Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume I, Part 18

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio
Number of Pages: 1006

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Prior to 1778, Capt. Thomas Hutchins, of the Provincial army and the inventor of the American System of Land Survey, had made a survey of the Falls, which re-

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PIONEER ENGINEERS OF OHIO.

sulted in a map and report of a plan to facilitate the progress of flat-boats and their freight.

Neither instruments nor engineers could be procured by the commissioners to survey the rapids of the Ohio, and nothing was done by them in that direction, James Geddes, one of the engineers of the Erie canal in New York, was employed as chief engineer in Ohio, and Isaac Jerome was appointed assistant. Only one leveling instrument could be obtained. One or more of the commissioners were generally in the field with the engineers. Several matters appear in the first re- port in the winter of 1822-23 well worthy of the attention of the present genera- tion. They were not promised and did not receive pay for their services. Their personal expenses for 1822 amounted to one hundred and seventy-six dollars and forty- nine cents.

During the season over 800 miles of canal routes had been surveyed with one instrument at a cost, including services, of two thousand four hundred and twenty- six dollars and ten cents.

Such were the characters to whom were committed this great project to build up a growing State. They had been directed to survey routes from Sandusky to the Ohio river ; from the Maumee river to the Ohio river; from Lake Erie to the Ohio river by the Black and Muskingum rivers ; also by the sources of the Cuya- hoga, and from Lake Erie by the sources of the Grand and Mahoning rivers.

In December, 1822, a full and able report was made by Chief Engineer Geddes and by the commissioners, including estimates on all the routes. What is especially remarkable, the final construction came within the estimates.

To comprehend the task imposed upon the engineers and commissioners, the wilderness condition of the State in 1822 must be realized. All the routes were along the valleys of streams, with only here and there a log-cabin, whose inmates were shivering with malarial fever. These valleys were the most densely wooded parts, obstructed by swamps, bayous and flooded lands, which would now be regarded as impassable.

Between 1822 and 1829, Isaac Jerome, Seymour Kiff, John Jones, John Brown, Peter Lutz, Robert Anderson, Dyer Minor and William Latimer, of the engineers, died from their exposures and the diseases of the country. Chain-men, axe-men and rod-men suffered in fully as great proportion.

Among the engineers who survived was David S. Bates (chief-engineer after Judge Geddes), Alexander Bourne, John Bates, William R. Hopkins, Joseph Ridgeway, Jr., Thomas I. Matthews, Samuel Forrer, Francis S. Cleveland, James M. Bucklang, Isaac N. Hurd, Charles E. Lynch, Philip N. White, James H. Mitchell and John S. Beardsley, assistants.

During the construction of the canal, from 1825-35, many other engineers of reputation became resident engineers, among whom were Sebried Dodge, John W. Erwin, who still survives, James H. McBride, Leonder Ransom, Richard Howe and Sylvester Medbury.

JAMES GEDDES.

In the published histories of Onondaga county, New York, Judge Geddes occu- pies a conspicuous place.

He was born near Carlisle, Pennsylvania, July 22, 1763, of poor Scottish pa- rents. After working on the farm and teaching school until he was of age, he made a journey to Kentucky, intending to settle there, but was too much dis- gusted with slavery to become a resident. In 1793 he prepared to manufacture salt at Onondaga lake, at a place since known as Geddis, there being then no Syracuse. After much deliberation, the Indians refused his presents and he departed, leaving the goods in their hands. They solved the difficulty by adopt- ing him as a white brother, and the salt business went on. He was a self-made surveyor and civil engineer, and engaged upon the survey and construction of the Erie canal. After his service in Ohio and the completion of the Erie canal, he was employed by the United States on the Chesapeake and Ohio canal until 1828.

. In that year he was requested to survey a canal route from the Tennessee to the Altamaha, but declined in order to engage upon the Pennsylvania canals. In

PIONEER ENGINEERS OF OHIO.

person he was rather short and robust, but very active and capable of great endur- ance. His disposition was genial, his manner cordial, inclined to be communi- cative.

Mr. George B. Merwin, of Rockport, Cuyahoga county, remembers Judge Geddes principally as a lover of buttermilk. Mr. Merwin, when a boy, was furnished with a pony and jug to scour the country up the valley to supply the surveying party with this drink, which does not intoxicate.

SAMUEL FORRER.

No engineer in Ohio spent as many years in the service of the State as did Mr. Forrer. He came from Pennsylvania in 1818 and in 1819 was deputy surveyor of Hamilton county, O. In 1820, Mr. William Steele, a very enterprising citizen of Cincinnati, O., employed Mr. Forrer at his own expense to ascertain the eleva- tion of the Sandusky and Scioto summit, above Lake Erie. His report was sent to the Legislature by Gov. Brown. This was the favorite route, the shortest, low- est summit and passed through a very rich country.

The great question was a supply of water. It would have been located and, in fact, was in part, when in the fall and summer of 1823 it was found by Judge D. S. Bates to be wholly inadequate.

Of twenty-three engineers and assistants, eight died of local diseases within six years.

Mr. Forrer was the only one able to keep the field permanently, and use the instruments in 1823. When Judge Bates needed their only level, Mr. Forrer invented and constructed one that would now be a curiosity among engineers. He named it the "Pioneer." It was in form of a round bar of wrought iron, with a cross like a capital T. The top of the letter was a flat bar welded at right angles, to which a telescope was made fast by solder, on which was a spirit level. There was a projection drawn out from the cross-bar at right angles to it, which rested upon a circular plate of the tripod. By means of thumb-screws and rever- sals, the round bar acting as a pendulum, a rude horizontal plane was obtained, which was of value at short range.

Mr. Forrer was not quite medium height but well formed and very active. He was a cheerful and pleasant companion. Judge Bates and the canal commis- sioners relied upon his skill under their instructions to test the water question in 1823. He ran a line for a feeder from the Sandusky summit westerly and north of the water-shed, taking up the waters of the Auglaize and heads of the Miami. Even with the addition the supply was inadequate. Until his death in 1873, Mr. Forrer was nearly all the time in the employ of the State as engineer, canal commissioner or member of the Board of Public Works.

He was not only popular but scrupulously honest and industrious. His life- long friends regarded his death as a personal loss, greater than that of a faithful public officer. He was too unobtrusive to make personal enemies, not neglecting his duties, as a citizen zealous but just.

He died at Dayton, Ohio, at 10 A. M., March 25, 1874, from the exhaustion of his physical powers, without pain. Like his life he passed away in peace at the age of eighty, his mind clear and conscious of the approaching end.

EARLY CIVIL JURISDICTION. SOUTH SHORE OF LAKE ERIE.

BY COL. CHARLES WHITTLESEY.

WHILE the French occupied the south shore of Lake Erie, there was not the semblance of courts or magistrates for the trial of civil or criminal issues. This occupation ended in 1760, but it is an open historical question when it began. La Salle was in the Ohio country from 1669 to 1671 or 1672; though if he estab- lished posts, the records of his occupation are lost. There are, on the Western Reserve, quite a number of ancient axe marks on the trees, over which the growth of woody layers correspond to those dates ; and which appear to me to have been made by parties of his expedition. The French had posts at Erie, Pa., on the Cuyahoga, on Sandusky Bay and on the Maumee and Great Miami rivers as early as 1749 and 1752, and probably earlier at some points in Ohio and Penn- sylvania. In 1748 the English colonists from Pennsylvania had a trading post at Sandusky Bay, from which they were driven by the French.

Pennsylvania had, however, no civil authority west of her boundary, which is described as being five degrees of longitude west from the Delaware river. The colony of Virginia had claims under various charters and descriptions to a part of Pennsylvania, and all the territory west and northwest as far as a supposed ocean called the South sea. Immediately after the peace of 1763 with the French, the Province of Canada was extended by act of Parliament, southerly to the Alle- ghany and Ohio rivers. Great Britain promised the Indian tribes that the whites should not settle north of the Ohio river. So far as I am now aware, the first civil organization under the authority of Virginia covering the Western Reserve was that of Botetourt county, erected in 1769 with the county-seat at Fincastle, on the head waters of the James river, between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies. But before this, there must have been a Virginia county covering the forks of the Ohio and extending probably to Lake Erie; for the troops captured at the Forks (now Pittsburg) by the French, in 1749, were Virginia militia under Ensign Ward. It is probable that he was or supposed himself to be within the county of Augusta. Settlers from that colony located on the Monongahela and Yough- iogheny. In 1776 three counties were erected on those waters, some parts of which possibly included a part or all of the Reserve.

These covered a part of Westmoreland county, Pa., which was settled from Vir- ginia. This conflict of authority brought on a miniature civil war, which was soon overshadowed by the war of the Revolution, in which both Virginians and Pennsylvanians heartily joined. In 1778, soon after the conquest of the British forts on the Mississippi and the Wabash, by Gen. George Rogers Clark, Virginia erected the county of Illinois, with the county-seat at Kaskaskia. It embraced the south shore of Lake Erie, Detroit, Mackinaw, Green Bay and Prairie Duchien, . but for practical purposes, only Kaskaskia, Cahokia and St. Vincent, or Vin- cennes. The British held possession of the Ohio country and all the lakes. For the English forts on both shores of the lakes, there was no county or civil organ- ization during the Revolutionary war. The government of this almost unlimited region was exclusively military, of which Detroit was the central post. British soldiers and officers were at all the trading posts in Ohio, exercising arbitrary authority over the Indians and the white traders, including the Moravian settle- ments on the Tuscarawas and the Cuyahoga.

After the treaty of peace in 1783, the same state of affairs continued, until, by

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successive campaigns against the Indians, the United States drove them off by military force. All the lives lost, the forts built, and the expeditions made in the northwest, from 1785 to 1794, were a continuation of the war of the Revolution against England. Even after the second treaty in 1795, she built Fort Miami, on the Maumee, within the State of Ohio. The result of the battle of the Rapids of the Maumee, in August, 1794, put a stop to her overt acts against us for a time; but it was not until after the war of 1812 that she abandoned the project of recovering the American colonies. While in her possession until 1799, there were at the posts on the lakes, justices of the peace, or stipendiary magistrates, exercising some civil authority, but none of them resided on the south shore of this lake.

This subject of early civil jurisdiction is a very obscure one, owing to indefinite geographical boundaries. I have received the assistance of Judge Campbell, of Detroit ; of Silas Farmer, the historian of Detroit City ; and of Mr. H. C. Gilman, of the Detroit Library, in the effort to trace out the extent of the Canadian dis- tricts and counties with their courts from 1760 to 1796. Their replies agree that it is difficult to follow the progress of civil law on the peninsula of Upper Canada, westward to the Detroit river and around the lakes. In 1778 Lord Dorchester, Governor-General of Canada, divided Upper Canada into four districts for civil purposes, one of which included Detroit and the posts on the upper lakes. Early in 1792 the Upper Canadian parliament authorized Governor Simcoe to lay off nineteen counties to embrace that province. It is presumed that the county of Essex, on the east bank of Detroit river, included the country on the west and south around the head of Lake Erie, but of this the information is not conclusive. Some form of British civil authority existed at their forts and settlements until Detroit was given up and all its dependencies in 1796. When Governor St. Clair erected the county of Washington in Ohio, in 1788, it embraced the West- ern Reserve east of the Cuyahoga. West of this river and the Tuscarawas was then held by the Indians and the British.

The State of Connecticut claimed jurisdiction over the Reserve, but made no movement towards the erection of counties. When she sold to the Land Com- pany, in 1795, both parties imagined that the deed of Connecticut conveyed powers of civil government to the company, and that the grantees might organize a new State. As the United States objected to this mode of setting up States, this region was, in practice, without any magistrates, courts, or other organized civil authority, until that question was settled, in 1800. Immediately after the British had retired, in 1796, Governor St. Clair erected the county of Wayne, with Detroit as the county-seat. It included that part of the Reserve west of the Cuyahoga, extending south to Wayne's treaty line, west to the waters of Lake Michigan and its tributaries, and north to the territorial line. Its boundaries are not very precise, but it clearly embraced about one-third of the present State of Ohio. The question of jurisdiction when Wayne county was erected in 1796 remained open as it had under the county of Washington. In 1797 the county of Jefferson was established, embracing all of the Reserve east of the Cuya- hoga. When Trumbull county was erected, in 1800, it embraced the entire Western Reserve, with magistrates and courts having full legal authority under the territorial government. Before this, although no deeds could be executed here, those executed elsewhere were, in some cases, recorded at Marietta, the county-seat of Washington county. Some divines had ventured to solemnize marriages before 1800 by virtue of their ministerial office. During the first four years of the settlement of the Reserve there was no law, the force of which was acknowledged here; but the law-abiding spirit of New England among the early settlers was such that peace and order generally prevailed. By the organization of Geauga county, March 1, 1806, what is now Cuyahoga county, east of the river, belonged to Geauga until 1809, when this county was organized.

THE STATE OF OHIO-SOURCES OF HER STRENGTH.

A paper read at the annual meeting of the Western Reserve and Northern Ohio Historical Society, November, 1881, by its President,

COL. CHARLES WHITTLESEY.

Nor long before the President left Mentor for Washington, he is reported to have said to a New York politician that Ohio had about all the honors to which she is entitled. The response was "that she had about all the other States could stand." This sentiment appears to be a general one, not in an offensive sense, but as a widespread opinion, honestly entertained. Whitelaw Reid, in a recent address at Xenia, Ohio, showed conclusively from the blue books, that as to the number of citizens from this State who have held Federal offices, they are not in excess of her share, and are not proportionally equal to those from Massachusetts and Virginia. If it be a fact that our representative men have attained a leading influence in national affairs, it cannot be because of numbers alone, and it should be remembered that they have been raised to place and power, principally by the suffrages of the whole people. If their influence at the Capital is overshadowing, and it is exercised for the good of the nation, there should not be, and probably is not any feeling of jealousy.

If our representative men are prominent, it may be a source of honorable State pride; for while great men do not make a great people, they are signs of a solid constituency. Native genius is about equally distributed in all nations, even in barbarous ones ; but it goes to waste wherever the surroundings are not prepitious. Intellectual strength, without cultivation, is as likely to be a curse as a blessing. If it has cultivation and good moral qualities, it cannot even then become prom- inent without great occasions ; and in republican communities, without the back- ing of a people equal to the emergency. Leaders are not the real power, only its exponents. Storm signals are not the storm, they are only indications. History clearly shows that in free or partly free communities, great men rise no higher than the forces behind them. It also informs us that those nations which have been the most powerful, have become so by a mixture of races. Cross-breeding, by a law of nature fortifies the stock physically, on which mental development greatly depends.

Why the mingling of certain races, like the Teutonic and the Celtic, produces an improved stock, while the same process between Caucasian and Negro or the North American Indian results in depreciation and decay, is one of those numer- ous mysteries, as yet unfathomed by man. Also, why the greatest unmixed races, such as Mongolian, Tartar, Japanese, Chinese, Hindoo, Arab and Hebrew, soon reach the limits of their improvement. A portion of the Aryan family mi- grated northwestwardly, mingling with the Caucasian, reaching Europe by the north of the Black sea. They acquired strength as they spread out on the waters of the Danube, the Elbe and the Rhine, becoming powerful and even dominant under the general name of Goths, having a language from which the Saxon and English were derived. This might be attributable to the medium climate between the Baltic and the Mediterranean, if other people had not enjoyed as temperate climes, and had not gone on increasing, either in mental, physical or political power. When the Celtic and Scandinavian people had pushed forward to the Western sea, and met in the British Islands, they were for a long time unable to go farther, and thus had the best of opportunities to coalesce. The Atlantic was finally overcome, and their propensity to migrate was gratified by crossing the

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sea to North America. This great stream of humanity kept the line of a temper- ate climate, the central channel of which, as it crossed the continent, occupied the State of Ohio.

In King John's time, an English people existed who exhibited their power through the barons at Runymede. Cromwell was endowed with a mental capac- ity equal to the greatest of men ; but he would not have appeared in history if there had not been a constituency of Roundheads, full of strength, determined upon the overthrow of a licentious king and his nobility. The English stock here proved its capabilities on a larger scale than in the days of King John. Washington would not have been known in history if the people of the American colonies had not been stalwarts in every sense, who selected him as their repre- sentative. In these colonies the process of cross-breeding among races had then been carried further than in England, and is now a prime factor in the strength of the United States.

I propose to apply the same rule to the first settlers of Ohio, and to show that if she now holds a high place in this nation, it is not an accident, but can be traced to manifest natural causes, and those not alone climate, soil and geograph- ical position.

There were five centres of settlement in Ohio by people of somewhat different stock ; four of them by people whose social training was more diverse than their stock. Beginning at the southwest, the Symmes' Purchase, between the Great and Little Miami rivers, was settled principally from New Jersey, with Cincin- nati as the centre. Next, on the east, between the Little Miami and the Scioto rivers, lay the Virginia Military District, reserved by that State to satisfy the bounty land warrants, issued to her troops in the war of the Revolution. It was like a projection of Virginia (except as to slavery), which then included Ken- tucky, across the Ohio river to the centre of the new State. Chillicothe was the principal town of this tract. The pioneers came on through the passes of the Blue Ridge, their ancestors being principally English and Episcopal, but claim- ing without much historical show, a leaven of Norman and Cavalier. With Marietta as a centre, the Ohio Company was recruited from Massachusetts and other New England States. In colonial times, their ancestors also came from England, but of opponents to the Church of England, in search of religious free- dom. One hundred and fifty years had wrought great differences between them and the Virginians. Next, west of the Pennsylvania line, lies the " seven ranges" of townships, extending north of the Ohio to the completion of the fortieth paral- lel of latitude, being the first of the surveys and sales of the public land of the United States. Most of the early settlers here came over the Alleghenies from the State of Pennsylvania ; some of Quaker stock, introduced by William Penn ; and more of German origin, in later days. North of them to Lake Erie lay the Western Reserve, owned and settled by inhabitants of Connecticut, with Cleve- land as the prospective capital of a new State, to be called "New Connecticut." This tract extended west from Pennsylvania one hundred and twenty miles. West of the seven ranges to the Scioto, and south of Wayne's treaty line, is the United States Military Reservation, where the first inhabitants were from all the States, and held bounty warrants issued under the resolution of 1776. They were not homogeneous enough to give this tract any social peculiarity. The north- western part of the State was, until the war of 1812, a wilderness occupied by Indians.

The New Jersey people brought a tincture of Swedish and Hollander blood, mingled with the English. Those from Pennsylvania had a slight mixture of Irish, Scotch and Scotch-Irish. The settlers of new communities leave their im- press upon the locality long after they are gone. In Ohio these five centres were quite isolated, on account of broad intermediate spaces of dense unsettled forests, through which, if there were roads or trails, they were nearly impracticable. They all had occupation enough to secure the bread of life, clear away the trees around their cabins, and defend themselves against their red enemies. Though of one American family, their environment delayed their full social fusion at least one generation. Their differences were principally those of education, and includ- ing their religious cultus, were so thoroughly inbred that they stood in the relation of different races, but without animosity. A large part of them had

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taken part in the war of the Revolution, or they would have been lacking in courage to plant themselves on a frontier that was virtually in a state of war until the peace of 1815. The expeditions of Harmar in 1790, St. Clair in 1791 and Wayne in 1792-94 embraced many of them as volunteers. Full one thousand whites and more Indians were killed on Ohio soil before peace was assured. Nearly every man had a rifle and its accoutrements, with which he could bring down a squirrel or turkey from the tallest tree, and a deer, a bear or an Indian at sixty rods. They had not felt the weakening effect of idleness or luxury. Their food was coarse, but solid and abundant. In spite of the malaria of new 'countries, the number of robust, active men fit for military duty was proportion- ially large. As hunters of wild animals or wild men, they were the full equals of the latter in endurance and the art of success. They were fully capable of defend- ing themselves. The dishonorable surrender at Detroit, August 16, 1812, became known on the Western Reserve, where the settlements were wholly unguarded, between the 20th and 22d ; probably at Washington not before the 25th or 26th. General Wadsworth, commanding the Fourth Division of the State Militia, ordered the Third Brigade (General Perkins) to rendezvous at Cleveland. On the 23d, the men of the Lake counties were on their way, each with his rifle, well- filled powder-horn, bullet-pouch and butcher-knife, in squads or companies, on foot or mounted ; and on the 26th, one battalion moved westward. By the 5th of September, before any orders from Washington reached them, a post was established on the Huron river, near Milan, in Huron county. Nothing but these improvised troops lay between General Brock's army at Detroit and the settled portions of the State. The frontier line of settlements at that time turned south, away from Lake Erie at Huron, passing by Mansfield and Delaware to Urbana, in Champaign county.

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Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume I, Part 18

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893 Publication date: 1907 Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio Number of Pages: 1006

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio
Number of Pages: 1006