Contents ▼▲
Front Matter Benjamin's Story The Ohio Company Rufus Putnam Colonel Putnam, Engineer The First Emigrants Building a Fleet Campus Martius Arrival of General Putnam Work of the First Emigrants Clearing the Land How Our Company was Formed Making Ready for the Journey Concerning Myself Setting Out Mistress Devoll's Outfit At Providence The Road to Blooming Grove Plans for the Future On the Water Once More Feasting on Honey Among the Moravians The Rope Ferry The Way Thru Pennsylvania The Shame of the Girls Meeting With Parson Cutler Ohio Cornfields The Governor and Judges The Name of the Town Campus Martius Independence Day Master Devoll's House The Indian Mounds At Harrisburg Isaac Barker's Sport Uncle Daniel Carter Uncle Daniel Joins Us Hard Traveling Mud and Water A Storm of Snow Across the Mountains A Friendly Dunkard Master Hiples's Kindness A Surly Landlord Isaac Flogs the Landlord A Much Needed Lesson A Time of Rest Pack Trains A Night Adventure Women and Children Descending The Mountains The Foot of the Hills Nearing Journey's End At Sumrill's Ferry Parting With Uncle Daniel Our Flatboat The Cattle Are Sent Away At Pittsburgh Too Much Water Escape of the Women Repairing Damages Our Pilot A Change Of Weather Noisy Fear A Real Feast Finding The Canoe Buffalo Creek A March Across Country At Marietta Plans for the Future Inspecting Marietta A Temporary Home Buying Land Visiting the Savages Captain Haskell's Advice A New Friend Fishing Through the Ice The Sabbath in Marietta A Regular Business A Visit from the Savages Building a Home A Great Project The Two Millers Savages on the Warpath

Benjamin of Ohio - James Otis




The Ohio Company

This is the story as I have heard it from General Putnam himself. It seems that when our war for independence came to an end, the government did not have money enough with which to pay the soldiers for their services, or, as Parson Cutler says, the country was much the same as bankrupt; General Washington himself declared that a wagonload of Continental money would be hardly sufficient to purchase a wagon-load of provisions.

[Illustration] from Benjamin of Ohio by James Otis

Now of course these soldiers must have their wages, and some men in the Congress proposed that the government sell land in the western country in order to raise enough money.

While this matter was being talked about, Congress ordered that a survey be made of the western lands, and Rufus Putnam himself received an appointment as one of the surveyors; but, not being able to attend to the work personally, he induced an old comrade, by the name of Benjamin Tupper, to take his place.

[Illustration] from Benjamin of Ohio by James Otis

When Master Tupper came back to the eastern colonies, after having been over the land, he told General Putnam what a great, grand country it was; and it is said that the two old comrades sat up all night talking over plans for buying land enough to form a colony, and that by daybreak they had decided to call a meeting of the citizens of Massachusetts and the nearby states, to be held at the Bunch of Grapes tavern in Boston, early in the month of March, 1786. This meeting was held, and a company was organized, to be known as the Ohio Associates.

The government had decided to use this land, as I have said, to pay off the soldiers, and this company, formed by General Putnam, employed Parson Manasseh Cutler and Master Winthrop Sargent to make a bargain with Congress. These two men offered to buy one million, five hundred thousand acres of land at one dollar an acre, paying down five hundred thousand dollars when the contract was signed, with the debts due the soldiers reckoned as so much ready money.

Those who had banded themselves together could not raise the remaining million dollars, and the result was that the government cut down the agreement so that our Ohio Company had at its disposal a little more than a million acres of land, instead of a million and a half.