Simon Girty - An Old Account

Malden, , Essex County, Ontario

Occasionally, someone will query as to whether they are related to Simon Girty or not.  Numerous family trees exist online following his five children and their descendents; whether correct or not is always the question.  

Most known in these parts is the existence of "Girty's Island," a piece of land in the Maumee River, a part of Flatrock Township, Henry County.  The writings about Simon Girty and this island are so, so numerous, but this account, published in the April, 1938, quarterly edition of The Historical Society of Northwestern Ohio, was especially entertaining.

"LITTLE JOURNEYS TO OHIO'S HISTORIC SHRINES

Girty's Island

The four Girty brothers, forerunners to the James brothers, the Younger brothers and the other desperadoes of the west, terrorized the entire northwestern country in the period between the revolution and the war of 1812.

From the west side River road (424), near Napoleon, the long island in the Maumee where they had the headquarters for their sallies against the white settlers can be seen.  On this island George Girty lived with his Delaware Indian squaw and it was there she bore him five or six children.

Blue Jacket, famous chief, had his own village nearby on the Maumee while further downstream were the trading posts of Alexander McKee and Matthew Elliott, who like the Girty brothers, were 'renegade' Americans.

The Girtys were George, James, Thomas and Simon.  It is Simon Girty who has occupied the spotlight of the paleface historians and for two generations his whispered name was enough to send a chill up the spines of the pioneers and their families.

Simon Girty

 Girty was painted blackest by Theodore Roosevelt in his Winning of the West, but this portrait of him, though it carried out the white men's tradition, was as inaccurate as much of Roosevelt's observations concerning this part of the country at the time.

Later research has disclosed a Simon Girty given over both to the cruelties and the kindnesses of the forest life, more able and therefore more to be dreaded than his contemporaries, but a man in whom patient search is bound to reveal at least a few virtues to set off against his violent years.

From Fort Pitt at the head of the Ohio, the Girtys, McKee and Elliott had fled when it became apparent that the revolution was to be a success and that men loyal to King George were not likely to be popular in Pennsylvania.  Every act they committed, whether it was to stand by while white men were sacrificed in an Indian execution at the stake, to lead a party of Indians, tomahawks in hand, against a frail white settlement or to set afire the log cabins and the cornfields of the pioneers, were inspired by the same partisanship as existed on the other side.

To the whites who had come swarming across the Alleghenies,the only good Indian was a dead Indian.  They looked upon the loyal British partisans as nothing less than friends, simply because they happened to be allied with their enemies.

From the standpoint of justice, neither the redcoats nor the deerskin pioneers gave a hang about the Indians.  Both were out to get from them what they could, the British by plying them with rum and blankets and the Yankees by pouring into them not unequal quantities of white moonshine and lead. 

The wars that waged constantly about the Maumee valley from 1778 - 1795 were never instigated by the red men.  On the one hand, pioneers hungry for land pushed their way north of the Ohio to the lake country.  On the other, British military commanders, using men like the Girty brothers for their agents, stirred up the Indians on every pretext to make raids.  At one important conclave of the Indians, no white man save Simon Girty was admitted.

It is from a boy captive, Oliver Spencer, that we get the most authentic, if not the most flattering picture of Simon Girty.  It should be borne in mind that Spencer, his mind filled with terror and hatred of the Indians, was no impartial observer.  In fairness also it should be recalled that more than once Simon Girty saved the lives of 'enemy' whites, such as Simon Kenton, when the Indians were ready to torture and do away with them.  The boy Spencer describes him:

'Simon Girty...his dark shaggy hair, his low forehead, his brows contracted, and meeting above his short, flat nose; his gray sunken eyes averting his ingenuous gaze; his lips thin and compressed, and the dark and sinister expression of his countenance, to me, seemed the very picture of the villain.

He wore the Indian costume, but without any ornament; and his silk handkerchief while it supplied the place of a hat, hid an unsightly wound in his forehead.  On each side in his belt, were stuck silver-mounted pistols, and at his left hung a short, broad dirk, serving occasionally the uses of a knife.'

Not a pleasant parlor companion, certainly.  Yet whether villain or romantic figure, Girty with hs brothers has left his name on the Ohio landscape, a memorial to the deep impression of terror he inspired in his own generation."

In 1951, the Crescent-News reported that a descendant of Simon Girty was in town, Mr. Warren Bruner.  Simon Girty, he said was his great-great grandfather through a marriage between his grandfather, a Bruner, and the granddaughter of Simon Girty.  For a full account, check out the article in the library - the Crescent-News of January 29, 1951.  Bruner did mention that Simon's brother, Thomas, had a trading post on the west bank of the Auglaize above the Fort grounds.

 

W. P. A. Cemetery Survey - The Old Kentuckian Burial Grounds

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.

 The Old Kentuckian Burial Ground

1. Name of Cemetery:

The Old Kentuckian Burial Ground at Winchester's Camp Number Three.

2. Location, how reached:

This historic burial ground is situated four miles east of the city of Defiance, Ohio on U. S. 24 and on the bank of the Maumee River, in the Independence Dam State Park.  In fact, it now comprises a part of the park.  It is directly across the road from the old Rohn house, mentioned under Architecture.  The Miami and Erie Canal takes up a part of this old burial ground.  It is reached from Defiance, Ohio, by going east on U.S. 24 along the north bank of the Maumee River for four miles just below the State Dam.

3. Name and address of caretaker:

This old burial ground, now being a part of the Independence State Park, is kept up by the sate of Ohio and the Park Board of Defiance County, also the C.C.C. boys in the last two years have did much work in and around here.  A shelter house is built on the grounds of the old burial ground.  For direct information, see Mr. Ed. Bronson, secretary of the Defiance County Park Board.

4. General description, size, appearance, denomination, fencing, etc.:

How any acres this burial ground originally contained cannot be accurately determined.  It is at the site of Gen. Winchester's Camp #3, during the winter of 1812 - 1813, the hardest winter ever suffered by white men in this part of the world.  

Winchester had built his fort in this year near the old site of Fort Defiance on the Auglaize River, and from here sent out groups of men to the east and west.  To the east and along the north bank of the Maumee River, he sent six hundred men, all of a Kentucky Regiment that had come up to Fort Winchester early in the fall from Kentucky as a strengthening for Winchester's troops.  And this company, he sent four miles down the river and established Camp #3, which at that time overlooked the old Shawnee town which stood on what is now the Rohn farm.

These Indians were the worst of the lot and, being incited by the British and renegades like Simon and James Girty, started to wipe out the whole regiment.  To make matters worse, no one was put in command of these Kentuckian troops and they had only a handful of supplies.  Winchester had promised to send a leader and food later.  But Winchester, himself, got hard up, and a lot of his men at Fort Winchester died and many deserted, taking all the food and rations they could carry.  So these some six hundred soldiers were left to starve.

Every time a man would step out of the block house or rather an old wooden log stockade, the Indians would shoot at him.  This winter was also very cold.  The men could not even get wood with thousands of trees around because the Indians were so hostile.

That winter over three hundred men died and were buried in this place.  Some from exposure and others starvation.  History says that the men used their moccasins to make soup out of and then fried all the leather they could find, even pieces of harness.  They killed the few horses they had and ate them.

When the canal was built in 1837 - 1848, thousands of bones were found, as the canal was dug directly through the burial ground.  These bones were all reburied and this place is now what is called the Old Kentuckian Burial Ground.  The Park Board, under the supervision of Mr. Abram Smith and Edward Bronson of Defiance, Ohio, has been trying for some time to raise money enough to erect a memorial to these Kentucky dead who gave their lives that winter.

The place is now wild and shady; large trees, mostly elms, shade it.  It has on its south side the Maumee River and on its north, the Canal, in which water is still running here.  The plot is about 75 yards wide; the length is not known.

5. Name and date of first burial recorded:

All men buried here were in the years of 1812 - 1813 during the winter and ninety percent of them were from Kentucky.  

It was also here that Captain Logan, the Indian Warrior, who joined the American forces and left his own people, died, having been wounded several miles farther down the river at the mouth of Turkey Foot Creek.  Later his body was moved to Fort Winchester and buried. 

6. Names of important persons buried here; for what noted:

This graveyard is of importance as stated above as the burying place of 300 Kentuckian warriors of General Winchester's Army in 1812- 1813.

7. Markers of unusual appearance:

None at the present time.  A movement is on the way to erect a memorial here.

8. Unusual epitaphs:  None

9. Is cemetery used for new burials?  Never used, only the one winter, 1812-1813. 

(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.)