Wait, Unpretentious Pluckiness

By C. Leon Knore

This book concerns the astonishing events enhancing the natural

leadership of General Benjamin Wait. General Wait participated as a

Ranger in the French and Indian War and the American Revolutionary War.

He was instrumental in delaying the British General John Burgoyne as he

marched from Canada to his defeat at Saratoga, the turning point of the

Revolutionary War. Between the wars, Benjamin and his brother, Joseph,

became outlaws in New York, were actively involved with the Green

Mountain Boys, and contributed significantly in establishing law and order

on the frontier in the Vermont country. With the creation of a new country

of liberty and democratic self-government, Benjamin was immersed in

creating Vermont as an independent entity between neighboring states.

His adventurous spirit never ceased, which finally contributed to the

founding of Waitsfield, Vermont.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781649523174

Book preview

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Wait,

Unpretentious

Pluckiness

The Astonishing Events Enhancing the Natural Leadership of Benjamin Wait, a Resolute Advocate for Liberty During the Formation of the United States

C. Leon Knore

Copyright © 2021 C. Leon Knore

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books, Inc.

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2021

ISBN 978-1-64952-316-7 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63985-691-6 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-64952-317-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Prologue

French and Indian War

Beginning an Adventure

Becoming a Ranger

For Home and King

The Acadian Solution

The British (William Pitt’s) Resolve for Victory

The Battle on Snowshoes

Fighting for Control of Lac du Saint Sacrement

Ending French Control East of the Mississippi

The Contribution of Religion to the Conflict

Religious Influence on the Wait Family

Religious Influence on the Saint Francis Raid

The Final British Drive

Taking Possession of French Territory

The Windup for the Waits in the French and Indian War (1753–1762)

The Royal Navy’s Trees

Settling Windsor

Surveyor General of the King’s Woods in North America Decides to Enforce the Law

New Hampshire-New York Land Grants Dispute

The Controversy

Becoming Outlaws

Are You or Are You Not with Us?

Standing Up to Parasitic Greed

The First Bloodshed of the American Revolution?

A War for Egalitarianism

Protection Is Not Cheap

Local Injustices Begin to Coalesce into a Bigger Picture

Protests Become Riots, and Violence Becomes More Prevalent

Protests and Riots Become War

Let’s Get Organized

One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward

Coping with Political Hurdles

The British Are Coming, the British Are Coming!

Denouement

Vermont Republic

Ethan Allen Runs into Trouble Once Again

Protests Against the New Republic

Whichaway Sanctuary

Old Soldiers Just Fade Away

The Beginnings

1752 Calendar

First Generation

Disruption of Congruity

Second Generation

Third Generation

Fourth Generation

Major Robert Rogers’ Rangers Attire and Accouterments (1757)

Rogers’ Ranging Rules (1757)

Benjamin Whiting’s Deposition of November 15, 1769, Regarding Escorting the Deans to New York

Benjamin Wait’s Deposition of November 15, 1769, Regarding Escorting the Deans to New York

Virginia Resolves (May 29, 1765) by Patrick Henry

Committee of Correspondence, February 7, 1775, Cumberland County, New York

Original Resolutions of the Cumberland County Congress at Westminster, June 6, 1775

Letter to New York Provincial Congress from Cumberland County Congress, June 1775

New York Provincial Congress Response to June 9, 1775, Letter from William Williams, Benjamin Wait, and Joab Hoisington

November 1777 Congratulatory Letter to Colonel Herrick from the Governing Vermont Council

Informing General Gates of Success of Rangers at Ticonderoga and Mount Independence, November 1777

Recruiting Instructions to Major Wait for Proposed Canadian Expedition

Recruitment Instructions to Major Wait for the Canadian Expedition

Letter Canceling Canada Expedition

First Constitution of the New State of Vermont

Congressional Resolves of December 5, 1782 Concerning the New Hampshire Grants

The Death Warrant of Charles I of England and the Wax Seals of the Fifty-Nine Commissioners

Partial Early Watertown Records

Thomas Waite, the Second Son of Thomas and Sarah (Cutler) Waite of Cambridge Farms in Lexington, Massachusetts

Waite’s Tavern 1746–1825

Wait’s Partial American Family Tree

General Benjamin Wait’s Children and a Few Descendants

References

Primary Sources

Secondary Sources

Acknowledgments

Index

This book is dedicated to my sons, Lee Patrick and Lane Michael; my grandchildren, Makenzie, Thad, Blake, Landry, and Whitley; plus all of General Benjamin Wait’s descendants.

Prologue

After attending an uncle’s funeral ceremony in 1989, my cousin Vontella Durko asked if I had ever read our family history. Since I was unaware of a written family history, Vontella sent 154 pages of loose-leaf notebook papers to me consisting of my paternal grandmother’s family history beginning in 1637. My impression was that this family history had been compiled by Ester Wait about 1934. Reading through the manuscript, I was surprised to discover that my grandmother Stella May Schomburg had a great-great-grandfather, Benjamin Wait, who had been a member of Rogers’ Rangers during the French and Indian War and a Vermont militia general during the American Revolution. His exploits reminded me of a fictional character in a novel. I had to go to New England to investigate for verification. As a result, my wife and I traveled to New England several times on genealogical vacations. We explored from Nova Scotia to Vermont and visited many libraries, historical societies, and cemeteries. My brother, Kenneth, accompanied me on one genealogical trip to Watertown, Sudbury, Springfield, Brookfield, and other communities in Massachusetts.

I found the lives of Benjamin, his brother Joseph, and their ancestors to be fascinating and extraordinary. Unknowingly to the Wait family at the time, they were living and participating in historical events that were significant in the formation of our new country. As teenagers, they volunteered for the armed forces formed to drive the French bureaucrats and military forces from British territory in North America. Consequently, their experiences as army Rangers, winning and losing battles or encounters from Nova Scotia to Fort Wayne, Indiana, helped secure Great Britain’s foothold in North America. Their Puritan ancestors paved the way as frontiersmen beginning seventeen years after the Pilgrims had landed. The Waite family was embroiled in King Philip’s War and was continuously advancing toward the wilderness.

As civilians, Benjamin and Joseph were leaders in their communities to protest against dishonesty and tyranny. As original settlers in Windsor on the east side of the Green Mountains, the Wait brothers partnered with Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys on the west side of the mountains of Vermont to fight for liberty and justice for all homesteaders against absentee land speculators. As tensions with the mother country grew in the colonies, the Wait brothers participated in organizing and communicating with neighbors. When the revolution began, the whole Wait family, consisting of six boys and their father, volunteered and served continuously as Patriots fighting against the Tories as well as the British military to the extent of the ultimate self-sacrifice.

As we study history in school, many of the historical events are just names or places without much meaning except to answer a question on a quiz. However, if one studies the events as the affair occurs to an individual or a family, the understanding and the causes for the events become much more clear and reasonable. Studying the lives of the Waits has tremendously expanded my historical knowledge and understanding of the Seven Years’ War, the New Hampshire Grants, the creation of an independent Vermont, and the Revolutionary War.

I never intended to write a book, but after several years of making notes and retracing the steps of the Wait brothers, spending many hours researching in libraries and on the internet, purchasing and reading antiquated but relevant books, and collecting a profusion of information on the Wait family, I decided to organize and summarize what I had learned into one record. Hence for the benefit of others who might be interested, I decided to write this book. Rather than just list Benjamin’s lifetime adventures, I resolved to explain the significant historical events that were occurring in our country at the time or add commentary to clarify the significance of Benjamin’s activities. Hence, more dates than usual in a story are included, not to interrupt the flow of reading but to clarify the chronological order of the affairs. This book is primarily a review of literature and is factual to the extent of the verity of the historical books and records examined.

Chapter 1

French and Indian War

Beginning an Adventure

On August 14, 1756, all hell was breaking loose. Cannonballs were shelling the garrison with nary a nook or cranny safe for any creature. Musket shots were whizzing by every few seconds, and more than a few arrows arrived close by with a thud. Never before had young Benjamin Wait experienced such devastation. He was sure his life would end soon here at Fort Oswego, three hundred miles from his home in Brookfield, Massachusetts. The cannonballs were smashing everything from barracks to stables. Ever since the break of day, the French and their Indian allies under General Montcalm (Louis-Joseph de Montcalm-Grozon, marquess de Montcalm-Grozon de Saint-Veran) had been bombarding the garrison. Every once in a while, Benjamin was able to get off a musket shot from behind the rampart near the Fort Oswego blockhouse, the effect of which was doubtful.

Fort Oswego cannons were located behind the ramparts outside the garrison to the south. Fort Ontario was located across the Oswego River a quarter of a mile to the east of the Oswego fortifications. Benjamin’s commander, Colonel James Mercer, ordered the artillerymen to turn the cannon to face Fort Ontario. The day before, Colonel Mercer had ordered the Pepperrell Regiment to vacate Fort Ontario, the most defensible area of the Oswego complex. To the west of the Oswego garrison was the least defensible area. The soldiers commonly referred to this area as Fort Rascal. Fort Rascal was abandoned about ten o’clock in the morning while the French and their Indian allies in large numbers were crossing the river farther to the south out of range of the British guns. Shortly thereafter, a most demoralizing event occurred in the garrison. Colonel Mercer was beheaded by a French cannonball. This tragedy devastated the senses of Colonel Littlehales, who automatically became the British garrison’s commander. Almost immediately, Colonel Littlehales called for a cease-fire. Before noon, General Montcalm accepted the surrender of the British forces. Oswego was the key supply base designated in the strategic British plan for the capture of the French Fort Niagara. Fort Niagara and Oswego, both on the shores of Lake Ontario, would have enabled the British to control or at least disrupt the French supply line to French forts in the Ohio country, including Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh). Two British regiments (the Fiftieth and Fifty-First Regiments under Massachusetts Governor Shirley and Colonel Pepperrell respectively) of provincial troops were at Oswego with the mission to accomplish a major goal of the grand British plan to drive the French from His Majesty’s claims in North America. Eleven years prior to this Oswego engagement, William Pepperrell earned his reputation as a leader when his New England volunteers captured the French Fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, which was celebrated as a glorious victory. Governor Shirley had been selected by General Braddock to lead the attack on Niagara (Ketchum 2002, 30–37).

According to the British plan, the French were to be attacked at four points at the same time to shrink the French boundaries of a vast territory: (1) Major General Braddock was to subdue Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh); (2) provincial troops under Colonel Shirley were to capture Niagara; (3) provincials from New England, New York, and New Jersey under the command of the superintendent of Indian affairs, Colonel William Johnson, were to seize Crown Point on Lake Champlain; and (4) other provincials from New England under the regular officer Lieutenant Colonel Henry Monckton were to capture Fort Beauséjour at the upper end of the Bay of Fundy where an isthmus connects the mainland of Canada with Acadia (Nova Scotia). Capturing Fort Beauséjour, in effect, would place Acadia under English rule. All four localities were considered to be British soil by the colonists and the British government even though the French had occupied Niagara for seventy-five years and Crown Point for twenty-five years (Parkman [1884] 1999, 96–97).

Benjamin Wait, at age nineteen, had joined General Shirley’s Fiftieth Regiment. Shirley’s and Pepperrell’s regiments consisted of provincial soldiers in the King’s pay as regular soldiers. Each soldier received two Holland shirts, two pair of shoes, two pair of worsted stockings, a silver-laced hat, and clothes of scarlet broadcloth (ibid., 163).

As of July 1755, Benjamin was serving under General Shirley at Albany, New York. From Albany, the Massachusetts regiments set out for Oswego going to Schenectady and up the Mohawk River to the Great Carrying Place (Rome, New York). At the Great Carrying Place, the soldiers crossed overland from the Mohawk River to Wood Creek, which empties into Oneida Lake. From Oneida Lake, they proceeded on to Lake Ontario. The total trip took twenty days of marching and camping after leaving Schenectady.

At Frontenac, on the north shore of Lake Ontario where the lake empties into the Saint Lawrence River, the French had a force nearly equal to the New England provincials at Oswego. The English colonials’ supplies were arriving late, and early bad weather contributed to a decision not to attack Niagara until spring. General Shirley returned to Albany in October and left seven hundred men, including Benjamin Wait, to garrison Oswego (ibid., 163-166).

European armies at this time in history generally followed the practice of ceasing hostilities during cold winter weather. During the winter, officers usually enjoyed an active social life of ballroom dancing and courting the ladies. The regular soldiers were assigned garrison duty, including woodcutting, fort improvements and maintenance, guard duty, parade drill, etc. Many of the provincial soldiers would return home with or without leave depending on their personal situation and the distance from home.

Having grown up from the age of ten on the Massachusetts frontier at Brookfield, Benjamin became an agile stealthy stalker of game and a crack shot with a musket. He had quick reactions and a phenomenal sense of direction, seldom becoming lost or disoriented in the woods. John, his father, had maintained a tavern and accommodations for travelers over the Old Post Road on Foster Hill near Brookfield. Brookfield had been the site of Indian raids since King Philip’s War in 1675 with intermittent attacks until 1712. While growing up in this environment, Benjamin acquired a wealth of information from the various wayfarers and frontiersmen about native cultures and beliefs, hunting, and surviving in the woods. Hence, while in Shirley’s regiment at Oswego, Benjamin immediately volunteered to serve as a scout or ranger, which was more to his liking than the boredom of garrison duty (Waite 1914, 11).

Due to a lack of adequate supplies for the winter of 1755–56, scurvy, dysentery, and hunger ravaged the soldiers at Oswego where more than half of the men died and the remainder were extremely weak. Although the men of the garrison had been informed by their Indian allies that the French were planning to attack, the fortifications had not been completed before the attack came. Not only did physical limitations make Oswego likely for capture but politics also sealed the doom of the outpost.

William Johnson, the British superintendent of Indian affairs, and New York Lieutenant Governor De Lancey connived to have William Shirley, the governor of Massachusetts, relieved of his military command as commander in chief of the British forces in North America. Shirley had been appointed second in command under Commander in Chief General Braddock, who was killed while marching his troops toward Ft. Duquesne.

Political power controlling trade and economic resources of the English colonies rested with the Board of Trade in London. Through political alliances, primarily the support of Massachusetts Governor Shirley, the Mohawk Valley Indian trader William Johnson was able to have himself appointed the superintendent of Indian affairs. This position placed Johnson in charge of all the British agreements and treaties with the Six United Iroquois Nations and their allies and dependents. Johnson held this key position from April 14, 1755, until his death, July 11, 1774. His fair trading practices with the Indians and marriage (prior to 1746) to Caroline, a niece of the Mohawk sachem Hendrik, consequently brought immense clout for Johnson with the Iroquois. Hendrik was a significant and influential figure in gaining Iroquois support for the British. Unfortunately, Hendrik was killed fighting for the British at the Battle of Lake George in 1755. Due to Shirley’s vainglorious attitude occasionally manifesting in decisions or actions related to the Mohawk, Johnson, after a time, became Shirley’s chief nemesis with the Board of Trade. De Lancey, an ambitious politician, was envious of Shirley’s rise in power after Braddock’s defeat, and he joined with Johnson in denouncing Shirley to the authorities in London (Parkman [1884] 1999, 167).

Consequently in 1756, John Campbell, the Earl of Loudoun, was named commander in chief replacing Shirley. Not arriving until late July, Loudoun was not able to send the 44th Regiment, under the newly promoted British Major General Daniel Webb to reinforce Oswego until August. While traveling in the Mohawk Valley on his way to the vulnerable fort, news of the fall of Oswego reached Webb. On August 20, Webb decided not to proceed and burned Fort Bull at the Great Carrying Place (Rome, New York) to keep the fort out of French hands. After burning the fort, he returned to German Flatts (Herkimer, New York) along the Mohawk River (Anderson 2000, 156). These events, including political motives, indirectly contributed to the fall of Oswego.

Chivalry was an expectation of European armies in the eighteenth century, and the French and British officers assumed these ideals were to be implemented in North America. In addition to the ideals of chivalry among opposing officers, regular European soldiers were drilled to follow orders with complete obedience or experience the penalty of suffering whippings of multiple lashes with the cat-o’-nine-tails at the whipping post, a common appurtenance at the military forts. Fifty or more lashes were commonly given as penalties to disobedient soldiers. Other common penalties for recalcitrant soldiers included the use of public stocks or being placed on a crudely constructed wooden horse for a long time. Hence, the soldiers were expected in many situations to face their enemy in rigid lines, loading and firing their weapons on command without the least protection, and in spite of the demise of their companions on either side. The Canadians (native-born denizens who were mostly descended from French fur traders and Indian women), Indians, and Provincials (English colonists), of course, avoided this method of fighting. The English colonists usually elected their own officers or volunteered for service under a particular recruiting officer from their own township or colony. The Indians fought independently or would temporarily volunteer to follow a particular leader for a certain battle for the gaining of spoils, scalps, or captives. Indians took scalps to be redeemed for a bounty or to exhibit as a war trophy indicating personal bravery and courage. Captives were taken many times by Indians to serve as slaves, to be adopted for replacing a close family member who had died in battle, or to be the object of the Indians’ revenge on their enemy. In any case, except for the regular soldiers and officers from Europe, the North American born fighters preferred to fire at their enemy from protective barriers and use stealth and the ambush method whenever possible. The native fighters had no qualms about vacating chivalrous practices when defending oneself from being killed or being taken prisoner, where the consequences usually meant barbarous torture.

Although the French and their Indian allies outnumbered the British forces at Oswego—3,000 to 1,135—General Montcalm judged the capitulation to have occurred too soon to merit an honorable surrender. Hence, the British soldiers became prisoners of war. Otherwise, the chivalry procedures of the day would have permitted the soldiers of the captured garrison to march home with their colors and personal weapons or gear and honorably agree not to participate in fighting as soldiers again for a certain period. In addition to the soldiers, others in the fort—including settlers, artificers, traders, sailors, Indians, women, and children—became prisoners (the women present were camp followers who were wives, laundresses, cooks, clothiers, etc.); and a vast amount of supplies were captured, including cannons, several sailing vessels, and a large number of whaleboats.

Being a prisoner of war and not knowing what the future might hold, Benjamin Wait and the other prisoners believed that the worst of the hell was over since General Montcalm had promised British provincials safety from the ravages of the Indians. However, Montcalm was naive, aristocratically pompous, and completely disillusioned in his understanding of the indigenous natives. His Indian allies were not participating in the fighting to serve king and country as the French were. Their motivation for fighting came from their upbringing in a culture that awarded warriors as courageous braves who gained personal glory, honor, plunder, trophies of courage (scalps), and captives from their enemies. Before the French soldiers could get the prisoners organized and under command, the Indians began to plunder. Finding the rum supply, the natives began killing and scalping the sick and wounded and taking captives. For young Benjamin, this aftermath was worse than the battle. During the battle, one knew what to expect. In this attack while being a prisoner, not only did each captive not know what to expect but also with no one in command, the prisoners did not know exactly how to react. Montcalm and his soldiers were not able to restore order until nearly a hundred of the prisoners were killed. Luckily, and most likely due to his size and brawn, having a muscular build more than six feet tall with wide shoulders and large hands, Benjamin was able to avoid the heinous abuses of the natives and was removed by the French to Montreal with fellow prisoners of war (Thompson 1824, 263). Montcalm would later permit an even greater massacre of prisoners at Fort William Henry in the Hudson River Valley of New York.

Captured by the French, Benjamin and the other captives from Oswego were taken from Montreal to Quebec where they debarked for France on a ship as prisoners of war before the end of 1756. However, to their good fortune, before landing in France, the prisoners—including Benjamin—were retaken from the French by a British man-of-war and transported to England, from where they soon returned to America in the spring of 1757 (Thompson 1824, 263; Jones 1909, 6–7; and Waite 1914, 11).

Becoming a Ranger

Upon his return to the colonies, Benjamin enlisted under his brother, Captain Joseph Wait, in a company of Rogers’ Rangers who at the time was campaigning on Lake George and Lake Champlain (Jones 1909, 7). When describing Rogers’ Rangers, Francis Parkman wrote in grandiloquent style:

The best of them were commonly employed on Lake George; and nothing can surpass the adventurous hardihood of their lives. Summer and winter, day and night, were alike to them. Embarked in whaleboats or birch-canoes, they glided under the silent moon or in the languid glare of a breathless August day, when islands floated in dreamy haze, and the hot air was thick with odors of the pine; or in the bright October, when the jay screamed from the woods, squirrels gathered their winter hoard, and congregated black birds chattered farewell to their summer haunts; when gay mountains basked in light, maples dropped leaves of rustling gold, sumacs glowed like rubies under the dark green of the unchanging spruce, and mossed rocks with all their painted plumage lay double in the watery mirror: that festal evening of the year, when jocund Nature disrobes herself, to wake again refreshed in the joy of her undying spring. Or, in the tomb-like silence of the winter forest, with breath frozen on his beard, the ranger strode on snow-shoes over the spotless drifts, and like Dürer’s knight, a ghastly death stalked ever at his side. There were among them for whom this stern life had a fascination that made all other existence tame. (Parkman [1884] 1999, 216–17)

Benjamin’s older brother by three years, Joseph, entered the provincial army in May 1754 at the age of twenty-one years under Captain Eleazer Melvin. In December, Corporal Joseph Wait was stationed at Falltown (Bernard, Massachusetts), in Lieutenant John Burk’s company of Rangers on the Crown Point expedition commanded by Colonel Israel Williams. In the fall of 1755, his company was in Colonel Seth Pomeroy’s regiment on Lake George. In December, he returned to Falltown, where he remained the rest of the year; and in February 1756, Joseph was appointed ensign in Colonel Joseph Dwight’s regiment with headquarters at Fort Edward and Fort William Henry on Lake George. Other well-known members of the Rangers included Robert Rogers, Israel Putnam, and John Stark.

While serving as a member of John Burk’s company of provincial Rangers on Lake George, Corporal Joseph Wait was recruited by his old friend from New Hampshire, Captain Robert Rogers. In January 1757, Joseph became a member of Rogers’ corps of Rangers. Rogers was instructed by the commander in chief to enlist only such men as were accustomed to traveling and scouting, and in whose courage and fidelity the most implicit confidence could be placed (Stark [1860] 1999, 397).

In April, the Rangers were ordered to New York; and on the twentieth of June, they sailed for Halifax, Nova Scotia. Here the English army of twelve thousand made preparations to attack Louisbourg. However, a report was received on the fourth of August that a French fleet of twenty-two ships of the line awaited the British at Louisbourg. This report arrested the planned attack, compelling Loudoun and his British forces to sail back to New York. The Rangers returned to the Western frontiers on Lake George.

In 1757, while serving as a Ranger, Benjamin Wait was taken prisoner by a scouting party of Indians and carried to their village of Saint Francis in Canada. At the village, he was compelled to undergo the ceremony of running the gauntlet, which required a prisoner to pass between two lines of native women and young warriors of the tribe who were armed with clubs or switches to strike the prisoners as they passed. The captive was frequently killed before he reached the council house, at which the two lines of Indians terminated. Wait observed his companions being severely whipped as they passed through the lines. Being perhaps more athletic and adroit than his companions and knowing the Indians’ character, Benjamin is quoted by his grandson that he figured, spunk would be a good antidote for savage barbarity [so he] ran through with clenched fists as vicious as a wild bull, knocking them from one side to the other, and when they [saw him] approaching they had little time enough to take care of themselves. He escaped with hardly a blow to the great delight of the old men of the tribe who sat at some distance, witnessing and enjoying the confusion of their young warriors. As he arrived at the end of the race, a French woman appeared at the door of a house nearby and, beckoning with her hand, said, Venez ici, Anglais, venez ici (Come here, Englishman, come here). He placed himself under her protection and was well treated during his captivity, which lasted about three months before he managed to escape with his companions and arrived at the English lines in a starving condition. This episode has been repeated over time in various but similar versions by several storytellers (Jones 1909, 6–7 and Waite 1914, 11–12). For example, Benjamin H. Hall in his History of Eastern Vermont, in a footnote on page 44, uses the following phrase to describe John Stark running an Indian gauntlet on June 9, 1752: "Stark, more athletic and adroit, and better comprehending the Indian character, snatched a club from the nearest Indian, laid about him to the right and left, scattering the Indians before him, and escaped with scarcely a blow; greatly to the delight of the old men of the tribe, who sat at some distance witnessing the scene, and enjoying the confusion of their young warriors."

For Home and King

The events leading up to the battle at Oswego started in 1753. This French and Indian War had become a hot war between France and England when a young twenty-one-year-old Virginia Provincial Major George Washington, at the bequest of British Governor Robert Dinwiddie, requested the French to vacate the Ohio country in December 1753. The contested Ohio country consisted of the Ohio River Valley and its northern tributaries. France, of course, believed this area should be under their sovereign domain to connect the French territories of Louisiana with Quebec.

The Virginia Provincial Council and Governor Dinwiddie interpreted the French’s refusal to vacate their Ohio country forts as hostility and ordered the newly promoted Lieutenant Colonel Washington to recruit two hundred men to go to the forks of the Ohio River and protect Virginia’s interest from further French encroachment. In the spring of 1754, a sizable force of French soldiers took possession of the fort on the Ohio River where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers join, which soon became the site of Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh).

Washington attacked a French negotiations party, mistakenly killing the prominent French emissary de Jumonville, a brother of the Fort Duquesne commander, Captain Louis Coulon de Villiers. About fourteen others of the French contingent were killed in the attack, and nearly thirty prisoners were taken. Hence, the war was on! Soon after the initial battle, Colonel Washington, with about four hundred volunteers, was defeated by Captain de Villiers. Anticipating an attack, Washington rushed to have Fort Necessity constructed about fifty miles south-southwest of Fort Duquesne. With six hundred French regulars and about four hundred Indians Captain de Villers defeated Washington at Fort Necessity on July 4. After promising not to return for a year, Washington and his men were permitted to march home (Anderson 2000, 55).

To recover their lost territory, the British sent General Edward Braddock to America as commander in chief of British forces with two regiments of Irish infantry. The American struggle between the French and British soon expanded to Europe. However, without the involvement of Indians in Europe, the conflict became known as the Seven Years’ War.

In the spring of 1755, General Braddock’s intentions were to launch simultaneous attacks to stop French aggression into English territory in North America. First, Braddock planned to march his two regiments to take Fort Duquesne and the other French forts north to Lake Ontario. Second, Braddock