significant proportions, and Congress was compelled to facilitate travel by opening a post route two hundred and twenty-six miles in length from the upper to the lower Ohio. Accordingly, the following act: "An Act to authorize Ebenezer Zane[1] to locate certain lands in the territory of the United States northwest of the river Ohio" was passed by Congress and approved May 17, 1796:
"Be it enacted, &c., That, upon the conditions hereinafter mentioned, there shall be granted to Ebenezer Zane three tracts of land, not exceeding one mile square each, one on the Muskingum river, one on Hockhocking river, and one other on the north bank of Scioto river, and in such situations as shall best promote the utility of a road to be opened by him on the most eligible route between Wheeling and Limestone,[2]
- ↑ The patriot-pioneer of Wheeling, the first settlement on the Ohio River below Pittsburg, which he founded in 1769, and where he lived until 1811. He was born in Virginia in 1747.
- ↑ The importance of the historic entrepôt Limestone, Mason County, Kentucky (later named Maysville from one of its first inhabitants) has been suggested in Volume IX of this series (pp. 70, 89, 128). It was the
