History of Medina county and Ohio, Part 2

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?; Battle, J. H; Goodspeed, Weston Arthur, 1852-1926; Baskin & Battey. Chicago. pub
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago : Baskin & Battey
Number of Pages: 1014

USA > Ohio > Medina County > History of Medina county and Ohio > Part 2

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Lake Erie has several excellent harbors in Ohio, among which are Cleveland, Toledo, Sandusky, Port Clinton and Ashtabula. Valuable improve- ments have been made in some of these, at the expense of the General Government. In 1818, the first steamboat was launched on the lake. Owing to the Falls of Niagara, it could go no farther east than the outlet of Niagara River. Since then, however, the opening of the Welland Canal, in Canada, allows vessels drawing not more than ten feet of water to pass from one lake to the other, greatly facilitating navigation.

As early as 1836, Dr. S. P. Hildreth, Dr. Jolin Locke, Prof. J. H. Riddle and Mr. I. A. Lapham,

were appointed a committee by the Legislature of Ohio to report the "best method of obtaining a complete geological survey of the State, and an estimate of the probable cost of the sanie." In the preparation of their report, Dr. Hildreth examincd the coal-measures in the southeastern part of the State, Prof. Riddle and Mr. Lapham made exam- inations in the western and northern counties, while Dr. Locke devoted his attention to chemical analyses. These investigations resulted in the presentation of much valuable information con- cerning the mineral resources of the State and in a plan for a geological survey. In accordance with the recommendation of this Committee, the Legislature, in 1837, passed a bill appropriating $12,000 for the prosecution of the work during the next year. The Geological Corps appointed consisted of W. W. Mather, State Geologist, with Dr. Hildreth, Dr. Locke, Prof. J. P. Kirtland, J. W. Foster, Charles Whittlesey and Charles Briggs, Jr., Assistants. The results of the first year's work appeared in 1838, in an octavo volume of 134 pages, with contributions from Mather, Hildreth, Briggs, Kirtland and Whittlesey. In 1838, the Legislature ordered the continuance of the work, and, at the close of the year, a second report, of 286 pages, octavo, was issued, containing contribn- tions from all the members of the survey.

Succeeding Legislatures failed to provide for a continuance of the work, and, save that done by private means, nothing was accomplished till 1869, when the Legislature again took up the work. In the interim, individual enterprise had done much. In 1841, Prof. James Hall passed through the State, and, by his indentification of several of the formations with those of New York, for the first time fixed their geological age. The next year, he issued the first map of the geology of the State, in common with the geological maps of all the region between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. Similar maps were published by Sir Charles Lyell, in 1845; Prof. Edward Hitchcock, in 1853, aud by J. Mareon, in 1856. The first individual map of the geology of Ohio was a very small one, published by Col. Whittlesey, in 1848, in Howe's History. In 1856, he published a larger map, and, in 1865, another was issued by Prof. Nelson Sayler. In 1867, Dr. J. S. Newberry published a geological map and sketch of Ohio in the Atlas of the State issued by H. S. Stebbins. Up to this time, the gcological knowledge was very general in its character, and, consequently, errone- ous in many of its details. Other States had been

IIISTORY OF OIIIO.

accurately surveyed, yet Ohio remained a kind cf terra incognita, of which the geology was less known than any part of the surrounding arca.

In 1869, the Legislature appropriated, for a new survey, $13,900 for its support during one year, and appointed Dr. Newberry Chief Geologist ; E. B. Andrews, Edward Orton and J. H. Klippart were appointed Assistants, and T. G. Wormley, Chemist. The result of the first year's work was a volume of 164 pages, octavo, published in 1870.

This report, accompanied by maps and charts, for the first time accurately defined the geological formations as to age and area. Evidence was given which set at rest questions of nearly thirty years' standing, and established the fact that Ohio in- cludes nearly double the number of formations be- fore supposed to exist. Since that date, the sur- veys have been regularly made. Each county is being surveyed by itself, and its formation ac- curately determined. Elsewhere in these pages, these results are given, and to them the reader is referred for the specific geology of the county. Only general results can be noted here.

On the general geological map of the State, arc two sections of the State, taken at each northern and southern extremity. These show, with the map, the general outline of the geological features of Ohio, and are all that can be given herc. Both sections show the general arrangements of the formation, and prove that they lie in sheets resting one upon another, but not horizontally, as a great arch traverses the State from Cincinnati to the lake shore, between Toledo and Sandusky. Along this line, which extends southward to Nashville, Tenn., all the rocks are raised in a ridge or fold, once a low mountain chain. In the lapse of ages, it has, however, been extensively worn away, and now, along a large part of its course, the strata which once arched over it are rc- moved from its summit, and are found resting in regular order on either side, dipping away from its axis. Where the ridge was highest, the erosion has been greatest, that being the reason why the oldest rocks are exposed in the region about Cin- cinnati. By following the line of this great arch from Cincinnati northward, it will be seen that the Helderberg limestone (No. 4), midway of the State, is still unbroken, and stretches from side to side ; while the Oriskany, the Corniferous, the Hamilton and the Huron formations, though generally re- moved from the crown of the arch, still remain over a limited area near Bellefontaine, where they

form an island, which proves the former continuity of the strata which compose it.

On the east side of the great anticlinal axis, the rocks dip down into a basin, which, for several hundred miles north and south, occupies the inter- val between the Nashville and Cincinnati ridge and the first fold of the Alleghany Mountains. In this basin, all the strata form trough-like layers, their edges outcropping eastward on the flanks of the Alleghanies, and westward along the anti- clinal axis. As they dip from this margin east- ward toward the center of the trough, near its middle, on the eastern border of the State, the older rocks are deeply buried, and the surface is here underlaid by the highest and most recent of our rock formations, the coal measures. In the northwestern corner of the State, the strata dip northwest from the anticlinal and pass under the Michigan coal basin, precisely as the same forma- tions east of the anticlinal dip beneath the Alle- ghany coal-field, of which Ohio's coal area forms a part.

The rocks underlying the State all belong to three of the great groups which geologists have termed " systems," namely, the Silurian, Devonian and Carboniferous. Each of these are again sub- divided, for convenience, and numbered. Thus the Silurian system includes the Cincinnati group, the Medina and Clinton groups, the Niagara group, and the Salina and Water-Line groups. The Devonian system includes the Oriskany sand- stone, the Carboniferous limestone, the Hamilton group, the Huron shale and the Erie shales. The Carboniferous system includes the Waverly group, the Carboniferous Conglomerate, the Coal Mcas- ures and the Drift. This last includes the surface, and has been divided into six parts, numbering from the lowest, viz .: A glacialed surface, the Gla- cial Drift, the Erie Clays, the Forest Bed, tlie Ice- berg Drift and the Terraces or Beaches, which mark intervals of stability in the gradual recession of the water surface to its present level.

" The history we may learn from these forma- tions," says the geologist, "is something as fol- lows:

" First. Subsequent to the Tertiary was a period of continual elevation, during which the topog- raphy of the country was much the same as now, the draining streams following the lines they now do, but cutting down their beds until they flowed sometimes two hundred feet lower than they do at present. In the latter part of this period of elc- vation, glaciers, descending from the Canadian

IIISTORY OF OHIO.

islands, excavated and occupied the valleys of the great lakes, and covered the lowlands down nearly to the Ohio.

"Second. By a depression of the land and ele- vation of temperature, the glaciers retreated north- ward, leaving, in the interior of the continent, a great basin of fresh water, in which the Erie clays were deposited.

"Third. This water was drained away until a broad land surface was exposed within the drift area. Upon this surface grew forests, largely of red and white eedar, inhabited by the elephant, mastodon, giant beaver and other large, now ex- tinct, animals.

"Fourth. The submergenee of this aneient land and the spreading over it, by iceberg ageney, of gravel, sand and bowlders, distributed just as iee- bergs now spread their loads broadeast over the sea bottom on the banks of Newfoundland.

"Fifth. The gradual draining-off of the waters, leaving the land now as we find it, smoothly cov- ered with all the layers of the drift, and well pre- pared for human oceupation."

" In six days, the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and rested the seventh day," records the Seriptures, and, when all was done, He looked upon the work of His own hands and pronouneed it " good." Surely none but a divine, omnipotent hand could have done all thuis, and none can study the "work of His hands" and not marvel at its completeness.

The ancient dwellers of the Mississippi Valley will always be a subject of great interest to the antiquarian. Who they were, and whence they eame, are still unanswered questions, and may remain so for ages. All over this valley, and, in faet, in all parts of the New World, evidenees of an ancient civilization exist, whose remains are now a wonder to all. The aboriginal raees could throw no light on these questions. They had always seen the remains, and knew not whence they came. Explorations aid but little in the solu- tion of the problem, and only conjecture can be entertained. The remains found in Ohio equal any in the Valley. Indeed, some of them are vast in extent, and consist of forts, fortifieations, moats, ditches, elevations and mounds, embracing many acres in extent.

"It is not yet determined," says Col. Charles Whittlesey, "whether we have discovered the first or the original people who occupied the soil of Ohio. Modern investigations are bringing to light evidences of earlier races. Since the presence of

man lias been established in Europe as a eotempor- ary of the fossil elephant, mastodon, rhinoceros and the horse, of the later drift or glacial period, we may reasonably anticipate the presence of man in America in that era. Sueh proofs are already known, but they are not of that conclusive charae- ter which amounts to a demonstration. It is, low- ever, known that an ancient people inhabited Ohio in advance of the red men who were found here, three centuries since, by the Spanish and French explorers.

" Five and six hundred years before the arrival of Columbus," says Col. Charles Whittlesey, "the Northmen sailed from Norway, Iceland and Green- land along the Atlantic coast as far as Long Island. They found Indian tribes, in what is now New En- gland, closely resembling those who lived upon the coast and the St. Lawrence when the French and English eame to possess these regions.

" These red Indians had no traditions of a prior people; but over a large part of the lake country and the valley of the Mississippi, earth-works, mounds, pyramids, ditehes and forts were discov- ered-the work of a more ancient race, and a peo- ple far in advance of the Indian. If they were not civilized, they were not barbarians. They were not mere hunters, but had fixed habitations, cultivated the soil and were possessed of consider- able mechanical skill. We know them as the Mound Builders, because they erected over the mortal remains of their principal men and women memorial mounds of earth or unhewn stone-of which hundreds remain to our own day, so large and high that they give rise to an impression of the numbers and energy of their builders, such as we receive from the pyramids of Egypt."

Might they not have been of the same race and the same civilization ? Many competent authori- ties conjecture they are the work of the lost tribes of Israel; but the best they or any one can do is only conjecture.

" In the burial-mounds," continues Col. Whit- tlesey, " there are always portions of one or more human skeletons, generally partly consumed by fire, with ornaments of stone, bone, shells, miea and eopper. The largest mound in Ohio is near Miamisburg, Montgomery County. It is the second largest in the West, being nearly seventy feet high, originally, and about eight hundred fect in circumference. This would give a superficial area of nearly four acres. In 1864, the citizens of Miamisburg sunk a shaft from the summit to the natural surface, without finding the bones

HISTORY OF OHIO.

cr ashes of the great man for whom it was intended. The exploration has considerably lowered the mound, it being now about sixty feet in height.

" Fort Ancient, on the Little Miami, is a good specimen of the military defenses of the Mound- Builders. It is well located on a long, high, nar- row, precipitous ridge. The parapets are now from ten to eighteen feet high, and its perimeter is sufficient to hold twenty thousand fighting men. Another prominent example of their works exists near Newark, Licking County. This collection presents a great variety of figures, circles, rectan- gles, octagons and parallel banks, or highways, covering more than a thousand acres. The county fair-ground is permanently located within an ancient circle, a quarter of a mile in diameter, with an embankment and interior ditch. Its high- est place was over twenty feet from the top of the moat to the bottom of the ditch."

One of the most curious-shaped works in this county is known as the " Alligator," from its sup- posed resemblance to that creature. When meas- ured, several years ago, while in a good state of preservation, its dimensions were two hundred and ten feet in length, average width over sixty fect, and height, at the highest point, seven fcet. It appears to be mainly composed of clay, and is overgrown with grass.

Speaking of the writing of these people, Col. Whittlesey says : "There is no evidence that they had alphabetical characters, picture-writing or hieroglyphics, though they must have had some mode of recording events. Neither is there any proof that they used domestic animals for tilling the soil, or for the purpose of erecting the imposing carth- works they have left. A very coarse cloth of hemp, flax or nettles has been found on their burial-hearths and around skeletons not consumed by fire.

"The most extensive earthworks occupy many ef the sites of modern towns, and are always in the vieinity of excellent land. Those about the lakes are generally irregular earth forts, while those about the rivers in the southern part of the State are generally altars, pyramids, circles, concs and rectangles of earth, among which fortresses or strongholds are exceptions.

" Those on the north may not have been cotem- porary or have been built by the same people. They are far less prominent or extensive, which indicates a people less in numbers as well as indus- try, and whose principal occupation was war among

themselves er against their neighbors. This style of works extends eastward along the south shore of Lake Ontario, through New York. In Ohio, there is a space along the water-shed, between the lake and the Ohio, where there are few, if any, ancient earthworks. It appears to have been a vacant or neutral ground between different nations.

"The Indians of the North, dressed in skins, cultivated the soil very sparingly, and manufactured no woven cloth. On Lake Superior, there are ancient copper mines wrought by the Mound- Builders over fifteen hundred years ago." Copper tools are occasionally found tempered sufficiently hard to cut the hardest rocks. No knowledge of such tempering exists now. The Indians can give no more knowledge of the ancient mines than they can of the mounds on the river bottoms.

" The Indians did not occupy the ancient earth- works, nor did they construct such. They were found as they are now-a hunter race, wholly averse to labor. Their abodes were in rock shel- ters, in caves, or in temporary sheds of bark and boughs, or skins, casily moved from place to place. Like most savage races, their habits are unchange- able ; at least, the example of white men, and their efforts during three centuries, have made little, if any, impression."

When white men came to the territory now em- braced in the State of Ohio, they found dwelling here the Iroquois, Delawares, Shawanecs, Miamis, Wyandots and Ottawas. Each nation was com- posed of several tribes or clans, and each was often at war with the others. The first mentioned of these occupied that part of the State whose northern boundary was Lake Eric, as far west as the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, where the city of Cleveland now is; thence the boundary turned southward in an irregular line, until it touched the Ohio River, up which stream it continued to the Pennsylvania State line, and thence northward to the lake. This nation were the implacable foes of the French, owing to the fact that Champlain, in 1609, made war against them. They occupied a large part of New York and Pennsylvania, and were the most insatiate conquerors among the aborigines. When the French first came to the lakes, these monsters of the wilderness were engaged in a war against their neighbors, a war that ended in their conquering them, possessing their terri- tory, and absorbing the remnants of the tribes into their own nation. At the date of Champlain's visit, the southern shore of Lake Erie was occupied by the Erics, or, as the orthography of the word is

IIISTORY OF OIIIO.

sometimes given, Erigos, or Errienous .* About forty years afterward, the Iroquois (Five Nations) fell upon them with such fury and in such force that the nation was annihilated. Those who escaped the slaughter were absorbed among their conquerors, but allowed to live on their own lands, paying a sort of tribute to the Iroquois. This was the policy of that nation in all its conquests. A few years after the conquest of the Eries, the Iroquois again took to the war-path, and swept through Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, even attacking the Mississippi tribes. But for the intervention and aid of the French, these tribes would have shared the fate of the Hurons and Eries. Until the year 1700, the Iroquois held the south shore of Lake Erie so firmly that the French dared not trade or travel along that side of the lake. Their missionaries and traders penetrated this part of Ohio as early as 1650, but generally suffered death for their zeal.

Having completed the conquest of the Hurons or Wyandots, about Lake Huron, and murdered the Jesuit missionaries by modes of torture which only they could devise, they permitted the residue of the Hurons to settle around the west end of Lake Erie. Here, with the Ottawas, they resided when the whites came to the State. Their country was bounded on the south by a line running through the central part of Wayne, Ashland, Richland, Crawford and Wyandot Counties. At the western boundary of this county, the line di- verged northwesterly, leaving the State near the northwest corner of Fulton County. Their north- ern boundary was the lake; the eastern, the Iro- quois.

The Delawares, or " Lenni Lenapes," whom the Iroquois had subjugated on the Susquehanna, were assigned by their conquerors hunting-grounds on the Muskingum. Their castern boundary was the country of the Iroquois (before defined), and their northern, that of the Hurons. On the west, they

* Father Louis Hennepin, in his work published in 1684, this alludes to the Erics: "These good fathers." r ferring t> the priests, " were great friend+ of the llurone, who told them that the Iroquois went to war beyond Virginia, or New Sweden, near a lake which they called 'Erije,' or ' Erie,' which signifies "the cat.' or ' nition of the cat, and because these savages brought captives from this nat'on in returning to their cantons along this lake, the Hurons named it. in their language, ' Brige, a" 'Erike,' ' the bike of the cat,' and which our Canadians, in softening the word, have called ' Lake Erie,'"

Charlevoix, writing in 1721, says: "The name it bears is that of an Indian nation of the Huron (Wyandot) language, which was formerly seated on it+ banks, and who have been entirely destroyed by the Iroquois. Erie, in that language, signifies ' cal,' and, in some acounts, this nation is called the ' cat nation' This name, probably, comes from the large numbers of that auimal found in this region."

extended as far as a line drawn from the central part of Richland County, in a semi-circular direc- tion, south to the mouth of Leading Creek. Their southern boundary was the Ohio River.

West of the Delawares, dwelt the Shawances, a troublesome people as neighbors, whether to whites or Indians. Their country was bounded on the north by the Hurons, on the cast, by the Dela- wares; on the south, by the Ohio River. On the west, their boundary was determined by a line drawn southwesterly, and again southeasterly- semi-circular -- from a point on the southern boundary of the Hurons, near the southwest corner of Wyandot County, till it intersected the Ohio River.

All the remainder of the State-all its western part from the Ohio River to the Michigan line- was occupied by the Miamis, Mineamis, Twigtwecs, or Tawixtawes, a powerful nation, whom the Iro- quois were never fully able to subdue.

These nations occupied the State, partly by per- mit of the Five Nations, and partly by inheritance, and, though composed of muany tribes, were about all the savages to be found in this part of the Northwest.

No sooner had the Americans obtained control of this country, than they began, by treaty and purchase, to acquire the lands of the natives. They could not stem the tide of emigration ; pco- ple, then as now, would go West, and hence the necessity of peacefully and rightfully acquiring the land. "The truc basis of title to Indian territory is the right of civilized men to the soil for pur- poses of cultivation." The same maxim may be applied to all uncivilized nations. When acquired by such a right, cither by treaty, purchase or con- quest, the right to hold the same rests with the power and development of the uation thus possess- ing the land.

The English derived title to the territory between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi partly by the claim that, in discovering the Atlantic coast, they had possession of the land from "ocean to ocean," and partly by the treaty of Paris, in Feb- ruary, 1763. Long before this treaty took place, however, she had granted, to individuals and colo- nies, extensive tracts of land iu that part of Amer- ica, based on the right of discovery. The French had done better, and had acquired title to the land by discovering the land itself and by cousent of the Indians dwelling thercon. The right to pos- sess this country led to the French and Indian war, ending in the supremacy of the English.

HISTORY OF OHIO.

The Five Nations claimed the territory in ques- tion by right of conquest, and, though professing friendship to the English, watched them with jeal- ous eyes. In 1684, and again in 1726, that con- federacy made cessions of lands to the English, and these treaties and eessions of lands were re- garded as sufficient title by the English, and were insisted on in all subsequent treaties with the Western Nations. The following statements were collected by Col. Charles Whittlesey, which show the principal treaties made with the red men wherein land in Ohio was eeded by them to the whites :

In September, 1726, the Iroquois, or Six Na- tions, at Albany, ceded all their claims west of Lake Erie and sixty miles in width along the south shore of Lakes Erie and Ontario, from the Cuyahoga to the Oswego River.

In 1744, this same nation made a treaty at Laneaster, Penn., and ceded to the English all their lands "that may be within the colony of Virginia."

In 1752, this nation and other Western tribes made a treaty at Logstown, Penn., wherein they confirmed the Lancaster treaty and consented to the settlements south of the Ohio River.

February 13, 1763, a treaty was made at Paris, France, between the French and English, when Canada and the eastern half of the Mississippi Valley were ceded to the English.

In 1783, all the territory south of the Lakes, and east of the Mississippi, was ceded by England to America-the latter country then obtaining its independence-by which means the country was gained by America.

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History of Medina county and Ohio, Part 2

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?; Battle, J. H; Goodspeed, Weston Arthur, 1852-1926; Baskin & Battey. Chicago. pub Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Chicago : Baskin & Battey Number of Pages: 1014

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?; Battle, J. H; Goodspeed, Weston Arthur, 1852-1926; Baskin & Battey. Chicago. pub
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago : Baskin & Battey
Number of Pages: 1014