HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 25
The commissioners did not attempt to touch the string which was given, and without rising determined on an answer. . . Council was not broke up more than fifteen minutes when a message came for the commissioners. After they had assembled, the chief took a white string and destroyed the whole of his former speech.
The exact truth is undoubtedly told in the journal of General Butler, who was really the chief personage in these transactions. It is a simple, straightforward, soldierly account, bearing every aspect of truth. According to this, after a rather defiant speech by Kekewepelletry, refusing hostages and other demands of the commissioners, he closed by throwing upon the table a black string of wampum. The commissioners then held a conference, and Butler stepped forward to reply, which he did at some length, concluding as follows:
We plainly tell you that this country belongs to the United States—their blood hath defended it, and will forever protect it. Their proposals are liberal and just ; and you, instead of acting as you have done, and instead of persisting in your folly, should be thankful for the forgiveness and the offers of kindness of the United States, instead of the sentiments which this string imparts and the manner in which you have delivered it. (I then took it up and dashed it on the table.) We therefore leave you to consider of what bath been said, and to determine as you please.
No such dramatic scene as the eulogists of General Clark have depicted appears to have occurred. The Indians were, however, brought to terms only with difficulty, and after much negotiation and many presents; but at length, on the second of February, 1786, a treaty was signed which compelled the Shawnee Indians to acknowledge the supremacy of the United States over all the territory ceded by England at the close of the Revolution, allotted and defined the reservation of the Shawnees, and provided for hostages and the return of white captives. Two whites named Pipe and Fox, and a little boy, were given up, and six young men of the Indians were left as hostages for the punctual fulfillment of the treaty.
CROGHAN'S VISIT.
The whites, however, as is well known to students of local history, were on the river and casually at this point many years before the military and diplomatic expeditions whose story is told.
In 1765 Colonel George Croghan came down the Ohio on an errand to Vincennes and Detroit, as commissioner for Sir William Johnson, to visit the French inhabitants at those points, and enlist their sympathies in behalf of the English, in the hope of obviating further Indian wars. He left an interesting journal of his voyage. Setting off from Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) on the fifteenth of May, in that year, with two batteaux and a considerable party of white men and Indians, he in a few days reached the region and made the following entries in his record.
29th. We came to the Little Miame river, having proceeded sixty miles last night.
30th. We passed the great Miame river about thirty miles from the little river of that name, and in the evening arrived at the place where the Elephant's bones are found [Big Bone lick], where we encamped, intending to take a view of the place next morning. This day we, came about seventy miles. The country on both sides level, and rich bottoms well watered.
In penning the last remark Croghan had doubtless in mind a lively recollection of the broad, beautiful Cincinnati basin which he had that day passed, He was taken by the Indians nine days after the last entry cited, and carried by them to Vincennes.
SETTLEMENTS AND INCIDENTS.
Some years after this, it is related that three brothers, James, George and John Medfee, of Botetourt county, Virginia, set their longing eyes upon the Miami country, intending, if they found it as desirable in all important respects as was described to them, to settle the wild but very hopeful tract of which they had heard, opposite the mouth of the Licking—otherwise they would go on to the settlements on the Salt river, in Kentucky, where they had acquaintances from the Old Dominion. About the beginning of June, 1773, they set out for the wilderness west. Procuring canoes at the Kanawha, they floated down that stream with considerable velocity by reason of an enormous freshet—twelve feet, as the traditions relate, above the great inundations of 1832 and 1847. It is supposed that it was this flood the height of which was marked, by these visitors or the Indians, upon a tree standing below Fort Washington, and which was pointed out by the latter as indicating the reach of the greatest height of the river they had known, either by personal experience or by tradition. Rushing out from the Kenawha upon the broad bosom of the Ohio, they were borne rapidly down that also. The mighty valley of the Beautiful River was full, almost from bluff to bluff; and when they arrived at the site of the future Losantiville and Cincinnati scarcely any tracts were in sight, below the heights, except water lots. Dismayed with the appearance of things, and not having the patience to wait for a more favorable season, they pushed on to their Kentucky friends, and, after a brief visit to their homes in Virginia, settled in the former State and became the heads of prominent Kentucky families. Such was the first abortive attempt at colonizing the Miami country that is on record.
In 1780, the father of General William Lytle—who (the general) became afterwards a citizen of Williams-burgh and then of Cincinnati, lived here in very honorable prominence for many years, and died in this city March 8, 1831—came down the river with the largest fleet of boats and company of immigrants that had been known to that time. It comprised sixty-three of the primitive craft then navigating the Ohio, conveying a number of men capable of bearing arms said to have been equal to one thousand, besides their women' and children. About ten o'clock in the forenoon of the twelfth of April, the occupants of the boats which were leading espied an encampment of Indians on the north side of the stream, opposite the debouchure of the Licking. Intelligence of danger was at once conveyed back to the fleet, and three large boats were directed to land above the camp, in a concerted order. Half the fighting men were to leap ashore the moment the boats should touch; and, stopping only to form in column, they charged the Indian village. The latter, however, in number variously estimated at one hundred and fifty to five hundred, did not wait for actual contact with their enemies, but incontinently fled, in their haste and disor-
4
26 - HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.
der abandoning many of their poor valuables. They were pursued to Mill creek and up the valley to a point beyond the present locality of Cumminsville. Several Indians were mounted, and got away easily; the others were suffered to escape. The whites returned to their boats, and moved on to the Mouth of Beargrass creek, now Louisville, where their projected settlement was effected.
The relation of Mr. John McCaddon, afterwards a resident of Newark, in this State, avers that he sailed down the Ohio in May of the same year, and afterwards, at Louisville, joined the expedition of George Rogers Clark against the Shawnees. Below the site of Cincinnati detachment of their force, which had chosen to march on the north side of the river, on account, they said, of more abundant game, while the main body kept to the Kentucky shore, became alarmed at the fresh signs of Indians, and took to their boats, intending to cross the river and rejoin their fellows, who had kept abreast of them. They had, however, got but a few yards from the bank when they were fired upon and thrown into confusion by a party of Indians; but before they reached the shore they heard the "scalp halloo" from the top of the hill, and knew that the Indians were in full retreat. It is probable that the wounded men of McGary's company, mentioned by Mr. McCaddon in his letter concerning the block-house, were hurt in this affair, since it was his command that was thus attacked.
In 1785, a party which included William West, John Simons, John Seft, a Mr. Carlin, and their families, also John Hurdman, all of Washington county, Pennsylvania, visited this region with a view to settlement. Passing the site of the Queen City to be, they landed at the mouth of, the Great Miami, it is thought in .April, and explored its valley as far as the subsequent site of Hamilton. They made improvements at sundry points where they found bottom lands finer than the rest; but do not appear to have remained permanently in the country. In the fall Hurdman came down the river, and found at its mouth Generals Clark, Butler, and Parsons, with Major Finney and his soldiers, about to construct the fort and make a treaty with the Indians. Almost the only matter which connects him or this incident closely with the history of Cincinnati is the fact that he was with the party of Symmes, three years afterwards, when there wandered away to his death John Filson, one of the proprietors of Losantiville.
In September of 1788 five gentlemen, from a station near Georgetown, Kentucky, came in two canoes to the mouth of Deer creek, up the bank of which they proceeded on foot about one hundred and fifty yards, when they were fired upon by a concealed savage, and one of them, named Baxter, was killed. He was buried at a spot just below the mouth of the creek, where, many years afterwards, a skeleton was found by a party of boys, the skull of which had a bullet rattling inside of it. It is some satisfaction to record that the Indian who shot poor Baxter was pursued by the rest of the party and brought down.
"MIAMI."
The last mention of the Cincinnati region by a geographical designation, before the incoming of Denman's colony, was doubtless by Judge Symmes, in his letter to Dayton, from Limestone (Maysville), October 12, 1788, referring to the unlucky expedition in which Filson was lost. The judge says: "On the twenty-second ult. I landed at Miami, and explored the country as high as the upper side of the fifth range of townships." The point at which he stepped ashore, and to which he casually and temporarily gave the general name of the region, was undoubtedly the Losantiville site, since here he met the party of Kentuckians, led by Patterson and Filson, who, in accordance with the public notice about to be set out in full in the next chapter, had "blazed" a road through the deep woods between Lexington and this place. They made up the major part of the escort which accompanied Symmes in the exploration that immediately followed into the interior.
CHAPTER V.
LOSANTIVILLE.
BY this time the reader who has followed patiently the pages of this volume will have no difficulty in understanding the considerations that probably determined the settlement of Losantiville. Probably no intelligent traveller had ever passed down the Ohio without noting the eligibility of this beautiful and otherwise singularly favored spot as the site of a settlement which might become a great city. The Mound Builder and the Indian had, each in his own time, realized its advantages of residence in clusters of homes; and very early the adventurous and speculative white man, as we have seen, turned with longing, eager eyes to the fertile tract opposite the mouth of the Licking, as the most hopeful spot spot in all the Miami country whereon to plant a colony.
Mr, James Parton, in his article on Cincinnati in the Atlantic Monthly for June, 1867, suggests that the location of the place was determined by considerations of safety, as this point was the best in this region for the posting of a garrison. He also calls attention to the facts that this is the only site on the Ohio river where one hundred thousand people could live together without being compelled to climb very high and steep hills, and that it is also about midway between the source and the mouth of the river—that is, near the centre of the great valley of the Ohio.
Be these things as they may—whether such thoughts entered the minds of the founders of Losantiville or not —it is certain that almost as soon as the proposal for the Miami Purchase had been mooted, long before Judge Symmes or the ostensible Proprietors of the village were able to give valid title deeds, the conditional purchase of the tract upon which the town was laid out had been made, and the site had been surveyed and settled. The
HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 27
men whose names, in the first instance, must forever be identified with the initial steps of this enterprise, which has eventuated in such wonderful results as are to be seen in the present city on the shore, were Matthias Denman, Colonel Robert Patterson, John Filson and Israel Ludlow.
DENMAN.
Of him, the original hero of the Losantiville venture, least of all is known. He was, like Symmes, Dayton and others of the company making the famous purchase, between the Miamis, a Jerseyman, residing at Springfield, Essex county, in that State, to which he returned, and where he remained so late as 1830, at least, after his colony had been firmly planted upon the tract he bought from Symmes. He was in that year visited in his home at Springfield by the father of Mr. Francis W. Miller, author of Cincinnati's Beginnings. That he was a man of some intelligence, enterprise and energy, may be inferred from the incidents of his connection with this enterprise in the then wilderness west; but we do not learn that he attained to any special distinction in his own State, or even where he was born or when he died.
PATTERSON.
Colonel Robert Patterson, a leading spirit in the projecting and founding of Losantiville, was a native of Pennsylvania, born near Cove mountain, March 15, 1753, of Irish stock, at least on his father's side. At twenty-one years of age he served six months on the frontiers of that State defending it against Indian incursions. The same year (1774) he and six other young adventurers, with John McLelland and family, made their way to the Royal spring, near Georgetown, Kentucky, where &ley lived until April, 1776, when they removed to the subsequent site of Lexington. Patterson, however, a few months afterwards assisted in the defence of McLelland's station, at Royal spring, when attacked by Indians; and was severely wounded by the savages in a night attack upon his party, while on their way to Pittsburgh shortly after, to procure necessaries, and was under a surgeon's care for a year. In April, 1778, at Pittsburgh, he joined the expedition of Colonel George Rogers Clark against the Illinois country, returning to Kentucky in September, and settling at Harrodsburgh. Early the next year, being then an ensign in the Kentucky militia, he proceeded under orders, with twenty-five men, to his former residence north of the Kentucky river, built and garrisoned a fort, and 'in April laid off the town of Lexington. In May he participated in the movement of Colonel Bowman against the Shawnee towns on the Little Miami, and then, probably, for the first time, passed over the wilderness tract that marked the future seat of the Queen City. In August, 178o, he was again here, with the expedition under Colonel Clark against the Indian towns on the Little Miami and Mad rivers; and once more, in the latter part of September, 1782, when Clark marched on his campaign of destruction between the Miamis, to avenge the defeat of the whites at the Lower Blue Licks in August—in which Patterson, now colonel and second in command to Boone, had a very narrow escape from capture. (He must thus have come to know well the advantages of the site opposite the mouth of the Licking, years before the arrangement with Denman and Filson was made. In 1786, Colonel Patterson seems to have made his last visit here, in another expedition against the Shawnees, under General Logan (in which he was badly wounded), before he came with the party in September, 1788, to "blaze" a road from. Lexington to the mouth of the Licking, in preparation for the settlement of Losantiville. As is well known, he never resided permanently with his colony here; but returned to Lexington after a month's stay. In 1804 he removed from that place to a farm near Dayton, in this State, where he survived until August 5, 1827, dying there and then at the advanced age of seventy-four years. Says the author of Ranck's History of Lexington:
In person Colonel Patterson was tall and handsome. He was gifted with a fine mind, but, like Boone, Kenton, and many others of his simple hunter and pioneer companions, was indulgent and negligent in business matters, and, like them, lost most of his extensive landed property by shrewder rascals.
FILSON.
John Filson was .a Kentucky schoolmaster and surveyor (although he says in the preface to his book, "I am not an inhabitant of Kentucky"), of some literary ability, as is evinced by the articles appended to A Topographical Description of the Western Territory of North America, by George Imlay, a captain in the continental army during the Revolution, and afterwards several years in Kentucky as a self-styled "commissioner for laying out lands in the back settlements." His work was published in London in three editions, 1792-7; and the appendix contains the following entitled articles, "by John Filson," one of our Losantiville projectors:
1. The Discovery, Settlement and. Present State of Kentucky, and an Essay towards the Topography and Natural History of that Important Country.
2. The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone, one of the First Settlers, comprehending every Important Occurrence in the Political History of that Province.
3. The Minutes of the Piankashaw Council, held at Port St. Vincents, April 15, 5784.
4. An Account of the Indian Nations inhabiting within the limits of the Thirteen United States, their Manners and Customs, and Reflections on their Origin.
Filson had already published, in 1784, at Wilmington, Delaware, in an octavo volume of one hundred and eighteen pages, the papers named in the first two titles; and they, with three others, were republished in New York in 1793, as a supplement to an American edition of Imlay's book, and all attributed to Filson. They include a report of the Secretary of State (Jefferson) to the President of the United States (Washington), on the quantity and situation of unsold public lands; also Thoughts on Emigration, to which are added Miscellaneous Observations relating to the United States, and a short account of the State of Kentucky—the whole making up a unique and in some respects valuable book. Filson was thus the first to publish a History of Kentucky.
His Adventures of Boone appears to have been written at the dictation of Boone himself, Filson supplying merely the phraseology, with perhaps an occasional reflection. The following document, signed by Boone and others,
28 - HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.
is printed as an endorsement and advertisement in Filson's work on Kentucky:
ADVERTISEMENT.—We, the subscribers, inhabitants of Kentucky, and well acquainted with the country from its first settlement, at the request of the author of this book have carefully revised it and recommend it to the public as an exceeding good performance, containing as accurate a description of our country as we think can possibly be given, much preferable to any in our knowledge extant; and think it will be of great utility to the public. Witness our hands this twelfth of May, Anno Domini 1784.
DANIEL BOONE,
LEVI TODD,
JAMES HARROD.
Part of Filson's preface is as follows :
When I visited Kentucky, I found it so far to exceed my expectations, though great, that I concluded it was a pity that the world has not adequate information of it. I conceived that a proper description of it was an object highly interesting to the United States; and, therefore, incredible as it may appear to some, I must declare that this performance is not published from lucrative motives, but solely to inform the world of the happy climate and plentiful soil of this favored region. And I imagine the reader will believe me the more easily when I inform him that I am not an inhabitant of Kentucky, but having been there some time, by my acquaintance in it am sufficiently able to publish the truth, and from principle have cautiously endeavored to avoid every species of falsehood. The consciousness of this encourages me to hope for the public candour, where errors may possibly be found.
Filson receives the following notice in Collins' History of Kentucky:
The second teacher [in Fayette county] was John Filson, in or before 1784; adventurer, surveyor, fanciful writer of the autobiography of Daniel Boone, and author of the first printed book about Kentucky—first published in 1784 in Wilmington, Delaware; in 1785 translated into French and published in Paris, France; in 1792, 1793, and 1797, thrice republished in London, with additions by Gilbert Imlay, a surveyor of Jefferson county, Kentucky, to satisfy the cravings of restless minds in England for information about the newest part of the Old World. [Mr. Collins had apparently not heard of the New York edition.] He was one of the original proprietors, drafted the first plan, and coined the pedagogical name of the projected town of Losantiville, etc.
In a subsequent part of this history, Judge Collins says:
His fanciful name for the intended town was adopted—Losantiville, which he designed to mean "the village opposite the mouth," Le-osante-ville, but which more really signifies, "the mouth opposite the village,"—who, or what induced the change from such a pedagogical and nonsensical a name to the euphonious one of Cincinnati is unknown [ !]; but in the name of the millions of people who live in or within reach of it, or visit it or do business with it, we now thank the man and the opportunity. The invention of such a name was positively cruel in Mr. Filson; we hope it had no connection with his early death. Perhaps that is reason enough why no street in Cincinnati is named after him.
Judge Collins seems also not to have heard that Plum street, in this city, is designated as "Filson street" upon Joel Williams' plat of the original town site, to be seen in the books of the recorder's office. Certainly, to the honor of the real founders and pioneers of Losantiville, the people of Cincinnati have not been neglectful in the matter of street names. There is a Ludlow street, a Ludlow avenue, and a Ludlow alley; Patterson has two streets, and Denman two; McMillan has an avenue; Burnet both street and avenue; while St. Clair, Gano, and many other early. names, have not been forgotten in the street nomenclature. It is true, however, that the memory of Filson has not yet thus been permanently honored.
According to Collins, when Denman visited Lexington in the summer of 1788, he saw "the double power" of Filson as a surveyor and writer, and enlisted him in the venture with himself and Patterson, on the north side of the Ohio.
Mr. George W. Ranck's history of Lexington notes of Filson that he "was an early adventurer with Daniel Boone, and after the discoverer of Kentucky returned to Lexington in October [1784], from the Chillicothe towns, Filson wrote, at his dictation, the only narrative of his life extant from the pioneer's own lips. This narrative was endorsed at the time by James Harrod, Levi Todd, and Boone himself. Filson taught in Lexington for several years, and did no little to secure the early organization of Transylvania seminary."
Filson, it will be remembered, was killed by the Indians in the Miami country, before the location was made at Losantiville. The circumstances of his death are narrated in chapter V, Part I, of this work.
Professor W. H. Venable, one of the latest and best of Cincinnati's songsters, thus, in his June on the Miami and other Poems, sings of our hero :
John Filson was a pedagogue--
A pioneer was he;
I know not what his nation was
Nor what his pedigree.
Tradition's scanty records tell
But little of the man,
Save that he to the frontier came
In immigration's van.
Perhaps with phantoms of reform
His busy fancy teemed,
Perhaps of new Utopias
Hesperian he dreamed.
John Filson and companions bold
A frontier village planned
In forest wild, on sloping hills,
By fair Ohio's strand.
John Filson from three languages
With pedant skill did frame
The novel word Losantiville,
To be the new town's name.
Said Filson: " Comrades, hear my words;
Ere three-score years have flown
Our town will be a city vast."
Loud laughed Bob Patterson.
Still John exclaimed, with prophet-tongue, "
A city fair and proud,
The Queen of Cities in the West."
Mat Denman laughed aloud.
Deep in the wild and solemn woods,
Unknown to white man's track,
John Filson went one autumn day,
But nevermore came back.
He struggled through the solitude
The inland to explore,
And with romantic pleasure traced
Miami's winding shore.
Across his path the startled deer
Bounds to its shelter green;
He enters every lonely vale
And cavernous ravine.
Too soon the murky twilight comes,
The night-wind 'gins to moan;
Bewildered wanders Filson, lost,
Exhausted and alone.
By lurking foes his steps are dogged,
A yell his ear appalls !
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A ghastly corpse upon the ground,
A murdered man he falls.
The Indian, with instinctive hate,
In him a herald saw
Of coming hosts of pioneers,
The friends of light and law;
In him beheld the champion
Of industries and arts.
The founder of encroaching roads
And great commercial marts;
The spoiler of the hunting-ground,
The plower of the sod,
The builder of the Christian school
And of the house of God.
And so the vengeful tomahawk
John Filson's blood did spill,—
The spirit of the pedagogue
No tomahawk could kill.
John Filson had no sepulchre,
Except the wildwood dim;
The mournful voices of the air
Made requiem for him.
The druid trees their waving arms
Uplifted o'er his head;
The moon a pallid veil of light
Upon his visage spread.
The rain and sun of many years
Have worn his bones away,
And what he vaguely prophesied
We realize to-day.
Losantiville the prophet's word,
The poet's hope fulfils—
She sits a stately Queen to-day
Amid her royal hills!
Then come, ye pedagogues, and join
To sing a grateful lay
For him, the martyr pioneer,
Who led for you the way.
And may my simple ballad be
A monument to save
His name from blank oblivion
Who never had a grave.
LUDLOW.
Colonel Israel Ludlow, the successor of John Filson as the holder of a third interest in the site of Cincinnati, was born upon the Little Head farm, near Morristown, New Jersey, in 1765. In his early twenties he came to the valley of the Ohio, to exercise his talents as a practical surveyor, and was here appointed by the geographer of the United States, to survey the Miami Purchase and that of the Ohio company, which he mainly accomplished by the spring of 1792, in the face of many difficulties and dangers, being generally without any escort of troops, in a country swarming with Indians. Taking the interest of Filson in the Losantiville venture after the death of the latter, he became the surveyor of the town site and the principal agent in disposing of the lots. After the treaty of Greenville he was employed by the Government to run the boundary lines for the Indian country established by treaty, and successfully completed the work, though amid many perils, and sometimes in imminent danger of starvation. He was the only one of the original proprietors who fixed his home at or near Cincinnati, establishing in 1790 Ludlow Station as a cit adel of defence against the savages upon a spot within the present limits of Cumminsville, the block-house standing at the intersection of Knowlton street with the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton railroad. It is claimed by his biographers (see Biographical Encyclopedia of Ohio, etc.,) that he gave the name to Cincinnati, in honor of the society of which his father, Commodore Ludlow, was a member. December 52, 5794, he laid out the town of Hamilton as a proprietor; and in November of the next year, in union with Governor St. Clair, Hon. Jonathan Dayton, and William McMillan, he planted the town of Dayton. November 55, 1796, he was married to Charlotte Chambers, of Chambersburgh, Pennsylvania, a quite extraordinary woman, who is made the subject of a beautiful biography by one of her grandsons. He died at home in January, 1804, after but four days' illness, and was buried in the graveyard adjoining the First Presbyterian church, Cincinnati, in ,the front wall of which was afterward fixed a tablet in honor to his memory. He was buried with Masonic honors, and an oration was pronounced upon the occasion by Judge Symmes.
THE PRELIMINARIES.
Denman, as a Jerseyman and perhaps a member of the East Jersey company, was early cognizant of the project of Symmes and his associates to secure the Miami Purchase ; and in January, 1788, he located, among other tracts, the entire section eighteen and the fractional section seventeen, lying between the former section and the river, upon which Losantiville was founded in the closing days of the same year. The present boundaries of the tract are Liberty street on the north, the Ohio river on the south, an east line from the Mount Auburn water works to the river a few feet below Broadway, and a west line from a point a very little east of the intersection of Central avenue and Liberty street to the river just below the gas works.
The agreed price was the same as the company was to pay the Government—five shillings per acre, or sixty-six and two-thirds cents; which for the seven hundred and forty acres of the tract paid for would have amounted to four hundred and ninety-three dollars and thirty-three cents. (This does not include sixty acres which were in dispute—the entire tract, as finally surveyed, containing eight hundred acres—and which Symmes claimed were not paid for.) But the purchase money, it is said, was paid in Continental certificates, then worth only five shillings on the pound, but turned into the treasury of the company at par; so that the actual cost of the entry to Denman, under this arrangement, was a little less than one hundred and twenty-five dollars. Some conjectures have been made that the entire eight hundred acres, now comprising by far the most valuable property in the city, did not cost Denman more than fifty dollars. Jonathan Dayton, one of the company, seems to have been fearful of the negotiation with Denman ; for, after Symmes had gone out to the Purchase, he urged him by letter not to allow the "Losantiville section" to be covered by any warrant, except one bought from Symnres or from Dayton as his agent, for six shillings threepence, or seven
30 - HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.
shillings sixpence, to aid in making the second payment on the purchase. As a matter of fact, the section eighteen was not covered by one of Symmes' warrants until May, 179o, and the fractional section not until April of the next year; and the old belief was that Denman secured both at a very low rate—for a mere song, as we should say now.
DENMAN'S MOVEMENTS.
In the summer of 1788 Mr. Denman found his way westward, and made a personal visit to his purchase opposite the mouth of the Licking, being thereby confirmed in his previous intentions of founding a station and ferry there, and leading a colony to the spot. On his way back he stopped at Limestone, and is said there to have fallen in with Colonel Patterson, and soon afterwards, at Lexington, with the schoolmaster Filson. Broaching his project to them, he found them eager listeners, and presently agreed to take them into joint partnership with him. In this arrangement Denman appears to have undertaken the chief conduct of the business, while Filson was to do the surveying and staking off of the tract and superintend the sales of lots, and Patterson was to be the main agent in obtaining purchasers and settlers. Denman was understood to be responsible for all matters relating directly to the purchase from the East Jersey company; Filson was already pretty well acquainted with the Miami country; and Patterson was the most influential man in stirring up people to the point of removal to the new land of promise. It was thus a very judicious and hopeful arrangement.
Soon afterwards, probably at Lexington, the following contract was executed between the parties:
A covenant and agreement, made and concluded this twenty-fifth day of August, 1788, between Matthias Denman, of Essex county, State of New Jersey, of the one part, and Robert Patterson and John Filson, of Lexington, Fayette county, Kentucky, of the other part, witnesseth : That the aforesaid Matthias Denman, having made entry of a tract of land on the northwest side of the Ohio river, opposite the mouth of the Licking river, in that district in which Judge Symmes has purchased from Congress, and being seized thereof by right of entry, to contain six hundred and forty acres, and the fractional parts that may pertain, does grant, bargain, and sell the full two-thirds thereof by an equal, undivided right, in partnership, unto the said Robert Patterson and John Filson, their heirs and assigns ; and upon producing indisputable testimony of his, the said Denman's, right and title to the said premises, they, the said Patterson and Filson, shall pay the sum of twenty pounds Virginia money, to the said Denman, or his heirs or assigns, as a full remittance for moneys by him advanced in payment of said lands, every other institution, determination, and regulation respecting the laying-off of a town, and establishing a ferry at and upon the premises, to the result of the united advice and consent of the parties in covenant, as aforesaid ; and by these presents the parties bind themselves, for the true performance of these covenants, to each other, in the penal sum of one thousand pounds, specie, hereunto affixing their hands and seals, the day and year above mentioned.
MATTHIAS DENMAN,
R. PATTERSON,
JOHN FILSON.
Signed, sealed, and delivered
in the presence of—
HENRY OWEN,
ABR. MCCONNELL.
The Virginia pound of those days was equivalent to three dollars and thirty-three cents in Federal specie, so that, since Denman sold two-thirds of his tract for sixty-six dollars and •sixty-seven cents, the cash value he apparently put upon the whole was but one hundred dollars.
"LOSANTIVILLE."
The general plan of the town was agreed upon, and Filson was to proceed as quickly as possible to get a plat made, and all things in readiness for early settlement and sale. It was also agreed to call the new place LOSANTIVILLE. This extraordinary designation was undoubtedly the product of the Kentucky schoolmaster's pedantic genius. An analysis of the word soon discovers its meaning. "L" is sometimes supposed to be simply the contraction of the French le, making the entire name to read "the town opposite the mouth." It is more generally believed, however, to have been intended by Filson as an abbreviation for Licking, leaving the article before ville in construction to be understood. Os is the Greek word for mouth, anti Latin for opposite, and vale French for town or city. The whole term would thus signify the town opposite the mouth of the Licking. It furnishes a remarkable instance, not only of an eccentric, polyglot neologism, but of the power of synthetic languages to express in one word what an analytic language like ours' must express in a much longer circumlocution and with somewhat numerous words. It has been doubted whether the village was ever really so called, except in the original plans of Filson, Denman, and Patterson; but there can 6e no doubt in the mind of one who looks well into the question, that the plan and village had that title continuously from the day they were agreed to, in August, 1788, to the day, January z or 4, 179o, when Governor St. Clair changed it to Cincinnati, "so that," as Judge Symmes wrote, "Losantiville will become extinct." There was never a post office or municipality here of that name; but letters were written from here under it; the town seems to have been familiarly so designated in correspondence and conversation; it has come down in almost unquestioned tradition associated with that title; and, to crown the evidence, it so appears upon some of the earliest maps of Ohio, and one of the plats recorded fifteen years after the settlement, while bearing the name Cincinnati, is also remarked in the explanations as "formerly called Losanterville ." The orthographic blunder noted suggests the spelling adopted by Mr. Julius Dexter in his prefatory historic note to King's Pocket-book of Cincinnati, and which may occasionally be seen in print elsewhere—"Losanteville," for which there are some good arguments to adduce. The name appears originally to have been written with considerable carelessness, since among the papers of Patterson, after his death, was found a copy of the "conditions" presently to be recited, though not in his handwriting, in the heading of which the name appears as "Losantiburg. " It was probably the heedless work of some clerk of Patterson's. The right name appears in the nomenclature of Cincinnati only in "Losantiville Hall," a place of assembly on Front street, many years ago, north of Deer Creek bridge, mentioned in the Cincinnati Almanac for 185o. Nothing else like it appears in all the geographical nomenclature of the world, except in a single instance—the name of the postoffice at Losantville, Randolph county, Indiana, probably named from a pioneer settler or proprietor.
HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 31
THE ROAD TO THE LICKING.
After the execution of the agreement, Denman returned to Limestone to meet Judge Symmes, leaving an understanding with his partners that they were soon to "blaze" a road through the wilderness in the direction of their purchase and establish a ferry across the Ohio there, if practicable. The former part of this arrangement appears conspicuously in the following advertisement, inserted by Patterson and Filson in the Kentucky Gazette, published at Lexington, for the sixth of September, 1788
NOTICE.—The subscribers, being proprietors of a tract of land opposite the mouth of the Licking river, on the northwest side of the Ohio, have determined to lay off a town on that excellent situation. The local and natural advantages speak its future prosperity, being equal, if not superior, to any on the bank of the Ohio, between the Miamis. The in-lots to be, each, half an acre, the out-lots four acres, thirty of each to be given to settlers upon payment of one dollar and fifty cents for the survey and deed of each lot. The fifteenth of September is appointed for a large company to meet in Lexington and mark a road from there to the mouth of the Licking, provided Judge Symmes arrives, being daily expected. When the town is laid off lots will be given to such as may become residents before the first day of April next.
MATTHIAS DENMAN.
ROBERT PATTERSON
JOHN FILSON.
A company was gathered without much difficulty in those restless and adventurous days. It was, probably, not large, but sufficient for the purpose, and did not include Judge Symmes, who was proceeding to "Miami" by way of the river. Without waiting for him, the party found its way to the Ohio—doubtless aided much of the way by old Indian trails and military traces—and must have arrived there in a few days, since it there met Denman and Judge Symmes, who records that he "landed at Miami" on the twenty-second of September. Filson is rather doubtfully said to have spent a day or two here, marking out streets through the dense forest. He, with the rest of the Kentuckians, accompanied Symmes on the exploring expedition up the Miami country, which they penetrated "as high as the upper side of the fifth range of townships," as the judge afterwards wrote. The adventures of this party, and the unhappy death of Filson, have been related in our chapter on the Miami Purchase. While Symmes and Patterson were absent on this excursion, Denman, Ludlow—who happened to be with the party, though not yet a proprietor—and others, followed the meanderings of the Ohio between the Miamis, and pushed their way about ten miles up one of the Miami rivers.
THE VOYAGE FROM LIMESTONE.
After the death of Filson and the return of the exploring party to the Ohio, Denman and Patterson went with Symmes back to Limestone, where they decided upon just the individual needed to take the place of Filson in the partnership, in the person of the young surveyor, Israel Ludlow; and an arrangement was made in October by which he should take Filson's interest in the Losantiville enterprise. The latter's plan of the town had perished with him. His brother, who was with the party of Kentuckians when John Filson was killed, considering that he had yet paid nothing and had established little valid claim upon the property, informed the surviving partners that the legal representatives of the deceased would demand nothing under the contract of August 22d. Ludlow prepared a new plan of the village, differing, it is supposed, in some important respects from Filson's, particularly as to the public square to be donated for church and school purposes, the common or public landing, and the names of streets. It is quite possible that some of these differences appear in the discrepancies observable between the recorded plats of Ludlow and of Joel Williams, which will be presently noted. The drafting of plans, the gathering of a colony, and other preparations for the settlement, employed the time of the proprietors at Limestone and elsewhere for many weeks, and they were further hindered for a time by the same obstacles which delayed Symmes, as recited in our chapter on the Purchase. At length, on the day before Christmas, in the year of grace 1788, the courageous founders of Losantiville and Cincinnati packed themselves in the rude flat or keel-boats and barges of the time, took leave of the party still at Limestone that was shortly to settle North Bend (the Columbia adventurers had been gone more than a month), and swept out on the broad bosom of the Ohio, now swelled beyond its usual limits, and covered thickly with floating ice.
They were all men, twenty-six in number. The following, by the best authorities, is the
ROLL OF HONOR.
Noah Badgeley, Samuel Blackburn, Thaddeus Bruen, Robert Caldwell, Matthew Campbell, James Carpenter, William Connell, Matthew Fowler, Thomas Gizzel (or Gissel), Francis Hardesty, Captain Henry, Luther Kitchell, Henry Lindsey, Israel Ludlow, Elijah Martin, William McMillan, Samuel Mooney, Robert Patterson, John Porter, Evan Shelby, Joseph Thornton, Scott Traverse, Isaac Tuttle, John Vance, Sylvester White, Joel Williams:
The list given in the Cincinnati Directory of 1819, which is usually repeated as the roll of founders, does not include the names of Ludlow and Patterson, which is Obviously incorrect; nor of Henry, Matthew Campbell, or Elijah Martin. It includes the name of Ephraim Kibby, who was subsequently of the Columbia colony, and was very likely of this party, as also Daniel Shoemaker, who is not on the list of 1819, but appears, like Kibby among the original proprietors of donation lots. Martin and Campbell were also such proprietors; but not Henry. The names of all the others appear in the list of those who drew donation lots, except those of the proprietors of the town and of Bruen, Caldwell, Connell, Fowler, Hardesty, Shelby, and Tuttle. The fact is, not all who came with the party staid as colonists, while others arrived subsequently to share in the distribution of the donation lots. Tuttle, Henry, and probably others, joined Symmes' voyagers to North Bend in February; Kibby and Shoemaker, though drawing lots at Losantiville, were with Stites' party at Columbia, and at least Kibby subsequently removed there; one other at least, Mr. Hardesty, went elsewhere, probably on the Kentucky shore, since there were Hardestys in Newport; and others drifted away without- making permanent settlement here.
32 - HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.
Judge Symmes' account of the voyage of the Losantiville argonauts from Limestone was communicated to his fellows of the East Jersey company, in a letter from North Bend, about five months afterwards. It is as follows:
On the twenty-fourth of December last, Colonel Patterson of Lexington, who is concerned with Mr. Denman in the section at the mouth of the Licking river, sailed from Limestone in company with Mr. Tuttle, Captain Henry, Mr. Ludlow, and about twelve others, in order to form a station and lay out a town opposite Licking. They suffered much from the inclemency of the weather and floating ice, which filled the Ohio from shore to shore. Perseverance, however, triumphing over difficulty, they landed safe on a most delightful high bank of the Ohio, where they founded the town of Losantiville, which populates considerably, but would be much more improved by this time, if Colonel Patterson or Mr. Denman had resided in the town. Colonel Patterson tarried about one month at Losantiville, and returned to Lexington.
The time of the departure from Limestone is indisputable; the date of arrival at "Miami" has been much disputed. For many years the twenty-sixth of December was celebrated as the anniversary of the landing; and to this day the city directory notes that as the day observed by the Cincinnati Pioneer association, though we are informed that their practice in this particular has changed. It does not seem at all probable that, in the face of difficulties experienced, the voyage from Limestone to Yeatman's cove, sixty-five or more miles, was accomplished in two days. An English traveller, noting his arrival here in 1806, records that "travelling is so very good between Limestone and the town, a distance of sixty-eight miles, that I descended in two short days' run, without meeting with any obstacles." Bad weather and other hindrances, as floating ice, which Symmes says "filled the Ohio from shore to shore," would undoubtedly delay the trip beyond two days, and very probably until the day now generally accepted as the true date—December 28, 1788. William McMillan, a man of native talents and classical education, of strong memory and Clear, judicial brain, testified years afterwards, in a chancery case involving the right of property, as between the city and Joel Williams, in the Public Landing, that he landed here with the party on that day. Denman also, in another case, testified that they came "late in December," though he could not remember the precise day; while Patterson and Ludlow thought the landing was early in January, which is quite certainly too late. Mr. McMillan's testimony, we think, now commands general acceptance. The tradition is probably correct that the party, occupied in completing the preparations, did not get away from Limestone until somewhat late in the day, and made but nine miles before tying up for the night; that the third day they sighted Columbia, but were unable to reach it or stop on account of the ice ; that the same cause prevented their landing here upon arrival opposite the spot on the evening of the same day, but that, after remaining in or near the mouth of the Licking through the night of the twenty-seventh, they effected a crossing with their boats the next morning, and triumphantly entered the little inlet at the foot of Sycamore street, afterwards known as Yeatman's cove. Fastening their frail barks to the roots and shrubs along the bank, they step ashore, collect driftwood and other dry fragments, strike the steel and flint, and provide themselves with their first necessity to comfort and cookery—ample fires. Very likely, the fatigues of the voyage over, they soon realize, even long before night, the graphic picture drawn by Dr. Daniel Drake more than sixty-three years afterwards: "Setting their watchmen around, they lay down with their feet to the blazing fires, and fell asleep under the music of the north wind whistling among the frozen limbs of the great sycamores and water maples which overhung them."
It was no time for prolonged rest or sleep, however. The depth of winter is not the season for open-air bivouacs, when shelters are at hand. The readiest expedient for the supply of material for dwellings—one already suggested by the practice of the boatmen of the age in breaking up their vessels and selling their constituent parts when the destination was reached—naturally occurred to the newly arrived, and their first cabin was constructed of boat-planks and other breakage from the craft in which they came. This is the statement of Judge Burnet, in the historical preface he wrote in Mr. George Henry Shaffer's Business Directory of 184o, and which Mr. Shaffer, who is still living, assures us is trustworthy in every particular. If so, the picture of the first cabin (represented as a log one, standing below the cove), used in a mayor's message some years ago as an advertisement for a forthcoming History of Cincinnati, must be revised and reconstructed in the light of this fact. The first was built on the present Front street, a little east of Main, and of course northwest of the cove or place of landing; and others soon put up, two or three in number, were in the immediate vicinity, where the dense, wild forest bordered upon the surging waters.
THE ORIGINAL TOWN PLAT.
While his companions occupied themselves in building, hunting, scouting, and other employments, Ludlow, doubtless assisted by Badgeley, who was one of Symmes' surveyors, and other trusty aids, engaged in the survey of the town, which was substantially completed by the seventh of January, 1789, when the drawing took place for the donation lots. The survey extended from the river to Northern row, now Seventh street, and from Eastern (now Broadway) to Western row (Central avenue), with out-lots of four acres each, or a present square, beyond Northern row to the north limits of the Losantiville purchase, at Liberty street. The out-lots numbered eighty-one. The street corners were marked upon the trees. There was and is, as everybody remarks, an interesting association between the two. The Jerseymen and Pennsylvanians of the party had clearly in mind, in the regularity with which the town was laid off and the names they gave its avenues, their favorite Quaker City—
Where the streets still re-echo the names of the trees of the forest,
As if they fain would appease the Dryads whose haunts they invaded.
The survey was not recorded until April 29, 1802, when the law of the Territory required it, under heavy penalties. The entry may be found in Book E-2, pages 62-63. The following documents, on page 6o, introduce and explain it:
References to the plan of the Town of Cincinnati, in page No. 62, exhibited by Colonel Israel Ludlow (as one of the proprietors), on the
HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO - 33
fore-noon of the twenty-ninth day of April, 18o2, and recorded agreeably thereto.
N. B.—The following certificate is attached to the original:
This may certify that I consider myself as having been one of the original proprietors of the Town of Cincinnati, and hereby authorize Israel Ludlow to make or copy a plan according to the original plan or intention of the firm, and cause to be recorded as such, agreeably to the Laws of the Territory in that case made and provided.
November 20, 1801.
MATTHIAS DENMAN.
Test :
P. P. STEWART,
D. C. COOPER.
The following notes from another Nola Bene may be of interest:
The lots in the regular squares of the town contain seventy-two square perches, are twelve poles in length and six poles wide. The out-lots, which are entire, contain each four acres, are in length from east to west six chains and fifty links.
The six long squares between Front and Water streets contain lots ten poles long and six poles wide.
All the streets in the town are four poles wide, excepting Seventh street* and the Eastern and Western row, which are but two poles wide.
The corners of the streets are north sixteen degrees west, and others crossing at right angles south seventy-four degrees west.—Streets through the out-lots four poles wide.
Then, on pages 62-3 of the record, follows the Ludlow plat. The streets thereon are named as now, except Eastern row (Broadway) and Western row (Central avenue). The name of Plum street is spelt "Plumb." None of the alleys or narrower streets now existing within the tract platted were in this survey. The space now occupied by the Public Landing is left blank, except for the well known cove of that day, which is figured as extending to the south line of Front street, a little east of the foot of Sycamore, and a little wider at its junction with the river than it was long. Colonel Patterson, in a deposition made in 1803, in the suit between Williams and the town of Cincinnati, said that this ground "in front of Front street was declared at that time a public common for the use of the citizens of the said town, excepting and reserving only, for the benefit of the proprietors, the privilege of establishing a ferry on the bank of the Ohio on said common."
All lots in the south half of the squares between Second and Third streets, and all below them, are laid out lengthwise north and south; all others in an east and west direction. Lots one hundred and fourteen to seventeen, and one hundred and thirty-nine to forty-two, are indicated in Ludlow's appended notes, and by a boundary of red ink in the plat, as "given to public uses." They constitute the block bounded by Fourth and Fifth, Walnut and Main streets, which was afterwards divided between the First Presbyterian church, the Cincinnati college, and the county. of Hamilton.
East of Eastern row, between extensions of Third and Fifth streets, were sixteen in-lots, and immediately north of these was the first range of out-lots, numbered from one to eight. The ranges of out-lots on the northwest, two in number, began also north of Fifth street. Some intruding hand has marked "canal" upon the north line of the third range of out-lots, above Seventh street, then the
*This was undoubtedly originally designated as Northern row.
narrow, two-rod street forming the north boundary of the town.
Another and rival plat, surveyed by whom we know not, was exhibited to the recorder by Joel Williams, on the same day, "at six o'clock P. m.," of "the town of Cincinnati (formerly called Losanterville)," by Samuel Freeman and Joel Williams, assignees of Matthias Denman and Robert Patterson. It was also recorded by the accommodating register of that official term, immediately after the Ludlow and Denman plat. The general changes in the names of streets, as indicated by letters upon this map, referring to notes prefixed, possess special interest, and exhibit the most pointed difference between the two. The present Water to Seventh streets are thus designated, in order: Water, Front, Columbia [Second], Hill [Third], High [Fourth], Byrd [Fifth], Gano [Sixth], and Northern row. At least one of these names, Columbia, prevailed in the local usage for many years. The intersecting streets, from Eastern row (which retained its name, westward, were Sycamore, Main, Cider [Walnut], Jefferson [vine], Beech [Race], Elm, Filson [Plum], Western row. The space devoted by the original proprietors to a public landing is shown as filled with in-lots, numbered four hundred and sixty-one to four hundred and sixty-eight. The numbers of other lots and the general features of the survey are the same as in the other plat. The same square, bounded by Main, Cider, High, and Byrd streets, is marked and noted as "reserved for a court house, a jail, a church, and school." There is also some difference observable in the boundary lines of sections.
This was made, as the appended affidavit of Williams shows, in the absence from the territory of Denman and Patterson, "the two other original proprietors of said town"—other than Filson, Colonel Ludlow not being recognized in the affidavit—and Williams' consequent belief, as he swore, "that they had no intention of recording in person the plat of said town, agreeable to a late act of the said territory, entitled 'an act to provide for the recording of town-plats.' " The affidavit goes on to aver that " this deponent further saith that he possesses, as he believes, sufficient information in the premises to enable him to make a plat of said town of Cincinnati, agreeable to the original plat, design, and intentions of the aforesaid original proprietors of said town, in manner and form as the same was originally laid out and declared by the proprietors aforesaid; and this deponent further saith that the within is a true and accurate map or plat of the said town of Cincinnati, agreeable to the original plat, plan," etc. The divergences from Ludlow's survey are thus partly accounted for. Williams' claims, under this plat, made without any reference to Colonel Ludlow, the original surveyor, who was still living and readily accessible within five miles of the Cincinnati of that day, were subsequently made the subject of litigation between himself and the public authorities, in which his plat was invalidated and his case lost. The property involved in the determination of this case was that which Williams' plat covers with town lots, but which has been continuously occupied, save a small part on the west side once covered with a building or buildings, as a public
34 - HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.
landing. This tract Williams had bought in 1800 from Judge Symmes, who made the usual guarantee of his right to sell it, and gave Williams some color for his claim. As to the comparative correctness of the two plats, it is worth notice that Colonel Patterson, in his deposition of 1803, declared that he had examined both plats, and believed "the one recorded by Israel Ludlow to be agreeable to the original plan."
Some years before this, in 1794 or 1795, Williams had come into possession by assignment of Denman's remaining interest, and claimed as an original proprietor. The remainder of Patterson's third, about the same time, passed by assignment to Samuel Freeman. The colonel remained here but a short time, and then returned; while Denman; who did not even come with the colony in December, did not remove from New Jersey. Of the four worthies originally associated with the founding of Cincinnati, only Colonel Ludlow became identified with the place as a resident; and he lived at his station some miles out. To all intents, however, he was a Cincinnatian.
THE DONATION LOTS.
Losantiville was now ready for regular 'settlement. It remained for the proprietors to fulfil their generous pledges of free in-lots and out-lots to the expectant colonists. The survey having been completed, or sufficiently advanced for the purpose, by the seventh of January, the proprietors, represented by Colonel Ludlow, promulgated the following:
CONDITIONS
on which the donation lots in the town Losantiville are held and settled.
The first Thirty town and out lots to so many of the most early adventurers shall be given by the proprietors, Messrs. Denman, Patterson, & Ludlow, who for their part do agree to make a deed free and clear of all charges and encumbrances excepting that of surveying and deeding the same, so soon as a deed is procured from Congress by Judge Symmes.
The lot-holders for their part do agree to become actual settlers on the premises; plant & attend two crops successively & not less than One Acre shall be cultivated for each crop & that within the term of two years—each person receiving a donation lot or lots shall build an house equal to Twenty feet square, One Storey & half high, with a brick, stone, or clay Chimney, which shall stand in front of their respective in lots and shall be put in tenantable repair within the term of two years from the date hereof.
The above requisitions shall be minutely complyed with under penalty of forfeiture, unless Indian depredations render it impracticable. Done this seventh day of January One thousand seven hundred & Eighty Nine.
ISRAEL LUDLOW.
The lottery for the distribution of the lots was held the same day, under the personal direction of Patterson and Ludlow, with the result indicated below. The original proprietors of some of the most valuable lots in the city are thus shown. The orthography of the original record, now in the possession of the Ohio Historical and Philosophical society, has been followed, there being no difficulty in recognizing the names:
