Fort Amanda Site

The pioneers of Logan township were exposed to all the inconveniences incident to the frontier. The old mill, operated by the Quakers at Wapakoneta, was the only one within a radius of forty miles. In 1826, William Berryman and his two sons, Thomas and Russell, loaded their canoe with a few bushels of corn and rowed up the Auglaize river, a distance of over fifteen miles, to the Wapakoneta mill. They arrived there in the evening and were informed that their grist could not be ground until the next morning. "Several Indians invited them to share their huts or lodges for the night - they accepted the hospitality of one of the leading ones. Upon retiring, the old Indian assigned one corner of the lodge to his guests ; took one corner with a couple of blankets himself, his squaw with the same number of blankets another, the children took the fourth corner with half a dozen deer skins for their bed and cover, and three dogs took the center of the room. At the dawn of day, a loud wough came from the Indian; the squaw and the children immediately arose; the latter soon made a fire on the outside of the lodge, and the squaw taking a large piece of meat from a gum on the outside of the hut, and cutting it in pieces, and putting it along with potatoes, dried corn, and corn meal, into a large skillet placed it over a fire where it was allowed to cook for half an hour. At the end of that time the skillet was set in the center of the lodge - the dogs were kicked out - and with wooden spoons, William Berryman and his sons partook of the breakfast."

Passage source: History of Western Ohio and Auglaize County, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Pioneers and Prominent Public Men, published 1905.

Alanson Earl was born in Canada in 1813, and was brought to the United States the same year. Two years later the family moved to Logan county, and in 1817, they again moved to Clark county where they resided until 1832. In that year they came to Allen now Auglaize county. At the age of twenty years, Mr. Earl had accumulated fifty dollars with which he entered forty acres of land in section eight, Goshen township. He immediately erected a log cabin on his land, and in the fall of 1833, he married Miss Rachel Day; of this union eight children were born, of whom six are still living. The entire country was a wilderness at that time. When Mr. Earl went to Wapakoneta to enter his land, he started from where Mr. Elsworth lived on the section line where the Waynesfield and Wapakoneta pike is now located. Then followed the section line by a blaze on the trees to where he struck the Lima and Wapakoneta road, there not being a house in the neighborhood. Mr. Earl resided on the land that he entered in 1833, until his death, which occurred in 1867.

Passage source: History of Western Ohio and Auglaize County, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Pioneers and Prominent Public Men, published 1905.

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 Logan Township - 11,470 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.