OH, USA
Muskingum Academy Established (Later Marietta College)
January 1, 1797
The founders of Marietta had set aside land for education from the beginning — Manasseh Cutler had insisted on educational reservations in the Ohio Company's plan. In 1797, the Muskingum Academy was established, which eventually developed into Marietta College, chartered in 1835. It is one of the oldest colleges in the Midwest and reflects the New England founders' commitment to a literate, educated republican citizenry as the foundation of self-government.
The college's founding was consistent with the Northwest Ordinance's language about religion, morality, and knowledge being "necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind" — a phrase Cutler had helped write. It translated the Ordinance's educational aspirations into institutional form.
People Involved
Massachusetts Congregationalist minister and self-taught scientist who lobbied Congress for the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and negotiated the Ohio Company land purchase. His July 1787 lobbying campaign in New York — conducted while the Constitutional Convention was simultaneously meeting in Philadelphia — produced both the Ordinance and the land deal that made Marietta possible. He never permanently settled there himself.
Son of Manasseh Cutler who settled permanently in the Marietta area and became one of the most important figures in Ohio's constitutional convention of 1802. Ephraim Cutler, despite being ill with a fever, cast the decisive vote that kept slavery out of the Ohio state constitution, preserving the Northwest Ordinance's prohibition and cementing Ohio's status as a free state.