Going to Ohio!

Every small farmer whose barren acres were covered with mortgages, whose debts were heavy burdens was eager to sell and begin a new life on the banks of the Ohio River.  Pamphlets described the climate as luxurious, the soil as inexhaustible, the rainfall as abundant and the crops as unfailing.  Paid agents assured the pioneers that a man of ambition and courage could prosper and be happy in the Old Northwest.

The 1790 census gave the population north of the Ohio River as 4,280 and increasing rapidly.  After General Wayne's victory and for a decade after, Ohio was the favorite goal.  Within eight years after Fallen Timbers, the region was ready for admission as the state of Ohio with Indiana fast on her heels.

It wasn't thought as an advantage by the eastern seaboard.  They thought the frontier would attract those who didn't fit in society, such as the broken down-troddens, the bankrupt, and the ne'er-do-wells.  It didn't turn out that way though, as industrious men with growing families moved in great numbers.  The protest from the eastern seaboard began to claim that it was a "plot to drain the East of its best blood." 

Anti-migration pamphlets were broadcast.  One represented a stout, ruddy, well-dressed man on a sleek horse with the label "I am going to Ohio!"  He met a skeleton of a man in rags on a dying horse with the label " I have been to Ohio!"  It didn't seem to matter as the migration increased and families continued to move west. ,Pennsylvanians, Virginians and Kentuckians made Chillicothe the center of the west.  In a decade, Ohio became the melting pot of Puritans, Irishmen, Scotch-Irishmen and Germans.  Ideals clashed and differing customs became harsh reality.

Next time...Blending it all together
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On March 28, 1776, Juan Bautista de Anza, one of the great pathfinders of  the 18th century, arrives at the future site of San Francisco with 247 colonists and establishes a fort. It was named six months later in honor of St. Francis of Assisi.