Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History
Benson Lossing, Ed.

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Land companies.

After the treaty at Fort Stanwix, the banks of the Kanawha, flowing north at the foot of the great Alleghany ridge into the Ohio, began to attract settlers, and application was soon made to the British government by a company, of which Dr. Franklin, Sir William Johnson, Walpole (a wealthy London banker), and others were members, for that part of the newly acquired territory north of the Kanawha, and thence to the upper Ohio. They offered to refund the whole amount (about $50,000) which the government had paid the Indians, and proposed the establishment of a new and separate colony there. This project was approved by Lord Hillsborough, secretary of state for the colonies, and the ministry finally agreed to it, but the troubles between the parent government and her children in America, then rapidly tending towards open war, prevented a completion of the scheme. Such was the origin of the “Walpole,” or “Ohio Company,” the “Vandalia Company,” and the “Indiana Company,” founded on a cession said to have been made by the Indians at the treaty of Fort Stanwix. These schemes of land speculators were dissipated by the same cause that arrested the completion of the Walpole scheme.