This large transaction would help Congress “pay down some of the national debt incurred during the Revolutionary War,” and enable Cutler, Putnam and others to build houses, buildings, churches and a university. The Ohio Company received 1.5 million acres, and a private real estate venture, the Scioto Company, took the rest. This would eventually lead to the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, in which a grant of 5 million acres of land would be purchased for $3.5 million. He knew that Washington was an early Ohio land speculator, and “as a young man had seen that wilderness firsthand on surveying expeditions.” By having strong ties with the man who would become the nation’s first president, it would help the Ohio Company immensely. McCullough writes, had “few human flaws,” communicated often with George Washington. Rufus Putnam, a “widely known hero of the Revolution and, in normal times, a farmer and surveyor,” to lead this important expedition. Nevertheless, Cutler didn’t want to leave his pulpit behind. He would also become the spokesman for the “Ohio cause” in front of the Congress in New York, and told Winthrop Sargent “The more I contemplate the prospect the more I feel myself inclined to take an active part in carrying on the settlement and to be one of the first emigrants.” This group would create the first settlement in Ohio, for which he (and other founders) would receive four shares, or 4,692 acres of land. Yet, this descendent of “strong-minded English Puritans” graduated from Yale College, loved his wife and children, had “boundless intellectual curiosity” and enjoyed “good food, good wine, a good story and good cheer.” He was, therefore, a perfect candidate to set out on the Ohio River.Ĭutler helped co-found the Ohio Company of Associates at the Bunch of Grapes meeting in 1784.

The pastor of the First Congregational Church of Ipswich Hamlet in Massachusetts, he would be an unlikely candidate for a rugged, adventurous pioneer at first blush. The book’s most important real-life character is Manessah Cutler.

Book the pioneers by david mccullough