In 1799 he estimated the value of his share in that company at twenty thousand dollars.
Washington took the lead in securing the rights of his old soldiers in the French War, advancing money to pay expenses in behalf of the common cause and using his influence in the proper quarters.

In August, 1770, he met many of his former officers at Captain Weedon's in Fredericksburg, and after they had dined and had talked over old times, they discussed the subject of their claims until sunset, and it was decided that Washington should personally make a long and dangerous trip to the western region.
In October he set out with his old friend Doctor James Craik and three servants, including the ubiquitous Billy Lee, and on the way increased the party.

They followed the old Braddock Road to Pittsburgh, then a village of about twenty log cabins, visiting en route some tracts of land that Crawford had selected.

At Pittsburgh they obtained a large dugout, and with Crawford, two Indians and several borderers, floated down the Ohio, picking out and marking rich bottom lands and having great sport hunting and fishing.
The region in which they traveled was then little known and was unsettled by white men.

Daniel Boone had made his first hunting trip into "the dark and bloody ground of Kaintuckee" only the year before, and scattered along the banks of the Ohio stood the wigwam villages of the aboriginal lords of the land.