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8
stockholders served in the House of Burgesses. Partially as a result
of the Ohio Company's interest in the west, Virginia frontier settlers
were relieved of having to pay taxes in 1752, and two years later,
610,000 was appropriated for frontier defense as the French and Indian
War began. 12
With the outbreak of warfare, the residents of Maryland and
Virginia began to view the Potomac as a possible route for forwarding
military supplies and troops to the frontier. Based upon a 1753 report
on French activities in the Ohio valley, the same year that the House
of Burgesses appropriated the L10,000 for frontier defense, Governor
Dinwiddie and the Royal Council recommended opening a public road to
settlers in the west to reinforce English claims (and the Ohio Company's
grant) in that area. 13 In 1755, following a meeting with George
Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Major General Edward Braddock in
Frederick Town, Governor Horatio Sharpe of Maryland and Sir John St.
Clair journeyed overland to Wills Town (Fort Cumberland) on the Potomac
and then went down the river to evaluate it as a supply route for troops
waiting at Wills Town to march west against the French. Sharpe and St.
Clair concluded that the Potomac "proved from the number of shoals and falls
to be of no service fn transporting either artillery or other baggage." 14
12Bacon-Foster, Early Chapters, pp. 9-16; Sanderlin, The Great
National Project, pp. 22-28.
13 John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., _The Wri is of George Washington
from the Original Manuscript Sources 1745-1799 Washington, D.C.: United
States Government Printing Office, 1938 , vol. 1, pp. 22-31; John A.
Pickell, A New Chapter in the Early Life of Washington, in Connection with
the Narrative History of the Potomac Company flew York: D. Appleton and
o., 5 , pp. - , - ..
14Browne, William H., ed., Corespondence of Governor Horatio
Sharpe, viol. 1 , i n Archives of Maryland (Baltimore: Maryland ~.;i stori
cal
Society, 1888), vol. 6, pp. 167-168.
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