Advertisement for Wagons, 22 May 1755
Advertisement for Wagons
Printed in The Pennsylvania Gazette, May. 22, 1755
Forty-One Waggons are immediately wanted, to carry each a Load of Oats and Indian-Corn from Philadelphia to Wills’s Creek,3 for which they are to be paid at their Return Twelve Pounds each Waggon. Protections and Passes will be given the Waggoners by Authority of the General, to prevent their being impressed, or detained after Delivery of their Loads. They are to set out together on Thursday the 29th Instant. Apply to Benjamin Franklin, in Philadelphia.
Note, Several Neighbours may conveniently join in fitting out a Waggon, as was lately done in the Back Counties. If the Waggons cannot thus be obtained, there must be an Impress.4
3. See above, pp. 49–51.
4. Governor Morris “had considerable Difficulties in procuring these Waggons,” he admitted to General Braddock, June 12; and had had to issue threatening warrants to the magistrates of four counties to bring them in. In several townships the citizens contributed between £5 and £15 as a premium to the wagoners, in addition to the regular hire of 15s. a day. This, Morris predicted, would make it difficult to hire wagons in the future except at an exorbitant rate. Pa. Col. Recs., VI, 415.