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Historical Collections of Ohio

By Henry Howe

Vol. I

©1888

 

 

ALLEN COUNTY

Page 241

ALLEN COUNTY was formed April 1, 1820, from Indian Territory, and named in honor of a Col. Allen, of the war of 1812; it was temporarily attached to Mercer county for judicial purposes. The southern part has many Germans. A large part of the original settlers were of Pennsylvania origin. The western half of the county is flat, and presents the common features of the Black Swamp. The eastern part is gently rolling, and in the southeastern part are gravelly ridges and knolls. The “Dividing Ridge” is occupied by handsome, well-drained farms, which is in marked contrast with much of the surrounding country, which is still in the primeval forest condition. Its area is 440 square miles. In 1885 the acres cultivated were 119,175; in pasture, 29,598; in woodland, 53,395; produced in wheat, 460,669 bushels; in corn, 1,157,149; wool, 103,654 pounds. School census, 1886, 11,823; teachers, 178; and 118 miles of railroad.

 

 

The population in 1830 was 578; 1850, 12,116; 1860, 19,185; 1880, 31,314, of whom 25,625 were Ohio born, 3 were Chinese, and 4 Indians.

 

The initial point in the occupancy of the county by the whites was the building of a fort on the west bank of the Auglaize in September, 1812, by Col. POAGUE, of Gen. HARRISON'S army, which he named in honor of his wife Fort Amanda. A ship-yard was founded there the next year, and a number of scows built by the soldiers for navigation on the Lower Miami, as well as for the navigation of the Auglaize, which last may be termed one of the historical streams of Ohio, as it was early visited by the French, and in its neighborhood were the villages of the most noted Indian chiefs; it was also on the route of Harmer's, Wayne's, and Harrison's armies. To-day it is but a somewhat diminutive river, owing to the drainage of the country by canals and ditches, and the clearing off of the forests; in the past it was a navigable stream, capable of floating heavily laden flat-boats and scows.

 

The fort was a quadrangle, with pickets eleven feet high, and a block-house at each of the four corners. The storehouse was in the centre. A national cemetery was established here, where are seventy-five mounds, the graves of soldiers of the war of 1812.

 

Among the first white men who lived at this point was a Frenchman, Francis DEUCHOQUETTE. He was interpreter to the Indians. It was said he was present at the burning of Crawford, and interfered to save that unfortunate man. He was greatly esteemed by the early settlers for his kindly disposition. In 1817 came Andrew RUSSELL, Peter DILTZ, and William Van AUSDALL; and in 1820 numerous others.

 

 

Page 242

Delphos. She was familiarly called the “Daughter of Allen county.” She died in 1871.

 

From an address by T. E. CUNNINGHAM, delivered before the Pioneer Association, at Lima, September 22, 1871, we derive the following additional items upon the early settlers of the county:

 

“Samuel McCLURE, now living, at the age of seventy-eight years, settled on Hog creek, five miles northeast of where Lima now stands, in the month of November, 1825, forty-six years ago. He has remained on the farm where he then built a cabin ever since. The nearest white neighbors he knew of were two families named LEEPER and KIDD, living one mile below where Roundhead now is, about twenty miles to the nearest known neighbor. On that farm, in the year 1826, was born Moses McCLURE, the first white child born on the waters of Hog creek. Mr. McCLURE'S first neighbor was Joseph WARD, a brother of Gen. John WARD. He helped cut the road when McCLURE came, and afterwards brought his family, and put them into McCLURE'S cabin, while he built one for himself on the tract where he afterwards erected what was known as Ward's mill. The next family was that of Joseph WALTON. They came in March, 1826.

Shawneetown, an Indian village, was situated eight miles below the McCLURE settlement, at the mouth of Hog creek. A portion of the village was on the old Ezekiel HOOVER farm and a portion on the BREESE farm. Mr. McCLURE and his little neighborhood soon became acquainted, and upon good terms with their red neighbors. He says HAI-AITCH-TAH, the war-chief, had he been civilized, would have been a man of mark in any community. QUILNA was the great business man of the tribe here. Soon after the McCLURE settlement was made they heard from the Indians at Shawneetown that the United States government had erected a mill at Wapakoneta. The settlers had no road to the mill, but QUILNA assisted them to open one. He surveyed the line of their road without compass, designating it by his own knowledge of the different points and the Indian method of reaching them.

 

There are many of the children of the early settlers to whom the name of QUILNA is a household word. To his business qualities were added great kindness of heart, and a thorough regard for the white people. No sacrifice of his personal ease was too much if by any effort, he could benefit his new neighbors.

 

In the month of June, 1826, Morgan LIPPINCOTT, Joseph WOOD, and Benjamin DOLP, while out hunting, found the McCLURE settlement. To his great surprise, Mr. McCLURE learned that he had been for months living within a few miles of another white settlement located on Sugar creek. He learned from the Hunters there were five families: Christopher WOOD Morgan LIPPINCOTT, Samuel JACOBS, Joseph WOOD, and Samuel PURDY. It is his belief that Christopher WOOD settled on Sugar creek as early as 1824, on what is known as the MILLER farm. In the spring of 1831, John RIDENOUR, now living, at the age of eighty-nine, with his family-Jacob RIDENOUR, then a young married man, and David RIDENOUR, bachelor-removed from Perry county, and settled one mile south of Lima, on the lands the families of that name have occupied ever since.”

 

LIMA was surveyed in 1831 by Capt. James W. RILEY. Christopher WOOD was one of the commissioners appointed to locate the county-seat, and was on the board to plat the village and superintend the sale of lots. Both of these were remarkable men. WOOD was born in Kentucky in 1769, was an Indian scout, and engaged in all the border campaigns, inclusive of the war of 1812. RILEY was the first settler in Van Wert county. He was a native of Middletown, Connecticut. Early in life, while in command of a vessel, he was shipwrecked on the coast of Africa, and fell into the hands of the Arabs; his history of his adventures reads like a romance. For a fuller account of him see Van Wert county.

 

Page 243

John MARK, and John BASHORE, all with families, except BREWSTER, who was a bachelor. Absalom BROWN was the first white citizen, and his daughter, Marion Mitchell BROWN, the first white child born here.

Three years later, the picture Lima presented is thus given in the cheery reminiscences of Robert Bowers:

 

My father brought me to Lima in the fall of 1834. I was then a boy of twelve years of age, and as green as the forest leaves in June a rare specimen to transplant on new and untried soil, where there was nothing to develop the mind but the study of forest leaves, the music of the bull-frog and the howl of the wolf. The boys and girls were their own instructors, and the spelling schools that were held by appointment and imposed upon our fathers by turns, were our highest academical accomplishments, and unfortunately for myself I never even graduated at them. Lima was then a town of very few souls. I knew every man, woman and child in the settlement, and could count them all without much figuring. No newspaper office, no outlet or inlet either by rail or earth. In the spring we travelled below, in the summer we travelled on top. Our roads were trails and section lines. Emigrants were constantly changing the trails seeking better and dryer land for their fooling and wheeling. Yet under all our disadvantages we were happy, and always ready to lend a helping hand and render assistance wherever it was needed. The latchstring was always out and often the last pint of meal was divided, regardless where the next would come from. the nearest mills were at settlements in adjoining counties, and the labor of going thither through the wilderness and the delays on their arrival in getting their grain ground, so great that they had recourse to hand-mills, hominy blocks and corn-crackers; so the labor was largely performed within the family circle . [A very pleasing picture of this is given in the reminiscences of Mr. Bowers; he says:] The horse and hand miller, the tin grater were always reliable and in constant use as a means of preparing our breadstuff. I was my father's miller, just the age to perform the task. My daily labor was to gather corn and dry it in a kiln, after which I took it on a grater made from an old copper kettle or tin bucket, and after supper made meal for the johnny-cake for breakfast; after breakfast I made meal for the pone for dinner; after dinner I made meal for the mush for supper. And now let me paint you a picture of our domestic life and an interior view of my father's house. The names I give below; a great many will recognize the picture only too well drawn, and think of the days of over forty years ago. Our house was a cabin containing a parlor, kitchen and dining-room. Connected was a shoe shop, also a broom and repair shop. To save fuel and light and have everything handy, we had the whole thing in one room, which brought us all together so we could oversee each other better. After supper each one knew his place. In our house there were four mechanics. I was a shoemaker and corn-grater. My father could make a sledge, and the other two boys could strip broom corn. My sisters spun yarn and mother knit and made garments. Imagine you see us all at work; sister Margaret sings a song father makes chips and mother pokes up the fire; Isaac spins a yarn, John laughs at him, and thus our evenings are spent in our wild home, for we were all simple, honest people, and feared no harm from our neighbors.

 

The want of mills is everywhere a great deprivation in a new country; varied have been the devices for overcoming it. The engraving annexed shows a substitute for a mill that was used in the early settling of Western New York, and probably to some extent in Ohio. It consists; of a stump hollowed out by fire as a mortar, with a log attached to the end of a young sapling bent over to act as a pestle. The process was slow and tedious, it being a day's work to convert a bushel of corn into samp.

 

The early settlers in Western New York when they owned a few slaves, which some of them did, employed them in this drudgery, hence the process was vulgarly termed “niggering corn.” People of humanity in our time would not be guilty of using such an expression as this. No one thing shows the general moral advance of the American people more strongly than their treatment of, and increased consideration for, the humbler classes among them.

 

Page 244

Recorder, George MONROE; Surveyor, James Pillars; Coroner, John C. COUVERY; Commissioners, John AKERMAN, Abraham CRIDER, Alexander SHENK. Newspapers: