USA > Ohio > Greene County > History of Greene County : together with historic notes on the Northwest, and the state of Ohio, gleaned from early authors, old maps and manuscripts, private and official correspondence, and all other authentic sources > Part 17
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"Logan, after the murder of his kindred and friends, in 1774, gave way, in a great measure, to intemperance and vindictiveness, and became a sullen, harsh, cruel, drunken vagabond. His acts of bar- barity finally brought him to a violent death on the southern shore of Lake Erie, between Sandusky Bay and Detroit, in 1780, at the hands of one of his own race !
" Colonel Michael Cresap, upon the breaking out of the Revolu- tionary war, in 1775, raised a company of volunteers at the call of the Maryland Delegates in Congress, and became their commander. He promptly marched to Boston, where he joined the Continental army of General Washington. His health, however, soon failed, and he attempted to return to his home in Maryland, but when, on the 12th of October, he reached New York, he found himself too feeble to proceed further. Daily declining, he died October 18, 1775, in the thirty-third year of his age, and was buried the day after his death, with military honors, in Trinity churchyard. A widowed wife and four children survived him. Thus died, in early manhood, the gallant soldier, the pure patriot, the cruelly defamed pioneer, the meritorious Revolutionary officer, the greatly maligned and unjustly assailed Cap- tain Michael Cresap !
"Lord Dunmore, after negotiating with the Indians for peace, and for the restoration of prisoners and stolen property, returned to Vir-
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ginia, pursuing very nearly the route by which he came, leaving a hundred men at the mouth of the Kanawha, and a small force at 'Fort Fincastle,' afterwards called 'Fort Henry' (now Wheeling) ; also a limited number of men at the 'Forks of the Ohio,' for the protection of the frontier settlements. Fort Henry was named in honor of Patrick Henry, who became Governor of the colony of Virginia as the successor of Lord Dunmore, immediately after the latter's espousal of the cause of the mother country against the colonies, and of his ignominious flight from Williamsburg, in June, 1775, and taking refuge on board of a British man-of-war.
" It may be recorded to the honor of Dunmore's officers that they were loyal to the colonies and patriotic to the core, which they made manifest when, at ' Fort Gowar,' at the mouth of the Hock-Hocking, while on their homeward march, they resolved, in view of the approaching rupture with England, 'that they would exert every power within them for the defense of American liberty, and for the support of America's just rights and privileges.'
ORGANIZATION OF ILLINOIS COUNTY.
" For the purpose of more effectually organizing civil government northwest of the Ohio River, after the conquest of the country by Colonel George Rogers Clark, the House of Burgesses of Virginia, in October, 1778, erected the county of Illinois out of the western part of Botecourt county, which had been established in 1769. Illinois county was bounded on the east by Pennsylvania, on the southeast and south by the Ohio River, on the west by the Mississippi River, and on the north by the northern lakes, thus making the territory that now constitutes the State of Ohio an integral portion of it. John Todd, Esq., was appointed County Lieutenant and Civil Commandant of Illinois county. He was killed in the battle of Blue Licks, August 18, 1782, and was succeeded by Timothy de Montbrun. The Mora- vian missionaries on the Tuscarawas, a few scores of Indian traders, and a small number of French settlers on the Maumee, made the sum total of white men at that time in what is now Ohio.
EXPEDITION OF GENERAL M'INTOSH.
" General Lachlin McIntosh, commander of the Western Military Department, made an expedition in 1778, with discretionary powers, from 'Fort Pitt to the Tuscarawas, with about one thousand men, and there erected Fort Laurens, near the present town of Bolivar, in
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Tuscarawas county. He garrisoned it with one hundred and fifty men, under command of Colonel John Gibson, and then returned to ' Fort Pitt.'
"The original purpose was to march his army to Detroit, or at least as far as the Sandusky Indian towns, but various causes prevented, and the campaign was comparatively fruitless. Not receiving rein- forcements as expected, and probably lacking in energy, and having no special capacity for Indian warfare, his expedition was a failure, and he resigned his command of the 'Western Military Department in February, 1779.
" General McIntosh was a Scotchman, born in 1727. His father's family, himself included, came with General Oglethorpe to Georgia in 1736 ; became Colonel of the First Georgia Regiment in the early part of the Revolutionary war; was soon made a Brigadier-General ; killed Hon. Button Gwinnett, a signer of the Declaration of Inde- pendence, in a duel fought in 1777; commanded the Western army in 1778-9; was captured at Charleston, South Carolina, May 12, 1780; became a member of Congress in 1784, and an Indian com- missioner in 1785, and died in Savannah, Georgia, in 1806.
ERECTION OF FORT LAURENS IN 1778.
" Fort Laurens (named in honor of the then President of the Con- tinental Congress, Henry Laurens), was the first parapet and stockade fort built within the present limits of Ohio-Fort Gowar, and others previously constructed, being of a less substantial character. Disas- ters attended it from the beginning. The Indians stole their horses, and drew the garrison into several ambuscades, killing fourteen men at one time and eleven at another, besides capturing a number also. Eight hundred warriors invested it at one time, and kept up the siege for six weeks. The provisions grew short, and when supplies from ' Fort Pitt' had arrived within a hundred yards of the fort the garri- son, in their joyousness, fired a general salute with musketry, which so frightened the loaded pack-horses as to produce a general stampede through the woods, scattering the provisions in every direction, so that most of the much-needed supplies were lost ! . Although it was regarded very desirable, for various military reasons, to have a garri- soned fort and depot of supplies at a point about equi-distant from the forts on the Ohio River and the hostile Indians on the Sandusky Plains, yet so disastrous had been the fate of Fort Laurens, on the Tuscawaras River, that it was abandoned. in August, 1779. Fifty
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years ago the Ohio canal was cut through it, and but little remains to show where this, the first of our military earthworks erected by the white race, stood. Though this stockade was constructed less than a hundred years ago, it is now numbered among 'the things that were, but are not !'
GENERAL DANIEL BRODHEAD'S EXPEDITION.
"To guard against the recurrence of predatory incursions into the frontier settlements east of the Ohio River, and to avenge the cruel- ties and atrocious barbarities of the savages, General Daniel Brod- head, in April, 1781, organized a force of about three hundred effective men, at Wheeling, with which he marched to the Mus- kingum River. The result of this campaign was the taking of the Indian town situated at the 'Forks' of said river (now Coshocton), with all its inhabitants, and the capture of some prisoners at other villages. Among the prisoners taken were sixteen warriors who were doomed to death by a council of war, and accordingly dis- patched, says Doddridge, with spears and tomahawks, and afterwards scalped ! A strong determination was manifested by the soldiers to march up the Tuscarawas to the Moravian towns and destroy them, but General Brodhead and Colonel Shepherd (the second officer in rank), prevented this contemplated outrage. The famous Lewis Wetzel killed, in cold blood, a chief who was held as a hostage by General Brodhead ! Other atrocities were committed by the infuri- ated men on their return march, who were resolved to adopt the most sanguinary measures, if necessary, to prevent in the future the murderous incursions of the savages into the frontier settlements !
" The border wars of this period were prosecuted on both sides as wars of extermination, and the cruelties and barbarities perpe- trated by the Indians had produced such a malignant spirit of revenge among the whites as to make them but little less brutal and remorseless than the savages themselves ! Some of their expe- ditions against the Indians were mere murdering parties, held together only by the common thirst for revenge; and it is not likely that any discipline calculated to restrain that pervading feeling, or that would be efficient in preventing or even checking it, could in all cases have been enforced. It is certainly unfortunate for the reputation of General Brodhead that his name is thus associated with the murder of prisoners ; but it is highly probable that he never sanctioned it, and could not have prevented it !
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"General Daniel Brodhead's home was in Berks county, Pennsyl- vania. He entered the Revolutionry army as a Lieutenant-Colonel, his commission bearing date July 4, 1776; was engaged in most of the battles fought by General Washington's army until early in 1779, when, on receiving a Colonel's commission, he was placed in command of the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment. On March 5, 1779, he was appointed to the command of the 'Western Military Depart- ment ' (succeeding General McIntosh), with headquarters at 'Fort Pitt.' This position he retained until 1781, when he was succeeded by General John Gibson, who was himself succeeded by General William Irvine, September 24, 1781.
" In 1789, General Brodhead was elected Surveyor-General of Penn- sylvania, an office which he continued to hold until 1799, when he retired to private life. His death occurred at Milford, Pennsylvania, November 15, 1809. He was one of four brothers, who all rendered essential services during our Revolutionary struggle.
COLONEL ARCHIDALD LOCHRY'S EXPEDITION.
"In the early summer of 1781, Colonel Lochry, the County Lieu- tenant of Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, was requested by Colonel George Rogers Clark to raise a military force, and join him in his then contemplated military movement against Detroit, and the Indian tribes of the Northwest generally. The month of the Big Miami river was first named as the place of general rendezvous, but was, subsequently, changed to the 'Falls of the Ohio.' Colonel Lochry raised a force of one hundred and six men, who, on the 25th of July, 'set out for Fort Henry (Wheeling), where they embarked in boats for their destination.' They passed down the Ohio river to a point a few miles below the mouth of the Big Miami, where, having landed. they 'were suddenly and unexpectedly assailed by a volley of rifle- balls, from an overhanging bluff, covered with large trees, on which the Indians had taken position in great force.' The result was, the death of Colonel Lochry and forty-one of his command, and the cap- ture of the remainder, many of whom were wounded-some of the captured being killed and scalped, while prisoners! This occurred August 25, 1781, and such of the captured as were not murdered, died, or escaped, did not reach their homes again until after the peace of 1783, when they were exchanged at Montreal, and sent home, arriving there in May, 1783. The murder of prisoners was alleged to be in retaliation for the outrages committed by Brodhead's men a
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few months before; and it has been said that this treatment of Lochry's men was one of the provocations for the brutal murder of the Moravian Indians, on the Tuscarawas, in 1782 !
COLONEL WILLIAMSON'S EXPEDITION.
" The wife of William Wallace, and three of her children, also John Carpenter, all of Washington county, Pennsylvania, were captured by the Indians in 1782, and carried off. Mrs. Wallace and her infant were found, after having been tomahawked and scalped! The fron- tiersmen were greatly exasperated, and at once organized an expedition of nearly a hundred men to pursue and chastise the murderers. On arriving at the Tuscarawas River, and finding the Moravian Indians there, in considerable force, gathering corn at the villages from which they had been forcibly removed, by British authority, the preceding autumn, to the Sandusky Plains, for alleged favoritism to the Ameri- can cause, the conclusion was soon reached that they had found the murderers of Mrs. Wallace and her child, and at once made prisoners of those at Gnadenhütten and Salem, to the number of ninety-six. The Indians at Shonbrun made their escape, on hearing of the capture of those at work at the other villages. It has been stated that some clothing was found with those Indians that was identified as that of the murdered friends of some of Williamson's men; but even if that were so, it did not prove that these Indians were the murderers, or had even aided or abetted the murderers.
" Colonel Williamson, on March 8, 1782, submitted the fate of his helpless captives to his excited men. The alternative was whether they should take them to 'Fort Pitt,' as prisoners, or kill them ! Eighteen only voted to take them to 'Fort Pit,' the others voted to butcher them, and 'they were then and there murdered in cold blood, with gun and spear, and tomahawk and scalping-knife, and bludgeon and maul!' Two only escaped ! There are many details of this atrocious massacre-this infamous butchery of an innocent people- but I omit them. History characterizes it as an atrocious and unquali- fied wholesale murder-as a terrible tragedy-a horrid deed ! Would that it could be blotted from our history! Colonel Williamson opposed the masscre, but could not control his men !
COLONEL CRAWFORD'S SANDUSKY CAMPAIGN.
"Soon after the return of the murderous expedition of Colonel Williamson, an expedition against the Wyandot villages, on the San-
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dusky Plains, was determined upon, their destruction being deemed essential to the protection of the frontier settlements east of the Ohio. Nearly all of Colonel Williamson's men volunteered, and recruiting went on so rapidly that by the 25th of May, four hundred and eighty men rendezvoused at the Mingo Bottoms, three miles below the present city of Steubenville. An election for commander of the expedition was held there, when it was found that Colonel William Crawford was elected, having received 235 votes, while 230 were cast for Colonel David Williamson. The latter gentleman was then promptly and unanimously chosen the second officer in rank. The entire force was" composed of mounted men, who, following the ' Williamson trail' to the Tuscarawas, passed rapidly on to the Sandusky. On reaching a point three miles north of Upper Sankusky, and a mile west of the Sandusky River, within the present limits of Wyandot county, a bat- tle ensued (known as the battle of Sandusky, fought June 4-5, 1782), followed by the defeat of Colonel Crawford and the loss of over a hundred men in killed and prisoners. Colonel Crawford was captured and tortured to death in a slow fire, accompanied by circumstances of barbarity unparalelled in the annals of Indian warfare. Some his- torians have misapprehended the purpose of the Crawford campaign. i think it clearly established that the design was not the pursuit and chastisement of the Moravian Indians, but the destruction of the Wyandot villages of the Sandusky Plains, and for the reasons above stated. The details of this disastrous expedition are so well known to the general reader that I omit them.
" Colonel Crawford was born in Orange county, Virginia, in 1783 (now Berkley county, West Virginia). He and General Washington were of the same age and were intimate friends from early life until Crawford's death, both being engaged while young men in the same pursuit, that of land surveyors. Both were officers in Braddock's dis- astrous campaign in 1755-both were officers in General Forbes' army in 1758, which successfully marched against Fort Duquesne. Colonel Crawford served as a captain in Dunmore's war, in 1774-recruited a regiment for continental service-became Colonel of the Seventh Virginia Regiment-was in the Long Island campaign, also in the retreat through New Jersey, and participated in the battles of Tren- ton and Princeton. In 1778 he had command of a Virginia regiment in the vicinity of 'Fort Pitt,' and built Fort Crawford, sixteen miles above the 'Forks of the Ohio.' He also participated in the erection of Fort McIntosh and Fort Laurens, and rendered other valuable services. He removed to 'Stewart's crossings' (now Connelsville) in
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1769, it being the point where Braddock's army crossed the Youghio- gheny River in 1755, and where he frequently received the visits of his old friend, General Washington, whose land agent he was. And here he lived when he took command of the ill-fated Sandusky expe- dition. Colonel William Crawford possessed the highest qualities of true manhood, and justly ranked as a hero among the heroes of those heroic times.
"Colonel David Williamson, the ranking officer after the capture of Colonel Crawford, took command of the defeated, demoralized, retreating forces, who were pursued by the victors at least thirty miles, and displayed considerable ability as such, particularly at the battle of Olentangy, which was fought June 6th, during the retreat, at a point now in Whetstone township, Crawford county, about five miles southeasterly from Bucyrus. Colonel Williamson lived in Washington county, Pennsylvania, and died there, after having served it in the capacity of sheriff. I repeat the statement to his credit that he was personally opposed to the murder of the Christian Indians, but could not prevent it.
GENERAL GEORGE ROGERS CLARK'S EXPEDITION.
" In the autumn of 1782, soon after the battle of Blue Licks, and in retaliation upon the Ohio Indians, for that and other marauding and murderous incursions into Kentucky, General George Rogers Clark, with a force of over one thousand men, marched against the Indian towns on the Miami River. One division of the army was under command of Colonel Logan, and the other was commanded by Colonel Floyd. The two divisions marched together from the mouth of the Licking to a point near the head waters of the Miami River, now in Miami county, and there destroyed some Shawanese towns and other property, including Loramie's store, which was at the mouth of Loramie's Creek, within the present limits of Shelby county. Ten Indians were killed and a number of pris- oners taken.
" General George Rogers Clark was born in Albemarle county, Virginia, November 19, 1752. He commanded a company in the right wing of Dunmore's army in 1774, and settled in Kentucky in 1776. In 1778 he led an army into the Northwest and conquered it. He served under Baron Steuben in 1780, during Arnold's invasion of Virginia, and rendered other valuable military services. He was also a legislator, and served as a commissioner in making treaties with the
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Indians at Fort McIntosh, in 1785, and at Fort Finney in 1786. Gen- eral Clark was a man of ability, of skill, energy, enterprise, and of wonderful resources. He died at Locust Grove, near the Falls of the Ohio, in February, 1818.
COLONEL LOGAN'S EXPEDITION.
"In 1786 Colonel Benjamin Logan crossed the Ohio River at Limestone (now Maysville), with four hundred men or more, and marched to the Mack-a-cheek towns on Mad River, to chastise the Shawanese there, who were intensely hostile to the Kentuckians. The result of the campaign was the burning of eight of their towns, all of which were situated within the present limits of Logan county ; also the destruction of much corn. Twenty warriors were also killed, including a prominent chief of the nation, and about seventy- five prisoners were taken. Colonel Daniel Boone, General Simon Kenton and Colonel Trotter were officers in this expedition. The two first named rendered valuable services in Dunmore's expedition, and afterwards, and the latter also made a good pioneer and war record.
"Several ininor expeditions, accompanied by comparatively unim- portant results I leave unnoticed, as details would add unnecessarily to the length of this paper. Those of Colonel Edwards to the Big Miami in 1787, and of Colonel Todd to the Scioto Valley in 1788, before the organization of the 'Territory northwest of the River Ohio,' were of this class.
FIRST TREATIES ESTABLISHING BOUNDARIES.
"The first treaty establishing boundaries in Ohio between our Government and the Ohio Indians was formed at Fort McIntosh, in January, 1785. Its provisions were given in last year's volume of ' Ohio Statistics.'
"This treaty was followed on May 20, 1785, by an ordinance of Congress which provided for the first survey and sale of the public lands within the present limits of Ohio. Under that ordinance the tract known as the Seven Ranges, whose boundaries were also given in last year's volume, was surveyed, and sales effected at New York, in 1787, to the amount of $72,974. The tract of the Ohio Land Company was surveyed and sold, pursuant to the provisions of an ordinance of July 23, 1785 ; and Fort Harmar, situated at the mouth of the Muskingum River, was built during this and the next year, for
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the protection of the immigrants that might settle upon #it. The title to the Ohio Land Company's purchase was not perfected until October 23, 1787, and until then, settling upon the public lands was discouraged and indeed forbidden by the Government ; but, notwith- standing a number of settlements were made between the time of the treaty of Fort McIntosh, in January, 1785, and the perfecting of the title of the Ohio Land Company in October, 1787. These were chiefly along the Hock-Hocking and the Ohio Rivers, and were broken up by military force, and the settlers dispersed or driven east of the Ohio River. Settlements that were attempted at the mouth of the Scioto, and other places, were prevented. Proclamations by Congress were issued against settling upon the public domain as early as 1785, and enforced by the military power when disregarded. Hundreds of families probably had attempted to settle permanently west of the Ohio River, previous to the arrival of the colony of New Englanders, at the mouth of the Muskingum, in April, 17SS, but were not per- mitted to do so. The fact, therefore, remains that the settlement was the first permanent one within the present limits of Ohio-all others being but temporary, by reason of the compulsory dispersion, pre- viously, of the settlers elsewhere, and the destruction of their huts.
THE FIRST WHITE CHILD BORN IN OHIO.
" Considerable effort has been made by various persons, to ascertain, if possible, who was the first white child born within the present limits of Ohio, also when and where born, and the name as well. The following claims to that distinction have been presented, and I give them in chronological order, with the remark that some Indian traders who resided among the Ohio Indians, before the Bouquet expedition, in 1764, were married to white women, who probably had children born unto them, but the evidence to establish it is lacking.
" In April, 1764, a white woman whose husband was a white man, was captured in Virginia, by some Delaware Indians, and taken to one of their towns at or near Wakatomika, now Dresden, Muskingum county. In July of said year, she, while yet in captivity at the above named place, gave birth to a male child. She and her child were among the captives restored to their friends November 9, 1764, under an arrangement made by Bouquet, her husband being present and receiving them. It was, as far as I am informed, the first known white child born upon the soil of Ohio, but the exact time and place of its birth, and its name, are alike unknown.
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"In 1770, an Indian trader named Conner, married a white woman who was a captive among the Shawanese, at or near the Scioto. Dur- ing the next year she gave birth to a male child, probably at the above named point. Mrs. Conner, in 1774, with her husband, removed to Shonbrun, one of the Moravian villages on the Tuscarawas, and there they had other children born to them.
"In April, 1773, Rev. John Roth and wife arrived at Gnadenhüt- ten, on the Tuscarawas, and there, on the 4th day of July, 1773, she gave birth to child, at which, the next day, at his baptism, by Rev. David Zeisberger, was named John Lewis Roth. He died at Bath, Pennsylvania, September 25, 1841. It is clear to my mind that John Lewis Roth is the first white child born within the limits of our State, whose name, sex, time, place of birth and death, and biography, are known with certainty.
"Howe in his 'Ohio Historial Collections,' states upon the authority of a Mr. Dinsmore, of Kentucky, that a Mr. Millehomme, in 1835, (who then lived in the parish of Terre-Bonne, Louisiana), informed him that he was born of French-Canadian parents, on or near the Loramie portage, about the year 1774, while his parents were moving from Canada to Louisiana; but there is nothing definite or authentic in this case either as to time or place.
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