Marietta and The Ohio Country
During early 1788, at about 54 years of age, William Stacy joined with other Revolutionary War officers as a pioneer to the Ohio Country, and was involved in establishing Marietta, Ohio at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers as the first permanent American settlement in the Northwest Territory. Colonel Stacy joined this venture as a shareholder in the Ohio Company of Associates, which was formed and led by Gen. Rufus Putnam and Gen. Benjamin Tupper. General Lafayette visited Marietta years later and described these pioneers and former officers: "They were the bravest of brave. Better men never lived." George Washington commented "I know many of the settlers personally, and there never were men better calculated to promote the welfare of such a community." Marietta is located in the county of Ohio bearing Washington's name.
During the settlement of the Ohio Country, two of Colonel Stacy's sons were with a small group of pioneers attempting to establish a settlement on some good potential farmland known as Big Bottom, upriver from Marietta on the Muskingum River. Colonel Stacy ice skated 30 miles (48 km) up the frozen river in late December 1790 and warned his sons about the danger of a possible Indian attack. His concerns were realized several days later on January 2, 1791 with the occurrence of the Big Bottom massacre, and the beginning of the Northwest Indian War. Twelve people were killed in the attack, including Stacy's son John. His son Philemon was taken captive and died later.
William Stacy was a prominent and active member of the pioneer settlement of Marietta. He superintended the construction of a stockade known as Picketed Point to protect the settlers from Indians, he was an officer in the militia, and he was an officer on the first board of police. Additionally, he served as an officer of the township of Marietta, and he owned one of two hand mills in the settlement. William Stacy was a member of the Society of the Cincinnati and an original member of the American Union Lodge No. 1 (Freemasons) at Marietta; the name of this lodge was reportedly suggested by Benjamin Franklin, and the seal engraved by Paul Revere. Stacy was honored with the position of foreman of the first Grand Jury in the Northwest Territory. This was an important event, as this court was the first establishment of civil and criminal law in the pioneer country.
William Stacy lost his wife Sarah to smallpox during March 1790 after 36 years of marriage. He subsequently married Hannah Sheffield during July of that year. "A man highly esteemed for his many excellent qualities, and honored for his services and sufferings in the cause of freedom," William Stacy died in Marietta in 1802 at 68 years of age. He was buried in Marietta at Mound Cemetery, the site of an ancient American Indian burial mound. Colonel Stacy has good company in his final resting place; Mound Cemetery reportedly contains the largest number of Revolutionary War officers buried in one location. A new memorial marker was dedicated to William Stacy in 1928 in Mound Cemetery.
Read more about this topic: William Stacy
Famous quotes containing the words ohio and/or country:
“Heaven is not one of your fertile Ohio bottoms, you may depend on it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Before the birth of the New Woman the country was not an intellectual desert, as she is apt to suppose. There were teachers of the highest grade, and libraries, and countless circles in our towns and villages of scholarly, leisurely folk, who loved books, and music, and Nature, and lived much apart with them. The mad craze for money, which clutches at our souls to-day as la grippe does at our bodies, was hardly known then.”
—Rebecca Harding Davis (1831–1910)