This well justified the assertion of Washington that "no colony in America was ever settled under such favorable auspices as that which has just commenced at the Muskingum. Information, property and strength will be its characteristics. I know many of the settlers personally, and there never were men better calculated to promote the welfare of such a community."

On the second of July, 1788, the village was publicly christened Marietta, after the unfortunate French Queen, Marie Antoinette, it having before that borne the name of Adelphia. On the fourth, a celebration of the anniversary of independence was held, Judge Varnum delivering the oration, and on the ninth, General Arthur St. Clair, who had been appointed Governor, arrived. The first law regulating the militia was published, and on the twenty-sixth the Governor issued a proclamation creating all the country which had been ceded by the Indians east of the Scioto into the county of Washington. On the second of September, 1788, the first Court was opened with appropriate ceremonies. The description, as given by the historian, is one worthy of the pencil of the greatest of painters, and I well remember when, as a boy, I first read it, the enthusiastic feelings it raised in me. Never was a court established with a more becoming sense of the great importance of that tribunal, which should ever sit as the representative of God dispensing justice on earth. I love still to read that description, and fancy myself one of the interested spectators.

The procession was formed at the Point, where most of the settlers resided, in the following order:

1. The High Sheriff (Colonel Ebenezer Sproat) with drawn sword. He is described as a man of uncommonly tall, portly person and commanding figure, who at once attracted the attention of the Indians, who styled him the Big Buckeye. He had been conspicuous in the battles of Trenton, Princeton, Monmouth and many others in the Revolutionary war. He was a man of bold and dauntless courage, and bore that sword of Sheriff for fourteen years.

2. The citizens! What a grand company of citizens! Generals and colonels, majors, captains, inferior officers, and private soldiers who had passed through the bloody fires of the Revolu

tion, now marching in the quiet garbs of citizens to enthrone a court of justice, which should in peace be the arbiter of all their rights of life, person and property.

3. Officers of the garrison of Fort Harmar, composed of the same class of men, but yet in the military service to protect the colony.

4. Members of the bar, now transferred from the fierce arena of war to the calm contention of mind with mind.

5. The Supreme Judges, General Samuel H. Parsons and General James M. Varnum, both distinguished officers of the Revolutionary army, and eminent lawyers and statesmen.

6. The Governor, General Arthur St. Clair, distinguished also in the same war and as President of the Continental Congress.

7. The newly-appointed Judges of the Court of Common Pleas, Generals Rufus Putnam and Benjamin Tupper, both also distinguished in that war, and also as the fathers of the new colony and its most active promoters. This august procession marched up a path that had been cut and cleared through the forest to Campus Martius (the stockade), when the whole countermarched and the Judges took their seats. Rev. Dr. Manasseh Cutler, one of the most eminent clergymen of the time, a chaplain in the Revolutionary army, a member of Congress afterward, and one of the most active and intelligent in forming the Ohio Company, then invoked the Divine blessing, and the sheriff solemnly proclaimed that a Court is now open for the administration of even-handed justice to the poor and rich, to the guilty and the innocent, without respect of persons; none to be punished without a trial by their peers, and then in pursuance of the law and evidence in the case. As witnesses to this spectacle was a large body of Indians from the most powerful tribes in the entire West, who had assembled for the purpose of making a treaty. The court of justice of the State then so solemnly opened has, in all these hundred years, never been closed; but is still open to all classes who seek redress for wrongs. The Territorial government, having been now established, with General St. Clair, Governor; Winthrop Sargent, Secretary; Samuel H. Parsons, John C. Symmes (in place of

John Armstrong, resigned), and James M. Varnum began the duty of legislating for the Territory, and continued in session until December, enacting a number of laws, which, however, were not approved by Congress, on the ground that the Governor and Judges had authority only to adopt existing laws from the codes of the original States, but not to enact laws of their own formation. On July 2, 1788, Congress was informed officially that a sufficient number of States had ratified the new constitution of the United States, and measures were taken to put it in force.

On January 9, 1789, at Fort Harmar, a treaty of peace was made with the Indian tribes. With the Iroquois, confirming the previous one at Fort Stanwix in 1784; another with the Wyandottes, Delawares, Ottawas, Chippewas, Pottawattamies, and Sacs, confirming and extending the treaty of Fort McIntosh of January, 1785

The first Congress under the new Constitution of the United States assembled at Federal Hall, Wall street, New York, in April, 1789, and installed George Washington as the first President of the United States, and one of its first official acts was to confirm the treaty made at Fort Harmar.

The terms of Territorial officers having expired on the adoption of the new Constitution, President Washington appointed General St. Clair, Governor; Winthrop Sargent, Secretary; Samuel H. Parsons, John Cleves Symmes, and William Barton, Judges of the General Court. William Barton declined, and George Turner was appointed in his stead. Judge Parsons died shortly after, and General Rufus Putnam was appointed in his place.

While affairs were thus progressing at Marietta, active steps were being taken in the Miami Purchase. On the 24th of December, 1788, Israel Ludlow, Matthias Denman, Robert Patterson, Joel Williams and twenty-three other men left Limestone, and on the 28th of December, amid floating ice that filled the Ohio from shore to shore, landed at Losantiville, now Cincinnati. This party proceeded at once to lay out, survey and make a plat of the new town. By the close of the year eleven families and twenty-four unmarried men were residents. On the 9th of August Captain Strong, with Lieutenant Kingsbury and Ensign

Hartshorn and a company of seventy men left Marietta, and on the 11th Captain Ferguson and Major Doughty followed, for the purpose of clearing ground and laying out a new fort for the protection of the settlers in Symmes' Purchase. After reconnoitering for three days from the Little to the Big Miami for an eligible site, he at length fixed on that opposite the mouth of the Licking river, which he represented as high and healthy, abounding with never-failing springs, and the most proper position he could find. On the 26th of September, 1789, he began the building of Fort Washington, in Cincinnati, on the square bounded by Third and Fourth and Broadway and Ludlow streets, on a reservation of fifteen acres made by the government. On the 24th of December, 1789, General Harmar left Fort Harmar with a small fleet of boats and three hundred men, and on the 28th landed at, and took command of, Fort Washington. Major Doughty returned to the command of Fort Harmar, and thenceforth for a number of years Fort Washington was the headquarters of the United States army in the West.

In this settlement, as well as at Marietta, was felt the necessity of religious services and educational privileges. On the twenty-fourth of January, 1790, the Baptist Church was organized at Columbia, with Rev. Stephen Gano as pastor, and shortly after an academy, with John Reilly as teacher; and in 1791 Rev. James Kemper was installed as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church at Cincinnati, and a church erected in 1792, on the corner of Fourth and Main, where the present church stands, and on the same lot the Cincinnati College building.

On the second of January, 1790, Governor St. Clair arrived at Cincinnati and organized the County of Hamilton, and changed the name of the town from Losantiville to Cincinnati, after that of the society organized by the officers of the Revolutionary army, of which he was a prominent member. William Goforth, William Wells, and William McMillan were appointed Judges of the Court of Common Pleas, I. Brown Sheriff, and Israel Ludlow Prothonotary or Clerk, and officers of the militia were appointed. As at Marietta, before Governor St. Clair arrived, the people had been governed by laws of their own making, with Israel Ludlow appointed by them as Sheriff to execute them.