![]() ![]() It is nine stories high at the Waters edge & is 87 by 62 feet. A most stupendously large building of Stone is likewise erected immediately on the bank of the River for a steam Mill. Here is one Woolen Factory four Cotton factories but not now in operation. Here are a great share of Mechanics of all kinds. There are about 60 Mercantile stores several of which are wholesale. ![]() It contained in 1815, 1,100 buildings of different descriptions among which are above 20 of Stone 250 of brick & 800 of Wood. A uniquely American story of settling the land developed: hardy individuals wielding an axe cleared it, built a log cabin, and turned the frontier into a farm that paved the way for mills and towns.Ī native of Vermont, Gershom Flagg was one of thousands of New Englanders who caught “Ohio fever.” In this letter to his brother, Azariah Flagg, dated August 3, 1817, he describes the hustle and bustle of the emerging commercial town of Cincinnati.Ĭincinnati is an incorporated City. Surveying, settling, and farming, turning the wilderness into a profitable commodity, gave purchasers a sense of progress. The future looked bright for those who turned their gaze on the land in the West. Surveyors marked off the parcels in straight lines, creating a landscape of checkerboard squares. Buyers were given low interest rates, with payments that could be spread over four years. They could thus purchase land directly from the government, at the price the government had set. The government created land offices to handle these sales and established them in the West within easy reach of prospective landowners. The Land Law of 1800 further encouraged land sales in the Northwest Territory by reducing the minimum parcel size by half and enabling sales on credit, with the goal of stimulating settlement by ordinary farmers. Under this law, the United States would sell a minimum parcel of 640 acres for $2 an acre. The Land Law of 1796 applied to the territory of Ohio after it had been wrested from Indians. The federal government oversaw the orderly transfer of public land to citizens at public auctions. ![]() The result was “Ohio fever,” as thousands traveled there to reap the benefits of settling in this newly available territory. The Ohio Country in the Northwest Territory appeared to offer the best prospects for many in the East, especially New Englanders. Among them were speculators seeking to buy cheap parcels from the federal government in anticipation of a rise in prices. In the early nineteenth century, people poured into the territories west of the long-settled eastern seaboard. THE LAND OFFICE BUSINESSĬartographer John Cary drew this map “exhibiting The Western Territory, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia &c” for his 1808 atlas it depicted the huge western territory that fascinated settlers in the early nineteenth century. This happened for the first time in the United States in 1819, when waves of enthusiastic speculation (expectations of rapidly rising prices) in land and commodities gave way to drops in prices. ![]() Market economies involve fluctuating prices for labor, raw materials, and consumer goods and depend on credit and financial instruments-any one of which can be the source of an imbalance and an economic downturn in which businesses and farmers default, wage workers lose their employment, and investors lose their assets. However, the expansion of the American economy made it prone to the boom-and-bust cycle. New opportunities for wealth appeared to be available to anyone. Commercial centers, to which job seekers flocked, mushroomed. It was now a market economy, one in which the production of goods, and their prices, were unregulated by the government.
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