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Hang out along the riverbank long enough and you are bound to find some interesting things. Old bikes, a single shoe, uniquely shaped driftwood, a lead plaque claiming the entire region for France.

Wait, what was that last one again?

Two boys playing near the confluence of the Muskingum and Ohio rivers found exactly that in 1798.

The plate was pulled from the ground at a spot where a flood had recently washed away part of the riverbank. They found it sticking out of the bank a few feet above the water. All the writing was in French so the two children could not read it. They took it home and began cutting pieces off it to make lead balls for muskets. Paul Fearing, a community leader at the time, got ahold of it and concluded the writing was in French. William Woodridge, who had just learned French, figured out from what was left of the plaque that the French had deposited it along the river to claim their right to the possession of the country. Eventually the plaque ended up in the hands of New York Governor De Witt Clinton, he bequeathed it to the American Antiquarian Society, located in Worcester, Massachusetts, who received it in 1828. Nearly 200 years later the plaque found along the riverbank in Marietta remains at the facility east of Boston. It has been loaned out several times to different museums, including the Ohio River Museum when it opened in Marietta in 1973.

A group of fifth grade students at Phillips School made a request to have the plate returned here in 1988. Lt. Gov. Nancy Hollister even got involved stating “As a direct descendent of the founder of Marietta, I have asked the society to consider giving back the lead plate,” she said in an article about the efforts of the students. The Times even took a stand on it with an editorial saying that “Marietta needs its plate returned.”

The president of the society, Ellen Dunlap wrote back a nine-page letter to the students, outlining the long history of the plate and outlining how they have used and taken care of it for nearly two centuries. She made it clear that the plate could be loaned out, but that its home would remain at the American Antiquarian Society.

When the children found the plate along the riverbank, it had been in the ground since Aug. 16, 1749. They didn’t know it at the time, but the plaque had been placed in the ground by a man named Captain Pierre Joseph Celoron de Blainville who traveled from the headwaters of The Ohio River to the Great Miami River near current day Cincinnati burying the plaques that were less than a half inch think and about 7 x11 inches in size. About the size of an iPad, the plaques were buried near the mouths of rivers that feed into what would later be called the Ohio River.

There are six spots where it was recorded that they were buried. The trees above those spots were marked with a sign of sorts. Trees along rivers, though, frequently get washed away by floods, so they likely provided little help to future generations.

The one in Marietta was the first one found. Another one was found in Point Pleasant around 50 years later. The second one was recovered and preserved before anyone could do any cutting on it. It is in the Virginia Museum of History and Culture because it was recovered from what was at that time, Virginia.

The rest have never been located. The one near Wheeling Creek in Ohio County was buried in an area that was later heavily developed by the railroad. At this point the lead may have been absorbed into the ground after being in wet dirt for several hundred years.

The plaques along the Ohio River were placed during a massive expedition that took place in 1749. At the time the French and the British were at odds over who would control the center of the continent. The King of France commissioned de Blainville to lead a group down the Ohio to reinforce the French claims to the area and to try to build better relationships with the native Americans and British traders who were already in the area. The expedition started in Montreal in June of 1749 with 250 men. With colorful uniforms, the soldiers, militia and native Americans made their way toward Ohio in white canoes made from birch trees. Using lakes when they could and carrying the canoes when they needed to portage between them, they made their way to Conewango Creek which led to the Allegheny, which would then turn into the Ohio at current Pittsburgh.

From the two plaques that survived, we know that they were engraved like a form letter, with the location and the date being engraved when they decided to bury one. The ceremonies at each location were somewhat elaborate, so some of them may have been dug up for the lead shortly after the flotilla of Frenchmen left.

When they reached the Great Miami they headed north after burying the last of their plates. They eventually reached Lake Erie and took a long paddle back to Montreal.

News of the claims being made angered the British, eventually leading to war with France. The claim to the land would be solved in favor of the British by the French and Indian War and the Treaty of Paris in 1763, and in favor of the United States by the Revolutionary War later.

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