Ohio History Journal

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THE OHIO PROSPECTUS FOR THE YEAR 1775

THE OHIO PROSPECTUS FOR THE YEAR 1775.

 

 

BY A. J. MORRISON, TOLEDO.

The extended advertisement given below in part,1 although

not strictly applicable to the whole of the territory of Ohio today,

is of interest for several reasons.  This statement, skilfully

colored as it is, brings out very well the idea of the Ohio country

as it must have been in many minds at the beginning of the

Revolution. The imagination is afforded material - what would

have been the result if either the Old Company [Ohio Land

Company] or the Walpole Company had accomplished solid

things before the Revolution? In the retrospect we can see that

there was a Divinity shaping our ends at that time.

And quite apart from the statements here made of fact and

fancy-conditions of transportation, the possibility of sending

ocean-going vessels down the Ohio, the suggestion of an agri-

cultural experiment station for the Ohio Valley, specifications for

an Ohio farmstead - the authorship of this pleasing work is an

item of moment, and it is to be regretted that the authorship

cannot be fixed with certainty. Sabin did not live long enough

to reach the letter Y, and to give his grounds for assigning this

"American Husbandry, by an American" to Arthur Young. It is

at least probable that Arthur Young was the author. From 1767

to 1776, when he went to Ireland, not a year passed (but one) in

which Arthur Young did not publish a work or works on the

subject of agriculture. In the bibliographies the year that is

missing is 1775. It is hardly to be supposed that Young stopped

writing for a year; and it is known that he was interested in

America from his first youth, and several times thought of going

there. If he wrote himself down "American" on the title page of

1Drawn from American Husbandry. Containing an Account of the

Soil, Climate, Production, and Agriculture of the British Colonies. By

An American. London, 1775. Vol. II., Chapter, "The Ohio."

(232)