Note on an Advertisement for Land on the Ohio River, 15 July 1773
Note on an Advertisement for Land on the Ohio River
The advertisement, dated July 15, 1773, and signed by George Washington at Mount Vernon, was printed in The Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser and in the Pennsylvania Gazette; it solicited applications for land grants in twenty thousand acres at the mouth of the Great Kanawha River. Its authorship has been attributed to Franklin, with no evidence but with admiration for his skill in propaganda.5 How Washington could have enlisted that skill, particularly when the tract in question lay within the area for which the Walpole Company was negotiating, is not explained.6 The attribution is a flight of fancy.
5. James Melvin Lee, History of American Journalism (Boston and New York, 1917), p. 94.
6. For the conflict between Washington’s claims and those of the Walpole Company see above, BF to WF, Feb. 14, and WF to BF, April 30.