USA > Ohio > Montgomery County > Memoirs of the Miami valley > Part 9
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The wholesale business of Cincinnati began not later than 1806. Dealers were then offering special inducements to country mer- chants, in order to divert their trade from eastern markets to Cincinnati. Some were offering to take at New Orleans market prices three-fourths of the amount of the purchase price in produce delivered at that point, and the balance cash.
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The merchants of today can little appreciate the difficulties en- countered by these early dealers. In order to sell their goods they were compelled to attend not only to the ordinary duties of a mer- chant and to incur ordinary responsibilities and risks, but also they were compelled to be the produce merchants of the country as well. They must take the farmers' produce and send or convey it to New Orleans, the only market for the west. It was necessary for the western merchant to buy pork and pack it, to buy wheat and have it ground into flour, to have barrels made to hold the flour, and then to build flat-bottomed boats and with considerable expense and great risk, float it down the Ohio and the Mississippi to New Or- leans. Having arrived at New Orleans and disposed of the cargo, the dangers were not over, as there was the long journey home. In returning there was the choice of routes. The merchant could either return home by land, a distance of 1,100 miles over the Natchez trace, 500 miles of which was through the Indian country, or go by sea to Philadelphia or Baltimore and thence home by land. The latter route was frequently chosen when the mer- chant wished to lay in a new stock of goods. One merchant of the Miami valley made fourteen such trips. On the first trip he had charge of five flatboats loaded with produce. Thirteen trips were made on flatboats and one on a barge. Eight times he traveled home by land and was usually about thirty days in making the journey from New Orleans to Cincinnati.
A large part of the imports continued to come from Philadelphia or Baltimore until, and even after, the introduction of the steamboat. Once or twice in the year the merchant would go to one or both of those cities to buy goods. If, after selling his produce at New Or- leans, he did not go by sea from that place, he would start from his home and travel on horseback, a distance of 600 miles, or go by keel-boat to Pittsburg and thence over land to one of the coast cities. When the goods were purchased he must engage wagons to haul them over a bad road to Pittsburg at a cost of from $6 to $10 per hundredweight; and after a journey of from twenty to twenty- five days over the mountains, he must buy flatboats or keel-boats and employ hands to take his goods to Cincinnati. The round trip from Cincinnati to Pittsburg usually consumed about three months, says McBride in his Pioneer History of Butler County. This grow- ing business soon brought about the construction of large ware- houses near the river and storage and commission firms began to appear.
There is little evidence showing the influence of the War of 1812 on the settlement of the Miami valley, but it is probable that the export of products, under existing conditions, were somewhat interfered with. However, the demands of the northwestern army for sustenance doubtless compensated in this respect for any such loss. According to market quotations in the Western Spy, wheat was worth 621/2 cents per bushel in October, 1812, and rose to $1 per bushel by the middle of the following December. John H. Piatt, the principal western army contractor, had frequent advertisements in the Cincinnati papers for pack horses, beef, cattle, hogs, flour, and whiskey. After the war the development of this region and its
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growing commerce is indicated by what appears to have been a great extension of the flatboat business. Under the head of Ship News, Cincinnati papers published the arrival and departure of barges. The following are some of the typical notices of the time: "Arrived on the 6th inst. the barge Cincinnati from New Or- leans. Cargo, sugar, cotton and molasses."
"Arrived June 1, the barge, Nonesuch, Capt. M. Baum, from New Orleans. Cargo, cotton and sugar. Also, two large keel-boats, cargo same."
"Arrived on Wednesday last, the barge Fox, Capt. Palmer, from New Orleans to Messrs. Marsh & Palmer ; cargo, sugar, cotton, and coffee."
On the first anniversary of St. Jackson's Day, Liberty Hall pub- lished the following:
"Sailed for New Orleans :
"Barge Nonesuch, 100 tons flour and pork.
"Barge Cincinnati, 115 tons flour and pork.
"Barge Fox, 40 tons flour and pork.
"Ten to 12 flat boats, each carrying 300 to 400 barrels, have sailed from Cincinnati within two months, loaded with pork, flour, lard and other products."
In 1817 this extensive flatboat trade was carrying down the river for export from Cincinnati the surplus produce of about 100,- 000 people, situated in what was then probably the richest and most productive agricultural section of the west. Flour, pork, and whiskey were the chief articles of export. Dr. Drake assures us that in 1815 the city exported annually several thousand barrels of flour to New Orleans, and it follows that a goodly portion of this export business was the product of the Miami valley. Richard Foster had given the people of the valley their first lessons in pork packing, and droves of swine were beginning to move toward Cin- cinnati for slaughter and shipment down the river. Nor did the commercial basis continue to be entirely agricultural. Local manu- facturers were beginning to contribute their share to the general development. Within the twenty-two years since the Treaty of Greenville, Cincinnati had increased from a village of 500 inhabitants to a city of a population of about 7,000; Dayton and other villages in the interior were rapidly increasing in size, and a considerable number of the inhabitants were engaged in manufacturing. Their principal business, of course, was to supply the local demand, but there had already begun a limited export of manufactured goods to regions farther west and south. Chief among these exports were beer, porter, cheese, soap, candles, spun yarn, lumber and cabinet furniture.
With the beginning of the steamboat era, in 1817, a new impetus was given to the varied industries of the Miami valley and this influence caused the population to increase more rapidly. A rich agricultural region, under frontier conditions and primitive means of transportation, had developed until in some portions there was already a population of nearly forty-five inhabitants to the square mile, according to McMaster, in his History of the People of the United States. And this population was growing rapidly and de-
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manded an increasing quantity of manufactures and imported goods, for which it would be ready to exchange a large surplus of farm products. Raw material for manufacturing purposes was con- venient, and all the necessary advantages were present to make the Miami valley the center of a prosperous and progressive civili- zation.
Taking them in chronological order, Hamilton was the first settled of the seven counties that are considered in this work as forming the territory of the Miami valley. And Hamilton was the second county settled in the state of Ohio. On November 18, 1788, the first settlement was made at Columbia by Major Benjamin Stites, with a party of eighteen or twenty frontiersmen. The site of the village was a little below the mouth of the Little Miami and is now within the limits of the city of Cincinnati, five miles east of Fountain Square. Henry Howe, in his Historical Collections, says of these settlers that they were superior men. Among them were Col. Spencer, Major Gano, Judge Goforth, Francis Dunlavy, Major Kabbey, Rev. John Smith, Judge Foster, Col. Brown, Mr. Hubbell, Capt. Flinn, Jacob White, and John Riley, and for several years the settlement was the most populous and successful.
Two or three blockhouses were first erected for the protection of the women and children, and then log cabins for the families. The boats in which they had come from Maysville, then Limestone, were broken up and used for the doors, floors, etc., to these rude build- ings. They had at that time no trouble from the Indians, which arose from the fact that they were then gathered at Fort Harmar to make a treaty with the whites. Wild game was plentiful, but their breadstuffs and salt soon gave out, and as a substitute they occa- sionally used various roots, taken from native plants, the bear grass especially. When the Spring of 1789 opened their prospects grew brighter. The fine bottoms on the Little Miami had long been cultivated by the savages, and were found mellow as ash heaps. The men worked in divisions, one-half keeping guard with their rifles while the others worked, changing their employments morn- ing and afternoon.
Turkey Bottom, on the Little Miami, one and a half miles above Columbia, was a clearing in area of a square mile, and had been cul- tivated by the Indians for a long while, and supplied both Columbia and the garrison at Fort Washington at Cincinnati with corn for that season. From nine acres of Turkey Bottom, the tradition goes, the enormous crop of 963 bushels were gathered the very first sea- son. Before this the women and children from Columbia early vis- ited Turkey Bottom to scratch up the bulbous roots of the bear grass. These they boiled, washed, dried on smooth boards, and finally pounded into a species of flour, which served as a tolerable substitute for making various baking operations. Many of the families subsisted for a time entirely on the roots of the bear grass, and there was great suffering for provisions until they could grow corn.
The facts connected with the settlement of Cincinnati are given substantially as follows by Henry Howe: In September, 1788, a large party, embracing John Cleves Symmes, Benjamin Stites, Den-
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man, Patterson, Filson, Ludlow, with others, in all about sixty men, left Limestone to visit the new Miami purchase of Symmes. They landed at the mouth of the Great Miami and explored the country for some distance back from that and North Bend, at which point Symmes then decided to make a settlement. The party surveyed the distance between the two Miamis, following the meanders of the Ohio, and returned to Limestone. On December 24, 1788, Den- man and Patterson, with twenty-six others, left Limestone in a boat to found Losantiville. After much difficulty and danger from float- ing ice in the river, they arrived at the spot on or about the 28th, the exact date being in dispute. The precise spot of their landing was an inlet at the foot of Sycamore street, later known as Yeatman's Cove. Ludlow laid out the town. On January 7, ensuing, the set- tlers by lottery decided on their choice of donation lots, the same being given to each in fee simple on condition that he raised two crops successively, and not less than an acre for each crop; that he built within two years a house equal to twenty-five feet square, one and a half stories high, with brick, stone, or clay chimney, each house to stand in front of the respective lot. The following is a list of settlers who so agreed, thirty in number: Samuel Blackburn, Sylvester White; Joseph Thornton, John Vance, James Dumont, a man named Fulton, Elijah Martin, Isaac Van Meter, Thomas Gissel, David McClever, a man named Davidson, Matthew Campbell, James Monson, James McConnell, Noah Badgely, James Carpenter, Samuel Mooney, James Campbell, Isaac Freeman, Scott Traverse, Ben- jamin Dumont, Jesse Stewart, Henry Bechtle, Richard Stewart, Luther Kitchell, Ephraim Kibbey, Henry Lindsey, John Porter, Daniel Shoemaker, Joel Williams. The thirty in-lots in general terms comprised the space back from the landing between Main street and Broadway, and there the town was started.
The North Bend settlement was the third within the Symmes purchase, and was made under the immediate care of Judge Symmes. The party, on their passage down the river, were obstructed, de- layed and exposed to imminent danger from floating ice, which cov- ered the river. However, they reached the bend, the place of their destination, in safety, early in February. The first object of the Judge was to found a city at that place, which had received the name of North Bend from the fact that it was the most northern bend in the Ohio river below the mouth of the Great Kanawha. The water-craft used in descending the Ohio, in those primitive times, were flatboats made of green oak plank, fastened by wooden pins to a frame of timber, and caulked with tow or any other pliant substance that could be procured. Boats similarly constructed on the northern waters were then called arks, but on the western rivers they were denominated Kentucky boats. The materials of which they were composed were found to be of great utility in the con- struction of temporary buildings for safety, and for protection from the inclemency of the weather, after they had arrived at their destination.
Gen. Harmar, at the earnest solicitation of Symmes, sent Capt. Kearsey with forty-eight rank and file to protect the improvements just commencing in the Miami valley. This detachment reached
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Limestone in December, 1788, and a few days later Capt. Kearsey sent a part of his command in advance, as a guard to protect the pioneers under Major Stites, at the Little Miami, where they ar- rived soon afterward. Accompanied by Capt. Kearsey, Mr. Symmes and his party landed at Columbia, on their passage down the river, and the detachment previously sent to that place joined their com- pany. They then proceeded to the bend and landed, about the first or second of February. When they left Limestone it was the pur- pose of Capt. Kearsey to occupy the fort built at the mouth of the Miami by a detachment of United States troops who afterward descended the Ohio river to the falls at Louisville, but that purpose was defeated by the high water, which had spread over the low grounds and rendered it difficult to reach the fort. Thus disap- pointed, the captain resolved that he would not build a new fort, but would leave the bend and join the garrison at Louisville. In pursuance of that resolution, early in March, he descended the river with his command. Symmes immediately wrote to Major Willis, commandant of the garrison at the Falls, complaining of the con- duct of Capt. Kearsey, representing the exposed situation of the Miami settlement, stating the indications of hostility manifested by the Indians, and requesting a guard to be sent to the bend. This request was promptly granted, and before the close of the month Ensign Luce arrived with seventeen or eighteen soldiers, which, for a time, removed the apprehensions of the pioneers at that place. However, it was not long before the Indians made an attack on the settlement, and one soldier was killed and four or five others were wounded, including Major J. R. Mills, from Elizabethtown, New Jersey, who was a surveyor and an intelligent and highly respected citizen. Although he recovered from his wounds, he felt their disabling effects to the day of his death.
The surface of the ground where Symmes and his party had landed was above the reach of the water and sufficiently level to admit of a convenient settlement. Therefore he determined, for the immediate accommodation of his party, to lay out a village at that place and to suspend, for the present, the execution of his pur- pose as to the city of which he had given notice until satisfactory information could be obtained in regard to the comparative ad- vantages of different places in the vicinity. However, the deter- mination to lay out such a city was not abandoned, but was executed in the succeeding year on a magnificent scale. It included the vil- lage and extended from the Ohio across the peninsula to the Miami river. This city, which was certainly a beautiful one, on paper, was called Symmes, and for a time was a subject of conversation and of criticism; but it soon ceased to be remembered-even its name was forgotten, and the settlement continued to be called North Bend. Since then, that village has been distinguished as the home of William Henry Harrison, soldier and statesman, whose re- mains now repose in an humble vault on one of its beautiful hills.
In conformity with a stipulation made at Limestone, every individual in the party received a donation lot, which he was re- quired to improve as the condition of obtaining a title. As the number of these adventurers increased, in consequence of the pro-
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tection afforded by the military, Symmes was induced to lay out another village, six or seven miles higher up the river, and which place he called South Bend, where he disposed of some donation lots; but that project failed, and in a few years the village was deserted and converted into a farm.
In the midst of these transactions, Symmes was visited by a number of Indians from a camp in the neighborhood of Stites' settle- ment. One of them, a Shawnee chief, had many complaints to make of frauds practiced on them by white traders, who fortunately had no connection with the pioneers. After several conversations, and some small presents, the chief professed to be satisfied with the explanation he had received and gave assurances that the Indians would trade with the white men as friends. In one of their inter- views, Symmes told the chief that he (Symmes) had been commis- sioned and sent out to their country, by the thirteen fires, in the spirit of friendship and kindness, and that he was instructed to treat them as friends and brothers. In proof of this he showed them the flag of the Union, with its stars and stripes, and also his com- mission, which bore the great seal of the United States, exhibiting the American eagle with the olive branch in one claw, emblematical of peace, and the instrument of war and death in the other. He ex- plained the meaning of those symbols to the satisfaction of the In- dians, though at first the chief seemed to think they were not very striking emblems, either of peace or friendship; but before he de- parted from the bend he gave assurances of the most friendly char- acter. Yet, when they left their camp to return to their towns, they carried off a number of horses belonging to the Columbia settle- ment, to compensate for the injuries done them by wandering trad- ers who had no part or lot with the pioneers. These depredations having been repeated, a party was sent out in pursuit, and the trail of the Indians was followed a considerable distance, when they discovered fresh signs and sent Capt. Flinn, one of their party, in advance to reconnoitre. He had not proceeded far before he was surprised, taken prisoner, and carried to the Indian camp. Not liking the movements he saw going on, which seemed to indicate personal violence in regard to himself, and having great confidence in his activity and strength, at a favorable moment he sprang from the camp, made his escape and rejoined his party. Fearing an ambuscade, the Indians did not pursue. The party possessed them- selves of some horses belonging to the Indians and returned to Columbia. In a few days the Indians brought in Capt. Flinn's rifle and begged Major Stites to restore their horses, alleging that they were innocent of the depredations laid to their charge. After some further explanations, the matter was amicably settled and the horses were given up.
Although they had one general object and were threatened by one common danger, there existed a strong spirit of rivalry among these three settlements-the first in the Miami valley; each person feeling a pride in the prosperity of the little colony to which he be- longed. That spirit had a strong influence on the pioneers of the different villages and produced an esprit du corps, scarcely to be expected under circumstances so critical and dangerous as those
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which threatened them. At first it was a matter of doubt which of the rivals-Columbia, Cincinnati, or North Bend-would event- ually become the chief seat of business. However, the doubt lasted but a short time. The garrison having been established at Cincin- nati, that fact made it the headquarters and the depot of the army, and as soon as the county courts of the territory were organized it was made the seat of justice of Hamilton county. These ad- vantages convinced everybody that it was destined to become the metropolis of the Miami country.
A large number of the original adventurers to the Miami pur- chase had exhausted their means by paying for their land and re- moving their families to the country. Others were wholly desti- tute of property and came out as volunteers, under the expectation of obtaining, gratuitously, such small tracts of land as might be forfeited by the purchasers, under Judge Symmes, for not making the improvements required by the conditions stipulated in the terms of sale and settlement of Miami lands, published by Symmes in 1787. The class of adventurers first named was comparatively numerous, and had come out under an expectation of taking imme- diate possession of the lands and of commencing the cultivation of them for subsistence. Therefore, their situation was distressing. To go out into the wilderness to till the soil appeared to be certain death; to remain in the settlements threatened them with starva- tion. The best provider of the pioneers found it difficult to obtain subsistence; and, of course, the class now spoken of were not far from total destitution. They depended on game, fish, and such prod- ucts of the earth as could be raised on small patches of ground in the immediate vicinity of the settlements. Small lots of provi- sions were brought down the river by immigrants, occasionally, and sometimes were transported on packhorses from Lexington, at a heavy expense, and not without danger. But supplies, thus pro- cured, were beyond the reach of the destitute.
Having endured these privations as long as they could be borne, the more resolute of them determined to brave the conse- quences of moving on to their lands. To accomplish the object with the least exposure, those whose lands were in the same neigh- borhood united as one family, and on that principle a number of associations were formed, amounting to a dozen or more, who went out resolved to maintain their positions. Each party erected a strong blockhouse, near to which their cabins were put up, and the whole was enclosed by strong log pickets. This being done, they commenced clearing their lands and preparing for planting their crops. While they were at work, during the day, one person was placed as a sentinel to warn them of approaching danger. At sun- set they retired to the blockhouse and their cabins, taking every- thing of value within the pickets. They proceeded in this manner from day to day and week to week till their improvements were sufficiently extensive to support their families. They depended for subsistence during this time on wild game, obtained at some hazard, more than on the scanty supplies they were able to procure from the settlements on the river. In a short time these stations gave protection and food to a large number of destitute families. After
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they were established, the Indians became less annoying to the set- tlements, as part of their time was employed in watching the sta- tions. However, the former did not escape, but endured their share of the fruits of savage hostility. In fact, no place or situation was exempt from danger. The safety of the pioneer depended on his means of defense and on perpetual vigilance. The Indians viewed those stations with great jealousy, as they had the appearance of permanent military establishments, intended to retain possession of their country. In that view they were correct, and it was for- tunate, as the settlers lacked either the skill or the means of de- molishing them. The great error of the Indians consisted in per- mitting those works to be constructed. They might have prevented it with ease, but they appeared not to be aware of the serious conse- quences until it was too late to act with effect. However, several attacks were made, at different times, with an apparent determina- tion to destroy them ; but they failed in every instance. The assault made on the station erected by Capt. Jacob White, a pioneer of much energy and enterprise, at the third crossing of Mill creek from Cin- cinnati, on the old Hamilton road, was resolute and daring; but it was gallantly met and successfully repelled. The attack was in the night, and in the fight which ensued Capt. White shot and killed a warrior, who feil so near the blockhouse that his com- panions could not remove his body. The next morning it was brought in, and judging from his stature, as reported by the inmates, he might have claimed descent from a race of giants. The appear- ances of blood on the ground in the vicinity of the blockhouse indi- cated that the assailants had suffered severely.
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