USA > Ohio > Morgan County > History of Morgan County, Ohio, with portraits and biographical sketches of some of its pioneers and prominent men > Part 6
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"The barracks or dwellings for the private soldiers were built along the sides of the curtains with their roofs sloping inward. They were divided into four rooms of thirty feet each, with convenient fireplaces, and afforded am- ple space for a regiment of men. The officers' houses were made of hewed logs two stories high, two rooms on a floor, with chimneys on each end. The large house in the southeast bastion was used for a storehouse. From the roof of the bastion which stood in the cur- tain facing the Ohio there arose a square tower, like a cupola, surmounted by a flagstaff, in which was stationed the sentinel. The room beneath was the guardhouse. An arsenal, built of timber and covered with earth, stood in the area of the fort near the guard- house and answered as a magazine or bomb-proof for their powder. The main gate was next the river, with a sally-
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TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC LANDS.
port on the side toward the hills which arise abruptly from the level ground at the distance of a quarter of a mile.
"Near the center of the fort was a well for the supply of the garrison in case of a siege, though for ordinary pur- poses water was brought from the river. In the rear and to the left of the fort, on the ground which had supplied the materials for building, Major Doughty had laid out fine gardens. These were cultivated by the soldiers, and in the virgin soil of the rich alluvions pro- duced an abundant crop of culinary vegetables for the use of the garrison. To the bravery and pride of a soldier the major added a refined taste for hor- ticulture. Peaches were planted as soon as the ground was cleared, and in the second or third year produced fruit. A variety of his originating is still cul- tivated in Marietta and known as the Doughty peach."
Fort Harmar continued to be occu- pied by United States troops until Sep- tember, 1790, when they were ordered to Fort Washington. During the In- dian war the barracks and houses of the fort were chiefly occupied by the Ohio Company's settlers, only a small detachment of National troops being stationed there.
Joseph Buell, a native of Connecticut, who was afterward a settler at Mari- etta, was in the service of the United States in the Northwest from 1785 to 1788, and kept a diary which affords many interesting glimpses of pioneer and military life at that period. His journal may be found in the seventh chapter of Hildreth's " Pioneer His- tory." From it we learn that the treat- ment of private soldiers was so rigorous as to be almost despotic. They were frequently punished by flogging, some- 4
times receiving two hundred lashes. The chief offenses were drunkenness and desertion. The men were idle, dis- solute and depraved. As their wages were but three dollars a month, it is not surprising that few industrious, sober men were to be found among them.
Buell left West Point, N. Y., Novem- ber 20, 1785, in one of the companies which had been ordered to the Western frontier. Major Wyllis, who shortly after became commandant at Fort Mc- Intosh, commanded the troops. They arrived at Fort McIntosh on the 26th of December. Shortly afterward three men deserted, were captured, and shot by order of Major Wyllis, without even the formality of a conrt-martial. Buell describes the act as the most inhuman he ever saw. On the 12th of March. 1786, Buell writes that Generals Parsons and Butler arrived from the treaty- meeting at the Miami. On the 3d of April Major Wyllis and Captain Ham- tramck with his company went down the river to disperse the frontier settlers on the right bank of the Ohio. May 4th, Captain Zeigler and Captain Strong embarked with their companies for the Muskingum. (Buell was orderly ser- geant in Captain Strong's company.) They arrived on the Sth, and two days later Captain Zeigler and his company departed for the Miami, and Captain Strong's company moved into the gar- rison.
In the month of June, Major Fish arrived from New York, and on the re- turn of Major Wyllis from the Miami, arrested him for shooting the three men at Fort MeIntosh without trial. Subsequently he was tried by a court- martial at Fort Pitt and acquitted. During the same month news was re-
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HISTORY OF MORGAN COUNTY, OHIO.
ceived of murders by the Indians in the vicinity of the Miami, and at Fish Creek. thirty miles from Fort Ilarmar. On the 4th of July Buell made this sig- nificant entry : "The great day of American Independence was commem- orated by the discharge of thirteen guns ; after which the troops were served with extra rations of liquor and allowed to get as drunk as they pleased."
During the summer and fall Indians were frequently seen in the neighbor- hood of the garrison, and the troops were constantly expecting an attack. The savages, however, did nothing more serious than to steal some of the officers' horses. The soldiers were kept a great part of the time on short rations. Provisions were exceedingly searce, and though hunters were employed to bring in all the game they could, there was frequently a lack of sufficient food. An Indian known as Captain Tunis fre- quently visited the garrison, and was on friendly terms with the soldiers, often warning them of hostile warriors being in the vicinity. In August a portion of the troops, under the command of Cap- tain Hart, left for Wheeling to escort and protect the surveyors of the seven ranges. November 25, " Captains Hart's and MeCurd's companies came in from the survey of the seven ranges. They had a cold, wearisome time-their clothes and shoes worn out, and some of their feet badly frozen."
The beginning of the year 1787 was without important incident at the gar- rison. On the 15th of March a sergeant and a party of men was sent out to assist some inhabitants (probably from Fish or Grave Creek) to move their families and settle near the fort. In the latter part of the same month, some of the hunters brought in a buffalo that
was eighteen hands high and weighed a thousand pounds. April 1st the In- dians came within twelve miles of the garrison, killed an old man and took a young boy prisoner.
April 9th, a party was sent out to bring in the hunters of the garrison, then fifty miles up the Muskingum, on account of rumored hostility of the Indians.
April 17th Major Hamtramck arrived and took command of the post. May 6th thirteen boats passed down the river, loaded with families, cattle, goods, cte., bound for Kentucky ; and on the next day twenty-one boats passed, on their way to the lower country, having on board five hundred and nine persons, with wagons, goods, etc. The entry for May 21st is as follows : "This even- ing I sent a young man, who cooked for me, to Kerr's Island (so called from Hamilton Kerr, a noted seout, who settled there early in the year 1787), about half a mile above the fort, after some milk. He was seen to jump into the river near the shore when about a third of a mile from the garrison. We supposed some of the people were play- ing in the water. Ile did not return that evening, which led me to fear he had lost his canoe. In the morning a party was sent after him. They dis- covered fresh signs of Indians and found his hat. They followed the trail, but did not find them. We afterward heard that they killed and scalped him. The Indians were a party of Ottawas."
On the 26th of May, Buell, with the rest of Captain Strong's company, em- barked for the Falls of the Ohio, and did not return to Fort Harmar until the 21st of the following November. The remainder of his journal contains little that would interest our readers.
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While the events recorded by Buell in his diary were transpiring the survey of the seven ranges of townships, as ordered by Congress in the ordinance of 1785, was in progress, under the direc- tion of Captain Thomas Hutchins, geo- grapher of the United States. The sur- veyors proceeded to the Ohio River, at the place designated in the ordinance, in the fall of 1785 and made a beginning of the survey. General Butler, on his way to the Miami, met the surveyors at the western boundary of Pennsylvania, and dined with them on the 30th of September. They were then apprehen- sive of trouble from the Indians, who, dissatisfied with the provisions of the treaty of Fort McIntosh, were strongly opposed to the survey. Their hostile attitude soon caused the abandonment of the work. In January, 1786, a treaty was held at Fort Finney, which pro- mised to secure peace, and in the follow- ing summer the survey was resumed. A very full account of the progress of the work is afforded by the journal of John Mathews, also published in Hil- dreth's history along with Buell's diary. Mathews was a young man from New Braintree, Mass., the nephew of General Rufus Putnamn. Hle came to the western country, led by a desire of adventure, with the hope of obtaining employment in the survey, in which he was successful. He was afterward one of the Ohio Company's surveyors, and a pioneer of Muskingum County, where he settled in 1796.
Mathews arrived at Pittsburgh JJuly 29, 1786, and, finding that the surveyors had already proceeded down the Ohio to Little Beaver Creek, immediately started to overtake them, accompanied by Colonel Sherman. On the 31st they arrived at the camp of the surveyors,
on the eastern bank of the Ohio, and found them awaiting the arrival of troops from Mingo (Fort Steuben*) to act as their escort in the survey. The troops arrived on the 5th of August, and from the middle of that month to the first of September, Mathews was employed under Adam Hoops, of Penn- sylvania, in the survey of the second range. On the 7th of September he started with General Tupper to assist in the survey of the seventlr range. On Sunday, the 17th, he records a visit made to an Indian camp on Sandy Creek. The Indians, eight in number, and including both men and women, were returning from Fort Melntosh to their town. " They had rum with them, and had bad a drunken frolic the night before, but they appeared decent and friendly." The next day General Tup- per began his range, locating his camp on " Nine Shilling Creek " (Nimishil- len). Here an express came to them from Major Hamtramck's camp at Little Beaver, bringing the word that the Shawnees were preparing to make au attack on the surveyors. Deeming it unsafe to proceed further, they sus- pended work and retreated toward Little Beaver. On the 21st they met Major Hamtramck and his counnand advancing to meet them, and all re- turned to Hamtramck's station. Early in October it was determined to con- tinue the survey, the troops of Major Hamtramck acting as their guard.
On the 11th they crossed the Ohio one mile below the old Mingo town, and started west on Crawford's trail, which they followed until the 13th.
* This garrison stood on Mingo Bottom, so called from its having been occupied by Mingo Indians, Its site was that of the present city of Steubenville. The fort was abandoned in 587, the troops being sent to Fort Harmar,
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HISTORY OF MORGAN COUNTY, OHIO.
On the Both of October, at their camp in the fifth range, they discovered that all the packhorses of the escort except one had been stolen by the Indians. Captain Ilart, commanding the troops, at once set about erecting a blockhouse. From the 1st to the 7th of November the party to which Mathews belonged were on what is now the south bound- ary of the seventh township in the third range of the United States Mili- tary District. Mathews and Major Sar- gent then started down Wheeling Creek, crossed the Ohio, and stopped at Colonel Zane's. They there found Captain Hutchins, and in his company Mathews started for Esquire McMa- han's sixteen miles above. On the 9th he was at the house of William Great- house, on the Virginia side. The next day he listened to a sermon delivered by a Methodist preacher, and on the 10th witnessed exercises of a far differ- ent character, as will be seen by the following entry :
" Saturday, November 11th. Being disappointed in my expectation of teach- ing a school this winter, I went to HIar- man Greathouse, the father of my friend William. Here I found a num- ber of the neighbors seated in social glee around a heap of corn. The in- spiring juice of rye had enlivened their imaginations, and given their tongues such an exact balance that they moved with the greatest alacrity, amid scenes of boxing, wrestling, hunting, etc. At dusk of evening the corn was finished, and the company retired to the house, whese many of them took such hearty dranghts of the generous liquor as quite deprived them of the use of their limbs. Some quarreled, some sang, and others laughed ; while the whole displayed a scene more diverting than edifying. At
ten o'clock all that could walk went home, but left three or four round the fire, hugging the whisky bottle and arguing very obstinately on religion ; at which I left them and went to bed."
The surveying party disbanded for the winter early in December, and most of its members left for their Eastern homes. Mathews, however, remained at the home of the Greathouses and pursued his studies. In February he went to Fort Steuben, at the request of Major Hamtramck, to take charge of the commissary department. February 10, 1787, Captain Martin and Mr. Lud- low left the fort for the woods to con- tinue and complete the survey of the ranges, and were soon after followed by other surveyors. On the 8th of May three surveyors returned to the fort, having received information of Indian outrages at Fish Creek, on the 25th of April, when three persons were killed and three taken prisoners. On the 11th a family was attacked about fifteen miles from the fort; one man and two children were killed, a woman wounded, and two children taken pris- oners.
In June Mathews was at Wheeling, opposite which the surveyors were then encamped, awaiting the arrival of troops to act as their escort. The troops came from Fort Harmar on the 6th, and two days later the surveyors started for their work. About this time other Indian outrages were re- posted in the vicinity of Wheeling. In August Mathews visited Fort Harmar, and subsequently he again assisted the surveyors. In February, 1788, having been appointed one of the Ohio Com- pany's surveyors, he joined the advance party of New Englanders en route for the west at Sumrill's Ferry, on the
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TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC LANDS.
Youghiogheny river, and on the 7th of April he arrived at the mouth of the Muskingum with the rest of the pioneers composing the first colony in Ohio.
We have devoted thus much space to Mathews' diary, not because it contains much of local interest, but because it shows the condition of the Ohio wilder- ness one hundred years ago, and affords such glimpses of life on the borders of civilization that from them the reader can, in imagination at least, picture what were the hardships and perils which the surveyors and adventurers of that day had to encounter.
By a provision of the ordinance of May 20, 1785, it was ordained that "the towns of Gnadenhutten, Schon- brunn and Salem, on the Muskingum (Tuscarawas), and so much of the lands adjoining to the said towns, with the buildings and improvements thereon, shall be reserved for the sole use of the Christian Indians who were formerly settled there, or the remains of that society, as may, in the judgment of the geographer, be sufficient for them to cultivate." The construction is in- volved, but the meaning is apparent. By a resolution passed July 27, 1787, Congress declared that tracts of land surrounding the towns mentioned, amounting in the whole to ten thou- sand acres, should be reserved and held in trust by the Moravians, or United Brethren, of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, " for civilizing the Indians and promot- ing Christianity," and for the uses speci- fied in the ordinance.
The first sale of a tract of public lands of the United States to an asso- ciation was made October 27, 1787, when the Board of Treasury agreed with the agents of the Ohio Company to sell to the latter a million and a half
acres, lying on the Ohio and Musking- unt Rivers. The lands known as the Ohio Company's purchase, were to be surveyed by the company within seven years without expense to the govern- ment, and laid off into townships, frac- tional parts of townships, and lots, as provided in the ordinance of 1785. The history of this purchase will be found in another chapter.
In May, 1788, a contract was made between the Board of Treasury and John Cleves Symmes for a tract lying on the Ohio River between the Great and Little Miami Rivers.
The unsettled state of Indian affairs in the territory from 1788 until the establishment of peace in 1795 pre- vented the government from continu- ing the surveys of congressional lands, and there was but little further legisla- tion in relation to the same during this period. By an act of Congress of March 3, 1785, the President was authorized and empowered to cause twenty-four thousand acres to be sur- veved, which were to be granted under certain regulations to the French set- tlers at Gallipolis.
A donation, small in itself, but im- portant in its relation to the history of the Muskingum Valley, was made to Ebenezer Zane, of Wheeling, in accord- ance with the provisions of an act passed May 17, 1796. This act pro- vided that there should be granted to Zane "three tracts of land, not exceed- ing one mile square each, one on the Muskingum, one on Hockhocking River, and one other on the north bank of Scioto River, and in such situations as shall best promote the utility of a road to be opened by him on the most eligible route between Wheeling and Limestone (Maysville, Ky.), to be ap-
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HISTORY OF MORGAN COUNTY, OHIO.
proved by the President of the United States or such other person as he shall appoint for that purpose." Besides opening the road, Zane was required to maintain ferries across the rivers during the pleasure of Congress. These tracts were located where the cities of Zanesville and Lancaster now stand, and on the Scioto opposite Chillicothe. For assisting him in opening the road Ebenezer Zane gave to his brother Jonathan and John McIntire the tract on the Muskingum, and they in 1799 laid out the village of Westbourn, now the city of Zanesville.
May 18, 1796, Congress passed an act providing for the survey and sale of the lands northwest of the Ohio, the substance of which will be given further on. This was followed by the act of June 1, 1796, establishing the United States Military District, the boundaries of which were as follows: Beginning at the northwest corner of the seven ranges of townships, and running thence fifty miles due south, along the western bondary of the seventh range ; thence due west to the main branch of the Scioto River; thence up the main branch of that river to the place where the Indian boundary line crosses the same (northwestern part of Delaware County) ; thence along the said bound- ary line to the Tuscarawas branch of the Muskingum River at the crossing- place above Fort Laurens; thence up that stream to the point where a line run due west from the place of beginning will intersect said river ; thence along the line so run to the place of begin- ning. The act provided that this tract should be surveyed into townships five miles square ; the lands to be granted for military services to the holders of registered warrants. One section pro-
vided that so much of the tract as should remain unlocated on the 1st of January, 1800, should be released from the reservation and be at the free dis- position of the United States. March 2, 1799, this section was repealed and the time extended to Jannary 1, 1802. The time was extended afterward by varions acts and amendments passed at different dates between 1802 and 1825.
The act of May 18, 1796, provided that a surveyor-general should be ap- pointed ; that he should engage a suffi- cient number of skillful surveyors as his deputies, whom he should canse, " with- out delay, to survey and mark the un- ascertained ontlines of the lands lying northwest of the River Ohio and above the mouth of the River Kentucky, in which the titles of the Indian tribes have been extinguished." Such part of the lands as had not already been con- veyed by letters patent, or divided according to the terms of the or- dinance of 1785, or which had not already been appropriated for satis- fying military land bounties, and which might not be so appropriated by Congress during that session, was to be surveyed into ranges, town- ships and sections-the manner of the survey to be very nearly according to the rules of the act of 1785, already given. Salt springs were to be reserved; with the sections in which they were found, and also the four central sec- tions of each township, for the future disposal of the United States. One-half of the townships, taken alternately, were to be subdivided into thirty-six sections, each containing six hundred and forty acres.
Section + provided that whenever seven ranges of townships had been sur- veyed, and the plats transmitted to the
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TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC LANDS.
Secretary of the Treasury, the lands should be offered for sale at public ven- due, under the direction of the governor or secretary of the Territory and the surveyor-general, in sections ; lands be- low the Great Miami to be sold at Cin- cinnati, and those between the Scioto and the seven ranges, and north of the Ohio Company purchase, at Pittsburgh. The townships remaining undivided were to be offered for sale in like man- ner at the seat of government of the United States, under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury, in tracts of one-quarter of a township, excluding the four central sections and the other reserves before mentioned. It was fur- ther provided that none of the lands to be offered for sale under this act should be sold at a price less than two dollars per acre. The time of the sale was to be advertised in the newspapers of the different States and Territories, and the sales at the different places must not commence within less than a month of each other.
Immediately after the passage of this act the Secretary of the Treasury was to advertise for sale the lands which re- mained unsold in the seven ranges, in- cluding the lands drawn for the army by the Secretary of War, also those lands before sold but not paid for. The townships which, by the ordinance of 1785, were to be sold entire, should be sold at Philadelphia in quarter-town- ships, the four central sections being reserved ; the townships to be sold in sections were to be sold in Pittsburgh.
The highest bidder for any tract was required to deposit one-twentieth of the purchase money at the time of sale, and to pay one-half of the sum bid within thirty days ; this being done he was enti- tled to a credit of one year on the balance,
patents to be issued on the final payment being made. Any purchaser paying in full at the time the first moiety was due should be entitled to a deduction of ten per cent.
The compensation of the surveyor- general was fixed at $2,000 per annum, and the expense of the survey was limited to three dollars per mile for each mile surveyed.
The fees for each certificate were as follows: For a tract of a quarter of a township, $20; for a section, $6, and for each patent the same sums.
An act passed May 10, 1800, changed and repealed several of the provisions of the foregoing law. Four land-offices were established in the Northwest Ter- ritory : At Cincinnati, Chillicothe, Mari- etta* and Steubenville.
The townships west of the Muskingum which, by the act of 1796, were directed to be sold in quarter-townships, were to be subdivided into half-sections; and all townships east of the Muskingum and all intersected by that river which had not before been subdivided were re- quired to be run and marked in sec- tions.
The lands thus subdivided were ordered to be offered for sale in sections and half-sections at the respective land- offices at specified dates, the sales to continue for three weeks and no more.
*The Marietta office was required to nttend to the sales of land east of the sixteenth range, south of the United States military lands and south of a line drawn dne west from the northwest corner of the first town- ship of the second range to the military lands. By net of March 3, 1803, the Marietta office was abolished and all unappropriated lands within the military tract west of the eleventh range within said traet were attached to the Chillicothe district ; and all lands within said eleventh range and east of it, and all lands north of the Ohio Company's purchase, west of the seven first ranges and east of the Chillicothe district, were required to be offered for sale at Zanesville under the direction of a register of the land und receiver of public moneys to be appointed for that purpose.
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HISTORY OF MORGAN COUNTY, OHIO.
The sale at Marictta was to begin on the first Monday in May, 1801. All lands remaining unsold at the closing of the public sales could be sold at pri- vate sale by the register. No lands to be sold either privately or publicly at less than two dollars per acre. The terms as to payment and the amount of fees were also modified.
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