A Revolutionary Officer
And the leader of the
Colony which made the
First settlement in the
Territory of the North-West.
Born April 9, 1738,
Died May 4, 1824.
[Illustration OHIO COMPANY'S LAND OFFICE.]
Not far from him are the majority of the Revolutionary heroes who came with
him from New England. It is claimed that there are buried here more
officers of the Revolution than in any other burying-ground in the United
States. About them lie thirteen soldiers of the War of 1812, and a number
of the brave men who fought in the Mexican War. Here too, are the
resting-places of many early citizens of Marietta, who are as a "Choir
Invisible"
"Of those immortal dead, who live again
In minds made better by their presence."
The gates are seldom open now to the silent caravans, for the graves in the
cloistral grass lie close.
Many relics of bygone days make Old Marietta interesting. The streets
running north and south bear yet the names given them by the early
settlers, of Washington and his generals. The "Sacra Via" and the breezy
"Capitolium" and "Tiber Way" bear witness to an old scholarship. "The
Point" recalls the picketed Point of the Indian wars. There still stands
the Ohio Company's Land Office, a wee, weather-beaten building, gray with
time, probably the oldest structure in Ohio. Opposite this is the old
homestead of Rufus Putnam, which stood within the Campus Martius. On the
park, fronting the river, is the quaint Two Horn Church of the
Congregationalists, erected in the wilderness in 1806 and now Ohio's oldest
church building. On the same street where it stands is the stately old
mansion of Governor Meigs, which was built two years earlier and which
still holds an honored place among Marietta's beautiful homes. In families
whose names mark their descent from the "forty-eight immortals" are
treasured numerous heirlooms,--ancestral portraits which look from their
tarnished frames pink-cheeked, confident and calm; old dresses, dim and
faintly odorous; and divers warming-pans, candlesticks and Blennerhassett
chairs, together with sundry bits of sprigged, delightful china.
[Illustration OLD TWO HORN CHURCH.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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