Here it seems proper to digress for a moment as to the Scioto Company—or more particularly to discuss the fact that in those days not all public men were heroes, and some were not even honest. Then, as now, the forward-looking forces of progress had to contend with selfishness, politics, chicanery and downright dishonesty.
It has been before pointed out that when Cutler was negotiating with Congress for purchase of Ohio Company lands, a group had approached him with a proposal to make another purchase at the same time for another company, and that he used this larger purchase to secure passage of the Ordinance of 1787. This other company was the Scioto Company, whose membership is not known beyond a small group. Its negotiations with the Ohio Company were carried on by one man, a public official. Cutler and Putnam did not permit the Ohio Company of Associates to become entangled with this other company—beyond the fact that the two purchases were to be made at the same time.
The Scioto Company was to purchase some 3,500,000 acres in the valley of the Scioto River. They sent Joel Barlow, a fair poet perhaps, but of questionable business sagacity, to France to dispose of these lands to fear-worn French. Barlow employed one William Playfair to sell the lands, and it was in the booklet the latter prepared that the fantastic statements as to candles, custard, etc., appeared. The sale was highly successful. Middle-class French in such jeopardy between the revolutionists and the aristocracy, hastened to emigrate to the new land of dreams. What became of the moneys they paid for their new homes has never been proved. Someone absconded and when they landed at Alexandria, Virginia, they learned that the Scioto Company had never acquired title to the lands sold to them.
One interesting incident of this skullduggery is worth mention. Among the French settlers was François D’Hebecourt, a close boyhood friend of Napoleon Bonaparte. Bonaparte had originally considered joining the party, but remained behind to follow if his friend’s reports substantiated the claims made. In case the new country did come up to expectations, he was to follow D’Hebecourt, and establish a new empire somewhere in western America. Of course, D’Hebecourt’s reports of the villainy of the Scioto Company, the hovels they found for homes and the ensuing famine which the French settlers endured changed Bonaparte’s intentions, and he remained in France to leave his mark later on all Europe.