When he came of age, he sold the property left to him by his parents and used the money to open his own business in Virginia although the venture ultimately proved unsuccessful.
A favorite of colonial Lieutenant-Governor Robert Dinwiddie, he was appointed a captain in the Virginia militia shortly before the French and Indian War.
[3] He was able to get these sketches to British forces by giving them to the Lenape warrior Keekyuscung who smuggled them out of the fort, however these papers were recovered by the French after the Battle of the Monongahela and he was sent to Quebec where he was tried and convicted as a spy.
He managed to escape from prison and, arriving on a ship from Halifax, he rejoined British forces at Louisburgh on the island of Cape Breton shortly after General James Wolfe had departed for Quebec.
[6] His memoirs were kept in the British Museum for nearly a century until 1854 when the manuscript was published in Pittsburgh in part due to efforts by Liverpool merchant James McHenry.