least, each at once began taking
breath and preparing to renew the struggle. Not a year passed that did
not witness border quarrels more or less bloody. The French authorities
filled the Ohio and Mississippi valleys with military posts; English
settlers pressed persistently into the same to find homes. In this
movement Virginia led, having in 1748 formed, especially to aid western
settlement, the Ohio Company, which received from the king a grant of
five hundred thousand acres beyond the Alleghanies. A road was laid out
between the upper Potomac and the present Pittsburgh, settlements were
begun along it, and efforts made to conciliate the savages.

[Illustration: Map showing Position of French and English Forts and
Settlements.]

[Illustration: The Ambuscade.]

[1754]

One of the frontier villages was at what is now Franklin, Penn., and the
location involved Virginia with the colony of Pennsylvania. As
commissioner to settle the dispute George Washington was sent out.

The future Father of his Country was of humble origin. Born in
Westmoreland County, Va., "about ten in ye morning of ye 11th day of
February, 1731-32," as recorded in his mother's Bible, he had been an
orphan from his earliest youth. His education was of the slenderest. At
sixteen he became a land surveyor, leading a life of the roughest sort,
beasts, savages, and hardy frontiersmen his constant companions,
sleeping under the sky and cooking his own coarse food. No better man
could have been chosen to thread now the Alleghany trail.

Washington reported the French strongly posted in western Pennsylvania
on lands claimed by the Ohio Company. Virginia fitted out an expedition
to dislodge them. Of this Washington commanded the advance. Meeting at
Great Meadows the French under Contrecoeur, commander of Fort Du Quesne
(Pittsburgh); he was at first victorious, but the French were
re-enforced before he was, and Washington, after a gallant struggle, had
to capitulate. This was on July 3, 1754. The French and Indian War had
begun.

[Illustration: Baddock's Route.]

[1755]

The English Government bade the colonies defend their frontier, and in
this interest twenty-five delegates from the seven northern colonies met
at Albany on June 19, 1754. Benjamin Franklin represented Pennsylvania,
and it was at this conference that he presented his well-considered
plan, to be described in our chapter on Independence, for a general
government over English Americ