CHAPTER III

THE FIRST SETTLEMENT IN THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY UNDER THE ORDINANCE OF 1787

When George Washington said farewell to his officers at the end of the Revolutionary War, he gave them this admonition:

“The extensive and fertile regions of the West will yield a most happy asylum to those who, fond of domestic enjoyment, are seeking for personal independence.”

While Washington did not become a shareholder in the Ohio Company of Associates, several circumstances give evidence as to his having been active in its planning.

Having personally visited the Ohio country in 1770 for the purpose of studying and selecting lands, his selection of some 40,000 acres in Virginia and Ohio for himself; and the comments in his journal of the trip give ample evidence of his enthusiasm for this part of the West. His repeated statement during the Revolution that in case of failure to achieve independence the troops should “retire to the Ohio Country and there be free”; his long and earnest efforts to open up routes to the West by canal and by road; his great friendship and admiration for Rufus Putnam; and his later decisive steps in sending Anthony Wayne to put a final end to the question of Indian land titles and warfare; all these indicate far more than a casual interest in the plans for and success of this first western colony.

Washington had himself earlier attempted to establish a colony on the Great Kanawha River south of the present town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. We can readily imagine that he may have deliberately refrained from becoming an Ohio Company Associate because of the implications of personal interest which might follow. But when, on April 7, 1788, a group of his former officers made the first settlement in the Northwest Territory, at Marietta, Washington exclaimed:

“No colony in America was ever settled under such favorable auspices as that which has just commenced on the banks of the Muskingum. Information, property, and strength will be its characteristics. I know many of the settlers personally, and there never were men better calculated to promote the welfare of such a community.”

The founders of Marietta settled in the West to regain the fortunes they had lost in the Revolution. Some of them earned nothing from their professions during the eight years of the war. They received little or no pay for their military services, because Congress had no power to raise money by levying taxes. Finally, they were paid with certificates issued by the Continental Congress. Because these notes were worth only about twelve cents on the dollar the expression, “not worth a Continental,” became a by-word. In desperation the officers looked to the public land of the West with its fertility, timber, fur, and game as a place to find the necessities of life. They were not speculators; they were pioneers in search of homes for themselves and their children.

Several unsuccessful attempts had been made by the soldiers to secure land in the West before Congress finally granted them a place to settle. As early as September, 1776, Congress tried to encourage enlistment by offering bounties of land—five hundred acres to a colonel, 100 acres to a private, and other ranks in proportion. At the time this offer was made, the government owned no public land, nor did it until the winning of the Northwest by George Rogers Clark, the cession of land claims by the states, and Indian treaties had provided a public domain. In hope of securing grants in this presumed domain Colonel Timothy Pickering in 1783 formulated “Propositions for Settling a New State by Such Officers and Soldiers of the Federal Army as Shall Associate for that Purpose.” He suggested that Congress purchase lands from the Indians and give tracts to soldiers in fulfillment of the bounty promises of 1776. In the hands of Putnam this suggestion became the “Newburgh Petition,” which was forwarded to Congress with the signatures of about 288 officers in the Continental Line of the Army. With this petition Putnam sent a letter to Washington in which he asked support for the appeal of the signers and outlined their plan. His letter included such wise suggestions as the exchange of land for public securities, the adoption of the township system of survey, and the advantage of settlements of soldiers in the West as outposts against danger from the Indians or from the English in Canada. In a belated response to these demands Congress enacted on May 20, 1785, “An Ordinance for ascertaining the mode of disposing of lands in the Western Territory,” which applied to the lands won from England, ceded by the states and now purchased from the Indians. This ordinance made no provision for government in the West, and, although the “seven ranges” just west of the Pennsylvania border were surveyed and offered for sale according to its provisions, but little land was sold and this attempt at westward settlement was a comparative failure.

This further reflects the determination of the American people to have an acceptable and agreed-upon form of government upon which to build a new country.

[Illustration: RUFUS PUTNAM

_Drawn by Herbert Krofft, Zanesville, Ohio_]

In these efforts of the officers to secure western lands, Putnam was the leader. Putnam had been well taught in the school of experience. After his father’s death, he had gone, at the age of nine, to live with his stepfather, who made him work hard and would not permit him to go to school. “For six years,” Putnam said, “I was made a ridecule of, and otherwise abused for my attention to books, and attempting to write and learn Arethmatic.” At the age of 16 he was bound as apprentice to a millwright. Three years later he decided to escape from the severity of his master and seek adventure by joining the English army in the French and Indian War. He returned home from his second enlistment in disgust, because he had been made to work in the mills when he wanted to fight the French and Indians. After working seven years as a millwright, he turned to farming and surveying. Soon after the outbreak of the Revolution he was appointed military engineer. Later in the war he constructed the fortifications at West Point and suggested that place for a military school. He retired from the army a brigadier general and returned to farming and surveying. Putnam was appointed by Congress surveyor on the seven ranges of townships provided for by the Land Ordinance of 1785; but he resigned to survey lands in Maine for his own state and recommended Brigadier General Benjamin Tupper for the position in Ohio.

Tupper was so closely associated with Putnam in western plans that the two men have been called twin brothers. It has been suggested that the two men deliberately investigated land available for purchase in two different regions to compare their advantages. Tupper was stopped at Pittsburgh by Indian trouble, but he heard favorable reports of the Ohio country, which made him enthusiastic for settlement. He hurried eastward and arrived at Rutland on January 9, 1786. Before the blazing fireplace in Putnam’s home the two men talked all night about their dream of settlement in the West. When the morning light gleamed through the windows of the kitchen, the ineffectual hopes of the army officers had been forged into a practical plan of action by the enthusiasm of Putnam and Tupper. On January 25, 1786, Massachusetts newspapers published an invitation to officers and others interested in western settlement to meet in their respective counties and appoint delegates to convene at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern in Boston to form an organization for the purpose.

Although this call was sent out three years after the Newburgh Petition, the prompt response of the officers showed that there had been no decline in interest. The Ohio Company of Associates resulted from this meeting.

It has been pointed out that most of those attending were also members of the military Society of the Cincinnati, so named because the Revolutionary soldiers thought they resembled the Roman soldier Cincinnatus in leaving their farms and work to save their country. No doubt the hope of western migration had been kept alive by discussion at the meetings of the Cincinnati. Most of those men also belonged to the Masonic Lodge, and this association also unified and perpetuated the ideas included in the Newburgh Petition of which most of them had been signers.

At the meeting in Boston on March 1 the delegates elected Putnam chairman and Major Winthrop Sargent clerk. One thousand “shares” were planned, and no person was permitted to hold more than five shares or less than one share, except that several persons could own one share in partnership. To facilitate the transaction of business, one agent was elected by each group of 20 shares to represent their interest at meetings of the company. Putnam, Manasseh Cutler, and General Samuel Holden Parsons, were appointed directors to manage the affairs of the company. Sargent was elected secretary and later General James M. Varnum was made a director and Colonel Richard Platt treasurer. All land was to be divided equally among the shares by lot. One year after the organization of the company 25 shares had been subscribed, and Parsons, Putnam, and Cutler were appointed to purchase a tract of land from Congress.

Although largely responsible for shaping the beginning of the new colony, Cutler did not move to the tract he purchased; he later visited the infant settlement, however, and his sons, Ephraim, Jervis, and Charles, became pioneer residents of the Northwest Territory.

Cutler contracted to purchase for the Ohio Company a million and a half acres at one dollar per acre, less one third of a dollar for bad lands and the expenses of surveying. Because the public securities with which payment was to be made were worth only twelve cents on the dollar, the actual purchase price was eight or nine cents per acre. The tract was bounded on the east by the Seven Ranges, which had been surveyed and offered for sale under the Land Ordinance of 1785, on the south by the Ohio River, and on the western side by the seventeenth Range; it extended far enough north to include in addition to the purchase one section of 640 acres in each township for the support of religion, one section for the support of schools, two entire townships for a university, and three sections for the future disposition of Congress. An interesting phase of this provision of the contract with the government was that the Ordinance of 1787 itself made no specific provision for public school lands, lands for support of religion, or for university purposes. The Land Ordinance of 1785 had provided for the setting aside of one section in each township for public schools, but for neither religion nor universities. But, so earnest of purpose were the men who had written into the Ordinance of 1787 “Religion, morality and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged,” that in their bargaining with the land commissioners, insistence was made upon these specific reservations. And so, perhaps outside the formal tenets of law, was furthered a public land policy which has done much to make our public school and university educational system an integral and distinctive feature of this government.

Five hundred thousand dollars was to be paid when the contract was signed and the same amount when the United States completed the survey of the boundary lines of the tract. The contract was signed on October 27, 1787, by Cutler and Sargent for the Ohio Company, and by Samuel Osgood and Arthur Lee for the Treasury Board, as commissioners of public lands. Because the company could not pay the second installment when it was due, the tract was reduced in size from a million and a half acres to 1,064,285 acres when the patent was issued on May 20, 1792. By giving 100,000 acres for donation lands to actual settlers, Congress reduced the final purchase to 964,285 acres.

In conformity with the Articles of Association the shareholders received equal divisions of the purchase. Instead of the 1000 shares originally expected, 822 were subscribed. When the final apportionment was made, each share received a total of 1,173.37 acres in seven allotments of eight acres, three acres, a house lot of .37 acres, 160 acres, 100 acres, a 640 acre section, and 262 acres.

Had army pay certificates been worth par, the maximum holding for any individual would have been about $5900, and from that amount down to a fractional part of $1173. In such sized holdings there could be little suggestion of either speculation or monopoly. The army certificates being depreciated in value as they were, the real value of holdings, in hard money, varied from about $700 down to a few dollars. On such vast capital was America started across a continent!!

The Ohio Company purchase was located on the Muskingum River for several reasons. Since the Associates of this Company expected to engage in farming, and since they were the first settlers, many have wondered why they did not choose a level tract rather than the hilly section of the Muskingum. The answers are several: Although they were the first settlers, they did not have first choice. Southern Ohio was the only part of the territory to which the United States could give clear title. Connecticut withheld her Western Reserve of three and a quarter million acres east of the Fort McIntosh Treaty line. The western land lying between the Scioto and Little Miami Rivers was under Virginia option. Since a location west of the Little Miami would have been too far from the settled part of the country, a tract of suitable size for the Ohio Company could be found only in the southeast part of the present state of Ohio. The southern location just west of the Seven Ranges was closer to New England and was on the then greatest thoroughfare of western travel, the Ohio River. Furthermore, the Muskingum region was as far distant as possible from the Indian settlements farther west. Another advantage was the protection afforded by Fort Harmar, which had been constructed in 1785 by United States troops under command of Major John Doughty for the purpose of stopping illegal occupation of the land. Also, the settlers would have as neighbors 13 families on the patent of Isaac Williams, which lay on the Virginia side of the Ohio, opposite the mouth of the Muskingum. In making his choice of location, Cutler considered all these factors as well as the advice of Thomas Hutchins, geographer of the United States, who told him that the Muskingum Valley was, in his opinion, “the best part of the whole of the western country.”

As soon as the purchase was assured, the Ohio Company started systematic preparation for settlement. Putnam was elected superintendent. Plans were made in Boston for a city of 4000 acres with wide streets and public parks at the mouth of the Muskingum. One hundred houses were to be constructed on three sides of a square for the reception of settlers. For making surveys and preparing for immigrants, the superintendent was ordered to employ four surveyors and 22 assistants, six boat builders, four house carpenters, one blacksmith, and nine laborers. Each man was required to furnish himself with rifle, bayonet, six flints, powder horn and pouch, half a pound of powder, one pound of balls, and one pound of buckshot. Surveyors were to receive $27 a month, and laborers $4 per month and board. Although these plans were made when it was midwinter and travel was difficult, no time was to be lost. These were men of action. They had waited over three years for Congress to make it possible to carry out their purposes. Putnam decided to lead an advance expedition to the Muskingum to be ready for surveying and building and planting early in the spring, and in _five weeks_ after the land contract was signed, they were on their way.

There is a substantial lesson in this for us who today profess heartfelt desires and intensities of purpose. Ahead of these men lay months of winter, severe enough in the settled communities but far more to be feared in the hazardous wilderness of the Alleghany Mountains. Travel by foot, for 800 miles with a plodding ox team for part of their baggage, over the roughest of roads and uncharted trails, and across swollen streams was to be their lot. So severe was the risk that no women could accompany the party. During the trip and at its end possible Indian attacks endangered them. Such was their prospect which they faced cheerfully, unflinchingly and enthusiastically.

[Illustration: PIONEER PARTY

_Drawn by Betty Kimmell, Vincennes, Ind._]

The company of 48 men was divided into two parties. The boat builders and their assistants, 22 in number, met at Cutler’s home in Ipswich, Massachusetts, on December 3, 1787. Cutler not only helped to fashion the government for the Ohio Company of Associates; he also provided for their migration a wagon covered with black canvas and lettered with his own handwriting “For the Ohio Country.” At dawn the men paraded to hear an address from Cutler, fired three volleys with their rifles, and went to Danvers, Massachusetts, where Major Haffield White assumed command. With their plodding ox team they took a route south and then southwest over stage coach roads, mountain trails, or cutting their own path as they went, to the old Glade Road westward through Pennsylvania. After a toilsome journey, they reached Sumrill’s Ferry on the Youghiogheny River 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh on January 23, nearly eight weeks after leaving home. At this place (now West Newton, Pa.) they started to build boats in readiness for the arrival of the other party.

Putnam assembled the second party of 26 surveyors and assistants at Hartford, Connecticut, on January 1, 1788. But business at the war office in New York required him to send the party ahead under the leadership of Colonel Ebenezer Sproat and rejoin them at Swatara Creek between present Harrisburg and Lebanon, Pennsylvania. When Putnam arrived, progress was delayed because the ice on the creeks would not support wagons. With the courage and energy developed by long military service, Putnam set the men to work cutting an opening so that the stream could be forded. During the day spent in cutting ice a heavy snow blocked the roads and made travel difficult. At Cooper’s Tavern near the foot of Tuscarora Mountain the snow was so deep that they were forced to abandon their wagons and build sledges to carry baggage and tools. The horses were then hitched to the sledges in single file, and the men walked ahead to break a path. After two weeks of this slow travel, they arrived at Sumrill’s Ferry on February 14.

[Illustration: PIONEER SETTLERS BUILDING ADVENTURE GALLEY ON THE YOUGHIOGHENY]

On account of the severe cold and deep snow little progress had been made by White’s men in building boats; but with the arrival of the superintendent and more laborers the work went ahead rapidly under the direction of Jonathan Devol, a ship builder. The largest boat was a galley constructed of heavy timber to deflect bullets and covered with a deck-roof high enough for a man to walk upright under the beams. It was 50 feet long and 13 feet wide with an estimated carrying capacity of 21 tons, although, as Putnam records it, it was of green timber and its real capacity, therefore, uncertain. The _Adventure Galley_ is the name commonly ascribed to this boat, although as an afterthought some called it the _American Mayflower_. Rufus Putnam in his diary written at the time calls it “Union Galley.” Since one boat would not transport the 48 men with their horses, tools, baggage, and food to support them until their crops matured, a large flatboat, 28’ x 8’, and three canoes were also constructed. It will be interesting to know something of what these “canoes” were like. They were not the hollowed-out log Indian canoes, nor were they of birch bark. Putnam describes them as of two tons, one ton, and 800 pounds burthen, respectively.

The popular small boat of the Ohio River, large enough to carry more than would the log canoe, was called a pirogue. It was a log canoe split in half lengthwise and with a wide flat section inserted between the two halves. This made a substantial and safer boat, with greatly increased carrying capacity, yet easy to handle, and, of course, easy for the pioneers to build with the primitive materials at hand.

And, speaking of boats and pioneers, Cutler records in his diary that on August 15, 1788, Tupper, who had been among the original party of settlers, took him down the river to see his new “mode for propelling a boat instead of oars.” This consisted of a “machine in the form of a screw with short blades, and placed in the stern of a boat, which we turned with a crank. It succeeded to admiration, and I think it a very useful discovery.” Thus, in the wilderness of Northwest Territory and 50 years before it came into general use, the screw propeller was invented and successfully demonstrated.

On April 1, 1788, the 48 pioneer settlers of the Northwest Territory launched their boats out into the Youghiogheny and pushed down that river to the Monongahela. At Pittsburgh they swung out into the current of the broad Ohio. John Mathews had been working since February 27 to collect provisions for the expedition at the mouth of Buffalo Creek (now Wellsburg, West Virginia). The horses, oxen and wagons had been sent overland to this point. After stopping the entire day of April 5 to load these provisions, and their equipment, the little flotilla floated on and arrived at the mouth of the Muskingum on the morning of April 7. The banks of the Muskingum at that time were lined with tall sycamores, which leaned out over the water, and so narrowed the mouth that the pioneers could not see it through the rain. Consequently the current carried them past the mouth of the Muskingum and below Fort Harmar. With ropes and the help of soldiers from the fort, the boats were towed back into the Muskingum. Then the pioneers rowed across and landed at noon above the upper point.

In what sense were these 48 founders of Marietta the first settlers in the Northwest Territory? Certainly they were not the first white men to live in the Ohio country. Sault Ste. Marie was planted by Marquette in 1668, 120 years before the founding of Marietta. Burke A. Hinsdale has said that the French posts—Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Vincennes, and many others—in the old Northwest contained a population of 2500 people in 1766. Wisconsin, northern Minnesota, Michigan, and Illinois had been major scenes of French exploration and settlement for a hundred years. But the French made no attempt to colonize their settlements; they preferred to keep the wilderness a vast, unbroken game preserve for trapping furs and Indian trading.

When the English secured possession of the country northwest of the Ohio River at the end of the French and Indian War, the British government angered the colonies, first by the decree of 1763 forbidding settlement, and later by ignoring the colonial charters which had granted the colonies territory “from sea to sea” and passing the Quebec Act of 1774, in which representative government was abolished.

It is not possible, a hundred and fifty years later, even if it were possible at the time, to interpret the working of the minds of the English king and council. It is a fair surmise, however, supported by considerable evidence, that the crown then saw the threat of American independence, if the American people could establish themselves in this vast and fertile empire beyond the mountains where physical geography alone would make it impossible for the mother country to hold the colonies in subjection or enforce her decrees upon them.

[Illustration: LANDING OF PIONEER SETTLERS IN NORTHWEST TERRITORY AT MARIETTA]

As early as 1761 Frederick Post from Pennsylvania, a Moravian missionary to the Indians, built perhaps the first “American’s” house in Ohio on the Tuscarawas River. On May 3, 1772, David Zeisberger and a company of Christian Indians established Moravian villages at Schoenbrunn, Gnadenhutten, and Lichtenau (near present New Philadelphia). Clarksville, now a suburb of Jeffersonville, Indiana, had been established by George Rogers Clark in 1784. Wiseman’s Bottom, four miles above the mouth of the Muskingum, was named after a man who made a clearing as entry right to 400 acres while Virginia still claimed the land north of the Ohio. During the Revolutionary War squatters began to settle northwest of the Ohio. Since these squatters were trespassing on lands reserved by treaty for the Indians, Congress attempted to drive them out. Ensign John Armstrong reported in 1785 that “there are at the falls of the Hawk Hawkin [Hocking River] upwards of 300 families, and at the Muskingum a number equal.” The squatters even elected one William Hogland, governor. These temporary and unlawful settlements would defeat orderly settlement, and deprive the new nation of the income from sale of the lands. To prevent such illegal occupation Fort Harmar was erected on the Ohio at the mouth of the Muskingum.

Marietta was the first legal American settlement northwest of the Ohio River under the Ordinance of 1787.

The Ohio Company of Associates spoke so enthusiastically in praise of their land that other New Englanders jokingly referred to the purchase as “Putnam’s Paradise” and “Cutler’s Indian Heaven.” Aside from the fact that the land was hilly in some sections, it came up to the expectations of the settlers. In contrast to the cold weather they had experienced in Pennsylvania, the pioneers found that the trees were in leaf at the Muskingum and grass was high enough for pasturing their horses. Over the entire region stretched an almost unbroken forest of great poplar, sycamore, maple, oak, hickory, elm, and other trees. Cutler records that on his visit to Marietta he saw a hollow tree forty-one and a half feet in circumference that would hold 84 men or afford room inside for six horsemen to ride abreast. The circles counted in one tree indicated that it was at least 463 years old. In boasting of the fertility of the land one settler wrote that “the corn has grown nine inches in twenty-four hours, for two or three days past.” Buffalo and elk were found in the woods when the pioneers arrived. A hunter could kill 20 deer in one day near Marietta. Wild turkeys weighing from 16 to 30 pounds were caught in pens and clubbed to death. The woods were alive with foxes, opossum, raccoon, beaver, otter, squirrels, rabbits and other small game. Bears, panthers, wild cats, and wolves were a menace to stock. Schools of fish made so much noise with their flopping against the boats that the men could not sleep on board. The largest fish caught were a black catfish weighing 96 pounds and a pike six feet long, weighing almost a hundred pounds.

When the pioneers arrived on April 7, 1788, they were welcomed by approximately 70 Delaware Indians, who were camping at the mouth of the Muskingum to trade furs at Fort Harmar. Their chief, Captain Pipe, assured the white settlers that his people would live at their home on the head waters of the river in peace with their new neighbors. Encouraged by this reception, the men unloaded the boards for their houses the first day and set up a large tent in which Putnam had his headquarters.

On the next day the laborers began clearing land, and on April 9 the surveyors started laying off the eight-acre lots. By April 12 four acres of land had been cleared at “The Point,” and work proceeded rapidly in building cabins and planting seed.

At first the pioneers called their settlement Muskingum. This name was a form of the Delaware word Mooskingung, meaning Elk Eye River in reference to the large herds of elk that ranged in the valley. Cutler’s choice for a name was the Greek word Adelphia, which means brethren. But on July 2, at the first meeting of the directors and agents in the new settlement, it was “resolved, That the City near the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum, be called Marietta.” History generally records that this name was a word formed from the first and last syllables of the name of Queen Marie Antoinette of France, chosen by the veterans of the Revolution as a gallant tribute to the nation which aided them in throwing off the shackles of English rule. Why the final a is uncertain.

Marietta was only the first of the settlements in the Northwest Territory under the ordinance. Many others were to follow rapidly, some destined to become great or small cities, and others to remain as villages. It is worthwhile, however, to follow briefly the history of this first official settlement for its depiction of the type of immigration into the new country and to illustrate the problems settlers faced in pushing America westward.

[Illustration: SETTLERS RECEIVING DEEDS FROM OHIO COMPANY’S LAND OFFICE AT MARIETTA]

For instance, in surveying the city the directors of the Ohio Company provided for wide streets and public parks. The principal streets of 90 feet in width ran parallel to the Muskingum River and were designated by numbers. They were intersected by cross streets named after Washington, Putnam and other Revolutionary generals. The bank of the Muskingum was set aside as a “commons” and dedicated forever to public use. It was called “The Bouery” and is today a public park. Within the city limits the surveyors found extensive earthworks and mounds which supplied mysterious evidence of a prehistoric race, which had sometime constructed a city on the same site. Colonel John May described the cutting of a tree that had grown for 443 years on one of the earthworks. The larger elevated square was named Capitolium, the smaller was called Quadranaou, and the road with high embankments from the river to the “Forty acre fort” was officially designated as Sacra Via. These were all dedicated as public property and are so today. A creek which emptied into the Muskingum below Campus Martius was called the Tiber, after the river near Rome. This use of classical names indicates that the cultured founders of Marietta were familiar with Latin and Greek literature.

The first cabins had been built at “the point” and a stockade erected enclosing some four and a half acres. The Indians told the settlers of the flood danger, showing them driftwood and laconically pointed out that “where water has been water will be again.”

In platting the city-to-be the pioneers, therefore, laid out an extremely broad street on high ground as the intended main street of the town, and named it for Washington. The complete dependence of the time upon river transportation and the distance of Washington Street from the Ohio River prevented its attaining its designed purpose and the business district of the city has never since realized the expectation of those first settlers.

Early in May, when the crops had been planted in the clearing and cabins had been constructed at “Picketed Point,” Putnam decided from his study of treaties at the war office in New York that the tribes would not permit their lands to be occupied without a struggle. May wrote in his Journal: “At Boston we have frequent alarms of fire, and innundations of the tide; here the Indians answer the same purpose.” On account of the danger of Indian attack all men not needed in the survey were put to work at the construction of an impregnable fort. This defense was called Campus Martius, after a name applied to a grassy plain along the Tiber in ancient Rome where military drills and elections had been held. The phrase literally means “a field dedicated to Mars, the god of war.”

The fortress was located on Washington Street, three quarters of a mile above the Ohio River. It consisted of 14 two-story houses arranged in the form of a hollow square, which measured 180 feet on a side. At each corner of the square stood a blockhouse with projecting upper story. Loopholes were cut in the projecting floor for showering bullets on Indian attackers. The entire fort was constructed of poplar planks four inches thick and 18 to 20 inches wide, which men hewed and whipsawed from the huge poplar trees that grew along the Muskingum. In one of the fort’s houses, which became Rufus Putnam’s home after the fort was dismantled, and which is now part of Campus Martius Museum, can still be seen the original timbers and form of construction. In the timbers, hewn in pre-determined shapes, were stamped Roman numerals, and by matching corresponding numbers, the artisans of that day were able to assemble the timbers into complete and substantial structures.

The blockhouses and part of the dwellings were built at the expense of the Ohio Company. On July 21, 1788, the directors ordered that carpenters be employed at half a dollar a day and one ration to complete the blockhouses, and that laborers be paid seven dollars per month and one ration per day. It was provided

“That a Ration consists of 1½ [lbs.] of Bread or Flour.

“1 lb. of Pork or Beef, Venison or other meat equivalent.

“1 Gill of Whisky.

“Vegetables.”

The complete structure contained 72 rooms. When the Indians finally went on the war path, the inhabitants constructed three lines of defense outside the fortress. A row of palisades sloped outward to rest on rails, a line of pickets stood upright in the earth 20 feet beyond the palisades, and a barrier of trees with sharpened boughs formed the first defense. Ammunition, cannon, and spears were stored in convenient places. The northeast blockhouse was used for religious meetings and sessions of the courts. At the outbreak of the Indian Wars in 1791, Campus Martius became the principal refuge of the people in Marietta. Of it, Putnam, who had built West Point and many other Revolutionary War fortifications, wrote that it was the finest fort in the United States.

While Campus Martius was being constructed, the survey was continued, the crops were planted and cabins erected and new settlers arrived. When John May arrived with a party of 11 men on May 26 and was invited to dinner by General Josiah Harmar, he was served, according to his diary, “beef a la mode, boiled fish, bear-steaks, roast venison, etc., excellent succotash, salads, and cranberry sauce.” Venison sold for two cents a pound and bear meat at three cents. May was surprised to see in Doughty’s garden an orchard of apple and peach trees and “cotton growing in perfection.”

Varnum arrived with a company of 40 settlers on June 5. Among them were James Owen and his wife, Mary Owen, the first woman who settled in the community. The settlers were so industrious that by June 20, 132 acres had been planted in corn in addition to large fields in potatoes, beans, and other vegetables.

As soon as the pioneers had provided shelter for themselves, they organized a temporary government to insure order and safety until the arrival of the officers of the Northwest Territory. On June 13 at an informal meeting of the directors and agents of the Ohio Company, it was decided that the directors present should act as a board of police to draw up a set of laws for the community. Colonel Return Jonathan Meigs was appointed to administer them. At the first official meeting of the directors the board of police was confirmed. The regulations provided for cleanliness, health, decency, safety, and moral conduct. Military guard was established. If any persons arrived who were not stockholders in the Ohio Company, the board of police was empowered to decide whether or not they should be permitted to stay. Settlers were required to carry arms during their work in the fields. No one was allowed to trade with the Indians without permission from the board or from Fort Harmar. Punishment for violation of the laws was to consist of either labor for the public, or expulsion. As evidence of the orderly conduct of the settlers it has been pointed out that in three months there was only one difference, and that was compromised. On July 4 the board of police nailed these temporary laws to the smooth trunk of a large beech tree near the mouth of the Muskingum.

On July 4 all work was suspended to celebrate the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Since most of the settlers had served in the Revolutionary Army, they observed the occasion with feelings of intense patriotism. A federal salute of 13 guns from Fort Harmar opened the celebration at dawn. At “The Point” on the east bank of the Muskingum a table 60 feet long was spread with wild meat, fish, vegetables, grog, punch, and wine. Harmar arrived with his lady and officers from the fort at one o’clock. Varnum, one of the judges of the territory, then delivered a flowery oration.

After the oration, the guests were twice driven from the table by thunderstorms before they finally finished dinner. The patriotic event continued with the drinking of the following toasts which illustrate the topics of general interest of the time:

1. The United States. 2. The Congress. 3. His Most Christian Majesty, the King of France. 4. The United Netherlands. 5. The Friendly Powers throughout the World. 6. The New Federal Constitution. 7. His Excellency General Washington, and the Society of Cincinnati. 8. His Excellency Governor St. Clair, and the Western Territory. 9. The memory of Those Who Have Nobly Fallen in Defense of American Freedom. 10. Patriots, and Heroes. 11. Captain Pipe, Chief of the Delawares, and a Happy Treaty with the Natives. 12. Agriculture and Commerce, Arts and Sciences. 13. The Amiable Partners of Our Delicate Pleasures. 14. The Glorious Fourth of July.

The Celebration closed with another salute of 13 guns and a “beautiful illumination” at Fort Harmar.