| Territory Northwest of the River Ohio | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Organized incorporated territory of United States | |||||||||||
| 1787–1803 | |||||||||||
 Seal | |||||||||||
.svg) Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, 1787 | |||||||||||
| Capital | Marietta (1788–1790) Cincinnati (1790–1799) Chillicothe (1799–1803)[1] | ||||||||||
| Area | |||||||||||
| • Coordinates | 41°N86°W / 41°N 86°W /41; -86 | ||||||||||
| Government | |||||||||||
| • Type | Organized incorporated territory | ||||||||||
| • Motto | Meliorem lapsa locavit "He has planted one better than the one fallen" | ||||||||||
| Governor | |||||||||||
• 1787–1802 | Arthur St. Clair | ||||||||||
• 1802–1803 | Charles Willing Byrd | ||||||||||
| History | |||||||||||
• Northwest Ordinance[2] | 13 July 1787 | ||||||||||
• Affirmed byUnited States Congress | August 7, 1789 | ||||||||||
• Indiana Territory created | May 7, 1800 | ||||||||||
| 1 March 1803 | |||||||||||
| |||||||||||
TheNorthwest Territory, also known as theOld Northwest[a] and formally known as theTerritory Northwest of the River Ohio, was formed from part of the unorganized western territory of the United States after theAmerican Revolution. Established in 1787 by theCongress of the Confederation through theNorthwest Ordinance, it was the nation's first post-colonialorganized incorporated territory.
At the time of its creation, the territory included all the land west ofPennsylvania, northwest of theOhio River and east of theMississippi River below theGreat Lakes, and what later became known as theBoundary Waters. The region was ceded to the United States in theTreaty of Paris of 1783. Throughout theRevolutionary War, the region was part of the BritishProvince of Quebec and thewestern theater of the war. It spanned all or large parts of six eventualU.S. states (Ohio,Indiana,Illinois,Michigan,Wisconsin, and the northeastern part ofMinnesota). Reduced to present-day Ohio, and some additional lands north and east on July 4, 1800, it ceased to exist March 1, 1803, when the southeastern portion of the territory was admitted to theUnion as the state of Ohio, and the remainder attached toIndiana Territory.
Initially, the territory was governed bymartial law under a governor and three judges. As population increased, a legislature was formed as were a succession of counties, eventually totaling thirteen. At the time of its creation, the land within the territory was largely undisturbed by urban development. It was also home to several Native American cultures, including theDelaware,Miami,Potawatomi,Shawnee, and others. There were a handful ofFrench colonial settlements remaining, plusClarksville at the Falls of the Ohio. By the time of the territory's dissolution, there were dozens of towns and settlements, a few with thousands of settlers, chiefly along the Ohio and Miami Rivers and the south shore of Lake Erie in Ohio. Conflicts betweensettlers and Native American inhabitants of the Territory resulted in theNorthwest Indian War culminating in General "Mad"Anthony Wayne's victory atBattle of Fallen Timbers in 1794. The subsequentTreaty of Greenville in 1795 opened the way for settlement particularly in southern and western Ohio.
The Northwest Territory included all the then-owned land of the United States west ofPennsylvania, east of theMississippi River, and northwest of theOhio River. It incorporated most of the formerOhio Country except a portion in western Pennsylvania, and easternIllinois Country. It covered all of the modern states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, as well as the northeastern part of Minnesota.
Lands west of the Mississippi River were theLouisiana Province of New Spain, formerly New France, acquired by the United States in 1803 by theLouisiana Purchase. Lands north of theGreat Lakes were part of the BritishProvince of Upper Canada. Lands south of the Ohio River constitutedKentucky County, Virginia, admitted to the union as the state ofKentucky in 1792. The area included more than 300,000 square miles (780,000 km2) and comprised about 1/3 of the land area of the United States at the time of its creation.
It was inhabited by about 45,000 Native Americans and 4,000 non-native traders, mostly ofFrench Canadian,British orIrish descent. Among the tribes inhabiting the region were theShawnee,Delaware,Miami,Wyandot,Ojibwa,Ottawa andPotawatomi. Notably, the Miami tribal capital along with British trading posts was atKekionga, at the site of present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana. Neutralizing Kekionga became the focus of the Northwest Indian War, the driving events in the early evolution of the territory.
_-_Geographicus_-_WesternTerritory-cary-1805.jpg)
Integration of the Northwest Territory into a political unit, and settlement, depended on three factors: relinquishment by the British, extinguishment of states' claims west of the Appalachians, and usurpation or purchase of lands from the Native Americans. These objectives were accomplished correspondingly by theAmerican Revolutionary War, provisions in theArticles of Confederation, and various treaties preceding theNorthwest Indian War includingTreaty of Fort Stanwix (1784) andTreaty of Fort McIntosh (1785). The treaty process extended well beyond the War and existence of the Territory as a political entity.
European exploration of the region began withFrench-Canadian voyageurs in the 17th century, followed by French missionaries and French fur traders. French-Canadian explorerJean Nicolet was the first recorded European entrant into the region, landing in 1634 at the current site ofGreen Bay, Wisconsin (althoughÉtienne Brûlé is stated by some sources as having exploredLake Superior and possibly inland Wisconsin in 1622). The French exercised control from widely separate posts in the region, which they claimed asNew France; among these was the post atFort Detroit, founded in 1701. France ceded the territory to theKingdom of Great Britain as part of theIndian Reserve in the1763 Treaty of Paris, after being defeated in theFrench and Indian War.
From the 1750s to the peace treaty that ended the War of 1812, the British had a long-standing goal of creating anIndian barrier state, a large Native American state that would cover most of the Old Northwest. It would be independent of the United States and allied with the British, who would use it to blockAmerican westward expansion and to build up their control of theNorth American fur trade headquartered in Montreal.[3]
A new colony, namedCharlotina, was proposed for establishment in the southern Great Lakes region before the events ofPontiac's War, after whichthe Crown issued theProclamation of 1763, which prohibitedwhite colonial settlement west of theAppalachian Mountains. This action angered American colonists interested in expansion, as well as those who had already settled in the area. In 1774, via theQuebec Act, Britain annexed the region to theProvince of Quebec in order to provide a civil government and to centralize British administration of the Montreal-based fur trade. The prohibition of settlement west of the Appalachians remained, contributing to theAmerican Revolution.
In February 1779,George Rogers Clark, leading a force ofVirginia militia,captured Kaskaskia and Vincennes from British commanderHenry Hamilton. Virginia capitalized on Clark's success by laying claim to the whole of the Old Northwest, calling itIllinois County, Virginia,[4] until 1784, when it ceded its land claims to the federal government. Britain officially ceded the area north of the Ohio River and west of the Appalachians to the United States at the end of theAmerican Revolutionary War with theTreaty of Paris (1783), but the British continued to maintain a presence in the region as late as 1815, the end of theWar of 1812.
.png)
Several states (Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut) had competing claims on the territory: Virginia claimed all of the portion that was formerly Illinois Country and Ohio Country; Massachusetts claimed the portion that is now southern Michigan and Wisconsin; Connecticut claimed a narrow strip across the territory just south of the Great Lakes; New York claimed an elastic portion of Iroquois lands between Lake Erie and the Ohio River. The western boundary of Pennsylvania was also ill-defined. Virginia's jurisdiction was limited to a few French settlements at the extreme western edge of the territory. Massachusetts's and Connecticut's claims were effectively lines on paper. New York had no colonial settlements or territorial government in the claimed lands.
The western border of Pennsylvania, previously assumed to run in a north by northeast zigzag, was resolved in 1780 by the Continental Congress. The Mason–Dixon line was extended westward to a point five degrees of longitude (about 260 miles) from the Delaware River and the western boundary extended to run due north from the westernmost extent of the Mason–Dixon line to the 43rd parallel. This incorporated the eastern part of Ohio Country as western Pennsylvania, and set the eastern boundary of federal lands.
"Unlanded" states, such as Maryland, refused to ratify theArticles of Confederation so long as these states were allowed to keep their western territory, fearing that those states could continue to grow and tip the balance of power in their favor under the proposed system of federal government. As a concession to obtain ratification, these states ceded their claims on the territory to the federal government: New York in 1780, Virginia in 1784, and Massachusetts and Connecticut in 1785. So the majority of the territory became public land owned by the U.S. government. Virginia and Connecticut reserved two areas to use as compensation to military veterans: theVirginia Military District[5] and theConnecticut Western Reserve[6]
Thomas Jefferson'sLand Ordinance of 1784 was the first organization of the territory by the United States; it provided a process for dividing the territory into individual states. TheLand Ordinance of 1785 established astandardized system for surveying the land into saleable lots, although Ohio was partially surveyed several times using different methods, resulting in a patchwork of land surveys in Ohio. Some older French communities' property claims based on earlier systems of long, narrow lots also were retained. The rest of the Northwest Territory was divided into roughly uniform square townships and sections, which facilitated land sales and development. The ordinance also stipulated that the territory would eventually form three to five new states.[7]
.jpg)
Under theNorthwest Ordinance of 1787, which created the Northwest Territory, General St. Clair was appointed governor. When the territory was divided in 1800, he briefly served as governor of the Northwest Territory remnant that included Ohio, the eastern half of Michigan, and a sliver of southeastern Indiana called "The Gore".
St. Clair formally established the government on July 15, 1788, atMarietta. In 1790, he renamed the settlement of LosantivilleCincinnati, after theSociety of the Cincinnati, and moved the administrative and military center toFort Washington.
As Governor, he formulated theMaxwell's Code (named after its printer,William Maxwell), the first written criminal and civil laws of the territory. Maxwell's Code consisted of thirty-seven different laws with the stipulation that the laws had to have been passed previously in one of the original thirteen states. The laws restructured the court system then in effect in the Northwest Territory. They also protected residents against excessive taxes and declared that English common law would be the basis of legal decisions and laws in the Northwest Territory.
The young United States government, deeply in debt following the Revolutionary War and lacking authority to tax under theArticles of Confederation, planned to raise revenue from the methodical sale of land in the Northwest Territory. This plan necessarily called for the removal of both Native American villages and squatters from lands west of Appalachia, loosely, the territory called "Ohio Country" and beyond.[8] Resistance from indigenous tribes, who were supported by the continued British presence in the Northwest Territory, presented a continuing obstacle for American expansion.
The area making up theOhio Country had been contested for over a century, beginning with the 17th-centuryBeaver Wars. TheWestern Confederacy, orWestern Indian Confederacy, was a looseconfederacy ofNative Americans in theGreat Lakes region of theUnited States created following theAmerican Revolutionary War. Congress passed theProclamation of 1783, which recognized Native American rights to the land. A council held in 1785 atFort Detroit declared that the confederacy would deal jointly with the United States, forbade individual tribes from dealing directly with the United States, and declared the Ohio River as the boundary between their lands and those of the American settlers.[9]
The Northwest Territory's first governor,Arthur St. Clair, sought to end Native American claims to Ohio land and thus clear the way for white settlement. In 1789, he succeeded in getting certain Native Americans to sign theTreaty of Fort Harmar, but many native leaders had not been invited to participate in the negotiations or had refused to do so. Rather than settling the Native Americans' claims, the treaty provoked an escalation of the "Northwest Indian War" (or "Little Turtle's War"). Mutual hostilities led to a campaign by GeneralJosiah Harmar, whose 1,500 militiamen weredefeated by the Native Americans in October 1790.[10]
A group ofsquatters had moved up to the area near present-dayStockport now inMorgan County, Ohio and settled alongflood plain, or "bottom" land, of theMuskingum River, some 30 miles north of anOhio Company of Associates settlement atMarietta, Ohio. TheBig Bottom massacre occurred on January 2, 1791.Lenape andWyandot warriors stormed the incompleteblockhouse and killed eleven men, one woman, and two children. (Accounts vary as to the number of casualties.)Rufus Putnam wrote to President Washington that "we shall be so reduced and discouraged as to give up the settlement [Marietta following the Big Bottom disaster]."[11]
In March 1791, St. Clair succeeded Harmar as commander of theUnited States Army and was commissioned as a major general. He led apunitive expedition involving two Regular Army regiments and some militia. In October 1791 as an advance post for his campaign,Fort Jefferson (Ohio), was built under his direction. Located in present-dayDarke County in far western Ohio, the fort was built of wood and intended primarily as a supply depot; accordingly, it was originally named Fort Deposit. One month later, near modern-dayFort Recovery, his force advanced to the location of Native American settlements near the headwaters of theWabash River.[12][13][14]
On November 4 they were routed in battle by a tribal confederation led byMiami ChiefLittle Turtle and Shawnee chiefBlue Jacket. More than 600 soldiers and scores of women and children were killed in the battle, known as "St. Clair's Defeat" and many other names. It remains the greatest defeat of a US army by Native Americans in history. About 623 American soldiers were killed in action, and about 50 Native Americans were killed. Although an investigation exonerated him, St. Clair resigned his army commission in March 1792 at the request of President Washington, but continued to serve as Governor of the Northwest Territory.[12][13][14]
 | This sectionis missing information about failed peace negotiations at Councils on the Auglaize fall 1792 & spring 1793. Please expand the section to include this information. Further details may exist on thetalk page.(January 2019) |
After St. Clair's defeat, In June 1792, President Washington tapped revolutionary war hero Major General "Mad" Anthony Wayne to avenge St. Clair and assert sovereignty over the western frontier. Wayne was commissioned to form a new army of 5120 professional soldiers, dubbed the "Legion of the United States". Wayne recruited and trained his army in Pennsylvania, and moved them to southwestern Ohio in fall of 1793.
There they were joined by the Kentucky Militia under Major GeneralCharles Scott. Over the next ten months, the armies marched north up the Great Miami and Maumee River valleys toward the Miami capital of Kekionga. Along the way Wayne's legion built a series of outpost forts including Fort Greene Ville, Fort Recovery and Fort Defiance. Fierce battles occurred around some of these but none of Wayne's forts were ever taken by the Native Americans.
| This sectionis missing information about siege of Fort Recovery summer 1794. Please expand the section to include this information. Further details may exist on thetalk page.(January 2019) |
In mid 1794, the British constructedFort Miamis near what is today Toledo, Ohio, to forestall Wayne's putative advance on the British stronghold at Detroit. The final battle of Wayne's campaign occurred within the scope of this fort. The military campaign of Gen. Wayne against the Western Confederacy, who were supported by a company of troops from Lower Canada, culminated with victory at theBattle of Fallen Timbers in 1794. Following the battle, in fall 1794, Wayne's army marched unopposed to Kekionga where they constructed Fort Wayne, a defiant symbol of U.S. sovereignty in the heart of Native American Country.
Jay's Treaty, in 1794, temporarily helped to smooth relations with British traders in the region, where British subjects outnumbered Americans throughout the 1790s. The following year, theTreaty of Greenville secured peace on the western frontier and opened most of southern and eastern Ohio for American settlement.
| Year | Pop. | ±% |
|---|---|---|
| 1792 | 7,920 | — |
| 1800 | 45,365 | +472.8% |
| Source: 1792;[15] 1800 (includes onlyOhio andWayne County, Michigan)[16][17][18][19] | ||
Sporadic westward emigrant settlements had already resumed late in the war[which?] after theIroquois Confederacy's power was broken and the tribes scattered by the 1779Sullivan Expedition. Soon after the Revolution ended, land-hungry migrants started moving west. A gateway trading post developed as the town ofBrownsville, Pennsylvania, which was a key outfitting center west of the mountains. Other wagon roads, such as theKittanning Path surmounting thegaps of the Allegheny in central Pennsylvania, or trails along theMohawk River in New York, enabled a steady stream of settlers to reach the near west and the lands bordering the Mississippi.[b]
This activity stimulated the development of the eastern parts of the eventualNational Road by private investors. TheCumberland–Brownsville toll road linked the water routes of thePotomac River with theMonongahela River of the Ohio/Mississippi riverine systems in the days when water travel was the only good alternative to walking and riding. Most of the territory and its successors was settled by emigrants passing through theCumberland Narrows, or along theMohawk Valley in New York State.
The Continental Congress' title to the lands north of the Ohio River was derived from the Treaty of Paris (1783), the Treaty of Fort McIntosh, and the cessions of four states. Settlement was through several means: squatters, direct U.S. government land sales to settlers, sales of tracts of land to land companies, and state sales of land to veterans in the Virginia Military District and Connecticut Western Reserve. The first area to be surveyed was theSeven Ranges along the eastern border of Ohio in 1786–1789. Direct sales of federal lands to individual homesteaders started here. In some cases, the government granted or donated land for special purposes.
Settlement followed the forts, whether garrisoned or not. Lack of a garrison meant that threat of Native American attack had become negligible. This was true everywhere in Ohio before 1800 except the northwest sector above the Greenville Treaty line. It became true in Indiana after the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811; by 1813 Battle of the Thames where Tecumseh was defeated and killed, the frontier had essentially moved to west of the Mississippi. The first U.S. military garrisons in the territory were Fort Patrick Henry, Vincennes, Indiana (1779), Fort Clark at Falls of the Ohio, Indiana (1783), and Fort Harmar in Ohio (1785). The first settlements were at these locations.
Thefirst land grant was to George Rogers Clark in 1781 at Falls of the Ohio on the Indiana side; he went on to found the settlement of Clarksville. The first two land purchases were large tracts of land sold to John Symmes (Symmes Purchase) in 1788 and two tracts sold to Ohio Company in 1787 and 1792 (Purchase on the Muskingum). Settlement of these areas was spearheaded by Losantiville and Marietta, respectively. In 1792, Congressdonated 100,000 acres to Ohio Company as a buffer zone against Native American incursion around the settled area. The vexing land claims by inhabitants of the old French Vincennes Tract were resolved by what was dubbed the 'Vincennes donation lands' embodied in a federal land act of 1791. Federal land sales in Indiana (then a part of Indiana Territory starting in 1800) began in 1801, through the Cincinnati land office.
After the Revolutionary War ended,Rufus Putnam (the "Father of Ohio") andManasseh Cutler were instrumental in creating theNorthwest Ordinance,[20] which opened up the Northwest Territory for settlement. This land was used to serve as compensation for what was owed to Revolutionary War veterans. It was at Putnam's recommendation that the land was surveyed and laid out in townships of six miles square. He organized and led the first group of veterans to the territory. They settled atMarietta, Ohio, where they built a large fort calledCampus Martius.[21][22][23]
Putnam and Cutler insisted the Northwest Territory be a free territory, with no slavery. The Northwest Territory doubled the size of the United States, and establishing it as free of slavery proved to be of tremendous importance in the following decades. It encompassed what became Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and part of Minnesota.
Putnam, in the Puritan tradition, was influential in establishing education in the Northwest Territory. Substantial amounts of land were set aside for schools. Putnam had been one of the primary benefactors in the founding ofLeicester Academy in Massachusetts, and similarly, in 1798, he created the plan for the construction of the Muskingum Academy (nowMarietta College) in Ohio. In 1780, the directors of the Ohio Company appointed him superintendent of all its affairs relating to settlement north of the Ohio River. In 1796, he was commissioned by President George Washington as Surveyor-General of United States Lands. In 1788, he served as a judge in the Northwest Territory's first court. In 1802, he served in the convention to form a constitution for the State of Ohio.[24][25][26]
In the1800 United States census, following the passage of anorganic act by the6th U.S. Congress creating theIndiana Territory in 1800, seven counties in the Northwest Territory reported the following population counts:[16][17][18][19]
| Rank | County | Population |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hamilton | 14,692 |
| 2 | Jefferson | 8,766 |
| 3 | Ross | 8,540 |
| 4 | Washington | 5,427 |
| 5 | Adams | 3,432 |
| 6 | Wayne | 3,206 |
| 7 | Trumbull | 1,302 |
| Northwest Territory | 45,365 |
According to the 1800 Census of the United States, the Northwest Territory (i.e. the pending state of Ohio) had a population, excluding Native Americans, of over 45,000, and Indiana Territory, a population of about 5,600. By the time of Ohio statehood, there were as many as 50 named towns in Northwest and Indiana Territories, a few, like Vincennes, with thousands of settlers, and dozens of unnamed settlements below the Treaty Line in Ohio.
Following settlement of the frontier, the great wave of colonial immigration flowed westward, founding the great cities of the eventual 6 states of the Territory which is now the midwestern United States early in the 19th century: Detroit (<1800), Cleveland (1796), Columbus (1812), Indianapolis (1822), Chicago (1833), Milwaukee (1846), Minneapolis (1847).
AFederalist, St. Clair hoped to see two states made of the old Ohio Country to increase Federalist power inCongress.[citation needed] He was resented by Ohio Democratic-Republicans for his apparent partisanship, high-handedness and arrogance in office. In 1802, his opposition to plans for Ohio statehood led PresidentThomas Jefferson to remove him from office as territorial governor. He thus played no part in the organizing of the state ofOhio in 1803. The firstOhio Constitution provided for a weak governor and a stronglegislature, in part a reaction to St. Clair's method of governance.
In preparation for Ohio's statehood, Congress split the Northwest Territory into two sections in 1800. A new territory,Indiana Territory, encompassed all land west of the present Indiana–Ohio border and its northward extension toLake Superior, except for a wedge-shaped area of present-day Indiana in the southeast known as "the gore". It, along with everything east of the new territory, remained part of the Northwest Territory.[28]
This legislation was signed into law by PresidentJohn Adams on May 7, 1800, and became effective on July 4. On April 30, 1802, Congress passed anenabling act for Ohio that authorized the residents of the eastern portion of the Northwest Territory to form a state constitution and government, and be admitted to the Union.[29] When Ohio was admitted as the17th state on March 1, 1803, the land not included in the new state, including the gore, became part of Indiana Territory, and the Northwest Territory went out of existence.[28]
Ongoing disputes with the British over the region were a contributing factor to theWar of 1812. Britain irrevocably ceded claim to the former Northwest Territory with theTreaty of Ghent in 1814.
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 established the Northwest Territory, and defined its boundaries, form of government, and administrative structure. In particular, it defined the bodies of government, established the legal basis of land ownership, provided for abolition and transfer of state territorial claims, made rules for admission of new states, established public education, recognized and codified 'natural rights', prohibited slavery, and defined the land rights and applicability of laws to the Native Americans.
At first, theterritory had a modified form ofmartial law. The governor was also the senior armyofficer within the territory, and he combinedlegislative andexecutive authority. But asupreme court was established, and he shared legislative powers with thecourt. County governments were organized as soon as the population was sufficient, and these assumed localadministrative andjudicial functions.Washington County was the first of these, atMarietta in 1788. This was an important event, as this court was the first establishment of civil and criminal law in the pioneer country.
As soon as the number of free malesettlers exceeded 5,000, the territorial legislature was to be created, and this happened in 1798. The full mechanisms of government were put in place, as outlined in theNorthwest Ordinance. Abicameral legislature consisted of aHouse of Representatives and a Council. The first House had 22representatives, apportioned by population of each county.[30] The House then nominated 10 citizens to be Council members. The nominations were sent to the U.S. Congress, which appointed five of them as the council. This assembly became the legislature of the Territory, although the governor retained veto power.
Article VI of the Articles of Compact within the Northwest Ordinance prohibited the owning ofslaves within the Northwest Territory. Territorial governments evaded this law by use of indenture laws.[31] The Articles of Compact prohibited legal discrimination on the basis of religion within the territory.
Thetownship formula created byThomas Jefferson was first implemented in the Northwest Territory through theLand Ordinance of 1785. The square surveys of the Northwest Territory became a hallmark ofthe Midwest, assections, townships, counties (and states) were laid out scientifically, and land was sold quickly and efficiently (although not without some speculative aberrations).
Arthur St. Clair was the territory's governor until November 1802, when PresidentThomas Jefferson removed him from office and appointedCharles Willing Byrd, who served the position until Ohio became a state and elected its first governor,Edward Tiffin, on March 3, 1803.[32] The Supreme Court consisted of (1)John Cleves Symmes; (2)James Mitchell Varnum, who died in 1789, replaced byGeorge Turner, who resigned in 1796, and was replaced byReturn Jonathan Meigs Jr.; and (3)Samuel Holden Parsons, who died in 1789, replaced byRufus Putnam, who resigned 1796, and was replaced byJoseph Gilman.[33] There were three secretaries:Winthrop Sargent (July 9, 1788 – May 31, 1798);William Henry Harrison (June 29, 1798 – December 31, 1799); andCharles Willing Byrd (January 1, 1800 – March 1, 1803).
The territory's firstcommon pleas court opened at Marietta on September 2, 1788. Its first judges were GeneralRufus Putnam, GeneralBenjamin Tupper, and Colonel Archibald Crary.Ebenezer Sproat was the first sheriff, Paul Fearing became the first attorney to practice in the territory, and ColonelWilliam Stacy was foreman of the first grand jury.[34]Griffin Greene was appointed justice of the peace.
Once the population of free men living within the territory rose to 5000, the federal government allowed residents to elect a legislature. The legislature, or General Assembly, consisted of two houses, a Legislative Council (five members chosen by Congress) and a House of Representatives consisting of 22 members elected by the malefreeholders in nine counties. The first session of the legislature was held in September 1799. Its first important task was to select a non-votingdelegate to the U.S. Congress. Locked in a power struggle with Governor St. Clair, the legislature narrowly elected William Henry Harrison as the first delegate over the governor's son, Arthur St. Clair Jr. Subsequent congressional delegates wereWilliam McMillan (1800–1801) andPaul Fearing (1801–1803).
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 established the concept offee simple ownership, by which ownership was in perpetuity with unlimited power to sell or give it away.
The Northwest Ordinance was the first act of its kind in that it prohibited slavery throughout a U.S. territory. This act was less controversial than it may have seemed at the time, practically a rework of an earlier 1784 act that proposed gradual reduction of slavery throughout the territories. Both of these proposed acts were supported by a variety of influential members of congress includingThomas Jefferson in the hope that slavery would fade as the nation grew.
In regard to theDelaware (Lenape) Native Americans living in the region, Congress decided, on July 27, 1787, that 10,000 acres on theMuskingum River in the present state of Ohio would "be set apart and the property thereof be vested in theMoravian Brethren ... or a society of the said Brethren for civilizing the Native Americans and promoting Christianity."[35]
TheNorthwest Ordinance called for a public university for the education, settlement and eventual statehood of thefrontier of Ohio and beyond. Article 3 stated, "Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." TheLand Ordinance of 1785 created an innovation in public education when it reserved resources for local public schools. The ordinance divided the territory into 36 mile2 townships, and each township was further divided into 36 one mile2 tracts for purposes of sale. The ordinance then stated that "there shall be reserved from sale the lot No. 16 of every township for the maintenance of public schools within the said township."[36]
In 1801,Jefferson Academy was established inVincennes. As Vincennes University, it remains the oldest public institution of higher learning in the Northwest Territory.
The next year, American Western University was founded inAthens, Ohio, upstream of theHocking River, due to its location directly betweenChillicothe (an original capital of Ohio) andMarietta. It was formally established on February 18, 1804, asOhio University.[37]
Forts, garrisons and settlements established in the territory northwest of the River Ohio between 1778 and 1803 (excluding those established inIndiana Territory after 1800). They are listed by present-day location and year established or of U.S. possession. Most forts were military garrisons only. General Anthony Wayne, during his Ohio Country campaign 1792–1795, built or rebuilt 10 such forts: forts (in order by date) Lafayette,[38] Greene Ville, Recovery, Adams, Defiance, Deposit, Wayne, Loramie, Piqua, and St. Mary's. Early settlements were outside or nearby forts: Clarksville, Vincennes, Kaskaskia (French), Losantiville, and the Ohio Company settlements at Marietta and Waterford/Beverly. Later, after the Treaty of Greenville, settlements no longer needed to be spearheaded by forts, and sprang up quickly below the Treaty Line.
Thirteen counties were formed by GovernorArthur St. Clair during the territory's existence:
Knox, Randolph and St. Clair counties were separated from the territory effective July 4, 1800, and, along with the western part of Wayne County, and unorganized lands in what are now Minnesota and Wisconsin, became theIndiana Territory.
The Northwest Territory ceased to exist upon Ohio statehood on March 1, 1803; the lands in Ohio that were previously part of Wayne County but not included in Trumbull County reverted to an unorganized status until new counties could be formed. The remainder of Wayne County, roughly the eastern half of theLower Peninsula of Michigan and the eastern tip of theUpper Peninsula, was attached to Indiana Territory. A sliver of Hamilton County along the southwestern border (the Greenville Treaty line) comprising a portion of the Whitewater River drainage basin and known as "The Gore" was also ceded to Indiana Territory.
| Six-mile rectangular system surveys |
|  |
|---|---|---|
| Five-mile rectangular system surveys | ||
| Indiscriminate surveys | ||
| Metes and bounds survey | ||
| Land grants | ||
| Other | ||
Images from Commons | ||
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
.svg)
