The following article was forwarded by Pam Hall. It includes the name of a number of early settlers in Franklin County that removed to Ohio. General Rufus Putnam, of Rutland, Worcester county, Massachusetts, who was one of the first organizers of this soldier movement, became a leader of a party of forty-eight men, his old comrades in arms, mainly from Worcester and Middlesex counties, and left Massachusetts, December 1, 1787, landing at Marietta, April 7, 1788. This was the earliest settlement in Ohio. George Smith, also of Rutland, the father of Orsamus Smith, and a comrade in the army with General Putnam, while a shareholder and promoter of the enterprise, did not accompany the expedition, having just married, in 1787, Molly Bent, the daughter of Captain Silas Bent and sister of Captain Silas Bent, Jr. The younger Bent accompanied the first party to Marietta. Silas Bent, SR., was born at Sudbury, Massachusetts, in 1744; was educated at Cambridge, Massachusetts; and married Miss Mary Carter. He died at Belpre, Ohio, April 4, 1818; she, at the same place, June 10, 1831, aged eighty-five years. Captain Silas Bent, Jr., went from Marietta to Missouri in 1806 as Assistant Surveyor General; was afterward appointed Presiding Supreme Judge of Missouri Territory: died at St. Louis in 1827. His son, Charles Bent, was the first Civil Governor of New Mexico, and was with his cabinet assassinated in the insurrection of Taos in 1847. Several other members of the same family distinguished themselves in the Mexican and Indian border warfare as well as the political history of the West. During the earlier years of the Marietta settlement the settlers lived in a fort, built on the site of an ancient city and fort of the mound-builders, and suffered much from Indians, not less than thirty of their number being killed by the savages. Eight years after the settlement of Marietta, there landed, July 4, 1796, at the mouth of Conneaut creek, in the northeast corner of Ohio, a band of pilgrims under the leadership of Major Moses Cleveland. There were fifty souls, among them two women and one young boy. This boy was the son of Elijah Gunn and one of the women Mr. Gunn's wife. Elijah Gunn was the son of Lieutenant Nathaniel Gunn, who had served in the Revolutionary war, as also had his six sons: Nathaniel, Stephen, Elijah, Elisha, Elihu, and Moses. The Gunn family had for generations lived in the towns of Montague, Massachusetts, and Granby, Connecticut. The daughters of Nathaniel Gunn were: Dorothy, Submit, Jemima and Mercy. Mercy was the wife of Luke Kendall and the mother of Mrs. Orsamus Smith. _____________________ landed at Conneaut with her little son, was the daughter of a Captain Carver, an explorer who, just before the war of the Revolution, had secured a grant of land from the English Government, covering a large tract of land in northern Ohio, west of Cleveland. Captain Carver was in England when the war broke out. He was prevented from returning to America and subsequently died in England, leaving two daughters, one of whom, as above stated, became the wife of Elijah Gunn ( Note Added: History of The Town of Sunderland, Massachusetts, by John Montague Smith, prepared by Henry W. Taft & Abbie T. Montague. Press of E. A. Hall & Co., Greenfield, Mass., 1899, Page 284 - lists Elisha Gunn as the husband of Mindwell Carver. Elisha was a brother of both Elijah and Moses. Moses married Olive Carver, sister of Mindwell), and the other married his brother, Moses Gunn. These brothers spent many years and a large amount of money in unsuccessful effort to obtain from Congress a ratification of the English grant. Elisha Gunn settled in Cleveland in 1796, and was living in good health and in possession of all his faculties in 1847, being then past ninety. Orsamus Smith was born in Peru, Berkshire county, Massachusetts, November 9, 1807, son of George and Molly(Bent) Smith, the former a native of Rutland, Massachusetts, and the latter of Sudbury, Massachusetts. He came to Ohio about 1823. His father, as already stated, being a shareholder in the Connecticut Land Company, had given to each of his several sons a farm in Ashtabula and Trumbull counties. After spending a few years in the woods of Ohio with his married brothers, older than himself, who had proceded him (John in Dorset, and Renselaer in Bloomfield), he returned to his home in Berkshire county, Massachusetts, where he married Melinda Clapp, the daughter of Erastus Clapp, of Deerfield, Massachusetts. Returning to Ohio, he settled on a tract of land at the center of Orwell, and, with his brothers, Pomeroy and Franklin, who with their father, George Smith, came to Ohio about the same time, at once began to lay the foundation for the present thrifty village. They erected several good frame houses, a large hotel ---still standing in 1893 ---and other business places, inducing the location there of those two excellent businessmen, George A. Howard and R. C. Newell, so long identified with the prosperity of the town. In a single year the place was transformed from a dense forest to a busy village. The township was rapidly settled, and the town itself, being favorably located on the main thoroughfare of eastern Ohio, half way between Ashtabula and Warren, readily took a position abreast with older towns in the section, which position it has fully maintained. Here Mr. Smith lost his wife, who, dying at the age of thirty, left two little boys, George E. and Horatio M., and a little girl, Frances M. In 1840 Orsamus Smith was again married, this time to Elmira Kendall, of Warren, Ohio, the daughter of Luke and Mercy(Gunn) Kendall, of Deerfield, Massachusetts, before referred to. Of Luke Kendall, it is recorded that he enlisted in the service during the Revolutionary war, but, being very young, his brother David secured his discharge by going in his place. The latter was taken prisoner and was held several years by the British. Elmira Kendall was born in 1806, at Deerfield. She was a pupil of the celebrated Mary Lyon, of Mt. Holyoke, Massachusetts, and at the time of her marriage was a teacher in Warren, Ohio. The children of this second union were: William O. and Emma L. Smith. Orsamus Smith was represented in the Civil war by his two sons, Major Horatio M. and William O., both of whom served in the Army of the Cumberland from August 13, 1862, until the close of the war, a period of three years. Both enlisted as privates in the One Hundred and Fifth Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Major Horatio M. Smith served as Quartermaster in the field the first year and on the staff of Major General George H. Thomas the last two years. He died in 1890, leaving three sons: Ford R., Louis Ord and Horatio Hoyt, and one daughter, Maud W. Smith. The other grandchildren of Orsamus Smith are: Ida M. and Augusta E. Smith, daughters of George E. Smith who lives in New York city. Mrs Frances M. Gilkeson, William O. Smith and Emma L. Smith, the remaining children of Orsamus Smith, live in Orwell. Orsamus Smith closed a long and busy life in Orwell, December 31, 1886, in his eightieth year; and his wife, Elmira, passed away at the same place, March 10, 1888, in her eighty-second year. Of these pioneer families, it should be further stated that Orsamus Smith had thirteen brothers and sisters; and that there were also fourteen brothers and sisters in Elmira Kendall's family, nearly all of whom lived to maturity and brought up families in Ohio.