Dr. Thomas Walker Biography

This article is companion to the video below. The biography begins after a brief interlude. After the biography, the video continues to cover two more articles posted here on the FTC blog: Walker’s full journal account, and an in-depth analysis of that account.

Walker was born in the tidewater region of Virginia about 30 miles northeast of Richmond, in 1715. We don’t know a whole lot about his childhood, but it culminates in him graduating from the College of William and Mary as a medical doctor. He was a hard-working guy; he became the most prominent physician in the region and eventually attracted the eye of Mildred Thornton (formerly Mildred Thornton Merriweather, widow to Nicholas Merriweather, of the same family line that would eventually produce Merriweather Lewis of the famed Lewis and Clark expedition). Walker married Mildred and so acquired her late husband’s 15,000-acre estate called Castle Hill. Maybe it was the sudden responsibility of that land, or maybe he’d already taken an interest in it, but it's not long after that that Walker starts surveying… and he gets good at it. 

Surveying in the 18th century, of course, was the gateway to real estate, which has been a source of wealth throughout all of human history. Walker, in learning to survey, gets to know another local guy named Peter. Peter had grown up about 50 miles away. Peter didn’t have much formal schooling, but he kept an impressive library and self-taught himself all kinds of life skills. He learned to survey and grow tobacco; in fact, he was book smart, but it was said that he could upright two 1000-pound hog heads of tobacco at the same time. That’s one man moving one ton of weight -- that’s a real strongman event by today’s standards -- something people spend years training for. He and Walker keep on getting to know each other, and they become close friends, and eventually they go in together with a bunch of other investors to form the Loyal Land Company in 1749. 

Anybody with any money in the time period was trying to get in on claiming land, you could get the highest return on your investment on it, because as you develop the land, the value increases, so the more settlers you can get out there, the more the remaining land is worth, and the more money you can make. The gains are only capped at how much land you can get, and if you can grow faster than the other guys, you can buy their land and keep on expanding exponentially. Well, Walker and his buddies, including this guy Peter and at least 5 members of the Merriweather family -- they all form the Loyal Land Company and successfully apply for an official royal grant of 800,000 acres; which is, by conversion, exactly 1,250 square MILES. And they get it on great terms, too, because unlike the Ohio Company of Virginia, which was another popular land speculating startup at the time: Walker and his boys don't even need to settle the land to attain a deed, they just need to survey it. But per the terms of their grant… they only have 4 years to do it. In settled land, surveying 800,000 acres over 4 years would be a feat, even today, with drones, LIDAR, and CAD. But 800,000 acres of wilderness that none of these shareholders have ever SEEN? I mean -- they have no context. No way to know where they are once they cross into the frontier. They’ll be counting the days to determine the date. Isolated. All they know is what they can see with their own eyes: they have a minuscule amount of control and understanding in this environment. And the entire ground is occupied by American Indians, if not living there then certainly hunting it. It's a prized hunting ground. They’re trespassing, land grant or not: But this is lifechanging money. Real generational wealth to be made. From their perspective, its a potentially unlimited fortune -- an infinite flow of money -- that these guys' recent ancestors would have had no SHOT at making as common folk in old Europe. It was an unfathomable opportunity, and so despite the mortal danger, the shareholders of the Loyal Land Company came together to elect the men who would go and survey the land, allowing them to formally claim it under the King’s law.

Well, maybe you can see where this is going: but Walker gets the nomination to lead the party. And they were right to pick him, he really is the man for the job; it shows in the journal that he writes once he’s out there, the one we’re reading today. He’s detailed. He makes daily entries, even if it's to say nothing happened. He writes with good spelling and grammar, his thoughts are organized, and because of this once-in-a-family-line opportunity that’s at stake, he’s furiously recording every directional aspect of where he is as he goes about this exploration, to the point that today, we can easily track his path on a map more than 250 years later, despite him wandering without context. This is a rare instance in which the college-educated Virginia aristocrat becomes the frontiersman: likely because he and his shareholders didn’t trust anybody else to do it. Once they get back -- after 4 to 5 months -- and he does survive the trip -- Walker will join the colonial legislature; the Virginia House of Burgesses. Except only one year into his first term he starts trying to work out plans to go explore the Missouri River: to try and find the Pacific Ocean: in 1753! and if that’s not foreshadowing for all the Loyal Land Company stakeholders from the Merriweather family, I don’t know what is… just about 50 years later, Merriweather Lewis will be out there cruising around on the Missouri River with his friend William Clark. Walker doesn’t end up executing this plan in the 50s because the French and Indian War breaks out in the spring of 1754: and he and any of his crew would most certainly have been killed on contact with the various american indian tribes that occupied the land: it would have been suicide to try and cross the continent as the war was breaking out, they wouldn’t have made it through the appalachia region.

In any case, once he’s back from the trip, Walker’s mind is on the frontier, sure -- but he’s enjoying his time in civilization serving in the house of burgesses -- his good friend Peter is a legislator alongside him! They’re young, but they’re well-established gentlemen. Leaders. But like I said, it's not long until the French and Indian War breaks out: Walker reports to the House of Burgesses and receives a commission as a major: because of his resourcefulness, he gets nominated to be commissary to General Braddock, he’ll furnish Braddock’s campaign, which we know ends in disaster at Braddock’s defeat. Walker escapes the defeat with his life -- he wouldn’t have known that Daniel Boone was there as a teamster driving one of the wagons that Walker himself had procured for Braddock -- but one can imagine they must have laid eyes on each other at some point: Boone, more of a boy, really, at 20 years old: and Walker, twice his age -- having already been out to Kentucky, having already tasted part of Boone’s destiny. After the defeat Walker continues as Commissary, trying to finance and acquire arms and supplies for the Virginians on a now blood-soaked frontier. Through that role, Walker gets acquainted with Washington, who’s a relative of his wife -- Washington was her first cousin, once removed -- he also gets to know Benjamin Franklin and a whole slew of other big names from the period, and a good bit of their correspondence can be found in the public domain: it seems like during this period, Walker’s horizons expand beyond being a member of the local gentry.

All the while Walker is tracking how shifts in the war could impact the Loyal Land Company’s grant. He stays connected to the frontier. Sometimes he is out there on the frontier. His friend Peter often hosts the Cherokee War Chief Ostenaco -- leader of Cherokee diplomatic relations with Great Britain... but Walker is going to take two massive blows during the war. The Loyal Land Company’s 4 year period to survey had been extended by another 4 years on account of the fighting, but it expired again in 1757. But also in 1757, and a far more personal loss… Walker’s good friend Peter falls ill. Really ill. And he passes away. He was pretty young for mortal illness: but by his death, Peter was a wealthy, landowning, aristocrat. Self-made for the most part. He leaves this remarkable story and a fantastic legacy to pass on: and in his will, he splits his land and possessions between his two boys. His son Thomas got half, except Thomas is 14. So before he died, Peter had appointed Walker guardian of his son. He knew Walker. Like a brother. He knew he was principled, they’d been in the legislature together: He knew Walker could handle an estate because Walker had inherited one at Castle Hill, when he married his wife: So Peter -- Peter Jefferson -- entrusts Walker to finish raising his son Thomas -- Thomas Jefferson -- and he trusts walker to manage Thomas’s half of the estate -- a nice cut of land along the Rivanna River with views of a gently sloping mountain, called Monticello.

As for the Loyal Land Company -- you’d think they had it made: Britain wins the French and Indian war, Walker is appointed true leader of the company after another guy steps down; he labels his role as the company’s leader “Agent” -- as in, land agent -- and now, Walker’s armed with these fantastic relationships with other men of power and influence: he’s successfully used the war to pivot from medicine into politics; and you’d think that he could have gotten another extension for the Loyal Land Company surveying efforts: hopefully a THIRD four-year increment: and on May 25th of 1763, he’ll apply for it: but the Governor’s Council, heeding advice from the king to discourage settlement west of the appalachian mountains in the fallout of the war, denies him the extension. Not long after, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 comes down the pike, which draws a big line from maine along the appalachian mountains to florida and dictates that settlement has to be contained to the east of it: kentucky, it seems, is off the table.

In Virginia, it can be said that it wasn’t the taxation without representation that really spurred the revolution: it was that proclamation. That plants the first seed of doubt about whether the government has the people’s best interests at heart. Virginians didn’t fight and die for nothing. They wouldn’t be remembered that way. The way they saw it, they were entitled to land they had just bled for. That revoliutionary spirit takes hold. It takes hold in Walker, who had just served Britain: he leads the Loyal Land Company forward. They keep selling. The Virginia government doesn’t try to stop him. They get it. They couldn’t formally greenlight it, but higher leadership was of the same opinion -- they decline to prosecute: at this point Walker’s friends Washington and Franklin and all the thought leaders of the time are starting to get pretty hot about British policy.

Moving into those revolutionary years: Walker remains close to the legislative action, continueing to cement his political career.. And unloading Loyal Land Company acreage to settlers all the while. He’ll represent Virginia in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix and Treaty of Lochaber [LOCK-UH-BER] -- I mean we’re talking about drawing up state lines here: he was the real deal. he dealt with the peace negotiations after the Battle of Point Pleasant. Walker served as a Virginia commissioner in negotiations with the Iroquois in Pittsburgh when the colonies tried to court them as allies against the British: he successfully played a political role that only he could: a virginia aristocrat who also knew the frontier and its native people, perhaps better than any other white man. Now, the caveat to this rosy picture of land negotiation is that throughout, other parties were doing some pretty malicious stuff. Supposedly they kept Walker at an arm’s length throughout, since he was a government representative… it would always be said that Walker dealt with the tribes fairly and retained their friendship. By the time of the revolution some of his 12 children are old enough to serve too: his son John was aid-to-camp to General Washington in 1777, rising to the rank of Colonel.

But once the revolution was won, the king’s law was no more -- the Loyal Land Company grant was thrown into uncertainty: congress moved to nullify it: Walker petitioned, fortunately he was well on the incrowd and some of his political acquintances can kinda go to bat for him: the congress ultimately recognizes the royal grant that the Loyal Land Company had received, but refused the company’s right to do any more surveying, basically killing the enterprize. It makes them developers, now, not speculators. He continued to serve in the Virginia legislature, rounding out a long career there: And remember Walker has also helped bring Thomas Jefferson into adulthood: in the early 70’s he had mentored Jefferson right into the legislature alongside him: Jefferson’s spotlight of course, over time outshines Walker’s: I imagine Walker must have been very proud of him: Walker ends up holding a formal advisory role to Jefferson for 3 years while he helped him write the book “Notes on the State of Virginia” which Jefferson published in 1785. And, as a sidebar, that’s a really interesting read: I highly recommend it. 

Walker passed away, peacefully in his home at Castle Hill in 1794. He had relinquished many of his titles by that time -- but he was still, proudly, “Agent” of land for the Loyal Land Company. He was a remarkable man, no doubt -- the earliest expert on the american west, when the west was still, by today’s standards, in the east. Start poking around in his kids lives and you’ll see that they really carried the torch. But wait! you’re only a few minutes in to his story: remember, he kept an active daily journal of his first journey into Kentucky as the first white man to cross the Cumberland Gap -- and we know how impactful that trip would be for him -- and just a reminder that if you stick around till the end, I’ll be adding my own commentary about the journal itself and throwing in my perspective as a living historian, pointing out things we can take away and practice as we try to honor America’s frontier past.

I’d like to share that during my research I found an interactive map of Walker’s journey if you’d like to follow along: that’s linked in the video description -- It could be a helpful tool if you want to further contextualize this trip. So, now you know Dr. Thomas Walker. You know what brought him up to the exploration in 1750 and how the exploration would fuel his life afterward: now, for the exploration itself.