Excerpt from Fort Necessity: National Battlefield Site, Pennsylvania The British likewise had become interested in the fertile lands of the Ohio Valley. Several prominent Englishmen and Virginians, among them Lawrence and Augustine Washington, elder brothers of George, appreciating the potential value of the area and the possibilities for trading posts and settlements, organized the Ohio Company in 1748. The following year, the company obtained from the British Crown a grant of acres on both sides of the Ohio between the Monongahela and Great Kanawha Rivers. An additional acres was promised if 100 families were settled on the first tract within 7 years. Fearing the encroachment of Pennsylvania settlers, as well as the French, the Ohio Company established a base of operations at Wills Creek, now Cumberland, Md. The company directed the opening of a wagon road to the Monongahela River over a path blazed by Nema colin, a friendly Delaware Indian. Christopher Gist, explorer and guide, was engaged to locate lands and to determine whether condi tions on the extreme frontier were suitable for settlements. Washington's mission TO fort LE boeuf. The French continued their activities. The new Governor General of Canada, the Marquis Du quesne, sent out an expedition of men to build a series of three forts in this region. Forts Presque Isle (near the present city of Erie) and Le Boeuf (in present Waterford) were built in the early summer of 1753. By the time they were completed, however, sickness and the lateness of the season prevented the construction of the third fort. The English trading post at Venango at the junction of French Creek and the Allegheny River (where Franklin is now located) was seized and occupied. Leaving a force to garrison the new posts, the French command returned to Canada for the winter. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.