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After American militia troops forcibly ended the 1812 siege of Fort Wayne, General James Winchester’s Army of the Northwest marched down the north side of the Miami [Maumee] River to stop or retard advancing British troops sent to aid in the siege of Fort Wayne. After three days of difficult march, Ensign James Liggett of the 17th Regiment, volunteered to lead a group of four spies or scouts to the site of the old Fort Defiance. Liggett’s small force was surprised and killed on or about September 25 near here. The Americans tried twice to recover the bodies, but met with ambush from hostile Native Americans sympathetic to the British. Their bodies were finally recovered and buried in a common grave. Besides Liggett, they included Wyatt Stepp, Guy Hinton, William Bevis, and Nathaniel Mitchell of Woodford County, Kentucky, all of Captain McCracken’s Company, 1st Rifle Regiment, Kentucky Volunteer Militia.
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On July 4, 1796, Moses Cleaveland and his survey party landed at the mouth of Conneaut Creek on the southern shore of Lake Erie in what is today Conneaut, Ohio. The Connecticut Land Company, a private land speculation enterprise, had hired General Cleaveland as its agent to survey the Connecticut Western Reserve lands and to found a settlement along the Cuyahoga River, later named Cleveland. Group members pitched tents and erected a crude shelter to protect the provisions and survey equipment before celebrating the independence of the new country with toasts and salutes. The next day they organized into field groups to begin the historic survey of measuring the townships and ranges of the Western Reserve.
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During the summer of 1863, General John Hunt Morgan, a Confederate cavalry leader from Kentucky, invaded southern Ohio with 2,460 mounted men. Throughout the campaign Morgan’s men plundered and looted before being captured by Union forces. On July 17, Morgan led his troops into Wilkesville stealing horses, sacking stores, and robbing private citizens. That night Morgan and some of his troops took lodging and meals with his first cousin Ruth Virginia Althar Cline and her husband Dr. William Cline. Morgan’s troops camped near the house of John and Elzia Levis where Elzia cooked for the men for fear they would harm her family. Additional soldiers of the raiding party stayed on the village square. Legend has it that while Morgan slept at the Cline Mansion, his black servant stole his looted money, and abolitionists Dr. Cline and Abraham Morris, helped him escape to freedom on the Underground Railroad.
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The W. Pearl King Prairie Savanna is a mostly undisturbed remnant of the once expansive Darby Plains Prairies. Prior to European settlement more than two centuries ago, the Darby Plains covered an area of more than 380 square miles west of Columbus. These prairies were an eastward extension of the Great Plains Prairie that Ohio State Professor Edgar Transeau termed the Prairie Peninsula in 1935. The W. Pearl King Prairie Savanna is a 20-acre vestige of a once large and varied habitat of native tallgrass prairie and oak groves. The prairie contains bur oaks, one of Ohio’s largest stands of prairie dropseed grass, and several other native prairie plants. Named for a former landowner, William Pearl King (1891-1960), the site has been owned and managed by Columbus and Franklin County Metro Parks since 2006.
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Teacher — Lawyer — Congressman — Soldier. Master Mason (1824). Georgetown Lodge No. 72.Free and Accepted Masons. ” . . . Hamer was one of the ablest men Ohio ever produced . . . I have always believed that had his life been spared, he would have been President of the United States . . .” Ulysses S. Grant. Memoirs, Vol. 1. [Masonic Emblem]
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These three stone water towers were erected by local craftsmen in 1892 and serviced the Ohio Hospital for Epileptics until 1950. The sandstone of the uncoursed masonry walls was quarried from the surrounding hills. The hospital facility, a former Union Hospital site during the Civil War, was the first of its kind in the United States. The towers were restored in 1981-1982.
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Digging of the Ohio-Erie Canal began in 1825, and the first canal boat navigated the Deep Cut at Licking Summit in 1831. The surrounding swamps were drained to create the Licking Reservoir, today known as Buckeye Lake, in order to supply adequate water for the canal going north to Coshocton and south to Circleville. After the canal route was established, the state engineers discovered that there was a ridge of hills located south of the proposed reservoir through which they would have to cut the canal. Since it was impossible to raise the level of the reservoir, the ridge had to be cut down to the level of the reservoir. This “Deep Cut” marks the deepest part of the canal at 32 feet and runs south from Millersport for nearly two miles. Unskilled laborers, primarily Irish immigrants, tirelessly dug the canal using picks, shovels, wheelbarrows, and oxen-cart.
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To the right is the route taken by the U.S. Legion under Major General Anthony Wayne as it marched across what would become Van Wert County. The army of 2,800 men camped west of this marker near the present cemetery on the night of August 4, 1794. Wayne’s orders were to subdue Native American tribes and his destination was a major village at the junction of the Auglaize and Maumee Rivers (now Defiance). Finding it abandoned, Wayne marched down the Maumee River and was attacked by a force of Indians on August 20. Wayne’s victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers ended the Indian Wars of the 1790s. The Treaty of Greene Ville, signed by Wayne and the representatives of twelve tribes, opened much of Ohio to American settlement. Side one includes a map on the right hand side of the marker showing the route of Wayne’s army through the eastern third of Van Wert County.