Named Entity Results, 1769 AD

Villere, Jacques Philippe Roy de 1769-1831 Military officer; born in France; was an officer of a regiment which was sent to Canada. He later became naval secretary of Louisiana. In 1769 he led a rebellion against the Spanish authorities, and was captured and killed in Louisiana in the same year. His son, Jacques, born near New Orleans, La., April 28, 1761, was majorgeneral of volunteers under Gen. Andrew Jackson in 1814-15; and governor of Louisiana in 1818-22. He died in New Orleans1769 he led a rebellion against the Spanish authorities, and was captured and killed in Louisiana in the same year. His son, Jacques, born near New Orleans, La., April 28, 1761, was majorgeneral of volunteers under Gen. Andrew Jackson in 1814-15; and governor of Louisiana in 1818-22. He died in New Orleans, La., in 1831. His grandson, Gabriel, born in Louisiana, March 15, 1785, was major of militia. During the invasion of the British he was sent to watch the Bayou Bienvenu. He was captured when the enemy landed at Fisherman's Village, but escaped to New Orleans, where he gave information of their approach to General Jackson. He died in New Orleans, La., July 6, 1852.

Wadsworth, Peleg 1748-1829 Military officer; born in Duxbury, Mass., May 6, 1748; graduated at Harvard College in 1769. As captain of minute-men, he joined the army gathering around Boston in the spring of 1775; became aide to General Ward; and afterwards adjutant-general for Massachusetts. He was in the battle of Long Island: and in 1777 was made brigadiergeneral of militia, serving, in 1779, as second in command in the Penobscot expedition, where he was taken prisoner. In February, 1781, he was captured and confined in the fort at Castine, whence he escaped in June. After the war he engaged in business in Portland and in surveying, and in 1792 he was elected a State Senator. From 1792 to 1806 he was a member of Congress. He died in Hiram, Me., Nov. 18, 1829.

Wanton, Joseph 1705-1780 Governor; born in Newport, R. I., in 1705; graduated at Harvard College in 1751 and engaged in mercantile business; was elected governor in 1769. He was appointed by the English government to investigate the burning of the ship Gaspee by the Whigs in 1773, and was also made superintendent of the British soldiers during their occupation of Newport. These and other causes made him an object of suspicion, and in 1775 the Assembly stripped him of all power and placed the executive prerogative in the hands of Deputy-Gov. Nicholas Cooke. Governor Wanton died in Newport, R. I., July 19, 1780.

surrender all the lands between the Ohio and Tennessee rivers to the English, and many backwoodsmen began settling beyond the mountains before it was known that the Iroquois Indians had ceded lands to which they had no legal right. What is now eastern Tennessee was then western North Carolina, and this region consisted of a most tempting valley, with the Cumberland River on one side and the Great Smoky Mountains on the other. The first settlers in this region were largely from Virginia. In 1769 the first settlement was made on the banks of the Watauga River, the people believing they were still within the domain of Virginia. Two years later, however, a surveyor discovered that the settlement was really within the limits of North Carolina. This fact led to the organization of a civil government for the growing settlement, an act that was consummated at about the time the troubles between the royal governor of North Carolina and the regulators reached their climax. These troubles c

Watts, Stephen -1788 Lawyer; born about 1743: graduated at the University of Pennsylvania in 1762; admitted to the bar in Philadelphia in 1769; removed to Louisiana in 1774; later became recorder of deeds of the English settlements on the Mississippi. He wrote an essay on Reciprocal advantage of a perpetual Union between Great Britain and her American colonies, which was published in 1766. He died in Louisiana in 1788.

Wernwag, Lewis 1769-1843 Civil engineer; born in Alteburg, Germany, Dec. 4, 1769; settled in Philadelphia in 1786. Not long afterwards he constructed a machine for manufacturing whetstones. He next became a builder of bridges and powermills. In 1809 he laid the keel of the first United States frigate built in the Philadelphia navy-yard; in 1812 he built a wooden bridge across the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia, which became known as the Colossus of Fairmount and which was till that time the longest bridge ever constructed, having a single arch with a span of 340 feet. About 1813, when he settled in Phoenixville, Pa., he began experiments for the purpose of utilizing anthracite coal. For a time he found it most difficult to ignite it, but later, by closing the furnace doors and making a draft beneath the coal, he succeeded in producing combustion. Later he invented a stove in which he burned coal in his own home. He died in Harper's Ferry, Va., Aug. 12, 1843.

Wheeling, A city, port of entry, and county seat of Ohio county, W. Va.; on the Ohio River, 63 miles west of Pittsburg, Pa. It was settled by Col. Ebenezer Zane in 1769; provided with a stockade work named Fort Henry to protect it against Indian hostilities in 1774; was the scene of Indian attacks in 1777 and 1781; and was besieged by the British, Sept. 11, 1782, when Colonel Zane successfully defended the fort without loss to his small garrison. Colonel Zane laid out a town here in 1793, which was incorporated in 1806 and 1836, and became the capital of the new government of Virginia in 1861, the place of meeting of the convention from which grew the State of West Virginia, and was the capital of the State in 1863-70 and 1875-85. Population in 1900. 38,878. See Zane, Ebenezer.

Williamson, Hugh 1735-1819 Statesman; born in West Nottingham, Pa., Dec. 5, 1735; graduated at the University of Pennsylvania in 1757; studied divinity; preached a while; and was Professor of Mathematics in his alma mater (1760-63). He was one of the committee of the American Philosophical Society appointed to observe the transit of Venus in 1769, of which he published an account; also an account of the transit of Mercury the same year. Being in England to solicit aid for an academy at Newark, N. J., he was examined (1774) before the privy council concerning the destruction of the tea at Boston. He returned home in 1776, and engaged, with his brother, in mercantile pursuits in Charleston, S. C. Afterwards he practised medicine at Edenton, N. C.; served in the North Carolina House of Commons; also as a surgeon in the North Carolina militia (1781-82). He was a delegate in Congress (1782-85 and 1787-88), and in the convention that framed the national Constitution. He was again in

Wisner, Henry 1725-1790 Patriot; born in Goshen, N. Y., about 1725; was an assistant justice of the court of common pleas in 1768; representative from Orange county in the New York General Assembly in 1759-69; member of the Continental Congress in 1774, and of the Congress which adopted the Declaration of Independence. He studied powder-making and erected three powder-mills in Orange county, from which a great part of the powder used in the Revolutionary War was supplied. He also aided the patriot cause at the time of the war by having spears and gun-flints made, by repairing the roads in Orange county; and by erecting works and mounting cannon on the Hudson River. He was one of the committee that framed the first constitution of New York in 1777; was State Senator in 1777-82; and a member of the State convention of 1788, which ratified the national Constitution. He died in Goshen, N. Y., in 1790.

Woodhull, Nathaniel 1722-1776 Military officer; born in Mastic, Suffolk co., Long Island, N. Y., Dec. 30, 1722; served in the French and Indian War, and was colonel of a New York regiment under Amherst. In 1769 he was in the New York Assembly, and was one of the few in that body who resisted the obnoxious measures of the British Parliament. In 1776 he was president of the New York Provincial Congress. On the landing of the British on Long Island, he put himself at the head of the militia, with whom he fought in the battle of Long Island. A few days afterwards he was surprised by a party of British light-horsemen, near Jamaica, and, after surrendering his The House in which Woodhull died. sword, he was cruelly cut with the weapons of his captors, of which wounds he died at an ancient stone-house at New Utrecht, Long Island, Sept. 10, 1776. A narrative of his capture and death was published by Henry Onderdonk, Jr., in 1848. His own Journal of the Montreal expedition in 176