HISTORY
OF
PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO,
CHAPTER I.
PHYSICAL FEATURES.
PREBLE county, if it has no scenery which realizes the grand or approaches the massively sublime, certainly presents to the eye a rare combination of those gentler elements of nature's beauty, which atones for the absence of the ruggedly picturesque. Nature everywhere wears an appearance which indicates her favor to man and adaptability to his good. The landscape everywhere is of that nature which most harmonizingly holds and surrounds the scenes of harvest and the husbandman's home. The rural residences and the tangible evidences of thrift and plenty which cluster around them seem appropriately placed in the pictures which a ride through Preble county discloses to the eye. They are the natural outcome—the crystallizations of the richness of the soil—and, although reared by the industry of man, they have not been wrought with such stress of force, such slow and difficult toil, as in some less favored regions. Not stubbornly or grudgingly has nature yielded here to man, but gladly and with glorious generosity of harvest from the largest of her riches. A benison of beauty seems to rest upon the land and to have as its counterpart and complement the blessing of plenty.
With salubrious climate, fertile soil, capable of bearing as full a variety of crops as any tract of country in its latitude, bountiful and constant water supply, undulating but not rough surface, insuring good drainage, and yet having no lands that are untillable, Preble county lacks no elements which the farmer needs. It has more than these—an inexhaustible supply of- limestone of great economic value, and a_ greater available abundance of good timber than any other section of the State equal in area.
In this chapter we present a description of the surface features and geology of the county, taken principally from the State geological report.
TOPOGRAPHY.
Preble county is bounded" on the north by Darke, on the east by Montgomery, on the south by Butler, and on the west by the State of Indiana. The drainage of the county is mainly by four streams, Twin creek, Seven Mile creek, Four Mile creek, and Elk creek, all of which flow into the Great Miami. Some small areas upon the west side of the county are drained by tributaries of the White river. The surface is generally gently rolling, and there is but a small part of the county which lies flat. Parts of Washington and Jackson townships are quite level, but there are only very small areas from which the water flows sluggishly, and even in these no swamps are found. The highest land of the county is to be found on the ridge between the drainage basins, the water-shed which extends through Israel, Dixon, Jackson, Jefferson, and Monroe townships. The southern portion of the county presents the most attractive appearance. It is beautifully diversified in surface, and, besides being very pleasing to the eye, it constitutes a very rich agricultural district. A geological and a topographical map of Preble county would be found, if compared, to have many points in common. In a general way the altitudes and depressions are connected directly with the geological formation. The northern portion of the county may be said to consist of the Upper Silurian formation, and the southern of the Blue limestone. The former lies higher than the latter and projects into it a promontory which extends below the county line. The Niagara limestone may be said, in a general way, to have an altitude of more than five hundred feet, and the Blue limestone of less than five hundred feet Above low water mark at Cincinnati. The following are the altitudes of a few points id the county:
FEET.
Eaton (site of court house) - 612
Camden (general level of town) - 407
County line in section thirty-two, Somers township - 601 .
Northwest corner of Israel township - 656
Summit of Blue limestone at Haldermansis mill - 515
South line of county in section thirty-three, Gratis township - 586
Winchestir - 425
West Alexandria (valley of Twin creek) - 427
Lewisburgh . - 495
Sonora (railroad grade) - 544
Extreme southeast corner of Lanier township, valley of Twin - 350
Valley of Seven Mile creek, on county line - 325
Ridge passing through Monroe, Jackson, etc - 675
The vertical range of the county is about three hundred and fifty feet, and the geological, as far as the bedded rocks are concerned, is considerably less.
GEOLOGICAL SERIES.
The geological series of Preble county comprises three main elements, one of which belongs to Lower
9
10 - HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO.
Silurian time, while the other two are of Upper Silurian age. ']'he Niagara group has an average thickness of seventy-five feet; the Clinton limestone a thickness of fifteen feet, and the Cincinnati group attains a thickness of two hundred and twenty-five feet. The Blue limestone or Cincinnati group is principally shown in the valleys. The valley of Twin creek is the deepest and widest, but is so much obscured with drift that it does not furnish as satisfactory exposures of the rocky floor as many of the shallower valleys do. Seven Mile creek gives, on the whole, the best exhibition of this series. From Camden to Halderman's mill, the stream runs much of the way upon the rock, and excellent opportunities are offered for studying the structure and collecting fossils of the formation. The Blue limestone yields a large quantity of building stone, of fair quality for local use. It was years ago much used for lime, but the advantages of the Cliff limestone for this purpose led to its general adoption as a substitute.
The Clinton limestone comes next in order (ascending,) after the Blue limestone. The line of junction between the Lower and Upper Silurian is very distinct in Preble county. A series of springs, and a very productive belt of country, mark this geological boundary. The shales with which the Blue limestone is terminated are impervious, and as the Clinton limestone that covers them is porous, and is also traversed with lines of fracture, springs must necessarily occur along the line of the two formations. Springs flowing over the margin of shales will do something toward imparting to them fertility, and this particular series of shales possesses the elements of fertility in large measure in their natural constitution. Many of the finest farms in the county belong to this horizon. The condition of the county in the Morning Star neighborhood of Lanier township very clearly exemplifies the facts here made mention of.
The Clinton limestone is everywhere uneven in its bedding. The contrast between it and the overlying Dayton stone, or the even courses of the Cincinnati group beneath is very striking. A layer of the Clinton stone can rarely be followed a rod. The stone itself, in many instances, seems solid, but it lies in very flat, lenticular pieces rather than in a regular wall. It is on this account that it is very little valued for building purposes where either of the other formations heretofore named is accessible. Parts of it are sandy in texture, and render the local name of sandstone applied to it appropriate. Throughout the exposure of this series in Preble and several adjoining counties beds are everywhere found that acquire the name of firestone. They are sought for chimney backs and for all similar uses to which ordinary limestone cannot be applied The chemical composition of the stone does not explain this peculiarity. They consist of eighty-four per cent. of carbonate of lime and about twelve per cent. of carbonate of magnesia. They can be burned into a fair article of lime, but endure without crumbling in all ordinary exposure to heat. The Clinton limestones in all of its outcrops throughout the county rich in its characteristic fossils. Favorite corals, chain corals, bulls-horn corals, and many forms of bryo zoans are very abundant, and are beautifully preserved.
PETROLEUM PRODUCTION GEOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED
In close connection with this fact, viz., that the formation is made up of organic remains, it is to be added that petroleum abounds through many of the exposures of the county. Geologists are generally agreed that petroleum, when occurring in a limestone rock, is derived from the animal remains of the rock, but no explanation can be given of the fact that the product occurs at one point and is wanting in another. When the excitement caused by the discoveries on oil creek was at its height the show of oil along the outcrop of this formation did not fail to attract attention, and rights to explore and develop the territory were bought up through several counties of Ohio and Indiana. Companies were formed and wells sunk at several points in southwestern Ohio. The deepest of these was at Eaton, where the boring was carried eleven hundred and seventy feet below the surface. There was, however, no geological promise in these undertakings. The Clinton limestone, it is true, is rich in petroleum in many localities, but its thickness does not exceed a dozen feet, and there have been no disturbances in its stratification, by means of which reservoirs for the oil have been prepared. When the Clinton limestone was passed in the boring the long series of the Cincinnati shales and limestones was not enough to exhaust the limestone series of the State. A considerable fragment of the rock was brought up from a depth of eleven hundred and thirty feet which proved to be a silicious limestone, quite after the pattern of the older limestones of the continent in their more northern latitudes. During the boring various alterations of disappointment and hope were realized by the projectors. The boring was begun in the Niagara limestone and when the Clinton limestone was reached the show of petroleum was sufficient to kindle a blaze of excitement. The telegraph was used to announce to distant stockholders the success of the enterprise, and the boring was temporarily suspended until a tank could be provided, that there might not be a "sinful waste of oil." There are several points in the county which still yield a fine show of petroleum, the springs that issue from the base of the. Clinton limestone being often thickly coated with it.
THE NIAGARA GROUP
is shown to best advantage in section in the bed and banks of Seven Mile creek at Eaton. There are nearly fifty feet exposed within a mile or two of the village. The ascending order of occurrence is as follows: (I) Dayton limestone, (2) Niagara shale, (3) West Union limestone, (4) Springfield limestone, (5) Cedarville or Guelph limestone. The three lowermost are, in this county, somewhat obscure, and the third has, in fact, not been positively identified. The Eaton building stone belongs in number four of this series. It constitutes the main resource of the northern part of the county. The same courses, together with the overlying Cedarville or Guelph beds, are also struck at New Paris. The upper. beds are here burned extensively for lime, which this
HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO - 11
horizon everywhere furnishes in central and southern Ohio. The stone agrees in its composition with the Cedarville beds, except that portions of it are highly fossiliferous. An analysis of the limestone of the Eaton quarries shows 49.75 per cent. of carbonate of lime; 35.87 carbonate of magnesia; 4.46 of alumina and iron, and 9.40 of silicious matter. Among the fossils found in great abundance at Eaton is the well known shell—Pentamerus oblongus, and also the more common of the Niagara trilobites. Some of these fossils appear here in greater abundance than in any other locality known, and in great perfection.
On Banta's fork, three miles from Eaton, excellent quarries are worked in the lower beds of the Niagara, and a fine article of flagging stone is secured. Similar courses are worked on the banks of Twin creek, two miles above Euphemia. The most extensively worked quarries of the county are located at New Paris. The upper numbers of the Niagara series are well developed and easily reached. The building stone courses are also accessible. The main interest, however, is the burning of lime, which is distributed mainly to the westward by railroads leading out of Richmond, Indiana. Patent kilns are in use, and the production amounts to three hundred bushels per day for eight months in the year. At the quarries on the east side of Twin creek, opposite Lewisburg, lime has been burned for thirty years.
A fine section is furnished in the bed and banks of Sellers run, of the upper rocks of the county. Beginning with a fine show of the Clinton limestone rich in its characteristic fossils, which is shown near Turner's distillery, the succeeding beds of the Niagara series to the Cedarville inclusive, are traversed and disclosed within the course of a mile.
DRIFT DEPOSITS.
The drift beds of the county cover nearly its entire area, and in general character they agree with the same order of deposits in adjacent regions. The boulder clay, or immodified drift is reached in the digging of many wells. In the northern half of the county this deposit is uniformly deep-so deep as never to be reached in ordinary excavations. Its surface is often covered with the sand, gravel and stratified clay which compose the modified drift of this region, and when so covered it constitutes the water bearer for the area which it occupies. When the boulder clay itself makes the surface, the water supply is found at easily accessible depths within it in some of the seams of sand and gravel that are scattered at irregular intervals through its substance. In the central regions of the county the boulder clay rests directly upon the polished surface of the Niagara limestone, and in the southern it is not seen as distinctly or often, its best exposures being in the deeper valleys. There is every indication that the boulder clay was formed under the great glacial sheet, which, it has been demonstrated, covered the western portions of the continent in the period preceding the present. It is filled with scratched and polished fragments of limestone and northern rocks, compactly laid in the dark blue clay which characterizes the formations of this age in every part of the world where they occur. The seams of sand and gravel interpolated in the clay, doubtless result from partial meltings of the glacial sheet in some of the wilder periods of its history. The ice sheet, in its southern advance, must have found the face of the continent covered with a forest growth and other forms of vegetation. It seems certain that some remnants of this pre-glacial growth are preserved in the boulder clay. Worn fragments of wood are often found deep in the clay, which it seems impossible to refer to any other source.
This pre-glacial vegetation must not, however, be confounded with the inter-glacial growths. The latter is, doubtless, of much more frequent occurrence. It is to a widespread stratum of inter-glacial vegetation that the buried tree tops, roots, leaves, and ancient soil, so often reported in the digging of wells, and other excavations, must be referred. The forest bed, as this stratum has been designated, is of much less frequent occurrence in Preble than in the counties south and east of it, but there are still many evidences of its presence within this area. In Harrison township a tree top is reported to have been struck at a depth of thirty feet. An ochre seam which sometimes accompanies the forest bed and sometimes replaces it in the regions to the southward, is also occasionally met with in Preble county. It is generally found associated with a gravel seam which it cements into a hardpan, which must be penetrated to reach the water veins. The beds of modified drift, as the sand, gravel, and clay, that overlie the boulder clay in stratified deposits are called, occur abundantly in the county, not being confined to the deeper valleys, but being found also over most of the uplands. In the northern townships, and especially in the flat lying districts, they have a general thickness of twenty feet. Underneath are found the seams of sand and gravel that cover the boulder clay, and which constitute the water bearer of this region.
PHENOMENAL BOULDER BELT.
In nearly all particulars the drift of Preble county is a part and parcel of the drift field of Ohio, but there is a single feature in which it has the prominence over all contiguous areas. A very remarkable boulder belt traverses its central and eastern regions—more remarkable than any similar belt in the State. There are various points in this general region where boulders are thickly strewn over the surface in limited areas, as, for instance, along the uplands that bound the Great Miami valley for twenty-five miles above Dayton, on the west side of the valley, directly opposite Dayton, and also in the country that lies west of the Stillwater, in the vicinity of Union, Montgomery county; but none of these boulder belts attain the proportion of the Preble county deposit. Its northern boundary is not very distinctly defined, but there is a gradual thickening of the boulders until we find them in the central part of Washington township so numerous as to render tillage of the fields difficult.
12 - HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO.
From this part the belt can be followed in a broad band to the southeastward, as far as the county line, and even beyond. Its length within the county is at least ten miles. Its greatest breadth does not exceed three miles, but the east and west roads cut across it diagonally, so as to show sections of four or five miles in width.
The boulders range in size from one thousand cubic feet downwards. Of one hundred and two blocks that were lying on the surface within a small compass, the largest was seven feet in length; another measured five feet; four exceeded four feet; six exceeded three feet ; and thirty-five measured more than two feet, while the balance were under that size. It is probable that in this area were nearly as many more concealed by a shallow covering of soil. On one farm near West Alexandria one thousand two hundred boulders, exceeding two feet in diameter, were counted to the acre. There are points where they occur in greater number than this. The value of the land is diminished where it is so thickly covered. The distribution of the boulders is irrespective of the elevations and irregularities of the surface. They cover the high grounds and the low about equally. They control portions of the belt, and occupy a part of the great northern plain of the county, which has an altitude of about one thousand feet above the sea. A considerable variety of composition is shown by the boulders, although the conglomerates are the most common as well as the most characteristic. They agree quite well with each other, and differ in a marked degree from the conglomerates met with elsewhere in the drift field of southwestern Ohio. It seems probable that they may hereafter give the clue to the exact location from which they were originally derived. Their peculiarity consists in their distinct stratification. Layers of coarse silicious pebbles are separated from each other by from four to eight inches of fine sandy quartzite, which is very often light green in color and which sometimes has a faint amethystine tint. The conglomerate character is sometimes but feebly shown, and then the blocks would be classed as ordinary quartzites.
The boulders evidently belong to the last stage of the Drift period, to the time of northern submergence which followed and closed the great ice age. They were floated by icebergs across the inland sea that stretched from the Canadian highlands to central Ohio, but no explanation is proffered of the fact that they occur just where they now lie, rather, than elsewhere. The present topography of the country furnishes some suggestions, but no adequate explanation of the phenomena One of the most remarkable circumstances occurring in the drift is the obstruction of an old valley by the boulder clay. This case is met with in the bed of a small tributary of Seven Mile creek, one mile west of the village of Camden. The stream has been compelled to abandon its old course for a short distance, and to work out a new and circuitous channel through the limestone rock.
12 - HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO
CHAPTER - II.
THE PRE-HISTORIC RACE.
TIME was when the face of the country did not appear as the pioneer first saw it—covered with an unbroken forest. Centuries before the sparse, scattered, nomadic Indian population dwelt in the land, and followed the chase through its tangled wood, this country was occupied by a numerous race, a people who had fixed habitations, and the customs of a semi-civilized nation. They lived by agriculture, and the country was, perhaps, denuded by them of its forest, if not to as great an extent as now, at least in a considerable degree. Strive as we may, by what little there is of the accumulated light of study and research, we can gain only a meagre amount of knowledge in regard to this people who occupied the continent prior to the age at which its written history begins. The race to which we ascribe the name of Mound Builders is one of which no chapter of history can be written; we can only gain an uncertain and unsatisfying glance behind the great black curtain of oblivion. No record has been kept, no musty legends or vague traditions have been handed down to give us an idea of the character and condition of the ancient race. Only the earth monuments, enclosing a few relics of rude art, and the last lingering remains of mortality-crumbling skelementons, which literally turn to dust as the places of their sepulture are invaded-have endured to silently and solemnly attest, in the nineteenth century, the existence of a vast and vanished race. Concerning the greater questions in regard to this people—their origin, nature, progress, and ultimate destiny, we can gain only a little knowledge from the works they have left behind them, and for the rest indulge in fascinating, fanciful, but futile speculations. The subject is one which is full of mysterious interest. Its immensity is awe-inspiring, and the gloom with which it is veiled, while baffling, lends to the study of this branch of archaeology an element of enchanting romance.
The ancient works, commonly attributed to the Mound Builders, are spread over a large extent of country. They dot the valleys from the Alleghanies to the far northwest, and extend from the lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. They are to be found upon the Missouri a thousand miles from its confluence with the Mississippi; upon the Kansas and Platte, and on other remote western rivers. They spread over the valley of the Mississippi, and line the shore of the gulf from Texas to Florida, extending in diminished numbers into South Carolina. They occur in great numbers in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Texas, and are less numerously distributed through the western parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and in North and South Carolina, as also in Michigan, Iowa and the Mexican possessions. That the earthworks are distributed evenly over this territory should not be imagined. They are confined, principally to the valleys of the rivers and large streams, and the few discovered elsewhere are small, with few exceptions.
HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO - 13
Within the State of Ohio there are undoubtedly over ten thousand mounds and other earthworks. They are much more numerous in the southern than in the northern part, and nowhere else in the State appear in greater number or variety than in the Scioto valley, which indeed seems to have been the seat of empire of the pre-historic race or at least the centre of population and theatre of government for a very large region.
The mounds and enclosures scattered through Ohio and the wider territory, we have just outlined, are of several classes. The enclosures may be classified as defensive works and religious enclosures. The tumuli or mounds are generally subdivided, by students, into Sepulchral, Sacrificial, Temple (or truncated) mounds, Mounds of Observation and Memorial or Monumental mounds.
Nothing is more absolutely sure in regard to the Mound Builders than that the irregular enclosures were primarily and principally intended as works of defence. They may have subserved other purposes, but they were constructed to answer as strongholds against an enemy. They are always found on high ground and in naturally strong positions. They usually occupy the summits of hills or plateaus, and often occur at the confluence of streams. The walls wind around the borders of the high land they occupy, and it is often to be noticed that they are thickest and highest at these points, which are naturally most easily accessible. In some instances miles of wall are found enclosing perhaps more than a hundred acres of land. The people who built these defences had certainly no mean order of military skill. They chose almost exactly the same situations upon which modern military engineers would locate forts, should the country be the scene of war—positions which could be given the maximum of resisting power with the minimum of outlay in labor. Fine examples of defensive works occur in Butler, Highland, Ross, Licking and Greene counties, and perhaps the most notable is the celebrated Fort Ancient in Warren county. The work in Preble county, at the confluence of Banta's fork and Twin creek, is of this order, though much smaller and simpler than many to be seen in other parts of the State. The walls of most of the enclosures are of earth, a few of stone, and in rare instances, of stone and earth combined. The immense amount of work necessary to the construction of these fortifications precludes the notion that they were hastily thrown up to repel a single invasion. They were for defence against a known and powerful enemy, and were probably the protecting wall against a fierce war-loving nation for many years. It is safe to suppose that as they were constructed through the exercise of a wonderful industry and steadfastness of purpose, the race of people who reared them had the courage to defend them and their country persistently against any odds.
The so called sacred enclosures are distinguished from the military works by their more frequent occurrence and by the regularity of their construction in geometrical figures—circles, squares, hexagons, octagons, ellipses, and parallelograms. Not unfrequently several of these forms appear in conjunction. Great skill is exhibited in the construction of this class of works. The plans show a perfection which could not have been attained without the exercise of some science similar to modern surveying. The evidence that works of this class were intended for religious uses is apochryphal. That they were not intended as military works appears altogether probable, from the fact that the fosse, or ditch, usually occurs inside the embankment. The enclosures may have been occupied by the houses of the rulers of the race, by those of the priesthood, and they may also have contained the temples which an idolatrous people raised, as the shrines of their gods. It is not improbable that such were the purposes for which these works were designed, and they may have been the theatres where great councils were held and games indulged in, as well as the places where were observed, on a colossal scale, the rites of a superstitious religion. There is evidence that they were intended for the assemblage of a vast concourse of people. The great circles of England, India, Peru, and Mexico, are similar to these sacred works, and within them have been found the shrines of the gods of the ancient worship. They may also have contained consecrated groves. We know that it has been a practice common to almost every people, in every time, to enclose their shrines, their places of worship, that they might he guarded from the profanation of man and the desecration of beasts. Frequently there is situated in the center of this class of works a mound or elevation, supposed to have served the purposes of an altar, on which animal, or, possibly, human sacrifices were offered. The writer has in several localities found stones in the center of these works which indicated subjection to intense and long-continued heat. Parallel ways, often termed covered ways, because they are supposed originally to have been constructed as the latter name implies, often connect two or more of the geometrical enclosures, or lead from them toward the streams, or to their ancient banks. Their supposed use was to afford protection to those passing to and fro within them. As the rounded embankments of the enclosures would not afford an absolutely impassable wall, it has been conjectured that they were originally surmounted by palisades or palings.
TUMULI.
Stately marble palaces and temples have fallen into shapeless masses of ruin, while the simple mounds erected by a more rude and primitive people, have withstood the elements and retained almost perfectly their original forms and proportions. Therefore, we find scattered throughout a wide country the mound monuments raised by an ancient race. These tumuli were among nearly all races in their infancy, the first objects of which ambition and adoration prompted the erection, the primitive memorials of all peoples. They are the principal storehouse of ancient art; they enclose the sacred altar, reared in the name of a lost religion; they hold in sepulture the bones of the distinguished dead. As disclosed by the pick and the spade, these mounds and their contents serve to give the investigating archm-
14 - HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO.
ologist the most extensive knowledge he can obtain in regard to the customs of their builders, and the condition of the arts and sciences among them.
Most of the mounds are of the kind denominated— sepulchral. They are generally of conical form, and vary in size from six to eighty or ninety feet in height. They usually stand outside of the walls of enclosures, but often occur in localities remote from any other works. There are cases in which they occur in groups, exhibiting a dependence that probably has some meaning. The mounds of this class invariably cover a skeleton, and in some instances more than one. The skelementons most commonly bear evidences of having been enveloped at the time of their interment in bark, coarse matting, or cloth, of which traces and casts nearly always remain. It sometimes happens that the cloth itself still exists, in a highly carbonized condition. Occasionally a rude chamber of stone surrounds the remains. Burial by fire seems to have prevailed among the Mound Builders of the north, and urn burial was more commonly practiced in the south. With the skeletons are found various remains of art, rude utensils of different kinds, ornaments and weapons. The fact that such articles always appear in proximity to the remains indicates that the Mound Builders, like the North American Indians, entertained the superstitious and delusive notion that the implements and weapons would be useful to the deceased in another state. It is vulgarly believed that the ancient race reared mounds over all of their dead, an idea which is quickly dispelled by reflection upon the immensity of their population and the comparatively small number of the mounds. The conclusion to which all archaeologists have come, in regard to this matter, is that only the illustrious chieftains, the rulers or the priests of the race, were honored by the rearing of mounds over their places of sepulture, and that the greater number-the common people-were buried by the process of simple interment. Day after day, and year after year, since the present race pushed westward into the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi, the ploughshare has uncovered remains which have well nigh "returned to the dust whence they came." So common has been the occurrence of unearthing remains in some parts of the country, that the discovery scarcely elicits remark. The wasting banks of the rivers occasionally display vast cemeteries, and names have been given to various localities from such exposures. It is not to be wondered at that where the bones in the mounds have so nearly crumbled into shapeless fragments, those buried in the common plain, and which are necessarily less protected from moisture, should in many cases have passed into that condition nearly or quite indistinguishable from the mould that surrounds them. It is impossible that any but the smallest proportion of these remains should be those of the Indian race. They are of a different and more ancient people. There are, doubtless, grand depositories of the dead who thronged and raised the silent monuments which we see all around us. We know not when we tread the village street or the green turf of the fields, but that we walk over the remains of thousands of forms, which an age ago were pregnant with the same life and spirit of which we are possessed.
Sacrificial or altar mounds have several distinctive characteristics. They usually exhibit stratification consisting of alternate layers of sand, clay and gravel, or pebbles. The strata are not horizontal, but conform to the convexity of the mound. These mounds contain altars of stone or fire-hardened clay, built upon the original level of the earth. Upon them are found ashes, charcoal and calcined bones, indicating sacrifice. Various implements also occur, as well as beads and other ornaments, and pottery. The remains found in the sacrificial mounds are, in numerous cases, in a condition to indicate that the altars were covered over with earth before their fires had ceased burning. Why they were so covered, or why covered at all, are questions which no man can answer. Perhaps it was to conceal them from the profane gaze of the people of another faith.
Temple mounds are not numerous in Ohio, and it is believed du not occur except at Marietta, Newark, Portsmouth and in the vicinity of Chillicothe. They are usually in the form of truncated cones, though sometimes so broad and flat as to make this term hardly applicable to them. It is supposed that they were once surmounted with structures of wood, all traces of which have long ago disappeared.
Mounds of observation are generally situated upon eminences, and it has been demonstrated by actual survey in some parts of the country that they are so situated in reference to each other that signals could easily be communicated along a line or chain of them. It is the supposition that they answered the same purpose as cairns of the ancient Celts—that is, they were signals or alarm posts as well as coignes of vantage and lookout stations. Along the Miami river, says Judge Force, "are dotted small mounds on projecting highlands, which seem to have been built to carry intelligence by signals along the valleys." They are numerous throughout the State.
Memorial or monumental mounds belong to the class of tumuli that were obviously built to perpetuate the memory of some important event. They are the equivalents of the stone heaps raised by the Hebrews and other nations. This class of mounds seldom contain any human remains or other deposits. When they do contain skeletons, as in a few cases, they ale those of Indians interred in shallow graves.
Effrgies, animal mounds, or, as they are sometimes called, emblematical or symbolical mounds, occur in greatest number in Wisconsin. Only a few are known in Ohio, the most notable being the eagle and the alligator in Licking county, and the serpent and egg in Adams county. The last named is upwards of a thousand feet in length and is a very perfect representation.
DEDUCTIONS AND SPECULATIONS.
Taking into consideration the facts here very briefly presented, the reader can form some idea of the probable nature of the ancient people, and of their number. Caleb
HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO - 15
Atwater, in a contribution to the Artherologin Americana, published in 1819, says: "The State of Ohio was probably once much more thickly settled than it now is, when it contains a population of about seven hundred thousand inhabitants." And we may add that the conclusion has been assented to and affirmed by nearly every student of western antiquities. That the Mound Builders were under a single and strong government seems very probable, because under any other the performance of such an immense amount of labor could not well have been secured. It is suggested by Mr. Isaac Smucker that some sort of servitude or vassalage prevailed.
It follows of necessity that if the Mound Builders were a numerous race they were also an agricultural people. The population was much too large to be sustained by the chase, by the spontaneous yieldings of the earth, the products of the streams, or all combined. They were not savages or barbarians, but attained that condition of life which is best described as semi-civilized. The general features of their works and their art remains prove this. They had some knowledge of mathematics and engineering, understood spinning and weaving, and the manufacture of pottery. They were undoubtedly essentially homogeneous in government, religion and general customs. Strongly swayed by a superstitious religion, as they doubtless were, it is not improbable that the government of the Mound Builders was one which sustained and made obligatory the observance of elaborate rites. Their priests were undoubtedly their civil leaders. The great number and vast size of those works which were incontestably constructed for religious observances, proved the great regard that the ancient people had for their religion. The sacrificial character of their worship is beyond a doubt.
When and from whence came the Mound Builders, and when and whither did they go? These are questions to which there comes no answering voice. Only the smallest evidence and that of the apochryphal kind has been received, tending to show that the ancient race had a written language. The two or three engraved tablets that have been discovered, even if genuine, there is reason to believe, will throw but little light upon the origin or subsequent history of the people, should scholars succeed in deciphering them. And it is improbable that any discoveries will ever be made, which will settle these most mooted questions.
Those who do not argue that the Mound Builders were an aboriginal race generally agree that they had their origin in the Orient, or at least in some trans-Pacific region, and that they came to this continent by Behring's straits, and then passing slowly southward and eastward, increasing as they went, they reached the middle region of the northern United States, and from thence, by slow process of extension or migration, made their way southward through the Mississippi valley, and ultimately into Mexico. The resemblances between the tumuli of the United States and the teocalli of Mexico suggest some connection between the Mound Builders and the semi-civilized races that formerly dwelt in the latter country, in Central America and Peru, and who erected the vast structures which lend such an absorbing interest to those regions.
Another theory is that the race instead of journeying southward, improving constantly in condition and increasing largely in population, had their origin in Mexico or some other part of tropical or semi-tropical South or North America, and emigrated northward, gradually retrograding in civilization until they reached the lake region and became so barbarous in their habits of life as to have lost their early habits of industry, their civilized customs and their government. This theory has but little support-its opposite being the one favored by most archaeologists. Beside the fact that the similarity between the ancient works in the northern part of the United States, those along the Mississippi, and those in Mexico, points to their creation by the same race of people, the history and traditions of the early Mexican people, which extend back to the seventh century, afford something of a corroborating nature. The people of Montezuma, as that unhappy ruler informed Cortez, knew by their looks that they were not natives, but strangers, who came from a great distance. Thus it will be seen, if the Mound Builders were the progenitors of the race to which Montezuma belonged, they must have arrived in Mexico prior to the close of the seventh century. The Aztecs are said by Mexican authorities to have arrived in the year 1648. To that race they ascribe the teocalli, with which their country abounds. If we allow ourselves to be influenced by the above date, supposing indeed that the Aztecs were the descendants of the Mound Builders, we must necessarily regard the ancient remains of our country as belonging to a period prior to the date given. The same or an even greater degree of antiquity is indicated by other evidence. The exceedingly decayed condition of the skeletons in the mounds, the amount of vegetable accumulation in the excavations, the age of trees standing upon the mounds and embankments, the shifting of the river channels since the works were constructed on their shores, and the fact that none of the MoundsiBuilders' works are found upon the latest formed terraces, or river bottoms, nor north of the northermost lake ridge, all point to the conclusion that a great time has elapsed since the ancient race inhabited the country. Some of the trees have been known to have an age of from six to eight hundred years, and such trees have been found surrounded with the mouldering trunks of others, undoubtedly of equal original size. Allowance must he made for a reasonable time for the encroachment of the forest after thi: works were abandoned by the builders, and then how great seems their age when we reflect that they are covered by at least the second growth of forest.
Speculating upon a people of a less remote age, we might exclaim with Halleck:
"What tates, if there be tongues in trees,
These giant oaks could tell
Of being born and buried here."
But the hoary antiquity of the stateliest monarchs of the wood cannot carry us back to the time when the builders of the enduring earth monuments dwelt in our
16 - HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO.
land. We can only know that a vast population filled the valleys and the fertile regions, and passed away; that a nation existed and is gone, leaving no page of history to carry through the ages the story of its origin and destiny. All that the student desires to know, that for which he has anxiously but vainly sought, has been engulfed in the illimitable oblivion that holds so much more of the history of human life—how much we cannot tell.
And here another thought arises-the conception of a possibility so stupendous and awe-inspiring, as to render the subject of our former speculation, vast though it is and fraught with mysterious interest, dwarfed by the comparison. Vast as may have been the age that has elapsed since our land has been the theatre of this unknown race, it is but a brief period in the cycles of time that have swept by since the first dawn of the world, and ancient as we are accustomed to regard the Mound Builders of America, they may have been only the last in a series of vanished races of men-the blood of the earth that has gone forth at every pulse beat of the creation, every heart throb of the Infinite.
LOCAL WORKS.
The most important of the Mound Builder remains in Preble county is the defensive enclosure situated at the confluence of Twin creek and Banta's fork, in Lanier township. The embankments here have been rendered less distinct than those of many similar works in other parts of the county. The slow wear of time, and the more telling work of the plowshare, have both had their effect upon the ancient walls, and they retain but little of their original semblance or even of the appearance which they presented to the early residents of the county. That the enclosure was intended for purposes of defence does not admit of a doubt. The site chosen was in itself a natural stronghold. The high land projecting like a wedge between the two streams could easily be guarded against the assault of an enemy, with no other than the advantages which its position affords. The earthworks constructed here would enable a small force of men to hold the situation against large odds, and it was, doubtless, to the ancient people, a practically impregnable fortress. It is very probable that the earth walls carried along the crest of the hill on two sides and across the level from the Twin creek side to the bank of its tributary stream, were surmounted by heavy palings or palisades. Still there is no positive evidence that such was the case, and we only form that conclusion from the fact that indications of such palings have been found elsewhere in defensive enclosures. The area enclosed by the embankments consists of several acres. There was evidently a gateway in the wall extending across the promontory, and there remains some indication of an earthen construction leading down the side hill upon the southeast side, very likely a passage-way by which the occupants of the fort, When in a state of siege, could reach the bed of Twin creek to procure from it water, without being exposed to the missiles of the enemy. The stream which evidently once flowed at the base of the bank has receded to a distance of several hundred feet, and therein is an evidence of the antiquity of the works, though an indefinite one, and of comparatively little value. Banta's fork does not appear to have shifted its channel since the remote time when the fortification was constructed. Several mounds occur at no great distance from this enclosure, and such is their position that it is natural to infer that they may have been used as signal stations or coignes of vantage from which the approach of an enemy might have been observed. This work is by no means a remarkable one, and the interest that would naturally attach to it is materially lessened by its poor state of preservation. We should not have devoted so much space to its description but for the fact that it is the only enclosure known in Preble county.
There are, however, a large number of mounds within the limits of Preble, probably not less than a hundred. But few of them have been. excavated, and none with very remarkable results. Among the most important we may mention the following: A large one on the Ozias farm, east of Lewisburgh, one on the Eaton and Lewis- burgh road, about a mile southwest of the latter place, and quite noticeable from the roadway, especially as one journeys toward Lewisburgh. There is a specimen of the Mound Builders' work on the farm of Franklin Pierce, near Camden, and one in the southern part of Somers township, near Somerville. There is a large mound on the Samuel Bennett farm in Dixon township, two on the Frank Dunlap farm, and another on the corner of Dixon and Israel townships, where the farms of Messrs. Pinkerston and McQuoiston adjoin. Two others in this vicinity are to be found on the John McDivitt farm, near Fair Haven. In Gasper township there are several mounds along Seven Mile, on the Albaugh, Duffield and Abram Sayler farms. From the one on the last named farm two copper axes were taken and an abundance of flints. The mound in the Eaton cemetery is well known, as it gives name to this resting place of the dead. When it was opened to receive the dust of Lowery and his comrades, who fell in 1793, charcoal was found near the base—an indication that it had been an altar or sacrificial mound, or perhaps a place where burned the sacred fire of an unknown religion. There is also a mound on the farm of John Kinkaid, in Washington township, one on the farm of Benjamin Homan, sr., one on the Griffis farm, half a mile from the former. The last mentioned is of good size. In Harrison township there is a mound a quarter of a mile east of Euphemia, and another on the Christian Stone farm, near Scuffletown. In Dixon township the novel sight is to be seen of a house built upon a mound. Near West Florence is a small tumulus upon one of the Kelley farms. The tumuli are also of quite frequent occurrence in Israel township, and in the vicinity of New Paris, Jefferson township, and in the valley of Twin creek. A very fine mound, of large size and beautifully symmetrical in appearance, is to be seen on the Swartzel farm in Monroe township. •
A great number of Mound Builders' implements and
HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO - 17
ornaments have been found in Preble county, and the discoverers have formed them into collections owned into other localities. Smith Hunt, of Richmond, Indiana, has probably gathered more articles from Preble county than any other one man. Many of his purchases and "finds" have been sent to the Rose Polytechnic institute, at Terre Haute, Indiana, as have also many gathered by Mr. G. Dix Hendricks, of Eaton. This gentleman has at various times had in his possession some of the rarest and most valuable archaeological specimens that have been brought to light in Preble county. He has been an indefatigable collector and brought to bear in his work rare judgment, obtaining thereby not only a local but general reputation among archwologists. He has sent many pieces to the Rose Polytechnic institute and to R. W. Mercer, of Cincinnati.
Albert Horn, of Lewisburgh, and Miss Mary Bloom, of Jefferson township, have also made collections, though small ones, and N. B. Stephens, of Eaton, has amassed quite a quantity of specimens, among which are sonic which are very rare and curious. He has a stone axe weighing twelve pounds, a very beautiful piece of workmanship which was found On the Ross Conger farm; a twenty-six-inch roller picked up on the Eli Fisher larch in Washington township, and a large collection of commoner articles. The gem of his collection is a small, hard stone carved in the shape of a canoe, and perforated with two holes through its bottom as if for the purpose of suspending it about the neck of him who was originally its possessor. It is of excellent workmanship, and certainly a unique specimen. It was found on the old Lewallen farm on Four Mile creek, in Dixon township. Mr. Stephens' collection is undoubtedly the best that is owned in the county, both in size and in the variety and value of specimens.
Matthias Disher, of Twin township, has in his possession some fragments of pottery found in a gravel bank on the farm now owned by Ezra Ozias. One of the pieces has upon it an ear-like projection or handle. The vessel was probably whole until broken by the plowshare which unearthed it. It was a jar or urn, and of very good form.
HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO - 17
CHAPTER III.
INDIAN OCCUPATION.
THE principal tribes of Indians within the bounds of Ohio at the earliest period at which definite knowledge was received regarding them, were the Wyandots, called by the French Hurons, the Mingoes, an offshoot from the Iroquois, the Ottawas or Tawas, the Chippesvas, Delawares, the Miamis, and the Shawnees. The Wyandots occupied the country about the Sandusky river; the Delawares the valleys of the Tuscarawas and Musking urn, and the Upper Scioto ; and the Miamis the valleys of the two rivers that bear their name with the country between. The Shawnees had the greatest strength upon the Scioto at the earliest period that the whites went among them, and afterward were most numerous upon the Great and Little Miami. The Mingoes were in greatest numbers on the Ohio river, about Mingo bottom, below Steubenville, and also on the Scioto. The Ottawas had their headquarters in the valleys of the Maumee and Sandusky, and the Chippewas were confined principally to the south shore of Lake Erie. All of the tribes, however, frequented more or less, lands lying outside of their regular divisions of territory, and at different periods their locations varied. Different tribes commingled, too, to some extent.
The Wyandots, according to the best authorities upon aboriginal occupation, were among the earliest red men who dwelt within the territory now included in Ohio. Then came the Delawares, who claimed to be the elder branch of the Lenni-Lenape, and called themselves the grandfathers of the kindred tribes, recognizing only the priority and superiority of the Wyandots. This division has been awarded a high rank by nearly all writers upon the Indians. The Ottawas dwelt originally upon the banks of the Canadian river, remaining there until driven away by the Iroquois; they were then scattered through Canada and Ohio, along the shores of Lake Erie.
As a rule the Ohio Indians were fine specimens of their race—none were superior to the Shawnees and Miamis, between which tribes there existed a long-abiding and warm feeling of. friendship. Little Turtle and Tecumseh were the representative chiefs of these tribes, the former of the Miamis and the latter of the Shawnees.
According to the best traditional authorities the dominion of the Miami confederacy extended for a long period of time over that part of the State of Ohio which lies west of the Scioto river, over the whole of Indiana, the southern part of Michigan and over a large portion of the territory now included in Illinois. The large territory claimed by the Miami's may be regarded as some evidence of the high degree of importance which they maintained as a nation among the Indian tribes of the northwest. The Miami nation or confederacy was composed of four tribes, viz: The Twightwees or Miamis proper, the Weas or Quiatenous, Pinkeshaws and Shockeys. The Miamis proper dwelt where knowledge was first obtained concerning them, almost entirely in the territory now included in southwestern Ohio and southeastern and eastern Indiana. This division was the largest and most powerful one in the confederacy. In the year 1765 the number of the warriors of this tribe was estimated at one thousand and fifty.
They were dwelling at that time in small villages upein the Scioto, the Miami, the Maumee, on the St. Joseph, of Lake Michigan, and upon the Wabash and its tributaries. Branches of the Shawnees, Delawares, Pottawatomies, and other tribes were at various periods permitted to enter and reside at various places within the boundaries of the large territory claimed by the Indians,
18 - HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO.
and hence the presence of the Shawnees in great numbers upon the headwaters of the Miamis. The Shawnees were the strongest and truest allies of the Miami:. They were intimately associated for a long period, and in each of the later Indian wars on the soil of Ohio, those of St. Clair and Wayne, as well as in the war of 1812, they bore together the brunt of the struggle. Although there is considerable conflicting testimony in regard to the early history of the Shawnees, it is generally concluded that they separated from the other Lenape tribes and led for many years a nomadic life in the south, the main body of them finally pushing northward, and encouraged by the Miamis, crossing the Ohio and locating in the Scioto' country. Here they lived until dispersed by the conquering Iroquois in 1672, when they again became scattered wanderers.
Returning in 1740, or soon after, a reunited race, they again took up their residence in the Scioto valley and contiguous territory, the Delawares for that tribe was then occupying the valley—allowing them to take peaceable possession. From the Scioto country they gradually passed westward to the Miami, attracted on the one hand by their old time friends and repelled upon the other by the frequent incursions of the whites, and finally by the advancement of civilization.
The Shawnees like the Miami: were divided into four tribes—the Piqua, Kiskolocke, Mequachuke and Chillicothe. Owing to their extensive wanderings this nation has been designated "the Bedouins of the American Wilderness,"—a term which is certainly not inappropriate when we consider that of all the tribes of the northwest this was the most nomadic in its habits (and indeed, has continued so down to the present time). The Shawnees were implacable enemies of the whites. They were fine specimens of physical manhood, and this fact coupled with their constancy in braving danger and stoicism in enduring the consequences of defeat won for them the appellation "Spartans of the Race." The Miami: were not behind them in powers or other admirable elements of Indian character. To the former nation, however, belonged Tecumseh, who undoubtedly exerted a wider influence than any warrior among the western Indians. "The Little Turtle " of the Miamis was much like the great Shawnee chief, excellent both as battle leader and in the councils of peace ; but students of Indian character have united in giving him a lower rank than Tecumseh.
Preble county appeared to have been neutral ground for several tribes in the latter years of the eighteenth century. As has been shown, it was within the domain of the Miami:, but so far as is known they never had a village of any importance within it, and, for that matter, neither did the Shawnees or any other tribe. Most of the Indians who traversed this portion of territory were Miamis, Shawnees, and Delawares, but it also served as a hunting ground for small parties of Wyandots, Mingoes, and other tribes. Well defined paths traversed the lands of Preble county, from the White waters to the Miamis, and in many places their trails could be easily distinguished several years after the white settlers came into the country. The last time that Indians were known to have camped within the limits of the county was in the winter of 1813-14. Five families of Delawares were located for nearly the whole of that season on section sixteen of Dixon township, on Four Mile creek, south of the Concord road. They were friendly to the whites and their presence was liked by them. They were looked upon as a safeguard against hostile Indians, who at that time were known to be skulking through the country.
LITTLE TURTLE, THE WAR CHIEF OF THE MIAMIS.
This celebrated chief, who was known in his tribe and to the Indians of the Western Confederacy as Meshekeuoghqua, has been mentioned several times in this chapter, and as his name will occur in the chapter following, upon St. Clair's campaign and Wayne's war, we take advantage of this opportunity to present the reader with such facts as are known concerning him. He led the Indians in that terrible battle known as the St. Clair defeat, and doubtless would have commanded the allied tribes who met Wayne had he not counseled peace. He is known to have been the chief of the party who attacked Adair at Fort St. Clair in 1792, and it is supposed that he led the company against which the brave Lieutenant Lowery made the gallant but forlorn fight near the Forty-foot pitch. Little Turtle lived many years after the wars in which he took so prominent a part, and was held in high esteem by many eminent men who became acquainted with him. When the famous traveler and philosopher, Volney, was in America, in 1797, Little Turtle went to Philadelphia, and the great scholar immediately sought acquaintance with the savage. Little Turtle had become convinced that opposition to the whites was useless, and used all of his influence over his nation to secure peace and the adoption of agricultural pursuits. It was to further this end that he went to Philadelphia. His errand was to solicit Congress and the Society of Friends for assistance to carry out his cherished plan, and to make his people an agricultural community. Schoolcraft says of this chief : "He was at once courageous and humane. There have been few individuals among the aborigines who have done so much to abolish the rights of human sacrifice." On the approach of the war of 1812 Little Turtle communicated with William Henry Harrison, then governor of Indiana, expressing his willingness to aid the United States and asserting the friendship of his people. He afterward rendered important service. This celebrated chief is buried at Fort Wayne.
HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO - 19
CHAPTER IV.
ST. CLAIR'S CAMPAIGN-ENGAGEMENT AT FORT ST. CLAIR.
NEARLY all of the Indian tribes of the Northwest Territory maintained an attitude of unceasing, uncompromising, hostility toward the white settlers from the organization of the territorial government in 1788, until the ratification of the treaty of Greenville, otherwise known as Wayne's treaty, in 1795. The campaigns directed against the Indians prior to the organization of civil government had failed to secure a permanent peace. The inhabitants of the county were constantly exposed to, and occasionally suffered from, sudden, stealthy attacks of the savages. Immigration was discouraged and the constant apprehension felt by the scattered pioneers of the territory, led a few to return to the older settlements and prevented those who remained in the wilderness from making the improvements with which they would have surrounded themselves had peace been assured.
The National Government, anxious to bring about a termination of hostilities in the territory, organized a number of military expeditions, the first of which was that of General Harinar, who was then commander in chief of the military department of the West, in 1790. Detachments of the army met with mortifying defeat at the confluence of the St. Joseph and St. Mary's rivers (now Fort Wayne, Indiana), and the campaign failed to give security from the apprehended attack of the Indians on the white settlements.
In 1791 General St. Clair, governor of the territory and a man who had achieved quite a military reputation in the Revolutionary war, organized an expedition which, although stronger than Harmar's army, was nevertheless terribly overwhelmed by the combined Indian forces. Little Turtle, the chief of the Miami's, Blue Jacket, of the Shawnees, and Buckongahelas, of the Delawirres, were engaged in forming a confederacy of all the tribes in the northwest territory, strong enough to drive the whites beyond the Ohio. It was St. Clair's purpose to check this movement, to secure control over the Indians by establishing a line of forts from the Ohio to Lake Erie, and especially to secure the commanding position at the head of the Maumee. General St. Clair began organizing his army at Pittsburgh at the close of April. On the fifteenth of May he reached Fort Washington (Cincinnati), and from this place, after many vexatious delays, he moved forward upon the seventeenth of September to a point on the great Miami (the site of Hamilton, Butler county), where Fort Hamilton was built, the first in the proposed chain of fortresses.
After the completion of Fort Hamilton the army, with the exception of a small garrison, left there, marched on forty-four miles further, and erected Fort Jefferson, about six miles south of the site of Greenville, Darke county. St. Clair and his army in passing northward through the territory now included within the boundaries of Preble county, marched up Seven Mile creek, west of Eaton. [The trace cannot now be definitely located. It was not cut to as great a width as most of the military roads, and the line has been almost wholly obscured by the growth of the forest and the action of the weather upon the soil.] Having garrisoned Fort Jefferson, St. Clair pushed on in the direction of the Indian villages on the Maumee, his force constantly being reduced by desertions, until he had, on arriving at the point where Fort Recovery was afterward built (near the south line of Mercer county), only about fourteen hundred men. At this point, on the fourth of November, 1791, occurred St. Clair's overwhelming defeat, the most disheartening disaster known in the annals of American border warfare. Even the defeat of Braddock was less disastrous. "Braddock's army consisted of twelve hundred men and eighty-six officers, of whom seven hundred and fourteen men and sixty-three officers were killed or wounded. St. Clair's army consisted of fourteen hundred men and eighty-six officers, of whom eight hundred and ninety men and sixteen officers were either killed or wounded. But the comparative losses of the two engagements represent very inadequately the crushing effect of the defeat of St. Clair. An unprotected frontier of a thousand miles, from the Allegheny to the Mississippi, was at once thrown open to the attack of the infuriated and victorious savages."
The Indians in this battle adhered to their usual mode of warfare during the first part of the engagement, and, unseen by the whites, poured into the broken, disorderly ranks of the terrified raw troops, a deadly fire. The battle began about half an hour before sunrise, and continued until half past nine, a constant, fierce and murderous engagement. The men who manned the guns of St. Clair's army were shot down one after another by the skilled marksman among the Miamisis and their confederates, and at length confusion beginning to spread from the great number who were falling in all quarters, "it became necessary to try what could be done by the bayonet." Lieutenant Colonel Darke led a spirited charge against the enemy's left flank, before which the Indians instantly gave way, and were driven back three or four hundred yards. For want of a sufficient number of riflemen, however, the advantage thus gained could not be maintained, and the troops were obliged to fall back in turn. The Indians entered the camp, and were repeatedly charged and driven back, but each time with a terrible loss to the whites. In one charge made by the Second regiment, all of the officers fell but three. The Indians fought with desperation and a fury born of long hatred. It was evident that they were controlled by some great chief, and in accordance with a well laid and thoroughly strategic plan. They made the attack from all quarters, and through the whole carnage maintained the most harassing line of tactics possible. At last, after four hours of unremitting battle, much of it hand to hand fighting, the remnant of St. Clair's army, terror-stricken, demoralized and utterly hopeless of victory, made a flying, disorderly retreat. The camp and artillery were abandoned necessarily, as there were no horses left, and the men in panic fled pell-mell through the woods and southward along the road, by which they had marched two days before, a well organized army of
20 - HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO.
twice as many men. Most of them threw away their arms, ammunition and accouterments, even after the pursuit which was continued about four miles, was abandoned. The road was strewn with them for miles. All day long the rout was continued, and at sunset ended twenty-nine miles from the scene of battle, at Fort Jefferson.
More than a hundred women were with St. Clair's army, following the fortunes of their husbands. The greater number fell victims to the savage enemy, and upon them was wreaked the most cruel vengeance of the victors. Many were found with huge stakes driven through their bodies, pinning them to the ground. The Indians believing that the whites had, for many years, made war merely to acquire land, crammed sand and clay into the eyes and down the throats of the dying and the dead. On the first of February, 1792, the field of battle was reached by General James Wilkinson and a detachment of men, who marched northward from Fort Washington through Preble county. The expedition was made for the purpose of recovering the artillery carriages and burying the dead. The soldiers found indications that the men who had fallen from wounds in the battle had been subjected to the most horrible torture, their limbs having been torn off, and the most indecent indignities perpetrated. Over six hundred skulls were reported to have been found.
It was never known exactly how many Indians fell in this battle, nor, for that matter, how many there were engaged in the fight, though from the extent of the camp which General Wilkinson and his soldiers visited and which was supposed to have been that of the Indians the night before the engagement, their number must have been very large. It has been variously estimated at from one to three thousand. Two thousand is said, by good authorities, to have been the approximate number. It has been generally supposed that Little Turtle,' the great chief of the Miamis, led the Indians in this, their fiercest fight and greatest victory, but Stone, in- his life of Joseph Brant, says that that famous chief was present with a hundred and fifty Mohawk braves, and commanded the warriors of the wilderness.
We have given a somewhat extended account of St: Clair's defeat, because, although it occurred at some distance from the territory of which this volume is the history, a knowledge of the event is necessary to a proper appreciation of the condition of the country at this period, and an adequate understanding of subsequent occurrence in Preble county.
It was after the terrible defeat at the site of Fort Recovery that Fort St. Clair was built just west of the site of Eaton. It was intended as an intermediate place of refuge between Fort Hamilton and Jefferson. The work was performed under the supervision of Major John S. Gano, of the State militia, and by the order of General Wilkinson, who had succeeded St. Clair as commandant of Fort Washington. General Harrison, at that time an ensign, was present during the building of Fort St. Clair, his duty being to command the guard on alternate nights. The detachment of troops detailed for the construction of this fort, and who successfully accomplished it during the winter of 1791-92, suffered very severely front the cold, having no fires and no covering.
Fort St. Clair was a stockade like the other strongholds along the border. It enclosed an area of only a few acres, and contained block-houses and officers' quarters. The forest was cleared away around it for a space of about forty acres. Stockades were usually made by digging a trench along the proposed line of defences, and in this setting the palisades or pickets, of which from one to two or three thousand were required, according to the size of the enclosure. General St. Clair, in his "Narrative," further describes the construction of one of the fortresses in the line which stretched northward from the site of Cincinnati. As its features were, in a general way, similar to those of Fort St. Clair, we transcribe a portion of his description:
• • • It is not trees taken promiscuousty that will answer for pickets. They must be talt and straight, and from nine to twetve inches in diameter, for those of a larger size are top unmanageable; of course, few trees that are proper are to be found without going over a considerable space of woodland. When found, they are peeled, cleared of their branches, and cut into tengths of about twenty feet. They were then carried to the ground and butted, that they might be placed firm and upright in the trench, with the axe or cross-cut saw. Some hewing upon them was also necessary, for there are few trees so straight that the sides of them witt contact when set upright. A thin piece of timber, calted a ' ribbon,' is run around the whote, near the top of the pickets, to which every one of them is pinned, with a strong wooden pin, without which they would decline from the' perpendicutar with every blast of wind, some hanging outward and some inward, which would render them in a great measure usetess. The earth thrown out of the trench is then returned, and strongly rammed to keep the pickets firmly in their place, and a shatlower trench is dug outside about three feet distant, to carry off the water, and prevent their being removed by the rains. " Pickets are set up on the outside, one between every two of the other; the work is then enclosed."
In October, 1792, a great council of all the Indian tribes of the West—the largest council of the kind ever held—was held at Auglaize (Fort Defiance, Ohio), and an armistice was entered into, which the Indians promised to observe until springtime. Peace was not, however, very faithfully observed. It was first broken within the present bounds of Preble county, upon the sixth of November following. On that day about two hundred and fifty Mingo and Wyandot warriors, under the command of Little Turtle, attacked, almost under cover of the guns of Fort St. Clair, a company of one hundred mounted riflemen of the Kentucky militia, commanded by Major John Adair, afterwards governor of Kentucky. Several accounts of this battle or skirmish, differing slightly, have been furnished by participants in the struggle. The first which we produce is condensed in part and in part taken word for word from a letter which James McBride, of Butler county, elicited from Joel Collins, who was in the action, and who afterward was a prominent citizen of Oxford. Writing in 1843 from memory of the events then, fifty years old, the judge stated that these men had been called out to escort a brigade of pack-horses under an order from General Wilkinson. They could then make a trip from Fort Washington, past Fort St. Clair, to Fort Jefferson, and return in six days, encamping each
HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO - 21
night under the walls of one of these military posts for protection. The Indians being elated by the check they had given our army in the preceding year, in defeating St. Clair, determined to make a descent upon the settlement then forming at Columbia, at the mouth of the Little Miami. Some time in September two hundred and fifty warriors struck the war pole and took up their line of march. Fortunately for the infant settlement, in passing Fort Hamilton they discovered a fatigue party, with a small guard, chopping firewood east of the fort. While the men were gone to dinner the Indians formed an ambuscade, and, on their return captured two of them. The prisoners informed the Indians that on the morning previous —which must have been on Friday—a brigade of eighty or one hundred pack-horses, loaded with supplies for the two military posts in the advance, had left Fort Hamilton, escorted by a company of riflemen, mounted on fine horses, and that if they made their trip in the usual time they would be at Fort Hamilton on their return on Monday night. Upon receiving this information Little Turtle abandoned his design of breaking up the settlement above Cincinnati and fell back some twelve or fifteen miles, with a view of intercepting the brigade on its return. He formed an ambuscade on the trace at a well-selected location, which he occupied through the day that he expected the return of the escorts. But as Major Adair arrived at Fort Jefferson on Saturday night, he permitted his men and horses to rest over Sunday, and thus escaped the ambuscade. On Monday night, when on their return, they encamped within a short distance of Fort St. Clair.
The remainder of the letter we quote verbatim. Judge Collins wrote:
The chief of the band of Indians being informed of our position by his runners, concluded that by a night attack he could drive us out of our encampment. Accordingly he left his ambush and a short time before daybreak, on Tuesday morning, the Indians, by a discharge of rifles and raising the hideous yells for which they are distinguished, made a simultaneous attack upon three sides of the encampment leaving that open next to the fort. The horses became frightened and numbers of them broke from their fastenings. The camp, in consequence of this, being thrown into some confusion, Captain Adair retired with his men and formed them into three divisions, just beyond the shine of the fires, on the side next the fort, and while the enemy were endeavoring to secure the horses and plunder the camp—which seemed to be their main object—they were in turn attacked by us—on the right by the major and his division, on the left by Lieutenant George Madison, and in the center by Lieutenant Job Hale, with their respective divisions. The enemy, however, were sufficiently strong to detail a fighting party double our numbers, to protect those plundering the camp and driving off the horses, and as we had left the side from the fort open to them they soon began to move off, taking all with them.
As soon as day dawn offered right sufficient to distinguish a white man from an Indian there ensued some pretty sharp fighting, so close in some instances as to bring in use the war-club and tomahawk. Here Lieutenant Hale was killed, and Lieutenant Madison Wounded. As the Indians retreated the white men hung on their rear, but when we pressed them too close they would turn and drive us back. In this way a kind of running fight was kept up until after sunrising, when we lost sight of the enemy, and nearly all of our horses, about where the town of Eaton now stands. On returning from the pursuit our camp presented rather a discouraging appearance. Not more than six or eight horses were saved—some twenty or thirty lay dead on the ground. The toss of the enemy remained unknown. The bodies of two Indians were found among the dead horses. We gathered up our wounded—six in number, took them to the fort, where a room was assigned them as a hospital, and their wounds dressed by Surgeon Boyd, of the regular army. The wound of one man, John James, consisted of but little more than the toss of his scalp. • • •
Another of the wounded, Lute Voorhes, afterward became a resident of Preble county, and died here not many years since.
" By sunset on the day of the action, we had sonic kind of rough coffins prepared for the slain. For the satisfaction of surviving friends, I will name them, and state that in one grave some fifty paces west of the site of Fort St. Clair, are the remains of Captain Job Hale. Next to him on his left we laid the remains of our orderly sergeant, Matthew English, then followed the four privates, Robert Bowling, Joseph Clinton, Isaac Jett and John Williams. Dejection and even sorrow hung on the countenances of every member of the escort as we stood around or assisted in the interment of these our fellow-comrades. Hale was a noble and brave man, fascinating in his appearance and deportment as an officer! It was dusk in the evening when we completed the performance of our melancholy duty. What a change! The evening before nothing was to be seen or heard in the encampment but life and animation."
Another account of the engagement is given by Major Adair in his report to General Wilkinson. Writing from Fort St. Clair, he says:
This morning, about the first appearance of day, the enemy attacked my camp, within sight of this post. The attack was sudden, and the enemy came on with a degree of courage that proved them warriors indeed. Some of my men were hand in hand with them before we retreated, which, however, we did to a kind of stockade, intended for stables; we then made a stand: I then ordered Lieutenant Madison to take a party and gain their right flank if possible. I called for Lieutenant Hale to send to the left, but found he had been slain. I then led forward the men that stood near me, which, together with the ensigns, Buchanan and Florin, amounted to about twenty-five, and pressed the left of their centre, thinking it absolutely necessary to assist Madison. We made a manly push, and the enemy retreated, taking all of our horses except five or six. We drove them about six hundred yards through our camp, where they again made a stand, and we fought them for some time. Two of my men were shot dead.
"At that moment I received information that the enemy were about to flank us on the right, and on turning that way I saw about sixty of them running to that point. I had yet heard nothing of Madison. I then ordered my men to retreat; which they did with deliberation, heartily cursing the Indians, who pursued us close to our camp, where we again fought them until they gave way; and when they retreated our ammunition was almost expended, although we had been supplied from the garrison in the course of the action. I did not think proper to follow them again, but ordered my men into the garrison to draw ammunition. I returned in a few minutes to a hill to which we had first drawn them; where I found five of my men scalped, who were brought in.
"Since I began to write this a few of the enemy appeared in sight, and I pursued them with a party about a quarter of a mile, but could not overtake them, and did not think proper to go further. Madison, whom I sent to the right, was on the first attack wounded and obliged to retreat into the garrison, leaving a man or two dead. To this misfortune I think the enemy are indebted for the horses which they have got; had he gained their right flank and I once had possession of their left, I think we might have routed them at that stage of the action as we had them on the retreat.
"I have six killed and five wounded; four men are missing. I think they went off early in the action on horse-back and are by this time at Fort Hamilton. My officers and a number of my men distinguished themselves greatly. Poor Hale died calling to his men to advance. Madison's bravery and conduct need no comment; they are well known. Florin and Buchanan acted with a coolness and courage that do them much honor; Buchanan after firing his gun knocked an Indian down with the barrel.
“They have killed and taken a great number of the pack-horses. I intend following them this evening some distance, to ascertain their strength and route if possible. I can, with propriety say, that about fifty of my men fought with a bravery equal to any men in the world; and had not the garrison been so nigh as a place of safety for the bashful I think many more would have fought *elt. The enemy have no doubt as many men killed as myself; they left two dead upon the ground and I saw two carried off. The only advantage they have
22 - HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO.
gained is our horses, which is a capital one, as it disables me from bringing the interview to a more certain and satisfactory conclusion."
22 - HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO.
CHAPTER V.
WAYNE’S WAR.---FALL OF LOWERY.
IMMEDIATELY after the defeat of St. Clair the general government sought, by friendly negotiation, to secure peace, though vainly. Preliminary steps were also immediately taken toward bringing about a reorganization of the army, putting it into a thoroughly efficient condition, and liberally equipped it, that it might be in readiness should necessity require.
General Wayne (the Mad Anthony, of Revolutionary fame, and the companion-in-arms of the President), was chosen by Washington, as commander of the army of the Northwest. He spent the winter of 1792 at Legionville, below Pittsburgh, in collecting and organizing his army, and at the close of April, 1793, moved down the river and encamped near Fort Washington, at a place called "Hobson's Choice." Here Wayne was engaged during the negotiations for peace, in drilling his soldiers, in cutting military roads through the forest, collecting supplies in the Indian country, and in making preparations for an inimediate campaign, in case the efforts of the commissioners to obtain peace should be unsuccessful. On the sixteenth of August, 1793, the commissioners received the final answer of the Indian council, and on the twenty-third they sent messengers to Wayne, informing him of the outcome-the failure to secure peace. The general being authorized to move into the Indian country and wage war against the hostile tribes, did so as early as was possible. He had an army of about three thousand men, consisting in about equal parts of the mounted riflemen, volunteers from Kentucky, and of troops brought together in the vicinity of Pittsburgh, very many of them hard characters, and some from the prisons—outlaws and renegades, who were reckless of what the future had in store for them, and actuated only by the spirit of action and adventure. The Kentuckians were commanded by General Charles Scott, the second ranking offrcer in the army, and who, as well as General Harry Lee (the Light Horse Harry, of Revolutionary fame), and General William Darke had been favorably considered by Washington in connection with the chief command of the expedition.
General Wayne began his march northward into the Indian country on the seventh of October, 1793, not following St. Clair's trace, but cutting a new one for his army on the east side of Seven Mile creek. Many of Wayne's soldiers were superstitious, and had they advanced into the enemy's country upon the road which St. Clair's ill-fated army had taken, they would have felt an apprehension of defeat which possibly might have brought on one, or which would, at least, have had the effect of lessening their faith in the force of arms and demoralizing their spirit. From Fort Hamilton, Wayne's trace diverged more considerably from St. Clair than it had south of that post. He marched through what is now Preble county, a short distance east of Eaton, and that portion of the route lying south of the town has been adopted as the location of a public highway, long known as "the old trace road." The trace crossed Banta's fork at or near the forty foot pitch, and ascended the high bank north at a point on the east side of the present north road from which point it bore a little west of north to Fort Greenville. A portion of the old trail is still marked by a growth of young sycamores, which have sprung up where the forest was cut away. Many of the first settlers saw on the uncovered roots of trees, along the trace, the indisputable marks of wagon wheels or of the heavy ordnance trains. On his way northward on this expedition, Wayne named the streams according to the distance from Fort Hamilton at which he crossed them, as Four Mile creek and Seven Mile creek. The latter had before that time been known and mapped as Ct. Clair's creek.
Of the march, and one of the sad incidents of war, the death of Lowery and his brave companions, which occurred subsequently, we will let General Wayne testify, in his own language. On the twenty-third of October he wrote to the Secretary of War from his camp on the southwest branch of the Great Miami, six miles beyond Fort Jefferson (six miles south of the present town of Greenville, Darke county):
I have the honor to inform you that the region took up its line of march from Hobson's Choice, on the seventh inst., and arrived at this place in perfect order, and without a single accident, at ten o’clock on the evening of the thirteenth, when I found myself arrested for the want of provisions. Notwithstanding this defect, I do not despair of supporting the troops in our present position, or rather at a place called Stillwater, at an intermediate distance between the field of St. Clair's battle and Fort Jefferson. The safety of the western frontiers, and the reputation of the legion, the dignity and interest of the Nation, all forbid a retrograde manouevre, or giving up one inch of ground we now possess, until the enemy are compelled to sue for peace. The greatest difficulty which at present presents itself is that of furnishing a sufficient escort to secure our convoys of provisions and other supplies from insult and disaster, and at the same time to retain a sufficient force at camp to sustain and repeat the attacks of the enemy, who appear to be desperate and determined. We have recently experienced a little check to our convoys, which may probably be exaggerated into something serious, by the tongue of fame, before this reaches you. The following is, however, the fact:
"Lieutenant Lowery of the second sub-legion, and Ensign Boyd, of the first, with a command consisting of ninety non-commissioned officers and privates, having in charge twenty wagons belonging to the quartermaster general's department, loaded with grain, and one of the contractor's wagons, loaded with stores, were attacked early on the morning of the seventeenth inst., about seven mites advanced of Fort St. Clair, by a party of Indians. Those gallant young gentlemen (who promised at a future day to be ornaments to the profession,) together with thirteen non-commissioned officers and privates, bravely fell, after an obstinate resistance against superior numbers, being abandoned by the greater part of the escort, upon the first discharge. The savages killed or carried off about seventy horses, leaving the wagons and stores standing in the road, which have all been brought to this camp, without any other toss or damage, except some trilling articles."
Lowery died urging his men to fight and doing all in his power to beat back the savage horde that had assailed him. His last breath sent forth words of encouragement to the brave men who fought by his side.
The summer of 1794. had well nigh passed before
HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO - 23
Wayne met the Indians of the confederated tribes in battle array, and achieved the brilliant victory which brought long enduring peace to the troubled borderers.
The winter season was regarded as an unfavorable time to carry on hostilities against the Indians, and on its approach General Wayne dismissed the Kentucky militia men and placed the regular troops in winter quarters. He erected Fort Greenville near the site of the present town of Greenville, in Darke county, and made that post his headquarters. On December 23, 1793, he ordered eight companies of infantry and a detachment of artillery to take possession of the ground on which St. Clair was defeated in r 79i, and to erect a fortification at that point. The order was executed, and the new fort was appropriately named Fort Recovery. Soon after the completion of this defence, Wayne received from some of the hostile tribes a message, in which they expressed a desire to make peace with the United States. The terms, however, on which the commander of the army proposed to make a treaty were either evaded or rejected by the Indians, probably because they were led by Lord Dorchester, governor-general of Canada, and others, to believe that Great Britain would, in the course of the year 1794, assist them in their attempt to force the American settlers to retire from the territory lying on the northwest side of the Ohio river. At this period, too, a critical and unsettled state of relations existed between the governments of Great Britain, France and Spain, on the one side, and the United States on the other, and it was only by skillful diplomacy and decisive measures that our government escaped being drawn into the vortex of European politics. But this complication of troubles is too broad for treatment in these pages. It belongs to national rather than local history, and reference is merely made to it that the reader may be reminded of the other perils which surrounded the infant Republic while this harassing Indian war was being waged upon the western border.
On the thirtieth of June, 1794, an escort consisting of ninety riflemen and fifty dragoons, a detachment of Wayne's army, commanded by Major McMahon, was attacked by a large body of Indians, under the walls of Fort Recovery. The Indian force, variously estimated at from seven to fifteen hundred, and probably assisted by a small number of British agents and French Canadian volunteers, made several attacks on the fort within twenty-four hours, and then retired. In these attacks the Americans lost twenty-two men killed, thirty wounded, and three missing. They also lost two hundred and twenty-one horses killed, wounded and missing. In a letter from Wayne to the Secretary of War, dated "Greenville, 7th July, 1794," he says: "The. Indians left eight or ten warriors dead on the field; although they were employed during the night, which was dark and foggy, and carrying off their dead and wounded by torchlight."
Major General Scott, with about sixteen hundred mounted volunteers from Kentucky (the men who had been dismissed in the autumn- previous) arrived at Fort Greenville, and joined the regular troops on the twenty-sixth of July. On the twenty-eighth the entire army commenced their march for the Indian towns on the Maumee. About twenty-five miles from Fort Recovery, on the St. Mary's river, Wayne built a small fortification which he named Fort Adams. The army marched from this point on the fourth of August, and on the eighth arrived at the confluence of the Maumee and Auglaize rivers. The advance of the army carried terror into the Indian country. Wayne, writing upon the fourteenth of August, says :
"I have the honor to inform you that the army under my command took possession of this very important post on the morning of the eighth instant, the enemy on the preceding evening having abandoned all their settlements, towns and villages with such apparent marks of surprise and precipitation, as to amount to positive proof that our approach was not discovered by them until the arrival of a Mr. Newman who deserted from the army at St. Mary's. * * * Thus, sir, we have gained the emporium of the hostile Indians of the west without loss of blood. The very extensive and highly cultivated fields and gardens show the work of many hands. The margins of those beautiful rivers, the Miami of the Lakes (or Maumee), and Auglaize, appears like one continued village for a number of miles above and below this place ; nor have I ever before beheld such immense fields of corn in any part of America from Canada to Ftorida. We are now employed in completing a strong stockade fort, with four good block-houses by way of bastions, at the confluence of the Auglaize and Maumee (on the site of the town by the same name), which I have called Fort Defiance. " * * " Everything is now prepared for a forward move to-morrow morning, toward Roche de Bout, or foot of the rapids. " " Yet I have thought proper to offer the enemy a last overture of peace, and as they have everything that is dear and interesting now at stake, I have reason to expect that they will listen to the proposition * * dispatched yesterday by a special flag (Christopher Miller), whom I sent under circumstances which will ensure his safe return, and which may eventually spare the effusion of much human blood. But should war be their choice, that blood be upon their own heads. America shall no longer be insulted with impunity. To an all-powerful and great God I therefore commit myself and gallant army."
On the fifteenth of August, 1794, General Wayne moved with his forces from Fort Defiance, and on the twentieth he gained a complete victory over the army of Indians. A force of about two thousand men collected near the foot of the rapids, near a British fort, erected subsequent to the treaty of 1783, and in violation of its obligations. After a short and sharp engagement, the Indians fled, and were pursued under the guns of the British fort. The number of Indians in the battle has been estimated all the way from one to two thousand. They were probably in larger number than Wayne's troops actually engaged against them, whose number, there is every reason to believe, was short of nine hundred. Good authorities say that there were in the action four hundred and fifty Delawares, one hundred and seventy-five Miami's, two hundred and seventy-five Shawnees, two hundred and twenty-five Ottawas, two hundred and seventy-five Wyandots, and a small number of Senecas, Pottawatomies and Chippewas. They had about seventy white allies, including a corps of volunteers from Detroit. The loss to Wayne's army was thirty-three killed and one hundred wounded. The Indian loss was more than double that of the Federal army. The woods were strewn for some distance with the dead bodies of Indians and their white auxiliaries—the latter armed with British muskets and bayonets. The Indians were
24 - HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO
commanded in this engagement by the Shawnees' war chief, Blue Jacket.
The Miami chief, Little Turtle, under whom the Indians in 1791 so overwhelmingly defeated St. Clair, was in the battle, but had little share in the control of the forces. Drake, in his Indian Biography, says: Among the earliest settlers in Preble county was Jacob Parker, who was a soldier of Wayne's army, and had encamped during the campaign on the very ground which he afterwards owned, and on which he spent the greater part of his life.
It has been generally said that had the advice of this chief been taken at the disastrous fight * * * with General Wayne, there is but tittle doubt he had met with as ill success as General St. Clair. He was not for fighting General Wayne at Presque Isle, and inclined rather to peace than fighting at all. In a council held the night before the battle he argued as follows: "We have beaten the enemy twice under separate commanders. We cannot expect the same good fortune always to attend us. The Americans are now led by a chief who never sleeps. The night and the day are alike to him; and during all the time that he has been marching on our villages, notwithstanding the watchfulness of our young men, we have never been able to surprise him. Think well of it. There is something whispers to me it would be prudent to listen to his offers of peace." For holding these views he was accused by another chief of being a coward. This ended all further discussion. Little Turtle fought bravely in the battles and its issue proved him a truer prophet than his accuser had believed.
After the engagement of August 20th, generally known as the battle of the Maumee, or the battle of Fallen Timbers, Wayne's victorious army destroyed all the cornfields and the Indian villages, and returned to the mouth of the Auglaize. Indian' hostilities were at an end, and in the summer of 1795 the peace was perfected by Wayne's treaty made at Fort Greenville, where the army headquarters had been again established, in the fall of 1794. The most important of the provisions made at this council, by the action of which the last remnant of Indian title to the lands in this part of the State was removed, are given elsewhere. The Greenville treaty was the negotiation which secured and perpetuated the peace won in Wayne's battle.
Now that we have briefly outlined Wayne's campaign, let us revert to that bloody event which gives local interest to the war, in Preble county, and the memory of which has been so imperishably fixed by the rearing of Lowerey's monument at the Eaton cemetery.
The exact spot where Lieutenant Lowery and his companions were ambuscaded and killed by the Indians is on Lowery's branch of Banta's creek, in the northeastern part of Washington township, and a few rods up the branch from Zion (Lutheran) church. On the day following the fight the bodies of Lowery, Ensign Boyd and thirteen brothers, who gave up life with them before the overpowering force which made that sudden, fierce attack, were removed to Fort St. Clair and buried a few rods southwest of the stockade, side by side. The remains of Lieutenant Lowery were removed on the fourth of July, 1822, and interred in the northwest corner of the old burial ground. The sad but patriotic ceremonial was conducted with military honors, and an appropriate funeral oration was delivered by Jonas A. Mendel. For fifty years the resting place of the other soldiers was under the long grass by the old fort, but on the seventeenth of October, 1843, the fiftieth anniversary of their death, their remains, too, were removed and with the bones of Lowerey, permanently deposited in a beautiful and symmetrically formed mound, one of the many memorials of a lost race, which dot the surface of Ohio and the valley of the Mississippi. On this occasion the late Rev. Charles W. Swain acted as chaplain, and the late A. Haines, sr., delivered an eloquent and appropriate memorial oration. Upon the apex of the mound was reared, through the enterprise of a number of public spirited citizens of Eaton, a marble shaft, suitably inscribed to the memory of the soldiers who sleep at its base. And so the gratitude of the people who have occupied the country, has been shown to a few of those who led the way in the wilderness and assisted in making it possible that the land should be opened to settlement.
As Wayne's army was advancing toward the Indian country in the spring of 1793, and when in that part of the wilderness which is now Butler county, a man by the name of Newman deserted. Wayne, fearing that he would do harm by carrying information to the Indians, sent out a party of men to capture and return him to the camp, where, doubtless, it was Mad Anthony's intention to have him .shot. Jacob Parker was one of the men detailed for this arrest. The little company started out in a northeasterly direction and soon came upon the fugitive's trail through the woods. They followed it the greater part of the day, and when overtaken by nightfall had reached Twin creek. Upon the west side of this stream and about half a mile from the site of West Alexandria, and perhaps eighty rods from the present site of the Dayton and Western pike, the party encamped. In the morning, while some of the men were engaged in preparing breakfast, young Parker took a ramble through the luxuriant forest, and along the ravine running back from the stream. This was about the twentieth of April, and, the season being unusually forward, nature wore a very attractive garb. The loveliness of the locality made a deep impression upon the young man that spring morning, and on returning to the camp he exclaimed to his comrades: "If I live and get safely through this campaign I mean to own this very piece of ground and open a farm here and live and die upon it." The older men laughed at what they regarded as Parker's boyish enthusiasm, but he insisted that he meant to carry out his intention, and should some day own a cultivated farm where all was then an unbroken wild. The subject for the time was forgotten in the discussion that followed upon the feasibility of following further the deserter. It was decided that further pursuit would be in vain, and the men, after partaking of a hearty meal, took up their march for the army, which they regained upon, or near, tilt! site of Eaton. Parker followed Wayne through his victorious campaign, and, when discharged, began to think longingly of the beautiful valley on Twin creek, where he and his comrades had camped. He had saved his pay as a soldier, and, on the declaration of peace, added. to his means by laboring as a cooper in the village of Cincinnati. About 1798, before the lands were in market, he
HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO - 25
visited the cherished site and built there a log cabin. From, that time until the lands were surveyed he remained there off and on, and, as soon as he was permitted, he purchased the quarter section, of one hundred and sixty acres of land, including the very spot he had encamped upon. Here he lived until his death, February z6, 1848, thus fulfilling his boyish prediction which had been laughed at by the older soldiers. Jacob Parker, the humble hero of this little incident of Wayne's campaign, was one of the most worthy and well-liked of Preble's pioneers. He was born in New Jersey in 1778, and was, therefore, about seventy years of age at the time of his death.
HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO - 25
CHAPTER VI.
ADVENT OF THE WHITE MAN IN SOUTHERN OHIO, AND
SETTLEMENT OF PREBLE COUNTY.
THE adventurous French explorers, Hennepin and LaSalle, who in 1679 steered the keel of civilization through Lake Erie and touched its south shore, were the first white men whom we know set foot upon the soil which now constitutes Ohio. The year following, the French had a trading station upon the Miami of the Lakes (Maumee), a few miles upon the site of Toledo, and, according to Bancroft, they had a route through the wilderness from Canada to the Mississippi, by the way of the Maumee, Wabash and Ohio rivers, in. 1716, and a little later another upon the site of Erie, Pennsylvania, by the way of the Allegheny and Ohio.
Vague traditions have been handed down, asserting 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 royal governor of Pennsylvania issued licenses for the carrying on of trade with the Indians as far west as the Father of Waters. In 1748 a trading station was established at the site of Sandusky, by the French, and in the same year the English explored the Ohio as far as the falls.
George Crogan and Andrew Montour, the latter a, half-breed son of a Seneca chief, traversed the wilderness in the summer of 1748 as the bearers of prints and presents from Pennsylvania to the Miami Indians. In return for these gifts the Indians granted the whites the right to build a stockade and establish a trading station at the mouth of Loramie's creek upon the Great Miami, within the bounds of the present county of Shelby. Accordingly a tort or stockade was built which was called Pickawillamy. It occupied the site of the subsequent station, generally known and often referred to in western history as Loramie's store. Fort Pickawillamy has been cited by some writers as the first point at which the English effected a settlement in Ohio. The building which was undoubtedly the first erected by the English on the soil of the State was destroyed in June, 1752, by a force of French, Canadians and Indians. The French traders along the Ohio and its tributaries, were pretty generally superseded by the English, and the enterprising and adventurous spirits from the settlements in Pennsylvania and Virginia, about the middle of the eighteenth century, and they maintained the supremacy peaceably until 1784. Christopher Cist and Crogan, in 1750, explored Ohio and passed near, if not into, the present bounds of Preble county. They reported that nothing was wanting but cultivation to make the territory which they had traversed a most beautiful country. The Rev. David Jones (Chaplain Jones of Revolutionary fame) made a tour through a large part of the territory now included in the bounds of Ohio, in 1752 and 1753, and from that time onward, beside the traders and explorers, the country was seen by many who were engaged in military expeditions against the Indians, among whom may be named Colonels Broadstreet, Bogart, McDonald, William Crawford, George Rogers Clark, Edwards, Tod, Bowman, Lockry, Broadhead, and Logan, Lord Dunmore, Israel Putnam, General Lachlin McIntosh, Daniel Boone, and Simon Kenton. Through the observations of these men and a host of others the wilderness was becoming known, and many had grown to look forward to it fondly as a prospective place of residence.
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, it became the field for the exercise of the zeal and bravery of the Moravian missionaries. The trials of these apostles of religion, the toils and privations of Frederick Post, John Heckwelder, and David Zeisberger, upon the Muskingum from 1772 to 1782, form one of the most interesting chapters in early. State history, but it is beyond our province to here produce the story of the missions and the horrible massacre which ended their existence. We only refer to the subject to remind the reader of the famous men who were in this then but little, known "far west," and to give a suggestion of the history that was being made long before the practical exercise of civil authority, and before the country was formally opened for permanent settlement.
By some authorities it is claimed that credit should be given these Moravians for establishing the first settlement in Ohio, intended to be permanent. The design of the founders of the mission station was doubtless to maintain them for an indefinite period, and had Salem and Schonbrun and Gnadenhutten not been wiped out in blood they would doubtless be to-day in existence, the oldest settlements in Ohio. However this may be, none deny to Marietta the honor of being the oldest permanent settlement in the State. An ineffectual attempt was made by four families to found a settlement at the mouth of the Scioto in 1785, but it remained for General Rufus Putnam and his Massachusetts colony, associates in the Ohio company to establish at the mouth of the Muskingum, on the seventh of April, 1788, the pioneer place of permanent habitation in our State-Marietta, so named after Marie Antoinette, the then ruling queen of France.
26 - HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO.
Not long 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, and consisting of about twenty persons, landed sometime in November, 1788, at the mouth of the Little Miami, within the limits of a tract of ten thousand acres, which. Colonel Stiles had purchased of Judge Symmes. They constructed a log fort or stockade, and laid out the village of Columbia. The second party, twelve or fifteen in number, was formed at Limestone (now Maysville), Kentucky, by Matthias Denman and Robert Patterson. After much difficulty and danger, caused by floating ice in the river, they made a landing opposite the mouth of the Licking river. The name adopted for the proposed town, says Burnet in his. "Notes," was "Losanteville," which had been manufactured by a pedantic foreigner whose name, has unfortunately been forgotten. It was formed, as he said, from the words .Le, os, ante and vale, which he rendered, "the village opposite the mouth." The proposed town was never laid off, but upon its intended site there was, however, laid out another village, according to a new plat—the village which is now grown into the populous, prosperous "Queen City of the West." The third party of pioneers in the Miami country was under the immediate supervision of Judge Symmes. Leaving Limestone on the twenty-ninth of January, 1789, the party landed early in the following month, at the point now known as North Bend, and so called, because the most northern bend which occurs on the Ohio south of the Kanawha. For some time it was a matter of doubt as to which of the rival settlements would eventually, as the western world was populated, become a great town. Columbia, for some time, maintained the lead, and even North Bend was considered to have advantages over Cincinnati.
During the time these settlements were making in the Symmes purchase, the southeastern part of Ohio was penetrated by the offshoots from Marietta, and the boundaries of civilization were slowly pushed forward along the river. On April 11, 1789, settlements were begun at Belpre (the French for beautiful meadow), fifteen miles below Marietta, and soon after at Newberry, twenty-five miles below, and also at Waterford and Duck creek. In the autumn of 1789 a settlement was made at the Big Bottom, on the Muskingum, about thirty miles above Marietta. The French settlement at Gallipolis was made in the summer of 1791. * Next after the laying
out of Gallipolis was the beginning made at Manchester on the Ohio, in Adams county, by Nathaniel Massie, and
* Although the French emigrants did not arrive until the summer of 1791, and after Massie had located Manchester, their village (Gallipolis), was laid out and made ready for them by the Ohio company, and when Manchester was founded there were residing at the former place a company of forty men from Marietta. Historians usually give Gallipotis the third place in the order of settlement, and Manchester the fourth. Should the consideration of priority in settlement, however, be based upon actual occupation of each site by permanent residents, Manchester would be entitled to rank third, and Gallipolis would of course be fourth. In speaking of these places as the third and fourth settlements in the State, Marietta and its offshoots are considered as one settlement, and the trio in the Symmes purchase collectively as another.
about thirty families from Kentucky, in the spring of 1791.
The settlements made up to 1791 and during 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 to number six hundred souls, and the village was composed of more than a hundred log cabins and fifteen framed houses.
In December, 1794, the town of Hamilton 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, had been the frontier settlement in the Miami country. In 1796 Chillicothe was settled, and the same year pioneers began to penetrate the northern part of the State, and Cleveland was laid out at the mouth of the Cuyahoga. At the close of 1798 that portion of the northwestern territory now included in the State of Ohio had a population of about five thousand persons. This population was chiefly in the valleys of the Muskingum, Scioto, the Miamis, and the small tributaries of these rivers within half a hundred miles of the Ohio. No portion of the country received a greater accession of settlers than the valleys of the Miamis. Nowhere was the development more marked or rapid, and nowhere was the prospect of the pioneers more alluring.
SETTLEMENT OF PREBLE COUNTY.
It is probable that a few "squatters" were in the territory now constituting Preble county as early as 1796, but the permanent settlement cannot be said to have begun until 1798.* Preble county now contains about five times as many inhabitants as there were in the whole state of Ohio in that year. The southern part of the county was first settled, and, to be more specific, the first township which had a permanent white resident was Gratis. In all probability that first resident, the pioneer of Preble county was John Leslie, who, according to the best authorities, came into the wilderness in 1798. He located on Elk Creek, and upon what is now known as section thirty-six, the extreme southeastern portion of the county, and that which was nearest to the settlements already made in the Miami valley. All northward of this locality was then an unbroken wilderness, and the Indian boundary but a few miles away. Southward there was a scanty fringe of settlements along the Ohio and a sparse sprinkling along its more important tributaries. The same year that John Leslie made his settlement, or the year following, Henry Phillips, John
The topic of settlement here only touched upon, and treated in a general way, is amplified in the several township histories, and the record of early settlers, in fact, forms, as it should, the greater part of each and every one of the chapters.
HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO - 27
Phillips, Hezekiah Phillips and John Long arrived in the county, and located in the same vicinity. About the same time that these settlers came in Jacob Parker* took up a residence in the woods on Twin creek, in what is now Lanier township, a short distance from the site of West Alexandria. The southwest corner of Israel township was settled in 1799, by William Huston, the Ridenours, the Kingerys, and some others. James Ochletree built the first mill in the county on Four Mile creek. Somers township was settled near the site of Camden, about 1802, by the Hendricks, Pottengers, Bennetts, Beasleys, Mores, and Smiths. Henry Paddock, Eli Dixon, Reuben Kercheval and a few others settled on Four Mile creek, in Dixon and Jackson townships, about the year 1804. In all probability Eli Dixon was the pioneer of Dixon township, John Harding and the Wades settled on Elkham creek, in Jackson township, about the same time, and were among the first in the township. Peter Vanausdel, John Clawson and Albert Banta were among the early settlers of Lanier, coming in, however after Jacob Parker, already mentioned. Among the earliest settlers of Gasper township were Gasper Potter (after whom it was named), Stephen Albaugh, Silas Dooley, sr., Robert Runyon, William Phillips, Phillip Lewellan, and the Duns. In Twin township the first settlers were the Robertsons, Dickeys, Nesbits, Ozias, and Vanwinkles. The pioneers of Harrison township were Joseph Singer, who arrived as early as 1803, Martin Rice, Tobias Tilman, Jacob Loy, James Abbott, Zachariah Hole, Alexander McNutt, and others. In Jefferson township the first settlers were the Purviances (among them, David, who at an early day ably represented the district in the State senate), the Flemings, Marshals, and Irelands. In Washington William Bruce, Cornelius Vanausdel, David E. Hendricks, Walter Buell, Alexander C. Lanier, John Aukerman, John Mills, John Goldsmith, and John Meroney, were among the first residents. Monroe was the last township in order of settlement, its lands being refused by the pioneers because fiat and wet. Its first settlers were the Armatouts, Shurleys, Adamses, Millers, Marshalls, Doyles, Davisons, Browns, and Coopers.
* For the story of Jacob Parker's settlement see the chapter on Wayne's campaign.
HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO - 27
CHAPTER VII.
A PICTURE OF THE PIONEERS.
THERE is a corps of active, brave men, usually volunteers, in advance of nearly every great and thoroughly organized army. It is their self-imposed duty to go ahead, and with axe and pick prepare the way for the fighting rank and file that follows. They are called pioneers. Beside the implements of labor they bear arms, for their position is a dangerous one. They are obliged to keep a constant lookout for an ambush, and they march on in momentary fear of a sudden attack, for the enemy, familiar with the land they are invading, and which to there is a terra incognito, full of terrible possibilities, is liable at any moment to sweep down upon tem, or pour into their midst a volley of arrows or musket balls.
The Virginians, Pennsylvanians, North Carolinians and Kentuckians who pushed their way into the great wilderness of southwestern Ohio, were the pioneers of one of the grandest armies earth ever knew. An army whose hosts are still sweeping irresistibly onward, and which, now after more than four score years, has not fully occupied the country that it won. It was the army of peace and civilization, which came not to conquer an enemy in blood and carnage and ruin, but to subdue a wilderness, by patient toil; to make the wild woodland blossom as the rose, to sweep away the forest, till the virgin soil, make fertile fields, and hew out houses which were to. become the abodes of peace and plenty. The pioneers were the valiant vanguard of such an army as this.
The hardy, resolute pioneers who penetrated the vast unknown land northwest of the Ohio, who settled along the Miamis and west of them in Preble county and the surrounding region, found a land as fertile and as fair as heart could wish. The long, cool aisles of the forest led away into mazes of vernal green, where the swift deer bounded by unmolested and as yet unscared by the sound of the woodman's axe or sharp ring of the rifle. All about them were displayed the lavish bounties of nature. The air was fragrant with the thousand odors of the woods in early spring. Underneath the giant oaks and sugar trees, the low-branched beeches, the walnuts and the' chestnuts and the sycamores, the ground was jeweled with strange and brilliant flowers, and the rich sweet grass, green to the water's edge, in the fertile valleys of the 'streams.
The pioneers could enjoy the pristine beauty of the scene, but they had before them the stern, hard realities of life. They could enjoy the vernal green of the wide extending forest, and'the evidences of the fertility of the country they had come to inhabit; they could look forward and fondly anticipate the life they were to lead in the midst of all this beauty, and the rich reward that was to be theirs for the cultivation of the mellow soil, but they had first to work—there was no time for lotus- eating ease in this valambrosia. The seed-time comes before the harvest in more senses than one.
Serious dangers, too, these pioneers were exposed to. The Indians could scarcely be trusted, or, at least, such was the feeling among the settlers. They were constantly apprehensive of trouble. The larger wild beasts were a source of much dread, and the smaller ones the source of great annoyance. Besides these was the liability to strange forms of sickness which always exists in a new country, and which was doubly feared as the settlers were beyond the reach of medical assistance. In the midst of all the loveliness of the surroundings there was a feeling of loneliness which could not be dispelled,
28 - HISTORY OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO.
and this was a far greater, source of trial to the men and women who first dwelt in the western country than can be imagined. The deep-seated, constantly recurring sense of isolation, made many stout hearts turn back to the older settlements and the abodes of comfort, the companionship and sociability they had abandoned to take up a new life in the western woods.
The pioneers making their way to what is now Preble county, by the Ohio in boats and thence northward through the forest, or all of the distance overland in the great Canastoga wagons, arrived at the place of their destination with but very little with which to begin the battle of life. They had brave hearts, however, strong arms, and were possessed of an invincible determination. Frequently they came on without their families, to make a beginning, and, this being accomplished, would return to their old homes for their wives and children. The first thing done by the pioneer-who brought his family with him was to provide a shelter, however poor and simple, from the rain. This having been done, ground was made ready for some crop, usually corn, as that was the surest. The trees were girdled, the underbrush cut away, if there chanced to be any, and the ground swept with fire. Ten, fifteen, twenty, or even thirty acres of land, might thus be prepared and planted the first season. In the autumn the crop would be gathered and garnered with the least possible waste, for it was the food supply of the pioneer and his family, and life depended upon its preservation.
While the crop grew, the pioneer busied himself with the building of his cabin, which must answer as a shelter from the storms of the coming winter, a protection from the ravages of wild beasts, and possibly as a pl