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Benjamin of Ohio: A Story of the Settlement of Marietta cover

Benjamin of Ohio: A Story of the Settlement of Marietta

Chapter 55: AT SUMRILL'S FERRY
By James Otis
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AdventureAmerican Literature

About This Book

A young narrator recounts leaving New England with an organized land company to settle in the Ohio country, tracing the group's formation, surveying and purchase of territory, and the hardships of overland and river travel. The narrative details building a fortified riverside village, clearing land, erecting mills and community institutions, encounters and cautious diplomacy with Native peoples, and everyday trials of frontier life. Interwoven with practical descriptions are personal episodes of labor, friendship, moral lessons, and the boy's growing sense of responsibility as the settlement develops into a permanent town.

AT SUMRILL'S FERRY

Here we learned of those people who went out from Danvers and Hartford. We saw where they built the Mayflower, and, in fact, we lodged at the very inn where some of them had lived while making ready for the journey down the river.

Sumrill's Ferry is not a large settlement, but a thriving one. Here were boat builders, ready to make any kind of craft needed.

To hear them talk of what they believed must have been our experiences during the journey, one would have said they looked upon us as more than foolish to have ventured so much in order to make a settlement in the wild Ohio country.

Before we had been at this settlement an hour, Uncle Daniel came upon Benjamin Slocomb and his family, who had left Danvers nearly four weeks before we started from Mattapoisett. Master Slocomb had waited at the ferry nine days until a boat could be finished in a manner to please him, and was on the point of setting off when Uncle Daniel saw him.