George Croghan

Early life and career

Little is known of Croghan's early life, including the names of his parents. He was born in Ireland around 1718. The best evidence for Croghan's age is found in the treasonous Filius Gallicae letters, written early in 1756 by an otherwise anonymous author. "France's friend" claimed to be nearly 38 years old, among other self-descriptions that pointed to Croghan, but a secret British investigation exposed the fraud. Croghan testified to his Irish origins in meetings in London in the 1760s. Croghan is a corruption and Anglicization of an older native Irish surname Mac Conchruacha

Apparently Croghan's father died young and his widowed mother married again, to Thomas Ward. Croghan emigrated as a young man from Dublin, Ireland to the province of Pennsylvania in 1741. His mother and step-father, his half-brother Edward Ward, and cousin Thomas Smallman also emigrated, the men working for him in America. Among relatives remaining in Ireland were a merchant, Nicholas Croghan (likely a brother of George); an aunt, Mrs. Smallman; and George's grandfather Edmund Croghan.

Within a few years Croghan became one of Pennsylvania's leading fur traders. A key to his success was establishing trading posts in Native American villages, as the French traders did, and learning their languages and customs. At the time, the usual British practice was to set up a post at a site for their own convenience, generally at a major crossroads, and wait for Native Americans to come to them. Croghan learned at least two Native languages, Unami (an Algonquian language common to the Lenape of the mid-Atlantic region) and probably Seneca (an Iroquoian language spoken by the westernmost Seneca nation of the Haudenosaunee), whose territory extended into what colonists called Pennsylvania. They also had hunting grounds in the Ohio Valley. These were the languages of the two major nations of Native Americans in the region.

Croghan also learned Native American customs, rapidly adopting the practice of exchanging gifts when he met with the people. He established his first trading base and wintered in a mostly Seneca village at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River on Lake Erie. (This area later developed as Cleveland, Ohio.) During the early years, Croghan's primary business partner was William Trent, also a trader. The son of the founder of Trenton, New Jersey, Trent likely supplied capital to acquire trade goods and set up their business.

Marriages and families

Croghan married in the 1740s and had a daughter, Susannah Croghan. He later married again, while serving as Deputy Indian agent to Sir William Johnson, British Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Northern District. His second wife was a Mohawk woman, Catherine (Takarihoga), daughter of Mohawk chief Nickus Peters (Karaghaigdatie). Their daughter Catherine (Adonwentishon) Croghan (1759–1837) would assume her mother's hereditary role as head of the Turtle clan. She later was the third wife of Joseph Brant, the prominent Mohawk war leader who led his people during their migration and settlement in Canada on lands granted by the Crown after the American Revolutionary War. Brant's sister Molly was a long-term consort of Sir William Johnson, so Croghan was doubly connected to influential British and Mohawk families in the East. Elizabeth Brant, a daughter of Joseph Brant and Catherine (Adonwentishon) Crogan, married William Johnson Kerr, a grandson of Sir William Johnson and Molly Brant.

King George's War, 1744–1748

Britain's blockade of French ports made the few French trade goods reaching Ohio Country prohibitively expensive; this resulted in a bonanza for the Pennsylvania British traders that alarmed the French. They knew that Native American trade and diplomacy were closely linked, and Croghan's activities from his base on the Cuyahoga River threatened French influence among the regional natives. As Croghan expanded his trading network westward toward Detroit, then held by the French, they encouraged French-allied Native Americans to attack him.

The British trader quickly took advantage of wartime conditions, establishing new posts at the Wyandot village of Sandusky and the Miami village of Pickawillany, tribes that had previously traded with the French.

His partnership with Trent was temporarily suspended when the latter joined the military to serve in King George's War (1744–48). The two men bought property on Conedogwinet Creek in present-day Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. Croghan developed a plantation there which served as his home and base of operations from about 1745 until 1751.

In April 1745 the Seneca protected Croghan from capture at the village on the Cuyahoga, but elsewhere French-allied Natives robbed a canoe-load of Croghan's furs. Croghan was adopted by the Seneca and in 1746, according to his testimony before the Lords of Trade in 1764, was one of their hereditary sachems among the 50 chiefs comprising the Six Nations' Onondaga Council. Already on it was William Johnson, the future British Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Northern District, Croghan's superior. Their principal French competitor for influence among the Native Americans in the Ohio region was Philippe-Thomas Chabert de Joncaire, son of the French fur trader Louis-Thomas Chabert de Joncaire (1670–1740), another Seneca appointee to the Onondaga Council two decades earlier. That these men were members of the tribes they represented cannot be overemphasized in understanding their roles in American history.

Early in 1747, Seneca and Wyandot warriors murdered five French traders at the Wyandot village of Sandusky. This was the start of a regional Indian revolt against the French fomented by Croghan. The Wyandot chief Nicholas Orontony led it at first. He was followed by Memeskia (or "Old Briton" as Croghan named him), known by the French as La Demoiselle, who was a Piankeshaw Miami chief.

Seven Years' War

The Seven Years' War (1756–1763) in North America, or French and Indian War as this front was known in the colonies, unofficially began in 1754 with the Battle of Jumonville Glen and effectively ended in 1760 with the British capture of Montreal. French forces occupied the Ohio Country and expelled or arrested British fur traders.

By the end of May, Croghan and Montour were in Winchester, Virginia, where Governor Dinwiddie commissioned them as captains under Col. George Washington. Croghan was to supply flour for the expedition and advise Washington on Indian affairs. Washington alienated his Indian allies during a crucial conference at Gist's plantation and blamed Croghan for the subsequent defeat at Fort Necessity. The Half King and Queen Aliquippa took their people to Croghan's plantation on Aughwick Creek, seeking refuge. The Half-King became fatally ill and died that October, followed by the Queen in late December.

During the Braddock Expedition in 1755, Croghan, assisted by Montour, led eight Indian scouts, the same group who had been with the Half King at Jumonville Glen a year earlier. General Braddock alienated the other friendly Indians, yet Montour and the handful with Croghan attended the gravely wounded general. Teamsters Daniel Boone and Daniel Morgan fled on horseback as Croghan pressed Braddock to relinquish command and, despite the general's refusal, apparently took charge. He got Braddock off the battlefield with the help of Braddock's aide, the 23-year-old Washington. Washington's account differs and his biographer James Flexner does not mention Croghan being present. Captains Croghan and Montour were there, outranked the General's aide, and worked together to save Braddock, with Croghan the more likely leader in the emergency. It was a familiar role, one Croghan assumed on the Pennsylvania frontier a year earlier, and during the almost continuous crises in Ohio Country before and after until 1777.

In 1755, friendly Indians again sought refuge at Augwick. Croghan fortified it as Fort Shirley, one of four forts he built on the frontier. In 1756, he relocated to the western edge of the New York frontier, beginning a 15-year career as Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs under Sir William Johnson. Johnson appointed him to deal with the Susquehanna and Allegheny Indians.

With Montour at his side and in command of 100 Indians on an overlooking hilltop, Croghan witnessed in July 1758 General James Abercrombie's calamitous frontal assault on Fort Ticonderoga. Afterward Croghan wrote Johnson that he feared a similar "thrashing" for Gen. John Forbes advance forces nearing Fort Duquesne, unaware that Major James Grant had been defeated five days earlier. Claiming to be one himself, Croghan used his influence on the Indians at Easton, Pennsylvania, where the treaty that stripped the French of their local allies was negotiated, assuring Forbes' success. He then joined Forbes on November 20 with fifteen Indian scouts in his usual role at the head of the military column, likely the first to see that the French had burned Fort Duquesne to prevent it being used by the British.

Pontiac's War

When Indian attacks engulfed Ohio Country in 1763, Croghan was in Philadelphia advising Governor Hamilton on Indian affairs and selling real estate. He galloped to Lancaster where word reached him that his business partner Col. Clapham had been killed in the region's initial attack, their Sewickley Creek trading post burned along with Croghan Hall near Pittsburgh, and that Fort Pitt was under siege.

General Amherst in New York ordered Croghan to Fort Pitt to investigate the causes of the uprising and Col. Bouquet to relieve it with a few hundred men. Croghan provided Bouquet with the latest intelligence from Carlisle. At Shippensburg he helped calm fearful residents by recruiting and arming 25 men to garrison Fort Lyttleton, abandoned in 1759. He also hired locals to carry ammunition and supplies from Fort Loudon to Bedford. He reached Bedford on June 12 and, believing further travel west too dangerous, he fed starving families and bolstered the garrison of seven soldiers under Captain Lewis Ourry. A few weeks later Indians attacked fifteen men mowing Croghan's fields within a mile of the fort, scalping two. Croghan refused Bouquet's order to march with his column when it left Bedford on July 27. Instead on August 2 he set out for Philadelphia to pursue private interests.

Denied leave by General Amherst to travel to London, Croghan resigned as Deputy Indian agent, angering Amherst. The general sailed to London on his own business. Croghan, accompanied by two officers recently besieged in Ft. Detroit and recalled to testify about the Indian uprising, set sail on the Britannia. The ship wrecked off the Normandy coast in January 1764. He survived, visiting Normandy historical sites on his journey to Le Havre, where he crossed the Channel to London.

While in London, Croghan was described as "the personification of wealth and power." The Lords of Trade declined Croghan's request to transfer his Indian grant of 200,000 acres (810 km2) from the Ohio to the Mohawk River valley, refused to compensate traders for war losses, or to permit an Illinois colony. But the Lords agreed to free the Indian Department from military control and to consider moving the Proclamation Line of 1763, which was intended to prevent westward settlement by British colonists and keep peace with Native Americans, from the Appalachian Mountains to the Ohio River. As the months waiting on the Lords dragged by, a planned trip to Ireland to claim the estate of his grandfather, Edmund Croghan, was put aside, significant for showing that Croghan's extreme ethnic pride and possible homesickness were now secondary to his life in America.

Later life

His ship reached New York on January 10, 1767, and two days later Croghan joined Samuel Wharton in urging Gen. Gage to establish an Illinois colony. When Gage refused, Croghan publicly resigned as Deputy Indian agent. Laid low by illness, he spent February recuperating at Monckton Hall near Philadelphia. In March he went to New York to visit with Sir William Johnson, who convinced him to withdraw his resignation. Sent to Fort Pitt in May, Croghan defused an Indian war over squatters and illegal trade. Governor John Penn detained Croghan in Philadelphia on his return east, with questions about the Indians to accompany the survey of borders between the colonies by Mason and Dixon, to settle the borders of Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Virginia (now West Virginia). He said of Croghan: "It would be very difficult to manage this business without his assistance." The Indians halted the survey before it was completed, in what was a vain attempt by Croghan to protect his 1749 grant by the Seneca for 200,000 acres from being included in Pennsylvania.

A hard year for Croghan's Indian diplomacy followed: the Black Boys' pledged in March to kill Croghan on his way to an Indian conference in Pittsburgh, and hostile Lord Hillsborough was appointed in London to the government portfolio for American affairs. Croghan established a quiet retreat at his large parcel of land at Lake Otsego. Its outlet is the headwater of the Susquehanna River. He built a six-chimney "hutt" and had Croghan Forest's 100,000 acres (400 km2) surveyed in September 1768 prior to final discussions by Sir Johnson with the Six Nations of the Treaty of Fort Stanwix.

As noted above, before completion of the Fort Stanwix Treaty in November 1768, the Six Nations sold Croghan 127,000 acres (510 km2) in New York bordering Lake Otsego, plus numerous tracts for his friends. At the large conference, attended by more than 3100 Haudenosaunee, the Six Nations demanded (on his part) that the Crown recognize these and other pre-treaty sales. They also asked that a grant by them of 2,500,000 acres (10,000 km2) on the Ohio to Trent and his associates be made part of the treaty. Third, they wanted to ensure that should Pennsylvania seize the 200,000 acres (810 km2) which the Indians had granted to Croghan at the Forks of the Ohio, they requested that the Crown grant Croghan as much land elsewhere. Sir William Johnson was censured by the Crown for aiding Croghan's private land dealings, and the government refused to ratify these private requests.

Facing bankruptcy, Croghan "drew bills payable on Samuel Wharton in London" for thousands of pounds in order to patent his New York land. Crippled with gout and hounded by creditors, Croghan sought refuge in Croghan Forest, which totaled more than 250,000 acres (1,000 km2). Its remote setting did not protect him when the Wharton bills were returned for nonpayment in February 1770.

Dunmore's War

Dunmore's War broke out in the Pennsylvania area in the spring of 1774, when frontiersmen led by Michael Cresap killed two Shawnee warriors, and Daniel Greathouse led other pioneers to kill the family of Logan, old Shikallamy's son. Croghan kept the Seneca and Delaware neutral, but his cooperation with St. Clair in defending the frontier prompted Connolly to accuse him of deserting Virginia. Shawnee chief Cornstalk, not wanting war, had three chiefs escort the traders from his villages to Croghan Hall. Connolly ordered 40 militiamen to capture or kill the Indians and they succeeded in shooting one of the Shawnee chiefs after they had escaped across the Allegheny. St. Clair, echoing other Pennsylvanians, said that Croghan was "indefatigable in endeavoring to make up the breeches."

That August deputies of the Six Nation brought the news of Sir William Johnson's death. He had died in July, the day before a sheriff's sale put over 50,000 acres (200 km2) of Croghan's New York land on the auction block. Bids totaled £4,840 despite the pall Johnson's death cast over the proceedings. Many of the bids were never paid and the sheriff absconded with most of the money collected, leaving only £900 for Croghan. He raised $6,000 in Virginia to buy directly from the Haudenosaunee 1,500,000 acres (6,100 km2) on the eastern bank of the Allegheny River. Samuel Wharton sent encouraging news about Vandalia, including the arrival of a large shipment of goods for gifts to the Indians and land payments, temporarily stored at Georgetown because of Dunmore's War.

Governor Dunmore reached Pittsburgh in September, pausing in his campaign against the Shawnee to grill Croghan concerning "Connolly's accusations about inciting the Shawnees to attack Virginia and siding with Pennsylvania against Virginia. Croghan easily disproved the charges and was reinstated in Dunmore's good graces." After bringing his war to a successful close that fall, Dunmore left 75 militia under Connolly to garrison Fort Pitt, renamed Fort Dunmore. The Virginia governor also adjourned the Augusta county court from Staunton to Pittsburgh, where he appointed Croghan to serve as president judge.

American Revolution

Croghan chaired Pittsburgh's committee of correspondence, formed in May 1775 after the battles of Lexington and Concord. The next month, Croghan was hosting a conference with Indians to ratify the Treaty of Camp Charlotte when Connolly was arrested by Pennsylvanians and imprisoned at Hannastown. Croghan and his committee secured Connolly's release and Connolly subsequently left the frontier to join Lord Dunmore aboard a British man-of-war.

On July 10, 1775, Croghan purchased 6,000,000 acres (24,000 km2) from the Six Nations between the Allegheny and Beaver rivers. Two days later, Congress established an Indian Department and appointed trader Richard Butler as its Pittsburgh agent. When Butler retired in April 1776, Croghan lobbied for his position. But, George Morgan was chosen as Indian agent and, still resentful for the failed Illinois trading venture a decade earlier, "had absolutely no use for Croghan."

During the summer of 1777, Croghan visited Williamsburg, Virginia, at the expense of the Gratz brothers to obtain a clear title to land he had sold them. After conferring with Governor Patrick Henry about frontier defenses, he returned to Pittsburgh with dispatches for General Edward Hand, who greeted him with suspicion. What was believed to be a Loyalist conspiracy had been uncovered. Colonel George Morgan, the Indian agent, Alexander McKee; Simon Girty, and others were under arrest. General Hand examined Thomas Smallman's papers and although there was nothing to indicate Croghan was disloyal, Hand ordered him to Philadelphia.

Two weeks after he reached the city, it was captured by the British. Croghan, too ill with gout to escape, was hauled before General Howe and castigated for chairing Pittsburgh's Committee of Safety and keeping the Lake Indians neutral. Ordered to take lodgings in town, where he was kept under constant supervision by two British officers, Croghan learned that Monckton Hall was burnt after the battle of Germantown, "another severe financial blow." When the British evacuated Philadelphia in June 1778, they left Croghan behind on parole. Returning Pennsylvania officials accused him of collaborating with the enemy, but Croghan was acquitted in a November 12, 1778, trial.

General Hand refused to let him return to Croghan Hall in western Pennsylvania, and Croghan spent the next two winters in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In an effort to pay off debts, Croghan mortgaged Croghan Hall to Joseph Simon. He deeded 74,000 acres (300 km2) of his Indian grant to the Gratzes, who paid his bills and financed another trip to Williamsburg to seek to have his Indian titles recognized by the state of Virginia, without success. Bedridden with gout upon his return, Croghan wrote few letters to family and friends. In May 1780, he moved to Philadelphia, where he learned his western properties were within the boundaries of the new state of Pennsylvania.

Croghan's estate

While the total value of his personal estate was valued at only £50 13s.6d, his extensive land holdings were "conservatively estimated at £140,000." Except for some specific bequests, his June 12, 1782, will left his entire estate to his daughter Susannah. Susannah Croghan Prevost died in 1790, survived by six of her twelve children. For decades, they pursued their claims to Croghan's often clouded deeds in numerous lawsuits. "For some years, the hopeless involvements of his estate kept courtrooms abuzz, and, when that ceased and his contemporaries died off, the man's name and fame faded away into the obscurity from which he had emerged."

Since the late 20th century, historians have re-evaluated Croghan's role and begun to assert his importance in the Ohio Country. He was a flamboyant character like William Johnson, brash and grasping, but also with a talent for diplomacy and relations with the Native Americans.

History continues to be made by Croghan descendants. To this day the female line of Croghan's Mohawk daughter Catherine are inheritors of her position and power in the Turtle Clan. "Catharine Adonwentishon was head of the Turtle clan, the first in rank in the Mohawk Nation. Her birthright was to name the Tekarihoga, the principal sachem of the Mohawk nation."[80]

Speculation in western New York lands and clouded titles resulted in many unscrupulous transactions. In 1786 William Cooper and his partner Andrew Craig "by questionable methods . . . purchased the Otsego lands [40,000 of Croghan's acres] for only £2,700." Cooper laid out the town of Cooperstown, New York, and built his mansion, Otsego Hall, on the former site of Croghan's residence. William Franklin and the Prevost heirs watched bitterly as the property increased in value twentyfold. "Andrew Prevost, Jr., wrote Franklin on December 12, 1812: 'We have lost an immense property from the infamous advantage taken by Cooper and others without your knowledge by a forced Sale under your Title.'" William Cooper's son, the author James Fenimore Cooper, presented his family's side of the dispute in his Chronicles of Cooperstown (1838).

Pronunciation of name

There has been disagreement as to how to pronounce Croghan's name. The governor of Canada, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, in a letter to the Minister of France on August 8, 1756, referred to “George Craon’s fort”, which appears to be a phonetic spelling. Although biographer Robert. G. Crist concludes that, given the Gaelic origins of the surname, the pronunciation was “Crone," his evidence is less than conclusive: a financial account that one of Croghan's clerks labeled as "Crohan and Trent;" and "a Frenchman who recorded his name as "Croan," apparently the way it sounded. Descendants have used the hard "g" pronunciation favored by Croghan scholar Margaret Pearson Bothwell, but Crist dismisses them and "the practice in Ireland today," where the name is pronounced "CROG-han." "CRO-ghan" seems to be the standard English pronunciation. Crist cites Nicholas B. Wainwright's "Crowan" as an intermediate step between "something like 'Crohan,' and in further simplification, 'Crone.'" A study of Crogan's dialect by Michael Montgomery, a linguist specializing in Irish, written more than thirty years after Crist, does not find the name pronunciation dispute worth mentioning.

Legacy and honors

In 2008, the Sons of the American Revolution added a new marker to Croghan's grave.

In 2012 a historical marker commemorating Croghan was dedicated at the veteran's memorial near Rostraver Township's borough building in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania.

In 2020, a historical marker, commemorating Croghan was placed at the site of his original trading post, in Mechanicsburg (Cumberland County), Pennsylvania.