Description
A foldout drawing titled A Sketch of several antient Fortifications, situate on the Little Miami River &c. details the location of old earthen forts on or near the Litte Miami River, a tributary of the Ohio River in present-day southwestern Ohio. The diagram, created by the Philadelphia draftsman Charles de Krafft, gives technical information and specifications on the fortifications, describing them as from 5 to 10 feet high, measuring generally upwards of 30 ft. across. In 1787 this region became part of the new Northwest Territory, an incorporated territory of the United States that encompassed present-day Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota. Virginia was granted a large tract of land between the Scioto and Little Miami rivers in the Northwest Territory to be used to pay bounties to Virginia veterans of the Revolutionary War. At an unknown date, this hand-drawn sketch was tipped into Thomas Jeffersons copy of the 1787 London edition of his Notes on the State of Virginia. (Jefferson may have inserted the illustration himself.) An engraved version of the drawing was incorporated into the 1853 edition of Notes brought to press in Richmond by Jeffersons grandson and executor, Thomas Jefferson Randolph. Citation: Notes on the State of Virginia. A 1787 .J45. Special Collections, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.
