THE MAUMEE ROAD LANDS.

     These are a body of lands, averaging two miles wide, lying along one mile on each side of the road from the Maumee river, at Perrysburg, to the western limits of the Western Reserve, a distance of about forty-six miles, and comprising nearly 60,000 acres.  They were originally granted by the Indian owners, at the treaty of Brownsville, in 1868, to enable the United States to make a road on the line just mentioned.  The general government never moved in the business until February, 1823, when Congress passed an Act, making over the aforesaid lands to the State of Ohio, provided she would, within four years thereafter, make and keep in repair a good road throughout the aforesaid route of forty-six miles.  This road the State government opened out, obtained the land and sold it.

TURNPIKE LANDS.

     These are forty-nine sections, amounting to 31,360 acres, situated along the western side of the Columbus and Sandusky Turnpike, in the eastern part of Seneca, Crawford and Marion counties.  They were originally granted by an Act of Congress, on the 3d of March, 1827, and were especially by a supplementary Act the next year.  The considerations, for which these lands were granted, were that the mail stages, and all troops and property of the United States, which should ever be moved and transferred along this road, should pass free of toll.

OHIO CANAL LANDS.

     Congress, by an Act passed on the 24th of May, 1828, granted to the State of Ohio 5000,000 acres of land to aid the State in completing her canals, and also a quantity "equal to one-half of five sections in width on each side of said canal" (the Miami canal), so far as it passes through the public lands, north of the old Greenville treaty line, and this is estimated at 106 miles, thereby making the quantity of land thus granted 340,000 acres - or 840,000 acres in all, provided that all troops and property of the United States transported thereon shall pass free of toll, as in the case of the before-mentioned turnpike lands.
     For both the canal and turnpike lands, the Governor made deeds to the individual purchasers.

SCHOOL LANDS.

     By compact between the United States and the State of Ohio, when the latter was admitted, it was stipulated, for and in consideration that the State should never tax the Congress Lands, until after they had been sold five years, and in consideration that the public lands would thereby more readily sell, that the one thirty-sixth part of all the territory included within the limits of the State should be set apart for the support of common schools therein.  And, for the purpose of getting at lands which should, in point of quality of soil, be on an average with the whole of the land in the country, they decreed that it should be selected by lot, in small tracts; that, to effect this fairly, it should consist of section number 16, let that section be good or bad, in every township of Congress Land, and also in the Ohio Company's land and in Symmes' purchase, all of which townships are composed of thirty-six sections each; and, for the United States Military Lands and Western Reserve, a number of quarter townships,  two and a half miles square, each (being the smallest survey then made), should be selected by the Secretary of the Treasury, in de___t places throughout the United States Military Tract, equivalent in quality to the one thirty-sixth part of those two tracts, respectively.  And for the Virginia Military Tract, Congress enacted that a quantity of land equal to the one thirty-sixth part of the estimated quantity of land contained there-in should be selected by lot, in what is called the "New Purchase," now comprising Wayne, Richland and part of Holmes and Marion counties, in quarter township tracts of three miles square each.  Most of these selections were accordingly made, but, in some instances by the carelessness of the officers conducting the sales, or from some other cause, a few Sections 16 had been sold, in which case Congress, when applied to, generally granted other lands in lieu thereof, as, for instance, no Section 16 was reserved in Montgomery township in which Columbus is situated.

LOCAL COURTS AND COURT OFFICERS.

     Among the earliest laws adopted was one which provided for the institution of a county Court of Common Pleas, to be composed of not less than three, nor more than five judges, commissioned by the Governor, who were to hold two sessions in each year. Pursuant to its provisions, the first session of said court was held in and for Washington county, Sept. 2, 1788.  The judges of the court were Gen. Rufus Putnam, Gen. Benjamin Tupper and Col. Archibald Crary, Col. Return Jonathan Meigs was clerk and Col. Ebenezer Sproat was sheriff.  Elaborate details of the opening of this, the first court held in the northwest territory, have come down to us, showing it to have been a stylish, dignified proceeding.  Briefly, "A procession was formed at the Point (the junction of the Muskingum with the Ohio river) of the inhabitants and the officers from Fort Harmar, who escorted the judge of the court, the governor of the territory, and the territorial judges to the hall appropriated for that purpose, in the northwest block house in "Campus Martius."  "The procession," says Mitchener "was headed by the sheriff, with drawn sword and baton of office.  After prayer, by Rev. Manasseh Cutler, the court was organized by

     The third settlement made in Ohio was at Manchester, Adams county, by Gen. Nathaniel Massie and a company of some twenty or thirty families or persons, who located where the upper part of the town now stands.
     The exact date upon which these first emigrants pitched their tents there is not known, but it must have been the latter part of December, 1790, or early in January, 1791, for we learn that, by the middle of March, 1791, they had their cabins built and enclosed by a stockade that contained four or five acres of land.
     We are aware that most writers say that Galliopolis was the third point settled in the State, and they, likewise, give the date as 1761?.  But this we think erroneous, because Massie's arrangements for a settlement being completed in the latter part of 1790, and his contract with his colonists being written and signed on the first day of December of that year, and those colonists living at no greater distance that Marysville, the inference is that but a brief time would elapse before they were on the ground.
     This, in connection with the amount of labor they had performed by the middle of March, is conclusive evidence that they must have settled here in the very beginning of 1891, if not in the closing days of the preceding year.
     Again, in regard to the Galliopolis settlement, which was made by Frenchmen, we learn that, in May or June, 1788, Joel Barlow, an agent for the "Scioto Land Company," left this country for Europe, "authorized to dispose of a very large body of land" in the west.  In 1790, this gentleman distributed proposals in Paris for the sale of lands at five shillings per acre.  "Which promised," says Volney, "a climate healthy and delightful; scarcely such a thing as frost in winter; a river called, by the way of eminence, "The Beautiful," abounding in fish of enormous size; magnificent forests of a tree from which sugar ___, and a shrub which yields candles; venison its abundance, without foxes, wolves, lions or tigers, no taxes to pay; no military enrollments; no quarters to find for soldiers."
     "During the year 1791," says history, " a considerable number of Frenchmen with deeds in their pockets for farms, in this beautiful , happy land embarked for America, where they arrived, is 1791-92."  From this the reader can readily see whether Galliopolis was settled before Manchester on the Ohio River, or on the valley of the Scioto, of Chillicothe.  Besides, he can imagine the feeling of these poor foreigners, who had spent their all to reach this promised land, when they found, in addition to the disappointment of their anticipated expectations of its excellence, that those of whom they bought did not own a foot of it, and their deeds were worthless.

ORGANIZATION OF COUNTIES
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WAYNE COUNTY - ITS BOUNDARIES - TOPOGRAPHY - SOIL - PRODUCTIONS - COUNTY SEAT _______
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     The Governor contended that the ordinance of 1787 gave him the power to divide the territory into counties, appoint and commission all officers, civil and military, below the rank of general officers, and that, having the updisputed right to appoint and commission all officers, it therefore followed as a necessary consequence, that he had the power of sub-dividing the counties, and refused to sign any law which might be passed for the sub-division of counties.
     "The members of the legislature admitted that the Governor had the power to appoint and commission all officers below the rank of general officers, and to lay out the parts of the districts (territory) in which the Indian title had been extinguished into counties and townships, subject however, to such alterations as may thereafter be made by the legislature."
     They contended that, after he had done that, that his power was at an end, because the territory had already been laid off by him and organized into counties, and that part of the ordinance which gave the Governor power to lay out the district into counties closes with the words, "Subject, however, to such alterations as may hereafter be made by the legislature." and that power for which he contended was a constructive one not authorized by the Constitution.
     Thus the dispute remained undermined until the adoption of the Constitution and the establishment of a State government.
     Washington County, embracing the eastern half of the present State of Ohio, was the only organized county of the North-west territory.

reading the commissions of the judges, clerk and sheriff, after which the sheriff proclaimed that the court was open for the administration of even-handed justice to the poor and the rich, to the guilty and the innocent, without respect of persons; none to be punished without a trial by their peers, and then in pursuance of the laws and evidence in the case."
     On the 23d day of August, 1788, a law was promulgated for establishing "General Courts of Quarter Sessions of the peace."  This court was composed of not less than three, nor more than five justices of the peace, appointed by the Governor, who were to hold four sessions in each year.  The first session of this court was held at "Campus Martius," September 9, 1788.  The commission appointing the judges thereof was read.  "Gen. Rufus Putnam and Gen. Benjamin Tupper," says Mitchener, "constituted the justices of the quorum, and Isaac Pearce, Thomas Lord and Return Jonathan Meigs, Jr., the assistant justices: Col. Return Jonathan Meigs, Sr., was clerk." Col. Ebenezer Sproat was sheriff of Washington.

to be the present city of Cincinnati is not with certainty known, although historians and writers have puzzled their brains over the question for many a day.  It appears to be settled that this party left Maysville on the 29th of January, 1789, but as it has failed to record the day of its arrival, writers have undertaken to estimate the amount of hindering causes to navigation, such as ice and the bad weather usually occurring at that season of the year, but no two arrive at exactly the same conclusion.  Therefore each reader must make his own calculation.
     To ascertain the original price paid for the land on which the city stands is another question that has sorely preplexed writers in their researches.  Now we state that Mathias Denman the original purchaser, bought about eight hundred acres, for which he paid five shillings per acre, in Continental certificates, which were worth then, in specle, five shillings on the pound - so that the specie price per acre was fifteen pence.  That sum, multiplied by the number of acres, will give the original cost of the plot of Cincinnati.