Zachary Taylor in 1848
Where Was Chesterfield?
When I looked at the address on a letter from 1849, the address was clearly in “Chesterfield, Lucas County, Ohio.” This stopped me cold. Chesterfield? No town that I knew of in Lucas County, and I had lived in and around the area for more than thirty years. I finally found Chesterfield, although not where I expected, and during the journey I also caught a momentary glimpse of an early, shortlived President. Here was the route I took.
County boundaries, at one time, were flexible, certainly not set in stone. This was especially true in the northwest corner of Ohio. Settled later than the rest of the state, owing in part to the daunting presence of the Black Swamp, counties such as Wood and Sandusky were organized only in 1820. Other northwest counties were drawn and redrawn because of the “Toledo War” in 1835 over the correct location of the Michigan/Ohio boundary line. And sometimes, old counties grew too large; boundaries that had fit once grew to be confining and were chopped up.
Also created in 1820 was Henry County. Lying west of Wood, Henry County once stretched all the way to the Michigan boundary, as did Wood County. But when the Toledo War came near to shooting in 1835, lawmakers in Ohio advanced their claims to the most northerly boundary for their state by creating a new county. Lucas County was created by lopping off the northernmost townships of both Henry and Wood. Part of the new county of Lucas was a township named Chesterfield. Chesterfield Township continued as part of Lucas until the state created yet another new county, Fulton, in 1850. Chesterfield Township remains in Fulton County to this day, but in 1849, when my letter was written, it was still part of Lucas County. The address on the letter, surprising to a modern Ohioan, was correct.[i]
There was never much of a town of Chesterfield, although there was a post office from 1837 to 1869. Named for Chesterfield Clemons, at whose house early settlers voted, the area remained a wilderness for many years. The Chesterfield post office was the only stop for 110 miles on the post road between Toledo and Lima, Indiana.[ii] The usual list of founding fathers can be found in the old county histories, but the person to whom this letter was addressed was a man named Egbert Bickford. Bickford (1828-1905) was born in New York state and died and was buried in Charlotte, Michigan, happened to be living in Chesterfield Township at the time of the 1848 presidential election. The letter, from his brother Horace, writes in part:
Elder
Brother Reid & his Wife got turned out of the Church and they are uniting
all their forces together to prepare for action they are about to send for Old
Zachary Taylor for their Commander in chief
we expect every day to hear their drums beating to arms we are in hopes that the conflict will not
last long Mr Coon is about to be hung
for slander he stands shivering waiting
for the day [of] judgment [sic]
We do not know why Egbert’s brother lost his church membership, but the report of it was dressed in military comparisons. Just a few weeks before the letter was written in January of 1849, the United States had elected General Zachary Taylor president. Taylor, who has a regular army soldier his entire life, was elected with military flourishes and pomp. The loser in the scramble to gain the Whig party nomination was none other than Henry Clay. Clay, who had made three bids for the presidency before, could not overcome Taylor’s heroic reputation. Clay’s nickname was “the old [rac]coon,” and in the gloomy aftermath of a lost election, he may indeed have shivered.
As exciting as the election of a famous general was in 1848, many Americans today have an uncertain memory of Zachary Taylor, who died after sixteen months as president. Henry Clay never realized his lifelong ambition. Certainly Egbert Bickford never made headlines. Humble as it was, this letter was worth some study. Lessons in geography and politics were there for anyone with the patience to decipher the handwriting.
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