| abstract | - Colonel Thomas Cresap (c. 1702–c.1790) was an English-born pioneering settler in the state of Maryland, and an agent of Lord Baltimore in the 'Maryland-Pennsylvania boundary dispute' that would be known as Cresap's War. He is something of a founding father from the dark side in American Colonial history, both reviled and admired. During the dispute, Cresap became a notorious figure in the Conejohela Flats areathe lower Susquehanna Valley in the area south of Wright's Ferrywhere his actions as an agent on behalf of his Patron Lord Baltimore who'd claimed the lands made him a wanted criminal in Pennsylvania. Cresap and his men were involved in several use of force incidents resulting in deaths acting to evict men who'd considered themselves legal settlers under Pennsylvania's Colonial Charter, but were to Lord Baltimore and Cresap's mind, just squatters. Because of the bloodshed during Cresap's War King George II issued an edict forcing a settlement of the Maryland-Pennsylvania boundary dispute against the claims by Lord Baltimore. Cresap was held a villain in Pennsylvania, and something of a hero in Maryland, which has municipalities named after him. Subsequently, in fear of reprisals by Pennsylvanians, Cresap moved his family west up the Potomac River drainage basin into the throat of the Cumberland Narrows mountain pass into the Monongahela River valley. The Cumberland narrows is one of only five navigable routes over the Appalachian Mountains barrier range, and there he founded what is now Oldtown, Maryland by building a trading post at the foot of the Amerindian trail over Wills Mountain (renamed Haystack now near Cresaptown), in the middle of the era when colonials were petitioning the crown to obtain lands of the so called Ohio Country across the Allegheny Mountains from the Indians. The colonials wanted the crown to open these possessions for settlement, and give them out under charter in the same old way, the crown's ministers, re. Cresap also sent traders over the pass and explored personally in Amerindian lands along the Monongahela upriver of Redstone Old Forts, some of which ended up as his property in what is now upper West Virginia, though still claimed by the Colony of Maryland. The crown complied, the Amerindians sold ca. 1744, and the land speculation stock company, the Ohio Company was granted a charter to in Western Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia ca. 1748. Cresap was given or would earn a large land grant from the Ohio Country in what is now West Virginia, for he was employed as commander of an expedition in 1748–1750 along with the Delaware Amerindian Chief Nemacolin to begin widening the Nemacolin Trail into freight wagon road from Cumberland, MD to Redstone Old Fort. George Washington and his troops would further improve the same road prior to Braddock's Military Expedition during the French and Indian War. Redstone, on the Monongahela River became Brownsville, Pennsylvania which dwarfed Pittsburgh in growth and vibrant industrial activities until c. 1840-50s, as a center for construction and outfitting various river craft (keel boats, flat boats, steamboats) settlers used to settle not only the entire Mississippi drainage basin, but the far west and Oregon Country beyond the source waters of the Missouri River.
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