|
clear and cultivate our lands if we can dispose of the produce to
advantage." 22
While Thomas Johnson pushed the Potomac effort in Maryland,
Virginians were not inactive. Shortly after the end of the French and
Indian War, the Ohio Company, which wished to retain its land grant in
the Ohio valley, attempted to have its charter renewed by sending George
Mercer to England. Mercer's quest proved to be a time consuming and
frustrating affair. Even as late at 1774, the best that he could
arrange was a proposed merger with a rival group of speculators. This
group, which included important English and colonial interests such as
Thomas Walpole, Richard Wharton, Robert Morris, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas
Pownall, Sir William Johnson and even John Hanbury, had their own plans
to create the new colony of Vandalia west of the Appalachian Mountains,
and they actively worked to thwart the Ohio Company's renewal request.
The Ohio Company ultimately declined the merger proposal of the Walpole
Associates, but individual members of the Ohio Company continued to
support Potomac improvement plans. 23
Simultaneously, other Virginians were also agitating for better
communication with coastal porLs. In late 1769 John Semple, a Scot
from Maryland who had taken over the Occoquan Mills in 1765, drafted his
own proposals for improving the Potomac. Noting the 1768 treaties
revising the Proclamation Line and Maryland's 1768 Potomac act, Semple,
like the 1762 promoters of the Potomac, suggested that an improved river
would aid both commerce and speculation:
22 Thomas Johnson to George Washington, June 18, 1770, George
Washington Papers, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul Minnesota.
23 Bacon-Foster, Early Chapters, pp. 21-23; U.S. Congress, House,
Report of the Committee on Roads and Canals, House Rept. 90, 19th
Congress, 2nd session, 1827, p. 26.
|
