Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume I, Part 86

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

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may be here, or they may be a great way off. You have lived a long time with us. I call on you to say if I have not been a father to you ; if I have not used you as a father would a son ?' I said, 'You have used me as well as a father could use a son.' He said, ' I am glad you say so. You have lived long with me ; you have hunted for me ; but your treaty says you must be free. If you choose to go with people of your own color I have no right to say a word ; but if you choose to stay with me your people have no right to speak. Now reflect on it and take your choice and tell us as soon as you make up your mind.' I was silent for a few minutes, in which time I seemed to think of most everything. I thought of the children I had just left crying ; I thought of the Indians I was attached to, and I thought of my people whom I remembered ; and this latter thought predominated, and I said, ' I will go with my kin.' The old man then said, 'I have raised you. I have learned you to hunt ; you are a good hunter. You have been better to me than my own sons. I am now getting old and I cannot hunt. I thought you would be a support to my old age. I leaned on you as on a staff. Now it is broken-you are going to leave me and I have no right to say a word, but I am ruined.' He then sank back in tears to his seat. I heartily joined him in his tears, parted with him, and have never seen or heard of him since."

On his return from his captivity Brickell settled in Columbus, and became one of its most esteemed citizens. O. M. Spencer, the eleven-year-old Cincinnati boy, was taken in 1792, while a little way from home, by two Indians. His captor was a Shawnee, but he shortly transferred his rights to his companion, Wah-paw- waw-qua, or White Loon, the son of a Mohawk chief. At their arrival at the confluence of the Auglaize and the Maumee, after disposing of their furs to a British Indian trader, they crossed over to a small bark-cabin near its banks, and directly opposite the point, and, leaving him in charge of its occupant-an old widow, the mother-in-law of Waw-paw-waw-qua-departed for their homes, a Shawnee village, on the river about one mile below.

Cooh-coo-che, the widow in whose charge young Spencer had been left, was a princess of the Iroquois tribe. She was a priestess, to whom the Indians applied before going on any important war expedition. She was esteemed a great medi- cine-woman.

The description of the settlement at that time is from the narrative of Spencer:

On this high ground (since the site of Fort Defiance, erected by General Wayne in 1794), extending from the Maumee a quarter of a mile up the Auglaize, about two hun- dred yards in width, was an open space, on the west and south of which were oak woods, with hazel undergrowth. Within this open- ing, a few hundred yards above the point, on the steep high bank of the Auglaize, were five or six cabins and log-houses, inhabited principally by Indian traders. The most northerly, a large hewed log-house, divided below into three apartments, was occupied as a warehouse, store and dwelling by George Ironside. the most wealthy and influential of

the traders on the point. Next to his were the houses of Pirault (Pero), a French baker, and M'Kenzie, a Scot, who, in addition to merchandising, followed the occupation of a silversmith, exchanging with the Indians his brooches, ear-drops, and other silver orna- ments, at an enormous profit, for skins and furs. Still farther up were several other families of French and English; and two American prisoners, Henry Ball, a soldier taken at St. Clair's defeat, and his wife, Polly Meadows, captured at the same time, were allowed to live here, and by labor to pay their masters the price of their ransom ; he by boating to the rapids of the Maumee,

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DEFIANCE COUNTY.

and she by washing and sewing. Fronting the house of Ironside, and about fifty yards from the bank. was a small stockade enclos- ing two hewed log-houses, one of which was occupied by James Girty (brother of Simon), the other, occasionally, by M' Kee and Elliott, British Indian agents, living at Detroit.

From this station I had a fine view of the large village more than a mile south, on the east side of the Auglaize, of Blue Jacket's town, and of the Maumee river for several miles below, and of the extensive prairie covered with corn, directly opposite, and forming together a very handsome landscape.

Young Spencer was redeemed from captivity on the last day of February, 1793, and through the solicitation of Washington to the governor of Canada. The latter instructed Col. Elliott, the Indian agent, to interpose for his release. He was taken down the Maumee in an open pirouge, thence paddled in a canoe by two sqnaws along the shore of Lake Erie to Detroit. His route thence was by Lake Erie in a vessel to Erie, Pa., thence to Forts Chippewa and Niagara, across New York State, then mostly a wilderness, to Albany, down the Hudson to New York city, thence through Pennsylvania to Cincinnati. The distance was 2,000 miles, and such the difficulties to be overcome that two years were consumed in the journey ; but for the protecting auspices of those highest in authority it could not have been accomplished at all.

Young Spencer became a Methodist minister, and reared a family of the high- est respectability ; one son became postmaster of Cincinnati about 1850, another a judge of its superior court.

Wayne was eight days in building Fort Defiance ; began on the 9th of August and finished on the 17th. After surveying its block-houses, pickets, ditches, and fascines, Wayne exclaimed, " I defy the English, Indians, and all the devils in hell to take it." Gen. Scott, who happened at that instant to be standing at his side, remarked, " Then call it 'FORT DEFIANCE !'" and so Wayne, in a letter to the Secretary of War written at this time, said : "Thus, sir, we have gained possession of the grand emporium of the hostile Indians of the West, without loss of blood. The very extensive and highly cultivated fields and gardens show the work of many hands. The margin of those beautiful rivers-the Miamis of the lake (or Maumee) and Auglaize-appear like one continued village for a number of miles both above and below this place; nor have I ever before beheld such fields of corn in any part of America from Canada to Florida. We are now employed in completing a strong stockade fort, with four good block-houses, by way of bastions, at the confluence of the Auglaize and the Maumee, which I have called Defiance."

When first known, there was an abundance of apple trees at Defiance. The bank of the Auglaize at one spot was lined with these trees, aud there were single trees scattered about in various places. It is supposed they were planted by French missionaries and traders during the French dominion on the lakes, and cared for afterwards by the Indian trappers and traders. The fruit of these trees was better than that of the so-called natural trees of the present time; they grew larger, and had a more agreeable taste. The stocks were more like the forest trees ; higher to the branches, longer to the limbs than the grafted trees of the presout day. Probably the shade and contracted clearings in which they were grown had much to do with this large growth. There was then no civilization to bring in borers, worms, and curculios, and so the trees thrived without hindrance. The "County History," published in 1883, from which the above was derived, says : "Defiance has been famed for the possession of a monstrous apple tree. Strangers have seldom failed to visit it, to measure its proportions, and speculate upon its age and origin. It stands on the narrow bottom, on the north side of the Maumee, and nearly opposite the old fort. It has never failed, in the knowl- edge of present settlers, in producing a crop of very excellent apples. One large branch, however, has of late years been broken off by the storms, which has much marred its proportions ; the remainder is yet healthy and prospering. Before the town was laid out there were many trees, equally thrifty and not less in size, in

546

DEFIANCE COUNTY.

this vicinity." The famed apple tree was destroyed by a gale in the fall of 1886. It was judged to be 150 years old, and was much dilapidated. It has produced in some seasons 200 bushels of apples.

In the war of 1812 Fort Defiance was an important point for the concentration of troops, under Gen. Harrison, against the British and Indians on the frontier. On one occasion a revolt took place in the Kentucky regiment of Col. Allen. Gen. Harrison was not present, but luckily arrived that night in camp, and had retired, when he was suddenly awakened by Col. Allen and Maj. Hardin with the bad tidings. The ontcome illustrates the knowledge of his men and the inimitable tact which Gen. Harrison appears to have possessed in his management of them. The details are from Knapp's " History of the Maumee Valley :"

Col. Allen and Major M. D. Hardin in- formed the General that Allen's regiment, exhausted by the hard fare of the campaign, and disappointed in the expectation of an immediate engagement with the enemy, had, in defiance of their duty to their coun- try and all the earnest impassioned remon- strances of their officers, determined to re- turn home. They begged the General to rise and interfere, as the only officer who could bring the mutineers to a sense of their duty.

Gen. Harrison informed the officers that he would take the matter in hand, and they retired. In the meantime, he sent an aid to Gen. Winchester to order the alarm, or point of war, to be beat the following morning in- stead of the reveille.

The next morning, at the roll of the drum, every soldier sprang to his post, all alert and eager to learn the cause of the unexpected war alarm. Gen. Winchester formed them into a hollow square; at this moment Gen. Harrison appeared upon pa- rade. The effect on the assembled troops of this sudden and unexpected appearance in their midst of their favorite commander can be easily imagined. Taking advantage of this Gen. Harrison immediately addressed them. He began by lamenting that there was, as he was informed, considerable dis- content in one of the Kentucky regiments ; this, although a mortification to himself, on their account, was happily of little conse- quence to the government. He had more troops than he knew what to do with at the present stage of the campaign ; he was ex- pecting daily the arrival of the Pennsylvania and Virginia quotas. It is fortunate, said this officer, with the ready oratory for which his native Virginia is so famed, that he had found out this dissatisfaction before the cam- paign was farther advanced, when the dis- covery might have been mischievous to the public interests, as well as disgraceful to the parties concerned. Now, so far as the gov- ernment was interested, the discontented troops, who had come into the woods with the expectation of finding all the luxuries of home and of peace, had full liberty to return. He would, he continued, order facilities to be . furnished for their immediate accommoda- tion. But he could not refrain from express- ing the mortification he anticipated for the reception they would meet from the old and

the young, who had greeted them on their march to the scene of war, as their gallant neighbors.

What must be their feelings, said the Gen- eral, to see those whom they had hailed as their generous defenders, now returning with- out striking a blow and before their term of plighted service had expired? But if this would be the state of public sentiment in Ohio, what would it be in Kentucky? If their fathers did not drive their degenerate sons back to the field of battle to recover their wounded honor, their mothers and sis- ters would hiss them from their presence. If, however, the discontented men were dis- posed to put up with all the taunts and dis- dain which awaited them wherever they went they were, General Harrison again assured them, at full liberty to go back.

The influence of this animated address was instantaneous.

This was evinced in a manner most flatter- ing to the tact and management of the com- mander. Col. J. M. Scott, the senior colonel of Kentucky, and who had served in the armies of Harmar, St. Clair and Wayne, in the medical staff, now addressed his men.

These were well known in the army as the "Iron Works " from the neighborhood from which they had come. "You, my boys," said the generous veteran, "will prove your attachment for the service of your country and your general by giving him three cheers."

The address was attended with immediate success, and the air resounded with the shouts of both officers and men.

Colonel Lewis next took up the same course and with the same effect.

It now became the turn of the noble Allen again to try the temper of his men. He begged leave of the general to address them, but excess of emotion choked his utterance. At length he gave vent to the contending feelings of his heart in a broken but forcible address, breathing the fire which ever burned so ardently in his breast. At the close of it, however, he conjured the soldiers of his reg- iment to give the general the same manifesta- tion of their patriotism and returning sense of duty which the other Kentucky regiments had so freely done. The wishes of their high-spirited officer were complied with, and a mutiny was nipped in its bnd which might, if persisted in, have spread disaffection

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DEFIANCE COUNTY.

through the Kentucky troops, to the disgrace of that gallant State and the lasting injury of the public cause. No troops, however, behaved more faithfully or zealously through

the remainder of their service till the greater part of them offered up their lives in de- fence of their country on the fatal field of Raisin.

HICKSVILLE is twenty miles west of Defiance, on the line of the B. & O. & C. R. R. It has two newspapers : Independent, Republican, T. G. Dowell, editor ; News, Independent, W. C. B. Harrison, editor. Churches : 1 Catholie, 1 Chris- tian, 1 Methodist, 1 Episcopal, 2 Presbyterian, and, in 1880, 1,212 inhabitants.

Hicksville was laid out in 1836 by Miller Arrowsmith for John A. Bryan, Henry W. Hicks, and Isaac S. Smith. The next spring the Hon. ALFRED P. EDGERTON (born in Plattsburg, N. Y., in 1813) came out here in 1837 and assumed the management of the extended landed interests of the " American Land Company " and of the Messrs. Hicks, their interest being known as the "Hicks Land Company." He revised and added to the layout of the town, built mills, and made extensive improvements, and was a generous contributor to every good work or thing connected with the welfare of the community. In his land-office in Hicksville, np to October 5, 1852, he sold 140,000 acres, all to actual settlers. In 1857 he removed to Fort Wayne, Ind., but remained a citizen of Ohio until 1862, and now, late in life, is Civil Service Commissioner under the general government.

Mr. Edgerton is a man of remarkable intel- lectnal and physical vitality, and his life has been strongly and usefully identified with the history of this region and the State. In 1845 he was elected to the State Senate from the ter- ritory embraced by the present counties of Williams, Defiance, Paulding, Van Wert, Mer- cer, Auglaize, Allen, Henry, Putnam, and part of Fulton, where he became the leader of the Democratic party, and electrified the Senate by his clear, logical sper-hes in opposition to some of the financial mer res advocated by the late Alfred Kelley, the Whig leader. It was stated that "while the debate between the two was Moss LĂNG Co. N.Y. one of the most noted of the times, that the ALFRED P. EDGERTON. respectful deference shown by Mr. Edgerton to Mr. Kelley, who was the senior, won for him the respect of the entire Whig party of the State and secured to him ever after the warm friendship and respect of Mr. Kelley, which he often exhibited in kind and valuable ways." This was during the period of our original tour over the State, and we well remember sceing him in his place in the Senate, being impressed by the keen, sharp, intellectual visage of the then young man. That memory has prompted us to this full notice.

He was elected to Congress in 1850 and again in 1852, and during the latter term, with several others of the more sagacious members of the Democratic party, opposed the rescinding of the Missouri Compromise.

On closing up the affairs of the land company Mr. Edgerton bought a large amount of land of them at a merely nominal price. We terminate this account of him by the relation of a very pleasant incident of honorable history, as related by Mr. Frank G. Carpenter :

Along early in the seventies Mr. Edgerton was worth between $800,000 and $1,000,000, and he was helping his brother, Lycurgus Edgerton, who was doing business in New

York. His brother had only his verbal promise for surety, and when the panic of 1873 came around and caused him to fail to the extent of $250,000, Edgerton was not

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DEFIANCE COUNTY.

legally responsible for his debts. Neverthe- less, he paid every dollar of them, though in doing so it cost him the larger part of his fortune. In order to get the ready money he had to sell valuable stocks, such as the Pitts- burg, Fort Wayne and Chicago railroad stock, and others which are now away above par, but which went then at a sacrifice. Upon Edgerton's friends urging him not to pay these debts of his brother, stating that he could not be held for them, he replied that the legal obligation made no difference to him. He had promised his brother that he would be his surety, and had he made no such promise he would have paid his brother's

debts rather than see his notes dishonored. Such examples as that above instanced by Mr. Carpenter of a fine sense of honor on the part of public men are of extraordinary edu- cational value to the general public, especially so to the young. Hence it pleases us to here cite another illustrative instance on the part of one of Ohio's gallant officers, Gen. Chas. H. Grosvenor, the member of Congress from the Athens district. He made claim for an invalid pension, which was allowed. Later, finding he could attend to business so as to support his family, he felt it wrong to accept of his pension, and ordered the check in his favor, which was about $5,000, to be cancelled.

DELAWARE.

DELAWARE COUNTY was formed from Franklin county, February 10, 1808. It lies north of Columbus. The surface is generally level and the soil clay, except the river bottoms. About one-third of the surface is adapted to meadow and pas- ture, and the remainder to the plough. The Scioto and branches run through north and south-the Olentangy, Alum creek, and Walnut creek. Area, 450 square miles. In 1885 the acres cultivated were 108,277; in pasture, 98,488; woodland, 43,371 ; lying waste, 1,009 ; produced in wheat, 279,917 bushels ; corn, 1,410,875 ; wool, 606,665 pounds ; sheep, 107,895. School census 1886, 8,487 ; teachers, 196. It has 72 miles of railroad.

TOWNSHIPS AND CENSUS.

1840.

1880.

TOWNSHIPS AND CENSUS.

1840.

1880.

Berkshire,

1,407

1,656

Marlborough,

1,182

360

Berlin,

827

1,388

Orange,

789

1,227

Brown,

908

1,178

Oxford,

774

1,266

Concord,

1,185

1,478

Porter,

678

925

Delaware,

1,917

8,091

Radnor,

1,174

1,209

Genoa,

1,193

1,045

Scioto,

877

1,667

Harlem,

963

1,144

Thompson,

660

851

Kingston,

657

562

Trenton,

1,188

899

Liberty,

811

1,481

Troy,

838

954

The population of the county in 1820 was 7,639; in 1840, 22,060; in 1860, 23,902 ; in 1880, 27,381, of whom 21,890 were Ohio-born.

The name of this county originated from the Delaware tribe, some of whom once dwelt within its limits, and had extensive corn-fields adjacent to its seat of justice. John Johnston says:

"The true name of this once powerful tribe is Wa-be-nugh-ka, that is, 'the people from the east,' or ' the sun rising.' The tradition among themselves is, that they originally, at some very remote period, emigrated from the West, crossed the Mississippi, ascending the Ohio, fighting their way, until they reached the Delaware river (so named from Lord Delaware), near where Philadelphia now stands, in which region of country they became fixed.

About this time they were so numerous that no enumeration could be made of

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DELAWARE COUNTY.

the nation. They welcomed to the shores of the new world that great lawgiver, William Penn, and his peaceful followers, and ever since this people have enter- tained a kind and grateful recollection of them ; and to this day, speaking of good men, they would say, 'Wa-she-a, E-le-ne,' such a man is a Quaker, i. e., all good men are Quakers. In 1823 I removed to the west of the Mississippi persons of this tribe who were born and raised within thirty miles of Philadelphia. These were the most squalid, wretched, and degraded of their race, and often furnished chiefs with a subject of reproach against the whites, pointing to these of their peo- ple and saying to ns, ' see how you have spoiled them,' meaning they had acquired all the bad habits of the white people, and were ignorant of hunting, and incapable of making a livelihood as other Indians.

In 1819 there were belonging to my agency in Ohio 80 Delawares, who were stationed near Upper Sandusky, and in Indiana 2,300 of the same tribe.

Bockinghelas was the principal chief of the Delawares for many years after my going into the Indian country ; he was a distinguished warrior in his day, and an old man when I knew him. Killbuck, another Delaware chief, had received a liberal education at Princeton College, and retained until his death the great out- lines of the morality of the Gospel."

In the middle of the last century the Forks of the Muskingum, in Coshocton county, was the great central point of the Delawares. There are yet fragments.of the nation in Canada and in the Indian Territory.

The following historical sketch of Delaware county and its noted characters was written for the first edition by Dr. H. C. Mann :

The first settlement in the county was made May 1, 1801, on the cast bank of the Olen- tangy, five miles below Delaware, by Nathan Carpenter and Avery Powers, from Chenango county, N. Y. Carpenter brought his family with him and built the first cabin near where the farm-house now stands. Powers' family came out towards fall, but he had been out the year before to explore the country and select the location. In April, 1802, Thomas Celler, with Josiah Mckinney, from Franklin county, Pa., moved in and settled two miles lower down, and in the fall of 1803 Henry Perry, from Wales, commenced a clearing and put up a cabin in Radnor, three-fourths of a mile south of Delhi. In the spring of 1804 Aaron, John and Ebenezer Welch (brothers) and Capt. Leonard Monroe, from Chenango, N. Y., settled in Carpenter's neighborhood, and the next fall Col. Byxbe and his company, from Berkshire, Mass., settled on Alum creek, and named their township Berkshire. The settlement at Nor- ton, by William Drake and Nathaniel Wyatt ; Lewis settlement, in Berlin, and the one at Westfield followed soon after. In 1804 Car- penter built the first mill in the county, where the factory of Gun, Jones & Co. now stands. It was a saw-mill, with a small pair of stones attached, made of boulders, or "nigger heads," as they are commonly called. It could only grind a few bushels a day, but still it was a great advantage to the settlers. When the county was organized, in 1808, the following officers were elected, viz. : Avery Powers, John Welch and Ezekiel Brown, commissioners ; Rev. Jacob Drake, treasurer ; Dr. Reuben Lamb, recorder, and Azariah Root, surveyor. The officers of the court were Judge Belt, of Chillicothe, presi-

dent ; Josiah M'Kinney, Thomas Brown and Moses Byxbe, associate judges ; Ralph Os- born, prosecuting attorney ; Solomon Smith, sheriff, and Moses Byxbe, Jr., clerk. The first session was held in a little cabin that stood north of the sulphur spring. The grand jury sat under a cherry-tree, and the petit jury in a cluster of bushes on another part of the lot, with their constables at a con- siderable distance to keep off intruders.

Block-houses .- This being a border county during the last war, danger was apprehended from the Indians, and a block-house was built in 1812 at Norton, and another, stillstanding on Alum creek, seven miles east from Delaware, and the present dwelling of L. H. Cowles, Esq., northeast corner Main and William streets, was converted into a temporary stockade. During the war this county fur- nished a company of cavalry, that served several short campaigns as volunteers under Capt. Elias Murray, and several entire com- panies of infantry were called out from here at different times by Gov. Meigs, but the county never was invaded.

Drake's Defeat .- After Hull's surrender, Capt. Wm. Drake formed a company of rangers in the northern part of the county to protect the frontier from mauranding bands of Indians who then had nothing to restrain them, and when Lower Sandusky was threat- ened with attack, this company, with great alacrity, obeyed the call to march to its de- fence. They encamped the first night a few miles beyond the outskirts of the settlement. In those days the captain was a great wag, and naturally very fond of sport, and being withal desirous of testing the courage of his men, after they had all got asleep, he slipped into the bushes at some distance, and, dis-

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Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume I, Part 86

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