USA > Ohio > Henry County > History of Henry and Fulton counties, Ohio : with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 62
USA > Ohio > Fulton County > History of Henry and Fulton counties, Ohio : with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 62
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Royalton has but one post-office, called Lyons, located at Lyons on a mail route extending from Adrian, Mich., to Wauseon, the county seat of Fulton county, and has had for many years a daily mail.
The Village of Lyons .- Lyons, formerly called Morey's Corners, did not commence its history until the building of the plank road in 1850. Since that time it has developed a steady growth to the present day. Jenks Morey was its original projector. It now supports one dry goods and general merchan- dise store, kept by Hinkle & Downer; one drug store by Nelson F. Carmon ; one undertaker shop and art gallery by Richardson & Ladd ; one hotel by Mr. Baker ; three blacksmith shops, one cheese factory, one brick and tile factory by James Briggs ; one grist and saw-mill, with attachments for making shingles, also a planing machine, owned by A. C. Daniels and Walter Meeker ; one millinery shop, one hardware and tin shop by R. W. Ladd; one harness and carriage trimming shop by F. A. Slater ; two churches, the Universalist, built in 1862, and one Disciples, built in 1877.
Lyons has a lodge of F. & A. M., numbering four hundred and thirty-four members, and organized in 1862. It has a lodge of the I. O. O. F., organzied at the same time. It has two physicians, Ezra B. Mann and H. H. Brown.
Phillips Corners .- This hamlet contains one dry goods store, run by Davis B. Brown; one blacksmith shop, one physician, Dr. Cunningham, and one wagon and repair shop.
Official Roll .- George B. Brown was the first sheriff of the county, elected in April, 1850. He served nearly one year. Charles D. Smith was elected in the fall of 1850 and served six years; Henry Jordan was commissioner for three years ; Elias Richardson two terms, six years of service; Hon. Ezra B. Mann, two terms as representative in the Legislature of Ohio, four years; Rich- ard Scott two terms as commissioner. In all this shows a term of twenty-six years of official service in the county for Royalton township.
Agricultural and Other Industries .- The agricultural and industrial power of this township in 1886, as represented by the returns of township assessor to the auditor of Fulton county, are carefully compiled and shown thus : Num- ber of acres of wheat sown, 1,086; bushels harvested, 10,591 ; rye, 130 acres,
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HISTORY OF HENRY AND FULTON COUNTIES.
bushels harvested, 1,950; buckwheat, 30 acres sown, bushels harvested, 480 ; oats, 609 acres sown, bushels harvested, 26,845 ; corn, 1,328 acres planted, bushels harvested, 42,952 ; meadow 1,528 acres, cut and harvested 1,567 tons of hay ; clover, 57 acres, cut and harvested 87 tons of clover hay and 72 bush- els of clover seed ; potatoes, 64 acres, number of bushels raised, 5,801 ; butter made, 25,220 pounds. ; cheese manufactured at home 24,000 pounds.
In factories supported by milk from the resident farmers, 150,000 pounds ; sorghum in syrup, 313 gallons ; eggs, 19,551 dozen ; apple orchards, 273 acres, bushels of apples raised, 23,165 ; number of pounds of wool, 29,071 ; number of cows milked, 736; bushels of other fruits : peaches 140; pears, 160; cher- ries, 41 ; plums, 9. Now, while the area of this township represents 15,773 acres of land, it is also found that there are nearly 4000 acres yet in a forest and uncleared, and 1581 acres of partially waste land.
Present Occupants .- So much attention has been given to the early pioneers it would be a matter of justice to name the present occupants of the soil, of whom some may be the descendants of early pioneers, and others have come at later periods, and in some measure have aided in giving a finishing touch to what was so early begun. They will be named in succession by sections upon which they reside ; section one, south of Harris line, A. Patterson, H. B. Whet- ter and George Hoadly ; section two, Thomas Richardson, R. Dewey, John Sturtevant and O. S. Sturtevant ; section 3, A. Chandler, S. Green and N. Fay ; section four, G. A. Potes and J. B. Woods ; section five, Moses Jay, Enos C. Daniels, A. C. Daniels ; section seven, including Otis and Walter Smith, James Smith, Jane B. Smith, Aaron Deyo, S. Onweller ; section eight, S. D. Carrol, William Smith, Richard Scott, John Roberts, Dwight Noble, Thomas G. Richardson ; section nine, Ezra B. Mann, D. N. Fenner, William Smalley, Elias Richardson, B. L. Barden; section ten, A. Hindee, J. Cottrell, G. W. Hoadly, Eli Phillips, Alpheus Fenner and T. Welsh ; section eleven, A. Cottrell, George B. Brown, Ansel H. Henderson J. Budlong, and J. Henderson ; section twelve, Benjamin Davis, G. T. Knight and H. Robb ; section thirteen, W. W. Driscoll, Alvah Steadman, J. R. Dodge, J. P. Hol- land, C. and S. Buck and J. L. Barden ; section fourteen, G. R. Morey, William Rynd, Wm. Davis and heirs of Ira Hinkle; section fifteen, V. R. J. Osborn, J. O. Meeker, George W. Welsh, Emeline Ketchum and But- ler Richardson ; section sixteen, William Potes, J. C. Fuller, S. H. Camron and heirs of Ephraim Hinkle; section seventeen, James Briggs, Warren P. Bebee, C. Hilton, Mary Mudge, M. Mann and Jas. B. Carpenter; section eighteen, A. C. Egnew, Clark Standish and R. Fuller ; section nineteen, E. Mead, P. E. Curtis, Anthony Leonard and F. W. Richardson ; section twenty, Oliver Gilmore, Fred Holt and A. Disbrow ; section twenty-one, Samuel Car- penter, Barney M. Robinson and J. C. Carpenter; section twenty-two, R. Hin- kle, W. S. Edgar, Daniel Wilson, A. Threedouble and Patrick Burroughs ;
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FULTON COUNTY.
section twenty-three, C. Thornton, N. J. Rynd, R. Lawler and H. Heffron ; section twenty-four, R. Sprague, L. H. Morrison, George Robb, N. Robb, P. Forester ; section twenty-five, William Blain, Samuel Gordinear, Benjamin Pa- rent, A. Fisher and J. Thompson ; section twenty-six, T. O. Neal, Jinks M. Youngs, J. Burroughs, J. Baker and H. Callehan ; section twenty-seven, Wm. Snyder; section twenty-eight, B. Welsh, S. Spangler and M. Richardson ; section 29, J. W. Vine, Harrison Welsh, T. A. Furgeson and B. Welsh ; section thirty, A. H. Jordan, Tip Southworth and F. De Merritt.
CHAPTER LII.
HISTORY OF SWAN CREEK TOWNSHIP.
S WAN CREEK township was erected by law in the year 1836. At that time it was a part of Lucas county, and included in the township of York; the same being true as to all of the territory comprising Fulton county, except the portions thereof acquired from Williams and Henry counties. The southern por- tion of this township, two miles wide and six miles long, its length being of the extent of the township from east to west, or from the western boundary of Lucas county, to the eastern boundary of York township, was taken from Henry county, and contains twelve square miles, or 7680 acres of land. The entire township contains forty-two square miles, or 26,880 acres. But this township, as it stands on the map of Fulton county, is not the same as originally con- structed. It formerly extended as far north as the Fulton line, and lacked its present two tiers of sections on the south ; but when Fulton township was erected, in 1843, all that part of this township between the present northern boundary of Swan Creek township and the Fulton line, was taken from Swan Creek township and attached to the new township of Fulton.
Here an explanation may very properly be made as to the meaning of the term, Fulton line. It has no reference to any boundary line of Fulton town- ship, but refers to the line of the original survey of the boundary between the States of Ohio and Michigan, and is so called from Fulton, the name of its sur- veyor. The State of Michigan claimed it as the correct boundary, which was disputed by Ohio, this State insisting that a subsequent survey, made by a man of the name of Harris, was the true one. This dispute gave rise to what is known as the "Toledo war," bloodless, but resulting in favor of Ohio as to the correct boundary on the north and south of the States referred to.
The northwestern part of the township was the earliest settled and devel- oped, and is probably, at the present time, the most affluent. The greater
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HISTORY OF HENRY AND FULTON COUNTIES.
part of the northern portion of the township was heavily timbered, and con- tains, naturally, the strongest and readiest soil for agricultural purposes. A. great deal of this township is what, in local parlance, is called "openings," or " opening lands," a designation or qualification as applied to the character of the land the origin of which is somewhat difficult to determine. But it seems to arise out of two facts peculiar to considerable of the soil and its aboriginal treatment in Fulton county ; the first being its composition, largely, and, in some instances, entirely of sand ; and the second, the undoubted circumstance of the Indians yearly burning it over to keep down the timber growth, to fa- cilitate their hunting. It is probable that the true origin of the term is in the last stated fact, although there is a large section of the county, which, in a state of nature, and completely unmolested by any one or anything, would not pro- duce other than scrubby and stunted growths of timber, and almost impervious thickets of hazel, whortleberry, and other brushy kinds of the smallest timber. These thickets furnished a covert or hiding place for game, and their only one; for in all the county there are no rocks, caverns, or deep and stony ravines, as in many parts of Ohio, and the burning of the thickets and undergrowth left no inaccessible hiding place, from the Indians, for the various kinds of game once abounding throughout the county. But this fact of the non-productiveness of heavy timber by much of the soil of Swan Creek township, is by no means conclusive of its lack of fertility. When properly drained, and it is fast becom- ing so, it is well adapted to gardening, and the production of all kinds of fruit, and if skillfully managed, yields excellent crops of clover, potatoes and oats, and fairly good corn and wheat. Being but a short distance from the enter- prising and thriving city of Toledo, and traversed by one of the principal lines of railway leading from that city, it is probable that but a few years will elapse before there will be so great a demand for the productions of the market gar- dener, that much of the area of this township will be devoted to that kind of farming. Another reason for this prediction lies in the fact that perhaps the poorest and most utterly worthless of all the land in northwestern Ohio, known as " openings," is much of that immediately adjacent to Toledo, on the west. It is very sparsely settled, and with the exception of a strip or belt here and there, seems incapable of productiveness, and a large part of it has not yet been cleared off or drained, and is not likely, for years to come, to be so at- tended to.
The natural drainage of Swan Creek township consists of a small sluggish stream called Blue Creek, a somewhat larger one called Bad Creek, both cours- ing in a southeasterly direction, and Swan Creek, from which the township was named, running almost due east, and all tributaries of the Maumee River. These streams are the objective points of all the numerous ditches now thrid- ding the township, by means of which it has, within the last few years, ob- tained a very excellent drainage.
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FULTON COUNTY.
For many years most of the people of the southern part of this township were poor. The marshy, sandy soil did not very abundantly repay their la- bors, and undoubtedly many of them had a hard time to secure a frugal living. Miasmatic troubles also plagued them a good deal ; but marvels have been wrought by ditching, and the land is very rapidly increasing in productiveness and value, and the atmosphere has been purified to such a degree that it now is, perhaps, as healthy a locality as any in the county. Generally speaking, the people are provident and industrious. Churches and good, comfortable school- houses abound, and evidences of material thrift and mental cultivation are rapidly on the increase. Another hopeful indication for the development, prosperity, and increase of wealth of this township is the disappearance of own- ership of large tracts of its land by non-residents and speculators. The cost of ditching has caused this class to dispose of their real estate, held only for speculation, in Swan Creek ; it therefore has been divided and subdivided, its owners now live on it and are clearing, ditching, and otherwise improving it.
The Air-Line Division of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway penetrates this township about three-fourths of a mile west of the Lucas county line, thereby passing first through the southeast corner of Fulton township, in which township, Swanton, the market town of this section, is mostly situated. Traversing a portion of section 12 north, the road then passes through sections 10, 9 and 8 north, leaving the last named at its southwest corner, and passing through the north part of section 18. The Swanton railway station is in Ful- ton township. A source of considerable revenue to the people of Swan Creek has been the manufacture and sale of ties to the railway company, the scrubby oak timber being well adapted to that purpose, and the railroad tie seller, here and there, has been something of a terror to the non-resident land owner, for not always did the enterprising axman, who was in the tie business, be scru- pulously careful to keep on his own land. But the predatory tie business be- longs to a decade gone by, and the epithet "sand-lapper," as applied to the people of southern Swan Creek, is fast losing its appositeness. At the south- east corner of this township the old Toledo, Wabash and Western Railroad, now known in railway nomenclature as the main branch of the Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific, passes, cutting a few acres of land, triangular in form, from the main body of the township ; but this road, although about cotemporaneous with the Air Line in date of construction, has been of no particular value to the development of the township.
The date of the first settlement of Swan Creek township cannot be ascer- tained with accuracy, but from the most reliable information that can be se- cured, was about the year 1834.
The first road penetrating this section was from Maumee City, which was largely the market and milling place, and also the first 'distributing point of those seeking new homes in the extreme northwest of Ohio, and so remained 70
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HISTORY OF HENRY AND FULTON COUNTIES.
until a few years later, when railways began to be built; the first being the main or old line of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, or as it at, and for many years subsequent to its construction, was called, the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railway. The construction and opening to travel and traffic of this road brought settlers, to some extent, from and by way of Southern Michigan, but did not divert the milling and marketing of the Swan Creek settlers from the immediate margin of the Maumee River and its few scattered towns.
The first twenty-five years of the settling and developing of Swan Creek township were marked by but slight progress. Perhaps from 1850 to 1860 were its most hopeful years of the period referred to. During the half dozen years just antedating the outbreak of the rebellion, there was an influx of set- tlers, who seem to have been the most prominent by way of enterprise and thrift, and to have carved out its most marked improvement. They and their children now are the leading citizens. Their discouragements were far less than those who first went in to possess the country, and their vantage ground was secured to them by the patience and persistence of the hardy pioneers who began to pass away with the dawn of a hopeful and promising day. The same spirit that impelled them to seek a primitive locality in which to build their homes, caused many of their descendants to do the same; and but few of their posterity are left, they having, from time to time, joined the restless column seeking homes farther and farther west.
The oldest church organization of the township is the Methodist Episcopal. The first place of worship was at Centreville, a small hamlet less than a mile south of Swanton. In 18- the meeting-house was removed to its present site in the southern part of the village of Swanton, and therefore it yet remains in Swan Creek township. In the northwestern part of the township there is a Union Church, so called, belonging to no religious denomination, and under no ecclesiastical control, but intended and used for united services, and where any and all religious bodies or people can meet for worship. It is known as the Viers church. Another church building, erected with the same view, is the Raker Union Church, in the western part of the township. It was dedicated in 1881. In October, 1886, the members of the United Brethren Church, in the neighborhood of what was formerly known as the Union school-house, in section 31, purchased the school building and removed it two and three-fourths miles east, in section 35, upon land owned by William Phare, and dedicated it to the service of their denomination, making four churches or places of religious worship in the township. Methodism, however, is the prevailing church faith, but there are also some Presbyterians, and a few Catholics and Free Metho- dists, the last named being an offshoot of the powerful sect founded by John Wesley.
Thirteen school-houses furnish the facilities for education to the people of
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FULTON COUNTY.
this township and the average yearly attendance for the last ten years has been about three hundred pupils. All these school buildings are frame or brick, the old log school-houses having entirely disappeared.
In 1870 Swan Creek township had a population of eleven hundred. By the Federal census of 1880 it was eleven hundred and ninety-six. To the list of Fulton county officials, than which there has not been a cleaner handed or more efficient one in the history of the State, Swan Creek township has con- tributed Nathaniel Leggett, who was the first treasurer, and filled that office for three terms ; General M. R. Brailey, who was prosecting attorney from 1858 to 1862; Caleb M. Keith, probate judge of the county three terms, closing his official career in that capacity in 1878, and immediately thereafter removed to Toledo; Charles Blake, commissioner from 1879 to 1885 ; Soc- rates H. Cately, an associate judge of the judicial district of which Fulton county was a part under the State constitution of 1802, and probate judge one term, beginning in 1854; and P. R. Lewis, infirmary director two terms.
All that part of the village of Swanton lying south of the railroad is in Swan Creek township, and comprises a population of about two hundred. The houses were mostly built at a comparatively recent date, and are all neat and comfortable, and in some instances elegant and costly. The minor share of the business is on the Swan Creek side, but there are several energetic and enterprising business establishments in that section of the place. The entire village ·is included in a special school district recently organized, and the schools have been graded and promise a high degree of excellence.
Centerville at the first four corners south, as the provincialism would state it, is very old and very sleepy, a mere relic and reminder of the time when travel and transportation were by stage and wagon; but in its bright and flourishing days it furnished pleasant and bountiful cheer at its old frame tavern on the northwest corner¿to the tired traveler and his jaded team, forty years ago. While perhaps aside from its beginnings away back in the forties, and its traffic in the necessaries of a homely and somewhat meager subsistence with the inhabitants of its sparsely settled environ before the railroads were built north and south of it, there is nothing in its drowsy annals worth record- ing ; yet in the memory of some to whom its old-fashioned tavern was once the only one for miles of weary, wooded, wet country, and who sat by its big blazing fire, and there made an extended acquaintance, and gossiped and told hunting stories and backwoods legends, or danced away the night in the somewhat rude but innocent revelry of the country ball, in its low-ceilinged, unornamented "ball-room," and ate from its bounteous table, or drank at its bar " when liquor was better than it is now," and a good deal cheaper, the mention of Centerville awakens very pleasant thoughts of the old palmy, bois- terous days before the railroads sent it to decay, and put its drowsy denizens who chose still to stay there to sleep. Wesley Knight for years was the land- Iord.
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HISTORY OF HENRY AND FULTON COUNTIES.
A conspicuous figure in the wilderness of Swan Creek was Nathaniel Leg- gett, the first person buried in Wauseon's beautiful cemetery. Clearing the land and hunting was his occupation for about ten years, and there was no doubt fully as great a fascination in those pursuits as in many of our later day pastimes and vocations. He located in this township about the year 1834, and old citizens who knew him, speak of him as having been a great worker and hunter, and his memory is yet cherished with kindness by the living few who were acquainted with him when he hunted or cleared the forest by day, and read law or history at night out of books from Maumee city by the light of blazing hickory bark on the rude hearth of his cabin home. He encouraged settlers to come to the place of his own choice, and did much toward starting the township on its final prosperous career. In the bench and bar chapter of Fulton county contained in this volume, a slight sketch of his life, and a brief estimate of his character as a lawyer and citizen are given, and mention of him is made in the present connection only for the purpose of perpetuating his memory as a pioneer of Swan Creek township.
Others of this township's first settlers were John Witmer, Wells Watkins, Joshua Fassett, Thomas Gleason, David Williams, Eccles Nay, Looman Hall, Sidney Hawley, William Meeker, William Fewless and Jesse Browning. All of these became residents therein prior to 1840. John Witmer settled in the northwestern part, on what is now section seventeen, in 1834. He came from Berne, one of the three leading cantons of Switzerland, and both he and his wife were natives of that country. Their first habitation in the township was built of bark, and at this time they had several children. In due time a por- tion of land was cleared and planted and a better house erected. Mr. Witmer was the father of three boys, who grew to manhood, two of whom battled for the country and laws of their father's adoption. At terrific battle of Pitts- burgh Landing one of them was killed. The father and sons all were good citizens, bred and brought up to the Swiss habits of patience, industry and frugality, and they were and are liberty-loving and patriotic.
Wells Watkins, who came to Swan Creek township in 1838, is still living. He is of English ancestry, but his parents were natives of the State of Mary- land. He was born in Jefferson county, O., on the 7th day of April, 1818, and was married on the 5th day of July, 1838, at Wayne county, O., to Sarah Newhouse. Just a month after his marriage Mr. Watkins and his wife started to seek a home in Fulton county. After a hard journey of nine days they reached and settled in Swan Creek upon section ten. The first winter he re- lates he did his milling on foot, carrying his grist of corn on his back three miles to a little mill, the motive power of which was furnished by a horse. His marketing was done at Maumee and Perrysburg, what little he had to market, and there were procured the articles of subsistence for his family, he making the expedition alone, winding about through the woods and swamps, and gen-
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FULTON COUNTY.
erally taking nearly a week for the round trip. Wages were very low, the remuneration for a hard day's work to the best of hands from sun-up to sun- down, being but fifty cents, and generally paid in some articles of barter in- stead of money, for money was extremely scarce, and the price of food and clothing correspondingly high. The most plentiful thing was game. Indians also were by no means scarce, but they were peaceable. The first two years flour was worth as much per barrel nearly as oxen per yoke, salt pork was worth as much per pound as the choicest steaks of beef at the city market, and potatoes so scarce and dear that it took three or four day's hard labor with an ax to earn money enough to buy a bushel of them. Clothing was manufactured at home around the cabin hearth, of buckskin, linsey, and coarse home-made linen. To this hardy pioneer family were born nine children, seven of whom are living. The wife and mother died in the year Mr. Watkins still survives, and is honorably borne on the roll of his country's defenders as a member of Company E, One hundred and Thirty-eighth Ohio Infantry. His son, Vernon C., was also a member of the same regiment.
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