Employed by the company were some former associates of George Croghan. Among them were Andrew Montour, a colorful half-breed of coureur des bois stock, and Croghan’s brother-in-law William Trent. With the aid of experienced men like these, Thomas Cresap was soon proving his worth to his tidewater partners and to the British Empire.
The threat was too obvious to be ignored by the French. They laid plans to push the English back over the mountains. Already, a French army detachment, using a traders’ portage between the eastern end of Lake Erie and Lake Chautauqua, had gone down to the Ohio via the Allegheny River, planting lead plates along both streams as a warning to trespassers. Already, French-led and French-inspired Indian raids had taken the lives of English traders, as well as those of their native hosts. In one case a prominent Indian chief allied with the English had been boiled and eaten by some Ottawas led by a French half-breed, all without discouraging the Englishmen it seemed. Now, in 1753, a French army of 1,000 men headed down the Allegheny from Canada, to begin building a line of forts along the line of the previously planted lead plates.
Forts were built first at present-day Erie on the lake and at the head of French Creek to secure a portage. Then, John Frazer’s trading post at Venango on the Allegheny was taken and converted to a fortification. There the French troops, bogged down with sickness, dug in for the winter.
That is where Major George Washington found them when he carried a note from the Governor of Virginia to their commanding officer suggesting that they all retire promptly to Canada. This, the Frenchmen said, they had no intention of doing. In the spring they would push on, down the Allegheny, to the strategic Forks of the Ohio.
Even as the French army was building canoes that winter for its advance on the Ohio, Thomas Cresap and William Trent were supervising the construction of an English fort at the forks of the river. They now represented the Governor of Virginia and the King of England, as well as the Ohio Company, all of whom were one and the same as far as the Ohio valley was concerned. In fact Trent, the fur trader in the employ of the Ohio Company, had been commissioned a captain by Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia to command the new fort and oppose the French.
But when spring and the French came to the Forks of the Ohio, Captain Trent was absent. He said he was looking for recruits; some suspected he was ferrying his beaver to a safer spot. The ensign in command yielded the English fort in the face of overwhelming odds, and the French built an impressive citadel in its place, which they named Fort DuQuesne to honor the Canadian governor of that name.
Washington, now Colonel Washington, who was advancing from Virginia with his militia to Trent’s support, was much too late. He was forced to content himself with palisading a defensive position along the road at Great Meadows. There at Fort Necessity, as he called it, he warded off as best he could the large number of French troops who came out to engage him.
That summer of 1754 Washington surrendered. When he led his militiamen back over the Alleghenies, the Frenchmen had succeeded in their purpose. The English were out of the Ohio valley.
However, the American phase of the Seven Years’ War had commenced—two years before it was officially declared in Europe. The critical contest known on this continent as the French and Indian War was under way, and the very next year General Edward Braddock arrived with his British regulars to direct the campaign.
The strategic plan decided upon encompassed a four-fold attack upon the French at DuQuesne, Crown Point, Niagara, and in Nova Scotia. General Braddock himself assumed the DuQuesne assignment, the most important immediate objective. But he failed on this mission, his abortive attempt to reach the Forks of the Ohio ending in the disastrous rout of his troops and his own death.