Harmon Blennerhasset's mansion on the Ohio River lithograph

Harman Blennerhasset's mansion on the Ohio River, ca. 1820-1829. In 1798, Irish native Harman Blennerhassett (1764-1862) settled and built a mansion on an island in the middle of the Ohio River. In 1805 he conspired with Aaron Burr to rebel against the United States. Using Blennerhassett's home as a staging ground, they plotted to form a new country with the western United States. When the government learned about this plan, the Ohio and Virginia militias were sent to stop boat traffic on the Ohio and Muskingum Rivers and seize the Blennerhassett home. Today, the restored mansion on Blennerhassett Island is a tourist attraction which visitors approach from West Virginia's Parkersburg Point Park via a paddlewheel boat. The lithograph was all first published in 1848 in Samuel Prescott Hildreth's book "Pioneer History" (Pioneer History: Being an Account of the First Examinations of the Ohio Valley, and the Early Settlement of the Northwest Territory ; Chiefly from Original Manuscripts)