Ohio History Journal

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HISTORY OF FORT HAMILTON

HISTORY OF FORT HAMILTON.

 

 

 

W. C. MILLER.

Butler County, Ohio, the eighteenth county established in

the seventeenth state of the Union, can present many points of

interest, archaeological and historical. Chief among these is

Fort Hamilton, the first of a chain of forts established by

the Government, in the Miami valley, for the protection of the

pioneers.

In compiling this sketch of Fort Hamilton the writer, a

resident of Hamilton for fifty years, has had access to the offi-

cial records, the manuscript of that early historian, James Mc-

Bride, and this, together with his personal information gathered

from the lips of the leaders in this community in the first half

of the nineteenth century, still living, in the young manhood days

of the writer, such men as Judge Chas. K. Smith, Elijah

Vance, Jesse Corwin, Nehemiah Wade, John Knox, Fergus An-

derson and Wm. N. Hunter, and in later days the personal rem-

iniscences of Hon. Wm. R. Cochran, John M. Millikin, Thomas

Millikin, Jacob Stillwaugh, Samuel Shafer, Joshua Delaplane,

Augustus Breitenbach, Thomas Moor, Henry S. Ehrhart, George

W. Tapscott and Stephen D. Cone. The writer has spared no

pains, and here furnishes as complete and exhaustive a history as

is possible to compile at this day.

 

 

 

That an ancient race once inhabited the site of old Fort

Hamilton, and the Miami valley, and in fact the central portion

of what is now the United States, there is no doubt. They left

no written history. All that we can gather is from their monu-

ments, consisting of earth-works, mounds, and implements, evi-

dences that they possessed certain degrees of civilization, and

were a peaceable people. According to the book Oahape pub-

Vol. XIII-7.            (97)