USA > Ohio > Mercer County > History of Van Wert and Mercer counties, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 39
USA > Ohio > Van Wert County > History of Van Wert and Mercer counties, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 39
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On September 12 Gen. Harrison reached the fort and the enemy fled at his approach and abandoned all their positions, which they had kept closely blockaded for many days. Fort Wayne being relieved, General Harrison destroyed the Indian towns on the Wabash, and at Elk Harbor on the waters of Lake Michigan, fifty miles distant.
September 17. The President then appointed Gen. Harrison to the command of the Northwest Army and the volunteers and militia of Kentucky and Ohio, numbering three thousand, making the whole army to consist of about ten thousand soldiers.
On September 19 General Harrison assumed command and gave the command of the Kentucky troops to Gen. Winchester. He then set out for St. Marys, where he arrived on the 20th and directed a large convoy to meet the detachment of Gen. Winchester at the site of okt Fort Defiance, at the mouth of Auglaize River.
On September 21 it became necessary to open a road from St. Marys to Fort Defiance by way of Tawa town and build a block-house between the two stations -the block-house to be of the largest size of such buildings, and not less than twenty five feet on the lower story.
The troops were in winter quarters at several posts, and nothing of
great interest occurred until the 22d January, 1813, when the massacre at the River Raisin occurred. Let us glance at the facts. Gen. Har- rison ordered Gen. Winchester to fall back to Fort Jennings, as Terum- seh was in his vicinity with a large force of British and Indian -. supposed to be near three thousand, and to be on the alert. Instead of obeying this order Gen. Winchester sent Col. Lewis with six hundred men to protect the farms. Col. Lewis exceeded his orders and pushed forward to Frenchtown; eighteen miles from Malden. He there attached and routed the British and Indian forces, and drove them two miles at the point of the bayonet.
The British hearing of this, sent large reinforcements from Malden and commenced a furious assault, by which Gen. Winchester's line was broken and scattered. MeAfee states, in speaking of the Indians, "that their chiefs held a council in which they soon determined to kill all the wounded who were unable to march, in revenge for the warriors they had lost in the battle at Frenchtown. Soon afterwards they began to yell, and to exhibit in their frantic rage the most diabolical dispositions. They began first to plunder the houses of the inhabitants, and then broke into those where the wounded prisoners were lying, some of whom they abused and stripped of their clothes and blankets, and then toma- hawked them without mercy. Some who were not in houses were killed and thrown into the flames, while others were tomahawked, inhumanly mangled, and left in the streets and highways.
The Americans in this sad affair lost upwards of two hundred and ninety in killed, massacred, and missing-only thirty-three escaped to the Rapids. The British took five hundred and forty-seven prisoners, and the Indians about forty-five. The loss of the British and Indians was between three and four hundred. Their whole force in the battle was about two thousand, one-half regulars and Canadians, commanded by Cols. Proctor and St. George; the other composed of Indians, com- manded by Round Head and Walk-in-the-Water. Tecumseh was not present, being on the Wabash, collecting the warriors in that quarter.
February 1, 1813. Gen. Winchester's army being reinforced by Gen. Leftwich's briga le, increased the number to eighteen hundred, but Gen. Harrison deemed it advisable to go into winter quarters and selected a good position on the south side of the river Maumee and called it Fort Meigs.
Nothing of importance ocenrred until the 2Sth of April, when the British troops encamped at the old station on the Maumee, two miles below Fort Meigs. Gen. Proctor with his six hundred regulars, eight hundred Canadian militia, and eighteen hundred Indians, kept up a con- tinued fire for three days against General Harrison's important works. During the night of the third day Gen. Clay approached Gen. Harrison with twelve hundred Kentuckians. The whole force was then concen- trated, charged the enemy, driving them from their batteries, spiking their cannon, and capturing forty-one prisoners, including one officer. The fighting lasted but forty-five minutes, during which time one huu- dred and eighty men were killed and wounded.
In less than two months the British and Indians under Tecumseh to the number of five thousand, threatened a second attack on Fort Meigs, and on the Ist of August Proctor summoned the post to surrender, at the same time informing Croghan that if he did not yield, the fort would be stormed and the occupants be tomahawked and scalped. Ensign Shipp met officer Dickson, who bore the summons, and immediately replied " that when the fort was taken there would be none left to massacre."
Gen. Harrison, who was at Fort Stephenson, situated at Lower San- du-ky, from which point he could protect either Upper Sandusky or Fort Meigs, being only nine miles distant, sent a message to Col. Croghan, who was in command of the fort, to evacuate at once ; but the message did not arrive until after the fort was surrounded. Croghan, however, re- turned for answer, " We are determined to maintain the place, and by Heaven, we can!" The British made the attack on the first day, but one hundred and sixty of the soldiers were killed and Proctor and his allies retreated. For this noble act Congress made Col. Croghan a Brig adier-General.
The second siege of Fort Meigs was abandoned by Proctor, who com- manded an army of two thousand British and five hundred Intians; soon afterwards concentrated their forces at Malden, their principal
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stronghold in Upper Canada. After their retreat Gen. Harrison com- menced preparations for carrying the war into their own country, and formed the bold project of capturing Malden and the conquest of Upper Canada.
On July 20, 1813, Gen. Harrison was informed that the naval arma- ment, which had been built under Commodore Perry's supervision, was prepared to co-operate with him in the reduction of Malden. With a view to this he wrote to Governor Shelby of Kentucky, earnestly soliciting a body of militia, not less than four hundred nor more than two thousand, and requesting that he would accompany them in person. Kentucky immediately responded to the call, and Gov. Shelby took command of fifteen hundred men, among which was Col. R. M. Johnson's regiment of mounted men.
August 2. Com. Perry proceeded to Sandusky to receive orders from Harrison; who commanded him to advance at once to Malden and. to bring the enemy to battle, while Gen. Harrison placed the army in a state for instant embarkation.
On the 10th of September, 1813, Com. Oliver Hazard Perry wrote the following letter to Gen. Harrison : "We have met the enemy and they are ours-two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and a sloop."
Gen. Harrison gave immediate orders to his soldiers to embark, and also the transportation of provisions, military stores, etc., to the margin . of the lake, which was commenced, and from the 16th to the 24th of September, the troops and provisions were all transported to the place of rendezvous at Put in Bay, and on the 24th he issued his order for the embarkation of the army, and, in the language of a noble-hearted officer, said to his soldiers, " Remember the River Raisin ; but remember it only whilst victory is suspended. The revenge of a soldier cannot be gratified on a fallen soldier."
On the 27th the army embarked, and landed in Canada eager to en- counter the enemy, but no enemy could be found! Malden was in ruins! The fort and works were a mass of smouldering ashes ! !!
McAfee in his history of the war states that Tecumseh addressed Proctor in this language: " Father, we see you are drawing back, and we are sorry to see our father doing so without seeing the enemy. We must compare our father's conduct to a fat dog, that carries its tail upon its back, but when affrighted drops it between its legs and runs away."
The next important event in the life of Gen. Harrison was the battle of the Thames at the Moravian towns on October 5. 1813, with the British and Indians under Proctor with his veterans, and Tecumseh with his two thousand warriors. Gen. Harrison gave them battle by attacking their front and rear, when the whole army was captured and the field won. The Americans lost thirty killed and wounded, while their foes lost six hundred and forty-five, including twenty-five officers; among the num- ber the celebrated Indian chief Tecumseh. Tecumseh fell respected by his enemies as a great and magnanimous chief. He had been in almost every engagement with the whites since Gen. Harmer's defeat in 1791. and at his death scarcely exceeded forty years of age. The stamp of greatness from the hand of nature he had received, and had his lot been cast in a different state of society, he would have ranked as one of the most distinguished individuals of his day.
This victory destroyed the force of the enemy in Upper Canada and put an end to the war in the Northwestern Territory, and on the 11th day of May, 1814. Gen. Harrison resigned his position as commander- in-chief of the Western forces. In the year 1816 he was triumphantly elected by the people of Ohio to fill a seat in Congress in place of Hon. John McLean, who had resigned. He was presented with a gold medal by Congress for his services. At the expiration of his services in Con- gress, in 1819, he was elected by the people of Ohio to the State Senate. In 1824 he was elected to the United States Senate by the Legislature of Ohio. In 1826 he was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Columbia. After his return he set- tled at North Bend on the Ohio River sixteen miles below the city of Cincinnati, O., and in November, 1840, he was called from his retirement to the Presidency of the United States, and was inaugurated March 4, 1841. He did not live to fulfil the high hopes centred upon him by the people, for on the 4th of April, 1841, one month after his inauguration, he laid down the burdens of the past and the responsibilities of the pres- ent, and, taking these for a couch, way embraced by the dreamless sleep of death.
1 !
DEATH OF COL. JOHN JOHNSTON.
Another of our carly settlers and pioneer citizens has departed this life, a man who was one of the prominent landmarks of the past, and whose life shed lustre upon the noble name of the pioneer.
A telegraphic dispatch received from Washington yesterday announced the death of the venerable Col. John Johnston. He was found dead on his bed at the United States Hotel in that city yesterday morning. We are not as yet informed of the cause of his sudden demise. He had reached the remarkable age of 86 years.
Col. John Johnston was born in the year 1775, and was educated and passed his boyhood in the State of Pennsylvania .* He came to the West in 1793 as an attache to the quartermaster's department of Gen. Wayne's army. When he first landed upon the site of this city it con- sisted of a few log cabins near Fort Washington. The boundless west was an almost broken wilderness, inhabited by wild beasts and Indians, with a few scattering settlements of whites.
In the winter of 1794-5 he was made a Mason at Bourbon Court House, now Paris, Kentucky, in a lodge working under the authority of the Grand Lodge of Virginia, of which Washington was a member. Soon after he returned to Philadelphia, and was for some years in the employ of the government in the War Office. He frequently saw the Father of his country in the lodge-room and at other places, and heard " Washington's farewell address" to his countrymen.
As secretary of a lodge in Philadelphia he marched in procession and participated in the funeral ceremonies in honor of the memory of the departed Patriot in the winter of 1800. At his death Co !. Johnston was a member of Me Millan Lodge of this city.
In the year 1801 he was appointed United States Agent at Fort Wayne. He was afterwards appointed Indian agent, which post he held for the extraordinary period of twenty-eight years, a striking evidence of the confidence reposed in him by the various administrations, and which divested their action of any party considerations. His station was at Piqua. Millions of money passed through his hands, every dollar of which was strictly accounted for.
The ancestors of the deceased were of the Episcopal Church, and he, together with the Rev. Intrepid Morse, of Steubenville, and the Rev. Samuel Johnston, of Cincinnati, organized the diocese of that church in Ohio. He was one of the original trustees of Kenyon College. Leaving the Indian ageney in 1828 he was afterwards appointed a Canal Com- missioner with Alfred Kelly, Gen. Bearsley, M. T. Williams and others,
He made the last treaty with the Wyandotte Indians in the years 1841-42 for their reservation, after which they were removed west of the Mississippi. The Senate hesitated to confirm the treaty, as he had. with . his characteristic love of justice, allowed the Indians full value for their land, instead of taking advantage of their ignorance, as is too often done. Thus the last tribe of Indians were removed from the State.
His object in visiting Washington recently was to urge a claim amount- ing to about $15.000, due him for services as Indian agent. He was throughout his long intercourse with the Indians a great favorite with them, and exerted a decisive influence in inducing a number of tribes to aid the Americans instead of the British in the war of 1812.
Col. Johnston was the oldest living subscriber to the Cincinnati Gazette. having commenced taking it as nearly as he could estimate, about sixty. six years ago, aud continued without interruption to his death. He never changed his locality, even for a brief period, without ordering his paper changed, so he would receive it without interruption. It had been his never-failing companion throughout a long and chequered career, and he felt all the attachment for it that he would for a near and dear friend of his early years. He entertained the same feeling for the Na- tional Intelligencer, which he had taken about sixty years. Both were indissolubly linked with the hallowed names of a multitudinons array of noble compeers who had gone before him, and a countless throng of glorious recollections, embracing the history of a nation.
In politics Col. Johnston was moderate and conservative, and during the recent canvass was a warm friend and advocate of John Bell for the Presidency.
. In his own life he says : " My early years were spent at Carlisle, Pennsylva nia, in the mercantile establishment of Judge John Creigh.
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HISTORY OF VAN WERT AND MERCER COUNTIES, OHIO.
Our old and esteemed friend, John D. JJones, Esq., married one of Col. Johnston's daughters, and for many years he has been in the habit of dividing his time, as the inclination might prompt him, between his rela- tives and friends here, and in Piqua and Dayton. Most of our city readers were doubtless familiar with his tall, commanding, and military looking form, so often seen promenading our streets, still unbent with the weight of more than fourscore years, and that fine pleasing and be- nevolent face that so prepossessed every one who saw it.
He was for a time President of the Historical Society of Ohio, and took a lively interest and active part in the forming of the Pioneer Asso- ciation of this city, of which he also served as President for one year, and contributed many valuable and interesting reminiscences.
His remains will probably be taken to Piqua for interment. Sojourn- ing temporarily in the capital of the nation, during the perilous times that are now upon us, it may well be imagined how deep and powerful the solicitude felt by the venerable and pure patriot for his beloved coun- try. If that country is to be rent in twain, he died none too soon-but we would that he had lived to see, as we fondly trusted he would, its alienated parts united once more in the bonds of fraternal peace and a common brotherhood.
He was one of the companions of the immortal Daniel Boone .- C'in- cinnati Daily Gazelle, Tuesday, Feb. 19, 1861.
STEPHEN JOHNSTON
Was a brother of Col. John Johnston, and is the father of Stephen John- ston, Attorney-at-Law, and resides in Piqua, Ohio. He was a candidate for the Presidency of the United States in November, Is80.
His father was a clerk in the United States factory store which had been erected near the fort, some time subsequent to the erection of Fort Wayne in 1794, for the purpose of supplying the Indians with agricul- tural implements.
History tells us that Mr. Stephen Johnston feeling very solicitous about the safety of his wife, who had been sent to the frontier in a deli- cate condition, accompanied by Peter Oliver and a discharged militia man named John Mangen, attempted to elude the vigilance of the In- dians, and visit the place of her abode. They left at 10 o'clock at night. Stephen Johnston was fired upon by six Indians and instantly killed in sight of the fort. Before the Indians could reload their pieces the other two men made good their retreat to the fort, and for a reward of twenty dollars an Indian was induced to bring in the body of Mr. Johnston.
JOHN CHAPMAN.
Among the pioneers of this section must be mentioned John Chap- man, more popularly known as "Johnny Appleseed," who traversed this whole region propagating his peculiar ideas and planting nurseries along his path. From Pennsylvania he entered Ohio, and planted those nurs- eries which became the parent stock of the orchards of the pioneers. Being of poor parentage and ushered in o life in the midst of the agita- tions and vicissitudes attending the revolutionary period, he obtained only sufficient education to enable him to read and write. Religiously inclined, he at an early age embraced the doctrine of Emanuel Sweden- borg, to which he adhered throughout his life. His benevolence was unbounded. He generally went bare-headed; but if he wore a hat or pair of shoes and saw any person whom he thought needed them, he would take them off and give them to that person. Miss Rosella Rice of Perryville, Ashland County, O., has given the following pen account of this peculiar man, he being a frequent visitor at her father's house.
"No one knows why Johnny was so eccentric; some people thought he had been crossed in love, and others that his passion for growing fruit trees and planting orchards in those early and perilous times had absorbed all the tender and domestic feelings natural to mankind. An old uncle of ours tells us the first time he ever saw Johnny was in 1806, in Jefferson County, O. He had two canoes lashed together, and was taking a lot of apple seeds down the Ohio River. About that time he planted sixteen bushels of seed on one acre of that grand old farm on the Walhouding River, known as the Butler farm. All up and down the Ohio and Muskingum, and their then wild and pretty tributaries did 16
poor Johnny glide along, alone, with his rich freight of seeds, stopping here and there to plant nurseries. He always selected rich, secluded spots of ground. One of them we remember now, and even still it is picturesque, beautiful, and primal. He cleared the ground himself, a quiet nook over which the tall sycamores reached out their long arms as if for protection. Those who are nurserymen now, should compare their facilities with those of poor Johnny going about with a load in a canoe, and, when occasion demanded, with a great load on his back To those who could afford to buy, he always sold on very fair terins. To those
John Chapman.
who couldn't he always gave or made some accommodating trade, or took a note, payable-some time-and rarely did that time ever come. Among his many eccentricities, was one of braving pain like an un- daunted Indian warrior. He gloried in suffering. Very often he would thrust pins and needles into his flesh without a tremor or a quiver; and if he had a cut or a sore, the first thing he did was to sear it with a hot iron and then treat it as a burn. He hardly ever wore shoes except in winter; but if travelling in summer time and the roads hurt his feet, he would wear sandals and a big hat that he made himself with one side very large and wide, and bent down to keep the heat from his face. No matter how oddly he was dressed or how funny he looked, we children never langhed at him, because our parents all loved and revered him as a good old man, a friend and benefactor. Almost the first thing he would do when he entered a house and was weary, was to lie down on the floor, with his knapsack for a pillow, and his head towards the light of the door or window, when he would say: 'Will you have some fresh news right from heaven ?' and carefully taking out his oldl, worn books, a Testament and two or three others, the exponent of the beautiful re- ligion that Johnny so zealousty lived out-the Swedenborgian doctrine. We can hear him read now, just as he did that summer day, when we were busy quilting up stairs, and he lay near the door, his voice rising denunciatory and thrilling-strong and load as the roar of the waves and winds, then soft and soothing as the balmy airs that stirred the morning glory leaves about his gray head. Hliv was a strange, deep eloquence at times. His language was good and well chosen, and he was
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HISTORY OF VAN WERT AND MERCER COUNTIES, OHIO.
undoubtedly a man of genius. Sometimes, in speaking of fruits, his eyes would sparkle and his countenance grow animated and really beautiful, and if he was at the table his knife aud fork would be forgotten. In describing apples, we could see them just as he, the word painter, pic- tured them-large, luscious, creamy-tinted ones, or rich, fragrant, and yellow, with a peachy tint on the sunshiny side, or crimson red, with the juice ready to burst through the tender rind."
Thomas S. Humerickhouse, in Hovey's Magazine of Horticulture for 1846, speaks of him as a scientific as well as early producer of apple trees. He says: "Obscure and illiterate though he was in some respects, he was another Dr. Van Mons, and must have been endued with the instinct of his theory." He was one of those quaint characters whose simple lives contain lessons that would add lustre to many a more pre- tentious name.
Born in the city of Boston in the year 1775, at an early age he pene- trated the then wilderness region of Western Pennsylvania, where he developed the singular peculiarity which afterward secured for him the name by which he was familiarly known. From Pennsylvania he drifted in 1801 to the territory of Ohio, his entire outfit consisting of a horse and wagon loaded with apple-seed, obtained from the cider-presses of Western Pennsylvania. Selecting a number of fertile spots in Licking County, Ohio, he planted his apple-seeds and was not again seen in that region for several years. In the mean time, however, he was planting bis curious nurseries in different parts of the West, extending from the «great lakes on the North, to the Ohio River on the South, and as far West as the western boundary of Indiana,
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Always in advance of the settlements, he penetrated the western wil- derness and planted his apple-seeds often in the midst of primeval forests, where, as the columns of civilization advanced, the pioneers found the means of establishing orchards, many of which stand to-day as monu- ments of the simple-hearted man whose entire life was given up to his singular pursuit.
Some five or six years after the time he disappeared from Licking County he was seen pursuing his way down the Ohio River, with two canoes laden with apple-seed. Reaching the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum Rivers, he ascended the latter, and on its banks, as well as those of its tributaries, he planted his apple-seeds, laying the foundation of what proved, in the course of time, to be one of the most profitable industries of central and northern Ohio. It must be borne in mind, in order to fully appreciate the enthusiasm of Chapman in following out the work to which he was devoting his life, that the regions he penetrated were still untouched by the hand of the settler, and that alone, in the midst of the illimitable wilderness, he labored cheerfully for the genera- tions which were to come after him.
There is something touchingly beautiful in the picture of this man. hundreds of miles from buman habitations, often surrounded by dangers, companionless in the midst of the oppressive silence of nature, pursuing his labor of love uncomplainingly and without hope of reward. Subse- quent to the voyage in canoes, of which we have spoken, he penetrated the Northwest, skirting the southern sho y of Lake Erie, planting by the way until he reached Detroit. In this, and other trips, he afterwards made, he either carried himself, or packed on horseback, the seed he was so generously distributing. His plantings were so extensive that it was necessary for him to make frequent trips for a new supply of seed to the cider-presses of western Pennsylvania. As time went on, and the country became settled, Chapman's nurseries, which were scattered over a wide area of country, furnished the means for the immediate planting of orchards, and were largely availed of by the men who were wresting from the wilderness homes for themselves and families, Thus what seemed originally the whim of a simple- minded man, in the end proved a source from which he drew the means to supply his wants. He cared nothing for money, and would take in exchange even cast-off clothing. A few pounds of flour or corn meal would purchase of him enough trees to plant a large orchard; while if his customers were poor, he could not be prevailed upon to recept anything, and would often with his own hands plant their orchards. It is related of him that he would often take the notes of farmers for trees, and considering the transaction closed, never ask for payment, or think of the matter again. What money he got he gave to those who were struggling to wake homes on
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