Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Title
The Journal of Major George Washington (1754)
Document Type
Article
Date of this Version
July 2007
Abstract
The Journal of Major George Washington, Sent by the Hon. Robert Dinwiddie, Esq; His Majesty’s Lieutenant-Governor, and Commander In Chief Of Virginia,
to the Commandant of the French Forces on Ohio. To Which Are Added, the
Governor’s Letter, and a Translation of the French Officer’s Answer.
In October of 1753, George Washington, a 22-year-old major in
the Virginia militia, volunteered to carry a letter from the governor
of Virginia to the French commander of the forts recently built on
the headwaters of the Ohio River in northwestern Pennsylvania.
The French had recently expanded their military operations from
the Great Lakes into the Ohio country, and had spent the summer
of 1753 building forts and roads along the Allegheny River, with the
design of linking their trade routes and sphere of influence down
the Ohio to the Mississippi. Virginia governor Robert Dinwiddie
believed them to be in violation of treaties and claims that made
those territories part of Virginia and Pennsylvania, as granted
by the British Crown, and his letter to the French commander
instructed him to cease, desist, and depart from those regions.
Washington left Williamsburg, Virginia on October 31, 1753,
and completed the round trip of more than 1,000 miles by horse,
foot, canoe, and raft in about ten weeks. He was accompanied
by Christopher Gist, an explorer and surveyor employed by the
Ohio Company, by Jacob Van Braam, a French Interpreter, four
Indian traders and baggage-men, and various Indian delegations
and guards, including Tanacharison, known as the “Half-King.”
Washington accomplished far more than the mere delivery of a
letter: he practiced diplomacy to keep the Native leaders allied to
the English cause; he interviewed French deserters and reported
on the extent of French military posts between New Orleans and
the Great Lakes; he reconnoitered the Forks of the Ohio with an
eye to the proper site for building a fort; and he inspected and
reported on the construction of the new French forts and made
estimates of their strength and preparations for the following
year’s expeditions.
When Washington arrived back in Williamsburg on January
16, 1754, Governor Dinwiddie immediately asked him to prepare a
written report for the House of Burgesses. Dinwiddie then had this
report printed, and it became very popular reading. The Virginia
legislature was so pleased with his mission and his report that they
voted him a £50 reward. The Journal of Major George Washington
was reprinted in various colonial newspapers as far away as Boston,
and a British edition was issued in London later that same year, for
which Washington sent materials for the preparation of a map.
This online electronic text edition of the Journal is based on
the first American edition published at Williamsburg in February
1754. It includes some annotations for the nonspecialist reader and
a note on the text discussing the sources and the few emendations
made.
It is accompanied by 2 maps, attached as supplementary PDF
files: one is a copy of the map that appeared with the London
edition, showing the whole region from the Atlantic to the
Mississippi, based on materials furnished by Washington; the other
is a detail derived from the map accompanying Thomas Jefferson’s
Notes on the State of Virginia (1787), showing the frontier region
through which Washington travelled, between Cumberland (Md.)
and Lake Erie. Of the two, the Jefferson map shows the geography
with somewhat greater accuracy.
Map from the London 1754 edition (PDF)
Detail from Jefferson map.pdf (992 kB)
The region from Cumberland to Fort Le Boeuf (PDF)
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