Finney, Ohio

We have elsewhere, in the chapter Before Losantiville, in the second division of this work, told the story of Fort Finney, down to and including the settlement and signature of a treaty with the Indians, February 2, 1786. It remains only to give its subsequent brief history. This we are happily enabled to do by the aid of the journal of Major Denny, which has been published in one of the valuable volumes issued by the Pennsylvania Historical society. It begins October 22, 1785, before the work was built, and a little before the movement of troops to that quarter began. From this clear and intelligent account we learn that General Butler and his fellow commissioners left the fort soon after the treaty was concluded, going away on the eighth of February, 1786, in three large boats, with their messengers and attendants, all apparently well tired of the place, where their life and duties had been by no means pleasant. Their voyage was up the Ohio on their return to civilization. The soldiers remained, however, with Major Finney, Captain Zeigler (afterwards Major Zeigler, commandant at Fort Washington), Lieutenant Denny, and other well known officers in command. St. Patrick's Day was duly celebrated by the bold Irish boys of the garrison, with all hands taking part in such festivities as included the disposal of festive liquids, and also in the observance of the Fourth of July, which followed in due course of time. Lieutenant Denny does not say just when the fort was evacuated, but the treaty of the Indians of the Miami and Maumee valleys was supposed to obviate the necessity for a military post here, and, all remaining quiet in this region, the commanding officer was presently directed to evacuate the place, which he did some time before January, 1789, taking his force to the Indiana side of the Ohio opposite Louisville, where a small work was also erected, and likewise called Fort Finney. We have no record that the work was occupied again by a military force, although General Harmar, 'in a letter of January 22, 1789, just before Symmes reached North Bend, said it was "not improbable that two companies would be ordered to be stationed at the mouth of the Great Miami, not only as a better cover for Kentucky, but also to afford protection to Judge Symmes in his intended settlement there." But it was doubtless standing when Judge Symmes came upon the premises, since the locality about the mouth of the Great Miami is commonly referred to by him as the Old Fort, and doubtless took its name from Fort Finney, not from the ancient work on the hills overlooking the Great Miami.

Passage source: History of Hamilton County, Ohio, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches, published 1881.

in Miami township, and the third in the Miami purchase, was made, as all careful readers of this work well know by this time, by Judge John Cleves Symmes - not at the mouth of the Great Miami, as he intended, and as General Harmar and others expected, but at North Bend. Who Judge Symmes was, in his family origin and early career, and what were his preliminary movements before reaching the Purchase with his colony, are narrated in

Passage source: History of Hamilton County, Ohio, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches, published 1881.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Miami Township.