Ohio's first straggling settlers had pushed northwesterly across the Ohio River during the Revolution, but the first real, permanent settlement was by the New England Company which established Marietta in 1788. This New England immigration, though soon swamped by that from other States, played an important part in the organization of the territory and in the shaping of its future policies.
Scarcely had the Massachusetts group, led by General Rufus Putnam, taken possession of its vast grant around Marietta, when a new group led by Judge J.C. Symmes of Kentucky occupied a grant of a million acres between the Great and Little Miami Rivers, including the sites of Cincinnati, Dayton, and many of the most important of the early settlements of the territory.
Virginia had reserved a military district of more than four million acres to reward its soldiers of the Revolution, and this quickly began to be settled largely by veterans from Kentucky which was at that time, it will be remembered, still a part of Virginia.
Connecticut on the other hand had stipulated for its own Western Reserve of nearly 3,000,000 acres, extending in an oblong, 120 miles, from the boundary of Pennsylvania along Lake Erie, and the settlement of Cleveland marked its nucleus.
Thus Ohio, within a few years after the Revolution, started with four different growing points. The Virginia element increased the most rapidly, partly because of its proximity to Kentucky, partly because of its easy access by the Ohio River, so that the English and Ulster Scots of the southern part of the State soon dominated the whole.
A similar element was continually coming across the Pennsylvania border from the Monongahela country, and before long the Pennsylvania emigration to Ohio became the greatest from any one State, filling up the central part which comprised the great wheat belt. Even as late as the Mexican War, one-fourth of the members of the Ohio Legislature were natives of Pennsylvania, exceeding the members born in any other State, or in all the New England States combined, or in Ohio itself.
Through Kentucky came not merely Virginians but a steady stream of Ulster Scots from North Carolina, many of whom, however, had previously been Virginians. The southern parts of the State, therefore, took on some of the complexion of the slave-holding States, while the northern part was tinged by the culture of New England and the Central States, many coming in from western New York, which from the present point of view is to be regarded as merely an extension of New England.
Thus for a score of years the population of the States to the south and east of Ohio, which, dammed back by hostile Indians, had been ready to overflow for some time, poured into the new territory. Then the flood slackened until after the close of the War of 1812, when it was renewed with vigor. Men from all parts of the United States who had served with the western and northern forces in the War of 1812 had seen the beauties of the new country and determined to settle there as soon as peace was declared and they could dispose of their holdings at home. So far as New England was concerned this tendency was accentuated by two remarkably cold winters in 1816 and 1817, which surpassed the memories of the oldest inhabitants. General economic and social conditions were favorable for a widespread movement of population. The northwestern part of Ohio had been cleared of Indians and was then thrown open to settlement.
This second great flood of immigration into Ohio was in general of the same character as the first, bringing into the State from all sides an almost purely Nordic population of British ancestry, except for the small element of Pennsylvania Dutch who for a while kept much to themselves, maintained their own customs and their own language, and thus cut themselves off largely from the march of progress. Their Alemannish dialect was rapidly becoming almost as far out of line with the literary language of Germany as it was with the English language of their adopted home.