USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > History of Hamilton County, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches > Part 9
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HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.
mulated interest, within four years from the day of sale.
The land-office was kept in Cincinnati for many years, or until the sales of Congress lands within its jurisdiction were very nearly completed. Colonel Israel Ludlow was the first register, and General Findlay first receiver. The line of registers was continued by Charles Killgore, Daniel Symmes (who was appointed after the expiration of his term as judge and served till near the time of his death, May 10, 1817), and Peyton S. Symmes, who had his office in 1819 at the corner of Lawrence and Congress streets, while General Findlay, still receiver, had his at 30 North Front street, "in the hotel." The latter Symmes held the post for many years-so lately as 1833, at least. Of the names of receivers after Findlay, we have only those of Andrew M. Bailey, who was receiver in 1829; Morgan Neville, receiver in 1831, and probably for some years before and after; and of Thomas Henderson, who was appointed July 28, 1838.
THE SCHOOL LANDS.
Congress, by its early compact with the people, sug- gested in the ordinance of 1785, and embodied in the act of 1802, by which Ohio became a State, gave them one thirty-sixth part of the public domain northwest of the Ohio river for the education of their children. The lands set apart for this purpose, in this State, at least, were often appropriated by squatters, and through un- wise, careless, and sometimes corrupt legislation, the squatters were actually vested with a proprietorship with- out consideration. Mr. Atwater, in his history of Ohio, says: "Members of the legislature not unfrequently got acts passed and leases granted, either to themselves, to their relatives, or to their warm partisans. One senator contrived to get by such acts seven entire sections of land into either his own or his children's possession." From 1803 to 1820 the general assembly spent much time every session in passing acts relating to these lands, without advancing the cause of education to any appre- ciable extent. In 1821 the house of representatives in the State legislature appointed five of its members- Messrs. Caleb Atwater, author of the history just cited, Lloyd Talbot, James Shields, Roswell Mills, and Josiah Barber- a committee on schools and school lands. This committee in due time made a report rehearsing the wrong management of the school land tract on behalf of the State, and warmly advocating the establishment of a system of education and the adoption of measures which would secure for the people the exercise of the rights which Congress intended they should possess. In com- pliance with the recommendation of the committee, the governor of the State, in May, 1822, having been so authorized by the legislature, appointed seven commis- sioners of schools and school lands, viz .: Caleb Atwater, the Revs. John Collins and James Hope, D. D., Nathan Guilford, Hon. Ephraim Cutler, Hon. Josiah Barber, and James M. Bell, esq. The reason why seven persons were appointed was because there were as many descrip- tions of school lands in the State-i. e., section num- bered sixteen in every township of the Congress lands and in Symmes' Purchase, and a similar proportion in the
Virginia Military District, the Ohio Company's Purchase, the Refugee lands, and the Connecticut Reserve. For the three different grants represented in the lands of Hamilton county the commissioners were: For the Mil- itary lands, Mr. Bell; for the Congress lands, Mr. Col- lins; for the Symmes Purchase, Mr. Guilford. The commission of seven was finally reduced, by various causes, to three members, Messrs. Atwater, Collins, and Hoge, who performed the arduous duties incumbent upon them with little remuneration and (at the time) few thanks, though posterity has not been wholly unmindful of their valuable services. Mr. Guilford, of Cincinnati, always a warm friend of education and an active pro- moter of the public school interest, though his name may not much appear in the later transactions of the commis- sion, was specially prominent and influential in its forma- tion and earlier work.
The legislature of 1823 adjourned without having taken any definite action upon the report presented by the commission; but during the summer and autumn of the next year the subject of the sale of the school lands was warmly agitated, and the friends of this measure tri- umphed over the opposition so far as to elect large ma- jorities to both branches of the general assembly in favor of its being made a law. The quantity of land conse- crated to this purpose was carefully ascertained, and amounted in 1825 to a little more than half a million of acres, valued at something less than a million of dol- lars. A portion of these lands was sold by the State government, under due authority of Congress, and the remainder was leased, the avails of the leases and sales forming a part of the present school fund of the State.
THE MIAMI PURCHASE.
The time had come for planting the foundations of "the State first born of the ordinance of 1787." That organic act had called the attention of the New World to the great fertile wastes to the north and west of La Belle Riviere. The rich valleys and deep forests had been growing into knowledge and fame for more than a generation, and had even attracted the notice and prompted the official remark of members of the British government. In 1750-1 Christopher Gist, as agent of the old Ohio Land Company, which had been organized a year or two before by some Englishmen, and the Wash- ingtons, Lees, and other Virginians, accompanied by George Croghan, reached the Great Miami in his journey across the wilderness country from the present site of Pittsburgh, and explored its valley for about a hundred miles to its mouth. His companion had brought liberal presents from Pennsylvania to the Miamis, and in return obtained the concession to the English of the right to plant a fortified trading house at the junction of Loramie's creek and the Miami, in the country of the Piankeshaws, the subsequent county of Shelby-an en- terprise carried into effect the next year, the stockade then erected being considered the first point of English settlement in Ohio. It was taken by the French and In- dians in 1752, and in 1782 was plundered and destroyed by George Rogers Clark, in his expedition against the
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HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.
Miami towns. The soldiers who returned from these in- cursions, and particularly the Virginians and Marylanders who accompanied Lord Dunmore in his campaign to the Scioto valley in 1774, carried back glowing accounts of the beauty and fertility of the virgin country, and pre- pared the way for its subsequent colonization. The Mi- ami valleys were carefully inspected by Daniel Boone, when a captive among the Shawnees in 1778, and by the war parties led from Kentucky by Bowman and Clark, against the Indians on the Little Miami and Mad rivers. In the autumn and winter of 1785, scarcely more than three years before the permanent occupancy began, Gen- eral Richard Butler, with a company comprising Parsons, Zane, Finney, Lewis, and others who were or became ce- lebrities, voyaged on a tour of observation and official duty from Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) to the mouth of the Great Miami, where they built a fort, dwelt for some months, and concluded an impartial treaty .. In the years about this time, 1784-5-6, the way was cleared by Indian treaties and Congressional legislation - specially by the ordinance of May 20, 1785, providing for the survey and sale of the public lands-for the set- tlement of southern Ohio. The more renowned ordi- nance of July 13, 1787, erecting the Northwest Territory, and certain minor measures adopted by Congress at the same session, granting authority to the Government "board of treasury" to contract for the sale of the lands thus opened to civilization, completed the preliminaries necessary to regular and permanent settlement. A be- ginning of this was promptly made the next year, as is well known, by the settlement of the Ohio Company, mainly New Englanders, under the leadership of General Rufus Putnam, upon their purchase at and about the mouth of the Muskingum, where they founded Marietta, named from the hapless Marie Antoinette, at that time queen of France.
Among those who had been attracted by a visit to the Miami country was one Captain (or Major) Benjamin Stites, of. Redstone, Old Fort, now Brownsville, Pennsyl- vania, who was the prime mover in the inception of the Miami Purchase. Stites is, indeed, the real hero of the Purchase, as regards the original conception of it. He was, like many of the first colonists in the tract, a native of New Jersey, born at Scotch Plains, Essex county. While still young he emigrated to western Pennsylvania and settled on Ten Mile creek, in the present county of Green. Here he became a captain in the militia, and took an active part in the frontier struggles with the In- dians. In the spring of 1787 he descended the Ohio from Redstone with a trading venture, in the shape of a flat-boat loaded with flour, whiskey, and other wares adapted to the river market of that day, and floated down to Limestone, or Limestone Point, now Maysville, Kentucky. Here his sales had small success, and he pushed with his goods into the interior at Washington, a few miles back, where he had better fortune. While here the Indians came upon a marauding expedition into the neighborhood, and ran off some horses, taking other property with them. Stites was a man of great strength and courage, and accustomed to Indian warfare. He at
once volunteered to go with a party in pursuit. It was speedily raised, and he hastened with it across the coun- try on the Indian trail until the river was reached, below where Augusta now stands, when they kept the Kentucky shore down to a point opposite the mouth of the Little Miami. Here it was ascertained that the red robbers had made a raft and crossed with their booty, evidently striking for their towns in the Miami country. The whites likewise made a raft, crossed themselves and their horses, and pursued the enemy to the vicinity of Old Chillicothe, a few miles north of Xenia, near the head- waters of the Little Miami, which it was deemed prudent not to approach closely, and the expedition retraced its steps. The return through the valley was made more leisurely, and Stites had the better opportunity to observe its beauty and fertility. Before recrossing the Ohio he had decided to come back to the valley with a colony, and make a permanent settlement. The idea of the Miami Purchase, in its rude outlines at least, was born in his sagacious mind. He closed his business at Washington as soon as possible and returned to his fam- ily. Some time afterwards he went to New Jersey for means with which to accomplish his intents; and there, at Trenton,* met him whose name was to be forever more conspicuously identified with the memory of the Pur- chase than his, the active agent in the prosecution and consummation of the enterprise-Judge John Cleves Symmes.
Judge Symmes held at this time an influential position as a member of Congress from the State of New Jersey. This celebrated Ohio pioneer was born July 21, 1742, at Riverhead, Long Island, the oldest son of the Rev. Timothy and Mary (Cleves) Symmes. In early life he was engaged in teaching and land-surveying. He went to New Jersey some time before the war of the Revolu- tion, in which he bore an active and honorable part --- was chairman of the Sussex county Committee of 'Safety and colonel of a militia regiment in 1774, and took his regiment in March, 1776, to New York, and built fortifica- tions, and was afterwards in the battle of Saratoga. He was presently elected delegate to the New Jersey State convention, and helped to draft the State constitution. During the remainder of the war he performed important military and civil services. In his own State he was suc- cessively lieutenant-governor, member of the council, and twelve years a judge of the supreme court; and was for two years a member of the Continental Congress. February 19, 1788, he was elected by Congress one of the judges of the Northwest Territory. He was thrice married, his last wife being a daughter of Governor Livingston, of New Jersey. He had two daughters as his sole offsping, one of whom, Maria, married Major Peyton Short, of Kentucky, and the other, Annie, became the consort of General William H. Harrison. "He was the founder of North Bend and South Bend, upon the Purchase secured by himself and colleagues, and, after a long and useful
* We here follow the narrative of Dr. Ezra Ferris, of Columbia, af- terwards of Lawrenceburgh, Indiana, in his communication to the Cin- cinnati Daily Gazette of July 20, 1844. The common statement is that Stites met Judge Symmes in New York, during the session of Congress.
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HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.
but troubled life, he died at Cincinnati February 26, 1814. In his later years he became so straitened in circumstances that he was compelled to assign his property to his sons-in-law. Some further notice of Judge Symmes, including a copy of his remarkable will, may be found hereafter in the annals of Cincinnati. He is fitly called by Mr. Cist, author of numerous books and miscellaneous writings upon Cincinnati and early local history, "the patriarch of the Miami wilderness," "the William Penn of the West," "the Columbus of the woods." The compiler of Annals of the West has neatly applied to him the words (with slight variation) of R. J. Meigs' poem, pronounced at Marietta during the Fourth of July celebration of 1788 :
To him glad Fancy brightest prospect shows, Rejoicing Nature all around him glows; Where late the savage, hid in ambush, lay, Or roamed the uncultured valleys for his prey, Her hardy gifts rough Industry extends, The groves bow down, the lofty forest bends. And see the spires of towns and cities rise, And domes and temples swell unto the skies.
To Judge Symmes Major Stites, probably for the sake, mainly, of Symmes' influence in Congress and with the officers of the Government, proposed the purchase, for themselves and their associates, of a large body of land in the Miami country, the first eligible tract west of the Ohio company's purchase and the Virginia Military reser- vation. Symmes is said to have visited the land of promise, with five companions, no doubt in the summer · of 1787, before deciding upon the proposal; and on his return began operations in his own name by the following memorial :
To his excellency, the President of Congress:
The petition of John Cleves Symmes, of New Jersey, showeth: That your petitioner, encouraged by the resolutions of Congress of the twenty-third and twenty-seventh of July last, stipulating the condition of a transfer of Federal lands on the Scioto and Muskingum rivers unto Winthrop Sargent and Manasseh Cutler, esqrs., and their asso- ciates of New England, is induced, on behalf of the citizens of the United States westward of Connecticut, who also wish to become pur- chasers of Federal lands, to pray that the honorable the Congress will be pleased to direct that a contract be made by the honorable the commissioners of the treasury board with your petitioner, for himself and his associates, in all respects similar in form and matter to the said grant made to Messrs. Sargent and Cutler, differing only in quantity and place where, and, instead of two townships for the use of a uni- versity, that one only be assigned for the benefit of an academy; that by such transfer to your petitioner and his associates, on their comply- ing with the terms of the sale, the fee may pass of all the lands lying within the following limits, viz: Beginning at the mouth of the Great Miami river, thence running up the Ohio to the mouth of the Little Miami river, thence up the main stream of the Little Miami river to the place where a due west line, to be continued from the western termination of the northern boundary line of the grant to Messrs. Sar- gent, Cutler & Company shall intersect the said Little Miami river, thence due west, continuing the said western line, to the place where the said line shall intersect the main branch or stream of the Great Miami river, thence down the Great Miami to the place of beginning. [Signed] JOHN C. SYMMES.
New York, August 29, 1787.
This was the same day, as a letter of the next June from the treasury commissioners shows, when a favorable act of Congress was passed, in regard to contracts for the public lands. Another act, of similar character, was passed on the twenty-third of October, authorizing the board of treasury to contract with anyone for tracts of
not less than a million acres of western lands in a single purchase, the front of which on the Ohio, the Wabash, or other river, shall not exceed one-third the depth. Un- der this, as we shall see, Judge Symmes presently sub- mitted a second proposal. His associates in this under- taking were a number of friends of his, mostly, if not all, Jerseymen, and a number of whom had been fellow- officers in the Revolution. Chiefly notable among them was Captain Jonathan Dayton, also a delegate in Con- gress from New Jersey, and subsequently speaker, under the constitution, of the house of representatives, and the gentleman from whom Dayton, Ohio, was named. He was the principal mouthpiece of the association (called the "East Jersey Company") in the long and complica- ted correspondence and negotiations with Symmes which ensued. Their scheme looked to the acquisition of two millions of acres, which, in the imperfect knowledge then had of the country, was supposed to be included within the limits designated, though the survey ultimately showed but about six hundred thousand acres there. Symmes drew up a plan for the management and dis- posal of the vast estate they expected to acquire, which was approved by his associates. His petition had been, on the second of October, as an endorsement upon it states, referred to the board of treasury to take order. The "board of treasury" was a small body of Govern- ·ment officials, representing the treasury department, and entrusted with the power of disposal of the public lands, which was afterwards vested in the Secretary of the Treasury, and finally in the general land office. The reference of Symmes' petition to Congress to the board "to take order" gave them discretionary power in the premises; and they presently agreed to negotiate the sale to Symmes and his associates.
Meanwhile, so confident was the judge of the success of his application, that he soon began to advertise the lands and make conditional grants thereof. On the " twenty-sixth of November, 1787, he issued at Trenton, in pamphlet form, "Terms of Sale and Settlement of Miami Lands," a sort of elaborate circular addressed "to the respectable public." In this the advantages of the new country are suitably set forth. The price of the lands offered is fixed for the present at sixty-six and two-thirds cents; but, "after the first of November next, the price of the lands will be one dollar per acre, and after the first day of November next [ensuing], the price will rise higher, if the country is settled as fast as is expected." The certificates raised by this augmentation in the price shall be applied towards the making of roads and bridges in the purchase. One penny proclamation, or the ninetieth part of a dollar, per acre, in specie or bills of credit of the States of New York, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania, must be paid by the purchaser at the time of purchasing the land-warrant. This fee of one penny per acre is to defray the expense of surveying the country into townships and lots, agreeably to the land ordinance. And one farthing proclamation, or the three hundred and sixtieth part of a dollar, per acre, in specia: ar paper money aforesaid, to be paid by the purchaser to defray the expense of printing the land-warrants, purchasing
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HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.
proper books for record, accommodating and paying the register for his services in attending to the recording of entries, and other incidental charges which will necessa- rily accrue. It was further expressly stipulated as to "all purchasers of lands from the said John Cleves Symmes, within his grant from the United States, of lands lying between the Great and Little Miami rivers, that if the locator (purchaser) shall neglect, for two years. after loca- tion entered, to make a settlement on every section which he or they may have located, or to settle some other persons thereon, or in some station, who shall con- tinue to improve the same for seven years, in such case one-sixth part of every such neglected section or quarter- part of a section, to be taken off in a regular square at the northeast corner, shall be forfeited, and shall revert back to the register for the time being, in trust so far as to authorize him to grant the same gratis to any volun- teer settler who shall first make application to the register thereof; and the register shall proceed to make out a deed to such volunteer settler for such forfeited sixth part."
In this pronunciamento Symmes reserved to himself the entire township lowest in the neck between the Ohio and the Great Miami, and the three fractional parts of townships north, west, and south between that and the rivers. These he would pay for himself, and lay out " a handsome town plat" thereon. It was here, evidently, that the judge expected to locate the future metropolis of the Ohio, and where, indeed, he did made his pioneer settlement. The tract reserved included what afterwards became Miami, Green, and Delhi townships, in Hamilton county. He also proposed an appropriation or reserva- tion, for the benefit of an academy or college, of one full township, to be laid off as nearly opposite to the mouth of the Licking river as an entire township might be found eligible in respect to soil and situation.
Mr. Symmes likewise began the issue of certificates or "Miami land warrants," the first of which, date of De- cember 17, 1787, authorizing the location of six hundred and forty acres in the Purchase, was issued to Mayor Stites, and seems to have been used by him "at the point betwixt the mouth of the Little Miami and the Ohio in the pint," in securing the tract upon which he after- wards set down the first stakes of Columbia. Stites does not appear in the history of the Purchase thereafter, ex- cept as a pioneer settler and prominent citizen at Colum- bia. He had, however, a liberal arrangement with Symmes, by which he was entitled to locate ten thousand acres in the Purchase, as near as might be about the mouth of the Little Miami. These, however, as we shall see, he was in imminent danger of losing some time after, by the determined effort made to compel Symmes to fix his eastern boundary upon a line drawn northeastward from a point on the Ohio twenty miles above the mouth of the Great Miami.
On the eleventh of June following Symmes addressed another letter to the board of treasury, reciting the diffi- cultier he had experienced in arranging credits with "the late Jersey line" -- the soldiers of the New Jersey contin- gent in the war of the Revolution-in regard to their
bounty lands, so as to help his first payment on the ex- pected contract for the Purchase, and asking a new con- tract "for a part of the same lands of one million of acres fronting on the Ohio and extending inland from the Ohio between the Great Miami river and the Little Miami river, the whole breadth of the country from river to river, so far as to include on an east and west rear line one million acres, exclusive of the five reserved sections in every township, as directed in the ordinance of the twentieth of May, 1785, and that the present grant be made on the principles laid down by the resolution of Congress of the twenty-third of October last." The board now declined to agree to these boundaries, and pro- posed the inclusion of a million of acres within confines starting from a point on the Ohio river twenty miles above the mouth of the Great Miami, along the courses of the former and following the latter, an east and west line on the north, and a line running nearly parallel with the general direction of the Miami to the place of beginning. This point was within the present limits of Cincinnati. A line drawn northwestward from it would leave Stites and other purchasers (for Symmes continued to sell the lands be- tween the Little Miami and that line) outside of the Pur- chase. More than three years afterwards-July 19, 1791 -Governor St. Clair issued his proclamation warning against such purchases, and threatening ejection by the officers of the United States, at the same time defining the boundaries of the Purchase pretty nearly as in the letter of the treasury board. Much annoyance was caused to Symmes, and much trouble and alarm to the settlers of Columbia and elsewhere on the west side of the Little Miami, by this uncertainty as to their lands; but the patent finally granted and fixing the Miamis as the eastern and western limits of the Purchase, quieted and confirmed their titles.
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