The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West

In 1786, a group of veteran officers of the Continental Army met at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern in Boston to develop a plan to settle the Northwest Territory. As part of the Treaty ending the Revolutionary War, the United States acquired “all the lands controlled by the British west of the Allegheny Mountains and northwest of the Ohio River east of the Mississippi” (6-7). The US thus possessed 265,878 square miles of wilderness and doubled its size. This Northwest Territory eventually would become the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. In 1786, there were no non-Indigenous settlements and thus no roads or western-style buildings on this land.

The leading advocate of this group was General Rufus Putnam, a hero of the Revolution. He pushed for the signing of the Newburgh Petition, which promised veterans land bounties in Ohio country. The group planned to form an association or company to buy the government lands in the Northwest Territory and establish the first settlement there. Putnam chaired this Ohio Company, which was also a “venture in land speculation” (12). Winthrop Sargent, a surveyor, was named the Secretary of the Company.