Christopher
Gist
Christopher Gist (1706–1759) was an accomplished colonial British explorer,
surveyor and frontiersman. He was one of the first white explorers of the Ohio Country
(the present-day states of Ohio, eastern Indiana,
western Pennsylvania, and northwestern West Virginia,
USA). He is credited with providing the first detailed description of the Ohio
Country to Great
Britain and her colonists. At the outset of
the French and Indian War (1754), Gist accompanied Colonel George Washington on missions into this wilderness and saved Washington's
life on two separate occasions.
Early
life and education
Born in 1706 in Baltimore, Maryland, Gist is thought to have had little formal education.
Historians believe that he received training as a surveyor, more than likely
from his father Richard Gist, who helped plot the city of Baltimore. Gist's
nephew Mordecai Gist served as a general under Washington in the Revolution.
Marriage
and family
Gist married Sarah Howard, a
daughter of Joshua Howard of Manchester,
England.
Howard served with King James II of England's forces as an officer during the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685, before settling in Baltimore, Maryland. The couple had three sons, Richard (1727–1780) who was
killed at the Battle
of King's Mountain, Nathaniel
who led Gist's Additional Continental Regiment in the Continental Army, and Thomas. Christopher's brother Nathaniel Gist married
Sarah's sister Mary Howard.
Career
By 1750 Gist had settled in northern
North Carolina, near the Yadkin River.
One of his neighbors was the noted frontiersman Daniel Boone.
During that same year, the Ohio Company
chose Gist to explore the country of the Ohio River
as far as the present-day Louisville, Kentucky area, and endear himself to the Native Americans along the
way. That winter Gist mapped the Ohio countryside between the Lenape (Delaware)
village of Shannopin's Town,
site of present day Pittsburgh, to the Great Miami River in present-day western Ohio. Gist was warmly received at Pickawillany
when he arrived in February 1751, and cemented the alliance between "Old Briton"
and English interests against expanding French interests.[1]
From there he crossed into Kentucky and returned to his home along the Yadkin.
When Gist returned to North
Carolina, he found that his family had fled to Roanoke, Virginia, because of Indian attacks. He rejoined them. In the summer
of 1751 he again went west to explore the Pennsylvania
and western Virginia (present day West Virginia),
country south of the Ohio River.
In 1753 Gist again returned to the
Ohio Country, this time accompanying George Washington. Robert Dinwiddie, the governor of Virginia, sent Washington to Fort Le Boeuf to deliver a message to the French demanding they leave the Ohio
Country. (The French were constructing forts in the Ohio Country to prevent the
British colonies from expanding there; they ignored Dinwiddie's letter.)
Washington took (now Lieutenant) Gist along as his guide. They traveled on the Venango Path
through the Ohio Country to get to the fort. During the trip, Gist earned his
place in history by twice saving the young Washington's life. He was a part of
the Battle
of Jumonville Glen.
In 1754, Washington, Gist, and a detachment
of Virginia
militia attempted to drive the French from the region. At the Battle
of Fort Necessity on July 3, 1754, the French soundly
defeated the Virginian colonists. This was the beginning of the French and
Indian War, a part of the Seven Years' War between France and England.
Gist owned land near the present
city of Uniontown, Pennsylvania. He called it Gist's Plantation and began to build a town
there. At the outset of the war, the French burned all the buildings.
Gist was a member of the Braddock Expedition in 1755 when it was defeated by the French and their Native
American allies. Following the defeat, Gist traveled into Tennessee,
where he met with various native groups to seek their support during the war.
His whereabouts during the final
years of the war were uncertain. It is said that in the summer of 1759 he
contracted smallpox and died in Virginia, South Carolina,
or Georgia. Other reports having him surviving until 1794 and dying in
Cumberland, North Carolina.
The entire wiki article can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Gist
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