Washington County, Ohio - Chapter 11: Later History of the Ohio Company, 1881

A Review of Some Important Matters. - The Price of Public Lands Reduced. - An Injustice to the Ohio Company. - The Rise of Securities. Forfeited Shares in the Ohio Company's Stock Sold to the Trustees of the Scioto Company. - Plans for a Final Settlement with Congress. - Trouble Caused by Speculative Stockholders. - They Desire that the Contract of Purchase be Forfeited. - The Directors at Philadelphia in 1792. - Their Petition to Congress. - Critical Condition of the Company's Affairs. - Lffect of the Indian. War. - Failure of and Loss by the Treasurer, Richard Platt. - The Scioto Company Fails to Meet Its Obligation. - Impossibility of Carrying Out the Original Contract. - The Only Hope of the Company and Its Settlement, a Release. - Favorable Action of Congress. - Three Patents Issued to Rufus Putnam, Manasseh Cutler, Robert Oliver and Griffin Greene, as Trustees of the Ohio Company. - Boundaries of the Purchase - The Donation Tract. - Beneficent Policy of the Company. - Division of the Lands. - Eleven Hundred and Seventy-three to Each of Eight Hundred and Seventeen Shares. - Names of the Members of the Ohio Company. - Number of Shares Owned by Each Person. - A Pendant to the History of the Company, Reaching Down to Recent Years.

Mucu of the later history of the Ohio company which would have been chronologically in order in the preceding pages, has been intentionally reserved for consideration connectedly in a single chapter. The most interesting topic is that which includes the release of the Ohio company from its original contract and its final settlement with Congress in 1792; but, to convey an adequate idea of the necessities of this release, and the difficulties and the perils which the company passed

In May, 1789, at a meeting of the company held at Marietta, General Putnam and Dr. Cutler (the latter then at his house in Massachusetts), were empowered to ascertain from the different agents the number of unpaid shares, which were represented by them, to declare them forfeited, sell them if possible, and effect a final settlement with the Government. The affairs of the company were in a very unsatisfactory condition They had paid to the Government on account of their purchase which required a million. They had no title to any part of their lands, although under their right of entry they had made a settlement and considerable improvement, and had set off to each shareholder one city lot, one threeacre lot and one one hundred and sixty-acre lot. Until the company was able to complete the division of the lands as contemplated in the articles of association, the shares were useless to the holders and almost worthless. The securities in which they were payable, had appreciated in value more than one hundred per cent. There appeared therefore, but a faint prospect of selling the forfeited shares, and unless they were sold, the final payment to the Government could not be made as provided in the original contract.

In January, 1790, the Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, in a report to Congress on methods of funding the public debt, recommended that the price of the public lands be fixed at twenty cents per acre, payable in coin or Government securities. With the intention of applying to Congress for a reduction in the price of the lands, General Putnam went to New York in January, 1790. He arrived upon the thirtieth, and was joined by Dr. Cutler late in February. Pending the action of Congress on the recommendation of Secretary Hamilton, they did not present their petition. Early in April it became evident that nothing could be done during that session to secure a reduction of the price of the Ohio company's lands. The friends of the company in Congress, however, were sanguine that at the next session they would be able to secure a reduction in price at least equivalent to the rise in the value of securities. William Duer, Royal Flint and Andrew Craigie, as trustees of the Scioto company, held an option from the board of treasury to purchase all the lands west of the Ohio company's territory to the Scioto river, and as far north as the tenth township. They desired to purchase of the Ohio company a tract of land near the mouth of the Big Kanawha, upon which they could locate a number of French emmigrants who had already sailed. General Putnam proposed to them that they should buy the forfeited shares of the Ohio company (the number of which was concluded, from the best attainable information, to be one hundred and forty-eight), take the three acre lots, the eight acre lots, the city lots and one hundred and sixty acre lots already set apart for those shares in the portion of the Ohio company's tract which had been surveyed, and locate the remainder, one hundred and ninety-six thousand five hundred and forty-four acres, in a compact body fronting on the Ohio river, below the Big Kanawha.

They accepted, and on the twenty-third of April, 1790, Putnam and Cutler, for the Ohio company, made a contract for sale to Duer, Flint and Craigie of the tract described. The consideration was one thousand four hundred and eighty-eight dollars in specie, to be paid in sixty and ninety days; eight thousand eight hundred and eighty dollars in indents of interest, to. be paid in six months, and the remainder to be paid when the Ohio company made its final settlement with Congress, at the same price per acre which that company should secure, and in the same public securities which they should pay for lands.

Duer, Flint and Craigie surrendered also to the Ohio company their right of preemption or option of purchase of all the lands north of the Ohio company's purchase to the tenth township. They were to have the same right to enter upon and occupy the lands comprised in the forfeited shares as was given the Ohio company by their contract with Congress, but no deed of conveyance was to be executed or demanded until the payments were fully completed. This contract was rightly deemed of great value to the Ohio company.* In case they should ultimately obtain a reduction in the price of their lands to twenty or twenty-five cents per acre, the amount already paid to the United States would entitle them to a larger amount of better lands in the territory comprised in the right of preemption released to them. To obtain this reduction and its application to the Ohio company's contract, they had secured a powerful ally in Colonel William Duer, formerly secretary of the board of treasury, an intimate and confidential friend of Washington and Hamilton, a man ot high social standing and of reputed great wealth. If their effort in obtaining a reduction of prices failed, the original contract was at least secure.

The Indian war which broke out in September, 1790 - for that was the time at which General Harmar started upon his expedition - prevented the directors from going on to New York, as they had expected to do, to continue negotiations for a settlement. The failure of the Government to take prompt and adequate measures for the pro_ tection of the settlements stopped immigration. With great difficulty many who had already settled in various parts of the purchase were prevented from returning to the east, and some did return.

A portion of the sharesholders who had bought shares for speculation and had no other interest than a pecuniary one in the success of the settlement, demanded that the securities in the hands of the treasurer of the company (about twenty-five thousand dollars), applicable to the final payment, be atonce divided among the shareholders, and if necessary, the contract be forfeited. Nothing but the

*Ata meeting of the Ohio company's agents, June 11, 1790, at which six hundred and fifty shares were represented, the following resolution was adopted, by 621 yeas to 29 nays:

Resolved, That the sale of certain tracts of lands made by the Honorable Rufus Putnam and Rev. M. Cutler to the trustees of the Scioto company be approbated, and it is hereby approbated, and that the thanks of the agents and proprietors be given to Rufus Putnam and Mr. Cutler for their attention to the -business of a settlement with Congress. - The Ohio company's journal.

In February, 1792, General Putnam, Dr. Cutler, and Colonel Robert Oliver - a majority of the directors - met in Philadelphia, where Congress was then in session. The special agents and proprietors were notified bya circular letter to assemble at Philadelphia at once, bringing with them all documents necessary to make a final settlement with the treasurer of the company, Colonel Richard Platt. The directors presented a petition asking Congress that the whole amount of lands included in the company's contract (one million, five hundred thousand acres) might be deeded to them for the payment of five hundred thousand dollars, already made, and that-a grant of one hundred thousand acres additional be made to the company to compensate them for lands they had donated to actual settlers and to those performing military duty, and for the expenses they were incurring in maintaining troops which properly belonged to the Government. The petition, after setting forth the facts heretofore represented, and appealing to Congress "'to retrieve this unfortunate company from inevitable ruin," concluded with an earnest and touching expression of the worst fears felt by the subscribers and by the people in the settlements:

A wery considerable part of the military strength of the settlement depends upon the non-proprietors to whom lands have been promised on condition of performance of military duty to the end of the present war and should the closing of this present contract be postponed until fnture session of Congress the company cannot fulfil their engagements to them, and if not done the directors are confidently assured that these people will desert the settlement, the inevitable consequence of which must be that a great part if not the whole of the settlements will be abandoned. Nor does the hazard of a total desertion depend only on those people. The resident proprietors sensibly feel the great loss of men and property which they have sustained, as well as the extreme distress and suffering they endured the last year. There is every reason to believe that unless they are retrieved from that State of suspense and uncertainty respecting their title, with which their minds have been so long exercised, they will make no further exertions to defend a settlement from which they are at any time liable to be driven; that if the ' scalping-knife and the tomahawk do not prevent an escape they will immediately retreat to some place of greater security. We will only add that the most of your petitioners have with much anxiety left their 'families exposed every moment to an attack from the Indians to repair to this place for the purpose of closing their contract, and should they be obliged to return without effecting this object we fear the evils we have suggested and many more will unavoidably take place.

The situation was bad enough, but it was to be worse. The agents did not assemble in Philadelphia until the eleventh of April, and before a settlement could be ef- - fected with Colonel Platt, there occurred a panic in New York and Platt failed, owing the Ohio company nearly fifty thousand dollars. Duer also failed and was' thrown into prison. Flint and Craigie were carried down by Duer's failure. No payments had been made by these men, as the directors of the Scioto company on account of their contract for purchase of the forfeited shares, and it was therefore surrendered and cancelled. The committee of Congress to whom were referred the directors' petition, reported favorably to its passage, but for some reason which does not clearly appear there was much opposition to it. The probable reason was the fact which had become widely known through meetings of the dissatisfied shareholders that the company had in its treasi

A critical juncture in the affairs of the Ohio company and the settlers had been reached. Besides the combination of adverse circumstances which threatened to overwhelm the company, "the second payment, five hundred thousand dollars was now due," says General Putnam,* according to the terms of the original contract, and "non-payment it was feared would forfeit lands which had already been paid for." It was impossible to make the payment, and the company's only hope was in securing a release from the obligations incurred and more liberal terms, as contemplated in the petition. "In this mount of difficulties," adds Putnam, " Divine Providence so overruled the minds of men that Congress passed an act authorizing the President" to take those measures which practically answered the prayers of the company, and retrieved it from ruin. 'The bill authorizing a settlement as it finally passed April 21, 1792, directed that a deed be made to the Ohio company for seven hundred and fifty thousand acres, by fixed boundaries, for the five hundred thousand dollars in securities which had already been paid into the treasury of the United States; another for two hundred thousand two hundred and eighty-five acres additional, or about one-seventh of the amount of the original contract, to be paid for in land warrants (a large amount of which had been turned over by Colonel Platt), and a third for one hundred thousand acres in trust to be given in tracts of one hundred acres each to actual settlers. The donation tract was saved only by the vote of Vice President Adams.

Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge was chosen treasurer of the Ohio company, vice Platt, and was directed to sell all the securities on hand, reserve ten thousand dollars to pay for further work on the survey, and to divide the remainder, pro rata, among the shareholders, through their respective agencies.

Upon the tenth of May the President, in pursuance of the act of April 21st, issued three patents} to 'Rufus Putnam, Manasseh Cutler, Robert Oliver, and Griffin Greene, in trust for the Ohio company of associates. The patents were signed by George Washington, President, and Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State. With the exception of one to the State of Pennsylvania, March 3, 1792, these are the first land patents issued by the Government. ft .

The lands which came into the possession of the company through these patents amounted to a total of nine hundred and sixty-four thousand two hundred and eightyfive acres, or including the donation tract, one million sixty-four thousand two hundred and eighty-five - instead of the amount originally contracted for - one million five hundred thousand acres. The bill for the relief of the company at first contained a clause providing that the company might secure a conveyance for the remainder of the one million five hundred thousand acres on the payment for the same within six years at the rate of twenty-five cents per acre, but this provision was lost in the senate.

The boundaries of the Ohio company's purchase as finally fixed by survey are as follows: Beginning on the Ohio river upon the western boundary line of the fifteenth range of townships (opposite the mouth Guyandotte); thence running northerly to a point about one mile north of the south line of township number seven; thence westerly to the western boundary of the sixteenth range; thence northerly to the north line of township number thirteen; thence easterly to a point about one mile east of the west boundary of range eleven; thence north four miles; thence east to the western boundary of the senenth range; thence south along that line to the Ohio; thence along the Ohio to the place of beginning. This tract includes the whole of the present counties of Athens and Meigs, and portions of Washington, Morgan, Gallia, Vinton, Jackson and Hocking.

The donation tract lies in the northeast part of the territory above described, and is about twenty-one miles long by eight in width. The boundaries are described as follows:* Beginning on the western boundary line on the seventh range of townships at the northeast corner of the seven hundred and fifty thousand acre tract; thence running north to Ludlow's line (surveyed by Israel Ludlow at the northern boundary of the original purchase of one million five hundred thousand acres); thence along that line westwardly to the tract containing two hundred and fourteen thousand two hundred and eighty-five acres ; thence south to the boundary of the seven hundred and fifty thousand acre tract; thence along that boundary, easterly to the place of beginning.

The directors of the Ohio company were the trustees of the donation tract. They had the land surveyed and boundaries established in May, 1793, and prescribed rules for their own government in donating the lands. It was decided that the settlers then in the tract should be provided with lots first.

General Putnam was appointed as the surveyor of the lands and superintendent of the donation tract business. The deeds were nearly all made out by him.

By the middle of July, 1793, seventeen thousand acres had been divided into one hundred and seventy lots. These were included in nine allotments, located in the vicinity of the Muskingum and Wolf creek. The total number of lots drawn during the year was one hundred and eighty-six. The lots which had been donated as lying outside of the tract, were covered by a new division, known as the fifth division, by which one-hundred acre lots were drawn in the company's lands as a part of each share,

There remains not much to be said of the Ohio company. When the final settlement was made with Congress its mission was practically closed. The influence, however, of the organization under whose auspices the State of Ohio and the great Northwest was opened, re-

Owing to the continuance of the Indian war, which was not ended until the treaty of Greenville, heretofore alluded to, in the summer of 1795, the surveys were not completed as soon as would otherwise have been the case. The college lands, two townships (Nos. 8 and 9 in the fourteenth range, now known as Ames and Alexander, in Athens county), were selected and surveyed in the winter of 1795-96, and so was carried out one of the wisest and most beneficent measures of the company, one which had engaged the attention of its leading men from the time the organization was effected, in 1787.

Another act of the company about this time exhibited the broad and kindly policy which had ever been one of its characteristics. The land on which the poor French settlers had located, at Gallipolis, sold to the Scioto company by the Ohio company, had reverted to the latter through the inability of the other party to pay for it. In November the lands were sold to the settlers at the low price of one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre.

The last meeting of the Ohio company west of the mountains, was called at Marietta November 23, 1795, and the directors and agents continued in session until January 29, 1796. The final partition or division of lands was made at this time, and on the first of February sworn to before Josiah Monroe, justice of the peace. By this division there were set off to each share in the stock of the company the following lands: First division, one eight-acre lot; second division, one three-acre lot; third division, one city lot; Fourth division, one onehundred-and-sixty-acre lot; fifth division, one one-hundred-acre lot; sixth division, one six-hundred-and-fortyacre lot, and one two-hundred-and-sixty-two-acre lot; total, one thousand one hundred and seventy-three acres.

Following isa list of the members of the Ohio company, among whom the lands were divided. There were eight hundred and nineteen shares classified in sixteen agencies; this order has been followed in making the list, the names being alphabetically arranged under each agency. Where an individual owned more than one share the number is given. Where two or more names appear in the same line there was a partnership in the share or shares. The list includes the names of many eminent characters and a very large number which are familiar to residents of Washington county. There are others which will appear strange, even to those persons best acquainted with the settlement of the Ohio company's purchase. A large proportion of this class belong to individuals who bought shares from purely speculative motives, and neversettled in the territory of which they owned a part.

Joel Barlow and associates, 3 shares; Abijah Colton; Joseph Day and associates; Abiel Griswold; Sylvanus Griswold; Peleg Heath and associates; Ebenezer Hinckley and associates, Thomas Lord, assignee; Timothy Hosmer; Elizabeth Judd; Daniel Jones; Abel Mathews and associates; Thomas Stanley and associates; Nathaniel Terry; John Watson, 2 shares; Samuel Wyllis; Nathan Williams.

Moses Ashley, Asa Hill; John Alden; Samuel Buffington; Daniel Dunham (his heirs); Asa Graves, Joseph Spencer; Noah Goodman, Aaron Howe; Samuel Kenshaw; Aaron Howe; Elijah Hunt; Perez Morton; Huldah Tupper; Ichabod Nye; Robert Oliver and associates, 2 shares; Alexander Oliver and associates; Rufus Putnam; Andrew Peters and associate, 2 shares; Asahel Pomeroy; John Quigley and associates; William Stacey, 4 shares; Calvin Smith and associate; Enoch Shephard; Benjamin Tupper, 2 shares; Benjamin Tupper, jr.; Anselem Tupper; Edward W. Tupper.

There is an interesting pendant to the history of the Ohio company, which reaches down to recent years. In the treasury of the company there were a number of Revolutionary certificates of the State of Georgia, which, owing to an irregularity in their endorsement, had been refused by the treasurer of the United States. Being unnegotiable, these certificates were practically valueless, and hence were undivided by the company. When the final partition was made, and the lands of the company set off to the shareholders, the certificates formed the only remaining property of the company (if property they could be called), except a small amount of personalty. The only value left in the shares was that which was contingent upon the negotiability of the Georgia certificates. There were few members of the company who believed that they would be recognized by the Government, and hence it was altogether a natural thing that the owners should part with their shares for trivial considerations.

army), came to Marietta in 1810, and began a career as land speculator, in which capacity he eventually became the owner of colossal interests and wielded most powerful influences. He saw in the Georgia certificates the possibility of a fortune, and in order to become their possessor began to buy up the shares of the Ohio company, securing most of them for merely nominal sums. During all of the time he was prosecuting his affairs as land dealer and absorbing the shares of the company, he was making a study of the history of the Georgia certificates, and as he progressed in his investigations he hecame each day and year more thoroughly convinced of his ability to realize not only their face value, but the amount of interest on them, compounded at six per cent., from the year of their issuance (1777) down to the time at which payment should be secured. Ata meeting of the surviving shareholders of the Ohio company, held at Providence, Rhode Island, in 1836, Mr. Ward was elected treasurer. In this capacity, representing the company as well as himself, after a long and careful preparation, he brought suit, in 1857, before the United States circuit court by an eminent attorney - John A. Rockwell, of Connecticut - for the payment of the certificates in his possession. It was represented that Mr. Ward was the legal holder of forty-three loan office certificates for the sum of four hundred dollars each, issued by authority of Congress, granted on the twenty-third of February, 1777, and to be payable in 1781; that these certificates were countersigned "by order of J. A. Treutlen, governor of Georgia," by E. Davis, jr.; that said Davis was duly authorized and appointed to countersign the certificates on behalf of the State of Georgia, by the governor of the State; that the United States had in repeated instances recognized their liability to pay, and had actually paid other certificates of the same issue, and had paid four years' interest upon those in the possession of Mr. Ward; that no objection was made that the paper was invalid until many years after the endorsement of interests upon the certificates, and then not from any want of genuineness, but upon the technical ground that the countersigning (by E. Davis, jr.,) was irregular; that there was evidence amounting to demonstration that the United States received a valuable consideration for the certificates, and that they came regularly into the possession of the Ohio company and that of the petitioner.

The counsel for the United States argued that there was no proof that the claimant was the treasurer of the Ohio company; that the company was not an incorporation, and the joint effects-of the individuals composing it, if any, would pass to the survivor and his executors; that the certificates in question were not legally issued, E. Davis, jr., not being properly authorized as a commissioner to countersign them; that Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, refused in 1790 and 1791, to fund the certificates; that the payment of interest on the certificates was no proof of their validity; and that there was no positive proof that the United States had received any consideration for the certificates.

States was indebted in the amount due on the forty-three certificates with interest upon them and a bill was reported (based upon an estimation of each certificate at two hundred and eighty-two dollars and forty-four cents) for the relief of Nahum Ward in the sum of sixty thousand eight hundred and seventy-six dollars and ninetynine cents. The judgment upon being reported back to Congress was, however, reversed, and an appeal was then taken to the Supreme court.

Mr. Ward was thoroughly convinced of the perfect equity of his claim. 'The preparation for presenting it had cost him years of his life and large sums of money. The ablest counsel working with the incentive of large contingent fees had made exhaustive efforts to win the suit. The amount for which judgment was secured in the Court of Claims did not represent the full measure of the claimant's expectation, but was within the limit prescribed by Congress, governing the amount to be sued for. The claim, with compound interest constantly increasing, amounted before litigation was finally suspended, to several millions of dollars. Mr. Ward constantly pursued his object until his death in 1861, and he was so thoroughly satisfied of the justness of the claim and so determined that the labors of years should not be lost that in his will he enjoined his heirs to carry on the suit. In accordance with his desire in 1870, William S. Ward appeared as the plaintiff in the case before the Supreme court of the United States, his counsel being ex-Attorney General Stanbery, Thomas Ewing, jr., and Judge Charles R. Rhodes. A judgment was affirmed adverse to the claimants, from which, however, Justice Field dissented, saying that he was of opinion that the demand of the plaintiff was a just obligation of the United States, as binding as any part of the public debt of the country.

And so was closed probably forever, the long continued litigation of Ward vs. the United States, growing out of the old Georgia Revolutionary certificates, which had formed a portion of the moneys of the Ohio company.