"" E-- -< Z Z o -z -o SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND TIMES OF COL. ISRAEL LUDLOW, ONE OF THE ORIGINAL PROPRIETORS OF CINCINNATI. FROM "SKETCHES IN THE M lAMI V ALLEY." BY HENRY BENTON TEETOR, A. M. ~C"\11' 1 ~ ~ llust"qateiL vlv" CINCINNATI: PRINTED BY CRANSTON & STOWE. 1885. Copyright by HENRY BENTON TEETOR. 1885. CONTENTS. Cbopbar 1. LINEAGE.-ApPOINTED SURVEYOR.-DEATH OF JOHN FIL­ SON.-BECOMES A PROPRIETOR OF CINCINNATI.-SUR­ VEYING OPERATIONS.- LUDLOW'S PLAT. - CINCINNATI AS A NAME.-A POPULAR NOTlON.-JUDGE BURNET'S STATEMENT.-"CINCINNATI" SUGGESTED BY LUDLOW.- DEATH AND BURIAL, •••• . Pages 5-23. HISTORY OF FORT WASHINGTON.-PrCTURE OF CINCINNATI IN 1800. - LUDLOW STATION. - FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ••... Pages 23-38. ~pprand;xl THE BEGINNINGS OF CINCINNATI.-CINCINNATI: ITS NAME AND PLAT.-How LUDI.OW BECAME A PROPRIETOR OF CINCINNATI.-LETTER OF SURVEYOR GENERAL HUTCH­ INS TO ISRAEL LUDLOW.-OFFICIAL REPORT OF COLONEL LUDLOW TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY,- Pages 49-52, Illust~ot;oDS' OLD FORT WASHINGTON,-CINCINNATI IN 18oo,-CHURCH OF THE PIONEERS, SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF COLONEL ISRAEL LUDLOW. Chapter I. LINEAGE. IR EDMUND LUDLOW, well known as Sone of the patriot" regicides" of King Charles I, was of an ancient and honorable English family. His father, Sir Henry Ludlow, was a member of the English Parliament, whose seat his son subsequently occupied. Sir Edmund immediately attached himself inflexibly to the Republican party; was one of the judges of Charles I, and appended his signature to his death warrant. He held many important com­ missions, military and civil, under the royal gov­ ernment and afterward under Cromwell, until the latter dissolved the Long Parliament. That action Ludlow disapproved, and withstood Cromwell 6 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF H face to face," thenceforward refusing to submit to his personal government as Lord Protector. He at once retired to his house in Essex, over the door of which was placed this inscription: "®mm solum forti patria, quia pairis." [Every land, because it was his father's, is to the brave man his own country.] After the Restoration, Sir Edmund escaped persecution by fleeing to the continent, and died in exile at Vevay, Switzerland, in r693, where a monument erected to his memory may yet be seen in the Church of St. Martin. From the "municipal and parliamentary bor­ ough and market-town Ludlow," in Shropshire, England, came the grandfather of Colonel Israel Ludlow, who crossed the Atlantic ocean and set­ tled in the colony of New Jersey. He was a member of this widespread historic family. The father, Colonel Cornelius Ludlow, had both hered­ itary and personal reasons for his honorable par­ ticipation in the war of the American colonies against their oppressors when the time came for them to achieve their independence by arms, and to assume a standing among the nations of the COLONEL ISRAEL LUDLOW. 7 earth. Thus Israel Ludlow's" life-blood tracked its parent lake" to war-proof fathers. THE BEGINNING. Israel Ludlow was born in 1765 upon his father's farm near Morristown, New Jersey. The war for independence opened upon his native land when he was only twelve years of age. The very fields over which his youthful feet wandered became ensanguined, almost beneath his eye, with the blood of his kindred. The ardor of his patri­ otism was enkindled by the memories of the part his forefathers had taken in the, struggle for liberty. APPOINTED SURVEYOR. After being thus schooled in the stirring times of the Revolution, and, in the years imme­ diately succeeding acquiring a collegiate educa­ tion, he was called, by reason of his "abilities, intelligence, and integrity," to undertake the sur­ vey of the Miami Purchase. This call was made upon him in 1787 by a letter from Thomas Hutchins, then Surveyor General of the United States. Ludlow was thus ordered to report to Judge Symmes. 8 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF When, on September 22, 1788, Ludlow arrived with Judge Symmes, Denman, Patterson, Filson, and others for the purpo~e of laying off a tow n opposite the mouth of the Licking River, he was doubtless the youngest, while his official relation to the enterprise presupposed him to be as intel­ ligent as anyone, of the historic party. Ludlow's business was to survey the Miami Purchase, and Filson's to layoff the town of " Losantiville" according to a plan agreed upon at Lexington. But before a bearing could be taken by the compass, or a chain could be stretched on the ground, the eastern limit of the Purchase had to be ascertain.ed. This Denman, the pur­ chaser from Symmes, upon whose ground the town was to be platted, required. Congress had said that the east line of the Purchase should stop exactly twenty miles from the mouth of the Great Miami River. Denman, the cautious, as a prerequisite demanded the ascertainment of this line before the village should be laid out on the ground. And to this task Ludlow first addressed himself by a survey of the river front, Ludlow being the first man to stretch a chain upon the site of Cincinnati. COLONEL ISRAEL LUDLOW. 9 DEATH OF FILSON. While Ludlow and Denman were thus en­ gaged, and while awaiting the result of that sur­ vey, Filson, Patterson, Symmes, and escort made an incursion into the interior in the direction of the Great Miami. This was about the 1st of October, 1788. From this expedition Filson never more returned. The mysterious disappearance of Filson, sup­ posed to have been killed by the Indians, before any thing had been done by him-a stake driven or a line marked-produced a profound sensation in this band of pioneers. Filled with apprehen­ sions, and seemingly baffled in the enterprise, the whole party returned at once to Limestone (now Maysville, Ky.); and the sounding aisles of the dim woods no longer rang to the anthem of the free until December the 28th following. BECOMES A PROPRIETOR OF CINCIN= NATI. After the arrival of Symmes, Patterson, and Denman at Limestone, as already mentioned, Filson's brother, who had been with the party when John Filson was killed, considering that 2 10 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF he had paid nothing and had only a nominal claim upon the property, notified the surviving partners that the legal representatives of the de­ ceaseq would demand nothing under the contract of August 22d, whereupon it was determined that the proper person to take Filson's place in the new enterprise was the young surveyor Ludlow. He was chosen because of his professional fit­ ness for the position, and he entered at once upon the work of making a plat-taking Filson's as a model-according to which he eventually laid out the section and fractional section con­ stituting the original Denman Purchase. GENERAL OPERATIONS. Beginning with the survey of Cincinnati m 1788 we find this young surveyor closing his official career in 1804, in the prime of life. In the meantime he had surveyed the whole of the Miami Purchase as directed by Surveyor-general Hutchins, of which he had made an acceptable report to Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the United States Treasury; had laid out the present cities of Hamilton and Dayton, being the sole owner of the former and part owner of the latter, COLONEL ISRAEL LUDLOW. II his co-pr'oprietors being Generals St. Clair, Wil­ kinson, and Dayton. His last official business consisted in establishing the boundary line be­ tween the United States and the Indian Terri­ tory according to the terms of the Green ville Treaty agreed upon by the Indian tribes and General Wayne in 1795. This was a dangerous and laborious undertaking, most of which was accomplished with only three active woodsmen as spies to give notice of danger. LUDLO'\i'V'S PLAT OF OINOINNATI. The Filson plan contemplated the name H Lo­ santiville." And yet the contract between the proprietors and purchasers, found among the pa­ pers of Colonel Patterson, bears upon its face the names of H Losantiburg" and H Losantiville." What does this mean? Simply, that no name had been fully agreed upon; or that more than one name had been suggested; or that until the time came to record a plat, which did not occur until September, 1795, when the title of Judge Symmes was confirmed, the name of the town might be considered an open ,question. Indeed, upon this very memorandum of agree- 12 .SKETCH OF THE LfFE OF ment for the sale and distribution of lots in Losantiville the name of "Cincinnati" also ap­ pears in the form of a blank deed, and in the hand writing of Colonel Ludlow. From the time of Filson's disappearance up to the arrival of Governor St. Clair, the name of the town had not been definitely fixed. It does not appear that any other name besides these had been suggested; and as Judge Symmes had it in mind to layout a city on a magnificent scale lower down the river, his advice on this mat­ ter would naturally neither be sought nor de­ sired. OINOINNATI AS A NAME. Was "Cincinnati" ever mentioned as the name of our city before the arrival of Governor St. Clair? If it was, then the part taken by the governor in designating "Cincinnati" as the county seat of "Hamilton County" in the order creating the courts and appointing judges thereof, was nothing more than adopting "Cincinnati" instead of "Losantiville" as the name of the young and insignificant village. How did it reach St. Clair's ears? By common fame, and from the COLONEL ISRAEL LUDLOW.