The first Fourth of July in Marietta had a special meaning not only because it came just a dozen years after the birth of the nation, but it also occurred at the conclusion of the first meeting of the directors of the Ohio Company who had worked to set up a form of government in the Northwest Territory.

The meeting was held near the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers. At the conclusion the directors wrote the basic rules governing the small town and posted it on the smooth trunk of a large beech near the river on July 4, 1788.

As the book “Pioneer History: Ohio Valley, and the early settlement of the Northwest Territory” noted — “This day was duly celebrated, in the usual manner, by the firing of thirteen cannons from Fort Harmer, in the morning and at evening.”

Those inhabitants dined on a meal of venison, bear meat, buffalo, as well as roasted pigs, that they had gotten from the Williams’ settlement across the river where Williamstown is today. They also had a variety of fish including a pike, which weighed one hundred pounds when caught.

Carried by two men with a pole, the fish dragged the ground as they carried it on their shoulders. Judge Gilbert Devol Sr. and his son, Gilbert, had caught the fish from a canoe after giving it chase by following the wake of the fish in the Muskingum River until it tired and they were able to capture it with a fish spear.

The fish would be remarkable if the story is true and it was actually a pike. The world record pike was caught in Germany in 1986 and it weighed 55 pounds. Catfish, common in the rivers today, can however, grow that big.

The arrival of Gov. Arthur St. Clair on July 9 extended the celebrating. He was greeted with a 14-gun salute when he arrived at Fort Harmar. On July 15 he came over to the east side of the Muskingum and met with Rufus Putnam and others near the confluence where the ordinance by Congress that formed the Northwest Territory was read. Three cheers closed out the ceremony.

Those attending the feast on the first Fourth of July in Marietta would later struggle to get enough to eat.

Food became scarce a year later after wildlife became harder to find and the crops planted that summer failed to produce enough food to make it through the winter with much of the corn being unfit to eat because it was harvested too early.

The settlement across the river from Marietta was a bit of a lifesaver for the young town of Marietta. Around a dozen families had moved to the area in 1787. Their farming success there had given the new arrivals on the Ohio side of the river confidence that they would succeed too. The Virginians had raised 1,000 bushels of corn the previous year and had made it through the winter of 1787-88 with enough food for themselves as well as more than 60 head of cattle and horses, plus pigs that were reportedly “fattened a sufficient quantity” for their own consumption.

Those in Marietta would have to turn to their neighbors across the river in 1789 when food supplies dropped very low and those in Marietta had to paddle canoes to Williamstown to purchase corn.

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