The first real explorations of the great territory secured by Virginia at the Treaty of Fort Stanwix were made by Dr. Thomas Walker, who later so skilfully managed Virginia’s part of that treaty, and Christopher Gist, in the early years of the second half of the eighteenth century, 1750 and 1751.
The brief journals[1] written by these men are the sources of our first information concerning the vast territory west of the Appalachian mountain system—the eastern half of the Mississippi basin south of the Ohio River. They are meager records of hard day’s pilgrimages, an outline of the routes pursued, and a description of the lands which were traversed. Both were explorers for two newly-formed land companies. Walker represented the Loyal Land Company of London, and Gist was the representative of the Ohio Company. The company for which Walker acted had secured a grant of eight hundred thousand acres in the territory now embraced in Kentucky north of 36° 30´. The Ohio Company had a grant of five hundred thousand acres between the Kanawha and Monongahela Rivers. These men were sent to search out favorable lands and report on the giants and grapes. They found both.
Little suggestion of the romance and daring of these historic journeys can be found in either of the journals of them; they make slight books. But volumes can be written on what can be read by the most careless reader between their few lines. The long climbing over the almost pathless mountains, the nights spent in discomfort, the countless trials, fears, dangers of which they knew so much and told so little—all this should make a story if it never has, that could not by any means find an uninterested reader. No youth’s history is of moment until we know the man and know that he is a man among men. Our nation is still a boy. Only with the passing of the years will its boyhood be studied and known as it should be known; when that time comes, the brief stories of such men as Walker and Gist will appear of priceless value.
“Having, on the 12th of December last, been employed for a certain consideration to go to the Westward in order to discover a proper Place for a Settlement, I left my house on the Sixth day of March, at 10 o’clock, 1749-50, in Company with Ambrose Powell, William Tomlinson, Colby Chew, Henry Lawless & John Hughs. Each man had a Horse and we had two to carry the Baggage. I lodged this night at Col. Joshua Fry’s, in Albemarle, which County includes the Chief of the head Branches of James River on the East side of the Blue Ridge.” Thus begins Dr. Walker’s journal. At this time England and her colonies were dating by the old calendar, each new year beginning on the twenty-fifth of March. Accordingly they started nineteen days before the beginning of the year 1750.
It was a brave little company of adventurous men. Walker had attended William and Mary College, and then had joined the ranks of that distinguished army of representative Virginians who, with saddle-bags and surveying instruments, proved to be the vanguard of the army which was to achieve the real conquest of the West. His home was Castle Hill, near Charlottesville, Albemarle County, Virginia, where his companions had rendezvoused for the present expedition and from which point they began their historic journey. Powell was of the best Virginian stock, and has left his name to one of the great valleys through which the highway to the West ran. His son became a Revolutionary officer and his great-grandson was General A. P. Hill, the famous Confederate leader. Chew was from Orange County, Virginia, and belonged to the Maryland branch of the Chew family. Two Presidents of the United States, Madison and Taylor, could claim him as a relative. Seven years later he served in Washington’s regiment in Forbes’s expedition against Fort Duquesne, and was killed in Grant’s wild attack on that fort. As the journal states, this company spent the first night out with Colonel Joshua Fry. Fry too was one of them in spirit, though he did not accompany them westward. He was a graduate of Oxford University, joint author with Jefferson of Fry and Jefferson’s celebrated Map of Virginia, and a commissioner for the crown in establishing the boundary line between North Carolina and Virginia. He was killed by being thrown from his horse while taking command of Washington’s expedition against Fort Duquesne, four years later. These statistics show plainly that the best brain and blood of Virginia was foremost in attempting to realize Virginia’s dream of conquest and expansion.
But it was a time for brave men to show themselves. Ambitious Virginia had been slow to claim the West, where even at this early date Frenchmen had gone so far into the wilderness. Céloron, bold emissary of the humpbacked Canadian Governor Gallissonière, was now burying leaden plates at the mouths of the rivers which emptied into the Ohio, as a sign of French possession of the West. One of these was placed at the mouth of the Great Kanawha “at the mouth of the river Chinodahihetha, this 18th day of August,” claiming for the Bourbon crown the entire territory in which the grant of land to the Ohio Company was located. There was not a moment to lose if the West was to be saved to England. A settlement must be made quickly, and Walker and his band pushed on immediately to find a “proper Place for a Settlement.”
But all this, seemingly, is neither here nor there—so far as Walker’s Journal is concerned. There is not one mention of the political crisis then at hand; instead of French claims, Walker deals with tired horses or broken-legged dogs, and where one might suppose he would mention national boundary lines he tells only of cutting names on trees. And at the end, where the reader might look for a summary statement of the results of his tour he finds this: “I got home about noon. We killed in the Journey 13 Buffaloes, 8 Elks, 53 Bears, 20 Deer, 4 Wild Geese, about 150 Turkeys, besides small game. We might have killed three times as much meat, if we had wanted it.” Yet, so far as human interest is concerned, the record is exceptionally entertaining, and to a student of the great thoroughfare from Virginia to Kentucky it is full of meaning; because of its many references to the difficulties of traveling at that early date, and to the varied experiences of explorers on the earliest thoroughfares westward. It is this story of experience in traveling west in 1750 that makes Walker’s Journal of interest in the present study.
On the day after the party left Colonel Fry’s, “We set off about 8,” writes Dr. Walker, “but the day proving wet, we only went to Thomas Joplin’s on Rockfish. This is a pretty River, which might at a small expense be made fit for transporting Tobacco; but it has lately been stopped by a Mill Dam near the Mouth to the prejudice of the upper inhabitants who would at their own expense clear and make it navigable, were they permitted.” Virginia’s great industry evidently flourished this far from tidewater even at this early date, though handicapped by these dams which were erected by the “Averice of Millers,” on which Dr. Walker comments again in his next day’s record. The record for Sunday, the eleventh, is appropriately brief: “11th. The Sabbath.” In only one or two instances did the party travel on Sunday, and then the journey was occasioned by necessity. On the twelfth the party crossed the Upper James River above the mouth of the Rivanna, and lodged with one Thomas Hunt.
“13th. We went early to William Calloway’s and supplied ourselves with Rum, Thread, and other necessaries & from thence took the main Waggon Road leading to Wood’s or the New River. It is not well clear’d or beaten yet, but will be a very good one with proper management.” Wood’s River—or New River, as we know it today—was discovered in 1671 by Colonel Abraham Wood, who explored along the line which later became the boundary line between North Carolina and Virginia. He crossed the Alleghenies through “Wood’s Gap” (now Flower Gap) and, going down Little River, found New River not far from Inglis Ferry, where Walker’s party crossed three days later. This mention of the road Walker traversed is his first reference to the great road westward toward Cumberland Gap; he remarks its roughness, but before he returned to Virginia he learned new lessons on rough roads. “This night we lodged in Adam Beards low grounds. Beard is an ignorant, impudent, brutish fellow, and would have taken us up, had it not been for a reason, easily suggested.” When thus brought in contrast with the hospitality usually tendered Walker’s party, the deportment of this churlish mountaineer is conspicuous. Travelers on these first highways were ever in need—if for nothing more than a camping-place. The people who settled beside the frontier roads were trained by bitter experience to a generous hospitality. This hospitality was particularly marked, throughout the colonies, among those who could afford it, especially on the frontiers; and here it was often bestowed upon travelers when it could be ill-afforded. The modern hotel has in a large measure relieved the general public from the burden of continual and promiscuous hospitality, and it has been found that where hotels are least known this prime requisite of an expanding civilization may still be found. On the frontier, men were dependent on those who lived beside the road, not only in time of accident and sickness, but at all times—for little food and forage could be carried. At times travelers nearly perished when once beyond the frontier line. Walker’s party, though they killed the large amount of game mentioned, were once compelled to kill and eat one of their dogs. Captain Estill, who lost his life in Kentucky in the engagement which bears his name, is said to have done a great service for emigrants from Virginia by killing game and leaving the meat beside the road, in order to “pass on and notify incoming trains where they might find a supply of meat.”
Instances of vile treatment of travelers are not often cited, but the few that exist are the exceptions that prove the rule of generosity which was common to the time.