Land Speculation – Emerging Revolutionary War Era

An Englishman on the Frontier

Part 1 click here.

Nicholas Cresswell left Alexandria for the Illinois Country on March 16, 1775, his correspondence as yet unknown to the local Committee of Safety. The Ohio River served as a highway to the west, so he headed for its origin at Pittsburgh. Along the way, he stopped to visit the battlefield where French and Indian forces defeated Major General Edward Braddock in July, 1755. Cresswell and his traveling companions found “great numbers of bones, both men and horses. The trees are injured, I suppose by the Artillery…the greatest slaughter seems to have been made within 400 yards of the River…We could not find one whole skull, all of them broke to pieces in the upper part, some of them had holes broken in them about an inch diameter, suppose it to be done with a Pipe Tomahawk.”[i]

Monongaela Battle (Library of Congress) — Initial Dispositions of the Battle of the Monongahela. Cresswell walked the battlefield on his way to Pittsburgh in 1775. (Library of Congress)

Continue reading “The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell, Part 2” →