George Croghan

George Croghan (c. 1718 – August 31, 1782) is an Irish-born fur trader in the Ohio Country of North America (current United States) who becomes the region's key figure earlier than his 1746 appointment to the Iroquois' Onondaga Council and remains so until his banishment from the frontier in 1777.

Emigrating to Pennsylvania in 1741, he becomes an important trader by going to the villages of Native Americans, learning their languages and customs, and working on the frontier where previously mostly French had been trading.

During and after King George's War of the 1740s, he helps negotiate new treaties and alliances with Native Americans.

Croghan is appointed in 1756 as Deputy Indian Agent with chief responsibility for the Ohio region tribes, assisting Sir William Johnson, British Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northern District, who is based in New York and has strong alliances with the Iroquois.

Beginning in the 1740s and following this appointment, Croghan amasses hundreds of thousands of acres of land in today's western Pennsylvania and New York by grants from Native Americans and purchases.

Beginning in 1754, he is a rival of George Washington for influence in Ohio Country and remains far more powerful there for more than ywenty additional years, until 1777 during the American Revolutionary War when he is falsely accused of treason.

He is acquitted the following year but patriot authorities do not allow him back in the Ohio territory.

Croghan's central role in Ohio Country events finds ample evidence in his two main biographers, yet they understate it.

He is irrelevant when not missing in recent George Washington biographies and the necessity of Croghan's as the through story is not yet seen in histories of the region or books on the French and Indian War, the North American front of the Seven Years' War between Britain and France.

Ohio's recorded history begins with Croghan's actions in the mid-1740s as fur trader, Iroquois sachem, and go-between for Pennsylvania, according to historian Alfred A. Cave.

Cave concludes that the treason charge that ended Croghan's career was trumped up by his enemies.

Western Pennsylvania becomes the focal point of events in August 1749 when Croghan purchases 200,000 acres from the Seneca, exclusive of two square miles at the Forks of the Ohio for a British fort.

Croghan soon learns that his three deeds will be invalidated if part of Pennsylvania sabotages that colony's effort to erect the fort, and leads the Ohio Confederation to permit Virginia's Ohio Company to build it and settle the region.[1

In 1754 Virginia sends to the Ohio Country George Washington, who will eventually supplant Croghan there.

French control of Ohio Country, which they call  the Illinois Country, indicating the area of their greater settlement, after Braddock's Defeat in 1755 finds Croghan building forts on the Pennsylvania frontier., following which he mans the farthest frontier post in present-day New York as Deputy Indian agent under Sir William Johnson, called the "Mohawk Baron" for his extensive landholdings and strong relations with the Mohawk and other Iroquois.

Croghan briefly lives until 1770 on a quarter of a million New York acres.

He resignsas Indian agent in 1771 to work on establishing Vandalia, a proposed fourteenth British colony to include parts of present-day West Virginia, southwestern Pennsylvania and eastern Kentucky, but continues to serve as a borderland negotiator for Johnson, who dies a British loyalist in 1774.

While working to keep the Ohio Indians neutral during the Revolutionary War, Croghan serves as Pittsburgh's president judge and chairman of the Committee of Safety, aligning with the patriots.

General Edward Hand of this city accuses him in 1777 of treason and Croghan is banished from the frontier.

Although he is acquitted in a November 1778 trial, Croghan is not allowed to return to the frontier.

He dies little acknowledged in 1782, shortly after the end of the Revolutionary War.

Croghan's thirty years as the pivotal figure in Ohio Country history has attracted relatively little academic interest.

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