Ohio Company Research Articles

Historical Real Estate: Market Morality and the Politics of Preservation in the Early United States

Historical Real Estate: Market Morality and the Politics of Preservation in the Early United States

Review: Historic Real Estate: Market Morality and the Politics of Preservation in the Early United States

Review: <i>Historic Real Estate: Market Morality and the Politics of Preservation in the Early United States</i>

The Federalist Frontier: Settler Politics in the Old Northwest, 1783–1840

The Federalist Frontier: Settler Politics in the Old Northwest, 1783–1840

Historic Real Estate: Market Morality and the Politics of Preservation in the Early United States by Whitney Martinko

Reviewed by: Historic Real Estate: Market Morality and the Politics of Preservation in the Early United States by Whitney Martinko Richard Longstreth Historic Real Estate: Market Morality and the Politics of Preservation in the Early United States. By Whitney Martinko. Early American Studies. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. Pp. x, 291. $39.95, ISBN 978-0-8122-5209-5.) Over the last quarter century, historic preservation has emerged as a major phenomenon in the reshaping of communities in the United States, but only much more recently has it begun to emerge as a significant factor in American intellectual thought—that is, how attitudes toward the physical past relate to a sense of identity and culture. The pioneering, and still very useful, volumes on the history of preservation in the United States written by Charles B. Hosmer Jr. are more a documentary narrative than an analytical exploration. Beginning with the remarkable studies of David Lowenthal, subsequent scholarship has begun to depart from examining preservation in a vacuum and to address its broader implications. As a result, we can begin to see how preservation entails much more than the documentary, legal, organizational, and technical frameworks established for protecting, repairing, or restoring historic buildings, structures, and landscapes. Preservation is a multifaceted, and sometimes contradictory, outlook toward how we retain things from the past that we consider significant through tangible or intangible means. Whitney Martinko's Historic Real Estate: Market Morality and the Politics of Preservation in the Early United States is an important addition to this growing corpus of scholarly investigations. Hosmer's first book drove home the [End Page 330] fact that preservation efforts in the United States, far from being a new phenomenon, began well before the Civil War and generated a rich array of endeavors by the early twentieth century. Martinko reveals that veneration of colonial architecture was widespread by the 1820s, and active measures to protect portions of ancient Native earthworks in the Ohio River Valley were taken well before the early republic. Preservation, as she presents it, did not simply entail rescuing threatened vestiges of the past, as in the well-known case of George Washington's headquarters at Newburgh, New York, where efforts began in 1838 and were successfully consummated in 1850. Preservation could also mean keeping a country estate intact and in the family. While rebuilding the main house in a more modern vein, preservation could also entail saving fragments and undertaking visual documentation, including images in publications. While we would like to think that we are far more accomplished at saving historic properties today than two centuries ago, Martinko's investigation shows how contemporary some of the attitudes in the early republic seem today. The Native earthworks were partially saved to enhance the appeal to attract settlers to the Ohio Company's real estate venture in what became Marietta, Ohio. Some merchants in the Northeast sought to capitalize on their "ancient" buildings as preferable to the new commercial buildings of the 1830s and 1840s (p. 22). Many persons sympathetic to the past assumed a moral high ground, insisting that the most financially lucrative development was not necessarily the optimal one. Others sought to adapt old buildings as a means of remaining economically competitive. Martinko presents the many aspects of considering the historic built environment between the late eighteenth and the mid-nineteenth centuries in such a clear, thoughtful, and often engaging way that it can be easy for readers to lose sight of what a formidable endeavor this study represents. Some of the work discussed is well known to specialists in the history of preservation, but much of it lies in previously unexplored territory, and even finding the material was no mean feat. The result is not only a very rich investigation but also a revelatory framework for understanding how Americans have considered their physical heritage. Richard Longstreth George Washington University Copyright © 2021 The Southern Historical Association

"From Such Beginnings, Much May Be Expected"

"From Such Beginnings, Much May Be Expected" Brandon C. Downing (bio) In The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West, David McCullough provides his version of how the West was won. He starts with a group of Revolutionary War veterans from New England led by Rufus Putnam, Manasseh Cutler, and Benjamin Tupper who founded the Ohio Company of Associates to secure land purchases in the Northwest Territory. Like all pioneer stories, their story was not an easy one. This was late eighteenth-century America where the advancing line of Euro-American settlement barely crossed the Appalachian Mountains. Compared to the thriving and well-developed eastern seaboard, the backcountry had "no roads. … no bridges, no towns, churches, schools, stores, or way-side taverns. … not one permanent legal settlement" (7). If the travelers survived the journey to the Ohio Country, then an uncountable number of trees of enormous size had to be cleared, houses had to be built, sustenance had to be obtained, and fields had to be sown and crops harvested. On top of the hard labor, settlers had to be vigilant against possible Indian attack; bears, wolves, and panthers lurking in the woods; and the harshness of the climate. Their success in overcoming these numerous obstacles enabled them to establish the first permanent settlement of the Northwest Territory—Marietta, Ohio—in 1788. McCullough is a good storyteller, and he succeeds in presenting the different personalities of the various settlers and the trials they had to endure to travel, build, and live in "their infant city." He illustrates the hardships endured by so many suffering from "Ohio fever" in their efforts to get from Massachusetts to the frontier. One couple, Ephraim and Leah Cutler, lost two children to illness: their one-year-old son, Hezekiah, and just a few days later their seven-year-old daughter, Mary. Even if one did survive the [End Page 173] journey, the realities of frontier life did not provide much certainty. Many residents suffered tremendously during the winter of the "Starving Year" (1789): measles took the lives of several children and smallpox took even more lives later that season. Not all was bad. McCullough also weaves in individual highlights such as the first wedding of the Northwest Territory between Rowena Tupper and Winthrop Sargent; the great escape of John Mathews from an Indian attack (sans trousers); and the building of Harman and Margaret Blennerhassett's opulent mansion by the notable and selftrained architect, Joseph Barker. Even during bleak times, when the settlers were confined to Campus Martius during the Northwest Indian War, they "enliven[ed] the off-hours within the stockade [with] a variety of games and sporting events—foot races, boxing matches" (117). These personal accounts provide a good description of what frontier life was like in the Ohio valley, and McCullough's ability to portray a vivid scene of so many individuals and families in one narrative is a testament to good, regional history. Despite the title, McCullough's book is not about the American West as one might imagine it. Instead, he primarily focuses on the individuals who founded, developed, and progressed the city of Marietta. This, however, is a good place to start because Marietta represented what the federal government envisioned the West to be—organized. Much of this organization was laid out in the Land Ordinance of 1785. In order to avoid lawsuits over property boundaries, collect taxes to pay for the Revolutionary War, and to satisfy land bounties to veterans, the land purchased by the Ohio Company of Associates would be divided into square townships six miles in length with thirty-six square miles in total. These organized township grids were similar to those found in New England. If the Land Ordinance was the form, then the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was the function as it established a territorial government and a method for admitting territories into states. The more recognizable provisions of this ordinance included the outlawing of slavery, reserving land for schools, ensuring trial by jury, and guaranteeing religious freedom. It was these articles that McCullough claims to be the "American ideals" the first pioneers of Ohio brought with them to...

Breaking the Appalachian Barrier: Maryland as the Gateway to Ohio and the West, 1750-1850 by John Hrastar

Reviewed by: Breaking the Appalachian Barrier: Maryland as the Gateway to Ohio and the West, 1750-1850 by John Hrastar Billy Joe Peyton Breaking the Appalachian Barrier: Maryland as the Gateway to Ohio and the West, 1750-1850. By John Hrastar. (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Company, Inc., 2018. Pp. viii, 255. Paper, $49.95, ISBN 978-1-47667044-7.) Before 1750, the Appalachian Mountains formed a natural barrier between British possessions along the eastern seaboard and French territorial claims west of the mountains. The Ohio Company of Virginia received a charter from the British government to settle the Ohio Country in 1749. France claimed the area that same year, with the competing claims culminating in the French and Indian War a few years later. By 1752, the Ohio Company had cleared a [End Page 149] primitive road from Wills Creek, a tributary of the eastward-flowing Potomac River, at Cumberland, Maryland, to the Monongahela River near present-day Brownsville, Pennsylvania. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other early leaders recognized the Potomac-Monongahela corridor as a choice location to break the Appalachian barrier. Maryland subsequently emerged as an important gateway to the West, a development that helped shape the demographic and political composition of residents living in Ohio and beyond. Breaking the Appalachian Barrier: Maryland as the Gateway to Ohio and the West, 1750-1850 touches on a range of important historical issues, including colonial wars for empire, federal and state involvement in internal improvements, and the evolution of transportation technology. It also covers related themes, such as Native Americans' reactions to colonial westward migration (and their loss of territory), the disposition of western land claims by eastern states after U.S. independence, and the Land Ordinances of 1784, 1785, and 1787. The book's final chapters detail three principal nineteenth-century transportation routes that spanned the Appalachian Mountains in Maryland: the Cumberland Road, the nation's first interstate highway; the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, which was nearly obsolete from the day it opened; and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the country's first long-distance carrier. In the preface, author John Hrastar admits that the facts about the opening of the Ohio Country have been well covered. He states, "The objective of this book is to focus on the people and events that contributed to breaking the Appalachian barrier as a single story in its own right" (p. 2). Without question, Hrastar exhibits a masterful ability to combine a series of seemingly separate and distinct projects into a unified, well-documented, and interesting story that details an essential building block of U.S. history. Therein lies the primary contribution of Breaking the Appalachian Barrier. The author has produced an encyclopedic account of the myriad transportation projects that crossed the formidable Appalachians to link Maryland with Ohio between 1750 and 1850. He provides an exhaustive backstory for each one, while clearly explaining the contextual and historical forces at work. Detailed and accurate maps are a standard component of any good transportation history, and Hrastar exceeds the standard with the inclusion of seventeen maps that detail early roads, Native American land cessions, Ohio land subdivisions, and more. In summary, Breaking the Appalachian Barrier is a must-read for anyone with a general interest in U.S. transportation history. Moreover, it details the specific forces that shaped westward migration and transformed Maryland into an important gateway for settlers moving to and through Ohio for a hundred years. Billy Joe Peyton West Virginia State University Copyright © 2019 The Southern Historical Association

“Bettering Our Circumstances”: Settler Colonialism in Ohio During the 1780s

“Bettering Our Circumstances”Settler Colonialism in Ohio During the 1780s Daniel R. Griesmer (bio) Through the Treaty of Paris after the conclusion of the American Revolution in 1783, Great Britain ceded vast tracts of land to the United States that extended from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River. As a result of this munificence, the United States Confederation Congress, under the auspices of the Articles of Confederation, wanted to populate these regions, which included the Ohio Country, as quickly as possible with American settlers. Although the Confederation Congress worked diligently to open Ohio for legitimate settlement during the 1780s, the national government could neither control nor secure American expansion into the Ohio region during this decade. The Confederation Congress faced two daunting problems as it attempted to gain firm control of the Ohio territory in the years after the conclusion of the American Revolution. First, many of the Native groups living in Ohio were upset that the British relinquished lands they believed was rightfully theirs to inhabit. To make matters worse, the United States government insisted that since the Natives sided with the British during the American Revolution, they had been on the losing side of the war and now had no right to try and claim any of the lands ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Paris. Not surprisingly, the Indians believed that they had won the majority of the battles they engaged in with the American army. Because of this these groups did not see themselves as a defeated entity. Over the course of the next decade, the Americans “constructed a national mythology that simplified what had been a complex contest in Indian country, blamed Indians for the bloodletting, and [End Page 22] justified subsequent assaults in Indian lands and cultures.”1 To address this issue, the American government engaged in a series of treaties with the Indian nations in order to gain firm title to their lands in Ohio. However, most of these agreements were dictated to smaller bands of Indian nations that had no right to agree on any contract without the consent of the larger Indian confederacy. Because of the dubious nature of these settlements many of these Indian groups, including the Miami and Shawnee nations, reacted violently toward American settlers who attempted to invade their space. Second, Congress had very little control over the squatters, or illegal settlers, who came to Ohio during this decade before and after the negotiations of the treaties with the Indian nations in Ohio. These individuals were unwilling to give up their land claims to the federal government. Despite repeated attempts by the national military to remove these squatters, the trespassers remained in Ohio. Eventually, these squatters aligned with legitimate speculators from the Ohio Company of Associates to try and remove the Natives from Ohio. As the Indians counterattacked to protect their lands, the settlers and the investors from the Ohio Company pleaded with their federal government to protect them from repeated Indian attacks. Eventually, the new stronger federal government, under the leadership of President George Washington and Secretary of State Henry Knox, agreed to send federal troops to Ohio in order to engage the Natives in battle and remove them as a threat to American settlement in that region. Despite the fundamental problems faced by the United States government during the 1780s, the American greed for Native lands in Ohio after the conclusion of the American Revolution reflected settler colonialism, a term that refers to a history in which settlers drove Native inhabitants from the land to construct their own ethnic and religious communities. At the heart of settler colonialism is the ability for the colonizing power to gain vast tracts of land at the expense of the indigenous populations. In addition, racial hierarchy—the depiction of Native peoples as savage and inferior—inhered in settler colonialism. Settler societies include Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and the United States, among others.2 In Australia, they believed in the idea of terra nullius, which means “land [End Page 23] belonging to no one.” As a result of this, the Natives living within their domains were British subjects rather than sovereign individuals, which meant that...

A Colony Sprung from Hell: Pittsburgh and the Struggle for Authority on the Western Pennsylvania Frontier, 1744–1794 by Daniel P. Barr (review)

Reviewed by: A Colony Sprung from Hell: Pittsburgh and the Struggle for Authority on the Western Pennsylvania Frontier, 1744–1794 by Daniel P. Barr Kevin T. Barksdale A Colony Sprung from Hell: Pittsburgh and the Struggle for Authority on the Western Pennsylvania Frontier, 1744–1794. By Daniel P. Barr. (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2014. Pp. 334.) In A Colony Sprung From Hell: Pittsburgh and the Struggle for Authority on the Western Pennsylvania Frontier, 1744–1794, Daniel P. Barr chronicles the efforts of the colonies/states of Virginia and Pennsylvania, Great Britain, and the American Congress to secure, stabilize, and govern the western Pennsylvania backcountry. From the early settlement of the region to the Whiskey Rebellion, Barr reveals the inability of these groups to control the unceasing Indian warfare, contentious land speculation efforts, colonial border disputes, and localist political sentiment that plagued the region in the eighteenth century. Barr divides his study of these efforts to project authority in the region into three phases. In Part I: Competition, Barr focuses on the efforts of Pennsylvania and Virginia land speculators and “expansionist-minded politicians” to assert claims over the region (6–8). From the earliest efforts to settle and speculate in the region through the French and Indian War, the colonies of Pennsylvania and Virginia aggressively vied for control of the region. The absence of clear colonial boundaries, the efforts of politically connected land companies (e.g., the Ohio Company), and the threat posed by the French and their Indian allies left the region ungoverned and vulnerable. The inability of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the British imperial administration to defend the region’s communities led to growing anger among western residents and their refusal to support the British war effort. Part II: Regulation examines the British postwar efforts to control the region and to prevent costly Indian warfare. The continued “intercolonial rivalry” for the region between Virginia and Pennsylvania, Ohio Indian threat, and ineffectiveness of British frontier policies undermined imperial postwar efforts to bring stability and peace to the region, restart Native American trade, and quieten festering regional localism (17). The growth of the region’s population, chaos surrounding Pontiac’s Rebellion and Lord Dunmore’s War, lack of civilian civic and political institutions, increased lawlessness, regional political factionalism, and growth of Indian hatred continued to make governance of [End Page 91] the region virtually impossible. Barr argues that the failure of British frontier authority and unpopular western policies (e.g., Proclamation of 1763) resulted in a postwar “power vacuum,” hostility to outside political interference, repeated violations of western policies (e.g., squatting, illegal land sales), and the escalation of the competition for the region by Virginia and Pennsylvania (133). In Part III: Revolution, Barr explores the efforts of the American government to control the region during the revolutionary period. Barr argues that the American Revolution in western Pennsylvania was simply part of the “long struggle for power and authority in the region” (169). The chaos surrounding the revolution and the continued confusion regarding state borders perpetuated the contest for the region between Virginia and Pennsylvania. The inability of the American and eastern state governments to address the wartime regional threats posed by loyalists and British-allied Indians continued to foster antigovernment sentiment in the region. As the violence and chaos continued to escalate during the war, the region’s growing localism and anger at distant governments resulted in military insubordination, resistance to supporting the American war effort, and rampant extralegal land speculation and squatting. The region’s leaders framed the American Revolution in local terms and acted according to regional interests. As the war approached completion, the new American government continued to struggle to govern the region, control Indian violence, halt squatting, and provide food and resources to the remote region. The failure of the American Congress to establish control over the region led regional leaders to launch “local initiatives” aimed at colonial defense and asserting local autonomy. Additionally, the absence of political authority in the region continued to fuel Pennsylvania and Virginia’s contest for the region, and the intercolonial contest for the forks of the Ohio ended only after a postwar agreement between Virginia and Pennsylvania at Baltimore...

Understanding the Eastern Prairie in the United States

Very little scientific or historical attention has been given to main body of temperate grasslands east of Mississippi River in United States, which are a relic of a much larger grassland (Gill and others 2009). Unlike other vegetation formations, climate is unable to predict distribution or serve as a proxy for prairie (Bond 2008). Prairie occupies a broad rainfall range, from ~20omm to ~3000mm mean annual precipitation, and occurs a wide range of soils. The definition of prairie applied is inclusive and that of Lundmark (2005) and United Nations Environmental Programme, World Conservation Monitoring Centre (Coad and others 2009): temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands. In this paper, information from historic sources is assembled to map eastern prairie at first European contact. It concludes with a brief discussion of how understanding distribution of eastern prairie may contribute to purposes of Convention Biological Diversity. BROAD BEAUTIFUL MEADOWS The Seneca are one of five Iroquois Nations in present-day New York (Anglica Senecas) (Figure 1). In 1669, near present day Geneva, New York, Fathers Francois Dollier de Casson and Rene de Brehant de Galinee wrote: The country between lake and large village, farthest to east, to which I was going, is for most part beautiful, broad meadows, which grass is as tall as myself. In spots there are woods, these are oak plains, so open that one could easily run through them horseback. This open country, we are told, continues eastward more than a hundred leagues. Westward and southward it extends so far that its limits are unknown, especially toward south, treeless meadows are found more than one hundred leagues in length. (Kellogg 1917a, 180) In 1780, Benjamin Gilbert and his family, captives of Seneca, gave a similar account of landscape: level and beautiful meadows (Gilbert 1784). As late as 1798, Genesee County in west-central New York was open and free of timber (Williamson 1798). [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] In 1751, instructions given to Christopher Gist, surveyor of Ohio Company, were to record where there is Plenty and Timber was scarce while prairie usually ranked as a lesser priority: you are not to omit proper Observations mountainous, barren, or broken (Darlington 1893, 67). To French politician and naturalist Constantin-Frangois C. Volney, traveling in North America 1795-1797, between Laurel (Mountains) Hill and Ohio River (Figure 1) was Desert (Volney 1804, 358) or unimportant. J. P. Brissot de Warville, in his 1788 survey of America, while a few kilometers east of Cayahoga River, observed large meadows with large oaks and walnuts, and Here also is great plenty of buffalo, deer, turkies, partridges, &c. (Warville 1797, 309). Gist in his journal wrote of land near Muskingum River as rich and broken and, All way from Licking Creek to this Place is fine rich level Land, with large Meadows, fine Clover Bottoms & spacious plains covered with wild Rye: wood chiefly large Walnuts and Hickories (Darlington 1893, 42). Gist continued, the wild rye was a course, natural grass, much used for fodder by early settlers (Darlington 1893, 117). The first and only Geographer of United States appointed by Congress was Thomas Hutchins. In 1776, a survey by Hutchins along upper Ohio River (Figure 2) found on North-west and South-east sides of Ohio, below Great Kamhawa [Kanhaway or Kanawha River], at a little distance from it, are extensive natural meadows, or Savannahs. These Meadows are from 20 to 50 miles in circuit. They have many beautiful groves of trees interspersed, as if by art, and serve as shelter for innumerable herds of buffaloe, Deer, &c.. (Hutchins 1787, 7). North of Ohio River, either side of Sikader (Scioto) River, was open grassland. …

Benjamin Harrison Smith, Land Titles, and the West Virginia Constitution

Perhaps no single person in West Virginia’s history has been as influen tial in the creation of a legal framework to provide clear titles for land transfers as Benjamin Harrison Smith. This history of quieting land titles shows the primary role played by Smith, and provides a new interpretation of the impact of the 1862 and 1872 West Virginia Constitutional Conventions as they relate to waste and unappropriated land, delinquent land, and forfeited land. 1 The quieting of land titles refers to the process of settling ownership conflicts. It provides for clear and marketable title to land. Clear title to lands in western Virginia had been an ongoing problem since the eighteenthcentury land grants to large land companies such as the Ohio Company, the Greenbrier Company, and the Loyal Company. 2 This history of quieting land titles in West Virginia adds a new dimen sion to the established historical narrative of absentee landowner exploitation and the victimization of smaller local landowners. Who held title to the land was just as important to local businesses and farmers as it was to industrialists. The point for the current discussion is not the ills of absentee landowner exploitation, but rather to explain how the legal infrastructure was put in place that allowed land to be owned and developed without fear of a clouded title by some land patentee in Virginia, Maryland, or New York. However, the quieting of claims on land titles did become one of the foundations for local and regional economic development as West Virginia moved into the period of dramatic growth between the 1880s and the 1920s. The state’s economic development, especially its natural resources, has been largely predicated on the basis of property law as defined, interpreted, liti gated, and implemented by Smith, his contemporaries, and the major West Virginia law firms which followed. 3 Benjamin Harrison Smith was a central player in clarifying and reaffirming landowners’ rights in a time of westward expansion and poorly defined landownership laws. He was one of the first to formally address the

“So Majestic a Monument of Antiquity”: Landscape, Knowledge, and Authority in the Early National West

“So Majestic a Monument of Antiquity”Landscape, Knowledge, and Authority in the Early National West Whitney A. Martinko (bio) In the spring of 1791, the Ohio Company of Associates was consumed with questions about the ornamentation of town squares. In the young town of Marietta, the first legal settlement in the Northwest Territory, the Associates formulated a detailed outline of how each public space should be planted and maintained. In one instance, they legislated that the square named Quadranaou be planted with a specific pattern of sugar maple, white maple, and mulberry trees and directed that “the Elevated square with the Ascents leading to the same be immediately put into Grass, and hereafter no other ways occupied—[ and] the whole to be left in good Post and Rail fence.” Likewise, they delegated the care of a raised road called the Sacra Via to their most respected leader; he was expected to “attend particularly to its preservation in its present form and seed it to Grass.”1 While the Associates directed the care of these spaces, they had not constructed the central features of these squares (Figure 1). The geometric earth forms at their centers were part of a mysterious complex of earthworks at the junction of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers, which Company leaders had scouted in the 1780s. The Company chose this site for its new town, and rather than ignoring or destroying the features, the men venerated and publicized them. Two centuries later, archaeologists would identify these features and objects excavated from within them as the products of the native Adena and Hopewell peoples, who lived in the Ohio River Valley between 1000 BC and 500 AD (Figure 2).2 But in the early republic, the features provided enigmatic evidence of former inhabitants of the American continent. After all, the Native Americans who lived in the Ohio country professed no specific knowledge of the structures. By labeling the earthworks and the objects uncovered from them “American antiquities,” western migrants convinced citizens throughout the United States that these landmarks would inform the history of their new nation. As the traffic of settlers and travelers increased in the Ohio Valley after 1800, the importance of antiquities to national culture shifted. After Ohio became a state in 1803, its residents sought recognition as authorities on the landscape by contrasting their own observations with those of outsiders, calling them generic, exaggerated, or both. In publishing their own findings and theories, residents began to link the collection and discussion of antiquities primarily to Ohio and only secondarily to the nation as a whole. In the 1810s, this search for local authority prompted some Ohioans to establish institutions, correspondence networks, and publications throughout the state to produce information about the West, in the West. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. A rare threedimensional depiction of the Marietta earthworks before settlement, likely sketched by Rufus Putnam. Printed in Harris, Journal of a Tour, n.p., Special Collections, University of Virginia Library. This study of the ways that Ohioans created knowledge about western lands, and in turn, about themselves, engages two bodies of historical literature: works about western landscape and identity and studies about the development of American intellectual networks and cultural institutions. Historians have long recognized that “from the beginning Americans had sought [End Page 29] their identity in their relationship to the land they had settled.”3 In order to appraise how westerners built state and regional identities, some historians have discussed the importance of the Land Ordinance of 1785 in imposing a grid on the landscape. Others have argued that the economic relationships that developed along the Ohio River and subsequent transportation networks unified Ohioans.4 Yet in explaining identity vis-à-vis landscape, these studies invoke a process by which settlers internalized a landscape feature as a symbol or common experience without detailing how this process transpired and created a shared identity.5 In another body of literature, historians have detailed the formation of transatlantic intellectual networks during colonial expansion and the effect that American independence had on this system. Yet none has examined how similar processes occurred during western expansion in the United States. Scholars who have studied American...

The Boundaries between Us: Natives and Newcomers along the Frontiers of the Old Northwest, 1750–1850 (review)

Reviewed by: The Boundaries between Us: Natives and Newcomers along the Frontiers of the Old Northwest, 1750–1850 Eric Hinderaker The Boundaries between Us: Natives and Newcomers along the Frontiers of the Old Northwest, 1750–1850. Edited by Daniel P. Barr. (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2006. xx, 261 pp. Cloth $52.00, ISBN 0-87338-844-5.) The Old Northwest was first subjected to extensive historical analysis early in the twentieth century when a generation of post-Turnerian scholarship focused on its traditions of democracy and institution building. In the past fifteen years interest in the region has been revived, now with a focus on cross-cultural relations and the complexities of lived experience in a frontier setting. The eleven essays in the volume under review fall squarely into this recent tradition. They vary widely in quality, originality, and persuasiveness, but the best of them are engaging and imaginative and suggest promising avenues for additional research. All the essays deal with relations between Indians and Euroamericans. One striking feature of the volume is its expansive time frame. Ranging from the era of the Seven Years' War to that of internal improvements and Indian removal, it brings together topics that are rarely considered within a single pair of covers. The first four essays deal with the Seven Years' War and its aftermath. Recent scholarship sees the Ohio Indians as an inchoate group from multiple backgrounds that was beginning to act together for some purposes; often it does not do enough to disaggregate the motives of those constituent groups. Ian K. Steele and Daniel P. Barr give close attention to the motives of Shawnees and Delawares, respectively, in entering the Seven Years' War and in so doing offer important clarifications to the war's origins. David Dixon's essay pushes too far in the other direction by arguing that the uprisings known as Pontiac's Rebellion, which came at war's end, offer proof of a new ethnicity shared by the Ohio and Detroit Indians. While certain concerns united these groups, they remained permanently divided in important ways as well. Matthew C. Ward persuasively counters Gregory Dowd's claim that British officers were the principal cause of Indian grievances after the Seven Years' War by highlighting officers' role as mediators and protectors of Indian interests—though he does so, curiously, without noting his disagreement with Dowd. Lisa Brooks presents a nuanced, persuasive account of the disagreement between the Mohawk Joseph Brant and Mahican Hendrick Aupaumut in their efforts to lead the Ohio and Detroit Indians to a workable settlement with the United States following the Revolution. Rooting each man's vision in a geographic analogy that drew on his own [End Page 151] people's traditions and historical experiences, Brooks powerfully illustrates the complexities of their attempts to mediate peace on the post-Revolutionary frontier. Frazer Dorian McGlinchey highlights the disparity between the ideal vision of Marietta, Ohio, articulated by the leaders of the Ohio Company and the messy actuality of their efforts. Donald H. Gaff emphasizes the fluid boundaries of identity and experience in the lives of Little Turtle, Jean Baptiste Richardville, and William Wells. Bruce P. Smith offers a highly suggestive analysis of the ways criminal law was used to adjudicate cases of cross-cultural homicide on the Illinois frontier. Far from being the equitable, well-ordered system that some scholars have argued for, Smith's analysis of two such cases suggests that frontier dwellers, both Indian and Euroamerican, resorted all too easily to extralegal violence to resolve their disputes. Phyllis Gernhardt, Ginette Aley, and Thomas J. Lappas consider the era of removal. Gernhardt's essay examines the experiences of Potawatomi and Miami Indians in the vicinity of Fort Wayne, where the United States trading factory accumulated debts that the federal government could leverage to secure parcels of land. In the 1830s and 1840s, after the factory system was abandoned, private traders were briefly able to do essentially the same thing, serving as middlemen who accumulated Indian debt and then negotiated land transfers with the government. Aley uses the example of the Wabash and Erie Canal to highlight the importance of internal improvements in converting the landscape of...

Using witness trees to assess forest change in southeastern Ohio

In 1787, the U.S. Congress authorized the sale of the "Ohio Company Purchase", ca. 5000 km2 in Appalachian Ohio. The land was surveyed using a township and range system shortly thereafter. Data on &gt;5600 witness trees were transcribed from the survey records, and witness tree locations were plotted on a digital map. This information was used to evaluate presettlement forest composition and structure and to investigate vegetation-site relationships before widespread alteration of the forests had taken place. Presettlement conditions were compared with present conditions using forest inventory and analysis (FIA) data. Two hundred years ago, the forests of southeastern Ohio were dominated by large individuals of Quercus alba L., Carya Nutt. spp., Quercus velutina Lam., and Fagus grandifolia Ehrh. These four taxa accounted for 74% of all witness trees. Although almost 70% of the region is forested today, the second-growth forest has witnessed a decrease in Quercus and Carya and an increase in Acer saccharum Marsh., Acer rubrum L., and many early successional species in smaller size classes. Despite the significant shift in forest composition and structure, species in general seem to be occupying similar positions in the present-day landscape compared with the presettlement forest; topographic variables most strongly control species occurrence in this landscape.

The Ohio Company and the Meaning of Opportunity in the American West, 1786-1795

tory threatened Marietta, the company's settlement at the confluence of the Muskingum and Ohio Rivers, while a financial panic in New York depleted the company's treasury. Those problems, however, paled in comparison to the internal divisions wracking the company. Eastern and western stockholders were fighting over the disposition of company funds, and both sides were levying accusations of malfeasance at the company's officers. Daniel Story, one of the stockholders living in Marietta, reported to company secretary Winthrop Sargent that it appears that the Proprietors in the Atlantic States are very uneasy, particularly, those in Massachusetts, Connecticut, & Rhode Island; in each of which States they have chosen Agents to examine into the proceedings of the Directors and Agents on this side [of] the mountains, to settle with Congress & obtain a deed for the purchase, divide the funds, & in fact dissolve the Company as soon as may be.' Story's words revealed just how much the interests of the Ohio Company's stockholders had diverged since its founding a few years earlier. Once joined in the common pursuit of purchasing and developing

Tactical and Practical problems in the French and Indian War

The year 1754 saw the outbreak of a struggle in North America which is known to modern Americans as the French and Indian War; to its contemporaries in America it was merely the French War. As official sanction by the great powers was not granted until 1756 and because the war dragged on until 1763, Europeans call the conflict the Seven Years War. The American phase of the war erupted as a result of long standing AngloFrench-Indian rivalries and tensions. These came to a head in the French occupation of the Ohio Valley to prevent claims by American land speculators such as the Ohio Company. Virginian militia were sent to the disputed area under one George Washington, but were quickly humbled. The French, of course, blamed England for the hostilities:

The Western Journals of John May: Ohio Company Agent and Business Adventurer

The Western Journals of John May: Ohio Company Agent and Business Adventurer

A Century of the Land-Grant Colleges

T HE Morrill Act of I862 was responsible for launching most of the colleges and universities commonly called land-grant colleges or state colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts. It is often forgotten that long before the Morrill Act was adopted, the federal government had made land grants to the new states to aid the common schools and to endow state universities. In part, the failure of the state university to satisfy the unformed aspirations of many farmers, politicians, and reformers gave force and direction to the movement that culminated in the Morrill Act. In 1785, in its first land legislation, the Continental Congress sought to encourage establishment of public education by reserving one section of land in each surveyed township of the public domain for the use of the common schools. Two years later, in I787, the same Congress granted land to the Ohio Company for the endowment of a literary institution. This and additional land was subsequently turned over to the state of Ohio for higher education. Other states carved from the Old Northwest asked for and obtained similar grants, and Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa were prompt in creating and opening institutions they called state universities. Subsequently, the states organized west of the Mississippi obtained such grants, and even some territories sought to establish universities in this way. In mid-twentieth century no one gave a thought to the fact that both Alaska and Hawaii had established universities long before they became states. Congress provided for common schools and state universities in the new states of the West before those areas had very much population, and the writers of the state constitutions and the members of the legislatures in the several new states made legal provision for common schools and universities as a conscious act of policy. The constitutions and the laws usually outlined the functions of the public institutions of higher learning and provided for a governing board with power to bring the institutions into existence. The boards thus created were generally responsible for obtaining land, planning and erecting buildings, establishing a course of study, hiring a president and a faculty, and attracting students-sometimes in the order given. Before the middle of the century, Horace Mann and others had popularized the notion of an American state system of education that

The Ohio Company: Its Inner History

The Ohio Company: Its Inner History

The Ohio Company: Its Inner History

The Ohio Company: Its Inner History

The Ohio Company: its Inner History. By Alfred P. James. Pittsburgh, The University of Pittsburgh Press, 1959. Pp. 375. $6.00.

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