BRADDOCK A STORY OF THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS BY JOHN R. MUSICK 66 99 66 AUTHOR OF COLUMBIA, ESTEVAN," "ST. AUGUSTINE," PREFACE. THE French and Indian wars were a struggle between the two greatest powers of Europe for supremacy in the New World. These struggles had far more to do with the final formation of our great American Republic than the casual observer may suppose. Hitherto, England had not fully appreciated her colonies in America, nor had the colonies a just appreciation of themselves. The long wars of the French and Indians with Americans and English were a school in which the hardy colonists were taught self-reliance, courage and fortitude. The despised provincial soldiers were for the first time compared with British regulars at Braddock's bloody defeat on the Monongahela. The comparison was favorable to the Americans, and, while it gave them self-reliance, the royalists and officers of the regular army changed their former contempt to jealousy and hatred. The acts of Braddock and Loudon first opened the eyes of the Americans to what might be expected from the royalists. The efforts of Loudon to "billet his regulars free" on the Americans was only the beginning of a series of attempts at oppression which ended with the stamp act, the tea tax and the Boston Port Bill. This story is designed to give all the principal incidents in the history of the great American Republic from the year 1700 to 1760. The Stevens family, whose lineage we have traced from the time of Columbus, appear here in Elmer and George Stevens and their sons Noah and Jean. Elmer and George were sons of Robert Stevens of Virginia, whose father was John Smith Stevens, a son of Philip Stevens, or Estevan, a Spanish youth captured at St. Augustine by Drake, and who helped to lay the foundation of Jamestown in Virginia. He was a son of Francisco Estevan of St. Augustine, who was born in Cuba and was the son of Christopher Estevan, a companion of Pizarro in Peru and De Soto in Florida. Christopher Estevan was born at San Domingo in 1510 and was the son of Hernando Estevan, who was the cabin |