1788

 

SETTLERS land at the site of Marietta and set to work. Return Jonathan Meigs is their leader. According to Charles Coffin: 

His mother named him Return Jonathan, because when she was a maiden in Connecticut, and Jonathan Meigs came to ask her to be his wife, she said, “No,” but the next moment was sorry, ran after him, and cried, “Return, Jonathan!” and he went back and she became Mrs. Meigs, and was so glad that she married him she named her first baby Return Jonathan. He had been to Yale College, was a lawyer, and now Governor of this new settlement. 

Early Marietta.

Settlers celebrate July Fourth.

* 

August: William Least Heat-Moon describes an incident related to the story of the Lady Washington, a merchant vessel out of Boston, that helped to open the fur trade with the tribes of the Northwest Pacific coast. 

    In 1788, the Lady Washington, the first American ship to visit the Northwest coast, anchored inside Tillamook Bay so that the party could go ashore to gather fresh fruit for a crew suffering from scurvy. During the mission a Negro sailor attempted to recover a cutlass stolen by Indians. The mate, Robert Haswell, recorded the incident:

 

[There] was a very large group of the natives among the midst of which was the poor black with the thief by the collar loudly calling for assistance, saying he had caught the thief; when we were observed by the main body of the natives to hastily approach them, they instantly drenched their knives and spears with savage fury in the body of the unfortunate youth. He quitted his hold and stumbled but rose again and staggered towards us but having a flight of arrows thrown into his back and he fell within fifteen yards of me and instantly expired while they mangled his lifeless corpse.