of his life, he would have set the prophet down as a crazy dreamer of dreams.

A GLANCE OF OHIO'S FIRST CENTURY.

BY A. A. GRAHAM.

When our forefathers emerged from the severe struggle necessary to establish our republic, they found themselves in a precarious condition. Their debts were unpaid; there were acrimonious jealousies among the thirteen states, which common danger had thus far hidden under a stern necessity and compelled them to remain united against a common foe.

The claims of the soldiers for their patriotic services were among the first presented to the old Continental congress. That body was one of the ablest legislative assemblies that ever met to consider the destinies of a nation. Stopping to consider their work only so far as it relates specially to the western country, let us look into this legislation a little.

The appeals of General Rufus Putnam and other army officers to be given lands for their services, backed by the strong argument and influence of Washington, had an effect not only on congress but on the whole country. Congress of itself, not owning the western land, could do nothing but urge on the states claiming such land to cede the same to the general government for the common benefit of all. In these appeals and the action of the states lies the root of our Nation. "Give the land for the good of the Union" was the demand. "It is not right," said those states not owning western lands, "that Virginia should claim such an extent of western country. She has no good title to such a vast realm that will drain us of our inhabitants and impoverish us in the end. We cannot ratify the articles of Confederation unless this is done." The justness of such a claim, the demand of the soldiers, the influence of the people, all had their effect. In 1781 New York had ceded her western lands, and in 1784, one year after peace was declared, Virginia gave a deed of cession of all her vast domain north and west of the River Ohio, reserving but a small amount from which she could pay her own soldiers. Massa

chusetts and Connecticut followed Virginia's example, and by 1786 the United States owned its public lands. In these deeds of cession, though not clearly realized at the time by the people, lies the idea of an imperishable Union. The land is ceded to the "United States for the common good and benefit of the people," is the fundamental idea." Further in the organic law of the "Territory northwest of the River Ohio" is the provision that the states to be created therefrom "shall forever remain a part of the Union, and share in all its burdens and all its benefits." Ohio could not secede if she desired, for that matchless law of 1787-that Compact of Freedom "—has placed forever beyond recall the right of any state that should be made in the Northwest Territory to evade her responsibilities to the whole Union.

The next year after the deed of cession was made, the law for the survey of the western country was passed. That law recognized the state claims, and, in that regard, is a state right document. The act for the government of the territory, passed July 13, 1787, is, however, essentially a national document. The one recognized the claim of individual states to the soil, the other admitted no individual claim, only that of all, and that as a Union.

The organic law of 1787 was the result of New England influence, backed by stern necessity. Congress wanted money, New Englanders wanted land, and wanted it from the United States. They came forward with a liberal offer of money and of men to colonize the territory, but said to congress: "You must pass laws recognizing the rights of mankind in person, speech and property."

These declarations were part of the compact of the ordinance which could not be repealed save by the consent of congress and the states; and in after years, when attempts were made to introduce slavery into the territory, the ordinance stood firmly in the way and could not be broken.

Settlements made in any country under such wholesome laws could not be else than prosperous. The best blood of the older states found lodgement here, and the best minds of the day a wholesome atmosphere in which to grow. On the forenoon of April 7, 1788, a "" band of adventurers," as they called themselves, alighted on the eastern bank

of the Muskingum river, a short distance above its confluence with the Ohio. They were the advance guards of a civilization that should occupy Ohio's valleys and hillsides, and, like their Puritan ancestors of 1620, disembarked from a Mayflower, which they had built in the early springtime at Somerell Ferry, a noted place of rendezvous on the western slopes of the Alleghany mountains. They had made the journey in five days down the "Yok," the Allegheny and the Ohio. They were not to tarry long alone. Indeed, they found Fort Harmar on the opposite bank of the river, built two years before, and now garrisoned by a company of United States troops. Other settlers rapidly followed them, and, had the surveys been completed, a large emigration would have settled to the north of the river. Public lands could not, however, be obtained until surveyed, and the emigrants that year, in great numbers, passed on down the river to the Kentucky settlements below.

The success of the Ohio company's efforts induced others to enter this inviting field. John Cleves Symmes obtained a large tract of land bordering the Ohio river, bounded on the east and west by the two Miamis. He made sales of a portion of his tract in 1788, and that fall one band of emigrants came to his purchase.

In November Major Benjamin Stiles, a fellow New Jerseyman, who had purchased ten thousand acres near the Little Miami, founded Columbia, the second settlement in the state, and late in December Mathias Dennian, Robert Patterson and John Filson laid out a town opposite the mouth of the Licking river, in Kentucky, which the latter, a surveyor and schoolmaster, named Loganteville. His untimely death soon after necessitated a change in the firm, and Colonel Israel Ludlow became a partner. A new survey was made and the " Queen City of the West" perpetuates their efforts.

Thus it was that Ohio settlements began. Two more years saw prosperous colonies on the river bottoms and in the Ohio company's purchase about Marietta. Further increase of population was summarily prevented by a savage Indian war, which broke out early in 1791, which raged four years, and ended only by the decisive victory of "Mad Anthony," at the battle of Fallen Timbers, August 20, 1794. August 3, 1795, the same "whirlwind," as the savages called him, concluded a

treaty of peace with the Indians at Greenville, in what is now Darke county, which established their boundary lines, and which assured safety to those settlers who would observe its provisions.

Wayne's treaty opened the way to settlements, and again the tide of emigration poured westward. The valleys of the Ohio and those streams flowing into it rapidly filled with settlers. Before the year 1800 there were prosperous colonies in the Ohio company's purchase and at Columbia, Cincinnati, Dayton, Chillicothe, Zanesville, Franklinton, Hamilton, Gallipolis, Manchester and many other localities in that part of the state south of the Greenville treaty line.

One portion of Ohio north of this line has a somewhat different history from other parts of the state.

North of the forty-first parallel, to the Canadian possessions, Connecticut had established a claim. In her deeds of cession, made in 1786, she had reserved that portion extending west from the Pennsylvania boundary one hundred and twenty miles, and which became known in history as the Connecticut Western Reserve. As a consequence this tract of land was almost wholly settled by Connecticut people, who so established their customs that it also became known as "New Connecticut." The reservation was sold to a company of associates and the proceeds applied to the permanent school fund of the "Mutiny State."

In selecting a man to manage the surveys and disposition of the land, the company sought among the ranks of the Revolutionary officers and chose therefrom General Moses Cleaveland. What General Rufus Putnam was to the Ohio company, General Cleaveland was to the Connecticut company—a man well fitted for the place, and one whose memory is perpetuated by the finest city (so its people say) in the Buckeye state. With a company of surveyors he arrived on the Reserve July 4, 1796, and at the mouth of a small stream, since known as Conneaut creek, held the first Fourth of July celebration in this part of the western country. The Massachusetts company of surveyors numbered forty-eight persous, all men. The Connecticut company numbered fifty-two persons, of whom two were women and one a child. This party divided into two portions, one to go south to the forty-first parallel, the other west to the mouth of the Cuyahoga, to which boundary the

Indian titles had been extinguished. Here the practical eye of the chief saw the location of a city, and soon a few log huts were built and the surveyor's chain marked out a town, the rival of any on the Ohio valley. So great was the exodus from the east to the west that in one year the Reserve had a population of over one thousand persons, and the towns of Ashtabula, Warren, Cleveland and others were the centers of active frontier life.

The congress of the United States had invested the territorial legislature and courts with the power to enact laws, and as the settlements increased, courts and the machinery of justice were placed in motion. Churches and schools were established in the beginning of each settlement, for by the organic law of the Territory all efforts for the advancement of the people were to be encountered and protected. The settlements of almost every part of the Territory, afterwards comprised in the state of Ohio, were modeled after the best of those of New England, and under the wise and beneficient organic law the best energies of the Atlantic coast found here a field of action.

It was also about this time that a great religious awakening convulsed the country, and as a consequence every denomination then in action had representatives among the emigrants. Partly from this and also. from the fact that the laws encouraged the advancement of religion, Ohio has more churches to-day, and more communicants in proportion to her population, than any state in the Union.

The ordinance of 1787, provided that the Territory should be divided into not more than five states, any division as such to be admitted when it enumerated sixty thousand or more inhabitants. By 1798 the inhabitants of the territory, numbering over five thousand free males over twenty-one years of age, determined to pass to the grade of territorial government. At first some attempts were made to establish a state having the Scioto river as its western boundary, but the efforts of Thomas Worthington and a few other strong men defended such a purpose, and succeeded in affirming the western boundary on a line running due north of the Great Miami river, as had been previously contemplated. The arbitrary acts of the Territorial governor, Arthur St. Clair, caused a strong sentiment to join in favor of the formation of a state in the "Eastern Division of the Northwest Territory." Congress, early in 1802,