Cincinnati's beginnings. Missing chapters in the early history of the city and the Miami purchase: chiefly from ... unpublished documents

Chapter I

Introductory Remarks — Historical Uncertainty— View of Annals of Cincinnati, as affected by that condition, and of their present claim to consideration — The attention directed to this quarter at close of Revolutionary War — Importance attached by the Earliest Emigrants to tributaries of the Ohio as Navigable Streams, and the influence of that idea in determining locations — Erroneous impressions in regard to some of the incidents of the commencement of the Settlement of Cincinnati — Site not fixed upon inconsiderately, nor as the complement of other similar contemporary ventures in its vicinity — Project of the Settlement at Cincinnati not originating with the Miami Purchase, but in an earlier impulse from Kentucky — Prominence of Lexington, Ky., at the opening of the Settling of the West — The applicants for the Tract of Ground on which Cincinnati was founded.

Chapter II

Legislation of Congress preparatory to Sales of Land in the Territory Northwest of the Ohio river — The Projects of the New England Ohio Company and Symmes and his Associates — That of Symmes as at first contemplated in the year 1787 — Symmes' Withdrawal of First Proposals and substitution of others before the Commissioners of the Treasury — The Commissioners' Acceptance and subsequent Modification of his last Proposals — His Action thereupon and Efforts to Change the Determination of the Commissioners — Their Refusal to Accede to his Terms, and his consequent embarrassment — His Communication to Boudinot respecting the State of the Matter and the Course he had Resolved to Pursue. HI CONTENTS. IV

Chapter III

Discontinuance of the Conference with the Commissioners and Departure of Symmes for the West with an Emigrant Train — Journey through Pennsylvania and Arrival at Devou's Ferry and Pittsburgh — Voyage Down the Ohio river and Arrival at Miami — Exploration of the Country and Hesitancy in regard to Commencement of Settlements — Return to Limestone to Consider the Situation and await more Favorable Opportunities.

Chapter IV

Judge Symmes advised of adverse action of the Government and Commissioners of the Treasury after his leaving for the West — Details of Proceedings on the part of the Commissioners, and in Congress, and by Symmes' Agents — Some Remarks by Symmes in reply to the Communications relative to the above matters.

Chapter V

Further occurrences at Limestone — A party of Surveyors sent forward to the Purchase, Stites accompanying them to his location — Kearsey Arrives with a small body of Troops — A band of Adventurers come from farther up the Ohio on their way to the vicinity of the Great Miami — The party designing to occupy the tract opposite the Licking start for their destination — Judge Symmes issues an. address to the Indians and sets out for the intended headquarters at the mouth of the Great Miami — He lands at North Bend and forms an Encampment — Blackbeard, a Shawnee Chief, visits him and is favorably impressed — Account of an interview between Symmes and Blackbeard — Kearsey abandons the Settlement — Condition as to support from Government and the bearing of the Indians.

Chapter VI

The final contract with the Commissioners of the Treasury — Stipulation as to Boundaries — Impracticability of the requirements of the Commissioners in that respect subsequently shown, and chan"*e of Boundaries made by act of Congress — Patent issued for part of the lands — Impediments to the carrying out of the Contract, and its. ultimate repudiation by the Government after failure for many years CONTENTS. V to comply with its terms any farther than was done under the Patent — Symmes' consequent perplexities — College township im broglio — The uniformly untoward course of the Government with Symmes — Reference to expressions in his last will and testament in regard to his grievances.

Chapter VII

Cursory View of the Various Selections First Made of Town Sites in the Purchase, in the Order of the Occupancy — Mouth of the Little Miami — Opposite the Licking — North Bend — South Bend — Hamilton — Dayton.

Chapter VIII

Earliest Recorded Trace of the Founding of Cincinnati — First Measures of the Parties in Interest — Filson's Name for the Town, the Import thereof, and the Change to the present one — Death of Filson, the Consequent Brief Interruption of this Project of Settlement, and its Successful Resumption about Three Months Afterward — Symmes' Account of the Entry of the Founders upon the Location — Immediate Indications of Prosperity — Statement of Progress in the year 1790, and of the Occasion of the Change of Name of the Town — Refutation of a Fanciful Account Respecting the Locating of Fort Washington — Ludlow and Williams' Record of the Town Plat — Concerning First Cost ofthe Ground and Denman's Course.

Chapter IX

Views of the founders as to comparative fitness of site borne out in subsequent history of Cincinnati — The aborigines cognizant and availing themselves of the advantages of the site as a point on lines of intercommunication — Natural and necessary identity of interests of adjacent sections of the country north and south of the Ohio river here— Some aspects of the locality of Cincinnati from an æsthetic point of view — Possible opinions from present indications of the character of the inhabitants and its tendency — High character of the earliest settlers illustrated by some individual examples and personal references— Judge Symmes' prophetic view of the future of the Miami settlement — Conclusion. VI CONTENTS.

Appendix

. No. i Defenceless Condition of the Settlers — A party of them Attacked by Indians. No. 2 Relating to same subject as the preceeding No. 3. Extract. Further reference to the defencelessness of the country — Dangers impending over the Miami and other neighboring settlements from Indian hostilities instigated by the British occupants of the Northern frontier. No. 4. Extract. Various matters of general and personal interest, and referring to calumnies circulated against Symmes. No. 5. Preparations for the City at North Bend. No. 6. Extracts from letter of Symmes to Dayton, dated North Bend, January 9, 1790. No. 7. Extract. Anxieties in regard to the second payment — Condition of the market for public securities — Anticipations of advantage to the Miami tract from the establishment of Military Headquarters thereon The market for lands likely to be affected by the opening of a Land Office by Congress.

CONTENTS. VII No. 8. Establishment of new stations — Suggestions as to management of affairs of the Purchase — Indians troublesome in Kentucky. No. 9. The Territorial Judges making the circuit to Illinois — Prospects at North Bend ; Indians mischievous there — Measures advisable for the interests of the Settlement. No. IO. The Judicial Circuit to Illinois — Depreciation of the Currency and High Prices — Condition of things at North Bend, Supplies Short and Inhabitants Discontented — Recommendation of Needful Policy to the Proprietary. No. n. Extract. Harmar's Defeat and its Results — Success of Hamtramach. on the Wabash. No. 12. Extract. Holders of the Muskingum and Miami grants savored by a delay of proposed measures in Congress for the sale of Western lands — Curious feature in the operation of the funding system upon the public debt ; payments for lands possibly thereby somewhat facilitated — Indian hostilities delaying the work of the Government surveyors — New expedition in preparation against the Indians.

No. 13 Boundaries and Extent of the Miami Purchase — Controversies between St. Clair and Symmes. No. 14 Controversies and Other Matters — Cincinnati or Cincinnata — Indians Troublesome— Sales of Lands thereby Affected — Denman in Quest of Certificates. CONTENTS. VIII No. 15. Extract. Controversies with St. Clair — Instance of Tyrannical Exercise of his Military Authority — Imperiousness of Officers of Regular Troops — Expeditions into the Indian Country — Scott, Edwards, Wilkinson — St. Clair's Preparations for his Campaign — His Anecdote of the Dutch Deputation — Proposed General Reduction of Prices of Land by Government Likely to Result Unfairly for Miami and Ohio Co. Purchasers. No. 16 Commencement of St. Clair's March, and Establishment of Fort Hamilton. No. 17 St. Clair's defeat and its consequences — Major Zeigler— Col. Wilkinson — Symmes badly wounded by a bullock.

No. 18. Controversies between Governor St. Clair and Judge Symmes — Instance of tyrannical exercise of military authority — Captain Armstrong — Ludlow's survey of the Purchase in progress. No. 19. Proceedings in Congress relative to the Miami and Ohio Co. tracts — Proposals for adjustment of individual interests. No. 20. Making the Second Payment — Conferences with Officers of the Government — Suggestions as to Management of the Business of the Purchase— Growing Aversion in Congress to Sales and Settlement of Western Lands. No. 21. Awaiting the Execution of the Patent at Philadelphia, -The Pennsylvania Disturbances — Excitement among the Quakers. CONTENTS. IX No. 22. Extract. Summary of obstacles encountered in carrying out the scheme of the purchase — Personal efforts, sacrifices, and risks — Difficulties of journeying — Some untoward action of Congress in reference to the territorial laws.

No. 23. Spreading of settlers into the back country after Wayne's victory — North Bend nearly deserted — Plans in reference to lands beyond the limits of the Patent. No. 24 Relative to Forfeitures and the Tenure of Lands beyond where Symmes and Associates had Right of Entry and Occupancy under the Contract with the Commissioners of the Treasury. No. 25. Extract. Differences in the attractiveness of various portions of the United States at that period, from diversities of political condition and other causes, according to the views of an English immigrant — The Indians of the vicinity somewhat demonstrative. No. 26. A Pressure of Business Engagements and Cares — Certain Personal Characteristics and Psychological and Moral Philosophical Points — Various Matters of Business. No. 27. Relative to matters of business mentioned in the preceding, and alluding to the evacuation of Detroit by the British.

No. 28. Expeditious journey from Cincinnati to Pittsburgh at the close of the last century. I PREFATORY. The first purchases from the Government, about the time of the commencement of its operation under the constitution, of lands in what was then called the Northwest Territory, with the attendant efforts for the establishment and maintenance of settlements therein are fairly to be reckoned among the notable occurrences of the earliest period of the history of the United States as a nation ; and anything essential to the completing of the account of the transactions might be looked upon even from a national standpoint, as deserving of preservation. The new claimant to a separate and equal station in the political firmament having emerged triumphantly from tlie arduous struggle in arms for independence, popular effort is then soon seen directed to plans for the redemption of a continent from a waste by the arts of peace.

Promi nent in the van of such manifestations were two schemes of purchase and settlement, of the description referred to, viewed by some with prophetic ken in the day of their inception as fraught with promise for the future, and to which, when regarded in the light of results thus far, it could not be alleged there was ever attributed an undue significance. Respect- PREFATORY. ing one of those, and certainly not the inferior in im portance, to add what may be found practicable to the store of information already possessed, is an object of the present endeavor. It would very likely re quire no protracted search nowadays in either of the two localities to which those schemes were directed, to find some single individual who, so far as prelimi nary pecuniary outlays were concerned, could under take a project of equal magnitude on his own unaided resources.

At that time American genius had not yet taxed its powers in devising any of the methods since found so efficacious, through the astonishing feats of "Credit Mobilier" ambidexters, for obtaining the largest possible quantities of the public domain at the least possible cost. That was also a day of small things comparatively, in a monied way, with such as were then casting their lots in the section of country which is particularly the subject of the present brief treat ise. In respect though of some qualities of character which are never likely to be too often or too brightly exemplified in a community, it might peradventure be found that the showing the}- made was not so remarkably small ; and there is no risk of their posterity now on the stage being any too often prompted to look back with a sense of the claims to remembrance of the people who, In face ofthe obstacles then to be en countered, put down the foundations here of a structure of prosperity and greatness of which certainly the present successors in possession have reason to PREFATORY'. 3 deem themselves favored inheritors.

All the sources drawn upon for the contents of the ensuing pages had been available to the writer, and something of an undertaking of this kind designed for years past ; but not until after entering upon the performance was there any thought of its exceeding in volume what might readily be disposed of through the medium of a news paper, or perhaps be subsidiary to some other pro duction of its own species wider in scope than itself. The work though as it progressed was found suscep tible of such an extension beyond the bounds at first contemplated as to seem better suited to its present form of publication, and it is now thus offered, not without some trust that it may prove interesting to a sufficiency of readers to justify the offering.

Chapter I

Introductory Remarks — Historical Uncertainty — View of Annals of Cincinnati, as affected by that condition, and of their present claim to consideration — The attention directed to this quarter at close of Revolutionary War — Importance attached by the Earliest Emigrants to tributaries of the Ohio as Navigable Streams, and the influence of that idea in determining locations — Erroneous impressions in regard to some of the incidents of the commencement of the Settlement of Cincinnati — Site not fixed upon inconsiderately, nor as the complement of other similar contemporary ventures in its vicinity — Project of the Settlement at Cincinnati not originating with the Miami Purchase, but in an earlier impulse from Kentucky — Prominence of Lexington, Ky., at the opening of the Settling of the West — The applicants for the Tract of Ground on which Cincinnati was sounded.

As a natural result of attendant circumstances the rise of any great political fabric, of either the national or municipal order, has its liability to be found more or less involved in an obscurity dissatisfying to tlie historical investigator, who is in quest merely of incon testably authenticated facts. The stream at the beginning is of insignificant dimensions, raising little or no expectation of the importance subsequently to be attained, and the actors in the opening scenes either have not the inclination or the opportunity, or are not impressed with any sense of a necessity for perpetuating a memorial of their doings. Such may be referred to, as among causes of obscurity, affecting the commencement of the his toric trace through want of reasonable prophylactics against oblivion. But with all the preservative appli ances ever available to judicious care, at this or other points of the process, it will hardly be contended any guaranty is afforded of the perfect integrity of what may purport to be the memorial of a people's past — ■ any assurance of the entire fulfilling of such a require ment as that of holding* the extending record in all its parts "Above the reach of sacrilegious hands ; Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage, Destructive war, and all-involving age."

Hence, when the annalist has reached the initiatory portion of the course, which it is his province to explore, through bygone times, a paucity of reliable accounts of actual doings and occurences has usually not failed to afford him some scope for the exercise of his own capacities for invention in improving upon fables. When their researches were extended into the haze of antiquity, much liberty of indulgence in this practice, the great Roman historian says, had up to his day always been accorded to his fraternity, as enabling them to impart to the beginnings of States, and the character of the founders, more of dignity than a strict conformity to truth in the narratives, if practicable, would admit of, and probably the majority of their successors, with some equally commendable object, have sufficiently manifested a disposition to prevent any right to the same privilege from beino* forfeited by non-user.

The securing of truthful and THE LOCALITY. 7 thorough accounts of particular parts and events might not, of course, ordinarily be expected to be facilitated by remoteness of the epoch sought to be brought under review, yet the difficulty is far from diminishing in the ratio of the reduction of the separating interval of time. Accordingly, though of an origin too recent to comport with the idea of her past course being traced far enough back for the reception of any tinge of antiquity, it were still some what abnormal, at least, if a full exemption, from the beginning, from the condition of uncertainty and in completeness could be claimed for the existing annals of the goodly municipality whose geographical place is upon the banks ofthe stream ycleped the Ohio, about midway of its length, precisely where the one called the Licking, bringing a tribute from Kentucky on the south, mingles its limpid waters with the some times turbid tide of the beautiful river, which here, m a southwardly deflected curve of some three miles in length, sweeps majestically westward across a nearly circular plateau environed with hills of moder ate altitude, presenting naturally little appearance of rugged or precipitous outlines, and when, as in the early days of the settlement, draped with the foliage of forests, forming, with the other features ofthe land scape, a panorama hardly surpassed for beauty among terrestial scenes.

There is none other, of course, intended to be designated than the city of Cincinnati, the same that, for a time whereof the memory of the present genera tion runneth not to the contrary, has been decorated with the additional appellation of the Queen of the West. As to how worthily she has borne the title of dignity, and the justice of her claims to the station so assigned, it may at least be alleged in passing, that, though she has not yet extended her swa}* to the Ultima Thule of the queen of the earth of old, still her fame as a sovereign has spread nearly that far. By the advance she has already made towards the attainment of enduring renown and importance, with her still brightening prospect of progress in the same line of achievment, the events of her history, it must be conceded, too, have been invested with that degree of interest that an opportunity of contributing in any measure towards dispelling whatever obscuring mist shrouds the dawn of her existence, either by the bringing to light of any new facts or the better setting forth of any that are not unheard of, may be looked upon as calling for the requisite endeavor.

To a task of that nature the writer of these pages has felt prompted by fortuitous access to some hitherto unpublished documentary matter serviceable to the performance. To gain a proper remove for a com mencement of the thread of the narration, there is little need of observing, demands no very lengthened journey into the realm of the past. Recurring to the period of the formal assumption by the people of this country of that station among degree of progress in settlement. 9 the powers of the earth to which the}- had concluded the laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitled them, it is noticeable that immediately upon the close of the Revolutionary War the attention of the inhabitants of the Atlantic border was strongly drawn to the new fields of enterprise soon to be opened in the vast region stretching from Virginia and Kentucky to the Mississippi and the great lakes, which had been con firmed to the republic by the definitive treaty at Paris of 1783, and the Valley of the Ohio, already world renowned for its beauty and fertility, lav first in the path of the Star of Empire's westward way.

The Virginia and Kentucky settlements had previously to its acquisition advanced their outposts to the southern confines of the noble addition to the do main of the new Government, and ere yet the Re public by the adoption of the Constitution had been fairly launched upon the waves of national existence, through two expeditions from far to the eastward, the foundation had been laid on the northern shores of the Ohio river of "the State first born of the ordinance of 1787." The tide of emigration which had now begun to flow into the receptacle thus opened was at tracted not only by its adaptation to agricultural pur suits, but also by the prospect of its becoming a theater of great commercial enterprise by reason of the navi gable character both of the Ohio river itself, and like wise to a great extent, as was then supposed, of all its larger tributaries, which, at their junctions with the main stream were regarded as affording sites where infant settlements might soon be nourished into vigor.

Thus the mouth of the Muskingum was chosen for their purposes by the founders of Marietta. Three years previously, a party of adventurers had attempted a settlement also at the mouth ofthe Scioto. The site of Limestown, now Maysville, Kentucky, by the disemboguing there ofthe waters of Limestone creek, was endowed with attractions of the like nature, and very promptly obtained recognition as one of the points. So, too, undoubtedly, the founders of Louis ville, while considering the multitudinous variety of inducements which that situation presented for such an undertaking as theirs, did not neglect to take a mental squint at the benefits which might be expected to accrue from some outcome of the navigation of Beargrass. In this respect a purchase, embracing the entire front upon the Ohio between the two Miamis, and estimated to be of sufficient extent backward to secure the whole tribute of Mad river, was thought a highly favored section, a. perfect Mesopotamia, and the views of the proprietors were accordingly at once directed to the mouth of the Great Miami as the most eligible point for their proposed city, which it was anticipated would speedily be raised to great importance by the vast boating interests with which the swelling bosom of the stream was soon to be charged.

Simultaneously with the earliest steps taken for such a demonstraadyantageousness of this site. 11 tion at that estuary, measures were initiated for establishing a colony at the point soon after called Colum bia, with similar designs upon the commerce of the Lesser Miami. Thus were set off, as the projectors of this scheme conceived, the two most advantageous locations for town sites to be found within the limits of their purchase. But careful observers who had pro spected this portion of the national possessions at a still earlier period, and were better furnished than these operators with items of information in regard to its topography, had already marked an intermediate point between the two last named, over against which a stream of no less pretensions than either of the Miamis debouched into the Ohio river on the Ken tucky side, and where it was conjectured that a settlement so located as to be enabled to exercise a proper surveillance over this opposite mouth would be found possessed of a combination of advantages whereby it could at least stand on an equal footing with any other that might be established anywhere in the vicinity, if indeed the result did not show it to have secured that certain nethermost lacteal duct from which the amplest supply ofthe nourishing secretions is usually supposed to flow.

To a spectator furnished with a convenient post of observation for a comprehensive survey of the position at the present time, it might seem that the mysterious virtues of this particular orifice for the purposes in view were not overrated. There appears to have been an idea that the founders of Cincinnati, when adopting their location, were precluded from much exercise of choice, as coming in after other more favored parties had been privileged to make their selections, and that under these circumstances it was discovered, in the progress of events, that the best point had here been hit upon by chance; or, something fortuitously occurring soon after the founding, it seems to have been imagined by some, gave to proceedings here a favoring impulse by which alone they were enabled thenceforward to hold a prosperous course.

But it is not probably the fact that the success of the movement was the result either of a fortunate accident after its inception, or of a fortunate blun der at the outset ; or that the movers had not some one among them who had become apprised of the com parative merits of the opening afforded at this place before the resolution was formed to lay out the town, or that they were not awake betimes to their oppor tunity. The marking of the location was neither a random stroke nor the work of gleaners. If, too, this precise point was not determined upon for a town site before any other on the northern shore of the Ohio river, within the limits of the State of Ohio, the pro ject which effected its adoption had at least been sufficiently well matured, and, but for a casualty, the settlement here would actually have had in its be ginning upon the ground, the priority of either of its two neighboring early competitors, North Bend and Columbia.

Entirely independently also of the meas- THE TREND FROM KENTUCKY. 13 ures with which it happened to be connected for the purchase of the contiguous body of lands from the Government, and even if that arrangement had never been effected or heard of at all, the founding of a city at a date not remote from that of the actual occurrence, at the locality then entered upon so success fully, could not have been regarded as other than a certainty. This result would seem to have ripened to eventuation as a consequence of the current of em igration which had been flowing with varying force for the previous ten years into Kentucky. The few first recruited to come as the founders of what proved to be the germ of the present Cincinnati were under Kentucky leadership, and principally composed of such as had been immediately before either domiciled or sojourning as adventurers in that part of the coun try, and to that quarter, chiefly, the first movers in the matter had looked as a present source of supplies and support for their undertaking.

The settlement, of course, became at once identified in all respects with the rest of the neighborhood on the north of the Ohio river, yet in its inception it seems traceable directly to the advances that had been made in the peopling of the adjacent region on tlie southern side. A well-known English poet, in alluding to the civilizing influence of the conquests of the Mistress of the Ancient World says : — " arts still followed where her eagles flew." There is an obvious applicability of his verse to the progress of our nation in the extension of her domain, and the genius of the country's civilization, as it followed the emblems of the nation's sway in their meteor flight across the continent, appears to have found at Lexington, Kentucky, its earliest home in the boundless wilderness of the West.

That com munity, almost at the beginning of its existence, afar oft' in " the sounding aisles of the dim woods" became a seat of learning. Transylvania University was established there in the year 1 788 ; it also at that time sustained a newspaper, the Kentucky Gazette. A few years later the earliest insurance company in the West was started there, and it was always able to make a fair showing among its inhabitants of such as might be deemed not unacquainted with the flavor of Attic salt. Of the number of those of the description just referred to, who were abiding there at the period immediately subsequent to the founding, were the founder himself and first settler, Colonel Robert Patter son, prominent among the early actors in the affairs of that State, and a certain John Filson, at one time a school teacher, who engaged also as a surveyor through the vicinity, and was the author of a life of Daniel Boone, and map and history of Kentucky,* which, originally published at Wilmington, in the '•'This work, now very rare, is highly prized and much sought by antiqua rians, copies of it having brought recently at book sales $50 to Sioo each.

APPLICANTS FOR THIS SITE. 15 State of Delaware, in 1784, and circulated immediately to a considerable extent in the Eastern States, within the next few years, also went through several editions in London and Paris, and so, soon obtained quite a wide though but temporary celebrity. Of the first explorers in this direction undoubtedly not a few had, by the time of the events now under consideration, had their attention drawn to the eligibility, for the purposes of a town site, of the point opposite the mouth of the Licking ; but in the early part, or summer of 1788, the two just named, in connection with Matthias Denman, of New Jersey, or through his agency, made application for the requisite tract of land to the party then understood to have bargained with Government for that, and all thereto contiguous, to the extent of 2,000,000 of acres.