USA > Ohio > Wayne County > History of Wayne county, Ohio, from the days of the pioneers and the first settlers to the present time > Part 1
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CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
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History of Wayne county, Ohio, from the
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Johnof Jeffries
HISTORY
OF
WAYNE COUNTY, OHIO,
FROM THE DAYS OF THE
PIONEERS AND FIRST SETTLERS
TO THE
PRESENT TIME.
BY BEN DOUGLASS, - WOOSTER, OHIO.
INDIANAPOLIS, IND. : ROBERT DOUGLASS, PUBLISHER. 1878. K
1
A 151657
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by BEN DOUGLASS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
U
TO
E. QUINBY, JR., THIS WORK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED, BY THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE.
As its title-page indicates, this book is intended as a record of the leading features and events of Wayne county from the period of its first settlement to the present time. To every thinking mind, the necessity of such a work must have been obvious, and it was but due to the intelligence of our citi- zens that it be produced at the earliest possible opportunity. Wayne county, in view of her conspicuous prominence in the sisterhood of the State, demanded that her traditions and her history be written. In the name of her pioneers and that their memories be not lost; of her first white inhabitants of the forest and stream, and to secure from oblivion a chronicle of the most important events of her first settlers and first settlements, furnishing withal, a continuons narrative of her wonderful strides from wilderness-life to the imposing spectacle of her present position, the writer undertook the work. Her history is em- phatically worthy to be written, and while it has involved immense labor and research, he has never shrank from the task, difficult and uninspiring as, at times, it has been. The toil of collecting and adjusting the material has occu- pied considerable time, but he is sanguine enough to believe he has produced such a work as, under the circumstances, will commend itself with favor to the reader.
While the relations of the different townships to the county-seat, or in fact to each other, are as the members to the body, and while the annals of all are interlaced, like the limbs of ancient wrestlers, the plan of the work is such that each township will have its own separate and specific history. He indulges not the hope that he has prepared a perfect history, or a complete one in all particulars, but trusts he has presented the leading features of Wayne county, and her past and present people, in such a way as to obtain the approval and considerate appreciation of a generous public.
INTRODUCTION.
A HISTORY of Wayne County, Ohio, in the more tangible form of a bound volume has long been a desideratum of an intelligent public-spirited class of our citizens. To wrench from "dumb forgetfulness " and recover from the dim and shadowy past the story of the struggles and privations of the pioneers; of their trials, hardships and suffering ; of their bitter experiences and victories of hope and faith; of their disappointments and triumphs, and crystallize the same upon the printed page, is certainly worthy of an honorable ambition.
With the single exception of cursory reference, no chronicle of our county has been given, save that collected and published in eighteen hundred and forty-eight, by Henry Howe, of Cincinnati, in his "Historical Collections." Valuable and cheerful as is this little sketch, it is but a "gleamy ray "-a glint of light falling from an unsettled mirror,
"Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be, Ere one can say it lightens."
In eighteen hundred and fifty-two, John Grable, of Paint Township, an erratic, eruptionary genius, full of the vegetating vigor of philosophy, attempted the enterprise, but for reasons un- ' known to the writer, it was not prosecuted to an issue. A portion of his manuscript we obtained through the courtesy of G. W. Fraze, of Paint Township, which we have appropriated as best subserved our purpose.
6
INTRODUCTION.
Subsequently the project elicited the thought of John P. Jef- fries, Esq., of the city of Wooster, who expended some time in search for material for such a volume. We have no reason to as- sign for his abandonment of the work, unless the urgent and mul- tiplying duties of the legal profession interfered with its completion. Be that as it may, we do not hesitate to pronounce it a misfortune, in view of the time in which he commenced the labor, and his manifest competency and fitness for its performance, that he did not prosecute it to a conclusion. More than to any other citizen of the county are we indebted to him for the serviceable interest he has shown in our undertaking, and it affords us no vain pleas- ure to here acknowledge his substantial and effective co-operation.
Later, and finally, the "truth-speaking Briton "-a wise growth of the island where the House of Commons adjourns over the "Derby Day " -* Thomas Woodland, Esq., in strains heroically poetic, invoked the Muse of History to breathe upon the enter- prise and cause it again to live.
Under the inspiration of Mr. Woodland, a society was organ- ized in eighteen hundred and seventy for the distinctive purpose of procuring for publication a history exclusively of the city of Wooster. The scheme was indorsed by many of the best citizens of the city; but a maturer thought suggested the propriety of compassing within the proposed book a history of the county.
This proposition was heartily approved and seconded by Hon. John Larwill, Hon. Martin Welker, E. Quinby, Jr., Leander Firestone, M. D., Hon. John P. Jeffries, Hon. John K. McBride, Hon. Benj. Eason, Hon. Joseph H. Downing, Ohio F. Jones, Esq., Angus McDonald, Constant Lake, David Robison, Jr., James C. Jacobs, John Zimmerman, Thomas Woodland, and many others that might be enumerated. Thereupon an organization was effected under the name of "The Wayne County Historical Society." Its purpose and aim being enlarged, the organization was adjusted and leveled to the new order of things. A Constitution and By-Laws were adopted, officers under the provisions of the same were chosen
*Since dead.
7
INTRODUCTION.
and elected, and a record of its sessions and general proceedings ordered to be kept. It was first conceived that, by the appoint- ment of committees in the city and various townships throughout the county, the data for the history could more easily and most effectually be procured, and thereby the publication of the same would be largely facilitated. The plan was adopted, and the Sec- retary of the Society corresponded with the various committees and instructed them in the respective duties they were severally expected to perform.
Time-ample time-was afforded in which to report, but with one or two notable exceptions, the reports were not forthcoming. The labor of collecting, combining and erecting into form was con- sequently devolved upon the historian; whilst under the first ar- rangement, his province would simply have been to revise, adjust and systematize for publication. This unexpected check to the plan of the Society was everything but satisfactory. The writer hesitated as to his line of action, but finally determined to go on. His work now assumed more formidable proportions, and seemed like the task of Sisyphus. As a result, time became a cardinal ingredient of the enterprise, and of this he availed himself, as was his privilege.
When all support failed us, we resolved to be our own master. When we beheld the panther in our path, we determined to approach him by the steps that suited us best. Though left alone in a somewhat primeval garden, we endeavored to inhale what fra- grance there was in the air; to turn over the sunken stones and see what treasures they concealed; to dig around the decayed trunks of the old trees to see if there were no sap or juices that might be extracted.
A more than usual interest is attached to our territorial history, concerning which the general reader, it is possible, may not be fully informed. Reference is made to the grants of lands in the New World, by James I. of England to the London and Plymouth Companies, and to those of Henry IV. of France, as early as six- teen hundred and three, which comprised the lands between the
8
INTRODUCTION.
fortieth and forty-sixth degrees of north latitude, and hence in- cluded what is now the State of Ohio.
A technically complete description of originally established Wayne County is given, which forms a chapter in the book of in- calculable value. Strange as it may appear, the Act creating Wayne County affords no intelligible idea of its remarkable boundary.
The organization of the North-western Territory, under the Ordinance of seventeen hundred and eighty-seven, is introduced in full, and its line of civil administration accurately pursued until the admission of Ohio into the Federal Union in eighteen hundred and three.
The topography and geology of the county are carefully con- sidered by John P. Jeffries, Esq., of Wooster, author of the "Natu- ral Hstory of the Human Races," who possesses the qualifications for the performance of such scientific labor.
Its archaeology is discussed at length, and forms a chapter which can not fail of interest to the student of the pre-historic period.
Indian ethnology, historical surveys of the Delawares, Wyan- dots, Shawanese, etc., who inhabited this section, together with descriptions of the Great Trail leading from Fort Pitt to Fort San- dusky, and the massacre by Captain Fulkes of the red warriors on the banks of Apple Creek, all are compassed in the range of the work.
The passage of Crawford's army through Clinton township, and of Beall's forces from Lisbon to Canton, Wooster, and on to the Huron, and a portion of the same to Fort Meiggs, are defined with reliable clearness, and viewed in the light of all the circum- stances, are rich discoveries and recoveries from the margins of rapidly fading history. The earliest settlements of the county, and the characteristics of its first settlers are grouped succinctly in separate departments. Pioneer life is portrayed, and the more exciting scenes and situations, in which the magnificent metamor- phosis appears of a brave people, moving from wilderness misrule and chaos to lofty civilization and grand achievement. A sketch
9
INTRODUCTION.
of Johnny Appleseed is introduced, more elaborately written and more pregnant in detail, than any biography yet furnished.
A survey of the present Wayne County is faithfully re-pro- duced, and the manner, time and date of its subdivisions into townships recorded. Its organization, the erection of its first courts, and many particulars thereto relating, receive special prominence. The laying out of Madison, and finally the establishing of Wooster as the county seat, together with the vacation of the first named place, is explained in the almost technical language of the courts.
Biographies of Generals Wayne and Wooster are presented, and the names of the officers of the city, county, townships and incorporated villages of the county, entrusted with their civil man- agement, are set forth with the fidelity justified by the public rec- ยท ords.
With the divergent theories of extinct races, or past peoples, etc., having inhabited the soil, we institute inquiry, but have no controversy. To have entered in extenso upon this question would have been to have penetrated neither a vine-yard nor an olive-yard, but an intricate jungle of thorns and briers, from which those who lose themselves therein, may bring back many scratches but no food. They "died and made no sign " beyond ancient tumuli and circular erections, the very character of which might assign them to almost any race which, after partially climbing the steep of civili- zation, had, from gradual decay, or sudden demolition, lapsed into barbarism or wholly disappeared.
Who these people were, whence they came, and what their destiny, investigation has not solved and pen has not yet posi- tively written. They belong to that period to which the bygone ages, incalculable in amount, with all their well-proportioned gra- dations of being, form the imposing vestibule. Whether the true mound-builders or not, we feel as we contemplate them that they were sentient, and possibly, superior beings, of whom nothing remains but antique relics and fossiliferous vestiges; masses of "inert and senseless matter never again to be animated by the mysterious spirit of vitality-that spirit which, dissipated in the
IO
INTRODUCTION.
air or diffused in the ocean, can, like the sweet sounds and pleas- ant odors of the past, be neither gathered up nor recalled."
It should be inferred, however, that upon a topic so absorbing and so vitalized with deep interest we would claim a hearing, but as before indicated, no controversy has been indulged and no special theories maintained.
The agricultural possibilities of the county are presented in a strong light, and a "bird's-eye " view of its cereals, fruits, etc., taken at short and long range, composes an interesting chapter. A complete history of the city of Wooster is given, with elaborate sketches of its original proprietors, together with a full account of the first surveys, names of first settlers, building of first houses, lo- cation of the same, and first architects, construction of first court- house, jail and churches, with names and biographies of pioneer judges, lawyers, physicians and clergymen.
The various townships have each a separate history, including date of organization, where first elections were held, names of judges of same, and first voters; where first school-houses and churches were erected; embracing incidents of "backwoods" life, with the experiences of the bear-hunter and the edge-man of the roaring camp-meeting.
The biographical department can not fail to be interesting, for history, we are told, "is the essence of innumerable biographies." Seneca says, " Is it not a more glorious and profitable employ- ment to write the history of a well ordered life, than to record the usurpations of ambitious princes?" Its object is the crystalliza- tion of the deeds and doings of the fathers; the transferring to the printed page some of the worthy and good of their living sons. We would save them from the obscurity, for which the arm is stretched, to rescue the fathers. Very near unto us all is forget- fulness. In the wondrous, boundless jostle of things, our lives and our deaths are soon lost sight of. The panorama is shifted, and the life-bustle of to-day is the death-tableau of to-morrow.
"The Fate goes round, and strikes at last where it has a great while passed by." The record of a humble but well spent life is
II
INTRODUCTION.
indeed worth the transient flourish of a pen. Posterity will not be ungrateful for it, and it should be enlarged into a record for its use. These sketches, in many instances, are sufficiently elaborate to delineate the more prominent traits of individual character, and are drawn together in open juxtaposition, irrespective of belief, position or creed. Prior to the organization of the county, in eighteen hundred and twelve, we have presented the most author- itative recollections of our oldest and most intelligent men who have lived in the county. There is unavoidable discrepancy and indefiniteness in the narration anterior to this date. Our re- searches covering this period, at times, were like a ramble for light in the land of the Homeric Cimmerians.
We regret that the initial year-marks have been blurred -that Time has blown the sand and dirt over the first foot-prints. Much previous to the above date, however, has been rescued from oblivion. From eighteen hundred and twelve we start abreast with the records, and are able, with few exceptions, to define the historic past. Our chief aim has been to seize hold of "first things," for they " have a fascination, because they are first things." It certainly should be the subject of a profound public regret that the project of preparing such a book has been so long postponed. Had it been inaugurated in the days and times of Joseph Larwill, John Sloane, Benjamin Jones, Alexander McBride, Levi Cox, Edward Avery, Cyrus Spink, Smith Orr, Andrew Mc- Monigal, etc., etc., we would have experienced little of the diffi- culty which we have met and with which we have been perplexed. We have sought to discharge our duty with impartiality, fidelity and discrimination, uniformly aiming to delineate, with scrupulous truthfulness, the aspects and features of the subjects upon which we have been called to pronounce. Nor have we allowed any portion of the work to be freighted with unimportant details, vapid disser- tations, or infested with recitations to gratify or pamper a perverted or depraved curiosity. It is but due to ourself and to the reader to say, that our work has been performed, at times, under serious
12
INTRODUCTION.
embarrassments, and that much of it has been accomplished dur- ing intervals of other employment.
More than this, we but add that our labors have been more tedious and difficult than was at first imagined, and that our resources of investigation have been more barren than we antici- pated. If we have rescued from the chasm of the past-the vortex of the dead untenanted years-anything that will interest the gen- erations of the coming time ; if we have saved from oblivion the memory of a life that illustrated a single virtue, a moral principle, or a religion in this mad Babylon of the world, then our labor will be compensated. Whether we have achieved this purpose, others will decide instead of us. We are less concerned in the verdict than those who render it. The hush of death will have fallen upon many ears when posterity shall arise and record its judgment.
Wooster, Ohio, June, 1875.
BEN DOUGLASS.
HISTORY
OF
WAYNE COUNTY, OHIO.
CHAPTER I.
HISTORY is the Letter of Instruction which the old generations write and post- humously transmit to the new.
All knowledge is but recorded experience and a product of history .- Carlyle.
WHILE it is indisputably true that the division of time known as the present challenges the paramount thought of the human mind, and that it is the prerogative of no man to solve the future, it may safely be affirmed that no man desires to be wholly uncon- scious of the past, or deaf to the voice of its lingering memories.
That community which would not by "the art preservative " perpetuate its traditions, register its experiences and chronicle its events, would be anomalous in the natural world, and a sterile, profitless and skeletonized theme for the pen that would seek to trace or define its existence. The disposition, in some manner or way, to embalm or rather transmit the past, to erect it into history, organize it into tradition, or cause it to live in the embroiderings of Fancy, has been and is a characteristic of all ages, classes and races of men.
The natives of Ashango-land are fortified and grow garrulous over the charm-working and superstitious myths of their black pro-
14
HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY, OHIO.
genitors, and the savage Indian has his repertory of hoarded leg- endary story, and is as familiar with the traditionary annals of his ancient tribes as was Herodotus with the Persian invasion, or Tac itus with the Forum.
It can be maintained, then, not as a fact or an abstraction, but as a principle entrenched in a sound and practical philosophy, that nothing can more interest a people or a community than a history of the times in which they have lived-a reproduction of the drama in which their fathers were the actors.
The faithful transmission of worthy deeds is one of the ennobling emanations of man's nature, and has been to some degree exhib- ited since the earliest dawn of his existence. Long anterior to the time of the discovery of the art of printing, memorable events were painted upon parchment and engraven upon stone, that they might live otherwise than in traditionary story or the song of bards. Many of the nations of antiquity adopted this method of perpetuating important events, as the ruins of Thebes, Persepolis, Nineveh, and other demolished cities of the Eastern world abun- dantly testify.
Cicero has well remarked that History is the truth of Philoso- phy. As to the truth of history, however, it is particularly relia- ble when it is written at the time the facts recorded are fresh in the recollection of the people where they have occurred. Written in any other way it becomes legendary, precarious and romantic, without the proper indorsement of its authenticity.
With this view I have written a History of Wayne County, Ohio, from a period long antedating its present organization- from its first settlement to the present time, and before its early annals have become entirely a myth.
I5
HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY, OHIO.
CHAPTER II.
THE NORTH-WESTERN TERRITORY.
AT the time Sebastian Cabot discovered North America, in 1498, the print of the foot of the white man was not upon its soil. He had traversed wide, billowy and "hilly seas," and peopled waste and desert places of the earth, but here, on the sun-down side of the Western Hemisphere, he was not found. It was the empire of the native American, barbaric hordes who roamed like untamed beasts over its extensive domain and secreted themselves in its shady groves and cloistered valleys, unrestrained and ungov- erned by any of the rules which regulate civilized life.
Cabot's discovery paved the way, as also did that of Columbus, for European immigration. Soon Spain, France and England vied with each other for the ascendancy in the New World.
Spain had the honor of establishing the first colony in North America, which was done at St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565, and is now the oldest city, by forty years, within the limits of the Re- public. The French planted the second in 1604, at Port Royal, in Acadia, the original name of Novia Scotia, and the English the third, at Jamestown, in April, 1607, which was the first permanent settlement of the English in America.
England, becoming alarmed at the encroachments of the French in the northern part of the New World, divided that portion of the country which lies between the thirty-fourth and forty-fifth degrees of north latitude into two grand divisions, and then James I., by
16
THE NORTH-WESTERN TERRITORY.
grant, disposed of that portion of the country included between the thirty-fourth and forty-first degrees to an association of merchants, called the London Land Company, and to the Plymouth Company, which subsequently settled New England, the territory between the thirty-eighth and forty-fifth degrees. These grants crossing over each other, to some extent, became a fertile source of trouble to the Crown. The Cabots had visited Nova Scotia as early as 1498, though there was no European colony established until the year above named, but Henry IV. of France, had, as early as 1603, granted Acadia to DeMonts, a Frenchman, and his followers, and some Jesuits, who, for several years, endeavored to form settle- ments in Port Royal and St. Croix, but who were finally expelled from the country by the English governor and colonists of Vir- ginia, who claimed the country by right of the discovery of Sebas- tian Cabot. This grant to DeMonts comprised the lands between the fortieth and forty-sixth degrees of north latitude, and hence in- cluded the lands at present composing the State of Ohio.
The grant of James I. of England to the London Company also embraced Ohio, and the grant of the same monarch to the Ply- mouth Company compassed a portion of it. France, alive to the importance of seizing and holding the sway over the much-coveted Foundling of the western sun, equipped and sent out her boldest adventurers to explore and possess the country, prominent among whom appeared LaSalle, Champlain and Marquette. Forts were erected by them on the lakes and on the Mississippi, Illinois and Maumee rivers, and the whole North-western Territory was in- cluded by them in the province of Louisiana; in fact our entire country, according to their geographers, was New France, except that east of the great ranges of mountains, whose streams flow into the Atlantic; and of this portion they even claimed the basin of the Kennebec, and all of Maine to the east of that valley. As early as 1750 they had strong and well-guarded fortifications erected at the mouth of the Wabash river, and a line of communication opened to Acadia, by way of this stream, the lakes and the St. Lawrence. The English not only claimed the North-western Terri-
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY, OHIO.
tory by reason of discovery, and by grant of the King of England, but by virtue of the purchase of the same, from the Indians by treaty, at Lancaster, in 1744. By that treaty the Six Nations ceded the lands or territory to the English, as they claimed. For the purpose of formally possessing it and vieing with the French in its settlement, a company denominated the Ohio Company was organized in 1750, and obtained a grant in that year from the Brit- ish Parliament for six hundred thousand acres of land on or near the Ohio river; and in 1750 the English built and established a trading-house at a place called Loramie's Store, on the Great Miami river, and which was the first English establishment erected in the North-west Territory, or the great valley of the Mississippi. In the early part of 1752 the French demolished this trading-house, and carried the inhabitants off to Canada. Its destruction involved something of a conflict, and the Ottawas and Chippewas assisting the French, fourteen of the red warriors were killed and several wounded before it succumbed.
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