<April 11, 1775: Walpole and his associates petitioned the King to be allowed to acquire, at a price and subject to conditions that might be thought reasonable, part of a tract of land on the Ohio purchased by the crown at a congress with the Six Nations at Fort Stanwix on November 5, 1768. After a number of orders from the Treasury, the Board of Trade, and the Committee of Council for Plantation Affairs, a report by the Board of Trade on May 6, 1773, proposed the terms of the grant and a plan for establishing a government. An order in council of May 19 referred this report to the Committee of Council, which on July 3 ordered the law officers of the crown to draft an instrument, embodying the conditions set forth in the report, to be issued under the great seal. On the 16th the law officers made their report; on October 28, 1773, the Committee of Council instructed them to prepare the instrument, and transmitted to the petitioners a map of the lands in question. Those lands and others purchased at the aforesaid congress were ordered to be erected into a colony under the name of Vandalia. Various persons and their families have taken unauthorized possession of parts of the grant to be made to the petitioners, who wish that these settlers may hold on the same terms that are to be set for the rest of the land. William Trent, one of the aforesaid associates, is about to leave for America. The signers, on behalf of themselves, their heirs, assigns, and associates, constitute him their attorney to manage their interests in the tract and to lease, at such rents and other terms as he considers most for their benefit, such parts of it as have been or may in future be settled; to make agreements with the lessees for the preemption [torn] of their leases on the same terms on which the signers, their heirs, assigns, and associates, shall sell unsettled neighboring land of the same quality and situation; and in general to act as the signers might if present in person. They ratify in advance whatever legal steps Trent may take.> Sealed and Deliv-ered by the above named Thomas Walpole and John Sargent (being first duly stamp’t) in Presence of