Scioto Company

For the 1802 land company formed by the founders of Worthington, Ohio, see Worthington, Ohio § History.
The proposed purchase by the Scioto Company is shown in red. The proposed purchase by the Ohio Company is in blue. The final purchase by the Ohio Company is in green. The French Grant is orange.
Shape and subdivision of the French Grant

The Scioto Company was a company led by American colonel William Duer, a land speculator, that swindled prospective settlers to the United States by selling worthless deeds of land.[1][2]

Duer worked with a British colleague and several French men to register and organize the company in Paris, France. Ostensibly working with the Ohio Company to purchase land in the Northwest Territory, agents of this institution sold worthless deeds to French people intending to emigrate to the United States. Many were refugees from the excesses of the French Revolution, and the émigrés were made up of minor aristocrats, merchants, artisans and craftsmen. The Scioto Company did not own the land it was selling.

  1. ^ Hulbert, Archer Butler (1915). "The Methods and Operations of the Scioto Group of Speculators". The Mississippi Valley Historical Review. 1 (4): 502–515. doi:10.2307/1886952. ISSN 0161-391X.
  2. ^ Hulbert, Archer Butler (1915). "The Methods and Operations of the Scioto Group of Speculators". The Mississippi Valley Historical Review. 2 (1): 56–73. doi:10.2307/1889105. ISSN 0161-391X.