: Newcom Tavern by Anonymous - Newcom Tavern; Taverns (Inns) Ohio Dayton

@FreeBooks

Posted in: #FreeBooks #FreeBooksIndia #FreeBooksApp #gg

Vote Up Vote Down   0 Reactions

Login to give Reaction!

NEWCOM TAVERN

It was to be almost another half-century, however, before anyone packed up his wife, musket and hoe and established a home in these fertile lands of legend. The Miamis--a tribe of the Algonquin family in powerful league with the Shawnees, Wyandots, Potawatomies and the Ottawas--were determined to keep the white man off the prime hunting grounds that lay between the Great and Little Miami rivers. They frequently crossed the Ohio to raid threatening settlements in Kentucky territory, and the doughty Kentuckians in return made bloody sorties into the Indians' Miami Valley. Two of the fiercest encounters were fought on the triangle of land where the Mad River meets the Great Miami.

Things were desperate--hardly secure for family life and farming--until that able general, "Mad Anthony" Wayne, led a force of 3600 daring men into Ohio country. The eventual surrender of the Miamis resulted in the Treaty of Greenville, and the end of the strife that had kept the Valley a wilderness. The treaty was signed in 1795, a little over a decade after Ohio, as part of the Northwest Territory, had come under control of the United States, and Congress had authorized sale of the land.

In the year of the treaty, Jonathan Dayton, head of a New Jersey land company which also included Generals Wilkinson and St. Clair and a Colonel Ludlow, acquired the so-called "seventh and eighth ranges" between the two Miami Rivers, and employed surveyors to lay out a town site. The town was to take Jonathan Dayton's name, although he was never to lay eyes on the holding. Ludlow was the only member of the land company to make the westward trek.

Newcom Tavern was one of the first structures to be erected in Dayton, and it is the oldest Dayton building now standing. Long a familiar landmark of Van Cleve Park, on Monument Avenue in downtown Dayton, the Tavern was moved to Carillon Park in the summer of 1964. Here, it is much more accessible to the public than it was in the congested business district, and it has the wooded setting that a frontier relic deserves.

It was in the spring of 1796 that three groups of settlers headed north from Cincinnati. One party came by flat boat, or pirogue, which was laboriously poled up the Miami. The other two groups came overland--one by wagon, the other on foot, leading packhorses and driving cattle.

The latter party was led by Colonel George Newcom, a veteran of Wayne's campaign against the redskins. Newcom immediately chose a lot on the southwest corner of Main and Water Streets, where the Newcom Manor apartments were later erected. He put up a one-room cabin of round logs as temporary shelter, then engaged one Robert Edgar to build a permanent house--18 by 22 feet, of square-hewn logs, with a loft above reached by a ladder. The small original shelter served as kitchen to the larger house for a while, but eventually was razed.

John F. Edgar, son of Robert, left a detailed account of those early days in his book, "Pioneer Life in Dayton and Vicinity," published in 1896. Concerning construction of the log tavern, he wrote:

"The agreement was that Newcom should pay Edgar six shillings per day for cutting and hewing the logs for the 'best house in Dayton,' to front on Main and Water Streets, and Edgar for his board agreed to furnish Newcom the carcass of a deer once every week, retaining the skin. This was full payment for his board and lodging. In order to comply with this part of his contract without breaking a day's work, my father would rise early, hide in the bushes on this side of the river at Main Street, and watch for the deer to come down to the river on the north side for their morning drink, when, choosing the best-looking one, he never failed to drop him. He would then, with his canoe, bring his week's board across the river before breakfast...."

Elsewhere in his book, Edgar tells us that Newcom was born in Ireland in 1771, and came to America with his parents in 1775. The family first settled in Delaware, then moved to the vicinity of Middletown, Pa. In 1794, Newcom and his wife, the former Mary Henderson, migrated to Cincinnati--and thence to Dayton. Of their arduous northward journey, historian Edgar wrote:

"The party led by George Newcom overland met with few difficulties as far as Fort Hamilton, the road to that place being kept in good condition by the army. From that point on, the road had been only recently surveyed by Mr. Cooper and his corps of helpers, and was in such primitive condition that it was necessary in crossing small streams to fell trees for footbridges. For the larger streams rafts were made to carry the people and the freight, the cattle and horses swimming across. All the property was carried in creels on packhorses, the children that were too small to walk being also carried in the creels, their heads only showing. Game being plentiful the party suffered no hardship from lack of food, but the nights were cold and the hastily constructed camps afforded but little shelter, the beds being made in the open air by spreading blankets over brush. This party was about two weeks on the road."

Edgar got his lime mortar by burning stones from the river. The size of the cabin was doubled two years later by addition of the section on the left. The new house, completely whitewashed at first, became the hub for much of Dayton's early activity. It housed the town's first school. The first church service was held there. It served as courthouse, council chamber, store and, most colorfully, as a crossroads tavern for the wagon men and drovers who were fanning out into the lush Northwest Territory.

Free books android app tbrJar TBR JAR Read Free books online gutenberg

(0)

Login to post a comment!