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ORGANIZATION.

The original Miami township was one of the creations of the court of general quarter sessions of the peace in 1791, at the same time as Cincinnati and Columbia townships were erected. Its boundaries were then defined as beginning at a point on the Ohio, at the first meridian east of the mouth of Rapid run, thence due north to the Great Miami, thence down that stream to the Ohio, thence up the Ohio to the place of beginning. These included not only the entire tract now occupied by the township but also the eastern part of Delhi, a strip of Green two sections wide, and about one-third of Colerain township. In some of the old documents the limits of Miami are more simply stated as "beginning at the southwest corner of Cincinnati township, thence down the Ohio to the mouth of the Miami, thence up the Miami to the west boundary of Cincinnati township, thence south to the beginning."

In the general rearrangement of 1803, compelled or suggested by the creation of several new counties from the still extensive Hamilton, the boundaries of Miami were cut down considerably from the northward, while they were extended one range of sections to the eastward. The were now described as "commencing at the mouth of the Great Miami, thence north on the State line to the Miami, thence up that stream to the north boundary of fractional range two, thence east nearly four miles to the northeast corner of section twenty-four in fractional range two, town two, thence south to the Ohio, thence westward to the place of beginning." These confines gave the township no further reach to the northward than it now has, but extended the present north line three miles to the eastward, and gave Miami a strip of as many sections' breadth from what is now Green township and about half of the present Delhi, the east line of the township intersecting the Ohio about a mile below Anderson's Ferry, or near Gilead Station.

By the time the change of 1803 was made it had been discovered, as maybe ascertained by a careful reading of the definition of boundaries, that some part of the course of the Great Miami, near its mouth, lay wholly in the State of Indiana; so that a narrow strip of territory lay to the east of it, between its channel and the State line, which did not belong to Miami township or to Hamilton county. This river is famous for its changes of course; and several of its ancient beds may be plainly traced further up the valley, besides many indications of slighter modifications of channel. It is probable that across the tract lying within a mile of the stream, between GUARD'S Island and the mouth of the Great Miami, its waters have advanced and receded many times. Quite recent maps of the State and county exhibit a belt of territory here that still belongs to Indiana; but, since the surveys upon which these are based were made, the river has again so encroached upon its eastern banks that it is believed all its shore in that direction is in Hamilton county and the State of Ohio, except perhaps a small tract near the Ohio & Mississippi railway bridge.
 

GEOGRAPHY.

The extreme western boundary of Miami township at present, therefore, may be stated with almost literal exactness as the Great Miami river, separating the township

The township lies in fractional ranges one and two, town one of each. It has but nine full sections, all of them in range two, and none in the peninsula below North Bend and Cleves; but has twenty-two fractional sections, and thus secures a very respectable amount of territory. Its acres count up fourteen thousand and fifty-seven. Its extreme length is on the eastern border and for about three-fourths of a mile in the interior - just six sections, this strip being included between the same parallels which bound Green township on the north and south. The shortest length is between the point of the elbow of the Great Miami, at the south end of Cleves, and the Ohio river about two-thirds of a mile. The greatest breadth is on a line crossing the township east and west from the northernmost point in the great bend of the Ohio, from which North Bend is named, not quite six miles; the shortest is on the extreme north line, between the Great Miami and the northeast corner of the township--three-quarters of a mile. From the east line of the township to the meridian drawn from the southwest comer that is the State line, the distance is over seven miles, and from the southwest comer - the extreme end of the peninsula - to the northeast corner is just ten miles. Miami is thus seen to be a very singularly shaped township, deeply indented on the south side by the Ohio river, and on the north and west in several places by the windings of the Great Miami.

Within Miami township the Ohio receives from the northward the waters of Muddy creek and the west fork of Muddy, the latter of which lies altogether in the southeastern part of this township; also Indian creek, which enters the river at North Bend station, and several minor streams. Along the northwestern borders of the township flows the South fork of Taylor's creek, leaving the township at the northwest corner, just opposite to which, at the northwest corner, the main stream of Taylor's creek, flowing down from Colerain township, discharges its waters. A mile due north of Cleves, Jordan creek dabouches also into the Great Miami, after flowing nearly three-fourths of the way across the township. One or two petty and probably unnamed brooks are also affluents of this river on the Miami side. Beside this river, above Cleves, the valley is wide and low, yielding great crops of corn in favorable seasons; below Cleves Rittenhouse Hill, Fort Hill, and the general ridge between the two rivers close down pretty closely upon the banks of the streams, until their junction is neared, when the country again becomes low and flat, and subject in part to frequent overflow. The highlands continue along the Ohio to the Southeast boundaries of the township; but have ample room at the foot for the tracks of the railroads, a fine wagon road, and the sites of several villages and railway stations. They afford many picturesque views up and down the river, and across to the Kentucky shore; and some of the finest suburban residences in the county, as that of Dr. WARDER near North Bend, have consequently been located upon these heights. The general character of the hill country of Hamilton county is maintained to the northward and westward until the valley of the Great Miami is reached - much broken and diversified, however, by the numerous streams that cut through and down the hills. Across them, from the direction of Cincinnati, comes in the Cleves turnpike, having the village of that name on the west for its terminus. There is a singular scarcity of north and south roads in the township, but a sufficiency of highways, with a general direction of east and west. The Ohio & Mississippi, and the Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis & Chicago railroads run parallel to each other and to the bank of the Ohio in this township until just past North Bend station, where the track of the latter diverges rapidly to the northward, passes under the ridge between North Bend and Cleves by a tunnel, and leaves the township, going westward, by a bridge over the Great Miami, half a mile northwest of Cleves. The Ohio & Mississippi continues its course along the Ohio beyond North Bend about five miles, to a point about half a mile above the mouth of the Great Miami, when it passes into Indiana.
 

TOWNSHIP OFFICERS, ETC.

The first officers of the Miami township, named by appointment of the court at the time of its erection, were in part as follows: Lynde ELLIOTT, clerk; Darius C. ORCUTT overseer of roads; Henry BRAZIER, overseer of the poor. The cattle brand for the township was fixed by the court as the letter D.

By the order of 1803 the voters of Miami were to meet at the house of Joseph COLEBY and there vote for two justices of the peace.

On the twenty-fourth of April, 1809, the governor of the State commissioned Garah MARKLAND and Stephen WOOD as justices of the peace for the township of Miami, each to serve during a term of three years.

We have also the following memoranda of justices elected by the people in later years: 1819, John PALMER, Daniel BAILEY; 1825, William HARRELL, James MARTIN; 1829, John Scott HARRISON, J. L. WATSON, Isaac MORGAN; 1865, John D. MATSON, A. R. LIND; 1866, A. R. LIND, James CARLIN; 1867-9, James CARLIN, James HERRON; 1870-2, James CARLIN, William B. WELSH; 1873-4, James CARLIN, James HERRON, William AYR; 1875, CARLIN and AYR; 1876-8, William JESSUP, A. R. LIND; 1879-80, CARLIN and LIND
 

ANTIQUITIES.

The famous ancient work which gives the name to Fort Hill, near the Great Miami river, is an irregular enclosure surrounding about fifteen acres. It is between the brows of precipitous ascents two hundred and sixty feet high on the Miami side and two hundred feet high towards the Ohio, which is about a mile distant; and is in a position well calculated for outlook and defence. The wall is now about three feet high, is composed of

Other remarks of the general concerning this work in the same address are as follows:
The engineers who directed the executing of the Miami work, appear to have known the importance of flank defenses. And if their bastions are not as perfect as to form, as those which are in use in modern engineering, their position, as well as that of the long lines of curtains, are precisely as they should be.

I have another conjecture as to this Miami fortress. If the people of whom we have been speaking were really the Aztecs, the direct course of their journey to Mexico, and the facilities which that mode of retreat would afford, seem to point out a descent of the Ohio as the line of that retreat. This position (the lowest which they appear to have fortified on the Ohio), strong by nature and improved by the expenditures of great labor, directed by no inconsiderable degree of skill, would be the last hold they would occupy and the scene of their last efforts to retain possession of the country they had so long inhabited. The interest which every one feels who visits this beautiful and interesting spot, would be greatly heightened if he could persuade himself of the reasonableness of my deductions, from the facts I have stated. That this elevated ridge, from which are now to be seen flourishing little villages and plains of unrivalled fertility, possessed by a people in the full enjoyment of peace and liberty, and all that peace and liberty can give - whose nations. like those of Spata, have never seen the smoke of an enemy's fire once presented a scene of war, and war in its most horrid form, where blood is the object and the deficiencies of the field are made up by the slaughter of innocence and imbecility. That it was here a feeble band was collected. remnant of mighty battles fought in vain, to make a last effort for the country of their birth, the ashes of their ancestors and the altars of their gods; that the crisis was met with fortitude and sustained with valor, need not to be doubted. The ancestors of Quitlavaca and Gautimozin, and their devoted followers could not be cowards.
 

FORT FINNEY.

This work, the first erection for human habitation made by white men upon the territory afterwards covered by the Miami purchase, except only the transient blockhouses erected by the war parties of Kentuckians upon the site of Cincinnati, stood upon the soil of Miami township, in the point of the peninsula. It was upon the west bank of a small creek, about three-quarters of a mile above the mouth of the Little Miami, and near the mouth of the creek, not far from what is now the southeast corner of the former farm of the late John Scott HARRISON. The site is still pointed out by residents of that neighborhood, and a writer in 1866 said that some remains of the fort were then still to be seen, though they have now wholly disappeared.

We have elsewhere, in the chapter Before Losantiville, in the second division of this work, told the story of Fort FINNEY, down to and including the settlement and signature of a treaty with the Indians, February 2, 1786. It remains only to give its subsequent brief history. This we are happily enabled to do by the aid of the journal of Major DENNY, which has been published in one of the valuable volumes issued by the Pennsylvania Historical society. It begins October 22, 1785, before the work was built, and a little before the movement of troops to that quarter began. From this clear and intelligent account we learn that General BUTLER and his fellow commissioners left the fort soon after the treaty was concluded, going away on the eighth of February, 1786, in three large boats, with their messengers and attendants, all apparently well tired of the place, where their life and duties had been by no means pleasant. Their voyage was up the Ohio on their return to civilization. The soldiers remained, however, with Major FINNEY Captain ZEIGLER (afterwards Major ZEIGLER, commandant at Fort Washington), Lieutenant DENNY, and other well known officers in command. St. Patrick's Day was duly celebrated by the bold Irish boys of the garrison, with all hands taking part in such festivities as included the disposal of festive liquids, and also in the observance of the Fourth of July, which followed in due course of time. Lieutenant DENNY does not say just when the fort was evacuated, but the treaty of the Indians of the Miami and Maumee valleys was supposed to obviate the necessity for a military post here, and, all remaining quiet in this region, the commanding officer was presently directed to evacuate the place, which he did some time before January, 1789, taking his force to the Indiana side of the Ohio opposite Louisville, where a small work was also erected, and likewise called Fort FINNEY. We have no record that the work was occupied again by a military force, although General HARMAR, in a letter of January 22, 1789, just before SYMMES reached North Bend, said it was "not improbable that two companies would be ordered to be stationed at the mouth of the Great Miami, not only as a better cover for Kentucky, but also to afford protection to Judge SYMMES in his intended settlement there." But it was doubtless standing when Judge SYMMES came upon the premises, since the locality about the mouth of the Great Miami is commonly referred to by him as the Old Fort, and doubtless took its name from Fort Finney, not from the ancient work on the hills overlooking the Great Miami.
 

THE INDIAN PERIOD

The following narrative was related by the Hon. J. Scott HARRISON, son of President HARRISON, in an address

This tale of Indian murder has always had a peculiar personal interest to me. My mother, then unmarried and living with her father. Judge SYMMES, at North Bend, had been on a riding excursion (horseback, of course), to the Point, the very afternoon of this murder, and has often told me that the horses of their party were still at the door after their return, when the fatal shot that killed DEMOSS was plainly heard. My mother was always under the impression that the Indian saw her party pass, but that bread, rather than blood, was the object of the murderer.
 

THE PIONEER SETTLEMENT

in Miami township, and the third in the Miami purchase, was made, as all careful readers of this work well know by this time, by Judge John Cleves SYMMES - not at the mouth of the Great Miami, as he intended, and as General HARMAR and others expected, but at North Bend. Who Judge SYMMES was, in his family origin and early career, and what were his preliminary movements before reaching the Purchase with his colony, are narrated in Chapter IV of the first part of this book. Major DENNY who had returned to the garrison at Fort HARMAR, thus wrote in his journal August 27, 1788, of the appearance of Judge SYMMES and party at the post, during the movement westward. The gallant young officer's attention seems to have been specially and worthily attracted by the principal young lady of the party, the daughter of the proprietor:
Judge SYMMES, with several boats and families. arrived on their way to his new purchase at the Miami. Has a daughter (Polly) along. They lodge with the general and Mrs. HARMAR. Stayed three days, and departed. If not greatly mistaken, Miss SYMMES will make a fine woman. An amiable disposition and cultured mind, about to be buried in the wilderness.

This "Polly" is the daughter who afterwards became the wife of Peyton SHORT the millionaire son-in-law of Judge SYMMES. General HARRISON's wife was Annie SYMMES, also daughter of the judge.

Arriving at Limestone Point, later Maysville, SYMMES's found himself detained there during a tedious fall and early winter by the delay of the authorities in concluding with the Indians the treaty of Muskingum, and so providing reasonable security for settlers in the wilderness further down the river. Major STITES, however, got off about the middle of November with his party for the mouth of the Little Miami, and Colonel PATTERSON, the twenty-fourth of the next month, for the famed and coveted spot "opposite the mouth of the Licking," but the chief proprietor of the Purchase was still detained. December 12th, Captain KEARSEY and forty-five troops came down the river from Fort Harmar, and reported to him as an escort. They were for the time being of no service, but rather an annoyance, since they brought but limited supplies, and the judge had to subsist them. In November he had ordered a few surveyors down the Ohio, to traverse the two Miami valleys as high up as they could get. Some of these formed the advance guard of SYMMES' immigration to the Great Miami country. The judge intended to remain at Limestone until spring, having taken, as he said, "a total house of my own," but he doubtless became restless at the success of STITES and PATTERSON in founding their settlements while he delayed, and was also assured by repeated messages from STITES of the friendly disposition of the Indians and their eager desire to see him. There was some danger that his red brethren would go off in anger and disgust at the refusal or neglect of SYMMES to meet them; and so, during the latter part of January, 1789, he collected with difficulty a small commissariat of flour and salt, placed on boats his family and furniture, with other members of the colony and such of KEARSEY's soldiers as had not been sent to STITES, and embarked from Limestone January 29th. The season was inclement. A few weeks before this time, about the last of December, a sergeant and twelve men of the command had been dispatched for the Old Fort with a party of settlers. The weather changed soon after they left Limestone, becoming very cold, and filling the river with ice, so that there was danger they would be frozen up in the stream. They reached Columbia, however, and there paused, expecting soon to go on to their destination. But while here, the floating ice forced their boats from the shore, stove in, and carried away the side of one bearing live stock, part of which was drowned, and the rest saved with difficulty. Most of the provisions on hand for the settlers and soldiers was also lost. This broke up the intended emigration to the Old Fort, the party remaining at Columbia, or returning to Limestone when the weather and river permitted.

When SYMMES started, January 29th, it was at a time of the greatest freshet in the Ohio that had been known since Kentucky was settled the greatest, indeed, between 1773 and the tremendous flood of 1832. When his flotilla reached Columbia he found the little settlement under water except one house, which was on the higher ground. The soldiers had been driven by the water to the garret of the block-house, and thence to the boats. Floating rapidly with the swollen stream to Losantiville, he found it "had suffered nothing from the freshet," as he afterwards wrote. He doubtless stopped and spent some hours, very likely a night, at each of these places; although speeded by the flood and not interrupted by ice, as the Losantiville voyagers were, he occupied about the same time in the journey that they did, namely, four days. Leaving the last outpost of civilization on the Upper Ohio in the morning, he landed,

The first dwelling occupied by Judge SYMMES and family in their new home, is described by Mr. F. W. MILLER, author of Cincinnati's Beginnings. It is probably typical of all others that sheltered the party the first few days:
As soon as he had debarked he formed there an encampment, erecting a kind of shelter then usually adopted in this region for such purpose, consisting of two forked sapplings set in the ground for uprights, with a crop pole resting in the forks of these as a support for [boat] boards leaning from the ground to form the sides, one end of the structure being closed up, and the other left open for an entrance and fireplace. In that he remained for about six weeks before being able to provide himself with anything more like a house.

Judge SYMMES found his fears of the tract about the mouth of the Great Miami amply justified. On the next day after landing he sent two of the most intelligent members of his party to the junction of the rivers to inspect the grounds, and upon their return they reported that so much of the neck of land there as was above water was considerably broken with hills and by a small stream of water, so as to forbid the. laying out of a city between the two large waters. The following day SYMMES himself went down with Captain KEARSEY, and made a thorough survey of the region about the old fort. By this time the river had fallen about fifteen feet, leaving great cakes off ice six inches in thickness clinging to the trees, making in some cases canopies of eight to ten feet in diameter. The ice also served him a good purpose in his survey, as showing to what points upon the banks and bottom lands the water had reached. He found "the fine large bottom of land down in the point" covered with water to the depth of many feet, and after making full inspection of the premises he wrote to his partner that "I am obliged to own that I was exceedingly disappointed in the plat which we had intended for a city." He prepared and sent them a map of the peninsula during the flood, which demonstrated the proposed site to be "altogether ineligible."

He writes further: "This (the founding of a city at the point) I pronounce very impracticable, unless you raise her, like Venice, out of the water, or get on the hills west of the township line." He found, indeed, only room enough for one street between the hill and the overflowed land, and this scarcely half a mile in length. "A small village," he concludes, "is all that I can flatter myself with at the point, if we allow more of a lot than barely enough to set a house on." He thought, however, that they might do well to lay out a plat of fifty or sixty lots there, which was never done, we believe. He was enthusiastic in his description of this part of the peninsula for the excellence of its soil and the imminence of its growth of wild grass. He estimated the tract at about three thousand acres, of which one thousand were first-rate meadow-land; another third was capable of tillage, and level enough for plowing; and the remaining third was heavily timbered with richer growths. He suggested to the company that the whole should be reserved as a common manor for the proprietors, under liberal regulations for others that might settle in the reserved township. "I have not seen," he says, "fifty acres together, of the most broken of this township, on which an industrious man could not get a comfortable living."

The result was a determination to lay out a village where the party had first landed. He accordingly platted the village of North Bend, and South Bend some time after. He kept looking about, however, for a suitable site for a city, and seems to have found two, "both eligible," one about two miles east of North Bend, on the Ohio, a little above the mouth of Muddy creek; the other the same distance north of the bend, in that sweeping curve of the Great Miami about ten miles from its mouth, within which are situated the major part of sections twenty-three and twenty-four, in the northwestern part of this township. At neither of these points, however, could a city be laid off upon the desired plan of a regular square. "On both," said SYMMES, "a town must, if built, be thrown into an oblong of six blocks or squares by four. It is a question of no little moment and difficulty to determine which of these spots is preferable in point of local situation." But in the same letter, of May 18, 1789, to one of the co-proprietors, the judge argues elaborately and stoutly in favor of the latter site, as, being on the Great Miami, it would not be necessary for the inhabitants of that region, going to the proposed city by water, to double around the point at the old fort to teach it, as they would if the city were on the Ohio. He was anxious to have the site of the city determined and get it laid off; as meanwhile he was embarrassed in laying out the lands in that part of the purchase by the uncertainty as to the location of the Miami metropolis. He writes: "As it is uncertain where the city will be built, and whether the point may be reserved for the purpose of a manor or not, I shall be cautious how I set apart particular lots of land until these matters are settled by the proprietors." The end was, as we shall presently see more fully, that the great "city of Miami" to be was laid out where he first landed, from the Ohio river at North Bend nearly to the Great Miami at the present village of Cleves.

Captain KEARSEY had received orders, probably from General HARMAR, simply to accompany the emigrants to their destination, wherever that might prove to be, and

The story of North Bend and other Miami settlements will be carried on further in this chapter.
Among the early settlers of the township, were the SILVERS, RITTENHOUSE, WOODS, MATERNS, HOWELLS, and ANTHONY families.