Page:Annals of Augusta County.djvu/163

 the distinction between Virginians and Pennsylvanians was still maintained. Each party held meetings separate from the other, and denounced the encroachments of the British government.

Captain Connoly, being discharged from custody, joined Lord Dunmore on board a British ship in Chesapeake Bay. He was at Portsmouth, Virginia, August 9, 1775, on which day he wrote to Colonel John Gibson to dissuade him from joining the patriot side. He then undertook a journey from the Chesapeake to Pittsburg, in company with a Doctor Smith, and in November, 1775, was arrested in Fredericktown, Maryland, for being engaged in treasonable projects. He was detained in jail, at Philadelphia, till April 2, 1777.

Finally, in 1779, each of the States appointed commissioners, and through their agency the dispute was quieted in 1780. The boundary was not definitely fixed, however, till 1785, when Mason and Dixon's line was established.

It is generally believed that Dunmore fomented the controversy about the boundary line, in order to embroil the people of the two provinces between themselves, and that Connoly was his willing agent. Connoly joined Dunmore at Fort Pitt, in the fall of 1774, and accompanied hfm in his march into the Indian country. In the summer of 1775, it is said, he was appointed colonel, with authority to raise a regiment of white men on the frontiers hostile to the cause of the colonies, and to enlist the Indians on the side of Great Britain. His arrest at Fredericktown defeated the attempt. After his release he joined the British army, and was with Cornwallis when he surrendered at Yorktown. By grant from Dunmore, he acquired a large landed interest on the Ohio river, where Louisville, Kentucky, now stands, John Campbell and Joseph Simon having an interest in the grant, and his share of the property was confiscated by act of the Legislature of Virginia, the territory then being a part of this State. The last we have heard of him was in 1788, when he came from Canada to Louisville, for the purpose professedly of making a business arrangement with Mr. Campbell, but the popular prejudice against him was such that he could not remain, and leaving the United States nothing further is known of him.—[See Border Warfare, page 134, and various acts in Hening, passed in 1780, 1783 and 1784, "for establishing the town of Louisville, in the county of Jefferson," &c., &c.]