As early as the year 1785, the year in which Putnam and Tupper were organizing the Ohio Company to purchase lands on the Muskingum, Maj. Benjamin Stites, a native of New Jersey, brought down the Ohio river from Red Stone, Pennsylvania, a flatboat laden with flour and whiskey, which valuable freight he sold to the inhabitants of Limestone or Maysville, Kentucky. High excitement was prevailing at the time. among the Kentucky pioneers, on account of late depredations of Indians who had stolen many horses. A company of whites was collected to go in pursuit of the red thieves, and Maj. Stites, keen for any adventure, joined the party as a volunteer, and became its leader. Following the trail of the Indians, the pursuers came to the Ohio at a point nearly opposite the mouth of the Little Miami, and then crossed to the Ohio, or " Indian side," of the river, a locality so often (trenched in the blood of savage warriors that it came to be called the "Miami Slaughter House." Still tracking the flying horse-thieves the Kentuckians went up the Little Miami to Old Town or Old Chillicothe, an Indian village north of where Xenia now stands; thence they went westward to the Big Miami, and down southward by way of Bill creek valley, to the Ohio. This excursion, which happened in summer, enabled Maj. Stites to see and examine delectable valleys of both Miamis, with their deep, rich soil, and magnificent natural growth of forest and grass, which had so taken the eye of Gist in 1.751. Stites wisely concluded that the sooner he cast his own lot in this land of more than promise, the better. Well for him and for his happy descendants, still living in plenty in the region, that he did so. Like Benjamin Tupper, this equally enterprising Benjamin was seized with the fever of land speculation. We are told by good authorities that the courageous Major walked from Ohio to the city of New York, where Congress was in session, to confer with Hon. John Cleves Symmes, then a member of Congress from Trenton, and to propose the purchase of lands in the West. The prospect of profit from an early purchase, like a swift contagion, worked in the imagination of Symmes, who immediately went to the Miami Country himself, and by the testimony of his own senses verified the report of Stites. Symmes returned to the East, a company was formed of twenty-four men, among whom were Symmes, Jonathan Dayton, Elias Boudinot; Dr. Witherspoon, and Benjamin Stites. In his own name Symmes petitioned Congress for a grant of 2,000,000 acres of land, to be located within designated boundaries; but when surveyed the tract was found to contain only 600,000 acres, of which 20,000 acres were sold to Maj. Stites.

The grant by Congress was signed October 22, 1787, and the transfer to Stites was made November 9, 1787. On December 7, 1787, Stites purchased 10,000 acres more, making in ale a snug farm of 30,000 acres of Miami valley, for the Major.

The reader will bear in mind that when the Territorial government of Ohio was organized, at Marietta, October 5, 1787, John Cleves Symmes was chosen one of the judges. The Miami purchase was consummated three months after the Muskingum purchase, and both were taken possession of in the following year, 1788.

SETTLEMENT OF COLUMBIA.

Maj. Benjamin Stites, anxious to take possession of his 30,000-acre farm on the Miami, induced a number of bold adventurers from Pennsylvania to join him, and, in the summer of 1788, lie descended the waters of the Monongahela and Ohio, on a "broad-horn" boat, arriving at Limestone (Maysville), Kentucky, in July. At this point the migrating company made a stock of clapboards to roof their anticipated cabins, and completed other plans for settling in the wilderness. Thirty of the band signed an article of agreement, but several seem to have backed out, deterred from venturing their lives in the " Miami Slaughter House," by the rumor of fresh danger from the Indians. On the 16th of November, 1788, Maj. Stites with a party of twenty-six persons, including four women and two boys, embarked at Maysville, and started clown the river to seek their future homes. They landed a little after sunrise, on the morning of November 18, somewhat below the mouth of the Little Miami, at a spot nearly in front of the present residence of Athan Stites, now within the limits of Columbia, a part of the corporation of Cincinnati. It is said that the first to plant foot upon the shore was Hezekiah Stites, brother to Benjamin. According to Rev. Ezra Ferris, the company, "after making fast the boats, ascended the steep bank and cleared away the underbrush in the midst of a pawpaw thicket, when the women and children sat down. They next placed sentinels at a small distance from the thicket, and having first united in a song of praise to Almighty God, upon their knees they offered thanks for the past, and prayer for future protection." This devout and pious scene, in the paw-paw thicket, near the shore of the Ohio, furnishes a study for some Cincinnati artist to immortalize in a painting. The bold brush of C. T. Webber would do it justice. Blockhouses were erected as promptly as possible, for the storage of goods, and the protection of the women and children, and thus was begun the settlement of Columbia, the nucleus of a great city.