The Frontiersmen (Winning of America Book 1) by Eckert Allan W

The Frontiersmen (Winning of America Book 1) by Eckert Allan W

Author:Eckert, Allan W. [Eckert, Allan W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jesse Stuart Foundation, Ashland, KY
Published: 2011-08-22T16:00:00+00:00


[ November 1, 1786 — Wednesday ]

A single lantern burned at high wick in the library of the large mansion in Trenton, New Jersey, where two men sat talking long after midnight.

“Judge,” said Benjamin Stites, “believe me. Trading being my business, I’ve traveled all over this country. I’ve seen fine farmlands and valleys here in the east, as well as to the south and north of here. But never anywhere have I seen land as rich and beautiful as that to the north in Ohio straight across from the mouth of the Licking.”

Judge John Cleve Symmes, member of Congress and a man of great wealth and influence, pursed his lips and nodded. He had known Major Stites for many years and had grown to respect the man’s judgment and regard for truth. He had listened with growing enthusiasm to Stites’s account: how Stites last summer had joined a party of Kentuckians at Washington and crossed the Ohio River, led by a fantastic figure of a frontiersman named Simon Kenton, in pursuit of some Indians who had stolen horses from his station; how they had gone as far north as the upper reaches of the Little Miami River to the ruins of the old Shawnee village of Chillicothe before a rainstorm forced them to give up the chase; and how they had returned, at Stites’s request, through the country which lay between the Little Miami and the Great Miami Rivers and how fabulously rich the soil and forests and streams were there.

The beauty of it all was that this land was in limbo — the Indians had mostly been driven from it and there was not one settler upon it. Surely the government would sell it to them cheaply, if for no other reason than to get some kind of settlement started in the area and thus open up the country. Until now the settlers had, to a man, been extremely wary of building on the north side of the river; but if they could encourage the government to build a fort across from the Licking similar to the fort that had been built at the mouth of the Muskingum, there was every reason to believe the settlers would flock in. Look, for example, at how they were signing up for land with the Ohio Company which had just established a little land office in the shadow of Fort Harmar. And if there were a few Indian risks involved, wasn’t it worth it? After all, this area between the two rivers bearing the same name was easily a third of a million acres of the richest land in America.

Symmes was admittedly impressed and was inclined to believe that the government could, indeed, be persuaded to sell them the tract, perhaps for as little as a dollar an acre. Naturally, even at such a bargain he wouldn’t be able to buy the whole tract himself, but the success of the Ohio Company intrigued him and others as well; it should not be difficult to find men willing to invest in such an enterprise.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.