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"HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY. 29
CHAPTER III.
FIRST PIONEER SETTLEMENTS - THE FRONTIER PERIOD.
[BY JOHN B. JEWETT]
The United States in 1789—The Northwest Territory—Visit to the Miami
Country—STlTES AND SYMMES —ORGANIZATION OF THE FlRST COLONIES —SETTLE-
MENT OF COLUMBIA. LOSANTlVILLE. AND NORTH BEND-COVALT STATION — Begin-
Ing of Indian Hostilities - Fort Washington Built—Hamilton County
Formed—New Settlements—Indians Attack Dunlap's Station - Indian War-
fare Continued — First Townships Formed—Mercersicrgu—White's Station
—Runyan's Station —White' Station Attacked—Increase of Settlements
and Townships - Close of the Frontier Period.
The United States in 1786 —the Northwest Territory.
THE United States of America, in the year 1786. was quite a different nation from the United States which to-day commands the respect of the greatest powers of the world. There were then thirteen States, instead of forty-four; the territory in their possession was not a fourth of what it now is, and their population not one fifteenth. The states were united more in name than in fact The Confederate Government, organized toward the close of the Revolution, in the hope of strengthening the bonds of union between the Colonies, hao demonstrated its incompetency more clearly every year of its existence. At one time, the executive committee which acted during each adjournment of Congress came to a dead-lock upon an important question, and went home, leaving the country absolutely without a general government; and when at length there begun to be violent out-breaks of popular feeling, and even armed insurrection, in resistance to the collection of taxes necessary to discharge the great war debt. Cougress proved so powerless that the State most violently threatened with misrule was compelled to depend upon voluntary aid of neighboring States in restoring order.
In this year, too, the people of the United States were beset by evils which came even nearer home than bad government. The war had of course made the fortunes of many, bnt it had ruined the fortunes of more. The majority were poorer, in everything but liberty, than even iu the frugal period which pieceded the revolt of the Colonies. The scarcity of good money had driven all classes into debt, and, because of the same scarcity, the harsh laws for the collection of debts, which vet existed as memorials of Uolouial aristocracy, were eu forced to the last point of severity. No class suffered so heavily from the general destitution as the disbanded soldiers of the Revolutionary army. Patriotism, like virtue, is most poorly rewarded...
over, the country became tranquilly indifferent to the claims of its defenders, and the veterans who had risked life, and lost health, in so many weary campaigns, for some time had great difficulty in obtaining the small wages due for their services. The separate States at length paid the claims, but such slander means were hardly sufficient, alone, to insure their possessors permanent home, or even a very long subsistence, unless invested where property and comfort were to be bad more cheaply than in the exhausted districts of the East. Fortunately for the veterans, for others who suffered like them, and for the progress of the nation, their country was able to offer them such a refuge.
HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY. 37
Limestone as a military escort, had refused to build a fort at North Bend, and had taken his troops to the Falls of the Ohio. Ensign Luce, who had been dispatched to North Bend with a smaller detachment in his place, on the 21st of May undertook to escort a number of citizens from North Bend to a point farther up the river. On the way their boat received an unexpected volley from the shore, which killed a soldier and wounded five others. Hardly a month of the year passed without bereaving some family among the settlers. Abraham Covah. a member of Capt. Covalt's household, "one of as brave souls of Pennsylvania as ever inhaled the morning air," was killed in June, while hunting with four companions in the Little Miami valley, some miles above Covalt Station. Another young hunter named Abel Cook, the chosen friend of the gallant Covalt, was assassinated in the forest at Round Bottom near the station, a month later, as he was returning from a visit to Columbia. His body was discovered by some of his own associates, who carried it mournfully to the station, and buried it, with touching propriety, beside the fresh grave of his youthful friend.
The effect of these murders, and of others like them, may be easily imagined. Immigrants bound for the West paused in consternation, and many of the families already in the Miami Country fled into Kentucky. North Bend alone lost over fifty inhabitants after the attack upon Ensign Luce's party. In the midst of this panic, however, the leaders of the colonists stood firm, and redoubled their demands upon the government for protection. Symmes declared that Capt. Kearsey, who had deserted the settlers for the silly reason that Symmes located his village at North Bend, instead of at the mouth of the Great Miami, was to blame for the disasters which followed his departure. Fortunately it was the government of the new Union that was addressed, and not the government under whose feeble auspices the colonies were planted; and at the head of it sat the man who, of all American statesmen, most deeply sympathized with the western pioneers in their struggle — Washington himself. Maj. John Doughty, a capable officer of the army then stationed at Fort Harmar, was ordered to erect a fort in the best position for the defense of the Miami settlements. He reached the Miami about the time that young Covalt was killed, bringing a strong force of infantry and a company of artillery. He chose to construct the fort at Losantiville, which was now really a village, though a smaller one than either Columbia or North Bend. In the meantime detachments of his troops were stationed at the other three settlements, and the courage of the people began to revive.
The presence of these forces by no means overawed the watchful enemy of the forest, who lurked about the settlements...
38 HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.
down the Ohio was to give the settlers of the Miami Country a constitutional government. The whole of the tract which Stites had explored three years before, and which was still in almost the same condition of aboriginal wildness as then, was incorporated into one county, which St. Clair requested Judge Symmes to name.
Symmes chose the name of Washington's great secretary, Hamilton, who was one of his stanch political friends; the governor himself, in establishing the seat of the county at Losantiville, changed the name of the hamlet to Cincinnati. He next created a court of common pleas, of three judges and a clerk, commissioned three justices of the peace, and appointed several citizens as officers to organize the able-bodied men of the settlements into a regiment of militia. The gentlemen honored with these offices were almost exclusively selected from Cincinnati and Columbia.
The organization of the county was proclaimed on the 2nd of January, and very shortly afterward the governor went on to Fort Vincennes, where be hoped to meet the chiefs of the several Indian tribes and offer them such terms as would bring peace to the harassed and weary settlers. But the hope was vain. About two months after he left, two more settlers were killed at Covalt Station, while at work in the woods near the fort making shingles. One of them was the brave Capt. Covalt himself.
Notwithstanding the steady presence of danger, a large number of the poorer class of settlers, who bad been increasing at Cincinnati faring the winter, determined to... out farther into the forest, and begin tbe cultivation of their land.
Some of these people were so deficient in means, according to one of the most quoted of the early chroniclers, that the chances of massacre appeared to them no more desperate than their condition at Cincinnati... starvation.
They accordingly formed themselves into parties, and were led forth, apparently, by the proprietors who had granted them lands. Symmes himself lending some of...
Three new stations were thus established during the month of April, at widely separated points in the lower portion of the extensive county. The most remote of these isolated settlements was established under the leadership of John Dunlap, one of Symmes' numerous surveyors, upon the eastern bank of the Great Miami, eighteen miles northwest of Cincinnati, in a position almost encircled by a turn in the river. Some thirty persons went with Dunlap to this spot, and constructed a stockade fort similar in plan to Covalt's, but much more carelessly and inefficiently finished. The area of the fort was one acre square. Dunlap. who was an immigrant from Colraine. Ireland, gave the name of his native town to the place; but the pioneers of the county, as was usual in the frontier districts of the West, knew the station by the name of its chief personage. The township in which the now empty site of the fort lies has inherited the Irish title. The names of *ome of Dunlap's settlers were Gibson, Larrison, Crum, Hahn and Birket
The second of the three stations of 1790 arose under the direction of Col. Israel Ludlow, the partner of Denmau and Patterson, six miles north of Fort Washington, in the valley of Mill creek, within tbe present boundaries of Cincinnati.
The third party went eastward, out of tbe Miami Purchase entirely, and built a strong blockhouse on the east side of the Little Miami, about a mile above Columbia, within the territory which Virginia reserved upon ceding her western claims to the Confederate Government in 1784. The spot occupied by the blockhouse is in Anderson township, at the foot of the hills opposite Flinn's Ford, one of the abandoned pioneer crossings of the Little Miami. This was Gerard's Station lts principal inhabitants were the families of John Gerard, Joseph Martin, Capt James Flinn, Stephen Bette. Joseph Williamson, Stephen Davis, Richard Hall and Jacob Bachhofen.
Tha increase in tbe nnmhar of settlements gave the Indians larger opportunities for theft and murder. Manv borsea were stolen, some of the families at Columbia
HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY 39
were rubbed of household property almost before their eyes, and in October, after Gen. Normal's main forces had left the county on their unfortunate expedition to the Indian towns of the Maumee. Jacob Wetzel, of Cincinnati, was attacked in the thickets of Millcreek Bottom by a savage, whom he managed to slay in a thrilling hand-to-hand combat, just in time to escape a band of his adversary's comrades, who were scouting near by.
The bloody defeat of Harmar encouraged the northern warriors to make a descent upon Hamilton county in full force. At daylight on Monday, Jauuary 10, 1791. the inmates of Dunlap's Station, the farthest outpost in the dreary wilderness, were startled... their slumbers by the dreaded Indian alarm, and sprang up to find the woods around their fort swarming with an army of redskins, commanded by the Shawnee chieftain, Blue Jacket, aod the detected cutthroat renegade. Simon Girty.
The garrison consisted only of a detachment of thirteen soldiers from Fort Washington, under Lieut. Kingsbury. and ten able-bodied settlers, while the savages numbered several hundreds; but the chiefs would give no satisfactory promise of quarter. the besieged naturally refused to surrender. A continuous fire was poured in... the stockade; and firebrands shot upon tbe roofs of the cabins, till midnight of the first day, when the ... retired a little distance from the fort, and burned to death a prisoner named Abner Hunt, whom they bad captured a day or two before their appearance at the station. The next morning a brave private soldier named Wiseman escaped from the statiou amid a shower of bullets, and carried the news of the attack to Fort Washington. He returned upon the third day with a party of Harmar's regulars and a company of mounted militia from Columbia, but the Indians had ... arrived, and were already beyond pursuit.
INDIAN WARFARE CONTINUED — FIRST TOWNSHIPS FORMED — MESCEBSBCROH — WHITES
STATION — RC.NVAN'l ... STATION.
The attack upon Dunlap's Station, though unsuccessful, sent a thrill of alarm even through Kentucky; and the pioneers continied to suffer so heavily from small raiding parties during tbe year, that the greater part of the immigrants who ventured into the county stopped at Cincinnati, under the protecting gees of Fort Washington; improvement was held in restraint at the old stations, and no one dared open a new settlement at all.
Such settlers as were resolute enongh to carry on their labors in wood and field, usually took the frontier precaution of working in band, part of each band being posted so as to keep a sharp lookout for danger. If the enemy appeared in large force, sentinels and laborers fled pellmell for their fort, cabins, or other places of security. As an example of the activity required for this mode of business, it may be mentioned that in May two citizens of Cincinnati, named Scott and Shepherd, were chased from their cornfield, a mile out, almost into the streets of the village, not having time to bring ... their plow.horses, which fell into the bands of the pursuers.
Some necessary household errands were discharged at the risk of life and liberty.
One day in September. James Newell, a resident of Columbia, started to take a quantity of corn to the mill at Covalt Station. At a place about halfway between the two'settlements he met Capt Anron Mercer and Capt. Ignatius Ross, two hardy veterans... of his village, who were returning home from the mill to which he was going.
The two Captains had seen Iudian signs up the river, and earnestly advised Newell to postpone tbe trip, and turn back with them to Columbia. Newell determined to proceed. He had scarcely parted from his friends when they heard the report of a rifle in the direction which be had taken. No other sound followed. Wondering whether they had heard Newell's weapon, or an Indian's. K... and Mercer hurried back. Newell lay dying by the horse-path; his assassin. who bad been concealed in tree near the trail, having made good his escape. The body of Newell was carried..."
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Biography
Additional Physical Format: (OCoLC)34277733
Material Type: Biography, Document, Internet resource
Document Type: Internet Resource, Computer File
OCLC Number: 181315855
Notes: "Illustrated."
Includes index.
Description: 1056 p. : map, ports.
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Bibliographic information
Title History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio: Their Past and Present, Including Early Settlement and Development ; Antiquarian Researches ; Their Aboriginal History ; Pioneer History ; Political Organization ; Agricultural, Mining and Manufacturing Interests ; a History of the City ..., Volume 2
Volume 2 of History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio: their past and present, including...biographies and portraits of pioneers and representative citizens, etc
County and regional histories of the "Old Northwest.": Ohio
History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio: Their Past and Present, Including Early Settlement and Development ; Antiquarian Researches ; Their Aboriginal History ; Pioneer History ; Political Organization ; Agricultural, Mining and Manufacturing Interests ; a History of the City, Villages and Townships ; Religious, Educational, Social, Military and Political History ; Statistics ; Biographies and Portraits of Pioneers and Representative Citizens, Etc
Publisher S. B. Nelson, 1894
Original from the University of Wisconsin - Madison
Digitized 14 May 2012
Length 1056 pages
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Abebooks
Your Want: # A20844810
Title: History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County;
This item is printed on demand. 282 pages.
Bookseller: ABC Books, Lowfield Heath, CRAWL
Price: US$ 21.23
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OHIO GENEALOGY EXPRESS
Welcome to
Hamilton County, Ohio
HISTORY - 1894
Source: History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio
their past and present
Illustrated.
Published Cincinnati, Ohio; S. B. Nelson & Co., Publishers;
S. B. NELSON. J. M. RUNK
1894
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OHIO GENEALOGY EXPRESS  | Welcome to Hamilton County, Ohio
HISTORY - 1894
|
Source: History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio
their past and present
Illustrated.
Published Cincinnati, Ohio; S. B. Nelson & Co., Publishers;
S. B. NELSON. J. M. RUNK
1894
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