I’ve been reading “The Ohio Frontier” by R. Douglas Hurt (1996) in preparation for some riding later this summer.

I am now getting to like this book, but was disappointed by some of the first chapters. The chapter titled “Clash of cultures” was not particularly insightful on cultural issues. There was much awkward use of quotations. For example:

By 1762, the Wyandots had not made Fort Sandusky “agreeable” for the traders and the garrison. Lieutenant H.C. Pauli, who commanded, warned Bouquet at Fort Pitt that they intended to “have it burnt”.

and

At a council meeting at Pittsburgh in July 1759, George Croghan told the Ohio Indians that the British would “never taste true Satisfaction” until all captives had been returned.

I suppose Hurt was trying to add some historical flavor to his text, but it doesn’t make it read well, nor is it particularly informative. Then there was this item:

Pontiac was quite clear. He said the “Master of Life put Arms in our hands,” a variation on the Christian concept that God helps those who help themselves.

In that case the quote is useful, but a) even though the Indian religious reform movements did seem to adopt some concepts from Christianity, I doubt that those had anything to do with this particular message, and b) “God helps those…” is not a uniquely Christian concept, even though the saying has been used by Christians, usually as a way of explaining why they are NOT going to follow some Christian teaching.

It’s a minor annoyance, but the first part of the book was filled with minor annoyances.

On the plus side, Hurt often told about events in terms of their modern location. It’s just what I need for more bicycling expeditions. Now I know where Pickawillany was in 1752, for example.

The book took a big turn for the better, though, beginning with chapter 4, “The road to Hell.” There is a lot of detailed information about Harmar’s expedition in 1790 and Hardin’s defeat that I had never read before, even though I’ve read many accounts of it. Makes me want to go back and see the locations again. The same for St. Clair’s defeat in 1791. The above photo was taken at the battle site at Fort Recovery, Ohio, on July 1, 2007. I’ve already posted several articles about that day’s ride, including this one.

One of several things I learned from Hurt’s book, which I had never understood before, was that if I had been standing in 1791 in the spot where I stood for this photo in 2007, made a quarter-turn to the left to see the main direction of Indian attack, and had been able to identify the various Indian groups, I would have found that the Potawatomi, Odawa and Ojibwe (i.e. the people of the three fires) were attacking on St. Clair’s left. The center was being attacked by Shawnees, Miamis, and Delawares. To the right would have been Wyandots and Iroquois. I like knowing about things like that.

In 1791 the spot where I took this photo was the bank of the Wabash River. St. Clair had sent the Ohio militia across the river, to set up camp there where they wouldn’t be able to desert so easily. I had known about the separation of St. Clair’s forces by the river, but had somehow not managed to link it to the problem of undisciplined militias. Hurt does a good job of explaining that throughout.

Those may seem trivial issues, but sometimes they also lead to greater understanding, too.

We’ll see how the rest of the book goes.

I’ve been thinking of installing some forum software on my Black Hawk Slept Here site where people can exchange genealogy notes and other information, but haven’t done so yet. I told her I’d post a photo of the gravestone here at The Spokesrider. (She lives far away and has not yet visited the gravesite.) The inscription contains a piece of information that I thought was significant, and it seems she does, too.

This photo is a version one of that I already posted here. The gravestone is shown inside the red oval. This cemetery was the starting point for a bike ride I did last July 2. We had spent the morning in the library in Bluffton, where among other things, I found that the local genealogy people had compiled a directory to the location of gravestones in this cemetery north of Murray. I also found a news item saying that the large sum of money Mr. Norcross had been thought to have accumulated, had been found in one of his outbuildings. He had lived in this area at the time of the Black Hawk war, had gone away for safety during the war, then had come back. Later he had gone to Texas with his family, but still later came back to Indiana where he lived a solitary life until he died.

After getting a bite to eat, Myra and I drove to this cemetery where I looked again for his grave, this time finding it with the help of that information from the library. Then I took off on an afternoon ride, while she went to learn about the Amish people who live along the Wabash River in Adams County.

My Spokesrider entries about Allen Norcross are here and here.

It was hard to get a good photo of the gravestone, because it was off in the shade at the west edge of the cemetery. Here it is in the foreground.

The background of this photo is very washed out, but if one clicks on it to get the larger version, it’s easier to read the inscription. The part that interested me was the words, “Rest Father.” It suggested to me that some of his children had come from Texas to put up this stone marker and perhaps claim their substantial inheritance. If his children had made a journey to the old homeplace, it also explained how the local history writers might have known what they did about the family in Texas.

I suppose there are other possible explanations for that part. But when I read these old county histories, in which sources are rarely cited, I often try to think about who possibly could have provided the information. Sometimes my hunches lead to other interesting investigations.

This was the final destination for the day — a piece of county road that marks a tiny part of the boundary between the area known as the Virginia Military Tract and the lands of the rectangular survey system.

The military tract is to the right of the road in the photo. It was for Virginia’s Revolutionary War veterans, and was part of the deal by which Virginia agreed to the new Confederation with other states. The method of surveying property lines of the military tract was chaotic, and over the years resulted in lots of litigation over boundaries. (There’s a good Wikipedia article that explains more. )

The land to the left was part of the system of rectangular survey into square miles and square townships.

The adoption of the rectangular survey was part of the same regularizing, rationalizing influence of the late 18th century that gave the world such things as the metric system of measurement. Its efficiencies were very consequential to individual lives and to the settlement of the North American continent. But all one sees here is an ordinary piece of county road to separate the two systems. That’s what I had come to see.

At the end of the little stretch of road (here the Virginia Military District is on the left) Myra picked me up, and the four days of bike riding came to an end. I had ridden 78 miles that day, and I had 213 miles for the four day outing, which was comfortably more than my goal of 200.

The average daily totals were not as much as I usually have done in the past, but this gave us a little more time to do things together between rides that didn’t involve my bicycle, including a good part of one day spent doing local history research in the Wells County public library. We’re planning more outings like this.

A question which local history buffs might be able to answer: Does Wapakoneta mean White Feather in Shawnee? The “Wap” likely means white, but I have no idea about the rest of it.

I finally got food in Wapakoneta — but it was not a good experience. Enough said about that.

I rode county roads south of US-33 and approached St. John’s from the south. This was where the Shawnee leader Black Hoof had lived.

This is one of two monuments to him in the small town. The words engraved on it say in part, “[He] opposed the Indian confederation of Tecumpseh in the War of 1812. A just and honorable man / Respected by both friends and enemies.”

The Americans showed their respect in a strange way, though. Black Hoof did indeed resist Tecumpseh, and in return a couple of his followers were killed in one of Tecumseh/Tenskwatawa’s witch hunts. (Witches came to mean, almost, “those who cooperated with the Americans’.) Instead of fighting with on the side of the British in the War of 1812 as did many native people (such as Black Hawk) his faction sat it out. As a reward his people were evicted from Ohio by the Americans after the war. But Black Hoof died before the eviction was complete, and is buried near here.

Fort Amanda was a supply station during the war of 1812. Now it’s a cemetery. It would have been a good place to have lunch, if I had been carrying my cook kit with me, because it’s a cemetery that has a picnic area alongside. Not your typical cemetery, obviously.

The path at the foot of the cemetery was roped off with police tape, because the St. Mary’s River is cutting away at the banks. Someday the graves pictured above will wash into the river, but hopefully not for a couple of lifetimes. I spent a lot of time here, going back and forth. I ducked under the police tape when there were no kids around for whom to demonstrate a bad example. At one time I decided I needed my tripod, so trekked back for that; then my camera battery gave out so I had to go back for a fresh one. This was in addition to going back for a shot I wished I had taken (which in the end didn’t work out so well).

Finally, I got back on my bike and took off, only to see from the road that there was a big monument, too. The walkway across the ravine separating the cemetery from the monument was there for a reason. So I rode back, unpacked my camera things, ducked under the police tape, walked across the cemetery and over the bridge across the ravine to get a few photos of the monument, too. This is one of them.

The “Deep Cut” site was in the northwest corner of Auglaize County. I intended to end the day in the southeast corner, with a stop at the site of Fort Amanda just to see what was there. This photo is on Deep Cut road, which follows close to the north edge of the county. I didn’t find anything of significance to use in the Black Hawk story. There were no names I recognized But there was a bit of shade which made it a good place to stop and refold and rearrange my maps for the next leg of my ride, to Fort Amanda and beyond.

After getting not as good a breakfast as I had hoped for at Fort Recovery, I headed east toward Fort Amanda. I stopped near the St. Mary’s River to watch the wheat harvest at a distance. It was interesting to see how the operator turned such an ungainly-looking piece of machinery with quick, tight turns to finish up an odd end of the field.

And here was an opportunity to not only ride in the general vicinity of the St. Mary’s River, but see it up close. So I dawdled here for a while, too. (This is not to mention a lengthy stop at an old cemetery just a half mile down the road. Lots of stopping to look at things.)

The roads all morning had been quiet, level, and well maintained. I was wondering why this road was called “Deep Cut Road.” I had chosen this route partly because the name intrigued me. But it was quiet and level. There had obviously been no need to cut the road through hills or anything of that sort.

The roads were so good, with wide ditches, I was thinking this could just as well be Minnesota. I was even getting just the slightest bit bored, compared with the rides I had done the previous three days. Then I came to this sign, which explained it all. I was traveling east, but an old canal from its era had cut through here, north to south,

July 3 was the 4th and final day ride. This time I was headed to the southeast corner of Auglaize County, Ohio, where the Virginia Military Tract butts up against the lands of the rectangular survey. The county maps showed a road that followed part of the boundary. That was my main destination. It’s another one of those bits of history that left a mark on the landscape, and I wanted to have a look.

I got a fairly early start – not even taking time to make coffee and oatmeal. I ate a grocery-store granola bar that Myra gave me, and said I’d save the other one to eat on the way. Then I forgot it in camp. So I was hungry by the time I got to Rockford 20 miles later. But at the point shown in this photo, I didn’t yet realize it. It’s at the Indiana-Ohio border. Teasels were in the roadside ditches all over.

I don’t recall seeing any more Amish farms once I crossed into Ohio. The political subdivisions can be important to these people, depending on local laws in one jurisdiction or another. It’s not as though there aren’t a lot of Amish in Ohio, but here it seems that for whatever reason, around here their farms go no further east than the Indiana border.

replaced photo, 24-jun

Murray, Indiana: Land of the Shelled, Home of the Shocked

The shelling was done from an F-16 of the Air National Guard. That had to have been almost as exciting as the news of Black Hawk in 1832. And news from Fort Wayne travels slowly nowadays, too, at least to the people living on the Wabash River at Murray, especially when the people in charge would prefer not to talk about how these things happen.

I’ve always wanted to do more bicycling vacations like this — days of riding interspersed with substantial amount of time in local libraries, looking for more local history. This one worked out as well as I imagined it could.

So we drove out to the Murray cemetery for another visit. Norcross was said to be somewhat reclusive (though affable enough) in his final years, with his wife long dead and his kids gone to Texas. So it is fitting that his gravestone is way off to the edge of the cemetery, barely visible in the shadows in the above photo. On it are the words “Rest Father,” which suggests that his kids did come back from Texas after his death to claim their substantial inheritance. And this also explains how the local history write could have known that they were in poor circumstances down there.

I’ll be putting more about Allen Norcross here: Allen Norcross “pulled up stakes”.

Then it was time for a bike ride. The ride to Decatur was one from the Wabash River to the St. Mary’s River, across flat country that had once been so wet that people said it was easier and faster to travel the 125 miles to Cincinnati than the 25 miles to Fort Wayne. People still work at it to keep it drained, which is what the equipment in the above photo is for.

In Decatur I got a bit lost, and wasn’t even sure which side of the St. Mary’s River I was on. I didn’t want a long ride today, because I wanted an early start for a long ride tomorrow. But eventually I realized I was still on the south side of the St. Mary’s, and had a pleasant ride straight south, much of it through Amish country.

It looks like the Amish household pictured above contains somebody whose whims about birdhouses have been indulged. It’s not often that you see visible signs of individual idiosyncrasies among these people. I hope it isn’t viewed as something harmful. One of their guidelines from the Bible is “Be not conformed to the world,” which is admirable. But as with the 60s hippies and many other non-conformists, this non-conformity is accompanied by considerable conformity within the community.

Some things about Amish country life remind my wife and I of our childhoods. More, though, is of what we heard our parents’ generation tell about farm life (and our parents’ generation was older than that of most people our age). But this photo, directly across the road from the birdhouses, shows an aspect of farm life that has probably not been seen outside Amish country for even longer than that. It was the first time I had seen wheat shocks like this outside of a storybook.

Altogether, today’s ride was 36 miles. It was also one of those rare times when I pulled into the campground sooner than I had predicted.