Washington's only surrender.

Before I start in on a new topic, I want to add a small bit of information to the last post.

I mentioned that none of the documents I had seen relating to the Prather family mentioned how many slaves the family owned, but after looking around a bit more, I found a listing of the "goods and chattel" of Thomas McKay Prather, Jonathan Smith's father. This list shows five "Negro" people -- one adult man, two adult women, and two children, a four-year-old girl and a two-year old.

The man was valued at 28 pounds, the two women at 48 pounds, and the children at 6 pounds and 4 pounds respectively. Depending on what online resource you use, the value of a pound in the year Thomas McKay's will is dated would equate to about $2,100 to $2,200. At the lower end of this scale, I calculate the total "value" of those five people at about $172,000, a not inconsiderable sum. Of course we're talking about human beings here, so it seems a bit ridiculous to putting a price on them.

The total value of the "goods and chattel" came to just a tad more than 192 pounds, slightly more than twice the value accorded the slaves. 

I mentioned last time that I would look to see what I could find out about a Col. Prather I had found who fought in the French and Indian War. And as often happens, I immediately ran into problems with the information posted to Family Search. The document quoted above shows Thomas McKay Prather Sr. as the colonel. And he may well have held that rank, but I'm pretty sure the man who fought in the French and Indian War, and possibly also the American Revolution, is Thomas McKay Sprigg Prather Jr., brother to Jonathan Smith Prather -- or John I called him in the last post.

I'm sure if I dug around a bit more I might find a muster list with Thomas Jr.'s name and unit on it, but a quick Internet search turned up nothing specific about his involvement. So we'll concentrate on relearning the importance of the French and Indian War, which I'd long since forgotten.

The French and Indian War is often regarded as the American theater of the Seven Year's War that was fought in Europe. Some people accept this designation, but others point out that hostilities in America began two years before the declaration of war in Europe. 

The immediate issue in America was conflict between the British and French in the Ohio Valley. The French had already established a presence, but the British were expanding westward, and of course, both sides believed they had the better claim. 

In 1753 Lt. Gov. Robert Dinwiddie decided the French were still trying to colonize the area and had heard the French were building forts. Dinwiddie appointed a very young -- 21 years old -- colonel by the name of George Washington, who had volunteered to be an emissary, to go meet with French officials in the area and tell them to knock it off. The senior French official in the area wrote a letter to Dinwiddie saying, "No," (short version) and sent Washington back to deliver the letter. 

Now the British were also building forts, and Dinwiddie had heard the French intended to attack one of them, so he sent Washington back with instructions to do what he needed to stop any such attack. By the time Washington returned, the fort in question had been attacked and surrendered. 

Washington pushed on into the territory and built his own small fort, which inevitably led to conflict with the French. The French eventually attacked the fort but suddenly offered generous terms for surrender, which Washington, whose forces and supplies were greatly diminished, accepted, the only surrender of his career.

Next time we'll look briefly at how the French and Indian War set the stage for the American Revolution.