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CHAPTER III.

FIRST PIONEER SETTLEMENTS-THE FRONTIER PERIOD.

[BY JOHN B. JEWETT.]

THE UNITED STATES IN 1786-THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY-VISIT TO THE MIAMI COUNTRY-STITES AND SYMMES-ORGANIZATION OF THE FIRST COLONIES-SETTLEMENT OF COLUMBIA, LOSANTIVILLE, AND NORTH BEND-COVALT STATION BEGINNING OF INDIAN HOSTILITIES -FORT WASHINGTON BUILT-HAMILTON. COUNTY FORMED-NEW SETTLEMENTS-INDIANS ATTACK DUNLAP'S STATION-INDIAN WARFARE CONTINUED-FIRST TOWNSHIPS FORMED-MERCERSBURGH-WHITE'S STATION -RUNYAN'S STATION-WHITE'S STATION ATTACKED-INCREASE OF SETTLEMENTS AND TOWNSHIPS-CLOSE OF THE FRONTIER PERIOD.

THE UNITED STATES IN 118E3--THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY.

THE United States of America, in the year 1786, was quite a different nation, from the United States which to-day commands the respect of the greatest powers of the world. There were then thirteen States, instead of forty-four; the territory in their possession was not a fourth of what it now is, and their population not one-fifteenth. The States were united more in name than in fact. The Confederate Government, organized toward the close of the Revolution, in the hope of strengthening the bonds of union between the Colonies, had demonstrated its incompetency more clearly every year of its existence. At one time, the executive committee which acted during each adjournment of Congress came to a dead-lock upon an important question, and went home, leaving the country absolutely without a general government; and when at length there began to be violent out-breaks of popular feeling, and even armed insurrection, in resistance to the collection of taxes necessary to discharge the great war debt, Congress proved so powerless that the State most violently threatened with misrule was compelled to depend upon voluntary aid of neighboring States in restoring order.

In this year, too, the people of the United States were beset by evils which came even nearer home than bad government. The war had of course made the fortunes. of many, but it had ruined the fortunes of more. The majority were poorer, in everything but liberty, than even in the frugal period which preceded the revolt of the Colonies. The scarcity of good money had driven all classes into debt, and, because of the same scarcity, the harsh laws for the collection of debts, which yet existed as memorials of Colonial aristocracy, were enforced to the last point of severity. No class suffered so heavily from the general destitution as the disbanded soldiers of the Revolutionary army. Patriotism, like virtue, is most poorly rewarded by those whom it financially benefits the most. As soon as the war appeared to be over, the country became tranquilly indifferent to the claims of its defenders, and the veterans who had risked life, and lost health, in so many weary campaigns, for some time had great difficulty in obtaining the small wages due for their services. The separate States at length paid the claims, but such slender means were hardly sufficient, alone, to insure their possessors permanent homes, or even a very long subsistence, unless invested where property and comfort were to be had more cheaply than in the exhausted districts of the East. Fortunately for the veterans, for others who suffered like them, and for the progress of the nation, their country was able to offer them such a refuge.

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The great Territory northwest of the Ohio river, a land dearly paid for with the blood of Anglo-Americans, and fairly acquired by their military prowess in more than one long war, was now open to colonization. By the treaty of 1783 with Great Britain, it had been formally transferred to the United States. Virginia, under whose government it fell in 1778, when her daring soldier, George Rogers Clark, took it from the British, had before the war closed arranged to dispose of lands within its limits, but upon the remonstrance of Congress, and of Several States, abandoned her right and title, except in a certain reserved section, to the general government. Massachusetts, who had claimed an interest in the western country under her old royal charter, soon followed Virginia's generous example, and Connecticut, whose claims were similar to those of Massachusetts, withdrew upon the same terms as Virginia. Fir the settlement of the great region thus delivered up for the common welfare, Congress at once began to make arrangements. A treaty was made with the Iroquois at Fort Stanwix, New York, another with the Delawares, Wyandots and Chippewas, at Fort McIntosh, and another with the Shawnees at the mouth of the Great Miami, by which the savages recognized the United States as the successor of Great Britain, and agreed to admit American settlers. The vast tract was being surveyed, and divided into convenient allotments for sale, in 1786, when the general discontent of the masses in the East was breaking forth in riots and other acts of outlawry. Gladly then did the impoverished but still dauntless veterans turn to the region which was being prepared for their reception, as one in which their courage could yet win homes in place of those which that same courage had sacrificed.

And indeed, no fairer land ever offered itself to the embrace of industry. It was the last untouched portion of that mighty wilderness which lay to the west of the Appalachian Mountains when Daniel Boone climbed their summits one summer day before the Revolution and feasted his soul with solitude. The smoke of the cabins of Western Virginia and Pennsylvania now rose at the foot of those mountains, and, for hundreds of miles due west, the green prospect which had thrilled the heart of the great pioneer was broken by the clearings which his own followers bad made. But the unspoiled forests of the northwest were as yet only parted by the winding rivers, by fields of prairie, or by the broad natural meadows which here and there were to be seen waving with wild rye and blue grass, abundantly feeding herds of deer, elk and buffalo, and promising still richer harvests and pastures to the agriculturist.

The first of the Revolutionary soldiers to take advantage of the opportunity now offered by Congress were those who, under the leadership of Rev. Dr. Cutler and Gen. Rufus Putnam, organized at Boston as the Ohio Company. It was not till the next year, however, that they selected a tract for settlement, and in the meantime another project was afoot.

VISITS TO THE MIAMI COUNTRY-STITES AND SYMMES.

The villages along the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers at this period were able to furnish many of the products of civilization to the more primitive settlers of Kentucky. In the spring of 1786, Capt. Benjamin Stites, a resident of Red Stone, one of the settlements on the Monongahela, left home upon one of the common trading voyages down the Ohio. He apparently started with no loftier purpose than to barter his goods to the best advantage, but, like the true frontiersman of his day, he was ready to leave his immediate employment at any moment to turn new circumstances to good account. He seems to have floated down to the Kentucky port, then called Limestone, and now Maysville, a distance of many miles along the Ohio wilderness, without important incident.

There his experience changed. '"'bile at a village not far from Limestone, endeavoring to dispose of his wares, some horses belonging to certain settlers there

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were spirited away by a party of the Ohio Indians, whom no treaty of peace could cure of their predatory habits. Being an experienced borderer, the Captain joined the band of settlers who started in pursuit. The trail of the marauders, after crossing the Ohio, led some sixty miles up the valley of the Little Miami to the Shawnee town, Old Chillicothe, and finding their property beyond recovery, the cautious pursuers crossed to the Great Miami, twenty miles farther west, and followed its course to the Ohio again.

The view which Stites thus obtained of the Miami Country ended his career as a Kentucky trader. In a short time be was traveling with all possible dispatch toward New York, where Congress then held its sessions, to negotiate for the purchase of part of the tract which he had explored. Probably the amount which lie proposed buying was too small to procure respect for his offer, for he soon sought a business alliance with a person whose means were more extensive than his own. This person was John Cloves Symmes, a citizen of Trenton, N. J., who had served in several public offices-in one as a member of the Continental Congress-with respectable distinction, and who was thoroughly qualified, by energy, patience, judgment and experience, to take charge of an enterprise so toilsome and hazardous as the establishment of a commonwealth in the western wilderness. While not a borderer himself, he comprehended fully the difficulties of border life, and was adapted to a work which the true frontiersman is not, that of developing all the resources of a wild country to the fullest uses of civilization. He accepted the advances of Stites, and in the summer of the next year after their meeting went in person to the country between the Miamis.

While Symmes was engaged in this inspection, Congress indirectly encouraged his scheme by passing an act for the government of the Northwest Territory, the famous Ordinance of 1787, which excluded slavery from the Territory forever, declared freedom of religious worship and necessity of schools, established an office of governor and court of judges, with combined legislative, judicial and executive functions, and arranged for the alteration of these simple institutions according to the future growth of society. A few days after the Ordinance was passed, Congress directed the Treasury Board to assign lands to the Ohio Company, whose directors had applied for one and a half million acres upon the two sides of the Muskingum. Symmes soon returned to New York, and contracted with the Treasury Board for a million acres of the fertile lands which he had been inspecting, at the price of 66 cents per acre. Before that year ended he had transferred 20,000 acres of his tract to Capt Stites.

ORGANIZATION OF THE FIRST COLONIES.

The greater part of the next year was spent by the leaders in organizing parties of immigrants in the East. Three settlements were to be established. Capt. Stites had chosen a site at the mouth of the Little Miami, Symmes at the mouth of the Great Miami, and a third speculator, Matthias Denman, a resident of Springfield, N. J., had made a location of several hundred acres at a point between the two other sites, on the bottom land and the elevated plain opposite the mouth of the Licking river.

The civil and social growth of the West had begun. It was in January, 1788, that Denman purchased the section opposite the Licking; in February Congress appointed the governor and the chief judges required for the Territory by the Ordinance, Symmes himself becoming one of the court; in April the first colonists of the Ohio Company arrived at the month of the Muskingum, two hundred miles east of the Miami Purchase, and laid out the town of Marietta; two months after Marietta was founded, the governor, Gen. Arthur St. Clair, and two of the judges, Parsons and Varnum, met there to begin their administration. After this first official session, Symmes went east again, to meet his family and followers. In the meantime

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Capt. Stites and his company from Red Stone had passed Marietta on their way westward, and reached Limestone, where they stopped to prepare a quantity of timber in order that their fort and cabins might be constructed immediately upon reaching the Little Miami. The experience of two generations had taught the natives of the Pennsylvania frontier better than to rely upon the friendship of the Indians.

They had been engaged in this employment a month or more, when Denman came up from the Miamis, where he had been examining his land, for which he now wanted settlers. It does not appear that he procured any recruits from Stites' division of Pennsylvanians, who were well enough satisfied with their own destination; but two prominent Kentuckians, Col. Robert Patterson and John Filson, the first of whom knew Denman's ground well, found his representations favorable, bought two-thirds of his claim, and agreed with him to lay out and settle a town, to be called Losantiville. Patterson, whose influence was the most considerable, undertook to muster a force of settlers for the town, and Filson, who was a schoolmaster and surveyor, to establish the lines of its lots and streets.

The plans of these proprietors were soon adjusted, and their terms for the sale of lots advertised among the people of Kentucky. It was now late in September, and in the midst of these arrangements, Judge Symmes arrived at Limestone with the party which he had marshaled in New Jersey, numbering sixty members. Leaving his people at the well-thronged little hamlet, Symmes, with Denman, Capt. Stites and others, proceeded to the Miamis, where Patterson, Filson and a large party of Kentuckians were awaiting his appearance to make a general survey of the country. Some forty or fifty miles up the valley of the Great Miami, the explorers came across a small encampment of Indians, the sight of which at once excited the savage propensities of the Kentuckians. Symmes, however, refused to allow them to massacre the tenants of the camp; the Kentuckians became surly, and finally showed their ill-spirit by deserting the Judge and his few stanch comrades altogether, The broken and scattered party straggled back through the forest, but upon reaching Limestone again Filson was missing. He was never again seen or heard of by his companions of that autumn adventure. After waiting a long time for his return, Denman and Patterson took in his place a young surveyor named Israel Ludlow, an employe of the government, who engaged to perform the services originally undertaken by Filson.

The mysterious disappearance of Filson, which was of course attributed to the Indians whom the expedition had encountered, was but one of several incidents which had happened to demonstrate to the waiting immigrants that the northern woods were still far from safe. The Federal Government, however, was endeavoring to establish perfect security, and all the colonists, impatient, yet dismayed, lingered at Limestone a month and a half longer.

SETTLEMENT OF COLUMBIA, LOSANTIVILLE AND NORTH BEND.

By that time, finding that the anticipated treaty was still delayed, Capt. Stites' people, the most adventurous of the colonists, determined to move forward. This decision, too, was formed in the face of a rumor which had just been brought to Limestone by a party of Kentucky hunters; they were told that five hundred Indian warriors were stationed at the mouth of the Little Miami, ready to visit death upon all white persons who dared to land there. Only the women of Stites' party were affected by this terrifying report, and even they did not hold back. On the 16th of November the whole party left Limestone; at daybreak of the 18th their flatboats approached the mouth of the Little Miami. A cautious reconnoisance in the dusky morning light proved that they had received an empty warning; no Indians were in sight, and when the winter sun rose the founders of the second settlement in Ohio were gathered together upon the spot which they had chosen for a home, pouring out their gratitude to Providence for a safe deliverance.

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The rumor which they had heard at Limestone is charged by some annalists to the jealousy of certain Kentuckians; but there were really a few Shawnees encamped several wiles up the Little Miami when Capt. Stites' boats put into shore. They offered friendship instead of war, however, and became so amiable that Stites sent word to Symmes and Patterson, at Limestone, to follow him without fear. Nevertheless, the Captain was not so confident of this specious good will s to neglect the construction of his blockhouse, and his prudence was well repaid.

The persons composing this adventurous troop were not numerous. Only five of the men brought their families: Capt. Stites, Elijah Stites, Greenbright Bailey, Abel Cook and Jacob Mills. The remainder were either unmarried, or had left their wives and children in safer quarters. Their names were Hezekiah Stites. John S. Gano, Ephraim Kibby, Benjamin Cox. Joseph Cox, Hampton and Allen Woodruff, Evan Shelby, - Hempstead, Daniel Shoemaker, Edmund Buxton, Elijah Mills, and Thomas C. Wade. During the next two years, the original party was strongly reinforced. The names of some of these later settlers were James H. Bailey, Zephr and Jonas Ball, James Bowman, Benjamin, David and Owen Davis, Francis Dunlevy, Hugh Dunn, Isaac and John Ferris, James Flinn, Gabriel and Luke Foster, James Newell, Benjamin F. Randolph, James Seward, William Goforth, Daniel Griffin, Joseph Grove, John Hardin, Cornelius Hurley, David, Henry, and Levi Jennings, Ezekiel Larned, John Manning, James Mathews, Aaron Mercer, Ichabod B. Miller, Patrick and William Moore, John Morris. Wickersham, John McCullough, and Ignatius Ross.

The village of cabins which at once began to grow up around the blockhouse was christened Columbia. It was situated on the bank of the Ohio, more than half a mile below the month of the Little Miami. The valley of the Little Miami, which is two miles wide at its lower termination, was not all covered with forest, but many acres of its low and level surface expanded into a spacious natural meadow, which from being frequented both winter and summer by numerous flocks of wild poultry soon won the name of Turkey Bottom. Over this broad bottom land Stites laid out squares and streets for a great city, which be hoped would eventually become the Queen of the West. But nature and destiny declared against him, and the city never advanced beyond the plan. The vast cornfields of the wealthy estates in the neighborhood are still haunted by the half-obsolete name of Turkey Bottom; the East End of the great Cincinnati corporation, which is gradually creeping up the Little Miami, wears the familiar name of Capt. Stites' rude little hamlet. These are the most substantial memorials of his defeated ambition which survive about the place of his settlement.

The message which Capt. Stites had sent to Limestone, and the peaceful progress made by his settlers during the next month, gave assurance to Patterson's company. Twenty-six of their then, among whom were Col. Patterson and Ludlow, the substitute of the lost Filson, started down the Ohio upon the 24th of December, during the most inclement weather of the season, reached the mouth of the Licking oil the 27th, and the next day began to lay out the town of Losantiville. To enlist these adventurers the proprietors of the ground, Denman, Patterson and Ludlow, had offered to give a lot to each of the first thirty men who would aid in establishing the settlement. In a few days these lots were surveyed, and each man made his choice by lottery. One or two cabins were then erected for shelter, the clearing of the ground was commenced, and other preparations made to receive several families that were expected to arrive in the spring.

In the meantime Judge Symmes remained at Limestone, waiting for the conclusion of the treaty which the authorities of the government were holding with the tribes of the Ohio at Fort Harmar, the government station opposite Marietta. Symmes seems to have been the most unwilling of all the Miami leaders, at this time, to trust the Indians; yet he had the least reason of all to apprehend molestation.

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His humane act in preserving the lives of the band on the Great Miami, in the preceding autumn, had given him a kinder place in their regard than he seems to have suspected. Besides, he had been granted military protection, which Columbia and Losantiville yet lacked. A detachment of forty-five soldiers, under Capt. Kearsey, had been sent from Fort Harmar at his request, and had been waiting his orders at Limestone since the 12th of December. On the 3d of January, 1789, he dispatched a conciliatory message to the Wyandot and Shawnee warriors, reminding then] of the service he had done them a few months before, offering to trade with them to their advantage, and requesting then] to restrain their young men from attacks upon the whites.

The message was well received, and shortly afterward the party of Shawnees whom Stites had found encamped at Columbia, having been cheated by some roving traders, for whose actions the settlers were in nowise responsible, demanded that Judge Symmes meet them and render reparation for their losses. As he still loitered, they sent word by Capt. Stites that they wished to see him; and shortly afterward they dispatched a second notice. Symmes thereupon feared that if be deferred his coming longer, they might go away offended, and all prospects of amicable relations, between their people and his, be completely destroyed. Though but imperfectly prepared for moving, he was determined by the latter consideration, and having gathered such provisions as could be obtained, he started down the river. His own family, a number of the settlers who had accompanied him from the East, and most of Capt. Kearsey's detachment of soldiers, formed his party. The river, swollen with one of its highest freshets, soon swept his fleet to Columbia, which village be found almost completely submerged. He passed on to Losantiville, where he stopped one night; on the 2nd of February, 1.78l, be stepped ashore at North Bend, a point twelve miles below Losantiville, and five above the month of the Great Miami. The sight of Columbia, sunken to the tops of its chimneys, had warned him against proceeding to his real destination.

After constructing a temporary habitation at North Bend, Symmes went on to the mouth of the Great Miami, where, like Stites at Columbia, he had dreamed of founding a magnificent city. Finding the situation as unfortunate as that of Columbia, he returned to North Bend, laid off a subdivision, and by donating some of the lots, succeeded in starting a respectable village.

The Shawnees who wished to see Judge Symmes were represented by Blackboard (or Blackbird). a chief of some note in the tribe. He soon called at North Bend, and after a long discussion with Symmes, who labored to convince him that the settlers should not be held liable for the frauds of every rascally trader, expressed himself as satisfied with the intentions of the Long Knives. Whether his declarations were sincere or not, ho sustained them by staying three or four weeks at North Bend, partaking of the Judge's entertainment, which included whiskey, in an exceedingly fraternal spirit.

COVALT STATION-BEGINNING OF INDIAN HOSTILITIES-FORT WASHINGTON BUILT.

About the time that Symmes left Limestone, a strong settlement was established in the valley of the Little Miami, nine or ten miles above Columbia, under the leadership of Capt. Abraham Covalt, a native of New Jersey. but a resident of Bedford county, western Penn., and a Revolutionary veteran. He was one of the leaders of the Miami immigration who cherished no splendid visions of future wealth and greatness; his highest worldly ambition was to remain independent. He was a true type of the sensible, homely, brave and honorable American of the old Colonial day, and an equally distinct type of that simple but noble manhood which appears to such rare advantage in every age and state of society.

The manner of his connection with Symmes is not clear, but the traditions of his family indicate that he made his purchase in 1787 or 1788, when Symmes and Stites were organizing their colonies in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Capt. Covalt left

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Pennsylvania on the 1st of January, 1789. His outfit consisted of two large flatboats, one of which was loaded with agricultural implements, and a number of the finest cattle, horses, sheep and swine, that had yet been brought to the country of the Miamis. Beside his own family, which was a numerous one, he was accompanied by several others, whose names are still prominent in the eastern part of Hamilton county. The leaders of these families were Robert McKinney, Jonathan Pittman, John Webb, John Hutchens, David Smith, Z. Hinkle, and Timothy Covalt; with them were friends or relatives bearing the names of Fletcher, Buckingham, Beagle, Clemmons, Coleman, Murphy, and Gerston.

This brave company, numbering in all forty-five persons, landed at Columbia on the 19th of January. For want of a better accommodation, a tent was raised on the bank of the Little Miami, in which the women and children found an indifferent shelter against the bitter cold and sleet of that memorable winter, while the men went up the valley to make a clearing and construct a fort.

The position of this station was one of the loneliest in the Miami Country at that early period, but its advantages as a natural site in a great measure compensated the hardy frontiersmen for the perils it invited. The valley of the Little Miami at this point plunges from the north, a deep and narrow opening between the wood covered hills, and meets the valley of the East Fork; the two, as they merge and widen into one, sweep away several miles to the westward. A long terrace, or elevated plain, lies in the arm of this curve, its level and extensive surface being now covered with the scattered houses which constitute the pretty suburban village of Terrace Park.

When Capt. Covalt first looked upon this plain its sandy soil was deep with the mould of an oak forest, fertilized by the decay of untold centuries, while its level expanse, once open to the sunlight and the air, offered every facility to cultivation. On the northeast the plain is separated from the foot of the hills by the hollow of a small stream that runs into the river; in this choice location Capt. Covalt and his followers erected a formidable stockade fort, of that design and construction which, from the first to the last experience of the Europeans and their descendants with the ferocious natives of the North American forest, was proven to be absolutely necessary to a mode of life requiring the precautions of defense more than convenience of residence. This class of structures first grew into use from the situation of the settlers of New England and Virginia, who found themselves a mere handful among hordes of wily enemies, whose merciless attacks could only be thwarted by a constant provision against surprise; and under their cover our population advanced from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. The successful stands which the scattered people of the frontier were enabled to make against the terrible savage, by means of these protections, were so wonderful that the future descendants of the borderers will probably be disposed to regard their career somewhat as the modern European regards the achievements of media-val knights-errant. The usual plan of these forts was a square. At each corner of the square stood a blockhouse; from blockhouse to block. house were ranged the cabins of the residents, with their roofs sloping inwardly, to incommode an enemy's entrance as much as possible. The exterior walls were perforated with loopholes, from which the fire of the besieged could be delivered during an attack. All openings between the cabins were closed by lines of palisade. The fort known through the early history of Hamilton county as Covalt's Station was built upon this plan, the cabins which formed its walls being seventeen in number. A mill, the first in the Miami Country, was built at the same time upon the small stream near the station, known yet as Mill run. The settlers from some of the lower stations carried their grist to this mill for several years after it was put into operation.

There were now four promising settlements along the edge of the great forest of the Miami Country, from the most extreme of which, in one direction, to the most extreme in the other, a sturdy woodsman might walk by the light of a single winter

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day. Fresh immigration would have soon poured into them, to develop all the branches of civilized industry, had the red men kept the several treaties by which they had bound themselves to peace. But the border history of North America was not yet ended. It was less reasonable for the Americans to expect that the lords of the soil would surrender their ancient rights while the slenderest chance remained of preserving them, than for Great Britain to expect that the Americans would submit to her tyranny. The Northwest Territory at this tinge held tribes who cherished the memory of more than a century's bitter wrongs against their overpowering enemy. The Mohicans and the Delawares still remembered the rivers of the salt sea; the Shawnees had abandoned more than one hunting ground to the palefaces before they found a home on the western rivers; the Miamis, who had long and proudly withstood the dreadful Iroquois, looked upon the new invaders of their land with haughty and ominous coldness; in(] the implacable Mohawk and his brethren of the Six Nations, who never made peace with one white nation except in alliance against another, roamed the valleys of Ohio, and mingled with the fallen tribes to inflame them by secret counsels of resistance, and to carry the secret bribes of the British, who, since the Americans had successfully defied their oppression, had grown more malignant in their hatred than the savages themselves.

The more intelligent men of the different nations regarded war as a policy rather than a means of gratifying malicious passion, but in those dignified intellects American dominion encountered its strongest check. They discerned clearly the mournful fate which was following their people, yet knew that retreat could only hasten its pursuit. Further struggle might prolong their wild liberty a few years; to cease struggling was to surrender it at once. From this alternative alone the suspended contest might have been resumed without the sly encouragement of the British.

These influences began to be felt but a few weeks after the first settlements were located in the Miami Country. The Miami nation had not been represented in the several treaties, and naturally refused to be bound by them, while the tribes with whom the treaties were made denied that they had relinquished their rights in their lands at all. Their disposition had completely changed. The only condition upon which they would now agree that peace should not be broken was that the Americans should withdraw beyond the Ohio, and never recross it, and one of the sagest, councillors and deadliest warriors of the Shawnees demanded that they should go back to their original quarters east of the Appalachian Mountains.

Before the coming of the whites more than one of the tribes dwelt upon the southern rivers of the country; one division of the Shawnees had their quarters at Old Chillicothe, in the Little Miami valley, it will be remembered, when Capt. Stites explored the country two years before. Upon the first appearance of the settlers the distrustful and designing natives retired northward, and the principal villages of the different nations were now gathered along the rivers of Lake Erie within striking distance of the settlements, yet safe from counter-surprises.

The treaty meeting, held at Fort Harmar during the winter, was hardly over before some of the very hands which had assembled there were prowling about the western stations, benton mischief. Before the first red bud tree was in bloom upon the hillsides, five of Capt. Covalt's fine horses had disappeared, and the people at Columbia had lost not only horses, but a considerable number of household articles and farming implements. The Columbians charged their losses to Blackbeard, Judge Symmes' admiring friend, and his gang, who took their departure by way of Columbia. Symmes was not surprised to learn of these misdeeds, for the bitter complaints made by Blackbeard's party against the traders had prepared him for such reprisals.

But the ill-will of the savages was rapidly growing ripe for bloodier manifestations. In April, one of Symmes' surveying parties was ambushed, and two of the six men composing it were killed. Capt. Kearsey, after accompanying Symmes from

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Limestone as a military escort, had refused to build a fort at North Bend, and had taken his troops to the Falls of the Ohio. Ensign Luce, who had been dispatched to North Bend with a smaller detachment in his place, on the 21st, of May undertook to escort a number of citizens from North Bend to a point farther up the river. On the way their boat received an unexpected volley from the shore, which killed a soldier and wounded Live others. Hardly a month of the year passed without bereaving some family among the settlers. Abraham Covalt, a member of Capt. Covalt's household, "one of as brave sons of Pennsylvania as ever inhaled the morning air," was killed in June, while hunting with four companions in the Little Miami valley, some miles above Covalt Station. Another young hunter named Abel Cook, the chosen friend of the gallant Covalt, was assassinated in the forest at Round Bottom near the station, a month later, as he was returning from a visit to Columbia. His body was discovered by some of his own associates, who carried it mournfully to the station, and buried it, with touching propriety, beside the fresh grave of his youthful friend.

The effect of these murders, and of others like them, may be easily imagined. Immigrants bound for the West paused in consternation, and many of the families already in the Miami Country fled into Kentucky. North Bend alone lost over fifty inhabitants after the attack upon Ensign Luce's party. In the midst of this panic, however, the leaders of the colonists stood firm, and redoubled their demands upon the government for protection. Symmes declared that Capt. Kearsey, who had deserted the settlers for the silly reason that Symmes located his village at North Bend, instead of at the mouth of the Great Miami, was to blame for the disasters which followed his departure. Fortunately it was the government of the new Union that was addressed, and not the government under whose feeble auspices the colonies were planted; and at the head of it sat the man who, of all American statesmen, most deeply sympathized with the western pioneers in their struggle Washington himself. Maj. John Doughty, a capable officer of the army then stationed at Fort Harmar, was ordered to erect a fort in the best position for the defense of the Miami settlements. He reached the Miamis about the time that young Covalt was killed, bringing a strong force of infantry and a company of artillery. He chose to construct the fort at Losantiville, which was now really a village, though a smaller one than either Columbia or North Bend. In the meantime detachments of his troops were stationed at the other three settlements, and the courage of the people began to revive.

The presence of these forces by no means overawed the watchful enemy of the forest, who lurked about the settlements like the invisible shadow of doom. Five or six persons were killed or captured at North Bend and Columbia before the year ended. but the savages confined themselves to the work of waylaying imprudent stragglers in the woods, and for a long time made no attempt to destroy a station.

Meanwhile Maj. Doughty's men were laboring at the fort on the bluff above the cabins of Losantiville. The structure was nearly finished by the middle of winter, and on the 29th of December, Gen. Josiah Harmar, commander of the forces of the Northwest, arrived with 320 regular troops, and established the headquarters of the United States army within its walls. As it was the most important military work in the West, he gave it the immortal name of the most important officer of the government. Whatever transformations Cincinnati may undergo in the future, her people, if they remain Americans, will remember the spot at the northwest corner of Third and Lawrence streets, where the Stars and Stripes first floated in the winter winds from the lofty flagstaff of Fort Washington.

HAMILTON COUNTY FORMED-NEW SETTLEMENTS--INDIANS ATTACK DUNLAP'S STATION.

Three days after Gen. Harmar took up his quarters at Fort Washington, viz. on the 1st of January, 1790, Governor St. Clair was received with due ceremony by the troops and citizens of Losantiville. One of the principal objects of his journey

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down the Ohio was to give the settlers of the Miami Country a constitutional government. The whole of the tract which Stites had explored three years before, and which was still in almost the same condition of aboriginal wildness as then, was incorporated into one county, which St. Clair requested Judge Symmes to name. Symmes chose the name of Washington's great secretary, Hamilton, who was one of his stanch political friends; the governor himself, in establishing the seat of the county at Losantiville, changed the name of the hamlet to Cincinnati. He next created a court of common pleas, of three judges and a clerk, commissioned three justices of the peace, and appointed several citizens as officers to organize the able bodied men of the settlements into a regiment of militia. The gentlemen honored with these offices were almost exclusively selected from Cincinnati and Columbia.

The organization of the county was proclaimed on the 2nd of January, and very shortly afterward the governor went on to Fort Vincennes, where lie hoped to meet the chiefs of the several Indian tribes and offer them such terms as would bring peace to the harassed and weary settlers. But the hope was vain. About two months after he left, two more settlers were killed at Covalt Station, while at work in the woods near the fort making shingles. One of them was the brave Capt. Covalt himself.

Notwithstanding the steady presence of danger, a large number of the poorer class of settlers, who had been increasing at Cincinnati during the winter, determined to push out farther into the forest, and begin the cultivation of their lands. Some of these people were so deficient in means, according to one of the most quoted of the early chroniclers, that the chances of massacre appeared to them no more desperate than their condition at Cincinnati, which threatened absolute starvation. They accordingly formed themselves into parties, and were led forth, apparently, by the proprietors who had granted them lands, Symmes himself lending some of them assistance.

Three new stations were thus established during the month of April, at widely separated points in the lower portion of the extensive county. The most remote of these isolated settlements was established under the leadership of John Dunlap, one of Symmes' numerous surveyors, upon the eastern bank of the Great Miami, eighteen miles northwest of Cincinnati, in a position almost encircled by a turn in the river. Some thirty persons went with Dunlap to this spot, and constructed a stockade fort similar in plan to Covalt's, but much more carelessly and inefficiently finished. The area of the fort was one acre square. Dunlap, who was an immigrant from Coleraine, Ireland, gave the name of his native town to the place; but the pioneers of the county, as was usual in the frontier districts of the West, knew the station by the name of its chief personage. The township in which the now empty site of the fort lies has inherited the Irish title. The names of some of Dunlap's settlers were Gibson, Larrison, Crum, Hahn and Birket.

The second of the three stations of 1790 arose under the direction of Col. Israel Ludlow, the partner of Denman and Patterson, six miles north of Fort Washington, in the valley of Mill creek, within the present boundaries of Cincinnati.

The third party went eastward, out of the Miami Purchase entirely, and built a strong blockhouse on the east side of the Little Miami, about a mile above Columbia, within the territory which Virginia reserved upon ceding her western claims to the Confederate Government in 1784. The spot occupied by the blockhouse is in Anderson township, at the foot of the bills opposite Flinn's Ford, one of the abandoned pioneer crossings of the Little Miami. This was Gerard's Station. Its principal inhabitants were the families of John Gerard, Joseph Martin, Capt. James Flinn, Stephen Betts, Joseph Williamson, Stephen Davis, Richard Hall and Jacob Bachhofen.

The increase in the number of settlements gave the Indians larger opportunities for theft and murder. Many horses were stolen, some of the families at Columbia

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY. - 39

were robbed of household property almost before their eyes. and in October, after Gen. Harmar's main forces had left the county on their unfortunate expedition to the Indian towns of the Maumee, Jacob Wetzel, of Cincinnati, was attacked in the thickets of Millcreek Bottom by a savage, whom he managed to slay in a thrilling band-to-hand combat, just in time to escape a band of his adversary's comrades, who were scouting near by.

The bloody defeat of Harmar encouraged the northern warriors to make a descent upon Hamilton county in full force. At daylight on Monday, January 10, 1791, the inmates of Dunlap's Station, the farthest outpost in the dreary wilderness, were startled from their slumbers by the dreaded Indian alarm, and sprang up to find the woods around their fort swarming with an army of red skins, commanded by the Shawnee chieftain, Blue Jacket, and the detested cutthroat renegade, Simon Girty. The garrison consisted only of a detachment of thirteen soldiers from Fort Washington, under Lieut. Kingsbury, and ten able-bodied settlers, while the savages numbered several hundreds; but as the chiefs would give no satisfactory promise of quarter, the besieged naturally refused to surrender. A continuous fire was poured in upon the stockade; and firebrands shot upon the roofs of the cabins, till midnight of the first day, when the besiegers retired a little distance from the fort, and burned to death a prisoner named Abner Hunt, whom they had captured a day or two before their appearance at, the station. The next morning a brave private soldier named Wiseman escaped from the station amid a shower of bullets, and carried the news of the attack to Fort Washington. He returned upon the third day with a party of Harmar's regulars and a company of mounted militia from Columbia; but the Indians had retreated about two hours before the reinforcement arrived, and were already beyond pursuit.

INDIAN WARFARE CONTINUED FIRST TOWNSHIPS FORMED - MERCERSBURGH -WHITE'S STATION - RUNYAN'S STATION.

The attack upon Dunlap's Station, though unsuccessful, sent a thrill of alarm even through Kentucky; and the pioneers continued to suffer so heavily from small raiding parties during the year, that the greater part of the immigrants who ventured into the county stopped at Cincinnati, under the protecting guns of Fort Washington; improvement was held in restraint at the old stations, and no one dared open a now settlement at. all.

Such settlers as were resolute enough to carry on their labors in wood and field, usually took the frontier precaution of working in bands, part of each band being posted so as to keep a sharp lookout for danger. If the enemy appeared in large force, sentinels and laborers fled pellmell for their fort, cabins, or other places of security. As an example of the activity required for this mode of business, it may be mentioned that in May two citizens of Cincinnati, named Scott and Shepherd, were chased from their cornfield, a mile out, almost into the streets of the village, not having time to bring off their plow-horses, which fell into the hands of the pursuers.

Some necessary household errands were discharged at the risk of life and liberty. One day in September, James Newell. a resident of Columbia, started to take a quantity of corn to the mill at Covalt Station. At a place about halfway between the two settlements he met Capt. Aaron Mercer and Capt. Ignatius Ross, two hardy veterans of his village, who were returning home from the mill to which he was going. The two Captains had seen Indian signs up the river, and earnestly advised Newell to postpone the trip, and turn back with them to Columbia. Newell determined to proceed. He had scarcely parted from his friends when they beard the report of a rifle in the direction which he had taken. No other sound followed. Wondering whether they bad heard Newell's weapon, or an Indian's. Ross and Mercer hurried back. Newell lay dying by the horse-path; his assassin, who had been concealed in a tree near the trail, having made good his escape. The body of Newell was carried

40 - HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

back to Columbia by Ross and Mercer. The scene of his death, a dark and woody ravine crossing the Wooster pike, halfway between Plainville and lied Bank. is still known as Newell's Hollow.

Altogether, over a score of persons were killed or borne away into captivity during the months of summer and autumn. Among the captives was Oliver Spencer, a lad of thirteen, son of a prominent Columbian settler. More happily favored by fortune than some of his comrades in distress, he was recovered by his father before he had time to develop into an Indian, and eventually became one of the most esteemed citizens of the county.

There is a vague tradition in the Little Miami valley, surviving as far north as Xenia, of a fierce onslaught made upon Gerard's Station during the fall of this year, but the particulars of the combat have faded utterly from legendary recollection. It is only known that the assailants, whether few or many, were beaten off. The sound of the conflict probably attracted relief from Columbia.

The life of the American frontier was essentially a struggle between two different orders of society, one of which was thousands of years in advance of the other. The bloody incidents of personal encounter between the two races represent the force of barbarism on one side of the picture: the bare forms of civil custom which the colonists strove to maintain, when the great machinery of civilization was utterly wanting to fill them, illustrate the force of progress upon the other. In the midst of the appalling attacks of the natives, the court of general quarter sessions of the peace, inaugurated by the governor the year before, divided the lower part of the great county of Hamilton into three long townships, running back side by side from the three settlements on the Ohio to a terminus beyond the present line of Butler county. The most eastern of these woodland bailiwicks was called Columbia township, the middle one, Cincinnati, the most western, Miami.

The expedition undertaken by Governor St. Clair, with the object of doing what Harmar had failed to do, for a time deprived the outer settlements of their inhabitants. After their guard of regulars, and some of the fighting men of their families, had gone to join the northward march of St. Clair. the remaining people of Covalt's Station grew fearful, left their fort to the gloomy silence of the forest, and went down the river to Gerard's. Dunlap's settlers remained at their post until they heard the news of the' terrible carnage and rout of the army, then, knowing by experience what consequences to expect, they hastily retreated to Cincinnati. But the enemy, foiled of his surest prey by this timely flight, kept aloof from the stronger stations, the winter passed quietly, and the soft and balmy spring of 1792, which started the buds of the forest, and filled the valleys with the warble of the birds, much earlier than their usual time, allured the fugitives back to their clearings before the end of February.

Their encouraging example called several new settlements into existence, the most important of which was Mercersburgh. Capt. Aaron Mercer, its founder, was a relative of Gen. Hugh Mercer, the long-lamented hero of the battle of Princeton; like him, of Irish birth, and like him, a Virginian by adoption. Capt. Mercer was of that large class of Revolutionary heroes who sacrificed their worldly fortunes upon the altar of patriotism. He left Winchester, Virginia, with his family, in 1790, reaching Columbia just as the troops belonging to that station returned from the scene of Harmar's defeat. There he resided, a leader in the community, until the rare season of 1792 invited him forth, at the head of a number of his Virginian neighbors, to begin the settlement of Mercersburgh. The tract which he bought for this purpose was on the east side of the Little Miami, three miles above Gerard Station, on the first elevated land of the valley. The position seemed secure from the average backwaters of the vast lower bottoms, and there, where several cold and crystal springs gushed abundantly forth from a nook at the foot of the hills, Mercer laid out a con-

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY. -41

siderable subdivision, made a clearing, and erected a " garrison," as a log fortress, or even a single blockhouse, was corruptly called by the Virginian bordorers.

The garrison was a rendezvous for parties of militia engaging in scouting expeditions till the close of the Indian war. Mercer was largely aided in his enterprise by his two Sons-in-law, one of whom was Ichabod B. Miller, a surveyor, and the other, Thomas Brown, a merchant. Brown was a son of the Thomas Brown who, some years later than this date, expanded Red Stone, Penn., into the borough of Brownsville.

Mercersburgh became Newtown in the early part of this century.

Capt. Jacob White, an immigrant from Red Stone. with several associates named Winans, Flinn, Goble and Pryor, opened the next settlement on Mill crook, at a point about five miles farther up than Ludlow's. This settlement comprised a blockhouse and several cabins, the blockhouse being built upon the southern bank, with two of the cabins, and the others just across the stream. The town of Carthage is the nearest representative of White's Station.

Henry Runyan, one of Virginia's daring natives, scorning the protection of numbers, ventured still farther into the howling wilderness, and erected his solitary cabin beyond the site of Reading. It seems remarkable that his retreat escaped the eyes of the savages, for they were constantly on the watch. Three of Covalt's settlers were captured during the summer, within a few hundred yards of the fort, and in the fall, Maj. Riggs, of the same station, was shot.

WHITE'S STATION ATTACKED - INCREASE OF SETTLEMENTS AND
TOWNSHIPS - CLOSE OF THE FRONTIER PERIOD.

The county enjoyed a tolerable repose during the spring and summer of 1793, while Gen. Wayne was drilling his legionaries at Cincinnati, for the third attempt to subdue the exultant foe, but shortly after be removed northward, in the autumn, the danger cloud again cast its shadow on the clearings. One morning in the latter part of October, a courier from Gen. Wayne galloped up to Capt. 'White's station on Mill creek, informed the settlers that a small detachment of the army, under Lieut. Lowry, had been destroyed near Fort St. Clair, the government post northwest of Hamilton county; cautioned them against surprise, and passed on with his warning to other settlements. Late that afternoon some of the dogs belonging about the cabins scampered away into the woods for a hunt; soon afterward a vociferous barking was heard from the hill above the station. One of the men, Andrew Goble. went out, in foolhardy contempt of Capt. White's protest, to see what mysterious quarry had been brought to bay. He had advanced only a little way when the hillside rang with a heavy discharge of firearms and the wild war whoop arose. Goble fell dead with eight bullets in his body, and thirty Indians rushed down upon the blockhouse, A widow named Pryor, with-her three small children, was in one of the cabins on the northern bank of the stream; one child was killed by the fire of the savages. She escaped across to the blockhouse with another; the third, an infant which she left lying in its cradle, was soon brained against a stump. The assailants, having lost their chief and several other warriors in a desperate attempt to take the blockhouse by storm, disappeared at nightfall.

The settlers of Hamilton county suffered but slightly from predatory incursions after this attack, for the bulk of the warriors were employed through the spring and summer of 1794 in watching Wayne's slow and cautious approach toward their homes; and after their united bands had been scattered by him at the decisive battle of Fallen Timbers, in August of that year, the tribes were too deeply crushed in spirit to undertake formidable expeditions. Some of their greatest chiefs, conscious that fate had irrevocably declared against them, renounced war forever, and spent the remainder of their lives in peaceful residence with the race which had wrought the downfall of their own. A few cowardly vagabonds, who had stolen

42 - HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY,

away from the council-fires of their people to avoid the risks of open battle, flitted about the stations before and after the great victory, but they were more successful as thieves and scavengers than as murderers.

It is interesting to note how much of that social and civil progress, for the sake of which the pioneers suffered all the horrors of savage warfare, had been accomplished when the struggle ceased. At the time of the treaty at Greenville, August 3, 1795, where the Indians of the Northwest surrendered the lands of their forefathers forever, there were at least sixteen different settlements in Hamilton county, where, six years earlier, there were but four. Griffin's Station had risen on Mill creek, almost within rifle-shot of White's; Tucker's Station on the west fork of the same creek, below the site of Glendale; Pleasant Valley Station, a short distance east of Tucker's; Voorhees' Station in the valley of East Mill creek, on the site of Lockland; McFarland's Station several miles east of Voorhees, on the summit of Pleasant Midge; and Campbell's Station far to the west, upon the bank of the Great Miami, several miles below Dunlap's.

Cincinnati numbered about one hundred habitations, most of them log cabins; Columbia consisted of about fifty such houses: North Bend. South Bend and Sugar Camp, Judge Symmes' three villages, were each somewhat smaller than Columbia. The whole number of inhabitants in the settlements considerably exceeded two thousand, of whom five hundred dwelt in Cincinnati. About the same time the three lank and empty townships of 1791 were filled sufficiently to be divided into six, Columbia, Cincinnati, Miami, Colerain, Springfield and South Bend, while the region east of the Little Miami, colonized by the people of Mercersburgh and Gerard's Station, had been brought under the government of the county as the township of Anderson. Roads had been opened from settlement to settlement, churches and schools had begun to flourish, some of the trades were introduced, and, in short, the foundation was laid for the vast social and political interests of succeeding generations.

The settlement of the Northwest Territory was the second great act in the history of the United States, of which the settlement of Hamilton county formed a single brief but vivid scene. It teas been the business of this chapter to review the more important, or the more eventful incidents of that scene, and to recall the personages who enacted its characteristic parts. The story loses distinct and peculiar interest in the great crowd of similar events which have transpired in this country since the sail of the " Mayflower " cast its shadow on the coast of the Wampanoags. but it presents abundant examples of personal heroism, perseverance and endurance, and abounds in characters of a kind from which no human being is averse to claiming descent.

The moral disposition of those early adventurers is equally a subject for local pride and admiration. The settlements were almost free from the lawless and dissolute class, the usual desperadoes of the frontier, the overwhelming moral sentiment of the community expelling or absorbing them. In most of the settlers was strongly reflected the devout religious ideas, and the sturdy and manly virtues of the old Colonial time.

In blood and lineage the first settlers were such that all elements of the modern population can recall their work with pleasure, and are honored alike by their memory. Some were of the old stock of Now England and the other Atlantic States; many were of the Scotch-Irish strain; not a few were genuine Hibernians; others. were Pennsylvania-Germans, and most of these men, so diverse in origin, had fought in the war which won them a common national name, dearer and grander than the fondest lingering memories of their European sires.

The pioneers of Ohio were actuated to perform their part by homely motives; they braved the perils and the hardships of the wilderness rather in duty to themselves than as the conscious benefactors of posterity, yet their successors and descendants, looking back upon their achievements through the mellow vista of time, can see-

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY. - 43

the full extent of their services, not only to local society, but to the whole American nation of to-day. As they were foremost in the movement which gave their country freedom, so they were first in the movement which has given it power. Some of them lived to see another generation end the westward march which they began, and to marvel at the rapidity with which it had been accomplished. One of the blockhouses of their period was still standing near North Bend when Fremont carried the flag of the Union to the Pacific coast.