Robert Dinwiddie

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Dinwiddie, Robert (1692-1727) royal customs official and lieutenant governor of Virginia (1751-58), born in Glasgow, Scotland. His demand (sent via then-Major George Washington) that the French commanders leave the lands south of the Great Lakes claimed by the British crown and the colony of Virginia precipitated the French and Indian War (1754-63).

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

The Scottish merchant Robert Dinwiddie (1693-1770) rose through colonial administrative ranks to the lieutenant governorship of Virginia.

Robert Dinwiddie was born of an old Scottish family. His father was a prosperous merchant, and his mother also came from a commercial family. Robert was educated at the University of Glasgow and entered his father's countinghouse. He later carried on a successful career as a merchant.

Dinwiddie's role as a colonial administrator began in 1721, when he was appointed British representative in Bermuda. After 16 years of service in Bermuda he received the important position of surveyor general, which included jurisdiction over Pennsylvania and the southern colonies of British North America. By tradition the surveyor general was entitled to a seat on the Virginia Council, a post Dinwiddie insisted on assuming. Characteristic of Dinwiddie's service in the Colonies was his zealous attention to the offices under his authority and a tendency to maximize his position by emphasizing the royal prerogative. In recognition of these qualities, he was appointed lieutenant governor of Virginia, England's largest colony, and took office on July 4, 1751.

As lieutenant governor, Dinwiddie saw the beginnings of the conflict on Virginia's frontiers that led to the French and Indian War. He was a firm advocate of British expansion into the west. He sought the help of the Indians and the other British colonies in the struggle against the French, pressed the legislature for defense funds, and favored the use of regular armed forces in place of the less reliable militia. Dinwiddie made George Washington a lieutenant colonel in 1754.

Generally, Dinwiddie was able to work in harmony with the Virginia Legislature. He did, however, prompt a serious conflict with the House of Burgesses shortly after he took office. In hope of increasing the British king's revenues, Dinwiddie tried to levy a fee for land patents, which would also require landholders to pay quitrents to the Crown. This precipitated the famous "Pistole Fee" controversy, in which the lower house charged that the governor had imposed an unlawful tax that endangered colonial liberty - a precursor of the arguments of the American Revolution.

The pressures of office and the war badly taxed Dinwiddie's health. At his own request he was relieved of office in 1758 and with his wife and two daughters returned to Britain. He died in London on July 27, 1770.

Further Reading

The most comprehensive study of Dinwiddie is the occasionally laudatory work by Louis Knott Koontz, Robert Dinwiddie: His Career in American Colonial Government and Western Expansion (1941). Also valuable are Douglas Freeman, George Washington: A Biography (7 vols., 1948-1957), and Richard L. Morton, Colonial Virginia (2 vols., 1960). The "Pistole Fee" controversy is best examined in Jack P. Greene, The Quest for Power: The Lower House of Assembly in the Southern Royal Colonies, 1689-1776 (1963).

This article is about the colonial governor. For the professional golfer, see Robert Dinwiddie (golfer).

Robert Dinwiddie, lieutenant governor of Virginia

Robert Dinwiddie (1693 – July 27, 1770) was a British colonial administrator who served as lieutenant governor of colonial Virginia from 1751 to 1758, first under Governor Willem Anne van Keppel, 2nd Earl of Albemarle, and then, from July 1756 to January 1758, as deputy for John Campbell, 4th Earl of Loudoun. Since the governors at that time were largely absentee, he was the de-facto head of the colony for much of the time.

French and Indian War

Further information: Great Britain in the Seven Years War

Dinwiddie's actions as lieutenant governor are commonly cited as precipitating the French and Indian War. He wanted to limit French expansion in Ohio Country, an area claimed by the Virginia Colony and in which the Ohio Company, of which he was a stockholder ^[1], had made preliminary surveys and some small settlements.

In 1753, Dinwiddie learned the French had built Fort Presque Isle near Lake Erie and Fort Le Boeuf, which he saw as threatening Virginia's interests in the Ohio Country. He sent an eight-man expedition under George Washington to warn the French to withdraw. Washington, then only 21 years old, made the journey in midwinter of 1753-54. The French refusal to withdraw set the stage for the events that took place at Fort Necessity.

In January 1754, even before learning of the French refusal, Dinwiddie sent a small force of Virginia militia to build a fort at the forks of the Ohio River, where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers merge to form the Ohio (present-day Pittsburgh). The French quickly drove off the Virginians and built a larger fort on the site, calling it Fort Duquesne, in honor of the Marquis de Duquesne, who had recently become governor of New France.

In early spring 1754, Dinwiddie sent Washington to build a road to the Monangahela and to then help defend the British fort. Learning that the French had taken the fort, Washington pressed on and built a small stockade, Fort Necessity, at a spot then called "Great Meadows", by the Youghiogheny River, eleven miles southeast of present-day Uniontown. Here he encountered the French in a skirmish on July 3, 1754 and was forced to surrender. Dinwiddie was subsequently active in rallying other colonies in defense against the French and ultimately prevailed upon the British to send General Edward Braddock to Virginia with two regiments of regular troops.

Dinwiddie's administration was marked by frequent disagreements with the Assembly over finances. In January 1758 he left Virginia and lived in England until his death at Clifton, Bristol.

References

1. ^ Anderson, F.: "Crucible of War", page 37. Vintage Books, 2000.

• This article incorporates text from the article "Robert Dinwiddie" in the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

Anderson, Fred (2001). Crucible of war: the Seven Years' War and the fate of empire in British North America, 1754-1766. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0-375-70636-4. 

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