George Mercer

George Mercer (June 23, 1733 – April 1784) was a British colonial subject who was a surveyor, military officer and politician in the Virginia colony, and a Loyalist during the American Revolutionary War. Early and family life Born at Marlborough Plantation, Colony of Virginia, to emigrant and King's Counsel John Mercer and his wife, the former Catherine Mason (daughter of George Mason II), George received a private education suitable to his class, as he would become the eldest surviving son of wealthy planter and real estate investor. He had several siblings, the most famous of those surviving being Virginia lawyer and judge James Mercer (1735–93) and Virginia militia captain and later Maryland governor John Francis Mercer. He was a maternal cousin to George Mason, for whom his father served as guardian after George Mason III died when his son was a child. In 1767 Mercer married Mary Neville at Scarborough, England, but she died a year later, and they had no surviving children. Career George Mercer surveyed lands on the frontier, including across the Appalachian Mountains which the Virginia colony claimed according to its charter (which like that of Pennsylvania set no western boundary, unlike that issued to Maryland), particularly those in which his father or the Ohio Company (in which his father and many other Tidewater planters, including George Washington invested) were interested in developing. Native Americans often disagreed with the colonial claims. Thus, frontier settlements were subject to attack, particularly since France also claimed much of North America and French and British traders sold weapons in exchange for furs either at trading posts or during their journeys further into the frontier. The Ohio Company had established one fortified trading post and storehouse at Ridgeley in western Virginia not far across the Potomac River headwaters from Cumberland, Maryland in 1750.