History of Shelby County, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 28

Author: R. Sutton & Co.
Publication date: 1883
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 427

USA > Ohio > Shelby County > History of Shelby County, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 28

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The first court ever held in the Northwest Territory was opened in the northwest block-house of Campus Martius (Marietta), August 2, 1788, and was held during the Indian war. At the close of the war and until the old court-bouse of Washington County was built, the courts were held in the upper story of a block-house at the junction of the Muskingum River with the Ohio. Washington County court house was built in 1798.

Fort Barbee

was erected by Col. Barbee near the west bank of the St. Marys River, and in the southeast corner of the Lutheran Cemetery, in the town of St. Marys.

Fort Jennings

was erected by Col. Jennings' regiment Sept. 1812, by order of General Harrison. It was intermediate between St. Marys and Defiance, and was situated in what is now the southwest part of Putnam County.

Fort Dillies

was erected on the west side of the Ohio, opposite Grave Creek, in 1792, in Belmont County.

Fort Mc Arthur

was built in January, 1813, in Hardin County, at the head of the Scioto and on Gen. Hull's road, three miles southwest of the present city of Kenton, and named after Gen. Duncan McArthur. He built two block- houses on the south side of the Scioto, each twenty by twenty-four feet, connected by a strong blockade, covering an area of near half an acre. From Fort McArthur to Rapids of the Miami is one hundred and fifty miles.

Fort Meigs

was erected by Gen. Harrison February 1, 1813, at the Maumee Rapids, in Wood County, and named by him in honor of Governor Meigs, of Ohio. General Proctor with the British forces, and Tecumseh with the Indians, were defeated at the siege of Fort Meigs. The fort was of an oblong shape, with bastions and block-houses, with two transverses run- ning from one end to the other. It originally covered about ten acres of ground, but through the action of the elements it rapidly disappeared, It was the scene of two of the most important battles of the war of 1812, viz., the British and their allies, the Indians, under Proctor.

Fort Miami

was at the foot of the Rapids, seven miles from Fort Deposit, and stood on the northwestern bank of the Maumee, near where Maumee City now stands.

Fort Necessity

was built June 22, 1812, by Col. Findlay, on the road from Fort McAr- thur to Blanchard's Fork, and is situated near what is now the town of Dunkirk, in Hardin County.

Fort Findlay.

A block-house called Fort Findlay was built at Blanchard's Fork June 25, 1812.

Fort Ball

was erected opposite Tiffin, on the west bank of the Sandusky River. It was a small stockade with a ditch, occupying about one-third of an acre, and was used principally as a military depot.

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HISTORY OF SHELBY COUNTY, OHIO.

MORAVIAN MISSIONS. PIONEER MISSIONARY.

Rev. Charles Frederick Post was the pioneer Moravian missionary to the Ohio Indians. He it was who made the preliminary movement among them which had in view their civilization and conversion from savagism to Christianity. With that high purpose he left his home in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1761, and visited the Delawares, then occu- pying the valley of the Upper Muskingum (now called the Tuscarawas), and then and there took the incipient steps in promotion of his object, by making their acquaintance, and by cultivating fraternal relations with them, and securing their confidence and friendship. He also built a cabin among them, which was situated within about a mile of one of their chief villages on the Tuscarawas River, named Tuscararatown, a. short distance south of the present northern boundary of Tuscarawas County. The building he erected stood in the immediate vicinity of the mouth of Sandy Creek, near the present village of Bolivar, and only a little way north of the line which divides Tuscarawas and Stark Coun- ties, on section twenty-five, in the township of Bethlehem, Stark County. A pile of stones, which probably formed the chimney of this early-time missionary's habitation, still indicated its site as late as the year 1843, when " Howe's Historical Collections of Ohio" first appeared. Some have held the opinion that this was the first house erected within the present limits of Ohio by a white man, but that is doubtless an error. The French, English, and American traders, years before, had built many huts, cabins, and trading stations; and so also had the French Jesuits erected buildings, at a prior date, along the Auglaize River, also on the banks of the Maumee, or Miami of the Lakes, as well as at or near Fort Loramie, on the portage between the Great Miami River and the south- ern tributaries of the Maumee.

After completing his building, this lone missionary of the West con- cluded that the next step in the preliminary measures looking to the civilization of the Indians on the Tuscarawas, and bringing them into the Christian faith, was to establish a mission school among them, and teach them to read the Scriptures in their own tongue. With this view this pioneer missionary returned to his home in Pennsylvania, to secure the services of an assistant who should devote his attention to the busi- ness of teaching the Indians and giving them suitable instruction; and in this he succeeded. John Heckewelder, then a youth of nineteen years, volunteered his services as a teacher, and was accepted; and on the 8th of March, 1762, the veteran missionary and his youthful com- panion started on their long horseback journey of thirty-three days, which they completed April 11th, by entering on that day the cabin built on the banks of the Tuscarawas River the previous year. But little, however, was accomplished by these missionaries during the sum- mer, except to clear a plat of ground fifty yards square around their cabin (the Indians being unwilling to allow more), and raising corn and vegetables for their subsistence. The necessary absence of the senior missionary for a number of months, he having accepted the invitation of the Governor of Pennsylvania to meet in council at Lancaster, on the 27th of August, to hold a conference with some Indian tribes; the scanty supply of food, and difficulty of procuring it; the sickness of Heckewel- der; the jealousy and hostility of the Indians, and other untoward cir- cumstances, led to the abandonment of this missionary enterprise in October, 1762, when John Heckewelder returned to Bethlehem.

As the Rev. Christian Frederick Post made the first, although unsuc- cessful, attempt to establish a Protestant mission among the Ohio Indians, and as he never afterwards identified himself, in any manner, with our subsequent history, we deem this the proper place for a brief biographical sketch of this pioneer missionary. It was quite otherwise with his as- sistant, John Heckewelder. He intimately connected his name with our history by his personal presence for almost half a century (though not continuously) after his first arrival at the Tuscarawas River, 1762, re- maining in Ohio until 1810, and rendering himself pre-eminently useful in various prominent official positions; so much so, indeed, that his name continues to be a "household word" among us to the present day.

Rev. Christian Frederick Post was a native of Conitz, in Polish Prus- sia. He came to America in 1742, and first exercised the functions of a Moravian missionary in 1743, having acquired some knowledge of the

language of the Indians. A few years later he became an adept in the language of the Mohawks. While among them, in 1745, he was arrested as a spy, or rather for supposed sympathy with the French, and was im- prisoned in Albany at first, and afterwards in New York. After enduring many weeks of confinement in prisons, he and his companion and fellow- missionary, Rev. David Zeisberger, were discharged, as not guilty, after an examination by the Governor and his Council, and were permitted to return to Bethlehem, their home. He soon after joined a mission in Connecticut, and remained there until 1749, when he returned to Europe, where, however, he made but a short stay. After his return to America he labored as a missionary at Wyoming, until 1754, when he again went to Bethlehem, the Moravian "head-quarters."

In the summer of 1758, Rev. Mr. Post was appointed by the Governor of the Colony of Pennsylvania, as bearer of a message to the Delawares, Shawanese, and Mingoes, of the upper Ohio Valley. The object of the Governor was to persuade them to withdraw from the French interest, which they were promoting, and induce them to return to their allegiance to the English. The results were so satisfactory as to secure Mr. Post's services for a second time, on a similar mission to other tribes of Indians in the upper Ohio Valley, and on the tributaries of the Ohio River. He started on this second mission, October 25, 1758, and returned in January, 1759, having made a part at least of his homeward journey with the re- turning army of General Forbes, after the capture of Fort Duquesne. We have before us the journals, as written by himself, of these several visits made by Mr. Post, and they show that he possessed considerable knowl- edge of the Indian character, and displayed a fair degree of ability as a diplomatist; his " talks" to the Indians being given, and the answers they made. These journals are important and valuable also for the in- telligence they furnish of the condition and feeling of the Indians as between the French and English, and, incidentally, their relations to- wards the Americans also; and for the amount of geographical informa- ion they give, as well as the facts they state, touching the location of the various tribes of Indians; the names given by them to the various Indian villages, also to the streams and points of historic interest in the country claimed by them around the " Forks of the Ohio," now Pitts- burgh.

Our veteran missionary (Rev. Christian Frederick Post), after his fail- ure on the Tuscarawas, in 1762, turned his attention to other fields, first visiting Central America, and establishing a mission among the savages of Nicaragua.

On the marital relations of the subject of this sketch we may be in- dulged in some remarks. He first intermarried with Rachel, a Moravian Christian woman of the Wampanoag tribe, who died in 1747. His sec- ond marriage, which occurred in 1749, was with Agnes, a Delaware, who was also a Moravian Christian. She died in 1751. His third wife was a white woman. It may be remarked that these matrimonial alliances with Indian women (although they were sincere Christians of their own faith) were rather distasteful to the ruling authorities of the Moravian Church, and rendered Mr. Post somewhat unpopular, so that, failing to have their full, hearty, and official co-operation, he became an independent missionary, but still a Moravian in creed, opinion, and practice. His death took place at Germantown (now incorporated in the city of Phil- adelphia), and which subsequently became conspicuous as the site of one of the battle-fields of the Revolution.

FIRST PROTESTANT SERMON IN OHIO-1771.

In the spring of 1771, Rev. David Zeisberger, a Moravian missionary, who had devoted many years of his life to the religious instruction of the Indians east of the Alleghenies, visited the chief Delaware town in the Tuscarawas Valley, and there, in the house of Netawatwas, the principal chief of the Delawares, delivered a sermon, at noon, on the 14th of March, 1771, which was probably the first Protestant sermon preached within the present limits of Ohio. The Indian capital, in which this sermon was preached, occupied the suburbs of the present village of Newcomerstown, in Oxford Township, Tuscarawas County. The proposition to establish a mission among the Delawares in the Tuscarawas Valley met with such a degree of favor as to induce an effort, at an early day, by the zealous Zeisberger, who, after a stay of a few days devoted to missionary labors,

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HISTORY OF SHELBY COUNTY, OHIO.

returned to Friedensstadt (City of Peace), a Moravian town on the Beaver River (now in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania), where he had, during the previous year, established a mission.

SCHONBRUNN-1772.

In pursuance of the purpose formed in 1771, on his first visit to the valley of the Tuscarawas, Rev. David Zeisberger, in the early spring of 1772, again visited the capital town of the Delawares, to make arrange- ments with their principal chief, Netawatwas, for the organization of a Moravian church and mission station in said valley. His negotiations were eminently satisfactory, and the chief granted for the purposes of the mission, lands on the Tuscarawas River from the mouth of the Still- water, extending northward for a number of miles towards the Tuscarawa village, suggesting the Big Spring, two miles south of New Philadelphia, as the most eligible site for both the mission church and Moravian vil- lage. The veteran missionary then returned to Friedensstadt, and in three weeks-that is, on the 3d day of May-he, with twenty-eight Moravian Indians, arrived at the Big Spring, and at once began the work of clearing the land, erecting houses, and building a church. The mis- sion-house, or church, was completed on the 9th of June (though not dedicated until the 19th of September), by which time a number of dwelling-houses had been built and occupied. On the 26th of August a bell was put on the church, and was doubtless the first one in Ohio.

The village was called Schonbrunn (Beautiful Spring), and was soon occupied by more than two hundred Moravian Indians, chiefly from Friedenshutten (Tents of Peace), on the Susquehanna, in Pennsylvania, exclusive of the five families that came from Friedensstadt. The acces- sions, during the summer, of Indians from the Susquehanna Valley, led by Rev. John Ettwein, secured from Netawatwas, the liberal chief, an additional grant of land extending a number of miles down the Tusca- rawas from the mouth of Stillwater. Rev. John Ettwein returned to his field of labor, but Rev. John George Jungman remained at Schonbrunn and labored there as a missionary with Rev. David Zeisberger, as did also, sometimes, Rev. John Heckewelder and others. Schonbrunn, before the year closed, contained more than sixty houses built of " squared tim- ber"-also a schoolhouse-besides huts and lodges. It was situated in the present township of Goshen, Tuscarawas County.

GNADENHUTTEN-1772.

Joshua, a Christian Indian, brought a party of Mohicans, on the 18th of September, 1772, to the Tuscarawas Valley, and on the 24th laid out a town on the west side of the river, four miles above Schonbrunn, calling it the " Upper Town." This location, however, was not satisfactory to Netawatwas, who induced a change to a place about eight iniles below Schonbrunn, on the east side of the Tuscarawas River, where, on the 9th of October, the town of Gnadenhutten (Tents of Grace) was laid out by Joshua and his colony of Mohicans from Friedensstadt. It was within the present township of Clay, Tuscarawas County. The first sermon was preached there by Rev. David Zeisberger, October 17, 1772. In 1773 Friedensstadt, on the Beaver, was abandoned, the population being transferred to Schönbrunn and Gnadenhütten, adding thereby consider- ably to their inhabitants. Rev. John Roth, the resident missionary at Friedensstadt, accompanied them, and remained at Gnadenhütten from April 24, 1773, until about the middle of August, when he removed to Schonbrunn. John Lewis Roth, who is generally believed to have been the first white child born within the limits of Ohio, had his birth at Gnadenhütten July 4, 1773, during the brief stay there of his parents, as above mentioned. During the latter part of this year, Rev. David Zeisberger, Rev. John Heckewelder, and Rev. John Roth were mission- aries at Schonbrunn, and Rev. John George Jungman and Rev. John Jacob Schmick at Gnadenhütten.

Rev. John Ettwein, who conducted the Indians from the Susquehanna to Schonbrunn, in the Tuscarawas Valley, in 1772, was born in the Schwartzwald, in Germany, in 1712. In 1754 he emigrated to America, and served the church both in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. In 1764, he became a member of the Mission Board, and was consecrated a Bishop in 1784. He stood at the head of the church in Pennsylvania until his death, which occurred at Bethlehem, in said State, January 2,

1802. It does not appear that he ever visited the West, except in 1772. He was a zealous, faithful, good man, and eminently useful during his long and eventful life.

Rev. John Roth, who conducted an Indian colony from the Susque- hanna Valley in 1772 to Friedensstadt, a Moravian village on the Beaver River, and who, the next year, went to the Tuscarawas Valley, was a native of Sarmund, a village in the Mark Brandenburg, Prussia, where he was born February 3, 1726. He settled in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in July, 1756, and three years thereafter (1759) he became a Moravian missionary. He entered into the married relation with Maria Agnes Pfingstag, at Bethlehem, on the 16th of August, 1770. As already stated, he, in June, 1772, accompanied some Christian Indians from the Sus- quehanna Valley to the west as far as Friedensstadt, where he remained until the next year, when he removed to Gnadenhutten, reaching that village April 24, 1773. In August of this year he removed to Schon- brunn, and remained there until after the breaking out of the Dunmore war in 1774, when he returned to Bethlehem, and was never again iden- tified with the Tuscarawas missions. Soon after his return to Pennsyl- vania he was called to serve the church at Mount Joy, and subsequently was Moravian minister at Emmaus, Hebron, and York, where he died July 22, 1791, and was buried at Bath, in said State. The son, John Lewis Roth, was educated at Nazareth Hall, being a member of the class of 1785, the first organized in that institution. He married, removed to Bath, where his father was buried, and died there on the 25th of Septem- ber, 1841. His mother died at Nazareth, Pennsylvania, on the 25th of February, 1805.

LICHTENAU-NEW SCHONBRUNN-SALEM.

Such was the degree of prosperity that had attended Schonbrunn and Gnadenhütten, that their joint population aggregated, at the close of the year 1775, upwards of five hundred. The establishment of a third mis- sion station in that valley was, therefore, taken into consideration early in the year 1776. Revs. David Zeisberger and John Heckewelder, with eight families, numbering thirty-five persons, with a view of building another Moravian town, encamped, on the 12th of April, 1776, on the site of the future village, two miles or more below the junction of the Tuscarawas and Walhonding Rivers (now Coshocton), on the east bank of the Muskingum River. A mission-house was soon built, which, until the erection of a chapel, served as a place of worship. The new town, called Lichtenau (Pasture of Light), was situated in the present town- ship of Tuscarawas, in Coshocton County. It had a rapid growth for several years, having had a considerable accession in April, 1777, from Schonbrunn, when, owing to a combination of causes, that hitherto pros- perous mission station was abandoned. High hopes of Lichtenau were cherished until early in 1779, when some hostile Wyandot and Mingo warriors, having made it a rendezvous and the starting-point for a new war-path to the Ohio River; and one or two of the surrounding tribes becoming more and more unfriendly, its abandonment was soon deter- mined upon, which was gradually accomplished. Rev. Wm. Edwards, one of the missionaries, in April, 1779, left Lichtenau and moved up the Tuscarawas River to Gnadenhutten. During the month of Decem- ber, 1779, Rev. David Zeisberger left with another colony, and passed up the Tuscarawas to a point a short distance above Schonbrunn, and commenced building a town, to which was given the name of New Schon- brunn. It was situated a mile or more below the present town of New Philadelphia, in what is now Goshen Township, Tuscarawas County. And in the spring of 1780, Rev. John Heckewelder, with all the Chris- tian Indians that remained at Lichtenau, left it and started the town of Salem, on the west bank of the Tuscarawas, about six miles below Gnadenhutten. Its site was in the present township of Salem, Tusca- rawas County, about sixteen miles below the county seat of said county. The chapel here was dedicated on the 22d of May, 1780, and in it Rev. John Heckewelder and Sarah Ohneberg, a mission teacher, were united in marriage July 4, 1780, and which was probably one of the first weddings of white people within the present limits of Ohio, Rev. Bernard Adam Grube, a veteran missionary, then temporarily in the West, being the officiating minister. He was born in 1715, near Erfurt, Germany, and died at Bethlehem in 1808, at the age of ninety-three years.

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HISTORY OF SHELBY COUNTY, OHIO.

Rev. Gottlob Senseman, a missionary from Pennsylvania, arrived dur- ing the year 1780, and was assigned to duty at New Schonbrunn. And during the autumn of this year, Rev. Michael Jung arrived, and became the assistant missionary at Gnadenhutten, Rev. William Edwards being the principal. Rev. David Zeisberger was superintendent of all the Tuscarawas Valley stations, and itinerated constantly from church to church.

THE PERILS OF THE MORAVIANS.

Unavoidable complications growing out of the Revolutionary War, as well as out of the border warfare between the white settlers east of the Ohio River and the Indian tribes west of it, and, incidentally, other causes, soon produced a condition of things unfavorable to their growth and success, and tended to render the Moravian settlements in the Tuscarawas Valley of quite uncertain duration. Their annals show that they were thus far anything but permanent, and were equally transitory afterwards, as their subsequent history clearly shows. Certainly the history of the Moravian mission in the Tuscarawas Valley well illus- trates the mutability of human affairs! They were the victims of cir- cumstances untoward in their nature, and in a great measure uncontrol- lable, and before which these mission stations soon succumbed, for a time at least. Their location in the then warlike state of affairs was exceed- ingly unfavorable to them. They were situated, unhappily for them, between the British post at Detroit and the American or Colonial mili- tary post at the "Forks of the Ohio," now Pittsburgh; and, on the other hand, these doomed villages were situated between the hostile Wyandots and other tribes on the Sandusky Plains, and in the valley of the San- dusky River, and the frontiersmen east of the Ohio River in Western Virginia and Pennsylvania. ' Between the British at Detroit and the Colonists at Pittsburgh a state of war existed, and had existed for years between the governments they respectively represented. So, also, there existed feelings of intense hostility between the savage Sandusky tribes and the white settlers east of the Ohio River. Being thus situated be- tween four hostile parties, it will be seen at a glance how difficult it was for the missionaries and their converts to maintain a position of strict neutrality towards all these respective combatants, and avoid all suspi- cion of aiding one or the other of those contending factions. As friends of peace, the Moravians were disposed, not only from principles and in- clination, but from motives of interest also, to maintain the position of neutrals between the aforesaid antagonistic parties; but such was their unfortunate location, and such the unfriendly circumstances by which they were surrounded, that suspicions of treachery towards one party or the others, seemed almost unavoidable, however well they maintained their attitude of neutrality. The combination of circumstances was such as to bring censure upon them, now by the British emissaries for favoring the cause of the Colonist, and then by the Colonists for favor- ing British interests; and again by the frontier settlers for favoring the Sandusky savages, and then the latter would charge treachery upon them for giving "aid and comfort" to the frontiersmen! Thus the exceeding perilousness of the condition of Moravian interests in the Tuscarawas Valley can be readily seen. The crisis came in the autumn of 1781.

THEIR CAPTURE AND REMOVAL TO SANDUSKY.

The missionaries were charged with being spies and having held trea- sonable correspondence with the Americans at Pittsburgh, and perhaps at some other points. Upon this charge the missionaries and all their Christian converts in the Tuscarawas Valley were arrested by Captain Matthew Elliott, a British emissary, who had under his command about three hundred hostile Indians. They, making no resistance, were made captives, September 11, 1781, and, by an overpowering force, compelled to leave their much loved homes, and take up the line of march for the Sandusky River, which they reached on the first day of October, after a journey of twenty days, of great privations and much suffering. The missionaries that were thus forcibly removed were Revs. Zeisberger, Senseman, and Jungman, of New Schonbrunn; Revs. Heckewelder and Jung, of Salem; and Rev. William Edwards, of Gnadenhutten. The point at which they were left to take care of themselves, their wives and children, and Indian captives, was on the banks of the Sandusky River,

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History of Shelby County, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 28

Author: R. Sutton & Co. Publication date: 1883 Publisher: Number of Pages: 427

Author: R. Sutton & Co.
Publication date: 1883
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 427