USA > Ohio > Noble County > History of Noble County, Ohio: With Portraits and Biographical Sketches of some of its pioneers and prominent men > Part 2
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352
Ball, James
358
Belford, Jabez
170
Barnes, N. B.
464
Brownrigg, John
380
Brown, Capt. John
248
Caldwell, Samuel
312
Caldwell, view of
296
Carr, James
292
Caldwell, Joseph, Sr
320
Clinedinst, Lieut. Henry H.
292
Danford, Morris.
390
Davidson, C. C.
356
Enochs, Gen. W. H
280
Frazier, Hon. W. H.
176
Finley, Hon. L. W
418
Gray, John.
424
Geddes, George E.
496
Hill, John B
566
Klauber, Rev. D. J.
574
Kraps, Dr. John W
202
Lemmax, John
412
Large, Henry.
416
Moseley, Capt. W. L.
288
McKee, Hon. Ezra
500
McKee, Robert
501
McGovern, Thomas
440
McClure, George A.
506
Nickerson, Rev. Sparrow
488
Noble, John
484
Okey, Judge William C.
178
Penn, B. F.
456
Penn, Miss Martha
457
Philpot, S. B
384
Robinson, John W
354
Rich, Jacob
480
Spriggs, David S.
180
14
1
15
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Spriggs, Dr. William S.
190
Shaklee, Col. Francis M
286
Smithberger, William
528
Sargeant, Gen. C. S.
284
Sullivan, E. P.
543
Trimmer, Stevenson
438
Taylor, George W
344
Wernecke, I. C
520
Way, Edward T
558
Wiley, Arch.
216
Young, Hon. William J
348
PAGE.
HISTORY OF NOBLE COUNTY, OHIO.
CHAPTER I. THE DAWN OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION.
FIRST WHITE MEN IN THE WEST - UNIMPORTANT RESULTS FROM SPANISH EXPLORATIONS -THE LAKE REGION EXPLORED IN 1678 - JOLIET AND MARQUETTE - CHEVALIER .LA SALLE THE FIRST WHITE MAN IN THE OHIO VALLEY - ACCOUNT OF HIS JOURNEY - PROBABLE EXPLORATION OF THE MUSKINGUM - THEIR MISSIONARIES AND TRADERS -ENGLISHMEN IN THE OHIO VALLEY, 1730-1751 - THE OHIO LAND COMPANY OF VIR- GINIA -- ITS UNSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT TO FOUND A SETTLEMENT - CHRISTOPHER GIST'S JOURNEY, 1750 - GEORGE WASHINGTON AT VENANGO, 1753 - COLONEL BOUQUET'S MIL- ITARY EXPEDITION, 1764 - GEORGE WASHINGTON ON THE OHIO, 1770- THE MASSACRE OF INDIANS AT YELLOW CREEK, 1774 - THE COUNTY OF ILLINOIS - THE MORAVIAN SETTLEMENTS ON THE TUSCARAWAS - THE MASSACRE AT GNADENHUTTEN, 1782 - CON- FLICTING CLAIMS AS TO THE OWNERSHIP OF THE WEST - STATE CLAIMS CEDED - IM- PORTANT TREATIES WITH THE INDIANS.
N EAR the thirty-fourth parallel of north latitude, in the year 1541, Ferdinand de Soto and his com- panions reached and discovered the Mississippi River. This was doubt- less the first expedition ever made by white men into the great central val- ley of North America. But the visionary and imaginative Spaniards wasted their efforts in a vain search for El Dorados, or the fountain of perpetual youth ; and, apart from the establishment of the first settle- ment in the United States at St. Augustine, in 1565. Their discover- ies and explorations, from the begin- ning to near the close of the six- teenth century, were barren of im- portant results in the history of this country.
But there was a nation which looked with practical gaze upon the newly-discovered world and sought to make at least a part of it their own. The French were among the earliest adventurers in the new land, and their efforts to explore and col- onize it were most active and ener- getic. But it was not until near the middle of the seventeenth century that the French were led to explore the region of the great lakes, and then religious zeal was the only in- spiration of the explorers. Lake Su- perior was visited in 1641 by Charles Raymbault, the first of the mission- ary explorers of the Northwest. Dur- ing the next thirty years, the Jesuits continued their explorations with great diligence and activity, establish-
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HISTORY OF NOBLE COUNTY, OHIO.
ing missions at various points north of the lakes, also in Michigan, Wis- consin and Illinois.
Joliet and Marquette, the former a Quebec merchant, and the latter a Jesuit missionary, in 1673 explored the country about the northern lakes, passed from Green Bay up the Fox and down the Wisconsin River into the Mississippi, and explored that river as far as the mouth of the Arkansas, returning by the Illinois and Chicago rivers to Lake Michigan.
It is the unanimous opinion of the chief historians of the country that Robert Chevalier La Salle was the first white man to explore the beau- tiful stream now known as the Ohio, and the first to tread the soil of the great State named from the river. The earliest explorers of the Missis- sippi region considered the Ohio and Wabash as one stream, and gave the name Ouabache to both.
La Salle was born in France in 1635, and educated for the priest- hood; but his adventurous spirit would not brook the seclusion of the cloister. He came to Canada in 1666 and plunged boldly into the wilder- ness to make a name as an explorer. Soon after we find him among the Seneca Indians of New York, seek- ing a guide to lead him into the country of the Delawares. Success- ful in his quest -having obtained a Shawnee prisoner by gifts to the Senecas- he set out upon his haz- ardous expedition. As the records of three years of his wanderings are lost to the world, there is no direct evi- dence as to the route which he took to reach and explore the Ohio River.
Several Ohio writers have asserted, with some showing of probability, that after proceeding up Lake Erie to the mouth of the Cuyahoga he fol- lowed that river to the portage and reached the Ohio by the Tuscara was and the Muskingum. It is generally agreed that the time of his journey was the winter of 1669-70. Others maintain that La Salle crossed Lake Erie to the Maumee, and came to the Ohio by that stream and the Miami. But the weight of historical evidence supports the generally accepted and more probable theory that he jour- neyed from the Seneca country to the Allegheny, and down that river to the Ohio, whence he explored its chief tributaries. Hence, although he may not have reached the Ohio by way of the Muskingum, it is very likely that he explored the latter stream during some part of his three years of wan- dering.
In 1679, La Salle, who was then at the French post of Fort Frontenac, on Lake Ontario, built and launched upon Lake Erie the Griffin, a bark of sixty ton's burden, the first vessel that ever navigated the waters of the lake; sailed across Lakes Erie and Huron to the Straits of Mackinac, and thence to Green Bay. From this point he sent back the Griffin with a cargo of furs, and, accom- panied by Father Louis Hennepin (a Franciscan monk) and fourteen other men, journeyed farther into the wild and unknown region. They pro- ceeded in canoes by way of the St. Joseph, Kankakee and Illinois rivers to Peoria Lake, in the vicinity of which La Salle erected a fort and
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THE DAWN OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION.
trading station. Then, leaving his lieutenant, Monsieur Tonti, and some of the men in charge of the station, he returned to Mackinac, where the Jesuits had a missionary settlement, and spent some months voyaging between that point and Fort Fronte- nac.
In January, 1682, La Salle set out on a grand voyage to discover the mouth of the Mississippi. By way of Lake Michigan, the Chicago and Illinois rivers, he reached the great river and descended it as far as the site of New Orleans. There, on the 9th of April, with due solmenities, in the name of Louis, king of France, he took possession of "the country of Louisiana, all its seas, harbors, ports, bays, adjacent straits, .
na- tions, people, provinces, cities, towns, villages, mines, minerals, fisheries, streams and rivers," from the Gulf to the sources of the Mississippi.
After this expedition the great royageur returned to his native land and induced his government to fit out an expedition for the purpose of planting a colony on the Mississippi. Sailing from France in 1685, he reached the Gulf of Mexico, but failed to discover the mouth of the Father of Waters. Landing within the present State of Texas, he ex- plored the adjacent region some dis- tance westward and northward. La Salle was murdered in March, 1687, by two of his own men. Thus per- ished one of the bravest and most gallant of the explorers of the New World. His scheme of colonization was a failure; but upon the strength of his action in taking possession of
the country in the name of the king, France laid claim to the vast terri- tory of Louisiana.
As early as 1688 France had estab- lished military posts at Frontenac, Niagara, Mackinac, and on the Illi- nois River, and before 1750 French settlements were established at sev- eral points on the great lakes and in the Mississippi Valley. But of the Ohio Valley, from the death of La Salle to near the middle of the eight- eenth century, there is little authen- tic history except that furnished by the journals of the Jesuit missiona- ries, who traversed the country along the Wabash and Maumee and the Illinois, founding missions and preach- ing to the Indians. Soon after the missionaries began their labors the French traders established posts, and to some extent explored the country. They had a trading-post at or near the mouth of the Maumee as early as 1680, and traveled back and forth from Canada to the Mississippi ; later they traveled to that stream by way of the Maumee, the Wabash and the Ohio, and from Presque Isle, on Lake Erie, by way of the Allegheny (which was long known as the Ohio), and the Ohio.
The entire region west of the Alle- ghenies was little known to the Eng- lish prior to 1740, when English traders began to supersede . the French. The colonial governments of Virginia and Pennsylvania espe- cially encouraged and fostered the commerce between the whites and the Indians. In this Virginia took the lead. Governor Spotswood was an enthusiast upon the subject, and
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HISTORY OF NOBLE COUNTY, OHIO.
after exploring and finding a practical passage through the Alleghenies in 1714 he entered eagerly upon the project of taking possession of the country beyond them. He urged upon the British government the importance of obtaining such a foot- hold in the West as to be able to re- sist the growth of French influence. One romantic feature of his work was the founding of the Transmon- tane order of knights, with the motto, Sie juvat transcendere montes. Though no systematic settlement or ex- ploration resulted, yet from time to time adventurers reached La Belle Riviere -the Beautiful River -as the French called the Ohio. Had Governor Spotswood's advice been heeded, the long and bloody French and Indian war (1754-63) might not have been necessary to dislodge the French from the West.
English traders visited the Ohio between 1730 and 1740, and were licensed by the government of Penn- sylvania to trade as far west as the Mississippi in 1744. John Howard descended the Ohio in 1742, and was captured on the Mississippi by the French. In 1748 Conrad Weiser, acting for the English, visited Logs- town, a Shawnee town on the Ohio, a short distance from Pittsburgh, bearing gifts to gain the favor of the savages. Soon after, the renowned pioneer, George Croghan, accom- panied by Andrew Montour, a Seneca half-breed, journeyed Westward into the country of the Miamis, won the favor of the tribes by gifts, and in 1751 erected a stockade on the great Miami within the present limits of
Shelby County, Ohio. This station, which was called Pickawillamy, was destroyed by the French and Indians in June of the following year. It was doubtless the first structure erected by the hands of Englishmen within the limits of the State.
Prior to 1750 the French estab- lished a trading-station and built a fort at Sandusky, and made a system- atic exploration of the Ohio and its tributaries. The expedition for this purpose was sent out by the Marquis de la Galissoniere, captain-general of New France, and was led by Celeron de Bienville. In 1798 a leaden plate was found at the mouth of the Mus- kingum, which bore an inscription of which the following is a translation :
"In the year of 1749, of the reign of Louis XV of France, we, Celeron, commandant of a detachment sent by the Marquis de la Galissoniere, cap- tain-general of New France, in order to establish tranquillity among some villages of savages of these parts, have buried this plate at the mouth of the river Chi-no-da-hich-e-tha, the 18th of August, near the river Ohio, otherwise Beautiful River, as a monu- ment of renewal of possession which we have taken of the said river Ohio, and of all those which empty them- selves into it, and of all the lands of both sides, even to the sources of said rivers, as have enjoyed or ought to have enjoyed the preceding kings of France, and that they have main- tained themselves there by force of arms and by treaties, especially by those of Ryswick, of Utrecht and of Aix-la-Chapelle." Another plate bearing a similar inscription was
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THE DAWN OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION.
found later at the mouth of the Kana- wha, and a few years ago one of like purport was found on the Upper Allegheny.
The first concerted movement look- ing toward the establishment of an English colony in the Ohio Valley was made in 1748, when twelve prominent Virginians, among whom were Robert Dinwiddie, governor of the province, Lawrence and Augus- tine Washington, brothers of George Washington, and Thomas Lee, presi- dent of the council of Virginia, formed an association styled the Ohio Land Company. In 1749 the com- pany received from George II a grant of half a million acres of land, to be located either between the Kanawha and Monongahela rivers, or on the northern bank of the Ohio. One of the conditions of the grant was that one hundred families should be settled on the tract within seven years.
De Bienville's expedition was made for the purpose of driving the English out of the Ohio Valley and thwart- ing the purposes of the Ohio Land Company. To the same end the French built forts at Presque Isle (now Erie, Pa.), at Le Bœuf, on a tributary of the Allegheny, about fifteen miles south of Lake Erie, and at Venango, and sent out a party to destroy the English post on the Maumee.
Meantime, in 1750, the Ohio Land Company sent out Christopher Gist and a surveying party to examine and explore the country in which it was proposed to establish the colony. The party reached the Ohio, opposite
the mouth of Beaver Creek, and, after tarrying at Logstown, crossed the country, arriving at the Tuscarawas River, opposite the present town of Bolivar, on the 5th of December. On the 7th Gist crossed the river to an Indian village, whose inhabitants were favorable to the French. Fol- lowing the river south, on the 14th he reached an Indian town near the junction of the White-woman Creek and the Tuscarawas. The town con- tained about one hundred families, part of them favorable to the English and part to the French. Here he found Montour and George Croghan, the latter having his headquarters in the town.
" When we came in sight of the town," says Gist, in his journal, "we perceived the English colors hoisted on the king's (chief's) house, and at George Croghan's. Upon inquiring the reason I was informed that the French had lately taken several English traders, and that Mr. Crog- han had ordered all the white men to come into this town, and had sent runners to the traders of the lower towns, and that the Indians had sent to their people to come and counsel about it."
Gist tarried among the Indians of the Tuscarawas Valley until the latter part of January, 1751, and during his stay visited the white woman, Mary Harris, who lived among the Indians and had great influence with them. White-woman Creek received its rame from her. She was of New England birth, and was captured and taken west when a child. She grew up and married
€
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HISTORY OF NOBLE COUNTY, OHIO.
among the savages, and ended her days among them.
Gist, accompanied on part of his journey by Croghan, crossed from the Muskingum to Licking Creek, thence to the Scioto, which he ex- plored to its mouth, then journeyed on the Ohio nearly to the falls at Louisville, returning on foot to Vir- ginia through Kentucky.
In 1753 the Virginians opened a road from Will's Creek, near Cum- berland, Md., to the Ohio Valley, and made preparations to establish a colony. The governor sent George Washington, with Christopher Gist as his guide, to the French posts at Venango (now Franklin, Pa.), and Le Bœuf, to demand the reason for the French invasion of British ter- ritory. The young Virginian re- ceived a defiant answer, and the project of founding a colony was abandoned, as it became evident that war must ensue between the French and the English. The struggle that followed established the British in possession of Canada and all the country east of the Mississippi, ex- cepting the Spanish territory and a small body of land about New Orleans.
In 1764 occurred the first English military expedition into the country northwest of the Ohio. Colonel Henry Bouquet was sent out to punish the Delawares, Shawnees and other Ohio tribes for their depredations and massacres on the Pennsylvania fron- tiers during the war between the French and the English. With a force numbering fifteen hundred men, three hundred of whom de-
serted before the expedition was fairly begun, he had marched through Pennsylvania along Braddock's old trail in 1763, conquered the Indians in a two days' fight at Bushy Run and taken the remainder of his army to Fort Pitt. On the 3d of October, 1764, he marched from Fort Pitt with fifteen hundred men on his way into the valleys of the Muskingum and the Tuscarawas. The expedition penetrated the Indian country as far as the forks of the Muskingum, where Coshocton now is. No blood was shed, the Indians yielding their as- sent to the terms of a treaty proposed by Colonel Bouquet, and delivering up the captives they then held. Over two hundred white prisoners were delivered into the Colonel's charge, and it was stated that more than a hundred more still remained at dis- tant points in possession of the Shawnees, who promised to deliver them to the English authorities in the following spring. Bouquet's army returned from its bloodless conquest, reaching Fort Pitt on the 28th of November.
While Bouquet was in the Mus- kingum country Colonel Bradstreet led an expedition to the Indian towns along the southern shore of Lake Erie, and was equally successful in his object, gaining the promise of peace without any fighting.
The British took but little advan- tage of their ascendency in the Northwest. The country was visited by few except Indian traders. The borders of Pennsylvania and Virginia were peopled years before adven- turous hunters and trappers ("squat-
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THE DAWN OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION.
ters") sought to make homes for themselves north of the Ohio, where the Indian title to the lands had not yet been extinguished.
In 1770 George Washington, Cap- tain William Crawford and Dr. Craik, accompanied by a party of Indians, journeyed down the Ohio as far as the mouth of the Big Kanawha. (Crawford, afterward colonel, was burned at the stake in what is now Wyandot County, in 1782.) The party were at the mouth of the Mus- kingum on the 27th of October.
In the spring of 1774, on the West Virginia side of the Ohio, there was perpetrated a most cruel and unpro- woked murder of Indians by the whites. The massacre took place opposite the mouth of the Yellow Creek, Jefferson County, Ohio. The victims were the kindred of Logan, the talented Mingo chief, renowned for his friendship to the whites. Logan had taken no part in the French and Indian war, except as a peacemaker. At the time of the massacre he was living on Yellow Creek and supporting himself and family by hunting. A party of white men encamped opposite the mouth of the creek, and were visited by six Indians - five men and one woman. The whites, after making some of the Indians drunk, murdered all, not even sparing the woman.
To avenge the death of his rela- tives, Logan took the warpath, and became the terror of the adventurous squatters of the border. Then, re- tiring farther into the wilderness, he made his home with the Shawnees- a tribe most hostile to the whites -
in the old Indian town of Chillicothe. The Shawnees, doubtless inspired by the influence and example of Logan, renewed their bloody assaults upon the frontier settlements. To quiet the increasing trouble, Lord Dun- more, the royal governor of Vir- ginia, organized and led an army into the Ohio country. The force was in two divisions, one led by General Alexander Lewis, and the other by Lord Dunmore himself.
General Lewis' division marched by land to the mouth of the Big Kanawha, while Dunmore's force proceeded down the Ohio in boats and canoes. At Point Pleasant, on the 10th of October, 1774, General Lewis' division (the smaller of the two), consisting of about eleven hun- dred men, was attacked by almost an equal number of Shawnees, under the leadership of Cornstalk. There ensued one of the most hardly con- tested battles ever fought between the white men and the red on the banks of the Ohio. The Indians re- tired after losing several of their best warriors. The whites lost over fifty men and several officers. The loss of the Indians was estimated at over two hundred.
Dunmore, instead of landing at the mouth of the Kanawha, as had been his original intention, disembarked at the mouth of the Hocking, where he erected a blockhouse in which to leave his surplus stores while he ad- vanced farther into the enemy's coun- try. Dunmore's division did no figlit- ing, but advanced to within eight miles of the Indian town of Chilli- cothe, and there was joined by
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HISTORY OF NOBLE COUNTY, OHIO.
General Lewis and his force. The Indians seemed humbled and sued for peace, and at Camp Charlotte a treaty was held. It was during the negotiation of this treaty that Logan gave utterance to his famous speech, once familiar to every schoolboy, be- ginning, "I appeal to any white man to say that he ever entered Logan's cabin hungry but I gave him meat," etc. Lord Dunmore returned to Virginia, and in the following year engaged in that rebellion which called for his expulsion in disgrace from the province. Whatever may have been the motives which ani- mated him in his subsequent course, there is no doubt but honorable pa- triotism and a desire for military re- nown inspired his western expedi- tion.
Contemporary with Lord Dun- more's expedition Colonel Angus McDonald led a force of four hun- dred men against the Indian towns on the Muskingum. Wakatomeka, a Shawnee town of considerable size, stood near the present site of Dres- den, Muskingum county. The force was collected at Wheeling, by order of the Earl of Dunmore, some time in June, 1774. It set out for the In- dian town, piloted by Jonathan Zane, Thomas Nicholson and Tody Kelley. About six miles from Wakatomeka the militia were met by a band of forty or fifty Indians, who attacked them, killed two soldiers and wounded several others. One In- dian was killed and several wounded. On reaching the town Colonel Mc- Donald found it deserted, the Indians having withdrawn to the opposite
side of the river. There they at- tempted to draw the soldiers into an ambuscade, but being unsuccess- ful, sued for peace. The commander agreed to make peace on condition that their chiefs be given him as hostages. Five chiefs were accord- ingly delivered up to him. The In- dians then representing that they would not make peace unless the chiefs of other towns were present, one of the hostages was released to bring in the others. He did not re- turn, and another chief was sent out, who also failed to come back. The soldiers then moved about a mile and a half up the river to another Indian village, where they had a slight skir- mish and killed one Indian. It was discovered while the whites were awaiting the return of the messen- gers that the Indians were engaged in removing their people and effects from the upper towns. The military then burned the towns and destroyed the cornfields of the Indians, and re- turned to Virginia with three of the hostages, who were released at the subsequent peace made by Lord Dun- more in the fall of the same year.
Aside from the noteworthy and successful expedition of General George Rogers Clark, mentioned more fully below, although several invasions of the western country were planned or made during the revolutionary period, there were few important events transpiring in what was afterwards the Northwest terri- tory from 1775 to 1783.
In April, 1776, Colonel George Morgan was appointed Indian agent for the middle department, with
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THE DAWN OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION.
headquarters at Fort Pitt. He held the position until sometime in 1779, and by his treatment of the savages did much to win their friendship and respect. In June, 1776, Colonel Morgan sent William Wilson into the Indian country to make arrange- ments for a treaty. Colonel Morgan accompanied him as far as Pluggys- town, then returned to Fort Pitt. Wilson visited Coshocton and other Indian towns, journeyed to Detroit, and returned by way of Coshocton.
In 1778 a fort was erected at the mouth of Big Beaver, and named Fort McIntosh. In the fall of the same year General McIntosh marched from that fort into the Indian coun- try, meeting with no opposition, and on the bank of the Tuscarawas, near the mouth of Sandy Creek, erected Fort Laurens, which he garrisoned with 150 men under the command of Colonel John Gibson. Fort Laurens was the first English fortification worthy of the name in Ohio. No good resulted from planting this post in the heart of the Indian country. The Shawnees and Wyandots be- sieged it for several weeks, killed several soldiers and caused the rest much privation. The distance of the post from supplies and the hostility of the Indians caused the fort to be abandoned in August, 1779.
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