USA > Pennsylvania > Erie County > A twentieth century history of Erie County, Pennsylvania : a narrative account of its historic progress, its people, and its principal interests, Volume I > Part 10
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It has been said that it was the killing of the Rutledges that brought about the erection, that year, of the American defenses at Erie, but this is a mistake, for there was not a sufficient lapse of time between the discovery of that tragedy and the beginning of the work on the block- houses and stockades. As a matter of fact, they were almost coeval. Un- doubtedly the soldiers detailed for that work were already on their way if not on the ground when the murder was discovered.
In was in July, 1795, and toward the latter part of the month when a detail of Gen. Wayne's soldiers, under command of Capt. Russell Bissell arrived here, and began the work of erecting military defenses. The earlier forts had occupied sites on the high ground near the bluff on the west of the Mill creek valley. The French fort was not far distant from the east line of Parade street, the finding of ruins having established this fact, and it is quite likely the fort built during the English occupancy, that was taken in Pontiac's war, occupied practically the same site.
The American defenses, however, were built on the high ground east of Mill creek, the tract to this day has been known as the Garrison Ground, and is now a part of the grounds belonging to the Soldiers' and Sailors' Home. It was admirably fitted for a place of defense, with the steep bank fronting on the north, the almost equally steep slope from Mill creek on the west and the abrupt bluff of the rather wide ravine or valley of Garrison run on the east. There was but one side, therefore, open to attack. This piece of ground was made ready for the purpose to which it was to be put, under the direction of Capt. Bissell, a skillful Indian fighter if not military engineer. He cut down all the timber, back a considerable distance, and erected on the cleared space an extensive stockade that contained within it two houses-(by some authorities there were three). All of these houses were built of logs and the principal one was a blockhouse of the usual American backwoods design, two stories high with the upper story much larger in diameter than the lower one, in order that in case of a close siege the enemy might be fired upon from above if an attempt were made to force an en- trance through the door or set fire to the building at its base. Besides
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cutting away enough timber to make room and material for his fortifica- tion, Captain Bissell was a sufficiently experienced Indian fighter to know that it was best to push the woods back as far as possible in order that there should be noscreen throughwhich the savages could make a sheltered approach. To secure this end he caused ten acres of ground to be cleared and cultivated, manifesting double good sense by this pro- vision for the maintenance of his garrison.
Happily there was no real need of the defenses built by Wayne's soldiers. The Indians had been fully subdued by the vigorous campaign of Mad Anthony in the west, and the peace of Canandaigua was of a character to give the authorities, at least, full assurance that all trouble with the aborigines in this part of the country was at an end. In one respect, however, the erection of the fortification was valuable, and even necessary. It imparted a sense of security to the settlers, already on the ground, and to those who contemplated moving in. The hardships of a pioneer in the forests of America were alone enough to daunt any but the most courageous. The hazard of Indian depredations added was too much for even the hardy first settler to willingly accept. There- fore the construction of the fort and its occupancy by a garrison of sufficient strength became a much needed guaranty for the purpose of ensuring the settlement of the country.
It has been stated by writers of the history of the Triangle that the detail of United States troops for the building of a fort at Presque Isle was sent here early in the spring of 1195, and that the work was begun immediately. This, however, is not in accordance with what has been stated by a number of persons who visited this section during the summer of that year. Deacon Chamberlain, who landed at Presque Isle in the latter part of June found no one here, neither whites nor Indians, and Captain Martin Strong, who landed at Presque Isle the latter part of July, on his way to Le Bœuf, where he was to serve as an assistant surveyor, writes that at that time the soldiers were at work felling trees for the stockade. A month later another of the new- comers reported that work on the defenses were still in progress. It is therefore more than probable that the fort was not completed until the end of the summer.
In August, 1795, Judah Colt, then in Canandaigua, learning that the land in the Triangle was open for purchase and settlement, decided to come this way, and in company with Augustus Porter, set out for Presque Isle. They traveled by horseback to Buffalo, where they took passage with Captain William Lee in a small vessel which Mr. Colt calls a shallop, and, reaching here, found signs of activity. On the high ground that commanded the entrance to the bay the United States troops, he says in his autobiography, were erecting a fort while on the west Gen. Irvine and Andrew Ellicott were engaged in the work of laying out by survey the town of Erie. They had come to buy land-Mr. Colt and Mr. Porter-and, well pleased with the appearance of the
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country, whose vigorous growth of timber gave evidence of fertile soil, each bought 400 acres. That the early impression was a lasting one is proved by what followed, for Mr. Colt became in time not only a permanent settler but one of the most prominent and influential men of the county. He is not reckoned among the very first settlers, and yet he is really entitled to be included among those who came here in the first year of its permanency.
Above the statement is made that the American fort commanded the entrance to the bay, and this is literally true. At that time there was no channel from the lake into the harbor such as we of today know. That is purely artificial and was constructed, many years after the period of which we are now writing, as a straight short cut in from the outside. Long after Erie came to he settled the bay continued to be entered by a somewhat shallow tortnous channel that, leading in from the lake passed the foot of the garrison bluff at a distance of 150 yards or so, and before reaching the mouth of Mill creek turned northwestward, almost in the direction of Misery bay, into the deep water of the main bay. This channel was not much above six feet deep, and was not wide, and in the course of time was to prove a troublesome feature. But this will appear in its proper place. When, in the course of events the important im- provement of a direct entrance had been constructed and the old channel was abandoned, it gradually filled up and a broad beach formed outside. Pools or ponds remained that for a long period were known as the pike ponds, but they gradually filled up, first by the growth of rank vegetation and then by its decay and the gradual encroachment of soil carried in by the streams and the wind which drifted the sand. After the Penn- sylvania Soldiers' and Sailors' Home had been established the work of filling-in was hastened to completion by Major W. W. Tyson who con- verted the flat into a fertile garden to supply the Home. The sole re- maining relic of Capt. Bissell's original work on that defense of 1795 is the well dug within the stockade, which is still serviceable at times by means of a modern pump, from which the blue-coated veterans of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Home can quench their thirst.
It is interesting to note that not a few of the names that became iden- tified with Erie county on that first year of the permanent settlement have endured until the present time. The name of Rees is still an honored one in Erie, and Reeds of the fourth generation after the Colonel are yet living here. The name of Miles has all these years been prom- inent in the western part of the county. Judson and Strong are still Waterford names, and have figured in distinguished fashion in the years that have passed. The Kings and Blacks of Le Bœuf have not died out, while Spaulding continues to be a name well known and respected in Conneaut township. Captain John Grubb has none of his name in Erie county today but of his blood there is a numerous progeny of excellent people.
Vol. I-6
SO
HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY
GEN. ANTHONY WAYNE (From portrait in Erie Public Library.)
CHAPTER X .- DEATH OF GEN. ANTHONY WAYNE.
THE FORT THAT MAD ANTHONY BUILT AND HOW IT CAME TO BE THIE PLACE OF HIS BURIAL.
There is not on the entire coast, east or west, certainly not within a half-score miles of Erie either way, a spot at once so charming as a view point and so strong as a site for military defense, as the piece of ground that was selected by Captain Bissell upon which to erect the American Fort Presque Isle in 1795. It is so to this day, whether con- sidered as a coign of vantage or a place upon which to erect a fort in case it became necessary to guard the entrance of the harbor. At the time the fort was first built, it will be easy for anyone well acquainted with the locality to understand, the view from that eminence must have been wonderfully fine. Then there was at no time a curtain of smoke to obscure the wide sweeping arc of the horizon, nor to dim the perspec- tive of the lovely panorama stretched out to the east along the coast, where point succeeded point, jutting out into the blue of the water, each succeeding timbered promontory of softer hue until the last is dim and blue in the distance. Directly out from the site of the fort, stretched the low lands of the eastern end of the peninsula, separated from the mainland by the winding channel. And the charm of that peninsular landscape was fine indeed, notwithstanding its level character. Nearer the bluff there were pools or small ponds margined by the rank growth of rushes and cat-tail flags, where the soldier blackbirds mustered in the summer time, or the stately blue heron stalked about on his stilts as he occupied himself at his fishing or expanded his marvelous stretch of wings as he sought a new location for his piscatory pursuits. Be- yond, the ponds are larger, and the fringing growth of more permanent vegetation-the willow peculiar to the peninsula, and the cottonwood coming on. The largest of the ponds to be seen is in later days to be known as the lake pond, and the still larger body to the west and separ- ated by a mere spit of sand will in time acquire the name of Misery Bay. And further still is seen the stretch of sand lying like waves thinly covered with a grass that raises its tall culms and panicles of golden plumes high above it. And yet farther the wide flat beach upon which the surf rolls thunderous in the northwest gales or whispering in the summer calms. Out of this shining sand the summer gales
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form fantastic shapes, drifting it into ridges and dunes, changing con- stantly even where the tall, blue-bladed sand grass establishes a precari- ous hold. West of that, beginning in the northern bight of Misery Bay the peninsula woods begin, frequently opened up, however, to give place to many a lakelet peacefully sleeping protected by a growth of sturdy forest trees. The eye sweeping to the west takes in the Bay- Presque Isle Bay-with its high wooded bluffs on the mainland side and the wide-extending curve of the peninsula on the other, gleaming and scintilating in the golden light of the western sun. Duquesne was right when he pronounced it the "finest in nature."
It is the year 1:96. The fort is yet barely a year old, but already has monotony settled drearily upon its garrison. the tedious rounds of duty become tiresome. For idleness is not happiness in perfection, and even the joy of drinking in the beauties of the scene is not a joy forever. Better to the men of that garrison would a brush with the Indians be than to be forever working without a purpose. But into the life of this garrison came an incident. It is to be marked in the rec- ords of the nation's history. It was the coming of Gen. Wayne.
General Wayne had proved, in the war of the Revolution, to be one of Washington's ablest lieutenants. It had come to be the rule to give him the brunt of the battle, for none better than he could be de- pended upon to inspire his troops with the courage and determination necessary to make the stand or to force the fighting. The remarkable charge at Stony Point was evidence of this, Wayne's soldierly scaling the steep declivity and carrying the works in a bayonet charge without firing a shot, while the enemy poured volley after volley of musketry and charges of grape and canister upon the impetuous continentals from the heights above. It was one of the grandest charges in all history and a triumph that properly made General Wayne a popular hero.
Therefore when, the war over, trouble arose with the Indians of the west, President Washington naturally selected as the man who should command the force that was to reduce the savages to subjec- tion and punish their British allies, his trusted lieutenant General An- thony Wayne. General Wayne, though having retired to private life, promptly accepted the place and at once set about preparations to retrieve the disasters of St. Clair out in what is now western Ohio and eastern Indiana. He was so successful in his plans that he brought on an action with the savages at Fallen Timber on the Maumee river on Aug. 20, 1794, and achieved a complete victory. It was such a crushing defeat for the Indians that, far and near, they yielded and sued for peace, and Wayne, having been commissioned by Washing- ton, met the conquered red men and made treaties of peace with them, treaties of such a character that they were ever afterwards observed,
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and the splendid territory long known as the west, and later as the middle west, was opened up for settlement. Wayne's victory gave this nation Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky.
The treaty work of Wayne occupied most of the year 1795. He visited the east, and in Philadelphia and other cities was received with many marks of enthusiastic admiration. Returning to the west to complete his labors, he concluded them in the summer of 1796, and then, his duties at an end, turned his face homeward.
It was in the fall of 1796 that Wayne set out upon his return to his home in Chester. It was a journey through the wilderness no matter which direction he took from the scene of his labors in the west, with little to choose. He decided upon that route which en- abled him to use the transportation facilities of the lake, and em- barked upon a small vessel at Detroit for Presque Isle, intending to proceed thence across the country to his home in the eastern end of the state. Upon his journey down the lake, however, he was seized with the gout, a disease with which he had previously been afflicted, and upon reaching Presque Isle was so ill that he was compelled to take to his bed, being accommodated in the second story of the block- house. A summons was sent to Dr. J. C. Wallace at Fort La Fayette, for there was no medical aid to be procured in Erie. As a matter of fact there was but a handful of people here at the time and they were sturdy pioneers who thought they had no use for a medical man. Dr. Wallace had been surgeon under Wayne during his Maumee campaign, and the general, taken seriously ill and evidently appreciat- ing the gravity of the situation, dispatched an aide to summon the doctor. It was a long journey, too long to be traversed within the necessary time. When Dr. Wallace had reached Franklin he was met by another courier, bearing the intelligence that General Anthony Wayne was dead.
The general died on Dec. 15, 1796, in the little blockhouse of the fort that was the sole work of military defense for this out-post on the frontier. He had anticipated the coming of the end, and calmly set about whatever preparations could be made, directing among other matters and things considered, that his body was to be interred in the basement of the blockhouse, at the foot of the flagstaff; and there he was buried.
It is interesting as illustrating one of the inaccuracies of accepted history, to note the error in statement with reference to the death of General Wayne that has been made by his biographers. Both Headley and Duyckinck state that Wayne died in a rude hut at Presque Isle and was buried on the lake shore. It was quite a different matter in reality. The soldier died within a military fort and was buried be- neath the pole from which floated the flag of his country. His was a soldier's death and a soldier's burial, and the site of his grave was of his own selection, the little fort becoming his mausoleum.
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For thirteen years the body remained entombed within the block- house that stood on the hill commanding the harbor entrance. The post of Presque Isle had become the borough of Erie and had begun to attract people to it from other parts of the country, but the grow- ing population did not affect Garrison hill. There the grave of Mad Anthony remained undisturbed-until after the thirteen years succeeding his death. Then in 1809, came Colonel Isaac Wayne from Chester county-a son of General Wayne-and his errand was to convey the remains of his father back to the old home and there bury them along with those of his kin.
It was not easy traveling then for it was a wilderness that occupied practically all of the state; a wilderness of forests and mountains, without roads or bridges or means of communication other than the blind trail through the woods. Colonel Wayne drove to Erie from the east on a sulky with a single horse. He was under the impres- sion that it would not be a difficult matter, after the lapse of thirteen years, to remove what had been left of his father's body. The work of decay, it was natural to believe, had greatly reduced it. It could easily be packed on the back of the sulky and thus carried to Chester.
But it turned out vastly different. When it was disinterred, to the surprise of everyone who had to do with it, the body was found to be in an almost perfect state of preservation, one foot and part of one leg alone having been affected by decay. It was a dilemma that pre- sented itself to Colonel Wayne with this condition of affairs revealed. It was out of the question to remove the body as it was found. In his difficulty Colonel Wayne called in Dr. Wallace, his father's old sur- gcon, for advice. What can be done to carry out the purpose of the journey? was the question that was asked. The surgeon declared he could provide a remedy for the trouble, and he was given a free hand.
Taking the body he proceeded to separate the flesh from the bones. It was no easy matter even for a skilled anatomist such as Dr. Wallace was, and it became necessary at length to dismember the remains and boil the parts in a large kettle until the flesh was soft enough to sep- arate from the bones. It was a gruesome proceeding, and one not pleasant to think about, and Colonel Wayne declared, when he learned what had been done, that if he had known what the actual state of af- fairs was he would at once have had the body reinterred and a monu- ment erected over the place where his father was first buried.
The work of Dr. Wallace proceeded until the skeleton of the Revo- lutionary hero was stripped clean, then putting the viscera and flesh back into the coffin along with the knives and other implements that had been employed in the work of dissecting, that was returned to the original grave in the basement of the blockhouse, while Colonel Wayne proceeded eastward with the bones of his father, which were eventually buried in St. David's church at Radnor, Delaware county, close by the
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Chester county line. It is a grim, and even horrible tale, this of the boiling of the body of the heroic Wayne, and is so much out of the common that some are not ready to believe it. But yet it is a fact. In the lobby entrance of the museum of the public library may be seen the kettle in which General Wayne's body was boiled. It is a mam- moth affair, similar to those used in olden times in the manufacture of potash or "black salts."
The method employed for preparing Wayne's body for removal in reality gave him two graves, for more in weight and more in bulk was reinterred in the Erie grave than was taken away. That this was not the judgment of the people generally is to be believed in view of the fact that the burial place was so lightly regarded and in time so utterly neglected. In the course of time the blockhouse became so di- lapidated that the doors hung by a single hinge, and the place that was at one time the principal defense of Erie became a cowshed-and yet it was the burial place of General Wayne.
One night a lot of hoodlum lads of Kingtown, playing around the old blockhouse, either by accident or in the spirit of mischief set it afire. It was burned to the ground. In the course of a short time every trace of it had disappeared and its original location was a mat- ter of pure guess work-if. indeed, anyone cared so much about the old structure as to do any guessing.
In the course of time, however, there arose one who did care to do some guessing, and who cared to do a great deal more. It was Dr. Ed- ward W. Germer. The doctor was a good deal of an antiquarian. He was also well posted in historical matters, and not averse to yielding admiration to anyone of heroic proportions. Dr. Germer was long health officer. He was the pioneer health officer and a mighty good one he was too. Long ago there used to be a brick yard at the foot of Ash street, or rather just south of the P. & E. railroad on Ash street. Right alongside this brick yard there stood a plain old-fashioned two-story frame house. Whether it was a farmhouse of other days or a dwelling erected by the maker of bricks I never learned. When it was best known to east-siders it had an evil cognomen. It was called the pest-house. It was the city hospital for treatment of contagious diseases, established through the efforts of Dr. Germer and maintained by him through arrange- ment that never was quite clear.
Dr. Germer had for his chief assistant, as keeper of the pest-house, a Mr. Katzmeier, and when business in the hospital was dull owing to the absence of smallpox, Dr. Germer found plenty of work for Mr. Katzmeier and his son to do. Dr. Germer was an ardent admirer of the hero of Stony Point, he knew the story of his death and burial, and he was acquainted with the fact that his body had. according to common report, been removed to the eastern part of the state. Dr. Germer, however, held that notwithstanding what had been done there
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was still a grave of General Wayne on Garrison hill and to find this grave was the task he assigned his man Katzmeier. After a vast amount of excavating at length they struck a promising trail. There were a variety of things thrown out with the dirt excavated-fragments of tinware, potsherds, scraps of leather and such things as accumulate in a rubbish heap around old houses. At length there was found a place that seemed as though it might have been a grave, the sides be- ing more compact than the centre. It was followed downward and at length there was uncovered a piece of decayed wood covered with leather and studded with brass headed tacks. The doctor carefully dusted and cleaned it and set to studying the arrangement of the tacks. He could make out, at length :
"A. W. "Ob. Dec. 15. "1:96."
Translated it meant, very clearly: "Anthony Wayne, died Dec. 15, 1196." The object of his search had been found. Extending his ex- ploration he found the sides and bottom of the coffin, but so decayed that they fell to pieces when touched. Inside, however, he found some knives and other implements, proof of two things: The truth of the story that when the work of separating the flesh from the bones of Wayne's body was completed the knives were thrown into the coffin ; proof also of the fact that it was Wayne's coffin that had been found- if proof in addition to the lid were required.
Dr. Germer's work and discovery was a reminder that General Wayne had more than one grave. The doctor maintained that after all that on Garrison hill was the most important as being the first place of burial and as containing more of the body than that at Radnor. A movement was then set afoot to properly mark the Wayne grave which brought about the erection upon the spot where the first one stood of a reproduction of the Garrison hill blockhouse. We have it today as one of the most noteworthy structures on the grounds of the Pennsylvania Soldiers' and Sailors' Home.
The new blockhouse, a restoration or replica if you please, as nearly as could be effected from hints in old woodcuts and sketches made in years gone by while the blockhouse still stood there, was really made possible by the efforts of Dr. Germer. He was undoubtedly the original strenuous man. When he set out to accomplish anything he generally got there-in his lexicon there was no such word as fail. Having found the grave of the famous American soldier he determined it should be suitably marked. He did not rest until it was. And how could it be more appropriately marked than by erecting upon the site of the original an exact reproduction ?
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