, Jr., Gentry and Common Folk: Political Culture on a Virginia Frontier, 1740-1789 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1991), 68, 70-71, 72-73.

⁶Quoted in Louis K. Koontz, The Virginia Frontier, 1754-1763 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1925), 163.