This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: POLLOCK Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/FMB.2ACI/374 Message Board Post: Description: Forgotton to the Nation by Donald Barr Childsey Some of the men who did a great service and the most to create the United States of America have never been given proper credit. For instance, without Robert Morris, Washington would have never kept fighting. And there was a 'Robert Morris' of the west, by name of Oliver Pollock. Pollock was born in Ireland and emigrated early to the Colonies. He lived for a while in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, then Havana, Cuba and later to New Orleans, He was a successful merchant and banker, wholly, a self made man. Appointed a Commercial Agent of the Colonies, he bought and shipped munitions and supplies up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, and across country from Pittsburg to Philadelphia. Govenor Patrick Henry appointed him a special agent for the State of Virginia during the Revolution, and in this capacity he did more than any other man to finance the George Roger Clarke expedition. If it had not been for his and Clarkes work, England would today own at least a good part of the middle west. Pollock has raised $300,000, mostly on his own notes. When liberty was won at last, the new Republic promptly forgot him and he was thrown into jail in Havana for non payment of personal depts. His friend, governor Galves, of Louisiana, upon becomig Captain-General of Cuba, released him on his own parole and Po;;ock set to work and built up a second fortune. He paid every cent of his depts contracted in the cause of a nation that neglected him. When he died, a very old man, at Pinckneyville, Mississippi on December 17, 1823, there was no official demnstration and today his name is forgotten .