(RETURN TO THE TITLE PAGE) HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO - 25 modern military engineers. They are usually on the higher ground, and are seldom commanded from positions sufficiently near to make them untenable through the use of the short-range weapons of the Builders, and, while rugged and steep on some of their sides, have one or more points of easy approach, in the protection of which great skill and labor seem to have been expended. They are never found, nor, in general, any other remains of the Builders, upon the lowest or latest-formed river terraces or bottoms. They are of irregular shape, con. forming to the nature of the ground, and are often strengthened by extensive ditches. The usual defence is a simple embankment thrown up along and a little below the brow of the hill, varying in height and thickness according to the defensive advantage given by the natural declivity. "The walls generally wind around the borders of the elevations they occupy, and when the nature of the ground renders some points more accessible than others, the height of the wall and the depth of the ditch at those weak points are proportionally increased. The gateways are narrow and few in number, and well guarded by embankments of earth placed a few yards inside of the openings or gateways and parallel with them, and projecting somewhat beyond them at each end, thus fully covering the entrances, which, in some cases, are still further protected by projecting walls on either side of them. These works are somewhat numerous, and indicate a clear appreciation of the elements, at least, of fortification, and unmistakably point out the purpose for which they were constructed. A large number of these defensive works consist of a line of ditch and embankments, or several lines carried across the neck of peninsulas or bluff headlands, formed within the bends of streams—an easy and obvious mode of fortification, common to all rude peoples."* Upon the side where a peninsula or promontory merges into the mainland of the terrace or plateau, the enclosure is usually guarded by double or overlapping walls, or a series of them, having sometimes an accompanying mound, probably designed, like many of the mounds apart from the enclosures, as a lookout station, corresponding in this respect to the barbican of our British ancestors in the Middle Ages. As natural strongholds the positions they occupy could hardly be excelled, and the labor and skill expended to strengthen them artificially rarely fail to awake the admiration and surprise the student of our antiquities. Some of the works are enclosed by miles of embankment still ten to fifteen feet high, as measured from the bottom of the ditch. In some cases the number of openings in the walls is so large as to lead to the conclusion that certain of them were not used as gateways, but were occupied by bastions or block-houses long ago decayed. This is a marked peculiarity of the great work known as "Fort Ancient," on the Little Miami river and railroad, in Warren county. Some of the forts have very large or smaller "dug-holes" inside, seemingly designed as reservoirs for use in a state of siege. Occasionally parallel earth-walls, of lower height than the embankments of the main work, * American Cyclopaedia, article "American Antiquities." called "covered ways," are found adjacent to enclosures, and at times connecting separate works, and seeming to be intended for the protection of those passing to and fro within them. These are considered by some antiquaries, however, as belonging to the sacred enclosures. This class of works abound in Ohio. Squier and Davis express the opinion that "there seems to have been a system of defences extending from the sources of the Susquehanna and Alleghany, in western New York, diagonally across the country through central and northern Ohio to the Wabash. Within this range the works that are regarded as defensive are largest and most numerous." The most notable, however, of the works usually assigned to this class in this State is in southern Ohio, and not very far from the boundaries of Hamilton county, being only forty-two miles northeast of Cincinnati. It is the "Fort Ancient" already mentioned. This is situated upon a terrace on the left bank of the river, two hundred and thirty feet above the Little Miami, and occupies a peninsula defended by two ravines, while the river itself, with a high, precipitous bank, defends the western side. The walls are between four and five miles long, and ten to twenty feet high, according to the natural strength of the line to be protected. A resemblance has been traced in the walls of the lower enclosure "to the form of two massive serpents, which are apparently contending with one another. Their heads are the mounds, which are separated from the bodies by the opening, which resembles a ring around the neck. They bend in and out, and rise and fall, and appear like two massive green serpents rolling along the summit of this high hill. Their appearance under the overhanging forest trees is very impressive."* Others have found a resemblance in the form of the whole work to a rude outline of the continent of North and South America. Another fortified eminence, enclosing sixteen and three-tenths acres, is found in the present Butler county, once within the old county of Hamilton. The entrance to this enclosure is guarded by a complicated system of covered ways. Another, and a very remarkable work, as having walls of stone, constructed in their place at the top of a steep and lofty hill with infinite toil and difficulty, is near the village of Bourneville, Ross county, on Spruce hill, a height commanding the beautiful valley of Paint creek. The wall is two and a quarter miles long, and encloses one hundred and forty acres, in the center of which was an artificial lake. Many enclosures of the kind have been surveyed and described in other counties of the State. II. SACRED ENCLOSURES.—Regularity of form is the characteristic of these. They are not, however, of invariable shape, but are found in various geometrical figures, as circles, squares, hexagons, octagons, ellipses, parallelograms, and others, either singly or in combination. However large, they were laid out with astounding accuracy, and show that the Builders had some scientific knowledge, a scale of measurement, and the means of computing areas and determining angles. They are often in * S. D, Peet, in the American Antiquarian for April, 1878, 26 - HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO. groups, but also often isolated. Most of them are of small size, two hundred and fifty to three hundred feet in diameter, with one gateway usually opening to the east, as if for the worship of the sun, and the ditch invariably on the inside. These are frequently inside enclosures of a different character, particularly military works. A sacrificial mound was commonly erected in the center of them. The larger circles are oftenest found in connection with squares; some of them embrace as many as fifty acres. They seldom have a ditch, but when they do, it is inside the wall. The rectangular works with which they are combined are believed never to have a ditch. In this State a combined work of a square with two circles is often found, usually agreeing in this remarkable fact, that each side of the rectangle measures exactly one thousand and eighty feet, and the circles respectively are seventeen hundred and eight hundred feet in diameter. The frequency and wide prevalence of this uniformity demonstrate that it could not have been accidental. The square enclosures almost invariably have eight gateways at the angles and midway between, upon each side, all of which are covered or defended by small mounds. The parallels before mentioned are sometimes found in connection with this class of works. From the Hope-town work, near Chillicothe, a "covered way" led to the Scioto river, many hundred feet distant. More of the enclosures left by the Mound Builders are believed to belong to this class than to the class of defensive works. They especially abound in Ohio. The finest ancient works in the State—those near Newark, Licking county—are undoubtedly of this kind. They are --rather were—twelve miles in total length of wall, and enclose a tract of two miles square. The system of embankment is intricate as well as extensive, and encloses a number of singular mounds—one of them in the shape of an enormous bird track, the middle toe one hundred and fifty-five feet, and each of the other toes one hundred and ten feet in length. A superb work, representing the combination of a square witn two circles, of the dimensions previously stated, exists in Liberty township, Ross county, a few wiles from Chillicothe. A work in Pike county consists of a circle enclosing a square, each of the four corners of which touches the circle, the gateway of the circle being opposite the opening in the square. Several combinations of the square and tne circle appear in the Hope-town works, four miles north of Chillicothe. Circleville derives its name from the principal ancient work—a circle and a square—which formerly stood upon its site. Many other remains of the kind are familiarly known in Ross and Pike, Franklin, Athens, Licking, Montgomery, Butler, and other. counties. III. MISCELLANEOUS ENCLOSURES.—The difficulty of referring many of the smaller circular works, thirty to fifty feet in diameter, found in close proximity to large works, to previous classes, has prompted the suggestion that they were the foundations of lodges or habitations of chiefs, priests, or other prominent personages among the Builders. In one case within the writer's observation, a rough stone foundation about four rods square was found isolated from any other work, near the Scioto river, in the south part of Ross county. At the other extreme of size, the largest and most complex of the works, as those at Newark, are thought to have served, in part at least, other than religious purposes—that they may, besides furnishing spaces for sacrifice and worship, have included also arenas for games and marriage celebrations and other festivals, the places of general assembly for the tribe or village, the encampment or more permanent residences of the priesthood and chiefs. Mr. Isaac Smucker, a learned antiquary of Newark, to whom we are indebted for important facts presented in this chapter, says: Some archaeologists maintain that many works called Sacred Enclosures were erected for and used as places of amusement, where our predecessors of pre-historic times practiced their national games and celebrated their great national events ; where they held their national festivals and indulged in their national jubilees, as well as performed the ceremonials of their religion. And it may be that those (and there are many such) within which no central elevation or altar occurs, were erected for the purposes last named, and not exclusively (if at all) for purposes connected with their religion, and are therefore erroneously called Sacred Enclosures. Other ancient peoples, if indeed not all the nations of antiquity, have had their national games, amusements, festivals, and jubilees ; and why not the Mound Builders, too ? Notably in this regard the ancient Greeks may be named, with whom, during the period known as the "lyrical age of Greece," the Olympic, the Pythian, the Nemean, and the Isthmian games became national festivals. And without doubt the Mound Builders, too, had their national games, amusements, festivals, and jubilees, and congregated within their enclosures to practice, celebrate, and enjoy them. IV. MOUNDS OF SACRIFICE.—These have several distinct characteristics. In height they seldom exceed eight feet. They occur only within or near the enclosures, commonly considered as the sacred places of the Builders, and are usually stratified in convex layers of clay or loan alternating above a layer of fine sand. Beneath the strata, and upon the original surface of the earth at the center of the mound, are usually symmetricaly formed altars of stone or burnt clay, evidently brought from a distance. Upon them are found various remains, all of which exhibit signs of the action of fire, and some which have excited the suspicion that the Builders practiced the horrid rite of human sacrifice. Not only calcined bones, but naturally ashes, charcoal, and igneous stones are found with them; also beads, stone implements, simple sculptures, and pottery. The remains are often in such a condition as to indicate that the altars had been covered before the fires upon them were fully extinguished. Skeletons are occasionally found in this class of mounds; though these may have been " intrusive burials" made after the construction of the works and contrary to their original intention. Though symmetrical, the altars are by no means uniform in shape or size. Some are round, some elliptical, others square or parallelograms. In size they vary from two to fifty feet in length, and are of proportional width and height, the commoner dimensions being five to eight feet. V. TEMPLE MOUNDS are not so numerous. In this State it is believed they were only at Marietta, Newark, Portsmouth, and about Chillicothe. They are generally larger than the altar and burial mounds, and are more frequently circular or oval, though sometimes found in other shapes. The commonest shape is that of a truncated cone; and, in whatever form a mound of this class HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO - 27 may be, it always has a flattened or level top, giving it an unfinished look. Some are called platforms, from their large area and slight elevation. They are, indeed, almost always of large base and comparatively small height. Often, as might reasonably be expected, they are within a sacred enclosure, and some are terraced or have spiral ascents or graded inclines to their summits. They take their name from the probable fact that upon their flat tops were reared structures of wood, the temples or "high places" of this people, which decayed and disappeared ages ago. In many cases in the northern States these •must have been small, from the smallness of their sites upon the mounds; but as they are followed southward they are seen, as might be expected, to increase gradually and approximate more closely to perfect construction, until they end in the great teocallis ("houses of God"). One remarkable platform of this kind in Whitley county, Kentucky, is three hundred and sixty feet long by one hundred and fifty wide and twelve high, with graded ascents; and another, at Hopkinsville, is so large that the county court house is built upon it. The great mound at Cahokia, Missouri, is of this class. Its truncated top measured two hundred by four hundred and fifty-two feet. VI. BURIAL MOUNDS furnish by far the most numerous class of tumuli. The largest mounds in the country are generally of this kind. The greatest of all, the famous mound at Grave creek, Virginia, is seventy-five feet high, and has a circumference at the base of about one thousand. In solid contents it is nearly equal to the third pyramid of Mykerinus, in Egypt. The huge mound on the banks of the Great Miami, twelve miles below Dayton, has a hight of sixty-eight feet. Many of the burial mounds are six feet or less in height, but the average height as deduced from wide observation of them, is stated as about twenty feet. They are usually of conical form. It is conjectured that the size of these mounds has an immediate relation to the former importance of the personage or family buried in them. Only three skeletons have so far been found in the mighty Grave Creek mound. Except in rare cases, they contain but one skeleton, unless by "intrusive" or later burial, as by Indians, who frequently used the ancient mounds for purposes of sepulture. One Ohio mound, however—that opened by Professor Marsh, of Yale college, in Licking county—contained seventeen skeletons; and another, in Hardin county, included three hundred. But these are exceptional instances. Calcined human bones in some burial mounds at the North with charcoal and ashes in close proximity, show that cremation was occasionally practiced, or that fire was used in the funeral ceremonies; and "urn burial" prevailed considerably in the southren States. At times a rude chamber or cist of stone or timber contained the remains. In the latter case the more fragile material has generally disappeared, but casts of it in the earth are still observable. The stone cists furnish some of the most interesting relics found in the mounds. They are, in rare cases, very large, and contain several bodies, with various relics. They are like large stone boxes, made of several flat stones, joined without cement or fastening. Similar, but much smaller, are the stone coffins found in large number in Illinois and near Nashville, Tennessee. They are generally occupied by single bodies. In other cases, as in recent discoveries near Portsmouth and elsewhere in Ohio, the slabs are arranged slanting upon each other in the shape of a triangle, and having, of course, a triangular vault in the interior. In the Cumberland mountains heaps of loose stones are found over skeletons, but these stone mounds are probably of Indian origin, and so comparatively modern. Implements, weapons, ornaments, and various remains of art, as in the later Indian custom, were buried with the dead. Mica is often found witn the skeletons, with precisely what meaning is not yet ascertained; also pottery, beads of bone, copper, and even glass—indicating, some think, commercial intercourse with Europe—and other articles in great variety, are present. There is also, probably, a sub-class of mounds that may be mentioned in this connection—the Memorial or Monumental mounds, thrown up, it is conjectured, to perpetuate the celebrity of some important event or in honor of some eminent personage. They are usually of earth, but occasionally, in this State at least, of stone. VII. SIGNAL MOUNDS, OR MOUNDS OF OBSERVATION. This is a numerous and very interesting and important class of the works. Colonel Anderson, of Circleville, thinks he has demonstrated by actual survey, made at his own expense, the existence of a regular chain or system of these lookouts through the Scioto valley, from which, by signal fires, intelligence might be rapidly flashed over long distances. About twenty such mounds occur between Columbus and Chillicothe, on the eastern side of the Scioto. In Hamilton county a chain of mounds, doubtless devoted to such purpose, can be traced from the primitive site of Cincinnati to the "old fort," near the mouth of the Great Miami. Along both the Miamis numbers of small mounds• on the projecting headlands and on heights in the interior are indubitably signal mounds. Judge Force says: "By the mound at Norwood signals could be passed from the valley of Mill creek to the Little Miami valley, near Newtown, and I believe to the valley of the Great Miami near Hamilton." Like the defensive works already described as part of the military system of the Builders, the positions of these works were chosen with excellent judgment. They vary in size, according to the height of the natural eminences upon which they are placed. Many still bear the marks of intense heat upon their summits, results of the long-extinct beacon fires. Sometimes they are found in connection with the embankments and enclosures, as an enlarged and elevated part of the walls. One of these, near Newark, though considerably reduced, retains a height of twenty-five feet. The huge mound at Miamisburgh, mentioned as a burial mound, very likely was used also as a part of the chain of signal mounds from above Dayton to the Cincinnati plain and the Kentucky bluff beyond. VIII. EFFIGY OR ANIMAL MOUNDS appear principally in Wisconsin, on the level surface of the prairie. They are of very low height—one to six feet—but are other- 28 - HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO. wise often very large, extended figures of men, beasts, birds, or reptiles, and in a very few cases of inanimate things. In this State there are three .enormous, remarkable earthwork- effigies—the "Eagle mound" in the center of a thirty-acre enclosure near Newark, and supposed to represent an eagle on the wing; the "Alligator mound," also in Licking county, two hundred and five feet long; and the famous "Great Serpent," on Brush creek, in Adams county, which has a length of seven hundred feet, the tail in a triple coil, with a large mound, supposed to represent an egg, between the jaws of the figure. By some writers these mounds are held to be symbolical, and connected with the religion of the Builders. Mr. Schoolcraft, however, calls them "emblematic," and says they represent the totems or heraldic symbols of the Builder tribes. IX. GARDEN BEDS.--In Wisconsin, in Missouri, and in parts of Michigan, and to some extent elsewhere, is found a class of simple works presumed to be ancient. They are merely ridges or beds left by the cultivation of the soil, about six inches high and four feet wide, regularly arranged in parallel rows, at times rectangular, otherwise of various but regular and symmetrical curves, and in fields of ten to a hundred acres. Where they occur near the animal mounds, they are in some cases carried across the latter, whicn would seem to indicate, if the same people executed both works, that no sacred character attached' to the effigies. X. MINES.—These, as worked by the Builders, have not yet been found in many different regions; but in the Lake Superior copper region their works of this kind are numerous and extensive. In the Ontonagon country their mining traces abound for thirty miles. 'Colonel Whittlesey estimates tlfat they removed metal from this region equivalent to a length of one hundred and fifty feet in veins of varying thickness. Some of their operations approached the stupendous. No other remains of theirs are found in the Upper Peninsula; and there is no probability that they occupied the region for other than temporary purposes. THE CONTENTS OF THE MOUNDS. Besides the human remains which have received sufficient treatment for this article under the head of Burial mounds, and the altars noticed under Mounds of. Sacrifice, the contents of the work of the Mound Builders are mostly small, and many of them unimportant. They have been classified by Dr. Rau, the archaeologist of the Smithsonian Institution, according to the material of which they are wrought, as follows: 1. STONE.—This is the most numerous class of relics They were fashioned by chipping, grinding, or polishing: and include rude pieces, flakes, and cores, as well as finished and more or less nearly finished articles. In the first list are arrow and spear-heads, perforators, scrapers, cutting and sawing tools, dagger-shaped implements, large implements supposed to have been used in digging the ground, and wedge or celt-shaped tools and weapons. The ground and polished specimens, more defined in form, comprise wedges or celts, chisels, gouges, adzes and' grooved axes, hammers, drilled ceremonial weapons, cutting tools, scraper and spade-like implements, pendants and sinkers, discoidal stones and kindred objects, pierced tablets and boat-shaped articles, stones used in grinding and polishing, vessels, mortars, pestles, tubes, pipes, ornaments, sculptures, and engraved stones or tablets. Fragmentary plates of mica or isinglass may be included under this head. 2. COPPER. —These are either weapons and tools or ornaments, produced, it would seem, by hammering pieces of native copper into the required shape. 3. BONE AND HORN.—Perforators, harpoon-heads, fishhooks, cups, whistles, drilled teeth, etc. 4. SHELL.—Either utensils and tools, as drinking-cgs, spoons, fish-hooks, celts, etc., or ornaments, comprising various kinds of gorgets, pendants, and beads. 5. CERAMIC FABRICS.—Pottery, pipes, human and animal figures, and vessels in great variety. 6. WOOD.—The objects of early date formed of this material are now very few, owing to its perishable character. To these may be added: 7. GOLD AND SILVER.—In a recent find in a stonecist at Warrensburgh, Missouri, a pottery vase or jar was found, which had a silver as well as a copper band about it. Other instances of the kind are on record, and a gold ornament in the shape of a woodpecker's head has been taken from a mound in Florida. 8. TEXTILE FABRICS.—A few fragments of coarse cloth or matting have survived the destroying tooth of time, and some specimens, so far as the texture is concerned, have been very well preserved by the salts of copper, when used to enwrap articles shaped from that metal. THE MOUND BUILDERS' CIVILIZATION. This theme has furnished a vast field for speculation, and the theorists have pushed into a wilderness of visionary conjectures. Some inferences, however, may be regarded as tolerably certain. The number and magnitude of their works, and their extensive range and uniformity, says the American Cyclopaedia, prove that the Mound Builders were essentially homogeneous in customs, habits, religion, and government. The general features common to all their remains identify them as appertaining to a single grand system, owing its origin to men moving in the same direction, acting under common impulses, and influenced by similar causes. Piofessor Short, in his invaluable work, thinks that, however writers may differ, these conclusions may be safely accepted: That they came into the country in comparatively small numbers at first (if they were not Autochthones, and there is no substantial proof that the Mound Builders were such), and, during their residence in the territory occupied by the United States, they became extremely populous. Their settlements were widespread, as the extent of their remains indicates. The magnitude of their works, some of which approximate the proportions of Egyptian pyramids, testify to the architectural talent of the people and the fact that they developed a system of government controlling the labor of multitudes, HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO - 29 whether of subjects or slaves. They were an agricultural people, as the extensive ancient garden-beds found in Wisconsin and Missouri indicate. Their manufactures offer proof that they had attained a respectable degree of advancement and show that they understood the advantages of the division of labor. Their domestic utensils, the cloth of which they made their clothing, and the artistic vessels met with everywhere in the mounds, point to the development of home culture and domestic industry. There is no reason for believing that the people who wrought stone and clay into perfect effigies of animals have not left us sculptures of their own faces in the images exhumed from the mounds. They mined copper, which they wrought into implements of war, into ornaments and articles for domestic use. They quarried mica for mirrors and other purposes. They furthermore worked flint and salt mines. They probably possessed some astronomical knowledge, though to what extent is unknown. Their trade, as Dr. Rau has shown, was widespread, extending probably from Lake Superior to the Gulf, and possibly to Mexico. They constructed canals, by which lake systems were united, a fact which Mr. Conant has recently shown to be well established in Missouri. Their defences were numerous and constructed with reference to strategic principles, while their system of signals placed on lofty their settlements, and communicating with the great water courses at immense summits, visible from distances, rivaled the signal systems in use at the beginning of the present century. Their religion seems to have been attended with the same ceremonies in all parts of their domain. That its rites were celebrated with great demonstrations is certain. The sun and moon were probably the all-important deities to which sacrifices (possibly human) were offered. We have already alluded to the development in architectute and art which marked the possible transition of this people from north to south. Here we see but the rude beginnings of a civilization which no doubt subsequently unfolded in its fuller glory in the valley of Anahuac and, spreading southward, engrafted new life upon the wreck of Xibalba. Though there is no evidence that the Mound Builders were indigenous, we must admit that their civilization was puiely such, the natural product of climate and the condition surrounding them.* THE BUILDERS IN HAMILTON COUNTY. Very brief notice of them will be made here, anything like detailed description being reserved for the special histories to come later in this work. Reference has been made above to the extensive signal system in the Miami country, and to numerous works upon the present site of Cincinnati. Elsewhere in the county the Builders have left frequent remains. They abound in Columbia, Anderson, and Spencer. townships, and are found all along the Little Miami valley from below Newtown to points above Milford. On the other side of the county, in the valley of the Great Miami, they are found numerously at the mouth of the stream, about Cleves, and for miles*   * The Americans of Antiquity, pp. 96—100. along the banks above and below Colerain. Near this place, about one mile south of the county line, is the celebrated enclosure known as "the Colerain works," surrounding a tract of about ninety-five acres. Judge Force thinks there was a strong line of fortifications along the Great Miami, from the mouth to Piqua, with advanced works near Oxford and Eaton, and with a massive work in rear of this line, at Fort Ancient. In the interior of Hamilton they appear at Norwood, Sharon, in Springfield township, and elsewhere to some extent. This region was undoubtedly one of the densest centers of population. We shall view some of their works more closely before this volume is closed. CHAPTER IV. THE OHIO INDIANS. "Then a darker, drearier vision Passed before me, vague and cloudlike; I beheld our nations scattered, All forgetful of my counsels, Weakened, warring with each other; Saw the remnants of our people Sweeping westward, wild and woful, Like the cloud-rack of a tempest, Like the withered leaves of autumn." H. W. LONGFELLOW, "Hiawatha." AFTER the Mound Builder came the red man. For untold centuries his history is a blank. Whence he came, how he spread over the continent, what his earlier numbers, supplies material for the philosophic historian. The literature of past ages is silent concerning these things; the voice of tradition is almost equally reticent. It seems quite certain, however, notwithstanding some speculations to the contrary, that no other race intervened between the mysterious people of the mounds and the savages whom Columbus and other discoverers found upon our soil. By the red men—fewer in numbers, doubtless, but fiercer, braver, and more persistent than their antagonists—the Builders were driven out and pushed to the southwest, hosts of warriors on both sides perishing in the protracted struggle. As Halleck says: "What tales, if there be tongues in trees, These giant oaks could tell Of beings born and buried here!" The new race was vastly inferior to the older. It was more a nomadic people. Villages and other permanent habitations seldom contained, through the course of many generations, the same tribes. They were not given, except to a very limited extent, to the tillage of the soil. War and the chase were their chief occupations, and the products of the latter, with spontaneous yields from the forest and stream; furnished the simple necessaries of their lives. Change for the worse as it was, apparently, in the population of this part of North America, it was doubtless in the order of Divine Providence, that the land might, by and by, be the more easily and advantageously occupied by the white man, who 30 - HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO. would come to fill it again with busy life and to dot its surface with the monuments of a civilization to which the wildest dreams of his predecessors never reached. THE IROQUOIS AND THE ERIES. The light of history begins to dawn upon the Indians of Ohio during the latter part of the seventeenth century. As early as 1609 the explorer, Champlain, made mention of the Iroquois, who then dwelt about the eastern end of Lake Ontario. In 1683 La Hontan names them again and says they are "in five cantons, not unlike those of the Swisses. Though these cantons are all one nation, and united in one joint interest, yet they go by different names, viz.: The Sonontouans [Senecas], the Goyagoans [Cayugas], the Onnatagues [Onondagas], the Ononyonts [Oneidas], and the Aguies [Mohawks]." The Five afterwards became the famous "Six Nations," and are sometimes mentioned as seven. These formed one of the three great divisions of the Indian tribes east of the Mississippi—the Huron-Iroquois, the Algonquins, and Mobilians, dwelling respectively, it may be stated in a general way, on the great lakes, the Ohio river, and the Gulf of Mexico. The second of these families, though perhaps not the most powerful in war, the first seemingly holding the supremacy, was by far the most numerous and widespread. Their habitat is described as "originally reaching from Lake Superior to the mouth of the St. Lawrence; and from the west of Maine to Pamlico sound along the Atlantic coast, and from the Roanoke river to the headwaters of the Ohio and westward to the mouth of the river, and from that point, including all south and west of Lake Erie, to Lake Superior again, leaving the Iroquois on Lake Ontario like an island in the midst of a great sea."* To this stock belonged most of the Ohio tribes ; but to their neighbors, east and west, the Iroquois and the Hurons, were allied in blood the ill-fated Filians, or Eries, the first of all western tribes to be observed and mentioned by the French explorers. They are first designated by the former name on Champlain's map, published in 168o; are again so named on the map of Richard Blome three years later; and so generally on tne old maps until 1735. Long before this, however, they are supposed to have been driven out, exterminated, or amalgamated with other tribes. Blome, in 1683, places the "Senneks," or Senecas, one of the Five Nations of the Iroqouis, among the Eries on the south of the lake to which the latter gave the name; and that probably is the tribe into which the Eries ultimately merged. Charlevoix, in 1744, puts their later tribal designation upon his map near the east end of Lake Erie (they had been located upon a map of 1703 near the west end), but adds the remark: "The Eries were destroyed by the Iroquois about one hundred years ago." Also, upon a map prepared by John Hutchins and published in 1755, where the tribe is assigned former territory stretching along the whole south shore of Lake Erie, this note appears: "The antient Eries were extirpated upwards of one hundred years ago by the Iroquois, ever since which time they [the Iroquois] have been in posses- * Rev. S. D. Peet, in The American Antiquarian, Vol. 1., No. 2. sion of Lake Erie." Mitchell's map of the same year supplies an interesting note: "The Six Nations have extended their territories to the river Illinois ever since the year 1672, when they were subdued and incorporated with the antient Chaouanons, the native proprietors of these countries and the river Ohio. . . The Ohio Indians are a mixt tribe of the several Indians of our colonies, settled here under the Six Nations, who have allwaies been in Alliance and subjection to the English." The territory of these renowned conquerors appears upon the maps as early as 1722 as a geographical district or political division named "Iroquois." It extended from Montreal to the Susquehanna, thence to the west end of Lake Erie, north to Lake Huron, and east to Montreal again— thus including about half of the present territory of Ohio. In the maps of 1755 the Iroquois' tract is extended to the Mississippi, and includes everything between that river and Lake Ontario, the Ohio, and the great lakes. One map divides "the country of the confederate Indians," now enlarged from five to seven nations, into their "place of residence," New York; their "deer-hunting country" (Tunasonruntic), which was Ohio; and their "beaver-hunting countries," or Canada. Nearly, then, to the period of exploration in the Ohio country, the Eries dwelt here; and fragments of their tribe probably remained when the first white men came, dwelling amid their conquerors, but not to be identified as separate from them. The indications, from traditions and the maps, which furnish the only data we have concerning them, are that the Eries only occupied the lands east of the Cuyahoga and south of the lake; while that west of the river was held by a kindred tribe, the Wyandots or Hurons. The later of the two classes of earthworks found in northern Ohio are assigned by some inquirers to the Eries, to whom many of the burial places and skeletons found in this region undoubtedly belong. The Indian names of streams, as well as that of the great lake to the northward, are supposed to have been given by them. THE WYANDOTS, OR HURONS. After the middle of the last century, knowledge concerning the Indians of Ohio was rapidly multiplied. Traders and explorers began, a little before that time, to contribute information about the tribes among whom they journeyed or traded; and Colonel Bouquet's expedition in 1764, to the Indian valleys on the Tuscarawas and Muskingum rivers, offered more definite, detailed, and authentic knowledge than had been accessible to that time. Among the tribes thus early reported, one of the most important was the Wyandots, or Hurons, as they were called by the French. This was a branch of the great Iroquois family, but had been warred upon by their red kindred, driven from their homes on the lake whose name perpetuates their memory, pushed to the northwest, into Michigan and Wisconsin, among the Ottawas and other tribes. Here, however, they encountered an unfriendly wing of the Dakota family, from the west of the Mississippi, and were by them hunted again southeastward. They finally appear upon the maps as located in northern HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO - 31 and western Ohio, west of the Cuyahoga river, "assigned to this territory," says Evans' map of 1755, "by express leave of the Iroquois." They held from the lake southward to the headwaters of the Scioto and the Miamis, and in some places below. They had villages even upon the site of Columbus and elsewhere in the present Franklin county. They were also mingled with the Delawares of southeastern Ohio. Although so often overpowered, they were still a martial people, and never surrendered themselves prisoners. General Harrison said of the Wyandot : " He was trained to die for the interest or honor of his tribe, and to consider submission to an enemy the lowest degradation." Their grand sachem during the early white occupancy of the State, Tahre, or the Crane, was undoubtedly a distinguished example of the finer sort of American Indian. The Wyandots held their lands in Ohio for a long time, subject to the Iroquois, without claiming proprietorship; and their name appears on none of the treaties with the English or the United States until. after 1784. THE DELAWARES. These claimed to be the elder branch of the LenniLenape tribes, and called themselves the "grandfathers" of the kindred nations, while recognizing the superiority of the Wyandots. This claim has been admitted by most writers upon the Indians. Like the Eries, they were, of Algonquin stock, and had removed from the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers to the Alleghany and the Ohio. This territory they were allowed by the grace of the all conquering Iroquois, who had early subjugated them. Their first removal from their original seat upon or near the Atlantic coast did not occur, however, until after the advent of William Penn. They then occupied lands in Virginia, but sold them by the treaty of Lancaster in 1744, and moved westward. In 1752, with other tribes, by the treaty of Logstown, they formally assented to the settlement of whites in the region south of the Ohio. About that time they were found numerously in villages on the Muskingum and the Beaver, but, according to Gist's journal of 1754, not anywhere west of the Hock-hocking. One unimportant Delaware tribe, the Munsees (some call these the Mingses), are found on the maps as far up the Ohio as the Venango river. Between this and the Scioto the Delaware territories were presumably located. In 1779, however, the delegates of the tribes gave to Congress, then at Princeton, New Jersey, the definition of a boundary which included the Miami and Wyandot tracts, and very likely others, as well as their own. It was as follows: From the mouth of the Alleghany at Fort Pitt to Venango, and from thence up French creek and by LeBceuf along the old road to Presque Isle, on the west; the Ohio river, including all the islands in it, from Fort Pitt to the Oubache (Wabash) on the south; thence up the Oubache to the broad Opecomecah, and up the same to the head thereof; and from thence to the headwaters and springs of the northwestern branches of the Great Miami or Rocky river; thence across to the headwaters and springs of the most northwestern branches of the Scioto river ; thence to the head westernmost springs of the Sandusky river ; thence down the same river, including the islands in it and the little lake, to Lake Erie on the west and northwest, and Lake Erie on the north. There is no probability that the Delawares ever occupied, at least within the period of white exploration 'or occupancy, any large part of this vast tract. What they did own north of the Ohio or east of the Cuyahoga they ceded to the whites by the treaty of 1785. The tribe, however, was represented among the Ohio Indians so late as 1813, when Delawares joined with others in a contract of amity and peace with the whites at Franklinton, on the present site of the western part of Columbus. THE SHAWNEES. The first that is known of this important and Warlike tribe, they lived to the south of the Cumberland and Ohio rivers, as all the early Frencn and English maps of the western country show. One writer says tney formerly lived on the Mississippi, whence they removed to the sources of a river in South Carolina, and, there coming in contact with the Cherokees and the Catawbas, they moved on to the Savannah. This seems to be confirmed, in part, by the tradition of the Sauks and Foxes, of the Upper Mississippi region, who say the Shawnees were of tne same stock with themselves, but migrated to the south. As early as 1632 they were mentioned by De Laet as residing on the Delaware river, whither they are supposed to have emigrated from Ohio. Forty years after the above date they joined themselves in an alliance for tne defence of the Andastes against the Iroquois. The Andastes were themselves an Iroquois tribe, now long extinct, which had its home on the Alleghany and the Upper Ohio, and are said at this time to have been located on the Susquehanna. Soon after, however, they are again found among the Delawares of the Delaware, where they staid till a backward emigration to Ohio began about 1744. They, a portion of the tribe which had not gone south,. had been previously on the Miamis, being the first tribe of which we hear in this region; and were there attacked and scattered by the terrible Iroquois. They now, upon their return, were located, by express permission of the Wyandots and the Iroquois, on and near tne Scioto and Mad rivers. Here they were divided into four bands—the Chillicothe, Piqua, Kiskapocke, and Mequachuke; and in the Scioto valley their chief town was situated, called by the English "Lower Shawneetown." There is also a Shawneetown in southern Illinois; and the wide wanderings of this people are elsewhere shown by the names they have left, as the Suwanee river of the popular song, in South Carolina, the Piqua of Pennsylvania and the town of the same name in the Miami country, and the Chouanon (now Cumberland) river of the old maps. They were the only tribe among tne northern Indians who had a tradition of foreign origin ; and for some time after the whites began to know them, they held a yearly festival to commemorate the safe arrival of their ancestors in the Western world. After their arrival in the Scioto valley, they were rejoined by the portion of the tribe which had settled in the south. From this branch, son of a Shawnee father who had married a Creek woman during the southern residence, the celebrated Tecumseh and his brother, Elsquataway, or "the Prophet," are said to have sprung. Under the leadership of the -former a part of the tribe 32 - HISTORY OF HAMILTON. COUNTY, OHIO. joined the British in the War of 181 2, 'in which Tecumseh lost his life. Cornstalk, the leading chieftain of the Scioto bands; the Grenadier Squaw, his sister, so called from her height and size, and whom all accounts represent as an Indian woman of unusual ability and acuteness; Cornplanter, and other famous warriors, were also of the Shawnees; and Logan, the celebrated Mingo chief, lived among them here. The sites of their towns and the places where they tortured their hapless prisoners are still pointed out upon the fertile "Pickaway Plains," in Pickaway county, a few miles from Circleville. Cornstalk is described as "a man whose energy, courage, and good sense placed him among the very foremost of the native heroes of this land." The following pathetic story is told of his fate, which reflects anything but credit upon the whites who were concerned in it: "This truly great man, who was himself for peace, but who found all his neighbors and the warriors of his own tribe stirred up to war by the agents of England, went over to the American fort at Point, Pleasant, at the mouth of the Great Kenawha, to talk the matter over with Captain Arbuckle, who was in command there and with whom he was acquainted. This was in the early summer of 1777; and the Americans, knowing that the Shawnees were inclining to the enemy, thought it would be a good plan to detain Cornstalk and a young chief, Red Hawk, who was with him, and make them hostages. The old chief, finding himself entrapped, calmly awaited the result. Ellinipsco, the son of Cornstalk, who came the next morning to see his father, was also detained. Toward night, one of the white hunters having been shot by an unknown Indian, the soldiers raised a cry, 'kill the red dogs in the fort,' and immediately carried their bloody thought into execution, the commander endeavoring, though almost unheeded, to dissuade them from their purpose. Cornstalk fell pierced by seven musket balls, and his son and Red Hawk met the same fate. Cornstalk saw his assassinators coming, and met them at the door of the but in which he was confined, his arms folded upon his massive chest and his whole mien expressing a magnificent stoicism. This was by no means the only shameful act of treachery on the part of the whites. The murder very naturally aroused an intense feeling of hatred for the whites throughout the Shawnee division, and was the cause of much future bloodshed." For more than forty years after the return and reunion of the tribe, 1750, it was engaged in almost constant warfare with the whites. They were among the most active allies of the French and sometimes of the British. After the conquest of Canada by the latter, they continued hostilities against the settlements, in alliance with the Delawares, until after the successful campaign of Colonel Bouquet. He, in 1764, estimated their bands upon the Scioto to number five hundred warriors. They took an active part against the patriots in the war of the Revolution and in the Indian war that followed, continuing it among the early settlers in this State until hostilities were terminated by the peace of Greenville in 1795. These Indians are specially distinguished in our national history. They have been variously called the "Bedouins of the American wilderness" and "the Spartans of the race," from their constancy in braving danger and enduring the consequences of defeat. They were undoubtedly among the ablest and bravest of the red men of the Ohio wilderness. THE OTTAWAS, CHIPPEWAS, AND MINGOS. Of these there is not much to say, as they make no great figure in early Ohio history. The former had their headquarters in this State, near or with the Wyandots, in the valleys of the Maumee and the Sandusky. They lived originally, so far as is known, upon the banks of the Canadian river which retains their name (the name also of the capital of the Dominion), whence they were driven by the confederated Iroquois and scattered westward and southward along both shores of Lake Erie. Their chief seats were far away on the• south shore of Lake Superior, where they became a powerful tribe, and, though remote, were exceedingly troublesome to the whites. Pontiac, hero of the famous conspiracy of 1763, was an Ottawa chief, and his tribe was foremost in the meditated mischief. They were the last of the greater ,tribes to succumb to the power of the whites. The Chippewas were also an important and numerous people, having their tribal centre in the far north, even beyond the Ottawas, in the Lake Superior region. There they were principally known as Ojibways or Ojibbeways, and were the first Indians met in that country by the French missionaries and explorers about 1640. They are an Algonquin tribe, and were formerly all well-developed, fine-looking fellows, expert hunters, brave warriors, and fond of adventure. They are still but little given to agriculture, yet some members of the tribe have proved susceptible of considerable education. "George Copway," "Peter Jones," "Edward Cowles," and perhaps others of the tribe; have been reputable writers and speakers upon matters concerning their people. In Ohio they occupied lands on the south share of Lake Erie, most of which they surrendered in 1805, and the remainder in 1817. They were much engaged in hostilities against the settlers, but joined in the peace of Greenville, and gave no serious trouble afterwards until the second war with Great Britain, when they were again hostile, but joined in the general pacification of the. tribes the year after it closed.. Not much is recorded in Ohio history of the Mingos, who are by some supposed to be identified with the Shawnees. They are known separately, however, as residing in considerable number about "Mingo Bottom," on the Ohio, below Steubenville, and to some extent in the Scioto valley. Here their most famous leader, Tahgah-jute, or Logan, though himself the son of a Cayuga chief, chose his home, as before noted, among a cluster of the Shawnee towns on the Pickaway plains, his own residence being at "Old Chillicothe," now Westfall. It was in this neighborhood that Logan gave Colonel Gibson the substance of his famous address to Lord Dunmore, and at Charlotte, on the other side of the river, that Dunmore's campaign of 1774 came to a peaceful end. They are believed, unlike the Shawnees, to have been an offshoot of the Iroquois family. It may here be noted HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO - 33 that the Ohio tribes seem to have lived in general friendliness, and that some of their lands were frequently common or neutral territory, in which the tribes intermixed at pleasure, outside of the tracts claimed as peculiarly. the property of each. Hence they became more or less commingled, and in the Scioto valley, and elsewhere in the State, when the first definite knowledge of the Ohio Indians was obtained, not only the Mingos and Shawnees, and the Shawnees and Miamis, but also the Wyandots, Delawares, and others were found residing amicably together. THE MIAMIS. The people of southwestern Ohio are chiefly interested in the story of the Miami Indians, although they occupied hut a comparatively small tract in this State, their habitat being mainly between the Miami country and the Wabash. The famous Miami chief, Little Turtle, however, thus outlined the former boundaries of his tribe, in the great council at Greenville, in 1795: "My forefather kindled the first fire at Detroit; from thence he extended his lines to the headwaters of the Scioto; from thence to its mouth; from thence down the Ohio to the mouth of the Wabash; and from thence to Chicago, on Lake Michigan. These are the boundaries within which the prints of my ancestors' houses are everywhere to be seen." The narratives of the early French explorers singularly confirm the statements of the Indian orator. They found the Miamis here and there upon the territory thus defined, and not anywhere else. They were of the Algonquin stock, and Charlevoix, in 1721, wrote that there was no doubt they were not long before identified with the Illinois, the hereditary and.. most formidable enemies of the Iroquois, and the first Indians encountered by Father Marquette in his voayge down the Mississippi. They included the Ouiatenon or Wea tribe of Indiana, the Peanguichia or Piankeshaw, the Pepikokia, Kilatak, and other tribes or bands. In Ohio, however, they were known in but three separate tribes—the Miamis proper, occupying the territory drained by the Maumee; the Piankeshaws, south of the former, and mainly between the Wabash and the Miami rivers; and the Twigtwees (by which name all the Miamis have sometimes been designated), still south of them, and likewise on the Wabash and Miami rivers, where they had invited the Shawnees to settle among them and aid in resisting the incursions of the Iroquois. The Hon. Albert Gallatin wrote in his Indian Tribes: "In the year 1684, in answer to the complaint of the French that they had attacked the Twigtwees or Miamis, the Five Nations assigned as one of the causes of the war that the Twigtwees had invited into their country the `Satanas' [the Shawnees] in order to make war against them." There was another and probably related tribe toward the headwaters of the Miamis, called Pickawillanies or Picts, who had a well known village called Pickawillany, where was also an English fort established in 1748, and marked on maps of that period as "the extent of the English settlements." The Miamis were found by the French in 1658 as far to the northwest as Green bay, and Allouez fell in with a large village of them in 1670, at the head of Fox river. Ten years afterward La Salle found them in considerable number upon the St. Joseph's river, in southwestern Michigan, which was called from them the River of the Miamis. They also frequented the region about Chicago, but had retired from both these districts when Cadillac, commandant at Detroit, marched against them in 1707. By 1721 they had returned to the St. Joseph's and were also on the Miamis, and were subsequently found, in their various bands, scattered through the Ohio and Indiana country before mentioned as their home. They joined in the conspiracy of Pontiac, and captured the British forts Miami and St. Joseph's ; but during the Revolution sided with England, and made peace only after the successful expedition of George Rogers Clark, in which some of their towns were devastated. They continued hostilities against the settlers at intervals, however, and were the main instruments of the disastrous defeats sustained by Generals Harmar and St. Clair, in 1790-91. They were led in these actions by their most renowned chief, Meche Cunnaqua, or "Little Turtle," who is remembered by persons still living as a noble looking specimen of the sons of the forest, and otherwise a superior Indian. He was present, but not commanding, at the defeat of the savages by "Mad Anthony Wayne" in 1794, and advised strongly against going into action. He is reported to have said on this occasion: "We have beaten the enemy twice; we cannot expect always the same good fortune. The Americans are now led by a chief who never sleeps. The day and the night are alike to him. I advise peace." He was one of the chiefs who signed the treaty of Greenville, and was faithful to it, never taking the war path thereafter. He died thirty years afterwards, at Fort Wayne, of gout, induced by too generous living among his white friends. Mr. E. D. Mansfield, who saw Little Turtle at his father's house early in the century, mentions him in his Personal Memories as "this most acute and sagacious of Indian statesmen, and a polished gentleman. He had wit, humor, and intelligence. He was an extensive traveller, and had visited all parts of the country, and became acquainted with many distinguished men. He had seen and admired General Washington." Colonel John Johnston, long Indian agent in Ohio, has also put on record his high appreciation of Little Turtle's qualities of mind and character. For many years after the peace of Greenville, in which they bore full part, they gave the whites little trouble and rapidly declined as a tribe. By sundry treaties between this time (1795) and 1809 they ceded their lands between the Wabash and the Ohio State line, beyond which they do not seem to have claimed the territory, or, if claimed, the claim was not allowed them. They refused to join in the hostile alliance proposed by Tecumseh, but their sympathies were finally enlisted against the Americans in the War of 1812, and they attacked a detachment of General Harrison's army sent among them under Lieutenant Colonel Campbell. Defeated in this action, they again sued for peace, and a final treaty was concluded with them September 8, 1815. 34 - HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO: They had become much addicted to drunkenness and violence, and their numbers decreased fast. They are now more nearly extinct than any other great Indian nation of their day. The first settlers of Hamilton county confronted principally the Twigtwees or Miamis. We shall presently consider the character of their intercourse, and rehearse some of the thrilling stories of Indian massacre in this region. INDIANS REMAINING IN 1811. In the year 1811 the following fragments of tribes were enumerated or estimated as still remaining, with the numbers stated, in the northwest corner of the State —that part as yet unpurchased from the Indians: Shawnees, seven hundred; Ottawas, five hundred and fifty; Wyandots, three hundred; Senecas, two hundred; Delawares and Miamis, two hundred. An aggregate was thus made up of but one thousand nine hundred and seventy; and the number continually decreased until their ultimate removal. The Shawnees were then residing about the headwaters of the Auglaize. and the Great Miami rivers, the Ottawas principally on Lake Erie, the Wyandots on the Sandusky, and the little bands of the Senecas, Delawares, and Miamis on the same river and its tributary streams. CHAPTER V. TITLES TO OHIO.-THE MIAMI PURCHASE. LONG after the occupancy by the Mound Builders ceased, but nearly a century and a half before that of the red man had closed in all parts of Ohio, came in the claim of the French to possession. The daring explorations of that renowned discoverer, Robert Cavalier de La Salle, included, it is rather hesitatingly said, a journey from take Erie to the southward, over the portage to the Allegheny river, and thence down the Ohio to the falls at the present site of Louisville. Upon this reputed discovery was based the claim of France to domination of the territory thus traversed by her courageous knight-errant; and, although it was somewhat feebly disputed by Great Britain, the title was held good until the treaty of Paris, in 1763, when it, together with the title to all the rest of "New France" northwest of the Ohio, was vested in the British Empire. The Revolutionary war, culminating in the peace convention concluded at Paris in 1783, transferred the ownership thereof to the new American Republic. EXTINCTION OF THE INDIAN TITLES. Upon the arrogant assumption that their prowess had subjected all the territory between the oceans, the Iroquois, or Six Nations, included in their claim, as we have seen, the present State, of Ohio. The treaty of Fort Stanwix, October 22, 1784, in which the Indians were represented by the famous chiefs, Cornplanter and Red Jacket, and Congress by its commissioners, Oliver Wolcott, Richard Butler, and Arthur Lee, finally extinguished this. In January of the next year the treaty of Fort McIntosh, negotiated by General George Rogers Clark, General Richard Butler, and Arthur Lee, for the Government, and the chiefs of the Delaware, Wyandot, Ottawa, and Chippewa Indians, fixed the boundary of their tribal territories along the Cuyahoga river and the main branch of the Tuscarawas, to the fork of the latter near Fort Laurens, and thence westwardly to the portage between the headwaters of the Great Miami and the Miami of the Lakes (later the Maumee), down that stream to the lake, and thence along the soutn shore to the mouth of the Cuayhoga. Similar limitations for the Ohio tribes were prescribed by the treaty of Fort Finney, concluded with the Shawnees at the mouth of the Great Miami, within the present tract of Hamilton county, January 31, 1786, by Generals Butler, Clark, and Parsons; by that of Fort Harmar, arranged by Governor Arthur St. Clair, January 9, 1789; and the treaty of Greenville, August 3, 1795. Subsequent treaties and purchases extinguished all remaining Indian titles in the State. THE STATE CLAIMS. For some time before the close of the Revolutionary war, and thereafter, the States of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York laid claims, under the old colonial grants, to parts of the territory now occupied by the commonwealth of Ohio. Virginia went further, and claimed the whole, as included in her title to all the land nortnwest of the Ohio, holding, she asserted, under the colonial charters granted by King James I in 1608, 1609, and 1611, and by right of conquest by General Clark in 1778 and 1779. The conflicting claims were composed without serious trouble. New York led the way, May 1, 1782, in ceding her rights therein to the United States. Virginia followed in a deed of cession, March 17, 1784, reserving, however, for grants to her Revolutionary soldiers, what has since been known as the "Virginia Military District," between the Scioto and Little Miami rivers. Massachusetts came next, in a resolution of November 13, 1784, authorizing her delegates in Congress to cede to the United States all her lands west of New York State. Connecticut closed the acts of cession in September, 1786, by relinquishing all her claims west of the Western Reserve. This grant was fitly characterized by the late Chief. Justice Chase as "the last tardy and reluctant sacrifice of State pretensions to the common good." THE LATER TITLES to the lands of Ohio were all derived, primarily, from the General Government. It was a condition in the terms of admission of Ohio as a State into the Federal Union, that the fee simple to all lands within her borders, especially those previously sold or granted, should vest in the United States. Under this stipulation, and by earlier grants or sales, divers companies, corporations, and persons have acquired title by grant or sale from the General Government. An unusual diversity, indeed, for a western State, has prevailed in this matter, as will be HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO - 35 seen by the list of the most important classes into which the lands of Ohio are divided: Congress Lands; United States Military Lands, the Virginia Military District, the Western Reserve, the Fire Lands, the Ohio Company's Purchase on the Muskingum, Symmes' Purchase (or the Miami), the Donation Tract, the Refugee Tract, the French Grant, Dolerman's Grant, Zane's Grant, Canal Lands, Turnpike Lands, Maumee Road Lands, School Lands, College Lands, Ministerial Lands, Moravian Lands, and Salt Sections. The history of some of these is highly interesting; but it cannot be detailed here. The lands belonging to the present county of Hamilton more immediately concern us, They belong, for the most part, to what is famous in Ohio land history as the Miami or Symmes Purchase, in part also to the class designated as Congress Lands, and in part to THE VIRGINIA MILITARY DISTRICT. That portion of Hamilton county lying east of the Little Miami river, being the township of Anderson, is included among the Virginia Military lands. The General Assembly of the Old Dominion, at the session of October 20, 1783, passed an act authorizing its delegates in Congress to convey to the United States all the right and title of that commonwealth to the territory northwest of the Ohio river. Congress agreed to accept this cession, with the stipulations that this vast tract should be formed into States containing each a suitable amount of territory, and that the States so formed should be distinctly Republican, and admitted members of the Federal Union, having the same rights of sovereignty and freedom as the other States. On the seventeenth of March following, the Hons. Thomas Jefferson, Arthur Lee, James Monroe, and Samuel Hardy, the Virginian delegates in Congress, conveyed to the United States "all right, title, and claim, as well as of jurisdiction, which the said commonwealth hath to the territory, or tract Of country, within the limits of the Virginia charter, situate, lying, and being northwest of the river Ohio." The act of cession contained, however, the following reservations: That in case the quantity of good land on the southwest side of the Ohio, upon the waters of Cumberland river, and between the Great and Tennessee rivers, which have been reserved by law for the Virginia troops upon Continental establishment, should, from the North Carolina line, bearing in further upon the Cumberland lands than was expected, prove insufficient for these legal bounties, the deficiency should be made up to the said troops in good lands, to be laid off between the rivers Scioto and Little Miami, on the northwest side of the river Ohio, in such proportions to them as have been engaged to them by the laws of Virginia. The land embraced in this reservation constitutes the Virginia Military district in Ohio, and is composed of the counties of Adams, Brown, Clinton, Clermont, Highland, Fayette, Madison, and Union, and portions of Scioto, Pike, Ross, Pickaway, Franklin, Delaware, Marion, Hardin, Logan, Clark, Greene, Champaign, Warren, and Hamilton counties. Congress passed an act authorizing the establishment of the reservation, and its location as defined by the legislature of Virginia, upon the report of the executive of that State that the suspected deficiency of good lands upon the waters of the Cumberland actually existed. The Virginia soldiers of the Continental line, who served in the Revolutionary war, were compensated in bounty awards out of these lands according to their rank, time of service, and other bases of claim. The course pursued in locating and patenting the bounty lands was as follows : The Secretary of War made to the Executive of Virginia a return of the names of such officers and soldiers as were by the State law entitled to them, and the governor issued warrants to the same. When these were located, a return of the surveys was made to the Secretary of State of the United States, the warrant was returned to the. Virginia land office whence it issued, and a patent signed by the President obtained, which vested full ownership in the patentee or his grantees. When it was found, as often happened, that a survey included land previously located, tne holder of the warrant was permitted to vacate his survey, or a part of it, and locate his warrant elsewhere. This provision, however, did not obviate much subsequent litigation, which is now mostly quieted. Dr. Drake, in his Picture of Cincinnati, published 1815, remarks that the interfering claims, up to that time, had "seldom produced litigation," which is a pleasant thing to remember, in view of the troubles that arose afterwards. Not only the soldier primarily entitled to the warrant, but any heir or assignee of his, was entitled to location. Large numbers of these warrants came into the hands of the early surveyors and settlers, as General Nathaniel Massie, Duncan McArthur, Mr. Sullivant, and others, and were by them used in securing vast and valuable tracts in the district. The names of these gentlemen appear very frequently as original owners upon the maps of the townships and counties now lying within its territory; and some of them are in the list of original owners in Anderson township, which will be given in the history of that division of the county. On the same day on which the act was passed, Richard C. Anderson, a colonel in the Federal army, was appointed surveyor for the Continental line, by the officers named in the act and authorized to make such appointment as they saw fit. He opened his office at Louisville, for entries upon the Kentucky lands, on the twentieth of July, 1784. When the Kentucky grant was exhausted, he opened another office—in Chillicothe we believe—for entries in the Ohio tract. He held this position up to the time 0f his death in October, 1826; and during the long period of his incumbency faithfully discharged its onerous duties. His son-in-law, Allen Latham, esq., of Chillicothe, was appointed surveyor some time after Colonel Anderson's death, and opened his office in the town named in July, 1829. The office is still held in that place by one of the surveyors under Latham, now the venerable E. P. Kendrick, esq., though its duties have become little more than nominal. He has held the post, under Presidential appointment, for nearly forty years. The district was originally surveyed with extreme irregularity, no such thing as section or range lines being recognized, and warrants being located according to the eligibility of the lands or the taste or fancy of the proprietor. Nothing like ranges or townships was laid off until the work was done by the county commissioners in 36 - HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO. the several counties, when it became necessary to erect townships for civil purposes. Hence the irregular shape and utter want of uniformity in size of most of the townships in the Military District. CONGRESS LANDS. In this division, by far the largest known to the history of land titles in this State or the country at large, belongs all the territory in Hamilton lying west of the Great Miami river, viz.: Whitewater, Harrison, and Crosby townships. The immense tract of which these are part was surveyed and put into market at first by direct sales from the Treasury Department of the Government, as soon as practicable After the passage 0f an ordinance by Congress to that effect, in 1785, when the several States claiming ownership had all made deeds of cession to the United States and the title had been cleared and perfected by Indian treaties. By this ordinance the initial steps of the survey were directed to be taken by the "Geographer of the United States," an official personage of no little importance, considering his talents and character and the extraordinary work he did, but whom history seems strangely to have neglected. A well directed attempt has been made by Colonel Charles Whittlesey, of Cleveland, to rescue the name and services of this useful public officer from oblivion; and we take pleasure in- presenting here in full his note upon the' subject: An office was created by ,the Continental Congress about the middle of the Revolution, called the "Geographer of the United States." Its purpose is not now fully understood, but appears at first to have been military. The Government, and especially the army, needed a bureau of charts. and of geographical knowledge, such as all civilized governments have, but of which it was then destitute. At the opening of the American rebellion Thomas Hutchins, of the colony of New jersey, was a captain in the Sixtieth Regiment of Foot, which was raised in the colonies, forming one of the battalions known as the "Royal Americans." This regiment constituted part of Colonel Bouquet's command in the expeditions of 1763 and 1764, into the Ohio country against the Indians who lived upon the Muskingum river. Hutchins appears to have been a well educated man.* Bouquet made him engineer to the expedition, and in pursuance of this duty he surveyed and measured the route day by day, after it moved west of Pittsburgh. He was one of those frontier characters who combine fearlessness, intelligence, and a love of adventure, of whom there were at that time quite a number in the British army. Hutchins kept a journal of the march, with a map of the route showing the position of each encampment, which was published at Philadelphia in 1765, by the historian of the expedition, the Rev. William Smith, of Philadelphia. While in the Ohio country, he conceived the plan of settling it by military colonies, as the best mode of securing peace with the Indians. The scheme was at the same time brilliant and practical. At the outbreak of the Revolution Captain Hutchins was in London, where he was soon afterwards suspected by the British agents of being in communication with Benjamin Franklin at Paris. He was put in prison, and his fortune, amounting to about forty thousand dollars, confiscated. In 1778 he succeeded in reaching Savannah in Georgia, and was soon after made "Geographer" to the Confederation. There is very little information in regard to his functions until the new government had achieved its independence, and in 1784 acquired title to the western lands. By.the ordinance of May 20, 1785, the geographer is directed to commence the survey of Government lands on the north side of the Ohio river where the west line of Pennsylvania should cross the same. An east and west base line was to be run thence westerly through the territory, which Mr. Hutchins was required to superintend in person and to take the latitude of certain p10minent points, especially the mouths of rivers. Longitude on land was not then attainable, for want of proper instruments. * He was author of the book cited in Chapter I of this volume, from which a unique description of the Great add Little " Mineami" rivers is extracted. To that day the surveys of all countries had been made on a base line determined arbitrarily by roads, rivers, mountains, or coasts. The most simple of all modes, that of north and south and east and west lines, had never entered the minds of mathematicians; or, if it had, had never been reduced to practice. The plan provided for in the ordinance of 1785 is no doubt the invention of Mr. Hutchins, which was foreshadowed in his scheme for military settlements, p10mulgated in 1765. By this original mode of laying out land, the township lines were to be run in squares, on the true meridian, six miles apart, and at right angles, east and west, parallel to the equator. Within these squares the lots or sections are laid out, also in squares, thirty-six in number, of one mile on a side, each containing six hundred and forty acres. All our Government lands have been surveyed on that plan, from that day to this. Each section and township throughout this vast space is so marked as to be distinguished from any other. Wherever the corner and witness trees are standing, whoever visits them can at once determine the latitude and longitude of his position, and the distance from each base and meridian line. "Hutchins, as geographer, had power to appoint surveyors, who were first to run the lines of seven ranges of townships, next west of the Pennsylvania line, from the Ohio river to the forty-first parallel north latitude. It was accomplished during the years 1786-7, among hostile Indians, who, notwithstanding the land had been ceded to the United States, were wholly opposed to the occupation by white men. Colonel Harmar's battalion, stationed on the Ohio and Alleghany rivers, was required to do duty in the woods as a guard with the surveyors. Otherwise the lines could not have been run. While Hutchins was zealously engaged in this work, having his office at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he was called away from it by death early in the year 1788. The office of geographer expired with him. Its duties were fora time transferred to the Treasury department and eventually the office of Surveyor General of the Public Lands" was created. Very little is known of the private history of this modest patriot of the Revolution. Probably he left no descendants. The office he held during nearly the entire existence of the Continental Congress was a very important one, requiring a high order of mathematical talent, physical energy, and personal courage. As the author of the best svstem of public surveys now known, his name should in some way be ,made more conspicuous in our annals. Even the place where his remains were interred, has passed into forgetfulness. From his first journey in Ohio with Colonel Bouquet, he foresaw and predicted that it would become a populous country. He lived barely long enough to see his favorite scheme of colonization commenced at Marietta by the soldiers of the Revolution. The office of "Surveyor-General of the Public Lands" was created by Act of Congress May 18, 1796, his duties at first being confined to the Northwestern Territory, but including, after the purchase of Louisiana, all the public domain west of the Mississippi and north of the thirty-third parallel of latitude. He appointed and instructed his own deputies, by whom the field surveys were executed. General Rufus Putnam, one of the Ohio company, and a pioneer at Marietta, was the first surveyor-general (1796), and his successors, during about half a century after the creation of the office, were Jared Mansfield, 1803; Josiah Meigs, 1813; Edward Tiffin, 1814; William Lytle, 1829; Micajah T. Williams, 1831; Robert G. Lytle, 1835, and Ezekiel S. Haines, 1838. The office was at first kept in Marietta, but was removed to Ludlow's station, near Cincinnati, in 1805, by Mr. Mansfield, and was afterwards for a long time kept in Cincinnati. Very important work was done in the surveys by this gentleman. He was of English stock, his ancestors in this country settling at Boston in 1634, and at New Havenfive years thereafter. He was a graduate of Yale college, and a thorough scientist for his .day. Hon. E. D. Mansfield, his son, in his "Personal Memories," expresses the opinion that he was the only man appointed HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY; OHIO - 37 to public office solely on the ground of his scientific attainments. He was appointed by President Jefferson while a teacher at the West Point Military academy, in 1803, more particularly to establish meridian lines, for want of which some of the surveys had gone sadly astray and made much trouble. After waiting some time for the importation of necessary instruments which could not then be procured on this side of the Atlantic, he established three principal meridians in Ohio and Indiana, which have since been among the fixed bases of the surveys. General Mansfield retained the office until 1813, when he resigned, and after some engineering duty for the Government, resumed his professorship at West Point, which he retained for fifteen years. The land-office was established in Cincinnati under the law of 1800, creating the Cincinnati Land district and establishing the offices of register and receiver. Similar offices were opened by the Government in Marietta, Steubenville, and Chillicothe. Before this time the Congress lands had been sold only in tracts of a section or more each. When William Henry Harrison, afterward President Harrison, became the first delegate of the Northwestern Territory in Congress, he, feeling the obstacle presented by this provision to the rapid settlement of the country, secured the passage of the law of t B0o, which, among other enactments, directed a portion of the public lands to be subdivided and sold in tracts of three hundred and twenty acres, or a half section. The working of this beneficent provision was so satisfactory that, by a subsequent act, the subdivisions were offered in lots of one hundred and sixty acres each, at two dollars per acre, on a credit, if asked, of five years. Finally, at the instance of Senator Rufus King, of New York, a law was passed for the offer of eighty acre tracts as the minimum, and the price was reduced from two dollars to one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre, which has since been the standard rate. Under the credit system, however, admitted by the acts of 1800 and subsequently, an immense and most burdensome debt was created by the settlers on Congress lands. In 1820 it was ascertained that the amount due from purchasers at the western land offices aggregated twenty-two millions of dollars—a sum believed to exceed the total volume of money then circulating in the Western States, and one far beyond the ability of the delinquent settlers to pay. If Congress should grant no relief and the laws be enforced, nine-tenths of them would be ruined by the loss of their land and improvements. It was a time of great financial depression. Money could not be had, and no property could be sold for cash. Over half of the settlers north of the Ohio were indebted to the Government, and the feeling among them and their sympathizers in the southwestern States was such that there was imminent danger of civil war if the Government should rigidly claim its own. Extension of time for payment would but increase the obligations and postpone the evil day; and it was seen that no practicable way was to be had out bf the difficulty, except by the prompt and utter extinguishment of the debt as an ,act of generosity and policy on the part of the Government. In this exigency a conference of a number of leading business and professional citizens of Cincinnati resulted in the preparation by Judge Burnet—who has left, in substance, this history of the transaction—of a memorial to Congress setting forth the facts in the case. A thousand copies of this were speedily printed and sent, with a letter of explanation and instruction, to every city, village, and post office in the States and territories where public lands were then sold. In a comparatively short time they began to come back in large numbers, and very numerously signed. A copy sent to Mr. Worthington, then governor of the State, secured his approval and influence in reaching the object of the movement. At the next session of Congress the memorials were sent in, the desk of every western member and delegate being literally covered with them ; and an act was consequently passed granting the desired relief. Under it the delinquent purchaser received in fee simple so much of the land he had entered as he had paid for, and had the privilege of relinquishing so much as he had not paid and could not pay for. If anything had been paid upon tracts relinquished, it might be credited upon tracts retained, so as to save important improvements. The settler was further relieved by this most beneficent enactment, in the release of all the back interest held by the Government against him. At the same session, in 1821, the King act before referred to, in relation to the public lands, was also passed. Originally, in the survey and sale of Congress lands, it was proposed to reserve one-seventh of the lands surveyed for the purpose of bounties to certain of the Continental .troops; but this plan was presently abandoned, in favor of the grant of an entire tract in the central part of the State, containing one million five hundred and sixty thousand acres, and including the whole of the present county of Coshocton and parts of nine other counties. Four sections in each township were, however, reserved for future sale by the Government, and one section was set apart in each for the maintenance of the public schools.. The public territory immediately west of the Great Miami was surveyed in 1799 and the following year, and the first sales under the act of Congress putting it into the market were held at the newly established land office in Cincinnati, under direction of the receiver, General James Findlay, beginning the first Monday in April, 1801; and were by public vendue. The minimum price, as before mentioned, was fixed by the act at two dollars an acre. Not much more than this was commonly bid. Jeremiah Butterfield and associates, for example, by the bid of ten cents per acre more than the minimum, secured two thousand acres along the river, in the north part of this county, and south part of Butler, which is among the finest land in the Miami country, and is to-day worth at least two hundred thousand dollars. Five per cent of the purchase money was to be deposited at the time of purchase, and to be forfeited if an additional sum making the whole amount equivalent to one-fourth of the price were not paid within forty days after the sale. Another fourth must be paid within two years; the next Within three; and the final installment, with all accu- 38 - HISTORY OF HAMILTON \COUNTY, OHIO. mulated interest, within four years from the day of sale. The land-office was kept in Cincinnati for many years, or until the sales of Congress lands within its jurisdiction were very nearly completed. Colonel Israel Ludlow was the first register, and General Findlay first receiver. The line of registers was continued by Charles Killgore, Daniel Symmes (who was appointed after the expiration of his term as judge and served till near the time of his death, May T0, 1817), and Peyton S. Symmes, who had his office in 1819 at the corner of Lawrence and Congress streets, while General Findlay, still receiver, had his at 3o North Front street, "in the hotel." The latter Symmes held the post for many years—so lately as 1833, at least. Of the names of receivers after Findlay, we have only those of Andrew M. Bailey, who was receiver in 1829; Morgan Neville, receiver in 1831, and probably for some years before and after; and of Thomas Henderson, who was appointed July 28, 1838. THE SCHOOL LANDS. Congress, by its early compact with the people, suggested in the ordinance of 1785, and embodied in the act of 1802, by which Ohio became a State, gave them one thirty-sixth part of the public domain northwest of the Ohio river for the education of their. children. The lands set apart for this purpose, in this State, at least, were often appropriated by squatters, and through unwise, careless, and sometimes corrupt legislation, the squatters were actually vested with a proprietorship without consideration. Mr. Atwater, in his history of Ohio, says: "Members of the legislature not unfrequently got acts passed and leases granted, either to themselves, to their relatives, or to their warm partisans. One senator contrived to get by such acts seven entire sections of land into either his own or his children's possession." From 1803 to 1820 the general assembly spent much time every session in passing acts relating to these lands, without advancing the cause of education to any appreciable extent. In 1821 the house of representatives in the State legislature appointed five of its members— Messrs. Caleb Atwater, author of the history just cited, Lloyd Talbot, James Shields, Roswell Mills, and Josiah Barber—a committee on schools and school lands. This committee in due time made a report rehearsing the wrong management of the school land tract on behalf of the State, and warmly advocating the establishment of a system of education and the adoption of measures which would secure foe the people the exercise of the rights which Congress intended they should possess. In compliance with the recommendation of the committee, the governor of the State, in May, 1822, having been so authorized by the legislature, appointed seven commissioners of schools and school lands, viz.: Caleb Atwater, the Revs. John Collins and James Hope, D. D., Nathan Guilford, Hon. Ephraim Cutler, Hon. Josiah Barber, and James M. Bell, esq. The reason why seven persons were appointed was because there were as many descriptions of school lands in the State- i. e. , section numbered sixteen in every township of the Congress lands and in Symmes' Purchas, and a similar proportion in the Virginia Military District, the Ohio Company's Purchase, the Refugee lands, and the Connecticut Reserve. For the three different grants represented in the lands of Hamilton county the commissioners were: For the Military lands, Mr. Bell; for the Congress lands, Mr. Collins; for the Symmes Purchase, Mr. Guilford. The commission of seven was finally reduced, by various causes, to three members, Messrs. Atwater, Collins, and Hoge, who performed the arduous duties incumbent upon them with little remuneration and (at the time) few thanks, though posterity has not been wholly unmindful of their valuable services. Mr. Guilford, of Cincinnati, always a warm friend of education and an active promoter of the public school interest, though his name may not much appear in the later transactions of the commission, was specially prominent and influential in its formation and earlier work. The legislature of 1823 adjourned without having taken any definite action upon the report presented by the commission; but during the summer and autumn of the next year the subject of the sale of the school lands was warmly agitated, and the friends of this measure triumphed over the opposition so far as to elect large majorities to both branches of the general assembly in favor of its being made a law. The quantity of land consecrated to this purpose was carefully ascertained, and amounted in 1825 to a little more than half a million of acres, valued at something less than a million of dollars. A portion of these lands was sold by the State government, under due authority of Congress, and the ramainder was leased, the avails of the leases and sales forming a part of the present school fund of the State. THE MIAMI PURCHASE. The time had come for planting the foundations of "the State first born of the ordinance of 1787." That organic act had called the attention of the New World to the great fertile wastes to the north and west of La Belle Riviere. The rich valleys and deep forests had been growing into knowledge and fame for more than a generation, and nad even attracted the notice and prompted the official remark of members of the British government. In 1750-1 Christopher Gist, as agent of the old Ohio Land Company, which had been organized a year or two before by some Englishmen, and the Washingtons, Lees, and other Virginians, accompanied by George Croghan, reached the Great Miami in his journey across the wilderness country from the present site of Pittsburgh, and explored its valley for about a hundred miles to its mouth. His companion had brought liberal presents from Pennsylvania to the Miamis, and in return obtained the concession to the English of the right to plant a fortified trading house at the junction of Loramie's creek and the Miami, in the country of the Piankeshaws, the subsequent county of Shelby—an enterprise carried into effect the next year, the stockade then erected being considered the first point of English settlement in Ohio. It was taken by the French and Indians in 1752, and in 1782 was plundered and destroyed by George Rogers Clark, in his expedition against the HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO - 39 Miami towns. The soldiers who returned from these incursions, and particularly the Virginians and Marylanders who accompanied Lord Dunmore in his campaign to the Scioto valley in 1774, carried back glowing accounts of the beauty and fertility of the virgin country, and prepared the way for its subsequent colonization. The Miami valleys were carefully inspected by Daniel Boone, when a captive among the Shawnees in 1778, and by the war parties led from Kentucky by Bowman and Clark, against the Indians on the Little Miami and Mad rivers. In the autumn and winter of 1785, scarcely more than three years before the permanent occupancy began, General Richard Butler, with a company comprising. Parsons, Zane, Finney, Lewis, and others who were or became celebrities, voayged on a tour of observation and official duty from Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) to the mouth of the Great Miami, where they built a fort, dwelt for some months, and concluded an impartial treaty.. In the years about this time, 1784-5-6, the way was cleared by Indian treaties and Congressional legislation —specially by the ordinance of May 20, 1785, providing for the survey and sale of the public lands—for the settlement of southern Ohio. The more renowned ordinance of July 13, 1787, erecting the Northwest Territory, and certain minor measures adopted by Congress at the same session, granting authority to .the Government "board of treasury" to contract for the sale of the lands thus opened to civilization, completed the preliminaries necessary to regular and permanent settlement. A beginning of this was promptly made the next year, as is well known, by the settlement of the Ohio Company, mainly New Englanders, under the leadership of General Rufus Putnam, upon their purchase at and about the mouth of the Muskingum, where they founded Marietta, named from the hapless Marie Antoinette, at that time queen of France. Among those who had been attracted by a visit to the Miami country was one Captain (or Major) Benjamin Stites, of Redstone, Old Fort, now Brownsville, Pennsylvania, who was the prime mover in the inception of the Miami Purchase. Stites is, indeed, the real hero of the Purchase, as regards the original conception of it. He was, like many of the first colonists in the tract, a native of New Jersey, born at Scotch Plains, Essex county. While still young he emigrated to western Pennsylvania and settled on Ten Mile creek, in the present county of Green. Here he became a captain in the militia, and took an active part in the frontier struggles with the Indians. In the spring of 1787 he descended the Ohio from Redstone with a trading venture, in the shape of a flat-boat loaded with flour, whiskey, and other wares adapted to the river market of that day, and floated down to Limestone, or Limestone Point, now Maysville, Kentucky. Here his sales had small success, and he pushed with his goods into the interior at Washington, a few miles back, where he had better fortune. While here the Indians came upon a marauding expedition into the neighborhood, and ran off some horses, taking other property with them. Stites was a man of great strength and courage, and accustomed to Indian warfare. He at once volunteered to go with a party in pursuit. It was speedily raised, and he hastened with it across the country on the Indian trail until the river was reached, below where Augusta now stands, when they kept the Kentucky shore down to a point opposite the mouth of the Little Miami: Here it was ascertained that the red robbers had made a raft and crossed with their booty, evidently striking for their towns in the Miami country. The whites likewise made a raft, crossed themselves and their horses, and pursued the enemy to the vicinity of Old Chillicothe, a few miles north of Xenia, near the headwaters of the Little Miami, which it was deemed prudent not to approach closely, and the expedition retraced its steps. Tne return, through the valley was made more leisurely, and Stites had the better opportunity to observe its beauty and fertility. Before recrossing the Ohio he had decided to come back to the valley with a colony, and make a permanent settlement: The idea of the Miami Purchase, in its rude outlines at least, was born in his sagacious mind. He closed his business at Washington as soon as possible and returned to his family. Some time afterwards he went to New Jersey for means with which to accomplish his intents; and there, at Trenton,* met him whose name was to be forever more conspicuously identified with the memory of the Purchase than his, the active agent in the prosecution and consummation of the enterprise—Judge John Cleves Symmes. Judge Symmes held at this time an influential position as a member of Congress from the State of New Jersey. This celebrated Ohio pioneer was born July 21, 1742, at _Riverhead, Long Island, the oldest son of the Rev. Timothy and Mary (Cleves) Symmes. In early life he was engaged in teaching and land-surveying. He went to New Jersey some time before the war of the Revolution, in which he bore an active and honorable part—was chairman of the Sussex county Committee of Safety and colonel of a militia regiment in 1774, and took his regiment in March, 1776, to New York, and built fortifications, and was afterwards in the battle of Saratoga. He was -presently elected delegate to the New Jersey State convention, and helped to draft the State constitution. During the remainder of the war he performed important military and civil services. In his own State he was successively lieutenant-governor, member of the council, and twelve years a judge of the supreme court; and was for two years a member of the Continental Congress. February 19, 1788, he was elected by Congress one of the judges of the Northwest Territory. He was thrice married, his last wife being a daughter of Governor Livingston, of New Jersey. He had two daughters as his sole offspring, one of whom, Maria, married Major Peyton Short, of Kentucky, and the other, Annie, became the consort of General William H. Harrison. He was the founder of North Bend and South Bend, upon the Purchase secured by himself and colleagues, and, after a long and useful * We here follow the narrative of Dr. Ezra Ferris, of Columbia, afterwards of Lawrenceburgh, Indiana, in his communication to the Cincinnati Daily Gazette of July 20, 1844. The common statement is that Stites met Judge Symmes in New York, during the session of Congress, 40 - HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO. but troubled life, he died at Cincinnati February 26, 1[814. In his later years he became. so straitened in circumstances that he was compelled to assign his property to his sons-in-law. Some further notice of Judge Symmes, including a copy of his remarkable will, may be found hereafter in the annals of Cincinnati. He is fitly called by Mr. Cist, author of numerous books and miscellaneous writings upon Cincinnati and early local history, "the patriarch of the Miami wilderness;" "the William Penn of the West," "the Columbus of the woods." The compiler of Annals of the West has neatly applied to him the words (with slight variation) of R. J. Meigs' poem, pronounced at Marietta during the Fourth of July celebration of 1788 To him glad Fancy brightest prospect shows, Rejoicing Nature all around him glows; Where late the savage, hid in ambush, lay, Or roamed the uncultured valleys for his prey, Her hardy gifts rough Industry extends, The groves bow down, the lofty forest bends. And see the spires of towns and cities rise, And domes and temples swell unto the skies. To Judge Symmes Major Stites, probably for the sake, mainly, of Symmes' influence in Congress and with the officers of the Government, proposed the purchase, for themselves and their associates, of a large body of land in the Miami country, the first eligible tract west of the Ohio company's purchase and the Virginia Military reservation. Symmes is said to have visited the land of promise, with five companions, no doubt in the summer of 1787, before deciding upon the proposal; and on his return began operations in his own name by the following memorial: To his excellency, the President of Congress.. The petition of John Cleves Symmes, of New Jersey, showeth: That your petitioner, encouraged by the resolutions of Congress of the twenty-third And twenty-seventh of July last, stipulating the condition of a transfer of Federal lands on the Scioto and Muskingum rivers unto Winthrop Sargent and Manasseh Cutler, esqrs., and their associates of New England, is induced, on behalf of the citizens of the United States westward of Connecticut, who also wish to become purchasers of Federal lands, to pray that the honorable the Congress will be pleased to direct that a contract be made by the honorable the commissioners of the treasury board with your petitioner, for himself and his associates, in all respects similar in form and matter to the said giant made to Messrs. Sargent and Cutler, differing only in quantity and place where, and, instead of two townships for the use of a university, that one only be assigned for the benefit of an academy; that by such transfer to your petitioner and his associates, on their complying with the terms of the sale, the fee may pass of all the lands lying within the following limits, viz: Beginning at the mouth of the Great Miami river, thence running up the Ohio to the mouth of the Little Miami river, thence up the main stream of the Little Miami river to the place where a due west line, to be continued from the western termination of the northern boundary line of the grant to Messrs. Sargent, Cutler & Company shall intersect the said Little Miami river, thence due west, continuing the said western line, to the place where the said line shall intersect the main branch or stream of the Great Miami river, thence down the Great Miami to the place of beginning. [Signed] JOHN C. SYMMES. New York, August 29, 507. This was the same day, as a letter of the next June from the treasury commissioners shows, when a favorable act of Congress was passed, in regard to contracts for the public lands. Another act, of similar character, was passed on the twenty-third of October, authorizing the' board of treasury to contract with anyone for tracts of not less than a million acres of western lands in a 'single purchase, the front of which on the Ohio, the Wabash, or other river, shall not exceed one-third the depth. Under this, as we shall see, Judge Symmes presently submitted a second proposal. His associates in this undertaking were a number of friends of his, mostly, if not ill, Jerseymen, and a number of whom had been fellow-officers in the Revolution. Chiefly notable among them was Captain Jonathan Dayton, also a delegate in Congress from New Jersey, and subsequently speaker, under the constitution, of the house of representatives, and the gentleman from whom Dayton, Ohio, was named. He was the principal mouthpiece of the association (called the "East Jersey Company") in the long and complicated correspondence and negotiations with Symmes which ensued. Their scheme looked to the acquisition of two millions of acres, which, in the imperfect knowledge then had of the country, was supposed to be included within the limits designated, though the survey ultimately showed but about six hundred thousand acres there. Symmes drew up a plan for the management and disposal of the vast estate they expected to acquire, which was approved by his associates. His petition had been, on the second of October, as an endorsement upon it states, referred to the board of treasury to take order. The "board of treasury" was a small body of Government officials, representing the treasury department, and entrusted with the power of disposal of the public lands, which was afterwards vested in the Secretary of the Treasury, and finally in the general land office. The reference of Symmes' petition to Congress to the board "to take order" gave them discretionary power in the premises; and they presently agreed to negotiate the sale to Symmes and his associates. Meanwnile, so confident was the judge of the success of his application, that he soon began to advertise the lands and make conditional grants thereof. On the twenty-sixth of November, 1787, he issued at Trenton, in pamphlet form, "Terms of Sale and Settlement of Miami Lands," a sort of elaborate circular addressed "to the respectable public." In this the advantages of the new country are suitably set forth. The price of the lands offered is fixed for the present at sixty-six and two-thirds cents; but, "after the first of November next, the price of the lands will be one dollar per acre, and after the first day of November next [ensuing], the price will rise higher, if the country is settled as fast as is expected." The certificates raised by this augmentation in the price shall be applied towards the making of roads and bridges in the purchase. One penny proclamation, or the ninetieth part of a dollar, per acre, in specie or bills of credit of the States of New York, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania, must be paid by the purchaser at the time of purchasing the land-warrant. This fee of one penny per acre is to defray the expense of surveying the country into townships and lots, agreeably to the land ordinance. And one farthing proclamation, or the three hundred and sixtieth part of a dollar, per acre, in specie or paper money aforesaid, to be paid by the purchaser to defray the expense of printing the land-warrants, purchasing HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO - 41 proper books for record, accommodating and paying the register for his services in attending to the recording of entries, and other incidental charges which will necessarily accrue. It was further expressly stipulated as to "all purchasers of lands from the said John Cleves Symmes, within his grant from the United States, of lands lying between the Great and Little Miami rivers, that if the locator (purchaser) shall neglect, for two years after location entered, to make a settlement on every section which he or they may have located, or to settle some other persons thereon, or in some station, who shall continue to improve the same for seven years, in such case one-sixth part of every such neglected section or quarter-part of a section, to be taken off in a regular square at the northeast corner, shall be forfeited, and shall revert back to the register for the time being, in trust so far as to authorize him fo grant the same gratis to any volunteer settler who shall first make application to the register thereof; and the register shall proceed to make out a deed to such volunteer settler for such forfeited sixth part." In this pronunciamento Symmes reserved to himself the entire township lowest in the neck between the Ohio and the Great Miami, and the three fractional parts of townships north, west, and south between that and the rivers. These he would pay for himself, and lay out "a handsome town plat" thereon. It was here, evidently, that the judge expected to locate the future metropolis of the Ohio, and where, indeed, he did made his pioneer settlement. The tract reserved included what afterwards became Miami, Green, and Delhi townships, in Hamilton county. He also proposed an appropriation or reservation, for the benefit of an academy or college, of one full township, to be laid off as nearly opposite to the mouth of the Licking rivei as an entire township might be found eligible in respect to soil and situation. Mr. Symmes likewise began the issue of certificates or "Miami land warrants," the first of which, date of December 17, 1787, authorizing the location of six hundred and forty acres in the Purchase, was issued to Mayor. Stites, and seems to have been used by him "at the point betwixt the mouth of the Little Miami and the Ohio in the pint," in securing the tract upon which he afterwards set down the first stakes of Columbia. Stites does not appear in the history of the Purchase thereafter, except as a pioneer settler and prominent citizen at Columbia. He had, however, a liberal arrangement with Symmes, by which he was entitled to locate ten thousand acres in the Purchase, as near as might be about the mouth of the Little Miami. These, however, as we shall see, he was in imminent danger of losing some time after, by the determined effort made to compel Symmes to fix his eastern boundary upon a line drawn northeastward from a point on the Ohio twenty miles above the mouth of the Great Miami. On the eleventh of June following Symmes addressed another letter to the board of treasury, reciting the difficulties he had experienced in arranging credits with "the late Jersey line"—the soldiers of the New Jersey contin gent in the war of the Revolution—in regard to their 6 bounty lands, so as to help his first payment on the expected contract for the Purchase, and asking a new contract "for a part of the same lands of one million of acres fronting on the Ohio and extending inland from the Ohio between the Great Miami river and the Little Miami river, the whole breadth of the country from river to river, so far as to include on an east and west rear line one million acres, exclusive of the five reserved sections in every township, as directed in the ordinance of the twentieth of May, 1785, and that the present grant be made on the principles laid down by the resolution of Congress of the twenty-third of October last." The board now declined to agree to these boundaries, and proposed the inclusion of a million of acres within confines starting from a point on the Ohio river twenty miles above the mouth of the Great Miami, along the courses of the former and following the latter, an east and west line on the north, and a line running nearly parallel with the general direction of the Miami to the place of beginning. This point was within the present limits of Cincinnati. A line drawn northwestward from it would leave Stites and other purchasers (for Symmes continued to sell the lands between the Little Miami and that line) outside of the Purchase. More than three years afterwards—July 19, 1791 —Governor St. Clair issued his proclamation warning against such purchases, and threatening ejection by the officers of the United States, at the same time defining the boundaries of the Purchase pretty nearly as in the letter of the treasury board. Much annoyance was caused to Symmes, and much trouble and alarm to the settlers of Columbia and elsewhere on the west side of the Little Miami, by this uncertainty as to their lands; but the patent finally granted and fixing the Miamis as the eastern and western limits of the Purchase, quieted and confirmed their titles. Shortly after the action of the board of treasury agreeing to the proposed Miami purchase, Thomas Hutchins, then geographer of the United States, offered Israel Ludlow, a young surveyor from New Jersey, an appointment to survey the boundary of the tract, "being assured," he wrote, "of your abilities, diligence, and integrity." He was also commissioned to survey the Ohio company's purchase, and received an order from the Secretary of War on the frontier posts for sufficient troops to serve as an escort into the wilderness. He accepted the appointment, and made repeated application for escorts to Major Zeigler and Generals Harmar and St. Clair; but without success, on account of the weakness of the garrisons, until October 21, 1791, when St. Clair gave him a sergeant and fifteen men. With these he accomplished the survey of the Ohio company's boundaries, but, he writes, "with the loss of six of the escort, and leaving in the woods all my pack-horses and their equipage, and being obliged to make a raft of logs to descend the Ohio as far as Limestone, from opposite the mouth of the Great Sandy river." At Fort Washington he now applied to Major Zeigler, commandant, for an escort on the Miami survey, but could get none, and undertook the work, in the winter of 1791-2, with simply the protection of three woodsmen to serve as spies and give notice of approach- 42 - HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO. ing danger. He went with these a hundred miles up the Great Miami, through deep snow and severely cold weather, during which his men had their feet frozen and were unable to hunt for the supply of the expedition; and he consequently returned. When the season moderated, he made another attempt to run the boundaries, with but three armed men in the party; but was frightened back by signs of Indians, and was again denied an escort at Fort Washington. By May 5, 1792, Ludlow could only report to the Government that "I now have the satisfaction to present to you the whole of the survey of the Ohio and part of the Miami purchases executed agreeably to instructions." The full commission was, however, finally executed by Colonel Ludlow, and in good shape. He \vas subsequently the surveyor of the original site of Cincinnati, in which he was also a joint proprietor. Messrs. Dayton and Marsh, representing the Symmes company, concluded a contract witn the treasury commissioners May 15, 1788, for two millions of acres, in two separate and equal tracts. The judge in July made up his mind to take but one million-acre tract, and, after his, departure for the west, Dayton and Marsh arranged a new contract with the Government for that amount of land between the Miamis, but its eastern boundary beginning at a line twenty miles up the Ohi0 from the mouth of the Great Miami. This agreement seems now absurd, in the light of knowledge that less than six hundred thousand acres are included in the entire tract between the rivers south of a line from the headwaters of the Little Miami due west to the other stream, and that, between the boundaries now agreed upon, less than half the quantity of land was enclosed that had been solemnly bargained for. On the fourteenth of July, 1788, Judge Symmes again addressed the treasury board, expressing his desire "to adhere to the banks of both Miamis in the boundaries of the one million acres," but asked permission to enter the tract with a party of settlers and cause a survey to be made and an accurate map of the country to be prepared, "on which you may delineate your pleasure. Until we have better knowledge," he adds, reasonably enough, "I conceive any further stipulations of boundaries would be rather premature." The board made no concession, however, and withheld the desired permission for him to enter upon the premises. Confiding in the ultimate decisions of Congress, he nevertheless, as Stites and other purchasers had already started for the Miamis, and part of his own following had been equipped and had crossed the Delaware en route westward, set out with a considerable caravan, reached Pittsburgh August 20th, and the mouth of the Great Miami on the twenty-second of September. From here he explored the country as far up as the north side of the fifth range of townships, and returned to Limestone, from which he did not set out with his party to make permanent settlement at North Bend until the twenty-ninth of the next January. Limestone was still a small place. Only three years before, General Butler, one of the commissioners to negotiate treaties with the Indian tribes, passed it with a large party, and thus recorded his impressions in his diary This I think to be a settlement of fine land, and believe the people will do very well, provided they have peace. There are about fifteen good cabins for families, kitchens, etc., included, and twenty-five houses. Here is a small creek, and from here a good wagon-road to Lexington and other places. The people seem determined to defend themselves; every man walks with his rifle in his hand, so enured are they to alarm. They are very civil, but possess that roughness of manner so universally attendant on seclusion from general society. Meanwhile, though, the settlement of Columbia had been made by Major Stites and others, and surveying parties sent out by Symmes to begin the survey of the proposed Purchase, a party on each of the Miamis, each to move north to points sixty miles in a straight line from the Ohio. The Losantiville (Cincinnati) colony had also made its settlement opposite the mouth of the Licking. The occupation of the Purchase had fully begun. Congress took alarm at the departure of Symmes before the closing of the business, fearing that he would get possession of the tract and set the Government at defiance. Judge Burnet, in his Notes on the settlement of the Northwestern Territory, says a resolution was offered in the body, ordering Colonel Harmar to dispossess him and pay the expenses of any military operations thus made necessary, out of the moneys deposited for his first payment; but that, through the representations of Dr. Boudinot and Captain Dayton, two of his associates and also members of Congress, the message was withdrawn. Certain it is, a resolution was moved in Congress a month after Symmes left, repealing the several acts of the previous October, by which the board of treasury was authorized to contract for the sale of western territory. It was referred to a committee, who consented to waive their report of the resolution back with recommendation of its passage, upon the intercession of the gentlemen named, together with Daniel Marsh, also of the East Jersey association. These persons urged its suppression mainly upon the ground that Judge Symmes, before departure, had completed his first payment in certificates and "army rights," and that in accepting it the United States were as firmly bound as if a contract had been signed. They agreed, in consideration of the failure to report the resolution, to sign a contract with the Government for the Purchase, with the limits prescribed by the board in the letter of June rah. Symmes had given Marsh a power of attorney at Pittsburgh, and, although technical objection was made to it, a tripartite contract was finally concluded October 15, 1788,* after many difficulties and disputes with the treasury board, between the board representing the Government as party of the first part, Dayton and Marsh as party of the second, and Symmes and his associates as party of the third part, for one million of acres In the Miami country, to be bounded as insisted upon by the commissioners and agreed to by Dayton, Boudinot, and Marsh. The contract stipulated that if Symmes, of the party of the third part, should neglect or refuse to execute it, the same should inure to the benefit of the parties of the second part, who, in that case, covenanted to perfect it themselves. It was further stipulated that the association should have the privilege of selling and locating as much * This instrument was not entered in the official records of Hamilton county until March 17, 1821. HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO - 43 of the remainder of the. Purchase as they chose to take at the contract price—sixty-six and two-thirds cents per acre, payable in certificates of Federal indebtedness. These could then be bought for five shillings on the pound, Pennsylvania currency—so that the original cash price of lands in the Miami Purchase, paid by Symmes & Company was but fifteen pence, or sixteen and two-thirds cents per acre. In pursuance of this provision the community at large was publicly invited to become associated with the company and avail themselves of this privilege. The terms of this offer bore a general and in some respects close resemblance to the original "Terms of Sale and Settlement," issued at Trenton in November, 1787. To induce them to do so without loss of time, it was stipulated that after the first of May then ensuing the price of the land should be one dollar "proclamation money," but that it would be still further increased as the settlement of the country would justify. It was expressly promised that all moneys received on those sales, above the Congress price, should be deposited with the register and expended in opening roads and erecting bridges for the benefit of the settlements. It was also stipulated that a register should be appointed by the associates to superintend the location of the land and to receive and apply the surplus money to those purposes. This provision, however, was neglected by the company, Mr. Symmes himself acting practically as register, receiving and using all moneys paid in after as well as before the raising of the price. The consideration money was to be paid to the parties of the second and third parts in six semi-annual equal instalments, and they were to receive patents for proportionate parts of the lands. Purchasers could pay one-seventh of the amount in military land warrants, issued by the Government to the Revolutionary officers and soldiers; and, for the convenience of those who wished to do so, Colonel Dayton was appointed to receive such payments. Subsequently the third entire range of townships in the Purchase was conveyed to Dayton, in trust for persons holding these warrants; it hence was called the Military range. It is now in Butler and Warren connties. Every locator was required to place himself or some other person on the land he purchased, within two years from entering his location, or in some station of defence, beginning improvement on every tract if it could be done with safety, and continuing the improvement seven years, if not disturbed by Indians, on penalty of forfeiture of one-sixth of each tract. This fractional part the register was to lay off at the northeast corner in a regular square, and grant to any settler who should first apply and perform the requirements. The object of this was to secure actual inhabitants, who would open up the country, and to make sure of at least one bona fide settler on each section. The tract thus held in abeyance was commonly called the "forfeiture." No register, as before noted, was appointed, though the forfeiture tracts were reserved; and the business was otherwise somewhat loosely conducted, so that it is considered doubtful whether any "forfeiture" title in the purchase was free from incumbrance; but when they came into litigation, the courts and juries took liberal views of the equities of the case and sustained the settlers. Symmes and his associates were to survey the Purchase at their own expense, and adopted a plan which was more economical than accurate. The principal surveyor—at first John Filson, and, after his death at the hands of the Indians, Colonel Israel Ludlow—was instructed to run a line east and west from one Miami river to the other, sufficiently north to avoid the bends of the Ohio, for a base line, and to plant stakes every mile. The assistant surveyors were to run meridian lines by compass from each of these stakes, and plant a stake at the end of each mile for a section corner. Purchasers were then allowed to complete surveys by running east and west lines between the corners, at their own expense. This was, of course, a very defective plan, and it resulted that scarcely two sections could be found in the purchase of the same shape or of equal contents. Some were too narrow, others too wide. It was doubted whether there was one in the entire tract of which the corresponding corners, either on the north or south side, were in the same east and west line. In some instances, says Judge Burnet, the corner on one meridian would prove to be ten, twenty, and sometimes thirty rods north or south of the corresponding corner on the other meridian. This irregularity was very much the subject of complaint. Three or four years afterward, when many of the sections had been occupied and improved, Judge Symmes adopted a plan to remove the difficulty, which rather increased it. He caused the meridian line, part of which formed the eastern boundary of the site of old Cincinnati, to be re-measured, and new stakes to be set at the terminus of each mile. This line he then declared to be the standard, and directed purchasers and settlers to run their lines anew east and west from these stakes, and re-establish their corners at the points of intersection on the meridians. This plan, had it been persisted in, would have changed every original corner in the purchase. Some of the land owners followed the judge's directions, and bounded their possessions by the new lines thus established. Much confusion and trouble resulted; but not for a great while, since a decision was presently obtained from the supreme court of the State, which confirmed the old corners on the ground that the original surveys had been made under authority of an act of Congress and accepted at the treasury department, and were therefore final and obligatory, and not to be disturbed by either party. The territorial lines of many parts of Hamilton county therefore remain to this day exceedingly uneven. The county maps show its northern line, for example, about as angular, in places, as a Virginia rail fence. About the same time a similar difficulty arose as to the boundaries of the Military range; but in this case also the original surveys were confirmed by the supreme court. In the former case, as some sections were too large and others too small, Judge Symmes adopted a rule that he would pay the purchasers four dollars an acre for the amount that their land was short of the quantity bargained for, and require the payment of a like sum per acre for those who had secured too much by the incorrect surveys. Notwithstanding all his efforts to obviate 44 - HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO. the difficulties, however, they continued to multiply, resulting in much litigation, kept up in some cases even after the decision of the supreme court. The contract of October, 1788, required the payment of the purchase money to be completed within three years after the boundary lines of the entire tract had been surveyed and plainly marked by the geographer of the United States or some other person appointed for the purpose. The last instalment fell due early in 1792, when only the first and part of -the second payment had been made; and so the entire contract became liable to forfeiture. Symmes had sold not only in the purchase as defined by the contract, but also most of the land between his east line and the Little Miami. In the spring of that year he petitioned Congress to allow the alteration of the contract extending the eastern boundary to that river, as originally asked. It was fortunately granted by an act of April 12, 1792, and by this a large number of innocent purchasers were secured in the quiet possession of their lands. It also provided for the reservation of fifteen acres to the Government, near the first town plat of Cincinnati, upon which Fort Washington was afterwards built. Judge Symmes then petitioned for a law authorizing the President to issue to him a patent for so much of the purchase as he had paid and could pay for. This, too, was allowed May 5, 1792, and two years thereafter he visited Philadelphia, then the seat of -Government, settled with the Treasury department, found he had paid for two hundred and forty-eight thousand five hundred and forty acres, and received a patent signed by President Washington, and dated September 30, 1794, for three hundred and eleven thousand six hundred and eighty-two acres, which included total reservations of sixty-three thousand one hundred and forty-two acres, fifteen acres for Fort Washington, and all sections or lots numbered eight, eleven, twenty-six, and twenty-nine, for such purposes as Congress might direct. All these, including the Fort Washington reserve, were released and put into the market by Congress in 1808. The remainder of the original Miami Purchase under the contract of course reverted to the Government. Sections sixteen were also reserved for public schools, and the equivalent of a section at or near the mouth of the Great Miami river, probably for a fortificaton, but afterwards sold to the Symmes' company; and one full township, to be located as near the center of the tract as possible, "for the purpose of establishing an academy and other public schools and seminaries of learning." The boundaries of the tract were substantially defined as the Great and Little Miami rivers, the Ohio, and a parallel of latitude to be drawn between the two former rivers, so as to comprise three hundred and eleven thousand six hundred and eighty-two acres. These enclosed, of course, all of Hamilton county between the rivers, and parts of the present counties of Butler and Warren to the northern boundary of the third range of townships, on an east and west line several miles north of the subsequent site of Lebanon. The tracts sold by Symmes north of this line were allowed by the Government to be regularly pre-empted and entered at Cincinnati by the purchasers, they taking the usual patents therefor at two dollars per acre. His result was not reached without long delay and much difficulty. Doubts of his right to sell lands so far to the northward had previously harassed purchasers, and they finally insisted that he should take steps for their security. They wanted to petition Congress, but he dissuaded them, went again to Philadelphia in the fall of 1796, and spent' the following winter and spring in efforts to induce the Government to take his offered money and make him a further grant in the Purchase, which would cover his troublesome sales. The arrangement of 1792 had apparently left open the contract of 1788, as to the remainder of the million acres bargained for; and, even so late as 1797, Symmes and his agents continued to offer lands in the fourth, fifth, sixth, and even the tenth range of townships "in the Miami Purchase." Congress finally decided, however, that the law of 1792 and the settlement and patent of 1794 constituted a full adjustment of his claims and a full performance by the Government of its obligations toward the company, and that he had no further rights under the contract. The situation of his grantees outside the Purchase was now desperate. Many had paid in full, all had in part, and most had spent much money and labor in improvements, which they were now liable to lose, together with their lands. Several towns had been laid out and settled upon this tract, mills built, orchards planted, and other important beginnings made. Of all these there was danger the rightful proprietors would be dispossessed, without remuneration. Congress was memorialized, and was generous in its provisions for relief. By an act passed in 1799 all persons having made written land contracts with Symmes before April 1st of that year, outside his patent, were secured preference over all other purchasers from the Government. Two years thereafter the right of preemption was extended to all purchasers from Symmes prior to the first of January, 1800. The extension of credit by Congress was so liberal that many were enabled to complete their payments from the produce of the farms; and all, it is believed, by the indulgence of the Government from year to year, were at last made secure in their titles. The act of Congress March 3, 18o1, provided in effect that any person who had contracted in writing, before the first of January, 1800, with Judge Symmes, or any of his associates, or had made payment to them for the purchase of any land between the Miami rivers, within the limits of the survey of the Purchase made by Ludlow, and not within the tract which Symmes had received, his patent should be entitled to preference in purchasing said land from the United States, at the then fixed price of public lands, two dollars per acre. Under another section of the act President Jefferson appointed Messrs. John Reily and William Goforth to act with General Findlay, receiver of public moneys at Cincinnati, as commissioners to hear and determine the rights of claimants under the law. A year did not suffice for the settlement of all claims, and by another law of May 1, 1802, the provisions of the former act were extended twelve months longer. Mr. Reily was re-appointed com- HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO - 45 missioner; Dr. John Sellman was also appointed; and the two, with General Findlay, as commissioner ex officio, closed up the business: within the year. The following copy of the letter of transmittal accompanying the commission to Dr. Goforth, a well-known member of the board, will be read here. with interest: TREASURY DEPARTMENT, October 9, 1801. SIR:—The President of the United States having thought proper to appoint you a commissioner, under the fourth section of an act of Congress, passed March 3, 1801, entitled "an act giving .a right of preemption to certain persons who have contracted with John Cleves Symmes, or his associates, for lands lying between the Miami rivers, in the territory, of the United States northwest of the Ohio," I enclose to you, herewith, a commission for that purpose. The duties to be performed, and the compensation to-be allowed to you therefor, being fully detailed in the act above recited, I shall only remark that, as the commissioners will not arrive in time to admit of the three weeks' notice required by the law, all practicable means should be employed to apprise the parties concerned of the appointment of the commissioners, as well through the medium of the newspaper published at Cincinnati, as by hand-bills posted up in the neighboring districts. As it will be proper, however, that the commissioners should act in concert in this, and all other matters confided to them, I beg leave to recommend that a meeting be immediately held for that purpose. I am, very respectfully, sir, Your obedient servant, ALBERT GALLATIN. WILLIAM GOFORTH, ESQ., at Cincinnati. THE "COLLEGE TOWNSHIP" also gave Judge Symmes and others much embarrassment. He had sold all or most of the township proposed to be reserved for academic purposes, which, originally advertised in his "Terms of Sale and Settlement," was one of the best tracts in the purchase. It is now Green township—the only regular thirty-six section township in the county. Strictly, the Purchase was not entitled by law to a college township, since the ordinance under which the early sales of public lands were made only allowed it when a purchase of two millions or more of acres was made. When Symmes' associates and agents reduced the Purchase to one million, he accordingly gave up the idea of a college township, erased the entry of it which had previously been marked out upon his map, and sold its lands with the rest. But when the bills for the change of boundaries and the grant of the patent were before Congress, Dayton had secured the insertion of a provision for such township, for "an academy, or other school of learning, to be located within five years in nearly the center of the patent as might be." There was now not an entire township left unsold in the Purchase. Symmes, in 1799, offered the Government the second township of the second fractional range; but that had also been sold in large part, and the offer was rejected successively by the Federal and Territorial Governments, the State legislature, and then \Congress again, to whom he in turn offered it, holding previous sales from it to be void. After the State government was formed Congress granted the legislature another township, or thirty-six sections, from the public lands, in lieu of one in the Purchase, which was selected by a commission appointed in 1803, from unsold lands west of the Great Miami. These form the pecuniary foundation —such as it is, through mismanagement and waste—of Miami University, 'established by the legislature in 1809, located at first by the commissioners at Lebanon, within the Purchase, but afterwards fixed by the legislature at the present village of Oxford, Butler county, where it has since remained.* The troubles of Judge Symmes concerning his Purchase were endless, and embittered much of his later life. In 1811 his house at North Bend was burned, presumably by an enemy who was angered at him for having refused to vote for the incendiary for some local office. In the destruction of this house also perished the certificates of the original proprietors of Cincinnati, upon which the judge had made deeds to purchasers after he was enabled to do so by the obtainment of his patent. In some cases they had been irregularly and fraudulently secured; in others deeds had been made to assignees of certificates, upon assignments asserted by the original holders to be fraudulent. It was also important to learn whether all deeds for lots' in the town had been authorized by the proprietors; but, whatever the facts were, the loss of certificates, which was irreparable, shut off investigation, and operated as a quietus for the claimants in possession. The agitations created by the disaster, however, increased seriously the burdens of the now aged pioneer. Four years thereafter the enterprising adventurer and hero of the Miami Purchase found rest in the grave, where, After life's fitfnl fever, he sleeps well. CHAPTER VI. THE MIAMI 'IMMIGRATION. "I beheld, too, in that vision All the secrets of the future, Of the distant days that shall be. I beheld the westward marches Of the unknown, c10wded nations. All the land was full of people— Restless, struggling, toiling, striving, Speaking many tongues, yet feeling But one heart-beat in their bosoms. In the woodlands rang their axes, Smoked their towns in all the valleys, Over all the lakes and rivers Rushed their great canoes of thunder." —H. W. LONGFELLOW, "Hiawatha." THE FIRST PARTIES TO START. By the winter of 1788-9 there were white settlements on all sides of the Miami Purchase, though some of them were distant. Pittsburgh was founded; the Ohio company's colony was set down at Marietta; Limestone Point, or Limestone, afterwards Maysville, was much nearer at the eastward, and Lexington and Louisville, in the same State, both founded already ten years or more, lay at other points of the compass; while Detroit at the * Almost the entire account of the contract of 1788, and the subsequent transactions, has been derived from Judge Burnet's interesting and instructive Notes upon the settlement of the Northwestern Territory. 46 - HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO. northward, Vincennes to the west, and St. Lows yet beyond, might be said to complete a cordon, though somewhat far away, of civilized settlement. In Kentucky, particularly at Lexington, as we shall see more fully in opening the history of Cincinnati, a lively interest began to be taken, in the summer and fall of 1788, in the colonization of the fertile tract between the Miamis. Attention was especially directed to the eligible site opposite the mouth of the Licking, which many of the men of Kentucky had seen, as they crossed the Ohio going upon or returning from their expeditions against the Indians. In this region the first steps were taken for the planting of Losantiville, which became Cincinnati, the "Queen City." So far had the project gone in early autumn that the fifteenth of September of that year was appointed "for a large company to meet in Lexington and make a road from there to the mouth of the Licking, provided Judge Symmes arrives, being daily expected." The first organized parties for the settlement of the Miami country, however, set out from the far east. A feeble scatter of emigrants had come to the Purchase and its vicinity on either side, from time to time, in the spring and summer of 1788; none of whom, however, dared attempt permanent settlement as yet, through fear of the savages and the total want of military protection. Some of them, on their return, remained at Limestone and joined the early expeditions hack to the Miami country. Meanwhile the material of those expeditions was collecting, under the auspices of Symmes and Stites, away in the comparatively old districts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The latter started with his party, at just what date we know not, but probably in the early summer of 1788, and waited at Limestone until and for some time after the arrival of Judge Symmes. The latter left New Jersey late in July of the same year, with an imposing train of fourteen four-horse wagons, and, with the wagons and on horseback, sixty persons, including his own family. He travelled leisurely across the then difficult country to Pittsburgh, and thence to Wheeling, sending his horses by land to the latter place from Devon's Ferry, on the Monongahela, while he embarked his people and their effects on the river. He regretted afterwards that he had not purchased ox-teams instead of horses, declaring that he should have saved three hundred pounds by it. He recommended his eastern friends proposing to immigrate to come with oxen, "as they are cheaper by one half in the first purchase, not so much exposed to accidents—the Indians have never disturbed them in any instance (except in the attack on Colerain, when the enemy took all the cattle for the supply of their small army)—and after long service they are still of their original value." He was not troubled by Indians on the route, but was delayed somewhat by heavy rains and bad roads, which caused the breakage of several of his axles by the time Pittsburgh was reached. He remained in that city but two days, and pushed on to Wheeling, as before recited, from which the party floated briskly down, the Ohio being in flood at the time, to the infant colony at Marietta, and thence to Limestone, at which he arrived the latter part of September, two months from his departure from New Jersey. This place was to be his base of operations for some months. He paid an early visit of exploration to the Miami country, but was doomed to weeks of weary waiting, at first for a sufficient military escort to justify the completion of his journey and the execution of the Muskingum treaty pending with the Indians, wnich was delayed till almost midwinter; then for supplies. He complained bitterly of the delay of General Harmar in sending him troops from the fort at Marietta; and when, on the twelfth of December, Captain Kearsey reached Limestone with a force of forty-five men, the arrival was "much more detriment than use," as Symmes wrote, since he was not ready to start, St. Clair not yet having advised him of the conclusion of the treaty, and, the troops coming to him with very limited supplies and Harmar failing to send more, he had to feed them from his own stores. The purchases he was compelled to make from the surrounding country after a time were effected with difficulty and at large cost, since the "amazing emigration," as he called it, into Kentucky had almost exhausted the Limestone region and put every kind of provisions up to three times the price at Lexington. THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS. There had been a numerous gathering at Limestone, waiting to go on to tne Miamis. Major Stites, however, got away the twenty-fifth of November with the surveyors dispatched by Symmes into the Purchase, determined to wait no longer for the beginning of his meditated settlement at or near the mouth of the Little Miami. The two or three block-houses (Fort Miami) erected by the party, -with the adjoining cabins, formed the nucleus of Columbia, now the oldest part of Cincinnati and the oldest white settlement in Hamilton county or anywhere in the Purchase. A sergeant and eighteen men were presently sent to Stites. A sergeant and twelve men were also started with a party of settlers coming down the river for the "Old Fort " at the mouth of the Great Miami; but all these were turned back at Columbia by ice in the river gorging it and damaging their boats, and returned, discouraged but in safety, to Limestone. Just one month after the departure of Stites's company, on the twenty-fourth of December, the throng at Limestone was further relieved by the exodus of the party led by Colonel Patterson, of Lexington—which, however, was composed much more of eastern men than of Kentuckians. Their objective point was the coveted spot opposite the debouchure of the Licking into the Ohio, to which they moved accordingly, and successfully arrived, though with some trouble from floating ice—probably on the twenty-eighth of December, 1788. The town they founded here took at first the name suggested by the pedantic Filson, who was one of the original projectors—"Losantiville," a name compounded of little words from several languages, and intended to signify "the village opposite the mouth of the Licking river." Thus was the second settlement in the Purchase made. The third was effected by Judge Symmes himself and the party then over six months out from their New Jersey homes. He had taken a house for himself and family at Limestone, ex- HISTORY Of HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO - 47 pecting to be detained there until spring. He waited vainly and long, struggling with the difficulties of subsisting the troops and his following there, for a boat-load of flour which had been ordered from up the river, and which had been promised him by Christmas at furthest, or for Harmar to forward supplies. But the last of January bringing an enormous freshet in the river, sweeping out the ice and furnishing a current favorable for rapid movement down the stream, he determined to tarry no longer. This determination was hastened also by messengers from Stites, who came on foot through the wilderness along the river banks, to advise him of the expressed friendship of the Indians and their eagerness to see him. A second message of this kind led him to fear that, if his journey were longer delayed, the savages would retire in disgust and anger; and he decided to leave. Collecting with much difficulty a small supply of flour and salt, he embarked his family and furniture, with Captain Kearsey and the residue of the force, and committed his fortunes to the swelling waters on the twenty-ninth day of January, 1789. Reaching Columbia, he found it flooded, with, the soldiers driven to the garrets of the block-houses and finally to boats, and only one house, built on high ground, out of water. Passing on to Losantiville he found the people there entirely out of the floods; but, knowing from his previous observations of the country at the mouths of the Miamis that the land about the "Old Fort" would be flooded, he abandoned his project of founding a city at the point between the Great Miami and the Ohio, and, at three o'clock in the afternoon, as he carefully notes, on the second of February, 1789, in an inclement season, his party stepped ashore at the site of North Bend. Improvement here was speedily begun; and Howe, in his Historical Collections of Ohio, says that about the same time another beginning was made, three miles below this place and two from the Indiana line, on the tract which afterwards formed part of the farm of the younger William Henry Harrison. This took the name of the "Sugar Camp Settlement," and at one time, says Howe, had as many as thirty houses. The block-house built here was still standing in 1847, though almost a ruin. Soon after the North Bend occupation, a site was selected by Judge Symmes for another town, which was destined to have a short career and a limited fame—South Bend, at the southernmost point of the Ohio in the purchase. North Bend, says Mr. Francis W. Miller, in Cincinnati's Beginnings, obtained its appellation from being farther to the north than any other northwardly extending deflection of the Ohio between the Muskingum and the Mississippi. Judge Symmes wrote in August, 1791, that "South Bend is pretty well established," and Mr. Miller says "the village which was started there soon showed such signs of progress as to be considered for a time a competitor in the race for supremacy." In September, 1791, it had eighteen or twenty families. The entire chain of settlements along the river, particularly Columbia, Losantiville, and North Bend, received rapid accessions of immigration. In the years 1789-90 the first-named had the largest population of any of them. THE "STATIONS." At all periods of its history, the vast majority of immigrations to the Miami country has come in by way of the river Ohio. In the early day there was rarely an arrival by any other means of transportation, from the absence or paucity and poorness of roads in the interior. It was natural, therefore, that the settlements along the north bank of that river should be the first made in the Purchase. The policy of Judge Symmes, however, was to disperse settlers through the entire tract. In this he differed from the Ohio company. He wrote to Dayton in May, 1789: At Marietta, the directors of the company settled the settlers as they pleased, on the New England plan of concentrating in towns and villages, so as to guard against Indians. In "Miami" every purchaser chose his ground, and converted the same into a station, village, or town at pleasure, with nothing to anticipate but fear of the Indians. If ten or twelve men agree to form a station, it is certainly done. This desultory way of settling will soon carry many through the Purchase, if the savages do ,not frustrate them. Encouragements are given at every man's will to settlers, and they bid on each other, in order to make their post the more secure." In accordance with this wise policy, Symmes was soon able to announce (to Dayton, April 3o, 1790): We here established three new stations some distance up in the country. One is twelve miles up the Big Miami, the second is five miles up Mill creek, and the third is nine miles back in the country from Columbia. These all flourish well. The first of these small forts or stockades was named "Dunlap's station," at Colerain, seventeen miles northwest of Cincinnati, about which a good many settlers early concentrated; the second, although at first called by Symmes "Mill Creek station," is better known as Ludlow's, and was at Cumminsville, within the present limits of Cincinnati; and the third was probably " Covalt's station." A few months later, in November, after Harmar's defeat, Mr. Symmes writes : " But for the repulse of our army, I should have had several new stations advanced further into the Purchase by next spring; but I now shall be very happy if we are able to maintain the three advanced stations." THE SETTLEMENTS OF THE NORTH. The next year, in September, General St. Clair, while marching to his defeat, established Fort Hamilton on the Great Miami, in the Purchase, twenty-five miles from Cincinnati, which speedily became the nucleus of a thriving settlement, and finally gave way to the town (now city) of Hamilton, founded in 1794. Long before this, in June, 1789, when the Mad river region was presumed to be included in the Purchase, Major Stites and other Columbians, arranging with Symmes for the purchase of the seventh entire range of townships, drew a superb plan for a town upon the subsequent site of Dayton, for which they proposed the name "Venice." The project failed, from difficulties in obtaining title from Symmes, and very likely also from fear of the savages. As soon, however, as the Indian troubles were pacificated this very desirable site at the mouth of the Mad river was occupied by a company composed of Governor St. Clair, General Dayton, General Wilkinson, and Colonel Ludlow, who founded and secured a rapid early growth for their new town of "Dayton." They had negotiated 48 - HIS TORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO. for the land with Symmes, but were compelled, of course, eventually to purchase from the Government, as, by the Judge's patent of 1794, it lay far outside of his tract. At an early day, also, Lebanon and other towns and country settlements in the Miami country, in and out of the Purchase, made their hopeful beginnings. DISCOURAGEMENTS. Thus rapidly, under the circumstances, was setting in the tide of Miami immigration. Some of those circum stances were specially formidable to the rapid development of the country. Notwithstanding tne peaceful auspices under which the first treaties and settlements had been made, and the comparative freedom from attack which the little communities enjoyed for some time, the fear of savage inroads was ever present, and even afar off it deterred the intending immigrant from making his venture. The fear of Indian massacre, captivity, and torture hung like a pall over the advance guard of civilization in the Miami wilderness. This was greatly increased by the disastrous defeats of Generals St. Clair and Harmar, and was not entirely removed until after the victory of Wayne at the battle of the Fallen Timbers, and the subsequent peace of Greenville. An era of security and peace then set in. The inhabitants could now leave their fortified stations and remove to tracts selected in the open country. Here they built their cabins anew, and began to subdue the forest and get in their first crops. Other immigrants rapidly arrived on the news of apparently permanent peace, to join them; and the wonderful growth of the region fairly began. Another cause operated almost as powerfully, early in the immigration, to deter settlement. This was the hostility of the Kentucky people, who, from being warm friends of the Miami country, had become its bitter enemies, and lost no opportunity to decry it. They doubt. less suffered "the piques of disappointment," as Symmes put it, at seeing the rich prize of the Purchase carried off by eastern men, after they, the leading Kentuckians, had fixed their longing eyes upon it. Nevertheless, many -land-jobbers from that region had bargained with the judge for tracts of his land, and had been granted generous terms—abundant time in which to pay the fees for surveying and registering required of land-buyers at that time, and to make their first payments. In most cases they utterly failed in these; and after waiting a reasonable lengtn of time, their negotiations or contracts were declared void by Mr. Symmes. They consequently took especial pains, particularly at Limestone, where all parties of immigrants going down the Ohio called, to discourage settlers from locating in the purchase. Symmes writes to Dayton in May, 1789: At Limestone they assert with an air of assurance that the Miami country is depopulated, that many of the inhabitants are killed and the settlers all fled who have escaped the tomahawk, adjuring those bound to the falls of the Ohio not to call at the Miamis, for that they would certainly be destroyed by the Indians. With these falsehoods they have terrified about thirty families, which had come down the river with a design of settling at Miami, and prevailed with them to land at Limestone and go into Kentucky. Nevertheless, [added the stout-hearted pioneer] every week, almost every day, some people arrive at one or other of our towns, and become purchasers and settlers. . . Many persons who have been with us, made purchases, built houses, and are fully satisfied and much, pleased with the country, go back and get their families. But later the feeling in Kentucky seems to have changed, or the disappointed and pestilent landsharks there had lost their influence; for a large immigration from that very region northward to the Miami valley was promised. Judge Symmes wrote November 4, 1790: Never had been finer prospects of speedy sales and settlement of lands in the Purchase, than were about the time the army marched to Harmar's defeat. Great numbers were arranging their business to emigrate from Kentucky and the Pittsburgh country; but the strokes our army has got seem to fall like a blight upon the prospect, and for the present seem to appall every countenance. Still another source of discouragement was found in 1791, in the arbitrary conduct of Governor. St. Clair towards Judge Symmes, and of the governor and the military towards the citizens of Cincinnati and the purchasers of lands in the southeast corner and elsewhere in the Purchase. On the twelfth and fourteenth of July in that year St. Clair addressed somewhat dictatorial letters to the judge, on the subject of his continued sales of lands between the Little Miami and the new line established by the Treasury board as the eastern boundary of the Purchase, and on the nineteenth issued the proclamation of warning and threat mentioned in our Chapter V. Mr. Symmes wrote: Every person must admit that the Governor has treated me and the settlers in a most cruel manner. He also writes of the proclamation, which seems to have been preceded or followed by another placing Cincinnati, or some part of it outside of the fort, under martial law: The Governor's proclamations have convulsed these settlements beyond your conception, sir, not only with regard to the limits of the Purchase, but also with respect to his putting part of the town of Cincinnati under military government. The governor had shortly before summarily arrested a respectable settler from New England, named Knoles Shaw, although he lived beyond the limits of martial law, as prescribed by the proclamation, put him in irons, as the judge was "credibly informed," and finally, without hearing before judge or jury, exiled him and his family from the territory, while his house had been burned by the troops, under St. Clair's orders. The charges against him related to the purchase of some articles of soldiers' uniform and the advising soldiers to desert ; but they rested solely upon the assertion of a soldier who deserted and was retaken, against whom Mr. Shaw stoutly asserted his innocence, and they were not, even if fully substantiated, such as called for the severe penalties inflicted, had the governor legal power to inflict them at discretion. Some of the military officers, partaking of St. Clair's spirit, had been guilty of other highhanded and unwarranted acts. One Captain Armstrong, commanding at Fort Hamilton, for example, ordered out of the Purchase some of the settlers at Dunlap's station, and threatened to eject them vi et armis if they did not go. Previously, under Harmar's command at Fort Washington, the regular officers at the fort committed "many other acts of a despotic complexion," "beating HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO - 49 and imprisoning citizens at their pleasure," writes Symmes. When, late in the same year, the defeat of St. Clair by the Indians was added to the disastrous repulse of Harmar, the combined discouragements certainly looked as if the Purchase would be ruined. Symmes wrote to Dayton: I expect, sir, that the late defeat will entirely discourage emigration to the Purchase from Jersey for a long time. Indeed, it seems that we are never to have matters right. What from the succeeding defeats of our army, and the Governor's arbitrary conduct towards the settlers, still more discouraging at the time than even the defeats, many settlers became very indifferent in their attachment to the Purchase, and numbers had left it on account of the Governor's conduct before his unparalleled defeat. Yet the elasticity of the indomitable spirit of the pioneers and their leaders rebounded from all depressions, and the immigration, after a period of relapse, went bravely on. It is estimated that there were two thousand white persons already in the Miami country in 1790, and that ten years thereafter the number had jumped to fifteen thousand. In 1810 Hamilton county alone had fifteen thousand two hundred and four, and the entire Miami country about seventy thousand, or one-seventh of the whole population then in the State. By August, 1815, it was judged by Dr. Drake that one hundred thousand at least were in the same region, or twenty-five per square mile, scattered over about four thousand square miles. It was a remarkable growth for the first quarter of a century. The expectations entertained of the whole Ohio country, long before it was permanently settled, are well shown by an official communication addressed in 1770 to the Earl of Hillsborough, then attached to the British government as Secretary of State for the North American Department, in which the following passage occurs: No part of North America will require less encouragement for the production of naval stores and raw materials for manufactories in Europe, and for supplying the West India islands with lumber, provisions, etc., than the country of the Ohio. The writer then gives six excellent reasons for the faith that is in him, with observations that involve many compliments to and a high appreciation, of the beautiful fertile land watered by the Ohio and its tributaries. THE MIAMI COUNTRY. It was a beautiful land to which the Miami immigration was invited— A wilderness of sweets; for Nature here Wantoned as in her prime, and played at will Her virgin fancies, pouring forth more sweet, Wild above rule or art ; the gentle gales, Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole Those balmy spoils. Judge Symmes had called it, with tolerably clear prescience, "a country that may one day prove the brightest jewel in the regalia of the nation." The forest was luxuriant, and fertile in native fruit products. The fine bottom lands in the valleys had been cultivated by the savages, and by the Mound Builders before them, for untold centuries, and were found by the early settlers as mellow as ash heaps, and with their fertility unimpaired by long culture, much less exhausted. Said Symmes to Dayton, in a letter from North Bend, May 27, 1789: "The country is healthy, and looks like a mere meadow for many miles together in some places." The "Turkey Bottom," still so-called, a clearing of about six hundred and forty acres, or a "section," made ready to the hand of civilization, a mile and a half above the mouth of the Little Miami, on the east side of the Purchase, with the produce of some smaller lots near Columbia, furnished the entire supply of corn for that hamlet and for Cincinnati during their first year. This tract, like many others in the valleys, was extremely fertile. Benjamin Randolph, one of the occupants, planted a single acre of corn upon it, which he had no time to noe, hastening back to New Jersey upon some errand of affection or business; and when he came back in the fall, he found that his neglected acre had one hundred bushels of excellent maize ready for him to husk. From nine acres of this tract, the tradition goes, the enormous crop of nine hundred and sixty-three bushels was gathered the very first season. Oliver M. Spencer, one of the earliest residents at this corner of the Purchase, thus pleasantly records his impressions of the Miami country in the primitive time: The winter of 1791--92 was followed by an early and delightful spring ; indeed, I have often thought that our first Western winters were much milder, our springs earlier, and our autumns longer than they now are. On the last of February some of the trees were putting forth their foliage ; in March the redbud, the hawthorn, and the dogwood, in full bloom, checkered the hills, displaying their beautiful colors of rose and lily ; and in April the ground was covered with Mayapple, bloodroot, ginseng, violets, and a great variety of herbs and flowers. Flocks of paroquets were seen, decked in their rich plumage of green and gold. Birds of various species and every hue, were flitting from tree to tree, and the beautiful redbird and the untaught songster of the west made the woods vocal with their melody. Now might be heard the plaintive wail of the dove, and now the rumbling drum of the partridge or the loud gobble of the turkey. Here might be seen the clumsy bear, doggedly moving off; or, urged by pursuit into a laboring gallop, retreating to his citadel in the top of some lofty tree ; or, approached suddenly, raising himself erect in the attitude of defence, facing his enemy and waiting his approach ;—there the timid deer, watchfully resting or cautiously feeding, or, aroused from his thicket, gracefully bounding off, then stopping, erecting his stately head for a moment, gazing around, or snuffing the air to ascertain his enemy, instantly springing off, clearing logs and bushes at a bound, and soon distancing his pursuers, It seemed an earthly paradise ; and, but for apprehension of the wily copperhead, which lay silently coiled among the leaves or beneath the plants, waiting to strike his victim ; the horrid rattlesnake, which, more chivalrous, however, with head erect amidst its ample folds, prepared to dart upon his foe, gene10usly with the loud noise of his rattle apprised him of danger ; and the still more fearful and insidious savage, who, crawling upon the ground or noiselessly approaching behind trees or thickets, sped the deadly shaft or fatal bullet, you might have fancied you were in the confines of Eden or the borders of Elysium. Many, notwithstanding these drawbacks, were the charms, attractions, and delights of the Miami country. The immigration thereto, as we shall now see, was every way worthy of it. 7