Miami Township

Organization

The original Miami township was one of the creations of the court of general quarter sessions of the peace in 1791, at the same time as Cincinnati and Columbia townships were erected. Its boundaries were then defined as beginning at a point on the Ohio, at the first meridian east of the mouth of Rapid run, thence due north to the Great Miami, thence down that stream to the Ohio, thence up the Ohio to the place of beginning. These included not only the entire tract now occupied by the township but also the eastern part of Delhi, a strip of Green two sections wide, and about one-third of Colerain township. In some of the old documents the limits of Miami are more simply stated as "beginning at the southwest corner of Cincinnati township, thence down the Ohio tp the mouth of the Miami, thence up the Miami to the west boundary of Cincinnati township, thence south to the beginning."

In the general -rearrangement of 1803, compelled or suggested by the creation of several new counties from the still extensive Hamilton, the boundaries of Miami were cut down considerably from the northward, while they were extended one range of sections to the eastward. The were now described as "commencing at the mouth of the Great Miami, thence north on the State line to the Miami, thence up that stream to the north boundary of fractional range two, thence east nearly four miles to the northeast corner of section twenty-four in fractional range two, town two, thence south to the Ohio, thence westward to the place of beginning." These confines gave the township no further reach to the northward than it now has, but extended the present north line three miles to the eastward, and gave Miami a strip of as many sections' breadth from what is now Green township and about half of the present Delhi, the east line of the township intersecting the Ohio about a mile below Anderson's Ferry, or near Gilead Station.

By the time the change of 1803 was made it had been discovered, as may be ascertained by a careful reading of the definition of boundaries, that some part of the course of the Great Miami, near its mouth, lay wholly in the State of Indiana; so that a narrow strip of territory lay to the east of it, between its channel and the State line, which did not belong to Miami township or to Hamilton county. This river is famous for its changes of course; and several of its ancient beds may be plainly traced further up the valley, besides many indications of slighter modifications of channel. It is probable that across the tract lying within a mile of the stream, between Guard's Island and the mouth of the Great Miami, its waters have advanced and receded many times. Quite recent maps of the State and county exhibit a belt of territory here that still belongs to Indiana; but, since the surveys upon which these are based were made, the river has again so encroached upon its eastern banks that it is be.- lieved all its shore in that direction is in Hamilton county and the State of Ohio, except perhaps a small tract near the Ohio & Mississippi railway bridge.

Geography. '

The extreme western boundary of Miami township at present, therefore, may be stated with almost literal exacts ness as the Great Miami river, separating the township from Dearborn county, Indiana. The remaining entire boundary on the west - and on the north, too, is also the Great Miami river, dividing Miami from Whitewater township. Next east of the township, along its entire border in this direction, is Green township; and on the south are the Ohio river, separating it from Kentucky, and a mile's breadth of the northwest part of Delhi township.

The township lies in fractional ranges one and two, town one of each. It has but nine full sections, all of them in range two, and none in the peninsula below North Bend and Cleves; but has twenty-two fractional sections, and thus secures a very respectable amount of territory. Its acres count up fourteen thousand and fiftyseven. Its extreme length is on the eastern border and for about three-fourths of a mile in the interior - just six sections, this strip being included between the .same parallels which bound Green township on the north and south. The shortest length is between the point of the elbow of the Great Miami, at the south end of Cleves, and the Ohio river about two-thirds of a mile. The greatest breadth is on a line crossing the township east and west from the northernmost point in the great bend of the Ohio, from which North Bend is named, not quite six miles; the shortest is on the extreme north line, between the Great Miami and the northeast corner of the township - three-quarters of a mile. From the east line of the township to the meridian drawn from the southwest corner that is, the State line, the distance is over seven miles, and from the southwest corner - the extreme end of the peninsula - to the northeast corner is just ten miles. Miami is thus seen to be a very singularly shaped township, deeply indented on the south side by the Ohio river, and on the north and west in several places by the windings of the Great Miami.

Within Miami township the Ohio receives from the northward th? waters of Muddy creek and the west fork of Muddy, the latter of which lies altogether in the southeastern part of this township; also Indian creek, which enters the river at North Bend station, and several minor streams. Along the northwestern borders of the township flows the South fork of Taylor's creek, leaving the township at the northwest corner, just opposite to which, at the northwest corner, the main stream of Taylor's creek, flowing down from Colerain township, discharges its waters. A mile due north of Cleves Jordan creek debouches also into the Great Miami, after flowing nearly three-fourths of the way across the township. One or two petty and probably unnamed brooks are also affluents of this river on the Miami side. Beside this river, above Cleves, the valley is wide and low, yielding great crops of corn in favorable seasons; below Cleves Ritenhouse Hill, Fort Hill, and the general ridge between the two rivers close down pretty closely upon the banks of the streams, until their junction is neared, when the country again becomes low and flat, and subject in part to frequent overflow. The highlands continue along the Ohio to the southeast boundaries of the township; but have ample room at the foot for the tracks of the railroads, a fine wagon road, and the sites of several villages and railway stations. They afford many picturesque views up and down the river, and across to the Kentucky shore; and some of the finest suburban residences in the county, as that of Dr. Warder near North Bend, have consequently been located upon these heights. The general character of the hill country of Hamilton county is maintained to the northward and westward until the valley of the Great Miami is reached - much broken and diversified, however, by the numerous streams that cut through and down the hills. Across them, from the direction of Cincinnati, comes in the Cleves turnpike, having the village of that name on the west for its terminus. There is a singular scarcity of north and south roads in the township, but a sufficiency of highways, with a general direction of east and west. The Ohio & Mississippi, and the Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis & Chicago railroads run parallel to each other and to the bank of the Ohio in this township until just past North Bend station, where the track of the latter diverges rapidly to the northward, passes under the ridge between North Bend and Cleves by a tunnel, and leaves the township, going westward, by a bridge over the Great Miami, half a mile northwest of Cleves. The Ohio & Mississippi continues its course along the Ohio beyond North Bend about five miles, to a point about half a mile above the mouth of the Great Miami, when it passes into Indiana.

The first officers of the Miami township, named by appointment of the court at the time of its erection, were in part as follows: Lynde Elliott, clerk; Darius C. Orcutt, overseer of roads; Henry Brazier, overseer of the poor. The cattle brand for the township was fixed by the court as the letter D.

On the twenty-fourth of April, 1809, the governor of the State commissioned Garah Markland and Stephen Wood as justices of the peace for the township of Miami, each to serve during a term of three years.

We have also the following memoranda of justices elected by the people in later years: 18 ig, John Palmer, Daniel Bailey; 1825, William Harrell, James Martin; 1829, John Scott Harrison, J. L. Watson, Isaac Morgan; 1865, John D. Matson, A. R. Lind; 1866, A. R. Lind, James Carlin; 1867-9, James Carlin, James Herron; 1870-2, James Carlin, William B. Welsh, 1873-4, James Carlin, James Herron, William Ayr; 1875, Carlin and Ayr; 1876-8, William J essup, A. R. Lind; 1879-80, Carlin and Lind.

The famous ancient work which gives the name to Fort Hill, near the Great Miami river, is an irregular enclosure surrounding about fifteen acres. It is between the brows of precipitous ascents two hundred- and sixty feet high on the Miami side and two hundred feet high towards the Ohio, which is about a mile distant; and is in a position well calculated for outlook and defence. The wall is now about three feet high, is composed of

Christopher Flinchpaugh

Christopher Flinchpaugh, born April 26, 1799 in Wurtemburg, Europe. Jacob, his father, was a common farmer ; Agnes Phyle. his mother was of common stoclc. Both his parents died when Christopher was a young man of fifteen summers, he coming to America in 1817, landing in Philadelphia. Out of a family of three brothers and two sisters, all of whom are dead, he was the youngest. One of the great associations and memorable events of his life, is the vivid recollection of Napoleon's campaign in 1816. The great disaster which followed his retreat, the Cossacks, the Russians, the Prussians, the French - left food scarce, and distress followed which beggars description.

Christopher, who was a passenger, worked his way in a sail vessel which was three months and two weeks m crossing. At the .end of the journey, he worked one year and six months to repay the expense. However, the agreement to school Christopher nine months, furnish him with two suits of clothes from head to foot, and forty dollars in mpney, was not kept and our young German failed to receive his reward. From near Harrisburgh he came to Miami township in the fall of 1819, and remained ever since.

Previous to his marriage in the spring of 182 1 to Elizabeth Columbia, he worked at stilling in Miamitown for one year and six months for Major Henrie. His wife was born December 20, 1801, was of Welsh extraction, and whose father was a Revolutionary soldier. By this marriage five sons and seven daughters were born : Jacob, Henrietta, Susanna, William, Mary, Caleb, Chris, Simon, Charlotte, Christina, Hannah, Elizabeth. Out of this family only six hve. From thfs ' family thirty-nine grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren have been born. Young Christopher was brought up in the Lutheran faith ; was baptized in infancy, and confirmed when fourteen years of age, but of practical religion he knew nothing. Educationally, he had eight years of schooling, but being of a careless disposition, failed to receive any benefit. Marvelous as it may seem the first year or two he preached he was unable to read English. During his employment in the distillery at Miami, he received the first impressions of sin, while working a copper still. But the first convictions of sin hung overhead^and in one year and six months after he was converted. But previous to this time a few months, he joined the United Brethren church, under the influence of Rosalia Fageley, a pious woman in whose house the n eeting held. He passed from a rough, blasphemous character to a minister of the gospel. Being of a determined nature, full of good impulses, he grasped the hand of all alike - the wicked and good - and implored them to turn to Christ. His conversion was in a cornfield while plowing corn, and from thence, the Sunday following, by agreement with the still-house hands, he preached his first sermon in Chamberstown, in Miami. Great results followed, and from thence he preached to many distinguished men. Among his audience at different times were General Harrison, Governor Bebb, Daniel Howell, the first male child in Miami township, and many others who long since have passed to their reward. Soon after beginning to preach in 1824, he was licensed by the United Brethren church, and travelled throughout the country, preaching in barns and log dwelling houses.

clouds over head, and when the devil tempted him to cease preaching, he came from Venice, where he preached in a cooper-shop in the morning, and in the evening at a school-house, to his home a distance of twelve miles. He had had his breakfast and went without dinner and supper. Coming home about 9 or 10 o'clock, and -reflecting on his hard trials, and tempted to retire from the ministry, their came a voice - a song of angels from Heaven singing, " How happy are they," exhorting him to continue. In all his he memorable life, neither has seen or heard so much melody, so great a choir, and so much of God's power to save. The matter of recompense was very small and distance in circuit very great. One circuit was four hundred miles in length, and consisted of thirty-two appointments.

Sometime in 1841 or 1842, a call was made to go to Germany. For six months he debated and prayed over the question, and at one time was tempted to drive God's spirit away by drink, but finally, on account of lack of funds, did not leave America. He regrets now his failure to accept the call, but God forgives him. Once while visiting a layman - which is a dream - he was invited by the member to go out and see his sheep. After going out, the sheep proved to be long wooly dogs which were sheared for sheep, illustrating a paradox in religion.

At difterent periods he travelled from Pittsburgh to the north of Portsmouth Evansville. The presiding elder's office was held and common preaching done everywhere. Both German and English pulpits were fillled, and both Enghsh and German converts baptized and taken into the church.

One unacquainted with pioneer life; the travelling through swamp and bog ; through forest and stream , and all their different parts, knows nothing of early ministerial preaching.

The following are persons and where they were baptized : one hundred children, twenty persons in Ohio river, twenty persons in Mill creek, sixty persons in Taylor's creek, ten persons in Muddy creek .fifty persons in Big Miami, river, ten persons in Logan creek, seventy persons in Johnson's fork, fifty persons in Dry fork, five persons in Indian creek, forty persons in Elk creek, fifty persons in Little and Big Twin, fifty persons in Browii s run, twenty persons in Beaver creek, and ten persons in East Little

Now, in old age, after a. life full of great trial, and one ladened with the choicest fruits, he, though not wealthy, but left in good circumstances, is left without a helpmeet. About him, all up and down the country, are hosts of friends. Many are in Heaven and many more are homeward bound. To him God has been gracious ; life with him has been a success. God, he fully believes, called him to preach. Every one to his notion is selected by his Master to go forth and meet sin.

The forest has faded before his ax as well as immorality. May God continue to bless him in the future as in the past. The present is short, but the future will find him in the best calling in our land.

stone and earth, and has a narrow gateway at the northeast corner, near a rocky tract on the hillside. There are prominent salients or bastions at both the northeast and southeast corners. A ditch upon the inside follows the wall throughout. A spring within would keep a besieged force well supplied with water, and a channel of another stream also intersects the wall, which might be damned in case of rainfall. The tableland within the fort is ten to twenty feet above the wall, the earth in which was scooped from the brow of the hill, while the stone was also collected from the locality. The former farm of Geneial Harrison approached near the fort by its west line; and the residence of his son, the Hon. J. Scott Harrison, was directly south of the work. The former in his discourse on the Aborigines of the Valley of the Ohio, delivered before the Historical Society of Ohio in 1838, printed in its transactions and also separately, thus uses this ancient work by way of illustration in an argument for the high antiquity of the Mound Builders' remains:

The sites of the ancient works on the Ohio present precisely the same appearance as the circumjacent forest. You find on them all the beautiful variety of trees which skives such universal richness to our forests. This is particularly the case on the fifteen acres included within the walls of the work at the mouth of the Great Miami, and the relative proportions of different kinds of timber are about the same. The first growth, on the same kind of land, once cleared and then abandoned to nature, on the contrary is more homogeneous after stinted to one or two, or at most three kinds of timber.

The engineers who directed the executing of the Miami work, appear to have known the importance of flank defences. And if their bastions are not as perfect as to form, as those which are in use in modern engineering, their position, as well as that of the long lines of curtains, are precisely as they should be.

I have another conjecture as to this Miami fortress. If the people of whom we have been speaking were really the Aztecs, the direct course of their journey to Me.xico, and the facilities which that mode of retreat would afford, seem to point out a descent of the Ohio as the line of that retreat. This position (the lowest which they appear to have fortified on the Ohio), strong by nature and improved by the expenditures of great labor, directed by no inconsiderable degree of skill, would be the last hold they would occupy and the scene of their last efforts to retain possession of the country they had so long inhab" ited. The interest which every one feels who visits this beautiful and interesting spot, would be greatly heightened if he could persuade himself of the reasonableness of my deductions, from the facts I have stated. That this elevated ridge, from which are now to be seen flourishing little villages and plains of unrivalled fertility, possessed by a people in the full enjoyment of peace and liberty, and all that peace and liberty can give - whose nations, like those of Spata, have never seen the smoke of an enemy's fire - once presented a scene of war, and war in its most horrid form, where blood is the object and the deficiencies of the field are made up by the slaughter of innocence and imbecility. That it was here a feeble band was collected, remnant of mighty battles fought in vain, to make a last effort for the country of their birth, the ashes of their ancestors and the altars of their gods; that the crisis was met with fortitude and sustained with valor, need not to be doubted. The ancestors of Quitlavaca and Gautimozin, and their devoted followers could not be cowards.

Fort Finney

This work, the first erection for human habitation made by white men upon the territory afterwards covered by the Miami purchase, except only the transient blockhouses erected by the war parties of Kentuckians upon the site of Cincinnati, stood upon the soil of Miami township, in the point of the peninsula. It was upon the west bank of a small creek, about three-quarters of a mile above the mouth of the Little Miami, and near the mouth of the creek, not far from what is now the southeast corner of the former farm of the late John Scott Harrison. The site is still pointed out by residents of that neighborhood, and a writer in i866 said that some remais of the fort were then still to be seen, though they have now wholly disappeared.

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

The Indian Period

A party of men residing at tlie Point (moutli of Big Miami), were returning from a small mill near North Bend, and with one exception, stopped at the old log house lately occupied by Andrew McDonald, where a tavern was then kept; and as this was before the days of temperance societies, it is a very fair inference that they stopped to take a drink. One rnan (Demoss), more temperate, perhaps, than his fellows, continued on his way up the hill - the trace to the Point then running over the hill, near the old graveyard, and on the bluff of the ridge. The revelers had hardly time to accomplish the object of their stop before the report of a rifle was heard on the hill. The party at the tavern, supposing it was only an intimation from their more sober companion to cease theii revels and continue their way home, rushed out of the house with a wild whoop, mounted their horses, and rode up the hill. But what must have been the horror of the party, on arriving at the crown of the hill, to find their companion dead and weltering in his blood! The undischarged rifle of Demoss, and the missing mealbag, too plainly explained the manner and cause of his death. Pursuit was immediately given, in a northwesterly direction, and the meal, but not the Indian, found. The Indian, in order to save his own life, had dropped that which had evidently incited him to commit the murder.

This tale of Indian murder has always had a peculiar personal interest to me. My mother, then unmarried and living with her father. Judge Symmes, at North Bend, had been on a riding excursion (horseback, of course), to the Point, the very afternoon of this murder, and has often told me that the horses of their party were still at the door after their return, when the fatal shot that killed Demoss was plainly heard. My mother was always under the impression that the Indian saw her party pass, but that bread, rather than blood, was the object of the murderer.

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

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; 4,266 words in this source stream.

Organization

The original Miami township was one of the creations of the court of general quarter sessions of the peace in 1791, at the same time as Cincinnati and Columbia townships were erected. Its boundaries were then defined as beginning at a point on the Ohio, at the first meridian east of the mouth of Rapid run, thence due north to the Great Miami, thence down that stream to the Ohio, thence up the Ohio to the place of beginning. These included not only the entire tract now occupied by the township but also the eastern part of Delhi, a strip of Green two sections wide, and about one-third of Colerain township. In some of the old documents the limits of Miami are more simply stated as "beginning at the southwest corner of Cincinnati township, thence down the Ohio to the mouth of the Miami, thence up the Miami to the west boundary of Cincinnati township, thence south to the beginning."

In the general rearrangement of 1803, compelled or suggested by the creation of several new counties from the still extensive Hamilton, the boundaries of Miami were cut down considerably from the northward, while they were extended one range of séctions to the eastward. The were now described as 'commencing at the mouth of the Great Miami, thence north on the State line to the Miami, thence up that stream to the north boundary of fractional range two, thence east nearly four miles to the northeast corner of section twenty-four in fractional range two, town two, thence south to the Ohio, thence westward to the place of beginning." These confines gave the township no further reach to the northward

~sections' breadth from what is now Green township and about half of the present Delhi, the east line of the township intersecting the Ohio about a mile below Anderson's Ferry, or near Gilead Station.

By the time the change of 1803 was made it had been discovered, as may be ascertained by a careful reading of the definition of boundaries, that some part of the course of the Great Miami, near its mouth, lay wholly in the State of Indiana; so that a narrow strip of territory lay to the east of it, between its channel and the State line, which did not belong to Miami township or to Hamilton county. 'This river is famous for its changes of course; and several of its ancient beds may be plainly traced further up the valley, besides many indications of slighter modifications of channel. It is probable that across the tract lying within a mile of the stream, between Guard's Island and the mouth of the Great Miami, its waters have advanced and receded many times. Quite recent maps of the. State and county exhibit a belt of territory here that still belongs to Indiana; but, since the surveys upon which these are based were made, the river has again so encroached upon its eastern banks that it is believed all its shore in that direction is in Hamilton county and the State of Ohio, except perhaps a small tract near the Ohio & Mississippi railway bridge.

Geography

GEOGRAPHY. The extreme western boundary of Miami township at present, therefore, may be stated with almost literal exactness as the Great Miami river, separating the township from Dearborn county, Indiana. The.remaining entire boundary on the west - and on the north, too, is also the Great Miami river, dividing Miami from Whitewater township. Next east of the township, along its entire border in this direction, is Green township; and on the south are the Ohio river, separating it from Kentucky, and a mile's breadth of the northwest part of Delhi township.

The township lies in fractional ranges one and two, town one of each. It has but nine full sections, all of them in range two, and none in the peninsula below North Bend and Cleves; but has twenty-two fractional sections, and thus secures a very respectable amount of territory. Its acres count up fourteen thousand and fiftyseven. Its extreme length is on the eastern border and for about three-fourths of a mile in the interior - just six sections, this strip being included between the same parallels which bound Green township on the north and south. The shortest length is between the point of the elbow of the Great Miami, at the south end of Cleves, and the Ohio river about two-thirds of a mile. The greatest breadth is on a line crossing the township east and west from the northernmost point in the great bend of the Ohio, from which North Bend is named, not quite six miles; the shortest is on the extreme north line, between the Great Miami and the northeast corner of the township - three-quarters of a mile. From the east line of the township to the meridian drawn from the southwest corner that is, the State line, the distance is over seven miles, and from the southwest corner - the extreme end of the peninsula - to the northeast corner is just ten miles. Miami is thus seen to be avery singularly shaped township, deeply indented on the south side by the Ohio river, and on the north and west in several places by the windings of the Great Miami.

Within Miami township the Ohio receives from the northward the waters of Muddy creek and the west fork of Muddy, the latter of which lies altogether in the southeastern part of this township; also Indian creek, which enters the river at North Bend station, and several minor streams. Along the northwestern borders of the township flows the South fork of Taylor's creek, leaving the township at the northwest corner, just opposite to which, at the northwest corner, the main stream of Taylor's creek, flowing down from Colerain township, discharges its waters. A mile due north of Cleves Jordan creek debouches also into the Great Miami, after flowing nearly three-fourths of the way across the township. One or two petty and probably unnamed brooks are also affluents of this river on the Miami side. Beside this river, above Cleves, the valley is wide and low, yielding great crops of corn in favorable seasons; below Cleves Ritenhouse Hill, Fort Hill, and the general ridge between the two rivers close down pretty closely upon the banks of the streams, until their junction is neared, when the country again becomes low and flat, and subject in part to frequent overflow. The highlands continue along the Ohio to the southeast boundaries of the township; but have ample room at the foot for the tracks of the railroads, a fine wagon road, and the sites of several villages and railway stations. They afford many picturesque views up and down the river, and across to the Kentucky shore; and some of the finest suburban residences in the county, as that of Dr. Warder near North Bend, have consequently been located upon these heights. The general character of the hill country of Hamilton county is maintained to the northward and westward until the valley of the Great Miami is reached - much broken and diversi-

*fied, however, by the numerous streams that cut through and down the hills. Across them, from the direction of Cincinnati, comes in the Cleves turnpike, having the village of that name on the west for its terminus. There is a singular scarcity of north and south roads in the township, but a sufficiency of highways, with a general direction of east and west. The Ohio & Mississippi, and the Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis & Chicago railroads run parallel to each other and to the bank of the Ohio in this township until just past North Bend station, where the track of the latter diverges rapidly to the northward, passes under the ridge between North Bend and Cleves by a tunnel, and leaves the township, going westward, by a bridge over the Great Miami, half a mile northwest of Cleves. The Ohio & Mississippi continues its course along the Ohio beyond North Bend about five miles, to a point about half a mile above the mouth of the Great Miami, when it passes into Indiana.

The first officers of the Miami township, named by appointment of the court at the time of its erection, were in part as follows: Lynde Elliott, clerk; Darius C. Orgutt, overseer of roads; Henry Brazier, overseer of the poor. The cattle brand for the township was fixed by the court as the letter D.

On the twenty-fourth of April, 1809, the governor of the State commissioned Garah Markland and Stephen Wood as justices of the peace for the township of Miami, each to serve during a term of three years.

We have also the following memoranda of justices elected by the people in later years: 1819, John Palmer, Daniel Bailey; 1825, William Harrell, James Martin; 1829, John Scott Harrison, J. L: Watson, Isaac Morgan; 1865, John D. Matson, A. R. Lind; 1866, A. R. Lind, James Carlin; 1867-9, James Carlin, James Herron; 1870-2, James Carlin, William B. Welsh, 1873-4, James Carlin, James Herron, William Ayr; 1875, Carlin and Ayr; 1876-8, William Jessup, A. R. Lind; 1879-80, Carlin and Lind.

The famous ancient work which gives the name to Fort Hill, near the Great Miami river, is an irregular enclosure surrounding about fifteen acres, It is between the brows of precipitous ascents two hundred and sixty feet high on the Miami side and two hundred feet high towards the Ohio, which is about a mile distant; and is in a position well calculated for outlook and defence. The wall is now about three feet high, is composed of

Christopher Flinchpaugh

Christopher Flinchpaugh, born April 26, 1799 in Wurtemburg, Europe. Jacob, his father, was a common farmer; Agnes Phyle, his mother was of common stock. Both his parents died when Christopher was a young man of fifteen summers, he coming to, America in 1817, landing in Philadelphia. Out of a family of three brothers and two sisters, all of whom are dead, he was the youngest. One of the great associations and memorable events of his life, is the vivid recollection of Napoleon's campaign in 1816. The great disaster which followed his retreat, the Cossacks, the Russians, the Prussians, the French - left food scarce, and distress followed which beggars description. i

Christopher, who was a passenger, worked his way in a sail vessel which was three months and two weeks in crossing. At the end of the journey, he worked one year and six months to repay the expense. However, the agreement to school Christopher nine months, furnish him with two suits of clothes from head to foot, and forty dollars in money, was not kept and our young German failed to receive his reward.

Previous to his marriage in the spring of 1821 to Elizabeth Columbia, he worked at stilling in Miamitown for one year and six months for Major Henrie. His wife was born December 20, 1801, was of Welsh extraction, and whose father was a Revolutionary soldier. By this marriage five sons and seven daughters were born: Jacob, Henrietta, the Lutheran faith; was baptized in infancy, and confirmed when fourteen years of age, but of practical religion he knew nothing. Educationally, , he had eight years of schooling, but being of a careless disposition, failed to read English. During his employment in the - distillery at Miami, he received the first impressions of sin, while work- = : ing a copper still. But [=== the first convictions of clouds over head, and when the devil tempted him to cease preaching, he came from Venice, where he preached in a cooper-shop in the morning, and in the evening at a school-house, to his home a distance of twelve miles. He had had his breakfast and went without dinner and supper. Coming home about g or 10 o'clock, and reflecting on his hard trials, and tempted to retire from the ministry, their came a voice - a song of angels from Heaven singing, '' How happy are they,"' exhorting him to continue. In all his he memorable life, neither has seen or heard so much melody, so great a choir, and so much of God's power to save. The matter of recompense was very small and distance in circuit very great. One circuit was four hundred miles in length, and consisted of thirty-two appointments.

_ Sometime in 184r or 1842, a call was made to goto Germany. For six months he debated and prayed over the question, and at one time was tempted to drive God's spirit away by drink, but finally, on account of lack of funds, did not leave America. He regrets now his failure to accept the call, but God forgives him. Once while i visiting a layman - which is a dream - he was invited by the member to ih go out and see his sheep.

At different periods he travelled from Pittsburgh to the north of Portsmouth Evansville. The presiding elder''s office was held and common preaching done everywhere. Both German and English pulpits were fillled, and both English and German converts baptized and taken into the church.

One unacquainted with pioneer life; the travelling through swamp and i bog; through forest and th stream, and all their difti ferent parts, knows nothing of early ministerial preaching.

The following are persons and where they were baptized: one hundred children, twenty persons in Ohio river, twenty persons in Mill creek, sixty persons in Taylor's creek, ten persons in Muddy creek fifty persons in Big Miami, \ river, ten persons in Loesi gan creek, seventy per- ' sons in Johnson's fork, fifty persons in Dry fork, five persons in Indian

'sin hung overhead, and in =S \ eS s in one year and six months ew A . creek, ry ee he after he was converted. Ey = <S RA . Elk creek, fifty perso

But previous to this time a few months, he joined the United Brethren a TESS church, under the influence of Rosalia Fageley, a pious woman in whose house the meeting was held. He passed from a rough, blasphemous character to a minister of the gospel. Being of a determined nature, full of good impulses, he grasped the hand of all alike - the « wicked and good - and implored them to turn to Christ. His conversion was in a cornfield while plowing corn, and from thence, the Sunday following, by agreement with the still-house hands, he preached his first sermon in Chamberstown, in Miami, Great results followed, and from thence he preached to many distinguished men. Among his audience at different times were General Harrison, Governor Bebb, Daniel Howell, the first male child in Miami township, and many others who long since have passed to their reward. Soon after beginning to preach in 1824, he was licensed by the United Brethren church, and travelled throughout the country, preaching in barns and log dwelling houses. :

Now, in old age, after a life fulf of great trial, and one ladened with the choicest fruits, he, though not wealthy, but left in good circumstances, is left without a helpmeet. About him, all up and down the country, are hosts of friends. Many are in Heaven and many more are homeward bound. To him God has been gracious; life with him has been a success. God, he fully believes, called him to preach. Every one to his notion is selected by his Master to go forth and meet sin.

The forest has faded before his ax as well as immorality. May God continue to bless him in the future as in the past. The present z short, but the future will find him in the best calling in our © and.

stone and earth, and has a narrow gateway at the northeast corner, near a rocky tract on the hillside. There are prominent salients or bastions at both the northeast and southeast corners. A ditch upon the inside follows the wall throughout. A spring within would keep a besieged force well supplied with water, and a channel of another stream also intersects the wall, which might be damned in case of rainfall. The tableland within the fort is ten to twenty feet above the wall, the earth in which was scooped from the brow of the hill, while the stone was also collected from the locality. The former farm of Genetal Harrison approached near the fort by its west line; and the residence of his son, the Hon. J. Scott Harrison, was directly south of the work. The former in his discourse on the Aborigines of the Valley of the Ohio, delivered before the Historical Society of Ohio in 1838, printed in its transactions and also separately, thus uses this ancient work by way of illustration in an argument for the high antiquity of the Mound Builders' remains:

The sites of the ancient works on the Ohio present precisely the same appearance as the circumjacent forest. You find on them all the beautiful variety of trees which gives such universal richness to our forests. This is particularly the case on the fifteen acres included within the walls of the work at the mouth of the Great Miami, and the _ relative proportions of different kinds of timber are about the same. The first growth, on the same kind of land, once cleared and then abandoned to nature, on the contrary is more homogeneous after stinted to one or two, or at most three kinds of timber.

The engineers who directed the executing of the Miami work, appear to have known the importance of flank defences. And if their bastions are not as perfect as to form, as those which are in use in modern engineering, their position, as well as that of the long lines of curtains, are precisely as they should be.

I have another conjecture as to this Miami fortress. If the people of whom we have been speaking were really the Aztecs,.the direct course of their journey to Mexico, and the facilities which that mode of retreat would afford, seem to point out a descent of the Ohio as the line of that retreat. This position (the lowest which they appear to have fortified on the Ohio), strong by nature and improved by the expenditures of great labor, directed by no inconsiderable degree of skill, would be the last hold they wauld occupy and the scene of their last efforts to retain possession of the country they had so long inhab- -ited. The interest which every one feels who visits this beautiful and interesting spot, would be greatly heightened if he could persuade himself of the reasonableness of my deductions, from the facts I have stated. That this elevated ridge, from which are now to be seen flourishing little villages and plains of unrivalled fertility, possessed by a people in the full enjoyment of peace and liberty, and all that peace and liberty can give - whose nations, like those of Spata, have never seen the smoke of an enemy's fire - once presented a scene of war, and war in its most horrid form, where blood is the object and the deficiencies of the field are made up by the slaughter of innocence and imbecility. That it was here a feeble band was collected, remnant of mighty battles fought in vain, to make a last effort for the country of their birth, the ashes of their ancestors and the altars of their gods; that the crisis was met with fortitude and sustained with valor, need not to be doubted. The ancestors of Quitlavaca and Gautimozin, and their devoted followers could not be cowards.

Fort Finney

This work, the first erection for human habitation made by white men upon the territory afterwards covered by the Miami purchase, except only the transient blockhouses erected by the war parties of Kentuckians upon the site of Cincinnati, stood upon the soil of Miami township, in the point of the peninsula. It was upon the west bank of a small creek, about three-quarters of a mile above the mouth of. the Little Miami, and near the mouth of the creek, not far from what is now the southeast: corner of the former farm of the late John Scott Harrison. The site is still pointed out by residents of that neighborhood, and a writer in 1866 said that some' remais of the fort were then still to be seen, though they have riow wholly disappeared.

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

The Indian Period

A party of men residing at the Point (mouth of Big Miami), were returning from a small mill near North Bend, and with one exception, stopped at the old log house lately occupied by Andrew McDonald, where a tavern was then kept; and as this was before the days of temperance societies, it is a very fair inference that they stopped to take a drink. One man (Demoss), more temperate, perhaps, than his fellows, continued on his way up the hill - the trace to the Point then running over the hill, near the old graveyard, and on the bluff of the ridge. The revelers had hardly time to accomplish the object of their stop before the report of a rifle was heard on the hill. The party at the tavern, supposing it was only an intimation from their more sober companion to cease their revels and continue their way home, rushed out of the house with a wild whoop, mounted their horses, and rode up the hill. But what must have been the horror of the party, on arriving at the crown of the hill, to find their companion dead and weltering in his blood! The undischarged rifle of Demoss, and the missing mealbag, too plainly explained the manner and cause of his death. Pursuit was immediately given, in a northwesterly direction, and the meal, but not the Indian, found. The Indian, in order to save his own life, had dropped that which had evidently incited him to commit the murder.

This tale of Indian murder has always had a peculiar personal interest to me. My mother, then unmarried and living with her father, Judge Symmes, at North Bend, had been on a riding excursion (horseback, of course), to the Point, the very afternoon of this murder, and has often told me that the horses of their party were still at the door after their return, when the fatal shot that killed Demoss was plainly heard. My mother was always under the impression that the Indian saw her party pass, but that bread, rather than blood, was the object of the murderer, in Miami township, and thé third in the Miami purchase, was made, as all careful readers of this work well know by this time, by Judge John Cleves Symmes - not at the mouth of the Great Miami, as he intended, and as General Harmar and others expected, but at North Bend. Who Judge Symmes was, in his family origin and early career, and what were his preliminary movements before reaching the Purchase with his colony, are narrated in