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© 2015 Robert Daiutolo, Jr. All RIGHTS RESERVED GEORGE CROGHAN: THE LIFE OF A CONQUEROR by ROBERT DAIUTOLO, JR. A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School—New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in History Written under the direction of Jan Lewis and approved by _______________________ _______________________ _______________________ _______________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey October, 2015 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION George Croghan: The Life of a Conqueror By ROBERT DAIUTOLO, JR. Dissertation Director: Jan Lewis This dissertation integrates my own specifying paradigm of “situational frontier” and his- torian David Day’s generalizing paradigm of “supplanting society” to contextualize one historical personage, George Croghan, who advanced the interests of four eighteenth-cen- tury supplanting societies—one nation (Great Britain) and three of its North American colonies (Pennsylvania, New York, and Virginia)—in terms of three fields of endeavor, trade, diplomacy, and proprietorship. Croghan was an Irish immigrant who, during his working life on the “situational frontiers” of North America, mastered the intricacies of intercultural trade and diplomacy. His mastery of both fields of endeavor enabled him not only to create advantageous conditions for the governments of the three colonies to claim proprietorship of swaths of Indian land, but also to create advantageous conditions for himself to do likewise. The loci of his and the three colonies’ claims were the “situa- tional frontiers” themselves, the distinct spaces where particular Indians, Europeans, and Euro-Americans converged in particular circumstances and coexisted, sometimes peace- fully and sometimes violently. His mastery of intercultural trade and diplomacy enabled him as well to create advantageous conditions for Great Britain to claim proprietorship in the Old Northwest (present-day Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Illinois) and for himself to do likewise. The supplanting process, according to David Day, involved three ii overlapping or contemporaneous “stages”: (1) the claiming of legal or de jure proprietor- ship; (2) the claiming of effective or de facto proprietorship; and (3) the claiming of mor- al proprietorship. The first stage involved a symbolic gesture like the raising of a territo- rial flag; the second involved territorial exploration and its consequences, like the naming of geographic features, the fortification of borders, the tilling of soil, the development of resources, and the peopling of lands; and the third involved the conceiving of a suitable justification of conquest. Since Croghan at one time or another claimed de jure, de facto, or moral proprietorship of Indian lands for himself, the three colonies, or Great Britain, he was a conqueror. iii Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my mother, Donna Ruth Giannini Daiutolo, who did not live to see its beginning, and to my father, Robert Daiutolo, Sr., whose love and support enabled me to finish it. iv Acknowledgments The author wishes to thank his dissertation adviser, Dr. Jan Lewis, for her guidance and support throughout the researching and writing of this dissertation. The author wishes al- so to thank the other members of his dissertation committee, Dr. Paul Clemens, Dr. Peter Silver, and Dr. James Merrell, for their advice. The author wishes also to thank two more contributors to this dissertation, his lawyer brother-in-law, Richard Hackman, for analyz- ing and synopsizing the several court cases in the Epilogue, and his artistic teenage neph- ew, Jesse Daiutolo, for rendering the maps that delineate the situational frontiers whereon the subject of this dissertation operated. v Abbreviations Archives CCC Cumberland County Courthouse (Carlisle, Pennsylvania) CCHS Cumberland County Historical Society (Carlisle, Pennsylvania) HCQC Haverford College Quaker Collection (Haverford, Pennsylvania) HSP Historical Society of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) LCC Lancaster County Courthouse (Lancaster, Pennsylvania) LCP Library Company of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) PSA Pennsylvania State Archives (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) UMCL University of Michigan, William L. Clements Library (Ann Arbor, Michigan) Manuscript Collections MFA Minutes of the Friendly Association (Historical Society of Pennsylvania) GPAS Gage Papers, American Series (University of Michigan, Clements Library) Published Primary Sources BFP The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, edited by Leonard W. Labaree, et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959-2008) BRC Braddock Road Chronicles, 1755, compiled and edited by Andrew J. Wahll (Bowie, Maryland: Heritage Books, Inc., 1999) DHNY Documentary History of the State of New York, edited by E. B. O’Callaghan (Albany, 1850-51) DRCNY Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York; Pro- cured in Holland, England and France, by John R. Brodhead, edited by E. B. O’Callaghan (Albany, 1853-87) GWD The Diaries of George Washington, 1748-1799, edited by John C. Fitzpatrick (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1925) GWPCS The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, edited by W. W. Abbot (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983) vi GWW The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, edited by John C. Fitzpatrick (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1931-1944) HBP The Papers of Henry Bouquet, edited by Sylvester K. Stevens, Donald H. Kent, and Autumn L. Leonard, et al. (The Pennsylvania and Museum Com- mission: Harrisburg, 1951) IHC Collections of the Illinois Historical Library, edited by Clarence Walworth Alvord (Springfield, Illinois: The Trustees of the Illinois State Historical Li- brary, 1915-40) JFW Writings of General John Forbes Relating to his Service in North America, edited by Alfred Proctor James (The Collegiate Press: Menasha, Wisconsin, 1938) MPCP Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania from the Organization to the Termination of Proprietary Government, edited by Samuel Hazard (Har- risburg, 1838-53) MPHC Michigan Pioneer Historical Society: Collections and Researches (Lansing, 1877-1929) PA Pennsylvania Archives. (Harrisburg and Philadelphia, 1852-1949) RDP The Official Records of Robert Dinwiddie, Lieutenant-Governor of the Colo- ny of Virginia, 1751-1758, Now First Printed from the Manuscript in the Col- lection of the Virginia Historical Society (Richmond, 1883) SCP The St. Clair Papers: The Life and Public Services of Arthur St. Clair, Sol- dier of the Revolutionary War; President of the Continental Congress, and Governor of the Northwestern Territory; with his Correspondence and Other Papers, Arranged and Annotated by William Henry Smith . , edited by Wil- liam Henry Smith (Cincinnati, 1882) SWJP The Papers of Sir William Johnson, edited by James Sullivan, et al. (Albany: University of the State of New York, 1921-65) WHC Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, edited by Lyman C. Draper and Reuben G. Thwaites (Madison, 1855-1911) Scholarly Journals PMHB The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography VMHB The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography vii WMQ The William and Mary Quarterly viii Table of Contents Pages Abstract ii Dedication iv Acknowledgments v Abbreviations vi List of Illustrations xi Introduction 1 Prologue 15 Part I Chapter 1 Irish Immigrant 22 Chapter 2 Private Trader 57 Chapter 3 Trading Partner 93 Illustrations 1 128 Part II Chapter 4 Indian Agent 136 Chapter 5 Army Scout 171 Chapter 6 Militia Captain 197 Chapter 7 Deputy Superintendent 227 Chapter 8 Objective Agent 262 Chapter 9 Reluctant Deputy 291 Illustrations 2 324 Part III Chapter 10 Inveterate Schemer 332 ix Chapter 11 Inveterate Opportunist 369 Chapter 12 Forgotten Man 404 Epilogue 443 Bibliography 453 x List of Illustrations Figure 1 North Carolinian Joseph Hewes’ eighteenth-century engraving 128 of Christ Church Figure 2 Pennsylvania’s Western Situational Frontier in Croghan’s Time 129 Figure 3 Pennsylvania’s Northern Situational Frontier in Croghan’s Time 130 Figure 4 The Old Northwest in Croghan’s Time 131 Figure 5 Croghan’s mid-1740s log cabin as it is today in Cumberland County 132 Pennsylvania Figure 6 “Croghan’s” (Pennsborough Plantation) on Lewis Evans’ A Map of 133 Pensilvania, New-Jersey, and New-York, And the Three Delaware Counties (1749) Figure 7 Croghan’s early base of operations in the Pennsylvania fur trade, 134 from Nicholas Scull’s The Map of the improved Part of the Province of Pennsylvania (1759) Figure 8 “Croghan’s Gap” on William Scull’s Map of the Province of Pennsyl- 135 vania (1770) Figure 9 Untitled and typically vague eighteenth-century map of Croghan’s 324 lands near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Figure 10 Pickawillany and the Old Northwest, from Thomas Kitchin’s A New 325 Map of the British Empire in Nth. America, Drawn from the Latest Authorities (c. 1782) Figure 11 New York in Croghan’s Time 326 Figure 12 Indian pictographs on treaty consummated at Johnson Hall on 13 327 July 1765 Figure 13 Chart of Old Northwest Indian tribes, from Croghan’s 1766 Journal 328 Figure 14 Croghan’s onetime rental property as it is today in Carlisle, Pennsyl- 329 vania Figure 15 Croghan’s Indian Land Purchases near Pittsburgh/The Proposed 330 Vandalia and Indiana Land Grants in which Croghan Held Shares Figure 16 Samuel Wharton’s architectural plans for proposed Vandalia guber- 331 natorial mansion xi 1 Introduction