Scioto Company
The Scioto Company was a French institution which granted worthless deeds in the Northwest Territory, later Ohio, to French colonists.
The Scioto Land Company was organized by Colonel William Duer and others in 1787 and officially organized in 1789 as the Compagnie du Scioto in Paris by Joel Barlow, the agent of Duer and his associates abroad (William Playfair, an Englishman, plus six Frenchmen).
This company had arranged with the Ohio Company, in 1787, for the use of about 4,000,000 acres (16,000 km2), (another source says about 3,500,000 acres (14,000 km2)), north of the Ohio River and east of the Scioto River, on which the Ohio Company had secured an option only. The dishonesty of those who conducted the sales in France, the unbusinesslike methods of Barlow, and the failure of Duer and his associates to meet their contract with the Ohio Company, caused the collapse of the Scioto Company early in 1790, and two subsequent attempts to revive it failed.
Meanwhile about 150,000 acres (610 km2) had been sold to prospective settlers, companies and individuals in France. On February 19, 1791, 218 of these purchasers left Havre de Grace, in France, and arrived in Alexandria, District of Columbia (now Alexandria, Virginia), on the May 3 following.
On their arrival, they were told that the Scioto Company owned no land. When they arrived at Marietta, Ohio, about fifty of them landed. In October 1791, rest of the company proceeded to Gallipolis, which was laid out about that time, and where rude huts had been built for them, were assured by the agent that the place lay within their purchase.
This land, however, fell within the limits of the tract bought outright by the Ohio Company, which sold it to the Scioto Company, and to which it reverted on the failure of the Scioto Company to pay.
In 1794, William Bradford, the U.S. Attorney General, decided that all rights in the 4,000,000 acres (16,000 km2) on which the Ohio Company had secured an option for the Scioto Company were legally vested in the Ohio Company.
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