The Dorhman Grant is a tract of 23,000 acres in Tuscarawas county, given by Congress to a Portuguese merchant.
The Virginia Military Lands were located on the west of the Scioto river. The amount of the grant in acres has never been known. There are fifteen counties in the tract and much of it has never been surveyed. This body of land was reserved by Virginia to pay her soldiers who were in the Revolution without compensation or pay. When it was determined by Congress to pay the soldiers in land, each original settler marked his own boundaries with a hatchet, and made a good liberal guess that the area within his lines would cover the acres given in his warrant.
The Moravian Grant was 4,000 acres in Tuscarawas county. Besides, many other donations were made for roads and other purposes, making a total of over eight million acres, the greater part of which went to creditors of the Government. Land was the only thing the United States had available to cancel the war obligations, and soldiers and others gladly accepted land certificates in lieu of those of silver or gold.
Land in body was more desirable than town lots. When Chillicothe was made capital of the territory it had about twenty cabins promiscuously located among the timber, which had not yet been cut down to designate the streets. The State House was constructed in 1800 by an old revolutionary soldier, Wm. Rutledge, and remained the Capitol until 1816, when it was permanently located at Columbus, Franklin county. The removal of the capital injured greatly the prospects and business of Chillicothe for many years, and secured leisure to its citizens, who engaged in various innocent amusements for killing time—in fact, lingered with scarcely a symptom of lysis until after the “Literary, Astronomical and Natural History Society” commenced the publication and distribution of that illustrated periodical (yearly), known and remembered to the last days of the older citizens, entitled “The Ground Hog Almanac.” Since then the town has grown in population, wealth and beauty, and is now the center jewel of the cities in the rich Scioto valley.
Provisions for the education of the generations that were to inhabit the North-west were made and ratified by Congress, in 1787, giving one-thirty-sixth part of the entire public domain to be reserved from sale for the maintenance of schools, declaring “That schools and means of education shall forever be encouraged.”
When Ohio was set off and became a state, the reserve school lands were placed under the management of the legislature, the constitution of 1802 making it the duty of that body to carry out the educational clause of the ordinance, and that the schools supported by the land grants should be open for the reception of pupils. But it turned out like many public trusts; with this splendid endowment of near a million acres of good land, the children of Ohio received no benefit from that source, nor from any legislative equivalent, for near half a century after settlement. The majority of the people, it must be confessed, were indifferent to the subject of education, and were used to keep in power enough imbecile legislators, who in defiance of Ephraim Cutler, the wording of the constitution and acts of Congress, spent the sessions for more than twenty years in perverse legislation of the public school lands.
THE HISTORIC GROUND HOG CLUB.
Organized February 2, 1800.
Certificate of Membership.