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A very concise introduction...

I was born in 1706 (the same year Benjamin Franklin) to Captain Richard Gist and Zipporah Murray in Baltimore, Maryland.  My grandfather was Christopher Richard Gist and my grandmother was Edith Cromwell.  I have two brothers

I received relatively little formal education while growing up but I was trained as a surveyor by my father who helped plot Baltimore, Maryland (Note: in 1732 my father received a patent for an alluvial deposit at the foot of Lunn's Point. This area was known as Gist's Inspection, but is better known today as Federal Hill).

Before moving to North Carolina (along the Yadkin River near Daniel Boone) in 1750, I married Sarah Howard in Maryland, she was the daughter of Joshua Howard of Manchester, England who had served as an officer - under King James - in the army of the Duke of York during the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685.

Later in 1750 I had been hired by the Ohio Company to explore and map (survey) the Ohio River Valley and North East Kentucky, this was from the headwaters around Shannopin's Town, Pennsylvania -now Pittsburgh- to modern-day Louisville, I was the first Englishman to do so*.  In the winter of 1750 I had mapped the Ohio countryside and watershed between Shannopin's Town to the Scioto River.

I returned home only to find that my family had fled to Roanoke, Virginia because of Indian attacks, I rejoined them but returned west in the summer of 1971 to explore Pennsylvania and western Virginia (West Virginia) south of the Ohio River going into 1951/52.

In 1953 I established a small settlement at Redstone Creek, what is now known as Brownsville, Pennsylvania (at the Monongahela River) and in the same year I was hired by 21 year-old Major George Washington (under the orders of Robert Dinwiddie, the governor of Virginia) to help deliver a message to the French  (at Fort La Boeuf) that they leave the Ohio Country.  I would save the young Major's life on two occasions during this year. My son, Nathanial (also the same age as Maj. Washington) accompanied us on the mission.

1954, myself with Major Washington and a detachment of Virginia militia tried to drive the French from the Ohio Country but we were soundly defeated at the Battle of Fort Necessity and thus the French and Indian War started.  During this time a town that I had begun to build (Uniontown, Pennsylvania where I owned land called Gist's Plantation)  had been burned to the ground by the French.

We did not fare much better the following year against the French (Fort Duquesne) and their native allies as the Braddock Expedition were defeated.  At this time I traveled into Tennessee and met with the leaders of various native tribes to seek their support for the war effort.

(A more detailed accounting of these years can be read in my journals:

I died in the summer of 1759 of smallpox in an as yet unfound location in Cherokee country.

A few bits of trivia:

*Tall and lanky, affable, gentle natured but a fierce fighter but did not suffer bullies lightly.  Spoke half a dozen Indian dialects with fluency and was highly regarded by his contemporaries.

*Gist provided England and its colonists with the first detailed description of southern Ohio and northeastern Kentucky.  Daniel Boone is generally credited for colonist settlement in Kentucky but Gist preceded him by eighteen years.

*Four brothers and four sisters. 

*His wife, Sarah, had a sister who married Christopher's brother, Nathaniel.

*Sarah and Christopher had three sons and two daughters