page_title: Ohio Company
section_title: French and Indian War
hierarchical_section_title: Ohio Company / French and Indian War
caption_attribution_description: English: A map of the most inhabited part of Virginia containing the whole province of Maryland with part of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and North Carolina. Drawn by Joshua Fry &amp; Peter Jefferson in 1751, published by Thos. Jefferys, London, 1755. This landmark map, unusual in that it relied on firsthand surveys, is the first correct depiction of the Allegheny Mountains, complete with 'The Great Road from the Yadkin River through Virginia to Philadelphia distant 455 Miles' - an accurate survey of what would come to be styled the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road.
context_page_description: The Ohio Company, formally known as the Ohio Company of Virginia, was a land speculation company organized for the settlement by Virginians of the Ohio Country and to trade with the Native Americans. The company had a land grant from Britain and a treaty with Indians, but France also claimed the area, and the conflict helped provoke the outbreak of the French and Indian War.
context_section_description: In 1748–1750, the Ohio Company hired Thomas Cresap who had opened a series of trading posts along the Potomac at Long Meadow, Oldtown, Maryland and Will's Creek (now Cumberland) on the foot of the eastern climb up the Cumberland Narrows along what was soon to be called the Nemacolin Trail, one of only three mid-mountain-range crossings of the Appalachian Ridge and Valley system outside the Hudson-Great Lakes route, or southern Georgia-Mississippi-Western Tennessee plains route. Cresap was given a  contract to blaze a small road over the mountains to the Monongahela River, and then to start widening this road into a wagon road. 
  In 1750, the Ohio Company hired Christopher Gist, a skillful woodsman and surveyor, to explore the Ohio Valley in order to identify lands for potential settlement. He surveyed by estimating the Kanawhan Region and the Ohio Valley tributaries beginning in 1750, 1751 and 1753. His journals provide valuable insights of the greater Ohio Valley and the Alleghenies. Gist travelled as far west as the Miami Indian village of Pickawillany (near present Piqua, Ohio). Upon the basis of his report, the Ohio Company settled in an area in Western Pennsylvania and present-day West Virginia; Gist and Cresap both receiving sizable settlements on the west side of the mountains. In 1752 the company had a pathway blazed between the small fortified posts at Wills Creek (Cumberland, Maryland), and Redstone Old Fort (Brownsville, Pennsylvania); Cresap and Nemacolin had established the location in 1750, which overlooked Redstone Creek and the ancient Monongahela River ford.
  The settlement efforts were complicated by the conflicting land claims of the time. The Ohio Country ceded by the King through Governor Dinwiddie included, in Dinwiddie's opinion, the "forks of the Monongahela," present-day Pittsburgh. In addition to the Pennsylvania colonial government claims of this territory, the French were fighting for and occupying much of the Ohio Valley, most notably at Fort Duquesne. Dinwiddie responded by sending a military unit under the command of George Washington to the region, which led to the outbreak of the French and Indian War.
caption: 1755 Fry-Jefferson map showing earlier established colonial borders before the French and Indian War
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