In 1785 lands of the Northwest Territory were offered for sale to the public. By 1800 four land offices were established and sales from the Zanesville office, which included tracts originally reserved for the Marietta and Steubenville offices and, more importantly, parts of the United States Military District, reserved for veterans of the Revolutionary War, form the basis of this volume. In addition, this volume also includes records from the Steubenville office for the period 1820-1840, the first twenty years of sales records having already been published. In tabular format this volume has a complete list of 22,770 persons who bought land in central and east central Ohio between 1800 and 1840. Data includes the name of the purchaser (in alphabetical order), date of purchase, place of residence at the time of purchase, and the range, township, and section of the purchased land, thus enabling the researcher to ascertain the exact location of the ancestor's land see also Items 480 and 481).

The story of early Ohio from the days of the Mound Builders to the Victorian Age. This is a story of the people who lived in what is now the Great State of Ohio during those times. A story of the Native Americans who were there before the coming of the white settlers and a story of the savage raids and battles fought in the struggle to gain or retain control of this rich, vast territory. A story of the men and women who participated in these events along with the suffering and hardships faced by all in a struggle to keep their home or in their quest to find a better life for themselves and their descendants. In 1897, William Dean Howells, a novelist who was born in Martins Ferry, Ohio, to show the love of his native state and provide people with its history, authored the book “Stories of Ohio”. This book is a wonderful, intriguing look at the history of the Great State of Ohio and those who called it home. Badgley Publishing Company has taken the contents of his book, added more material and illustrations and re-created this historically significant work in an effort to preserve his story and make it available to the public again.

As the state of Ohio prepares to celebrate its bicentennial in 2003, Andrew R. L. Cayton offers an account of ways in which diverse citizens have woven its history. Ohio: The History of a People, centers around the many stories Ohioans have told about life in their state. The founders of Ohio in 1803 believed that its success would depend on the development of a public culture that emphasized what its citizens had in common with each other. But for two centuries the remarkably diverse inhabitants of Ohio have repeatedly asserted their own ideas about how they and their children should lead their lives. The state's public culture has consisted of many voices, sometimes in conflict with each other. Using memoirs, diaries, letters, novels, and paintings, Cayton writes Ohio's history as a collective biography of its citizens. Ohio, he argues, lies at the intersection of the stories of James Rhodes and Toni Morrison, Charles Ruthenberg and Lucy Webb Hayes, Carl Stokes and Alice Cary, Sherwood Anderson and Pete Rose. It lies in the tales of German Jews in Cincinnati, Italian and Polish immigrants in Cleveland, Southern blacks and white Appalachians in Youngstown. Ohio is the mingled voices of farm families, steelworkers, ministers, writers, schoolteachers, reformers, and football coaches. Ohio, in short, is whatever its citizens have imagined it to be.

Under the leadership of Rufus Putnam, 48 men, departed New England during the severe winter of 1787/88 and made their way west through the mountains to Sumrill's Ferry on the Youghiogheny River in Pennsylvania. There they spent the winter building two huge flatboats and three canoes to take them down the Youghiogheny to the Monongahela River and then down the Ohio River to their destination, a point of land at the mouth of the Muskingum River. Here, these pioneers would establish the first settlement in the territory northwest of the Ohio River and name it Marietta. Among these early pioneers, who opened the door to western settlement of the United States, were many heroic men and officers of the American Revolution. George Washington said, "I know many of the settlers personally, and there never were men better calculated to promote the welfare of such a community." General Lafayette, the Frenchman who fought alongside the colonists during their struggle for independence said, "I knew them well. I saw them fighting for their country. They were the bravest of the brave. Better men never lived." This book contains the true stories of these great men and other pioneers who withstood Indian Warfare, starvation, sickness, death and deprivation to establish themselves in the wilderness of the early American frontier and begin the westward expansion of the greatest nation on earth. A great companion book for "Pioneer History" by S. P. Hildreth first published in 1848. This book is part of the Historical Collection of Badgley Publishing Company and has been transcribed from the original. The original contents have been edited and corrections have been made to original printing, spelling and grammatical errors when not in conflict with the author's intent to portray a particular event or interaction. Annotations have been made and additional contents have been added by Badgley Publishing Company in order to clarify certain historical events or interactions and to enhance the author's content. Photos and illustrations from the original have been touched up, enhanced and sometimes enlarged for better viewing. Additional illustrations and photos have been added by Badgley Publishing Company.