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by Ray Swick American historians remember Harman Blennerhassett for the romantic role he and his attractive wife played in the Burr conspiracy. Far more significant, however, is the role he played from 1797 to 1806 as a frontier entrepreneur in the Ohio River Valley. The Blennerhassetts arrived in the United States in 1796, emigrating from Europe for both personal and political reasons. Family friction created by Blennerhassett’s marriage to Margaret Agnew, his niece, and Blennerhassett’s sympathy toward anti-British movements in Ireland had forced a change. Blennerhassett viewed the United States as a suitable country for a new home, but he wrote to his nephew shortly after his arrival in New York that he would be satisfied with nothing less than what he had possessed in Europe— a landed estate. Kentucky’s recent entry into the Union drew his attention to the newly-opened western lands, where there was “an increase of wealth flowing into the country, unequaled in the annals of any other, from emigrations.” The Blennerhassetts wintered in Pittsburgh late in 1796, and in August, 1797, Blennerhassett embarked alone downriver to begin his search for a home. His first stop was at Marietta, in the Northwest Territory where the Muskingum River flows into the Ohio. It took him only one week to decide; when he re-embarked on the river it was not downstream, but back to Pittsburgh to bring his wife to their new home. The Blennerhassetts returned to Marietta by September. Their financial involvement in the area had begun. What the Blennerhassetts discovered in the Marietta region was a group of communities just recovering from the devastation of a five-year Indian war that had commenced shortly after the first settlement in 1788. Marietta itself was the oldest settlement in Ohio and the center of government and business for several other settlements, including the attractive site of Belpre, twelve miles down the Ohio opposite the mouth of the Little Kanawha River. Rich bottom soil made the region overwhelmingly agricultural with extensive orchards and excellent crops of corn, wheat, beans and lesser vegetables. Regardless of the visual results of the settlers’ agricultural improvements, decades were to pass before the region would lose its wilderness characteristics. It took more than a few years of even the hardest labor to destroy a forest that had stood for centuries. As late as 1807, but four or five clearings existed in the twelve miles between Belpre and Marietta. The wealth of Harman Blennerhassett soon played an instrumental role in changing the face of this frontier country. At his father’s death in 1792, Blennerhassett had inherited £20,000 which he deposited with a London banking firm, Brooke-Watson and Company. Brooke-Watson invested the money in British Funds which subsequently diminished in value, shrinking Blennerhassett’s fortune to £ 13,000. This British stock, over the period of several years, was converted into American stock at Philadelphia. £13,000 was not a large fortune by contemporary European standards, but it made Blennerhassett a wealthy man in the eyes of his frontier neighbors. Blennerhassett would dispense his wealth during his 1797-1806 residence in the Ohio Valley through five different means. The largest amounts were spent on his estate, which he constructed as a residence and business enterprise. Another chunk of the fortune was invested in a chain of mercantile stores through Blennerhassett’s partnership with the Dudley Woodbridge family of Marietta. |
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