OHIO COMPANY. In .1merican history, the name applied to two companies organized for the purpose of exploiting and making settlements in the Ohio Valley. The first was an association of prominent Virginia planters and some London merchants. and was organized in 1749. It re ceived from George II. a grant of 500.000 acres von,. X I V.--19.
of land lying chiefly south of the Ohio Itiver, in what is now NI est Virginia. Thomas Lee, presi dent of the Virginia Council, was I he originator of the scheme. and Washington, a brother of George W ashington, was one of the leading members. In 1772 the Walpole Com pany secured from the King a grant of the whole territory southeast of the Ohio from the Penn sylvania boundary to a point opposite the mouth of the Scioto. The Ohio Company now became merged in the Walpole Company. A second company, known as the 'Ohio Company of Associates,' was formed at Boston in March, 1786, by 11illUITS and soldiers, chiefly of the _Mas sachusetts, Connecticut. :Ind Rhode Island lines, fur the purchase and settlement of Western lands.
Gen. Rufus Putnam, Samuel IL Parsons, and Manasseh Cutler were chosen as directors, and the lands selected for purchase lay along the Ohio River on both sides of the Muskingum. After considerable delay the company secured a grant upon favorable terms from Congress and the contract was formally signed in October, 1787, by the Treasury Board of Congress and by Dr. Cutler and Winthrop Sargent, acting as agents of the Ohio Company. In December, sev eral companies of surveyors, earpenters, smiths, farmers. and others, under the leadership of Gen eral Putnam, emigrated to the new territory. ar riving in April, 178,8. Opposite Fort Harmer they laid out a town which was named Marietta in honor of the French Queen. Marie Antoinette. Consult: King, History of Ohio (Boston, 1858) ; and _McMaster, History of the People of the United Stales, vol. i. (New York, 1883). See Onto.