Marietta: Campus Martius, the Conus and Mound Cemetery

At a glance

Overview

Marietta, at the mouth of the Muskingum River on the Ohio, is where 48 men of the Ohio Company of Associates under Rufus Putnam landed on April 7, 1788, founding the first organized American settlement in the Northwest Territory. They built their town on top of the Marietta Earthworks, a Hopewell ceremonial complex of square enclosures, flat-topped mounds and a graded way to the river built roughly 100 BC to AD 500, and gave its parts Latin names. Campus Martius, a square stockade of two-story blockhouses and dwellings built 1788 to 1791, sheltered the settlers through the Northwest Indian War; after the 1795 Treaty of Greenville it was dismantled, leaving only Rufus Putnam's house. The Great Mound, or Conus, was reserved as public ground and from 1801 became the center of Mound Cemetery, where more Revolutionary War officers are said to be buried than anywhere else in the country. Today the State of Ohio's Campus Martius Museum (built 1928) encloses the Putnam House and the Ohio Company Land Office, and the Conus, the Capitolium and the Quadranaou survive in public ground.

The name

The settlement was first called Adelphi; on July 2, 1788 the Ohio Company directors renamed it Marietta in honor of Queen Marie Antoinette of France, for French help in the Revolution. At the same meeting they named the new garrison Campus Martius and gave Latin names to the ancient works: Capitolium, Quadranaou, and Sacra Via for the graded road up from the Muskingum. (source)

Native American history

The high terrace east of the Muskingum near its mouth holds the Marietta Earthworks, a Hopewell ceremonial center dated about 100 BC to AD 500: a large square enclosure of about 50 acres with four flat-topped pyramidal mounds, a smaller square of about 27 acres with gateway mounds, and a circular embankment and ditch around a large burial mound, the Conus. A walled, graded way, later called the Sacra Via, ran 680 feet down to the Muskingum. Sources differ on the Conus: Ohio History Central treats the whole complex as Hopewell, while other accounts attribute the conical mound to the earlier Adena; a 1990 Cleveland Museum of Natural History excavation confirmed the Capitolium as Hopewell. When settlers opened the Conus near its summit they found an adult burial beneath a large flat stone and closed the hole. At the April 1788 landing Captain Pipe, a principal chief of the Delawares (Lenape), was camped at the mouth of the river with about seventy of his people to trade at Fort Harmar, and welcomed the newcomers. The Treaty of Fort Harmar was signed across the river on January 9, 1789 with Haudenosaunee, Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, Sauk, Wyandot and Lenape leaders; it failed to settle the land dispute, and after the Big Bottom attack of January 2, 1791 the Marietta settlers lived largely inside Campus Martius until the Treaty of Greenville in 1795.

• Conus (Great Mound): burial, Mound Cemetery, Fifth and Scammel streets, Hopewell (c. 100 BC - AD 500); some sources say Adena
• Quadranaou: mound, Quadranaou Park (Camp Tupper), Hopewell (c. 100 BC - AD 500)
• Capitolium: mound, under the Washington County Public Library, Fifth Street, Hopewell (c. 100 BC - AD 500)
• Sacra Via: earthwork, Sacra Via Park, Third Street to the Muskingum, Hopewell (c. 100 BC - AD 500)
• Captain Pipe's Delaware camp: camp, mouth of the Muskingum River, April 1788
• Treaty of Fort Harmar: treaty, Fort Harmar, west bank of the Muskingum mouth, January 9, 1789

Stories

The landing at the Muskingum

The pioneer party left Massachusetts in December 1787 and built boats over the winter at Sumrill's Ferry on the Youghiogheny. On April 2, 1788 they set off in a covered galley 45 feet long and 12 feet wide, with a flatboat and three canoes. With help from the commander at Fort Harmar their boat was towed back across the Muskingum, and they landed at the upper point of the Muskingum mouth about noon on April 7. Waiting for them was Captain Pipe, a principal Delaware chief, with about seventy of his people, who had come to trade at the fort and shook hands with the newcomers. The settlers marveled that knee-high pea vines and buffalo clover were already growing, while snow still lay in the hollows back east. The galley, first called the Adventure Galley, was renamed the Mayflower after the Pilgrims' ship. (source)

Counting tree rings on the mounds

The settlers found the ramparts and mounds covered in old trees and wondered who had built them; the Indians could tell them only that the works were the remains of an ancient people. One day, in the presence of Governor St. Clair, trees on the works were cut down and their rings counted. By the Rev. Manasseh Cutler's journal as quoted in 1900, the largest, a poplar, had 452 rings. Reasoning that this growth had been preceded by at least one more forest of equal age, Cutler wrote that the works had been deserted more than 900 years, and that if they had been occupied 100 years they were built more than 1,000 years before. (source)

The handsomest pile of buildings

Campus Martius stood on the high plain beside the ancient works, 30 feet above the Muskingum bank. A settler writing in 1788 described it as a regular square with a two-story blockhouse at each corner, the upper story jutting 18 inches over the lower, and two-story dwellings forming the walls between them. He called it the most handsome pile of buildings on this side of the Allegheny Mountains. Rufus Putnam, Benjamin Tupper, Governor Arthur St. Clair and other pioneers lived inside it, and Maj. Anselm Tupper commanded it during the Northwest Indian War. The Campus Martius Museum now occupies the site, and the Rufus Putnam House, part of the original fort, is enclosed inside it. (source)

A burial ground around the Great Mound

The Ohio Company set the Conus square aside as public ground in 1788, first naming it Marie Antoinette Square and after 1791 simply Mound Square. Putnam leased it that year on condition that mulberry trees ring the square, willows circle the mound's base, and nothing within be plowed. The first dead were buried elsewhere: a child, Nabby Cushing, in August 1788, and Gen. James Varnum in January 1789, with Native chiefs walking two by two in his funeral procession. In 1800 someone suggested the Mound Square as a cemetery, and Col. Robert Taylor, who died on September 30, 1801, became its first burial. Gen. Benjamin Tupper and his son Maj. Anselm Tupper were later moved there, and in 1889 smallpox victims of 1798 and two men killed in the Indian war were reburied in it. In 1822 the town voted on whether to put the new courthouse on part of the square; the cemetery stayed. (source)

The officers' cemetery

Many of Marietta's founders were Revolutionary War officers paid in federal land warrants. Buried at Mound Cemetery are Gen. Rufus Putnam and Gen. Benjamin Tupper, both founders of the Ohio Company, Commodore Abraham Whipple and Col. William Stacy, among others. At a Daughters of the American Revolution conference reported in 1900, it was stated that more officers of the Revolution were buried in the Mound Cemetery than anywhere else in the United States. When Lafayette visited Marietta in 1825 he said of its veterans that he had known them well and seen them fight. (source)

The Sacra Via sold for brick

The Ohio Company ordered that the Sacra Via, the walled, graded way from the great enclosure down to the Muskingum, never be disturbed or defaced. Its parallel earthen walls ran 680 feet, and the path sank from 8 feet below grade at the top to about 20 feet near the river. In 1820 a leaseholder began plowing down the Quadranaou and was removed after a public outcry and a court case. The Sacra Via was not so lucky: a city council member who made bricks persuaded the council to sell him the walls, and the bricks reportedly went into the Unitarian Church. Today the way survives only as a level parkway from Third Street to the river. (source)

Timeline

• c. 100 BC - AD 500: Hopewell people build the Marietta Earthworks, with square enclosures, platform mounds, the Conus burial mound and a graded way to the Muskingum. (source)
• 1749: A French expedition under Celoron de Blainville buries lead plates claiming the Ohio Country; one was found at Marietta in 1798 and partly melted into musket balls before its meaning was recognized. (source)
• 1785: U.S. troops under orders of Col. Josiah Harmar build Fort Harmar on the west bank at the mouth of the Muskingum, the first frontier fort in the Ohio Country. (source)
• 1786: Capt. Jonathan Heart of Fort Harmar draws a plan of the earthworks, published in the Columbian Magazine in May 1787 and now considered the first archaeological investigation in Ohio. (source)
• 1786: Rufus Putnam, Benjamin Tupper, Samuel Holden Parsons and Manasseh Cutler form the Ohio Company of Associates at the Bunch-of-Grapes tavern in Boston, March 1-3. (source)
• 1787: Congress passes the Northwest Ordinance on July 13, and on October 27 the Treasury Board contracts to sell the Ohio Company 1.5 million acres at the mouth of the Muskingum. (source)
• 1788: On April 2 the pioneer party leaves Sumrill's Ferry on the Youghiogheny aboard a 45-foot galley, the Adventure Galley, later renamed the Mayflower. (source)
• 1788: On April 7, 48 men led by Rufus Putnam land at the upper point of the Muskingum mouth and set up Putnam's marquee tent as the colony's headquarters. (source)
• 1788: By June 20 the settlers have planted 132 acres of corn on the plain east of the new stockade. (source)
• 1788: On July 2 the directors rename the town from Adelphi to Marietta and give Latin names to the ancient works and to the Campus Martius stockade. (source)
• 1788: On July 15 Governor Arthur St. Clair crosses from Fort Harmar and is received in a bowery by Putnam, beginning civil government in the Northwest Territory. (source)
• 1788: Ohio Company surveyors begin work from the log Land Office, later reported to be the oldest building in Ohio. (source)
• 1789: The Treaty of Fort Harmar is concluded on January 9 with Haudenosaunee, Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, Sauk, Wyandot and Lenape leaders. (source)
• 1789: Gen. James Mitchell Varnum, a territorial judge, dies and is buried on January 15 with military and Masonic honors, Native chiefs among the mourners. (source)
• 1790: Rufus Putnam's post-and-plank house, part of the Campus Martius wall, is completed late in the year. (source)
• 1791: Lenape and Wyandot warriors attack the Big Bottom settlement up the Muskingum on January 2, killing about 14 settlers and opening the war around Marietta. (source)
• 1791: The Land Office is moved away from the Muskingum so the guns of Campus Martius can protect it. (source)
• 1791: Rufus Putnam leases the Conus square for 12 years on condition that it be planted with trees, never plowed and fenced. (source)
• 1795: After the Treaty of Greenville the stockade is dismantled; Putnam buys the adjacent blockhouse and adds four rooms to his house. (source)
• 1800: The settlement is incorporated as the town of Marietta. (source)
• 1801: Col. Robert Taylor, a Revolutionary War soldier, is the first person buried at the Mound Square, which becomes Mound Cemetery. (source)
• 1811: The Ministerial Trustees reserve Mound Square to the town as a public burying ground, rent free for 99 years, renewable forever. (source)
• 1824: Rufus Putnam dies in his Campus Martius house, where he had lived since 1790. (source)
• 1838: Samuel R. Curtis surveys the earthworks; Squier and Davis publish the plan in 1848, wrongly crediting Charles Whittlesey. (source)
• 1882: The Sacra Via is mostly destroyed and its clay used to make bricks; most of the earthworks' walls are gone by this time. (source)
• 1905: The Marietta chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution leases the Putnam House. (source)
• 1916: The Washington County library is built on the summit of the Capitolium mound, which preserves most of it. (source)
• 1917: The State of Ohio buys the Campus Martius site and places it with the Ohio Historical Society. (source)
• 1928: The State of Ohio builds the Campus Martius Museum around the Putnam House. (source)
• 1938: Gutzon Borglum's sandstone Start Westward Memorial is unveiled in Muskingum Park for the sesquicentennial of the settlement. (source)
• 1953: The Ohio Company Land Office is moved onto the museum grounds to secure its preservation. (source)
• 1966-1972: The Ohio Historical Society restores the Putnam House inside the museum. (source)
• 1973: The Conus is listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 23 as the Mound Cemetery Mound. (source)
• 1990: Cleveland Museum of Natural History archaeologists excavate part of the Capitolium and confirm it as Hopewell. (source)

Sources

• en.wikipedia.org: Marietta, Ohio
• en.wikipedia.org: Marietta Earthworks
• en.wikipedia.org: Mound Cemetery (Marietta, Ohio)
• en.wikipedia.org: Campus Martius (Ohio)
• en.wikipedia.org: Campus Martius Museum
• en.wikipedia.org: Rufus Putnam House
• en.wikipedia.org: Ohio Company Land Office
• en.wikipedia.org: Fort Harmar
• en.wikipedia.org: Ohio Company of Associates
• en.wikipedia.org: Treaty of Fort Harmar
• en.wikipedia.org: Big Bottom massacre
• en.wikipedia.org: Start Westward Memorial
• nps.gov: campus martius museum
• mariettamuseums.org: campus martius
• ohiohistory.org: campus martius museum
• mariettaohio.org: marietta earthworks
• touring-ohio.com: marietta earthworks
• ohiohistorycentral.org: Marietta Earthworks
• archive.org: pioneerhistorybe00hild djvu.txt
• archive.org: sketchmoundceme01cottgoog djvu.txt