Ohio History Journal

Editorialana.                      119

due. This did not include the promised bounty lands. Furthermore,

the land was to be free from taxation seven years. (2) There should

be set apart for this purpose a tract of vacant territory lying within

the bounds described in the preliminary treaty between the United

States and Great Britain. (3) The territory so set apart should be

laid off in districts not more than two degrees in latitude and three

in longitude; and each district should be divided into townships, the

surveying to be done at the expense of the general government. (4)

Any district should become a State and be admitted into the Union

on an equality with the original States as soon as it contained twenty

thousand male inhabitants. (5) Ten thousand out of every hundred

thousand acres should be reserved as a domain for the use of the United

States; "the rents, shares, profits, and produce of which lands, when any

such shall arise, to be appropriated to the payment of the civil list of the

United States, the erecting frontier forts, the founding of seminaries

of learning, and the surplus after such purposes (if any) to be appro-

priated to the building and equipping a navy, and to no other use or

purpose whatever."

In October of this same year (1783) before it had received title

to any of the western domain, Congress appointed a committee of which

Thomas Jefferson was chairman to consider the form of government for

the anticipated territory.

On March 1, 1784, the very day Virginia made to the United

States government, cession of all her claims to the Northwest Territory,

which cession was accepted by Congress, Jefferson reported what is

known as his ordinance, providing for the dividing into districts of all

the western lands "ceded or to be ceded" and the creation of a tempo-

rary government therefor.

According to Henry S. Randall, in his "Life of Thomas Jefferson,"

the draft of this reported ordinance "in the handwriting of Mr. Jefferson,

is yet preserved among the archives of the State Department at Wash-

ington." Mr. Randall then gives the Ordinance, as introduced, entire:

"The Committee appointed to prepare a plan for the temporary

government of the Western Territory, have agreed to the following

resolutions.

"Resolved, That the territory ceded or to be ceded by individual

States to the United States, whensoever the same shall have been pur-

chased of the Indian inhabitants, and offered for sale by the United

States, shall be formed into distinct States, bounded in the following

manner, as nearly as such cessions will admit-that is to say: North-

wardly and southwardly by parallels of latitude, so that each State

shall comprehend, from south to north, two degrees of latitude, begin-

ning to count from the completion of thirty-one degrees north of the

equator; but any territory northwardly of the forty-seventh degree

shall make part of the State next below; and eastwardly and westwardly

they shall be bounded, those on the Mississippi by that river on one

side, and the meridian of the lowest point of the rapids of Ohio on the

other; and those adjoining on the east by the same meridian on their

120        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

western side, and on their eastern by the meridian of the western cape

of the mouth of the Great Kanawha; and the territory eastward of this

last meridian, between the Ohio, Lake Erie, and Pennsylvania, shall be

one State.

"That the settlers within the territory so to be purchased and

offered for sale, shall, either on their own petition, or on the order of

Congress, receive authority from them, with appointments of time and

place for their free males, of full age, to meet together for the purpose

of establishing a temporary government, to adopt the constitution and

laws of any of one these States, so that such laws nevertheless shall

be subject to alteration by their ordinary legislature; and to erect, sub-

ject to a like alteration, counties or townships for the election of mem-

bers of their legislature.

"That such temporary government shall only continue in force in

any State until it shall have acquired twenty thousand free inhabitants;

when, giving due proof thereof to Congress, they shall receive from

them authority, with appointments of time and place, to call a conven-

tion of representatives to establish a permanent constitution and gov-

ernment for themselves; Provided, That both the temporary and per-

manent governments be established on these principles as their basis: 1.

[That they shall forever remain a part of the United States of America;]

2. That, in their persons, property, and territory, they shall be subject

to the Government of the United States in Congress assembled, and to

the Articles of Confederation in all those cases in which the original

States shall be so subject; 3. That they shall be subject to pay a part

of the federal debts contracted or to be contracted, to be apportioned

on them by Congress according to the same common rule and measure

by which apportionments thereof shall be made on the other States;

4. That their respective governments shall be in republican forms, and

shall admit no person to be a citizen who holds any hereditary title;

5. That after the year 1800 of the Christian era there shall be neither

slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States, otherwise

than in punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly

convicted to have been personally guilty.

"That whensoever any of the said States shall have, of free in-

habitants, as many as shall then be in any one of the least numerous

of the thirteen original States, such State shall be admitted by its dele-

gates into the Congress of the United States on an equal footing with

the said original States; after which the assent of two-thirds of the

United States in Congress assembled shall be requisite in all those cases

wherein, by the Confederation, the assent of nine States is now required;

Provided, The consent of nine States to such admission may be obtained

according to the eleventh of the Articles of Confederation. Until such

admission by their delegates into Congress, any of the said States, after

the establishment of their temporary government, shall have authority

to keep a sitting member in Congress, with right of debating but not

of voting.

"That the territory northward of the forty-fifth degree, that is to

say, of the completion of forty-five degrees from the equator, and ex-

tending to the Lake of the Woods, shall be called SYLVANIA.

"That of the territory under the forty-fifth and forty-fourth de-

grees, that which lies westward of Lake Michigan, shall be called

MICHIGANIA; and that which is eastward thereof, within the penin-

sula formed by the lakes and waters of Michigan, Huron, St. Clair, and

Erie, shall be called CHERRONESUS, and shall include any part of

the peninsula which may extend above the forty-fifth degree.

Editorialana.                       121

"Of the territory under the forty-third and forty-second degrees,

that to the westward, through which the Assenisipi or Rock River runs,

shall be called ASSENISIPIA; and that to the eastward, in which are

the fountains of the Muskingum, the two Miamies of the Ohio, the

Wabash, the Illinois, the Miami of the Lake, and Sandusky rivers, shall

be called METROPOTAMIA.

"Of the territory which lies under the forty-first and fortieth de-

grees, the western, through which the river Illinois runs, shall be called

ILLINOIA; that next adjoining to the eastward, SARATOGA; and

that between this last and Pennsylvania, and extending from the Ohio

to Lake Erie, shall be called WASHINGTON.

"Of the territory which lies under the thirty-ninth and thirty-eighth

degrees, to which shall be added so much of the point of land within

the fork of the Ohio and Mississippi as lies under the thirty-seventh de-

gree, that to the westward, within and adjacent to which are the con-

fluences of the rivers Wabash, Shawnee, Tanissee, Ohio, Illinois, Mis-

sissippi, and Missouri, shall be called POLYPOTAMIA; and that to

the eastward, further up the Ohio, otherwise called the Pelisipi, shall be

called PELISIPIA.

"That the preceding articles shall be formed into a charter of com-

pact, shall be duly executed by the President of the United States in

Congress assembled, under his hand and the seal of the United States,

shall be promulgated, and shall stand as fundamental constitutions be-

tween the thirteen original States and those newly described, unalter-

able but by the joint consent of the United States in Congress assembled,

and of the particular State within which such alteration is proposed to

be made."

This ordinance of Mr. Jefferson, it will be observed, embraced

all the public territory east of the Mississippi River between latitudes 31^°

and 47^° degrees north. It was to be divided into seventeen states by

lines of latitude two degrees apart, intersected by two meridians of

longitude. Ten of these states were to be north of the Ohio River and

were to bear the "high-sounding" names designated. Under Jefferson's

classic checker-board arrangement, the eastern section of present Ohio

would have fallen into Washington, the northwestern part of Ohio

would have fallen into Metropotamia, the middle western into Saratoga,

and the southwestern into Pelisipia, "Pelisipy being another name dis-

covered for the Ohio river."

The proposed states were to remain forever a part of the United

States; and in them slavery should cease after the year 1800. The only

persons dwelling in this vast domain at that time were about three

thousand Louisiana French mostly on the lower Mississippi and the

scattering French settlers in the Northwest among whom were a few

slaves. The settlers of the French towns in the territory taken by

George Rogers Clark claimed, after the Revolution, to be citizens of

Virginia. The settlers in each of the proposed ten northern states,

according to Jefferson's plan, were to have a temporary government,

which was to continue until the state reached a population of twenty

thousand; then it could have a delegate in Congress and when its

population should reach a census equal to any of the least numerous

122        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

of the thirteen original states it might be admitted into the Union on

an equality with the said original states.

Congress duly considered this ordinance and after several modi-

fications, chiefly the rejection of the slavery clause and the repudiation

of the bounds and classical names of the proposed states, the ordi-

nance was passed April 23 (1784). It was the end of Jefferson's labors

in connection with his own ordinance, or any other, for within three

weeks after the passage of his ordinance, viz. on May 10, 1784, Jeffer-

son resigned his seat in Congress, in order to accept the appointment

of Minister Plenipotentiary to act in conjunction with Mr. Adams and

Dr. Franklin, in negotiating treaties of commerce with foreign nations.

On this mission he remained abroad till the close of 1789.

The Jefferson ordinance remained nominally in force for three

years, until the passage of the famous and better one of 1787. The

Northwest remained meantime an unorganized wilderness, for the ordi-

nance of 1784 "left everything inchoate" and with all its merits was a

nullity. In the meantime Congress continued to consider the question

of the settlement and government of this great domain and between

the adoption of the ordinance of 1784 and the final one of 1787, no

less than three ordinances, each differing from the others, were reported

to Congress and discussed by that body.

On April 26, 1787, a committee, previously appointed, consisting

of Johnson of Connecticut, Pinckney of South Carolina, Smith of

New York, Dane of Massachusetts, and Henry of Maryland, reported

"an ordinance for the government of the Western territory." This ordi-

nance was debated the next day and subsequently recommitted to a

revised committee -Carrington and R. H. Lee of Virginia, Dane of

Massachusetts, Kean of South Carolina and Smith of New York-but

the ordinance did not come up for second reading until May 9th.

The third reading was to have taken place on the following day

(10th) but the progress of the ordinance was at this stage suddenly

arrested by a series of events not here to be related. Congress, through

inability to secure a quorum, did no business till July 5th. On the

afternoon of that day Dr. Manasseh Cutler, agent of the "Ohio Company

of Associates" arrived in New York City, from Boston, and through

his influence the Ordinance of 1787 was changed in many features and

passed July 13th, by unanimous vote of all the states represented, the

only member voting against it being Yates of New York. This ordi-

nance, however, is not here to be considered.

Much speculation has been indulged concerning the relation of

Jefferson's ordinance to that of 1787. In his famous reply to Hayne,

in 1830, Mr. Webster ascribed the authorship of the Ordinance of

1787 solely to Nathan Dane of Massachusetts. Mr. Thomas Benton, of

Missouri, "promptly challenged the accuracy of that statement," saying

Editorialana.                        123

"that ordinance and especially the non-slavery clause, was not the work

of Nathan Dane of Massachusetts, but of Thomas Jefferson of Virginia."

It is not our purpose to enter into this discussion which has been

the theme of many a writer. Our impression is that Mr. Jefferson has

not been duly accredited with the share due his ordinance as a basis for

the one of 1787. Jefferson must, says Curtis M. Geer, in his volume on

the Louisiana Purchase, be "credited with the effort of trying to abolish

slavery but his anti-slavery clause would have been of doubtful value,

for the Ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery at once instead of waiting

sixteen years before abolishing it."  Mr. Benton was of course spe-

cifically in error, but on the other hand partially correct, for the Ordi-

nance of 1787 was based in large measure on the provisions of Jefferson's

ordinance of 1784. The latter, however, as has been noted, was sug-

gested in the main features by the Bland ordinance of 1783, so that

who "thought first" is still an open question. Mr. Jefferson is to be

credited in no small way with the many features of the final famous

ordinance, but many of its chief and characteristic articles were the

products of other hands--the hands of Nathan Dane, Rufus King and

Manasseh Cutler; while to the latter, above all others, was due the

final touches and diplomatic efforts that brought about the passage of

the great Magna Charta of the Northwest Territory.

RUFUS PUTNAM MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION.

The Rufus Putnam Memorial Association, the headquarters of

which are at Worcester, Mass., and which society now has the title and

possession of the Rufus Putnam Homestead at Rutland, Mass., held its

tenth annual meeting in the Rufus Putnam House at Rutland on Septem-

ber 27, 1910. G. Stanley Hall, President, presided. At this meeting the

following resolutions were unamiously adopted:

"WHEREAS, General Rufus Putnam, in whose honor this Asso-

ciation was formed, in his home at Rutland, Mass., with General

Benjamin Tupper planned the Ohio Company of Associates and

within its walls wrote the call for election of delegates to form

that Company, an event of great national importance, and

"WHEREAS, General Putnam led the first colony of pioneers

from Massachusetts and Connecticut to Marietta, Ohio, making

there the first legal settlements in the Territory Northwest of the

River Ohio, where he labored for thirty-six years for the cause

of City and State, promoting and organizing Muskingum Academy

in 1797, the percursor of Marietta College, and

"WHEREAS, Marietta College represents the high ideals of

patriotism and morality carried into the Northwest by Massa-

124       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

chusetts pioneers one hundred and twenty-five years ago, now owns

and preserves with pride the Journals, Diaries, and all other papers

of General Rufus Putnam, and all the Journals, records, accounts,

surveys and other manuscripts of the original Ohio Company of

Associates, owns the Stimson Collection of Americana, and the

Slack Collection of Historical Documents and Prints, and its His-

torical Museum preserves hundreds of priceless memorials of those

historic Massachusetts Founders of Ohio, has already been made

custodian of the archives of the Ohio Company of Associates of

New York, and further, is with fidelity and patriotic enthusiasm

keeping alive the memory of this great historic movement; There-

fore be it

"Resolved, That we, the Rufus Putnam Memorial Association,

in order to perpetuate through the centuries the reverence for the

unselfish devotion of the pioneers who first settled in the great

State of Ohio, do appoint through its President, a Committee of

Ten to formulate and carry out a plan to secure what shall be

known as the General Rufus Putnam Memorial Fund of One

Hundred Thousand Dollars;

"That the income of this Fund be expended;

"For the maintenance of the Rufus Putnam home in Rutland,

Mass., in its present state of preservation;

"For the support of the departments of History and Political

Science and the Historical Museum of Marietta College;

"For such other purposes as shall promote the general aim of

this enterprise;

"That the Trustees of Marietta College, Marietta, Ohio, be

made the custodians and trustees of this Fund who shall make

annual report to this Association of its condition and the dis-

position of its income;

"That the Ohio Company of Associates of New York, the

Trustees of Marietta College, and the patriotic and historical

societies of Massachusetts and Ohio be asked to participate in this

endeavor."

In accordance with the above resolutions, a Committee was ap-

pointed to take charge of raising the Memorial Fund, as follows: G.

Stanley Hall and A. George Bullock, of Worcester, Mass.; Whitelaw

Reid, of London, Eng.; A. F. Estabrook and Ex-Gov. Curtis Guild, Jr.,

of Boston, Homer Lee, of New York; and W. W. Mills, Chas. S. Dana

and A. B. Hulbert, of Marietta, Ohio.

At the annual dinner of the Association, held in Rutland on the

same date (September 27), Honorable Charles S. Dana of Marietta, a

Life Member of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society,

Editorialana.                      125

as well as a member of the Rufus Putnam Memorial Association, delivered

the following eloquent address on the life and achievements of General

Rufus Putnam:

Permit me to state at the beginning of my remarks, ladies

and gentlemen, that I regard this association and this occasion

of high character. It is a privilege to me to stand by the threshold

of the founder of Ohio and greet you of the East who revere the

life and the deeds of Rufus Putnam. Here among the hills of

Massachusetts the name of Rutland seems the articulation of

the empire of the great Northwest. The mists of a century and

a quarter do not dim the deeds of the Company of Ohio Asso-

ciates, upon whom history spreads all the effulgence of the glorious

sun.

So I greet you of the Old Bay State, as ones who love the

story of our national beginning, of our expansion, of our terri-

torial acquisitions and of our public characters whose lives are

a legacy. The plain history of America transcends all the gilded

imaginations of the writer of the historical novel. The pen cannot

add to the life of Washington, of Hamilton, of Adams, of Putnam,

and within our own time it can but fittingly record its tribute to

that great American of your own Commonwealth, George Frisbie

Hoar.

The story of Rufus Putnam is the story of thirteen Colonies,

of the Continental Government, of the Colonial and Indian Wars,

of the American Revolution, of the suppression of Shay's Rebellion

and of Ohio. His days were crowded in an epoch that changed the

course of civilization and hand in hand with the men of 1776 he

took up the inheritance of the Magna Charta, of Plymouth Rock,

of the Virginia Constitution, of the Declaration of Independence

and while the Colonies were framing the Constitution of the United

States he joined in compelling the Ordinance of 1787.

Can the imagination, at this distance, reach the sublimity of

the work of Putnam and his compeers?

From the heights of Abraham in quick succession the Amer-

ican idea paved the way for the heroic, self-sacrificing events that

flashed from Lexington to Yorktown.

From Yorktown "westward the course of Empire took its

way" and stopped over the Ohio country, gave us Marietta, with

the Ohio Company, with Putnam and Tupper, and a state that today

is the "seat and the center of Empire."

If Quebec had not fallen into the hands of the English under

General Wolfe, it is highly probable that the land we now call the

great Northwest would exist under the colors of France. If

Laurence and Augustine Washington had not formed a company,

with Lord Fairfax, in 1748, that they called the Ohio Company,which

126       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

company controlled the land immediately south of the Ohio

river and north of the Little Kanawha, it is also possible that

Ohio would be a French province today. If. General Lewis had

not led his poorly-armed and clad Virginia mountaineers to the

battle of Point Pleasant in the Ohio Valley and routed the Indians,

(who were fighting under English directions) it is also possible

that there would not have been any reason for this Putnam society

to exist.

The stolid Englishmen had made their homes along the lines

of the Atlantic Coast.

The country beyond the Allegheny mountains did not appeal

to them, while the Frenchmen quickly laid claim to its vast extent.

Here that brilliant race of men, with all their force of fancy,

dreamed the dreams of Empire in a land that Daniel Webster de-

scribed as "vast, untouched, unbounded, magnificent wilderness."

The first Ohio company under the brothers of George Wash-

ington failed.

In 1763 King George issued an order that shut out all the

Virginians from the Ohio lands, leaving the French unmolested,

and here, in my opinion, is where France failed in not following

up her possession with colonies in which women and children

could be found.

During the darkness of Valley Forge George Washington

called his officers about him and told of the beautiful lands of

the Ohio, a country that he had visited more than once in youth

and early manhood, and suggested that in the event of the loss

of the American cause that the soldiers of the Revolution seek a

home in its genial climate.

The war was ended and the treaty of peace signed in Septem-

ber, 1783.

The colonists were independent, but the lives of many of the

defenders were lost in battle and the remaining ones lived in utter

poverty. The troops were without pay, the Continental government

had neither money nor credit. The hearts that had not faltered

before Hessian guns now faced a situation wherein heroism of

another kind had to obtain. The resources of the government

were exhausted and the only relief in sight of any kind was in the

Western lands that Maryland had compelled the other colonies

to form into a single body by surrendering all of their individual

claims thereto.

May we not pause here a moment and call to mind the sig-

nificance and the final effect of this action on the part of Mary-

land.

Let us keep in mind that the history of our country is an

open book. We do not trace our beginning to a she wolf, nor do

Editorialana.                     127

the gods of mythology enter into our story. Here we have a

nation builded in the bright and broad light of history, and we

can trace the lines and subtle influences in a large and, yes, a

small way in their entirety that created our Constitution.

This action on the part of Maryland created a ward for the

Colonies, and this charge made the opening of the Ohio Company

of Associates. The Ohio Company was the dynamic force whence

came the Ordinance of 1787. The Ordinance of 1787 forced the

ratification of the constitution by the Colonies and was one of the

most effective weapons in the hands of Hamilton in dealing with

the stubborn assembly of New York.

This great Ordinance stands as one of the mothers of human

progress. In the language of Webster, "it fixed the character of

the population in the vast regions northwest of the Ohio by ex-

cluding from them involuntary servitude."

The Ohio Company grew from a call issued from yonder house

by General Putnam and General Tupper -both brave soldiers of

the Revolution, and the friends and companions of Washington.

We have met to commemorate and perpetuate the life and the

deeds of Rufus Putnam in the fragrance of appreciation and

grateful memory.

Putnam, the step-son of a Sutton inn-keeper, became a self-

made man of the highest type. He early developed a fondness

for engineering and had his early training in the old French and

Indian wars. While in the conflict of the Revolution his services

were most distinguished at Dorchester Heights, in the fortifying

of West Point, the creating of coast defenses, taking part in the

capture of the army under Burgoyne and the safe return from

Long Island.

We cannot stop for the narrative of his career in full today,

time forbids; but we of the Ohio country look to this Rutland home

as the pilgrim to his shrine.

Rufus Putnam, the father of Ohio, is my toast! Rutland!

Marietta! Ohio! these are the sequences.

It is mine to be one of you in heart and pride, for I am a son

of the men of 1788, who established government in Ohio, and it has

been my privilege to live in the appreciation of the high ideals,

plans and effective work of Putnam and his associates. "The wise

and brave men," said Senator Hoar, "who settled Marietta would

have left an enduring mark, under whatever circumstances, on

any community to which they had belonged. But their colony was

founded at the precise and only time when they could have secured

the Constitution which has given the Northwest its character and

enabled it, at last, to establish in the whole country, the principles

128        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

of freedom which inspired alike the company of the first and

second Mayflower."

I question if history records another instance wherein the

government of a state was projected and the laws worked out in

detail in the advance of the coming of a single individual to the

land. Herein the genius of Putnam was recognized and, with his

forceful character, he was placed at the head of the Ohio Com-

pany of Associates.

Our history is dotted with the accounts of land companies

from way down in Maine to Texas and Oregon. Man has felt

here the lure of the land and answered the call of adventure and

of gain since Bradford came to Plymouth. The organization of

such companies has worked upon the speculative side of humanity

and very few of them, indeed, have found a place in history. They

lacked both the opportunity and the character of the Ohio Company.

The work of our fathers is secure. We approach with all the

pride of confidence.

Congress granted the Ohio lands to the soldiers of the Revo-

lution as compensation for their services and the character of these

men who followed Putnam has marked beyond no doubt or ques-

tion the five great states over which Governor St. Clair once

ruled.

In the settlement at Belpre, the first off-shooting colony from

Marietta, there was not a man who was not a commissioned officer

of the Revolution. These men did not come by accident, they

were the associates of Putnam and of Tupper. They loved their

country and these Ohio pioneers took with them their flag and

placed it by the cabin door, and to them it meant a new country,

a new home, a new state, one for which they had fought and

suffered. Such men as these could not be driven back by a naked,

lurking foe. Their inspiration was their home and they needed but

to glance over their shoulders into loving eyes and to hear the

prattle of babes around the cabin fire.

General Washington said "I know many of the settlers per-

sonally, and there never were men better calculated to promote

the welfare of such a community."

"I know them all" cried Lafayette with emotion, when he

visited Marietta, in 1824. "I know them all. I saw them at Brandy-

wine, Yorktown and Rhode Island. They were the bravest of

the brave."

Senator Hoar said "Washington and Varnum, as well as

Carrington and Lafayette, dwell chiefly, as was Washington's

fashion, upon the personal quality of the men and not upon their

public offices or titles. Indeed to be named with such commendation,

upon personal knowledge, by the cautious and conscientious Wash-

Editorialana.                      129

ington, was to a veteran soldier better than being knighted on the

field of battle."

The names of the first forty-eight to arrive at Marietta in the

Ohio Mayflower and their immediate successors, with the families

that commenced to come a little later even now proclaim the care

and plans of Putnam with increasing worth, and their simple,

upright, conscientious lives come to us as a benediction.

Rufus Putnam placed great value on religious and educational

opportunities. To Washington he wrote "We will hew down the

forests, and therein erect temples to the living God, raise and edu-

cate our children to serve and love and honor the nation for

which their fathers fought, cultivate farms, build towns and cities,

and make the wilderness the pride and glory of the nations."

I have never been able to picture Putnam as a man given to

making money from his associates. He did not exploit the Ohio

Company. When he left Rutland he had in his heart the love of

God and the love of his fellow man and to him the Ohio Country

offered an opportunity for the advancement of mankind in a land

where human slavery could not exist, and where the church was

to stand beside the school-house. He realized that a people to be

great must be accomplished, and so he took with him the plans of

a university and under the Ohio Company the first institution of

this kind was established in Ohio.

In the wilderness our fathers propagated Greek and Latin

roots from the very beginning and raised a citizenship of con-

spicuous mark. Men of broad lives and views, who knew their

rights and dared maintain them; men who absorbed the ideas of

Putnam's life and placed their own lives behind the guns that

flashed from Sumter and Appomattox.

The Ohio pioneers responded to their country's call and

crushed Burr's attempt to divide the west from the east. Whether

Burr carried such a guilty motive or not, the Federal power relied

upon the men from New England in the Ohio Valley to execute

the government will.

Putnam's idea of a college was carried into effect at Marietta.

The corner stone in Ohio of higher education was laid at Marietta,

in 1797, and at the head of the academy was a graduate of Yale.

And from this beginning Marietta College was charactered and

throughout the years it has always maintained and exalted the

standard of its founders as an institution of high order.

The atmosphere that made it necessary was of Putnam origin

and Putnam's estate passed eventually into its endowment funds.

Rufus Putnam could not have conceived of the creation of a

community without an institution of higher learning, and by the

Vol. XX.-9.

130        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

fire place here in Rutland he planned for an institution like Marietta

College. Through his seat of learning his influence lives, today,

and Rutland and Marietta are joined by the ties that will endure.

Ohio is now one of the empire states with a population repre-

sentative of the civilization of the globe. Her children have amal-

gamated the blood of New England and of the Virginians, and

in these strains her men and women are virile, they are yet the

exemplars of the Putnam band and must be the source of per-

petuating the good, honest, common sense that has, after all, made

America great.

Do not, ladies and gentlemen, allow your ideals of Putnam's

standard to be replaced by the "Melting Pot." The pure strain of

American blood must not he contaminated in this way for other-

wise we will turn back the hands of time.

Truly this is a time of rapid progress. Ours is the engine

of internal combustion, the wireless message, the subtle power

of electricity, the recording of the human voice, the power of

aerial travel.

This is a country just passing the portals of real human prog-

ress and we are a part of the same. Ours is the inspiration of all

that has made our nation great, and it is ours to help keep perpetual

the integrity of Rufus Putnam, his honest purpose and his devotion

to "religion, education and morality."

Concerning the further proceedings of the Rufus Putnam Memorial

Association, in celebration of the 125th anniversary of the organization

of the "Ohio Company of Associates" for the purpose of making the

first permanent settlement in the Northwest Territory, the Boston

Transcript of January 11, 1911, has this to say:

A unique anniversary meeting was held yesterday at the

Rufus Putnam House in this town to celebrate the first step

that was taken by Massachusetts soldiers toward making a

settlement west of the Allegheny Mountains, in what is now

Ohio. Early on the morning of Jan. 10, 1786-125 years ago-

Generals Rufus Putnam and Benjamin Tupper completed in this

house the final draft of a circular entitled "Information," which was

sent out to the press of Massachusetts in fourteen Massachusetts

counties, calling upon all the soldiers of the Revolution who desired

to exchange their worthless certificates for public land in the West,

and all others who desired to join a company and make a settle-

ment on the Ohio, to meet at certain taverns in certain specified

towns on the fifteenth of the following February, and there elect

delegates to represent them at a meeting in Boston, March 1, 1786.

This circular, with the list of delegates elected in the various coun-

ties, is given below.

Editorialana.                       131

As a result of the meeting at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern

in Boston, March 1, the "Ohio Company" was organized, which

company played a very important part in inducing Congress to enact

the famous Ordinance of 1787, which created our first American

Territory with its exceedingly important slavery prohibition.

It is the hope of the members of the committee from the

Rufus Putnam Memorial Association and the Ohio Company of

Associates of New York that the patriotic societies in Boston,

Salem, Cambridge, Northampton, Plymouth, Barnstable, Worcester

and Lenox will be sufficiently interested in this interesting his-

torical anniversary to hold meetings in their respective towns on

Feb. 15, 1911- the 125th anniversary of local meetings- and elect a

delegate or delegates to an anniversary banquet to be held in Bos-

ton on the night of March 1 to celebrate the 125th anniversary of

the formation of the Ohio Company, which played an all-important

part, through its chief agents, General Putnam and Rev. Manasseh

Cutler, at the critical hour in the expansion of the United States.

An exact copy of the "Information" and the record of the

first meeting of the Ohio Company of Associates, held March 1,

1786, copied from the originals in the library of Marietta College,

Marietta, O., follows:

On the twenty-fifth day of January, one thousand seven

hundred and eighty-six, appeared in the Public Prints a Piece styled

"Information" with the Signature of the Generals Putnam and

Tupper, of the late American Army-and in Substance as follows,

Verbatim, viz:

INFORMATION. -

The subscribers take this method to inform all Officers and

Soldiers who have served in the late War, and who are by an

Ordinance of the Honourable Congress to receive certain tracts

of land in the Ohio Country; and also, all other good Citizens

who wish to become adventurers in that delightful region; that

from personal inspection, together with other incontestible evidences,

they are fully satisfied that the Lands in that quarter, are of a

much better quality than any other known to New England people -

that the Climate, seasons, produce, &c., are in fact equal to the

most flattering accounts which have ever been published of them-

that being determined to become purchasers, and to prosecute a set-

tlement in this Country--and desirous of forming a general asso-

ciation with those who entertain the same ideas-they beg leave to

propose the following plan, viz:

That an association by the name of the OHIO COMPANY,

be formed of all such as wish to become purchasers, &c., in that

Country (who reside in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts only,

132        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

or to extend to the Inhabitants of other States, as shall be

agreed on).

That in Order to bring such a Company into existence, the

Subscribers propose that all persons who wish to promote the

scheme should meet within their respective Counties (except in

two instances hereafter mentioned) at ten o'clock A. M., on Wed-

nesday, the 15th day of February next-and that each County,

or meeting, there assembled, chuse a delegate or delegates, to

meet at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern in Boston, on Wednesday

the first day of March next at ten o'clock A. M., then and there to

Consider and determine upon a General Plan of Association for

said Company-which plan, covenant, or agreement being published,

every person (under condition therein to be provided) may by

subscribing his name, become a member of the Company. -

To carry these proposals into effect, the subscribers request,

that all persons disposed as aforesaid, will meet on the said 15th

day of February, for the purpose of chusing delegates as aforesaid,

at the places hereinafter mentioned, viz: -

Those of Suffolk County at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern, in

Boston - Essex at Capt. Webbs in Salem - Hampshire, at Pome-

roys in North Hampton - Plymouth at Bartlets in Plymo - Barn-

stable Dukes & Nantuckett Counties, at Houland's in Barnstable--

Bristol at Crockers in Taunton- York at Woodbridge's, in York-

Worster at Patch's in Worster - Cumberland and Lincoln, at

Shattuck's in Falmouth - Berkshire, at Dibble's in Lenox -

RUFUS PUTNAM,

BENJa   TUPPER.

Rutland, Jany. 10th, 1786.

In Consequence of the foregoing-On the first Day of

March, One thousand seven hundred and Eighty-six, Convened at

the Bunch of Grapes Tavern, in Boston, as Delegates from several

of the Counties of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to consider

of the Expediency of forming an Association or Company to pur-

chase Lands and make a settlement in the Western Country, the

Gentlemen whose names are underwritten-

County of Suffolk--Winthrop Sargent, John Mills

County of Essex-Manasseh Cutler

County of Middlesex-John Brooks, Thomas Cushing

County of Hampshire -Benja Tupper

County of Plymouth -Crocker Sampson

County of Worcester -Rufus Putnam

County of Berkshire-John Patterson, Jahlaliel Woodbridge

County of Barnstable-Abraham    Williams

Elected General Rufus Putnam Chairman of the Convention

and Maj. Winthrop Sargent Clerk-From the very pleasing De-

134       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

After honorable discharge from the army the deceased completed

his theological course at Yale, and then his long and varied career as

a minister of the Moravian Church began. On August 17, 1862, he was

ordained to the ministry of the Moravian Church, in Bethlehem, by

Bishop Samuel Reinke.

From 1863 to 1867 he was active as a home missionary in New

Haven, Conn. From 1868 to 1876 he was pastor at York, Pa., and

during this pastorate the congregation completed a new church edifice.

On May 23, 1871, he was united in holy wedlock with Miss Mary

Elizabeth Holland, daughter of the late Rev. Francis R. and Augusta

Wolle Holland, then of Hope, Indiana.

From 1876 to 1879 he filled the pastorate of the congregation at

Nazareth, Pa. From 1879 to 1880 he ministered to the congregation in

Brooklyn, N. Y. From 1880 to 1885 he was minister of the First Mo-

ravian Church in the City of Philadelphia, Pa. From this city he re-

moved to New York City and became the active and beloved pastor of

the German Mission on Sixth street. Here he ministered from   1885

to 1892. During these years he made his influence felt beyond the circle

of his own congregation. He served acceptably as assistant chaplain

of St. Luke's Hospital in New York and as a member of the Board

of Managers of the American Trust Society and of the Evangelical

Alliance of the United States.

From 1892 to 1897 he was pastor of the Moravian Church at New

Dorp, Staten Island. He next followed a call westward. From 1897

to 1909 he was pastor of the congregation at Gnadenhutten, Ohio. Dur-

ing these, nearly twelve, years of devoted activity on historic ground,

the commodious John Heckewelder Memorial Church of Gnadenhutten

was built. After untiring effort this beautiful sanctuary was dedicated,

debt free, to the worship of the Triune God. On July 27, 1905, the

Board of Trustees of Scio College conferred upon the deceased the

degree of Doctor of Divinity.

Not quite two years ago, in February, 1909, Dr. Rice became pas-

tor of the Moravian congregation in South Bethlehem, Pa. He labored

in this place long enough to endear himself to his people and a large

circle of friends and to set in motion the forces that have succeeded in

putting under roof what promises to become a beautiful and comfortable

church edifice.

As a preacher and platform speaker, Dr. Rice excelled. He was

prominent in the councils of the church and a forceful speaker on the

floor of her synods. He was twice honored by being chosen to repre-

sent the American Moravian Church, Northern Province, at the General

Synod, held in Herrnhut, Saxony, Germany-in 1869 and again in 1899.

He made some valuable contributions to the literature of the Moravian

Church. He was the author of "David Zeisberger and His Brown Breth-

ren." Only a short time ago he turned over to the Governing Board

Editorialana.                       135

of the Northern Province of the American Moravian Church his share

of the work on a "Book of Order," which the Synod of the Church

had ordered published and the preparation of which had been entrusted

to a committee of three, Dr. Rice being chairman.

As a pastor Dr. Rice was tenderly sympathetic and carried into the

homes of his people a Christ-like spirit. He will be most gratefully

remembered by many whom he had helped on by his thoughtfulness

and consideration.

Suddenly, quietly and peacefully, he fell asleep while waiting for

the opening of the service, in which he was to participate, in the First

Baptist Church, in South Bethlehem, on Tuesday evening, January 10,

1911. His age was 70 years, 4 months and 2 days.

To the above tribute of Professor Schwarze we can only add a

few words concerning Reverend Rice's enthusiastic work in the field of

Ohio history. He had unbounded energy and infused the same into all

who came in contact with him. Life was not an existence of hard labor

with him, though no one ever worked more constantly or effectively-

but life was a joyful task, filled with cheer, sympathy, patriotism and

gratitude for the opportunity of labor. It was Dr. Rice who instigated

the celebration of the Gnadenhutten Centennial in the Fall of 1898-a

most succesful celebration of the founding of that famous Moravian

settlement by John Heckewelder in 1798. Thousands poured into the

little village to participate in the intensely interesting program arranged

for the occasion by Dr. Rice. Again in the Fall of 1908 Dr. Rice

planned for and successfully executed the one hundredth anniversary of

the death of David Zeisberger, whose remains lie buried in the little

cemetery at Goshen, some six miles distant from Gnadenhutten.

The Editor of the Quarterly will never cease to remember the days

of the celebrations just mentioned. The spirit-yes and the spiritual

--interest of Dr. Rice in the proceedings; his eloquence in speaking of

the lives and deeds of Heckewelder and Zeisberger-those first mission-

aries to the western redmen. The story of these celebrations and the

splendid orations of Dr. Rice may be found in the pages of the pub-

lications of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, where

generations yet to come will doubtless read them and be edified by the

history there so graphically told. Dr. Rice possessed a patriotism of

the fervid kind; he was easily put at "fever heat" when speaking of the

Civil War and the blessings of freedom arising therefrom. The altar

of his country was close to the altar of his religion. His fellow mem-

bers of the Grand Army of the Republic, recognized his services in the

war and his devotion to the memory of those days by electing him

chaplain of the Ohio State organization.

Dr. Rice was a man of rare ability, put to the best use, and the

world is the better for his living in it.

136        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

THE BUNCH OF GRAPES TAVERN.

In "Old Boston Taverns" -a rare little pamphlet published in

Boston in 1886 and written by Samuel Adams Drake--is an entertain-

ing little chapter on the "Bunch of Grapes Tavern," the inn that figured

so historically in the early stages of the organization of the Ohio Com-

pany of Associates. The tavern stood in King Street, now State Street,

at the upper corner of Kilby Street. It was not far from the site of

the Boston Massacre and in the engraving of that bloody scene by Paul

Revere the balcony over the entrance to the tavern is shown on the

extreme left, while the town hall is in the background. Mr. Drake

states that "three gilded clusters of grapes temptingly dangled over the

door before the eye of the passer-by." These bunches of grapes were

of course large wooden imitations of the real clusters. He also adds

that "apart from its palate-tickling suggestions, the pleasant aroma of

antiquity surrounds this symbol, so dear to all devotees of Bacchus

from immemorial time." Shakespeare in "Measure for Measure" has

his clown say, "'Twas in the Bunch of Grapes, where indeed you have

a delight to sit, have you not?" And Froth answers, "I have so, be-

cause it is an open room and good for winter." The Boston tavern

thus named dates back to 1712, from which time until the Revolution

it was a public inn and as such feelingly referred to by various travelers

as the best "punch-house" to be found in all Boston.

When the line came to be drawn between conditional loyalty and

loyalty at any rate the Bunch of Grapes Tavern became the resort and

headquarters of the high Whigs in which patriotism only passed current

and the Royalists found cold reception. It was in this tavern, states

Drake, "on Monday, July 30, 1733, that the first grand lodge of Masons

in America was organized by Henry Price, a Boston tailor, who had received

authority from Lord Montague, Grand Master of England, for the

purpose." Upon the evacuation of Boston by the Royal troops and the

entrance of the Colonists, General Washington was handsomely enter-

tained at this tavern and later after reading the Declaration of Inde-

pendence from the balcony of the town hall, the populace proceeded to

pull down from the public buildings the Royal arms which had dis-

tinguished them and gathered them in a heap in front of the Bunch

of Grapes Tavern, made a bonfire thereof. The register of the Bunch

of Grapes Tavern, if it had kept one, would show an illustrious list

of guests, such as General Stark, Lafayette, and many of the Revolu-

tionary leaders and heroes, but probably what most distinguishes it is

the fact that there were held in this tavern the initial meetings of the

officers and directors of the Ohio Company, their first gathering being

held there March 1, 1786.

In the summer just passed (1910) the Editor during a visit to

Boston endeavored to find the location of the Bunch of Grapes Tavern.

The site was easily discovered, but alas the surroundings were com-

pletely changed, and where the original tavern once stood is now a sky-

scraper business block, in the basement of which, under the very corner

where stood the old tavern, is a little restaurant, perhaps twenty feet

square, with a lunch-counter at the end, over which was arched the

imitation of a large grapevine, from which hung many clusters of

ingeniously similated grapes.