OHIO STATEWIDE FILES OH-FOOTSTEPS Mailing List Issue 48 *********************************************************************** USGENWEB NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgwarchives.net/ *********************************************************************** OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest Volume 03 : Issue 48 Today's Topics: #1 [OH-FOOT] Colerain twp pt 4 [Tina Hursh To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-Id: <1.5.4.32.20030326200739.0162a1f0@clubnet.isl.net> Subject: [OH-FOOT] Colerain twp pt 4 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Trancribed by Karen Klaene *********************************************************************** Colerain Township - pgs 255-262 *********************************************************************** History of Hamilton County Ohio with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches. Compiled by Henry A. Ford, A.M. and Mrs. Kate B. Ford, L.A. William & Co., Publishers; 1881. Baxter VANSICLE, father of Eliza, came from Maryland with his father and settled on the present site--about one mile west of Sater--in the year 1812. Mr. VANSICLE farmed in the summer and fished in the winter, the river at that time furnishing plenty of that kind of meat, and the market being as good then as now. Mr. VANSICLE died March 12, 1872. Thomas MCHENRY came with his father to Colerain township in the year 1812, where he has resided since. The farm was purchased of a Mr. RICHARDSON and was then about the only settlement made in that vicinity. Mr. MCHENRY' is a member of the Presbyterian church. Mrs. Eliza SCOTT resides at the mouth of DUNLAP creek, where James Henderson SCOTT, her husband, lived many years before his death. He was the proprietor of a sawmill on the Miami river, and engaged chiefly in that business. Mrs. SCOTT was born in Hamilton county, but when six years of age her parents moved to Illinois, where she remained until twenty-one years of age. She was married in 1856, and in 1876 her husband died. Peter POOL, deceased husband of Mary Jane POOL, was born March 2, 1822--died August 10, 1864; purchased about forty acres near the school-house, district No. 7, Colerain township, where he remained many years before his death. James POOLE resides on the Locus farm, the beautiful site near GROSBECK' Colerain township. He was born March 29, 1824, in Hamilton county, and has been iden- ~g 261~ tifed in the interests of that portion of the State during his life: He was a soldier in the late war, and is an active member of the church. His father, William POOLE, came from Vermont in 1816, and died in Springfield, Ohio, in 1868. James POOLE was married January 3, 1857, to Emily CILLEY, daughter of Bradbury CILLEY. John GAISER was born in Germany in 1829. In 1850 he came to Ohio and first settled in Green township. His wife, Wilhelmina GAISER, was born in 1835, and died in Cincinnati in May, 1871. The children living in that city are Katie, Eliza, and Lottie. John C., Caroline, George W., and William H. are now living in Colerain. Mr. GAISER has been in township office and was a farrier at Camp Monroe during the war. John BARNES was born in 1812, in Kentucky, from which State he came into Ohio and made settlement. His wife, Aremento BARNES, died in Colerain township in 1874. The surviving children are Abraham and Mary Jane, now of Colerain; Hugh of Harrison; Daniel, of Indianapolis, Indiana; Alfred W:, of Mill Creek; and Catharine, of Miami. Peter POOLE, the husband of Mary Jane BARNES, died of typhoid fever in the army of Virginia in 1864. Charles WILLEY was a native of Massachusetts, and settled in Colerain township. In 1864 he died in Indiana. Tullitha WILLEY, his wife, born in 1802, is still living in Colerain as also are his two daughters, Sarah and Mary. His son Joseph is now a resident of Indiana. W. G. ARNOLD, of TAYLOR' a farmer, was born in 1836. He bought land here in 1872, since which time he has resided in the village. Louis R. STRONG of TAYLOR' was born and raised near the village, and owns fifty-three acres at that place. He was born on the sixth of August, 1827. A. B. LUSE, M.D., an experienced physician (old school) of over forty years standing, was born in Butler county in 1809; came to Mt. Pleasant in 1830, where he has practiced his profession ever since with an exception of but three years, during which time he pursued his profession in Hamilton, and was there during the cholera epidemic of 1833-4-5. In 1835 he returned to Mt. Pleasant, where he still resides. Mrs. Agnes CILLEY is the wife of Columbus CILLEY, eldest son of Bradbury Hedges CILLEY. Columbus CILLEY was born November 4, 1839, in Colerain Station, Hamilton county, Ohio. After perfecting his studies at College Hill he enlisted as wheel-driver First regiment Ohio light artillery, December 2, 1861, and served until December, 1864. He was in the battles of Gettysburgh, Fredericksburgh, Chancellorsville, Manassas Gap, and other hotly contested engagements. Mr. CILLEY was a good soldier, was a much respected man, and lived on the old homestead after the war and until his death, at which time he was a trustee of the Presbyterian church. Mrs. CILLEY now lives in Venice. Henry GULICK a farmer near BEVIS, is one of the most prominent fruit growers in the country, and is a prominent man in other respects. He began life empty handed, and has made his fortunes since by his own exertions. When two years of age he came with his parents from New Jersey to Hamilton county. He was captain of a company in the One Hundred and Thirty-eighth Ohio volunteers, during the hundred day service; and has filled other positions of prominence. In 1856 he purchased the beautiful site near BEVIS, his present homestead. His son Edward is a natural sculptor, studied the art without the assistance of a tutor, and has produced some remarkable results, of which may be mentioned "The Bachelor's Trial," "The Goddess of War," etc. J.P. WATERHOUSE, M.D., of BEVIS, came to Hamilton county in 1853--born in 1825. His father, Joseph, came to Indiana in 1844. He was a member of the Maine legislature and captain of the militia. Dr. WATERHOUSE graduated in the Miami Medical college in 1854. Practiced his profession in Charleston, Illinois, three years, then in Venice, Ohio, two years, and was for six years a member of the Methodist Episcopal conference. He was a private in the one hundred day service, in the One Hundred and Thirty-eighth regiment Ohio national guard. Mary Jane DAVIS, granddaughter of Paul HUSTON, and daughter of Thomas BURNS and Jennie HUSTON, was born and raised near Carthage, Ohio. Her great-grandfather, Archibald BOURNS, came from Scotland in 1751, and settled in Pennsylvania. Her father and grandfather were sickle makers; both raised large families, who were devoted Christians of the Presbyterian faith. Mrs. DAVIS was; for the space of four years, in the missionary work at Wapanauca, Indian Territory, teaching the mission school of that place The school was composed of the Chickasaw Indians, out of which, during her stay, she wrought considerable success. Mrs. DAVIS is a devoted Christian, and took great interest in her work, for which she deserves great praise. One year previous to leaving this field of labor she was married to Leander DAVIS, March 16, 1855, and for a while lived in Illinois, where he died July, 1865, since which time Mrs. DAVIS has lived in Colerain township, on what is known as the second homestead. John GASSER, of Barnesburgh, came from Germany in 1849, and has lived in the county for thirty years; is a blacksmith--also a farmer--of that place. He raises fruit and vegetables, and markets in Cincinnati. He has been married three times. A. L. COMPTON, of Mount Pleasant, lives on the old homestead farm, a part of-which he owns; he also owns an extensive tract of land in Tennessee. Mr. COMPTON is a prominent member of the Masonic fraternity of this place, and is also secretary of the Jersey John HYDE association, of Cincinnati, for the recovery of the estate of John HYDE, of New Jersey, believed to be in the Bank of England, and amounting, it is said, to sixty or seventy millions of dollars. J. R. THOMPSON of Taylor' principal of the public schools of that place, perfected his studies in the One Study university, of Harrison county, Ohio, came to Taylor' in 1875, since which time-he has been engaged in teaching and dealing in real estate. He owns several lots and houses in the village M. T. JONES, of Colerain township, lives one mile ~pg 262~ south of Pleasant run, on the Hamilton pike. He is a native of Butler county, where he lived until 1817, at which time he moved to the above-named place. COLERAIN VILLAGE. The beginnings of this settlement, and the adventures of Dunlap' Station thereat, have been narrated. John DUNLAP was one of Judge SYMMES' confidential surveyors; and, like most of his class, he easily inclined to land-speculation and the founding of towns, and, herein resembling his distinguished chief, the Miami purchaser, he did not hesitate to discount the future liberally, when it would serve his purposes. Hence he set his stakes down in the bend of the Great Miami, surveyed off a town-site, and offered lots for sale, before he had any valid title whatever to the land upon which they were located. He made some sales; cabins were erected; a fortified station built, and other improvements made. This, be it noted to the enduring honor of the now desolated site in the great bend of the Miami, was the first settlement of any size in the country back of the skirt of villages along the Ohio. But it presently appeared that DUNLAP would be unable to perfect titles to his colonists; the fear of recurring Indian attack probably united with this to discourage the little band; DUNLAP himself soon left, for a time at least; the settlers gradually abandoned the once promising village, and its site returned in due time to its primitive wildness and desolation. The purchasers lost all they had paid DUNLAP, and the value their improvements. The chief memorial of the settlement is in the beautiful name given by the founder to it, and transferred, probably perpetually, to the township itself. The Colerain pioneer, according to the list of first officers of the township, given above, was here still in 1794. He gave the name to the post office of DUNLAP. This place, more commonly known as "Georgetown," is situated only about two miles from the original Colerain, or DUNLAP' Station, and due east of it, at the junction of the Colerain pike with two minor roads, on the west side of section eighteen, one and a half miles south of the county line. A place of this name is mistakenly set down on the map prefixed to the later editions (as that of 1793) of FILSON' Account of the State of Kentucky, as a village on the other side of the county, on the Little Miami, about eight miles above Columbia. It was somewhere in the northeast part of this township, it will be remembered, and probably not far from the subsequent site of DUNLAP, that one of these authors, John FILSON, of the original trio of projectors of Losantiville or Cincinnati, was probably massacred by the Indians. No word or trace of him was ever obtained, after his separation from SYMMES' exploring party in the early fall of 1788, This place was laid off as Georgetown September 2, 1829. BEVIS is also on the Colerain turnpike, something less than midway of its course across the township from the southeast, on the south side of section ten, and half-way across it. A post office and a few houses are here, and a cemetery carefully laid out, with a regularly recorded plat. The village was named from Jesse BEVIS. a native of Pennsylvania and an early settler of the township, first upon the farm now owned by Martin BEVIS. He built the first hotel upon the village site some time in the 20's, and kept it for more than forty years, dying in it finally in 1868, at the age of eighty-six. It is remarked that, although many hundreds of people had been sheltered under the roof of this inn during his time, his was the first death that had ever occurred there. He held for many years the office of township treasurer, and furnished nearly all the means for building the Bevis (United Brethren) church. The St. John's Catholic church, which supplies the wants of Catholicism here and at Dry Ridge, is ministered to by the Reverend Father J. VOIT. Near this place, upon the farm of Martin BEVIS, is the camp-meeting ground formerly leased by a Cincinnati association of Methodists, but since abandoned in favor of the site now used near Loveland, in Clermont county. "Camp Colerain," which occupies a little space in the war history of Hamilton county during the late rebellion, was upon the former ground, where the buildings erected for camp-meeting purposes gave shelter to the soldiers. It was, however, used but a short time, and was never a regular camp of rendezvous or instruction. GROESBECK One mile north of the south line of the township, and nearly the same distance from the east line, at the northwest corner of section one, also on the Colerain pike, is the hamlet of GROSBECK, which bears the name of one of the most famous Cincinnati families. PLEASANT RUN is situated upon the little stream whose name it bears, and immediately upon the east line of the township, half a mile south of the Butler county line. One of the early. Baptist churches was located in this region, which had twenty-five members in 1836. The Reverend Wilson THOMPSON was pastor in 1816, and for some time after. At this place the rebel General John MORGAN' force occupied the Colerain pike, moving eastward, during the famous raid of 1863. Two or three of his men were captured by citizens here, and one resident, who was mistaken in the dusk of the evening for a rebel, was killed by the Federal cavalry who were in the rear of MORGAN. TAYLOR'S CREEK is a post-office and hamlet in the southwestern part of the township on the Harrison pike, at the sharp bend westward of the stream from which it takes its name, one and a half miles due east of Miamitown and the Great Miami river. BARNESBURGH is a recent and small village in this township, on the Blue Rock turnpike, about four miles from New Baltimore. It is a straggling village along the road for a mile or more, with a stream running on the east side of it. POPULATION. By the tenth census, that of 1880, Colerain township had three thousand seven hundred and twenty-six inhabitants. 1 * One of these cabins is said to be that still standing on the river road near the Colerain end of the bridge over which runs the highway to Venice, removed thither from the old site; and bullets are said to have been cut from its logs. If so, this is probably the only remaining relic of the fortified stations of Hamilton county. -------------------------------- End of OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest V03 Issue #48 ******************************************