“A vivid panorama of the transitional years when Ohio evolved from a raw frontier territory to an established province of an ever-expanding nation.” —Booklist Nowhere on the American frontier was the clash of cultures more violent than on the Ohio frontier. First settled by migrating Native Americans about 1720 and later by white settlers, Ohio became the crucible which set indigenous and military policy throughout the region. There, Shawnees, Wyandots, and Delawares, among others, fought to preserve their land claims. A land of opportunity, refuge, and violence for both Native Americans and whites, Ohio served as the political, economic, and social foundation for the settlement of the Old Northwest. “Finally, after nearly twenty-five years, a high-quality general history of the frontier period of the state of Ohio . . . [A] dynamic account . . . that should delight both Transappalachian frontier scholars and interested amateurs.” —History “This exhaustively researched and well-written book provides a comprehensive history of Ohio from 1720 to 1830.” —Journal of the Early Republic

Few mementoes remain of what Ohio was like before white people transformed it. The readings in this anthology -- the diaries of a trader and a missionary, the letter of a frontier housewife, the travel account of a wide-eyed young English tourist, the memoir of an escaped slave, and many others -- are eyewitness accounts of the Ohio frontier. They tell what people felt and thought about coming to the very fringes of white civilization -- and what the people thought and did who saw them coming. Each succeeding group of newcomers -- hunters, squatters, traders, land speculators, farmers, missionaries, fresh European immigrants -- established a sense of place and community in the wilderness. Their writings tell of war, death, loneliness, and deprivation, as well as courage, ambition, success, and fun. We can see the lust for the land, the struggle for control of it, the terrors and challenges of the forest, and the determination of white settlers to change the land, tame it, "improve" it. The new Ohio these settlers created had no room for its native inhabitants. Their dispossession is a defining theme of the book. As the forests receded and the farms expanded, the Indians were pressured to move out. By the time the last tribe, the Wyandots, left in 1843, they were regarded as relics of the romantic past, and the frontier experience came to a close. Anyone fascinated by the panorama of America's westward migration will respond to the dramatic stories told in these pages.

This work examines the founding and development of Worthington, Ohio to show how it reflects New England culture transplanted and reshaped by the Western frontier. It provides a perspective from which historians can better understand the process of westward migration and frontier settlement.

Few mementoes remain of what Ohio was like before white people transformed it. The readings in this anthology—the diaries of a trader and a missionary, the letter of a frontier housewife, the travel account of a wide-eyed young English tourist, the memoir of an escaped slave, and many others—are eyewitness accounts of the Ohio frontier. They tell what people felt and thought about coming to the very fringes of white civilization—and what the people thought and did who saw them coming. Each succeeding group of newcomers—hunters, squatters, traders, land speculators, farmers, missionaries, fresh European immigrants—established a sense of place and community in the wilderness. Their writings tell of war, death, loneliness, and deprivation, as well as courage, ambition, success, and fun. We can see the lust for the land, the struggle for control of it, the terrors and challenges of the forest, and the determination of white settlers to change the land, tame it, "improve" it. The new Ohio these settlers created had no room for its native inhabitants. Their dispossession is a defining theme of the book. As the forests receded and the farms expanded, the Indians were pressured to move out. By the time the last tribe, the Wyandots, left in 1843, they were regarded as relics of the romantic past, and the frontier experience came to a close. Anyone fascinated by the panorama of America's westward migration will respond to the dramatic stories told in these pages.

In 1826 thirty-year-old Anna Briggs Bentley, her husband, and their six children left their close Quaker community and the worn-out tobacco farms of Sandy Spring, Maryland, for frontier Ohio. Along the way, Anna sent back home the first of scores of letters she wrote her mother and sisters over the next fifty years as she strove to keep herself and her children in their memories. With Anna's natural talent for storytelling and her unique, female perspective, the letters provide a sustained and vivid account of everyday domestic life on the Ohio frontier. She writes of carving a farm out of the forest, bearing many children, darning and patching the family clothes, standing her ground in religious controversy, nursing wounds and fevers, and burying beloved family and friends. Emily Foster presents these revealing letters of a pioneer woman in a framework of insightful commentary and historical context, with genealogical appendices.

Recounts the arrival in Ohio of Iroquois-speaking Indians, the entry of white fur traders and missionaries, the slaughter and expulsion of the Indians, and settlement by New Englanders and others.