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10
Despite the fact that the Pennsylvania route to the west was safer,
Governor Dinwiddie and John Hanbury of Pennsylvania (also a stockholder
in the Ohio Company) successfully used their influence in England to
have General Braddock take the Potomac route against the French at Fort
Duquesne. Braddock then built a road following the Ohio Company trail
from the headwaters of the Potomac to those of the Ohio; the time and
energy expended in doing this may have contributed to his defeat at
hands of the French and Indians later in 1755.15
The Ohio Company failed to achieve its goal of settlement during
its alloted seven years because of the French and Indian War, but it
did establish the route to the interior used by later Potomac projects.
That route followed the river from Alexandria to the mouth of Wills
Creek (later Fort Cumberland), and from there it followed an Indian
trail over the mountains to the three forks of the Youghiogheny River
(known as Turkey Foot for obvious reasons). This river fed the Ohio.
The Indian trail eventually became Braddock's Road, and later still,
National Road. (Figure one). 16
As the French and Indian War drew to a close, plans to use the
Potomac again took on a primarily economic character. Unlike the
the
15John Semple concluded that Braddock's defeat and death had
resulted from "the carriage of his /Braddock's% artillery, ammunition,
and provisions a great part of the way" along the Potomac route west.
John Semple's Proposal's for Opening the Potomac, George Washington
Papers, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul Minnesota; Edward S.
Delaplaine, The Life of Thomas Johnson, Member of the Continental Con-
gress, First Governor o the State o Maryland, an Associate ustice of
the nite States urpreme Court (New York: Grafton Press, 927 , p. 62;
> >am H. Browne, e d., orrespondence of Governor Horatio Sharpe, vol.
1, pp. 167-168; Ward, Early Development of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal,
p. 12; Bacon-Foster, Early Chapters, p. 16.
16Sanderlin, The Great National Project, pp. 10-20; Ward, Early
Development of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, p. 11; Bacon-Foster, Early
Chapters, p. 16.
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