The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West

Highlighting Timothy Flint’s description of the Ohio River in 1816, McCullough emphasizes its natural beauty. Travelers to the region never failed to be impressed with the sight. Even Frances Trollope, an English critic of American culture, “was openly moved by her first encounter with the Ohio River” (223). Trollope and other visitors had several complaints of western ways, however.

Arriving in the US in 1827, Trollope attempted to make a living in Cincinnati with an arcade or entertainment business. After the business failed, she returned to England and criticized the western life for the strain it placed on women who lost their beauty and youth by the age of 30 (224), the mosquitoes, the excessive drinking, and the lack of charm and grace among its inhabitants. She deplored the existence of slavery in the south as well. Charles Dickens, another famous visitor, considered Americans to be bores and criticized their odd expressions. Alexis de Tocqueville, a French aristocrat who astutely described American society in the 1820s, warned of the danger of slavery to the nation.

Alcohol, McCullough explains, played a significant role on the frontier. However, by the 1820s, drinking had increased all over the US, prompting the formation of the Temperance Movement, which called for abstinence from alcohol and prohibition. E. Cutler, who lost his brother Charles to alcoholism, was an advocate of this cause, which had gained some support in Marietta.

The most stinging criticism of the west from Dickens, Trollope, and others concerned the disgraceful treatment of the Indigenous peoples. The Removal Bill of 1830 relegated the Indigenous tribes to distant reservations. Dickens witnessed one of the last phases in the implementation of this bill. He and his wife had stopped for the night at a Wyandot village in northeastern Ohio on their travels. He heard the federal agent note the attachment that the Wyandots had to the land but later that summer, they were to be sent to Cincinnati “where they were to go by steamboat to reservations farther west” (230). Indigenous names remained for rivers, such as the Scioto, and towns, but the peoples were expelled.

In Cincinnati, Dickens was impressed with the cheerfulness of the thriving city when he visited in 1842. There was much to like in the city’s free public schools and Dickens admired the manners of the people as well. Even though he was not an advocate of temperance, he was pleased to see Irishmen marching in a parade in favor of it.

In 1830, Hildreth and his wife Rhoda, now in their fifties with grown children, traveled east for a visit. The methods of transportation had radically changed in the time since they had emigrated west. In their journey east, they would travel via private carriage, river and oceangoing steamboats, canal boats, and rail. They left their son George, also a physician, in charge of the practice in Marietta, and first visited another son, also a physician, in Zanesville.

They were astonished to see the countryside now cultivated, no longer a wilderness. They stopped in Cleveland, which by then had eight to ten thousand people and had beautiful buildings. Delivering a lecture to the Medical Convention in Cleveland, Hildreth described the landscape in 1788. McCullough claims that it was “his hymn to the vanished wonder of the wilderness and to the natives for whom it had so long been their kingdom” (232). From there, the Hildreths traveled to Buffalo and onto New York City, which they described as noisy.

They next went to New Haven. Hildreth loved the city and was able to stay with Benjamin Silliman, who was the most esteemed scientist in the US in the first half of the 19th century. Impressed with Hildreth’s geological observations and theory about the formation of the Ohio River, Silliman gave him a tour of Yale. Hildreth met Silliman’s relation, the artist John Trumbull, and viewed his gallery at Yale. He was also able to view the Gibbs Cabinet of minerals and the anatomical collection at the medical college. It was the highlight of his trip. From there, the couple traveled to Hartford and Boston, where Hildreth watched an operation at the Massachusetts Hospital. On the return trip, Hildreth was impressed with a new “contrivance that hauled the canal boat” (238) over the Allegheny Mountains. He and his wife were thrilled to return home.

While the Hildreths were traveling, a Boston traveler stopped in Marietta and wrote a moving and positive description of this first settlement in Ohio. The quiet elegance of the town and its maturity were noted. The town reminded the traveler of New England, and he was astounded to find the society so well established in such a short period of time.

In the summer of 1843, word came that John Quincy Adams, the former President and now member of Congress, was to travel to Cincinnati to lay the cornerstone for the first public observatory in the western hemisphere. Adams, an ardent advocate of education, was seeking to build support for the Smithsonian Institution in Congress. Adams would visit Marietta on his return trip and a small group of dignitaries, namely E. Cutler, Barker, and Caleb Emerson, were to accompany Adams from Marietta to Pittsburgh.

Greeted by enthusiastic crowds, Adams arrived in Cincinnati on November 8 and because of bad weather, gave only half of his speech at the dedication. He arrived in Marietta on November 15 aboard the Benjamin Franklin steamboat. To E. Cutler’s delight, Adams gave a speech praising the contributions of M. Cutler and Putnam. Since Barker had died on September 21 at age 78, his son joined Emerson and E. Cutler on the trip escorting Adams to Pittsburgh. E. Cutler, who like Adams was an advocate of education and an opponent of slavery, undoubtedly enjoyed the experience.

In his later years, E. Cutler remained healthy and was an avid reader. He was involved with the Whigs, who opposed the anti-intellectualism of the Jacksonian administration. With the help of his daughter Julia, he wrote his own story. The Cutlers were an affectionate and close family. It pleased E. Cutler that his son William was elected to the state legislature as a Whig in 1844 and was soon recognized as a leader there. E. Cutler’s brother Jervis died in June 1844 at the age of 75.

Two years later, or June 30, 1846, Sally, his wife of 38 years, died as well. In 1849, his oldest son Charles joined the gold rush to California. McCullough notes that, still, “the west was the future” (252). Unfortunately, in a blow to E. Cutler, Charles died of cholera months later. In the early spring of 1853, E. Cutler fell from a horse and did not recover from his injuries. He died on July 8, 1853 at the age of 86. Ironically, he died the same way as his namesake, M. Cutler’s brother. There were lengthy tributes to his accomplishments.

Prior to the Civil War, Marietta had become one of the main escape routes for runaway enslaved people. Acting as conductors in the Underground Railroad, many in Marietta and Washington County helped fugitive enslaved people in their route to Oberlin, Ohio, then across Lake Eerie to Canada. Most were quiet about their participation; however, David Putnam was quite open about it. There is some evidence that E. Cutler assisted in these activities as well. E. Cutler considered Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a hero, believing that the book did more to promote the abolitionist cause than all sermons put together (255). Stowe had lived in Cincinnati for 17 years before moving to Maine with her husband. William Cutler would later be elected to the US Congress, where he would be the third generation of Cutlers to battle against slavery.

In 1850, Marietta remained a small town, with a population under 4,000, and was true to its founding ideals of religious freedom and education. With growing numbers of Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Germany, the first Catholic place of worship was established in 1830 and the first Catholic church was built in the 1850s. There were Jewish immigrants as well, but their presence remained small in the 19th century. The town’s inhabitants took pride in their community and in the beautiful tree-lined streets.

Samuel Hildreth published Pioneer History in 1848, a work that chronicled “the early settlement of the Ohio Valley” (253). The book received praise at the time and had long-term value. After collecting the stories of several pioneers, Hildreth published Memoirs of the Early Pioneer Settlers of Ohio in 1852. It told the stories of 39 characters. Hildreth died on July 24, 1863, when the country was in the middle of the Civil War and Ohio had a population of two million people. His son George was serving in the militia under the auspices of Colonel William Rufus Putnam, Jr., at the time. Putnam gave George leave to attend to his father’s death. One obituary noted that Hildreth had lived a complete life and “finished his work” (258). McCullough notes that the other leading pioneers of Marietta had done so as well.