USA > Ohio > Montgomery County > Dayton > History of the city of Dayton and Montgomery County, Ohio, Volume I > Part 72
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the waters and of the fowl that fly above the earth; changes among the creatures that creep and among the beasts of the earth. And the God that saw it all, and brought all these changes about, is the same God who. now rules the world. No man can tell what changes the future may have in store.
SOIL.
Soil consists of fragments of rock more or less mixed up with decaying vege- table and animal matter. This decaying vegetable and animal matter frequently is referred to under the term organic matter. Organic matter is supplied by all the plants and animals that die in the fields and forests, and the products of whose decay is carried by rains into the soil. It is supplied in larger quantities and in a shorter period of time by the green crops, such as clover and winter rye. which are raised by farmers for the purpose of enriching the soil, and which therefore are turned under by the plow. Natural manure is one of the best sources of organic material for the soil. Many of the artificial fertilizers consist in large part of organic material ; of ground up bones, dried blood, and shreds of flesh, mixed with various mineral substances.
Fragments of rock, however, form by far the larger part of the bulk of the soil. These fragments are derived from various sources. The natural decay of the larger rock masses where exposed to the action of weathering is the most common source. The freezing and thawing of rocks while moist, in winter, causes them to crack and crumble. The changes of temperature between day and night, even in summer, tend to loosen the grains of the rock. At the surface, rock exposed to direct sun light expands more rapidly than the somewhat cooler rock beneath. Therefore fragments at the surface tend to break loose and to spall off. The action of water seeping through the soil results in the removal of a part of the cementing material by solution, and the grains then become more readily separated. In fact, all the processes of weathering tend to reduce rocks to frag- ments, and, eventually, to fine particles, which then make up the greater part of the soil.
The streams contribute much to the formation of soil. Even more rapidly than the processes of weathering, the action of streams reduces rocks to small fragments. Rocks are torn loose from the banks during high waters. These fragments are rolled along the bottom and reduced to rounded pebbles, or finally to pellets of sand. The materials worn off from the rock fragments form part of the mud washed along or carried in suspension by streams. The sand itself acts like a grinding material, and as it is hurled by a rapidly flowing stream against the larger pebbles and boulders, it gradually reduces them in size and rounds their corners. In this process both the pebbles and the pellets of sand become smaller, and both contribute to the finer mud and clay carried by the stream.
A considerable part of this material never reaches the sea but is deposited by streams either along their channels or along the lower lands bordering the stream courses, during freshets. All of the so-called bottom lands, near stream courses, often the richest lands in the country, are chiefly river and stream deposits. How- ever destructive the rivers may be during times of great freshets, their past geolog- ical history has resulted in the upbuilding of the valuable bottom lands, the home of the huckster, the raiser of garden vegetables and small fruits.
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In the more southern states, where no glaciation ever has taken place, the soils of the stream courses often are very different from the soils of the uplands.
Along the streams, the soils consist of rock fragments derived from many sources, thoroughly mixed together. All of the rocks exposed farther up streani have contributed something to the soils bordering the lower parts of the channel.
This is true to a much smaller extent on the uplands. Here the soil frequently is produced by the decay of the actual bed rock. Here the fertility of the soil frequently depends directly upon the chemical constituents of the rock which formerly occupied exactly the same area as that now occupied by the soil. In fact, here the soil frequently is an excellent indication of the kind of rock which formerly occupied this territory, and of the kind of rock which still may be ex- pected immediately beneath the soil, where weathering has not yet greatly affected the rock. In unglaciated areas, upland soils frequently represent the products of decay of a single series of rocks having a nearly uniform chemical composition ; but at different levels very different soils may be found. Since the soils along valleys commonly result from a mixture of materials from many sources they are much less likely to show striking local chemical peculiarities.
It is evident that the soils of glaciated regions must of necessity be mix- tures from many sources. All along the entire path of the glaciers, from the farthest north, across Canada and northern Ohio, as far as Montgomery county every kind of rock present in the solid ledges reaching the surface has furnished materials for this general mixture. Chemically, therefore, the soils of glaciated areas are likely to contain most of the ingredients of a fertile soil. They may, however, show strong physical differences.
The soils of Montgomery county are chiefly glacial soils. Their chemical nature is dependent not upon the character of the underlying rocks but upon the character of the rocks lying toward the north of this county, along the patlı followed by the glaciers. To be sure, most of the materials found in the soils are not in the shape in which they were brought down by the glaciers. Even during glacial times these deposits were worked over more or less by streams. But, owing to their origin, they are extensive mixtures, and the materials in these mixtures have come from a definite direction, from the north.
The most extensive soils in Montgomery country are those known as Miami clay loam. These soils cover most of the uplands, away from the larger streani courses. Nearly four-fifths of all the soil in the county belongs to the Miami clay loam. These soils are the weathered products of the mixture of ground up rock left upon the surface of the county during glacial times. While it is not the most fertile soil found in the county, it ranks among good strong soils. It will produce an average of forty to sixty bushels of corn, and twenty to thirty bushels of wheat to the acre. This soil is a light loam, remarkably uniform in texture and composition. It has a light brownish yellow color, is easy to till, and dries readily after rains. The sub-soil, beginning at a depth of about twelve inches below the surface, is heavy, sticky, reddish brown clay loam, either with or without pebbles. When these lands were first discovered they were covered with a thick growth of sugar and soft maple, basswood, beech, black walnut, poplar, wild cherry, white and blue ask, several varieties of oak, black gum, elm, hickory, buckeye, and iron wood.
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Tobacco thrives well in this soil. The tobacco is said to have good body, good sweating properties, to be fine fibered, and elastic. Usually crops are grown in rotation. Corn usually is followed by wheat in the fall. Clover is sown in the spring. The following spring the clover is used for hay. The last stand of clover is turned under, and the next year, the fourth, corn is planted again. Oats and timothy do well.
In some localities the retreating glaciers left, on the uplands, broad shallow depressions, often marshy or filled with standing water. The accumulation of decaying vegetable matter, washed into the hollows by rain, along with a small quantity of fine silt, gradually filled these depressions with a black, heavy sticky, clay loam, known as the Miami black clay loam. It is hard to cultivate. In dry seasons it tends to bake hard and crack open. Before drainage these areas were miry, and were avoided by farmers. At present many of these soils are producing good crops. They are upland soils, merely occupying depressions of the Miami clay loam.
The finest farming land in Montgomery county is formed by the Miami gravelly loam. This is a valley soil, forming the so-called second bottoms, thirty to sixty feet above the river level. This soil underlies most of Dayton. The flat lands east of the Miami river as far south as West Carrollton belong here, also the flat areas along the Valley pike, northeast of Dayton, and in the vicinity of Harshmanville. This soil also is of glacial origin, but it has since been consider- ably modified by stream action. The soil consists of heavy, sticky, clayey loam, but mixed with sand and a considerable quantity of gravel. Gravel often forms more than fifteen per cent of the soil. The subsoil often is full of gravel and admits of ready drainage. These second bottoms were eagerly sought by the early settlers who realized that these soils were lighter, warmer and drier than the colder and damper upland soils. This is the soil best adapted to truck farming. Celery, cabbage, melons, tomatoes, beans, sweet corn, small fruits, are the main crops.
The first bottoms, between ten and twenty feet above river level, are sub- ject to change from year to year, owing to inundations during freshets. Here the soils also are of glacial origin, but so modified by river action that the smaller fragments of sandy elements predominate. On account of their sandy nature these soils are well drained, warm and dry during most of the growing season. Owing to their nearness to Dayton, these bottom lands frequently are used for truck farming, as is true of the second bottoms, but the dangers of innunda- tion, of course, add an element of risk. The building of levees enormously in- creases the value of these lands. Ordinarily these first bottom soils are known as Miami sandy loam, but when the quantity of sand is less, the term Miami loam is considered sufficient. These terms were introduced by the United States Depart- ment of Agriculture, which has made a special study of the soils of this county, and which at present is assisting in a study of the special treatment which should be given the various soils of this county in order to insure their greatest fertility. The experiment fields are located near Germantown, and every effort is made to induce visiting farmers to take advantage of the results of the investigations here conducted.
CHAPTER II.
OUR PREDECESSORS.
A hasty or superficial view of the lands that we possess recognizes only the marks that have been erected by persons of our own blood and manner of life. Yet before our ancestors made their appearance here, the hills and valleys that we call our own, in common with other parts of our great country, were long occupied by human beings, like unto ourselves, who called the land their own and left upon it traces of their presence, character and habits.
Professor G. Frederick Wright thinks, and many archaeologists agree with him, that in the gravels beneath us evidences, such as the discovery of a flint instru- ment eight feet beneath the surface at Madisonville, on the Little Miami, indi- cate that man existed here in the glacial age. According to this view to the north of us or even here, men in the first stages of progress were living a precarious life, leaving their rude instruments and even their bodies to be buried under many feet of glacial drift. Fortunately, we are not called on to decide a matter on which scholars so radically disagree. Yet imagination once excited still sees man following up the retreating ice sheet.
Montgomery County has within its borders a number of large earthworks showing that human beings in considerable numbers must have had here their home prior to the coming of the white man. Many of the earthworks in Mont- gomery county are slight indeed. A few men now with the assistance of horses, or even with the use of small modern tools, would be able soon to erect the mounds or embankments which we now seek out so carefully as the evidence of the mound builders presence and power. Yet the dim and disappearing works that we see are the evidence of many years of occupation and labor by those who had only for their help the wooden spade and the rude basket. The larger works may impress us more with the power and perseverance of our predecessors, but the many smaller ones can not fail to impress us with their wide and continued occu- pancy. What the land is to us it once was to them. Their tools and weapons, their pottery and their baked altars impress us with the fact that the short generations of the people to whom we belong were preceded by many generations of less developed peoples.
Accounts of the works and places of archaeological interest in Montgomery county have been given in magazine articles and in books from very early times down to the present. Dr. Samuel H. Binkley of West Carrollton located and
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explored many mounds and gave reports in the American Antiquarian and other publications. At the present time, W. C. Mills, curator and librarian of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society is engaged in charting the earth works of Montgomery county. He was reared in Clay township and takes much interest in the archaeological features of his own county. There are not fewer than one hundred works or places of archaeological interest in Montgomery county, though only about seventy-five are sufficiently known or prominent to be noted on a chart.
Miami township leads the list with more than twenty places of interest- eight mounds, six circles, three squares, a manufacturing village, a cemetery, a workshop and a nest of flint instruments. Three enclosures near Alexanderville have attracted a great deal of attention. The embankments are now between five and six feet high where not leveled by the plow. The larger circle has a diameter of one thousand nine hundred and fifty feet, and is said to be the largest lowland inclosure in Ohio. The smaller circle has a diameter of eight hundred and seventy- five feet and from one side of it there extends a long curved embankment, sug- gesting to some persons the form of a serpent. The square enclosure includes thirty-one acres. None of these works were brought to completion.
The greatest interest is excited by the great mound a mile southeast of Miamis- burg. The dimensions of the mound are given as sixty-eight feet in perpendicular height and eight hundred and fifty-two feet in circumference and include from one million, three hundred thousand to one million, five hundred thousand cubic feet of earth. It has been partially explored but without discovering much of archaeological interest. It is the highest mound in Ohio, and the highest but one in the Ohio valley. There has been much talk of the state's acquiring the mound but no decisive action has been taken.
German township has five mounds, a village site, a workshop and an enclosure sometimes called the Germantown Fort and sometimes called the Carlisle Fort. The greater part of the works is in Montgomery county and the smaller part in Warren county. The works are divided into two parts, the eastern division, con- taining about nine acres and the western, containing about six acres. The eastern division is protected by precipitous bluffs which border the bottom lands of the Big Twin. On the north and south are deep ravines. Three successive lines, now leveled by the plow constituted the protecting barrier between the eastern division and the western division which lies out on level ground. A spring lay between the enclosing walls. In the eastern division there was a stone enclosure said to have been seventy-eight feet in length and forty-five feet in breadth, in the shape of a horseshoe. A number of features connected with the works at an earlier time are now no longer discernable. The works on a site so rugged and consisting of such prominent embankments deserve well to be called a fort.
Jackson township is credited with nine mounds the most of them along the Big Twin and Tom's Run; the largest, known as Cedar mound, stands on the high north bank of the Big Twin. In addition to these mounds there is the "Hill Fort," situated near Farmersville on the Big Twin. Its form is an irregular tri- angle, two sides resting upon the margins of deep ravines, the third on the Big Twin. The embankments extend along the edge of the two ravines and terminate at the precipitous bank of the Big Twin. The length is about eight hundred feet
Courtesy of Albert Kern MOUND AT MIAMISBURG
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as measured along this bank. There are three enclosures within this fort, two in the shape of horse shoes and the third in the form of a circle. One of the horse shoe enclosures has a diameter of three hundred and eighty feet north and south and four hundred feet east and west.
Jefferson township has seven mounds, all of them near the bend of the Miami river which cuts into the township. Besides, on the high bluff adjoining the Miami river at a point called the Narrows there is an extensive earth-work. At a point on the level at the top of the bluff two embankments meet forming a right angle. These embankments each extend about half a mile to a valley forming with them a triangle. Outside of the enclosure is a mound. This earth-work is not far re- moved from the low-land enclosures near Alexanderville. Some writers assert that there is always a hill-fort close to such enclosures. While this earth-work has not been called a fort it may have been used for defensive purposes.
Washington township has credited to it four mounds, one on the eastern border near Sugar creek and three in the northeastern part on streams leading to Hole's creek.
Van Buren township has three mounds and one extensive earth-work, two of the mounds standing just outside of the latter. The earth-work is the most marked fortification in Montgomery county. It is situated in Calvary cemetery which occupies a commanding elevation on the bluffs immediately south of Dayton. The earth-work includes twenty-four acres. The isolated hill was well suited for defensive purposes with steep slopes on every side except toward the south. On this side is a gateway within which is a ditch twenty feet wide and seven hun- dred feet long. The ramparts which were of unusual height were loosely rip- rapped on the outside with small stones. Unfortunately, the improvement of Calvary cemetery has led to the removal of about one-half of the enclosing wall.
Mad River township has a mound on the high ground near Tate's Point not far from Mad river and another near the Miami river, three miles north of Dayton.
Harrison township has a mound just east of the National Soldiers' Home. There was formerly a mound two miles north of Dayton a short distance east of Stillwater river.
Madison township has a mound one mile east of Trotwood. Two miles west of Trotwood on the Jacob Eby farm there is a mound surrounded by a small circle. A mile and a half southeast of Trotwood south of the railroad there was a mound from which a number of skeletons were taken. At a distance of about half a mile from this point there are two mounds, one east and the other west. On the Samuel Basore farm in the northeast corner of the township there is a mound with a very wide base. It was formerly over twenty feet in height.
Perry township has two mounds a short distance north of Johnsville and two mounds in the northeast part of the township near Wolf creek.
Clay township is said to have neither a mound nor a hill.
Randolph township had a mound and an Indian cemetery a short distance north of Englewood but both have disappeared.
Butler township has a mound cast of the Stillwater river on the Enos Yount farm near the northern boundary of the township. Near Little York at the top
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of a very high hill there is an Indian burying-ground from which numerous pieces of pottery and other articles have been taken.
Wayne township while probably not destitute of ancient remains has no earth- works credited to it.
The site of the city of Dayton had within its limits a large number of places of archaeological interest. Mounds were located as follows: One at the corner of Fifth and Mound streets, one on Dayton street, one north of the head of Central avenue, one on Huffman hill, one in the western part of the city on the Neibert farm and one in Oakwood. A burying-ground was situated near the south bank of Mad river. There is also a village site located at the east end of the Riverdale dam across the Miami river.
Skeletons of Indians have been found in many parts of the city as at the corner of Water and Mill streets, of First and Beckel streets, in the Fair Grounds hill, in a knoll in Woodland cemetery, at the north end of the Dayton View bridge and at the west end of the Third Street bridge. In cutting through a mound at the east end of First street in 1841 to open up the street to the Springfield pike a skeleton was found around the neck of which was a string of one hundred and seventy copper beads. In the grave were also a number of arrow and spear heads. Articles of copper and stone were also found when the Mound Street mound was removed.
Great quantities of implements of stone, copper and bone have been found in all parts of Montgomery county. Many large collections are now in the possession of citizens and many articles have been carried away and distributed to other parts of the country.
Formerly, the Mound Builders were widely distinguished from the American Indians. They were separated from them by many centuries and were credited with having made great attainments in knowledge and the arts. At the present time they are believed to have been the ancestors of the American Indians and not to have been separated from them much either in time or their attainments. We may, however, recognize a distinction between them. Professor W. C. Mills recognizes two grades of culture among the Mound Builders themselves. the lower called the Fort Ancient culture and the higher called the Hopewell culture. Hc finds evidence of the higher culture at Miamisburg, Alexanderville, Farmersville and below Germantown. The lower culture extended over the entire county and preceded the higher culture. The marks of the higher culture are the larger use of agriculture as distinguished from hunting and fishing and the production of articles appealing to the sense of the aesthetic.
CHAPTER III.
ORGANIZATION AND HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY.
HISTORY-FORMATION OF TOWNSHIPS-FIRST ELECTIONS-TAX DUPLICATE FOR 1804 -INCORPORATED TOWNS-PUBLIC ROADS AND BRIDGES-COUNTY OFFICIALS- CLERK OF COURTS-PROSECUTING ATTORNEYS-SHERIFFS-TREASURERS-CORO- NERS-COMMISSIONERS-RECORDERS-AUDITORS - SURVEYORS - COMMON PLEAS JUDGES - PROBATE JUDGES - THE DUNKER CHURCHES - GYPSIES - FARM STATISTICS.
HISTORY.
In order to make the historical account of the city of Dayton intelligible it was necessary to give in advance many of the facts as to Montgomery county. In con- sequence many things will here be passed by that otherwise would be entitled to a place.
THE FORMATION OF TOWNSHIPS.
When Montgomery county was constituted, March 24, 1903, at the first session of the legislature after Ohio was admitted as a state, the county consisted of all of the state of Ohio north and west of the present south line and the extended east line of the county. It was about as large as the states that Jefferson had pro- posed to form in the territory in the northwest and southwest. It was not expected, however, that the county should remain larger than it now is.
For one year the affairs of the county were for the most part administered by the three associate judges, who in addition to sitting with the presiding judge in the regular sessions of the court, had sessions of their own for this purpose. Almost the only gap in the records of Montgomery county comes in at this point. The associate judges made their report to the newly constituted board of county commissioners, but their report was not copied into the regular record and has not been handed down. The record of the county commissioners simply says : "The books and papers of the associate judges were presented to the commis- sioners by Benjamin Van Cleve, clerk of the county aforesaid." In the year in which the associate judges had charge, the most important transactions were the locating of the county seat by a special commission appointed by the legisla- ture, who were to report to the court of common pleas, and the formation of the original townships. The accounts of both were probably in the reports made to
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the county commissioners. Enough has already been said of the locating of the county seat. Most of the facts in regard to the formation of the townships may be learned from contemporaneous and later accounts.
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