USA > Ohio > Montgomery County > Dayton > The story of Dayton > Part 4
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The goods with which these first stores were stocked came in Conestoga wagons from Philadelphia over the mountains to Pittsburgh, from there down the Ohio River to Cincinnati on rafts, called "broadhorns"; thence up the Miami or on pack-horses through the woods to Day- ton. When a pack train arrived, swinging up Main Street with jingling bells and shouts from the drivers, on its way to unload at Phillips' or Cooper's or Steele's, it was an event of great interest. Sometimes a dozen horses, tied together, each carrying an average of two hundred pounds, and escorted by four or five men, filled the roadway. The trip occupied at least five days, the drivers having supplied themselves, by means of their rifles, with food on the way.
When merchants purchased stock it was not, as in these days, through the offices of a traveling salesman, those con- venient persons being then quite unknown. What was not to be procured by means of correspondence must be pur- chased at the eastern market in person, necessitating one trip to Philadelphia a year for the leading Dayton mer- chants. This undertaking meant for the buyer at least three weeks in the saddle, through the woods of Ohio and Pennsylvania. When selecting a horse for this purpose, the purchaser was careful to ask, "Is he a good swimmer?" there being many unfordable streams in the long journey between here and Philadelphia. One family still living in Dayton, boasts a great-grandmother who made that trip in order to bear her husband company, their three-months-old baby in her arms, partly resting on the saddle bow.
Such merchandise as did not come from Philadelphia, through Cincinnati, was brought from New Orleans in barges. Flour, sugar, rice came up; wheat, rye, corn, tal- low went down. The pack train was not the only excite- ment on Main Street in those days. Just as interesting was a fleet of keel boats arriving from the north and taking on cargo for the down-stream journey from the big red ware- house at the head of Wilkinson Street. In 1810, a line of freight boats was established, connecting Dayton directly
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Our Commercial Beginnings
with Lake Erie by way of the Miami, Auglaize, and Mau- mee rivers. Whole fleets would sometimes be seen tied up. along the bank, waiting for high water. The Watchman prints an account of nine flat-boats loaded with grain, sad- dles of venison, salt pork, pelts, and whisky, which left the landing for the South in one day. During March and April, 1818, seventeen hundred barrels of flour were ship- ped from Dayton to New Orleans.
Occasionally people built rafts and undertook the jour- ney to New Orleans as a private speculation. Two such boats were constructed in the middle of Main Street at Third, and when finished, were moved on rollers to the river and launched. The usual plan was to sell both boat and cargo at the destination, the owner returning by stage and saddle. One local item announced the arrival of a keel boat over seventy feet long, and carrying twelve tons of merchandise, which had been consigned to H. G. Phillips. Spring shopping was governed largely by the stage of water prevailing in the Miami River. If you wanted a new bon- net, the beeswax or coon-skins, with which to pay for it, must be brought to the store in ample time to catch the next down-river boat or they were not accepted as payment.
Although so much business activity was evident in Day- ton at that day, the country at large still remained virtually a wilderness. The roads of that day were worse than poor -they were impassable. It was twenty years later than the period described before the era of turnpikes arrived, mean- while during the winter season, farmers were practically shut off from civilization. One such, coming in from the Mad River district, became imbedded hub deep on Monu- ment Avenue near the present gas works, and was forced to ask for help to pry his wheels from the mire.
A typical journey was that of Benjamin Van Cleve, on his way home from Chillicothe, where he had been serving as clerk in the legislature, and thus described in his journal : "In the latter part of January, I returned from Chillicothe by way of Lebanon. There had been a deep fall of snow.
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which was beginning to dissolve with heavy rains before I got to Williamsburg, and made traveling very bad. After I left there the flats were covered with water, sometimes to the saddle-skirts. The creeks were bank full, and I, having been confined to a close room with neither air nor exercise during the whole winter, caught a violent cold. Owing to my habit of leaning against the table while writing, I had developed a pain in my side in which the cold seemed to settle. The gait of the horse caused me great pain, all food threw me into a violent dyspepsia, which, up to this time, 1820, still returns in cold weather."
In 1805, this little community of plain frontier folk who had scarcely emerged from the coon-skin-cap-and-moccasin period of ten years before, decided to possess a library. Through the initiation of D. C. Cooper, then a member of the legislature, the "Dayton Social Library Society" was organized, with Benjamin Van Cleve as librarian. The few books which composed the collection were kept in his home, which also served as the village postoffice. Little has come down to us of the selection of books or the tastes of the readers, but one thing only is plain, that libraries were then as careful as now to make the public respect books. "Rules for borrowers," as found in the old records, imposed a fine of two cents for each drop of tallow that the reader was personally responsible for.
The spring of 1805 brought a terrific week of high water, the river breaking over its banks at Mill Street, and pouring across the town. The flood measured eight feet in depth at Third and Main, and much property was de- stroyed. With a promptness imitated on a later and greater occasion, Dayton hastened to assure the world at large that beyond a severe wetting it was not so much the worse for the disaster.
During this same year, the first courthouse was erected on ground contributed by D. C. Cooper, the site now oc- cupied by its successor. Constructed of brick, two stories high, the walls were flush with the sidewalk, and the rear
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Our Commercial Beginnings
of the lot was occupied as at the present day by a jail. The sheriff, who boarded at Newcom's, kept the key in his pocket.
On the next corner north of the courthouse, stood Mc- Cullom's Tavern, which was beginning to supercede New- com's as a place of popular resort. Logs had, by this time, gone out of style as building material and the new hotel with its fine brick walls, the first in Dayton, was pointed out with pride to visiting strangers. The guests were sum- moned to five o'clock breakfast by a bell on the roof, and a tall pole at the entrance door bore a swinging sign on which was painted the capture of the British frigate "Guerriere" by the Amerigan frigate "Constitution." This cosmopolitan touch quite captured the traveling public and McCullum's became the gayest place in Montgomery County. It was occupied for hotel purposes until 1870, after which it be- came a business house and so remained until 1880, when it was destroyed to make room for the Fireman's Insurance Building.
Sometime during this first decade of Dayton's existence it became advisable to encourage traffic from beyond the river. Therefore, a ferry was established at the head of First Street, meeting the road from Salem, another at the end of Wilkinson Street, and a third farther south to connect with the road to Germantown. Mere rope arrangements, they were, these primitive ferries, across which the boatmen propelled their raft by pulling, hand over hand, from bank to bank, slow, but not a little better than swimming. Con- sidering the scarcity of money in those times the fares seem high,-seventy-five cents for a loaded wagon and team, fifty cents for an empty wagon and team, thirty-seven and one-half cents for a two-wheeled carriage, twelve and one-half cents for a man on horseback, six and one-quarter cents for a man on foot.
Another important advance toward convenient living was when, in 1804, mail began to come in every week, and a new postoffice was opened to accommodate the increase.
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Every Monday, a post-rider on a tired and mud-stained horse, brought a sack of letters up from Cincinnati, the only mail office west of the Alleghanies, and went on his way to Detroit. If you wished to communicate with a friend at Franklin, the letter had first to go to Cincinnati and be brought back to its destination on the return trip. From 1804 to 1806, people living as far north as Fort Wayne were obliged to come to Dayton for their mail. When, therefore, the new route was opened, enabling letters to be exchanged every week, it was a most welcome arrangement.
Postage stamps had not at that time been invented ; twenty-five cents, the amount generally due on a letter, being marked on the envelope and collected from the person to whom it was written. Often, however, the recipient, a "land poor" pioneer, did not possess the necessary twenty- five cents. He might have owned a whole block on Main Street, and not been able to more than look at the outside of his letter through the door of the box.
Garden or other products were not accepted by the Government in exchange for mail, and upon that decree hung many a real hardship. The relatives and friends from whom one was hungering for news, might be distant the whole length of Pennsylvania and letters a week in coming. To pay twenty-five cents in silver for a missive three months old was surely not the least of the pioneer troubles. When Benjamin Van Cleve was postmaster, a fellow feeling for his neighbors, who rarely saw a dollar, so moved him that he frequently allowed unpaid-for-mail to go out of the office, to which charitable plan the Postmaster-General strongly objected. Peremptory instructions against such running up of bills on the United States Government came from Philadelphia and put an end to the practice.
The fall election of 1807 showed the casting of one hun- dred and ninety-six votes, from which one may estimate the probable population of Dayton at that time to have been upward of a thousand souls. Many new dwellings had been built, and the population included two editors, one minister,
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one lawyer, one school teacher, and three doctors. Five stores, three taverns, and a dozen dwellings composed Main Street of that day.
In 1811, there occurred what was probably the severest and most prolonged earthquake in history. Owing to the fact that the country was sparsely settled, with little inter- communication among the widely separated centers, almost nothing was recorded of the catastrophe. Also, there were no massed products of civilization for it to destroy. But no diary of the time leaves it unmentioned. All agree that the
18. 108.
The first brick house in Dayton built by Henry Brown for his bride, Kitty Patterson. It stood on Main Street just north of the alley leading to Ludlow Street. For many years used by the Dayton Journal.
first shock occurred in December, several in January, and that during February the vibrations were almost continuous. What geographical changes it wrought will never be known. Ohio and Mississippi River boatmen described how whole areas of land sank out of sight, islands appeared in new places, and the course of the shores altered for miles.
The personal narrative of a Dayton man who was on a flatboat on the way down the Miami River, describes this catastrophe. He was awakened at three o'clock one morn-
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ing by waves rocking the boat. As waves are of unusual occurrence in the Miami River, the voyager sprang up to investigate. By the dim light of dawn he saw the river banks rising and falling, trees along the water's edge swept as if by a hurricane and old water-logged trunks from the bottom of the stream hurled up-standing. During the long journey to New Orleans the same thing occurred at inter- vals, and the trip was continued only because the water seemed safer than the land. Many times during those months Dayton people were said to have fled from their homes in terror. It was spring before the shocks entirely ceased.
One of these early years witnessed a cruel frost on the seventh of June, which killed the young corn, knee high in the river bottoms, and blackened all vegetation. No roast- ing ears graced Dayton tables that season.
A strange migration of squirrels is also mentioned in early diaries. They seemed to be searching for mast, and crossed the river in such swarms that the surface of the water was brown, and the boys, in protection to the growing crops, gathered on the bank and clubbed the swarming animals to death. An item in the "Centinel" records that a thousand squirrel scalps had been brought to the office in one dav.
CHAPTER VII. 1807.
Some of the Men Who Made Dayton.
Our debt to the early citizens. Daniel C. Cooper, the sur- veyor. Benjamin Van Cleve, the diarist. Robert Patterson, soldier and citizen. Other good names which deserve our ap- preciation.
The history of any locality is really the history of the men who lived in it and worked for it. Therefore, the story of Dayton should not proceed farther without a few words about the men who gave our city the stability which insures future growth.
During the earliest years of our history, two names stand out with prominence, those of Daniel C. Cooper and Benjamin Van Cleve. The first you have already met, cut- ting his way through the woods from Cincinnati, that others might follow, and you have read how the second guided the pirogue up the current of the Miami and helped build the first houses. Both deserve our lasting gratitude.
A surveyor from New Jersey, Daniel C. Cooper, came west, as so many young men did, to find a new home. He acquired, as you know, much of the central area of Dayton, and this he proceeded to use, not for his own benefit, but for that of the city in whose future he had such faith. Cooper's first valuable service was the fine city plat he drew, improving upon that of Israel Ludlow by straighten- ing boundary lines and widening the streets.
With an eye to immediate needs, Cooper built two mills on his town land, and two on the farm south of town. Be- sides being a good investment, this enterprise marked Cooper as a public benefactor, since it put an end to the grinding of corn in a hand-mill, until then one of the severest tasks in the pioneer household.
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Cooper's first home occupied the present site of the National Cash Register factory, on ground which later be- came the property of Colonel Robert Patterson. His sec- ond home was what a social item in the weekly paper called "an elegant log mansion lined with cherry boards." This mansion stood on the southeast corner of First and Wil- kinson streets.
Daniel C. Cooper, Engineer, who laid out the streets of Dayton and contributed much ground for public uses.
Knowing that the first need of a community is ground for public buildings, Cooper donated one lot for a market- house, one for a courthouse, half a block for a girls' school on First Street (Cooper Seminary), a lot for a boys' school on the west side of St. Clair Street near Third, four acres for a graveyard on Fifth Street between Ludlow and Wil-
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kinson, and a Main Street site for the First Presbyterian Church. Cooper Park, in which the Public Library now stands, was left, in his will, "to be a public walk forever."
Cooper served his city from year to year in various official capacities-as justice of the peace, trustee of the library and academy, president of the Council, and, as Mary Steele says,* "in every way in his power labored for the
The Old Stone Mill. Formerly Stood on South Brown Street. Built by Col. Robert Patterson in 1810 and then known as the Rubicon Factory.
prosperity of the town." To his enlarged view, foresight, broad plans, liberality and business capacity much of the present advancement of our city is due.
And yet there is no "Cooper Avenue"! At all events "Cooper Park" it must certainly be, now and hereafter.
If, by chance, you go to that strip of river bank upon which the log cabin is situated and where Benjamin Van Cleve spent so much time during his own and Dayton's ear-
* "Early Dayton."
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liest years, you must pay tribute to a remarkable man whose chief claim to our esteem is that he has revealed to us so much of our early history. Benjamin Van Cleve under- stood, among other valuable things, the value of a diary. In a blank book, still in the possession of his descendants, there was entered from day to day for twenty-six con- secutive years, an account of things occurring under his own observation. To appreciate this undertaking you need perhaps to be reminded that the outfit of a pioneer house- hold seldom included writing materials, and never the pri- vacy in which to use them. This record, the only one ex- istent, was probably written by the light of a brush fire or a tallow dip, on a table that limped, or wanting even that, on his own knees, among per- haps a dozen hunters or sur- veyors, all talking (or snor- ing) at once.
From the closely written pages of this faded, yellow book we learn how the father, John Van Cleve, was shot and scalped in his own cornfield Benjamin Van Cleve, Diarist and Historian, Librarian, first Teacher, first Postmaster, member First Legislature. near Cincinnati, in sight of his son, who went bravely to his assistance. How Ben- jamin, then a boy of seventeen, took upon himself the care of the family, paid his father's debts, and served in the army at fifteen dollars a month. We read his personal account, a thrilling story, of the defeat of St. Clair's army, of his trip to Philadelphia bearing confidential dispatches to the War Department, and of his adventures at Fort Massac.
It was when he was barely twenty-three, that, landing from the pirogue at the head of St. Clair Street, Van Cleve
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became a fellow citizen of yours and mine. He described himself at that time as dressed in hunting shirt, breech- cloth and moccasins, and carrying a gun, tomahawk, and knife eighteen inches long, suspended from his belt. A primitive backwoodsman this, like scores of others, but with various distinguishing characteristics which led him in time to be accounted one of Dayton's most useful citizens.
In 1803, Van Cleve was appointed postmaster. In sum- mer he farmed, in winter he taught school, first at New- com's Tavern, and afterward at the blockhouse. He was the first clerk of the court, an incorporator of the Dayton Library, and member of the Board of Trustees both of Miami University and of the First Presbyterian Church. Married in 1804 to Mary Whitten, who lived seven miles from the settlement, his worldly prospects at the time were thus described in his journal :
"I had a horse creature and a few farming utensils, and her father gave her a few kitchen utensils, so we could make shift to cook our provisions. We also had a bed, a cow, a heifer, two lambs and a ewe, a sow and pigs, a saddle and spinning wheel. I had corn and vegetables growing, so that if we were not rich we had sufficient for our imme- diate wants, and were contented and happy."
The wedding, to which all the young folks in Dayton and the surrounding country were invited, did not much resemble a modern social function. A bountiful dinner was spread out of doors on a table loaded with pioneer lux- uries, to the enjoyment of which guests came on horseback through the woods. After the ceremony, which was per- formed by a traveling preacher, the whole cavalcade accom- panied the bride and groom to the new home, a commo- dious log house on the corner of Jefferson and First streets. It was not long before this household began to be known as a center of frontier hospitality. Van Cleve was a good talker, he knew the Miami country by heart and loved it. Strangers went to him for information, they found a hos-
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pitable wife and open fire, books and good cheer, a home that was officially both library and postoffice, and socially a gathering place for friends.
One record in Van Cleve's diary is a significant one. "My main object," he writes, "has been to be useful in the sphere in which my Creator has placed me. I ought, there- fore, never to procrastinate anything until to-morrow that can be done to-day." His political creed as contained in the following entry, reflects modern principles : "All public officers are public servants who should be supported, but the people ought ever to be watchful of their rights, and oppose the encroachments of power. I have never sup- ported either men or measures because they were of this or that party, believing that strictly party measures are de- structive of the general good." Cooper here forestalls the famous sentiment so popular during the Cleveland cam- paign, that "a public office is a public trust."
In short, Benjamin Van Cleve shines forth among the plain people of that day as a man who kept certain things alive-books, for instance, and the love of learning gener- ally.
It was a great day for Dayton when Colonel Robert Pat- terson, with his wife, five sons, and six daughters, came up from Kentucky to occupy their new home on the land just south of town which had been purchased from D. C. Cooper. The Colonel was a famous Indian fighter and car- ried wounds from ten engagements, one of which never healed, and was at last the cause of his death. When a boy of seventeen, he had journeyed from his father's home in Pennsylvania to the unbroken wilderness of Kentucky, where his life was so full of adventure that no other, except that of Daniel Boone, would make a better story. As the supply of ammunition at the fort where he lived threatened to become exhausted, Patterson, with five young fellows of his own age, left the shelter of the stockade at Royal Spring and traveled to Pittsburgh, a journey of two hundred miles against the current of the Ohio. When encamped for the
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night, the party suffered an attack at the hands of the sav- ages, one of them with a lunge of his tomahawk cutting a deep gash in Robert's side. In pain and terror the boys scattered in the darkness, one to die alone, and two to suf- fer the pangs of pain and thirst. Sitting on a log in the
Colonel Robert Patterson, from a portrait in the possession of Colonel E. T. Durrett, of Louisville, Kentucky.
darkness, the young pioneer heard his own blood dripping on the dry leaves, and wondered whether he was ever to reach shelter alive. He was rescued after indescribable suf- fering, and lived many years to tell of his adventure. Later, Patterson founded Lexington, Kentucky, and was one of the three original owners of Cincinnati.
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Robert Patterson's military career was remarkable. He fought in every important engagement which took place be- tween the whites and the Indians in two States from 1777 to 1812, including the battle of Blue Licks, where he barely escaped with his life, George Rogers Clarke's Illinois cam- paign, where he led the advance, and St. Clair's defeat, where he protected the rear.
As a citizen, his service was no less worthy. He was first to send for a schoolmaster to teach the boys and girls in the log fort at Lexington, first to solicit subscriptions for library, first to organize a Sunday school and teach in it; if not first, then a close second, to establish Transylvania University in Kentucky. He planted vineyards and trees, improved the streets, built good roads, was a stock raiser and breeder of fine horses, and, finally, a member of the first Kentucky legislature.
Financial difficulties and the fact that Kentucky was a slave State, were the reasons which finally brought the Pat- tersons to Dayton. In October, 1804, the family arrived and moved into the new log house which stood south of town in the triangle of ground now bounded by the canal, Main Street, and the hills of Oakwood. Then there was no Main Street and no canal. The road that passed be- tween the Patterson house and the river, followed the pres- ent course of the canal and entered town at Ludlow Street. Brown Street was the road to Cincinnati.
Social life felt a new impetus when this gay family was added to Dayton's population. Weddings occurred in the course of time, the sisters marrying and settling, some in Dayton and some in the country. In 1820, Colonel Patter- son built a fine brick house to the east of the old one. It is still standing. This became a center for family gather-
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ings, as the children's children came from time to time un- der the old roof-tree. The mills which Cooper had built were in operation, and supplied lumber and flour to the people for miles around. Every day during the summer
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