Note 25 — Chapter II · The First Military Expedition.
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It is said that there was a small party, of about forty men, in the employ of the Ohio Company, who had commenced throwing up entrenchments at the Fork. “On the 17th of April, Ensign Ward, then in command, saw, upon the Alleghany, a sight that made his heart sink; sixty bateaux and three hundred canoes, filled with men and deeply laden with cannon and stores. The fort was called on to surrender. Ward tried to evade the act; but it would not do. Contrecœur, with a thousand men about him, said ‘Evacuate,’ and the ensign dared not refuse. That evening he supped with his captor, and the next day was bowed off by the Frenchman, and, with his men and tools, marched up the Monongahela.”—Annals of the West, p. 87.