DE BOW'S REVIEW: A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF COMMERCE, AGRICULTURE, MANUFACTURES, INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT, STATISTICS, ETC., ETC. ESTABLISHED JANUARY 1, 1846. VOL. XIV. APRIL, 1853. No. IV. ART. 1.-PROGRESS OF OHIO, HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL. UNDER Marquette's discoveries in Mississippi river. After the colonies re1673, the French laid claim to all the nounced their allegiance to the British region watered by the Mississippi and crown, in 1776, the different states its tributaries; and after D'Iberville's claiming western lands under their resexpedition from France, which explor- pective charters, ceded them to the Unied northward up the Mississippi, as ted States as common property, and the Marquette had done southward from Ca- English claim was relinquished by the nada, forts were located, and colonies treaty of Paris, in 1783. planted at different points throughout the whole extent of country-all subject to the general authority of Louisiana. And thus originated their claim to the territory northwest of the Ohio river, while the English based theirs, not only upon the grants of different monarchs, embracing the whole extent of land from sea to sea, but upon the ground that the Six Nations owned the entire valley of the Ohio, and had placed it, with themselves, under the protection of England; the English, also, asserting the purchase of a portion of the land. An English trading company was formed in 1748, styled the Ohio Company, whose trading-house or fort on the Great Miami, attacked and destroyed by the French, in 1752, was the first English settlement in the Ohio valley upon record. Braddock's defeat in 1755, gave encouragement to the Indians to encroach eastwardly. After several treaties and outbreaks, they were defeated by Lord Dunmore at Point Pleasant, in a severely contested battle, which was followed soon afterwards by a final peace. In 1763 took place the cession of Canada to England by France, and with it all her claim to the territory east of the VOL. XIV. 1 The Ohio river had been proposed for our western boundary by Mr. Oswald, the commissioner on the part of England; but, as is well known, John Adams insisted upon the Mississippi as the boundary, and it was thus settled by that neIt was in 1784 Virginia cedgotiation. ed her right to the lands north of the Connecticut, MassachuOhio river setts, New-York, and Pennsylvania shortly afterwards following her example. The Indian title was extinguished, first by a treaty at Fort Stanwix with the Six Nations, and subsequently by a second one with the Wyandotts, Delawares, &c., at Fort McIntosh. Surveys and sales were then made by Congress, the "New-England Ohio Company" purchasing a tract lying adjacent to the Scioto and Muskingum rivers, and there commencing in the spring of 1788 the settlement of Marietta, at the mouth of the Muskingum, the first permanent A previous attempt at the one in Ohio. mouth of the Scioto, where Portsmouth now stands, was abandoned, on account of difficulties with the Indians. In the same year with the settlement at Marietta, General Arthur St. Clair was appointed by Congress governor over the new territory-Winthrop Sargeant, se cretary-and as judges, Samuel Holden November, 1791, General St. Clair, at Parsons, James Mitchell Varnum, and the head of an army of nearly 3,000 men, John Cleves Symmes, who organized the territorial government, and made and adopted suitable laws. approaching the Indian towns, was attacked near what is now the line of Darke and Mercer counties, by the In 1787, John Cleves Symmes, a combined forces of nearly all the northmember of the Old Congress from New- west tribes, and experienced a total and Jersey, and formerly chief justice of that most disastrous defeat. The Indian difstate, with associates, contracted with ficulties were, in consequence, multiCongress for the purchase of one million plied, and for a time emigration ceased acres of land, lying between the two entirely. Washington, as President, Miamis, and extending back north- urged the prosecution of this protective wardly from the Ohio river. The second war; but it was not until 1794 that an settlement in Ohio was made in this army was assembled at Greenville, untract, at Columbia, a point five miles der Gen. Anthony Wayne. In August above Cincinnati, October, 1788. Soon of that year he obtained a decisive vicafterwards, Symmes sold to Mathias tory over a force of two thousand Indians, Denman, of New-Jersey, about eight at the Rapids of the Maumee. When their hundred acres of his purchase, opposite the mouth of the Licking. Five hundred and fifty dollars was the sum paid for these eight hundred acres of land, on which now stands the principal business portion of the city of Cincinnati. The first cabin upon this site was erected in December, 1788. The settlements that followed were, Manchester, on the Ohio river, the first effected in the country, lying between the Scioto and Little Miami rivers, by General Massie and others, in the winter of 1790; Gallipolis, by immigrants from France, in the same year; Hamilton, laid off by Israel Ludlow, late in 1794; Dayton, by the same, in 1795; Cleveland, surveyed and laid out in the fall of 1795; Chillicothe, laid out by General Massie, in 1796; and Portsmouth, settled since 1805. The tract reserved by Connecticut, in her cession to the general government, situated east of the Cuyahoga, found purchasers in her own and other states, and by the year 1800 numbered one thousand settlers. country was laid waste, and they saw the American forts springing up around them, they at length submitted and sued for peace. When we consider the fierce and unrelenting warfare waged by the Indian tribes upon the white settlements of the West, during the thirty-seven years of almost uninterrupted conflict, from 1757, when the first white man was killed in Kentucky, down to the period of Wayne's victory, we may form some faint idea of the toil, and perils, and suffering of the bold and hardy race of pioneers who effected the colonization of the vast western world. An Indian chief, at the conclusion of a treaty, yielding up the right of soil in Kentucky, said to Boone, "Brother, we have given you a fine land, but I think you will have trouble to settle it." And his prediction was fully verified, there and elsewhere, of lands purchased of the Indians. Hostilities being at an end, population rapidly increased in the rich farming district between the Miamis-settlers Though the Indian treaties had been spread outward from Marietta. Connecrenewed and confirmed, they were con- ticut sent many to her reserved tract, tinually violated by hostile portions of bordering on Lake Erie; and in 1798 the the different tribes, and in 1789, nine inhabitants of the territory were 5,000 persons were killed in Symmes' pur- in number, with eight organized counchase. Block-houses were built by the ties. The territory was then entitled, by alarmed settlers, and Major Doughty, the ordinance of 1787, to representatives with one hundred and forty men from in a territorial legislature, the first meetFort Harmar, Marietta, in June, 1789, ing of which took place in Sept., 1799. commenced Fort Washington, the site of the present city of Cincinnati. The Indian aggressions still continuing to intimidate them, General Harmar with 1,300 men marched against their towns, and attacked them, but was unsuccessful, and retreated back to Cincinnati. In Wm. Henry Harrison, then secretary of the territory, and since President of the United States, was at that time elected to Congress. In 1802 Congress authorized a convention to form a state constitution; it assembled at Chillicothe, and on the 309 lence, that has within itself the renovating power to prevent its exhaustion under the most constant culture. When thoroughly tested, seven-eighths of the soil of Ohio will be found well adapted to the permanent production of wheat. Indian Wars-State Constitution-Nature of the Soil. 29th November adopted and signed a and sandstone that lie above and below constitution of state government, by them, constitute a soil of great excelwhich act Ohio took her place amongst the states of the Union. The first General Assembly under the state constitution was held at Chillicothe in 1803. In 1805 the United States acquired, by another Indian treaty, the portion of the reserve of Connecticut lying west of the Cuya- On the south-east and south, Ohio has hoga river, and in subsequent treaties a river-shore four hundred and fifty miles the Maumee and Sandusky regions were in length, which is visited by steamers ceded by the Indians, thus extinguishing from four to eight months of every year. all their claims in Ohio. In 1811 the Its interior streams, though worthless for Indians, after a series of outbreaks, were navigation, are invaluable as feeders for defeated by General Harrison, then canals, and for the water-power which governor of the Indiana territory, at the they almost everywhere afford. By far famous battle of Tippecanoe. During the greatest concentration of capital is this same year the first steamer ever in the south-western portion of the state, launched upon the western waters made in and around Cincinnati. Cleveland the voyage from Pittsburgh to New-Or- and the country around it may be ranked leans. In 1816 the seat of government the second in the state for wealth and was removed from Chillicothe to its business; Zanesville forms the third present location at Columbus, situated focus of wealth, and on account of the in the centre of the state, upon the fine beds of coal and iron in the surScioto river. rounding country, bids fair to become extensively engaged in manufacturing. Trumbull, Ashtabula, Geauga, and Portage, are rich in fine cattle and the productions of the dairy. The southeastern and central counties constitute at present the most productive wheat region in the United States. The Scioto valley is distinguished for its corn, cattle, and hogs, which it produces in great abundance. The north-western quarter of the state is too new to have acquired much wealth of any kind; but when well settled it will be second to none but the south-west, and it may even overtake that rich and beautiful section. Its position for commerce and manufactures is remarkably good, and its soil will yield abundantly all the productions grown in other parts of the state. It would seem almost superfluous to speak of the fertile character of the soil of Ohio, but there are some varieties, owing to geological formation, which may be properly noticed. That part which has transition lime-rock for its upper stratum is of course possessed of a soil remarkably durable, and well adapted to wheat and grass. This portion embraces nearly half of the state, the eastern line of it commencing at the lake, near the mouth of the Huron river, and passing in a southerly direction, leaves Columbus a few miles east, and touches the Ohio river in Adams county. All lying west of this line is emphatically a limestone country. A great part of the ten counties constituting the Connecticut Reserve is based on shale and sandstone, and although good land, and capable of producing, with careful culture, all kinds of grain and fruit suitable to the climate, yet, lacking calcareous matter in the soil, it is less fertile than the rest of the state. The middle and south-eastern section of Ohio is much more uneven than the western and northern, the streams having carried away the earth to a greater extent, because it was from its nature less able to resist the action of flood and frost. This great section has the debris of the lime strata, that lie in the coal series, scattered on all its hill sides and valleys; and mingling with the debris of the beds of shale Ohio has twenty-five millions of acres, nearly every acre of which may be cheaply brought into tillage, and its average fertility exceeds that of the best interval lands or primitive countries. If it were all under culture in wheat, it might produce five hundred millions of bushels, being nearly five times as much as is grown in the United States. It is fully able to sustain in comfort and happiness ten millions of people; and with that number it would average but 250 to the square mile, or one person to every 2 acres. In climate we believe no other state equals it for mildness and uniformity. Its winter cold and its summer |