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CHAPTER V.

EARLY OHIO.

Five Characteristic Centres of Settlement—First Measures After the Revolution for Selling Western Lands—Ordinance of 1785—Revolutionary Bounties—Organization of the Ohio Company—Ordinance of 1787 —The Ohio Company Land at the Mouth of the Muskingum—Formal Inauguration of Government—Growth of the Massachusetts Colony—Settlement Between the Miamis—John Cleves Symmes' Purchase—Founding of Cincinnati—French Settlement at Gallipolis—The Virginia Military District—Settlement of Manchester—Founding of Chillicothe—Character of Population—The Western Reserve— Sale to the Connecticut Land Company—Surveyed into Townships—Cleveland Founded—Slow Growth at First—Subsequent Rapid Growth—The Northwestern Indian Reservation—Frontier Line of Settlements in 1812—Population in 1812—Erection of Counties—Formation of State Government—Origin of the Northwest Boundary Difficulty—Open Conflict Between Ohio and the Territory of Michigan—Opening Wedge to Settlement in Northwestern Ohio—Causes of the War of 1812—Attitude of the Wyandots—Results of the War Forecasted—Hull's Surrender—Ohio Exposed to the Enemy—Militia Volunteers —Victories Follow Defeat and Disaster—Ohio's Part in the War.

THE fading picture of Wyandot Lower Sandusky calls to mind a more stirring scene, Lower Sandusky of Fort Stephenson fame. This period, brief but crowded with tragic events, dates the beginning of white settlement in Sandusky county. What was Ohio then? is a question which naturally suggests itself, and one which this chapter is intended to answer.

Historically Ohio is carved into seven distinct divisions, bearing five characteristic civilizations transplanted from different Eastern colonies, and tracing their ancestry to antagonistic races or social castes. Out of these five elements has grown the Ohio of today—justly proud and sufficiently honored.

The centres of early settlement, widely separated from each other by bridgeless streams and long reaches of untraversed forests, impressed the instincts and training brought from Eastern homes upon their localities. That impress is still discernible in the politics, religion, and culture of the native population. The clashing of opinion which has been a necessary result of grouping five discordant elements into one State, has been potent in developing native intellect and producing occasions for its exercise. It is further a proposition, proved by the inevitable logic of history, that the mingling and fusion of people of different races, temperaments and training, is productive of physical and mental strength. To these facts may be

54 - HISTORY OF SANDUSKY COUNTY.

attributed in great measure the high position which Ohio has taken in affairs.

When the Revolution closed, the Congress of the Confederation found itself in possession of a vast Western domain of boundless fertility. Plans of emigration and colonization again revived. Congress, in May, 1785, passed "an ordinance for ascertaining the mode of disposing of the Western lands, and Thomas Hutchins, the United States geographer, was instructed to lay off the territory into townships of six miles square, and each township into thirty-six lots, containing six hundred and forty acres each. Congress had, in 1776, and by several succeeding acts, pledged bounties to the Continental soldiers. One-seventh of the land was to be reserved for this purpose. Lots eight, eleven, twenty-six, and twenty-nine were to be reserved for future sale; the remainder was to be divided among the several States and sold by them at not less than one dollar per acre, with the additional cost of the survey and sale. This system operated against the colonization plan, for the townships were to be drawn by the several States, making it impossible for a company to purchase a large tract in one body. This ordinance excepted an undefined tract between the Scioto and the Little Miami, which had been reserved by Virginia in her act of cession, for the use of her own troops. Indian hostilities prevented individual settlement, and it was evident that Congress had placed too high an estimate on the value of the unbroken forest.

From time to time, as circumstances suggested, this original ordinance was amended. The bounty claims of Revolutionary soldiers were the strongest agency in the settlement of the Northwest. A major-general were entitled to eleven hundred acres, a brigadier-general to eight hundred and fifty acres, colonel to five hundred acres, lieutenant-colonel to four hundred and fifty acres, major to four hundred acres, captain to three hundred acres, lieutenant to two hundred acres, ensign one hundred and fifty acres, noncommissioned officers and privates one hundred acres each. As early as 1783 General Rufus Putnam, of Massachusetts, transmitted to Washington a memorial asking for an appropriation of Western lands to supply these claims. The measure was placed before Congress, but the question of ownership not being settled action was postponed. In 1775 Colonel Benjamin Tupper came West as a surveyor, but the survey being interrupted by Indian troubles he returned to the East the following winter with such favorable impressions of the country beyond the Ohio that he united with Putnam in forming a plan of association and settlement. They prepared a publication setting forth the project, and inviting all who desired to promote the scheme to send delegates to a general convention to be held in Boston, March 1, 1786.

An opportunity now seemed open to the hardy and resolute soldiers who had carried the war to a successful issue, to retrieve their ruined estates. The convention which met in pursuance to this call, represented the best elements of New England society. Articles of association were agreed upon, which made the capital of the company one million dollars. Three directors — Samuel H. Parsons, General Rufus Putnam, and Dr. Manasseh Cutler, were elected, with instructions to purchase a private grant of lands. Major Winthrop Sargent (second Territorial Governor) was elected secretary.

About the time of the organization of the Ohio Company another land company was organized in New York, with William Duer at its head. Dr. Cutler, to whom was delegated the responsible office of

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making a contract with Congress, found that body averse to the New England scheme, but by combining with the New York company, in which several members of Congress were interested, there was hope of success. It had been the hope of the Massachusetts company to have General Parsons, one of their own number, placed at the head of the new territorial government which colonization would make it necessary to establish; but his plan of purchase could not succeed without the support of General St. Clair, who was a representative from Pennsylvania and President of Congress. Cutler was a good lobbyist and yielded the choice of his associates in favor of St. Clair for the governorship.

A contract was finally agreed upon in July, 1787, and confirmed the following October.

The first ordinance directing the establishment of a government for the Western territory, was submitted by Mr. Jefferson in 1784, and contained a clause against slavery. It also contemplated the division of the Territory into seventeen States. This ordinance, with the important omission of the proviso against slavery, was passed by Congress in April, 1784. This act, owing to the divisions it contemplated, was thought inexpedient, and another act, applying only to the territory acquired by the cession to the United States by Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, and Connecticut,—all the territory at that time owned by the United States—was submitted, which resulted in the passage on July 13, of the celebrated ordinance of 1787, which is in fact the fundamental law of the States whose territory was comprehended,—Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

This enactment organized a single territory northwest of the Ohio and eastward of the Mississippi, subject to future division, if deemed expedient by Congress, into two districts. This fundamental law, enacted before a solitary freeholder raised his cabin on the territory it was intended to govern, has been characterized as a fit consummation of the glorious labors of the Congress of the old Confederation. It established in the Northwest, the important principles of the equal inheritance of intestine estates, and the freedom of alineation by deed or will. After prescribing a system of territorial civil government, it concludes with six articles of compact between the original States and the people of the States in the Territory, which should forever remain unalterable unless by common consent. The first declared that no person demeaning himself in a peaceable and orderly manner, should ever be molested on account of his mode of worship or religious sentiments. The second prohibited legislative interference with private contracts, and secured to the inhabitants trial by jury, the writ of habeas corpus, a proportionate representation of the people in the Legislature, judicial proceedings according to the course of common law, and those guarantees of personal freedom and property which are enumerated in the bill of rights of most of the States. The third provided for the encouragement of schools and for good faith, justice, and humanity toward the Indian. The fourth secured to the new States to be erected out of the Territory the same privileges with the old ones; imposed upon them the same burdens, including responsibility for the Federal debt, prohibited the States from interfering with the primary disposal of the soil of the United States, or taxing the public lands; from taxing the lands of nonresidents higher than residents ; and established the navigable waters leading into the Mississippi and St. Lawrence, and the portages between them, common highways for the use of all the citizens of all the

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United States. The fifth article related to the formation of new States within the Territory, the divisions to be not less than three nor more than five. By this article the west boundary of Ohio became a line running northward from the mouth of the Great Miami, until it intersected a line running eastward from the southern bend of Lake Michigan, the northern boundary.

The sixth article provided that,

There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the Territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crime whereof the party shall have been convicted.

This ordinance gave the greatest encouragement to immigration, and offered the fullest protection to those who became settlers, for "when they came into the wilderness they found the law already there. It was impressed upon the soil while yet it bore up nothing but the. forest." *

The Ohio Company, before the close of the summer, was rapidly formulating regulations for the government of their affairs, and the associates making hasty preparations for the anticipated removal to the beautiful country of which they had formed most extravagant ideas.

In October Congress ordered seven . hundred troops for the protection of the frontiers, and on the 5th of the month appointed the territorial officers: Arthur St. Clair, Governor; Winthrop Sargent, Secretary; Samuel H. Parsons, James M. Varnum, and John Armstrong, t Judges.

On the 7th of April, 1788, a company of forty-eight men, with General Rufus Putnam at their head, disembarked from their boat at the mouth of the Muskingum and planted the first American colony on the soil of Ohio.

The civil government of the Territory

* S. P. Chase, Statutes of Ohio.

+ Judge Armstrong declined the office and John Cleves Spumes was appointed to fill the vacancy.

which had been created the fall before, was formally established upon Ohio soil, on the 15th of July. The Governor and Judges had arrived at Fort Harmar several days before. The ceremonies attending inauguration of government were highly impressive. The Judges, Secretary, and inhabitants assembled on the site of Marietta, where the Governor was welcomed by Judge Parsons. Under a bower of foliage contributed by the surrounding forest, the ordnance of 1787 was read, congratulations exchanged, and three hearty cheers echoed and reechoed from the waters of two rivers, the high hills, and thick forests.

Marietta, the town founded by the Massachusetts colony, became an important centre of settlement. Conceived on the soil of the loyal old Bay State, the story of its birth was heralded throughout all New England. Reinforcements came from the best homes and the best communities, not from Massachusetts alone, but of Connecticut and Rhode Island also. The course of emigration from the impoverished States, once opened, widened and deepened until temporarily closed by an unfortunate conflict with the red natives, a little less than three years after the arrival of the first company of pioneers. Early in 1789 two colonies branched off from Marietta, one settling on the Ohio, opposite the mouth of the Little Kanawha, known as the Belpre Association; the other on the Muskingum, twenty miles above its mouth, which still bears the name of Waterford. During the same summer a third colony branched off from the parent town, and located on Big Bottom, in Morgan county. The attack on the Big Bottom block-house, January 2, 1791, and the indiscriminate slaughter of its inhabitants, was the opening of a general Indian war along the whole border.

New England had little more than commenced to plant her civilization at the

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mouth of the Muskingum when a people of different stock cut into the forest, and raised their cabins between the Miamis of the Ohio. In October, 1788, John Cleves Symmes, one of the judges of the Territory, and a native of New jersey, negotiated with Congress on behalf of himself and associates for the purchase of one million acres extending northward from the Ohio, between the Great and Little Miamis, but in consequence of failure to make payment the greater part of the purchase reverted to Congress, the patent when issued covering but about three hundred thousand acres. Judge Symmes sold the large, natural amphitheater opposite the Licking River, to Mathias Denman, of New Jersey, who entered into a contract with Colonel Patterson and Mr. Filson, of Kentucky, for laying out a town. Mr. Filson was killed by the Indians, and his interest became the property of Israel Ludlow. Patterson and Ludlow, accompanied by a small party, arrived on the site of Cincinnati December 26, 1788. This may be considered the date of the founding of Cincinnati. A few block-houses had been erected the preceding month at the mouth of the Little Miami. In February following the arrival of Patterson's party, Judge Symmes, with a party of citizens and soldiers, descended the Ohio, and disembarked at the mouth of the Great Miami, where it was proposed to found a city destined to become the metropolis of the West, but unfortunately the site was inundated by spring floods, necessitating abandonment of the cherished project. Judge Symmes, determined to be the founder of a city, then laid out a town extending from the Ohio to the Miami. But nature had formed another place for the Western metropolis, which, unfortunately for the projector of the Miami settlement, he had sold.

North Bend was the name given by Symmes to his town, Losantiville to the town in the amphitheater, which was soon changed to Cincinnati, and the town at the mouth of the Little Miami founded by Colonel Stiles, was named Columbia. The three villages were rivals for a short time, but the establishment of Fort Washington in June, 1789, and its occupation by three hundred soldiers under command of General Harmar probably turned the tide in favor of Cincinnati. The original settlers of these villages were mostly from New Jersey, and recruits for a number of years came from the same place. Thus was planted in the Miami Valleys the civilization, temperament and hereditary bias of the "Red Sand State,"—Hollander and English tinctured with Swedish blood.

The third settlement* in Ohio, and the first foreign colonization, was made opposite the Big Kanawha in the .summer of 1791. We have mentioned the joint negotiations of William Duer of New York, and Mannasseh Cutler, for the purchase of an extensive tract, bounded by the Ohio River on the south and extending northward between the first seven ranges to the Scioto. A patent for the whole tract was issued to the Ohio Company; but two days afterward, all of the tract lying west of the seventeenth range was transferred to the Scioto Company, of which Duer was chief. The Scioto Company at once took measures for the disposition of its lands, foreign colonization being the . favorite and novel scheme. Joel Barlow, the poet, was sent to France, then in the days of its discontent and revolution. His roseate descriptions pictured an Arcadia, of which Fair Haven was the destined capital. Attentive listeners saw noble forests, consisting of trees that spontaneously produce sugar, and a plant that yields ready-made

* By the term "settlement" we mean the clusters of related posts and villages.

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candles, gracefully rising from la belle riviere, a pure stream abounding in excellent fish of vast size. To live in a land of plenty with no taxes to pay and no military services to perform, was the fair vision of this trancendent land which influenced a large company, composed chiefly of carvers and gilders, coach-makers, friseurs, and other artistes. Less than a dozen heavy laborers embarked in the enterprise. Deeds for their land, handsomely printed in high colors, raised still higher the delusive anticipation that their journey was to a Fair Haven in fact as well as in name.

The Scioto Company employed General Rufus Putnam, of the Ohio Company association, to locate a village and prepare homes for the immigrants. Fair Haven, located opposite the mouth of the Kanawha, was found to be below the high-water-mark, which induced General Putnam to locate Gallipolis (City of the French) four miles below upon a high bank. A detail of forty laborers, under Major Burnham, cleared a small tract of land, and built block-houses and cabins, arranged in four rows, twenty in each row. The Company had also contracted with the Ohio Company to furnish the colony with provisions, but having failed to make payment for labor already discharged, the French were left in a pitiful condition. The disheartenment of disappointment on their arrival at the promised paradise became utter dejection when they learned that the Scioto Company had never paid for the land, and in consequence could give no title. These deluded foreigners, enured to tender-handed employments, were thrown into the pioneer battle under the greatest disadvantages. In constant danger of an attack from Indians, suffering from sickness, and without money, they were unable to do for themselves as settlers at the other openings along the river were doing. They were provided for by an act of Congress, in 1798, which set apart for them a tract. of land known as the French Grant, east of the mouth of the Scioto. Many remained at the original place of settlement; others, disgusted with the imposition practiced upon them, found homes at other places—Vincennes, St. Louis, Kaskaskia, and St. Genevieve. We have not included Gallipolis as one of the centres of settlement because the original colony, although it has left its impress upon its own locality has never asserted itself in affairs of the State.

The Virginia Military District is one of the most interesting historical divisions of the State. It became practically an extension of Virginia into Ohio, between the Scioto and the Little Miami, as far north as the centre of the State. As has been noticed in a preceding chapter, Virginia, of which Kentucky was a part, reserved in her act of cession of all claims to lands northwest of the Ohio, this extensive tract to be appropriated as bounty to her own troops in the war of the Revolution. General Nathaniel Massie was appointed by the State Government to make a survey of the District, and for some time carried on the work by making expeditions with his party through the present territory of Kentucky. In the winter of 1790-91, encouraged, no doubt, by the flourishing progress of the settlements at the mouth of the Muskingum and at the Miamis, Massie determined to plant a colony on Virginia soil. Such a settlement would afford his party protection from danger and exposure white prosecuting the survey. The site of Manchester was chosen and a town laid off in lots. The adjoining tracts were surveyed into an equal number of out-lots of larger size. He gave general notice through Kentucky of his intention to found a town, and offered to the first twenty-five families one out-lot and one in-lot, and one hundred acres of land. His terms were quickly

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accepted by upwards of thirty families. The company arrived in March, 1791, and went to work with a will. In a short time each family had a cabin, and the whole village was enclosed with a strong stockade, with block-houses at each angle. The Indian war was at its hottest when this colony crossed the river and built their fort, but "it suffered less from depredation and even interruption by Indians 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 peril, and as watchful as hawks."*

This settlement was known as Massie's Station for a few years. The name was changed to Manchester.

A general border war, which had been waged industriously on both sides between the Ohio tribes and the Pennsylvania and Virginia borderers for a long term of years, assumed more alarming proportions with the opening of the year 1791. The first attack on the north side of the Ohio was at Big Bottom, on the 2d of January. That bloody surprise, in which fourteen persons were slain and five taken captive, t marks the opening of a period of distress and peril for the pioneers of Ohio. Lower Sandusky's part in the history of that period has been shown. For four years immigration was almost at a standstill, and at the settlements unceasing danger from a clandestine enemy held in check material improvement.

The report of Wayne's decisive victory on the Maumee was a joyful message to the garrisoned settlers along the Ohio. That event marks the beginning of the second epoch of Ohio history, an epoch full of activity and one which moulded the

* McDonald's Western Sketches.

+ One of the captives was the father of a highly respected citizen of this county, Charles Choate.

political destinies of the State. The boundless possibilities of the West was no longer a speculation. Colonization and war together had disseminated through the East a knowledge of the fertility of the soil and transportation facilities. Peace opened the garrisons, and the valleys of every river resounded with the woodman's axe. "Never since the golden age of the poets," says an old writer, "did the `siren song of peace and harmony' reach so many ears or gladden so many hearts as after Wayne's treaty in 1795." Never did a people, we may add, engage with such earnestness of purpose in the incalculable task of hewing a great State out of an unbroken forest.

The village of Cincinnati, which in 1792 had a population of about two hundred, increased to upwards of six hundred souls before the close of 1796. Population spread northward from Cincinnati, and was characteristically Jersey, but there was a considerable mixture of people from other Eastern States.

Hamilton, Butler county, was laid out in 1794, and settled soon afterward.

Dayton, Montgomery county, and Franklin, Warren county, were settled in 1796.

An attempt was made by Massie, in 1795, to found a town in the heart of the Virginia Military District, but Indian hostilities defeated his scheme. The following year the attempt was repeated with a more favorable result. Chillicothe was laid out early in 1796, and became by far the largest town in the District, and first capital of the State of Ohio. The pioneers of the military tract came through the passes of the Blue Ridge, bringing with them the institutions of the Old Dominion, except slavery, which was fortunately barred beyond the Ohio by the ordinance of 1787. The contrast between the Virginian of the Scioto and his Eastern neigh-

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bor, the New Englander of the Muskingum, was as marked as the difference in the character of their native States. The Virginian proudly traced his ancestry to English nobility, and claimed the blood of Norman and Cavalier; his neighbor at Marietta turned to the New England Register of Genealogy, and followed his line of descent to the Puritan Nonconformist who came to America for religious freedom. These two elements have been, since before the formation of the State Constitution, opposing forces in State politics, at times on the floors of legislation, fighting each other as bitterly as the respective States from which they sprung.

We have now hurriedly sketched the founding and growth of the three southern and oldest centres of settlement. The fourth division in order of settlement, but first entered by Federal surveyors, was the seven ranges. The survey of these ranges was commenced in compliance with an ordinance of Congress passed in 1785. The seven ranges extend seven townships west from the Pennsylvania line, and from the Ohio River to the fortieth parallel of latitude. Most of the settlers came over the Alleghanies from Eastern Pennsylvania. Many are of Quaker descent, but a larger proportion are of German origin. Some of the counties were partially settled from other States. There is less homogenity of race and training in this than in any other of the five centres of early settlement. In this respect it is like the United States Military Reservation lying just west of it and extending to the Scioto. This tract was set apart to satisfy Revolutionary bounties, and in consequence drew its population from all the States. Settlements were made simultaneously in several parts of the seven ranges as soon as Indian hostilities were suppressed. Steubenville, one of the oldest of the towns which flourished, was founded in 1798. The county of Jefferson was erected in 1797.

The Northwestern Indian Reservation, of which Sandusky county is a part, drew largely from the seven ranges and from the Military Reservation.. These two divisions are coupled together as one centre of settlement, the character of the mixed population being about the same in each.

The Connecticut Western Reserve is the largest tract in the State possessing a homogeneous population. Extending westward from the Pennsylvania line to the east line of Sandusky county, and from the forty-first parallel to the lake, it contains an area of more than three million three hundred thousand acres, and is settled even to this time almost wholly by people of Connecticut stock.

In a previous chapter relating to the ownership of the Northwest, it was seen that the dispute between the States arising from indefinite colonial titles to Western lands, was finally settled by the States ceding their claims to the Federal Government. "The last tardy and reluctant sacrifice" was made by Connecticut, in 1786, with this extensive reservation, which it was supposed by the Legislature would eventually become a new State — New Connecticut—almost commensurate with the parent Commonwealth. Another dispute arose, when, in 1788, Governor St. Clair, in obedience to the ordinance of 1787, organized the Territory into counties, constituting all that part east of the Cuyahoga, the Tuscarawas and the Scioto, Washington county, with Marietta as the county seat. This proclamation was deemed by Connecticut an interference with territory over which she had sole jurisdiction.

The first tract of land disposed of by the State, was sold in 1786 to General Samuel Parsons. It consisted of twenty-four thousand acres, lying partly in each of

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the present counties of Mahoning and Trumbull. He had heard that there were available saline springs on the tract, and made the purchase for speculative purposes. His expectations were never realized, and he was drowned in the Beaver River, three years afterward. He never paid for the land and it reverted to the State of Connecticut, the original grantee of the patent.

The Fire lands, embracing the present counties of Huron and Erie, was the next section carved off from her Western possessions by the State. During the Revolution, British invading parties were the special terror of Connecticut. Most of her ablebodied men were in the army, leaving the State with a feeble guard against hasty exploits from the royal headquarters at New York. Nine towns were thus plundered and laid waste, mostly by fire, and the inhabitants of one of them massacred. The sufferers, after the war appealed to the Legislature' for relief, and, after several years discussion and delay, they were voted an appropriation of five hundred thousand acres, to be surveyed off from the western part of the Reserve, and distributed in proportion to their losses. The settlement of this district did not commence until about 1808, owing to Indian occupation and fear of hostilities.

The Legislature of Connecticut took the first measures towards the sale of the State's Western lands in October, '786, when a resolution was passed directing a survey of all that part of the Reserve east of the Cuyahoga and the portage leading from the Cuyahoga to the Tuscarawas. The resolutions also directed the sale of the land at fifty cents an acre, in the public securities of that day. No sales were made, except to Parsons, under this resolution, which was displaced by another resolution changing the method of sale, in 1795. The Company plan, which hadproved successful in the southern part of the Territory, was finally adopted by Connecticut. In May, r 795, a committee was appointed to receive propositions for the purchase of all the unappropriated lands in the Reserve, and to make the best contract possible for the State, the committee being empowered to give deeds to the purchasers. One million dollars in specie was the minimum price fixed by the Legislature, and specie or specie notes only were to be received as payment. The committee succeeded in making the sale in September, 1795, to a company of thirty-five persons, at the sum of one million two hundred thousand dollars. This sum became the basis of the Connecticut school fund, which now amounts to about two million dollars. The transfer was made to the Connecticut Land Company, which was incorporated under the laws of Connecticut. An act was also passed incorporating the proprietors of the Firelands. These acts granted political jurisdiction over transferred lands, under authority of the State of Connecticut. It will be seen that by this act practically a dual government was created in Northeastern Ohio. The Reserve, by the ordinance of 1787, was made a part of the Northwest Territory, the United States recognizing the reservation, by Connecticut, of a proprietary right to the soil, but claiming absolute political jurisdiction. This intricate conflict of claims was finally settled in 1800, by Connecticut abandoning her pretensions and recognizing the political authority of the Territorial Government.

The leading man in the Connecticut Land Company, and the heaviest stock-holder, was Oliver Phelps. A deed was made by the State to each purchaser, giving him absolute title to a number of acres proportional to the amount of stock subscribed. The buyers, for convenience,

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transferred the whole tract to three trustees. The company was enlarged to four hundred shares at- three thousand dollars a share. The management of its affairs was entrusted to a board of eight directors.

General Moses Cleaveland was appointed surveyor of the Company, with instructions to layoff all that part of the Reserve east of the Cuyahoga in townships of not less than sixteen thousand square miles, and to lay out a town at the mouth of the Cuyahoga. Washington, Jefferson, and other statesmen of the times, who took a live interest in Western settlement, looked upon the mouth of the Cuyahoga as destined to become an important commercial point. This prediction, widely entertained, led to the selection of the site of the prospective capital of New Connecticut, for the authority of the Northwest Territory had not yet been accepted. The surveying party commenced early in July, 1796, and reached the mouth of the Cuyahoga in October, where a town was laid out in accordance with the direction of the company, and named Cleaveland, in honor of the veteran chief of the corps. A small settlement was made that fall, but the growth of the village was slow, discouragingly slow, in comparison with the flourishing towns on the Ohio. At the end of the first year the population was fifteen. Three years later there were but seven residents, and in 1810 only fifty-seven. A feeble settlement was made at Conneaut the next year after Cleaveland was founded, and several openings were made in the Mahoning Valley during the next few years. The Mahoning country was more accessible, and consequently grew faster than the northern part. Warren was the most important point on the Reserve for a number of years, and contained, in 1801, thirty-five families. Trumbull county was organized in 1800, with Warren as the county seat.

If the growth of the Reserve at first was slow, the superiority of its soil finally became known, and New Connecticut has grown within the last seventy years, with remarkable rapidity. Chillicothe, the principal town of the far famed Scioto Valley, founded but a few months before Cleveland, became the first capital and second city of the State, while the Reserve was yet scarcely a factor in politics. In 1880 there were within the Reserve four cities outrivalling in size and industry the Virginian city of the Scioto.

The seventh division into which patents, grants, and treaties carved the territory of Ohio, is the one including Sandusky county. It was almost without white habitation at the opening of the period which closes this brief outline of the growth of Ohio. It was upon the native population of this Northwestern Indian reservation that the British arms, in 1812, depended for their chief assistance.

The frontier line of settlements, at the opening of that struggle, extended from Lake Erie at Huron, southward through Richland, Delaware, and Champaign counties, thence westward to beyond the Miami and Indiana line.

The early settlers of Ohio, without exception, were superior men. The dangers of the frontier kept back all who were lacking in courage or incapable of enduring physical hardships. Even in the lull of supposed peace there was constant danger of an attack from red warriors, kindled to vengeance by a real or supposed injury. In 1810 the population of the State was 230,760; the vote for governor, in 1812, was 19,752, and at different times during the war, then actually in progress, more than twenty thousand Ohio troops were in the field, more than the entire number of votes cast at an important State election.

The first county proclaimed by the

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Governor was Washington, embracing about half the present territory of Ohio, and reaching from the mouth of the Cuyahoga to the mouth of the Scioto. Hamilton county was proclaimed in 1790. Detroit was occupied by American troops in 1796, and made the seat of a new county —Wayne--which embraced the whole territory of Michigan, Northwestern Ohio and Northern Indiana. The Virginia Military District was erected into a county in 1797. The same year Washington county was divided, the northern half being set off as Jefferson county, with Steubenville as the county seat. Adams was divided by the erection of Ross in 1798, and Jefferson by the erection of Trumbull in 1800. Trumbull was the first county of the Reserve. Several counties were formed in the Reserve between 1800 and 1809, when Huron was erected. The treaty of Maumee Rapids, the inevitable sequence of the issue of the War of 1812, brought into market all Northwestern Ohio except the Indian reservations, and by an act of the Legislature the tract thus fully acquired was carved into counties in 1820.

Indiana Territory was set off by an act of Congress in 1800, and in 1802 an enabling act was passed authorizing the people of Ohio to elect delegates to a convention for the formation of a State constitution as a preliminary step to admission into the Union. The act admitted delegates only from that part of the Territory comprehended by the ordinance of 1787, as the most eastern of the five States into which it was proposed to divide the Northwest. This act cut off the northern county of the Territory (now the eastern part of Michigan), and brought upon Congress the charge of endeavoring to erect the State for partisan purposes.

One of the duties of the convention was to define the boundaries of the new State. The ordinance made the western boundary a line running due north from the mouth of the Miami River, and the northern boundary a line running east from the southern bend of Lake Michigan. This line was not yet surveyed in 1802, but the convention, acting on the hypothesis that it was the intent of the ordinance to include Maumee Bay in the Eastern State, resolved that the northern boundary should be a line running from the most northerly cape of Maumee Bay to the southern bend of Lake Michigan.

The Constitutional Convention finished its labors in November, and the document became the fundamental law of the State without being submitted to the people. Congress recognized Ohio as a member of the Federal Union in February, 1803.* It is not, the purpose of this chapter to trace the civil history of the State, but only to present such a view as will show the chronological and ethnological relations of Sandusky county, and the events of a general character which have affected its history.

The Constitutional Convention's definition of the northern boundary was for many years the subject of serious dispute and eventually threatened to involve the State in war ; indeed more than threatened —war was actually begun. The convention determined the line on the principles on which courts of chancery construe contracts. The map on file in the State Department, and used by the committee which framed the ordinance of 1787, marked the southern extreme of Lake Michigan far north of its real position, and a line was drawn due east which intersected the western coast of Lake Erie north of the Raisin River. This line was

*The date of admission is variously given as April, 1802, (the date of the passage of .the enabling act), November, 1802, and February, 19, 1803. The latter date has the best claim.

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manifestly intended to be the boundary of the new State when formed. The apprehension caused among the members by an old hunter's statement that a line drawn due east would cut off Maumee Bay, which was manifestly intended by Congress to belong to Ohio, induced the convention to change the line prescribed by the language of the ordinance in order to make certain of saving to the State the valuable harbor at the mouth of the Maumee.*

The question of jurisdiction over the territory lying between the line prescribed by the Ohio Constitution and the line prescribed by the ordinance, first came up in 1812, the population of the disputed tract at that time being fifty families. Nearly all desired the jurisdiction of Ohio, except a few officers serving under the government of Michigan, and determined to enforce the laws of that Territory. t

Conflicting claims in 1835 caused an open rupture in which Sandusky county participated. This conflict is detailed in another chapter. Its origin was in the interpretation and definition by the State Convention, of an act of the Federal Congress.

It remains to close this chapter with a summary of an episode in National history and an epoch of preeminent consequence in local history. We say an episode in National history, for although the blood of America's bravest citizens and England's trained soldiers stained the hardly contested battlefields of three campaigns, although the Federal Treasury was depleted, private estates bankrupted and the occupations of peace well nigh destroyed, the result in an international sense was negative. We have called the war an epoch in local history because it was the opening wedge to white settle-

*Burnet's Notes.

t Burnet's Notes.

ment, from the Sandusky Valley to the Maumee. Nearly all the ablebodied men of Ohio were brought into the field, and the expanse of forest inhabited only by rebellious Indians, which lay between the British western headquarters and the Ohio settlements, was an important part of that field. Men of sufficient sturdiness, selfrespect and courage to volunteer in defense of their homes bivouacked in the heavy forests of the Northwest, perceived the unbounded wealth of the soil and discussed around cheerful camp fires the probable future of the wilderness and advantages of early settlement. Many even blazed on the trees the chosen locality of their future home. Forts and permanent camps made openings in the wilderness, were the centres of army trails, attracted traders and tradesmen, and thus became incipient villages. The complementary local result of the war was its weakening and demoralizing effect upon the Indians to whom this region had been guaranteed a home inviolable as long as they maintained peace with the United States.

In the previous chapter we called attention to the ambition of Tecumseh, and his operations looking toward the establishment of an Indian empire in the West. He was encouraged and aided in his scheme by agents of the British Government, who desired to have an organized force of braves ready to follow the standard of the crown in the event of probable conflict with the United States. The European powers had, for a long time, been engaged in war, and successive military decrees involved serious commercial complications. England, as a war measure, claimed the right to search all neutral vessels, and under this pretense hundreds of American seamen were impressed on board British ships. Congress threatened war, but the threat only made English agents more active in spreading the fire-

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brands of discontent and rebellion among the Western tribes.

The attitude of the Wyandots has already been touched upon. Crane and his cabinet of chiefs foresaw in the approaching conflict certain destruction for their nation, and exercised their utmost efforts to prevent the calamity by maintaining neutrality. The disaster to Tecumseh's cause at Tippecanoe, in 1811, further impressed them with the futility of war, and threatened to crush the confederacy before it had been completed. It was Tecumseh's plan to refrain from attack upon the white settlements until the conflict with Great Britain should be in actual progress, but the battle of Tippecanoe was precipitated by the Prophet while Tecumseh was on a diplomatic mission among the Creeks, in the South. That battle disclosed to the Americans the dangers of the situation, and the extent to which British influence had been exerted among the Indians.

Interference with American trade, enforced by the blockade system, the impressment of American sailors, and the encouragement given the Indians supplemented by supplying them with arms, induced Congress in June, 1812, to declare war. Although this ultra measure had long been contemplated, our Government was totally unprepared for the conflict, which accounts for the disgraceful series of blundering during the first year of its progress.

To General Hull, Territorial Governor of Michigan, with headquarters at Detroit, was given the important commission to make an invasion of Upper Canada; but, through the imbecility of that officer, the project was a total failure, and for the same reason Detroit fell into the hands of the British, without a blow, on the 15th of August. This disaster spread the greatest apprehension throughout Ohio. The Northwestern army, composed of fourteen hundred brave men, were now prisoners of war; the British command of the lakes was absolute; the Territory of Michigan was in the possession of foreign troops and their Indian allies, and nothing was left to prevent an invasion into Ohio. The militia of the Reserve, under General Wadsworth, turned out almost to a man, and in little more than two weeks from the first announcement of Hull's surrender at Cleveland, an army of raw farmers and woodsmen were encamped on the Huron River.

Before the close of the summer British arms presided over the Upper Lakes, Fort Dearborn, the last American post, falling victim to a most horrid Indian massacre. During the winter of 1812-13 warlike preparations were pushed in the Northwest with the spirit of self-defence. Harrison, with an army of volunteers, occupied the northwest of Ohio, constructed forts and garrisoned every strong point, so that at the opening of spring a greater feeling of security prevailed, and ablebodied men followed the army with less apprehension concerning the safety of their homes. It is not within our province to follow this conflict, which opened with defeat, disaster and disgrace, except one desperate scene, which is fully treated in a separate chapter. Croghan's gallant and successful defence of Fort Stephenson turned the tide in favor of the volunteer arms. Perry followed by making the flag of the Republic master of Lake Erie, and Harrison complemented these achievements by totally defeating Proctor and extinguishing the allied Indian force under Tecumseh on the Thames. The bullet which mortally wounded Tecumseh killed British influence over the Northwestern Indians, and secured the people of Ohio perpetually against incursions from that source. Jackson, at New Orleans, crowned the

66 - HISTORY OF SANDUSKY COUNTY.

series of brilliant victories, and gave perpetual luster to American arms.

During the whole contest the conduct of the State Government was as patriotic and honorable as the devoted bravery of her troops was eminent. When the necessities of the National Treasury compelled Congress to resort to a direct tax, Ohio, for successive years, cheerfully assumed and promptly paid her quota out of the State Treasury.* There was, at first, a difference of opinion with regard to the expediency of war, out when a foreign army landed on our shores her citizens cheerfully volunteered, and Ohio's blood stained every important battlefield in the Northwest.