Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 187]

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Seminary and College Funds

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western immigration and public grants of land. They issued a call through the newspapers of New England, inviting delegates to meet at the Bunch of Grapes tavern, Boston, on March 1, 1786. At this meeting the Ohio company was formed for the purpose of purchasing a large tract of land in the Ohio territory, and settling it with good, New England stock. During the year, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, one-fourth of the stock of the company, was subscribed. This sum was considered sufficient to insure the success of the company; therefore the stockholders at a meeting in March, 1787, elected Samuel Holden Parsons, Manasseh Cutler, and Rufus Putnam directors, with full power to negotiate with congress for the purchase of the desired lands.2 Parsons drew up a memorial in which he set forth the desires and proposals of the company. It was presented to congress in May, and was immediately referred to a special committee.8 This memorial of the Ohio company and the energetic work of Cutler, who reached New York on the fifth of July, moved congress to take up again the discussion of the bill for a permanent organization of the western territory. Aroused by the prospect of a large sale if a satisfactory form of government should be provided, congress speedily took up the measure and referred it to a new committee. The presence of Cutler, together with the assurance that if his plans matured, immigration into the western territory was practically certain, gave new life to the delayed bill, which finally passed on the thirteenth of July, and became the governmental instrument of the northwest territory. This important work disposed of, congress was free to consider Cutler's plans for a purchase of land. The committee in charge reported favorably on the terms suggested, which among other things, provided for a reservation of four townships for a seminary of learning within the purchase, but congress considered this too much and consequently omitted mention of it in an ordinance reported July 19th. Cutler, however, strongly felt the desirability of a provision of this sort, and therefore subsutler, Life Journal and Correspondence, 1: 180, 192. •Bancroft, History of the Formation of the Constitution, 2: 10!).

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