Welcome to the American Story.

Stories about what it is that makes America beautiful

and worthy of our love.

This is Chris Flannery with the Claremont Institute.

I call this one, bravest of the brave.

When you military contains more revolutionary war officers' graves than any other graveyard in the United States.

Your first impulse is to wonder how this could be.

There was not even any city or American population here during the Revolutionary War.

Wouldn't this distinction more likely belong to some cemetery several hundred miles east?

In a popular city like Boston for example and it turns

out that Boston is a good place to start on the morning of March 1st, 1786, 11 veteran officers from Washington's Continental Army

gathered at the bunch of Grapes Tavern in Boston for a conversation that led to the creation of the Ohio

Company of Associates. The purpose of the company was to purchase lands from

the Continental Congress then meeting in New York, and establish a settlement

in the Ohio country that was part of the newly acquired Northwest Territory.

Veterans of the Revolutionary War had been promised land bounties in the Ohio country in payment for their military service.

These veterans were often poorer than their neighbors who had not served in the war,

and had more motive than others to undertake the risky venture of traveling to and settling

in that wild country.

The economic depression that followed the Revolutionary War hit New England hard,

and many veterans finished the war in one degree or another of poverty.

Revolutionary War officers and soldiers were also more prepared than others to make such an arduous journey.

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