Ohio History Journal

OHIO

Archaeological and Historical

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BUCKEYE STATION

 

BUILT BY NATHANIEL MASSIE IN 1797

 

 

BY MORTEN CARLISLE

Shrouded in the mists of obscurity and but little

known except to a few of the older generation in and

about Manchester, Ohio, this old house, built by the

famous surveyor, General Nathaniel Massie, stands to-

day, mute evidence of the excellence of his work and a

link between the throbbing life of the present day and

those hardy pioneers, whose toil and suffering made

possible the settling of the Northwest Territory and the

making of our great State of Ohio.

This house, built in 1797, on the high hill overlook-

ing the Ohio River, is possibly the oldest existing dwell-

ing in Ohio, with the exception of one or two houses in

Marietta. It was probably the first attempt of Nathan-

iel Massie to make for himself a permanent home, but

at that he had but little time to enjoy such a home, for,

aside from being still unmarried, he was an unusually

busy man, with many projects under way, notably the

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2        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications establishing of Chillicothe, which he undertook in 1796, so that he had few opportunities for enjoying the com- forts of life. A man of great vision, the son of Nathaniel Massie, Sr., of Goochland County, Virginia, on the upper James River, he had come out to Kentucky in 1783, not as a

penniless soldier of fortune, but to take up lands which had already been located by Daniel Boone for the elder Massie. These lands were given to his son and he was also given an outfit and some capital. Others in Vir- ginia commissioned him to locate land for them, so he came out with a definite object in view and the means for carrying out his projects.

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Buckeye Station               3

Massie was young and active, at the age of twenty

years, and with the full flush of manhood in his veins

he set to work vigorously.  He learned surveying

rapidly, was for a time a deputy surveyor under Rich-

ard Clough Anderson, the principal surveyor of Vir-

ginia lands, who opened an office in Louisville in 1784.

No survey was legal unless made by Anderson or one

of his deputies, so that Massie had this advantage, in

addition to his natural ability. He was an unusually

good judge of distances and the lay of the land, so that

his surveys soon became recognized as more accurate

than those made by others and he was commissioned to

do a great deal of locating.

He rapidly accumulated property and was well-to-do

when in 1790 he decided to undertake the establishing

of a settlement on the Virginia military lands on the

north side of the Ohio River. In August 1790 the

Congress of the United States had passed the act au-

thorizing the locating of military land claims within the

limits of the Virginia Reservation, between the Scioto

and Little Miami Rivers, north of the Ohio River.

There was immediately a rush of those who held land

warrants to secure the best land within those bound-

aries. Massie, being by this time an experienced woods-

man and of great courage, was commissioned to locate

many of these claims. The usual fee was fifty pounds,

or in lieu of money a twenty-five to fifty per cent in-

terest or share in the amount of land the warrants

called for. With such liberal remuneration is it to be

wondered at that he soon became wealthy and the owner

of a large amount of landed property?

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4        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications The surveying of lands on the north of the Ohio River was a perilous undertaking and the surveyors had to go armed and with an armed guard as a protection against the attacks of bands of Indians. To make their escape across the river and to safety on the Kentucky

shore was no easy matter for the surveyors and to pro- vide a base of operations and a refuge of safety Massie decided to establish a settlement and a stockaded fort on the north side of the Ohio. To this end he posted notices in the Kentucky settlements and otherwise ad- vertised his plan, which was to build his fort on the bot-

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Buckeye Station               5

tom land, opposite the lower end of what is now known

as Manchester Island No. 2, but was then known as the

lower of the three islands.

To any one agreeing to move to his settlement he

made the following offer: "The free gift of one in-lot,

one out-lot and 100 acres of farm land, the in-lots to

measure 5 poles (82 1/2ft.) in width on the front or street

side, and 11 poles (181 1/2ft.) in depth. The out-lots to

consist each of four acres of bottom land and the farms

to be of 100 acres located at a greater distance from the

fort. But there was a condition attached to this gift:

each man had to agree to reside for two years in the set-

tlement. He could not leave for any extended time

without supplying a male substitute to aid in the pro-

tection of the fort in case of attack. At the expiration

of the two years he was to receive title to his property.

Many of the 100-acre farms were located quite a

distance from Manchester, on what is known as "GIFT

RIDGE," and which is marked on the accompanying map.

This ridge is a nearly level plateau, about 500 feet above

the river level, and the probable reason for giving the

settlers this land at such a distance was on account of

its being better soil than that of the narrow valleys.

The only really fine land was in the river bottoms and

there was not sufficient of that to supply all the settlers,

except at a too great distance from the settlement, so

Massie evidently gave the best he could, which happened

to be on what was afterwards named "GIFT RIDGE" on

account of the free gift of the property.

From  The Life of Nathaniel Massie by David

Meade Massie (grandson of Nathaniel Massie) we

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6        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

learn that the following people signed the contract for

establishing the settlement:

N. Massie                                               John Ellison

John Lindsey                                          Ellen Simmeral

William Wade                                          John + McCutcheon

John Block                                              Andrew + Anderson

Samuel + Smith                                       Matthew + Hart

Jesse + Wethington                                 Henry Nelson

Josiah Wade                                            John Peter C. Shanks

John Clark                                               James Allison

Robert Ellison                                         Thomas Stout

Zephaniah Wade                                     George - Wade

 

It will be noted that only 20 names are on the list,

whereas it has been stated by historians that Massie re-

quired 25 people to join his company before beginning

work. Probably others joined at a later date but the

above are all that David Meade Massie gives in his ac-

count. Six of these "signed by mark."

Having secured the desired number of settlers to ac-

company him, Massie now began his life work in the

Northwest Territory. Gathering their tools, household

goods and such materials as they needed they crossed

the river and set to work constructing the stockade,

about opposite the lower end of the lower island, on the

Ohio side. By March 1791 "Massie's Station" was

finished, so far as the actual building of the cabins was

concerned and it was enclosed by a stout stockade of

heavy log pickets set in the earth, and bound together

at the top. The settlers were busily engaged in clearing

the out-lots, to prepare them for cultivation. After Gen-

eral St. Clair's disastrous defeat on November 4, 1791,

the Indians became very bold and caused much loss and

suffering among the scattered settlements of the North-

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Buckeye Station               7 west and in Kentucky. Massie's Station, however was not attacked, but some of his men were captured outside of the fortification, notably Israel Donalson, a member of one of his surveying parties, and also Andrew

Ellison, both of whom eventually returned safely after many hardships. The most tragic event was the killing of Asahel Edgington on Lick Creek about five miles northeast of where West Union now stands, and very near where the Treber Tavern was afterwards built. The name of Massie's Station was later changed to NOTE. Donaldson's Run in the above map should be Donalson Run.

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8       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

MANCHESTER, being named after Manchester, England,

the original home of the Massie family.

In his exploring about the country adjacent to Man-

chester, Massie had been impressed with a certain spot

on the top of one of the hills a few miles east of his set-

tlement, which had a magnificent view of the river in

both directions, was nearly level, had many fine springs

of water and was an unusually attractive place. A

reference to the map will show its location. He re-

served this tract for his own use, eventually building a

cabin of buckeye logs on one end of the plateau. He

probably intended to use it as a summer home, or pos-

sibly to escape the effects of the malaria which was so

prevalent on the low lands, but he left no mention of it

among his papers, so far as I can find, nor is it men-

tioned in any of the accounts of Massie's life. How-

ever it evidently did occupy a prominent place in his

thoughts and he may have made considerable use of it at

times. Undoubtedly it was of more than a passing

whim with him, for Captain Nelson W. Evans, in his

excellent History of Adams County, published in 1900,

has this to say of Buckeye Station, which we will quote

verbatim:

"THE OLDEST HOUSE IN OHIO"

"Four miles above Manchester, on the Ohio River,

there is a spot whose natural beauty attracted the ad-

miration of the untutored savages, long before they ever

met the white men. There they visited and maintained

an outlook up and down the river. There they buried

their dead, whose graves are known to this day.

"General Nathaniel Massie visited this place in 1791

and so delighted was he that he proceeded to locate it as

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Buckeye Station               9

his own. ..A high, almost level plateau, between the val-

leys of Donalson's Run on the east and Ellison's Run

on the west, connecting on the north with "GIFT

RIDGE." The south-east corner of this plateau affords

a magnificent view of the Ohio River for many miles in

either direction. Massie first built a cabin of buckeye

logs and called the place "BUCKEYE STATION." In order

to render his choice location secure from attacks of In-

dians, he took up the entire GIFT RIDGE, to the north of

it for four or five miles with military warrants and gave

the land to those who would settle on it and thus placed

a cordon between himself and the savages. Massie was

a brave man but he liked company when Indians were

expected.

"So captivated was he with this place that notwith-

standing the fact that he laid out Chillicothe in 1796 and

had taken up a fine piece of land on Paint Creek, in what

is now Ross County, in 1797, in the summer of 1797 he

proceeded to erect a frame house where the Buckeye

cabin had stood. This was at a time when a frame

house was a remarkable undertaking. All lumber had

to be sawed by hand, 'whip-sawed' as it was called.

"The house, still standing, is about ten rods (165

feet) back from the cliff on the south, overlooking the

Ohio River and five rods (52 1/2 feet) from the bluffs on

the east overlooking Donalson's creek, where on April

22nd 1791 Israel Donalson was captured by a band of

Indians. All timbers and boards had to be sawed by

hand with whip saws and all nails were made by hand

by a blacksmith on an anvil. The house is but one story

high but has two very fine chimneys, one single and one

double. Those chimneys were built most substantially.

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(10)

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Buckeye Station              11

They stand today, (1900) as perfect as when, one hun-

dred and three years ago, they were erected.

"The house fronts to the south, with a side front to

the east, looking up the Ohio River, and with a further

room to the north, making two rooms on the east side

of the house. Between these two rooms is the great

double chimney. To the west is a wing with a hall and

one large room with the other stone chimney at the

west end. The hall fronts to the south and on each

side of the door is a window to enable the inmates to in-

spect the guest before entering.

"From the hall is a door on each side for entering

the east and west rooms. Entering the east room we

find a window to the south and one on the east side,

both with very small panes of glass. Walls are lined

with very wide boards, the ceiling is plastered. Floors

are of old fashioned boards, such as are no longer seen.

The fireplace in the east room is a feature, it being four

feet high from hearth to the arch and eight feet in width.

Entering the north room we find a door and window

to the east and a door and window to the west. On the

right of the chimney, in the north room was a stair-

way leading to two attic rooms, which were sided and

ceiled with boards, these attic rooms being over the

north and south rooms only.

"The west room had the single stone chimney and

over it an old fashioned wooden mantel of walnut,

carved and figured, which was the pride of the owner

and the envy of the neighbors.

"The floor boards, though very wide, were tongued

and grooved, and the weather boards, on the outside of

the house, were put on pointed instead of overlapped.

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12       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications The house may have had other additions to it but they were gone when we visited it in 1900. "The grounds about the house had at one time been tastefully laid out and traces of such were still evident. Two locust trees stand in front of the house to the south, at least ten feet in circumference (about 3 ft.

diameter) and not less than 100 years old. Northwest of the house about ten yards stands an enormous cherry tree 13 feet 6 inches in circumference (about 4 ft. diameter). "Approaching over a very bad road, up and down hill, over stones and boulders, two miles from GIFT RIDGE, which difficulty of access has to a certain ex- tent isolated the house and kept the curious from de-

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Buckeye Station              13

stroying it, which would have been the case if it had

been on a well travelled road, but being so difficult to

reach has been its preservation. Seven fine springs flow

from the hillsides near the residence.

"At this place General Nathaniel Massie dwelt oc-

casionally from 1797 to 1802, but the shades of ob-

livion are so fast darkening the history of this hardy

pioneer that but little can be learned of his residence

there during that period. General Massie's wife was

Susan Meade, the daughter of Colonel David Meade,

of Maycox, Prince George County, Virginia. Colonel

Meade had moved out to Kentucky and at the time of

his daughter's marriage he resided at his country estate

of Chaumiere des Prairies, near Lexington.   Mrs.

Massie's sister married Charles Willing Byrd, Secre-

tary of the North-West Territory and later appointed

U. S. District Judge for Ohio, 1803-1828. Judge Byrd

bought Buckeye Station consisting of 600 acres, from

his brother-in-law, Nathaniel Massie, in 1807 for $3,100

and moved there in June, 1807. He was then 37 years

old and his wife 32. His children were MARY, POWELL,

KIDDER MEADE, WILLIAM SILONWEE, and EVELYN.

"Judge Byrd had been born and reared at the

princely estate of Westover, seven miles from Williams-

burg, Virginia. His wife was from Maycox, a short

distance from Westover. Both he and his wife had

been reared in all the luxury of the times. From 1797

to 1807 they lived in Cincinnati, then but a small village,

but the largest settlement in the Northwest, and why

they chose to move to such a wilderness no one can con-

jecture. Here Judge Byrd and his family saw the first

steamboat descend the Ohio River in 1811 and here his

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14      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

patient wife died on the last day of February 1815, and

was buried under a walnut tree about 200 yards from

the house. Her grave is still visible.

"After the death of his wife, Judge Byrd moved to

West Union and sold the place to John Ellison, son of

Andrew Ellison of Lick Fork, for $4,000. John Ellison

resided here from 1818 to 1829, the time of his death,

and here most of his children were born. His wife was

Annie Barr, whose father, Samuel Barr had been killed

in a fight between Kentuckians under Simon Kenton

and a party of Indians under Tecumseh, March 1792.

Sarah, the second child of John Ellison, married the

late Thomas W. Means, of Hanging Rock, Ohio. There

John Ellison's daughter, Mary K., was married to Wil-

liam Ellison, her distant cousin and there her sister

Esther married Hugh Means of Ashland, Kentucky.

"Jane Ellison, another daughter, was the wife of

David Sinton of Cincinnati. She was born here, but

was married to Mr. Sinton at the home of Thomas

Means, at Union Landing. She died in Manchester in

1853 and was buried in the Presbyterian churchyard

there. Her daughter is the wife of Mr. Charles P. Taft,

of Cincinnati.

"Here also the late John Ellison, a banker of Man-

chester, was born and here he spent a happy childhood.

While the Ellisons resided here the Station had many

distinguished visitors from Cincinnati, Maysville,

Hanging Rock and elsewhere."

The above is the only account I have been able to

find of Buckeye Station, but the facts are so well

grounded in local traditions of the neighborhood that

the statements are all probably true. The house was

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Buckeye Station              15

probably but little used by General Massie for the

reason that his interests had been transferred to his new

settlement of Chillicothe, and he may have lived there

only during the summer months, before his marriage,

or have used it as a base for hunting expeditions, etc.

Massie was married in 1800, and he built his fine

two-storied house near the "Falls of Paint Creek" at

that time, so he really had only three years in which he

could have made any use of the Buckeye Station place.

So few people have actually visited the Station that

on August 2, 1930 at the invitation of the present

owner, Mr. Samuel Drennon Baldwin, of Manchester,

the writer, accompanied by Mr. William H. Burtner,

went to Manchester and thence to the Station. The

road was as Captain Evans had described it, rough,

steep and with large rocks over which the automobile

had to climb. Mr. Baldwin had directed us by way of

the Island Creek road to Cat-Bird School, thence up

GIFT RIDGE to QUINN'S CHAPEL, following the Ridge

south and through George Osman's farm to the house.

From  Quinn's Chapel to the Station the route was

nearly level, but the road is too rough to be recom-

mended.

Passing through several barnyards, opening and

closing gates and chasing cattle out of our way, we

finally came out on the "BUCKEYE STATION" property.

There are at present about 150 acres in the farm. The

soil seems to be good, and the crops were in better con-

dition than those of the valleys. The top of the hills

is a plateau, with several feet of loamy, friable soil,

overlying a heavy strata of stone, which is said to be a

dolomite, that is, about forty per cent magnesium car-

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16       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications bonate and sixty per cent calcium carbonate, although it looks more like a brown sand stone. This strata is twenty to thirty feet thick; and as it is somewhat porous it acts as a retainer of water during the dry periods, feeding it out in the form of springs at the parting be- tween the lower and impervious shale and clay forma-

tion. These springs were quite strong at the time of our visit, even though it was during the driest period in the history of the Ohio Valley. As you drive across the fields towards the house you suddenly come out on the bluff overlooking the river, and the road runs along close to the edge. Before reach- ing the house the road passes a remarkable projecting shelf of rock which extends out over the valley below for sixty or seventy feet. This is a bare rock devoid of

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Buckeye Station               17

all vegetation and is known locally as "HANGING ROCK"

but it must not be confused with the town of Hanging

Rock, in Lawrence County, this being a local name only.

From Hanging Rock you obtain a wonderful view of

the valley with the river about 500 feet below. The

river and the Kentucky hills lie like a panorama, stretch-

ing out in endless billows of green with the silver rib-

bon of water below for fully ten miles in either direc-

tion. The break in the hills where Ohio Brush Creek

makes its valley is easily discernible to the East and

farther on you can follow the line of hills almost to

Vanceburg, Kentucky. To the west the view is ob-

structed to a certain extent by the projecting foliage of

a large tree, but through its leafy branches one can fol-

low the river for a few miles below Manchester.

This rock is the stone cap rock of the region, an

isolated piece which has withstood the weathering ef-

fects of time. It stands out with a sheer drop of 150

feet or more to the hillside below. This is probably the

lookout used by the Indians, and referred to by Cap-

tain Evans in his description. It is the most striking

feature of the place and a finer lookout would be hard

to find.

The location of the house is substantially as de-

scribed in Evans' account except it is in very bad repair,

filthy and dirty beyond description. It is occupied by a

family of renters, tenants of Mr. Baldwin.                         Many

changes have been made within recent years.                   Mr.

Baldwin says that the original weather-boarding has

been replaced, but it does not look as if it had been re-

placed within many years, as it is so old and dilapidated.

If it had been put on within the last 30 years, which

Vol. XL-2.

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18      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications would be since the time Captain Evans visited it, I do not think it could possibly have deteriorated so much. The boards are so old and weathered it would have taken more than 30 years to make them so. They look like the original covering and a reference to the photo- graph of the house will show them, warped, split and broken. These boards are lapped, similar to weather-

boards of the present day, not pointed which I suppose Captain Evans meant for tongued and grooved. The weather-boards on Treber's Tavern, near West Union, which was built in 1798 are tongued and grooved, and I understand they are the original covering, in no worse condition than those on Buckeye Station. The large fire place has been torn out and the chim- ney walled up, with only a hole for a stove pipe left. We were particularly disappointed in this as we had hoped to see the original fire place with swinging crane,

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Buckeye Station             19

and other accessories. The north room had another

opening into, what appeared to be, the same flue, with

a regulation kitchen stove and stove pipe. This is what

was supposed to be "the great double chimney," but it

seemed to us no larger than the other chimney, on the

west side of the house.

The accompanying plan of the house is made from

memory. We would have liked to make accurate

measurements but the man, a Mr. William Brown, was

away and his wife and small children seemed disin-

clined to allow too much of an examination.

A reference to the plan will show the general ar-

rangement. You will note the great number of doors,

and the lack of windows. The so-called hall is used as

a bed room, and it was probably intended as such in the

beginning. The east room was the best lighted and

best arranged. The floor boards were wider than the

present day pine flooring, about twelve inches or so, but

nothing unusual. The ceilings and walls were covered

with paper, rough common paper, nailed on and much

of it hanging in shreds, which added to the general run-

down look of the place. In the photograph of the fire

place the paper on the wall and the floor boarding can

be seen.

This fire place is the one in the west room, the one

described as "being the pride of the owner and the envy

of the neighbors," shown in the accompanying illustra-

tion, and the fragments of wooden molding on both

sides of the chimney may be remnants of this wonder-

ful mantel piece. Not much of the original remains.

As to any previous attempt at beautifying the

grounds, there was no evidence whatever of any land-

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20      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

scaping, but considering the great number of years

which have elapsed since General Massie or Judge Byrd

lived here, anything of that kind would naturally have

disappeared long ago. There are four large locust trees

near the house, these being about eighteen inches in

diameter, and one large cherry about twenty-four inches

in diameter, all of which are very old trees.

As you drive along the road, on the way in to the

place, you pass two graves in a field on the east side of

the road. These graves are rough, un-sodded mounds

marked with flat pieces of stone such as are picked up

off of the ground. They lie just north of the charred

stump of a walnut tree. One of these graves marks the

last resting-place of Mrs. Charles Willing Byrd, thus

confirming Captain Evans' account of Mrs. Byrd's

burial. Whose grave the other one is no one knows.

There is no way to distinguish the grave of Mrs. Byrd.

On visiting the Presbyterian churchyard in Man-

chester we found the graves of many members of the

Ellison family and also the grave and monument of

Mrs. David Sinton. The dates of her birth and death

are given as 1826-1853 thus her age was 27 years at the

time of her death.

It is hardly possible that General Massie and the

subsequent tenants of Buckeye Station followed the

circuitous route to reach it that we did, and there is

evidence that they either followed the ridge down on

the east side of Ellison's Run, or a shorter and steeper

road from the house down to the river bottom, coming

into the highway about where the Kirschner house now

stands.

This latter route brings the visitor to the top of the

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Buckeye Station              21

hill almost exactly at the Buckeye Station, and as it

seems to have been well worn, still being visible among

the trees, it is more than likely the route used.

As Captain Evans says, "Why they moved to such a

wilderness is more than one can conjecture," is very

true, because a more inaccessible lonely place would be

difficult to imagine, and it was much more difficult of

access at the beginning of the last century than it is

today. The toil and hardships suffered by the inhabit-

ants of the place must have been appalling to any one

not accustomed to the privations of the frontier. Yet

for a beautiful spot and a beautiful setting it would be

equally difficult to imagine anything that could surpass

it.

It is truly remarkable the number of people of dis-

tinction and merit who lived in Buckeye Station. A one-

story frame house of only four rooms housed Judge

Charles Willing Byrd of the aristocratic Byrd family

of Virginia, whose forebears traced their descent from

the nobility of England and France and whose family

for many generations have been the leaders in the social

and political activities of the South. This same family

have had many distinguished sons, among them being

ex-Governor Harry Flood Byrd of Virginia and his

equally illustrious brother Richard Evelyn Byrd, of

Arctic exploration fame. Judge Byrd's large family

lived in this small house and his young children were

raised amid these lonely surroundings.

Later the Ellisons, John Ellison being the son of

Andrew Ellison, who had been captured by Indians,

taken to Detroit, ransomed by a British officer, later to

return to Manchester and his family. John Ellison,

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22      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

within the narrow confines of this small house, raised a

large family, many of whom rose to positions of wealth

and prominence, and their children and their children's

children are today among our most honored citizens.

When you look at this humble dwelling you marvel that

it could have been the home of such high class people,

especially when you realize what it meant in those days

to reach the place, almost inaccessible on its mountain

top.

There are numerous local traditions about Buckeye

Station, of the lonely wife who pined for the society of

her own people and who would steal out at night and lie

on "HANGING ROCK" in the hope that she might roll

off and thus end her sorrow, of the hard and selfish

husband who filled the best room with grain, and who

locked up all provisions when he left, so that his family

had to go hungry until his return. These and many

other tales cling to the old place and add to its mystery.

No doubt some of them had a foundation in fact.

For much of the above information we are indebted

to the writings of Colonel John McDonald, David

Meade Massie, Captain Nelson W. Evans, Scott's His-

tory of Highland County, The Life of Simon Kenton by

Edna Kenton, and to Mr. S. D. Baldwin, the present

owner of Buckeye Station, to all of whom due ac-

knowledgment is given.

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