History of Sandusky County Ohio with Illustrations 1882, Part 21

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ART. 3. It is agreed that the lines embracing the lands' given and ceded by the preceding article shall be run in such direction as may be thought most advisable by the President of the United States for the purpose aforesaid.

ART. 4. It is agreed that the said Indian Nations shall retain the privilege of hunting and fishing on the lands given and ceded as above, so long as the same shall remain the property of the United States.

Done at Brownstown, in the Territory of Michigan, this 25th day of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America, the thirty-third.

WILLIAM HULL, Commissioner.

NE-ME-KAS, or Little Turtle, PUCK-E-NESE, or Spark of Fire, MACQUETEQUET, or Little Bear, SHEMMANAQUETTE,

WAPE-ME-ME, or White Pigeon, MA-CHE.

KEWECHEWAN TONDAGANE.

MOGAN, Pottawatomies. ┐

MIERE, or Walk-in-the-Water., I-YO-NA-YO-TA-HA, or Joe, SKA-HO-MAT, or Black Chief, ADAM BROWN.

│ Wyandots

│

┘

MA-KA-TE-WE-KA-SHA, or Black Hoof, - Shawanees. KOI-TA-WAY-PIE, or Colonel Lewis. ┘

It will be noticed that this Brownstown treaty, November 25, 1808, was the first step in the direction of procuring a road through the Black Swamp and on east of the river to the west line of the Connecticut Western Reserve.

While the treaty did not in terms set a time within which the United States should open this road for travel, and thus make it available to emigrants, the Government ac- cepted the donation of valuable land for the purpose. This acceptance raised an implied obligation binding the Government, as the donee, to establish and open the road between the points indicated in the treaty within some reasonable time.

This obligation was clearly and definitely recognized by the United States by an act of Congress, approved by the President, December 12, 1811. This act provided that the President should appoint three commissioners to survey and mark the most eligible course for the road, and return an accurate plat of the survey to the President, who, if he should approve the same, should cause the plat and survey to be deposited with the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States; and providing further, that said road should be located, established and constructed pursuant to the treaty held at Brownstown on the 25th day of November, 1808. This act also provided that the commissioners should be paid three dollars and their assistants one dollar and fifty cents per day while employed in the work.

┐

│ Chippewas.

│ │

┘

Ottawas. ┘

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HISTORY OF SANDUSKY COUNTY.

This act appropriated six thousand dollars for the purpose of compensating the commissioners and opening and making the roads.

The act contemplated the survey and making of two roads provided for in the treaty of Brownstown. One from the Miami of Lake Erie to the west line of the Connecticut Western Reserve, and the other from Lower Sandusky southward to the Greenville treaty line.

It is difficult now to ascertain with cer- tainty whether the survey provided for by the act of Congress of 1811 was made, or, if made, at what precise date it was done; or the line which was reported for the roads, or who were the commissioners under the last mentioned act. There is, however, little doubt that a survey of a line for the Maumee and Western Reserve Road was made some time between 1811 and 1816. We find in an old volume, entitled Land Laws for Ohio, published in 1825, another act of Congress, approved April 16, 1816, which authorizes the President of the United States to cause to be made, in such manner as he may deem most proper, an alteration in the road laid out under the authority of an act to authorize the surveying and making of certain roads in the State of Ohio, contemplated by the treaty of Brownstown, so that said road may pass through the reservation at Lower Sandusky, or north thereof not exceeding three miles.

The act of 1816 provided that the nec- essary expenses incurred in altering said road should be paid out of moneys appro- priated for surveying the public lands of the United States. This expression, "altering," clearly implies that a survey had before been made. Probably the alteration was not, in fact, made, nor is the fact material, because Congress, in 1823, in authorizing the State to make the road, did not restrict the State to any survey or par-

ticular location of the road which had before been made, but only gave the termini of the road as given in the treaty of Brownstown.

In the meantime, communication between Fort Meigs, on the Maumee, and Fort Stevenson, on the Sandusky River, was carried on. by way of the Harrison trail, as it was called, which will be mentioned in another part of this work. About the year 1820, after this county was organized and the lands around Lower Sandusky were coming into market, and the country was attracting settlers, some unsuccessful efforts. were made to have, Congress construct the road. according to the obligations to do so, by fair implication from the terms and spirit of the treaty. These efforts were unavailing, but finally Congress consented to transfer the building of the road to the State of Ohio. This was' done at the earnest solicitation, not only of the pioneers who had settled at and about Lower Sandusky, but also the Kentucky Land Company, who Clad invested in lands in the reservation.

Thereupon, by an act of Congress, ap- proved February 28, 1823, it was provided that the State of Ohio might lay out a road, specifying termini and dimensions, the same as specified in the treaty, and to. enable the State to make the road, Congress granted to the State the same quantity of land given by the treaty. But in the meantime the United States had been. selling land, regardless of the strip two, miles wide for the road, and many of the best tracts along the line . had been sold to individual purchasers. On the east portion of the line, especially from the sand ridge and Clyde to Bellevue, a large. part of the road land had been thus disposed of, and many of the best tracts west of the Sandusky River were taken in like manner; also much of the reserve of two miles square at Lower Sandusky. For

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HISTORY OF SANDUSKY COUNTY.

the lands thus sold which should have been applied to making the road, the act provided that the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States should pay the State, to be applied to the construction of the road, one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre. The United States also provided in the act that the Government would stop selling these lands as soon as the State reported a survey and location of the road, and provided, also, that the road should be made by the State in four years from the date of the act, and that the lands should not be sold by the State for less than one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre. The lands along the road were by this act to be so taken as to be bounded by sectional lines as run by the United States. The money arising from the sales of these lands was, after building the road, to vest in the State to keep the road in repair.

The reader having traced the original design of this road back to its source, in the treaty of Brownstown, November 25, 1808, should not fail to notice that we owe the right to it to the liberality and kindness of a people we call savages. Having also seen that the United States transferred the work of making the road to the young and growing State of Ohio, February 28, 1823, it is easy to realize that a spirited set of pioneers would not long be barred, and the seekers after homes still further west, as in Michigan and Indiana, barred in, too, by the Black Swamp. They were wide awake and keenly alive to the improvement of the county, and country around them. They foresaw that if Lower Sandusky was ever to he a place of note and thrift, there must be a road connecting the place with the East and West.

The town of Lower Sandusky had in it in 1823-24-25, such men as Jesse S. Olmstead, Josiah Rumery, Nicholas Whittinger,

Thomas L. Hawkins, Ammi Williams, Ezra Williams, Moses Nichols, Cyrus Hulburd, Charles B. Fitch, Jeremiah Everett, Jacques Hulburd, Elisha W. Howland, Morris A. Newman, Israel Harrington, and others, all too shrewd, clear of apprehension, and too energetic, not to strive zealously for the contemplated great improvement. The zeal of these early settlers, aided, no doubt, by the influence of the Kentucky Company, who had purchased largely of the reservation, induced the General Assembly of the State to accept the proposition made by the United States, to assume the work of selling the land and making the road.

SURVEY OF THE ROAD.

The General Assembly of the State promptly took up the subject, and, by laws, provided for surveying the line and establishing the road, and also for surveying these lands which were to be sold to raise the money necessary for its construction, and also to contract for the making of the road.

In the year 1824 an office for the sale of the lands was opened at Perrysburg, under the superintendence of Mr. McNight, who began the sales and also contracted for the making of the road in 1824.

Quintus F. Atkins was the surveyor of the lands, and of the road also; but he had under him a surveyor named Elijah Risdon, whose special duty it was to run the line of the road and stake it out. The act authorizing this survey was passed January 27, 1823, and the line was run in the summer and fall of that year. Our respected fellow-citizen, Hezekiah. Remsburg, who resided near the line of the road, on the bank of Muskalonge Creek, remembers well, although then a boy, that Risdon and his surveying party, coming through from the West, were attracted to his father's by the light of an outdoor

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brick oven, which his mother was heating quite late in the evening, and called at for refreshments and lodging, which the party received without charge, according to the custom of the generous pioneers of that day.

METHOD OF MAKING THE ROAD.

It should be remembered that the line of this road, from the Maumee (Miami) River to Hamer's Corner, as it was then called, but now Clyde, a distance of near forty miles, ran through an almost unbroken forest of exceedingly dense and heavy growth. The roadway was to be cleared one hundred and twenty feet wide thirteen feet next the outer lines of the one hundred and twenty feet was, by the contract, to be cut with stumps as high as ordinary clearings; the next inner seventeen feet was to be cut nearly or quite level with the surface of the earth, with a view to have it available for a side road; the inner sixty feet was to be grubbed up clean, and thrown up in the form of a turnpike. This sixty for the pike was placed nearer to the south side of the outer line, leaving greater room for a side road on the north side, where the sun might sometimes shine and make that dry sooner than the south side. Hence we find now that the side road is on the north side of the main or Macadamized pike. The timber from the clearing and grubbing was piled on the outer thirteen feet.

It was no child's play to cut down, grub out, and roll away the immense trees which stood so thick in this one hundred and twenty feet, especially when we consider the fact that these courageous men had 'to contend, not only with the giant trees and their roots, but also with tormenting flies and mosquitoes, mud and water, and fever and ague; and yet the work was done in spite of all these obsta-

cles, and done on time, that is, substantially and to the acceptance of Congress, within the four years' limit prescribed by their act of 28th February, 1823.

MENTION OF SOME OF THE CONTRACTORS AND COST OF CLEARING AND TURNPIKING THE ROAD.

Our much respected, fellow-citizen, Nathan P. Birdseye, now of Fremont, in a recent interview with the writer, stated that his father, James Birdseye, was one of the early contractors for work on the road. His contract was to make seven miles in all, and also to build the bridge over the Sandusky River at Lower Sandusky. About two miles and a half of his job was west of the river, and the remainder east of it, a part being in York township, and a part between the river and Green Creek. Our informant was then a young man, and worked with his father in the performance of his contracts. He says the first work done on the road was in 1824, (Mr. Birdseye "began his in September of that year), and that the whole was cleared and piked up in the year 1827.

Messrs. Fargo & Harmon had a large contract to make this road between Green Creek and Clyde.

Mr. James Birdseye finished the bridge over the Sandusky River in January, 1828, for the contract price of three thousand dollars. It was built of solid, heavy white oak timber of the very best quality procured from land east of Lower Sandusky, about two miles distant. There were no stone piers or abutments, but instead, strong double bents were used. These bents were boarded up with strong plank, and the space between the two walls filled with stone to give weight and solidity to the structure, and to resist the high waters of the river.

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HISTORY OF SANDUSKY COUNTY.

THIS BRIDGE CARRIED AWAY BY A FLOOD.

In February, 1833, occurred the greatest flood ever known on the Sandusky river. The ground was frozen and covered with a deep snow. Several successive days of heavy rain dissolved the snow, and the combined water from the rain and snow, no part of which was absorbed by the earth, was suddenly precipitated into the ice-covered river. The large bodies of ice in the upper portion of the stream were soon raised and loosened by the accumulating water, and brought against the still firm ice a little below the city, where it gorged and for a time prevented the water passing; the gorge of broken ice extended a long distance above the bridge. The water rose until in about twenty-four hours after the gorge was formed the ice began to lift the bridge; the great pressure forced a movement of the ice below, and the whole body of ice at and above the bridge moved down stream carrying on its surface the entire structure without parting it except from the shore at each end. The bridge was carried down stream about half way from where it stood and where the present iron bridge stands, and head of the island next below the bridge.

The movement thus far was slow, steady, and majestic, growing slower and slower until the river was again gorged with ice below, and the movement ceased with the bridge intact, though a little curved, and nothing broken. After this second gorging of the ice, the pent up waters turned from the channel above, flowed over the valley, and formed a strong current down Front street, which brought and lodged there great cakes of ice. It was then a river from hill to hill on either side of the channel, and the whole covered with broken ice of more than a foot in thickness. Through the crevices in the broken ice the water went gurgling and roaring for several days. A sudden change

in the weather froze this mass together, and the bridge was for weeks, perhaps a month, used as a footbridge to cross the river on. A few boards used as an approach made it a great convenience for the time. All this time a current of water was running quite swiftly down Front street, and canoes and skiffs were used to go from one part of the town to another for a period of about ten days, when the water found an outlet below and the flood subsided. But the bridge remained in the place where the ice left it until the usual spring freshet, which was comparatively moderate, carried it further down and broke it. The bridge was floored with two-inch oak plank, sawed at Emmerson's sawmill, which then stood on Green Creek, on the farm now owned by George T. Dana, and about half a mile south of the line of the road. Mr. Birdseye says there were four double bents to support the bridge, besides those at each end. That it was well put together, and of good material, is shown by its tenacious resistance to the forces brought against it. But the engineer had not raised it high enough for such a flood. The bridges built after this one will be noticed in another chapter of this work.

COST OF ROAD AND PRICE OF LAND.

The average cost of clearing, grubbing, and throwing up this road was about dollars per mile, exclusive of the cost of bridges; and the contractors in many instances paid for land by the work they performed. The road lands, Mr. Birdseye said, were sold at different prices, ranging from one dollar and twenty-five cents to two dollars and fifty cents per acre, during the time of making the road.

CHARACTER OF THE ROAD WHEN COMPLETED.

When the road was completed according to the original design, in 1827, it was simply a strip one hundred and twenty

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HISTORY OF SANDUSKY COUNTY.

feet wide cleared through the woods, with a ridge of loose earth about forty feet in width between the ditches along the sides.

The trees outside of the hundred and twenty feet stood thick and towering on either side, giving at a little distance the appearance of a huge wall about a hundred feet high, and when in foliage almost shutting out the rays of the sun except a little time in the forenoon. Still, this road was a benefit. It was at least a guide through the Black Swamp, which travelers could follow without fear of losing their way, and during the dry seasons of the year was a tolerable road for a few years. It soon became a stage route, and about 1830 a line of four-horse post coaches was established on this road. The attempt, however, to run passenger coaches with regularity was a failure, for the road, then being much travelled through the swamp, was found impassable for coaches more than half the. year. Occasionally, in the dry portions of the year, from July to the equinoctial rains, the coaches would go through with some regularity. The contractors, however, endeavored to carry the mails through every day. As a con- veyance for the mails the hind wheels of a wagon were furnished with a tongue, a large dry goods box made fast to the cart thus improvised, into which the mail pouches were stowed. To this four stout horses were harnessed to plunge and flounder through thirty-one miles of mud and water. If a passenger on this line would pay well for the ride and take his chances to get through, he was permitted to mount this box and keep his seat if he could, but there was no insurance against being splashed all over with mud, or plunged into it headforemost by being thrown from his seat. When this conveyance arrived at either end of the line the cart, the driver, and the horses often pre-

sented almost an indistinguishable mass of slowly moving mud.

Meantime emigration to the West increased, and the more the road was trav- elled the worse it became. Some attempts were made now and then by the superin- tendent to fill up an impassable mud-hole with earth, but such work only made it thicker and deeper. The condition of this road, traversed by emigrants from all sections of the east; the reported failures in carrying the mails according to contract, by reason of its impassability, gave it a National reputation for being, perhaps, the worst road on the continent. The distance from Lower Sandusky to Perrysburgh was thirty-one miles. Hauling stalled teams, out of the worst mud-holes had become a regular and well-established employment of the settlers along the route, and in 1834, 1835, and 1836, there were thirty-one taverns between Lower Sandusky and Perrysburgh, which would be a tavern averaging one to every mile of road. These taverns had two purposes; one was to give the traveler food and shelter for the night, and the other to pull their tired and stalled teams through the worst places with ox teams, and start them forward to the next impassable mud-hole, where they would find another ready to perform a like service. These taverns, be it remembered, were log huts in the woods, on the borders of the road. Our very worthy citizen, John P. Moore, says that one Andrew Craig happened to locate on the road in the vicinity of several of the worst places in the track; that Andrew charged exorbitant prices for pulling out the. stalled teams, and for the use of his cabin for emigrants to rest in over night. That it was a common occurrence for Andrew to work all day in getting the team through one or two bad places, and then have the emigrants go back to stay at his house for three successive nights, until they got

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within the jurisdiction of the next tavern. Andrew's charges were never too low to afford him a good income. He was a representative tavern-keeper of the time, on that road.

There was little variation in the condition and management of this road until an event happened which aroused public attention throughout the State to the necessity of its improvement, and that event was what is called

THE OHIO AND MICHIGAN WAR.

While this war, as it was called, was not the direct result of any action of Sandusky county, still its influence and bearing upon the subsequent improvement of the road had such an importance in the advancement of the county that a brief allusion to it seems proper. Beside this, the prominent part taken in that dispute by citizens of the county makes a notice of its causes and results pertinent to this history.

The convention of delegates which met at Chillicothe in September, 1802, formed a Constitution for the purpose of presenting it to Congress for acceptance, and for then being admitted to the Union as a State. In the seventh article of the sixth section of the instrument as finally agreed upon and accepted by Congress, the convention undertook to set out the boundaries of the State. After minutely and clearly describing the eastern, southern, and western boundary, the section continued in the following words:

On the north by a line drawn east through the southern extreme of Lake Michigan until it shall in- tersect Lake Erie or the territorial line; thence with the same through Lake Erie to the Pennsylvania line. Provided that said line shall not intersect Lake Erie east of the mouth of the Maumee River; then and in that case it shall, by and with the consent of Congress, be bounded by a line drawn from the southern extreme of Lake Michigan to the northern cape of the Maumee Bay.

It was soon ascertained that an east line drawn from the southern extreme of Lake

Michigan would intersect Lake Erie far east of the mouth of the Maumee or Miami River. Ohio, upon ascertaining this fact, solicited Congress to assent to the establishment of her northern boundary according to the proviso contained in the seventh article of the sixth section of her Constitution. The opinions of members of Congress differed on the subject, some holding that the proviso had already been assented to by the adoption of the Constitution; others believed that the assent of Congress was made necessary by the terms of the proviso, and that further action was necessary to establish the boundary beyond all question. In 1815 the Senate of the United States acted on the subject, favoring the claim of Ohio, but the bill was rejected by the House of Representatives. Again, in December, 1834, the Senate passed the same bill and it was again rejected by the House of Representatives. Thus it appears that the State of Ohio had, for a period of nearly thirty years, solicited Congress from time to time to establish beyond a doubt or cavil her northern boundary, without accomplishing the purpose. In the meantime she had exercised civil jurisdiction to the line mentioned in the proviso, and had at great cost constructed the Miami canal, which connected with the Maumee River at Manhattan, which place then, 1834, promised to be what the city of Toledo now is, the chief commercial city of northwestern Ohio. It should be mentioned here, in order to properly understand the cause of dispute, that in 1805 Congress, in organizing the territorial government for the Territory of Michigan, had bounded that Territory on the south, unconditionally, by a line drawn east from the southern extreme of Lake Michigan. This line would leave Toledo, Manhattan, and the mouth of the Maumee River, to the territory of Michigan, and take from Ohio a strip of land

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about ten miles in width at the west line of Ohio, and running to a point; then the line due east from the southern extreme of Lake Michigan touched Lake Erie.

For many years the country was so wild and had so few settlers that there was no strife and no question about its occupancy or the civil jurisdiction over it, and Ohio in good faith held possession and built the canal through it without hindrance or opposition. After the project for building the canal was formed and the work under way, the then future commercial importance of the mouth of the Maumee River and the Maumee Bay, and this ten miles of territory including them, began to be appreciated.

The repeated failures of Congress to pass the necessary enactment or declaration, especially the last failure in 1834, served to attract attention to the subject and induce a discussion of the question whether Ohio or Michigan owned this strip of valuable territory. To Ohio this question had become one of grave importance. She had spent large sums of money in improvements on it, and it was then clearly seen that in the future development of the Northwest a large commercial city must grow up somewhere near the mouth of the Maumee River. Wea- ried of importuning Congress, the State itself took action in the matter. February 6, 1835, the Governor of Ohio, Robert Lucas, sent a communication to the General Assembly of the State, recommending the passage of a law "declaring that all the counties bounded on the northern boundary of the State of Ohio, shall extend to and be bounded by a line running from the southern extreme of Lake Michigan to the northern cape of the Maumee Bay." On the 23rd day of February, 1835, an act was passed by the General Assembly in accordance with the Governor's recommendation. Over a part of the

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History of Sandusky County Ohio with Illustrations 1882, Part 21

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