(page 59)
CHAPTER V.
Dayton Township-Small Fees Received by Officials-Taxes in 1798-D. C. Cooper, Justice of the Peace from 1799-1803-Newcom's Tavern-The Tavern Used as the First Court House and Jail-First Store-Newcom's Corner, the Business Center of Dayton-A Typical Frontier Tavern-Dayton Contained Nine Dwellings in 1799-Several Roads Opened--Monument Avenue Cleared-Main Street a Narrow Wagon Road Settlements Few and Far Between- Hardships of Pioneer Life-- Indian War-Apprehended-Block House Built-School Opened in the Block House-First Distillery Started-Cooper's Saw Mill-Corn Cracker-Hogs Introduced-Feed on Mast-Attacked by Wild Animals--First Flat Boat Launched-Sheep Introduced-Cost of Groceries at Cincinnati-Little Money in Circulation-Business Conducted by Barter-Value of Different Kinds of Skins--Cut Money-McDougal's Store-Trade with the Indians-First Child Born in Dayton-Taxation in 1800-First Wedding-Census in 1801-First Minister-Methodists-Presbyterians-Log Meeting House-First Grave Yard--John W. Van Cleve's Description of Dayton in 1805 -Presbyterians Worship in Newcom's and McCullum's Taverns--Worship in the Court House--First Brick Presbyterian Church-Rev. James Welsh, First Pastor William Kin-John H. Williams.
DAYTON was originally in Hamilton County, out of which several other counties were afterward carved. Dayton Township was formed in the winter of 1796-1797. It was of great size, and included the whole of what are now Wayne, Mad River and Van Buren townships, and parts of Washington and Miami townships; and also other territory at present in Montgomery, Greene, Clarke, Champaign, Logan and Shelby counties. The county commissioners and township assessors jointly controlled the expenditures of the township, but made regular reports to the county court and met yearly as a court of appeals to hear objections against assessments.
Until the appointment of a justice of the peace in 1799, Dayton had no government but that administered by these county and township officers, whose chief duty was assessing and collecting taxes. The fees of the township officials were not extravagant. An order of the county commissioner, which has been preserved, directed the treasurer of Hamilton County to pay James .Brady five dollars and twenty cents out of the first moneys that came into his hands, "the same being his perquisites in full as assessor for the township of Dayton in the year 1797." This year Cyrus Osborn, constable of Dayton Township, received one dollar and ninety cents, to which by law he was entitled, "for his trouble and attention in executing the commissioners' warrant for ascertaining the taxable property." He also received "fifty cents for (page 60) one quire of paper used in the aforesaid business." The commissioners each received seven dollars and fifty cents in 1797, and the county expended for stationery fourteen dollars and thirty-four cents. The officers appointed in Dayton Township in 1798 were James Thompson, constable; Daniel C. Cooper, assessor; George Newcom, collector. Mr. Cooper's fees were seven dollars and twenty-one cents. The rates of valuation for taxes for 1798 were fixed by the commissioners. It would seem that in the valuation of property for taxation no regard was paid to the quality of the article or animal; a good or poor house, a fine or indifferent horse, and so on, paid the same tax. Single men, with no property, were taxed one dollar; cleared land (valuation for taxation) per acre at twenty dollars; cattle per head, sixteen dollars; horses, seventy-five dollars; cabins, twenty dollars; houses, six hundred dollars; grist mills and saw mills, each six hundred dollars; boats, two hundred dollars; ferries, one thousand dollars. There were one hundred and thirty eight tax-payers in the township, and the total amount raised for the year, was one hundred and eighty-six dollars, sixty-six and a half cents.
Twenty-two tax-payers lived in the village and its immediate vicinity in 1798, and the total amount of taxes paid by them was twenty-nine dollars and seventy-four cents.
In 1799 Samuel Thompson was made constable; John McGrew, assessor; John Ewing, collector, in Dayton Township. The assessments amounted to two hundred and thirty-three dollars and seventy-two cents, and two hundred and twenty-four dollars were collected. Mr. Cooper was made justice of the peace for the township. He tried his first case October 4, 1799. It was a suit for eight dollars brought by Abram Richardson against George Kirkendall. The total costs were thirty-three cents; entering judgment, ten cents; Summons, ten cents; subpoena, thirteen cents. " Defendant stayed collection with John Casey on the bond." The next case was a suit for six dollars and seventy-eight cents brought by John Casey, Kirkendall's bondsman, against Matthew Bohn. The squire's- decision was as follows: "From the circumstances in the case, it appears that there is really no cause for action, and plaintiff is taxed with the costs, viz.: summons, tell cents; entering judgment, twenty cents; satisfied."
Another suit for seven dollars and sixty-six cents due for fur was brought by Winetowah, a Shawnee Indian, against Ephraim Lawrence. Lawrence was ordered to pay Winetowah one dollar and twenty-one cents and costs. The squire's last record was made May 1, 1803. Mr. Cooper tried one hundred and eighteen cases during this period of three (page 61) years and seven months. One hundred of them were certified as settled, the rest as "satisfied."
Newcom's tavern, the first in the Miami valley, north of Fort Hamilton, was built in the winter of 1798-1799. It stood on the southwest corner of Main Street and Monument Avenue; was two stories high and built of hewn logs, and was. the largest and best house in the hamlet and in all the country for miles around. This building, now covered with weather boards, though the logs are as sound as when cut ninety years ago, still stands on the site where it was originally placed, and is occupied as a grocery and dwelling. Lime was probably made for the first time this year from stones gathered from the bed of the river and piled on a huge log fire which took the place of a kiln. Newcom's tavern was, it is supposed, the first house in Dayton that was chinked and plastered with lime mortar. A wondering country boy, on his return from the village, reported to his astonished family that "Colonel Newcom was plastering his house inside with flour."
The southwest corner of Main Street and Monument Avenue was the business centre of Dayton Township for five or six years. At Newcom's tavern was opened the first store, and it was also the first court house and jail, and at one time the Presbyterians held their Sunday services there. It was a typical frontier tavern, the host and hostess doing with their own hands the work of the house and of the log stable at the back end of the lot; taking travelers into their family and making literal guests of them. All travelers on horseback, on foot or in wagons; prospectors hunting for lands, emigrants, and farmers and their families in town for the day, stopped at Newcom's to eat and sleep; to shop; attend to law business; get a drink from the only well in the township or a glass of whisky, or to rest and gossip round the roaring log fire, where the villagers loved to gather. If a crowd was possible in so small a hamlet, it assembled on the southwest corner of Main Street and Monument Avenue, perhaps when court was in session, as in 1803; or when there was a meeting to organize for defense against the Indians or to attend to religious or political business.
The extreme and long continued cold and deep snows of February, 1799, caused much suffering in the settlement to animals and increased the labors and anxieties of the people.
On the first of April, 1799, when Dayton was three years old, the town contained nine cabins-six on Monument Avenue, one of them Newcom's tavern; two on First Street and one on the corner of Fifth and Main streets. Beside the four built in 1796, there was George Westfall's cabin on the southeast corner of Main and the alley between First (page 62) and Monument Avenue, and Paul D. Butler's on Monument Avenue, near Main Street. John Williams, who was a farmer, had a cabin on the southeast corner of Monument Avenue and Wilkinson Street. Thomas Arnett, a shoemaker, lived on the northwest corner of First and Ludlow streets, and John Welsh, a substantial farmer, on the southeast corner of Fifth and Main streets, a long distance through the woods and brush from the others. Daniel C. Cooper's cabin on the southeast corner of Monument Avenue and Jefferson Street was empty. For a time General Brown, who greatly distinguished himself in the War of 1812, had kept bachelor's hall there, but he no longer lived in Dayton.
Monument Avenue was now open to its present width. A narrow wagon road led out of Main Street through Franklin and Hamilton to Cincinnati. Another beginning at the eastern end of Monument Avenue, namely at Mill Street, extended up Mad River by Hamer's farm to Demint's and Mercer's Stations, now Fairfield and Springfield. Into this road a little beyond the east line of town came a road running from what is now the northwest corner of First and Ludlow streets, along where First Street now is. Another road crossing Mad River at its old channel nearly opposite Webster Street, led to Livingston, Staunton, and Piqua. At first the only routes through the woods were trails marked by blazed trees. These were followed by narrow bridle paths worn by frequent passing, which were afterwards widened so that a single wagon could pass over them.
The nearest settlements to the northeast of Dayton in 1799 were Chribb's Station, settled three years before in the forks of Mad River; Mercer's and Demint's stations and McPherson's Station, near Urbana.
There were two or three families at Livingston at the mouth of honey Creek in Miami County. Staunton was a small place near Troy. A few people lived at Piqua and at Lorimie's store, sixteen miles northwest of Sidney, which was the frontier settlement in that direction. Cincinnati, Hamilton and Franklin were very small villages.
At the corner of Warren and Main streets was a sign board, which read, "One half mile to Dayton." People living here reported that "the country was thickly settled and emigration to it rapid," yet there was no blacksmith living within twenty miles of Dayton. There was no clearing between Thomas Davis' cabin on the Bluffs and Hole's Station, now Miamisburg, where near the old block house and stockade there was one solitary cabin. The good home missionary, Nobler, preached at this "old fortress" in 1798 "to a small congregation, consisting chiefly of the few families that lived at the fort." On inquiry he found "that this fortress was on the frontier and no settlement around or near them." (page 63) Mr. Kohler was taken sick shortly afterwards, and he wrote: "To travel and preach was impossible; and to lie sick at any of the houses in these parts would be choosing death; as it is next to impossible for a well man to get food or' sustenance, much more for one prostrate on a bed of sickness." He traveled fifty miles before he reached a place where all invalid could stay with any degree of comfort, a statement which may help us to realize the hardships of pioneer life. An invalid traveler would have fared badly in a cabin of one room and a loft, occupied by a large family, hospitable and unselfish as the pioneers usually were. During the summer of 1799, an Indian war was apprehended. Benjamin Van Cleve makes the following allusion to the threatened hostilities in his journal: "In July and August the Indians were counciling and evinced an unfriendly disposition. The British traders and French among them had made them dissatisfied with the cession of their lands and with the, boundaries, and block houses were built at Dayton and all through the country, and the people became considerably alarmed." The Dayton block house was large, built of round logs and with a projecting upper story, so constructed that the occupants might guard against the lower part of the building being set on fire by the savages. It stood on the Main Street bank of the Miami. The threatened attack did not come, but the men were all armed and ready to take refuge with their families in the block house in case of an alarm.
It was never used as a fort, but was converted into a school house, where Benjamin Van Cleve, the first Dayton school-master, taught the pioneer children reading, spelling, writing, and arithmetic. The lower story was occupied by the school. The room was like those in their bare, rough cabin homes, very primitive. Books were scarce and it is said that the alphabet and spelling were taught from large charts prepared by the master. If so, they were beautifully executed, for Benjamin Van Cleve's penmanship was a model of neatness and elegance.
The master says in his journal for 1799-1800: "On the 1st of September I commenced teaching a small school. I had reserved time to gather my corn and kept school until the last of October." He got in his corn, of which he had an excellent crop, the first week in November. He then went to Cincinnati to assist the clerk of the house of representatives of the first Territorial legislature, so that vacation lasted several weeks after the corn was safely housed. The assembly adjourned a few weeks before Christmas, and he returned to Dayton and "kept school about three months longer."
Whisky, which was regarded as the "solace and elixir of life," and freely drunk without any qualms of conscience by the most religious (page 64) people in 1799, was very expensive when brought here from Cincinnati. In August, Daniel C. Cooper advertised in the Western Spy, published at Cincinnati, for an experienced distiller, "offering him good encouragement." In the fall he started a distillery, and soon afterwards built a paddle-wheel saw mill and a tub mill, or corn cracker, run by water power on a creek called Rubicon, which runs through the Patterson farm, just outside the present city limits. The cabin in which he lived till 1804 stood near his mills.
The "corn cracker" is thus described in the History of Montgomery County. "Four posts were set in the ground, about four feet apart, two on each side of the creek, forming a square; the posts stood four feet above ground, and on top of them was a puncheon floor, and on that a small pair of buhrs were set. To the perpendicular shaft the I runner' was attached; the shaft passed through the bedstone, and at the lower end was the horizontal tub wheel. Four forks were planted to hold the poles on which were laid the clap-board roof to keep the rain out of the hopper. The sides of the mill were not inclosed." Rude and primitive as this mill was, settlers came to it from nearly the whole of the Miami Valley and from up Mad River as far as Springfield. He "obtained all the custom of town, and took toll from the Trojans and Pequods." About 1800 a small overshot mill was built in Mad River Township, on McConnell's Creek. After this date, mills improved and increased in number. Limestone or granite boulders furnished material for buhrs, and millers generally made their own.
This year (1799) Mr. Cooper began to raise hogs on his farm. They had not before been introduced. They fattened rapidly in the woods on the great quantity of acorns and beech nuts, which they found there.
The nuts that furnished nutritious food for the hogs were not a blessing without alloy. The unusual amount of mast which ripened in 1801 and 1802 attracted immense flocks of wild turkeys to the settlement.
They did not confine themselves to the forest, but alighted in felds and gardens, destroying the growing corn and eating such quantities as it matured, that, to save the crop, it was necessary to gather it very early.
The hogs were hunted in the fall and shot with rifes, for they became very wild and savage, and went in droves. Experience taught them to defend themselves from the wolves, and to protect their pigs by making a circle around them. They sometimes tore a wolf to pieces with their tusks. When pigs were kept in pens, they were roofed with heavy logs to exclude the wolves. Wildcats and panthers also attacked hogs. Panthers were so strong that they could carry a hog for a long (page 65) distance, through deep snow, into the woods. One day a man heard a disturbance among his hogs, which he kept on the north side of the river, opposite Ludlow Street, and crossed over in a canoe to see what was the matter. While looking about, he heard something fall to the ground tinder a leaning tree, which proved to be a dead hog dropped by a panther. The animal came down the tree and disappeared in the woods without attacking the man.
The first flatboat was launched in the winter of 1799, near McDonnell's Creek by David Lowry. It was loaded in Dayton with grain, pelts, and five hundred venison hams, and when the spring freshet raised the river, started on the two months' trip to New Orleans. The voyage was safely accomplished. Lowry sold his cargo and boat and returned home on horseback. Many Ohio men laid the foundations of their fortunes by taking a flat boat load of provisions south.
In 1800 sheep were introduced. They were difficult to raise, as they were unable to protect themselves against wolves. It was necessary to shut them up securely at night and to keep constant guard over them when pasturing.
For the first three or four years the settlers had purchased all their f lour, groceries, dry goods, hardware, and whisky, and most of their corn meal in Cincinnati. They were usually brought on pack horses. It was a long journey of nearly a week over a rough road, or of ten days if the traveler came by boat.
The charge for transportation was two dollars and fifty cents per hundred weight. Flour was nine dollars a barrel, and it cost five dollars to bring a barrel to Dayton. Corn was one dollar per bushel. The following list of Cincinnati prices in 1799 has been preserved. American merchants had not yet learned to use the United States currency, and their charges were in pounds, shillings, and pence. Imperial tea, twenty-two shillings six pence per pound; Hyson, sixteen shillings ten pence; loaf sugar, four shillings; flour, eighteen shillings ten pence per one hundred pounds; pork, eighteen shillings nine pence; beef, twenty-two shillings six pence; wheat, five shillings; rye, three shillings; corn, one shilling ten pence per one hundred pounds.
There was little money in circulation, and business in the Northwest Territory was chiefly conducted by the barter of articles that were easily transported on pack horses, such as ginseng, peltries, and bees-wax, which had fixed values. A muskrat skin passed for twenty-fve cents; a buckskin, for a dollar; a doe skin, for one dollar and fifty cents; a bear skin, from three to five dollars. The price of a pair of cotton stockings was a buckskin; a yard of calico cost two muskrat skins; a set of knives and (page 66) forks, a bear skin; a yard of shirting, a doe skin; a pair of moccasins, a coon skin or thirty-seven and a half cents.
The want of small change led the pioneers of the Ohio valley to invent what was called cut money or sharp shins. They cut small coins, chiefly Spanish, into quarters and circulated them as readily as money that had not been tampered with.
The first four years Dayton traders found difficulty in disposing of their peltries, as there was no store nearer than Cincinnati or Hamilton, where Henry Brown had opened a trading house in 1795. In the fall of 1800 the first store was opened in Dayton by Mr. McDougal, of Detroit, in a room in the second story of Newcom's tavern. This store was a great convenience to the settlement and to the people for forty miles around. The Indians came in the spring in small parties, five or six in each, to trade with McDougal, exchanging their furs, skins, fish, game, wild honey, and maple sugar for his powder, blankets, whisky, dry goods, and trinkets.
The Indians were, as a rule, drunken, worthless, and dishonest, and were often noisy and troublesome. They had a great deal of curiosity and the disagreeable habit of unceremoniously walking in and about the cabins, peering into chests and cupboards, and, if not watched, they appropriated any article they fancied.
April 14, 1800, occurred an event of some importance to the villagers, the birth at her father's tavern of Jane Newcom, said to have been the first child born in Dayton, though others have claimed that honor; as for instance, Dayton Hamer, born December 9, 1796, on his father's farm, three miles from Dayton; and Jane Edgar, who married Augustus George, and who was born November 24, 1800, on her father's farm, part of which is now within the corporation. Jane Newcom married Nathaniel Wilson. She died at the residence of her daughter, Mrs. Josiah Gebhart, April 5, 1874.
July 14, 1800, Jerome Holt was appointed township constable. Mr. Holt was directed to make a list of the free male inhabitants who were twenty-one years of age and over. His pay for this work was nineteen dollars and fifty cents. The taxation this year was at the rate of forty cents on each one hundred dollars valuation for houses, mills and other buildings; forty cents for each horse; ten cents for cattle; fifty cents to two dollars for young or single men; one dollar each for bond servants. The first wedding in the Dayton settlement occurred August 28, 1800. Benjamin Van Cleve was married on that day to Mary Whitten at her father's house, on his farm near Dayton. In Mr. Van Cleve's journal occurs this quaint record of the event: "This year I raised a crop (page 67) of corn and determined on settling myself and having a home. I accordingly, on the 28th of August, married Mary Whitten, daughter of John Whitten, near Dayton. She was young, lively, industrious, and ingenuous. My property was a horse creature and a few farming utensils, and her father gave her a few household or kitchen utensils, so that we could make shift to cook our provisions; a bed, a cow and heifer, a ewe and two lambs, a sow and pigs, and a saddle and spinning wheel. I had corn and vegetables growing, so that if we were not rich, we had sufficient for our immediate wants and we were contented and happy." In 1801 Benjamin Van Cleve was appointed county surveyor. He was also lister for Dayton Township. He received nineteen dollars and fifty cents for his work, of which he made the following record in his diary: "This year I took in the returns of taxable property in Dayton Township which was all the Miami country from the fourth range upwards. The number of free males over twenty-one years old, between the two Miamis from the south line of the township to the heads of Mad River and the Great Miami, was three hundred and eighty-two, east of the Little Miami less than twenty." The danger of attacks from Indians as well as the need of men to clear lands made it as desirable to know the number of men in the township capable of bearing arms or wielding an axe as to learn the names and the value of the property of tax-payers. The township taxes for this year amounted to five hundred and fifty-six dollars and sixty-two and a half cents, which was an increase of three hundred and twenty dollars and ninety cents since 1799.
The first minister who preached in the settlement, was Rev. John Kobler, of the Methodist Church. He delivered four sermons in Dayton, which he describes in his journal for 1798 as " a little village by that name on the bank of the Big Miami," containing a few log houses and eight or ten families. He held his first service here on Sunday, August 12th, and several of the little company assembled to hear him, were much affected by his exhortations. He organized a class of eight members, of which he made William Hamer leader. Mr. Hamer was a Methodist local preacher, and had held Sunday services at his cabin, three miles up Mad River or in the woods surrounding it, ever since his arrival in 1796. During 1797 a class had met regularly at his house.
Mr. Kobler's second sermon at Dayton was preached on Sunday, August 26th, "to all the people which town and country could afford, which were but few at best." January 1, 1799, he "preached at Dayton to a mixed company of traders from Detroit, some Indians, French, and English," from the appropriate text, " In every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of him." He spoke so forcibly on (page 68) the fearful consequences of sin ,that many of them looked wild and stood aghast as if they would take to their heels." April 2d he preached in Dayton for the last time to all the people of the village and surrounding farms. He considered the township a promising missionary field. In 1805 the Methodists, for the first time, had regular preaching.
At that date, Abraham Amos and John Meek were assigned to preach here alternately. Before this, they had occasional services in the log meeting-house or elsewhere, when some minister of their denomination visited the village. The first class-meeting held in town met at the house of Aaron Baker. No protracted or camp-meetings were held here earlier than 1817.
In the fall of 1799, and during the following winter, the Presbyterians held their meetings in the block house, at the head of Main Street.
Previously, they occasionally met for public worship at each other's cabins. Rev. John Thomson, of Kentucky, preached here several times in 1800, and occasionally for several years afterward. Rev. James Kemper also preached in Dayton once in 1800.
In the spring of 1800 the people of the Dayton settlement, both in and out of town, united in getting out logs and building a cabin for a Presbyterian meeting-house at the corner of Main and Third streets. Lots numbers 133 and 134 had been given by Mr. Cooper to the Presbyterian Church, and as was customary, at that day the ground surrounding the church was used as a burial ground.
The log cabin meeting-house was eighteen by twenty feet in size, seven logs high, and raised two feet from the ground by pieces of log placed upright under each corner of the floor. It was neither chinked with chips nor daubed with yellow clay, and had no windows. The cracks between the logs admitted more than enough air and probably sufficient light. The seats and door-steps were logs, and the foor was made of rough puncheons. The clapboard roof was secured by weight poles. It was hidden from the view of passers-by on Main Street by a thick copse of hazel bushes and small trees, among which wound the narrow path through the graveyard, by which it was approached. The Presbyterian Society was organized by Presbytery in 1800-1801. Rev. William Robinson, who lived three miles up Mad River and owned a mill there by which he supported himself, supplied the Dayton and Beulah congregations, the latter at Beavertown, as frequently as possible. These societies were really one church, and the Beavertown branch soon ceased to have a separate existence.
In 1805 the log meeting house was sold for twenty-two dollars, which went into a building fund for a new Presbyterian church. The same (page 69) year a graveyard, donated by Mr. Cooper, containing four acres of ground, was opened further from the center of town, on the south side of Sixth Street, between Ludlow and Wilkinson. The graveyard was divided into three parts-equal portions being given to the Presbyterian church, the Methodist church, and the town of Dayton. In September, 1815, the graveyard on the corner of Main and Third streets was platted and sold at public auction by the trustees of the Presbyterian church. The remains of the pioneers were not removed from their frst resting place, and there under the banks and stores erected on that busy square, " the bones of such of ' the forefathers of the hamlet' as escaped the exhuming spade of cellar diggers, repose."
John W. Van Cleve, who had seen Dayton change from a wilderness to a thriving town of 4,000 inhabitants, in a lecture delivered in 1833, gives the following description of his native place in 1800-1805: " While the inhabitants all lived on the river bank, it was no uncommon thing for strangers, on coming into the place after threading their way through the brush until they had passed through the whole -town plat from one extremity to the other, and arrived at the first few of the cabins that constituted the settlement, to inquire how far it was to Dayton. They were of course informed that they had just passed through it and arrived in the suburbs. The fact seemed rather ridiculous, and it was very natural for them to think that the projectors of the town had calculated much too largely in laying it out upon so extensive a scale. The inhabitants themselves indeed partook of the same opinion. The lots on the east side of Main Street, opposite the court house, were considered so far out of the way that it was not thought probable that the town would extend much beyond them, and they were accordingly appropriated for a graveyard, and remained so till 1805, when the present burying ground [on Sixth Street] was selected, which has been used by the town and country ever since."
The part of the Sixth Street graveyard belonging to the Presbyterians was not improved till September, 1815, when it was cleared, fenced, sown
with grass seed, and the lots offered for sale for burial purposes at the court house, the Main Street lots being sold by the trustees of the church at the same time and place for residences or business houses. For the next year or two after the log meeting-house was sold, the Presbyterians held their services at Newcom's log tavern, or at McCullum's new brick tavern, at the southwest corner of Main and Second streets, removing in 1806 to the new court house, on the corner of Main and Third streets. Here they remained until they had completed their first brick church, on Ludlow and Second streets, in 1817. They had loaned (page 70) the county commissioners four hundred and twelve dollars on condition that they should be permitted to worship in the court house. The new church was a two-story building, forty-two by fifty feet, with a gallery on three sides of the room. The lot on which it was built cost five hundred dollars. The pews were sold October 4, 1817, bringing a total amount of two thousand, nine hundred and eighty dollars. Their frst settled minister was Rev. James Welsh, M. D., who came in 1805 and remained till 1817. During the period treated of in this chapter, two important accessions were made to the settlement. William King and John H. Williams entered and settled on land just west of the Miami River, parts of which are now included in that portion of Dayton known as Miami City. William King, dissatisfied with Kentucky on account of slavery, emigrated from that state to this vicinity in 1801. He was a remarkable man, distinguished for his strong convictions and his conscientious determination to carry them out at whatever cost. He was for many years an elder in the First Presbyterian church, and had something of the Puritan and Covenanter in his composition. Ile lived to a great old age, lacking at his death but three months of being one hundred years old. His family consisted of three sons and two daughters. His two elder sons, John and Victor, removed to Madison, Indiana, where they held positions of honor and usefulness. Samuel married Mary C., the daughter of John II. Williams, and both he and his wife were for many years highly esteemed and useful. Jane married David Osborn.
John H. Williams carne in 1802, and was during his residence here an honored and highly esteemed citizen. His descendants are numerous and have held prominent positions in the community. The children by his frst wife were: James Lockard; Mary Carothers, married
Samuel King; Sarah, married William Boal; Lucinda, married Scott Douglas; Herbert S.; Susan, married Henry Stoddard; Anna, married first Jeptha Regans, married second James R. Wallace; Samuel; Elizabeth, married James Wallace. Eliza Jane, daughter by his second wife, married Charles Sherman. Frances Taylor, daughter by his third wife, married Dr. C. O. Waters.
Return to "History of Dayton" Home Page
