ing or seeming to believe that there was no French there; till the Governor of Virginia sent Col. Washington to the heads of Venango Creek, where he met the French General at a fort he had lately built there.
In February 1754, Captain Trent was at the mouth of Red Stone Creek, building a Store house for the Ohio Company, in order to lodge stores to be carried from there to the mouth of Monongehela, by water, where he had received orders in conjunction with Cresap[1] and Gist to build a fort for that Company. This Creek is about 37 miles from where fort Du Quesne now stands.
About the 10th of this month he received a Commission
from the Governor of Virginia with orders to raise a
Company of Militia, and that he would soon be joined by
Col. Washington. At this time the Indians appointed
to meet him at the mouth of Monongehela in order to
receive a present which he had brought them from Virginia.
Between this time and that appointed to meet the
Indians he raised upwards of twenty men & found them
with arms ammunition & provisions at his own expence.
At this meeting the Indians insisted that he should set
his men at work, which he did, and finished a Store House,
————
- ↑ Colonel Thomas Cresap was a Yorkshireman who came to Maryland at an early age. Having settled within the territory in dispute between Maryland and Pennsylvania, he became an aggressive leader of the forces of the former and was arrested by the Pennsylvania sheriff of Lancaster, where he spent several months in jail. Being released by an agreement between the proprietors of the two colonies (1739), he moved westward, and became the first permanent settler of Maryland beyond the mountains, taking up land at a deserted Shawnee village now called Oldtown. An active member of the Ohio Company, he was assisted by the Indian Nemacolin in blazing the first path west to the Ohio (1752). After the defeat on the Monongahela, Cresap moved back to the settlements on Conococheague Creek; but on the return of peace sought his former location, where he became a noted surveyor and frontiersman. His son Michael was likewise a well-known borderer and Indian fighter. For a complete biographical account, see Ohio Archæological and Historical Publications (Columbus, 1902), x, pp. 146-164.—Ed.
