Stories of Ohio by William Dean Howells

General Rufus Putnam, a brave officer of the Revolutionary war, was the first to call the attention of the Eastern States to the rich territory opened to settlement west of the Ohio by the peace with Great Britain, and he was one of the earliest band of pioneers which landed on the shores of the Muskingum. In 1787 Rev. Manasseh Cutler of Ipswich, Massachusetts, published a description of the Ohio country, which left little to the liveliest imagination. If anything was naturally lacking for the wants of man in a land abounding in wild fruits, "herds of deer, elk, buffalo, and bear," and flocks of "turkeys, geese, ducks, swans, teal, pheasants, partridges, etc.,. in greater plenty than the tame poultry are in any part of the old settlements of America," and in rivers "stored with fish, especially catfish, the largest, and of a delicious flavor," which "weighs from thirty to eighty pounds," it could be easily supplied by art. "The advantages of every climate," Dr. Cutler told his readers, "are here blended together," and the rich soil, everywhere underlain with valuable minerals, and covered with timber waiting to be built into ships and floated down the rivers to the sea, would produce not only "wheat, rye, Indian corn, buckwheat, oats, barley, flax, hemp, tobacco," but even "indigo, silk, wine, and cotton."

It is no wonder that the Ohio Company found the New Englanders eager to come out and possess this goodly heritage, and that the first band should have started from Dr. Cutler's own village. At dawn, on the 30th of December, 1787, they paraded before his church and parsonage, twenty-two men with their families. After listening to a short speech from him, they fired a salute, and set off, as the lettering on their leading wagon made known, "For the Ohio Country. " It was eight weeks before they reached the headwaters of the Beautiful River, and began to build boats to float down its current to the mouth of the Muskingum. In the meantime, on the 1st of January, 1788, another company left Hartford, Connecticut, and in four weeks joined the first. They could not embark on their voyage together until April 2d, but in five days they arrived at Fort Harmar, beside the Muskingum, and were at their journey's end. They did not find the shores waving with indigo, silk, and cotton, but they saw that the soil could produce almost any crop, and the weather was so mild and lovely that they must have been confirmed in their belief of all that Dr. Cutler had told them of the climate.