Josiah Atkins Jr: Surveying the Black Swamp

Josiah Atkins, Jr.  Ledger, 1826-1827

Hayes Presidential Library and Museums

 

 

Josiah Atkins, Jr. was born in Wolcott, Connecticut in 1789.  He was the younger brother of Quintus F. Atkins who had settled in Ashtabula County, Ohio.  Quintus traveled through Northwest Ohio delivering the mail and beginning a mission with Rev. Joseph Badger.  Later, he was appointed superintendent of building a road through the "Maumee Swamp," land granted to the state of Ohio by Congress.  Quintus sent his younger brother Josiah to survey and sell the lands. He spent three years in Lower Sandusky (now Fremont, Ohio.)

The above images are the first two pages of Josiah's 100-page ledger of the survey of the lands (divided into lots) from the line of the Connecticut Western Reserve to Perrysburg, known as the Black Swamp (now U.S. Route 20).

Josiah Atkins, Jr. detailed the location of the numbered lots by range and township.  He measured the acreage, the presence of streams, and the soil quality of many lots. Atkins identified the  species of trees and also measured their diameter and height: Elm, lynn (also known as poplar), black ash, burr oak, maple, and hickory were present. 

Today this provides an understanding of the original environment and types of trees native to the Black Swamp region. This record is part of the Oscar Stierwalt Local History Collection at the Hayes Presidential Library and Museums. Josiah Atkins, Jr went on to work as a surveyor, builder, accountant, storekeeper and historian, postmaster, and justice of the peace.

Intelligent, well read, and curious, Atkins accumulated a large library that he willed to Tabor College in Iowa.  He died in Oberlin, Ohio in 1871.

Westwood Cemetery

Oberlin, Ohio

Courtesy Find a Grave

Seager Tavern, Woodville Township, Sandusky County, Ohio

 The existence of the Seager Tavern is well documented as one of the 30 taverns built along the 31 miles of the Maumee and Western Reserve Pike (now State Rte. 20) between Fremont (then known as Lower Sandusky) and Perrysburg, Ohio, known by pioneers as part of the Black Swamp.

Daniel Seager, born 1777 in Simsbury, Connecticut, had married Catherine Lounsbury in Duchess County, New York.  After living many years near Pompey, New York and a brief time in Geauga County, Ohio, they came with five of their six adult children to settle in Woodville Twp., Sandusky County, Ohio in 1833.   

It was a time of "westward" expansion.  Improved lands in the east were often priced beyond the reach of young families. Northwest Ohio provided one of the last places in the state of Ohio where virgin land could still be purchased from the federal government. Many times, sons and daughters brought their elderly parents with them.

On April 3, 1833, shortly after his arrival, Daniel purchased tract #101, bordering on the south side of the pike in section 35 of Woodville Twp. It contained 118 acres.  Daniel contracted to pay the federally regulated price of $1.25 per acre in four annual payments.  It was here that Daniel and his family built their tavern.  Like most of the other taverns along the pike, it no doubt served the family as their home as well.  A short time later, he purchased another parcel consisting of 85 acres. This lay just south of the tavern property.

Accommodations at most of the taverns along the pike were primitive at best.  Every pioneer family faced the awesome task of clearing land for crops.  But those who settled in the midst of the Black Swamp had the additional burden of draining their fields. Only a few acres could be transformed into productivity each year. More than 1/3 of those who settled left within a year. But the hardy souls of the Black Swamp, such as the Seager family, were determined to take advantage of the income from the unbroken stream of "movers" slowly slogging their way westward through the pike's mudholes.

If enough shot and powder were available, families could provide meals of racoon, opossum, turkey, and deer - all plentiful in the swamp. Small grain crops produced feed for the oxen and horses. Warm fires and the ever-present whiskey jug made the mud, cold, and backbreaking misery nearly bearable.  At dusk, the taverns filled up quickly. Every available inch of space would be filled with exhausted families wrapped in mud-caked, damp blankets.  Many were forced to sleep in their wagons or beside campfires.

Daniel was nearing 60 years of age on his arrival. Most of the labor was necessarily done by his children - Charles, Thomas, Elizabeth, Mary, and Catherine. Charles, was born in Pompey, New York in 1811 and educated at its academy.  A widower, he brought his young daughter, Martha Jane, to the swamp with him.

During this time the population of Woodville Twp. continued to grow as a few optimistic pioneers decided to try their luck in the swamp.  When Woodville built its first schoolhouse in 1836, the township trustees hired Catherine Seager to be its first teacher. This position often went to young men, but Catherine, still single at the age of twenty-three, had been educated in the east and was well qualified for the position.  By 1842, when Daniel died at the age of 65,  all of his children except Catherine had married. It's probable the tavern continued in operation a few more years. Improvement had been made on the pike in 1840, decreasing the tavern business immensely.

 Some miles west of the Seager tavern was that owned by Thomas and Harriet (Cochran) Miller who had married in 1826. The tavern was located where the Portage River crossed the pike (now Woodville,  Ohio). The couple has lost two babies.  A plot of land had been set aside by C. B. Collins as a burial ground.  Thomas and Harriet buried their babies there and when Thomas passed away in 1828, he too, was interred in the same cemetery. 

In 1835, Charles Seager married Thomas' strong-willed widow. They had one child, Charles L., born in 1837. The couple ran her tavern as well as assisting the Seager family with their lands and tavern. In 1837, Charles and Harriet sold the Miller tavern. Two years later, Charles bought from the heirs of Henry Weaver the tavern known as the "Sugar Creek House. " The tract,  which was bisected by Sugar Creek, lay on the north side of the pike and contained nearly 143 acres. The couple also bought land and settled on a farm in Ballville Twp., Sandusky County. 

In the Lower Sandusky Whig in 1839 Charles advertised "for rent Sugar Creek House 13 miles west of Lower Sandusky.  Attached to this tavern stand is a farm containing nearly 150 acres, 50 tillable, very productive. Terms: rent payable quarterly in advance."

In  addition, Charles  and Harriet began buying up the interests in Daniel's estate.  These plans were cut short when Charles died in 1844.  Harriet buried him in the cemetery near her first husband. 

  

Harriet Seager

Sandusky County History, 1882

 

As Daniel's estate hung in limbo, no doubt Thomas Seager managed the Seager tavern and property. But with Thomas' death four years later, and the waning traffic along the pike the tavern business most certainly came to an end. 

Daniel's widow, Catherine, and his unmarried daughter remained on the land. John McBride,  relative of neighboring tavern owner Michael McBride, lived with them and farmed the property. This provided an income until the settlement of Daniel and Charles' estates.  Barthol Hurrelbrink had purchased part of the Seager estate, but within a matter of months Michael McBride had gained title to the entire property.  Catherine, almost 70 years of age, with her dower interest in Daniel's estate, returned to New York to an easier less primitive way of life.

                                                  

Charles Seager Grave

 

                     

The great grandson of Charles Seager recalls the family history that when the Oakwood Cemetery was opened in Fremont, Ohio, Charles' widow Harriet Cochran Seager was determined to have her husband's body removed from the early Woodville Cemetery near Sugar  Creek. Her son refused to take part in this  expedition. Harriet then hitched her wagon and hired two men to help her remove Charles' body from the cemetery along the pike. He was then reinterred in the new Oakwood Cemetery in Fremont, Ohio.

The Grim Reaper

 “Mr. Leezen has the ague and the fever, Eliza the headache. Mr. Thomas Gallagher had the intermittent fever and his son the remitting fever. Many sick at the river at Green Creek. Mr. Rogers is yet hearty, but his housekeeper has another visit from the fever and ague.” These were just a few of the quotes from Josiah Atkins’ letters to his brother back in Ashtabula, Ohio.

In 1824, Josiah, a personable young man, had come to Lower Sandusky [Fremont, Ohio] to manage the sale of lands through the 20 miles of Black Swamp to Perrysburg, Ohio. The tracts were the last federal lands for sale in Ohio. Settlers ditched, grubbed, dug, chopped, and burned their way through a 120- foot right- of-way in the massive quagmire that would become the Maumee and Western Reserve Road.

Like the settlers, Atkins soon became sick himself. He wrote that he was at last freed from the shaking and fever. Yet, he told his brother, “I am not well – there is something hanging or clinging about my springs of life that tells me I am not well. My head is dizzy, my knees are weak, my breath is short. I am anything less than half such a man as I was when I came to this good and great city of Lower (than hell) Sandusky.”

Woodland Mosquito

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Some thought it was the foul air and the swamp's gases that was making nearly everyone sick. In reality, it was the ever present mosquitoes that thrived in the pools of stagnant waters. They were the culprits that spread malaria among these early pioneers. Many became so ill, they lay shaking in the cabins, unable to work or care for their families. More than a third who came gave up and moved on. No one really knows the exact death toll.

Mosquitoes carrying malaria not only brought death and misery to the settlers of the Black Swamp, but as far back as the Bronze Age, they contributed to the collapse of the Greek and Egyptian civilizations. For centuries mosquitoes harboring malaria had sapped the strength of armies. At the surrender of Yorktown, nearly half of Cornwallis’ soldiers were unfit for battle due to malaria. According to historian Amanda Foreman, the Panama Canal was only completed because of quinine and better mosquito control. In World War II, General MacArthur believed that for every one of his Pacific Theater divisions, two were unfit to fight because of malaria.

Today, the Grim Reaper continues to take its toll. Each year, more than 400,000 die from malaria throughout the world. Two thirds are children under the age of five. Welcome news has finally come! This year for the first time, the World Health Organization has approved a childhood vaccine against malaria!

Remembering the Great Black Swamp

The Rev. Joseph Badger described the area as "generally low and interspersed with gentle swells of excellent land, well-timbered, but between the ridges lie streams and hideous swamps of two, three, four miles in width. Stretches of mud and water from knee to belly deep to our horses extend from 8 to 10 miles."

The pioneer missionary was describing the Great Black Swamp, that immense low-lying tract of land that dominated the thirty-mile expanse between Ohio's Sandusky and Maumee Rivers.  In total, the swamp covered 1500 square miles and affected a portion of ten of Ohio's counties. So daunting was the swamp that northwest Ohio was the last place settled in all of the state.

Great Black Swamp Map

Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Beech, oak, hickory, and elm trees reached more than 100 feet above the swamp's jungle-like vegetation, choked streams, and marshes.  The canopy blotted out the sunlight, making the Black Swamp a dark, depressing, and lonely place for many of those first settlers.  It was such a forbidding landscape that even the Native Americans left it to the wolves, snakes, horseflies, and the massive swarms of mosquitoes. 

More than one-third of the pioneers who settled in the Black Swamp gave up and moved on.  It took determination and endurance to remain. The Goll Woods is one place that some remnants of the swamp remain and can be experienced today. Lying a mile and one-half north of Archbold, Ohio, in German Twp., Fulton County is a 321-acre preserve that is believed to be the least disturbed woodland area in this part of the state. 

Immigrants from France, the Peter Goll family purchased 32 acres in Fulton County in 1834. Eventually, the Goll land grew to nearly 600 acres. It remained in the family for generations. The state of Ohio acquired the land from Peter Goll's great granddaughter in 1966 and dedicated it to a nature preserve in 1975. 

Goll Woods

Courtesy of ODNR

The old growth forest has some of the largest trees remaining in the state of Ohio and is truly reminiscent of the Great Black Swamp. Selective cutting only took place once - during World War I. Eighty acres of the preserve is virgin forest that the Goll family called the "Big Woods." You will see 200-to-400-year old trees; some of which have trunks four feet in diameter. There are cottonwood; sycamore; pin, bur, and white oak; pine; ash; and tulip trees. Their canopy is so dense, it still presents the eerie gloom of the Black Swamp that our ancestors felt. To learn more about the Goll Woods, go online to Goll Woods State Nature Preserve. 

Lightning and windstorms have felled come of these majestic trees just as they have for thousands of years. They lay on the swamp's floor, decomposing in the dark shade amid the native wildflowers and wood plants of ferns, lilies, violets, elderberry and raspberry bushes, and Solomon's seal. Look ever so closely and you will see  salamanders, toads, woodpeckers, an occasional wild turkey or a whitetail deer. And, always, always there are the mosquitoes.  For our ancestors, it was a hostile landscape that took everything they had.... and for many - it took their very lives.  For us, it is a natural treasure that gives us an appreciation for what our ancestors experienced in the Great Black Swamp.

  

Atkins Papers: Proposals for Constructing the Bridge Across the Carrying River at Woodville, Ohio,

List of Bids Submitted for Constructing the Bridge across the Carrying River at Woodville, Ohio
1825

The scanned documents are part of the Quintus F. Atkins Business Papers recently donated to Hayes by Mr. Harry Wilkins on behalf of the Tabor Historical Society of Tabor, Iowa.  They were preserved by Martha Atkins, who graduated from Oberlin College where she met her husband John Todd. Before moving to Tabor, Martha and John  were active in Oberlin’s anti-slavery and temperance movements.

Martha’s father, Quintus F. Atkins was appointed by the state of Ohio as Superintendent of the Maumee and Western Reserve Road that passed through the Black Swamp.  Having discovered the description of the Atkins Papers held by HPLM, Wilkins and the Tabor Historical Society believed that Tabor's Atkins Papers could be better utilized if it were merged with those located here at Hayes Presidential.

A portion of Tabor's Atkins Papers includes proposals sent to Atkins from Sandusky Countians, hoping to gain the contract to build a bridge across the “Carrying River” (i.e. the Portage River) where the road passed through Woodville, Ohio.

Atkins listed the names of bidders, their sureties, amounts proposed, and expected dates of completion. The eleven proposals listed in the first document were written during the spring of 1825. Tabor's Atkins Papers include a total of 18 proposals. Below is that of Thomas Miller. Thomas and Harriet Miller owned a tavern at the site where the Portage River (Carrying) crossed the Maumee and Western Reserve Road (now Rte. 20) as early as 1825.

Proposal Submitted by Thomas Miller
1825

Unfortunately, Tabor's Atkins Papers do not provide evidence of who was awarded the contract. A Sketchbook of Woodville, Ohio: Past – Present, written in 1986 for the village’s sesquicentennial, states on page 14 that the “first bridge over the Portage River in Woodville was a covered wooden bridge. It is not known just when it was built.” The latest date proposed by a bidder was August of 1826. The requirements stipulated that the bridge should be capable of withstanding ice, flooding, and driftwood for a period of three years. The wooden bridge did all that and much more; it was not razed until 1878 when it was replaced with an iron bridge. 

Bidders were:
John P. Rogers
James Birdseye
Josiah Rumery
Ezra Williams
S. B. Collins
James Justice
George J. Moore
Jacques Hulburd
Joseph Wood
Seth Doren
Jonathan H. Jerome