History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 41

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

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Early last night the water broke over the levee west of the Hocking Valley track, and plowing its way through the track of the Little Miami Railroad, it poured down the grade past the Door, Sash & Lumber Factory and commingled with its kindred element which had already made its way through the levee below. The water there soon formed a rushing river and poured through this channel at a lively rate. By this break the bridges were saved, and possibly other great calamities averted. The water also made its way across Broad Street farther to the west, above the old town of Franklinton, and the village was thus all sur- rounded on both sides by the angry flood. It was hard to judge from the meagre reports received from this quarter last night what was the extent of the damage.

Later reports from Sellsville [the winter quarters of the Sells Brothers' Circus and Men- agerie] revealed that the damage had not been half told. When last heard from the em.

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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

ployes and employers were working with almost superhuman efforts to transport the animals to a place of safety. The cakes of ice had formed a gorge about the cluster of buildings, and the large elephants could not be induced to swim to land through this. The smaller ones, seven in number, had been carried to the dry ground to the west in wagons, as well as some smaller animals. The lions and other carnivorous animals confined in the building to the north from that occupied by the elephants kept up a frightful noise. A great many cages were placed directly on the floor, and at five o'clock the water was three feet deep in the room and still rapidly rising.

The grandest view of the flood was from the iron bridge in the southern limits of the city, at the crossing of Green Lawn Avenue. There the temporary lake could be seen with the mighty current fighting through the curves of the city limits, and the water spread out over the whole of the bottom lands as far down the valley as the eye could reach, while the flats were under water and the little onestory frame houses looked like boats which were just ready to start out. The water covered most of the territory about sunset and became still higher during the night. In the evening the west end of the old slaughter house at the foot of Friend Street gave way and came down stream like a flatboat bent on a cruise. It had no doubt passed Circleville ere the denizens of that place saw the light of day.

Numerous incidents are told of the peculiar situations in which people were found in their houses. They were standing on chairs, and on beds, while the furniture floated about the room. A cradle was observed to go down the river yesterday, but no occupant was in it. A bedstead was floating down in the forenoon, and a washtub full of clothes followed it.

The present high water surpasses the famous flood of 1847. At that time the levee broke near the upper bend of the river, and the water poured down across the isthmus beyond Franklinton. The National Road was nearly ruined between the Broad Street Bridge and Sullivant's Hill. The high water arose on January 4 of that year, and continued unabated for some days. A man named Joe Bennett made a great deal of money running a ferryboat between the Hill and Franklinton, as the public had to use his boat for about two weeks. There were no railroad tracks then to interrupt the course of the waters, and an enormous lake spread from the State Quarries to the south over the level farming land. There have been numerous great floods since, but none have reached so high a point till the present one. The floods of 1867 and 1870 were very destructive to property and spread devastation far and wide.s

The subsidence of the waters on this occasion was gradual. At least a hundred families were driven from their homes by the invading element, and had to seek temporary shelter. The Franklinton Schoolhouse was turned into a tem- porary hospital, and more than twenty families were for a time fed and lodged within its walls. The police force of the city was kept constantly employed, with its patrol wagons, and the boats from the parks, in the rescue of imperiled life and property, and the Sisters of the Good Shepherd were untiring in their ministra- tions of help and comfort.

This, up to the present writing, has been the most recent of the important Scioto River floods. On the twentyfourth of January, 1887, the water in the channel rose ten feet above its normal height, but it soon began to recede, and no particular damage was done.

Intermittently washed, as it has thus been, by huge volumes of water, the local topography of the river has exhibited, within the historic period, some inter- esting changes. Early in the settlement of the borough, a strip of land called an island extended from Broad Street south to the dam, and was a favorite dancing place, it is said, for the manumitted slave population which settled in Nigger Hol- low. An island just above the mouth of the Whetstone, on which part of Harri-

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THE SCIOTO RIVER.

son's British captives of the Battle of the Thames were, for a time, placed under guard, has now mostly disappeared. Another bit of insular territory, of which no vestige now remains, clove the channel of the river just above the present bridge of the Little Miami Railway. It was variously known as Brickell Island, Willow Island and Bloody Island, of which latter title the derivation is thus explained :

On a certain occasion, about 1840, a ball took place at the Neil House, and among the wild and mercilessly bewitching maidens there present, was Miss Lizzie H-, a frolic-loving romp, who was simultaneously solicited to dance by two young gentlemen, one from Logan County, the other from Richland. Miss H -- gave her preference to one of the suitors, no matter which, and jok- ingly told the other he could " settle it" with his rival. The suggestion was taken in dead earnest, a duel arranged, seconds chosen, and the Willow Island, then a retired spot, selected as the scene where offended honor was to be propitiated with blood. The murderous intentions of the young quarrelers having become known, quite a number of persons assembled on the river's bank to see them fight it out. Everything being made ready, shots were exchanged two or three times, but with- out effect. The seconds were sensible men, and had been careful to put no bullets in the pistols. Finally some boys who had been out hunting came along with loaded rifles, wherenpon one of the duelists proposed to " stop this nonsense," take the weapons of the hunters and settle the affair at once. But this proposition did not snit the other antagonist, and so the affair, after some further parleying, ended, and the willowy sandbar of the Scioto which formed the scene of this melodramatic episode bore thenceforward the name of The Bloody Island.

Attempts to navigate the Scioto by steam have been frequently made. The carliest of these attempts seems to be indicated by the following advertisement, bearing date March 6, 1828, and quaintly illustrated with a picture of a steam- boat :

For Ripley The Superior Fast Sailing S. B.

Trosco. A. H. KEEF, Master.

Will positively sail from the port of Columbus for Ripley between the 25th and 28th of the present month - weather permitting; and will touch at Circleville, Chillicothe, Piketon, Portsmouth, and the several intermediate landings. The Tiosco was built at Columbus in a superior manner, and of the best materials, being timbered and iron-fastened. She has ex- cellent accommodations for cabin passengers, being very lofty between the decks, and is sufficiently capacious to contain several small families. For freight or passage apply to the captain on board, or to

SMITH & BARNEY, State Street.

The writer hereof is not able to embellish this record with any reliable facts as to the fate of the Tiosco. With her departure from Columbus, with " several small families," perhaps, between decks, she disappears from history. How successfully she made her way amid the snags and sawyers of the sinuous Scioto, whether she ever reached Ripley, or whether she perished miserably enmeshed in the octopus- like roots of some riparian sycamore, are matters of pure speculation. The proba- bilities seem to be that one trip to Ripley was all that her adventurous commander cared to make. But however the Tiosco may have fared, there still existed, in

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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

later years, bold spirits firm in the faith that the Scioto could be made a vehicle for the uses of steam. Of this we have evidence in the following advertisement which was dated August 8, 1843, and appeared in the newspaper prints then current :

The splendid highpressure steamer EXPERIMENT

will leave Gill & McCune's dock at the foot of Town Street every day (Sundays excepted) for the head of navigation, at 73 o'clock A. M., touching at all intermediate points on the Scioto and Olentangy, and run until 10} o'clock ; and from 3 p. M. until 8 o'clock in the evening. Parties wishing to take a morning or evening excursion can charter this boat by leaving a card at the American, or by applying to the Captain on board. The proprietors have been at considerable expense to make this boat safe and comfortable, and the engine having been fitted up by Messrs. J. D. Dare & Co., experienced engineers of Zanesville, is second to none for safety. Charges moderate.

The end of the Experiment is as uncertain as that of the Tiosco, but whatever it was it did not prove to be the last of steam navigation of the Scioto, for, in a Piketon letter to the Ohio State Journal of February 3, 1848, we read :

The steamboat American, Grey, Master is a few rods below this place on her first trip up the Scioto, and will, without doubt, arrive in the neighborhood of Chillicothe either this evening or tomorrow morning. A thorough examination of the river was made a few days since by competent captains, and it fully confirmed the opinion heretofore entertained, that the Scioto is navigable for light draught steamers during the greater part of the year. The American is not a small boat, but it has not as yet met with any obstructions, and none are anticipated.

A steam canalboat called the Enterprise, Captain Douel, arrived at Columbus from Zanesville in August, 1859, and on the twentyfourth of that month made an excursion up the Scioto "as far as water would permit."9

In May, 1877, the steamer Vinnie began making trips from her dock at the foot of Town Street to points on the river above the month of the Whetstone.

Thus closes the catalogue of steam vessels of local origin which have plowed the Scioto's waters. It has probably not been exhausted, but a sufficiency of instances has been given to show, let us hope, that the marine annals of Columbus are not so barren as an uninformed person might be induced to suppose.

NOTES.

1. In February, 1833, Mr. Sullivant published an advertisement inviting proposals " for the construction of a bridge across the Scioto River at Columbus, after the plan of the Alum Creek Bridge, on the National Road." The advertisement stated that the bridge would have two spans, of about one hundred and forty feet each.

2. Ohio State Journal.

3. Ibid.

4. Sullivant Family Memorial.

5. Ohio State Journal.

6. Ibid.

7. Ohio State Journal, September 20, 1866.

8. Ohio State Journal, February 5, 1883.

9. Ohio State Journal.

CHAPTER XIX.

FROM TRAIL TO TURNPIKE.

Of all inventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted, those inventions which abridge distance have done most for the civilization of our species. Every improve- ment of the ineans of locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually as well as materially, and not only facilitates the interchange of the various productions of nature and art, but tends to remove national and provincial antipathies, and to bind together all the branches of the great human family. In the seventeenth century the inhabitants of London were, for almost every practical purpose, further from Reading than they now are from Edinburg, and further from Edinburg than they now are from Vienna .- Macaulay's History of England, Chapter 3.

At the time the borough of Columbus was originally located and surveyed, it was touched by no road or path excepting a few primitive trails through the forest. All the thoroughfares which then existed centered at Franklinton. " There was not a road leading to or out of the town," says Colonel Olmsted.1

The first pathway through the Ohio wilderness marked by civilized man was Zane's Trace, described in a note to a preceding chapter. The original explorers either took their course by the compass, followed the principal rivers and their tributaries, or traveled in the paths beaten by the feet of the deer, the bison and the Indian. When the avant-couriers of the pioneer host varied from these paths, they marked their routes by the barking or girdling of trees. No routes for wheeled travel having yet been opened, most of the merchandise for the early settlements was transported on the backs of horses, oxen and mules. "The pack- saddle of yore," says one of the historians of the wilderness period,? " was the ex- press car of the backwoods, carrying passengers, freight and mails. Packhorses were often driven in lines of ten or twelve. Each horse was tied to the tail of the one going before, so that one driver could manage a whole line. The pack or burden of a single animal was of about two hundred pounds weight." Packsaddles were made by trimming the forked branches of trees so as to adjust the pronged part to the back of the burden-bearing beast. " Mr. Speed," says the writer just quoted, " relates an anecdote of a frontier preacher who, at an outdoor service, paused in the midst of his sermon to look up, and point to a treetop, saying : ' Brethren, there is one of the best limbs for a packsaddle that ever grew. After meeting we will go and cut it.'"

Writing in 1868 of his father's emigration from Connectient to Granville, Ohio, in 1808, Colonel P. H. Olmsted says :

[311]

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IHISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

At that time we had to pass through an almost unbroken wilderness to reach our des- tination. Only a few marked trees served as a guide through the dense forest, there being no cut-out road. During a December afternoon we were overtaken with a tremendous snow- storm which so blinded our way that when within about ten miles of Alum Creek, we had to stop for the night. We made a kind of protection against the storm with logs and branches of trees, and a large fire in front, which we kept burning all night. Our horses were fastened to the wagon and covered with bedquilts, where they remained during the night without water or forage. It was a most terrible situation to be placed in, and one I shall never forget. The next morning we found the snow about ten inches deep, and the marks upon the trees so obliterated that it was almost impossible for us to find our way, but we persevered, and about two o'clock P. M. crossed Alum Creek and were soon domiciled in an old log cabin which was tendered us for the winter.3

Such were the conditions of emigrant travel in Ohio at that early period. The country possessed neither roads nor bridges.4 The gristmill nearest to Gran- ville, says Colonel Olmsted, was Governor Worthington's, eight miles north of Chillicothe, and thither and back was a journey of six days.

In one of the most striking chapters in his History of England, Macaulay emphasizes the civilizing importance of roads, highways, and other facilities of in- tercommunication. Singularly in keeping with the improvement of such facilities in England, particularly by the construction of solid wagonroads for neighborhood intercourse, was the advancement made, as the historian shows, in the intellectual and social condition of the people.5 Just so it has been - still is - in Ohio. The pioneer settlers being, for the most part, intelligent and enterprising, one of their very first concerns was the improvement of their means of social and commercial intercourse. The highway, the schoolhouse and the church were allied enterprises and advanced abreast.

When the first Common Pleas Court of Franklin County was organized in 1803, the opening and construction of roads took a conspicuous part in the earlier pro- ceedings. From these proceedings, quoted in an antecedent chapter, it appears that preliminary steps were taken for opening various roads, first of which was one leading " from the public square in Franklinton " by " the nearest and best way to Lancaster, in Fairfield County." This road, says Martin, in a footnote, " was made to cross the Scioto at the Old Ford below the canal dam, and pass through the bottom fields (then woods) to intersect what is now the Chillicothe road south of Stewart's Grove and continued to be a travelled road until after Columbus was laid out. Jacob Armitage kept the ferry over the river."6

The second road for which viewers were appointed by the Court, was one leading, " from the northeast end of Gift Street, in Franklinton, on as straight a direction as the situation of the ground will admit of a road, towards the town of Newark, in Fairfield County." Joseph Vance was appointed to survey the Lan- caster road, Samuel Smith that to Newark. At the same sitting a commission was appointed to " view," and Captain John Blair was authorized to survey, a road " from the public square in Franklinton to Springfield, in Greene County." At the Jannary sitting, in 1804, " a petition was presented by the Rev. James Kilbonrn and others, praying for a view of a road to lead from Franklinton to the town of Worthington." The prayer was granted by the Court, and Joseph Vance was named as surveyor of the line. Mr. Kilbourn was at the same time appointed to

O, Johnson

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FROM TRAIL TO TURNPIKE.

survey a crossroad from Worthington to intersect the main thoroughfare from Franklinton to Newark. The report of the viewers of the road from Franklinton to Worthington was received at this sitting, and the supervisor in Liberty Town . ship was directed to "open said road, and make it passable for loaded wagons." At the March sitting of the same year, similar action was taken as to the road, so far as " viewed," from Franklinton to Springfield. Lucas Sullivant was ap- pointed surveyor to "attend the viewers" in their additional work on that line.

Thus, with the beginning of the county, began also its original system of highways, but necessarily most of the wilderness roads continued to be, for many years - even decades - after they were first opened, of a most rudimentary char- acter. For neighborhood convenience, forest paths and private lanes were made to suffice. During the early infancy of the Columbus borough its wheels and pedestrians took their way by the shortest routes and most solid ground they could find amid the stumps and brushheaps. When Christian Heyl approached the place from the south in 1813, he found the only road then existing in that direc- tion crossed by the private gate of John MeGowan. By what means and strata- gems Mr. Heyl indneed McGowan to open the gate, and let him into the capital of Ohio, has been narrated.

The first step toward readier ingress and egress seems to have been the authority conferred upon the State Director, by the act of January 27, 1814, to apply a certain part of the proceeds of taxation of the inlots to "improvement of the State road leading from the town of Columbus to Granville." Additional prog- ress was made in pursuance of an act of the General Assembly, passed February 16, 1815, appropriating fortysix thousand dollars from the Three Percent. Fund conferred by Congress,' for the purpose of opening and repairing roads in Ohio. From this appropriation Franklin County obtained one thousand dollars, thus dis- tributed : "On the road from Columbus to Newark, beginning two miles cast of Alum Creek," six hundred dollars ; on the road towards Springfield, " beginning eight miles west of Columbus," three hundred dollars; and " on the road towards London, Madison County," one hundred dollars. These sums were not sufficient to go very far in the way of making grades, building bridges, or even in chopping down trees and laying " corduroy," but they indicated a beginning, and a willing- ness to do more, when the funds should be had, to make the capital approachable.

On December 2, 1816, the General Assembly passed an act " to incorporate the Franklin Turnpike Company," providing as follows :

That Lucas Sullivant, James Johnston, John Kerr, Lemuel Rose, Timothy Spelman, David Moore, John J. Brice, William Taylor, Zachariah Davis, William W. Gault, Stephen McDoughal, Lyne Starling, Joseph Vance and Joseph Miller, and their associates, be and they are hereby incorporated, created and made a body corporate and politic, by the name and style of the Franklin Turnpike Road Company, for the intent and purpose of making a turnpike road from the town of Columbus in the County of Franklin to the town of New Ark in the County of Licking, with all the rights, privileges and immunities, and subject to all the restrictions, limitations, provisions and disabilities prescribed in the act entitled an act to provide for the regulation of turnpike companies.

In pursuance of this aet, John Kerr opened the books for subscriptions to the stock of this company May 17, 1817.

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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

By an act of December 10, 1817, Joseph Vance and Abraham Pickens, of Fair- field County, were appointed commissioners to lay out a road from Jacksonville, in that county, to Columbus.

An act " to provide for laying out and establishing a State Road from Colum- bus to the north line of Clinton Township in Franklin County " was passed December 7, 1820.

In 1823 the Granville road, which was then the most direct route eastward, was "little else," says Martin, " than one continuous mudhole." In consequence of its almost impassable condition the following notice appeared in one of the March issues of the Columbus Gazette :

The undersigned respectfully request that as many citizens of Franklin County as can make it convenient will meet at the tavern of Robert Russell, on Saturday, the eleventh day of April next, for the purpose of making arrangements to meet thecitizens of Licking County, and labor on the Columbus and Granville road for two days, in the latter part of May next.

Ebenezer Butler, Archibald Benfield, Samuel Shannon, Henry Brown, William Neil, J. A. McDowell, P. H. Olmsted, A. I. McDowell, Edward Livingston, John Kerr, Samuel G. Flenniken, Orris Parish, Ralph Osborn, James Kooken, James K. Corey, Eli C. King, Francis Stewart.

The Granville road at that time crossed the Scioto near the present western terminus of Spring or Gay Street, and took its course eastward through the settle- ments on the Big Darby and Gahannah. It crossed the Alum and Big Walnut creeks by toll bridges erected by David Pugh. The Worthington road, up the east bank of the Whetstone, passed on to Delaware. The road from Franklinton to Lancaster passed through the cornfields and meadows just south of Franklinton and crossed the river at the Old Ford.

In 1828, citizens of Knox County memorialized Congress for the construction of a National Road from Cincinnati to Buffalo, New York, ria Columbus, Mount Vernon, Wooster, and Erie.

The first commercial connection of the capital with Lake Erie was furnished by the Columbus & Sandusky Turnpike, built by a joint stock company incor- porated by an act of the General Assembly passed January 31, 1826. The incor- porators were John Kilbourne, Abram I. McDowell, Henry Brown, William Neil, Orange Johnson, Orris Parish and Robert Brotherton of Franklin County, and nineteen others whose residences were on the line in or near Delaware, Bucyrus and Sandusky. The capital stock of the company was fixed at $100,000, with authority to increase it to double that amount, in one-hundred-dollar shares. Con- gress was at once earnestly petitioned to aid this enterprise, and, largely in con- sequence of the efforts of Colonel Pardon Sprague, of Delaware County, passed an act March 3, 1827, which appropriated " to the State of Ohio for the purpose of aiding the Columbus & Sandusky Turnpike Company in making a road from Co- lumbus to Sandusky City, the onehalf of a quantity of land equal to two sections on the western side of said road, and most contiguous thereto, to be bounded by sectional lines, from one end of said road to the other, wheresoever the same may remain unsold, reserving to the United States each alternate section, through the whole length of said road through the lands of the United States, to be selected by the Commissioner of the General Land Office, under the direction of the President :

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FROM TRAIL TO TURNPIKE.

Provided, That no toll shall at any time be collected of any mail stage, nor of any troops or property of the United States."

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History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 41

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