OHIO GENEALOGY EXPRESS


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Welcome to
Seneca County, Ohio
History & Genealogy

Source:
History of Seneca County:
from the close of the Revolutionary War to July, 1880:

embracing many personal sketches of pioneers, anecdotes,
and faithful descriptions of events pertaining to the organization of the county and its progress

Published: Springfield, Ohio: Transcript Print. Co., 
1880

CHAPTER VII
Pg 121

The Seneca Chief Presents the Governor of Canada with 954 American Scalps -
Tall Chief - The Tuuquanias - Killing the Squaw of George Washington
Judge Hulburt - Caleb Rice - Benj. Culver- Rev. James B. Finlay -
Capt. Joseph - Mrs. Ingham - Capt Joseph - Capt. Sherwood =
Sketch of Mrs. Ingham - Early Marriages

     THE Senecas were, at one time in their history, a very powerful race, and about the time  of the revolutionary war the most savage and cruel of any of these forest monsters.  About the time they took possession of their reservation in Seneca county, there was scarcely anything left of them, and those that did settle here were a mixed rabble of several tribes, half-breeds and captives.
     For more than a century this tribe had been in contact with the white race, in peace and in war; and instead of deriving the benefit which naturally ought to have followed, from this intimacy, they deteriorated to more abject barbarism still, and dwindled down to a handful of dirty, stupid, superstitious, worthless rabble.  Had not this county once been their home, and been named after them, nobody would care to read or learn anything about them.  As it is, the reader would scarce be satisfied, in perusing a history of this county, without having an opportunity to learn all there was of them, and what they were like when they roamed over the ground that contains so many happy homes as now enjoyed by the people here.  All these sprung up by magic, as it were, since the last satanic yell of these hell-hounds of the woods died on the desert air.
     The manner in which the British government carried on both her wars with the United States, by making these red fiends their allies, and supplying them with everything needful to perpetrate their cruelties upon the white people along the frontier, put that government in a worse light still, looked at from every stand-point that tie may justify.  For a high-toned, christian people, claiming the mastery of the seas, and upon whose territory the sun never ceases to shine, not only justifying midnight butcheries of her superior enemy by savage warfare, but helping it along and approving these atrocities, calls aloud for universal condemnation.

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     The relation of Great Britain with the western savages, and the power this red ally exercised on  the western frontier, is clearly shown in a letter that Dr. Franklin furnished the American Remembrancer, an authority which nobody will dispute.
     The British government had sent its agents to all the Indian tribes to enlist the savages against the colonists.  The America sent Benjamin Franklin to Paris to secure, if possible, the aid of France in favor of his countrymen.  Dr. Franklin wrote an article for the American Remembrancer, which, in  that day, exerted a very powerful influence in both Europe and America.  It purported to be a letter from a British officer to the Governor of Canada, accompanying a present of eight packages of scalps of the colonists, which he had received from the chief of the Senecas.  As a very important part of the history of the times, the letter should be recorded.  It was as follows:

"MAY IT PLEASE YOUR EXCELLENCY:
     "At the request of James Hoyt, eight packages of scalps, cured, dried, hooped and painted with all the triumphal marks, of which the following is the invoice and explanation:
     "No. 1 - Containing forty-three scalps of Congress soldiers, killed in different skirmishes.  These are stretched on black hoops, four inches in diameter.  The inside of the skin is painted red, with a small black spot, to denote their being killed with bullets: the hoops painted red; the skin painted brown and marked with a hoe; a black circle all round, to denote their being surprised in the night; and a black hatchet in the middle, signifying their being killed with that weapon.
     "No. 2 - Containing the scalps of ninety-eight farmers, killed in their houses; hoops red, figure of a hoe, to mark their profession; great white circle and sun, to show they were surprised in day time; and little red foot, to show they stood upon their defense, and died fighting for their lives and families.
     "No. 3 - Containing ninety-seven, of farmers; hoops green, to show that they were killed in the fields; a large, white circle, with a little round mark on it, for a sun, to show it was in the day time; a black bullet mark on some, a hatchet mark on others.
     "No. 4 - Containing one hundred and two, farmers; mixture of several of the marks above; only eighteen marked with a little yellow flame, to denote their being of prisoners burnt alive, after being scalped; their nails pulled out by the roots, and other torments; one of these latter being supposed to be an American clergyman, his hand being fixed to the hook of his scalp.  Most of the farmers appear, by the hair, to have been young or middle-aged men, there being but sixty-seven very gray heads among them all, which makes the service more essential.
     "No. 5 - Containing eighty-eight scalps of women; hair long, braided in the Indian fashion, to show they were mothers; hoops, blue; skin, yellow ground, with little red tad-poles, to represent, byway of triumph, the tears

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of grief occasional to their relatives; a black scalping knife or hatchet at the bottom, to mark their being killed by those instruments.  Seventeen others, being very gray; black hoops; plain brown color; no marks but the short club or cassetete, to show they were knocked down dead, or had their brains beaten out.
     "No. 6 - Containing one hundred and ninety-three boys' scalps, of various aging small green hoops, with ground on the skin, with red tears in the middle, and black marks, knife, hatchet or club, as their death happened.
    "No. 7 - Containing two hundred and eleven girls' scalps big and little; small yellow hoops; white ground tears, hatchet and scalping knife.
     "No. 8 - This package is a mixture of all the varieties above mentioned, to the number of one hundred and twenty-two, with a box of birch bark, containing twenty-nine little infants' scalps, of various sizes; small white hoops, white ground, to show that they were nipped out of their mothers' wombs.
     "With these packs, the chiefs send to our Excellency the following speech, delivered by Conicogatchie, in council, interpreted by the elder Moore, the trader, and taken down by me in writing:
     "Father - We wish you to send many scalps, that you may see we are not idle friends.  We wish you to send these scalps

 to the Great King, that he may regard them, and be refreshed; and that he may see our faithfulness in destroying his enemies, and he convinced that his presents have not een made to an ungrateful people." etc. - Abb. Hist. of Ohio, p. 189.

     Is the reader at a loss to determine which is the most lovely of the two - the American savage or the British savage - the giver or the receiver of these scalps?

     Mrs. Sally Ingham, in her contribution, says:

     My father was the Rev. James Montgomery who was appointed the first agent of the Seneca Indians.  He took charge of his office in November, 1819, when we moved into the old blockhouse at Fort Seneca.  I was then a little girl eight years old.  Louis Tuquania was then the head chief of the tribe.
     Tall Chief was a tall, noble looking specimen of an Indian, sober and honorable.  Seneca John, Steel, Coonstick and Comstock were nephews of Tall Chief.  Comstock died  very suddenly when Coonstick was out west for some time, and when he returned an investigation was instituted to ascertain the manner of his death.  John, his brother, was found guilty of the murder by having procured the services of a medicine woman who administered poison to Comstock, Coonstick, Shane and Steel were his executioners.  I think the particulars given by Gen. Brish are, perhaps, the most correct version of the whole affair.
     We lived in the old blockhouse seven years.  The pickets were yet there when we came.  Some of them had been broken down.
     The Senecas were an exceedingly superstitious people, and notwithstanding all the influences brought to bear upon them to love and embrace the christian religion, they were very stubborn, and seemed to prefer their untutored notions about the Deity to the beauties of divine revelation.  

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MORETO COME

 

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was nicely braided.  Very proud of his education and French training, he often put on great airs, and said, "This is the way the French officers do."  His overbearing disposition often got him into trouble with other Indians, all of whom he regarded as vastly his inferiors, and very frequently father was called upon to settle his troubles for him.
     A man by the name of Keeler lived near the river bank.  He had a family of six children; he came from the state of New York, and bought forty acres of land.  The family suffered greatly with sickness.  I don't remember what became of them.
     Alexander McNutt and his brother, Daniel McNutt, were also here in 1819.  Daniel had a family, and Alexander married a sister of Isaac I. Dumond. My father solemnized their marriage.
     William Montgomery started a store in 1833, in a log cabin, in the village that is now called Fort Seneca.
     Eliphalet Rogers bought a farm near Wolf creek.  He married Hannah Jackson, who had lived at Mr. Bowe's a long time.  Rogers was an honest, home-spun sort of a man.  His farm became afterwards known as the Snook farm.
    
Old Mr. Sherwood was a captain of a militia company, and very proud of his station.  He was a great talker, and somewhat boastful.  He did not live to be very old.
     Mr. William Harris, the gunsmith, was a man about five feet ten inches high, stout and well built.  He was poor, but a man of considerable refinement, and strictly honest.  He drank some, but not to excess.  He came here with his family after the Barneys, but before the Dumonds, and was amongst the first that settled near the fort.
     The Pikes and the Chaneys lived on the Spicer place when we came to the fort.
     There were three of these Tuguanias.  One was the head chief, another was the Joseph, and the third was the Armstrong Tugnania, the son of the one eyed medicine woman.

__________

MRS. SALLY INGHAM

     The subject of this sketch was born in Champaign county, Ohio, on the 4th day of February, 1811.  She is the fifth child of the Rev. James Montgomery, and was but eight years old when the family moved into the blockhouse at Fort Seneca.  She grew up from childhood into a blooming maiden, on the banks of the old Sandusky, among a few white settlers on one side, and the Senecas on the other side, of the river.
     In these wild and rural scenes of her childhood, she lived under the droppings of the sanctuary, blessed with the love of christian parents, and a cheerful disposition, that lets the owner look upon the sunny side

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of life - a blessing that never forsook her in all her life-long pathway.
     For want of other schools she received her primary education in the household, and afterwards took lessons in English grammar from Judge Hulbert.  She also attended a grammar school taught by Edson B. Goit, Esq., in Lower Sandusky, Ohio.  With this training she was enabled to teach school herself, and kept her first school near John Crum's, on the state road, three miles north of Tiffin; and after the death of her father, she taught two years lower.
     When she was about getting ready to attend the grammar school at Fremont, she went to McNeil's store at Fort Ball, to buy a pair of shoes.  Mr. Sardis Birchard sold them to her.  He was then clerk in the store, and afterwards became familiarly known in Lower Sandusky by the name of Judge Birchard, the uncle of President Hayes.
     On the 25th day of March, 1832, Mrs. Ingham was married to Mr. Milton Frary, a young farmer in Pleasant township, in this county, who died in 1852.  After living in widowhood seventeen years, she married a Mr. Alexander Ingham, from Cleveland, Ohio, who also died in April, 1870.
     Mrs. Ingham is still in the enjoyment of good health, and the same old happy disposition.  She has a remarkable memory of past events.  The names of persons, places and incidents are at the tongue's end, and her ready delineation is easily discernible by reading her narrative.  She has her father's temperament and appearance, strongly marked.  Her conversation is both instructive and amusing, couched in splendid English, and sweetened by her christian training, which unconsciously crops out on every occasion.
     If she ever had an enemy, he must have died long ago.  She is beloved by all who know her, and welcome at every door.
     For more than fifty-two years she has been a faithful member of the M. E. Church, in good standing; and while she enjoys her trust and confidence in God, she is not bowed down by the weight of the cross, but seems rather to bear her faith and increasing weight of years as an enjoyment.
     She has now lived in Seneca county longer than any other person in it, and is the last and only remaining member of a once very large family.
     Mrs. Ingham had four children: James R. Frary, who was married to Hattie F., daughter of the Rev. Andrews.  He died in Tiffin, in March, 1862, well known among the merchants and business men of Tiffin; Emily, now the wife of Jacob Baker; Sarah, who was married

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to Ralph Gates, and died in 1877; Justin, who died in 1863, as a prisoner of war in a rebel hospital in Danville, Virginia.
     The writer, in gratitude for her many narratives of men and things pertaining to early lifein Seneca county, can only wish her many more years of life in the enjoyment of her happy nature, in health, comfort and contentment.

- END OF CHAPTER VII -

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