The Ohio River Trade, 1788-1830

by Hazel Yearsley Shaw

In the year 1787, the Ohio Company purchased 1,500,000 acres of land from Congress. The total price agreed upon was nearly three and a half million dollars, but the payment was made in public securities worth only about twelve cents on the dollar.[141] Joel Barlow was sent to Europe to sell the lands, and a subordinate association, called the Scioto Company, was formed to aid him. Mr. Barlow made considerable sales to individuals and companies in France, and many emigrants came to this country, who would have been ruined by the bad faith of the Company, had not the government generously interfered in their behalf.[142] From 1790-1795 the Ohio Company expended more than $11,000 in defending their settlements, which was never repaid them by the United States.[143] J. C. Symmes of New Jersey in 1787, entered into a contract with Congress for the purchase of a million acres between the two Miami Rivers. He finally paid for about one third of it, for which he received a patent.[144]

The early adventurers to the Northwest Territory were men who had spent the prime of their lives in the War of Independence. Many of them had exhausted their fortunes in maintaining the desperate struggle, and retired to the wilderness to conceal their poverty.

Some of them were young men, descended from revolutionary patriots. Others were adverturous spirits to whom any change might be for the better.[145]

The emigration westward, even in 1788, was very great, the commandant at Fort Harmar reporting forty-five hundred persons having passed that post between February and June of that year.[146] Emigrants were constantly passing down the Ohio for Kentucky in 1789.[147] Prior to the year 1795, the east side of the river, for about ten or twenty miles below Wheeling was generally well settled. There were few settlements on the opposite shore until the Muskingum River was reached, and from here to Limestone, "except at the mouth of the Great Kanhaway," the country on both sides of the river was a wilderness.[148] "Till the years 1796-1797 the banks of the Ohio were so little populated that they scarcely consisted of thirty families in a space of four hundred miles."[149]

From the time of the Treaty of Greenville the inhabitants in Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, and the adjoining States, had gone on increasing with astonishing rapidity, and swarms were pressing forward from the new settlements even beyond the Mississippi.[150] The emigrants from the Eastern States, established themselves in general on the Ohio. The emigrants from Jersey and Maryland spread themselves on both sides of the river, as they descended the Ohio, but during the years, 1793-1796, it was observed that they settled rather on the right than the left, particularly on both the Miamis, the Muskingum, the Great and Little Sciotos, and the Wabash.[151] During this time the population of Kentucky did not increase much, owing to the dearness of land, and the uncertainty of tenures, which led the emigrants to prefer the Northwest Territory, where the land was equally good, and the titles indisputable.[152] Emigrants from Virginia and North Carolina went into Kentucky, and those from the Carolinas and Georgia settled in Tennessee.[153] Before the close of the year 1796, the white population of the Northwest had increased to about five thousand, chiefly distributed in the lower valleys of the Muskingum, Scioto, and Miami Rivers, and on their small tributaries, within fifty miles of the Ohio River.[154]

By an act of May 7, 1800, the Northwest Territory was divided into two parts and placed under separate territorial governments; the western division was called Indiana.[155] The population was divided into three settlements, which were widely separated. One of these was at the Falls of the Ohio opposite Louisville; another at Vincennes, and distant from the first more than one h hundred miles; and the other comprised the French population in the tract extending from Kaskaskia to Cahokia, on the Mississippi, two hundred miles from Vincennes[156], Illinois from 1800 to 1809, made a part of the Indiana Territory, and was, during that period, under the laws and jurisdiction of that Territory. February 3, 1809, the Territory of Illinois was established by an Act of Congress.[157] April 30, 1802, Congress passed the Enabling Act[158] for the formation of the State of Ohio, and on February 19, 1803, passed an "act to provide for the execution of the laws of the United States within the State of Ohio."[159]

Ohio is described by one traveler as being settled by "people from New England, the region of industry, economy, and steady habits."[160] As early as 1800 a New England emigrant was not common, the settlers coming principally from Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia, and some from Pennsylvania.

In 1800 there were about twelve hundred French Creoles and from eight hundred to one thousand Americans living in Illinois about nine-tenths of the State being occupied by the Indians.[161] The first colony of Europeans who formed a settlement in Illinois were Irish, and located on the Ohio River in 1804 or 1805.[162] From 1805-1809 the whole country on the margin of the Ohio, Wabash, and Mississippi Rivers, from where Alton now stands to Vincennes, commenced to improve.[163]

The population of the States increased during this period as follows:[164]