History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio; their past and present, Part 4

Author: Nelson, S.B., Cincinnati
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Cincinnati : S. B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1592

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ORGANIZATION OF THE FIRST COLONIES.

The greater part of the next year was spent by the leaders in organizing parties of immigrants in the East. Three settlements were to be established. Capt. Stites had chosen a site at the mouth of the Little Miami, Symmes at the mouth of the Great Miami, and a third speculator, Matthias Denman, a resident of Springfield, N. J., had made a location of several hundred acres at a point between the two other sites, on the bottom land and the elevated plain opposite the mouth of the Licking river.

The civil and social growth of the West had begun. It was in January, 1788, that Denman purchased the section opposite the Licking; in February Congress appointed the governor and the chief judges required for the Territory by the Ordi- nance, Symmes himself becoming one of the court; in April the first colonists of the Ohio Company arrived at the mouth of the Muskingum, two hundred miles east of the Miami Purchase, and laid out the town of Marietta; two months after Marietta was founded, the governor, Gen. Arthur St. Clair, and two of the judges, Parsons and Varnum, met there to begin their administration. After this first official ses- sion, Symmes went east again, to meet his family and followers. In the meantime

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

Capt. Stites and his company from Red Stone had passed Marietta on their way westward, and reached Limestone, where they stopped to prepare a quantity of tim- ber in order that their fort and cabins might be constructed immediately upon reaching the Little Miami. The experience of two generations had taught the natives of the Pennsylvania frontier better than to rely upon the friendship of the Indians.

They had been engaged in this employment a month or more, when Denman came up from the Miamis, where he had been examining his land, for which he now wanted settlers. It does not appear that he procured any recruits from Stites' division of Pennsylvanians, who were well enough satisfied with their own destina- tion; but two prominent Kentuckians, Col. Robert Patterson and John Filson, the first of whom knew Denman's ground well, found his representations favorable, bought two-thirds of his claim, and agreed with him to lay out and settle a town, to be called Losantiville. Patterson, whose influence was the most considerable, undertook to muster a force of settlers for the town, and Filson, who was a schoolmaster and surveyor, to establish the lines of its lots and streets.

The plans of these proprietors were soon adjusted, and their terms for the sale of lots advertised among the people of Kentucky. It was now late in September, and in the midst of these arrangements, Judge Symmes arrived at Limestone with the party which he had marshaled in New Jersey, numbering sixty members. Leaving his people at the well-thronged little hamlet, Symmes, with Denman, Capt. Stites and others, proceeded to the Miamis, where Patterson, Filson and a large party of Kentuckians were awaiting his appearance to make a general survey of the country. Some forty or fifty miles up the valley of the Great Miami, the explorers came across a small encampment of Indians, the sight of which at once excited the savage propensities of the Kentuckians. Symmes, however, refused to allow them to massacre the tenants of the camp; the Kentuckians became surly, and finally showed their ill-spirit by deserting the Judge and his few stanch comrades altogether. The broken and scattered party straggled back through the forest, but upon reach- ing Limestone again Filson was missing. He was never again seen or heard of by his companions of that autumn adventure. After waiting a long time for his return, Denman and Patterson took in his place a young surveyor named Israel Ludlow, an employe of the government, who engaged to perform the services originally under- taken by Filson.

The mysterious disappearance of Filson, which was of course attributed to the Indians whom the expedition had encountered, was but one of several incidents which had happened to demonstrate to the waiting immigrants that the northern woods were still far from safe. The Federal Government, however, was endeavor- ing to establish perfect security, and all the colonists, impatient, yet dismayed, lingered at Limestone a month and a half longer.

SETTLEMENT OF COLUMBIA, LOSANTIVILLE AND NORTH BEND.

By that time, finding that the anticipated treaty was still delayed, Capt. Stites' people, the most adventurous of the colonists, determined to move forward. This decision, too, was formed in the face of a rumor which had just been brought to Limestone by a party of Kentucky hunters; they were told that five hundred Indian warriors were stationed at the mouth of the Little Miami, ready to visit death upon all white persons who dared to land there. Only the women of Stites' party were affected by this terrifying report, and even they did not hold back. On the 16th of November the whole party left Limestone; at daybreak of the 18th their flatboats approached the mouth of the Little Miami. A cautious reconnoisance in the dusky morning light proved that they had received an empty warning; no Indians were in sight, and when the winter sun rose the founders of the second settlement in Ohio were gathered together upon the spot which they had chosen for a home, pouring out their gratitude to Providence for a safe deliverance.

Wolf Harryon

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

The rumor which they had heard at Limestone is charged by some annalists to the jealousy of certain Kentuckians; but there were really a few Shawnees encamped several miles up the Little Miami when Capt. Stites' boats put into shore. They offered friendship instead of war, however, and became so amiable that Stites sent word to Symmes and Patterson, at Limestone, to follow him without fear. Never- theless, the Captain was not so confident of this specious good will as to neglect the construction of his blockhouse, and his prudence was well repaid.

The persons composing this adventurous troop were not numerous. Only five of the men brought their families: Capt. Stites, Elijah Stites, Greenbright Bailey, Abel Cook and Jacob Mills. The remainder were either unmarried, or had left their wives and children in safer quarters. Their names were Hezekiah Stites, John S. Gano, Ephraim Kibby, Benjamin Cox. Joseph Cox, Hampton and Allen Woodruff, Evan Shelby, -- Hempstead. Daniel Shoemaker, Edmund Buxton, Elijah Mills, and Thomas C. Wade. During the next two years, the original party was strongly reinforced. The names of some of these later settlers were James H. Bailey, Zephu and Jonas Ball, James Bowman, Benjamin, David and Owen Davi-, Francis Dun- levy, Hugh Dunn, Isaac and Jobn Ferris, James Flinn, Gabriel and Luke Foster, James Newell, Benjamin F. Randolph, James Seward, William Goforth, Daniel Griffin, Joseph Grove, John Hardin, Cornelius Hurley, David, Henry, and Levi Jennings, Ezekiel Larned, John Manning, James Mathews, Aaron Mercer, Ichabod B. Miller, Patrick and William Moore, John Morris. Wickersham, John Mccullough, and Ignatius Ross.

The village of cabins which at once began to grow up around the blockhouse was christened Columbia. It was situated on the bank of the Ohio, more than half a mile below the mouth of the Little Miami. The valley of the Little Miami, which is two miles wide at its lower termination, was not all covered with forest, but many acres of its low and level surface expanded into a spacious natural mead- ow, which from being frequented both winter and summer by numerous flocks of wild poultry soon won the name of Turkey Bottom. Over this broad bottom land. Stites laid ont squares and streets for a great city, which he hoped would event- ually become the Queen of the West. But nature and destiny declared against. him, and the city never advanced beyond the plan. The vast cornfields of the- wealthy estates in the neighborhood are still haunted by the half-obsolete name of Turkey Bottom; the East End of the great Cincinnati corporation, which is gradually creeping up the Little Miami, wears the familiar name of Capt. Stites' rude little. hamlet. These are the most substantial memorials of his defeated ambition which. survive about the place of his settlement.

The message which Capt. Stites had sent to Limestone, and the peaceful prog- ress made by his settlers during the next month, gave assurance to Patterson's company. Twenty-six of their men, among whom were Col. Patterson and Ludlow, the substitute of the lost Filson, started down the Ohio upon the 24th of December, during the most inclement weather of the season, reached the mouth of the Licking on the 27th, and the next day began to lay out the town of Losantiville. To enlist these adventurers the proprietors of the ground, Denman, Patterson and Ludlow, had offered to give a lot to each of the first thirty men who would aid in establish- ing the settlement. In a few days these lots were surveyed, and each man made his choice by lottery. One or two cabins were then erected for shelter, the clearing of the ground was commenced, and other preparations made to receive several families that were expected to arrive in the spring.

In the meantime Judge Symmes remained at Limestone, waiting for the conclu- sion of the treaty which the authorities of the government were holding with the tribes of the Ohio at Fort Harmar, the government station opposite Marietta .. Symmes seems to have been the most unwilling of all the Miami leaders, at this time, to trust the Indians; yet he had the least reason of all to apprehend molestation.

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

His humane act in preserving the lives of the band on the Great Miami, in the pre- ceding autumn, had given him a kinder place in their regard than he seems to have suspected. Besides, he had been granted military protection, which Columbia and Losantiville yet lacked. A detachment of forty-five soldiers, under Capt. Kearsey, had been sent from Fort Harmar at his request, and had been waiting his orders at Limestone since the 12th of December. On the 3d of January, 1789, he dispatched a conciliatory message to the Wyandot and Shawnee warriors, reminding them of the service he had done them a few months before, offering to trade with them to their ad- vantage, and requesting them to restrain their young men from attacks upon the whites.

The message was well received, and shortly afterward the party of Shawnees whom Stites had found encamped at Columbia, having been cheated by some roving traders, for whose actions the settlers were in nowise responsible, demanded that Judge Symmes meet them and render reparation for their losses. As he still loitered, they sent word by Capt. Stites that they wished to see him; and shortly afterward they dispatched a second notice. Symmes thereupon feared that if he deferred his coming longer, they might go away offended, and all prospects of amicable relations, between their people and his, be completely destroyed. Though but imperfectly prepared for moving, he was determined by the latter consideration, and having gathered such provisions as could be obtained, he started down the river. His own family, a number of the settlers who had accompanied him from the East, and most of Capt. Kearsey's detachment of soldiers, formed his party. The river, swollen with one of its highest freshets, soon swept his fleet to Columbia, which vil- lage he found almost completely submerged. He passed on to Losantiville, where he stopped one night ;. on the 2nd of February, 1789, he stepped ashore at North Bend, a point twelve miles below Losantiville, and five above the month of the Great Miami. The sight of Columbia, sunken to the tops of its chimneys, had warned him against proceeding to his real destination.

After constructing a temporary habitation at North Bend, Symmes went on to the mouth of the Great Miami, where, like Stites at Columbia, he had dreamed of founding a magnificent city. Finding the situation as unfortunate as that of Colum- bia, he returned to North Bend, laid off a subdivision, and by donating some of the lots, succeeded in starting a respectable village.

The Shawnees who wished to see Judge Symmes were represented by Blackbeard (or Blackbird), a chief of some note in the tribe. He soon called at North Bend, and after a long discussion with Symmes, who labored to convince him that the set- tlers should not be held liable for the frauds of every rascally trader, expressed himself as satisfied with the intentions of the Long Knives. Whether his declara- tions were sincere or not, he sustained them by staying three or four weeks at North Bend, partaking of the Judge's entertainment, which included whiskey, in an exceedingly fraternal spirit.

COVALT STATION-BEGINNING OF INDIAN HOSTILITIES-FORT WASHINGTON BUILT.

About the time that Symmes left Limestone, a strong settlement was established in the valley of the Little Miami, nine or ten miles above Columbia, under the leader- ship of Capt. Abraham Covalt, a native of New Jersey, but a resident of Bedford county, western Penn., and a Revolutionary veteran. He was one of the leaders of the Miami immigration who cherished no splendid visions of future wealth and greatness; his highest worldly ambition was to remain independent. He was a true type of the sensible, homely, brave and honorable American of the old Colonial day, and an equally distinct type of that simple but noble manhood which appears to such rare advantage in every age and state of society.

The manner of his connection with Symmes is not clear, but the traditions of his family indicate that he made his purchase in 1787 or 1788, when Symmes and Stites were organizing their colonies in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Capt. Covalt left

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

1136109 Pennsylvania on the 1st of January, 1789. His outfit consisted of two large flat- boats, one of which was loaded with agricultural implements, and a number of the finest cattle, horses, sheep and swine, that had yet been brought to the country of the Miamis. Beside his own family, which was a numerous one, he was accom- panied by several others, whose names are still prominent in the eastern part of Ham- ilton county. The leaders of these families were Robert Mckinney, Jonathan Pittman, John Webb, John Hutchens, David Smith, Z. Hinkle, and Timothy Covalt; with them were friends or relatives bearing the names of Fletcher, Buckingham, Beagle, Clemmons, Coleman, Murphy, and Gerston.

This brave company, numbering in all forty-five persons, landed at Columbia on the 19th of January. For want of a better accommodation, a tent was raised on the bank of the Little Miami, in which the women and children found an indifferent shelter against the bitter cold and sleet of that memorable winter, while the men went up the valley to make a clearing and construct a fort.

The position of this station was one of the loneliest in the Miami Country at that · early period, but its advantages as a natural site in a great measure compensated the hardy frontiersmen for the perils it invited. The valley of the Little Miami at this point plunges from the north, a deep and narrow opening between the wood- covered hills, and meets the valley of the East Fork; the two, as they merge and widen into one, sweep away several miles to the westward. A long terrace, or ele- vated plain, lies in the arm of this curve, its level and extensive surface being now covered with the scattered houses which constitute the pretty suburban village of Terrace Park.

When Capt. Covalt first looked upon this plain its sandy soil was deep with the mould of an oak forest, fertilized by the decay of untold centuries, while its level expanse, once open to the sunlight and the air, offered every facility to cultivation. On the northeast the plain is separated from the foot of the hills by the hollow of a small stream that runs into the river; in this choice location Capt. Covalt and his followers erected a formidable stockade fort, of that design and construction which, from the first to the last experience of the Europeans and their descendants with the ferocious natives of the North American forest, was proven to be absolutely neces- sary to a mode of life requiring the precautions of defense more than convenience of residence. This class of structures first grew into use from the situation of the settlers of New England and Virginia, who found themselves a mere handful among hordes of wily enemies, whose merciless attacks could only be thwarted by a constant provision against surprise; and under their cover our population advanced from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. The successful stands which the scattered people of the frontier were enabled to make against the terrible savage, by means of these protec- tions, were so wonderful that the future descendants of the borderers will probably be disposed to regard their career somewhat as the modern European regards the achievements of medieval knights-errant. The usual plan of these forts was a square. At each corner of the square stood a blockhouse; from blockhouse to block- house were ranged the cabins of the residents, with their roofs sloping inwardly, to incommode an enemy's entrance as much as possible. The exterior walls were per- forated with loopholes, from which the fire of the besieged could be delivered during an attack. All openings between the cabins were closed by lines of palisade. The fort known through the early history of Hamilton county as Covalt's Station was built upon this plan, the cabins which formed its walls being seventeen in number. A mill, the first in the Miami Country, was built at the same time upon the small stream near the station, known yet as Mill run. The settlers from some of the lower stations carried their grist to this mill for several years after it was put into operation.

There were now four promising settlements along the edge of the great forest of the Miami Country, from the most extreme of which, in one direction, to the most extreme in the other, a sturdy woodsman might walk by the light of a single winter

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

day. Fresh immigration would have soon poured into them, to develop all the branches of civilized industry, had the red men kept the several treaties by which they had bound themselves to peace. But the border history of North America was not yet ended. It was less reasonable for the Americans to expect that the lords of the soil would surrender their ancient rights while the slenderest chance remained of preserving them, than for Great Britain to expect that the Americans would submit. to her tyranny. The Northwest Territory at this time held tribes who cherished the memory of more than a century's bitter wrongs against their overpowering enemy. The Mohicans and the Delawares still remembered the rivers of the salt sea; the Shawnees had abandoned more than one hunting ground to the palefaces before they found a liome on the western rivers; the Miamis, who had long and proudly with- stood the dreadful Iroquois, looked upon the new invaders of their land with haughty and ominous coldness; and the implacable Mohawk and his brethren of the Six Nations, who never made peace with one white nation except in alliance against. another, roamed the valleys of Ohio, and mingled with the fallen tribes to inflame them by secret counsels of resistance, and to carry the secret bribes of the British, who, since the Americans had successfully defied their oppression, had grown more malignant in their hatred than the savages themselves.

The more intelligent men of the different nations regarded war as a policy rather- than a means of gratifying malicious passion, but in those dignified intellects Amer- ican dominion encountered its strongest check. They discerned clearly the mourn- ful fate which was following their people, yet knew that retreat could only hasten its pursuit. Further struggle might prolong their wild liberty a few years; to cease struggling was to surrender it at once. From this alternative alone the suspended contest might have been resumed without the sly encouragement of the British.

These influences began to be felt but a few weeks after the first settlements were located in the Miami Country. The Miami nation had not been represented in the several treaties, and naturally refused to be bound by them, while the tribes with whom the treaties were made denied that they had relinquished their rights in their lands at all. Their disposition had completely changed. The only condition upon which they would now agree that peace should not be broken was that the Americans should withdraw beyond the Ohio, and never recross it, and one of the sagest coun- cillors and deadliest warriors of the Shawnees demanded that they should go back to their original quarters east of the Appalachian Mountains.

Before the coming of the whites more than one of the tribes dwelt upon the southern rivers of the country; one division of the Shawnees had their quarters at Old Chillicothe, in the Little Miami valley, it will be remembered, when Capt. Stites explored the country two years before. Upon the first appearance of the set- tlers the distrustful and designing natives retired northward, and the principal villages of the different nations were now gathered along the rivers of Lake Erie- within striking distance of the settlements, yet safe from counter-surprises.

The treaty meeting, held at Fort Harmar during the winter, was hardly over before some of the very bands which had assembled there were prowling about the western stations, bent on mischief. Before the first red bud tree was in bloom upon the hillsides, five of Capt. Covalt's fine horses had disappeared, and the people at Columbia had lost not only horses, but a considerable number of household articles and farming implements. The Columbians charged their losses to Blackbeard, Judge Symmes' admiring friend, and his gang, who took their departure by way of Columbia. Symmes was not surprised to learn of these misdeeds, for the bitter complaints made by Blackbeard's party against the traders had prepared him for such reprisals.

But the ill-will of the savages was rapidly growing ripe for bloodier manifesta- tions. In April, one of Symmes' surveying parties was ambushed, and two of the six men composing it were killed. Capt. Kearsey, after accompanying Symmes from

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

Limestone as a military escort, had refused to build a fort at North Bend, and had taken his troops to the Falls of the Ohio. Ensign Luce, who had been dispatched to North Bend with a smaller detachment in his place, on the 21st of May undertook to escort a number of citizens from North Bend to a point farther up the river. On the way their boat received an unexpected volley from the shore, which killed a soldier and wounded five others. Hardly a month of the year passed without bereaving some family among the settlers. Abraham Covalt, a member of Capt. Covalt's household, "one of as brave sons of Pennsylvania as ever inhaled the morning air," was killed in June, while hunting with four companions in the Little Miami valley, some miles above Covalt Station. Another young hunter named Abel Cook, the chosen friend of the gallant Covalt, was assassinated in the forest at Round Bottom near the station, a month later, as he was returning from a visit to Columbia. His body was discovered by some of his own associates, who carried it mournfully to the station, and buried it, with touching propriety, beside the fresh grave of his youthful friend.

The effect of these murders, and of others like them, may be easily imagined. Immigrants bound for the West paused in consternation, and many of the families already in the Miami Country fled into Kentucky. North Bend alone lost over fifty inhabitants after the attack upon Ensign Luce's party. In the midst of this panic, however, the leaders of the colonists stood firm, and redoubled their demands upon the government for protection. Symmes declared that Capt. Kearsey, who had deserted the settlers for the silly reason that Symmes located his village at North Bend, instead of at the mouth of the Great Miami, was to blame for the disasters which followed his departure. Fortunately it was the government of the new Union that was addressed, and not the government under whose feeble auspices the colonies were planted; and at the head of it sat the man who, of all American statesmen, most deeply sympathized with the western pioneers in their struggle- Washington himself. Maj. John Doughty, a capable officer of the army then stationed at Fort Harmar, was ordered to erect a fort in the best position for the defense of the Miami settlements. He reached the Miamis about the time that young Covalt was killed, bringing a strong force of infantry and a company of artillery. He chose to construct the fort at Losantiville, which was now really a village, though a smaller one than either Columbia or North Bend. In the meantime detachments of his troops were stationed at the other three settlements, and the courage of the . people began to revive.

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History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio; their past and present, Part 4

Author: Nelson, S.B., Cincinnati Publication date: 1894 Publisher: Cincinnati : S. B. Nelson Number of Pages: 1592

Author: Nelson, S.B., Cincinnati
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Cincinnati : S. B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1592