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[Photo of WILLIAM M. MCKINLEY]

     Pioneers - In the general history of the county is mentioned briefly the coming of the first settlers to Findlay, and are given the names of those pioneers who located here prior to 1830.  The first permanent settler, or rather "squatter," in what is now Findlay Township, as well as in the county, was Benjamin J. Cox.  He was a native of Virginia, where he grew to manhood and married Mary Hughes.  Early in the present century, with his wife and four children- two sons and two daughters - he removed to Ohio, locating near Yellow Springs, in Greene County, where Elizabeth now the wife of Jacob Eberly, of Portage, Wood County, was born September 20, 1806.  From Greene the Cox family removed to the south part of Logan County, where they lived during the war of 1812, four children having been born there, one of whom died.  Mr. Cox, who was a one-eyed man, served as a scout in the armies of Hull and Harrison.  Upon the close of the war and the evacuation of Fort Findlay, in 1815, Mr. Cox, who had often been to the fort, brought his family to this point and took possession of a story and a half hewed log house, erected and previously occupied by Thorp, the sutler of the garrison, while the war lasted.  Here in 1816 another daughter, Lydia, was born, she being the first white child born in the township, as well as in what is now Hancock County.  She is at present a resident of Michigan, herself and Mrs. Eberly being the only survivors of the family.  Mr. Cox was a typical backwoodsman - a man who never thought of the morrow, and was only happy when following the chase.  He cleared and cultivated some land near the fort, and also kept a sort of a frontier tavern, but most of his time was passed in hunting.  He lived in harmony with the Indians, who then dwelt at several points along the Blanchard, and in 1818 when they removed to their reservation around Big Springs, the chief Kuqua, offered Mr. Cox a farm if he would go and live with them, but he refused the offer.  The land upon which Mr. Cox lived was entered by Hon. Joseph Vance, William Neill and Elnathan Cory, in July, 1821, and in the fall of 1821 he had to give up his house to Wilson Vance and remove to a smaller cabin, which stood a little southwest of it.  In 1823 Mr. Cox left Findlay and went to the Maumee, subsequently locating near Portage, Wood County, whence he and his wife removed to Indiana and there died.
     Among the first settlers of Defiance County was the family of Robert Shirley, and his daughter, Mrs. Ruth Austin, widow of Rev. James B. Austin, in her "Recollections of Pioneer Life in the Maumee Valley," alludes as follows to their previous attempted settlement in Hancock County:
     "My father, Robert Shirley, when viewing the country in 1820, had selected Fort Findlay as the place of their settlement, and in the spring of 1821 they each sent out a four horse wagon, with plows, etc., seed-corn and potatoes, also a stock of provisions and a few hogs.  Two men were sent with each wagon, making a party of six.  My brothers, James and Elias, took father's team.  They cleared and fenced land, and put in corn and potatoes.  When the summer's work was done, one man returned with each wagon to Ross County, leaving a horse apiece for the three men remaining.  Brother James remained and Elias returned.  To fatten the hogs, slaughter and pack them down, and to gather and store the corn and potatoes for the winter was the work of those remaining; then they left all in the care of Mr. Cox's family - the only residents there - and returned to their homes.  The horse left for brother James had previously got away and went back to Ross County.  The alarm at home was very great when the horse arrived without its rider; all were sure he had been killed until a letter was received from him explaining the circumstance.  Having heard much of the Fort Defiance region, brother James went there before coming home, and was so captivated with it that, on his return, he persuaded father to change the location of his future home from Fort Findlay to Fort Defiance."
     In the spring of 1822 the Shirley family removed from Ross County to the vicinity of Fort Defiance, and in her account of the trip Mrs. Austin, then a girl of eleven years of age, says: "After accompanying us to our destination, brother James returned to Fort Findlay for the purpose of conveying the provisions stored there, for the subsistence of the family, to Fort Defiance.  He made the journey through the unbroken wilderness alone, on foot, provided with his compass, gun, ammunition, flings, punk and blanket.  Our parents had great fears that James would fall a prey to wild animals or Indians, but he got safely through, and purchasing a pirogue at Fort Findlay, took the provisions down Blanchard's Fork to the Auglaize, and thence down that stream to Fort Defiance.  These provisions had been raised the previous year in Hancock County, with the expectation that the future home of the family would be at Fort Findlay."

     The MORELANDS were the next family to settle in Findlay Township, the two sons, William and Jacob, having come out with the Shirleys from Ross County in the spring of 1821.  They cleared a small patch of ground, put in a crop, and erected a cabin on the southwest quarter of Section 17.  In the fall the whole family, consisting of the parents and two sons and four daughters, removed to this county.  The father, William, Sr., built a cabin on the north bank of the river, a little northeast of the dam which crosses the stream at Findlay, and all of the children lived with him except Jacob, who kept "bachelor's hall" in the cabin up the river, on what is now the Aaron Baker farm.  This tract was soon afterward entered by John P. Hamilton, and when the latter came out in the spring of 1822. Moreland was compelled to remove from the land which he had improved with the intention of entering it when able to do so.  William Moreland, Sr., was one of the judges at the elections held in Findlay Township in 1823 and 1824, being elected overseer of the poor in the later year.  In 1824 he was assessed fro one horse and three head of cattle, but he never owned any land, and after residing in the county about eight years he removed to Michigan.  In October, 1823, Jacob Moreland entered the west half of the southeast quarter of Section 7, Township 1 north, Range 11, and settled upon it.  He is found assessed in 1824 with four head of cattle.  On May 4, 1826, he was married to Sarah Poe (a niece of Jacob Poe) by Robert McKinnis, justice of the peace, this being the second marriage in Hancock County.  He was elected township treasurer in April 1828, and removed to Michigan about the same time as his father.  William Moreland, Jr., entered the north half of the northwest quarter of Section 18,Township 1 north, Range 11, Dec. 21, 1826, and on Mar. 12, 1827, he was married to Julia, daughter of Job Chamberlin, Sr., by Joshua Hedges, justice of the peace of Findlay Township.  He afterward sold his land to William Taylor and removed to a small farm on the west bank of Eagle Creek, in what is now Madison Township.  In the spring of 1831, the territory now embraced in Eagle, Van Buren, and the west half of Madison Township was cut off Liberty and Findlay and erected as Van Buren; and at the first election held in the new Subdivision of June, 1831, William Moreland, Jr., was chosen as justice of the peace.  In May, 1833, he purchased the improvement of John Diller, but soon afterward sold out and settled on Section 36, Findlay Township.  His wife died in March, 1836, and he subsequently followed his father and brother to Michigan.  Two of his sisters, Susan and Elizabeth, were married, respectively, to John and Joseph Gardner, pioneers of Hancock County, who also moved away at an early day.  Another sister married John Simpson, Jr., and removed to Michigan, while the remaining one married a Mr. Locke, who lived on the Tymachtee.

     JOHN SIMPSON, of Ross County, Ohio, entered the east half of the northeast quarter, and the east half of the southeast quarter of Section 25, Township 1 north, Range 10, October 25, 1821, and with his son John settled upon it the same fall.  About two years afterward his father was killed by a falling limb.  While hoeing corn in a field which they had partly cleared up, a storm came on, and in running to the house for shelter he was struck on the head by a falling limb and killed instantly.  A few years after his father's death another son, Thomas, came out from Ross County, and they subsequently sold their land to Job Chamberlin, Sr., and John Boyd.  John Simpson, Jr. married a daughter of William Moreland, Sr.  After selling the old homestead the Simpsons purchased of John Gardner, Sr., the west part of the southeast quarter of Section 13, whereon a portion of Findlay now stands.  On the 14th of March, 1828, they sold this tract to Wilson Vance, who subsequently laid it out in town lots.  George W. Simpson is also found among the electors of 1828, and it is presumed he was a member of this family.  Soon after selling out to Vance they went to Michigan, toward which a considerable immigration was moving about that period.  During their residence in this county the Simpsons did very little farming, but kept a pack of hounds and followed the chase like true backwoods Nimrods.  It is said that one of their principal inducements in going to Michigan was a report brought back by a visiting wag that all sorts of crops produced abundantly in that region without cultivation, and wild game was very plentiful.  Such a land of paradise for the hunter was what the Simpsons were looking for, and they went only to find it similar to the country they had deserted.

     JOB CHAMBERLIN, SR., comes next in the order of settlement outside the town of Findlay, having located with his family on the hill which bears his name, February 15, 1822.  Mr. Chamberlin and his wife, Deborah, were born, reared and married in Colchester, Connecticut.  Soon after marriage they removed to Cayuga County, N. Y., where eight children were born to them, viz.:  Deborah, Sally, Nancy, Lucy, Vesta, Julia, Norman and Job.  The eldest there married Benjamin O. Whitman, who afterward removed to the county.  In 1819 the parents, with the seven remaining children, boated down the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers to Lawrenceburg, Ind., and settled at Georgetown, a village about six miles from Lawrenceburg.  Here Nancy died, and in the spring of 1821 Mr. Chamberlin removed to Urbana, Ohio.  On the 4th of October, 1821, he entered the southwest quarter of Section 30, Township 1 north, Range 11, and the following February arrived with his family at the site of his future home, leaving two daughters, Sally and Lucy, in Urbana, where they were soon afterward married, respectively, to Levi and Thomas Taylor, pioneers of Champaign County.  Messrs, Vance, Cox, Moreland, Smith and Simpson, the only families then living in the township, assisted Mr. Chamberlin to build a log cabin, into which he moved with his family the third day after their arrival.  He soon made a clearing which he planted in corn, and from this crop raised sufficient to winter h is stock through the winter of 1822-23.  Mr. Chamberlin took an active interest in all the early elections.  In those held in 1823 and 1824 he was one of the judges of election, and in the latter year was chosen treasurer, and also one of the trustees of Findlay Township, which at the first county election in April, 1828, and was defeated, but he was elected township trustee at that election.  In the first tax levy, made in 1824, Mr. Chamberlin is assessed for five head of cattle, viz.: three cows and a yoke of oxen.   But in a few years he was able to furnish the pioneers, who came into the county, with hogs, cattle, sheep, wheat, corn, wool and other necessaries then very scarce in this part of the State.  In 1827 he bought out John Simpson, paying for the eighty acres in hogs, and thus became the owner of 240 acres, covering a large portion of "Chamberlin's Hill."  His wife died Jan. 8, 1829, and the next year he married Miss Sarah Criner.  In 1831 he divided the old homestead on the hill equally between his two sons, Norman and Job, and removed to a farm on Section 7, Liberty Township, where he died Sept. 4, 1847, his widow surviving him till Dec. 28, 1854.  In early life Mr. Chamberlin was a Baptist, but his second wife being a Presbyterian he united with that church after his marriage to Miss Criner.  Of the four children who came with him to this county in 1822, all are dead except Job.  Vesta married Joseph C. Shannon, who then lived on the Tymochtee, and died in about a year afterward.  Julia became the wife of William Moreland, Jr., in 1827, and died in 1836.  Norman married Elizabeth Baker in 1832.  She died the following year, and in 1834 he was married to Eliza Watson, sister of Richard Watson, Sr., and died at his home on the hill in 1845, while serving as coroner of the county, leaving one son, John, who, in after years removed to Illinois.  Job, with his wife and family, lived on the hill till 1874, when he moved into the village, where he is now residing - the oldest living pioneer of Hancock County.

     JOHN P. HAMILTON entered the west part of the southwest quarter of Section 17, Township 1 North, Range 11, Oct. 8, 1821; and the east part of the southwest quarter of the same section, June 10, 1822.  In the spring the southwest quarter of the same section, June 10, 1822.  In the spring of the latter year Mr. Hamilton brought out Matthew Reighly and wife, and settled on his land, taking possession of a cabin previously erected by Jacob Moreland, who intended entering the tract, but put it off until too late, and thus lost the land and improvements thereon.  With the assistance of Mr. Reighly a crop was put in, and in the fall Mr. Hamilton brought his family to their new home on the Blanchard.  He and wife, Martha,  were natives of Virginia, who had settled in Gallia County, Ohio, whence with three children, Eliza, Robert and Mary B., they came to Hancock, where Lucinda, Julia, Emily, Parmelia and John were born.  Of these Mrs. Job Chamberlin and Mrs.. Emily Vandenburg of Findlay, and John and Parmelia of Kansas, are the only survivors.  In 1824 Mr. Hamilton was assessed for two horses and two head of cattle.  At the first county election in April, 1828, he was elected one of the three commissioners of Hancock County, and re-elected the following October, serving until December, 1831.  Mr. Hamilton was one of the progressive men of that day and took an active interest in all the early public business of the county.  He died in Findlay, Nov. 8, 1857.

     BLUFORD HAMILTON came out with his brother, John P., in 1822, and resided with the latter till his marriage with Zibella Beard, about 1829.  He was one of the voters at the first county election; but as he died in the spring of 1833, he is not very well remembered.

     THOMAS SLIGHT settled in Findlay Township early in the summer of 1822.  He entered the south part of the southeast quarter of Section 17, Township 1 north, Range 11, Oct. 29, 1821, his land adjoining John P. Hamilton's on the east.  Mr. Slight was assessed in 1824 with one horse and four head of cattle.  In April, 1828, he was elected coroner of Hancock County, and re-elected in October following, serving till November, 1830.  He was again elected to the same office in October, 1832, and once more in 1835.  Mr. Sight was a native of Maryland.  He reared quite a large family and some of his descendants still reside in the county.  He had a brother named Joseph, who came with him to Hancock, whence most of the family removed to Indiana.

     JOHN and ELIZABETH GARDNER and family settled on the site of Maple Grove Cemetery late in the fall of 1822.  The parents were Pennsylvania-Irish and had a family of four sons and three daughters when they came to this county.  The Gardner boys, Jonathan, John, William and Joseph, are remembered as well-developed specimens of physical manhood, who had few superiors in the backwoods sports of pioneer days.  The father entered over 200 acres of land in Findlay and Liberty Townships in 1821 and 1822.  John and Joseph Gardner married, respectively, Susan and Elizabeth Moreland.  In 1828 John Gardner, Sr. sold his land near Findlay and soon after removed to Lagrange County, Ind.  The whole Gardner family left the county soon after this time, some of them settling in Indiana and others in Michigan.  At the second election, held in Findlay Township in April, 1824.  John Gardner was elected one of the two fence viewers; and the same spring was assessed for two horses and four head of cattle.  He was also a voter at the first county election in April, 1828, and the family were residents of the county about seven years.

     JOSHUA HEDGES came from Fairfield County, Ohio, to this township in September, 1824, and settled north of the river on Section 11, where he had entered about 160 acres of land Mar. 28, 1822.  Mr. Hedges was born in Virginia May 24, 1793, and removed to Fairfield County, Ohio, with his parents when quite small, where he grew to manhood and, April 13, 185, was married to Miss Hannah Reese, also a native of Virginia, born in September, 1796.  They had a family of one son and five daughters when they came to Hancock County, and three children were born here.  Of the nine only one survives, though several of their grandchildren reside in the county.  In April, 1826, Mr. Hedges was elected justice of the peace, and re-elected to the same office.  He was the first treasurer of Hancock County, serving from April to October, 1828.  In 1840 he was elected coroner and served one term.  Mr. Hedges died on the old homestead northwest of Findlay, in 1845, his widow surviving him ten years, dying in 1855.  He was a tall, muscular, energetic man, very hospital and strictly honest, a stanch Democrat and for many years a member of the Methodist Church.

     DAVID GITCHEL, of Logan County, Ohio, settled on the southeast corner of John Simpson's land, on "Chamberlin's Hill," about 1825.  He built a cabin and cleared a few acres of ground, but when Simpson sold out to Job Chamberlin, Sr., in 1827, Gitchel moved to a piece of land about a mile south of the Simpson place, and finally went back to Logan County.
     In the spring of 1827 ISAAC JOHNSON and wife, and sons, Joseph, Isaac, Miller and Eli, and daughters, Betsy and Lydia (the former of whom subsequently married Matthew Reighly, and the latter Peter Deamer), came to this township.  The Johnsons removed from Virginia to Portsmouth, Ohio, in 1811, and thence to this county sixteen years afterward.  The father released a piece of land of Joshua Hedges, in Section 11; was elected overseer of the poor in April, 1828, and after several years' residence in the county he removed to Indiana.  His son, Joseph, though bending under the weight of old age, is yet a resident of the county.  A sketch of him will be found in the history of Marion Township.

     JOHN BOYD

     JOHN JONES located northwest of Findlay in the fall of 1827, whence he removed to a piece of land on Eagle Creek, south of the town.  He was elected constable of Findlay Township in April, 1828.  After a few years' residence in this county he went West, and is little remembered even by the oldest settlers.
     JACOB FOSTER
     JUDGE ROBERT L. STROTHER
     WILLIAM DULIN
     LEONARD TRITCH
     ABRAHAM and MARGARET SCHOONOVER
     JOHN BAKER, RICHARD WADE and HENRY FOLK
     ROBERT BONHAM, SR.
     DANIEL ANDRECK, JOHN BISHOP, JOHN HARRITT, BENONI CULP and JACOB FELLER
     JOHN BYAL
     Other settlers in 1832 were THOMAS G. WHITLOCK, ALVIN SCHOONOVER, PETER DEAMER and SAMUEL SPANGLER
     In the spring of 1833 ANTHONY STROTHER
     FREDERICK DUDUIT
     In September, 1833, WILLIAM BYAL
     SAMUEL K. RADEBAUGH

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