Delaware Bend - Its Path Through History - Part 1

 

From the 1890 Defiance County Plat Map

This informative article appeared in the Defiance Crescent-News on December 2, 1927.  Written by Ethelyn Sexton, an insructor at Defiance College in Journalism, Sexton takes the story of Delaware Bend from the time of the Native Americans who camped on the shores of the Maumee at the curve in the river until the present day.

"Bend, Once Flourishing Lumber Town, Recalls Indians, Wayne, and Pioneers

The community of Delaware Bend, ten miles west of Defiance, one mile off the Hicksville Pike, has perhaps more forcefully than any village in Northwest Ohio been marked by the merciless tread of the great, black oxen.

From an Indian settlement in the days when this section of Ohio claimed only the Redman as inhabitants, to an important logging center with all the attendant high life of those early days, then again the march of years, leaving in their wake, a deserted village with but an occasional landmark to suggest the days of prosperity  - this, in brief, is the history of Delaware Bend.

The little group of houses which comprise the place today is located on a slight bluff at the foot of which flows the Maumee River. The well-cultivated fields of wheat and corn, the orchards that line its banks, give no hint of the fact that once these fertile spaces were a wilderness, that the road from the Bend to Defiance was a poorly broken trail made by Anthony Wayne, almost impassable in winter. Nor is it easy to imagine in these days of advanced transportation, facilities that the white settlers of the spot pushed canoes up and down the Maumee with a 'setting pole' before the keel boat came into use.

First Whites Come in 1822

According to records, it was in the early twenties that the white man first came to Delaware Bend, eight families arriving within the space of a few years.  The records, as stated by George W. Hill, coming to the Bend from Washington County, Pennsylvania, in 1822 and locating in Section 27, include a reference to the old Indian orchard planted by the Delaware Indians, and the great fields of corn which they had grown.  Memories of the Hill family in the History of Defiance County, published in 1883 read:

'The old Indian orchard at Delaware Bend is probably from seventy five to one hundred years old.'

The Hill homestead comprised some 280 acres on the banks of the Maumee where the river turns, giving the community its name. It was on the site of the former Indian village which flourished before the advent of Anthony Wayne who, descending upon the Delaware, put down their corn and forcing them to abandon their dwelling homes, offered this land for sale.

Whiskey Bargaining too Effective

The recollection of Mrs. Hill, whose father, Benjamin Mulligan, was a pioneer of the Bend, tells in this early history of the arrival of the McGinnis family, who settling near her home on what is still called the Speaker farm, attempted to open negotiations with the Indians with a barrel of whiskey.

Not wisely, but too well, did his bargaining have effect, for on one occasion, when McGinnis was out of town, the Indians imbibed so freely of the new trading commodity that the Mulligans, one and all, in order to escape the drunken orgies of the Indians set out late in the evening for Defiance.

Along the swamp road by the Maumee, the horses were often knee deep in muck and water and aftertimes, wrote Mrs. Hill, 'my father was forced to go on hands and knees ahead of the teams to keep the path and thus by toilsome stages, we reached Defiance by 2 o'clock the next morning,'

Coon Skins Legal Tender

Fully as interesting are the pioneer experiences of the Snook family. William Snook, coming from Trenton, New Jersey, located at the Bend in 1824, buying land on both sides of the river at the point where today the B & O Railroad crosses the Maumee.

This was in the days when in all Northwest Ohio, coon skins were legal tender for taxes and for commodities of life, and descendants of William Snook tell of a thrilling coon hunt in the vicinity of the Bend that nearly cost the lives of adventurous young Snooks.

After killing three coons, George, John and Peter, nephews of the pioneer, succeeded in felling a large tree, which they believed to be a 'don' tree, a sort of coon rendezvous.  To their surprise and dismay, however, the chief inhabitant of the treed was a great, black bear who attacked George, wounding him.  The other boys, with their axes, succeeded in disabling the bear, which was found later by an Indian, almost dead from the wounds.

Next: Part 2

W. P. A. Cemetery Survey - Old Indian Burial Ground on the Maumee River

In this series, some of the general surveys of Defiance County cemeteries will be shared, transcribed as written on the original W.P.A. reports, with a few punctuation and/or spelling changes for readability.  The surveys were probably done around 1936.

For more up to date information on the cemeteries, check out this chart on our website:
 http://defiancecountygenealogy.org/cemeteries.html)

Old Indian Burial Ground on the Maumee River

1. Name: The Old Indian Burial Ground on the Maumee River

2. Location:

Located in Noble Township, Section 19, four miles west of the City of Defiance on the high bank of the north side of the Maumee River.  Reached from the Court House at Defiance by taking route #66 north across the Maumee River bridge to the second street over the river, turning left or to the west on this street called West High Street and following this angling road called the Jericho Road for three and one half miles to a spot where the river comes close to the road.  On this high 60 foot bluff is the location of an old Indian lookout and ancient Indian burial ground.

3. Name of caretaker:

There is no caretaker.  The grounds are not kept up.  It is private property, but is quite frequently used as camping grounds.  There is nothing here to discern it as a Graveyard.  The location only, recorded by historians, tell us it was a burial ground.  There is no marker or is it kept up by the Defiance County Park Board.

4. General description:

A high, 60 foot bluff, overlooking a bend in the Maumee River.  The river on the south, a ravine on the west, the road on the north, and a deep gorge on the east, mark the spot.  This round covers about ten acres, and from this point, one can see up and down both bends of the river.  This land is not cultivated and on all sides are large trees, mostly hickory, and wild peach.  

The land here for and comprising these ten acres is flat and a loose yellow clay soil.  Many pieces of broken flint can still be found here.  I picked up several the day I visited this spot.  Campers have also been using the place recently.  It is not fenced in and runs directly along the road.  It is known only as a graveyard by what historians tell us, especially Dr. C. E. Slocum in his History of the Maumee River Basin in 1905.   

5. First Burial:

Unknown for certain, probably used by the old tribe of hostile Delaware Indians, before the time of Anthony Wayne, or more probably used by some tribe for its people who died in and around the confluence of the Maumee and Auglaize Rivers during the Great Council of Indian Braves held at the now site of Fort Defiance in 1792.

Remains of Indian graves ahve been found here in the past.

6. Important Persons:

Unknown, names of even the tribe of Indians burying here is lost.

7. Markers:

This place is as yet unmarked and also unmapped, except by a short description by Dr. Charles E. Slocum in his History of the Maumee River Basis.

8. Epitaphs:  None

9. (Cemetery) is not used today, however there is an old graveyard called the Poole Graveyard located just across the ravine from this old Indian burial ground.

Cecil Cadwallader

Authority: A History of the Maumee River Basin by Dr. C. E. Slocum, 1905

Mr. Abram Smith, Defiance, Ohio, of the Defiance County Park Board

        
(The Works Progress Administration was formed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in reaction to the Great Depression as a means of employing Americans and stimulating the economy.  Established in 1935, one of the projects of the W.P.A. was to conduct Historical Records Surveys, one of which included finding information on cemeteries and the graves of veterans.  The W.P.A. was disbanded in 1943, but the historical information provided on these surveys continue to be of interest and are, thankfully, preserved.)