USA > Ohio > Montgomery County > Memoirs of the Miami valley > Part 11
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Benjamin Stanton was born of Quaker parentage on Short Creek, Belmont county, Ohio, March 4, 1809. He was bred a tailor, which appears to have been a favorite trade for young Friends, probably from its humanitarian aspects-"clothing the naked." He studied law and was admitted to the bar at Steubenville, in 1833; came to Bellefontaine in 1834, and was successively prosecuting at- torney, state senator, member of the Ohio Constitutional Conven- tion in 1851, and served several terms as a member of Congress. In 1861 he was elected lieutenant-governor of Ohio, on the same ticket with Gov. David Tod. In 1866 he removed to West Virginia, where he practiced law until his death.
Ethan Allen Brown was born in Darien, Conn., July 4, 1766. He studied law with Alexander Hamilton, and settled in Cincinnati, in 1804. From 1810 to 1818 he was a supreme judge, and then was elected governor and began agitating the subject of constructing canals. In 1820 he was re-elected over Jeremiah Morrow and Gen. William Henry Harrison. In 1822 he was elected to the United States senate, and from 1830 to 1834 he was United States minister to Brazil. Later, he served as commissioner of public lands and then retired to private life. He died in Indianapolis, in 1852, after a long and useful career.
The governor of Ohio during the Mexican War, 1846-48, was William Bebb. He was born of Welsh stock, in 1802, on the Dry Fork of Whitewater, in Morgan township, Butler county. He re- moved to the Rock river country, in Illinois, early in the fifties, where he had a large farm, and he later went to Europe and led a colony of Welsh colonists from Wales to the wilderness of Scott county, Tennessee. He lived to be a pension examiner under Lincoln and help in the election of Grant; and he died at his home in Rockford, Ill., in 1873.
Judge Francis Dunlevy, who died at Lebanon, Warren county. in 1839, was born in Virginia, in 1761. When he was ten years of age his family removed to Western Pennsylvania. At the early age of fourteen years he served in a campaign against the Indians,
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and continued mostly in this service until the close of the revolu- tion. He assisted in building Fort McIntosh, about the year 1777, and was afterward in the disastrous defeat of Crawford, from whence, with two others, he made his way alone through the woods without provisions, to Pittsburgh. In 1787 he removed to Ken- tucky, in 1791 to Columbia, and in 1797 to Warren county. By great perserverance he acquired a good education, mainly without instructors, and part of the time taught school and surveyed land until the year 1800. He was elected from Hamilton county a mem- ber of the convention which formed the state constitution. He was also a member of the first legislature, in 1803, and at the first or- ganization of the judiciary he was appointed presiding judge of the first circuit. This place he held fourteen years, and though his circuit embraced ten counties, he never missed a court, frequently swimming his horse over the Miamis rather than fail being present. On leaving the bench he practiced at the bar fifteen years and then retired to his books and study.
Benjamin Van Cleve was a typical man, and, as a good repre- sentative of the best pioneer character, is worthy of especial notice. He kept a journal, from which the following facts pertaining to his career have been mainly drawn. He was the eldest son of John and Catherine Benham Van Cleve, and was born in Monmouth county, New Jersey, Feb. 24, 1773. When he was seventeen years old the family removed to Cincinnati, Jan. 3, 1790, and settled on the east bank of the Licking, where Major Leech, in order to form a settle- ment and have a farm opened for himself, offered 100 acres for clearing each ten-acre field, with the use of the cleared land for three years. John Van Cleve, the father, intended to assist his son in this work, but was killed by the Indians. Benjamin by hard work as a day laborer, paid his father's debts, sold his blacksmith's tools to the quartermaster-general, and tried to the best of his ability, though a mere boy, to fill his father's place. Much of the time, from 1791 till 1794, he was employed in the quartermaster's department, whose headquarters were at Fort Washington, earning his wages of fifteen dollars a month by hard, rough work. He was present at St. Clair's defeat, and gives in his journal a thrilling ac- count of the rout and retreat of the army, and of his own escape and safe return to Cincinnati. In the spring of 1792 he was sent off from Cincinnati at midnight, at a moment's notice, by the quarter- master-general, to carry despatches to the war department at Philadelphia. In the fall of 1795 he accompanied Capt. Dunlap's party, to make the survey for the Dayton settlement. On April 10, 1796, he arived in Dayton with the first party of settlers that came. In the fall of that year he went with Israel Ludlow and William G. Schenck to survey the United States military lands between the Scioto and Muskingum rivers. In the winter of 1799- 1800 he taught in the blockhouse the first school opened in Dayton. From the organization of Montgomery county in 1803, till his death in 1821, he was clerk of the court. He was the first postmaster of Dayton and served from 1804 until his death. In 1805 he was one of the incorporators of the Dayton library, and in 1809 he was ap- pointed by the legislature a member of the first board of trustees
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of Miami university. He was an active member of the First Pres- byterian church.
Logan county is rich to excess in names of men who have been known to the nation as possessed of rare intellect, wide attainments and great force of character. High on this list unquestionably stands the name of William H. West. Mr. West was born at Mills- borough, Washington county, Pennsylvania, and with his parents came to Knox county, Ohio, in 1830. He graduated at Jefferson college, Pennsylvania, in 1846, dividing the honors with Gen. A. B. Sharpe. He taught school in Kentucky until 1848, when he ac- cepted a tutorship in Jefferson college, and a year later was chosen adjunct professor at Hampden-Sidney college, Virginia. In 1850 he entered as a student the law office of Judge William Lawrence at Bellefontaine, Ohio, and on his admission to the bar formed a law partnership with his tutor. Judge West was one of the few prominent men who formed the Republican party. It was in 1854 that he joined in an appeal to all parties, after the repeal of the Mis- souri Compromise, that brought out a convention at Columbus, Ohio, when West was one of the most prominent speakers, and Joseph R. Swan was nominated as a candidate for judge of the su- preme court of Ohio, and through the aid of another newly formed political organization called the "Know Nothings" was elected by a majority of more than 75,000. In 1857 and in 1861 Judge West was a member of the state legislature, serving in the House, and in 1863 he was elected to the Senate. Afterward his party in the Logan Congressional district sent him as their delegate to the Chicago convention, when he took part in the nomination of Abraham Lincoln. In 1865 and 1867 he was chosen attorney-general of Ohio, and in 1869 was tendered the position of Consul to Rio Janeiro, but declined. In 1871 he was elected judge of the supreme court of Ohio, and was making his mark as an able jurist, when his failing sight forced him to resign. The marked event of his political life occurred in 1877, when he was nominated by his party, in state con- vention assembled, its candidate for governor. The great railroad strikes that arrested the wheels of nearly all the locomotives of 150,000 miles of operating railroads was on hand, and the newly named candidate for governor had to meet the issue involved in the strife. It was one Judge West had studied and mastered. He knew what capital and labor meant, and he felt keenly all that it signified. He saw then what has developed since, that it was fated to be the great issue of civilization and had to be faced and solved before the wheels of progress could continue to revolve, and in his first utterance after his nomination he took the side of toil against the corporations. He was defeated at the election, and then retired to his home at Bellefontaine, where he continued in the practice of his profession practically until his death.
Thomas L. Young was born on the estate of Lord Dufferin, in North Ireland, Dec. 14, 1832. He came to this country at fifteen years of age and served ten years as a private in the regular army, entering in the last year of the Mexican War. In 1859 he came to Cincinnati, graduated at its law school, and when the Civil War broke out he was assistant superintendent of the House of Refuge
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reform school. On March 18, 1861, he wrote a letter to Gen. Win- field Scott, whom he personally knew, offering his services for the coming war, thus becoming the first volunteer from Hamilton county. He eventually entered the army, was commissioned colonel, and for extraordinary gallantry at Resaca was brevetted general. In 1866 he was elected to the legislature, in 1872 served as senator, and in 1876 was elected lieutenant-governor, succeeding R. B. Hayes, when the latter became President. He died, July 19, 1888, singularly admired for his thorough manliness.
John B. Weller, born in Hamilton county in 1812, had a success- ful career. When but twenty-six years of age he was elected to Congress and was re-elected for two succeeding terms. He led the second Ohio regiment, as lieutenant-colonel, in the Mexican War, and returning thence led the Democratic party in the bitter guberna- torial fight of 1848, being defeated by Seabury Ford, of Geauga county, the Whig candidate. In 1849 he was commissioned to run the boundary line between California and Mexico. From 1852 to 1857 he was United States senator from California and then was elected governor. In 1860 he was appointed by Buchanan minister to Mexico, and he died in New Orleans, where he was practicing law.
William C. Schenck, father of Gen. R. C. Schenck and Ad- miral James F. Schenck, was born near Freehold, N. J., Jan. 11, 1773. He studied both law and medicine, undetermined which to make his life profession, and finally adopted that of surveyor. He came to Ohio as agent for his uncle, Gen. John N. Cumming, prob- ably also of Messrs. Burnet, Dayton, and Judge Symmes. He be- came one of the most competent surveyors in the west. In 1796 he surveyed and laid out the town of Franklin, in Warren county, and in 1797 he set out to survey what was known as the Military Tract. In the winter of 1801-02 he surveyed and laid out the town of Newark, and in 1816 surveyed and laid out Port Lawrence, now known as Toledo. In 1799 Gen. Schenck was elected secretary of the first territorial legislature, and he was a member of the first senate of the state of Ohio. In 1803 he removed from Cincinnati to Warren county, locating in the village of Franklin, where he lived until his death, in 1821. During the war of 1812 he held a com- mission in the militia, but owing to the confused and imperfect con- dition of the records in the office of the adjutant-general of Ohio, it has seemed to be impossible to determine just what services he performed with the army or what rank he held. Some time previous to the war he had resigned a commission of brigadier-general of militia, which rank he had held for a long time. At the outbreak of the war he was present with his troops in the field at an early date. Gen. Schenck was one of the early and active promoters of the Ohio canal system, and in 1820 he was appointed by Governor Brown one of the commissioners to survey the route of a canal. In further prosecution of the project, Gen. Schenck made a speech be- fore the legislature, to which he had been elected from Warren county, warmly advocating the immediate construction of the canal. At the close of his speech he left the house and went to his lodgings, where he was seized with a sudden attack of illness and died with-
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in a few hours. He was highly esteemed throughout the state as a man of a high order of mental ability, unimpeachable integrity and an active, useful citizen.
John W. VanCleve was born, June 27, 1801, and tradition says he was the first male child born in Dayton. His father was Ben- jamin VanCleve, heretofore mentioned as one of the band of set- tlers who arrived in Dayton, April 1, 1796. John W. VanCleve from his earliest years gave evidence of a vigorous intellect and of a retentive memory. At the age of sixteen he entered the Ohio university at Athens, and so distinguished himself for proficiency in Latin that he was employed to teach that language in the college before his graduation. In after life he mastered both the French and German languages and made several translations of important German works. He studied law in the office of Judge Joseph Mc- Crane, and was admitted to the bar in 1828. Not finding the practice of the law congenial, he purchased an interest in the Dayton Jour- nal and edited that paper until 1834. After being engaged in other business for a few years, in 1851 he retired and gave the remainder of his life to his studies and to whatever could benefit and adorn his native city. He was elected and served as mayor of the city in 1831-32. He also served at various times as city civil engineer, and in 1839 compiled and lithographed a map of the city. He was an ardent Whig and entered enthusiastically into the celebrated politi- cal campaign of 1840, writing many of the songs and furnishing the engravings for a campaign paper, called the Log Cabin, which at- tained great notoriety throughout the United States. He was the founder of Dayton Library association, afterward merged in the public library, and the invaluable volumes of early Dayton news- papers, from 1808 to 1847, was his gift to the library. It was his suggestion to plant the levees with shade trees, and the first trees were selected by him and planted under his direction. But the chief work for which the city is indebted to him is the foresight which secured the admirable site for the Woodland cemetery, before it was appropriated to other uses. In 1840, when the cemetery asso- ciation was organized, public attention had not been generally called to the importance and desirability of rural cemeteries, and the sug- gestion at that time of a rural cemetery for Dayton was in advance of the times. Woodland cemetery is the third rural cemetery in order of time in the United States, preceding Spring Grove at Cin- cinnati three years. To Mr. VanCleve the honor is due of sug- gesting the cemetery and persistently carrying it through to com- pletion. Mr. VanCleve died, Sept. 6, 1858, at the comparatively early age of fifty-seven years.
Edward Henry Knight was born in London, England, June 1, 1824, and died in Bellefontaine, Jan. 22, 1883, at which place he had had legal residence the last twenty-five years of his life, al- though absent a large part of the time, in Washington, Paris, and England. He was educated in England, where he learned the art of steel-engraving and took a course in surgery. In 1846 he set- tled in Cincinnati as a patent attorney. In 1864 he was employed in the patent office at Washington, where he originated the system of classification. In 1873 he issued his most important work, the
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American Mechanical Dictionary. He was a member of the inter- national juries at the World's Fair in Philadelphia, in 1876, and Paris, in 1878; and he was United States commissioner at the last named exposition, receiving the appointment of Chevalier of the Legion of Honor from the French government, in recognition of his services. He was a member of many scientific societies, both , American and European, and in 1876 he received the degree of LLD. from Iowa Wesleyan university. He compiled what is known as Bryant's Library of Poetry and Song, was the author of a num- ber of valuable scientific and other works, and one of the most use- ful men in research and literature that America has produced. After death his brain was found to weigh sixty-four ounces, being the heaviest on record, excepting that of Cuvier.
William Henry Harrison was born at Berkley, on the James river, twenty-five miles from Richmond, Va., in 1773. He entered Hampden-Sydney college, which he left at seventeen years of age. He then began the study of medicine, but the death of his father checked his professional aspirations, and the note of preparation which was sounding through the country for a campaign against the Indians of the west, decided his destiny and he resolved to enter into the service of his government. Gen. Washington yielded to the importunities of the youth and presented him with an ensign's commission. With characteristic ardor he departed for Fort Wash- ington, now Cincinnati, where, however, he arrived too late to participate in the unfortunate campaign of St. Clair. In the suc- ceeding year, when Wayne assumed the command, Ensign Harrison was selected by him for one of his aides, and distinguished himself in Wayne's victory. After the treaty of Greenville, in 1795, he was given command of Fort Washington, and shortly afterward he married the daughter of Judge Symmes, the proprietor of the Miami purchase. He resigned his commission and commenced his civil career at the age of twenty-four years, as secretary of the north- western territory, and in 1799, he was elected its first delegate in Congress. He was appointed chairman of the committee on lands and though meeting with much opposition from speculators, secured the passage of a law for the subdivision of public lands into smaller tracts. To this measure is to be imputed the rapid settlement of the Miami valley, and in fact the entire country north of the Ohio river. Shortly afterward, when Indiana was erected into a separate territory, Mr. Harrison was appointed by President Adams its first governor. While in Congress, he was present at the discussion of the bill for the settlement of Judge Symmes' purchase, and although this gentleman was his father-in-law, he took an active part in favor of those individuals who had purchased from Symmes be- fore he had secured his patent. In 1801 Governor Harrison entered upon the duties of his new office at the old military post of Vin- cennes. Among his duties was that of commissioner to treat with the Indians, and in this capacity he concluded fifteen treaties and purchased their title to upwards of seventy million acres of land. He applied himself with characteristic energy and skill to his duties. He commanded at the battle of Tippecanoe, and from that time until after the declaration of war against England he was un-
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remittingly engaged in negotiating with the Indians and preparing to resist a more extended attack from them. In August, 1812, he received the brevet of major-general in the Kentucky militia, to enable him to command the forces marching to relieve Detroit. The surrender of Hull changed the face of affairs and he was appointed a major-general in the army of the United States, his duties em- bracing a larger sphere. On Oct. 5, 1813, he brought the British army and their Indian allies, under Proctor and Tecumseh, to ac- tion near the river Thames. For this important action Congress presented Gen. Harrison with a gold medal. The northwestern frontier being thus relieved, he left his troops at Sackett's Harbor, under the command of Col. Smith, and departed for Washington by the way of New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, and on the whole route he was received with enthusiasm. Owing to a mis- understanding with Secretary Armstrong he resigned his commis- sion in the spring of 1814, and retired to his farm at North Bend, in Ohio, from which he was successively called by the people, to represent them in the Congress of the United States and in the legislature of the state. In 1824 he was elected to the Senate of the United States, and in 1828 he was appointed minister to Co- lombia, which station he held until he was recalled by President Jackson, not for any alleged fault, but in consequence of some difference of views on the Panama question. Gen. Harrison again returned to the pursuits of agriculture at North Bend, and in 1834, on the almost unanimous petition of the citizens of the county, he was appointed prothonotary of the court of Hamilton county. In 1840 he was called by the people of the United States to preside over the country as its chief magistrate, and his death, which took place, April 4, 1841, just a month after his inauguration, caused a deep sensation throughout the country. He was the first President of the United States to die in office.
John Woods was born in Pennsylvania, in 1794, of north Irish stock. He came when a mere child with his parents to Warren county, Ohio. He served in Congress from 1825 to 1829, and then edited and published the Hamilton Intelligencer. From 1845 to 1851 he was auditor of the state, in which office he brought order out of confusion and "left indelible marks on the policy and history of Ohio." Later, he was interested in railroad development, and from his habits of industry and restless energy proved a great power. He died in 1855, aged sixty-one years. It seems that from early boyhood he determined to get an education and become a lawyer. The country all around was a wilderness and he con- tracted to clear a piece of land for a certain compensation. In this clearing he erected a hut, where he studied nights when others slept, and this after having chopped and hauled heavy timber all day. Then regularly every week he went over to Lebanon to re- cite and receive instructions from Hon. John McLean, later asso- ciate justice of the United States supreme court. In this Woods was, however, but a fair sample of Ohio youth of that day, to whom obstacles served as lures to tempt them to fight their way. The history of Ohio is profusely dotted all over with them. On their brows is stamped "invincibility," and over them flies a banner bear- ing just two words, "will" and "work."
EDUCATION IN THE MIAMI VALLEY
P HYSIOGRAPHICALLY considered, the Miami valley con- sists of the whole area drained by the two Miami rivers and their tributaries including the Whitewater river, which stream enters the Great Miami from the west not far above its mouth. Thus considered, it embraces the major part of western Ohio and much of eastern Indiana. Generally speaking, it is delimited on the west by the Ohio-Indiana boundary line and is one of those areas into which Ohio is sometimes subdivided.
This division is justified on other than physiographic grounds Its settlement was due to one of several well defined movements of population into the area now embraced within the state. First there was the advance of individualistic representatives of the Penn- sylvania-Virginia frontier population into the eastern section of the state known as the Seven Ranges. Following them were the New Englanders of the Ohio company with their political and social institutions. After them there came into the Miami valley Judge Symmes at the head of a middle states contingent and Patterson and Filson heading the Kentucky advance, to be followed by Scotch- Irish Presbyterians and English Quakers from the Carolinas and Georgia seeking to escape from contact with slavery, and by Germans from Pennsylvania and later direct from Europe in quest of good lands and a larger liberty. Into the Virginia lands, lying between the Little Miami and Scioto rivers, Col. Massie led the veterans of the Virginia regiments while the Western Reserve was occupied by settlers from Connecticut and their fellow New Eng- landers. These movements of population continued until their vanguards met near the center of the state and then they crossed and interflowed as they moved out to occupy the northwest section of the state. Thus it is that the Miami valley is not only physically different but possesses cultural characteristics that differentiate her from the other areas of the state.
Of the many interesting accounts given us of the valley during the early days of its development that by Dr. Drake written but little more than a century ago is the most graphic. At that time the valley boasted of a population of 90,000.
Cincinnati had about one thousand houses, a stone courthouse with dome, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist and Friends' meeting- houses, two banks, two newspapers, a library, a two-story building in process of erection for the accommodation of the newly founded Lancastrian seminary, and a number of manufacturing establish- ments, including one stone mill.
Hamilton had seventy houses, chiefly log, a postoffice and print- ing office, but no public buildings save a stone jail. Lebanon was a considerable village with houses of brick and wood, a courthouse
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