USA > Ohio > Brown County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 11
USA > Ohio > Clermont County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 11
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39
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Portsmouth is, and started a clearing. After some planting, the four went "land hunting" along the Scioto to near Pike- ton where one of them, Peter Patrick, cut his initials from which Pee-Pee township in Pike county took its singular name. Nearby, two of them were killed while the other two escaped over the hills to the mouth of the Little Scioto on the Ohio, where they fortunately gained a boat that took them to their little patch by the future city of Portsmouth, whence they fled to Limestone. The busiest antiquarian has found no proof of another white occupation of that date in all the Scioto region. But Harmar's observations were made from the talk about Pittsburgh. Yet, there were some whites by or with the Indians of whom a few were of the marvelous type that braved every danger, but the larger portion were mon- grels or derelicts from civilization, whose place in the de- scending scale ranged between outcasts, fugitives and rene- gades, whose only link to their race was a bitter memory and a hated color only tolerated by their red neighbors because they were equally wild and pitiful. With all allowance for such possible people, the lower Miami region of the Indian Country was a boundary of mutual fear equally deserted by the squaw and papoose or shunned by the settler's wife and babe, and only traversed by the stealthy scouts of crafty foes.
On August 5, 1786, a little army of science crossed the river at the mouth of Little Beaver and began the perilous task of mapping the wilderness beyond the Ohio. A commodious structure was built for a base and named Fort Steuben, which was the beginning of Steubenville. On September 18, four- teen surveyors and fieldmen guarded by thirty-six soldiers, having reached forty-three miles on an east and west line on the Big Trail by Sandy Creek, were stopped by a scout's report that a large band of warriors was near. On September 23, Thomas Hutchins, the "Geographer-General," retired with his surveyors to their fort. This mapping of the "Congress Land" of Ohio, under military protection was renewed in east- ern Ohio with the leaves of 1787. Meanwhile, Richard Clough Anderson was appointed Surveyor-General of "Military Lands," with office at Louisville, that was opened August I, 1787, and extended by a corps of deputy surveyors, who pres- ently began the work of mapping the still unconquered wilds
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between the Scioto and the Litle Miami, with no military aid but their own wits and rifles. The men who took the hazard of that labor were men of massive mould and toughest fiber. With their wandering ways, the partition of the land by metes and bounds for individual industry was something slowly learned and poorly acquired by the Indians. A similar restric- tion of air or light would have seemed scarcely more absurd. The destructive effect upon their mode of living was equally charged to the surveyors and their instruments. The imme- diate effect of the treaties was to permit the white people to attempt a settlement that had heretofore been forbidden them by their own laws; but that permission did not give pos- session which was still fiercely opposed by those who did not approve the terms made by the chiefs.
An incident for local pride that should not be forgotten by any who love the land is found in the fact that the first attempt under legal authority for individual possession of a tract for a home in the Military District was made by a sur- veying party headed by John O'Bannon, who landed on the north bank of the Ohio, November 13, 1787, and, notwith- standing much recent and adjacent danger, surveyed four- teen hundred acres for Colonel Neville, which now includes the village of Neville and thus commemorates that fine offi- cer of the Virginia line. The work thus begun continued for several months amid difficulties peculiar to a wintry sea- son and with due regard to the hostile surroundings. What prompted the start at Neville is unknown. But the records of the surveys show that O'Bannon was connected with work for several distinguished soldiers. On November 14, 1787, a survey of one thousand acres that now includes the village of Moscow was made for General Richard C. Anderson and on December 28, 1787, a tract of eight hundred and thirty- nine acres in what is Franklin township was set apart for General George Washington. O'Bannon's service has been much considered in the Ohio Archaeological Reports, and is perpetuated by the stream that marks the northwestern limit of Clermont. It is difficult to adequately impress the peo- ple of this day with the conditions that confronted the early map makers. Except for the ancient hills with the stream embracing vales between and a few score of names, the con-
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nections between the past and present geography of the re- gion are mainly determined by the fictitious lines traced through imagined points by the exploring surveyors, whose names in musty records seem scarcely less mythical than the fabulous heroes of legendary lore. Yet, our homes and all they imply stand within the circumscription of those first elusive lines of the original surveys that charted the wilder- ness for civilization.
1787 was a year full of importance for our story. Even before the surveyors began the map for homes yet to come, statesmen such as had only gladdened the dreams of liberty before, were planning a noble prospect for man; for, as if inspired with a vision not seen but sure to be, the Fathers of the Nation solemnly ordained that the great Northwest should be forever free. Under the auspicious decrees of that Ordi- nance of 1787, the second Declaration of America, the spirit of migration enlarged the hope of man. The occupation of Ohio undertaken by Virginia thirty-seven years before and generally maintained by her arms was become a question of national anxiety. As the realization seemed in sight, the hope of the cavalier became the object of the pilgrim's pride. While Virginia had kept the region from the Scioto to the Miami to pay the promised bounty to her patriots, the equally deserving soldiers of other less fortunate States moved to secure a similar reward. On June 16, 1783, two hundred and eighty-three officers vainly petitioned Congress to that ef- fect. On March 3, 1786, delegates from the Revolutionary soldiers of New England met in Boston at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern and organized The Ohio Company, with General Israel Putnam President, for the purpose of mak- ing a western settlement.
On July 6, to Congress then in session in New York City, Dr. Manassah Cutler as agent for the association presented their proposition for a purchase conditioned upon an accept- able form of government that should be prescribed. In just one week on July 13, with a satisfaction that included every member of Congress present, that "acceptable form of gov- ernment," the wisest, the noblest and the most benevolent legislation ever combined in one performance, was accom- plished by the famous Ordinance of '87. On July 27th, only
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two weeks later, the negotiations with the Ohio Company for one million five hundred thousand acres of land were con- firmed. This purchase of land around the Muskingum valley ranged northward and eastward to the Congress lands of East- ern Ohio. At the same time a subcontract was made that pre- empted all land westward along the Ohio to the Scioto. The prospects of the Ohio Company of New England, like those of the Ohio Company of Virginia forty years before, were rosy with the spells of hope. Looking backward we can see how the plans of both companies brought the promoters more care than personal profit, and how both toiled for results mainly to be enjoyed by other generations.
On November 23, 1787, at Bracket's Tavern in Boston, the company in convention ordered that the move to the Ohio should begin. On December 3d, the van, as often pictured, started from Ipswich, Mass., westward to Braddock's road to landings whence the wagons and stock could be taken on a second "Mayflower" to a second New England on the Ohio. Others in other wagons followed later. On the cloudy morn- ing of April 7, 1778, the entire company of forty-eight men armed at Fort Harmar and began the foundations of Marietta, and so began the first-no, the second attempt for the civiliza- tion of Ohio. As the offspring of New England, it is but nat- ural that this event should have adventitious importance to that school of historians. The pomp of oratory, the persuasion of rhetoric and the ecstacy of poetic rapture have combined to celebrate that enterprise, until those of little research are apt to forget that there were others who shared their merits and multiplied their achievements.
The longing for land was not limited to the bravest and best. Many schemes were contrived to gain fine tracts that ranged from the tomahawk claims of illegal settlers to grants from foreign courts. To detect and thwart these dubious titles was not less important than the sales to responsible pur- chasers. The currency was fickle and scarce. Personal safety also hindered individual ventures and required that many should band together. Therefore the government was driven to consider immense tracts at one sale.
In this way John Cleves Symmes, a native of Long Island, a resident of New Jersey, a Lieutenant Governor, a mem -.
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ber of Congress, a judge of the Supreme Court of that State, and an active Colonel in the Revolution-all accomplished before his forty-fifth year-petitioned Congress on August 29, 1787, on behalf of citizens westward of Connecticut, who, encouraged by the terms secured to the New England people, prayed that they should have a million acres, on similar con- ditions, to be granted on the Ohio and between the Little and Great Miami Rivers. Congress directed that this petition should take order from October 2, 1787. A method was thus prescribed along the entire river front of Ohio, whereby a settler could obtain a title for a home, either in the Congress Lands of Eastern Ohio, of the Company, of Symmes, or in the Virginia Military District between the Little Miami and the Scioto, where the land warrants could be located in the order presented.
How rapidly this was done, considering that it was brought about on horseback, is proved by a report to the Secretary of War, in which Colonel Harmar states from "Camp at the Rapids of Ohio, June 15, 1787." "Judge Symmes .... is here and has it in contemplation to establish a settlement on the Wabash." Out of this "contemplation" Symmes hurried to the site of future wealth between the Miamis, and then to New York to make his "Association" solid for all that was left of Ohio on the Ohio. We know that he hurried or he could not have done the work between the dates. The discov- ery of such incidental combinations helps a writer and his reader to feel that there is affinity between now and then.
In all this while, Major Benjamin Stites was, unconsciously perhaps, helping the fates to spin a pretty story, by loading a boat at "Old Fort Red Stone" in the early weeks of 1787, with produce of which, according to the custom of the time, some portion most likely was the then most popular brand of spirits, "Old Monongahela." Landing at Maysville and selling his load at Kenton's Station, now Washington, he would have started east, but an Indian raid for horses allured him to join the pursuit of the retreat that soon crossed the Ohio, followed many miles down the north bank and then went across the hills to the Shawnee towns about the head streams of the Little Miami. Finding the chase hopeless, the partly prudently retreated down stream to the Ohio. De-
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lighted with the scene, Stites determined to make a settle- ment there and hastened east to urge that arrangement. He arrived in time to help Symmes, with zealous argument, and clinched the decision by bargaining for a ten thousand acre corner by the mouth of the Little Miami. Judge Symmes and Major Stites at once began to persuade their neighbors and to prepare their migration, which because of adjustments with Congress was not undertaken till the next spring.
The conditions not far from the proposed settlements make the intention appear incredible. In April, 1787, a son of Colonel Charles Scott was killed and scalped near his father's home. On May 20, 1787, three family boats or "Arks," loaded with several families each, were decoyed ashore on almost the same sands where Major Rogers and his command were massacred eight years before; and in the awful butchery that followed not one out of all the families was left to tell the most horrid tale of the Beautiful River. On July 7, 1787, Colonel Harmar reported from the Falls that none would venture up the river and that his letters had been returned because of danger about the Miamis. In the summer of 1786 an Indian band stole thirteen horses from Colonel William Lytle, living within sixteen miles of Lexington. In 1787 they would have taken his stockade but for the timely arrival of sixty helping men. At any time and anywhere from the Scioto to the Wabash and to the Kentucky rivers, death was imminent with no more warning than the flourish of a toma- hawk and a glimpse of a swarthy face. The retaliation made in an excursion to the headwaters of the Great Miami under Colonel Edwards was disappointing and only served to in- crease-if possible-the hatred of the races.
In that year, 1787, by the reports of the County Lieuten- ants, Kentucky mustered five thousand fighting men and more kept coming. From October 10, 1786, to December 9, 1787, three hundred and twenty-three boats carried five thousand eight hundred and eighty-five souls, with two hundred and sixty-seven wagons, eight hundred and thirty-seven cattle, and two thousand seven hundred and fourteen horses by Fort Harmar to Limestone and the Falls. Such was the growth from "one hundred and two guns" in 1777. But on January 10, 1788. Harmar, now a general, reported that he
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had ordered all officers commanding posts to put the troops perfectly on their guard to avoid surprise, as his information indicated the open hostility of the confederation under Brant.
The condition thus brought into view displays the weak- ness of the new Nation in its infancy. The Congress that produced the Ordinance of 1787 had chosen a strong man for its President; and in their wisdom that President was needed to govern the new Territory they had formed, and that man was Arthur St. Clair. He did not seek the place. He wished not to go. Some have said that this was affected. The reasons for believing his sincerity are as a hundred to one. In large experience, natural endowment and favor of fortune, he was easy among the most accomplished and se- cure in social dignity. There was much to be missed and little that could be gained from life in the wilderness. He was persuaded by an ideal of duty to accept what his wis- dom would have refused. In an evil hour for his quiet, St. Clair consented to leave the society he adorned and be the Governor of the chaos of the Territory Northwest of the Ohio. This happened October 5, 1787. On July 9, 1788, the Governor first came to Marietta. On July 15, civil govern- ment was proclaimed, and on June 26, the county of Wash- ington was established. On August 27, Judge Symmes and party reached Fort Harmar on their way to the Miamis. Events began to happen in some places and ceased to happen in others. Trouble with the Indians grew thicker. Major Stites came with his people to Limestone and went among his friends at Kenton's Station. While riving clapboards to take on the boats for the roofs to be made about the mouth of the Little Miami, a favorite nephew helping him was shot to death by an Indian who escaped. And the surveying across the river in Old Clermont ceased for awhile about the same time. Because Judge Symmes' people in the East had some trouble in fixing terms with the agents of the Con- gress, their people in the West were delayed at Limestone, when they should have been building cabins by the Miamis. Of course, there was suspicion and rumors of a jealousy that feared the western agents would undersell those about the Muskingum, and so put things in the way, which is all for- gotten or should be, and, most likely, was not so. But whether
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so or not, Major Stites floated down to his purchase, and, on November 18, 1788, began the settlement of Columbia, with twenty-six people present.
Matthias Denman of New Jersey having acquired a title to an eight hundred acre tract opposite the mouth of the Licking, for about one hundred and twenty-five dollars in specie, and having sold an undivided two-thirds of it to Colonel Robert Patterson and John Filson of Lexington, for the purpose of laying off a town, the people interested came out from Lexington to Limestone; and from there in boats to the number of twenty-six men, to their purchase, on De- cember 28. And that was the beginning of Losantville. Judge Symmes and his party came to North Bend, February 2, 1789, which made four settlements on the Ohio: Marietta, Colum- bia, Losantville and North Bend. The people by the Mus- kingum were protected by Fort Harmar. Why the others were permitted amid the strife around has not been explained. The attacks on the river were frequent. Captured boats were used to capture others. On July 27, thirty-six soldiers under Lieutenant Peters conveying supplies were attacked near the mouth of the Wabash and suffered a loss of ten killed and eight wounded. A mounted expedition mustered under Col- onel Robert Todd and, crossing near the mouth of Eagle Creek, marched through the southeastern part of Old Cler- mont into Adams county and went by way of Sinking Springs to wipe out the Paint Creek towns. They returned by the same trail with little success, the Indians having made a flight that could not prudently be followed far. Although Colonel Todd had married Jane, the eldest sister of William Lytle, the young hero of Logan's expedition through Brown county two years before, was not in the second campaign. Instead, he took a conspicuously brilliant part in "Grant's Defeat" near Vevay, Ind., of which we are to have an account farther on in Lytle's own words.
Whoever honors this story with a reading must expect frequent mention of St. Clair and Lytle through a number of pages to come; for they had much to do with the found- ing and settlement of Old Clermont. The Governor came instructed by Congress to omit no effort to treat for peace. After months of baffling tactics, in which the Indians con-
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sumed the most of eight thousand dollars' worth of stores provided for their maintenance, and, after insisting that the settlers should not plant corn in Ohio, a treaty was signed on January 11, 1789, from which St. Clair went to New York City, and the Indians went to place their women and chil- dren in towns farther north and west along the Maumee and Wabash for the final fight where British help was handy.
On April 30, 1789, St. Clair witnessed the first inaugura- tion of President Washington, to whom, on May 2, he re- ported the condition of the Territory and the particulars of the treaties. Twelve days later Washington wrote "with concern" about some murders that had been committed by the Indians on April 23, by Dunkeld Creek near the Monon- gahela River. This brought the atrocities of the Western War, that was not admitted to be a war by the East, much nearer home. The murderers were assumed to be some rem- nants of the Shawnees who ought to be intercepted, for the incident was likely to have a bad effect on the late treaty. About the same time St. Clair received several cures for the gout, a bad trouble for one from whom so much activity was required. Yet the months went by in ceaseless effort for needed legislation and much more needed money to buy arms and stores for his Territory, for the President agreed with him that the "banditti must be intercepted." With no re- liance but hope, the course was piled with difficulties. The French in Illinois and on the Wabash clamored to retain their slaves, while the poor whites of their own tongue were starving. General Miro, the Spanish Governor at New Or- leans, on September 6, 1789, gave forth a proclamation to encourage immigration to the Province of Louisiana (which was everything west of the Mississippi) that would have depopulated the Ohio Valley, but for one stupid blunder in- herent in the Spanish nature. That blunder restricted public worship to the forms of the Roman Church. Otherwise, the promise included a homestead of not less than three hundred acres for each family and a free market for every product at New Orleans. With the one testing restriction, the proclama- tion was made with no acceptance alike from the descend- ants of the Puritans, the Covenanters, the Cavaliers, the Huguenots, and even the Catholics who had learned the
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benefits of civil and religious liberty. They would accept no less, the bourbon King would not grant that much. But the proclamation disclosed the insidious design to dissolve the Union with discontent.
On October 6, 1789, St. Clair received his instructions from President Washington and also a personal, explanatory letter, in which it was "forcibly observed" that war with the Indians ought to be avoided by all consistent means. Wash- ington had the peculiar art of stating his purpose so that a reason required the desired action. The execution of that order to refrain from force, for it was an order, was much resented in Kentucky. In coming west by Fort Harmar, St. Clair on January 2d reached the settlement of Losanti- . ville, which he renamed Cincinnati, and on January 4th is- sued the proclamation of the county of Hamilton that then embraced all between the Great and Little Miamis from the Ohio to the new treaty line. From there he hurried to the French towns in Illinois that had been ruined by the disorder following Clark's conquest. While doing all in his power to provide for their want, he "put them in some order on April 27," by proclaiming the county of St. Clair, including about the western half of the present State southward from the Illinois River. On May I, while at Cahokia, he reported to the Secretary of War from dispatches just received, a series of disasters that broke the eastern illusions of peace. On March 22, Major Doughty, having gone about two hundred and thirty miles up the Tennessee with fifteen men to talk peace, was attacked in great force. Six of his men were killed and five wounded. On the same day, two boats were taken near the mouth of the Scioto. In the midst of the capture, three more boats were seen coming down. These were so closely chased with one of the captured boats for fifteen miles that the crews of two took to the third boat and escaped. One of the four boats lost held twenty-six horses and over six thousand dollars' worth of goods for one firm, besides much other property. On March 12, a boat loaded with salt for Louisville was taken and the crew killed, and, on the next day, a man was killed only two and one-half miles from Fort Steuben. With a touch of poetic pathos, St. Clair com- mented : "We seem to be here in another world that has no
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connection with the one we lately left." The loneliness he was toiling to cheer found another expression at the close of the long report. "Of what is passing in your quarter, or of the European world, we know as little as the man in the moon. For pity sake, send some newspapers. I never be- fore thought them of any consequence-they will now be a great treat." The western trip included the proclamation of the county of Knox, on June 20, 1790, bounded on the east by the Great Miami, on the west by the new county of St. Clair and on the south by the Ohio.
Refusing longer to endure the attacks charged to the Shaw- nees on the Scioto, who were said to hide along its banks and watch from the hills by its mouth for the coming boats, two hundred and thirty Kentuckians under Colonel Charles Scott crossed the Ohio, on April 30, and rode rapidly along the eastern side of Brown county with the design of striking the Scioto so as to intercept the retreat of the plundering band. Some accounts claim that General Harmar joined in the chase with a hundred soldiers, but it is not probable that he acted against Washington's restraining order. The expedition found only four Indians, who were promptly killed. The rest had gone beyond pursuit.
On August 16, 1790, the Governor officially informed Gen- eral Butler at Pittsburgh that there was no prospect of peace, and called upon him for sixty men properly equipped. The same notice went to other officers along the border. On Au- gust 23 the President approved the plans for the campaign. The war begun at Pickawillany on June. 21, 1752, without notice and continued somewhere without ceasing, was thus undertaken by the United States, without declaration and without enthusiasm. On September 30, General Harmar with three hundred and twenty regulars and with eleven hun- dred and thirty-three militia under Colonels Hardin and Trotter started from Cincinnati and marched to the Old Chil- licothe by Xenia and thence by Piqua and a hundred miles farther to the junction of the St. Mary and St. Joseph Rivers, now represented by the city of Fort Wayne, where the town of Omee was then the chief town of the Miami tribe, and a sort of capital for the various bands of Shawnees and others who had retired from farther south and east. The Indians
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