USA > Ohio > History of Ohio, covering the periods of Indian, French and British dominion, the territory Northwest, and the hundred years of statehood > Part 20
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48
* This synopsis is abbreviated from that given by Judge Chase, in his sketch of Ohio history which was prefixed to the edition of the statutes of Ohio, edited by him and published in 1833.
176
CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF OHIO.
consider the futile objections that are made to the revelation of "man- ifest destiny" by conquering soldiers and statesmen. The Spanish right was really about on a par with that of the Indians, as weighed against the demands of civilization. The Spaniards in Louisiana made a show of resistance to the spread of American dominion, and President Jefferson ealled on Governor Tiffin, in 1803, to prepare a regiment for use if necessary. When the call was made on the Sec- ond division, says Colonel MeDonald, the Scioto valley furnished a full regiment of men. The company officers of the regiment assem- bled in Chillicothe and unanimously elected Duncan MeArthur to the command as colonel. But the vast western region was possessed in peace, and Judge Meigs, of the supreme court of Ohio, was selected by Jefferson to command the upper country, with the rank of brevet lieutenant-colonel in the United States army, with head- (marters at St. Louis, and also to hold the office of supreme judge in the west. He resigned his judgeship in the Ohio supreme court and was succeeded by Daniel Symmes.
To aid in the realization of the period when Ohio became a state, and the conditions under which the pioneers labored, a few words may be said. It was three years before the first mining of coal in the United States, five years before the first practical steamboat, thir- teen years before gas was used anywhere in America for lighting. It was about a quarter century before steam railroads, steam printing presses and friction matches were heard of, forty years before the telegraph and the sewing machine, half a century before kerosene lamps, and three quarters of a century before telephones, electric lights and trolley cars. It was in the age of tallow candles, flat boats and Conestoga wagons. The news of the world, brought by horsemen across the mountains, was of Napoleon Bonaparte, who made him- self emperor of France in 1804, fought at Ansterlitz in 1805 and fin- ished at Waterloo in 1515.
The building of ocean-going vessels was at this time a flourishing industry at Marietta. In May, 1800, the first one, called the St. Clair, a full-rigged brig, cleared from Marietta, loaded with flour and pork on the way down and sailed from New Orleans to Philadelphia. On account of this industry, farmers gave more attention to hemp growing, ropewalks were established, and iron was imported from the forges of the Juniata. In 1803 two ships, seven brigs and three schooners were built and rigged at Marietta to sail the rivers to New Orleans. Capt. Jonathan Devol, who managed the building of the Ohio Mayflower, built the boat Muskingum of 230 tons in 1801-02 for Benjamin Ives Gilman, and other vessels, and in 1805 he sailed to New Orleans in a schooner from his own yard. Edward W. Tup- per, son of Gen. Benjamin Tupper, at his Marietta shipyard built the brig Orlando, that sailed down the Ohio and Mississippi and to the Mediterranean. He was also the builder of two United States
177
FIRST YEARS OF STATEHOOD.
gunboats in 1807. The most popular river boats continued to be the arks, built of plank, fastened to ribs or knees with wooden bolts. Forty to sixty feet long, and twelve or eighteen wide, they carried sixty to eighty tons, without any effort except steering on the part of the erew. When emptied at New Orleans or Natchez they were taken apart and sold as lumber. The sailing boats were not expected to return either, but they had the advantage of being able to venture ont in the gulf and seek other ports. The exports were flour, corn, hemp, and flax, beef, pork, smoked hams of venison, whiskey, peach brandy, oak staves and lumber.
But, as it was well-nigh impossible to bring goods up the Missis- sippi, it was easy to prophesy, as did a writer of that day: "The people of the upper country will always procure their goods at Wash- ington, Baltimore or Philadelphia, and have them brought thenee in waggons. So eireminstaneed, they will be provident in their use of foreign articles ; they will prevent their need of them by setting up various manufactories, the raw material of which they so abun- dantly possess, and thus supply other places, without needing or being able to receive any returns but specie. The consequence will be that this interior country must every year become more independ- ent upon other countries, more prosperous and more happy."
The published journal of a traveler through Ohio reveals the progress of settlement a year or two after the beginning of state- hood .* At Marietta he noted a difference as he came from the Vir- ginia country. "Here, in Ohio, they are intelligent, industrions and thriving ; there on the backskirts of Virginia, ignorant, lazy and poor. Here the buildings are neat, though small, and furnished in many instances with brick chimneys and glass windows; there the habita- tions are miserable cabins. Here the grounds are laid ont in a regu- lar manner and inelosed by strong posts and rails, there the fields are surrounded by a rough zig-zag log fence. Here are thrifty young apple orchards ; there the only fruit is the peach, from which a good brandy is distilled." But Ohio had a good many peach trees also, as well as brandy, and Marietta was an exceptional community, even in Ohio. Marietta had ninety-one dwellings, of which eleven were brick and three stone, eight stores and three rope walks. Mneh busi- ness was done, and ship building was promising great results. The other towns in Washington county were Belle Pre, 17 miles below, opposite the elegant mansion of Blennerhassett on an island of more than a hundred acres; Waterford, Adams on the Muskingum, Salem on Duck Creek, founded in 1795, Athens on the Hoekhock- ing, site of the Ohio university, Ames, north of Athens, and New- port, above Marietta.
Harris gave a brief notice of each county. In Trumbull were
* Thaddeus Mason Harris, "Journal of a Tour," published in 1805. I-12
178
CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF OHIO.
the towns of Warren, a pleasant and thriving town on Beaver creek, with considerable trade by portage to La Grande Riviere, into the lake: Youngstown, a flourishing settlement. and "Cleveland, a pleas- ant little town." Jefferson county had the towns of Steubenville laid out in 1795, very flourishing, and Warren, a small place sixteen miles lxlow. St. Clairsville and Pultney, small settlements, were the main features of Belmont county.
Gallia county had its main settlement at Gallipolis, which had about a hundred houses in two rows ( the French inhabitants of which had mostly gone to the grant about twenty-four miles below, where M. Gervais platted Burrsburg), and Fairhaven, a small town opposite the mouth of the Kanawha. Scioto county boasted of Alexandria, a hamlet at the month of the Seioto, with great expecta- tions, and Adams county had the river towns of Massiesburg and Manchester. Clermont had one town, Williamsburg, with twelve or fifteen houses. Hamilton county, after this long stretch of emptiness, was an agreeable change, with Cincinnati," boasting upwards of three hundred dwellings. "A printing press is estab- lished here, which issues a weekly paper." The other towns were Columbia, Newtown and North Bend. Muskingum county had two rival towns, Springfield, on the east bank of the Muskingum, with thirteen families, and Zanesville opposite, with ten families, on Zane's grant. Both were on the post road from the east to Ken- tueky. Besides these were the Moravian towns of Schonbrun, resettled in 1799 or 1500: Gnadenhütten, ten miles below : Salem, six miles further down the river, and Tuscarawi, platted at the forks in 1799. Fairfield connty had the fine little town of Lan- easter, established in 1800. In Ross, Chillicothe had considerable importance as a town of one hundred and fifty houses; Newmarket had twelve and Westfall ten. Franklinton, "a small but flourish- ing town on the forks of the Scioto, forty miles above Chillicothe." was the metropolis of the vast interior county of Franklin. War- ren county had its villages of Deerfield and Waynesburg. The one town of Butler county was Hamilton, a small settlement. Day- ton and Franklin were similar small settlements in Montgomery county. These few counties, which comprised the State at that time. had the following number of white males in 1803: Trumbull, 1,111; Columbiana, 542: Jefferson, 1,533: Belmont, 1,030: Wash- ington and Muskingum, 1,246: Gallia, 307: Seioto, 249; Adams, 906; Clermont, 753: Hamilton, 1,700; Fairfield, 1,051; Ross,
* Among the men who came to Cincinnati in 1803 was Nicholas Long- worth, born in Newark. N. J., in 1782. He was the first to introduce the culture of the grape and the making of wine in Ohio, became very wealthy by investments in real estate, and was one of the most eminent and use- ful citizens of Ohio. It was in his honor that Longfellow made the pun at a social meeting, "Worth makes the man and want of it the fellow."
179
FIRST YEARS OF STATEHOOD.
1,982; Franklin, 240; Warren, 854; Greene, 446; Butler, 836, and Montgomery, 526. The total white males were 15,314.
In July, 1805, as has been previously noted, the proprietors of Sufferers' Land ( Fire Lands) bought of the Indians the part of the C'onneetient reserve west of the Cuyahoga. In the same year a treaty was made at Fort Industry, the site of the future Toledo, by the United States, by which the Indians ceded not only what is called the Fire Lands, but the strip south of it, as far west as the west line of the Connecticut reserve. The Wyandots, Chippewas, Mansees and Delawares, who made this cession, were promised a perpetual annuity of $1,000, $175 of which was to be paid by the Fire Lands company, which had previously agreed to pay the Indians $4,000 down and $12,000 in six annual payments for the land they obtained. In 1807 Governor Hull, of Michigan, by treaty of friendship at Detroit, secured the right to Ohio of building a road from the western limit of the Fire Lands to the Maumee rapids, and a strip a mile wide on each side of the road, as well as another road south from Lower Sandusky ( Fremont). Taylor Sherman,* of Connecticut, was sent out to superintend the settlement of the Fire Lands, and on February 7, 1809, the region was set off as the county of Huron. The strip of Indian country south of this, also acquired by the treaty of 1805, remained without a name, except the "New Purchase," until it was formally designated as Wayne county in 1808, including also the present counties of Ashland and Richland and parts of Stark, Holmes, Morrow and Crawford.
Thomas Ashe, an Englishman, coming down the Ohio in 1806,7 (n reaching the mouth of the Scioto was curious to see Chillicothe, and its democratical government, of which he had heard mneh, and he undertook to walk up through the rather wet lands west of the river. "I suffered much for my curiosity," he said. "My ronte lay through a wilderness so thick, deep, dark and impenetrable that the light, much less the air of heaven, was nearly denied access. We were like- wise alnost stung to madness by musketoes. So numerous were these persecutors, that we walked amidst them as in a cloud, and suffered to an excess not possible to describe." Chillicothe he found a town of about 150 houses. At Cincinnati there were twice as many. The importance of the latter eity he ascribed largely to the faet that "in Holland, Germany, Ireland and the remotest parts of America, persons intending to emigrate deelare they will go to the Miamies," so famous was that fertile and beautiful region.
* His son, Charles R. Sherman, followed him to Ohio, and became a lawyer at Lancaster, and later one of the ahlest judges of the supreme court. Among his children were Senator John Sherman and General William Tecumseh Sherman.
+"Travels in America." London, 1808. Ashe traveled under an assumed name and was afterward called the "swindling Englishman." and "the infamous Ashe." The West was not tolerant of criticism in those days.
180
CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF OHIO.
Lebanon he found the community of Shaking Quakers, and at Day- ton much shaking of another sort, from malaria.
In the Warren county settlements, which included Lebanon and the homes of Francis Dunlavy and Matthias Corwin, father of Tom Corwin, and the farm and mill of Jeremiah Morrow, there were strange doings about this time. In 1802 there came from Kentucky a Presbyterian preacher, Richard MeNemar, a gaunt, restless man, learned in the ancient languages, who started a "revival," in which the congregation went into convulsions, shouted, jerked, barked, rolled abont upon the ground, prophesied, and exhibited faces of such eestasy that it was not doubted that they were more favored than St. Paul, who could only look "as through a glass darkly" upon the glories of eternity. At these meetings the people would sing with sneh energy that they could be heard for miles around.
James B. Finley, of Highland county, son of the Rev. Robert W. Finley, went down into Kentucky in 1501 to see the famous Cane Ridge camp-meeting ; was terrified by the noise and fervor, of twenty- five thousand shouting people, but yielded to the impulse, and became one of the leading workers under Francis Asbury, who preached at the Chillicothe statehouse in 1>03. Presbyterians were also active in the great religions movement, that continued until 1810. Appar- ently inseparable from the "revivals" were "the jerks," a peculiar nervous disorder that some declared was the work of the devil. At the camp-meetings, that became common, one of the most famous preachers was Lorenzo Dow, a native of Connecticut, who traveled and exhorted from the Lakes to the Gulf.
In March, 1805, there arrived at Lebanon the forerunners of another religious movement, John Meacham and his associates, who came to found a community of the Shaking Quakers, started in Eng- land about sixty years before, in the delusions of a woman, Ann Lee, who claimed to be a re-incarnation of Christ. She was put in a mad- house in the old country, but came to America and found favor. The seet had nich success at Lebanon, and founded the Shaker town at Union Village.
There was also brought into the wilderness the mystical doctrines of Swedenborg by one of the memorable characters of pioneer days. Jonathan Chapman, who is said to have been born at Boston abont 1775. Ile came into the Territory in 1501 with a horse load of appleseeds, planted an orchard in Licking county, and was ever after- ward known as "Johnny Appleseed." In 1806 he came down the Ohio by boat and went up the Muskingum and Mohican into the Ash- land county country, where he planted more nurseries. To the Indians he was a great "medicine man." and to the whites a myste- rions but always welcome visitation. From his seeds thousands of orchards grew, and he may have imparted some degree of mystical
181
FIRST YEARS OF STATEHOOD.
coloring to the religions life of the frontier by his eloquent discourses. For forty years he wandered about in Ohio and Indiana, elad some- times in a coffee sack, with his cooking pan for a hat.
In the Western Reserve and other parts of the State religious col- onies were founded, such as the town of Tallmadge, in Summit county, established exclusively for Congregationalists or Presbyte- rians by David Bacon, a missionary from Connectient, in 1807. There was bred Leonard Bacon, a famous theologian of later days, and his sister, Delia Bacon, who became noted in England as well as America for her attempt to transfer to the great English philosopher whose name she bore the honors of him who wrote "not for an age but for all time."
The State was vet mainly in a condition of nature. "We do not believe there was even one bridge in the State when it was organized," says Caleb Atwater, in his quaint history. "The roads were few and it was no easy matter for a stranger to follow them." Atwater him- self preferred to thread the forests with the aid of a compass. The judges of the supreme court and the cirenit judges, traveling from county to county, attended by a retinue of lawyers, were accustomed to swim rivers and smilingly submit to the buffetings of nature and the attentions of the mosquitoes, which were almost overwhelming.
Much has been written of the lack of comfort of the settlers, and their sufferings. It is a common theme, and need not here be dwelt upon. Living in their log cabins and laboring tremendously at elear- ing away the giant trees, the man and wife and their flock of chil- dren were happy, as happy as any people are now. The men and women of today would do the same work now if they were similarly situated, and develop just as nich endurance of mind and muscle, and the men and women of that day, if suddenly brought back from their well-earned rest to fill our places, would quickly adapt them- selves to the present conditions. Thousands of times have sections of humanity gone through as great a progress, in the essentials of life, as has occurred since 1803 in Ohio, and man forever remains the same, wonderful in adaptation to circumstances, and departing little from the original creature, whether he stand in wonder of himself as the master of the newly invented stone axe, or the newly invented steam engine, trolley-ear and telephone.
But Ohio was not all log houses during the administration of the genial Doctor Tiffin. There was a really imposing stone capitol at Chillicothe, and upon the hills overlooking the town were the man- sions of Senator Worthington and Duncan MeArthur, as deserving of a place in romance as the plantation homes of Virginia. Worth- ington's home was a Virginia mansion transplanted. It was fanci- fully named, according to the custom of the Virginia gentlemen when they built homes in the wilderness, and known as Adena. A grand place it was, in fact, and furnished for the entertainment of such worthies as the duke of Saxe-Weimar, the Clays and Breckinridges
182
CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF OHIO.
of Kentucky and President Monroe, who enjoyed its hospitality in later years. Duncan MeArthur, who had come to Ohio with the Pennsylvania soldiers in 1790 and fought under Harmar at the head of the Manmee: skirmished with the Indians at Captina, below Wheeling, in 1792 ; hunted along the Ohio with Joseph Vance, and carried a chain with Nathaniel Massie in 1793; scouted against the Indians along the river in the service of Kentucky, and after the treaty of Greenville helped plant the town of Chillicothe, was now becoming one of the greatest land owners of Ohio, and his mansion corresponded to his prosperity. General Massie's comfortable home at Paint Creek was also a place of much social life. Here the Vir- ginians who came frequently on land business were entertained. Colonel MeDonald recalled that the hospitality of this home bordered on extravagance, especially when the general welcomed any old com- panion in frontier adventure. "His lady, although raised in pol- ished and fashionable life, took great pleasure in rendering his awkward woods companions easy nd at home. I well remember that it was in Mrs. Massie's room I first saw tea handed around for supper, which I then thought foolish business and still remain of that opinion."#
Another famous mansion, not quite in the State, as all her territory is "northwest of the river Ohio," was on an island opposite Belpre. Elijah Backus, of Connectient, bought the island of its original claimant for a small price, and sold half of it about 1798 at $26 an acre, to an easy victim who had come down the river fresh from Ire- land. This purchaser was Harmon Blennerhassett, a native of Eng- land, then thirty years old, a graduate of Trinity college, Dublin, who had inherited a small fortune and married a daughter of the lieutenant-governor of the Isle of Man. Locating on the island, so that he might own a few slaves, he made business investments at Marietta, and spent a good part of his money in building a spacious frame house, in plan and architectural finish resembling a barracks, but furnished with considerable luxuriance and good taste. Abont forty thousand dollars is said to have been expended on the residence and grounds. The master is described as a tall, slight-built, short- sighted man, a good musician, devoted to scientific experiments, but with little aptitude for business, who dressed in scarlet or buff small- clothes and a blue broadcloth coat, silk stockings and silver buckled shoes, after the fashion of the gentry of that day. His wife, a charm- ing woman, could jump a fence and lead the dance with equal ease, and as she rode her horse from Belpré to Marietta, attired in scarlet habit, she reminded the sober-minded pioneers of some tropical bird of gay plumage and rapid flight, winging its way through the woods. ;
* Biographical Sketches, by Col. John McDonald, 1838.
+ Such is the description of Dr. S. P. Hildreth, of Marietta, in his "Pio- Deers of Ohio."
183
FIRST YEARS OF STATEHOOD.
There were numerous balls and assemblies at Marietta and Belpre, as well as at her home, in which she was the chief spirit.
In 1804 the first presidential electors of Ohio were chosen: Will- iam Goforth, James Pritchard and Nathaniel Massie, who cast the vote of the State for Thomas Jefferson for a second term. Jeffer- son's administration was "almost worshipped by our people," says Caleb Atwater, "who were greatly caressed in return, by the object of their reverence." There was some opposition, for a resolution in the legislature, comending the government for taking possession of Louisiana, passed the house by a majority of only one, and the opposition had a protest spread upon the journal against absurd com- mendations of the government for doing its duty. Among these prot- estants was Philemon Beecher, from Connecticut, a man then thirty years old, who had settled at Lancaster; the pioneer of the Beechers in Ohio, and dean of the famous Lancaster group of lawyers.
It will be remembered that Napoleon Bonaparte, citizen of the republic of France, in 1804 declared himself emperor of the French. The same year was the last of the term of Aaron Burr as vice-presi- dent of the United States. He sought to step from that place to the governorship of New York, but was thwarted by Alexander Hamil- ton. Deeply offended by the personal charges traceable to Hamilton, Burr forced the great Federalist to meet him in a duel that resulted in Hamilton's death. Duels were common in that day, even along the Ohio river, but such a storm of indignation arose over the killing of Hamilton that Burr soon realized that his wonderful political career was ended in the east. His property in New York was seized by creditors, and if he had entered New Jersey he would have been arrested on the charge of murder. No man had been more popular in the United States, no man was more brilliant and winning. He was not unlike Napoleon, a little man, with marvelous eyes ; a soldier also, gallant and successful. Bidding farewell to the senate in March, 1805, with a speech that left his distinguished andience in tears, Aaron Burr followed the advice of Gen. James Wilkinson and came down the Ohio on his way to Nashville, where it was hoped he might be elceted to Congress. He traveled too slowly, and that scheme failed. But he was received as one of the great men of the age in Kentucky, Tennessee, and at New Orleans, whither he con- tinued his journey. In sailing down the Ohio in one of the arks of that period he stopped at Marietta, and called at the famous Blenner- hassett home, finding the good man out, but greatly fascinating his wife, as he did all women and most men. At Cincinnati he visited his friends in the senate, John Smith, and Gen. Jonathan Dayton, and at Nashville he was the guest of Andrew Jackson. He inter- ested himself in the schemes of the west and talked with Wilkinson and Dayton about a canal at Louisville. At New Orleans he discov- ered hostility to American rule. Conflict had again arisen with the
184
CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF OHIO.
Spanish over the claim of the United States that in buying Louisiana of Napoleon they had also acquired ownership of Texas, Baton Rouge and Mobile. As Burr was returning and enjoying the hospi- tality of Henry Clay in Kentucky a little revolution broke out among the Americans in Baton Rouge against the Spanish. A year later General Wilkinson and his troops and a Spanish army were eonfront- ing each other near Natchitoches, and war with Spain was confidently expected, and in Kentucky and Tennessee anxiously desired. Wil- kinson in the fall of 1805 urgently besought William Henry Harri- son, who was quietly ruling over his territory in Indiana, to have Burr sent to Congress from that region.
Returning east Burr kept Wilkinson informed of the prospect of war, which by this time seemed fading, for William Pitt had died and Napoleon had intimated that the United States could have Texas and Florida only by another contribution to his war chest. For the last time Burr sought a place in the United States service, at the hands of Jefferson, and being refused, devoted himself to the project of planting a colony in western Louisiana, with the object of making a conquest of Texas and Mexico, and founding an empire of which he should be the head, to which part of the western United States might be admitted, if it should be favorable to the project. The first necessary step in the great scheme was that General Wilkinson should bring on war, which would be easy. Let some hostility be committed, without authority, and if the Spanish moved a finger, Kentucky and Tennessee, if not Ohio, would rise in fury to sweep the Dons from the continent.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.