The Legislature, in addition to passing general laws, appropriating money, and performing the usual duties of such bodies, should, in joint session, elect the state officers below the rank of governor-that is, the secretary of state, the auditor of state, and the treasurer of state, and judges of state courts and "President Judges" of the courts of common pleas in the various counties. It was also to elect the principal officers of the military establishment. The governor was the only state officer elected by the people except the members of the Legislature.

The constitution also outlined the duties and powers of the executive and judicial departments of the state, but for the present purpose of reciting the proceedings of the legislative department, the details of those constitutional provisions need not be detailed.

Section 25 of the first article of the constitution designated the times of holding sessions in the following words: "The first session of the general assembly shall commence on the first Tuesday of March next (1803) and forever after the general assembly shall meet on the first Monday of December in every year, and at no other periods unless directed by law or provided for by this Constitution."

The first election was held January 11, 1803. The Legislature met in Chillicothe on March 1st following, and began its part in the momentous era which was that day entered upon.

FIRST LEGISLATIVE SESSION

March 1 to April 16, 1803

Deliberations were held in the new State House at Chillicothe. This was probably the first stone public building erected in the Northwest Territory. Its construction had been commenced in 1800 and finished. the next year. The capitol proper was a two-story square building surmounted by a small cupola. At the right was a one-story building, probably not more than 24 feet square, for the use of the state auditor and state treasurer. At the rear was a jail. They were all considered fine structures in that day, but they were insignificant indeed judged by later standards.

The Senate was composed of fourteen members, and the House of Representatives of thirty. They were sent by the nine counties which then spread over the entire area of the state, exclusive of the Indian Reservation at the northwest corner, viz.: Adams, Belmont, Clermont, Fairfield, Hamilton, Jefferson, Ross, Trumbull and Washington. The other counties of the state, later established to make a total of eightyeight, were all formed out of the territory in these original nine, and eight of them were so formed before that first session of the Legislature adjourned.

It is well worth while to record here the names of the forty-four men who composed that first law-making body of Ohio. Among them were some who had helped in the most important way in rescuing the territory from its terrible tribulations of private and massed Indian warfare, and in building the new commonwealth destined to such a glorious future. Others afterward became eminent in the state and nation. Many of them were Revolutionary heroes. All were men of the enterprise and the spirit that pioneers were made of. The list of names was as follows:

Senators-John Beasley and Joseph Darlington, of Adams County; William Vance, of Belmont; William Buchanan, of Clermont; Francis Dunlevy, Jeremiah Morrow, John Paul and Daniel Symmes, of Hamilton; Zenas Kimberly and Bazaleel Wells, of Jefferson; Abraham Claypool and Nathaniel Massie, of Ross; Samuel Huntington, of Trumbull, and Joseph Buell, of Washington.

Representatives-Thomas Kirker, Joseph Lucas and William Russell, of Adams; Joseph Sharp and Elijah Wood, of Belmont; Amos

Ellis and R. Walter Waring, of Clermont; William Trimble and David Reece, of Fairfield; John Bigger, Thomas Brown, James Dunn, William Maxwell, Robert McClure, Thomas McFarland, William James and Ephraim Kibby, of Hamilton; Rudolph Bear, Zacheus A. Beatty, Isaac Meeks and Thomas Elliott, of Jefferson; Michael Baldwin, Robert Culbertson, William Patton and Thomas Worthington, of Ross; Ephraim Quimby and Aaron Wheeler, of Trumbull; William Jackson, Robert Safford and Wyllys Silliman, of Washington.

In the Senate, Nathaniel Massie was elected speaker; William C. Schenck, clerk, and Edward Sherlock, doorkeeper. In the House Michael Baldwin was made speaker; William R. Dickinson, clerk, and Adam Betz, doorkeeper. The title speaker of the Senate has long since given way to that of president, and that of doorkeeper to sergeant-at

arms.

Speaker Massie at that time was forty years old. He was born in Virginia, was a Revolutionary soldier at seventeen, came to the Ohio country early and was surveyor, Indian fighter, and large land owner. He was major-general of the Ohio militia for several years. Speaker Baldwin was a brilliant lawyer of Chillicothe, afterwards described as "eloquent, eccentric and dissipated."

The officers of the Legislature were all chosen unanimously. There were two political parties, but in the first election the republicans, afterwards called democrats, so completely outnumbered the federalists that there was no contest worthy of the name. Politics immediately made its appearance in the Legislature, nevertheless, and the very first day of the session, contests were filed as to right of members to sit. Such contests were very frequent in the early days of the General Assembly, and some of them were very bitter.

On the third day after meeting, the two Houses convened in joint session to open and declare the result of the ballot for the first governor. Returns from Fairfield and Washington counties were missing, but there was no delay on that account, and it was officially declared that Edward Tiffin had received 4,564 votes and that none had been cast against him. This number of votes was at least 50 per cent short of the real number of voters in the state at that date. But the federal party had no candidate, it was known in advance that Doctor Tiffin was sure to be elected, and there was no effort to "get out the vote." If there had been daily newspapers then, doubtless the cry, since so familiar, of "Vote as you please, but vote," would have begun in the first year of the state's existence. No official census of the people had been taken, but it was estimated that the total population was between 45,000 and 50,000 and that at least 10,000 men were eligible to cast their ballots. A committee of five, duly appointed, escorted the governor-elect to the hall of the House, where he took the oath of office, administered by Return Jonathan Meigs, Jr., and delivered his inaugural address-so short that it filled less than twenty lines of the House Journal. The next day he sent in his first annual message, very brief. In it he dealt entirely with matters pertaining to the machinery necessary to the new

state.

Some days were occupied in discussing and adopting rules to control their deliberations, and also the rules to be followed in the election of state officers and United States Senators. Arrangements were made. for printing the governor's message, the laws, rules and journal, and in getting down to the regular routine of business. A rather odd act was a refusal, by a vote of three yeas to twenty-six nays in the House, to employ a chaplain. It was probably not due to a lack of religious feeling, but can be accounted for by motives of economy. Another incident which seems strange in modern times was the receipt of a memorial from one Sally Woolcot asking to be divorced by the Legislature from John Woolcot. Other memorials similar to this were presented from time to time, and such prayers granted or denied. It was not until

December 29, 1804, that the consideration of divorce applications was placed in the hands of the courts. For years afterward, however, the General Assembly exercised this power.

Two weeks after the session began the General Assembly elected the subordinate state officers-William Creighton, Jr., as secretary of state; William McFarland, as treasurer, and Thomas Gibson, as auditor. These three, with the governor, comprised the executive department. On April 1st the first two United States Senators from Ohio were elected in joint session. They were John Smith, of Cincinnati, and Thomas Worthington, of Chillicothe. Both figured prominently in later events-Smith as the unfortunate object of suspicion of complicity with Aaron Burr, whom he met, as vice president, during the term in the Senate he was just now about to enter upon, and Worthington as a distinguished senator during the terms of Jefferson and Madison, later as governor of Ohio, and always as prominent in many activities which were advantageous for the state and redounded to his own fame.

The judicial system was organized early in April. The constitution required the General Assembly to appoint three Supreme Court judges, president judges for three districts into which the state was divided, and associate judges for each of the counties. All these judicial offices were filled by the legislators at this time. The Supreme Court judges were Return Jonathan Meigs, Jr., Samuel Huntington, and William Spriggs. Meigs and Huntington were later governors of Ohio, and all three had brilliant careers in stations judicial and otherwise.

The original nine counties were, of course, entirely too large in area for convenient local government, and as the population was rapidly increasing by the arrival of emigrants from other states, smaller governmental units became necessary. Eight new counties were defined and established "erected" is the word used in the laws-Butler, Columbiana, Franklin, Gallia, Greene, Montgomery, Scioto, and Warren.

An act was passed fixing the annual salaries of the state officers. The governor was allowed $900; the Supreme Court judges, $900 each; president judges of the Common Pleas courts, $750 each; auditor of state, $750, and treasurer of state, $400. Members of the Legislature were allowed $2 per day and $2 for each twenty-five miles they traveled in going to and returning home from the capital.

All the acts mentioned above were of routine character, necessary to set in motion the governmental machine. But, although it was in session less than seven weeks, and it was necessary to devote most of its time to these details, nevertheless the General Assembly passed a few important laws of a different character. The first of these was one regulating marriages. It provided that male persons twenty-one years old, and female persons eighteen years old, not nearer of kin than first cousins, might be joined in matrimony, and also males of eighteen and females of fourteen if their fathers, mothers, or guardians consented. The act provided a complete code of marriage licensing and public notice, and required the official performing the ceremony to make due return within three months, under $50 penalty. If any person celebrated a marriage contrary to the law such person was subject to a fine of $1,000.

Beginnings were made in laws for punishing crime, for regulating taverns, for establishing system of education, and for supervising elections, but not much progress along these lines was made at the first session. A general enactment was made that all laws which had been in force under the territorial government were to remain in effect unless they conflicted with the new constitution or with the new laws passed.

The first volume of the statutes of Ohio was published as soon as possible after the adjournment of the General Assembly, and copies were distributed to the courts, state and county officials, etc. The laws were designated as "Chapters." Most of them, of course, were of a routine character, but some of them are interesting as throwing further

light upon the conditions of the times and also as showing the attitude of our first law makers towards their responsibilities and duties.

They were more than conservative in the salaries they allowed both the highest and lowest officials, and they certainly could not be accused of being "salary grabbers," for they were content, as before noted, to allow themselves $2 per day-for such days as they actually servedand $2 for each twenty-five miles they traveled in going to and from Chillicothe while attending the sessions. Their travel was almost entirely on horseback. Roads permitting travel by carriages hardly existed at all, and practically their only "highways" were bridle paths through the forests. They could find little, if any, accommodation at taverns, and they must depend upon the hospitality of the cabins-few and far between in many sections of the settlers for food by day and shelter by night.

The members of the convention which had drafted and adopted the state constitution the previous November had as yet received no compensation for that distinguished service, and the fifth chapter of the laws now passed appropriated $2 a day for each of these constitution. builders, with an additional 10 cents a mile to cover their traveling expenses by the most direct routes to the sitting of the convention and back home again.

Within less than a month after the General Assembly convened for the first session, it adopted the seal of Ohio of a design which has been but once altered. On March 25, 1803, it passed Chapter Seven, for this purpose. The seal for use by the state was to be two inches in diameter, that of the Supreme Court one and three-quarter inches in diameter, and that to be used by the counties one and one-half inches in diameter. The secretary of state was authorized and directed to have them made, and $175 was appropriated to pay the bill. The words of the law describing the design of the seal are as follows: "On the right side, near the bottom, a sheaf of wheat, and on the left a bundle of seventeen arrows, both standing erect; in the background, and rising above the sheaf and arrows, a mountain, over which shall appear a rising sun."

The enumeration of white males above twenty-one years, required by the constitution to be taken during the following summer, was provided for by Chapter Twenty-three of the laws. It was to be done by "the listers of taxable property" in the several townships, commencing on the 1st of August, 1803, and to be finished within thirty days. If one of them failed to make his return, or made a false return, he was to forfeit the sum of $30. The listers were to make their reports to their county clerks. They were to receive $1.25 per day for their services, and 8 cents a mile was allowed for travel to the county seats to make their reports. This was a very considerable item, for most of the counties covered very large areas. County clerks were to forfeit $300 for failure to make returns to the state authorities of the aggregate numbers of voters in their respective counties.

Chapter Twenty-four described the manner of holding elections. The provisions were very crude compared with modern methods. Each township was made an election district, and the courts designated the voting houses, as near to the center of the townships as possible. These houses were, of course, in almost all cases, homes of settlers. At 9 o'clock on election morning the voters who had congregated were to choose three judges, and these three were to select two clerks, who were themselves to provide the poll books. The sheriff of the county was to provide the box, lock and key. In the lid of the box there was to be an aperture through which the "tickets" (the word ballot was not yet in use) could be pushed, and beneath this aperture was to be placed "an iron spring bolt so as to close the aperture and exclude the admission of anything into the box after the close of the polls."

Voting was to begin at 10 o'clock in the morning and end at 4 in the afternoon. The "tickets" were either written or printed. Exact instruc