settlement was not a success. He began to show signs
of failing health and waning fortune. On July 18, 1769, he wrote from
Lake Otsego to Thomas Wharton of Philadelphia, "Eight days ago I was
favored with yours. I should have answered it before now, but was then
lying in a violent fit of the gout, for ye first time, wh. has confin'd
me to bed for 18 days, & now am only able to sit up on ye bedside."
During the next winter Croghan was in New York and Philadelphia, but in
March and April, 1770, he was again at Otsego, whence he wrote to Sir
William Johnson concerning financial difficulties. In May he wrote of a
proposed journey southward for his health and business interests.

But Croghan was never in business for his health. In October he was once
more on his old plantation near Fort Pitt, where Washington, on an
exploring expedition, visited him and dined with him. It seems that he
was trying to persuade Washington to buy land of him in the West, and,
according to Washington's surveyor, Captain William Crawford, was using
Washington's prospective purchases as an inducement to others, at the
same time not being very sure of his title, "selling any land that any
person will buy of him, inside or outside of his line."

Croghan never returned to Otsego. He mortgaged his tract of land to
William Franklin, son of Benjamin Franklin, and lost it under
foreclosure in 1773. The title later passed to William Cooper and Andrew
Craig, both of Burlington, New Jersey, which was also the home of
Richard Smith, who had visited Croghan at Otsego.

Appended to one of Croghan's deeds is a map purporting to show the
improvements which he had made at the foot of the lake, but, says
Fenimore Cooper, "it is supposed that this map was made for effect."
When William Cooper first visited the spot, in 1785, the only building
was one of hewn logs, about fifteen feet square, probably Croghan's hut,
deserted and dismantled, standing in the space now included in the
Cooper Grounds, near the site of the present Clark Estate office. Except
for the visit of Clinton's troops in 1779, the place had been abandoned
for fifteen years. The only signs of "improvements" were seen in a few
places cleared of underbrush, with felled and girdled trees, and in the
remains of some log fences already falling into ruin. Silence and
desolation had fallen upon "the little farm in America" upon which
Croghan had dreamed of passing his declining years.

In an inventory o