Pioneer History

In the year 1787, George Washington was President of the newly formed Government of the United States of America. The vast area west of the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River was acquired from Great Britain by the Treaty of Paris in 1783. The British had forbidden white settlement there to appease the Indians. At the end of the American Revolution, the United States now claimed this territory by “Right of Conquest” over Great Britain and with the creation of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 opened it up for white settlement against the protests of the Indians who still considered it their land. The first permanent American settlement northwest of the Ohio River was Marietta in the year 1788. It was not an easy life for these early pioneers. This book chronicles the events from the earliest explorations of the territory, the purchase of lands by The Ohio Company, the early settlements and the trying times of the early pioneers who settled and tamed this original Northwest Territory.