Memoirs of the Miami valley, Part 5

Author: Hover, John Calvin, 1866- ed; Barnes, Joseph Daniel, 1869- ed
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Chicago, Robert O. Law company
Number of Pages: 684

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MEMOIRS OF THE MIAMI VALLEY

1, 1888, to one dollar. On his own behalf he reserved the nearest entire township to the mouth of the Great Miami, as well as frac- tional townships about it, as the site of a proposed city. There was a rush for the land bargains, and Matthias Denman, of New Jersey, also with a town in view, took up an entire section opposite the mouth of Licking river.

While the settlers at Marietta were busy clearing fields and building log houses, in 1788, they were visited, Aug. 27, by the advance guard of the Miami colony, led by Symmes, who stopped at Marietta for a few days to perform his duties as a lawmaker for the territory. He had been appointed judge the preceding February, and thus was one of the lawmaking body of the North- west territory. The Miami valley was, naturally, a more inviting field for settlement than the Muskingum, but it had been avoided on account of the Indian hostilities. So frequent were the forays of Kentuckians, Shawanees and Wyandots through this beautiful valley and among its verdant hills that it had become known as the "Miami slaughter house," and future events were to confirm the aptness of the title. As late as March, 1788, while Putnam and his Marietta colony were coming down the Ohio, a consider- able party of explorers, including Samuel Purviance, of Baltimore, and some French mineralogists and botanists, were nearly all killed or captured by the Indians at the mouth of the Great Miami.

Stites and a party of settlers landed, Nov. 18, 1788, just below the Little Miami, and founded a town called Columbia. Symmes and party were on the way, but waited at Limestone (Maysville, Ky.) for a military escort, and Denman, without a following, went to Lexington, Ky., and formed a partnership with the founder of that city, Col. Robert Patterson, a Pennsylvanian who had visited Ohio as an officer in the Indian campaigns, and John Filson, a Pennsylvania schoolmaster who had become a Kentucky surveyor and the first of Kentucky historians. In the deal between these three, Denman received $100 in Virginia currency, and the Ken- tuckians each a third interest in the section opposite the mouth of Licking, where the partners proposed to found a town and call it Losantiville. Free lots being offered as an inducement to im- mediate settlement, a large company of Kertuckians followed Pat- terson and Filson to the city cite, where they met Denman, Symmes and Israel Ludlow, chief surveyor of the Miami company, Sept. 22, 1788. A plat had been made by Filson, and the city of Cin- cinnati then had its dedication. But the survey and location of lots could not be made until Ludlow had ascertained if this section were within twenty miles of the mouth of the Great Miami.

Symmes, in his headlong course as a promoter, had been brought to a sudden check by the fact that the treasury board did not favor his application for such a great river front, and in view of his unauthorized procedure, was disposed to have nothing to do with the project. Through the intercession of Gen. Dayton and Daniel Marsh, representing Symmes' associates, the board was brought to consent to the sale of a twenty-mile front, eastward from the mouth of the Great Miami, and running back far enough to contain one million acres, and this tract was not formally contracted

SETTLEMENT OF THE MIAMI VALLEY

for until three weeks after the preliminary location of Cincinnati (October 15, 1788.) The matter was finally settled by a patent to Symmes and his associates, September 30, 1794, for the land be- tween the two Miamis, and far enough inland to include 311,682 acres, from which Sections 16 and 29 were reserved for the sup- port of education and religion, and 8, 11 and 26 for disposal by Con- gress; also the Fort Washington reservation, and one complete township for a college. The latter was finally selected in Butler county, though not quite complete, and is the site of Oxford.

While awaiting the survey, a large part of the adventurers, as they called themselves in that day, made an excursion into the in- terior to view the promised land and encountered an encampment of Indians, from which they turned back. The historian, Filson, becoming separated from the party, probably was killed by the Shawanese, as he was never again heard from. The adventurers all returned to Kentucky or the east. Ludlow became the succes- sor of Filson in the partnership. Symmes went to Limestone, and waited for the conclusion of a new treaty with the Indians to in- sure peace. This desired treaty was concluded by Gov. St. Clair at Fort Harmar, January 8, 1789, reaffirming the bounds set by the treaty of Fort McIntosh, as the fruit of conquest. The Iroquois chief, Joseph Brant, approached the council place, but did not par- ticipate, and it afterward appeared that the Indians present were unauthorized to bind their tribes to cede any lands northwest of the Ohio. Romance has it that Brant was met in the forest by his former acquaintance, the Governor's daughter, Louisa St. Clair, whose horsemanship and skill with the rifle was the admiration of the frontier.

Meanwhile, about Christmas, 1788, or New Year's, 1789, Pat- terson and Ludlow and a small party returned to Losantiville, and began laying out town lots, and the first settlers of that city gathered to select their property. "On the 24th of December, 1788," says Symmes, in one of his letters, "they left Maysville to form a station and lay a town opposite the Licking." The river was filled with ice "from shore to shore," but "perseverance triumphing over diffi- culty, they landed safe on a most delightful high bank of the Ohio, where they founded the town of Losantiville, which populates con- siderably." James H. Perkins, in his Annals of the West, points out that the day of the settlement is unknown. "Some, suppos- ing it would take about two days to make the voyage, have dated the being of the Queen City of the West from December 26. This is but guesswork, however, for as the river was full of ice, it might have taken ten days to have gone the sixty-five miles from Mays- ville to Licking. But, in the case in chancery, to which we have referred, we have the evidence of Patterson and Ludlow that they landed opposite the Licking in the month of January, 1789; while William McMillan testifies that he 'was one of those who formed the settlement of Cincinnati on the 28th day of December, 1788.'"

But it is quite certain that Symmes and his party were delayed until late in January. Then, on coming down the river to Fort Finney, the country about it was found under water. The dis- gusted military officer abandoned the fort to go to Louisville, but

MEMOIRS OF THE MIAMI VALLEY

Symmes landed upon the nearest dry spot and began a town, which was given his name. With the advent of pioneer recruits, North Bend was established a few miles up the river. Which of the vari- ous locations should be the center of development was in doubt un- til Symmes' appeal for military protection led to the placing of an army post. Ensign Luce and eighteen men built a stockade at North Bend and occupied it several months, but there was an In- dian attack in the spring of 1789 that stampeded the inhabitants. Then Major Doughty came down with a larger force and in the summer of 1789 selected Losantiville as the best position and built a stockade that he called Fort Washington. The story was told by Judge Jacob Burnet that the commanding officer became "enamored with a beautiful, black-eyed female," at North Bend, whom her husband took to Cincinnati, whereupon the officer decided that the latter was the best strategic position. "This anecdote was com- municated by Judge Symmes," said Burnet, "and is unquestionably authentic," but Judge Symmes was much offended at the officer.

Gen. Josiah Harmar, commanding the regular army of the United States, which was composed of his regiment of infantry and Major Doughty's battalion of artillery, occupied this fort with the main part of his command, December 29, 1789, and Gov. St. Clair, stopping there on his way to the Wabash and Mississippi, established, January 2, 1790, a new county, which Symmes named in honor of Alexander Hamilton. The name of the town St. Clair changed to commemorate the title of the new military order, the Cincinnati. This county included the country between the Miamis back to the Standing Stone forks of the larger river. Cincinnati, as the seat of an unsettled county, began, in a squalid and barren fashion, its history as the metropolis of the Ohio valley. In 1792 (February 11), Gov. St. Clair extended the county jurisdiction to include all west of the Scioto and a line north from the lower Sha- wanee down to Sandusky bay, and east of a line from Standing Stone forks of the Great Miami to Lake Huron, including all East- ern Michigan.

In 1795, Gen. Wayne had made a treaty with the Indians, at Greenville, by which the line of the lands of the United States had been extended from Loramie's, westward to Fort Recovery, and thence southward to the mouth of the Kentucky river. The boundary of Hamilton county was extended westward, June 22, 1798, to make it correspond with this change in the boundary of the government territory. The line between Hamilton and Knox counties then became: "The western boundary of the county of Hamilton shall begin at the spot, on the bank of the Ohio river, where the general boundary line of the United States and the Indian tribes, estab- lished at Greenville the third day of August, 1795, intersects the bank of that river, and run with that general boundary line to Fort Recovery, and from thence by a line to be drawn due north from Fort Recovery, until it intersects the southern boundary line of the county of Wayne, and from thence to the southern boundary of the county of Wayne, shall also be the eastern boundary of the county of Knox." Hamilton county in this way got a part of Knox county, and a part of what is now Indiana.

SETTLEMENT OF THE MIAMI VALLEY

The settlements mentioned were not to enjoy peaceful condi- tions for a number of years. The Miami valley, as a part of the Northwest territory had passed to the United States and had been opened to their people. But the Indians were still in a large measure its occupants and in some degree its owners. They began to feel the pressure of the white settlements, and they began to commit depredations and destroy property and even lives of the settlers.

Gen. Josiah Harmar, a Revolutionary veteran, was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the United States army, September 29, 1789, and was at once directed to proceed against the Indians. He cen- tered a force of some fifteen hundred men at Fort Washington (Cincinnati). His army consisted of some three hundred regulars and eleven hundred "militia," which really meant indiscriminate volunteers mostly from Kentucky, aged men and inexperienced boys, many of whom had never fired a gun. "There were guns without locks and barrels without stocks, borne by men who did not know how to oil a lock or fit a flint." With this "outfit" Gen. Harmar proceeded (September 30, 1790),'into the heart of the Indian coun- try, around the headwaters of the Maumee and the Miami. The Indians, less than two hundred, say the historians, led by the Miami warrior, Chief Little Turtle, divided the army, defeated and routed them, and Harmar, chagrined and humiliated, retreated to Fort Washington after suffering great loss of men. It was a stunning blow and created dismay and terror among the Miami valley set- tlers. The Indians were highly elated and emboldened to further and more aggressive attacks upon their white enemies.

It was now evident to the government that large measures must be taken to establish the authority of the United States among the Indians and protect their Ohio settlements. Washington called Gov. St. Clair to Philadelphia, and with the approval of Congress placed him in command of an army to be organized for a new In- dian expedition. On October 4, 1791, Gen. St. Clair, at the head of some three thousand troops, hardly better in quality than those under Harmar, set out from Fort Washington. The plan was to proceed northward along the present western line of the state and establish a line of Forts to be properly maintained as permanent points for military operation and protection. Forts Hamilton, St. Clair and Jefferson, the latter near Greenville, were erected. But when the expedition, now about twenty-five hundred strong, had reached a branch of the Wabash in what is now Mercer county, some thirty miles from Fort Jefferson, it was attacked by an allied force of Indians, fifteen hundred strong, under Little Turtle. It was a desperate, irregular combat, the troops were completely demoralized and panic stricken, and indulged in "a most ignominious flight," with the woeful loss of over six hundred killed and two hundred and fifty wounded, a loss equal to that of the American army at Germantown, when Gen. Washington suffered one of the worst defeats and greatest losses of the Revolution.

The Indian question had now become more serious than ever before, and there was great danger of the disaffection spreading among the Six Nations, with whom the whites had been at peace since the treaty of Fort Harmar. Washington anxiously scanned

MEMOIRS OF THE MIAMI VALLEY

the list of officers for a reliable successor to St. Clair. The choice finally fell upon Anthony Wayne, the dashing, intrepid hero of Ticonderoga, Germantown, Monmouth and the storming of Stony Point. Wayne arrived at Fort Washington in April, 1793, and by October had recruited his army and was ready to move. He cau- tiously crept his way into the interior as far as Fort Greenville, which he erected, and where he spent the winter, and whence he forwarded a detachment of several hundred to build Fort Recovery, in commemoration of the defeat of St. Clair, at that point. This fortification was attacked by the advancing Indians, one thousand strong, under their puissant general, Little Turtle, who made a desperate charge only to be repulsed and compelled to retreat. It was their first serious check. In August, 1794, Wayne with his "Legion," as his army was called, reached the confluence of the Auglaize and Maumee. Here he established another link in the chain of forts, named Defiance. The Indian allies had concentrated about thirty miles down the river at the rapids of the Maumee, near the British fort, Miami, one of the post retained by the Eng- lish at the close of the Revolutionary war and then recently reoccu- pied by an English garrison from Detroit, under the direction of John G. Simcoe, lieutenant-governor of Canada. The field chosen for battle was at the Falls of the Maumee on the wind swept banks, covered with fallen timber. The savages were outwitted and over- whelmed. They fled in wild dismay toward the British fort. Wayne's triumph (August 20, 1794), was complete, the brilliant and dash- ing.victory of Stony Point was won again. The Indian warfare was shattered, and the red man began to realize his critical condi- tion. The famous Greenville treaty was entered into in August, 1795, between Gen. Wayne for the United States and the repre- sentatives, over eleven hundred in all, of some eleven leading In- dian tribes. This treaty removed that influence which for six years had prevented the development of the colony planted in the Miami valley, and it was now possible to extend settlements uninterrupted into that region.

At the time of the Treaty of Greenville there were gathered under the protection of Fort Washington and close to the stockades of Columbia, North Bend, and the dozen or more stations in that vicinity, several hundred anxious settlers who hailed that event as the beginning of an era of peace and security and an opportunity for better times. "The return of peace gave them new ambitions and new hopes." They removed from their forts into the adjacent country, selected farms, built cabins, and began to subdue the for- ests. So decisive was this movement that, for a time, the curious phenomenon presented itself of settlements like Cincinnati, North Bend and Columbia, in a new and growing country, actually los- ing a large part of their population. In evidence of this, Miller, in his Cincinnati's Beginnings, says that Judge Symmes wrote to Jonathan Dayton, August 6, 1795, that North Bend was reduced more than one-half in its number of inhabitants since he had left to go to New Jersey, in February, 1793 ; that the people had spread themselves into all parts of the purchase below the military range since the Indian defeat on August 20, and that the cabins were

SETTLEMENT OF THE MIAMI VALLEY

deserted by dozens in a street. Another thing that had in some measure contributed to this exodus was the demand that Symmes had made on all volunteer settlers to go out and improve on their forfeitures in the course of the year, as the truce with the Indians afforded a very favorable opportunity for the purpose.

News of the treaty also accelerated the westward movement and deflected to the northwest territory many of those who other- wise probably would have gone into Kentucky. And many people who had settled below the Ohio river when the Indian wars were raging north of it now crossed the river and became numbered with the settlers in the future states of Ohio. Four important cen- ters of settlement within the present limits of the state received the newcomers, the Western Reserve in the neighborhood of Cleveland, the Marietta district, the Scioto district in the neighborhood of Chillicothe, and the Miami valley.

These settlers were engaged for a time almost exclusively in the primitive occupations of the wilderness. . They built their own cabins and made for themselves a rude sort of necessary furniture and utensils. Preparatory to the development of a clearing the trees were deadened and soon a crop of Indian corn was planted to supply the necessities of the family. And the pioneer was a hunter as well as a primitive farmer. His time was occupied for several seasons with clearing the forest, securing a sufficient food supply, and possibly improving his cabin so that it would be more habitable. His limitations under such circumstances did not permit him to pro- duce a surplus, and so he was enabled to buy little or nothing. He and his family were compelled to be manufacturers of a primitive sort, as store goods were necessarily denied them. They dressed in clothing made of skins or flax raised and spun and woven at home. An important step in advance was made when a few sheep were secured and linsey woolsey was substituted for cloth of pure flax. In some instances the pioneer was only a squatter, while in others he had enough money to make the first payment on his land and thus held the title in his own name.

From the very beginning of this great rush of individual set- tlers "men of capital and enterprise in the older settlements be- came interested in securing claims and titles to extensive bodies of land and in leading forth colonies for their occupation," says Monette, in his History of the Mississippi Valley. Seventeen days after the conclusion of the treaty of Greenville, a company composed of a number of gentlemen who were prominent in the affairs of the Northwest territory made a joint purchase of land from John Cleves Symmes and subsequently laid out the town of Dayton at the junction of the Great Miami and Mad rivers. Those interested were: Winthrop Sargent, Secretary of the Territory; Gen. James Wilkinson, Jonathan Dayton, who was one of the original owners of the Miami purchase, and Israel Ludlow. The last named had already identified himself with the early history of Cincinnati by surveying the town site and also establishing Ludlow's Station, now Cumminsville. In December, 1794, he had laid out the town of Hamilton, under the protection of Fort Hamilton on the Great Miami, and now he was called upon to lay out what was to become

MEMOIRS OF THE MIAMI VALLEY

the first city of importance in the Miami valley, north of Cin- cinnati.

But Judge Turner seems to have anticipated the founders of Dayton, for on the day before they had completed their purchase from Symmes the Centinel of the Northwest Territory published an advertisement, saying that, "Encouragement will be given to the first ten families who will go and form a station on a township of land lying with a front of several miles upon the eastern bank of Mad river." And in the following March, Robert Benham, who appears to have been agent for Turner, advertised in the same periodical a sale of lots in the town of Turnerville on Mad or Chille- kothi river.

An unusual thing in that early day was an editorial in a frontier newspaper, but following Wayne's treaty with the In- dians the rush of population to the Mad river country was of such importance as to induce Editor Maxwell, of the Centinel, to pro- duce the following, in his issue of April 2, 1796:

"It is with great satisfaction that we can announce to our readers the rapid strides of population and improvement on the frontiers of this country. The banks of the Mad (or as called by the Indians) Chillekothi river, display at this moment hopeful ap- pearances. But yesterday that country was a waste, the range of savages and prowling beasts; today we see stations formed, towns building, and the population spreading. At the mouth of the river on the eastern side now stands the town of Dayton, in which are already upwards of forty cabins and houses, with the certain pros- pect of many more. Three and twenty miles above this in the forks of the river, a town called Turnerville will shortly be laid out on an admired plan, and from whose situation many advantages may be expected, as roads to the lakes and Pittsburgh intersect at this point. Stations in the neighborhood are already in forewardness, and a mill will shortly be built on a fine never failing seat within a mile or two from town. Two stores of goods will be opened there in the course of the Spring. *

* * Thus we have a certain prospect of a flourishing frontier, that in the case of a renewal of Indian hostilities, will be a shield to the older and more popular settlements within the Miami Purchase."

Individual settlements were pushing up the valley of the Little Miami and in 1798 the town of Waynesville was located in the wilderness on the banks of that river. In the opening year of the new century we find Judge Symmes again active in a personal endeavor to extend the frontier. The Western Spy, published at Cincinnati, of March 26, 1800, contains a communication from him calling a meeting at John Lyon's tavern on Millcreek of those gen- tlemen who intended to become adventurers on "Scioto and Whet- stone waters" to enter into articles of regulation, elect a foreman and inform each other who would furnish wagons, oxen or horses, for the purpose of transporting utensils of husbandry and provisions to the new settlement. In one week after the meeting the party was to march in a body to the place of settlement with their wagons, pack horses, cattle, sheep and hogs.

But before their dreams could be realized these ambitious town

SETTLEMENT OF THE MIAMI VALLEY

builders were compelled to wait for a further agricultural develop- ment. At first the best that they could hope for was a limited population of the squatter class and possibly an occasional farmer, who settled in or near one of these proposed towns in hopes of a larger social intercourse, than could be secured on a wilderness farm.

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The area of unoccupied land was so great, notwithstanding the great movement of population to the Northwest territory, that for many years after the treaty of Greenville most of the country was sparsely settled and large areas of native forest remained untouched. In 1797, a traveler passing in a northwesterly direction from Man- chester to the Little Miami river found but one cabin on the trace between those points. That one was built by a Mr. Van Metre, about seven miles from where Newmarket, Highland county, is now located. A man by the name of Wood had built a mill on the little Miami and there were several cabins in that vicinity. On the re- turn trip the same traveler passed but two homes between Cincin- nati and Chillicothe. Bailey, in his Journal of a Tour, tells of pass- ing down the Ohio in 1797 and remarks that "this tract of country lying between the two Miamis is the only properly settled country on the north side of the Ohio; for though there are a few scattered plantations along the banks of the Ohio, and on some of the rivers which run into it, yet they are too widely diffused to assume any corporate form." But at this time the whole southern bank of the Ohio, from Limestone to Louisville, had begun to assume a civilized appearance, according to the same writer.

About 30,000 settlers found their way into Ohio in the first five years following the treaty of Greenville, and thus the popu- lation was increased from about 15,000, in 1795, to about 45,000, in 1800, a gain of 200 per cent. Of this number, 14,629 were living in Hamilton county. However, it must be remembered that at that time Hamilton county included practically the entire Miami valley. Its eastern boundary was identical with the present eastern boundary of Clermont county to the northeast corner of that county, and from there it extended north to the Indian treaty line. The treaty line formed both its northern and western boundaries, and Hamilton county thus included a small part of what is now Southeastern In- diana. This gave Hamilton county at that time an area of about 4,000 square miles and a population of a little over three and a half persons per square mile. That part of the Miami valley west of the river and north of the latitude of Dayton was almost en- tirely unoccupied.

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Memoirs of the Miami valley, Part 5

Author: Hover, John Calvin, 1866- ed; Barnes, Joseph Daniel, 1869- ed Publication date: 1919 Publisher: Chicago, Robert O. Law company Number of Pages: 684

Author: Hover, John Calvin, 1866- ed; Barnes, Joseph Daniel, 1869- ed
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Chicago, Robert O. Law company
Number of Pages: 684