From George Washington to Peter Hog, 21 March 1774
To Peter Hog
Mount Vernon 21st March 1774.
Sir,
The design of my giving you the trouble of this Letter, is to request the favour of you to aid Captn Crawford in qualifying, & giving Security, to his Commission as assistant Surveyor to Colo. Thomas Lewis.1 He is informed by that Gentleman, that there will be no Court in Augusta to do business in the next Month, but that, if he will get there a few days before (which he strongly urges both to Captn Crawford & myself) he has no doubt but through your Means, a few of the Magestrates, & Clerk, may be convend to do this business, for the accomplishment of which I heartily wish. As Captn Crawford may not be well acquainted in your County, & consequently at a loss to obtain Security, I should be obliged to you to join him in the Bond, and this Letter shall bind me to hold you indemnified on this head. Lord Dunmore hath Interested himself a good deal in behalf of this appointment of Captn Crawfords, recommending him, himself, by Letter to Colo. Lewis. his immediate qualification therefore, to Act, is highly necessary.
As I wrote you a very long Letter sometime ago, respecting our Landed matters in the western world,2 I have little to add on that score, as you have doubtless receiv’d it though detaind even longer than I had any Idea of, by the Waters preventing Captn Crawfords getting to the intended Meeting of the Sandy Creek Claimts at Winchester the 5th Instt.3 I am Sir Yr Most Obedt Serv⟨t⟩
Go: Washington
ALS, IaPle. The separate cover addressed to Peter Hog is in another hand and seems to be the cover of a letter from a Mr. “Hubburt.”
2. GW’s letter has not been found. Peter Hog, who was a captain in the Virginia Regiment of 1754 at its capitulation at Fort Necessity and continued to serve as a captain in GW’s Virginia Regiment after 1755, received land under the terms of Dinwiddie’s Proclamation of 1754.
3. On 10 Feb. the following notice appeared in Purdie and Dixon’s Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg): “IT is absolutely necessary that the sundry Claimants in the Patent granted to Mr. John Savage, and others, who were with Colonel George Washington at the Battle of the Meadows, for 28,627 Acres of Land on the Great Sandy Creek, a Branch of the Ohio, should have a Meeting, to fix on a Time for making a Division of the said Land, and to pay off the contingent Expences attending the first Survey. This is therefore to give Notice to those concerned in the said Patent to meet at Winchester, on Saturday the 5th of March, to take proper Measures on this Occasion.” The notice was signed by Charles Smith, Angus McDonald, William Buffington, and Gabriel Jones, the first two of whom were claimants in the patent (see “List of all the Patents granted by His Excellency John Earl of Dunmore Governor of Virginia,” P.R.O., C.O. 5/1353, ff. 42–62). The meeting was held on the fifth when a majority of claimants attended, and another meeting was proposed for 20 May (Virginia Gazette [Rind; Williamsburg], 31 Mar. 1774). On 25 Feb. 1775 Dixon and Hunter’s Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg) gave notice that it was “indispensably necessary” for the claimants to meet “at the Confluence of the Great Kanhawa” on 8 May to divide the land “on the River Ohio and the Sandy Creeks.” This last notice was signed by Van Swearingen (Swerengen), Robert Rutherford, Isaac Larew, and James McCarmick (McCormack). John Savage served as a lieutenant with GW in the Fort Necessity campaign and was a captain in GW’s Virginia Regiment of 1755. His portion in the first dividend of land was in a 28,627–acre tract on Big Sandy Creek which was to be parceled out among sixty-one claimants (Petition to Lord Dunmore and the Virginia Council, c.4 Nov. 1772, n.3). Dunmore’s grant for the tract, dated 15 Dec. 1772, is in DLC:GW. The Big Sandy Creek flows into the Ohio at Ravenswood, West Virginia.