The Winning of the West, Volume 3: The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790Roosevelt, Theodore
History
The Winning of the West, Volume 3: The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790
Roosevelt, Theodore
Northwest, Old -- History; United States -- Territorial expansion; West (U.S.) -- History
A regulation of a very different kind provided that two townships should
be set apart to endow a university. These two townships now endow the
University of Ohio, placed in a town which, with queer poverty of
imagination, and fatuous absence of humor, has been given the name of
Athens.
Organization of the Company.
The company was well organized, the founders showing the invaluable New
England aptitude for business, and there was no delay in getting the
settlement started. After some deliberation the lands lying along the
Ohio, on both sides of, but mainly below, the Muskingum, were chosen for
the site of the new colony. There was some delay in making the payments
subsequent to the first, and only a million and some odd acres were
patented. One of the reasons for choosing the mouth of the Muskingum as
the site for the town was the neighborhood of Fort Harmar, with its
strong Federal garrison, and the spot was but a short distance beyond
the line of already existing settlement.
Founding of Marietta.
As soon as enough of the would-be settlers were ready, they pushed
forward in parties towards the headwaters of the Ohio, struggling along
the winter-bound roads of western Pennsylvania. In January and February
they began to reach the banks of the Youghioghany, and set about
building boats to launch when the river opened. There were forty-eight
settlers in all who started down stream, their leader being General
Rufus Putnam. He was a tried and gallant soldier, who had served with
honor not only in the Revolutionary armies, but in the war which crushed
the French power in America. On April 7, 1788, he stepped from his boat,
which he had very appropriately named the Mayflower, on to the bank of
the Muskingum. The settlers immediately set to work felling trees,
building log houses and a stockade, clearing fields, and laying out the
ground-plan of Marietta; for they christened the new town after the
French Queen, Marie Antoinette. [Footnote: "St. Clair Papers," i., 139.
It was at the beginning of the dreadful pseudo-classic cult in our
intellectual history, and these honest soldiers and yeomen, with much
self-complacency, gave to portions of their little raw town such
ludicrously inappropriate names as the Campus Martius and Via Sacra.] It
was laid out in the untenanted wilderness; yet near by was the proof
that ages ago the wilderness had been tenanted, for close at hand were
huge embankments, marking the site of a town of the long-vanished
mound-builders. Giant trees grew on the mounds; all vestiges of the
builders had vanished, and the solemn forest had closed above every
remembrance of their fate.
Beginning of Ohio.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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