HISTORY OF WYANDOT COUNTY
CHAPTER I.
LOCATION AND EXTENT-NATURAL FEATURES.
SITUATION -BOUNDARIES-AREA - STREAMS - SURFACE - SOIL-GEOLOGICAL
STRUCTURE-MATERIAL RESOURCES.
LOCATION AND EXTENT.
By reference to the State maps, the reader will observe that Wyandot County lies in the northwest quarter of the State of Ohio, nearly equidistant from Lake Erie on the north, and the Indiana State line on the west. That the counties bordering upon it are Seneca on the north; Crawford on the east; Marion and Hardin on the south; Hardin and Hancock on the west; and that its thirteen Subdivisions, known respectively as Antrim, Crane, Crawford, Eden, Jackson, Marseilles, Mifflin, Pitt, Richland, Ridge, Salem, Sycamore and Tymochtee Townships, contain eight square miles more than eleven surveyed townships, or 258,560 acres.
NATURAL FEATURES.
Its Streams.-Lying near the great watershed of the State, just on its northern slope, it contains no large Streams. Tymochtee Crook with its tributaries, and the headwaters of the Sandusky River, comprising the Little Sandusky and the Broken Sword Creeks, and the small streams known as Sycamore Creek, Tyler's Run, Sugar Run, Negro Run and Rock Run, are the drainage system of the county. Their general course is due north, except that the eastern tributaries of the Sandusky have a direction westerly or southwesterly, until they descend upon the area of the water-lime, and are well within the drainage valley of the Sandusky. The Tymochtee Creek, throughout the most of its course in Wyandot County, is a Slow stream and has a clay bottom. Its valley is as wide and its banks as high as those of the Sandusky itself, although less water actually passes down its channel. The Sandusky, on the contrary, more frequently runs on a rock bottom, and its current is more rapid. It affords occasional water-power privileges. The same is true of the small creeks entering it from the east.
The Surface.-The topography of the county is quite simple. The western half is gently undulating or flat. The excavated valley of the Tymochtee Creek, which is usually about a hundred rods wide, and rarely exceeds two hundred rods, presents, in its abrupt descents, the most noticeable changes of level. There are several extensive prairielike tracts, which have a black soil and were never clothed with forest. They are in
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the higher levels, and give rise to some of the tributaries of Tymochtee Creek. One is north and west of Carey, extending largely into Seneca and Hancock Counties, known as Big Spring Prairie. Another covers much of the township of Richland, known as Potatoe Swamp, and a third occupies the southeastern part of Mifflin and the southwestern part of Pitt Townships, extending also into Marion County. The Cranberry Marsh, in Jackson Township, also extends largely into Hancock County. That tract known as Cranberry Marsh, in Crane Township, and the marshy tract in the center of Tymochtee Township, are of less extent but in every way analogous to the rest. These marshes were probably, once the sites of lakes, which have become filled by the slow accumulation of vegetable matter, and the washing in from the adjoining land of the finer materials of the drift. This is particularly noticeable about the ridges and knolls which inclose Big Spring Prairie. Besides these untillable marshes, most of the territory lying between the Tymochtee Creek and the Sandusky River, has a black, loamy soil, and was once, probably, subject to inundation by those streams, although now it is generally laid out in fine farms.
East of the Sandusky River the surface is more broken, and there is a noticeable ascent from the area of the water-lime to that of the coniferous. There is a tract of elevated land, like a fragment of a glacial moraine, along the west side of Broken Sword Creek, extending from Eden Township to the Little Sandusky in Pitt Township. Besides these undulations in the original surface of the drift, that part of the county east of the Sandusky is subject to erosions by frequent small streams, which have worn channels in the drift and sometimes in the rock itself.
Where the streams of the county ran through level tracts, they present the usual terrace and flood-plain. The former is the old drift surface, and rises from twenty to forty feet above the level of the water. The latter, which is constantly changing its position and its contents, is, of course, dependent on the greatest freshet rise of the stream. Along the Tymochtee Creek it is sometimes twelve feet or more above the summer stage of the stream.
The Soil.-The prevailing feature of the soil is clay. This, however, is variously modified. In the higher parts of the county, it is gravelly, and often contains stones and bowlders. It is compact, and almost entirely without stones or even gravel in the level tracts, especially where there has been a gradual filling up, with slow or imperfect drainage. The soil of the prairies, which is black, consists very largely of vegetable matter in various stages of decay. Drainage is especially needed in the western part of the county.
The Geological Structure.*-The Niagara limestone underlies a tier of townships along the western side of the county, lipreading to the east so as to include the village of Marseilles. The western boundary of the Lower Corniferous enters the county from the north, about two miles east of Mexico, passes through Bellevernon and Little Sandusky, and leaves the county in Section 11, Pitt Township. Hence the most of the county, which is specially characterized by its flat surface, is underlain by the water-lime formation. It is necessary to say, however, that the western central portions of the county are entirely without rocky outcrops, and it may be that the Niagara underlies more area than has been ascribed to it. also that the boundary between the water-lime and the corniferous, as above located, is to a certain extent conjectural.
*Compiled from the report of N. H. Winchell, as published by authority of the State Legislature, in 1873.
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The Niagara limestone has near Carey an unusual and somewhat remarkable exposure The surface of the country for many miles in every direction is flat, without exposure of rock. At this point the Niagara swells up suddenly in two separate mounds or ridges, which rise so obtrusively the drift has been in many places entirely denuded. They rise to the height of forty to fifty feet. They are each about five miles long, and are so situated toward each other, and in relation to the direction of natural drainage, that they inclose the marsh known as Big Spring Prairie. They are distinguished as the North Ridge and the West Ridge. The included prairie is of the shape of a horseshoe, the too turned a little east of north, the West Ridge filling in the bow. It is usually about a mile wide, with a length of ten miles. It is drained in opposite directions. Spring Run drains it into the Sandusky River, and a stream known as the "Outlet" drains it into the Blanchard. The soil is so wet that at present it is impossible to till it. Good progress has, however, been made in draining some portions, which now produce corn of prodigious growth. The descent to the prairie from the north or from the west, so as not to be intercepted by either of the limestone ridges, is very gradual, even unobservable. The soil changes imperceptibly from a more or less gravelly clay to a fine, tough clay; then by the addition of vegetable matter the surface soil becomes black and moist, and all vegetable growth disappears except grasses and sedges. Efforts were made to ascertain the thickness of this black muck, but no result was obtained other than the fact, that while it exceeds eight feet in some places, it is usually but four or five. It is thin about the margin of the marsh, and seems to be generally underlain by a tough, blue clay, often so calcareous as to constitute a marl. This blue clay is sometimes itself overlain by a bed of quicksand. Within the muck the horns of elk are said to have been found, and logs several feet in diameter. Along the south margin of the prairie, within the bow, there is considerable sand, as if the deposit of a lake shore. Within the bow of the prairie there is also considerable flat land not marshy, the surface rising very gently toward the south for the distance of nearly one mile, when the West Ridge rises suddenly to the height of nearly fifty feet. The prairie is crossed by three public roads. These are constructed by throwing together the dirt from two parallel ditches, on which is placed first corduroy, and afterward, when repairs are needed,. stone hauled from the ridges, giving the road a rough macadamizing. Many months in the year the prairie is covered with water, and it is only in the driest months that cattle venture on it for grazing. Within it are sometimes little undulations or hillocks, on which grow bunches of shrubs and large herbs.
The rock here exposed has been found to contain characteristic Niagara fossils only in the North Ridge. There are no perpendicular sections of the bedding, except in small quarries on the slopes of the ridges near their bases. In these openings the stone appears very different from that seen in bare places higher up the ridges and on their summits, and the dip is uniformly toward the low ground, whatever the position of the quarry.
The quarry of Mr. Samuel Shoup, situated on the western slope of the West Ridge, about three miles from Carey, shows the rock dipping about fifteen or eighteen degrees toward the southwest; that is, toward the nearest low ground. It is in thin, fragile beds, of a light drab or buff color, porous, and soft under the hammer, showing no distinguishable fossils.
In the quarry of Mr. Thomas Shepherd, northeast quarter Section 11, Ridge Township, about a mile northwest of Mr. Shoup's, the beds are thin
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and so carious they can hardly be lifted, in even sheets of a buff color, sometimes reduced to sand by the weather, Then comes a bed three to eight inches thick; vesicular; of a buff color; easily worked. Then it is irregularly bedded; lenticular or massive; buff color; carious; with traces of fossils.
Mr. F. J. Worrello's quarry, northeast quarter Section 16, Crawford Township, is in the same kind of stone, but it is so far removed from the ridge that beds have not been tilted by it. They lie horizontal, or with a very slight inclination southwest. The rock is here very near the surface. The same is true at Carey, where it is sometimes reached in digging postholes for fences.
The quarry of Mr. Jonas Huffman is in the west slope of the North Ridge, situated in the northwest quarter of Section 4, Crawford Township, and shows the following descending section. Dip toward the west, 100. The rock here is overlain by about two feet of drift and loose fragments; then comes about two feet of confused and lenticular in the bedding, with larger pores or cavities, sometimes filled with calcite; fossiliferous, showing two species of bivalves, cyathophylloids and favositoids. Then two feet of hard, close-grained; light drab; beds four to eight inches. The close grained has a bluish tint.
Mr. Peter Kibbler's quarry at Springville affords a slight exposure of the same kind of stone, with a gentle dip west or toward the prairie. The stone here seems a little more firm, bat is generally porous, with fine cavities; fossils wanting or so absorbed as to be undistinguishable. The color is a light drab, varying to buff, and also to gray. especially when thrown in piles. The stone is not handsome, the beds being uneven and containing some white chert. At Mr. David Smith's quarry, in the northeast quarter of Section 3, in Amanda Township, Hancock County, the stone is buff, porous and thin, the beds being only about two inches thick. Stone thrown out from these quarries becomes a light buff, sometimes almost white under the weather, and although not of a durable quality, it has been used considerably in ordinary walls and foundations.
In passing over the ridges which are occupied by good farms, stones are often seen gathered from the fields and deposited in piles or in the corners of the fences, or laid up in walls. They consist of fragments from the underlying rock, and of northern bowlders, the former greatly predominating. Along the road the rock is frequently seen bare, and, as already remarked, it is different, lithologically, from that seen in the foregoing quarries. It is most frequently a dark drab or brown, bard, crystalline rock, apparently in a rough, massive condition, containing cavities sometimes two or three inches in diameter. It nowhere appears in even beds. It is rarely vesicu. lar, like the stone seen in the quarries described, but contains large cavities, irregularly scattered through it. The color is sometimes a bluish drab, and it not unfre neatly shows obscure traces of fossil remains. These occur sometimes in rock otherwise compact and solid, or they may be so numerous as to make the rock porous and loose, the interior shell being entirely wanting. The fragments furnishing these fossils are, however, more vesicular and lighter colored than the stone usually seen scattered over the surface of the ridges, They have the lithological characters of that phase of the Niagara seen in the Sandusky River at Tiffin, Seneca County, and at Genoa, in Ottawa County. In the northeast quarter of Section 32, Crawford Township, a ridge may be seen of the same kind of stone as those north of Carey, running north and south, visible about one-half mile, slightly exposed on land of Joseph Pahl.
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It would seem as if the conditions of the ocean's bed in which the Niagara was formed were not uniform. While regular strata were being deposited in a wide area, including portions of Seneca and Hancock Counties, without disturbance or contortions, a concretionary and crystallizing force sprang into operation in the northwest corner of Wyandot County, which in working from below, caused the even beds of deposition to swell upward or over the growing mass or masses. In some cases, it aided in the preservation of fossil remains; in others it hastened their absorption into the mass of the rock. This is a peculiarity of the rock formation not confined to the Niagara, but its displayed conspicuously in the water-lime above. and it has been seen in the Lower Corniferous. When the lapse of time brings such hardened masses into contact with the erosions of ice and water they cause the prominent features of the landscape by the removal of the more destructible parts about them. Such may be the explanation of the remarkable ridges about Carey, the even, friable beds seen in the quarries about their flanks having once been continuous over the summits, but, unable to resist the forces of the glacial epoch, were denuded down to the more enduring rock
Within those ridges are several eaves, the entrances to which are small and have been accidentally discovered, sometimes by men plowing in the field. One particularly, on the farm of Mr. Adam Keller, northwest quarter Section 2, in Ridge Township, is described as having a perpendicular descent of sixty-five feet to a stream of water which is very deep and separates one apartment by a narrow passage from another. The entrance is about five feet across and the sides are of rock.
The Niagara, in the south west corner of the county, rises rapidly in the same way from below the water-lime which lies to the north, the dip being northeast and to the amount of twenty-five degrees along Sections 18 and 13 near the county lines. It here appears as a thick-bedded gray and crystalline limestone. It also shows in the Tymochtee Creek, at the village of Marseilles, in a characteristic surface exposure. About five feet of thick, hard beds may be seen along the creek, lying nearly horizontal, or with a very slight dip south-southwest. It is slightly porous and fossiliferous. It is sometimes blotched with blue and drab. These are the beds that rise so rapidly about a mile further south, forming a little ridge or brow of prominent land facing north. On this brow is situated the residence of Mrs. Socrates Hartle. The rock is shown in the excavation for the cellar about the center of Section 13, in Marseilles Township, also, in a ditch by the roadside in Section 18, about sixty rods east of Mrs. Hartle's house, where the rapidity of the current of water has cleaned off the smoothed and striated rock in a handsome exposure. A little stream, locally known as Little Tymochtee Creek, makes eastward along the north side of this brow of land, and on Section 13, less than a quarter of a mile north of Mrs. Hartle's house, and perhaps thirty feet below the Niagara outcrop near it, the blue slaty beds of the water-lime way be seen in the creek.
In the southeast quarter Section 13, in Marseilles Township, Mr. Heckathorn has a quarry in the Niagara. The beds here are three to six inches in thickness. The stone is rather firm, though somewhat porous. It is used for quicklime and for general building purposes. Southeast quarter Section 11, in Marseilles Township, D. Heckathorn burns lime from the Niagara dip north; beds about four inches. Within forty rods north of Mr. H.'s quarry the water-lime appears in the Little Tymochtee Creek. In northeast quarter Section 11, Marseilles Township, H. H. Cary burns lime
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and supplies building stone from the Niagara; beds three to five inches. dip east exposed eighteen inches. Near the village of Marseilles, in the same township, Mr. Charles Norris and Michael Keckler have small quarries of Niagara limestone.
The water-lime formation, which in counties further north presents three distinct, general lithological characters, in Wyandot County, is mainly reduced to one. That aspect of the water-lime designated "Phase No. 3,11 passes, with the addition of much bituminous matter into a thin bedded, even, slaty condition, which, first black, weathers blue on the sides of the bedding, or lastly a chocolate color, while tile fractured edge is a very drab. Throughout the country it is known in this condition as "blue slate." When the bituminous matter is more evenly distributed through the rock, instead of being confined to the thin partings, the beds are thicker and of a blue color.
The principal outcrop of the water-lime within the county is along the left bank of the Tymochtee Creek, in Section 27 and 34, in Crawford Township. The banks of the creek expose perpendicular sections of four to eight feet of these thin beds. The dip being continuously toward the southwest, a connected section of eighty-four feet ten inches may be made out in a descending order. The beds are homogenous, tough, thin, sometimes having so much bituminous matter as to appear like the great black slate. The thinnest beds are. however, streaked with alternations of dark drab, and a bituminous brown. When wet the brown is almost black, but when dry and weathered it sometimes assumes a blue color, and if long weathered it becomes chocolate. There are among these occasional patches of thicker, even drab beds, which finally become so persistent upward as to require a special designation.
Mr. McD. M. Carey has a quarry in these thin, blue beds and on Section 27, which has acquired considerable notoriety for the large, smooth slabs or flagging it affords. Some of the thicker beds furnish also a handsome and useful stone for building. The dip is toward the south-southwest exposure about twelve feet perpendicular. The stone here shows the characteristic Leperditia altu. The quarry is in the old river bank or hard-pan terrace, about forty rods from the stream. This water-lime is seen in the following places in Wvandot County:
In Section 16, southwest quarter, in Crane Township, at the old "Indian Mill," these blue flags have been taken out of the bed of the Sandusky and used for foundations for the mill. But in the construction of the bridge at the same place, the stone used is said to have come from Leesville, Crawford County.
In Section 21, Crane Township, at Carter's dam, in the Sandusky River, Mr. John Strasser has opened the water-lime. The stone is in irregular, thick and thin beds. When freshly quarried, it is blue-drab, and of a fine grain. Exposed a short time to the weather, the whole pile becomes a bright blue. The fracture of the beds, however, becomes a much more ashen or drab-blue than the sides of the bedding. The dip in W. Strasser's bed is about nine feet deep. About thirty rods east of Strasser's quarry, in the bed of the Sandusky, blue flagging is taken out like that of Mr. Carey's quarry on the Tymochtee Creek, except that here the blue color pervades the white mass. Fragments of this, whenever bituminous and jointed, come out in long tapering pieces. These flags show a fossil which appears like a species of modiolopsis. In Crane Township, southwest quarter, Section 22, in a bed of Rock Run, a fine grained blue stone is quarried and used for
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foundations. It weathers a drab color to the depth of a half-inch or an inch, all over the outside. One only of. six inches is exposed. In the northwest quarter of Section 27, in the same township, along the bed of Rock Run the water-lime is abundantly exposed, with a general dip southeast, changing to west at the west end of the outcrop. Mr. Peter Weinandy here burns lime and sells stone. This bed has a depth of about fifty-seven feet Beds which certainly cannot have been fractured more than a few months, were seen to have already acquired a coating of drab one-eighth to one-fourth of an inch thick over the fractured surface. The layers themselves, before quarrying, are sometimes one-half to two-thirds drab, with a blue streak through the center. It would seem as if the drab were entirely an acquired color, and that perhaps the whole water-lime was at first a blue rock. The access of air or 0rated water seems to cause the change. the fact that the lower, regular beds (as at this quarry), shut off the peculations of water through the rock, may account for the longer preservation of the blue. Whenever the beds are lenticular or irregular, or are so situated that the atmosphere finds free access to them, they are drab. They are seen to be blue only when deep-seated or lying very true.
In Section 28, east side of Tymochtee Township, the Tymochtee slate is seen in the bed of the Sandusky, at Hayman's mill. Handsome flags, about two inches thick, are taken out. In Section 22, Pitt, Township, Mr. James Anderson's quarry shows the following section in the bank of the Sandusky : Bituminous drab, ten inches ; very hard, flinty, irregular beds, five feet.
There are sometimes bituminous films visible on the fractured edge ; no fossils. In Pitt Township, on the southwest quarter of Section 10, Mrs. Rebecca Smith owns a quarry in the Sandusky, from which a fine-grained, even-bedded blue stone is taken, which weathers an ashen color. Here are some handsome beds, six to eight inches thick, affording a fine building material. Dip southeast. At various points in Pitt Township, the same features of the water-lime may be seen. No reliable estimate can be made of the thickness exposed, or of their relative places in the formation, the outcrops are so isolated, and show so nearly the same characters. The same stone is quarried in the river at Upper Sandusky by Mr. William Frederick. The same stone is found in Section 17, in Crawford Township, on lands of Mr. George Mullholand, and on Section 24, in the quarries of Messrs. Mitten and O'Brien, in the water- lime. The stone from these openings is in thick beds, much like the gray, hard beds of the quarries at Tiffin.
The lower corniferous may be seen in interrupted outcrop along the Sycamore Creek, from Benton, in Crawford County, to Section 18, in Syca. more Township, Wyandot County. Through the whole of this distance it is so hid by drift that no reliable section can be obtained. It is of the coarse-grained, thick-bedded, harsh and magnesian type until just within Section 17, Sycamore, the character of the rock changes. It assumes very much the aspect of the drab, thin- bedded water- lime. A little further down the creek the soft, thick beds of the lower corniferous return. Further still, there is another similar change to a fine-grained, compact,. light-blue stone, without fossils. This character continues through the most of Section 27, and some in Section 21, evinced not often by rock in situ, but by the angular, bluish, fine grained pieces in the stream. This member of the lower corniferous was also seen near Melmore, in Seneca County. No opportunity has been offered to ascertain its thickness, but,
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judging from the superficial expose, it may have a thickness of thirty or even forty feet. In the northwest quarter of Section 21, Sycamore, about eighteen inches of similar compact blue limestone maybe seen in the creek, underlain by a blue shale, which crumbles conchoidally and shows spots of darker blue or purple. It is sometimes quite rocklike, yet when long weathered it crumbles. Its thickness cannot be stated, though there can. not be less than ten feet, judging from the distance it occupies the bed of the creek. On Section 18 of the same township, a thick-bedded, even. grained rock, harsh, like a sandstone, is slightly exposed. It is gray, without visible fossils, and weathers buff. It is impossible to give its dip, thickness, or relation to the shale just mentioned. It is probably below that, Near the same place, land of Andrew Bretz, there are also large fragments of a fragile, bituminous, crinoidal limestone, seen in the bed of the creek. In Pitt Township, southwest quarter of Section 25, on the land of Jacob Brewer, the lower corniferous is slightly exposed in the upper bank of the Sandusky River. The rock consists almost entirely of the coral Coenostroma monticulifera vein. On a thickness of about a foot can be in situ, but a mass of two feet thickness is tilted up so as to present the edges of the beds in a perpendicular position.
The Drift.-Wherever sections were observed throughout the county, the drift shows, as in counties further north, the two usual colors. The first is light brown, or ashen, and extends downward about twelve feet. It may be stratified or entirely unstratified, and forms the soil where it has not been covered with alluvial or marshy accumulations. Its color alone distinguishes it from the underlying blue or Erie clay. They both contain bowlders that show glacial action. On Section 24, Crawford Township, the lower member was seen exposed twenty-seven feet four inches in the bank of Tymochtee Creek, embracing beds of gravel and sand. 'The upper overlaying was twelve feet, and entirely unassorted, yet on Section 18, Tymochtee Township, both are more or less stratified. No two sections of this bank would be the same. The greatest uniformity in the order of alternation is in the upper part. The blue hard pan sometimes extends upward quite to the brown clays and sands, and in one case the whole bank consists of hard pan, the upper portion having the brown color. Hence the general character of this bank, and of the drift in Wyandot County, is as follows: Brown clay and sand, stratified; brown hard pan; statified brown clay; stratified blue clay and sand; finer blue clay and blue hard pan; brown clay; blue clay; debris, bowlders and slides. On the opposite side of the creek this bank is entirely wanting. There is a bank of a trifle over twelve feet, composed of agglutinated, rusty sand, without gravel or bowlders, at the base of which, near the water, is a bed of vegetable remains containing some pretty large limbs, and numerous branches of wood. Such deposits are common in the alluvial bottoms bordering the streams. There is a gradual ascent from the level of this bank to the height of the bank on the opposite side of the river, attainting that elevation in a distance of forty rods.
Material Resources. -The chief source of material wealth in Wyandot County, as with other counties in Northwestern Ohio, lies in its rich and exhaustless soil. The streams are generally too small or too sluggish to be reliable for water-powers. The rocks themselves are not known to possess sky deposits of valuable minerals. They will serve for common use in building, and will make an excellent quicklime. There is reason to believe, also, that the water-lime, when having the characters seen in the quarry of Mrs. Smith, Section 10, Pitt Township, will afford a cement of hydraulic properties.
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Good brick, of a red color, are made in different places in the county from the surface of the drift. Such establishments are owned at Upper Sandusky by Jacob Gottfried & Brother, and by Ulrich & McAfee; also on the southeast quarter of Section 11, Salem, and on the Infirmary Farm, by Jacob Ulrich. Sand for mortar is easily obtained from the numerous natural sections of the drift along the drainage valleys. A sand bank at Upper Sandusky was observed to underlie a deposit of eighty feet of brown hard pan, and was excavated to the depth of ten feet. The layers of sand, lay nearly horizontal.