Page images
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]

CHIEFLY FROM ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS; CONTAINING THE PAPERS OF
COL. GEORGE morgan; THOSE OF JUDGE BARKER; THE DIARIES
OF JOSEPH BUELL AND JOHN MATHEWS; THE RECORDS

OF THE OHIO COMPANY, &c., &c., &c. 1

[blocks in formation]
[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed]

PUBLISHERS' ADVERTISEMENT.

This work is published under the superintendence of the Historical Society of Cincinnati, and forms the first volume of its transactions. It contains a full account of all that took place in Washington county, where the first settlement in the present state of Ohio took place, from 1788 to 1803; or during the existence of the Territorial Government. It also presents an outline of the leading events in the Ohio Valley, before 1788. The materials of this book are almost wholly original, comprising the papers of Colonel George Morgan; those of Judge Barker; the diaries of Joseph Buell and John Mathews; the records of the Ohio Company, &c., &c.

The high character of the author for integrity, his long residence in the country, his attainments, and laborious habits, afford such assurance of the accuracy of the work, as to justify the Society in commending it to the public.

The Society has in its possession the manuscript of a work, containing ample biographies of the first settlers of Marietta and its vicinity, prepared by the author of the present volume. Should the sale of this be as large as its merit leads the Society to hope it will be, the volume of Biography will follow it in a short time, as the second volume of the transactions.

INTRODUCTION.

There having been no historical account published of the first settlement of the Ohio Company at Marietta, but the brief one by the Rev. Thaddeus M. Harris, and the materials on which it was to be founded becoming annually more and more scarce, from the death of the early inhabitants, the author, in the year 1841, was led to commence this difficult, but, to him, pleasant labor. Having himself lived in the county more than forty years, he was personally acquainted with a large number of the first pioneers, and heard them relate many of the scenes described in these pages. No regular journal, or diary, of the progress of the settlements having been kept, to which he could have access, it has been a tedious work to collect all the dates of events with the accuracy desired. Many were ascertained from old letters; some by a journal kept by Simeon Wright, which was lost soon after his death; but an abstract of the most important things in which, was obtained several years previous. General Rufus Putnam's journal furnished the dates for many facts, but more were obtained from his letters. The files of old newspapers in the Antiquarian Library, at Worcester, Massachusetts, supplied numerous authentic documents, from the letters of the pioneers to their friends, and to Isaiah Thomas, the editor of the "Massachusetts Spy." The diaries of John Mathews, Esq., and General Joseph Buell, of events on the Ohio river, before the settlement of the Ohio Company, afford many valuable facts in the early history of the country, deemed worthy of preservation, and are inserted previous to the account of that event. The journal of the transactions of the Ohio Company has been very freely quoted, and goes hand in hand with the historical events that transpired among the colonists. One mode of collecting materials for the history, was to employ some of the few that remained of the first settlers to write down their recollections of the events as they occurred in the settlement to which they belonged, in Marietta, Waterford or

« PreviousContinue »