Documents in Year 1794                     

Links of Interest:

• George Washington, First U.S. President

(1789-1797)

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• Education: State Institutions of higher education established:

University of Georgia (1785) - South
University of North Carolina (1789) - South

University of Tennessee (1794)- South

University of South Carolina (1801) - South
Indiana University (1820) - Midwest
University of Michigan (1837) - Midwest
University of Wisconsin (1848) - Midwest

Source: Foundations of American Education, Sixth Edition page 140 / L. Dean Webb, Arlene Metha. Published by Pearson Education. 2010 see 1801 for next event...

• Westward Expansion / American Frontier:

"President George Washington is starting his second term of office.  The government owes over $75 million to France, Spain, and the Netherlands, nations that helped finance the Revolutionary War. Washington's plan to pay it off hinges on settlers buying frontier land. Each acre costs $1. The government has 160 million acres to sell. But the Native American people there were not about to accept all these Americans flooding over the Appalachian and they attacked. This inhibits the sale of lands."

"Four years earlier Washington commissioned the nation's first professional army. Now he sends over 2,000 troops to the Ohio Territory to crush Native American resistance and reopen the frontier to land sales. Among the Army's officers is a man who will one day be President, William Henry Harrison. One of Harrison's officers is Lieutenant William Clark. His brother, George Rogers Clark fought with Daniel Boone in the Revolution. Daniel Boone is living in Point Pleasant in the Ohio Valley (modern day West Virginia)."

"The resistance has grown to 1,500 Native American warriors from dozens of tribes including Tecumseh's Shawnee. They have been secretly tracking the Army through Ohio Territory. On 20 August 1794 on the northwestern edge of modern day Ohio  the warriors attack the U.S. Army brigade. Lietenant William Clark regroups his men for a counterstrike. Overwhelmed and outnumbered the Native Americans retreat. The conflict will become known as the Battle of Fallen Timbers and changes the balance of power on the frontier."

Sources:

The Men Who Built America: Frontiersmen

"This 2018 four-episode, high-quality documentary offered on Amazon Prime or the History Channel is well worth watching. The episode titled "Never Surrender" covers the time period from 1792-1812 which includes the Lewis and Clark Expedition and Shawnee Tecumseh's fight against American settlers."

My Father, Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews with Nathan Boone

This free ebook preview provides a major portion of an interview of Nathan Boone, the youngest son of frontiersman, Daniel Boone. He and his wife recollect interesting stories they knew about his father's exploits on the American frontier.

• Military:

  French Revolution (1789-1799)

Maximilien Robespierre rose to power and the Jacobins and virtual dictatorship by the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror from 1793 until 1794 during which between 16,000 and 40,000 people were killed.

• Science:

  Englishman, Joseph Priestly, (1733-1804), Discoverer of Oxygen

Clergyman and experimenter. Priestly’s experiments in 1774 of a plant growing under a glass revealed  the atmosphere was restored inside the glass allowing mice to breathe longer than without the plant. “What Priestley was observing is dioxygen, otherwise known as “free oxygen” or O₂, a molecule formed by the union of two oxygen atoms.”  Through his experiments on air Priestley found that "air is not an elementary substance, but a composition," or mixture, of gases.“ (Priestly) was  the first to discover that breathable air was a concoction of plants, and with (Benjamin) Franklin’s help he was able to grasp and describe the far-reaching consequences that process would have on our understanding of Earth’s environment.

He invented soda water, water suffused with carbon dioxide. The method earned the Royal Society's coveted Copley Prize and was the precursor of the modern soft-drink industry. His support for the American and French revolutions so enraged his countrymen that he was forced to flee England in 1794. He settled in Pennsylvania.

Johnson, Steven. The Invention of Air. New York: Riverhead, 2008.

Frenchman, Lavoisier, (1743-1794), "Father of modern chemistry"

[1] was a French nobleman prominent in the histories of chemistry and biology.
[2] He named both oxygen (1778) and hydrogen (1783) and helped construct the metric system, put together the first extensive list of elements, and helped to reform chemical nomenclature. He was also the first to establish that sulfur was an element (1777) rather than a compound.
[3] He discovered that, although matter may change its form or shape, its mass always remains the same.

He was branded a traitor by the Assembly under Robespierre, during the Reign of Terror, in 1794. Lavoisier was tried, convicted, and guillotined on 8 May in Paris, at the age of 50.