[1] At that time, Washington owned a large parcel of land, totaling 58,000 acres, across Western Pennsylvania, then part of the American frontier.

[2] The land had been given to Washington in the District of West Augusta by the Colony of Virginia in consideration of his service during the French and Indian War.

[2] In 1777, David Reed, his brother John Reed, brother-in-law Samuel McBride (husband of David and John Reed's sister Lydia) and several other Seceder (or Associate) Presbyterians, moved from Lancaster County to what later became Washington County, Pennsylvania, to take possession of land that they believed themselves to have purchased from Colonel George Croghan,[3] who himself had established an early British American trading post in the Ohio Country before the French and Indian War.

[2] The group referred to themselves as Seceders,[5] an 18th-century movement within Scottish Presbyterian which spread to the north of Ireland.

[2] The meeting was recorded in Washington's journal as follows: September 20, 1784 dined at David Reed's, after which Mr. James Scott and Squire Reed began to enquire whether I would part with the land, and upon what terms; adding that, though they did not conceive they could be dispossessed, yet, to avoid contention, they would buy if my terms were moderate.