History of Preble County, Ohio, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches, Part 5

Author: H. Z. Williams & Brothers
Publication date:
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 559

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On the thirtieth of June, 1794, an escort consisting of ninety riflemen and fifty dragoons, a detachment of Wayne's army, commanded by Major McMahon, was at- tacked by a large body of Indians, under the walls of Fort Recovery. The Indian force, variously estimated at from seven to fifteen hundred, and probably assisted by a small number of British agents and French Cana- dian volunteers, made several attacks on the fort within twenty-four hours, and then retired. In these attacks the Americans lost twenty-two men killed, thirty wounded, and three missing. They also lost two hundred and twenty-one horses killed, wounded and missing. In a letter from Wayne to the Secretary of War, dated "Greenville, 7th July, 1794," he says: "The Indians left eight or ten warriors dead on the field; although they were employed during the night, which was dark and foggy, and carrying off their dead and wounded by torchlight."

Major General Scott, with about sixteen hundred mounted volunteers from Kentucky (the men who had been dismissed in the autumn previous) arrived at Fort

Greenville, and joined the regular troops on the twenty- sixth of July. On the twenty-eighth the entire army com- menced their march for the Indian towns on the Maumee. About twenty-five miles from Fort Recovery, on the St. Mary's river, Wayne built a small fortification which he named Fort Adams. The army marched from this point on the fourth of August, and on the eighth arrived at the confluence of the Maumee and Auglaize rivers. The advance of the army carried terror into the Indian country. Wayne, writing upon the fourteenth of August, says :

"I have the honor to inform you that the army under my command took possession of this very important post on the morning of the eighth instant, the enemy on the preceding evening having abandoned all their settlements, towns and villages with such apparent marks of surprise and precipitation, as to amount to positive proof that our ap- proach was not discovered by them until the arrival of a Mr. Newman who deserted from the army at St. Mary's. + * . *

Thus, sir, we have gained the emporium of the hostile Indians of the west without loss of blood. The very extensive and highly cultivated fields and gardens show the work of many hands. The margins of those beautiful rivers, the Miami of the Lakes (or Maumee), and An- glaize, appears like one continued village for a number of miles above and below this place ; nor have I ever before beheld such immense fields of corn in any part of America from Canada to Florida. We are now employed in completing a strong stockade fort, with four good block-houses by way of bastions, at the confluence of the Auglaize and Maumee (on the site of the town by the same name), which I have called Fort Defiance.

* Everything is now prepared for a forward move to-morrow morning, towar'l Roche de * Bout, or foot of the rapids. *

+ Yet I have thought proper to offer the enemy a last overture of peace, and as they have everything that is dear and interesting now at stake, I have reason to expect that they will listen to the proposition * *

. dispatched yesterday by a special flag (Christopher Miller), whom I sent under circumstances which will ensure his safe return, and which may eventually spare the effusion of much human blood. But should war be their choice, that blood be upon their own heads. America shall no longer be insulted with impunity. To an all-power- ful and great God I therefore commit myself and gallant army."

On the fifteenth of August, 1794, General Wayne' moved with his forces from Fort Defiance, and on the twentieth he gained a complete victory over the army of Indians. A force of about two thousand men collected near the foot of the rapids, near a British fort, erected subsequent to the treaty of 1783, and in violation of its obligations. After a short and sharp engagement, the Indians fled, and were pursued under the guns of the British fort. The number of Indians in the battle has been estimated all the way from one to two thousand. They were probably in larger number than Wayne's troops actually engaged against them, whose number, there is every reason to believe, was short of nine hun- dred. Good authorities say that there were in the action four hundred and fifty Delawares, one hundred and seventy-five Miamis, two hundred and seventy-five Shaw- nees, two hundred and twenty-five Ottawqs, two hundred and seventy-five Wyandots, and a small number of Sen- ecas, Pottawatomies and Chippewas. They had about seventy white allies, including a corps of volunteers from Detroit. The loss to Wayne's army was thirty-three killed and one hundred wounded. The Indian loss was more than double that of the Federal army. The woods were strewn for some distance with the dead bodies of Indians and their white auxiliaries-the latter armed with British muskets and bayonets. The Indians were

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HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO.

commanded in this engagement by the Shawnees' war chief, Blue Jacket.

The Miami chief, Little Turtle, under whom the Indi- ans in 179t so overwhelmingly defeated St. Clair, was in the battle, but had little share in the control of the forces. Drake, in his Indian Biography, says:

It has been generally said that had the advice of this chief been taken at the disastrous fight *

+ with General Wayne, there is but little doubt he had met with as ill success as General St. Clair. He was not for fighting General Wayne at Presque Isle, and inclined rather to peace than fighting at all. In a council held the night before the battle he argued as follows: "We have beaten the enemy twice under separate commanders. We cannot expect the same good for- tune always to attend us. The Americans are now led by a chief who never sleeps. The night and the day are alike to him; and during all the time that he has been marching on our villages, notwithstanding the watchfulness of our young men, we have never been able to sur- prise him. Think well of it. There is something whispers to me it would be prudent to listen to his offers of peace." For holding these views he was accused by another chief of being a coward. This ended all further discussion. Little Turtle fought bravely in the battle, and its issue proved him a truer prophet than his accuser had believed.

After the engagement of August 20th, generally known as the battle of the Manmee, or the battle of Fallen Tim- bers, Wayne's victorious army destroyed all the cornfields and the Indian villages, and returned to the mouth of the Auglaize. Indian hostilities were at an end, and in the summer of 1795 the peace was perfected by Wayne's treaty made at Fort Greenville, where the army headquarters had been again established, in the fall of 1794. The most important of the provisions made at this council, by the action of which the last remnant of Indian title to the lands in this part of the State was removed, are given elsewhere. The Green- ville treaty was the negotiation which secured and per- petuated the peace won in Wayne's battle.

Now that we have briefly outlined Wayne's campaign, let us revert to that bloody event which gives local inter- est to the war, in Preble county, and the memory of which has been so imperishably fixed by the rearing of Lowerey's monument at the Eaton cemetery.

The exact spot where Lieutenant Lowery and his companions were ambuscaded and killed by the Indians is on Lowery's branch of Banta's creek, in the north- eastern part of Washington township, and a few rods up the branch from Zion (Lutheran) church. On the day following the fight the bodies of Lowery, Ensign Boyd and thirteen others, who gave up life with them before the overpowering force which made that sudden, fierce attack, were removed to Fort St. Clair and buried a few rods southwest of the stockade, side by side. The remains of Lieutenant Lowery were removed on the fourth of July, 1822, and interred in the northwest corner of the old burial ground. The sad but patriotic ceremonial was conducted with military honors, and an appropriate funeral oration was delivered by Jonas A. Mendel. For fifty years the resting place of the other soldiers was under the long grass by the old fort, but on the seventeenth of October, 1843, the fiftieth anniversary of their death, their remains, too, were removed and with the bones of Lowerey, permanently deposited in a beautiful and symmetrically formed mound, one of the many memorials of a lost race, which dot the surface of

Ohio and the valley of the Mississippi. On this occa- sion the late Rev. Charles W. Swain acted as chaplain, and the late A. Haines, sr., delivered an eloquent and appropriate memorial oration. Upon the apex of the mound was reared, through the enterprise of a number of public spirited citizens of Eaton, a marble shaft, suitably inscribed to the memory of the soldiers who sleep at its base. And so the gratitude of the people who have occupied the country, has been shown to a few of those who led the way in the wilderness and assisted in making it possible that the land should be opened to settlement.

Among the earliest settlers in Preble county was Jacob Parker, who was a soldier of Wayne's army, and had en- camped during the campaign on the very ground which he afterwards owned, and on which he spent the greater part of his life.

As Wayne's army was advancing toward the Indian country in the spring of 1793, and when in that part of the wilderness which is now Butler county, a man by the name of Newman deserted. Wayne, fearing that he would do harm by carrying information to the Indians, sent out a party of men to capture and return him to the camp, where, doubtless, it was Mad Anthony's intention to have him shot. Jacob Parker was one of the men detailed for this arrest. The little company started out in a northeasterly direction and soon came upon the fugitive's trail through the woods. They followed it the greater part of the day, and when overtaken by nightfall had reached Twin creek. Upon the west side of this stream and about half a mile from the site of West Al- exandria, and perhaps eighty rods from the present site of the Dayton and Western pike, the party encamped. In the morning, while some of the men were engaged in preparing breakfast, young Parker took a ramble through the luxuriant forest, and along the ravine running back from the stream. This was about the twentieth of April, and, the season being unusually forward, nature wore a very attractive garb. The loveliness of the locality made a deep impression upon the young man that spring morn- ing, and on returning to the camp he exclaimed to his comrades: "If I live and get safely through this cam- paign I mean to own this very piece of ground and open a farm here and live and die upon it." The older men laughed at what they regarded as Parker's boyish enthusi- asm, but he insisted that he meant to carry out his inten- tion, and should some day own a cultivated farm where all was then an unbroken wild. The subject for the time was forgotten in the discussion that followed upon the feasibility of following further the deserter. It was de- cided that further pursuit would be in vain, and the men, after partaking of a hearty meal, took up their march for the army, which they regained upon, or near, th: site of Eaton. Parker followed Wayne through his victorious campaign, and, when discharged, began to think long- ingly of the beautiful valley on Twin creek, where he and his comrades had camped. He had saved his pay as a soldier, and, on the declaration of peace, added to his means by laboring as a cooper in the village of Cincin - nati. About 1798, before the lands were in market, he

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HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO.

visited the cherished site and built there a log cabin. From that time until the lands were surveyed he re- mained there off and on, and, as soon as he was permit- ted, he purchased the quarter section, of one hundred and sixty acres of land, including the very spot he had encamped upon. Here he lived until his death, Febru- ary 26, 1848, thus fulfilling his boyish prediction which had been laughed at by the older soldiers. Jacob Par- ker, the humble hero of this little incident of Wayne's campaign, was one of the most worthy and well-liked of Preble's pioneers. He was born in New Jersey in 1778, and was, therefore, about seventy years of age at the time of his death.

CHAPTER VI. ADVENT OF THE WHITE MAN IN SOUTHERN OHIO, AND SETTLEMENT OF PREBLE COUNTY.

THE adventurous French explorers, Hennepin and LaSalle, who in 1679 steered the keel of civilization through Lake Erie and touched its south shore, were the first white men whom we know set foot upon the soil which now constitutes Ohio. The year following, the French had a trading station upon the Miami of the Lakes (Maumee), a few miles upon the site of Toledo, and, according to Bancroft, they had a route through the wilderness from Canada to the Mississippi, by the way of the Maumee, Wabash and Ohio rivers, in 1716, and a little later another upon the site of Erie, Pennsylvania, by the way of the Allegheny and Ohio.

Vague traditions have been handed down, asserting that the English had trading posts upon the Ohio in 1730, and we know that they had soon after that time, for in 1744 the royal governor of Pennsylvania issued licenses for the carrying on of trade with the Indians as far west as the Father of Waters. In 1748 a trading station was established at the site of Sandusky, by the French, and in the same year the English explored the Ohio as far as the falls.

George Crogan and Andrew Montour, the latter a half-breed son of a Seneca chief, traversed the wilder- ness in the summer of 1748 as the bearers of prints and presents from Pennsylvania to the Miami Indians. In return for these gifts the Indians granted the whites the right to build a stockade and establish a trading station at the mouth of Loramie's creek upon the Great Miami, within the bounds of the present county of Shelby. Accordingly a tort or stockade was built which was called Pickawillamy. It occupied the site of the subsequent station, generally known and often referred to in western history as Loramie's store. Fort Pickawillamy has been cited by some writers as the first point at which the English effect. d a settlement in Ohio. The building which was undoubtedly the first erected by the English on the soil of the State was destroyed in June, 1752, by a force of French, Canadians and Indians. The French

traders along the Ohio and its tributaries, were pretty generally superseded by the English, and the enterpris- ing and adventurous spirits from the settlements in Pennsylvania and Virginia, about the middle of the eighteenth century, and they maintained the supremacy peaceably until 1784. Christopher Cist and Crogan, in 1750, explored Ohio and passed near, if not into, the present bounds of Preble county. They reported that nothing was wanting but cultivation to make the terri- tory which they had traversed a most beautiful country. The Rev. David Jones (Chaplain Jones of Revolutionary fame) made a tour through a large part of the territory now included in the bounds of Ohio, in 1752 and 1753, and from that time onward, beside the traders and explorers, the country was seen by many who were en- gaged in military expeditions against the Indians, among whom may be named Colonels Broadstreet, Bogart, Mc- Donald, William Crawford, George Rogers Clark, Ed- wards, Tod, Bowman, Lockry, Broadhead, and Logan, Lord Dunmore, Israel Putnam, General Lachlin McIn- tosh, Daniel Boone, and Simon Kenton. Through the observations of these men and a host of others the wilderness was becoming known, and many had grown to look forward to it fondly as a prospective place of residence.

While the territory now included in Ohio was still a wilderness, the wilds of which were only inhabited by roving bands of savages and by a few traders, it became the field for the exercise of the zeal and bravery of the Moravian missionaries. The trials of these apostles of religion, the toils and privations of Frederick Post, John Heckwelder, and David Zeisberger, upon the Musking- um from 1772 to 1782, form one of the most interest- ing chapters in early State history, but it is beyond our province to here produce the story of the missions and the horrible massacre which ended their existence. We only refer to the subject to remind the reader of the famous men who were in this then but little known "far west," and to give a suggestion of the history that was being made long before the practical exercise of civil authority, and before the country was formally opened for permanent settlement.

By some authorities it is claimed that credit should be given these Moravians for establishing the first settle- ment in Ohio, intended to be permanent. The design of the founders of the mission station was doubtless to maintain them for an indefinite period, and had Salem and Schonbrun and Gnadenhutten not been wiped out in blood they would doubtless be to-day in existence, the oldest settlements in Ohio. However this may be, none deny to Marietta the honor of being the oldest permanent settlement in the State. An ineffectual at- tempt was made by four families to found a settlement at the mouth of the Scioto in 1785, but it remained for General Rufus Putnam and his Massachusetts colony, associates in the Ohio company to establish at the mouth of the Muskingum, on the seventh of April, 1788, the pioneer place of permanent habitation in our State-Marietta, so named after Marie Antoinette, the then ruling queen of France.

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HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO.

Not long after the settlement had been made at Mari- etta, three separate companies were organized to occupy and improve portions of the Symmes purchase, between the Great and Little Miamis. The first, led by Colonel Benjamin Stiles, and consisting of about twenty persons, landed sometime in November, 1788, at the mouth of the Little Miami, within the limits of a tract of ten thou- sand acres, which Colonel Stiles had purchased of Judge Symmes. They constructed a log fort or stockade, and laid out the village of Columbia. The second party, twelve or fifteen in number, was formed at Limestone (now Maysville), Kentucky, by Matthias Denman and Robert Patterson. After much difficulty and danger, caused by floating ice in the river, they made a landing opposite the mouth of the Licking river. The name adopted for the proposed town, says Burnet in his "Notes," was "Losanteville," which had been manufact- ured by a pedantic foreigner whose name has unfortu- nately been forgotten. It was formed, as he said, from the words Le, os, ante and ville, which he rendered, "the village opposite the mouth." The proposed town was never laid off, but upon its intended site there was, however, laid out another village, according to a new plat-the village which is now grown into the populous, prosperous "Queen City of the West." The third party of pioneers in the Miami country was under the imme- diate supervision of Judge Symmes. Leaving Limestone on the twenty ninth of January, 1789, the party landed early in the following month, at the point now known as North Bend, and so called, because the most northern bend which occurs on the Ohio south of the Kanawha. For some time it was a matter of doubt as to which of the rival settlements would eventually, as the western world was populated, become a great town. Columbia, for some time, maintained the lead, and even North Bend was considered to have advantages over Cincinnati.

During the time these settlements were making in the Symmes purchase, the southeastern part of Ohio was penetrated by the offshoots from Marietta, and the boun- daries of civilization were slowly pushed forward along the river. On April 11, 1789, settlements were begun at Belpre (the French for beautiful meadow), fifteen miles below Marietta, and soon after at Newberry, twenty-five miles below, and also at Waterford and Duck creek. In the autumn of 1789 a settlement was made at the Big Bottom, on the Muskingum, about thirty miles above Marietta. The French settlement at Gallipolis was made in the summer of 1791. * Next after the laying out of Gallipolis was the beginning made at Manchester on the Ohio, in Adams county, by Nathaniel Massie, and

about thirty families from Kentucky, in the spring of 1791.

The settlements made up to 1791 and during two or three years following, slowly increased in size. Cin- cinnati in 1792 contained about thirty cabins besides the barracks and other buildings connected with Fort Wash- ington. The population was about two hundred and fifty. Four years later, or in 1796, according to Monette's Valley of the Mississippi, the settlement had grown to number six hundred souls, and the village was composed of more than a hundred log cabins and fif- teen framed houses.

In December, 1794, the town of Hamilton was laid out and soon after a few settlers located there. Dayton was laid out on the fourth of November, 1795, but not permanently settled until April 1, 1796. Franklin, upon the Miami, and within the present county of War- ren, was laid out in 1795, and the first settlers arrived in the spring of the following year. Previous to this, Mill Creek, eleven miles north of Cincinnati, had been the frontier settlement in the Miami country. In 1796 Chil- licothe was settled, and the same year pioneers began to penetrate the northern part of the State, and Cleveland was laid out at the mouth of the Cuyahoga. At the close of 1798 that portion of the northwestern territory now included in the State of Ohio had a population of about five thousand persons. This population was chiefly in the valleys of the Muskingum, Scioto, the Miamis, and the small tributaries of these rivers within half a hundred miles of the Ohio. No portion of the country received a greater accession of settlers than the valleys of the Miamis. Nowhere was the development more marked or rapid, and nowhere was the prospect of the pioneers more alluring.

SETTLEMENT OF PREBLE COUNTY.

It is probable that a few "squatters" were in the territory now constituting Preble county as early as 1796, but the permanent settlement cannot be said to have begun until 1798 .* Preble county now contains about five times as many inhabitants as there were in the whole state of Ohio in that year. The southern part of the county was first settled, and, to be more specific, the first township whichhad a permanent white resident was Gratis. In all probability that first resident, the pio- neer of Preble county was John Leslie, who, according to the best authorities, came into the wilderness in 1798. He located on Elk Creek, and upon what is now known as section thirty-six, the extreme southeastern portion of the county, and that which was nearest to the settlements already made in the Miami valley. All northward of this locality was then an unbroken wilderness, and the Indian boundary but a few miles away. Southward there was a scanty fringe of settlements along the Ohio and a sparse sprinkling along its more important tributa- ries. The same year that John Leslie made his settle- ment, or the year following, Henry Phillips, John

* Although the French emigrants did not arrive until the summer of 1791, and after Massie had located Manchester, their village (Gallipolis), was laid out and made ready for them by the Ohio company, and when Manchester was founded there were residing at the former place a com- pany of forty men from Marietta. Historians usually give Gallipolis the third place in the order of settlement, and Manchester the fourth. Should the consideration of priority in settlement, however, be based upon actual occupation of each site by permanent residents, Manches- ter would be entitled to rank third, and Gallipolis would of course be fourth. In speaking of these places as the third and fourth settlements in the State, Marietta and its offshoots are considered as one settle- ment, and the trio in the Symmes purchase collectively as another.

The topic of settlement here only touched upon, and treated in a general way, is amplified in the several township histories, and the record of early settlers, in fact, forms, as it should, the greater part of each and every one of the chapters.

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HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO.

Phillips, Hezekiah Phillips and John Long arrived in the county, and located in the same vicinity. About the same time that these settlers came in Jacob Parker* took up a residence in the woods on Twin creek, in what is now Lanier township, a short distance from the site of West Alexandria. The southwest corner of Israel township was settled in 1799, by William Huston, the Ridenours, the Kingerys, and some others. James Ochletree built the first mill in the county on Four Mile creek. Somers township was settled near the site of Camden, about 1802, by the Hendricks, Pottengers, Bennetts, Beasleys, Mores, and Smiths. Henry Pad- dock, Eli Dixon, Reuben Kercheval and a few others settled on Four Mile creek, in Dixon and Jackson townships, about the year 1804. In all probability Eli Dixon was the pioneer of Dixon townshipr John Hard- ing and the Wades settled on Elkham creek, in Jackson township, about the same time, and were among the first in the township. Peter Vanausdel, John Clawson and Albert Banta were among the early settlers of Lanier, coming in, however after Jacob Parker, already men- tioned. Among the earliest settlers of Gasper township were Gasper Potter (after whom it was named), Stephen Albaugh, Silas Dooley, sr., Robert Runyon, William Phillips, Phillip Lewellan, and the Duns. In Twin township the first settlers were the Robertsons, Dickeys, Nesbits, Ozias, and Vanwinkles. The pioneers of Har- rison townshipwere Joseph Singer, who arrived as early as 1803, Martin Rice, Tobias Tilman, Jacob Loy, James Abbott, Zachariah Hole, Alexander McNutt, and others. In Jefferson township the first settlers were the Purviances (among them, David, who at an early day ably represented the district in the State senate), the Flemings, Marshals, and Irelands. In Washington Will- iam Bruce, Cornelius Vanausdel, David E. Hendricks, Walter Buell, Alexander C. Lanier, John Aukerman, John Mills, John Goldsmith, and John Meroney, were among the first residents. Monroe was the last town- ship in order of settlement, its lands being refused by the pioneers because flat and wet. Its first settlers were the Armatouts, Shurleys, Adamses, Millers, Mar- shalls, Doyles, Davisons, Browns, and Coopers.

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History of Preble County, Ohio, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches, Part 5

Author: H. Z. Williams & Brothers Publication date: Publisher: Number of Pages: 559

Author: H. Z. Williams & Brothers
Publication date:
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 559