History of Crawford County, Ohio, and representative citizens, Part 14

Author: Hopley, John E. (John Edward), 1850-
Publication date: 1912
Publisher: Chicago,Ill., Richmond-Arnold Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1302

USA > Ohio > Crawford County > History of Crawford County, Ohio, and representative citizens > Part 14

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Section VI .- That the commissioners elected ac- cording to the provisions contained in the third sec- tion of this act, shall meet on the first Monday of May next, at the town of Bucyrus, and then and there determine at what place in said county of Crawford the judicial courts shall be held till the permanent seat of justice shall be established in said county.

Section VII .- That those townships and frac- tional townships in Crawford county which have heretofore been attached to and formed a part of any township in Marion or Seneca county respect- ively, are hereby attached to, and declared to be a part of, Crawford township in said Crawford county, till the same shall be otherwise provided for by the Commissioner of said county.

By this act the question of the place of the county seat would be decided by the first county commissioners elected. As early as 1821 the settlers near Bucyrus had made a road through the woods to Sandusky. Almost following the route laid out by them Col. Kil- bourne, in 1822, had surveyed a road to San- dusky, and along this road much land was being entered. In 1825 Joseph Newell entered land on section 9, Holmes township; it was about a mile west of the Tiffin road, and was on the south bank of the Brokensword, just below where the Brandywine empties into that stream, and adjoining the eastern bound- ary of the Indian reservation. It was a hand-

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Crawford

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some site for a town, and being very much nearer the centre of the county, Mr. Newell laid out a town on his land which he called Crawford, in the hope that the county seat might be located there.

Before the town had fairly started, the question came before the voters for settlement by the election of the first commissioners. At the time of the first election, April, 1826, two- thirds of the population were in the eastern part of the county, and nearly all of these would naturally support Bucyrus; the other third were expected to favor a more central location. The most thickly settled section at that time was in what is now northern Wy- andot, the present township of Tymochtee,

containing the little settlement of Old Tymoch- tee and the town of McCutchenville, the latter having a few more inhabitants than Bucyrus. It was in this township the first election in Crawford county was held. Crawford town- ship had been established by the Delaware County Commissioners in 1821, and comprised the territory that is now Crawford, Tymochtee and Sycamore townships, Wyandot county, and Texas township, Crawford county. The electors met at the home of Henry Lish, who ran a ferry across the Tymochtee on the road from Upper Sandusky to Lower Sandusky (Fremont), passing through where Tiffin now is, that city not then having any existence. There were thirteen electors present. They elected a chairman and secretary of the meet- ing, appointed judges, and elected by ballot the fourteen township officers. At that time there was no settler in what is now Texas township, so there was no vote cast from what is now Crawford county. The nearest this county came to getting an office was by re- lationship, Ichabod Merriman being elected one of the trustees, Rufus Merriman one of the appraisers, and Myron Merriman one of the fence viewers. They were relatives of the Merrimans who became prominent in Bucyrus.

When the first county election was held on April 1, 1826, the principal fight was for the commissioners, as on these officers rested the selection of the county seat. Bucyrus was awake to her interests, as the men she pre- sented were John Magers, of Sandusky, who came to the county in 1823; Thomas McClure, of Liberty, who came to the county in 1821,

and George Poe of Whetstone, who came in 1823. In these three townships were nearly half the population of the entire county, and these three men won out. The other first offi- cers were Hugh McCracken, of Bucyrus, for Sheriff; James Martin, of Bucyrus, for Au- ditor, and John McClure for Surveyor. John H. Morrison may have been elected treasurer, but the general custom in those days was for the commissioners to appoint the first treasurer. At any rate, Mr. Morrison was the first treasurer of the county. Of the men elected the commissioners were farmers, Mc- Clure followed his occupation of surveyor, Mc- Cracken was a wheelright, Martin was a school teacher, and Morrison was a lawyer.

The Bucyrus section had two-thirds of the vote, so political wire pulling may not have been necessary. It is a matter of record, how- ever, that in the October election of that year, John Carey, of Crawford township (now Wyandot county) was elected as the first rep- resentative from the new county to the State Legislature. This may have been purely ac- cidental, but when two-thirds of the voters present the principal office in their gift to one- third, present day politicians would have their suspicions that the Hon. John had been de- cidedly friendly to the Bucyrus commissioners in the county seat fight.

The newly elected commissioners held their first meeting at Bucyrus, on the first Monday in May, 1826, and promptly selected Bucyrus as the county seat of the new county.

All the early records of the county commis- sioners were destroyed by fire in October, 1831, when the jail in Bucyrus was burned. Many other records of the county were lost at the same time. In those days the commissioners held four meetings a year. The first meeting of the county commissioners of which there is any record was as follows :

"Proceedings of the Commissioners of Crawford County, begun and held in the town of Bucyrus, on the 17th and 18th days of October, A. D. 1831: "Be it resolved, That James McCracken, Esq., of Crawford county, be and hereby is appointed a com- missioner (in the room of R. W. Cahill, Esq., re- signed) to lay out a certain state road, commencing at the town of Perrysburg, in Wood county; thence to Mccutchenville; thence to Bucyrus, in Crawford county.

"Resolved, That an order be issued to the Au- ditor, John Caldwell, for seventy dollars and sixty- eight cents, for his services as Auditor.

HISTORY OF CRAWFORD COUNTY

"Resolved, That Z. Rowse be, and he is hereby authorized to contract for books for the Clerk's and Recorder's offices, to be paid out of the county treasury."

While there are no records of the commis- sioners prior to the above, from papers in other offices and from township records it is found that among the first acts of the commis- sioners in 1826 was the dividing of the new territory into townships, and Cranberry was formed as the northeastern township, its ter- ritory including what is now Cranberry and the eastern four miles of Chatfield. Texas township was a part of Sycamore township; west of this were Tymochtee and Crawford, these last three townships having been created by the Marion Commissioners. This consti- tuted the northern tier of townships. The central. tier commenced on the east with the three mile strip which was the northern half of Sandusky township; west of this was Liberty, about six miles square; then Holmes six miles square, and then Antrim, which included what is now Tod and extended to Pitt township. The southern tier commenced on the east with the southern half of Sandusky, three miles wide; then Whetstone nearly six miles square; then Bucyrus, the same territory as now; northern Dallas was a part of Antrim, which extended to Pitt township. The present two miles of southern Dallas and the two southern miles of Whetstone were then a part of Marion county, and the eastern four miles of the county were a part of Richland county. With the exception of the two mile strip which was added to Whetstone on the south in 1845, the townships of Liberty, Whetstone, Holmes and Bucyrus were in 1826 the same territory they are today.

On account of the Pike road from Bucyrus to Sandusky, and the business it created along the line by giving a market outlet to the set- tlers, the western portion of Cranberry was becoming rapidly settled, and petitions were presented to the commissioners for the division of Cranberry, and about 1831 Cranberry was established its present size, and Chatfield created six miles deep and four miles wide. About the same time Lykins was erected from Sycamore township, the western half of that township, and it included the present Lykins and the western mile of Chatfield.

No further change was made in the town- ships until in 1835. Sandusky township was a strip on the east three miles wide and twelve deep, which was so inconvenient that the cit- izens petitioned for a division of the township, and Sandusky township was erected as at pres- ent, the three mile strip, six miles deep, east of Whetstone being formed into a new township named Jackson.

In 1835, the Government purchased of the Indians, seven miles off the eastern part of their reservation, which was all of the present Tod township, a trifle over two miles of west- ern Bucyrus and Holmes and the northern three mile strip of Dallas. This was surveyed and in 1837 opened to settlement. This neces- sitated a rearrangement of townships. The parts adjoining Bucyrus and Holmes were easily placed by making them a part of those townships, which they already were by the survey. Antrim was divided, the northern half being named Leith township and the southern half remaining Antrim. Leith town- ship included in its borders the six northern miles of Tod while the three southern miles of Tod and the three northern miles of Dallas were a part of Antrim.

The prominent man in the new township of Leith was George W. Leith, whose father was the first white child born in the Sandusky val- ley, his grandfather, John Leith, having been taken a prisoner by the Wyandot Indians when a boy, afterward marrying Sally Lowry, a white girl who had also been taken prisoner by the Indians. John Leith was an Indian trader and Samuel Leith, the father of George W .. was born in 1775, at the village which was then the headquarters of the Indians, probably the old Indian town of Upper Sandusky, about three miles further up the Sandusky than the present town of Upper Sandusky. During the Revolutionary war and at the time of Craw- ford's campaign John Leith, the grandfather, ran a trading store at the Wyandot village, which was the headquarters of the Indian allies of the British, and when the township was named Leith by the commissioners, the enemies of Leith protested against the name on the ground that his grandfather was on the side of the British. The remonstrance became so universal that the commissioners were com- pelled to change the name, and wisely avoided

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any future difficulty by deciding that as the territory was the exact centre of the county they would name it Centre township. Prior to this, when the township was organized as Leith, there was an election to fill the various offices, and George W. Leith was elected justice of the peace. He had already qualified and was serving when the indignant storm broke, and when the commissioners discarded the name of Leith, he promptly resigned his office.

The justice elected in Antrim township was George Garrett. When the Indian mill was started for the use of the Wyandots near Up- per Sandusky under the treaty of 1817, it was run by Garrett. Later he built the Garrett mill on the Sandusky near Wyandot, and was running this when he was elected justice. He was a life-long friend of Leith, a quarter- blood Indian, and was so indignant at the ac- tion of the commissioners that he, too, re- signed.

There were no other changes or erections of townships, until the present Crawford county was formed in 1845, when 18 miles was taken from the western part of the county to form Wyandot county. As part compensation for this loss of territory four miles on the east was added to Crawford from Richland, and two miles on the south was added from Marion. The Richland addition included the present townships of Auburn and Vernon. South of Vernon was Sandusky township, Richland county, four miles wide and seven deep, and as Crawford had a township named Sandusky the new territory was called Polk, it receiving two miles of the strip taken from Marion county. The balance of the two mile strip from Marion county was attached to Whetstone, and further west the two mile strip was made a part of a new township named Dallas. West of Bucyrus, Holmes and Lykins a strip two miles wide remained a part of Crawford county. The northern six miles of this territory was erected into Texas township, the next nine miles became the present town- ship of Tod and the lower three miles were added to Dallas. In the north, one mile was taken from the eastern side of Lykins and given to Chatfield, making both these townships equal in size, five miles square.

Polk and Jackson were the southeastern townships of the county Polk being four miles

wide and seven deep and Jackson three miles wide and seven deep. A petition was pre- sented to the Commissioners to make a dif- ferent division of these two townships, and after several hearings, the boundary was changed and instead of being north and south the dividing line was made east and west, the northern part, seven miles wide and four deep being named Jackson and the southern part, seven wide and three deep being called Polk.

The next change of townships was in 1873. Crestline, in Jackson township, had been laid out in 1851, and became a prominent railroad centre, and grew so rapidly in population that the business of the entire township was con- ducted at that town, which was so inconvenient to those residing in the western portion of the township that a petition was presented to the commissioners to divide the township, and the request was granted the five western miles be- ing formed into a township which was named Jefferson, leaving Jackson the smallest town- ship in the county, only two miles wide and four deep.

The final change of township lines was in 1909, when two southeastern sections of Vernon township petitioned to be attached to Jackson, as it would be more convenient to them. Their request was granted.

Another large branch of the work of the early commissioners was the laying out of new roads and the straightening of old ones. The road mentioned in the first records of the commissioners in 1831, that from Perrysburg to Bucyrus, was what is now known as the Tiffin road.

The county seat had only been selected tem- porarily, so the people of Bucyrus did not feel disposed to erect a new court house. The county did, however, build a jail. The com- missioners made the contract with Zalmon Rowse for its construction. It was of logs, and was built on the lot now occupied by the Park House, at the southeast corner of Wal- nut street and the Pennsylvania road. This jail was built in 1827. It was the only county building, and in it were kept many of the county records which were destroyed by the burning of the building in October, 1831.

The selection of Bucyrus as the county seat carried with it the holding of court at Bucyrus. In those days, a Common Pleas Court con-

HISTORY OF CRAWFORD COUNTY

sisted of a lawyer, appointed by the Legisla- ture, who was the presiding judge, and three prominent citizens, also appointed by the Legis- lature, who sat with him as associate judges. The first court was held in this county in 1826. There was no court house and the most con- venient place to hold the court was in Abel Carey's cabin on the south bank of the Sandu- sky just west of the Sandusky avenue bridge. Ebenezer Lane, of Norwalk, was the presiding judge for this section, and he came across the country on horseback. The Legislature had appointed in February, as the associate judges for the new county, E. B. Merriman and John Carey of Bucyrus, and John B. French of Sandusky township. Later, court was held in the school house, which was a one story log structure in a grove just west of the present site of Holy Trinity Church, the lot now oc- cupied by Mrs. Charles Vollrath. When a jury case was on, the sheriff escorted the jury- men to some private residence or shop where they could hold their deliberations undis- turbed. Each year also the Supreme Court met at Bucyrus. In those days the Supreme Court was composed of four members, and court was held not less than once each year in every county in the State, two members of the Supreme Court being necessary to consti- tute a quorum. Court days were great days for Bucyrus. The best rooms in the tavern were reserved for the judges, and lawyers came from the surrounding towns, notably Mansfield, Norwalk and Delaware, and in the evening the judges laid aside their dignity and with the visiting lawyers sat in the hotel office, which was the bar room, and told their stories and reminiscences to the delight of the villagers who dropped in. These villagers were not a part of the sacred circle, probably not more than half a dozen of the more prominent men in the town having the temerity to take any part in the conversation.

The town of Bucyrus was growing, the county was becoming more and more thickly settled, and roads were being laid out so they would pass the mill or farm of some prom- inent citizen, his convenience being of far more importance in those days than anything else; or, probably, as it was the influential citizen who took the active part to secure the road he would naturally see that its location

was the most convenient for him. Finally in 1830 the Legislature appointed three commis- sioners to visit Crawford county and recom- mend a site for the permanent county seat. The commissioners were Judge Hosea Wil- liams of Delaware, R. S. Dickerson of Lower Sandusky (Fremont), and J. S. Glassgo of Holmes county. The census of 1830 gave Crawford a population of 4,778, and of these about two-thirds were in the eastern part, and the other one-third in the western part, or Wyandot portion. There were but two towns of any consequence in the county, Bucyrus with a population of about 300, and McCutch- enville a dozen or more larger. The objection to Bucyrus was that it was in the south- eastern part of the county, and in those days when the only means of travel was over the worst of roads this was a serious objection. Mccutchenville, however, although a trifle larger than Bucyrus, was not to be considered; it being in the extreme northwest. The only real danger to Bucyrus was the site of James Newell's town of Crawford on the bank of the Brokensword. Unfortunately for him the town had not developed. It had probably three log houses, with a little clearing around each; the rest was all original forest and only the plat of the town could show where the streets were to be. A graveyard was marked on the plat but even this was covered with trees like the rest, and untenanted. However, in those days the commissioners appointed by the Legislature to locate permanent county seats were governed by a desire to place the site as near the centre of the county as pos- sible. True, the exact centre of the county (within a mile of Osceola) was then an In- dian reservation of twelve by seventeen miles in size, of the eighteen by thirty of the county, but the commissioners for the State well knew the time was not far distant when this great central tract would be thrown open for settle- ment. Already many settlers had squatted on the reservation in defiance of the law, and others were occupying and clearing it, renting from the Indian owners. Four miles northeast of the exact centre of the county was Bucyrus' rival for the county seat.

In the summer of 1830 the commissioners appointed to settle the question came to Bucyrus, and faithful to their duties visited

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the site of Crawford, going out what is now the Tiffin road over a road which had been made by the settlers themselves through the woods avoiding as far as possible the swampy ground. Five miles to the north they left this semblance of a road and took a trail through the woods for about a mile, and came to the three or four little cabins. After passing over the swampy ground that then covered southern Holmes this higher ground on the banks of what was then a pretty little river certainly showed up as an attractive site for a town. The commissioners returned to Bucyrus, no doubt tired from a twelve miles ride on horse- back through what was then nothing but swamps and forest, and they found a fine sup- per waiting for them at the tavern. They found also the prominent men of the village there. Col. Kilbourne was up from Columbus to attend the banquet given in their honor; his partner, Samuel Norton, was there; also Zalmon Rowse and a young attorney who had recently located in the town, Josiah Scott; the Careys and the Merrimans, the McCrackens and the Failors were there; George Lauck and Ichabod Rogers, the latter rapidly becoming one of the wealthy men of the village. It is probable nearly all of Bucyrus' prominent cit- izens were there or dropped in to meet the commissioners. The matter was talked over under the most enjoyable circumstances. Nor- ton agreed to donate the two lots held in reserve by him for a school house and jail. Kilbourne agreed to donate two of his reserved lots for the court house. And under the excitement and enthusiasm of the mo- ment, and the stimulating and exhilarating ef- fects of the liquid end of the feast, liberal cit- izens promised various subscriptions toward the erection of public buildings, and to show they meant it they reduced their promises to writing to which they affixed their names.

The lots donated by Kilbourne for the court house, were Nos. 90 and 92, the present site. The lots for a schoolhouse and a jail donated by Norton, were Nos. 86 and 88, now occupied by the Park House and the residence of A. Wickham. With some of the other subscrip- tions, the county commissioners' records later show that legal measures had to be taken for their collection, which indicates the wisdom of those engineering the movement having a

promise made under the enthusiasm of the mo- ment reduced to writing and signed. Human nature does not change much after all, and even in the present day the courts are some- times resorted to for the enforcement of the payment of subscription to some enterprise which the signer enthusiastically supported at. its inception. On the other hand, in 1823 Samuel Norton signed an agreement to give one-third of the proceeds received from the sale of all the lots he owned in Bucyrus to- ward the erection of public buildings, pro- vided a new county was formed with Bucyrus as the county seat, and in 1826, when the Pike Road from Columbus to Sandusky was being prospected, some of the Bucyrus business men and lot owners, to secure the road subscribed for more stock than their property was ap- praised at on the tax duplicate. No wonder the Ohio Gazeteer of 1826, in its mention of Bucyrus, described it as "a lively post town laid out in 1822," &c. It was easy enough to select the beautiful site of Bucyrus, but that did not make the town; it took the enterprise and push, the liberality and work of Norton and Rowse, of Merriman and St. John, of the Careys and the McCrackens to give it the name and the reputation of "a lively post town" when it was only three years old, and to keep it one.

After the selection of Bucyrus as the county seat the commissioners let the contract to Zalmon Rowse for the erection of a court house. Col. Kilbourne was the architect of the new building and the contractors were Nicholas Cronebaugh, Abraham Halm and William Early. The design of the building, as drawn by Kilbourne, was simply a copy of the State House at Columbus, only smaller, hav- ing but one window on each side of the door in the front of the buildings, instead of the two windows on each side which the State House had. The site of the building was the present site, except that it was built further forward, even with Mansfield street. The first floor was on a level with the street, cer- tainly not more than one log step being neces- sary to enter the building. On each side of the door was the window. The second floor was the court room and had three windows in front and two on each side. The first floor also had but two windows on each side of the

HISTORY OF CRAWFORD COUNTY

buildings. The roof sloped from the four sides up to a square tower. On top of this was a smaller round tower surmounted by a weather vane. The building was of brick, the brick being made at Halm's brick yard which was at the southwest corner of Sandusky and Warren. In the course of its erection the building had reached the second story by Dec. 4, 1830, and on that day the scaffolding gave way and Elias Cronebaugh and a man named Seigler were thrown to the ground and killed. On the completion of the building it was painted white, emblematic of the purity of the justice which it was expected would be fur- nished within the new structure. In 1837 a bell was added, which cost $100, and the day it was placed in position was made the occasion for a jollification. In 1844 a fence was placed around the lot, which cost $56; it was of wooden pickets, about four feet high, rest- ing on the ground. The building was not only used for the courts but for all public meetings, and there were very few Sundays when the court room was not used by some religious denomination for the holding of services.

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History of Crawford County, Ohio, and representative citizens, Part 14

Author: Hopley, John E. (John Edward), 1850- Publication date: 1912 Publisher: Chicago,Ill., Richmond-Arnold Publishing Company Number of Pages: 1302

Author: Hopley, John E. (John Edward), 1850-
Publication date: 1912
Publisher: Chicago,Ill., Richmond-Arnold Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1302