d acres on the Western waters, or a
thousand for those who came prior to 1778, was, in substance, the
continuation of a system familiar in the Old West.

The grants to Beverley, of over a hundred thousand acres in the Valley,
conditioned on seating a family for every thousand acres, and the
similar grants to Borden, Carter, and Lewis, were followed by the great
grant to the Ohio Company. This company, including leading Virginia
planters and some frontiersmen, asked in 1749 for two hundred thousand
acres on the upper Ohio, conditioned on seating a hundred families in
seven years, and for an additional grant of three hundred thousand acres
after this should be accomplished. It was proposed to settle Germans on
these lands.

The Loyal Land Company, by order of the Virginia council (1749), was
authorized to take up eight hundred thousand acres west and north of the
southern boundary of Virginia, on condition of purchasing "rights" for
the amount within four years. The company sold many tracts for L3 per
hundred acres to settlers, but finally lost its claim. The Mississippi
Company, including in its membership the Lees, Washingtons, and other
great Virginia planters, applied for two and one-half million acres in
the West in 1769. Similar land companies of New England origin, like
the Susquehanna Company and Lyman's Mississippi Company, exhibit the
same tendency of the Old West on the northern side. New England's Ohio
Company of Associates, which settled Marietta, had striking resemblances
to town proprietors.

These were only the most noteworthy of many companies of this period,
and it is evident that they were a natural outgrowth of speculations in
the Old West. Washington, securing military bounty land claims of
soldiers of the French and Indian War, and selecting lands in West
Virginia until he controlled over seventy thousand acres for
speculation, is an excellent illustration of the tendency. He also
thought of colonizing German Palatines upon his lands. The formation of
the Transylvania and Vandalia companies were natural developments on a
still vaster scale.[124:1]

XII. The final phase of the Old West, which I wish merely to mention, in
conclusion, is its colonization of areas beyond the mountains. The
essential unity of the movement is brought out by a study of how New
England's Old West settled northern Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont,
the Adirondacks, central and Western New York, the Wyoming Valley (once
or