Guide to the Ohio Company Papers, 1736-1813 DAR.1925.02

Arrangement

Repository
ULS Archives & Special Collections
Title
Ohio Company Papers
Creator
Ohio Company (1747-1779)
Collection Number
DAR.1925.02
Extent
1.5 Linear Feet (4 boxes)
Date
1736-1813
Abstract
The Ohio Company, founded in 1747, represented the trading and land prospecting interests of a handful of Virginia planters. In 1748, company representative George Mercer secured a land grant from the British Crown for 200,000 acres in the Ohio territory, a colloquial term for what is now modern day West Virginia, much of Ohio, western Pennsylvania and parts of Maryland. The company employed frontiersman Christopher Gist to survey the area of the grant and negotiate a treaty with the Native Americans in the 1750s. Gist embarked on three separate journeys into the Ohio territory in 1750-51, 1751-52, and 1753-54. The Ohio Company's efforts in the contested region were largely stymied by the outbreak of the French and Indian War, despite its continued existence until its formal dissolution in 1779. Members of the company included Virginians George Mason, brothers Lawrence, Augustine, and George Washington, Virginia colony Governor Robert Dinwiddie, and British merchant John Hanbury. This collection includes manuscript copies of the Case of the Ohio Company, a collection of materials compiled by George Mercer to demonstrate the progress made by the Ohio Company, and a number of debt notes related to the company's trade in dry goods. The collection documents the involvement of John Mercer, James Mercer, George Mercer, George Mason, George Croghan, Thomas Cresap, Adam Stephen, and William Crawford in the company. Digital reproductions of this collection are available online.
Language
English .
Author
Kate Colligan, Angela Manella, and Matt Gorzalski.
Publisher
ULS Archives & Special Collections
Address
University of Pittsburgh Library System
Archives & Special Collections
Website: library.pitt.edu/archives-special-collections
Contact Us: www.library.pitt.edu/ask-archivist
URL: http://library.pitt.edu/archives-special-collections

Existence and Location of Copies

Digital reproductions of this collection are available online. Material enclosed in Mylar was not removed from the protective enclosure for scanning because of extreme brittleness of the original material. As a result, digitizing the material in grayscale proved more effective than in color.

History

The Ohio Company, founded in 1747, represented the trading and land prospecting interests of a handful of Virginia planters. Thomas Lee was appointed president, Nathaniel Chapman served as treasurer, and John Mercer was both secretary and general counsel. In that year, John Mercer's son, George Mercer, was appointed the company's representative in England. In 1748 the British Crown approved a land grant to the company to be administered by the Colony of Virginia. The grant covered the Ohio territory, a colloquial term for what is now modern day West Virginia, much of Ohio, western Pennsylvania and parts of Maryland. Governor Robert Dinwiddie, a member of the company, required that the company develop trade with the Indians, erect forts, and settle one hundred families to secure the grant. The company employed frontiersman Christopher Gist to survey the area of the grant in 1750. Two years later, Iroquois leaders signed a treaty at Loggstown, Pennsylvania, a large Native American settlement on the Ohio River near preswent-day Ambridge, Pa. Gist was the representative of the Ohio Company and Colonel Joshua Fry represented the Colony of Virginia at the negotiations. The Ohio territory was also claimed by the French, who began erecting forts in the Ohio Valley in reaction to the Treaty at Loggstown and other factors. By the beginning of the French and Indian War in 1754, the Ohio Company's efforts were largely stymied, despite its continued existence until its formal dissolution in 1779. Other members of the company included Virginians George Mason, brothers Lawrence, Augustine, and George Washington, Governor Robert Dinwiddie, and British merchant John Hanbury.

The Ohio Company and Pennsylvania frontier history were of great interest to a handful of late-nineteenth-century American scholars, among them William M. Darlington. According to a letter in the collection case file dated September 1884 and written by William R. Mercer, a descendant of George Mercer, to Lyman C. Draper of the Wisconsin State Historical Society, "...the whole of Capt. Christopher Gists diary in the hand writing of one of the Early members of my family -- was sold some years ago in New York with other valuable papers in relation to the Ohio Company to Mr. William Darlington of Pittsburgh Penn who no doubt still has them, he being as I understand Engaged in writing a history of the Ohio Co." This evidence suggests that the Gist journals in this collection are not the original journals penned by Gist, but represent a copy created by a Mercer relative, who is believed to be John Mercer. Further, writing to a researcher in October 1938, Lois Mulkearn, the Darlington Memorial Librarian, said that "The Darlington Library does not contain any maps or other manuscript material by Christopher Gist, but does hold a manuscript copy of Gist's journals made by one other than Christopher Gist himself. You probably know that the greater part of the records of the Ohio company were destroyed by fire at the time of the Civil War. The remaining volumes are in the Manuscript Department of the Pennsylvania Historical Society at Philadelphia." This supports the collection provenance as described in the Custodial History (see below).

Darlington indeed did compile a history of the Ohio Company in the form of the publication of Christopher Gist's Journals published posthumously in 1893. While Darlington's publication contains Gist's journal entries, the book largely contains Darlington's explanatory notes on the entries, such as where particular camps were located and biographical sketches of important figures from Gist's journals. Multiple editions of Gist's journals have been published, the earliest as an appendix to Thomas Pownall's 1776 A Topographical Description of North America. In the 1950s, there was a major upsurge of interest in the frontier history of the eastern United States. In the 1940s and 1950s, Lois Mulkearn, the first Darlington Memorial Librarian, took up an extensive study of the Ohio Company papers collected by William Darlington. Mulkearn wrote the George Mercer Papers, the authoritative volume on the Ohio Company Papers, particularly the Case of the Ohio Company compiled by George Mercer.

Scope and Content Notes

According to an article published in PITT: A Quarterly of the University of Pittsburgh (Winter, 1941-42), the "Ohio Company papers in the Darlington Library are a part of the Mercer collection referred to by some historians as 'the lost records of the Ohio Company.'" The collection contains manuscripts used by George Mercer to prepare his Case of the Ohio Company, which documented the Company's actions in the Ohio territory, and are the highlight of the collection. The Case of the Ohio Company was published by George Mercer in 1769 in pamphlet form, but the manuscript copy of the Case in this collection is distinct from the published version in many respects. For a thorough critique of the difference, see Mulkearn's George Mercer Papers. The Darlington collection includes the only known manuscript copy of the Case of the Ohio Company. The journals kept by Christopher Gist, recorded during his three scouting missions into the Ohio territory in the 1750s as a field agent of the company, are part of both the published Case reproduced in Mulkearn's book and the manuscript Case in this collection. The collection includes two different manuscript copies of the Gist journal used by William M. Darlington to publish (posthumously) his 1893 book on the subject. The bound copy contains events from Gist's 1750-51 and 1751-52 journeys. The other copy, comprised of individual manuscript pages, documents entries for the first journey but only a part of the second journey, and is believed to have been copied by a descendant of William R. Mercer.

The collection also includes debt notes and correspondence related to business conducted by the Ohio Company in Virginia, Maryland and western Pennsylvania. The notes include the name and residence of the debtor and the debt holder, the date that the debt was entered into the public record through the county clerk, and the amount. These materials are often annotated to document subsequent legal action, most commonly, the passage of the debt to a third party. In the contents list, accounts indicate an itemized list of goods for which a debt is owed, and a debt or more informal promise to repay simply document an amount. Also present are materials related to various legal cases brought against debtors. Full names are given when present and legible, and bracketed items indicate that the name was difficult to read. The spelling of names is open to interpretation because many of the names are the result of non-standardized spelling. Additionally, page numbers in brackets indicate the location of the transcription in Mulkearn's George Mercer Papers (example: LM p237 indicates that this document is transcribed on page 237 of Lois Mulkearn's book.)

Arrangement

  • Series I. Case of the Ohio Company, 1752-1762
  • Series II. John Mercer, James Mercer and George Mercer, 1759-1813
  • Series III. George Mason, 1750-1785
  • Series IV. George Croghan, 1745-1778
  • Series V. Thomas Cresap, 1739-1770
  • Series VI. Adam Stephen, 1751-1791
  • Series VII. William Crawford, 1757-1789
  • Series VIII. General Debt Notes and Correspondence, 1736-1793
  • Series IX. Copies of Papers Relating to The Ohio Land Company of Virginia from the Records of the Board of Trade in London, 1747-1749

Access Restrictions

No restrictions.

Acquisition Information

Part of the original donation of William M. Darlington's family library to the University of Pittsburgh in 1918 and 1925 by his daughters, Edith Darlington Ammon and Mary Carson Darlington.

Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements

Many of the manuscripts in this collection are very fragile and require particular care when handling. Some have been encased in Mylar.

Custodial History

George Mercer procured the papers of the Ohio Company in 1763 from Charlton Palmer, the company's solicitor and former agent, in order to prepare his Case of the Ohio Company for publication. Upon George Mercer's death in 1784, his papers were most likely bequeathed to his brother, James Mercer, who passed them on to his son, Charles Fenton Mercer. Following Charles Fenton Mercer's death in 1858, the papers remained at "Howard," the Alexandria, Virginia, home he shared with his niece, Judith, and her husband, John Page McGuire.

According to Baldwin's and Mulkearn's "'The Lost Records' of the Ohio Company," "When Alexandria was occupied by Federal troops in 1861, 'Howard' was converted into a temporary hospital. Vandalism was rampant among the soldiers and the personal belongings of the family were destroyed. Trunks containing the records of the Ohio Company were broken open and their contents were thrown upon a campfire. A shoe box full of the records was carried away by a Federal soldier and was sold to a secondhand book dealer in the Mohawk Valley in New York." Indeed a typewritten letter in the collection case file dated October 9, 1884, indicates that the papers were purchased by William M. Darlington in the spring of 1876 from Morven M. Jones in Utica, New York, through an "old book dealer."

William R. Mercer, descendent of George Mercer, contested the ownership of the papers, which eventually ended up in the office of Darlington's attorney, Frank C. Osborne. Mrs. Osborne forwarded the papers to the Western Pennsylvania Historical Society upon her husband's death in 1940. The papers were identified by Franklin C. Holbrook, director of the Historical Society, as a part of the materials gifted and bequeathed to the University of Pittsburgh by Edith and Mary Darlington, and subsequently forwarded them to the Darlington Memorial Library.

This collection was located in the Darlington Memorial Library in the University's Cathedral of Learning until 2007 when it was moved to the ULS Archives Service Center for processing, storage, preservation and service. However, it remains in the custodianship of the ULS Special Collections Department.

Preferred Citation

Ohio Company Papers, 1736-1813, DAR.1925.02, Darlington Collection, Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System

Previous Citation

Ohio Company Papers, 1736-1813, DAR.1925.02, Darlington Collection, Special Collections Department, University of Pittsburgh

Processing Information

This collection was processed by Angela Manella and Kate Colligan in December 2007. Revision of the finding aid with the addition of Series IX was completed by Matt Gorzalski in July 2008.

Copyright

No copyright restrictions.

Related Material

Archival:

Leland Baldwin Research Files, 1935-1941, DAR.1957.01, Darlington Collection, Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System

Darlington Autograph Files, 1610-1914, DAR.1925.07, Darlington Collection, Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System

Lois Mulkearn Research Files, 1937-1956, DAR.1981.01, Darlington Collection, Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System

Pittsburgh Waste Book and Papers of the Fort Pitt Trading Post, 1757-1765, DAR.1925.03, Darlington Collection, Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System

Papers of Alfred Proctor James, 1932-1963 (1960-1963), MSS# 149, Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania

Published:

Bailey, Kenneth P. The Ohio Company of Virginia and the westward movement, 1748-1792 : a chapter in the history of the colonial frontier. Glendale, California: Arthur H. Clarke Co, 1939.

James, Alfred P. The Ohio Company: Its Inner History. Pittsburgh, Pa: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1959.

Treaty of Loggstown. The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (October 1905): 143-174.

Bibliography

  • Abbott, Phyllis R. Review of George Mercer Papers Relating to the Ohio Company of Virginia, by Lois Mulkearn. Agricultural History 30, no. 1 (January 1956): 44-45.
  • Bailey, Kenneth. "Christopher Gist and the Trans-Allegheny Frontier: A Phase of Westward Expansion." The Pacific Historical Review 14, no. 1 (March 1945): 45-56.
  • Baldwin, Leland and Lois Mulkearn. "'The Lost Records' of the Ohio Comapny." PITT: A Quarterly of the University of Pittsburgh. Winter, 1941-42.
  • Darlington, William. Christopher Gist's Journals. Pittsburgh, Pa.: J. R. Weldin & Co., 1893.
  • Ellis, Thomas H. "The Ohio Company." William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine no. 1 (October 1896): 129-131.
  • Mulkearn, Lois. George Mercer Papers. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1954.
  • Pownall, Thomas. A Topographical Description of North America. 1776.

Subjects

    Corporate Names

    • Great Britain. Board of Trade
    • Ohio Company (1747-1779)

    Personal Names

    • Craik, James
    • Crawford, William
    • Cresap, Thomas
    • Gooch, William, Sir
    • Mercer, George
    • Mercer, James
    • Mercer, John
    • Stephen, Adam
    • Croghan, George
    • Gist, Christopher
    • Mason, George
    • Crawford, William

    Geographic Names

    • Ohio River Valley -- History -- Sources
    • Pennsylvania, Western
    • Loggstown (Pa.) -- History
    • Ohio
    • West Virginia
    • Maryland, Western

    Occupations

    • Surveyors
    • Explorers

    Genres

    • Copybooks
    • Correspondence
    • Invoices

    Other Subjects

    • Anglo-French War, 1755-1763
    • Merchants
    • Real estate development -- United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
    • Business and Industry
    • Indians of North America -- Ohio River Valley -- Social life and customs
    • Indian traders -- Ohio River Valley
    • Land speculation -- Ohio River Valley

Container List