USA > Ohio > Washington County > Marietta > Washington County, and the early settlement of Ohio : being the centennial historical address, before the citizens of Washington County, by Israel Ward Andrews Marietta, Ohio, July 4th, 1876 > Part 1
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Gc 977.101 W27a 1667604
M. L.
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 00824 4631
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016
https://archive.org/details/washingtoncounty00andr_0
Washington County,
- AND THE -
EARLY SETTLEMENT OF OHIO.
BEING THE
Centennial Historical Address,
BEFORE THE CITIZENS OF WASHINGTON COUNTY,
-BY-
ISRAEL WARD ANDREWS, LL. D .. President of Marietta College.
MARIETTA, OHIO, JULY 4th, 1876.
CINCINNATI: PETER G. THOMSON, PUBLISHER, 179 VINE SIRFLI,
IS77.
1667604
CORRESPONDENCE.
SECRETARY'S OFFICE
WASHINGTON CO., AGRICULTURAL & MECHANICAL ASS'N.
Marietta, O., Feb. 19th, 1876. I. W. ANDREWS, D. D.,
Dear Sir :- The Board of Directors of the Washington County Agricultural and Mechanical Association, at a meeting held Feb. 16th, 1876, in conformity with the recommendations of the Centennial authorities at Philadelphia, and the Annual Agricultural Convention of this State, and to carry such recommendations into effect, selected you to prepare and deliver an historical address the coming Fourth of July. It would afford me pleasure to receive your acceptance.
Yours most respectfully,
C. T. FRAZYER,
Secretary.
Marietta College, Feb. 22, 1876.
Dear Sir :- I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 19th instant, conveying to me an invitation from the " Washington County Agricultural and Mechanical Association," to prepare and deliver. on the Fourth of July next, an historical address pertaining to the development of the county within the century.
Will you convey to the Board of Directors my appreciation of the honor conferred on me in selecting me for this service, and my grate- ful acceptance of the same?
Yours truly,
ISRAEL W. ANDREWS.
HON. C. T. FRAZYER, Secretary, Etc.
iv
Correspondence.
At a subsequent meeting of citizens, the following officers were appointed for the celebration of the Centennial Fourth of July :
Hon. P. B. BUELL, President.
Vice Presidents .- Adams, S. N. Merriam; Aurelius, J. D. James: Barlow, D. N. Dunsmore; Belpre, L. E. Stone; Decatur, A. Russell: Dunham, S. D. Ellenwood ; Fairfield, C. H. Goddard; Fearing, Chas. Zimmer; Grandview, Jasper Lisk; Harmar, Col. D. Barber; Inde- pendence, August Hille; Lawrence, A. J. Dye; Liberty, John Con- gleton; Ludlow, Isaac Scott; Marietta-Ist Ward, Wm. Glines; 2d. Jewett Palmer; 3d, I. R. Waters; Marietta Tp., W. F. Curtis; Musk- ingum, L. J. P. Putnam; Newport, J. B. Greene; Palmer, J. M. Murdock; Salem, Walter Thomas; Union, Matthew Jurden; Warren, C. B. Tuttle; Waterford, H. F. Devol; Watertown, Isaac Johnson ; Wesley, B. F. Arnold.
Col. T. W. MOORE, Marshal.
Reading of the Declaration of Independence, Capt. W. H. GURLEY.
On the 25th of May, President Grant issued a Proclamation bringing to the notice of the people, a joint resolution of Congress, recommending their assembling in their several counties and towns on the Centennial Anniversary, and " that they cause to have delivered on such day, an historical sketch of said county or town, and that a copy of said sketch may be filed, in print or manuscript, in the Clerk's office of the said county, and an additional copy be filed in the office of the Librarian of Congress, to the intent that a complete record may thus be obtained of the progress of our institutions during the first Centennial of their existence."
In accordance with this recommendation and the arrangements previously made, the citizens of Washington County, assembled at Marietta, and duly celebrated the Centennial Anniversary of our National Independence.
Hon. P. B. Buell presided, and Col. T. W. Moore officiated as marshal. Prayer was offered by Rev. S. C. Frampton, and the Decla- ration of Independence was read by William H. Gurley, Esq. The historical address was then delivered by the orator of the day.
5
Historical Address.
F ELLOW CITIZENS OF WASHINGTON COUNTY: On this day, one hundred years ago, the Thirteen United Colonies became THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. The people of the colonies, through their representatives in General Congress assembled, publicly declared themselves absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and solemnly and religiously proclaimed to the world their determination to assume and maintain a separate and equal station among the nations of the earth. It was a bold declaration to be made by those small and feeble colonies, against a great and powerful nation. But they believed in the justness of their cause and could appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of their intentions. They placed a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence; and the more we study our national history from that eventful day to this, the clearer are the proofs that that protection has not been withheld.
There is not need to recount the steps by which our fathers were led to dissolve the bonds that bound the colonies to the mother country. The first meeting to consider their grievances, was in 1765, when dele- gates from nine colonies met in New York. The pas-
.
6
Centennial Historical Address.
sage of the Stamp Act by Parliament, in March of that year, was the immediate occasion of this Congress. They adopted a declaration of rights and claimed the treatment due to British subjects: "that it is insepar- ably essential to the freedom of a people, and the un- doubted right of Englishmen, that no taxes be imposed on them but with their own consent, given personally or by their representatives." This sentiment passed into a maxim, "taxation without representation is tyranny." If Parliament should enact laws to tax the people of the colonies, the representatives of the colonies ought to be admitted as members of Parliament. The maxim did not mean that taxation without suffrage is tyranny, for the ordinance for this north-west territory provided that no one could vote without "a freehold in fifty acres of land in the district."
The Stamp Act was repealed, but other taxes and duties were imposed quite as obnoxious to the colonies. In September, 1774, the first Continental Congress met at Philadelphia, embracing delegates from twelve colo- nies. There were men in that Congress whose names have become household words. Addresses to the king, to the people of Great Britain, to the people of the col- onies, and to the inhabitants of the Province of Quebec, were drawn up, and the Congress hoped that their grievances would be redressed. But should the course of the king continue as before, they recommended a sec- ond Congress in the month of May following. The king remained obstinate, and the second Continental Congress was convened as had been recommended. But hostili- ties had already commenced at Lexington and Concord, and measures for defense were immediately taken. An army was organized, and on the 15th of June George
7
The Declaration of Independence.
Washington was unanimously elected general of all the forces. His commission styled him the "General and Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the United Colonies."
The breach became wider and wider. The people began to talk of separation. On the 7th of June, 1776, Richard Henry Lee, in accordance with the vote of the Virginia Convention, moved in Congress a declaration of independence. After a most thorough discussion in the committee of the whole it was adopted on the tenth. The further consideration was postponed till July. On the second of that month it was adopted in Congress; and on the fourth the declaration, which had been pre- pared by a committee previously appointed, was adopt- ed. While the resolution was passed on the second, the formal declaration was adopted on the fourth, and thus that became our national birth-day. Each of the colonies was transformed into a State, and the thirteen united colonies became an independent nation. Whether the independence thus declared could be maintained was to be decided by the sword. Should the people fail in the great struggle, they would have no place as a nation on the page of history. Should they succeed, their national existence would date from the fourth of July, 1776.
We celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of that day. The American Republic has completed her first century. It has been a century of growth. From about three millions of people we have become more than forty millions. From a little strip along the At- lantic coast our possessions have increased till they ex- tend from ocean to ocean, and from the forty-ninth par- allel of latitude to the gulf. Including Alaska, the ter-
8
Centennial Historical Address.
ritory now belonging to the United States is nearly ten times as large as that occupied by the thirteen colonies. The number of States has increased to thirty-seven, with Colorado to be admitted, probably during the pres- ent month; indeed considered already as a State by the great conventions of Cincinnati and St. Louis.
The two great events of the century have been the formation and adoption of the Constitution of the United States, and the recent civil war. This great struggle, while it was a sectional war growing out of slavery as its immediate cause, was in reality a conflict of ideas- the old articles of confederation pitted against the con- stitution of 1787. Appeal was made to the arbitrament of the sword, and the doctrine of the government has. been settled, as so many other great political ques- tions have been, by blood. The institution of slavery is gone; those who were defeated in the great struggle accept the situation, and we may hope that all parts of the nation will be bound together by a closer tie, and that no root of bitterness will ever again spring up to trouble us.
The invitation with which I have been honored, to address my fellow citizens of Washington County on this Centennial Independence day, does not allow me to speak at length of national questions, or national pro- gress; but confines me for the most part to what per- tains to the origin and development of our own county.
It is an honor to be the orator on this day, for this, the oldest county in the great North-west, bearing the name of the one man whom all Americans hold in rev- erence; whose history, more than that of any other, is interwoven with the history of the State.
1. The proclamation of the President admitting Colorado was issued on the first of August, 1876.
9
Title of the United States to Ohio.
This region was originally a part of the vast dis- trict claimed by the French, and known as Louisiana. The Mississippi river was discovered by French mission- aries, and was subsequently explored to its mouth by LaSalle, who, according to the custom of the nations of that day, took possession in the name of his sover- eign, Louis XIV, of the vast region drained by its waters. After the French war, France, by the treaty of peace of 1763, ceded to Great Britain all her possessions east of the Mississippi river. When the war of the Ameri- can Revolution broke out, the whole of the castern part of the great Mississippi valley was claimed by Great Britain, and by the treaty of 1783 between that power and the United States this region was relinquished to our nation. It is true that various States of the Union laid claim during the Revolutionary war to large tracts west of the Alleghenies on the ground of old English charters, but their claims were conflicting and it was the policy of Congress not to decide between them. Eventually all these States made cessions of their claims, some with and others without reservations; but the probabilities are that the nation as a whole, which had really wrested the lands from Great Britain, was by the laws of nations the rightful owner of the region. These lands thus came from the French to the English by the treaty of 1763, and from the English to the United States by the treaty of 1783. And it is a plea- sant coincidence that when General Rufus Putnam, in 1757, then only nineteen years old, and others of the noble pioneers of Ohio, shouldered their muskets and made those wearisome marches to Canada and endured such great privations in the old French war, they were really fighting for the region which was to be their future
10
Centennial Historical Address.
-
home, and where they were to lay the foundations of many rich and prosperous States.
The settlement at Marietta in 1788 grew out of an appropriation of lands made by Congress in 1776 to the officers and soldiers of the army. Those who should serve during the war were to receive tracts according to their rank; a Colonel 500 acres, a Lieutenant Colonel 450, and so on. a private soldier 100. In 1780 the act was extended to General officers; a Major-General to receive 1, 100. a Brigadier-General 850. In June 1783. the officers of the army to the number of 2SS. petitioned Congress that the lands to which they were entitled might be located in " that tract of country bounded north on Lake Erie, east on Pennsylvania, south-east and south on the river Ohio, west on a line beginning at that part of the Ohio which lies twenty-four miles west of the mouth of the river Scioto, thence running north on a meridian line till it intersects the river Miami. which falls into Lake Erie, thence down the middle of that river to the Lake." They speak of this tract as " of sufficient extent, the land of such quality and situation. as may induce Congress to assign and mark it out as a tract or territory suitable to form a distinct government (or Colony of the United States), in time to be admitted one of the Confederated States of America:" and also as " a tract of country not claimed as the property of. or within the jurisdiction of, any particular State of the Union."
General Rufus Putnam forwarded this petition to General Washington, accompanying it with a long and able letter, in which he detailed the advantages which the establishment of such a colony would secure to the whole country. He says; " The part which I have
11
General Putnam's Letter to Washington.
taken in promoting the petition is well known, and therefore needs no apology when I inform you that the . signers expect that I will pursue measures to have it laid before Congress; under these circumstances I beg leave to put the petition into your Excellency's hands, and ask with the greatest assurance your patronage of it." He suggests a chain of forts, say twenty miles apart, extending from the Ohio to the Lake by the Scioto or Muskingum. His letter concludes thus: "The petitioners conceive that sound policy dictates the mea- sure, and that Congress ought to lose no time in estab- lishing some such chains of forts as has been hinted at, and in procuring the tract of country petitioned for, of the natives; for the moment this is done, and agrecable terms offered to the settlers, many of the petitioners are determined, not only to become adventurers, but actually to remove themselves to this country; and there is not the least doubt but other valuable citizens will follow their example. and the probability is that the country between Lake Erie and the Ohio will be filled with inhabitants, and the faithful subjects of these United States so established on the waters of the Ohio and the lakes. as to banish forever the idea of our Western territory falling under the dominion of any European power, the frontiers of the old states will be effectually secured from savage alarms, and the new will have little to fear from their insults."
In this letter General Putnam speaks of townships six miles square, with reservations for the ministry and schools-probably the first suggestion of the kind. General Washington immediately transmits this petition. with a copy of General Putnam's letter, to the President of Congress, accompanying it with an earnest letter.
12
Centennial Historical Address.
In April, 1784, General Putnam writes again to Wash- ington, who in his reply expresses great regret at the inaction of Congress. He says, "for surely if justice and gratitude to the army, and general policy of the Union were to govern in this case, there would not be the smallest interruption in granting its request." "
In January, 1786, Generals Rufus Putnam and Ben- jamin Tupper issued a call for a meeting of officers and soldiers and others to form an Ohio Company. The meeting was held in Boston, March Ist, delegates be- ing present from eight counties. General Putnam was the president of the meeting and Major Winthrop Sargent, clerk. A committee was appointed to prepare articles of association, and the Ohio Company of Associates was duly organized. The object was to raise a fund in continental certificates, for the sole purpose of buying western lands in the Western Territory and making a settlement.
The fund was not to exceed a million dollars in continental specie certificates, exclusive of one year's interest, each share to consist of one thousand dollars in certificates and one year's interest; and ten dollars in gold or silver. This interest and the gold and silver were to be used for incidental charges, expenses of agents, &c. No person was to hold more than five shares. An agent represented twenty shares.
The officers were to be five directors, a treasurer, and a secretary, to be appointed by the agents. The directors were to have sole control of the Company's fund, and the lands purchased were to be divided by lot as the agents should direct.
I. This autograph letter of General Washington, dated ed June, 1784, is among the Putnam papers in the library of Marietta College, presented by Hon. William R. Putnam, grandson of General Rufus Putnamn.
13
The Ohio Company's Purchase.
Three directors were appointed in March, 1787: General Samuel H. Parsons, General Rufus Putnam and Reverend Doctor Manasseh Cutler. Major Win- throp Sargent, was made secretary. At a meeting in August, General James M. Varnum, of Rhode Island, was elected a director, and Richard Platt, of New York, treasurer. Doctor Cutler was employed to pur- chase of Congress land for the Company in the " Great Western Territory of the Union," and in July, 1787, went for that purpose to New York, where the Conti- nental Congress was then in session.
The year 1787 was an eventful year. The present Constitution of the United States was framed, the ordi- nance for the government of the Territory North-west of the River Ohio was enacted, and the purchase of land was made by the Ohio Company. The North American Review for April of this year says: "The ordinance of 1787, and the Ohio purchase were parts of one and the same transaction. The purchase would not have been made without the ordinance, and the or- dinance could not have been enacted except as an essential condition of the purchase."
The contract was made for 1,500,000 acres, Con- gress passing an act to that effect July 27th, acceding to the terms proposed by Doctor Cutler; the ordinance for the Territory having been passed on the 13th of the month.
This is the place to speak particularly of two men in connection with this settlement. Many of the early settlers were eminent men. No other settlement of modern times can show so many-but two were especi- ally prominent, General Rufus Putnam and Doctor Manasseh Cutler.
14
Centennial Historical Address.
General Putnam early conceived the idea of an or- ganized emigration to the West. He wrote to Wash- ington in 1783. and again in 1784; he had previously, in 1773, explored West Florida with reference to grants from the British Government for those who had served in the French War. He presided at the meeting called to form the Ohio Company, and was chairman of the committee to draft the articles of association. He was one of the three directors first appointed, and after the purchase he was appointed Superintendent of all the business of the company relating to the settlement of the lands. He was at once appointed a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, very soon was made one of the three Judges of the Territory, and later became the Sur- veyor-General of the United States. Before coming to Ohio he had risen from the position of a common sol- dier to the rank of Brigadier-General. He had the con- fidence of Washington. In every position in which he was placed he succeeded. By the force of his charac- ter, by his integrity, his energy, he accomplished what- ever he undertook. It is impossible to study the history of those times and the part he acted without being im- pressed with the solidity and excellence of his character. intellectual and executive, moral and religious. In a community of able men, many of them highly educated. General Putnam was from the first the leading man.
Doctor Cutler was not among the pioneers, though his children were; his connection and agency were es- pecially in the purchase of the land, and in framing the ordinance of ITS7: He was a highly cultivated man, a graduate of Yale College, and a member of divers philo- sophical societies. At that time he was pastor of a church in Eastern Massachusetts. He was at the meeting, March
15
The Ordinance of 1787.
Ist, 1786, was placed on the committee to draft articles, all the others being military men, and was made a di- rector with General Putnam and General Parsons. He was appointed to purchase the land, and while making the negotiation the ordinance of 1787 was enacted.
An ordinance for the North-west Territory had been reported in Congress in March, 1784, by a com- mittee of which Mr. Jefferson was chairman. It pro- hibited slavery after 1800, but this restricting clause was stricken out. It was passed April 23d, and remained on the statute book till repealed by the ordinance of 1787. Various efforts had been made to improve it, but without success.
Dr. Cutler reached New York July 5th. On the 9th a new committee on the ordinance was appointed. On the I Ith the ordinance was reported, and on the 13th it was passed, with but one vote against it. No act of legislation by any legislative body in the United States has been more highly praised than this. Mr. Webster says: "We are accustomed to praise the law-givers of an- tiquity; we help to perpetuate the fame of Solon and Lycurgus; but I doubt whether one single law of any law-giver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked, and lasting character than the ordinance of 1787."
Judge Timothy Walker says: "It approaches as near to absolute perfection as anything to be found in the legislation of mankind."
For this immortal ordinance we are largely, per- haps chiefly, indebted to Dr Cutler. The evidence of his agency in it has been recently re-examined and pre- sented by a writer in the North American Review, and it seems to be unanswerable. This ordinance was
16
Centennial Historical Address.
the first under which any Territory was organized, and it has been the model for all those that have since been enacted.
How great the obligations of the great North-west and of the whole country are to this quiet Massachusetts clergyman, are thus apparent. Far distant be the day when the county of Washington, the State of Ohio, and the whole North-west shall cease to cherish the names and memory of Rufus Putnam and Manasseh Cutler.'
The contract for the sale of 1,500,000 acres to the Ohio Company was duly signed Oct. 27, 1787, by Samuel Osgood and Arthur Lee, of the Board of Trea- sury of the United States, and by Manasseh Cutler and Winthrop Sargent for the Ohio Company. Payment was to be made " in specie, loan office certificates re- duced to specie, or certificates of the liquidated debt of the United States." The price was one dollar an acre, liable to a reduction "by an allowance for bad land, and all incidental charges and circumstances whatever ; pro- vided that all such allowance shall not exceed, in the whole, one-third of a dollar per acre." Rights for 4 : counties of land to the army might be used in pay- ment, but not for more than one-seventh of the whole tract.
The tract was bounded on the east by the seventh range of townships, south by the Ohio, west by the west boundary of the seventeenth range, extending so far north that an east and west line would embrace the number of acres, besides the reservations. These were section sixteen for schools : twenty-nine for the support of religion ; eight. eleven and twenty-six to be disposed of by Congress; and two townships for a university.
1. In the " Lives of the Early Settlers of Ohio," by Dr S. P. Hildreth, to7 pages are devoted to General Putman. A biography of Doctor Cutler is in preparation by Rev. I'dwin MI. Stone, of Providence, Rhode Island, and will soon be published.
17
The Ohio Company and Congress in 1792.
The contract authorized the settlers to enter at once upon half of the tract extending west to the west line of the fifteenth township.
The Company paid half the purchase money when the contract was made; the land to be conveyed when the payment should be complete. But the failure of some of the shareholders to make their payments, the expenses of the Indian war, and losses sustained through their treasurer, so embarrassed the Company that it was impossible for them to pay the remaining $500,000. Early in 1792 the directors met in Philadelphia and memorialized Congress for relief. The Committee of the House of Representatives, to whom the memorial was referred, reported in favor of releasing the Com- pany from the remaining payment, and giving a deed for the whole tract. The House, however, modified this and passed a bill, authorizing a conveyance for that half of the tract already paid for (750,000 acres), another conveyance for 214,285 acres (one-seventh of the ori- ginal purchase) to be paid for within six months by warrants issued for bounty rights, and one for 100,000 acres which was to be conveyed in tracts of 100 acres as a bounty to each male person of eighteen years of age, being an actual settler. The bill further provided that the Company might receive a conveyance for the remainder of the 1,500,000 acres on the payment for the same within six years at the rate of twenty-five cents an acre with interest. This last provision was stricken out in the Senate, and the one providing for 100,000 acres of donation lands was saved by the cast- ing vote of the Vice-President.
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