MAKING OF MONROE COUNTY, OHIO
by R.E. Harrington
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Until
the early 1800s, essentially no one lived in what is now Monroe County, Ohio --
not even Indians. It is true that
American Indians inhabited the North American continent long before the
Europeans began to arrive. However,
their population was sparse consisting of a number of tribes distributed over a
vast wilderness. They subsisted on meat
that they hunted with bows and arrows, spears, and traps. The Indians were also farmers in that they
planted corn, beans, and squash. They
lived in small villages of usually no more than a few hundred individuals. Being surrounded by vast areas of
wilderness, they had no concept of owning land as the Europeans knew it.
Then
came the British and French who had been fighting each other in Europe and on
the seas for centuries. Through early
contact with the Indians of the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes area the
French had discovered a rich resource in the form of animal pelts that was
available by trading with the Indians.
So, the primary interest of the French was to establish a partnership
and trade with the Indians. For this
purpose, they cultivated the friendship of the six tribes who lived in what is
now upper New York State. These tribes
became known as the six nations or the Iroquois League. The French built trading posts and provided
the Indians with blankets, guns, gunpowder, cooking utensils, axes and
tomahawks, whisky, cloth, and other European commodities. In exchange they took animal pelts and skins
for leather that were in great demand in Europe.
The
French encouraged more and more trapping and exploitation of the animal
population for furs and leather. The
Indians of the Iroquois League were only too glad to comply because animal
pelts were the money with which they could buy the white man's goods that over
the decades had gradually become necessities for their newer way of life. Trade was the only source of such
commodities as metals, guns, gunpowder and whisky.
Eventually,
the population of animals diminished to the point that they were insufficient
for the Indians of the Iroquois League to meet their trading requirements. Again, the French came to their Indian
partners' "rescue" by encouraging and helping them to become
aggressors of their neighboring tribes.
So the Iroquois League moved westward into new hunting and trapping areas
along the Great Lakes. In this process,
they eradicated the Erie Indian Tribe and under the tutorage of the French,
appointed themselves as the leading tribe over all other tribes in what would
become known as the Northwest Territory.
Several of the tribes submitted to the administrative domination by the
Iroquois League, but a number of others such as the Shawnee and Miami did not.
Farther
south on the North American continent the British were interested in settling
and farming the land. While the British
also traded with the Indians for animal pelts, the major income from their
colonies came from food, tobacco and taxes imposed on the expanding
population. This policy encouraged the
expansion of settlements and the colonies grew ever westward as more settlers
came and the demand for land increased.
For nearly a century the land east of the Allegheny Mountains was
sufficient for the growing population.
The King of England had established the Allegheny Mountains as the
dividing line between settlers and the Indian lands, a boundary that was
honored by the settlers for several decades.
By
the middle of the 1700s the relationship between France and England on the
American continent had deteriorated even further. To support the French trading enterprises to the north in 1749
the French sent a military expedition that claimed most of the area that we now
call the Northwest Territory. In so
doing their claim included the lands of the Shawnee, Cherokee, Miami, Mingo,
and other tribes. The British viewed
these claims as a trespass on their Pennsylvania and Virginia colonies. In addition, the British had established
their own trading posts among the Shawnee and other Indian tribes in this area. When the French arrived these British
traders were told to leave.
These
new claims of the French to the Ohio country fanned the flames of antagonism
that led to the French and Indian War.
The Indians viewed the squabble between the French and British as being
between two white tribes from across the ocean. Most of the Indian tribes
preferred to remain neutral in the squabble. However, the French were the
trading partners of the Iroquois League who had become dependent on trade for
their survival and prosperity. So,
eventually they agreed to join with the French in their war with the British.
France
did a poor job supporting their colonial forces in America both militarily and
in terms of providing supplies the trade with the Indians. As the sources of trade supplies dried up
for the French, caused in no small part by the British, the French traders
began gouging and cheating the Indians.
Deliberately playing to this French weakness, the British offered better
deals and in effect bought much of the Indians' allegiance away from the
French. This had the effect of reducing
military pressure on the British although the hostility of the Indians over the
encroachment by settlers still existed.
Eventually the British prevailed in the French and Indian War and in
1760 they were victorious in forcing the French to withdraw from North
American. As a result, the Indians found themselves trading with the
British instead of the French. Having won the French and Indian War, the
British laid claim to all the Northwest Territory. This was one of the terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1763 that was
made between the British and French but without the participation of the
Indians. With the French expelled from North America, the King of England, in
an effort to appease the Indians, ordered that all of the land between the Great
Lakes and the Ohio River would be Indian land and was not to be settled.
By
this time the land between the Atlantic Ocean and the Allegany Mountains had
become filled with farms and new land was needed for settlement. Settlers began to spill across the Allegheny
Mountains from Pennsylvania and Virginia.
In addition, surveyors were being hired to survey land in the upper Ohio
Valley with an eye to future settlement.
This encroachment of the whites into the Indian hunting land cause
justifiable concern among the Indians that the lands of the Ohio Valley would
soon be settled as the land east of the Allegheny Mountains had been.
In
an effort to accommodate the need for new land, the British convened a council
at Fort Stanwix with the Iroquois League in 1768. They did not invite the tribes who inhabited the Ohio
Valley. From the Iroquois League they
"bought," for £10,000 worth of goods, the area to the west
of the Allegheny Mountains and south and east of the Ohio River. In retrospect, it seems clear that this
negotiation with the Iroquois League was a ruse to claim that the land had been
bought, as opposed to being taken by force.
Needless to say, the Indian tribes such as the Shawnee, Cherokees, and
Miami who claimed the area as their homes and hunting grounds did not recognize
the transaction.
For
the Indians who lived on and used the lands "purchased" by the
British of the Stanwix Treaty, the problem was the continuing encroachment of
settlers. To some of these tribes the
conflict between the French and British had been an opportunity to push the
settlers back across the Allegheny Mountains.
Indeed, the French had encouraged this goal to help enlist the Indian
forces to their side during the French and Indian War. But with the British being the winning side
in the French and Indian War, the problem of encroachment of settlers took on a
more serious and sinister complexion.
The King's order to reserve the land north of the Ohio River as Indian land
stood for only a short period. The ruse
of the British buying land from Indians who did not own it was repeated several
times. Over the next two decades, the
situation went from bad to worse with both the whites and Indians becoming
increasingly suspicious of the other. Before long, this led to a state of
open but undeclared war between the white settlers and the Indians. The Indians' objective remained that of
forcing the whites to return east of the Allegheny Mountains. Attacks were mostly relatively small
hit-and-run skirmishes in which both the whites and Indians committed
horrendous atrocities. Several times the whites were nearly driven from
the lands west of the Allegheny Mountains where they were settling.
To make matters worse for the settlers, in 1776 the Americans declared their
independence from England. This
precipitated the American Revolutionary War that involved several years of war
between England and the eastern colonies. The new American government
that was formed was weak. It had no
money and was ill prepared to provide protection to the settlers on the western
frontier. As a result, the undeclared war between the whites moving into
the Ohio Valley and the Indians who felt that they owned the land continued
with disastrous results for both sides, but mostly for the whites. [Capt. John Baker, John Wetzel,]
As
the war between England and the future United States, reached a conclusion attention
could be focused on the Indian problems at the western frontier. The problem was that the new American
government was broke and tired of war.
The result was a period of about a decade of aggressive Indian attacks
on the settlers. The new Federal
Government built forts and staffed them with minimal troops but at best these
were shelters for settlers if they had advanced notice of Indian raids.
Even
though the Revolutionary War had been concluded in the east with the surrender
of British Major General Charles Cornwallis to George Washington at Yorktown,
the British still held key forts in places like Fort Detroit, Fort Niagara, and
Fort Miami. They also continued to
operate trading posts with the Indians.
And while there was at least a pretence of observing the surrender as
terms of the peace treaty were being worked out, these Canadian and fort
commanders continued the war by sponsoring the Indians as their surrogate
armies. From these positions they continued
to serve as military suppliers and advisors to the Indians and encouraged them
to continue attacks on the settlers in the Ohio Valley. Several futile efforts
were made by the white settlers to muster an effective resistance. However, the armies used for these efforts
were largely collections of unorganized and untrained militia from among the
settlers. The Indians with the help of
the British effectively repelled most of these missions, frequently with great
loss of life among the militia. The
Indians took refuge in what is now Central Ohio and were essentially immune
from attacks by the whites. [Maj.
Gen. Arthur St. Clair]
During
this long and bloody period, war parties of Indians would leave their villages
and follow established trails to the Ohio River or canoe down one of the rivers
leading into the Ohio River. There they
lay in wait for boats to come down-river with passengers and stores intended
for the settlements or forts. They
would attack the boats, kill or capture the crew, confiscate the cargo, and
return to their villages. This became a
profitable activity for the marauding Indians although it was not without risk
for the warriors. The fate of prisoners
could range from being adopted into the Indian tribe, to being sold to the
British, to being killed and scalped, or to be horribly tortured to death for
reasons known only to the captors. [Crow Sisters, - Johnson Brothers, - Battle of Captina, - Drumm Family Massacre]
Many
of the war parties would cross the Ohio River and set upon settlers'
cabins. The outcome would likely be
about the same as for the boats that they attacked on the river. They would loot the cabins of anything that
they found of value and could carry.
They would usually kill all the livestock and destroy the crops. An objective was to terrorize other settlers
into returning east of the Allegheny Mountains.
The
horrendous, inhuman acts were not confined to the Indians. Whites frequently engaged in similar
activities, some motivated by revenge, others perhaps intended to dissuade the
Indians from their terrorist ways. The
result became almost a one-upmanship contest of who could be the more cruel.
Most
people who were killed by an enemy on the frontier were scalped. A major factor in this practice was to
collect a bounty that had been placed on victims. The British, for example, paid the Indians a bounty for each
scalp taken. These were bought by the
British and stored. In these wanton
acts of murder even the unborn was not exempt.
[Scalp shipment]
The
land that would eventually become Monroe County was on one of the main routes
followed by Indian war parties intent on waylaying boats or crossing into
Virginia. Trails that ran along Sunfish
and Captina Creeks were used for these purposes.
Finally,
after years of terrorist activities that resulted in white settlers and Indians
alike being massacred, the Federal Government mustered the resources to
assemble, equip and train an effective army on the western frontier. Under professional military leadership for
the first time, General Anthony Wayne marched an army of 2,500 trained men
north to do battle with the Indian tribes.
When the encounter between the Indians and whites finally occurred at
Fallen Timber, the effectiveness of St. Clair's army was hardly tested. It served its purpose, however. The Indians were sufficiently impressed that
they capitulated and most of the tribes sued for peace. The conclusion of this last major
confrontation resulted in the Treaty of Greenville in 1795. [Greenville
Treaty]
All
of the Indian tribes had not signed the Greenville Treaty, however, so even
after the Treaty, attacks on some white settlements continued but they were
sporadic and claimed fewer casualties.
Effective, organized resistance by the Indians was never again achieved
even though they tried; particularly, through the efforts of Tecumseh.
Many details of the history of this period have been omitted in the brief
narrative above. But, it is not the purpose of this discussion to detail
the history of the Northwestern Territory. Suffice it to say that
following the Greenville Treaty of 1795 the flow of settlers increased
dramatically, particularly into the region north of the Ohio River. The Greenville Treaty had established a new
boundary between the settlers and Indian lands. The Indian lands were reduced to what is now the northern half of
the State of Ohio and lands west of Ohio. The Indians moved farther north and
west making way for the new wave of settlers.
On
March 1, 1803 Ohio became the seventeenth state in the United States. The Northwestern Territorial Government was
ended by the organization of the Ohio State Government on that date, as called
for by the provisions of the Ohio constitution framed at Chillicothe.
Ten years before the Greenville Treaty,
and 28 years before it became a county, Monroe County was part of a block of
land that became known as The Seven Ranges. The new American Government
established the Seven Ranges to provide land to pay soldiers and officers who
had fought in the Revolutionary War. The Government also intended to sell
this land to individuals as a way of raising money. The Seven Ranges included all or major parts of what are now the
counties of Carroll, Jefferson, Harrison, Belmont, and Monroe. It also included small parts of the counties
of Columbiana, Tuscarawa, Guernsey, Nobel, and Washington. In order to have a
method to identify and locate the individual land parcels, a method of
surveying was established in 1785 that became known as the Federal Survey
System. The Seven Ranges were the first
public lands to be surveyed using this system.
This method is essentially a grid of squares, six miles on each side,
that could be overlaid on a map of the region much like the system of latitude
and longitude that is used on a worldwide basis. The system is still in
use today. [Federal Survey System]
Using the Federal Survey System, soldiers of the Revolutionary War could be
given acreage in the form of "warrants." The owner of a warrant
could either settle on the land described by his warrant or sell the warrant if
he could find a buyer. The difficulty for the warrant holder, however,
was that at the time these warrants were issued in the late 1700s, the Indians
still thought that all the land north of the Ohio River belonged to them.
And since the war between the settlers and Indians was raging, it was
frequently worth their life to try to claim and settle on land covered by the
warrant.
Another
consideration was that most of the land in the southern part of The Seven
Ranges is hilly and on average a lot less desirable for farming than much of
the other land found in Ohio. As a result, the land sold slowly and
settlement of Monroe County lagged behind the settlement of some of the
choicest farmlands farther down-river and in the center and northern part of
the State.
Some of the lands in The Seven Ranges were offered for sale in New York in
1787-9 and some in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in 1796. Some of the land sold at these sales, but
not much. It was not until the land
offices were established in July 1, 1800 that sales picked up.
Monroe
County was organized as a county of Ohio by an act of the Ohio legislature on
January 29, 1813. Although established in 1813, its borders were modified
several times through 1851. It was
named for James Monroe who was then the United States Secretary of State (1811
- 1817) and later became the fifth president of the United States (1817 -
1825). The greatest extent of the
county, east and west, is twenty-six and a half miles, by twenty-two miles
north and south. It contains 470 square
miles.
By
the time that Monroe County became an Ohio county, it was beginning to be
actively settled. From a relatively slow start during the first decade of
1800 the population increased rapidly during the years between 1820s and
1850s.
By
the late 1820s Monroe County began to see a rush of settlers eager to buy land
and begin farming. Many came directly
from Europe enticed by the opportunity to own their own land in an environment
largely free of the politics and demands of government. They came with their own religious biases
but in most cases, not because of them.
Both the Protestant and Catholic settlers brought their respective
churches' customs and organizations and it is to the record keeping systems of
these churches that we are indebted as major resources of data and information
to help reconstruct much of what we know about these settlers who are our
Monroe County ancestors.
Many
of our ancestors arrived in the decades between 1830 and 1850. Most bought farms and began their families. It was the settlers of this period that
established the familial tone of the County with many of the current residents
being descendants of these early families.
Many of the farms where they settled were bought from holders of those
early deeds or warrants. In some cases, these farms already had houses
and other improvements on them, but most did not.
In
1850 Monroe County reached it peak in population. Over the next 60 years the population remained about constant at
around 25,000 people. This undoubtedly
reflected the facts that the available farms had become saturated with large,
stable families that limited further growth.
Then, after about two generations the original families began to age and
with no more land available and the coming of the automobile and railroad that
made travel easy, the younger population began to move elsewhere to seek their
future. Over the decades of 1910
through the 1940s the population of the County steadily declined to the present
level of about 15,000. This new
stabilized population level reflects the relatively older community and the
fact that the County offers little opportunity other than farming as careers to
younger people.
It
would be a serious oversight not to take note of the oil boom that occurred in
Monroe County at the turn of the 20th century.
Oil had been discovered in the late 1890s on both sides of the Ohio
River. This discovery attracted
developers, speculators, wildcatters and many others to Monroe County. Villages such as Lewisville, Graysville,
Rinard Mills, and elsewhere nearly burst at their seams as they tried to
accommodate the sudden burgeoning, albeit temporary, populations. Oil brought jobs and money and unprecedented
requirements for hotels, restaurants, general stores, saw mills, saloons,
livery stables and many other supply and service oriented businesses. Farmers became able to supplement their
incomes by working in the oil fields.
Many of the young men entering the work force for the first time had
another option besides farming. All
these factors combined to maintain the higher population level through the
decade of 1900. But as the oil boom
fever passed and the industry converted from exploration and drilling to
production and maintenance, most of which was done by the indigenous
population, the County began to resume much of its original familial
flavor. The difference was that the
industry of the County had experienced a change. Families who had settled as farmers were now farmers and oil
field workers. Some of this vocational
flavor can still be seen today in Monroe County. But, it is more likely to be seen by those doing genealogy and
peering into the past 100 years.
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