USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > Cincinnati > Centennial history of Cincinnati and representative citizens, Vol. I, Pt. 1 > Part 35
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Another circumstance which Symmes regard- ed as giving the settlers at Marietta greater se- curity was their method of settlement which was the New England plan of connected towns or vil- lages. The settlers were not permitted to go to any point at will but were restrained by their di- rectors, while at Miami every purchaser was al- lowed to choose his ground and convert the same into a station, village or town at pleasure. Noth- ing restrained him in this particular but the fear of the Indians and as a result whenever ten or twelve men agreed to form a station it was done. This method of course already militated against concentration of strength but on the other hand it tended to develop the country and open up for settlement new lands throughout the entire pur- chase.»
The delay in the ratification of the treaty at Fort Harmar, however, on the one hand had a tendency to keep Symmes and his party at Lime- stone, but on the other hand kept the Indians oc- cupied to the east of the settlements between the Miamis and to that extent at least reduced the danger. When Captain Kearsey with 45 troops arrived at Limestone on the 12th of December, 1788, ordered down the Ohio to protect Ludlow who was then surveying the river to Scioto, it was with the further instructions from General Harmar to go to Miami when the settlement was made there to protect the pioneers through the winter as already stated. These troops were not sufficiently supplied with provisions and the ar- rangements made to renew their supplies fell through. Symmes himself was obliged to un- dertake the burthen of supplying these soldiers and he complains very bitterly about it. He had to furnish fifty days' rations to the sergeant and 18 men who were sent to support Stites at his station ; again two weeks later when the party of settlers already mentioned started down the river to plant themselves at the Old Fort at Mi- ami (Fort Finney) another sergeant and 12 men were sent with them and had to be supplied with stores. This detachment it will be remembered was not successful in its purpose. The intense cold froze the river so that it was feared they would get fast in the ice before they reached Miami. They succeeded in making Columbia however, where their boats were injured and much of their stock lost to the settlers; this forced them to give up their intended settlement at the Old Fort.
When Symmes was finally prevailed upon by the information of Stites as to the impatience of the Indians to see him and the fear that if he did
not soon arrive at the settlement, the red men would regard him as a myth and would leave in disgust, he started on his expedition down the river on January 29, 1789, and Captain Kearsey and the remainder of his men went with him. It will be remembered that as he passed Columbia he found the place under water and the soldiers driven from the ground floor of their blockhouse into the loft and from the loft into a boat which made him give up the plan of going down as far as Old Fort, which he realized must be but poor- ly protected from the floods.
Captain Kearsey was very much inclined to landing his company at the Old Fort and was ever afterwards much disappointed at Symmes' refusal to go down the river. After the river had fallen about fifteen feet, Kearsey and Symmes explored the site of the Old Fort and found that the land in the neighborhood of the point had been covered to the depth of many feet.
THE DEPARTURE OF KERSEY.
Kearsey was so disgusted at the situation that he made no attempt to build a fortification at North Bend, although he remained on the ground from the 2nd day of February to the 8th day of March "in which time" says Symmes "he had not thrown two logs together. by way. of de- fence though a child would have been sensible of the necessity of such a measure."
He finally left for the falls, leaving behind him but five men without any blockhouse or other means of protection and had been gone but eight days when a contractor's boat arrived with many supplies for him. Symmes was most indignant at Kearsey's conduct which furnished his enemies . ammunition for reports to his injury. Stories were circulated among the strangers who came down the river to Limestone, that the troops had left the place, that the settlers were starving and that the settlement had been given up by Con- gress as of no consequence. The Indians were said to be on the point of annihilating the settle- ment and sometimes the story was told that they had already done so. Such reports naturally discouraged great numbers from procceding down the river and turned them aside to Ken- tucky. It is not surprising that Symmes thought Kearsey's conduct should have been inquired into and brought before General Knox. It seems remarkable that the dangers of the settlement already referred to in the chapter relating to the Indians should have made so little impression
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upon the government nor unreasonable that Symmes should indignantly write as follows :
"I now, sir, beg leave to ask why it is that we are so neglected on the score of troops, at the settlements on the Miami purchase? Is it a matter of no moment to the United States, whether we are saved or destroyed by the sav- ages? It is true the Indians have hitherto been unexpectedly pacific, but who can vouch for a continuance of peace. They are a subtile enemy, and all their boasted friendship may be only to learn our numbers, and what state of defence we are in. The Shawanese nation (and they are nearest to us) would not treat with Governor St. Clair, at Muskingum; and why should they re- fuse him peace, and observe it with us? There are several companies of troops at Muskingum, even so many that all the surveyors of the Ohio Company have always been escorted with a guard : what guards have the Miami surveyors had? nothing more than their own vigilance and courage to carry them into the very midst of danger." (Symmes to Dayton, May 18, 1789.)
TIJE ARRIVAL OF LUCE.
The applications for protection to Major Wyllys at the falls of the Ohio happily resulted in his sending Ensign Luce with 18 men to North Bend. The party arrived during the last days of March and within a week built a good blockhouse. It was during his stay at North Bend that the episode of the Indian attack else- where referred to occurred. In this attack one soldier named Runyan from New Jersey was killed and six others wounded, including two citizens. A soldier, Gray, it was thought was mortally wounded and he was taken with the other soldiers to the garrison at the falls where there was a surgeon. This attack neces- sarily frightened the settlers very much and fifty of the inhabitants fled during the next few days and the work at South Bend was temporarily abandoned.
Symmes immediately upon his arrival at North Bend attempted to enter into negotiations with the Shawanese and for that purpose sent Isaac Freeman, as related in another chapter. At the same time he made an effort through Major Wyllys to obtain from General Harmar more troops. In the meantime he built a stockade for fear of the worst. "Should the Indians prove hostile, or should the Indians come in with Mr. Freeman, for their friends with us, if we remain then as defenceless as now, I fear our weakness
may tempt them to make war upon us. But there is another benefit I promise myself from a good large stockade : this is, that it will embolden many a citizen to settle in this town, whose nerves would not bear the thoughts of sleeping out of a fort. Had we have had a good stock- ade on the 21st ultimo, I do not believe that half so many, if any, indeed, would have fled the place." (June 14, 1789.)
In June, further messages from Major Ham- tramck at post Vincennes, reciting hostilities by the Indians on the Wabash, as well as a letter to Mr. Luce that the Miami and Wabash In- dians intended to attack the settlement during the summer, called further attention to the defense- less condition of the pioneers in the Miami coun- try and it is probable that these rumors taken in connection with the attack on North Bend as well as the actions of the Indians at other points within the settlements are responsible for the definite action of the authorities which terminated in the settlement at Fort Washington.
TIIE ROMANTIC STORY OF LUCE.
Judge Burnet (in his "Notes"), however, tells a romantic tale which may or may not be true, explaining the selection of Losantiville as the place for the fort.
After explaining that North Bend at first had the advantage because of the landing of the troops there by General Harmar which had in- duced many of the first adventurers to plant themselves there as the place of greatest safety and the subsequent departure of that detachment for Louisville, he proceeds : "It appears also that Ensign Luce, the commandant of the party which succeeded it, did not feel bound to erect his fort at any particular place but was at liberty to select a spot best calculated to afford the most ex- tensive protection to the Miami settlers. View- ing his duty in that light. he put up a small tem- porary work sufficient for the security of his troops, regardless of the carnest entreaty of the Judge to proceed at once to erect a substantial, spacious blockhouse, sufficient for the protection of the inhabitants of the village.
"The remonstrances and entreaties of the Judge had but little influence on the mind of this obstinate officer, for in spite of them all he left the Bend and proceeded to Cincinnati witli his command where he immediately commenced the construction of a military work. That im- portant move was followed by very decided re- sults-it terminated the strife for supremacy, by
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removing the only motive which had induced former emigrants to pass the settlements above and proceed to the Bend. As soon as the troops removed from that place to Cincinnati, the settlers of the Bend who were then the most numerous, feeling the loss of the protection on which they had relied became uneasy and began to follow; and ere long the place was almost entirely deserted and the hope of making it even respectable town was abandoned. In the course of the ensuing summer, Major Doughty arrived at Cincinnati with troops from Fort Harmar and commenced the construction of Fort Washington which was the most extensive and important military work in the Territory belong- ing to the United States.
"About that time there was a rumor prevail- ing in the settlement, said to have been endorsed by the Judge himself, which goes far to unravel the mystery in which the removal of the troops from the Bend was involved. It was said, and believed, that while the officer in command at that place was looking out very leisurely for a suitable site on which to build the blockhouse, he formed an acquaintance with a beautiful black-eyed female, who called forth his most as- siduous and tender attentions. She was the wife of one of the settlers at the Bend .. Her husband saw the danger to which he would be exposed if he remained where he was. He therefore resolved at once to remove to Cincin- nati, and very promptly executed his resolution. As soon as the gallant commandant discovered that the object of his admiration had changed her residence, he began to think that the Bend was not an advantageous situation for a mili- tary work, and communicated that opinion to Judge Symmes, who strenuously opposed it. His reasoning, however, was not as persuasive as the sparkling eyes of the fair dulcinea now at Cincinnati. The result was a determination to visit Cincinnati and examine its advantages for a military post; which he communicated to the Judge, with an assurance that if, on examina- tion, it did not prove to be the most eligible place he would return and erect the fort at the Bend. The visit was quickly made, and resulted in a conviction that the Bend could not be compared with Cincinnati as a military position. The troops were accordingly removed to that place, and the building of a blockhouse commenced. Whether this structure was on the ground on which Fort Washington was erected by Major Doughty, can not now be decided. That move- ment, produced by a cause whimsical and appar-
ently trivial in itself, was attended with results of incalculable importance. It settled the ques- tion whether North Bend or Cincinnati was to be the great commercial town of the Miami country.
"Thus we see what unexpected results are sometimes produced by circumstances apparently trivial. The incomparable beauty of a Spartan dame produced a ten years' war, which terminat- ed in the destruction of Troy; and the irresist- ible charms of another female transferred the commercial emporium of Ohio from the place where it had been commenced to the place where it now is. If this captivating American Helen had continued at the Bend, the garrison would have been erected there-population, capital, and business, would have centred there, and there would have been the Queen City of the West."
This story is considered of sufficient conse- quence as to be referred to by John Scott Har- rison in his Cleves address where he uses the language quoted below. Mr. Harrison's father was for some time commander of Fort Wash- ington and his grandfather was Judge Symmes, who resented very much the moving of the troops to Losantiville. It is not unlikely there- fore that his statement in this address is a state- ment of what was common knowledge not only in his family but among the public.
"But, if tradition be true, the prosperity of the North Bend Colony was not so well founded -that it could not be retarded, and finally de- stroyed, by the whimsical caprice of a black- eyed girl. This fair resident of North Bend (whose name, I regret to say, neither history nor tradition has given us) suddenly 'took it into her head to remove to the Cincinnati settle- ment. And almost as suddenly the lieutenant commanding the guard at North Bend (who had been sent to erect a blockhouse at that place, with perhaps some discretion as to Cincinnati) came to the steadfast conclusion that lie could not think of damaging his reputation as an en- gineer officer so much as to build a fort at the Bend, when Cincinnati afforded so much more eligible a position. What particular influence the removal of the dark-eyed beauty had in brightening up the engineering qualifications of the officer in command, history does not tell us. But history does tell us, that Lieutenant Luce removed his command to Cincinnati, and there built his Fort-'Ergo,' there stands 'Queen City.'" (Pioneer Life at North Bend, p. 10.)
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This story romantic as it is has not appealed to most of the subsequent writers of history who demand accurate detail rather than romantic generalizations. Mr. Miller in his book, "Cin- cinnati's Beginnings," devotes considerable space to discrediting Judge Burnet's narrative. His argument for discrediting the story is first that Ensign ' Luce who had built a blockhouse at North Bend "as good a one as could have been expected under the circumstances and con- tinued to occupy it conducting himself in a per- fectly satisfactory manner for at least the next four months or until the end of the ensuing July." He further states that the backset which the affairs at North Bend had received was in consequence of the abandoning of that post by Luce with his command and as a result of the attack in May already referred to. He con- cludes that Fort Washington was completed and garrisoned by Major Doughty before the close of that same year and begun by him that sum- mer while Ensign Luce was shown by the letter of Symmes to be still at the Bend. As a final argument Mr. Miller suggests that Mr. Luce did not have the proper implements with which to build a fort. For these reasons he rejects his story altogether. (Cincinnati's Beginnings, p. 91.) .
Mr. Ford in his "History of Cincinnati" (page 37) speaks of this as a gossipy tradition and apparently takes the view of Mr. Miller, al- though the first point of Mr. Miller's argument he shows by a quotation of Symmes' letter, July 17, 1789, to be of no consequence: In this iconoclastic age the tendency of historical writ- ers is to reject the romantic, especially when it seems to have nothing more than tradition to support it. It must be confessed, however, that such historical method does not necessarily at- tain the greatest accuracy. The gossipy tradi- tion shorn of its exaggerations is frequently a more truthful representation of fact than misty records or formal documents. Judge Burnet did not arrive in Cincinnati for some half dozen years after the building of Fort Washington, but he was a man of affairs and of high stand- ing in the community, and such a man as would be likely to hear the details of the inside history of the settlement generally discussed. Although it is true that Judge Symmes does not mention anything throwing light on this episode, it seems strange and little hard to believe that Judge Burnet would have recited in the book, which he hands down to posterity as his contribution to the history of the section, a statement of this
character as endorsed by Judge Symmes him- self if there had been no basis whatsoever for the statement. Judge Burnet has not always been careful in his statements of fact so far as matters of date are concerned, but he was at all times a controversialist and therefore would probably hesitate to recite such a story if he had not felt certain that it was known to others as well as to himself. In his letter of October, 1837, to Delafield, the Judge says: "This anec- dote was communicated by Judge Symmes and is unquestionably . authentic." (Transactions Ohio Historical Society, Vol. I, p. 18.)
As to the point that Luce had constructed a suitable blockhouse, it need only be said that this blockhouse was evidently entirely unsatisfactory after the attack in May. In a letter of July 17, 1789, Judge Symmes complains of the help- less condition of the settlement. He says that Freeman returned from the Indian country with such terrifying accounts of the warlike prepa- rations at the Indian towns as to raise fresh commotion in the village and as to induce many families to go down to the falls, leaving a place which they regarded as the very forlorn hope of the United States, "and at the same time so intolerably neglected as we are." "One ensign and twelve soldiers in a little blockhouse badly constructed, and not an axe, hoe, spade, or even tomahawk-the property of the United States -is furnished to them. They must have per- ished for want of shelter and firewood had I not furnished utensils to them ever since De- cember last, to my very great detriment, for very few axes and other articles are returned until they are entirely ruined, and frequently when I lend an article it is gone forever from me, as boats are always passing, and by calling at this place furnish an opportunity to the sol- diers to barter for liquor many an article of mine. Not a swivel is afforded us, when com- mon prudence dictates that each village should have two or three field pieces at least. I have indeed lost sight of any succor from the United States. Major Wyllys assured me when on his passage up the river, that he would prevail with General Harmar to detach. some men from that post. Seven weeks have elapsed since, and not a man arrives-not even a dawn of hope that any will arrive, unless these settlements become more an object of attention to Congress and General Knox."
In view of this letter, Mr. Miller is hardly justified in speaking of the blockhouse at North Bend as being as good a one as could have been
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. expected under the circumstances. It is per- fectly apparent that the fortification was, not regarded sufficient and that an effort was made in every communication sent up the river to induce General Harmar to construct a fort worthy of the importance of the place. The blockhouses along the river were regarded as but temporary in their character and a more pre- tentious military work was confidently expected.
As early as June 22nd, General Harmar, in writing to Major Wyllys, had suggested that two companies would probably be ordered to be stationed at the mouth of the Great Miami "not only as a better cover for Kentucky but also to afford protection to Judge Symmes in his intended settlement there."
The argument that Luce remained at North Bend until at least as late as July 17, 1789, as reflecting upon this story can have no weight, as the actual effort to fortify the Miami coun- try was not begun until a couple of months later. The same difference in time affects the suggestion that it was the attack in the spring that gave Losantiville its preeminence. This point was no safer during the summer than was the Bend garrisoned by Luce and his men. The final argument, that of the insufficiency of im- plements, disappears in view of the fact that when the determination was reached to build a fortress proper implements were sent.
TIIE ARRIVAL OF MAJOR DOUGIITY.
In his "Military Journal," Denny, who had just received his lieutenant's commission, makes the following entry on the 9th of August of that year :
"Aug. 9th. * * Captain Strong, with his two subalterns, Lieutenant Kingsbury and En- sign Hartshorn, and a complete company of seventy men, embark for the Miami.
"Ith .- Captain Ferguson joined us with his recruits. Major Doughty follows Captain Strong for the purpose of choosing ground and laying out a new work intended for the protec- tion of persons who have settled within the lim- its of Judge Symmes' purchase.
"Sept. 4th .- Ferguson with his company or- dered to join Strong in erecting a fort near the Miami. Lieutenant Pratt, the quartermaster, ordered to the same place."
General Harmar in his letter to General Knox, Secretary of War, written from Fort Harmar on September 12, 1789, says :
"Major Doughty informs me, in his letter dated the twenty-first ultimo, that he arrived at
the Little Miami on the sixteenth, and after reconnoitring for three days from thence to the Big Miami, for an eligible situation whereon to erect the works for headquarters, he had at length determined to fix upon a spot opposite Licking River, which he represents as high and healthy, abounding with never-failing springs, etc., and the most proper position he could find for the purpose."
It is apparent from these records that Judge Symmes' appeals were about to have some effect and that Major Doughty who had arrived at Fort Harmar from New York, on July 7th, was the officer who had the final determination of the matter of location. Several days before Ma- jor Doughty arrived a number of other officers had reached the Bend and undoubtedly had made explorations with the view to the location of suitable works. Just what influences might have been brought to bear upon the particular officer whoever he may have been, whose judg- ment was finally accepted as to the location, we have no means of knowing. It is a curious commentary however that when Ensign Francis Luce retired from the army in the following March, General Harmar did not seem enthusias- tic about him. "Ensign Francis Luse has given me his resignation and I now enclose his commis- sion which I hope you will be pleased to accept. I have allowed him to be run upon the rolls until the first of May next as he is considerably em- barrassed in his circumstances." (The name is spelled Luse and Luce indiscriminately.)
There is another story that shortly after Lieu- tenant Kingsbury and his soldiers arrived at Co- lumbia, he commenced building a fort about one and a half miles below the Fort Miami built by the first settlers. A rise in the river convinced him that the situation was a bad one and on De- cember 31, 1788, he loosed cable and floated down below the mouth of Deer creek. Here he landed at the high bank just above the foot of Broad- way and at this point on January 1, 1789, he be- gan building a picket fort as near the bank of the river as it could be erected. Captain Stites who was in the party was quoted years after by say- ing that this was the first attempt made towards crecting a building in Cincinnati. This fort according to the story was built and occupied by the soldiers until Fort Washington was com- plete and afterwards when the contractors' house was built a little above it it was enclosed with that building and became a part of the artificers' vard.
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Symmes' complaints seem to have had influ- ence in the 'matter, and Dayton writes to him on August 15, 1789:
"In consequence of what you wrote to me, I conversed very freely with General Knox on the situation of the settlers upon your tract, and likewise upon its position on the Ohio as com- paratively preferable for the general defense of the territory to either of the other places at which the troops are stationed. He gave me assurances before I took my leave of him, that he would immediately make such new arrangements in that country as would effectually cover and pro- tect you. If this should be delayed long, do not fail to inform me, and I will take care to re-, mind him of his promise."
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