History of Hamilton County, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 14

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp; Williams, L.A. & co., Cleveland, O., pub
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio, L. A. Williams
Number of Pages: 590

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THE MURDER OF FILSON.

The reference of Judge Symmes' letter to his visit to the Great Miami the preceding "summer" seems rather to refer to his tour of exploration in that valley in the early fall, thus mentioned in a letter of his dated Octo- ber, 1788: "On the twenty-second ultimo I landed at Miami, and explored the country as high as the upper side of the fifth range of townships." About forty miles inland, at some point on the Great Miami, his party came upon a small camp of the savages, so small that they could easily have destroyed it and its inhabitants. In his company were a number of Kentuckians, who had accompanied Colonel Patterson and the surveyor Filson, two of the projectors of Losantiville, in the "blazing" of a road, through the forest from Lexington to the mouth of the Licking, as one of the preliminary steps to the proposed settlement opposite that point, and had incited him to make the exploration by promising him their es- cort until it was finished. These men, sharing the in- veterate hostility of their people to the red man, desired

HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.

to make away with this little band of wandering savages and their humble property at once. Symmes prevented them, however, and would not allow the Indians to be harmed or their stuff to be taken. About half the Ken- tuckians, therefore, after giving him all the trouble they dared by their disorderly conduct, deserted his party and started for home, leaving him almost defenceless in the perilous wilderness. The rest of the men of Kentucky soon also showing an intention to desert, he was obliged to leave his exploration but partially accomplished, and make his way as rapidly as possible back to the Ohio, up which he pushed again to his headquarters at Limestone. Filson, who, together with Patterson, had accompanied the expedition, also deserted it about the time the first Kentuckians went, through fear of remaining longer with either detachment of the party; but, strange to say, in his eagerness to make greater haste out of the wilderness, he decided to confront its dangers solitary and alone, and so swung away from even the feeble protection which he had with Symmes and the remainder of the escort. He was never seen or directly heard from again. Within three hours from the time of his abandonment of the party, it is supposed he had fallen a victim to the ferocity of the Indians. The locality of the occurrence, thinks Mr. Miller, author of Cincinnati's beginnings, was “prob- ably not far from the northern boundary line of Hamilton county, and the northeast corner of Colerain township." With Filson also perished his plan of Losantiville, which had been carefully prepared at Lexington, and is believed to have been on his person at the time.

FRIENDLINESS AND HOSTILITY.

Notwithstanding subsequent hostilities between the Indians and the whites of the Purchase, the feeling of the sons of the forest toward Judge Symmes personally appears to have been kind and friendly-perhaps in mem- ory, if not of his proclamation or letter, yet of his re- straint of the Kentuckians when some of their people were threatened with pillage and murder, and of his sub- sequent kindness to them. He does not appear ever to have been attacked or otherwise molested by them in his own person or property; and nearly seven years after- wards, at the negotiation of the treaty of Greenville, some of the Indians assembled there told him that they had often been on the point of shooting him, but had recognized him in time to save his life. Nevertheless the kind-hearted and hospitable judge was sorely tried and troubled by their hostility to his settlers on the Purchase -a feeling which early developed in cruel and bloody deeds. The traditions of the region were those of in- veterate warfare and hatred between the races. Only ten years before Symmes' settlement at North Bend, Colo- nels Bowman and Logan had led a hundred and sixty Kentuckians up between the rivers against the Shawnee towns on the Little Miami, within the present limits of Greene county, in retaliation for atrocities committed by the Indians in Kentucky shortly before, and had experi- enced some sharp fighting. The Indians pursued them to the mouth of the Little Miami, where they recrossed the Ohio on their homeward march, The next year

after this expedition the redoubtable George Rogers Clark headed a troop of a thousand Kentuckians against the Little Miami and Mad river towns, and destroyed the Indian village at Piqua and much corn of the growing crops of the Indians. It is said that after crossing the Ohio at the mouth of the Licking, on their north- ward march, they built two block-houses on the present site of Cincinnati, and that the force was disbanded there on their return, homeward bound.

BLOCK-HOUSES, OR FORTIFIED STATIONS,

were destined to play an active part in the Indian and pioneer affairs of the Symmes Purchase. They were erected by associations of colonists for mutual safety, upon a plan of settlement proposed by Judge Symmes as best for the development of the country. A strong log block-house being put up, it was surrounded by the cabins of the settlers, rather closely crowded together, and the whole was then encircled by a stout stockade or picket, made of tree trunks or logs set pretty deep in the ground, and making, in some cases, a really formidable work of defence. Not until this was completed did the settlers venture to begin clearing land and planting crops. Even then they were obliged to work with their rifles near and sentinels constantly on the alert. At sunset all returned to the stockade, taking everything portable and of value with them. These stations were made as numerous as the number of settlers, and more particularly the number of troops that could be obtained for each from the mili- tary commander in this region, would warrant. It might be presumed that, in the exposed state of the country, nothing would have been easier than to get or retain sol- diers for the protection of the settlers, since that was pre- cisely for what the forces of the United States were sent to the valley of the Ohio. But it was not always so. We have recorded the difficulties and detentions which beset Judge Symmes at Limestone, while endeavoring to get his colony to its destination, through the failure of Gen- eral Harmar to send him an escort promptly. After he had secured the protection of Captain Kearsey and the small remnant of his troop, and had made his settlement at North Bend, he was very soon unceremoniously de- serted by Kearsey and all but five of his command, the rest putting off down the river to Louisville, without even building him a stockade or block-house. It was then nearly a month before the earnest persuasions of Symmes prevailed with Major Wyllys, the commandant at that place, to secure him a garrison, consisting of an ensign and eighteen men, which speedily, by desertion and In- dian attack, was reduced to twelve, and Luce, after build- ing a tolerable block-house and remaining four months, transferred his little force to Losantiville, again leaving Symmes' hamlets nearly or quite unprotected. The country had no adequate protection, indeed, until the early part of the following summer, when Major Doughty arrived from Fort Harmar with two companies of sol- diers and began the erection of Fort Washington. Even then, and for some time after, troops were arbitrarily sent to or withdrawn from the stations.

In a letter from North Bend, January 17, 1792, Symmes

HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.

relates how "General St. Clair, by much importunity, gave Mr. Dunlap a guard of six soldiers. With these the set- tlers returned to Colerain [Dunlap's station]. In a very few days after the station was re-settled, the Governor ordered the six soldiers back again to Fort Washington. But the next day General St. Clair set out for Philadel- phia, and Major Zeigler came to the command. His good sense and humanity induced him to send the six men back again in one hour's time, as I am told, after General St. Clair left Fort Washington, and he assured Mr. Dunlap that he should have more soldiers than six, rather than the station should break. Majors sometimes do more good," he naively adds, "than generals."

Dr. Goforth, then of Columbia, wrote September 3, 1791 :

The number of militia at these stations, from the best accounts I have received, are at Columbia, 200; Cincinnati, 150; South Bend, 20 ; City of Miami, 80; Dunlap's, 15; and Covalt's, 20.

A considerable number of these stations, more or less strongly fortified, are known to have existed within the present limits of the county during the period of Indian warfare; and it is quite possible that the memory of others has disappeared. So far as known, they were as follows:

I. Covalt's Station, at Round Bottom, twelve miles up the Little Miami, below the present site of Milford. This was erected in 1789, and Mr. John G. Olden, author of Historical Sketches and Early Reminiscences of Lock- land and Reading, is disposed to place it first in chrono- logical order, although similar claims have been made for Clemens', Gerard's, Dunlap's, and Ludlow's stations.

2. Clemens' station, also on the Round Bottom, about half a mile below Covalt's.

3. Gerard and Martin's station, on the west side of the Little Miami, and about two miles from its mouth, near the present Union bridge.

4. Dunlap's station, established in the early spring of 1790, in Colerain township, on the east side of the Great Miami and in the remarkable bend of that stream which begins about half a mile south of the county line.

5. Campbell's station, also on the east bank of the Great Miami and in Colerain township, opposite the present site of Miamitown.

6. Ludlow's station, whose site is now embraced within the limits of Cincinnati, about five miles from Fountain square, in the north part of Cumminsville. It was also established in the spring of 1790. This was the most famous of all the stations.

7. White's station, probably established in 1792, on the bank of Mill creek, northeast of the present site of Carthage, near the aqueduct, and about where the ice- pond now is.

8. Tucker's station, on section four, Springfield town- ship, east of the old Hamilton road and about a mile and a half northwest of Lockland.

9. Runyan's station, also of 1792, on section nine- teen, Sycamore township, about a mile and a half north of Sharonville, and near the present county line. This was the outpost in that direction.

IO. Griffin's station, established, probably, in the fall of 1793, about half a mile west of White's station, where the

Carthage and Springfield turnpike now crosses Mill creek.

II. Voorhees' station, in the south part of section thirty-three, Sycamore township, on the west bank of Mill creek, built early in 1794.

12. Pleasant Valley station, on the line between sec- tions four and ten, Springfield township, near the "Sta- tion Spring." Also built in the spring of 1794, by the builders of Tucker's station, to protect them and another party which had moved in to the westward.

13. McFarland's station, in Columbia township, near the site of Pleasant Ridge, established in the spring of 1795, and believed to be the last founded of the pioneer stations in this county.

Some of these stations were the scene of fierce Indian attacks, and others of cowardly murders by the savages. Their story will be more particularly related in the histo- ries of the townships.

In 1794-5 Mr. Benjamin Van Cleve, then of Cincin- nati, but soon afterwards of Dayton, made many interest- ing memoranda of affairs in the Miami country, among which we find the following, made in the latter year :

On the twentieth [ot August], seventeen days after the treaty [of Greenville], Governor St. Clair, General Wilkinson, Jonathan Dayton, and Israel Ludlow contracted with John Cleves Symmes for the pur- chase and settlement of the seventh and eighth ranges, between Mad River and Little Miami. One settlement was to be at the mouth of Mad River, one on the Little Miami in the seventh range, and one on Mad River above the month.

Two parties of surveyors set off [from Cincinnati] on the twenty- first of September-Mr. Daniel C. Cooper, to survey and mark a road and ent out some of the brush, and Captain John Dunlap to run the boundaries of the Purchase. I went with Dunlap. There were at this time several stations on Mill Creek: Ludlow's, White's, Tucker's, Voorhees's, and Cunningham's .* The last was eleven miles from Cin- cinnati. We came to Voorhees's and encamped.

A limited number of regulars was stationed at several of these by General Harmar or his subordinate officers. All together they afforded protection and food to a large number of pioneer families, who must otherwise have been driven out of the country. They were of use else- where among the early settlements, as well as for local defence, and the pioneers in other parts of southern Ohio were less annoyed after their establishment, because the Indians had to spend a part of their time in watch- ing the stations, instead of taking the war-path against the scattered and isolated settlers. They regarded these defences, indeed, with peculiar disfavor. Judge Burnet accompanies an interesting paragraph upon the stations, in his Notes, with these remarks:

The Indians viewed these stations with great jealousy, as they had the appearance of permanent military establishments, intended to re- tain possession of their country. In that view they were correct ; and it was fortunate for the settlers that they wanted either the skill or the means of demolishing them. The truth is, they had no idea of the flood of emigration which was setting towards their borders, and did not feel the necessity of submitting to the loss to which immediate action would subject them. Their great error consisted in permitting those works to be constructed at all. They might have pre- vented it with great ease, but they appeared not to be aware of the serious consequences which were to result, until it was too late to act with ef- fect. Several attacks were, however, made at different times, with an apparent determination to destroy them; but they failed in every in_ stance.

* Cunningham's settlement, according to Mr. Olden, " was not a regular sta- tion in the proper sense of that term. No block-house or other defensive work were erected, and there was no organized community.

HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.

"CAPTAIN BLACKBEARD."

Shortly after the permanent location of Judge Symmes upon the Purchase, he had the honor to entertain, in his rude shelter at North Bend, a Shawnee chief bearing the English piratical name of "Captain Blackbeard," who lived some scores of miles to the northward, near Roche de Bœuf, on the Manmee river. The Judge has left the following entertaining account of the interview:

The chief (the others sitting around him) wished to be informed how far I was supported by the United States, and whether the thirteen fires (States) had sent me hither. I answered in the affirmative, and spread before them the thirteen stripes which 1 had in a flag then in my camp. I pointed to the troops in their uniform, then on parade, and informed the chief that those were the warriors which the thirteen fires kept in constant pay to avenge their quarrels, and that, though the United States were desirous of peace, yet they were able to chas- tise any aggressor who should dare offend them, and to demonstrate this 1 showed them the seal of my commission, on which the American arms are impressed, observing that while the eagle had a branch of a tree as an emblem of peace in one claw, she had strong and sharp arrows in the other, which denoted her power to punish her enemies. The chief, who observed the device on the seal with great attention, replied to the interpreter that he could not perceive any intimation of peace from the attitude the eagle was in, having her wings spread as in flight, when folding of the wings denoted rest and peace; that he could not understand how the branch of a tree could be considered a pacific emblem, for rods designed for correction were always taken from the boughs of trees; that to him the eagle appeared, from her bearing a large whip in one hand and such a number of arrows in the other, and in full career of flight, to be wholly bent on war and mischief. I need not repeat here my arguments to convince him of his mistake, but I at length succeeded, and he appeared entirely satisfied of the friendship of Congelis (for so they pronounce Congress) to the red people.

Captain Blackbeard staid a month or so in the neigh- borhood of Judge Symmes, with whom he had frequent friendly conferences, and whose hospitality he accepted, especially when it took the form of whiskey, without reservation or stint. Notwithstanding subsequent martial events, some of which must have come very near to his lodge on the Maumee, Blackbeard seems to have re- mained friendly to the whites, and long afterward he repaid with interest the kindness and hospitality he had received from Symmes by requitals to Judge Burnet and other lawyers and federal officials on their way through the wilderness from Cincinnati, to attend the courts in Detroit.

TREACHERY AND MURDER.

Much of the promise of the Indians to them, however, was to be broken to the hope. Their expressed friend- liness was undoubtedly, in some cases, used to mask treachery. Scarcely more than two months after the de- parture of Blackbeard, namely, on the ninth day of April, 1789, one of Symmes' exploring parties was fired upon by the savages while leaving its camp, and two of its number-a man named Holman, from Kentucky, and Mr. Wells, from Delaware-were instantly killed. John Mills and three others, staying not to fight the foe and standing not upon the order of their going, escaped to the settlements .* A straggler into the forest from the

villages had now and then also been picked off, and on the twenty-first of May an attack was made in some force from the Ohio shore upon a boat-load of settlers whom Ensign Luce, the officer then stationed at North Bend, was escorting with a detachment of his men from that place up the river to South Bend. The boat was not captured with its precious freight ; but by the fire one of the soldiers-Runyan, a New Jersey recruit-was killed, and four others of the troops were wounded. Mills, also a Jerseyman, who had escaped the previous disaster, was now among the wounded, being shot through the lungs; but was taken in hand by friendly squaws and cured with- out much difficulty. One of the settlers-William Mont- gomery, of Kentucky-was also hurt, and so badly as to be sent to Louisville for treatment. The affair created intense excitement and fear at. North Bend, where the garrison was now felt to be utterly inadequate; and Symmes, in an indignant letter to Dayton, bitterly re- news his complaints of the neglect of the commanders to send him troops enough for protection. He says: "We are in three defenceless villages along the banks of the Ohio, and since the misfortune of yesterday many citi- zens have embarked and gone to Louisville; and others are preparing to follow them soon; so that I fear I shall be nearly stripped of settlers and left with one dozen soldiers only. Kearsey's leaving the Purchase in the man- ner he did, ruined me for several weeks." Five days later he writes: "I believe that fifty persons of all ages have left this place since the disaster of the twenty-first. The settlers consider themselves as neglected by the Govern- ment. We are really distressed here for the

want of troops." About this time the jealous and angry Kentuckians, before mentioned, began to designate the Purchase as "a slaughter-house," from the danger of mas- sacre they really had some reason for representing as ex- isting there.

TROUBLE BREWING-THE BRITISH.

At this time the settlers at Losantiville and Columbia were tilling their in.lots, as well as out-lots, with firearms at their elbows and sentinels carefully posted. Weeks before the pacificatory letter of the Indians at "Mawme" to Symmes, it became evident that, as soon as they could prepare for serious inroads, the tribes would show their thorough-going antagonism to the new settlements being planted upon the Ohio, whatever their verbal or written words might be. The most alarming reports were brought in by Mr. Isaac Freeman, who had penetrated the Indian country on an errand from Symmes, and had returned in safety and with several released captives, and also the . olive-branch missive from "Mawme," but, writes the judge, he "brings such terrifying accounts of the warlike preparations making at the Indian towns, that it has raised fresh commotions in this village, and many families are preparing to go down to the Falls" [Louisville]. British influence was busy in stirring up the Indians to acts of hostility. In the same letter Symmes writes :

While Mr. Freeman was at the Indian towns he was lodged at the

* The year before Symmes came with his colony, about the twentieth of May, a large party of whites, descending the river in three boats was attacked by the Indians a little below the mouth of the Great Miami, and cut off or captured to a man. Samuel Purviance, a prom- inent citizen of Baltimore, was one of the company, and was never afterwards heard of, though General Harmar caused a long and careful

search to be made for him. It was one of the most terrible and sweep- ing disasters from Indian attack that ever occurred in the valley of the Ohio.

HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.

house of a chief called Blue Jacket, and while there he saw the pack- horses come to Blue Jacket's house loaded with five hundred weight of powder and lead equivalent, with one hundred muskets; this share he saw deposited at the house of Blue Jacket. He says the like quantity was sent them from Detroit, to cvery chief through all their towns. Freeman saw the same dividend deposited at a second chief's house in the same town with Blue Jacket. On the arrival of the stores from De- troit, British colors were displayed on the housetop of every chief, and a prisoner among the Indians who had the address to gain full credit with them and attended at their council-house every day, found means to procure by artifice an opportunity of conversing with Freeman. He assured Freeman that the Indians were fully determined to rout these settlements altogether; that they would have attempted it before this time, but had no military stores; but these being then arrived, it would not be long before they would march.

Confirmation of these reports was received about the same time from two widely separated points at the east and west, from Vincennes and from Pittsburgh.

INDIAN OUTRAGES.

We can find in Mr. Freeman's account one reason at least why the infant settlements along the Ohio were for so many months spared from Indian outrage, conflagra- tion, and general massacre. Individual cases of capture, maiming, or murder were not wanting, however. Judge Symmes writes, January 1, 1790: "We have already had a iman murdered by the Indians within the squares of the city." This may refer to the case of a young son of John Hilliers, a settler at the Bend, who had gone out on the morning of the twelfth of December next previous, to drive home the cows, and, when scarcely half a mile from the block-house, was tomahawked and scalped, and his gun and hat were carried off. On the seventeenth of the same month two young men from the settlement, James Lafferty and Andrew Vaneman, hunting along the river, were surprised by Indians while sitting at night by their camp-fire, and were both killed at the first shot. Their bodies were then stripped of clothes, and toma- hawked and scalped in the most barbarous manner. A letter from Judge Symmes, written in May following, re- ferring to matters at North Bend, says: "Things were prosperous, considering the mischief done there this spring by the Indians. They plant considerable corn, though much more would have been planted if no mis- chief had been done. Many fled on those occasions- two men have been killed. The Indians are universally hostile, and the contrary opinion is ill-founded."

On the other side of the Purchase, the settlers at Co- lumbia were greatly troubled after the depredations and attacks once began, which was not until nearly a year after the founding of the colony. In time too soon, how- ever, the dreaded blows fell. Among the cultivators of the soil to whom Major Stites had leased the rich clear- ing known as Turkey Bottom was one James Seward, who occupied a lot upon it for his daily labor, but had his residence on the hillside near the village. Two sons of his, Obadiah and John, aged respectively twenty-one and fifteen years, were at work in this field one afternoon, September 20, 1789, when they were surprised by a small party of Indians, at a hickory tree which had been felled for nuts, whose bushy top gave the savages an excellent opportunity for concealment and stealthy approach. Obadiah gave himself up at once, and was securely bound by withes or twigs; but the other ran for his life, in a cir-

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History of Hamilton County, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 14

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp; Williams, L.A. & co., Cleveland, O., pub Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio, L. A. Williams Number of Pages: 590

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp; Williams, L.A. & co., Cleveland, O., pub
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio, L. A. Williams
Number of Pages: 590