Header Graphic
Memoirs of the Miami Valley - Volume One
The Story of Logan County, The Day of the Settler, County Seat

(page 169)

THE STORY OF LOGAN COUNTY

 

            SOMEWHAT more than a century and a quarter ago, a passenger in an airship, if one for the moment imagine that marvel   of the twentieth century to have existed then-in passing over the gentle eminence of Logan county, might have looked down upon a scene which gave no sign of human habitation save the half hidden roofs of two or three rude council houses built of logs, intrenched within forests of oak, elm, beech, hickory, ash and maple, densely massed, except where the site of some long since sunken lake, or forest fire, had left its trace in a green plain, and feathered here and there with the smokes of sheltered camp-fires. Had he been especially observant, he might have noticed that the forest on the crest of the eminence, and along the great north and south divide, here flung its green arms higher skyward than at any point in his journey from the mountains of the east to the great "father of waters" in the west. He could not have failed to note that the great divide was cleft by the winding valleys of a half score silver ribbons of water, gathering in the south and flowing on to join the flood of some wider stream below. He should have seen, also, although engineers and geographers did not, that that greater river, fed by the well-spring of a lake lying high in the wooded slopes, and augmented by the waters of streams which tumbled down from the western slopes of the divide, was born and bred in this territory, and that the honor of its rise belongs to this county as the head of the Great Miami valley.

            But the woods concealed much, and even the existence of an opulent, if savage, life could only have been suspected at that time, from such a vantage. Sheltered by the deep foliage, lay a number of gemlike lakes, stocked with fish; the forest itself was home for innumerable furred and feathered denizens, which furnished the savage with meat for his nourishment and skins for his clothing and shelter. The soil of the fertile little prairies produced his maize in plenty, and the trophies which he brought with him from the white man's civilization, in his retreat from the south and east, added to the comfort of the wild life among the Miami headwaters. Hogs roamed the woods in summer, but were fed with corn and fattened to some degree for the slaughter in winter. The white man's cattle and horses had followed the Indian, whether they would or no, and added to them, many a white captive made his unwilling home among the huddled huts and tepees of an Indian village.

            Though stealthy, the life of the savage here was vivid and intense, for the Shawanoese Indians, with remnants of other tribes. had taken their last stand in these retreats, and from their forest fastnesses made vengeful sallies against the white settlers of the south, returning with plunder often blood-stained. And the set (page 170) tiers, in their turn, made raids of reprisal. Struggle and bloodshed were rife. The white man's hands were no less bloody than his red brother's. Renegade white men from the south, no less than lawless British from the north, aided the Indians and instigated many of their attacks, profiting thereby; nor was outlawry and a love of wild adventure quite absent from those who defended the white settlers. Between all these elements the struggle was prolonged until justice gave way to mere revenge, and the white heralds of civilization were hardly more humane than the savages who defended the hunting grounds of their fathers. But wherever the original fault lay, the innocent suffered with the guilty, and life on the Ohio frontier was become intolerable. Settlers who returned from distant scenes of labor, or expeditions of honest emprise, to find their fields despoiled, their cattle and horses driven away, their cabins in ashes, and their families scattered, murdered or taken captive, had become desperate. The Shawanoese of the headwaters remained implacable long after the major part of the Ohio tribes had submitted to white dictation, and, strong in their pride of warriorship, avenged their accumulated wrongs upon the least occasion. With them, though less antagonistic to the settlers, were contingents of various tribes,-Wyandots, Chippewas, Delawares, Ottawas, Monseys, Mingoes and a solitary Cherokee. But the enraged white settler recognized little difference between one red tribe and another, it seems.

            The "Wabash Expedition," undertaken by Gen. Clarke in 1786, had as a part of its design the wiping out of the headwater             villages, known as "the Mad River towns," with the expectation that so decisive a step would result in the end of Indian raids from that quarter. As the army moved northward up the valley of the Miami, Col. Benjamin Logan, with a band of about seven hundred Kentuckians, ripe for revenge, was detached to proceed up Mad river valley against the Shawanoese stronghold. The entire group of villages lay within the territory of Logan county, beginning with those near the mouth of Mac-a-chack creek, from whence Pigeon Town lay about three and one-half miles to the northwest, and Wapatomica, a Mingo village (where was located the great council which once had condemned Simon Kenton to die at the stake), the headquarters of Moluntha, Great Sachem of the assembled tribes, about the same distance to the northeast of Mac-achack. North of Wapatomica, lay the Wyandot village called Zane's Town, from the residence there of a white man of that name. Blue Jacket's town (the site of Bellefontaine), Reed's Town, not far from this neighborhood, and Solomon's Town, farther to the north and west (sometime the home of Tarhe the Crane), are all mentioned among the list of towns. The principal chiefs were Blue Jacket (Weyapiersenwah), the most implacable of them all and second only to Black Hoof (Catahecassa), the successor to the murdered Cornstalk (Wiwelespea), in ability and skill as a leader of his people; Moluntha (who had married the sister of Cornstalk, a squaw of enormous size and so warlike as to be known as "the Grenadier") ; Tarhe, the Wyandot, and Buckongehalas, the Delaware. The forest foe may well have seemed formidable.

            (page 171) Col. Logan spared no pains to make the success of the attack certain. Detailing Cols. Patterson and Kennedy to the left and right wings, he took command of the central division, with Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton leading the troops. From the account written many years later by Gen. William Lytle, then but a lad of sixteen, the facts of the day are briefly restated here. The Mac-a-chack towns were defended with desperate valor, the warriors, of whom about twenty were killed, in scarcely an instance asking quarter, preferring to die rather than yield. Many prisoners were taken.

            The third town was Wapatomica, which could be plainly seen as the troops approached it across a plain a mile and a half in breadth. Their expectation was to meet or overtake a larger body of Indians, which would precipitate a general engagement. Young Lytle was about to shoot at one of a flying group of savages, when the warrior held up his hand in token of surrender, at the same time ordering the others to stop. The savage who had surrendered came toward Lytle, calling his women and children to follow him, but before Lytle could reach the proffered hand, the men had rushed in and were with difficulty restrained from killing the submissive Indian. He was then led back to his town, which was situated on a high commanding point of land (Bald Knob), jutting well out into the prairie, where a flag, flying at the time from a sixty-foot pole, proclaimed the residence of the chief, Moluntha. Thirteen prisoners had been taken, including the chief, his three wives, and several children, among whom was a lad of noble height and bearing, about young Lytle's age. This easy victory might have remained bloodless except for the cruelty and vindictive hatred of a few of the unrulier soldiers, who took advantage of the general confusion to defy the express command of Logan that none of the prisoners be molested. Molutha himself was slain, almost immediately after Logan's departure, by Col. McGary, who in cold blood seized an axe from the Grenadier Squaw, and with it crushed in the chief's head, before a hand could prevent the deed. The desperado escaped through the crowd of men and horses and never returned. The young son, Spemica Lamba (High Horn), who with the rest of the family had witnessed the atrocity, had attached himself to young Lytle as his prisoner. Col. Logan, attracted by his beauty and intelligence, took Spemica Lamba to his own home in Kentucky, where he was given the advantage of civilized education and society during a period of nine years, permitting him also to assume the name of Logan. But the disgrace cast upon the whole expedition by McGary's cruelty could never be atoned for.

            It appears that at nearly all points after the first towns, the warriors were all gone on the annual hunting expedition, to remote haunts of game, and the carefully planned attacks surprised- only villages and food stores hastily deserted by feeing squaws and children. These northern villages were also burned, as well as the corn stored up for winter maintenance,-with what degree of soldierly valor the citizen of today may determine for himself.

            Zane's Town, the Wyandot village, where stood a block house (page 172) built by the English, was burned the next morning, after which the detachment returned to the main body of troops. There appears, in some histories of the expedition, a reluctance to admit the destruction of a town where a white man was known to live, on the ground that Logan could not have ordered an act of such wanton bad faith.

            However, Lytle wrote of what he was eyewitness to, and the account is further proved by the story of Jonathan Alder, a white captive in one of the villages, who related the absence of the braves at the hunting grounds, and the arrival at their village, one morning, of an Indian runner who warned them of the approach of the white troops. Alder, a mere child, retreated with the women and children to a spot near the headwaters of the Scioto, where they suffered for days from want of food, there being not a man among them who was capable of hunting. After eight days they returned to find their village in ruins, their corn reduced to charcoal and the block house a heap of ashes. Driven to Hog creek for food, they starved through the winter on a diet of "raccoons, with little or no salt, no bread at all, nor hominy or sweet corn." They came back in the spring for the sugar season, and then again retired for safety to Blanchard's fork, where they continued to eke out a scanty living in exile. Yet was their spirit not subdued, and the red terror still stalked the woods of Logan county.

            Blue jacket had rallied his braves to new strongholds, and by 1794, when "Mad" Anthony Wayne began his campaign in the Maumee valley, he found a new town bearing the name of the

doughty Shawanoese chieftain. With the destruction of this town, and the erection of Fort Defiance at the spot, the junction of the Maumee and Auglaize rivers, began the final act of the tragic drama of the Indian. So far as Logan county and the Miami valley were concerned, the curtain fell one year later, with the defeat of the Indians at the rapids of the Maumee, August, 1795, in the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Even then the fierce spirit of the Shawanoese was not quenched, but the wiser counsels prevailed to make them choose submission to the white terms of peace rather than annihilation. Nevertheless, of all the chiefs who signed the Treaty of Greenville, Little Turtle being the only one not of Logan county, which established the line beyond which the Indian might not go without the consent of the white man, not one ever broke his pledge. To their honor be it said and remembered that, bitter as the bread of peace must have lain on the red man's tongue, their loyalty never swerved even in the disturbances which hovered on the edge of settlement in the following years, when, led by the eloquent Tecumseh, seven hundred warriors, painted and feathered for the fight, offered battle at the mouth of Stony creek. The Indians of Logan allied themselves with the whites and gratefully accepted protection at their hands against their ill-advised brethren, who were persuaded to retire by the bold diplomacy of Simon Kenton.

            The Dawn of Peace: Notwithstanding the location of the Greenville treaty line, which intersected the territory of Logan county from northeast to southwest, crossing Bokes Creek and Rush Creek townships, and Washington and Bloomfield, forming (page 173) the northern boundary of Harrison, and approximately that of Lake, the Indians quite generally came back to their old haunts in these fertile slopes after the establishment of peace, rebuilding their former towns and taking up once more a happy life of plenty. White settlement, being slow to begin, encouraged this movement, while the presence of white settlers taught and encouraged them in a more civilized mode of living and economy. Major Galloway, who made a canvass of the district in 1800, reported that at that time all of the villages destroyed in 1786 had been rebuilt, with the exception of the Mingo village, Wapatomica, which remained deserted. Zane's Town was again a Wyandot village; Lewis Town, on the Great Miami, was a Shawnee village; Solomon's Town, now long known as the McClure farm, was then the home of Tarhe, the Wyandot chief; Reed's Town, rather vaguely stated to be a group of cabins near the site of Bellefontaine; McKee's Town, about four miles south of the site of Bellefontaine, on McKee's creek, probably the same as "Pigeon Town," where there was a trading station; Buckongehelas, the Delaware chief, had a village on the creek which bears his name. From other very early white settlers it is known that Blue jacket had a town on Blue Jacket creek, his cabin being built near the famous Blue jacket spring, which still flows, being now enclosed within the premises of the Kerr Brothers' warehouse, in Bellefontaine. (R. G. Kennedy advances the opinion that Blue jacket's cabin was occupied as a home by John Tullis, sr., after the retirement of the chief to Wapakoneta.) The presence of white persons was brought to light by Major Galloway, also. For the most part they were helpless to make other choice, having been brought up in captivity, and in ignorance of the whereabouts of their families. John Lewis, one of the Shawnees, his name adopted from British association, was found to have living at his place a white woman of advanced age, named Polly Keyser, who performed the drudgery of his establishment. She had been taken captive in childhood, from near Lexington, Kentucky, had married an Indian and was the mother of two half-breed daughters. Jonathan Alder, already referred to in these pages, was another white, found living with an Indian wife and their family of half-breed children.

            Alder had been stolen in early childhood from his home in Wythe county, Virginia, in the spring of 1774, being surprised by a band of Indians while hunting stray cattle with his brother, two years older. The brother was killed while attempting to escape, and Jonathan was only preserved from death by the intervention of an Indian chief named Succohanos, whose only son had died, and who saw, in this black-haired white child, an heir to his position in the tribe- He was taken to a Mingo village on Mad river, where the wife of the chief, Whinecheoh, received him tenderly, bathed and dressed him in Indian fashion, and he was adopted into the family, which consisted of three daughters who bore the English names of Mary, Hannah, and Sally. The two older girls, like their parents, were very kind to the little captive, but in their absence Sally was wont to tease him and taunt him with unpleasant names, the Indian for "ornery, lousy prisoner" being her favorite epithet.

            (page 174) The homesick boy, with whom the Indian diet disagreed (or was it, as has been suggested, merely bad Indian cookery?), and who suffered severely from fever and ague, was sent to live for a time with Mary, who had married the chief, John Lewis, and the gentle treatment he received from this Indian couple called forth his lifelong gratitude. The boy was here taught the arts of swimming and hunting, and when he reached a proper age was given an old British rifle, with which he became an expert shot. After the peace of 1795, he encountered new difficulty in the fact that he had forgotten the white man's language, and, in consequence, had failed to comprehend the necessity of being present at the treaty meeting, and so did not receive his grant of land. However, he took up land in regular order, and to the two white settlers who afterward retaught him his native tongue, he said that he was happy in that he could once more meet both red and white in equal friendliness. The Alders lived as white people, and became quite prosperous, but at length, hearing that his family were still alive, he tired of his Indian wife, and induced her to release him by relinquishing nearly all of his accumulated property, after which he returned unto his own, and Logan county knew him no more. Quite a different story is that of Isaac Zane, the third white person found resident in 1800, and who also was brought here a captive by Indians when a little lad. Two of the Zane boys were captured at the same time, in 1763, when on their way to school near their home in Mooresfeld, Virginia (Berkeley county). The inaccurate statement that the brother who shared Isaac's captivity was Ebenezer Zane, was at one time accepted as fact, but as Ebenezer was the eldest of the family and Isaac the youngest, it was probably the next older brother, Jonathan, who was his companion-he being eleven and Isaac nine years of age. The Indian captors were of the Wyandot tribe, and the boys were taken first to Buffalo, thence to Detroit, where they were adopted into the Wyandot tribe, and afterward brought to Sandusky. About two years later, their relatives, discovering their whereabouts, offered a ransom for them. This was accepted in the case of Jonathan, but Chief Tarhe, who was without an heir to his title, refused the ransom for Isaac, desiring to keep him for his own son. And so for nine years the boy remained in Tarhe's home, recognized as the chief's adopted heir, and the playmate of the chief's daughter, Myeerah (Walk-in-the-Water). Tarhe's wife was a beautiful French-Canadian woman, and Myeerah, said also to have been very beautiful, was their only child. Isaac Zane's life in captivity had been happy. His personal attractions had made him a favorite, and he had loved the free ways of the Indians. He was deeply attached to his kind foster father and his family. Nevertheless, when the peace of 1772 released all captives, by treaty between the French and English, Isaac seized the opportunity and returned to Virginia. His relatives were by this time dispersed to other points, and he settled in Frederick county, entered the local political life, and, so the account goes, was elected to the house of Burgesses in 1773 (when, if the chronology is correct, he must have been but nineteen years of age), holding his seat for two or three years.

            (page 175) Then the memory of Myeerah drew him inevitably back to the home of Tarhe on Mad river, and, relinquishing his ambitions, he returned to the scene of his happy captivity, married the playmate of his boyhood, and settled where the town which bears his name afterward sprung up. Tarhe, after the marriage, withdrew to Solomon's Town, leaving the young people in possession of the old home. Antrim's account of Isaac Zane's career states distinctly that he took no part- in the Revolutionary war, but other authorities refer to him as "a revolutionary guide," and it is certain that he was employed by Gen. Butler as a guide in 1785, after the war was ended, and that he was known as a peacemaker and mediator between Indians and whites. For these various services to the government, he was awarded grants for two sections of land, choosing, as might be expected, that spot where he already lived, the present site of Zanesfeld. He was defrauded of this land by a dishonest surveyor, whom he had entertained as an honored guest, and was obliged to accept in its place two sections in Champaign county, to which he did not remove, but repurchased the land where his home stood, and remained there until his death, which occurred in 1816.

            James McPherson was the fourth white man definitely known to be a resident of Logan county in 1800. McPherson was a native of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and while fighting with the colonists was taken prisoner by the British and Indians at the defeat of Longhry at the mouth of Big Miami. During the years of his captivity he was employed in the British-Indian department, with Elliott and McKee. He married a white woman who was, like himself, a captive. With the Indians, McPherson was on good terms, and their name for him was "Squa-la-ka-ke" (the red faced man). After the treaty of 1795 McPherson was released and re-entered the service of the United States, being appointed Indian agent for the Shawnees and Senecas at the Lewistown reservation, a position which he retained until 1830. He is said to have become terztporarily very wealthy through shrewd land investments and through trading but at one time he applied, not for a pension, but for three years' back pay from the government for his services in the Revolution, which he claimed were owing him at the time of his capture by the British. His daughter, said to have been the most famous beauty of northwestern Ohio, as well as the most beautifully gowned in her day, married a white settler, Daniel Workman. The McPherson farm became, many years ago, the site of the Logan county infirmary. Robert Robitaille, an engaging French-Canadian of good family, also is known to have lived in Zane's Town, possibly as early as 1793 or 1794, bringing with him from Montreal a stock of goods with which he set up a trading post with the Wyandot Indians. There seems to be undoubted grounds for the statement that his store was the first to be established in the county, for it was in operation when the frst settlers arrived, and he had married Elizabeth Zane previous to 1800, while at the time of his removal to the Ludlow district south of Bellefontaine, they had two sons. The legend that John Gunn had a tavern on the Ludlow road, and that Robitaille had a store near this tavern in 1800, can have no (page 176) foundation, for the Ludlow line was not surveyed until 1800, did not immediately become a route, and the Gunn tavern at that place was not licensed until 1805, which was the actual date of Robitaille's removal thither from Zane's Town. Both store and tavern had a brief existence, the land company of which Gunn was agent deciding that a tavern at another point (Belleville) would be more profitable, and sell land faster for them. The chief result of the tavern settlement on the Ludlow line had been the populating of a lonely little burying ground in which the merchant Robitaille reposed with several other early settlers, among them some of the Moores.

            Gunn closed his tavern in 1806, and settled west of Bellefontaine (or its site), where he opened, a stone quarry and built the first stone residence in the county, a structure long pointed out as a landmark. Robitaille's young widow left with two little boys, James and Robert, jr., afterward married James M. Reed. At her death, relatives from Montreal came and took the boys to Canada, where they were educated and rose to distinction. There is a claim that Simon Kenton, the doughty hero of a hundred hairbreadth escapes from death at the hands of the Indians, came back to these retreats as early as 1800, drawn, it may be inferred, by the charm which they possessed even in danger and captivity to the very scenes where he had possibly more than once run the gauntlet, or momentarily expected to have the fagots lighted at his feet, in the days of his daring youth. He is said to have tarried a while in the neighborhood of the Zanes, who had been his friends in former times, and later took up permanent residence near "New Jerusalem," where he rounded out his life in the pursuits of peace, always an honored counselor in questions between the Indian and settler and able to keep the good will of both. Whatever may be the truth in regard to Simon Kenton's early exploits and his connection with the outlaw, Simon Girty, and it is probable that he was misled for a time by the glamour which makes a hero of such a desperado in the eyes of imaginative youth, it is none the less true that he was a welcome and valuable presence among the settlers of Logan county, which still proudly claims him as one of its sons. In recognition of his service, military and otherwise, to the government through twenty years of almost constant struggle, he was awarded a pension in his old age. His sons and daughters married into the best families among the settlers, whose earliest arrival he is believed to have antedated by one year. Margaret Moore, the white wife of Blue Jacket, had returned to her own people long before the period of conflict in which her husband was so prominent a figure. She was stolen from her home in Pennsylvania (or Virginia) when a child of nine years, carried into captivity but well treated, as were many captive white children, and married to the young chief, Blue Jacket, when she arrived at womanhood. Claiming to be still devotedly attached to him, she responded to the entreaties of her relatives and paid them a visit after the peace of 1772, expecting to return. Suspecting the outcome of the visit, Blue Jacket kept their son, Joseph, with him, for surety. The Moores would not permit their daughter to leave them again, and Margaret's daughter, Nancy, afterward the wife of (page 177) James Stewart, was born in Virginia, and never permitted to see the face of an Indian "except," as Mrs. Sarah M. Moore wrote in 1872 (Antrim's Hist.), "when she looked in a mirror," until 1805, when she came to Logan county with her husband and settled on a section of land which had been granted near Lewistown. Mrs. Moore goes on to say that the mother, Margaret, was once a guest at the Moore home in company of her daughter, the two women presenting a great contrast, the mother being a handsome elderly lady, while Mrs. Stewart had decidedly Indian features and was badly marked with smallpox. The Indian son, Joseph, came to visit his mother about 1812. Reared in the manners and customs of the half-civilized aborigines, he. was most unattractive, and presently disappeared, probably to enlist with the British in the War of 1812. Of Nancy Stewart's four children, none married, the race of Blue jacket thus becoming extinct. The Stewarts were buried in the cemetery of Muddy Run church, below West Liberty.

 

The Day of the Settler

 

            Previous to and accompanying the date of first settlement, the presence of white "squatters" is a possibility, but these should not be confused with those who came to fnd homes. So far as is known, the white persons and families mentioned heretofore constituted the entire white population, when, at the opening of the new century, the Logan county of the future lay, its fertile acres awaiting that place in the sun which only the white man's methods could give it. Its wealth was only half suspected. Its magnificent timber, in the absence of transportation facilities, was regarded as an incumbrance to lands which promised rich agricultural results. Its immense deposits of fine building and paving gravel and sand, its beds of marl, and its vast stores of limestone, exposed by glacial action and remote upheaval, to easy quarrying, were untouched. Its very geography was incomplete, and its peculiar topography as well as its high altitude unrecognized. A statement that the summit of all Ohio was to be found within its borders would have been received at that time, and for more than half a century afterward, with incredulity. That the Great Miami owed its origin to sources contained in the same territory would have been scouted in like manner-and until a very recent date-so positively had the early geographers ascribed it to the northern watershed. Nor was the altitude of the original water level of Indian Lake yet known to engineers, though afterward utilized as a reservoir for the Miami canal, but means of the state dam, since which it has become the largest body of natural water between Lake Erie and the Ohio river.

            Water power and water supply, afforded by its rapid streams and its multitude of pure springs added to the prospects for farming, however, and it was to no uncertainty that the early home seekers from the south and east bent their steps.

            It was a December sun, smiling wanly down on a landscape white with snow, which witnessed the arrival in this land of promise of the first overland emigrants, Joe Sharp, his wife, Phoebe, and (page 178) three children, Achsa, the oldest daughter; Joshua, their only son, and Sarah, the youngest child. Accompanying them was Mrs. Sharp's young brother, Carlisle Haines. The journey was made with a team of four horses, but whether by vehicle is not known. But we are told that the first wheeled vehicle of any description did not enter the county until two or three years later than the Sharp family, so that if there was a vehicle at all it could only have been a "drag" or mud sled. They brought with them all their supplies for the winter that lay ahead of them. The day was Christmas, 1801. By nightfall their camp had been cleared and their first rude cabin constructed from the logs that had been felled that day. The presence of dead bees lying on the snow led, also the same day, to the discovery of four "bee trees," a variety of Christmas tree which even a Quaker family must have approved, and the bounty of the bees was added to the stock of provisions in the little log cabin. Backed by health and imbued with hardy courage, the pioneers who came so well provided as these were already wealthy. Not every white settler who braved the wilderness in search of a spot to call his own, came with hands so full.

            By the opening of spring, 1802, sufficient space had been cleared for planting the first corn crop, and four acres were devoted to setting out an apple orchard, the first in the county. Mrs. Sharp had brought from Chillicothe a sapling pear tree, which she had used as a riding switch on the way to the new home on the Darby, and this was set out beside the cabin door, where it took root and survived in a bearing condition as long as the apple orchard-a period of seventy to seventy-five years.

            The Sharp family were Quakers, as has been intimated, native in New Jersey, but of later residence in Virginia, from whence they came to try their fortunes in a newer field. Following them, in the years 1802-3-4-5 came relatives and acquaintances, also Quakers, forming a nucleus around which gathered many others of the same worthy sect, a splendid foundation for the building of a new community. The first of these were Thomas and Esther Antrim, Esther being a daughter of the Sharps. Thomas was a blacksmith, and doubtless entitled to be recorded as the first of his ancient and honorable calling to settle in this new country. He was also a Quaker preacher of much ability, and he took an active part in the organization and building of the first Quaker church, which was the first church of any name to be erected in the wilds of Logan. A school was also conducted in the same (log) building, and nearby was established that pathetic necessity, the first burying ground. Daniel, the son of Thomas and Esther Antrim, is stated authoritatively to be the first white child born among the incoming settlers, but his title has been disputed by another claimant in the person of a daughter born to the Sharps. It might be safe to say that Daniel Antrim was the first white boy born in the county, and that his very young aunt was the first white girl, were it not that a daughter of the 1askeeps contests this latter claim. It is beyond the scope and purpose of this chapter to follow minutely the individual composition and genealogy of each (page 179) settlement, nor is such detail necessary to a clear story of local development, although, in a larger work, merely to have been among the "first settlers" is ample cause for the immortalization of names. But from time to time certain strong characters or groups must be projected on the screen in the telling of Logan's story, in such light as they were vital factors in the life of the infant commonwealth. It is but just to say at this point that it was not individuals, however, but the whole pioneer body, men and women, from whom arose the social structure of today. Upon that foundation, built with successive acquisitions of enduring value, cemented by marriage bonds weaving intricately but clearly throughout the fabric of its walls, the Logan county of today stands like one family, and that family like its sturdy forebears, "All American."

            Beginning with the early spring of 1802, settlement began to occur quite generally all over the county, wherever traces of former occupation by Indians or their white associates survived, or where the already mentioned forerunners had planted their cabins. The Indians may be said to have pointed the way, having so thorough a knowledge of the advantages of different localities. Particularly at Zane's Town, the oldest and most familiar of the Indian towns, numerous Quaker families grouped about the headwaters of Mad river, while still others followed down the fertile valley to the Mac-a-chack, forming new groups in the neighborhood of West Liberty. To the central and western parts, attracted by the proximity of the McPhersons and others, came settlers of equal mettle, all hastening to avail themselves of the rich lands of which such marvelous accounts had been sent "back home." The extreme west and north sections were, perhaps, a little later than the others to attract a rush of settlers-partly on account of the Indian reservation, and the remote and lonely position at the time-yet there, too, not a few of the "first families" located in quite early years. The tide of immigration, once started, set steadily, if not with spectacular rapidity, overspreading gradually all the territory not reserved to the Indians, who, by the way, did not retire from the white man's neighborhood with noticeable haste. Not many of the f irst settlers came here under the infuence of "emigration fever," however, but with carefully calculated preparation and foreknowledge of the conditions they were to meet. They were pioneers barn and bred, and almost without exception the children of parents who had left the older civilization of the Atlantic colonies or states for frontier life in Virginia, Maryland, and Kentucky, and the Ohio valley on the north, and they had doubtless imbibed a love for virgin fields of effort as they grew up. They were ready in spirit to encounter whatever difficulties the pioneer life presented in this new country. Its hardships were accepted as a matter of course, and the emigration was voluntary and eager. Nor were all the refinements to which they were heirs in the eastern centres left behind them in these successive migrations, for refinement lies deeper than material belongings. Religion, education, and the skilled hand were in their stock of implements, and high aspiration and the energy which is required to attain high objects. With these they wrought for themselves new lares and penates, and from the (page 180) logs of the forest primeval reared themselves new temples of worship and of learning.

            At Zane's Town, early to feel the impulse of immigration, the family of Isaac Zane, with its sons and daughters-in-law, already made the nucleus of a town, in the settlers' sense, when the frst newcomers arrived. The Zanes were a notable race of men wherever the name appears in colonial records. The grandfather of Isaac, who came to America from England (the family originated in Denmark), with William Penn, left his mark on the city of brotherly love in one of its streets, which bears the name of Zane. Ebenezer Zane, the eldest brother of Isaac, had taken as deep root in the Scioto valley, while Isaac himself, while yet a captive in the wilderness, had merely by force of personality impressed the name of Zane indelibly on the Indian village which sheltered him. Isaac and his wife were, from the first, powerful instruments in promoting friendliness between the Indians and the whites. Their children, three sons and four daughters, were: William, Ebenezer and Isaac, Jr., and Nancy, Elizabeth, Kitty and Sally. Of the sons, the names of whose helpmates are not disclosed, the first is William, who removed, in 1820, to the Upper Sandusky, and became leading counselor for the Wyandot Indians; Ebenezer, who built the one      story log part of the house now known as the McCormick house, in 1804. (This is the oldest house now standing either in the village or the county.) The two-story part was added in or near 1814. Ebenezer removed to Wyandot county in 1832. Isaac, Jr., by his father's will, settled on the farm afterward owned by E. O. Wickersham, near "Wickersham's Corners." The house, still standing, was a fine residence for the times in which it was built, and became known as "Zane Mansion." It was constructed by a man named Bishop, who received for his compensation a farm, which is now owned by the Pennock estate. Isaac also removed to Wyandot county in the thirties, dying there.

            Of the daughters, Nancy, the oldest, had made a visit, about the date of 1796-7, to her grandfather, Tarhe, who was at the time      living in the vicinity of Lancaster, Ohio, and while there had met her fate, a happy one, in the person of William McColloch, who was assisting her uncle, Ebenezer Zane, Sr., in cutting the early thoroughfare known as "Zane Trace." William and Nancy were married in 1797, and did not come to Zane's Town to live until 1803, when their son, Noah Zane McColloch, was five years old. (Little Noah was already distinguished as the first white child born in the village of Zanesville.) It may be told that the Zanes and McCollochs had long been neighbors and friends in the Culpeper vicinity in Virginia, and that the marriage of William and Nancy was the second tie of wedlock between different branches of the family. Solomon and Samuel McCulloch arrived to settle permanently in Zane's Town in the same year (1803), bringing their families. Kitty Zane married Alexander Long, who came very early to the village, and their part of the Zane estate lay on the south side of the road leading to Bellefontaine (then still Blue Jacket's Town), while that of her brother, Ebenezer, jr., lay on the north. These two tracts, with a few scattered houses and the store of Lanson (page 181) Curtis (successor to Robert Robitaille), the man who imported the "first wheeled vehicle" into Logan county, comprised the village of Zane's Town in 1815. In 1819 it was "layed out," as quaintly stated, by joint agreement of Zane and Long, who rechristened it "Zanesfield." Three additions have since been made to this oldest town in Logan county, and first of all new world towns to bear the name of Zane.

            Sally Zane married Robert Armstrong, who was instrumental in discovering the real headspring of the Scioto river, for which advantage to the Virginia Military Surveys Gen. Arthur deeded to him one hundred acres in the southeastern corner of the increase of territory gained by the relocation of the Ludlow line north of the Greenville treaty line.

            Elizabeth Zane, who, after the death of her first husband, Robert Robitaille, married James M. Reed, died about 1819 or 1820, leaving a young daughter, as well as the two Robitaille boys.

            Job Sharp had, before the date 1803, built on his own farm on Darby creek a small mill operated by water power obtained from two fine springs which he united in a headgate. Very rude and primitive the mill was, and designed for the use of his own family, but it produced a meal that was far superior to the grits which the settlers had thus far produced for themselves by pounding corn between stones, or by using a boulder for a pestle with a hollowed stump for a mortar, so the fame of "Sharp's Mill" spread rapidly and settlers came from far and near to patronize it. But, closely following the Sharp mill, William McColloch, who settled with Nancy a little south of the village at Zane's Town, had built a mill expressly for public patronage, the first real mill in the county, distinguished by a millrace one mile long, traces of which may still be seen.

            In 1812, William McColloch organized a company of volunteers to serve the country in the war with Great Britain. He furnished the necessary horses and cattle, and maintenance for the same without remuneration, and, at the head of his scouts, joined Gen. Hull at Belleville. He was killed in the defeat of Browntown, the site of Detroit, when the British were commanded by Gen. Brock and the Indians by Tecumseh. There is a story that Tecumseh commanded McColloch's heart to be eaten by his braves, to imbue them with the courage of the valiant pioneer soldier. His body lies in an unknown spot. Nancy, his widow, a few years later (1816) built a school house and employed a teacher for it, the whole being a free offering in the interest of education. This was the first free school in Logan county. Nancy died in 1848 and was buried, by her own request, in the orchard of her home farm. Solomon McColloch at once entered actively into the affairs of the settlements, after his arrival in Zane's Town, his marked ability making him valuable in many lines. When, fifteen years later, it became necessary to choose a site for the county seat of Logan, he was appointed by the court to be the first director of the new town. He it was who received the deeds from the original owners, laid out the town, after the survey, into its original sixteen squares, and subdivided these into lets which he brought to (page 182) public sale. One of his daughters married Miller Kenton, a son of           Gen. Simon Kenton, and a sister became the wife of James M. Workman, one of whose daughters married Simon Kenton, jr.

            Samuel McColloch was an officer in William McColloch's company in the war of 1812, and his son, George, was also a member of the same band of scouts. Both survived the war, the father having lost an arm, becoming thereby one of the early pensioners of the government in Logan county. The son, who was but fifteen years of age when the family located in Logan county, married the daughter of George Henry of Culpeper, Virginia, in 1809, the Henrys being also pioneers here. George McColloch became one of the earliest Baptist ministers in the county, and was a pastor of old Tharp's Run Baptist church. He spent an honored life, known to the whole county, and attained the grand old age of ninety-six years, dying universally mourned in 1886. .The year 1806, once accepted as the year of first settlement, was, in fact, the date of a wave of immigration into Champaign county proper, a part of which wave overflowed into what was afterward set apart as Logan. This group came from the Western Reserve, and did not difer essentially in the character of its personnel from the contingent which preceded it, a goodly community, indeed, and though widely scattered, of remarkable unity of aim and sympathy. No better idea can be formed of the population at this time than is briefly conveyed in the election list of 1806, the occasion of the frst election ordered in "Zane township," which then comprised the whole of Logan county, as given in the intimate little volume of Joshua Antrim, published in 1872, and now, it is to be regretted, nearly vanished from the bookshelves of the county. Quoting the list in full:

            "Judges, James McPherson, George M. Bennett, Thomas Antrim.

            "Clerks, Thomas Davis, Henry Shaw. "Certified by William McColloch, J. P.

            "Names of Electors [the spelling of many names is crude] Jiles Chambers, Isaac Zane, John Stephenson, William McCloud, Matthew Cavanaugh, Abner Cox, Alexander Suter, John Tucker, William C. Dagger, John Fillis, sen. [Tullis], George Bennett, Thomas Davis, Daniel Phillips, Thomas Antrim, James McPherson, John Provolt, Job Sharp, Jeremiah Stansbury, Samuel McCulloch, Edward Tatman, James Frail, William McColloch, Isaac Titsworth, Arthur McWaid, John Lodwork, Henry Shaw, Carlisle Haines, Samuel Sharp, John Sharp, Charles McLain, John Tilis [Tullis] jr., Daniel Tucker."

            Among the candidates for election were Daniel McKinnon, for sherif; Solomon McColloch, for commissioner, and William Powell, for coroner. Other names entered in the county records previous to 1812, include the Inskeeps, Reames, Garwoods, Euans, Outlands, Newells, Blacks, Ballingers, Curls, Moots, Randalls, and Dr. John Elbert, who came in 1809. When peace was permanently established after the war of 1812, immigration became so rapid that it is only possible to mention those who became most prominent in the (page 183) development of the country and the building of towns and industries.

            During all the years of settlement, one figure, quaint, fantastic, yet unobtrusive, had become familiar to every accessible part of the country. Even where conditions seemed to defy access, he came and went, ministering, self-appointed, to the welfare of the wilder

            ness and its pioneers. This was Jonathan Chapman, "Johnny Appleseed," who was neither settler nor homeseeker, who had, in fact, no home, but who for forty years or more traversed the valleys of Ohio and Indiana, planting apple orchards, asking no compensation from whomsoever would suffer his service and his trees. He was a native of New England, and a Swedenborgian in religious faith, and he preached his doctrines wherever he found a listener. He also endeavored to live up to the Scriptures, which he interpreted with a literalness which caused him to be regarded by the average observer as mentally unbalanced. This gentle and kindly old itinerant, however, merely practiced (a policy as unusual then as it is now) what he preached, and the worst that should be said of him is that he was consistent. Savage and settler alike respected him, when once they knew him; little children loved him, and rejoiced when he made his rounds; in all his life he inspired fear in no one but that solitary German backwoodsman who met him suddenly in the woods, attired in his familiar rags and tatters, and found it a fearsome sight. But his orchards were, as he intended, a blessing, and left the wilderness fragrant long after he ceased to tread it. True, the varieties were haphazard, and his conscientious objection to grafting and pruning stood in the way of improving the stock, A niece of Jonathan's (daughter of his sister, who followed him to the west) living in Fort Wayne, Indiana, who learned the facts of his life motive from her mother, explains that "Uncle Jonathan believed it to be a sin to interfere with the divinely ordained processes of nature, and so would never graft his stock." Also, the "cast-of tin can or cooking utensil" which he wore as a hat was not adopted as a matter of taste, but from what he deemed necessity. The stew-pan was indispensable on his travels ; so was a cover for his head. Hands and back were already overloaded, and the only place available for carrying the pan was his head, which could not accommodate both pan and hat. Therefore Jonathan sacrificed the hat, just as he sacrificed every other thing which stood in the way of his service to his fellowman. His coat of coffee-sacking, which he "found to be a very good garment," was only adopted in an emergency, and he would not discard it for a handsomer garment lest he should, by having something better than he actually needed, deprive some other man more needy than himself.

            Undoubtedly Jonathan loved beauty, and wished to create beauty and happiness, else why the apple trees, the gifts of gay prints and ribbons to his child friends? It was of his own choice that he always slept upon the floor before the cabin fireplace, but his motive was a wish not to incommode his host's family. For the same reason, he would not sit at the table lest some one of the children of the family had to wait, but he was a welcome guest at (page 184) all cabins. His life ended March, 1843, at the end of a prematurely warm day, when he reached the home of William Worth, near Fort Wayne, after a long tramp. His supper of bread and milk was eaten while he sat, of his own choice, on the western doorstep, and from the same lowly pulpit he read, aloud, the Beatitudes. Then he lay down, as usual, on the floor to sleep-a sleep from which he emerged only to enter that which knows no waking. His burial in the old David Archer cemetery was attended by old settlers' families from miles around and from the city. In after years the

original oak slab which served for a headstone rotted away, and for a time the exact location of the grave was uncertain, but in 1912 it was rediscovered in digging for another grave (the old cemetery is still in use) and the headstone above the now double grave bears inscriptions for both occupants. A bronze tablet (set in a natural boulder) dedicated to the memory of the deeds of Jonathan Chapman, was placed in Swinney park at Fort Wayne in 1916.

            Logan County Formed. The new county was separated from Champaign December 30, 1817, by an act of legislature, only its southern boundary being determinate for some time after. The "act" provided for the location of a temporary seat of justice at the tavern of Edwin Mathers "or other convenient place" until a permanent site should be established. The separation was directed to take effect March 1, 1818, and the act was signed by Duncan Mc

            Arthur, then speaker of the lower house. The land comprising the county was referred to as "Congress and Virginia Military Lands," and the final fixing of the northern boundary was not completed for some years, being delayed by disputes with Hardin county relative to the relocation of the old surveys. The arbitrary division of the county into townships, followed slowly as settlement progressed.

            Logan county received its name in the act of legislature creating it, and it was bestowed in honor of Gen. Benjamin Logan of the American Army, whose forces frst opened by means of the "expedition," the territory of the Miami headwaters to white settlement. There is a somewhat popular error, frequently met with, that if the county was not named in partial reference to "Logan the Mingo," the name Logan at least had an Indian origin. This is quite without foundation, the truth being that the only Logans who had hereditary right to the name were of direct Irish ancestry, if not of direct importation from Ireland. The name belongs to the unnumbered Irish names ending in "gan." Logan the Mingo (Indian name Tah-gah-jute) was born at Shamokin, Pennsylvania, the half-breed son of a white Canadian named Shikellamy, who at the time was the chosen chief of the Indians collected in that vicinity. Tah-gah-jute succeeded his father in that capacity. James Logan, an Irish Quaker and celebrated scholar, came to America with William Penn in the first half of the eighteenth century, and at the time Tah-gah-jute reached manhood, he was acting governor of the Pennsylvania colony. Tah-gah-jute conceived a great admiration for him, and adopted his name (with or without sanction of the owner) a custom quite common among Indians of all tribes. Later, (page 185) as "Logan, Chief of the Mingoes" Tah-gah-jute migrated to Ohio, where the troubles began. "Mingo" was merely a term applied by Indians to any group of Iroquois living in exile from their own territory. "Logan Chief of the Mingoes" was in no way connected with the Indians of Logan county, nor concerned in the conflicts there. Incidentally, his celebrated "speech," was inaccurately reported by the trader, John Gibson, for Logan never had a child, and his wife outlived him, although he attempted to kill her, while intoxicated, and believing that he had done so, fed. Being pursued by relatives, who followed him to carry this tiding, the fugitive, who was discovered at last near the shore of Lake Erie, was killed, in resisting capture, by Tod-hah-dos, the son of his sister, who alone of the Mingo's blood had been a victim of the white raids in Ohio.

            This is a digression, however, and is to be pardoned, because introduced to make clear a point which is of interest to every Loganite.

 

County Seat

 

            Offers were made by different settlers of sites for the proposed capital of the new county, the commissioners, Richard Rocker, John Hopkins and Solomon Smith, at first accepting thatof lands lying about two miles south of Zanesfeld, possessed by Solomon McColloch, Samuel McCoid and Joseph Hedges. In the month of April, 1819, the "said commissioners" were informed by the Court of Common Pleas that "a good and sufficient title in fee simple" was unobtainable for the proposed site, whereupon they accordingly selected another site, offered by John Tullis, Leonard Houtz and William Powell, whose proposition included the liberal terms quoted below from the court document furnished the historian by Mr. W. W. Riddle. The site in question was, of course, the land upon which the heart of Bellefontaine was soon afterward located. After designating in technical terms the exact location of the tract, the offer reads :

            "We, the undersigned, will give, for the use of the county, the Public Square, a sufficient lot for public worship, and burying ground, and in addition to the above lots, as much ground as will make one hundred acres, the whole to be laid out in lots, and to give the county an equal half of said lots, as they may be numbered, beginning with the lowest number, or the highest number, the town directors to take the first choice, we the next, and so on, alternately. Also to convey the lots to be given as aforesaid in fee simple, with covenants of warranty. Given our hands this 4th day of May, 1819."

            No mention is made in the court journal quoted of the name of the new county seat, but in the year following the title Bellefontaine appears an accepted thing. It is well understood now that the name was selected not in reference or compliment to any other town or family of that name, but as descriptive of the crystal springs in which the locality abounded, and possibly in special reference to Blue jacket spring, the site being that of Chief Blue Jacket's former residence. Further on in the proposition of Messrs. Tullis, Houtz and Powell, the southern boundary of the town was fixed (page 186) as "a line running due east and west," and so located as to include "the big spring." The long misprized gift to the town was at the foot of the slope, south of the old Blue jacket cabin in which (with some improvement, doubtless,) John Tullis, sr., then made his habitation. The word "Bellefontaine," meaning "beautiful fountain," was suggested by a daughter of John Gunn, who, it will be remembered, is said to have been a man of scholarly attainments, and whose daughters were also unusually accomplished ladies. The town was laid out March 18, 1820, by the proprietors and the town director, Solomon McColloch, duly appointed and authorized by the court. Based upon the southern boundary line, the plat was divided into sixteen blocks, standing "four square" with the world-or so it was honestly intended by the early surveyors. Cincinnati (now Main) and Columbus avenues intersected at the center, the public square lying at the southeast angle of the intersection. Chillicothe and Sandusky avenues extended east and west to south and north of Columbus, and Mad River and Detroit streets ran north and south to the east and west of Cincinnati street. The outer edges were simply designated "corporation limits" and only thirty feet was allowed each for roadway. The lots averaged fifty-five feet in width, by two hundred and twenty feet in depth. The cemetery was located in the northwest corner of the plat, and many years later, after the removal to the new city of the dead, the plot was transformed into a pretty little park (Powell), in which a memorial boulder and bronze tablet was placed a few years ago by Miss Mary Powell, in honor of her grandfather, William Powell. Needless to say, the whole plat lay almost unimproved, and mostly lost in a thicket of trees and underbrush, through which the projected streets had yet to be hewn. The Blue jacket cabin, in which lived the senior Tullis, was the only structure within the limits of the plat. The whole was done as written down. The town director was ordered by the court to attend public sales, and authorized to make private sales at his own discretion if he believed the county should profit thereby, and in particular authorized to sell to William Powell, "Lot 114, on which some improvement is made." In the mammoth game of "tit-tat-toe" between the county and the proprietors (scarcely as smile-provoking to the participants as it seems today), the county had taken all the lots with "even numbers." These lots were offered at public sales, the first of which was held the first Tuesday in June, 1820. The plat was fled for record August 12, 1822. Solomon McColloch held his responsible office, for which he gave bond in the sum of $10,000, until 1831, at which time a further entry in the court journal reads : "Solomon McColloch comes into court and tenders this resignation of the office of town director, which resignation is accepted by the court who thereupon appointed Benjamin S. Brown his successor, with Henry H. McPherson, David P. Alder, and Anthony Casad for his sureties. Dr. Benjamin S. Brown was still acting in the capacity as late as 1841, and doubtless continued to act until the county's properties. were finally disposed of.

            Among the very earliest settlers of the new town were Joseph Gordon, Nathaniel Dodge, Anthony Ballard, William Gutridge, (page 187) Thomas Haines and John Rhodes. Joseph Gordon, well known as an early post-rider for the army, and mail carrier in the settlements, erected the first house, a log cabin, at the west end of the lot at the northwest corner of Cincinnati and Chillicothe streets. He lived in this house, and, soon after, built a larger one on the corner, with a low attic story above, which he sold to Anthony Ballard, who kept a tavern there for a year or two. Robert Paterson then occupied it for a time as a store and residence, while buying and building elsewhere, and Dr. Lord also lived there, and had a small office building adjacent. On the southeast corner of the same streets, where the Dowell block stands, Dr. Lord erected, in 1830, a frame building which he rented for tavern purposes, different tavern keepers of the times running the place, which went by various names. Walter Slicer and Patrick Watson are said to have been hosts there. On the northeast corner of these streets was erected the first brick building within the original town limits. John W. Marquis was the builder, and its first occupant was a man named Mitchenor. It subsequently was torn away and rebuilt by Walter Slicer, whose family residence was maintained in the new building for many years. It was afterward remodeled into a business house, and has for many years now been occupied by the Patrick Fogarty grocery. Slicer's property included not only the residence, but several lots to the north on Main street, and a large section to the east and south on Chillicothe- Mrs. Anna B. Blessing, youngest daughter of the Slicers, now living on East Chillicothe street, has vivid recollections of the life of the old home.


Return to "Memoirs of the Miami Valley - Volume One" Home Page