USA > Indiana > Dearborn County > History of Dearborn County, Indiana : her people, industries and institutions > Part 9
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afterwards called Tanner's creek. They remained there about a month and went to Ohio to arrange for making improvements in their new home. Two years later, Rev. John Tanner brought his two sons, John, Jr., aged nine years, and Edward, aged fifteen, to the station. The two boys wandered off to the river shore and were captured by Indians. Edward made his escape and returned home. John, however, was kept prisoner for twenty-four years before any word was secured from him. He spent his life among the Indians and in 1818 was selected as an interpreter by the United States government and stationed at Sault Ste. Marie. His father removed to New Madrid, Mo., in 1798, and died there a few years later.
In April, 1788, an important settlement was made at Marietta, Ohio. This station was established and well fortified for absolute protection and, as a result, was made a base for future expeditions. When a company of settlers pushed out from Pittsburgh or Wheeling, the first place to which they bent their course was Marietta. From there they planned their final desti- nation.
Now comes the first transaction of magnitude in the virgin Middle West. When Maj. Benjamin Stites, of Red Stone, Pennsylvania, heard that the treaty of Ft. Finney had been consummated, he undertook an exploring expe- dition in the region between the Miami rivers. On his return to his home he gave the information he had gathered to Judge John Cleves Symmes, of New Jersey. The latter was very much impressed by the major's recital of what he saw and he immediately made a contract with the treasury board of the United States for the purchase of the lands. The lands that entered into the contract were about one million acres between the two Miamis, comprising what are now the counties of Hamilton, Butler, Preble, Montgomery, Greene, Clinton, Warren, Clermont and Brown. The purchase price was sixty-six cents per acre.
SETTLEMENTS ON THE SYMMES PURCHASE.
Three parties were formed to occupy and improve separate portions of Symmes' purchase. The first, led by Benjamin Stites, consisted of twenty- two male persons, with the families of some of them, who, on November 18, 1788, landed at the mouth of the Little Miami, and founded Columbia, within the limits of the tract of ten thousand acres deeded by Symmes to Stites. The second party was formed at Limestone :Inder Mathias Denman and Robert Patterson, amounting to twelve or fourteen persons, and landed opposite the
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mouth of the Licking near the close of December, 1788, and founded Cin- cinnati, first called Losantiville. The third party was under the immediate care and direction of Judge Symmes and left Limestone, January 29, 1789, and were delayed during their passage down the river by floating ice. Early in February they reached North Bend, above the mouth of the Great Miami, where Judge Symmes proposed to found a city. North Bend was so named from the fact that the river at that point made the most northerly bend be- low the mouth of the Great Kanawha.
Judge Symmes laid out a village here, and gave each settler a lot, on condition that he improve it. But for the city of his dreams he had a great plan. The Miami river approaches the Ohio river very closely at the town of Cleves, but, instead of flowing into the great stream here, it makes an abrupt detour to the west and south and reaches the Ohio about eight miles farther on. Thus an inland peninsula is formed between the two rivers. On the high summit of this land, overlooking the states of Kentucky and Indiana and affording a wonderful view of the great valley of the Ohio, Symmes pro- posed to build a city. He named it Symmes City and intended that it be- come a monument to his memory as the first "big" settler in the West.
However, the judge was wrong. Within a few years even the same of the projected city was forgotten. The town of North Bend endured. The judge returned to New Jersey so highly elated with his purchase that, on Sep- tember 22, 1789, he wrote to his associate, Gen. Jonathan Dayton, that he thought some of the land near the Great Miami "positively worth a silver dollar to the acre in its present state." Regarding these settlements between the Miamis, General Harmar, in a letter from Ft. Washington, dated January 14, 1790, describes them as follows: "The distance between the Little and Great Miami is twenty-eight measured miles. Near the Little Miami there is a settlement called Columbia ; here, some miles distant from Columbia, there is another named Losantiville, but changed lately to Cincinnati, and Judge Symmes himself resides at the other, about fifteen miles from hence, called Miami City. at the north bend of the Ohio river. They are in general but small cabins. and the inhabitants of the poorer class of people."
At the solicitation of Judge Symmes, General Harmar sent Captain Kearsey. with forty-eight rank and file. to protect the settlements begun in the Miami country. Part of the men were stationed at Columbia, but Judge Symmes soon had all of them brought to North Bend. where they arrived in February. 1789. The intention was for them to occupy Ft. Finney. which had been constructed three years before. But a high stage of the river made it
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extremely difficult to reach the fort and Captain Kearsey determined to depart for Louisville with the coming of spring. This resolve was made because of his acute disappointment in not finding a fort constructed and ready to re- ceive his troops.
Judge Symmes at once reported to Major Willis that Captain Kearsey had been guilty of misconduct and explained how his settlers were exposed to constant danger on account of their lack of protection. Major Willis sent Ensign Luce, with eighteen soldiers, to North Bend.
SHATTERED DREAMS.
The presence of troops at North Bend gave that place a decided advan- tage over the two settlements further north. Settlers came where the best protection was afforded. But Ensign Luce was obstinate and, despite the entreaties of Judge Symmes, he would not erect a permanent fort there. He built a temporary affair that was sufficient for sheltering his troops, but de- ferred building a permanent structure until he could get word from his supe- rior officers as to what sort of a fortification he was expected to build and where. On September 16, 1789, Major Doughty arrived in the Miami coun- try with instructions to erect a strong fort at the most suitable point. He spent a day in each of the three settlements and finally decided on Cincinnati, "as high and healthy, and abounding with never-failing springs, and the most proper position." The soldiers were removed from North Bend to Cincinnati, and most of the settlers followed them. That one move settled the destiny of Cincinnati, and the settlement there soon eclipsed all other settlements along the river below Pittsburgh and became, in fact, the "Queen City of the West."
The bright future which Judge Symmes had pictured for North Bend began to wane with the departure of the troops for Cincinnati. Judge Symmes, however, had his residence at North Bend until his death. There. on a beautiful knoll that rises up from the sleepy town, is his grave, covered by a time-worn tablet on which can be read the following inscription: "Here rest the remains of John Cleves Symmes, who, at the foot of these hills, made the first settlement between the Miami rivers. Born on Long Island, State of New York, July 21, 1742; died at Cincinnati, February 26 A. D. 1814." Judge Symmes had been chief justice of New Jersey and, at the time he em- barked in his land speculation in the West, was a member of the colonial Con- gress. He was the father-in-law of President William Henry Harrison, whose remains are contained in a tomb about twenty rods from his own grave on the knoll about which his dreams of city-building were shattered.
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INDIAN PROTESTS.
Although Judge Symmes purchased the great tract of land at a very low figure, yet he was not financially successful in the venture. The settle- ment of the country was so long delayed by continued Indian hostilities that he was unable to meet his obligations with the government. Judge Symmes proposed to treat the Indians kindly and justly and to retain their friendship rather than needlessly be unfriendly with them. The very lands he had pur- chased were a part of the vast hunting grounds of the red man. This land, together with Dearborn, Ohio and Switzerland counties in Indiana, com- prised one of the chief ranges for the Indian and, although they had no permanent towns located here, still they often came in large numbers and encamped. They saw in the gradual encroaching of the white men in these hunting preserves a movement that would eventually deprive them of the use of the hunting grounds and they protested that the obligation in the treaty under which the government claimed the land was not binding.
The Indians were further imposed upon by tricky white traders, who drove infamous bargains with them. This aroused in them a sense of re- venge that was already well-developed, if latent. The result was depredations of every sort. Then some worthless whites would pick off a lonely Indian, roaming through the woods, and for this act the inevitable corollary would be a similar one in retaliation. The dark cloud of war between the whites and Indians grew with time and all but eclipsed the bright hope of the settlers. Finally the war came and it lasted seven years before a lasting peace was concluded. But it was a fortunate thing for the Miami settlers in the end. After the Wayne treaty, a feeling of security prevailed everywhere along the frontier and civilization took root quickly and soon bore its fruit of progress. But Judge Symmes was ruined by the seven years of struggle. During all that time his land operations were practically at a standstill and his obliga- tions to the government fell due with monotonous regularity. Had he been able to finance the project, he would have been a Croesus.
OTHER EARLY SETTLEMENTS AND PIONEERS.
Although the first permanent settlements north of the Ohio river in Indiana were made just as soon as it became evident that the Indians were not only going to observe the treaty made with them by General Wayne in 1795, but that they were glad to abide by it. Yet these were not the first
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white men that had been on Indiana soil, by any means. It is very possible that the French voyageur, as early as La Salle's time, frequently, in his jour- neyings from the St. Lawrence country to the warmer and more desirable winter climate of New Orleans, floated his canoe down the Big Miami and out into the broader Ohio. The French at that time were great explorers and they knew every nook and corner of the Northwest Territory. They at times used in their travels the portage, between the Maumee and the Miami. Both rivers were by them called the "Meyamee" and much confusion has arisen in regard to locations and routes of travel on account of that fact. The English sent explorers into the Ohio valley as early as 1700, and Pennsylvania traders had traversed the country long before the treaty of 1763, so that every desir- able point of occupancy was well known many years before settlers even thought of acquiring land here. The claims of both the English and French to the Ohio valley were flimsy, but where there were none but the Indians to protest, it was sufficient to establish a claim and that was all either nation wanted.
The Ohio Company, that George Washington's brothers were interested in, claimed, from Virginia's grants to them, a wide scope of land in the valley, the extent of which and the boundaries they themselves could not describe. As early as 1740 traders from Pennsylvania had built a trading post at the forks of the Big Miami above Dayton, Ohio, which was called Loramies, after the trader who occupied it. The Ohio Company sent Christopher Gist out to investigate the merits of the valley and he was at Loramies about 1751. He had met George Croghan, a representative of the governor of Pennsyl- vania. and they were where the town of Piqua now stands, on the 17th day of February, 1751. Gist traveled down the Miami and crossed the Ohio near where Louisville now is, returning to the East through the gaps in the Cumberland range in eastern Kentucky, having been gone for several months. After Gist's reports of the fertility of the valley became known. many attempts were made to settle in the valley. Numerous explorers and adventurers swarmed over the country. examining it for the best locations. But the In- dians were vigilant and resented the incoming white men's encroachments. The French, too. in order to make a show of occupancy, were by no means blind to the endeavors of the English to occupy the country. They could see plainly that if the English once obtained a stronghold in the valley it would be impossible to eject them. On the 10th of May. 1744. the French governor of Canada. Vaudreuil. wrote home to the king of France that there was grave danger of the English gaining the ascendency in the valley and that it would
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be a sad mistake for the French to yield. To more firmly establish their claim to the Ohio valley, the French governor, in 1749, sent Louis Celeron with a party of soldiers to place lead plates, on which were written out the claims of France, at the mouths of the rivers that emptied into the Ohio. One of these plates has (some seventy-five years ago) been found at the mouth of the Muskingum river. Shortly after these plates had been buried, William Trent, who was sent out by Virginia to conciliate the Indians, heard, through the friendly Indians, of the French action, and reported it. The struggle for the Ohio valley finally ended, in so far as the French were con- cerned, with the surrender of Quebec and the treaty of 1763. This relieved those from the Eastern states who desired to settle in so far as the French were concerned, but not so with the Indians. It soon was understood that the Indians must be reckoned with before a permanent settlement could be assured. From 1763 until 1775 the French were slowly letting go of the country and of their influence over the Indians. Then, the War of the Revo- lution coming on, it was not hard for the English influence to persuade the Indians that these settlers, explorers, long hunters and adventurers, were to be counted as enemies, while the Englishmen only represented the small army that took possession of a post here and there and represented to the red man no menace of ever losing his hunting grounds.
Daniel Boone and numerous other bold adventurers, however, did not listen to the claims of the Indian, or the English, but proceeded to occupy the land. Bold adventures, hunters and woodsmen thronged the valley the year round. Even through the perilous years of the Revolution, when every In- dian was an enemy and British influence did not hesitate to kill every Amer- ican found in the valley, plenty of men could be found who were familiar with the country, and who had traveled over it. Long hunters were common, men who, with gun and some powder, would stay for two or three years among the forests, living off of what they found in the way of game. A little more civilized than the Indian, they were the advance guard of the Amer- ican pioneer, and could give information in regard to the character of the country in most any direction. George Rogers Clark, in his expedition against Kaskaskia, found some of them and they were just as ready for an adventure like Clark's, as they were for hunting. A peculiar class were they, of a kind necessary for a country, a skirmish line between the enemy and the main line of the advancing army. After the War of the Revolution. these men became all the more numerous and the Ohio valley was full of them, like the approach of an advancing storm-first the scattering rain drops, then an
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ever-increasing amount, until the final downpour. The war closed in 1782 and the treaty with England was finally proclaimed on the 19th of April, 1783. Yet, in 1785, when the treaty of Ft. Finney was made, we find this extract from the journal of General Butler, one of the commissioners ap- pointed to make the treaty. "Sailed at half past one o'clock, the wind ahead. Here is some very fine land, covered with ash and other timber. Pushed ahead to the Great Miami, above the mouth of which I ordered the whole command to camp, about five o'clock in the evening. I went out with Major Finney to examine the ground for a post. Saturday, October 22, 1785." On Sunday, October 23, General Butler, with some of the officers went down to call on Gen. George Rogers Clark, "who lodged at a place called a station, which is a few families collected for mutual safety to one place and a little fort erected." This shows that within a year and a half after peace was de- clared the outposts of the settlements in Kentucky had already advanced to the Ohio river. Rev. John Hindman, in his diary, says that with a party, consisting of John Simons, John Seft, William West and a Mr. Carlin, with their families. he left Washington county, Pennsylvania, in March, 1785. landing at Limestone, now Maysville, Kentucky, where they stayed two weeks. Next they landed at the mouth of the Big Miami. "We were the first company to land at that place. Soon after we landed, the Ohio river raised and covered all the bottoms at its mouth; therefore we went over tu the Kentucky side and cleared thirty acres of land. Sometime in May or June, 1785, we went up the Big Miami to make what we called improvements, so as to secure a portion of the land which we selected out of the best and broadest bottoms between Hamilton and the mouth of the river. We pro- ceeded up where Hamilton now is and made some improvements wherever we found bottoms finer than the rest, all the way down to the mouth of the Miami. I then went up the Ohio again to Buffalo, but the same fall re- turned and found Generals Clark, Butler and Parsons at the mouth of the Big Miami as commissioners to treat with the Indians. Major Finney was there also. I was in company with Symmes when he was engaged in taking the meanders of the Miami at the time John Filson was killed by the Indians."
This story may not be clearly accurate, but it illustrates the truth that, outside of the organized and, in time, the effective settlements, roving, rest- less people were spying out the country and had their eyes on what they con- sidered desirable tracts, which they would lay claim to just as soon as events justified it. The earliest actual settler it is impossible to determine. Num- bers came into the country at about this same time. The close of the War of
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the Revolution had set loose thousands of restless spirits. Men who had be- come accustomed to a life of adventure, to whom the quiet, after the storm of war, seemed burdensome. These people wandered to the West, looking for adventure more than a location for a home. Most of them were bound by no ties to any particular locality. Single men, full of adventure, ready for any hardship or any danger, they preferred to live off what the wild forest fur- nished rather than to settle down to the pursuits of civilized life. It was, no doubt, this class of men who kept the Indians incited to committing outrages on the frontier settlements. Many of them, at no time very scrupulous, the wild life of a courier de bois had added to their training. Not very well in- formed as to what the general government was doing to clear the path for the actual settler, they frequently took the matter of law into their own hands, with a one-sided idea of justice that gave themselves everything and the Indian nothing. The Indian retaliated by stealing any property the white men might be so fortunate as to be possessed of, such as horses and cattle. not stopping even at that, but very frequently destroying the lives of mer women and children, to even up for what they deemed a trespass on their territory and a violation of the rights of property. Some of the earliest white squatters in this part of Indiana were men who had been captured by the In- dians in boyhood and, not liking their customs and ways of living, they pre- ferred to live by themselves, sometimes with an Indian wife and at other times alone, just the woods and the wild animals about to keep them company. These characters receded to the westward just behind the Indian and were part of the general plan, by which this great country became conquered so rapidly.
THE FIRST ACTUAL SETTLERS.
Accounts differ as to who was the first actual settler in the county. It will possibly never be determined; neither is it at all material who he was. The fact may be that a number of people came into the county at practically the same time and, the means of travel being bad, they were unknown. Few records were kept in those days by the pioneers who were actual settlers. It was generally a mere matter of memory. It has been claimed, variously, that Adam Flake and family were the first settlers locating on South Hogan. It is claimed elsewhere that he did not arrive until 1796. Samuel Morrison, who devoted much time to such matters, says: "Early in January. 1796, Adam Flake and family settled on South Hogan creek. In February, 1796. Ephraim Morrison, a soldier of the Revolution, built the first log cabin and
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cut away the first trees on the bank of the Ohio, just above the mouth of Hogan creek, where the city of Aurora now stands. Early in May, 1796, Capt. Joseph Hayes and family and Thomas Miller and family settled in the big bottoms, three and one-half miles north of Lawrenceburg." Samuel Mor- rison was a son of Ephraim Morrison and no better authority could be ob- tained that he.
Shortly after Captain Hayes arrived, Henry Hardin and family settled on the site of Hardinsburg. William Gerard and family and George Crist and family were also settlers in the same vicinity in the year 1796. On Laughery creek, it is claimed that George Groves settled at its mouth in 1794 and built the first cabin in the county. It is also claimed that Nicholas Cheek settled on Wilson creek in 1794, about the same time that George Groves was building his cabin on Laughery. Other authorities claim that Groves did not arrive until 1798. The treaty of Greenville was not signed until August 3, 1795, and it is not very probable that any of these men would undertake to establish permanent homes until the full terms of the treaty were well known. It is more possible that these settlers were busy in 1795 raising crops for the coming winter, and that by the beginning of the winter they would be aware of that portion of the treaty ceding all the lands east of the line drawn from the mouth of the Kentucky river to Ft. Recovery, to the United States. This would naturally stimulate their desires to acquire some of this new coun- try. All who came into this county before the land office was opened at Cin- cinnati, April 9, 1801, were just "squatters" and were locating desirable ground to enter. None of them could possibly have established permanent homes. When the land office did open, many of these families were doomed to bitter disappointment, because others, more alert or blessed with more ready money, secured the very lands they had selected. The year 1796 was five years be- fore the land office was opened and that was a long time to wait for a chance, only, to secure the rewards for their patience and endurance. These "squat- ters" erected just an abiding place, made generally out of unhewn logs, with one or two rooms. The Indian had been so badly punished that it was antici- pated, and correctly, that it would be several years before he could recover enough self-confidence to make any more attempts against the settlements. The desire for securing the pick of the land brought these families into the county before the land could be purchased at the land office. It was nat- ural, for several reasons, that they keep close to the streams that enter the Ohio river and that, for the time, they remain near to navigation. At that time there was no outlet down the Mississippi that could be depended upon.
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The Spanish were in possession of the mouth of the river and much difficulty was encountered in entering the domain of Spain, a short distance below. Natchez. The nearest protection was the stockade at North Bend, or just across the river at Tanner's Station, now the thrifty little hamlet of Peters- burg, Kentucky.
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