of the Ohio. In 1787 Dr. Manasseh Cutler had negotiated with Congress for the purchase of several millions of acres, including the tract of the "Ohio Company," in the region of Marietta, and that of Judge Symmes in the Miami country. On the 7th of April, 1788, Gen. Rufus Putnam, with forty-seven men, most of whom were Revolutionary soldiers, landed at Marietta; on the 13th of July Governor St. Clair, by proclamation, defined the boundaries of Washington county, the first in territory of the Northwest; "on the 20th of July the Rev. William Breck, a New England man, and one of the Ohio Company, delivered on the banks of the Muskingum the first sermon ever preached to white men in the present State of Ohio"; and on the 2d of September, with religious and civic ceremonies of an imposing character, the first Court of Common Pleas was opened at Marietta. On this occasion Dr. Cutter officiated as chaplain.

As this eminent clergyman and scientist was on his way to the Muskingum in August, 1788, he had met Judge John Cleves Symmes, at Bedford, Pa., on his way with his family and some colonists to the Miami. The advance guard, under Matthias Denman, of New Jersey, reached Cincinnati in December of this year, Symmes himself not getting there until the following February.

While the New Englanders, under the lead of Putnam, attacked the wilderness of the Northwest at Marietta, and the New Jersey colonists, under Symmes, attacked it at Cincinnati, other brigades of colonists were subduing the Genesee country. From 1761 to 1788 the Moravians, on the Muskingum and on the Cuyahoga, were striving to introduce Christian institutions among the savages. While several sales of lands on the Western Reserve were effected by Connecticut as early as 1788, and to the Connecticut Land Company in 1795, the first permanent settlement in Northern Ohio was not effected until 1796. How difficult of access all these regions north of the Ohio were may be inferred from the length of time consumed by the various bands of colonists to Marietta, Cincinnati, and Cleveland. Whittlesey says that "for thirty years before 1788 rude highways had been in existence over the ridges of the Allegheny Mountains, made by Braddock and Forbes, to the forks of the Ohio at Pittsburgh. From thence they could

float onward with the stream"; but in 1798 Edwards and Doane were ninety-two days on their journey from Connecticut to Cleveland. James Kingsbury reached Conneaut in the fall of 1796, by a journey very tedious and even perilous, and such were the straits of his family that during the following winter, the snow being too deep for the oxen, "he was obliged to drag a hand-sled to Erie-thirty miles--and obtaining a bushel of wheat to draw it himself to Conneaut." Atwater says that "Kingsbury and his hired man drew a barrel of beef the whole distance at a single load."*

To reach the new country under the most favorable circumstances during the first twenty-five years after the military colonists landed at Marietta, in 1788, was a tedious and sometimes dangerous undertaking. Dr. Cutter, in the summer of 1788, took about six weeks to travel by sulky and canoe from Massachusetts to Marietta, and the late Mrs. Judge Burnet, as did many other ladies, repeatedly made the journey from New York to Cincinnati on horseback. To reach the great valley in those days was no child's play, and even at a later day, during the existence of the first bank in Chillicothe, so slow were the public conveyances and so bad the roads, that a man. who was offered a large reward to get to Philadelphia in time to stop the payment of a draft fraudulently obtained, preferred to make the journey on foot, and actually did so, obtaining the reward!

According to Judge Law, the French had effected settlements, as trading and military posts, both at Kaskaskia and Vincennes, "as early as the year 1710 or '11-probably the former." (Law's Vincennes, p. 12.) In 1796 Volney found not only the French people at the latter place, but "new settlers from the neighboring States." In 1798 there were twelve families of these new settlers in the place, and in 1799 Col. Henry Vanderburgh, an old army officer, and a citizen of Vincennes, was a member of the Legislative Council, which constituted the upper house of the first Territorial Legislature that met north of the Ohio. The following year the territory of Indiana was organized, including all that now constitutes the States of Indiana, Michigan and Illinois. In 1804 an im

mense portion of the Louisiana purchase west of the Mississippi was added to it. Dillon says the entire Territory in 1800 was estimated to have a civilized population of 4,875. In 1808 this immense region had about 28,000, of whom some 11,000 were within the present State of Indiana. In 1807, according to Dillon, there were in Indiana "2,524 free white males, of twenty-one years and upward." Of these 2,516 were in the south quarter of the State, or south of a line connecting Lawrenceburg and Vincennes.

The General Assembly of Virginia had granted Gen. Geo. Rogers Clarke, and the men who assisted him in the capture of Vincennes and other French posts, 450,000 acres of land, which are chiefly in Clarke County, Indiana, and in 1783 passed an act establishing Clarksville at the Falls of the Ohio, a few miles above New Albany. In 1801 Clarke County was established. In a private letter the indefatigable historian of Indiana, John B. Dillon, states that "the earlier civilized settlements within the original boundaries of Clarke County were, without an exception, founded on the borders of the Ohio river. A few soldiers were stationed at a small fort that was erected at the site of Jeffersonville before the year 1789, and a block-house, which bore the name of Armstrong's Station,' was built in 1795 on the right bank of the Ohio, about seventeen miles above the Falls. Clarksville was a small village in 1808, and in the year 1810 the only villages on the Indiana side of the river, between the Miami and the Wabash, were Lawrenceburg, Madison, Jeffersonville, and Clarksville. Charlestown, in Clarke County, and Corydon in Harrison, were both founded about 1808. Very few of the founders of these villages were from New England. The most of them came from Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina, and a few from Pennsylvania."

In 1791 eight men, bearing the name of Hayes, and two named Miller, settled in the Miami bottom, near Lawrenceburg. In 1796, and again in 1798, other families came to Dearborn County, so that in 1800 the settlements there were quite strong. At Rising Sun, in Ohio County, adjoining Dearborn, we learn from a discourse by the Rev. B. F. Morris, that in 1798 emigrants began to find homes at that pleasant spot on the Ohio. From a remark of Perret Dufour, in his

history of the "Early Times in Switzerland County," it may be inferred that the earliest date of settlement there was 1797, although John James Dufour did not begin at Vevay until 1798.

It is very probable that emigrants had settled at other points on the river than those mentioned before 1808, where Madison was located. The Indiana Gazetteer of 1849 says: "The first settlements of any consequence were made from 1790 to 1800 in the towns along the river, so that the inhabitants, on the first notice of the approach of the Indians, might escape into Kentucky."-(Ind. Gaz., for 1849, p. 192.)

We have the following dates, which belong to this sketch : The first settlement at Vincennes was about 1710 or '11, and American settlers at the same place about 1795 in 1789 there was a small military post at Jeffersonville, and from 1791 to 1800 settlements were made at Lawrenceburg, Rising Sun, Vevay, "Armstrong's Station," and probably at some other points on the Ohio. In 1808 such points as Madison, Corydon, and Charlestown were settled. In 1800 the Territory was organized. The first county-Knox-was organized in 1790, the second-Clarke-1801, Dearborn County in 1802, and Harrison in 1808. "A court of civil and criminal jurisdiction was organized at Vincennes, June, 1779"-the first after the conquest by Clarke, and on the 4th of November, 1790, "the judges of the Superior Court of the Northwest Territory" appointed regular times for holding courts at Vincennes.(Dillon 169-297.) "The first school-teacher in Indiana, of whom we have any account, was M. Rivet, a Romish priest at Vincennes, who opened a school at that place in 1793. The second school was near Charlestown, in Clarke County, in 1803. (Daniel Hough, in Schools of Indiana, pp. 53-4.) And on the 4th of July, 1804, Elihu Stout published at Vincennes The Indiana Gazette, the first newspaper within the present bounds of Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois.-(Law's Vincennes, p. 138.)

It is said that in 1804 the Rev. Peter Cartwright preached the first discourse ever delivered by a Protestant minister in Indiana. In the spring of 1805 the Rev. Thomas Cleland preached the first Presbyterian sermon at Vincennes. So far as we know, this was the first delivered in Indiana.

The Territory of Indiana had been organized six years when the Rev. Samuel B. Robertson formed the first Presbyterian church within the present bounds of this State. This was the "Indiana Church," not far from Vincennes. In 1807 a second church was formed, which did not live long. If this weakling, that long since died, be excepted, the second church formed was at Charlestown in 1812. From this time until the formation of the Synod of Indiana, in the autumn of 1826, the growth of our church was not very rapid, but it was healthy. The new Synod included forty churches, among which may be named that at Washington, 1814, Madison, 1815, Salem, New Albany, Livonia, Blue River and Pisgah, 1816, Bloomington, 1819, Hanover, 1820, Evansville, 1821, Indianapolis, 1823, Crawfordsville, Franklin and Columbia, 1824, and several others. Among the ministers who had preached statedly or occasionally we find the names of Samuel B. Robertson, Samuel T. Scott, Joseph B. Lapsley, John Todd, John M. Dickey, William Robinson, Thomas C. Searle, James McGrady, James H. Johnston, William W. Martin, Daniel C. Banks, James Balch, John F. Crowe, Isaac Reed, Baynard R. Hall, Charles C. Beatty, David C. Proctor, George Bush, Samuel G. Lowry, and quite a large number besides.

Until 1824 the Transylvania Presbytery of Kentucky included Indiana. On the first of April of that year the Presbytery of Salem was formed, the first in Indiana, and was at tached to the Synod of Kentucky. According to the Salem Presbytery Reporter, there were seven ministers in it, and Gillett adds, "most of the churches in the State." In 1825 the original Presbytery was divided into the three Presbyteries of Salem, Madison and Wabash, the aggregate strength of which amounted to fourteen ministers and forty-three churches. (Dickey's Brief History, 21). The Assembly's minutes for 1826 illustrate the weakness of the churches at that time. The eleven churches of Salem Presbytery had a total of 478 communicants; the thirteen churches of Madison Presbytery had 536 communicants; and there was no report from the churches of Wabash Presbytery. From what we know of these churches, we shall do no injustice in saying that the entire membership of all the Presbyterian churches in Indiana did not exceed