Ohio History Journal

THE PEOPLE OF OHIO'S FIRST COUNTY

 

 

By WAYNE JORDAN

 

Colonel John May of Boston, writing from Pittsburgh to

his wife on May 12, 1788, remarked, "I wish there were more

New England people going to Muskingum."¹ By Muskingum

he meant the newly founded Marietta colony, which had not yet

been named for France's queen.² The colonel had been impressed

by the number of boats, laden with whites and blacks, which

kept floating by en route to Kentucky. Against such competition,

apparently, he feared that the Yankees of the Ohio Company had

made but a poor beginning.

The hopes of May and his fellow promoters were never

wholly fulfilled, although many more New England people did

find their way to Marietta, at times in rather large parties. Cod-

fish were soon being eaten on the banks of the Muskingum,³ and

by September of 1790 a "Gentleman in Neworleans" was writing

of "the industry, sobriety and good order of the Newenglanders"

at Marietta, with whom he spent some days while journeying

down the Ohio.⁴ Later travelers were to comment on Yankee

traits which distinguished the community. To Christian Schultz,

Marietta was "New England in miniature."⁵ John Melish found,

"The state of society is such as might be expected in a colony

from Massachusetts,"6 and Fortescue Cuming observed, "Marietta

 

1 John May, Journal and Letters . . . Relative to Two Journeys to the Ohio

Country in 1788 and '89 (Cincinnati, 1873), 38-9.

2 Muskingum was the first name applied to the settlement being planted by the

Ohio Company. The usage occurs in Manasseh Cutler's writings and in the diary of

John Mathews. Josiah Harmar dated letters from "Fort Harmar," but used Mus-

kingum when referring to the locality rather than to the fort itself. Josephine E.

Phillips, who has edited many of the Backus and Woodbridge letters, writes, "Clarina

and Elijah Backus head their letters 'Muskingum' as late as 1794, as does Lucy Wood-

bridge Backus. James Backus uses 'Muskingum' on all personal letters of which I

have copies, as late as 21st Nov., 1790."

3 "Dined on Codfish & potatoes," wrote James Backus under date of July 20,

1788. See his fourth Notebook (in Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society

Library).

4 Worcester Spy, December 16, 1790.

5 Christian Schultz, Jun. Esq., Travels on an Inland Voyage through the States

of New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee . . . (New York,

1810), I, 143.

6 John Melish, Travels in the United States of America, in the Years 1806 &

1807, and 1809, 1810 & 1811 . . . (Philadelphia, 1812), II, 103.

(I)

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2       OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

is principally inhabited by New Englanders, which accounts for

the neat and handsome style of building displayed in it."7

That the Ohio Company of Associates did create an im-

portant sphere of New England influence was, perhaps, apparent

enough in pre-state days, when five of the seven men who served

as judges of the Territory were Marietta Yankees.⁸ Such names

as Putnam, Parsons, Varnum, Sargent, Tupper and Fearing recall

the colony's role in      that Federalist era.       Evidence of its im-

portance at a later date is to be found in the participation of

Ephraim Cutler, Return Jonathan Meigs, Jr., Benjamin Ruggles

and Samuel F. Vinton in the affairs of Ohio,⁹ and in the fact

that the community gave Solomon Sibley, Lewis Cass and William

Woodbridge to Michigan. Three rather conspicuous generals of

the Civil War--Don Carlos Buell, John Pope and Irvin Mc-

Dowell--were grandsons of Marietta pioneers.¹⁰ Other names

may be added: the Dawes family, for instance, and Harrison

Gray Otis.¹l Truly an extended chapter, past and present, could

be written on this focal point in the distribution of New England

leadership to the West.¹²

Equally apparent, however, is the fact that the New Eng-

landers were not destined to be the sole occupants of their pur-

 

7 Fortesque Cuming, Sketches of a Tour to the Western Country, through the

States of Ohio and Kentucky . . . (Pittsburgh, 1810), reprinted in R. G. Thwaites,

ed., Early Western Travels (Cleveland, 1904-1907), IV, 124. One who did not have a

good word for the Marietta Yankees was George W. Ogden, who wrote, "The town

is settled almost wholly with emigrants from the New England states, who have little

energy and less property, to add beauty or grandeur to the place." Ogden, however,

has been pilloried as a plagiarist and a fraud by M. M. Quaife in "Critical Evaluation

of Sources for Western History," Mississippi Valley Historical Review (Cedar Rapids,

Iowa), I, (1914), 175-83.

8 Nine were appointed, but John Armstrong and William Barton did not serve.

Those from the Marietta colony were Samuel Holden Parsons, James Mitchell Varnum,

Rufus Putnam, Joseph Gilman and Return Jonathan Meigs, Jr.

9 Benjamin Ruggles and Samuel F. Vinton were New Englanders attracted to

the Ohio purchase to practice law. Vinton located in Gallipolis and was Marietta's

representative in Congress for many years. Ruggles practiced law in Marietta until

he received the judicial appointment which started him on his way to the United

States Senate.

10 Israel Ward Andrews, Washington County, and the Early Settlement of Ohio,

Being the Centennial Historical Address . . . (Cincinnati, 1877), 71.

11 Martin R. Andrews, ed., History of Marietta and Washington County, Ohio

(Chicago, 1902), 859, for Major General Otis's birth and background.

12 Since the World War the community has been represented in national affairs

by a chairman of the Democratic National Committee, a Vice President of the United

States, an ambassador to Great Britain, a Comptroller of the Currency, a two-term

Governor of Ohio, and a Republican presidential nominee. This statement refers, of

course, to the public careers of Charles G. Dawes, Henry M. Dawes, George White

and Alfred M. Landon.

• 2
 

JORDAN: PEOPLE OF OHIO'S FIRST COUNTY                       3

 

chase. The Gods of the Mountains,1³ pushing westward from

Virginia and Pennsylvania, had reached the Muskingum some

years before the "First Forty-seven"14 were greeted by the gar-

rison of Fort Harmar. This is confirmed by Rufus Putnam,

who wrote to George Washington:

 

It is a fact Sir, well known that immediately after the conclusion of

the war in 1783 privet adventurers, in a perticuler way, located & by build-

ing Cabbens, girdling trees or planting a few hills of Corn, took posetion

of all the most valuable land on the Muskingum, Hockhocking, and other

rivers as well as on the Ohio for Several hundred mils, Nor must it be

forgot that numbers of these people ware driven off by the federal Troops

at the point of the Bayonet, their houses burnt & corn destroyed--.15

Earlier presence of the backwoodsmen detracts in no way

from the achievements of the men and women who wore shoes

instead of moccasins and who proposed to plant civilization in-

stead of a few hills of corn. To Ichabod Nye it was plain that

before the Ohio Company's migration there was "nothing but a

herd of wild Men either read or white (not much differing except

in Collour) inhabiting the Countrey."¹⁶ The evictions had been

successful, but regardless of the opinions held by Nye or any of

his fellows, the blood of the frontier was to be mixed with that

of New England, and despite the gulf that separated the two

cultures,17 a society was to grow up which contained elements

of both. As early as November 12, 1788, James Backus of

Marietta was writing in his diary, "five Virginia People Dutch-

 

13 The name which David Howell of Rhode Island gave in 1784 to the people of

the Allegheny ridges. See Archer Butler Hulbert, Ohio in the Time of the Confed-

eration (Marietta, 1918), 69.

14 There were forty-eight men in the pioneer party, but Return Jonathan Meigs

(Senior) arrived at the Muskingum a few days after the others.

15 Clarence Edwin Carter, ed., The Territorial Papers of the United States

(Washington, 1934--), II, 338-9. In this letter, dated February 28, 1791, Putnam is

depicting a previous dire state of affairs that will recur unless Congress protects the

settlements against the Indians.

16 Ichabod Nye MSS, formerly held by Miss Martha Nye Sproat, Chillicothe,

Ohio; copied by Josephine E. Phillips of Marietta.

17 That there was such a gulf is not an idle assumption, although the literature

on the subject is too scattered for a single bibliographic footnote. Russel J. Fergu-

son, Early Western Pennsylvania Politics (Pittsburgh, 1938), 17, says, "The cultural

level, perforce, was generally low," and that "only the inception of a native culture

existed in western Pennsylvania in 1790." The testimony of such New Englanders

as John May, Ephraim Cutler, Ichabod Nye and Thaddeus Mason Harris is borne

out by the writings of Josiah Harmar and Ebenezer Denny, both Pennsylvanians.

The diaries of Philip Vickers Fithian and David McClure, and the reminiscences

of Joseph Doddridge leave no doubt that the frontier folk were, in Doddridge's words,

"a rude and illiterate people" and that "their grade of civilization was, indeed,

low enough."

• 3
 

4      OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

men came to purchase lands in our company."¹⁸ With the com-

ing of the Indian troubles, the people who hitherto had known

only the ways of civilization frequently found it advisable to em-

ploy the "wild Men" to do their hunting and scouting.¹⁹ More-

over, the geographic situation of the colony made it inevitable

that people from the Virginia-Pennsylvania frontier, accustomed

to hills, should be attracted to it for years to come.

From the time May penned his plaint in Pittsburgh until

now, no thoroughgoing effort has been made to determine just

how many New England settlers actually reached the Ohio pur-

chase, or to measure the representation of the various colonial

stocks in the counties which grew out of it. Such a study may

well begin with Washington County, not only because of the in-

terest which attaches to it as Ohio's oldest governmental unit, but

because its capital, Marietta, was the hub of whatever New Eng-

land influence there was in the southeastern part of the state.

Lending more than local interest to such a study, perhaps, is the

circumstance that the county lies south of the Mason and Dixon

line,²⁰ and was directly in the westward path of Virginia and

Maryland.

Benson John Lossing, in A      Pictorial Description of Ohio,

published in New York in 1849, included in his compen-

dium on Washington County the statement, "This, the first

settled county in Ohio, was peopled by New-Englanders;

and their descendants now constitute the principal portion of its

population."21  Henry Howe had been just as definite in 1846.

Of Marietta he wrote in his complimentary way, "Its inhabitants

are mostly of New England descent, and there are few places

in our country that can compare with this in point of morality

and intelligence--but few of its size with so many cultivated and

18 Fifth Notebook.

19 Samuel P. Hildreth, Pioneer History (Cincinnati and New York, 1848), 309-10,

quoting MSS of Joseph Barker, says, "The most of the eastern, or New England

men, previous to coming here, were unacquainted with the rifle and the woods ..."

One of the Marietta heroes during the Indian trouble was Joshua Fleehart, or

Fleeharty, whose X mark appears on the petition sent Congress in 1785 by the evicted

Ohio squatters.

20 A prolongation of the southern boundary of Pennsylvania into Ohio would

pass somewhere in the vicinity of Caldwell, in Noble County, and not so very far

from New Lexington, in Perry County. All of the Ohio purchase was south of this

hypothetical line.

21 Page 95.

• 4
 

JORDAN: PEOPLE OF OHIO'S FIRST COUNTY                  5

literary men."22    As late as 1877 "the regular correspondent"

of the New York Tribune, writing from Washington about Presi-

dent Rutherford B. Hayes' impending visit to a soldiers' reunion

at Marietta, described the place as "one of the most distinctively

Yankee cities in the entire West."23   Such characterizations have

seldom if ever been challenged by Marietta's own writers, and

it is safe to say that to this day most residents there think of

their town as an offshoot of New England.

All Ohio historians, of course, have noted the New England

auspices under which the first permanent settlement was estab-

lished, but the possibility that the Yankee associates left a perma-

nent impress upon the population of a strategic section of the

state has been, for the most part, strangely ignored. In recent

years, particularly since the publication of Robert Emmet Chad-

dock's doctoral dissertation, Ohio before 1850,24 there has been

increasing emphasis on the Pennsylvania and southern elements

in Ohio's early population, with a parallel tendency to delimit

New England's influence to the Western Reserve, where its obvi-

ousness cannot be denied.

More than one scholar has treated the Yankee migration to

southeastern Ohio as though it were a sporadic affair, to be dis-

missed almost as casually as the French migration to Gallipolis.

The extent to which the work of the Ohio Company can be

ignored, with or without justification, is reflected in the following:

The largest proportion of the settlers in Ohio were from the middle

states, as Pennsylvania and New Jersey; these were to be found in the

central and southern part of the state. Another large contingent came from

the South, though not so numerous as the other; these consisted almost

entirely of the poorer whites, the non-slave holding elements. New England

made the smallest contribution, the settlers from that section confined

chiefly to the northern tier of counties.25

It is true that Professors E. H. Roseboom and F. P. Weisen-

 

22 Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio (Cincinnati, 1904), II, 784.

²³ Cincinnati Commercial, September 5. 1877.

24 Ohio before 1850, a Study of the Early Influence of Pennsylvania and Southern

Populations in Ohio, Columbia University, Studies in History, Economics and Public

Law (New York), XXXI, no. 2 (1908).

25 E. L. Bogart, Financial History of Ohio, University of Illinois, Studies in

the Social Sciences (Urbana), IX, no. 21 (1912), 29. Also, quoted in R. C. McGrane,

William Allen (Columbus, 1925), 19.

• 5
 

6       OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

burger have noted the persistence of a Yankee political bias in

the southeastern quarter of the state. They observe that the suc-

cess of the Republican Party in some southern and southeastern

counties in 1860 was due largely to its tariff appeal, "excepting

only the old Ohio Company Grant, where New England traditions

made Republicanism       take quick root."26     On   the other hand,

even Edward Channing, in describing Ohio, Indiana and Illinois

as they were on the eve of the Civil War, makes the sweeping

assertion, "The southern part of these three States, that lying

south of Zanesville, Columbus, Indianapolis, and Springfield, was

settled for the most part from the South and was bound to the

South by close economic ties."27        The economic ties need not

be questioned, but considering that the lands of the Ohio Com-

pany lay directly south of Zanesville, one may wonder whether

something has been overlooked.²⁸

The census of 1850 has provided the starting point, and the

stopping point as well, for most population studies of early Ohio.

That enumeration was the first in which places of birth (state,

territory or foreign country) were recorded, and it provides an

important prop for Chaddock's much-quoted thesis. Summarizing

and interpreting the results, he writes:

 

Official census figures relating to the population coming into Ohio from

Pennsylvania and the South were not taken until 1850, at the very close

of the period we are considering. In this year the inhabitants born in other

states but living in Ohio were tabulated and they present an interesting

study. Pennsylvania had furnished over 200,000, more than twice as many

as any other state and several times as many as all New England together.

Taking the seven states which furnished the largest numbers, we find that,

out of a total of a little less than a half-million from these states, Pennsyl-

 

26 E. H. Roseboom and F. P. Weisenburger, History of Ohio (New York,

1934), 264.

27 Edward Channing, A History of the United States (New York, 1921-1926),

VI, 277. Channing was influenced by D. C. Shilling, "Relation of Southern Ohio to

the South During the Decade Preceding the Civil War," Historical and Philosophical

Society of Ohio, Quarterly Publication (Cincinnati), VIII, no. 1 (January-March,

1913), 3-28. The Shilling article makes no mention of the Ohio Company although

the election maps accompanying the text show that the political behavior of the Ohio

Company counties differed from that of southern Ohio as a whole.

28 Commenting on the essential unity of the Ohio Valley before the Civil War,

Carl Russell Fish says, "Two factors disturbed this unity. On the north bank, about

Marietta, were the descendants of a compact colony of easterners, with a strong

New England element, and middle Ohio and central Indiana were infiltrated with

the same strain." See "The Decision of the Ohio Valley," American Historical

Association, Annual Report . . . for the Year 1910 (Washington, 1912), 157.

• 6
 

JORDAN: PEOPLE OF OHIO'S FIRST COUNTY                      7

 

vania furnished forty-three per cent; Virginia eighteen per cent; New

York seventeen per cent; Maryland eight per cent; New Jersey five per

cent; Connecticut five per cent; and Massachusetts four per cent. It will

be observed from these percentages that Massachusetts and Connecticut

together furnished just half as many as Virginia and about one-fifth as many

as Pennsylvania.

The lines of migration were still converging from the eastern and

southern states upon the fertile Ohio Valley. The total population in the

State at this period was a little less than two million, so that by far the

larger number had been born on Ohio soil. Very many of the first settlers

had died before the census of 1850, leaving children as natives of Ohio

but influenced by the ideas and traditions of their fathers. An even larger

percentage of these could trace their ancestry to Pennsylvania and the

South in the previous generation. It is therefore evident that the figures

are not an accurate index of the relative proportions of the very early

settlers from the various older states.²⁹

After citing available data on the origins of Ohio legislators,

United States Senators and Congressmen³⁰ before 1840, Chad-

dock concludes that, "From all the evidence presented it seems

clear that Ohio's early population came largely from the back-

country regions of Pennsylvania and the South. It seems highly

probable that the largest single element was the Scotch-Irish...."31

With this background, it will be interesting to see whether

the Ohio Company planted a measurable New England element

in Washington County, and to determine, if possible, just how

much influence this element exerted in that segment of the Ohio

Valley. Such a study may well begin with the census of I850.

Unfortunately, the nativities recorded in that year, while tabulated

for the state as a whole, are not available in tabulations by

counties.³²   It is therefore necessary to work with the original

29 Chaddock, Ohio before 1850, 39-40.

30 Ibid., 44-5. Virginia contributed forty per cent. of Ohio's United States

Senators before 1840, Connecticut twenty-seven per cent. In the same period the

Middle States contributed forty-eight per cent. of the state's representatives in Con-

gress, the South twenty-four per cent. and New England twenty-one per cent. Twenty-

five per cent. of the state legislators were natives of New England in the sessions

of 1821-22, 1825-26 and 1828-29, but by 1839-40 the figure had shrunk to nine per cent.

31 Ibid., 46. To other historians today it seems highly improbable that the largest

single element was the Scotch-Irish. See American Council of Learned Societies,

"Report of Committee on Linguistic and National Stocks in the Population of the

United States," American Historical Association Annual Report . . . for the Year

1931 (1932), I, 124, and sections of report devoted to Scots and Irish. Also, see

Alfred P. James, "The First English-speaking Trans-Appalachian Frontier," Missis-

sippi Valley Historical Review, XVII (1930), 69-70.

32 Figures for Ohio are given in U. S. Census Office, 7th Census, 1850, Report

of the Superintendent of the Census for December 1, 1852 . . . (Washington, 1853),

Table of "Nativities," 16-19.

• 7
 

8       OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

census sheets, or for convenience sake, with a set of 725 photostats.

The population of Washington County in 1850 was 29,540, and

the sheets list that number of persons by name, giving the age,

sex, color, place of birth, and in the case of males over 15, the

occupation.³³

Apparently the Washington County of 1850 had a somewhat

more stable population than that of the state as a whole. Despite

the location on the Virginia border, and on the Ohio River, 66.6

per cent. of the county's inhabitants were born in Ohio, whereas

the state's percentage of native Ohioans was 61.57. Foreign-

born represented 9.2I per cent. of the county's population, while

residents born in other states of the Union accounted for 23.56

per cent. With the natives of the other states grouped by sec-

tions, the 29,540 persons enumerated in Washington County

showed the following origins:

 

Place of Birth                        Persons                      Percentage34

Ohio      .....................                                          19,675     .....................                                           66.60

New       England .............                                 1,128       .....................                                           3.81

Middle States .............                                       3,275       .....................                                           11.08

Southern States............                                     2,488       .....................                                           8.42

Western         States ............                                    71        .....................                                           .24

Foreign Countries.........                                   2,721       .....................                                           9.21

Unknown or Not Given35..              182  .....................                     .61

 

Admittedly the number of New Englanders is not impressive.

The Middle State representation was nearly three times as great,

and there were more than two Southerners for every native

Yankee. Foreign-born in the county were more than twice as

numerous as the folk from the Land of Steady Habits. None

the less, the frequency of New Englanders in Washington County

was slightly higher than in the state as a whole.

 

33 Other columns record marriage within the year, school attendance, adult

illiteracy, value of real estate owned, and whether the person was deaf and dumb,

blind, insane, idiotic, pauper, or convict.

34 The percentages in this column would total 100 if computation of fractional

percentages were carried further.

35 In some instances the census-taker failed to use as many ditto marks as were

apparently intended. Wherever the space for the place of birth is blank, the person

is counted with the unknown, regardless of probabilities indicated by birthplaces of

other persons in the family.

• 8
 

JORDAN: PEOPLE OF OHIO'S FIRST COUNTY                     9 The population of Ohio in 1850 was reported as 1,980,427,36 and origins indicated by the census were: Place of Birth            Persons 37               Percentage Ohio  ..................... 1,219,432       ..................                                 61.57 New England ..............                       66,032 ..................                 3.33 Middle States ..............                 312,860   ..................                 15.79 Southern States ............                147,604   ..................                     7.45 Western States .............                11,628     ..................                     .58 Foreign Countries..........                218,512   ..................                 11.03 Unknown    ................                       4,359   ..................                     .22 From         this table, by adding the four sectional groups, one may derive the fact that 538,124 persons then living in Ohio had been born in other parts of the Union. The corresponding figure Washington County, Ohio, in 1850. 36 This figure is from the table of nativities in Report of the Superintendent of the Census for December 1, 1852 . . ., 16-19. U.S. Census Office, 7th Census, 1850, The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850 (Washington, 1853) gives the state's total population as 1,980,329. 37 Figures in this column are from Report of the Superintendent of the Census for December 1, 1852 . . ., 16-19. The Seventh Census: 1850, 851, gives the number of persons born in Ohio as 1,215,876, the foreign-born as 218,193 and te unknown as 4,390. Since the latter volume does not contain a table of nativities by states, it is necessary to adhere to the former in figuring percentages. From earlie foot- notes in may be observed that the volumes containing the discrepancies were pub- lished in the same year, 1853. Translated into percentages the variations would be slight. be slight.

• 9
 

10      OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

for Washington County was 6,962. These numbers make pos-

sible another comparison. In Ohio as a whole the New Eng-

landers represented 12.26 per cent. of the resident natives of other

states and territories, whereas in the county they accounted for

16.2 per cent. of the persons born in other parts of the country.

In this difference, perhaps, can be detected the first evidence of

Ohio Company influence.

The distribution of New England natives within the county

in 1850 can best be observed by dividing the townships and wards

into two groups. The seven eastern townships, about one-third

of the total area, lay within the Seven Ranges.³⁸ The rest of the

county, with the exception of Aurelius township, lay within the

original Ohio purchase and the Donation Tract.³⁹ The two regions

differ geographically, and although joined in the same govern-

mental jurisdiction for more than one hundred and fifty years,

they present ethnic and cultural contrasts to this day.⁴⁰ The land

in the Seven Ranges was more rugged, and the Yankees arriving

at Marietta looked to the western rather than to the eastern town-

ships of their own       county.     The representation      of the    New

Englanders by townships, and according to the states of their

birth, was as follows:

 

Ohio Company Area41          Mass. Conn.       Me.       Vt.         N.H.  R.I.        Total

Adams ..............                     16          1          6          4           2                     17   46

Aurelius .............                  12          6          14        ..           ..       ..            32

Barlow  .............                    6            14        1          5           1       6            33

Belpre ...............                    28          19        1          3           6       4            61

Decatur   ............                                       4                   1                ..                 10               4            ..                   19

 

38 Specifically, in the fifth, sixth and seventh of the ranges surveyed under the

Land Ordinance of 1785. The western line of the seventh range strikes the Ohio

River at the southeast corner of Marietta township. See Randolph C. Downes,

"Evolution of Ohio County Boundaries," Ohio State Archaeological and Historical

Quarterly (Columbus), XXXVI (1927), 340-477, for changes in limits of Washington

County since its organization.

39 The Donation Tract was an area of 100,000 acres granted by Congress to the

Ohio Company directors, as trustees, for allotment to actual settlers. See Archer

Butler Hulbert, Records of the Ohio Company (Marietta, 1917), II, 139-46, and map

facing I, 6. Also, H. Z. Williams & Bro., pub., History of Washington County, Ohio

(Cleveland, 1881), 92, and Howe, Historical Collections, I, 131.

40 Newport township is an exception. Although in the Seven Ranges, it bears

more resemblance to the Ohio Company townships. As will be seen later, Newport

came under New England influence.

41 Aurelius, in the eighth range, is bounded on the south by the Ludlow Line,

which marked the northern limit of the Donation Tract. It is included with the

Ohio Company townships because it belongs geographically with Salem and Fearing,

and like them was peopled by settlers who ascended the Duck Creek Valley from

• 10
 

JORDAN: PEOPLE OF OHIO'S FIRST COUNTY                       II

 

Ohio Company Area              Mass. Conn.      Me.        Vt.         N. H.  D.I.       Total

Fearing  .............                    3          18         12         1           3                     2      39

Harmar .............                    49        22         10         1           6        2           90

Marietta, 1st Ward...             55        28         13         8           10      2           116

Marietta, 2nd Ward...             73        34         24         11         14      4             160

Marietta Twp........                 27        26         1           10         13      2           79

Roxbury  ............                   7          5           9           7           5        ..           33

Salem      ...............                17        11         9           4                     3           1      45

Union ...............                    8          3           12         5           3                     8      39

Warren    .............                 18        23         9           6           7        5           68

Waterford ...........                  33        27         8           14         7        7           96

Watertown ..........                  16        30         1           4           2        9           62

Wesley ..............                    3          1           2           3           6        1           16

 

Total .......               375      269       132       96         92      70         1,034

Seven Ranges42                               Mass. Conn.      Me.        Vt. N.H. R. I.   Total

Grandview ...........                                    2                3                 ..            ..           ..         ..                    5

Independence ........                                  1                2                 7                  4                 ..              ..                 14

Jolly .............                                                                                    1 ..                                                 1                 ..          3

Lawrence ............       2         1          ..           2           1           1                     7

Liberty ..............                                                          2                 ..                  2                 1             ..                    5

Ludlow ..............                                       2                ..                  ..                  7                 1             ..                 10

Newport ............                   14        11         3           13         1        8           50

 

Total .......               22        19         11         28         5        9           94

County Total.           397      288       143       124       97      79         1,128

Here the hand of history is clearly discernible.Although the

figures are small, the persistence of Ohio Company influence is

apparent. The county's seven townships in the Seven Ranges had

7,409 inhabitants, but only ninety-four of them, or 1.26 per cent.,

were New Englanders. More than half of these were in one town-

ship, Newport, on the Ohio River and of easy access to Marietta.⁴³

The population of the rest of the county was 22,131, with a native

Yankee element of 4.67 per cent.

 

Marietta. The greater portion of Aurelius township was annexed to Noble when

that county was created in 1851.

Roxbury township lost its identity in 1851, a part being annexed to Morgan

County and the remainder being merged with the new township of Palmer.

Union, which lay on both sides of the Muskingum just above Marietta, was

subsequently divided between Adams, Muskingum, Warren and Watertown.

Present-day townships which do not appear in the census of 1850 were organized

as follows: Fairfield and Palmer in 1851, Dunham in 1856 and Muskingum in 1861.

See Andrews, Centennial Historical Address, 25.

42 Jolly no longer exists. A part of the township was annexed to Monroe

County in 1851 and the rest to Grandview township in 1859.

43 According to Williams, Washington County, 566, the Danas from Massachusetts

and the Greenes from Rhode Island were the first "permanent" settlers in Newport

township, although squatters had preceded them.

• 11
 

12     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Persons born in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and

Delaware accounted for 47.04 per cent. of the Washington County

folk who had been born in parts of the Union other than Ohio.44

This ratio was lower than the corresponding ratio in the state as

a whole, for Ohio's Middle State group represented 58.13 per

cent. of the outstate native element.45      As might be expected, the

relative frequency of Middle Staters was greater in the Seven

Ranges than in the Ohio Company region. Natives of the four

states constituted 12.25 per cent. of the population of the seven

eastern townships, and 10.59 per cent. of the population of the rest

of the county. Their distribution took this pattern:

 

Ohio Company Area                            Penna.   N. Y.        N. J.        Del.        Total

Adams .....................                            66          36            3             1            106

Aurelius   ...................                          80          14            5             3                     102

Barlow     .....................                        74          28            7             ..                     109

Belpre     ......................                       97          44            31           2                     174

Decatur ....................                           47          19            2             ..                     68

Fearing  ....................                           47          23            5             2            77

Harmar ....................                           42          69            11           3                     125

Marietta, 1st Ward...........                   120        62            5             1            188

Marietta, 2nd Ward.........                    94          60            10           6            170

Marietta Twp. ..............                      55          18            7             4            84

Roxbury  ....................                         90          27            7             3            127

Salem      ......................                       72          19            14           2            107

Union ......................                           75          19            5             1            100

Warren   ....................                         170        37            14           7            228

Waterford     .................                     118        34            8             4            164

Watertown .................                                                  97                 40                   10                 ..                    147

Wesley .....................                          233        27            7             2            269

 

Total ..............                                          1,577           576                151               41                 2,345

 

44 The census sheets show that 6,962 persons in the county were born out of

the state but in the United States. This figure is higher by sixty-eight than that

given in U. S. Census Office, 7th Census, 1850. A Statistical View of the United

States . . . Being a Compendium of the Seventh Census . . . (Washington, 1854), 191.

45 From the table of nativities in Report of the Superintendent of the Census

for December 1, 1852, 16-19, may be derived 312,860 as Ohio's total number of resi-

dents born in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, and 538,124 as

the total number of persons born out of the state but in the United States. The

Seventh Census: 1850, 851, gives 541,870 as the number of persons born out of the

state but in the United States. See footnotes 36 and 37.

• 12
 

JORDAN: PEOPLE OF OHIO'S FIRST COUNTY                  13

 

Seven Ranges                                                             Penna.           N.Y.                N.J.               Del.              Total

Grandview  ..................             164                          15                   4                     1                   184

Independence ...............                     45            12            7            2            66

Jolly  ........................                         170          7              5                           1       183

Lawrence   ..................                      61            14            6            3                      84

Liberty .....................   84                  10            15            4                           113

Ludlow   ...................   87                  9              7              6            109

Newport ...................  150                27            7              7            191

 

Total ..............                    761          94            51          24                    930

County Total ......                 2,338       670          202        65                    3,275

 

Some of the New       Yorkers, of course, were of pure New

England stock.46             The Allegheny River provided a natural route

for migration from      western New York into the Ohio Valley, and

many of those who followed it were but one generation removed

from Yankeedom. If half of the New Yorkers reaching Washing-

ton County were so descended, and that may be a conservative

estimate, then the indicated New England group would represent

4.95 per cent. instead of 3.81 per cent. of the county's population.

Such a shift would reduce the Middle State percentage from 11.08

to 9.95, but it would still be more than double the Yankee figure.

As might be expected in a border community, recurrence of

southern natives in the county was higher than in the state as a

whole. in Ohio the southerners accounted for 27.42 per cent.

of residents who were natives of other states,47 while in the county

the percentage was 35.73. Persons born in the South made up

10.71 per cent. of the total population of the townships in the

Seven Ranges, and 7.65 per cent. of the total population of the

Ohio Company area. The southern representation by townships,

with figures for the six leading states, was:

 

46 See Lois Kimball Mathews, The Expansion of New England (Boston and

New York, 1909), 153-69.

47 This percentage is derived from the table of nativities in Report of the Super-

intendent of the Census for December 1, 1852, 16-19, which indicates that 147,604 per-

sons living in Ohio had been born in fourteen Southern States and the District of

Columbia. See footnote 45.

• 13
 

14      OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Ohio Company Area                        Va.               Md.              Ky.        N.C.          Tenn.   La. Total48

Adams ..............                                    48                13                ..            ....   ..                ..                                     61

Aurelius    ............                                 81              20                ..            ..                ..                 ..                                 101

Barlow       ..............                               66              8                   1                  ..         ..                                                    75

Belpre    ..............               155        13          4                   2               1      1 176

Decatur .............                                     96              4                   1                             1                 ..    ..                           102

Fearing   .............                                    14              8                   ..            ..                ..     ..                                              22

Harmar .............                                      87              13                ..                   ..                                  1              ..           101

Marietta, 1st Ward... 108                 12                3                      ..                           2                       2              127

Marietta, 2nd Ward...     76              23                16                   ..                           1                 1    117

Marietta Twp. ....... 132                     6                   ..                                 ..                ..                                       4  142

Roxbury    ............                                  62              15                1                             1                 ..                    ..                                                           79

Salem  ...............                                      26              15                3                  ..                ..                 ..                           44

Union ...............                                      34              4                   1                  ..                            1                    ..                                   40

Warren    ............. 167                         15                2                                4                      2                                1  191

Waterford ..........                                    69              23                7                  ..                ..                 ..                                                   99

Watertown    ..........                               83              5                   1                  ..                            1                    ..                                   90

Wesley   .............                                   83              15                ..                   3               ..                 ..                           101

 

Total ....... 1,387             212              40                   11                        9       9             1,668

 

Seven Ranges

Grandview ........... 148                      29      1                             .. ..                ..                            178

Independence ........                               79              12                              .                 ..                 ..      ..                91

Jolly  ................                                       81              41                2                  ..                ..           ..                                 124

Lawrence ............                                  34              7                   1                  ..                ..                 ..                                                   42

Liberty ..............                                     71              27                1                  ..                ..                 ..                  99

Ludlow   .............                                 68                27                   ..                ..                ..      ..   95

Newport ........... 142                           14                1                                1                ..     ..                                 158

 

Total ........ 623                157              6                                1                      0                                0           787

County Total 2,010     369              46                   12                        9                       9                  2,455

 

One hundred sixty-seven of the southerners in this tabulation

were Negroes,49 but with due allowance for that, the representa-

tion of the Southern States is not adequately reflected by the

48 Figures in this column give total representation of all Southern States, not

merely the six leaders. Minor Southern contributions to Washington County were:

Mississippi 8, District of Columbia 7, Missouri 7, South Carolina 3, Georgia 3,

Alabama 3, Florida 1, "Carolina" 1. The steamboat traffic doubtless accounts for

those from the lower South.

49 The Negroes have not been tabulated separately because they are not so

tabulated in the report (footnote 32) used in obtaining state percentages for com-

parison with county percentages.

The total negro population of Washington County in 1850 was 393, of whom

214 were born in Ohio, 156 in Virginia, 9 in Pennsylvania, 5 in Maryland, 5 in North

Carolina, 1 in Kentucky, 1 in Delaware, 1 in Maine and 1 in a place not designated.

Only thirteen of these lived in the Seven Ranges.

• 14
 

JORDAN: PEOPLE OF OHIO'S FIRST COUNTY                       15

 

figures. That is because it is impossible to tell how many of the

persons enumerated as Pennsylvanians were actually Virginians.

Geography had dictated that large numbers, probably a majority,

of the Pennsylvanians moving into southeastern Ohio would be

emigrants from the territory now embraced in Pennsylvania's

Allegheny, Westmoreland, Fayette, Washington and Green coun-

ties. By far the greater part of that region had originally been

under Virginia jurisdiction,⁵⁰ and in some of the counties the

Virginia element remained dominant for many years.51

Many early Ohioans were Virginia patentees who had lost

out in Pennsylvania, or backwoodsmen who had hoped to make

good their tomahawk claims there under Virginia rule.⁵² It fol-

lows, then, that a substantial but indeterminable number of the

persons listed as Pennsylvania natives in the census of 1850 were

members of Virginia families that had pushed north along the

Monongahela and the Youghiogheny before moving into the Ohio

Valley.53 This, in itself, would make little difference in a survey

of this kind, if one were to accept the more or less popular belief

that the Virginia-Pennsylvania frontier was almost exclusively the

preserve of slavery-hating Scotch-Irish. However, the researches

of modern scholarship are making it more and more apparent that

such was not the case.

A recent historian of western Pennsylvania refers to "the

general ethnic differences" of the people of the two colonies that

contended for the region, and observes that partisanship made

 

50 See Boyd Crumrine, "The Boundary Controversy Between Pennsylvania and

Virginia: 1748-1785," Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh, Annals, I (1901-1902). Minutes of

Virginia courts held on Pennsylvania soil will be found, edited by Crumrine, in the

same Annals, I, II and III. These show Virginia jurisdiction as an accomplished

fact, not an idle claim. Also see Sherman Day, Historical Collections of Pennsyl-

vania (Philadelphia, 1843), 359, 662, 680, and William H. Egle, An Illustrated History

of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, 1876), 144, 1140-1.  Russell

Jennings Ferguson, Early Western Pennsylvania Politics (Pittsburgh, 1938), has map

(p. xiii) showing Virginia county lines in Pennsylvania.

51 William Hanna, History of Greene County, Pennsylvania (n. p., 1882), 16,

says, "It must always be borne in mind that this section of country west of the

Monongahela was settled by persons favorable to Virginia rule; that colony claimed

the territory as her rightful domain, and the majority no doubt thought the claim

was just."

52 Pennsylvania Archives (Harrisburg), Third Series, III (1896), 507-73, lists

"Virginia Entries in Western Pennsylvania, 1779-1780."

53 Anyone who will examine the deed books of Washington and Greene counties

in Pennsylvania and those of Washington and Noble counties in Ohio will note a

striking recurrence of the same family names. Direct genealogical evidence shows

that many of these names belong to Virginia families that migrated to Ohio by way

of Pennsylvania.

• 15
 

16     OHIO ARCHAELOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

assimilation a gradual process.⁵⁴    He also says, "It is probable

that one-third of the population of the five early western counties

was comprised of English people or those of English extraction

and that the ratio was two-fifths or more in the three southwestern

counties -- Fayette, Washington and  Allegheny."⁵⁵    True, the

Scotch-Irish had a peculiar capacity for politics which gave them

"an incommensurate weight,"⁵⁶ but it is unlikely that they were

ever present in such numbers as have been assumed. The most

thoroughgoing survey of colonial origins that has been attempted

to date, that of the American Council of Learned Societies, has

resulted in the conclusion that the principal elements in the popu-

lations of Virginia and Pennsylvania in 1790 probably represented

these percentages:57

Free

Ulster           State

English    German             Scotch           Irish           Irish

Virginia .........    68.5        6.3                                10.2               6.2             5.5

(and W. Va.)

Pennsylvania ....    35.3       33.3       8.6        11.0       3.5

It is true that the Scots and Irish tended to concentrate on

the frontier, but it must be remembered that even there they were

a majority only in certain communities, not in vast areas.⁵⁸ Also

to be remembered is the fact that state loyalties in the early decades

of national history meant far more than such loyalties do today.59

It would, then, be desirable to determine, if it were possible, just

how   many of the Pennsylvania natives living in Washington

County, Ohio, in 1850 were of the Virginia persuasion. That it is

not possible calls attention to one of the difficulties confronting

those who attempt to put Ohio's history on a statistical basis.

Another limitation, so far as the census of 1850 is concerned,

is emphasized by the presence of seventy-one natives of newer

western states in Ohio's oldest county in that year.      In the two

 

54 Ferguson, Western Pennsylvania Politics, 15, 22.

55 Ibid., 9.

56 Ibid., 11.

57 American Historical Association, Report of . . . 1931, 1, 124.

58 Joseph Doddridge, who grew to manhood on the Virginia-Pennsylvania frontier,

was able to write, "With the descendants of the Irish I had little acquaintance,

although I lived near them." See his Notes on the Settlement and Indian Wars . . .

(Albany, 1876), 198.

59 Hanna, Greene County, 16, says, "All that had ever been done for these back

woods settlers (they said) had been done by Virginia."

• 16
 

JORDAN: PEOPLE OF OHIO'S FIRST COUNTY                    17

 

wards of Marietta were eleven natives of Indiana and two natives

of Illinois, and that in itself reminds one that this census was

taken at a comparatively late date.      In the whole of Washington

County were fifty persons born in Indiana, sixteen born in Illinois,

three born in Michigan and two born in Iowa.

Nearly all the foreign-born in Washington County in 1850

were from Germany or the British Empire. Representatives of

the countries making the heaviest contributions were distributed

in this manner:

Ohio Company           Ger-       Ire-         Eng-      Scot-  Can-

Area                   many      land       land       land   ada60 Wales Total61

Adams ...........                                    93                 10                 4                   ..                              2                           ..    109

Aurelius ..........                 18          8            51          1            2        ..              80

Barlow        ...........                               1                 4                   12                120        ..               ..                           137

Belpre    ...........                 9           17          7            64          5        ..              102

Decatur ..........                   2                         10          2        ..         ..                 ..                                  14

Fearing  ..........                 376        2            29          10      ..         .                      417

Harmar ..........                                    28                 15                 7                   ..                              1                           ..    51

Marietta, 1st Ward                         100                                    34                44          ..               1                           1    180

Marietta, 2nd Ward          207        42          29          9            6        1              294

Marietta Twp. ....             33          18          16          14          4        ..              85

Roxbury   .........               2           2            6            3        ..         ..                 13

Salem  ............                 200                       9            8        6         1                 12                236

Union ............                  141        64          4            5            4                        ..  218

Warren ..........                                    27                                      12                7             11            1                           ..    58

Waterford   .......                6           24          5            7            2        ..              44

Watertown .......                                41                                      10                18          20            1                           ..    90

Wesley ...........                   1           17          2            7            3                        ..  30

 

Total ...... 1,285      298       251        277                  33                           14                2,158

Seven Ranges

Grandview   ........                             25                                      16                20          ..                    1      ..              62

Independence ......                            52                                      14                16          ..               ..                           ..                                                    82

Jolly .............                                      29                                      14                10          ..               ..                           ..                            53

Lawrence   ........                               56                                      6                   14          2               2                                 ..                      80

Liberty       ..........                             123                                    6                   6             6               1                           ..                            142

Ludlow    ..........                  7                         21          3        ..            1                  ..              32

Newport ..........                                 32                                      9                   21          1               1                           2    66

 

Total ......                            324                                    86                90          9               6                           2    517

County Total 1,609              384        341        286        39                      16                2,675

60 Including five from Nova Scotia, two from South Canada, one from New

Brunswick and one from Prince Edward Island.

61 Figures in this column give total representation of all foreign countries, not

merely the six leaders. Minor foreign contributions to Washington County were:

France 13. "Europe" 13, Switzerland 9, "British America" 4, Guernsey 2, "At Sea" 2,

Denmark 1, Sweden 1, West Indies 1.

• 17
 

18      OHIO   ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

As has been hinted, there was an infiltration of "Dutchmen"

dating from the colony's first year.⁶² There had been Germans in

the United States garrison at Fort Harmar, but it is not apparent

that they left any impress on the community.⁶³ Individuals such

as "an old German, Danner," described as the leading person in

the first settlement on Duck Creek, figure in the county's earliest

annals.⁶⁴ The pre-Revolutionary German strain of the Virginia-

Pennsylvania frontier was represented,⁶⁵ of course, but the old

Pennsylvania Dutch country did not contribute a recognizable ele-

ment to this part of the Ohio Valley.⁶⁶ The Germans who came

out of the mountains shared the superstitions of their more pros-

perous brethren in the East, and doubtless some of their dialectic

peculiarities, but there was little else to link them with the people

of the bulging barns in such Pennsylvania counties as Berks, Lan-

caster and York.⁶⁷      They came individually, and by families, but

did not form distinctive communities in Ohio's first county.⁶⁸

There was no German church in Marietta until 1839.69 By

that year an inflow which had begun with the arrival of a few

settlers from the Rhine Palatinate in 1833 had reached consider-

able proportions.⁷⁰ This movement resulted from the failure of

the German revolution of 1832, and was systematically encouraged

by Washington County business men, who formed an Emigrant

Association in 1834 to provide information "of advantage and

 

62 See footnote 18 and text to which it refers.

63 Albert Bushnell Hart, speaking at Marietta in 1906, mentioned these Ger-

mans and assumed that some of them "doubtless married and became the ancestors

of some of you."   (O. S. A. H. Quar., XVII (1908), 262.)  Major David Zeigler

took a Rhode Island bride at Fort Harmar in 1789 (Howe, Historical Collections,

I, 854), but evidence that private soldiers of German birth married and settled in

the community is singularly lacking, although the records kept by the New England

colonists were remarkably voluminous.

64 Ichabod Nye MSS.

65 The difficulty of detecting this strain may be judged from the fact that both

German and Scotch-Irish historians have laid claim to the Zane family.

66 The term  "Pennsylvania Dutch" has been too loosely used in Ohio. No

doubt some communities did receive Germans of the type that gave eastern Pennsyl-

vania its distinctive character, but these pacific, thrifty agriculturists should not be

confused with the Indian-fighters of German origin who formed a part of the frontier

vanguard.

67 Such personalities as Lew Wetzel and Mike Fink, while not necessarily

typical of the frontiersmen of German descent, emphasize the contrast between the

"Dutch" borderers and the thrifty sectarians of the East.

68 There had been such communities on the Virginia-Pennsylvania frontier, of

course: for example, Rice's Fort on Buffalo Creek. Rarely, it appears, Dunkers

found their way into Washington County, Ohio. A Dunker family named Bouser

settled on Duck Creek about 1810, but moved away after a few years. See Williams,

Washington County, 678.

69 Ibid., 388.

70 Bernard Peters, "The German Pioneers," O. S. A. H. Quar., II (1888), 62-9.

• 18
 

JORDAN: PEOPLE OF OHIO'S FIRST COUNTY                 19

 

interest to emigrants who may come hither."71          One Marietta

Yankee, the energetic Nahum Ward, projected a manufacturing

center for the Germans. He laid out the village of Bonn in Salem

township in 1835, planted a grove of white mulberry trees, pro-

vided silkworms and spinning machinery, and invited the immi-

grants to share in an industrial future which, unfortunately, never

materialized.⁷²

The Germans throve though silk culture did not, and certain

townships, notably Fearing, Salem, Union and Adams, took on a

new complexion. This immigration, continuing through the '40's

and '50's, accounts for the conspicuous showing of the German

element in the census of 1850. Many of the county's residents

listed in that year as natives of Germany were infants, a fact

emphasizing the newness of the movement.

The next largest foreign group, the Irish, had been consider-

ably augmented by the building of locks and dams in the Mus-

kingum River. This project, which was begun in 1837, brought

an influx of Irish laborers, many of whom remained in the

county.⁷³  Until that time most of the Irish in the community had

been Protestants, but the new element included a considerable

number of Catholics. The first resident pastor of the Catholic

faith in Marietta was installed in 1838,74 and the number of Irish

communicants continued to increase. However, it is not improb-

able that a majority of the Irish natives listed in the county in

1850, hailed from Ulster, although this could hardly have been

true a few years later.⁷⁵

The Scotch-Irish, in all probability, had their representatives

among the squatters who were evicted before the Ohio Company

settlement took place. A few of the pioneers from New England

 

71 M. R. Andrews, History of Marietta and Washington County, Ohio (Chicago,

1902), 288. The constitution of an earlier organization, "the Emigrant Society of

the County of Washington, Ohio," was printed in the American Friend (July 25, 1817).

72 Williams, Washington County, 590.

73 Ibid., 100.

74 Andrews, Marietta and Washington County, 366.

75 In 1850 Washington County had one Roman Catholic organization with church

accommodations for 200 persons. In 1870 the county had four Roman Catholic

organizations with accommodations for 1600 persons in all. Cf. The Seventh Census

of the United States: 1850, 877, and U. S. Census Office, 9th Census, 1870. The

Ninth Census of the United States: 1870 (Washington, 1872), I, 551. Some of the

Catholics, of course, were Germans.

• 19
 

20 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

were of this extraction.⁷⁶ Colonel Robert Oliver, who was elected

a director of the Ohio Company in 1789, was a native of northern

Ireland, though reared in Massachusetts.⁷⁷ Such names as Mc-

Guffey, McClure and McLeland cal be found in Rufus Putnam's

list of persons arriving at Marietta before 1791.⁷⁸  Caldwells, Mc-

Kees and other identifiable Scotch-Irish families were arriving

from   Pennsylvania before the settlement was ten years old.^{79 A}

native of County Antrim, Alexander Hill, commanded one of the

militia companies in the War of 1812, and found time to run, suc-

cessfully, for sheriff.⁸⁰

Such instances might be multiplied, yet the performance of

the Scotch-Irish in Washington County seems to have been largely

an individual affair.    Apparently, the families moved in by twos

and threes, forming neighborhoods rather than sizeable communi-

ties. It is not possible to point to a single township or village in

which Scotch-Irish influence predominated, nor is it evident that

these people planted any of the institutions commonly associated

with them     elsewhere.    Whether Calvinists or not, those early

Ohioans whose speech and manner betrayed recent Irish origin

were "foreigners" to most of their neighbors.⁸1 This, apparently,

was no handicap to born leaders among them, but it must be re-

membered in        evaluating   their influence wherever they       were a

minority.⁸²           Presbyterianism   in Marietta was established, not by

the Scots and Irish, but by New Englanders who preferred that

form of church organization.83

The presence of 286 natives of Scotland in Washington

County in 1850 was due in large part to the efforts of a single

 

76 Charles Knowles Bolton, The Scotch-Irish Pioneers (Boston, 1910), emphasizes

the role of this element in New England.

77 Williams, Washington County, 461.

78 Ibid., 57-59.

79 L. H. Watkins & Co., pub., History of Noble County, Ohio (Chicago, 1887),

311, 318, 498. Cf. Williams, Washington County, 582, 685.

80 Andrews, Marietta and Washington County, 563-4; Andrews, Centennial Ad-

dress, appendix, 80.

81 May was suspicious of the "Irish palaverers" on the Youghiogheny. See his

Journal and Letters, 31.

82 The early Irish, whether from Ulster or not, were the subject of many jokes.

See Watkins, Noble County, 486. Also, ibid., 383-4, for an account of a Protestant

Irish colony that settled in what was then Monroe County in 1817. Although "friends

to religion and education," these Irish "were looked upon with a good deal of

suspicion by their neighbors, who came from Maryland, Virginia and other Eastern

States."

83 C. E. Dickinson, A History of the First Congregational Church of Marietta,

Ohio (Marietta, 1896), 27, 44-5, 54, 88; Williams, Washington County, 384-5.

• 20
 

JORDAN: PEOPLE OF OHIO'S FIRST COUNTY               21

 

New   Englander, the same Nahum      Ward already mentioned in

connection with the silkworms. The ultimate owner of nearly all

the Ohio Company shares, Ward is said to have held title at one

time or another to more than 100,000 acres in southeastern Ohio.84

By 1821 it had occurred to him that people from Scotland would

do well on some of the highlands of Washington County. He

prepared a pamphlet based on the earlier works of Manasseh

Cutler and Thomas Hutchins,85 filled a book with plats, and headed

for Glasgow.⁸6 An emigrant company was organized there, and

in 1823 a band of Scotch colonists arrived in Marietta, in the

midst of "the great sickness,"⁸⁷ which soon thinned their ranks.

The survivors became firmly established in the county, and other

Scots joined them, but it would be hard to show any local af-

finity between them and the Protestant Irish.

The English colonists of the county, more numerous than the

Scotch, had been linked rather romantically, in an earlier day,

with the Aaron Burr Conspiracy. When Harman Blennerhassett

came to build his island paradise in the Ohio Valley, he brought

with him an entourage of English workmen, some of whom settled

in and near Marietta. A son of one of these workers was John

Brough, Civil War governor of Ohio, born in Marietta in 1811.88

Whether connected with Blennerhassett or not, and by no means

all of them were, a relatively large number of English families

arrived in the 1790's, and some of their members gained con-

siderable influence in the community.⁸⁹ To this nucleus others

were attracted, mostly farmers and tradesmen, who were rapidly

assimilated by the Yankee element.

It is interesting to note that the English natives in Wash-

ington County in 1850 were more numerous than natives of Con-

necticut, and almost as numerous as natives of Massachusetts.

 

84 Ibid., 477.

85 Nahum Ward, A Brief Sketch of the State of Ohio (Glasgow, 1822).

86 American Friend, July 27, 1821, and June 6, 1823. Ward also visited other

points in the British Isles and on the Continent.

87 A fever epidemic. See Williams, Washington County, 427, 477.

88 Howe, Historical Collections, I, 515. Also, Osman C. Hooper, "John Brough,"

O. S. A. H. Quar., XIII, 41, and Dictionary of American Biography (New York,

1928-1937), III, 94.

89  Among them were the Alcocks, the Corners and the Thornileys. The de-

scendants of Caleb Thorniley, who arrived with his family from Cheshire in 1795,

numbered more than a thousand persons by 1902. See Andrews, Marietta and Wash-

ington County, 311.

• 21
 

22       OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

The representation of the British Empire was nearly as great as

New England's, yet it was only two-thirds as great as Germany's.

Summarized by townships, the origins indicated for the popu-

lation of Washington County by the census of 1850 were:

 

New                                  Middle                                         For-          Un-

Ohio Co. Area       Ohio England     States           South       West           eign           known90    Total

Adams ..............    964                     46                106          61               ....                                109                7          1,293

Aurelius ............   918                     32                102          102                               3  85                           8   1,250

Barlow    ..............                           707              33            109             75                  1             137    ....                    1,062

Belpre     ..............                           1,096           61            174             176                9             102                4          1,622

Decatur .............   515                     19                68            102                               1  14                           84             803

Fearing .............    697                     39                77            22     ....                           417                         2               1,254

Harmar    ............ 637                     90                125          104                               1                53             ....             1,010

Marietta, 1st Ward..                         916              116          188             129                2             190           ....             1,541

Marietta, 2nd Ward..                       870              160          170             123            11              296                4          1,634

Marietta Twp.........                          669              79            84               143                2             87                  5          1,069

Roxbury ............   826                     33                127          79                                 2  17                           9   1,093

Salem  ...............   807                     45                107          44                                 3  236                         4   1,246

Union ...............    760                     39                100          42                                 1  218                         5   1,165

Warren .............   909                     68                228          193                               2  58                           3   1,461

Waterford             ..........                 1,256           96            164             106                8                             52             8                                1,690

Watertown            .........                  982              62            147             90                  1             90                  2          1,374

Wesley ..............   1,134                  16                269          103                               5  30                           3   1,560

Total ..........                          14,663         1,034       2,345          1,694         52              2,191        148           22,127

Seven Ranges.

Grandview            ..........                 709              5              184             179                8                             69 ....                  1,154

Indepedence.......  474                     14                66            92               ....                  82           ....                  728

Jolly .................     641                     8                  183          125                               7                53                              2                                1,014

Lawrence ...........  594                     7                  84            43                                 1                80             5               814

Liberty ..............    859                     5                  113          99     ....                           142                         5               1,223

Ludlow   .............  790                     10                109          98                                 2                36                  6                    1,051

Newport ............   941                     50                191          158                               1                68                  16                  1,425

Total ..........                          5,008           94            930             794            19                               530                     34                                            7,409

County       Total..                 19,671         1,128       3,275          2,488         71              2,721        182           29,536

From   these          figures   one     might leap        to                    the      conclusion      that

New England's role in southeastern Ohio had been a negligible

one, since Washington County fails to show more than a small

percentage of born Yankees. Such a conclusion would be wrong,

a fact best witnessed by the census itself.

Particularly significant is the information which the census

gives on occupations. In every community it is rather obvious

that some persons exert more influence than others. Cultural

levels, economic status, education and social affiliations can make

one man      in a village more important historically than a thousand

of his fellows.        Can it not be assumed that the average physician

is more of a leader in his town than the average day laborer?

90 See footnote 35. The large number in this column for Decatur township is

due to an enumerator's neglect.      The space for place of birth was left blank on

two entire sheets.

• 22
 

JORDAN: PEOPLE OF OHIO'S FIRST COUNTY          23 Is not a lawyer ordinarily more influential than a sawyer, and is not a merchant a more important figure, historically, than a teamster? It seems apparent enough, even in the most democratic communities, whether one likes it that way or not. It should be possible, then, in a study of this kind, to use certain occupations as indicators of the influence this stock or that wielded in local affairs. Such an occupational list might in- clude clergymen and editors as well as the doctors, lawyers and merchants. Public officials are important, but not to the exclu- sion of college professors, teachers, druggists and dentists, for politics, after all, is but one aspect of society. Certainly each of these pursuits denotes some degree of effectiveness in the com- munity. The census of 1850 shows that the persons in Washington County who were engaged in such key occupations had been born in these places:91 91 Manufacturing, which was preponderantly in the hands of the New Englanders, is not included in the tabulation because of difficulty in distinguishing between in- dustrialists and craft workers. A cobbler, for instance, may be listed in the census as a shoe manufacturer. 92 One Ohioan, Arius Nye, judge of common pleas court, is counted twice, as a lawyer and as a public official. 93 One New Englander, William A. Whittlesey, listed as a lawyer and a member of Congress, is counted twice. 94 One Virginian, Alpheus C. Gallehue, of Grandview, is counted as a clergyman and as a merchant, both occupations being listed in the census. Three persons have been counted twice (see footnotes 92 and 93) because the table is intended to empha- size the positions rather than individuals. 95 "Lawyer" and "Sawyer" often look alike in the original census sheets, and care must be taken to distinguish them. 96 Plus one physician of unknown origin. 97 This classification is limited arbitrarily to persons using the term "mercant" in describing their occupation to the census-taker. Those who called themselves grocers and butchers are not included, and neither are those styled "general trader" or "speculator." No sectional variation in the usage of "merchant" is apparent. 98 A congressman, a judge, four postmasters, the county's sheriff, recorder, clerk of courts and auditor, the superintendent of the infirmary and one justice of the peace make up this group. Since the table is restricted to data contained in the census p this group. Since the table is restricted to data contained in the census

• 23
 

24      OHIO   ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Representation of the foreign-born in these key occupations

was as follows:

England    Ireland       Scotland        Canada     Germany

Physicians    ....            1                  3                 1                                ..                ..

Clergymen     .....           2          ..                 ..                    1                  5

Merchants    .....           2                  4                                              ..     ..         7

Teachers                ......                   ..                  3                                                          ..                    1                                ..

Druggists      ......          ..                  ..                 ..            1                  ..

 

5                 10               1           3                   12

New    England's place in community affairs is immediately

apparent.      Sixty-six    of               the      positions    tabulated    are  held    by

Yankees, whereas natives of the four Middle States hold forty-

seven, and natives of the South twenty-eight. Although natives

of New England account for only 3.81 per cent, of the county's

population, they are represented in twenty-seven per cent. of the

positions of influence held by native Americans.¹⁰⁰ That, how-

ever, does not tell the whole story.

Seven of the eight Ohio-born lawyers can be identified as

persons of New England descent.¹⁰¹ The New York lawyer102

was of Yankee extraction and so were two of the three Virgin-

ians.¹⁰³ It follows that fourteen members of the Washington

County bar were of New         England stock, against one from         Penn-

sylvania and one from Virginia, with one Ohioan unaccounted for.

In percentages the figure is 82.35 for New England against 5.88

for either Pennsylvania or Virginia.

 

sheets, no person is included in this classification unless he gave public office as his

occupation. It is obvious, of course, that the number of office-holders was greater

than the list indicates.

99 The census-taker was instructed to record the occupation of each male person

over fifteen. In a few localities the enumerators exceeded their instructions and listed

women as teachers. The only persons counted here are males who described themselves

as teachers. According to the Seventh Census: 1850, 856, Washington County had four

academies with a total of sixteen teachers and 216 public schools with a total of 227

teachers. Such figures, if reliable, were obtained from sources other than the sheets

which list the inhabitants by name. Doubtless many men who taught occasional terms

of school were listed as farmers, or in some other occupation.

100 Assuming that the physician of unknown origin, mentioned in footnote 96, was

born in the United States.

101 Those so identified are Arius Nye, Dudley S. Nye, Rufus E. Harte, Charles

R. Rhodes and Charles F. Buell, Marietta; Darwin E. Gardner and David Barber,

Harmar.

102 Henry A. Towne, nephew of Samuel F. Vinton.

103 The Virginia-born lawyers of New England descent were William S. Nye and

Selden S. Cooke.

• 24
 

JORDAN      PEOPLE OF OHIO'S FIRST COUNTY                     25

At least ten of the physicians who were born in Ohio can

be identified as Yankees.104 That means that fifty per cent. of

the county's native American practitioners were of New England

extraction. Comparable results are obtainable from some of the

other groups. At least fifty of the hundred key positions at-

tributed to Ohio natives in the tabulation were held by persons

of identifiable New England descent.¹⁰5 Two of the merchants

from New York were Yankees,106 and the fact that one clergy-

man from     New    York was a Congregationalist107 carries a strong

presumption that he, too, was of that extraction.

In all, 122 of the tabulated places of community leadership

were held by New Englanders or members of New England

families who were born in Ohio, New York or Virginia. The

New England representation among native Americans in these

key occupations was a shade more than fifty per cent., and it

is not claimed that all persons of Yankee ancestry in the group

have been discovered.108

Such   a   comparison, of course, is purely          quantitative.     It

makes no distinction between a man of science, like Dr. Samuel

P. Hildreth,¹⁰⁹ and a frontier herb doctor. The college-trained

professional men in the county were New Englanders for the

most part, and in all of the occupational groups it would be easy

 

104 Those so identified are J. D. Cotton, Bartlett Shipman and Simeon D. Hart,

Marietta; W. S. Newton and B. F. Hart, Harmar; William B. Little and William

Glines, Waterford; William Beebe, Barlow; E. P. Bailey, Warren; Theodore S. Dana,

Newport.

105 Persons so identified, in addition to those named in footnotes 101 and 104, are:

(Clergymen) Levi L. Fay, Lawrence; (Public Officials) Jeremiah Willson, Waterford;

Stephen Newton and Aurius Nye (see footnote 93), Marietta; (Merchants) William

F. Curtis, John B. Shipman, Samuel Shipman, A. T. Nye, George M. Woodbridge,

John M. Woodbridge, William Woodbridge, Joseph Holden, Jr., James Holden, John

Mills, Luther D. Dana, John Hall and William B. Thomas, Marietta; Levi Barber

and David Putnam, Jr., Harmar; Charles Devol and Simeon Seely, Waterford; Chaun-

cey Ford, Watertown; William W. McIntosh, Adams; William D. Bailey, Warren;

N. C. Goodno, Belpre; D. W. Loring, Barlow; Dan Hill, Salem; Charles Dana, New-

port; (Teachers) Julius A. Payne and Charles Cook, Marietta; William Mason,

Adams; Ca [sic] Barker, Waterford; (Dentist) J. L. Devol, Union.

106 A. B. Waters, Marietta, and David Barber, Harmar. This is not the David

Barber who is listed as a lawyer in footnote 101.

107 Thomas Wickes, Marietta.

108 County histories, genealogical manuscripts and other local sources have

been used in making identifications. In some instances descent is indicated by family

groupings in the census itself. The number assigned to the New England element

should be regarded as a minimum rather than as a maximum.

109 A member of the Ohio legislature in 1810-1811, Hildreth "secured the enact-

ment of a law regulating the practice of medicine and providing for medical societies."

In 1839 he was president of the third medical convention of Ohio. See Dictionary of

American Biography, IX, 21-22, and Arthur G. Beach, A Pioneer College: the Story

of Marietta (Chicago, 1935), 91-92.

• 25
 

26      OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

to show that the scale of prominence weighed heavily in favor

of the Yankee element.110

It is interesting to note that the representation of the foreign-

born in these significant pursuits was greater than the combined

contributions of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. The

foreign-born likewise held leadership over those of southern

origin. Thirty-one of these tabulated positions were held by

foreigners, and only twenty-eight by persons from the South. In

this, perhaps, may be detected a cultural factor that has received

too little stress in studies of frontier Ohio. The people from

the backwoods of Pennsylvania and Virginia might outvote all

others in the county, but they clearly were not able to compete

on even terms with either the New Englanders or the foreigners

in  business and     the professions.¹¹¹        Positions of influence not

filled by Yankees were apt to be filled by men born abroad, par-

ticularly in callings requiring some degree of education.¹¹²

Direct evidence of the cultural advantage held by New Eng-

landers in the Washington County of 1850 is provided by the

census. There were 1,223 adults then living in the county who

could not read or write.113 Only sixty-eight of them were

Negroes,¹¹⁴ and only seventy-one were foreign-born,¹¹⁵ leaving a

total of 1,084 native white illiterates.¹¹⁶ Four hundred sixteen

 

110 The tabulation, being restricted to certain occupational designations, fails to

include such well-to-do citizens as Douglas Putnam, "land agent," Henry Fearing,

"general trader," Harlow Chapin, "farmer," and Nahum Ward, "none," recognized

leaders in the community. All were of New England stock.

111 It must be remembered that the vast majority of Virginians and Pennsyl-

vanians in the Ohio Valley had not come from seaboard centers of colonial culture,

but from the woods and mountains, where pen and ink were rarely used.

112 How many of the men commonly regarded as symbols of Virginia and Penn-

sylvania influence in Ohio were products of the frontier? A survey might yield an

interesting result. William Henry Harrison, son of a distinguished Virginia governor,

belonged to a caste that had no counterpart in the mountains. Nathaniel Massie's

father was a tidewater planter, and Edward Tiffin was an Englishman. The Princeton

Presbyterians who planted schools and churches in western Pennsylvania were not

typical of the region in which they labored, but were missionaries sent to it.

113 "Persons over 20 y'rs of age who cannot read & write." According to The

Seventh Census: 1850, 860, there were 1207 such persons in Washington County, a

figure which cannot be reconciled with the original census sheets. In arriving at the

figure 1223 several persons listed as illiterates have been excluded because they were

under twenty. Illiteracy was indicated by a check mark, and in some instances the

markings are doubtful.

114 The Seventh Census: 1850, 860, gives the number of free colored illiterates in

Washington County as eight (six males and two females), a gross error.

115 The census report cited in the preceding footnote gives the number of foreign-

born illiterates in the county as fifteen. Actually, their representation by nationality

was: Germany 22, Ireland 22, England 16, Scotland 3, Canada 3, "British America" 3,

Switzerland 2.

116 The Seventh Census: 1850, 860, gives the number as 1,192, a definite error.

• 26
 

JORDAN: PEOPLE OF OHIO'S FIRST COUNTY                 27

of these were born in Ohio, three hundred thirty in the Southern

States and two hundred ninety-four in the Middle States. Twenty-

one were born in New England.

Representation of the older states in the ranks of the un-

taught within the county was :117

New England            Middle States             South

Massachusetts ..... 7       Pennsylvania .....               240    Virginia .........            262

Connecticut ....... 5               New York........           26      Maryland ........           66

Maine ...........                4     New Jersey........ 20    N. Carolina........ 1

New   Hampshire...        3                                       Delaware .........  8                Georgia ..........  1

Vermont ..........             2

 

21                       294                      330

Since the county's native whites included 1,127 from New

England, 3,265 from the Middle States and 2,321 from the

South,¹¹⁸ it is easy to determine that the New Englanders' per-

centage of illiteracy was 1.86, against nine per cent. in the Middle

States group and 14.21 per cent. for the southerners. Roughly,

then, in comparison with the New England group, illiteracy was

about five times as prevalent among the persons from the Middle

States, and about eight times as prevalent among those from

the South.

Distribution of the illiterates within the county reflects the

influence of the Ohio Company. Marietta, Harmar and Marietta

township combined have only seventeen adults who cannot read

and write, four of them     colored, out of a total population of

5,254. Harmar has a single illiterate, from New York; Marietta's

first ward has but one, from Germany. At the other extreme

is Grandview, the easternmost township, with 165. The Ohio

Company townships119 list 537 illiterates, black and white, in a

population of 22,131 while the townships in the Seven Ranges

list 686 in a population of 7,409. The percentages are: Ohio

Company 2.42, Seven Ranges 9.27.120

 

117 One native of Iowa and one of Indiana were among the county's illiterates.

118 See footnote 49.

119 Including Aurelius. See footnote 41.

120 Complete illiteracy returns by townships, including Negroes, were: (Ohio

Company) Adams 9, Aurelius 6, Barlow 7, Belpre 46, Decatur 69, Fearing 6, Har-

mar 1, Marietta first ward 1, Marietta second ward 5, Marietta township 10, Roxbury

75, Salem 7, Union 6, Warren 129, Waterford 12, Watertown 63, Wesley 79; (Seven

• 27
 

28      OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Since the ability to read and write is a recognized gauge of

social effectiveness, these figures must weigh heavily in any study

of the Ohio Company's influence. Whether the Yankee element

was numerous or not, it can hardly be denied that its contribu-

tions were statistically apparent in 1850.

Actually, the numerical disproportion between the New

Englanders and the other principal elements in the county was

not so great, if the persons of Yankee descent born outside of

New England be taken into account. That many of the New

Yorkers belonged to this group has been noted,¹²¹ and it may be

added that some of the persons counted as Canadians were sons

and daughters of Bay Staters who had moved to Nova Scotia

before migrating to Ohio.¹²²

When the Indian trouble became acute in Marietta's early

days, a number of the New England settlers sought safety in

the older communities of the Virginia-Pennsylvania frontier.

While conditions in Ohio remained uncertain it was not unusual

for westward-bound families to stop, sometimes for a season,

sometimes for several years, in the vicinity of Pittsburgh or

Washington, Pa., or somewhere in the Virginia panhandle.123

Later it was inevitable that many families should move back and

forth across the Ohio River, and in a few instances recognizable

Yankee neighborhoods grew up on the Virginia side.¹²⁴ Thus it

came about that an indeterminate number of Virginia and Penn-

sylvania natives living in Washington County, Ohio, were of New

England parentage.

 

Ranges) Grandview 165, Independence 141, Jolly 141, Lawrence 6, Liberty 51, Lud-

low 158, Newport 24. Only three of the illiterates in the Seven Ranges were Negroes,

all in Jolly township.

121 Matthews, Expansion of New England, also describes early spheres of New

England influence in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

122 Notably Sarah Dyar, 74; Joseph B. Dyar, 50, and Sarah (Dyar) Otis, mother

of General Harrison Gray Otis, all in Union township. Some of the Spragues and

Olneys of Rhode Island lived in Nova Scotia before migrating to the county, but

none of them were listed in this census as natives of that province.

123 For example, James Stanley of Fearing, sixty-one years old in 1850, is listed

as a native of Pennsylvania. He was the son of Thomas and Mixenda Stanley, of

Connecticut. Cf. Williams, Washington County, 684.

124 Vienna and Belleville had a number of New England families. See Dickin-

son, First Congregational Church, 18, 22 and 82, (for Vienna) and Samuel P. Hildreth,

"Settlement at Belville, in Western Virginia," Hesperian (Columbus, Ohio), III

(June-November, 1839), passim.

• 28
 

JORDAN: PEOPLE OF OHIO'S FIRST COUNTY           29

 

Intersectional marriages became more frequent with the years,

and by 1850 census groupings like this were not uncommon:125

 

Daniel G. Dee 40 M    Shoe Maker Connecticut

Sarah                        "               38 F                                                      Va.

William                   "               19 M                   "                "                     "

Abram                      "               17 M                   "                "                    "

Russel              "         16 M           Farmer           "

Samuel                     "               12 M                                                    "

Permelia         "         7 F                                    "

That five of the Virginians in this family have one New Eng-

land parent in pretty apparent, but if William had been a few

years older at the time of the census, and had established a house-

hold of his own, there would be nothing in the record to show

his New England descent.^l26

Birthplaces of children often reveal the route by which a

family migrated to Ohio. For example:127

 

Lester R. Crandall   58 M   Miller    Con.

Mary                            "                                            58 F                 "

Caroline           "                             18 F                  N. Y.

William             "                             15 M    Laborer Pa.

 

By far the greater number of the unrecorded New Eng-

landers in the county at the time were in the Ohio-born group.

To Marietta, which was sixty-two years old when the census of

1850 was taken, had come three more or less distinct waves of

migration from New England. The first lasted from 1788 until

the Indian war of 1791-1795, and the second from 1795 until

the War of 1812. In both of these periods most of the Yankee

settlers appear to have been members of families that had in-

vested in the Ohio Company, or laborers employed by them. In

the third period, from 1812 to the late 1820's, a more diversified

migration from  New England occurred, including families that

had been too poor to participate in the grand plan of the revolu-

tionary associates.  Many of them, it is probable, were fleeing

 

125 Family No. 1, Harmar.

126 A supposition might be founded on the name in this particular case, but that

would not hold true in most instances.

127 Family No. 109, Newport.

• 29
 

30      OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

the economic dislocations caused by the embargo and the second

war with Britain.¹²⁸

While individual business and professional men were drawn

from New England to Marietta in the 1830's and 1840's, there

was no marked movement to the colony from that region after

1825. One Washington County historian observes that a shift

in population took place about 1820. Before that year, he says,

cultivation was largely restricted to the bottom lands. With de-

velopment of the hilltops, "which the New Englanders as a rule

despised and avoided," came an increasing influx of non-Yankee

farmers.¹²⁹

Nearly all of the original settlers, and a majority of the

adults in the later waves of New England migration, had died

before the census of 1850 was taken, leaving their descendants

to be counted as Ohioans.¹³⁰

Late in 1858 one William Warren,¹³¹ a cooper, prepared

for a local newspaper a list of persons in the town and town-

ship of Marietta who were seventy or more years old. There

were eighty-four of them, men and women who had "witnessed

changes in the affairs of the world more marvelous than it seems

possible the same number of years can again produce." Besides

ages, Warren reported birthplaces and, in most instances, the

years of residence in Ohio.¹³² Twenty-six of the patriarchs were

foreign-born and thirty-three, more than half of the American-

born, were natives of New England. Birthplaces were:

 

New                                 Eng- Ire- Scot- Ger-

Eng.¹³³ N. Y. Pa. N. J. Va. Md. land        land land many

Men        ..................                        18            2    1                     1            4            3            8           3             1             5

Women   ...............                           15            ..                                         1            2            7           4             1             2     ..                      6

33            2    2                     3                          11                       7                            9                             5                                              1                      11

128 Some immigrants of the third period were making money by trading one

frontier for another. James Webber, who moved in 1818 from Vienna, Me., to

Olive township (now Noble County), had acquired 100 acres in the Kennebec Pur-

chase for $96 in 1802. He improved the land and lived on it, then sold it in 1818

for $650. With this money he could go to Ohio, buy better land and have working

capital left over.

129 Williams, Washington County, 99-100. Chapter is by Alfred Mathews, who

also cites the Western Reserve's retarding influence upon New England migration to

southeastern Ohio.

130 Amos Porter, Jr., the last member of the pioneer party of 1788, died November

28, 1861, aged ninety-two. He was from Danvers, Mass., and lived in Salem township.

131 Born in Shirley, Mass., September 24, 1800; died in Marietta, Ohio, April

2, 1892.

132 Marietta Home News, January 1, 1859.

133 Of the men born in New England, eleven were from Massachusetts, three

from Connecticut, two from Rhode Island, one from Maine and one from Vermont.

Of the women, nine were from Massachusetts, five from Connecticut and one from

New Hampshire.

• 30
 

JORDAN: PEOPLE OF OHIO'S FIRST COUNTY            31

 

Seventeen of the men born in New England had lived in

Ohio for an average of 52.1 years. Four men from the Middle

States averaged 51.7 years' residence and six from the South

averaged forty-seven years in the state. Sixteen men born abroad

had been in Ohio for an average of 36.2 years.134 Of the women,

fifteen from New England averaged 42.8 years' residence, two

from the Middle States fifty-six, six from the South 40.6, and

nine from abroad 25.1.135 These figures seem to show that while

all the elements were present at an early date, the proportion of

New Englanders had formerly been much greater.

Returning to the census of 1850, one finds that only one of

the fifty New England natives in Newport township is under

twenty years of age, and only fourteen of them are under forty.

In Belpre township, down the Ohio, where there are sixty-one

New Englanders, twenty-four of them are aged sixty or more,

while not one is under twenty. This age distribution compares

with that of Belpre residents born in the other sections as follows:

 

New                         Middle                 Southern

England                     States                  States

Age 60 and over ......      24            21                                                    7

Age 20 and under......      ..                                  32                                                                               76

Total in township....       61            174                       176

In Adams township, up the Muskingum, a similar compari-

son yields this result:

New                                       Middle                           Southern

England                     States                  States

Age 60 and over .....                       22                         16                            8

Age 20 and under ....                       5                           12                            9

Total in township....                       46                         106                          61

Such samplings, in different sectors of the county, merely

confirm the fact that the numerical strength of the New England

stock in the county must be measured largely in terms of persons

born in Ohio. The problem, then, is to locate the Yankee de-

134 The average residence of the eight men born in England was 49.5 years,

reflecting the known fact that English migration to the county was contemporaneous

with that from New England.

135 Terms of residence for three men and six women were not given, and these

are excluded in computing the averages.

• 31
 

32     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

scendants. In some instances this is easy, for census entries like

this leave little room for doubt: 136

 

John M. Slocomb           39 M      Carpenter             Mass.

Joanna            "             38 F                                    Vermont

William F.       "             12 M                                   Ohio

George L.        "             10 M                                   "

Mary Perkins "      7 F                                                                                "

Albert H.        "             5 M                                     "

Harriet C.        "             3 F                                      "

Sometimes the presence of a grandparent in the home reveals

New England descent that would not otherwise be indicated, but

in many cases the census itself gives no clew at all, and identifica-

tion must depend on direct historical evidence. Consider this pair

of families living under the same roof in Harmar:137

 

Douglass Putnam           44 M      Land Agent    Ohio

Eliza                "                                                        41 F

Benjamin                 "                    18 M      Student

Samuel P.                "                    15 M

Douglass                "                    12 M

Mary               "                                                        4 F

Eliza                         "                                                                                     6/12 F

Ann E. Whipple            18 F

Isabella Hyndman          26 F                                    Ireland

Eliza Whipple               70 F                                    Mass.

 

A. W. Shaw                    37 M      Bucket Manufacturer   Ohio

Lydia M.    "                                  34 F

Benjamin D. "                               12 M

Rothe W.        "                                                        10 M

Georgianna             "                    5 F

Eliza Shriver                  19 F

One might assume that Anne E. Whipple was a daughter

or granddaughter of Eliza Whipple, and therefore of Massa-

chusetts descent, but one unfamiliar with the community might

never suspect that all the persons listed, except the two hired

 

136 Family 105, Marietta second ward.

137 Dwelling No. 46, Families Nos. 52 and 53. The names are spelled here as the

census-taker wrote them down, which accounts for such variations as the extra "$"

in Douglas and "Rothe" for Rotheus.

• 32
 

JORDAN: PEOPLE OF OHIO'S FIRST COUNTY                        33

 

girls,¹³⁸ were of undiluted New England stock. Douglas Putnam

was a great-grandson of General Israel Putnam, of Connecticut.

His family and that of Augustus Warner Shaw were of such

prominence that all their members can be identified without dif-

ficulty, thus establishing the true New England representation in

these households, which is fourteen persons instead of one.139

It is not always so easy. Wives born in Ohio are often

hard to identify, and of course, no conclusions regarding a wife's

origin can be drawn from that of her husband. However, source

materials at Marietta are abundant, and in a suprising number of

instances one can reconstruct the history of families that would

otherwise be mere names in the census. By combining local his-

torical data with the data provided by the enumerators of 1850,

a significant minimum computation of the Yankee element can

be made.

Card-indexing the families in the town of Harmar reveals

that the census itself lists, in addition to ninety persons born in

New    England, ten     Ohio natives with       both   parents from      New

England, and ninety-four other Ohio natives with one parent

from New England. The census also indicates that twenty-four

others who were born in Ohio had one New England grand-

parent.¹⁴⁰ Besides, it shows that nine of the Virginians, two of

 

138 The status of Isabella Hyndman is quite apparent, that of Eliza Shriver

less so.

139 Williams, Washington County, 475, 484; Andrews, Marietta and Washington

County, 945, 948-51; Julia Perkins Cutler, Life and Times of Ephraim  Cutler (Cin-

cinnati, 1890), 17 n., 125 n.; George J. Blazier, ed., Marietta College Biographical

Record (Marietta, 1928), 3. Benjamin, Samuel P. [H.] and Douglas Putnam, Jr., were

sons of Putnam's first wife, Mary Ann Hildreth. The two daughters were children of

the second wife, Eliza, daughter of Levi and Eliza Whipple. See Howe, Historical

Collections, II, 334, and 0. S. A. H. Quar., XIX, 265-6, for Levi Whipple.

140 A search of the Harmar enumeration for Ohio natives of indicated Middle

State or Southern descent, by the same procedure, yields this comparison:

Both                      One               One Grand-      Total

Parents                    Parent           parent               Indicated

Southern        .........................                                                21                        77                  ....                      98

Middle   State          ....................                                           55                        87                         5                        147

New       England    ....................                                           10                        91                         24                      128

These figures are arrived at by approaching the census from the point of view

of each section in turn. A person with a New England father and a Southern mother,

for example, is counted in both groups.

Parents of known New England descent are counted according to their birth-

places, since this tabulation is only intended to reflect the enumeration.

Again the fact that the New Englanders were an older and earlier group in

the community is evident.

Among persons with one New England parent the combination most frequently

encountered is that of a New England father and an Ohio-born mother.

• 33
 

34     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

the Pennsylvanians, and two of the New Yorkers were of Yankee

descent.¹⁴1

Turning from the census to other sources reveals that seventy

persons not included in the above groups are of known New Eng-

land descent.¹⁴² To these may be added still another classification,

persons not otherwise identified whose probable Yankee kinship

is indicated by names which appear to have no incidence save in

the New England portion of the community.¹⁴³ There are twenty-

eight such persons in Harmar.

In all, then, besides the ninety born in New England, there

are 211 persons of identifiable New England descent, or 239 if

the "probable" group is included. The larger figure may be used,

for the margin of possible error can hardly do more than com-

pensate for persons of Yankee descent who have not been dis-

covered.¹⁴⁴ This means that 329 of Harmar's 1,010 inhabitants,

or 32.57 per cent. of the town's total population, were in some

degree of New England descent, whether born in New England

or elsewhere. That percentage, rather than 8.9I per cent., which

would be the figure if native New Englanders alone were counted,

represents the minimum numerical strength of the town's Yankee

element. Excluding the foreign-born and the Negroes from the

calculation, it will be found that persons of New England blood

accounted for 34.48 per cent. of Harmar's native white population.

That not all these people were of 100 per cent. Yankee ex-

traction is obvious. One having a New England grandparent

whose identity is disclosed by the census might be three-fourths

a Virginian, or of some other extraction which is undisclosed.

It is assumed, however, that intermarriage was, statistically speak-

ing, a reciprocal affair, and that undiscovered Virginia and Penn-

sylvania elements in the Yankee group were matched by undis-

 

141 One or both parents, or a grandparent.

142 County histories, obituaries in local newspapers, family scrapbooks and

genealogical manuscripts provide the identifications.

143 For example, three children named Fearing living with Zenas C. Berry, 37,

New Jersey, and Sarah B. Berry, 39, Ohio, in Family No. 84. Also included are

persons named Hart, Judd, Chamberlin, Sprague and Starling whose connection with

known New England families of the same name in the vicinity has not been established.

144 Since the census reveals some New England families not mentioned in county

histories or other readily available records, it is reasonable to assume that there are

Ohio families of Yankee origin which is not indicated in either the census or

the histories

• 34
 

JORDAN: PEOPLE OF OHIO'S FIRST COUNTY                         35

covered Yankee elements in the Virginia and Pennsylvania

groups.¹⁴⁵

By applying the same procedure to Marietta township and

the two wards of Marietta, and combining the results with those

for Harmar, the following table for the pivotal community of the

county is obtained:

New Eng.146 New Eng.147          New Eng. New. Eng.148 Indicated

Birth            Descent       Descent            Descent Minimum

Indicated         Indicated     Indicated         Indicated New Eng.

by Census        by Census    Historically      by Names     Element

Marieta, 1st Ward          116              168               69              48                401

Marietta, 2nd Ward        159              185               47              34                425

Marietta Township                    79                          152                        31                      28                         290

Harmar ..........               90                141               70              28                329

Translated into percentages of the native white population,1⁴⁹

the table becomes:

New Eng.      New Eng.     New Eng. New Eng. Indicated

Birth            Descent       Descent            Descent Minimum

Indicated        Indicated     Indicated         Indicated New Eng.

by Census         by Census    Historically      by Names     Element

Marietta, 1st Ward    8.71                                12.62                            5.18                  3.60                     30.12

Marietta, 2nd Ward 12.25                               14.26                            3.62                  2.62                     32.76

Marietta   Township   8.11                             15.62                            3.18                  2.87                     29.80

Harmar .......... 9.43                                              14.77                            7.33                  2.93                     34.48

The total native white population of these four subdivisions

of the county was 4,555.         Since the tables have indicated 1,445

persons of New England birth or descent, it follows that at least

145 It is obvious that a Connecticut father and a Virginia mother would cancel

each other in numerical comparison of New Englanders and Southerners. The greater

number of old persons from New England would seem to indicate, if anything, a

geater proportion of Yankees among the undisclosed grandparents.

146 A Negro native of New England, living in Marietta second ward, is not

included.

147 In a few instances historical data have prevented erroneous conclusions that

might otherwise be drawn from the census. For example, when it is known that

the head of the family has taken a second wife, and she is not the mother of all

the children listed, the findings are revised accordingly.

148 Conclusions from names have been drawn with great caution. It is interest-

ing to note, however, that many of the Yankee names current in Marietta cannot

be found at all in the Pennsylvania portion of the 1790 census. Such names as Judd,

Fearing, Wharf, Hobby, Olney and Putnam do not appear in the Pennsylvania

enumeration, although there are a few Putmans. Morse, Woodbridge and Chapin

appear once, and Starling but twice, thus emphasizing the fact that the New Eng-

landers at Marietta did have a distinctive name pattern.

149 The native white population was 1,331 in Marietta first ward; 1,297 in Marietta

second ward; 973 in Marietta township and 954 in Harmar.

• 35
 

36     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

31.72 per cent. of all the native whites in the immmediate Marietta

area were of Yankee extraction. Counting the foreigners and

Negroes, the New England element represented 27.5 per cent. of

the whole number of inhabitants.¹⁵⁰

Despite the appearance of exactitude given by the fractional

percentages, the results are merely approximations obtained by a

set method.    The procedure calls for repeated exercise of in-

dividual judgment, and it is unlikely that any two investigators

would arrive precisely at the same figures. The appraisal is a

conservative one, however. It provides an acceptable minimum

measure of the Yankee stock in the county's principal community,

but this must not be regarded as a maximum.

Similar results are obtainable in other parts of Washington

County, and it is not improbable that the New England element

in 1850 represented a third of the native population in the whole

area which had been under the Ohio Company proprietorship.151

Confirming this, and giving substantial evidence of the orig-

inal New England strength in the region, is the census of 1810.

Paul Fearing was the enumerator for Washington County in that

year, and a notebook copy of his returns is preserved in the

Marietta College Library. This is probably the only extant por-

tion of that census for Ohio, for the lists sent to Washington

were destroyed when the British burned the Capitol.

The county's population in 18IO was 5,991, and the Fearing

notebook lists 1,001 heads of families by name.152 Birthplaces

were not recorded, but that deficiency can be supplied in many

instances from other sources. County histories, church records,

newspaper files, letters, diaries, D. A. R. lineage books, and in

some instances the census of 1850, enable the investigator to

identify at least 533 of the persons named.¹⁵³ The places of

 

150 The total population of the four districts was 5,254.

151 This proprietorship sealed the fate of the squatters. The frontiersmen driven

from the Muskingum by federal troops could not return unless they were able to

buy land or were willing to meet the fairly rigid requirements imposed on settlers

in the Donation Tract. This materially deterred Virginia and Pennsylvania migration

to the purchase in early years.

152 The county embraced a wider area in 1810 than it did in 1850. See Randolph

C. Downes, "Evolution of Ohio County Boundaries," O. S. A. H. Quar., XXXVI

(July, 1927), 380 and 424, for maps.

153 Thanks are due Josephine E. Phillips, of Marietta, who has made a careful

survey of local sources, card-indexing data on more than two-thirds of the persons

named in this census.

• 36
 

JORDAN: PEOPLE OF OHIO'S FIRST COUNTY       37 origin indicated for these patriarchs, grouped by townships, were: 154

These results may be regarded as reasonably definite, being based on direct documentation. The totals may be increased some- what by including persons identified on more purely circum- stantial evidence, such as coincidence of name and location.l56 Adding the "probables" to those definitely identified gives this result: New England ..........    367    England ............... 19 Pennsylvania ........... 86        Ireland ................  13 Virginia ...............                  75              France      ................ 4 New Jersey ...........                 23              Germany  ............                   3 New York ............                 16              Scotland ...............                   2 Maryland ..............                16              Wales .................                    1 Delaware ..............                 2 Total  ................  627 Since the average family in Washington County in 1810 ap- proximated six members, it becomes apparent that a bloc of I,896 New Englanders is roughly indicated by the documented group, or 2,202 if the "probables" are included. That the same ratios would prevail in the unidentified por- 154 Wooster township became Watertown in 1824. 155 The New England column includes four from Nova Scotia who were mem- bers of Yankee families. In other instances, persons are grouped according to birth- places, or if the birthplace is not recorded, according to the point from which the person migrated. 156 If a man is described in a county history as "an early squatter" or as a person "from the frontier," the fact may be taken as fairly conclusive evidence that he was not a New Englander.

• 37
 

38     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

tion of the community is unlikely. The Virginia-Pennsylvania

frontiersmen appear at a definite disadvantage in a survey of this

kind. Being less literate, they left fewer records of their lives,

and are therefore harder to identify. On the other hand, the

New England segment indicated by historical sources is large

enough to be convincing, and it is not unlikely that more than

half of the county's people in 1810 were Yankees. It is also

very obvious that Ohio's New Englanders in that year were not

confined "to the northern tier of counties."

The people of Washington County in 1810 made up about

one-fortieth of the total population of Ohio.¹⁵⁷ In 1800, the

county had more extended boundaries but settlement within it

was largely concentrated in the Marietta area. Its population in

that year was 5,427, more than one-eighth of the whole number of

people in the eastern division of the Northwest Territory.¹⁵⁸ Since

the New Englanders were the ones in whom title to all land in

the Ohio Purchase had originally been vested, it is fair to assume

that their numerical proportion was even greater at that time.

The census of 1810, like that of 1850, makes plain that the

early Marietta Yankees were numerous enough to figure sig-

nificantly in the geometric increase of Ohio's native population.

Clearly Mr. Chaddock's assumption that "an even larger per-

centage" of Ohioans "could trace their ancestry to Pennsylvania

and Virginia" in the generation previous to 1850 does not hold

good in Washington County. Moreover, the findings for this

county justify the suggestion that other counties, certainly all

those in the Ohio Purchase, must be similarly examined before

sweeping statements can be made regarding their early population.

It may also be suggested that conclusions regarding the effec-

tiveness of the New England element in Ohio as a whole should

rest on more than a percentage drawn from the census of 1850.

 

157 Ohio's population in 1810 was 230,760.

158 U. S. Bureau of the Census, 15th Census, 1930, Fifteenth Census of the

United States: 1930 (Washington), I, II, gives 45,365 as the population of Ohio in

1800, a figure which probably takes in Michigan. Caleb Atwater, A History of the

State of Ohio (Cincinnati, 1838), 348, gives 42,156 as the population in that year.

Andrews in Centennial Address (p. 27) stated: "The territory of Indiana was formed

in 1800, and the census of that year showed a population of 42,000 in the eastern

division (of the Northwest Territory). After the adjournment of the legislature in

January, 1802, another census gave 45,028 inhabitants. . . ."

• 38
 

JORDAN: PEOPLE OF OHIO'S FIRST COUNTY         39

 

The mere fact that there were but 66,032 native New Englanders

in the state at that time proves little. The historian needs to

know whether most of them were aged men and women who had

founded Ohio families in an earlier era. He also needs to know

how many of them were college graduates, and how their con-

tributions to leadership and learning compared with those made

by other groups. How many of the state's leading bankers were

Yankees, and how many of the college professors? When such

questions are answered, more accurate estimates of New Eng-

land's influence on Ohio can be made.

As regards Washington County, the answer is definite

enough. The New England element which had been dominant

in local affairs from the beginning remained so in 1850, despite

constant contributions to the population of other parts of Ohio,

and to other western states.

Also apparent is the fact that this element exerted influence,

in both local and state affairs, out of all proportion to its numerical

strength. In part, no doubt, this was due to an economic factor.

The Yankees of Washington County, being first in the owner-

ship of the land, were the ones who reaped the increment as

civilization developed. Fully as important, however, was the cul-

tural factor, which enabled the New Englander to assert himself

in pursuits for which the man of the frontier could not qualify.

Strikingly emphasized, in this reconstruction of the early

life of the Marietta community, is the slowness with which the

genuine backwoodsmen won positions of influence. The statistical

view of illiteracy and representation in the professions points to

the truth that those who brought civilization with them were the

ones who planted and maintained it. Adaptation was a slow and

painful process for many of the people from the trans-Allegheny

frontier. The Girtys, the Wetzels and their kind provide a color-

ful chapter in our history, but one may wonder just how con-

sequential it was.

To become an effective factor in the new society, the frontiers-

man had first to divest himself of his frontier ways. He had to

learn to read and write, to wear shoes, and to conform to regula-

tion for the common good. His tutors came from the seaboard

• 39
 

40     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

and from   foreign lands, but in large measure they came from

New England, the only part of the country that had anything

resembling a system of public education.

Those who seek the significance of the Marietta colony in

matters purely political will not find it. The chief importance of

the settlement was as a civilizing agency. Long before there was

any northwestern Ohio, and before the Western Reserve had

made a fair beginning, this Yankee outpost in the Ohio Valley

was instructing the Gods of the Mountains in such elementary

things as the use of the tablecloth.l⁵⁹ Because of this colony

vast numbers of Ohioans in the state's formative years were being

taught by New England teachers, saved by New England preach-

ers, dosed by New England doctors, and hired and fired by New

England employers.

The census reports, if examined closely, give proof of this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

159 May, Journal and Letters, 145. Also see Samuel P. Hildreth, "Manners

and Domestic Habits of the Frontier Inhabitants, in the First Settlements of Ohio,"

The Medical and Physical Sciences (Columbus), II (1856), 33-6, for the home life

of a family from the Virginia backwoods.

• 40