[1475] In this interval between 1765 and 1774 there was a revival of the purpose of settlements in the country watered by the Ohio and its tributaries. The breaking up by the war of the earlier enterprise of the Ohio Company (see Vol. V., ante; Sparks in his Washington, ii. 483, says its papers were entrusted to him fifty years ago by Charles Fenton Mercer, of Virginia) had led to a plan to buy out the French settlers in Illinois (Sparks's Franklin, vii. 356; Bigelow's Franklin, i. 537, 547; ii. 112); and this being abandoned, the earlier project had been merged in the scheme known at first as Walpole's Grant, and subsequently as the Colony of Vandalia, which had derived some impetus immediately after the conclusion of peace in 1763 by the publication in London of The Advantages of a Settlement upon the Ohio (now rare; copies in Harvard College library; in Carter-Brown Catal., iii. 1363; Thomson's Bibliog. of Ohio, no. 7), and in Edinburgh of The Expediency of securing our American Colonies by settling the Country adjoining the Mississippi River and the Country upon the Ohio Considered (Harvard College library, 6373. 33). The scheme had the countenance of Lord Shelburne, and the Shelburne MSS., as calendared in the Hist. MSS. Com. Report, v. p. 218 (vol. 50), show various papers appertaining. Professor H. B. Adams, in the Maryland Fund Publications, no. xi. p. 27, has marked the growth of the perception of the importance of these lands.
The grant was not secured till 1770, nor ratified till 1772 (account in Sparks's Franklin, iv. 233, and Washington, ii. 483). Franklin had interested himself in securing the grant against the opposition of Hillsborough. See Franklin's letters in Works, iv. 233; the adverse report of the Lords of Trade (p. 303), and Franklin's reply to it (p. 324). These last papers are also included in Biog. lit. and polit. Anecdotes of several of the most Eminent persons of the present Age (London, 1797), vol. ii. Provision was made for securing out of this grant the lands promised to the Virginia soldiers, in which Washington was so much interested. The coming on of the Revolution jeopardized the interests of the grantees, and in 1774 they petitioned the king that the establishment of a government for Vandalia be no longer delayed. Walpole, in May, 1775, was anxious at the turn of affairs (Hist. Mag., i. 86), and in 1776 the plan was abandoned. A memorial of Franklin and Samuel Wharton, dated at Passy, Feb. 26, 1780, tracing the history of these lands, is in the Sparks MSS., no. xvii.
On the early settlers of Ohio at this time, see S. P. Hildreth's Biog. and Hist. Memoirs of the Early Pioneer Settlers of Ohio (Cinn., 1852); James W. Taylor's Hist. of Ohio, 1650-1787 (Sandusky, 1854); and a paper by Isaac Smucker on the first pioneers, in Mag. of Amer. Hist., Aug., 1885, p. 326. The position of the Delawares in this region during the war is discussed by S. D. Peet in the American Antiquarian, ii. 132.
The Filson Club of Louisville has published (1886) Thomas Speed's Wilderness road, a description of the route of travel by which the pioneers and early settlers first came to Kentucky, their previous publication having been Reuben T. Durrett's Life and Writings of John Filson, the first historian of Kentucky (1884), which gives in fac-simile the earliest special map of Kentucky, after a copy in Harvard College library,—most copies of the book being without it,—for while the Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucke was printed in 1784, at Wilmington, Del., the map was printed in Philadelphia, and was an improvement upon the general maps of Charlevoix, Evans, Hutchins, Pownall, and others. Filson's book was issued in French, at Paris, in 1785, and reprinted in English in Imlay's Topog. Description of North America (London, 1793 and 1797), in conjunction with Imlay; again by Campbell in New York, in 1793. Filson first presented to the world the story of the adventures of Daniel Boone in the appendix of his book, and from that it has been copied and assigned to Boone himself, in the Amer. Museum, Philadelphia, Oct. 1787, and in Samuel L. Metcalfe's Collection of some of the most interesting narratives of Indian Warfare in the West (Lexington, Ky., 1821,—Thomson's Bibliog. of Ohio, no. 818). The life of Boone embodies much of the history of the pioneer days of Kentucky. His subsequent biographers, J. M. Peck (in Sparks's Amer. Biog.), E. S. Ellis, G. C. Hill, H. T. Tuckerman (in his Biog. Essays), C. W. Webber (in Hist. and Rev. Incidents, Phil., 1861), Lossing (in Harper's Mag., xix.), and others, have depended upon Filson. E. C. Coleman has told the story as it is centred about Simon Kenton (Ibid. xxviii.), and J. H. Perkins has given it more general bearings in his "Pioneers of Kentucky", in No. Amer. Rev., Jan., 1846, included in his Memoir and Writings, ii. 243. Cf. Marshall Smith's Legends of the War of Independence and of the Earlier settlements in the West (Louisville, 1855), and the old fort at Lexington, Ky., in Mag. Amer. Hist., Aug., 1887, p. 123.
What is now Tennessee was known after 1769 as the Settlements of the Watauga Association, and so continued till 1777, when, during the rest of the Revolutionary War, it was a part of North Carolina (J. E. M. Ramsey's Annals of Tennessee, Charleston, 1853; Philad., 1853, 1860; Sabin, xvi. no. 67, 729).
There are documents on the Illinois country during this quiet interval among the Shelburne Papers, as noted in the Hist. MSS. Com. Report, v. pp. 216, 218 (vols. 48 and 50). Cf. John Reynolds, Pioneer Hist. of Illinois (1852); Breese's Early Hist. of Illinois, and the other later histories (see Vol. V., ante, p. 198). Cf. Arthur Young's Observations on the present State of the waste lands of Great Britain, published on occasion of the establishment of a new Colony on the Ohio (London, 1773).
Several journals of voyages and explorations along the Ohio and its tributary streams, which were made during this period, are preserved to us, such as that of Capt. Harry Gordon, from Fort Pitt to the Illinois in 1766, which is printed in Pownall's Topog. Description (London, 1776), and of which the original or early copy seems to be noted in the English Hist. MSS. Com. Report, v. p. 216; that of Washington, who visited the Ohio region in 1770 to select lands for the soldiers of the late wars, and which is printed in Sparks's Washington (vol. ii. 516, beside letters in Ibid. 387, etc. Cf. Irving's Washington, i. 330, and some letters in Read's George Read, p. 124); and those of Matthew Phelps, who was twice in this Western country between 1773 and 1780, and whose account is given in the Memoirs and adventures, particularly in two voyages from Connecticut to the river Mississippi, 1773-80. Compiled from the original journal and minutes kept by Mr. Phelps. By Anthony Haswell (Bennington, Vt., 1802).
The diary of Rufus Putnam, who explored the lower regions of the Mississippi Valley between Dec. 10, 1772, and Aug. 13, 1773, is preserved in the library of Marietta College. (Cf. Mag. Amer. Hist., vii. 230.)—Ed.
[1476] Connolly was arrested as a Tory in November, 1775, and held as a prisoner until exchanged in the winter of 1780-81. He then planned a scheme with Tories and Indians to capture Fort Pitt. See Olden Time, i. 520; ii. 93, 105, 348; Craig's Pittsburg, 112, 124; Perkins's West. Annals, 140, 148; Jacob's Cresap, 75-91; Am. Archives, 4th ser., i. 774.
[1477] Botta's Am. War, i. 250; Doddridge's Notes, (ed. 1876), 238; Olden Time, ii. 43.