John Catron

“ By the act of March 18, 1818, Congress directed the lands in the Ohio Company's donation tract to be surveyed by the surveyor general, separating that conveyed to settlers from that not conveyed, and belonging to the United States by reversion. This latter land he was to lay off into townships and sections, or into one-hundred-acre lots, conforming them to the plan observed by the company, when providing for actual settlers. And he was ordered to make returns of the surveys to the General Land Office, and to the register of the land office at Marietta. ”

“ The ordinary laws for surveying by ranges, townships, and sections, did not apply to this tract, nor to the surplus that might revert, as ordinary surveys would have thrown the townships and sections into fractions, by the hundred-acre lots previously disposed of by the company.
By compact, the United States stipulated to give to the State of Ohio one thirty-sixth part of the public lands in that State, for the use of schools; and the 16th section of each township was the land thus contracted to be given, in cases where there were regular surveys in townships of six miles square ”

“ By the act of 21st of April, 1792 there was granted to Rufus Putnam and others, known as the Ohio Company, one hundred thousand acres of land in the Marietta district, in the territory northwest of the Ohio river. ”