USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > History of Hamilton County, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches > Part 19
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The first mill run in Hamilton county was started by Mr. Neaiad Coleman, a citizen of Columbia, soon after the planting of the colony. It was a very simple affair, quite like that known at Marietta in the early day, and figured in Dr. S. P. Hildreth's Pioneer History. The flat- boats were moored side by side near the shore, but in the current, and with sufficient space between them for the movement of a water-wheel. The grindstones, with the grain and flour or meal handled, were in one boat, and the machinery in another. This rude mill, kept going by the cultivation 'of the rich soil at or near Colum- bia, was the chief source of supply for the soldiers of Fort Washington and the citizens of Cincinnati for one or two years. Without it, there would at one time, at least, have been danger of abandonment of the fort, if not of the settlements. Before its construction, settlers who had no access to hand-mills or who wished to economize their labor, went far into Kentucky to get their grinding done. At one time Noah Badgeley and three other Cincinnati settlers went up the Licking to Paris, for a supply of breadstuff, and on their return were caught in a flood, their boat overturned, Badgeley drowned, and the others exposed to peril and privation upon branches of trees in the raging waters for two or three days. It is possible that Coleman's mill is identical with that mentioned in early annals as the property of one Wickerslham (Wicker- ham he is called in Spencer's Indian Captivity, probably by error of the types), which is sometimes referred to as the first mill, and was situated at a rapid of the Little Miami, a little below the Union bridge, where Philip Tur- pin's mill was afterwards erected.
Soon after Coleman started his grist-mill, another, but of different character, was built on Mill creek, near Cin- cinnati. A horse-mill existed in that town at a very early day, near the site of the First Presbyterian church, and some of the meetings of that society were held in it.
The first cases of capital punishment in the county occurred at the southeast end of Fort Washington in 1789-the execution of two soldiers, John Ayers and Matthew Ratmore, for desertion. The first execution by the civil authorities was that of John May, in Cincinnati, near the close of the century, by hanging, under sentence for the murder of his friend, Wat Sullivan, whom he stab- bed with a hunting-knife during a drunken brawl at a party given in a log cabin then standing near the corner
of Sixth and Main streets. He was hanged by Sheriff Ludlow, at the spot on the south side of Fifth street, east of Walnut, where B. Cavagna now has his grocery store, and where the first jail stood. The country for fifty miles around turned out its population to see the execu- tion.
Other "first things" will be recorded in connection with the special histories of Cincinnati and other parts of tbe county, where full notes will be made of these to which we have given rapid mention.
CHAPTER XI.
MILITARY HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY.
The land is holy where they fought, And holy where they fell ; For by their blood that land was bought, The land they loved so well. Then glory to that valiant band, The honored saviors of the land !
The God of battles heard their cry, And sent to them the victory.
They left the plowshare in the mould, Their flocks and herds without a fold, The sickle in the unshorn grain,
The corn, half garnered, on the plain ; And mustered, in their simple dress,
For wrongs to seek a stern redress, To right their wrongs, come weal, come woe, To perish, or o'ercome their foe.
A BRILLIANT RECORD.
Probably no county in the United States-certainly none in the States that date their origin since the war of the Revolution-has a more brilliant military record than Hamilton county. In the Indian period, during the last war with Great Britain, the skirmish with Mexico, and the great civil war, the men of Cincinnati, and of Hamil- ton county at large, bore full and honorable part. Their patriotism from the beginning has been clear and un- doubted; their readiness to serve the country in any hour of its peril has been equally manifest, whenever the occa- sion for its exhibition has come. From Fort Washington, near the old Cincinnati, marched the troops of Harmar, of St. Clair, and of Wayne, in their several campaigns . against the savages of the north country; and hence, much later, moved gaily out, likewise on the Hamilton road, and one bright May morning, the Fourth regiment of infantry in the Federal army, which formed the main stay of the beleaguered force at the battle of Tippecanoe. From Hamilton county went large and gallant contin- gents in the War of 1812-15 and the war with Mexico; and her contingent in the war of the Rebellion was num- bered by many thousands-a very large percentage, in- deed, of the entire force (three hundred and ten thou- sand six hundred and fifty-four men) recruited in the State of Ohio during the struggle. It is doubtful whether any city in the Union furnished more men to the Federal cause, in proportion to its population, than Cincinnati.
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HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.
The record of the entire county, in this regard, is greatly to its honor. Of one hundred thousand two hundred and twenty-four men raised for the Union army in Ohio in 1861, eight thousand one hundred and ninety-two, or very nearly one-twelfth, were from this one county. It had at any time, considering its numerous population, but an exceedingly light requisition upon it for drafted militia. The total quota assigned it for draft during the war was but two thousand one hundred and forty-eight, of which one thousand eight hundred and sixty-nine were furnished in voluntary recruits, and the actual entire draft from Hamilton county, in the four years of war, was but a paltry one hundred and seventy-eight. Through some accident, neglect, or failure of calculation-for it cannot have been through inability to procure the men, or other necessity-this still left the trifling deficit of ninety-five men. But there were only twenty-three coun- ties in all the State that were not deficient in the filling of their quotas; and six of the counties in which there was a shortage exhibit on their military record, notwith- standing the immense disparity of population, greater de- ficits than does Hamilton county. The general work and record of the county during the bloody years are better shown by the statistical history of 1862. Upon the first of September of that year, the number of enrolled militia in the county was thirty-nine thousand nine hundred and twenty-six, of whom the volunteers in the armies of the Union numbered fourteen thousand seven hundred and ninety-five. The number then ordered to be drafted was one thousand one hundred and seventy-five; but so rapid were the enlistments, and so many errors were demon- strated in the figuring of the enrolling, recruiting, and mustering officers that the number was more than made good (credits of one thousand five hundred and twenty- nine men being obtained through volunteers and errors shown), and there was consequently no draft.
AT FIRST.
In almost the earliest days of Cincinnati and Colum- bia, as we have seen in chapter IX., and shall see more fully hereafter, provision was made for an organized mili- tia. One of the first acts of Governor St. Clair, after the erection of Hamilton county, was the appointment of officers at these two places for a battalion of militia; and the protection and defence of the settlements, and the punishment of the marauding and murdering savages, which had before proceeded in an irregular though effective way, was thenceforth under the eye of the Terri- torial government. Some of the officers and men of the early companies greatly distinguished themselves after- wards in the battles of Indian warfare and the War of 1812, and not a few laid down their lives upon the bloody fields. Since the date of their enrollment, ninety years ago, Hamilton county has never been without an organ- ized military force of her own.
HARMAR'S CAMPAIGN AND DEFEAT.
About the middle of the year 1790, Governor St. Clair, upon his return to Fort Washington from a pro- tracted tour of official duty in the more distant parts of the Territory, beginning with the creation of Hamilton
county at Cincinnati the previous January, had a pro- longed consultation with General Harmar, who had shortly before, in April, led an unsuccessful expedition against the Indians of the Scioto valley. As a result of the council, it was determined to send a force against the Indians of the Maumee, whose depredations upon the settlements along the Ohio had become persistent and exceedingly annoying. St. Clair accordingly issued cir- cular letters to the militia commanders in Kentucky, Vir- ginia, and western Pennsylvania, calling out their troops to reinforce the regular army for this campaign. The lat- ter formed but two small battalions, commanded by Majors Wyllys and Doughty, with an artillery company of three field-guns. The Pennsylvania and Virginia militia formed another battalion, under Colonel John Hardin; and the Kentuckians mustered three battalions, com- manded by Lieutenant-Colonel Trotter. Virginia seems not to have sent enough troops to form a separate organ- ization, and the whole force for the expedition consisted of but one thousand four hundred and fifty-three men, of whom only three hundred and twenty were regular sol- diers. They were very poorly equipped, having few of the necessaries of military life, as camp kettles and axes ; and their arms were generally in bad condition, many of them absolutely unfit for service. Some of the Pennsyl- vanians had no arms whatever. Not a few old and in- firm men and mere boys also appeared among the mili- tia. The temper of the volunteers, too, was by no means good. They were averse to act with the regular troops, and manifested considerable jealousy of them, giving the commander of the expedition, General Harmar, a deal of trouble. There were also unfortunate quarrels for precedence among the principal officers of the volun- teers, in which they were stubbornly backed by the men of their respective commands.
On the twenty-second of September, Major Wyllys arrived with his detachment of regulars from the garrison at the falls of the Ohio; on the twenty-fifth came Major Doughty with part of the Fort Harmar garrison, and Lieutenant Frothingham followed soon after with the remainder. The last of the Pennsylvanians came on the twenty-fifth. The Kentuckians had not all arrived when the march began; but, as the tardy volunteers were dra- goons and mounted riflemen, they were able to overtake the moving column, which they did on the fifth of Oc- tober.
About the thirtieth of the previous month, General Harmar moved his force from Fort Washington by a route represented to him by his guides as the shortest and best to the objective points of his campaign, and en- camped about ten miles from the fort. Had he been able here, as Wayne afterwards was, in the Mill creek valley, to halt for better organization and equipment of his mot- ley command, and for drill and other necessary prepara- tion for the field, a happier story might be told of the result. He decided to go on at once, however; and on the thirteenth of October the little army neared the Maumee villages. Colonel Hardin was detached with a company of regulars and six hundred militia, as an ad- vance party to find the enemy and keep them engaged
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HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.
until the main body could get up. He found the towns abandoned; and when the remainder of the column arrived, on the morning of the seventeenth, they were destroyed, with a large quantity of corn, estimated at twenty thousand bushels, standing in the fields. This was the only real damage inflicted upon the savages by the campaign, and alone redeemed the movement from absolute failure. Colonel Trotter was then sent with three hundred men to scout in the woods, but to no effect; and Colonel Hardin, on the nineteenth, led an- other reconnoisance in force. Falling in with a much smaller party of the enemy and being fired upon, the whites, without even stopping to form line of battle, dis- gracefully retreated in disorder, losing nine militiamen and twenty-four regulars killed. Two days afterwards, the whole army began to retire; but on the night of that day, the twenty-first, Hardin obtained permission to lead another detachment the next morning back to the site of the Indian villages in hopes of finding and punishing the enemy. He did so, and was again defeated with much loss; when further aggressive operations were sus- pended. The scene of these disasters was near Keki- onga, an Indian village opposite the subsequent site of Fort Wayne. The army returned in an orderly way, by slow and easy marches, to Fort Washington, pursued cautiously by the red men, who did no serious injury. Arrived at the fort, the militia were disbanded and dis- missed, and the regulars sent again to their garrisons. Harmar hastened to Washington, resigned his commis- sion, and demanded a court of inquiry, which was ordered. Its finding substantially vindicated him, and put the blame of the failure of the expedition mainly upon the inefficiency of the militia force and the insuffi- ciency of their equipment.
WILKINSON'S EXPEDITION.
In July following, at Governor St. Clair's suggestion, the Kentucky board of war-a body of leading citizens and militia officers authorized by Congress-determined upon an expedition against the Elk River Indian towns, in the present Indiana country. It was to rendezvous at Fort Washington, and be under command of Colonel Wilkinson, of that post. On the twentieth of July the Kentuckians duly arrived and mounted, and provis- ioned for thirty days, began to assemble at the fort, and on the first of the next month a column of five hundred and twenty-five men began the movement. It marched first upon the Maumee villages, but without provoking an engagement, Wilkinson intending merely to feint in this direction, and on the sixth, after some skirmishing, reached an extensive Ouiatenon village called L'Anguille, on Eel river, near its debouchure into the Wabash. It was captured and destroyed, together with two hundred acres of corn in the milk, a number of Indians being killed and others taken prisoners. Among the latter were the son and sisters of the Ouiatenon chief or "King," as Wilkinson calls him in the official report. Advancing to the prairies of western Indiana a small Kickapoo town was burned and the standing corn destroyed, and on the twenty-first of the month, after a march of four hundred
and fifty-one miles from Fort Washington, he reached safely the falls of the Ohio, where the expedition was dis- banded.
ST. CLAIR'S CAMPAIGN AND DEFEAT.
The Indians derived great encouragement from the retreat of General Harmar, although exceedingly exasper- ated by the destruction of their villages and crops, and they harried the frontier settlements worse than before. Another expedition became necessary to punish them, and also to establish a military post at an important strategic point, near the junction of the St. Joseph's and St. Mary's rivers, at the head of the Maumee. Governor St. Clair, having been made a major-general in the regular army and commander in chief of the forces in the northwest, was entrusted with the command in this campaign, with General Richard Butler second in authority. They began preparations early in 1791, and by the middle of July the first regiment of the Federal troops, numbering two hundred and sixty-nine men, reached Fort Washing- ton. Two thousand and three hundred militia and regulars, most of whom were raw recruits, were soon gathered there, and after encamping for a season at Lud- low's Station (now Cumminsville), six miles from the fort, along which is now "Mad Anthony" street, the army marched, September 17th, to the Great Miami, where the city of Hamilton now stands, and where Fort Hamilton-named, like this county, from the then Secre- tary of the Treasury-was built by St. Clair's men, a strong, well-constructed work, about one thousand feet in circuit. Leaving a sufficient garrison and resuming the march forty-four miles further, the troops halted again for twelve days, to build Fort Jefferson, six miles south of the present site of Greenville. October 24th the final advance into the Indian country began, but under many difficulties. St. Clair was seriously ill with the gout, having to be carried on a litter; the men were deserting singly and in large parties; the trails were ex- ceedingly difficult for artillery and wagons; provisions were scant, and the march proceeded very slowly and toilsomely. Only about fourteen hundred men and eighty-six officers remained when the scene of action was reached, on the third of November. This was upon a branch of the Wabash river, just south of the head- waters of the St. Mary of the Maumee, which was the stream to which St. Clair supposed he had arrived. Fort Recovery was afterward built upon the battlefield, and a town of the same name still perpetuates its mem- ory.
The very next morning, at daylight, the Indians at- tacked in great force. The first pressure came upon the militia, who, as in Harmar's defeat, speedily gave way, and in their retreat threw two of the regular battalions into much disorder. The enemy were, however, checked and temporarily driven back, but their fire was heavy and very deadly, particularly among the officers, and the raw troops were soon in precipitate flight, abandoning the camp and artillery, and strewing the line of retreat with their arms and accoutrements. Major Clark's battalion courageously covered the retreat, and prevented the absolute destruction of the columns. The race to the
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HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.
rear was maintained without halt until Fort Jefferson, twenty-nine miles distant, was reached about sunset of the same day. Eight hundred and ninety men and sixteen officers, more than sixteen per cent. of the whole number engaged-were left dead or wounded in this engagement. It is accounted the most terrible reverse the American arms ever suffered from the Indians-even more disas- trous than Braddock's defeat .* It was but a feeble rem- nant of the expedition that finally, four days after the defeat, found rest and shelter within the walls of Fort Washington.
Among the killed were General Butler, the hero of the Fort Finney treaty, and second in command of the expedition, Lieutenant Colonel Oldham, and other prominent officers. The wounded included Colonel Winthrop Sargent, of Cincinnati, secretary of the North- west Territory, and the Viscount Malartie, a foreigner of distinction, serving as a volunteer aid upon St. Clair's staff. He had been a captain in the guard of Louis XVI, but left it to join the Gallipolis colony, and volun- teered as an aid-de-camp to St. Clair when his expedition reached that point on its way down the river. After the defeat and his wound, which was severe, he had no stomach for more Indian fighting, and soon made his way to Philadelphia, and thence back to France.
Colonel Wilkinson succeeded St. Clair as commandant at Fort Washington; and in the following January, the troops being idle, he called for volunteers from the sur- rounding county to reinforce his two hundred regulars for an expedition to the scene of defeat, to bury the dead, and bring off the cannon and other public property that might have been left by the Indians upon the field. The yeomanry of Hamilton county, and some of the neighboring Kentuckians, promptly responded, and rendezvoused at the fort. The snow lay two feet deep upon the ground, deeper than had been known since the white -man's occupancy of that region; and the ice was so thick in the Ohio that the Kentucky volunteers.could not ferry their horscs over, and had to cross them upon a still stronger tract of ice above the mouth of the Little Miami. On the twenty-fifth of the month Wilkinson moved out, upon the trace opened by St. Clair, and en- camped the first night upon the hill south of Mount Pleasant, afterwards occupied by Cary's academy, and the second night at Fort Hamilton. By the time he reached Fort Jefferson the difficulties and hardships of the march were telling severely upon the detachment, and he determined to send back the regulars, retaining the mounted volunteers and the public sleds whereon to bring off the guns. With these he reached the theatre of St. Clair's disaster on the first of February, finding the snow there also deep, but not completely concealing the remains of the dead. As many of these as could be conveniently found under the circumstances were collected and buried in pits ; but so many remained un- buried that persons with Wayne's expedition eighteen months afterwards reported, doubtless with exaggeration (since the Indians carry off their dead), that six hundred
skulls were found upon the field, and that it was neces- sary to clear the tents of bones before beds could be spread upon the surface. Three gun-carriages were found and brought away, with some small arms; five others had been so damaged as to be useless. The can- non had disappeared; but as the adjacent creek was covered with thick ice and snow, a thorough search in it, where it was believed they had been thrown, was not practicable. They were subsequently found, however, and mounted on Fort Recovery, where they were used with effect during Wayne's occupancy of the battle- ground. Evidences were observed of great cruelties in- flicted by the savages upon the unfortunates of St. Clair's expedition who had been left wounded upon the field. Wilkinson was not disturbed by the enemy during his brief campaign of humanity, and he returned quietly to Fort Washington when its object was accomplished.
WAYNE'S CAMPAIGN AND VICTORY.
The most vigorous measures on the part of the Gen- eral Government were now necessary to preserve the frontier settlements in the northwest from destruction and to prevent the early reflux of the advancing wave of civilization. A competent leader was first in demand. From a number of able officers of the army, most of them Revolutionary heroes, whose names were submitted to President Washington, he selected the hero of the storm- ing of Stony Point, the brave "Mad Anthony Wayne"- he who showed so much method, withal, in his madness. In June, 1792, Wayne reached Pittsburgh, with ample powers, and set about the slow, yet, as the sad experience of Harmar and St. Clair had proved, the indispensable preparations necessary to success. He addressed him- self at once to the recruiting and drill of the new "Le- gion of the United States," which was presently, by a bloody victory, to pacificate the savages of the northwest.
Establishing a camp on the Ohio, twenty-two miles be- low Pittsburgh-called "Legionville," from the title of his army-he gathered, by December, a considerable force there. About the last of April, 1793, he moved it down the river to Fort Washington, and thence, as it was too numerous to occupy that work, out to a camp he formed in the Mill Creek valley, near the village of Cin- cinnati, about the spot upon which the gas-works were long afterwards erected. This camp was designated by him as "Hobson's Choice," since it was the only one in the vicinity which the high water of that spring made eli- gible for the purpose.
The following is Judge Burnet's interesting note upon the selection of this camp:
On the arrival of General Wayne, at Cincinnati, with the troops from Legionville, late in 1793, he ordered the quartermaster, with two or three of his officers, to make a careful examination of the grounds adjoining the town, and select the most eligible spot for the construc- tion of an encampment. After a careful execution of the order, they reported that there was no sitnation near the town, on which the army could be conveniently encamped, and that the only ground which was in any degree calculated for the purpose was on the river bank, between the village and Mill creek. The general replied, "if that be so, we have Hobson's choice. and must take it." From that expression the place selected was immediately called "Hobson's Choice," and has been known by that name ever since. The general was evidently a reader of the Spectator, or was at least familiar with the term which has its origin in a notable chapter of that work.
*Western Annals, third edition, 585.
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HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.
Here the work of organizing and drilling the soldiers went steadily on through the summer. Washington wrote to Wayne: "Train and discipline them for the service they are meant for; and do not spare powder and lead, so the men be made marksmen." One of Wayne's sentinels at this time was posted upon the lofty ancient mound which stood until 1841 at the intersection of Mound and Fifth streets. The force suffered much from fevers and influenza and by desertion. Wayne also found it difficult to obtain the mounted volunteers he wanted from Kentucky, as the militia of that State retained the old prejudices, and disliked to serve with regulars. AII obstacles were, however, gradually overcome; and on the seventh of October, the faithful and well directed efforts of the Government to secure peace by diplomacy having so far failed, the army began an aggressive campaign. It numbered two thousand six hundred regular troops, three hundred and sixty mounted militia, and thirty-six guides and scouts. One thousand Kentucky volunteers, under General Charles Scott, joined it, soon after, at Fort Jefferson. A strong position six miles in front of this work was occupied on the thirteenth, and held for several months, while the "peace talks" with the Indians were renewed by the commissioners of the Government. On the sixth of November the Kentucky mounted infantry had a sharp affair with the Indians not far from Fort St. Clair, a work constructed near the present site of Eaton, Preble county, in which the whites lost some men and nearly all their horses.
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