The error of making the south shore of Lake Erie east and west came to a curious end. When the association of gentlemen known as the Connecticut Land Company were about to buy the Reserve, they agreed with a prospective competitor to let it have the excess over three million acres. This was the Excess Company, but there was no land for it, and the error of one hundred years led to considerable financial disaster.
I ought to mention, as a matter of curious history, the map of John Fitch, of steamboat memory. He spent considerable time in surveys within the bounds of Ohio and Kentucky, and had previously traveled the country as a prisoner among the Indians. In 1785 he made a map of the “Northwest Country,” containing original and accurate information. He prepared the copper plate, engraved it himself, and printed it with a cider press. He was then living in Bucks county, Pa., and sold the map at six shillings per copy to raise money enough to pursue his inventions relating to steamboats.
We have now reached the period of settlement and can take a retrospect.
From the discovery of the continent in 1494 it was one hundred and seventy-five years to the pioneer discovery of Ohio. In eighty-five years more both France and England set to work in earnest to make good their claims to it. In thirty-four years more England had beaten France, America had beaten England, and the first permanent settlement had been made in Ohio. It took two hundred and ninety-four years to reach this point. There are but ninety-two years left to 1880 for the pioneers of Ohio; but what a fruition to their work! The solitary settlement has become a mighty nation of three million people, as large as the whole United States in the Revolution, and how much stronger and with what an abundance of wealth and comfort—a centre of intelligence and the home of Presidents!
It is a wonderful review. The pioneers found the State covered with large forests, almost without exception requiring the severest labor to remove; and the change, all within a possible lifetime, seems amazing. The world cannot show its parallel, and when one thinks seriously it will be found to be one of the most interesting and important events in the history of man. Peace as well as war has its victories.
We can only live over in stories the life of the pioneers. But theirs was sturdy independence and severe labor, with least encouragement.
“Haply from them the toiler, bent
Above his forge or plow, may gain
A manlier spirit of content,
And feel that life is wisest spent