Washington's First Public Service.%--The arrival of the French in western Pennsylvania alarmed and excited no one so much as Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia.

He had two good reasons for his excitement.

In the first place, Virginia, because of the interpretation she placed on her charter of 1609, claimed to own the Allegheny valley (see p.

33).

In the second place, the governor and a number of Virginia planters were deeply interested in a great land company called the Ohio Company, to which the King of England had given 500,000 acres lying along the Ohio River between the Monongahela and the Kanawha rivers, a region which the French claimed, and toward which they were moving.
As soon, therefore, as Dinwiddie heard that the French were really building forts in the upper Allegheny valley, he determined to make a formal demand for their withdrawal, and chose as his messenger George Washington, then a young man of twenty-one, and adjutant general of the Virginia militia.
Washington's instructions bade him go to Logstown, on the Ohio, find out all he could as to the whereabouts of the French, and then proceed to the commanding officer, deliver the letter of Dinwiddie, and demand an answer.