USA > Ohio > Brown County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 16
USA > Ohio > Clermont County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 16
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More about the affair was learned from prisoners, who were with Tecumseh, after they were released and returned through
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Wayne's Victory and Treaty. The fate of McIntyre was thus explained. In the afternoon before the attack, he had caught a horse in the woods, which he tied by their camp fires, and rode it away on the retreat. Tecumseh and four others found his tracks the next morning, and, following, came to where he had stopped and was cooking a piece of meat. After a chase, McIntyre was personally captured by Tecumseh, who did not pursue the retreating whites any farther, but returned to his own camp with the prisoner. After a short absence on other affairs, Tecumseh on returning was deeply indignant to find that his guards had killed McIntyre. What was done about this same McIntyre's bond to Belteshazzar Dragoo has not been found. Various tales of the battle were told by the re- turned prisoners. Some placed the Indian loss at two; others said that fourteen were killed and seventeen wounded, and that a band of a hundred intending to capture boats on the Ohio was thus turned from their purpose. Every enlarging circum- stance was used to increase the consequence of Tecumseh and soothe the discomfiture of Kenton's party.
Some of Tecumseh's band remained in the East Fork Valley or others took their place. Massie gathering a large force for an early start, arranged to work in three detachments that could be massed for mutual protection. The course taken as shown by results was toward and up the Little Miami as far as possible, and then east to Paint Creek and the Scioto, in order to obtain some outline of the Military District. As Massie's own detachment of nine men was working along the Stone Lick, they were attacked by some twenty Indians and forced to seek safety in Covalt's Station across the Miami to- ward Fort Washington.
There is circumstantial but not positive assurance that, as the party went working up the eastern side of the Miami, Colonel Robert Todd selected the tract now known as Todd's Survey, No. 1550, of four hundred acres that now includes a part of Branch Hill. But the Survey was not reported until March 10, 1794. On April 1, 1792, Joseph Carrington's Survey No. 631, of five hundred acres now including most of Loveland was fully struck from the wilderness. The party then passed northward through eastern Warren County, and to Clark and Clinton Counties. On April 24, 1792, all Kentucky was made
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to mourn for Colonel Robert Todd's death by the haunting Indian's. Despite the danger, the work went on to the finish of Massie's purpose. Made more watchful, if possible, by his beloved brother-in-law's untimely fate, William Lytle had the special fortune to discover and kill an Indian in the act of firing upon the unsuspecting Massie. But for the clear eye, steady nerve and instant action of the student, the career of the Master would have stopped the next moment. The relations between the two were full of the instinctive respect of brave and generous spirits that believe in the good and fear no harm from the other. In the deep solitudes of their companionship, they opened their thoughts to visions of the empire of homes and happiness that would mantle the Land Wonderful, when the throngs of delighting toil should follow the paths they were preparing. As their youth was leading through the perils of spying the land, so, out of the right that comes with all dearly bought knowledge, their age should share the splendor of the transformation that would soon require their busy pleasure to hasten. Instead of sending their brave designs to wither along the waste of vain intentions, fostering fate changed their dreams into plans of action so plain and prac- tical that time but wears a deeper mark to their merit.
After returning to Massie's Station, surveying was resumed on Stone Lick, as is proved by the record on October 20, 1792, of John Linton's Survey No. 681, for one thousand six hundred and sixty-six and two-third acres in Stone Lick township. The position of that survey is a peculiar proof that others adjoining were made at another time in order to close the extremely dif- ficult lines. It has pleased some writers who probably never followed a line, "Through bush and through brier," to decry the lack of system characteristic of the Virginia Military Sur- veys. In fact there was much lack of system all through. The Indians were not systematic in their attacks. The public defense was a personal necessity. The scalps of the houseless and the well-to-do counted the same in the war dances, but there was much inequality among the defenders. To remedy this Virginia promised an ample home, and promised that each should choose and shape the land himself. The custom gloried in the intense individuality that was avowed by whoever could say "I am a Virginian." What that has meant on battlefields
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has passed into history. Such was the sentiment mingled with the divisions of the land that seem very odd and awkward to those accustomed to the modern method of surveying which is not more suggestive of patriotism than the multiplication table. Unless the honor was bartered or trifled away, the name of a survey is a perpetual memorial of the first posses- sor's martial worth. To judge the quality and make a fair allowance for difference between hill and valley, land or water power according to the orders or advice of the owners of the warrants was a part of the problem that continuously con- fronted the first surveyors. A fair study of such problems must admit that there was nothing careless or haphazard in the skill that comprehended and projected the bold lines, "Through flood and through fire," and Indian fire at that, of Linton's huge survey, nearly three miles long, so as to include several more miles of the Stonelick Canyon. A modern buyer could not easily be shown a less desirable tract of equal extent in the two counties. Yet it was the first and for some, time the only survey made in Stonelick Township. To make that survey Massie braved the presence of Tecumseh's victo- ' rious band. From it he was forced to fly to Covalt's Station and after the big expedition of the year was done, he returned to finish the interrupted lines. We have recently heard much censure of selfish control of ore, oil and timber lands and irrigation ways. Those whose logic results in opposition to all private possession of natural forces will frown at the object of Linton's Survey in 1792, when there was no roof raised and no grain grown in all the space between Massie's and Covalt's Stations. After the test of more than a hundred years all must smile to learn that Massie's perilous efforts to make and com- plete that survey were prompted by his determination to pre- empt and hold the most valuable mill-sites along that precipi- tous stream.
In 1793, Lytle not yet twenty-three years old was deemed qualified for independent action. After that, Massie mainly · took the Scioto side of the District, and gathered his helpers in his convenient Station or from about Maysville and Kenton Station. Lytle inclined to the Miami side with assistants from about Lexington. Of these assistants, his brother John, also a surveyor, was first. The story of their work for the ten or
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twelve years to come would largely be a history of the map- ping of Old Clermont. The fringe notched along the Ohio by O'Bannon's party in 1787 and 1788 and by Massie, and by a few others along the Miami and up the smaller streams in 1792, was now to be widened by an advance upon the inland forest. On April 1, 1793, eight hundred choice acres adjoining Todd's Survey in Miami Township were measured for Ezekiel Howell. On April 10, a four hundred tract was cut out on the O'Bannon in Goshen Township for W. Campbell. The young surveyor may be regarded as having "found himself" by the end of that summer, judging by the work accomplished during a few days. From October 6 to October 12 inclusive, the surveys on the waters of the East Fork, and mostly in Batavia Town- ship, were : for Robert Tyler, thirteen hundred and thirty-three and one-third acres ; for John Gernon, two thousand acres ; for Joseph Jones, seven hundred thirty-eight acres ; for N. Darby, fourteen hundred and forty-four acres; for William Parsons, one thousand acres; and for Robert Gibbon, one thousand acres-in all, seven thousand, five hundred and fifteen and one- third acres in six tracts, in seven days. Some of these and many others have suffered a change of names but the metes and bounds are as fixed by Lytle. The Gibbon tract includes the town of Amelia. The chain for the Parsons Survey was carried by David Osborn and Charles Crist, while the marking was done by Daniel Campbell. A thousand acres for Robert Dandridge was arranged to include the water power on Clover Creek.
The profit of the work was fascinating. An old Virginia law fixed a surveyor's fee for the field work and descriptive plat at three hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco for each thousand acres. But, with the great peril of the work, such regulation went out of use, and the owners of land warrants gladly gave an interest in the tract to be located when a price in money could not be agreed upon. Sometimes a fourth and even a third interest was offered. The owner or owners of several warrants sometimes offered one for the surveys of the rest. Then, presently, a tract would be entered in Lytle's own name. All Kentucky was speculating in land and no one was more hopeful than young William Lytle, as he realized his steadily growing consequence as an Ohio land-holder. Ambi-
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tion tinted every prospect. We can believe that the winter months were busy with describing and explaining what had been done, and with planning, dealing and contracting for the next campaign. The youthful hero of Moluntha's Capture and Grant's Defeat was welcomed with local pride about Lexing- ton or where he chose to go in Kentucky. The trend of his ambition carried him away from the swirl of petty rivalries and gained him sympathy amid otherwise jealous contentions. · Those, who might have been hostile to his energy centered on local affairs, were eager to use his talent on the danger line. Without a page to quote from but the maps of his work, we know that his life was brimful of intense physical and mental activity. His enterprise was radically personal in every detail. There was no co-operative bureau or agency to collect the war- rants, arrange the terms or distribute the surveys. There was no mail, no express, no communication, except a special mes- senger went to or from the party hidden in the wilderness. Everything depended upon the infinite attention of the chief whose sole limitation was an honorable performance of his promise.
Lytle's party for 1794 started early-so early, that on March 27 they had completed a survey for John Breckenridge of four thousand acres within which the Village of Bethel was some- what centrally founded. In and about that Breckenridge Sur- vey, fate also founded and fostered a series of incidents that within two generations reached the utmost importance yet at- tained in the Story of Freedom. While a completed survey was a desirable base for another, it was sometimes required that there should be a "line-up" with an older one miles away. A general gathering place thus became a necessity for a party many.miles from its home.
A sheer bank of thirty feet facing southward across the East Fork and stretching more than as many rods either way along the stream offered some protection against attack on that side. The huge beech trees that crowned the bluff were a natural rampart for men trained "to tree" against an enemy. A plenti- ful spring flowed and still flows from between the Silurian ledges and the eight or ten feet of overtopping gravel and soil that forms the surrounding plain to the hills a half mile away. In front of the bank and floating downward from the midway
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spring, a pretty island of some three acres once divided the river and made the scene an enchanting trysting place for rural rėvelry, party powwow or pious praise. Some thought that a trail came that way from the Shawnee towns on the Miami to the Buffalo grounds by the Bluelick plains in Kentucky. Others thought it was on the way by which the Scioto War- riors hastened to the Mouth of the Licking. Lytle soon learned that the camp was central in the Valley of the East Fork, about which his fortune was gathering. Just when the camp was formally chosen is not known. But the traditions of the Surveyor's Camp were a vivid memory among some who loved to tell how things began. It may have had some use in 1793. The following year required such convenience and in 1795, Lytle's work was all around that vicinity, reaching east- ward into the present limits of Brown County.
Among those speculating in Ohio lands was General James Taylor afterward a resident of Newport, Kentucky, who be- came the holder of many fine tracts in the Virginia Military District. The immediate local effect of Wayne's Victory was to permit actual settlers to buy lands for that purpose. The first evidence of that new order in Old Clermont was a power of attorney from General Taylor to William Lytle issued on April 24, 1795, authorizing him to sell and convey in such quantities and on such terms as he saw fit any or all of Taylor's Military lands. The survey of a thousand acres between Mount Carmel and Tobasco was sold to Robert Kyle for two dollars and fifty cents per acre. The next survey including Tobasco was sold for two dollars per acre, to Daniel Durham. In the same year Ezekiel Dimmitt bought the fine bottom lands just below Batavia for two dollars and fifty cents per acre. These values may be regarded as fairly representative of the land market in 1795. The buyers were among the ablest of the pioneers and left prosperous families. Taylor and Lytle were thoroughly posted traders and fully realized the benefits from prospective settlement.
In coming and going between Lexington and his work in Ohio, Lytle had the choice of two roads. One was the main pioneer trail from Limestone Point on the Ohio to Central Kentucky, now known as the Maysville and Lexington Pike. From Limestone the way to his camp went down the Ohio and
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over the hills across the Breckenridge Survey, sometimes by Feesburg, but generally by the Bullskin. That way went nearby where Amos Wood, his son William, and Thomas Watt came over the river from their cabin by what is now Dover to get some Ohio venison. Having killed a deer and while getting ready to return, they were surprised by Indians and fled with all speed. Failing to reach their boat, Amos jumped into the river and started to swim across, but was shot from the bank. The son was tomahawked while running for life. A tomahawk thrown at Watt was dodged and gained by him. Turning upon the pursuing Indian, Watt was able to gain the boat and reached the Dover shore, where the tragedy had been witnessed by the wife and mother and other friends of the slain. Wood's body was found near Cincinnati, where the rest of the family afterward lived awhile and then drifted away to a still wilder frontier. How many more of the luckless who went from friends and were known no more may have perished on the lonely shore of Old Clermont can never be told.
But when Lytle wished to confer with General Taylor or make large acquaintance with the managers of the Symmes Purchase or to meet those who were going between Kentucky and the Army or to pay his respect to Governor St. Clair, he went by Covalt's Station to Cincinnati and over the road lately opened from there to Lexington.
While the locality has frequent mention in the early annals of the Cincinnati region the story of Covalt's Station has been strangely omitted from works that should have been adorned with the heroic incidents. In the same days when Judge Symmes and Major Stites were forming their plans and gather- ing the companies that settled Columbia and North Bend and resulted in Cincinnati, Captain Abraham Covalt, a soldier of the Revolution, from New Jersey, but then a resident of Bed- ford County, Pennsylvania, negotiated with Symmes and Stites for the possession of a tract on the Little Miami, which proved to be the noble terrace opposite the mouth of the East Fork that at once gained fame among the pioneers with the appro- priately descriptive name of "Round Bottom." The forgetful- ness of the ancient story is doubtless due to the fact that the first settlers soon went away and left their fine land to be the farm home of United States Senator, John Smith, whose fair
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fame was clouded by an imputed complicity with Aaron Burr. After that, every material vestige of the once formidable sta- tion faded from sight and memory so that none can point its place. Captain Covalt having organized his expedition and journeyed over the mountains to the Ohio, started down the river on New Year's day, 1789, and on January 19, landed with- out mishap at Columbia, from two large "arks" loaded with all that was deemed necessary for an independent colony. One boat brought agricultural implements, the outfit for a small grain mill and the finest lot of horses, cattle, sheep and swine that had as yet been brought to the Territory North West. The entire company amounted to forty-five men. women and children. The patriarch's family was numerous, and the heads of other families were Robert McKinney, Jonathan Pittman, John Webb, John Hutchens, David Smith, Z. Hinkle and Timothy Covalt. Among the single friends and relatives were Fletcher, Buckingham, Beagle, Clemmons, Cook, Coleman, Murphy and Gerston. On the dispersion of the colony, the paternal names of Covalt, Mckinney, Webb, Hutchens, Fletcher, Beagle and Clemmons crossed the Miami and follow- ing the lines to newer and cheaper lands, found homes in Union. Miami, Goshen, Wayne and Stonelick Townships of Clermont County. As many of the men were cut off in the long war, the more numerous maternal branches have formed a bewildering network of extensive relationship to that band of bold adventurers.
Captain Covalt indulged no illusions of a peaceful possession. Through undaunting perils and with unflinching fortitude. he hoped to plant his family amid the honorable plenty of the most productive prospect of which his ears had heard. To accomplish this, the grandfather accepted the hazard of plant- ing their fortune on the utmost verge of the Indian Country at the mouth of the desolate Valley centering the Land of Old Clermont. Without delay the weak were left on the boats and in tents protected by Columbia while the strong went to Round Bottom and built seventeen cabins into a palisade that also protected a structure for their mill. The exact location is not certain except that it was determined by the water power of the small stream from the hills, long known as Mill Run. The site therefore was near the present confluence of the Wooster
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Pike, the Pennsylvania Railway, the Hillsboro and Columbus, and the Milford and Blanchester Traction lines. This scene of incessant travel in full view of the immense freighting of the Norfolk and Western Railway across the Miami has the dis- tinction of being the first inland white settlement in all Ohio. As the winter of 1788-9 with its record of extreme severity went by, Covalt's people were reunited under their protecting palisade in making the "clearing" that now bears the alluring yet satisfying name of "Terrace Park." Before the first flowers of spring had faded in that loveliest of valleys, five of their best horses had been stolen. In June Fletcher, Buckingham and Abraham Covalt, Jr .. started to hunt up the Miami. Be- fore going far, Covalt became uneasy and insisted that they should return so urgently that the others consented to get back to the station by nightfall. While retracing their way, they were suddenly fired upon by a band of yelling Indians. Covalt and Fletcher were walking close together, and started to run down the river. Buckingham some three rods in the rear started up the river much hindered by his blanket which was finally flung from his neck with the loss of his hat. The hill coming close to the river there, he started up, but soon per- ceiving that he was not pursued. he stopped, carefully primed his gun, and listened. A yelling down the bottom forty rods or more away convinced him that one or both of his com- panions had been overtaken. With such a start, he hurried along the hills till near the railroad bridge below Miamisville, and then across the bottom plain made famous as Camp Den- nison, to the stockade, where Fletcher had come only a few minutes earlier in the night. Tripped by a vine, Fletcher had fallen and laid still. while the pursuers, thinking him done for, pushed on after the doomed Covalt. Then he darted aside and gained safety. A searching party the next day found and brought young Covalt's scalped and plundered body for decent burial at the Station. One month later his dearest friend, Abel Cook, was killed by a savage lurking around their field. and was buried by his side. In March, 1790. the row of graves was increased for Captain Covalt and Hinkle, who were killed while making shingles near the fort. In September. 1791. Captain Aaron Mercer and Captain Ignatius Ross of Columbia in re- turning from Covalt's Mill with their grists on horseback met
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4
James Newell, also of Columbia, on his way to the mill with corn to be ground. They warned him that "Indian signs" had been seen, and vainly entreated him to return with them. Be- fore going far, they heard a shot, and on cautiously returning, found that Newell had been killed, pilfered and his horse stolen. Captain Ross was the father of Major Thomas Ross, the pioneer of Sterling Township. Captain Mercer was the pioneer who ventured in the summer of 1792 to build a block house on the east side of the Miami where copious springs gushed from a gravel bank and flowed through a prodigiously fertile bottom safely above all floods. The enterprise was aided by his sons-in-law, Ichabod Miller and Thomas Brown, and the place was known as Mercersburg, until some later people invented the strikingly inappropriate name of Newtown for one of the very old towns of Ohio.
One who would rather mingle the fancies of romance with facts of action may find many suggestions in tracing the migra- tions of families. In 1789 William Riggs, Sr., of Delaware, and a son who answered to the title of Major started from Delaware with a good wagon, four fine horses, a negro man worth eight hundred dollars, a choice outfit and three thousand dollars in gold. The winter was spent with a son and daughter living near Fort Red Stone, doubtless with much satisfactory speculation about the fine heritage that would be secured in the Miami country. In the spring of 1790, they reached Lime- stone, where the negro man took flight and was seen no more. After a vain wait for his return, their boat sailed or floated to Columbia, where the wagon was put ashore and the horses tied fore and aft, as was the custom, for feeding over night, with two boys for a sleepy guard. In the morning the horses were gone and never found, without blame to the Indians. In some way the family became a part of the Covalt garrison. Shortly after Newell's fate, Timothy Covalt, who had suc- ceeded his father, went with Major Riggs across the Miami to get a basket of pawpaws. As they sauntered through a patch back of the long familiar mill site, they met the fire and awful yell of three Indians lurking along the gravelly ridge fifteen or twenty yards away. Seeing that Riggs, who was ahead. had fallen, Covalt turned from the hotly pursuing Indians and fled into the river from which he was rescued by people from the
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fort who came so promptly that the Indians only stopped to scalp the unfortunate Riggs who could not have been chosen for more evil fate in Delaware.
A large per cent. of the Covalt garrison was with St. Clair's Army, and when the tidings of that defeat came, the dispirited remnant took their effects and combined with those at Gerard's Station. Gerard's Station was founded in April, 1790, by a party that went entirely outside of Symmes' Pur- chase and boldly established themselves on the east side of the Little Miami entirely within the Virginia Military reservation, where a strong block house was built not far from the eastern end of what has long been known as the Union Bridge-a point of unique importance to much of Brown and Clermont Coun- ties. The head men in maintaining Gerard Station were John Gerard, Joseph Martin, Captain James Flinn, Stephen Betts, Joseph Williamson, Stephen Davis, Richard Hall and Jacob Bachofen. The talk about old-fashioned weather, either hot or cold or any extreme, has no supporting evidence in a long aggregation of time. While the winter of 1788-9 was a dreadful memory, the first winter of 1792 was semitropical. The despair of defeat was lulled by a gladness of spring that wooed the refugees back to the deserted stations, and Round Bottom was reoccupied in February. But during the summer three of Covalt's already depleted garrison were captured. The loss of the leader and more than half of the defenders told heavily on the rest. How the affairs of the Station were settled and how the estate passed to Senator Smith, I have not learned, nor does it matter much after the failure of the heroic effort, except the painful neglect which has obliterated the graves that should have been respected. The pertinence to our story is the grim courage that went back from the River Ohio and there boldly made the first interior stand for civilization, in West Milford on the edge and within the municipal jurisdiction of Clermont. And with this, the fact must be taken that quite a half of the survivors staked their subsequent fortune in Old Clermont.
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