Ohio History Journal

Big Bottom and Its History.             31

 

Point Pleasant and ended at Fallen Timbers. After Wayne had

made a treaty with the Indians, and Jay with the British, the

occupation of the savage was gone, and the settlements began

to extend beyond the banks of the rivers.

Yet long before this consummation, even within the period

of border warfare, these pioneers from New England, officers

and soldiers of the Revolution, began to make arrangements

for the education of their children. They were determined

that religion, morality and knowledge" should "be encouraged"

from the very beginning. In the first winter Major Anselm

Tupper taught a school in the Marietta block-house, and in the

first summer Manasseh Cutler had suggested Harmar Hill as

a suitable place for a university. The rapid settlement of the

Scioto country so changed the center of population that a few

years later General Rufus Putnam found it expedient to choose

another site- Chandler's Hill--where Ohio University now

stands. Ere this was done the citizens of Marietta had taken

steps towards having an institution for higher education in their

own town. Within a year after the close of the Indian War

they began Muskingum Academy, from which grew Marietta

College. The first body of emigrants to this valley, those from

New England, have left us, then, two worthy monuments of

their zeal in behalf of higher education, Ohio University and

Marietta College.

When peace had been established the Western Reserve was

opened for settlement, and from that time New England sent

comparatively few to "Muskingum," as this whole valley was

then called. The hardy yeomen of Virginia came across the

country and occupied the land north of the Marietta settlements.

Their path is marked by the names of Monroe and Morgan

counties, commemorating two of Virginia's distinguished sons.

North of these and mingling with them came the Scotch-Irish

from Pennsylvania, building Presbyterian churches and acade-

mies and preaching "righteousness, temperance and judgment

to come." Some of those academies have grown to Colleges,

and one of them, Muskingum College, though little among the

tribes of Israel, has sent out many a Saul to lead the people. A

college that has given us the Finleys, the Stevensons and such

32        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

university presidents as Dr. Thompson and Dr. Harper deserves

grateful remembrance from the whole people.

North of the Scotch-Irish zone there came from Pennsyl-

vania to the Muskingum, as the Tuscarawas was then called,

the Moravians to occupy the land where their disciples, the

Christian Indians had been murdered. John Heckewelder, the

pioneer of this movement, had visited this valley as early as 1762.

A group of Moravian churches in Tuscarawas county remains

as a fitting memorial of his Christian labors.

Early in the nineteenth century immigrants from   Ger-

many and Ireland came in considerable numbers to this valley.

Their settlements are marked by Lutheran and Catholic churches.

The blending of all these elements could not be accomplished

at once.  Even the native Americans had little acquaintance

with their neighbors from other states, and there were differ-

ences in faith and in customs which for a time kept the little

qroups asunder. I have often heard a tradition of a New Eng-

land family that was surrounded by Virginians. A girl from

this family had gone on some errand to the cabin of a neighbor.

While she was there a child exclaimed, "Mother, give her a

piece of bread. I want to see how a Yankee eats." There were

also differences and mutual prejudices between Americans and

foreigners, but comradeship in battling with the wilderness

changed these feelings into sympathy and respect. The Amer-

ican soon learned that the Irishman or the German was as handy

at a log-rolling or a raising as any other man, and these learned

in their turn that the Yankee or the Virginian was not unwilling

to be neighborly. Whatever traces of old differences remained

were obliterated by the storm of Civil War. The strife which,

for a time, divided the nation united the section. In the regiment

to which I had the honor to belong, as well as in others raised

in this valley, there were worthy descendants of all these classes.

Cavalier and Puritan, Catholic and Protestant, German, Irish,

and American, were all united in defending a common country,

and thus in the fiery trial of war all the elements were fused into

a united people.