Nothing is more fascinating or valuable to a historian than a first hand account of a place or time. This highly desirable reprint includes not just one, but many such accounts. Between 1750 and 1753 Christopher Gist, the Agent of the Ohio Company of Virginia, explored the greater portion of the region now included within the states of Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia, and parts of western Maryland and southwestern Pennsylvania. These explorations were the earliest made so far west for the single object of examining the country, and they are the first of which a regular journal was kept. Gist is often remembered for saving George Washington from freezing to death in the Allegheny River as they returned from delivering a message to the commandant of the French forts in the Ohio country during the winter of 1753. These remarkable journals contain descriptions of lands, friendly and hostile Indians, Indian customs, French settlements and forts, English settlements, and interesting events that occurred on the trail. Additionally, this book contains biographical sketches of Gist and many interpreters and traders, such as Andrew Montour and the Montour family, George Croghan, Thomas Cresap, the Indian Guyasuta, General James Grant, Conrad Weiser, and others. Historical documents, correspondence, and maps supplement this important work. Of special interest is Robert Orme’s letter to Gov. Dinwiddie, describing the horror of Braddock’s Defeat. Other information relates to the Treaty of Lancaster, the Ohio Company, the Walpole Grant, Wm. Trent & Co., Pownall’s Account of the Lead Plate, and Letters and Speeches to Indians. An indispensable resource for colonial history scholars and for living historians interested in pre-Revolutionary War America!
William M. Darlington
(1893), 2006, 5½x8½, paper, index, 296 pp.
ISBN: 9780788422775
101-D2277
