Of the thousands of Revolutionary War veterans that migrated to Ohio after winning independence, among the first were the members of the Ohio Company, who established the first permanent American settlement in present-day Marietta. Among the most prominent founders of the Ohio Company was James Mitchell Varnum, who had distinguished himself as a brigadier general of the Continental Army, and later as a member of the Continental Congress.

He was also an important military innovator that was responsible for one of the most forward-looking experiments of the war. After the army had suffered stinging defeats at Brandywine and Germantown, and the subsequent British occupation of Philadelphia, Varnum was dispatched by General Washington to his home of Rhode Island to solicit supplies and recruits for the struggling war effort. He returned in December 1777, just as Washington’s army was about to enter winter camp at Valley Forge.

It is important to note that many, if not most, of the regiments from New England were integrated. At the time, 10 to 15 percent of the two Rhode Island regiments at Valley Forge were comprised of Black Patriots. These men were part of the valiant defense of Fort Mercer the previous October, where 300 Rhode Island troops won a devastating victory over 1,000 Hessians that attacked the fort.

As recruiting continued in Rhode Island, the Black Patriots of the two regiments were combined into one company, which marched out of Valley Forge with Washington’s army in June 1778 in pursuit of the British evacuating Philadelphia for New York City. Having finally caught up with the British, this veteran company of Black Patriots was part of the vicious fighting at the hedgerow at the Battle of Monmouth, incurring a number of casualties.

Shortly thereafter, the company was marched to Rhode Island to join the new recruits to prepare for a planned attack on British forces occupying Newport. By July 1778, recruiters had enlisted eighty-eight slaves, as well as several dozen other free Black Patriots. Upon passing muster, the slaves were given their freedom, and their former owners paid up to £120. In total, the state of Rhode Island paid approximately $2 million in modern-day money for the emancipation of these soldiers of what would be termed the “Black Regiment.” This regiment was comprised of 225 men, about two-thirds of which were Black Patriots, which would be commended for their actions during the August 1778 Battle of Rhode Island, and later for their part in the taking in Redoubt 10 at Yorktown. The regiment was disbanded in June 1783.

General Varnum would resign his commission in 1779 to return to Rhode Island, where he took command of the state’s militia and resumed his law practice. In his four years of service in the Continental Army, he had participated in the Siege of Boston, the battles of Long Island, White Plains, Fort Mercer, and Rhode Island, and survived the winter at Valley Forge. He was twice elected to the Continental Congress in 1780 and 1787 (his brother, Joseph Bradley Varnum, would serve as the sixth Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and as a senator from Massachusetts).

After the war, he would be one of the original founders of the Society of Cincinnati, along with other prominent former Continental Army officers, including George Washington, Henry Knox, Nathanael Greene, and Alexander Hamilton.

As an Ohio Company founder, he was appointed in October 1787 as one of two federal judges for the Northwest Territory. He arrived in Marietta on June 5, 1788, and among his first tasks was to assist Governor Arthur St. Clair in drafting new laws for the territory. He died, however, in January 1789 at the young age of forty from consumption and was buried with full military honors in the old graveyard in Marietta just weeks before the new government was to be seated in New York under the recently ratified U.S. Constitution, and his old friend George Washington elected as its first president.

The old graveyard was abandoned in 1790 with the beginning of the Indian War, as its location was too far from the protection of the block house. More than 75 Revolutionary War chieftains were later buried in the Mound Cemetery in Marietta. In 1867, the remains of General Varnum and twenty-seven others buried in the old graveyard were removed and reinterred in the Founders Lot of Oak Grove Cemetery, where a plain white military marker records the final resting place of this important hero of the American Revolution and the founding of Ohio.

Patrick Poole is a resident of Central Ohio and the author of “Black Patriots: Recovering a Lost History of the American Revolution,” and the forthcoming “Rocking the Cradle of Revolution: Women in the Fight for American Independence.”