USA > Ohio > Biographical and historical memoirs of the early pioneer settlers of Ohio, with narratives of incidents and occurrences in 1775 > Part 18
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Soon after this marriage, he entered into merchandise; purchasing a large store of goods from Nightingale and Clark, a noted importing house of that day. Being entirely unacquainted with mercantile affairs, fond of company and generous living, with the liberal habits of a soldier, in the full vigor of life, it is not to be wondered at, if he did not excel in trade, as he had done in military matters. Nothing can be more unlike than the two callings; and out of hun- dreds who tried it, scarcely one succeeded. He had no taste for his new business, and in a short time he failed; swal- lowing up his wife's patrimony, as well as his own resources.
About this time, 1786, Congress ordered the first surveys of their lands, west of the Ohio river, to be executed. Seven ranges of townships, beginning on the Ohio, at the western boundary line of Pennsylvania, were directed to be pre- pared for market. Col. Sproat was appointed the surveyor for the state of Rhode Island, and commenced operations in the fall of that year. The hostility of the Indians pre- vented the completion of the work, and his range was not finished until the following season.
In 1789, the Ohio Company was formed, and he was ap- pointed one of the surveyors of their new purchases, for which his hardy frame and great resolution eminently fitted him. In the autumn of 1789, they resolved to send on a company of boat-builders and artificers to the head waters of the Ohio at Simrel's ferry, for the purpose of preparing boats for the transportation of the provision and men, to commence the colony in the spring. Col. Sproat led one of
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these detachments. On their way out the following incident occurred, to lighten the tediousness of the way : The party arrived at the house of a thrifty German farmer, near the foot of the mountains, on Saturday night. He received them with the greatest hospitality, supplying all their wants with cheerfulness, and when Monday morning arrived, wished them a favorable journey; and so pleased was he with his wayfaring acquaintance, that he refused any pay. Col. Sproat not only returned him his sincere thanks, but felt grateful for his kindness. The hospitable German had a beautiful little dog, to which he was much attached and greatly valued. One of the laboring hands, named Danton, had the baseness to put him into the wagon, unknown to any one. When they stopped again for the night, a mes- senger placed in the hands of the colonel the following note from his German friend: "Meeshter Col. Sproat, I dinks I use you well; den for what you steal my little tog?" The colonel was much mortified and greatly enraged when the dog was found, but met with an opportunity of sending him back the following morning, with a polite, explanatory note, to his master. Danton never outgrew the infamy of this nefarious act, but had it often cast at him in his future life.
The detachment, after great fatigue, reached their desti- nation, and spent the remainder of the winter in building a large boat called the May-flower, in remembrance of the vessel that transported their forefathers to a new home, as this was to convey the pilgrims of the west to their home in the wilderness. The party arrived at the mouth of the Muskingum on the 7th of April, 1788. Col. Sproat imme- diately commenced his labors as surveyor for the company, and continued them until the breaking out of the war in January, 1791, when all further operations in the woods were suspended. Many of the savages visited the new settlement to see the Bostonians, as they were called, and to exchange
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their meat, skins, and peltry, for goods with the traders at Marietta and Fort Harmer. The tall, commanding person of Col. Sproat, soon attracted their attention, and they gave him the name of Hetuck, or Big Buckeye. From this, no doubt, originated the name of' Buckeye, now applied to the natives of Ohio, as the phrase was familiar to all the early settlers of Marietta.
On the arrival of Gov. St. Clair and the organization of the county of Washington, he commissioned him as sheriff, which post he held for fourteen years, or until the formation of the state government, when a change in the political measures of the administration threw him out of office. He was also, at the same time, commissioned as colonel of the militia. In the fall of 1790, just before the commencement of the attack on the settlements, he was authorized by Gen. Knox, secretary of war, to enlist a company of soldiers for the defense of the colony, appoint rangers, and superintend the military affairs of the United States in Washington county, with the pay of a major, which post he filled with fidelity, to the satisfaction of the settlers and the government. His experience in military matters, was of great advantage to the inhabitants, while his bold, undaunted manner, in- spired them with courage in times of greatest danger.
His family arrived here, with Com. Whipple, in 1789. It consisted of his wife and one daughter. After the close of the war she married Solomon Sibley, Esq., of Detroit, who commenced the practice of law in Marietta.
As sheriff of the county, he opened the first court ever held in the territory, now Ohio, marching with his drawn sword and wand of office, at the head of the judges, gov- ernor, secretary, &c., preceded by a military escort, from the Point to the northwest block-house of Campus Mar- tius, on the 2d day of September, 1788. It was an august spectacle, conducted with great dignity and decorum, making
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a deep impression on the red men of the forest, many of whom witnessed the ceremonies, and at this time bestowed on him the Indian name, by which they ever after desig- nated him.
During the whole period of the war he performed his du- ties as superintendent of the military posts at Belpre, Waterford, and Marietta, and paymaster to the rangers and colonial troops. These certificates of dues for services rendered the Ohio Company-for they too kept up a mili- tary band at their own expense-as well as the United States, served in place of money, and formed nearly all the currency afloat during the five years of the war. They were generally for small sums, and taken in payment for goods at the stores, who received their cash for them in Philadelphia, and also passed as a tender between the in- habitants. Had it not been for these assignats, the suf- ferings of the settlers would have been much greater. It is said by Col. Convers, who resided at Waterford, that he did not believe that settlement, in 1792, could have raised ten dollars in specie amongst them. They had little or nothing to sell, and experienced the greatest difficulty in producing the common necessaries of life. The Ohio Company ex- pended more than eleven thousand dollars of their funds in defending the settlements, which was never repaid them by the United States, as it in justice ought to have been.
In disposition and temperament, Col. Sproat was cheer- ful and animated; exceedingly fond of company and jovial entertainments; much attached to horses and dogs; always riding in his long journeys over the country, then embra- cing half the state of Ohio, some of the finest horses the country afforded, and generally accompanied by two or three large dogs, who, next to horses, shared largely in his favors. In executing the sterner requisitions of the law among the poorer classes of society, he has been often known to furnish
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the money himself for the payment of the debt, rather than distress an indigent family. His heart, although full of merriment and playfulness, overflowed with kindness. He had no enemies but those of a political kind. In per- sonal appearance, he was remarkable for his tall, majestic figure, and exact proportions; towering like a Saul, a full head above the hight of other men.
The office of sheriff was filled with great dignity and propriety, commanding by his noble presence and military bearing the strictest silence and decorum from the audience, while the court were sitting; and when on duty, wearing his sword as an emblem of justice, as well as of execution in fulfilling the requirements of law. This badge of office was very appropriate, and was kept up in several of the states for many years after the war, but, like many other good and wholesome usages, has given way under the prevalence of ultra democratic principles.
He was a Federalist of the old school, warmly attached to his country and to the precepts taught by his venerated commander, Gen. Washington, in the times which tried men's souls.
For several years of the latter part of his life he devoted his leisure time to cultivating the earth, for which he ever retained a strong predilection, formed in early youth. He was fond of the rougher kinds of labor, such as driving a team of young oxen, and in ascending a hill with a load beyond the strength of his team, delighted in applying his shoulder to the wheel, and helping them out of the difficulty. Gardening was another favorite pursuit. The bank of Ma- rietta now occupies one corner of his garden, which covered nearly an acre. It was laid out in squares and spacious walks, very tastefully, embracing ornamental shrubs, and all the varieties of fruits cultivated in the middle states. An ancient pear tree is still standing, planted by his hand.
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The garden was kept in nice order by an old black woman named Suke, who outlived him many years, but always spoke of her kind, old Master Sproat, in terms of exalted admiration.
The dwelling house is now owned by Capt. Daniel Green, and is a specimen of New England architecture very cred- itable to the period in which it was built, nearly fifty years ago.
He died suddenly, in the full vigor of health, in February, 1805, having his oft-repeated wish of a sudden exit fully answered. His memory is held in grateful remembrance by all who knew him.
CAPT. JONATHAN DEVOL.
FROM the earliest ages, and even from the first invention of letters, it has been one of the most pleasing duties of the historian to record the lives and actions of distinguished and useful men. In this way a kind of immortality is given to their names, and they live again amidst the descend- ants of future generations ; their good deeds stimulating others to imitate their virtuous and praiseworthy examples. Abounding, as the first colony of the Ohio Company set- tlers did, with excellent men, in numbers and qualifications far exceeding those of any other settlement in the valley of the Ohio, yet few of them were more deserving than the subject of the following memoir.
Jonathan Devol was born at Tiverton, in the colony of Rhode Island, in the year 1756. His ancestors were of French descent. His father settled in Rhode Island, and was a dealer in West India produce. The mother belonged to the sect called Quakers, who in that day composed a large portion of the inhabitants ; the mild sway of Roger Williams encouraging perfect freedom of conscience, and good-will to all mankind. The family was quite numerous, he being the youngest of seven sons.
Schools of learning, before the Revolutionary war, were of rare occurrence, and his whole education was embraced in one year's schooling. It fortunately happened that his father possessed a small library of choice books, from the perusal of which he reaped valuable instruction, and ac- quired a taste for reading that never forsook him in after life. When quite young he learned the trade of a ship
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carpenter, and in manhood became quite noted for his skill in constructing boats of beautiful model and rapid sailing. One of his boats took a purse of fifty guineas, in a race between some gentlemen amateurs of Newport and Providence, where this manly sport was brought to great perfection.
When the war for independence broke out between Great. Britain and the colonies, he took the side of his country, and before he was twenty years old, received a commission as ensign. In October, 1775, on the first call for troops for the interior defense of the colony, he marched with a part of a company of men, and joined the regiment to which he belonged, on the hights back of the town of Newport. In December following, he was appointed to the same rank, in a regiment enlisted for a year. In June, 1776, he was com- missioned as a lieutenant in the continental service. In December following, he was promoted to the adjutancy of the first regiment in a brigade raised to repel the British, who had invaded Rhode Island.
In July, 1777, he resigned that post, in consequence of being superseded in the promotion of the adjutant of the second regiment, to the vacancy of brigade-major, to his wrong, and retired to private life, as any spirited man would have done, in a similar case. This disregard to the military rates of promotion, in the early years of the war, was a source of heart-burnings and of serious injury to the cause, until corrected by more just views of this important spring in the service.
In September of the same year, he acted as a volunteer in the badly conducted expedition of Gen. Spencer, against the British in Rhode Island. After the evacuation of the island, in January, 1780, he retired to Tiverton, and was appointed to a captaincy in the militia. While occupied in the busy scenes of that eventful period, he was often selected
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to conduct hazardous expeditions above his rank, and for several services of this kind, received the thanks of the com- manding general of the troops on this station. Amongst other dangerous exploits, was the following, of cutting out a British brig from under the stern of a twenty gun ship, in the outer harbor of Newport.
On the evening of the 11th of April, 1776, there arrived in the roadstead of Newport, a sloop-of-war of twenty guns, a transport-ship of eighteen guns, with a brig and sloop as tenders ; the latter were moored directly under their sterns. A plan was soon arranged for making an attack on them with the row galleys then in port. To effect this, it was ne- cessary to procure a party of volunteers from the brigade, then quartered in the town of Newport. Lieut. Devol was at that time sick in bed, with an attack of the mumps; and nothing but the certain failure of the measure, from the want of his assistance, could have induced him to leave his room. In a short time he procured twenty volunteers to accompany him in the hazardous attempt. They embarked on board the galley of Capt. Grimes, the commodore of the station, about eleven o'clock, in a dark, rainy night. She was worked with oars, and carried one long eighteen- pounder. The captain attempted to lay the galley along- side the brig, intending to carry her by boarding; but the force of the tide, and the imperfection of the human vision in the darkness of the night, caused the galley to fall upon her quarter. Lieut. Devol, at the head of his boarders, who stood ready to spring up the side of the enemy, as soon as the vessels came in contact, now mounted over her quarter, followed by only five of his men, the others being prevented by the falling off of the galley, before they could get on board. While in the act of climbing over the quarter, the sentinel on deck hailed, and fired his musket down among the assailants; the ball passed very near the head of Mr.
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Devol, who instantly returned the salute with one of his pistols. Followed by his five brave men, he was soon on the deck of the brig, and, cutlass in hand, drove the midship- man who had command, with ten men, below, and instantly fastened the hatches down upon them. The next act was to cut loose the cable and get their prize under way. In performing this service, they had a tedious time; for the axe and the carpenter were both left in the galley, with the residue of the boarders. In this dilemma, recourse was had to a cutlass, and by repeated and strenuous hacks in the dark, they, at length, after thirty minutes, divided the four- teen inch cable by which she was moored, and the tide soon put her in motion. In the meantime, the twenty gun ship had got under way, and came down on her larboard side, to the rescue of the tender. The galley had now recovered her lost ground by the aid of her sweeps, and came up on the starboard side, just as the cable gave way, so that as the prize swung round she fell foul of the galley. The ship all this time kept firing into her, both with cannon and musketry, but from the darkness and confusion of the night, did but little damage, except to her rigging and spars, with the loss of one man mortally wounded. As soon as the gal- ley was free, she opened her fire on the ship with her long gun. The enemy soon gave up the pursuit, and the brig, with her crew, was brought in and moored at the wharf in Newport.
This was as brave and gallant an exploit as was enacted during the war. Had the whole twenty men succeeded in boarding the brig, it would have been a bold achievement, considering how near she lay to the twenty gun ship. But when the number is reduced to five, to oppose ten men on their own deck, it deserves all our praise. And then to stand for twenty or thirty minutes, hacking at the cable with such an inefficient tool, exposed to the constant fire of the
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enemy, required the utmost coolness and intrepidity. The effects of this night's exposure to the rain and cold, confined Mr. Devol to his bed for a long time, and laid the founda- tion of a disease from which he severely suffered for the last twenty years of his life.
On the 1st of May, 1777, a party of British and Hessians were seen from the American look-out, at Battery hill, on the main land, about a mile and a half from their lines on the island, in search of deserters that had come off the night before. Lieut. Devol, with twenty men, was ordered over across the inlet, near Howland's ferry, to attack them. He landed his party undiscovered. Two men were left in charge of the boats, and one sent to an adjacent eminence to give notice of any other body of their foes that might be in sight. With seventeen men he charged at full speed on the enemy. They immediately fled, and their commander, a lieutenant in the twenty-second regiment, fell a prisoner into their hands. The party under his orders consisted of twenty-five men, as confessed by himself. They were hotly pursued as near to the lines as was prudent. Soon after the British took possession of Newport, a number of the disaffected inhabitants of Rhode Island, called Tories, joined them. These renegades from their country's cause, felt a greater inveteracy to the Whigs than the British themselves, and sought every opportunity to distress and destroy them. One dark night they fitted out a marauding party from New- port, in a swift sail-boat, manned with ten or twelve men, who were well acquainted with the adjacent country along the shores and inlets of the bay which embosom the island. In this expedition they attacked and plundered the house of Job Amy, an old but very respectable citizen, robbing him of a part of his furniture, and considerable valuable plate, taking the old man also with them, hoping to extort money from him by way of ransom. His son Job, an active young
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man, was so fortunate as to escape by jumping out of a chamber window, and half-dressed as he was, hastened with all speed to Howland's ferry, where Mr. Devol then lived, knowing that he commanded a party of men and one of the swiftest boats, for the purpose of rescuing the inhabitants and harassing the enemy. The distance he had to run was about ten miles, which he performed in an incredibly short time, along the sandy beach of the shores. He reached the ferry about midnight, across which he had to swim, and awak- ening Mr. Devol, related the disasters of the night. He di- rected him to go and arouse the boat's crew, while he procured a keg of water and some provisions. In a few minutes all were ready, and Job entered with them as a vol- unteer in the cruise. Knowing the course which the robber boat must pursue in her return to Newport, they concluded that if they could reach Sckonet Point, a noted headland, which she must pass, they could overtake them before they arrived within reach of the protection of the British shipping, and recover the plunder, as well as make prisoners of the crew, and release their own friends whom they had forced away with them. By great exertion in rowing and the ut- most skill in sailing, they hove in sight of the point just as the day dawned, and made out the robber boat a short mile distant. Bill Crowson, the commander of the Tory crew, a violent villain and robber, espied his pursuers at the same time; expecting that he might, possibly, be intercepted from the escape of Job Amy; and yet the distance was so great that he did not believe he could travel that far in so short a space of time as to bring Devol down upon him by day- light. One of Crowson's prisoners, an active, bold man, as soon as he saw the pursuing boat jumped upon the thwarts, ยท and swinging his hat, shouted with all his might, saying he knew it was Devol's boat, one of the swiftest in all those waters, and they should surely be retaken. Bill d-d
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him for an impudent rebel, and with a terrible oath, swore if he did not seat himself quietly in the boat, as the motion disturbed her sailing, he would shoot him on the spot. He boldly answered that he dare not do it, for his friends would shortly be up with him and revenge his death. His predic- tion was soon verified. Devol's crew, by great exertions with their oars, as well as the nicely adjusted sails under his own care, soon ran along side, and on being ordered to sur- render in a tone that meant to be obeyed, they gave up with- out firing a shot, although manned by a more numerous crew. Knowing their cause to be a dastardly one, they could not defend it with the courage of men who have right and justice on their side. After the surrender, the young man who had been ill-treated and abused by Crowson, sprang at him with a sword which he snatched from the hand of one of the men, and would have put him to death but for the interference of Mr. Devol, who could not suffer a prisoner to be injured, however mean and villainous he might be. The boat returned in triumph with her prize, although the British fleet lay at anchor within gunshot of the spot. Crowson was such a notorious rascal, that the in- habitants of Tiverton were with difficulty restrained from hanging him up without trial. He was, however, sent off under a guard to Taunton jail, and confined as a British prisoner. Job Amy, the young man who gave the alarm, never recovered from the exertions of that night, but died of a consumption before the end of a year.
In 1776, Capt. Devol married Miss Nancy Barker, the daughter of Capt. Isaac Barker, for many years a noted ship-master of Newport. Her father was lost at sea some years before the war, and she, with her widowed mother and several sisters, now resided on a farm, near the center of the island, on the road from Howland's ferry to Newport. When the British troops took possession of the place, many of the
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inhabitants were suffered to remain quietly in their houses. Mrs. Barker was one of this number, and three or four of the officers were quartered the winter following at her house. They, however, treated her and the young ladies very po- litely and paid her honorably for their board. The fiery and patriotic spirit of the young lieutenant could not brook the thought of his betrothed remaining in the society of the enemies of his country, lest their fascinating manners and rich dresses should lessen her devotion to the Whig cause. He accordingly, after giving her timely notice, planned an expedition on to the island with a party of men, and one dark wintry night, at the imminent hazard of his life from the sentries, brought off his intended wife in safety. Shortly after this event, they were married at the house of an elder sister, near Fairhaven. This union proved to be a very happy one, though checkered with many vicissitudes. She was the mother of thirteen children, and shared with him the dangers and privations of settling a new country in the wilderness, amidst the horrors of an Indian war.
After the close of the Revolution, and he had witnessed the triumph of his country over her enemies, he settled down in quiet at Howland's ferry. Here he carried on the boat- building, and kept a small store of groceries. 7
When the Ohio Company was formed in 1789, he became one of the associates. In the autumn of that year, he joined the little band of pioneers who preceded the actual settlers with their families, and spent the winter on the Youghiogheny river, at Simrel's ferry. Here he was employed by Gen. Putnam to superintend the building of a large boat for the transport of the advance guard of the Ohio Company and their provisions to the mouth of the Muskingum. She was named by the adventurers, the May-flower. This is said to have been the first decked boat that ever floated on the Ohio. She was built with stout timbers and knees like a galley,
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