Category: Savage Spring Series
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Before He Was President: George Washington the Land Magnate
In the decade after the French and Indian War, the frontier between Fort Pitt and the future site of Wheeling buzzed with uncertainty—half promise, half threat. This was contested ground, scarred by past conflict and rich with opportunity, and nobody knew that better than George Washington. (I know some people don’t like to think of… Read more
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Fort Duquesne: Black Heart of the North American Hinterland
The English were traders on the Ohio River by the early eighteenth century, but the colonies were largely concentrated along the Atlantic coast. In 1747, the combined lobbying of Virginia planters and London stockholders finally paid off when King George II approved the charter granting the Ohio Company of Virginia 200,000 acres of land in… Read more
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What’s in a Name? Colonization and the Erasure of Native Identity
The modern region where the mob violence in question occurred is downstream traveling west to south of the ‘Forks of the Ohio River’, the confluence where the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River intersect to form the Ohio River, stretching from modern day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, down to the border of Ohio and West Virginia’s Northern… Read more
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Westward Pressure: Immigration, Land Hunger, and the Push to Reach the Ohio
In the eighteenth century, thousands left Europe in search of land and opportunity in the American colonies. Among them, none came in greater numbers than the Ulster Presbyterians—better known today as the Scots-Irish. Like many German immigrants, they arrived hoping to claim farmland of their own. But what they found was a crowded colonial society,… Read more
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Savage Spring: 1774 and the Mob Violence in the Upper Ohio River Valley – Introduction
Before the first shots of the American Revolution were fired, another war was already brewing in the Ohio Valley. It’s a story tangled in violence, unregulated land schemes, and political manipulation. And like many stories on the early American frontier, it raises more questions than answers. Who is Logan? What happened to his family? Where… Read more