The Arrival of General Putnam

It was while they were building this fleet that General Putnam's party joined them, and on the first day of April the new Mayflower, together with the smaller craft, began the voyage down the Ohio, arriving opposite Fort Harmar on the seventh day of April. There were forty-eight men on board the vessels: four surveyors with twenty-two others to attend them, six boat builders, four carpenters, one blacksmith, and eleven so-called common hands.

I myself have heard General Putnam say that when his company arrived at Swatara Creek it was frozen over, but not sufficiently hard to bear the weight of the wagon, and they spent one entire day cutting a passage through the ice. Then, later, he says so great was the quantity of snow as to block up the roads, and when they got as far as Cooper's, at the foot of the Tuscarora mountains, they found old snow twelve inches deep. Nothing save pack horses had passed over it, therefore it was necessary to build sleds and harness the animals one before the other, with the men marching in front to break out the roads, and thus they continued until arriving at the Youghiogheny, as I have already said.

As you know, our town of Marietta is on the Muskingum River at its mouth where it empties into the Ohio, and I am sending you such a drawing as I have been able to make, so that you may know just where we are located.