Land Schemes: the Colony of Vandalia

As we've seen, British and American land speculators focused heavily on the land of the Ohio River Valley, particularly the Fort Pitt area, where the Allegheny and Monongahela join to form the Ohio, where modern Pittsburgh now stands.  Today, we'll look at one such scheme, the Colony of Vandalia.

In 1748, the British Crown granted a petition of a group of speculators calling themselves the Ohio Company the right to settle 200,000 acres in what is now the Pittsburgh area.  As usual, Native inhabitants of the land were neither informed nor consulted.  Nor had Settlers waited for the formalities.  Squatters were already rife in the region.  The French and Indian War (1755-1762) and Pontiac's Rebellion (1764-67), put a stop to those plans.  As Native rose and pushed Settlers and traders out of the area, a group of displaced Whites gathered together in a group they called the Suffering Traders.  They lobbied the talks at Fort Stanwix (1768) to receive compensation for trade goods, farm implements and other items lost by Native raids.  The Iroquois were persuaded, or forced, to give this group an allotment of land.  Again, the Shawnee, Cherokee, Delaware and other tribes who used the land as their hunting range weren't informed or consulted, leading to more raids as these tribes tried to keep their hunting ranges clear.

The Suffering Traders morphed into the Grand Ohio Company and representative sailed to London to get the Crown to recognize their grant and give them permission to colonize something they called Vandalia.  Vandalia was a reference to the ancestry of Queen Charlotte (Mrs. George III) ancestry.  She'd been born a German princess, with rumored descent from the ancient Germanic tribe of the Vandals.  (This was one of many rumors to explain her dark complexion, including that she had secret African or even Native ancestry, go figure).  The British government ended up giving the Grand Ohio Company more land than the Treaty had, including great swaths of what is now Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky, though they never formalized a Colony of Vandalia.  Notwithstanding, speculator began buying land and Settlers began moving in, leading to Lord Dunmore's War of 1774, and loud protestations by Pennsylvania and Virginia that some of their land was being taken from them.  Again, no input sought by the people whose land it truly was. 

The American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), eventually halted efforts by the Grand Ohio Company to settle the land.  However, after the War, settlers and others who believed they'd been given grants to settle petitioned the Continental Congress and later the Federal Government to create a fourteenth state of Westsylvania.  This early era in American history was one of fraudulent land conveyances everywhere.  Anyone who wanted to own land could draw up their own deed, forge a few signatures and voila, or sell the phony paper for money and, voila again.  Not sure of the legitimacy of these grants, and dealing again with loud protests by Virginia and Pennsylvania, the federal government declined to created a state out of Westsylvania.  Vermont became the fourteenth state instead. 

The official colony of Vandalia/Westsylvania may have died a bureaucratic death, but the idea lived on the hearts of the Settlers and Squatters who helped themselves to the Ohio Country, prompting more skirmishes with the Natives.  Government surveyors later allotted portions of the land to Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio Territory, though there were several treaties promising all or portions of this land to various Native tribes.