This story from the Washington Post Magazine cracks me up every time I read it.
"George Washington's Western Adventure: In 1784, the father of our country set off to survey the wilderness empire of the new republic. He also had to collect some rent," By Joel Achenbach, Sunday, June 6, 2004; Page W10.
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On the thirteenth of September, 1784, coming down from the mountains into the valley of the Youghiogheny, George Washington arrived at the gristmill. His gristmill. He had never seen it. Years earlier, before the Revolution, he'd been told that his mill was the finest west of the Alleghenies. But now that he was finally free from his duties as commander in chief, and could make the long journey to inspect the mill personally, he saw to his dismay that it harnessed the might of a feeble stream, a virtual rivulet -- a seep! The millrace was essentially dry. Perhaps the masters of the place were expecting some other source of power to come along, something more sophisticated than water.
<snip>
"I do not find the Land in general equal to my expectation of it," Washington wrote in his diary. "The Mill was quite destitute of Water . . . In a word, little rent, or good is to be expected . . .
Washington knew who was to blame for the mill disaster: Gilbert Simpson, the mill operator, whom Washington had once described as a man of "extreame stupidity."
<Washington was a man who called a pig a pig. His letters -
http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/">collected and online now at UVA - are peppery on a great many subjects, and a fun read. SNIP>
Pennsylvania had been founded by Quakers, but these Scotch-Irish were a different breed -- rougher, more belligerent and ready to tromp into every remote mountain hollow of the Appalachians to hack out a new life. They did not come to the mill to give the general a parade. The great man threatened to take away their farms. When they had arrived in this part of western Pennsylvania in the early 1770s -- it was then considered part of the sprawling colony of Virginia -- they had found a trackless forest. They had hacked down trees, burned and grubbed the stumps, built fences, log cabins and barns, and found a way to survive in a world that still knew the howl of the wolf. They had endured the constant risk of Indian attacks, and, indeed, one of their members, Thomas Bigger, had narrowly escaped a massacre that claimed the lives of three families a dozen miles to the west, near Raccoon Creek. And now, years later, they'd gotten word of a visitor, at best an absentee landlord, but perhaps more properly a man with no right to their farms whatsoever.
What bad luck for the Seceders: They had squatted on the wrong man's land.
<snip>
When George Washington moved among frontier folk, he didn't mix.
<Nor do many Boston Brahmin types who invade the heartland during campaigns. SNIP>
The squatters formally declared that they did not recognize Washington's ownership.
He would have to sue them, they said.
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John Edwards could have some fun with "tort reform" and that story, as he continues to connect with the literal and figurative heirs of those stern frontier folk, and turns those states from purplish to blue in the 2008 Electoral College.
- Dave
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