of England, was educated at Oxford. Coming over to
Virginia, he appears to have resided for a time in the County of Essex.
He was some time professor of mathematics in the College of William and
Mary, and afterwards a member of the house of burgesses, and engaged in
running a boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina to the
westward. In concert with Peter Jefferson, father of Thomas, he made
a map of Virginia, and he was, as has been mentioned before, a
commissioner at the treaty of Logstown, in June, 1752. He died
universally lamented.

Washington, in a letter addressed to Governor Dinwiddie about this time,
said: "For my own part, I can answer that I have a constitution hardy
enough to encounter and undergo the most severe trials, and I flatter
myself, resolution to face what any man dares, as shall be proved when
it comes to the test, which I believe we are upon the borders of." The
provisions of the detachment being nearly exhausted, and the ground
occupied disadvantageous, and the French at the fork of the Ohio, now
called Fort Du Quesne, having been reinforced, and being about to march
against the English, a council of war, held June the twenty-eighth, at
Gist's house, thirteen miles beyond the Great Meadows, advised a
retreat, and Colonel Washington fell back to the post at the Great
Meadows, now styled Fort Necessity, which he reached on the first of
July. His force, amounting, with the addition of an independent company
of South Carolinians, to about four hundred men, were at once set to
work to raise a breast-work and to strengthen the fortification as far
as possible. Forty or fifty Indian families took shelter in the fort,
and among them Tanacharisson, or the half-king, and Queen Aliquippa.
They proved to be of more trouble than advantage, being as spies and
scouts of some service when rewarded, but in the fort useless. Before
the completion of the ditch, M. De Villiers, a brother of De Jumonville,
appeared on the 3d of July, 1754, in front of the fort with nine hundred
men, and at eleven o'clock A.M., commenced an attack by firing at the
distance of six hundred yards, but without effect. The assailants
fought, under cover of the trees and high grass, on rising ground near
the fort. They were received with intrepidity by the Americans. Some of
the Indians climbed up trees overlooking the fort, and fired on
Washington's men, who returned the compliment in such style that the red
men slipped down the t