Come visit Muskingum County History for an Ohio Humanities’ Speakers Bureau event with Brandon Downing about how the Northwest Territory shaped the development of early America!

This talk examines Marietta as a cultural heritage site that serves a crucial role in redefining American collective history by reconstructing a national identity based on the Northwest Ordinance, one of the most important, progressive, and far-reaching legislative acts in American history. By using the interlinked aspects of place, Marietta’s importance as the “first organized settlement of the Northwest Territory” illustrates how it became the birthplace of equality through the preservation of the public domain. This is in contrast with the myth of freedom and independence of a seemingly limitless land. The lessons learned from Marietta as “place,” then, expands the American narrative by challenging our understanding of territorial expansion within the United States in the early nineteenth century.

Brandon C. Downing is an Assistant Professor of History at Marietta College. He teaches early American history classes in Native and Colonial America, the American Revolutionary War, and in Public History. His primary interests are Native-White interactions in the Ohio Valley, the War of 1812, and the history of Marietta, OH. He is currently working on a project titled, “Performative Violence as Political Discourse: Delawares during the Seven Years’ War, 1755-1758,” which provides a Native perspective on the Penns Creek and Great Cove Massacres in Pennsylvania.

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