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Benjamin of Ohio: A Story of the Settlement of Marietta

Chapter 7: THE FIRST EMIGRANTS
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.

THE FIRST EMIGRANTS

You remember all the talk and excitement in Massachusetts at this time, when so much was being told regarding the beauties of the Ohio country, and you know how eager I was to set out with that first party which left Danvers under the leadership of Major Haffield White on the first day of December, in the year 1787.

As you also know, these men were to halt somewhere on the Youghiogheny River to build boats, in order to continue the journey by water, and a second party, under the command of General Putnam himself, was to leave Hartford in Connecticut shortly afterward, to join those from Massachusetts.

This second company was really led by Colonel Ebenezer Sproat because General Putnam was forced to go to New York on some business of his own, and did not succeed in overtaking the people until they had come to Swatara Creek in Pennsylvania.