"The Pioneers" by David McCullough - An Excellent Saga of the Settling of the Northwest Territory across the Ohio River

I have come to appreciate David McCullough's unique gift at making various periods of American history come to life. In his latest work,  "The Pioneers," the historian focuses his attention on the little town of Marietta, Ohio as the first settlement in the territory opened up by Congress passing the Northwest Ordinance in 1787. Part of my enjoyment of this book can be attributed to the fact that I found a number of points of personal connection. The settling of Marietta by a group of New Englanders was engineered by the team of Manasseh Cutler and General Rufus Putnam. Cutler was a minister living in Ipswich, Massachusetts, just down the road from where I grew up in Newburyport. Putnam had served under George Washington in the Revolutionary War. His headquarters were situated on Inman Street in Cambridgeport, across the street from where I lived for several years.

The New England residents who saw an opportunity to establish a new and prosperous life on the bank of the Ohio displayed remarkable courage and perseverance, clawing a lasting settlement out of the heavily forested wilderness across the Ohio River from Virginia. Marietta was established at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum Rivers, downstream from Pittsburgh.

The reader sees the settling of the Northwest Territory through the lens of the lives of several key families: the Cutlers, the Putnams, the Bakers, the Hildreths. We also experience developments in the life of the young nation as seen through the eyes of the denizens of Marietta. Among these larger issues were the wars with the Indians, the War of 1812, the British Embargo, the fight to keep slavery from encroaching on the new states, the Underground Railroad, the fight for free public education, and the impact of steamboats to open up the inland rivers to commerce and navigation. We also get to experience visits to Marietta from several notable figures in American history: Aaron Burr, General Lafayette, John Quincy Adams among them.

This aspect of the history of the westward expansion of our nation was something I had not been very familiar with. McCullough's account of the establishment of Marietta and the towns and cities that followed gave me a deeper appreciation of the the vision and tenacity of those who left New England to establish a new City On a Hill to replicate what had been created in Boston.

Enjoy!

Al