Columbia Township (part 2 of 5)

' curing the long wait at Limestone, in September, a pp' y of about sixty went down the river, landing at the mouth of the Little Miami, and exploring the back country thoroughly for some distance between that point and the great North Bend, where Symmes afterwards planted his colony. The judge was with them, but Stites was not. He was busily engaged with preparation for his settlement, making plans for the village plat and the fort, and getting out clapboards for roofs from the woods about Limestone, with the hearts of timber prepared to fill the spaces between the logs of his prospective cabin, cut of boat-plank doors, with their hangings all ready, were also made. He and his son Benjamin were mainly en ged in this work, and in storing them in a boat ready for he movement. At this time a sharp lookout had to be kept against Indian attack; and people walked about the streets and vicinity of Limestone habitually with arms in their hands. Nehemiah Stites, indeed, a nephew of the major, was killed by the savages while passing to or from the woods in which his relatives were at work.

Another important item of preparation was also accomplished during the delay at Limestone, in the execution and signature of an agreement required by Stites, and assented to by about thirty persons, to form a settlement at the mouth of the Little Miami. Some were scared off afterwards, by the persistent rumors of disaf- '' -d Kentuckians, pehaps anxious to divert immigrants toward Lexington and other settlements on their side of the Ohio, that a large party of hostile Indians was encamped at or near the point of intended settlement. The majority held to their signatures, however, and it is pretty well settled that the original body of the pioneers of Columbia and the Miami purchase was composed as follows:*

Mfijor Benjamin Stites and family, including Benjamin Stites, jr. ; Elijah Stites and family, including Jonathan Stites; Greenbright Bailey and family, including John F. Bailey and Reason Bailey; Abel Cook and family, Jacob Mills and family, Hezekiah Stites, John S. Gano, - Ephraim Kibby, Elijah Mills, Thomas C. Wade, Edmund Bu.\ton, Daniel Schumacher, Allen Woodruff, Joseph Cox, Benjamin Cox, Evan Shelby, Mr. Heampstead, twenty stout stalwart men, with two wellgrown, capable boys (the Stites sons), were of this band. "And there was woman's fearless age. Lit by her deep love's truth ; There was manhood's brow, serenely high, And the fiery heart of youth."

the accuracy of this list, as well as for many other facts embraced in this narrative, we confidently rely upon the statement of the Rev. 1 _ Terris, D. D. , long of Columbia, afterwards of Lawrenceburgh, as embodied in his communication to the Cincinnati Daily Gazette, date of July 20, 1844.

The names of Kibby and Schumaker (or Shoemaker) appear in the list of grantees of donation lots at Losilntiville, distributed by lottery January i, 1789. Several other Columbia pioneers also acquired property, and some made permanent settlements at Cincinnati, their names being identified with the early annals of both places. Colonel Spencer, the Rev. John Smith, Colonel Brown, Captain Jacob White, afterwards of White's station, Mr. H John Reily, the schoolmaster, and others,

The Columbia argonauts - "more numerous," says Burnet's notes, "than either of the parties who commenced the settlements below them on the Ohio" - led by Stites in person, he, as Symmes wrote shortly after to Dayton, "having a great desire to plant himself down there," floated out upon the broad river from Limestone, it is believed, on the sixteenth of November, 1 788. The first stage of their journey took them to the mouth of Bracken creek, on the Kentucky side. An interesting incident of the voyage is thus related by Dr. Ferris :

They descended the river to Bracken creek; and from that place they started, as they supposed, in time to float down the Little Miami by sunrise, so as to have the day before them for labor. Previous to their leaving Maysville, a report had been in circulation that some hunters had returned from the woods who had seen five hundred Indians at the mouth of the Little Miami, and that the Indians had heard the white people were coming there to settle, and intended to kill them all as soon as they should arrive. On its being announced at break of day that they were near the mouth of the Miami, some of the females were very much alarmed on account of the report alluded to. To allay their fears, five men volunteered their services fo go forward in a canoe, and examine. If there were no Indians they were to wave their handkerchiefs, and the boats, which were kept close to the Kentucky shore, were to be crossed over and landed. If there were, the men were to pass by and join the boats below. The token of "no Indians" was given, and the boats were crossed over and landed at the first high banks (about three-fourths of a mile) below the mouth of the Little Miami, a little after sunrise on the morning of the eighteenth of November, 1788.

This landing was on the present soil of Spencer township, outside the corporate limits of Columbia, a few hundred yards further up the river, where is still a considerable settlement, some of the buildings in which are very old. The traditional place of landing is pointed

After making fast, they ascended the sleep bank and cleared away the underbrush in the midst of a pawpaw thicket, where the women and children sat down. They next, as though to fulfil the commands of the Saviour, "watch and pray," placed sentinels at a small distance from the thicket, and, having first united in a song of praise to Almighty God, to whose providence they ascribed their success (Mr. Wade taking the lead in singing), upon their bended knees they offered thanks for the past and prayer for future protection; and in this manner dedicated themselves (and probably their thicket) to God, as solemnly and acceptably as ever a stately temple, with all the pomp and splendor attending it, was dedicated. There were in this little group six persons, viz: Benjamin Stites, John S. Gano, Thomas C. Wade, Greenbright Bailey, Edward Buxton, and Mrs. Bailey, who were professors of the Christian religion of the Baptist church.

Thus, in a little more than one year from his first conception of this great enterprise, Major Stites with his little company was on the ground, prepared to commence that immense labor necessary to change this then vast wilderness into a fruitful field.

The first duty was to build a defence against the marauding savage. Plans for this had already been prepared, and without delay the strong arms of the settlers began to make inroads upon the forest, in the preparation of material for a simple military work. Part of the men stood guard, while others toiled, while laborers and guards from time to time exchanged places. The site of the first block-house was selected near the point of landing, and about half a mile below the mouth of the Little Miami - just in front, it is said, of the subsequent residence of A. Stites, esq. It is also said that the encroachments of the river long since washed away this site. The work was so far advanced by the twenty-fourth of November that the women, children, and portable goods of the party were moved into it. The troops who came from Limestone soon after, to form a garrison, erected another block-house, below the first - west of the other, as tradition runs, and between the present toll-gate of the New Richmond pike and the river. Some say that four block-houses in all were erected, and so situated as to form, with a stout stockade connecting them, a square fortification, which took twenty months afterwards the name of a work erected by the British on the Maumee about this time, near the scene of Wayne's victory, Fort Miami.

Oliver M. Spencer, who was a boy nine years old when he came with his father to Columbia, says in his Narration of Captivity that at that time Columbia was "flanked by a small stockade, nearly half a mile below the mouth of the Miami, with four block-houses at suitable distances along the bank."

In the immediate neighborhood, but below the fort, cabins were then put up as rapidly as possible, and the settlers housed themselves for the winter. They had scarcely got comfortably located, however, when the inundation of January drove them from every cabin except one, which had fortunately been perched upon the higher ground. The soldiers in the block-house - a garrison of eighteen men and a sergeant, had been sent in December from Captain Kearsey's company at Limestone - were crowded into the loft of the structure by the rapidly rising waters, and were rescued from their uncomfortable and perilous position by a boat, in which they crossed to the hills on the Kentucky side. Much of the loose property of the settlers was lost by the flood. The Hon. A. H. Dunlevy, in his History of the Miami Baptist Association, among other things, says of the consequences of this unhappy experience :

A winter of bloody conflict with the Indians was anticipated ; but, contrary to expectation, the colony remained undisturbed during all that winter and until autumn of the next year. The settlers labored incessantly in building cabins for themselves upon the beautiful plain which lies east of most of the present buildings in Columbia ; but on the first of January, 1789, a high flood in the Ohio proved that they had made a bad selection for a town. The whole bottom was overflowed, but one house escaping the deluge. Afterwards improvements were made below and further from the river, on higher ground ; but that flood forever ruined the prospects of Columbia. During the Indian war many stayed there because they could not move further into the country on account of tlie savages. But as soon as Wayne's victory, in the fall of 1794, secured the safety of the settlements in more interior localities, the people began to leave Columbia ; and after the treaty of Greenville, in 1795, many more left, and Columbia ever after had the appearance of a deserted town.

The sturdy colonists did not abandon the ground at the first flood, however, but returned to them when the waters abated, and meantime provided themselves with such shelters as they could. They were often hard pressed for food this first winter, and some suffered much for want of their wonted articles of sustenance. Wild game abounded, but there was no salt or breadstuff to eat with the fresh meat, except what could be had in small quantities from passing boats. The women and children resorted much to Turkey bottom, when the weather and the condition of the ground permitted, to scratch up the bulbous roots of beargrass, which they boiled and mashed, and so ate them, or dried the substance and pounded it into a sort of flour. In the spring, with the growth of vegetables on the Turkey bottom and other fertile tracks, the situation improved, and the abundant crops of the first year rendered starvation thenceforth exceedingly improbable. There was even a surplus for Fort Washington, as the following incident shows:

Luke Foster, of the pioneers at Columbia, was one of the lieutenants appointed for the militia of Hamilton county by Governor St. Clair. He performed a most patriotic act in 1789, when the troops at Fort Washington were on particularly short commons, and General Harmar sent two of his officers to Columbia to get supplies. Captain James Flinn had corn to sell, but would not let the soldiers have it, saying that, while he lived near Marietta, the year before, he had sold corn to the garrison at Fort Harmar and had never been paid for it. Captain Strong answered that the men at the fort had been living on half rations for nine days, and if they were not supplied they must leave or starve. Mr. Foster, who was standing by, upon this instantly offered to lend them a hundred bushels of corn, which was part of the growth from two and a half acres in Turkey bottom, planted with six and a half quarts of corn, for which he had exchanged the same quantity of corn meal. His offer was gratefully accepted; but so remiss was the garrison afterwards in payment, or so poorly supplied, that, when in need himself, he had to ride six times to the fort to get as much as nineteen bushels of it returned. Mr. Foster, it may be of interest here to note, finally settled two miles south of Springdale, in Springfield township, where he lost his life on the tracks of the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton railroad, August 28, 185 1, being struck by a gravel train. He was eighty-eight years old, had become deaf, and was otherwise greatly enfeebled. For many years he was an associate judge of the court of common pleas, under the old system, and was one of the first appointees to that office in Hamilton county.

As soon as practicable after the landing, Stites had his proposed city surveyed, which he fondly hoped might become the metropolis of the west. According to the narrative of Oliver M. Spencer, published long afterwards, it was to occupy the broad and extensive plain between Crawfish creek and the mouth of the Little Miami - a distance along the Ohio of nearly three miles - and to extend up the Miami about the same distance. It was actually laid out over a mile along the Ohio, stretching back about three-quarters of a mile from that stream, and reaching half-way up the high hill whichformed in part the eastern and northern lines. This tract was platted, partly in blocks of eight lots, each of half an acre, and the rest in lots of four and five acres each. Nine hundred and forty-five inlots are said to have been staked off by Stites' surveyors. The streets intersected each other at right angles. A different plat of Columbia, corresponding more nearly to the village of recent years, bears date May 5, 1837.

Major Stites' title to his entire large tract in this region was afterwards threatened, by the apparent determination of the Government authorities to draw the eastern boundary of the Miami purchase from a point twenty miles up the Ohio from the mouth of the Great Miami, which would have left him outside of the purchase, and altogether destitute of valid title from Symmes. It is to the honor of the judge that in this crisis he stood bravely by his friend, writing to his associates of the East Jersey company: "If Mr. Stites is ousted of the settlement he has made with great danger and difficulty at the mouth of the Little Miami, it cannot be either politic or just." Governor St. Clair at once issued his proclamation warning settlers off the Miami country east of the aforesaid line; but the matter was afterwards arranged, and the east and west boundaries of the purchase were fixed as originally proposed, upon the two Miamis.

During its first two years Columbia flourished hopefully, and was then remarked as a larger and more promising place than Losantiville or its successor, Cincinnati. It was the largest settlement in the Miami country, and was expected to increase rapidly; "but," says Dr. Drake, in his picture of Cincinnati, "the bayou which is formed across it from the Little Miami almost every year, and the occasional inundations of nearly the whole site, have destroyed that expectation, and it is now [18 15] inhabited chiefly by farmers." The village was not only superior in population, but also in the convenience and appearance of their dwellings. But for the floods, and the establishment of Fort Washington and then the county seat of Cincinnati, which naturally gave it great advantage, it might have been the metropolis of Miamidom. Many excellent citizens, as Colonel Abram and Ezra Ferris, who came December 12, 1789, and Colonel Spencer, who landed a year thereafter, joined the colony during these years. We subjoin some notices of the more noted among the immigrants of the first decade:

John Reily, one of the early settlers of Columbia, was but t-wprify-fiyp yparq old when the colony came, having been born in Chester county, Pennsylvania. April 10, 1763. He had seen much service, however, in the army ofthe Revolution; was engaged at Camden, Guilford Court House, Ninety-six, and Eutaw Springs, and served through his eighteen months' term honorably and safely. After a few years in the wilds of Kentucky, he removed from Lincoln county, near the present site of Danville, to the Columbia settlement, December 18, 1789, and the next year taught the first school kept there, or anywhere in the Miami purchase. He took full part in the scouts and expeditions into the Indian country, and in 1794 removed to Cincinnati, where he became successively deputy clerk of the county court, clerk of the territorial legislature, and clerk and collector of the town. He removed to Hamilton in 1803, and there spent the remainder of his days, dying in that place June 7, 1850, after a long and highly honorable career.

Judge William Goforth came in the early part of 1789. He is mentioned so often in the course of this history, as associated with affairs here and at Cincinnati, that a biographical sketch of him here seems unnecessary. The judge builded better than he knew in keeping a diary of his journey hither and of events for some time afterwards. It is an interesting old document, and the public owes access to it to Mr. Charles Cist, who published it nearly forty years ago in his Cincinnati Miscellany. We correct one or two patent blunders in the yearly dates :

Day-Book

Jan. 2 left our camp and put down the Ohio and on the 8th arrived at Limestone and thence to Washington which is in 38 degrees some minutes North, and had at that time 119 horses. " i2th left Washington (Mason Co., Ky.,) on the 12th and arrived on the 18th at Miami (Columbia). " 23 the first four horses were stolen - by the Indians - April 4 two of Mills' men were killed.

" II A cat-fish was taken - four feet long, eight inches between the eyes, and weighed 58 pounds. Judge Symmes arrived on the 2nd of February, 1789, as he informed Major Stites at his own post. April 21 traded with the first Indian.

" 25 Major Stites, old Mr. Healer and myself took the depth of the Ohio River when we found there was 57 feet water in the channel, and that the river was 55 feet lower at that

The water at the high flood was 112 feet. * Oct. 9 Mr. White set out for the Tiber. Aug. 16 Major Doughty went down the river. Dec. z8 Genl. Harmar passed this post down the River.

2 Mr. Sargent left this post to go up the River together with Judge Turner. Sep. 12 The Mason county militia past this post on their way to headquarters. " 19 200 Militia from Pennsylvania past this post on their way to

Cincinnati. " 23 The Governor went down to Cincinnati. " 25 Major Doughty and Judge Turner also. " 30 The main body of the troops marched. 1791. Jan. 2 begun to thaw. Mch. I Indians fired at Lt. Baily's boat.

and wounded on the 19th March. " 27 Mr. Flasket arrived - the 24th in the morning fought the Indians just after daybreak, about 8 miles above Scioto - this the same battle mentioned in Hubble's narative. July 7 Col. Spencer's son taken prisoner.

" 14 Francis Beadles, Jonathan Coleman, a soldier killed. 1792. Jan. 7 In the evening Samuel Welch was taken. Nov. 2 Last Monday night met at my house to consult on the expediency of founding an academy - Rev. John Smith, Major Gano, Mr. Dunlevy, - afterward Judge of the Court of Common Fleas, and myself - Wednesday night met at Mr. Reily's school-house - Mr. Reily then the teacher was for many years Clerk of Butler Common Pleas and Supreme Court - to digest matters respecting the academy, the night being bad, and but few people attending postponed till next night which was ist of November, met at Mr. Reily's to appoint a committee. Dec. 6 Fall of snow 7 inches on a level.

Daniel Doty, of Essex county. New Jersey, was one of the immigrants of 1790. He came on the twenty-third of October, in a flat-boat, from Pittsburgh. He then found, according to his recollections long after, but two hewedlog buildings in the place, one of them occupied by Major Stites, the other by Captain John S. Gano. He enlisted promptly in Captain Gano's company of militia, which every able-bodied man in the settlement had to join, and which now mustered about seventy - a strong and efficient company. He turned out with the parties marching to the relief of Covalt's and Dunlap's stations, when the Indian attacks were made upon them ; and was secured by the Cincinnati Presbyterians, together with a man named French, to bring their first pastor, the Rev. James Kemper, and his family, through the wilderness from near Danville to his new home. In 1792 Mr. Doty returned to New Jersey, by way of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and by sea, but came back to the Miami country in 1796, with his wife and children, and removed to the vicinity of Middletown, Butler county, where the rest of his life was spent. He was the first collector of taxes for that part of the country, which was then in Hamilton county. McBride's Pioneer Biography says:

His district was twelve miles wide from north to south, comprising two ranges of townships, extending from the Great Miami to the Little Miami rivers, comprehending the sites where the towns of Franklin and Waynesvillehave been laid out, and the immediate country and settlements. The whole amount of the duplicate committed to him for collection was two hundred and forty-four dollars, of which he collected every dollar and paid it over to Jacob Burnet of Cincinnati, who was the treasurer for the county of Hamilton. Mr. Doty's own tax, for some years previous to his death, was upwards of one hundred and thirtyfive dollars - more than half of the amount which he then collected from the whole district of which he had been collector. In the discharge of the duties of his office as collector, he must have ridden over more than one thousand miles. For these services, including his time and expenses, he received one per cent, on the amount of the duplicate, two dollars and forty-four cents, and no more. This appears to have satisfied Mr. Doty with public office, as he never afterward, during his whole life, was a candidate for any office.

Francis Dunlevy emigrated from Kentucky to Columbia in 1791, and at first was engaged in teaching, in company with Mr. John Reily. He was then less than thirty years old, having been born near Winchester, Virginia, December 31, 1761. When but a boy he was engaged in Indian, and afterwards in the Revolutionary warfare, and helped to build up Fort Mcintosh, the first regular military work within the present bounds of Ohio. He was at Crawford's defeat on the plains of Sandusky, and in the retreat was cut off from the main body of the army, and had to make his way through the wilderness to Pittsburgh. In 1787 he removed with his father's family to Kentucky, and ten years afterwards, having resided six years in Columbia, he removed to the vicinity of Lebanon, where he died, November 6, 1839. He was fourteen years presiding judge of the court of common pleas of the first circuit, which included Hamilton county, and was a member of the first Constitutional convention, also of the first legislature that assembled under the State government.

The following notice of perhaps the most renowned citizen that Columbia ever had, is extracted from the Life of Senator Morris, by his son, Mr. B. F. Morris:

In 1795 Thomas Morris, a young and enterprising adventurer, nineteen years of age, from the mountains of western Virginia, arrived in Columbia. He was immediately employed as a clerk in the store of Rev_Jiihj[i Smith, and became a great favorite with him. During this time his mind became deeply exercised on the subject of personal religion, and his feelings found utterance in frequent poetic effusions, which are all lost. Rev. John Smith and others regarded these productions as of great merit for a youth of his age and limited education. For several years he continued in the employ of Smith, improving, as he could, his mind by reading, and preparing for a wider sphere of action.

now stands, was frequently traversed by Morris. His feet tlireaded tlie forest, then in the wild magnificence of nature, and the craclc of his rifle brought down many a wild turkey from the tops of lofty trees which covered the very spot on which now is erected and established that noble building and mstitution, the Young Men's Mercantile Library association. How wonderful the change in fifty years' Now commerce, arts, sciences, education, Christian institutions, and the highest forms of a refined social civihzation, and a prosperous industrial population of over two hundred thousand people, cover with their peaceful and noble triumphs, and their monuments of taste and civilization, and happiness, the same forest where young Morris was accustomed to shoot his wild game.

Mr. Morris married Rachel, daughter of Benjamin Davis, a Columbian who came from Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, to Mason county, Kentucky, and thence here. He was of Welsh stock and had a fine family of five sons and two daughters. Morris removed to Williamsburgh, and then to Bethel, Clermont county, and became greatly distinguished as a lawyer, legislator. United States Senator, and anti-slavery agitator.

From another settler named John Morris, at the time the most prominent man in the settlement, a cluster of houses on the hillside took the name Mnrristown.

By the close of 1790 Columbia contained about fifty cabins. Wickerham's mill, upon floating boats, had been established upon the Little Miami, and yielded supplies of coarse corn meal, but wheat flour was still so scarce that what could be had was generally reserved for the sick. Before Wickerham started his small run of stones, the corn had been pounded by the colonists into hominy or laboriously ground in a hand-mill.

The post at Columbia was evidently regarded as of considerable importance, since as many as two hundred soldiers were stationed here in 1794. The need of military protection, however, was then mostly over. There had been demand enough for it before, as the record of Indian murders, captures and robberies in this region abundantly shows. But the first approaches of the Indians to the settlers here, soon after their arrival were thoroughly friendly. The savages came often to the block-houses, expressing great friendship, and calling for Judge Symmes, toward whom they were very favorably disposed, on account of his having saved one of their small camps froni the Kentuckians during the surveying expedition the year before. They had seen Stites' boats on the banks of the river, opposite the block-house, and held a council at their hunting camp six miles from the Ohio, at which it was concluded to take the attitude of friends rather than enemies toward the newcomers. A white man named George had been ten or twelve years a prisoner with them, and could speak both English and Indian. At first he accompanied a single savage as near to the block-house as they dared go, and hallooed to the settlers who were at work upon it. He called for some of the whites to go to him, but they took no heed of him, mistaking him for one of their own people. Presently one of them asked "in a blackguarding manner," as the old account puts it, why he didn't come to them, if he" had anything to say. Discouraged at this, George went with the Indian back to their camp. He afterwards started out again with a party of five Indians, armed and mounted, for the block-house. They came upon a trail of a surveyor's party, numbering three, who were hunting, and followed it until the men were overtaken. The latter fled, but could not escape, and prepared for resistence. Two of the three were Robert Hanson and Joseph Cox, from Sussex county. New Jersey. Hanson aimed his gun at the foremost Indian, but the red man took off his cap, trailed his gun, and held out his right hand as a token of friendship. George called out to the other party not to fire, as the Indians were their friends, and did not wish to hurt them, and they would like to be led to the block-house. Affairs were speedily arranged, and all went amicably together to meet Major Stites. Their joint arrival very much surprised the people at the settlement, some of whom were disposed to think them spies, there only to observe the strength of the colony for defence, others thinking them sincere in their peaceful professions. Both sides, however, as the story runs, "began to form a sociable neighborhood," and there was for a while considerable fraternity between the whites and reds, the former frequently visiting and even spending nights at the Indian camps, while the savages with their squaws frequented the settlement, spending days and nights there, principally occupied in drinking whiskey.

The messages of Stites to Symmes, in regard to the Indians' professions, and their desire to see him, with his action, were sufficiently set forth in previous chapter.

In a very few weeks, however, the status changed, and a war period set in. The journal of Judge Goforth shows that, so early as January 23, 1789,- four horses were stolen by the Indians; that two men were killed April 4th; the next day five more horses were stolen, and outrages were frequent thereafter, and the feeling between the hostiles became so envenomed that both sides engaged in killing and scalping with apparently equal activity. Some incidents related of the Columbia scalpers will be found in our chapter on "The Miamese and the Indians."

The news of the attack on Dunlap's station greatly excited the settlers at Columbia, who quickly mounted a volunteer party, armed with rifles, under Lieutenant Luke Foster, marched to Cincinnati the same night, and joined the regular and volunteer force there forming for the relief of the station. Before daylight the next morning all were on the move, through several inches of snow, and arrived near the scene of action between ten and eleven o'clock in the forenoon, only to find that the Indians had mostly departed.

On the night of the fourth of March, 1791 , the cabin of Mr. Jonas Bowman, which was further down the river than any other in Columbia, was approached by Indians, and an attack made. Mr. Bowman had been up the Licking hunting wild turkeys with Mr. John Reily; and, returning chilled and tired, a large fire was built in the open fireplace, which made the house a conspicuous object in the dark night, as it was not chinked between the logs, and the fire was plainly visible a long distance. The Indians fired through the cracks, but happily without effect, when Mr, Bowman, who was sitting by the fire, instantly threw a bucket of water on the flames, thus darkening the room and confusing the Indians, who made off, vainly pursued and fired at by Bowman. Mrs. Bowman afterwards found a flattened bullet in the bosom of her dress, which had probably glanced and spent its force by the time it reached her, A messenger was dispatched to Fort Washington, with news of the attack, and a party of regulars and volunteers was made up at once, reaching Columbia before daylight; but a thorough scout for many miles into the country failed to discover any Indians.

The subjoined narrative, taken frotm Cist's Miscellany, is a fuller and more interesting account than that previously given in this work of the capture of young Oliver Spencer:

Spencer, then a boy of eleven, had been on a visit to Cincinnati, from Columbia where he then lived, to spend the Fourth of ]uly (1791) here, and having stayed until the seventh set out in a canoe with four other persons who were going to Columbia. About a mile above Deer creek, one of the men, much intoxicated, made so many lurches in the canoe as to endanger its safety, and Spencer, who could not swim, becoming alarmed, was at his earnest request set ashore, as was also the drunken man, who was unable to proceed on foot and was accordingly left where landed. The three in the canoe and Spencer on shore proceeded on, but had hardly progressed a few rods when they were fired on by two Indians. A Mr. Jacob Light was wounded in the am), and another man, name unknown, killed on the spot, both falling overboard, the man left on shore tomahawked and scalped, and Spencer, after a vain attempt to escape, was carried off by the savages and taken out to an Indian village, at the mouth of Auglaize, where he remained several months in captivity. Tidings of these events were taken by Light, who swam ashore a short distance below by the aid of his remaining arm, and Mrs. Coleman, the other passenger, who, though an old woman of si.Nty and of course encumbered with the apparel of her sex, was unable to make any efforts to save herself, but whose clothes floating to the top of the river, probably buoyed her up in safety. It is certain at any rate, incredible as it may be thought by some, that she floated down to Cincinnati where she was assisted to shore by some of the residents here.

Spencer, after remaining nearly a year among the Indians, was taken to Detroit, where he was ransomed and finally sent home, after an absence in various places of three years, two of which he passed among his relatives in New Jersey. He resided subsequently in the city, where he held various offices of trust and honor, and died on May 31, 1838.

Upon the occurrence of this exciting event the following dispatch was sent by the commandant at Fort Washington to the chief officer at Fort Hamilton :

Dear Sir - I send out to apprise you that, this day about noon, a party of savages fired on a party, consisting of two men, a woman, and Colonel Spencer's son - about one and a half miles above this and on this side of the river - one man killed, the other wounded, but not mortally, and poor little Spencer carried off a prisoner. I sent out a party who fell in with their trail in General Harmar's trace, about six miles from this, and followed it on the path about two miles farther, when the men failing with fatigue, the sergeant was obliged to return. Master Spencer's trail was upon the path. This is a further answer to the pacinc overtures, and makes me tremble for your boy. I pray you if possible to redouble your vigilance, and on Monday morning early Captain Peters will march with his company and six wagons to your assistance. Send me twenty horses the moment Peters reaches you, and I will be with you next day - in the meantime your cavalry should scout on both sides of the river, and your riflemen be kept constantly in motion. Adieu. Yours,

The first church organized and the first sermon preached anywhere in the Miami purchase, were at Columbia. So early as Deceinber, 1789, the Rev. David Jones, a Baptist clergyman from Chester county, Pennsylvania, while on a visit down the Ohio valley, stopped at Columbia and pronounced his first sermon in one of the blockhouses at the fort. This place was then ldrL;er than

Losantiville, and more likely to attract the attention of a visiting stranger. There was a larger Baptist element here, too.'* Another early preacher to the Columbians, Elder Stephen Gano, had further reasons for interest in the colony, since he had ties of blood connecting him with the Stiteses and the Ganos. Before he came, however, the people had ministerial visits from the Rev. David Rice, a Presbyterian divine of some note from Kentucky, and Elder John Mason, a Virginia Baptist and brother-in-law of Elder John Smith, who soon afterwards became the first settled pastor among the Little Miamese. Elder Gano caine in March, 1790, making one of his many visits to his relatives, and after pleaching several sermons organized a Baptist church in Columbia - probably on Saturday, March 31, 1790, though Hon. A. H. Dunlevy, descendant of Judge Dunlevy, and author of a History of the Miami Baptist Association, names the twentieth of January, 1790, as the time. Mr. Dunlevy rests upon the diary of Dr. Goforth, then a resident of Columbia, which we published on another page; but that is believed to have been made up, in part at least, many years after the occurrence narrated, and to be somewhat unreliable. The distinct recollection of persons present at the organization of the church, that it was on the last Saturday of March, is considered better testimony.

The place of meeting was no longer a block-house, but the dwelling of Benjamin Davis. After appropriate services, the church was formally constituted by the aid of Elder Gano; Mr. Thomas Sloo, a member of his church in New York city, also being present. Nine persons joined at the time, whose names are given by Mr. Dunlevy as follows:

Such was the little band that foimed the first organization of Christian institutions in the Miami valleys, from which a thousand church spires now point heavenward.

Isaac Ferris was appointed deacon, and JohnJLiiano, clerk, of the infant church. Elijah Stijes, Rhoda Siites, and Sarah__Feuis> ''^'sre received upon experience, and were baptized in the river the next d.iy (Sunday), afier a preaching service at the house of Major William Goforth. Three other members, Mrs. Meeks, and Messrs. Sinith and Baily, soon afterwards joined by letter; so that the church now numbered fifteen. Elder Gano was unanimously chosen pastor; but he was too strongly bound to his work in the older communities of the east, and returned thither. He seems to have been a man of uncommon ability and power, and certainly, as organizer of the first Christian church in the Miami country, demands some further notice here. He was born in New York city December 25, 1762, and was a brother of John S. Gano, of Cloumbia. His father was a clegyman, and

* Mr. Dunlevy, in his History of the Miami Baptist Association, says of the first Columbia colony: "Among this little band of some twenty-five persons, there were six Baptists. There names were Benjamin Stites, John S. Gano, Thomas C. Wade, G'eenbright Baily, Mrs. Bailv his wife, and Edmund Buxton."

his mother of one of the Stites famihes. In his twentyfourth year he was ordained, and served as pastor in the city, in Hillsdale and Hudson, New York, and finally for thirty-six years in Providence, Rhode Island, where he attained considerable distinction, and where he died August i8, 1828. During one of his western tours he preached at Lexington, Kentucky, having in his audience the eloquent Henry Clay, who thus testified of him: "He was a remarkably fervent preacher, and distinguished for a simple, effective manner. And of all preachers I ever listened to, he made me feel the most that religion was a divine reality."*

Very soon, however, the church had its pastor - one who also was destined to attain distinction, but in a different field, and at last to end in poverty and obscurity. Elder John Smith, a Virginian by birth and education, now in the prime of his manhoood - "a man," says the volume cited above, "whose personal appearance was noble and commanding, and who was possessed of very popular manners and a remarkably fascinating address - " visited Columbia in June and preached several times so acceptably that a unanimous call was given him to settle as pastor. This he accepted, and returned home to arrange his business, which took longer than was expected ; and he did not arrive until the spring of 1791; the church meanwhile being served acceptably by Danitl Clark, a licentiate from Whiteley church, Pennsylvania, who had removed to Columbia with his own and other Baptist fainilies. He was afterwards fully ordained by Elders Smith and John Gano, a venerable Baptist clergyman from near Lexington, on the twenty-first (or twenty-third) of September, 1793, after a preaching service by Elder Gano in a grove of elms near the village. It was the first ordination among the Miamese, or in the Northwest Territory, of a Protestant clergyman.

In October, 1791, the substantial addition was made to the church of fifteen members by letter and two by experience and baptism. The building of a church edifice was the next thing in order, upon a lot given for the purpose by Major Stites, upon a slight eminence in the northern part of Columbia, now near and east of the Little Miami railroad, where a pile of rocks and some ancient graves still mark the spot. The meeting-house was resolved upon in February, 1792, but was more than eighteen months in building, not being regularly occupied, probably, till late the next year, though Mr. Dunlevy says there was preaching in it in the spring of 1793.! The structure was frame, thirty-six by thirty feet, with galleries and a hipped roof It stood until 1835, when it was pulled down, having been abandoned for years and become very much dilapitated. A picture of it, in this state, appears in Howe's Historical collections of Ohio, in the first volume of the American Pioneer, and in Mr. Dunlevy's little history. The following lines were written during the later years of the church by an old Columbian :

On Visiting The Old Church At Columbia

is the choir that here so sweetly sang The song of praise to God and peace to man ? Methinks, returning through the lapse of years, I hear their anthem notes soft stealing on my ears.

Yet may the hand of Time long spare thy brow. Though covered o'er with many a furrow now; That generations yet to come may see Some vestige left - some trace remaining still of thee.

Peace to the inmates that around thee sleep! May angel bands their slumbering ashes keep, Till Gabriel's trumpet rends the hearing clay. And calls them forth to joys that never shall decay!

The law then required every able-bodied man attending meetings for worship to carry his firearms with him, prepared to defend the inhabitants, as well as those at the meeting, from an attack of the Indians. On the first day the house was opened for worship. Colonel Spencer, one of the early settlers at Columbia and at that time the head of the militia, attended the services, and at the close addressed the militia and pointed out the necessity of strict discipline at these meetings. On another occasion during the same season, when the congregation had assembled for worship, two men came from the woods with an Indian's scalp wiich they Had just taken;* and during this and the ne.xt year two members of the church, Francis Grifirn and David Jennings, were killed by the savages. A number more of the inhabitants of Columbia were killed by the Indians during the years 1791-2, and several taken prisoners - among them O. M. Spencer, son of Colonel Spencer above named, and long after a well-known citizen of Cincinnati. All their religious meetings, therefore, until Wayne's victory in the autumn of 1794 (and the treaty of Greenville in the next year) had to be guarded by armed men.

The Columbia church was the vigorous parent, prolific in offspring of other churches scattered up and down the Little Miami valley, at places, where its members settled after the the Greenville treaty. Within little more than a dozen years after its formation, colonies from it had founded, or helped to found. Baptist churches at the Little Miami island, on Carpenter's run, in the present

Sycamore township; near Ridgeville, Warren county; at Turtle creek, now Lebanon ; near Little Prairie, now Middletown; and even at Staunton, near the county seat of Miami county, about seventy miles north of Columbia

According to the recollections of Mr. David Doty, published in McBride's Pioneer Biography, "the order then was for every man to meet on parade on Sunday morning, armed and equipped, and after going through the manual exercise, march to the place of worship, stack their guns in one corner of the cabin until divine service was concluded, and then take them and return to their homes."

Elder Smith preached a part of the time in Cincinnati. In April, 1790, the Columbia church formally resolved "that in view of the entire destitution of preaching in Cincinnati, Brother Smiih be allowed to spend half his time in that place." In 1795 he resigned at Columbia, and devoted his work to what was known as the Little Miami Island church, on an islet in the river, about eight miles northeast of Columbia. He was assisted at the latter place by Elder Clark, the ordained of the September meeting in 1793, who took sole charge of the church after Smith's retirement, and ministered to it until autumn, 1797, when he removed to the northward and organized, successively, the Deer Creek and Turtle Creek (since Lebanon) churches. For a number of years he preached to both, and was the only pastor the latter church had from its formation in 1798 until 1829, or thereabouts, when he became superannuated. He lasted five or six years longer, dying December 11, 1834, in his ninetieth year.

Elder Smith ministered to the pioneer church for over ten years, and then dropped into politics. He was a member of the first Constitutional convention, that which organized the State of Ohio, and was one of the first United States Senators from this State. In 1806, when the storm burst over the head of Aaron Burr, Senator Smith shared in Colonel Burr's obloquy, simply, it would appear, from the hospitality tendered by him to Burr during the latter's visit to Cincinnati, and his firm expression of belief that Burr's projects involved nothing treasonable or injurious to the country.

A few individuals of very bad character, at Cincinnati, wlio had themselves been intimate with Burr, and several of whom, it was believed, had been fully committed to his plans, when the clamor became great withdrew their familiarity with Burr, and, to screen themselves, joined in accusing Smith of connection with him. Party political strife at that time ran high, and at Cincinnati a secret organization was formed, and oaths of inviolable privacy were taken. The crimination of Senator Smith originated with the secret society. Its members were the principal witnesses against him, and refused on his trial to answer any questions except such as they pleased, and as they supposed, no doubt, would afford evidence against him.

A bill of indictment was actually found against him, though abandoned without trial. He was put upon trial in the Senate, however, and though vindicated, it was by a majority so meagre that he felt virtually condemned, and resigned his seat. The expenses of his defence were so great, and the pressure of his creditors so persistent, that he was compelled to part with all his property here, and in 1808 retired to an obscure locality in Louisiana, where he owned a tract of land, and where he thenceforth lived until his death, in 1824.

Other early pastors of the Columbia church were: Elder Peter Smith, from Georgia, 1800-4; William Jones, at Duck creek, 1805-14; John Clark, at Duck creek, 1814-16; and James Lyon, who was still living in 1857.

A notable revival occurred under the ministry of the first named, in the spring of 1801, in which nearly one hundred and fifty persons were baptized and admitted to the church, among them several, as James Lynn, afterwards pastor of the same church, Ezra Ferris and Hezekiah Stites,who themselves became useful preachers of the gospel. Later in its history others of its young men have gone out to different parts of the country in similar service.

In 1808 the meeting-place of the membership in this church was removed from Columbia to a more central point two miles north, where it took the name of the Duck Creek church, which it has since borne.

September 23, 1797, the first ecclesiastical gathering of importance in the Miami country took place with this church, in Columbia, to form an association of Baptist churches. It was composed mainly of ministers and delegated laymen from the societies at Columbia, Little Miami Island, Carpenter's run and Clear creek, though two ministers were present from Kentucky. Elder John Smith was elected moderator and David Snodgrass, clerk. After consultation it was resolved "that the churches in this Northwest Territory, and those adjacent, of the Baptist order, should meet at the Baptist meetinghouse in Columbia, on the first Saturday of November ensuing." At that meeting further arrangements were made to form the Miami association, which was " fully constituted at a meeting held with the Island church October 20, 1798, still another meeting having been held meanwhile in June, 1798, at Columbia. Such bodies moved slowly in those days.

A Methodist Episcopal class was formed at Columbia in 1799, by the Rev. John Kobler, the pioneer of Methodism in this region, and Francis McCormick, who lived near the mouth of the East fork of the Little Miami, and died near Mount Washington in 1836.

The Columbia Congregational church was organized December 22, 1867, with twenty-nine members. For some time divine worship was regularly held at the town hall, but in 1870 the present edifice was commenced and completed. It is a neat, frame building, with bell, costing about five thousand dollars. The auditorium or main room has a seating capacity of two hundred and seventy-five; while the room at the rear, which may be thrown open with the other, will comfortably seat sixty or seventy-five more. This is commonly used for the infant department of the Sabbath school, and for prayer meetings. The church has a pipe-organ, which has a distinct and peculiar history : It was obtained and given to the church by Mrs. H. P. B. Jewett, who now resides in New York city. In the death of

Deacon Jewett, which occurred April 2, 1877, the church lost an invaluable member, and the community was deprived of a consistent Christian citizen.

The church has had five pastors, viz: Rev. J. W. Peters, Rev. H. L. Howard, Rev. D. I. Jones, of Pleasant Ridge, Rev. R. M. Thompson, of Mount Washington, and Rev. D. F. Harris, who has been pastor since the fall of 1876.

Like all suburban churches, this one labors under the disadvantages of a transient population. People are constantly coming and going, so that stability is almost out of the question. In the last few years the church has suffered on account of the removal of some of its most efficient members, notably Mr. O. W. Nixon, of the Inter-Ocean, Chicago, who was a few years ago the treasurer of Hamilton county. During the four years' pastorate of Rev. Mr. Harris, there have been fifty-seven additions to the church - thirty-two by letter and twentyfive by profession. The present membership is one hundred and thirty-four. The ladies of the church and congregation have two missionary societies, the Home and the Foreign; while a third, in the interest of both, is carried on by the young people. Besides this work, the chuich regularly contributes her proportion, with sister churches of the Miami conference, toward the Oberlin ministerial fund. The church also contributes toward the support of the great missionary and benevolent societies, such as the American Board, the American Missionary association, the Home Missionary association, and the Congregational Union.

The first school in the county was opened in Columbia June 21, 1790, by John Reily, the settler before noticed. It was a six-months' subscription school, and appears to have been kept right through the warm season. The next year Francis Dunlevy joined his pedagogic interests vi'ith Mr. Reiley's, the former taking the classical department, while the other taught the English studies. In 1793 Reily gave the school over altogether to Dunlevy, and went to settle in the Mill Creek valley, seven miles from Cincinnati. The system of "boarding round" must have existed in his time of teaching in Columbia, since he records in his journal : "In the month of August boarded twelve days with Mr. Patrick Moore; in the month of September boarded twelve days with Hugh Dunn; and in the month of December boarded with John McCuUoch six days." He must have had a school-building put up for him, as Dr. Gofroth's diary names "Reiley's schoolhouse" as a certain place of meeting. If so, this was the first temple of learning in the Miami country.

A little more than eight years after the settlement of Columbia, it entertained a distinguished visitor in the person of a young Englishman named Francis Baily, afterwards an "F. R. S.'" and president of the Royal Astronomical society. The following extracts are from his journal of a tour, which was not published until 1856, and thenappeared as an appendix to a memoir of Baily, by the late Sir John Herschel:

This morning we dropped down the river about half a mile to a convenient landing, and here we had a much better view of the town than we had where we lay last night. The houses lie very scattered along the bottom of a hill which is about one-eighth of a mile from the liver. The town is laid out on a regular plan, but was never in a very flourishing state. The neighboring and well-settled country round and at Cincinnati prevents it from being a place of any great importance: hesides, it lies very low, and is often overflowed from the river, which prevents any houses being built immediately on the banks, as is customary in these new settlements. One-quarter of the land on which the town was intended to be laid out is now under water.

After breakfast we went ashore to view the town, and H. introduced me to Mr. [Rev. John] Smith and Dr. Bean. The former gentleman is a man of very good property, which he has acquired in several different ways in this ptace : he is a farmer, a merchant, and a parson ; all these occupations, though seemingly so different, he carries en with the greatest regularity and without confusion. The latter is a man of good education and practices physic heie, somewhat in the same manner as our country apothecaries in England do, for which he is dubbed doctor. As those gentlemen rank with the first in the place, a description of their habitations, manners, and society will serve, without any great variation, for that of the bulk of emigrants in a similar state of life.

As Dr. Bean would insist upon our sleeping at his house, and in fact stopping with him during our residence 'here we accompfanied him home. His house was built of logs, as all the houses in these new settlements are, and consisted of a ground floor containing two rooms, one of which was appropriated to lumber, the other served all the purposes of parlor, bed-room, shop, and everything else (though there was a little outhouse where they occasionally cooked their victuals and also washed), and it did not appear as if it had been cleaned out this half-year. There were two windows to throw light into the room, but there had been so many of the panes of glass broken, whose places were supplied by old hats and pieces of paper, that it was very httle benefitted by the kind intention of the architect. I saw a few phials and gallipots on a shelf in one corner of the room, and near them a few books of difterent descriptions. . . Such is the force of example that very few of the emigrants who come into this kind of half-savage, half-civilized, state of life, however neat and cleanly they might have been before, can have resolution to prevent themselves from falling into that slovenly practice which everywhere surrounds them ; and it is not till the first class of settlers are moved off, that any of these new countries are at all desirable to a person brought up in different habits of life.

At dinner-table I observed a table prepared in the middle of the room, with some knives and forks and pewter plates placed on it, but without anv table-cloth; and when the dinner was ready, two of his servants who were working out in the field were called in, and sat down at the same table and partook of the same provisions as ourselves.

Our provisions consisted of some stewed pork and some beef, together with some wild sort of vegetable which had been gathered out in the woods, as it must be observed that in all these new settlements fresh provisions, both in meat and vegetables, are at some seasons very scarce, particularly at the time we were there. The inhabitants live a great deal upon deer and turkeys, which they shoot wild in the woods, and upon bacon, which they keep by them in case of need, and as to vegetables, ' they are seldom to be procured, e.«ept in summer. The bread which is made here is chiefly of Indian meal; it is a coarse kind of fare, but after a little use becomes not all unpleasant.

When the time drew nigh for us to retire to rest, we were shown to one corner of the room where there was a ladder, up which we mounted into a dismal kind of a place without a window, but instead of these there were a number of crevices between the logs, which had never been filled up, and in the room there were three beds, or rather three bedsteads, with a few blankets thrown over them.

I went to breakfast with iVlr. Smith, and here I found things a little more in order, though far from that degree of refinement and comfort to be met with in the more civilized parts of this country. This house bore the marks of industry and cleanliness, and we were regaled with tea and coffee and boiled chicken for our breakfast, attended with buckwheat cakes, which are common in this part of the country.

The farm of this gentleman consists of several acres of land adjoining his house, which he keeps in high cultivation - chiefly meadow ground - and from which he has realized a great deal of money. His warehouse was near the water side. It consisted of but one room, where he brings down the river such articles of European manufacture as are most in demand. There are but two or three other stores of the same kind in Columbia. The profits of this trade are generally one hundred percent., and sufficiently compensate the trade for the trouble of a journey once or twice ayearto Philadelphia.

That inveterate romancer, Thomas Ashe, who afterwards made away with Dr. Goforth's admirable collection of fossil remains, passed Columbia on his way to Cincinnati in 1807, and made the following note in his book:

Just below the junction of this stream [the Little Miami] with the Ohio is the town of Columbia, which rose out of the woods a few years ago with great rapidity and promise, and now is on the decline, bemg sickly and subject to insulation, when the waters of the Miami are backed up the country by the rise of the Ohio in the spring, the current of the Ohio being so impetuous as to hinder the Miami from flowing into the stream. [!]

A topographical description of the State of Ohio, Indiana Territory, and Louisiana, by J. Cuder, published in 1810, gives a paragraph to Columbia:

Immediately below the mouth of the Little Miami is the town of Columbia. It was laid out by Colonel Symmes, and is the oldest settlement in the State, on the Ohio river, except Marietta, but has increased very little in the iiumber of its inhabitants. At present it is only a neat, pleasant village, consisting of about forty houses, built at some distance from eacli other, on a rich bottom or interval. Nor is it probable, from its situation, that it will ever become a place of much business.

In 1 8 19 Columbia is noticed m the Ohio State Gazetteer as "a post town of Hamilton county, six miles eastwardly from Cincinnati. It is situated on the north bank of the Ohio river, one mile below the mouth of the little Miami, and contains about fifty houses."

The first marriages in Columbia, as reported under the law of the court of general quarter sessions of the peace, are believed to have been those of Captain Jaines Flinn and Jane Newell, June 27, 1790, and of Bethuel Covalt and Rachel Blackford, December 29, 1790.

Columbia village was regularly incorporated in 1868.. By the last census taken before its annexation to Cincinnati, that of 1870, it had a population of one thousand one hundred and sixty-five. It was taken into the city in 1873. AiTiong its mayors have been - J. L. Thompson, 1869; W. J. M. Gordon, 1870; Benneville Kline, 1872-4.

Linwood

This place has a large site - one thousand three hundred and fifteen acres, or over two square miles - comprising four hundred and forty-six acres more than all the rest of Spencer township. It is situated in the northeast part of the township, on the hills west of the Little Miami railroad, and southwest of the observatory at Mount Lookout. It was founded in 1848 for L. A. Chapman, by Israel Wilson, and has been greatly enlarged and otherwise improved since by the operations of the Linwood Land company. January 16, 1874, the village was incorporated for general purposes, and its mayor that year was Mr. John P. Lan_gdon^

It is mainly a place for suburban residence, with Methodist, Congregational and Baptist churches, and a good graded school; but a beginning of manufacturing has been made with a hame-factory, etc. It has a population of seven hundred and twenty-two by the census of 1880.

Linwood station is half a mile south of the main part of Linwood, at the junction of the Union Bridge and Wooster turnpikes, and on the Little Miami railroad. A

James L. Langdon settled in Columbia township in 1806. He was born in Orange county, Vermont, in 1792, and emigrated to Ohio, where he still lives. He has followed the business of farming on the Miami bottoms. At times also he has served as a Methodist preacher. His wife, Sarah Phelps, was born in Maine in 1799, and died in 1863. They have three children living in this county: John P.; Elam C, a resident of Linwood; and Mrs. Harriet Williams, of Springfield. Mr. Langdon is one of the oldest men living in Columbia township; he is eighty-eight years old, has lived a life that commands the respect of all who know him, and his two sons are worthy representatives of himself is on the Little Miami railroad and river, at the southeast corner of the township, on the Spencer line, about a mile east of the observatory, and two and a half miles northeast of Columbia. Batavia Junction, where the Cincinnati & Eastern narrow guage joins the Little Miami, is a few hundred yards northeast of it.

Mount Lookout

is at the extreme northeast corner of Cincinnati, and lies both within and without the city. The observatory attached to the University of Cincinnati is located here, in charge of Director Stone. A fine private park lies just inside the city limits, which is much in request for picnic parties and celebrations. A dummy railroad connects the locality with the horse-cars at Pendleton. o'bryanville. A village on the Madison pike, now included in the First ward of the city, at the northwest corner of the old Spencer township. It was laid out in 1875 ^Y Scarborough & Williams, executors of the will of Benjamin Hey.

Also an old village, but more considerable, lying between the hills and the river, from Fulton to Sportsman's Hall or the East End garden. The Delta station, on the Little Miami railroad, and the termini of the Columbia and Mount Lookout dummy railroads, are at the latter point.

Turkey Bottom

This is a notable track of about one and a half square miles, between the Little Miami river and Columbia. It was found by the first settlers already cleared, for the most part, by the long cultivation of the Indians, and very likely also of the Mound Builders; but still exceedingly fertile. From nine acres of it planted by Judge Goforth during the first season of white occupancy, nine hundred and sixty-three bushels of corn were raised ; and Captain Benjamin Davis realized a crop of one hundred and fourteen bushels from one acre. There is also a tradition that Benjamin Randolph, having planted a single acre with corn and then compelled to visit New Jersey, came back in the fall and found one hundred bushels of corn, witiiout any attention meanwhile, ready for his ingathering. Major Stites was its first owner, and leased it out in good-sized lots - unmarked by divisions - to six of the colonists, for terms of five years. The first cultivation of it by the whites had to be done under guard, to protect against Indian surprise. It was almost the sole Columbia cornfield of 1789 and '90, and was the favorite resort of the women and children, for procuring the b.argrass root for fuel.

In the matter of the fertility of the Columbia region, an extravagant local item in the Wesk?-n Spy and Hamilton Gazette for September 11, 1802, with quotation here :

There is in the garden of Colonel John Armstrong, of Columbia, a peach-tree on which there is fruit nearly as big as a half-bushel, and would weigh, it is supposed, from twenty to twenty-five pounds.

names a station on the Little Miami railroad in Eastern Cincinnati, and also a district for suburban residence on the neighboring hill, which is called Mount Tusculum, and closely overlooks Columbia both south and east. Over three hundred acres have been handsomely laid out and improved by Judge Joseph Langworth, the improvements including a fine roadway of about five miles length, called Undercliff avenue, which encircles and intersects the entire quarter.

Population

Spencer township - the little tract now lying outside the city - had nine hundred and ninety-five inhabitants by the census of June, 1880. And yet it had as the larger township, a population of two thousand five hundred and forty-three in 1880.

The Langdon Family

THE LANGDON FAMILY. The records of the Langdon family in Linwdod go back to Philip Langdon, a mariner from Boston, Massachusetts, who was originally from England, it is supposed. His seventh child and fifth son was Lieutenant Paul Langdon, who was born September 12, 1693, and died December 3, 1761. He married Mrs. Mary Stacy August 18, 1 7 18, in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, and they had seven children; the fifth being John Langdon (the grandfather of James D. Langdon). Lieutenant Paul Langdon and this son John took part in the Revolutionary war. This John was born June 21, 1728, and died October 10, 1822. He married Eunice Torrcy, December 29, 1 757, and they had a fainily of eight children, whose names were John W., Artemas, James, Josiah, Joanna, Oliver, Eunice, and Solomon. Of these Artemas died in infancy, and the brothers, excepting Josiah, all came to Ohio with their sister Joanna, and although they were farming, yet they often officiated as preachers and exhorters in the Methodist church. They settled near Cincinnati, and some of their descendants are living in the old homestead. James, the third son, was the father of the subject of the following sketch. He was born March 27, 1762, and died October 3, 1804. He was married December 15, 1788, to Esther Stebbins, also of Wilbraham, Massachusetts, and their children were Richard Chester, James Davenport, Elam Potter, Lorenda, and Joanna. He (the father) died while the children were comparatively young, leaving the cares of the family on the mother, who was a woman of remarkable energy of character. She was usually known as "Aunt Esther," and as friend, nurse, or neighbor, was very often called upon for advice or assistance. In those days the women spun and wove the cloth for bedding and clothing, and Aunt Esther was a wonderful weaver and spinner. Her father was Moses Stebbins, the son of Samuel, who was the son of Samuel, who was the son of Thomas, who was born in 1620, in England, and son of Rowland Stebbins, or Stebbing, as the name was originally, and who came to America in 1634, and settled in Massachusetts.

James Davenport Langdon was born June 13, 1792, in Vershire, Vermont. His father was James Langdon, who married Esther Stebbins, December 15, 1788, in Wilbraham, Massachusetts. His parents vi^ere both natives of this place, but immediately after their marriage they moved to Vershire, Vermont. He hadjwo brothers, Richard C. and Elain P., and two sisters, Lorenda and Joanna. In October, 1804, his father died whilst away from home on business, after a very short illness of measles. Two years after his death, or in 1806, two of his uncles, John W. and Solomon, wiih thtir families, his mother with her family, Andrew Peters and Wales Aldrich and their families, in all about forty souls, moved in wagons from Vermont and came out to Ohio. The journey was tedious and slowly made through the wilderness, there being no roads scarcely, camping at night as they could, sometimes at an occasional tavern or farm house, but oftener in their wagons as night came on. It took about ten weeks to reach the Ohio river at Wellsville, where they embarked on flat-boats, taking the wagons aboard, but sending the horses by land down the Ohio side. Floating down the river they landed at Columbia two days before Christmas. That first winter in Ohio his mother and family lived in part of the house of Oliver Spencer - an old building which still stands near the old tanyard. There was only one other house then in Columbia, the McMahon house, and that is still standing near the Columbia railroad station.

This Oliver Spencer was the father of Robert, afterwards a Methodist preacher, Henry E., who was for several years mayor of Cincinnati, Oliver, a judge in the Hamilton county courts, and a fourth son who became a farmer in northern Ohio.

called Red Bank station, on the farms or lands which have ever since been occupied by them and their descendants, on and near the Little Miami river. This land was purchased by his uncle Oliver Langdon, who was the guardian appointed in Vermont, out of tracts originally owned by Benjamin Stites. There were only ten or a dozen families then in all of what is now known as Spencer township; they were Eliphalet, Joseph, Andrew, and John Ferris, brothers, and Henry Ferris their cousin - the families of Larned, Allen Witham, Giffins, Nash, Riggle and Williams. A treaty had been made two or three years before with the Indians, and about all had gone to reservations. The first school-house was built by Joseph Ferris on his farm. The first religious society, Methodist, was formed in 1805 in the McMahon house alluded to, and the Baptists built the first church in Ohio in Columbia a few years later which was destroyed about 1835. The Methodists built their first church in Columbia about 1840, which was accidently burned and rebuilt on another lot. The settlers for the first year or two lived literally on hog and hominy. The first grist-mill was run by two brothers named Hawley, and was on the Miami near the mouth of Clough creek. Afterwards it was owned and run for years by the Turpins until worn out or destroyed.

The brothers and sisters of James D. are all dead. The sister Lorenda married Lemuel SnowTfTSeptember, 181 6, and moved to a farm in Indiana; the other sister, Joanna, also married a farmer, Minervus Swift, in September, 1 818, and lived four years in Indiana; Elam Potter married Ann Cromwell, a sister of Joseph Cromwell, who kept the famous Broadway hotel so long iti Cincinnati. Elam Potter was connected as clerk or assistant postmaster nearly all his life with the Cincinnati post office. Richard was a printer and newspaper publisher, and his widow still lives in Covington, Kentucky. James D., the subject of this sketch, was married to Sarah Phelps December 23, 1818, and has lived on the one spot about sixty-three years. He has always been actively engaged in farming from his early youth, and owes his good health and long years to good habits and regular living. His uncle Oliver was quite a preacher, and officiated at funerals, baptisms and marriages. After his uncle's death, in 1828 or 1829, he began to preach himself; the text of his first sermon was i Samuel xii- 24 - "Only fear the Lord and serve Him in truth with all your heart, for consider how great things He has done for you" - and was at a service one Sunday at the mouth of the Little Miami river. There being but few rninisters in those days it naturally fell to be his lot to take the uncle's place. So from that on he was continually called on to preach, attend funerals, and solemnize marriages for miles all around the country. He was licensed to preach in 1836 and ordained elder in 1842. During the year 184S he was superintendent of Cincinnati circuit, and for eight years was a member of the annual conference of the Methodist Protestant church. He was president of the first teinperance society formed in the year 1833 in Columbia township. For years in succession he was a township trustee and school director, and has all

His wife had an experience in coming to Ohio (which was the year before the marriage, or 1817) very similar to that of her husband. She was born in Hollowell, Maine, on May i, 1797, and was the daughter of Ebenezer and Sarah Phelps. She had four brothers, William, John, Alfred and Nathan, with one sister, Eliza, who came in wagons all the long journey from Hollowell, Maine, to Columbia. The brothers and sister (who married Jonathan Livings) all settled in Indiana, and raised families there. Dr. Ebenezer S. Phelps, the oldest brother, located in Middleton, Massachusetts, where he and his family now reside. James D. and Sarah had a family of nine children - James, Sarah, Cynthia, Harriet, Cyrus, John, Elam, Edwin and Henry. There are now living only the father and three of the children - John P., Elam C, and Harriet. John P. occupies the homestead and is a farmer, and has one son, James W., who lives near his father, and is a farmer. The old family dwelling had become so out of repair and dilapidated, in 1877, having been used for some sixty years, it was torn down by John P., and a modern and commodious dwelling was built on the site. John P. has been mayor of the village for three successive terms, and been commissioned twice as magistrate for the township. Elam C. resides on part of the homestead farm, has had four children, three now living. These two brothers, from time to time, have been called upon to take part in aifairs of the township and village. Elam has served seventeen years as school trustee, several terms in village council, two or three terms as treasurer of township, and both the brothers are members and workers in church and Sabbathschool, taking an active part in all public enterprises. Harriet became the wife of Rev. Charles H. Williams, a minister in the Methodist Protestant church. She has three sons living, and for several years her home has been in Springfield, Ohio, where the sons are connected with railroads, and the husband is an active church officer. The sons James, Cyrus and Edwin, and the daughter, Sarah, died young or unmarried. Cynthia married Dr. H. E. Morrill, and her home was in Brooklyn, New York, where an only daughter survives her, and who is now the wife of Dr. Hugh Smith. The son, Henry, became a physician and surgeon, and acted as such during the late war, in the Seventy-ninth regiment, Ohio volunteer infantry, which was with General Sherman during that wonderful march through the South, which virtually brought the war to an end. His widow survives him and one son, Willie Carson. The doctor, after the close of the war, practised medicine in Columbia for several years, and his office was within gunshot almost of the old Spencer house, in which his grandmother and father spent the winter of 1806-7.

Harriet, born July 25, 1825, still living in Springfield, Ohio; Cyrus Stebbins, born January 5, 1828, died February I, 1864; John Phelps, born December 8, 1829, living in Linwood, Ohio; Elam Chester, born March 31, 1832, living in Linwood, Ohio; Edwin Mattoon, born December 20, 1834, died July 26, 1847; Henry Archer, born May 28, 1839, died May 13, 1876.

John P. Langdon married, for his first wife, Mary Williams, May, 1855, and James W., a son by this marriage, is living, and married to Lida Durham, and occupies part of the father's farm. John P.'s second marriage took place in April, 1861, to Keturah Nash, and the couple still occupy the homestead place, and the old father lives with them.

Elam C.'s first wife was Cynthia Allen, of New York State. She died in December, 1868, leaving two girls. His second wife was Martha F. Nash (whose sister married as above), a native of the old Columbia township. Two children have been born to them, one living only.

Source changes here: from 1789 History of Hamilton County Ohio with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches, by Henry A. Ford and Kate B. Ford, published 1881; 45,009 words in this source stream.

Organization

Columbia is the oldest born of the townships of Hamilton county. Upon its soil, as originally constituted, was planted the first colony in the Miami Purchase - the first white settlement, indeed, anywhere in the Ohio valley between Limestone or Maysville and the falls of the Ohio, otherwise the mouth of Beargrass creek, or J.ouisville. From this lodgment of Major Stites and his people near the mouth of the Little Miami, annd his designation of the cluster of cabins by the patriotic title then (1788) much more in vogue than now, the subsequent township of course derived its name. The history of that settlement, and to some extent of the gallant men who founded it, will be told very fully in the chapter devoted to Spencer township, with which Columbia, as a country village, was last associated, and to whose history its own seems properly to belong.

Columbia township was erected by the court of general quarter sessions of the peace, in 1791, at the same time Cincinnati and Miami townships were formed; but seems to claim priority by virtue of its cattle brand, which was fixed to be the letter A, the others taking respectively the letters Band C. The boundaries of this town were then assigned as follows:

"Beginning at the foot of the second meridian east of Cincinnati, on the Ohio bank; thence north to the third entire (or military) range; thence east to the Little Miami; thence down the Miami to Ohio river; thence down the Ohio to place of beginning."

This was a vast township, larger than some counties are now. Cincinnati and Miami townships, with it, included the whole of Hamilton county on the Purchase, south of the military range. Beyond their north line, in the Miami country, there was probably at this time not a single white settler, and the extensive boundaries of the township were su)posed to be sufficient to include all probable settlement on the east side of the Purchase for years to come. It was not many years, however, before the call was made for the erection of townships in the further tracts of the Purchase now covered by Butler and Montgomery counties,.as settlement rapidly progresssd in them.

Upon the reconstruction of the Hamilton county townships in 1803, after the erection of Butler county by the first State legislature, the boundaries of Columbia were thus changed:

. "Commencing at the southeast corner of Cincinnati township, thence north to the northwest corner of section thirty-six in fractional range two, township four; thence east to the Little Miami; thence south to the Ohio; thence westward to the place of beginning."

This arrangement gave the township just the entirety of its present territory, with the whole of the later Spencer township, including so much of the city as is now east of "the second meridian east" of the old city of Concinnati. The voters were at this time required to meet at the house of Samuel Muchmore, upon the present site of Madisonville, and elect three justices of the peace.

Geography

When Spencer township was formed Columbia was cut down to its present limits, and lost the famous. old village from which it took its noble and high-sounding name. The township is now bounded on the west by the "second meridian line" aforesaid, to a point about a mile and a quarter north of the Ohio, separating it from Mill Creek township ; on the north by the old line of 1803, from the northwest corner of section' thirty-six in the fractional range two, township four, to the Little Miami, dividing it from Sycamore and Symmes townships; on the south by that river, Spencer township, and a part of Cincinnati, and on the east by the same stream, which separates it from Anderson township and a short front of Clermont county. It is nine miles long on its north line, which is the greatest length of the township; and but four miles and a quarter in its shortest length, at the south of the township. It is five miles broad on the west, and for more than four miles thence to the eastward, and is then of variously reduced width, according to the windings of the Little Miami, until, on its eastern border, it is less than two and a half miles wide. The Little Miami River, with its ins and outs, has a bank of about nine miles in this township. Forty sections, twenty-nine whole, and eleven fractional, are included in the present territory of Columbia, making eighteen thousand eight hundred and sixty acres, of which two hundred and thirty-nine are covered by the site of Madisonville. They are much more regular in their boundaries than sections in most. other parts of the Symmes Purchase - thanks, perhaps, to the superior skill or care of Major Stites and his surveyors - and each full section comprises exactly or very nearly a square mile.

The topography of Columbia township, for picturesque and varied character, and eligibility for suburban _purposes, is scarcely equaled anywhere else in Hamilton county. The valley of the Little Miami stretches broadly along its eastern and southeastern districts, with the heights beyond Milford and Newtown in the distance, and others closer to the course of the stream - in one instance, near the northeast corner of Anderson township, coming down close to the course of the stream. Across the entire length of the township, in a general east and west direction, spreads another great, deep valley, evidently very ancient in its formation, but now with no large stream in its bed - probably an old channel through which the waters of Mill creek found their way to the Little Miami. The township may be said to consist pretty nearly of this and the Miami valleys. The result of the great operations of nature, by which they have been channeled, has been to afford a very large number and variety of beautiful sites for human habitation. Indian Hill and the Norwood Heights, Pleasant Ridge, Oakley, Madisonville, Mount Lookout, and indeed, almost every square mile of the higher ground in the township, are excellently adapted to the purposes of suburban residence, as well as for farming. Neighborhood to a great city has naturally called attention to these advantages, and every one of its numerous villages has more or less of the suburban character.

Apart from the Little Miami, Columbia has no stream of size within it or upon its borders. Duck creek, and perhaps a dozen other brooks and rivulets, traverse some part of the township, most of them toward the Little Miami, but two or three, in the northwestern part, making their way to the valley of Mill creek. The Marietta & Cincinnati railroad enters the township near Norwood, about a mile and three-quarters from the southwest corner, traverses about half its breadth on a general east and west line to Madisonville, whence the route makes rapidly northward and northeastward to its emergence from the township beyond Madeira station, near the southeast course of this railroad lie in Columbia. The Little Miami railroad_has about the same length along or near the river in this township, entering at the southeast corner, at Red Bank station, and. proceeding by the Batavia junction, Plainville, and several other points, to its exit from the county at the northeastern corner, opposite East Milford, and a mile and a half further. crossing the river and leaving the county altogether. The Cincinnati & Eastern narrow-gauge railroad tracks also intersect the southern tier of sections; but its arrangements for entering Cincinnati from the north and west are not yet consummated, and the road is not much used west of Batavia road. The Cincinnati Northern narrow-gauge, now in course of construction, crosses the township. from south to north, entering from the direction of Walnut Hills, and passing through Norwood. Several fine turnpikes, as the Cincinnati & Wooster, once the main line of communication eastward; the Madison, the Montgomery, and others, with many well-kept, ordinary wagon-roads, add to the facilities of communication with the city and surrounding country. Upon some of them, as over the Montgomery pike to Pleasant Ridge, lines of omnibuses are regularly run to and from Cincinnati. i ANCIENT REMAINS.

One of the richest fields for antiquarian research in the world, for the extent of it, is presented in this township, notably in the eastern and southeastern parts of it. It has been industriously and very intelligently worked during the few years last past by the members of the Madisonville Scientific and Literary society; and in this sketch we freely use the results of their labors, particularly as set forth in Dr. Charles L. Metz's articlé on the pre-historic monuments of the Little Miami valley, in the Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History for October, 1878, and his chart accompanying the paper.

1. Dr. Metz and his co-laborers arrange the works in groups. Group A is mostly upon the property of Charles F. Stites, one mile west of Plainville, between the Wooster turnpike and the Little Miami railroad and river, upon the second bottom or plateau, in section nine. This plateau has a general elevation above the river of nearly two hundred feet; and above it, at a height varying from ten to twenty-five feet, is a narrow ridge, mainly compéSed -of reddisli sand, upon which the most notable work of the group is situated. This and the remaining works in this locality are thus described by Dr. Metz:

Commencing at the east end of the ridge, and in a wood known as "'Stites' grove," we find an earthwork consisting of a circle, central tumulus, and an oval-shaped tumulus impinging on the outer southeast edge of the circle. The following extract, from an article entitled "'The Mound Builders,"' by Mr. Florien Giauque, published in the Harvest Home Magazine, August, 1876, describes this work as follows:

'In the grove in the 'picnic woods' owned by Mr. Charles Stites, of Columbia, on the top of this ridge, there is a circular enclosure made by a ditch and an earthen embankment outside of and immediately adjoining this ditch, and no doubt made of the material which was taken from it. From the bottom of this ditch to the top of the embankment, the present height is five and one-half feet; the diameter of the ditch from deepest cut on either side is seventy-five feet; the enclosing embankment, from crest to crest, is one hundred and five feet; and the diameter of the entire work, from outside to outside, is about one hundred and forty-five toone hundred and fifty feet. On the east this embankment is enlarged into a regular mound, about forty-eight feet in diameter and about six feet high above the adjacent ground. At the southeast part of the enclosure there is left an entrance-way about ten feet wide - that is, there is here neither ditch nor embankment. This entrance facés and is about forty feet away from the edge of the terrace or bluff, which is here quite steep, and about one hundred feet (estimated) high above the river, which is here quite near the foot of the bluff. The edges of the terrace and ridge coincide here."

The ridge to the east of this work slopes gently until it reaches the general level of the plateau. On this slope numerous relics are found. The above-described work was explored by Mr. Giauque and others, and several fine relics were found. The finding of one he describes as follows:

''One of the trenches was begun about the north of the mound, and the writer [Mr. Giauque], while working here, hardly a foot below the surface ef the mound and about seven feet from the centre of it, found a very fine relic. It is a tube six inches long, a little less than an inch in diameter, made. of crinoidal limestone, highly polished, though somewhat coated and discolored in places by the oxide of iron which has collected on it during its long burial. The hole extends entirely through from end to end, but grows rapidly smaller near one end, being about five-eighths of an inch in diameter most of the distance, and about three-sixteenths of an inch at the smaller end This relic is, in fact, a cylinder for about four and one-half inches of its length toa diamond-shaped perforation."

I have measured the circumference of some of the larger trees growing on this work, An ak has nine and one-half feet, beech eight and one-half feet in circumterence on the central tumulus, maple six and three-tenths feet, an oak six and seven-tenths feet in circumferenc:

Northwest of this work, and about two hundred feet distant, at the foot of the sand-ridge, and on the general leve: of the plateau, is a mound which has been recently explored. Its diameter east to west is forty-five feet, elevation seven feet. An oak tree on its western slope has eight and seven-tenths feet, and a beech on its eastern slope five feet of a circumference. An interesting avcount of the exvloration of this mound, by Mr. Giauque, was published in the Harvest Home Magazine, in the article from which I quoted above. The circumstances of exploration are of considerable interest to the archzeologist, and I make the following extracts from Mr. Giauque's ariicle:

'About eleven feet from the outsid> and two fee: above the original surface, the shovel, hitherto working pretty freely in clayey sand, struck the first big stone. It was a flat limestone, possibly brought from the neighboring hill about a half a mile away, as there was none nearer; and it was much reddened and softened by fire, tne fossil shells in it being whitened or more nearly calcined than the other parts. This, together with charcoal and ashes, pieces of bone, pieces of bowlder broken by fire, were very encouraging indications of a 'find.' Further digging showed .uat the rock struck was the part of a stone arch, rudely made of undressed limescone.

found a skeleton, the tibia (shin-bone) being the first part of it discovered. The arch was then enurely uncovered, the earth removed between it and the skeletu:, and the skeleton taken out. If the mound had been dividea into four parts, by drawing a line through its centre from north to south and another similarly from east to west, the arch would have beeuw entirely within the northwest section of the mound, and the skeleton which it covered lay with its head nearly towards the northeast (N. E. E.) Perpendicular sections of the mound, as dug away that day, showed from the bottom upwards:

''2, About a foot of sandy earth, possibly mixed with ashes, but no charcoal nor pieces of bowlder or bones, and, especially in places where the rock above had relieved it from pressure, quite loose and soft.

"3, The arch, hitherto so cauled for convenience, but perhaps hardly entitled to the name. This was made, as has been said, of undressed but flat limestone, averaging about twenty to thirty and six to eight inches in length -and breadth, four inches in thickness, and approximately most of them being about a medium between thesé extremes. The arch was about seven feet long and five,and a half or six wide, its highest part being in a line with and directly over the body, and arching downward on either side till its edges on the right and left of the skeleton nearly reached the clay on which the skeleton lay. But the stones were not set up on edge, so that the structure, while really an arch in form, was probably not self-sustaining. ; It contained three layers of stone, one over the other, making about a foot in thickness.

'5. Charcoal and ashes, the charcoal not plenty nor in large pieces, this indicating that the fire had burned out before being covered up with earth. This fire was hot enough to color all the top rocks, as mentioned of the first one found.

«6. A layer of sand about fifteen inches thick, with pieces of firecracked bowlder, burnt limestone, and pieces of human bones, much decayed - or were they partially burned?

West and to the south of this tumulus, and on the same continuous sand-ridge mentioned above, are four or five elevations or tumuli, with an average height of three to four feet, being from two to three hundred feet apart. The ridge is here under cultivation; numbers of relics, flint chips, and broken bowlders, are ploughed up on this ridge. ;

Northwest of these tumuli, and on the general level of the plateau, one-fourth of a mile distant, is a mound which has a circumference at base of two hundred feet, and an elevation of seven feet. It is as yet unexplored, but cultivated annually.