French and English. The Indians, although cheated and made drunk, were still in possession of the woods they considered to be their own. Virginia claimed what Pennsylvania, and even Connecticut, said was theirs; Pennsylvania was reaping the only harvest of the wilderness, of the value of some fifty thousand pounds a year, the trade in furs; last of all, in 1749, some enterprising gentlemen in England and Virginia planned the Ohio Company, meaning to colonize even north of the Ohio.
When Mr. Thomas Lee, president of the council, died, my brother Lawrence became the head of the Ohio Company, and all of this, as I now see, had much to do with the next change in my life. I find it pleasant again to dwell here on the good sense and liberal spirit of my brother, who, had his life been spared, would surely have been chosen to do that which has fallen to me. His character is well seen in his desire that the Dutch from Pennsylvania, whom he invited as settlers, being dissenters and having come into the jurisdiction of Virginia, should not be forced to pay parish rates and support clergymen of the Church of England, as all dissenters were obliged to
