CHAPTER VII.

SOCIETIES, ASSOCIATIONS, ETC.

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     THESE pages have already shown how the Ohio River was discovered by LaSalle in 1689 who explored the country north of it; how Celeron had planted the leaden plats at the mouth of the Muskingam, Scioto, and Great Miami Rivers; how the first English settlement west of the Alleghenies was established at Piqua, Miami County, in 1749, and its subsequent destruction.
     The first fort built by the national government in Ohio was on the right bank of the Muskingum, at its confluence with the Ohio River, in the year 1785, and named Fort Harmar in honor of Josiah Harmar, the commander.  Three yeas afterward, in 1788, Gen. Rufus Putnam brought from Massachusetts a colony of settlers, who erected a stockade fort and named it Marietta, also located at the mouth of the Muskingum, and two years afterward, the United States troops, who had built Fort Harmar, abandoned it and constructed Fort Washington near the mouth of the Great Miami River, on the site of Cincinnati, and this fort was also abandoned in 1795, after the treaty of Greenville.
     In 1788, contemporaneous with the Massachusetts colony at Marietta, a colony was located on the Symmes purchase at the mouth of the Little Miami River, called Columbus.  The Symmes purchase embraced 2,000,000 acres of land between the Big and Little Miami Rivers.  All of the east half of Miami County was in the Symmes purchase, but none west of the river.  Gen. William H. Harrison, afterward President of the United States married a daughter of John Cleve Symmes, who purchased this immense tract of fertile land.  The town of Cleves, in Hamilton County, was named for Symmes.
     The defeat of General Harmar in 1790, and of General St. Clair in 1791, in their respective campaigns, against the Miami and other tribes of Indians in northwest Ohio, increased their confidence in their prowess to repel the steady westward movements of the white man, and thus developed a check to the settlement of the State that demanded prompt and effective measures to control and dissipate.  It was during this year of 1794, during the second term of Washington, that the whiskey rebellion in western Pennsylvania was suppressed; Washington was embarrassed by dissensions in his cabinet.  Hamilton's financial policies were attacked with severity by Jefferson, and Jefferson's conduct of foreign affairs was bitterly criticized by the vitriolic pen of Hamilton.  Washington's influence, towering above all others, was barely able to prevent his cabinet from dissolution.  Both of these great leaders had ardently advocated the re-election of Washington to the Presidency.  After that event, however, Jesserson resigned his office of Secretary of Foreign Affairs in January, 1794, and retired to private life at Monticello.  A year later, Hamilton also resigned.  The redeeming feature of this period was the work of Mad Anthony Wayne in the Indian country of Northwestern Ohio.
     The author of this history is indebted to Washington Sterrett, his grandfather, a captain of Wayne's army, for a history of Wayne's march from Ft. Washington

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(Cincinnati) to the Maumee with a force of 3,000 men, mostly recruited in Kentucky.  In the late summer of 1793, he

MORE TO COME

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ARTHUR ST. CLAIR (Portrait)

     ARTHUR ST. CLAIR was born in Scotland, in 1734, and after receiving a classical education in one of the most celebrated universities of his native country, studied medicine; but having a taste for military pursuits, he sought and obtained a subaltern's appointment, and was with Wolfe in the storming of Quebec.  After the peace of 1763, he was assigned the command of Fort Ligonier, in Pennsylvania, and received there a grant of 1,000 acres.  Prior to the Revolutionary War, he held several civil offices.  His military skill and experience, intelligence and integrity were such, that when the Revolutionary War commenced, he was appointed Colonel of Continentals.  In August, 1776, he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier, and bore an active part in the battles of Trenton and Princeton.  Afterwards, charges of cowardice, incapacity and treachery were brought against him.  He was tried by court martial, and the fact was disclosed that the works were incomplete, and incapable of being defended against the whole British army; he was acquitted, with the highest honor, of the charges against him.  After the passage of the ordinance for the government of the Northwestern Territory, he was made Governor, and continued in the office until within a few weeks of the termination of the Territorial form of government, in the winter of 1802-3, when he was removed by President Jefferson.  On the 31st of August, 1818, after a long and useful life, Governor St. Clair died near Greensburg, aged eighty-four years.

WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON
Acting Territorial Governor (PORTRAIT)
1798

     WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON ...

EDWARD TIFFIN
First Constitutional Governor
(PORTRAIT)

     EDWARD TIFFIN, the first ...

THOMAS KIRKER
Acting
1807-1808
(PORTRAIT)

     THOMAS KIRKER of Irish ancestry, was among the early settlers in Adams County.  .............

SAMUEL HUNTINGTON
1808-1810
(PORTRAIT)

     SAMUEL HUNTINGTON was born in 1765.  He was the .................

X
RETURN JONATHAN MEIGS
1810-1814
(PORTRAIT)

     RETURN JONATHAN MEIGS was born at Middletown, Conn., in 1765; graduated at Yale, studied law and was admitted to the bar in his native town.  He was among the first settlers of Marietta.  In the winter of 1802-3, eh was elected Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the State.  The next year he resigned this office, having received from Jefferson the appointment of Commandant of the United States troops and militia in the Upper District of Louisiana, and shortly after was appointed one of the judges of the Territory of Louisiana.  In April 1807, he was commissioned a judge of Michigan Territory; resigned the commission in October, to become a candidate for Governor of Ohio; was elected, in a spirited canvass, over his competitor, General Massie; but not having the constitutional qualifications of the four years' residence in the State, prior to the election, his election was contested, and decided against him.  In the session of 1807-8, he was appointed Senator in Congress, which office he afterwards resigned, and was elected Governor of Ohio in 1810.  In March, 1814, having been appointed Postmaster General of the United States, he resigned that office, and continued his new vocation until 1823.  He died at Marietta, Mar. 29, 1825.

     THOMAS LOWRY YOUNG was born at Killyleagh, Ireland, Dec. 4, 1832.  With his parents he landed in this country, at the age of twelve, and at sixteen enlisted in the regular army, serving ten years and retiring as orderly-sergeant.  Soon after he removed to Cincinnati.  In 1861 he was commissioned captain in General Fremont’s Body Guard and served until January, 1862, when the guard was disbanded.  In August, 1862, he recruited a company for the 118th Ohio Infantry.  He rose to be Colonel and served
until September, 1864. when he was honorably discharged on account of sickness.  At the battle of Resaca, Colonel Young led the charge on the enemy’s center, his regiment losing in a few minutes 116 out of 270 men engaged.  For this and other acts of gallantry, he was brevetted Brigadier-General.  He studied law and was admitted to the bar in April, 1865, and in October was elected a representative to the Ohio Legislature, serving two years.  In 1871 he was chosen State Senator for one term.  In 1875 he was elected Lieutenant-Governor, and March, 1877, became Governor, when Rutherford B. Hayes assumed the presidency.  Governor Young’s rise from obscurity of an emigrant boy to the governorship of a great State, is a high tribute to American Institutions, as well as to his own integrity in civil life and unflinching courage as a soldier.  He died at Cincinnati, Ohio, July 20, 1888.

ASA SMITH BUSHNELL
1896-1900

     ASA SMITH BUSHNELL, of Springfield. was horn at Rome, N. Y„ on Sept. 26, 1834.  His grandfather, Jason Bushnell, was a Revolutionary soldier who saw much service.  His great-uncle, William Bushnell, was one of the forty-eight who made the first settlement at Marietta, and the stone table commemorating that event bears his name His father, Daniel Bushnell, removed to Cincinnati in 1845, and in 1851 the future Governor removed to Springfield, where he resided up to the time of his death. In ail these years he was engaged in active business, continually rising in influence and growing in wealth.  During the Civil War Governor Bushnell served as a Captain in the One Hundred and Fifty-seventh Ohio Infantry.  In politics he was always an ardent Republican, contributing freely in time and money.  He served the State as Quartermaster-General during both of Governor Foraker’s administrations, and in 1887 declined a unanimous nomination for Lieutenant-Governor.  In 1895 he was elected Governor of Ohio by the largest plurality ever given, except in the darkest days of the Civil War, and was re-elected in 1897.  He was an officer in the Episcopal Church, and was noted for his many charities, especially for a donation of $10,000 to the Masonic Home, which procured its location at Springfield.  He was an enthusiastic Grand Army man. and a Thirty-third degree Mason.