edited by
HENRY J. YEAGER
Nouvelles du Scioto:
The Story of a Fraud
The original settlement of what is now
southern Ohio, at the end of the eighteenth
century, was marred by scandalous
treatment of the French immigrants by the
promoters of the Scioto Land Company.
Through its agency in Paris the com-
pany, using misleading information, sold
land to Frenchmen eager to settle in
America. The Parisians suffered
considerable physical hardship on their voyage,
to say nothing of the mental anguish in
discovering when they disembarked that
they had been badly deceived. One of
them, a young man who calls himself simply
D'Allemagne, published an account of his
adventures when he returned home to
France, and it is this booklet which is
here translated.1
Our primary interest in the booklet is
to derive an understanding of the life
and hardships encountered by these first
French settlers on their way from their
homeland to Ohio. We also get a glimpse
of the French character and social
organization of the time. With typical
Gallic insight into human nature, Monsieur
D'Allemagne analyses his fellow
immigrants and himself, sparing no one's feelings,
least of all his own. He becomes very
much alive for us: an intelligent young man,
discontented with the quiet and comfort
of home, seeking fortune and adventure
elsewhere.
The story of the French settlers in the
Ohio country began when arrangements
for the habitation of the Northwest
Territory were made. By 1783 it had become
clear that Congress would definitely
come into possession of the disputed western
lands, certainly those north of the Ohio
River, and probably all west of the Alle-
ghenies. Provision was made for their
sale and settlement by the Land Ordinance
of 1785. The minimum purchase provided
by the law was $640 for 640 acres--too
expensive for the average settler. As a
consequence, most of the sales were made
to private land companies for resale in
smaller lots. In October 1787, the Ohio
Company purchased from the United States
government one and a half million
acres of land in what is now southern
Ohio.2 At the same time a second contract
was signed, giving purchasing rights for
an additional five million acres to the
1. D'Allemagne, Nouvelles du Scioto,
ou Relation Fidele du voyage et des infortunes d'un parisien
qui arrive de ces pays-la, ou il
etoit alle pour s'etablir (Paris, Chez
Lenoir et Leboucher, Imprimeurs, rue
des Mauvais-Garcons, Faubourg S.
Germain, au Cafe la Fayette; aout, 1790). Only one copy of this
booklet still exists, and that is in the
Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. There is, however, a photocopy of
this text in the Genealogy Section of
the New York Public Library, 42nd Street branch.
2. Payson Jackson Treat, The National
Land System, 1785-1820 (New York, 1967), 35-37, 50-51.
Mr. Yeager is assistant professor of
French at Rutgers University.
262
OHIO HISTORY
Scioto Land Company. The signers of both
contracts were the same, but the
Scioto Company remained a vague
organization, formally constituted only in Paris.
Its sole purpose was to sell its share
of the land to Europeans. But what the com-
pany sold were not land titles but
merely options to buy.3
Agents of the Scioto Company in Paris
sold land either for pure speculation,
for settlement, or for both. Accounts
differ as to the motives of the company.
One commentator calls it "an
organization of rogues"4 while another attributes the
cause of its misrepresentations to a
"poetic" agent.5 Poetry perhaps, untruths
certainly! The potential settlers were
told, among other things, that the land was
already cleared and settlements
constructed,6 that it was only forty leagues to
Ohio from Alexandria, Virginia, the port
of debarkation for the immigrants, and
that this trip could be made entirely by
water.7 Trees were supposed to produce
sugar spontaneously, and plants to yield
ready-made candles.8 No less a person
than Thomas Hutchins, Chief Geographer
of the United States, was cited in the
Prospectus of the Scioto Company as supporting its claim that the
soil was extremely
fertile and the climate mild and
delightful.9 D'Allemagne uses a written statement
by the same Hutchins as a preface to his
account.10
Despite the misrepresentations by the
agents of the Scioto Company, one must
not forget that at this particular time
the French were so fascinated by America
that they were willing to be deceived by
such claims. They were interested in
the United States for political, social,
and even literary reasons. Jean-Jacques
Rousseau by the 1760's had already
kindled a lively interest in man in his natural
state. Uncontaminated by civilization,
the "noble savage" was thought to be super-
ior to his cousin in the cities.11 Further,
Rousseau drew attention to the influence
of Nature on the soul of man and the
relationship between the emotions and
3. Treat, National Land System, 58.
4. Henry T. Bannon, Stories Old and
Often Told, Being Chronicles of Scioto County, Ohio (Balti-
more, 1927), 52.
5. From an article by Judge Cutler,
cited in History of the Lower Scioto Valley, Ohio (Chicago,
1884), 32. Judge Cutler was the son of
the Reverend Dr. Manasseh Cutler who was the agent for the
Ohio Company in making its contract with
Congress. As a consequence we would expect Judge Cutler
to be less than severe with the Scioto Company
to prevent any besmirching of the reputation of the
Ohio Company and hence of his father.
6. See maps and inscriptions, pages 264
265
7. As reported by D'Allemagne in the
booklet. At this time in France the league was about 4445
meters, a little over two and a half
miles.
8. C. F. Volney, A View of the Soil
and Climate of the United States of America (Philadelphia,
1804), 322.
9. Much of the information concerning
the western country published in the Prospectus pour
l'etablissement sur les rivieres
d'Ohio et de Scioto, en Amerique (Paris,
1789) was derived from Hutchins'
Description Topographique, a translation of an earlier work by the same author. See
Note 10.
10. 'Having read attentively the
brochure in which is given a description of the Western Territory
of the United States, I, the
undersigned, certify that the facts contained therein relative to the fertility
of the soil, the abundant crops, and
other advantages for farmers are certain and conform to the truth;
and that they correspond perfectly with
the observations that I made during the ten years that I stayed
in that country.'
Signed Thomas Hutchins, Geographer of
the United States
This statement must have appeared as a
certification to a pamphlet by Manasseh Cutler, of which a
translation was made by the Scioto
Company and circulated in Paris as the Description du Sol, des
Productions . . . de cette Portion
des Etats-unis situee entre la Pennsylvanie, les rivieres de l'Ohio et du
Scioto en Amerique en 1787. D'Allemagne surely had access to the brochure and we
can assume the
quotation is correct. The survey of the
western lands, required by the Ordinance of 1785, was entirely
in Hutchins' hands. Undoubtedly he had
no idea that his statement was being used fraudulently.
natural surroundings. And where could the French find examples of man situated far from the corrupting cities of Europe, amid scenery of breath-taking grandeur? In America, of course. Another writer, a bit later than Rousseau, Bernardin de Saint Pierre, expressed somewhat the same ideas, but stressed the beauty of exotic scenery for its own sake.12 His works helped develop a taste for distant places and strange surround- ings. These new ideas, which were beginning to circulate, stirred the imagina- tion of the literate Frenchman and aroused his interest in the New World. A large percentage of the French immigrants to Scioto were well educated, either members of the bourgeoisie or aristocracy. The latter even arranged to bring over laborers with them. Far more practical attractions for the French were low taxes and the political liberty to be found in the United States. The American Revolution, fought in the name of freedom, had aroused sympathy in the French, especially since political ideas were very much on everyone's mind--the French Revolution had already begun but was far from over. Business, D'Allemagne tells us, was already suffering from it. He felt that he might be wise to leave France to escape the uncertainty and possible danger of a political upheaval. In any event, Frenchmen on their way to Ohio started gathering in Le Havre as early as November of 1789, and toward the end of the following February several ships sailed for America. Because of bad weather and difficulties encountered on the voyage they did not all reach their destination at the same time. Neither the journey itself nor the reception in Alexandria was very pleasant. D'Allemagne relates the whole story, vividly and directly. 11. See, for example, his La Nouvelle Heloise or Emile. 12. In particular his Les Etudes de la Nature. |
Legend to maps: 1 Lands ceded to the Army 10 Seven rows of townships acquired 2 The small squares show the manner by individuals and occupied since in which the land will be divided 1786 into townships of six square miles 11 Ohio or the Beautiful River by order of Congress. 12 Ohio County Lead mines 13 Part of Virginia 14 Scale in ordinary English miles 4 Salt springs 15 The English mile equals 825 French 5 Extent of the land acquired by the fathoms Ohio Company 16 Map of the purchases of the Ohio 6 Cleared and inhabited and Scioto Companies 17 Extent [of land] acquired by the Scioto Company 8 Coalfields 18 Lands of the Scioto Company 9 First town 19 Marietta 265 |
266
OHIO HISTORY
News from Scioto:
or The Faithful Telling of the Voyage
and the Misfortunes of a
Parisian Returning from There, Where He
Had Gone to Settle13
Having embarked on the 19th of February
1790 to go to Scioto, I returned to Paris
from America on the 16th of July.
Everyone asks me what I saw, where I was, and
just what is this Scioto. Why
didn't I stay there? They ask a thousand questions.
I answer right and left, but people have
a hard time understanding what I am
saying. Through repeating so often, one
mutilates the facts, exaggerates the details,
and distorts the truth. But I owe
reverence to the truth, and that is what I want to
give here. Everything that I am going to
tell is exact. And although they say a
beau mentir qui vient de loin,14 I will
allow myself neither exaggeration nor reticence.
Everybody in Paris is talking about
Scioto. The disorder which the Revolution
has caused to business makes more easily
creditable the hopes for fortune which
this overseas establishment presents.15
There are three sorts of enthusiasts who
avidly seize this favorable circumstance
for emigration. First of all are those
who, having failed in business, dread their
creditors, and who are lucky enough or
clever enough to have saved back some-
thing from the bankruptcy proceedings,
which are often severe. For these people
it is a need, a necessity to go abroad
and live in a locality where the police cannot
follow.
The second sort are those small
merchants, quite honest, but of limited intelli-
gence, who, bored with their mediocrity
in commercial affairs, but ambitious to
become rich, have the presumption to
believe that by changing the climate they
will do more brilliantly in business.
With this flattering idea in mind, they sell
their little shops; turn everything into
cash: contracts, furniture, etc; bring along
the wife and children; say good-bye
forever to that ungrateful Paris; and come
what may, they go flying toward Scioto .
. . .
The third kind are lazy young men, or
others who have seriously damaged their
financial position, but still feel
courageous enough to work to repair it. Or else
they are workers or craftsmen,
frivolous, fickle, and eager for novelty. For these
people, whatever they have in hand has
no value; they suppose that another sort
of life will be more favorable to them.
Being attached to nothing, they have no
painful sacrifices to make. Just for the
sake of change they are resolved to undergo
anything, attempt anything.
I was in this last class. I am twenty
years old, robust and of sound constitution.
During the Revolution I served
zealously.16 I helped my aunt and uncle in their
business on the rue des Boucheries,17
in the faubourg Saint-Germain. These two
13. For the French title and details on
the publication see Note 1.
14. It is easy for him to lie who comes
from a distance.
15. Although the Revolution had hardly
begun, some of the aristocrats and wealthy bourgeoisie
saw the handwriting on the wall and were
fleeing Paris. The merchants could no longer count on their
patronage; and their servants, who had
been discharged, added to the ranks of the unemployed.
16. This statement, although probably
true considering the author's spirit of adventure, is also a
precautionary one. D'Allemagne wants to
be sure his neighbors do not think his emigration was an
attempt to escape the Revolution,
particularly since his home neighborhood in Paris produced some
of the most active revolutionaries.
Between the fall of the Bastille and his leaving for America there
was not much activity in which he might
have participated. Perhaps he was part of the angry mob
which brought the king from Versailles
to Paris. This was more a period of meetings and manifestos
than of direct action.
Nouvelles du Scioto 267
provided for me and I owe them
everything. With them I lived quietly, happily,
comfortably, until the moment that I
heard people talking about Scioto. Some
fellow citizens, who lived on my street,
were looking into arrangements for making
the trip. They talked to me about their
plans, and their hopes for fortune. My
greedy mind was soon taken over. That
was it. At night I dreamt of nothing any
more except Scioto; during the day I
thought of nothing but Scioto. I cared nothing
about the rest of the world. Paris had
no charm any more; France . . . was nothing
beside Scioto. Happiness was to be found
only there. Boredom took hold of me;
I was not helping my uncle with the same
care as before. I neglected my duties;
his business seemed foreign to me. Only
Scioto had the power to hold me. There
is where I would work with enthusiasm.
How eager I was to leave! My uncle had
consented to my making the trip. Besides
the fact that he did not want to thwart
my wishes, he had decided to let me go
because I would be leaving with fellow
citizens from the rue des Boucheries,
neighbors and acquaintances. There were
eight of us from the same neighborhood,
friends, almost like brothers.
The Scioto Company of Paris had arranged
our route--we would disembark at
Alexandria in Virginia, where the
American branch of the Company was located.18
We were to present ourselves to them and
they were supposed to put us in posses-
sion of the land which had been
bought and paid for in Paris.
So we set sail on the 19th of February,
1790 from Le Harve on the Patriote, a
ship of seventeen cannons.19 The captain
was named Legros, and the ship's fitter,
who was from Le Havre, was called
Ruelan. There were twenty-two men in the
crew. As for the passengers, there were
two hundred twenty of us, of which forty-
two were women, and fifty masters, those
who had acquired land at Scioto; and
the remainder were servants.20
I shall not paint what I felt at the
moment of departure, nor that joy which was
made all the more keen by my impatience
to cast off. I cannot describe either the
sensation impressed upon my
consciousness by the forward thrust of the vessel in
the open sea, nor the palpitation of my
heart, inspired by the sight of that vast
liquid expanse. I shall skip over also
the details of the handling of the ship and
the activities of the deck boys.
All went well, the wind assisted us. I
was busy making sure that I did not miss
anything. Everything was new to me, so I
wanted to see it all.
When meal time arrived, I was hungry and
was prepared for a hearty repast.
At sea, the quality of the provisions is
of great importance.
Starting with the first meal, they put
us on hard tack and salted meat. Just
imagine how happy we were! That hard
tack was seven years old, bought second-
hand from other fitters along the Guinea
coast. It was full of worms, spiders, and
17. The odds are that the uncle of
D'Allemagne was a butcher, as the name of the street implies.
18. Alexandria, Va., at this time was a
major port on the East Coast with a flourishing trade with
the interior of the country. It was the
principal outlet for the products of northern Virginia--flour and
tobacco for the West Indies and Europe.
19. This is not one of the five ships of
immigrants for Scioto mentioned by Belote as having sailed
at the end of February. He does not
claim, however, to give an exhaustive list. Certainly there were
more than five ships which sailed in the
winter and spring of 1790. Theodore Thomas Belote, "The Scioto
Speculation and the French Settlement at
Gallipolis," University Studies, University of Cincinnati,
Series II, Vol. III (Sept.-Oct. 1907),
47.
20. The word "master" (maitre) in this context is chiefly honorific; it refers to
those who possess
land. Although several of the passengers
were accompanied by indentured servants, there is no ques-
tion here of a master-slave
relationship.
268 OHIO
HISTORY
other insects. Along with the hard tack
there were some rotten dried beans and
some spoiled peas. That was all we had
for food! To drink, bad cider. Ah, how I
missed my uncle's house. Every day it
was the same thing. I was nauseated. I think
I would have died of hunger, if I had
not purloined a nice piece of codfish which
I kept well hidden. Every day I would
eat a small piece of it raw.21 From morning
to night we cursed that ship's fitter,
the scoundrel; we commended him to the
devil. In our indignation, in the excess
of our misery, we hung that Rualan [sic] in
effigy. It seemed that he had loaded his
ship with rotten provisions only so that we
would perish on the way.
The weather was not any better than the
food. We had to bear the brunt of
several storms. Below decks was always
full of water. Once for three days all of us
had to stay shut up without seeing the
sky and without getting any food. The cap-
tain, hidden in his cabin, had abandoned
the ship to the storm--she lay hove to.
The captain was as hard as he was
dishonest, a pitiless tyrant, thoughtless and
inconsiderate. He treated us all like
dogs.
It was in this cruel state, in this
situation, as deplorable as it was desperate, that
we made the crossing in seventy-seven
days. We finally arrived on the 6th of May
in the Chesapeack Bay and sailed up the
Pautaumack River22 to Alexandria in
Virginia.
One can imagine our joy to be back on
land after having suffered so much and
having endured such harsh treatment, and
after being deprived for so long of the
necessities. Ah, nothing would equal the
happiness which was going to be ours;
nothing could express our enthusiasm,
the intoxication which filled us as we left
the sea behind us.
Famished for three days, badly nourished
for two months and a half, how we
needed good food. How pleasant and
delicious it was going to seem to us!
Vain wait, illusive desire! From the
time we first touched land at the mouth of
the bay we had to go four days without
receiving any fresh provisions. Finally,
having arrived at Alexandria, we found
only poor beef, poor fish, and inferior
bread. All of it was very expensive.
Somewhat refreshed, our first care was
to talk about Scioto--just how far was
it? We were probably quite close, were
we not? In answer to these first questions
we received the most sad, the most
dispiriting news. People said they were sorry
for us, and this sentiment was enough to
let us know that the future was going to
be even more unhappy than what we had
just gone through.
The Scioto Company of Paris had assured
us that we would find their American
representatives in Alexandria, and that
we would be welcomed by these gentlemen
who would take care of us from then on.
They would see that we got to Scioto
where they would hand over the land
which had already been bought, plus various
other properties, into the hands of
those to whom they belonged.
No Company representatives in
Alexandria! They were, we were told, in New-
yorck, sixty leagues away.23 Still
another trip to undertake without being sure,
without hope perhaps, of finding them in
Newyorck.
21. This is in February; the fish would
not have spoiled if kept outside.
22. As we shall see, D'Allemagne shares
with his century a rather haughty disdain for accuracy
and consistency in the spelling of
proper names, particularly foreign ones.
23. In fairness to the Scioto Company,
one should note that the ships bearing the French arrived
so far behind schedule that the company
representative assumed that they had gone into another port
and he had returned to New York. See Belote,
"The Scioto Speculation," 47.
Nouvelles du Scioto
269
All the passengers met together in order
to decide what course of action to take.
It was determined to send two deputies
to Newyorck [New York] to find out posi-
tive news of the Company, and also what
would become of us. Sieurs Thibault and
Bart were chosen to make the trip. They
promised to make all speed and to return
soon.
More than twelve days had elapsed
without any news from them. Finally on
the fifteenth day, a letter arrived in
which they announced that they had been
received by the Company. They pledged
that, if we waited a few more days, they
would send agents to lead us to Scioto.
This answer appeared neither sufficient
nor reassuring. Sieurs Thibault and Bart
were both masters and had each brought
along fifty laborers. Before leaving Paris,
they had each bought a thousand acres of
land at Scioto. The lack of positive
details in their answer and certain
warnings which had come to us, plus other
information which we had obtained in
Alexandria, left us little room for doubt
that our deputies, convinced by their
inquiries in Newyorck that the trip to Scioto
was useless, if not impossible, did not
dare to return to Alexandria to rejoin us.
They would have been exposed to all the
vengeance of the laborers which they
had brought over. Not being able to
fulfill their pledges to these workmen, no
other course of action was open to these
gentlemen except to abandon the laborers
and to find some sort of home and means
of support for themselves.
Everything combined to prove this
conclusion. The Paris Company had assured
us that from Alexandria to Scioto it was
no more than forty leagues, all by water.
But we learned that it was three hundred
forty-two leagues of which one hundred
twenty-two were by water and the rest
over land. We found out further that Scioto
is nothing but a wilderness which means
that all provisions must be carried in. In
addition, we were informed that one is
exposed to fierce beasts: tigers, bears and
flying serpents; and that it takes five
months to get there through the forest and
across the swamps and mountains. And
finally, once there, one has to cross the
Belle Riviere24 on the banks
of which one will be welcomed by savages who num-
ber more than eighty thousand. These
barbarians overrun the land of the Scioto
which the Company in Paris was selling.
It lay between the Scioto and the Belle
Riviere and had to be constantly fought
over with hordes of savages.
Ever since we had received the letter
from our deputies, our situation was quite
distressing. We did not know what to
believe, what to do, nor what would become
of us. We resolved to write to Kentucke,
two hundred leagues from Alexandria,
in order to find out more details and
information about Scioto. It is about one
hundred leagues from Kentucke to Scioto.
The answer that we received was that
the country of Scioto was uninhabitable.
From Kentucke they sent us gazettes which
told how on the 15th of the preceding
April, five hundred savages, having left
Scioto, had crossed the Belle Riviere,
or Ohio, had spread out during the night in
Kentucke, and had ravaged thirty-five
houses, committed all sorts of vandalism
and horrors. Among other things, they
had wrenched off the skulls of the inhabi-
tants in order to take them to their
chief who paid them a louis25 for each skull.
And it is with these gentlemen that we
are supposed to dispute the possession of
those acres of Scioto land before
putting them under cultivation.
24. The Ohio River. As for the
description of Scioto, after all that D'Allemagne had been through
it is not surprising that he exaggerates
a bit, consciously or unconsciously.
25. A gold coin, at this time worth
about twenty-four francs--very roughly about five dollars.
270
OHIO HISTORY
We finally went to Jonston26 three
leagues from Alexandria. The consul did
nothing but give us news just as
disheartening as the others. He took pity at our
plight, and assured us that the country
of Scioto was uninhabitable. Imagine our
grief upon coming back to Alexandria.
What was to become of us? We had no
resources in this miserable town.
Alexandria is spacious--about the same
size as Versailles,27 but not very heavily
populated. Each house is separated from
the neighboring one by lands which do
not produce anything for the inhabitants
except tobacco and corn. The cultivation
of these crops is the sole occupation of
their Negroes. The grass there is always
dry. The city is poor, no commerce, no
shops; French money is exchanged at only
two-thirds of its value--and one does
not receive any hard money.28 The inhabi-
tants display on their foreheads misery
and shame; religion and marriage are un-
known; poor food, poor drink; the only
thing of any worth is the wood. Winter
lasts six months, and is very cold; the
heat of summer is excessive: the days are
short in all seasons.29
The sight of such a town completed our
misfortune and our affliction. Wander-
ing around town we were constantly
evading one another, and just as constantly
running into each other. The only time
we spoke was to groan; the only time we
looked at each other it was to cry. But
the worst off of all were those poor labor-
ers who, abandoned by their masters,
were lacking in everything, and were in the
cruelest misery.
Finally eight of us got together: Sieurs
Lallemand and his wife, Menard and
his wife, Lefevre, Gantyne, Bouchot and
me; and we decided to recross the sea to
France on the first ship available. It
grieved us a great deal to leave behind the
other travelers, fellow citizens, to
wretchedness and despair. But since we could
not do anything for them, we kept our
minds on our plan. It was not without its
dangers.
Our fellow passengers who were staying
behind numbered about one hundred
eighty. Among these were the one hundred
laborers of Sieurs Thibaut and Bart.
Before our arrival there had already
been more than two hundred other masters
and workingmen without means.30 These
people could not return to France, the
workers because they did not have the
money, and the masters because they were
afraid for their liberty.31
A Dutch ship was ready to set sail. We
did not hesitate in the least to run the
risk of going to sea again. Returning to
France was our sole salvation and our only
recourse.
26. There was no town near Alexandria in
either Virginia or Maryland at this time which was
called Jonston. Either D'Allemagne is
referring to Jones Point, on the river just below Alexandria; or
else he is confused with Georgetown, a
thriving commercial center.
27. The town of Versailles, not the
palace grounds.
28. There was still a question at the
time whether the new Federal Government would be able to
stabilize its currency. Naturally, no
one would give away good money when he could substitute paper
of doubtful value. The question of
currency also explains some of the actions of the Scioto Company.
Historians suppose that the original
intention of the company was not outright fraud, but rather its
officials expected to pay for their land
with Continental money which at the time of their negotiations
(1788) was selling at an enormous
discount. But with the establishment of sound fiscal policies in 1791,
the Scioto Company was caught in a
squeeze and could not meet its obligations.
29. D'Allemagne is letting his misery
get the better of his objectivity. As for the heat, one should
remember that the Potomac basin does
have very humid, disagreeable summer weather.
30. The first group of settlers had been
there since the first of May.
31. For fear of the Revolution at home.
In view of what happens later in the narrative, their own
workers would have prevented them from
leaving.
Nouvelles du Scioto 271
So on the 26th day of May we embarked on
the Dutch ship La Confiance whose
captain was . . . of Amsterdam.32
All those unfortunate Frenchmen who
remained behind for lack of means to
return were quite unhappy that we were
going to abandon them. They envied our
good fortune in leaving such a
disagreeable land and being able to return to France.33
Jealousy united with despair; they
announced that they would oppose our leaving.
They even threatened that we would not
get down the river to the sea without
misfortune. The Americans, who probably
had some indirect interest in preventing
our returning to France, offered one
hundred louis to our Dutch captain to leave
without us.34 They even
menaced us with cannon. To crown our ill luck, we were
becalmed in the river for eleven days.
We were agitated and impatient to leave,
under continual fear of being attacked.
Night and day we mounted a guard on
the deck. We ate and drank only with
uneasiness, fearing that our water might
have been poisoned.
Finally the wind, having become
favorable, permitted us to leave. It was a very
pleasant moment for us all.
The Dutch captain was a good man, gentle
and upright, sympathetic and
thoughtful. The food was excellent, the
drink good, and the provisions fresh. In
addition, the sailing was smooth; we
encountered only one storm.
We met a French ship of the Far East run
leaving Newyorck where the Scioto
Company was located. The ship informed
us that it had saved sixty passengers
who were going to Scioto, that it had
taken them to Newyorck, that their effects
had all been lost as well as their ship
which had sunk just three minutes after they
had gotten on board the rescuing ship.
The captain heaped imprecations on the
Scioto Company.35 And then
the sea separated us.
At last we arrived in Le Havre on the
11th of July, a crossing of forty-five days.
You can imagine how happy we were to see
the coast of France. They told us in
Le Havre that a schooner had just left
with ninety-five passengers, all of them rich,
for Alexandria; and then from there to
Scioto. The ship had perished when it was
three days out, according to the report
of five sailors who had managed to swim
away and who were saved by another ship.
The trip seemed short from Le Havre to
Paris, and I was soon back in the
heart of my family. I begged my uncle's
pardon for my flightiness. I assured him
that I was cured forever of the
"Scioto madness"; and that I was only too happy
to be back. My good uncle threw his arms
around me and told me to profit from
this lesson, and the next time to follow
his advice. We have, he told me, so much
uncultivated land in France, so many
heaths to be cleared in many parts of the
Kingdom. There is the real Scioto. It is
there that should be employed the will to
32. Name omitted in the text.
33. As far as the French immigrants as a
whole are concerned, a few like D'Allemagne and his
party returned to France, a few settled
in Alexandria and Philadelphia; but the majority finally did
leave for Ohio toward the end of June. Upon their
arrival, some settled the town whose name com-
memorates their national origin,
Gallipolis.
34. The townspeople wanted the French to
stay and settle the undeveloped lands of Virginia. This
is part of the reason for their
extravagant tales about Scioto; see Note 24.
35. The truth about Scioto was beginning
to spread among the French. While D'Allemagne was
on the high seas, a book had been published in Paris
warning against emigration to Ohio: The New
Mississippi, or the Dangers of Living
on the Banks of the Scioto, by a Traveling Patriot. (Roux, Sergeant-
Major, Le Nouveau Mississippi, ou les
dangers d'habiter les bords du Scioto par un patriote voyageur.
Paris, Jacquemart, 1790.)
272
OHIO HISTORY
work, the funds, and the courage of the
pioneers; not in expeditions to far away
places which absorb men and resources.
Why do we go looking so far for what
Nature has put within reach? Why go to
the trouble of getting used to other
climes when with less danger we can
possess an enterprise of which the results are
more sure. The government is at fault, I
said. It is one of those great political errors
and abuses which private citizens like
us can only watch in silence and pity the
victims.
Signed, D'ALLEMAGNE
rue des Boucheries
The book received favorable notices so
that the Scioto Company could ill afford to leave them
unanswered. As a postscript to his
story, D'Allemagne with the same touch of irony he showed in
presenting Thomas Hutchins' statement,
publishes a letter from the directors of the Company to Abbe
Jean-Louis Aubert, editor of the
influential Gazette de France.
'Letter and observations addressed to
Monsieur I'Abbe Aubert on the subject of the extract from
the work entitled The New
Mississippi, or the Dangers of Living on the Banks of the Scioto inserted
in the notices and announcements of
number 102 of Monday, April 12, 1790.
'Dear Sir:
'While honoring the intentions which
caused Monsieur Jacquemart to publish the work entitled:
The New Mississippi, and you Sir to give an extract from it in your notices
and announcements of the
12th of this month, the Scioto Company
cannot let persist the grave charges published against it,
which are all the more startling because
they are presented in a journal which because of the useful-
ness and especially because of the
distinguished merit of the literary section edited by you, Sir, is
widely read.
'The Scioto Company, which has no
intention of establishing an argumentative correspondence with
its detractors in any journal, has hope,
however, in your impartiality, Sir, and that you will have dis-
tributed with one of your next numbers
the following observation, which have to do only with the
extract in question. The company does
not propose to destroy step by step in a special work the
assertion concerning the settlement of
the Ohio and the Scioto which Monsieur Jacquemart seems to
have taken from the Memoirs of Monsieur
Roux. It will be done with the force of truth, without
allowing any expression which might
wound two respectable citizens, who happen to be very poorly
informed.'
edited by
HENRY J. YEAGER
Nouvelles du Scioto:
The Story of a Fraud
The original settlement of what is now
southern Ohio, at the end of the eighteenth
century, was marred by scandalous
treatment of the French immigrants by the
promoters of the Scioto Land Company.
Through its agency in Paris the com-
pany, using misleading information, sold
land to Frenchmen eager to settle in
America. The Parisians suffered
considerable physical hardship on their voyage,
to say nothing of the mental anguish in
discovering when they disembarked that
they had been badly deceived. One of
them, a young man who calls himself simply
D'Allemagne, published an account of his
adventures when he returned home to
France, and it is this booklet which is
here translated.1
Our primary interest in the booklet is
to derive an understanding of the life
and hardships encountered by these first
French settlers on their way from their
homeland to Ohio. We also get a glimpse
of the French character and social
organization of the time. With typical
Gallic insight into human nature, Monsieur
D'Allemagne analyses his fellow
immigrants and himself, sparing no one's feelings,
least of all his own. He becomes very
much alive for us: an intelligent young man,
discontented with the quiet and comfort
of home, seeking fortune and adventure
elsewhere.
The story of the French settlers in the
Ohio country began when arrangements
for the habitation of the Northwest
Territory were made. By 1783 it had become
clear that Congress would definitely
come into possession of the disputed western
lands, certainly those north of the Ohio
River, and probably all west of the Alle-
ghenies. Provision was made for their
sale and settlement by the Land Ordinance
of 1785. The minimum purchase provided
by the law was $640 for 640 acres--too
expensive for the average settler. As a
consequence, most of the sales were made
to private land companies for resale in
smaller lots. In October 1787, the Ohio
Company purchased from the United States
government one and a half million
acres of land in what is now southern
Ohio.2 At the same time a second contract
was signed, giving purchasing rights for
an additional five million acres to the
1. D'Allemagne, Nouvelles du Scioto,
ou Relation Fidele du voyage et des infortunes d'un parisien
qui arrive de ces pays-la, ou il
etoit alle pour s'etablir (Paris, Chez
Lenoir et Leboucher, Imprimeurs, rue
des Mauvais-Garcons, Faubourg S.
Germain, au Cafe la Fayette; aout, 1790). Only one copy of this
booklet still exists, and that is in the
Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. There is, however, a photocopy of
this text in the Genealogy Section of
the New York Public Library, 42nd Street branch.
2. Payson Jackson Treat, The National
Land System, 1785-1820 (New York, 1967), 35-37, 50-51.
Mr. Yeager is assistant professor of
French at Rutgers University.