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Plunging herds of buffalo seeking salt licks and grazing lands wore trails through the Ohio Country when it was an Indian no-man’s land. Later, Indians found the same trails suitable for their needs. The tawny paths were highways as well as highest ways. Indians found ridges and summits superior to valleys for trails because they were drier, windswept of snow, never clogged by flood debris and safer.
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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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Here in 1887, frustrated locals destroyed the Six Mile Reservoir when legal efforts to close it failed. Years after any boat ran on the Wabash & Erie Canal, its water source, the 2,000-acre reservoir, became a stagnant, uncultivable breeding ground for disease-carrying mosquitos. Legislative attempts to abandon the canal and reservoir failed because manufacturers in Defiance used the waterway to float logs downstream. On the night of April 25, 1887, 200 men calling themselves “The Dynamiters” carried a banner that read, “No Compromise! The Reservoir Must Go!” and converged here, overpowered citizen guards, gouged the banks of the reservoir, dynamited the bulkhead and lock, and burned down the lockkeeper’s house. The next day, Governor Joseph B. Foraker denounced the acts of the “mob of lawless and rioting men.” (Continued on other side)
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Built in 1816 by General Reasin Beall and his wife Rebecca Johnston Beall, the homestead is recognized as the oldest existing residence in the City of Wooster. Born in 1769 in Maryland, Reasin Beall came to Ohio in 1801. In the War of 1812, he was promoted to brigadier general of the Ohio militia. After the war, Beall served one term as a Republican to the Thirteenth Congress and ten years as a register of the land offices at Canton and Wooster. After Beall died in 1843, his daughter Elizabeth and son-in-law Joseph Stibbs II received his house.
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Camp No. 3 was located about six miles below Fort Winchester on the north side of the Maumee River. Militiamen from Kentucky, part of the forces led by War of 1812 Brig. Gen. James Winchester, occupied the camp from November 1812 until December 30, 1812. They had marched off to war in summer wearing their linen clothing; unaware they would end up in the heart of the Black Swamp in mid-winter. The suffering they endured was intense. Camp No. 3, thought to cover an area of about 40 acres, had picketed walls and an earthen bastion at each corner. The soldiers built small huts for shelter. In his diary, Pvt. Elias Darnell of Lewis’ Regiment of Kentucky volunteers referred to Camp No. 3 as “Fort Starvation.”
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John Chapman (1774 – 1845) leased these three acres to the north and west from William Botts Hedges on April 29, 1828. He paid Hedges by cultivating 1,000 apple trees on the site over the next ten years. Apples provided an important food source. Cut and dried for sauces in the winter, they could be pressed into cider or “apple jack” at a time when water often carried disease. The Hedges Nursery profited the Shanesville area by shipping apples to the major trading posts at Piqua and Ft. Wayne. During his lifetime, Chapman proved an able businessman who established profitable orchards in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. In 2009, American Forests, the Johnny Appleseed Foundation, the Museum at Urbana University, and the Village of Rockford planted two “Rambo” apple trees at the Hedges Nursery site.
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Settlers and soldiers moving west brought with them familiar institutions such as the Masonic Lodge. Here at Camp Meigs, military officers were authorized by Ohio Militia Captain Henry Brush, Ohio Masonic Grand Master, to establish the first lodge in Northwest Ohio on September 13, 1813. Colonel William Anderson was Master, Lt. Col. William McMillan, Senior Warden, and Capt. Charles Gratiot, Junior Warden. Built under the command of Gen. William Henry Harrison, the fort was named for Ohio Governor, Return Jonathan Meigs.
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General John Hunt Morgan led a force of 2,000 Confederate cavalrymen into Meigs County on July 18, 1863, during a raid north of the Ohio River. More than 50,000 Union troops and mlitia pursued Morgan across the State of Ohio. At Langsville, in an attempt to delay the Confederate approach, local militia burned the bridge near McMaster’s grist mill. This was the first burned bridge encountered by the Confederates on their trek across Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio. A young Confederate soldier, shot and killed by a local resident, was buried near this site. After suffering losses at Buffington Island, Morgan surrendered eight days later near West Point in Columbiana County. The surrender field was the northernmost point reached by Confederate forces during the Civil War.
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