Major Washington was located at Alexandria, on the upper Potomac, in February where he superintended the rendezvous and the transportation of supplies and cannon. It was found necessary to resort to impressments to raise the required quota of men. As early as February 19th, so slow were the drafts and enlistments, Governor Dinwiddie issued a proclamation granting two hundred thousand acres of land on the Ohio to be divided among the officers and men who would serve in the expedition. This had its effect.
By April 20th Washington arrived at Will’s Creek (Cumberland, Maryland) with three companies, one under Captain Stephen joining him on the way. The day previous, however, he met a messenger sent from Captain Trent on the Ohio announcing that the arrival of a French army was hourly expected. And on the day following, at Will’s Creek, he was informed of the arrival of the French on what is now the site of Pittsburg and the withdrawal of the Virginian force under Trent from the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela whither they had been sent to build a fort for the protection of the Ohio Company. This information he immediately forwarded to the Governors of Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland.
Fancy the state of mind of this vanguard of the Virginian army at the receipt of this news. It was, then, at the last frontier fort, eleven companies strong. Their order was to push on to the Ohio, drive off the French (which was then reported to number a thousand men) and build a fort. Before it the only road was the Indian path hardly wide enough to admit the passage of a pack-horse.
A ballot was cast among Washington’s Captains—the youngest of whom was old enough to have been his father—and the decision was to advance. The Indian path could at least be widened and bridges built as far as the Monongahela. There they determined to erect a fort and await orders and reinforcements. The reasons for this decision are given as follows in Washington’s Journal of 1754:[1].
“1st. That the mouth of Red-Stone is the first convenient place on the River Monongahela.
2nd. The stores are already built at that place for the provisions of the Company, wherein the Ammunition may be laid up, our great guns may also be sent by water whenever we shall think it convenient to attack the Fort.
3rd. We may easily (having all these conveniences) preserve our men from the ill consequences of inaction, and encourage the Indians our Allies to remain in our interests.”
[1] The private Journal kept by Washington on the expedition of the Virginia Regiment in 1754 was composed of rough notes only. It was lost with other papers at the Battle of Fort Necessity and was captured by the French and sent to Paris. Two years later it was published by the French government, after being thoroughly “edited” by a French censor. It was titled “Memoire contenant le Precis des Faits, avec leurs Pieces Justificatives, pour servir de Reponse aux Observations envoyees, par les Ministres d’Angleterre, dans les Cours de l’Europe. A Paris; de l’Imprimerie Royale, 1756.”
In this Memoire, together with portions of Washington’s Journal appear papers, instructions, etc., captured at Braddock’s defeat in 1755. Of the portion of Washington’s Journal published, Washington himself said; “I kept no regular one (Journal) during the Expedition; rough notes of occurrences I certainly took, and find them as certainly and strangely metamorphised, some parts left out which I remember were entered, and many things added that never were thought of, the names of men and things egregiously miscalled, and the whole of what I saw Englished is very incorrect and nonsensical.” The last entry on the Journal is on June 27th., six days previous to the Battle of Fort Necessity.