USA > Ohio > Sketches and statistics of Cincinnati in 1859 > Part 2
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You are aware that I was not among the first adventurers to the Miami valley. When the settlement of it began I had not finish- ed my education; but I commenced my journey to join the little band of adventurers as soon as my professional studies were closed, which was in the spring, after the treaty of Greenville, in 1795, had terminated the Indian war; of course the town had been laid ont, and the settlement of it commenced, before my arrival. It had. however, made but little progress, either in population or im- provement; though it contained a larger number of inhabitants than any other American village in the territory, excepting Mariet- ta; and if you take into the account the officers and soldiers of ibe
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garrison, and others attached to the army, it very much exceeded the population of that place.
"Most of the persons who saw the town laid out, and put up the first cabins erected in it, were here when I came, and were my earliest companions and associates. Without professing an un- usual share of curiosity, it is natural to suppose, that I learnt from them, correctly, the few and simple historical facts of the place, which, for good or ill, I had selected for life as my residence. By way of comparison, it may be said, that the facts connected with the recent location of the Cincinnati Observatory -- the donation made by our distinguished fellow-citizen, N. Longworth, Esq .-- the ceremony of laying the corner-stone of the edifice, by the ven- crable sage and patriot of Quincy, and the name of Mount Adams then publicly given to it, are not more distinctly known, as matters of history, than were the facts of the laying out, establishing and naming of the town of Cincinnati, at the time to which I refer. They were a subject of inquiry by every stranger who came to the place, and every person in the village could recite them. There was but one version to the story, which was this : that Mr. Denman, of New Jersey, entered into a contract with Col. Robert Patterson, of Lexington, and John Filson, a surveyor in the employ of Judge Symmes, to lay out the land opposite the mouth of Licking river, then the exclusive property of Mr. Denman. A plat of the con- templated town was made out, and Losantiville agreed upon as its name; but before any step was taken to carry that contract into ef- fect, and before a chain had been stretched on the ground, Mr. Fil- son was killed by the Indians, not having done anything to fulfill his part of the contract; in consequence of which it was forfeited, and the projected town fell through. This is all that was ever done toward the establishment of a town by the name of Losantiville; yet, as was natural, the settlement, then just beginning was for some time called by the intended name of the projected town.
" Early in the next season, Mr. Denman entered into a new con- tract with Col. Patterson and Israel Ludlow, to lay out a town on the same ground, but on a different plan from the one formerly agreed upon. To that town they gave the name of Cincinnati, and by that name it was surveyed and known in the fall of 1789.
" I was informed by Judge Turner, one of the earliest adventurers to the West, that he had seen both plats, and that the general out- line and plan of division were nearly the same in both, but that 2
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the first or Filson plat, to which the name of Losantiville was to have been given, set apart two entire blocks for the use of the town, and that it gave as a public common, all the ground between Front street and the river, extending from Eastern Row to West- ern Row, then the extreme boundaries of the town plat: and it is impressed upon my mind, though I cannot say what caused that impression, that on the first or Filson plat, Front street was laid down nearer to the river, or made more southing in its course westward, than we find it on the plat of Cincinnati. I was also informed that some of the names which had been selected for streets of the Losantiville plan, were given to streets on the plan of Cincinnati, and that others were rejected. This circumstance may account for a fact, which is no doubt remembered by many now living in the city, that after Joel Williams had become pro- prietor, by purchasing the right of Mr. Denman, and had deter- mined to claim the public common, as private property, an unsuc- cessful effort was made to change the names of some of the streets on the genuine plat of Cincinnati by substituting others, taken from the plat of Filson. That attempt created some temporary difficulty in the minds of persons not correctly informed, as to the true his- tory of the town, and many took the precaution of inserting both the names in their deeds and contracts.
"But independent of these facts, it must be evident that the name of the town could not have been changed after the town had been established, named and surveyed. The territorial statute of De- cember, 1800, which I advocated and voted for in the Legislative Council, made it the duty of the proprietors of every town which had been laid out in the territory, before that time, to cause a true and correct map, or plat thereof to be recorded in the recorder's office of the county in which it lay, within one year after the pas- sage of the act, under a heavy penalty.
" The name of the town constitutes as important a part of the plat of it as the names of the streets or the numbers of lots, and the title to property acquired in it, is affected as much by error, mistake or un- certainty, in the one, as in the other; it was therefore considered im- portant for the security of property holders that a true record should be made of these matters, and of everything else appertain- ing to the plat, precisely as they were when the town was estab- lished, and the sale of the lots commenced. Hence, the law re-
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quired a true and correct plat-in other words, the original plat, without change or variation, to be recorded.
"When the plan of Cincinnati was recorded by Israel Ludlow in 1801-the original proprietors were all living, he being one of them. It is therefore impossible to suppose, that he did not know what the original plat contained-or that he acted without authori- ty-or that he would falsify the plat by placing on it any name other than the one originally given to it. I was intimately acquaint- ed with Col. Ludlow who recorded the town plat, and was profes- sionally consulted by him as to the requirements of the statute. He was very much annoyed by interference of Joel Williams, a sub-proprietor, who insisted on making innovations, or changes in the original plat, calculated to favor a claim he was setting up to the public common for landing. I gave it as my opinion that Mr. Williams not being an original proprietor, or even a resident of the country when the town plat was formed and established, and hav- ing had no agency in the formation of the original plan of the town, could not be presumed to know what it was: and moreover, that the statute did not recognize him as having any other or great- er authority to interfere in the matter, than any other individual who had become the purchaser of a single lot.
"The result was, that each of those individuals prepared and lodged in the recorder's office, a plat of the town, affirming it to be a true copy from the original. Unfortunately, perhaps -- certainly without legal authority, the recorder placed both plats on the re- cord, but the community soon became satisfied, that the plat pre- pared and certified by Col. Ludlow, was alone to be relied on.
"This, however, has no other bearing on the subject matter of our conversation, than arises from the fact, that each of them af- firmed Cincinnati to be the true, original name of the town.
" The controversy between them continued for several months, and was marked with great warinth. On one occasion it terminated in a violent personal conflict, in which the original plat of the town, made and agreed to by the proprietors at Limestone, in the winter of 1788-9, bearing on its face the name of Cincinnati, was torn in pieces, each party retaining a part of it. In this altercation Colo- nel Ludlow took the ground that Williams was an unauthorized in- truder, and that the statute made it his duty, as an original propri etor, to record the plat, correctly and faithfully as it came from the proprietors; neither adding to, subtracting from or altering anything
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which was on it when it was agreed to and signed by the proprie- tors.
" To show how firmly he adhered to that principle I will mention one case. The ground bounded by Broadway, Front street, Main street and the river, had been publicly given, and set apart by the proprietors, with his knowledge and concurrence, as a common, for- the use of the town forever. This fact he knew and affirmed, but, because the word common had not been written on the map within the lines inclosing that donation, or elsewhere, he refused to insert it on the copy made for the recorder; and yet it is affirmed by im- plication that he deliberately made cut and placed on record a plat of the town, affirming it to be a true copy of the original, know- ing that it contained a name altogether different from the one which had been in the first instance adopted and entered on the plat.
"I will state further that, at an early period, professional duty made it necessary for me to investigate the facts connected with the origin and establishment of Cincinnati, which did not extend to to any other individual then or now living, and it so happened that the performance of that duty was required at a time when the town was almost in its incipient state, and when all the original proprie- tors and most of the first adventurers and settlers were living with- in the village or in places easily accessible.
" Without presuming to claim more of tact or industry than be- longs to the profession generally, it may be presumed, considering the sources of correct information then within my reach, that I must, at least, have ascertained the name of the place, the estab- lishment and history of which I was investigating.
"It has been already intimated that Joel Williams, soon after he purchased the proprietary right of Mr. Denman, set up a claim to the common before described, alleging it to be private property, reserved by the proprietors for future disposition. On the strength of that pretence he erected a brick house on the northwest corner of the tract in question. In consequence of this movement a num- ber of the most public-spirited of our citizens-Martin Baum, Jesse Hunt and General Findley taking the lead-raised a fund by sob- scription, to defend and sustain the right of the town. I was em- ployed to collect and perpetuate the testimony applicable to the case; and you will not hesitate to believe that, in executing that commission, my inquiries were directed to the original proprietors and to such other persons as were likely to have any knowledge of
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the facts, touching the laying out of the town and the matters con- tained on the original plat. I mention this to show that there was something more than curiosity prompting me to this investigation of the early history of the town, which ought to entitle it to cre- dence.
" Now, let any person ask himself what description of facts were- likely to be disclosed in the course of such an examination, and the answer will be, precisely such as were stated in the preceding part of this letter, if they existed, although they could not have any bearing on the matter then in controversy. On the supposition that they did not exist, was there a sufficient motive to induce any- body to fabricate them? It would be difficult to assign a reason in favor of an affirmative answer.
"You will perceive that, to sustain the right of the town to the common, it was necessary to prove the correctness of the plat re- corded by Ludlow, which affirmed Cincinnati to be the true, origi- nal and only name of the town. In pursuing that inquiry the facts came out that there had been a previous project for laying out a town, the name of which was to have been Losantiville, but that that project had fallen through. As that matter had no relation to the subject I was specially investigating, it was not noticed in the depositions, but omitted as irrelevant.
" Having said thus much on the subject of our conversation, I will state as information which may be interesting, if not useful, that in. November, 1794, Samuel Freeman purchased the unsold interest of Robert Patterson in the town section and fraction-that in March, 1795, Joel Williams purchased the unsold interest of Mr. Denman, and in November, 1803, he also purchased of Samuel Freeman the proprietary interest acquired by his purchase from Colonel Patter- son, by which he owned and represented two shares, or equal third parts of the unsold lots and ground in the section and fraction.
"You are, no doubt, acquainted with the fact that, by an arrange- ment between Judge Symmes and the first proprietors of the town, he was to retain the title in trust for them, and to execute deeds to the purchasers of lots, on their producing certificates of the re- spective purchases, signed by any two of the proprietors. You have also, it is presumed, heard that all those certificates, of which no record has been preserved, were consumed in the conflagration of Judge Symmes' house. These facts, connected with the sale of Freeman's entire proprietary right to Joel Williams, may possi-
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bly account for the link which is said to be wanting in the chain of title to part of the ground, lying west of the town plat, now held under Joel Williams. That fatal fire may have consumed the documents required to make out a complete paper title.
" This conjecture is in some measure corroborated by a reference to the peculiarities of Mr. Williams, who had an active mind-was somewhat eccentric-possessed a vein of humor, and could at times be very sarcastic. He was, however, quite illiterate and un- usually careless, and, having great confidence in Judge Symmes, he generally relied on him as a friend and adviser, though, on one or two occasions, there was some serious misunderstanding be- tween them. J was frequently engaged for him, in his legal con- troversies, and it so happened that a paper required in his cause was found in the keeping of Judge Symmes. I have several times, when calling on him for papers, seen him open and examine the contents of his desk, which gave me an opportunity of knowing that even the most valuable of his papers were kept in a very care- less and slovenly manner; and I have often thought that it would have been better for him if all his papers had been in the safe keeping of a guardian or friend; and particularly so, as every per- son who had been a purchaser of a town property was exposed more or less to the consequence of his carelessness, resulting from the peculiar manner in which titles to property, within the town section or fraction, though beyond the limits of the town plat, were to be obtained. To illustrate my meaning: there have been cases in which non-residents have purchased lots, obtained their certifi- cates, and left them in the hands of Judge Symmes, without call- ing for deeds: after the burning of the Judge's house, and the con- sequent destruction of their evidence of title, other persons, by a fresh purchase, or otherwise, have become the legal owners of the same lots.
Very respectfully,
" CHARLES CIST.
J. BURNET."
Three or four cabins were put up by the new colony as speedily as possible, the first of which was built upon Front, cast of Main st .; and in the course of January following was completed the survey and laying off of the town, then covered with sycamore and sugar trees in the first or lower table, and beech and oak upon the upper or second table. Through this dense forest the streets were laid out, their corners being marked upon the trees. This survey ex-
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tended from Eastern Row, now Broadway, to Westem Row, and from the river as far as to Northern Row, now Seventh street. The population of the place had become, by May, 1789, cleven families, besides twenty-four unmarried men, dwelling in about twenty cabins, principally adjacent to the present landing. The larger part of the trees in the bottom between Walnut street and- Broadway were cut down, but remained on the ground for several years.
At this period an abundant supply of game and fish made good the failure of the provisions brought by the settlers. The Indians, although unfriendly, had as yet committed no hostilities or oven depredations.
About the first of June, 1789, Major Doughty arrived with one hundred and forty men from Fort Harmar, on the Muskingum, and built four block-houses nearly opposite the mouth of Licking. When these were finished, within a lot of fifteen acres reserved by the United States, and immediately on the line of Third street, between Broadway and Lawrence street, he commenced the con- struction of Fort Washington. This building, of a square. form, was simply a fortification of logs hewed and squared, each side about one hundred and eighty feet in length, formed into barracks two stories high. It was connected at the corners by high pickets with bastions or block-houses, also of hewed logs, and projecting about ten feet in front of each side of the fort, so that the cannon placed within them could be brought to rake the walls. At the centre of the south side or front of the fort was the principal gate- way, a passage through this line of barracks about twelve feet wide and ten feet high, secured by strong wooden doors of similar dimensions. As an appendage to the fort, on its north side, and inclosed with high palisades extending from its northeast and northwest corners to a block-house, was a small triangular space, in which were shops for the accommodation of the artiticers. Ex- tending along the whole front of the fort was a fine esplanade, about eighty feet wide, and inclosed with a handsome paling on the brow of the bank, the descent from which to the lower bottom was sloping about thirty feet. The exterior of the fort was white- washed, and at a short distance presented a handsome and imposing appearance. On the eastern side were the officers' gardens, finely cultivated, ornamented with handsome summer-houses, and yield- ing in their season abundance of vegetables. The site of this
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building is that part of Third street opposite the Bazaar, and extending an average breadth of about sixty feet beyond the line of the street on both sides.
Fort Washington was completed by November. On the 29th of the succeeding month, General Harmar arrived with three hun- dred men and took possession of it. 4
In the course of this year, several log houses, and one frame, were built; and some of the out lots, north of Seventh st., cleared. The legal title to the ground on which the town was built, being still in John Cleves Symmes, the patentee, all the deeds for the original in and out lots, were made in his name. In 1790, the lots, on fractional section No. 12, were laid out by Symmes as an addi- tion to the town plat. General Arthur St. Clair, at this time, was the governor of the northwestern territory, and, in January, 1790, arrived at the village for the purpose of organizing the county, which, at the suggestion of Symmes, was called Hamilton, in com- pliment to the then Secretary of the Treasury. This county cov- ered the whole territory west of the Muskingum; and Cincinnati was then, as it ever since has been, its seat of justice. The town had an increase of forty families this year, and about as many cabins were erected; two frame buildings were also added, during the same time. Fifteen or twenty of the inhabitants and neighbors were killed by the Indians, in the course of 1790. The increase at Columbia, near the Little Miami, was rather greater, and a new station called Colerain, seventeen miles northwest of Cincinnati, on the Great Miami, was laid out. Four or five other stations around the village, and generally within five or six miles, were also erected. At these places General Harmar stationed a few regu- lars for their defense. The Indians were constantly prowling around the neighborhood, and those who ventured outside their forts, did so at the peril of their lives.
Let us now leave the settlers at Cincinnati making their improve- ments and accompany Judge Symmes, at this period, January, 1789, starting out to his domains at North Bend, to lay off the great city of the Miami Purchase.
Before leaving Limestone for North Bend, Symmes - fol- lowing the example of William Penn, who, before leaving Eng- land, dispatched a letter of friendship to his new, Indian neigh- bors -sent the following epistle to his red brethren of the Miami country :
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" Brothers of the Wyandots and Shawanese! Hearken to your brother, who is coming to live at the Great Miami. He was on the Great Miami last summer, while the deer was yet red, and met with one of your camps; he did no harm to anything which you had in your camp; he held back his young men from hurting you or your horses, and would not let them take your skins or meat, though your brothers were very hungry. All this he did because he was your brother, and would live in peace with the Red people. If the Red people will live in friendship with him, and his young mon, who came from the great Salt ocean, to plant corn and build cabins on the land between the Great and Little Miami, then the White and Red people shall all be brothers and live together, and we will buy your furs and skins, and sell you blankets and rifles, and powder and lead and ruin, and everything that our Red broth- ers may want in hunting and in their towns.
"Brothers! A treaty is holding at Muskingum. Great men from the thirteen fires are there, to meet the Chiefs and head men of all the nations of the Red people. May the Great Spirit direct all their councils for peace! But the great men and the wise men of the Red and White people cannot keep peace and friendship long, unless we, who are their sons and warriors, will also bury the hatchet and live in peace.
"Brothers! I send you a string of wliite beads, and write to you with my own hand, that you may believe what I say. I am your brother, and will be kind to you while you remain in peace. Fare- well!
"Jan. the 3d, 1789.
JNO. C. SYMMES."
There is this great difference in their letters, although there is so much general similarity in almost every respect as to inspire be- lief that the one suggested the other-that, in Penn's letter, he says: "Nor will I ever allow any of my people to sell rumme, to make your people drunk." Symmes, on the contrary, proposes to sell them rum, as well as rifles, powder and lead.
On the 29th January, 1789, Symmes left Maysville, accompanied by Captain Kearsay and thirteen men, detailed for the protection of the new settlement. The river was uncommonly high-the freshet of that date being higher than any since 1773, and higher than any subsequently, until those of 1832 and 1847. On reaching Columbia he found the place under water, with the exception of 3
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one house only, which occupied higher ground. Next day he reached Cincinnati, which had suffered nothing from the flood. He landed at North Bend on the 2d February. Here he found the country so much overflowed as to leave him in doubt where to lo- cate the city that was to be. For the present, however, North Bend was laid out and settled rapidly. Captain Kearsay, finding pro- visions scarce, leaves him with four men, on the 8th March, having done nothing toward building even a block-house; but Major Wyl- lys, at the Falls of Ohio, upon Symmes' application, dispatched Captain Luce with eighteen men to protect the settlement. Luce, within a week, had a substantial block-house finished.
Judge Symmes kept his surveying parties busily employed, and on the 9th of April, a party, who were out with John Mills, while leaving camp early, were fired on by a party of Indians, three or four in number. Messrs. Holman, of Kentucky, and Wells, of Delaware, were killed. Mills and three others made their escape.
On the 25th May, in the vicinity of North Bend, the Indians fired on a boat, in which were Captain Luce, Mills, the surveyor, and several soldiers and citizens. One of the soldiers, Runyan, from New Jersey, was killed, and four others, soldiers, wounded. Mills and one of the settlers were also wounded, but with the others re- covered.
It is needless to follow the history of North Bend or Columbia as settlements any farther. The superior advantages of Cincinnati, safe from innundation, and shortly becoming sheltered from Indian depredations and murders, under the protection of Fort Washing- ton, became now so apparent that no effort could arrest the progress of the place by rival enterprises. Cincinnati, as laid out, was cov- ered with sycamore and sugar-trees upon the first or lower table, and beech and oak upon the second or upper table.
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