USA > Ohio > Montgomery County > Dayton > Early Dayton; with important facts and incidents from the founding of the city of Dayton, Ohio, to the hundredth anniversary, 1796-1896, > Part 2
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THE report of the French Major Celoron de Bienville, who, in August, 1749, ascended the La Roche, or Big Miami River in bateaux to visit the Twightwee villages at Piqua, has been preserved ; but Gist, the agent of the Virginians who formed the Ohio Land Company, was probably the first person who wrote a description in English of the region surrounding Dayton. Gist visited the Twightwee or Miami villages in 1751. He was
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2
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EARLY DAYTON
delighted with the fertile and well-watered land, with its large oak, walnut, maple, ash, wild cherry, and other trees. The country, he says, abounded "with turkeys, deer, elk, and most. sorts of game, particularly buffaloes, thirty or forty of which are frequently seen feeding in one meadow; in short, it wants nothing but cultivation to make it a most delightful country. The land upon the Great Miami is very rich, level, and well timbered-some of the finest meadows that can be. The grass here grows to a great height on the clear fields, of which there are a great number, and the bottoms are full of white clover, wild rye, and blue grass." A number of white traders were living at the Miami villages and in one of their houses Gist lodged. It is stated by pioneer writers that buffaloes and elk disappeared from Ohio about the year 1795.
Long before any permanent settlement was made in the Miami Valley, its beauty and fertility were known by the people beyond the Alleghanies and the inhabitants of Kentucky, who considered it an "earthly paradise," and repeated efforts were made to get possession of it. These efforts led to retaliation on the part of the Indians, who resented the attempts to dispossess them of their lands, and the continuous raids back and forth across the Ohio River to gain or keep possession of the valley caused it to be called, until the close of the eighteenth century, the "Miami slaughter-house." The wild animals-wolves, wildcats, bears, panthers, foxes-which roamed through the valley now so peaceful and prosperous were scarcely more brutal and fierce than the inhabitants of the infrequent villages scat- tered along the borders of the Miami hunting-grounds-the terrible "Indian country," the abode of cruelty and death, which the imagination of trembling women in far-distant blockhouses invested with all the horrors of a veritable hell on earth. The pioneers of Kentucky looked with jealous and envious eyes on this great Indian game preserve. The wily and suspicious savages did their best to exclude them ; but, though they ventured over here at the risk of being burned, they frequently came alone or in small parties to hunt or rescue some friend captured in a raid into Kentucky by the Indians. Before the Miami Valley had ever been visited by whites, the country lying between the Great and Little Miamis, and bounded on the south by the Ohio and on the north by Mad River, was used only as a hunting- ground. Dayton lies just within this former immense game pre-
From the "National Cyclopedia of American Biography," by permission of James T. White & Co.
Anty Wayne
From the "National Cyolopedia of American Biography," by permission of James T. White & Co.
Any Claire
From the "Cyolopedia of American Biography." Copyright, 1888, by D. Appleton & Co.
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From the "Cyclopedia of American Biography." Copyright, 1889, by D Appleton & Co.
Jona: Dayton
From the "National Cyclopedia of American Biography," by permission of James T. White & Co.
19
THE SETTLEMENT
serve. Probably no wigwam has been built and no Indians have lived on the site of Dayton since 1700. The site of Dayton was a favorite rendezvous for Indian hunters or warriors. Parties came down the Miami in canoes, and, having formed a camp of supplies at the mouth of Mad River in charge of squaws, set out on their raids or hunts.
In the summer of 1780, General George Rogers Clark led an expedition of experienced Indian fighters to Ohio 'against the Shawnees near Xenia and Springfield. He defeated the Indians. By this victory the homes, crops, and other property of about four thousand Shawnees were destroyed, and for some time they were wholly engaged in rebuilding their wigwams, and in hunt- ing and fishing to obtain food for their families. Among the officers who held command under Clark was Colonel Robert Patterson, from 1804 till 1827 a citizen of Dayton.
Finding that the Indians were recovering from their defeat of 1780, Clark, in the fall of 1782, led a second expedition of one thousand Kentuckians to Ohio. They met with no resistance till they reached the mouth of Mad River, on the 9th of November, where they found a small party of Indians stationed to prevent their crossing the stream. A skirmish on the site of Dayton followed, in which the Kentuckians were victorious. They spent the night here, and then proceeded to Upper Piqua, on the Great Miami. Having destroyed Upper Piqua, they went on to the trading-station of Laramie, and plundered and burned the store and destroyed the Indians' wigwams and crops. These two expeditions, or campaigns, were campaigns of the Revolu- tion, as the Indians were friendly to the British.
For some time after the peace with Great Britain in 1783, the Indians, who had met with many reverses and losses during the Revolution, did not trouble the settlements as much as formerly, but about 1785 they recommenced hostilities, and in 1786 a force commanded by Colonel Logan was sent against the Wabash and Mad River villages. One of the brigades was commanded by Colonel Robert Patterson. They harried and ruined the Indian country, and destroyed eight towns and the crops and vegetables, taking a large number of horses, and leaving the Indians in a state of destitution and starvation from which it took them nearly a year to recover. The Kentuckians returned to the Ohio by the way of Mad River, and at the mouth of the river found a party of Indians on guard. With them was Tecumseh, at this
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EARLY DAYTON
time about fourteen years of age. Having, after some slight resistance, beaten the Indians and driven them up Mad River and gained the second battle or skirmish between whites and Indians fouglit on the site of Dayton, they camped for the night. Being well supplied with provisions taken from the captured villages, they remained here for two or three days examining land with a view to recommending a settlement in this neighbor- hood. Having driven the Indians for the time being out of the Miami Valley, the Kentuckians, when they departed, left an uninhabited country behind them.
In 1789 Major Benjamin Stites, John Stites Gano, and William Goforth formed plans for a settlement to be named Venice, at the mouth of the Tiber, as they called Mad River. The site of the proposed city lay within the seventh range of townships, which they agreed to purchase from John Cleves Syminies for eiglity- three cents an acre. The deed was executed and recorded, and the town of Venice, with its two principal streets crossing each other at right angles and the position of houses and squares indicated in the four quarters outlined by the streets, was laid out on paper. But Indian troubles and Symmes's misunderstand- ing with the Government forced them to abandon the project, and "we escaped being Venetians."
In the spring of 1793 General Wayne was made commander of the Western army. His victories over the Indians on June 30 and 31 and August 30, 1794, ended four years of Indian war. August 3, 1795, a treaty of peace was concluded at Greenville, which was regarded as securing the safety of settlers in the Indian country.
August 20, 1795, seventeen days after the treaty was signed, a party of gentlemen contracted for the purchase of the seventh and eighth ranges between Mad River and the Little Miami from John Cleves Symmes, a soldier of the Revolutionary army, who, encouraged by the success of the Ohio Company, had, after much negotiation, obtained from Congress a grant for the purchase of one million acres between the two Miamis. The purchasers of the seventh and eighth ranges were General Arthur St. Clair, Governor of the Northwest Territory; General Jonathan Dayton, afterward Senator from New Jersey ; General James Wilkinson, of Wayne's army, and Colonel Israel Ludlow, from Long Hill, Morris County, New Jersey. On the 21st of Sep- tember two parties of surveyors set out, one led by Daniel C.
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THE SETTLEMENT
Cooper to survey and mark a road and cut out some of the brush, and the other led by Captain John Dunlap, which was to run the boundaries of the purchase. On the Ist of November the sur- veyors returned to Mad River, and Israel Ludlow laid out the town, which he named for General Dayton. Three streets were named St. Clair, Wilkinson, and Ludlow for the proprietors .- Another was called, as a sort of compromise, Jefferson, as the proprietors were Federalists. Dayton was founded by Revolu- tionary officers, and bears their names. It is also linked to the War of 1812 by a street called for Commodore Perry. For many years Perry Street was down on the maps of the town as Cherry Lane.
On November I a lottery was held, and each one present drew lots for himself or others who intended to settle in the new town. Each of the settlers received a donation of an inlot and an outlot. In addition, each of them had the privilege of pur- chasing one hundred and sixty acres at a French crown, or about one dollar and thirteen cents, per acre. The proprietors hoped by offering these inducements to attract settlers to the place.
Forty-six men had agreed to remove from Cincinnati to Day- ton, but only nineteen came. The following men and about seventeen women and children were the original settlers of Dayton : William Hamer, Solomon Hamer, Thomas Hamer, George Newcom, William Newcom, Abraham Glassmire, Thomas Davis, John Davis, John Dorough, William Chenoweth, James Morris, Daniel Ferrell, Samuel Thompson, Benjamin Van Cleve, James McClure, John McClure, William Gahagan, Solomon Goss, William Van Cleve.
In March, 1796, they left Cincinnati in three parties, led by William Hamer, George Newcom, and Samuel Thompson. Hamer's party was the first to start; the other two companies left on Monday, March 21, one by land the other by water. Hamer's party came in a two-horse wagon over the road begun, but only partially cut through the woods, by Cooper in the fall of 1795. The company consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Wil- liam Hamer and their children Solomon, Thomas, Nancy, Eliza- beth, Sarah, and Polly, and Jonathan and Edward Mercer. They were delayed, and had a long, cold, and uncomfortable journey.
In the other party that traveled by land were Mr. and Mrs. George Newcom and their brother William, James Morris, John Dorough and family, Daniel Ferrell and family, Solomon Goss
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EARLY DAYTON
and family, John Davis, Abraham Glassmire, and William Van Cleve, who drove Mr. Thompson's cow, which was with the cattle belonging to the Newcom division of the colonists.
Thompson's party were steered and poled by Benjamin Van Cleve and William Gahagan in a large pirogue down the Ohio to the Miami and up that stream to the mouth of Mad River. A pirogue was a long, narrow boat of light draft and partly enclosed and roofed. It required much skill and muscular strength to pole a boat up stream for many miles. The men, each provided with a, pole with a heavy socket, were placed on either side of the boat. They "set their poles near the head of the boat and bringing the end of the pole to their shoulders, with their bodies bent, walked slowly down the running board to the stern, returning at a quick pace to the bow for a new set."
The Miami in 1796 wound through an almost wholly uninhab- ited wilderness. Such a journey, it seems to us, looking back from this safe and prosaic age when steam cars whirl us up from Cincinnati, must have been full of danger and of exciting adven- ture, and yet not without its pleasures. Imagination invests this little band of adventurers, laboriously making their way with their boat-load of women and children up the Indian-named river and valley to a frontier home in the ancient Miami hunting- grounds, with an atmosphere of romance. On the borders of their ancestral corn-fields and game preserves lurked jealous and revengeful savages, gazing with envious and homesick eyes on the rich lands of which the pioneers had dispossessed then. The Indian reign of terror, in spite of the treaty of peace, really lasted till after 1799, but travelers on the river were probably in less danger of surprise in early spring than when the foliage was in full leaf and the Indians could consequently more easily conceal themselves.
However unpropitious the season may be, there are always occasional sunshiny days in the early spring in Ohio. Though the woods in 1796 were wet from recent showers, the rain seems to have been over before the pirogue began its voyage, and no doubt part of the time the weather was mild and bright. The banks of the Miami were thickly wooded, and vocal with the songs of countless varieties of birds. The flowers and the foliage of the trees were just beginning to unfold, and the ground was covered with grass fresh with the greenness of spring. For miles on either side of the Miami extended a fertile and beautiful country.
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Rebekah Ro 5,9681
THE LANDING OF THE FIRST SETTLERS, APRIL 1, 1796.
ORIGINAL PLAN OF DAYTON, AS RECORDED IN THE RECORDS OF HAMILTON COUNTY.
I hereby certify That the above or within plat is atrue copy of the
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Sec 35, T.2,77.
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Book I 2, Page 58, Homili, County Records
plan of the Town of Ilayton, as recorded in need
I hereby certify that this mop is a correct copy of the
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River
32 E OSX. Ciny. O.
Te Hayman C. E.o.
Received on Recorded 28th April 1802
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Sec 33. T2. R. T
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PLAN OF THE
T.I. R.I.
Sac 10
JOC 4 T. I. R. Y.
The outlots contain Yen acres
The lots are six pale's wide and twelve long including the alley
and all are four poles wide, except those crossing in the Public
those running up and down the River cross at right angles.
note - The streets running from the River run S. 16°Z. and
TOWN OF DAYTON
Israel Judion.
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Given under my hand this 27th day of April 1802
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original plan of the Town of Hoyten.
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The alleys are one hole nide
Ground, which are six pales wide
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( SIGNED )
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THE SETTLEMENT
At the close of each day the boat was tied to a tree on the shore, and the emigrants landed and camped for the night around the big fire by which they cooked their appetizing sup- per of game, and fish, and the eggs of wild fowls, for which the hunger of travelers was a piquant and sufficient sauce. Meat was fastened on a sharp stick, stuck in the ground before the fire, and frequently turned. Dough for wheat bread was sometimes wound round a stick and baked in the same way. Corn-bread was baked under the hot ashes. "Sweeter roast meat," exclaims an enthusiastic pioneer writer, "than such as is prepared in this manner, no epicure of Europe ever tasted." "Scarce any one who has not tried it can imagine the sweetness and gusto of such a meal, in such a place, at such a time."
In the pirogue came Samuel Thompson and his wife, Catherine ; their children, Sarah, two years old, Martha, three months old, and Mrs. Thompson's son, Benjamin Van Cleve, then about twenty-five, and her daughter, Mary Van Cleve, nine years of age; the widow McClure and her sons and daughters, James, John, Thomas, Kate, and Ann, and William Gahagan, a young Irishman. The passage from Cincinnati to Dayton occupied ten days. Mrs. Thompson was the first to step ashore. Two small camps of Indians were here when the pirogue touched the Miami bank, but they proved friendly and were persuaded to leave in a day or two. The pirogue landed at the head of St. Clair Street April 1, 1796. The Thompson party was the first to arrive.
Samuel Thompson was a native of Pennsylvania, and removed to Cincinnati soon after its settlement. He married the widow of John Van Cleve. Mr. Thompson was drowned in Mad River in 1817, and Mrs. Thompson died at Dayton, August 6, 1837. William Gahagan was a native of Pennsylvania, but of Irish parentage. He was a soldier in Wayne's legion, and came west in 1793, serving with the army till the peace of 1795. Benjamin Van Cleve and he were friends and comrades. He was one of the party which surveyed the site of Dayton. In 1804 or 1805 he removed to a tract of land south of Troy, called Gahagan's Prairie, which he owned. Here his wife died and he married Mrs. Tennery. He died about 1845 in Troy. The McClures soon removed to Miami County. Little is known of Solomon Goss, Thomas Davis, William Chenoweth, James Morris, and Daniel Ferrell. Abraham Glassmire was a German and unmarried. He was a very useful member of the little community, making looms
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EARLY DAYTON
and showing much ingenuity in contriving conveniences not eas- ily obtained by pioneer housekeepers. John Dorough was the owner of a mill on Mad River, afterwards known as Kneisley's Mill. William Newcom, younger brother of George, was born about 1776. He married Charlotte Nolan, and had one son, Robert. William Newcom died at Dayton from the effects of hardships and exposure during the War of 1812, in which he served as a soldier. Biographies of other pioneers will be given later on in our history.
We can easily imagine the loneliness and dreariness of the uninhabited wilderness which confronted the homeless pioneer families as they arrived by water or land at Dayton. "The unbroken forest was all that welcomed the Thompson party, and the awful stillness of night had no refrain but the howling of the wolf and the wailing of the whippoorwill." The spring was
late and cold, but though at first the landscape looked bare and desolate, before many days the air was sweet with the blossoms of the wild grape, plum, cherry, and crab-apple, and the woods beautiful with the contrasting red and white of the dogwood and redbud or of elder and wild rose, and the fresh green of young leaves. The woods were full of wild fruits, flowers, and nut- bearing trees and bushes.
As a temporary protection against the weather the pioneers, on their arrival, built, with the lumber of which the pirogue was made, against a log or bank three-sided huts or shanties, roofed with skin or bark, and open towards the fire, which was made outside. Then they began at once to fell timber and build log cabins, containing one room and a loft. After or before the cabin was built, the trees for some distance around were girdled and left to die a slow death, as they interfered with the cultiva- tion of the soil, and also concealed lurking Indians. Then a few acres were grubbed for a corn and potato patch.
Isolated from other settlements by miles of unbroken forests, the only road a trail marked by blazed trees or a narrow bridle path, with treacherous Indians and wild beasts prowling . through the tangled undergrowth on either side, the inhabitants of frontier places like Dayton were dependent on each other for society and for assistance in sickness and work. They shared everything. The latchstring was always out. Hildreth says of Marietta that the various households in the little community were like the nearly related branches of one family, and probably this was true of the log-cabin hamlet of Dayton.
NEWCOM'S FIRST LOG CABIN, BUILT IN 1796.
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THE SETTLEMENT
As soon as possible after the arrival of the pioneers, the whole of Monument Avenue was cleared of brush and trees. But with this exception, a few farms, and the wagon-road cut in the middle of Main Street and running south to Franklin, Fort Hamilton, and Cincinnati, the country on both sides of the Miami was for many miles unbroken forest or a thicket of hazel bushes and wild fruit-trees. Pioneers could, in the summer, step out of their back doors into a boundless wild park or garden. Delicious perfumes, sweet as attar of roses,-delicate, pungent, aromatic,-and countless flowers, pink, white, purple, scarlet, blue, and blending with every shade of yellow and green, delighted the senses. To be sure, mud, snakes, stinging insects, thorns, burrs, and poisonous vines detracted from the pleasure of their strolls. Innumerable garter-snakes were to be seen, and rattlesnakes were often found.
A hazelnut thicket covered a good deal of the town plat, and is often mentioned in the reminiscences of first settlers. Dr. Drake, a noted Cincinnatian, writing of Dr. Elliott, an ex-army surgeon and ancestor of some of our prominent Daytonians, says, "In the summer of 1804 I saw him in Dayton, a highly accomplished gentleman in a purple silk coat, which contrasted strangely with the surrounding thickets of brush and high bushes." Such elegant raiment, though common in cities, was not often seen in frontier villages. Benjamin Van Cleve, in his interesting manuscript autobiography, describes himself on June 26, 1794, as dressed in a hunting-frock, breechcloth, and leggings, with a knife eighteen inches long lianging at his side, a gun in one hand, and a tomahawk in the other. And this costume, in a modified form, was usual. A coonskin cap was added in winter.
John W. Van Cleve, who had seen his native place change from a wilderness to a thriving town, gives this description of Dayton in 1800-1805: "While the inhabitants all lived on the river bank, it was no uncommon thing for strangers, on coming into the place, after threading their way through the brush until they had passed through the whole town plat from one extremity to the other, and arrived at the first few of the cabins that constituted the settlement, to inquire how far it was to Dayton. They were, of course, informed that they had just passed through it, and arrived in the suburbs." A little later they would have found a log cabin occupied by Jolin Welsh, a substantial farmer, at what is now the southeast corner of Main
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EARLY DAYTON
and Fifth streets, and inquiring of him the distance to Dayton, would have been directed to Newcom's Tavern, about a quarter of a mile down the road. Persons still living, and not aged, remember, when driving the cows home from the prairies east of St. Clair and south of First Street,-where both pasturage and water from several ponds were abundant, -lingering in the public square (now Cooper Park) to fill their pockets with hazelnuts. The ponds were filled so long ago that many never heard of them. This is also true of "the ravine that ran from the head of Mill Street down the present course of the canal to the river below the foot of Ludlow Street, and of another wide ravine that extended from the levee at the head of Jefferson Street across to Cooper Park, connecting with the ravine running south." A gully five or six feet deep, beginning at the corner of Wilkinson and First streets, crossing Main at Third Street, and ending at the corner of Fifth and Brown streets, was not wholly filled up till Mr. J. D. Platt built his house on the northwest corner of First and Wilkinson streets.
In 1798 the home missionary, Rev. John Kobler, visited Day- ton, which he describes as a little village of that name, on the bank of the Big Miami, containing a few log houses and eight or ten families. When threatened with illness, he hastened southward, for "to lie sick at any of the houses in these parts would be choosing death, as it is next to impossible for a well man to get food or sustenance." Yet, as is usual in regions where very rich soil is newly cultivated, the pioneers all had ague. Fortunately, what was chill day to one-half the popula- tion was generally well day to the other half. One Sunday morning, when a little knot of worshipers were assembled, as a pioneer lady used to relate, a tall, bent, gaunt, sallow-faced man, who was enjoying his "well day," slowly and feebly crept up the aisle. A little child, after one glance at this walking skele- ton, exclaimed in terror, "O mother, is that death?" and buried his head in her lap. He had taken literally the saying that an invalid "looked like death." January 1, 1799, Mr. Kobler preached at Dayton to a mixed company of traders from Detroit, and some Indians, French, and English, from the appropriate text, "In every nation he that feareth him, and worketh right- eousness, is accepted with him." He spoke so forcibly that "many of them looked wild and stood aghast, as if they would take to their heels."
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