was born about 1706, in Maryland. Little is known of his early years except that he probably received formal training as a surveyor from his father, Richard Gist, who had helped plat Baltimore, Maryland.

By 1750, Gist had moved to northern North Carolina along the Yadkin River. In that same year the Ohio Company hired him to survey along the Ohio River from its headwaters near Shannopin's Town, Pennsylvania (now Pittsburgh), to what is now Louisville, Kentucky. That winter he mapped the Ohio countryside from Shannopin's Town to the Scioto River, wher