tary title with which to cover the tract, bought out the
claim of his financially embarrassed old neighbor Captain John Posey to
three thousand acres, paying L11.11.3, or about two cents per acre.
Crawford, now a deputy surveyor of the region, soon after resurveyed two
thousand eight hundred thirteen acres and forwarded the "return" to
Washington, with the result that in 1774 Governor Dunmore of Virginia
granted a patent for the land.

In the meantime, however, six squatters built a cabin upon the tract and
cleared two or three acres, but Crawford paid them five pounds for their
improvements and induced them to move on. To keep off other interlopers
he placed a man on the land, but in 1773 a party of rambunctious
Scotch-Irishmen appeared on the scene, drove the keeper away, built a
cabin so close in front of his door that he could not get back in, and
continued to hold the land until after the Revolution.

By that time Crawford himself was dead--having suffered the most
terrible of all deaths--that of an Indian captive burnt at the stake.

The other tract whose history it is worth our while to follow consisted
of twelve hundred acres on the Youghiogheny River, likewise not far from
Pittsburgh. It bore seams of coal, which Washington examined in 1770 and
thought "to be of the very best kind, burning freely and abundance of
it." In the spring of 1773 he sent out a certain Gilbert Simpson, with
whom he had formed a sort of partnership, to look after this land, and
each furnished some laborers, Washington a "fellow" and a "wench."
Simpson managed to clear some ground and get in six acres of corn, but
his wife disliked life on the borderland and made him so uncomfortable
with her complaints that he decided to throw up the venture. However, he
changed his mind, and after a trip back East returned and, on a site
noticed by the owner on his visit, built a grist mill on a small stream
now called Washington's Run that empties into the Youghiogheny. This was
one of the first mills erected west of the Alleghany Mountains and is
still standing, though more or less rebuilt. The millstones were dug out
of quarries in the neighborhood and the work of building the mill was
done amid considerable danger from the Indians, who had begun what is
known as Dunmore's War. Simpson's cabin and the slave quarters stood
near what is now Plant No. 2 of the Washington Coal and Coke Company.
The tract of land contains valuable seams of coal and with