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 4
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In November, 1785, John Van Cleve removed with his family and several relatives and friends from Freehold, New Jersey, to Pennsylvania. The party traveled with three wagons, two of which contained Van Cleve's blacksmith tools, provisions, and household furniture. The emigrants had an uncomfortable and fatiguing journey up and down the icy or snowy Alleghany Mountain roads, which, "being only opened sufficient for wag- ons to pass, and neither dug nor leveled, also winding in botlı ascent and descent," there was constant danger of upsetting. "To undertake the crossing," Benjamin Van Cleve wrote, "witlı loaded wagons required a considerable degree of resolution and fortitude." The horses were soon nearly exhausted fromn tlie hard pulling through the deep snow, which balled in their feet. Sometimes the wagons stuck in the mud or broke down. The
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women and children suffered very much from cold and exposure. Benjamin Van Cleve writes on November 17: "Tarried to repair our wagons, and the women were eniployed in baking and cook- ing." November 18 : "Froze considerable last night. The roads are filled with ice. Came this day to Mr. McShay's on Sideling Hill. The house was so crowded with travelers that, notwith- standing the cold, we were obliged to encamp in the woods. The horses and men are very much fatigued, having spent near half the day getting up this hill, which is steep and stony, and the road winds back and forth to gain the sunimit. We had to put six horses to a wagon and bring one up at a time." They reached their journey's end on the 8th of December.
The greater part of the time between 1786 and 1789 the Van Cleves spent on a farm near Washington, Pennsylvania. In December, 1789, the family emigrated to Cincinnati, making the journey by water, and arriving the day after General St. Clair changed the name of the town, which had previously been called Losantiville. Benjamin Van Cleve settled on land on the east bank of the Licking River, belonging to Major Leech, who, wishing to open a farm for himself, offered a hundred acres of unimproved ground for each ten-acre field cleared by a settler, with the use for three years of the improved land.
Benjamin Van Cleve hoped, with the assistance of his father's labor, to secure at least one hundred acres, but the latter's death prevented the fulfillment of their expectations. A fortified station was built on Leech's land, and four families and four single men went out to the place to live. The Indians were very troublesome and daring in 1791, skulking through the streets of Cincinnati and the gardens near Fort Washington at night. On the 21st of May they fired on John Van Cleve while he was at work in his field near the village and captured a man named Cutter, who was standing within a few yards of him. "The alarm was given by halloing from lot to lot, until it reached town." Benjamin Van Cleve came in from Leech's Station just. as the news of the attack was received at Cincinnati, and saw the villagers running to the public grounds. He followed them, and there met with a man who had seen the Indians firing on his father. He asked if any would go to the rescue with him, "and pushed on without halting." After running a short distance the party met John Van Cleve. "While we were finding the trail of the Indians on their retreat," Benjamin writes, "perhaps forty
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persons had arrived, most of whom joined in the pursuit ; but by the time we gained the top of the river hills, we had only eight." They kept the Indians " on the full run till dark," but were obliged to return to Cincinnati at night without recapturing Cutter. A few days later, on the Ist of June, John Van Cleve was again attacked by Indians while working in his own lot. "A naked Indian," Benjamin says, "sprang upon him; my father was seen to throw him, but at this time the Indian was plunging his knife into his heart. He took a small scalp off and ran. The men behind came up immediately, but my father was already dead."
One of John Van Cleve's daughters was married, but he left four younger children, who were not old enough to support themselves. "I immediately resolved," Benjamin Van Cleve says, "to supply the place of father to them to the utmost of my ability, and I feel a consolation in having fulfilled my duty towards them as well as my mother. My father had not many debts or engagements to fulfill. I paid some debts by my labor (all that he owed) as a day-laborer, and my brother-in-law assisted me in building a house he had undertook, and received the pay for my mother." "After the funeral of my father, I returned and planted my corn, but was obliged to divide my time and bestow the greater part at Cincinnati for the benefit of the family. I settled my father's books, fulfilled his engagements, and sold his blacksmith's tools to the quartermaster-general."
For a number of years Benjamin Van Cleve was burdened with the support of his mother and the family, and had a hard strug- gle with poverty. He was young and ignorant of the world, and felt the need of counsel. Many depended on him, and there was no one to whom he could turn for help, or with whom he could share his responsibilities. "Happy he who has, at this period of life," he wrote years afterwards, at a date when his own carefully nurtured son had recently graduated with honor from Ohio Uni- versity, "a father or friend whose experience will afford him a chart ; whose kind advice will serve as a compass to direct him."
Benjamin Van Cleve was all his life a lover of good books and good men, and though he enjoyed very limited educational advantages, he became noted for intelligence, information, and elevation of character. Vice seems to have had but slight charın for him ; but no doubt the thought of his helpless family would have restrained one of his affectionate nature and spurred him to exert himself to the uttermost had he been tempted to fall into
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idle and dissipated habits. He was obliged to seek work wher- ever he could find it, and could not afford to be nice in his choice of associates. "Had my fortitude and resolution," he says, "been weaker, they might have been overcome, for my com- panions for several years were of the most profane and dissipated, such as followers of the army and mostly discharged soldiers."
In the summer of 1791 he obtained employment in the quar- termaster's department, and on the 8th of August set off for Kentucky, where his uncle, Captain Benham, was commissioned by the Government to buy artillery horses for St. Clair's army. Van Cleve received the purchased horses at Lexington, branded them, and pastured them in the neighborhood of the town. In about two weeks a drove was collected and taken to Cincinnati. Captain Benham was very ill on their return from Kentucky, and his nephew was obliged to do all his writing, keep his accounts, and attend to his other business.
On the 3d of September Benham and Van Cleve left Fort Washington, Cincinnati, for the army, with three or four bri- gades of packhorses, loaded with armorer's and artificer's tools. The armorers were armed and marched with the brigades, but would have proved a weak escort had the Indians attacked them. Benhanı's party overtook the troops at a place thirty or forty miles beyond Fort Hamilton, and marched with them to Fort Jefferson, which was not completed. At the end of five days Benham and Van Cleve returned with six brigades, leaving five at Hamilton and taking one on to Fort Washington. They were ordered back to transport provisions from Cincinnati to the army, which was reduced to short allowance, the failure of Colonel Duer, the contractor, having thrown all military arrange- ments into confusion. The packhorsemen returned as soon as possible with their loads, and overtook the army on the 31st of October twenty-two miles beyond Fort Jefferson. They found poor St. Clair so ill with the gout as to be carried in a litter. The Kentucky militia had just deserted in a body, and the evening of the day that Benham's party arrived in camp the first regiment was dispatched to bring the deserters back, and also to escort in provisions that were then on the way.
Benjamin Van Cleve had been entered on the pay-roll of the army as a packhorseman, at fifteen dollars pay per month. He worked hard to earn his wages. Each brigade of packhorses drew its rations separately. As he kept the accounts and also
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communicated orders, he had a great deal of writing to do. In addition to his ordinary duties, he was often obliged to take care of his own and his uncle's horses. Sometimes it was necessary to carry part of the stores or provisions lashed on the back of the animal he was accustomed to ride, and foot it himself through the mud in the roughest manner. Captain Benham had a large marquee, or horseman's tent, which, as it was very roomy, he occasionally asked officers to share. "Having sometimes to be in the company of officers and sometimes in the mud," Van Cleve was induced on his expeditions to the army to take all his clothes with him, and they made a heavy and unwieldy pack.
At daybreak on the 2d of November, while, in obedience to orders, packing his cumbersome luggage on his horse in prepara- tion for the return to Cincinnati, he heard firing and was soon witnessing his first battle. It was not long till his horse was shot down, and instead of lamenting the accident he was glad of it; for he now felt at liberty to share in the engagement, expecting much pleasure from the turmoil and excitement of the battle, which, in his ignorance of the condition of the army and of the uncertainties of Indian warfare, he was confident would end victoriously for our troops. In a few moments he provided himself with a gun obtained from a man who was wounded in the arm, began firing, and till the retreat was commenced was in the thick of the fight. He escaped unhurt, though he lost his horse and all his clothes ; but Captain Benhanı and Daniel Bonham, a young man brought up by Benham, and whom Van Cleve regarded as a brother, were both wounded.
The ground was soon "literally covered with dead and dying men, and the commander gave orders to take the way," that is, to retreat. Van Cleve joined a party of eight or nine men whom he saw start on a run a little to the left of where he was. When they had gone about two miles, a boy, who had been thrown or fell off a horse, begged Van Cleve's assistance, and he ran, pulling the boy along, about two miles farther, until both had become nearly exhausted. Seeing two horses approaching, one of which carried three men and the other two, Van Cleve managed to throw the lad up behind the two men. Though afterwards thrown off, the boy escaped and got safely home. Van Cleve did not see Bonham on the retreat, but understood that his body was found in the winter on the battlefield and buried.
Van Cleve was taken with cramp during the retreat and could
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hardly walk, "till he got within a hundred yards of the rear, where the Indians were tomahawking the old and wounded men." Here he stopped to "tie his pocket-handkerchief around a man's wounded knee." The Indians were close in pursuit at this time and he almost despaired of escaping. He threw off his shoes and the coolness of the ground revived him. "I again," he says, "began a trot, and recollect that when a bend in the road offered, and I got before half a dozen persons, I thought it would occupy some time for the enemy to massacre them before my turn would come. By the time I had got to Stillwater, about eleven miles, I had gained the center of the flying troops, and, like them, came to a walk. I fell in with Lieutenant Shaumberg, who I think was the only officer of artillery that got away unhurt, with Corporal Mott and a woman who was called 'Redheaded Nance.' The latter two were crying. Mott was lamenting the loss of his wife, and Nance that of an infant child. Shaumberg was nearly exhausted, and hung on Mott's arın. I carried his fusee and accouterments and led Nance; and in this sociable way we arrived at Fort Jefferson a little after sunset."
Benham and Van Cleve immediately went on with Colonel Drake and others, who were ordered forward to dispatch pro- visions to the troops. After marching a few miles the party was so overcome with fatigue that they halted. A packhorseman " had stolen at Fort Jefferson one pocketful of flour and the other full of beef." Another of the men had a kettle. Benjamin Van Cleve groped about in the dark until he found some water in a hole, out of which a tree had been blown by the root. They then made a kettle of soup, of which each of the party got a little. After supping they marched four or five miles farther, when a sentinel was set and they lay down and slept. They were worn out with fatigue, and their feet were knocked to pieces against the roots in the night and by splashing through the ice without shoes, for "the ground was covered with snow and the flats filled with water frozen over, the ice as thick as a knife-blade." On the 6th of November they reached Hamilton and were out of danger.
On the 25th of November Benham and his nephew were paid off and discharged at Fort Washington. A week later Van Cleve entered the service of the new army contractors, Elliott & Wil- liams, and started the same day for the Falls of the Ohio to bring up a boat-load of salt. When he returned he was employed by the contractors to feed and take charge of a herd of cattle
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through the winter. In the spring, when the cattle were turned out to pasture near Cincinnati, he went on a twelve days' trip by boat to Fort Hamilton. Afterwards for a short time he was in charge of horses belonging to the quartermaster at a camp three miles up the Licking River.
The evening of the 10th of May, 1792, he was expected at Cincinnati to draw provisions. He arrived about dark and found that the quartermaster had determined to send him express to Philadelphia, and had been to his mother's, had his clothes packed, a horse saddled, and everything ready for the journey. He received his instructions from the quartermaster and com- mandant, and started before midnight accompanied by Captain Kimberland. Forty dollars were given him, which were expected to be "equal to his expenses" and he was ordered to take the most direct route to Philadelphia, which at that day was via Lexington, Kentucky, and Crab Orchard, Cumberland Mountains, Powell's Valley, Abingdon, Bolecourt, Lexington, Staunton, Mar- tinsburg, Louisa, Hagerstown, Maryland, York and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He traveled with as little delay as possible by day or by night. On reaching Crab Orchard eighteen persons joined him. The party was armed with five guns and five pistols. The trip, on account of the Indian alarms and rainy weather, was very disagreeable.
Van Cleve reached Philadelphia June 7, 1792, and delivered his dispatches next day. He went to the War Department every morning at ten o'clock to see if there were any commands for him, and at last General Knox ordered him to go to New York to conduct thither a pair of fine horses which the heads of the department had presented to Captain Joseph Brant, chief of the Six Nations. Van Cleve was directed to leave the horses in the care of Mr. Edward Bardin, of the City Tavern, taking his receipt and requesting him to deliver them to Captain Brant on the latter's arrival in New York. Mr. Van Cleve replied that he would be glad to go to New York, but that, if he went, money to pay his expenses must be furnished him by the Government. General Knox was much excited by this answer, swore at the young man, and declared that it took more for his expenses than would support the Duke of Mecklenburg ! Whereupon Van Cleve waxed wroth. "I suppose," he says, "he was in jest, but I felt nettled, and observed that I ate three times a day, as I was accustomed to do at home, and my horse had to have hay and
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oats ; that I had been on expense for forty or fifty days and on forty dollars ; and that I was a small matter behind with my landlord." Knox made no further objections, but ordered the necessary money to be paid to Van Cleve.
Captain Brant arrived by stage at the City Tavern on June 29, just as his horses stopped at the door, so that he gave his own receipt for the animals. It is stated in the Memoranda that the chief was "quite intelligent and communicative, wrote a decent hand, and was dressed more than half in the fashion of the whites."
Mr. Van Cleve returned to Philadelphia on the 30th of June. Knox gave him leave of absence until the IIth of July to visit relatives in New Jersey. During his stay in Philadelphia he amused himself visiting friends, attending the play, drawing a plan of President Washington's new house, which was then building, and reading all the books he could get hold of. He purchased twenty-five volumes. He boarded with a Quaker family, and found profit and pleasure in attending the Friends' meeting and in reading Barclay's "Apology" and others of their books. "The landlord and landlady," he says, "assumed the exercise of parental authority over me, the same as over their own son. I believe I was more obedient to them, and a considerable share of mutual attachment took place. I felt regret at parting from them, and my good mother shed tears on the occasion."
He left Philadelphia on the 25th of July with dispatches for General Wayne, who was at Wheeling, and for Colonel Cushing, the commandant at Fort Washington. On his return journey he followed the route over the Alleghanies he had traveled when emigrating from New Jersey in 1789, and found the roads much improved. On the way he turned aside to visit relatives, and was slightly reprimanded by General Wayne for his delay in deliver- ing the dispatches. The journey from Wheeling to Cincinnati was made by river. The party occupied two boats, commanded by Ensign Hunter, a sergeant, and corporal, who were conduct- ing to Ohio twenty-one recruits enlisted in New Jersey. One boat was loaded with oats and corn, and the other had on board a quantity of cannon-ball, two pieces of artillery, and a few boxes of shoes. Four recruits deserted at Wheeling, and Van Cleve turned out with a party of soldiers to search for them, but the men escaped capture. A good deal of whisky was drunk on board the boats, and the soldiers were "mellow" during nearly the whole voyage. One of the men entertained his companions
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by singing for half a day at a time. Ensign Hunter and his wife frequently visited Van Cleve's boat, and when alone with the soldiers he amused himself reading the twenty-five books he had bought at Philadelphia, finishing nearly all of them before he reached Cincinnati on the 3d of August, 1792. One day he and the sergeant and another person landed for a deer hunt, over -. taking the boats further down the river.
Van Cleve's expenses during his absence of one hundred and fourteen days were $114.562/3. He served a month in the quarter- master's department after his return. Through some misunder- standing, he did not receive his pay for his services as express till the 15th of March, 1793. "I became tired and disgusted," he says, "with their arrogant and ungenerous treatment, and in want of the money I begged that they would pay me something -anything that they thought I merited. There was no mail nor way for me to make it known or get redress at Philadelphia, and they were so good as to pay me five shillings per day." Yet the quartermaster professed to be satisfied with the manner in which he had discharged his duties, and with the bills of expense. "Paid Israel Ludlow for my lots in Cincinnati," he says, after concluding his account of the trip to Philadelphia, "got bills of sale for them, and cleared and fenced them. I labored intolerably hard, so as to injure my health, and raised a fine crop of corn."
In the winter of 1793 Van Cleve and Stacey McDonough engaged with the army contractors, Elliott & Williams, to bring up salt and other articles from the Falls of the Ohio to Cincinnati. The contractors furnished a boat and one hundred- weight of flour for each trip, and paid six shillings sixpence freight per barrel. Van Cleve and his companions took the boat down themselves, but engaged hands at five dollars per week in Kentucky (where the farmers, when their summer work was over, were glad to get employment in the public service), who agreed to be ready, on certain days when the cargo for the return voyage was collected, to assist in loading the boat. They brought up one boat-load of salt and two of corn. By the Ist of December Van Cleve cleared seventy-five dollars. They then reëngaged with the contractors at fifteen dollars per month and went for a boat-load of salt, but did not receive their freight till January I, 1794. The river was almost frozen over and they had a tedious return trip, not reaching Cincinnati till January 25.
In February, 1794, Captain Benliam employed Benjamin Van
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Cleve to open a sutler's store at Fort Greenville, the headquarters at this date of Wayne's legion. He took six packhorses to Greenville, loaded with stores and liquors, and in March returned to Cincinnati for another six-horse load. This was an unfortunate undertaking. He was twice robbed while at the fort, losing over fifty dollars in money, all his clothes, and some small articles. He also got into trouble at headquarters through a misunder- standing, sold the sutler's store, and left Fort Greenville penniless.
On the 16th of May lie again engaged in the contractors' employ, and on the 24th was sent down the Ohio to Fort Massac with two boats loaded with provisions. A detachment of infantry and artillery commanded by Major Doyle and Captain Guion, and eight Chickasaw Indians, accompanied them. There were ten boats in the little fleet, which were directed to proceed in exact order. Van Cleve's boat, number seven, was heavily loaded and weak in hands, so that when all were rowing it could not keep up, and when all were drifting it outwent the other boats. As the Major had the reputation of being haughty, arbitrary, and imperious, and had been nicknamed "King Doyle," Van Cleve thought it useless to explain matters to him. Sometimes num- ber seven would be ten miles ahead in the morning, and it would take the others with hard rowing half the day to overtake it. "The men," the Memoranda relates, "by that time would be pretty much fatigued, and we could manage to keep our place until night. We generally received a hearty volley of execrations for our disobedience of his orders. We returned mild excuses and determined to repeat the offense."
At Saline, on June II, "I observed," Van Cleve says, "a fire on shore, and hailed, when two Canadian French hunters came to us with their canoes loaded with skins, bears' oil, and dogs. One of them had passed twenty-six years in the wilderness between Vincennes and the Illinois River. Before morning we found three others, who went along with us to hunt for us." The boats reached Fort Massac June 12. On the 26th of June . "King Doyle " unjustly ordered the arrest of Van Cleve and his comrades. That day there arrived at Fort Massac a number of inen who had been enlisted in Tennessee by officers who had received commissions from Citizen Genêt, ambassador from the French Republic to the United States. The real object of the visit of these French recruits was probably to examine the place, and ascertain the strength of the force assembled there; but they
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stated that, having nothing else to do, they had volunteered to escort some salt-boats to Nashville, and had stopped out of curiosity to see the soldiers. They invited Van Cleve and his companions to take passage in their boat, and as the former was anxious to return home the offer was accepted. Neither Van Cleve nor his associates were interested in Genêt's projects. . One of Van Cleve's party who had a public rifle went up to restore it to the Major, who, angry at his departure, cursed and struck him, and ordered him and his friends, who were in the boat but heard the command, to be taken to the guard-house. "The Major," Van Cleve states, "was walking backward and forward on top of the bank. With my gun in one hand and tomahawk in the other, and a knife eighteen inches long hang- ing at my side, dressed in a hunting-frock, breechcloth, and leggings, my countenance probably manifesting my excitement, I leaped out of the boat, and with a very quick step went up to the Major. I looked like a savage, and the Major, mistaking my intention, was alarmed and retired as I advanced." Finally, matters were explained to the satisfaction of both, and Van Cleve consented to remain till the 3d of July, when the Major intended to send a boat to the Falls of the Ohio. Van Cleve and his friends left on the appointed day, but growing tired of the society of the soldiers, determined on the 9th, at Red Banks, to make the remainder of the journey by land.
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