USA > Ohio > Brown County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 17
USA > Ohio > Clermont County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 17
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Lytle had fine control of the old pioneer spirit. He believed , in such men and they believed in him. No other man of his time induced so many to come to his lands and terms. There is a tradition of the Surveyor's Camp that Adam Snider, one of
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his men, killed an Indian for some offense, such, perhaps, as horse stealing-the greatest of pioneer provocations-for which retaliation was demanded. Lytle considered the com- plaint with a diplomatic gravity delightful to Indian etiquette and surprising to his associates. A feast was served and pres- ents arranged until the messengers professed satisfaction and ceased to prosecute. The tradition rests upon the memory of Mrs. Mary Cowdrey, a daughter of General Lytle's youngest sister, Elizabeth, whose married name was Beaty. Nearly sev- enty years of Mrs. Cowdrey's life were passed as a resident of Pike Township. Her story long forgotten by others is con- firmed by the fact that Adam Snider was one in the Surveyor's Camp and that he lived long in Williamsburg in a house across Broadway from the Court House, of which he was the janitor for many years. He was remembered by the old as a gentle, pleasant mannered man who bore no trace of a wild rough life. The easy change in their demand may be taken as proof that the Indians had not come to the camp with clean hands, but rather in a spirit of making good out of a bad claim.
In fact, the waning power of the Indians in 1793-4, despite their recent victories, 'permitted little attention to the clamor of distant bands whose pilferings were a poor substitute for the stern duty of watching and hindering Wayne's steady march toward the ruin of their dominion. After all the war for the Ohio was but a part of the ceaseless conflict that has every- where happened, and will forever occur between the essen- tially hostile forces of ignorance and progress. By the innate strength of its own action European refinement was brought into line along the Ohio against conditions thousands of years behind the march of the white race. The col- lision between resolute natures that would not and could not exist together was not to be averted. Every plea of the Indian to hold the land for hunting was impossible. Every proposi- tion to divide the land for individual tilling, and for the use of commerce was scorned. And so the tiller rose up against the man who would not work and slew him.
If the hunting rights had existed for generations and through centuries the decisions of war would have been equally force- ful. But the possession of the Shawnee claimants between Eagle Creek and the O'Bannon to the utmost sources of all
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the included streams had been nominal, and never amounted to the construction of one wigwam or the planting of a hill of corn. Again, this nominal claim never reached the duration that civilized experience has wisely established for the limita- tions needed to confirm a thorough and undisturbed posses- sion. From the extirpation of the Mound Builders to the ejectment of the Shawnees there is nothing to show that the region of Brown and Clermont counties was ever more than a trailing ground for hurried bands-and not much of that. With such conclusion there is no need for mawkish sentiment about the fate of the barbarians. They were the victims of an evolution that soon or late destroys what can not be as- similated. Their removal was so imperatively necessary as the extirpation of the fierce animals that fed upon the flocks and could neither change their spots nor hide their ravenous jaws. Yet no human mind can or should ignore the pity of or forget the sorrow that fell to the women and children for whom Moluntha asked mercy from the conquering race. The lack of a report of his plea for peace in face of the opposition of his warriors amid the commotion of the interrupted Treaty of Fort Finney is a deplorable loss from the all too meager records of Indian eloquence. The violence of their life, the imminence of tragic death, the mourning of mothers, the cry of fatherless children, the hunger of many, the impending ruin of all, formed a matchless theme for impassioned declamation, which, from the treaty, we know was mastered by the old Sachem, who was the statesman of the people generaled by Cornstalk and Tecumseh.
At last, within eight years of his dastardly assassination, the destiny foreseen by Moluntha was accomplished at the Battle of the Fallen Timbers on the Maumee. After the re- sults of that battle were confirmed by Wayne's Treaty in 1795, the white man was free, and not before, to "plant corn in Ohio," unvexed by Shawnee war. Enough of the land had been surveyed to afford homes for many, but the work was only fairly begun, and much the larger part had not been touched by O'Bannon, Massie, Lytle and the agents of Tay- lor. What was done by others came later.
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CHAPTER IX.
COMING OF THE PIONEERS.
The Effacement of a Hundred Years-The Settlements After Wayne's Treaty-Massie's Repulse from Paint Creek in 1795 -The Origin of Williamsburg-James Kain-Massie and Lytle in the East in the Winter of 1795-96-Platting of Wil- liamsburg Stopped by a Blizzard-Thomas Paxton-The Buchanan, Wood and Manning Settlement-The Ferguson Family-John Logston-Hamilton and Clark-Beltashazzar Dragoo-The Pioneers in a Forest Land-Adam Bricker- The People of 1796-The Pietists-The Five Ellis Brothers -The Dunlap-Kinkead Connection-James Edwards-Mills Stephenson-The Beaseleys-The Longs-Amos Ellis- Ezekiel Dimmitt and the Gest Brothers-The Light Family -The Christmas Fires of 1797-The Origin of Bethel- Obed Denham-The Baptist Church-The First Emancipa- tion Society-Taylor and Lytle Build a Grain and Saw Mill -The Earliest Breadstuff-The First Mill East of the Lit- tle Miami and West of Chillicothe-Lytle in Philadelphia in 1797-98-Early Births-Rumors of a New County-Ear- liest Roads-First Marriage-Kain's Dug Way and Mor- gan's Raid.
A view of the period in which our institutions began imme- diately involves a consideration of when and how and where the land was "taken up," which was the term of the time that distinguished private tracts from the public domain. Since in the beginning the forest covered all, it will be easier to men- tion and understand where it was broken. Only those who attempt to revive the past can realize how completely the ordinary concern of a life is submerged by a hundred years. Except it be written on a trasured leaf or carved on a mossy stone there is naught to tell a name of those upon whose knees our infant sires were tossed. Enough, however, has been gathered from here and there to mark some lines between what was and what was not, so that a mind alert for historic hint may find some unexpected satisfaction.
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While insisting that the Indian claims to our part of Ohio depended upon might and not upon right, it is only fair to add that there is no authentic instance of any claim whatever upon any land in Brown or Clermont counties not founded upon the ordinances and acts of Congress. This condition limits attention to the occupation of the surveys on which no settlement was maintained before the Treaty of Greenville, August 3, 1795, a date to be repeated until accepted as the base for all peaceful settlement north of the Ohio. Outside of the fourteen or fifteen block houses or stations around Fort Washington and forming a defensive cordon for the Cincinnati group the first settlement to the north was under the protection of Fort Hamilton, where ten families came in 1794. The first on record to test the value of Wayne's Treaty was William Bedle, who, on September 21, 1795, left Cincin- nati with his fortunes in a wagon and went by one of the old army trails to a point about five miles west of Lebanon, where, lest the Indians should forget, he built a block house for safety and began the first clearing in Warren County. In the same days, a company, in which Governor St. Clair was a shareholder, started an exploring party up the Great Miami. On November 4, that same party located at Dayton, to which three different companies went from Cincinnati in 1796 and made the first start in Montgomery County. The first settlement in Clark County was made at Chribb's Station in 1796, and on April 7, 1796, the first house was raised in Greene county. In December, 1794, a correspondence between Massie and Rev. Robert W. Finley relative to a settlement of emancipators from Kentucky re- sulted in the forming of a party of sixty men at Manchester for an exploration of the Scioto Valley. On reaching Paint Creek they encountered the Indians of that vicinity, who had refused to take part in Wayne's Treaty. In the conflict that followed Joshua Robinson was mortally wounded, but Arm- strong, a captive, escaped to his friends, while two Indians were killed and several wounded. The Kentuckians retreated to Brush Creek, where they were attacked early the next morning. The party continued to retreat with Allen Gilfillan wounded, and, on the next day, reached Manchester and went to their homes. With this repulse the efforts for settlement in that direction for 1795 were closed.
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Meanwhile, Lytle returned to his camp on the East Fork. On May 14, 1795, he made Timothy Peyton's Survey, No. 954, of one thousand acres in Sterling Township. Other work was done. But the time had come for a more important at- tempt. For two or three miles westward from the camp, close along the present track of the Norfolk & Western Railway, a tornado in downward swoop had leveled the forest some years before, and left a log-strewn scene. When soaked with win- ter storms, the rotting trunks were more forbidding for culti- vation than the green wilderness. But when fanned by sum- mer winds, the tangled mass was quick to burn. That Survey- or's camp and the tornado's path were the origin of Williams- burg, that, after Manchester, was a twin birth with Chilli- cothe, as the second town founded between the Scioto and the Little Miami.
Without waiting for settlers, Lytle determined to make a start where it would fix attention in a way to do him the most good. To this end, James Kain, of Columbia, where he had come in 1790 from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with well grown sons and some younger children, was engaged to clear forty acres of the tornado deadening. The extent of the undertak- · ing in one season proves that much help was required, but who rendered that help beyond his sons Daniel and John is not known. The clearing made in 1795. from its nature, was done in the dry season-in the summer. The clearing camp or cabin was a mile and a half west of the Surveyor's Camp. The scene until recently was witnessed by a spring beneath the brow of the hill about two hundred yards south of the Deerfield road and west of Kain Run, so named from the first white man to dwell by its course.
In those days the plans of Massie and Lytle were perfected for final action. The friendship of the master and pupil was strengthened by the larger purposes of manhood. Massie must have been much vexed by the skirmish with the Paint Creek Indians which had deferred his hopes by making set- tlements that would promote the land market in which both had much interest. They felt that the chance was coming that would redeem their hopes and repay their risks. And, what was still more important, both had located about all the land warrants that could be picked up in Kentucky. But the
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warrants were reported to be plenty and cheap in the East. Therefore, in the fall of 1795, both went east for mutual advantage and with a clear understanding of their purpose to secure the patents for lands already surveyed and to obtain options on work to come. They travelled well mounted with extra horses for the packs, the servants and themselves, so that the company could move rapidly and keep well together, for the Indians were not the only dangerous people on the lonesome traces.
In a letter from Philadelphia, then the national capital, and dated January 16, 1796, to his "Honored Parents," and now in my hand, Lytle gives a short account of his travels. He not only describes his difficulties, but also shows the customs of a well-to-do traveller at that time and proves himself a master of clear expression.
"Before arriving here in the fall, I had been obliged to travel 2,100 miles through several states; then finding, after three weeks' delay that my business called me to Richmond, Va., I left Peter, my servant, to take care of my horses and went on board a packet that sailed for Baltimore, where I con- tinued my journey in the land stages to Fredericksburg, in Virginia, at which place I was obliged to lie for one fortnight, when I got better and went on; but, unfortunately caught cold and relapsed. By the time I arrived in Richmond, I was ready to go to bed and lie thirty-three days, extremely ill with a nervous complaint, unable to attend to business or any- thing else. I then set out for Philadelphia again, at which place I arrived on the 28th of December, and have mended daily since, and at this time enjoy estimable health, living in Fourth street near the Market. Mr. Massie and self found, as we cannot get our patents down for two months, that it will be better for one of us to stay and get them, than to take the trouble of coming all the way back, so the lot appears to fall on me to stay, and I suppose it will be the middle of March before I leave. I think, if I get home once more, I will marry some person that will keep me there for I am tired of this rambling. The French appear to be generally successful, and I believe peace would be agreeable to both parties, if they knew how to come at it on honorable terms. I had the honor of dining a few days since with a British officer on
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the Lightning, so after the conversation changed to the present state of war in Europe, 'Oh, damn the French,' said the Captain, 'we are like not to do as much as we thought with them; they are like flints-the more they're beat, the more they spit fire.'"
This letter concluding with some personal words to par- ents, brothers and sisters was directed to "William Lytle, Esqr., Fayette Co'ty, Kentucky." Because a mail to that place as yet was not, the four pages were held by a wafer without an envelope, and "Honored by Mr. N. Massie." The child who wanted "to see things" done in the first landing at Cincinnati, the buffalo and bear hunter of fourteen, the boy volunteer who captured Moluntha and defied his General, the demon incarnate of wild courage at Grant's Defeat, the pupil who outran the Indians in a four-mile race from Donal- son's Creek, the youthful surveyor and prosperous land dealer, was now left in his twenty-sixth year to guide and maintain an important business and enjoy life in what was then the most select society in America, where he was credited with fine spirit and great promise; for his heroism was well known to the officials over whom George Washing- ton was still President. Amid such pleasant surroundings, he met and impressed a young lady already chosen by fate to be the grandmother of their illustrious descendant, "The Soldier Poet of America."
The future generals eventually got their patents "down." With their habits of keen observation, they must also have learned much that was different from the woodcraft of their experience. Many warrants were obtained that made the future look busy, and old plans were made definite. Massie returned and so restored the hopes of the emancipators, that Finney and forty others met him at Manchester, and, starting about April 1, 1796, went to the mouth of Paint Creek, while others boated up the Ohio and the Scioto. They planted some three hundred acres of Indian fields in corn. In August Mas- sie began to lay out the town of Chillicothe and by the end of the year twenty cabins were occupied. Because of his detention in Philadelphia even longer than expected, Lytle did not get started so early. Kain returned, planted corn and enlarged the clearing, and became a permanent settler. But
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before this, and according to the family tradition, in 1795, he brought his daughter Polly-for Mary-then a handsome lass of twelve years, on the same horse with an older friend, Polly Bunton, from Columbia where their provisions were obtained. While at the camp these girls cooked for the clearing party. How long that employment lasted is not told, but from it they both claimed, in many years to follow, that they were the first white women to come to the East Fork Valley, and that state- ment was never disputed. Polly Kain married James Perrine and Polly Bunton married Daniel Kidd, both worthy pioneers of Batavia, who all lived to see their posterity sit in high places-so high that the peril and adventure of those girls seem an impossible dream. Among those who belonged to the surveyor's company, tradition and documentary proof alike have preserved the names of Adam Bricker, Adam Snider and Ramoth Bunton, the father of Polly, as subse- quent residents. In 1796 the clearing grew so large that it was known as a landmark in pioneer geography, as the "Big Field," long after the locality was marked on the maps as Williamsburg.
As the indispensable planting and tending of the crop per- mitted, Kain built a large cabin by the Surveyor's Camp. That cabin was on the ground afterwards laid off and num- bered as In Lot No. 43. The exact site is now covered by the fine home of Charles P. Chatterton, whose wife, once Lorisa Kain, is a great-granddaughter of the first occupant of the ground. To that cabin Kain's family was brought by way of Newtown in a wagon driven by young Archibald McLain over a road that had to be cut through the brush, so that the trip took several days. As soon as established, the "Kain House" became a place, where the surveyors brought the game that fell in their ramblings, and where they found a more varied table than their regular camp fare. Under such conditions, but at a date not stated, Lytle began to lay off his town with the help of John and James Campbell as chain carriers, and James Sterling as marker. Even with Lytle's activity and dexterity the task of arranging and platting five hundred lots with streets properly disposed to the nature of irregular surroundings, all supplemented by nearly one hun- dred and fifty out lots or squares for an expected growth, and
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all laid with a precision that hinders trouble and still com- mands admiration, was neither easily nor quickly done. While the enterprise was in full action, a blizzard on Novem- ber 26, 1796, froze the earth so that stakes could not be driven and in consequence no more was done with compass and chain that year. Before leaving for winter quarters, the re- ports were completed for three surveys for Daniel De Benne- ville, amounting to three thousand five hundred acres includ- ing the town and nearly one-fifth of the township of Williamsburg.
The platting and the statements of Lytle gave such assur- ance of a town that some decided to stay. There was plenty of corn in the Big Field and game in the woods everywhere. Much work was promised the next year. According to cus- tom, a lot each was to be given the first ten settlers that would build a house. Kain took Lot 43 west of the Surveyor's Camp which ranged along the bank and the adjoining part of Front Street. Adam Snider built on Lot 265. Adam Bricker took his chance west of the mill site. Ramoth Bunton chose a lot by the spring north from the public square. A statement has been made that John. Lytle remained in the place during the winter of 1796-7. Whether so or not, the four cabins named are all that can be claimed for that date. A good deal can be found to show that a satisfactory man could hold a steady place with Lytle whose policy was always generous. There was, and is yet where not usurped, a surplus of both width and length for every lot in Williamsburg. There is or was a tradition that his practice was based upon the assumption that there was enough for all, and that a full measure would hinder · contention. Because of this, people gathered about who cared more for his service than for the wages.
In rescuing the Surveyor's Camp for a while longer from the impenetrable oblivion that will ere long shroud all en- deavor, I have in some degree accomplished a pleasant but by no means easy task. for the satisfaction of people who may delight to dally with the infancy of Old Clermont. The fad- ing traditions among the old, that were condensed to a phrase or ignored by writers who failed to discern their significance have been assembled, compared and found in such harmony with family registers, public records and events of those days,
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that the work about that camp is restored to a sequence which puts other settlements in a clearer perspective and makes a logical story possible. Much of this explanation must be referred to the fine memory of Mrs. Harriet Lytle, a daughter-in-law of John Lytle, who, after the age of ninety, minutely remembered the conversation of him and his brother, the General, who delighted in her interest in their early adventures. She had clear recollection of such pioneers as lived in Williamsburg until the removal of the county busi- ness to Batavia.
With the work done there as a surveying center, Williams- burg has a priority of at least three years over any other place between the present limits of Adams and Hamilton counties, or more definitely named, between Covalt's and Massie's Stations. But as a place of continuous residence that priority has been reduced to a contest with several localities.
Going eastward from Covalt's Station on Round Bottom, the first of all inland clearings and settlement on the Little Miami within the limits of Old Clermont was made near Loveland by Colonel Thomas Paxton, an officer in the Penn- sylvania line in the Revolutionary Army, who also had a command of Kentuckians in Wayne's Army, from which he returned south along the eastern bank of the Little Miami. Pleased with the country, he sold in Kentucky and purchased twelve hundred acres in Miami township. Of four accounts consulted, one states that he came to Loveland in the spring, another in the fall of 1795; the other two, in 1796; but all claim that he built the first house and raised the first crop of corn by a white man between the Little Miami and Scioto rivers. That claim is both too broad and too far. If the writers had read farther, they would have found the oldest date exceeded four years by the settlement at Manchester, and still nearer, could have found several preceding crops and numerous older settlers at Newtown and at Gerard's Station. It is not credible that a man of Paxton's reputed sagacity would have risked his wife and four daughters-a prize to tempt a tribe-far out in the wilderness still haunted by thieving Indians scarcely restrained by the treaty, as was experienced by Massie's expedition to Paint Creek. The confusion in the dates of the different accounts is cleared by
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the reasonable probability that an advance party in 1795, was followed by the family in 1796 to a house that even then was stockaded.
The first credible attempt at a clearing on the riverside within the present limits of Clermont was made in the sum- mer of 1795, by error,' on the Neville Survey, by John Gregg and William Buchanan, who intended to take up the Anderson Survey at Moscow. Upon discovering the mistake, Gregg returned to Kentucky, whence his son George came in later years to form a large and influential connection. Buchanan went into the uplands and began another clearing near Cal- vary Church in Washington township. Shortly after he was followed by three brothers, John, David and Jeriah Wood, and three brothers, John, Nathan and Elisha Manning, who were intermarried with three of the Wood sisters, so as to form almost one family, which during the winter of 1795-6 built a stockade about a fine spring by Indian Creek. That stockade called Manning's Station soon attracted more company and became noted as a place of refuge in the lonely country, yet no attack was ever felt, and the timbers were used for other purposes.
Isaac Ferguson, whose father, Thomas, was with Washing- ton at Great Meadows and in Braddock's Defeat, and who was himself a Revolutionary soldier, moved his family in 1784 from the Monongahela to Limestone. In 1792 he was with Kenton in the fight with Tecumseh at Grassy Run. In 1795 while living in Kentucky, opposite the mouth of Ten Mile, he cleared fifteen acres in Ohio township, planted an orchard and built a cabin to which, in 1796, he brought his family in time to raise a crop.
An old tradition claimed that John Logston was the first white man to live in Franklin township in Clermont, where he kept a ferry at the mouth of Bullskin at a date that ex- cluded all others from comparison. If so, his occupation must have been lonesome, unless his patrons were horse stealing Indians, against whom the Kentuckians provided a bounty for every red scalp with the right ear attached, which made canoeing on the Ohio somewhat precarious to the red people, and others too, for the scalp hunters were not over nice and would have preferred a mistake to a lost chance. Any review
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