George Croghan

Background

George Croghan was born in 1718. He was brought up as an Episcopalian near Dublin, Ireland, and migrated to Pennsylvania in 1741.

Career

He established a home on the frontier near Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and made it a base for his trading operations.

Croghan was rapidly transformed into a typical frontiersman. He learned the Delaware and Iroquois languages and had an intimate knowledge of the habits and customs of the Indians. He established trading-posts throughout the upper Ohio country; from them English influence spread among the Indians to such a degree that the French feared that a wedge would be driven between Canada and Louisiana. In the numerous Indian councils and treaties that followed, Croghan, as the representative of Pennsylvania, was the leading English agent.

In 1752, the French in self-defense opened hostilities at Pickawillani, and by 1754 Croghan’s business in the West was ruined and his employees and fellow traders killed or driven across the mountains. As a captain in charge of friendly Indian scouts, he assisted Washington and Braddock in their attempts to stop the French onslaught.

In 1756, Sir William Johnson rewarded Croghan’s restless activity and his genius for Indian negotiations by taking him into the imperial service as his deputy superintendent of Indian affairs. As such, Croghan conducted the most important and delicate negotiations with the strong and sullen tribes in the Northwest. He assisted Gen. Forbes in capturing Fort DuQuesne in 1758 and Col. Bouquet in occupying Detroit in 1760.

In 1764, he was in England, supporting before the leading English officials a plan for a strong imperial Indian department and also furthering his own and others’ plans to exploit western lands. Upon his return Gen. Gage and Sir William Johnson sent him upon his most famous mission, that of opening the Illinois country to English occupation. It was still ruled by the French and thither Pontiac had retreated like a lion at bay.

While on the way, Croghan and his party were attacked and he himself tomahawked and taken prisoner. “I got the stroke of a Hatchet on the Head, but my skull being pretty thick, the hatchet would not enter, so you may see a thick skull is of service on some occasions, ” he wrote to his friend Capt. Murray. Soon, however, he was freed, met Pontiac, and made a final treaty of peace with him.

In 1768 he played a prominent part in making the important treaty of Fort Stan- wix. The policy of economy and of restricting the imperial Indian department caused him to lose interest in it and finally to resign in 1772. Meantime he had acquired several thousand acres of land around Carlisle, but soon sold most of his holdings at a profit and followed the advancing frontier to Pittsburgh. Here, in 1758, he built “Croghan Hall” and acquired large estates. In central New York he patented over 250, 000 acres. He also purchased 200, 000 acres near Pittsburgh from the Indians, but failed to perfect his title. His greatest rival here was George Washington. Between 1763 and 1775, Croghan was intimately associated with Benjamin Franklin, Sir William Franklin, Sir William Johnson, Samuel Wharton, and William Trent in organizing western land companies.

He was a member of the Indiana Company, which for years vainly tried to secure legal recognition of its grant of 2, 500, 000 acres on the upper Ohio, and of the Illinois Company, which tried to secure 1, 200, 000 acres on the Mississippi and establish a colony there. Most promising of all, however, was his charter membership in the Grand Ohio Company which planned to establish the “fourteenth” English colony, Vandalia, south of the Ohio. The outbreak of the Revolution, however, wrecked all of Croghan’s extensive land operations.

His last years were spent in poverty. He was unjustly accused of being a Tory, in spite of the fact that he had served as chairman of the committee of correspondence at Pittsburgh in 1775.

He died at Passyunk, near Philadelphia, in 1782.

Achievements

• Next to Sir William Johnson, Croghan was the most prominent English Indian agent of his time. His journals and correspondence constitute one of the chief sources for the history of the West from 1745 to 1775 and his career epitomizes it. He was one of the first Englishmen to foresee the future greatness of the wilderness beyond the Appalachians.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A selection of George Croghan's letters and journals relating to tours into the western country--November 16, 1750-November, 1765 .

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Early Western Journals, 1748-1765

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Travels in America, 1750-1920, Vol. 1, pp. 45-173. A selection of George Croghan's letters and journals relating to tours into the western country - November 16, 1750 - November, 1765

    ( About the Book The Americas were settled by people migr...)

  • Army Life on the Western Frontier: Selections from the Official Reports Made Between 1826 and 1845 by Colonel George Croghan

    ( From Fort Snelling on the upper Mississippi and Fort Le...)

Membership

He was a member of the Indiana Company and a member of the Grand Ohio Company.

Connections

Croghan married in the 1740s and had a daughter, Susannah Croghan. He later married again. His second wife was a Mohawk woman, Catherine (Takarihoga), daughter of Mohawk chief Nickus Peters (Karaghaigdatie).

2nd spouse:

Catharine (Takarihoga)

Daughter:

Catharine

Daughter:

Susannah