- 2 -     

     The Scioto Company procured eight ships to transport the French from Le Havre to Alexandria, Virginia early in 1790. Claudius Cadot and Jane and Steven Bastide succumbed to Playfair's description of this delightful place. They could hardly wait to get there. They imagined it to be near the Atlantic Ocean. Playfair had not mentioned it was several months journey inland. Claudius and Jane were married in Le Havre Cathedral in December, 1789 and boarded one of the first three ships to leave for America. She was 23 and he was 32. That's when their troubles began. The voyage was very rough, wth one storm after another. One ship sank, but the other two ships accompanying them managed to save all the people aboard, but they lost everything they owned. Early in May, 1790, after three months at sea they arrived in Alexandria, Virginia. The remaining five ships arrived later.

     They were happy to be in America, and were graciously welcomed by the American people, but there was no agent from the Scioto Company to meet them to supply them with transportation to Fairhaven, the original name that the Scioto Company gave the new community. Finding out that they had worthless deeds they sent Monsieur Bureau to President Washington who had the Ohio Company and the Scioto Company agree to a plan whereby the French paid again for one town lot and one outside the stockade. Many of the French people decided to stay in Alexandria and others moved to Philadelphia, New York and other eastern cities rather than continue to the wilderness of the Northwest Territory.

     The brave and hardy ones including Claudius and Jane Cadot were eager to get to that promised land. So Colonel Duer out of his own pocket paid for horses and wagons to transport the remaining French 500 to Fairhaven. The next problem they had was the road from Alexandria to Pittsburgh was practically non-existent. They had to clear the way through forests, over mountains, creeks and streams and mud. It took them until October to get to Pittsburgh. There they unloaded the wagons and loaded everything on flatboats which were floated down the Ohio River to Fairhaven which was supposed to have been built at the confluence of the Ohio River and the Kanawha. The land was so swampy and low the English woodsmen including Colonel Robert Safford, hired by Colonel Duer, moved the site of the town to a  higher point of land, four miles south. The woodsmen constructed a stockade with a block house in each corner and 80 cabins plus a ballroom. The French finally arrived mid-October, 1790. They immediately opened their trunks, got out their finery, the musicians tuned up their violins and they had a ball. They danced the minuet and other dances in style at the time in Paris. They continued to have two balls a week.

     They held a meeting and changed the name Fairhaven to Gallipolis, the city of the Gauls. Every able bodied man had to serve in the militia as the "friendly natives" turned out to be unfriendly as they resented the white man's intrusion on their hunting grounds. Since everyone in France at that time had to be Roman Catholic, they brought a priest with them. He left at the end of the first year to go to New Orleans. The church sent another priest over and he left too.