USA > Ohio > Shelby County > History of Shelby County, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 7
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The settlers at and in the vicinity of Wheeling, and along the Ohio River, were doubtless inveigled into the commission of hostile acts towards the Indians, by the inflammatory appeals to them by Connolly, whose influence over them was of vicious tendency. He was an ambitious intriguer, a mere instrument in the hands of Dunmore; and the war of 1774 is fairly traceable to a large extent, to his intrigues, exciting ap- peals, and machinations.
Brantz Mayer says that "the day after the declaration of war by Cre- sap and his men, under the warning authority of Connolly's message, some canoes filled with Indians were descried on the river, keeping under cover of the island, to screen themselves from view .. They were imme- diately pursued and overtaken fifteen miles below, at or near the mouth of Captina Creek, where a battle ensued, in which an Indian was taken prisoner, a few were wounded on both sides, and, perhaps, one slain. On examination, the canoes were found to contain a considerable quantity of ammunition and warlike stores, showing that they were 'on the war- path' in earnest." Captain Cresap is generally supposed to have com- manded the pursuing party, but his biographer, Rev. John J. Jacob,
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emphatically declares that he was not present. This affair occurred April 27th.
On the 30th of April, a force of twenty or thirty men, led by Captain Daniel Greathouse, went up the Ohio River to the mouth of Yellow Creek, above the present city of Steubenville, and there, accompanied by circumstances of great perfidy and atrocity, murdered ten Indians, some of whom were the kindred of Logan, the celebrated Mingo chief. This act was the more dastardly because committed against men, women,. and children who were known to cherish no hostile purposes toward the whites! After these occurrences, it was manifest to the most hopeful friends of peace that an Indian war was inevitable! As might have been anticipated, the savages at once furiously took the war-path! Parties of them, with murder in their hearts, scoured the country east of the Ohio River, and made hostile raids into the settlements, and laid them waste! Men, women, and children were murdered and scalped ; the brains of infants were dashed out against the trees, and their bodies were left exposed, to be devoured by birds of prey and by the wild beasts of the forest ! Terror, gloom, excitement, consternation pervaded all the border settlements !
Upon the representations made to Governor Dunmore of outrages that clearly indicated a hostile disposition of the Indians toward the whites and a determination to make war upon them, that functionary promptly commissioned Colonel Angus McDonald, and authorized him to organize the settlers on the Youghiogheny and Monongahela rivers for the de- fence of the frontiers.
Lord Dunmore, knowing Michael Cresap to be a man of courage, en- ergy, and force of character, personally tendered him a captain's commis- sion, with a view to the immediate enlistment of a force of co-operation with the troops rapidly organizing by McDonald, west of the Alleghenies. Captain Cresap accepted the commission, and entered upon his duties promptly. Such was his popularity, that more than the required com- plement of men were recruited in a very short time, and at once marched to join the command of McDonald, the ranking officer of the expedition. The combined forces, numbering four hundred men, after a dreary march through the wilderness, rendezvoused at Wheeling, some time in June. The invasion of the country of the Ohio Indians was their pur- pose. In pursuance of their object, they went down the Ohio in boats and canoes to the mouth of the Captina Creek, and from thence they pursued their march to the Indian towns at and near the mouth of the Wakatomika Creek (now Dresden), a point about equidistant from the present city of Zanesville and the town of Coshocton, both on the Mus- kingum River, Jonathan Zane being the chief pilot of the expedition.
About six miles from Wakatomika, a force of forty or fifty Indians, lying in ambush, gave a skirmish, in which two of McDonald's men were killed, and eight or nine wounded, while the Indians lost one or more in killed, and several wounded. When McDonald arrived at the chief Wakatomika town, he found it evacuated, and the whole Indian force were in ambuscade a short distance from it, which being discovered, the Indians sued for peace. A march to the next village, a mile above the first, was effected, and a small skirmish ensued, in which some blood was shed on both sides. The result was the burning of the towns, and the destruction of their corn-fields. There was the usual perfidy on the part of the Indians, and really nothing substantial was accomplished, when the expedition returned to Wheeling, taking with them three chiefs as captives, or hostages, who were sent to Williamsburg, the seat of the colonial government of Virginia. This expedition was designed only to give temporary protection to the frontier settlers, and was preliminary to the Dunmore expedition to the Pickaway Plains, or " Old Chillicothe" towns, near the Scioto, later in the year.
Colonel Angus McDonald was of Scotch parentage, if he was not him- self a native of the Highlands of Scotland. He lived near Winchester, Frederick County, Virginia, upon, or near, to the possessions early ac- quired in "the valley," and which was then, and is still, known as " Glengary," named in honor of the ancestral clan to which the ancient McDonalds belonged in the Highlands of Scotland. Some of Colonel McDonald's descendants, in the fourth generation, are still living near to, or upon, these domains of the earlier McDonalds.
LORD DUNMORE'S WAR.
The summer and early autumn of 1774 resounded with the din of prep- aration of war, in various portions of Virginia, having in view the raising of armies, ostensibly for the purpose of subjugating the hostile Ohio Indians. Governor Dunmore organized an army numbering about fif- teen hundred men, in the northern counties, principally in Frederick, Hampshire, Berkley, and Dunmore (now Shenandoah), which assembled on the banks of the Ohio River, above Wheeling; while, at the same time, by arrangement, General Andrew Lewis raised over a thousand men in the southern counties, for the same purpose, which rendezvoused at Camp Union, on the Greenbriar River. The two armies were to form a junction at the mouth of the Kanawha. Bancroft says " these armies were composed of noble Virginians, who braved danger at the call of a royal governor, and poured out their blood to win the victory for western civilization." Three companies that served in the MeDonald expedition to the Muskingum, immediately upon their return in July, entered the army of Lord Dunmore, and formed a part of the right wing thereof, which was directly under his immediate command. They were com- manded respectively by Captain Michael Cresap, Captain James Wood, and by Captain Daniel Morgan, who all subsequently figured as officers in our Revolutionary war, the last named being the distinguished Gen- eral Morgan of heroic fame, while Captain James Wood reached high military and civil positions, having served as governor of Virginia from 1796 to 1799. Among others of the Dunmore army who afterwards attained to more or less distinction as military commanders, and whose names, to the present time, are " household words" in the West, were Colonel William Crawford, General Simon Kenton, General John Gibson, and General George Rogers Clark. Among those connected with the left wing of the Dunmore army, who were then, or subsequently became, hon- orably identified with the history of our country, were its gallant com- mander, General Andrew Lewis; General Isaac Shelby, a lieutenant then, afterwards the " hero of King's Mountain;" Colonel Charles Lewis, who gave up his life for his country on the battle-field of Point Pleasant ; also, Hon. Andrew Moore, who served Virginia many years in both branches of our national legislature, with honor to himself and credit to his State.
The right wing of the Dunmore army reached the Ohio River, by way of " Potomac Gap," about the first of October; and the left wing, under command of General Lewis, encamped at the mouth of the Kanawha River near the same time, where he soon received a dispatch from Lord Dunmore changing the place of the junction of the two wings of his army to the vicinity of the Indian towns on the Scioto, near the " Picka- way Plains." Meanwhile, Dunmore, with his command, went down the Ohio to the mouth of the Hockhocking River, and there built " Fort Gower." From thence he marched his army up said river, through the territory that now constitutes the counties of Athens, Hocking, Fair- field, and portions of Pickaway, and encamped on Sippo Creek, a trib- utary of the Scioto, within a few miles of the Shawanese towns, where he erected some entrenchments, naming his encampment " Camp Char- lotte."
General Lewis intended to start with his command towards the Indian towns on the Scioto on the 10th of October, to join Governor Dunmore, but at sunrise on that day he was unexpectedly attacked by about one thousand chosen warriors, under the command of Cornstalk, the cele- brated Shawanese chief, who had rallied them at the old Chillicothe town, on the Scioto, near the " Pickaway Plains," to meet the army of General Lewis, and give them battle before the two corps could effect a union. The battle lasted all day, and terminated with the repulse of Cornstalk's warriors, with great slaughter on both sides. It has been generally characterized by historians as "one of the most sanguinary and best fought battles in the annals of Indian warfare in the west." Seventy-five officers and men of Lewis's army were killed, and one hun- dred and forty were wounded. The loss was, probably, equally as great on the part of the Indians, who retreated during the night.
General Lewis was reinforced to the extent of three hundred men, soon after the battle, and then started upon his march of eighty miles, through the wilderness, for the Indian towns on the Scioto, arriving within four miles of " Camp Charlotte" on the 24th of October. His
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HISTORY OF SHELBY COUNTY, OHIO.
encampment, which was named Camp Lewis, was situated on Congo Creek, a tributary of Sippo Creek, near the southern termination of the "Pickaway Plains," and within a short distance of the " Old Chillicothe „town."
The principal chiefs of the Indians on the Scioto met Lord Dunmore at "Camp Charlotte," and agreed with him upon the terms of a treaty. Cornstalk, who had been defeated by General Lewis, was present, and, being satisfied of the futility of any further struggle, was specially anx- ious to make peace, and readily obtained the assent of the chiefs present to it. The Mingoes were not a party to the treaty, but remained rebel- lious; whereupon Captain Crawford was sent, with a small force, against one of their towns on the Scioto, which they destroyed, and took a num- ber of prisoners, who were not released until the next year. And it is a noteworthy fact, too, that Logan, the great Mingo chief, would not attend the council at " Camp Charlotte." He could not be prevailed upon to appear, and in any way make himself a party to the treaty. Dunmore greatly desired his attendance and acquiescence, at least, if he could not secure his approval of the terms of the treaty. To this end he sent Col- onel John Gibson as a messenger to the old Chillicothe town, across the Scioto, where Logan usually spent his time when not on " the war-path," to ascertain the reasons for his absence, and, if possible, to secure his presence.
Logan was found, but he was in a sullen mood. At length, becoming somewhat mollified under the gentle and persuasive manipulations of Gibson, and from the effects of freely administered "fire-water," he moved from the wigwam in which this preliminary interview was held, and, beckoning Dunmore's messenger to follow, "he went into a solitary thicket near by, where, sitting down on a log, he burst into tears, and uttered some sentences of impassioned eloquence, charging the murder of his kindred upon Captain Michael Cresap." Those utterances of Logan were committed to paper by Colonel Gibson immediately on his return to "Camp Charlotte," and probably read in the council and in the pres- ence of the army. And this is substantially the history of the famous speech of Logan, until it appeared in the Virginia Gazette, of date Febru- ary 4, 1775, which was published in the city of Williamsburg, the then seat of government of the colony of Virginia. Its publication was, doubt- less, procured by Dunmore himself. It was neither a speech, an address, a message, nor a promise to assent to, or comply with, the provisions of a treaty, but simply the wild, excited, passionate utterances of a blood-stained savage, given as near as remembered by Colonel Gibson, and which con- sisted, in part, of slanderous allegations, based on misinformation, against Captain Michael Cresap-charges known by every officer at " Camp Charlotte" to be unfounded-allegations that have been persist- ently propagated to the present time, to the detriment of the fair fame and memory of an injured patriot, a valuable, enterprising, adventurous pioneer on the western frontiers, and a brave soldier and gallant officer in the Revolutionary army, who died a patriot's death while in the service of his country !
Colonel Gibson, knowing that Captain Cresap had not participated in any way in the murder of Logan's kindred at Yellow Creek, immediately after the close of the very spirited recital of his injuries, corrected Lo- gan's impressions as to Cresap's guilt, but the half frantic savage per- sisted in the false charge he had made, or at least declined to withdraw it, and Colonel Gibson felt bound to put Logan's words on paper, as near as he could just as they were spoken. Soon after Logan's speech, as it was called, was published in Williamsburg, it was republished in New York and elsewhere, and its further republication by Thomas Jefferson, in his "Notes on Virginia," in 1784, as a specimen of aboriginal elo- quence, gave it still greater currency, and, tacitly, an apparent indorse- ment of the charge it contained against Captain Cresap. But Mr. Jeffer- son published it without any reference to the truth or falsity of said charge, but to disprove the statements of Buffon and Raynal, who alleged the inferiority of Americans, and charged that there was a natural tend- ency to physical, mental, and moral degeneracy in America !
Colonel (afterwards General) Gibson was a man of talents, and abund- antly capable of executing the agency attributed to him in this matter. He enjoyed the confidence of General Washington, who, in 1781, intrusted him with the command of the " Western Military Department." General Gibson was Secretary of Indiana Territory, and sometimes acting 5
Governor, from 1800 to 1813, and held other positions of honor. He died near Pittsburgh, in 1822. Most of the foregoing facts are obtained from the sworn deposition of General Gibson himself, and from the cor- roborative statements of General George Rogers Clark, Colonel Benja- min Wilson, Luther Martin, Esq., Judge John B. Gibson, and other gentlemen distinguished for talents an'd veracity.
During the summer of 1774 Logan acted the part of a murderous de- mon! He was a cruel, vindictive, bloody-handed savage! He took thirty scalps and some prisoners during the six months that intervened between the time of the unjustifiable, wanton, unprovoked murder of his friends at Yellow Creek, and his interview with Colonel Gibson! He had had his revenge! To quote his own vigorous language, "he had fully glutted his vengeance!" And notwithstanding he had indulged his savage pro- pensities, even to satiety one would suppose, he nevertheless subsequently engaged in other hostile crusades against the frontiersmen, one of these being the murderous expedition into Kentucky which resulted in the capture of Ruddell's and Martin's Stations, and the taking of many pri- soners. He also went on a similar mission to the Holston River settle- ments, in 1779. Logan was a savage, but had been friendly to the whites. After the brutal murder of his friends, the frontiersmen east of the Ohio River, and the red men west of it, assumed an attitude of intense hostility towards each other, the latter embracing every oppor- tunity to rob, capture, and murder the former, and those outrages were met by the white settlers in a determined spirit of retaliation and revenge. The conduct of Logan, therefore, was not surprising. The fact that he was a savage is the best plea that can be offered in mitigation of his enormities. And he had great provocation, too!
Logan, after the murder of his kindred and friends, in 1774, gave way, in a great measure, to intemperance and vindictiveness, and became a sullen, harsh, cruel, drunken vagabond. His acts of barbarity finally brought him to a violent death on the southern shore of Lake Erie, between Sandusky Bay and Detroit, in 1780, at the hands of one of his own race !
Colonel Michael Cresap, upon the breaking out of the Revolutionary war, in 1775, raised a company of volunteers at the call of the Maryland Delegates in Congress, and became their commander. He promptly marched to Boston, where he joined the Continental army of General Washington. His health, however, soon failed, and he attempted to return to his home in Maryland, but when, on the 12th of October, he reached New York, he found himself too feeble to proceed farther. Daily declining, he died October 18, 1775, in the thirty-third year of his age, and was buried the day after his death, with military honors, in Trinity churchyard. A widowed wife and four children survived him. Thus died, in early manhood, the gallant soldier, the pure patriot, the cruelly defamed pioneer, the meritorious Revolutionary officer, the greatly ma- ligned and unjustly assailed Captain Michael Cresap !
Lord Dunmore, after negotiating with the Indians for peace, and for the restoration of prisoners and stolen property, returned to Virginia, pursuing very nearly the route by which he came, leaving a hundred men at the mouth of the Kanawha, and a small force at " Fort Fincastle," afterwards called " Fort Henry" (now Wheeling); also a limited number of men at the " Forks of the Ohio," for the protection of the frontier settlements. Fort Henry was named in honor of Patrick Henry, who became Governor of the colony of Virginia as the successor of Lord Dunmore, immediately after the latter's espousal of the cause of the mother country against the colonies, and of his ignominious flight from Williamsburgh, in June, 1775, and taking refuge on board of a British man-of-war.
It may be recorded to the honor of Dunmore's officers that they were loyal to the colonies and patriotic to the core, which they made manifest when, at " Fort Gower," at the mouth of the Hockhocking, while on their homeward march, they resolved, in view of the approaching rupture with England, "that they would exert every power within them for the defence of American liberty, and for the support of America's just rights and privileges."
ORGANIZATION OF ILLINOIS COUNTY.
For the purpose of more effectually organizing civil government north- west of the Ohio River, after the conquest of the country by Col. George
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HISTORY OF SHELBY COUNTY, OHIO.
Rogers Clark, the House of Burgesses of Virginia, in October, 1778, erected the county of Illinois, out of the western part of Botetourt County, which had been established in 1769. Illinois County was bounded on the east by Pennsylvania, on the southeast and south by the Ohio River, on the west by the Mississippi River, and on the north by the northern lakes, thus making the territory that now constitutes the State of Ohio an integral portion of it. John Todd, Esq., was appointed County Lieu- tenant and Civil Commandant of Illinois County. He was killed in the battle of Blue Licks, August 18, 1782, and was succeeded by Timothy de Montbrun. The Moravian missionaries on the Tuscarawas, a few scores of Indian traders, and a small number of French settlers on the Maumee, made the sum total of white men at that time in what is now Obio.
EXPEDITION OF GEN. MC INTOSH.
Gen. Lachlin McIntosh, commander of the Western Military Depart- ment, made an expedition, in 1778, with discretionary powers, from "Fort Pitt" to the Tuscarawas, with about one thousand men, and there erected Fort Laurens, near the present town of Bolivar, in Tuscarawas County. He garrisoned it with one hundred and fifty men, under com- mand of Col. John Gibson, and then returned to " Fort Pitt."
The original purpose was to march his army to Detroit, or at least as far as the Sandusky Indian towns, but various causes prevented, and the campaign was comparatively fruitless. Not receiving reinforcements as expected, and probably lacking in energy, and having no special capacity for Indian warfare, his expedition was a failure, and he resigned his command of the " Western Military Department" in February, 1779.
General McIntosh was a Scotchman, born in 1727. His father's fam- ily, himself included, came with General Oglethorpe to Georgia in 1736; became Colonel of the First Georgia Regiment in the early part of the Revolutionary war; was soon made a Brigadier-General ; killed Hon. Button Gwinnett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, in a duel fought in 1777; commanded the Western army in 1778-79; was captured at Charleston, South Carolina, May 12, 1780 ; became a member of Con- gress in 1784, and an Indian Commissioner in 1785, and died in Savan- nah, Georgia, in 1806.
ERECTION OF FORT LAURENS IN 1778.
Fort Laurens (named in honor of the then President of the Continental Congress, Henry Laurens) was the first parapet and stockade fort built within the present limits of Ohio; Fort Gower, and others previously constructed, being of a less substantial character. Disasters attended it from the beginning. The Indians stole their horses, and drew the garrison into several ambuscades, killing fourteen men at one time, and eleven at another, besides capturing a number also. Eight hundred warriors invested it at one time, and kept up the siege for six weeks. The provisions grew short, and when supplies from " Fort Pitt" had arrived within a hundred yards of the fort, the garrison, in their joyous- ness, fired a general salute with musketry, which so frightened the loaded pack-horses as to produce a general stampede through the woods, scat- tering the provisions in every direction, so that most of the much-needed supplies were lost. Although it was regarded very desirable, for vari- ous military reasons, to have a garrisoned fort and depot of supplies at a point about equidistant from the forts on the Ohio River and the hostile Indians on the Sandusky Plains, yet so disastrous had been the fate of Fort Laurens, on the Tuscarawas River, that it was abandoned in Au- gust, 1779. Fifty years ago the Ohio Canal was cut through it, and but little remains to show where this, the first of our military earth works erected by the white race, stood. Though this stockade was constructed less than a hundred years ago, it is now numbered among "the things that were, but are not !"
EXPEDITION OF COL. JOHN BOWMAN.
In July, 1779, Colonel John Bowman, with a hundred and sixty Ken- tuckians, marched against some Shawanese Indian towns situated on the Little Miami River, within the present limits of Greene County. It was in retaliation for atrocities then recently committed in Kentucky. The troops were divided, a portion of them being commanded by Colonel Benjamin Logan. They rendezvoused at the mouth of the Licking,
opposite the present city of Cincinnati, from whence, at the end of the second night, they reached the vicinity of one of the towns undiscovered. Soon fighting ensued, but, says Albach, "from some unexpected cause, there was no efficient cooperation between the two wings of the Kentucky army, and, consequently, but little success." The town was destroyed, and some booty, including one hundred and sixty horses, was taken. There was gallant fighting on both sides, nine men of Colonel Bowman's army being killed, and probably as many, or more, on the part of the Shawanese. Blackfish, one of their chiefs, was wounded.
The Indians were, however, on this occasion, in no degree daunted or crippled, and made a vigorous pursuit of the Kentuckians, frequently attacking them during the first day's retreat, which was commenced at about ten o'clock. The retreating army recrossed the Ohio at the mouth of the Little Miami, and then dispersed to their homes.
Colonel Logan was of the Bouquet and Dunmore expeditions, and he, as well as Colonel Bowman, have had honorable mention, in Western history, of their meritorious conduct.
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