(September 26, continued)

This is another view looking north from the high ground a mile north of Logansville — ground on which the Vance fort may have stood during the war of 1812.

The Greenville Treaty line is a couple of miles north of here. The marker back in Logansville lists blockhouses, including this one, that were built along the treaty line, but I suppose a point a couple of miles away can still be considered to be along that line. The blockhouses would have been placed where they could best protect settlers, and here is where some of the very first settlers to the area had come by the time the war broke out.

In the last post I mentioned two places that have been given as the location of the fort. The black dot above is the location of the marker that says the blockhouse was a mile north. But the 1880 county history said it was on high ground a mile east. (The base map is courtesy of Historic Map Works. If you click on it, you’ll go to the original 1875 map from which I took a screen shot.)

One other source gives yet a 3rd location. A biography of Joseph Vance was written for Ohio History in 1910 (Volume 19). The author was Benjamin F. Prince, a professor at Wittenburg College in Springfield. The article is available online here. Page 230 contains this information:

In 1807 the murder of a white man near Urbana by a malicious Indian, as later investigation showed, caused a general alarm among the whites. In order to prepare themselves against any depredations from the Indians a military company was formed of which young Vance was made Captain. He was with a party that a little later built a block-house on the Great Miami River where Quincy, a village in Logan County, now stands. It was called Vance’s block-house. It was used as a post of observation and a depot of supplies for the army of the North west. Vance’s company was called out a number of times just prior to the War of 1812 to resist threatened outbreaks of Indians.

Quincy is 2.75 miles to the southwest. I suppose it’s possible that this was an earlier blockhouse. Prince speaks of this one as having been built before the war broke out. But he doesn’t make any mention of any other blockhouse where Vance operated later. Prince continues:

When the war broke out Urbana was still a border settlement, and became headquarters for the military operations of the Northwest. Through that place Hull passed with his army on his route to Detroit. From it he was piloted to the Maumee by Joseph Vance and his brother. Here for a short time Govrnor Shelby with his four thousand mounted Kentuckians encamped during their journey northward to join the army of General Harrison. Here supplies for the army were gathered and distributed, in which duty Vance had a share. Here were brought many wounded soldiers. To this place Colonel Richard M. Johnson, the reputed slayer of the celebrated Tecumseh, was brought to recover from his wounds before being carried to his home in Kentucky.

The part of Captain Vance in this war was to assist in guarding trains of quartermasters’ supplies and to look after the defense of the borders against incursion from the Indians.

So far I haven’t been able to find out whether the research materials that Prince used for his articles have been archived anywhere, but this family history page about him gives me an idea of where to start asking.

There is another place on the map above that might be good for a future bike ride. I like to collect stories of men who came to live on land that they had seen as soldiers during the War of 1812. William J. Smith (the name circled in blue in the lower right) was said to be the grandson of such a person. The following is from the 1880 history of Logan County, page 839:

WILLIAM J. SMITH, farmer; P. O., DeGraff; was born in Clarke Co., O., in 1830, and at 1 year of age came to Logan Co.; … in 1865 he moved from his farm and rented 178 acres of his father, at the same time keeping the stock on his own place; two years after he bought the farm he was renting, which, in 1832, was purchased by his grandfather, John Smith, who had seen it during the war of 1812, as he was a soldier in frontier service, stationed near the present site of Logansville.

The 1881 history of Clark County contains a roster of Joseph Vance’s company of riflemen. But John Smith is not listed in it. So there are loose ends to this story, too. Still, it gives me yet another reason to come back to this country sometime for more rides.