Ohio History Journal

ANDREW R. L. CAYTON

 

"A Quiet Independence":

The Western Vision of

the Ohio Company

 

 

Speculative schemes and idealistic visions merged in post-

Revolutionary America to produce many new towns in the rapidly

expanding Northwest Territory. A group of New England veterans

of the American Revolution, organized as the Ohio Company of

Associates, established the first such community on April 7, 1788, at

the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers, some 200 miles

downstream from Pittsburgh. They called their town Marietta.

Within the next several years, many of the 594 associates of the

Ohio Company cleared land, built homes, settled their families, and

sought fortune and security in or near this city. Above all, they

attempted to protect and stablize their financial and ideological in-

vestment in what they called "the western world" by providing

Marietta with a pervasive and enduring form and character.1

Indeed, the construction of Marietta was the culmination of a long

contemplated effort by a highly organized elite to establish a com-

munity designed to secure individual fortune within the context of

communal order. In a 1790 letter seeking to obtain increased protec-

tion from Indians, to gain the opening of the Mississippi River, and

to assuage eastern fears about depopulation, Ohio Company Super-

intendent Rufus Putnam told Congressman Fisher Ames that the

"Genus" and "education" of no other people was "as favorable to a

 

 

Andrew R. L. Cayton is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Brown University and an

Instructor in the history department at Harvard University.

 

 

1. "A Contemporary Account of Some Events," in James M. Varnum, An Oration

Delivered at Marietta, July 4, 1788 (Newport, 1788), in Samuel Prescott Hildreth,

Pioneer History: Being an Account of the First Examination of the Ohio Valley and the

Early Settlement of the Northwest Territory (Cincinnati, 1848), 515. Hildreth is a

detailed account of the founding of Marietta by an early resident. For a concise,

modern narrative, see Beverley W. Bond, Jr., The Foundations of Ohio, Carl Wittke,

ed., The History of the State of Ohio (5 vols., Columbus, 1941), I, 275-90.

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6                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

republican Government" as that of Massachusetts. But in the 1780s

Putnam and his colleagues had been less sanguine about the "mor-

rals, relegion and policy" of the East. Then, without the reassuring

presence of Putnam's friend and mentor George Washington as

president under a strong federal Constitution, some Americans

appeared to the founders of the Ohio Company to be repudiating or

distorting the tenets of republican government as they defined

them. Bitter frustration and disgust with their perception of the

United States in the 1780s made the development of Marietta cru-

cial to the associates. Far more than a source of profit, the city was

to serve as "a wide model" for the "regular" and "judicious" settle-

ment of the West.2

In the East, the veterans had sensed the imminent disintegration

of their inseparable personal and public worlds. Believing them-

selves poorly paid for military service in the Revolution, outraged at

a perceived loss of status when they had expected increased respect

and prestige, self-pitying but genuinely frightened by post-

Revolutionary America, the associates of the Ohio Company sought

to escape what they saw as the contentious anarchy of the East and

to bring order and stability to their lives in a prosperous but control-

led West. Mixing materialism and idealism inextricably, the

Marietta founders' negative view of their economic and social posi-

tions in the 1780s nurtured positive hopes for a certain, harmonious

existence based on a regular city and landed wealth.

Assuming that stability could be produced by a relatively

egalitarian dispersal of land among the virtuous and by the example

of an orderly city, this self-appointed elite hoped to control the

evolution of western society. In this task, they clearly failed. For the

boats carrying the people who would settle and develop the West

generally passed by Marietta, their passengers perhaps put off by its

very regularity and pretensions and interested in individual fortune

without the elitist notions of stability and harmony that guided the

Marietta founders. Yet, if the story of early Marietta is ultimately

one of failure, it nonetheless provides a crucial example of the mo-

tives of some early immigrants to the Northwest Territory.

Historians have generally seen the Ohio Company, which was

 

 

2. Rufus Putnam to Fisher Ames, 1790, Rowena Buell, ed., The Memoirs of Rufus

Putnam and Certain Official Papers and Correspondence (Boston, 1903), 246; Man-

asseh Cutler, An Explanation of the Map which delineated that part of the Federal

Lands, Comprehended between Pennsylvania, the Rivers Ohio and Scioto, and Lake

Erie; confirmed to the United States by sundry Tribes of Indians, in the Treaties of

1784 and 1786, and now ready for Settlement (Salem, 1787), 14.

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A Quiet Independence                                           7

 

organized as a joint stock corporation by eleven veterans of the

American Revolution on March 1, 1786, in Boston, as the climax of a

persistent but basically economic effort by New England officers to

obtain payment for their wartime service. Certainly, director Man-

asseh Cutler and secretary Winthrop Sargent's handling of the

purchase of 1,500,000 acres from Congress in 1787 and their close

association with speculators like William Duer and speculations

like the Scioto Company tend to confirm that judgment. No one can

doubt that the associates were interested in getting land and money.

Many, like Alexander Hamilton, had no immediate intention of set-

tling in the West. Because the company seems so much like a spec-

ulative venture, its rhetoric, while not without defenders, especially

among local historians, has often been dismissed as propaganda

designed to gain favors from Congress or to attract settlers to the

purchase. One of the five directors of the company, Manasseh Cut-

ler, even found something redeeming about Shays' Rebellion:

"These commotions," he told Winthrop Sargent, "will tend to pro-

mote our plan and incline well-disposed persons to become adven-

turers." But it was not merely the force of their rhetoric that the

associates believed would convince other people to join. "For," as

Cutler himself noted about Massachusetts in 1786, "who would wish

to live under a Government subject to such tumults and confusions."

Generally believing the assumptions and fears that lay behind

much of their exaggerated public prose and anxious private letters,

the associates expected many others to be receptive to their charac-

terizations of eastern society and their hopes for the West. They did

not reject American society so much as they wanted to stabilize it.

Largely soldiers or their sons who were gambling on building, or

rebuilding, a more predictable life, the active participants in the

westward migration were indeed speculators - in the future as well

as land. Like Captain Joseph Rogers, who had "served honorably

through the Revolution" and then resided some time with his

friends," these veterans believed that they had "cast" their "Bread

upon the Waters of the Revolution" in vain, and now, like "many an

Old Soldier," marched "toward the setting sun in hopes to find it in

the West."³

 

3. Manasseh Cutler to Winthrop Sargent, October 8, 1786, quoted in Sidney Ka-

plan, "Veteran Officers and Politics in Massachusetts, 1783-1787," William and Mary

Quarterly, IX (1952), 43; Joseph Rogers is quoted in George J. Blazier, ed., Joseph

Barker: Recollections of the First Settlement of Ohio (Marietta, 1958), 11. The associ-

ates are portrayed as speculative entrepreneurs in Sidney Kaplan, "Pay, Pension,

and Power: Economic Grievances of the Massachusetts Officers of the Revolution,"

Boston Public Library Quarterly, III (1951), 15-34, 127-42, and Kaplan, "Veteran

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8                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

The earliest origins of Marietta lay in the increasing material and

social distress felt by its founders. Insistent upon describing them-

selves as "reputable, industrious, well-informed" men with status in

society, the members of the Ohio Company assured congressmen

that "many of the subscribers are men of very considerable property

and respectable characters." If the associates were certain that they

were "distinguished for wealth, education, and virtue," events and

other people appeared to them to be threatening that crucial self-

image. Long-standing discontents with the evolution of New Eng-

land society came to a head in the 1780s as the future Mariettans

saw ubiquitous challenges to their security and social status.⁴

Generally sons of substantial farmers and artisans, most of the

future emigrants came from towns in an arc around Boston, in east-

ern Connecticut, and in Rhode Island undergoing the pangs of com-

mercial growth and the disruption of what seemed in retrospect, at

least, to have been a more personal, communal world. Such pre-

dominantly agricultural towns as Pomfret, Connecticut, and

Stoughton, Massachusetts, experienced increasing population

accompanied by a growing number of neighborhood disputes and

stronger connections with the more commercial and cosmopolitan

worlds of Boston and Providence.

 

 

Officers," 29-57. For discussions of the congressional negotiations and land grant,

with emphasis on the speculative nature of the Ohio Company, see Joseph S. Davis,

"William Duer, Entrepreneur, 1747-1799," Essays in the Early History of American

Corporations (2 vols., Cambridge, 1917), II, 131-45; Merrill Jensen, The New Nation:

A History of the United States during the Confederation, 1781-1789 (New York, 1950),

355-59; Richard H. Kohn, Eagle and Sword: The Federalists and the Creation of the

Military Establishment in America, 1783-1802 (New York, 1975), 99-100; Shaw

Livermore, Early American Land Companies (New York, 1939), 136-46; and

Frederick Merk, History of the Westward Movement (New York, 1978), 104-05. Not all

historians have seen the associates as economic men, however. The most complete

and admiring study of the motives of the associates is Archer Butler Hulbert's intro-

duction to The Records of the Original Proceedings of the Ohio Company (2 vols.,

Marietta, 1917). Hulbert viewed the Company as the democratic, "uniquely unselfish

and thoroughly American" (I, ciii) carrier of New England idealism, piety, and pat-

riotism to the West. Other writers who emphasize the communal nature and New

England origins of the company include: Ray Allen Billington, Westward Expansion:

A History of the American Frontier, 3rd ed. (New York, 1967), 212-20, esp., 218;

Beverley W. Bond Jr., The Civilization of the Old Northwest (New York, 1934), 9-12;

Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The National Experience (New York, 1965), 53-54;

Ralph Brown, Historical Geography of the United States (New York, 1948), 215-19;

Thomas D. Clark, Frontier America: The Story of the Westward Movement (New

York, 1959), 149-51; and Malcolm J. Rohrbough, The Trans-Appalachian Frontier:

People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775-1850 (New York, 1978), 66-70.

4. Varnum, An Oration, 507; Manasseh Cutler to Nathan Dane, March 16, 1787,

William Parker Cutler and Julia Perkins Cutler, eds., Life, Journals, and Corres-

pondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler (2 vols., Cincinnati, 1888), I, 507.

• 4
 

A Quiet Independence

Certainly, economic difficulties haunted several future associates who came of age in the troubled 1760s. Manasseh Cutler's experi- ence as a young Yale graduate was not uncommon. A native of Killingly, Connecticut, a town beset with "wrangles and church feuds," Cutler unsuccessfully tried life as a merchant on Martha's Vineyard before hesitantly turning to the ministry in the late 1760s. Rufus Putnam and Benjamin Tupper, both the youngest of several sons, found their efforts at farming interrupted by service in the French and Indian War and by the necessity of supplementing their income through milling and tanning. Such insecurity com- bined with land scarcity to cause many future Ohioans to consider migration from New England in the early 1770s. Hoping to receive land as compensation for their military service, the cousins Israel and Rufus Putnam participated in a surveying expedition to the Mississippi River in 1773. They were intensely disappointed by the Crown's decision to refuse their petition.5   5. Ellen D. Larned, Historic Gleanings in Windham County, Connecticut (Provi- dence, 1899), 76; Cutlers, Manasseh Cutler, I, 73, 89. See also, Buell, Rufus Putnam, 7, 53; Samuel Prescott Hildreth, Biographical and Historical Memoirs of the Early Pioneer Settlers of Ohio (Cincinnati, 1852); and Julia Perkins Cutler, The Founders of Ohio (Cincinnati, 1888). The future Mariettans' problems and frustrations were part

• 5
 

10                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

The American Revolution dramatically raised the expectations of

such frustrated men. Among the first to respond to Lexington and

Concord, the future emigrants with near unanimity enthusiastical-

ly participated in the 1775 siege of Boston. Not only did the war

provide the identifiable enemy and social solidarity in the battle to

"restore peace, tranquility . . . Union and liberty" to America, it

confirmed at a critical moment the future pioneers' previously inse-

cure status as leaders in personal communities. For the Ohio Com-

pany directors Rufus Putnam and Benjamin Tupper of Mas-

sachusetts, James Varnum of Rhode Island, and Samuel Holden

Parsons of Connecticut, arrived at Boston as chief officers of local

and state militia, indisputable evidence of their social standing and

the respect and confidence of their neighbors. Further military ser-

vice, in the officers' minds at least, only accorded them formal defer-

ence within the strictly hierarchical society of the army.⁶

In the end, however, fighting for American independence and re-

publican ideals seemed to make economic and social disaster a dis-

tinct possibility for many of the future emigrants. Sometimes enfee-

bled and rarely paid, many of those who served their new country

spent family fortunes in mere survival. The failure of Congress to

pay them, claimed Major-General Samuel Holden Parsons, was in-

tensely frustrating to men who "have expended their estates, have

 

 

of a larger pattern in New England society resulting from an expanding population

and declining resources, especially land. See, Richard Bushman, From Puritan to

Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765 (New York, 1967);

Philip J. Greven, Jr., Four Generations: Population, Land and Family in Colonial

Andover, Massachusetts (Cambridge, 1970); Robert A. Gross, The Minutemen and

Their World (New York, 1976), 10-29, 66-108; James A. Henretta, The Evolution of

American Society, 1700-1815: An Interdisciplinary Analysis (Lexington, 1973), 5-39,

114-15; and Kenneth Lockridge, "Land, Population and the Evolution of New Eng-

land Society, 1630-1790," Past and Present, No. 39 (April, 1968), 62-80.

6. [James Mitchell Varnum], "Ministerial Oppression, with The Battle of Bunker

Hill: A Tragedy," [1775], The Harris Collection, The John Hay Library, Brown Uni-

versity, Providence, Rhode Island. The future of Mariettans' revolutionary motives

seem to correspond with the patterns outlined in Rowland Berthoff and John M.

Murrin, "Feudalism, Communalism, and the Yeoman Freeholder: The American

Revolution Considered as a Social Accident," Stephen G. Kurtz and James H. Hutson,

eds., Essays on the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, 1973), 256-88; Richard L.

Bushman, "Massachusetts Farmers and the Revolution," Richard M. Jellison, ed.,

Society, Freedom, and Conscience: The American Revolution in Virginia, Mas-

sachusetts, and New York (New York, 1976), 77-124; Gross, The Minutemen, 30-66;

Kenneth Lockridge, "Social Change and the Meaning of the American Revolution,"

Journal of Social History, 6 (Summer, 1973), 403-09; Stephen E. Patterson, Political

Parties in Revolutionary Massachusetts (Madison, 1973); Gordon S. Wood, The Crea-

tion of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (New York, 1969), 46-124; and Michael

Zuckerman, Peaceable Kingdoms: New England Towns in the Eighteenth Century

(New York, 1970), 220-58.

• 6
 

A Quiet Independence                                          11

 

hazarded their lives and health, and sacrificed the just expectations

of their families for the salvation of their country."⁷

Although their fears were often exaggerated, the difficulties of

the future associates did seem to escalate in the 1780s. More crucial

than what was actually happening to these soldiers was their

perception of what was happening to them. By their standards, post-

war America seemed unfamiliar and unfair. A successful lawyer

and a member of the Connecticut legislature before the war, Par-

sons, for example, believed himself "nearly impoverished" and in

bad health at its end. Despite his election to the Connecticut legisla-

ture in the 1780s, his fortune consisted solely of the government

securities he received in lieu of pay and his hopes of profiting from

"the future disposal of the land" he surveyed in 1786 in a "subordin-

ate" position. "Insolvent" despite his investment in the Ohio Com-

pany, Parsons died in 1789 bewailing "the multiplied troubles

which have fallen to my lot."8

Unsuccessful "mercantile" ventures were not infrequent, as the

former soldiers found it difficult to adjust to a more complex econ-

omy. Colonel Ebenezer Spoat, a prewar farmer of substantial

means, for example, tried his hand at "mercantile affairs" in the

1780s. "Being entirely unacquainted" with trade and having "no

taste for his new business ... in a short time he failed; swallowing

up his wife's patrimony, as well as his resources."9

While not all of the future associates suffered financially in the

1780s, many complained bitterly of poor opportunities and ineq-

uities. Solomon Drowne, a Rhode Island veteran and future associ-

ate, spent several years preparing for a medical career only to find

no demand for his services. Reduced to running a pharmacy with his

sisters, the ambitious Drowne protested being "superseded or sup-

planted in so many instances, or to experience almost every species

of slight and neglect." "Rust and obscurity" seemed his fate, he

lamented, "after devoting the best years of my life to study, and

spending a pretty good estate to qualify myself in the best possible

manner for the exercise of an important position."10

 

 

7. Samuel Holden Parsons to Colonel Root, August 29, 1779, Charles S. Hall, Life

and Letters of Samuel Holden Parsons: Major-General in the Continental Army and

Chief Judge of the Northwestern Territory, 1737-1789 (Binghamton, 1905), 266.

8. Hall, Samuel Holden Parsons, 581; Parsons to his wife, October 18, 1788, Hall,

Parsons, 533.

9. Hildreth, Biographical and Historical Memoirs, 235.

10. [William Drowne], "A Brief Sketch of the Life of Solomon Drowne, M.D.," The

Drowne Papers, The Rhode Island Historical Society, Providence, R.I.; Solomon

Drowne to Theodore Foster, July 25, 1790, William Drowne, "A Brief Sketch," 71. See

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12                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

Not the lack of profit but the lack of prestige that followed from

his relative poverty was what really rankled Drowne. A graduate of

Brown University, a man who had studied in Philadelphia and

Europe and dined with Thomas Jefferson, Drowne fretted that his

economic failure was undoing his quest for social prominence. Some

historians have criticized the associates of the Ohio Company for

their seemingly crass pursuit of land, their angry demands for pay

from Congress and the states, and their careful attention to the

fluctuations in the price of the securities they received in lieu of pay.

The associates were indeed frantic for money, but their "grasping"

was essentially the pursuit of "a quiet independence" that would

accord them a position consonant with the standing they believed

they held, or should hold, in society. To Commodore Abraham Whip-

ple, a future Mariettan, his approaching "misery and ruin" were

incompatible with his election to the Rhode Island legislature in the

1780s. A respected man hardly mortgaged his farm "for a temporary

support," had it sued out of his possession, and then faced the pros-

pect of being "turned out into the world ... destitute of a house or a

home," even if he had lost much of his money fighting for his coun-

try's independence. To Whipple, his land was the foundation of his

personal independence, of his position as a recognizable community

leader.11

In 1783, feeling neglected and slighted, the officers of the Con-

tinental army organized the Society of the Cincinnati, partly to

serve as a lobbying agency to get some sort of payment from Con-

gress, but primarily to perpetuate the formal status they had held as

army officers into a socially and economically uncertain postwar

society. The medal given to each of its members revealed their in-

tense longing for order, tranquility, and respect. The decoration

also, Julia Perkins Cutler, Life and Times of Ephraim Cutler (Cincinnati, 1890), 15;

and Rufus Putnam to George Washington, April 5, 1784, Buell, Rufus Putnam,

224-25.

11. "Petition of settlers of Belpre, Ohio to George Washington," March 14, 1793,

The Samuel Prescott Hildreth Papers, I, The Dawes Memorial Library, Marietta

College, Marietta, Ohio; "Copy of an Address from Abraham Whipple to Congress,"

The Whipple Papers, The Rhodes Island Historical Society. Status anxiety was sug-

gested as a motive for the associates' migration in Jacob Burnet, Notes on the Early

Settlement of the Northwestern Territory (Cincinnati, 1847), 45. For other examples of

the postwar difficulties of veterans, see, Frederick S. Alvis, Jr., ed., Guide to the

Microfilm Edition of the Winthrop Sargent Papers (Boston, 1965), 10; Roger J. Cham-

pagne, Alexander McDougall and the American Revolution in New York (Schnectady,

1975), 199-200, 216; Cutlers, Manasseh Cutler, I, 155; and especially, George

Washington to the Secretary of War, October 2, 1782, Louise B. Dunbar, A Study of

"Monarchical" Tendencies in the United States from 1776 to 1801 (New York, 1970),

47. Kohn, Eagle and Sword, contains an unsympathetic analysis of the officers'

response to their problems; see Kohn, 9-39.

• 8
 

A Quiet Independence                                         13

 

featured Cincinnatus, the Roman hero, in a field and "his wife

standing at the door of their cottage; near it with a plough and

instruments of husbandry." Three senators were offering Cincinna-

tus a sword, calling him back to the defense of the Roman republic.

Around the edge of the whole ran the inscription, "OMNIA RELI-

QUIT SERVARE REM PUBLICAM." On the reverse was pictured

the sun rising over an "open city" with "Fame crowning Cincinna-

tus" and the legends "VIRTUTIS PRAEMIUM" and "ESTO

PERPETUA."12

The importance of Cincinnatus as an ideal figure to the partici-

pants in the Ohio Company was immense. Of the eleven men who

met in Boston in March 1786 to organize the company, six were

members of the society, as were four of the company's five directors

and its secretary. To the associates, Cincinnatus was a model of

ideal behavior in an ideal world - for Cincinnatus, living on the

land far away from the tumult and corruption of cities and sacrific-

ing his happiness so that the republic might survive the chaos of

war and enjoy the pleasure and prosperity of peace, made a powerful

comparison with their own positions. Cincinnatus was the embodi-

ment of the independent virtuous republican. Firm fighters for the

American republic in war, the Cincinnati envisioned themselves as

its staunchest farmer-citizens in peace. They had had, claimed

Mariettan Joseph Barker, "a second education in the Army of the

Revolution, where they heard the precept of wisdom and saw the

example of Bravery and Fortitude. They had been disciplined to

obey, and learned the Advantages of subordination to Law and good

order in promoting the prosperity and happiness of themselves and

the rest of Mankind." A self-proclaimed elite in the defense of

harmonious republicanism, the Cincinnati sternly warned that they

would expel any member "who, by conduct inconsistent with a gen-

tleman and a man of honor, or by opposition to the interests of the

community in general, or the society in particular, may render him-

self unworthy to continue a member."1³

To their disgust, however, the officers believed that the Revolu-

tion had not only threatened the economic base on which their sta-

 

 

12. [C. M. Storey, ed.], Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati: Minutes of all

Meetings of the Society up to and including the meeting of October 1, 1825 (Boston,

1964), xxviii.

13. Blazier, Joseph Barker, 50; [Storey], Massachusetts Society, xxvi. On the rela-

tionship of the associates of the Ohio Company and the Society of the Cincinnati see,

Mrs. L. A. Alderman, The Identification of the Society of the Cincinnati with the First

Authorized Settlement of the Northwest Territory at Marietta, Ohio, April 7, 1788

(Marietta, 1888), 24; and Hulbert, The Records of the Original Proceedings, I, xl-xlii.

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14                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

tus rested, it had released anarchic and insubordinate elements.

Only symptomatic was the virulent scorn directed at the Cincinnati,

as the pretensions and hereditary characteristics of the society

raised a storm of protest throughout New England. Mass meetings

and memorials condemned the organization as anti-republican and

elitist. Shocked at such treatment, Samuel Holden Parsons found

the veterans of Connecticut exposed to "daily Insults" and "con-

temptuous malignant Neglect." "Without honor," he said, they

could no longer live in New England and were seeking homes in

New York or farther west. To these veterans, it seemed clear that

something had gone wrong in the course of revolution.¹⁴

Everywhere they looked in the mid-1780s, the associates of the

Ohio Company found ingratitude and growing anarchy in the East

making a prospective settlement in the West alluring and idyllic. To

Samuel Holden Parsons, the West represented "the Rewards of our

Toils" in the Revolution and "a Safe Retreat from the Confusions

and Distress into which the Folly of our Country may precipitate

us." The essential problem with the East, according to Major

General James Varnum, was that too rapid change and local pre-

judices were leading to disorder and potential despotism. Indeed, the

prevalence of the former made the latter almost necessary. Man-

asseh Cutler summarized the general feeling when he wondered to

Winthrop Sargent, the company secretary, in 1786 if "mankind are

in a State for enjoying all the natural rights of humanity and are

possessed of virtue sufficient for the support of a purely republican

government." "Dishonesty, Villainy, and extreme ignorance" were

rampant. America, he complained, "is the first nation" that could

make "a fair experiment of equal liberty in a civil Community," but

it seemed to be failing in its calling.¹⁵

Benjamin Tupper, who believed in 1787 that monarchy was "abso-

lutely necessary" to save the United States from total chaos, saw, as

did many of the associates, a climax to his personal and public

discontents in Shays' Rebellion in late 1786. Coming after the

actual formation of the Ohio Company, the rebellion only confirmed

 

 

14. Samuel Holden Parsons to Alexander McDougall, August 20, 1783, quoted in

E. James Ferguson, The Power of the Purse: A History of American Public Finance,

1776-1790 (Chapel Hill, 1961), 156fn. On the public reaction to the Society, see

Wallace E. Davies, "The Society of the Cincinnati in New England, 1783-1800,"

William and Mary Quarterly, V (1948), 3-25.

15. Samuel Holden Parsons to Winthrop Sargent, June 16, 1786, The Winthrop

Sargent Papers, The Massachusetts Historical Society (microfilm); Manasseh Cutler

to Winthrop Sargent, November 6, 1786, The Sargent Papers. See also, Wood, The

Creation of the American Republic, 391-467.

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A Quiet Independence                                       15

 

the disillusionment and fears of the associates. In such a crisis,

Tupper cried, "The old Society of the Cincinnati must once more

consult and effect the salvation of a distracted country." The Cincin-

nati did pledge their support of the Massachusetts government,

partly because the uprising threatened the value, even the exist-

ence, of the securities on which rested the hopes of many to recoup or

build fortunes. But their personal economic problems symbolized a

more general imperiling of the republican experiment in freedom.

Not all of the Ohio Company associates merely decried the rebellion.

Many, such as Rufus Putnam and Benjamin Tupper, actively joined

General Benjamin Lincoln "against the Insurgents." Others sold

their farms in utter disgust. Cutler was right when he argued that

"these commotions will tend to promote our plan and incline well

disposed persons to become adventurers for who would wish to live

under a Government subject to such tumults and confusions."16

In short, the veterans sought the security of a well-ordered life.

Escaping the conflicts of an increasingly unfamiliar and contentious

society, they would find "the assaults of passion ... subdued by the

gentler sway of virtuous affection" in the West. Solomon Drowne

hoped that "much-eyed Peace" would "wave her Olive-branch over

the earth and at last compose the dispositions of perverse mankind!"

Above all, "infatuated mortals" would "learn that happiness is not

the offspring of contention, but of mutual concession and accomoda-

tion." Marietta, Varnum argued, would be "a safe, an honorable

asylum" where equal protection under the law and "the labor of the

industrious will find the reward of peace, plenty, and virtuous

contentment."17

Thus, unrewarded service, personal economic insecurity, and a

frightening perspective on the events of the 1780s led the associates

of the Ohio Company to forsake what they perceived as an in-

creasingly perverse world. In the West they would build anew along

the guidelines of eastern models, but with control and stability

inherent in the structure of society. In the 1790s, when the United

States seemed more secure under Federalist rule and the associates

confronted new problems in the West, they would find much more to

praise in the East. But on the eve of their actual migration, disgust

and disillusionment prevailed. When Winthrop Sargent met some

old war friends on a surveying trip in the West, they determined, in

 

16. Benjamin Tupper to Henry Knox, April, 1787, quoted in Kaplan, "Veteran

Officers," 55; Beull, Rufus Putnam, 103; Manasseh Cutler to Winthrop Sargent,

October 6, 1786, quoted in Kaplan, "Veteran Officers," 43.

17. Varnum, An Oration, 505, 508; Solomon Drowne to Dr. Levi Wharton, January

21, 1792, William Drowne, "A Brief Sketch," 80; Varnum An Oration, 506.

• 11
 

16                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

summarizing the feelings of the associates, that the lands of the

Ohio would be a place "where the veteran soldier and honest Man

should find a Retreat from ingratitude" and vowed, once settled,

never again to visit the East "but in their children and like Goths

and Vandals to deluge a people more vicious and villainous than

even the Praetorian Band of Ancient Rome."18

 

The pioneers, however, were well aware that migration and rhet-

oric would not solve their problems, for social and economic chaos

could travel west just as easily as virtue. Reform must begin at the

foundations of society. As Samuel Holden Parsons declared, "the

habits of an old world are in some degree to be corrected in forming a

new one of the old materials. The different local prejudices," he

added, "are to be done away and a medium fallen upon which may

reconcile all." Thus, the particular value of the Ohio Country for

erecting a more stable society was that it was largely virgin land.

There, proclaimed Manasseh Cutler, "in order to begin right ... will

be no wrong habits to combat, and no inveterate systems to overturn

--there is no rubbish to remove, before you can lay the foundation."

In Ohio, the associates planned to create an orderly society based on

equality and security of property, and on the institutions of the

school, church, and government, all firmly entrenched in the purity

of a natural, regular setting. Rhetorically, the founders of Marietta

articulated their version of hopes and ideals that had echoed in New

England for a century and a half.19

There were to be no economic jealousies, inequities, or insecur-

ities in the West. Near equality would mark company holdings and

the virtue of all men would be firmly grounded in the "quiet inde-

pendence" of landed property. The price of an individual share was

set as $125 in gold or $1000 in continentals, each share entitling the

owner to a city lot and farm acreage of proportional size. The com-

pany further decreed that no person was to own more than five

 

 

18. Winthrop Sargent, "Diary," July 19, 1786, The Sargent Papers. New England

society looked more appealing to the associates in the 1790s, perhaps because it

seemed more stable. See, for example, Gross, The Minutemen, 153-88; and Van Beck

Hall, Politics Without Parties; Massachusetts, 1780-1791 (Pittsburgh, 1972), esp.

347-50.

19. Samuel Holden Parsons to William S. Johnson, November 24, 1788, Hall,

Parsons, 534; Cutler, An Explanation . . ., 20. See also, Henry Nash Smith, Virgin

Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge, 1975). A harmonious,

orderly, corporate society had, of course, long been a goal in New England society.

See, for example, Bushman, From Puritan to Yankee, Kenneth Lockridge, A New

England Town: The First Hundred Years (New York, 1970), and Zuckerman, Peace-

able Kingdoms.

• 12
 

A Quiet Independence                                          17

 

shares - within the ranks of the elite, all were to be as economically

equal as possible. After the area had been surveyed, plots and num-

bers were drawn and matched by lot; again the design was to insure

a rough equality. Natural leaders would be recognized on the basis

of merit rather than wealth and every member of society would have

an independent stake in the perpetuation of order. To a large extent,

the goal of equality of holdings was achieved, at least on paper. In

1796, when the Ohio Company had virtually ceased to exist, it in-

cluded 594 stockholders owning a total of 496 shares. The average

share per person was .835 with a majority of stockholders owning

one share; only forty men owned more than three shares.²0

Also of supreme importance was a traditional New England

emphasis on education and religion. Marietta, Solomon Drowne said

in 1789, presented a "noble opportunity for advancing knowledge of

every kind," and for training "rising sons of science." Just as import-

ant, associate Thomas Wallcut declared, religion was "the most

solid foundation" and "the surest support of government and good

morals." Thus, one of the first orders the company gave was for the

directors to pay close attention immediately "to the Education of

Youth and the Promotion of Public Worship." Even a university was

planned.²¹

As for government, Rufus Putnam extolled it in his charge to the

first grand jury in Marietta, "Government is absolutely necessary

for the well being of any people, and the General Happiness of

Society", he said, "and I believe it will be found true that all nation-

al prosperity in every age of the world has generally, if not always,

been enjoyed in proportion to the rectitude of their government and

the due administration of its Laws." Hoping to dominate the West

ideologically and materially, the people of Marietta futilely begged

Major General Arthur St. Clair, first governor of the Northwest

Territory, to live in Marietta rather than Cincinnati.²²

Manasseh Cutler summarized the feelings of the associates in a

sermon delivered during his short visit to Marietta in August, 1788.

He spoke of the coming "bright day" when "science, virtue, pure

 

20. Hulbert, The Records, I, 6-10, 23-39, II, 234-42.

21. Solomon Drown[e], An Oration, Delivered at Marietta, April 7, 1789 in Com-

memoration of the Commencement of the Settlement Formed by the OHIO COMPANY

(Worcestor, 1789), in Hildreth, Pioneer History, 522; George Dexter, ed., "Journal of

Thomas Wallcut," Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, XVII (1879-1880),

191; Hulbert, The Records, I, 40.

22. Rufus Putnam, "Charge to the Grand Jury at the September Term, 1788,"

quoted in Arthur L. Buell, "A History of Public Address in the First Permanent

Settlement of the Northwest Territory from 1788 to 1793," (doctoral dissertation,

Ohio University, 1965), 152.

• 13
 

18                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

religion, and free government shall pervade the western hemis-

phere" and argued that the settlers could not overlook the "cultiva-

tion of the principles of religion and virtue" if they intended to

insure their "civil and social happiness." Religion and education

provided "the greatest aid to civil government" and "lay the founda-

tion for a well-regulated society." Only with such cultivation would

people "conform to ... the community's laws and regulations" out of

"principles of reason and custom."²³

But the greatest advantage of the West in building a more profit-

able, equitable, and thus stable, society was its natural setting. Like

Cincinnatus, the associates hoped to draw virtue and prosperity

primarily from the soil. In fact, these New Englanders were ecstatic

about the advantages of an agricultural regime both in attracting

settlers and in ordering society. In a hyperbolic promotional pamph-

let, Manasseh Cutler praised "the deep, rich soil" that would yield

riches for an industrious, agricultural people and the natural water-

ways that would convey their productions to markets. "The toils of

agriculture," he wrote, will in Ohio "be rewarded with a greater

variety of productions than in any part of America." The possibili-

ties of the land were often the most significant thing settlers noted

upon arriving in the West. Associate and merchant John May, for

example, journeying home to New England for a visit, whiled away

the tedious trip by remembering that "delightful country whose

swelling soil will doubly reward the industrious planter."²⁴

The land received its fullest tribute in a speech by Solomon

Drowne on April 7, 1789 - the first anniversary of the founding of

Marietta. Drowne's address was an extended paean in praise of

agriculture. Indeed, he credited the "virgin soil" with luring the

settlers "from your native homes" with "charms substantial and

inestimable." The Ohio Country, said Drowne breaking into verse,

was far from the chaos of the East:

 

The rage of nations and the crush of states

Move not the man who from the world escaped,

In still retreats and flowering solitudes

To nature's voice attends from month to month.

 

 

 

 

23. Manasseh Cutler, "Sermon at Marietta," August 24, 1788, Cutlers, Manasseh

Cutler, I, 344.

24. Cutler, An Explanation ..., 14; John May, August 10, 1788, Dwight L. Smith,

ed., The Western Journals of John May: Ohio Company Agent and Business Adven-

turer (Cincinnati, 1961), 73.

• 14
 

A Quiet Independence                                      19

 

Husbandry, Drowne continued, is "the best occupation of mankind"

and "the country['s] . . . most estimable" virtue was that it could be

practiced "under the auspices of firmly established liberty, civil and

religious, and the mild government of natural laws." Like Cutler,

Drowne noted that agriculture was a "profitable" enterprise. But

more important, it was an "honorable . . . art" that had been "the

delight of the greatest men."²⁵

Agricultural isolation, however, was not the goal of the early

Mariettans. As detailed in Cutler's pamphlet, they envisioned a

wide-ranging commerce for their settlement with the East, Florida,

and the West Indies. The bulk of their exports down the Mississippi

or back across the mountains would be agricultural products like

"corn, flour, beef, lumber, etc." Yet Cutler noted the advantages of

small-scale manufacturing, as long as it was guided by a landed

elite. "Instead of furnishing other nations with raw materials," he

argued, "companies of manufacturers from Europe could be intro-

duced and established in this inviting situation, under the superin-

tendence of men of property." Far from turning their backs on profit,

commerce, and industry, the associates embraced its orderly and

regular development. As in all other things, the early Mariettans

did not reject commercial development so much as they wanted to

prevent its potentially disruptive and perverting side effects. Their

effort was not to create an insulated asylum, but to restructure the

world they had grown up in to make it more stable, predictable, and

fair. And to achieve that goal, the associates believed that society's

leading members had to ground their lives, ideals, and fortunes

securely, if not exclusively, in the land. For farming was the most

independent of pursuits and a clear antidote to social contention and

economic upheaval. "To have a good farm," Manasseh Cutler told his

Ohioan son in 1797, "to establish a good landed interest in prefer-

ence to trade, or any other object," was of supreme importance, "for

there is nothing in this country that will render a man so completely

independent and secure against the difficulties which arise from the

changes which the times, the state of the country, and other contin-

gencies may occasion, and which are and always will be taking place

in the world." "Freedom and tranquility," concluded Solomon

Drowne, "may be enjoyed to perfection, if a person be qualified with

virtue and a competence." The years of uncertainty and contention

would end in the solid, predictable rhythms of farming.²⁶

 

25. Drowne, An Oration, 519, 523.

26. Cutler, An Explanation ..., 13. 20; Mannaseh Cutler to Ephraim Cutler, 1797,

Julia Cutler, Ephraim Cutler, 35fn; Solomon Drowne, December 26, 1799, William

• 15
 

20                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

With the philosophy of republicans and the institutions of educa-

tion, religion, and government firmly founded on economic quality

and the practice of husbandry, Mariettans seemed to have little to

do but build their model society along the guidelines enunciated in

their rhetoric. While "rejoicing nature all around us glows," they

would watch

 

. . . the spires of Marietta rise,

And domes and temples swell to the skies;

Here, justice reigns, and foul dissensions cease,

Her walks be pleasure and her paths be peace ...

In harmony and social virtue blend

Joy without measure, rapture without end.

 

In sum, said the inhabitants of Marietta to Governor St. Clair in the

summer of 1788, "May we here find a peaceful and happy retreat

after the toils of a calamitous war! May we enjoy the richest fruit of

a glorious revolution!"²⁷

Nowhere was the nature of the society the Ohio Company en-

visioned better reflected than in the physical plan of Marietta. Be-

cause the city was to dominate and epitomize the new world, on

nothing more than its structure did the nature and future of the

associates' hopes depend. The plan of Marietta was drawn in Boston

in the fall of 1787. If not radically innovative, the design nonethe-

less reflected the associates' strong emphasis on regularity and

order. The agents of the company reserved 5,760 acres of the

1,500,000 they had purchased from Congress at the confluence of

the Ohio and Muskingum rivers for a city of sixty rectangular

blocks in the general form of ten blocks wide and six deep. All the

streets were to be 100 feet wide except for a main one of 150 feet. Of

the sixty blocks, the agents appropriated four for public use, while

 

 

Drowne, "A Brief Sketch," 120. See Ephraim Cutler's comments on the relationship

of land and character in Julia Cutler, Ephraim Cutler, 89-90. On the nature of the

early American farms and the relationship of commerce and virtue see, respectively,

James Henretta, "Families and Farms: Mentalite in Pre-Industrial America," Wil-

liam and Mary Quarterly, 35 (1978), 3-32; and Drew R. McCoy, "Republicanism and

American Foreign Policy: James Madison and the Political Economy of Commercial

Discrimination, 1789-1794," William and Mary Quarterly, 31 (1974), 633-46.

27. Return Jonathan Meigs, "Fragment of a Speech on July 4, 1789," Buell, "A

History of Public Address," 149; "Inhabitants on the Muskingum to Governor St.

Clair," July 16, 1788, Clarence E. Carter, ed., The Territorial Papers of the United

States (26 vols., Washington, 1934), II, 133. On the early government of Marietta, see

Rohrbough, The Trans-Appalachian Frontier, 368-70; and on the early government of

the Northwest Territory, see Jack Ericson Eblen, The First and Second United States

Empires: Governors and Territorial Government, 1784-1912 (Pittsburgh, 1968).

• 16
 

A Quiet Independence                                           21

 

the other fifty-six were to be divided into "house Lots" of 90 by 180

feet.²⁸

In the Ohio Country, Rufus Putnam laid out the basic gridiron

pattern specified by the agents, but in so doing he took advantage of

"the situation of the Ground" and put it to use as a virtuous founda-

tion for the orderly city. The most striking feature of the land the

Ohio Company bought was a group of ancient Indian mounds. The

huge piles of dirt, relics of the civilization of the Adena group of

mound-builders and more than a thousand years old, intrigued the

New Englanders. Winthrop Sargent, for example, spent days

measuring and preparing descriptions of the mounds. The first

thing Cutler went to see when he arrived for his brief visit in the fall

of 1788 was the most curious of the ancient monuments, a large

cone-shaped mound surrounded by a ten-foot moat. The early

Mariettans were obsessed with speculation about the origins of the

mounds. Solomon Drowne, interested in attaching some classical

virtue to them, suggested that they were not unlike the burial

mounds of the ancient Trojans, the ancestors of the Roman republi-

cans. Certainly there had been an elaborate civilization on the spot

of the Ohio Company settlement, and the Mariettans felt a primi-

tive nobility exuding from its remnants. What the agents resolved

about the future of the cone-shaped mound applied for all of "the

ancient works." "Every prudent measure," they decided, "ought to

be adopted to perpetuate the figure and appearance of so majestic a

Monument of Antiquity." Eventually, they made it the center of

their cemetery.²⁹

More than merely preserving the mounds, however, Putnam built

the town around them, superimposing the regular plan of the com-

pany on the Indian ruins. The larger mounds became the centers of

public squares. Naming these blocks proved simple, for there was no

better way to secure the prominence of virtue than to mark the

relics of primitive grandeur and nobility with names from the Ro-

man republic. The agents named the land around the burial mound

Conus, and reserved blocks called Capitolium and Quadranou focus-

 

28. Hulbert, The Records, I, 15, 20. See also, John Reps, Town Planning in Fron-

tierAmerica (Princeton, 1969) 282-91. The comments of Manasseh Cutler and Winth-

rop Sargent on contemporary cities reveal an intense appreciation of"regularity" and

a dislike of the "haphazard" in urban planning. See, for example, Cutler's 1787

observations in his diary in Cutlers, Manasseh Cutler, I, 215, 248, 285, 306-07, 393,

429; Sargent, "Diary," July 4, 1786, The Sargent Papers; and G. Turner to Sargent,

November 6, 1787, The Sargent Papers.

29. Drowne, An Oration, 522; Hulbert, The Records, II, 209. For travellers'

observations on Indian mounds, see John A. Jakle, Images of the Ohio Valley: An

Historical Geography of Travel, 1740 to 1860 (New York, 1977), 68-71.

• 17
 

22                                      OHIO HISTORY

ing on two rectangular mounds. Putnam and the agents established the final of the requisite four public squares at the confluence of the rivers and named it Cecilia. Completing the reminders of ancient Rome, the New Englanders christened their temporary stockade Campus Martius.30 The company did not rely altogether on what the land provided, however, to mark their city. They planned a large role, for example, for trees that they would plant. The agents in Boston had ordered rows of mulberry trees placed along both sides of the city streets. Placed ten or fifteen feet from the houses, the trees' duties, accord- ing to Cutler, were "to make an agreeable shade, increase the salubrity of the air, and add to the beauty of the streets." The rows of trees would also create natural sidewalks, leaving streets of the 30. Hulbert, The Records, I, 51. See also, Reps. Town Planning, 285.

• 18
 

A Quiet Independence                                   23

spacious width of seventy feet. The importance of trees in adding to the beauty and regularity of the city was most clearly reflected in the strict rules for the temporary leasing of the public squares for clearing and other improvements until the danger of Indian attacks had passed. A "Mr. Woodbridge," for instance, was given a lease on the Capitolium in 1791 for eight years on the condition that he "surround the whole with Locust Trees, except at each corner there shall be an Ash - that the lines a, a, a, be Mulberrys and the lines b, b, Weeping willows, that the trees be set out within two years." The elevated mound on the Capitolium, moreover, "with the As- cents leading to the same," was to be "immediately put into Grass and hereafter occupied in no other way."31 The names of the city streets were chosen to reinforce the virtue of the residents of the regular city by perpetuating the fame of its founders and their contemporaries. While the associates gave the streets parallel to the Muskingum River numerical names, the names of modern Cincinnati marked the perpendicular avenues. 31. Manasseh Cutler to Ebenezer Hazard, September 18, 1787, Cutlers, Manasseh Cutler, I, 331; Hulbert, The Records, II, 80.

• 19
 

24                                               OHIO HISTORY

 

Appropriately, the Mariettans called their main street Washington.

Those streets to the south of it they named Knox, Worcester, Scam-

mel, Tupper, Cutler, Putnam, Butler, and Greene; to the north were

St. Clair, Warren, Montgomery, and Marion. The only break in the

ranks was Sacra Via, which ran in two parallel strips from Quadra-

nou west to the Muskingum River just above Washington Street,

and preserved part of the noble Indian works.

Idealistically, the associates envisioned a diffusion of themselves

and the institutions of republican virtue throughout the city. The

random drawings of house lots would place the associates through-

out the city to watch over new arrivals and to lead by example. A

church and a courthouse were planned and built away from the

main street and the central mounds and public square, unlike a

typical New England town where everything focused on the central

green. The virtuous elite and institutions were to be omnipresent so

that no sore could fester into degeneracy and chaos.³²

The final component of the Marietta plan was the agricultural

one, for most of the pioneers intended to become, or to reassume a

role as, Jefferson's virtuous laborers "in the earth." While they

would live, or at least maintain a home, in Marietta, the sharehold-

ers would farm their land for the inseparable goals of profit and

independence. No matter how noble farming was, however, it re-

quired markets to make it economically secure. Many had moved to

Marietta explicitly "to live in a Country where they can maintain

their families from the produce of their lands better than where

they" had lived. For the first few years Putnam and Cutler looked to

"the Constant coming in of new settlers" to provide "a good market."

By 1800, Mariettans were building ships and trying to develop an

ocean-going commerce. With a cargo of flour and pork, Commodore

Abraham Whipple temporarily quit his farm in 1800 to pilot "the

first rigged vessel ever built on the Ohio River" to New Orleans,

Havana, and Philadelphia. By 1808, approximately twenty ships of

150 to 450 tons had cleared from the "port" of Marietta. By provid-

ing an outlet for agricultural products and a means of securing other

items, this trade was designed to reinforce both the viability and

pervasiveness of an essentially agrarian life and the commercial

hegemony of Marietta.³³

 

 

32. The church was built at Front and Putnam Streets; the courthouse at Second

and Putnam. Quadranou was located at the head of Sacra Via, and Capitolium at

Fifth and Washington Streets.

33. E. Haskell to Winthrop Sargent, February 28, 1786, The Sargent Papers; Hil-

dreth, Biographical and Historical Memoirs, 160-61. On the early commercial de-

• 20
 

A Quiet Independence                                          25

 

The Ohio Company greatly emphasized the equality of the quanti-

ty of the land each associate received. The agents divided the land

grants into several plots rather than one large farm in order to

make their settlement in "the most compact manner," and to equal-

ize land grants in terms of both actual size and distance to Marietta.

The associates were very sensitive about reassuring that their goal

of equality was realized. When Rufus Putnam and some of the first

group of settlers argued that "the first actual Settlers should take

their choice" of sixty-four acres "of the best land on the Ohio and

other navigable streams," they were abruptly overruled. Later, af-

ter the agents had been in Ohio for a while and seen the contours of

the land with which they were dealing, they resolved that they

should have the power to divide the land "as equal[ly] as may be, by

dividing greater Quantities of Land to some Lots, and less to other

Lots, to do more equal Justice." But they later rescinded this resolu-

tion on the ground that equalizing quality would require arbitrary

decisions and might lead to favoritism and corruption. Eventually,

most felt, the company would build "¹⁰ or 12 Towns" up the Musk-

ingum "which will give handsome farms to every right in the

Propriety." Return Jonathan Meigs told fellow associate Thomas

Wallcut that "the plan" was "to proceed regularly down the Ohio

and up the Muskingum" in expanding the hegemony of the com-

pany. The point, as always with the Ohio Company, was that a

rough egalitarianism was to be preserved at all times among the

associates. The "perfect harmony" of the Jeffersonian idea was to be

maintained by a democracy of independent farmers guided by the

example of an elite and the order and beauty of the town.³⁴

Indeed, Marietta fulfilled all the requirements necessary for the

"perfect harmony" enunciated in the rhetoric of its builders. The

gridiron pattern of the city gave it regularity, order, and predictabil-

ity. These same values, as well as the ideal of controlled egalitarian-

ism, were reinforced by the uniformity of the house lots and the land

grants. Only the preservation of the mounds broke up Marietta's

regularity, but even they were made to serve the same functions.

 

velopment of the Ohio Valley, see, Randolph C. Downes, "Trade in Frontier Ohio,"

The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XVI (1930), 467-94; Archer Hulbert, "West-

ern Ship-building," American Historical Review, XXI (1915-1916), 720-33; Rohr-

bough, The Trans-Appalachian Frontier, 93-114; and William T. Utter, The Frontier

State, 1803-1825, Carl Wittke, ed., The History of the State of Ohio (5 vols., Columbus,

1942), II, 146-82, 229-62.

34. Buell, Rufus Putnam, 106; Hulbert, The Records, I, 83; Samuel Holden Par-

sons to Manasseh Cutler, August 24, 1787, The Sargent Papers; Return Jonathan

Meigs to Thomas Wallcut, February 26, 1790, Dexter, "Journal of Thomas Wallcut,"

190.

• 21
 

26                                            OHIO HISTORY

 

Unlike other western and New England cities, Marietta focused on

the natural setting for ideological reasons as well as convenience.

Not only did this put tangible virtue on display, it also gave no

particular part of the city exclusive status. Certainly Washington

Street was the "main" one, but why live there when one could live

facing the public squares or along the rivers? The institutions of

republican virtue were spread throughout the city. Marietta had no

"center," in a New England sense.

Above all, the Ohio Company's city had space and an intended

simple elegance. The broad avenues, lined with trees, many of them

named after modern Cincinnati, and the several open, naturally

ornamented squares emphasized the natural setting and the beauty

of the area, uniting classical virtue and primitive nature. A con-

scious effort was made to hide vice and unlovely things like stables

in alleys. Finally, the inhabitants of the city were to perform agri-

cultural functions and own their own land to maintain a secure

independence. Not a radical innovation in urban planning, Marietta

represented a readjustment of the virtues and flaws of contemporary

cities fitted to a powerful natural setting in an attempt to preclude

anarchy and institutionalize order in the physical structure of

society.

 

More was necessary to make the Mariettans' world complete,

however, for they saw themselves as the progenitors of a stable

society. Their efforts would be successful only if they converted

everyone coming west to the philosophy of order and agrarian inde-

pendence. Regular Marietta, with its mounds, avenues, and com-

mercial hegemony was to serve that role. In this spirit, James Varn-

um reminded Mariettans in the summer of 1788 that their "bright

example" must "add to the felicity of others" who "having formed

their manners upon the elegance of the simplicity, and the refine-

ments of virtue, will be happy in living with you in the bosom of

friendship."³⁵

The confederation government heartily approved of the notion

that Marietta should "serve as a wide model for the future settle-

ment of all the federal lands." Congress had long been concerned

about people crossing illegally into the Ohio Country from Pennsyl-

vania and Virginia without paying for the government-owned lands

of the Northwest Territory. Wanting the money from land sales to

help pay off the war debt, the government as early as 1785

 

 

35. Varnum, An Oration, 507.

• 22
 

A Quiet Independence                                           27

 

dispatched Ensign John Armstrong and a troop of soldiers to drive

such "squatters," "a banditti whose actions are a disgrace to human

nature," back across the Ohio River. Later, forts were erected along

the Ohio, including Fort Harmar at the mouth of the Muskingum

River, to prevent further intrusions.³⁶

On a 1786 surveying trip to the Ohio Country, Winthrop Sargent

feared that this "powerful and dangerous" "lawless Banditti" would

steal "the most eligible situations and valuable Tracts of land on the

Ohio." Without the army, the land would have no "Security" what-

soever. Fearful of anarchy and disorder pursuing them to the West,

the associates discovered that these supposed evils were beating

them there. Cutler hoped that settling so near Pennsylvania would

leave "no vacant lands exposed to be seized by such lawless bandit-

ti." In general, the Mariettans could only have faith, as Thomas

Wallcut put it, that "our people will be the means of introducing

more ambition and better taste," and that their prosperous and

regular settlement would still make the Ohio Country, in Cutler's

words, "the garden of the world, the seat of wealth, and the centre of

a great Empire." As such, Marietta would epitomize "the ideas of

order, citizenship, and the useful sciences." To preserve their status

and exercise the leadership reserved for society's elite, precluding

the growth of anarchy in the West was both a duty and a necessity.³⁷

But the prolongation of the Indian wars to 1795 kept the associ-

ates from executing their plans as quickly as they would have liked.

The company gave land to settlers willing to protect its purchase

from both Indians and squatters. Sometimes, the Mariettans acted

more forcefully. When, in 1797, an unauthorized group of people

settled near present-day Athens, Ohio, some fifty miles to the north-

west of Marietta, Rufus Putnam immediately dispatched a contin-

gent of "men possessing firmness of character, courage, and sound

discretion" to prevent the land from being "overrun" and "to estab-

lish a peaceable and respectable settlement." Not the least of the

Mariettans' worries was that they had long ago set aside the Athens'

township for a university that "promised most important results."

The "substantial men" Putnam sent pushed out a "large portion of

 

36. Cutler, An Explanation . . ., 14; Ensign John Armstrong to Colonel Josiah

Harmar, in Harmar to President of Congress, May 1, 1785, William H. Smith, The

Life and Public Services of Arthur St. Clair (Cincinnati, 1882), II, 4fn.

37. Winthrop Sargent, "Diary," September 7, 1786, The Sargent Papers; Cutler,

An Explanation . . . , 14; Thomas Wallcut to George Minot, [draft], October 31,

November 3, 1789, Dexter, "Journal of Thomas Wallcut," 175. On the general rela-

tionship of squatters, government, and land companies, as well as the early settle-

ment of the Ohio Country, see John D. Barnhart, Valley of Democracy: The Frontier

versus the Plantation in the Ohio Valley, 1775-1818 (Lincoln, 1970), 121-47.

• 23
 

28                                              OHIO HISTORY

 

the disorderly population," and established Athens' "character as an

orderly and respectable community." They introduced, in sum, "a

mild and refined state of manners and feelings," and gave order to

an area that was being developed with no other principle than that

"might makes right."³⁸

Marietta, however, was not itself always a paragon of virtue.

Squabbles over land and personal grievances had split the company

directors until the deaths of Varnum and Parsons in 1788 and 1789.

More crucial was unanticipated trouble within the new city. The

members of the Ohio Company had settled on their arrival in 1788

in a stockade about a mile up the Muskingum River from the Ohio

to avoid floods, but a group of buildings soon grew up at the conflu-

ence of the rivers, built by a mixture of discontented associates and

itinerants who were allowed temporary housing. These people

erected walls and named the cluster the Picketed Point. Attuned to

river traffic, the Point became blatantly commercially oriented,

sporting a store and a tavern.

To the associates lodged up the Muskingum in Campus Martius,

the Point seemed reminiscent of the East they had fled in disgust. In

February, 1790, a Marietta grand jury debated four grievances

arising from events at the Point. The jury resisted a demand for the

abolition of duelling on the ground that the practice "would discour-

age cowards, and we want brave men." But a second demand, for the

incorporation of the city to provide for "the poor and sick strangers,"

passed, as did a request for a law "licensing and regulating taverns."

The jury also condemned the practice of slavery. In the same year,

Thomas Wallcut felt outraged enough by behavior at the point to

write to Governor St. Clair complaining about a particular tavern

keeper. Wallcut wanted "the inordinate passions of oppressive,

cruel, and avaricious men" restrained. The "disorderly, riotous, and

ill-governed house"of Isaac Mixer, Wallcut concluded, was "destruc-

tive of peace, good order, and exemplary morals upon which not only

the well-being but the very existence of society so much depends." It

was not the pursuit of profit that annoyed the associates, but the

lack of control and regularity that characterized the point in their

eyes. Thus, what Wallcut requested from St. Clair was simply a law

"licensing and regulating taverns."³⁹

 

 

38. Ephraim Cutler, "The First Settlement of Athens County," Hildreth, Biog-

raphical and Historical Memoirs, 410, 408, and 413.

39. Thomas Wallcut, February 2, 1790, Dexter, "Journal of Thomas Wallcut," 181;

Wallcut to Arthur St. Clair, [draft], 1790, Dexter, 182fn. Picketed Point is described

in Hildreth, Pioneer History, 325.

• 24
 

A Quiet Independence                                   29

Despite several efforts, the company did not gain control over the point until the conclusion of the Indian wars in 1795 and the begin- ning of serious building. The hegemony of the virtuous elite within orderly Marietta was then relatively secure. They brought their plan to fruition and suppressed "the lawless Banditti" in or near their settlement. According to Samuel Prescott Hildreth, an early Marietta physician and historian, with the end of the Indian wars "few events of interesting character transpired .... Each man took possession of his lands, and commenced clearing and cultivating his farm."40   To an extent, then, the Ohio Company succeeded in obtain- ing financial independence for many of its associates and in build- ing a harmonious city. But physical structure could not insure that the example of Marietta would lead the entire West to a consis- tently ordered existence. The second goal was as crucial to the associates as the first. If Marietta failed to set the "tone" of the West, it would remain a utopian oasis, and a fragile one at best. Yet, the "banditti" were not easily controlled outside the confines of the     40. Hildreth, Pioneer History, 345.

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30                                              OHIO HISTORY

 

Ohio Company purchase. Organic growth, controlled by a self-

proclaimed elite, was simply out of place in the West, as the develop-

ment of the ironically named Cincinnati - the second permanent,

American settlement in the Ohio Country - testifies.

Founded in 1788, Cincinnati grew rapidly because of its position

as the center of government and military operations against the

Indians. The development of the city quickly became uncontrolled

and haphazard. Commercially-oriented Cincinnati grew along the

river with waterfront land at a premium. Like Marietta and other

western cities being built in this era, Cincinnati had a gridiron

pattern. But neither it nor any other community could match the

Mariettans' obsession with virtue and regularity. The preservation

of the Indian mounds and their incorporation in the Marietta plan,

for example, were almost unique in American town planning.

The speculators and profit-oriented merchants who began to

dominate Cincinnati seemed to the Mariettans to lack the requisite

intense commitment to the secure independence of landed property

and controlled, organic growth. Consequently, Winthrop Sargent,

moving to Cincinnati in 1791 to assume the position of secretary of

the Northwest Territory, found the situation not unlike the East in

the 1780s. He despaired that the people of Cincinnati and Marietta

"seem never to have been intended to live under the same govern-

ment - the latter are very like our Forefathers and the former

(generally) very licentious and too great a portion indolent and ex-

tremely debauched." To protect himself, Sargent found it necessary

to surround his Cincinnati home with, of course, a garden. John

Reps, the historian of American town planning, concludes that an

1815 "plan of Cincinnati . . . reveals nothing very remarkable. In-

deed, it shows every indication of being laid out... as a speculative

enterprise and little more." "What is more," says Reps, "in its de-

sign," Cincinnati "resembled hundreds of similar towns that were

soon to spring up throughout southern and central Ohio as the re-

gion began to attract land hungry settlers from the east." Commer-

cial and haphazard Cincinnati, not agrarian and regular Marietta,

became the model for western development.⁴¹

 

People going to cash in on the prosperity of booming towns like

Cincinnati and Louisville passed Marietta in growing numbers in

the 1790s. The soldiers at Fort Harmar, across the Muskingum from

Marietta, counted the passing flatboats into the thousands. Cincin-

 

41. Winthrop Sargent to Timothy Pickering, September 30, 1796, quoted in Ben-

jamin Pershing, "Winthrop Sargent: A Builder of the Old Northwest," (doctoral dis-

• 26
 

A Quiet Independence                                         31

 

nati, and not Marietta, became the center of the Ohio Valley, large-

ly for geographic and economic reasons. Moreover, the controlled

and systematic development of Marietta to secure an elite's notion

of virtue and stability was anachronistic, and no doubt contributed

to its failure to dominate the West. Even by the early nineteenth

century, many people believed that making money and pursuing

their own best interest would lead to virtue and communal improve-

ment. The "invisible hand" of laissez-faire economics, not the self-

appointed members of the Cincinnati, nor Indian mounds, nor

regular streets, would bring out the best in society.

By 1824, the year of Rufus Putnam's death, George Ogden, a

Quaker merchant from New Bedford, Massachusetts, had found evi-

dence to support that contention on a trip down the Ohio River.

Ogden praised Marietta for its "delightful" location, but little else.

The city, claimed Ogden, "was until within a few years one of the

most flourishing towns in the state," rivalling Cincinnati in "ele-

gance" and "enterprising spirit." But now Marietta wore "quite a

different aspect, and" was "rapidly declining." It lacked "commer-

cial energies," and thus, "grandeur," Ogden complained. Cincinnati,

in contrast, was the "largest and the handsomest town in the state,"

the product of its "flourishing energies." For Ogden, Cincinnati had

prospered, whatever its origins; Marietta had declined, despite its

noble beginnings - the better place was obviously the city that was

wealthy and successful. The worst fears of the Ohio Company had

come to pass.⁴²

The first Mariettans belonged to a world of community and of a

harmonious, regular society that was dying - if it ever had really

existed - as Marietta was being designed to institutionalize it.

Only aged comrades understood any more, including the Marquis de

Lafayette who during his 1825 tour of America stopped in Marietta

and walked over the graves of his fallen friends in Mound Cemetery.

"I knew them well," Lafayette told their descendents, "I saw them

fight for their country. They were the bravest of the brave. Better

men," he concluded wistfully, "never lived." If so, they held an

archaic vision in which regularity, order, and communal virtue

counted for as much as individual gain, where even merchants built

 

sertation, University of Chicago, 1927), 46-147; Reps, Town Planning, 292. On early

urban experience in the Northwest, see Jakle, Images of the Ohio Valley, 122-57, esp.

143-56; Rohrbough, The Trans-Appalachian West, 352-60, esp. 353-54; and Richard

C. Wade, The Urban Frontier (Chicago, 1959), esp. 11, 15-16, 19-20, 22-30.

42. George W. Ogden. Letters from the West (New Bedford, 1823); Reuben G.

Thwaites, ed., Early Western Travels, 1748-1846 (32 vols., Cleveland, 1904) XIX,

34-135.

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32                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

homes first for "the benefit of the community" and then for them-

selves and "profit." A contemporary account of the July 4, 1788,

festivities in Marietta emphasized that the inhabitants were in

"high spirits, and extremely happy" and only needed "their tender

companions, whom they have left beyond the mountains, to partici-

pate with them in the rising glories of the western world." Happy

and hopeful the original Mariettans may have been, but those glor-

ies were to be of a kind that they could never imagine and thus

would go to others.⁴³

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

43. Lafayette is quoted on a tablet in Mound Cemetery, Marietta, Ohio; John May,

July 11, 1788, Smith, Journal, 62; "A Contemporary Account of Some Events," Hil-

dreth, Pioneer History, 515.

• 28