White Eyes and his Name

    

       Many Ohio towns have inherited Indian names.  Especially in smaller, out of the way places, towns and villages were often named for their Native founders or given the name, or an English equivalent.  In our own area, one need travel no further than Tontogany, Maumee, Ottawa, or Wapakoneta to see, perhaps not an Indian town, but at least a landscape feature with a Native name.  Sometimes the name is familiar, sometimes not.

            In Coshocton County, there was once a village with the evocative name of White Eyes Plains.  An description from 1881 reads:  “A broad expanse of level country, White Eyes plains begins in the western Part of the township [Lafayette Township] and continues eastward eight or ten miles through Oxford township into Tuscarawas County.”  Settled by Europeans about the year 1803, White Eyes Plains seems never to have been a town in the sense of businesses and homes together in a compact settlement.  We do know that White Eyes Plains had a post office in 1815 to until 1892 (with a brief pause in 1854-55), when the name changed to Isleta.   For part of this time, the post office was kept in a nearby village, Oxford Station.  Such were the vagaries of post office politics. 

            But if White Eyes Plains is a flyspeck on the map, the Native leader for whom it was named was considerably more famous.  White Eyes (c1730-1778) was a Lenape, or Delaware, Indian leader who led a movement among his people in favor of the rebelling American colonies.  Although large swaths of his life are unrecorded, here is a summary of what we do know.

            White Eyes, whose name was so hard for settlers to pronounce that one source dodged the question, and rendered his name as “something like Koquethagechton,” was unknown in the historical record until 1766.  He then appeared as a messenger at the end of the French and Indian War.  That he was trusted with this task  “…suggests he may have been well suited for interaction between Indians and whites…”  White Eyes kept a tavern and trading post in western Pennsylvania, but moved with his tribesman to the Muskingum Valley of eastern Ohio, pushed there by white settlers around Pittsburgh.  He married Rachel Doddridge, daughter of a settler who had been killed by natives.  He set up his own town on the banks of White Eyes Creek at its mouth with the Tuscarawas River, at the eastern end of the White Eyes Plains.  In 1774, he was elected principal chief of the Delaware Indian nation.

            Also in 1774, White Eyes was involved in Lord Dunmore’s War, a scrap between Virginia colonists and the Shawnee that foreshadowed the American Revolution.  White Eyes unsuccessfully tried to negotiate peace between the two.  After the war, White Eyes sought to negotiate the safety of the Delaware nation with Dunmore.  When the Revolution broke out, the Delaware nation split into factions.  Part of the tribe remained neutral in the conflict, and was led by Konieschquanoheel , or Captain Pipe.  White Eyes cast his lot with the Americas.  His ultimate goal was to create a Delaware Indian state with representation in Congress.  White Eyes addressed the Continental Congress in April of 1775 with this aim, and in 1778 signed a treaty with the new republic which outlined these goals. 

           

In November of 1778, White Eyes served the American army as negotiator in a hostile move toward Detroit.  White Eyes, heading for our part of Ohio, vanished.  Army officials told the Delaware that he died of smallpox.  In later years George Morgan, a friend of White Eyes, wrote to Congress that White Eyes had been murdered by American militiamen, who then covered up their deed to keep the Delaware nation within the American sphere of influence.  It is now generally accepted that White Eyes was murdered, although the details are unclear.

            It is sad that so many Native people have no monument beyond giving their names to our landcape, especially those who tried to work with the settlers who now occupy that land.  White Eyes lived and died long ago, but we would do well to remember him.  His story reminds us that working for a just cause does not absolve bad actions.  This keeps Indian place names from being merely quaint.

{Sources include A. A. Graham, History of Coshocton County, Ohio (1881), and Gregory Dowd, A Spirited Resistance (1992).]

Constitution Song

(I'm no poet, obviously, but my niece and I worked this out for a Government class, and I liked it well enough to post it.  Some of the rhymes are bumpy, and of course the references to current government figures will mean nothing in ten years.  But here it is.)

Hail the Constitution

(to be sung or recited to the beat of “Yankee Doodle”)

In Washington there is a group

Of pols we call the Congress

They write our laws and pass the bills

That fix our federal messes.

Chorus:

Hail, oh Hail, the Constitution

Congressman will use it,

Boehner, Biden, but watch out!

Obama yet must sign it.

A new law may be introduced

In either house of Congress,

And starts upon its longish trail,

In subcommittee darkness.

If they approve, the subcommittee,

Pass to full committee

And go a-voting yes or no

The excitement makes us giddy!

Now each House of Congress must

Debate the pending measure,

Then take a vote that’s based upon

Its wisdom, need, or treasure.

Ohio’s Boehner pushes laws

As Speaker of the House

Or lets them languish in a drawer

Or stuffs them in his blouse.

If Veep Joe Biden’s out of town,

Pat Leahy takes his job

As President pro-tem he rules

The Senate and its mob.

House and Senate must agree

To pass the proffered law.

If debates and votes are yes,

Its given to Obama.

If President Obama likes

The bill, he then can sign it.

But if he thinks if won’t do good

His veto pen will kill it.

This president has yet to use

A veto on a bill

Unlike some other presidents;

G. Cleveland loved to kill!

If signed the bill becomes a law

And then, for worse or better,

The Republic must abide by it

(Unless the Courts think better!)

So this is how our laws are made .

You’d better not forget it!

‘Cause if you do you’ll get an F

And then be thought a nitwit!

Joel W. Kelsey - Politician, Businessman, and Hog Merchant

            Like many nineteenth century men of means, Joel W. Kelsey did many services for Toledo in the nineteenth century.  But it may be that he will be most vividly remembered as a pork processor.  The only letters he wrote that have come down to us speak not of his political career, or his business acumen, but of his work smoking hams, judging the heft of hogs, and selling lard.

           

            Joel Kelsey (1819-1903) was born in Guilford, Maine.  He drifted westward, first to Port Huron, Michigan, and then in 1841 settled in Toledo.  He first worked in the lumber business, then about the time of the Civil War began farming and gardening.  Not content to simply farm, Kelsey actively participated in the political scene.  A staunch Republican, he served a term as Lucas County treasurer and also was elected a County Commissioner.  He helped buy land for the Wabash Railroad, and, showing that he was not content to sit always at a desk, served as a volunteer fireman for Toledo.

            But it was mainly in the pork business that Joel Kelsey made money.  About the same time he became a farmer, he “engaged in the pork-packing business with Charles A. and F. J. King.”  Kelsey had several partnerships, finally retiring from active business in 1876.  He lived on for many years, finally dying in his son’s home at 2921 Collingwood. 

            If you have ever read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, you will understand that working in a pork packing facility before the Food and Drug Act of 1905 was not a pleasant experience.  Joel Kelsey wrote of his experiences long before that, but his letters make it clear that pork packing, even at that early date, had its own unusual sights, sounds, and smells.  Because there was no refrigeration at the time, pork was smoked or pickled.  On February 13, 1860, Kelsey wrote:

We have to stay here to smoke Hams & we buy all the Hogs that come along…I am in hopes to sell a lot in pickle….

            Kelsey had to respond to customer demand, even in those days.  On March 1 of the same year, he wrote:

We are smoking Meat all the time & sell Hams as fast as we can get them out.  The shoulders do not sell much…..

            A hog is a versatile animal, but a butcher will tell you that a shoulder is mostly fat and gristle.  Not surprisingly, Toledoans in 1860 seemed to prefer hams to shoulders.  Fortunately, Kelsey had other options, and on February 2, he wrote mentions selling lard :

I sold all other Lard this week at 10 cts [per pound].  We are smoking much as fast as possible. . . . 

            Joel Kelsey could not have foreseen that pork packing would be his life’s main work.  Whether it was because of disappointing sales or the constant hustle and noise is hard to say.  On January 24, 1860, he reported

The markets of [sic] Hogs have fallen off very much of late & the chance is that the business is about done….

           

            And on February 13 he sounded defeated and disgusted:

If we had our Hams & Shoulders disposed of I should close up the House.

But like many businessmen, he was more optimistic than pessimistic:

We have got a good name for smoked meats…..

            Joel Kelsey was a politician, fireman, and farmer.  But perhaps we should best remember his role in keeping ham on the table of Toledoans.  Toledo was never quite the “hog butcher of the world,’ as Carl Sandburg famously said of Chicago, but thanks to Joel Kelsey, Toledo could count on ready supply of pork.

Johnny Appleseed in the Maumee Valley

by Alan Borer



It is hard to pin down the facts of folk heroes, if any. Paul Bunyan may or may not have been one of several lumberjacks. Mike Fink was real, but few of the tales told about him are true. There is divided opinion about the identity of John Henry, who “died with a hammer in his hands.” But an Ohio folk hero is quite well documented, even if not all of the stories they tell about him are.

John Chapman (1774-1845) is better known to us Johnny Appleseed. Chapman was a colorful character, to say the least. A native of Leominster, Massachusetts, Chapman was early apprenticed to an orchardist. He learned the art of planting, grafting, and caring for fruit trees. As a young man, Chapman experienced a religious conversion, and spent the rest of his life propagating Christianity as interpreted by the Swedish mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg.

Chapman wandered the wilds of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana acting as Swedenborg’s apostle and planting apple seeds. It is uncertain just how calculating an orchardist Chapman became. He planted apple orchards wherever the land and his peripatetic travels took him. He kept ahead of even the earliest settlers, who often found Chapman-planted stands of apple trees waiting when they arrived at their new homes in the wilderness. Chapman owned hundreds of acres of orchard in the old northwest, and ironically, died a landed, if not wealthy, man.

Wealthy or not, John Chapman’s lifestyle was eccentric in the extreme. Again, not all of the tales told about Johnny’s life are true, but many of them were remembered by aged pioneers 75 later. Chapman wore a frying pan for a hat, a potato sack for a shirt, and went barefoot. A strict vegetarian, he was known to have rescued bread crusts from the slop buckets of pigs because it was wrong to waste food. Chapman would not put any animal in harms way; he once extinguished a campfire because insects were consumed by his flames.

Chapman’s peaceful ways extended to settlers and native people alike. Indians regarded the odd behavior of Chapman as a sign he had a connection to the world of spirits, and he walked and visited among the tribes freely. When the War of 1812 renewed hostilities between Native and European Ohioans, Chapman raced, on foot, from cabin to cabin, urging the whites to seek shelter in the blockhouse at Mansfield.

“Johnny Appleseed” spent a great deal of time in the Mansfield area, planting orchards and preaching. But he also had extensive dealings around Newark, Steubenville, Urbana, Wooster, Ashland, and Mount Vernon. Chapman also had several connections to our area. He owned a seed nursery on the Blanchard River in Hancock County about. 1828, and owned three town lots in the village of Mt. Blanchard in the same county. At about the same time, Johnny owned land on the Maumee River, at the mouth of the Tiffin River and also near the village of Florida, both in Defiance County. Somewhat later, in 1834-36, he owned parcels in Allen County, Indiana’s Maumee Township totaling over 100 acres.

Chapman was no stranger to the notorious Black Swamp. Reportedly he had apple seedlings ready to sell to families “that were beginning to push up the streams into this dismal corner of the wilderness.” Several pioneers recollected a seedling nursery belonging to Chapman “somewhere near Fort Findlay on the upper Blanchard.” This nursery may be related to Chapman’s landholdings in what would become Mount Blanchard. One family bought apple trees from Chapman as he paddled a canoe down the Blanchard.

The Defiance area was full of actual or reputed Chapman plantings. “He started several thousand seedlings,” at his nursery at the mouth of the Tiffin River. Allegedly, Chapman slept in a “giant hollow sycamore” tree near this nursery. His Florida, Ohio, nursery was planted with seedlings from the Tiffin River plot. Another nursery near Kingsbury Park in Defiance was allegedly Chapman’s work.

John Chapman proceeded further and further up the Maumee and finally wound up in Fort Wayne. He did not exactly “settle” there, for he took long planting, fencing, and inspection trips all through Ohio. And being who he was, he continued to help others. In Fort Wayne, he often stayed in the cabin of Mr. and Mrs. William Worth. The Worth’s son Richard liked to tell tales of Johnny Appleseed. One story was brief: “One time while on the banks of the Maumee, he was attacked by a bear, which he killed with a pole while swimming towards him.” Chapman, who preached friendship toward animals, may or may not have done this.

Chapman died in Fort Wayne in March of 1845, at the Worth cabin. He had some assets, including a gray mare horse and several plots of land in Knox and Richland Counties in Ohio and Maumee Township in Allen County, Indiana. He died during the “hard times” of the 1840s, and there were many creditors who sought a piece of his estate. He never married, but left an enormous impact on the Middle West.

Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana are full of plaques and memorials to the ragged, wandering orchardist, who seemed to be part John the Baptist and part Francis of Assisi. Yet there was another side to Chapman. One of his quirks lay in the well-attested fact that he would not plant grafted apple trees. Yet wild apple trees mostly produce an inedible sour or bitter apple, usable only for making cider, which quickly turned “hard.” And in a time where no water was guaranteed potable, cider was a safe (and lucrative) choice

Did Johnny Appleseed plant the wilderness for apple pies and applesauce, or for alcoholic hard cider? Did he understand the connection that the tens of thousands of seeds he planted would probably yield fruit fit only to be made into alcohol? Did John Chapman, vegetarian and animal lover, make money by growing the fruit used to fuel the rampant alcoholism of the early nineteenth century?

We may never know. John Chapman blessed Ohio with apple trees, but their use was up to us.


[John Chapman’s story is told most fully and accurately in Robert Price, Johnny Appleseed: Man and Myth (Bloomington, 1954.). Also used in this essay was Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire (New York, 2001) and W. J. Rorbaugh, The Alcoholic Republic (Oxford, 1979).]

Niklaus Fischer of Bregenz, Austria and Fremont, Ohio

Niklaus Fischer


These pictures were shared with me by my distant cousin Fred Mehling of Toronto, Ohio. We are both descended from the man in the first picture, Nicholas (or Nicklaus) Fischer (or Fisher), of Bregenz, Austria. His son, Gephart Fischer, was a brother to my Great-great grandmother, Barbara Fischer Borer (1850-1899). The Fischers emigrated from Bregenz to Fremont, Ohio. They lived on a farm on Sandusky River, where Nicholas and Gephart farmed and did landscaping. They helped do the landscaping for Spiegel Grove, the home of President Rutherford B. Hayes.

Here is what an unidentified grandchild wrote, in part, about the Fishers:

"Father said the raised mostly potatoes. In fact so many were raised that later he could hardly eat them, because his work as a child was with potatoes, and little else to eat besides them.

In 1853 Nicholas and the family (11 children) came to this country. Because of poor winds, the family was on the way over to the United States for one month.

They settled on the Wilson farm, which was in the locality of Wilson Avenue (West).... Nicholas and Father graded the hill leading to the New cemetery along St. Ann's road, taking three weeks to complete it...

Mary Geiger Fisher [Niklaus's wife] died with a heart ailment in 1868 at the age of 54. Nicholas fell in a well and hurt his back and broke his hip and died in 1897, at the home of his daughter Mrs. John Ochs. He lived with his son, Gephart for several years preceding the accident."

For the record, I will also add some comments from Sister Mary Alphonsus Fisher, SND, another descendant:

"Nicholas Fisher....and his family suffered much. His wife, the pious Marie Geiger, entered eternal life at the age of fifty-four. The children were forced by poverty to work for farmers....A Mr. Hass felt sorry for the family. He brought them ham, bread and other edibles for their sustenance...When Nicholas was 70 years old, he insisted on helping dig a well. He slipped and fell into the pit. The hose fell upon him. The injuries proved fatal. His grave is next to his little wife's in St. Joseph's cemetery, just north of the crucifixion group...."

Yet another reminiscence stated:

..."The father, Nicholas, [and sons] Gephart and George became road and street contractors. They cut down trees, blew up stumps, leveled the ground for the two cemeteries....Gephart continued planting trees in President Hayes' [sic] extensive yard...."

Gephart Fisher, the son of Niklaus

This information may be of no interest to anyone but Niklaus Fisher's descendants, but they must be numerous.






Gephart's farm

What Was a “River Agent?”

Steamboats are as rare as hens’ teeth today; so too are postal history items related to steamboats as carriers of the mail. When most of us think of steamboats, we think of Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, the movie Showboat, or at least hum a few bars of Ol’ Man River. But at one time, steamboats, or packet boats, were a critically important link in delivering mail around the Union

On the Delcampe website, I recently found this cover. [Figure1] The seller (in Bangkok, Thailand!) was advertising a cover addressed to Powell Brothers in Springboro, Pennsylvania. Docketing showed the cover was mailed by one N. Beeker of Ripley, Ohio. More on them later, but it was the postmark that caught my eye. Only half legible, it showed enough to read that it was cancelled on a steamboat by a “Riv. Agt.” or River Agent. A more legible CDS backstamp CDS reads “Cincinnati, O. April 5, 1884 - Transit.”.

What need for correspondence did this cover represent? What could it tell us about steamboating? Why was it in Bangkok (OK, that one is really none of my business)? To answer some of the questions this cover raises, let us look at some of the clues.

A “river agent” was the aquatic version of a route agent. In Fred MacDonald’s book Postal Markings of U.S. Waterway Routes, 1839-1997, he quotes:

“These route agents were employees of the Post Office Dept . . . sorted mail, accepted mail bags containing letters….and postmarked letters outside the mail bags. . . .
Down to about 1875, the postmarks used by these route agents were of almost any style and in almost any wording which pleased the route agent. . . . the presence of such words, abbreviations and expressions such as S.B., Steamer,… Riv. Agt…..”

The river agent had a miniature post office on board the steamboat. “It contained a sorting desk with a bank of pigeon holes….a small supply of stamps…ink pads, canceling devices, and a supply of lock pouches.” The agent even had a mail slot for customers who wrote letters during their voyage. The agent never charged any fees beyond standard letter mail rates for his work. At landings during the trip, a steamboat employee humped the mail bags down to the dock or “way landing.””

Identifying the job of a “river agent” can thus be reconstructed. Before the Civil War, steamboat captains acted in a semi-official capacity to care for the onboard mail. In 1880, there were still 6,797 passengers a year on Ohio Riverboats, and 348 new boats constructed. When our cover was mailed, riverboat traffic was shrinking due to competition from railroads, but far from dead.

The steamboat line on the postmark begins with “M,” leading a previous owner to believe that the original cancel probably referred to Maysville. Maysville, Kentucky, in Mason County, was from early on a steamboat port. Caleb Atwater, in 1829, wrote: “A steamboat runs daily between Maysville and Cincinnati.” There does not appear to have ever been a steamboat line devoted solely to the Maysville-Cincinnati route, but, as with railroad RPO cancels, a Maysville/Cincinnati cancel may not refer to a steamboat line so much as a Post Office designation of a postal route. Maysville and Ripley are only 18 miles apart on the Ohio River. The backstamp “Transit” leads me to think it was applied after the steamboat leg of the trip. I could easily see the letter mailed in Ripley, put on the steamboat and carried to Cincinnati, where it joined the everyday mailstream and eventually winding up in Pennsylvania.

No “N. Beeker” of Ripley appears in the Census. The “Powell Brothers” who received the cover was a large livestock handler near Erie, Pennsylvania. The Powell Brothers owned 3000 acres, starting as a nursery operation, and changing to livestock after the Civil War. “Their fine stock comprises Clydesdale horses …To all those who want to buy fine stock you can obtain it of the Powell Brothers, the celebrated stockmen, who will at all times extend to you fair dealing and courteous entertainment, which is a characteristic of these gentlemen, and on the of attributes to their wonderful success in the stock business. [1891]” “This business was so extensive, it included its own Post Office, Western Union Telegraph, railway station and both Adams and Wells-Fargo companies.”

Although the enclosure is long gone, Mr. Beeker was probably inquiring about horses or cattle. Little did he know that his envelope would have traveled by steamboat, evoking romantic memories of packet boats on the Ohio River.

[Besides the sources mentioned in the article, I also used Timothy H. Lewis, Transportation of Mail by Steamboat in the Nineteenth Century (Master’s thesis, University of Toledo, 1992), “Spring Township”[http://www.cvahs.org/spring.html; accessed November 20, 2010]; M.P. Sargent, Pioneer Sketches: Scenes and Incidents of Former Days (Erie, Pa: Herald Printing & Publishing Co., 1891).]

“What to Do With Ghum Wah?”

[A Bend of the River article]


In the March 27, 1905 Toledo Blade, a story ran under the headline, “What to Do With Ghum Wah?” Part of that article describes the problem:

“Ghum Wah, of Toledo, was found guilty of being a Chinese person unlawfully in the country, and was ordered to be deported some time ago. Judge Taylor, of the United States district court, Saturday, confirmed that order giving the custody of Ghum Wah to the United States marshal, with instructions to return the celestial to the Chinese empire with all convenient dispatch.”

Yet the case was not as cut and dried as it seemed. Colonel Isaac H. Marrow, “Chinese inspector for Ohio,” wanted Wah to be held on forgery charges and tried in the United States. “It is alleged Wah secured the papers of a dead …man and changed the photograph and his own identity.” Marrow, a colonel in the Civil War, wanted Wah to serve time here, then, “I will see to it that a marshal is at the prison gates ready to take him back to China, where he belongs.”

In 1882, Congress passed a bill known as the “Chinese Exclusion Act.” Under this law, Chinese immigration to the United States was stopped for ten years. When it resumed, there were many restrictions applied that slowed Chinese citizens from entering the country. The Act providing for “Chinese inspectors,” responsible for keeping unwanted Chinese out of the country. “[S]tate boards or commissions enforced immigration law with direction from U.S. Treasury Department officials. At the Federal level, U.S. Customs Collectors at each port of entry collected the head tax from immigrants while ‘Chinese Inspectors’ enforced the Chinese Exclusion Act.” [http://www.uscitizenship.info/ins-usimmigration-insoverview.html]

One of the ways Chinese could get around the exclusion policies was by assuming the name, papers, and identity of a Chinese already residing here who had died or returned to China. The Ghum Wah mentioned in the Blade story in 1905 may have actually had a different birth name. In the Census of 1900, there is a Ghum Wah working in a laundry on Cherry Street. Same Ghum Wah, or one man borrowing another’s name?

Whatever his name actually was, Ghum Wah was arrested in February of 1905. On the 25th, his bail was set at $700.00. On March 25, a judge ordered “that a “U.S. Marshal deport defendant to the Empire of China.” [Blade, March 30, 1905] Wah pleaded not guilty, but it is not clear whether to the charge of forgery, being in the country illegally, or both. But the court apparently decided to deport Wah immediately, rather than try him here on the forgery charge. In any event, the Blade reported on April 20, 1905 that Ghum Wah and another Chinese man, No Wing, of Cleveland, were escorted to Washington by two United States Marshals. They were then to be moved to Norfolk, Virginia, from where they would be shipped home to China. On June 19, the court received word that the deportation had been carried out

We have no further trace of Ghum Wah. What we don’t know about him could fill a book. Did he stay in China, or join the revolution that rocked China only a few years later in 1911? We cannot say. We do know that for a few weeks in 1905 he was the focus of a court case in Toledo. “What to do with Ghum Wah?” We might as well ask, “Whatever became of Ghum Wah?”

[I would like to thank Marianne C. Mussett, librarian for the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio--Western Division (Toledo, Ohio), for her help in digging Gum Wah’s files out of a vault in the Toledo Federal Courthouse. Not an easy task!]