This past Thursday was Take Your Child to Work Day. My twins were in school, but I was able to take my daughter, Stella, and son, Paulie, to work with me. We had a blast. We spent the morning doing office work at the visitor’s center, then spent time out in the Fort, opening up and getting ready for the day. My son has become quite the guide and was able to take me around a few buildings, explaining all of the history he could remember. I am looking forward to his help when we get busy with tours in the summer. I am sure he will volunteer! I am proud he can remember all the facts about the Fort, considering it has been some time since he was there doing tours.

Over the last few weeks at the site, we have been working hard to prepare the Fort for the season. There is so much to do to get the place ready for visitors — from mowing to dusting, cleaning, sweeping and the like. We officially open to visitors Monday. And we will be ready. Thanks go out to the many volunteers who work so hard to make the Fort and Fort Steuben Park ready for the summer.

Our season runs from May to October. I always found that funny because when the soldiers were here in 1786 and ’87, they were here from October to May, just the opposite of when we are open, not including when we are open for about a month at Christmas to the public. The Fort was actually a fortification facilitated by the necessity that cold weather was coming in the late fall of 1786 and the soldiers of the First American Regiment, who were out with the surveyors mapping the Northwest Territory, needed shelter for the winter.

With the festivities around America’s 250th celebration — coming up within the year — I am really excited to be at the Fort at this time in our nation’s history. The story of the Fort is the story of our nation’s past. The story of Fort Steuben really begins with the American Revolution, or rather, the end of it. The land that would become Ohio at that time was part of the Northwest Territory, a vast stretch of land that was ceded to the United States after the Revolutionary War. This was negotiated in the Treaty of Paris, the formal document ending the war in 1783. The Northwest Territory was huge, consisting of land that would become parts of six states: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and parts of Minnesota.

The Northwest Territory did not officially exist until July of 1787, when the Northwest Ordinance was enacted. This was an important early ordinance in our history because it did a few things. Among the provisions for the creation of the territorial government, it gave stipulations and requirements describing how a territory could become a state, that is when a population of a territory reached 5,000 free male inhabitants, and a constitution could be drawn up. When the population reached 60,000, the territory was eligible for statehood. That happened for Ohio in 1803, proving that in the last decade of the 18th century and the first three years of the 19th, a tremendous number of settlers moved into what is today, Ohio. The Northwest Ordinance also granted religious freedom, the right to habeas corpus and the right to a trial by jury among other personal liberties. Women were able to inherit land in the territory, too, under specific circumstances. Slavery was outlawed in the new territory with the caveat that fugitives, that is, people escaping slavery from another state, could be reclaimed and returned to the person claiming ownership. With that aside, the banning of slavery in the new territory was a major step in the abolition of slavery in our country, although there was a long way to go.

Before the Northwest Ordinance, another landmark piece of legislation was passed by the federal government, at that time, the Confederation Congress. This was known as the Land Ordinance of 1785. This ordinance dictated and explained the way land west of the Ohio was to be surveyed and broken into lots, sections, townships and ranges. It is important to understand the need for the survey was to hasten the sale of the land. Why the sale? Well, that question goes back to the revolution. After the war, the federal government was essentially financially broke. Our form of government we were operating under at the time, not the constitution but the Articles of Confederation, did not grant the federal government the power to tax its citizens. So, funds had to be raised in another way, and in this case, land would be sold in this new territory to bolster the federal coffers.

Thus, the stage was set for the construction of Fort Steuben. In 1785, the first group of surveyors would be sent out to start the work in Ohio. They put their first point as the Point of Beginning, a point along the boundary between the states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and near the northern point of what is today, West Virginia. This point is the beginning of the U. S. Public Land Survey, and it is a heavy hitter historically. This point began the survey of the first seven ranges of the Northwest Territory.

The work began in 1785, but with threats of Native American violence toward the surveying team, work was stopped that year. The following season, another group of surveyors took up the work, now protected by the First American Regiment. The regiment is a group of soldiers who are the foundations of our modern army today. The regiment was commanded by Josiah Harmar, but John Francis Hamtramck led only three companies of the First American Regiment to accompany and protect the surveyors and remove illegal squatters from Ohio. It was these three companies that constructed Fort Steuben in the fall of 1786.

The soldiers would stay at the Fort until May of the following year, when the survey came to an end. With all this history, one can see how Fort Steuben fits into this national story from the American Revolution until the creation of the Northwest Territory and beyond. It is a history we are excited to share with our visitors when we open the gates on Monday ushering in our 39th year of existence in Steubenville. I am blessed to be part of that history, and happy to have shared it with my children in a small way this past week.

(Zuros is director of Historic Fort Steuben.)