On January 2, 1778 Virginia Governor Patrick Henry authorized the militia to take action against the British outpost of Kaskaskia in Illinois.  Henry sent the secret orders to Virginia-born Kentuckian George Rogers Clark, a handsome 24 year-old surveyor-turned-soldier.  Kentucky then was a Virginia county, Clark a respected frontiersman.   

George Rogers Clark and his 175 man band were “to apply to General Hand at Pittsburgh for boats and ammunition, to take Kaskaskia, and to prepare for a fort at the mouth of the Ohio.”  The team seized the Kaskaskia outpost without firing a shot.  Clark, described as the father of the western country, went on to capture Vincennes.  

It was Gunston Hall’s George Mason IV, the Ohio Company’s treasurer who sent Clark west.  Clark, elementarily schooled with James Madison, learned the surveyor’s trade from his grandfather.  Rogers’ western claims, the Ohio Company and similar companies’ land claims were America’s claims.  Together they formed the basis for Britain’s transfer of the Northwest Territory—lands west of the Alleghenies and northwest of the Ohio River—to the United States as part of the Treaty of Paris in 1783.  

In 1748 the Ohio Company presented a petition to England’s King George II requesting permission to settle the “countries on the Ohio and extend the British trade beyond the mountains on the western confines of Virginia.”  Company founders included John Hanbury of London, Thomas Lee, Lawrence and Augustine Washington, and John Carlyle.  John Carlyle later resigned and George Mason IV joined.

 The King’s 1749 concession consisted of 500,000 acres of land, 200,000 of which were granted with the stipulation that 100 families settle straightaway and build a fort.  At the time England and France were struggling for North American control.  The prize: the Ohio River Valley and all its imagined bounty.  

The French were the first to settle the Valley, traveling from Canada across Lake Erie then south by river.  Alternatively, the English used associations like Virginia’s Ohio Company to stake their claims.  Did land speculation, or did it not trigger the French and Indian War (1754-1763)?  England’s Royal Proclamation of 1763, issued at War’s end, prohibited colonial governors from issuing western land grants.

“The situation vis-à-vis land speculation and land grants in eighteenth century America has been oversimplified,” historian Robert A. Rutland wrote.  “To be sure, the common denominator was greed; vast profit at little risk of the goal.  However, the drive for western lands also involved vision, sacrifice, and determination.  Many of the largest land speculators ultimately fell into a morass of debt, but there were others such as [George] Mason who had the combined instincts of the statesman and the entrepreneur.  They financed the explorations and surveys that made settlement of the West relatively safe and absolutely certain.”

In 1774 the Ohio Company, in cooperation with the College of William and Mary, hired surveyors William Crawford, Hancock Lee and his brother Willis, and George Rogers Clark to chart the Company’s Kentucky holdings.  Mason wanted a measure of value. Knowledge was power, especially during the Revolutionary War.

At Commander-in-Chief George Washington’s urging, George Mason in 1777 returned to sporadically serve in the Virginia Assembly.  Washington needed to calm Virginians financial fears.  The revolution was expensive and inflation was taking its toll.

“A rat in the shape of a horse is not to be bought at this time for less than 200 pounds,” General Washington complained.  Mason proposed that Virginia’s western lands be set aside as a sinking fund to pay the state’s War debt.

George Mason – with George Rogers Clark’s cooperation – advocated a military maneuver which, if successful, would harden Virginia’s control of the Northwest Territory.  The legislator and the frontiersman met in Williamsburg and presented their plan.  Virginia would pay Clark in land to capture British outposts positioned north of the Ohio River.  Governor Patrick Henry, Assemblymen Thomas Jefferson and George Wythe agreed.  Clark’s capture of Kaskaskia cinched the clandestine deal. 

Wrote Clark to Mason in 1779:  “Continue to favor me with your valuable lessons—continue your reprimands as though I was your son—when suspicious, think not that promotion, or conferred honor, will occasion any unnecessary pride in me…It is with pleasure that I obey in transmitting to you a short sketch of my…proceeding in the Illinois.”

George Mason’s landholdings, including the Northern Neck and western Kentucky, eventually totaled 75,000 acres.  As a lawyer, as the Ohio Company’s Treasurer he assumed responsibility for even more.  Mason remained a steadfast member of the Ohio Company until his death in 1792.

Unlike Mason George Rogers Clark died in poverty; in Kentucky in 1818.  The Revolutionary War battle, the 1782 Battle of Blue Licks was fought in Kentucky County.  Clark’s men were defeated and his absence harshly criticized.  He retaliated—a last act—but glory eluded him.

In the end Clark and his soldiers received only a portion of the land payment due them.  Among Virginia’s early excuses: Benedict Arnold had burned Clark’s financial records.  Virginia made its last debt payment in 1913, to Clark’s estate.

Gunston Hall Plantation, George Mason IV’s home, is located at 10709 Gunston Road in Mason Neck, Virginia 22079.  Gunston Hall Plantation is open daily, except New Year’s Day, and admission applies.  January events include an archaeological symposium, Mason Neck Underground: From Pre-History to the Early Republic. The symposium is scheduled for Saturday, January 28, 9 a.m. until 4 p.m., and registration is required.  For more information, visit www.gunstonhall.org or telephone (703) 550-9220.

Columnist’s Note:  The acronym AYP as used in last month’s column stands for Adequate Yearly Progress, a test associated with No Child Left Behind.