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��HISTOKY OF OHIO.
��after that time to be regulated by the demand for land. Each purchaser was bound to begin im- provements within two years, or forfeit one-sixth of the land to whoever would settle thereon and remain seven years. Military bounties might be taken in this, as in the purchase of the associates. For himself, Symmes reserved one township near the mouth of the Miami. On this he intended to build a great city, rivaling any Eastern port. He offered any one a lot on which to build a house, providing he would remain three years. Conti- nental certificates were rising, owing to the demand for land created by these two purchases, and Con- gress found the burden of debt correspondingly lessened. Symmes soon began to experience diffi- culty in procuring enough to meet his payments. He had also some trouble in arranging his boundary with the Board of the Treasury. These, and other causes, laid the foundation for another city, which is now what Symmes hoped his city would one day be.
In January, 1788, Mathias Denman, of New Jersey, took an interest in Symmes' purchase, and located, among other tracts, the sections upon which Cincinnati has since been built. Retaining one-third of this purchase, he sold the balance to Robert Patterson and John Filson, each getting the same share. These three, about August, agreed to lay out a town on their land. It was designated as opposite the mouth of the Licking River, to which place it was intended to open a road from Lexington, Ky. These men little thought of the great emporium that. now covers the modest site of this town they laid out that summer. Mr. Filson, who had been a schoolmaster, and was of a some- what poetic nature, was appointed to name the town. In respect to its situation, and as if with a prophetic perception of the mixed races that were in after years to dwell there, he named it Los- antiville,* " which, being interpreted," says the " Western Annals," " means mYZt', the town ; anti, opposite to ; os^ the mouth ; L, of Licking. This may well put to the blush the Campus Martins of the Marietta scholars, and the Fort Solon of the Spaniards."
Meanwhile, Symmes was busy in the East, and, by July, got thirty people and eight four-horse wagons under way for the West. These reached Limestone by September, where they met Mr. Stites, with several persons from Redstone. All
- Judge Burnett, in his notes, disputes the above account of the
origin of the city of Cincinnati. He says the name " Losantiville " was determined on, but not adopted, when the town was laid out. This version is probably the correct one, and will be found fully given in the detailed history of the settlements.
��came to Symmes' purchase, and began to look for homes.
Symmes' mind was, however, ill at rest. He could not meet his first payment on so vast a realm, and there also arose a difference of opinion be- tween him and the Treasury Board regarding the Ohio boundary. Symmes wanted all the land be- tween the two Miamis, bordering on the Ohio, while the Board wished him confined to no more than twenty miles of the river. To this proposal he would not agree, as he had made sales all along the river. Leaving the bargain in an unsettled state. Congress considered itself released from all its obligations, and, but for the representations of many of Symmes' friends, he would have lost all his money and labor. His appointment as Judge was not favorably received by many, as they thought that by it he would acquire unlimited power. Some of his associates also complained of him, and, for awhile, it surely seemed that ruin only awaited him. But he was brave and hope- ful, and determined to succeed. On his return from a visit to his purchase in September, 1788, he wrote Jonathan Dayton, of New Jersey, one of his best friends and associates, that he thought some of the land near the Great Miami " positively worth a silver dollar the acre in its present state."
A good many changes were made in his original contract, growing out of his inability to meet his payments. At first, he was to have not less than a million acres, under an act of Congress passed in October, 1787, authorizing the Treasury Board to contract with any one who could pay for such tracts, on the Ohio and Wabash Rivers, whose fronts should not exceed one-third of their depth.
Dayton and ]Marsh, Symmes' agents, contracted with the Board for one tract on the Ohio, begin- ning twenty miles up the Ohio from the mouth of the Great Miami, and to run back for quantity be- tween the Miami and a line drawn from the Ohio, parallel to the general course of that river. In 1791, three years after Dayton and Marsh made the contract, Symmes found this would throw the purchase too far back from the Ohio, and applied to Congress to let him have all between the Mi- amies, running back so as to include 1,000,000 acres, which that body, on April 12, 1792, agreed to do. When the lands were surveyed, however, it was found that a line drawn from the head of the Little Miami due west to the Great Miami, would include south of it less than six hundred thousand acres. Even this Symmes could not pay for, and when his patent was issued in September, 1794, it
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