Advertisement, 16 December 1769
Advertisement
Mount Vernon, Fairfax county, Dec. 16. [1769]
His Excellency the Governor, by and with the advice and consent of his Majesty’s Council, having been pleased to grant 200,000 acres of land on the Great Kanhaway, &c. to the officers and soldiers who embarked in the service of this colony, agreeable to a proclamation issued the 19th of February, 1754 (by the Hon. Robert Dinwiddie, Esq; then Lieutenant Governor). And having moreover been pleased to require, that I should receive the several and respective claims of every person who engaged in the service aforesaid, before the battle of the Meadows, in 1754, I do hereby give this public notice thereof, requesting that every officer and soldier, or their representatives, will exhibit their respective claims to a share of these lands, properly attested to me, before the 10th day of October next ensuing, in order that the whole may be laid before his Lordship and Council, and finally adjusted.1 And to the intent that no unnecessary application may be made, it is hereby signified, that no person who entered into the service of this colony after the said battle of the Meadows (which concluded the campaign of 1754) is intitled to any part of these 200,000 acres of land, as they were given to the first adventurers, under the proclamation aforesaid.
George Washington
Rind’s Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg), 28 Dec. 1769; Purdie and Dixon’s Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg), 21 Dec. 1769. GW paid Purdie and Dixon fourteen shillings for “advertising for the claims to be brought in,” and he paid William Rind £2.7 for “inserting the same 22 weeks” (account with the grantees under Dinwiddie’s proclamation in 1754, 15 Dec. 1769–14 June 1774, DLC:GW).
1. GW met with “the Officers of the first Virga. Troops” on 2 Aug. 1770 in Fredericksburg at George Weedon’s tavern, where they “dined & did not finish till abt. Sun set” (, 2:261). At the meeting GW agreed to go down the Ohio with William Crawford to have a look at the area where the bounty lands were to be located. Crawford would at that time begin his surveying. The officers agreed that the costs involved in securing the land would be divided among them according to rank. See the Minutes of the Officers of the Virginia Regiment of 1754, 5 Mar. 1771, n.5. Thomas Bullitt petitioned the Virginia council on 31 Oct. 1770 to protest that the method of allotting land to the veterans adopted at the August meeting operated unfairly in his case and in that of others (ViHi: Colonial Papers; , 6:375).