Thus, eighty-one years after the first cession to the United States of Indian lands in the Northwest Territory, territorial acquisition was complete.
It is not fair to leave consideration of growth of settlements without some mention of its religious aspect, particularly in view of the portentous clauses of the ordinance, “Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government” and “no person, demeaning himself in a peaceable and orderly manner, shall ever be molested on account of his mode of worship.” It is impossible even to estimate the influence of the French-Catholic missionaries upon the Indians and later white settlers. Nor can we evaluate the effect of the early Moravian effort to christianize the Indians in Ohio.
As soon as the Ohio Company settlers built their cabins, they provided educational opportunities for their children. Aside from the Moravian mission school for Indians at Schoenbrunn in 1773, the first school in Ohio was opened for the small children at Belpre in the summer of 1789. On the hill above Farmers’ Castle lived Colonel Israel Putnam, who brought to Belpre many books that had belonged to his father, General Israel Putnam. With these books as a nucleus, the Belpre residents formed a library owned by a joint stock company with shares at ten dollars each. It was variously called the Putnam Library, the Belpre Library, and the Belpre Farmers’ Library. It was the first American circulating library in the Northwest Territory.
A school was conducted at Marietta during the winter of 1788 by Tupper in the northwest blockhouse of Campus Martius. Teachers were employed regularly every year thereafter in Campus Martius and “The Point.” On July 16, 1790, the Ohio Company made its first appropriation of $150.00 for the support of schools. According to the contract of the Ohio Company with Congress, two townships near the center of the purchase were to be given by the national government for a university. Under this provision Ohio University was established at Athens in 1808 as the first state university in the world under democratic government.
EVOLUTION OF THE STATES OF NORTHWEST TERRITORY
Adapted from R. G. Thwaites: see Wisconsin State Historical Society _Collections_ (Madison, Wis.) XI (1888), 451-496.