HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY

(RETURN TO THE TITLE PAGE)

INDIAN HISTORY - ORGANIZATION AND EARLY SETTLEMENT OF THE COUNTY, AND

EARLY HISTORY OF GREENVILLE TOWNSHIP AND CITY.</P>

BY. JOHN WHARRY.

To narrate the history of any given locality is a labor that seldom satisfies the writer who engages in it, and more frequently fails to interest or gratify the reader. Many things must be omitted from want of information, and the relation of many more. for the want of correct information as to both actors and events. would be better left unattempted. The uncertainty of human memory, and the defects. mutilations and losses of record evidence must frequently expose the labor of the historian to just criticism, and not unfrequently to unjust incredulity.

The rise and fill' of the "Northwest Territory." from its creation by the ordinance of July 13. 1787, to its present status of five large and populous States, now in a great measure controlling the nation of which they form so important a part, seems so like it vision of Ezekiel. Daniel or John, that the narration of that rise and progress must now. near the close of the first century of that progress, be deemed mythical and incredible.

Ninety-three years ago, there were not within the limits of the Territory, exclusive of fifty or sixty thousand Indians, who have been swept away like the mist on the river. two thousand people. if half that number, of Caucasian lineage, and that thousand or upward have multiplied until the census of the current year, 1880 will show a product of ten millions. This transformation has taken place within three generations. and has never been equaled. save in the close of the fourth and beginning of the fifth century. when the North Pole swarmed and a new race swept down and trod out of sight the old Roman Empire,extending from Thule to the Caspian. and from Ormus to the Pillars of Hercules.

Ohio was the first-born of the ordinance of '87, and is now—if not the "keystone " of the arch of the Union Valley of Achor and the door of hope " of the Nation (we spell the word with a big N), of which she forms so conspicuous a part.

But the writer has not undertaken to write the history of the United States, the Northwest Territory, nor the State of Ohio that duty must devolve upon somebody else. II is only purpose is to gather up and save from utter oblivion sonic of the incidents. men and events. where presence and occurrence go to make a part. and a part only, of the history of the town of Greenville, and the township in which it is located.

Some events in its earlier years made it then a place of some note, while many other events of later date may not seem to deserve recital or perusal here, and would be recorded to little purpose. save that the narrator desires to give obedience to the old injunction, " not to despise the day of small things."

The town of Greenville. the county scat of one of the largest and best agricultural counties of Ohio. like many other towns of the State, has a history, and, like many others whose history dates back to a period beyond the memory of "the

208 - HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY

oldest inhabitant," many events making part of the history are certain, and capable of truthful and accurate narration, whilst many others are of that character  that, to now relate them with a truthful regard to time and place, and actors and circumstances, is ft duty that requires care and labor to discriminate between myth and truth and between fiction and fact ; and this the writer purposes to do as best he may, premising that many events of which mention will be made came to his knowledge half a century ago, from the actors in those events, who are now all passed away.

In the old Territorial days. under the administration of the first President of the United States, attempts were made to subdue the aboriginal race that occupied the Northwest Territory, and open it up for the occupancy of those who would plant and foster civilization ; and there were many such. who desired to find homes for themselves and their children after them, in the valleys of the Muskingum, Scioto, and the two Miamis.

Scarcely had a settlement been projected in the Territory by Putnam and Symmes and their associates, founders of Marietta and Cincinnati, when an expedition was organized and force sent against the Indians of Ohio, under the command of Gen. Josiah Harmar.

This foray, ill disciplined, ill provided for and ill commanded, in a very short time was defeated and scattered, with great loss of men and means, and the prospect of the Territory was darkened.

To this day, the accounts of Harmar's defeat are a puzzle and a trouble to historians, and their statements as to time and place disagree, and all are more or less right, and are also more or less wrong.

The facts, when simply and truthfully related, were, that Harmar's army was in a state of mutiny, and had separated into three bodies. each going on its own hook," that were met and disastrously defeated by the Indians on different days and places, between the headwaters of the Maumee. Miami and Scioto. in the region of what is now Hardin and Hancock Counties. The greater number of these forces thus divided—and nominally under Harmar's command, but in fact under no command whatever—were slaughtered or captured. and those who escaped fled as best they could to Wheeling, Pittsburgh. Limestone or Cincinnati. Of these, there were enough left to tell the tale, and it was told so many different ways, that, although nearly everybody believed a part, scarcely anybody believed but a part of the then current relations of Harmar's campaign and defeat. The disaster occurred in the summer of 1789.

Maj. George Adams, then a soldier in Harmar's army, again in the service as a Captain of scouts under Wayne, and, nearly twenty years later, commandant of the garrison at Greenville, during the negotiations preceding the execution of the treaty of 1814, of which notice will be taken. and, later in 'life. a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Darke County. was five times shot and severely wounded in one of three several defeats of Harman. He survived, and was carried on a litter between two horses to Cincinnati, although on the way a grave was dug for him three evenings in succession. With his ashes in the Martin Cemetery. three miles. east of Greenville, are two of the bullets of the five, which he carried in his body from 1789 until his decease in 1832.

The next movement against the Indians was set on foot in 1791. At the head of this was placed in command by President Washington. who was a great stickler for red tape and things, Gen. St. Clair, Governor of the Northwest territory. and with him was placed, as second in command, Gen. Richard Butler, with whom he had not been on speaking terms for ten years, owing to an old feud dating back to the Massacre of Wyoming, in the days of the Revolution.

St. Clair, with an army of half-disciplined and half-provisioned men, manhed north from Cincinnati, into an unknown wilderness, in October, 1791, and before he reached the Wabash, which, in the absence of correct geographical knowledge, was supposed to be the St. Mary's River, his command was in almost the same condition

HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY - 209

of Harmar's army, two years before ; one regiment was in open mutiny, and wits on the retreat, and another was sent back to reduce the refractory to subjection. Late in the evening of November 3, 1791, his troops, which had been on a forced march, and on half rations, all day, lay down weary and hungry, in an improvised camp, on the bank of the river, where the town of Recovery is now located. The Indians were in force within a mile beyond the river, under the leadership of Little Turtle, the war chief of the Miamis, who, in this engagement, were re-enforced by the Wyandots, Pottawatomies and Shawnees, under their chiefs.

Before daybreak on the morning of November 4, 1791, a day long remembered by many mourning families, from the Monongahela to the Miami, St. Clair's force, numbering about 1,300 men, was attacked, and in less than two hours 600 men were dead and the residue routed and fleeing as fast as their famished condition would permit. Many were slaughtered on the retreat, and it was no unusual thing, efter the lapse of more than forty years, in clearing up the lands of Gibson Township. in which the site of the defeat is situated, to find the bleached bones of dead who fell by the wayside.

The news of St. Clair's defeat spread over the land, and the nation was excited, and, as is frequently the case in like excitements, the actual loss, great as it was, was greatly exaggerated, and blame for the disaster placed on other shoulders than where it rightly belonged.

No such disaster had befallen the whites in a conflict with the Indians, since Logan had defeated Lord Dunmore at the battle of the Point, before the Revolution. A court-martial was called and deliberated ; after many days' investigation, St. Clair was acquitted of blame, and none dared to charge the disaster to those who should have been held responsible for it ; but now, after the lapse of almost a century, it is beginning to be understood that the disasters of 1789 and 1791 are to be laid at the door of Gen. Washington, then President of the United States, and Gen. Knox, his Secretary of War.

St. Clair, in his march northward, passed over the plain on which the town of Greenville now stands, had not noted its adaptability to military uses, although he had fortified a post at Fort Jefferson, five miles south of it, and in a military point of view having no characteristics of a locality that could be defended from an external enemy.

The demand of the people of Western Pennsylvania and Northwestern Virginia for more lands had its effect on Congress, as well as upon the President, and measures were taken to organize another campaign against the Indians, who yet held the valleys of the Miami, Scioto and Muskingum. For the command of the force sought to be raised to clear out and subjugate all the southern part of Ohio, the President selected Gen. Anthony Wayne, a Revolutionary General, yet in the prime of life. as the commander of the force soon to be raised for the purpose of clearing the Northwest Territory of its enemies.

Wayne had before him the knowledge so dearly bought by the preceding campaigns of Harmar and St. Clair, and fully appreciated the causes of disaster in each of those campaigns, and set himself to remedy the trouble so patent to a military man. that chiefly caused the failure of those campaigns. An army was soon recruited, numbering between three and four thousand men, carefully officered, and then began the business of drill and discipline.

The summer and fall of 1792, and the winter and spring of 1793, passed away, and Wayne's forces were yet under daily exercise, acquiring efficiency for the duty that would soon be required of them. Fort Washington, now inside the limits of Cincinnati ; Fort Hamilton, the present county seat of Butler County, and another fort, occupying the present site of Eaton, were built and garrisoned, and in the fall of 1793, Wayne, with the residue of his force, proceeded northward and occupied a plain on the southwest branch of the Great Miami, where be built and strongly fortified a post that was for the next two years to be his headquarters, and which he named, in honor of his old friend of the Revolution,Fort Greenville.

210 - HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY

Wayne's arrival on the ground on which he built Fort Greenville, and which now is wholly within the limits of the present town of Greenville, was on the 13th of October, 1793, and from that date may be said to commence the history of the town of Greenville, and with its history, it may also be said, commenced, the develop- ment of the Northwest Territory, as created by the ordinance of the old Congress six years before, into the now great States of Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin, occupying the center, and in a great measure controlling the action, civil and political, of the United States of America.

FORT GREENVILLE

When Wayne first occupied Fort Greenville, in the autumn of 1793, anything like a civil government in the Northwest Territory could hardly be said to have an existence, as the little hamlets of Marietta and Cincinnati were the cull places between the Ohio and Mississippi where there was any call for a Judge or Justice of the Peace, a Sheriff or a Constable. The Territory had, two years before. been parceled out by the Governor and Council into the five counties of Washington, Hamilton, Knox, St. Clair and Wayne, the boundaries whereof at this day no man knoweth, and can only infer their location by learning that the Judges of the Territory performed circuit duty and went through the forms of holding courts at Marietta, Cincinnati, Vincennes, Kaskaskia and Detroit. the seats of justice of the several counties before named.

The same fall that Wayne occupied Fort Greenville, a detachment of his army advanced northward and built and garrisoned small stockade fortresses of sufficient strength to withstand any force likely to be brought by his Indian foes against them at Fort Recovery, on the ground of St. Clair's defeat ; Loramie's, where the Indians and French burned out David and Alexander Loramie in 1752 ; at St. Mary's, on the river of the same name, which is a tributary of the Maumee, or, as it was then called, the Miami of the Lakes, and at some other points. Fort Recovery, soon after it was built, was attacked by an Indian force nearly ten times the number of its garrison, but safely withstood the attack and severely punished its assailants. In the Indian council which preceded the assault on Fort Recovery, occurred one of those seemingly little disagreements which engendered distrust, but had an influence which, as we shall see, had a subsequent effect. and tended months afterward to spread distrust in the Indian host, and bear evil fruit. Little Turtle strongly urged his allies to let the fort alone, as it was not against such places that their warriors could hope for success. His efforts were unavailing, and the assault was made against his counsel and judgment. and he quietly informed his own tribe, the Marais, that they could see just as well if they kept back out of harm's way, and let those who were desirous of butting their heads against Gibson's palisades try it on, and see what would come of it." The Miamis profited by his advice, and although appearing to aid in the effort to win the victory over Gibson and his garrison, after a whole day's hard fight and when night came and an account of killed and wounded was taken, were found to have sustained little or no loss. The Wyandots, Pottawatomies and Shawnees had suffered severely. This brought about distrust and jealousy of the Turtle and his counsel that prevented his advice from being heeded, when it probably might have secured as great a victory over Wayne as he had obtained over St. Clair nearly three years before.

Wayne passed the winter of 1793-94 in strengthening his position, securing supplies and getting his command in good fighting trim and order, as well as in obtaining full and thorough information of all that was going on in the Indian camps and councils. His spies, "trigged" out in their paint and grease, were everywhere from Greenville to beyond the Maumee. and took note of every ing, and kept their commander thoroughly posted. Elliott and McKee were doing their best at Detroit to stimulate their allies to perseverance, and had their adherents in Wayne's headquarters at Greenville ; and one prominent individual, implicated

HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY - 211

by intercepted letters, was arrested and ironed and laid in the guardhouse for months, and although the evidence was insufficient to establish his complicity and treachery by proof, such as a court would require, but few in the army had any doubt of his guilt. It is not best, even at this late day, to name the man alluded to, as his descendants in the third and fourth generation occupy high social standing in Western Ohio.

In June, 1794, Wayne, having learned that the Indian force was embodied and within a few miles of him, took the field with about 3,000 men, leaving still a strong garrison in Fort Greenville, and took up his line of march with care, circumspection and no undue haste, to the northward, taking the route toward Loramie and St. Mary's. On the third night after leaving Greenville, his forces were encamped in the southeastern part of what is now Patterson Township, and the main body of the Indians were not more than two miles distant from him on the bank of Black Swamp Creek, in the same township. On that night, at a council held in the Indian camp, at Which Maj. Adams, of whom mention has been previously made in these pages, and who had so far recovered of the wounds received five years before, as to be in the service in Wayne's army, was present, disguised in full Indian rig and paint, Little Turtle strongly urged that an onslaught be . male before morning. This advice was withstood by the Crane, head chief of the Wyandots, and by the Shawnee and Pottawatomie chiefs, and the head men of other tribes who were in the Indian force. The reasons given by those who opposed the Turtle's counsel were, that they desired Wayne to be farther away from his home. as they designated Fort Greenville, and that they could better engage him when they were nearer their friends, as they designated a British fort and garrison on the Maumee, which had been kept up in defiance of the stipulations of the treaty of 1783 ; but the true reason of their opposition to the Turtle's advice was their distrust of him. excited the previous autumn at Recovery.

The views of the majority prevailed, and the two armies, seldom more than three or four miles apart, continued to move to the north until, on the morning of July 20. 1794, at Rouge De Bout, beyond the Maumee, in plain view of the English fort, and almost in reach of its guns, the Indians made a stand and were routed with considerable loss, and fled for succor to the fort, but were not permitted to enter, as Col. Campbell. the commander, had a wholesome apprehension of what might befall him and his garrison, if he gave any cause, by manifesting an interest for the safety of his friends. Subsequently to the battle, some spicy correspondence took place between Wayne and Col. Campbell, but all that came of it was that Wayne contented himself with burning and destroying everything pertaining to the fort and its garrison outside of their stockade. After the defeat of the Indians, the commander built and garrisoned a fort named after himself, at the confluence of the St. Mary and St. Joseph Rivers, where they unite to form the Maumee. and another down the Maumee, at the junction with the Auglaize.

The Indians. finding themselves sorely pressed by Wayne, who, as Little Turtle said, slept with his eyes open, and deriving no aid or comfort from their English allies, either on the Maumee or at Detroit, soon began to think that peace, on the terms they ascertained could be had, was better than to have their braves exterminated by the unerring rifles of Wayne's scouts, who seemed to them to be everywhere, began to make overtures, as they had learned an important lesson. In the old French war, which had been terminated in 1763, before many of those who now formed their force were born, their old men remembered that they were always upheld by their French allies, but the English race, now in power in Upper Canada, and along the frontier, cared no more for the Indians than they did for their dogs, save as it would subserve their own purposes, irrespective of what of good or evil might fall to the lot of the red men.

Arrangements were made in the latter part of the spring of 1793, the chiefs, head men and warriors of a number of the tribes assembled at Fort Greenville, where, after several weeks' negotiation, the terms of a treaty were agreed upon.,

212 - HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY

and, with all due formalities, signed by the contracting parties on the 3d day of August. 1793, and in due time was approved and confirmed, and peace restored. By this treaty, in consideration of sundry perpetual annuities to the several tribes represented at Greenville, some of which remain annually payable to this day, there was ceded to the United States almost the entire south half of the State of Ohio, and a large gore of Eastern Indiana, and a number of small tracts to be used by the United States as sites for occupation for military purposes with in what yet remained as Indian Territory.

Wayne's treaty opened up for settlement. by a white population, the valleys of the Muskingum, Hockhocking, Scioto and the Little and Great Miami Rivers, and the lower tributaries, and the business of surveying the newly acquired territory into ranges, townships and sections, preparatory to entry and settlement, went on with little intermission for several years. and after the withdrawal of Wayne's army and the evacuation of Greenville, Recovery. Loramie and other frontier posts by their garrisons; the surveyors employed by the Government. and their assistants, were the only white men who were at any time found within the limits of the territory that in after years became the county of Darke, named after one of the brave but unfortunate officers of St. Clair's army, who met his death at Recovery in November, 1791.

Fort Greenville was evacuated by its garrison in the spring of 1796, and, later in the same year, was burned down to obtain nails and other material to be used in the construction of the buildings of the first settlers of Montgomery County, in Dayton or its vicinity.

During the occupation of Fort Greenville by Wayne's army, it was visited by M. Volney, a Frenchman of considerable note in the closing years of the last century, author of the " Ruins of Empires " and some other publications, the perusal of which afforded gratification to men who scouted the Bible as a book of fables. This man, who could not believe the narrative of the deluge as given by Moses in the book of Genesis, was stuffed by the statement of some of Wayne's younger officers, who accompanied him on his trip to Greenville, as they passed the falls of Greenville Creek, some twelve miles below the fort, that the Ohio River, in times of great floods, backed the water of the Miami River and its tributaries until the water in the creek was raised to a level with the top of the falls. This yarn he gravely related as a fact in his book of " Notes of Travel in America," published after his return to Europe, thus demonstrating the truth of the apothegm " that in credulity, the unbeliever can go ahead of men of faith."

In 1799, 1800, 1801 and 1802, Israel and Stephen Ludlow. Daniel C. Cooper, David Nelson and Benjamin Chambers. and in 1805, Fulton. McKhann and McLene. with their assistants, engaged in the work of surveying the land for the United States, were the only white men who were at any time within Darke County. so far as any knowledge has come down to us. No doubt Indians trapped and hunted within its borders, but that rests only on conjecture. grounded on its probability.

Some time subsequent to the treaty of 1795 but the year cannot be ascertained, except that it was between 1796 and 1804—the Prophet. and 'is brother, the celebrated Tecumseh of the Shawnee tribe. emigrated from the Indian town of Upper Piqua, with a few families who adhered to them, and established a small Indian village above Greenville on the west side of Mud Creek : the site of this village is now within the farms of William F. Bishop and Joseph Bryson, and continued there until about 1811. The writer of these pages learned many years ago from the late Col. John Johnson, who, from the time of the elder Adams until the Presidency of Gen. Jackson, was agent on . behalf of the United States for the Indian tribes of the Northwest Territory. that the Prophet and his adherents were driven off by his tribe. the Shawnees, on account of his and their bad character, that Black Hoof and the other Indians said that the Prophet was a bad man and a thief. This statement might well be believed without having any Indian's word for it. The writer in his time has seen and

HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY - 213

known several thousand Indians, but is satisfied that he never beheld half a dozen of the " noble red men " who would not steal whenever and wherever they could have the opportunity, anything and everything they could lay their hands on, unless it might be a ship's anchor or a pair of millstones.

The character of the Prophet and his people was not in the least improved by their translation from Piqua to the Mud Creek town; they continued to steal as long as they remained there, and had they continued there until now would still have pursued the same high calling. A Frenchman, whose name cannot now be ascertained, built and occupied as a trading-house, on a small stale, a little log cabin on the west side of the creek, opposite the site of the burned fort, about the year 1803. but could not stand it very long; in the early part of the summer of 1806, the Prophet and his Indians had stolen his entire stock, powder, lead, flints, tobacco and whisky. and the poor frog-eater was "busted" and left.

FIRST SETTLEMENTS.

We come now to the period when what may be called the first settlement of the town and

township of Greenville, may be said to commence. Late in 1806, or early in 1807, Azor Scribner, leaving his wife and probably two young children near Middletown. came with a small stock of Indian goods, including tobacco and whisky. and opened out in the Frenchman's deserted cabin. He did not bring his family from Middletown until 1808, but at what time of the year is not now known. his eldest daughter yet living here, and who was born before he came here, being then too young to remember the time of year that her mother, her sister and herself were brought here by her father.

It is now well understood that the first white man who, with a wife and children, emigrated to the county and settled in Greenville Township. was Samuel Boyd, who came in 1807 and built himself a cabin about two and a half miles north by east from the site of Fort Greenville, on the bank of a branch that yet goes by the name of Boyd's Creek. Boyd was a native of Maryland, had lived in Kentucky and was probably married there before he emigrated to Ohio, and had, as far as the writer has been able to learn, made a short stop of one or two years near the Miami, in Butler County, before emigrating to the wilderness that two years afterward created the county of Darke. Boyd lost his wife about 1816, and she was the first person buried in the old graveyard below the railroad bridge ; the early settlers having previously used as a cemetery the lot on which the Catholic Church is erected. He died in 1829 or 1830 ; one of his daughters, the wife of John Carnahan, had died in 1821 or 1822, and another, the wife of Robert Martin, survived until about three years ago, and previous to her decease was for some years recognized at the " oldest inhabitant." Soon after Boyd came, Azor Scribner removed his family and, abandoning the cabin on the west side of the creek, occupied one of the buildings of the fort that had escaped the fire inside of the pickets. Scribner died in 1822 ; his widow in the early part of 1825 married a Yankee adventure', who, in less than a year, deserted her, and the last ever heard of him he was in a Canada jail on a charge of treason, having been involved in McKenzie's rebellion, which occurred some forty years ago.

The next settler in the county, although not within Greenville Township, to which he afterward removed, was Abraham Studabaker, who settled on the south side of the creek below the bridge at Gettysburg. He came with his wife and one or two children in time to plant corn in the spring of 1808.

In the summer of 1808, John Devor purchased from the United States the half-section of land which had been the site of Fort Greenville, and in conjunction with his son-in-law. Robert Gray, laid out, partly within and partly without the old fort, what may be called the initial part of the present town of Greenville, to which a dozen or more additions have since been made. Their town plat was executed and acknowledged on the 14th day of August, 1808, and sent to Miami County,

214 - HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY.

which then included within its limits the whole of what is now Darke County, for record.

On the same day that Devor entered the town half-section. he also entered for his neighbor, John Bonner. of Montgomery County. a half-section some five miles down the creek below Greenville. and Maj. Murray. of Hamilton. entered the quarter-section on which Fort Jefferson had been built by St. Clair on his ill- starred campaign of 1791. Later in the year, Mr. Studabaker entered the tract on which he settled below Gettysburg. The patents for Bonner's and Studabaker's land were not issued for many years.

After the lapse of more than seventy years. it is a matter of considerable difficulty either to state the order in which emigrants arrived in the new settlement, or even anything that would specify all who did come. It is also, at this day, a matter of considerable uncertainty. if ascertained at all, to find out when what subsequently became, by legislative enactment. Darke County, was organized as a civil township of Miami County. This much is known, that the new settlement was re-enforced by the arrival, in 1808. of Thomas McGinnis and family from what was yet the new State of Tennessee, and Barnabas Burns, who was married to the mother of the wife of McGinnis, who was a native of either North or South Carolina. but emigrated to Ohio from Tennessee. Both became hind-owners on the west side of Mud Creek, between Greenville and the Prophet's town. as the Indian village was called, to which allusion has been made in these pares. The some year. or early in 1809, came Enos Terry, afterward an Associate Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and entered the quarter-section northeast of the town, and laid off upon it another town plat, also called Greenville, that, subsequently to the creation of Darke County, was established as the county seat. but so continued for a brief period. The town site occupied about twenty or twenty-five acres in the northwest corner at the quarter-section. It was then the day of small things no man ever built upon or dwelt within the limits of the town. Horatio G. Phillips. of Dayton, purchased two lots, for which lie never received a title. but for which he received in lieu a deed in subsequent years of two lots in Devon and Gray's town, to purchase his acquiescence in the measures taken to remove the seat of justice of the county to the other town on the southeast side of the creek. In 1809. came William and Joseph Wilson, from the Little Miami. to which they had emigrated only a few years before, from Washington County. in Pennsylvania ; both bought land settled north of Greenville. and, both being natives of the holy sod of Ould Ireland," the name of Ireland " was given to. and for many years retained by. that part of Greenville Township where they were located. William Wilson was located on a quarter-section but half a mile north of the Devor purchase of the site the old fort, and one mile north of his quarter was the quarter-section of his brother Joseph. Both men had families of children. some quite young and others grown up to manhood. William Wilson died in 1821. and his wife several years afterward. Joseph Wilson sold out in 1826. and, with his family. sons and daughters then grown up and married. emigrated to the West. somewhere. to grow up with the country." Not very long after Pevor and Gray had laid off the town of Greenville, probably within a year. Gray disposed of his interest in the newly laid- out town. and the residue of the half-section in which it was situated, to his aunt, Mrs. Rachel Armstrong. then a widow with four young children—the eldest not ten years old—who, with her family. removed to and settled in Greenville. about the close of 1809. Devor, the other proprietor, still continued to reside in the county of Montgomery. Mrs. Armstrong. with her nephew, William Devor. a son of the co-proprietor, who came and resided as a member of her family with her ; both died of a disease called the cold plague... in January. 1812. Mrs. Armstrong's children were then taken in charge by her relatives in Warren and Hamilton counties ; one of them. Samuel Armstrong born in February, 1806. yet survives, unmarried and keeping bachelor's hall. at Walnut Hills. Hamilton County.

HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY - 215

FORMATION OF DARKE COUNTY.

The Legislature of Ohio, then in session at Zanesville, by their act of January 3.1809, created the county of Darke out of territory previously forming a part of the county of Miami. and, within a year afterward, a commission appointed by the Legislature established the seat of justice of the newly formed county at Terry's, town of Greenville. north of the creek. This selection was procured, as it was sopn afterward charged, by what fifty years later would have been denominated “cheenanigen." practiced on the Commissioners by Terry and old Billy Wilson, the first of whom it was alleged had promised each of the Commissioners a choice lot in the new county seat, and the other had added strong persuasions in the way of a liberal use of whisky and some ready money, so that even at that early clay, the corruption of men occupying positions of trust was not deemed to be a myth or an impossibility. Whatever the facts may have been, no investigation was ever made. nor were any legal proofs ever offered, but the matter was subject of public talk and general suspicion.

And whilst speaking on this subject, it may as well be stated, that, by the enactment of the Legislature at the session of 1810-11, a new commission was created. to whom was confided the duty of relocating the seat of justice of the county. This commission, consisting of Messrs. Barbee and Gerard, of Miami County. and Lanier. of Preble, after considering the propositions of Terry, David Briggs. and Devor and Mrs. Armstrong, looking to the material benefits to the county. as proffered by the parties. accepted the proposition of Devor and Mrs. Armstrong, and selected as the future county seat the town laid out at Wayne's old fort, of Greenville.

The accepted proposition covenanted to donate to the county one-third of all the town lots then laid out, or that they or their heirs might thereafter lay out. on the adjoining lands in the west half of Section 35, in which their town plat was located.

Some years after, Mrs. Armstrong having died in the mean time, Devor, for himself and on behalf of the heirs of Mrs. Armstrong, pursuant to the order of the Court of Common Pleas, executed their contract so far as the lots then laid off was concerned, by conveying to the Commissioners of Miami County, in trust for the county of Darke, when it should thereafter be organized, thirty-two of the ninety-six lots then laid out, but, although additional town lots on the adjacent land of the half-section have since been laid out by the heirs of Devor, and also by the heirs of Mrs. Armstrong, no further donation or conveyance has ever been made, nor have the Commissioners of Darke County ever demanded or required any further performance of their covenant.

After the creation of the county in 1809, a number of families emigrated to Greenville and its vicinity ; some remained only for a short period, whilst others resided here until theij' decease. or until, in after years, the glowing accounts of a better land," farther toward the setting sun, tempted them to seek their fortunes on the banks of the Wabash, St. Joseph, Illinois and Missouri, and in the prairies of Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska. The names of some of them are no longer remembered. and of all that had attained to manhood or womanhood, who came prior to the close of 1812, not one remains ; all are gone, and even their descendants are as the forest leaves after the frosts and snows of winter have passed—lying in the ground, or blown away.

Among those who came between the spring of 1809 and the fall of 1810, the writer. at this distant day, can only name a part, and of that part were Moses Scott, from Southwestern Pennsylvania, who, with his son William, were afterward successive Sheriffs of Darke County, serving in the first, second and third regular terms of that office after the organization of the county ; John Studabaker and Abraham Miller. brother and brother-in-law to Abraham Studabaker, who had settled clown the creek some two years before : they were located on lands on the old

216 - HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY.

trace to Fort Jefferson, some two miles south of Greenville : Scott purchased a quarter-section, a half-mile south of the Devor purchase, that has for the last thirty years or more been the property of David Studabaker. and also purchased two lots adjoining the public square in Greenville. on which he erected a two-story log house, in which for the period of from twelve to fifteen years. he kept what in those days was regarded as an A No. 1 tavern. or inn, where the weary traveler could he regaled on corn bread, venison, coffee, tea or whisky, as might best suit his appetite or mitigate his hunger and thirst. Scott and what were left of his-family migrated to Fort Wayne, Ind., in 1824. In the Indian troubles of 1S12, he had his powder-horn shot away from his side ; a number of years before. he had a narrow escape when engaged in the whisky insurrection in Western Pennsylvania. and his guests at the tavern in Greenville were always entertained by a recital of how he escaped powder and lead in Pennsylvania, as well as a detail of the powder-horn adventure in the prairie above Greenville. About the time of Scotfs advent in Greenville, came Charles Sumption, commonly known as the " Wax-works," with a family, consisting of a wife, two sons and four daughters. His son George settled on what is now the Bishop Farm, on Mud Creek. which he sold in 1829, and went to the St. Joe country in Northwest Indiana. Charles ultimately settled up the creek, about six miles above Greenville, in Washington Township. One of the daughters married Benoni Overfield, and was long remembered by the traveling public as the first-class landlady of the Overfield Tavern in Troy. Another was married to Jesse Rush, who also migrated with George Sumption to the St. Joe, in 1829. Another daughter married a blackguard named Henry Lowe, who came here from Kentucky on the'hunt of runaway negroes in 1812. The elder Sumption having buried his his first wife and married a second, died near what is now known as Coletown in 1825.

Early in 1810, came from Pickaway Plains, below Circleville, on the Scioto, James Rush, Henry Rush. Andrew Rush an' Henry Creviston, and settled, the two first-named at and adjoining the Prophet's town. on Mud Creek, Andrew Rush on the West Branch, where it was crossed by what was known as the "Squaw Road" or Delaware Path. Creviston, after a year or two. and after his brother-in- law, Matthew Young. came out from Piekaway County. in conjunction with him purchased land northeast of Coletown, where he resided until 1825. when he went a few miles farther up the creek. and settled in Washington Township. On the organization of the county, in the winter of 1816-17. James Rush was chosen by the Legislature as one of the Associate Judges of the Court of Common Pleas. which office he held for fourteen years. being re-elected by the Legislature in 1824 ; at the expiration of his second term, Judge Rush with all his thmily—save one daughter who, in 1828, was married to the late John Deardorff—removed to Eel River. in Indiana.

Andrew Rush was murdered by the Indians in 1812. as will be elsewhere adverted to in these pages, and Henry Rush died in 1813, leaving a widow who was subsequently married to James Bryson, and four children, three sons and one daughter, of whom only his second son, Lemuel Rush, is now living. at the advanced age of about seventh--five years. about three and a half miles north of Greenville. With the Rush brothers, came their brother-in-law, John Hiller, and settled on the West Branch, adjoining Andrew Rush. After the outbreak of the Indian troubles. in 1812, and the murder of Andrew Rush. Hiller and his family left and went to the Miami, a mile or two above Piqua. where lie remained until about 1816, when he returned to his farm on the West Branch. where he died in 1828, leaving a widow, five sons and three daughters. all of whom are now dead, the last. Aaron Hiller, Esq., having died some two years ago on his farm adjoining the land on which his father settled in 1810.

The emigration in 1811 was very slight, and of those who came scarcely any remained ; but of those who found their way here, one name must not be omitted. Abraham Scribner, a brother of the Azor Scribner who has been previously

HISTORY OF DARKS COUNTY - 217

noticed, came to Greenville in the summer or early fall of 1811. He had previously been master of one or more vessels engaged in the navigation of the Hudson River, from New York to Troy, or in the coasting trade from Passamaquoddy to the capes of the Chesapeake. and, sometimes, as far south as Hatteras.

When he came to the county of Darke, he was about thirty years old. From exposure, while commander of a vessel a year or two before, he had nearly lost the sense of hearing, and this infirmity, in connection with some other peculiarities, made him a man singular and exceptional in his character and deportment.

Part of the time he spent in Greenville, in the family of Mrs. Armstrong, until her death in January, 1812, and part of the time in Montgomery County, in the family of John Devor, one of the proprietors of Greenville, whose daughter Rachel he married in 1814. What he engaged in to make for himself a living for a year or more after he came to this country, none now living knows; he appeared to be always busy. and yet no one could tell what he was doing or whether he was doing anything. Being at Dayton in the spring of 1813, he enlisted in Col. Dick Johnston's mounted regiment, and with it went to Upper Canada, where, in the fall of that year. he participated in the battle of the Fallen Timber, where Proctor was defeated and Tecumseh was killed. After being discharged from the service, about the time he married Miss Devor. and having entered the prairie quarter- section above the mouth of Mud Creek. now owned by Knox & Sater, he erected a log house upon it, and brought his wife from Montgomery County and went to housekeeping.

In about two years. Scribner sold his quarter-section, on which he had only paid his entrance money. $80. to John Compton, of Dayton, for $1,600, and took his pay in a stock of goods at retail price, and opened out a store.

In the summer of 1821. Scribner lost his first wife, and, after an interval of a few weeks, married a second wife. Miss Jane Ireland, of the vicinity of New Paris, who also died in the summer of 1822. After the death of his second wife, he sold out his stock of goods, and, having placed his children among friends, went to the Maumee. where lie purchased land in Henry County, and fooled away his money in half clearing some land and having several thousand rails made, about which, five years afterward, Jake De Long wrote to him that they were lying in the woods, and getting no better very fast." In a few months, he returned to Greenville and resumed the mercantile business. in which he continued the residue of his life. In January, 1825. he married his third wife. He died in March, 1847, in the sixty-sixth year of his age.

This much time and space has been devoted to Mr. Scribner, because, during ten or twelve years of his life, he was " the power" in the county ; he was the autocrat and ruler of the Democratic party. and discharged all the functions of caucuses, primary elections and nominating conventions ; those he allowed to rim for office ran and were elected, and those he forbade had to keep shady and hold their peace. But at last he forked off from Jackson Democracy, although he would be " right side up " now among Democrats, for he was an uncompromising adherent to the resolutions of 1798—State rights and Calhounism. His last wife survives, after thirty-three years of widowhood, living with one of her sons in Western Indiana. The only survivor of the children of his first wife, Mrs. S. J. Arnold, lives in Greenville.

It may be as well here as elsewhere, to relate an occurrence which tended, in its consequences, greatly to retard the early settlement, not only of Greenville and Darke County, but various other towns and counties in Western Ohio and Southeastern Indiana. The mission of Tecumseh to stimulate the western and southern tribes of Indians to engage in a general war against the whites was generally known from the Lakes to New Orleans, but it was not so well, known that his efforts had been in the main unsuccessful. and people were alarmed and excited. He had as vet, owing to the good sense of Little Turtle, Black Hoof and the Crane, failed to enlist the Miamis, Shawnees or Wyandots in what those

218 - HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY.

chiefs deemed a senseless and wild undertaking. that in the end would bring great calamity upon their tribes. when a witless freak of cruelty, cowardice and treachery backed his efforts and turned the scale.

A small stockade had been erected at Greenville, and was garrisoned by a few men under Capt. Wolverton and Lieut. Fish. David Conner had a small trading- house in Greenville, where he dispensed blankets, calico, powder, lead, flints, tobacco, whisky, and other Indian necessaries, to the " noble red men.” A Miami Indian, with his squaw and their son, a boy of some thirteen or fourteen years, were coming from the northwest to Greenville for supplies, and in the evening encamped beside what was afterward known as Irwin's spring, within less than a mile of the town. A white man, who had traveled with them for some miles. came into town and made mention of the matter, and it became known in the garrison. Wolverton, who was a man of some sense, was absent. and Fish. who had no sense at all, was in command. Here was an opportunity to acquire a character for bravery at small cost, and it was not to be thrown away, and he laid his plans accordingly ; and the old adage that " the greater the coward the more cruel the devil," was again to be verified.

At break of day the next morning, Fish, with three or four of his command, drew near the camp. The woman had risen, and was gathering wood for a fire to cook their morning meal, and was shot down. Her husband arose on the alarm. and was also instantly killed. The boy fled, but as he was crossing the point of the prairie, was shot at and wounded in the wrist : he escaped. and such was the rapidity with which he and his friends spread the news of this dastardly act. and such fts effect upon the Indian mind, that. before 10 o'clock the next day. Fort Meigs, a hundred miles distant, was beleaguered by 2.000 raging savages. The tomahawk was raised by nearly all the Indian tribes of the Northwest and from that time until after Harrison's victory over Tecumseh and Proctor at the Fallen Timber, the settlers on the frontier were only preserved from the terror by night and the arrows that flieth by day " by the most unremitting watchfulness.

On the 18th day of June, 1812, Congress declared war against Great Britain, and the little fort at Greenville. which had been built and garrisoned on Indian account, some months previous, became a permanent establishment, until the close of the war and declaration of peace. in 1815. Its garrison was usually composed . of men gathered from the neighboring counties of Miami. Montgomery, Greene, Warren, Butler and Preble, as well as of sane who came to Darke County to spy out the land, and stay if they liked it. Amount these men. but few names can now be recalled, and they would hardly be remembered, but from events with which they were connected, or because when the troubles were over, they remained as residents of the county. Among these. can be enumerated John and Samuel Loring, James Cloyd, David and Peter Studabaker (brothers of Abraham and John Studabaker, already mentioned). Jacob Miller (who for many years was known by the cognomen of " Proaps "), Joseph Gass. Asa Spencer. Thomas Briggs. David Riffle, Hezekiah and Lewis Phillips. and John Ellis. Some of these men were married, but for the time being had left their wives and children" below in the settlement," as the common phrase then was, and others. either (luring the war or at its close married in the vicinity. .John Loring had entered a quarter-section adjoining Devor, as early as 1809, but had sold to John Stoner, who was killed by the Indians near the first crossing of Miller's Fork, on the trace to Lexington, in August, 1812, on the same day that Elliott was killed by the same enemies, on the same trace, about three or four miles nearer to Greenville. from which place both had been sent by the officer in charge of the garrison, with dispatches to Maj. Price, requesting re-enforcement to the small garrison. deemed necessary in eonsequ ice of the murder of Andrew Rush and two children of William Wilson, which had occurred only a day or two before. A considerable part of the Loring quarter- section is now part of the town of Greenville. Sam Loring brought his family to

HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY - 219

Darke County after the war, and located on the quarter-section on which a portion of the village of Palestine is laid out. James Cloyd, at the return of peace, married a daughter of Andrew Noffsinger. and remained a resident of German Township, until his decease, some four or five years ago, at which time he was President of the Pioneer Association of Darke County. John Ellis was in St. Clair's army at the time of the defeat at Recovery. in 1791 ; was with Wayne from 1793 to 1796, and participated in the defense of Recovery, at the time of the Indian attack, anti in the rout of the Indians at Rouge de Bout, in 1794 ; after the second treaty of Greenville. in August, 1814, he brought his family and settled at Castine, where he resided for a number of years, and subsequent to 1840, removed to Mercer County, near Recovery, where, after some years' residence, he died, at the age of over ninety. Ellis. in his youth, had been a prisoner with the Indians, and exhibited, ever after. through his long life, many Indian characteristics. David Studabaker was killed in the army, during the war of 1812. Peter Studabaker, between 1825 and 1830. removed to the Wabash, below Recovery, and some years later, farther down the river in Indiana, where his death occurred some twenty years since. The Phillips brothers. about 1816, located on Miller's Fork, near the south boundary of Darke County, where both died in their old age. Joseph Gass, who was a near relation of the compiler of the journal of Lewis and Clark's expedition to the mouth of the Columbia River, at the commencement of this century, married a daughter of William Wilson, resided in several localities in Greenville Township, until about 1833, when he left and Went to Wisconsin ; the last known of him. he was at Milwaukee. about forty years ago. Two of his daughters reside in Dayton. and are the only members of his family now known to be living. Asa Spencer married a daughter of Joseph Wilson, emigrated to the northwest about 1825. and in a brief period was followed by his father-in-law, with all his children, sons and daughters. The last known of Spencer and the Wilsons was some seven or eight years ago. A slander suit was then pending, between him and one of his brothers-in-law, and John Wilson was here to take the depositions of the old inhabitants. to establish the character and standing of Spencer in this community, fifty years before, as a hog-thief. David Riffle, after the war, purchased land on Stillwater, above where Beamsville now is, and removed there in 1814, and after the lapse of a few years. died there about 1820. Thomas Briggs married the Widow Wilson. relict of the William Wilson who was distinguished by the name of " Little Billy Wilson " ; his uncle, William Wilson. the father of the children murdered by the Indians, being known as " Old Billy." His wife died between 1845 and 1850. and he followed her to the grave a year or two later. " Proaps " never married : he lived about, from " pillar to post," among relatives and friends, until he had attained more than his threescore and ten years, when he passed away at Pete Studabaker's. on the Wabash. These personal reminiscences might be greatly extended. and probably interest the reader, but they must be brought to a close. The writer of these pages was personally acquainted with most of those of whom he has written. and his recitals of the events narrated derived from them or his personal knowledge ; is now in the "sear and yellow-leaf" of age, and human memory fails to retain and be able to transmit, with any certainty, the persons and events of which memory alone, without the aid of pen or stone, and in the absence of all living, can now bear testimony.

Nothing has yet been said about what might be called the civil history of the town and township of Greenville, or the county of Darke.

The laying-out of the town of Greenville. as we have seen, occurred anterior to the creation of the county of Darke, and both events, so far as now known, preceded any organization of town, township or county, as a " body politic." At what period elections were first held for civil officers, might probably be ascertained from a search in the office of the Secretary of State, at the Capital, if they were not irretrievably lost in the removal of the seat of government from Zanesville to Chillicothe, when public records and documents disappeared, and in all

220 - HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY.

probability went down tie flood of the Hocking into the Ohio, and thence, by way of the Ohio, past New Orleans, to the Gulf of Mexico.

The most ancient memorial relating to civil or criminal procedure is the judgment of Enos Terry, rendered as a Justice of the Peace, against a stray negro who was arrested, arraigned and tried before him for stealing a brass watch from a soldier of the Greenville garrison, in 1812. On the conviction of the negro, a sentence was pronounced by Terry unknown to the books, and not set down or nominated in the statutes. The negro was required to submit to one of two penalties, at his own option. Either to bear the infliction of the Mosaic forty lashes, save one, or be stripped stark naked and climb a thorny honey locust before Terry's door. Abe Scribner, who was present when the trial came off and sentence was pronounced, made a lifelong enemy of Terry, by suggesting to him that his two daughters, one of whom afterward married John Mooney, and the other Bill Scott, that in case the negro took to thorns, should assist him up the locust.

Subsequently, John Purviance, David Briggs and Terry were Justices of the Peace of Greenville Township, which, as yet. was co-extensive with the entire county, no other divisions being made until after the organization of the county, pursuant to an act of the General Assembly of December 14, 1816. At a later period, Samuel McClure, who lived on Whitewater, and Jacob Carlaugh, who resided at Stillwater, were commissioned Justices.

To pursue the civil history of the township of Greenville whilst it embraced the entire county and remained as a mere appanage of Miami County, and to know who were trustees or constables, would but little interest the reader of these pages, and for that reason the further reference to that matter is omitted. But it may as well be stated here as elsewhere, that from the first setting-up of a civil polity in Greenville Township, when it was co-extensive with the county, until a county organization took place under the act of December, 1816, no dismemberment took place, and until a cutting-up under the authority created and set in motion by that act, it remained entire. On perfecting the new county organization, its dimensions were considerably reduced, and subsequent changes in its limits were made from time to time until 1828, since which time its boundaries have been unchanged.

After the defeat of Tecumseh and Proctor in the fall of 1813, the Indian allies of Great Britain were desirous for peace, as well as in want of other things. which they could only have by making peace, and overtures to that end from the hostile tribes were made to the representatives of the United States Government. The chiefs and head men were invited to a conference and council at Greenville, early in the spring of 1814 ; some of the tribes were tardy in responding to the invitation, being no doubt, to some considerable extent hindered and delayed through English influence, but about the middle or latter end of June some three or four thousand Indians, representing a number of the tribes, were encamped around Greenville and its vicinity. The United States was represented by Gens. Harrison and Cass, historic names in our annals, and the conference commenced. The negotiation, accelerated or delayed as outside influences prevailed, for even at that early day whisky and money were factors to be used. considered and disposed of, as the exigencies of statecraft required, was protracted for some weeks, until on the 20th of August, 1814, all differences were reconciled and the second treaty of Greenville was duly signed.

Since that day, no Indian war has troubled Ohio or Indiana, although in 1824, a cowardly and brutal murder of a family of Indians migrating from the State of New York to the West, by some white outlaws. in the vicinity of what were known as the Delaware towns, in Indiana, well-nigh occasioned an outl- yak that might have equaled that to which Fish, by his brutal and cowardly conduct, gave rise twelve years before. David Conner. who but a few years before had established himself as an Indian trader, on the Mississinewa, near what was known

HISTORY OF DARRE COUNTY - 221

as "Llewellyn's," and who had an influence over the Miamis and Pottawatomies superior to their native chiefs, exerted himself to prevent the lifting of the tomahawk, and was successful. The murderers, two in number, whose names are now forgotten by the writer, but may be found in the criminal records of Madison County, in Indiana, were arrested, indicted, tried, convicted and hanged. Conner, by his efficiency in securing justice, and his wise counsels preventing war, so won the good will and esteem of the Indians of the Miami tribe, that in solemn council he was made a chief of the tribe and with all proper rites and ceremonies duly inaugurated and installed into his office. It may not here be amiss to relate an incident of Conner's life that occurred some years previous. He had established himself as an Indian trader at Recovery, very soon after the execution of the treaty of 1814, and in effecting that treaty his influence with the Indians had been exerted, and by his exertions he had made some enemies amongst not only white men but Indians. One evening, several of the latter waited upon him at his trading-house, and deliberately notified him that the object of their visit was to take his life. He by his answer to them apparently acquiesced, but asked a few minutes' respite to put things in order so that others might not suffer loss by his taking-off. This was granted, and they took their seats to enable him to properly fix up things. He deliberately spread a deerskin on the floor and emptied a keg of powder on it ; and while they wondered what he would do next, he sprang to the fire and seized a brand and swore in good strong Miami that he and they would all go to hell together. The Indians stood not upon the order of their going, but went in what was unusual to an Indian, "very much hurry." In speaking of the matter afterward, one of the Indians who took part in the transaction told the writer that "Conner one devil of a man, he care no more for an Indian than he did for himself." He was never again molested by them. It may as well be stated here that Conner came to Greenville late in 1811 or early in 1812, and opened a small store and trading-house ; and with him came David Thompson and purchased and settled upon the quarter-section south of Greenville, where David Studabaker now resides. Thompson had been a Soldier in Wayne's army at Greenville, and with him at Rouge de Bout; he remained a resident of the county until his decease. about 1840, when he had attained the age of more than eighty years ; his wife died a few years later, and his oldest daughter, the widow of the late Judge Beers, his only surviving child of eight—four sons and four daughters—resides about a mile north of the town, and has attained an age of about eighty years.

There was in attendance at Greenville during the time of the negotiations preceding the treaty and until it was signed, a large concourse of white men as well as Indians. Men were here from Cincinnati, Dayton, Hamilton, Chillicothe, and various other places in Ohio : Maysville, Lexington, Frankfort, and other places in Kentucky ; from points on the Ohio River, and even from Maryland and Pennsylvania. Many of these came to look at the country with a view to a settlement in it if they were pleased with it. and the Indian question so settled that they could emigrate to it and be freed from Indian disturbances ; others to look out lands that it would be safe to buy as an investment of their surplus money ; others to see what was to be seen. and make money if they could out of either Indians or white men as opportunity should offer, and many came with no defined object. Between the time of the treaty and the opening of the year 1816, many entries of land in Darke County were made at the Land Office in Cincinnati. The lands were sold by the Government on a credit of one-eighth down and the residue in seven annual installments. A number of tracts in the vicinity of Greenville were taken up on speculation that did not change hands for many years, and were kept unimproved. Among those who thus purchased, and probably never again saw the lands they bought, were Gen. James Taylor, of Newport; Gen. James Butler, of Frankfort, Ky. ; George P. Torrence, David K. Este, David Wade and William Burke, of Cincinnati ; Nathan Richardson, of Warren County ; Joseph

222 - HISTORY OF Darke COUNTY.

Hough, of Chillicothe ; Talbot Iddings, Andrew Hood and John Devor, of Montgomery County, and some others, whose purchases many of them long remained an eyesore, withheld from improvement, in the vicinity of Greenville. Many of these tracts, none of which were less than a quarter-section, remained in first hands from twenty to forty years, brought in the end but little more than the purchase money and interest to those who had purchased them, and added proof, if proof were necessary, that the well-being and progress of society in this nation demands that the title of the soil, vested in the National Government or the States, should not be transferred save to actual settlers.

Many other purchases were made on credit, by men who failed to pay out, and were compelled in the end to relinquish part to save the residue, or entirely forfeit their purchases. The United States was, in the end, under the pressure of the debt entailed by the war of 1812 and other causes, compelled to abandon the system of selling the national demand upon credit.

Congress, however, in a year or two after the forfeiture, authorized the issue of what was termed land scrip, to those who had lost their purchases, equal in amount to what they had paid, which, being receivable at any Government land office in payment for the lands of the United States, became for some years a part in some measure of the business currency of the country, as the scrip could pass from hand to hand until it was canceled at the land office.

The emigration to the town, township and county, from the time of the "stampede" on the breaking-out of the Indian troubles, and until after the treaties between the United States and both the Indians and England, was scarcely noticeable. Although many people came here, they did not come to stay, and were here for transient purposes only, and the population of the town, township and county, after the departure of the crowd who were here at the treaty, and after the withdrawal of the garrison at Greenville and from the other small stockades erected for protection in the evil days at Fort Nesbitt, Fort Black and Fort Briar, was little, if any, greater than in the spring of 1812.

It may not be amiss here to recapitulate, as well as can now he done, who were as residents within the limits of the township of Greenville after the treaty was signed in 1814, and by the term limits of the township confine the enumeration to the bounds of what is now Greenville Township, and not, as then, the whole county of Darke. In the town were Moses Scott, Azor Scribner, David Connor and John Loring, and the wife of the murdered John Stoner and his orphaned children. With these, as boarders or employes off and on. were Abraham Scribner, James Cloyd, Philder G. Lanham, Silas Atchison. and probably some others, whose residence cannot be definitely stated. North of the town, in Ireland, dwelt Enos Terry, Joe Wilson, Old Billy Wilson, Little Billy Wilson. Asa Spencer, and in their families as dependents and hangers-on, John Mooney, Joe Gass, and probably others not now remembered. Down the creek, below the town, and within a mile of it, was David Briogs, with whom resided his brother Thomas. Up Greenville Creek, Aaron and Matthias Dean had commenced the erection of the mill in many years afterward designated Dean's Mill, but, on the murder of Rush,the work ceased, and they left for the Miami, near Middletown, and did not return and complete it until after the war. Up Mud Creek, on the west side, were Thomas McGinnis, Barney. Burns, Henry and James Rush. The widow of Andrew Rush, with her two children, the oldest of whom was born November 28, 1809, lived on the West Branch where it was crossed by the " Squaw Road." David Miles was on the knoll where Mt. Griffin now resides. about half a mile southwest of the mouth of Mud Creek. On the east side of Mud Creek were Abraham Miller and John Studabaker, and just above the last, but outside the present township boundary, Zadok Reagan had located in the edge of the prairie, at what was known in after years as the " Burnt Cabin.- On beidge Creek were David Thompson and George Freshour. Charles Sumption. the "waxworks," lived in divers places, sometimes in Greenville, others on Bridge

PAGE 223 - PICTURE OF Z. R. HOLLAND

PAGE 224 - BLANK

HISTORY OF DARKS COUNTY - 225

Creek and on Mud Creek. He moved so often that his locality at any given date, after the lapse of nearly seventy years, cannot be stated with certainty. In his family at times were found Overfield and Low, who became his sons-in-law, and it may as well be stated here as elsewhere, that the marriage of one of Sumption's family—either his son Charles to a daughter of Mrs. Barney Burns, or one of his girls, Jemima or Sanh, who previous to the treaty became the wives of Overfield and Low—was, in all probability, the first rite of that character solemnized in the county. :There may have been others than those named resident in the township at that early day, but the writer, who in his early years was personally acquainted with nearly all of them, cannot now speak with certainty, nor depend upon the accuracy of his memory of their statements to him, of the dates of their removal to the locality from which now all are gone.

Between the signing of the treaty of 1814 and the organization of the county in the spring of 1817, under the law of the preceding winter, the emigration to the township, as well as to the residue of the county, taking view the sorry pros- pect of making a living in it, had increased the population more than threefold. In these two and a half years. George, Peter, John, Moses and Aaron Rush, brothers of the three who came in 1810, Henry Hardy and Archibald Bryson, who had married their sisters, came to the county ; James Bryson, who married the widow of Henry Rush, came, and John Hiller returned from Miami County, to which he had fled three years before on Indian account. Some of these parties settled out- side of Greenville Township. and others remained but for a brief period. On the West Branch and Greenville Creek were settled John 'McFarland, Daniel Potter, David Williamson, Joseph Huffman and Isaac Dunn. With Williamson came his brothers, James and John, who remained but for a brief period ; one went to Butler County, and the other returned to his father's house in Greene County to die of consumption. On the south of Greenville. between town and _Abraham Miller's, Henry House, an old soldier of Wayne's army, with a family of sons and daughters, was located. In the southeast, was located on Bridge Creek Nathan Popejoy ; between him and David Thompson was settled William Arnold, and south of Thompson. now came Abraham Studabaker from his first location below Gettysburg. Down the creek were located William, George, Jacob, Andrew and Joel Westfall. on the north side ; and William Hays, Sr., and William Hays, Jr., on the south side. Ebenezer Byram first settled up Greenville Creek above Dean's mill. which, on their return, was completed in a year or about that after the war, but soon removed out of the township down the creek to New Harrison, as his place is now termed, but which had no existence until years after his death. To Ireland came David Douglass, James Stephenson, or Stinson, as the name was usually pronounced, and Robert Barnett. Over the creek, on the Recovery trace, was located David Irwin, and southwest of him, on the creek, David Ullery. East of Terry's place was located Alexander Smith, the first temporary Sheriff of the county. Justice of the Peace of Greenville Township for several years, and once, for a few days, owing to the non-receipt of election returns from some locality between Greenville and Maumee Bay, had a seat in the State Legislature, from which he was ejected on a contest with the far-famed Capt. Riley, who, a few years previous, had been a prisoner riding a camel from Timbuctoo to Mogadore across the desert of Sahara, in Africa, Smith was afterward a candidate for the Lower House of the State Legislature, but was defeated by Gen. James Mills. Riley also again was before the people of the district, which then included nine or ten counties of Northwest Ohio, for a seat in the House of Representatives, but failed. Subsequently, becoming more ambitious, he ran for Congress, but was badly beaten by William McLean, a brother of the late Judge McLean, of the United States Supreme Court. Archibald Bryson settled on the east side of the West Branch, above and south of the Squaw road, and east of him, toward Mud Creek, were located John Whitacre, John Embree, who was better known by the nickname of " Swift," and David Marsh, the first peddler of " wall-sweep" clocks in the county.

226 - HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY.

The lots in the town of Greenville were yet the joint property, so far as the legal title was concerned, of John Devor and the heirs of the deceased Mrs. Armstrong ; prior to her death, contracts for several of them had been made with parties who had paid for and were now living on them, but as yet had no paper title. Devor, soon after the treaty, moved up to Greenville from Montgomery County ; he had now purchased two additional sections, twelve hundred and eighty acres or more of land, part near to, and other portions more remote from, Greenville, and for the advancement of the town it was necessary not only to perfect to the purchasers the title of the lots already bargained, but to dispose of the residue, as well as secure to the county the title of the one-third given as an inducement to secure the location of the county seat. Legal proceedings to accomplish the desired ends were instituted in the Court of Common Pleas of Miami County, to which Darke, not yet organized, was attached. Under these proceedings the selection of the lots for Darke County was made, decrees for title of those contracted away taken, and the proper conveyances executed and an appraisal of the residue of the lots, as well as adjacent lands of the half-section, was made, and a sale by the Sheriff of Miami County ordered. A public sale by the Sheriff was had at Greenville on the 11th day of June, 1816, when more than fifty lots were sold to purchasers on the usual terms of partition sales, part cash and part in deferred installments. One tract of the adjoining land was sold, but the residue, some two hundred acres, was bid in by Devor to prevent what he considered a sacrifice, and some years afterward became the subject of another suit in partition in the court of Darke County.

It may be as well here to take note of who in the period between the treaty and the county organization, had come to Greenville, and what was going on.

Devor, as already stated, had moved up, and with him came four sons and three daughters ; one daughter, married to Scribner had preceded his removal, and two others, one the widow of Robert Gray, were soon after married, the widow, Jane Gray, to Linus Bascom, and the other, Elizabeth, to David Irwin ; his remaining daughter, Mary Devor, died unmarried in 1820 ; John Devor died in July, 1828, and his aged widow some five or six years afterward ; all his children save one, Thomas Devor, a resident of Jay County, Ind., are dead years since. Bascom had come here after the treaty, and with him Solomon Hamer, who, as partners, had a little store or trading ranch. The partnership was dissolved in ill- blood in a short time, each party charging the other with unfairness. Hamer left, and the last known of him Jack Douglass heard him preach in New Orleans ; he recognized Jack in the crowd of hearers, and as soon as the benediction was pronounced, made his way to him, and taking him aside begged him to keep shady, as he, Hamer, was doing a d—d fine business. In addition to the little stores of Connor, Scribner and Bascom & Hamer, Horatio G. Phillips, of Dayton, sent Eastin Morris to Greenville with a small stock of goods, about the close of 1815. Morris was not a success as a merchant, but afterward. in 1818, became Clerk of the Court, which position he held for ten years. On Scribner's emigration to the Maumee in 1822, the positions of County Recorder and Postmaster resigned by him fell to the hands of Morris. These several positions he held until about the close of the year 1828, when he resigned them all and went to Gallatin in Sumner County, Tenn., and engaged in the practice of law, and about 1840 removed to Burlington, Iowa, where he died in 1865 or 1866. After the treaty, Andrew Hood bought the quarter-section adjoining the town on the west, which included some fifteen acres east of Mud Creek and Greenville Creek, built a two-story log- house about half-way between Mud Creek bridge and the old ford, and started his sons Robert and William in the mercantile business in a small way. Some years later they emigrated to Fort Wayne.

Bascom, after his marriage, built a two-story log house at the northwest side of the public square and commenced keeping a tavern, dividing the business and drawing some of the custom from Moses Scott and Azor Scribner. A man by the

HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY - 227

name, real or assumed, of Daniel Routsong, came here, married Susie Creviston and sank some vats just outside the pickets of the fort, about twenty rods above Mud Creek bridge. In a few weeks, it leaked out that he had a wife and children in Maryland. As soon as he was apprised that the fact was known, being certain if he escaped the penitentiary Henry Creviston would shoot him, he fled the country. Near the same time, John and James Williamson started a similar enterprise over the, creek, about a hundred yards west of Porter's tannery. Neither tang and ever amounted to " shucks." It cannot now be asserted that a side of leather was ever made at either, and not five persons in the county remember that they ever existed. Not far from this period came William Sipe from Greene County, and put up a kiln near the east corner of the town plat and started a pottery ; he also followed shoemaking a little, and hunting a great deal ; in the latter employment he was not a success, for Dick Lyons put a spell on his gun that prevented him from killing anything he shot at for several years, until Dick himself was "flabbergasted" by shooting a calf instead of a deer, when fire-hunting at night on the creek below the town. During the period between the treaty and the organization of the county, a number of unmarried men came to Greenville to grow up with the country, of whom as yet no mention has been made ; and some of them in after years became factors in making up the current history of the county. Among these were John and James Craig, John Armstrong, Henry D. and Robert N. Williams, David Buchanan, James Perry and some others. On the day succeeding the sale of the town lots by the Sheriff, came John Beers, and near the same time, John Talbot and Dr. Stephen Perrine, the first regularly educated physician who located in the place, followed shortly after by Dr. John Briggs, who for many years was a safe and successful practitioner. Beside these were two quacks, one a so-called Doctor Hopkins who went in on the " root and yarb " principles, who after swindling a number of credulous people, some of whom he had doctored from bad to worse. and others had lent him money, in a short time, with his bone-set, mullein and dog-fennel, departed hence and was not again heard of ; the other, a Jacob Myers, an itinerant vender of a specific which he carried about in a gallon jug, and issued to the ignorant as a preventive or remedy for the " fever 'n ager." A few years later, he narrowly escaped the gallows in Mercer County, for killing a patient with a decoction of buckeyes and white-walnut bark, administered as a cure for the chills.

In regard to the conveniences and necessities of the community it may as well be stated here that Terry, in 1810, erected a little corn-cracker of a mill at the bend of the creek above the " Dutch Bridge." During the war, the soldiers in the garrison destroyed the mill dam as a cause of disease, under the pretext of military necessity, and it was never rebuilt. After the war, Deans completed their mill, begun three or more years before, and John Devor erected a saw-mill half a mile south of it on the West Branch, at what is now the site of Fox & Bechtold's woolen-mill. Other improvements, save the clearing of land and erection of log houses, and stables, and cribs, and the occasional bridging of a mud-hole on the old traces of St. Clair and Wayne and the Indian paths by corduroys, there were none. The only modes of travel were on foot or on horseback, as nothing on wheels could get over the the roads nine months of the year.

The organization of the county, under the act of December 14,1816, may in some particulars be said to have a place in the annals of the town and township of Greenville, and of some of those particulars only will mention here be made. The same General Assembly that passed that act elected Joseph H. Crane President Judge of the First Judicial Circuit, a position for which he was eminently fitted, and worthily adorned until his election to Congress in October, 1828 ; and also elected John Purviance, Enos Terry and James Rush Associate Judges of the Court of Common Pleas of Darke County. The appointment of Clerk of that Court, and of the County Recorder, devolved upon the Court. It was intended that Beers should be chosen to the first of these positions, but he wanted a few weeks' residence

228 - HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY.

of the prescribed time to render him eligible, and Linus Bascom was chosen as Clerk pro tern., until a subsequent term, and before that subsequent term intervened Beers had "lost his grip" and Eastin Morris was duly chosen to that office for the term of seven years. The Associate Judges had met in special term to appoint a County Recorder. There were two candidates. James Montgomery and Abraham Scribner. Montgomery was a fair penman, and Scribner's chirography was. in after years, aptly compared, by David Morris, to a furrow drawn by a shovel plow through a newly cleared field of beech land. The Judges were at a stand, and appointed a committee of two to report to an adjourned session on the qualifications of the candidates. Neither member of the committee could have claimed " benefit of clergy," if his neck had been in jeopardy, for neither could read nor write a word. Scribner made so much sport of the appointment, that at the adjourned session, the Court, to stop his mouth, gave him the appointment, which he held until his resignation in 1822, and, during his whole term, not a single word was ever written by him in the books of his office, the entire clerical labor was performed by Dr. Briggs and Eastin Morris. The Board of County Commissioners selected Beers as their Clerk, which position he held until the Legislature created the office of County Auditor in 1820 or 1821. It may as well be stated here that in 1829, upon the death of David Morris, Beers obtained the office of Clerk, which he held until 1850, when he was chosen President Judge of the First Circuit, which he held until he was superseded under the new dispensation brought in by the constitution of 1851. He also held for a number of years the pos.ition of Prosecuting Attorney and Justice of the Peace. He was a sound and able lawyer, regarded as an oracle in legal matters by all his Acquaintance, yet he never appeared to advantage as an advocate before a jury, nor in an argument to a court. His decease occurred about 1865.

Soon after the organization of the county, the Commissioners took measures for the erection of a jail, and one of a very humble character was erected on the north part of the public square, not more than thirty feet from the north corner of the city hall. It was constructed with two apartments each about fifteen feet square, the outside walls made of two thicknesses of sound oak timber, hewed one foot square, set on a double platform on the ground, of the same material, and overlaid by another of the same character upon which the roof was raised ; the apartments were separated by a partition similar to the walls. To one apartment was a door, and one window about two feet square ; in the partition was another door leading to the other apartment, which had no other opening, either door or window. When it had inmates in cold weather, the outer room was warmed by a kettle of charcoal, the fumes of which escaped through the window and crevices between the logs of the walls and ceiling.

One of the timbers forming the floor was once cut in two, being severed by gin auger furnished to a prisoner through the window by a friend outside, the piece was cut off was pushed from under the wall, and the party confined escaped. The piece of timber was replaced and fastened, but some years later was by a prisoner loosened and removed, but in endeavoring to escape. he got wedged fast in the opening, and could neither get out nor get back. The Sheriff found him in the morning, and with some effort released him from what was close confinement. This structure was burned down by an incendiary on the morning of Sunday, May 2, 1827. It was erected by Matthias Dean at a cost of about $200 in county orders that would then bring only about 60 per cent of their face in money. In 1827-28, a new structure for a jail and jailer's residence of brick was erected on the corner occupied by the new building of Matchett, Wilson & Hart. This was a less secure building than the old log jail. Very shortly after it was completed, a noted thief named Jonathan Bayles, who had been committed for horse-stealing, got out 'f it so mysteriously, that the jailer, William Rush, was indicted and tried for aiding his escape ; the jury before whom he was on trial, after the case was left to them, deliberated for sixty hours without meat or drink (it was not then allowed to feed

HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY - 229

a jury at the expense of the county), and being unable to agree, were with the assent of the defendant discharged, and before another term came on, the statement of Bayles, who had been arrested and committed at Fort Wayne for other offenses, explained the manner of his escape, and so completely satisfied every one that RUM' had no hand in it, that the Prosecuting Attorney entered a nolle. It may as well be stated here, that this second jail was demolished about 1840, on the erection of another on the southeastern part of the same lot, that is now superseded by the fourth jail of Darke County. About a year after letting the contract for the first jail, John and James Craig erected the first court house of the county, a frame structure of two stories, about 22x28 feet, the upper story which was reached by a stairway from the court room which occupied all of the lower story, was divided into a clerk's office and jury room. If two juries were in deliberation at once, as was sometimes the case, the second was sent to some private house. This building was erected on the south part of the public square, diagonally across Broadway and Main street from the old log jail. In it, courts were held until the summer of 1834, when it was removed, and with alterations and additions, was converted first into a dwelling-house, and lastly to a whisky saloon on Third street, southwest of and next to Odd Fellows' Hall. The second court house built by James Craig. who has been named as one of the builders of the first, was located in the center of the public square. Craig took the contract at so low a figure, that he lost from $1,500 to $2,000 in his undertaking. On the erection of the present court house, the second one was demolished to make room for the city hall. a building that neither for convenience; nor as an ornament, is any improvement upon the old structure. It may also in this connection be noted that no place of business was provided for any county officer, save the Clerk, until the erection of the second court house, and in that for only a part of them. The Auditor, Recorder. Treasurer. Tax Collector and Sheriff had each to furnish his own quarters, at his own expense. The Commissioners first quartered themselves on their Clerk, afterward, when the office of Auditor was provided for, on him. It may further be stated here. that from 1822 to 1826, the position of Collector of the Taxes was sold at public auction to the highest bidder. This statement requires an explanation. County orders were at a discount in these years of from 37 1/2 to 62 1/2 per cent ; the treasury being generally without funds, they could alone be passed at their face to the Collector in payment of the county taxes levied on chattel property ; for the land tax denominated the State tax, cash or coined money, or what was its equivalent, notes of the bank of the United States, was required ; yet in the annual settlement. a proportion of the land tax was set off to the county, and this proportion the Collector could discharge by turning over to the County Treasurer the orders at their face value which he had bought at 35 to 65 cents on the dollar. This chance of making a little money enabled the Collector to give a bonus for the office. For several years, county orders were a special currency of inferior value. as about the same time, the Bank of the Commonwealth in the State of Kentucky. If you wanted to buy a horse or a cow, ten bushels of wheat or forty acres of land, the price was named as so much in cash, or a different value in county orders.

In 1823, this state of things opened the door for a transaction that gave rise to much excitement, ill blood, and evil speaking, that for several years laid on the shelf a hitherto popular man, then in place as a public officer, although in after years he was acquitted by the people of blame in the matter, save negligence of duty, the fraud mixed up with it being laid to other account.

On the annual settlement with the County Treasurer, the county orders redeemed by him were delivered to the Commissioners and Auditor, and he was credited therefor, and the law then required that they should be burned in the presence of those officials. No schedule of their number, amount or payee was made or kept, but only the aggregate to be inserted in the credit to the Treasurer ; at the settlement of the year mentioned, when the bundle of orders were turned

230 - HISTORY OF DARKS COUNTY.

over there was no fire handy to carry out the behest of the law, and friction matches had not yet been seen or known. The bundle was left in the Auditor's care, who was to fulfil the omitted duty when he had a fire or lighted candle in his office, and nothing more was thought of it. Some months afterward, several of these orders, distinctly remembered by Treasurer, Collector and Commissioners to be of those previously redeemed, were found in circulation. How they again got out was never definitely proved or known, nor was it ever ascertained what amount had been thus fraudulently re-issued. No accurate investigation ever took place, for the system of keeping books then in vogue in Darke County afforded no means of making an accurate investigation. Some of the orders were tracked very near, but not quite to the Auditor. That officer was many years later placed in a position of trust, in which his securities paid heavily for his default ; his name is omitted, and the matter, only remembered after the lapse of nearly threescore years by less than a dozen persons now living, is only adverted to here, because in the ensuing session of the General Assembly, it gave rise to an enactment, ever since in force, that on the redemption of a county order, the Treasurer should either plainly write or print across the face of it the word "redeemed," with the date of its redemption, and subscribe to the statement his name officially. It may as well be further stated here, that one of those sureties by reason of public sympathy for his loss, was some years after chosen to the same position of trust to which his business attainments was not equal, and he had to entrust his duties to subordinates whose rascality in turn made him a public defaulter, and he was sued on his blond. It is not an agreeable duty to the writer to narrate some of these occurrences, but truth requires that history record facts, even if they are unpleasant.

In the succeeding pages of the division of this work allotted to the writer, he must confine himself to the duty before him—the progress of the town and township of Greenville, and in that he must confine himself to narrower limits, and in those limits come to a system and classification.

At the head of what are called the liberal and learned professions, leaving out the clerical, of which but little need be said, stands the law and legal. When courts that ranked above Justices of the Peace were first held in the county, Beers was a law student under the tuition of Gen. William M. Smith, of Dayton, and was admitted to the bar by the Supreme Court within two years after the organization of the county, and, with the exception of Increase Graves, who was only here for a few months in 1820 or 1821, and then went to the North, was the only member of the legal fraternity resident in the county until he was appointed Clerk, in the year 1829. Of him, mention has been previously made, save that he once was a candidate for Congress against John B. Weller, and was defeated. During the twelve years from 1817 to 1829, attorneys from Eaton, Dayton, Troy, and, on some few occasions, from Hamilton, Lebanon, Springfield and Urbana, traveled the circuit with Judge Crane, and had more or less business in the courts at Greenville. Late in 1829 or early in 1830, Hiram Bell, who had studied under John Woods, of Hamilton, located in Greenville, and soon, by his industry, secured a fair practice. In 1833, he was elected County Auditor ; some years later, he was elected to the Lower Branch of the Legislature, in which he served two terms, being once re-elected. At a yet later date. he was elected a Representative in Congress. In 1835, William M. Wilson, also from Hamilton, came to Greenville, and secured a fair proportion of business in his profession. He was elected to the office of Prosecuting Attorney, and, subsequently, to the office of County Auditor, which he held for several years, until lie vacated it for a seat in the Ohio Senate.

Bell, who in the contest for Senator was defeated by Wilson, and in a brief period defeated Wilson in the Whig nomination for Congress. died late in De amber, 1855, and his widow, at a late period, was married to Wilson, who had in the mean time lost his wife, a daughter of Maj. Dorsey, to whom he was married in September, 1837. He attained, by executive appointment, the position of Judge

HISTORY OF DARRE COUNTY - 231

of the Common Pleas of this subdivision of the Court of Common Pleas, which office he filled with ability and dignity for the period of about two years. Subsequently, in the summer of 1865, his second wife died, and in a week he followed her to the grave. Bell left no descendants ; Wilson, by his first wife, had a family of one son and several daughters, who yet survive him. In 1837, near its close, or in 1838, not far from its beginning, came Cyrus F. Dempsey, from Southern Ohio, near Portsmouth, who had but recently been admitted to the bar, and hung out his shingle. He, unlike Beers, Bell and Wilson, who were then " simon- pure Whigs," was a professed Democrat. He obtained the position of Prosecuting Attorney, and had a reasonably fair share of legal practice ; but he was ambitious of attaining a higher position, and sought to attain it by means that his Democratic brethren considered " not on the square," In a solemn conclave of priests and elders of that tribe, he was, with all due ceremony and the rites of bell, book and candle." excommunicated from communion with the faithful, and cast out. In a short time after, he left for Fort Wayne, or some place near it, where he soon after died.

This brings us down to the close of 1840, and here we might stay our hand ; but the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth " may as well be spoken, and that requires a statement that, in the later years, chiefly since the incoming of the new constitution, there has come up over the land a swarm of lawyers, like the frogs out of the river of Egypt in the day of Moses, that penetrate into the kitchens, closets and bedchambers, and, with a few honorable exceptions, are found at marriages in search of divorce cases, and at funerals, hunting partition suits, button-holing clients at market, church and cemetery, “instant in season and out of season," kicking for a job, forcing the conviction upon all who bestow thought upon the matter. of the necessity in this country of institutions like the Brotherhoods of Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn, and the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple.

In the medical profession, mention has already been made of Drs. Perrin and Briggs. In 1828. came Dr. Andrew O'Ferrell. from Kentucky, who died in the winter of 1829-30, and later came Dr. James H. Buell, from Eaton, who remained but for a short period. In the winter of 1830-31, Dr. J. M. P. Baskerville, who for some years was engaged in his profession at Greenville ; later he went to Vetsailles. He was a native of Virginia ; came here from the vicinity of. London, Madison Co.. Ohio. to which locality, after several years, he returned, and at which place a few years since he died. About 1834-35, Dr. I. N. Gard came here from Jacksonburg. in Butler County, and engaged in practice, in which he yet, at the age of threescore years and ten, is engaged. Dr. Gard has been, in former years, honored with a seat in the Ohio Senate, and in later years a member of the Board of Trustees of the Southern Ohio Lunatic Asylum, and of other boards of State charities, in all of which positions he has been a faithful and intelligent public servant. He is now the senior in the medical profession in the county. About a year, more or less, after the advent of Dr. Gard, came Dr. Alfred Ayers, also from Butler County. For a time he was a partner of Dr. Gard. In 1838, he married a daughter of the late Judge Beers, who bore to him several children, sons and daughters. Some years ago, on the decease of his father, he returned to the paternal homestead in Butler County, where, after the decease of his wife and eldest daughter, he also,,about two years ago, was laid in the narrow house, at the age of about sixty-eight years. In the interval between 1820 and 1840, the town and neighborhood had, at various times, divers and sundry " physical doctors " of the stripe of Hopkins and Myers ; but they were ephemeral, like Jonah's gourd— came up, were bitten by a worm at night, and perished in the heat of the next day. Their names and doings it is unnecessary to record.

The writer would here in this connection mention that in the summer and fall of each of the years 1821 and 1822, the town, as well as the adjacent country, was visited with severe and fatal sickness, of malarial origin, and almost epidemic in

232 - HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY.

its character. Many died of both sexes and of all ages, but the mortality was greates among those of middle age, both men and women. Again, in the summer ana fall of 1829 and 1830, the town, township and county was scourged with a disease. denominated, in common phrase, flux. The mortality was great. chiefly among children, although persons of all ages became victims. In each of these visitations, the medical force of the county being inadequate to the requirements taxing it, physicians were sent for and responded to the calls from Richmond, New Paris, Eaton, Lewisburg, Milton, Troy and Piqua, in the adjacent counties of Wayne, Ind., and Preble and Miami, Ohio. In 1833, when so many localities ill the United States were desolated by the cholera, but two deaths from that disease occurred within 1)arke County, neither of which was in Greenville.

It may be deemed that the next matter that should engage the attention of the narrator should be the educational department of the community of which he is relating the history. John Beers, John Talbot and Henry D. Williams were each of them " schoolmasters " in Greenville and its vicinity during a few years subsequent to their emigration to Greenville ; whether a school of any sort was taught, prior to their arrival, in the town or township, is now, after the lapse of more than sixty years, a matter unascertainable. Talbot, an offshoot of the old Earls of Shrewsbury, ennobled in the fifteenth century in the person of the antagonist of the Maid of Orleans, sometimes taught a country school, and sometimes fulfilled the duties of the office of Constable of Greenville Township. He was fond of his bottle, which he kept hid. out in hollow stumps and brush-heaps, near his schoolhouse, in the vicinity of the settlement, near the Prophet's town on Mud Creek, where it was located : he fell into disfavor and left the country about 1821. Beers each winter was usually located south of town, in the neighborhood of Thompson, Studabaker, Arnold and Freshour. and Williams was usually below, where the Hayes, Westfalls; Popejoy and the Carnahan family were his patrons. Log cabins, in which in place of glass greased paper admitted the light, and a chimney occupied the end in which log-heaps were burned to keep up the requisite warmth, were the requisite edifices in which they each "taught the young idea how to shoot."

There was a log edifice erected on Lot 32, in Greenville, on which was located the first burial ground, that at times served as a schoolhouse, at others, after the organization of the county, as a room for the grand jury, and once for the sitting of the court. It is probable that Beers, Talbot and Williams each taught, or pretended to teach, a school in it at intervals between 1818 and 1824 ; it was only once occupied afterward for this purpose. In 1827, under Guilford's law to inaugurate public schools in Ohio, the Trustees divided Greenville Township into school districts, and Greenville District, to get the thing fairly under headway, chose three men School Directors, no two of whom, by reason of feuds and ill-feeling, would speak to each other. The parties alluded to, who may as well be named, John Beers, David Briggs , and Linus Bascom, let the year pass away without further action than being sworn into office. In the succeeding year, a new Board was erected and qualified, and proceeded at once to action, and had the old house on Lot 32, to which neither town or district had any title, pulled down, and removed the logs to a half of Lot No. 3, deeded by Bill Wiley in discharge of fines for assault and battery, to the school district.

To aid in the re-erection and fitting-up, a subscription in aid of public funds was taken up, and some forty dollars in work or money subscribed. On the evening after the old house had been pulled down, and the logs hauled to the newly selected site, an altercation took place between Abraham Scribner and Isaac Shideler, as to the price and value of the floor in the new schoolhouse, in the heat of which, Shideler, in whose hands the subscription paper had been left, stu k it in the stove, and that was the end of the enterprise ; in after years the logs were cut into firewood by Samuel Pierce and others of the vicinity, who needed fuel and were short of funds to buy it. Years afterward, the district, erected in place

HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY - 233

of one decent schoolhouse, two " make-shifts," on Lots 3 and 13, that for years were a nuisance, eye-sore and heart-scald to those who had children to be sent to school. But, after au interval of many years:they were superseded by the good sense of the Board of Education of the town, under whom the existing school buildings were erected some years since.

The history of the town of Greenville as a municipal organization here demands a brief notice, and only brief notice will here be given. At the session of the "State Legislature of 1832-33, the first act to incorporate the town of Greenville was passed. Some matters in that act deserve a passing notice. The elective franchise was restricted to those who had been for six months not only voters of the county and State, but residents of the town, and eligibility to the offices of Mayor and Trustees, forming the legislative council of the town, limited to freeholders. It would probably be well if these provisions had been continued, but under the codes passed under the new constitution of the State, and which abrogated all the old charters of the cities, towns and boroughs of the State, pure and unadulterated Democracy intervened to such an extent that the public burdens were imposed and public funds expended by those who were wholly disinterested, bearing no share in the one, nor having any material interest in the other. To make a long story short, it may as well be stated, that, for more than twenty years. the municipal government of the town, from year to year, has been created and controlled, in the main, by men who, with few exceptions, pay no taxes, and care nothing how much others have to pay. It is now a matter of so little interest as to who held office as Mayor, Council, Marshal, Clerk and Treasurer of the Town from 1833 to 1840. that the recapitulation of their names would have little to interest the reader of these pages, and hence the matter is here dismissed.

In regard to the progress of the township of Greenville outside of the clearing of the land and reducing it to cultivation, which steadily went on, it may be here related that after the erection and destruction of Terry's mill and the completion of Dean's, the next enterprise was the erection- in 1824, by Samuel Kelly. of a wool-carding establishment near the site, but above where Terry's mill was destroyed in 1813, and within about a year afterward, a mill for grinding grain was added by the same proprietor, who, about 1828, sold out to John Swisher, who continued both concerns for some years, until the termination of a lawsuit against him by Dr. Perrine, for nuisance, for backing water over the swamps above the mouth of Mud Creek. The outcome of this lawsuit resulted in the virtual destruction of the mill in 1835-36.

In about 1826-27, David Briggs erected a grist-mill and saw-mill on the creek, a mile and a half below the town, which, with little profit to the various owners who have possessed the property within the past forty years, has been in operation until this spring-1880—when its destruction has been determined upon under the pretext of draining the swamp above the mouth of Mud Creek. William. who, with his brothers, Samuel and Christophher, and his brothers-in-law, Hugh Lourimore and John Culbertson, emigrated to the county in 1816 and 1817 and settled east and southeast of Greenville, at the distance of from two to five miles, built a saw-mill on the dividing branch, near its confluence with Greenville Creek, about the year 1822. This concern rotted down, and was rebuilt several times ; has been in operation, off and on, on the average, about three months of the year since its first erection. About fifteen years later, John W. Harper built another saw-mill on the same branch, about half a mile above Martin's, which was operated for a number of years, but is now among the things that were.

About the same time that Briggs was engaged in the erection of his mill, Jared Barnes put up a grist and saw mill near the west line of the township, on Greenville Creek. The mills have been remodeled and rebuilt various times, and have been owned by various parties, and are yet in existence, sometim3s in running order, but nearly as much of the time lying idle for repairs. The traps

234 - HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY.

which have been enumerated constituted the milling facilities of the township to the close of 1840, and during all the years before that, and much of the time since, the chief dependence of the people of the town and township for the pre1.ared material whereof to make their bread, was on mills not merely beyond the limits of the township, but beyond the boundaries of the county.

Notice has already been taken of the tanyard abortions of Routsong & Williamson. About 1819 or 1820, Amos P. Baldwin and John McGregor started a tannery on a small scale, on the lot on Water street below the railroad, now occupied by Jack Taylor. Baldwin died about 1821, and the concern, in a year or two, changed hands, and kept on changing until on the death of George Sanderson, the last owner, who operated it in 1855, when it went out of existence altogether ; it was never, so far as known, a source of any profit to any of its owners.

In 1826, William Martin, already named, established a tannery about a quarter of a mile up the branch, above his saw-mill. From this concern, for thirty or forty years, his son Robert, and others who ran it, turned out a commodity which they said was leather, but by other people was called horn ; a side of it might be bored or cut when moist, but in the dry state defied awls and edge-tools. In 1831 or 1832, Jacob Herkimer located a tannery between Water street and the Creek, about half-way from the Broadway bridge to the mouth of Mud Creek ; he died in a year or two afterward, when it was taken charge of by his step-son, D. R. Davis, in behalf of his mother and the minor children of Herkimer, after which it changed owners several times, and is now the property of Thomas B. Waring, a recent purchaser. A year or two afterward, William W. Jordan purchased a tract of land over the creek and began what is now the Porter Tannery ; it also changed owners once or oftener before it came into the hands of the present occupants—the Messrs. Porter—and it, as well as the Herkimer yard, have been carried on continuously through all the intervening years.

Of the other industries of the town of Greenville prior to 1840, it is unnecessary to speak. There were carpenters and blacksmiths, shoemakers and tailors who did the work required by their customers, who usually furnished the materials to be wrought upon ; at that day there was neither foundry, machine-shop nor planing-mill either in the town or in the county. But in this connection, one other matter of note must -be stated. In 1832, Samuel Scott and Edward Donelann commenced the publication of a weekly newspaper, that, having borne various titles and passed through the hands of many proprietors, is yet, after the lapse of forty-eight years, published as the Greenville Journal.

The duty yet remains to speak of the changes and progress in other avocations and employments to the end of 1840, and, as the first item, relate the successions as well as beginnings of those upon whom devolved the duty of affording food and shelter to the wayfarers, including roan and beast, for a consideration.

Moses Scott, as has already been stated, emigrated to Fort Wayne in 1824. On leaving, his stand was rented to Judge Terry. who remained in it until about the close of 1827, and was succeeded, first, by John Armstrong, who in a short time gave way to Jack Douglass. James Craig, in 1829, purchased the property, occupied the old stand until his brick building adjoining the public square, and the nucleus of the present Wayne House, was completed. into which he removed, and continued the business until 1833, when lie rented the stand to Edward Shaffer, whose death occurred in the summer of 1835, after which, his widow continued the business for some months, when she gave way to Charles Hutchin, from Jacksonburg, in Butler County. Hutchin, in 1837, built the Broadway House, now the Exchange Bank and Vantelburghs grocery, into which he removed, and the house across the street was not again occupied as a tavern until after 1840. Bascom ceased to keep a tavern in 1829, on the decease of. his wife. and his premises were not again ever occupied for that purpose. In 1828, a house (now the

HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY - 235

residence of John Hufnagle, recently built by Dr. Perrine, was occupied by Samuel Robison as a public house, but in a few months he surrendered it to the Doctor, who had taken to himself a wife and needed it as a residence ; and here it may as well be noted that, some four or five years afterward, Mrs. Perrine died, and Perrine, after some time (how long the narrator fails to remember), ceased to be a householder, and, for the remaining years.of his life, was found sometimes here, sometimes at, Dayton and sometimes in New Jersey, where he had numerous rela- tives. At last, some two years ago, he died in the lunatic asylum near Dayton, to which, on account of mental aberration, he had for a few years been consigned, beyond the age of more than fourscore years. The widow of Azor Scribner, a year or two after the desertion of her second husband, ceased to occupy the old Scribner stand on Water street. and, for about a. year (1828-29), in it was kept, by Isaac Shidler, a tavern after the manner that the woman kept tavern in Indiana, to wit, like h-1." The establishment ceased for keeps" in the autumn of 1829. In 1828, Joshua Howell, who had in that year been elected Sheriff, and had, some years previously, been for one term County Commissioner, removed from Fort Jefferson and opened what was called a tavern in a small frame house on Third street, that stood where is now the dwelling of George Studabaker. In 1830, he erected a frame house on the corner of Broadway and Fourth street, which was dignified with the title of Travelers' Rest." Howell, who, in the interim after his shrievalty expired. wanted to run for Congress, and did run a sorry race for a seat in the State Legislature. in 1831 sold the " Travelers' Rest" to Nicholas Mark, who, after some years' occupancy, leased it to David Angel, who was its occupant in 1840 and for some time afterward. The further history of the "Rest" will not here be related, further than to say that it was pulled down, some four years ago, to permit the erection of “Allen's Hall" and the Greenville Bank." In 1830, Francis L. Hamilton enlarged. by the erection of a second story and additions, a frame building on Main street and the public square, opposite the newly erected tavern of Craig, and in it continuously, until after 1840, kept a public house, held in good esteem by all his boarders and the traveling public. In a few years after 1840, Hamilton took charge of a hotel in Richmond, Ind., from which, in a couple of years, he returned to his farm, some three miles north of Greenville, and from there, at a later period, to the town, where he died about two years ago, at the age of more than eighty years. The old tavern stand was removed, within the decade of 1840-50, to give place to the Waring Block. The changes in this department of business, since the close of 1840, will be noted elsewhere.

The progress of business in the mercantile line, prior to the close of 1840, must he noticed, and the changes of the parties engaged in it, as well as the locations where the business was transacted, taken into account. Beside the unremembered Frenchman and Azoi. Scribner, mention has already been made of David Connor, Abraham Scribner and the Hoods.

Connor, after the treaty, and near the time that Scribner and the Hoods engaged in business. as has elsewhere been stated, removed to Recovery ; at a later period. he was on the Mississinewa, below Llewellyn's mill, where he was located at the time of the murder of the Indians, in 1824, that raised him to the chieftainship. At a later period, he went down the river below the Broad Riffle, within the limits of what is now Grant County, Ind., where his death occurred about 1848. His wife never left Greenville, but continued to reside there until her decease, in March, 1851. Scribner, as has been stated, on the death of his second wife, went to the Maumee, having sold out his stock to Henry House, but, after a few months' absence, returned early in 1823, repurchased from House, and continued in business until his death, in 1847.

The Hoods were succeeded by Alexander Delorace and he in a few months gave way to Charles Neave, who remained but a short time, when he returned to Cincinnati, in 1822, and for thirty years or more was a member of the firm of T. & C. Neave, extensively engaged in the iron and hardware business in that city.

236 - HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY.

About the time that Neave left, Nicholas Greenham, of Piqua,.established what might be called a branch of his Piqua house at Greenville, which was withdrawn in April, 1825.

In the fall of 1826, Loring R. Brownell, also from Piqua, came with a stock, and continued until late in 1833 or early in 1834. He sold his stock to James M. Dorsey and Henry Arnold. In three years, or near that, afterward, Dorsey withdrew, and Arnold alone carried on the business of the house until after 1840, and now, forty years later, is still in business as a member of the firm of H. & H. N. Arnold. In the latter part of 1827, John McNeil engaged in business in a small way, and in about a year sold out to F. L. Hamilton, who, in a year or eighteen months, sold to W. B. Beall, in 1830, who, in the spring of 1831, was joined by Francis Waring, who several years later became sole proprietor. and continued in business until 1876. His death occurred in 1878. Beall died about 1855 or 1856. About the same time that Beall commenced business, Allen La Mott and Josiah D. Farrar, as the firm of La Mott & Farrar. commenced and continued until after 1840. In 1834 or 1835, Milton Bailey bought a stock of goods, and in a brief period gave place to John Baird, who in short meter " blew out of the bolt ropes " and went to Texas or Arkansas, leaving creditors to wailing and gnashing of teeth."

About the same time that Bailey started in business, William Martin, who has before been named as proprietor of a saw-mill and tanyard, employing a relative as clerk and salesman, laid in a stock at Cincinnati. and opened out in Greenville. In a year or little more, Martin ascertained that he was in bad shape ;" to keep things from getting worse, dismissed the clerk ; to meet pressing demands, borrowed $1,000, which amount, with what should have been the profits, he found had been sunk, and sent what remained in care of his son, William Martin, Jr., to Recovery, about the close of 1835 or early in 1836. In the end lie weathered the storm, but in after years, after the establishment was closed out, he frequently stated to friends that it would have been far more than $1,000 in his pocket if he had never " tried on" being a merchant.

In 1834, John C. Potter came from Butler County, and engaged in the mercantile business, which he continued until the death of his wife, daughter and himself from cholera, in August, 1849. A year later came his brother Hiram Potter and Samuel Davis, from Jacksonburg, in Butler County, who for a time carried on the mercantile business, as the firm of Potter & Davis. The firm dissolved in 1838 or 1839 ; Davis went to Piqua. and Potter continued business as successor of the firm until his death in June, 1845.

The trading house of Connor, afterward occupied by Greenham, was on the east corner of Water and Sycamore streets. The Hoods, Delorac and Neave on the northwest side of Water street, between Elm and Vine. The establishment of Scribner was first in a log house, out of town as then laid out, near where is now located the gas works, and subsequently on the south corner of Main and Elm, and in 1830, he again removed down Main street between Sycamore and the public square. McNeil, Hamiltthi & Beall were in the same location which stood on the site of the Waring Block, and two or three years later Beall & Waring were at the Kipp corner, in a building which, at a later day, when it was the " Buckeye House." was burned down. Brownell first located between Sycamore and Elm on Main street, where Dr. Lynch now resides ; at a later day at the east corner of the public square, on Broadway, to which La Mott & Farrar, who first were in the old stand of McNeil, Hamilton & Beall, removed, in 1833. and when he was succeeded by Dorsey & Arnold. They transferred the concern to the west corner of Broadway and Third. Bayley & Barrd were on the west side of Main, between the public square and Sycamore. John C. Potter first opened at the same plat and then, after erecting the Katzenberger building, which served as storeroom and dwelling, occupied it until his decease, in 1849. Potter & Davis were at first in Bascom's corner, afterward in what is yet known as the Hiram Potter House, between the public square and Walnut street.

HISTORY OF DARKS COUNTY - 237

At the close of 1840, all the mercantile business of the town was transacted within the four blocks adjoining the public square.

It must here also be stated that previous to that time, in a country town like .Greenville the mercantile business was not divided up into the various branches of dry goods, groceries, iron and hardware, groceries, queensware and drugs, medicines, paints and dye stuffs. Every dealer had nearly a little of everything, and but very little of anything. The whole stock of merchandise in every department, brought to the town in a year, would not have been equal to the spring purchase at this day, in the department of dry goods alone, of Moore & Winner, H. & H. N. Arnold or Wilson & Hart. Prior to that year, no separate and distinct concern known as an iron and hardware store, drug store, clothing store (no Jew had yet appeared in the town), boot and shoe store, or grocery, had existed in the place. But the whole truth may as well be known. There had been traps, called groceries, kept by " Dad Warren. Ethan Powers and Josiah Shaw, where a potato or a button were sold for a fivepenny-bit, and the customer given as a gratuity a drink of bald-faced whisky.- Under the old license laws the grand jury deemed it their business to inter-meddle with these institutions, and they were soon "dried up."

During all the years over which this narration reaches, the progress of the town and township of Greenville, as well as the county of Darke, although sometimes slow, has been onward.

The census of 1820 showed the population of Darke County to be 3,717, and in that enumeration was included the inhabitants of what was then Mercer County, the territory of which then embraced part of the counties of Shelby and Auglaise. The inhabitants of what now remains as Darke County could not have exceeded 2,000. At the close of 1824, the town of Greenville had within it thirteen families, all told, the total number, old and young. being less than 100 souls. The census to be taken the present year, 1880. will reveal the fact that the town now contains about or quite four thousand inhabitants.

Several things in the early years withheld in town and county progress and improvement. The valleys of Bridge Creek, Mud Creek and the West Branch were then impenetrable swamps, covered by willows and inhabited by wolves.

In 1820. the sale of Government lands on a credit ceased, and early in 1825, all thus previously sold had to be paid out or forfeit to the United States. Sev- eral thousand acres were forfeited, and the certificates of several thousandigare, as the laws then permitted, were relinquished to be applied in discharge of what remained due on the remaining portion. The mortality of the years 1821 and 1822. and of 1829 and 1830. contributed to prevent emigration. The furor for speculation in wild lands in 1836 and 1837 broke out, and even the banks of the Mississippi Indian Territory, as well as that which the Government owned, were staked out into city and town lots continuously from Keokuk to St. Paul. The bank crash of the latter year came when "red dog " and "mad dog," "wild cat" and every kind of paper money went down into simple rags, and the projected cities and towns from the Ohio to the Mississippi, with few exceptions, remain on paper only to this day. Many of the lands purchased as a speculation in Darke County remained unimproved and unsold for thirty years, and some of them to this day. Nevertheless, in spite of all these drawbacks, Darke County (the soil of which, fifty years ago, the more a man owned of it the worse he was off ), has moved on, until now it ranks, if not the first, yet among the first in the State of Ohio.

As a sequel to what has been related of the early history of Greenville, town and township, it may not be improper to say something of some of the actors in that history who have now gone hence. It has been stated that among the arrivals after the treaty were Archibald and James Bryson, natives of Bedford County, Penn., who became settlers in Greenville Township. Archibald Bryson, on the organization of the county, was chosen a County Commissioner, and re-elected to

238 - HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY.

a second term of that office. and served at intervals in other public duties. For a period of twelve years. front 1811; to 1828. his influence and opinions as to men and measures served more limn that of any other man to direct and control public action. and it may be said that this influence was exercised honestly and judiciously. He hated demagogues. and “greased no man with the oil of fool.” The ascendency which he had maintained passed over to and was exercised by Scribner for a succeeding period of almost ten years. Since that time. no other individual has been able. without the co-operation of rings and cliques—and. in the days of Bryson and Scribner. rings and cliques had not been imported—to guide and govern Darke County. Now and then. some man took it into his head to “go it alone,” but such only made a mistake. and were “left out in the cold.” Archibald Bryson, about 1840, emigrated to Western Indiana. and died near Pittsburg. in Carroll County. about 1865. James Bryson. who had served several years as Justice of the Peace. was for some years County Commissioner. and for seven years was Associate Judge of Darke Common Pleas continued to reside in the county until his decease, not far from the time of his Brother's death.

A. Studabaker, who has been named as one of the earliest settlers in the county, was a resident of Greenville Township thirty-seven years. 1815-52, until his death, and was for many years a County Commissioner. He was destitute of education. but was a man of sound .judgment. good executive ability, and strictly honest. Talbot. in 1822 or 1823. went to Indiana. put himself on good behavior and short rations. and was some years later elected to the shrievalty of one of the river counties down the Ohio. after which nothing further is known of his history to the writer. David Irwin was County Collector of taxes in the days when the office was sold at auction. In after years, he was County Treasurer, in which office he died, about 1846. and was succeeded by his son James in the same position, in which he also died, about 1851.

David Briggs, a very worthy man, came to this county as early as 1810: was elected a Justice of the Peace as early as 1816, or previous ; was County Treasurer in 1819 or 1820. In 1828. by Scribneis direction. was elected County Commissioner. and, three years later. by his commandment, was defeated for the same office. Mention has been made of John Craig. He was the third County Auditor, and, while holding the office, died in 1825. James Craig, his brother, a year later, married the only daughter of Robert Gray. one of the proprietors of the town when first laid out, and raised a family of daughters. three of whom yet survive. After the discovery of the California gold fields. lie went there, seeking to mend his fortunes, and three years later returned. and soon after died. His widow died a few years later. There was another James Craig. stepson of Judge Terry. and brother of Alexander. David and Seymour Craig. He was elected Sheriff of the county in 1830. and died a few months later, in 1831. Joshua Howell has been spoken of as a Commissioner and Sheriff. Three others. John. Thomas and Jerry, were here between 1827 and 1835. All were ambitious. and had reasonable He Joshua had been Justice. Commissioner and Sheriff: John was Sheriff after Craig's death four years ; Thomas was six years a Justice ; and. in the fall of 1835, at the end of John's term. Jerry was anxious to be his successor. Old Billy Chapman. in his Yankee accent. declared that “Darke County had been Howelled enough." Other people thought so. and Jerry was left. The whole race left the county soon after. and the truth may as well here be spoken, that not one of them possessed capacity to fit them for any public employment. and the. further truth. borne out by the record of more than forty years. may as well be stated. that the proclivity to elect asses to office in Darke County ceased not when the Howells were gone.

The writer must here bring this chapter to a close. In his younger days. he was intimately acquainted with a number of individuals who hail been the armies of Harman. St. Mir and Wayne. He was also intimately acquainted with nearly all the early settlers of Darke County, in which he has himself resided for

HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY - 239

more than fifty-five years. The matters which lie has related that occurred before he came upon the scene he obtained many years nos() from the statements of those who had personal knowledge of the thcts they related. and on whose truth he could rely ; and the remaining statements of events since he came to the county were nearly all within his own personal knowledge. Of all of whom he has spoken. not half-a-score remain. and of those above mere childhood who dwelt in Greenville when he came to the place. not one is left—all are gone !

A few incidents of early years have been omitted. and of some of them mention should be made.

In 1828. a stray printer on his rambles came into the county, named Benjamin S. Bullfinch. At that early day “teetotalism” had not made any serious inroads. Bullfinch. when under the influence of “Baldface.” entered somebody's house and promiscuously appropriated a watch of the value of more than $10, as it was alleged and proved. He was arrested. indicted and tried, and as drunkenness was not then a justification of theft, was convicted and sentenced to the penitentiary for a year. This was the first conviction for an offense punishable by a sentence to the penitentiary in the county.

On the morning of January 21, 1840, there was found on the premises of the Broadway House, a dead infant that had come into the world at some time of the preceding night. The mother was soon ascertained to be a young woman in the employ of the landlord. Charles was was then the Coroner, and in obedience to his warrant a jury was called, who by their finding made the charge of infanticide against the mother, and she, as soon as her condition permitted, was removed to the county jail. After several months she was brought to trial. She was defended by Judge Crane, who discharged that duty by order of the court, without fee or reward. At that day, lawyers discharged the duty 01 defending the indigent accused, when thereto assio-ned by the court, upon and for the honor of their profession ; and the practice of r'shysters haunting county jails in search of jobs at the cost of the county had not yet been inaugurated. On the trial. the woman was acquitted. That death had been occasioned by violence was established by the post-mortem investigation, but whether that violence was the result of purpose or accident was never known. The mother had been entirely alone in her hours of agony. No defense of insanity was set up ; that plea, as an offcome for murder, was then scarcely known in criminal procedure. Now the conduct and character of the manslayer and his ancestry, to the third and fourth generation, are sought out to establish hereditary insanity, and as scarce any one who in his pedigree but must make mention of fools as well as madmen, the defense of mental alienation is generally made out.

In 1794, a criminal in Wayne's garrison was by a military court tried, convicted and sentenced, and pursuant thereto was hanged. Since that day, the sentence to death as the penalty of a broken law has been but once pronounced. by a court of justice in Darke County. and that sentence is not at this present writing executed. Whether it ever will he, is in the uncertainty of the future.

The uproar On the streets reminds the writer that this is "show day ; " there is to be exhibited a menagerie of animals and a circus. The first show in Green, vine was of a similar character. though on a smaller scale, in June, 1829. But then as now, the institution was accompanied by a band of counterfeiters and thieves. On the next morning, Jim Craig had amongst his assets $22 in counterfeit money. coin and hank notes. . Howell had $17, and other townsmen had lesser amounts. Two men had their pocket-hooks stolen, three others their pockets cut and purses taken, and there were outside thefts in the county amounting in the aggregate to $200 or $300. But then as now. men and their families who had neither meat nor meal, salt nor whisky in their dwellings. came to town and spent their last dime to see the show.

Of the rise and progress of religious organizations in the town and township, the writer has not yet made mention, and, like many other matters of early years,

240 - HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY.

there is obscurity and doubt. As early as 1817 or 1818, Elder Nathan Worley, from Montgomery County, a man who could not read one word in the Bible, but by his people regarded as an apostle, belonging to the body who called themselves "Christians," and commonly called New Lights," who utterly abhorred any other appellation or name of denomination or sect ; and David Purviance, who had been a party in the revolt from the Presbyterian body at Cane Ridge. in Kentucky, about 1799 or 1800, and who, about 1809 or 1810. had removed with a number of like faith to the vicinity of New Paris, Preble County, the one illiterate as the fishermen of Galilee, the other like Paul or Timothy. " learned in the Scriptures from his youth." at intervals, few and far between, held religious services in the town or vicinity. About 1818, Greenville became a point in a circuit of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and John P. Durbin, a D. D. of after years, and.a man whose praise is yet in all the churches. although he has gone hence to his reward, was the first itinerant circuit-rider. About the same time or near it, the town and township became a missionary field of the Presbyterian Church, and was visited first by Nicholas Pittenger. and subsequently by John Ross of that denomination. who held services in the town and neighborhood. From 1819 or 1820, services of the Baptist Church were held at long intervals, by Childers and Wintermole, ministers of that denomination, who yet, after the lapse of sixty years, have a quasi-organization. although no regular stated service or house of worship in the town or township.

About the year 1833, a Methodist Church was erected on the site of the present edifice ; it was a frame building. and of dimensions capable of seating an audience of one hundred to one hundred and fifty. The building was removed in after years across the street to make way for the present house. Near the same period, the Baptists took possession of the ground where the old log schoolhouse had been demolished. and erected a small frame structure to serve them as a place of worship. In 1836 or 1837, the existing Episcopal Church was erected on the ground where it yet stands ; its position has been changed and the house enlarged. Either the same year or the year previous, the Christian Church erected a brick building on Third street, between Broadway and Walnut street, which was taken down about thirty years since on an exchange of lots, the church obtaining the site of the present edifice. These four buildings were the only structures for ecclesiastical uses in town or township in 1840. Services of other denominations were held either in some of these buildings after their erection or in the court house. It should, however, be stated here, that at the Catholic cemetery, two miles northeast of the town, a log house yet standing was erected, and in it at distant intervals religious services were held, when a priest came to look after the lambs of that flock who had strayed into the wilderness. This old building was probably erected !a 1839 or 1840.