USA > Ohio > Brown County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 18
USA > Ohio > Clermont County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 18
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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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of such long obscured happenings must of necessity often de- pend upon the investigation of other writers. The research subsequent to his first publication about Franklin township by the late R. J. Bancroft has cleared much doubt from the name of Logston. It now appears that the once mythical Logston was a soldier of the Revolution; that he was one of O'Bannon's surveying party at Neville, and afterwards, in 1787-8, for which he was a scout and hunter; that he often crossed the river for the fine hunting in Ohio; that he built a cabin or shack for that purpose, that he had a family and moved to Tennessee in 1801; and that he left a son, Joseph, who was a voter at the first election of which there is a record in Washington township. But there is no proof that the father considered himself other than a Kentuckian. The most plausible solution of this and all similar traditions of extra- ordinary pioneer zeal on the north bank of the Ohio is that the facile memories of the aged, have too freely and too early. shifted their heroes from the uncertain safety of Kentucky to the positive danger of the Ohio side. If any should cite the courage of the surveyors or doubt the temerity of their adven- tures, as an example to be followed by daring home makers in lonely lodges in a hostile land, it should be clearly understood and well remembered that O'Bannon, Massie and Lytle were equals in wood craft with the wiliest warriors, and that they went in strong parties fully armed with scouts and hunters in front and rear and flanks, who could not be passed without giving an alarm that changed every man to a trained and resolute fighter, such as the Indians seldom chose to battle with on equal terms. All this was far different for the lone settlers of whom the rashest must have halted before exposing his wife and children to the horrors of massacre and capture.
A similar story is told of Alexander Hamilton of County Tyrone, Ireland; who lived as a hunter in Lewis township with his wife and five children, but of these some or all were born later-the account is hazy. His right was a "squatter's claim" which was nothing; but, little or less, it was bought by Joseph Clark, Sr., who came with his wife and six children from Pennsylvania in 1795, and soon built a cabin where his undertakings included a small grist mill on White Oak some five years later ; and seven years later another on Bullskin, and
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still later a copper still which at that time did not hinder him or his family from a strict adherence to the Presbyterian Church of which he was an elder for many years.
It is not claimed that any settlement during 1795 was made within the present limits of Pleasant township. Properly con- sidered, this makes the reputed early presence of Hamilton and Clark at an aimless spot far back from the river in the jungle of Lewis township more striking and more uncertain.
No name in the early days of the region has more curious mention than that of Belteshazar Dragoo. By the bond from Alexander McIntyre in 1791 as stated on a previous page, he was the first on record to contract for a home in Brown County. Some have claimed that he came in 1794 to three hundred acres of land on Eagle Creek. This conflicts with the claim made for Hamilton in Lewis township. As Dragoo lived in Mason County, Kentucky, it is more probable that he acted according to the time and did not cross the river with his wife and twelve children until the treaty was sure. The next peculiar mention of Dragoo explains his departure from Eagle Creek. It may be hard to refute the claim that he came before all others but it is harder to believe that a sane man would take a wife and a large brood of children into a defenseless cabin miles away from any possible help, and yet none was known to be near. Granting that all the people named had made some preparation to plant corn in Ohio in 1796, from Paxton by the O'Bannon to Dragoo on Eagle Creek, there were not fifty grown people-not one to the mile, as a trace crossed the country between. But the ways into the wilderness were broken ; or to be more literal, the courses into the woods were blazed, and the paths were ready to be widened.
There are few scenes of human endeavor that excite more sympathy from a cultivated mind than the consideration of the work done by the pioneers in a forest land. At the thought of a charging line rushing on to death or glory, every nerve thrills with the fellowship of danger, and every sense tingles with the joy of conflict ; but as we look upon the puny might of a lonely man going forth to smite plenty from the gloomy grandeur of the measureless wilderness, our spirit quails at the mighty toil, and we feel that they who staked their lives
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against such awful labor had need of stouter hearts than they who go to sudden battle. We would gladly call the roll of those who made the roads, cleared the fields, and wrought the change for our enjoyments, but the passing of more than a hundred years has worn away many a name that we would love to hear and be pleased to record; for it is no idle fancy that after another hundred years, when the hills shall be reclothed with the verdure of ten thousand more dotting homes and the valleys filled with a countless host, many eyes will search these pages for ancestral names borne by heroes in the ancient strife, and, vainly searching they will marvel with vexed pity for the indifference that, under the specious pretense of mock humility, has forgotten or neglected to per- petuate the honor of its own blood, and thus denied them the peculiar pride of tracing their lineage to those who honored the land of their birth.
At last the long and fierce strife for possession had ceased to trouble. The Land of the Blue Limestone and the Home of the Blue Grass had been wrested from savagery. In and after 1796, there was no Indian molestation east of the Little Miami and for many miles north of the Ohio. At last and not before, the Indian Country was ready for the Coming of the Pioneers.
Within recent days, we have been accustomed to expect that the occupation of new territory will be announced by presidential proclamation to vast multitudes of home seekers restrained by long lines of soldiers, ordered by electricity and signalled by booming cannon. The news of the Peace of 1795 that opened the fairest garden of America was carried by tardy messengers on jaded horses to sparsely peopled settle- ments beyond distant mountains over which roads as yet were scarcely traced. To many on the coast plain, weary of the moaning waves and sterile sands, or tired of struggling with granite fields and lengthy winters, the promise of boundless acres of fertile soil with a genial clime came as a grateful bid to a welcome feast. With some the response was as quick as the power to act, while others just as eager were fain to com- pose their desire until they could condense their wealth to the limits of a mover's wagon over the rugged marches toward a virgin land of which the tuneful names proclaimed beauty and inspired patriotism.
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As the first fruit of the American Revolution, Ohio was founded by a people thoroughly nurtured in the sentiments and firmly fixed in the fundamental truths of that grandest event in all political history. Their elevation to the proud distinction of being the founders of a mighty state that was to be the mother of many more was not an accident but the natural consequence of their devotion to liberty. Their much marching to and fro in the long conflict had shown that their paternal acres were all too narrow for the rapidly multiplying children of freedom. They knew there was a vast expanse beyond the mountains. They listened to the stories of the marvelous richness of the soil. They knew the way was long. They knew the service was hard. They felt the reward was sure. They gathered their substance and started forth, not as exiles but as heroes to possess as much of the earth as their strength could compass. They greeted the mountains with hymns of lofty cheer. They gained the heights with glad- ness. They looked not back, but always forward, as they sought the secret trails of scanty barbarism and changed them to the open paths of peace and plenty.
Yet, all this was not quickly and easily done. The nation knew not where to find its revenue. The States were still staggering with the debts that were the price of their liberty. The people however proud of their victory were poor in purse-very poor, as measured by present standards. The populace long restricted to agriculture had not the steel to edge its tools. The great porch at Mount Vernon was paved with brick made in England and brought in ships that had gone there laden with tobacco. It is difficult to fathom the American depression caused by British repression which many, inured by long custom, were slow to resent, even after independence was a nominal fact but not an actual commercial condition.
From what has been stated, and the most patient research has not found others, an impartial judgment, without intent to provoke or attempt to decide controversy, must conclude that the honor of the first settlement is one that can be as- signed to neither localities nor individuals. James Kain, at Williamsburg; Thomas Paxton, near Loveland; Isaac Fergu- son, below New Richmond; William Buchanan with the
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Wood and Manning families, back of Moscow; Joseph Clark, in Lewis township; and Belteshazar Dragoo, on Eagle Creek were the pioneers whose claims seem equally credible in their respective spheres. Each and all of these, at widely separated points and without conference, seem to have made a simulta- neous attack upon a task that would appall their bravest de- scendants. Nor is it strange that their efforts should have occurred at the same time. The chance for which each was waiting came to all alike, and each took his appointed place in the work that had room for many more. But back of them all looms the potent presence of William Lytle, the master spirit of the occasion, whose explorations preceded their pos- session by four years of excessive hardship and intense devo- tion to his purpose.
- The immigration of 1796 was mostly from or by way of Kentucky, where prospective settlers had been restrained by the prohibitory conditions of the war, during which many a story had been told by daring hunters, or by escaping cap- tives, about the marvelous land beyond the river. While the immigration for that year may seem small, it brought much encouragement to those already on the ground, with whom there was some previous acquaintance or quick fellowship.
Among the second year settlers, the name of Adam Bricker should come first because of his previous presence with the surveyors and because of his long and patriotic duty on the frontier. He was born in 1762 under the protection of Fort Redstone. In 1780 while he and a brother were absent from their home then on the outskirts of the settlement, all the rest of the family, both parents and children were butchered by the Indians. In 1784 he joined the regulars at Red Stone and served his company as a hunter. In 1785 his company was ordered to Pittsburgh, and later to the forts at Marietta. Cincinnati and Louisville. In 1790 he re-enlisted and served through the rest of the Indian War. Upon his discharge in . 1795, he came to Columbia and took service with Lytle as a hunter for the surveying party at and around the camp and by the Big Field. He lived alone in his cabin by the mill until his marriage in 1805 to Rebecca Hartman with whom ten children were born. After their posterity had scattered, word came back that a large connection with the same name
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had been found in Northern Illinois and about the Western Lakes, whose striking resemblance to the Ohio Brickers gave much significance to their tradition of an ancestor who had been an Indian prisoner. That captive most likely was a survivor of the massacre of the Brickers at an age when little was remembered but the name he brought back to civilization. Events disposed so strangely different from all ordinary ex- perience suggest curious reflection upon the spite of fortune.
Adam Snider, probably much longer in Lytle's previous em- ploy, has been mentioned as the mild mannered slayer of an intrusive Indian. He lived a single life and was much liked.
Ramoth Bunton as he was called, though the name was printed Bunting in the official lists of the Revolution in which he was a soldier, brought his wife, a son, James, and Hettie, a, sister of Polly hereinbefore mentioned. The name has dis- appeared. Hettie married and went farther west. But Joseph Kidd, a son of Polly, had twenty-one children.
The family of James Kain, then forty-six years old, included his aged father also named James, his mother, his wife, Kath- erine, his three sons, Daniel, John and Thomas, and three daughters. Mary or Polly, Elizabeth and Sarah. James Kain had done some service in Revolutionary days with the militia of Lancaster, his Pennsylvania home. His sons, Daniel and John, were with Wayne's Army, from which it may be guessed that James. Daniel and John Kain, Bricker, Bunton and Snider had many stories to trade when they happened to gather round the cabin fires of those first winter days in the wild woods nearly twenty miles away from Paxton's or the sorrowful people at Covalt's.
Paxton's stockade from first to last sheltered a people of whom all of the first to come are not clearly mentioned. At the time of the settlement, Colonel Paxton was about sixty years old and had been twice married. Some of the first children were married and remained in Kentucky. Of these some came to their father later on. Some of the second chil- dren were well grown and the youngest of all was born in 1799. What the large and influential Paxton connection has failed to preserve or explain can not be supplied by others. Of the twelve children, ten seem to have come to Ohio, but not all to Clermont, and not all at the same time.
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The people for whom Manning's Station was a refuge were : . William and Jane Abrams Buchanan with four children ; John Wood and wife with five sons and two daughters; David Wood and wife with seven sons and four daughters; Jeriah Wood and wife with one son and two daughters ; John, Elisha and Nathan Manning, whose wives were sisters of the Wood brothers and who each had children-in all seven couples, some of whose children were born in Kentucky and more in Ohio, but how many of either cannot be learned.
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In building their Ohio home Isaac and Elizabeth Leedom Ferguson had the help of ten children, Isaiah, Zachariah, Hugh, Isaac, Francis, James, Thomas, Elizabeth, Nancy and Ruth, who were true pioneers that gave a multitude of de- scendants to prove the worth of their name, and to increase re- spect for the founders of our local institutions. The family of Joseph Clark has been, and that of Dragoo will be, mentioned.
Absalom, a son of Jeremiah and Sarah Dod Day, married Elizabeth, a daughter of George Earhart, at Columbia, which he left at the age of twenty-three and came to Williamsburg in 1796 to claim one of the ten lots donated to the first settlers. Their oldest child, Mary, was born January 28, 1797. At this writing, that is the first birth yet noted in Williamsburg and in Old Clermont. Their second child, Sarah, was born on December 1, 1798, in the Williamsburg home, but their third child, Elizabeth, was born September 25, 1800, on the Day farm by De La Palma in Sterling township. They also had four sons and four more daughters whose progeny forms one of the extensive relationships that interlink the counties of Brown and Clermont. It is pleasant to note that Jeremiah Day came to pass old age with his son, Abraham, and to en- joy a pension granted for service in the Revolution. About the same time with the Days, Widow Mac Kaslin came and gained a home by building a cabin on In Lot No. 51, which is still a choice part of the town. A lot each was given to Polly Kain and Polly Bunton because they were the first women to come to the town. The other two gift lots were taken, but by whom is not known. For on December 15, 1796. the earliest sale. known in Williamsburg is attested by a well kept title bond to Ephraim McAdams for In Lot No. 121, and Out Lot No. 79, for which the consideration was twenty-eight
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dollars. This means that the town contained not less than ten houses by the close of 1796, and probably more, for McAdams would hardly have paid scarce money when a lot could have been had for the asking.
The pioneers of the river side remembered that a Revolu- tionary soldier named David Golclazer had a cabin which some said was built in 1795, and others in 1796, at the mouth of Indian Creek. From their account, he was a mighty hunter after the order of many soldiers who took to trapping. When game grew scarce, he took the course of Logston, and he was killed fighting Indians in the Southwest. His cabin was prob- ably a mere hut to shelter himself and furs. Associated with him as a fellow soldier was Larry Byrns, whose service in the War of '76, was recognized by a pension granted September 6, 1819. The children of Byrns intermarried with the Buchanans and Nevilles.
Edward Salt, an Englishman by birth, has the credit for making the first permanent settlement in the Franklin town- ship of Clermont, to which he came through Kentucky from Virgina with wife, two sons, Henry and John, and three daughters, for whom he built a cabin in 1796, and started a ferry at the mouth of Bullskin.
Thomas Fee, Jr., came to the same vicinity in the same year, but two years later made a permanent home in Wash- ington township. At short intervals, to adjacent points, he was followed by the remainder of the family of Thomas Fee, Sr., who, with eight sons and two daughters, became the founder of this notable Clermont family which has multiplied exceedingly and spread to many parts of the Union.
Rodham Morin came into Ohio Township in 1796 and settled below New Richmond near Isaac Ferguson, where he was followed in 1797 by his father, Edward Morin, another soldier of the Revolution, whose numerous descendants have so intermarried with other Revolutionary families that the posterity of the old families form not a chapter but a brigade of the Sons and Daughters of the Revolution. James John, another patriot soldier, came next below the Fergusons and made a home at the mouth of Nine Mile for seven children, now mainly represented in the southern townships.
Francis McCormick of the Revolutionary service was the
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first to improve the Clermont side of Milford. While his large posterity must mostly be sought elsewhere, his early home has immeasurable fame, for in his cabin was organized the first Methodist Episcopal class and church of all the world that is north and west of the Ohio. The next to make a clear- ing about Milford was George Conrad, who also raised a cabin to which his wife and four children came the next spring. Their home was about one mile northeast of where Major Riggs was killed as told on a previous page.
In the summer of 1796 the Paxton people gained a large accession of what they thought near neighbors, three or four miles away at what has since been famous as Camp Dennison, but was once called Germany, because of the origin of the immigrants, a colony of Germans, who in some degree had repeated a peculiar phase of England's religious experience. For, as those who protested against the formalism of the Es- tablished Church of England and insisted upon a personal consecration to a purer life were stigmatized Puritans, so also did it come to pass a hundred years later that a portion of the Lutherans began to notice and then to regret that a mere adoption of creed was superseding deep religious feeling and reverential living, and that dogmatic formulas were usurping the place that belongs only to the Bible; and, so thinking, they began to insist on the Bible as the basis of theology, to profess a change of heart, and to practice a consequent holi- ness of life more consistent with their lofty ideals of true piety. For this they were nicknamed Pietists, who became so very unpopular that, like many more of the best in America, they were driven from Europe with goads and whips.
After much buffeting, both by sea and land, which in- cluded heroic service in the Revolution, a company of these Pietists or German Puritans, determined to test the promised freedom of the Northwest, and, despite their sour belief, proved they were not insensible to the charms of beauty by choosing "Big Bottom," after "Round Bottom," the finest , prospect on the most lovely Miami. Here, their leader, Chris- tian Waldschmidt, came in 1796, and with him then, or within a year or two, came Ludwig Freiberger, Jacob Moyer, Jacob Stroup, Johannes Kugler, George Harner, Andreas Freis, Wil- helm Landen, Joseph Bohne, Jacob Lefeber, Hans Leckie,
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Christian Ogg, Friedrick Bichanboch, Kasper Spaeth, Sam- uel Ruelhi, Hans Rodecker, Valentine Weigans, Hans Mad- dern, Daniel Prisch, Samuel Backenheim, Andreas Orth and Johannes Mantag. In the following year Waldschmidt's Mill was built. Though across the Miami and in Hamilton County, the influence on western Clermont was so quick and lasting, that it became a large part thereof. If the curious reader should decipher and trace those German names, he will find that most of them have figured largely in the history of Clermont including present days, and always with credit. While most other early names are of British origin, it is pleasant to recall the strong features, the odd speech and the quaint manners of even the first sons and daughters of those worthy exiles for conscience sake, whose descendants have been so thoroughly Americanized that most of them will scarcely recognize the antique names of their ancestors. On the same boat down the Ohio with Waldschmidt, but not as one of the colony, came William Fitzwater, who, at a later date, left a large family in Miami township.
Among the many floating down the Ohio in 1796 and mostly going to Kentucky as the safer side were the five brothers, Samuel, James, Hezekiah, Jeremiah and Nathan Ellis, from Virginia. Nathan chose to stop within the present limits of Huntington township, where he was the first permanent set- tler, established a ferry, lived an active, useful life, and twenty years later laid out part of his land for the town of Aberdeen. He was preceded in the township by Ellis Palmer, a hunter, who after clearing lands for others went farther east in Adams County. Jeremiah and Hezekiah Ellis settled on Eagle Creek. James and Samuel took the boat on to the fine lands where Higginsport was afterward founded. On these lands bar- gained for with Colonel Higgins, the original owner, before leaving Virginia, Samuel Ellis laid the plans for an ample for- tune which he lived to possess into his ninety-third year. His old age was lightened still more by a pension for Revolution- ary service.
Because of the early occupation of Maysville as the eastern port to the Kentucky settlements and still more, perhaps, owing to the proximity of Fort Kenton, the stronghold of the almost fabulous Simon Kenton, the Ohio side for miles
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above and below is veiled with a glamour in which mighty hunters come and go in ways that can not be effaced from the old traditions which may have been based on facts rather than imagination. For, the danger gave richer zest to the fascina- tion that lured the venturesome to chase the forbidden game of Ohio. But the huts for such transient purpose, though claimed by the bravest scouts, do not class with a settler's cabin. William and Anna Dunlap Kinkead with her brother, William Dunlap, built a cabin near Ripley and then concluded to go to a tract near Chillicothe owned by the father of the Dunlaps. On reaching that tract they distrusted the Indians still lingering there. Their fear was sharpened by the fact that Kinkead's mother had been captured from her husband and three babes, of which one was butchered in her sight, and taken to that same Chillicothe thirty-two years before. Dur- ing that captivity, the mother's fourth child was born. But, before the year was gone, Bouquet's dramatic expedition to Coshocton in 1764 forced the Shawnees to surrender their cap- tives, and Mrs. Kinkead was restored to her family. Reflect- ing upon all the horror of the place in that time, young Kin- kead stopped not to unpack his goods but straightway re- turned to the deserted cabin by Eagle Creek, where Anna gave him nine children, of whom seven lived long. After a year with his sister and brother-in-law, William Dunlap married Polly Shepard, whose parents had just come from Virginia to White Oak with several grown children. William and Polly Dunlap started a clearing near the Kinkeads and built a cabin where eight children came and grew to much credit.
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