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were obliged to take the oars and manage the boat as best they could. They were enabled to effect a landing at Limestone, now Maysville; and a few days after their protector died of his wounds and they followed him weeping to the grave. But to resume our narrative. Being too well posted in Indian strategy to be decoyed, we pursued our journey unmolested. Nothing re markable occurred save the death of my much-beloved grand-mother. The day before we landed at Limestone she took her mystic flight to a better world. Her remains were committed to the dust at Maysville and Rev. Cary Allen preached her funeral. In company with my father and in his boat there were two missionaries-Revs. Cary Allen and Robert Marshall."

The reader has doubtless perceived the reason for thus particularly presenting the character and habits of pioneer inhabitants of Pennsylvania and Virginia, and the difficulties and dangers through which they passed, in reaching the place of their new homes in the West. Few or none of the first settlers of Ohio, though mostly, if not, all natives of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina came direct from those States to Ohio. They first settled in Kentucky, while those who came from the old States, some ten or twelve years later, settled at Chillicothe. Of these latter, one William Craig, an emigrant with his family traveling to Chillicothe by wagon, struck upon Zane's trace, marked the fall before (1796) from Wheeling to Maysville. This was merely a blazed route through the woods. It, however, was a guide to Chillicothe, and Craig determined to follow it, and he did so for a distance of seventy miles by cutting a way for his wagon. This was a most tedious undertaking for one man, encumbered with a wagon, team and family, but he persevered and had in the end the satisfaction of landing safely at the encampment called Chillicothe.

To give an idea of the difficulty encountered by emigrants from the old States, about eight years later, the following extract is made from material furnished for this history by Col. William Keys of this place which is very similar to the history of the emigration of many more old settlers of Highland. He says: It seems to me that in order to have a correct idea of the labors and extreme danger we had to encounter in settling Highland county and other parts of the State, we ought to take into account the trouble, toil and fatigue

we had to undergo in moving to it. When we take into consideration the then state and condition of the roads over the mountains and hills, the great want of bridges and ferries over water courses, we can have some conception of the extreme difficulty of traveling over the almost impassable route from the old settlements to Ohio at that early day. Turnpikes, railroads and steam boats were not then in existence; and the roads over the mountains were the most difficult wagon ways conceivable-without grading-ruts, gutters, mudholes and other obstacles, never mended, and being a hilly, broken and uneven mountainous country, made it toilsome in the extreme.

An intelligent lady being requested by a friend to furnish her with a receipt for the best method to dress a hare for the table, complied and commenced her receipt by saying, "the first thing to be done in the matter was to catch the hare." It seems to me equally necessary in order to give our successors and posterity an adequate idea of the extreme labor in settling Ohio, we ought to recapitulate the toil, fatigue and drudgery of traveling to our wild woods home in the West. 'The lady above alluded to seemed to have a clear view of her undertaking. She knew the persons who would be engaged in feasting on the delicate and well dressed morsel, when on the table, would never think of the labor and trouble of catching it. So the descendants of the early settlers, and the present occupants of our well improved farms, our beautiful towns, our commodious churches, school houses, court house, excellent flouring mills, &c., will hardly turn a thought in the direction of the toil, drudgery and hardships of those laborious men who leveled the forests and opened up the farms. I will, therefore, give a short sketch of the trials of our company over the mountains, believing a correct account of our own travels will equally well describe the hardships of many others.

We took our journey from the valley of the Old Dominion in September, A. D. 1805, with a strong team, large wagon and a heavy load. We proceeded on our way over the Alleghany mountains, Greenbrier hills, Sewell and Gauley mountains, Kanawha rivers and backwater creeks, often impassable by the rising of the river, and arrived at Point Pleasant, where we crossed the Ohio and left most of our troubles behind us. Our company consisted of two family connections, each of which were subdivided into one or two smaller fami

lies; and to give promise of a fair be ginning, each of them had an infant specimen of young America to carry on the knee, and numbering twenty-three persons in all, eight of whom were full grown men. We often had to exert all our united strength and skill to prevent our wagons from upsetting, and had often to double teams in order to ascend the steep mountain sides. None of our company met with any accident, but not so with all the emigrants who preceded us on the same route; we sometimes passed the fragments of broken wagon beds, broken furniture and remnants of broken boxes and other marks of damage by upsetting on the mountain side, where the wagon, team and all had rolled over and over down

the steep declivity, for some rods, until stopped by the intervention of some trees too stout to be prostrated by the mass of broken fragments. By doubling teams, we could reach the mountain top, but to get safely down again called for other contrivances. One expedient frequently tried was to fasten a pretty stout pine tree to the axletree of the wagon with chains, so as to retard the downward course upon the horses. At the foot of such hills and mountains could be seen sundry such trees that had been dragged down for the purpose above named. We arrived at our Highland home in about eight weeks, constant travel, Sundays excepted.

CHAPTER II.

THE FRENCH DOMINION, WITH A SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE SUBSEQUENT CON-
TESTS AND CESSIONS WHICH FINALLY BROUGHT THE TERRITORY OF OHIO
UNDER THE CONTROL OF THE UNITED STATES-SIMON KENTON'S CAPTURE
AND ESCAPE-THE STORY OF JOSHUA FLEETHART
NENT SETTLEMENT IN THE STATE AT MARIETTA.

T

HE beauty and fertility of the Territory of which our county was a part, were unknown to Europeans until the adventurous spirit of French missionaries and traders discovered them. They early and fearlessly plunged into the pathless wilderness of the West and exhibited a courage and perseverance without a parallel- the one the meek and patient apostles of Christ, the other the cunning and unscrupulous worshipers of mammon. Each, however, saw and concurred in the importance of this comparatively unknown region, as an appendage to the Canadian possessions of their native country. On the suggestions thus made, France determined to lay the foundation in the Mississippi Valley of an Empire which should ultimately surpass not only in extent of territory, but in grandeur and power, the British possessions on the East. In furtherance of this purpose, these lines of communication between Canada and the Mississippi were formed, and posts, religious, military and for trading purposes, established at suitable distances from each other. They had explored the greater part of the Mississippi in canoes and made themselves

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THE FIRST PERMA

familiar with the adjacent country, but a permanent settlement at the mouth of this river was deemed indispensable to the success of the grand scheme of the Empire. Accordingly an expedition was fitted out by the French Government, for the express purpose of establishing a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi river, which had not yet been discovered. This expedition was placed under the command of M. D'Iberville, who, in March, 1698, entered the mouth of the Mississippi and took formal possession of all the territory drained by it in the name of Louis XIV. of France, to which was given the name of Louisiana. This territory embraced all between the Alleghany and Rocky Mountains, and of course includedwhat is now Ohio. The French pushed on their ambitious enterprise with great energy. Their plan seems, however, to have been chiefly to monopolize the trade of the natives. The jealousy of the English on the other side of the mountains soon became aroused, for they claimed the same territory. A trading company, called the Ohio Company, was organized as early as 1748, the object of which was to secure the

lucrative traffic of the natives of the The western Indians were more or

country now embraced within the limits of our State. This company sent out agents to negotiate with the Indians and open the way for a permanent trade. These agents were Christopher Gist and George Croghan, who penetrated the wilderness as far as the Indian town of Piqua on the waters of the Miami. Three years afterwards the French having heard of this house, sent a party of soldiers to the Indians and demanded the traders as intruders upon French lands. The Indians refused to deliver up their friends. The French then attacked the English trading houses and after a severe battle, in which a number of the combatants were killed and many others wounded, took and destroyed it, carrying away the traders to Canada. Such was the fate of the first British settlement in Ohio. The next year, Washington, then a youth of 22 years, was sent out by the Government of Virginia with letters of remonstrance to the French commandant. Washington passed through a good part of what is now Ohio, in the execution of this mission, and arrived at the end of his journey a few miles south of Lake Erie. A short time previous to this the Governor of Canada had sent M. de Bienville at the head of three hundred men to the banks of the Ohio to court the favor of the Indians, and publish the claim of France to the territory. He distributed presents with a lavish hand among the natives and earnestly warned them against trading with the English. He traversed the greater part of the territory and nailed leaden plates to trees and buried others in the earth at the confluence of the Ohio and its tributaries, bearing inscriptions to the effect that all lands on both sides of the rivers to their sources belonged to the crown of France. Negotiations having failed to adjust the respective claims of the two nations to the Mississippi Valley, a war ensued which resulted in the conquest by the English of the French possessions in America, which was finally acknowledged by a treaty in 1763. The territory which is now Ohio thus ceased forever to be a part of the province of Louisiana and an appendage to the crown of France.

From this period on, at intervals, military expeditions from east of the mountains, traversed the forests of Ohio, to negotiate treaties, protect trading posts, recover prisoners and chastise the Indians. In 1774 Lord Dunmore made a treaty with the Indians in what is now Pickaway county.

less united against the Americans during the whole of the Revolution, and many expeditions from Pennsylvania, Virginia and Kentucky penetrated the forests of the territory in pursuit of them as far as the Miami. In 1782 Gen. Clark, of Kentucky, led an expedition against Shawneetown, Upper and Lower Piqua, and destroyed them.

After the Colonies renounced their allegiance to the British king, England by an act of Parliament passed in 1777 annexed the whole of the North-western Territory to, and made it a part of the province of Quebec. This claim of the English monarch to what is now our State, was ceded to the United States by the treaty of 1783 and the Mississippi river made the western boundary of the United States. The year following, the State of Virginia ceded to the United States the right of soil and jurisdiction to the district of country embraced in her charter situated north-west of the river Ohio. Two years after, Connecticut also ceded her claim, which covered a portion of what is now the State of Ohio. Numerous tribes of Indians also had claims to the soil within the present limits of Ohio, which the General Government had to purchase prior to the commencement of settlements. Accordingly treaties were made in 1784 and 1785, by which the Indians ceded their claims to all the southern and eastern portions of the present State. The Indian title having been thus extinguished, the legislative action of Congress became necessary before settlements were commenced. In May, 1785, Congress passed an ordinance for ascertaining the best mode of disposing of these lands. Under this ordinance the first lands were surveyed and put into market that were sold in the territory. These surveys were limited on the east by the Pennsylvania line and on the south by the Ohio river. In 1787 a considerable quantity of these lands were sold, but no further sales were made until 1801.

Ten years before these first land sales, Daniel Boone had passed through Ohio a prisoner to the Indians, and noted its beauty, fertility and natural resources. A few months afterwards Simon Kenton, weary of a few weeks' inaction. resolved upon an expedition to the Indian towns on the waters of Scioto, for the purpose of getting horses from the Indians. Alexander Montgomery and George Clark joined him. They crossed the Ohio and proceeded cautiously to what is now called Frankfort, in Ross county. They fell in with a

fine drove of horses feeding near the town, and being prepared with salt and halters, succeeded in catching seven of them. They then dashed off with all speed to the Ohio river, which they struck near the mouth of Eagle creek, but owing to a hard wind the waves were running so high that they could not get the horses to take water, and were therefore most reluctantly compelled to remain on the bank all night or abandon their prize.

The Indians pursued and overtook them the next morning, killed Crawford and took Kenton prisoner, while Clark made his escape. They stripped Kenton and tied him fast to a wild horse, which they turned loose. After it had run about, plunging, rearing and kicking for some time and become satisfied that it could not get rid of its burden, it submitted and followed the cavalcade, which, passing from the mouth of Eagle creek to the north fork of Paint, must have gone through where Winchester now stands in Adams county, and Marshall and Rainsboro, in this county. Kenton also traveled the same route with his drove of stolen horses, for which he came near losing his life at the stake. Fortunately for him the celebrated renegade white man, Simon Girty, was at the Indian towns, and he and Kenton having been raised boys together, he interposed to save him, and Kenton ultimately returned to Kentucky.

[NOTE-This account leaves a wrong impression on the mind of the reader. It is true that Simon Girty, when he recognized Kenton upon the latter's arrival at the Indian village of Waughcotomoco, did interfere in his behalf and had the sentence of death reversed, and for three weeks treated him with uniform kindness, but distant chiefs arriving Girty's influence was of no avail, and again Kenton was condemned to death at the stake, Sandusky being the place fixed upon for the execution. There, however, an Indian Agent named Druyer rescued him and conveyed him a prisoner to Detroit, where he remained from October, 1777, until June, 1778, when he escaped from "Thus," says a celebrated writer, "terminated one of the most remarkable adventures in the whole range of western history. A fatalist would recognize the hand of destiny in every stage of its progress. He was eight times exposed to the gauntlet, three times tied to the stake, and as often thought himself upon the eve of a terrible death.

the British.

All the sentences passed upon him, whether of mercy or condemnation, seemed to have only been pronounced in one council to be reversed in another; every friend that Providence raised up in his favor, was immediately followed by some enemy, who unexpectedly interposed, and turned his short glimpse of sunshine into deeper darkness. For three weeks he was see-sawing between life and death, and during the whole time he was perfectly passive. No wisdom, or foresight, or exertion could have saved him.

Fortune

fought his battle from first to last, and seem

ed determined to permit nothing else to interfere."-ED.]

In 1782 Col. Crawford led a company of four hundred Pennsylvanians against the Wyandotte towns. On the 6th of June he met the enemy and suffered a most disastrous defeat. Crawford was taken prisoner and burned. Gen. G. R. Clark shortly afterwards led a company of about fifteen hundred Kentuckians against the Indian towns on the Miami, which they burned, having killed a large number of Indians and taken thirty or forty prisoners. Four years afterwards Col. Logan led about seven hundred men from the neighborhood of Washington, Kentucky, against the Pickaway towns, to chastise the Indians for horse-stealing. They crossed the Ohio at Limestone, and very probably passed through what is now Highland. This expedition succeeded in destroying two towns, killing a number of Indians and making prisoners of many more. This little army met no further resistance in marching through the Indian country. They burned four other towns, and destroyed their corn and everything that belonged to them.

For more than forty years that portion of the North-western Territory, now Ohio, had been traversed and explored by the hardy and heroic frontier men of Pennsylvania, Virginia and Kentucky. The Indians also, either in their insatiable thirst for the blood of the pioneer settlers, or in pursuit of game, were almost constantly, except in the dead of winter. traversing the country between the lake and the Ohio.

Occasionally a bold hunter would cautiously penetrate within their ranges toward the close of autumn, and, after preparing a comfortable camp, remain and trap and hunt until spring. Sometimes small companies of two or more, would occupy the same camp, as it was known that the Indians were also in the habit of thus spending their winters, and not unfrequently, if they discovered an encampment of white hunters and trappers, they would keep a watch on them till they believed they had about got through with their winter's sport and collected all their peltry, then surprise their camp, kill the hunters and appropriate the booty.

A story is told of one Joshua Fleethart, of Western Virginia, who was employed by the Ohio Company in 1788 as a scout and hunter, in which capacity he had no superior north of the Ohio. At times even, when the Indians were known to be most hostile towards the whites, he would start from the settlement with no companion but his dog,

and ranging within about twenty miles of an Indian town, would build his camp and trap and hunt nearly the whole season. On one occasion this reckless contempt of danger almost cost him his life. Anxious for a good hunt he took his canoe, rifle, traps and blanket, and without even the companionship of his dog, started late in the fall down the river to the mouth of the Scioto, up which he pushed his canoe, till he reached a point within twenty-five miles of the Indian town of Chillicothe. Being in the midst of the best hunting grounds of the Indians, he fixed his camp and for ten or twelve weeks trapped and hunted in this solitary region unmolested. He hunted the bear on the Brushcreek hills where they were then most abundant, and the beaver in the small streams that fell into the Scioto. He met with fine success and lived in most luxurious style on roasted beaver tails washed down with bear's oil. Thus quietly and pleasantly passed away the winter, until about the middle of February. He then began preparations for returning to the settlement, by making up his peltries into packages, which he loaded in his canoe. The day he had fixed for his departure he was discovered and fired upon by Indians, one of whom he killed, and after a long chase he managed to baffle them, and get to

the canoe, which he launched and floated out safely into the Ohio.

The first permanent settlement was made at Marietta on the 7th day of April, 1788. It consisted of forty-eight men under the superintendence of Gen. Rufus Putnam, no less than eleven of whom were Revolutionary officers and quite a number of the remainder had been soldiers in that war. The attention of Gen. Putnam had been turned to the Ohio Valley by Gen. Washington during those dark and almost hopeless times, while the triumph of the British seemed almost inevitable. Washington some times spoke of the West as a place of retreat in case of defeat, and no doubt considered the scheme of independence as feasible if their worst apprehensions should be realized. The next permanent settlement in the present State of Ohio, was made in what is now Hamilton county, at the mouth of the Little Miami, by a party of eighteen men led by Benjamin Stites, who landed in November, 1788. At this point they constructed a log fort and laid out the town of Columbia. The next settlement was made at Gallipolis, in 1791. A settlement was also made by Gen. Massie, at Manchester, the same year, but owing to the hostility of the Indians, none were made in the interior for some years after.

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