History of Sandusky County, Ohio : with portraits and biographies of prominent citizens and pioneers, Part 9

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 9

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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 pur- poses. His expectations 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 Fire lands, embracing the present counties of Huron and Erie, was the next section carved off from her Western posses_ sions 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 ex- ploits from the royal headquarters at New York. Nine towns were thus plundered and laid waste, mostly by fire, and the in- habitants 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 pub- lic 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 con- tract 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 Legis- lature, 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 Con- necticut school fund, which now amounts to about two million dollars. The trans- fer 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 Fire-lands. These acts granted politi- cal jurisdiction over transferred lands, under authority of the State of Connecti- cut. It will be seen that by this act prac- tically 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 Connecti- cut, of a proprietary right to the soil, but claiming absolute political jurisdiction. This intricate conflict of claims was finally settled in 1800, by Connecticut abandon- ing her pretensions and recognizing the political authority of the Territorial Gov- ernment.

The leading man in the Connecticut Land Company, and the heaviest stock- holder, 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 sub- scribed. The buyers, for convenience,

HISTORY OF SANDUSKY COUNTY.

transferred the whole tract to three trus- tees. The company was enlarged to four hundred shares at three thousand dollars a share. The management of its affairs was entrusted to a board of eight directors.

General Moses Cleaveland wasappointed surveyor of the Company, with instructions to lay off all that part of the Reserve east of the Cuyahoga in townships of not less than sixteen thousand square miles, and to lay out a town at the mouth of the Cuyahoga. Washington, Jefferson, and other statesmen of the times, who took a live interest in Western settlement, looked upon the mouth of the Cuyahoga as des- tined to become an important commercial point. This prediction, widely entertained, led to the selection of the site of the pros- pective capital of New Connecticut, for the authority of the Northwest Territory had not yet been accepted. The survey- ing party commenced early in July, 1796, and reached the mouth of the Cuyahoga in October, where a town was laid out in accordance with the direction of the com- pany, and named Cleaveland, in honor of the veteran chief of the corps. A small settlement was made that fall, but the growth of the village was slow, discourag ingly slow, in comparison with the flour- ishing towns on the Ohio. At the end of the first year the population was fifteen. Three years later there were but seven residents, and in 1810 only fifty seven. A feeble settlement was made at Conneaut the next year after Cleaveland was founded, and several openings were made in the Mahoning Valley during the next few years. The Mahoning country was more accessi- ble, and consequently grew faster than the northern part. Warren was the most im- portant point on the Reserve for a number of years, and contained, in 1801, thir- ty-five families. Trumbull county was or- ganized in 1800, with Warren as the county seat.

If the growth of the Reserve at first was slow, the superiority of its soil finally became known, and New Connecticut has grown within the last seventy years, with remarkable rapidity. Chillicothe, the principal town of the far famed Scioto Valley, founded but a few months before Cleveland, became the first capital and second city of the State, while the Reserve was yet scarcely a factor in pol- itics. In 1880 there were within the Reserve four cities outrivalling in size and industry the Virginian city of the Scioto.

The seventh division into which pa- tents, grants, and treaties carved the terri- tory of Ohio, is the one including San- dusky county. It was almost without white habitation at the opening of the period which closes this brief outline of the growth of Ohio. It was upon the native population of this Northwestern Indian reservation that the British arms, in 1812, depended for their chief assistance.

The frontier line of settlements, at the opening of that struggle, extended from Lake Erie at Huron, southward through Richland, Delaware, and Champaign coun- ties, thence westward to beyond the Miami and Indiana line.

The early settlers of Ohio, without ex- ception, were superior men. The dangers of the frontier kept back all who were lacking in courage or incapable of endur- ing physical hardships. Even in the lull of supposed peace there was constant danger of an attack from red warriors, kindled to vengeance by a real or sup- posed injury. In 1810 the population of the State was 230,760; the vote for governor, in 1812, was 19,752, and at different times during the war, then actu- ally in progress, more than twenty thou- sand Ohio troops were in the field, more than the entire number of votes cast at an important State election.

The first county proclaimed by the

HISTORY OF SANDUSKY COUNTY.

Governor was Washington, embracing about half the present territory of Ohio, and reaching from the mouth of the Cuy- ahoga to the mouth of the Scioto. Ham- ilton county was proclaimed in 1790. De- troit was occupied by American troops in 1796, and made the seat of a new county -Wayne-which embraced the whole ter- · ritory of Michigan, Northwestern Ohio and Northern Indiana. The Virginia Military District was erected into a county in 1797. The same year Washington county was divided, the northern half be- ing set off as Jefferson county, with Steubenville as the county seat. Adams was divided by the erection of Ross in 1798, and Jefferson by the erection of Trumbull in 1800. Trumbull was the first county of the Reserve. Several coun- ties were formed in the Reserve between 1800 and 1809, when Huron was erected. The treaty of Maumee Rapids, the in- evitable sequence of the issue of the War of 1812, brought into market all North- western Ohio except the Indian reserva- tions, and by an act of the Legislature the tract thus fully acquired was carved into counties in 1820.

Indiana Territory was set off by an act of Congress in 1800, and in 1802 an enab- ling act was passed authorizing the people of Ohio to elect delegates to a convention for the formation of a State constitution as a preliminary step to admission into the Union. The act admitted delegates only from that part of the Territory compre- hended by the ordinance of 1787, as the most eastern of the five States into which it was proposed to divide the Northwest. This act cut off the northern county of the Territory (now the eastern part of Michigan), and brought upon Congress the charge of endeavoring to erect the State for partisan purposes.

One of the duties of the convention was to define the boundaries of the new

State. The ordinance made the western boundary a line running due north from the mouth of the Miami River, and the northern boundary a line running east from the southern bend of Lake Michi- gan. This line was not yet surveyed in 1802, but the convention, acting on the hypothesis that it was the intent of the ordinance to include Maumee Bay in the Eastern State, resolved that the northern boundary should be a line running from the most northerly cape of Maumee Bay to the southern bend of Lake Michigan.

The Constitutional Convention finished its labors in November, and the document became the fundamental law of the State without being submitted to the people. Congress recognized Ohio as a member of the Federal Union in February, 1803 .* It is not the purpose of this chapter to trace the civil history of the State, but only to present such a view as will show the chronological and ethnological rela- tions of Sandusky county, and the events of a general character which have affected its history.

The Constitutional Convention's defi- nition of the northern boundary was for many years the subject of serious dispute and eventually threatened to involve the State in war ; indeed more than threatened -- war was actually begun. The convention determined the line on the principles on which courts of chancery construe con- tracts. The map on file in the State De- partment, and used by the committee which framed the ordinance of 1787, marked the southern extreme of Lake Michigan far north of its real position, and a line was drawn due east which in- tersected the western coast of Lake Erie north of the Raisin River. This line was

*The date of admission is variously given as April, 1802, (the date of the passage of the en- abling act), November, 1802, and February, 19, 1803. The latter date has the best claim.

HISTORY OF SANDUSKY COUNTY

manifestly intended to be the boundary of the new State when formed. The ap- prehension caused among the members by an old hunter's statement that a line drawn due east would cut off Maumee Bay, which was manifestly intended by Congress to belong to Ohio, induced the convention to change the line prescribed by the language of the ordinance in order to make certain of saving to the State the valuable harbor at the mouth of the Mau- mee. *

The question of jurisdiction over the territory lying between the line prescribed by the Ohio Constitution and the line prescribed by the ordinance, first came up in 1812, the population of the disputed tract at that time being fifty families. Nearly all desired the jurisdiction of Ohio, except a few officers serving under the government of Michigan, and determined to enforce the laws of that Territory. t

Conflicting claims in 1835 caused an open rupture in which Sandusky county participated. This conflict is detailed in another chapter. Its origin was in the in- terpretation and definition by the State Convention, of an act of the Federal Con- gress.

It remains to close this chapter with a summary of an episode in National his- tory and an epoch of pre-eminent con- sequence in local history. We say an epi- sode in National history, for although the blood of America's bravest citizens and England's trained soldiers stained the hardly contested battlefields of three cam- paigns, although the Federal Treasury was depleted, private estates bankrupted and the occupations of peace well nigh de- stroyed, the result in an international sense was negative. We have called the war an epoch in local history because it was the opening wedge to white settle-

ment, from the Sandusky Valley to the Maumee. Nearly all the able-bodied men of Ohio were brought into the field, and the expanse of forest inhabited only by rebellious Indians, which lay between the British western headquarters and the Ohio settlements, was an important part of that field. Men of sufficient sturdiness, self-respect and courage to volunteer in defense of their homes bivouacked in the heavy forests of the Northwest, perceived the unbounded wealth of the soil and dis- cussed around cheerful camp fires the probable future of the wilderness and ad- vantages of early settlement. Many even blazed on the trees the chosen locality of their future home. Forts and permanent camps made openings in the wilderness, were the centres of army trails, attracted traders and tradesmen, and thus became incipient villages. The complementary local result of the war was its weakening and demoralizing effect upon the Indians to whom this region had been guaranteed a home inviolable as long as they main- tained peace with the United States.

In the previous chapter we called atten- tion to the ambition of Tecumseh, and his operations looking toward the estab- lishment of an Indian empire in the West. He was encouraged and aided in his scheme by agents of the British Govern- ment, who desired to have an organized force of braves ready to follow the stand- ard of the crown in the event of probable conflict with the United States. The European powers had, for a long time, been engaged in war, and successive mil- itary decrees involved serious commercial complications. England, as a war meas- ure, claimed the right to search all neutral vessels, and under this pretense hundreds of American seamen were impressed on board British ships. Congress threatened war, but the threat only made English agents more active in spreading the fire-

*Burnet's Notes.

+ Burnet's Notes.

HISTORY OF SANDUSKY COUNTY.

brands of discontent and rebellion among the Western tribes.

The attitude of the Wyandots has al- ready been touched upon. Crane and his cabinet of chiefs foresaw in the ap- proaching conflict certain destruction for their nation, and exercised their utmost efforts to prevent the calamity by main- · taining neutrality. The disaster to Te- cumseh's cause at Tippecanoe, in 1811, further impressed them with the futility of war, and threatened to crush the confed- eracy before it had been completed. It was Tecumseh's plan to refrain from at -. tack upon the white settlements until the conflict with Great Britain should be in actual progress, but the battle of Tippe- canoe was precipitated by the Prophet while Tecumseh was on a diplomatic mis- sion among the Creeks, in the South. That battle disclosed to the Americans the dan- gers of the situation, and the extent to which British influence had been exerted among the Indians.

Interference with American trade, en- forced by the blockade system, the im- pressment of American sailors, and the encouragement given the Indians supple- mented by supplying them with arms, induced Congress in June, 1812, to de- clare war. Although this ultra measure had long been contemplated, our Govern- ment was totally unprepared for the con- flict, which accounts for the disgraceful series of blundering during the first year of its progress.

To General Hull, Territorial Governor of Michigan, with headquarters at Detroit, was given the important commission to make an invasion of Upper Canada; but, through the imbecility of that officer, the project was a total failure, and for the same reason Detroit fell into the hands of the British, without a blow, on the 15th of August. This disaster spread the greatest apprehension throughout Ohio.

The Northwestern army, composed of fourteen hundred brave men, were now prisoners of war; the British command of the lakes was absolute; the Territory of Michigan was in the possession of foreign troops and their Indian allies, and nothing was left to prevent an invasion into Ohio. The militia of the Reserve, under General Wadsworth, turned out almost to a man, and in little more than two weeks from the first announcement of Hull's surrender at Cleveland, an army of raw farmers and woodsmen were encamped on the Huron River.

Before the close of the summer British arms presided over the Upper Lakes, Fort Dearborn, the last American post, falling victim to a most horrid Indian massacre. During the winter of 1812-13 warlike preparations were pushed in the Northwest with the spirit of self-defence. Harrison, with an army of volunteers, occupied the northwest of Ohio, constructed forts and garrisoned every strong point, so that at the opening of spring a greater feeling of security prevailed, and able-bodied men followed the army with less apprehension concerning the safety of their homes. It is not within our province to follow this conflict, which opened with defeat, disas- ter and disgrace, except one desperate scene, which is fully treated in a separate chapter. Croghan's gallant and success- ful defence of Fort Stephenson turned the tide in favor of the volunteer arms. Perry followed by making the flag of the Re- public master of Lake Erie, and Harrison complemented these achievements by to- tally defeating Proctor and extinguishing the allied Indian force under Tecumseh on the Thames. The bullet which mor- tally wounded Tecumseh killed British in- fluence over the Northwestern Indians, and secured the people of Ohio perpetu- ally against incursions from that source. Jackson, at New Orleans, crowned the

HISTORY OF SANDUSKY COUNTY.

series of brilliant victories, and gave per- petual luster to American arms.

During the whole contest the conduct of the State Government was as patriotic and honorable as the devoted bravery of her troops was eminent. When the ne- cessities of the National Treasury com- pelled Congress to resort to a direct tax, Ohio, for successive years, cheerfully as-

sumed and promptly paid her quota out of the State Treasury .* There was, at first, a difference of opinion with regard to the expediency of war, but when a foreign army landed on our shores her citizens cheerfully volunteered, and Ohio's blood stained every important battle-field in the Northwest.

*CHAPTER VI.

PRE - HISTORIC RACES.

The Cave-Dwellers-Mound Builders-Their Fortifications and Works in the County-Description and Location of the Works-The Stone Workers.

THE CAVE-DWELLERS.

THAT there was a race of men who T dwelt in caves made in the rocks, who inhabited this continent, or parts of it, is now pretty well settled among those who search for ancient traces of man- kind. Much inquiry has been made in this direction by earnest and learned men, and the facts gathered furnish strong circumstantial, if not positive evidence that some of the Cave-dwellers inhabited different parts of Ohio, and that they were the first inhabitants. Among the proofs adduced to establish the existence of the Cave-dwellers, we find that some time ago Colonel Whittlesey, who was President of the Northern Ohio Historical Society, made an exploration along the Cuyahoga River, from its source to its mouth, and reported that he found artificial habitations made in the rocks forming the north side of the river, which, though narrow, has

*The following chapters, up to and including parts of the history of Fremont, were written by Hon. Homer Everett,

cut a channel down the north side of the dividing ridge between that river and the Tuscarawas. He found that in some places the chasm was made deeper than the stream is wide at its head, and on the sides were caves containing human bones and bones of animals, showing that they were once inhabited by human beings.

General Bierce, who published a history of Summit county, corroborates, from personal observation, the statements of Colonel Whittlesey as to the caves. Gen- eral Bierce also shows that in Green township, formerly of Stark county, now of Summit, on the east side of the Tusca- rawas River, great numbers of stones were found by the white settlers of Stark coun- ty on an elevated plateau. These stones varied from four to six feet in circumfer- ence and were elevated a little above the earth's surface, with a comparatively even surface on top. On these stones it was supposed sacrifices of human beings were made to appease the wrath or propitiate

*S. P. Chase.

HISTORY OF SANDUSKY COUNTY.

the favors of some ancient god or gods. Near by the place where these stones were found was the Indian trail used in passing from the Sandusky country to the Ohio River. The trail ran along the elevated ridge on which these stones were found. But no evidence was found about these stone altars either of calcined bones of · burnt prisoners, or of charred wood, or of implements to indicate that the altars had been made use of for any purpose by the modern Indians; and in the absence of other evidence, the conclusion is that the altars were erected by the ancient race domiciled in the caves, and who were probably the first of mankind in Ohio. Mr. Whittlesey, in passing down the Cuya- hoga, found earthworks and other evi- dences of a later race than the Cave- dwellers, and further on toward the lake he found what approaches to be regular fortifications, evincing a still higher civili- zation than the earthworks already men- tioned; but he leaves his readers to form their own conclusion.

From the facts given here by Colonel Whittlesey and General Bierce, taken in connection with the better and the un- doubted testimony which the Mound Builders have left of their existence, and interpreting the works each race has left on the earth, as they came and passed in successive ages, we may quite reasonably conclude that first came the Cave-dwellers into this land to inhabit it. Second, there succeeded them at some time another race who had invented implements, and could erect earthworks for defences, and who piled it up into great mounds for burial, sacrificial, or military purposes. Thirdly, came a race who worked stone and earth and with their improved imple- ments, made regular fortifications and places of abode or worship. Fourthly came a race of red men who afterwards kicked down the stone altars and de_

stroyed the earthworks of their predeces- sors, struck fire from flint, burned all they could of the structures of the more an- cient races, using for themselves the bow and arrow and stone hatchets and stone arrow heads, with bark canoes and thongs of the hides of animals for- fishing and hunting purposes, while the mounds of earth raised by the more ancient races were left unharmed, as places for lookout, or of burial for their chiefs and warriors. Thus seems to read the inscriptions made by the ancient races on the surface of the earth, as far as they have been yet inter- preted by observation, science and reason.

WHENCE CAME THE CAVE-DWELLERS.

Where these most ancient of the inhab- itants of our continent, the Cave-dwellers, came from, is a question which perhaps may never be satisfactorily answered. But certain geological facts may help to con- jecture whence they came. First, it is said by the most learned geologists of the time, that certain portions of this conti- nent are the oldest portions of the earth's surface, and contain its Eozoic crust with- out evidence of marine beds or other proofs of submergence by any floods since that day. Certain areas in northern New York, Canada, Labrador, and west of the Mississippi, in Missouri, Arkansas, Dako- ta, and Nebraska remain as in the Eozoic time, or time when there was no life. Second, from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Ocean no sea has ever overflowed these parts of the continent since the close of the carboniferous age or the age which produced the plants and forests out of which coal was formed .* Third, at the time the carboniferous sea disappeared the water-shed holding back the mass of waters of the lake existed and on which dry land first appeared in Ohio. This water-shed traversed the State from south-

*See Dana's Geology, 135, 136, 137, and 138.

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History of Sandusky County, Ohio : with portraits and biographies of prominent citizens and pioneers, Part 9

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