FORMATION AND GEOGRAPHY

ANCIENT WORKS.

     The following notes of antiquities in Spencer township are taken from Dr. Metz's paper on the Prehistoric Monuments of the Little Miami Valley:

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COLUMBIA

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     The original agreement with Judge Symmes, when the subject of the Miami purchase was broached to him by Stites should have ten thousand acres about the mouth of the Little Miami, lying as nearly in a square as possible, as a reward for his discovery of the country and his consequent scheme of purchase, and should be allowed as much in addition as he could pay for.  He appears by the receipts, however, finally to have had to  pay for all the lands he acquired.
     During the long wait at Limestone, in September, a party of about sixty went down the river, landing at the mouth of the Little Miami, and exploring the back country thoroughly for some distance between that point and the great North Bend, where Symmes afterwards planted his colony.  the judge was with them, but Stites was not.  He was busily engaged with preparation for his settlement, making plans for the village plat and the fort, and getting out clapboards for roofs from the woods about Limestone, with the hearts of timber prepared to fill the spaces between the logs of his prospective cabin, cut of boat-plank doors, with their hangings all ready, were also made.  He and his son Benjamin were mainly en__ged in this work, and in storing them in a boat ready for he movement.  At this time a sharp lookout had to be kept against Indian attack; and people walked about the streets and vicinity of Limestone habitually with arms in their hands.  Nehemiah Stites, indeed, a nephew of the major, was killed by the savages while passing to or from the woods in which his relatives were at work.
     Another important item of preparation was also accomplished during the delay at Limestone, in the execution and signature of an agreement required by Stites, and assented to by about thirty persons, to form a settlement at the mouth of the Little Miami.  Some were scared off afterwards, by the persistent rumors of disaff__d Kentuckians, perhaps anxious to divert immigrants toward Lexington and other settlements on their side of the Ohio, that a large party of hostile Indians was encamped at or near the point of intended settlement.  The majority held to their signatures, however, and it is pretty well settled that the original body of the pioneers of Columbia and the Miami purchase was composed as follows:*

     Major Benjamin Stites and family, including Jonathan Stites; Greenbright Bailey and family, including John F. Bailey and Reason Bailey; Abel Cook and family, Jacob Mills, and family, Hezekiah Stites, John S. Gano, Ephraim Kibby, Elijah Mills, Thomas C. Wade, Edmund Buxton, Daniel Schumacher, Allen Woodruff, Joseph Cox, Benjamin Cox, Evan Shelby, Mr. Heampstead, twenty stout stalwart men, with two well-grown, capable boys (the Stites sons), were of this band.

"And there was woman's fearless age,
  Lit by her deep love's truth;
The was manhood's brow, serenely high,
  And the fiery heart of youth."

     Mr. Robert Clarke in his useful pamphlet on Losantiville, has added the following names of subsequent but still early colonists at Columbia:

    The names of Kibby and Shumaker (or Shoemaker) appear in the list of grantees of donation lots at Losantiville, distributed by lottery Jan. 1, 1789.  Several other Columbia pioneers also acquired property, and some made permanent settlements at Cincinnati, their names being identified with the early annals of both places.  Colonel Spencer, the Rev. John Smith, Colonel Brown, Captain Jacob White, afterwards of White's station, Mr. H____ John Reily, the schoolmaster, and others, were also of the early Columbia - all, says Judge Burnet, "men of energy and enterprise."
     The Columbia argonauts - "more numerous," says Burnet's notes, "than either of the parties who commenced the settlements below them on the Ohio" - led by Stites in person, he, as Symmes wrote shortly after to Dayton, "having a great desire to plant himself down there," floated out upon the broad river from Limestone, it is believed, on the sixteenth of November, 1788.  The first stage of their journey took them to the mouth of Bracken creek, on the Kentucky side.  An interesting incident of the voyage is thus related by Dr. Ferris:

     They descended the river to Bracken creek; and from that place they started, as they supposed, in time to float down the Little Miami by sunrise, so as to have the day before them for labor.  Previous to their leaving Maysville, a report had been in circulation that some hunters had returned from the woods who had seen five hundred Indians at the mouth of the Little Miami, and that the Indians had heard the white people were coming there to settle, and intended to kill them all as soon as they should arrive.  On its being announced at break of day that they were near the mouth of the Miami, some of the females were very much alarmed on account of the report alluded to.  To allay their fears, five men volunteered their services fo go forward in a canoe, and examine.  If there were no Indians they were to wave their hand kerchiefs, and the boats, which were kept close to the Kentucky shore, were to be crossed over and landed.  If there were, the men were to pass by and join the boats below.  The token of "no Indians" was given, and the boats were crossed over and landed at the first high banks (about three-fourths of a mile) below the mouth of the Little Miami, a little after sunrise on the morning of the eighteenth of November, 1788.

     This landing was on the present soil of Spencer township, outside the corporate limits of Columbia, a few hundred yards further up the river, where is still a considerable settlement, some of the buildings in which are very old.  The traditional place of landing is pointed
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     * For the accuracy of this list, as well as for many other facts embraced in this narrative, we confidently rely upon the statement of the Rev. ___ Ferris, D. D., long of Columbia, afterwards of Lawrenceburgh, an embodied in his communication to the Cincinnati Dailly Gazette, date of July 20, 1844.

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out, in front of an old two-story brick dwelling, near the lower part of the settlement.
     Dr. Ferris proceeds with these interesting details of the landing:
     After making fast, they ascended the steep bank and cleared away the underbrush in the midst of a pawpaw thicket, where the women and children sat down.  They next, as though to fulfil the commands of the Saviour, "watch and pray," placed sentinels at a small distance from the thicket, and, having first united in a song of praise to Almighty God, to whose providence they ascribed their success (Mr. Wade taking the lead in singing), upon their bended knees they offered thanks for the past and prayer for future protection; and in this manner dedicated themselves (and probably their thicket) to God, as solemnly and acceptably as ever a stately temple, with all the pomp and splendor attending it, was dedicated.  There were in this little group six persons, viz:  Benjamin Stites, John S. Gano, Thomas C. Wade, Greenbright Bailey, Edward Buxton, and Mrs. Bailey, who ere professors of the Christian religion of the Baptist church.
     Thus, in a little more than one year from his first conception of this great enterprise, Major Stites with his little company was on the ground, prepared to commence that immense labor necessary to change this then vast wilderness into a fruitful field.

     The first duty was to build a defence against the marauding savage.  Plans for this had already been prepared, and without delay the strong arms of the settlers began to make inroads upon the forest, in the preparation of material for a simple military work.  Part of the men stood guard, while others toiled, while laborers and guards from time to time exchanged places.  The site of the first block-house was selected near the point of landing, and about half a mile below the mouth of the Little Miami - just in front, it is said, of the subsequent residence of A. Stites, esq.  It is also said that the encroachments of the river long since washed away this site.  The work was so far advanced by the twenty-fourth of November that the women, children, and portable goods of the party were moved into it.  The troops who came from Limestone soon after, to form a garrison, erected another block-house, below the first - west of the other, as tradition runs, and between the present toll-gate of the New Richmond pike and the river.  some say that four block-houses in all were erected, and so situated as to form, with a stout stockade connecting them, a square fortification, which took twenty months afterwards the name of a work erected by the British on the Maumee about this time, near the scene of Wayne's victory, Fort Miami.
     Oliver M. Spencer, who was a boy nine years old when he came with his father to Columbia, says in his Narration of Captivity that at that time Columbia was "flanked by a small stockade, nearly half a mile below the mouth of the Miami, with four block-houses at suitable distances along the bank.
     In the immediate neighborhood, but below the fort, cabins were then put up as rapidly as possible, and the settlers housed themselves for the winter.   They had scarcely got comfortably located, however, when the inundation of January drove them from every cabin except one, which had fortunately been perched upon the higher ground.  The soldiers in the block-house - a garrison of eighteen men and a sergeant, had been sent in December from Captain Kearsey's company at Limestone - were crowded into the loft of the structure by the rapidly rising waters, and were rescued from their uncomfortable and perilous position by a boat, in which they crossed to the hills on the Kentucky side.  Much of the loose property of the settlers was lost by the flood.  The Hon. A. H. Dunlevy, in his History of the Miami Baptist Association, among other things, says of the consequences of this unhappy experience:

     A winter of bloody conflict with the Indians was anticipated; but, contrary to expectation, the colony remained undisturbed during all that winter and until autumn of the next year.  The settlers labored incessantly in building cabins for themselves upon the beautiful plain which lies east of most of the present buildings in Columbia; but on the first of January, 1789, a high flood in the Ohio proved that they had made a bad selection for a town.  The whole bottom was over flowed, but one house escaping the deluge.  Afterwards improvements were made below and further from the river, on higher ground; but that flood forever ruined the prospects of Columbia.  During the Indian war many stayed there because they could not move further into the country on account of the savages.  But as soon as Wayne's victory, in the fall of 1794, secured the safety of the settlements in more interior localities, the people began to leave Columbia; and after the treaty of Greenville, in 1795, many more left, and Columbia ever after had the appearance of a deserted town.
     The sturdy colonists did not abandon the ground at the first flood, however, but returned to them when the waters abated, and meantime provided themselves with such shelters as they could.  They were often hard pressed for food this first winter, and some suffered much for want of their wonted articles of sustenance.  Wild game abounded, but there was no salt or breadstuff to eat with the fresh meat, except what could be had in small quantities from passing boats.  The women and children resorted much to Turkey bottom, when the weather and the condition of the ground permitted, to scratch up the bulbous roots of beargrass, which they boiled and mashed, and so ate them, or dried the sub stance and pounded it into a sort of flour.  In the spring, with the growth of vegetables on the Turkey bottom and other fertile tracks, the situation improved, and the abundant crops of the first year rendered starvation thenceforth exceedingly improbable.  There was even a surplus for Fort Washington, as the following incident shows:
     Luke Foster, of the pioneers at Columbia, was one of the lieutenants appointed for the militia of Hamilton county by Governor St. Clair.  He performed a most patriotic act in 1789, when the troops at Fort Washington were on particularly short commons, and General Harmar sent two of his officers to Columbia to get supplies.  Captain James Flinn had corn to sell, but would not let the soldiers have it, saying that, while he lived near Marietta, the year before, he had sold corn to the garrison at Fort Harmar and had never been paid for it.  Captain Strong answered that the men at the fort had been living on half rations for nine days, and if they were not supplied they must leave or starve.  Mr. Foster, who was standing by, upon this instantly offered to lend them a hundred bushels of corn, which was part of the growth from two and a half acres in Turkey bottom, planted with six and a half quarts of corn, for which he had exchanged the same quantity of corn meal.  His offer was gratefully accepted; but so remiss was the garrison afterwards in payment, or so poorly supplied, that,

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when in need himself, he had to ride six times to the fort to get as much as nineteen bushels of it returned.  Mr. Foster, it may be of interest here to note, finally settled two miles south of Springdale, in Springfield township, where he lost his life on the tracks of the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton railroad, Aug. 28, 1851, being struck by a gravel train.  He was eighty-eight years old, had become deaf, and was otherwise greatly enfeebled.  For many years he was an associate judge of the court of common pleas, under the old system, and was one of the first appointees to that office in Hamilton county.
     As soon as practicable after the landing, Stites had his proposed city surveyed, which he fondly hoped might be come the metropolis of the west.  According to the narrative of Oliver M. Spencer, published long after wards, it was to occupy the broad and extensive plain between Crawfish creek and the mouth of the Little Miami - a distance along the Ohio of nearly three miles —and to extend up the Miami about the same distance.  It was actually laid out over a mile along the Ohio, stretching back about three-quarters of a mile from that stream, and reaching half-way up the high hill which formed in part the eastern and northern lines.  This tract was platted, partly in blocks of eight lots, each of half an acre, and the rest in lots of four and five acres each.  Nine hundred and forty-five inlots are said to have been staked off by Stites' surveyors.  The streets intersected each other at right angles.  A different plat of Columbia, corresponding more nearly to the village of recent years, bears date May 5, 1837.
     Major Stites' title to his entire large tract in this region was afterwards threatened, by the apparent determination of the Government authorities to draw the eastern boundary of the Miami purchase from a point twenty miles up the Ohio from the mouth of the Great Miami, which would have left him outside of the purchase, and altogether destitute of valid title from Symmes.  It is to the honor of the judge that in this crisis he stood bravely by his friend, writing to his associates of the East Jersey company: "If Mr. Stites is ousted of the settlement he has made with great danger and difficulty at the mouth of the Little Miami, it cannot be either politic or just."   Governor St. Clair at once issued his proclamation warning settlers off the Miami country east of the afore said line; but the matter was afterwards arranged, and the east and west boundaries of the purchase were fixed as originally proposed, upon the two Miamis.
     During its first two years Columbia flourished hope fully, and was then remarked as a larger and more promising place than Losantiville or its successor, Cincinnati.  It was the largest settlement in the Miami country, and was expected to increase rapidly; "but," says Dr. Drake, in his picture of Cincinnati, "the bayou which is formed across it from the Little Miami almost every year, and the occasional inundations of nearly the whole site, have destroyed that expectation, and it is now [1815] in habited chiefly by farmers."  The village was not only superior in population, but also in the convenience and appearance of their dwellings.  But for the floods, and the establishment of Fort Washington and then the county seat of Cincinnati, which naturally gave it great advantage, it might have been the metropolis of Miamidom.  Many excellent citizens, as Colonel Abram and Ezra Ferris, who came Dec. 12, 1789, and Colonel Spencer, who landed a year thereafter, joined the colony during these years.  We subjoin some notices of the more noted among the immigrants of the first decade:

     JOHN REILY, one of the early settlers of Columbia, was but twenty-five years old when the colony came, having been born in Chester county, Pennsylvania, Apr. 10, 1763.  He had seen much service, however, in the army of the Revolution; was engaged at Camden, Guilford Court House, Ninety-six, and Eutaw Springs, and served through his eighteen months' term honorably and safely.  After a few years in the wilds of Kentucky, he removed from Lincoln county, near the present site of Danville, to the Columbia settlement, Dec. 18, 1789, and the next year taught the first school kept there, or any where in the Miami purchase.  He took full part in the scouts and expeditions into the Indian country, and in 1794 removed to Cincinnati, where he became successively deputy clerk of the county court, clerk of the territorial legislature, and clerk and collector of the town.  He removed to Hamilton in 1803, and there spent the remainder of his days, dying in that place June 7, 1850, after a long and highly honorable career.

     JUDGE WILLIAM GOFORTH came in the early part of 1789.  He is mentioned so often in the course of this history, as associated with affairs here and at Cincinnati, that a biographical sketch of him here seems unnecessary.  The judge builded better than he knew in keeping a diary of his journey hither and of events for some time afterwards.  It is an interesting old document, and the public owes access to it to Mr. Charles Cist, who published it nearly forty years ago in his Cincinnati Miscellany.  We correct one or two patent blunders in the yearly dates:

EXTRACTS FROM MEMORANDUM MADE BY JUDGE GOFORTH, IN HIS DAY-BOOK.

1789

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     Daniel Doty of Essex county, New Jersey, was one of the immigrants of 1790.  He came on the twenty-third of October, in a flat-boat, from Pittsburgh.  He then found, according to his recollections long after, but two hewed log buildings in the place, one of them occupied by Major Stites, the other by Captain John S. Gano.  He enlisted promptly in Captain Gano's company of militia, which every able-bodied man in the settlement had to join, and which now mustered about seventy - a strong and efficient company.  He turned out with the parties marching to the relief of Covalt's and Dunlap's stations, when the Indian attacks were made upon them; and was secured by the Cincinnati Presbyterians, together with a man named French, to bring their first pastor, the Rev. James Kemper, and his family, through the wilderness from near Danville to his new home.  In 1792 Mr. Doty returned to New Jersey, by way of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and by sea, but came back to the Miami country in 1796, with his wife and children, and removed to the vicinity of Middletown, Butler county, where the rest of his life was spent.  He was the first collector of taxes for that part of the country, which was then in Hamilton county.  McBride's Pioneer Biography says:

     His district was twelve miles wide from north to south, comprising two ranges of townships, extending from the Great Miami to the Little Miami rivers, comprehending the sites where the towns of Franklin and Waynesville have been laid out, and the immediate country and settlements.  The whole amount of the duplicate committed to him for collection was two hundred and forty-four dollars, of which he collected every dollar and paid it over to Jacob Burnet of Cincinnati, who was the treasurer for the county of Hamilton.  Mr. Doty's own tax, for some years previous to his death, was upwards of one hundred and thirty five dollars - more than half of the amount which he then collected from the whole district of which he had been collector.  In the discharge of the duties of his office as collector, he must have ridden over more than one thousand miles.  For these services, including his time and expenses, he received one per cent, on the amount of the duplicate, two dollars and forty-four cents, and no more.  This appears to have satisfied Mr. Doty with public office, as he never afterward, during his whole life, was a candidate for any office.

     FRANCIS DUNLEVY emigrated from Kentucky to Columbia in 1791, and at first was engaged in teaching, in company with Mr. John Reily.  He was then less than thirty years old, having been born near Winchester, Virginia, Dec. 31, 1761.  When but a boy he was engaged in Indian, and afterwards in the Revolutionary warfare, and helped to build up Fort Mcintosh, the first regular military work within the present bounds of Ohio.  He was at Crawford's defeat on the plains of Sandusky, and in the retreat was cut off from the main body of the army, and had to make his way through the wilderness to Pittsburgh.  In 1787 he removed with his father's family to Kentucky, and ten years afterwards, having resided six years in Columbia, he removed to the vicinity of Lebanon, where he died, Nov. 6, 1839.  He was fourteen years presiding judge of the court of common pleas of the first circuit, which included Hamilton county, and was a member of the first Constitutional convention, also of the first legislature that assembled under the State government.
     The following notice of perhaps the most renowned citizen that Columbia ever had, is extracted from the Life of Senator Morris, by his son, Mr. B. F. Morris:

     In 1795 THOMAS MORRIS, a young and enterprising adventurer, nineteen years of age, from the mountains of western Virginia, arrived in Columbia.  He was immediately employed as a clerk in the store of Rev. John Smith, and became a great favorite with him.  During this time his mind became deeply exercised on the subject of personal religion, and his feelings found utterance in frequent poetic effusions, which are all lost.  Rev. John Smith and others regarded these productions as of great merit for a youth of his age and limited education.  For several years he continued in the employ of Smith improving, as he could, his mind by reading, and preparing for a wider sphere of action.
     The plat of ground on which the great commercial city of Cincinnati

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     *Cist's foot-note:  "This seems an unaccountable mistake.  The flood of 1832 was but 64 feet above low water, and the highest flood ever known at the settlement of the country was but 12 feet higher."
     †Another mistake, as will appear hereafter.

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now stands, was frequently traversed by Morris.  His feet threaded the forest, then in the wild magnificence of nature, and the crack of his rifle brought down many a wild turkey from the tops of lofty trees which covered the very spot on which now is erected and established that noble building and institution, the Young Men's Mercantile Library association.  How wonderful the change in fifty years' Now commerce, arts, sciences, education, Christian institutions, and the highest forms of a refined social civilization, and a prosperous industrial population of over two hundred thousand people, cover with their peaceful and noble triumphs, and their monuments of taste and civilization, and happiness, the same forest where young Morris was accustomed to shoot his wild game.

     Mr. Morris married Rachel, daughter of Benjamin Davis, a Columbian who came from Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, to Mason county, Kentucky, and thence  here.  He was of Welsh stock and had a fine family of five sons and two daughters.  Morris removed to Williamsburgh, and then to Bethel, Clermont county, and became greatly distinguished as a lawyer, legislator, United States Senator, and anti-slavery agitator.
     From another settler named John Morris, at the time the most prominent man in the settlement, a cluster of houses on the hillside took the name Morristown.
     By the close of 1790 Columbia contained about fifty cabins.  Wickerham's mill, upon floating boats, and had been established upon the Little Miami, and yielded supplies of coarse corn meal, but wheat flour was still so scarce that what could be had was generally reserved for the sick.  Before Wickerham started his small run of stones, the corn had been pounded by the colonists into hominy or laboriously ground in a hand mill.
     The post

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LINWOOD.

RED BANK STATION

is on the Little Miami railroad and river, at the southeast corner of the township, on the Spencer line, about a mile east of the observatory, and two and a half miles northeast of Columbia.  Batavia Junction, where the Cincinnati & Eastern narrow guage joins the Little Miami, is a few hundred years northeast of it.

MOUNT LOOKOUT

is at the extreme northeast corner of Cincinnati, and lies both within the without the city.  The observatory attached to the University of Cincinnati is located here, in charge of Director Stone.  A fine private park lies just inside the city limits, which is much in request for picnic parties and celebrations.  A dummy railroad connects the locality with the horse-cars at Pendleton.

O'BRYANVILLE.

     A village on the Madison pike, now included in the First ward of the city, at the northwest corner of the old Spencer township.  It was laid out in 1875 by Scarborough & Williams, executors of the will of Benjamin Hey.

PENDLETON.

     Also an old village, but more considerable, lying between the hills and the river, from Fulton to Sportsman's Hall or the East End garden.  The Delta station, on the Little Miami railroad and the termini of the Columbia and Mount Lookout dummy railroads, are at the latter point.

LEWISTON

was a former village in Spencer township, laid out in 1828 by William Lewis.  It is now included in the Seventeenth ward of the city.

UNDERCLIFF AND RUSSELL'S

are stations and suburban villages on the Little Miami railroad, between Columbia and Red Bank.

TURKEY BOTTOM.

     this is a notable track of about one and a half square miles, between the Little Miami river and Columbia.  It was found by the first settlers already cleared, for the most part, by the long cultivation of the Indians, and very likely also of the Mound Builders; but still exceedingly fertile.  From nine acres of it planted by Judge Goforth during the first season of white occupancy, nine

[photo of J. D. LANGDON]

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TUSCULUM

names a station on the Little Miami railroad in Eastern cincinnati, and also a district for suburban residence on the neighboring hill, which is called Mount Tusculum, and closely overlooks Columbia both south and east.  Over three hundred acres have been handsomely laid out and improved by Judge Joseph Langworth, the improvements including a fine roadway of about five miles length, called Undercliff avenue, which encircles and intersects the entire quarter.

POPULATION.

     Spencer township - the little tract now lying outside the city - had nine hundred and ninety-five inhabitants by the census of June, 1880.  And yet it had as the larger township, a population of two thousand five hundred and forty-three in 1880.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

THE LANGDON FAMILY.  (pgs. 359 - 360)

[Picture of Residence of C. B. Johnson, (built in 1821) Near Mt. Healthy, Hamilton Co., O]

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