History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 40

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1202

USA > Ohio > Franklin County > Columbus > History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I > Part 40

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"August 5, 1839."

2. By A. A. Graham & Co.

3. Autobiography of Christian Heyl.

4. Ohio State Journal, November 14, 1855.

5. Ibid, July 24, 1871.

6. Ibid, September 10, 1859.

7. Geological Survey Report, Volume IV.

8. Conversation with the author.

9. Ohio State Journal.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE SCIOTO RIVER.

In his first report to the Scioto Company, in 1802, Mr. James Kilbourn spoke of the Scioto as a navigable stream. In 1803 the supplies which he procured for the Worthington colony were brought up by boat from Chillicothe. Those which he purchased and shipped at Pittsburgh also reached their destination by water. The early Indian traders and merchants at Franklinton obtained their goods by the same means of transportation. For many years after the first white settlements at and about the forks of the Seioto, that river was the only practicable inlet for merchandise or outlet for produce. Commercially New Orleans was to Central Ohio then what New York is now. It was the natural market for the surplus pro- ductions of the Scioto Valley, and was reached by barges, in frontier dialect " broad- horns," built and laden at their point of departure, and broken up, and sold with their cargoes, at their point of destination.

The emigrants who quitted the country, as some of the early settlers did, trav- eled by the same means. There being no roads, they could not travel by wagon. The readiest and cheapest way to " go west " at that time, was to build a barge, and float down stream with the current. This was done by Mr. John Ransburg, who settled in 1809 on the west side of the river, near the present termination of Moler Street, and there ereeted a threestory frame mill. At a later date Mr. Ransburg sold his property to his soninlaw, Rollin Moler, from whom Moler Street takes its name, put all of his chattels, even to his domestic animals, on a large " broadhorn " of his own building, floated down the Seioto and the Ohio to the Mississippi, and settled near New Madrid, Missouri. In 1816 Colonel Andrew McElvain, who set- tled at Franklinton in 1797, and was the first white man to raise corn on the Sul- livant Prairie, built a barge on the Whetstone near the present King Avenue Bridge, and with his family and goods, and those of his neighbors, Ballentine and Skidmore, descended the Scioto and Ohio in this homemade craft, ascended the Wa- bash, and settled at Vincennes.

The Scioto was deeper then than it is now, says Mr. S. P. MeElvain - son of Colonel Andrew McElvain - and such is the concurrent testimony of the surviving pioneers. The water in it, says one of these, was in early times, never less in depth than three or four feet. " I have seen the keelboats which navigated it moored near the present Broad Street Bridge," says another. " Many of the broadhorns built here were floated to New Orleans, with cargoes of produce, and there taken apart and sold for the value of the lumber." Fed, as it was, by the primitive

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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

springs and from the marsh-reservoirs of the forests, we may well believe that the current of the Scioto was at that time both copious and clear. No dams obstructed it, no sewage or factory offal polluted its waters. Through the great, silent wilder - ness it meandered, overhang and shadowed by the giant buttonwood ; smooth here, rippled there, fretted at intervals by sportive waterfowl, and mottled by the re- flected blue and green of sky, tree and meadow. Such was the Scioto when, nour- ished and screened as a child of the forest, civilization had not yet cropped away the trees which protected its sources, made a ditch of its channel, or exposed its shrinking current to the blaze of the unpitying sun.

Lyne Starling, it is said, was first to build barges, load them with produce, and float them from Franklinton to New Orleans. His original ventures of this kind were made in 1810-11. The boats of Lucas Sullivant had navigated the river at a prior date, and at a later one those of William Neil descended from Worthington to New Orleans, whence their cargoes were shipped to Liverpool. Doubtless other similar enterprises were undertaken during the first quarter of the present century. In Pickaway County as many as thirty boats were built for the Scioto River trade in a single year. Most of them, we are told, " had a triangular bow, while others were square in the front as in the rear. There were three oars on deck -one in the rear, called the steering oar, and two side oars called sweeps. The sweeps were only used to pull out of an eddy, or to assist in avoiding objects that were danger- ons. The steering oar was used only to keep the boats in their safe course. There was no thought of accelerating the progress of these boats after they reached the Ohio. They were simply put into the current and allowed to go with it." So says a Pickaway County historian.

So much were the natural watercourses used, and so necessary were they, for the purpose of commerce and local transportation, that the General Assembly pass- ed, on December 4, 1809, the following act :

SECTION 1. That the following streams be and they are hereby declared navigable, or public highways, to wit: The Mahoning from the Pennsylvania line as far up as Jesse Hol- liday's Mill ; Stillwater from its confluence with the Muskingum River as far up as the mouth of the Brushy Fork of said stream ; Will's Creek, from its confluence with the Muskingum as far up as Cambridge; One Leg (commonly called Kanotton) as far up as the division line be- tween the fourteenth and fifteenth townships, in the seventh range; the Scioto from its con- fluence with the Ohio River as far up as the Indian boundary line; and the Little Musking- um from its confluence with the Ohio up as far as the south line of Section number thirtysix, in the second township of the seventh range.

SECTION 2. That no person shall be permitted to build a milldam on any of the said riv- ers, or in any manner obstruct the navigation of the same, unless such person or persons erecting such milldams shall make a lock or slope, or both, if necessary, to the same, of such size and dimensions as the board of commissioners of that county in which the milldam is to be erected shall deem sufficient, so as to admit of the safe passage of boats, or other watercraft, either up or down said stream, and keep the same in constant repair ; Provided, always, that if any such person does not own both sides of the stream, he shall not be at liberty to build a dam without the consent of the person against whose land such a dam is intended to be abutted.

Section three provides that intention to build a dam shall be advertised and specifications as to its form and dimensions laid before the commissioners.

The first bridge connecting the borough with Franklinton was that of Lucas Sullivant, authorized by act of the General Assembly passed February 15, 1815,

303

THE SCIOTO RIVER.

and opened for travel November 25, of the year following. In the division of Lu- cas Sullivant's estate, this bridge fell to the share of Joseph Sullivant, whose fran- chise was purchased, carly in the thirties, for ten thousand dollars, and surrendered. The purchase money was raised by private subscription, except two thousand dol- lars contributed by the county, and was paid on stipulation with the Superintend- ent of the National Road that he would erect a substantial free bridge in lieu of the one owned by Mr. Sullivant, the temporary substitute for which was carried off in 1834 by a freshet.1 The bridge built in pursuance of this arrangement was a cov- ered wooden one, with two separated tracks for vehicles, and an outside walk on each side for foot passengers. It stood until replaced by the present open iron bridge in 1882-3. The following account of the building of this National Road Bridge was published in 1882 :9

Captain Brewerton and Lieutenants Stockton and Tilden, three young West Pointers, were sent to superintend the work of building the bridge. They began in 1832, and stayed about two years before it was completed. Mr. Andrew McNinch, who lives four miles west of the city, hauled the stone for the abutments, taking it from the quarry near the present site of the Central Asylum for the Insane. Besides him, Elias Pegg, now of Franklinton, and Captain Nelson Foos, of 340 East Oak Street, are probably the only ones now living who worked on the bridge. No nails were used, except to put the shingles on the roof. No iron whatever was employed in the construction, the iron rods now seen at intervals overhead in the bridge having been put in in later years. Only oaken pegs were used to hold the heavy pieces together, but they were painted on the end to look like iron, and the deception work- ed well.

When the bridge was finished the question arose as to its strength. There were many who doubted its ability to stand all it should, and there was a great deal of talk about it. A few days after it was pronounced done, however, it had a test which settled every question as to its staying qualities. There was a tremendous amount of travel over the pike in those old days -ten times as much as there is now. Cattle and hogs were being constantly driven through the town on the way to the eastern market. One of the largest of these droves came along a few days after the completion of the Broad Street Bridge. It belonged to and was driven by Richard Cowling, of London, well known in these parts then as "Dick Cowling." He stopped over night in Franklinton. That village was as separate from Columbus at that time as two villages could be, and there was not a thought that they would ever be joined, much less that the corporate limits of Columbus would one day extend far beyond the old village. Just over the river it was all farm land, and there was a double row of sturdy locust trees which extended from the river to the east entrance to Franklinton, a few of which are still standing. But, to resume our story.

Dick Cowling stopped over night at the tavern in Franklinton, and the next morning came down to examine the bridge before attempting to drive his cattle through it. He at once concluded that it would not bear the burden, and was making arrangements to swim his stock across. Captain Brewerton, wbo had engineered the building of the bridge, assured him that it was plenty strong enough to hold all that could be piled upon it, and told him the Government would pay all the loss of the cattle if the bridge broke down with them. Ac- cordingly, Dick decided to venture it, and brought the whole seven hundred head down. Almost everybody thought the whole drove would go down, and they laid off from work for the ex- press purpose of seeing the bridge destroyed. There was some trouble in getting the cattle started through, but when they began there was a perfect stampede. The bridge was filled up-both roadways and footpaths -and all with a rushing, rearing crowd of steers. It creaked loudly, and settled down visibly, and everybody thought the end had come. Two men who brought up the rear, leading two unruly heifers by halters, became frightened by the cracking sound, and leaving their charges, ran back as fast as their legs would carry them.

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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

But when the last animal was over, and the bridge was still solid, old Cowling went up to Captain Brewerton, and in his gruff manner laconically blurted out: "Good bridge, by G --! " and invited everybody who had come down to see the new crossing fall, to come over to Zollinger's and have something to drink, which invitation was generally accepted. After that no one had any fear to drive anything across the bridge, and it has stood very nearly fifty years, and never been injured by anything placed upon it.

Before the original Sullivant bridge was built, the river was crossed by fords and ferries. The Old Ford, as it was called, was at the point where the Hocking Valley Railway now crosses the river, near the foot of Main Street. A canoe ferry was kept there by James Cutler, whose buxom daughter Sally, it is said, some- times manipulated the oars for the transient traveler. Colonel P. H. Olmsted, writing in 1869, says: "Our usual route to Franklinton, then [1814] the county- seat, was to cross the river just below Comstock's Slaughter House, generally in a ferryboat kept by Jacob Armitage, the Scioto those times being much higher than at present. During the year 1814, I think it was, that stream was not fordable but for a few days the entire year, a circumstance that has not occurred since. Before Mr. Sullivant built his dike to prevent the overflow of the Scioto during the spring freshets, it was not unfrequent for Franklinton to be surrounded by water, and could only be approached by some kind of water craft. In fact, the country to the west of us looked like a lake, and Franklinton like a small island. I have passed in a skiff from this place to that ancient town, and tied up to a signpost."3

The first flood in the Scioto of which we have any record is that of 1798, the traditions of which indicate that it must have been of an extraordinary character. So great was the rush of waters that the flat lands around the town of Franklin- ton, which had been laid out the year before, were all inundated, " and the plan of the town was reduced, and made to conform in limits to the higher grounds."4 Freshets more or less formidable no doubt occurred at various times during the borough period, but the recorded indications of them are meager. With the clear- ing away of the forests, as usually results from that change of conditions, these freshets seem to have increased in suddenness and violence. " The great flood of 1832" is spoken of by old inhabitants as a remarkable event. Early in July, 1834, a heavy rainfall produced a rapid rise in the river which carried away the tempo- rary National Road Bridge at the foot of Broad Street, destroyed a considerable quantity of salt at the landing, and greatly damaged the freshly-built embankments of the canal.

At the beginning of the year 1847 a flood took place which surpassed all rec- ords previously known. The fencing and bridges of the Valley were generally swept away, and many of the warehouses and porkpacking establishments along the river at Columbus were surrounded by water five feet deep. Referring to this event, the Ohio State Journal of January 4, 1847, says :

So high has [sic] been the waters, and so great the destruction of the bridges, that we are almost destitute of the news of this terrific flood. The bridge below Delaware, at the paper mills, is either injured, or the approach to it. Reports say it was swept away, but this we believe is not so. Report also says the bridge over the Whetstone at Worthington is gone ; also that over the Scioto at Belle Point, Delaware County. The new stone bridge in this county, at Dublin, has lost one of its centre piers. Hutchins's flour mill this side of Dublin, is moved around from its foundations, and on yesterday rested against a tree. The National

Rsones

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THE SCIOTO RIVER.

Road bridge between this city and Franklinton, and beyond Franklinton is much injured by the rush of waters over it. In addition to the injury to the railroad bridge mentioned on Satur- day, the embankments beyond Franklinton are broken in three places, and iron and timbers all carried away. .

The destruction of corn and fencing is incalculable. One person has estimated the amount of fencing carried away on the Scioto alone as a dozen miles in length. We have heard the probable amount of corn lost, if the flood was as severe below as above, at from one to three million bushels.

Yesterday was bright and warm - as beautiful as a May day - last night it commenced raining again, and it has been raining pretty much all day. . . . By a mark made by Mr. Ridgway in the warehouse at the west end of the bridge at the great February flood of 1832, the present flood was just nineteen inches higher than that, and perbaps the highest known since the settlement of the country.

Daguerreotype views of this flood were taken by George A. B. Lazell.

Under date of December 24, 1852, we have the record of a flood of considerable dimensions. The river bottoms opposite Columbus were inundated, and the vil- lage of Franklinton was entirely isolated by the surrounding waters. Many of the workmen at the foundry of Ambos & Lennox were obliged to fly from their homes. The loss of property was great.5

A freshet worthy of mention took place February 21, 1859. On the tenth and eleventh of April, 1860, a flood of great volume and destructiveness swept down the Valley. All the flat lands on the West Side were submerged, and the town of Franklinton became a suburban island. On the East Side, the iron works of Peter Hayden and the premises of the Ohio Tool Company were invaded. On the eleventh the highwater mark of the flood of 1832 was reached, but on the twelfth the water fell six feet. The clay-colored eurrent, when at its climax, was " literally darkened," it is said, " with floating timber."6

On the twentyfirst of April, 1862, the Valley was visited with another men- tionable freshet, and in 1866 the greatest September flood took place which, until that time, had ever been known since the earliest settlement of the country. After some days of heavy rainfall, the river suddenly assumed the dimensions of a huge, turbid torrent bristling with floating trees, and burdened with fragments of buildings, drowned animals, fencerails, pumpkins, haystacks and cornshocks innumerable. From Tuesday, the eighteenth, to five P. M. on Wednesday, the nineteenth, the river rose twelve feet, passing, it was then believed, the high water mark of 1832, and reaching that of 1847. A levee which had been built north of the National Road proved insufficient to hold baek the flood, and the entire low- lying area of the West Side was again inundated. The low grounds on the East Side were also submerged, the flood coming with such suddenness that many peo- ple were driven precipitately from their homes, and with great difficulty removed their household goods and domestic animals in time to save them. Immense crowds of people assembled on the east bank of the river to witness the angry torrent. Its appearance, as viewed from the dome of the Capitol, is thus described :

Up stream and down stream was traceable the widened current of the swollen river, hardly detached from the broad lakes of still water clustering about farmhouses and flooding the city suburbs. Old landmarks were gone, the National Road seemed blotted, in part, from the map of these suburban districts, as revised, railroads were less than dotted lines, and fences designated by mere hairstrokes. The low districts to the west and to the south

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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

were extremely well watered, and were principally inhabited by a floating population. Cat- tle and horses, caught napping on high points, were navigating the inundated country in a very careless manner, going no way in particular, if we except certain spasmodic plunges downward.

There were pretty scenes in the dim distance of women and children being handed from windows to boats below, of men wading shoulderdeep in the water carrying little children above their heads across the flood, and of anxious faces framed in windows toward which the water surged rapidly. The scene was peculiar, grand and novel, and the event is to be remembered as a landmark in our history .?

All the tributaries of the Scioto were, on this occasion, more than bankfull, and the damage to crops, bridges, fencing and highways was very great. Traffic between the city and country was almost entirely suspended. The water began to recede on the twentieth, and by five o'clock P. M. of that date had dropped eighteen inches below the highest point reached at Columbus.

The next notable freshet occurred in March, 1868, when the river rose about fifteen feet above its usual stage and reached a point six or eight inches below the highwater mark of 1866, and eighteen inches below that of 1847. The riparian territory of the West Side was again inundated, the ground stories of the buildings on State Avenue were invaded, and the country up and down the raging river, as seen from Columbus, assumed the appearance of a vast lake. Middletown, sub- merged in 1866, escaped injury this time, owing to the protection afforded by an embankment crected the preceding summer.

High water occurred again in 1869, 1870, and on the second of August, 1875. On the occasion last mentioned, the West Side levee was broken through, people inhabiting the flat lands were driven from their dwellings, and numerous bridges, in different parts of Franklin County, were swept away.

Following the breaking up of the ice in the Scioto, February 10, 1881, the channel of the river was swept by a flood which went over its banks, and would have done a great deal of damage to West Side property but for the frozen condi- tion of the levees, which enabled them to withstand the pressure of the raging waters. The greatest damage was done below the south bridge of the Hocking Valley Railway, where the bend of the river threw the current with great force against the dikes. The embankment yielded to the shock, and a large scope of territory around the railway shops was submerged, in some places to the depth of five or six feet. The blast furnace in that locality was reached, and its fires extin- guished. Many of the small dwellings on the West Side bottoms had to be aban- doned by their occupants. The water rose, on this occasion, 12 inches higher than the points reached by the floods of 1869 and 1870,

The fourth of February, 1883, is mentioned as a " historical day," in the record of Scioto River floods. For many hours previously a steady rain had fallen on a surface of glassy ice which covered the ground and rapidly precipitated the water into every available channel. In consequence of this the little river soon began to assert its power and capacity for mischief in a manner almost unheard of before. The ice which covered the surface of the river broke up on Saturday evening, February 3, and an instant rise of five feet, followed by further steady swelling of the current, immediately took place. In the course of a few hours the engines at the Waterworks were threatened with inundation, thus putting the city in jeopardy

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THE SCIOTO RIVER.

of fire, as well as flood. Gangs of shovelers were immediately put to work on the levee, but were obliged to abandon it, and were able to prevent the aqueous aggressor from disabling the watersupply engines only by a hasty embankment thrown up around the building. Thousands of people congregated along the shores to witness the mighty, resistless sweep of the waters. The scenes which fixed their attention for many hours of mishap and anxiety are thus described by one of the chroniclers of the occasion :

Standing on the upper Hocking Valley Bridge, a person could not help feel awed and impressed at the grand scene before him. To the right and north, the Olentangy was pour- ing its yellow, turbid waters inte the larger and more quiet stream of the Seioto. The large ice cakes ground together with a peculiarly harsh and crunching sound, and when they would strike the piers of the bridge would cause the old frame structure to tremble; then they, with the floating débris, would dive beneath, and reappearing below would go on in their mad rush down stream. The fertile land lying between these two rivers was all inun- dated. Here and there a peak of some lone haystack would appear, or the tops of bushes would rise and fall as the ice-cakes passed over them. Far up to the northwest, looking toward the buildings located there, stretched one vast lake of water. The little shanty occupied by a man named Morris, and which is situated upon the land which has caused so much litigation, was surrounded by the yellow waters, and only the roof and upper part appeared. The family had to move out about eleven o'clock Saturday night, and stood on the bank and saw their poultry and other property move down stream on a cake of ice. To the right were the offices of the Thomas and Laurel Hill companies nearly submerged by the waters which were gradu- ally climbing up the sides and finding an easy entrance at the windows. The roadbed of the Dublin and Columbus Pike had entirely disappeared from view, and only the tops of the fences showed where the road was located. The railroad tracks were all the land that appeared, and they stretched off to the north and west. seemingly passing over a lake.

Late in the afternoon it became evident that the water would break through the dikes and railway tracks and make its way down through Franklinton. Those who had boats were kept busily employed in transporting people from their houses to places of safety. About eleven o'clock the first break occurred in the levee about two hundred yards north of the Harrisburg Bridge. The bottom lands at once filled up several feet deep, and the inhabitants of the houses situated on the flats had to make their way to dry land as best they could. . . . About four o'clock the water had reached a height of twelve and one-half feet above low water mark, which was about one foot lower than the height attained in 1847. The water. however, continued to rise, and before midnight the old mark had been eclipsed and the water was a foot higher than it was ever known to be before. Early in the evening cars were heavily loaded with pigiron and placed upon the two bridges of the Hocking Valley. This great weight held the bridges to their places and was all that kept the structures from being swept away. The water broke over the embankments at the waterworks about eight o'clock, and the lower engine was extinguished at once. The upper one, however, was started, and at eleven o'clock was working away, although the water was over the cylinders and the firemen were up to their waists.

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History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 40

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co Publication date: 1892 Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co. Number of Pages: 1202

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1202