OHIO GENEALOGY EXPRESS

A Part of Genealogy Express
 

WOOD COUNTY, OHIO
HISTORY

    Source:
REMINISCENCES of
PIONEER DAYS in WOOD COUNTY
and the
MAUMEE VALLEY
Gathered from the papers and manuscripts of the late C. W. Evers
A PIONEER SCRAP BOOK
1909

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WOOD COUNTY'S BIRTH

Its Development from the Misty Past - Our Love for the Memory of Our
Heroic Pioneers, Whose Splendid Results We Now Enjoy

By Charles W. Evers.

     WHO is there who does not love to hear of their ancestors and their ancestral home, even if that home was ever so homely - nothing but a log cabin with a stick chimney?  Even though the father and mother and grandparents, - long since passed away - were plain, every-day people, dressed in home-spun garb, yet our thoughts to our latest hour in life go back to the dear old home and to those dear old people with tenderest emotions.
     Heroic, were they?  Ah, yes.  We of Wood county may not deny that virtue to our ancestors.  Go back if you will half or three-quarters of a century and view the wilderness landscape of swamp, plain and forest as they found it, in your worst vein of imagination and say if they who buffeted with those discouragements were not untitled heroes.
     The Wood county of today has much to be proud of.  We need no self-glorification, but our pride may justly go back to those pioneer ancestors who amid poverty, sickness and privation of every kind laid broad and enduring, the foundation of our present prosperity.
     It is the story of such as these - individuals, communities and nations, together with the land they inhabited which makes biography and history - two of the most interesting branches of human knowledge.  Wood county with its accumulation, thrifty people and historic years, has an interesting contribution of this kind, now fast passing into oblivion, which if fittingly and truthfully told is well worthy a place in the annals of the nation.  Much that belongs to and becomes a part of our history occurred before our land had a place marked in the Geographical Atlas.
     Our homes of today lay in the track of great events.  The martial tread of armies, men upon whose valor the fate of the nation hung, disturbed the silent wastes of Wood long before she had so

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much as a name, and the forest echoes repeated the startling roar of the cannon which proclaimed that the final contest between Civilization and Barbarism was in deadly issue at her very threshold.
     The story of her early settlement and progress while a fruitful theme for the chronicler's pen, will derive increased interest from a brief narration of some of this preceding outline history which has become a part of the written story of the nation.  In this we are told that Wood county was a small fractional part of a vast extent of territory, of which the French were the first white claimants, basing their claim as other Europeans did on the right of discovery and conquest.  This nominal possession had existed about one hundred years when, in 1763, the English, who were also claimants of contiguous territory, dispossessed the French, after a bloody war, of all their lands in America.  That twenty years later, in 1783, England, in turn, after a war of eight years, was forced to quit-claim all her possessions south of Canada to her own rebellious Colonists, who started a new Government of their own styled The United States of America.
     The open page of our history after this nominal ownership by these two most powerful and enlightened nations of Europe, for a period of one hundred and twenty years, was still a blank.  No marks of civilization were left behind.  Adventurous explorers and fur-traders had passed through the forests of by the river in expeditions to points beyond, but otherwise this land, since called Wood county, was nought but a vast game preserve for vagrant bands of Indian hunters.
     But a change for the better is coming slowly.  Civilization has set its course westward with relentless tread.  Was is sometimes a great educator.  The various desultory expeditions in the west had been the means of promulgating wonderful stories in the east of the beauty and fertility of the western country, and shortly after the birth of the new Government a vast tide of immigration was sweeping across the Alleghenies to the fertile region of the Ohio and its tributaries.
     It should be kept in mind that each of the civilized nations claiming any part of the country, held it always subject to the claims of the Indian tribes occupying it.  There was this serious cloud on the title of all land in the west at that time.  In the present boundaries of Ohio not less than thirteen tribes and bands laid claim to title.  As will be readily foreseen the great inundation of white settlers into their fine hunting grounds soon aroused the jealousy and hostility of these tribes and stealthy murders and brutal, fiendish outrages on the whites soon followed.  The Government, then under the wise administration of President Washington, has observed so far as possible a humane and pacific policy toward all the tribes and had spared no efforts to secure peace with them by treaty and purchase of their lands. But through the mischievous advice and influence of British traders, who were profiting by a lucrative traffic with the Indians, they insisted on the Ohio River as the boundary between them and the whites, and no treaty which all the tribes would respect and sanction could be made, only on this basis.
     Finally an army under Gen. Harmar was sent against them, but was defeated on the Maumee near where Fort Wayne now is.  Another army under Gen. St. Clair, then Governor of the Northwest Territory, was organized and sent against them.  Again, the savages fell back, though by a more direct course toward the Maumee.  Again the Americans met with overwhelming defeat and were routed with great slaughter and the barbarous butchery of all their unfortunate wounded and prisoners, and the loss of all their cannon and military equipage.
     This so emboldened the Indians that

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all the whites north of the Ohio were compelled for safety to shut themselves up in forts and block-houses and from all sides came loud demands for strong and vigorous measures by the Government, which was far too slow and lenient in its policy to suit the distressed settlers.
     President Washington now sent for General Anthony Wayne, an old army associate of his in the Revolution.  Wayne, who was a resolute man of audacious courage, came on the organized his army and though assailed and opposed by every strategem of savage warfare, he marched to the Maumee, where on the northerly bank of the Maumee about two miles below the present townsite of Waterville, Aug. 20, 1794, he met the confederated tribes and fragments of tribes of the Northwest who had assembled their warriors to dispute his further advance by the wager of battle.  Wayne assailed them with his characteristic fury and impetuosity.  The issue was not long in doubt.  The Indians were completely routed, many of their chiefs being killed, while the rest, when the battle was over, were flying fugitives.  They had been encouraged and assisted by the British, who had a fort, in violation of their treaty with the United States, just below where Maumee is now.  Some of their Indians fled there for protection but the gates were shut against them.  The English commander had doubtless a pretty wholesome respect for Wayne as a soldier and did not care to take any chances in provoking him to storm the fort and therefore prudently refused to give shelter to the fugitive savages.
     The Americans destroyed all cornfields and Indian villages on their return up the river, subsisting much of the time, especially while they were constructing Fort Wayne and Defiance, on the corn and vegetable patches of the Indians.  After garrisoning these forts Wayne marched back to Fort Greenville, now in Darke county, and left the tribes to ponder over the situation until spring to decide whether they would make peace of have more war.
     The effect of Wayne's victory over the Indians cannot be correctly measured by the number of savages slain in battle.  The campaign had convinced them of their inability to successfully make war on the whites.  They had seen an army come among them led by a chief whom they could neither surprise nor defeat.  They had seen the hollowness of the English promises of help; when danger came they had seen the king's soldiers creep into their forts like ground hogs, and when the Indian went there for protection the gate was shut in his face and he was left to the mercy of Wayne's victorious soldiers.  They had seen their cornfields laid waste, their villages burned and their women and children left destitute for the winter and had seen five garrisoned forts placed in their country to enforce peace.  There was a logic in all this that the Indian could understand.  He saw that he must do one of three things, make peace, leave the country, or be annihilated.
     British agents still endeavored to prevent a treaty, but hollow promises and fine talk did not allay the pangs of hunger and the pinching cold of winter; and the following year the basis of a treaty was made at Greenville, Darke county, on the 3d of August, 1795, by which the Indians relinquished all claim forever to more than three-fourths of Ohio, besides sixteen cessions of land, located from each other at great distances, and distributed over an extensive area of wilderness country, the lands upon which are now established those great centers of commerce, Chicago, Detroit, Toledo and Fort Wayne, besides other distant posts as Versailles, and Mackinaw.  This treaty was signed by the war chiefs of no less than twelve tribes of Indians.
     Then came treaty after treaty and

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grant after grant during the yeas that followed - Treaty of Fort Industry, 1805; at Detroit, 1807; at Brownstown, 1808; treaty where Maumee now stands, in 1817, and one of the most important to the Maumee Valley; treaty at St. Marys, 1818; treaty of Saginaw, 1819.  One by one the different grants were extinguished.  The Delawares ceded their reservations in 1829.  The Wyandots ceded theirs by a treaty made at Upper Sandusky, Mar. 17, 1842.  This was the last Indian treaty in Ohio - a state, says Henry Howe, every foot of whose soil has been fairly purchased by treaties from its original possessors.  The last Indian title extinguished was that of the Wyandots, and they left for Kansas in July, 1843.

EARLY FORMATION
pg. 10

Wood County Seat Once at Detroit -- Struggle Over Location - Rivalry Between Orleans and Perrysburg.

MR. EVERS compiled the following bit of interesting history of Wood county in its early days: 
     The territory now known as Wood county, belonged to the Eries, or, as some historians say, The Neuter Nation.  The French explorers and missionaries first saw the shores of Lake Erie, and next to the Iroquois, invaded the country about the close of the first half of the Seventeenth Century.  From the beginning of French exploration to 1713, it formed a part of the original province of Quebec; from 1713 to 1764, it was a part of Louisiana; from 1764 and 1769, under the British parliament statute, it belonged to Quebec province; from 1769 to 1778, under authority of the Virginia legislature, it was attached to Boletourt county, Va., and from 1778 to 1787, it formed a part of Illinois county, Va.
     When the territory northwest of the Ohio was established in 1787, Wood county was its wildest and most in hospital part, and later off of Wayne county (organized in 1796).  The Ottawas, Miamis and other tribes, claimed it as their hunting grounds.

The First Legislature.

Of Ohio, in March and April, 1803, established the counties of Green, Montgomery, Gallia, Butler, Warren, Geauga, Scioto and Franklin, and all of Wood county, south of the Fulton line was detached from the great county of Wayne.  Our county seat was then at Detroit.  Congress had since chopped us off, so to speak, and, like a chip from a great log, we were lying over in the state of Ohio, and our late county seat, Detroit, was in Wayne county still, but in Indiana territory.  The Maumee country had been divorced.  We were in that fragment of Ohio that had been Wayne county, Northwest territory, but now we were in a new state, without a seat of justice or county government, nor even a county name.

No Use For It.

     It is true that the hordes of Indians and few white traders and half breeds here had but little use for a county seat, but still it was the fashion to preserve the semblance of civil government, by attaching all territory to some organized county for such purposes.  It had been the rule too, on the Ohio, where the settlements began, to extend the limits of the new counties to the northern bound

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ary of the territory.  So it happened, when Green and Franklin counties were organized on the settlements, they were extended north to the state line, possibly to include the 12 mile reserve, and took in the present territory of Wood.  The present tire of eastern townships of Wood were in Franklin, with the county seat at Franklinton, now Columbus, and the remainder of Wood was attached to Green county, with seat of justice at Xenia.  But the fact that this territory had two county seats caused but little inconvenience; except the U. S. Reserve it was all Indian territory; there were no taxes to pay or deeds to record.  Settlements, however, were extending up the Made river very fast, and two years later, 1805, Champaign county was formed of parts of Green and Franklin counties, and in 1817, Logan county was organized.  Wood county was in Logan county from 1817 to 1820 as well as in Erie County in the territory of Michigan, for the Michigan authorities justly exercised jurisdiction over a part of it.
     Dr. Horatio Conant had no sooner made his home within the old limits of Wood county, than Governor Cass commissioned him a Justice of the Peace of Erie county, with headquarters at Maumee.  To oppose this section and as soon as Waynesfield township of Loan county was established, the governor of Ohio commissioned  Seneca Allen, of Fort Meigs, a Justice of the Peace for Logan county, and thus it was in two distinct jurisdictions until 1835-36, when the Toledo war woke up congress to apply a remedy.

A County of Their Own.

     Now that the Maumee Rapids people had a county of their own, and a seat of justice right in their midst, it might reasonably be presumed that they would, after the great inconvenience they had endured, be happy to a man.  Not so Human nature is not shaped thus.  It was the same then as it is today; never satisfied.  Maumee had the county seat temporarily, but not by general approval.  Orleans and Perrysburg were not pleased.  The settlers were pretty evenly divided on each side of the river.  But in the new counties then forming, the seats of justice were fixed temporarily by the legislature until the developments of population should indicate where the proper place for the county seat would be, when three disinterested commissioners were appointed, whose duty it was to carefully investigate the situation and fix upon the location of the county seat.  Had the location of the seat of justice been by a vote of the settlers, no doubt Maumee would have held it at that time.

Both Sides Are Envious

     Orleans and Perrysburg, both on the south side of the river, were envious of each other and would not act in unity, and in a triangular battle, Maumee could out vote either of them.  The question has often been raised in later years as to how Perrysburg got the county seat away from her stronger neighbor, Maumee, and we believe this is the first time an explanation has appeared in print.

The County Seat Located

      At the session of the legislature, in the winter of 1821-22, Charles R. Sherman (father of Senator and General Sherman), Edward Paine, Jr., and Nehemiah King were appointed commissioners to fix the permanent location of the county seat of Wood county.  At the May term of court in Maumee, 1822, the report of these commissioners, a copy of which had been placed on file with the clerk, was read in open court, and from which report (following the language of the journal).  "it appears that the town of Perrysburg in said county of Wood, was selected as the most proper place as

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a seat of justice for said county of Wood, the said town of Perrysburg being as near the center of said county of Wood, as to situation, extent of population, quality of land and convenience and interest of the inhabitants of said county of Wood, as was possible, the commissioners aforesaid designate in-lot No. 387, as the most proper site for the court house of said county of Wood."

Fought Till the Last

     It must not for a moment be supposed that Maumee surrendered up this coveted prize without a protest, or that Orleans looked on with an approving smile.  Both opposed it with every possible influence, but Perrysburg had a powerful ally. -Just at this critical juncture, the United States gave sonic friendly aid to her protege.

A Gift of Great Benefit

     In May, 1822, Congress enacted a law vesting the title to all unsold lots and out-lots in Perrysburg, in the Commissioners of Wood county, on condition that the county seat should be permanently located there. The net proceeds of the sale .of the lots were to be used in erecting public buildings, etc. There was a considerable number of these lots unsold and the gift proved of great benefit to the county in its early poverty, in getting a jail and court house without much expense to the tax-payers.  Regardless of this help to the county, the decision of the commissioners who located the seat of justice, was a wise and also a just one, either in the light of the views set forth in their report, or of what subsequently occurred, the dismemberment of Wood county to form Lucas.

A Complicated Question

     There was, too, at this time a complicated question of jurisdiction between Ohio and the territory of Michigan, which well nigh provoked a war 15 years later. According to the claims of Michigan, most of the territory north of the Maumee belonged to her.  The final decision of the question rested with Congress, as Michigan was not yet a state.  This uncertainty of jurisdiction may also have had its influence with the commission which fixed the permanent county seat at Perrysburg.  It was known to the friends of the latter place, and the Hollisters, Spaffords and others, who had at that time invested in property in Perrysburg, were tacticians enough to work the point for all it was worth. Although the decision of the commission in favor of Perrysburg was made in May, 1822, there does not appear to have been any haste in the removal.

The Commissioners Meet

     The first meeting of the county commissioners in Perrysburg, as shown by their journal, was on the 3rd of March following, nearly ten months after the decision had been made. Their minutes of the proceeding in Maumee, during almost three years, show a light amount of routine work. They had constructed a log jail and taken some steps looking to the establishment of roads. Their record for the entire time covers only about 20 pages, and the auditor, Ambrose Rice, received $29.75 for his services in the year ending March 4, 1822.  Thomas W. Powell, then prosecuting attorney, was appointed auditor for the year 1823, and filled both offices, getting an allowance of $30 for his services as auditor, which was 25 cents more than Rice got.

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THE TREATY OF MAUMEE.
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Most Important to Wood County - Opposed by Some of the Indian Chiefs - Thrilling scenes -- This section at Last Placed on the Map.
-----

     THE conclusion of the series of great events by which the United States acquired a clear title deed to the lands now embraced in wood county, with that of the Maumee Treaty in 1817.  In Sept. of that year Duncan McArthur and Lewis Cass, as the authorized agents of the United States, met the Wyandot Seneca, Delaware and Shawnee by which the United States acquired a clear title deed to the lands now embraced in Wood county was that of the Maumee Treaty in 1817.  In September of that year Duncan McArthur and Lewis Cass, as the authorized agents of the United States, met the Wyandot, Ottawa, Chippewa, Pottawatomy, Seneca, Delaware, and Shawnee tribes to the number of about 7,000 Indians, at a treaty council at the Maumee Rapids and purchased from them all their remaining lands in Ohio except some scattering reservations. Only one of these touched the present limits of Wood county.
     Of all the great treaties from that made with the Iroquois at Fort Stanwix in 1784, down to this at the Maumee Rapids, none was so important to Northwestern Ohio. Campaigns had been made and battles fought—sometimes to end in defeat, sometimes in victory.  Treaty had followed treaty, but each and all had consigned this land to the sway of the savage. Almost three decades had passed from the time the Marietta Colony was planted on the Ohio in 1878, until the power of the government was invoked in bringing the unshadowed noonday light of Civilization to the Maumee country. Now, for the first time could it be said that this section stood on an equality with the rest of Ohio, free from the fetters of ownership and dominance of a race whose interests, habits, customs and mode of life were entirely opposed to the improvement of the country.
     It is possible that this land was, in that early time, thought unfit for white occupation, or rather that it was better suited to the uses of Indians than whites.  It was doubtless true that in some respects this portion of Ohio was not the most desirable of any in the State. That, however, coupled with the fact that it was held as Indian territory for about thirty years after settlement begun in other portions of the State, explains why some of the counties were, for a time,
way behind the procession.
     A line drawn from Sandusky Bay south along the west end of the Connecticut Reserve to the Greenville treaty line, near Mount Gilead, thence westerly along that line to the Indiana line, thence north to Michigan, and including all the west part of Ohio as far as Defiance, and down the Maumee to its mouth, would about embrace the Ohio land bought at that treaty, and since cut up into about eighteen counties. Wood, as she is today, lay entirely within this purchase, aside from the half of the twelve-mile square Reserve on the north side of the Maumee, bought at Wayne's treaty. The land on the north side of the Maumee, west to Defiance, was bought at the treaty of Detroit, 1807.
     The treaty was regarded by the people of the state with great interest. This part of Ohio north of the Greenville line was a blank space on the map. It was simply the Indian territory and the "Black Swamp." Its name caused a shrug of terror to many. In others there was a belief that while it was not an earthly paradise, yet it was a good place to go and "grow up with the country."
     The Indians too, did not agree as to the advisability of selling it.  There was a division among them and some stout opposition developed at the treaty.

Signing the Treaty of 1817

     Gen. Hunt, in his reminiscences, says:

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There was an Indian present whose name was Mashkeman, who was a great warrior, and prided himself on being a British subject. He had been bribed to
oppose the treaty.  When lie found the Indians giving way to Cass and McArthur, our commissioners, it made him very angry.  He said in his speech that "the palefaces had cheated the red men, from their first landing on this continent.  The first who came said they wanted land enough to put a foot on.  They gave the Indians a beef, and were to have so much land as the hide would cover. The palefaces cut that hide into strings, and got land enough for a fort.  The next time they wanted more land they bought a great pile of goods, which they ottered for land. The red men took the goods, and the palefaces were to have for them so much land as a horse would travel round in a day. They cheated the red man again by having a relay of horses to travel at their utmost speed.  In that way they succeeded. Now. you Cass," pointing his finger and shaking his tomahawk over Cass' head, "Now, you Cass, come here to cheat us again."  Thus closing he sat down. Cass replied:  "My friends, I am much pleased to find among you so great a man as Mashkeman.  I am glad to see yon have an orator, a man who understands how much you have been cheated by the white people, and who is fully able to cope with them—those scoundrels who have cheated yon so outrageously. "Tis true what he has said, every word true. And the first white man was your French father.  The second white man was your English father you seem to think so much of.
     "Now you have a father, the President, who does not want to cheat you, hut wants to give you more land west of the Mississippi than you have here, and to build mills for you. and help you till the soil."
     At which Mashkeman raved and frothed at the mouth.  He came up to Gen. Cass, struck him on the breast with the back of his band, raising his tomahawk with the other hand, saying, "Cass, you lie: you lie!'"
     Cass turned to Knaggs, who was one of the interpreters, and said: "Take that woman away and put a petticoat on her; no man would talk that way in council."
     Two or three Indians and interpreters took him off out of the council. The treaty resulted in buying from the Indians the northwestern part of Ohio and the southern part of Michigan.
     Another warrior, Otusso, meaning White Cloud, and his mother were also present and are thus spoken of:
     Otusso, son of Kantuck-e-gau, the most eloquent warrior of his tribe, was a very intelligent Indian—quite the equal of Tecumseh in menial acumen, but lacking the force and vigor of the latter. Otusso was a descendant of the renowned Pontiac, and at the time of his death the last of his family, and the last war chief of his nation, remaining on the Maumee river.
    His mother was a sort of Indian Queen and grandniece to Pontiac. She was held in great reverence by the Indians— so much so, that at the time of Ibis treaty in 1817 (she then being very old and wrinkled and bent over with age. her hair perfectly white), no chief would sign the treaty until she had first consented and made her mark by touching her fingers to the pen. At that treaty there were 7,000 Indians gathered together. When the treaty was agreed upon, the head chiefs and warriors sat round the inner circle.  She had a place among them. The remaining Indians, with the women and children, comprised a crowd outside. The child's sat on seats built under the roof of the council house, which was open on all sides. The whole assembly kept silence.  The chiefs bowed their heads and cast their eves to the ground and waited

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patiently for the old woman until she rose, went forward, and touched the pen to the treaty, after it had been read to them in her presence.  Then followed the signatures of all the chiefs.
     Following close after this treaty another helpful thing to the settlement took place.  The Government in the previous year 1816, had not only platted the town of Perrysburg but had resurveyed the 12-mile Reserve.  It was in this survey that a change was made and the land along the river subdivided into river tracts instead of the usual form of survey.
     The land office was at Wooster, Ohio, and in 1817 the sale took place, which proved of great advantage to the settlement. It gave a fixedness and permanence to the improvements started.  Hitherto when all were squatters without fixed tenure there was but little incentive to go into extensive improvement.
— C. W. E.

More Encouragement to Settlers

     Following close after this treaty another helpful thing to the settlement took place. The Government in the previous year. 1816, had not only platted the town of Perrysburg but had resurveyed the 12-mile Reserve. It was in this survey that a change was made and the land along the river subdivided into river tracts instead of the usual form of survey.
     The land office was at Wooster, Ohio, and in 1817 the sale took place, which proved of great advantage to the settlement.  It gave a fixedness and permanence to the improvements started. Hitherto when all were squatters without fixed tenure there was but little incentive to go into extensive improvement.  — C. W. E.

WOOD COUNTY BORN
pg. 15

In the Track of Startling Events Long Before It Had a Name

     WOOD COUNTY, in name and boundary, was born into the sisterhood of Ohio counties April 1, 1820, by an act of the Ohio Assembly.  She
drew her first breath of official corporate life in the following month, May 12, in the second story of a little store room in Maumee. There the first Board of Commissioners (Daniel Huhhell, John Pray and W. H. Ewing) held their first meeting and made the first page of the official records of Wood county.
     The beginning was small, but the expectations were proportionately great.  It is safe to affirm that there was not at that time a more unpromising member in the. family of Ohio counties. Possibly that gallant soldier, Captain Wood, who was Gen. Harrison's chief engineer at Fort Meigs, and who helped to defend that post in 1812, and for whom Wood county was named, did not feel very highly complimented.  But were it possible that he could rise up from beside the marble shaft built to his memory on the Hudson at West Point, and view this land now touched by the magic wand of three generations, he would not be ashamed of his progressive namesake.
     The biography of these hardy pioneers and the historic events of the memorable past rightly form a part of the story of Wood county. An account of the land and of the individuals and communities who occupy it makes biography and history, two of the most interesting branches of human knowledge.
     Wood county, with her accumulation of historic years and thrifty, progressive people, has a contribution of this kind now fast passing into oblivion, which, if truthfully and fittingly told, is well worthy a place in our national history.  Much that belongs to and becomes a part of our history occurred before our land had a place marked in the geography of the world. The homes which we enjoy to-day lay in the tracks of great events of the past.
     Long before the silent wastes of Wood had even a name, the martial tread of armies responded to the call of the nation, when its destiny hung trembling in the balance. It was then the startling roar of cannon proclaimed that the final contest between Civilization and Barbarism was in deadly issue at her very threshold.—C. W. E.

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