Special to The News and Sentinel
MARIETTA - The Washington County Historical Society's annual Pioneer Day dinner on Thursday promises to be informative, but decidedly less raucous than the celebration that took place on the first anniversary of the settlement of Marietta.
On April 7, 1789, one year after Col. Rufus Putnam and other members of the Ohio Company arrived at the confluence of the Muskingum and Ohio rivers, a "riot and high misdemeanor" took place, according to a complaint filed the next day.
Witness accounts on file in the Special Collections department at Marietta College's Legacy Library described carriages being overturned, gunshots and even the firing of a cannon.
A handful of men "had been drinking and celebrating," said Linda Showalter, Special Collections associate. "They had survived one year in the wilderness. It was a jubilant occasion. They just went a little wild."
Bill Reynolds, historian at the Campus Martius Museum, said the founders of Marietta, the first permanent American settlement in the Northwest Territory, had a lot of hard work to do that first year, under conditions that are difficult for people to imagine today.
"To take a day off from hours and hours of toil and labor and celebrate, you can understand if they overdid it a little bit," he said.
History lives on in Marietta today, through the extensive documents in the Special Collections department, artifacts and exhibits at the Campus Martius and Ohio River museums and in the hearts and minds of dedicated volunteers and educators who work to tell the stories to new listeners and new generations.
"Our forebears in this area did a wonderful job of saving their history," Showalter said. "They knew what they were doing was of great significance."
Letters describing their experiences in the new settlement were printed in newspapers in the eastern cities from which the settlers had come. Those making the journey and those observing from afar knew success in the Northwest Territory would have a great economic and cultural impact on the young nation, Showalter said.
Among the resources at the college library are Putnam's own writings, such as a journal that included his observations on the early days of the settlement and a record of transactions for the Ohio Company.
Putnam and 46 other men arrived at the mouth of the Muskingum about 1 p.m. on April 7, 1788. The next day was "spent making some temporary cover till we can fix on the spot for building," Putnam wrote.
By the third day, they had already set to work clearing and surveying the land.
"The land was so important. That's why they were here," Showalter said.
About a third of the Ohio Company partners came to the area to settle. Others were landlords, looking to make money from their property.
After the first 48 settlers (Return Jonathan Meigs Sr. arrived a few days later than Putnam's boats, after driving cattle over land), another 85 arrived in July 1788. Families started coming the next year, with the population growing to nearly 300 in 1789. Another 200 would arrive in 1790.
Life in those days centered around the fortifications. In Marietta, there was Campus Martius, a massive fortress and the seat of territorial government, and Picketed Point, a center for merchants located at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers, where the Lafayette Hotel stands today. Across the Muskingum, Fort Harmar, established in 1785, was where people were licensed to sell and trade with the Native Americans. Soldiers also worked to negotiate treaties with them.
Although the early pioneers had a sense of adventure about them, life here was still quite difficult.
"Living conditions were very primitive compared to what they had known in the long-settled Eastern Seaboard," said Ray Swick, historian of West Virginia State Parks and Forests, based at Blennerhassett Island Historical State Park.
In a memoir on file at the Marietta College library, Melzar Nye, who moved to the settlement with his family in 1790 at the age of 5, describes living on Third Street in a "log cabin which father could hardly stand straight in."
Lucy Woodbridge, who came to Marietta in 1788, wrote in a letter that she didn't know how long the settlement would last, Swick said.
Even what people think of today as simple medical procedures could be treacherous. Swick said one of Woodbridge's letters tells of her going to the doctor to have an abscessed tooth removed and coming home with a broken jaw.
Some residents found the social structure lacking. There were efforts at schooling and church, Swick said, but they were initially "very primitive" compared to what the settlers were used to in their previous lives.
Clearing the land for farming wasn't easy, Reynolds said, since much of the land was covered by virgin forest. Even trees that were cut down continued to be obstacles because of their massive stumps that were difficult to remove.
"They're planting in rows that kind of zigzag all over the place," Reynolds said.
The land they were farming was quite fertile. Reynolds said one settler wrote home claiming corn grew 10 inches in one night.
But before long, the settlers would face what came to be known as the "Starving Times."
A variety of factors were to blame, Reynolds said. In 1790, an early frost claimed some crops. The price of corn was extremely high, according to rufusputnam.com, a website dedicated to Putnam.
And Native Americans drove game animals like deer and turkey away from the settlers, Showalter said.
The intervention of Isaac Williams - the namesake of Williamstown - saved the settlement, Showalter said. He had an abundant crop (possibly because his plants were in the ground earlier, Reynolds said) and he sold some of his excess to the residents of Marietta.
The physical and logistical obstacles in building a new settlement weren't the only challenges the pioneers faced.
"They had it rough physically and they had it rough psychologically because they had this terror of guerrilla warfare from the Indians," Swick said.
The Native Americans greeted the settlers warmly at first but they were angered by the taking of their land. The British stirred them up even more against their former colonies, Reynolds said.
Most Marietta residents lived near the fortifications or in them, their homes part of the stockade walls. Some, like Putnam, lived in blockhouses on the corners of the structures. Others lived outside that protected area, "but they did that at their own risk," Swick said.
The Big Bottom massacre, in which 12 Ohio Company settlers were killed in their blockhouse in Morgan County by Native Americans, marked the start of the Indian Wars locally.
"Those expecting to move on lands were more concerned for their safety than anything else, fearing that if they should leave the Garrison (Campus Martius) that they would all be murdered," Melzar Nye writes.
When farming, some workers would stand sentry, watching out for natives, while others worked the fields. If Putnam's wife wanted to walk the six blocks from her home to Picketed Point, Reynolds said, "you went with an armed escort because they didn't know. They were extremely frightened."
The Indian Wars ended in 1795 with the Treaty of Greenville. But even that did not mark the end of hostilities - for both sides.
Showalter told of an incident in 1805 when a white man killed a Native American. Putnam, who believed in the rights of the natives, issued an order to a local store to deliver up to $5 worth of goods to the murdered man's widow "to wipe away her tears," a phrase common in Native American dealings.
"It shows his compassion for this woman," Showalter said. "She could probably buy some food and a blanket."
Ledgers from a number of early Marietta stores can also be found in the college library's Special Collections, detailing purchases of everything from fabric and gloves to fiddle strings and alcohol.
Alcohol was an important commodity. Whiskey was part of the payment for the builders of Picketed Point and the First Congregational Church, Showalter said.
"You just didn't get anything done if you didn't have whiskey to pay the workers," she said.
Tangible items like that were of more value than currency at the time. Cash was scarce, even more so after most soldiers were moved from Fort Harmar in 1789. The military had bought produce from farmers, Swick said, who were now left to sell their crops to other cash-strapped farmers.
The area received a major economic boost in the late 1790s, when the wealthy Harman Blennerhassett moved to the area. Swick compared the impact of his arrival to the opening of an industrial plant in the 20th century.
"He had money. He hired people," he said.
Blennerhassett employed people to build the renowned mansion on the Ohio River island that bears his name today. He also invested in local businesses - the fur trade, ship-building, ginseng gathering and a chain of general stores.
Despite the difficult living conditions, Marietta drew the interest of Blennerhassett and others because of its culture. The settlement's population was full of college graduates, military officers and other educated and upper-class individuals, Swick said.
"You had a special spirit of Marietta culture that was rare on the frontier," he said.
Marietta was better organized than nearby settlements in what was then western Virginia. Swick said this was because the settlers came from New England, for the most part in family, communal or neighbor groups and brought their institutions with them. Across the Ohio River, settlers more or less arrived as individuals or single family units.
"Enough of them settled together in what is now Marietta ... that it was a community from go," Swick said.
The streets of Marietta were laid out with extra width, to allow for better fire response and future growth.
"The pioneer settlers had vision," Swick said. "They thought they were founding a great city and it was very disappointing to them that Marietta never grew into the size of Columbus."
There are a number of reasons for this, Swick said, many detailed in Andrew Cayton's book "Town into City." Among them was flooding and the development of other forms of transportation, including canals, the National Road and railroads, also made other parts of the state more accessible, according to the Ohio Historical Society.
But the memories of those early days and that grand vision remain in Marietta today, holding the interest even of those who have studied it for decades.
"You always find something new," Reynolds said.
