Centennial History of Butler County, Ohio, Part 129

Author: Bert S. Bartlow, W. H. Todhunter, Stephen D. Cone, Joseph J. Pater, Frederick Schneider, and others
Publication date: 1905
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1149

USA > Ohio > Butler County > Centennial History of Butler County, Ohio > Part 129

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the war of 1812. Since his demise a portion of the tract has been sold, and a small part of the estate has passed into the possession of his son, John R., being incorporated in his fine farm.

WILLIAM N. HUNTER.

William Noble Hunter was born in Butler county, Ohio, December 21, 1804. His father, Thomas Hunter, emigrated from Rockingham county, Ireland, and settled in New York in 1787. In 1796 he came to. Fort Washington, now Cincinnati, and that year joined General Wayne's army in its movement against the Indians, leaving three motherless children in the care of friends. Returning after the treaty of Greenville to Fort Washington, he married Jane Noble, daughter of one of the early settlers, and a soldier in General St. Clair's army. They settled on land purchased of Judge Symmes, in Butler county. William Noble Hunter was the youngest child of this union and the subject of this sketch. He was reared upon his father's farm and on August 16, 1827, was married to Esther Woodrough Symmes near the very farm where, fifty years after, he died. Esther Woodrough Symmes was a daughter of Judge Celadon Symmes, associate judge of Butler county from 1806 to 1820 and prior to that time assistant to Israel Ludlow in the survey of the Symmes purchase in the Mi- ami country, and nephew of Judge John Cleves Symmes, the proprietor, and Phebe Randolph Symmes. his wife. cousin to John Randolph of Roanoke.

William N. Hunter was a good man, whose aims and motives were high. His aspirations were holy and afford a striking example of what may be accomplished

when governed by noble impulses. The treasure of knowledge that he acquired in the log school house, with clapboard roof and puncheon floor, a log left out for the admission of light, with greased paper in- stead of glass, was the foundation upon which he built a life and a character that shown out resplendent and drew men unto him for advice and counsel. He was well- informed on all subjects, being a close reader and observer of men and things. Stern in his convictions of right and duty. both in religion and politics, active and industrious. all qualified him to be a leader among men. which he was in the community where he lived for forty years. In politics he was a Whig and early allied himself with the anti-slavery movement. He once said, "If the Almighty intended that one set of men should do all the eating and no work, and another set to do all the work and have little to eat. He would have provided one set with all mouth and the other with all hands." He became one of the first adherents of the Republican party, and remained so to the end. The Bible was his daily text book; consequently at his first opportunity, that being at a camp meeting held at Springdale. Hamilton county, in the summer of 1827. he, together with his wife, made an open confession of his faith, and erected a fam- ily altar where for fifty years thereafter they daily sought the divine blessing. In 1828 Mr. and Mrs. Hunter identified themselves with the Presbyterian church of Hamilton, Ohio, and in 1837 Mr. Hunter was elected elder of this congregation. He was one of the founders and builders of the Pleasant Run church and served as elder in that and the Hamilton church for forty years, or until his death. He was identified with the

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Sabbath school work and the Bible society of both state and county, serving as delegate at their conventions year after year. He established the mission school at Symmes Corner and Fairfield and was for many years the superintendent. Apt at teaching and being well versed in the scriptures, he often surprised his listeners by his clear and pointed remarks on the sacred word. One of his most exemplary characteristics was his ambition to excel in all his undertakings. He was a farmer and stockraiser, and how well he succeeded was attested by the state and county fairs, where he carried off the first premium for his cattle, hogs, sheep and grain. When a young man he worked for fifty cents a day upon the farm where he died-in possession of which place he named it Shady Side. There, surrounded by his devoted wife, five sons and five daughters, the youngest the wife of Dr. William C. Miller, on his golden wedding day, August 16, 1877, he received the call-the summons to the marriage supper of the Lamb, and to mansions eternal in the heavens prepared for those who seek and find, who knock and it shall be opened unto them that love Him. It was said of him by one of his most in- timate friends, "I do not doubt but what the Lord could have made a better man than William N. Hunter, but He did not do it." It is men of such character and pure, upright lives that honor and dignify the community in which they live. William N. Hunter's life was remarkable for his unswerving de- votion to principle and his firm faith in providence. Fully believing that in the full exercise of his trust and the discharge of his whole duty, all other things needed would be added. All of this was most beau- tifully illustrated in his life, for he lacked no good thing. Blessed be his memory.

HON. JESSE CORWIN.

Jesse Corwin was born June 30, 1797. in Bourbon county, Kentucky, the fifth child and next to Hon. Thomas Corwin, of na- tional fame. His father, Mathias Corwin, removed from Morristown, New Jersey, in 1785, to Bourbon county, Kentucky, but owing to defective land titles, in 1798 re- moved to the Miami country, where the town of Lebanon now stands. Mathias Corwin had been justice of the peace in Bourbon county, Kentucky, and in Ohio eleven times a member of the general as- sembly, and twice speaker of the house, and later associate judge of the court of com- mon pleas of Ohio. Jesse Corwin was reared on his father's farm, studied law un- der Judge Dunlavy, was admitted to the bar in 1820 and in 1822 took up his residence in Hamilton, Ohio, to practice his profes- sion. In 1825 he was elected prosecuting attorney of the county and served as such for ten years. In 1826 he was chosen as orator of the day at the Fourth of July celebration that year, and his prophetic ut- terances on that day, even unto this day, were republished in one of our local papers at the request of Joseph R. Symmes, an old friend and admirer of his, fifty years later. 1876. In 1829 he married Jane McMechan, a daughter of Rev. James McMechan and Marjory Hudson, his wife, a lineal descend- ant of Sir Henric Hudson, the explorer. They came to Hamilton, Ohio, in 1817, from County Down, Ireland, but Rev. Mc- Mechan died two years later. The well-to- do citizens of Hamilton at once established a school for the benefit of this family, where the daughters, Ellen and Jane, taught. In 1831 Mr. Corwin was elected to the Ohio legislature, serving two terms. In 1836 he

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was nominated by the Whig party for con- test case, but he was honorably acquitted by gress, in this the then second district, com- the jury without leaving their seats, and thus ended a bitter political quarrel. In 1849 Mr. Corwin removed to a farm for the benefit of his family of six children, but did not abandon the practice of law. In 1856 he was nominated by the Republican party for judge of the court of common pleas, and in 1859 removed to Hamilton, purchasing the property his descendants now occupy. He died October 23, 1867, the oldest member of the Butler county bar. Of him it has been said by those who best knew him that he was the widows' lawyer. No greater honor could be conferred upon any man in his profession. He was from early youth an assiduous student of the law, and early made himself familiar with the prin- ciples and the rules that underlie its prac- tice. A man of good solid judgment, of generous impulse and frank disposition, firm in the right as God gave him to see the right, upright and honest and a most estimable citizen. posed of Butler, Preble and Darke counties, with a normal Democratic majority of one thousand two hundred. He was defeated by one hundred and sixty-two votes. Fifty years later, a politician of that day, but then a man eighty years of age, told his son-in- law how Mr. Corwin was defeated. There was a settlement of Mennonites (Germans) in the upper part of the county; like the Quakers they were opposed to war, or any- thing appertaining thereto. Texas was then in revolt against Mexico. Its union with the United States would mean war. This German politician and another. person went to these people and told them that if Mr. Corwin was elected there would be war. They all came out and voted, thus consum- mating Mr. Corwin's defeat. "I must acknowledge to you, his nearest male rela- tive, before I die, the injury I have done to that just and upright man." Three brothers were candidates for congress in Ohio. Thomas, Moses and Jesse; the first two were elected, and the other should have JOEL COLLINS. been. In 1838 Mr. Corwin was prevailed Joel Collins was born in Halifax county, Virginia .. on the 16th of September, 1772. His father, Stephen Collins, with his wife and four children (Joel being the eldest), removed from Virginia in 1779, to seek a home in the wild regions of Kentucky. In this undertaking a journey of some five hundred miles had to be made, chiefly through an uninhabited country, along a way called the Wilderness Trace, on which there was neither the habitation of man nor a military post, from Powell's valley in Vir- ginia to English's station in Kentucky. This station was on Dick's river, a branch of the Kentucky river, and afterward became upon to make the race again, but without success. "They do not want me; I will not run," was his reply. In 1840 he became a director, with John M. Millikin, Charles K. Smith and others, in the Hamilton Bank. The bank failed in 1842. Politics run high at that day. and the directors of the Hamil- ton Bank were indicted by a grand jury of Butler county. Elijah Vance, a most in- tense political partisan, was prosecuting at- torney. B. Hickson, another rank politician, was judge,-all bitter opponents of the bank officials. John M. Millikin, as president of the defunct bank, was first put on trial, as a

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better known by the name of "Crab Orch- ard."

In October, 1779, Stephen Collins, with four of his brothers and a brother-in-law, each with their families, and also one brother without a family, constituted the emigrating party. During the journey, while unmolested by the Indians, the party came near losing their lives by cold and starvation. When they had arrived near the middle of the wilderness, the weather became very rainy and unusually cold. In the meantime the provisions they had brought from the settlements became ex- hausted. After undergoing the severest hardships the party arrived at English's sta- tion, about the middle of February. 1780, where they obtained some relief, and then proceeded to Logan's station whence they procured some dried buffalo beef, the first of the kind they had seen. They then passed on to a place near Dick's river, lo- cated by Colonel Bowman as a suitable site for a station. This gentleman had traveled with them some days in Powell's valley, when they first set out. It was then agreed that they would settle together when they arrived in Kentucky. Here several cabins were speedily put up, and thus Bowman's station was commenced.

In the summer of 1780 General George Rogers Clark, who had his headquarters at Fort Nelson, now the site of Louisville, issued an order commanding every man in Kentucky on the militia roll, capable of bear- `ing arms, to march forthwith to the mouth of the Licking on the Ohio river, where he would meet them on a certain day named. Stephen Collins was among the number who obeyed the order and joined Clark's army on its expedition against the Indians

north of the Ohio river, whose incursions had lately been so disastrous to the settle- ments of the whites in Kentucky. The army crossed the Ohio river on the 2d of August, 1780, and took up the line of march for the Indian towns. On the 6th of August they reached Chillicothe, an Indian town on the waters of the Little Miami river, about three miles north of the present city of Xenia. Finding the town abandoned by the Indians and still burning,-they hav- ing set fire to it that morning,-the army marched to Piqua, another Indian town on the north side of Mad river, about six miles west of the present city of Springfield, where they arrived on August 8th, and where a battle was fought with the Indians. whom they defeated, burned their town, and destroyed their growing corn. General Clark and this army remained on the ground two days, and then returned to the Ohio river. opposite the mouth of the Licking, by a different route from that which they had taken on making the expedition. Mr. Col- lins then removed his family to Lexington, where he lived the accustomed life of the pioneer settler. In 1791 Joel Collins, then in his nineteenth year, had his first ex- perience as a soldier under the command of General Charles Scott. He was attached to a troop of horse commanded by Captain Kenneth McCoy. The expedition consisted of about nine hundred mounted men, who rendezvoused at the mouth of Kentucky river. They started on the 23d of May, 1791. and by the 31st had marched one hun- dred and thirty-five miles. They proceeded with all possible expedition for the Indian towns on the Wabash river, where they took and destroyed the Wea and Kickapoo towns, killed thirty-two warriors and took fifty-

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eight prisoners, some of them women and children. The party reached the falls of the Ohio on the 14th of June, when the prisoners were left, and Joel Collins received his discharge and returned home.

We next find him serving as one of an escort of a brigade of pack-horses and en- gaged in a skirmish with the Indians at Fort St. Clair, which stood near where the town of Eaton. in Preble county, Ohio, is located. This occurrence took place on No- veinber 6, 1792. The parties engaged were two hundred and fifty Wyandott and Min- goe warriors, led by the celebrated Indian chief Little Turtle, and an escort of one hundred Kentucky militia, under the com- mand of Captain John Adair. subsequently governor of Kentucky. In the fall of 1793 General Charles Scott marched with one thousand mounted Kentucky militia to aid General Wayne in his expedition against the Indians. They joined the main army near Fort Jefferson on the 15th of October. In this expedition Mr. Collins served as sergeant-the first office he ever held-in Captain Henry Bartlett's company of mounted riflemen. General Wayne, owing to the lateness of the season, and being un- prepared for a winter campaign. deemed it most prudent to suspend his march and build Fort Greenville, which being accomplished, the regular troops went into winter quar- ters and the Kentucky militia were dis- charged and returned home.

The following year Mr. Collins, then re- siding at Frankfort, Kentucky, was elected captain of a militia company. Shortly afterwards he received and accepted the ap- pointment of first lieutenant in the standing army of the United States. He was ordered to enlist men and establish three military

posts on the wilderness road, being the trail which led from the old settlements in Vir- ginia and the Carolinas to the new settle- ments in Kentucky. These stations were intended for the protection of the emigrants and others while traveling that road. Here, in the best hunting grounds in the western country, Mr. Collins spent three years, which period he considered the most pleas- ant part of his life.

On February 25, 1797, the governor of Kentucky appointed Mr. Collins a judge of the court of Lincoln county. In the fol- lowing month he was married in Fayette county, Kentucky, to Miss Elizabeth Beeler, daughter of Samuel Beeler, and sister of Colonel Samuel Beeler, who was one of the first settlers on the Miami college lands, Ox- ford. Ohio. He then purchased a farm which he cultivated for several years, though during that time he made one trading voy- age, in a flatboat. to New Orleans. In 1806 he removed to Ohio, and settled on a small tract of land which he purchased on Four-Mile creek, in what is now Oxford township, Butler county. His land being altogether in the woods, and few persons settled near him, at that time, the first busi- ness which required his attention was to build a cabin and clear a piece of ground to plant corn. He spent several years in ex- tending his improvements and attending to the duties of his farm. His dwelling was situated near the mouth of a small stream. that empties into Four-Mile creek, which stream bears the name of Collins' run to this day. Near this stream he constructed a powder mill, about twenty feet square, of rough logs, in which he devoted a portion of his time to the manufacture of gun- powder. When the township of Oxford was

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first organized, in the year 1811, Joel Col- St. Mary's) until further orders. They re- lins and Levi Lee were the first justices of mained at this camp two weeks, and were then stationed at St. Mary's, from which place they were sent on a forced march to ascertain the whereabouts of General Win- chester. Upon their return to St. Mary's they went into winter quarters and remained until their term of service expired, in March, 1813, when they were discharged and re- turned to their homes. While Captain Collins' company was not ordered into bat- tle, and consequently returned unincumbered with those laurels and high honors which some imagine can be obtained on the battle- field, still it is justly claimed for them that they did good service in opening roads, mak- ing water-craft and pushing on provisions and other needful supplies for use of the army. the peace who were elected and served. He resigned this office in 1813, when he was appointed a captain in the army of the United States. Prior to the war of 1812, when the Butler county militia was or- ganized, Mr. Collins enrolled himself as a private soldier, under Captain William Robeson, who had been elected to command the company formed on the west side of the Great Miami river. Captain Robeson was, however, shortly afterward promoted to the office of brigade major, and the company chose his lieutenant, John Taylor, to be their commander. Taylor died shortly afterward, at Oxford, and Joel Collins was elected to succeed him. His commission bore date of May 16, 1812, giving him the rank of captain of a rifle company; he was attached to the First Battalion, Second Regiment, Third Brigade, and First Division of Ohio Militia.

In August, 1812, war with England having been declared, Captain Collins re- ceived orders to march with his company to the town of Lebanon, where, on August 10th, they joined three other companies of riflemen, a company of artillery and a com- pany of light infantry. The next day they took up the line of march for Urbana. Hull's surrender in the meantime had led to the appointment of William Henry Har- rison as commander-in-chief of all the troops in the Northwestern Territory. Collins' company was soon detailed to open up a wagon road way along Wayne's old trace from Fort Loramies to St. Mary's. They performed that duty in about eight days and were directed to remain in their last en- campment ( which was within two miles of

In 1813 Mr. Collins returned home, and shortly thereafter he received the appoint- ment of captain in the standing army of the United States, and was ordered to Cincin- nati to enlist men for the service. He soon had twenty-three men enlisted, when he was ordered to rendezvous at Franklinton. He left Hamilton, in company with Lieutenant Alexander Delorac, in October and pro- ceeded to Franklinton, where they remained a month, and was ordered to Sandusky, and from thence to Detroit, where he was sta- tioned for some time. On March 4, 1814. he was appointed to the command of the force at Sandwich, in Canada, and proceeded to build a fort at that place. He was also, for a short time, commander of Fort Malden, in Canada. He was afterward ordered back to Detroit, where he took command of the place, and continued in the service until the close of the war in 1815, when he retired from the army with credit and honor to

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himself. He then returned to his farm in Oxford township. During the time Captain Collins was in the army he disbursed con- siderable sums of money on account of the government, and when he retired from the service his accounts were promptly closed, and a small balance found due to him from the government.

In October, 1817, Joel Collins was elected a representative in the general as- sembly of Ohio from Butler county, and was . re-elected every successive term until 1823, when he was elected to the senate. Thus he served in the legislature of Ohio ten years in succession, during which time he discharged his duties as a legislator with honor to himself and to the satisfaction of his constituents. On July 20, 1829, Allen Trimble, governor of Ohio, appointed Mr. Collins associate judge of the court of com- mon pleas for Butler county, to succeed Henry Weaver, Esq., who had resigned. Subsequently at the next session of the gen- eral assembly he was elected to the same office, and commissioned to hold the office for the term of seven years, from the 24th of February, 1830. In June, 1822, he was appointed by the board of trustees secretary of Miami University, in which capacity he served until June, 1855. Mrs. Collins died August 1, 1855, aged seventy-seven years. April 25, 1858, he married Mrs. Mary · Woodruff, of Oxford. Our subject died at his home in Oxford, November 16, 1860, in the eighty-ninth year of his age, univer- sally esteemed as an honest man.

DANIEL DOTY.

Daniel Doty was born in Essex county, New Jersey, on the 23d of March, 1765. When he arrived at manhood he formed the resolution of exploring the western country,

the fame of whose fertility and beauty he had heard. Accordingly, on September 10, 1790, he left his home and proceeded to Fort Pitt (now Pittsburg), whence he de- scended the Ohio river in a flatboat to the then infant settlement of Columbia, at the mouth of the Little Miami river, where he arrived on October 23d. Here he concluded to remain. Almost his first experience was his enlistment as a member of the militia company of the place, of which Gano was captain and Ephraim Kirby was lieutenant. At that time General Harmar wac com- mander of the military forces of the coun- try, and John Cleves Symmes, the proprietor of the Miami country, was the chief magis- trate and at the head of the civil department.

General Harmar was then out on his ex- pedition against the Indians. He returned to Fort Washington about ten days after Mr. Doty landed at Columbia. During the years 1791-2 the country was almost con- tinually in a state of alarm, on account of of the depredations of the Indians. Mr. Doty turned out with the company which went to the relief of Dunlap's station, in January, 1791.

On April 24, 1792, Mr. Doty left Co- lumbia in a flatboat and descended the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans, from whence he went by sea to New York and returned to his native home in New Jersey. He remained there until the fall of 1795, when he returned to the Miami country. Wayne's treaty with the Indians had pre- viously been concluded at Greenville, and peace restored to the country. In the spring of 1796 Mr. Doty, with his wife, Betsy, and their children, removed to near where Middletown now is, where he commenced an improvement on a tract of land which he had previously purchased. Here he spent

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the remaining portion of his life, and died the duplicate,-two dollars and forty cents, near where he had built his first log cabin. and no more.

He built his first cabin on the bank of the Great Miami, about one mile below the present site of Middletown. There were few settlers in the neighborhood. There was a block-house inclosed by pickets, and a few cabins on the south side of the prairie, near Dick's creek. His neighbors were Mr. Brady, Mr. Carson, John Reed and Joseph Henry. No crops had been raised to sup- ply those coming to the country, conse- quently Mr. Doty had to go to Cincinnati for provisions for his family. He had to pay one dollar per bushel for corn meal, and then pack it home on horseback, where it was baked into "johnny cakes" on a clap- board before the fire. As for meat, wild game was abundant and Mr. Doty took great delight in hunting.

Mr. Doty was the first collector of taxes in the part of the county where he settled. His district was twelve miles wide, from north to south, comprising two ranges of townships, extending from the Great Miami to the Little Miami rivers. The whole amount of duplicate committed to him for collection was two hundred and forty-four dollars, of which he collected every dollar, and paid it over to Jacob Burnet at Cincin- nati, who was then treasurer for the county of Hamilton. Mr. Doty's own tax. for some years previous to his death, was up- ward of one hundred and thirty-four dol- lars-more than half the amount he had col- lected from the whole district when he was collector. In the discharge of the duties of his office as collector he must have ridden more than one thousand miles. For these services, including his time and expenses. he received one per cent. on the amount of

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Centennial History of Butler County, Ohio, Part 129

Author: Bert S. Bartlow, W. H. Todhunter, Stephen D. Cone, Joseph J. Pater, Frederick Schneider, and others Publication date: 1905 Publisher: Number of Pages: 1149

Author: Bert S. Bartlow, W. H. Todhunter, Stephen D. Cone, Joseph J. Pater, Frederick Schneider, and others
Publication date: 1905
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1149