Ohio Counties
Adams
Historical Collections of Ohio
By Henry Howe
Vol. I.
©1888
DEFIANCE COUNTY
Page 539
DEFIANCE
COUNTY was erected March 4, 1845 from Willliams,
Henry and Paulding, and named from Fort Defiance. It is watered by the Auglaize, the
Tiffin and the Maumee; this last-named street was anciently called “Miami of the Lake,” and sometimes
“Omee.” The Maumee is navigable by streamers, in
high water, to Fort Wayne, and I ordinary stages to that place for keel boats
carrying sixty tons. The Auglaize
is navigable for keel boats to Wapakoneta, and the Tiffin, which is a narrow,
deep stream, is navigable, for pirogues of a few tons, received a large part of
its supplies by the Maumee. Much of this county within the Black Swamp region, and where
cleared and drained as fertile perhaps as the aimed valley of the Nile. It was covered by abundant forests of
oak, hickory, ash, and elm and other trees, mostly of gigantic size, rendering
the clearing away a heavy labor. Area 420 square miles. In 1885 the acres cultivated
Page 540
Were 113,070;
pasture, 12,019; woodland, 65,823; lying waste, 906; produced in wheat, 342,352
bushels; oats 242,330; corn, 650,887; wool, 66,570 pounds. School census 1886,
8,2038; teacher, 148. It has 49 miles of railroad.
|
Township and Census |
1840. |
1880. |
Township and Census |
1840. |
1880. |
|
Adams, |
188 |
1,509 |
Mark, |
|
1,096 |
|
Defiance, |
1,044 |
6,846 |
Milford, |
175 |
1,460 |
|
Delaware, |
201 |
1,505 |
Noble, |
|
912 |
|
Farmer, |
281 |
1,302 |
Richland, |
|
1,427 |
|
Hicksville, |
67 |
2,381 |
Tiffin, |
222 |
1,526 |
|
Highland, |
542 |
1,226 |
Washington, |
98 |
1,325 |
Population of
the country in1840 was 2,818; in 1850, 2,818; in 1860, 11,983; in 1870, 15,719;
and in 1880, 22,515, of whom 16,711 were Ohio-born; 1,780 born in Germany, 867
Pennsylvania; and 553 New York.
The annexed
plan and description of Fort Defiance is found in the memoranda of Benj. VAN
CLEVE, communicated by his son, John W. VAN CLEVE, of Dayton to the American Pioneer.
At each angle
of the fort was a block-house. The
one next the Maumee is marked A, having port-holes, B, on the three exterior
sides, and door D and chimney C on the side facing to the interior. There was a line of pickets on each side
of the fort, connecting the block-houses by their nearest angles. Outside of the pickets and around the
block-houses was a glacis, a wall of earth eight feet thick, sloping upwards
and outwards from the feet of the pickets, supported by a log wall on the side
of the ditch and by fascines, a wall of fagots, on the side next the
Auglaize. The ditch, fifteen feet
wide and eight feet deep, surrounded the whole work except on the side toward
the Auglaize; the diagonal pickets, eleven feet long and one foot apart, were
secured to the log wall and projected over the ditch. E and E were gateways. F was a bank of
earth, four feet wide, left for a passage across the ditch. G was a falling
gate or drawbridge, which was raised and lowered by pullies,
across the ditch, covering it or leaving it uncovered at pleasure. The officers’ quarters were at H,
and the storehouses at I. At K two lines of pickets converged
toward L, which was a ditch eight feet deep, by which water was procured from
the river without exposing the carrier to the enemy. M was a small sand-bar at
the point.
FORT DEFIANCE.
The lands now
embraced with Defiance county were ceded by the
Indians to the United States by the treaty of Sept. 29, 1817, at the rapids of
the Miami of Lake Erie. Surveys
were made from the Indiana line east to the line of the Western Reserve and
south to the Greenville treaty line.
The base line of this survey is the 41st degree of north
latitude and it is also the south line of the Connecticut Western Reserve. On the 12th of February,
1820, the legislature of Ohio passed an act erecting these coded lands
“into fourteen separate and distinct counties.”
Among these was
Williams county.
When Williams was organized in 1824 Henry, Paulding and Putnam counties
were attached to it for judicial purposes, with the town of Defiance as the
county-seat of Williams county, and it so remained for many years, when Bryan,
then covered with a dense forest, was selected as the site of the new
county-seat of Williams.
Dissatisfaction with this change led to the creation of Defiance county, with Defiance as the seat of justice.
The
nucleus of the early settlement of these counties was at Defiance, and it was
chiefly settled in what now constitutes Defiance county
by those who were active in the early official life of Williams county.
Page 541
The first
court-house (a brick structure) for
Williams county was, as late as 1883 standing on the banks of the Maumee in
Defiance and used as a private dwelling.
A large part of the settlers of Defiance county
was Germans. Many were laborers
upon the railroads, who remained and took up lands.
Drawn
by Henry Howe in 1846.
DISTANT VIEW OF DEFIANCE FROM THE
NORTH BANK OF THE MAUMEE.
DEFIANCE IN
1846—Defiance, the county-seat, is on the south bank of the Maumee, at
its junction with the Auglaize, on the line of the canal, 152 miles north-west
of Columbus, 58 from Toledo and 50 from Fort Wayne. It was laid out in 1822 by Benj. LEVEL
and Horatio G. PHILIPS and contains 1 Methodist and 1 Catholic
L. E. Beardsley, Photo, Defiance,</