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Historical Collections of Ohio

By Henry Howe

Vol. I

©1888

 

FULTON COUNTY

Page 661

Fulton.

Fulton County was formed February 28, 1850, from Lucas, Henry, and Williams counties.  Its service is pleasantly undulating, and is drained by tributaries of the Maumee.  Its soil is fertile.  Being originally heavily wooded, its early settlement was slow.  Its area is 400 square miles.  In 1885 the acres cultivated were 124,300; pasture, 25,032; woodland, 53,834; lying waste, 2,632; produced in wheat, the 375,532 bushels; oats, 362,327; rye, 12,132; corn, 680,014; butter, 531,773 pounds; cheese, 452,240; wool, 188,294; sheep owned, 40,992.  School census 1886, 6,696; teachers, 142.  It has 33 miles of railroad. 

 

 

Population in 1850 was 7,070; in 1860, 14,043; 1870, 17,789; 1880 21,053, of whom of 14,907 were Ohio-born; 1,485, New York; 902, Pennsylvania; 185, Indiana; 569, British Empire; 731, German empire. 

Wauseon, named from an Indian chief, is thirty-two miles west of Toledo, on the L. S. & M. S. R. R., in the center of a fine agricultural region.  County officers in 1888: Probate Judge, Levi W. Brown; Clerks of Court, Albert D. Smith, James C. King; Sheriff, Daniel Dowling; Prosecuting Attorney, Mazzini Slusser; Auditor, Abram W. McConnell; Treasurer, John B. Schnetzler; Recorder, Harrison E. Randall; Surveyor, Lucius B. Fraker; Coroner, Levi E. Miley; commissioners, James C. Vaughn, Daniel T. Beddle, Sylvester W. Baum.  Newspapers: North Western Republican, Sherwood & Williams, editors; Democratic Expositor, J. C. Bollmeyer, editor; Fulton County Tribune, Republican, Smith & Knoft, editors and publishers.  Churches: 1 Methodist, 1 Congregational, 1 Baptist, 1 Disciples, 1United Brethren, and one Catholic.  Bank of Wauseon, Barber & Callendar, E. S. Callender, cashier. 

Workshops and Employees. - Philip Shletz, jacks and cider-mill screws; H. H. Williams & Co., butter tubs and lumber, 18 hands; Meeks & Cornell, saw mill; W. J. Harper, Rugg machine; Wauseon Roller Mills, flour and feed, 18. - State Report for 1887.  Population in 1880, 1,905.  School census in 1886, 576; W. S. Kennedy, superintendent. 

Wauseon was platted in 1854.  The first building was erected by E. L. Hayes as a store and dwelling in April of that year.  In 1870 it became a county-seat. 

Colonel D. W. Howard, of this county, has given us the following valuable and interesting reminiscences of early experiences among the Indians and pioneers of Fulton and adjoining counties:

My grandfather, Thomas Howard, with my father Edward, an uncle Richard Howard, with their wives and a sister, Mrs. Sidney Howard Nelson, left Yates County, N. Y., early in May, 1821, with two emigrant wagons.  Arrived at Buffalo, grandfather, my mother and two HuntS, with a girl cousin and myself, the only children, shipped on board a thirty-two ton schooner, commanded by Captain Anson Reed, for Fort Meigs; the men driving the team's (with three or four cows and a few sheep) along the shore of Lake Erie; a trip of many weeks duration and of much hardship, as there were scarcely any roads much of the way. 

The little vessel arrived safely after a very rough voyage of more than a week, entered the dark waters of the Maumee on the morning of June 17, and in the dusk of the same evening anchored in the bay under the walls and frowning packets of Fort Meigs. 

Page 662

villages which lined either bank of the river, with the yells and boisterous revelry of the inhabitants at their sports, filled us with dismay who had never before beheld the face or heard the hideous yells of the native redman. 

The principal settlement on the river at this time was "Orleanes," on the river flats, immediately under the fort, on the north west bank, and was largely composed of Canadian French.  Business was almost entirely confined to the Indian fur trade, which was carried on by John and Frank Hollister, General John E. Hunt, Robert A. Forsyth and Judge Wolcott, whose wife was the daughter of the Indian chief Little Turtle.

F. C. Blackman, Photo., Wauseon.

Central View in Wauseon.

The agriculture of the country was at this time so limited, that it scarcely produced sufficient for the support of the inhabitants; but the wild game of the country (such as wild turkey, venison and bear meat), which was abundant, made up for the deficiency.  A little settlement was started at Waterville, six miles above Maumee City, in 1818, by John Pray, Deacon Cross, Whitcomb Haskins and a few others; a few families, Elisha, Elijah, and Richard Gunn, Mr. Bucklin Scribner and Samuel Vance, settled at Prairie Damascus, on the north bank of the river, six miles above the head of the Grand Rapids (twenty-five miles above Fort Meigs), about 1818, and Pierce Evans, the Indian trader, at Old Fort Defiance, at the mouth of the Auglaize river.  The Indian mission was established ten miles above Fort Meigs on the right (south bank) of the river in 1821, and my father, Edward Howard, with two brothers, built their cabins at the head of the Rapids, during the winter of 1822-23, and were the first settlers above the mission (eight miles) on the south bank, with Uncle Peter Menard (Menor), a French trader, on the Indian reservation, on the south bank. 

The first settlers within the present limits of Fulton County where Valentine Winslow (whose wife was Cecilia Howard, a cousin of mine), Col. Eli Phillips and David Hobart, who came in the summer of 1833, all of whom have long since passed to the other shore except Col. Phillips, who is still living, hale and hearty, on the farm on which he built the first cabin.  The old pioneer was active at the rearing of our Pioneer Cabin, several years ago, to commemorate the events of the early pioneers.

The Old Maumee Mission. - The Presbyterian Mission was established on the south bank of the Maumee, ten miles above Fort Meigs and eight below the head of the Rapids, in the year 1821 or 1822, about the time that my father and his two brothers moved to their lands at the head of the Rapids of the Maumee. 

At the time of its establishment there was no settlement on the south side of the river above what is now the village of Waterville, and my father and his two brothers with the aid of the mission people cut the first wagon track, from opposite Waterville to the head of the Grand Rapids, winding up and over deep gullies, and across several considerable streams, such as the Tone-tog-a-nee (named from the great chief of the name, whose village was at its mouth), Kettle creek and Beaver creek, which had to be crossed by fording in order to reach their destination. 

Page 663

note located on the banks of all the streams in the country. 

Rev. Isaac Van Tassel was the principle of the mission; Mr. Sackett and Rev. Mr. Coe, assistants, with their wives and several maiden ladies as teachers, and together with a few mechanics and laborers forming the community of white people that established and carried forward the enterprise successfully for many years; in fact sustained it in its work of Christianizing and civilizing the Indians until the tribes were by degrees moved to their far-off homes in the West and Northwest, on the Missouri, the Kansas and the Osage rivers and on the bays and rivers of the Straits of Mackinack. 

Mission schools. - I had a long acquaintance with those good missionary people and have no words but kindness for them.  While they may have accomplished but little in Christianizing the Indians, they did the best they could for them and with the best intentions.  Their work was one of great difficulty: white men and half-breeds sold whiskey to the Indians, used all efforts against their patronizing the institution, and hired the Indians to keep their children from school.  It is easy for anyone to appreciate the difficulty of establishing a school among these wild, fierce people - boys and girls who had never been restrained, or their freedom abridged in the least.  To gather together one or two hundred boys and girls of all ages, from six or seven to twenty years, was no easy task; to ask them to come in out of the free woods, to close their Indian sports of fishing and hunting and paddling in their canoes, of riding on horseback, running races and other pastimes, was of course requiring great effort on the part of these young savages, and after a few days experience in the school-room, with all its attendant restraints, it cannot be wondered that many of them took the trail back to their villages, having had enough of civilization. 

I appreciate the situation, as I had the same experience and have not forgotten it to this day. 

After the Indians became acquainted with the mission people, and knew that they were true friends, their children were sent to the school and most of the time they had from eighty to one hundred and fifty in attendance. 

The society bought a large and valuable tract of land, including an island of about three hundred acres, upon which they opened a farm, built a large mission house, and a commodious school-room; where the teachers held forth to us for six long hours every day except Sunday, when we had two good long old-fashioned Presbyterian sermons. 

I have said we, and I do so for the reason that I had (what I then thought) a sad experience at the old mission.  When I was between seven and eight years old my father placed me in the care of the Rev. Van Tassel, at the mission school.  I was taken like the Indian boys from the woods, away from my sports and associates at the Indian village opposite my father's, or I had spent most of my time, as free as the Indian boys and, like them, as wild as a partridge or wild turkey. 

We spent the time at the village in summer, shooting bow and arrows, fishing or swimming in the river, and in many other plays and sports peculiar to young Indian boys, and you can imagine that it was almost death to shut us away from all these pastimes; and shut up in a school-room (where the presiding genius was a sanctimonious old maid of the hard-shell, stiff-backed Yankee Presbyterian persuasion), where long prayers were said morning and evening, and not a smile or whisper allowed. 

Many of the Indian boys brought to the school after a few days experience left between two days, and forever after kept at such a distance that they could never be caught or tempted back.  I would have gladly followed their example and hid in the Indian villages, among which I had many friends, but Indians were too honest and would not have kept me hid from my father and mother. 

Every effort was made by these earnest missionaries, and always with the kindest manner, to induce these wild and untutored people to believe in the Bible and its teachings, but with limited success; they took education readily, but religion sparingly and doubtingly.  Although the great end originally anticipated was not gained the mission did a good work; it educated many hundreds of the youths of these tribes, of whom many in after years in their new homes west of the Mississippi became good farmers and mechanics and some of them are still living in Kansas and Indian territor