FIFTY YEARS OF OHIO. (From the July No. of the North American Review.)

(Continued from last No.)

flat boats; and, in Symmes's estimation, the country about the river was "superiour in point of soil, water, and timber, to any tract of equal dimensions to be found in the United States." The hope that a great city was to arise at this point, long continued to comfort the harassed mind of the projector; and when St. Clair informed him, that he was about to visit and organize the Miami purchase, Symmes doubted much whether a new town which he had laid out at South Bend, or Losantiville, would be best fitted for the county seat; but as the former was more central, thought, that, if it were made the county town, "it would probably take the lead of the present village (Losantiville) until the city can be made somewhat considerable."

It is a curious fact and one of many in Western history, that may well tend to shake our faith in the learned discussions as to dates and localities with which scholars now and then amuse the world, that the date of the settlement of Cincinnati is unknown, even though we have the testimony of the very men that made the settlement. Judge Symmes says, in one of his letters, "On the 24th of December, 1788, Colonel Patterson, of Lexington, who is concerned with Mr. Denman in the section at the mouth of Licking river, sailed from Limestone," &c. Some, supposing it would take about two days to make the But the mind of this persevering and just man, voyage, have dated the being of the Queen city of which had never been at ease since he first emthe West from December 26th. This is but guess-barked in the enterprise of reclaiming the wilderwork, however; for, as the river was full of ice, it ness, was to be still further tried. The Kentuckmight have taken ten days to have gone the sixty-ians, seeing that he, by his clemency, his moderation, five miles from Maysville to the Licking. But, in the case in chancery to which we have referred, we have the evidence of Patterson and Ludlow, that they landed opposite the Licking "in the month of January, 1789;" while William M'Millan testifies, that he "was one of those who formed the settlement of Cincinnati on the 28th day of December, 1788." As we know of nothing more conclusive on the subject than these statements, we must leave this question in the same darkness that we find it, and proceed to more certain events.

and his firmness, still remained on good terms with the Indians, and that settlers were flocking to his lands, represented the boasted fertility of the soil as a lie, and the safety of the settlers as a delusion. Some even threatened to make it so, by destroying every Indian they could find in the Miami purchase. The soldiers that were with him were idle, disobliging, and burdensome. His surveyors and settlers were "at times put to great shifts from want of bread." Continental certificates were rising, and his purchase was endangered by the difficulty of The settlers of Losantiville built a few log-huts obtaining them. Many, that had bought of him on and block-houses, and proceeded to lay out the speculation, threw up their contracts. Then came town; though they placed their dwellings in the information, that the British were urging the Indimost exposed situation, yet, says Symmes, they ans to war; and his expected recruits did not come. "suffered nothing from the freshet." The judge Next was actual warfare, and his settlers left him spent a little time with them, and then fell down to fifty at one time. And, to complete his disquiet, North Bend, accompanied by the small army which his friends beyond the mountains wrote to him, that had been allowed him for his protection. Here they great attempts would be made to turn him from the built "a camp," "by setting two forks of saplings bench; that he was universally disliked, almost in the ground, a ridgepole across, and leaning boat-hated by the settlers, and that his eastern co-propriboards, which had been brought from Maysville, one end on the ground and the other against the ridgepole; enclosing one end, and leaving the other open for a door, where the fire was built to keep out the cold, which was very intense."

etors were displeased by his management.

The perils of warfare Symmes was prepared to meet. At the beginning he had said, "Disasters I expect; if I can prevent a defeat, it is as much as I hope for the first year; we may talk of treaties as Finding his point to be so low, that the city could we please; I am certain we must fight or leave the not be safely built there, unless, as he says, "you ground." And now that the day of trial was near by, raise her like Venice out of the waters," he survey- he shrunk not. "What will be the issue," he says, ed the grounds between the north bend of the Ohio" God only knows. I shall maintain the ground as and the Miami; thinking a plan might be arranged so as to have the advantage of both rivers still, it being but a mile across the isthmus. He found the land, however, to be too hilly and broken, and was forced to content himself with a small town-plat reaching a mile and a half along the Ohio, of which he offered the alternate lots to settlers, of whom forty came within two months, and built themselves "comfortable log-cabins."

long as I possibly can, ill prepared as we are. I can but perish, as many a better man has done before me."

But dislike and opposition, which his heart assured him he had not merited, he did not meet without suffering. While yet on his way to the West in the summer of 1788, he said of his accusers, that "the only revenge he wished to have against them was, that they might have equal success in their views, attended with equal calumny and censure;" for which he thought he had "pretty good security, if they undertook to do business for many;" and the bitterness, which he then tasted, was increased every year that he lived.

But his longing for a city still continued; and, after much consideration, he determined in favour of a spot twelve miles up the Miami, and within half an hour's ride from North Bend; he preferred this to the Ohio shore, because he thought it better to concentrate the trade of the Miami valley, than to It was not destined, however, that this frontier be one of the many cities along the larger stream. post of the West should perish. In June, a force of The Miami was then considered navigable, and was a hundred and forty men was sent to Cincinnati; and for many years afterward navigated by keel and Fort Washington was commenced, upon the spot

since made classick by the Bazar of Mistress Trol- defeat, because they are well known. The effect lope. In December, this band was increased to was, as we have said, dreadful. It almost stopped four hundred and forty, by the arrival of General emigration; nor was confidence felt again until the Harmar, who was about to march against the Indi- decisive victory of Wayne, in August, 1794, which ans of the Maumee and Wabash. At this time Lo-led to the treaty of Greenville in the same month santiville contained eleven families and twenty-four of the year following. bachelors, beside the garrison.

When the knowledge that peace had been made In January, 1790, the governour and judges arrived with the Indians became general, however, "all at that village for the purpose of organizing the Kentucky," as Symmes says, "and the back parts county; which Symmes, whom "the governour of Virginia and Pennsylvania ran mad with the excomplimented with the honour of naming" it, called pectations of the land-office opening" in the West; Hamilton, after the well-known Alexander, then" they laugh me full in the face, when I ask them Secretary of the Treasury. At this time, also, the one dollar per acre for firstrate land, and tell me, name of Losantiville was abandoned, and Symmes they will soon have as good for thirty cents." Even and St. Clair adopted that of Cincinnati, or, as the his North Bend settlers left him, to push their forfrontier wrote it, Cincinnata, "in honour of the or- tunes in those interiour valleys, of which the soldiers der of the Cincinnati, and to denote the chief place of St. Clair and Wayne gave such descriptions.of their residence." The name is a good one, but The mere prospect of a treaty diminished the poputhe place ill suited for the residence of these hon-lation of this young town one half, and its compleourable "knights," whose constitution could not even withstand the semi-aristocratick air of the sea

coast.

In the spring of 1799, various stations were formed and garrisoned in the neighbourhood of Cincinnati; and General Harmar began to prepare for his campaign against the old Miami village at the junction of the St. Joseph's and St. Mary's, though he was not able to leave till the following September. Of his march, his ill success, amounting to a virtual defeat, and the outburst of savage warfare that followed, we shall not speak, as they may be found in any history of those times. The return of the troops, mournful as it was, had its ray of comfort, however, for our adventurer. "It is impossible," he says, "to describe the lands over which the army passed; I am told that they are inviting to a

charm."

But in 1791 came new troubles. It was found that it would be very hard, if not impossible, for Symmes and his comrades to pay for the million of acres, extending twenty miles only on the Ohio, as so much of it lay back from that stream that he could not find purchasers. And this brought him into conflict, in some way, with St. Clair, a selfwilled and arbitrary man, who had, also, about this time, seen fit to proclaim military law in a " part of the town of Cincinnati ;" an act which the judge thought "bordered hard on tyranny." And when Symmes offered to accompany the governour in the expedition for which he was then preparing, his excellency gave him an answer that led him to think that his presence would be rather disagreeable than otherwise. Next came the fear, that Congress might open a land-office, and, by competing with, ruin him; and then the panick that resulted from St. Clair's defeat, on the fourth of November, 1791. When the news of that event reached the settlers, they left their farms with scarce an exception; dismay went through the whole West; and a savage warfare commenced, that for two years and eight months nearly equalled that of 1763. These things were all sources of great discomfort and loss to Symmes, who had, amid them all, but one cause for joy, and that a poor and unchristian one; the general dislike that was brought upon his old foe, St. Clair, whose pride, no doubt he was very glad to see humbled.

We say nothing of the particulars of that general's

tion gave his hopes almost a death-blow. So uniformly unfortunate was this founder of the most thriving colony of the Ohio, that warfare and peace, prosperity and adversity, seemed equally to injure his interests; and, to complete the picture, he was now at variance with his friend and adviser, Dayton.

But we cannot follow any farther his individual fortunes. No man ever seemed in a surer path to wealth, influence, and honour than Judge Symmes when he first began his western operation. He was a man of good sense and very general information; just, kind, courageous, and persevering; but he had still some faults, which, co-operating with that fatherly but inscrutable Providence which governs all our external fortunes, thwarted his projects, destroyed his most promising plans, and involved him in quarrels and lawsuits, so that at last he died poor and neglected.

But the cloud that is still upon his memory will one day rise. It is clear that, in despite of his failings, he was a true and high-minded man; and the future historian of Ohio will feel, as he examines his character, that it is one upon which he may dwell with pride.

From the conclusion of the treaty of Greenville, the rapid growth of the Miami valleys may be dated; for, after that time, but one great event occurred to embarrass the settlers of that region. This was the failure on the part of Symmes to pay for much of the land which he had sold. But even this difficulty was almost entirely removed by the pre-emption laws to which we have referred. The country lying about the junction of Mad river and the Miami, was one of the most valuable portions which were in this situation. Seventeen days after Wayne's treaty, that is, upon the 20th of August, 1795, this tract was purchased of Symmes by St. Clair, James Wilkinson, Jonathan Dayton, and Israel Ludlow, who, during the next month, sent surveyors to lay out their purchase; and, in November, Mr. Ludlow named and surveyed the town of " Dayton," now one of the most flourishing in the state.The settlement of the new town began in the follow ing April.

When it was found, however, that this purchase would not be included in Symmes's patents, the proprietors refused to accept the benefit of the preemption law, and abandoned their contract; which

was taken by Daniel C. Cooper, who realized a fortune from it.

From Cincinnati and Dayton, settlers spread in every direction. And it was not till the country was pretty well filled, that the towns began to grow; the population of Cincinnati increasing but two hundred persons from 1800 to 1805, while the whole region back received about twenty-five thousand emigrants during that time.

The great causes of the rapid advance of the Miami country were, its fertility, ease of access, healthful character, and uncommon amount of water power. The Muskingum and Scioto valleys were not so broad as those of the Miamis; and the uplands between these last-named streams being upon limestone, while those about the former are based on sandstone, are richer, as well as more level. But the superiority of the Miami country, in respect to water-power, was still more striking. Though as yet but poorly improved in proportion to its capabilities, it at this time moves a very great amount of machinery; as may be seen by the following statement, which we take from a letter written to us by an inhabitant of Dayton, the population of which, in 1833, was but three thousand four hundred:

railroad, which crossing Kentucky, Tennessee, and South Carolina, with branches to North Carolina and Georgia, is to rival the Mississippi, and make the West and the South one, as the West and Southwest are already one.

The population of the region in question, though, like that of all fertile countries, less generally hardworking than that of the more hilly tract purchased by the Ohio Company, is, to a very uncommon degree, industrious and sober. In the neighbourhood of Dayton great numbers of Germans are settled: and their steady, straight-forward, plodding habits exert a good influence over our more fickle and enterprising countrymen.

Some idea of the nature and amount of the productions of the country lying back of Cincinnati may be had from the following return of articles received at that point by the Miami canal, during the year ending December first, 1837 :

89,000 bushels of corn,

75,000 barrels of flour,

22,000" pork, besides nearly three million pounds of bulk pork, and 1900 hogsheads of ham and shoulders,

54,000 barrels of whiskey,

249,000 pounds of butter, (printed in the canal report, "kegs.")

"We have within our corporation three cotton factories; a carpet factory, four stories high, one hundred by forty feet, and now turning out one The exports of Cincinnati in 1826 amounted to thousand yards of ingrain and Venetian carpeting but one million of dollars; in 1836 they were comweekly; a gunbarrel manufactory, four stories puted by an accurate observer at more than six millhigh, which sends its work through the whole Mis-ions. This includes, besides receipts by the canal sissippi valley from Illinois to Louisiana; three and wagons, the produce in pork, lard, &c., of large establishments for the making of machinery; 162,000 hogs, driven to Cincinnati, and there killa large merchant flourmill; a fullingmill; a saw-ed; and also one hundred steam-engines, two hunmill, with a lath factory, and machine for jointing, dred and forty cotton-gins, twenty sugar-mills, and planing, and grooving boards; and an establishment a great variety of other manufactured articles of all for sawing stone. All these works are driven by kinds;-the results of more than fifty steam-factothe water of Mad river; and we hope soon to see ries at work in and about the city. three times as much more in operation. A company has been formed and chartered to bring the water of this river from a point three miles from town, and throw it into the canal (Miami), above all the works now in use. They will be able to use all the water of the river at one point, with a fall of seventeen feet. Mad river, above the town, affords millsites for many miles, at an average distance of about a mile apart."

This writer also says, that, nine miles above Dayton on the Miami, the whole of that river may be applied, with a fall of from thirteen to sixteen feet.And, in addition to these streams, are four large creeks with falls; twelve locks upon the canal; and several springs affording water enough for mills; "in one case a single spring acts upon three successive wheels of twenty-five feet each."

This same writer gives the following calculation of the exports of 1836 :

Of pork,
"flour.
"whiskey,

"iron manufactures,
"hats, books, &c.
"sundries,

$3,000,000

600,000

750,000

2,000,000

1,350,000

400,000

$8,100,000

During that year, also, there were built in Cincinnati, thirty-five steamboats, costing $850,000.

In illustration of the rapidity of the increase in the Miami valley, as compared with that of the Ohio Company's purchase, the following facts are worthy of attention. In 1834, the average value of lands in Washington county, was, by tax appraisement, one With such advantages of situation and soil, the dollar twenty-three cents per acre; in Meigs county, valleys of the Miami rivers must become thickly set-one dollar ninety-two; in Athens county, one dollar tled and highly cultivated. A canal already con- sixty-three; in Gallia county, one dollar five. These nects the interiour with Cincinnati, and in a few years, are in the tract bought by the Associates. Let us beyond a doubt, the whole region from that city to now look at Symmes's purchase. Hamilton county, Lake Erie will be traversed by a canal and a rail- ten dollars per acre; Montgomery county, four dol road; while from Cincinnati, as a centre, will radi- lars fifty-three; Butler county, six dollars four; ate, in addition to these, a most admirable M'Ad- Warren county, five dollars eleven. amized turnpike-road, (now in a great measure finished;) a canal and railroad to Indiana; three other M'Adam turnpikes, already constructed in part, two to meet the national road in Ohio, and the third to reach the centre of Kentucky; and that giant

Turning from the fortunes of the two main settlements made in Ohio before the final peace with the Indians, we come to the history of Gallipolis.And here we must confess our extreme deficiency of materials, although many of the original settlers

are still residing in their "city of the French." And to this deficiency is added confusion, which we have in vain tried to do entirely away.

those of whom the French bought, cannot apply in any degree to the Ohio Company. Nor do we know that there was a want of faith at all; the In May or June, 1788, Joel Barlow left this coun- lands were believed to be what Barlow represented try for Europe, "authorized to dispose of a very them. A contract with government was to have large body of land" in the West. In 1790, this gen- been regularly made, and funds (as we learn) were tleman distributed proposals in Paris, for the sale of collected toward the payment. But the treasurer of lands, at five shillings per acre, which promised, the company became bankrupt, and the funds were says Volney, "a climate healthy and delightful; lost, how we know not. The spot to which the scarcely such a thing as frost in winter; a river French were directed was supposed to be within called, by way of eminence, 'the Beautiful,' abound-the limits of the intended purchase; and, once there, ing in fish of an enormous size; magnificent forests the company, which had failed, could do nothing for of a tree from which sugar flows, and a shrub which them. As we hold it to be good philosophy, as well yields candles; venison in abundance; without fox- as true charity, to choose of two sufficient causes es, wolves, lions, or tigers; no taxes to pay; no that which involves the least moral guilt, we should military enrolments; no quarters to find for soldiers. ascribe that mingling of private and company conPurchasers became numerous, individuals and whole cerns, which seems to have ruined the latter, to families disposed of their property; and in the want of care, and not want of honesty. course of 1791, some embarked at Havre, others at Bordeaux, Nantes, or Rochelle," each with his titledeed in his pocket. Five hundred settlers, among whom were not a few carvers and gilders to his majesty, coachmakers, friseurs and peruke-makers, and other artisans and artistes equally well fitted for a backwoods life, arrived in the United States in 1791-92; and, acting without concert, travelling without knowledge of the language, customs, or roads, they at last managed to reach the spot designated for their residence, after expending nearly, or quite, the whole proceeds of their sales in France.

They reached the spot designated; but it was only to learn, that the persons whose title-deeds they held did not own one foot of land, and that they had parted with all their worldly goods merely to reach a wilderness, which they knew not how to cultivate, in the midst of a people of whose speech and ways they knew nothing, and at the very moment when the Indians were carrying destruction to every white man's hearth. Without food, without land, with little money, no experience, and with want and danger closing around them, they were in a position, that none but Frenchmen could be in without despair.

Who brought them to this pass? Volney says, the Scioto Company, which had bought of the Ohio Company; Mr. Hall says, in his Letters from the West (p. 137), a company who had obtained a grant from the United States; and, in his Statisticks of the West (p. 164), the Scioto company, which was formed from or by the Ohio Company, as a subordinate. Barlow, he says, was sent to Europe by the Ohio Company; and by them the lands in question were conveyed to the Scioto Company. Kilbourn says, "the Scioto Land Company, which intended to buy of Congress all the tract between the western boundary of the Ohio Company's purchase, and the Scioto, directed the French settlers to Gallipolis, supposing it to be west of the Ohio Company's purchase, though it proved not to be." The company, he tells us, failed to make their payments, and the whole proposed purchase remained with government.

The last we believe to be the true account. No other connexion existed, so far as we can learn, between the Ohio and Scioto companies than this, that some persons were stockholders in both; so that the want of good faith, charged by most writers on

But, whatever doubt there may be as to the causes of the suffering, there can be none as to the sufferers. The poor gilders, and carvers, and peruke-makers, who had followed a jack-a-lantern into a literally howling wilderness, found that their lives depended on their labour. They must clear the ground, build their houses, and till their fields. Now the spot upon which they had been located by the Scioto company was covered, in part, with those immense button wood or sycamore trees, which are so frequent along the rivers of the West, and to remove which is no small undertaking even for the American woodman. The coachmakers were wholly at a loss; but at last, hoping to conquer by a coupde-main, they tied ropes to the branches and while one dozen pulled at them with might and main, another dozen went at the trunk with axes, hatchets, and every variety of edge-tool, and by dint of perseverance and cheerfulness at length overcame the monster; though not without some hair-breadth escapes; for, when a mighty tree, that had been hacked on all sides, fell, it required a Frenchman's heels to avoid the sweep of the wide-spread branches.But when they had felled the vast vegetable, they were little better off than before; for they could not move or burn it. And at last a good idea came to their aid; and while some chopped off the limbs, others dug, by the side of the trunk, a great grave, into which, with many a heave, they rolled their fallen enemy.

Their houses they did not build in the usual straggling American style, but made two rows or blocks of log cabins, each cabin being about sixteen feet square; while at one end was a larger room, which was used as council-chamber and ball-room.

In the way of cultivation they did little. The land was not theirs, and they had no motive to improve it; and, moreover, their coming was in the midst of the Indian war. Here and there a little vegetable garden was formed; but their main supply of food they were forced to buy from boats on the river, by which means their remaining funds were sadly broken in upon. Five of their number were taken by the Indians; food became scarce; in the fall, a marsh behind the town sent up miasmata that produced fevers; then winter came, and despite Mr. Barlow's promise, brought frost in plenty; and, by-and-by, they heard from beyond seas of the carnage that was desolating the firesides they had left. Never were men in a more mournful situation; but