255
GENERAL ARTHUR ST CLAIR
The Columbus Dispatch contained
the following editorial in
its issue of April 5, 1934:
Tuesday was the two hundredth
anniversary of the birth of a man
closely connected with the early history
of Ohio, whose life was a pitiable
tragedy--Gen. Arthur St. Clair, governor
of the Northwest Territory when
Ohio formed the body of it. He was born
in Scotland, April 3, 1734, and
came to America in his young manhood.
With ability as a soldier he served with
the British forces in America
before the Revolution and was with Wolfe
at Quebec. He married an
American girl, daughter of a prominent
Massachusetts family, and served
in the Revolutionary army, being a loyal
supporter of Washington.
Afterwards he entered politics and was
president of the Continental
Congress when the Ordinance of 1787
establishing the Northwest Territory
was enacted, and naturally became its
governor. Sent to subdue Indians in
northwest Ohio, his army was entrapped
and cut to pieces. It was necessary
to send Gen. Anthony Wayne to complete
the task to which St. Clair had
been assigned.
As territorial governor he fell into
conflict with the ruling element in
the state chiefly over the prerogative
of establishing counties, and through
that, out of harmony with President
Jefferson at Washington, and as a result
was removed. The sun of his life seemed
to be setting. His wife, of gentle
breeding, whom he had brought into the
Western wilds, died and with a
daughter he left Ohio to take up his
residence on a small farm he owned near
Ligonier, Pa. There he became a truck
gardener and one day as he was
driving to the village a lurch of the
cart threw him from his seat and he
was fatally injured. In a little country
graveyard not far from the Na-
tional road is his grave marked only by
a headstone which his Masonic
brethren erected, expecting that a more suitable
monument would some day
be placed there by the public. That has
not happened."
It seems appropriate to publish in the
QUARTERLY of the Ohio
State Archaeological and Historical
Society during this bi-cen-
tennial year an article on the first
governor of the territory of
which Ohio was originally a part.