History of Sandusky County Ohio with Illustrations 1882, Part 8

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A contract was finally agreed upon in July, 1787, and confirmed the following October.

The first ordinance directing the estab- lishment of a government for the Western territory, was submitted by Mr. Jefferson in 1784, and contained a clause against slavery. It also contemplated the division of the Territory into seventeen States. This ordinance, with the important omission of the proviso against slavery, was passed by Congress in April, 1784. This act, owing to the divisions it contemplated, was thought inexpedient, and another act, applying only to the territory acquired by the cession to the United States by Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, and Connecticut, all the territory at that time owned by the United States was submitted, which resulted in the passage on July 13, of the celebrated ordinance of 1787, which is in fact the fundamental law of the States whose territory was comprehended, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

This enactment organized a single ter- ritory northwest of the Ohio and eastward of the Mississippi, subject to future division,

if deemed expedient by Congress, into two districts. This fundamental law, enacted before a solitary freeholder raised his cabin on the territory it was intended to govern, has been characterized as a fit consummation of the glorious labors of the Congress of the old Confederation. It established in the Northwest, the important principles of the equal inheritance of intestine estates, and the freedom of alineation by deed or will. After prescribing a system of territorial civil government, it concludes with six articles of compact between the original States and the people of the States in the Territory, which should forever remain unalterable unless by common consent .. The first declared that no person demeaning himself in a peaceable and orderly manner, should ever be molested on account of his mode of worship or religious sentiments. The second prohibited legislative interference with private contracts, and secured to the inhabitants trial by jury, the writ of habeas corpus, a proportionate representation of the people in the Legislature, judicial proceedings according to the course of common law, and those guarantees of personal freedom and property which are enumerated in the bill of rights of most of the States .. The third provided for the encouragement of schools and for good faith, justice, and humanity toward the Indian. The fourth secured to the new States to be erected out of the Territory the same privileges with the old ones; imposed upon them the same burdens, including responsibility for the Federal debt, prohibited the States from interfering with the primary disposal of the soil of the United States, or taxing the public lands; from taxing the lands of nonresidents higher than residents; and established the navigable waters leading into the Mississippi and St. Lawrence, and the portages between them, common highways for the use of all the citizens of all the

HISTORY OF SANDUSKY COUNTY.

United States. The fifth article related to the formation of new States within the Territory, the divisions to be not less than three nor more than five. By this article the west boundary of Ohio became a line running northward from the mouth of the Great Miami, until it intersected a line running eastward from the southern bend of Lake Michigan, the northern boundary.

The sixth article provided that,

There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the Territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crime whereof the party shall have been convicted.

This ordinance gave the greatest en- couragement to immigration, and offered the fullest protection to those who became settlers, for "when they came into the wilderness they found the law already there. It was impressed upon the soil while yet it bore up nothing but the forest." *

The Ohio Company, before the close of the summer, was rapidly formulating regu- lations for the government of their affairs, and the associates making hasty preparations for the anticipated removal to the beautiful country of which they had formed most extravagant ideas.

In October Congress ordered seven hundred troops for the protection of the frontiers, and on the 5th of the month appointed the territorial officers: Arthur St. Clair, Governor; Winthrop Sargent, Secretary; Samuel H. Parsons, James M. Varnum, and John Armstrong, Judges.

On the 7th of April, 1788, a company of forty-eight men, with General Rufus Putnam at their head, disembarked from their boat at the mouth of the Muskingum and planted the first American colony on the soil of Ohio.

The civil government of the Territory

which had been created the fall before, was formally established upon Ohio soil, on the 15th of July. The Governor and Judges had arrived at Fort Harmar several days before. The ceremonies attending inauguration of government were highly impressive. The Judges, Secretary, and inhabitants assembled on the site of Marietta, where the Governor was welcomed by Judge Parsons. Under a bower of foliage contributed by the surrounding forest, the ordnance of 1787 was read, congratulations exchanged, and three hearty cheers echoed and reechoed from the waters of two rivers, the high hills, and thick forests.

Marietta, the town founded by the Massachusetts colony, became an important centre of settlement. Conceived on the soil of the loyal old Bay State, the story of its birth was heralded throughout all New England. Reinforcements came from the best homes and the best communities, not from Massachusetts alone, but of Connecticut and Rhode Island also. The course of emigration from the impoverished States, once opened, widened and deepened until temporarily closed by an unfortunate conflict with the red natives, a little less than three years after the arrival of the first company of pioneers. Early in 1789 two colonies branched off from Marietta, one settling on the Ohio, opposite the mouth of the Little Kanawha, known as the Belpre Association; the other on the Muskingum, twenty miles above its mouth, which still bears the name of Waterford. During the same summer a third colony branched off from the parent town, and located on Big Bottom, in Morgan county. The attack on the Big Bottom blockhouse, January 2, 1791, and the indiscriminate slaughter of its inhabitants, was the opening of a general Indian war along the whole border.

New England had little more than com- menced to plant her civilization at the

*S. P. Chase, Statutes of Ohio.

Judge Armstrong declined the office and John Cleves Symmes was appointed to fill the vacancy.

HISTORY OF SANDUSKY COUNTY.

mouth of the Muskingum when a people of different stock cut into the forest, and raised their cabins between the Miamis of the Ohio. In October, 1788, John Cleves Symmes, one of the judges of the Territory, and a native of New Jersey, negotiated with Congress on behalf of himself and associates for the purchase of one million acres extending northward from the Ohio, between the Great and Little Miamis, but in consequence of failure to make payment the greater part of the purchase reverted to Congress, the patent when issued covering but about three hundred thousand acres. Judge Symmes sold the large, natural amphitheater opposite the Licking Rive, to Mathias Denman; of New Jersey, who entered into a contract with Colonel Patterson and Mr. Filson, of Kentucky, for laying out a town. Mr. Filson was killed by the Indians, and his interest became the property of Israel Ludlow. Patterson and Ludlow, accompanied by a small party, arrived on the site of Cincinnati December 26, 1788. This may be considered the date of the founding of Cincinnati. A few blockhouses had been erected the preceding month at the mouth of the Little Miami. In February following the arrival of Patterson's party, Judge Symmes, with a party of citizens and soldiers, descended the Ohio, and disembarked at the mouth of the Great Miami, where it was proposed to found a city destined to become the metropolis of the West, but unfortunately the site was inundated by spring floods, necessitating abandonment of the cherished project. Judge Symmes, determined to be the founder of a city, then laid out a town extending from the Ohio to the Miami. But nature had formed another place for the Western metropolis, which, unfortunately for the projector of the Miami settlement, he had sold.

North Bend was the name given by Symmes to his town, Losantiville to the town in the amphitheater, which was soon changed to Cincinnati, and the town at the mouth of the Little Miami founded by Colonel Stiles, was named Columbia. The three villages were rivals for a short time, but the establishment of Fort Washington in June, 1789, and its occupation by three hundred soldiers under command of General Harmar probably turned the tide in favor of Cincinnati. The original settlers of these villages were mostly from New Jersey, and recruits for a number of years came from the same place. Thus was planted in the Miami Valleys the civilization, temperament and hereditary bias of the Red Sand State, Hollander and English tinctured with Swedish blood.

The third settlement* in Ohio, and the first foreign colonization, was made opposite the Big Kanawha in the summer of 1791. We have mentioned the joint negotiations of William Duer of New York, and Mannasseh Cutler, for the purchase of an extensive tract, bounded by the Ohio River on the south and extending northward between the first seven ranges to the Scioto. A patent for the whole tract was issued to the Ohio Company; but two days afterward, all of the tract lying west of the seventeenth range was transferred to the Scioto Company, of which Duer was chief. The Scioto Company at once took measures. for the disposition of its lands, foreign colonization being the favorite and novel scheme. Joel Barlow, the poet, was sent to France, then in the days of its discontent and revolution. His roseate descriptions pictured an Arcadia, of which Fair Haven was the destined capital. Attentive listeners saw noble forests, consisting of trees that spontaneously produce sugar, and a plant that yields ready made

* By the term "settlement we mean the clusters of related posts and villages.

HISTORY OF SANDUSKY COUNTY.

candles, gracefully rising from la belle riviere, a pure stream abounding in excellent fish of vast size. To live in a land of plenty with no taxes to pay and no military services to perform, was the fair vision of this transcendent land which influenced a large company, composed chiefly of carvers and gilders, coach-makers, friseurs, and other artistes. Less than a dozen heavy laborers embarked in the enterprise. Deeds for their land, handsomely printed in high colors, raised still higher the delusive anticipation that their journey was to a Fair Haven in fact as well as in name.

The Scioto Company employed General Rufus Putnam, of the Ohio Company association, to locate a village and prepare homes for the immigrants. Fair Haven, located opposite the mouth of the Kanawha, was found to be below the high-watermark, which induced General Putnam to locate Gallipolis (City of the French) four miles below upon a high bank. A detail of forty laborers, under Major Burnham, cleared a small tract of land, and built blockhouses and cabins, arranged in four rows, twenty in each row. The Company had also contracted with the Ohio Company to furnish the colony with provisions, but having failed to make payment for labor already discharged, the French were left in a pitiful condition. The disheartenment of disappointment on their arrival at the promised paradise became utter dejection when they learned that the Scioto Company had never paid for the land, and in consequence could give no title. These deluded foreigners, inured to tender-handed employments, were thrown into the pioneer battle under the greatest dis- advantages. In constant danger of an attack from Indians, suffering from sickness, and without money, they were unable to do for themselves as settlers at the other openings along the river were doing. They were provided for by an act of Congress,

in 1798, which set apart for them a tract of land known as the French Grant, east of the mouth of the Scioto. Many remained at the original place of settlement; others, disgusted with the imposition practiced upon them, found homes at other places- Vincennes, St. Louis, Kaskaskia, and St. Genevieve. We have not included Gallipolis as one of the centres of settlement because the original colony, although it has left its impress upon its own locality has never asserted itself in affairs of the State.

The Virginia Military District is one of the most interesting historical divisions of the State. It became practically an extension of Virginia into Ohio, between the Scioto and the Little Miami, as far north as the centre of the State. As has been noticed in a preceding chapter, Virginia, of which Kentucky was a part, reserved in her act of cession of all claims to lands northwest of the Ohio, this extensive tract to be appropriated as bounty to her own troops in the war of the Revolution. General Nathaniel Massie was appointed by the State Government to make a survey of the District, and for some time carried on the work by making expeditions with his party through the present territory of Kentucky. In the winter of 1790-91, encouraged, no doubt, by the flourishing progress of the settlements at the mouth of the Muskingum and at the Miamis, Massie determined to plant a colony on Virginia soil. Such a settlement would afford his party protection from danger and exposure while prosecuting the survey. The site of Manchester was chosen and a town laid off in lots. The adjoining tracts were surveyed into an equal number of out-lots of larger size. He gave general notice through Kentucky of his intention to found a town, and offered to the first twenty-five families one out-lot and one in-lot, and one hundred acres of land. His terms were quickly

HISTORY OF SANDUSKY COUNTY.

accepted by upwards of thirty families. The company arrived in March, 1991, and went to work with a will. In a short time each family had a cabin, and the whole village was enclosed with a strong stockade, with blockhouses at each angle. The Indian war was at its hottest when this colony crossed the river and built their fort, but "it suffered less from depredation and even interruption by Indians than any settlement previously made on the Ohio River. This was, no doubt, due to the watchful band of brave spirits who guarded the placemen who were reared in the midst of danger, and inured to peril, and as watchful as hawks."*

This settlement was known as Massie's Station for a few years. The name was changed to Manchester.

A general border war, which had been waged industriously on both sides between the Ohio tribes and the Pennsylvania and Virginia borderers for a long term of years, assumed more alarming proportions with the opening of the year 1791. The first attack on the north side of the Ohio was at Big Bottom, on the ad of January. That bloody surprise, in which fourteen persons were slain and five taken captive,+ marks the opening of a period of distress and peril for the pioneers of Ohio. Lower Sandusky's part in the history of that period has been shown. For four years immigration was almost at a standstill, and at the settlements unceasing danger from a clandestine enemy held in check material improvement.

The report of Wayne's decisive victory on the Maumee was a joyful message to the garrisoned settlers along the Ohio. That event marks the beginning of the second epoch of Ohio history, an epoch full of activity and one which moulded the

political destinies of the State. The boundless possibilities of the West was no longer a speculation. Colonization and war together had disseminated through the East a knowledge of the fertility of the soil and transportation facilities. Peace opened the garrisons, and the valleys of every river resounded with the woodman's axe. "Never since the golden age of the poets," says an old writer, "did the `siren song of peace and harmony' reach so many ears or gladden so many hearts as after Wayne's treaty in 1795." Never did a people, we may add, engage with such earnestness of purpose in the incalculable task of hewing a great State out of an unbroken forest.

The village of Cincinnati, which in 1792 had a population of about two hundred, increased to upwards of six hundred souls before the close of 1796. Population spread northward from Cincinnati, and was characteristically Jersey, but there was a considerable mixture of people from other Eastern States.

Hamilton, Butler county, was laid out in 1794, and settled soon afterward.

Dayton, Montgomery county, and Franklin, Warren county, were settled in 1796.

An attempt was made by Massie, in 1795, to found a town in the heart of the Virginia Military District, but Indian hostilities defeated his scheme. The following year the attempt was repeated with a more favorable result. Chillicothe was laid out early in 1796, and became by far the largest town in the District, and first capital of the State of Ohio. The pioneers of the military tract came through the passes of the Blue Ridge, bringing with them the institutions of the Old Dominion, except slavery, which was fortunately barred beyond the Ohio by the ordinance of 1787. The contrast between the Virginian of the Scioto and his Eastern neighbor,

* McDonald's Western Sketches.

+ One of the captives was the father of a highly re- spected citizen of this county, Charles Choate.

HISTORY OF SANDUSKY COUNTY.

the New Englander of the Muskingum, was as marked as the difference in the character of their native States. The Virginian proudly traced his ancestry to English nobility, and claimed the blood of Norman and Cavalier; his neighbor at Marietta turned to the New England Register of Genealogy, and followed his line of descent to the Puritan Nonconformist who came to America for religious freedom. These two elements have been, since before the formation of the State Constitution, opposing forces in State pol- itics, at times on the floors of legislation, fighting each other as bitterly as the re- spective States from which they sprung.

We have now hurriedly sketched the founding and growth of the three southern and oldest centres of settlement. The fourth division in order of settlement,, but first entered by Federal surveyors, was the seven ranges. The survey of these ranges was commenced in compliance with an ordinance of Congress passed in 1785. The seven ranges extend seven townships west from the Pennsylvania line, and from the Ohio River to the fortieth parallel of latitude. Most of the settlers came over the Alleghenies from Eastern Pennsylvania. Many are of Quaker descent, but a larger proportion are of German origin. Some of the counties were partially settled from other States. There is less homogeneity of race and training in this than in any other of the five centres of early settlement. In this respect it is like the United States Military Reservation lying just west of it and extending to the Scioto. This tract was set apart to satisfy Revolutionary bounties, and in consequence drew its population from all the States. Settlements were made simultaneously in several parts of the seven ranges as soon as Indian hostilities were suppressed. Steubenville, one of the oldest of the towns which flourished, was founded in 1798.

The county of Jefferson was erected in 1797.

The Northwestern Indian Reservation, of which Sandusky county is a part, drew largely from the seven ranges and from the Military Reservation. These two divisions are coupled together as one centre of settlement, the character of the mixed population being about the same in each.

The Connecticut Western Reserve is the largest tract in the State possessing a homogeneous £ population. Extending westward from the Pennsylvania line to the east line of Sandusky county, and from the forty-first parallel to the lake, it contains an area of more than three million three hundred thousand acres, and is settled even to this time almost wholly by people of Connecticut stock.

In a previous chapter relating to the ownership of the Northwest, it was seen that the dispute between the States arising from indefinite colonial titles to Western lands, was finally settled by the States ceding their claims to the Federal Government. "The last tardy and reluctant sacrifice" was made by Connecticut, in 1786, with this extensive reservation, which it was supposed by the Legislature would eventually become a new State New Connecticut almost commensurate with the parent

Commonwealth. Another dispute arose, when, in 1788, Governor St. Clair, in obedience to the ordinance of 1787, organized the Territory into counties, constituting all that part east of the Cuya- hoga, the Tuscarawas and the Scioto, Washington county, with Marietta as the county seat. This proclamation was deemed by Connecticut an interference with territory over which she had sole jurisdiction.

The first tract of land disposed of by the State, was sold in 1786 to General Samuel Parsons. It consisted of twenty-four thousand acres, lying partly in each of

HISTORY OF SANDUSKY COUNTY.

the present counties of Mahoning and Trumbull. He had heard that there were available saline springs on the tract, and made the purchase for speculative purposes. His expectations were never realized, and he was drowned in the Beaver River, three years afterward. He never paid for the land and it reverted to the State of Connecticut, the original grantee of the patent.

The Firehinds, embracing the present counties of Huron and Erie, was the next section carved off from her Western possessions by the State. During the Revolution, British invading parties were the special terror of Connecticut. Most of her able-bodied men were in the army, leaving the State with a feeble guard against hasty exploits from the royal headquarters at New York. Nine towns were thus plundered and laid waste, mostly by fire, and the inhabitants of one of them massacred. The sufferers, after the war appealed to the Legislature for relief, and, after several years discussion and delay, they were voted an appropriation of five hundred thousand acres, to be surveyed off from the western part of the Reserve, and distributed in proportion to their losses. The settlement of this district did not commence until about 1808, owing to Indian occupation and fear of hostilities.

The Legislature of Connecticut took the first measures towards the sale of the State's Western lands in October, 1786, when a resolution was passed directing a survey of all that part of the Reserve east of the Cuyahoga and the portage leading from the Cuyahoga to the Tuscarawas. The resolutions also directed the sale of the land at fifty cents an acre, in the public securities of that day. No sales were made, except to Parsons, under this reso- lution, which was displaced by another resolution changing the method of sale, in 1795. The Company plan, which had

proved successful in the southern part of the Territory, was finally adopted by Con- necticut. In May, 1795, a committee was appointed to receive propositions for the purchase of all the unappropriated lands in the Reserve, and to make the best contract possible for the State, the committee being empowered to give deeds to the purchasers. One million dollars in specie was the minimum price fixed by the Legislature, and specie or specie notes only were to be received as payment. The committee succeeded in making the sale in September, 1795, to a company of thirty-five persons, at the sum of one million two hundred thousand dollars. This sum became the basis of the Connecticut school fund, which now amounts to about two million dollars. The transfer was made to the Connecticut Land Company, which was incorporated under the laws of Connecticut. An act was also passed incorporating the proprietors of the Firelands. These acts granted political jurisdiction over transferred lands, under authority of the State of Connecticut. It will be seen that by this act practically a dual government was created in Northeastern Ohio. The Reserve, by the ordinance of 1787, was made a part of the Northwest Territory, the United States recognizing the reservation, by Connecticut, of a proprietary right to the soil, but claiming absolute political jurisdiction. This intricate conflict of claims was finally settled in 1800, by Connecticut abandoning her pretensions and recognizing the political authority of the Territorial Government.

The leading man in the Connecticut Land Company, and the heaviest stockholder, was Oliver Phelps. A deed was made by the State to each purchaser, giving him absolute title to a number of acres proportional to the amount of stock subscribed. The buyers, for convenience,

HISTORY OF SANDUSKY COUNTY.

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History of Sandusky County Ohio with Illustrations 1882, Part 8

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