Gallipolis

Begun as William Duer's land speculation project, the Scioto Company sought to attract European investors to buy land in the Ohio country, and it appealed especially to French middle-class people beginning to feel the effects of the French Revolution. Hundreds invested in hopes of security and prosperity, but when they arrived in the United States they discovered their deeds were worthless because the Scioto Company had not paid for the land. The disillusioned French settlers left Alexandria, Va., on June 29, 1790, for the Ohio country. Many were noblemen, doctors, army officers, manufacturers, tradesmen, and lawyers, and they were unadapted to frontier hardships and continued to live in the formal French manner to which they were accustomed. Common sense and the use of their trades nevertheless helped them quickly establish a thriving river trade, and by the end of 1790 the settlement had between 300 and 400 French inhabitants. The vestiges of these settlers remained in Gallipolis. With the outbreak of conflict in 1861, Gallipolis, then a town of some 3,000, became strategically important to the Union because of its location and the tides of war, and over the next four years it played a role without counterpart in Ohio. Thousands of soldiers passed through its troop concentration area on their way to major campaigns; its longstanding role as a supply depot for the Kanawha Valley was turned to military use to maintain armies in the field; riverside warehouses held vast military stores for steamboat transport; newly mustered troops established Camp Carrington in a wheat field above town; and the women of Gallipolis helped care for thousands of wounded and sick in an army hospital.

Gallipolis, Ohio · United States