History of Crawford County and Ohio, Part 34

Author: Perrin, William Henry, [from old catalog] comp; Battle, J. H., [from old catalog] comp; Goodspeed, Weston Arthur, 1852- [from old catalog] comp; Baskin & Battey, Chicago, pub. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago, Baskin & Battey
Number of Pages: 1034

USA > Ohio > Crawford County > History of Crawford County and Ohio > Part 34

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This general picture of the early settlements of Ohio, is borne out by the first twenty-five years of history in every township in Crawford County. The Ohio fever took strong hold of many of the communities in the older States, and no sooner was the "New Purchase " heard of, than hundreds, anxious to secure a home with plenty of land, flocked to the new country. The eastern tier of townships formerly belong- ing to Richland, Auburn, Vernon, Jackson and Polk, were surveyed by Maxwell Ludlow, in 1807. The remaining territory was surveyed in 1819, by Deputy Surveyor General Sylvanus Bourne. The early pioneers came close after the surveyors, and in many places found the bark still fresh upon the stakes that marked the different sections. The first actual settler, however, was more bold, and, braving the dan- gers and inconveniences of frontier isolation, penetrated the dense forest, and took up a claim on the border of the Sandusky Plains, eight miles from the nearest cabin, and twice that many miles from what might be called a com- munity. He is represented as a man of large athletic proportions, standing six feet high, of strong determination, keen intelligence, and full of the true spirit of enterprise. This was Samuel Norton, the founder of the village of Bucyrus. He came from Susquehanna County, Penn., and, after selecting his quarter-section

on the present site of the county seat, he re- turned to his native State for his family. The land was not yet surveyed, nor offered for sale ; but here he erected his pole cabin, and pro- ceeded to make a clearing, trusting that he would have no difficulty in securing the land by purchase, when put on the market. In this cabin, located near the site of the present rail- road bridge, his daughter, Sophronia, was born ; the first white child, probably, within the origi- nal limits of the county. "At this time his only neighbors were David Beadle, and his sons, Mishel and David, Daniel McMichael, and Joseph Young. Col. Kilburn's 'Song of Bu- cyrus' has it :

" ' First Norton and the Beadles came With friends, an enterprising band ; Young and McMichael, men of fame, Soon joined the others hand in hand.'

" Of these, Daniel McMichael settled on a quar- ter-section, two miles east on the river ; Young settled on the farm now owned by John A. Gormly ; Mishel Beadle, on the farm now owned by L. Converse, and David Beadle, just southwest of the village of Bucyrus. Of the settlers who came into the various parts of the county about this time, were Resolved White, a descendant of the child born on the May- flower ; Rudolph Morse and David Cummins, in the present limits of Auburn Township ; Ja- cob Snyder, near Leesville ; David Anderson and Andrew Dixson and sons, in Vernon Town- ship ; John Brown and his son, Michael Brown, on the farm owned by the late Mr. Beltz, of Polk Township ; David Reid and two men named Pletcher, a little south of that point; in Sandusky Township, there were Westel, Ridge- ly and J. S. Griswell, near where the Bucyrus and Leesville road crosses the Sandusky River ; a little south was Peter Bebout ; Samuel Knisely, at Knisely's Springs, and his brother Joseph, and John B. French, just north of him. Near the Bear Marsh, were Isaac Matthews

* Flint's Letters from America, 1818.

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William Handley, Nelson Tustason, two fami- lies of McIntyres, and John Davis. "*

" *The great avenue of travel at this carly period was along the route followed by Gen. Crook's army in 1813, and rendered this section of country particularly accessible to immigra- tion from Pennsylvania. Another feature of the early settlement of the county, will be ob- served in the fact that there was no common center in this territory, from which the inereas- ing population seemed to disperse over the county. This country had filled the eye of many in the older settlements, who were pre- pared to move forward so soon as the way should be opened, and, when once the treaty barriers were removed, there was a general rush for the various points that had already been canvassed. The settlement in what is now Au- burn Township, was largely made up of New Englanders, and received its first white inhab- itants in 1815. These facts, somewhat at va- rianee with the history of the greater part of the county, have their explanation in the loca- tion of this township adjoining the ' fire lands ' of the Western Reserve. These lands, appro- priated for the use of certain citizens of Con- neeticut, who suffered by the devastation of the English during the Revolutionary war, were early settled by these beneficiaries, and naturally attracted others of their friends to the same vi- einity. Although much of the land in Auburn at an early date was occupied by marshes, it still presented attractions enough in its near- ness to old friends, to induce John Pettigon and William Green to settle here as early as 1815. Two years later, Charles Morrow joined the little settlement ; in 1819, the little colony from New York, named above; John Blair, in 1821, and A. T. Ross in 1825. Vernon was principally settled by New Englanders, many of them locating Revolutionary war land warrants. The land was not the most inviting, a large part of it being covered with marshes.

*John Moderwell's letters in Bucyrus Journal, 1868.

The first settler was George Byers, in 1818. He occupied a squatter's claim, and was noto- rions in the early times as a trapper. Coming soon after him was James Richards, in 1821, and George Dickson from Pennsylvania, in 1822. The settlement in the southeast corner of the county was an early and important one. This whole corner of the county was known as Sandusky Township, in Richland County. Ben- jamin Leveredge and his sons James and Na- thaniel, together with George Wood. and David, came in 1817, and were the first to settle on the present site of Galion. Benjamin Sharrock came in 1818 and Asa Hosford in 1819. These hardy, stalwart men were followed, in 1820, by Father Ketteridge, a great trapper and hunter, by Rev. James Dunlap, in 1822, and Nathan Merriman in 1824. James Nail, in his printed recollections, says : " In 1819, I left my father's farm and came to what was then called San- dusky Township, Richland County, and bought 160 acres of Congress land, about two miles from Galion, on the road to Leesville. All the settlers then heard of, in what is now Crawford County, were three brothers by the name of Lev- eredge, living a little west of where Galion is. and my brother-in-law, Lewis Leiberger, who settled on a piece of land adjoining me. Living with Leiberger, I put up a cabin on my land, and commenced clearing it. In the fall of 1821, I married, and settled on my piece of land. By this time, some other settlers came into the community, such as John Brown, Benjamin Sharrock, Nehemiah Story and others." Whet- stone was first settled about 1820, and num- bered among its earliest pioneers, Esi Norton, Frederick Garver, Ileman Rowse, Christopher Bair, John Kent and others. The community here grew rapidly, and by 1827 numbered some thirty families, principally from Pennsyl- vania and the New England States. Liberty was first invaded by Daniel McMichael, who was followed by Ralph Bacon in 1821, from Mentor, Ohio. In the same year, the families

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HISTORY OF CRAWFORD COUNTY.

of John Maxfield, a native of Vermont, and John O. Blowers, from Wayne County, Ohio, were added to the population of the township. In 1822, William Blowers, Calvin Squier and Nehemiah Squier, came from New York, and in 1823, some sixteen families were added to this settlement, principally from the far Eastern States. The settlement of Chatfield was not quite so rapid as some of the southern and eastern parts, but had a nucleus about which a settle- ment gathered as early as 1820. An early character was Jacob Whetstone, who spent his time hunting and trapping. The more impor- tant family was represented by Silas and Oliver Chatfield, whose name has been perpetuated in that of the township. Holmes township labored under some disadvantages at this period. The western portion was still reserved to the In- dians, and along its southern border an exten- sive cranberry marsh made it undesirable for settlement. Mr. Hearman was the first resident of the township, who was followed in a short time by William Flake. The growth of the set- tlement here was slow, and it was probably 1825, before it could aspire to the title of com- munity.

" The difficulty and trials of the early set- tlers of Crawford County, although not so great as those encountered by the first settlers west of the Alleghanies, were yet such as would be considered by their descendants of the present day as almost insurmountable. Nearly all the land within the present limits of the county was covered by heavy timber, which almost entirely prevented the sun's rays from reaching the ground. This, in connection with the formation of the country and the nature of the soil, necessarily made very muddy roads, even with the little travel then passing on them, and mud, and the fever and ague pro- duced by the same causes, were the great drawbacks to the rapid development of this country. The distance from mills and from other settlements was also among the serious

difficulties they had to contend with. For sev- eral years, nearly all the flour used had to be brought from the mills on Mohican Creek and its tributaries, in Richland County, thirty and forty miles distant. The practice then was to make a trip in an ox wagon to the vicinity of one of these mills, purchase a small quantity of wheat from some of the settlers there, have it ground, and carry the flour back to Bucyrus -the voyage consuming from a week to ten days' time.

"Most of the pioneers were men of small means. Their stock of cash being generally ex- hausted upon paying the Government price for eighty, or, at most, one hundred and sixty acres of land, many became discouraged at the hardships they had to encounter and returned to their old homes. Others would have done so could they have raised the wherewith to carry them there. This, however, did not last long, most of them becoming entirely satisfied after a few years' residence, the improvement of the country each year making it more toler- able to live in, and giving increasing promise of its future prosperity.

" The total change in the appearance of the country to one who can look back forty-five years (written in 1868) seems almost mirac- ulous. Could one of the residents here in 1825, after an absence of forty years, now re- turn, he would find it difficult to recognize a single familiar landmark or half a dozen famil- iar faces, and one who has not a correct record of his age is inclined to think he has been here a century instead of less than half of one."*

It will be observed that quite a large pro- portion of these early settlers were of New England origin. This fact of late years has been entirely changed, and the German element in most parts of the county has assumed the ascendency. This change began about 1832. In this year and succeeding ones, there was a *Moderwell's Letters, ISG8.

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HISTORY OF CRAWFORD COUNTY.

large accession of German population coming direct from Europe. Coming by the Erie Canal to Buffalo, and thence to Cleveland or Sandusky, the Maumee Valley presented the most available place for settlement at that time, and this fact undoubtedly determined the destination of scores of persons who have since made this once marshy and unhealthful country to become a strong competitor with localities far more highly favored by nature. In 1848, the political troubles of Germany brought another considerable addition to the Teutonic element of Crawford, and many a German " agitator " is to-day among the county's most reliable citizens.

The origin of Crawford County as a distinct political division of the State dates back to February 20, 1820. At this time, the whole Maumee Valley was opened to settlement, and was divided up into counties for judicial and governmental purposes. Townships 1, 2 and 3 south, in Ranges 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 east, and all the land east of these townships up to what was then the western limits of Richland County, was named Crawford County, in honor of the gallant soldier who ended, in 1782, a brave and praiseworthy career on the plains within these boundaries. This division did not at that time have any political significance or power, but was simply attached to Delaware County, an association that did not even have the merit of an equality in the disadvan- tages. Fortunately, the matter of law or taxa- tion did not enter very largely into the experiences of the pioneer settlements until a nearer county seat was provided. December 15, 1823, the county of Marion, roughly blocked out at the time Crawford was named, was regularly organized, and became the guardian of her younger sister, as the act reads, "for judicial purposes." Save that some of its townships had received a name and something of a start toward civilization, Craw- ford was the same insignificant figure in affairs

of state as before. On the 17th of February in the following year, the increase of popula- tion having become so great as to make it inconvenient for the more remote settlers to go to Marion to transact their business, that part of Crawford which was situated north of the Wyandot reservation, "including one tier of townships lying east and west," was attached to Seneca County for judicial purposes. This continued until January 31, 1826. Crawford County was independently organized and intro- duced into the sisterhood of counties by the following act :

SECTION 1. Be it enacted, etc., that the county of Crawford be, and the same is hereby, organized into a separate and distinct county.

SEC. 2. That all Justices of the Peace residing within the county of Crawford shall continue to dis- charge the duties of their respective offices until their commissions shall expire and their successors are chosen and qualified.

SEC. 3. That the qualified electors residing in the county of Crawford shall meet in their respective townships on the first Monday of April next, and elect their several county officers, who shall hold their re- spective offices until the next annual election, and until others are chosen and qualified according to law. SEC. 4. That all suits and actions, whether of a civil or criminal nature, which shall have been commenced, shall be prosecuted to final judgment and execution, and all taxes, fines and penalties which shall have become due shall be collected in the same manner as if this act had not been passed.

SEC. 5. That Zalmon Rowse is hereby appointed Assessor for said county of Crawford, who shall, on or before the first day of April next, give bond, as is pro- vided in the fourth section of the "act establishing an equitable mode of taxation," to the acceptance of Enoch B. Merryman, who is hereby authorized to re- ceive said bond, and deposit the same with the County Auditor of said county forthwith after such Auditor shall have been elected and qualified ; and the Asses- sor herein appointed shall be required to perform the same duties, hold his office for the same time and in the same manner as if he had been appointed by a court of common pleas for said county of Crawford ; and the Auditor of State is hereby required to trans- mit to said Assessor a schedule of all lands subject to

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HISTORY OF CRAWFORD COUNTY.

taxation within said county, which schedule said As- sessor shall return with his other returns to the County Auditor.

SEC. 6. That the Commissioners elected according to the provisions contained in the third section of this act shall meet on the first Monday in May next, at the lown 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.

SEC. 7. That those townships and fractional town. ships in Crawford County which have heretofore been attached to and formed a part of any township in Marion or Seneca Counties respectively, 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 Commissioners of said county.

The county thus organized included a scope of territory three Congressional townships in width, and extending from the eastern bound- ary of Sandusky and Cranberry Townships to the western boundary of Crawford, Salem and Mifflin Townships, in Wyandot County. The larger part of what is now Wyandot County, and three miles of the western portion of Holmes and Bucyrus townships, was covered by the Wyandot Indian reservation. In 1835, the In- dians sold to the government a strip seven miles off the east end of their reservation, which was sold by the government publicly in Marion, Ohio. This tract extended in what is now Wyandot County, some two miles. A considerable part of this land located around the present village of Osceola, was bought by a company who laid out this town and sold a good many lots in the belief that the county seat would eventually be removed there, as it . was near the center of the county as then con- structed. This speculation was defeated on February 3, 1845, by the erection of Wyandot County. In the general re-organization of the counties that then took place, Crawford lost all the territory west of the middle line of town- ships in Range 15 east, and gained from Marion County a strip of territory two miles

while extending to the Richland County line, and from the latter county on the cast a tract four miles wide, extending the whole length of Craw- ford from north to south, some twenty miles. In 1848, a tier of fractional sections were taken off in the erection of Morrow County, leaving Craw- ford in its present outlines. In the matter of township lines the information is not so accu- rate. The early records of this county having, unfortunately, been burned, the only clew is to be found by a tedious search in the early records of Delaware and Marion Counties. Bucyrus, Liberty and Whetstone were probably erected by the Commissioners of Delaware County, but with what boundaries is not known. During the three years this county was attached to Marion, a number of townships north, east and west of the Indian reserve were erected. Syca- more, Tymochtee, Pitt and Antrim Townships were among these. "Tymochtee Township," says Mr. Moderwell, " lay directly west of Syca- more, and probably contained more inhabitants forty [now fifty-two] years ago, than any town- ship in the county, and contributed its full share to the business of our courts." What was done before the latter part of 1831, by the Commis- sioners of Crawford is open to conjecture only. In 1845, there were the following sixteen town- ships, of which none of those located within the present limits of Crawford, were erected subse- quent to 1831 : Antrim, Bucyrus, Center, Chatfield, Cranberry, Crawford, Holmes, Jack- son, Liberty, Lykens, Mifflin, Pitt, Sandusky, Sycamore, Tymochtee, and Whetstone. On the 6th of March, 1845, the commissioners of Crawford County took the following action in regard to the fractional townships and territory added :

This day, it was resolved by the Commissioners of Crawford County, that the following fractional town- ships taken from the counties of Richland and Marion, and those lying on the west side of said county of Craw- ford, according to an act of the General Assembly of the State of Ohio, passed February 3, 1845, to ereet the

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HISTORY OF CRAWFORD COUNTY.

new county of Wyandot, and alter the boundaries of Crawford, be organized into separate townships, to wit :

All that part taken from the county of Richland, and being in Township twenty-two (22) north, Range twen- ty (20) west, be, and the same is hereby, organized into a separate township, and shall be known by the name of AUBURN :

All that part taken from the county of Richland, and being in Township twenty-one (21) north, Range twenty (20) west, be, and the same is hereby, organized into a separate township, and shall be known by the name of VERNON.

All that part taken from the county of Richland, and being in Township twenty (20) north, Range twenty (2.)) west; and all that part taken from Township nineteen (19) north, Range twenty (20); and all that part taken from the county of Marion, and being in Township fifteen (15) north, Range twenty-one (21), be, and the same is hereby, organized into a separate township, and shall be known by the name of POLK :

All that part taken from the county of Marion, and being in township four (4) south, Range sixteen (16) east ; and all that part taken from the county of Marion, and being in Township four (4) south, Range fifteen (15) east ; and all that part taken from Township three (3) south, Range fifteen east, except six sections off the north end of said fractional township, be, and the same is hereby, organized into a separate township, and shall be known by the name of DALLAS :

All that part taken from Township two (2) south, Range fifteen (15) east, and six sections off the north end of fractional Township three (3) south, Range fif- teen (15) east be, and the same is hereby, organized into a separate township, and shall be known by the name of TODD :

All that part taken from Township one (1) south, Range fifteen (15) east, be, and the same is hereby, or- ganized into an independent township, and shall be known by the name of TEXAS :

All that part taken from the county ' of Marion, and being in Township four (4) south, Range seventeen (17) east, be, and the same is hereby, attached to Whet- stone :

All that part of fractional Section thirty-one (31), thirty-two (32), in Township three (3) south, Range sixteen east, be, and the same is hereby, attached to Bucyrus.

It will be observed that the township of Polk, as thus constructed, occupied the southeast corner of the county as Dallas does the southwest. To this arrange- ment the citizens objected, and in the following June

the line of division between Jackson and Polk Town- ships was run from the "northeast corner of Sec- tion twenty-seven (27), in Polk Township, and thence west on the section line to the southwest corner of Sec- tion twenty-two (22), in Jackson Township."

On the 10th of March, 1873, Jefferson Town- ship was erected out of the twenty sections in the western part of Jackson Township. There had been two polling precincts for some time, and, a jealousy springing up in regard to the division of officers, a division was made, cut- ting Jackson Township off with but eight sec- tions. With these changes, Crawford County stands as at present, divided into sixteen town- ships. Three of these have thirty-six sections, one has forty full sections besides eight frac- tional sections, two have thirty sections, and two eighteen sections, and the others have re- spectively twenty-eight, twenty-six, twenty- four, twenty-two, twenty-one, twenty, twelve and eight sections.

The first election provided for by the act erecting the county, was contested with consid- erable spirit. By a provision of the act, the first Commissioners were empowered to fix the place for holding the courts, until permanently fixed by commissioners appointed by the State. The result of the election, therefore, practi- cally decided this interesting question, and this fact constituted the point on which the factions joined issue. The western part of the population considered the village of Crawford, located on the Broken Sword Creek, the more generally accessible, and the southern part pre- ferred Bucyrus as the site for the county seat. The result was a victory for the partisans of Bucyrus, in the election of Thomas MeClure, John Magers and George Poe, who established the county seat, temporarily, at Bucyrus. In 1830, Judge Williams, of Delaware; R. S. Dickenson, of Fremont, and J. S. Glassgo, of Holmes County, Commissioners appointed by the Legislature for the purpose, confirmed this action of the County Commissioners, and es-

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HISTORY OF CRAWFORD COUNTY.

tablished the county seat permanently at Bucy- rus. A Mr. Beardsley received the first ap- pointment as Clerk, but shortly afterward resigned, and was succeeded by Col. Rowse, who held the office for a number of years, and at the same time discharged the duties of County Recorder. He was succeeded as Clerk by J. B. Larwill, D. W. Swigart, Alexander P. Widman, J. R. Clymer, Thomas Coughlin, David C. Cahill and A. A. Ruhl ; and as Re- corder, by Jacob Howenstine, James Robinson, Frank M. Bowyer, William Stremmel and D. O. Castle. Hugh MeCracken was the first Sher- iff, and was succeeded by John Miller, John Moderwell, David Holm, John Shull, Samuel Andrews, James L. Harper, John Cald- well, James Clements, Jonathan Kissinger, William C. Beal, John Franz, Joseph Worden, Daniel Keplinger, James Worden, Henry J. Row and John A. Schaber. James Martin was first elected Auditor, and was succeeded in this office by Charles Merriman, Edward Billips, John Caldwell, Jacob Howenstein, George Sinn, Owen Williams, John Pitman, A. M. Jack- son, E. R. Kearsley, A. A. Ruhl, Samuel Hoyt, William Seroggs, Frederick M. Swingley, J. H. Robinson. The first County Treasurer, John H. Morrison, was succeeded by Gen. Samuel Myers, George Lauck, Charles Hetich, Otto Fieldner, George Donnenwirth, Joseph Roop, John Franz, J. B. Franz, John G. Birk, C. H. Shoner and W. Riblet. The first Probate Judge was Harvey Eaton, who was succeeded by George Wiley, P. S. Marshall, J. S. Elliott, Abram Summers, James Clements, Robert Lee and Shannon Clements.

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History of Crawford County and Ohio, Part 34

Author: Perrin, William Henry, [from old catalog] comp; Battle, J. H., [from old catalog] comp; Goodspeed, Weston Arthur, 1852- [from old catalog] comp; Baskin & Battey, Chicago, pub. [from old catalog] Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Chicago, Baskin & Battey Number of Pages: 1034

Author: Perrin, William Henry, [from old catalog] comp; Battle, J. H., [from old catalog] comp; Goodspeed, Weston Arthur, 1852- [from old catalog] comp; Baskin & Battey, Chicago, pub. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago, Baskin & Battey
Number of Pages: 1034