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OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest                    Volume 99 : Issue 363

Today's Topics:
  #1 HAMILTON COUNTY PART 4               [AUPQ38A@prodigy.com (MRS GINA M RE]

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X-Message: #1
Date: Sat,  5 Jun 1999 16:33:39, -0500
From: AUPQ38A@prodigy.com (MRS GINA M REASONER)
Subject: HAMILTON COUNTY PART 4


HISTORICAL COLLECTION OF OHIO By Henry Howe, LL.D., 1898

                        HAMILTON COUNTY - PART 4

        CORN PIT. -A number of objects of copper, particularly beads, have
been taken from these pits, as have also several pipes of various shapes
cut out of stone. One pit discovered August 26, 1879, known as the
"corn-pit," is of peculiar interest. The depth of this pit was six feet,
its diameter three feet. The layers or strata from above downwards were:
        1st, Leaf-mould 24 inches; 2d, Gravel and clay 15 inches; 3d, Ashes
containing animal remains, pottery sherds, unio shells 10 inches; 4th Bark,
twigs and matting 4 inches; 5th, Carbonized shell corn 4 inches; 6th, Layer
of twigs, matting and corn leaves 2 inches; 7th, Carbonized corn in ear 6
inches; 8th, Boulders covering the bottom of the pit 6 inches.
        Immediately along-side of this pit was another the same depth, 3
feet 7 inches in diameter; containing leaf-mould, 24 inches; ashes with
animal remains, fragments of pottery, shells, etc., 4 feet.
        The bottom layer of all the pits was invariably ashes, and in the
ashes were found, in good state of preservation, bone implements,
representing fish hooks, fish spears, bone and horn digging tools, bone
beads, solid cylinders of bone two to three inches in length one-fourth to
one-half inch in diameter, bone awls, needles, fifes, grooved bones, cut
pieces of antler of deer and elk, copper beads, perforated unios, together
with numerous animal remains; of these many were identified as belonging to
the deer, elk, bear, buffalo, raccoon, opossum, mink, woodchuck, beaver,
various species of birds and water fowls, turkey, fish, together with
various species of unio shell.
        POTTERY. -The skeletons were buried in the horizontal position, and
are generally found at a depth of from eighteen inches to three feet; with
the skeletons have been found a number of vessels of pottery; the most
common of these are small cooking-pots with pointed bottoms and four
handles. Most of the vessels are simply cord-marked, but some are found
ornamented within with incised lines, or with circular indentations.
Several have been obtained on which were small and rudely made medallion
figures representing the human face.
        LIZARD ORNAMENTATION. -On one pot a similarly formed head is on the
edge so as to face the inside of the vessel. One vessel lent to the
Smithsonian Institute has luted ornants representing the human face on
either side between the handles. A half dozen small vessels have a very
interesting form of decoration; these are known as lizard or salamander
pots. On some of these vessel the salamander, which is fairly modeled, is
on the surface of the broad, flat handles on opposite sides, on others
these ornaments are placed between the handles, and on one they form the
handles. In all, the head of the salamander is on the edge or lip of the
vessel, and in one or two is carried a little to the inside. A few other
forms of vessels are represented by single specimens. Such are an ordinary
pot attached to a hollow stand a few inches high, two vessels joined
together, one above the other, the upper without a bottom, the two having
eight handles and a flat, long dish with two handles on each end.
        THE PRE-HISTORIC CEMETERY, near Madisonville, occupies an area of
about fifteen acres covered with vast forest trees. Many of the skeletons
and pits are found beneath the roots of large oak, walnut or maple trees.
        MARDELLES OR DUG-OUTS. -In the county but two of the circular
excavations designed as "mardelles" have been found. The best preserved of
this class of works is the one situated on the lands of the John Turner
estate, two miles northeast of the village of Newton.
        This pit has a diameter of sixty feet at the top, depth in the
centre twelve feet; six feet from the edge of the pits is a well-marked
embankment conforming to the circular edge of the pit. The embankment is
two feet high, eight feet wide at the base, and is interrupted by a
gate-way or opening fifteen feet wide at the east. There are many
interesting objects in the county that warrant a detailed description; we
can, however, but briefly call attention to the terraced hill at Red Bank
and the old road-way in Section 11, Columbia Township.
        The hill at Red Bank, just north from the railway station, has an
elevation of about 300 feet, and is terraced on its eastern and southern
slopes. The terraces are five in number and are undoubtedly the work of
human hands. This hill is surmounted by a small mound. The ancient road-way
in Section 11, Columbia Township, near Madisonville, is cut along the face
of a steep hill extending from the creek in a south-westwardly direction to
the top of the hill ending near the Darling homestead. The road-way is
upward of 1,600 feet in length, having an average width of twenty-five
feet, and is overgrown with large forest trees.
        IMPLEMENTS OF PREGLACIAL MEN. -Evidence of preglacial men having
existed in Ohio have been given by the finding of rudely chipped pointed
implements at Madisonville and at Loveland in the glacial deposits as
before stated. The discovery of the altar mounds in the Little Miami Valley
similar to those discovered and explored by Squire and Davis in the Scioto
Valley, near Chillicothe, would indicate that the territory that is now
known as Ross and hamilton counties was once the great centre of the
pre-historic population of Southern Ohio.

                        THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS

        Hamilton county was the second settled in Ohio. Washington, the
first, had its first settlement at Marietta, April 7, 1788. The country
between the Great and Little Miamis had been the scene of so many fierce
conflicts between the Kentuckians and Indians in their raids to and fro
that it was termed the "Miami Slaughter House." In June, 1780, the period
of the Revolutionary war, Captain Byrd, in command of 600 British and
Indians with artillery from Detroit, came down the Big Miami and ascended
the Licking opposite Cincinnati on his noted expedition into Kentucky, when
he destroyed several stations and did great mischief. And in the August
following Gen.Rogers Clark, with his Kentuckians, took up his line of march
from the site of Cincinnati for the Shawnee towns on two blockhouses on the
north side of the Ohio. These were the first structures known to have been
built on the site of the city.
        The beautiful country between the Miamis had been so infested by
the Indians that it was avoided by the whites, and its settlement might
have been procrastinated for years, but for the discovery and enterprise of
Major Benjamin Stites, a trader from New Jersey. In the summer of 1786
Stites happened to be at Washington, just back of Limestone, now Maysville,
where he headed a party of Kentuckians in pursuit of some Indians who had
stolen some horses. They followed for some days; the latter escaped, but
Stites gained by it a view of the rich valleys of the Great and Little
Miamis as far up as the site of Xenia. With this knowledge, and charmed by
the beauty of the country, he hurried back to New Jersey, and revealed his
discovery to Judge John Cleves Symmes, of Trenton, at that time a member of
Congress and a man of great influence. The result was the formation of a
company of twenty-four gentlemen of the State, similar to that of the Ohio
Company, as proprietors of the proposed purchase. Among these were General
Jonathan Dayton, Elias Boudinot and Dr. Witherspoon, as well as Symmes and
Stites. Symmes, in August of next year, 1787, petitioned Congress for a
grant of the land, but before the bargain was closed he made arrangements
with Stites to sell him 10,000 acres of the best land.
        Under the contract with Symmes, Stites, with a party of eighteen or
twenty, landed on the 18th of November, 1788, and laid out the village of
Columbia below the mouth of the Little Miami; it is now within the limits
of the city, five miles east of Fountain Square.
        The settlers were superior men. Among them were Col. Spencer, Major
Gano, Judge Goforth, Francis Dunlavy, Major Kibbey, Rev. John Smith, Judge
Foster, Col. Brown, Mr. Hubbell, Cap. Flinn, Jacob White and John Riley,
and for several years the settlement was the most populous and successful.
        Two or three block houses were first erected for the protection of
the women and children, and then log-cabins for the families. The boats in
which they had come from Maysville, then Limestone, were broken up and used
for the doors, floors, etc., to these rude buildings. They had at that time
no trouble from the Indians, which arose from the fact that they were then
gathered at Fort Harmar to make a treaty with the whites. Wild game was
plenty, but their breadstuffs and slat soon gave out, and as a substitute
they occasionally used various roots, taken from native plants, the bear
grass especially. When the spring of 1789 opened their prospects grew
brighter. The fine bottoms on the Little Miami had long been cultivated by
the savages, and were found mellow as ash heaps. The men worked in division
one-half keeping guard with their rifles while the others worked changing
their employments morning and afternoon.
        Turkey Bottom, on the Little Miami, one and a half miles above
Columbia, was a clearing in area of a square mile, and had been cultivated
by the Indians for a long while, and supplies both Columbia and the
garrison at Fort Washington at Cincinnati with corn for that season. From
nine acres of Turkey Bottom, the tradition goes, the enormous crop of 963
bushels were gathered the very first season.
        Before this the women and children from Columbia early visited
Turkey Bottom to scratch up the bulbous roots of the bear grass. These they
boiled, washed, dried on smooth boards, and finally pounded into a species
of flour, which served as a tolerable substitute for making various baking
operations. Many of the families subsisted for a time entirely on the roots
of the bear grass; and there was great suffering for provisions until they
could grow corn.

        -continued in part 5

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End of OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest V99 Issue #363
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