Before 1796 - Setting the Stage

Early Civilization

    The earliest inhabitants of our area were the nomadic Paleo-Indians.  They followed and hunted the Pleistocene mega fauna - the slow and wandering mammoth, mastodon, ground sloth, giant elk, and giant beaver.  Life in 15,000 - 12,000 B.C. was a harsh existence and their tools were basic and crude.  There is evidence of campsites, but they built no shelters.

    Their culture was replaced by the Archaic people, 10,000 - 7,000 B.C., who were hunters and fishermen.  They followed game and built temporary shelters along side the creeks.  Over time their culture evolved into one that used more rituals.  By 1.000 B.C. to 200 A.D, the people of this area were building mounds as their burial sites, and became known as the Adena, the mound builders.  There have been more than five mounds found in Washington Township, all have been destroyed.  The Himes Mound on Alex-Bell Road was excavated in 1978 by the Ohio Historical Society.

Terrain

    Under the soil, the bedrock of our area is made up of limestone and shale formed during the Ordovician Period of geologic time (approximately 440-500 million years ago) and limestone of the Silurian Age (formed approximately 400-440 million years ago).  Rivers, creeks, traces, and streams ran abundant.

Flora

    The Washington Township area was a vast wilderness - a forest that was made up of some 80 varieties of trees, a forest so dense that there was very little sun.  Early surveyors said that some of the trees were so large that four people could not join hands around them.  The creeks flowed here and there, and along these creeks there were meadows of wildflowers or patches of wild rye or wild strawberries.

Fauna

    Game was plentiful - from the large elk, deer, black bears, wildcats, wolves and foxes, down to the small rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, opossums, and porcupines.  There were wild turkeys, ducks, geese, and carrier pigeons that flew in such masses as to mask the sun.  And poisonous snakes like rattlesnakes and water moccasins covered the forest floor. 

Roads

    The oldest road builders were the herds of large animals.  Their effortless path finding was second nature to them.  The early inhabitants no doubt used those worn trails as their own and as time passed they soon became roads: Mad River, Clyo, St. Rt. 48, Sheehan, and St. Rt. 725 from Wilmington to Clyo and from Franklin and Main all the way to Indiana.  

First Settlers

    In the period preceding the arrival of the colonists, Native-Americans - the Shawnee, Miami, Delaware, and Wyandot - used the Miami Valley as hunting grounds.

    The Treaty of 1783 with England gave the United States all lands lying between the Great Lakes and the north border of Florida, and the Atlantic coast and the Mississippi River.

    The Land Ordinance of 1785 established the "rectilinear system" of land survey.  It required that all territory be divided into rows or "ranges" of townships each six miles square.  It further required that each township be divided into 36 sections of one square mile (640 acres) with one to be reserved for the maintenance of schools.  Eventually, sections, half-sections, and quarter sections became standard units in land claims and purchases.  Ohio was the first state to be surveyed in this manner.

    The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 designated the area north of the Ohio River as the Northwest Territory.  A temporary government was established until each state reached 60,000 population when it would be admitted into the Union.  This territory eventually became Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota.  It granted self-government, trial by jury, and freedom from slavery.

    General Charles Scott and his mounted Kentucky Company, were the first recorded whites to pass through Washington Township in the summer of 1784.  They spent a night near the corner of St. Rt. 48 and Alex-Bell on their way to join General Anthony Wayne near Greenville.  With the defeat of the Native-American Indians at the Battle of Fallen Timbers on the Maumee River that summer, the worst of the war was over.  The 1795 Treaty of Greenville brought reasonable security from harassment from the Native-Americans and it opened the floodgate for immigration into the new territory.

John Cleves Symmes - a fraud or just disorganized?
    Born in New Jersey, Symmes was a surveyor and a teacher.  He fought in the Revolutionary War, contributed to the financial support of the army, and served as Chief Justice of New Jersey and as a member of Congress.  In the spring of 1787, he made a trip down the Ohio River to check out the new territory and decided to form a company to purchase the land between the valleys of the two Miami Rivers.  He obtained the support of fellow congressman Jonathan Dayton, Elias Boudinot, and John Witherspoon.  The original proposal was to purchase two million acres using in part his certificates of indebtedness received for his financial aid to the army.  Without waiting for approval from Congress, however, he issued a pamphlet describing this land and ended up collecting $83,000 from these unlawful land sales.  When Congress answered his petition, it was for only one million acres and did not include the land that he had already sold.

    To add to the confusion, Symmes did not obtain a proper survey of the land, kept his own records instead of appointing a registrar, and because of his slipshod bookkeeping, sold some tracts twice.  As can be imagined, the sales created many problems, and specifically, title problems for the purchasers.  Because they were innocent of wrong-doing, Congress granted special concessions to these men: they could again purchase their same lands from the Government at two dollars an acre which could be paid in installments, without interest, with extensions being added until the final day to be paid was January 1, 1812.  Most of the thirty-five settlers in Washington Township that were affected finished paying by the 1812 deadline.

     In 1811, Symmes' home and most of his records were burned to the ground.  He died in 1814 of cancer in extreme poverty.  There is no real evidence that Symmes intended to swindle and cheat his customers.  He was disorganized and lacked good sense in failing to wait for Congress' approval.