HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY OHIOBy Aldrich Lewis Cass
Published 1889
HISTORY OF OXFORD TOWNSHIP
CHAPTER XXVIII
TOWNSHIP number five, in range twenty three, is bounded on the north by Perkins, on the south by Ridgefield, east by Milan, and west by Groton. Its general aspect is not unlike those adjoining, being level, and diversified with three streams of water, the largest of which is the Huron River. This flows through the southeast corner of the township from the west, and passes through the corner of it on its way to Lake Erie. Pipe Creek and Crab Apple Creek are the only streams, beside the Huron River, in this township, and the latter empties into it. The township was first colonized in the month of February, 1810, by six families from Conneaut, Erie county, Pennsylvania.
These early settlers were Jonathan Sprague, an old man who had served in the army of the Revolution as lieutenant. He built a cabin on the east bank of Pipe Creek, a quarter of a mile from Bloomingville. His son’s family and three families of Dunhams settled between him and the present Bloomingville, and Linas Ensign settled a mile southwest of Bloomingville, on the farm occupied by John Paxton. In the month of July of the same year Thomas James and James Forsyth moved into the township. During that fail three others (named Nathan, Standish, and Wood) came, and were followed the next year by Thomas Hamilton, Dr. Hastings, John Dillingham, and Samuel McGill.
The survey of the township was made by Jabez Wright and Almon Ruggles, assisted by Benjamin Drake as chain bearer, in 1810, and throughout the year there were large accessions to the township, but the following year this Was checked by war with Great Britain and the cowardly surrender of the traitor Hull at Detroit, leaving the scattered settlements of Northwestern Ohio exposed, to the depredations of the Indians. The panic among the settlers became so great that many of them fled to older settlements for safety. The greater part of those who fled went to Mansfield, conveying their household goods and families on horseback and in wagons. We cannot picture the discomforts of that time with fear, sickness and suffering on every side. Fever and ague was almost as bad as the Indians, and the women and children suffered greatly by exposure during their journey. Those who remained behind proceeded at once to build a blockhouse for their protection in Bloomingville, and later a second one was built near it, and both enclosed with pickets as a better method of general protection. After this, until the close of the war, there were few additions to the settlement in Oxford. In an account written by F. D. Drake, whose father was prominently identified with the new country, is found a graphic description of those early days, from which the following extracts are taken:
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"On the 16th of April, 1815, my father and his family, consisting of mother and four boys, left Erie, Pennsylvania, for our future home in Oxford township, where we arrived the 4th of May, having performed the journey of one hundred and sixty miles in nineteen days. My father had provided himself with a span of fine horses, a light wagon covered with linen stretched over hoops. All heavy articles were left to be forwarded by water to the mouth of the Huron. The road was so bad that, with the addition of a yoke of oxen which my father purchased in Cleveland to hitch ahead of the horses in bad places, we were unable to travel more than six or eight or ten miles a day.”
He proceeds to describe the process of making new roads, cutting underbrush, laying a corduroy through marshy places, and at length tells of his arrival at their journey’s end :
“ We stayed at Jabez Wright’s, who lived at that time on the west side of Huron River, about a mile from its mouth. He was surveyor and land agent. He was afterwards an associate judge of Huron county. His house was crowded that night with settlers on business connected with a sale of lands. Among the number was Major Joseph Strong, the first permanent settler of Lyme township. The major and my father had been neighbors in New York State, and as every vestige of a road had disappeared, he volunteered to guide us to his house. We started early next morning, the major ahead on horseback as advanced picket, the team following; and the three boys, driving the oxen, bringing up the rear.”
He then continues to give us the details of that eventful journey, of his impressions of the broad prairies, covered with tall grass of the brightest green, and their first trials as pioneers. There was little or no money in circulation in those days. A man might raise large amounts of grain, and own large numbers of cattle, and still not be able to raise money to pay his taxes.
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borrow a dollar or even fifty cents was almost an impossibility, and whoever had it was looked upon as a rich man. In 1817 a man named Charles Lindsay moved from Dayton to near the head of Cold Creek, and having been connected with a wild cat bank in Dayton, he suggested to some of the most influential men that they might start a bank at Bloomingville. It was just what they wanted, and a public meeting was called, and attended by most of the men of the township. It was resolved at once that a bank be established, and Abner Young should be president, and Charles Lindsay, cashier. The necessary amount was subscribed, and Lindsay was employed to go to Cincinnati to get the bills struck off, and attend the Legislature and get a charter. While he was gone, some of the others erected a banking house, which is still standing. Lindsay promised everything necessary to do a bogus banking business, except a charter. The Legislature was not doing that kind of business, and the thing was no go. A sale was therefore made, and Major Faley bought the banking house, and Shirley and Youngs bought the balance of assets, consisting of notes, plates, etc.
Early troubles came to the settlers in many forms, and perhaps none was more distressing than the milk sickness that affected the cattle. It came simultaneously with the attempt to have a bank, and the cause of it to this day remains a mystery. There are still places in our country where this is common, and the United States has offered a generous reward of many thousand dollars to whoever discovers the secret cause of its prevalence. In Oxford township they believed it was the result of the animals drinking from springs of mineral water, but this was disproved by the fact that a flock of sheep belonging to Thomas James, of Bloomingville, were pastured in a field where there was no stream, and yet a number of the flock were affected by it. Its effects on animals was known as "trembles", and it was quite customary to see a fat calf, after sucking, walk a short distance, then begin to tremble, and in a little while fall down and die. The superstitious believed in witchcraft. Many people died from this poison, and their remains are buried at the forks of the roads a short distance east of Bloomingville, with no monument to tell the story of their lives in the new country to which they had come full of hope.
The first mill was always the most important step in the history of progress of a township, for upon the mills all families depended for food. In 1817 there was a mill in Venice, and in 1820 one at Milan, and one near the head of Cold Creek. A man named Powers had built one on the Huron River in Greenfield township. This was built in the woods, and the lower part of the house holding the machinery was not enclosed. Mr. Drake gives us a graphic description of this mill as he remembered it, when he took a grist there in his boyhood. He says: “The floor of the second story was five or six feet from the ground. About half way from the front door was a platform six feet high, on which the stones were placed. The presiding genius of this establishment
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was a very cross, lame man. Millers were then autocrats, and no appeal could be made from their decision, and one of their rules was that the person who brought a grist should bring it in and take it out. The state of the roads made it necessary to stay one night at the mill, and the night I stayed, ten or twelve others were there also. The clicking of the hopper, the sound of the water, the noise of people talking, and the singing of mosquitoes, precluded the possibility of sleep.
Bloomingville is situated in the northwestern part of the township, on the line of an Indian trail, near Pipe Creek. The ground is high and dry, and had been a favorite place as a camping ground with the Indians before a white man’s foot had touched it. The village was started in 1811, and laid out in 1817 by Abiathar Shirley and Abner Young, and its future was then very promising. It has ceased to grow much, and still remains a pleasant village, the centre of interest to the township. It was here that the first post office was established in 1810, with Aaron Bigsby as postmaster. The first store was opened the year following by Nathan Wood. The first hotel was started in 1812 by Abiathar Shirley.
Election precincts were almost boundless in this township, owing to the sparsely settled country. What is now embraced in the townships of Oxford, Groton, Perkins, and a part of Margaretta, was then one precinct, and all elections were held at Wheatsborough, since called Bloomingville. It was not until 1826 that Groton effected a separate organization.
Churches do not abound in Oxford township. There was no regular church organization until within the last twenty years, but there were religious meetings held long previous, and Father Gurley, an earnest Methodist, who settled early in the township, did much toward keeping alive an interest in religious things. Somewhere near 1869 a Lutheran Church was formed near Prout’s Station, and this has since grown to be a strong church and is in a very flourishing condition under the care of Rev. Enzling, of Sandusky. He goes to Prout’s Station every second Sabbath, and is heartily in earnest in his work.
Schools were attended to when money was still a minus quantity, for these pioneers came from a land of books and knowledge, and whatever else must be sacrificed, their children must be educated. Ohio owes much of its prosperity to this principle, and a traveler passing through its various townships is always impressed by the spacious and substantial school buildings that are seen in every township. In Oxford, the first school-house was built in 1810, while forests were still untouched and savages at home upon the soil. It stood half way between Pipe Creek and Bloomingville, and a term of school was kept in it during the winter of 18II by Joseph Alby. There are now fine brick buildings throughout the township, and children never stop to contrast their surroundings with those of their ancestors.
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Oxford township seemingly furnishes light material for the historian, but with her history have been interwoven the lives of some of Ohio’s most prominent persons. Notably among these names is that of Eleutheros Cooke, father of the well known Jay and Pitt Cooke, of national reputation as bankers. Judge Caldwell’s name is also interwoven with this township by incidents in his early life, so that, although Oxford has no large city or town, or even village, honor comes to it through the individuals that have belonged within her borders. In an oration delivered before the pioneers at their celebration in 1857, Hon. Eleutheros Cooke reviewed the causes of our country’s growth and development, and then proceeded to speak of the changes wrought by fifty years in the Firelands. He went back to the year 1790, when Moravian missionaries made a settlement on the Huron River, and then traced the rise and growth of prosperity, of institutions and military organizations that he had known. He pictured in graphic language the sufferings of the forefathers, and the wild alarm that was felt when Hull surrendered in 1812. He gives an incident of law in his own career, which cannot fail to interest the reader of primitive customs. We quote his own words:
“Until after my settlement among them, the ordinary log cabin, as well for the dwelling of the rich and poor as for the church, school room and courthouse, constituted the proudest architectural monuments of pioneer taste and extravagance. I well remember that the richest and most highly self prized laurels I ever won at the bar were plucked at a little seven by nine temple of justice built of logs, at the old country seat, three miles below Milan. If my honorable friend, Judge Lane, were here today, he would at once call to mind a suit in which he and I were pitied against earh other, and which we brought to an amicable settlement by a little cyphering on a huge log, breast high, which lay near the doorway.”
Then he spoke of the lack of markets for their produce, and the beginning of the Erie Canal. He describes the raising of the first shovelful of earth just forty years before, near Rome, N. Y., when the enterprise was begun, and all the glorious prosperity that followed its completion, only to be excelled by the advent of steam and rapid transit, thus showing the march of empire and transformations wrought by fifty years. He also speaks of an account he had recently seen of the coming of Mr. Nathaniel Deane to Cleveland in 1798, when it took ninety-two days for himself and family to make the journey from Chatham, Conn., and then Mr. Cooke contrasts this with the statement that his son had just left Sandusky for Philadelphia, and the next morning, before breakfast, he had heard of his safe arrival. This was in 1857, when steam and electricity were recognized factors in all progress.
