The History of Miami County, Ohio, Part 55

Author: W. H. Beers & Co.
Publication date: 1880
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1051

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Ford & Co.'s wheel factory was established in 1870. The establishment is now owned by a joint-stock company, of which Jacob Rohrer is one of the princi- pal stockholders. They employ constantly about one hundred hands, and, for the size of the place, do a more extensive business than is done by any similar estab- lishment in the State. They have a reputation for sending out good, substantial work, not only in our own land, but also in other countries, as they frequently fill orders for parties beyond the seas.

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The Grape Sugar Factory is now being erected by a common joint-stock com- pany, consisting of about twelve stockholders. This is the only establish- ment of the kind in the county, and the company is making preparations for carry- ing on an extensive business. The buildings are very large, the central one being 40x48 feet, and four stories high ; another, running north and south from this, is 40x125 feet, three stories high, while the north wing, running east and west, is 100 feet deep. The whole thing, when completed, will cost about $50,000, The com- pany expect to begin operations about the 1st of August.

Trupp, Weakley & Co., builders and contractors, established their firm in 1872, when they put up their buildings, east of the railroad in Tippecanoe City, at a cost of about $6,500, to which they soon added machinery to the value of $10,000. They have been carrying on a very extensive business since they began operating, constantly employing about forty hands making sash, blinds, doors, etc., etc., doing, perhaps, as large a business in their line as any firm in the county.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Tippecanoe City was incorporated Monday, May 5, 1851, and the following officers were elected for that year ; viz., Levi N. Booker, Mayor ; E. F. Shields, Recorder ; Thomas Jay, Michael Shellabarger and Henry Krise, Councilmen ; Eli Snell, Marshal ; and I. L. Wilcox, Treasurer. They took the oath of office from A. B. Hartman, J. P.

The officers for 1880 are : A. H. Wesler, Mayor ; John K. Herr, Treasurer ; Samuel Galloway, Clerk ; David Carles, Marshal ; John Clark, John L. Norris and G. W. Weakley, Councilmen ; Joseph Brump, Street Commissioner.

MAILS.

The first mail matter coming to Monroe Township stopped at the post office which was then located in Hyattsville. Henry J. Hyatt, was the first Postmaster. He lived in a log cabin with one room, which was used as a dry-goods store, tailor's shop, post office and dwelling house ; and, as the room was by no means large, it will readily be seen that every part of the house was occupied. The mail was brought from West Charleston once a week, by Kiel Hoagland, a youth of ten summers, who rode a bob-tailed sorrel horse, with a blazed face, by no means as fleet as the one Mazeppa rode.

Many years afterward, when the mail-boy reached manhood, he became one of the proprietors of the Royal Baking Powder, manufactured in New York, and is now a millionaire. Perhaps, if he had been told, when trying to make the old sorrel jump the ditch in front of the post office, that the day was coming when he could sit in a cushioned carriage of his own, with his driver in the box, he. would not have believed the prediction. Dr. Gilbert became Postmaster in 1851, and was instrumental in having three mails a week instead of one. The post office paid at that time about $15 per year. A. W. Miles, the present Postmaster in Tippecanoe City, receives about $600 per year.

TIPPECANOE CITY FIRE DEPARTMENT.

A hook and ladder company was organized in 1872, with Charles Trupp, Chief Director, and Daniel B. Davis, Thomas J. Sheets, George L. Favorite and Daniel Argabright, Assistant Directors. The department was re-organized in 1874, when a new engine was purchased at a cost of $7,000.

CEMETERIES.

Of these there are several in the township, the oldest having been set aside for burial purposes in 1808. The principal one in use at present, lies southwest of Tippecanoe. It was purchased a few years since by a company of stock-holders, of which Jacob Rohrer is President. There are thirty-two acres of ground in the plat, a portion of it already laid off into neat lots, and here quite a number of the early settlers are buried. Thus ends the history of Monroe for the three-quarters of a century that have come and gone. A new era is dawning, the importance of

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which is not paralleled by any precedent. Another page in the book of her exist- ence is being turned, upon the unsullied surface of which remain to be chronicled the deeds of the present generation. Let the works of her people in the present age reach what magnitude they may, they surely cannot excel in importance those of the forefathers, upon whose lives and works, the most apathetic individual cannot meditate without acknowledging them to be " men of thought and men of action," who did well the work that was given them to do.

Fredericktom-(Fidelity P. O.)-Situated partly in Union Township, received its name from Frederick Yount, one among the earliest settlers of the township. Ginghamsburg-A village of but secondary importance, is situated in the southern part of the township, contains a few dwellings, and also one or two places where goods of various descriptions are bought and sold.

WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP AND THE CITY OF PIQUA.

BY DR. G. VOLNEY DORSEY .*

Washington Township, the smallest in size, though the wealthiest and most populous of the townships of Miami County, is situated on the western side of the Great Miami River, and, numbering from the west, is the second in the northern tier of townships in the county. It is bounded on the north by Shelby County, on the east by the townships of Spring Creek and Staunton, on the south by Concord and Newton, and on the west by Newberry. The surface is undulating in the eastern and southern portions, but flat in the western part. The soil is very fertile, especially on the bottoms adjoining the river, and on the fiat lands of the west, which are deeply covered with a black vegetable mold, forming, when drained, an exceedingly productive and durable farming land. The southern portion, in the vicinity of the Miami, has fine quarries of an excellent quality of limestone, which is extensively used throughout the northwestern part of the State, and also in the neighboring counties of Indiana.

The portion of this township around the old Indian towns, known commonly as Upper Piqua, was among the earliest settlements of the State, and hence the Indian history, as well as that of the early white settlements, is full of very inter- esting details which are rapidly passing away. This history is very largely indeed an unwritten one, and as such, much of it has perished with the actors and their immediate descendants, while the scanty materials which remain are daily passing away, with the lives of those who, holding them only by oral tradition, have too frequently neglected to put them in any durable shape. They are scattered over the country in the memories of the few settlers of townships and neighborhoods who came in in the early days, and they must be separately and laboriously gath- ered for some hand to unite, in time, into a more complete and continuous narra- tive. Local history is not only interesting in itself, but it is valuable as a record of the past, which is the foundation of a present and future. Facts connected with the early history of a village or township, often have an important bearing on events in which the whole county is concerned, and, through these, may reach even to a higher importance. To secure these passing facts, which are being so rapidly lost beyond the possibility of recovery, is the object of the present work.

Washington Township is particularly noted as one of the most celebrated of the Indian locations in the Northwestern Territory. Here was the last home of the red man in the county, and here were the earliest white settlements. The Shawanese villages, known in the early history of the West as the Twighteewce Towns, celebrated in the early border warfare, and where prisoners were generally brought when captured by these Indians, in their raids on the white settlements in Kentucky and Western Virginia, were located about two miles higher up the Miami River than the site of the present city of Piqua, at what is usually called

*Dr. Dorsey's history concludes with article on Stone Quarries.

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Upper Piqua. It was here that Fort Piqua, long a British post of some impor- tance, was built. This fort was located after the capture of Fort Du Quesne by the English, and formed one of the most westerly of the British points of defense. It was afterward used as a place of deposit for provisions and supplies for our armies when engaged in Indian warfare in the West, and was especially serviceable to Gen. Wayne when he marched through this county to chastise the Indians after the unfortunate defeat of Gen. St. Clair at Fort Recovery in the present county of Mercer. The last commander of this post was Capt. I. N. Vischer, in 1794. After this time, it was almost entirely abandoned, and it was finally dismantled and the materials removed.

The last battle of the French wars, and indeed the last encounter of any im- portance between the French and English forces in North America, was fought at Upper Piqua (as the fort and grounds in its vicinity have come to be designated), on a part of the farm now known as the Col. John Johnston farm, just above the mouth of Swift Run, on the plat of ground lying to the right of the St. Mary's turn- pike, where it winds around the hill after crossing the creek. From eight hundred to one thousand European troops were engaged on each side with large bodies of Indians, the French being aided by the Miamis, Wyandots and Ottawas, and the English by the Delawares, Shawnees, Senecas and others. Col. John Johnston used frequently to relate the fact that he had been told by the Indian chief Cornstalk, who remembered well the scenes of the battle, though then only & boy, but present then with his tribe, the Shawnees ; it began, he said, at sunrise, on a warm day in June, and continued until it became dark in the evening. The French were finally defeated, and retreated toward Detroit, or more probably toward Vincennes, but never made a stand afterward in the county. Many per- sons now living remember well that bullets and cannon balls, occasionally a sword or bayonet, and sometimes the old and rusted barrel of a musket, were plowed up in cultivating these grounds, for many years after they were brought under the entire control of the white settler.

Upper Piqua was the headquarters of the Shawnees as long as they remained in the Miami country, but was finally abandoned, when they went north to Wapa- koneta. Before their removal, however, to the West, beyond the Mississippi, they came down in a body to the old grounds, and remained several days in the neigh- borhood of their former homes, and several members of the tribe since their removal when visiting the East, have turned aside to look again on the honored and well-remembered spot.

Piqua in the Shawnees tongue signifies " ashes," and the legend, as related by the Indians, is, that long years before the white man came, they burned a captured enemy on the site of their town, and, when the body was reduced to cin- ders, they saw suddenly the form of a man rising from the funeral pile, and stand- ing erect before them. Struck with. astonishment at the vision, they exclaimed, "Otatha-he-wagh-piqua," " He has come out from the ashes"-and from that time the name of the town was called " Piqua." The late George C. Johnston, Esq., who was for many years a trader with the Shawnees, and was adopted into their tribe and spoke their language perfectly, is the authority for this history. The name thus continues to hand down to succeeding generations the language and tradition of the red man, who is so rapidly disappearing from among us.

Washington Township was organized with its present limits in 1814, but sev- eral years before that time a settlement and village were commenced on the present site of Piqua. A man named Job Gard, who accompanied Wayne's army to Greenville in the capacity of a sutler, returned after a time to the old fort at Upper Piqua, and remained there until it was broken up and the works destroyed. He then, having gathered up a portion of the wood and iron used in its construc- tion, removed with it lower down the river, and located himself at what was then called, from the eastern detour of the river, Piqua Bend. Here he built a cabin and made what was then called an improvement, which usually meant clearing off a patch of ground and surrounding it with a worm fence. This was about the year

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1798. Long before this, however, portions of the land in and about the Bend were cultivated by the Indians in corn, but no white man had yet made his home on them. In 1799, John Manning bought the improvement of Gard and occupied it for several years. It was located on what is now the east side of Harrison street, toward the south end of the street, and extended a short distance down the hill, then much more considerable than it now appears, and stretched along the river bank, on what is now Water street. Settlers now began to come in slowly, and, as a protection against the Indians, their cabins were placed some- what closely together. It was not long before the families began to desire some- thing better than the hand-mill, usually operated by a lever attached to a sweep, not much unlike the old well-sweeps which can still occasionally be seen in the country. These hand-mills and the primitive hominy mortars, made by hollowing out the log of a good-sized tree, were the main sources of supply of farinaceous food for the early inhabitants of the West, but, as numbers increased, all began to wish for something better. Accordingly, about the spring of the year 1804, Manning commenced the erection of a mill on the Miami, near the south end of what is now Harrison street, and perhaps two hundred yards cast of the present steam flour- ing mill now standing on the south side of Water street. This was the first mill in this section of the country. John Manning and Matthew Caldwell entered the land on which the town of Piqua stands, and also considerable tracts in the im- mediate vicinity, and, on the 29th day of June, 1807, Armstrong Brandon began the work of laying out the town plat on their lands. Brandon was subsequently connected with the original proprietors in the ownership of the town plat. In this year Piqua consisted of seven houses, all built of logs, and owned and occu- pied by John Manning, Edward Manning, Alexander Ewing, Benjamin Leavell, Arthur Brandon, Nathaniel Whitcomb and Joseph Porquette. All these houses were built on that part of Water street now lying east of the canal, and on the south end of Main street, in the vicinity of the Lock Mill and the railroad. Ewing opened the first tavern in a house standing on the west side of Main street, below the railroad, and very near the present location of Benkert's saddler shop. On the opposite side of the street was the cabin of Joseph Porquette. At that time, there was quite a broad strip of land between the east side of the street and the river bank, since occupied by the canal, the railroad, and the west end of the river bridge. This was claimed by Porquette. Ewing was a trader, and, in addi- tion to his tavern, had a few articles of traffic which he sometimes exchanged with the Indians for skins .and furs. As the village grew, the consumption of liquor very naturally increased, and Porquette kept some whisky also on his side of the street, which was not a little frequented, from the fact that the first black- smith shop stood hard by, and hence it happened that occasionally little disturb- ances arose in this vicinity, somewhat to the disgust of the good and sober people in the other houses, and as the numbers year by year increased, and these out- breaks became more marked and frequent, Porquette's little piece of ground was at length called by the distinctive appellation of the "Devil's Half-acre," that it might be known that this was all the territory to which it was believed His Satanic Majesty could rightfully lay claim within the limits of. the town. This name con- tinued for many years, and it was only after the larger portion of the ground was buried in the canal and the evil spirit probably laid beneath its waters, that the name was lost, and is now only remembered by a few of the old inhabitants.

There was no post office until 1811, when a weekly post-route was extended from Dayton. Arthur Brandon was the first Postmaster, receiving his commission from President Madison. He was succeeded after a few years by William Johnston. The first Trustees elected after the organization of the township before noticed in 1814, were John Widney, Benjamin Brandon and William Mitchell. The latter, and his brother Robert, came from Tennessee several years before, and were the first settlers in the township outside of the boundaries of the village. The first Justice of the Peace in the township was Matthew Caldwell. In those days there was little litigation; the early settlers lived quietly and peaceably, neighbors

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settled their smaller difficulties by the advice and counsel of friends of the parties, and when more serious troubles occurred, which could not be adjusted in this way it was not unusual to decide the matter by a physical encounter, in which the longest arms and the most ponderous blows demonstrated the possessor of the most rightful acuse.

The village continued to increase, growing up with the influx of inhabitants into the surrounding country. In 1820, there were already about four hundred inhabitants, and in 1830, nearly seven hundred. As early as 1823, an act of incor- poration was granted by the General Assembly of the State, in which it is stated that " the householders in the town of Piqua, in the county of Miami, having com- plied with the provisions of the act of the General Assembly, entitled 'An act to provide for the incorporation of towns,' and having filed in the office of the Secre- tary of State, the documents required by the above-recited act, etc." This act of incorporation bears date January 7, 1823, and has the signature of Jeremiah McLene, then Secretary of State, and the old grand seal of the State of Ohio affixed. The town is therein described as " situate on the western bank of the Great Miami River, and was originally laid out by John Manning and Matthew Caldwell, and includes a part of fractional Sections 17 and 18, in Township No. 6 east, First Meridian, comprising one hundred and one lots, and containing in said original plat fifty-two acres, which said plat was recorded on the records of the county of Miami, on the 28th day of August, 1807, and also an addition thereto called the North Addition, which was laid out by Enos Manning and Charles Murray, which said last-mentioned plat was recorded in the Recorder's office of the county afore- said, on the 10th day of July, 1816, and consists of fifty-three lots, being part of fractional Section No. 17, Township No. 6 and Range No. 6 east, First Meridian. The whole of said town as contained on and represented by said plats, is bounded by the Great Miami River on the north, by the lands of Charles Murray and Man- ning on the east, by the Great Miami River and lands of William Johnston on the south, and by the lands of John Campbell, Matthew Caldwell and John Kyte on the west, which said town was originally named and called Washington, but was afterward, by an act of the Legislature of this State, changed to Piqua, by which name it is now known and called."

The original of these " Letters of Incorporation," is now in possession of Dr. Dorsey, and is preserved at the Citizens' National Bank, of Piqua.

In the winter of 1832-33, the General Assembly of Ohio passed an act extending the Miami & Erie Canal, which already reached from Cincinnati to Dayton, from the latter point to Piqua, a distance of thirty miles. In the spring of 1834, the surveys having been made and the line generally located, the letting of the various sections was advertised, and during the summer the work was put under contract. An immediate impetus was given to the growth of the village, which it was well understood would become for a time the head of navigation, so soon as the canal should be completed. Several hundred Irish and German laborers were soon at work in the town and vicinity, north and south, for it was necessary to carry the canal nearly four miles to the north of the town, to the State dam on the river, ·where the supply of water was to be obtained. Contractors on the north end of the line made their headquarters at Piqua. Bodies of engineers flocked into the town, estimates were paid every sixty or ninety days, and the population in a single year ran up to more than fifteen hundred. Business of all kinds also increased very largely, and the little village of a few years before, assumed all the appearances of a busy, growing and prosperous town. In the summer of 1837 the work was completed, the water was turned into its new channel, and the first canalboat, an old hulk which had been brought up on wheels from Dayton, or somewhere in the vicinity, was floated on the waters on the 4th day of July of that year. The entire and successful navigation of the canal was soon established. Freight boats and a line of packets for travel were making regular trips. The town and the entire neighboring country felt the effects of the large increase of busi- ness and travel, and Piqua, as the head of navigation on the canal, was the most

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important town in Northwestern Ohio. This continued for nearly seven years before the canal was extended and completed through to the lake at Toledo. During all these years, Piqua enjoyed the trade of all the northwest of Ohio, and much of Eastern and Northeastern Indiana. The heavy goods for all this region of country were brought here by water, and conveyed thence by wagons to their destined places of sale. A very large portion of the products of all the same country poured in here also for shipment on the canal. No railroads, as yet, traversed the land, and the Southern market was still the point to which the prod- uce of the Great West slowly wended its way. Towns that have now grown to importance through the aid of great railroad facilities, were then dependent on wagon transportation for all their supplies, and Richmond, Fort Wayne, St. Mary's, Lima and all their surroundings, naturally drew to Piqua as the nearest point where the heavy and cumbrous carriage on very bad roads could be changed for the easy and comparatively rapid transportation of the canal. In 1844, when the canal was opened to the lake for business, Piqua had already grown to be a town of nearly five thousand inhabitants. Since that time the growth has been less rapid, but it has still gone forward. Railroads have cut off much of the trade from the more distant towns, but the increased population and wealth of the fertile Miami Valley, one of the best tracts of land in the world, and teeming with every- thing that can conduce to the comfort and happiness of men, have still enabled the young city to go forward in its career of prosperity, with scarcely a step back- ward, save in those seasons of commercial and financial depression which have been so severely felt throughout our country.

At various times since the organization of the county, Piqua has desired and has made vigorous attempts to secure the location of the county seat in her cor- porate limits. Having been always much the largest and wealthiest town in the county, it was believed that the real interests of the county would be subserved by the removal of the business of the whole county to this place. And there is no doubt that at various times, could the voice of the people have controlled the loca- tion of the seat of justice, its place would have been at Piqua. But the completion of the county buildings at Troy has, for a time at least, and perhaps forever, set- tled that much-vexed question. For years past, Piqua has been turning her atten- tion to the increase of her manufactures as the surest means of securing an increase of population and wealth. There are very few points in the State, where the efforts of the people in this direction have been crowned with more complete success. Her extensive and inexhaustible stone quarries supply her with the best possible ma- terial for building; her railroads have opened the way for the easy access of all the coal necessary for steam machinery, and iron is also brought in abundance and at cheap rates. The river and canal afford a good supply of water-power ; but, per- fectly aware that yet more was necessary to insure the necessary facilities for increased machinery, the people in 1865 conceived the idea of constructing an hydraulic canal, which would not only afford an ample supply of water for domestic purposes and for the suppression of fires in every part of the town, but would also afford a large amount of additional power for manufacturing purposes. This canal is taken out from the Miami & Erie Canal, at Lockport, in Shelby County, below the entrance of the Sidney feeder, and more than four miles to the north of Piqua, brought. across the Loramie River, and, passing along the western border of the town, finds its way again to the canal at the south end of the corporation. The fall from the point. of exit at Lockport to its entrance into the main canal at Piqua is fifty-two feet. The supply of water is abundant ; there are several small reservoirs on the line, and one two miles above Piqua covering about sixty-five acres. These act as important feeders, adding a valuable supply of water, in addition to that derived from the State. There are already on the hydraulic, a large paper-mill, one of the largest oil-mills in the State, and another paper-mill and straw-board manufac- tory to be erected during the present year. The supply of water for all domestic purposes is abundant, and is afforded at a very moderate cost. Our citizens avail themselves freely of this luxury in the summer-time, keeping their dooryards

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The History of Miami County, Ohio, Part 55

Author: W. H. Beers & Co. Publication date: 1880 Publisher: Number of Pages: 1051

Author: W. H. Beers & Co.
Publication date: 1880
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1051