March 3, 1786, General Rufus Putnam
and some other Continental officers met at the "Bunch of Grapes"
Tavern in Boston and decided that it would be to their advantage
to exchange for land in the Seven Ranges the paper certificates
in which they had been paid for their military services.
Accordingly an "Ohio Company" was organized, and Dr. Manasseh
Cutler--"preacher, lawyer, doctor, statesman, scientist, land
speculator"--was sent off to New York to push the matter in
Congress. The upshot was that Congress authorized the sale of one
and a half million acres east of the Scioto to the Ohio Company,
and five million acres to a newly organized Scioto Company.
The Scioto Company fell into financial difficulties and, after
making an attempt to build up a French colony at Gallipolis,
collapsed. But General Putnam and his associates kept their
affairs well in hand and succeeded in planting the first legal
white settlement in the present State of Ohio. An arduous winter
journey brought the first band of forty-eight settlers, led by
Putnam himself, to the mouth of the Muskingum on April 7, 1788.
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