USA > Ohio > Sketches and statistics of Cincinnati in 1859 > Part 12
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35
Under these circumstances some general idea may be conceived of the sufferings and privations which those endured who formed the van-guard of civilization, and prepared the way for the present generation to enjoy the fruit of past labors and sufferings. But it is not so easy, without some specifications such as I shall furnish here, to realize the nature and extent of the privations of individ- uals who, in many cases, abandoned comfortable homes and the- enjoyment of civilized life at the call of duty. Especially was this the case in respect to several of the pioneer mothers. A few notes from the recollections of one of the survivors, probably the only one of the party who landed with Major Stites at Columbia, a venerable lady recently deceased, whose family has borne a conspicuous part in the civil, political, military, and religious history of the Miami Valley, will possess my readers of a more distinct idea of these sacrifices and privations, than they could otherwise acquire. These were given me in 1846.
My informant was born and brought up in New York, her parents being in prosperous circumstances. Her husband, who was a sur- veyor, had been for some time in delicate health, and concluded to accompany Maj. Stites to his settlement at the mouth of the Little Miami. At this place, where they landed on the 18th November,
1
----
EARLY ANNALS.
123
1788, and to which the settlers gave the name of Columbia, two or three block-houses were first erected for the protection of the women and children, and log cabins were built, without delay, for occupation by the several families. The boats in which they came down from Limestone being broken up, served for floors, doors, etc., to these rude buildings. Stites and his party had riven out clapboards, while they were detained at Maysville, which, being taken down to Columbia, enabled the settlers to cover their houses without delay. The fact that the Indians were generally gathered to Fort Harmar, at the mouth of the Muskingum, for the purpose of making a treaty with the whites, contributed also to the tem- porary security of the new settlement. Little, however, could be done beyond supplying present sustenance for the party from the woods. Wild game was abundant, but the breadstuffs they took with them soon gave out; and supplies of corn and salt were only to be obtained at a distance, and in deficient quantities, and various roots, taken from the indigenous plants, the bear-grass especially, had frequently to be resorted to as articles of food. When the spring of 1789 opened, their situation promised gradually to im- prove. The fine bottoms on the Little Miami had been long culti- vated by the savages, and were found mellow as ash-heaps. The men worked in divisions, one-half keep ng guard, with their rifles, while the others worked, changing their employments morning and afternoon. My informant had brought a looking-glass, boxed up, from the east, and the case being mounted on a home-made pair of rockers, served for the first cradle in the settlement. It had previously been set across a barrel to do duty as a table. Individ- uals now living in Cincinnati were actually rocked, during their infancy, in sugar-troughs.
It was with difficulty horses could be preserved from being stolen, by all the means of protection to which the settlers could resort. In the family to which this lady belonged, the halter-chains of the horses were passed through between the logs and fastened to stout hooks on the inside. But neither this precaution nor securing them with hopples, would always serve to protect horses from the savages. On one occasion, a fine mare, with her colt, had been left in the rear of the house, in a small inclosure. The mare was taken off by Indians, they having secured her by a stout buffalo tug. It appears they had not noticed the colt in the darkness of the night. As they rode her off, the colt sprang the fence after
11
124
EARLY ANNALS.
the mare, and made such a noise galloping after, that, supposing themselves pursued, they let the mare go, lest she should impede their escape, and the family inside of the house knew nothing of the danger to which they had been exposed, until the buffalo tug told the night's adventure.
On another occasion, several families, who had settled on the face of the hill, near where Colonel Spencer afterward resided, at a spot called Morristown, from one Morris, the principal individual in the settlement, had hung out clothes to dry. Early in the even- ing, a paity of Indiaus, prowling around, made a descent and car- ried off every piece of clothing left out, nor was the loss discovered until the families were about to retire for the night. Pursuit was made, and the trail followed for several miles; when, arriving at the place where the savages had encamped, it was found deserted, the enemy being panic-struck, and having abandoned all to effect their escape. The plunder was recovered, but not until the Indians had raveled out the coverlets to make belts for themselves.
But many of the settlers encountered more serious calamities than loss of property. James Seward had two boys massacred by the savages, and James Newell, one of the most valuable of the settlers at Columbia, shared a similar fate. Hinkle and Covalt, two of the settlers on Round Bottom, a few miles up the Miami, were shot dead, in front of their own cabins, while engaged hew- ing logs. €
In November, 1789, a flood occurred on the Ohio of such mag- nitude as to overflow the lower part of Columbia to such a height as first to drive the soldiers, at one of the block-houses, up into the loft, and then out by the gable to their boat, by which they crossed the Ohio to the hills on the opposite side. One house, only, in Columbia, remained out of water. The loss of property, valuable in proportion to its scarcity and the difficulty of replacing it, may be readily conjectured.
Honor to the memories of those who, at such cost, won as an in- heritance for their successors the garden-spot of the whole world!
The first settlers suffered greatly for provisions, before the crops of their second year produced food in abundance, subsisting on short allowance of corn, which was pounded or ground into hominy in hand-mills. They were thankful, in those days, if they could only procure corn enough. Many of the families at Columbia subsisted on the roots of the bear-grass. Jesse Coleman, to whom
125
EARLY ANNALS.
I have already referred, tells me that he has repeatedly had nothing more, for three days' subsistence, than a pint of parched corn. He was then six years of age.
Mr. C. says the first mill in Hamilton county was constructed by his father, Mr. N. Coleman, at Columbia, who made fast two flat- boats, side by side, the water-wheel being put up between both. The grindstones, with the grain and flour, were in one boat, and the machinery in the other. Up to this time, the grinding through the whole country was by hand-mills. Under these circumstances, the settlers were obliged to get grinding done by going as far as the old settlements in Kentucky for that purpose. Noah Badgley, and three others of the first settlers of Cincinnati, started for Paris, Ky., for a supply of bread corn at this period, no crop of their own having been raised by the settlers till the next year. They embarked, with their supplies, in a canoe, up the Licking, while the river was high and the weather cold. After proceeding down that stream several miles, they came to a place where it broke into various channels, very crooked and difficult, and the canoe was forced into drift-wood and trees with such violence as to overset it. The men saved themselves by climbing a tree. One of them swam out and escaped; but Badgley, in the attempt to fol- low him, was carried down so rapidly by the current, that he was unable to gain the shore, and perished. The other two continued on the tree three days and nights, before they could be relieved from their perilous and distressing predicament.
The first improvements made in Columbia were the means of supplying Cincinnati and the garrison, at Fort Washington, with sustenance for some time, perhaps for two seasons, 1789 and 1790, before crops were raised within the city limits.
TURKEY BOTTOM, one and a half miles above the mouth of the Little Miami, was a clearing of six hundred and forty acres, made ready to the hands of the whites when they commenced the settle- ment of the country. The Indians had cultivated it for a length of years up to the period of Major Stites' settlement, although part of this extensive field had been suffered to grow up, by neglect, in black and honey locust, which became literally, as well as figura- tively, " thorns in the sides" to the early settlers. This ground was leased, by Col. Benjamin Stites, to six of the settlers for five years, and with a clearing of Elijah Stites, and other settlers, of six acres more, furnished the entire supply of corn for that settlement
126
EARLY ANNALS.
and Cincinnati for that season. Nothing could surpass the fertility of the soil, which was mellow as an ash-heap. Benjamin Ran- dolph planted an acre, which he had no time to hoe, being obliged to leave the settlement for New Jersey. When he returned, he found one hundred bushels of corn ready for husking.
Seed corn, and even corn for hominy, and in the form of meal, were brought out of the Kentucky settlements, down the Licking, and occasionally from a distance as great as Lexington.
While those who were Best off were thus straitened, it may readily be supposed that others must have suffered still greater privations. The women and their children came from Columbia to 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 sub stitute for making various baking preparations. Few families had milk, and still fewer bacon, for a season or two.
In 1789, General Harmar sent Captains Strong and Kearsey to Columbia to procure corn for their soldiers. They applied to Jas. Flinn, understanding he had five hundred bushels for sale. Flinn refused to sell to the army, having the previous year, when he re- sided at Belleville, below Marietta, not been able to get his pay for a supply he had furnished the troops a Fort Harmar, in conse- quence of the removal to some other station of the officer who made the purchase. Strong remarked, "If we can't get corn, we shall have to retreat on starvation." While they were talking, and with great earnestness, Luke Foster, since Judge of the Hamilton Court of Common Pleas, came up and inquired the difficulty. Captain Strong replied, "The difficulty is, that the troops have been, for nine days, on half rations, and the half rations are nearly out, and we are starving for corn." Foster agreed then to lend the garrison one hundred bushels, to be returned the next season. How badly off they were the next season, may be judged by the fact, that Foster had to ride down to Cincinnati six times to get nineteen bushels of it!
How opportune this offer was, may be judged by the fact that the corn in the hands of Flinn and Foster constituted two-thirds of the whole supply of Columbia and Cincinnati.
Judge Foster gave me the following history of the crop, which enabled him to supply the wants at Fort Washington. He had run out of seed corn, and the only one of the neighbors who could
127
EARLY ANNALS.
supply him with the quantity he wanted-less than a peck-hap- pened also to be out of corn meal.' As Foster had a small quantity of this last, an exchange was promptly made of thirteen pint cupfuls, pint for pint. The corn was planted, three grains in a hill, this sup- ply serving to seed two and a half acres. The crop had not been put in early, and it was a dry season, but such was the character of the soil, and the condition it was in, that barely turning up the earth to the hills served to keep it in moisture.
An incident or two in the pioneer history of John S. Wallace, one of the earliest settlers of Cincinnati, and a resident here until his death, which occurred not many years since, are worthy of being rescued from the oblivion to which the greater share of the events of those days is rapidly hastening.
Mr. Wallace was, with most of the first settlers of Cincinnati, a native of Pennsylvania, and had been engaged in trading voyages on the Ohio, at a date even prior to the first settlement of our city.
On his second visit to Cincinnati, in 1789, he was informed that Captain Strong's company of regulars, who had been stationed at Ft. Washington to protect the infant settlements in Judge Symmes' purchase, were about to abandon the post for want of provisions, supplies from stations higher up the Ohio having given out. Wal- lace called on the Captain, and suggested to him that he could probably buy as much corn at Columbia as would furnish bread- stuffs for some time, while he-Wallace-would take the woods, with a hunter or two in company, and supply the meat rations. The suggestion was well-timed as well as judicious, and readily adopted.
The success of the application to James Flinn and Luke Foster, has been already narrated.
In the meantime Wallace started to the woods, accompanied by two of the early settlers, Drennan and Dement. Drennan did not understand much of hunting, and Dement had never attempted it; but they were both serviceable in the only department in which they were needed by Wallace, that is in packing the meat-Indian fashion, on their backs-Dement especially. They went down the river in a canoc, some ten miles below Cincinnati, on the Ken- tucky side, where they secreted their craft in the mouth of a small branch, fearing the Indians might be induced to lie in ambush for their return, if it fell under their uotice. Here they struck into the woods and secured an abundant supply of buffalo, deer, and bear
128
EARLY ANNALS.
meat to last the troops, about seventy in number, for six weeks --- until provisions should arrive from Pittsburg.
This supply was of great importance. Without provisions the military station here must have been relinquished, to the prejudice of its speedy re-occupation, and to the necessary discouragement of persons settling at the place, as well as tempting the abandon- ment of the existing settlements of Cincinnati and Columbia.
From the statement of the individual I have referred to on page 122, the following notes have been compiled. "I will add to what I have already stated to you, some recollections of the journeys which our early settlers were compelled to take through the wil- derness, when business or necessity called us to our former homes and neighbors."
The savages were so hostile that such journeys were not often undertaken. When they were, the traveler would start to Lime- stone by river, in a canoe or pirogue, from Fort Washington or Fort Miami, as the case might be. Flatboats were always used to descend the Ohio, but were of course not adapted to ascend it. The traveler always took provision with him, and kept on what was termed the Virginia side, so called from the Virginia land claims. From Limestone his route lay to Lexington sixty-four miles, all a wilderness, except a station at the Blue Licks, erected by a gentle- man named Lyons, who carried on making salt. He had a family of colored people, and entertained travelers. As this was the only supply of salt to the emigrants at that period, and Mr. L. dealt with great fairness with the settlers, he was very popular, and had a great run of custom for that day. From Lexington the traveler proceeded to the Crab Orchard, leaving written notices at Lexing- ton that a party would leave the Crab Orchard at such a date. These notices or advertisements were posted at stations, or on trees. This was the means of making a party from the various stations or settlements of such as were desirous also to journey east. At the appointed time, the party would assemble to proceed on horseback, with their rifles, to the old settlements from which they came. But though traveling in this mode in numbers, and with their arms in their hands, they were often attacked by Indians, and several, at different times, lost their lives.
Everything brought by the emigrants to the west was taken out on pack-horses; but as the children, both white and black, had to be taken this way also, only a few articles of the first necessity
129
EARLY ANNALS.
could be added. It is easy to judge the privations and sufferings of the early settlers by this circumstance.
I traveled once, in the way of which I speak, in 1789, from Co- lumbia, designing to accompany my husband on his way east as far as Lexington, where his father and mother resided, with whom I intended to stay until his return. He was on a journey to New York and Philadelphia. We left Maysville-then Limestone- with the agreement not to speak a word to each other, after leav- ing Washington, until we should reach the Blue Licks, twenty-two miles. At Washington, four miles on our journey, we learned that the Indians had attacked a party, the day before, of movers to Lex- ington. This we considered good encouragement to proceed, as the Indians would be off as rapidly as possible through fear of pur- suit. They are a very cautious people, and will not attack except at an advantage. We remained at Lyons' all night; and, after reaching Lexington next day, my husband set out for the Crab Orchard, on his way over the mountains. In due time I received a letter from him, which was taken through the wilderness by a party of settlers coming out on their way to the west. The party was attacked by Indians, and the man who had the letter killed, and the letter, which had been on his person, was very much stained with his blood. Others of the same party were killed at the same time.
Occasionally travelers would go up the Ohio, to Wheeling, by pirogue or canoe, polling or paddling all the way; but most per- sons went the route which I have described. In ascending the river, they always kept the Virginia side as the safest.
When the courts were first established in Cincinnati, the officers who lived in Columbia, went down in canoes, or walked the dis- tance, but always on the Virginia side, for fear of Indians. They were obliged to take their provisions with them, as there were very few inhabitants in Cincinnati, and no boarding-houses there at that period.
David McCash, a native of Scotland, emigrated to this country, with his wife and oldest son, William, soon after the acknowledg- ment of American Independence, and settled in Mason county, Ky., a few miles from Limestone, now Maysville. Here James, a second son, was added to the family.
In 1792, he took down to Cincinnati, in a pirogue, apples, peaches, turnips, etc., the products of his farm, to Gen. Wayne's
130
EARLY ANNALS.
encampment, at Hobson's Choice, in the region of which the pre- sent gas works is the centre. The General assigned him a guard to protect his property until he should effect a sale.
Next year, in April, 1793, the family emigrated to Cincinnati, and took out their effects at what was called the Stone Landing, above Broadway. They bought out a settler's right to a log cabin, on Walnut, north of Third street, being the lot north of that on which the Masonic building has been recently built, and purchased an out-lot of four acres for as many dollars, being the ground now including Miles Greenwood's foundry, the Bavarian brewery, and bounded south by the Miami canal, and worth now, without in- cluding the improvements, three hundred thousand dollars.
The oldest brother, William, constructed a water-cart, the frame of which was formed of two poles, in the middle of which a cross- piece was fastened; pegs to hold the barrel were driven into the lower part, and the ends served for shafts. This was the first con- venience for supplying the city with water for cooking or drinking uses.
The next step in the progress of vehicles for transportation, in this city, was the construction, by McCash, of a wheeled cart. This was effected by making a pair of wooden wheels, perhaps six inches thick, and two and a half feet in diameter, connected with-not running on-an axle, which was held by large staples in which it rolled, that secured it to the bed and shafts. McCash hauled the first barrel on his car, and the first load of goods on his dray or cart, ever transported through the streets of Cincinnati.
James, the younger brother, from whom I have these facts, recol- lects, when but five years old, planting the four acre lot alluded to, in pumpkins, which he dropped into the hills of corn, prepared by the old man, and planted by the elder brother.
"Ah!" said Mr. McCash, in narrating these things, "we had to stir ourselves in those days. Hands were scarce, and boys were expected to do what I cannot get boys now to do for me. My father sent me, one day, to Grummon's mill, on Millcreek, a few rods above where Ernst's garden now is, with his mare. I was taking a bag of corn to be ground, and was not seven years old at the time. On this occasion I first saw Presley Kemper. He was at the mill, and when the corn meal was put on the beast, and such a bit of a boy riding it, he offered to go with me to the town, as Cincinnati was then called, and of as many houses as
131
EARLY ANNALS.
could now be put upon a single block or square of the city. But I was too proud to accept his offer, and started alone. Where the Brighton House now is, my bag slid off, and I was in a pretty fix. There was no human being nearer than an old fellow named Harkless, who lived in Wade's woods, and there was no path opened to his cabin that I knew of. So I first sat down and cried, and then mounted the mare and returned to the mill, and got the miller to put the meal on the beast for me. This seems nothing now, but you must recollect that whole region was grown up in weeds to that degree that a man might be within five rods of a hundred head of cattle without suspecting they were there. And the stories of Indians, who had visited the neighborhood within two or three years, stealing cattle and carrying off children, was enough to try the spunk of a little fellow like me-yes, and of older people, too.
-
"Another time, after we had removed to the country, and were living fifteen miles from Cincinnati, when I was about nine years old, my father sent me to hunt up a stray mare, which was sup- posed to be down the Millcreek bottoms. I hunted and hunted, and at last found her at Hobson's Choice. She was too lame to travel, so I staid at Cincinnati a week, until she got better, though not well, and started home with a man named John Hole. When I got where I had to cross Millcreek, there was ice over it so thick that it required the mare to rise up and strike the ice with both her fore feet to break a passage, and I had hard work to keep my seat. The water was full belly deep to a horse. Hole was too cowardly to go first, and made me do so. If I had slipped off, it would have been a gone case with me."
Such was the training which has reared up the grown men among the farmers of Hamilton county of the present day.
The year 1792, as has been elsewhere alluded to in this volume, was remarkable for a flood of uncommon height and of course breadth. John Ludlow, formerly Sheriff of Hamilton county, was brother to Israel Ludlow, one of the early proprietors of Cincinnati, and followed him to the west, from New Jersey, in the spring of 1792. He left Redstone, now Brownsville, Pa., with his family, in company with a trader, named McGowan, on a flatboat loaded, among other things, with castings, bar iron, and grindstones. Lud- low had two wagons slung on one side of the boat to assist in bal-
132
EARLY ANNALS.
ancing the weight of four horses, a yoke of oxen, and two milch cows, which he was taking down for farming purposes. Two in- dividuals of Ludlow's family, were his son, William D., and his daughter, Eliza, of the ages of five and three years respectively. They still survive-the daughter being now Mrs. Patton, a married lady of Dayton, O., and the son a resident of Carthage, in this county.
The boat reached the lower island of what are now termed the Three Sisters, at the termination of which the boat sprung a leak by starting a plank. It had struck against a sunken log, and com- menced filling with rapidity. In pulling round to make the island, the bow of the boat struck a drift-heap, on which the party sprang, at least such of them as were conscious of their danger, leaving William and Elizabeth on the roof of the boat, whither they had clambered as the water began to rise in the boat. One of the hands, with great promptitude, made the cable of the boat fast to a tree on the island.
The river being high, the current strong, and the boat unman- ageable, she struck with so much force, while swinging round, as to throw the weight entirely to one side, and the horses and cattle being lifted by the water from the floor in these struggles, disen- gaged the roof from the boat, and it floated off with the children on it. The result of this was, that the boat was thrown on its beam ends, and all the live stock on her, one horse excepted, drowned. By an uncommon want of foresight, they had not provided them- selves, as usual, with either skiff or canoe, and the distress, amount- ing to agony, of the parents, may be readily conceived. McGowan ran up the island to discover if any boat was in sight. He saw one nearly three miles off, and hoisted a signal of distress. This was a flatboat, on which were Jesse Hunt and Joseph Prince, two well- known citizens of this place. Prince recognized the signal, and was disposed to land their boat; but Hunt, who was aware that it was an Indian practice to decoy the whites ashore by such artifices as these, utterly objected to do so. Prince then took the skitf, and, with two of the hands, the whole party armed with rifles, rowed near enough to hold a conversation with McGowan, who explained the difficulty. There was no need of urging the party to push on and overtake the children, if possible. They stretched to their oars, but did not reach the floating roof until they had rowed
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.