USA > Ohio > Franklin County > Columbus > History of the city of Columbus, Ohio, from the founding of Franklinton in 1797, through the World War period to the year 1920 > Part 2
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RIVER
OAKLAND AVE-
K R.R. MILITARY TOWNSHIP
PERRY TOWNSHIP
CLINTON
S
C. C C & STL (1796)
MIFFLIN TOWNSHIP
NGY
C.A. & C. R.R.
ACREEK
FIFTH AVE.
TRACT
SURVEY 1393 Lucas Sullivant
REFUGEE
TRURO TOWNSHIP
BROAD ST
VIRG
SURVEY. 42210 Robert Culbertson LAND
SURVEY.420
O
T
0
LANDS
ORIGINAL BOUNDARY CITY LIMITS 1891
1910
CONGRESS
(1796)
MADISON TOWNSHIP
1916
HAMILTON TOWNSHIP
Showing Different Land Surveys and Growth of City from 1812 to 1920.
township was quartered, each quarter having an area of 61 square miles, or 1,000 acres. The Refugee tract, in which the greater part of Columbus lies, was divided into sections of 610 acres each and subsequently divided into half-sections. The Congress lands were divided into townships six miles square, and the townships into sections, each one mile square, or 610 acres. The Virginia Military lands were surveyed with reference to no regular plan. Any person holding a Virginia land warrant might locate at will within the district and make his own boundary lines, provided only he did not encroach on land previously located. Says Judge J. E. Sater, in his exhaustive study of Franklin county land titles: "Many of the
MILITARY
SURVEY 717 (1790)
LOCKBOURNE RD.
-
1783 1798
SURVEY 2668 Lucas Sullivant
OLEN
BROAD ST
CONGRESS
AZIONI
LANDS
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HISTORY OF COLUMBUS, OHIO
surveys fell short in quantity, others overlapped each other. Confusion and litigation necessarily resulted. The first surveyors in this district were accustomed to add or throw in a percentage in their surveys, sometimes as much as ten per cent." Professor R. W. MeFar- land characterized these surveys as "wonderful to behold," and tells of a tract "calling for ninety acres, the given metes and bounds of which enclosed over 1,600 acres." The eager- ness to possess lacked or defied regulation of choice-a characteristic which has not yet de- parted from the affairs of man. At first, the government price of public land was $2 an acre, in payments. After 1820, the price was $1.25 an acre, payable at entry.
It is now pertinent to inquire what was the nature of the country toward which land claimants and other settlers were directing their footsteps. This is important because the geology and topography of a given section determine in considerable measure the occupa- tion of the people living within it. Dr. Edward Orton in his contribution to Lee's History of Columbus, wrote:
Central Ohio consists of a slightly undulating plain from 800 to 1100 feet above sea level. Across it the present drainage channels extend in shallow valleys. Columbus is situ- ated in the most important of these shallow troughs, the Scioto valley, but it also extends to the adjacent uplands in considerable portions of its area. Low water of the Scioto in the central portion of the city is approximately 700 feet above tide. The uplands of the northernmost portions are not less than 900 feet above tide. . . . In addition to the furrow occupied by the Scioto proper, parts of two other important valleys are included here, viz., the Whetstone (Olentangy) and Alum creek. The former is in reality a much more con- spicuous feature of the country than its main valley. The Scioto has wrought out its bed for a number of miles above Columbus in Devonian limestone. It therefore has rock bottom and rock walls, though the latter are of small height. The Whetstone (Olentangy) on the other hand, lying to the eastward of the Scioto, has wrought its valley out of the shale. It nowhere has a rocky floor, but the beds of drift that underlie it are not less than 100 feet deep. .. . A beautiful scope of fertile bottom land, not less than a half mile in breadth, constitutes the intervales of the present river. . . . Alum creek also occupies an old valley, as is proved by a series of facts similar to those already given. We thus see that these easily eroded shales have been removed from Columbus and the region south of it on a very large scale, and into the space from which they have been carried away a vast load of glacial drift has been deposited. The substitution has been of priceless service to the district in every way. The most harren soil of Ohio, viz., that derived from the shale series, is the one that is geologically due here. In place of it, the weathered limestone gravel yields a soil that is the very type and standard of excellence. The forest growth that the shale would have supported is decidedly inferior in character, but in place of it we find oak, walnut, hickory and other of our most valued timber trees. The natural water supply of the shale is of the most unsatisfactory sort but these same drift deposits constitute a universal and inexhaustible reservoir from which we can draw all needed supplies for all time.
The Glacial period has done everything for Columbus. It is practically the only important fact in its geology. The topography, soils, water supply and drainage are all dependent upon this great series of heds.
The soil on which the city was to be built consisted of clay, sand and gravel judi- ciously distributed and enriched by fallen and decayed vegetable matter. Thus there were here, waiting the coming of the white man, not only fertile plains already rudely cultivated by the Indians, but also forests in which there was a great variety of animal and bird life, trees of which timber could be made, animals whose flesh could be turned into food and their skins into clothing, stone and sand for building, clay for brick-making and water for power. There were other riches, such as coal and natural gas, in ncar-by fields, but of these the first comers had no hint.
"It was easy," says Professor George D. Hubbard, in a recent monograph, "to put the land under cultivation, for like most of the prairie, it was not fully timbered and only a part needed to be cleared before all could be turned over by the plow and planted. So level, too, was the land that none was really waste, unless too wet; and communication either by canoe in stream or by wagon was casy in all directions. The timber along the streams and over parts of the upland plains furnished all the lumber needed for quickly built log houses. fences and stock shelters, and provided ample fuel for all early needs, but was not so heavy, dense or widespread as to depress the people or obstruct their progress in agriculture and in- tercoursc."
CHAPTER II. THE SETTLEMENT OF FRANKLINTON
Lucas Sullivant and His Surveying Party on Deer Creek-Armed Encounters and Perils- Location of the Town-First Residents and Their Rude Cabin Homes-Stories of the Captivity of John Brickell and Jeremiah Armstrong among the Indians.
Some such promise as this must have presented itself to the mind of Lucas Sullivant who, in 1795, when he was thirty years of age, came into Ohio as one of a number of deputy surveyors of land in the Virginia Military district. Virginia had authorized her soldiers to select a surveyor of the lands she had reserved for them when she made her cession to the general government. They had chosen Colonel Richard C. Anderson, a distinguished soldier of the Revolutionary War, and the latter had established headquarters at Louisville, Ky., sending deputies to do the actual field work. Among these deputies, besides Mr. Sullivant, were Nathaniel Massie and Duncan McArthur, two men who were destined to play an im- portant part in the building of the State. To Mr. Sullivant was assigned the northern por- tion of the district, and his first appearance on the field of his operations was on Deer creek, in what is now Madison county. He came with about twenty men-assistants, chain car- riers, scouts and porters. It was a dangerous enterprise upon which this party had em- barked for there were wild animals to be encountered and of the human beings already there, the Indians were hostile and the whites, desiring all they could find for themselves, were suspicious of one another. White men who had claims, rather than come themselves, were willing to pay large sums to surveyors who would explore and locate their claims for them. They would give for the job one-fourth or even one-half the land located or, when money was required, ten pounds Virginia currency for each thousand acres. The Sullivant party's first encounter was with a French trader and two Indians, as a result of which the trader was killed and the Indians put to flight. It was a rear guard action with which Mr. Sullivant had nothing to do and which he sincerely deplored. He regretted the shedding of human blood and feared for reprisal by the Indians. His fears were well founded for, four days later, while he was completing his task on Deer creek, he saw a band of Indians, more numerous than his party, approaching. They had been sent, he subsequently learned, from the Mingo village on the present site of Columbus, to take revenge for the previous attack. The odds being against them, Sullivant and his party concealed themselves in the high grass, and the Indians passed on, only to be recalled at nightfall by the sound of a gun fired by one of the surveying party at a flock of wild turkeys. There was a brief encounter with firearms and the surveying party escaped in the darkness. In their flight, they were separated into two groups and when they were reunited three days later, it was found that two of the party were missing, one of whom was known to have been killed at the first fire of the Indians.
Soon after this adventure, Mr. Sullivant and his party began operations in the present confines of Franklin county, and on a subsequent expedition, he located a tract of land for himself on the fertile lowlands opposite the "forks of the Scioto," as the junction of the Scioto and Olentangy was then called. Mr. Sullivant's surveying experiences were inter- esting. He had at least one other narrow escape from violence at the hands of the Indians. He awoke, one morning, from his sleep in the open to find a huge rattlesnake coiled on the blanket that covered him, but threw off both blanket and snake and soon despatched the latter. A panther was, later, discovered perched on the limb of a tree under which the campfire of the party had been built, and the animal was shot dead just as he was about to spring upon them. At Marble Cliff, Mr. Sullivant discovered a veritable den of rattlesnakes -a prodigious number of them, just awakened from their winter torpor and filling the air with a most offensive odor as they basked in the sunshine. It was the most famous of many snake dens along the rocky bank of the Seioto and was the scene in later years of numerous snake hunts in which the settlers engaged in order to rid the neighborhood of the loathsome and dangerous reptiles.
The Indians, the wild animals and the snakes did not deter Mr. Sullivant. They were to him only temporary incidents, while the alluring faets were the fertility of the soil, the
12
HISTORY OF COLUMBUS, OHIO
luxuriance of the forest, the converging streams providing an abundance of water and the general availability of the section for a contented and prosperous human existence. If there is wonder that he located on the lowlands, instead of on the now more desirable high- lands east of the river, the answer is to be found in the fact that he had nothing to do with the latter lands. The limit of the traet he was surveying was the river. Besides, the high banks were densely wooded and the land just beyond was marshy. He chose what to almost anybody at that time would have appeared to be the more desirable of the two sites. And so, in August, 1797, on the edge of the fertile plain where the Indian women had long cul- tivated maize, he laid out a town which he called Franklinton. The first plat fronted the river opposite the junction of the two streams, but before the announced sale of lots was held, a flood eame to warn him and he shifted the plat to higher ground adjacent. To one street he gave the name, Gift, and offered to donate lots thereon to persons who would make actual settlement. Other streets were named Foos, Green, Sandusky, and Skidmore, the names in some cases being those of the earliest settlers. Joseph Dixon and his wife were the first actually to locate on the site of the new town, they having come in the fall of 1797, while the Sullivant party were absent, and built a cabin near the forks of the two rivers, on the south and west sides. John Brickell, Robert, John and Jeremiah Armstrong, who had been prisoners with the Indians, eame about the same time; and in the returning Sullivant party were Samuel and Andrew MeElvain, Abraham Deardurff, George and John Skidmore, Robert Balentine, Jacob Grubb, Benjamin White, Jacob Overdier, John Blair, and perhaps others. At any rate among the earliest settlers were William Domigan, who came from Maryland; Joseph and John Foos, from Kentucky ; Michael Fisher, from Virginia; John Dill, from York county, Pa., James Marshall, Adam Hosaek, William Fleming, John Lisle, Arthur O'Harra, and others whose last names only have been preserved-Dunkin, Stokes, Hunter, Stevens, Brown and Cowgill.
Lucas Sullivant, having again returned to Kentucky to be married, established his per- manent home in Franklinton about 1801. Then came Lyne Starling, Robert Russell and Colonel Robert Culbertson, the last named from Shippenburg, Pa., with a numerous family of sons, sons-in-law and daughters. These then were the First Families of Franklinton.
The first houses were, of course, log cabins built of the trees that were felled to make the elearing necessary for agriculture. They were rude affairs like those that are still to be found in various parts of the country. Logs, piled one upon another to the desired height, notehed and pinned together, made the sides, the chinks being filled with strips of wood and covered with mortar made from the clay. Rafters were raised in the form of an inverted V and pinned together at the top and to the upper log below. Small pieces of hewn timber were pinned across the rafters, and over them split boards in tiers to make the roof. Open- ings for doors and windows were eut through the logs, the doors being made of boards, swung on wooden hinges, and the windows being covered with young deerskin scraped thin so as to let the light through. Floors were of timber hewn smooth for the upper surface. The fireplace was built of stone; the chimney was built up outside the house and was made of stone laid in elay mortar. If there was an upper room, it was reached by a rude ladder also outside. Bedsteads were made of poles or rails, one end being fitted into a hole bored in a log that helped to make the side of the house, and poles or rails on end for the corner posts. Strips of pawpaw, elm or buckeye were tied across the horizontal rails and leaves, wild grass or straw filled the tieks and made the early mattress. No iron was used in the building of these first cabins, even the hinges and lateh of the door being of wood, and the door being opened by pulling a string of deerskin attached to the latch and protruding through a hole in one of the slabs. At night the latehstring was pulled in and the door was locked. Some families had two cabins with a floored and covered space between. According to H. Warren Phelps, many of these early cabins were occupied as late as 1845, when he came here as a boy with his parents.
CAPTIVES AMONG THE INDIANS.
Among the first settlers in Franklinton were two men who had been held captives by the Indians-John Brickell and Jeremiah Armstrong. Brickell's story, as told by himself in the American Pioneer in 1842, may be thus summarized : He was born May 24, 1781, near Uniontown, Pa. His father died when he was quite young and he went to live with an elder brother near the site of Pittsburg. In February, 1791, a band of Indians 150 strong
13
THE SETTLEMENT OF FRANKLINTON
made a raid on all the white settlements along the Alleghany river. Brickell, then a lad of ten, while working in the field, was approached by one of the Indians who indicated the direction in which he wanted the boy to go with him. Suspecting nothing, as he had been on friendly terms with Indians, Brickell complied but later, feeling that something was wrong, attempted to run away. He was caught, his hands tied behind him and marched off with the warning that, if he made trouble, he would be killed. Subsequently, he was turned over to George Girty, a renegade white man, and taken to the Indian rendezvous at Tuscar- awas, where he met two other white prisoners, Thomas and Jane Dick, who had been neighbors on the Alleghany. From there Brickell was taken on a journey towards Sandusky, was beaten by drunken Indians on the way and, on entering a Seneca town with his com- panions, was made to run the gauntlet till he was rescued half dead by a big Indian who, he thinks, was Captain Pipe. Proceeding onward with his Indian captor, they met at the Auglaize river another Indian whom Brickell's companion addressed as brother, to whom he was delivered and by whom he was subsequently adopted. The name of this latter Indian was Whingwy Pooshies, or Big Cat of the Delawares. Brickell lived in his family from about the first week in May, 1791, until his release in June, 1795. Big Cat was a member of the Indian army that fought and defeated St. Clair and shared in the spoils, much to the comfort of the captive as well as others of the family. On the occasion of one of the annual visits of the Indians to the Maumee rapids to receive presents from the British, Brickell again saw Jane Dick, but her husband was absent, having, as he learned, been sold for $40 and taken to Canada. One day during that visit, Jane Dick was missing and a great search was made for her without avail. In later years she told him that her husband had formed a plot with the captain of the vessel that brought the presents to abduct her. She was taken secretly on board and hid in a hogshead, where she remained until the day after the vessel sailed, about thirty-six hours. It had been planned to abduct Brickell at the same time, but the opportunity did not present itself.
In June, 1794, Brickell went with three Indians on a hunting expedition and, returning two months later, found all their companions gone, as they supposed to receive their presents from the British at the Maumee rapids. But the next morning they learned that the van- guard of General Wayne's army was at hand. The Indians fled, and Brickell with them, joining a larger body at the rapids. There they were attacked, two or three days later, by some of Wayne's soldiers, but successfully defended themselves capturing one soldier named May, who was shot the next morning. Brickell tells of seeing Indians retreating after the battle of Fallen Timbers, of the discouragement of the Indians, their anger at the British who, they insisted, had not given the support promised and of the offer to make peace with Wayne. On the conclusion of the treaty, by the terms of which all captives were to be released by the Indians, Big Cat took Brickell to Fort Defiance and, standing before the officers, addressed the lad, asking him to testify if he had not been treated as a son and giving him the choice to remain or go with the whites. The boy testified to the Indian's kindness, but decided to go with the people of his own race. It was a pathetic scene, for in the years of Brickell's captivity, a real affection had sprung up between him and the Indians, and Big Cat, who was old, expected the lad's support.
Brickell returned to the south with the soldiers of Wayne's army, found his relatives in Kentucky, and went again to his old home in Pennsylvania. In 1797, he came to Franklinton and later bought of Lyne Starling a ten-acre tract in front of the Penitentiary site. When he died July 20, 1844, he owned three pieces of property-the one mentioned, another on Spruce street and a third in Clinton township-which he bequeathed to his wife and two sons, making bequests of money to his daughter and granddaughter. In 1888, after the real estate had been sold to other parties and, with the growth of the city, had greatly increased in value, the Brickell heirs brought suit to recover the lands transferred, claiming that the terms of the will had been violated. The courts beld that they were entitled to no relief.
The story of Jeremiah Armstrong, as told by him to William T. Martin in 1858 and incorporated in Martin's History of Franklin County is substantially as follows: Mr. Arm- strong was born in Washington county, Maryland, in March, 1785. Ile had a sister and three brothers, William, Robert and John, older than himself. The family went to live in Virginia, opposite the upper end of Blennerhassett's island. There, in April, 1794, in the absence of William and Robert, who had gone to a floating mill the family owned on the river, the house was attacked by twenty Wyandots. The father, finding his firearms de-
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HISTORY OF COLUMBUS, OHIO
fective and being unable to make a defense, eseaped through the roof and ran for assistance. Meanwhile, the Indians broke into the house, killed three of the children and the mother who had fallen while trying to escape through the chimney and had broken her hip. She was useless to the Indians in that plight and so they slew and scalped her with the others. The boy, Jeremiah, and his sister, they carried off, after plundering the house. When they had gone a mile or two, they halted to determine whether or not they should kill the lad who was a burden. A young Indian offered to carry him, if necessary, and so the party moved on, distancing all pursuers and coming at last to a point near where Lancaster now stands. There, Jeremiah and John were separated from their sister and taken to Sandusky, where the former was adopted into the Deer tribe and the latter into the Turtle tribe. The sister was taken to Maumee, whenee she was abducted by a white man in search of his sister, taken to Detroit and subsequently married. John was taken to Brownstown, and Jeremiah came with the family to which he belonged to what is now Columbus, camping on the present site of the Penitentiary. Jeremiah became, as he says, "a very good Indian" and was called Hooseoatahjah, meaning "Little Head." When the news of Wayne's vietory reached the camp, the Indians hurried off to Sandusky bay, the lad with them, eager to go because he had come to feel that the pale faees were also his enemies. Soon after, William Arm- strong, who was then living in Kentucky, hearing that Jeremiah was held a prisoner, eame into Ohio in search of him and located both boys at Sandusky bay, but the latter were un- willing to leave their captors, feeling very proud of their paint and feathers. William went to Detroit for help and, returning with an officer and twelve men, compelled the boys to leave the Indians and go with him. He took them to Erie, then to Pittsburg and finally to Chillicothe, reelaiming them en route by changing their Indian dress for the elothing of the whites and telling them of the dreadful scene in their pioncer home, when the mother and the three other children were killed.
Jeremiah and Robert Armstrong came to Franklinton when the former was twelve years old, the latter being some years his senior. Jeremiah there grew up to manhood and in the spring of 1813 purchased a High street lot and built a tavern which he condueted for many years. The house was known first as the Christopher Columbus and later as the Red Lion.
CHAPTER III. EARLY DAYS IN FRANKLINTON.
Selected as the County Seat-First County Buildings-First Industries-Road Building- First School and Church-Coming of Dr. James IIoge-Execution of Leatherlips- The Sullivants, Lyue Starling, Dr. Lincoln Goodale, Dr. Samuel II. Parsons, Gustavus Swau, and Other Leaders in the Settlement.
There are no statistics to show how many people gathered at Franklinton in the first five years after it was laid out, but it is probable that, when Franklin county was created by the first General Assembly of Ohio, sitting at Chillicothe, Franklinton had a population of 100 or more. This may be inferred from the fact that, at the election held in June, 1803, Franklin county was credited with 159 votes, of which 59 were cast in Franklin township. And it was an extensive county at that time, too. The eastern boundary was nearly what it now is, the southern ran near the middle of Pickaway, the western was the Greene county line and the northern Lake Erie. The boundaries so remained till 1808, when Delaware county was created, bringing the northern boundary of Franklin county to its present line. The creation of Pickaway and Madison in 1810 and of Union in 1820 reduced the county approximately to its present size, though there were a few subsequent changes.
At the time of the creation of the county, the General Assembly chose Jeremiah McLene James Ferguson and William Creighton to fix the county's permanent seat of justice. This commission served six days and selected Franklinton. The records of the Court of Common Pleas, September 8, 1803, show that they were paid at the rate of $2 a day for the service, McLene being allowed $3 extra for writing and circulating notices as required by law. The county, in May, 1803, was divided into four townships-Franklin and Darby, on the west side of the river, separated by a line running westward from a point a little south of Dub- lin; and Harrison and Liberty, on the east side, separated by an east and west line running through the middle of what is now Hamilton township. Franklin township is the only one of the original four remaining even in name, changes in the shape of the county and density of population making more and different divisions desirable. Hamilton, Montgomery and Pleasant were created in 1807; Madison, Plain, Truro and Washington, in 1810; Clinton and Mifflin, in 1811; Norwich, in 1813; Blendon and Jackson, in 1815; Jefferson and Sharon in- 1816; Prairie, in 1819; Perry, in 1820, and Brown, in 1830.
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