OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Tidbits of Ohio -- Part 15 ************************************************************************ USGENWEB ARCHIVES(tm) NOTICE Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm All documents placed in the USGenWeb Archives remain the property of the contributors, who retain publication rights in accordance with US Copyright Laws and Regulations. In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, these documents may be used by anyone for their personal research. They may be used by non-commercial entities so long as all notices and submitter information is included. These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit. Any other use, including copying files to other sites, requires permission from the contributors PRIOR to uploading to the other sites. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgenwebarchives.org ************************************************************************** File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 March 5, 2005 ************************************************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio And Then They Went West Know Your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley Tid Bits- Part 15. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Seed of Three Towns The first settlements on the land between the two Miamis were made in the late fall and early winter, a time of cold rains, snow, ice in the river, and sharp winds that came through the thick trees and sent chill into the brush pole huts and hastily chinked log cabins. The first settlement in southern Ohio was Columbia, founded by Major Benjamin Stites, who landed with twenty six adults and several children on November 18, 1788. When the families stepped out on the land after their long journey down the Ohio in flatboats, they made a clearing in a pawpaw thicket. In this clearing, while the women and childen knelt on the ground and the men stood guard clutching their long rifles, they prayed for the success of the settlement. Next, all fell to work and built open-faced brush huts; a fair shelter from snow or rain, but filled with cold and the smoke from a fire kept burning by the open door. As soon as there was time, the men began building stout, heavily timbered log cabins, into which they moved their families. Although it was small, Columbia soon made plans for a church and a school. The settlers had been there little more than a year when they organized the Columbia Baptist Church and a pay school for boys-- the first church and school in Hamilton County. The churchyard and many graves of the first settlers can be seen near Lunkin Airport, and there is nothing to mark the site of the first school building, and its location has been forgotten. However, we do know that its first teacher was John Reily, a former Revolutionary War soldier. His pay was small. Much of it he took out in board and lodging, staying with first one family and then another for a week or so at a time. He taught the older boys such subjects as arithmatic, grammer, reading, writing, and spelling. Very young children usually learned the alphabet and a bit of reading and writing at home. The next year, 1791, Francis Dunlevy, also an ex-soldier, came to teach Greek and Latin to the Columbia boys. The second settlement to be made in the Symmes Purchase was Losantiville, begun on December 28, 1788. Though Colonal Israel Ludlow and other men first came to live there on that date, they had already spent time in planning streets for the prospective town and dividing the forest lands into fields and lots. John Filson, a young school-teacher from Lexington, Kentucky, had been one of those who helped plan the town. He had wished to give the place a name that would describe its location. Taking French, English, and Latin words, he created the name, " Losantiville, " meaning " the city opposite the mouth of the Licking." John Filson never lived to see the first cabins built in the settlement he named. While he, Ludlow, and other men were surveying the land and planning the settlement, he went off in the deep forest and disappeared. He never came back. For the next first few days after Colonel Ludlow and other men came to live at Losantiville, they stayed in small shacks made from the timbers of their flatboats. But soon Ludlow built a log cabin at the Northeast corner of Front and Main Streets, the first cabin in what was to be downtown Cincinnati. By February three cabins had been built, and other settlers continued to come in small groups. Judge John Cleves Symmes, the man who had first bought the great chunk of land that later made up most of Hamilton County, thought he would rather live at the bend on the Ohio beside the Great Miami. Early in 1789 he therefore went past Columbia and Losantiville on down the Great Miami. There, with his family, his friends, and some soldiers who had come to guard him, he founded North Bend. Early in the year 1789, therefore, three settlements lay in Hamilton County. But they were so small that they were more like the seed of towns sown in a wilderness than like real towns. And all through the winter there were many times when it seemed the seed could not grow, for they were hindered by many troubles. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Hamilton County's long Winter Getting food was at first the greatest problem. True, there was much game in the forest, but a continued diet of bear, deer, and wild turkey meat, combined with little bread and no vegetables, was tiresome and often sickening. The supply of flour and meal was low, and it was almost impossible to get more in the winter weather. Streams were swollen, and filled with great slabs of drifting ice. Since most travel was either by flatboat or depended on the streams and rivers, trips for supplies were slow and dangerous. The flatboats were safe enough unless overtaken by ice cakes, but most were useless for traveling upstream. To go against the current the the setlers used pirogues, long, canoe-shaped boats such as the indians had, but these were given to tipping over and were hard ro manage in a swift stream. The swollen streams and rivers not only made travel difficult, but also caused much trouble at both Columbia and North Bend by flooding most of the cabins in both settlements. Since none of the settlers had known what the Ohio River and the two Miami Rivers would do in the early spring, they had built their homes to near the water for safety from even mild spring floods. At North Bend the soldiers were trapped and forced to take to a higher land by boat, and at Columbia conditions were a little better. At Losantiville, however, Colonel Ludlow and the others had built their cabins out of danger of the rising waters. Fortunately, through this first bad winter, the settlers were so few and Fort Washington had not yet been built, the Indians gave more help than trouble. Early in the 1789, before settling at North Bend, Judge Symmes had sent a string of white beads to the Indians in token of friendship, and he also wrote them a letter. In his letter he said: " If the red people will live in friendship with him [ Judge Symmes ] and his young men who came from the great salt ocean to plant corn and build cabins on the land between the Great and Little Miai, then the white and red people shall be brothers and live together, and we will buy your furs and skins and sell you blankets and rifles and powder and lard and rum, and everything that our red brothers may want in hunting and in their towns. Brothers, a treaty is holding at Muskingum. Great men from the thirteen fires are there to meet the chiefs and the head men of all the nation of the red people. May the Great Spirit direct all their councils for peace. But the great men and the wise men of the red and white people cannot keep peace and friendship long unless we, who are sons and warriors, will bury the hatchet and live in peace. " A few days after the settlers had landed, they were surprised to find a band of friendly indians. With the Indians was a white man named George, who had lived among them so long that he dressed and acted like the Indians, and spoke their language. Yet, in spite of his long stay in the Indian towns, he had not forgotten how to speak English. When he first met the settlers he called to them as they were working on their small fort. The settlers thought that he was one of them and that he was loafing among the trees. They called back and told him to get to work. Through the winter he acted as interpreter for Major Stites and the Shawnee who lived a short distance away. The people of Columbia and the Indians grew more neighborly, and soon exchanged many friendly visits. The squaws, with their papooses strapped to their backs, would even come to the cabins and stay overnight. When the food was gone at Columbia, the Indians loaned and sold the settlers all the corn they could spare. They taught the women what wild roots could be found under the snow in the woods and how to bake and boil them for use instead of bread. In spite of bad weather and food so scarce that many settlers were often weak, the winter was a busy time. The work of surveying and dividing it into lots and fields, crisscrossed by streets and roads, went forward in al kinds of weather. It took many of the men on long journeys into the snowy woods. Others were occupied hunting game for food. When all their work was finished, most of the people planned for the spring. Cutting down the great trees and getting the land ready for seed was a hard task. Trees six feet thick were common, and their huge roots stopped the plow. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Sprouting Not all the problems of the Ohio pioneers were solved with the coming of spring, nor even by the good crops of corn that grew in Turkey Bottom in the second summer. Lack of food ceased to be the greatest hardship. Troubles of a graver nature shadowed the settlements. The Indians, who had been friendly and helpful for a while, grew hostile. The settlers needed better protection than that given by a small band of soldiers at North Bend. The United States Government decided that it should build a good, strong fort. After a discussion of all possible locations, it was agreed to erect the fort in the middle one of the three small settlements -- Losantiville. Fort Washington, named in honor of George Washington, was finished before the end of the year 1789. It consisted of five large log blockhouses, four placed so as to form the corners of a square, and a fifth at the corner of a triangle on one side. All were connected by cabins of thick logs set close together like a mighty fence. Inside the fort were quarters for General Harmer and the three hundred officers and soldiers who came to protect the people in the Symmes Purchase. Losantiville ceased to be simply a few log cabins limited by the Ohio River on one side and vast reaches of forest on the other sides. True, no more than forty or fifty new settlers came within the next year or so, but the fort with its soldiers made the small settlement important in the Nortwest Territory. It was no longer a village governed by laws of its choosing, but a military post ruled mostly by the army. The fort and its soldiers dominated the life of the village. Small boys ran away to visit the fort and to watch the soldiers drill. People became accustomed to the sound of the sunrise and sunset guns and the sights of soldiers marching through the muddy streets or drilling for war. There was one soldier, a tall, black-eyed lieutenant by the name of William Henry Harrison, who in later days became one of the best-loved and most-respected men in the Northwest Territory. When 1811 the Indians made a desperate attempt to hold that part of the Territory that is now Indiana, it was to be him, who led the soldiers against them in the famous victory at Tippecanoe. Later still, he married a daughter of Judge John Cleves Symmes, and in 1841, became the President of the United States. When Harrison was a young lieutenant at the fort, there were several other men, older than he, who were outstanding people in the Ohio Country. One of these was Arthur St. Clair, first Governor of the Northwest Territory. Early in January 1790, he came down the Ohio from Marietta to visit Losantiville and Fort Washington. St. Clair looked over the few log cabins and the short, miry streets that lost themselves in the nearby woods. He decided that Losantiville was no fit name for the place. Perhaps he thought the name to fancy for such a little village, or maybe he only wished to honor the Society of the Cincinnati, to which he belonged. The Society of the Cincinnati was an organization of men who had served three years as officers in the Revolution. The men were pledged to help each other, and it was agreed that when a member died, his oldest son would take his father's place. In honor of this Society, St. Clair named the little town Cincinnati. Shortly after the naming of Cincinnati, St. Clair, with the help of the judges of the Supreme Court, decided the boundaries of Hamilton County. Judge Symmes named it Hamilton in honor of Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury. Cincinnati was chosen the seat of the new county and the capital of the Norhwest Territory. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Tid Bits to be continued in part 16.