The Ohio Frontier: An Anthology of Early Writings

Ohio River Valley Series

by Emily Foster (Editor)

Few mementoes remain of what Ohio was like before white people transformed it. The readings in this anthology—the diaries of a trader and a missionary, the letter of a frontier housewife, the travel account of a wide-eyed young English tourist, the memoir of an escaped slave, and many others—are eyewitness accounts of the Ohio frontier. They tell what people felt and thought about coming to the very fringes of white civilization—and what the people thought and did who saw them coming.

Each succeeding group of newcomers—hunters, squatters, traders, land speculators, farmers, missionaries, fresh European immigrants—established a sense of place and community in the wilderness. Their writings tell of war, death, loneliness, and deprivation, as well as courage, ambition, success, and fun. We can see the lust for the land, the struggle for control of it, the terrors and challenges of the forest, and the determination of white settlers to change the land, tame it, "improve" it.

The new Ohio these settlers created had no room for its native inhabitants. Their dispossession is a defining theme of the book. As the forests receded and the farms expanded, the Indians were pressured to move out. By the time the last tribe, the Wyandots, left in 1843, they were regarded as relics of the romantic past, and the frontier experience came to a close.

Anyone fascinated by the panorama of America's westward migration will respond to the dramatic stories told in these pages.

Genres: History

244 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1996

About the author

Emily Foster is a long-time writer and editor. After an early career as a grant writer and administrator, she moved into freelance writing and eventually took a job as writer and then senior editor with Columbus Monthly magazine. She also served for two years as editor of Cincinnati Magazine before crossing the street into public relations. She was vice-president of Steiner-Lesic Communications, a public affairs firm, and then Associate VP for University Relations, retiring in 2008.

Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. The editor did a good job weaving first hand diaries, books, and journals of early Ohio settlers.