It looks good on a bumper sticker or a “Welcome to Marietta” sign, but was Marietta really the first settlement in the Northwest Territory?

When I was a grade school student in Florida, we would take field trips to St. Augustine. On its “welcome to” signs it claims to be the first city in the United States, having been settled in 1565. When I moved to the relatively young city of Marietta (1788) I took it for granted that it was indeed the oldest settlement in the Northwest Territory. After all, the sign when you enter town proclaims “MARIETTA First organized settlement in the Northwest Territory.” Well, I didn’t even know what the Northwest Territory was (I thought we had moved to the Northeast), but I accepted what I was told as fact.

I am, of course, older now (much) and have learned to question some things (well, everything actually) and I thought it would be a good time to see who was first.

One could make a very convincing argument that the indigenous people had the first settlements here. Those arriving from New England in April 1788 found the remnants of a civilization that had been here 1,000 years before and had built large earthen structures, some of which remain here today. I assume they were very organized. After all, what they built has lasted for a millennium. Their settlements were long gone though. The native Americans that were here in 1788 were a different group. Those who lived in settlements around the state were soon pushed farther and farther west by those wanting to bring their own brand of community here. They likely would have been in permanent settlements if everyone could have gotten along in the vast new space.

So, let’s call Marietta the first permanent white settlement in the Northwest Territory. But was it?

The Northwest Territory was made up of the current day states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota. Technically, settlement could not happen in any of these areas until the Northwest Ordinance was enacted in 1787. The trouble is, it did. People were trying to settle Martins Ferry as early as 1779. Nearby Wheeling, Va., had been a town since 1769 when Ebenezer Zane decided it would be a good place for a community by marking trees with an axe. Wheeling, of course, was already part of Virginia, and Virginia had been a colony since the start. The 48 men aboard the Adventure Galley (that would be the flatboat, not Captain Kidd’s 17th Century pirate ship) would have passed both settlements on their way to the “frontier” that was Marietta less than 100 miles south.

How about the other areas that made up the Northwest Territory? Vincennes, founded in 1732, is Indiana’s oldest city — it was settled by the French and had a thriving fur trade.

Sault Ste. Marie was settled as early as 1668, making it the oldest city in Michigan.

There are several communities in Illinois that are older than Marietta. The largest, Peoria, was founded in 1691 by French explorer Henri de Tonti.

Further north in Wisconsin, Green Bay, famous for the Packers and for some reason, people wearing cheese on their heads, was settled in 1754 as Baie Verte (French for “The Green Bay.”)

The oldest city in Minnesota is Wabasha, which was laid out in 1854 and is located in a part of the state (west of the Mississippi) that was not part of the Northwest Territory anyway. So is the whole Marietta first thing a lie?

Not really. None of the cities settled before Marietta were done so under United States law because the land was not officially part of the nation. Not until the Ordinance of 1787 was the establishment of the Northwest Territory possible. The ordinance gave a pathway for lands to be settled and eventually to become states.

In that regard, Marietta is the first permanent white settlement organized under the terms of the Northwest Territory. It just doesn’t fit on a “Welcome to Marietta” sign, or a bumper sticker that well.

Art Smith is online manager of The Times, he can be reached at asmith@mariettatimes.com