USA > Ohio > Montgomery County > Dayton > History of the city of Dayton and Montgomery County, Ohio, Volume I > Part 6
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In August, 1791, Colonel Wilkinson was sent with a force of five hundred and fifty mounted men against the Wabash Indians. While the expedition was suc- cessful in destroying much property and killing a few Indians, and capturing some others, the result was that the Indians were angered rather than subdued. Previous expeditions under Colonel Hardin and General Scott against the Wabash Indians were of a like class and were intended to prevent the reenforcing of the Indians on the Maumee, whom General St. Clair was now to attack.
ST. CLAIR'S EXPEDITION.
Large plans were made for the northern expedition but inefficiency and disap- pointment attended almost every move. September 17, 1791, the army which should have been ready months earlier, started on its course. The army was made up of two small regiments of regulars, two of six months' levies, a number of militia, a few cavalry, and was provided with some batteries of light guns. The start was made by the old trail from Cincinnati to a crossing over the Great Miami and thus to the north. Where Hamilton now is a fort had been erected and named Fort Hamilton. The next fort, erected while on the march, was Fort Jefferson, six miles south and a little west of where Greenville now is. From here the army marched to where the present state line crosses the east branch of the Wabash. Here, without proper caution and protection against surprise, the army, now about fourteen hundred strong, went into camp. The next morning, November the 4th, early in the morning, the camp was suddenly attacked.
The soldiers fought bravely and here and there drove back the Indians, but the Indians had every advantage and in three hours the survivors of the conflict were a fleeing rabble, seeking in whatever way to reach safety in Fort Jefferson. After a pursuit of about four miles the Indians returned to the battlefield to gloat
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over and divide the spoil. It was a second Braddock's defeat. The Indians were under the command of Little Turtle of the Miamis. In the quartermaster's de- partment, Benjamin Van Cleave, one of the founders of Dayton, held a place. While not a soldier, he performed a soldier's part, and has given us in his diary one of the best accounts that we have of the battle and the disorderly retreat. The following is an extract from his account of the rout: "In a short distance we were so suddenly among the Indians, who were not apprised of our object, that they opened to us and ran to the right and left without firing. I think that about two hundred of our men passed through them before they fired, except a chance shot. When we had proceeded about two miles, most of those mounted had passed me. A boy had been thrown or fell off a horse and begged my assistance, and I ran, pulling him along, about two miles further, until I had nearly become ex- hausted. The last two horses in the rear, had one, two, and the other carried three men. I made an exertion and threw him on behind the two men. The In- dians followed but about half a mile further. The boy was thrown off, but es- caped and got in safe.
"My friend Benham I did not see on the retreat, but understood that he was thrown off about this place and lay on the left of the trace, where he was found in the winter and was buried. I took the cramp violently in my thighs and could scarcely walk until I got within a hundred yards of the rear, wliere the Indians were tomahawking the old and wounded men. I further detained here to tie my pocket handkerchief around a man's wounded knee and saw the Indians close in pursuit. At this time, for a moment my spirits sunk and I felt in despair of my safety. I hesitated whether to leave the road or whether I was capable of further exertions. If I left the road, the Indians were in plain sight and could easily over- take me. I threw the shoes off my feet and the coolness of the ground seemed to revive me. I again began a trot and recollect when a bend in the road offered and I got before half a dozen persons. I thought that it would occupy some time for the enemy to massacre these before my turn would come. By the time I got to Stillwater, about eleven miles, I had gained the center of the flying troops and like them came to a walk. I fell in with Lieutenant Shaumburg, (who, if my recollec- tion serves me, was the only officer of the artillery that got away unhurt), with Corporal Matt and a woman who was called Red Headed Nance. The latter two were both crying. Matt was lamenting the loss of his wife and Nance of an infant child. Shaumburg was nearly exhausted and hung on Matt's arm. I carried his fusee and acoutrements and led Nance. In this way we came together and arrived at Jefferson a little after sunset."
It is difficult to account for the number of women and children and old men who accompanied the expedition. As the intention was to establish a permanent garrison at the juncture of the St. Joseph and St. Mary's rivers, families of sol- diers and others may have intended to establish their homes there. The blow to the frontier settlements and to the country in general was by turns stupifying and maddening. Six hundred and thirty men had been killed and over two hundred and eighty wounded, many officers, including General Butler, second in com- mand, being in the number. General St. Clair showed great bravery, had several horses killed under him, but lived to receive much blame and suffer humiliation be- cause of his disastrous defeat.
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From the "Cyclopedia of American Biography." Copyright, 1889, by D. Appleton & Co.
From the "National Cyclopedia of American Biography," hy permission of James T. White & Co.
ArsiClaire
From the "Cyclopedia of American Biography." Copyright, 1866, by D. Appleton & Co.
From the "National Cyclopedia of American Biography," by permission of James T. White & Co.
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In January, 1792, General Wilkinson was sent to the scene of St. Clair's de- feat to bury the dead and to bring away government property that had not been destroyed. Fort St. Clair, near the present site of Eaton, was built under the order of General Wilkinson in March, 1792.
PEACE EFFORTS.
After the defeat of St. Clair the exposed settlements on one thousand miles of frontier were subject to the attacks of the emboldened savages. The govern- ment hesitated on what now seemed to be the necessity of a formal war. As before, at different times, the government had sought to substitute negotiations for force, so now, by various negotiations, through friendly tribes, through the British, and by commissioners in direct conference, a peaceful solution was sought. The Indians had so been drawn together by the events of a few preceding years that they could now more nearly be dealt with as a single body. Indeed there was no alternative to dealing with them thus. Five independent embassies, sent to the hostile Indians by the United States, failed to secure peace. A number of the Federal peace agents were murdered.
Distinguished commissioners met the confederated tribes in July, 1793, at the Maumee Rapids, and presented urgently the desire of the United States for peace. The Indians took time to consider, consulted their chief warriors, and presented on the 13th of August an able and impressive answer, the last part of which giving their ultimatum, may well be quoted: "Brothers :- At our general council, held at the Glaize last fall, we agreed to meet commissioners from the United States for the purpose of restoring peace, provided they con- sented to acknowledge and confirm our boundary line to be the Ohio, and we determined not to meet you until you gave us satisfaction on that point. That is the reason we have never met. We desire you to consider, brothers, that our only demand is the peaceable possession of a small part of our once great coun- try. Look back and review the lands from whence we have been driven to this spot. We can retreat no farther, because the country behind hardly affords food for its inhabitants, and we have, therefore, resolved to leave our bones in this small space in which we are now confined.
"Brothers: We shall be persuaded that you mean to do us justice if you agree that the Ohio shall remain the boundary line between us. If you will not con- sent thereto, our meeting will be altogether unnecessary. This is the great point which we hoped would have been explained before you left your homes, as our message, last fall, was principally directed to obtain that information." This weighty declaration was subscribed by the names of sixteen tribes or na- tions. The logic of the position of the Indians was applicable not only to the lands north of the Ohio but to all the lands, at that time or before, occupied by the Indians, and that occupation, no difference how slight or how used, might be made a bar to the advance of civilization. The heedless course of the In- dians in refusing the liberal terms that the Federal government was prepared to grant, was largely due to counsel and encouragements of the British on the north and the Spaniards on the west. The Americans could not yield to what General Wayne called the "hydra of Indian, British and Spanish enmity."
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GENERAL WAYNE'S EXPEDITION.
General Anthony Wayne, a hero of the Revolution, was given charge of the army that was to restore the glory of American arms and to give security to a bloody frontier. Called "Mad Anthony" because of his daring and impetuosity, in his campaign he proved a severe drill-master, exact in all his arrangements, and in caution the despair of his forest foes. October 7, 1793, he left Fort Washington, following the same general course pursued by St. Clair. October 23d, a force of nearly one hundred soldiers, conveying twenty wagons loaded with supplies, was assaulted seven miles west of Fort St. Clair and defeated. Where Greenville now stands he built a fort and called it Fort Greenville. While here, he sent forward a force to the scene of St. Clair's defeat, where a fort called Fort Recovery was built. This fort was later savagely attacked by a large body of Indians. July 28, 1794, the army moved north, establishing Fort Adams on the St. Marys and Fort Defiance at the mouth of the Au Glaize. The Indians being unwilling to consider terms of peace, the army numbering two thousand regulars and one thousand cavalry, moved down the north bank of the Maumee to the Maumee Rapids. Here, August 20, protected by a wide belt of fallen timber, the Indians had arranged to give battle. An impetuous charge of both regulars and cavalry, with such rapid pursuit as not to give the Indians and their white allies a chance to reload their guns, decided the result. In a con- flict of forty minutes, for which, however, a preparation of two years was neces- sary, the last and most decisive of our great Indian battles was decided. Thirty- three Americans were killed and one hundred wounded. The Indian loss was two or three times as great. Towns were destroyed and fields were laid waste. The significance of the battle was due to the fact that so many tribes were rep- resented by their warriors and leading chiefs. The Wyandots lost seven chiefs among the slain. A fort was erected at the confluence of the St. Mary's and St. Joseph and called Fort Wayne. After the battle, Forts Loramie and Piqua were erected at the head of the Great Miami to guard supplies brought up that river. A fort was also built at the Tawa towns at the head of navigation in Au Glaize.
The following year, on the 3d day of August, was signed the Greenville treaty, a treaty in which all of the northwestern Indians joined. The Indian boundary line, as agreed on, followed the Fort Harmar treaty line west "to a fork of that branch of the Great Miami river running into the Ohio at or near which fork stood Loramie's store, and where commences the portage be- tween the Miami of the Ohio and St. Mary's river, thence to Fort Recovery, and thence to the Ohio at a point opposite the mouth of Kentucky river." With the Greenville Treaty was introduced a new era in the history of the settlement of the Northwest.
The treaty between Great Britain and the United States, negotiated by Jay November 19, 1794, secured the evacuation of the northern posts by the British in 1796. The Pinckney treaty with Spain, signed October 27, 1795, secured the boundary on the east bank of the Mississippi, claimed or demanded by the United States, and best of all the undisputed free navigation of the Mississippi,
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thus putting an end to Spanish intrigue and the separatist movements in Ken- tucky and adjoining territories.
CIVIL ADMINISTRATION.
With external difficulties so largely removed, and with the newly opened lands filling up so rapidly, we may look back to the beginning of civil admin- istration. General Arthur St. Clair, the first governor of the Northwest Terri- tory, had an honorable record in the Revolutionary War, and earlier, as a young lieutenant, he had won distinction in the French and Indian war. He was serv- ing as president of the Continental Congress when the Ordinance of 1787 was passed. In 1788, he came to Marietta, where civil government was with suit- able ceremony established. July 26, 1788, Governor St. Clair by proclamation formed Washington County, including all of the eastern part of the present state of Ohio, with Marietta as its county seat. In 1790, he came on to the Miami settlements, where he changed the name of Losantiville to Cincinnati. He established Hamilton County by a proclamation issued January 2, 1790. It was bounded by the Ohio and the two Miamis and a line drawn due east from the Standing Stone Forks (Loramie's Creek). Cincinnati was made the county seat and became the place of residence of the Governor. Governor St. Clair hastened to the Illinois country, where April 27, 1790, St. Clair County was formed, with Kaskaskia as the seat of government. June 20, 1790, Knox County was formed, consisting mostly of the present territory of the state of Indiana, but also a large part of Illinois, and that part of Ohio west of the Great Miami. The county seat was Vincennes on the Wabash.
The governor and the three judges of the General Court were the law- makers for the Territory. Rather they were authorized to take laws already existing in one or another of the States and make them binding in the Territory. Samuel H. Parsons, John Armstrong and James M. Varnum were the first judges appointed, all of them able jurists. Judge Armstrong soon resigned and Judge Symmes was appointed in his stead. On the death of Judge Varnum, Judge George Turner became one of the judges. Judge Rufus Putman took the place of Judge Parsons, deceased. Later, Joseph Gillman took the place of Rufus Putman, and in 1798, Return Jonathan Meigs took the place of Judge Turner. Laws were adopted establishing courts, providing for a militia, de- fining crimes and providing punishments, forbiding improper and profane language, the violation of the Sabbath, the selling of intoxicants to the Indians, providing for county jails, pillories, whipping-posts and stocks. All fees were definitely regulated, and made, as would be thought now, ridiculously low. The penalty for drunkenness was a fine of five dimes for the first offense, and for every successive offense the sum of one dollar, and, "in either case, upon the offender's neglecting or refusing to pay the fine, he was set in the stocks for the space of one hour." There was a law forbidding the "selling of spiritous and other intoxicating liquors to soldiers in the service of the United States, being within ten miles of any military post." All kinds of gambling were for- bidden. The body of these laws, as formulated and published in 1795 in Cin- cinnati by authority of Governor St. Clair and Judges Turner and Symmes, is
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known as the "Maxwell Code," and has been praised by Chase and others as a fit code for a rising state.
The Court of Common Pleas was opened at Marietta on the first Tuesday of September, 1788, with the following call: "O yez! a court is opened for the administration of even-handed justice to the poor and the rich, to the guilty and the innocent, without respect of persons ; none to be punished without trial by their peers, and then in pursuance of the laws and evidence in the case."
HAMILTON COUNTY.
For the year before the arrival of General St. Clair in the Miami country, the people had formed and administered their own laws, Israel Ludlow, having been appointed by them Sheriff. When Hamilton county was formed, William Goforth, William Wells and William McMillan were appointed judges of the Court of Common Pleas ; J. Brown was made sheriff, and Israel Ludlow, clerk. Many of the early settlers were soldiers or officers of the Revolutionary war. Others came from New Jersey. The company at the head of which Symmes stood were chiefly a New Jersey company, and naturally enlisted immigrants from that state and adjacent territory. To these streams were added streams of German and Scotch-Irish from Pennsylvania and enterprising frontiersmen from Kentucky. The turbulent element usually collecting on the border, though not absent, was much less conspicuous than in many places.
On January 24th, 1790, the Baptist church was organized at Columbia, with Rev. Stephen Gano as pastor, and shortly after an academy with John Reilly as teacher was established there. In 1791 Rev. James Kemper was installed pastor of the First Presbyterian church at Cincinnati.
Citizens of Dayton and Montgomery county are interested in Cincinnati as Dayton was founded by people coming from that place, and are interested in Hamilton county as Hamilton county included for a time a part and then all of Montgomery county and adjacent territory.
February IIth, 1792, the country between the Little Miami and the Scioto was added to Hamilton county. This would still leave Montgomery county west of the Great Miami a part of Knox county with the county seat at Vincennes. June 22d, 1798, Hamilton county was made to include the territory west of the Great Miami to the Indian boundary line.
The settlements in Hamilton county, falling within the present limits of Montgomery county may pass unnoticed for the present, as it is desirable to fol- low their history without the interruption coming from the consideration of matters of a general nature.
After the victory of General Wayne and the treaty of Greenville, immigra- tion into the territory north of the Ohio went forward at a rapid rate. Cin- cinnati became a busy and thriving town. Settlers found their way in single families, and in rural and village groops into regions far from the Ohio River.
TERRITORIAL LEGISLATURE.
In 1798, Governor St. Clair issued a proclamation declaring that the North- west Territory had five thousand free male inhabitants of twenty-one years of
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age, the number necessary in order to elect representatives to a territorial legis- lature. Representatives from the sparse population in this wide area met in Cincinnati, September 16th, 1799. Judge Burnet speaks as follows as to the legislature thus constituted : "In choosing members of the first territorial legis . lature, the people in almost every instance selected the strongest and best men in their respective counties. Party influence was scarcely felt." The assembly provided for the passing of the territory under the new form of administration and current requirements. The most important act of the assembly was to elect William Henry Harrison as the representative of the territory to the United States Congress. Harrison was successful in securing, against the influence of powerful land speculators, legislation by which public lands were to be sold in small divisions and on easy terms to settlers. At this time began the determined conflict between Governor St. Clair and his federalist associates, and a group of younger men of the party of Jefferson. Of thirty measures passed by the legislature, the Governor vetoed eleven, six of them relating to the formation of new counties. The governor was blamed for being arbitrary and tyrannical.
May 7, 1800, the Northwest Territory was divided by a line nearly coincident with the western line of the State of Ohio, the actual line being the Indian boun- dary line as far north as Fort Recovery and thence north to the Canadian line. The territory to the west was called the Territory of Indiana, and that east of this line retained the old designation, the Northwest Territory, or the Eastern Division of the Northwest Territory.
November 3, 1800, the second session of the first territorial legislature met at Chillicothe and continued in session till December 9th. The second territorial legislature, elected from the Eastern Division of the Northwest Territory, held its first session at Chillicothe, commencing November 23, 1801, and ending January 23, 1802.
Meanwhile the breach between Governor St. Clair and the group of younger men now coming to the front was becoming wider. The change by which a terri- torial legislature was established only made the Governor's control more absolute. The chief ones opposed to the governor were Charles Willing Byrd, William Henry Harrison, backed by Judge Symmes, whose daughter he had married, John Smith, Edward Tiffin, Nathaniel Massie, Thomas Worthington, Michael Bald- win and Return J. Meigs. Governor St. Clair was a man of high qualities of mind and heart. He appreciated his unusual position as appointed to preside over the rude beginnings of a country with imperial possibilities. He was patriotic and in- corruptible. He was compelled to deal inflexibly with land speculators and politi- cal adventurers. Yet his last days were imbittered because he had not discernment to see the changes made necessary by new conditions and the tact to transfer some of his authority and responsibility to new hands.
OHIO A STATE.
Though the territory did not have the population of sixty thousand required before statehood should be granted, it was concluded that the only way to break away from the power of the governor was by the securing of the standing of a state. With this aim in view, and also with the aim to secure the removal of St.
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Clair as governor, Worthington and Baldwin went to Washington to promote such action as might reach the desired ends.
April 30, 1802, Congress passed an enabling act and November Ist following, the constitutional convention met at Chillicothe, and on the 29th of the same month adjourned, having adopted a constitution. As might have been expected, the con- stitution provided for the widest popular liberty, and clothed the government with no great amount of power. It followed the ordinance of 1787 in forbidding sla- very and in proclaiming religious liberty. March 1, 1803, the first state legislature met at Chillicothe, at which time all territorial officers resigned. This date is the proper date for the beginning of statehood. For the first, we are now permitted to use the name Ohio as a political designation. Ohio has been called the "first- born of the ordinance of 1787." She was the seventeenth in the sisterhood of states and began her history with boundaries substantially the same as at present. Governor St. Clair had planned for a small state, and then planned to defeat any action looking toward statehood, and, when all of his efforts failed, he showed his irritation by a remark expressive of his distrust of government in the hands of the people. This remark was the occasion of his being dismissed from his office No- vember 22, 1802, by President Jefferson. From this time, Charles Willing Byrd, the secretary of the territory, discharged the duties of governor till the first gov- ernor elected under the constitution was inaugurated.
PART SECOND
THE CITY OF DAYTON
CHAPTER I.
THE FOUNDING OF THE DAYTON COMMUNITY.
ENVIRONMENT-LARGE PURCHASES OF LANDS-THE SURVEYS-WEST OF THE MIAMI -JUDGE SYMMES-GOVERNOR ST. CLAIR-GENERAL DAYTON-COLONEL LUDLOW -VAN CLEVE'S ACCOUNT OF SURVEY AND SETTLEMENT-HAMER'S PARTY- NEWCOM'S PARTY-THOMPSON'S PARTY-FIRST NECESSITIES-NEWCOM'S TAVERN-THE INDIANS-SCHOOLS AND CHURCHES-STORES AND MILLS-SOCIAL EVENTS-NEIGHBORING SETTLEMENTS-ROADS-FIRST BOAT-HAMILTON COUNTY -DAYTON TOWNSHIP-LAND TITLES-LAND SALES-MEMORIAL TO CONGRESS- SUITS IN THE SUPREME COURT-SKETCHES OF FIRST SETTLERS-CHARACTER OF THE FIRST SETTLERS.
ENVIRONMENT.
Montgomery county may lay claim to being the central county in the large territory known as the Miami country. Whether we think of the points of the compass, of the centering within its bounds of the larger rivers, or of the rep- resentative character of the land and the people, this central position holds good. Half of two townships and a fraction of a third drain to the Little Miami, while the other parts of the county slope to the Great Miami.
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