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Peter Wraxall (died 11 July 1759) was a British official in the province of New York.
| This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations .(February 2019) |
Peter Wraxall (died 11 July 1759) was a British official in the province of New York.
Born in Bristol, England, Wraxall was the son of John Wraxall, a merchant. Peter became a seaman after his family suffered financial hardship. He traveled to the Netherlands and Jamaica before finally settling in New York. In 1746, during King George's War, he raised a company for the expedition into Canada. The next year, he went back to England on private business.
While in England, Wraxall received two royal commissions in 1750: secretary for the New York government to the Indians and clerk of the common pleas in the county and city of Albany. When he returned to New York, however, he found that the governor had already appointed Harmon Gansevoort to the Albany clerk position. Wraxall attempted through the courts to have his clerk's commission honored, to no avail.
Wraxall did have his commission as New York's secretary of Indian affairs, which proved to be an important position as the French and Indian War approached. In 1754, Wraxall attended the Albany Congress, where British officials attempted to improve their relationship with the Iroquois and recruit native support for the coming conflict. At the same time, Wraxall published An Abridgement of the Records of Indian Affairs: Contained in Four Folio Volumes, Transacted in the Colony of New York, from the Year 1678 to the Year 1751, an important compilation of documents chronicling New York's dealings with Native Americans. Wraxall's work highlighted the incompetence of New York's Indian commissioners at Albany, and suggested that Indian affairs should be centralized under a single official. The Abridgement was sent to officials in Great Britain, and may have influenced the policy changes that followed.
At the Albany Congress, Wraxall met William Johnson, an influential New York official. In April 1755, Johnson was commissioned as sole British agent to the Iroquois. Wraxall was appointed as Johnson's secretary, a position he held for the remainder of his life. In 1755, Wraxall accompanied Johnson on the Crown Point expedition. Johnson's victory at the Battle of Lake George on 8 September made him a British hero, but Wraxall, though important, remained obscure.
Wraxall's final years were relatively uneventful. He continued to serve as Johnson's secretary, and attended Indian conferences, but poor health kept him from further military service. In 1756 he married Elizabeth Stillwell. He died three years later in New York City. His replacement as the crown's Indian secretary was Witham Marshe.
The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was a theater of the Seven Years' War, which pitted the North American colonies of the British Empire against those of the French, each side being supported by various Native American tribes. At the start of the war, the French colonies had a population of roughly 60,000 settlers, compared with 2 million in the British colonies. The outnumbered French particularly depended on their native allies.
William Shirley was a British Army officer and colonial administrator who served as the governor of the British American colonies of Massachusetts Bay and the Bahamas. He is best known for his role in organizing the successful capture of Louisbourg during King George's War, and for his role in managing military affairs during the French and Indian War. He spent most of his years in the colonial administration of British North America working to defeat New France, but his lack of formal military training led to political difficulties and his eventual downfall.
The Albany Congress, also known as the Albany Convention of 1754, was a meeting of representatives sent by the legislatures of seven of the British colonies in British America: Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. Those not in attendance included Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Jersey, Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Representatives met daily at the City Hall in Albany, New York, from June 19 to July 11, 1754, to discuss better relations with the Native American tribes and common defensive measures against the French threat from Canada in the opening stage of the French and Indian War, the North American front of the Seven Years' War between Great Britain and France.
Sir William Johnson, 1st Baronet, was a British Army officer and colonial administrator from Ireland. As a young man, Johnson moved to the Province of New York to manage an estate purchased by his uncle, Royal Navy officer Peter Warren, which was located in territory of the Mohawk, one of the Six Nations of the Iroquois League, or Haudenosaunee. Johnson learned the Mohawk language and Iroquois customs, and was appointed the British agent to the Iroquois. Because of his success, he was appointed in 1756 as British Superintendent of Indian Affairs for all the northern colonies. Throughout his career as a British official among the Iroquois, Johnson combined personal business with official diplomacy, acquiring tens of thousands of acres of Native land and becoming very wealthy.
Thayendanegea or Joseph Brant was a Mohawk military and political leader, based in present-day New York and, later, Brantford, in what is today Ontario, who was closely associated with Great Britain during and after the American Revolution. Perhaps the best known Native American of his generation, he met many of the most significant American and British people of the age, including both United States President George Washington and King George III of Great Britain.
Thomas Pownall was a British colonial official and politician. He was governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay from 1757 to 1760, and afterwards sat in the House of Commons from 1767 to 1780. He travelled widely in the North American colonies prior to the American Revolutionary War, opposed Parliamentary attempts to tax the colonies, and was a minority advocate of colonial positions until the Revolution.
John Butler was an American-born military officer, landowner, merchant and colonial official in the British Indian Department. During the American Revolutionary War, he was a prominent Loyalist who led the provincial regiment known as Butler's Rangers on the frontiers of New York and Pennsylvania. Born in Connecticut, he moved to New York with his family, where he learned several Iroquoian languages and worked as an interpreter in the fur trade. He was well-equipped to work with Mohawk and other Iroquois warriors who became allies of the British during the rebellion.
Events from the year 1754 in Canada.
George Croghan was an Irish-born fur trader in the Ohio Country of North America who became a key early figure in the region. In 1746 he was appointed to the Onondaga Council, the governing body of the Iroquois, and remained so until he was banished from the frontier in 1777 during the American Revolutionary War. Emigrating from Ireland to Pennsylvania in 1741, he had become an important trader by going to the villages of Indigenous Peoples, learning their languages and customs, and working on the frontier where previously mostly French had been trading. During and after King George's War of the 1740s, he helped negotiate new treaties and alliances for the British with Native Americans.
The Covenant Chain was a series of alliances and treaties developed during the seventeenth century, primarily between the Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee) and the British colonies of North America, with other Native American tribes added. First met in the New York area at a time of violence and social instability for the colonies and Native Americans, the English and Iroquois councils and subsequent treaties were based on supporting peace and stability to preserve trade. They addressed issues of colonial settlement, and tried to suppress violence between the colonists and Indian tribes, as well as among the tribes, from New England to the Colony of Virginia.
The Seven Nations of Canada was a historic confederation of First Nations living in and around the Saint Lawrence River valley beginning in the eighteenth century. They were allied to New France and often included substantial numbers of Roman Catholic converts. During the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), they supported the French against the British. Later, they formed the northern nucleus of the British-led Aboriginal alliance that fought the United States in the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.
Hendrick Theyanoguin, whose name had several spelling variations, was a Mohawk leader and member of the Bear Clan. He resided at Canajoharie or the Upper Mohawk Castle in colonial New York. He was a Speaker for the Mohawk Council. Hendrick formed a close alliance with Sir William Johnson, the Superintendent of Indian affairs in North America.
Molly Brant, also known as Mary Brant, Konwatsi'tsiaienni, and Degonwadonti, was a Mohawk leader in British New York and Upper Canada in the era of the American Revolution. Living in the Province of New York, she was the consort of Sir William Johnson, the British Superintendent of Indian Affairs, with whom she had eight children. Joseph Brant, who became a Mohawk leader and war chief, was her younger brother.
Peter Silvester was an American politician who was a member of the United States House of Representatives from New York, and a prominent Federalist attorney in Kinderhook. He was a mentor to Martin Van Buren, the 8th President of the United States and was the grandfather of New York Representative Peter Henry Silvester.
The Battle of Lake George was fought on 8 September 1755, in the north of the Province of New York. It was part of a campaign by the British to expel the French from North America, in the French and Indian War.
The Battle of Fort Bull was a French attack on the British-held Fort Bull on 27 March 1756, early in the French and Indian War. The fort was built to defend a portion of the waterway connecting Albany, New York to Lake Ontario via the Mohawk River.
Witham Marshe was the representative of the colony of Maryland at the negotiation of the Treaty of Lancaster in 1744. He noted that the Iroquois were heavy drinkers, however they were careful to remain sober while negotiating important treaties.
The Iroquois, also known as the Five Nations or the Six Nations and by the endonym Haudenosaunee, are an Iroquoian-speaking confederacy of Native Americans and First Nations peoples in northeast North America and Upstate New York. They were known during the colonial years to the French as the "Iroquois League", and later as the "Iroquois Confederacy". The English called them the "Five Nations", including the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. After 1722, the Iroquoian-speaking Tuscarora from the southeast were accepted into the confederacy, which became known as the Six Nations.
Joseph Louis Cook, or Akiatonharónkwen (Mohawk), was an Iroquois leader and commissioned officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Born to an African father and an Abenaki mother in what is now Schuylerville, New York, he and his mother were taken captive in a French-Mohawk raid and taken to Kahnawake, a Mohawk village south of Montreal. They were adopted by a Mohawk family. His mother soon died and he served Catholic missionaries, learning French. He became an influential leader among the Mohawk and distinguished himself as a warrior for their allies the French during the French and Indian War.
The Commissioners for Indian Affairs were a group of officials of colonial Albany, New York charged with regulating the fur trade and dealing with the Iroquois.
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