You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This history is enriched with personal recollections and reminiscences. Its pages are filled with the names of those individuals who settled, or helped in some way to establish the County, as well as those who are remembered for various other reasons. The fifty-four illustrations include Wise County’s commonwealth attorneys, from the first (1856) to the twenty-first (1935).
In 1750 and 1751 Christopher Gist, an agent of the Ohio Company of Virginia, explored the greater portion of the region now included within the boundaries of Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia, along with portions of western Maryland and southwestern Pennsylvania. These explorations were the earliest made so far west for the sole object of examining the country, and the first of which a regular journal was kept. It was on these two journeys that he made his greatest contribution to history.
None
In 1750 the Appalachian Mountains were a formidable barrier between the British colonies in the east and French territory in the west, passable only on foot or horseback. It took more than a century to break the mountain barrier and open the west to settlement. In 1751 a private Virginia company pioneered a road from Maryland to Ohio, challenging the French and Indians for the Ohio country. Several wars stalled the road, which did not start in earnest until after Ohio became a state in 1803. The stone-paved Cumberland Road--from Cumberland, Maryland, to Wheeling, Virginia--was complete by 1818 and over the next 30 years was traversed by Conestoga wagons and stagecoaches. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad--the first general purpose railroad in the world--started in Baltimore in the 1820s and reached Wheeling by 1852, uniting east and west.
George Mercer was a lieutenant and later captain of the First Virginia Regiment during the French and Indian War, and a land surveyor. He served as agent for the Ohio Company in England. In this book, Lois Mulkearn interprets George Mercer's documents on the activities of the Ohio Company.Through the eyes of Indians, French, and English we see the political and military efforts to control the vast area of the Ohio frontier, and witness treaties signed at Logstown, and those between Pennsylvania and the Weas and Piankashaws in 1740. Among Mercer's other papers are directions for laying out the first British town to be called "Saltsburg" at present day McKees Rocks, outside Pittsburgh. With this extensive collection, Mulkearn enlightens our knowledge of colonial history and the western frontier.