Subject: Re: [OHIO] OHIO Wagon Roads - Cont'd From: glenys@sonic.net To: Maggie Stewart-Zimmerman 73777,25 Date: 5-Nov-98 13:03 Here's the next installment: Rufas Putnam's Great Idea In 1785, a Boston businessman named Rufas Putnam had a great idea for making lots of money. As a former Rev. War General, he knew that the new US was filled with thousands of former Rev. soldiers, all of whom had been paid a suit of clothes and a promise of land "out west somewhere" in the form of a certificate called a Bounty Land Warrant. These certificates had a set value of $1.25 per acre of land, but a soldier would have to travel to the great western wilderness and claim his parcel of land. The certificates could be legally "assigned" and the buyer of the certificate would then gain the claim to wilderness land. Rufas devised a plan to buy certificates from former Rev. soldiers and for a fraction of their face value. He then figured out a way to combine these certs for obtaining large tracts of land in the west. Rufas was to become a land speculator... and he formed a company called the "New Ohio Company". By early 1787 the company was able to obtain warrants representing thousands of acres of land ... . The New Ohio Company did not have trouble buying these certs. Going west was dangerous ... it was estimated that 90% of all Rev. War Land Warrants were sold in this way. The New Ohio Company set up shop in New York City, on Wall Street (and it is how the NY Stock Exchange got started). Based on his assignments of bounty-land warrants, plus purchases on credit, the company's land grant was drawn on a map (north of the Ohio River, including all of present-day Washington County, Ohio), and exempted from the lands to be sold by the Federal Govt. Rufas also managed to gain much more land by agreeing to honor any soldier's bounty land warrants in the area granted to the company. All in all, Rufas' company managed to purchase seven million acres of land in the NorthWest Territory for an average price of eight cents per acre. Rufas said he was willing to manage his company's large tract of land, sell to private buyers, and act as an agent for the Fed. Govt. Congress ... voted for it, mainly because they had no method for selling the land themselves. The New Ohio Company ... was selling land in the new Northwest Territory well before the Federal Government began selling land there. Putnam told Congress he would pay for the land as soon as he sold it. The amazing part of the story is that he pulled it off! He moved to the Ohio River and founded the town of Marietta, Ohio where he began fulfilling his promise to Americans wanting to buy cheap farm land in the Ohio country. As a result, the earliest wagon roads into the Ohio were developed to get people to Rufas Putnam's land. Next: Gateway to the West -- >>Glenys Rasmussen<< http://www.sonic.net/~glenys/ >>"My home lies wide a thousand miles, In the Never-Never Land." (Henry Lawson)<<