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44 - HISTORY OF ROSS AND HIGHLAND COUNTIES, OHIO. CHAPTER IV. ADVENT OF THE WHITE MAN. Early Occupation of Ohio by the French and English--Traders among the Indians.— Adventurers.— The Moravian Missionaries.—Ineffectual Attempt to Form a Settlement at the Mouth of the Scioto in I785,--The first Permanent Settlement Made at Marietta, 1788.— Other Settlements in the Muskingum Region, and in the Symmes' Purchase.—The French at Gallipolis.—First Settlers in the Virginia Military District at Manchester.— Attention of Kentuckians Attracted to the Fertility of the Scioto Country.—A Colony Established in Ross County.—Station Prairie Plowed.—Beauty of the Scenery.— Chillicothe Laid out.—The Ninth Territorial Town Platted.--Settlement of Highland County.—John Wilcoxon at Sinking Springs in 1795.—The First Town in the County Established as a Rival of Chillicothe.—Henry Massie, Brother of General Nathaniel Massie, its Founder.—The Relationship of the Two Counties.—National Bloods of the Inhabitants.—A General View. The earliest white men upon the soil now included in the limits of Ohio, were the adventurous French explorers, Hennepin and La Salle, who, in 1679, first steered the keel of civilization through Lake Erie, and touched its banks. As early as 1680 the French had a trading station upon the Maumee, a few miles from the site of the present city of Toledo, and, according to Bancroft, they had a route through the western wilderness, from Canada to the Mississippi, by way of the Maumee, Wabash and Ohio rivers, in 1716, and only a little later, from the site of Erie, Pennsylvania, by the Alleghany and Ohio. There have been handed down certain vague traditions that the English had trading posts upon the Ohio in 1730, and we know that they had soon after that time; for in 1744 the governor of Pennsylvania issued licenses for trading with the Indians as far west as the Father of Waters. In 1748 the Ohio Land company was formed by Thomas Lee, with twelve other Virginians, among whom were Lawrence and Augustine, brothers of George Washington, and a Mr. Hanbury, of London. Under these auspices, Christopher Gist, a land surveyor, and thoroughly familiar with the woods, explored the Ohio as far down as the falls, and in the same year the French followed up their claim to the territory between Lake Erie and the Ohio river, which the exploring party of Celeron de Bienville had reasserted, by taking actual possession of the northern part, and establishing a fort and trading station at Sandusky. In the same year George Crogan and Andrew Montour, a half breed son of a Seneca chief, who often acted as an interperter between the whites and Indians, traversed Ohio (probably in company with Gist), the bearers of liberal permits from Pennsylvania to the Miamis. In return for these gifts the Indians granted the whites the right to build a stockake and establish a trading house at the mouth of Loramie's creek, upon the Great Miami, within the bounds of the present county of Shelby. Accordingly, a fort or stockade was built, which was called Pickawillamy. This has been cited by some writers as the first point of English settlement in Ohio. The building which was, undoubtedly, the first erected by the English, on the soil of this State, was destroyed in June, 1752, by a force of French, Canadians and Indians. The French, who had carried on most of the trading with the Indians along the Ohio and its tributaries, previous to 1745, were about that time superceded by the English, and the enterprising and adventurous spirits from the settlements in Virginia and Pennsylvania, who retained the traffic in peace until 1784. The traders mentioned in another chapter (The Indians), as being met by the Rev. David Jones among the Shawnees of the Scioto country, in 1773, were from the Old Dominion, and the colony of Pennsylvania. Besides these traders, there were the men who made military expeditions into the Ohio country against the Indians among whom may be mentioned Colonel Bradstreet, Israel Putnam, Colonel Boquet, Colonel McDonald, Lord Dunmore, General Lachlin McIntosh, Colonel John Bowman, Colonel George Rogers Clark, General Daniel Broadhead, Colonel Archibald Lochry, Colonel William Crawford, Colonel Logan, Simon Kenton, Daniel Boone, Colonel Edwards, and Colonel Tod. While the territory now included in Ohio was still a wilderness, the wilds of which were only inhabited by roving bands of savages and by a few traders, a trackless forest through which the soldiers on their occasional incursions could with difficulty force their way—it became the field for the exercise of the zeal and bravery of the Moravian missionaries. The trials of these faithful apostles of religion, the toil and privations of Frederick Post, of John Heckwelder, and of the Rev. David Zeisberger, upon the Muskingum, from 1772 to 1782, is one of the most interesting chapters of our pre-territorial history, but is beyond our province to here produce the sad story of the missions and the horrible massacre that ended their existence. We only refer to the subject briefly, as we have to others, to remind the readers of the famous men who were in this then but little known "far west," and to bring to mind the history that was being made long before the practical exercise of civil authority, and before the country was thrown open for permanent settlement. INEFFECTUAL ATTEMPT TO FORM A SETTLEMENT AT THE MOUTH OF THE SCIOTO IN 1785. Just three years before the settlement at Marietta an attempt was made by four families to form a permanent home at the mouth of the Scioto, and upon the site of Portsmouth. In April, 1785, they descended the Ohio from Redstone, Pennsylvania, and mooring their boat at the mouth of the Scioto a few days after they had left the outposts of civilization, and evidently hoping and expecting that the redmen would suffer them to remain and improve the soil, immediately set to work to prepare the ground for corn planting. Soon after their arrival the four men, heads of families, started up the Scioto to see the valley, which had been described to them by whites, who had traversed it while in captivity among the natives, as the paradise of the west. They ascended the stream as far as where Piketon now stands, where they were surprised, while asleep by the side of their camp-fire, by the Indians, who killed two of their number. The other two escaped, and making all possible HISTORY OF ROSS AND HIGHLAND COUNTIES, OHIO - 45 haste back to the unprotected women and children, at the mouth of the Scioto, and imparting the sad intelligence of the death of their two comrades, they lost no time in gathering up all of their movables, and steered their canoes down the river to Limestone, Kentucky. THE FIRST PERMANENT SETTLEMENT IN THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. Up to the time of the passage of the ordinance of freedom, in 1787, there had been no permanent settlement of whites in the territory northwest of the Ohio, unless we admit to the French trading-posts in the north and northwestern part the right to that title. Previous to the passage of the ordinance, congress, by force of arms, had prevented occupation of the territory, so far as was possible. As soon, however, as preliminary steps were taken for the lawful and formal opening of the western country for settlement, there was organized, in Massachusetts, the Ohio Land company. Upon July 23, 1787, the board of treasury was authorized to make sales of land, and four days later, the Ohio company made application for a purchase, which was perfected October 27, 1787, and embraced the tract of land containing about a million and a half of acres, lying within the present counties of Washington, Athens, Meigs, and Gallia. After the deduction of two townships of land, six miles square, for the endowment of a college (the Ohio university, at Athens), also of every twenty-ninth section, dedicated to the support of religious institutions; of every sixteenth section, for the use of schools; of the eighth, eleventh, and twenty-sixth sections, reserved by the United States for future sale, and of the donation lands, there remained but nine hundred and sixty-four thousand two hundred and eighty-five acres, to be paid for by the company. General Rufus Putnam, of Revolutionary fame, was chosen superintendent of the company November 23d. Only a short time after that date a number of boat builders were sent ahead to the point on the Youghiogheny river, where now is West Newton, to make preparations for the journey down the Ohio. The remainder of these Massachusetts pioneers joined the advance guard in February. The whole company left West Newton April 2, 1788, in a boat forty-five feet long, and very strongly made, to afford the best protection possible from the Indians, should they be inclined to hostility. This boat, called the "Adventure Galley," and afterwards the " Mayflower " (so prone is history to repeat itself, even in names), was floated down the Youghiogheny to the Monongahela, and thence down the Ohio to the present site of Marietta, at the mouth of the Muskingum, where she arrived on the seventh of April, 1788. There upon that date these brave, intelligent New England pioneers made the first permanent stand for civilization in the State of Ohio. The colony thus established was reinforced, in the July following, by another company from Massachusetts. The settlement was named Marietta, after Marie Antoinette, queen of France. The location of the frontier village was very probably influenced by the establishment, since 1785, of a post— Fort Harmer—upon the opposite bank of the Muskingum, and the selection, by the Ohio company, of the tract of country, including much of the Muskingum valley, was probably due to the very favorable reports of that region, which had been circulated by explorers and adventurers, notably Colonel Boquet, who commanded an expidition against the Indians in 1764. The eventful history of the growth and progress of the Marietta settlement being fully recorded elsewhere, it is beyond the scope and intention of this work to reproduce it. We pass this inviting subject to make brief mention of the other early settlements in Ohio. Soon after the settlement had been made at Marietta, three separate companies were organized to occupy and improve portions of the Symmes purchase, between the Great and Little Miamis. The first, led by Colonel Benjamin Stiles, consisted of about twenty persons, who landed sometime in November, 1788, at the mouth of the Little Miami, within the limits of a tract of ten thousand acres that Colonel Stiles had purchased of Judge Symmes. They constructed a log fort, and laid out the village of Columbia. The second party, twelve or fifteen in number, was formed at Limestone by Matthias Denman and Robert Patterson. After much difficulty and danger, caused by floating ice in the river, they landed on the north bank of the Ohio, opposite the mouth of the Licking. The name adopted for th e proposed town, says Burnet, in his notes, "was Losanteville, which had been manufactured by a pedantic foreigner, whose name, fortunately, has been forgotten. It was formed, as he said, from the words, Le os ante vide, wli ich he rendered, 'The village opposite the mouth.'" The proposed town was never laid out, but, upon its intended site, there was, however, another village laid off, according to a new plat, which, under the name of Cincinnati, became the Queen city of the West. The third party of pioneers in the Miami country was under the immediate direction of Judge Symmes. They left Limestone on the twenty-ninth of January, 1789, and, early in the following month, the point now knoWn as North Bend, and so called because it was the most northern bend in the Ohio south of the Kanawha. For some time, it was a matter of doubt which of the then rivals would eventually become a great town, as the western town was populated and developed. Columbia, for some time, took the lead, and even North Bend was considered to possess advantages over Cincinnati. While these settlements were making in the Symmes purchase, the southeastern part of Ohio was penetrated by the off-shoots from Marietta, and the boundaries of civilization were slowly pushed forward along the river. On April il, 1789, settlements were began at Belpre (the French for beautiful meadow), fifteen miles below Marietta, and at Newberry, twenty-five miles below, and also, soon after, at Waterford and Duck creek. In the autumn of the following year, a settlement was made at the "Big Bottom," on the Muskingum, about thirty miles above Marietta, and within the present limits of Morgan county. This settlement was the scene of a terrible massacre by the Indians on the second of January, 1791, Fourteen persons, among them a woman and two chit- 46 - HISTORY OF ROSS AND HIGHLAND COUNTIES, OHIO. dren, were slain and five persons carried into captivity. The other settlers in the small communities suffered loss, too, and were constantly harassed by the Indians. The French settlement at Gallipolis was made in the summer of 1791. On February 19th, of the year mentioned, a colony composed almost entirely of tradesmen and artisans, all entirely unfit for frontier life in a strange country, but lured on by the favorable promises, and roseate descriptions of Joel Barlow, agent for the so- called Scioto Land company, sailed from Havre de Grace for America. They arrived in Alexandria, District of Columbia, on the third of May following, and made their way, slowly and with much difficulty, across the country to La Belle Riviere, and thence down stream to the objective point of their toilsome journey, the goal of their desires, which imagination, incited by Barlow's praises of the country, led them to anticipate would present all the beauties of an arcadia. They were disappointed to find that the land had never been fully purchased by the Scioto company, and that they could secure no titles. The members of this little colony led a pitiful life at Gallipolis, being in constant danger of attack from the Indians, suffering from sickness, from lack of money, and from want of knowledge how to do for themselves what others were doing in the few settlements along the Ohio. In 1798, they were provided for by the act of congress, which set apart for them the tract of land, known as the French grant, lying east of the mouth of the Scioto. Some of them, finding themselves imposed upon, went to other parts of the country Kaskaskia, St. Genevieve, St. Louis, and Vincennes, and some remained at the original place of settlement. The location of the village was made, before the arrival of the French, by a party of men sent out from Marietta, by Rufus Putnam. These men erected about one hundred cabins and a stockade, with block-houses at the corners. The next settlement in Ohio, and the first within the Virginia Military district, was made at Manchester, (Adams county), upon the Ohio river, by General Nathaniel Massie, and about thirty families from Kentucky. Massie, who had for some time been surveying in the Virginia Military district, making his expeditions from Kentucky, in the winter of 179o-91, determrned to make a settlement in the field of his operations, that he might better secure his party from danger and exposure. In order to accomplish his purpose, he gave general notice of his intention in Kentucky, and offered each of the first twenty-five families, as a donation, one in-lot, one out-lot, and one hundred acres of land, provided they would settle in the town he proposed to lay out. His terms were quickly accepted, and by upwards of thirty families. He selected the location and laid off the plat of Manchester, which, for a number of years, was called Massie's Station. The little colony, with Massie at their head, went to work with a will, and by the middle of March, 1791, had cabins erected, and the village enclosed with a strong stockade, with block-houses at each angle. Although this settlement was begun in the hottest Indian war, "it suffered less from depredation, and even interruption from the Indians," says McDonald, in his sketches, "than any settlement previously made on the Ohio river. This was, no doubt, due to the watchful band of brave spirits who guarded the place men who were reared in the midst of danger, and inured to perils and as watchful as hawks."* The settlements already made during 1791 and two or three years following, slowly increased in size. Cincinnati, in 1792, contained about thirty cabins, besides the barracks and other buildings connected with Fort Washington. The population was about two hundred and fifty. Four years later, or in 1796, according to Monette's "Valley of the Mississippi," the settlement had grown in number six hundred souls, and the village was composed of more than a hundred log cabins and ten or fifteen frame houses. In December, 1794, the town of Hamilton, Butler county, was laid out, and soon after a few settlers located there. Dayton was laid out on the fourth of November, 1795, but not permanently settled until April r, 1796. Franklin, upon the Miami, and within the present county of Warren, was laid out in 1795, and the first settlers arrived in the spring of the following year. Previous to this, Mill creek, eleven miles north of Cincinnati, was the frontier settlement in the Miami valley. In 1795 the settlements of the whites began to extend from Manchester into the country along the Ohio, and to the northward. Many cabins were erected which were unoccupied, because of apprehension of Indian hostilities. About this time the reports of Massie and his companions, who Wad been almost constantly busy in making surveys, began to attract the attention of the Kentuckians to the remarkable fertility of the soil in the Scioto valley and along Paint creek. As Massie was the owner of several large tracts along the Scioto, he determined to attempt a settlement at some favorable locality, and immediately began his preparations, following the same plan that had proved so successful in the establishment of Manchester. To attract settlers, he gave notice that he intended to lay off a town upon the Scioto, and offered as a gift to each of the first one hundred settlers one in-lot and one out-lot of four acres. This announcement was favorably received in Kentucky, and an exploring party came out soon after by way of Manchester. Owing to the fact that Indians were met with on Paint creek, and a skirmish ensuing, t the party retreated, and the exploration was abandoned for that y ear. * McDonald speaks of this settlement as the fourth in the present limits of Ohio. It was made prior to the actual occupation of Gallipolis by the French, and while the company of forty men, under Putnam, were preparing the place for them. McDonald, undoubtedly, considered the cluster of settlements in the Muskingum country, as one; the three settlements in the Miami country, as another, and Gallipolis as the third. Viewed in this light, the statement of McDonald, and the evident assertions of other historians, would be correct. When the settlement at Manchester was effected, however, there were four separate settlements in the Marietta group, and then within the present limits of Hamilton county, with a colony of workmen temporarily residing at the site of Gallipolis. Thus, although there were actually more than three points at which permanent locations had been made, there were but three sections of the country occupied, and, for general purposes, it is sufficiently exact to call Manchester the fourth settlement in the State. * See chapter entitled "The Indians." HISTORY OF ROSS AND HIGHLAND COUNTIES, OHIO - 47 FIRST SETTLEMENT IN ROSS COUNTY. Notwithstanding the failure of the first expedition and the severe experience of the bold men who undertook it, another was made early in 1796. About the last of February, or the first of March the company assembled at Manchester, and immediately went forth to establish a settlement upon the Scioto. A part of the company went in boats up the Ohio, and thence up the Scioto, and the others went overland. They were to meet at the mouth of Paint creek. Those who made the journey by water, carried, in addition to their arms and provisions, the few articles absolutely indispensable to those who intend to make a permanent settlement in a new country. They had the rude plows then in use, a few other implements for farming, and seeds to plant in the rich alluvial soil which they knew they would find in the valley. On the first day of April, 1796, they landed at the "Station Prairie " about three miles south of the present town of Chillicothe, unloaded their boats, and immediately began preparations for planting a crop and establishing homes. This was the initial settlement in Ross county, or upon the Scioto. Three hundred acres of the fertile bottom land were turned up by thirty plows, and so for the first time within the knowledge of man, this beautiful, primitive and peaceful landscape was enlivened by the presence and the cheerful labor of the race of civilization. For the first time the air resounded with the plowman's voice, and was filled with the fragrance of the freshly upturned mould. The greater part of the bottoms was covered With a heavy growth of timber, in which the black walnut and maple or sugar tree predominated, though a portion of them formed beautiful prairies clothed with the rich blue grass, to which these Kentucky pioneers were not strangers. McDonald, in enthusiastic reminiscence, says the outer edges of these prairies were beautifully fringed around with the plum trees, the red and black haw, the mulberry and crab apple. In the month of May, when these nurseries of nature's God were in full bloom, the sight was completely gratified, while the fragrant and delicious perfume which filled the surrounding atmosphere, was sufficient to fill and lull the soul with ecstacies of pleasure. The first season that the pioneers spent in the backwoods settlement was attended with some suffering for the want of the conveniences of life, but was in a general way prosperous. No trouble whatever was experienced with the Indians. They associated with the whites in the most friendly manner, and showed by their conduct that it was their desire to preserve the promises of peace they had spoken at the then recently made treaty of Greenville. The excellent authority from whom we have several times quoted in this chapter, and who wrote from the knowledge of personal observation, testifies that they were "entirely peaceful for many years, unless they were excited by the cupidity of the whites in selling them ardent spirits." Massie almost immediately laid out the town as he had promised to do, and after the survey it was given the name of Chillicothe, after the Indian villages, though there was no town by that name upon the site, nor had there ever been. In accordance with the proposition made by the proprietor, one hundred in-lots and the same number of out-lots were given to the first settlers, and a number were sold to other persons, the first being disposed of at ten dollars apiece. The town grew rapidly, and before the winter of 1796, had in it several stores, taverns and shops. Chillicothe was the ninth territorial town plat laid off, its predecessors being, in the order named, Marietta, Columbia, Cincinnati, Gallipolis, Manchester, Hamilton, Dayton and Franklin. SETTLEMENT OF HIGHLAND COUNTY. John Wilcoxon was, undoubtedly, the first settler within the present limits of Highland county. In the spring of 1795 he emigrated from Kentucky, crossed the Ohio river at Limestone (now Maysville), and pushed out into the vast and pathless forest of the northwest, determined to find a home. With his wife and child upon a strong horse, and himself and dog in advance, he struck out for the rich country along the Scioto, and main Paint, about which such favoroble reports had been carried to Kentucky by the scouts, surveyors, and Indian hunters. He wandered about for days, and finally, struck with the beauty of the place and its advantages, he located at Sinking Springs. He went to work in earnest to make a home and establish himself in the wilderness. Corn, brought from Kentucky, was planted in a little piece of ground which Wilcoxon managed to clear, and in the fall this solitary family was enabled to harvest a sufficient crop to maintain life during the coming winter. In July, Wilcoxon, while engaged in procuring some wild honey, was made a prisoner by some Indians. They compelled him to go with them, and started off in the direction of the Indian town (Old Chillicothe), on the north fork of Paint. They crossed main Paint not far from the site of Bainbridge, and followed the right bank down to the point where the stream is now crossed by the turnpike, where they encamped for the night. In the morning, as the Indians were making preparations for the day's march, they were surprised by a sudden attack. They had supposed themselves perfectly secure and had taken no precautions to guard against an enemy. As they could not see the attacking party, and had no means of knowing its strength, they beat a hasty retreat, and in the confusion which ensued, Wilcoxon managed to escape. The attacking party, it transpired, was the surveying company of General Massie. Wilcoxon lost no time in returning to his cabin to allay the anxiety of his wife. Early in the spring of 1796, Wilcoxon's improvement was visited by a small party of Kentucky immigrants, who were on their way to the Chillicothe settlement. They were entertained in the pioneer style. Wilcoxon and his wife became so attached to these, their first visitors in the wilderness, that they decided to abandon their lonely cabin in the woods, and went with the immigrants to Chillicothe. In the fall of 1796, Timothy Marabou and family, from Virginia, while making their way through the forest came upon the little clearing and 48 - HISTORY OF ROSS AND HIGHLAND COUNTIES, OHIO. the cabin which Wilcoxon had left, and, taking possession, occupied it for several years. About the same time, Frederick Braucher and family, als.o of Virginia, settled about half a mile north of Sinking Springs, on the line of Zanes', or, more properly, Tod's trace —which was a continuation of Zanes'. Thus was commenced the first settlement of Highland county. CHILLICOTHE'S RIVAL. Shortly after the location of Massie's Station (now Manchester), on the Ohio river, Henry Massie a younger brother of General Michael Massie, came out from Virginia, and was employed as an assistant surveyor by his brother. In the summer of 1796 he was engaged in locating lands about the head waters of Brush creek, within the present limits of Highland county. While making these surveys he became impressed with the beauty of an upland tract, which he entered and located for himself. It was, he judged, about midway between the towns already laid out in the Virginia Military district, and he thought that it might become the site of the seat of government for a new county, when the population should become sufficient to warrant the erection of one. Nearly all of the rich bottom lands in the Scioto and Miami countries had already been taken up, and Henry Massie was necessarily confined in making his choice to the hill country between. He undoubtedly conceived at that time the idea of laying out a town, and was probably encouraged to do so by the success of his brother's enterprise at Chillicothe. He visited the latter place in 1796, and was impressed by the idea that a great fortune would accrue to his brother from its rapid growth and the consequent sale of lands. Resolving to lose no time in the establishment of a town upon his tract of land, he set out from Manchester on the fifth of April, 1797, with a company of surveyors, and arrived at the proposed site of the town on the evening of the 7th. He proceeded the next month to lay off the town and commence the foundation of a permanent settlement. Some huts were built for protection from the weather, and other necessary improvements made. The company had brought with them on pack-horses, meal, bacon, salt, etc., in sufficient quantities for their immediate need, and also axes and other implements. The company consisted of Henry Massie, Oliver Ross and his daughter, a girl of fifteen, Robert Huston, and another man whose name is unknown. Miss Ross, who served the party as cook, was believed to be the first woman in Highland county, and in consequence, a lot was given her in the town when it was laid off. Massie had so long indulged in his dream of founding a town, that he firmly believed it would become a rival of Chillicothe, and accordingly he proceeded to lay off the plat of his upland village on a grand scale. The simple, natural, and convenient plan of Philadelphia was adopted, and the plat was formed into regular squares; the streets intersecting at right angles. The two main streets were each made ninety-nine feet wide, and the others sixty-six. The town plat covered over four hundred acres. It now remained to give the town a name, and after considerable thinking upon the subject, Massie decided to name it after a favorite village in Virginia— New Market. The first residence built in the town was that of William Weshart—a log cabin, intended for a tavern. How the settlement prospered, and how near it came to being a rival of Chillicothe, as Henry Massie had hoped, is fully related in the history of New Market township. The town became the county seat of Highland when the county was erected, February 18, 18os, the provisions of the act being that "the courts of said county shall be holden in the town of New Market until a permanent seat of justice shall be established in said county," which permanent establishment at Hillsborough occurred in 1807. The settlement within the present limits of Highland county being fairly commenced at the Sinking Spring improvement and at New Market, continued to increase slowly until 1800, and quite fast after that year. Greenfield, the second town platted in the county, was laid out in 1799. The eastern part of the county and the southern were the first settled, and those portions of the county received many accessions to their population, while the northern and western parts were still unimproved. Highland county was very largely settled from Ross, and so, in another sense than in being territorially created very largely from the latter, has a close relationship to "the mother county of the Scioto country." Many of the families, especially in the eastern part of the county, first had their homes in the townships just .east of Paint creek, at Chillicothe, or the High Bank settlement. The population of the two counties show the same general characteristics. Both have a large element of the Virginia stock, with a sprinkling from the other old southern States, and a considerable number of families who emigrated from Pennsylvania. Highland has more of the Scotch-Irish blood than Ross county, and, in addition, has two elements of population not found in the older county—the Quakers and a colony of French. The former people are principally residents of the country around Leesburg, and the latter have an isolated and conservative settlement in White Oak township. A GENERAL VIEW. By the time that the settlement was made at Prairie station, in Ross county, the Muskingum settlements had increased in population and sent off vigorous out-shoots, and those between the Miamis, in the Symmes purchase, had been undergoing a slow but steady growth. Small farming settlements were dotted along the Ohio and its tributaries, south of Marietta. But while the pioneers of civilization from Virginia and Kentucky were coming, singly and in little bands, into the southern part of the northwest territory, a new movement was begun at the north. At the very time when the Massie company were tilling the bottoms at Prairie station, in the middle of July, 1796, the first surveyors entered the Connecticut Western Reserve, and encamped at the site of Conneaut, the Plymouth of the "Reserve." In September the town of Cleveland was laid out. The settlement, HISTORY OF ROSS AND HIGHLAND COUNTIES, OHIO - 49 thus begun in Northeastern Ohio, increased, at first, very slowly, and in 1798 there were probably, in the entire Western Reserve, not more than one hundred and fifty permanent settlers—twenty-five within the present limits of Ashtabula county, and a few families at Cleveland, Youngstown, Burton, Hudson and Mentor. The population increased much more rapidly at the extreme northwestern part of the territory, and the settlement began there at an earlier date than in the Connecticut Reserve, Winthrop Sergeant, in September, 1793, proceeding to Detroit and there organizing the immense county of Wayne, and thus establishing civil authority in that quarter, while, as yet, there were no settlements in the country further east, which might reasonably have been expected to be settled first. But nowhere in the State did the settlement increase faster than along the Scioto. Emigrants from Virginia and Kentucky advanced into the valley in great numbers, and the settlements were extended along the stream and on the fine lands lying along Paint and Deer creeks, and on other branches. Before the close of 1796, that portion of the northwest territory now included in the State of Ohio, had a population of five thousand persons, of both sexes and all ages. This population was chiefly in the valleys of the Muskingum, Scioto, the two Miamis, and on three small tributaries, within half a hundred miles of the Ohio. |