USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > History of Hamilton County, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches > Part 87
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Noah Markland was born in Kentucky, April 25, 1803, and* came to Ohio with his parents when about two years of age. He remembers the building of the first school-house in Green township. It was made of logs, on the farm now owned by Simeon Pounder. The first teacher was Moses W. Cotton, who taught in 1809. He also remembers the building of the first church, on
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HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.
the site of the present Methodist Episcopal church, called the Ebenezer church. He learned the cooper's trade with his father which he followed but a short time, when he turned his attention to farming in which he is now engaged. In 1832 he came to this township and settled on the farm now owned by Charles Short. In 1825, April 5th, he married Jemima Sammons, of Hamil- ton county. She had seven children, and died October 16, 1844, at the age of forty-one years. He then mar- ried Rebecca Laird, of the same county. He is a mem- ber of the Methodist Episcopal church, and in politics is Republican. He has eleven children-Jesse; Lean- der, not now living; James, married to Sarah Gooden; William, married to Jane Wade; Charles; Francis, mar- ried to Elizabeth Flinchpaugh; Mary J., the wife of Wil- liam B. Welch; Martha, the wife of George T. Redfern and living in Tennessee; Annie M., the wife of James F. Maensley; Samuel, and Elizabeth H.
Moses Argo was born in the State of Delaware, in 1771. A farmer by choice, he came to this State and settled near Mount Pleasant, this county, in October, 1803. He married Sarah Bruin, of New Jersey, and his marriage license is the second on record in the probate court of this county. In politics, he was a Jacksonian Democrat. In 1813 he moved to Miami township, and began his home on the farm now owned by William Brawley. He died in 1842; his wife had died nine years previously. They had nine children: Libbie, now the wife of Lewis Fowler; Lucinda, wife of Daniel Helter- brine, of Indiana; Alexander, married to Mary A. Wal- hiven, and residing in Illinois; Ebenezer, who had three wives, Amanda Tapel, Hannah Spinning, and Laura M. Oldruve; Anna, who was the wife of Thomas Kinkaid, and is now married to Enos Gray, and living in Indiana; William, Elizabeth, and one that died in infancy.
Ebenezer Argo was born in this county in 1810. When fifteen years old he began the trade of shoemaking. In 1836 he came to Cleves, and opened a shop in the building now used by him as a wareroom. In 1842 he married Amanda Yapcl, of Illinois. She had three chil- dren, and died in Cleves in 1848. He then married Hannah Spinning, of New Jersey, who died in 1867. His third wife was Louisa M. C. Oldruve, a native of England. She died in 1876. In February, of 1861, he sold out the boot and shoe business to Michael Miller, and began dealing in groceries and hardware, in which he is still employed. He is trustee and elder in the Presbyterian church, of which he is a member, and is a Republican in politics. He has three children: Sarah A., married to Edmund Kane; William, whose wife is Melissa Hearn; and James E.
Samuel Burr was born on Long Island, in 1766. He married Debora Fleet, of the same place. In 1793 she died, leaving one child. He afterwards was married to Phœbe Dodge, of the same place, and she died, leaving two children. He was an excellent mathematician, a self educated man. While in New York, he was appointed head clerk in the general post office, under President Washington, and served until the seat of government was moved to Philadelphia, when he resigned. In 1817 he
came to Ohio with his family, and settled on what is now known as the Oliver Spencer farm. While in Ohio, he followed farming and surveying. The first year after he came here, he was appointed trustee of the Cincinnati college, which office he held for a number of years. He was a member of the Methodist Episcopal church, and in politics he was an Old Line Whig. His children are Edward M., now on Long Island; William P., married first to Cynthia Brown and afterward to Lydia M. More- head; and Deborah F., the wife of Henry Dodge, of Long Island.
William P. Burr was born on Long Island, August 17, 1808. He came to Ohio with his parents, and settled on the same place. His business has been farming and surveying. He is a member of the Methodist Episcopal church, and in politics was first a Whig, but more recently has been a Republican. In 1827 he married Miss Cyn- thia Brown, of this township. She died March 18, 1834, leaving five children. He afterward married Lydia M. Morehead. His family has numbered twelve: Mary, Edward, Martha A., Robert, Samuel, Deborah, Eliza, Emma F., Phœbe, and three others who died in early infancy.
Jesse Hearn was born in North Carolina in 1783, came to Ohio when about twenty-one years of age, and settled in North Bend. He was a farmer, which business he followed all his life. He was a member of the Meth- odist Episcopal church for a great many years, held the position of trustee from the time the Miami church was built until his death. In politics he was a Democrat. He died June 28, 1854. His wife was Nancy Kyle, of the same township. She was born December 26, 1789, and died the same date, 1859. They had nine children : Elizabeth; Harriet, the wife of John Brown; Edward, married to Sarah Palmer; Mary A., the wife of Isaac Ingersoll; John, married to Patience Ingersoll; James, who has had three wives, Hester A. Rogers, Jane Mark- land and Kate Hayes; Purnel, married to Ann M. Noble; Anna B., the wife of Joseph Schermerhorn; Patience, who died an infant; and Jesse, now married to Henrietta Flinchpaugh.
Purnel Hearn was born in this township November 1, 1823. He was formerly a butcher, but is now a farmer. In 1850 he married Ann M. Noble, of Green township. One year he has served as township trustee, is a member of the Methodist Episcopal church, and, in politics, is Democratic. He takes a deep interest in religious mat- ters, has been class leader, trustee, and superintendent of the Sabbath-school for a number of years. His children's names are: Missuria, William, Elizabeth, Phœbe J., Frank T., George M., Purnel O., and one that died when very young.
NORTH BEND.
When Judge Symmes found that he was to be disap- pointed in his hopes of founding a large city at the mouth of the Great Miami, he was easily persuaded to plant his colony where it had landed on the second of February, 1789, at the northernmost point of the great bend in the Ohio. Here, he writes, "I flatter myself with the pros- pect of finding a good tract of ground, extending from
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river to river, on which the city might be built with more propriety than it would be to crowd it so far down in the point, from the body of the county round it." Here, accord- ingly, he made his settlement, calling it North Bend, he said, "from its being situated in the most northerly bend of the Ohio that there is between the Muskingum and the Mississippi." Forty-eight lots of one acre each, and of four rods, or sixty-six feet, front, were staked off, of which every other one was a donation lot, granted to actual settlers upon condition that the donees should build immediately thereon; and one was also reserved for each of the proprietors.
It should be here observed that these proprietors did not include all the associates or partners of the East Jersey company, but were those belonging to a special company of twenty-four, formed March 15, 1788, under the auspices of Judge Symmes and Dr. Thomas Bondi- not, to found the expected city of Miami and sell the property within the townships the judge had reserved to himself between the Ohio and the Great Miami. The business of the company was managed by Symmes and Bondinot, and the latter had given the judge power of attorney to sell "shares of propriety" in the said city and townships until all were disposee of. Each proprietor was entitled to choose an entire square or block in the city, when founded, which should be exclusively his own, subject to no future division with other proprietors. Under this arrangement Symmes was now proceeding with his settlements in the Miami peninsula.
On the twelfth of September, 1789, Judge Symmes' partners wrote him that their choice for the site of the city was where he had landed and made his settlement in February-namely, at North Bend-and instructed him to lay it off there. He set about the survey during the later fall and early winter, and reported on the ensuing first of January, as follows :
We find the ground rather uneven, but, on The whole I hope it will do better than I formerly thought it would, especially as it embraces several valuable springs which never fail. Some of the squares are very good ones, but others of them are very indifferent, owing partly to Camp creek's running across the plat, as also to very considerable hills and deep gutters which are interspersed through the isthmus. The city does not reach quite over to the banks of the Miami, for I have laid it out exactly on the old plan and on the cardinal points, not receiving any instructions from you authorizing me to throw it into an oblong, which would have shot it better across the neck of land from river to river.
The new survey completed, the vacation of the old plat, which was included within it, and the nullifying of the arrangements made with settlers for donation and other lots. The judge was naturally appehensive of re- sultant trouble; but he wrote in his January letter :
I believe that I shall have very little difficulty in procuring the relin- quishment of all the lots which are sold and given away in North Bend. Those which have been paid for I hope will be restored on reimbursing the purchaser his money, though several of these purchasers are not on the ground at present, therefore I cannot say what objections they may start. The most of those who had donation lots in this village are well pleased with the new arrangement, as they now get five acres, and had but one before. This seems to pacify them, though they have generally built cabins on the acre.
Some special interest attaches to the judge's next re- mark, as showing the primitive character of the dwellings then upon the site:
Very fortunately for the proprietors, not one man in the village, but myself and two nephews, have been at the expense of building a stone chimney in his house; therefore they can the more readily cast away or remove their former cabins and build new houses on the proper streets of the city. The expense of clearing and fencing their lots is what they most lament, as this labor goes directly to the benefit of other people who take up such cleared lots. I shall, therefore, be obliged to make them some-compensation for this in order to keep up the quiet of the town.
The judge had taken a rose-colored view of the pros- pects, which was not answered by the outcome of his de- structive and constructive operations. In about five months (April 30, 1790) he was compelled to write to Dayton :
I must enjoin it upon the proprietors to send out some of their body with discretionary powers to act for the good of the whole without be- ing subject to subsequent control by the proprietors, for you cannot conceive the disorders that have been occasioned by breaking up the old village of North Bend to make room for the city. Some have left the town offended at the measure, while others are quarrelling about the use of the cleared land which was opened last year. Captain John Brown fenced one of these lots in order to sow it with hemp, but the same night his fence was all burnt and laid in ruins. He charges Daniel Gard and Peter Keen with the fact.
Symmes himself was obliged to make a plea to the board of proprietors, for the preservation of his own im- provements, which were threatened with the common fate "in the general wreck of the village," he said. In the course of this he introduces the interesting description of his houses, which will be found a few paragraphs hereafter.
The "city of Miami" was, nevertheless, duly laid off in a square of about a mile, the streets intersecting at right angles, regardless of hill or valley, height or plain, and running with the cardinal points of the compass. On the east (Mr. F. W. Miller, in Cincinnati's Beginnings, says also on the north), running from river to river, a strip of land was reserved for a common. The judge had no instructions as to the width of this, but took the responsibility of laying it forty rods, or an eighth of a mile wide. He wrote:
I would have left a wider common, but at this dangerous time when we have already had a man murdered within the square of the city, to leave a larger extent of unoccupied land between the city and small lots, would have looked rather like trifling with the lives of citizens who are obliged to go daily to their labor on the donation lots beyond the com- mon.
By "small lots" the judge must have meant the smaller out-lots-those of ten acres, which lay next beyond the common. "The ten acres," he wrote, "I shall throw round the hills and city in the nearest manner I can. The lots within the city-some of them, at least-were of the unwonted size, for in-lots, of five acres. Beyond the ten-acre tracts, in order, were out-lots, first of thirty acres, then of sixty.
This was Symmes' plan for any other towns or cities he might lay off; and this was the main element in the em- barrassment and uncertainty caused by the delay in fix- ing the site for the city, as mentioned in a previous sec- tion of this chapter. He was also anxious to know whether he might sell the proprietors' alternate reserved lots at North Bend, for which he had many offers; and had taken the responsibility of selling one "to a valuable citizen," rather than lose him, for "half a joe," or three dollars. He wished to sell more of them, to encourage emigration; and his anxieties to get the foundations of a
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settlement at the bend well laid form the burden of a number of his letters to his associates. He notes that his surveyors were having a hard time of it, at work as they were in midwinter, with snow deep, the cold severe, and supplies short. One of them, Noah Badgley, who lived at Losantiville, but was formerly of Westfield, New Jersey, had lost his life by drowning during a freshet in the Licking river, while returning with others in a boat from a place in Kentucky where they had procured some " bread-corn." The two men who were with him had a narrow escape with their lives, being rescued from a tree- top in the midst of the raging waters, where they had been for three days and nights.
Under the new arrangement fifty of the small lots were to be given to the first fifty applicants, on condition that they should build a house and agree to reside three years in the city. They were rapidly taken up, and by April 30th the judge could write :
We have parted with all the donation lots around the city, and I think it highly incumbent on the proprietors to add one fifty more thereto, as, people being refused out-lots when they apply, go directly up to the back stations where they are sure to have them.
He also asked the privilege of giving away about thirty-five acre lots at South Bend, which was now going rapidly, and he desired to encourage the settlement there.
The proprietors seem to have acted liberally with the infant settlement, and to have given the judge ample powers of grant or gift; for, more than five years after- wards (August 6, 1795), he wrote to Dayton:
There are yet several hundred donation lots in the plan of the town that have never been accepted by anybody, and very few indeed will purchase a lot when they can have such a choice of one gratis.
The inlots given to actual settlers in the city were soon taken up, and, as applications continued to be made, further surveys were extended up and down the Ohio, until over one hundred acre lots were laid out, giving the place a front on the Ohio of about one and a half miles, or nearly half of the present extensive frontage, accord- ing to the nominal boundaries of the village plat.
Judge Symmes remained for six weeks in the rude shelter he had built for his family upon first landing, and then removed into a more comfortable log cabin, which by that time was enclosed and roofed. He subsequently wrote the following description of his own group of habi- tations and other buildings at this point :
I have gone to considerable expense in erecting comfortable log houses on the three lots, which I had taken for myself and two nephews, young men who are with me. The lots in North Bend were four poles wide; we have therefore occupied twelve poles of ground on the banks of the Ohio. This front is covered with buildings from one end to the other, and of too valuable a construction for me to think of losing them in the general wreck of the village. That the proprietors may be more sensible of the reasonableness of the request, I will give you a description of them. The first, or most easterly one, is a good cabin, sixteen feet wide and twenty-two feet long, with a handsome stone chimney in it; the roof is composed of boat plank set endwise, obliquely, and answers a triple purpose of rafters, lath, and an undercourse of shingle, on which lie double rows of clapboards which makes an exceedingly tight and good roof. The next is a cot- tage, sixteen feet by eighteen, and two and a half stories high; the roof is well shingled with nails. The third is a cabin, fifteen feet wide and sixteen feet long, one story high, with a good stone chimney in it; the roof shingled with nails. The fourth is a very handsome log house, eighteen feet by twenty-six, and two stories high, with two good cellars under the first in order to guard more effectually against heat and cold.
This large cabin is shingled with nails, has a very large and good stone chimney which extends from side to side of the house, for the more convenient accommodation of strangers, who are constantly coming and going, and never fail to make my house their home while they stay in the village. In this chimney is a large oven built of stone. Adjoin- ing to this house I have built me a well-finished smoke-house, fourteen feet square, which brings you to a fortified gate of eight feet, for com- munication back. All the buildings, east of this gate, are set as close to each other as was possible. Adjoining to and west of the gate is a double cabin of forty-eight feet in length and sixteen feet wide, with a well built stone chimney of two fire-places, one facing each room. This roof is covered with boat-plank throughout, and double rows of clapboards in the same manner with the first described cabin. In these several cabins I have fourteen sash-windows of glass. My barn or fodder-house comes next, with a stable on one side for my horses, and on the other one for my cows. These entirely fill up the space of twelve poles. This string of cabins stands-poles from the bank of the river, and quite free from and to the south of the front or Jersey street of the city. The buildings have cost me more than two hundred pounds specie, and I cannot afford to let them go to strangers for nothing-the mason work alone came to more than one hundred dollars. There is not another house on the ground that has either cellar, stone chimney, or glass window in it, nor of any value compared with mine.
August 10, 1796, the judge writes :
I am building a dwelling house and grist-mill, both on pretty exten- sive plans, and obliged personally to superintend the whole without doors by day, and to arrange my accounts by night, so that, from early dawn to midnight, I am engaged with my buildings or my farm. I had this season a wheat and rye harvest of fifty acres, and have one hundred and fourteen acres of land planted with Indian corn, and a stock of one hundred and fifty bead of cattle.
Most of the settlers who received the original donation lots had fulfilled their obligations with reasonable prompt- ness, and by the middle of May following the landing of the colony, about forty of the lots had each a comfortable cabin erected upon it, covered with shingles or clap- boards, "and other houses still on hand," as the judge wrote. Not three donation lots, he added, remained at this time unappropriated.
The new city is designated as the City of Miami in Dr. Goforth's letters and in old official documents. Judge Burnet, in his Notes on the Settlement of the Northwestern Territory, says the place was known as Symmes, and it was frequently called Symmes' City. Whatever name or names it may have borne, however, the settlement continued to be popularly called North Bend, and it has never wholly lost that cognomen from the hour of its christening to the present day. The place grew rapidly during its first two or three years, and in 179I was deemed worthy of a garrison of eighty soldiers, who, according to Dr. Goforth, were stationed there. The presence of the troops had a great deal to do with the prosperity of the settlement, and when they were withdrawn the people rapidly followed them to Cincin- nati, or removed to other points deemed more secure than North Bend, so that the village was for a time almost deserted. After St. Clair's defeat some years later, there was a perfect stampede to the back country. Au- gust 6, 1795, the judge wrote:
The village is reduced more than one-half in its number of inhabit- ants since I left it to go to Jersey in February, 1793. The people have spread themselves into all parts of the Purchase below the military range since the Indian defeat on the twentieth of August, and the cabins are of late deserted by dozens in a street.
He remained steadfastly by his city, however, doing all he could to reanimate and resuscitate it. He built
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HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.
another residence in the northwest part of it, whose site is still plainly marked by the remains of a cellar and a heap of stones near a large honey-locust, on the north side of the road, in the southeastern edge of Cleves, west of the tracks of the Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis, & Chicago railroad. Here he was visited in 1808 by the romancing English traveller, Thomas Ashe, who after- wards published in his book of American travels the following memoranda of his visit. They afford a very interesting picture of the judge's household, and their employments in the later years of his life :
I left Cincinnati with an impression very favorable to its inhabitants, and with a higher opinion of its back country than I entertain of any other. Seven miles [!] below my departure, at a place called North Bend, I stopped to take breakfast with the hospitable Judge Symmes, the original proprietor, after the extinction of the Indian title, of the whole of the country lying between the two Miamis. The situation which the judge has chosen for his residence cannot be equalled for the variety and elegance of its prospects. Improved farms, villages, seats, and the remains of ancient and modern military works, decorate the banks of the finest piece of water in the world, and present themselves to view from 'the principal apartments of the house, which is a noble stone mansion, erected at great expense-and on a plan which does in- finite honor to the artist and to the taste of the proprietor. Differing from other settlers, Mr. Symmes has been studious to give the river-sides a pastoral effect by preserving woods, planting orchards, and diversify- ing these with corn fields, sloping pastures, and every other effect in- cidental both to an improved and rural life. From this expression of elevated judgment you may be prepared to know that the proprietor formerly resided in England, and after in New York, where he married his present wife, a lady distinguished by elegance of mind and a gen- eral and correct information. They have no children, but there resides with them a Miss Livingston, on whom they fix their affections, and whom they treat with parental kindness and respectful urbanity, the one being due to her intrinsic merit, and the other to her family, which is eminent by birth, property, and talent in the State of New York.
The judge passes his time in directing his various works, and the ladies read, walk, and attend to numerous birds and animals, which they domesticate, both for entertainment and use. Miss Livingston is much of a botanist-a practical one. She collects seeds from such plants and flowers as are most conspicuous in the prairies, and culti- vates them with care on the banks and in the vicinity of the house. She is forming a shrubbery also, which will be entirely composed of magnolia, catalpa, papaw, rose, and tulip trees, and all others distin- guished for blossom and fragrance. In the middle is erected a small Indian temple, where this young lady preserves seeds and plants, and classes specimens of wood, which contribute much to her knowledge and entertainment. When the beauties of the fine season fade, and the country becomes somewhat inert and insipid, the judge and the ladies remove to Cincinnati, and revolve in its pleasures till fatigued, when they again return to their rural economy, and to the prosecution of happy and inoffensive designs. I could with great difficulty tear myself from persons so amiable.
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