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 3
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THE SETTLEMENT
When in the fall of 1795 pioneers, or their representatives, vis- ited the "mouth of Mad River" to select homes, they drew both town and outlots, and the latter farms some of them cultivated. They also had, after a time, gardens round their cabins. "West of Wilkinson Street," as Curwen, the delightful first historian of Dayton, says, "was a huge corn-field within one common enclo- sure, where, as in that golden age of the world when men lodged under trees and fed upon acorns, every man was at liberty to till as much of the soil as he chose." Further, small prairies between the large inclosure and the cabins served as a common vegetable garden.
It is a disputed point whether Mary Van Cleve, the sister of Benjamin, or her mother was the first to leap from the boat which conveyed the party of travelers in search of a new home in a new country-the Dayton of a hundred years ago. Trans- planted at the age of nine, she grew up with the village, and spent a long life here. She was well known by her two marriages as Mrs. Swaynie and Mrs. McClean. Some of her early experi- ences were very thrilling. She had reason to regard Indians with horror. Her father, John Van Cleve, while cultivating his farm near Cincinnati, was killed in 1791 by a "naked Indian, who sprang upon him, plunged a knife into his heart, took a small scalp off, and ran." A party of friends of Mr. Van Cleve pursued him and his band, and Mr. Thompson, afterward Mary Van Cleve's stepfather, overtook one of the Indians and cut off his hand. As a consequence, Mr. Thompson incurred the revengeful spite of all the savages, but hoped after his removal to Dayton to be rid of them. There came a time, however, when this roving band also found their way to the frontier village. Late one dark summer evening, having filled themselves with fire-water, they surrounded the Thompson and Van Cleve cabin on Monument Avenue, midway between St. Clair and Jefferson streets, and with fierce yells demanded admission. The family were alone, and, realizing their great peril, they took Mary, a brave little girl of twelve, from her bed, hastily dressed her, lifted a part of the puncheon floor, and directed her to watch her opportunity to creep through the small aperture to the ground, above which the cabin was raised a little, and run to Newcom's Tavern for help. Every anecdote of this period is in some way connected with our only liistorical relic. Her descrip- tion of her terrified run through the pathless brush and hazel
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EARLY DAYTON
patches, tears streaming down her cheeks, the noise of the dread- ful warwhoops of the Indians in her ears, her flesh and clothes torn with briars, her bare feet splashing through the water, and slipping and stumbling over the mossy stones at the bottom of the gully which then ran from Second Street, by the park, back of the Monument Avenue cabins to Jefferson Street near the river bank, was very graphic. No wonder that in telling the story she often said, "I ran a mile before I reached Newcom's Tavern." Yet the distance was not quite two of our present squares. A number of men were at the tavern, wondering what the howling and shrieks they heard from the eastward could mean. They all returned with her, one of the men carrying her home in his arms. By their assistance the Indians were routed, and nothing serious resulted from the attack.
Mary Van Cleve was married in 1804 to John McClean, by whom she had seven children. Two daughters live in Dayton - Mrs. Sarah J. McC. Swaynie and Mrs. E. S. Dow. She married, second, in 1826 Robert Swaynie. They had no children. Mrs. Swaynie died several years ago.
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CHAPTER II
EARLY SETTLERS
DANIEL C. COOPER-Newcom's Tavern-Cooper Park -Mr. Cooper Becomes Titular Proprietor of the Town-His Improvements and Liberality- Indians Frequent Visitors-Playing Marbles at Midnight-Robert Edgar -First Store in Dayton-Henry Brown-First Flatboat-Furniture of the Nine Cabins Constituting Dayton-Food-Game-Hogs Introduced -Fish -Blockhouses for Defense Against Indians Built at Dayton-First School in Dayton - Benjamin Van Cleve's Autobiography - Early Life of Van Cleve-Battle of Monmouth-Wagon Journey of the Van Cleves Across the Mountains-Murder of John Van Cleve at Cincinnati by Indians-Benjamin Van Cleve Supports his Father's Family-Self-Edu- cated -Employed in Quartermaster's Department of Western Army- St. Clair's Defeat-Employed in Flatboating by Army Contractors-In Charge of Army Horses and Cattle-Sent Express to Philadelphia by Quartermaster's Department-Sent by General Knox from Philadelphia to Conduct Pair of Horses to Indian Chief Brant -Quarrel with General Knox-Meets Brant in New York-Studious Life After Return to Phila- delphia-Sent West with Dispatches to General Wayne-Journey by Boat from Wheeling, Accompanied by Officers and Recruits-Cheated Out of His Pay -Flatboating to Kentucky-Sutler at Fort Greenville-Sent by Army Contractor to Fort Massac with Two Boats Loaded with Pro- visions-Adventure at Fort Massac with Major, Called "King," Doyle - Returning, Visits Red Banks, a Resort of Thieves and Cutthroats- Drives Cattle to Greenville, Fort Wayne, and Fort Washington-Accom- panies Captain Dunlap to Make the Survey of the Dayton Settlement- Adventures as a Surveyor-Keeps Field-Notes During Rain on Blocks of Wood-Settles in Dayton-Surveying, Writing, and Farming-Trials.
NOW THAT the approach of the Dayton Centennial is exciting a special interest in the settlers and founders of the town, it should not be forgotten that Daniel C. Cooper is the pioneer who should be made most prominent and given the highest honors at our celebration. He was born in Morris County, New Jersey, in 1773. About 1803 he married Mrs. Sophia Greene Burnet, of Dayton. From the time that a settlement here was first planned by St. Clair, Wilkinson, Dayton, and Ludlow, he was acquainted with the project, and inclined, it is probable, to make the new town his home. He accompanied the surveying parties led by Colonel Israel Ludlow through the Miami Valley in 1794 and
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EARLY DAYTON
1795, and in September, 1795, by direction of the proprietors, marked out and cut through the brush from Fort Hamilton to the mouth of Mad River the wagon-road by which the pioneers ended their journey. That fall and winter he located one thousand acres of land in and near Dayton. He settled here permanently in the summer of 1796, building a cabin on the southeast corner of Monument Avenue and Jefferson Street. In 1798 he moved onto the farm, south of Dayton, afterwards the home of Colonel Patterson and General Brown, who distinguished himself in the War of 1812, and was afterwards commander-in- chief of the United States Army. He kept bachelor's hall in his Monument Avenue cabin for a time.
It would have been a disgrace not to have preserved Newcom's Tavern, which, when built in 1799, was the pride of all this region on account of its superiority to any other house north of Hamilton. We know that round it cluster nearly all the most interesting historical associations of the earliest period of the history of Dayton, and that it was the first tavern, store, church, court-house, and jail of the town or county. There is great propriety in naming the little pioneer landing for the Van Cleves. But it is also eminently proper that the square in which the library building stands should be called Cooper Park, for the generous, public-spirited man who gave it and other valuable lots to the town. Our citizens seem not to know, or to have forgotten, that several years ago the City Council voted to name this square Cooper Park, so that it is improper, whether law, gratitude, or sentiment is concerned, to call it Library Park. Cooper Park let it be henceforth and forever.
In 1801 the original proprietors of Dayton became discouraged and Mr. Cooper became titular proprietor of the town by the purchase of preëmption rights, agreement with settlers, and friendly Congressional legislation. He showed his intelligence and breadth of view by the size of lots and the width of streets and sidewalks on his new plat of the town, and by his liberal. donations of lots and money for schools, churches, a graveyard, market-house, and for county buildings, and to desirable settlers whoni he induced to come here. He built the only mills erected in Dayton during the first ten years of its history -flour-, full- ing-, and sawmills, and one for grinding corn. For several years at different periods he served as justice of the peace, president of Council, and member of both branches of the Legislature, and in
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EARLY SETTLERS
every way in his power labored for the prosperity of the town, county, and State. His residence, built in 1805 on the southwest corner of Ludlow and First streets, was described as an "elegant mansion of hewn logs, lined inside, instead of plastering, with cherry boards." To his enlarged views, foresight, broad plans, liberality, integrity, and business capacity mnuch of the present advancement of our city is due. The impress of his wise, mod- erate, prudent, yet progressive spirit, laid upon the town in its infancy, has never been lost.
Indians were frequent visitors to the village of Dayton, and even when friendly their curiosity and thieving habits made them unwelcome. They generally came to exchange skins, maple sugar, etc., for articles carried about the country by traders. Robert Edgar, one of the earliest settlers and a valuable citizen, many of whose descendants live in Dayton, built himself a lonely home on the little prairie now the site of the Water Works. Sometimes at night Indians, with whom he must have been inconveniently popular, would stop in front of his cabin and call, "Lobit ! Lobit !" (Indian for Robert ) till he awoke and admitted them. They came for amusement, and were not satisfied till they had persuaded their host to get down on the floor and play marbles with them. When they had enjoyed the game to their hearts' content, they departed in great good humor, and their relieved and weary entertainer went back to bed. His associations with the Indians were not all of a laughable charac- ter. In 1792, at Wheeling, his father was, on Good Friday evening, attacked, killed, and scalped by nine Indians, while on the way to warn a neighbor of their approach.
Robert Edgar first visited Dayton in 1795 as one of the survey- ing party led by Mr. Cooper, and settled here in 1796. Though a farmer, he was also a good mechanic, and built and ran mills for Mr. Cooper at Dayton, and for Mr. Robinson upon Mad River. He was a soldier in the War of 1812 in one of the companies of mounted rangers from this county, and his sword is now in possession of his son, John F. Edgar. Robert Edgar was born in Staunton, Virginia, in 1770, and emigrated to Ohio before 1795. At Cincinnati, September 27, 1798, he married Mrs. Mar- garet Kirkwood. Mr. and Mrs. Edgar had a large family, but only five lived past childhood. Jane Allen, born November 24, 1800, married Augustus George, December 4, 1817, and died in 1824; descendants in Dayton, the children of the late George
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EARLY DAYTON
H. Phillips. Robert A., born October 10, 1803, married Catherine · Iddings; died in 1833. Samuel D., born March 26, 1806, married Minerva A. Jones, August 5, 1845; died October 1, 1874. He has a number of grandchildren, the children of two daughters and a son. Mary, born April 8, 1811, married, May 10, 1831, Stephen Johnston ; died July 25, 1849. John F., born October 29, 1814, alone survives. He married, April 20, 1843, Effie A. Rogers. He has three daughters-Jeanne, Isabel, and Elizabeth Edgar.
In the fall of 1800 the first store in Dayton was opened in a room of the second story of Newcom's Tavern by a Mr. McDougal from Detroit. Though this store was a great con- venience to the villagers and the country for forty miles around, McDougal's chief trade was with Indians, who came here for that purpose.
In 1804 Henry Brown, prominent in the early history of our city, built on Main Street, near the High School, a frame build- ing for a store-the first house erected here specially for business purposes. Since 1795 he had been engaged in the Indian trade, having stores at Fort Hamilton and Fort Laramie, and, as stated, in 1804 at Dayton, in partnership with Mr. Sunderland. Three generations of his descendants have been well known in our city. The agents of his firm were camped on all the streams for many miles in every direction from Dayton, wherever Indians could be reached. Traders, accompanied by packhorses laden with goods, took long, lonely, dangerous journeys through the wilderness, lasting several months, to Indian villages. Some of their goods were shipped in flatboats or pirogues down the rivers to Cincinnati and New Orleans.
Henry Brown was born near Lexington, Virginia, about 1770. In 1793 he came to the Northwest Territory as military secretary for Colonel Preston, who was in command of a regiment in Wayne's army. February 19, 18II, he married Katherine, daughter of Colonel Robert Patterson. Mr. Brown died in 1825. Mr. and Mrs. Brown had three children : R. P. Brown, born. December 6, 1811, married Sarah Galloway, October 31, 1837; died May 4, 1879. Henry L. Brown, born December 3, 1814, married Sarah Belle Browning, February 7, 1837 ; died November 25, 1878. Eliza J. Brown, born in Dayton, October 30, 1816, married Charles Anderson, September 16, 1835. R. P. and Henry L. Brown were men of the finest character, influential in many directions, and held in the highest regard by their fellow-citizens.
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EARLY SETTLERS
The first flatboat that left Dayton was owned by David Lowry. It started on the two montlis' trip to New Orleans during the spring freshet of 1799, and was loaded with grain, pelts, and 500 venison hams.
The nine cabins which in 1799 constituted Dayton, contained only a few home-made benches, stools, beds, tables, and cup- boards, often of buckeye and beechwood. Doddridge in his "Notes" says that a pioneer's table furniture consisted of "some old pewter dishes and plates; the rest, wooden bowls or trenchers, or gourds, and hard-shelled squashes. A few pewter spoons, much battered about the edges, were to be seen on some tables. The rest were made of horn. If knives were scarce, the deficiency was made up by the scalping-knives, which were carried in sheaths suspended from the belt of the hunting-shirt." The cabin was warmed and lighted wholly by the huge open hickory fire, over which, in pots suspended from cranes or on the coals or in the ashes, the cooking was done. At an early date the pioneers raised flax, liemp, and wool, and the women spun, wove, and dyed, with colors made from walnut and butternut hulls or wild roots, the fabrics from which they made the clothes of the family. Every cabin had its spinning- wheel and loom, the latter built by the ingenious pioneer weaver, Abraham Glassmire. One wonders whether pioneer women were really harder worked than their granddaughters. They had little to occupy or amuse them outside their own homes- no benevolent societies, clubs, receptions, calls, concerts, or lectures, and only occasional church services. They had only one or two rooms to keep in order, and no pictures, books, cur- tains, carpets, rugs, table- and bed-linen, bric-a-brac, china, glass, or silver to take care of. Their wardrobes were scanty, and the weekly washing must have been small. Wheat flour could not be obtained; corn hoe-cake, ash-cake, johnny-cake, dodgers, pone, hominy, and mush and milk were principal articles of diet. Meal was slowly and laboriously ground in handmills. Wild plums, crab-apples, blackberries and strawberries, sweet- ened with maple sugar, furnished jellies and preserves. There was an abundance of wild honey, and of wild goose and turkey and duck eggs. They often tired of venison, bears' meat, rabbits, squirrels, wild turkeys, ducks, geese, quail, and pheasants, and longed for pork. There was great rejoicing, no doubt, when, in 1799, Mr. Cooper introduced hogs. In 1800 sheep were first
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EARLY DAYTON
brought here. The rivers were full of bass, catfish, pickerel, pike, eels, and sunfish.
Benjamin Van Cleve says in his autobiography that, in July and August, 1799, "the Indians were counseling and evinced an unfriendly disposition. The British traders and French among them had made them dissatisfied with the cession of their lands and with the boundaries, and blockhouses were built at Dayton and all through the country, and the people became considerably alarmed." The Dayton blockhouse stood on the present site of the soldiers' monument, and was built of round logs, with a projecting upper story. The men in town and surrounding country kept strict watch, and were all armed and ready to take refuge, if necessary, with their families, in the blockhouse. But it was never used for protection against Indians. For a short time it was the village church and school-house. In the first story, the year it was built, the Presbyterians held their Sunday services, and the same year Benjamin Van Cleve taught there the first school ever opened in Dayton -another reason why the park which the High School overlooks should be named for him. In his journal for 1799-1800, he says: "On the Ist of September I commenced teaching a small school. I had reserved time to gather my corn, and kept school until the last of October." He harvested a fine crop by the first week in November. Vacation lasted part of December ; for, after harvest, he went to Cincinnati to assist the clerk of the House of Representatives of the first Territorial Legislature. He was well suited to such work. He held the office of clerk of the Montgomery Court of Common Pleas from 1802 till his death in 1821, and was postmaster from 1804 to 1821, being the first to hold either office in Dayton.
After Mr. Van Cleve's return from Cincinnati, he "kept school about three months longer." It is said that, as books were difficult to procure, he taught the alphabet and spelling from charts prepared by himself. They were, no doubt, beautifully written and colored, for his penmanship was remarkable for elegance and legibility, and his diary or autobiography is illus- trated by plans and maps neatly executed in India ink and water colors. He was a skillful surveyor and engineer, and like those of General W. C. Schenck ( father of Admiral and General R. C. Schenck ) and other contemporaries of his profession, the papers and accounts which descendants of people for whom he did business still preserve are not only correct in form and substance,
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EARLY SETTLERS
but beautiful pieces of work, and often ornamented by a large and artistic monogram of the employer.
In 1801 Mr. Van Cleve was appointed county surveyor. In 1812 the President of the United States appointed him and two other commissioners "to explore, survey, and mark a road by the most eligible course from the foot of the rapids of the Miami of Lake Erie to the western line of the Connecticut Reserve, and a road to run southwardly from Lower Sandusky to the boundary line established by the treaty of Greenville."
Mr. Van Cleve's autobiography or "Memoranda," as he styled it, now in the possession of Mrs. Thomas Dover, widow of a grandson, is a very curious and valuable book. It has never been printed in full. This sturdy little manuscript volume, written in a hand as graceful and legible as the best type, and bound in strong, square leather covers, which, like the heavy paper within, are dark with age, has, though studied by several his- torians, and read by many others, been so carefully guarded by the appreciative descendants of the writer that time and use have injured it very little.
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Mr. Van Cleve's life after 1796 is so much a part of the history of Dayton that it seems more appropriate and interesting to describe the incidents that occurred during that period under the proper dates in our story, than to give them in a continuous biography. His childhood and youth, while not spent in Dayton, were filled with hardship as well as romantic adven- ture of a kind that made him master of all his faculties, and this severe discipline developed the character that rendered him one of the most useful and progressive founders and citizens of the struggling village in the Mad River country. Therefore, a somewhat detailed account of his early years will be both inter- esting and profitable. He is worthy of being held up as an example to the boys in our public schools. Some of his traits are of the kind that appeal most strongly to boy nature.
In his Memoranda, which he states was written for the in- struction and amusement of his children, Mr. Van Cleve sets down for their guidance the rules by which he regulated his own valu- able life. He tells them that he made it a point to be polite and obliging to all with whom he was connected in business, whether he stood to them in the relation of employer or employee. And in his obituary it is stated that he "recommended himself to esteem by his agreeable manner of doing business." He regarded
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EARLY DAYTON
justice, honor, and integrity as the best policy, though it was not this inferior motive but a higher one that led him to pursue that upright and public-spirited career which won the respect and admiration of his fellow-citizens. He was a religious man and a member of the Presbyterian Church. He took an active part in promoting the best interests of his town and State, and was a trustee of several literary institutions. In the Memoranda lie dwells upon the fact that he always had a place for everything and a set time for the performance of each duty, and he exhorted lıis children above all to form similar systematic, accurate, and methodical habits.
Benjamin Van Cleve began to keep a diary at a very early age, and not long before his death in 1821 he condensed and revised his journals, copying them into the volume from which the material for his biography is drawn. His Memoranda contains, perhaps, the most accurate and graphic description of St. Clair's defeat that has been written ; and from the Memoranda has also been obtained the only reliable account of the settlement of Dayton. The Memoranda, supplemented by the files of early newspapers which he preserved, consitutes him literally the his- torian of Dayton from 1795 to 1821.
Benjamin Van Cleve's ancestors came to Flatbush, Long Island, from Amsterdam, Holland, in the seventeenth century, and from thence removed to Staten Island, and finally settled in New Jersey. He was born February 24, 1773, in Monmouth County, New Jersey, and was the eldest child of John and Cath- erine Benham Van Cleve. He had three brothers and five sisters. His father was a blacksmith.
Mr. Van Cleve's earliest recollection was of the battle of Mon- mouth, on the 28th of June, 1778. Late in life he could well remem- ber the confusion of women and children, and their flight to the pine swamps just before the engagement, though he was only five years old at the time. When about a mile from home the refugees came in sight of the enemy, and paused to consult what course to pursue. The Monmouth men went in search of the Amer- ican army, and Benjamin Van Cleve, "becoming separated from the rest of his family, aimed," he tells us in the Memoranda, "to return home." When within a short distance of the enemy, tlie bugles drove the child, who in the confusion had not been missed, back to the place where his relatives were collected. The refugees could hear the firing distinctly, and judge from the sound which
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EARLY SETTLERS
side was advancing or receding. "When our army was retreating, many of the men were melted to tears ; when it was advancing, there was every demonstration of joy and exultation." The next day John Van Cleve and his brothers "acted as guides to separate companies of Colonel Morgan's riflemen, and reconnoi- tered the British right flank, took a number of prisoners, and. took and recaptured a great deal of property."
When, on the retreat of the British, John Van Cleve brought his family back from the pine swamps, he found nothing to mark the site of his home but a naked and blackened chimney, stumps of apple trees, and the bodies of animals killed by the British. He "had," his son says, "neither a shelter for his family, nor bread for them, nor clothing to cover them excepting what they had on. He saved a bed and a looking-glass, which we carted with us. A yearling heifer had escaped the enemy, and a sow, with a back broken by a sword, lived. My father's anvil remained, I believe, amidst the rubbish and ruins of the shop. Several wagons and an artillery carriage were burnt in the shop; the pieces of artillery had been thrown into a pool of muddy water in the middle of the road, and were not found by the enemy." The Tories committed depredations both by land and by sea on the Monmouth County people, and for this reason the militia were till the end of the war almost constantly on duty. John Van Cleve was "from home on this service a great part of the time, and he was in some skirmishes with the Tories and British. He was also under General Forman at the battle of Germantown."
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