USA > Ohio > Seneca County > History of Seneca County, Ohio; a narrative account of its historical progress, its people, and its principal interests, Vo. I > Part 16
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There was an old Indian living on the Van Meter tract, in this county-a Mohawk-whose name was Charlieu, and who was famous for his animosity to the Americans.
As early as 1822, while yet the county was only tenanted by a few hundred white people, the first physician arrived. The succeeding year more adventurous spirits pushed further west- ward, and thenceforward physicians came here to reside.
In the earlier years of the county, and even for two decades after its organization, the corn-grinder and wheat-pounder were members of the pioneer's family. The difference between the mills now used for the manufacture of flour and those of half a century ago are as marked as those between the modern woolen mill and the old-fashioned loom in which homespun cloth was manu- factured for the purpose of providing stout and serviceable gar- ments to clothe the hard working farmer and his sons.
George Park had a round-log-cabin hotel on Perry street, the first tavern in Tiffin. He afterwards put'a two-story frame hotel on the lot now covered by the National Hall Block.
Those pioneers of Fort Ball and Tiffin built well indeed. Al- most all their day-dreams have been realized, and a city has sprung up out of the ancient groves, extending from plateau to plateau on each side of the old, ever running, river.
Seneca county was formed from old Indian Territory. April 1, 1820, organized April 1, 1824, and named from the tribe which had a reservation within its limits. The surface is level, and the streams run in deep channels. The county is well watered, has considerable water power, and the soil is mostly a rich loam.
The first plat of Tiffin contained 118 lots-each block of 12 lots facing four streets, with a cross alley through the center. It
had three streets running east and west, viz: Perry, Market and Madison, starting near Rocky creek and ending near the river; and three streets running north and south, viz: Jefferson, Wash- ington and Monroe, starting near the river, and ending at an alley 180 feet south of Madison street. The east end of this alley is now Tiffin street, and leads from Jefferson to the old cemetery.
The hardest of all the hardships that the frontier settler had to contend with, was the malarial diseases everybody was sub- ject to. The ground was covered with water and decaying vege- table matter; the river and the creeks were clogged with drift- wood and fallen timbers; beaver dams set the water back, thereby covering large tracts of land, while cat-swamps (as they were
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then called) were very numerous. There were terrible thickets and jungles of brush bushes of various kinds growing on rich, boggy soil.
Getting grinding done at the few mills there were then in the country, was attended with great hardship. After the City Mill, now in the first ward of Tiffin, was put up, farmers from Crawford, Hancock and Marion counties came here to get their grists ground, and at times, fifteen, twenty, or more teams waited their turn and camped out a whole week, with the family at home on small allow- ance, or probably with no bread at all.
Fever and ague, and bilious fevers were very common, and men were often seen standing on the street on a hot summer day, pale as death, with overcoats on, buttoned up to the chin, their hands in their pockets and shaking so that their voices trembled. The chill was always followed by a fever, and when that was passed, the patient was all right again until next day, or day after.
It was not until the land was opened up for entry, or pur- chased, that immigration became active, or the country began to fill up. Then the necessity of established villages became obvious.
The frost of May 15, 1834, destroyed all the fruit crop and potato crop, together with more than one-half the wheat crop. Later that year, flour, in the Tiffin market, was quoted at $14 per barrel.
The drought of 1838 resulted in destroying the grain crop, and reducing the corn crop to the amount of seed sown. A great hail storm swept over the county in May, 1839.
Simon Girty, the most infamous of all the white savages amongst the red skins, was adopted by the Senecas, and became not only a great scout, but also an expert hunter.
James Montgomery, the first Indian agent for the Senecas, was known to them by the name, Kuckoo-Wassa, or New Acorn.
Next to the products of the soil, the most important resources of Seneca county consist in the products of the quarries. Through- out most of the county there is no difficulty in obtaining good building stone.
The Washington Band was organized at Tiffin in 1839, and gave a concert at the court house in May of that year. This pioneer band drummed up the militia, and was generally useful. Boo's Band dates back before the war.
Clay for brick and red pottery is found in suitable quantities in all parts of the county.
On the 18th of May, 1825, and after quite a number of new- comers had settled in Seneca, there occurred one of the most violent tornadoes of which history gives any account. It has usually been called the "Burlington storm."
The first white man to whom travel in northwestern Ohio is
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credited, was Pere Rasles. In 1869 Father Rasles came to America as a missionary to the Abenaquis Indians. He was a devout man and a scholar, publishing a dictionary of the Indian language as one of the evidences of his zeal.
New Fort Ball extending from the river to the alley in rear of Madison street, included all the in-lots in the northern addition to Tiffin, and all on what was known as Fort Ball was surveyed by James Durbin, in November, 1837, on the east part of the tract of land reserved to Robert Armstrong, for Josiah Hedges.
There are several instances of record where the early settlers had to subsist on a soup made of flour and milk or flour and water, so that the small supply of flour could be extended.
The seat of justice for Seneca county was not located until March 25, 1822, when Herford, Spink and Miner, the commis- sioners appointed for that purpose, arrived and selected the vil- lage on the east bank of the river to be the county seat.
In June, 1825, Mr. Rawson visited Tiffin, Seneca county, Ohio, for the first time. He passed through Bellevue, where stood but a single cabin, and thence through a dense forest to Tiffin. The territory was then occupied by the Seneca Indians. Tiffin con- sisted of about a dozen families dwelling in rude cabins. The timber had been mostly removed on Washington street, south from the Sandusky river to Market street. There was no hotel in Tiffin, so Mr. Rawson forded the river and stopped at a tavern kept by Elisha Smith, at Fort Ball.
The early settlers will remember the jewelry store of Seewald, in the large, hewed log house, on south Washington street, in Tiffin. The front end was devoted to jewelry, and the back part to gun- smithing.
The greatest losses by fire that Tiffin ever suffered, at any one time, occurred on the 13th of April, 1872.
The Indians with their bitter feuds, their wars of extermina- tion, their alliances with the British, their invasions, their revenges, their hates, are all gone.
Wolves were rather troublesome neighbors in early days. They made frequent visits to the early settlers, and would make the very earth tremble with their howlings and complaints to the intruders of their time honored homes. Some parts of the county were unenviable settlements on this account.
The beginning of the police force of Tiffin dates back to 1851. when the first marshal was elected.
The settlement of the county by Americans may be said to begin in 1817, though, in reality, the actual useful pioneer did not make his presence known here until 1819, when Eden, Clinton and Pleasant townships received their first quota of American pluck and enterprise.
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Money was very scarce. Every dollar the immigrants had was invested in land as a general thing. Among those, who, after- wards were considered the most wealthy, were men who cleared lands for others at fifty cents per day, boarding themselves, or for eight to ten dollars per acre, to raise money for indispensable necessaries of life, or to pay taxes. Many pioneers were com- pelled to work on the canals, to get a little money, leaving their families alone in the woods for months at a time.
In 1863, while the militia of Ohio was being reorganized and regiments formed, Seneca county had two regiments.
The Senecas were an exceedingly superstitious people, and notwithstanding all the influences brought to bear upon them to love and embrace the Christian religion, they were very stubborn.
After the reservation came into market, the country settled up very rapidly, and soon the land was all taken up. Then roads were opened, land cleared, and houses put up, so that it began to look like an old country.
The county was at one time a favorite camping ground for seahawks and eagles. It is related that some years before the Senecas left the county, a hawk carried off a pappoose that was left by its Indian mother in a grove which then stood on the south bank of the river, near Washington street bridge.
Tiffin, the county seat, is a beautiful city, most conveniently situated, and replete in everything which wealth and intelligence suggests.
At a treaty held at Washington City, on the 29th of February, 1831, the United States were represented by Mr. James B. Gardiner, and the Senecas by Coonstick, Seneca Steel, Captain Good-hunter, Hard-hickory and Small-cloud Spicer, their chiefs. George Her- rin acted as interpreter. General Henry C. Bresh was sub-agent. At this treaty the Senecas sold their whole reservation to the United States, with full authority to sell the same.
The cholera made its first appearance in Seneca county August 19, 1834, when Mrs. John Hubble, of Monroe street, died. A son of Mrs. Dalrymple was the last to die from this visitation in 1834. The disease attacked both native and foreign residents. Fifteen years later, in 1849, this plague again visited the county; again in 1852, and afterward in 1854.
There was a time when deer were killed by the first settlers . of Tiffin and Fort Ball, within the limits of their villages. The bear, wild hog, wolverine and wolf, were all here.
The Wyandots ceded their reservation to the United States in 1842. At this cession the last foot of soil in Ohio passed away from the red man.
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MRS. TABITHA STANLEY'S RECOLLECTIONS.
The following sketches of the early settlement of Seneca county were given by two of the younger pioneers. Tabitha Stanley said : "My brother Samuel and a young man by the name of John Eaton started for Ohio on foot. for the purpose of pres- pecting and exploring the country. They came to the valley of the Sandusky, and wrote back to us to pack up and come out here, as this was an excellent country. My father was a gunsmith by trade and brought his tools to Seneca county with him. He put up a shop on the northeast part of a piece of land that afterwards became the property of my husband, Benjamin Culver, and known as the Culver farm, near Fort Seneca.
"When we got here we found the country a dense wilderness. We put up with Barney's folks, and moved into the same cabin they occupied, which had been built by William Spicer, who then had moved upon his section in the Seneca reservation, east of the river. Spicer was an Indian captive, and had a family of half Indian children. Their names were John, James, Small Cloud, Little Town, and one daughter, who was married to another white captive by the name of Crow. Spicer was a great help to the new comers, for he had cattle, horses and hogs in large numbers. He used to let his land out on shares, and often furnished horses and oxen to farm with. He sold a great deal of corn to the immi- grants; also cattle and hogs, and often let cows out for pay. He was a good neighbor, ever ready and willing to help the needy. People often borrowed his horses and oxen to go to the mill. We had to go to Monroeville or to Cold Creek mills, to get our grinding done-some thirty miles away, through forest and swamps, without any bridges across the streams, and no road or any other way to guide the traveler but blazed trees.
"The Barney family consisted of West. who was the oldest, and Benjamin, both single, a widowed sister, Mrs. Polly Orr, who afterwards married John Eaton who came out here with my brother Samuel in 1819, as already stated, and Ann, the youngest sister, who was afterward married to David Rice, in the fall of 1820. Benjamin Barney married my sister Minerva in the winter of 1820. David Smith of Fort Ball, who was then a Justice of the Peace, solemnized the marriage, and played the violin that night at the wedding dance. Mr. Erastus Bowe came with Mr. Smith to the wedding. Mr. Bowe was the first settler in Fort Ball.
"The wedding was a rural affair, indeed. The dancing was done on a puncheon floor. A puncheon is a plank about six inches thick, split out of a solid log, and then hewed on one side and 'spotted' on the other so as to fit even on the sleepers. This made a very solid and substantial floor to dance on. Boards were
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very scarce and hard to get, on account of the great want of saw mills. We came here in the summer of 1820. That fall we all took siek, and became so reduced in strength that one was not able to help the other. There was no doctor nearer than Huron coun- ty, where Doctor Stephenson lived. He came sometimes, and stayed a day or two to supply us with medicine. We were all fortunate enough to get well.
"The following year my brother Augustus came. Soon after his arrival his wife took sick and died, leaving him with two chil- dren, both small.
"We were all well and hearty the next year, except my mother, who was then very sick, but recovered. Benjamin Barney moved to Fort Seneca, close to the old fort built by General Harrison in 1812, and then occupied by Mr. James Montgomery, a Methodist preacher and agent for the Seneca Indians. He, (Mr. Mont- gomery,) was also afterwards elected Justice of the Peace, and solemnized the marriage ceremony when Mr. Culver and I were married. Mr. Montgomery was considered a very good man, and was highly respected. One of his sons died. I was the only white girl outside of the family who attended the funeral.
"Mr. Benjamin Barney and Mr. Anson Gray both moved with their families to the state of Illinois, and both became wealthy. Gray and his wife are both dead. Barney's wife is also dead, but Barney is still living and is now about eighty-four years old. One year ago, when he was a here on a visit, I saw him at Mr. Rice's in Townsend township, Sandusky county, when he was very hearty and active.
"Very few white people lived here when we came. Mr. Bowe, Mr. Risdon, Mr. David Smith and Mr. Levi Crissey lived in Fort Ball; Abner Pike, Ezra Sprague, Willard Sprague, Francis Sprague, widow Shippey, Nathan Shippey, Robert and Lorenzo Abbott, Dorcas and Polly Shippey, Joel Chapin, Mr. McNutt who had two sons-Alexander and Daniel-Caleb Rice and Daniel Rice, Pardon Wilson, Phineas Frary, Sidney Barney-a cousin of Benjamin Barney-Samuel, Silas, Hiram, Asel and Phineas Pike, Louisa Emmerson, who taught school, Eliphalet Rogers, Henry Rogers, Ebenezer Mills, Daniel Mills, Jeremiah Chapman, Hannah Jackson, the Rollins family, and the Dumond, Duke and Mont- gomery families, constituted about all the white people that lived within ten miles of the fort. except the captives on the reservation.
"They used to have their military trainings on the Culver farm, then known as the Spicer place. At one of these trainings I first saw Mr. Hugh Welsh. I think he was the fifer for the com- pany. Caleb Rice was captain, my brother Samuel was lieutenant, John Eaton was orderly, and West Barney was ensign. They used to meet there every year. The general muster was held near the stockade of the fort.
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"The reservation extended from a point opposite Baker's mill to a point opposite the mouth of Wolf creek, in Sandusky county. The Mohawks lived on the farms now owned by the Frys, Flum- merfelts and Claggetts. The Senecas lived opposite the old fort and below. Some of them lived near Green Springs, and up to what is now Watson's Station on the C. S. & C. R. R. Crow lived further up, opposite my father's, joining the Spicer section on the north.
"In 1821 a log cabin stood at a place near what is now San- dusky street in Tiffin, and where Captain Bagby built a very nice residence opposite the old residence of Luther A. Wall, Esq. This residence is now occupied by a family named Lewis. Into this cabin a gentleman from Auburn, New York, moved in that year. His name was Mr. Childs. There was but himself and his wife. They were well dressed, and both very handsome. Mr. Childs had been in the mercantile business in the state of New York. He was then about twenty-five years old, when he took sick and died in the cabin. Soon after his death Mrs. Childs was delivered of a child, and the neighbors took her and the babe to Judge Ingraham's, who then lived near neighbors to Mr. Bowe, where, after suffering about nine days, she also died. The widow Orr, a sister of the Barneys, took the child to raise and kept it one year, when a sister of Mrs. Childs came out here, and took it back to Auburn with her. Somebody had named the child Nancy. Childs and his wife were both buried in the old grave yard, near the B. & O. depot."
This William Spicer, who played so conspicuous a part in the history of the Seneca Indians while living in this valley, was a native of Pennsylvania, and was captured by the Indians when he was very young. When the white settlers first came into this valley Spicer had been on the Sandusky forty years, and during the Revolutionary war. There is but little known of his history. The Wyandots took him to the banks of the Ohio, and used him as a decoy to bring boatmen to the shore. They tied him to a tree near the bank of the river and compelled him to call on the boatmen for help, and while the savages lay in ambush any per- son approaching Spicer became an easy prey. Many were thus made to suffer the cruelty of the Wyandots, but it is to be pre- sumed that Spicer played his part merely by compulsion.
HARRIS REMINISCENCES.
Mark A. Harris, whose observations were as close as his recol- lections are fresh and minute, said :
"I came to Seneca county with my grandfather, William Harris, with whom I had always lived, and up to the time when my
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aunt Tabitha married Mr. Culver; then I lived with them. This was in 1828. My uncle, Benjamin Culver, bought eight hundred and four acres of land at the sales. His homestead consisted of three hundred acres. The Flummerfelt and Abbott farms are also parts of Culver's purchase. He also owned the land where the 'Cronise saw mill' used to be, in Liberty township. These lands he bought at the sales, in Delaware. Horton Howard was receiver, and Platt Brush was register of the land office. Mr. Brush lived near and south of Fremont. He married for his second wife a widow Green, from Maryland, formerly-the mother of the Honorable Frederick W. Green, who was auditor of Seneca county for a long time, and afterwards represented this congres- sional district in Washington. This was during the ever memor- able trouble occasioned by the repeal of the eighth section of the "Missouri Compromise." After serving a term in Congress, Mr. Green was appointed clerk of the U. S. District Court for the northern district of Ohio, when he moved to Cleveland, where he lived up to the time of his death, which occurred in the spring of 1879.
"The Barneys came here from Massachusetts in 1818, and settled near the old fort. It seems that nearly all the settlers in that vicinity preferred to be near the fort, so as to have the benefit of its protection in time of danger. There were three brothers of these Barneys-West, Benjamin and Marshal; and two sisters- Polly Orr, whose husband and one child had died here, and Ann Barney, the younger sister. Marshal also died here, and he, Mr. . Orr and his child, were buried at the Spicer place. Ann married Daniel Rice, who was afterwards elected justice of the peace-the first one in the township.
"Benjamin Barney was a very resolute and honorable man, and a great friend to William Spicer ; and when Spicer was robbed Benjamin took great interest in having the robbers brought to justice, and securing the money. This was probably the first robbery in Seneca county, and it occurred in this wise, viz :- Spicer was well off, and took in a great deal of money from the sale of hogs, cattle, horses and corn. His money was all in gold and silver. Spicer lived on the top of the hill on the west bank of the river, opposite the north point of the island in the river, and about four miles south of the fort. One afternoon when Spicer was alone in his cabin, a man by the name of Rollins came in and demanded Spicer's money and the key to his chest. Spicer refused to deliver over, and Rollins struck him with a club on the head, which stun- ned him, and he fell. While in this condition he hear Rollins laugh, and also heard some others come in, but could not tell who they were. When Spicer recovered his consciousness, the men and his money were gone.
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"Spicer was a small man, and had no education ; he could not count much, and did not know exactly how much money he did have, but it was generally believed that he had between six and seven thousand dollars.
"This Rollins was a carpenter by trade, and at the time of this occurrence was employed to help a certain Paul D. Butler in building a saw mill on the left bank of the river, where Lafayette street, in Tiffin, comes down to the river. Some of the timbers of this mill were afterwards used by Mr. Josiah Hedges in the build- ing of the saw mill standing on the left bank of the river, opposite Reuben Kedler's mill, so-called.
"As soon as the news of the robbery became known, the neigh- bors turned out to assist the constable in the chase after the thieves and the recovery of the money. A man by the name of Downing lived on the top of the hill back and south of Baker's mill, some three miles north of Tiffin, in a cabin near the river. The con- stable, Mr. Papineau, in company with Benjamin Barney, came to Downing's house and sat down to talk awhile, when a little girl of the family said to these men, 'My papa put something nice under there ;' pointing to the hearth-stone. They arrested Down- ing, and raising the hearth-stone, found over five hundred dollars in silver under it. Afterwards some six hundred dollars more were found in the spring at the foot of the hill close by the cabin. These six hundred dollars were supposed to have been put into the spring by this William Rollins who struck Spicer, and who was also arrested soon after. Downing got away from the constable, and was never heard of afterwards. Judge Fitch, who lived near the river, below Elder Kating's, also found some money supposed to be Spicer's, in a ravine that runs across the north west corner of the Culver place, (as then known.) This sum was also over five hundred dollars. All this money was promptly restored to Spicer.
"Butler, Case, and quite a number of others were arrested, and were all taken to Norwalk, in Huron county, for trial. Caleb Rice also assisted in making these arrests. Some of the prisoners escaped before trial; Case, Butler and some others were acquitted. Rollins was the only one that was convicted of the robbery, and was sentenced to the penitentiary for the term of eleven years. He was pardoned out before his term expired, Spicer himself signing the petition.
"Samuel and John Wright, in later years, became the owners of the farm that from thence bore their name. They were from Rochester, New York. John Wright and Daniel Bissell, also from New York, put up a distillery near the springs on the banks of the river, on this farm. I worked in, and conducted, the dis- tillery for a long time. The business was done in the firm name of "Bissell & Wright." When the farmers brought their corn to
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be distilled on shares or to be exchanged, we gave them five quarts, and when the corn was cheap and plenty, we gave them six quarts of whisky for one bushel of corn.
"About that time two young ladies came to my aunt, Mrs. Culver, from New York on a visit. They were sisters: Mariah Hunt, the oldest, and the younger, Sylvia Ann Hunt, daughters of her sister. While here the two Mr. Wrights made their acquaintance and married them. John Wright married Mariah, and Samuel Wright married Sylvia Ann.
"When I was about eleven years old. I had to go with my uncle, John Harris, to the mill at Monroeville. This was the near- est mill to our home, and about thirty miles away. We could not get across the river with a team. so we hauled our corn to the shore of the river, and unloaded it there. Then we took our team home, and loading our corn into a dug-out-a canoe made out of a log- we hauled it across and unloaded it on the other shore. Then we borrowed a yoke of oxen from Mr. Spicer. and a cart from Crow, (we did not say "Mister" to an Indian, ) and loaded up our corn and started. The next night we stopped with a man by the name of Nichols, near Bellevue, and in the evening of the second day we reached Monroeville. There were a great many customers ahead of us, and there was no prospect for us to get in for about a week ; so we started for Cold creek mills.which were eleven miles north- west from here. They had just commenced dressing the mill- stones when we arrived, and after waiting two days at Cold creek, we started home with our grist. At Cold creek we bought a bushel of peaches, which were then, and especially with us in the woods, a great variety. Afterwards they grew almost spontaneously, and produced abundantly, until within about fifteen years ago. Now it is seldom that a crop of them can be raised in this county. The first night on the way home we reached Dr. Stephenson's. The next day our provisions gave out. We came to a fire in the woods where a man had been chopping. and being very hungry, we looked around amongst the logs for provisions that the wood chopper might have hidden somewhere, and found raw pork and bread. We divided even with the man. and putting his half back where it was, made way with ours. and drove on. When we got home we were gone nearly a week.
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