Delaware Bend - Its Path Through History - Part 2

 Delaware Bend - Part 2 - by Ethelyn Sexton, Defiance Crescent-News, 1927

"Johnny Appleseed - Familiar Figure

Dr. E. R. Snook, born in 1835, five years before the government removed the Indians from this part of Ohio, whose father, Honorable William H. Snook, was a member of the Ohio legislature, has written of the Indians which filled the dooryard of the little homes in the wilderness, waiting to trade coon and deerskin for corn, with his father, whose Indian name, 'Tohochimo' signified his fairness and kindness toward those first natives of the land.

Other outstanding names in the early history of the settlement are Montgomery Evans, Sam Hughes, James Shirley, Lewis and George Platter, Johnny Appleseed, remembered as the lavish planter of apple trees in the vicinity of the Bend, and among later settlers, the Speaker family.

Jacob Kintner, grandfather of Dan Kintner, Defiance, came to the community in the early forties, living on the farm later owned by Henry Slough, grandfather of Emmett Slough, Defiance. Mr. Kintner, in speaking of his boyhood experiences, said, 

'Delaware Bend was indeed a lively place then. Every store had a saloon in connection with it. And they had some great fights. When the railroad went through, it was livelier than ever for the railroad workers located there.'

Delaware Township was probably organized in 1824; the village was laid out by W. D. Hill & Co. in 1874 - a little group of 50 houses in the woods. A stave mill did a thriving business - barrel hoops were made in fourteen private families - two hotels, three grocery stores, two ?

'I remember the shoemaker,' said Mr. Kintner, 'And I remember Kate Breeno's hotel. There was a blacksmith's shop. And Abe Smith, father of Charles Smith of Defiance, was the township treasurer.  He kept a hotel, too.'

 

Mr. Kintner told stories of going to Delaware Bend from his home down the old grade which was laid out by the Cincinnati Northern, but which never felt the weight of rails.

'They considered Delaware Bend a coming industrial center then,' he said, ' for they planned to run a railroad down there from Bryan. But the road finally went around by Sherwood.'

It was Mr. Kintner's uncle, George Frederick, who build a church in Delaware Bend, later taken over by the Methodists. Though now deserted, it still stands a monument to the work and ideals of those early pioneers who, even before the Bend took on the name of a village, had determined that a place of worship should not be lacking in the little settlement.

St. Stephen Catholic Church c 1890 (photo from the St. Isadore website)

First Churches Are Built

The history of the Kintner family is closely associated with the religious life of the Bend.  The records of the community relative to the Dunkard denomination quaintly state taht Jacob Kintner, Jr, father of Dan Kintner, who later became a bishop in Northwest Ohio, 'was chosen in 1861 to the office of deacon and on the 17th day of October, 1864he was chosen to the ministry while Samuel Kentner became a deacon.'

Again we read that later, Jacob Kintner, Jr. was 'ordained to solemnize marriages and baptisms.' And in 1873, for the sum of $1,000, the church 'gave Jacob Kintner and David Shong the job of erecting a building 34 x 56 feet in size and 16.5 feet high.' This church was located in the Maumee district about one-half miles from the Bend.

Joe Sanders, now living at Delaware Bend, recollect the days when a little log church built by the Catholics stood across the river near the old cemetery, later to be replaced by the frame one now in use. 'All the houses were big ones,' he said, 'and my grandmother on y mother's side never cooked a meal on the stove. The school teacher got $16 a month and did her own janitor work.'

A big dance hall furnished amusement on many a winter's night in those days, and for miles around, the sturdy young folk of the time drove in over the poorly broken roads to step the tune of 'Turkey in the Straw' and 'The Arkansas Traveler' until the late stars vanished in the track of the sun.

Landmarks Fast Disappeared

Today but few landmarks suggest the village which once throbbed with industrial activity.  A few decaying shingles mark the site of the stave mill run by David Sharp. The old church and Kate Breeno's hotel still stand with gaping windows, like eyes that are blind, a few houses, a general store with a gasoline station - this is all that remains.

The railway station was discontinued a few years ago, and now the B & O trains stop only on 'flag.' Mail comes to the village by two routes, half the community being located on a Sherwood route, and the other half receiving their half from Defiance.

Delaware Bend of old will never again exist.  But to one who knows the history of the place and to him who has personal recollections of the roistering logging days, it has an interest which time cannot dispel, and it almost seems that on a windy December night when the moon rides restlessly on banks of clouds, that a phantom crowd is gathered about the old wagon shop and that blanket covered horses are hitched before Abe Smith's place..."

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