Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Land
Daniel M. Friedenberg
[A review and exerpt from the book published by
Prometheus Books, 1992.
Reviewed by Pat Patterson]
PAT PATTERSON:
Mr. Friedenberg takes a hard look at land ownership and
speculation in early America. Hero debunking? Overly cynical? Judge
for yourself. I found it well worth reading. These land companies and
the major purchasers are familiar to all of us genealogists interested
in early Virginia and the frontier. Friedenberg's work is helpful in
putting together an overall view of events in land development and
territorial expansion that doesn't turn away from the
behind-the-scenes manipulations. His attitude is often provocative:
you'll get Friedenberg's interpretation, not an impartial analysis of
interests, and his view of causes and motives is often quite
cut-and-dried. But it's a wonderful antidote to the white-washed
history we all got fed in early school years. I strongly recommend
reading this work.
PART TWO: LAND AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
CHAPTER 12
Evading the 1763 Proclaimation: The Land Companies
"The government consists of a gang of men exactly
like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special
talent for the business of government, they have only a talent for
getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to
search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and
promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten, that promise is
worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting A to
satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage."
-- H. L. Mencken
The Ohio Company Whelps the Mississippi Company
The Ohio Company of Virginia, which had been launched with such
golden hopes, soon ran into problems. The long years of the French and
Indian War paralyzed all activity, preventing the company from meeting
the terms of a grant that called for settling two hundred families.
Also, the internal politics in Virginia was hostile to the company,
not only because of public ire against its role in starting the war,
but also because of party politics.
This hostility requires some explanation. Although the aristocratic
class formed a united front when its collective privileges were
threatened, internally it was divided (as was true of New York Colony
in this same period) into two competing factions. One might be called
the Tidewater or Northern Neck clique and the other the Albemarle and
Shenandoah clique; or plantation owners living north or south of the
Rappahannock River. Though not so sharply defined, it was also the
older aristocracy against the new blood. The Ohio Company was
dominated by old Virginians from the tidewater area. The newly rich
group from the southwestern part of Virginia was composed of more
aggressive men, with the outstanding exception of George Washington.
The Loyal Company and the Greenbrier Company, new partnerships created
by Piedmont speculators, were thus rivals of the Ohio Company.
The power of each faction ultimately depended on its influence with
the governor, whose cooperation was necessary not only to receive land
patents, but also to set the terms. Under Sir William Gooch, acting
governor in the 1740s, the Ohio Company was out of favor. In fact, in
order to receive its original grant, the shareholders of the Ohio
Company had to appeal to influential interested parties in London to
put pressure on the Virginia government to act: as mentioned, that was
the reason for Lawrence Washington's trip to England in 1748. The Ohio
Company charter was only secured due to the influence of the Duke of
Bedford, who received a share as reward, rather than by the Virginia
council.
Things changed when Colonel Thomas Lee, a leading member of the Ohio
Company, became pro tem governor after the departure of Sir William;
and the fortunes of the company were definitely up when Robert
Dinwiddie, whose interest in the Ohio Company preceded his arrival in
America (as is known by correspondence between Lawrence Washington and
Dinwiddie while the latter was still in London), was appointed to the
top Virginia office in 1751.
The relation of the Ohio Company to the French and Indian War has
been noted. In 1757, Dinwiddie resigned because of ill health and
returned to England. The position of the company then weakened. During
the years of the war the shareholders, who by their own statement had
spent over L310,000 to advance the undertaking, believed, with reason,
that after the eviction of the French their patent would be renewed.
The change in British policy, culminating in the 1763 Proclamation,
came as a tremendous blow.
Another problem the company faced was that the partners, though among
the leading aristocrats of colonial Virginia, had little influence on
the lords controlling British policy in London. Benjamin Franklin and
his colleague Samuel Wharton, who were far more astute in such
matters, knew where to apply pressure and whom to corrupt. The
Virginia autocrats, in their private cocoon of black slaves and small
white planters and mechanics, reacted with rage when they could not
have their way: that rage transformed itself into a colony whose
aristocrats were united in revolution a few short years later. At this
earlier point of time, however, their inability to break through the
rules established by the 1763 Proclamation left them unable to pursue
their speculative activities. Losing favor in Virginia itself after
the departure of Governor Dinwiddie, the Ohio Company shareholders
were paralyzed.
One possible solution was another grant. The leading lights of the
company felt they might improve their chances by making a claim to a
new area. Much of the same group holding Ohio Company stock --
including George Washington and his half-brother, John Augustine
Washington; four Lees; Presley Thornton; and William and Henry
Fitzhugh -- organized a new scheme called the Mississippi Company,
which, after originally exploring the possibility of a grant farther
west, petitioned in 1768 for an area running on the far side of the
Alleghenies from western Pennsylvania to what is now Kentucky. The
original petition for a million acres in the Mississippi Valley was
then enlarged to two and a half million acres. The group requested
that the king forego quitrents, fees, and taxes for twelve years, in
return for which they would attempt to establish two hundred families
on the land. Arthur Lee, whose father had been the initial sponsor of
the Ohio Company, was in London and acted as agent.
The Mississippi Company made little headway. The truth was that the
Virginians behind this new company did not have sufficient influence
and, as will be seen, another group of colonials, mainly from
Pennsylvania, were in this same period on the point of achieving a
great coup in land speculation. As a final note, Washington recorded
his total loss in the venture as a little more than L327.
Some evidence seems to indicate that the Mississippi Company was
formed as a diversion to give more weight to the Ohio Company claims
Clarence W. Alvord, whose two-volume study entitled The Mississippi
Valley in British Politics is the lodestar from which all other ore of
the period must be mined, speculates that the Virginia group hoped
that by avoiding a frontal attack on the more powerful Pennsylvania
syndicate (whose project, first called the Indiana Company, then the
Walpole Company, and last Vandalia, overlapped the area desired by the
Mississippi Company), more consideration would be given as a sop to
their Ohio Company.
There appears to be some truth in this analysis, as shown by later
events. The British ministry rejected entirely the petition of the
Mississippi Company, one in which no English lords or merchant princes
participated. However, to buy off pressure from shareholders of the
Ohio Company, which had some British participation, two shares of the
total of seventy-two shares in Vandalia were given to Ohio Company
members. Colonel George Mercer, the company agent in London, also got
an extra share for his "cooperation." To quiet the claims of
the veterans of Washington's 1754 Virginia regiment in the French and
Indian War, the Vandalia sponsors also assigned these men a total of
200,000 acres from their much larger patent, of which Washington ended
up with 40,000. The future first president was not happy since his
shares in the Ohio Company and the Mississippi Company were larger
than his land claim under the veterans' bonus. But most of the other
persons involved accepted the settlement with varying degrees of
resignation.
The Greenbrier and Loyal Companies
It will be recalled that the Virginia council in 1745 made two grants
each for 100,000 acres: one to James Patton and the other to John
Robinson. Several years after his patent, John Robinson formed the
Greenbrier Company to market the acreage. The company took its name
from the Greenbrier River on which the grant lay, the area involved
being the first lateral river bank beyond the Alleghenies. Eventually
the Greenbrier Company became a satellite of a much larger speculation
created by Robinson and his friends.
When the Ohio Company was about to receive its charter by means of
pressure from London, Speaker Robinson and his legislative cronies
decided to organize a still more ambitious scheme. Called the Loyal
Company, it was launched and received both council approval and the
governor's sanction without trouble. The grant was for 800,000 acres
along the western frontier of Virginia. In terms of present geography,
most of the Ohio Company patent fell in West Virginia, as well as a
part of western Pennsylvania; while the Loyal Company patent fell
mainly in what is now Kentucky.
The Loyal Company was backed by the newer aristocrats from the
Piedmont. The more prominent were Peter Jefferson, father of Thomas
Jefferson and the wealthiest squire in Albemarle County; Dr. Thomas
Walker, a practicing physician and surgeon without medical degree;
John Lewis, whose family enters prominently in Revolutionary annals;
five Merriwethers, who were related by blood to almost anyone of
importance in western Virginia; Francis Thornton; and Edmund
Pendleton. Most of these men were members of the council or assembly.
Pendleton was the front man for the John Robinson interests, Lewis
represented the Shenandoah Valley and the others were mainly from
Albemarle County. The older aristocrats were not completely excluded:
for example, Francis Thornton and Thomas Nelson were members of both
the Loyal Company and the Ohio Company. In general, however, there was
a clear line separating the two competing cliques.
In contrast to the Ohio Company patent, the Loyal Company was not
required to settle any families. The grant was made solely as a
speculation and, put simply, was a present that the leaders of the
legislature, with the governor participating, made to themselves. This
elicited a complaint to the Crown from George Mercer, representing the
Ohio Company in London. Listing the various land patents to the
dominant political faction in the Virginia legislature, he wrote, "No
less than 1,350,000 acres of land were granted by the governor and
council to borrowed names and private land-mongers who were incapable
of making effectual settlements...." The complaint was true but
had no ring of pure silver, for it was the whine of one group of
hungry speculators preempted by another.
Dr. Thomas Walker, the heart and brains of the Loyal Company,
deserves special notice. Agent of the Loyal Company for some forty-one
years, Dr. Walker had his finger in every official land activity in
Virginia during the second half of the eighteenth century. Like
similar top Virginians, a dazzling marriage inaugurated his career. It
was to Mildred Thornton, widow of Nicholas Merriwether, whereby he
acquired the Castle Hill estate, some 11,000 acres in Albemarle
County. Mildred Thornton was also a cousin to George Washington and,
though Walker and Washington were antagonists in the feud between the
Ohio Company and the Loyal Company, they were partners in other
projects, such as the Great Dismal Swamp venture. Walker was also the
bosom friend and neighbor of Peter Jefferson, and became guardian of
Thomas Jefferson after his father's early death. Through the force of
his personality and a web of family ties, Walker's faction dominated
the land grants of the Virginia council for decades. Dr. Walker also
had that charming ability to siphon personal interest into official
appointments, a characteristic of great success everywhere. It was due
to his Machiavellian hand that the Loyal Company succeeded where the
Ohio Company failed.
The French and Indian War suspended development plans and in 1763 the
Virginia council, under direct orders from London, notified company
officials that the Loyal Company patent was not to be renewed, because
of the proclamation forbidding settlement west of the Alleghenies. The
reaction of company shareholders was not what might be thought from
loyal colonists, for Walker and his associates of the Loyal Company
went ahead in open violation of the proclamation. Going one step
further, the company, in 1766, assured of the support of William and
Thomas Nelson of the council and, it would seem, the governor himself,
urged all who had quitted their claims during the war to return to
them on pain of forfeiture -- an entirely illegal action.
By winking an eye the Virginia government could overlook those
subrosa actions, but the Crown still stood in the way. The difficult
solution to this problem would be to move the boundary farther west by
treaty agreement with the Indians. It would seem that only a miracle
could achieve such an aim in view of the 1763 Proclamation, but Dr.
Walker set to work.
The first step was to be sure that Virginia commissioners at Indian
treaties involving land changes would go along. The Virginia
legislature dutifully chose two men to represent the colony at such
treaties: Colonal Andrew Lewis, son of John Lewis and head of the
Greenbrier Company, and Dr. Thomas Walker, head of the Loyal Company!
Like Dinwiddie and Washington representing both government policy and
their own pocketbooks as shareholders in the Ohio Company, Lewis and
Walker could now proceed with unclouded vision.
After the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, which established the
boundary lines to the north of Virginia, Lord Shelburne in London was
anxious to settle the entire western frontier in order to avoid Indian
wars. He ordered John Stuart, superintendent of Indian affairs for the
southern department, to fix the frontier to the south. Lewis and
Walker, the Virginia commissioners, wanted to move the boundary as far
west as possible in order to make legitimate the claims of the
Greenbrier and Loyal companies. John Stuart, however, agreed with the
Cherokee chiefs that the line of the boundary should run to the mouth
of the Great Kanawha River in what is now West Virginia, rather than
farther west to the Ohio River alongside what we now call Kentucky.
The Virginia commissioners worked through their political friends and
the House of Burgesses passed a request that Stuart move the boundary
to the Ohio River. The royal governor, however, had no choice but to
back the superintendent of Indian affairs and, with the reluctant
signatures of Lewis and Walker appended, the Treaty of Lochabar, South
Carolina, in 1770, established the line at the Great Kanawha.
Then an odd thing happened. By agreement with the Cherokee chiefs,
for "a promise of =A3500 that was never paid," the line was
moved west to the Ohio River after treaty signing. It was obvious that
much rum flowed. John Stuart did not object since the change was made
with the consent of the Cherokees themselves. It is not difficult to
guess who offered the money to the Cherokee chiefs, for the line of
the Loyal Company claim now was extended even beyond the original
grant.
Dr. Walker, apparently in fear of reversal by the Privy Council, went
to work immediately. By December 16, 1773, some 980 surveys were made,
on which basis 201,554 acres of land, slightly more than one-quarter
of the original grant, were sold. Thomas Walker had succeeded, unlike
the Ohio Company shareholders, in thwarting the declared policy of the
British Crown. This was due to his close contacts with the Virginia
legislature, many of whose members had a personal interest in his
success. Indeed, the Virginia council was so subservient to Walker
that when settlers established themselves on land that the Loyal
Company no longer owned, after the revocation of the patent in 1763,
the sheriff was ordered to remove the offenders unless they purchased
their land from the company. In effect, settlers who by Virginia law
had a preemptive right to fifty acres, were forced to buy land they
had already improved from a company whose charter had lapsed. This
would have been impossible, the evidence indicates, if it were not for
the fact that Governor Dunmore in Virginia and William Legge, Earl of
Dartmouth in England (who had succeeded to the office of colonial
secretary) both were personally involved in the speculation.
It almost goes without saying that Dr. Thomas Walker in 1775
represented Albemarle County in the Virginia assembly as a member of
the Revolutionary Convention. Patriotism and land thirst were blood
brothers in the Virginia planter aristocracy.
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