The Pioneers

Unfortunately I missed the opportunity to hear David McCullough speak about his new book in Louisville.  It was just one of those occasions when I wimped out at the last minute and didn't make the drive.  However, I am enjoying the book a lot.  It is a part of history that I didn't know much about.  Many of the original settlers coming into the new Northwest territory were from New England.  And the first settlement was at Marietta....on the Muskingum River.

Marietta is a city in, and the county seat of, Washington County, Ohio, United States. During 1788, pioneers to the Ohio Country established Marietta as the first permanent settlement of the new United States in the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio. Wikipedia



The Old Northwest became U.S. territory in 1783 by the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolution and soon was one of the most pressing problems before the U.S. Congress. The four so-called landed states—Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut—claimed portions of the Old Northwest, while states with no western land claims, especially Maryland, argued that if the claims of the landed states were recognized, the wealth and population of the other states would be attracted to the western lands. The final solution was the cession of all the lands to the U.S. government, which was thus greatly strengthened; New York made its cession in 1780, Virginia in 1784, Massachusetts in 1785, and Connecticut in 1786. Two reserves were kept, the Virginia Military District and the Connecticut Western Reserve in Ohio. The Ordinance of 1785 established the Township System for surveying, which used a rectangular grid system in order to divide the land. 


On July 13, 1787, the Confederation Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance. The act created the Northwest Territory. It also established a form of government and specified how the various parts of the Northwest Territory could become states. The Northwest Ordinance required the creation of at least three but not more than five states from the Northwest Territory. The first state to be formed from the Northwest Territory was Ohio, the seventeenth state of the United States of America. While the United States government had now established how the Northwest Territory would be governed, American Indians living in the area did not consent to American control of the region. From the Northwest Territory's creation in 1787 until well after Ohio statehood in 1803, bloodshed between white settlers and the American Indians already in residence in the region continued in the American Northwest.


The first group of these early American pioneers to the Northwest Territory is sometimes referred to as "the forty-eight" or the "first forty-eight", and also as the "founders of Ohio".^[3][4] These first forty-eight men were carefully chosen and vetted by several of the co-founders of the Ohio Company of Associates, Rufus Putnam and Manasseh Cutler, to ensure not only men of high character and bravery, but also men with proven skills necessary to build a settlement in the wilderness


Right now I am reading about the fact that there was a scam early in the settlement of the Northwest Territory.  French settlers arrived in Marietta only to find that the money they had paid was not used to buy land for them.  These settlers moved on down the ohio River and established Galipolis....I will put a date and more information here when I get a chance.

But then I decided I wanted to put a few names to remember into this blog post....and while looking for the names I found the following and didn't want to loose these thoughts:

So it is Manasseh Cutler's son ....hmmm....Elijah is wrong....Elisha is wrong ...but it does start with an E.  Manasseh did not move to Ohio.  But his son did.  And what I was reading today said that there was a point at which there was an election and a group was trying to slide slavery back into Ohio.  And this son was fighting it with everything he had.  And he got sick....and was so sick he could not get out of bed the day of the vote.  But his friends carried him to the site....and he mustered what little he could to speak....and the vote passed by only one vote to prohibit slavery in Ohio.  I will make this better when I get time....but I didn't want to loose the thought.

While Manasseh Cutler never moved, Rufus Putnam did move to Ohio and played a prominent part in the early history.