USA > Ohio > Wood County > Commemorative historical and biographical record of Wood County, Ohio : its past and present : early settlement and development biographies and portraits of early settlers and representative citizens, etc. V. 1 > Part 12
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Two vessels came up.in the summer of ISI5. and took a greater part of the ordnance and government property from the fort to Detroit. The schooner " Black Snake, " Capt. Jacob Wil- kinson, took off a cargo of guns and stores the same season, and the fort, which had been in
* The incidents and history of the settlement covering the per from 1815 to 1-20, here given. are largely derived from the manuset notes of W. V. Wav, of Perrysburg, in possession of the writer, W got his data from the Spaffords, Hollisters. Wilkinsons. Joshua Chapp. . Gen. Hunt and others.
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charge of Lieut. Almon Gibbs and about forty men, was abandoned. For the convenience of the fort, and any stray settlers, Gibbs had, the previous year, May 9, 1814, been appointed postmaster, and the office was named Fort Meigs. When Major Spafford left, in 1813, Miami post office was discontinued. After the fort was abandoned, in 1815-16, Gibbs quit the army, crossed to the other side of the river and went into trade, taking the post office with him. All the lower Maumee Country, for some time after, went under the general name of Fort Meigs. The incoming settlers, many of whom located about the fort, sometimes found the old block-houses very convenient places to live in until they could build, and the palisade and other timber served for many useful purposes as long as they lasted. At length, however, there arose some strife about who had a right to live in the block-houses, and someone set fire to them and burned them up.
It will help the reader to get a better idea of the Maumee settlement prior to the war, if we give the names of those who, afterward, pre- sented claims to the government for loss of prop- erty. The list is taken from Knapp's History of the Maumee Valley. A meeting of these claim- ants was called at the house of Amos Spafford, November 24, 1815, and he was empowered to act as their agent, and authorized to go to Wash- ington and make proper application for indemni- fication for their losses. Their names were: Daniel Purdy, Oliver Armstrong, James Carlin, William Carter, George Blalock, James Slawson, Amos Spafford, Samuel Ewing, Jesse Skinner, William Skinner, Stacey Stoddard, Jacob Wilkin- son, Thomas Dick, Samuel H. Ewing, William Peters, Amos Hicox, Richard Gifford, Samuel Carter, Baptiste Momeny, Thomas McIlrath, Chloe Hicox, David Hull, John Redoad, and others. The property lost consisted of various articles; for instance, James Carlin had his cabin burned, estimated value, $110; one blacksmith shop, $55; two-year old colt, taken by Wyandot Indians, valued at $30. Oliver Armstrong lost a horse, valued at $60; another man six acres of wheat in barn, burned; four tons of hay; clothing and bedding, burned or stolen, and various other articles are enumerated, including standing corn used by the U. S. troops, aggregating over four thousand dollars, which, with some other sums, the government, after some delay, allowed.
Most of the arrivals now were by way of the lake, from Cleveland and the ports below. The wldiers from the southern part of Ohio, who had made the march across the swamp, or caught the Maumee ague, did not advertise the country very
favorably, nor did many immigrants arrive from that section. Still, all who had seen it were charmed with the Maumee and its scenery, and the glowing accounts they gave of the fish and game are refreshing to read. Wayne's men, especially, who were here in the month of August, while the surface was dry, and the corn and truck patches of the Indians were at their best, grew enthusiastic over the beautiful islands, fish, game, timber, rich soil, etc. But when later in the season they were building Forts Wayne and De- fiance, and half of them sick with fever and ague, they were glad to get away; many of them, how- ever, returned in after years.
Seneca Allen, who a little later became the first resident justice of the peace, in what is now Wood county, came with his family, in 1816, from Detroit. On the same vessel came the families of Jacob Wilkinson, Elijah, Charles and Christopher Gunn. The Gunns and Allen located on the north side of the river. The latter opened a trading place with the Indians at Roche de Boeuf, where a man named Isaac Richardson had located a mill site. The Gunns settled between there and Maumee, and became perma- nent and useful citizens. Many of their descend- ants are still living there. [On February 20, 1817, Charles Gunn, as justice of the peace, under jurisdiction of Champaign county, solemnized the first marriage in the present limits of Wood county, under the laws of the State. Aurora Spafford, son of Major Amos Spafford, and Mrs. Mary Jones were the pioneer couple who first stepped under the hymeneal yoke. They had been waiting for some weeks for Gunn's commis- sion. If they had a license, which they doubt- less had, they sent to Urbana, the county seat, to get it. The nearest road there was by Hull's Trace. ]
Two years later Allen moved down to Fort Meigs, and held the office of justice for several years. Jacob Wilkinson's family, who came with Allen, in 1816, but who had been there before the war, settled on the flat, below the fort, and kept tavern. An incident occurred there, which reminded them that their new home was not above high-water mark. One night the water rose in their cabin, and they had to scramble up the ladder to the loft, from which they were res- cued by boatmen. In the confusion the baby, in the cradle, had been forgotten. It was found. fast asleep, floating about on the water. Its "crib," as they are called nowadays, was, luck- ily, the half of a hollow log, with boards nailed on each end, and nearly water-tight.
In the latter part of 1816 came the Vances.
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Wilson and Samuel, and in the spring of IS17 opened up a trader's store, for their brother, Joseph Vance, afterward Governor of Ohio. This was the pioneer store in what is now Wood county. The Hollisters opened a store soon after. All the traders, previous to this, had been on the other side of the river. Down on the flats, below the fort, David Hull, in 1816, kept the pioneer tavern of the county. Almira Hull, his daughter, had, according to Judge Way's memoirs, the proud distinction of being the first white child born in Wood county, so far as known. The date was 1817.
Thomas Mellrath settled on the flats in 1815, and Ephraim Leaming and his brother Thomas, carpenters and mill-wrights, settled near the river, in what is now the east part of Perrysburg; but in the spring of ISIS moved over to Mon- clova, and rebuilt the sawmill begun there, before the war, by Samuel Ewing, on Swan creek. Much of the lumber used by some of the early settlers was sawed there. Samuel H. Ewing, father of the late Judge Ewing, of Wood, lived then on the tract next east of the fort. H. P. Barlow, who afterward married a daughter of Victor Jennison, further down the river, taught school, in the fort settlement, in the winter of 1816-17, and the following summer located on the north side of the river.
In 1816. the United States Governinent sent out an agent, Alexander Bourne, to locate and lay out a town-site at the foot of the Maumee Rapids. After considerable investigation, the agent chose the present site of Perrysburg, and Deputy U. S. Surveyors Joseph Wampler and William Brookfield laid out a town there. Major Amos Spafford gave the town its name, upon a suggestion from Hon. Josiah Meigs, United States Land Commissioner, at that time. It was named, of course, in memory of Commodore Perry. That selection of a town site by the government's agent was one of vast import- ance in fixing the destiny of later towns on the lower Maumee.
was a possibility that it might, with its early start and prestige of government paternity, have been the great city of the valley, instead of Toledo. [In the summer of 1836, J. D. Cummings, David Ladd, D. W. Deshler, Norman C. Baldwin, John C. Spink, William Neil, Elnathan Cory. Joseph H. Larwill, N. M: Stewart and others bought, of Jesse Stone, River Tracts 17 and IS, about 450 acres, just below " Rock bar," on the north side of the river, for $40,000, and employed Hiram Davis, surveyor of Wood county, to plat the front part of the tract into lots, and named it Marengo. With the strong backing it had, Marengo gave promise of becoming a city; but the money panic of 1837 struck it as with the deadly blight of an October frost, and in IS38 the sheriff closed out all that was tangible of the town of Marengo, and it is but a memory. ]
Maumee Treaty .- It will now be in chrono- logical order to note the concluding chapter in the series of important events, by which the United States acquired title deed to the land now within bounds of Wood county, except the part of the United States Reserve which had been previously acquired by Wayne's treaty. In September, 1817, Duncan McArthur and Lewis Cass, as the authorized agents of the United States, met the Wyandot. Ottawa, Chippewa. Pottawatamie, Seneca, Delaware and Shawnee tribes, to the number of about 7,000 Indians, at a treaty council, at the Maumee Rapids, and pur- chased from them all their remaining lands in Ohio, except some scattered reservations retained as homes by the Indians. Only one of these reserves touched the present limits of Wood county; that of thirty-four square miles on the south side of the Maumee, below where Toledo is, granted to the chiefs of the Ottawa tribe, and the corner of which projected into Sections 1, 2. 3 and 10 of Lake, and Fr. Sections 25, 26, 27, 28. with Sections 33, 34, 35 and 36 of Ross town- ships, as will be noticed on some of the Wood county maps. This place was known as Tush- quegon, or McCarty's, village. A section of land, by request of the Ottawas, was also given Peter Minor, out of a former reservation to that tribe, lying about where Providence, Lucas county. is now. Minor's Indian name was Sawendebans, or the "yellow hair." and he had been adopted as the son of the Chief Tondaganie. or, as it is now written, Tontogany. the Ottawa name for dog. Of all the great treaties, from that made with the Iroquois, at Rome, N. Y .. (Fort Stanwix). in 1784, down to 1817. this, at the Maumee Rapids, was, to northwestern Ohio.
Below Perrysburg, about two miles, is a ridge or rock across the river channel, called " Rock bar," where vessels, drawing over six feet of water, cannot pass safely in a summer stage of water. The light craft on the lake, in 1816, were not obstructed by the " bar. " but the heavy vessels' of a later date found it dangerous. "Rock bar" destroyed the hope of any town above it from becoming the commercial emporium of the Maumee Country, and forced the selection of a new site below it. Had the government agent located Perrysburg below the "bar, " there . the most important. Campaigns had been inade
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and battles fought, sometimes ending in defeat, sometimes in victory. Treaty had followed treaty, but all had left this land under savage sway. Twenty-nine years, almost three decades, had passed since the Marietta colony was planted on the Ohio river, in 1788, until the Federal Government, by this last act, swept away the cloud that shadowed the civilization of the Maumee Country. Now, for the first time, the land stood on an equality with the rest of Ohio, free of ownership and domain by a race, whose instincts, habits, customs and mode of life were entirely opposed to the improvement of the country. It is possible that this land was, in the early time, thought unfit for white occupation; or rather, that it was better suited to the uses of Indians than whites. It was doubtless true that, in some respects this was not the most desirable part of Ohio. This, and the fact that it was held as Indian territory for thirty years after settle- ments had commenced in other portions of the state, explains why some of the counties, in northwestern Ohio, were so far behind the rest of the State in improvements.
A line drawn from Sandusky Bay, south, along the west end of the Connecticut Reserve, to the Greenville Treaty line, near Mount Gilead, thence westerly, along said line, to the Indiana line, thence north to Michigan, and including all the west part of Ohio, east as far as Defiance, and down the Maumee to its mouth, would about em- brace the Ohio land bought at the treaty of 1817, and since cut up into about eighteen counties. Wood county, as she is bounded to-day, lay en- tirely within this purchase, except half of the twelve-mile-square reserve on the south side of the Maumee, bought at Wayne's treaty, in 1795. The land on the north side of the Maumee, west to Defiance, the reader will remember, was bought at the treaty of Detroit, 1807. This treaty of 1817 was regarded by the people of the State with great interest. The part of Ohio, north of the Greenville line, was a blank space on the map. It was simply the Indian territory, and the " black swamp." Its name caused a shrug of terror to many people; while others believed that, though it was not an earthly paradise, it was a good place to go to and "grow up with the country.
The Indians did not all agree as to the ad- visability of selling it. There was a division, and some stout opposition was developed at the treaty. Gen. Hunt, before qnoted, in his remin- iscences says: "There was an Indian present, whose name was Mesh-ke-mau, who was a great warrior, and prided himself on being a British
subject. He had been bribed to oppose the treaty. When he found the Indians giving way to Cass and McArthur, our commissioners, it made him very angry. He said in his speech that the palefaces had cheated the red men, from their first landing on this continent. The first who came said they wanted land enough to put a foot on. They gave the Indians a beef, and were to have so much land as the hide would cover, The palefaces cut that hide into strings, and got land enough for a fort.
" The next time they wanted more land they brought a great pile of goods, which they offered for land. The red men took the goods, and the palefaces were to have for them so much land as a horse would travel round in a day. They cheated the red man again by having a relay of horses to travel at their utmost speed. In that way they succeeded. . Now, you Cass,' pointing his finger and shaking his tomahawk over Cass' head, 'Now, you Cass, come here to cheat us again:' thus closing. he sat down. Cass replied: ' My friends, I am much pleased to find among you so great a man as Mesh-ke-mau. I am glad to see you have an orator, a inan who under- stands how much you have been cheated by the white people, and who is fully able to cope with them-those scoundrels who have cheated you so outrageously. 'Tis true what he has said, every word true. And the first white man was your French father. The second white man was your English father, you seem to think so much of. Now you have a father, the President, who does not want to cheat you, but wants to give you more land west of the Mississippi than you have here, and to build mills for you, and help you till the soil.'
"At which Mesh-ke-mau raved and frothed at the mouth. He came up to Gen. Cass. struck him on the breast with the back of his hand, raising his tomahawk with the other hand, saying, . Cass, you lie; you lie.'
"Cass turned to Knaggs, who was one of the interpreters, and said: . Take that woman away and put a petticoat on her: no man would talk that way in council.'
"Two or three Indians and interpreters took him off out of the council. The treaty resulted in buying from the Indians the northwestern part of Ohio and the southern part of Michigan."
Another warrior and his mother, present at the treaty, are thus spoken of: "Ottuso, son of Kan-tuck-e-gun [ Hosmer says Kan-tuck-e-gun was the widow of Pontiac], the most eloquent warrior of the tribe, was a very intelligent Indian; quite the equal of Tecumseh in mental qualities,
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though lacking the moral force and vigor which made the latter a leader of his race. Ottuso was a descendant of Pontiac [ Parkman says Ottuso was the son of Pontiac ], and, at the time of his death, the last of his family, and the last war chief of his nation remaining on the Maumee river. His mother was a sort of Indian queen, and grandniece to Pontiac. She was held in great reverence by the Indians. So much so, that at the treaty of Mauinee, in 1817, she then being very old and wrinkled, and bent over with age, her hair perfectly white, no chief would sign the treaty until she had first consented. and made her mark, by touching her fingers to the pen. At that treaty there were 7,000 Indians gathered together. When the treaty was agreed upon, the head chiefs and warriors sat round the inner circle, she had a place among them; the remain- ing Indians with the women and children forming a crowd outside. The chiefs sat on seats built under the roof of the council house, which was open on all sides. The whole assembly kept silence. The chiefs bowed their heads and cast their eyes to the ground, and waited patiently for the old woman until she rose, went forward, and touched the pen to the treaty, after it had been read to them in her presence.
Following close after this treaty another helpful thing to the settlement occurred. The government in the previous year (1816) had not only platted the town of Perrysburg, but hadre-sur- veyed the Twelve-mile Reserve. It was in this survey that a change was made, and the land along the river subdivided into River Tracts in- stead of following the usual form of survey by sections. The land office was at Wooster, Ohio, and the Maumee lands were thrown on the market, at auction, in February. This sale proved of great advantage to the settlement. It gave a permanence to the improvements started. Hitherto, when all were squatters without fixed tenure, there was but little incentive to go into extensive improvements. Now the settler could own his lands. The sale was on the installment plan. Some paid the price, and took a patent from the government at once. Others did not get their patents until final payments. When purchasers failed to meet the payments the land was resold. Some assigned their claims to sec- ond parties; in such cases the name on the sale book and in the patent does not correspond. These changes and the neglect of purchasers to record their patents, when they received them, or perhaps not at all. have been fruitful of trouble in tracing titles.
Soon after, Dr. J. B. Stewart, of Albany,
N. Y., and J. J. Lovett bought River Tracts 65 and 66, including the old fortifications and the settlement that had sprung up around the fort. A town site was surveyed, below the fort. next the river, and called Orleans, or sometimes, to better distinguish it, "Orleans of the North.
Dr. Stewart was also one of the builders and owners of the pioneer steamboat on the lakes, the "Walk-in-the-water," built at Black Rock, in 1818, and doubtless it was the design of Stewart to make Orleans one of the chief points in the lake trips of his new boat. The pros- pects of the town, as the leading port at the head of Lake Erie, were bright, and would have been materially aided by steamboat connec- tion with the lower lake ports, but unfortunately "Rock bar " prevented the boat from ever reach- ing Orleans. She came up as far as Swan creek, and turned back. She drew too much water for Orleans. As a rapid traveler, the "Walk-in-the- water" was not a success. Noah Reed, who came with Uncle Guy Nearing's family to Detroit in 1819, says in his menioirs, that he was a passen- ger on the new steamboat from Black Rock; she left that port on the 18th day of August, and did not reach Detroit until the 15th day of September. The boat was carried back until within sight of Buffalo, five or six times, after getting to Dun- kirk and beyond. After a career of three years. she was beached, in a storm, near Dunkirk, and went to pieces. Thus both of these ventures of the enterprising Albany men, the pioneer steam- boat, and the town of Orleans, proved unfortu- nate.
Not to be outdone, the ambitious dwellers on the north side of the river had staked out a town in 1818, and christened it after the historic river. Maumee. Here were three embryo claimants for city honors. Most that was needed to make them flourish was a thrifty population. Each had ready advocates to proclaim its advantages over the other, but there was little room for ar- gument, as whatever might be said, in praise or derision, applied to all, for the reason that they were so near together. One thing in their favor was that they had no competitors, either above or below, to decry their merits, or to entice away business. The combined efforts of the three claimants, did not cause a great rush of immi- grants to either place. There was a vast ex- panse of country opening in the West then: besides the Maumee did not have a good reputa- tion as a health resort. The increase of popula- tion was very gradual. The chief business at that time was the fishing and fur trade, and the rich islands and bottoms were very productive in
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grain and vegetables. But nearly all who came were soon discouraged by malarial attacks, in one form or another.
The experience of John T. Baldwin, father of Marquis Baldwin, of Toledo, given in the history of Lucas county, from which we quote, was doubtless similar to that of many others who came there: "He and his sons sailed a little schooner, called the 'Leopard.' Mr. Baldwin and family came to Orleans, April I, ISIS, and rented a small house and staid until July, when they left. In November they returned and lived in a part of Seneca Allen's house. In the fol- lowing spring (1819), Marquis dropped corn for Gen. Vance, on his farm, just above Orleans. The family, as on their previous stay, suffered so much from fever and ague, that at times there were not well persons enough to take care of the sick. In June, 1819, Mr. Baldwin again became discouraged, and left for his old home, at Palmyra, Portage county, but made two or three trips, with the . Leopard,' between Cleveland, Detroit and Orleans, during the season, on one of which he took a cargo of corn for Jonathan Gibbs from the Maumee to Detroit. In 1823, Mr. Baldwin and family, a third time, came to the Maumee, stopping at what is now Toledo, then Port Law- rence, where they made their home. Among the residents at the Rapids, in ISIS, John Baldwin remembers the following at Orleans :- William Ewing, Elisha Martindale, James Wilkinson, Samuel and Aurora Spafford, the Vances, Hollis- ters, Amos Pratt and others previously mentioned in these pages. At Maumee :- Robert A. For- syth, John E. Hunt, Almon Gibbs, Dr. Horatio Conant, James Carlin, and a Frenchman, named Peltier; down toward Miami :- Daniel Hubbell and William Herrick; while up the river were John Pray, Gilbert and Artemus Underwood, James Adams and others. In the woods, at Per- rysburg, was John and Frank Hollister, John Webb, David M. Hawley and William Wilson.
" Marquis Baldwin gives some of the current prices, for labor and goods, taken from the books kept by his father, which are of interest. The price for half-soling a pair of boots was $3; Mrs. Baldwin, making fine shirt, $1; making woolen pantaloons, $1. 50; linen, 50 cents; common la- borers got $25 a month and board; sailors the same; cider brought $8. 50 per barrel; tobacco, 50 cents a pound; chickens, 25 cents apiece ; whiskey, 50 cents a pint; tar, $1.50 per gallon; tin plates, 31 cents; salt, $8 per barrel; nails, 25 cents a pound; flour, $4 per 100 pounds; bacon, 20 cents; beefsteak, 10 cents; pork, 182 cents; butter, 31 cents; castor hats, $7; shoes, $2. 50 per pair."
The year IS17 was eventful to the settlers on the Maumee, in another thing. Some years before the war of 1812, this territory, we remember, was attached to Champaign county. with the county seat at Urbana, about one hun- dred miles distant. The Greenville Treaty line, just north of that county, had stood as a wall to stop further settlement in that direction. That barrier was now removed, and March 1, IS17, a new county, north of Champaign, and extending to Michigan, called Logan, with the county seat at Belleville (now Bellefontaine), was organized. This part of the Maumee Country was now a part of Logan, with the county seat still on Hull's Trace, but eighteen miles nearer than before the change. Soon after, the township of Waynesfield, which took in the Maumee settlement, was established, which proved a further convenience to the peo- ple in selecting local peace officers, and better regulating their home affairs in various ways.
The years 1818 and 1819 were characterized by a steady, but uneventful, growth on the Maumee. The settlers were, as a class, ener- getic and ambitious. Their hopes were in the building of a city there, and making it the center of a great population, as well as of a great trade. Their hopes were apparently well founded. It was only unforeseen natural, but insurmountable, obstacles that prevented their realization.
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