The Pioneers

by David McCullough

  The cabin in which all were gathered consisted of “a single room, about sixteen feet square, built of rough logs, with a puncheon floor. . . .

  Two or three rough wooden stools supplied the place of chairs, and as the neighbors came in the men took seats on the floor, Indian fashion, with their backs to the wall, all round the sides of the room; while I was making my prescriptions, and answering the inquiries of these simple minded people, the good woman of the cabin was preparing the evening meal. It was quite instructive to see how few comforts and little furniture a family could live and the business of housekeeping be conducted.

  He went on to describe the cooking apparatus, the common cast iron “bake oven,” a heavy black kettle with an iron cover. Filled with slices of fresh venison and salt pork, it went on top of a huge fire in the fireplace until sufficiently cooked, after which it was poured into a large brown earthen platter and set down on the hearth. The kettle was then refilled with the dough of Indian meal, put back on a bed of hot embers, and allowed to bake into “pone bread.” That accomplished, the kettle was again employed to make a hot drink of spring water and maple sugar and the guests were invited to take seats or stand at the table.

  “There were no plates,” Hildreth wrote, “but each one had a fork or his hunting knife, with which he speared up pieces of meat from the platter, conveying them to his mouth, with occasional bites of nice pone bread, in the most natural and easy manner.”

  As the evening grew late, those who lived nearby left for home, while those who lived farther off were invited to spend the night, including Dr. Hildreth.

  Above all it was the medical profession that figured foremost, that he had “the blessed means of rescuing a father, mother, or a child, of some distressed family, from the grasp of death,” that was the physician’s “richest compensation to be prized far above gold, however necessary it may be to our wants and is his best, if not often his only reward for many a long and weary ride, and many a sleepless night.”

  The country physician had inevitable adversities to face but as Hildreth was to emphasize in one of his articles, he himself had his own source of compensation, of enjoyment. On his solitary rides the physician need not be downcast or feel alone, not with such wonders of nature all about him.

  During the spring, as he traverses the woodlands and prairies, he can collect for his herbarium the choicest gifts of flora, and select such medicinal plants as will be useful in [treating] diseases. In the summer, endless species of insects, offering the most charming specimens for his entomological collection, cluster around him and beset his path on every side. Many of the most rare and beautiful in my cabinet were collected in my country rides. Has he a taste for conchology, various species of land shells are strewed along the way, and in every rivulet he crosses, contains varieties of bivalves. In autumn the hill sides and the banks of streams, offer continual subjects to exercise his skill in geology; while the frosty nights of winter, in the sparkling stars and heavenly constellations, afford the sublimest views for his contemplation.

  There seemed no end to his interests, or the reach of his appeal among the many with whom he came in contact and the respect they had for him. “He observed and noticed,” one friend remembered, “everything that came within the range of a capacious mind.”

  In the fall of 1810, when a number of his Republican friends placed him on the ticket as a representative of Washington and Athens counties in the state legislature, he suddenly found himself, at age twenty-seven, the youngest member of Ohio’s House of Representatives.

  His political career “terminated” after two sessions. As he would explain, “I never had any talent for oratory.” And so he returned to his professional duties and private life without the least regret, “fully satisfied with my trial to become a noted public character.”

  Nonetheless, he had drafted and succeeded in getting passed a first bill for the regulation of the practice of medicine.

  Along with everything else, he somehow found time to draw and paint and with stunning results, and particularly with his exquisite watercolors of speckled caterpillars morphing into dazzling butterflies. He had been fascinated with butterflies since a boy. “I have not language to express the delight afforded to me from the sight of rich colors, especially those of a small butterfly commonly seen on the blossoms of the thistle. I never tired of looking at them.”

  But then he never seemed to tire of looking at almost any form of nature. The love of natural science, as he said, had followed him all his days, and served as “a never failing source of enjoyment amidst the perplexities of life.”

  Asked how it was that he could do so much and accomplish so much, he said, “I’ve learned to use every one of all the odds and ends of the time.”

  II.

  For Ephraim and Leah Cutler it had become an extremely difficult time. Her health, a concern even before they first came west, had taken such a downward turn that to give her the help and attention needed Ephraim had ceased serving in the legislature.

  The situation became such that it was decided Leah must be nearer proper medical attention. So they had leased the wilderness farm they had worked so hard to establish near Ames and in the last week of December 1806 departed in two wagons. After three days of slow-going twenty-seven miles through the woods, they reached the banks of the Ohio to settle temporarily in a rented house at Belpre in what was to become the township of Warren.

  With the passing of winter Ephraim began clearing land to build a new home on high ground beside the river farther upstream six miles below Marietta.

  He was far from alone in his concern about Leah, who had the “decided symptoms” of consumption. “We feel extremely anxious about her,” his father wrote from Hamilton. “We rejoice that you have left your farm so that she will be freed from so much [to] care [for]. I would recommend to her to abstain from all labor, to use an easy, generous diet and have her mind as easy and quiet as possible.”

  Because of an extremely rainy spring in Ohio, progress on the new house went slowly and Leah’s condition grew worse to the point where it became clear she had little time left to live.

  Leah died on November 3, 1807, at the age of forty-two. It was the worst blow of Ephraim’s life.

  But in her final days, she had offered some advice. For his own good and that of their four children, she had insisted, he must remain single a short time only and remarry. She even went so far as to name the person she thought best suited for him. It was an act of genuine, selfless good intent, and of courage.

  The woman she had in mind was not someone she knew, only heard about. Her name was Sally Parker and she was also unknown to Ephraim. Thirty years old, or ten years younger than he, she had been born and raised in Newburyport, Massachusetts, before coming west with her family at age eleven. They had left their home in the summer of 1788. Her father, William Parker, had a proprietor’s share in the Ohio Company of over a thousand acres, but on reaching western Pennsylvania decided he did not want, not yet at least, to risk his wife and family to the realities of life on the Ohio frontier. Instead he purchased a small farm in western Pennsylvania. Not until 1800 did they continue on to Ohio. By then Sally was twenty-three.

  On March 11, 1808, a matter of only a few months after Leah’s death, Ephraim sat down to write Sally Parker a letter. “It is with great diffidence I presume to address you on a subject which to me is of the highest importance,” he began.

  I am at this time destitute of that solace of the heart a female friend to whom I can disclose my cares or who can alleviate my sorrows, assuage my grief or share my joys. The author of our natures has given your sex the most unlimited faculties and powers in all those respects and has said that it is not good, for a man to be alone. I am not insensible of the hard terms which I have to offer you and in consequence a total rejection of my suit is what I have a right to expect. . . . I have nothing to give as a compensation for this but my love and respect, but I find the impetuosity of my passion has carri
ed me too far. I will then only ask the favor to address you and cultivate an acquaintance. As I am very anxious to know my fate I must ask the favor that you will condescend so much as to convey to me your sentiment in such a way as you may think proper.

  Four days later came her reply. She felt herself in an “awkward predicament,” knowing nothing of his “person, manners, taste and sentiments,” but given his reputation as a gentleman: “If a personal interview is consistent with your desire, I am induced by the principles of politeness to accede thereto.” When or where they met for the first time was not recorded.

  Ephraim felt a great need for advice from his father, who by this time because of health problems had retired from Congress and returned home to Hamilton and his responsibilities as pastor of the First Congregational Church.

  In a letter dated April 4, Ephraim wrote to tell his father about Sally Parker and to say he had marriage much in mind and without delay.

  “She is a person of excellent character and of a refined and cultivated mind and manners,” he wrote, but added that he could not count on any fortune to come with the marriage. “Her father is a good liver with a handsome property, but has eleven children. Of course each one’s share will be small.”

  That same day, April 4, Ephraim also wrote what appears to have been his first all-out love letter to Sally. “The heart when full to overflowing seeks a vent and nothing relieves it so effectively,” he began, “as to pour out our thoughts to [the] one we love.”

  He was busy every day, at work on his new house, but thinking of her constantly.

  The lonely hours I pass, altho’ I am surrounded by noisy workmen and trifling neighbors are tedious. Indeed, there is none to whom I can divulge my thoughts. . . . You may well conceive then the pleasure I take in flying to my pen for relief. . . . You will my dear, pardon me when you consider that my heart has been a long time, as it were, on the rack, its feelings have been strained on the highest cord of grief, sorrow and joy and love, it now wants a repose and how can it enjoy repose when everything that is dear, to it is at such a distance. Oh my sweet girl, how can it be possible for one to live without you. I have felt the rapture of the most refined love. . . . O my dear every little pleasure I enjoy, every beauty of nature I see loudly tells me who is absent.

  His father’s reply from back home, dated May 6, was all Ephraim could have hoped for. “I have no hesitation in advising you to do it,” wrote Manasseh Cutler, “and so far as I am acquainted with your circumstances, I should conceive it best for you to do it as soon as you can make it convenient. It is true, a decent respect ought to be paid to the memory of a very valuable deceased companion, but I never thought that propriety in this respect rendered long delay necessary especially where the circumstances of a family required the forming a new connection.

  You are sensible [he continued] I can give no advice with respect to the individual you name, as she is a perfect stranger. Your choice might be left to your own judgment and the advice of friends who are acquainted. But a person pointed out by your late excellent wife, I think you must prefer, if all other instances accord, much before any other. This would certainly have weight in my mind. I think her advice that you should not remain single long is a strong proof of the correctness of her judgment.

  But by then Ephraim and Sally were already man and wife. They were married on April 13, Ephraim’s forty-first birthday.

  In his reply to his father to tell him the news so his new bride would not remain “a perfect stranger,” Ephraim provided a first full-scale description:

  She is tall and of a very agreeable figure. Her countenance is very striking, it is perfectly engaging without having that regularity which distinguishes great beauties, a native dignity and elegance of manners added to this intelligent and serene countenance with a modest air which tells the beholder she is well bred, cannot fail to be interesting.

  Since leaving Massachusetts at age eleven, she had had no “benefit from schools,” Ephraim continued, but well aware of the importance his father put on education, he quickly added with emphasis that, nonetheless, she was “well acquainted with history, geography, poetry, and music,” largely because of her mother and her own “ardent thirst for knowledge.” Her taste, he said, particularly her love of reading and appreciation of nature, was congenial to his own.

  Finally, knowing how it would delight his father, he added, “She would indeed make an excellent botanist in a short time under your tuition, for nothing [would be] more pleasing to her than to trace things to their secret springs and to look through nature up to nature’s God.”

  Sally proved almost at once to be a highly welcomed addition to the Cutler family, warm-spirited, well-mannered, and witty. As one of Ephraim’s daughters, Julia, would one day write, “She not only superintended and participated [in] the labors of the large household, but by her systematic methods found time to direct, in their early years, the studies and hear the recitations of her children.”

  Ephraim and Sally were to add five more children to the family, the first of whom was born a year after their marriage, the second a year after that.

  Ephraim finished building their new home, a handsome, two-story stone house facing the Ohio River at what was to become the town of Warren, named for one of the heroes of the Revolution, General Joseph Warren, who was killed at the battle of Bunker Hill.

  The house had taken longer to complete and cost more than he had expected. It “absorbed all my means,” as he would write, and he had already been in debt. Indeed, if Ephraim Cutler had one failing, it was his seeming inability ever to be out of debt and remain so. Nonetheless he and Sally were to make the new home a center of hospitality in all seasons.

  As daughter Julia was also to recount, “A free hospitality characterized the early settlers of Ohio, and in few houses was its exercise more constant than at the Cutler homestead.” New Englanders who came west to see for themselves, proprietors of shares in the Ohio Company, plus any number of others, would stop for a rest from the fatigue of their travels.

  “Travelers, or persons visiting Marietta often had letters of introduction to father, or were brought by gentlemen of that place to see him,” Julia wrote. “And an impromptu dinner party of well informed and agreeable people was no rare occurrence and not infrequently the visit was prolonged until the next day. My mother and father were both eminently social and good talkers, and often on these occasions friendly, delightful intercourse continued into the small hours of the night.”

  But, as she also added, “Sometimes it must be confessed the pleasure of this free hospitality had its drawbacks. Disagreeable people would occasionally take advantage of it, in several instances prolonging their stay two to three months.”

  Local veterans of the Revolution, many among Ephraim’s best friends, were always welcome guests for dinner or an overnight stay. Ministers passing through or visiting would preach a sermon in the house, and for nearly a year the front sitting room served as the first school in the community.

  When, after a time, Ephraim returned to service in the state legislature, all manner of politicians, attorneys, pleaders for one cause or another kept coming and going.

  III.

  The winds of change, the unexpected blows of nature, and unexpected developments taking place elsewhere kept striking and with pronounced repercussions for the people of the Ohio Valley. In 1807 it had been the influenza epidemic, then Jefferson’s Embargo Act.

  But it was also in 1807, on August 17 in New York, that Robert Fulton’s new steamboat made her memorable voyage up the Hudson River to Albany and back, attaining a speed of five miles per hour.

  Four years later in the 1811 edition of an Ohio River guidebook called The Navigator, published in Pittsburgh, appeared a most important item.

  There is now on foot a new mode of navigating our western waters, particularly the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. This is with boats propelled by the power of steam. This plan has been carried into successful operation on the H
udson River at New York, and on the Delaware between New Castle and Burlington. It has been stated that the one on the Hudson goes at the rate of four miles an hour against wind and tide on her route between New York and Albany, and frequently with 500 passengers on board. From these successful experiments there can be but little doubt of the plan succeeding on our western waters, and proving of immense advantage to the commerce of our country.

  A Mr. Rosewalt [Nicholas Roosevelt], a gentleman of enterprise . . . has a boat of this kind now on the stocks at Pittsburgh, of 138 feet keel, calculated for 300 or 400 tons burden. . . . It will be a novel sight, and as pleasing as novel to see a huge boat working her way up the windings of the Ohio, without the appearance of sail, oar, pole or any manual labor about her—moving within the secrets of her own wonderful mechanism, and propelled by power undiscoverable! This plan if it succeeds, must open to view flattering prospects to an immense country, an interior of not less than two thousand miles of as fine a soil and climate, as the world can produce, and to a people worthy of all the advantages that nature and art can give them.

  In late October 1811 the first steamboat on western waters, the New Orleans, under the command of its builder, Nicholas Roosevelt, departed from Pittsburgh and proceeded down the Ohio at an astonishing speed of 12 miles per hour. Fifteen people were on board, including Roosevelt, his wife, and their two-year-old daughter. After a brief stop at Marietta, where they were greeted by a cheering crowd, they traveled on down the full length of the Ohio and on to the Mississippi, then all the way to New Orleans, 2,000 miles in fourteen days.

  The age of steam had arrived on western waters.

  After the New Orleans, in a matter of only a few years, would follow the steamboats Comet, Vesuvius, Enterprise, Aetna, Dispatch, Buffalo, and more. The moving of produce and supplies, as well as countless passengers both downstream and back, was never to be the same.