USA > Ohio > Montgomery County > Dayton > History of Dayton, Ohio. With portraits and biographical sketches of some of its pioneer and prominent citizens Vol. 1 > Part 7
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Provisions were dear at Cincinnati, and when settlers could afford to purchase them, there was much delay in bringing them up to Dayton, so that the supply here was often nearly exhausted. Flour cost $14.00 per barrel by the time it reached here, but it was seldom used except in sick- ness or on special occasions. The fine crop, which the settlers raised the first year, rendered them less dependent on the Cincinnati market. They brought horses and cattle with them, and milk was an important part of their food.
Clothes, moccasins, and harness were often made of deerskin, and caps of the furs of raccoons and rabbits, killed and dressed by the wearers. They frequently made their own leather, which, though coarse, was durable. Tan bark was easily obtained and pounded for the tanning trough which nearly every family had sunk in the ground on their lot.
The pioneer's dress, according to a writer in the American Pioneer, usually consisted first of a tow linen shirt and pantaloons manufactured by the women of his family. Over this he wore a suit of buckskin, consisting of a hunting coat and leggins. The coat was ornamented with buckskin fringe down the sleeves, round the collar, cape, belt, and tail, and sometimes on all the seams. The leggins, which protected him from rattlesnakes, briars, and nettles, and kept out snow and mud, reached a little above the knee, and were cut the size and shape of the leg. The seams, which as in the coat were two inches and a half wide and sewed up on the outside, were cut into fringe. They were buttoned to the pantaloons by a strap reaching from the knee to the hip and tied into the moccasins at the ankle. The deerskin moccasins neatly fitted the feet. Dried oak leaves usually took the place of socks or stockings. A large scalping knife in a scabbard was generally worn suspended from the belt.
Soon the pioneers began to raise flax, hemp and wool, which their
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capable wives and daughters, who had as much faculty as the typical New England woman, spun and wove into tow linen, woolens or mixed flannels, linseys, and jeans for clothes and household use. They seldom bought dress goods. Every cabin had its spinning wheel and loom. Abraham Grassmire, the ingenious Dayton pioneer weaver, assisted the settlers to build looms the first or second year after their arrival. The women made dye stuff's themselves at first, no doubt, from the hulls of walnuts and butternuts and from a wild root of a bright yellow color. A little later the hunting shirts were probably dyed with indigo or madder brought from Cincinnati.
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Isolated from the other settlements by miles of unbroken forests, the only road a trail marked by blazed trees or a narrow bridle path, with treacherous Indians and wild beasts prowling through the tangled under- growth on either side, the inhabitants of frontier places like Dayton were dependent on each other for society and for assistance in sickness and in work. They shared everything. The latch-string was always out. Hildreth says of Marietta that the various households in the little com- munity were like the nearly related branches of one family, and probably this was true of the log cabin hamlet of Dayton.
The principal amusements of the men were hunting, trapping, shoot- ing matches, and the quarter race. Then there were log rollings and burnings, house raisings, corn shuckings, and frolics at the sugar camps, in which both sexes participated, and which occupied so much of their time that their life cannot be described without mentioning them.
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Sometimes nearly the whole winter was spent in rolling logs, and when a number of large heaps were made, the men gathered to kindle and the women to tend the fires. They often worked half the night, making a frolic of necessary labor, and regaling themselves with a hearty supper.
Sugar camps were correctly named in those days, for in sugaring off time when the collecting and boiling of sap often continued all night, men, women, and children literally camped in the maple groves.
The line between town and country could not be drawn during the earlier years of the history of Dayton. Woods and corn fields spread over what are now city streets.
The elder pioneer women were always specially interested in quiltings. Patches of gaudy colors and bizarre patterns were a substitute for the art embroidery of their granddaughters. Still more delightful than the gossipings around the quilting frame and the supper afterwards, to which the men were invited, were the wedding festivities, which, according to Mr. King, among well-to-do Ohio pioneers, lasted three days. The first
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day the guests amused themselves with sports of various kinds. The second day the marriage ceremony was performed, which was followed by the wedding feast, the table groaning under a bountiful supply of backwoods dainties. Then came the dance, which lasted till morning. The third day was devoted to the infare or house-warming. The bride was escorted on horseback to her new home, and "the ride was not unlike to that of Canterbury in style." The day ended with another merry dance. Rough practical jokes were played and there was much boisterous talking and laughing. The fun was fast and furious, and unrestrained by the ceremonious and punctilious manners of fashionable society.
The territorial law permitted the marriage "of male persons of the age of eighteen years and female persons of the age of fourteen years, and not nearer of kin than first cousins." But it was necessary that notice should be given either in writing posted at some conspicuous place within the township where the woman resided, or publicly declared on two days of public worship. Sometimes a manuscript notice, signed D. C. Cooper, Justice of the Peace, for the territory, was tacked to the trunk of a prominent forest tree near the road. Early marriages were so much the custom that respectable parents saw with approbation young daughters who at the present day would be still in the schoolroom married to men who were mere boys in age. A girl of fifteen was as much a young lady in 1800 as a girl of twenty at the present day.
The axe and the rifle were equally indispensable to the pioneer, for wolves, panthers, and wild cats, as well as Indians, were often trouble- some. Packs of wolves sometimes came into the settlement in the day time, and they made night hideous with their howls, destroyed stock and poultry, and ate up vegetables growing in the gardens. They were sometimes shot after dark through the cracks in the cabins. Large bounties were paid for scalps. The settler's rifle was never long out of his sight. When in the house, gun, powder horn, and shot pouch hung within reach on buck horns fastened on the wall, and were beside being useful, about the only decorative articles a cabin contained.
Doddridge says that hunting "was an important part of the employ- ment of the early settlers of this country. For some years the woods supplied them with the greater amount of their subsistence, and with regard to some families and certain times, the whole of it; for it was no uncommon thing for families to live several months without a mouthful of bread." At such times children were taught to call the "Jean venison and the breast of the wild turkeys bread, and the flesh of the bear was denominated meat." But the artifice did not succeed very well with those who had been brought up in the east, where beef was plenty.
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" After living in this way for some time, we became sickly; the stomach seemed to be always empty and tormented with a sense of hunger." "It frequently happened that there was no breakfast till it was obtained from the woods. Fur and peltry were the people's money. They had nothing else to give in exchange for rifles, salt and iron, on the other side of the mountains."
Buffaloes and elk disappeared from the Miami Valley before 1795, but the woods in 1797 were still full of deer, bears, wild turkeys, geese, ducks, pheasants, and numerous other edible animals, beside many that were both useless and troublesome. Harmless gartersnakes abounded and rattlesnakes were occasionally seen. Large and small animals and turkeys were frequently taken in traps for the sake both of the pelts and the flesh. The rivers were full of bass, catfish, pickerel, pike, eels and sunfish, which were caught by hook and line and in snares, traps, and nets.
"Hunting," says Doddridge, "was not a mere ramble in pursuit of game, in which there was nothing of skill and calculation." "The whole business of the hunter consisted of a succession of intrigues. From morning to night he was on the alert to ,gain the wind of his game, and approach them without being discovered." Bear hunting required much daring and courage, as well as skill, but was constantly engaged in for the sake of obtaining the valuable skins, meat, and oil.
A favorite amusement with the first settlers of Dayton, was "fire hunting," which Curwen thus described: "The deer came down to the river to drink in the evening and sheltered themselves for the night under the bushes which grew along the shore. As soon as they were quiet, the hunters, in pirogues, paddled slowly up the stream, the steers- man holding aloft a burning torch of dried hickory, bark, by the light of which the deer was discovered and fired on. If the shot was successful, the party landed, skinned the animal, hung the carcass upon a tree, to be brought home in the morning, and then proceeded to hunt more game." The settlers did not bring swine with them, and it was several years before " hog and hominy " were substituted for venison.
The Thompsons, Van Cleves, McClures, George Newcom, his wife and brother William, and Abraham Grassmire settled on the town plat and the other colonists on neighboring farms. The farming lands for two or three miles around the mouth of Mad River were included in the Dayton settlement. William Van Cleve moved to his farm south of Day- ton in two or three years, and Abraham Grassmire left here before 1803.
The town plat was divided into two hundred and eighty building lots, ninety-nine feet wide and one hundred and ninety-nine deep, and reservations were made for markets, schools, churches, and burial grounds.
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HISTORY OF DAYTON.
There were also fifty-four ten-acre out-lots east of the present canal basin. The town and three of the streets were named for the original proprietors, General Dayton, General St. Clair, General Ludlow, and General Wilkin- son, who were Federalists, and as a compromise one of the streets was called Jefferson.
The town was bounded on the north by Water Street, now Monument Avenue; east by Mill Street to Third; thence west to St. Clair Street; thence south to Fifth Street; thence west to Jefferson; thence south to South, now Sixth Street; thence along Sixth Street to Ludlow; thence north to Fifth; thence west to Wilkinson, and thence north to Water Street. Water, First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and South streets were to run east and west, and cross at right angles Mill, St. Clair, "Jefferson, Main, Ludlow; and Wilkinson streets, which were to run north and south. Water Street, now Monument Avenue, was immediately cleared of trees and brush to the river brink; but over nearly all the rest of the town plat spread for several years a dense thicket of hazel bushes interspersed with occasional clumps of haw, wild plum, cherry, thorn, scrub oak and forest trees.
A gully about five feet deep extended from near the corner of First and Wilkinson streets, crossing Main diagonally at Third Street, to the prairie near the corner of Fifth and Brown streets. It was bordered and hidden from view by a thick hazel copse. Main Street, which was merely a narrow, rough wagon road cut out of the bush from Cincinnati to Dayton, must have disappeared at the Third Street crossing in the bottom of this gully, coming up and out again on the other side of it. The gully was sometimes full of water and difficult to cross, as it served as a natural drain for the ground on which Dayton is built; but during the greater part of the year it was dry. The First and Wilkinson Street end of the gully was not filled up till 1883.
A deep ravine extended from the head of Mill Street down the course of the canal to the river below the foot of Ludlow Street. This was connected near Library Park with another ravine, which ran across the town from the river at the head of Jefferson Street.
Forests with a thick undergrowth of vines and bushes, and full of wild animals, covered most of the country to the east and southwest and the hills to their summits on the south. North of the Miami, the woods extended to the river bank. The rich bottom land beyond old Mad River was, as in 1795, hidden under a tangled maze of weeds and vines. Opposite the Main Street shore of the Miami there was a large island and there were three others in Mad River just above its mouth.
In the spring of 1796, three cabins on Monument Avenue, between
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Main and Mill streets, constituted the whole of Dayton. George New- com's cabin stood on the southwest corner of Main Street and Monument Avenue; Samuel Thompson's on Monument Avenue, half way between Jefferson and St. Clair streets, and Mrs. McClure's at the corner of Monument Avenue and Mill Street. They built their dwellings on Water Street lots close to the Miami, because the river was then believed to be navigable. They thought that in future years, when they hoped that boats laden with produce from their own neighborhood and supplies from abroad would be constantly passing up and down the stream, property would be more valuable near the landing than elsewhere. The settlers, as a rule, drank river water, though there was a spring in a grove near the corner of First and Wilkinson streets.
A prairie extending from First Street to Fifth, and from Perry Street to the river, was enclosed and cultivated in common by the Daytonians. This communal farm, long known as the commons, and where in later times cows had free pasturage, excited the imagination of Curwen, whose sketch of Dayton is a model of skillful condensation of facts and grace of style. "West of Wilkinson Street," he says, "was a huge corn field within one common enclosure, where, as in that golden age of the world when men lodged under trees and fed upon acorns, every man was at liberty to till as much of the soil as he chose."
Between this large enclosure and the three cabins was a small prairie which served as a vegetable garden for the hamlet, though most of it was . also planted with corn. A number of prairies, usually less than half an acre in size, lay north of First and west of Wilkinson Street, and there were five east of St. Clair and south of First Street, separated by small tracts of timber.
The first winter proved mild and pleasant, and both men and women accomplished a good deal of out door work, burning brush, rolling logs and clearing ground for cultivation in the spring. During the year the settlement was strengthened by a constant stream of emigrants, though only two or three settled on the town plat. But dread of Indians, who wandered about the country in small bands, prevented any of them from locating far from here, for Dayton was the rallying place in case of danger.
Jerome Holt, Daniel C. Cooper, and Robert Edgar came this year. During the preceding year Mr. Cooper had located one thousand acres of choice land near here and in the town. Mr. Cooper built a cabin, which he probably occupied about two years, at the southeast corner of Monu- ment Avenue and Jefferson Street.
The spring of 1791 was favorable for making maple sugar and molasses, and the settlers had also a good erop this year of corn, tobacco, 5
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hemp, flax, beans, turnips, pumpkins, and cabbage, while plenty of wild grass and fodder were gathered for their stock. The following descrip- tion of the eagerness with which settlers welcomed the new vegetables after the deprivations of the long hard winter is probably applicable to Dayton: "I remember how narrowly the children watched the growth of the potato tops, pumpkin and squash vines, hoping from day to day to get something to answer in the place of bread. How delicious was the taste of the young potatoes when we got them! What a jubilee when we were permitted to pull the young corn for roasting ears, still more so, when it had acquired sufficient hardness to be made into Johnny cake by the aid of a tin grater. We then became healthy, vigorous, and contented with our situation, poor as it was."
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CHAPTER V.
Dayton Township-Small Feos Received by Officials-Taxes in 1798-D. C. Cooper, Justice of the Peace from 1799-1803-Newcom's Tavern-The Tavern Used as the First Court House and Jail-First Store-Newcom's Corner, the Business Center of Dayton-A Typical Frontier Tavern-Dayton Contained Nine Dwellings in 1799-Several Roads Opened-Monument Avenue Cleared-Main Street a Narrow Wagon Road-Settlements Few and Far Between-Hardships of Pioneer Life-Indian War Apprehended-Block House Built-School Opened in the Block House-First Distillery Started-Cooper's Saw Mill-Corn Cracker-Hogs Introduced-Feed on Mast-Attacked by Wild Animals -First Flat Boat Launched-Sheep Introduced-Cost of Groceries at Cincinnati-Little Money in Circulation-Business Conducted by Barter-Value of Different Kinds of Skins-Cut Money-McDougal's Store-Trade with the Indians-First Child Born in Dayton-Taxation in 1800-First Wedding-Census in 1801-First Minister-Methodists -Presbyterians - Log Meeting House - First Grave Yard - John W. Van Cleve's Description of Dayton in 1805-Presbyterians Worship in Newcom's and McCullum's Taverns-Worship in the Court House -- First Brick Presbyterian Church-Rev. James Welsh, First Pastor-William King-John H. 'Williams.
D AYTON was originally in Hamilton County, out of which several other counties were afterward carved. Dayton Township was formed in the winter of 1796-1797. It was of great size, and included the whole of what are now Wayne, Mad River and Van Buren townships, and parts of Washington and Miami townships; and also other territory at present in Montgomery, Greene, Clarke, Champaign, Logan and Shelby counties.
The county commissioners and township assessors jointly controlled the expenditures of the township, but made regular reports to the county court and met yearly as a court of appeals to hear objections against assessments.
Until the appointment of a justice of the peace in 1799, Dayton had no government but that administered by these county and township officers, whose chief duty was assessing and collecting taxes.
The fees of the township officials were not extravagant. An order of the county commissioners which has been preserved, directed the treasurer of Hamilton County to pay James Brady five dollars and twenty cents out of the first moneys that came into his hands, "the same being his perquisites in full as assessor for the township of Dayton in the year 1797." This year Cyrus Osborn, constable of Dayton Township, received one dollar and ninety cents, to which by law he was entitled, "for his trouble and attention in executing the commissioners' warrant for ascertaining the taxable property." He also received "fifty cents for
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one quire of paper used in the aforesaid business." The commissioners each received seven dollars and fifty cents in 1797, and the county expended for stationery fourteen dollars and thirty-four cents.
The officers appointed in Dayton Township in 1798 were James Thompson, constable; Daniel C. Cooper, assessor; George Newcom, collector. Mr. Cooper's fees were seven dollars and twenty-one cents.
The rates of valuation for taxes for 1798 were fixed by the commis- sioners. It would seem that in the valuation of property for taxation no regard was paid to the quality of the article or animal; a good or poor house, a fine or indifferent horse, and so on, paid the same tax.
Single men, with no property, were taxed one dollar; cleared land (valuation for taxation ) per acre at twenty dollars; cattle per head, six- teen dollars; horses, seventy-five dollars; cabins, twenty dollars; houses, six hundred dollars; grist mills and saw mills, each six hundred dollars; boats, two hundred dollars; ferries, one thousand dollars. There were one hundred and thirty eight tax-payers in the township, and the total amount raised for the year was one hundred and eighty-six dollars, sixty-six and a half cents.
Twenty-two tax-payers lived in the village and its immediate vicinity in 1798, and the total amount of taxes paid by them was twenty-nine dollars and seventy-four cents.
In 1799 Samuel Thompson was made constable; John McGrew, assessor; John Ewing, collector, in Dayton Township. The assessments amounted to two hundred and thirty-three dollars and seventy-two cents, and two hundred and twenty-four dollars were collected.
Mr. Cooper was made justice of the peace for the township. He tried his first case October 4, 1799. It was a suit for eight dollars brought by Abram Richardson against George Kirkendall. The total costs were thirty-three cents; entering judgment, ten cents; summons, ten cents; subpoena, thirteen cents. "Defendant stayed collection with John Casey on the bond." The next case was a suit for six dollars and seventy-eight cents, brought by John Casey, Kirkendall's bondsman, against Matthew Bohn. The squire's decision was as follows: "From the circumstances in the case, it appears that there is really no cause for action, and plaintiff is taxed with the costs, viz .: summons, ten cents; entering judgment, twenty cents; satisfied."
Another suit for seven dollars and sixty-six cents due for fur was brought by Winetowah, a Shawnee Indian, against Ephraim Lawrence. Lawrence was ordered to pay. Winetowah one dollar and twenty-one cents and costs. The squire's last record was made May 1, 1803. Mr. Cooper tried one hundred and eighteen cases during this period of three
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years and seven months. One hundred of them were certified as settled, the rest as " satisfied."
Newcom's tavern, the first in the Miami valley, north of Fort Hamilton, was built in the winter of 1798-1799. It stood on the south- west corner of Main Street and Monument Avenue; was two stories high and built of hewn logs, and was the largest and best house in the hamlet and in all the country for miles around. This building, now covered with weather boards, though the logs are as sound as when cut ninety years ago, still stands on the site where it was originally placed, and is occupied as a grocery and dwelling. Lime was probably made for the first time this year from stones gathered from the bed of the river and piled on a huge log fire which took the place of a kiln. Newcom's tavern was, it is supposed, the first house in Dayton that was chinked and plastered with lime mortar. A wondering country boy, on his return from the village, reported to his astonished family that "Colonel Newcom was plastering his house inside with flour."
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The southwest corner of Main Street and Monument Avenue was the business centre of Dayton Township for five or six years. At Newcom's tavern was opened the first store, and it was also the first court house and jail, and at one time the Presbyterians held their Sunday services there. It was a typical frontier tavern, the host and hostess doing with their own hands the work of the house and of the log stable at the back end of the lot; taking travelers into their family and making literal guests ' of them. All travelers on horseback, on foot or in wagons; prospectors hunting for lands, emigrants, and farmers and their families in town for the day, stopped at Newcom's to eat and sleep; to shop; attend to law business; get a drink from the only well in the township or a glass of whisky, or to rest and gossip round the roaring log fire, where the villagers loved to gather. If a crowd was possible in so small a hamlet, it assembled on the southwest corner of Main Street and Monument Avenue, perhaps when court was in session, as in 1803; or when there was a meeting to organize for defense against the Indians or to attend to religious or political business.
The extreme and long continued cold and deep snows of February, 1799, caused much suffering in the settlement to animals and increased the labors and anxieties of the people.
On the first of April, 1799, when Dayton was three years old, the town contained nine cabins-six on Monument Avenue, one of them Newcom's tavern; two on First Street and one on the corner of Fifth and Main streets. Beside the four built in 1796, there was George West- fall's cabin on the southeast corner of Main and the alley between First
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and Monument Avenue, and Paul D. Butler's on Monument Avenue, near Main Street. John Williams, who was a farmer, had a cabin on the southeast corner of Monument Avenue and Wilkinson Street. Thomas Arnett, a shoemaker, lived on the northwest corner of First and Ludlow streets, and John Welsh, a substantial farmer, on the southeast corner of Fifth and Main streets, a long distance through the woods and brush from the others. Daniel C. Cooper's cabin on the southeast corner of Monument Avenue and Jefferson Street was empty. For a time General Brown, who greatly distinguished himself in the War of 1812, had kept bachelor's hall there, but he no longer lived in Dayton.
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