The colony was
promoted in France by Joel Barlow, an Ananias even among land sharks,
representing the Scioto Land Company, or Companie du Scioto, one of
the numerous speculative concerns that early sought to capitalize
credulity and European ignorance of the West. The Company had, in
fact, no title to the lands, and the wretched colonists found
themselves stranded in a wilderness for whose conquest they were
unsuited. Of the colonists McMaster says: "Some could build coaches,
some could make perukes, some could carve, others could gild with such
exquisite carving that their work had been thought not unworthy of the
King."[32] Congress came to the relief of these unfortunate people in
1795 and granted them twenty-four thousand acres in Ohio. The town
they founded never fully realized their early dreams, but, after a
bitter struggle, it survived the log cabin days and was later honored
by a visit from Louis Philippe and from Lafayette. Very few
descendants of the French colonists share in its present-day
prosperity.
The majority of the French who came to America after 1820 were factory
workers and professional people who remained in the cities. There are
great numbers of French Canadians in the factory towns of New England.
There are, too, French colonies in America whose inhabitants cannot be
rated as foreigners, for their ancestors were veritable pioneers.
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