History of Sandusky County, Ohio : with portraits and biographies of prominent citizens and pioneers, Part 8

Author: Everett, Homer, 1813-1887
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : H.Z. Williams
Number of Pages: 1040

USA > Ohio > Sandusky County > History of Sandusky County, Ohio : with portraits and biographies of prominent citizens and pioneers > Part 8

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HISTORY OF SANDUSKY COUNTY.

attributed in great measure the high po- sition which Ohio has taken in affairs.

When the Revolution closed, the Con- gress of the Confederation found itself in possession of a vast Western domain of boundless fertility. Plans of emigration and colonization again revived. Congress, in May, 1785, passed "an ordinance for ascertaining the mode of disposing of the Western lands, and Thomas Hutchins, the United States geographer, was in- structed to lay off the territory into town- ships of six miles square, and each town- ship into thirty-six lots, containing six hundred and forty acres each. Congress had, in :776, and by several succeeding acts, pledged bounties to the Continental soldiers. One-seventh of the land was to be reserved for this purpose. Lots eight, eleven, twenty-six, and twenty-nine were to be reserved for future sale; the remainder was to be divided among the several States and sold by them at not less than one dollar per acre, with the additional cost of the survey and sale. This system operated against the colonization plan, for the townships were to be drawn by the several States, making it impossible for a company to purchase a large tract in one body. This ordinance excepted an un- defined tract between the Scioto and the Little Miami, which had been reserved by Virginia in her act of cession, for the use of her own troops. Indian hostilities prevented individual settlement, and it was evident that Congress had placed too high an estimate on the value of the un- broken forest.

From time to time, as circumstances suggested, this original ordinance was amended. The bounty claims of Revo- lutionary soldiers were the strongest agency in the settlement of the Northwest. A major-general were entitled to eleven hun- dred acres, a brigadier-general to eight hundred and fifty acres, colonel to five

hundred acres, lieutenant-colonel to four hundred and fifty acres, major to four hundred acres, captain to three hundred acres, lieutenant to two hundred acres, ensign one hundred and fifty acres, non- commissioned officers and privates one hundred acres each. As early as 1783 General Rufus Putnam, of Massachusetts, transmitted to Washington a memorial asking for an appropriation of Western lands to supply these claims. The meas- ure was placed before Congress, but the question of ownership not being settled action was postponed. In 1775 Colonel Benjamin Tupper came West as a sur- veyor, but the survey being interrupted by Indian troubles he returned to the East the following winter with such favorable impressions of the country beyond the Ohio that he united with Putnam in form- ing a plan of association and settlement. They prepared a publication setting forth the project, and inviting all who desired to promote the scheme to send delegates to a general convention to be held in Bos- ton, March 1, 1786.

An opportunity now seemed open to the hardy and resolute soldiers who had carried the war to a successful issue, to re- trieve their ruined estates. The conven- tion which met in pursuance to this call, represented the best elements of New England society. Articles of association were agreed upon, which made the capi- tal of the company one million dollars. Three directors - Samuel H. Parsons, General Rufus Putnam, and Dr. Manas- seh Cutler, were elected, with instructions to purchase a private grant of lands. Ma- jor Winthrop Sargent (second Territorial Governor) was elected secretary.

About the time of the organization of the Ohio Company another land company was organized in New York, with William Duer at its head. Dr. Cutler, to whom was delegated the responsible office of

HISTORY OF SANDUSKY COUNTY.

making a contract with Congress, found that body averse to the New England scheme, but by combining with the New York company, in which several members of Congress were interested, there was hope of success. It had been the hope of the Massachusetts company to have General Parsons, one of their own number, placed at the head of the new territorial govern- ment which colonization would make it necessary to establish; but his plan of purchase could not succeed without the support of General St. Clair, who was a representative from Pennsylvania and President of Congress. Cutler was a good lobbyist and yielded the choice of his associates in favor of St. Clair for the governorship.

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 divis- ion of the Territory into seventeen States. This ordinance, with the important omis- sion 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 Mas- sachusetts, New York, Virginia, and Con- necticut,-all the territory at that time owned by the United States-was submit- ted, 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 com- prehended,-Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wis- consin, and Michigan.

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

ion, if deemed expedient by Congress, in- to 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 es- tablished in the Northwest, the important principles of the equal inheritance of in- testine estates, and the freedom of alinea- tion by deed or will. After prescribing a system of territorial civil government, it concludes with six articles of compact be- tween the original States and the people of the States in the Territory, which should forever remain unalterable unless by com- mon consent. The first declared that no person demeaning himself in a peacable and orderly manner, should ever be molest- ed on account of his mode of worship or religious sentiments. The second pro- hibited legislative interference with private contracts, and secured to the inhabitants trial by jury, the writ of habeas corpus, a proportionate representation of the peo- ple 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 non-residents higher than residents ; and established the navigable waters leading into the Mississippi and St. Lawrence, and the portages between them, common high- ways 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 be- came settlers, for "when they came in- to 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 prepara- tions 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,t 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 Ma- rietta, where the Governor was welcomed by Judge Parsons. Under a bower of foli- age contributed by the surrounding forest, the ordnance of 1787 was read, congratu- lations exchanged, and three hearty cheers echoed and re-echoed from the waters of two rivers, the high hills, and thick forests.

Marietta, the town founded by the Massachusetts colony, became an impor- tant 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 com- munities, not from Massachusetts alone, but of Connecticut and Rhode Island also. The course of emigration from the im- poverished States, once opened, widened and deepened until temporarily closed by an unfortunate conflict with the red na- tives, 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 Bot- tom, in Morgan county. The attack on the Big Bottom block-house, January 2, 1791, and the indiscriminate slaughter of its inhabitants, was the opening of a gen- eral 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 C'leves 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 Terri- tory, and a native of New Jersey, nego- tiated 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 pur- chase reverted to Congress, the patent when issued covering but about three hundred thousand acres. Judge Symmes sold the large, natural amphitheater op- posite the Licking River, to Mathias Den- man, 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 prop- erty 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 block-houses 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 Wash- ington 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 oppo- site the Big Kanawha in the summer of 1791. We have mentioned the joint ne- gotiations 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 betwen 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 ly- ing west of the seventeenth range was trans- ferred 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 favoriteand novel scheme. Joel Barlow, the poet, was sent to France, then in the days of its discontent and revolution. His rose- ate descriptions pictured an Arcadia, of which Fair Haven was the destined capital. Attentive listeners saw noble forests, consist- ing 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 excel- lent fish of vast size. To live in a land of plenty with no taxes to pay and no mili- tary services to perform, was the fair vision of this trancendent land which influenced a large company, composed chiefly of carv- ers and gilders, coach-makers, friseurs, and other artistes. Less than a dozen heavy la- borers embarked in the enterprise. Deeds for their land, handsomely printed in high colors, raised still higher the delusive an- ticipation that their journey was to a Fair Haven in fact as well as in name.

The Scioto Company employed Gen- eral 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 Kanaw- ha, was found to be below the high-water- mark, 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 block-houses and cabins, arranged in four rows, twenty in each row. The Company had also contracted with the Ohio Com- pany 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 disheart- enment of disappointment on their arrival at the promised paradise became utter de- jection when they learned that the Scioto Company had never paid for the land, and in consequence could give no title. These deluded foreigners, enured to ten der handed employments, were thrown into the pioneer battle under the greatest dis- advantages. In constant danger of an attack from Indians, suffering from sick- ness, and without money, they were una ble to do for themselves as settlers at the other openings along the river were doing. They were provided for by an act of Con-

gress, 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 settle- ment; others, disgusted with the imposi- tion practiced upon them, found homes at other places-Vincennes, St. Louis, Kas- kaskia, 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 ap- propriated as bounty to her own troops in the war of the Revolution. General Na- thaniel 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 settle- ments 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 protec- tion from danger and exposure while pros- ecuting the survey. The site of Manches- ter 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 of- fered 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, 1791, 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 stock- ade, with block-houses 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 place-men 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 2d of January. That bloody surprise, in which fourteen persons were slain and five taken captive, t marks the opening of a period of distress and peril for the pioneers of Ohio. Lower Sandusky's part in the history of that pe- riod has been shown. For four years im- migration was almost at a standstill, and at the settlements unceasing danger from a clandestine enemy held in check mate- rial 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 in- calculable task of hewing a great State out of an unbroken forest.

The village of Cincinnati, which in 1792 had a population of about two hun- dred, increased to upwards of six hundred souls before the close of 1796. Popula- tion 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 hos- tilities defeated his scheme. The follow. ing 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 Vir- ginian of the Scioto and his Eastern neigh-

* 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.

bor, 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 Reg- ister of Genealogy, and followed his line of descent to the Puritan Nonconformist who came to America for religious free- dom. 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 par- allel of latitude. Most of the settlers came over the Alleghanies from Eastern Pennsyl- vania. 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 homogenity of race and training in this than in any other of the five centres of early settle- ment. 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 Revolu- tionary bounties, and in consequence drew its population from all the States. Settle- ments were made simultaneously in several parts of the seven ranges as soon as Indian hostilities were suppressed. Steu- benville, one of the oldest of the towns which flourished, was founded in 1798.

The county of Jefferson was erected in I797.

The Northwestern Indian Reservation, of which Sandusky county is a part, drew largely from the seven ranges and from the Military Reservation. These two di- visions 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 con- tains an area of more than three million three hundred thousand acres, and is set- tled 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 aris- ing from indefinite colonial titles to West- ern lands, was finally settled by the States ceding their claims to the Federal Govern- ment. "The last tardy and reluctant sac- rifice" 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 dis- pute 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 juris- diction.

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History of Sandusky County, Ohio : with portraits and biographies of prominent citizens and pioneers, Part 8

Author: Everett, Homer, 1813-1887 Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : H.Z. Williams Number of Pages: 1040

Author: Everett, Homer, 1813-1887
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : H.Z. Williams
Number of Pages: 1040