As the French encroached on the Ohio River valley the British took the stance that this was territory claimed by Virginia. It ordered that a message be delivered to the French. On receipt of it Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia dispatched 22 year old Major George Washington to deliver it. His difficult travels through the winter took him through the Appalachian wilderness to the French outpost at Fort Le Boeuf [now Waterford, PA]. It is one of the opening phases of the French and Indian War. Washington demanded France’s withdrawal from their Ohio Valley outposts. Not surprisingly, the French commander refused claiming that the Ohio River had been discovered by La Salle and therefore rightfully belonged to them.

Washington kept a journal of the mission which was first published in Williamsburg in 1754. That edition is virtually unobtainable as only 11 known copies survive. It is Washington’s first published work and covers the period from 31 October 1753 to 16 January 1754. In the same year, an English edition was published by Thomas Jefferys. Unlike the first issue, Jefferys included a map. He also appended to the book a copy of Dinwiddie’s letter to the commandant of the French troops at Fort L Boeuf as well as the reply. According to Church Washington’s original manuscript of the Journal is in the National Archives, London.

The enclosed ‘Map of the Western parts of the Colony of Virginia, as far as the Mississippi’ is of some significance and rarity. ‘Although Jefferys does not cite a source, evidence suggests that the geography may have come from the western portion of Joshua Fry and Thomas Jefferson’s draft of Virginia sent in 1751 to Lord Halifax, president of the Board of Trade and Plantations’ (Pritchard & Taliaferro). The road from Williamsburg to Logstown is shown with the miles between locations indicated. There are three known states of the map, this is the first stating lower right ‘… The Shawanons are same with ye. Senekas one of the Six Nations’. In state two this was altered to ‘ye. Satanas’ and interestingly this has been altered by hand here.

Provenance: With bookplate of Thomas Philip, Earl de Grey (1781-1859); bookplate of James Strohn Copley (1912-73), his sale, Sotheby’s New York, 15 October 2010 lot 662, where it sold for $104,500. Copley possessed ‘one of the most significant collections of historical American manuscripts assembled during the twentieth century … this sale is rich in material from the period of the American Revolution through the early nineteenth century’ (Sotheby’s). Brown (1959) Ohio 19; Church (1907) 999; Howes (1962) W-134; Pritchard & Taliaferro (2002) ref. 31; Sabin (1868-1936) 101710; Storm (1968) Graff 4553; Streeter (1967) 3:1713; Vail (1970) Old Frontier 472.