CHAPTER IX.

WAR BETWEEN THE FRENCH AND ENGLISH COLONIES - BRADDOCK'S MARCH HIS DEFEAT-ACADIA, NIAGARA AND CROWN POINT— BATTLE OF LAKE GEORGE-CONDITION OF CANADA.

SCARCELY had the French established themselves in Canada, when a chain of circumstances occurred that resulted in their overthrow. The people of the northern English colonies had learned to regard their Canadian neighbors with the bitterest enmity. With them, the very name of Canada called up horrible recollections and ghastly images; the midnight massacre of Schenectady, and the desolation of many a New England hamlet; blazing dwellings and reeking scalps, and children snatched from their mothers' arms, to be immured in convents, and trained up in the abominations of Popery. To the sons of the Puritans, their enemy was doubly odious. They hated him as a Frenchman, and they hated him as a Papist.

Hitherto, he had waged his murderous warfare from a distance, wasting their settlements with rapid onsets, fierce and transient as a summer storm; but now, with enterprising audacity, he was intrenching himself on their very borders. The English hunter, in the lonely wilderness of Vermont, as by the warm glow of sunset he piled the spruce boughs for his woodland bed, started, as a deep, low sound struck faintly on his ears-the evening gun of Fort Frederic, booming over lake and forest. The erection of this fort, better known among the English as Crown Point, was a piece of daring encroachment, which justly kindled resentment in the northern colonies. But it was not here that the immediate occasion of a final rupture was to arise. By an article of the treaty of Utrecht, confirmed by that of Aix la Chapelle, Acadia had been ceded to England; but, scarcely was the latter treaty signed, when debates sprang up touching the limits of the ceded province.

Commissioners were named on either side, to adjust the disputed boundary; but the claims of the rival powers proved utterly irreconcilable, and all negotiation was fruitless. Meantime, the French and English forces in Acadia began to assume a belligerent attitude, and indulge their ill blood in mutual aggression and reprisal. But, while this game was played on the coasts of the Atlantic, interests of far greater moment were at stake in the West.

The people of the middle colonies, placed by their local position beyond reach of the French, had heard with great composure of the sufferings of their New England brethren, and felt little concern at a danger so doubtful and remote. There were those among them, however, who, with greater foresight had been quick to perceive the ambitious project of the rival nation; and, as early as 1716, Spotswood, Governor of Virginia, had urged the expediency of securing the valley of the Ohio by a series of forts and settlements. His proposal was coldly received, and his plan fell to the ground. The time at length was come when the danger was approaching too near to be slighted longer. In 1748, an association, called the Ohio Company, was formed, with the view of making settlements in the region beyond the Alleghanies; and, two years later, Gist, the company's surveyor, to the great disgust of the Indians, carried chain and compass down the Ohio as far as the falls at Louisville. But, so dilatory were the English, that, before any effectual steps were taken, their agile enemies appeared upon the scene. In the spring of 1753, the middle provinces were startled at the tidings that French troops had crossed Lake Erie, fortified themselves at the point of Presque Isle, and pushed forward to the northern branches of the Ohio. Upon this, Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, resolved to despatch a message requiring their removal from territory which he had claimed as belonging to the British crown; and, looking about him for the person best qualified to act as messenger, he made choice of George Washington, a young man twenty-one years of age, Adjutant-General of the Virginia militia.

Washington departed on his mission, crossed the mountains, descended to the bleak and leafless valley of the Ohio, and thence

continued his journey up the banks of the Alleghany, until the fourth of December. On that day he reached Venango, an Indian town on the Alleghany, at the mouth of French Creek. Here was the advanced post of the French, and here, among the Indian

HON. CHARLES W. GRANT.

CHARLES WESLEY GRANT, of East Saginaw, was born March 15, 1817, at Smithville, Chenango county, New York. He came to Michigan at the age of twenty years, and settled in Saginaw county in the spring of 1849. At that time there being no railroad nor plank road, and scarcely any other leading to that county, he came in a skiff down Flint river from the then village of Flint with the late George R. Cummings, Esq., who had just received a commission from Governor Ransom as prosecuting attorney for Saginaw county.

log cabins and huts of bark, he saw their flag flying above the house of an English trader, whom the military intruders had unceremoniously ejected. They gave the young envoy a hospitable reception, and referred him to the commanding officer, whose headquarters were at Le Bœuf, a fort which they had just built on French Creek, some distance above Venango. Thither Washington repaired, and on his arrival was received with stately courtesy by the officer, Legarduer de St. Pierre, whom he describes as an elderly gentleman of very soldier-like appearance. To the message of Dinwiddie St. Pierre replied that he would forward it to the Governor-General of Canada; but that, in the meantime, his orders were to hold possession of the country, and this he should do to the best of his ability. With this answer, Washington, through all the rigors of the midwinter forest, retraced his steps, with one attendant, to the English borders.

While the rival nations were beginning to quarrel for a prize which belonged to neither of them, the unhappy Indians saw, with alarm and amazement, their lands becoming a bone of contention between rapacious strangers. The first appearance of the French on the Ohio excited the wildest fears in the tribes of that quarter, among whom were those who, disgusted by the encroachments of the Pennsylvanians, had fled to those remote retreats to escape the intrusion of the white men. Scarcely was their fancied asylum gained, when they saw themselves invaded by a host of armed men from Canada. Thus, placed between two fires, they knew not which way to turn. There was no union in their counsels, and they seemed like a mob of bewildered children. Their native jeal

In 1850, as a partner of A. M. Hoyt, the proprietor of the incipient city of East Saginaw, he built the first mill erected there, and for himself, the first dwelling house. He was one of the five voters who organized the township of Buena Vista in 1851. At that election he was elected township clerk, commissioner of highways, justice of the peace, school inspector, etc.

In 1856 he was elected sheriff of Saginaw county, and held that office for the four following years.

During President Buchanan's administration, and for two years afterwards, he served as deputy United States marshal under Col. Rice, Col. Davis and John S. Bagg.

ousy was roused to its utmost pitch. Many of them thought that the two white nations had conspired to destroy them, and then divide their lands. "You and the French," said one of them, a few years afterwards, to an English emissary, "are like the two edges of a pair of shears, and we are the cloth which is cut to pieces between them."

The French labored hard to conciliate them, plying them with gifts and flatteries, and proclaiming themselves their champions against the English. At first, these arts seemed in vain, but their effect soon began to declare itself; and this effect was greatly increased by a singular piece of infatuation on the part of the proprietors of Pennsylvania.

During the summer of 1754, delegates of the several provinces met at Albany, to concert measures of defense in the war which now seemed inevitable. It was at this meeting that the memorable plan of a union of the colonies was brought forward; a plan, the fate of which was curious and significant, for the crown rejected it as giving too much power to the people, and the people as giving too much power to the crown. A council was also held with the Iroquois, and though they were found but lukewarm in their attachment to the English, a treaty of friendship and alliance was concluded with their deputies. It would have been well if the matter had ended here, but, with ill-timed rapacity, the proprietary agents of Pennsylvania took advantage of this great assemblage of sachems to procure from them the grant of extensive tracts, including the lands inhabited by the very tribes whom the French were at that moment striving to seduce. When they heard

Mr. Grant came to Saginaw poor in purse, but rich in energy and courage. Having satisfied his taste for public office, he turned his attention to lumbering, which he has diligently and successfully pursued ever since. By the exercise of his business talent, which is of a high order, he has built up an enviable credit and amassed an ample fortune. He is an example of that steady advance in wealth and social standing that is invariably achieved by a young man of good habits and persevering industry, who has the good sense to husband his income and make it productive by judicious investment. He resides on the "James Riley Reservation," where he has erected a palatial residence. Here he enjoys his well earned wealth, and dispenses an elegant hospitality.