From the Northwest Ordinance to the Present
In early September of 1790, Persis Rice Putnam and her children left their comfortable home in Rutland, Massachusetts to accompany husband and father Rufus Putnam to a newly established settlement in what was then the Northwest Territory of the United States of America… Read full article
In the spring of 1788, a group of forty-eight men began to create a settlement that came to be known as Marietta, Ohio. Rufus Putnam was their leader… Read full article
The history of the Northwest Ordinance and the history of the Ohio Company [1] are intertwined. The Ohio Company helped to define the Northwest Ordinance, and the Northwest Ordinance was in turn key to the success of the Ohio Company. Much has been written about the Ohio Company, some characterizing its members as shrewd land speculators and some characterizing them as patriotic visionaries. Perhaps, in a uniquely American way, they were both… Read full article
By 13 July 1787, when the Northwest Ordinance was passed, thirteen colonies originally established by Great Britain in North America had united and won independence. [1] A governing body formally known as the United States in Congress Assembled had signed the 1783 Treaty of Paris with Great Britain. Under the terms of this treaty, Great Britain ceded to the United States the area north of the Ohio River and south of the British Canadian border, extending west from Pennsylvania to the Mississippi. The Northwest Ordinance provided for governance of this territory and established a process by which states could be formed from it… Read full article