Whitewater Township (part 3 of 17)

Berea Cemetery

At the old chapel is the oldest burying-ground in the township.. The land was donated by Ezekiel Hughes, esq., in 1805, and deeded to the Berea Union trustees. The lots are all sold, and held by parties in this and adjoining townships. Here is the grave of Daniel G. Howell, esq., who was born in the block-house at North

1866. He was the first white child born in North Bend or Miami township, where he always resided, an honored and useful citizen and a devoted Christian. On a large upright slab of Italian marble is the following inscription: "Jonas Frazee. A soldier of the Revolution; a native of Westfield, New Jersey, born 1759, died 1858 - erected by the citizens." A beautiful marble pyramid marks the grave of Colonel Benjamin Cilley, a native of New Hampshire, who died in 1857, aged sixty-two years. The family monuments of Ezekiel Hughes, esq., Rev. B. W. Chidlaw, Edward Hunt, esq., and John V. Chamberlain, plain and substantial, beautify the secluded home of the dead.

In the graveyard attached to the Presbyterian church at Elizabethtown are the honored graves of the Hunts, Bonhams, Haires, Rees, Lebow, Hayes, Guards, and other pioneer families, with monuments designating the 'spot containing their sacred dust.

Whitewater Villages

Cadberry was a pioneer town, laid out by Henry Cadberry in 1802 - one of the very first to be planted in this State west of the Great Miami. It was in Hamilton county, but that still stretched far to the northward. Cadberry may, or may not, have been within the limits of the old-Whitewater township, laid out the next year, or of the present Whitewater.

Shrewsbury was another village, now utterly extinct, platted in 1803 by John Bucknell, upon the Great Miami river, but on which side we are as yet unable to learn, and so cannot locate it certainly in Whitewater township.

Miamitown is situated upon the north half of section six, in the northeastern part of the township, at the point where the Cincinnati and Harrison turnpike crosses the Great Miami, fifteen miles from ifs mouth. It is opposite to the southwest corner of Colerain township, upon which stood Campbell's station during the period of Indian warfare. Miamitown was laid eff un the twentysecond of April, 1816, by Arthur Henry. It is thus noticed in the Ohio Gazetteer of 1819: "This town promises to become a place of considerable business." In the Gazetteer of 1841 it is said to have contained one hundred and eighty-seven inhabitants, thirty-three dwellings, one flouring- and saw-mill, one distillery, two taverns, three stores and several mechanics' shops. The macadamized turnpike to Cincinnati and the bridge across the Miami, ''with two arches of.one hundred and sixty feet span each," are noticed. It enjoyed a daily mail. It had one hundred and thirteen inhabitants in 1830, one hundred and eighty-seven in 1840, two hundred and twentythree in 1850, and two hundred and seventy-five in 1880. At a celebration of the Fourth of July here, in 1817, General Harrison read the Declaration of Independence and offered the following toast: 'May the fertile banks of the Miami river never be disgraced by the culture of a slave, or the revenue they afford go to enrich the coffers of a despot" - which was quite pronounced antislavery sentiment for those days and for a native Virginian.

Elizabethtown, as we have seen, was settled as early as 1806, but was not platted as a village until April 15, 1817, when the town was ushered into being by the hands of Isaac Mills.* In later days it has been found necessary, in order to meet the requirements of the post office department, to give the name Riverdale to the post office here. It does not seem to have been noticed in the State Gazetteer of 1819, but in that of 1841 the following is said of it: "The Whitewater canal passes through this place. It contains several stores, two taverns, one meeting-house, and one hundred and twenty inhabitants." Eleven: years before, by the census of 1830, it had one hundred and thirty-two inhabitants. It had two hundred in 1880. ¢

Berea was a little place laid out about the site of the Berea meeting-house, in 1817, by Samuel Pottinger. It was never much more than a "'paper town."

Valley Junction is not a surveyed town, but simply the point of union of the two railroads that intersect the township. It has a station-house and two or three dwellings.

Hunt's Grove, on the line of the Whitewater Valley railroad, near the junction of the Whitewater and the Dry fork, is not a village, but a very pleasant locality, famous as a resort for picnics.

Population, Etc

Whitewater had one thousand five hundred and seventy-four inhabitants by the last census. In 1879 the assessed value of its lands, lots, and improvements, was seven hundred and sixty-one thousand four hundred dollars; of its chattel property, one hundred and ninety thousand seven hundred and forty-four dollars; and the amount of the tax duplicate fer the year was therefore nine hundred and fifty-five thousand one hundred and forty-four dollars.

Biographical Sketch Ezekiel Hughes

Ezekiel Hughes was the descendant of an ancient and honorable family in the parish of Llanbrynmair, Montgomeryshire, North Wales, Great Britain. The first of his ancestors was Evan ap Owen Fach, who died in 1680. His son, Hugh Evan ap Owen, died in 1720, and was succeeded by his eldest son Edward, who, according to the Welch custom, took for his surname the given name of his father, and henceforth the name of Hughes became the surname of the family. Edward Hughes was succeeded by his eldest son, Richard, born in 1700, and he by his son, William, born in 1725, and he by his son, Richard, who married Mary Jones, of Pen-y-bout, in the same parish. They had three children: William, Ezekiel, and Martha. The family, for over two hundred

*There was another town in Hamilton county, bearing the name of Elizabeth, laid off in 1847 by Daniel Reeder; but we are unable to locate it in any of the townships.

years, had lived on a large farm called Cum Carnedd Uchaf, leased from Sir Watkin William Wynne, the great land proprietor in North Wales. The family owned three farms in the same parish; but the leasehold was so valuable that, for all these years and to this day, they have lived on a rented farm. In accord with the rights of primogeniture, William, the eldest son, became, at the death of his father, in 1807, owner of the reale' >, and continued on the leasehold. Ezekiel Hughes was born August 22, 1767. His father gave him a good education, sending him to Shrewsbury, where a good school was found, that he might acquire the English language. At the age of eighteen he was apprenticed to learn watch and clock making at Machynlleth. His venerable father encouraged him to visit the United States with the view of selecting and purchasing a large tract of land for hisfuture home. In April, 1795, with a good outfit and in company with his cousin, Edward Bebb (father of Honorable William Bebb, late governor of Ohio), sailed in the ship Maria, of Salem, Massachusetts, reaching Philadelphia after a tempestuous and tedious voyage of thirteen weeks. He remained in this city and vicinity for nearly a year. Congress being in session, he improved his time by acquiring a knowledge of the government and the laws of the country, and preparing for an exploring tour beyond the Alleghanies. In the spring of 1796, he left Philadelphia for the west. He travelled on foot, passing through a Welsh settlement at Ebensburgh, Cambria county, Pennsylvania, he reached Red Stone Old Fort (Brownsville, Pennsylvania), thence on a flatboat to Fort Washington (Cincinnau). This journey was performed in three months. by his trusty and faithful friend, Edward Bebb, explored the Symmes purchase, and bought one hundred acres in section thirty-four, Colerain township, then an almost unbroken forest. Here these two adventurers built a cabin and cleared a few acres, and spent their time cultivating the virgin soil, hunting, and exploring the regions beyond the Great Miami river. In 1800 this great and fertile domain was surveyed, and in 1801 offered, by the United States, for sale. Mr. Hughes purchased two sections, Nos. 15 and 16, in Whitewater township, paying for it two dollars and five cents per acre. Having secured this fine body of land, he returned to Wales in 1803, and married Miss Margaret Bebb, and in 1804 returned with his bride to their new home on the west bank of the Miami river. In less than a year his estimable wife died, and her remains were the first interred in the Berea cemetery, a beautiful spot donated by Mr. Hughes for a home of the dead. In 1805 he was again united in marriage with Miss Mary Ewing, born in Northumberland county, Pennsylvania, June 11, 1785. Her parents, Thomas aad Ann Ewing, were from the north of Ireland, staunch Presbyterians. Her father was a soldier of the Revolutionary army, and participated in several battles. He was one of the early settlers of Whitewater township, lived to an advanced age, and his grave is on the farm which he owned near the Cleves bridge. Mr. Hughes leased most of his valuable lands. He was a kind and generous landlord, highly esteemed by all of his tenants; always ready to help poor, honest, and industrious men. They had a family of six sons and four daughters. Ann, the eldest, was born March 6, 1806, married Edward Hunt in 1830, and has two sons - Thomas H., Jacob H., and Mary. Richard was born in 1808, married Elizabeth Elder, died in 1850, leaving one son, Ezekiel, and six daughters - Elizabeth, Mary, Martha, Margaret, Frances, and Rebecca C. Jane was born in 1810, and is new residing on the old homestead. Thomas was born in 1812, married Jane Bond and lives in Kansas. William was born in 1814, married Amarilla Robinson. He died in Iowa, in 1845, leaving one daughter - Martha H. Hughes. John was born in 1816, studied medicine, and was a successful practitioner in this neighborhood for over thirty years. He married Mary B. Clark, and died in 1880, leaving two sons, William and Richard, and three daughters, Frances, Eliza- Martha was born in 1818, and lives on the old homestead. Edward was born in 1820, married Miss Mary Davis, and has a family of three sons, William, John, and Edward, and three daughters, Alice, died in 1840, a very estimable and promising young man. Rebecca was born in 1826, married Rev, B. W. Chidlaw and has a family of four daughters - Martha, who died in 1876; Mary I., Ann, and Jane Carter, and three sons - John, Benjamin, and James H. At his death, the estate, as divided by Mr. Hughes, was inherited by his children, and remains to this day, after the lapse of so many years, in their possession. In 1820, Mr. Hughes suffered a severe fall while descending the steps of the First Presbyterian church, on Main street, Cincinnati, which lamed him for life. Educated in the Christian faith and encouraged by the godly example of his pious parents, he, early in life, embraced the religion of Jesus Christ, and lived a useful, happy Christian life, leaving for his large family the inheritance of a good name, and on the second of September, 1849, died the death of the righteous in a good old age, full of years, and was gathered to his fathers. His bereaved widow continued to reside at the old homestead, surrounded by the comforts of life and the society of her children, until her death, October 2, 1857, aged seventy-two years. She commanded her household in the love and fear of God, and her children arise and call her blessed. '

Supplementary Matter

The following biographies, settlement notes and other paragraphs have been received since the chapters of this volume, to which they severally belong, went to press:

Source changes here: from History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio, by Various, published 1894; 233,449 words in this source stream.

Biographical

lt) Soh oe oe OE OAR Dea 458-463 CHAPTER XXXIX. APPENDIX. Census of Cincinnati City and Hamilton County, 1890.............0.... 0 ce cece eee eee 464-465 PART IL BIOGRAPHICAL.

Miscellaneous

Biographiespertainin esto Cincinnatile: «am peter terse cls oiler cr fy eee aire ere 469- 923 Biographies of Hamilton County, outside of Cincinnati......................--.000-- 923-1042 MISCELLANEOUS.

Introductory

WHEN Hamitron County was ERECTED, AND By Wuom - Its BounDARIES, AREA AND PorpuLaTION - Wuy CINCINNATI was sO NamMED - StT..CLAIR THE First TERRITORIAL GOVERNOR - Wuo He Was, WHat He Dip anp How HE DIep.

| a ere COUNTY, of which Cincinnati is the seat, was created by proclamation issued by Gen. Arthur St. Clair, governor of the Northwest Territory, January 4, 1790. The proclamation is dated January 2nd, but it was not promulgated until the 4th. The former date, however, is generally accepted as the official beginning of its existence. Hon. John Cleves Symmes, the original purchaser of a large tract of Miami lands, and who had reached the territory in advance of the governor, claimed that he was given the privilege of naming the county, and he chose the name of Hamilton, in honor of Alexander Hamilton, then Secretary of the Treasury. At the same time Governor St. Clair gave to the village the name of Cincinnati, in lieu of that pedantic compound, ' L'Os-anti-ville,"' which had been invented by John Filson.

In the '"' Life and Public Services of Arthur St. Clair,'' his accomplished biographer informs us that the governor, secretary and the judges were old Revolutionary soldiers, and most of them were members of the Society of the Cincinnati. Washington, Hamilton and St. Clair were original and prominent members of that society, and personal friends. The name of Washington, therefore, was given to the first county formed in Ohio, and that of his distinguished aid to the second. And what is more natural, too, tban that the military, social and benevolent society which was organized after the war, in which they were conspicuous figures, for the purpose of perpetuating the memory of that struggle for freedom, and affording aid to the survivors, should also be remembered by St. Clair in naming what is now a great city ?

"And to carry out this idea, in a short time, the name of St. Clair was given to the third (now in Illinois) county, and that of Gen. Knox, who was concerned in the drafting of the charter of the society, to the fourth, by Secretary Sargent, who took good care to see that his own chief was not neglected in the records.

The original boundaries of Hamilton county were as follows: Beginning at the mouth of the Little Miami; thence down the Ohio river to the mouth of the Big Miami, and up said stream to the Standing Stone Forks; thence in a straight line due east to the Little Miami, then down that stream to the place of beginning.

This vast district comprised about one-eighth of the present State of Ohio. In a short time the following counties were created out of territory which originally belonged to Hamilton: Clermont, 1800; Montgomery, 1803; Warren, 1803; Greene, 1803; Butler, 1804; Champaign, 1805; Miami, 1807; Preble, 1808; Darke, 1809; Clinton, 1810. As now constituted, Hamilton is bounded on the east by Clermont, south by the Ohio river, the line being low-water mark on the north side, west by Dearborn county, Indiana, and north by Butler and Warren counties. The present area is about 3554 square miles, or 227,516 acres. The county has the largest city, and is the most populous and wealthy in the State.

Settlements within the present limits of the county - principally along the river - were made two years before its erection by Gen. St. Clair, and many thrilling adventures and narrow escapes occurred, which will be found fully described in the chapters to follow.

The county having been established by proclamation, the next step was the announcement by the governor of the appointment of court officers, in order that the wheels of justice might be set in motion. Officers were appointed and courts established at Cincinnati much in the same manner [St. Clair Papers, Vol. I, p. 162] they were at Marietta, Washington county, September 2, 1788. On that occasion an impressive ceremony was observed by the Territorial officials. At Cincinnati William Goforth, William Wells and William McMillan were appointed judges of the Court of Common Pleas and Justices of the Court of General Quarter Sessions of the Peace. Israel Ludlow was made clerk of the several courts, and Cincinnati was declared to be the county seat. In addition to the foregoing, the following appointments were also made: Jacob Topping, Benjamin Stites and John Stites Gano, Justices of the Peace; John Brown, gentleman, Sheriff. Military officers were also named.

Having performed this duty, the governor issued a proclamation on the 5th of January, 1790, directing that '' the Justices of the Peace hold their courts of General Quarter Sessions of the Peace at the town of Cincinnati, on the first Tuesdays in February, May, August and Nevember; and the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas hold their courts at the same place on the first Thursdays of May and November." Thus was the civil government of Hamilton county organized one hundred and four years ago.

The governor then hurried down the river to the Falls, where he arrived on the Sth, made some appointments for Clarksville, and then hastened on to Kaskaskia, where he arrived March 5, 1790. After some preliminary business, a proclamation was issued erecting the county of St. Clair April 27, 1790. Judicial officers were also appointed. This was the third county erected in the Northwest Territory. The hostile attitude of the savages of this great domain caused the governor much uneasiness, and how to appease them was the problem that perplexed him.

When Governor St. Clair arrived at Losantiville [Cincinnati] the settlement consisted of two small hewed log houses and several cabins. Maj. Doughty, under orders from Gen. Harmar, was engaged with a small military force in finishing the construction of Fort Washington. The population of the rude village, exclusive of the military, probably did not exceed one hundred and fifty. The surroundings were in the primitive condition of nature. Painted savages lurked in the forests ready to pounce upon any one who should incautiously stray beyond the lines of protection. and tomahawk and scalp him in thetwinkling of an eye. The outlook was not encouraging, but the hardy pioneers had faith in what was in store for them in the future, and they were not disappointed.

Gen. St. Clair, who was appointed governor of the Northwest Territory by vote of Congress October 5, 1787, filled the office until November 22, 1802, when he was peremptorily removed by President Jefferson, on account of political intrigue and his acrimonious address before the Territorial Legislature at Chillicothe in November, 1800. Much of the ill feeling prevailing against him had its origin in Cincinnati, after the seat of government was removed from that place to Chillicothe. The letter of dismissal directed that he should turn over the office to Charles Willing Byrd, the secretary, until a successor could be designated. William Henry Harrison, then the Delegate in Congress, was appointed to succeed him. But as Congress about that [St. Clair Papers, vol. I, p. 245] time divided the Northwest Territory, Gen. Harrison was assigned to the Territory of Indiana.

The immense region over which St. Clair so long presided as Territorial governor was long since formed into five great States, and they are now all populous, prosperous and rich.

This brief introductory chapter would not be complete without telling something of the history of the man who created Hamilton county, served so long as governor of the Territory, and finally died in poverty on account of the ingratitude of the government he served long and brilliantly during the Revolutionary struggle.

Who was Arthur St. Clair? He was a Scot by birth, born in the town of Thurso, in Caithness, Scotland, March 23, 1786. After receiving a fair education he was indentured to Dr. William Hunter, of London, but not liking the study of medicine, purchased his time, obtained an ensign's commission and came to America with Amherst in 1758, landing at Louisburg in May of that year. He was assigned to the command of Wolfe, who had been selected to reduce Quebec, and took a conspicuous part in that brilliant engagement. He shared in all the Jabors and privations of the campaign which resulted in the defeat of the French and the passage of Canada under British rule. :

After the close of the war he retired to Boston, where he soon after married Miss Phoebe Bayard, half sister of Governor James Bowdoin. By this marriage he received the sum of £14,000, being a legacy to his wife from her grandfather, James Bowdoin. In April, 1762, he resigned his commission, and soon after located in what isnow Westmoreland county, Penn. When Indian hostilities broke out he took an active part against the savages. In 1764 he resided with his young wife at Bedford for a short time, and they then took up their residence in Ligonier Valley, where he had acquired a large tract of land, partly by purchase and partly by grant by the King, for his services in the French war. The fine stretch of valley land where the town of Ligonier now stands was a part of the tract located by St. Clair. In 1769 he commanded Fort Ligonier. He actively engaged in improving his land, built a fine residence, and a mill, and the future outlook was bright and promising. In April, 1770, he was appointed surveyor for the District of Cumberland, which then embraced the western part of the State.

A month later the offices of Justice of the Court of Quarter Sessions and Common Pleas, and Member of the Proprietary, or Governor's Council, for Cumberland county, were conferred on him. When Bedford county was erected, in 1771, Governor Penn made him a Justice of the Court, Recorder of Deeds, Clerk of the Orphan's Court, and Prothonotary of the Court of Common Pleas for that county.

During Dunmore's war, St. Clair arrested Connolly, the factotum of the irascible Virginia official, at Fort Pitt, and jailed him at Hannastown, then the seat of West- moreland county, which had been erected in 1773, and of which he was the recipient of appointments similar to those held in Bedford. Lord Duomore demanded: his removal for this act, but Governor Penn refused, saying that St. Clair was a. 'gentleman'? and a competent official, and reminded him that his demand was. '*somewhat dictatorial. "'

On the breaking out of the Revolution he was commissioned a colonel, having warmly espoused the cause of the Colonies, and asked to repair at once to Philadelphia. He did so, though the sacrifice was great; he abandoned his improvements and 700 acres of beautiful land, and, as it afterward proved, his fortune. This was in December, 1775. He entered the army with enthusiasm, and participated in many engagements. The full account of his brilliant and patriotic service is too. long to insert here. In July, 1776, he was made a brigadier-general, and on the 19th of February following a major general. He participated in the campaign of the Jerseys, and shared in the horrors of Valley Forge; he was the bosom friend of Washington, who, when Arnold's treason was discovered, directed him to take the command at West Point, ''and,'' remarks his biographer, ''it became his sad duty, as a member of the court, to try Major Andre, the victim of Arnold's trea-on, to declare that that meritorious and virtuous officer had incurred the penalty of death."

When the revolt of the Pennsylvania Line occurred at Morristown, January 1, 1781, St. Clair, who was at Philadelphia, hastened to the scene with Lafayette, and by good advice did much to quell the spirit of insubordination. Afterward he was sent to the army in the South, and was present at the surrender of Cornwallis. From there he was sent to the aid of Gen. Greene in South Carolina with six regiments and ten pieces of artillery.

The war over, St. Clair returned to his family in Pennsylvania. During 1783 he was engaged in closing up the accounts and furloughing the veteran soldiers, and he had trouble with the new levies stationed at Lancaster, who refused to accept their discharges without pay, marched to Philadelphia and threatened to mob Congress, but he was largely instrumental in quieting them, and they dispersed after giving Congress a great fright.

Having taken up his residence in Philadelphia, St. Clair, in 1783, was elected a member of the Council of Censors, a body provided for in the Constitution of 1776, and charged with the duty of inquiring whether the Constitution had been preserved inviolate, and he became a very active member of the council. He was also elected to the office of Vendue Master of Philadelphia - -an honorable and lucrative position, through which the public revenues were received at that time - - his transactions being with the controller.

In the meantime he was chosen a delegate to Congress from Pennsylvania; on the 20th of February, 1786, he attended that body, and on Friday, February 2, 1787, he was elected its president. ''This,'' says his biographer, '' was a recognition of the ability of the man, rather than the patriotism which made him a soldier of the Revolution, as the work of the session of 1787 was scarcely excelled in importance by the results of that other body, in session at the same time, which gave to America a Constitution."' During this session the famous Ordinance of 1787, erecting the Northwest Territory, was passed. On the day the final vote was taken he was absent from the chair, but had always taken a deep interest in the measure. On the dth of October, 1787, Congress proceeded to elect officers for the new government. Arthur St. Clair was chosen governor; James M. Varnum, Samuel Holden Parsons, and John Armstrong, judges; and Winthrop Sargent, secretary. Mr. Armstrong declining, John Cleves Symmes was afterward appointed to the vacancy. He did not want the office, but his friends insisted that, aside from his capability, the salary might, in part, assist in reimbursing him for his pecuniary sacrifices during the Revolution. Unable to escape the responsibilities of the governorsbip, and realizing that there was yet no congressional legislation fur carrying into effect the ordinance, he improved the earliest opportunity, after the assembling of the first Congress under the Federal Constitution, to secure the necessary actions. In July, 1789, a bill, which had been drafted by St. Clair for the government of the Northwest Territory, was introduced, and passed both houses without opposition. This gave the sanction of Congress to all of the important provisions of the Ordinance of 1787.

While in New York attending to these preliminary duties, and consulting with Gen. Knox, Secretary of War, regarding some plan for the settlement of the Indian troubles, St. Clair had the extreme pleasure of assisting at the inauguration of his old friend, Washington, as the first President of the United States. His name at one time was freely canvassed in connection with the position of Vice-President; and in July, 1789, while he was waiting for the new government, he was asked to stand for the governorship of Pennsylvania.

The greatest misfortune that befell the grand old soldier and governor - though a committee of Congress afterward absolved him from all blame - was his overwhelm. ing defeat by the Indians November 4, 1791, which cast a cloud over his name and fame during the balance of his life. The details of this disaster need not be recited here. Suffice it to say it was terrible, and caused him to resign his commission of major-general and commander-in-chief, which honor had been conferred on him.

While engaged in the service of his country during the Revolution, his private affairs were entirely neglected. In the darkest hours, when the Pennsylvania Line revolted, Washington appealed to St. Clair for aid, and he contributed liberally of his own means to feed and clothe the starving soldiers. When the war closed he endeavored to get this refunded in a settlement of his accounts, but failed on account of some irregularity. The justness of the claim, however, was admitted. He then appealed to the committee on claims in Congress, who reported that the money had been received and expended for the benefit of the United States, but payment was barred by the statute. While acting as superintendent of Indian affairs, it became necessary. in order to carry out the instructions of the Secretary of War, to become responsible for supplies which exceeded in amount the warrants furnished by government, $9,000. When St. Clair sent his accounts to the Treasury department it was disallowed, because the accompanying vouchers were not receipted. When this omission was supplied, the contractor required St. Clair to give his personal bond for the payment of the vouchers. When again presented to the Treasury for pay ment, the vouchers could not be paid because there was no appropriation for debts contracted under the confederation, and before that could be secured, Mr. Hamilton went out of office. Mr. William Henry Smith, in his biography of the old hero, says that he had not been anxious about the matter, and, in 1796, all of the papers were destroyed by fire in the War office.

St. Clair, we are told, finally applied to Congress, where, again, paynrent was refused because of the statute of limitations! The creditor got a judgment on the bond and $5,000 was paid on the debt; but in 1810, execution was issued, at which time the debt had increased, with interest, to $10,000. At that unfavorable moment, when the embargo had driven money out of the country, St. Clair's property was forced to sale; and a most valuable tract of land, on which there was a good mill, a large and well tinished dwelling bouse, and all of the necessary outhouses for a farm, besides a farnace for smelting iron ore, on which St. Clair had laid out about $10,000, and which was rented at the time for $2,400 per annum - all of which was worth fully $50, 000 - a large sum in those days - which would have made him and his family comfortable for the remaining years of his life, was sacrificed to pay a debt which was in no proper sense personal, but was due from the United States. It went under the hammer for $4,090! All of his other property went in the same way, and St. Clair, wife, daughters, and orphan grandchildren were reduced to poverty.

This home, from which they were now driven, was built while St. Clair was governor of the Northwest Territory - about 1799 - and was named by him '' The Hermitage," in fond anticipation of the time when he should be relieved of the cares of state. It was about two miles north of Ligonier. The residence was considered handsome at the time, and the situation was picturesque. A fine trout stream flowed in front of the house through'an expanse of meadow and woodland, with the blue outlines of the mountains visible in the distance, to complete the landscape. In referring, afterward, to the executions which swept away this beautiful home, and all his personal property, St. Clair said: '' They left me a few books of my classical library, and the bust of Paul Jones, which he sent me from Europe, for which I was very grateful."

Was not this forbearance which spared the counterfeit of an old friend, and the means for forgetting the pangs of hunger and the ingratitude of man, sufficient to be grateful for? This was more than the government did - it took the best years of his life and his money, piled debt upon debt, and then, when he sought his own, mocked his gray hairs, and sent him tottering to the grave.

Strenuous efforts were still made by eloquent friends to obtain justice for him at the hands of the government, but a rancorous party feeling stood as a barrier, because he was a Federalist. Such magic orators as Henry Clay and Charles F. Mercer advocated the cause of honesty and right embraced in the duty of government; Willam Henry Harrison, afterward President of the United States, exerted all his influence in his behalf, but nothing was accomplished at the time. That debt was never paid. Finally there was wrung from Congress a pension of $60 per month, but not a dollar of it ever reached St. Clair, for a remorseless creditor seized upon it at the very door of the Treasury.

The loss of his home drove St. Clair to a rude log house on the barren lands of Chestnut Ridge - about five miles from Ligonier - where the few remaining years of his life were spent in poverty. His favorite daughter, Mrs. Louisa Robb, shared his fortunes and cheered him in his closing days of gloom. The humble dwelling stood by the side of the old State road that passed from Bedford to Pittsburgh. Here many visitors were attracted by the fame of the noble resident. Hon. Lewis Cass, who once visited him, said: ''He was a most interesting relic of the Revolutionary period; tall, erect, though advanced in years, well-educated, gentlemanly, thoroughly acquainted with the world, and abounding in anecdotes descriptive of the men and scenes he had encountered in his eventful career."

Hon. Elisha Whittlesey saw him in 1815, as he and three friends were journeying on horseback over the road. They proposed to stop at his house and spend the night. ''He had," says the distinguished traveler, ''no grain for our horses, and after spending an hour with him in the most agreeable and interesting conversation respecting his early knowledge of the Northwestern Territory, we took our leave of him with the deepest regret. I never was in the presence of a man that caused me to feel the same degree of esteem and veneration. He wore acitizen's dress of black of the Revolution; his hair clubbed and powdered. - When we entered he rose with dignity and received us most courteously. His dwelling was a common double log house of the Western country, that a neighborhood would roll up in an afternoon. Chestnut Ridge was bleak and barren. There lived the friend and confidant of Washington, the ex-governor of the fairest portion of creation. It was in the neighborhood, if not in view, of a large estate near Ligonier that he owned at the commencement of the Revolution, and which, as I have at all times understood, was sacrificed to promote the success of the Revolution. Poverty did not cause him to lose his self-respect, and, were he now living, his personal appearance would command universal admiration.''

During the last four years of his life the family were frequently in great want. Pennsylvania, his adopted State, finding that he was in such reduced circumstances, settled an annuity of $300 on him, and, in 1817, increased it to $600. In 1857, thirty-nine years after his death, Congress appropriated a considerable sum for his surviving heirs. How much more graceful, as well as appreciative, it would have been, had the money been appropriated when he was living. The lapse of years could hardly condone the shameful treatment he received at the hands of the Republic he helped to create.

We have seen when and how he was removed from the governorship of the Northwest Territory. Let us hasten on and close this pathetic story of ingratitude.

On one of the closing days of August, 1818 (continues Mr. Smith), the venerable patriot undertook to go to Youngstown, three miles distant, for flour and other necessaries. He bade good-bye to his Louisa, and started off with his pony and wagon, in good spirits. The authorities had changed the State road so that it passed along the Loyalhanna creek, several miles north of the St. Clair residence, and the route to Youngstown was rough and dangerous. Pony and wagon moved along safely until within a mile of the village, when a wheel falling into a rut, the wagon was upset, and the aged general thrown with great force upon the rocky road. In the course of the day he was discovered ]ying where he had fallen, insen-

\sible, and the pony standing quietly at a short distance, awaiting the command of his old master - faithful to the last. He was carried tenderly back to the house, but neither medical skill nor the tender care of loved ones couid restore him, and on the 3lst of August, 1818, death relieved him from his sufferings in the eighty-third year of his age.

Thus passed away, after a long and eventful career, one of the heroes of the Revolution. Ona plain sandstone monument, in the old cemetery at Greensburg, almost in sight from the car windows on the Pennsylvania railroad, is this inscription: ''The earthly remains of Major-General Arthur St. Clair are deposited beneath this humble monument, which is erected to supply the place of a nobler one due from his country."

This was the tribute of the Masonic Order, to which he belonged, and is the only one ever raised to perpetuate his name and memory. As he erected Hamilton county and gave Cincinnati its name, what could be more appropriate, honorable and just, than that great and opulent city erecting a statue of heroic size in memory of the patriot and hero in some public place, to remind the people of the man whose patriotism, generosity and fidelity aided in founding this mighty State? Cincinnati is the liberal patron of art, music and literature; her stately temples, museums, academies. and magnificent fountain, are noble monuments reared by the liberality of her rich and worthy citizens for her adornment and grandeur; let Arthur St. Clair be remembered in marble or bronze, so that the coming generations may be taught who he was, what he did and how he died.

The Mound-Builders

INTRODUCTORY - THE TvRNER Grourp - THE NEWTOWN GROoUP - THE MADISONVILLE REMAINS - Movunp-BvuitpERs at Rep Bank - TuHeE CIncINNATI Works - FortT MIAMI - OTHER Works IN THE CouNTY - THE MouND-BUILDERS AND THE ANCIENT NATIONS OF MEXICO.

O land, which affords so many proofs of a wonderful antiquity as the United States, has so completely lost the story of its past. Italy, Greece, Persia and Egypt not only retain a distinct knowledge of their ancient peoples, and of the great national incidents connected with most of their ruins, but they are still inhabited by the children of those peoples, in whom is reflected something of the character which actuated the deeds of the former time; even Mexico and Central America, our sister lands, are by no means destitute of those legends which

But what was the history of the regal barbarian whose bones were taken from the shapely and lofty tumulus of Grave Creek? Of the industrious communities that dwelt within the massive village-walls of the Ohio Valley? Of those more primeval tribes. the wild comrades of the mastodon, whose grotesque fetich altars rise from the prairies of Iowa and Wisconsin? Of those devotees of a more elaborate religion, whose stately temple-pyramids - their very proportions suggestive of the grandeur of civil power - overlook the lowlands of Louisiana and Mississippi? And who and where are the descendants of the beings who built, used, and tenanted these speechless ruins?

Such questions, which appeal almost as strongly to popular fancy as to philosophic contemplation, allow a wide range of speculation within the limits prescribed by the character of the ruins themselves.

Of recent years, the keen eye of science has discerned the fact that some of the simpler and ruder earthworks of this country, especially mounds, and many burialplaces, are those of tribes differing but little from the Indians of recent times. The discovery, however, has given no new name to that older and peculiarly distinct race that once occupied the southern half of Ohio: whose most remarkably typical works are seen at Marietta, Liberty, Newark, Hopeton and Fort Ancient, and to whom the world has long alluded as "the mysterious Mound-Builders.'' The void which separates them from the present is complete. Not even the faint echoes of language and tradition, which associate the stately temples of the Southern States with the Mexicans, survive in this region, or arise from distant quarters; and the partial record of their mode of life, which has been preserved for centuries in their monuments and less imposing relics, furnishes only a few doubtful clues to the relation borne by the nameless nations to other American peoples, to the date of their existence, or to the causes of their disappearance.

It is among their suggestive remains, nevertheless, that those secrets of the past lie buried, and time alone, which hid them there, can bring them forth.

The territory comprised within the present limits of Hamilton county was inhabited by several communities, which there is little doubt were of this ancient race, as their remains are of the same distinct and singular character as the most notable in the State. In fact, these works have, from the days of the first white pioneers, attracted wide and distinguished interest, and of late years have been examined and discussed by some of the most celebrated archeologists and antiquarian scholars in the country.

The sites occupied by these communities are nearly all in the valleys of the two Miamis--which were peopled for miles upward by kindred communities - and in Jocalities which must have been considered then, as now, the choicest in the land.

The Turner Group. - One of the most favored, in this respect, of the Mound- Builder villages was situated just below the mouth of the East Fork of the Little Miami, upon a spot lying in the northeastern corner of Anderson township, which is well-known to students of archeology throughout the land as the Turner place. About midway between the sweeping and picturesque hills, a considerable knoll rises from the broad, level, and fertile terrace of the valley. This isolated elevation, formed by nature for a strong defensive position, was skillfully fortified by the old villagers. The knoll is cut into three separate hillocks, by two transverse ditches, each from twenty to thirty feet in depth. The level summit of the middle hillock, insulated by these two formidable chasms, was crowned with a circular wall of earth, which, on the southeast side, opened into a gateway a hundred feet wide; from the portals of this opening a broad and commodious causeway descended by a gentle grade to an extensive group of mounds and enclosures upon the broad and level plain below, showing the destination to which the ancient processions were accustomed to march.

Prof. F. W. Putnam, of Harvard College, one of the very ablest of American archeologists, and Dr. C. L. Metz, of this county, who has won high rank in the same pursuit, explored a great part of this place in 1886. The group of mounds in the fields below the causeway proved to be the coverings of numerous altars, upon which lay loads of burnt ornaments - pearls, images in terra-cotta, and even gold and silver articles - all placed there as religious offerings during elaborate and imposing ceremonies. Not far from the mounds was found the cemetery of the people, containing a great number of skeletons incased in stone-boxed graves, and among the graves. several pits filled with ashes instead of skeletons. The same method of combining the rites of cremation and burial was practiced on a still larger scale by another community of the Hamilton county Mound-Builders.

The Newtown Group. - Upon the same extensive terrace, two miles farther down the valley, also in Anderson township, at the foot of the eastern range of hills, in a position well-chosen for an agricultural village, the Martin mound, one of the largest in this part of the State, rises to the majestic height of forty feet above the plain. Within easy view from its tall and solitary summit is an humbler tumulus, standing in the center of the principal cemetery of Newtown. Several other mounds, companions to this, were formerly scattered over the lowland, now covered by the streets of the village. A milesouth of Newtown, in the deep and wooded valley of Jennie's run, is a lonely temple mound; from this point to the Ohio, a distance of several miles, the eastern hills of the Little Miami are crowned with scattered mounds of inferior size, but show none of the unmistakable geometrical earthworks of the Mound-Builders.

The Madisonville Remains. - One of their most populous communities, however, was located just across the valley from Newtown, on a branch of the Western terrace, within sight of the smoke of every village on the eastern side. The location is a mile south of Madisonville, on the Stites and Ferris estates. The earthworks, which consisted of two or three circular embankments, and several large mounds, were guarded on the river side by a precipitous bluff, a hundred feet in descent. During the course of investigation which the Scientific and Literary Society of Madisonville began here in 1879, and which the Peabody Museum completed, hundreds of skeletons and several long rows of ash pits, like the few found on the Turner place, were discovered in the cemetery of the village, which lay along the bluff west of the earthworks. From the great number of burials in the cemetery, it has been estimated that the village contained not less than five thousand inhabitants.

Mound-Builders at Red Bank. - Two miles farther down the Little Miami, upon a high ridge of gravel, which directly overhangs the river, stands a considerable tumulus. Dr. Metz. in his widely-known article, '' The Prehistoric Monuments of the Little Miami Valley,"' refers to a great earthen circle, long since obliterated, and to a burial ground, several acres in area, which occupied the lower plain west of the ridge. Two niiles below this point, the Little Miami empties into the Ohio, whose steep and rugged hills, for five or six miles westward, allow only a very narrow margin to the great stream.

The Cincinnati Works. - At that distance, however, they suddenly open to the northward, bending their way around a plain some two or three miles square, elevated safely above the tremendous freshets of the river, and which in its natural state offered every inducement, as a home, that a thrifty but simple-mannered people seek and demand frum their mother nature.

The local reader hardly needs to be reminded of the oft-quoted descriptions, by pioneer writers, of the earthworks which once stood upon the soil now completely covered by the great city of Cincinnati, and which suggest, if they do not prove, that here was one of the greatest Mound-Builders' towns which ever flourished in the valley of the Ohio. Upon the hill-enclosed plain, only a few hundred feet back from the high bluff which descended to the bottom-land, near the present line of Third street, lay an earthen wall in the form of a great ellipse, covering more space than two squares of the modern city. The gateway of this inclosure, like that of the Turner causeway, opened to the rising sun, and was guarded by two broad parapets. From one of these, a low embankment, about the height and breadth of an ordinary sidewalk, led, first south, then east, to a large mound near the edge of the bluff, at a point now marked by the northeast corner of Thirdand Main. Another low embankment extended clear from the river, between Broadway and Sycamore, curving from Third to Sixth, and another ran from the river in the same manner, 'Cin the western part. of the town." As these descriptions were written when Cincinnati was asmall town, the quarter referred to was probably between Plum and Central avenue. Onthe western verge of the plain, half a mile from the ellipse, stood a lofty mound, which gave a view of Mill creek valley, the course of the Ohio and all the surrounding hillsides. North of the sentinel mound stood a small tumulus, and another yet beyond it. In the middle of Fifth street, near Broadway, was a small circular earthwork, and toward the northern part of the plain was a peculiar double-walled structure, extending seven hundred and sixty feet east and west.

Fort Miami. - Some eighteen miles below Cincinnati, the Great Miami empties into the Ohio, and at the junction of the two valleys, upon a very lofty hill, is a work which so far surpasses all others in the county as a fortification as to tell at once that its occupants, whether they were contemporary with the other communities of the Miami Country, or of a later race and date, held a post of extreme danger.

Prot, Warren K. Moorehead, whose brilliant archeological discoveries have so greatly increased our knowledge of the Mound-Builders of Ohio, thus compares Fort Miami with Fort Ancient, the greatest prehistoric fortification in the United States: '"' The embankment is about the same average size as that of Fort Ancient. It is carried around the brow of the hill, probably the distance of over a mile. The gateways are similar to those of Fort Ancient. The area inclosed is about forty acres. The ditch in all places is on the interior of the wall; in some places it reaches a depth of three feet. * * * Like Fort Ancient, this structure was obviously built for defense."

Other Works in the County. - From the Ohio the Mound-Builders spread up the. valley of the Great Miami, far beyond the limits of this county, and at New Baltimore, on the western side of the river, about sixteen miles above Fort Miami, another of their stopping places is marked by an irregular earthen wall along the stream. A few miles farther north, on the eastern bank, in Colerain township, is a walled inclosure which embraces nearly a hundred acres, the largest area, by far,. comprised by any single work in the county. On the heights near Norwood is a mound rivalling in size the Martin mound of Anderson township. A great number of small mounds, and several cemeteries, scattered through the county, bear witness

The Mound-Builders And The Ancient Nations Of Mexico

Distinct as the works of the Mound-Builders are in type, their characteristics do. not seem sufficient, as yet, to settle beyond all dispute to what family of the North American aborigines the people belonged. The earliest theory which occurred to.

antiquarians, and the one which remains most popular, because of the heroic history which it suggests, is that the true Mound-Builders of the north were the early ancestors of the Nahuas, or Mexicans; that during long ages of forgotten conflict with the advancing red men, they retreated slowly down the valley of the Mississippi, and finally to Mexico. As they went, their civilization grew more and more elaborate; they developed more magnificent institutions of government, a more luxurious state of society, and their arts multiplied toa degree suited to their advanced condition; a new people grew from the old; the rude northern villages were forgotten in the sumptuous cities of the south; instead of patriarchal chieftains, monarchs ruled the commonwealth; and meeting finally the greatest civilized race of America, the Mayas, in the valleys of Mexico, the progressive children of the North added the finishing touches to a culture which even in Montezuma's day, the last of its splendor, still retained some of the elements of its Mound-Builder origin.

It would be difficult to find in all the histories of the old world, even in those parts which are rendered most fascinating by poetic myth and fable, a grander theme for human interest than this imaginary career of the Mound-Builders; even the rise of the Grecian nations, from pastoral times to the glorious Athenian era, is a mere incident of the past in comparison with such a vast romance. Yet the theory, splendid as it may appear to some, is by no means without foundation. There are positive proofs that a race, which spoke the same language and had the same arts and civilization as the Mexicans, once dwelt in the southeastern portion of the United States, whether they came to that region from the North, or from Mexico itself; and the early traditions of the Mexicans affirm that their forefathers entered Mexico from the direction of those very Gulf States.

A connection between these Nahua people of the Southern States and the Mound- Builders of the Ohio Valley is next shown in the design of their religious structures and their sepulchres, the northern circular mounds being sometimes found in the south, and the southern types of pyramids and platform-mounds occasionally appearing in the north. To fill out the story of the migration and progress from north to south, estimates, based upon facts more or less definite, are made to show that the earthworks of the Ohio, and those of the Upper Mississippi, are older by centuries than those along the Gulf of Mexico. As the Nahuas can be traced from the Gulf States to the Ohio Valley by means of the platform-mounds, so they can be followed from Ohio by the circular inclosures and a few "Animal mounds'' to the northwest, where the great mastodon mound of Wisconsin tells of a period, compared with which the hoariest traditions of Mexico grow young.

Whether this dim track of likenesses is to be trusted, or not, in threading the wilderness of the American past, it is certain that the ancient Mound-Builders of Ohio - not least remarkably those of Hamilton county - were just such a people as the Mexicans might have been derived from. In their religious and burial customs, especially, are the rudiments of the same magnificent ceremonies with which the Mexicans worshiped their deities. and bade farewell to their dead. The great chiefs and heroes of the Mound- Builders were covered by the loftiest sepulchres; the sepulchres, rendered holy by the deep reverence of generations, became fit shrines for the worship of posterity, and many a temple rose upon the sacred tombs; often the bones of human beings, no doubt the relics of captives taken in war and sacrificed, are found lying around the skeleton to which the ghastly honors were paid; often the dead were cremated, and their ashes deposited, with solemn rites, in the thickly-planted cemetery of the village; and again, the body which was given back to nature by the tardier process of decay, was so placed in the mausoleum, or the lowlier grave, that the spirit might begin at once its journey to the sunny land of morning or the darker North. All these practices, and others, were as common to the Mexicans as to the Mound-Builders, and were merely enlarged by the grander civilization of the South. In the light of such facts the average observer may easily imagine that the

It is tantalizing to the eager inquirer into this remote mystery to be treated to the startling, yet elusive glimpses which open to his bewildered eye, as new discoyeries flash athwart its depths. One of the most striking, but most baffling of these discoveries, was made by Prof. Moorehead and Dr. Cresson two years ago in the Scioto Valley, near Chillicothe. In exploring the monuments of that region, which seems to have been a central province of the Mound-Builders of Ohio, the two scientists unearthed a thick group of altars, piled with rich ornaments of the Mound- Builder fashion, just as they were given to the flames of sacrifice in far-off days. But among the mass of rude and simple trinkets, among the skeletons of beings that had held the highest rank of their little day and place, the astonished archzologists found a Jarge number of copper articles, of a make and finish never before seen among relics of Mound-Builders' skill. Most of these curiosities were designed for personal ornaments; some were made apparently to represent figures of mystic meaning; several were cut in a style strangely like certain work of the artisans of Mexico and Central America, but the most remarkable of all were forms of the supreme religious symbol of the ancient Mexicans and Mayas - the cross.

There is nothing to prove that these royal decorations, deeply corroded with the green rust of centuries, were manufactured in this country by native Mound- Builders, and if not made by northern hands, the copper images of the cross must have been carried from the distant lands of the South, where the benign Quetzacoat], the Divine Teacher of the New World, was worshiped under that emblem for unknown centuries before the Aztecs, the last immigrants of their race, wandered into the valley of Anahuac from some mysterious northern land. Here speculation grows bewildered. Copper crosses like these might have found their way to the Ohio Valley more than two thousand years ago, when the great Maya city of Nachan was in the prime of its glory; or when the empire of the Olmecs, the first Nahuas in Mexico, had succeeded the sway of the Mayas; or as late as the tenth century of our era, when the dominions of the Mexicans, then called Toltecs, extended far northward into lands that have no name in Mexican history.

And if the ornaments are specimens of one of these vague southern periods, in what manner were they transported hither? Some extraordinary expedition seems to have been the cause of their presence here, for no such articles were ever before found among the hundreds of Mound-Builder sepulchres which have been opened throughout the country. Were they brought in the coffer of some adventurous merchant from one of the opulent cities of the Xicolan or Chiapan coast, and bartered to the rude kings and priests of the Scioto? Did they come with the embassy of some ambitious ruler, who wished to learn if the distant barbarians who bowed before the symbol of his deity, and perhaps spoke his language, were worthy of conquest? Or were they despoiled from some band that came from afar upon a mission of discovery and never returned to tell what they had seen? Conjecture only adds to conjecture.

It may be, then, that the dark past of the Mound-Builders was blended with the shadowy ages of some of the grandest nations of the ancient American world. Perhaps some account of them was recorded in the national books of the Toltecs, or of the Mayas, as the people of the mysterious island of Atlantis were mentioned in the annals of Egypt; but since those records perished more than three centuries ago, despised and unread, in the ruthless fires of the Spanish conquerors, it may well be doubted whether anything of their actual history will ever be rescued from the depths of oblivion. American archeologists and antiquarians, whose zeal and skill are constantly increasing, may at last succeed in tracing their progress from country to country, and from period to period, but the most sanguine investigator can hardly hope that Time will answer more than the two questions: Of what race were the Mound-Builders? In what era did they flourish ?

Chapter Cut

Tue Unrrep Srares in 1786 - Tue Norrawest Trerrirory - Visit To THE Mzamr Country - StTITes AND SymMMEes - ORGANIZATION OF THE First CoLonies - SETTLEMENT OF CoLumBia, LosanrivitueE. anp Norra Benp - Covatt Srarion - Becrnntmn@ oF Inpian Hostiniri1es - Forr Wassineron Buitr - Hamitton County Formep - New Setttements - Inprans Arrack Dunuap's Station - Inpran War- FARE CONTINUED - First Townsuies Formep - MERcERSBURGH - -WHITE'sS STATION - Rvuyyan's Srarion - Wauire's Station Arrackep - lIncorEase oF SETTLEMENTS AND Townsuips - CLosE OF THE FRONTIER PERIOD.

from the United States which to-day commands.the respect of the greatest powers of the world. There were then thirteen States, instead of forty-four; the territory in their possession was not a fourth of what it now is, and their population not one-fifteenth. The States were united more in name than in fact. The Confederate Government, organized toward the close of the Revolution, in the hope of strengthening the bonds of union between the Colonies, had demonstrated its incompetency more clearly every year of its existence. At one time, the executive committee which acted during each adjournment of Congress came to a dead-lock upon an important question, and went home, leaving the country absolutely without a general government; and when at length there began to be violent out-breaks of popular feeling, and even armed insurrection, in resistance to the collection of taxes necessary to discharge the great war debt, Congress proved so powerless that the State most violently threatened with misrule was compelled to depend upon voluntary aid of neighboring States in restoring order.

In this year, too, the people of the United States were beset by evils which came even nearer home than bad government. The war had of course made the fortunes. of many, but it had ruined the fortunes of more. The majority were poorer, in everything but liberty, than even in the frugal period which preceded the revolt of the Colonies. The scarcity of good money had driven all classes into debt, and, because of the same scarcity, the harsh laws for the collection of debts, which yet existed as memorials of Colonial aristocracy, were enforced to the last point of severity. No class suffered so heavily from the general destitution as the disbanded soldiers of the Revolutionary army. Patriotism, like virtue, is most poorly rewarded by those whom it financially benefits the most. As soon as the war appeared to be over, the country became tranquilly indifferent to the claims of its defenders, and the veterans who had risked life, and lost health, in s0 many weary campaigns, for some time had great difficulty in obtaining the small wages due for their services.. The separate States at length paid the claims, but such slender means were hardly sufficient, alone, to insure their possessors permanent homes, or even a very long: subsistence, unless invested where property and comfort were to be had morecheaply than in the exhausted districts of the East. Fortunately for the veterans, for others who suffered like them, and for the progress of the nation, their country was able to offer them such a refuge.

The great Territory northwest of the Ohio river, a land dearly paid for with the blood of Anglo-Americans, and fairly acquired by their military prowess in more than one long war, was now open to colonization. By the treaty of 1783 with Great Britain, it had been formally transferred to the United States. Virginia, under whose government it fell in 1778, when her daring soldier, George Rogers Clark, took it from the British, had before the war closed arranged to dispose of lands within its limits, but upon the remonstrance of Congress, and of several States, abandoned her right and title, except in a certain reserved section, to the general government. Massachusetts, who had claimed an interest in the western country under her old royal charter, soon followed Virginia's generous example, and Connecticut, whose claims were similar to those of Massachusetts, withdrew upon the same terms as Virginia. For the settlement of the great region thus delivered up for the common welfare, Congress at once began to make arrangements. A treaty was made with the Iroquois at Fort Stanwix, New York, another with the Delawares, Wyandots and Chippewas, at Fort McIntosh, and another with the Shawnees at the mouth of the Great Miami, by which the savages recognized the United States as the successor of Great Britain, and agreed to admit American settlers. The vast tract was being surveyed, and divided into convenient allotments for sale, in 1786, when the general discontent of the masses in the East was breaking forth in riots and other acts of outlawry. Gladly then did the impoverished but still dauntless veterans turn to the region which was being prepared for their reception, as one in which their courage could yet win homes in place of those which that same courage had sacrificed.

And indeed, no fairer land ever offered itself to the embrace of industry. It was the Jast untouched portion of that mighty wilderness which lay to the west of the Appalachian Mountains when Daniel Boone climbed their summits one summer day before the Revolution and feasted his soul with solitude. The smoke of the cabinsof Western Virginia and Pennsylvania now rose at the foot of those mountains, and, for hundreds of miles due west, the green prospect which had thrilled the heart of the great pioneer was broken by the clearings which his own followers had made. But the unspoiled forests of the northwest were as yet only parted by the winding rivers, by fields of prairie, or by the broad natural meadows which here and there were to be seen waving with wild rye and blue grass, abundantly feeding herds of deer, elk and buffalo, and promising still richer harvests and pastures to the agriculturist.

The first of the Revolutionary soldiers to take advantage of the opportunity now offered by Congress were those who, under the leadership of Rev. Dr. Cutler and Gen. Rufus Putnam, organized at Boston as the Ohio Company. It was not tili the next year, however, that they selected a tract for settlement, and in the meantime another project was afoot.

The villages along the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers at this period were able to furnish many of the products of civilization to the more primitive settlers of Kentucky. In the spring of 1786, Capt. Benjamin Stites, a resident of Red Stone, one of the settlements on the Monongahela, left home upon one of the common trading voyages down the Ohio. He apparently started with no loftier purpose than to barter his goods to the best advantage, but, like the true frontiersman of his day, he was ready to leave his immediate employment at any moment to turn new circumstances to good account. He seems to have floated down to the Kentucky port, then called Limestone, and now Maysville, a distance of many miles along the Ohio wilderness, without important incident.

There his experience changed. While at a village not far from Limestone, endeavoring to dispose of his wares, some horses belonging to certain settlers there were spirited away by a party of the Ohio Indians, whom no treaty of peace could cure of their predatory habits. Being an experienced borderer, the Captain joined the band of settlers who started in pursuit. The trail of the marauders, after crossing the Ohio, led some sixty miles up the valley of the Little Miami to the Shawnee town, Old Chillicothe, and finding their property beyond recovery, the cautious pursuers crossed to the Great Miami, twenty miles farther west, and followed its course to the Ohio again.

The view which Stites thus obtained of the Miami Country ended his career as a Kentucky trader. In a short time he was traveling with all possible dispatch toward New York, where Congress then held its sessions, to negotiate for the purchase of part of the tract which he had explored. Probably the amount which he proposed buying was too small to procure respect for his offer, for he soon sought a business alliance with a person whose means were more extensive than his own. This person was John Cleves Symmes, a citizen of Trenton, N. J., who had served in several public offices - in one as a member of the Continental Congress - with respectable distinction, and who was thoroughly qualified, by energy, patience, judgment and experience, to take charge of an enterprise so toilsome and hazardous as the establishment of a commonwealth in the western wilderness. While not a borderer himself, he comprehended fully the difficulties of border life, and was adapted to a work which the true frontiersman is not, that of developing all the resources of a wild country to the fullest uses of civilization. He accepted the advances of Stites, and in the summer of the next year after their meeting went in person to the country between the Miamis.

While Symmes was engaged in this inspection, Congress indirectly encouraged his scheme by passing an act for the government of the Northwest Territory, the famous Ordinance of 1787, which excluded slavery from the Territory forever, declared freedom of religious worship and necessity of schools, established an office of governor and court of judges, with combined legislative, judicial and executive functions, and arranged for the alteration of these simple institutions according to the future growth of society. A few days after the Ordinance was passed, Congress directed the Treasury Board to assign lands to the Ohio Company, whose directors had applied for one and a half million acres upon the two sides of the Muskingum. Symmes soon returned to New York, and contracted with the Treasury Board for a million acres of the fertile lands which he had been inspecting, at the price of 66 cents per acre. Before that year ended he had transferred 20,000 acres of his tract to Capt Stites.

Organization Of The First Colonies

The greater part of the next year was spent by the leaders in organizing parties of immigrants in the East. Three settlements were to be established. Capt. Stites had chosen a site at the mouth of the Little Miami, Symmes at the mouth of the Great Miami, and a third speculator, Matthias Denman, a resident of Springfield, N. J., had made a location of several hundred acres at a point between the two other sites, on the bottom land and the elevated plain opposite the mouth of the Licking river.

The civil and social growth of the West had begun. It was in January, 1788, that Denman purchased the section opposite the Licking; in February Congress appointed the governor and the chief judges required for the Territory by the Ordinance, Symmes himself becoming one of the court; in April the first colonists of the Ohio Company arrived at the mouth of the Muskingum, two hundred miles east of the Miami Purchase, and laid out the town of Marietta; two months after Marietta was founded, the governor, Gen. Arthur St. Clair, and two of the judges, Parsons and Varnum, met there to begin their administration. After this first official session, Symmes went east again, to meet his family and followers. In the meantime

Capt. Stites and his company from Red Stone had passed Marietta on their way westward, and reached Limestone, where they stopped to prepare a quantity of timber in order that their fort and cabins might be constructed immediately upon reaching the Little Miami. The experience of two generations had taught the natives of the Pennsylvania frontier better than to rely upon the friendship of the Indians.

They had been engaged in this employment a month or more, when Denman came up from the Miamis, where he had been examining his land, for which he now wanted settlers. It does not appear that he procured any recruits from Stites' division of Pennsylvanians, who were well enough satisfied with their own destination; but two prominent Kentuckians, Col. Robert Patterson and John Filson, the first of whom knew Denman's ground well, found his representations favorable, bought two-thirds of his claim, and agreed with him to lay ont and settle a town, to be called Losantiville. Patterson, whose influence was the most considerable, undertook to muster a force of settlers for the town, and Filson, who was a schoolmaster and surveyor, to establish the lines of its lots and streets.

The plans of these proprietors were soon adjusted, and their terms for the sale of lots advertised among the people of Kentucky. It was now late in September, and in the midst of these arrangements, Judge Symmes arrived at Limestone with the party which he had marshaled in New Jersey, numbering sixty members. Leaving his people at the well-thronged little hamlet, Symmes, with Denman, Capt. Stites and others, proceeded to the Miamis, where Patterson, Filson and a large party of Kentuckians were awaiting his appearance to make a general survey of the country. Some forty or fifty miles up the valley of the Great Miami, the explorers came across a small encampment of Indians, the sight of which at once excited the savage propensities of the Kentuckians. Symmes, however, refused to allow them to massacre the tenants of the camp; the Kentuckians became surly, and finally showed their ill-spirit by deserting the Judge and his few stanch comrades altogether. The broken and scattered party straggled back through the forest, but upon reaching Limestone again Filson was missing. He was never again seen or heard of by his companions of that autumn adventure. After waiting a long time for his return, Denman and Patterson took in his place a young surveyor named Israel Ludlow, an employe of the government, who engaged to perform the services originally undertaken by Filson.

The mysterious disappearance of Filson, which was of course attributed to the Indians whom the expedition had encountered, was but one of several incidents which had happened to demonstrate to the waiting immigrants that the northern woods were still far from safe. The Federal Government, however, was endeavoring to establish perfect security, and all the colonists, impatient, yet dismayed, lingered at Limestone a month and a half longer.

Settlement Of Columbia, Losantiville And North Bend

By that time, finding that the anticipated treaty was still delayed, Capt. Stites' people, the most adventurous of the colonists, determined to move forward. This decision, too, was formed in the face of a rumor which had just been brought to Limestone by a party of Kentucky hunters; they were told that five hundred Indian warriors were stationed at the mouth of the Little Miami, ready to visit death upon all white persons who dared to land there. Only the women of Stites' party were affected by this terrifying report, and even they did not hold back. On the 16th of November the whole party left Limestone; at daybreak of the 18th their flatboats approached the mouth of the Little Miami. A cautious reconnoisance in the dusky morning light proved that they had received an empty warning; no Indians were in sight, and when the winter sun rose the founders of the second settlement in Ohio were gathered together upon the spot which they had chosen for a home, pouring out their gratitude to Providence for a safe deliverance.

The rumor which they had heard at Limestone is charged by some annalists to the jealousy of certain Kentuckians; but there were really a few Shawnees encamped several miles up the Little Miami when Capt. Stites' boats put into shore. They offered friendship instead of war, however, and became so amiable that Stites sent. word to Symmes and Patterson, at Limestone, to follow him without fear. Nevertheless, the Captain was not so confident of this specious good will 's to neglect ie construction of his blockhouse, and his prudence was well repaid.

The persons composing this adventurous troop were not numerous. Only five of the men brought their families: Capt. Stites, Elijah Stites, Greenbright Bailey, Abe} Cook and Jacob Mills. The remainder were either unmarried, or had left their wives and children io safer qnarters. Their names were Hezekiah Stites, John S. Gano, Ephraim Kibby, Benjamin Cox. Joseph Cox, Hampton and Allen Woodruff, Evan Shelby, - Hempstead, Daniel Shoemaker, Edmund Buxton, Elijah Mills, and Thomas C. Wade. During the next two years, the original party was strongly reinfureed. The names of some of these later settlers were James H. Bailey, Zephu and Jonas Ball, James Bowman, Benjamin, David and Owen Davix, Francis Dunlevy, Hugh Dunn, Isaac and Jobn Ferris, James Flinn, Gabriel and Luke Foster, James Newell, Benjamin F. Randolph, James Seward, William Goforth, Daniel Griffin, Joseph Grove, John Hardin, Cornelius Hurley, David, Henry, and Levi Jennings, Ezekiel Larned, John Manning, James Mathews, Aaron Mercer, Ichabod B. Miller, Patrick and William Moore, John Morris. Wickersham, John McCullough, and Ignatius Ross.

The village of cabins which at once began to grow up around the blockhouse was christened Columbia. It was situated on the bank of the Ohio, more than half a mile below the mouth of the Little Miami. The valley of the Little Miami, which is two miles wide at its lower termination, was not all covered with forest, but many acres of its low and level surface expanded into a spacious natural meadow, which from being frequented both winter and summer by numerous flocks of wild poultry soon won the name of Turkey Bottom. Over this broad bottom land Stites laid out squares and streets for a great city, which he hoped would eventually become the Queen of the West. But nature and destiny declared against him, and the city never advanced beyond the plan. The vast cornfields of the wealthy estates in the neighborhood are still haunted by the half-obsolete name of Turkey Bottom; the East End of the great Cincinnati corporation, which is gradually creeping up the Little Miami, wears the familiar name of Capt. Stites' rude little hamlet. These are the most substantial memorials of his defeated ambition which: survive about the place of his settlement.

The message which Capt. Stites had sent to Limestone, and the peaceful progress made by his settlers during the next month, gave assurance to Patterson's company. Twenty-six of their men, among whom were Col. Patterson and Ludlow, the substitute of the lost Filson, started down the Ohio upon the 24th of December, during the most inclement weather of the season, reached the mouth of the Licking on the 27th, and the next day began to lay out the town of Losantiville. To enlist. these adventurers the proprietors of the ground, Denman, Patterson and Ludlow, had offered to give a lot to each of the first thirty men who would aid in establishing the settlement. In afew days these lots were surveyed, and each man made his choice by lottery. One or two cabins were then erected for shelter, the clearing of the ground was commenced, and other preparations made to receive several families that were expected to arrive in the spring.

In the meantime Judge Symmes remained at Limestone, waiting for the conclusion of the treaty which the authorities of the government,were holding with the tribes of the Ohio at Fort Harmar, the government station opposite Marietta. Symmes seems to have been the most unwilling of all the Miami leaders, at this time, to trust the Indians; yet he had the least reason of all to apprehend molestation.

His humane act in preserving the lives of the band on the Great Miami, in the preceding autumn, had given him a kinder place in their regard than he seems to have suspected. Besides, he had been granted military protection, which Columbia and Losantiville yet lacked. A detachment of forty-five soldiers, under Capt. Kearsey, had been sent from Fort Harmar at his request, and had been waiting his orders at Limestone since the 12th of December. On the 3d of January, 1789, he dispatched a conciliatory message to the Wyandot and Shawnee warriors, reminding them of the service he had done them a few. months before, offering to trade with them to their advantage, and requesting them to restrain their young men from attacks upon the whites.

The message was well received, and shortly afterward the party of Shawnees whom Stites had found encamped at Columbia, having been cheated by some roving traders, for whose actions the settlers were in nowise responsible, demanded that Judge Symmes meet them and render reparation for their losses. As he still loitered, they sent word by Capt. Stites that they wished to see him; and shortly afterward they dispatched a second notice. Symmes thereupon feared that if he deferred his coming longer, they might go away offended, and all prospects of amicable relations, between their people and his, be completely destroyed. Though but imperfectly prepared for moving, he was determined by the latter consideration, and having gathered such provisions as could be obtained, he started down the river. His own family, a number of the settlers who had accompanied him from the East, and most of Capt. Kearsey's detachment of soldiers, formed his party. The river, swollen with one of its highest freshets, soon swept his fleet to Columbia, which village he found almost completely submerged. He passed on to Losantiville, where he stopped one night; on the 2nd of February, 1789, he stepped ashore at North Bend, a point twelve miles below Losantiville, and five above the month of the Great Miami. The sight of Columbia, sunken to the tops of its chimneys, had warned him against proceeding to his real destination.

After constructing a temporary habitation at North Bend, Symmes went on to the mouth of the Great Miami, where, like Stites at Columbia, he had dreamed of founding a magnificent city. Finding the situation as unfortunate as that of Columbia, he returned to North Bend, laid off a subdivision, and by donating some of the lots, succeeded in starting a respectable village.

The Shawnees who wished to see Judge Symmes were represented by Blackbeard (or Blackbird), a chief of some note in the tribe. He soon called at North Bend, and after a long discussion with Symmes, who labored to convince him that the settlers should not be held liable for the frauds of every rascally trader, expressed himself as satisfied with the intentions of the Long Knives. Whether his declarations were sincere or not, he sustained them by staying three or four weeks at North Bend, partaking of the Judge's entertainment, which included whiskey, in an exceedingly fraternal spirit.

About the time that Symmes left Limestone, astrong settlement was established in the valley of the Little Miami, nine or ten miles above Columbia, under the leadership of Capt. Abraham Covalt, a native of New Jersey. but a resident of Bedford county, western Penn., and a Revolutionary veteran. He was one of the leaders of the Miami immigration who cherished no splendid visions of future wealth and greatness; his highest worldly ambition was to remain independent. He was a true type of the sensible, homely, brave and honorable American of the old Colonial day, and an equally distinct type of that simple but noble manhood which appears to such rare advantage in every age and state of society.

The manner of his connection with Symmes is not clear, but the traditions of his family indicate that he made his purchase in 1787 or 1788, when Symmes and Stites were organizing their colonies in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Capt. Covalt left

Pennsylvania on the Ist of January, 1789. His outfit consisted of two large flatboats, one of which was loaded with agricultural implements, and a number of the finest cattle, horses, sheep and swine, that had yet been brought to the country of the Miamis. Beside his own family, which was a numerous one, he was accompanied by several others, whose names are still prominent in the eastern part of Hamilton county. The leaders of these families were Robert McKinney, Jonathan Pittman, John Webb, John Hutchens, David Smith, Z. Hinkle, and Timothy Covalt; with them were friends or relatives bearing the names of Fletcher, Buckingham, Beagle, Clemmons, Coleman, Murphy, and Gerston.

This brave company, numbering in all forty-five persons, landed at Columbia on the 19th of January. For want of a better accommodation, a tent was raised on the bank of the Little Miami, in which the women and children found an indifferent shelter against the bitter cold and sleet of that memorable winter, while the men went up the valley to make a clearing and construct a fort.

The position of this station was one of the loneliest in the Miami Country at that early period, but its advantages as a natural site in a great measure compensated the hardy frontiersmen for the perils it invited. The valley of the Little Miami at this point plunges from the north, a deep and narrow opening between the woodcovered hills, and meets the valley of the East Fork; the two, as they merge and widen into one, sweep away several miles to the westward. A long terrace, or elevated plain, lies in the arm of this curve, its level and extensive surface being now covered with the scattered houses which constitute the pretty suburban village of Terrace Park. .

When Capt. Covalt first looked upon this plain its sandy soil was deep with the mould of an oak forest, fertilized by the decay of untold centuries, while its level expanse, once open to the sunlight and the air, offered every facility to cultivation. On the northeast the plain is separated from the foot of the hills by the hollow of a small stream that runs into the river; in this choice location Capt. Covalt and his followers erected a formidable stockade fort, of that design and construction which, from the first to the last experience of the Europeans and their descendants with the ferocious natives of the North American forest, was proven to be absolutely necessary to a mode of life requiring the precautions of defense more than convenience of residence. This class of structures first grew into use from the situation of the settlers of New England and Virginia, who found themselves a°mere handful among hordes of wily enemies, whose merciless attacks could only be thwarted by a constant provision against surprise; and under their cover our population advanced from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. The successful stands which the scattered people of the frontier were enabled to make against the terrible savage, by means of these protections, were so wonderful that the future descendants of the borderers will probably be disposed to regard their career somewhat as the modern European regards the achievements of medieval knights-errant. The usual plan of these forts was a square. At each corner of the square stood a blockhouse; from blockhouse to blockhouse were ranged the cabins of the residents, with their roofs sloping inwardly, to incommode an enemy's entrance as much as possible. The exterior walls were perforated with loopholes, from which the fire of the besieged could be delivered during an attack. All openings between the cabins were closed by lines of palisade. The fort known through the early history of Hamilton county as Covalt's Station was built upon this plan, the cabius which formed its walls being seventeen in number. A mill, the first in the Miami Country, was built at the same time upon the small stream near the station, known yet as Millrun. The settlers from some of the lower stations carried their grist. to this mill for several years after it was put into operation.

There were now four promising settlements along the edge of the great forest of the Miami Country, from the most extreme of which, in one direction, to the most extreme in the other, a sturdy woodsman might walk by the light of a single winter day. Fresh immigration would have soon poured into them, to develop all the branches of civilized industry, had the red men kept the several treaties by which they had bound themselves to peace. But the border history of North America was not yet ended. It was less reasonable for the Americans to expect that the lords of the soil would surrender their ancient rights while the slenderest chance remained of preserving them, than for Great Britain to expect that the Americans would submit to her tyranny. The Northwest Territory at this time held tribes who cherished the memory of more than a century's bitter wrongs against their overpowering enemy. The Mohicans and the Delawares still remembered the rivers of the salt sea; the Shawnees had abandoned more than one hunting ground to the palefaces before they found a home on the western rivers; the Miamis, who had long and proudly withstood the dreadful Iroquois, looked upon the new invaders of their land with haughty and ominous coldness; and the implacable Mohawk and his brethren of the Six Nations, who never made peace with one white nation except in alliance against another, roamed the valleys of Ohio, and mingled with the fallen tribes to inflame them by secret counsels of resistance, and to carry the secret bribes of the British, who, since the Americans had successfully defied their oppression, had grown more' malignant in their hatred than the savages themselves.

The more intelligent men of the different nations regarded war as a policy rather than a means of gratifying malicious passion, but in those dignified intellects American dominion encountered its strongest check. They discerned clearly the mournful fate which was following their people, yet knew that retreat could only hasten its pursuit. Further struggle might prolong their wild liberty a few years; to cease struggling was to surrender it at once. From this alternative alone the suspended contest might have been resumed without the sly encouragement of the British.

These influences began to be felt but a few weeks after the first settlements were located in the Miami Country. The Miami nation had not been represented in the several treaties, and naturally refused to be bound by them, while the tribes with whom the treaties were made denied that they had relinquished their rights in their lands at all. Their disposition had completely changed. The only condition upon which they would now agree that peace should not be broken was that the Americans should withdraw beyond the Ohio, and never recross it, and one of the sagest councillors and deadliest warriors of the Shawoees demanded that they should go back to their original quarters east of the Appalachian Mountains.

Before the coming of the whites more than one of the tribes dwelt upon the southern rivers of the country; one division of the Shawnees had their quarters at Old Chillicothe, in the Little Miami valley, it will be remembered, when Capt. Stites explored the country two years before. Upon the first appearance of the settlers the distrustful and designing natives retired northward, and the principal villages of the different nations were now gathered along the rivers of Lake Erie within striking distance of the settlements, yet safe from counter-surprises.

The treaty meeting, held at Fort Harmar during the winter, was hardly over before some of the very bands which had assembled there were prowling about the western stations, bent on mischief. Before the first red-bud tree was in bloom upon the hillsides, five of Capt. Covalt's fine horses had disappeared, and the people at Culumbia had lost not only horses, but a considerable number of household articles and farming implements. The Columbians charged their losses to Blackbeard, Judge Symmes' admiring friend, and his gang, who took their departure by way of Columbia. Symmes was not surprised to learn of these misdeeds, for the bitter complaints made by Blackbeard's party against the traders had prepared him for such reprisals.

But the ill-will of the savages was rapidly growing ripe for bloodier manifestations. In April, one of Symmes' surveying parties was ambushed, and two of the six men composing it were killed. Capt. Kearsey, after accompanying Symmes from

Limestone asa military escort, had refused to build a fort at North Bend, and had taken his troops to the Falls of the Ohio. Ensign Luce, who had been dispatched to North Bend with a smaller detachment in his place, on the 21st of May undertook to escort a number of citizens from North Bend to a point farther up the river. On the way their boat received an unexpected volley from the shore, which killed a soldier and wounded five others. Hardly a month of the year passed without bereaving some family among the settlers. Abraham Covalt, a member of Capt. Covalt's household, "'one of as brave sons of Pennsylvania as ever inhaled the morning air," was killed in June, while hunting with four companions in the Little Miami valley, some miles above Covalt Station. Another young hunter named Abel Cook, the chosen friend of the gallant Covalt, was assassinated in the forest at Round Bottom near the station, a month later, as he was returning from a visit to Columbia. His body was discovered by some of his own associates, who carried it mournfully to the station, and buried it, with touching propriety, beside the fresh grave of his youthful friend.

The effect of these murders, and of others like them, may be easily imagined. Immigrants bound for the West paused in consternation, and many of the families already in the Miami Country fled into Kentucky. North Bend alone lost over fifty inhabitants after the attack upon Ensign Luce's party. In the midst of this panic, however, the leaders of the colonists stood firm, and redoubled their demands upon the government for protection. Symmes declared that Capt. Kearsey, who had deserted the settlers for the silly reason that Symmes located his village at North Bend, instead of at the mouth of the Great Miami, was to blame for the disasters which followed his departure. Fortunately it was the government of the new Union that was addressed, and not the government under whose feeble auspices the colonies were planted; and at the head of it sat the man who, of all American statesmen, most deeply sympathized with the western pioneers in their struggle - Washington himself. Maj. John Doughty, a capable officer of the army then stationed at Fort Harmar, was ordered to erect a fort in the best position for the defense of the Miami settlements. He reached the Miamis about the time that young Covalt was killed, bringing a strong force of infantry and a company of artillery. He chose to construct the fort at Losantiville, which was now really a village, though a smaller one than either Columbia or North Bend. In the meantime detachments of his troops were stationed at the other three settlements, and the courage of the people began to revive.

The presence of these forces by no means overawed the watchful enemy of the forest, who lurked about the settlements like the invisible shadow of doom. Five or six persons were killed or captured at North Bend and Columbia before the year ended. but the savages confined themselves to the work of waylaying imprudent stragglers in the woods, and for a long time made no attempt to destroy a station.

Meanwhile Maj. Doughty's men were laboring at the fort on the bluff above the cabins of Losantiville. The structure was nearly finished by the middle of winter, and on the 29th of December, Gen. Josiah Harmar, commander of the forces of the Northwest, arrived with 320 regular troops, and established the headquarters of the United States army within its walls. As it was the most important military work in the West, he gave it the immortal name of the most important officer of the government. Whatever transformations Cincinnati may undergo in the future, her people, if they remain Americans, will remember the spot at the northwest corner of Third and Lawrence streets, where the Stars and Stripes first floated in the winter winds from the lofty flagstaff of Fort Washington.

Three days after Gen. Harmar took up his quarters at Fort Washington, viz. on the Ist of January, 1790, Governor St. Clair was received with due ceremony by the troops and citizens of Losantiville. One of the principal objects of his journey down the Ohio was to give the settlers of the Miami Country a constitutional government. The whole of the tract which Stites had explored three years before, and which was still in almost the same condition of aboriginal wildness as then, was incorporated into one county, which St. Clair requested Judge Symmes to name. Symmes chose the name of Washington's great secretary, Hamilton, who was one of his stanch political friends; the governor himself, in establishing the seat of the county at Losantiville, changed the name of the hamlet to Cincinnati. He next created a court of common pleas, of three judges and a clerk, commissioned three justices of the peace, and appointed several citizens as officers to organize the ablebodied men of the settlements into a regiment of militia. The gentlemen honored with these offices were almost exclusively selected from Cincinnati and Columbia.