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At the Vortex of Imperial Conflict Tensioninthe OhioValley. Unlike the peaceful advance of settlement into the Valley of Virginia, occupation of trans-AlleghenyWest Virginia proceeded amid considerable peril. French and Indian claimants contested nearly every move by the Virginia settlers into the area. The claims of both England and France to the Ohio Valley, of which trans-Allegheny West Virginia was a part, rested upon principles recognized by international usage. England based her claims upon the discovery of the New River by Batts and Fallam, an extensive fur trade in the region, and settlements along remote tributaries of the Ohio, such as the New and the Greenbrier. France asserted rights emanating from the allegedvisitof La Sallein 1669, far-flungtrading operations, and settlementsin the Illinois country. In 1742,duringKing George's War, two Virginians, John Howard and John Peter Salling, perhaps in anticipation of the opening of trans-Alleghenylands, set out for the western country. Howard, who apparently lived on the South Branchof the Potomac, and Salling, then living on the New River, ascended the South Branch and moved westward by way of the New and Coal rivers. At Peytona,on the Coal River, they observed outcroppingsof coal. They continued to the Kanawha and followed that stream to the Ohio, where they constructed a bullboat, which carried them on to New Orleans. Whether Howard and Salling had any official or semiofficial sanction for theirjourney remains unknown, but skeptical French officials took no chances. They arrestedthe entireparty. Sallingmanagedto escapeand makehis way back to Virginia. His journal probably provided much of the information on western Virginia used by Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson in their famous map of 1751. Not so fortunate, Howard and the other men were sentto France and put on trial. The court cleared them of any criminal charges, whereupon they went to London and faded into obscurity.' 'The backgroundof the Howard and Sallingexpedition is discussedin FairfaxHarrison, "'Ihe Virginians on the Ohio and Mississippi in 1742," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 30(April 1922):203-22. With her own claims to parts of the Ohio Valley at stake, Virginiatook the lead in asserting the rights of England. Her contention that the Iroquois, or Six Nations, had ceded their right to territory west of the Allegheny Mountainsin the Treatyof Lancasterof 1744suggests that even then shewas ready to embark upon an aggressivepolicy intheOhioValley.Inthe wakeof theTreatyof Aix-laChapellein 1748,which ended King George's War but proved no more than an armed truce, both Virginia and France stepped up their activities in the Ohio Valley. TheVkginialandGmpanies.Convincedthat settlementswereessentialto controlof the OhioValley, Virginiaasearly as 1745turned to the policy that had proved successful in peopling the Valley of Virginia. She offered speculators one thousand acres of land for each family they settled west of the Allegheny Mountains and allowed them four years instead of the customary two to meet their requirements. By the end of 1754, Virginia had granted more than 2,500,000acres in the trans-Allegheny region, about 650,000of them in West Virginia. Only three of the recipients,the Greenbrier, Loyal, and Ohio companies , however, achieved any noteworthy ~uccess.~ The Greenbrier Company came closest to fulfilling its agreement. Its members included John Robinson, Sr., the Speakerof the House of Burgesses, John Lewis, a prominent Valley landowner, and others with political influence and experience in settling frontier areas. In 1745 the company received one hundred thousand acres in the Greenbrier Valley. By 1754 Andrew Lewis, its surveyor, had laid off more than fifty thousand acres.3 The Loyal Company, with a grant of eight hundred thousand acres in 1748, consisted of forty prominent Virginians, includingJoshua Fry and Peter Jefferson . Itsguiding spiritwas Dr. Thomas Walkerof AlbemarleCounty,whomoved to Wolf Hills, the present Abingdon, about 1748. On March 6, 1750,Walker and fivecompanionsundertook a searchforlandsforthe company.Theypassed through Cumberland Gap and into central Kentucky and missed the rich Bluegrass region by only about a day's journey. Walker and his men returned home by way of southernWest Virginia and the Bluestone,New, andGreenbrier rivers. By 1754the Loyal Companyhad seatedabouttwohundredfamilieson its lands, mostly in southwestern Virginia, but a few apparently settled along the New and Bluestonerivers in West Virginia. Much closerto the heart of the internationalconflict in the OhioValley was *Descriptionsof these grants are in H.R. McIlwaine,Wilr~ler Hall, andBenjaminJ. Hillman, eds, Executive Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia, 6 vols. (Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1925-1%6): Vol. 5, 172-73, 195, 206, 231, 258, 282-83, 295-97, 377...

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