Putnam did not lose heart. His next step, taken in January, 1786, was to call a meeting of officers and soldiers and others to form an Ohio Company. The meeting was held at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern, in Boston, March 1, 1786, and the Ohio Company of Associates was duly formed. It was agreed to raise a fund to purchase from Congress, for purposes of settlement, the western lands which Congress had been asked to give them.

On July 27, 1787, a tract of 1,500,000 acres on the Ohio River, between the Scioto and the Muskingum rivers, was sold to the Company at sixty-six and two-thirds cents per acre. Half the amount was paid down. When, later, it became impossible to pay the remainder, Congress gave a measure of relief.

The first emigrants to go to the new lands set out from Danvers, Massachusetts, December 1, 1787, under the guidance of General Rufus Putnam, while a second party started from Hartford, Connecticut, January 1, 1788. The first party of twenty-two men followed the Indian trail over the Allegheny Mountains and reached the Youghiogheny River, on January 23, 1788, while the second party of twenty-eight men, making better time, joined them on February 14. Then a barge, called the Mayflower, was built, forty-six feet long and twelve feet wide. A cabin was provided for the women of the party, and an awning was stretched. The men propelled the boat with ten oars.

On April 1 the voyage to the Ohio was begun, and on April 7 the party reached the mouth of the Muskingum. The barge was moored to the bank, opposite Fort Harmar. Thus came the Massachusetts pioneers to the town of which Washington wrote later: "No colony in America was ever settled under such favorable auspices as that which has just commenced at Muskingum. Information, property, and strength will be its characteristics. I know many of the settlers personally, and there never were men better calculated to promote the welfare of such a community."

Here the pioneers laid out the town of Marietta among the famous Indian mounds, naming it in honor of Marie Antoinette of France. The greatest mound of all was made the central feature of Marie Antoinette Square. This mound is thirty feet high, while the circular base is 375 feet in circumference. It is surrounded by a moat fifteen feet wide and five feet deep. Beyond the moat is a parapet twenty feet thick and 385 feet in circumference. This square was leased to General Putnam for twelve years, on condition that he "surround the whole square with mulberry trees with an elm at each corner." The base of the mound was to be encircled with weeping willows, and evergreens were to be placed on the mound. The parapet was to be surrounded with trees, the square was to be seeded down to grass, and the whole was to be enclosed with a post and rail fence. This effort to create a park at the very beginning was an unusual feature of this pioneer experience.

An enclosure of logs, with a log fort at each corner, was built for protection against the Indians. Between the corner forts were the cabins occupied by the various families. The forts and the enclosure were named the Campus Martius. One of the early houses built within this stockade became the home of General Putnam.

Marie Antoinette Square soon became known as Mound Square. General Putnam turned over his lease to the town, which set the property aside as a cemetery. Many of the settlers had died during two epidemics of smallpox, and there was need of a cemetery nearer the town than the ground set aside at the beginning.

It is claimed that more officers of the Revolution have been buried in the Mound Cemetery than in any other cemetery in the country. There were twelve colonels, twelve majors, and twenty-two captains among the Marietta pioneers. When General Lafayette was in Marietta in 1825, the list was read to him, and he said: "I knew them all. I saw them at Brandywine, Yorktown, and Rhode Island. They were the bravest of the brave."

Over Putnam's grave is the following inscription:

Gen. Rufus Putnam
A Revolutionary Officer
And the leader of the
Colony which made the
First settlement in the
Territory of the Northwest.
Born April 9, 1738
Died May 4, 1824.