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20 2 The Ohio River Valley As the lighthouse at the entrance to Le Havre’s harbor slipped out of sight, de Luzières, gazing back over the taffrail of Citoyens de Paris, knew that this would be his last mortal glimpse of France, for he had solemnly decided to forsake the ancient compost heap of Europe for the virgin soil of America. De Luzières’s journey, by land and sea, from Valenciennes to the East Coast of North America went smoothly, but his headaches began as soon as he arrived at the docks in Philadelphia on October 15, 1790, even before he and his family could disembark; and to a large degree they never let up until death gave him his ultimate relief just before Christmas 1806 in New Bourbon, the community he had founded thirteen years earlier. In his rush to board ship and flee France in August; de Luzières had not ironed out the details regarding expenses with the captain and the outfitter of the Citoyens de Paris before the ship sailed out of Le Havre-de-Grâce. In Philadelphia the captain refused to let de Luzières disembark without paying a surcharge of 3,159 livres tournois , apparently for the goodly size of his entourage and his astonishing mass of material possessions. It’s also possible that the captain was personally devoted to the French Revolutionary cause, and when he had an aristocrat in his clutches he took advantage of the situation to extort a large chunk of cash from him. Philadelphia became temporary capital of the American republic in 1790, but in the early 1790s the city was gorged with thousands of French refugees (numbering perhaps as much as 15 percent of the city’s total population)1 1.AllanPotofsky,“The‘Non-AlignedStatus’of FrenchEmigrésandRefugeesinPhiladelphia , 1793–1798,” www.transatlantica.org/document1147.html. These refugees included The Ohio River Valley 21 in flight from the republican revolution in France. Once de Luzières’s substantial entourage managed to disembark at the foot of Lombard Street, they were met by a representative of the Scioto Company, one Colonel David S. Franks. Franks tried to be helpful, and his dedication reveals that the company was not merely an elaborate fraud but also one whose benevolent (if also greedy) intentions were overwhelmed by the scope of the enterprise , a few irresponsible individuals, and the contingencies of events on the ground. Colonel Franks, who had served in the American Revolution, was one of many American soldiers who appreciated France’s support during that revolution. De Luzières later complained that Franks had not served him well, but Franks was a serious and competent person, and he tried his level best to be of assistance to the French immigrants, most of whom could not speak a word of English.2 During the spring of 1790, American organizers of the Scioto Company recognized that the company had no valid title to lands on the north bank of the Ohio River, something that Barlow in Paris had not wished to recognize. The company’s contract with the U.S. Congress provided for a preemption right, an option to buy, rather than a fully consumated purchase. The Scioto Company therefore purchased from the Ohio Company of Associates (whose contract with Congress went beyond preemption to purchase) an alternative site upon which to settle the French Scioto colonists, some of whom were already en route.3 A crew of husky woodcutters from western Massachusetts was brought in to build log cabins and blockhouses for defense; the threat of Indian attack in the Ohio River valley at this time period was real and persistent . Major John Burnham, yet another veteran of the American Revolution involved in the Scioto affair, commanded this crew, and they worked throughout the summer and autumn of 1790. They were apparently assisted by an experienced woodsman from the region—Daniel Boone—who at the time was settled close by near the mouth of the Kanawha River (the present location of Point Pleasant, West Virginia).4 This was a tumultuous, dangerous, and complicated time in that part of North America, for the Ohio Country had not yet been “pacified.” In late ———— the famous, or infamous, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, who paraded on the streets of Philadelphia with his black mistress on his arm. 2. Concerning Franks, see Jocelyne Moreau-Zanelli, Gallipolis: Histoire d’un mirage américain au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000), passim, esp...

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