9. Carson, Colonial Virginians at Play, 22; Hunter Dickinson Farish, ed., Journal & Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian: 1773–1774, Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg (1943), 32–35, 177–78.
10. To John, 1749–1750, GWP; to Robin, 1749–1750, GWP; to Sally, 1749–50, GWP.
11. Levy, Where the Cherry Tree Grew, 72–73. The colony compensated slave owners for the execution of misbehaving slaves in order to encourage the owners to “discover the villainies of their slaves”; the rationale was that if the owners were not compensated, they might protect their investment in a slave by covering up his or her crimes. David John Mays, Edmund Pendleton, 1721–1803, A Biography, Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1952), 1:35. On the resemblance between brother and sister, one family called Betty “a most majestic-looking woman, and so strikingly like her brother” that if she wore military garb, “battalions would have presented arms, and senates risen to do homage to the chief.” Custis, Recollections, 147.
12. To Anne Fairfax Washington, September–November 1749; Colonel Fairfax to Lawrence Washington, 17 July 1749; Lawrence Washington to unnamed correspondent, 7 November 1749, Robert Dinwiddie to Lawrence Washington, 20 March 1750/51, in Conway, Barons of the Potomac and the Rappahannock, 272–79; George Washington Papers, LOC, Series 5, Financial Papers, General Ledger A, 1750–1772, Image 37. Virginia’s governor had awarded the Ohio Company 200,000 acres near the Forks of the Ohio River, plus an option on another 300,000 acres if the company met benchmarks for settling the land. Lawrence authorized expeditions by Christopher Gist, a frontiersman, to identify good settlement sites. Bailey, The Ohio Company, 74–87; Freeman 1:244–45; Kenneth Bailey, “Christopher Gist and the Trans-Allegheny Frontier: A Phase of the Westward Movement,” Pacific Hist. Rev. 14:45, 47–48 (March 1945); Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, New York: Alfred A. Knopf (2000), 27. Gist kept a journal of his travels in the unsettled lands, and would soon play a significant role in Washington’s life. William McCullough Darlington, ed., Christopher Gist’s Journals, Pittsburgh: J. R. Weldin (1893). Lawrence argued that the Ohio Company could recruit German settlers if Virginia would exempt the Germans—who largely belonged to “dissenting” Protestant sects—from the colony’s tax to support the Church of England, which the dissenters despised. The tax was not modified.
13. Court Case, 3 December 1751, note 2, GWP; Freeman 1:246; Virginia Gazette (Hunter), April 25, May 2, July 4, November 7, 1751.
14. Alicia K. Anderson and Lynn A. Price, eds., George Washington’s Barbados Diary 1751–52, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press (2018), 15–48.
15. Barbados Diary, 83, 85 (6 and 7 October 1751), 100–105 (16–19 October 1751), 112–13 (22 and 23 October 1751), and 124 (30 October 1751).
16. Hilary McD. Beckles, A History of Barbados, from Amerindian Settlement to Caribbean Single Market, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2006), 52–53; Warren Jr., George Washington’s Journey to Barbados, 9. At roughly the same time, an English visitor to Barbados repeatedly observed how many Africans lived on the island. Robert Poole, The Beneficent Bee: or, Traveler’s Companion, London: E. Duncomb (1753), 208, 220–21. Virginia was remarkable, and recognized as such, in having a large population but barely any settlements worthy of being called a town, much less a city. “They have no ambition to fill a metropolis and associate together,” a traveler observed in the 1740s. The towns, he added, “are very slightly peopled, and very badly situated.” Kimber, Itinerant Observations in America, 46.
17. Barbados Diary, 62 (4 November 1751).
18. Barbados Diary, 77 (22 December 1751); Poole, The Beneficent Bee, 213, 208.
19. Barbados Diary, 62, 64–65 (4, 6, and 7 November 1751). Their house, now restored by the Barbados government, was on Bush Hill. Anna Agbe-Davies, Carrie Alblinger, Marley Brown III, Edward Chappell, Willie Graham, and Kelly Ladd, “The Architectural and Archaeological Analysis of Bush Hill, the Garrison, St. Michael, Barbados,” Colonial Williamsburg Foundation for the Barbados National Trust (January 2000).
20. Barbados Diary, 64, 67, 69 (6, 9, and 11 November 1751); S. D. Smith, “Gedney Clarke of Salem and Barbados: Transatlantic Super-Merchant,” New England Quarterly 76:499 (December 2003), 509–11, 516–17.
21. Barbados Diary, 63, 68–70, 77 (5, 10, 12, 13 November and 22 December 1751).
22. Barbados Diary, 71 (16 November 1751), 72 (12 December 1751).
23. Editor’s Note, “The Washingtons in Barbados,” GWP (quoting Jared Sparks, ed., The Writings of George Washington, Boston: John B. Russell, 1833, 2:422).
24. Barbados Diary, 77–78 (22 December 1751).
25. Barbados Diary, 85 (25 December 1751), 72 (12 December 1751), 77–78 (22 December 1751).
26. Barbados Diary, 77 (22 December 1751).
27. Barbados Diary, 84, 87–88 (23, 28, 29, and 31 December 1751), 89, 91–94, 97 (3, 4, 9–12, 14, 15, and 19 January 1751).
28. Dinwiddie’s title was lieutenant governor of the colony, while Lord Albemarle was nominally Virginia’s governor. Under British colonial practice, the governor was a figurehead who rarely appeared in the colony; Lord Albemarle never crossed the Atlantic. The governor’s duties consisted almost entirely of accepting payments from the lieutenant governor, who was customarily referred to as the governor. Koontz, Robert Dinwiddie, 202–4; L. Scott Philyaw, Virginia’s Western Visions: Political and Cultural Expansion on the Early American Frontier, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press (2004), 37 (governors hired lieutenant governors “to do the actual administering of His Majesty’s distant dominions”). In the period covered by the first two parts of this book, most of the individuals who exercised the powers of the royal governor of Virginia were actually the lieutenant governor, while one was the actual governor; for convenience, the book refers to all of them as governors.
5. TURNING POINT
1. James H. Soltow, The Economic Role of Williamsburg, Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg (1965), 6; Edward Kimber, Itinerant Observations in America, 63; “Journal of a French Traveller in the Colonies, 1765, I,” Am. Hist. Rev. 26:726, 741 (1921); Koontz, Robert Dinwiddie, 122.
2. Koontz, Robert Dinwiddie, 30–38; Lewis, For King and Country, 121–22; John Richard Alden, Robert Dinwiddie: Servant of the Crown, Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (1973), 5–10; Lucille Griffith, Virginia House of Burgesses 1750–1774, Northport, AL: Colonial Press (1963), 9.
3. Barbados Diary, 218; from Landon Carter, 9 May 1776, GWP.
4. Editor’s Note, October 20, 1750, GWP.
5. Sparks, The Life of George Washington, 2:423.
6. Anderson, Crucible of War, 17.
7. Jacob-Nicolas Moreau, A Memorial Containing a Summary View of Facts with Their Authorities, in Answer to the Observations Sent by the English Ministry to the Courts of Europe, Philadelphia: James Chatten (1757), 15–16; Donald H. Kent, The French Invasion of Western Pennsylvania, Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (1954), 3.
8. Alan Taylor, American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750–1804, New York: W. W. Norton & Co. (2016), 20. The land development schemes included the Greenbrier Company (headed by John Robinson, Speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses), the Woods River Company (led by Colonel James Patton of Augusta County, Virginia), and the Loyal Company of Virginia (including Peter Jefferson, father of Thomas). James Titus, The Old Dominion at War: Society, Politics, and Warfare in Late Colonial Virginia, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press (1991), 11. In a 1754 letter, Colonel Fairfax’s son-in-law John Carlyle wrote specifically of the fear of being encircled by hostile French lands: “With the settlements on the [Mississippi] belonging to the French and hemming us in by the Appalachian Mountains,” then “all the Indians [would] be dependents on the French Crown and upon any war they might send down their Indians and cut off their people and drive off their stocks of cat
tle, etc., and be very troublesome and dangerous neighbors.” John Carlyle to George Carlyle, 3 July 1754, in “The Personal and Family Correspondence of Colonel John Carlyle of Alexandria, Virginia,” in Carlyle Correspondence.
9. Anderson, Crucible of War, 25–26; Doug McGregor, “The Shot Not Heard Round the World: Trent’s Fort and the Opening of the War for Empire,” Pennsylvania Hist. 74:354, 356 (Summer 2007); Darlington, Gist’s Journals, 48 (17 February 1751). A French official reported in 1749 that the French were losing their position in the Ohio valley because of “the excessive price of French goods [and] the great bargains which the English give, as well as the large presents which they make to the tribes.” David Clary, George Washington’s First War: His Early Military Adventures, New York: Simon & Schuster (2011), 35.
10. Kent, French Invasion, 6; Hugh Cleland, George Washington in the Ohio Valley, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press (1955), 3; McGregor, “The Shot Not Heard Round the World,” 358–61.
11. Darlington, Gist’s Journals, 46–48 (12 and 17–18 February 1751); Francis Jennings, Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies and Tribes in the Seven Years War in America, New York: W. W. Norton & Co. (1988), 49–51.
12. Bailey, Ohio Company, 74; Darlington, Gist’s Journals, 31 (11 September 1750, instructions to Gist), 40 (9 January 1752), 44 (30 January 1752); 68 (16 July 1751, instructions to Gist), 34 (25 November 1751), 77 (12 March 1752), 69–70 (24 November 1751, 7 December 1751).
13. Shannon, Iroquois Diplomacy, 34, 23–24; Koontz, Robert Dinwiddie, 87; Fred Anderson, “Introduction: Old Forts, New Perspectives,” in Hofstra, Cultures in Conflict, 5; Calloway, Shawnees, 14; Eric Hinderaker, “Declaring Independence: The Ohio Indians and the Seven Years’ War,” in Hofstra, Cultures in Conflict, 106–7. By 1750, the tribes in the Ohio valley included the Miami (or Twightwees), the Delaware, the Shawnee, and the Mingo (who were mostly emigrating Senecas). Their relationships with one another evolved under the shadow of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, who dominated New York and claimed power over the Ohio country, though Iroquois power was shrinking along with their population.
14. Titus, Old Dominion at War, 14–15; Lengel, First Entrepreneur, 13. Many Ohio Indians had migrated from the east. Dinwiddie to Cresap, 23 January 1752, in Dinwiddie Records 1:17–18; Dinwiddie to Conrad Weiser, 12 December 1751, Dinwiddie to Joshua Fry, undated, Dinwiddie to Colonel James Patton, 13 December 1751, Dinwiddie to Governor Ogle, 13 December 1751, in Dinwiddie Records 1:6–13.
15. Calloway, Shawnees, 17; Shannon, Iroquois Diplomacy, 81.
16. On the various interpretations of Tanaghrisson’s tribal identity, see Kent, French Invasion, 46 (Seneca); Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 57 (Mingo); Lewis, For King and Country, 84 (Seneca overseeing the Mingos); Shannon, Iroquois Diplomacy, 128 (Catawba).
17. McGregor, “The Shot Not Heard Round the World,” 362; Bailey, Ohio Company, 136–37; David Dixon, “A High Wind Rising: George Washington, Fort Necessity, and the Ohio Country Indians,” Pennsylvania Hist. 74:333, 337–38 (Summer 2007); Anderson, Crucible of War, 18.
18. To William Fauntleroy, 20 May 1752, GWP; Freeman 1:261–62.
19. Release from Lawrence Washington, 17 June 1752, GWP; Lawrence Washington Will (20 June 1751), GW Papers, Series 4, Library of Congress; Freeman 1:264; from George Mason, 29 July 1752, GWP.
20. Lawrence also left half of his slaves to be divided among George and his three brothers on condition that they pay £150 to their sister, Betty Lewis. For modern readers, Lawrence’s early death may call to mind a similar sequence two centuries later in the family of Joseph Kennedy, who avidly groomed his eldest son, Joseph Jr., for a high destiny. When Joseph Jr. died young, the path opened for his younger brother, John F. Kennedy, to become the family’s standard bearer.
21. To Dinwiddie, 10 June 1752; Freeman 1:268; Commission as Adjutant for Southern District, 13 December 1752, GWP.
22. Titus, Old Dominion at War, 4–5; Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 104, 106–7, 109; Griffith, House of Burgesses, 75; Don Higginbotham, George Washington and the American Military Tradition, Athens: University of Georgia Press (1985), 23–24.
23. Kent, French Invasion, 13–32, 46–47, 53–65; Anderson, Crucible of War, 32; Donald H. Kent, “The French Occupy the Ohio Country,” Pennsylvania Hist. 21:301, 311 (October 1954); Dixon, “A High Wind Rising,” 74:339–40.
24. Hall, Executive Journals 5:438–40, 442–43 (9 July, 24 August, and 22 October 1753), 5:443–44 (27 and 29 October 1754); Koontz, Robert Dinwiddie, 195–99; Anderson, Crucible of War, 37. Boundaries on the frontier had not been settled between Pennsylvania and Virginia, much less between Britain and France. Anderson, Crucible of War, 30; John Carlyle to George Carlyle, 11 August 1753, in Carlyle Correspondence.
25. Hall, Executive Journals 5:439–40 (24 August 1753); Instruction from Robert Dinwiddie, 30 October 1753, GWP.
26. To John Robinson, 30 May 1757, GWP; Bailey, The Ohio Company, 153–54; Kenneth Bailey, “Christopher Gist and the Trans-Allegheny Frontier: A Phase of the Westward Movement,” Pacific Hist. Review 14:45, 48 (March 1945); Kate Van Winkle Keller, George Washington: A Biography in Social Dance, The Hendrickson Group (1998), 14–15; Anderson, Crucible of War, 43; Freeman 1:277.
27. The Journal of Major George Washington, Williamsburg: William Hunter (1754), 3, 22–23.
28. Journal of Major Washington, 7–8; Shannon, Iroquois Diplomacy, 150.
29. Journal of Major Washington, 9–12.
30. Journal of Major Washington, 14–15; Darlington, Gist’s Journals, 82.
31. Journal of Major Washington, 17–19.
32. Journal of Major Washington, 20–25; Darlington, Gist’s Journals, 83–86.
33. Legardeur de St. Pierre to Robert Dinwiddie, 16 December 1753, reprinted in Freeman 1:325; Anderson, Crucible of War, 45; Hall, Executive Journals, 458–59 (21 January 1754); Dinwiddie to John Carlyle, 21 January 1754, Dinwiddie to William Trent, January 1754, in Dinwiddie Records 1:53–57; from Dinwiddie, January 1754, GWP.
34. Journal of Major Washington, 2.
35. David S. Shields, “George Washington: Publicity, Probity, and Power,” in Harvey and O’Brien, George Washington’s South, 146; Pennsylvania Gazette, February 5, March 12 and 26, 1754; New York Mercury, March 25, 1754; Boston Post-Boy, April 1, 1754; Boston Gazette, April 23 and 30, and May 21, 1754; South Carolina Gazette, February 26–March 5, 1754; “Some Extracts of the Journal of Major George Washington,” The Gentleman’s Magazine (April 1754); Scots Magazine (May 1754).
6. FIRST COMMAND
1. Clary, George Washington’s First War, 6; John Ferling, “Soldiers for Virginia: Who Served in the French and Indian War?” VMHB 94:307, 316 (1986).
2. Dinwiddie to Trent, January 1754, Dinwiddie to Colonel James Patton, January 1754, Dinwiddie to Lord Fairfax, January 1754, Dinwiddie to Colonel William Fairfax, January 1754, in Dinwiddie Records 1:55–57, 1:48–52.
3. Dinwiddie to Lord Fairfax, 23 February 1754, Dinwiddie to Lord Holdernesse, 12 March 1754, Dinwiddie to Governors of South Carolina, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, January 1754, in Dinwiddie Records 1:82, 1:93–94, 1:61–71; Titus, The Old Dominion at War, 25, 31–32; Hall, Executive Journals, 499 (proclamation of 19 February 1754) and 461–62 (Council meeting of 18 February 1754); from Dinwiddie, January 1754, n. 12, GWP; Freeman 1:334.
4. Fifty-one counties were represented in the House of Burgesses during this session, while single delegates represented the College of William & Mary, Jamestown, Norfolk Borough, and Williamsburg. McIlwaine, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1758–1761, 9:vii–vii.
5. Carl Bridenbaugh, Seat of Empire: The Political Role of Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg, Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg (1958), 43–55; Griffith, Virginia House of Burgesses, 25–32; Koontz, Robert Dinwiddie, 200–208; Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 25; Dinwiddie to the
Lords of Trade, 12 March 1754, in Dinwiddie Records 1:98; Titus, The Old Dominion at War, 39–41; Hall, Executive Journals 462 (22 February 1754); Dinwiddie to Governor DeLancey of New York, 23 February 1754, in Dinwiddie Records 1:79.
6. McGregor, “The Shot Not Heard Round the World,” 74:365–67; Journal of Major Washington, 22; from William Trent, 19 February 1754 (reprinted in Maryland Gazette, March 14, 1754), GWP; Anderson, Crucible of War, 46.
7. Dinwiddie to John Hanbury, 12 March 1754, in Dinwiddie Records 1:102–3; to Robert Dinwiddie, 7 and 9 March 1754, GWP.
8. Dinwiddie to Horatio Sharpe, 1 March 1754, in Dinwiddie Records 1:85–86; Koontz, Robert Dinwiddie, 136–37; to Richard Corbin, February–March 1754, GWP; Dinwiddie to Washington, 15 March 1754, Dinwiddie to Lord Holdernesse, 12 March 1754, in Dinwiddie Records 1:106–7, 1:93–96. Working with surveyor Peter Jefferson (father of Thomas Jefferson), Fry had produced the first reliable map of Virginia in 1751. Hughes, Surveyors and Statesmen, 87–88, 163
9. To Dinwiddie, 20 March 1754, GWP; Harry M. Ward, Major General Adam Stephen and the Cause of American Liberty, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia (1989), 1–6.
10. To Dinwiddie, 25 April 1754, GWP; to Thomas Cresap, 18 April 1754, GWP; John Harrow v. George Washington, Frederick County Circuit Court, October 1754, Library of Virginia, https://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=lva/vi02845.xml (return of arrest warrant).
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