Under an ordinance passed in 1785 the virgin lands of the Northwest Territory were offered for sale to the public, the first public land in the U.S. to be subdivided. Four land offices were established in Ohio for the auction and private sale of these lands. Sales from the Marietta Land Office, covering twelve present-day Ohio counties–the entire southeastern portion of the state–are the subject of this book.

In an easy-to-use tabular format, there is a complete list of the 7,500 persons who bought land in southeastern Ohio from 1800 to 1840. Data given includes the purchasers’ name (in alphabetical order), date of purchase, place of residence at the time of the purchase, and the range, township, and section of the purchased land. The information in this tightly organized book is a distillation of the contents of tnirty volumes of unindexed land records.