ed with these events, and the men who enacted them, the greater cause we shall have to be contented with our own condition, and to bless that providence which brought us into this fertile and happy valley at a period when all these difficulties are ended, and we speak of them as a dream of the night.

hundred thousand acres, or more, and were often sold to the merchants of the Atlantic cities, by the original owner or his assignee, on speculation, or in payment for merchandise. With this proprietor, Mr. Wood made a contract to act as agent for the company in conducting the settlement, and as surveyor, in examining the boundaries of the purchase, and in running out lots of two hundred acres, as donations to actual settlers.

For the following historical sketch of the origin and the founding of the settlement at Belville, I am indebted to Joseph Wood, Esq., the principal agent in the transaction, and now living in Marietta, Ohio, at the ad- A suitable boat, built under his direction, vanced age of eighty years. Mr. Wood was freighted with cattle, horses, farming was born in Hunterdon county, State of utensils, etc., with such other articles as New-Jersey, on the 9th of January, in the might be needed in commencing a new setyear 1759. Like the most of our active and tlement more than two hundred miles disuseful men, he was brought up on a farm. tant from any place where supplies could be After receiving a common school education, procured, in the midst of a wilderness. The he made choice of the art of land survey- boat left Pittsburgh on the twenty-eighth ing as a pursuit, and on the 4th of July, in day of November, in the year 1785, with a the year 1785, then in his twenty-sixth crew of ten men, a part of whom were year, he left his native State, to join a com- Scotch emigrants, and the balance native pany of surveyors who were assembling at Americans, hired for one year as laborers, Pittsburgh, to survey the public lands north-in erecting buildings, and in clearing lands. west of the river Ohio, and south of the They reached the destined port in safety, western boundary line of the State of Penn- and landed at the new settlement of Belsylvania, under the then Geographical Sur-ville, on the sixteenth of December followveyor of the United States.

At the period of their assembling, the Western tribes of Indians had begun to show symptoms of hostility to the Americans, and had killed and plundered several white traders who resided among them, and threatened the frontiers in such a way as to render the sending of the surveyors into the wilderness hazardous and inexpedient. It was, therefore, postponed to a future day. While residing in Pittsburgh, without any regular employment, Mr. Wood fell in with Capt. William Tilton, who, with Messrs. W. and J. N. Gibbs, merchants of Philadelphia, were proprietors of a tract of land lying on the left bank of the Ohio river, in the State of Virginia, thirty miles below the mouth of the Muskingum, containing ninety-one thousand acres.

ing. On the passage down, they landed at the mouth of the Muskingum, where Major John Doughty, of the United States Army, with a detachment of soldiers and artificers, was then building a fort, which was called "Fort Harmer," and was one of a chain of defenses to be erected along the borders, and at commanding points on the Ohio river, for restraining and checking the western tribes, and to protect the settlements then in contemplation.

After landing and mooring their boat where it would not be damaged by floating ice, the next operation was to select a site for their buildings. A high, dry bottom was chosen, near the bank of the river, convenient of access to water; where, after cutting away the forest-trees, a commodious It was one of those tracts log house was erected of the timber, forty or parcels of land, lying in Western Virgi- feet in length by twenty in breadth, and two nia, which the State had been for several years disposing of to her citizens, with a liberal hand. On paying a certain sum per acre into the land office, a warrant was issued, which the holder was allowed to locate in any part of the State west of the mountains, not already occupied; he defining the boundaries of the tract, and recording the description of the survey in the proper office. Some of these tracts contained a

stories high, with a piazza on one side, reaching to the second story. Convenient loopholes or openings for musketry were cut in the logs. They took possession of the new dwelling early in January, 1786, in the mean time cooking and sleeping in the boat. In the following spring, several Scotch families joined them from Pittsburgh, who had left there late in the fall before, but had been detained by the ice, and the severity of the

CHAPTER II.

winter. Several additional cabins were now mountain ranges, from Pittsburgh to the erected close to the bank of the river, and mouth of the Scioto, and in its endless in front of the larger one. Subsequently, ridges, ravines, hollows and slopes, affordas the Indians became troublesome, four ing every facility for the secretion and block-houses were built in the angles of an predatory operations of the savage, in his oblong square, between which were erected perpetual warfare with the whites. How several other log houses. The whole were thoroughly the Indians had examined and connected by pickets, eight or ten feet high, taken advantage of its topography, was seen set strongly into the earth, so as to make a in all their inroads. tolerably regular stockaded garrison, sufficient for the accommodation of one hundred and fifty, or two hundred persons; and thus completed, they formed an oblong square, about three hundred feet in length by one hundred feet in breadth. At each end were large strong gates for the admission of their eattle, teams, etc.; and on the side next the river a small gate or sally-port, through which they passed for water, or to embark in their canoes. A few rods below, on the bank of the river, stood five or six log houses, which had been occupied by families, but were deserted after the commencement of hostilities. The whole had the aspect of a smart village.

Prosperity of the settlement-Abundance of game

Additional settlers-Some account of them-Character of the pioneers-Disasters-The settlement attacked by Indians-Death of Jacob Parchment and James Kelly.

For a time, every thing went on prosperously with the new settlement. Their lands yielded most abundant crops, and the settlers all enjoyed excellent health. The river was stored with large fish, and the woods abounded with deer and wild turkies. So abundant were the latter, and so fearless of The new families having taken possestheir new neighbors, that they every autumn sion of their lands, the colonists went cheer- visited their corn-fields, venturing up to the fully to work, clearing off the huge forest of doors of the cabins. Mr. Wood says that beech, sugar-tree and poplar, which had, un- one autumn he shot a turkey every day, for disturbed by man, occupied the rich bottoms, thirty days in succession, standing by the ever since their formation. The alluvions door of his fodder-house. They ate them here are more than half a mile wide, and af- roasted, boiled and stewed, until they beforded the most abundant crops of Indian came a weariness to the eater, like the quails corn, potatoes, beans, etc.; while, on the op- to the palates of the murmuring Israelites. posite shore, the river is lined with "nar- For about two years, the settlement remained rows," and the hills, which are very high, undisturbed by the Indians; and by the time stand close to the water's edge. The wide the war broke out in 1790, they had fenced, bottoms on one side, and the narrows on the and under cultivation, about one hundred acres other, continue for four or five miles below of land. In 1787, they commenced depredathe mouth of the Big Hockhocking river. tions by stealing eight or ten of their horses, About a mile above the garrison, a large although no attempt was made on their creek, called "Lee creek," puts into the lives until the year 1790. From this time, Ohio, which takes its rise in the hills back to the close of the war, they were watched, of the settlement, and spreads out into sev-harassed, plundered, and killed by the Ineral branches, affording fine ranges for cattle, and in those early days abounding in peavine and buffalo clover.

The whole region of country on both sides of the Ohio river is hilly, and broken by small runs, into hollows; but the soil is rich, and clothed with a thick growth of forest trees, affording many fine sites for farms. This broken or hilly tract extends back for fifty or eighty miles on the right bank of the river, when it gradually melts away into low undulations, or terminates in prairie. On the left, it continues hilly until it rises into

dians.

About this period, the settlement received a strong accession to its numerical strength, from a number of families that joined them from "Flinn's Station," located above the mouth of Lee creek, and about a mile from Belville. This station was commenced in the spring of 1785, by a hardy band of adventurers from the vicinity of Wheeling, but originally from the Susquehanna river, and accustomed to a border life from childhood. They had taken possession of an old abandoned Indian clearing, of about twenty

acres, on the bank of the river, just above Scotch families joined the settlement in the bounds of the Belville purchase, and 1786, and drew lots of land, viz: James had raised a fine crop of corn before Mr. Pewtherer, William Ingals, David JamerWood had taken possession for the compa- son, Andrew McCash, and McDonald, with ny. The principal occupation of these men, two single men, Frank Andrews and Thomwas trapping and hunting. The station as Gildruth. Many of the descendants of consisted of old Mr. Flinn, a widower, and these men, especially the Colemans, Dewhis two sons, Thomas and James, with eys, and Andersons, are still living in the families; Mr. Parchment, with his wife and vicinity of Belville. two sons, Jacob and John, single men; In the summer of 1790, Mr. Wood marJohn Barnet, who married a daughter of ried Margaret, the daughter of James old Mr. Flinn, and had a family of chil- Pewtherer, Esq., a native of Scotland. dren; and John McCullock, a single man. In The new "station," being destitute both 1787, they were joined by Joel and Joshua of a magistrate and preacher of the gospel, Dewey, from near Wyoming, Pennsylvania; the parties were under the necessity of Stephen Sherrod, wife and son, from the visiting Belprie, one of the new settlements same place: Macomb Coleman, afterwards of the Ohio Company, about sixteen miles killed on Mill creek, with his wife and fami- higher up the river, and the ceremony was ily of sons and daughters, was from near Car- performed in "Farmer's Castle," a strong lisle, in Pennsylvania, and came in April, stockaded garrison, by General Benjamin 1789. His son John, who was also married, Tupper, one of the magistrates of the comwas one of the most celebrated hunters pany. In April, 1791, a few days before and woodsmen of that day. Peter and the assault of the Indians, and the murder Andrew Anderson, from above Wheeling, of Mr. Kelly, he removed with his wife to came at the same time. Peter married a Marietta, as he had accomplished all that daughter of old Mr. Coleman. He was born was in his power to do, for his employers in the year 1758, near Fort Cumberland, in Philadelphia. While the war continued, in Maryland, and moved with his father, he was occasionally engaged in surveying west of the Mountains, and settled on for the Ohio Company, at the imminent Buffalo creek, near the present town of hazard of his life; especially the donation West Liberty, Virginia, in the the year lots in " Round-bottom,' on the Muskin1770, when only twelve years old. Their gum, when he was attended by a guard of nearest neighbor, for one or two years, twenty-one men. After the restoration of was fourteen miles distant, and the next peace, he was extensively occupied in surtwenty miles. During the first year, they veying the United States' lands, in the lived in a hut, built of poles and covered with "Seven Ranges," east of the Ohio Compabark. His father built the first water-mill ny's lands. In 1801, he was appointed west of the Mountains-a small tub-wheel Register of the United States Land Office, mill, on Buffalo creek. Mr. Anderson was at Marietta, in which service he continued eighty years old in July, 1838, and died in until the year 1837: a proof that his duties November following. I visited him a short were satisfactorily performed to his differtime before his death, and collected many of ent employers, being no less than six out of the events hereinafter related. He was a the eight Presidents, who had directed the stout man, of great muscular strength, and affairs of the Republic since its formation. so accustomed to danger, that he hardly After Mr. Wood left the garrison at Belknew the sensation of fear. His features ville, it was in the condition of a free derather coarse, with a full high forehead; mocracy, without any head. The boldest complexion sanguine; a strong uncultivated men took the lead; and, as they were all mind, and sound judgment. In cases of bound together by ties of common danger, sudden emergency and hazard, he was oft- and their mutual dependence on each other, en looked up to as a leader, by his compa- few or no altercations ever occurred. They nions as intellect and courage will always had no civil officers for many years. If be, in dangerous situations. For many any disputes arose, they were settled by the years after the peace, he served as a civil elder men; and, where all were disposed to magistrate, under a commission from the do right, there was no need of laws or exGovernor of Virginia, to the entire satisfac- ecutive functionaries. As all were on a tion of his neighbors. The following level, and all poor, there were no envyings、

The utmost harmony prevailed, and, in prime of life. He left the garrison one afmany respects, they were like one great ternoon, in the autumn of 1790, to hunt family. A large proportion of the men deer on the south branch of Lee creek, now in the garrison, were trappers and about one mile back of the garrison, and hunters, and often left their home for weeks was shot and scalped, by a party of nine together, roaming through the forests with Indians, a little before sun-set. John Coleas little sense of fear as the Indians them- man happened to be within two hundred selves. This was especially the fact with yards of him at the time, as he was John Coleman, Joel and Joshua Dewey, returning from the Newberry settlement, Joshua Fleehart, and Peter Anderson.- where he had been killing deer for the inThese men were all born and brought up habitants. Hearing the crack of the rifle, on the frontiers--were expert woodsmen--| he knew, in a moment, it was an Indian and often, during the Indian war, left their gun. So acute and discriminating was the families at Belville, to kill deer and buffalo ear of a thorough backwoodsman, that he for the inhabitants of "Farmer's Castle," could not only distinguish the report of the and the garrison at Newberry, packing the Indian rifle from that of the whiteman's, but meat for several miles on their backs. he could also tell the guns of his companions, pointing out each one by name, if he had been for any length of time accustomed to hearing them, in the same manner that a nice ear will distinguish the different steamboats, by the sound of their engines. Coleman immediately secreted himself in a hollow log, and continued there until the Indians, nine in number, had passed directly by the spot where he lay; knowing that there must be more than one of them, which rendered it useless for him to expose his life. The shot had also been heard at the garrison, and pronounced, by experienced men, to be that of an Indian. A party went out the next day and buried him, but the Indians escaped without injury. This was the first death that had taken place amongst them from the Indians, and deeply affected the women and children with grief and consternation; while the hardy hunters viewed it as a warning to be watchful, and a deed to be revenged the first opportunity.

The settlers of the Ohio Company, although brave men, many of whom had often encountered their enemies in the open field, were yet ignorant of wood-craft, and wholly unskilled in the Indian modes of fighting, or in the use of the rifle in hunting deer. For these reasons, they seldom ventured far from the walls of their garrisons, but employed men who had from their youth been accustomed to the woods, and whose fathers had been born within the shadows of the forest, and nourished on the produce of the chase. These were, almost universally, a race of men fitted for the station they occupied of large and powerful frames, bold hearts, rough manners, and as ignorant of letters as the red men to whom they were opposed, and with whom was waged a perpetual warfare; and if not sworn, like Hannibal, on the altars of their country, to unceasing hatred of the Indians, they were nurtured and brought up with the feeling of perpetual enmity. They were kind and Amongst the many thrilling and tragic charitable to each other; and in hospitality, events that befel the inmates of the garrinot excelled by the savages themselves. son at Belville, none excited a stronger inFor this reason, they would expose them-terest among the colonists, than the murder selves to any danger in procuring food for of James Kelly, and the captivity of his litthe suffering inhabitants of the new settle-tle son, Joseph, by the Indians. This ments of the Ohio Company, and hunt the distressing incident took place on the sevdeer in situations that would have been fatal to any man unaccustomed to a woodland life, and the wiles and stratagems of the Indians.

Having described the commencement and progress of the settlement at Belville, with the habits and manners of the inhabitants, we will now narrate some of the disasters which befel them.

The first person who fell by the Indians, was Jacob Parchment, a young man in the

enth of April, in the year 1791, being the anniversary of the landing of the first settlers of Ohio at Marietta, on the same day, in 1788. A brief biography of Joseph's father, will not be uninteresting to the reader, and is due to the memory of one of the pioneers of the West. James Kelly was a native of Massachusetts, and a cultivator of the soil in Plainfield, where he married Anna Hart. Having beome involved in debt, by being security for a neighbor, at a

about one hundred and fifty yards distant. John, a brother about twelve years old, was hobbling along on crutches, being very lame,

period when more changes took place in the fortunes of the citizens of the new Republic, than at any other subsequent time, viz: soon after the close of the war of from a recent deep burn on the hip, and had the Revolution, he was forced to sell his approached within fifty yards of his father; farm, and sacrifice the whole proceeds while his mother, with a younger sister and to the payment of the debt. The Ohio little St. Clair, just beginning to walk, were Company having taken possession of their standing in the open gate-way of the fort, in purchase about this time, his attention was the act of proceeding out to join them. It naturally drawn to this new Eden in the was yet early in the morning, and Mr. KelWest, where he could seek a new home, ly had but barely commenced his work, and better provide for his young and in- when a number of Indians, who had been creasing family. Accordingly, he left his secreted in the adjoining forest, sprang over native State in September, 1788, and reach- the fence and rushed immediately upon him. ed Pittsburgh that fall. Here he passed Being quite hard of hearing, and intent on the winter; and the following spring, em- his work, he did not observe them, although barked his family in a flat boat, or "ark," Joseph, who was only a few paces distant, as they were then called, on the waters of hallooed with all his might. A stout Inthe Ohio, and reached Fort Harmer, at the dian came up behind him and clasped both mouth of the Muskingum, without accident, arms around his waist, intending to take where he spent the summer. It was here him prisoner. In an instant he was aware that little Joseph, then in his fifth year, and of his danger; but, being a man of vast musa sister, two years older, came nigh losing cular strength, and great courage, he directtheir lives, from eating a quantity of fruit of ly freed himself from his grasp, and hurled the wild cherry, which they found in a cask, the Indian heels over head, more than a rod, in an upper room of the fort, from which the amongst his astonished companions. Pickbrandy had been drawn, and left by some ing up the hoe which he had dropped, he of the officers. He lay for a long time insen- defended himself so stoutly that the Insible, and was only saved by the greatest dians, despairing of taking him alive, shot exertions. The following winter was pass- him down, applying the tomahawk and ed in "Campus Martius," a strong stockaded scalping knife. While this affair garrison, on the east side of the Muskingum transacting, two Indians seized on little river, and the head quarters of the officers Joseph, notwithstanding his loud screams and agents of the Ohio Company. Here for help, and hurrying him along to the Mrs. Kelly, in December, 1789, gave birth high fence which surrounded the field, to the first male child born in the colony, pitched him over to some of their companwho was named St. Clair, in honor of the ions. Another Indian, with his tomathen Governor of the North-Western Terri-hawk, gave chase to John, who, throwing tory. away his crutches, and fear lending him activity, was enabled to outrun him, and escaped into the fort.

was

The following spring, Mr. Kelly moved his family to Belville, raised a crop of corn, and spent the following winter. He and his wife were both pious people, and members of the Congregational church; and were highly esteemed by their new friends in the West for their probity, industry, and kind-Further particulars of the Indian attack—Joseph Kel

ness to those with whom they associated. At the time of his death, he was the father of six children--four daughters and two sons. Joseph was then in his seventh year, and was in company with his father, who was busily engaged in covering some flax-seed with a hoe, which had been scattered the evening before, around some stumps, and could not be done with the harrow. The field was adjoining the walls of the garrison; and the spot where they were at work, was

CHAPTER

III.

ly taken prisoner-An incident-One of the war party wounded, and retreat of the Indians-Young Kelly borne into captivity-Subsequent events-A Shawanee village.

IN the field, close by where Mr. Kelly fell, was a small log cabin, tenanted by Mr. Sherrod, his wife and son. Having always lived on the frontiers, and fearless of danger, Mr. Sherrod had declined moving within the defences, although often warned of the hazard. This man will be again