à mes soins pendant le voyage que j’ai fait l’été dernier dans les derrières de la Virginie, il te suffira de savoir que nous possédons actuellement plus de cent mille acres de terre sur les bords ou près de l’Ohio, 250 milles par eau au-dessous du Fort Pitt, autrefois Fort Duquesne, à 350 milles de Philadelphie et environ 300 de Baltimore. Elles sont situées entre le grand et le petit Kanhawa (ou Canhaway, ou Canway), deux rivières qui se jettent dans l’Ohio. C’est un pays montueux, très-coupé, mais fertile, propre surtout à la culture du bled et à élever du bétail. J’ai fait arpenter presque toutes ces terres l’année dernière; je pars demain pour aller finir cet ouvrage et pour mener quelques familles afin de commencer un établissement. Nous avons au reste revendu quelques petites portions qui nous ont remboursé les trois quarts des premières avances…
During this summer Gallatin kept a brief diary, so that it is possible to follow all his movements. Leaving Richmond on the 31st of March, alone, on horseback, he ascended James River, crossed the Blue Ridge near the Peaks of Otter, and arrived at the Court-House of Greenbrier County on the 18th April. Having seen the surveyor and attended to his locations of land, he started northwards on the 21st, and on the 29th reached his headquarters at Clare’s on George’s Creek. Here Savary joined him, and after making their preparations they set off on the 26th May, and descended the Ohio with their surveying party to the mouth of Little Sandy Creek, where from June 3 to July 1 they were engaged in surveying, varied by building a log cabin, clearing land, and occasionally killing a bear or a buffalo. On the 1st July, Gallatin, leaving Savary and four men at “Friends’ Landing” to carry on the work, set off by water for the Grand Kanawha, and surveyed country about the head-waters of the Big Sandy and between the Elk and the Pocotaligo. On August 13 he descended the Pocotaligo, and on the 15th, striking across country to the southward, he reached “Meeting Camp,” on the Elk, and received letters from Savary announcing that the Indians had broken up his operations on the Ohio and compelled him to abandon the cabin and clearing.
This Indian outbreak deranged all their plans. It had been their intention to settle on these lands between the two Kanawhas, and for this purpose they had engaged men, built the log cabin, and cleared several acres on the banks of the Ohio adjoining the lands located by General Washington and known as “Washington’s Bottom.” They themselves, it is true, were not directly molested by the Indians, but boats had been captured and emigrants murdered a few miles from their settlement. They were obliged to abandon their plan and to return to Clare’s. This wild attempt to make his home in an utter solitude one hundred and twenty miles beyond the last house then inhabited on the banks of the Ohio, was obviously impracticable even to Gallatin’s mind, without incurring imminent danger of massacre.
The friends returned to George’s Creek. It was then, at the October court of Monongalia County, Virginia, according to the record, that Gallatin at last “took the oath of allegiance and fidelity to the Commonwealth of Virginia.” He had long considered himself an American citizen; this act merely fixed the place of citizenship. By the laws of his native country he was still a minor. He was actually residing in Pennsylvania. The old Confederation was still the only national government. Virginia was the State to which he was attached, and of Virginia he wished to be considered a citizen, so that even a year later he signed himself in legal documents “of Monongalia County, Virginia.” He had fully determined to remain in the Western country, and he chose Monongalia County because his lands lay there; but the neighboring Pennsylvania county of Fayette was both by situation and resources a more convenient residence, and even so early as 1784, as has already been shown, Savary and he had established a store and made their base of operations in Fayette County. In November of this year 1785 they leased from Thomas Clare for five years a house and five acres of land at George’s Creek, in Springhill Township, on the Monongahela: here they made their temporary residence, transferring their store to it, and placing in it several men who had been engaged as settlers and had remained in their service. After the joint establishment had been carried on for two or three years, Gallatin bought a farm of four hundred acres about a mile higher up the river, to which he transferred the establishment, and which ultimately became his residence, under the name of Friendship Hill, perhaps to commemorate the friendship of Serre, Savary, and Badollet.
This then was the promised land, the “fond de terre” which poor Serre had described, and to which Badollet was now on his way. In point of fact it suggested Switzerland. No better spot could have been found in the United States for men who had passed their youth by the shore of Lake Geneva, overlooked by the snow summit of Mont Blanc. Friendship Hill rises abruptly from the Monongahela, and looks eastward to the Laurel Ridge, picturesque as Serre could have imagined, remote as Rousseau could have wished. But as a place of permanent residence for men who were to earn their living according to the Genevan theory, it had one disadvantage which is pointedly described by Gallatin himself in a letter to Badollet, written about half a century afterwards.8 “Although I should have been contented to live and die amongst the Monongahela hills, it must be acknowledged that, beyond the invaluable advantage of health, they afforded either to you or me but few intellectual or physical resources. Indeed, I must say that I do not know in the United States any spot which afforded less means to earn a bare subsistence for those who could not live by manual labor than the sequestered corner in which accident had first placed us.”
Thus much accomplished, Gallatin and Savary left George’s Creek on the 22d November, making their way to Cumberland on the Potomac, and so down the river to Richmond. But in the following February he again returned to George’s Creek, and there he kept house for the future, having never less than six persons and afterwards many more in his family. Here Badollet now came, in obedience to his friend’s wishes. With him Gallatin buried himself in the wilderness, and his family entreated for letters in vain.
Quand une correspondance, mon cher fils, est aussi mal établie que la nôtre, on ne sait par où commencer. Je t’ai écrit quelques lettres dont j’ignore le sort; j’en ai reçu une de toi, il y a deux ou trois ans; si la date en était exacte, elle me fût rendue ici dans trente jours … d’où je conclus que nous étions assez voisins et qu’il ne tenait qu’à toi de nous donner plus souvent de tes nouvelles. Nous n’en avons eu que bien peu et la plupart indirectes. Mais enfin je ne te fais point de reproches; je sais que les jeunes gens s’occupent rarement de leurs vieux parents et que d’ailleurs j’ai cru entrevoir que tes occupations et tes divers déplacements out dû avoir de longs momens inquiétans et pénibles. Il y a quelques mois qu’un Mr. Jennings qui a été ton ami et qui est parti pour l’île de Grenade, écrivit à Mlle. Pictet de Baltimore le 28e février qu’il avait été à Philadelphie où il avait compté de te trouver, mais que malheureusement pour lui tu en étais parti pour une province à 3 ou 400 lieues de là pour y faire arpenter un très-grand terrain inculte que tu avais acheté à vil prix. Il ajoutait ensuite que s’étant informé exactement de diverses personnes qui te connaissent, on avait fait de toi un très-bon rapport sur l’estime et le crédit que tu y avais acquis… Tu n’as pas oublié sans doute que tu seras majeur dans le courant du mois de janvier prochain, 1786…
Enfin j’ai reçu ta lettre du 29e mars… J’ai peine à excuser ce long silence; je ne saurais même prendre pour bonnes les raisons que tu en donnes; il me paraît plus vraisemblable que l’amour-propre t’empêche d’écrire lorsque tu n’as rien à dire d’avantageux de ta situation… Je me flatte que M. Savari a un mérite plus sûr que Serre et Badollet. Quant à Serre, je comprends qu’il y a quelques nuages entre vous… Son goût sera toujours de courir des aventures…
Monsieur, – Je ne puis imaginer que vous soyez instruit que le bruit de votre mort est parvenu jusqu’à Genève comme la chose du monde la plus certaine et que vous ne vous soyez pas hâté de le détruire par vos lettres…
See below, p. 646.
