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An Artist's Conception of Toledo, 1800

When the first settlers came to the Maumee Valley, they built cabins and planted crops, even though the land still belonged the Indians. The fur traders, who built trading posts along the Maumee River, came first, possibly as early as 1680, but they stayed only as long as their trade with the Indians prospered. The military reservations laid out after the Treaty of Greenville in 1795 encouraged permanent settlers, but the land had not been surveyed or offered for sale, so those who established homes within the reserves were squatters on government land. The area outside the reserves remained Indian territory, where only those few who had land grants from the Indians owned their farms.

Frenchmen Gabriel Godfrey and John Baptiste Beaugrande built a trading post at the foot of the rapids of the Maumee River, near the present site of the city of Maumee about 1790. Other French settlers followed, among them Pierre Momonee, Jacques Peltier, and a man named La Pointe. Pierre Menard, who later changed his name to Peter Manor, left his position as agent with the Northwest Fur Company to start a trading post in the same area about 1808. Probably the best known of the Frenchmen, Peter Navarre acted as a spy and scout for the Americans during the War of 1812. Born at Detroit in 1785, he came to the Maumee in 1807 with his brothers. They built a cabin on the east side of the river near its mouth, where a sizeable French settlement soon developed.

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Peter Navarre's Cabin

No record exists to positively identify the first English speaking settler, but George Knaggs may have come to the Maumee Valley as early as 1760. In 1785 the Ottawa Indians granted his son, Whitmore Knaggs, four thousand acres in the present city of Maumee, where in 1825 he built one of the first frame houses in the area. William McKee built his trading post near the Maumee River rapids in 1794, but he left the region before the War of 1812. Colonel John Anderson, a British Indian agent, established a trading post and a farm at the foot of the rapids about 1800 by some accounts, though others place him there in 1794. In 1807 six English families lived in what is now Maumee. David Hull, a nephew of General Isaac Hull, lived near the present site of Fort Meigs.

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James Carlin, a blaksmith, and his son, Squire Carlin, came from Monroe about 1807.
Amos Spafford, the first federal port collector and postmaster, came here in 1805, bringing his family five years later to make their home in what became Perrysburg.

Settlement of the Twelve Miles Square Reserve officially began in 1807, two years after it was surveyed, and twelve years after the Indians relinquished it to the United States in the Treaty of Greenville. By 1812 sixty-seven families lived in the vicinity of the Maumee River rapids, scattered throughout an area that was also inhabited by Ottawa Indian tribes. At the start of the War of 1812 some of the Ottawas warned Peter Manor that hostile Indians planned to massacre all white families in the Maumee Valley. General Hull left a military detail to protect the settlers, but the soldiers soon abandoned the temporary fort, retreating to safer country. The settlers then had no choice but to leave their homes and farms until the war ended.

Three years later, in the summer of 1815, the settlers returned to find their cabins burned and their fields overgrown with weeds. Fort Meigs and a small garrison of American troops had replaced the Indian villages. Beginning immediately to rebuild, they assessed the damages. Through Amos Spafford, they applied to the United States government for compensation for their losses of crops and livestock at the hands of the British and the Indians. The claims ranged from $40 to $75, and totaled more than $4000, all of which the government eventually paid.

The Judge James Wolcott House

The end of the war brought an end to the threat of Indian hostilities, which brought more settlers. Perrysburg was platted in the Twelve Miles Square Reserve in 1816, and Maumee in 1817. Both quickly became thriving villages, though further down the river the site that would become Toledo remained undeveloped. Dr. Horatio Conant, who became collector of the port at Maumee, clerk of courts for Lucas County, and a justice of the peace, came to Maumee in 1816. John Hunt also settled in Maumee in 1816. He later served as the first state senator for the area. Wilson and Samuel Vance opened a store in 1816, and H.P. Barlow taught school in the settlement during the winter of 1816-17. His was most likely the first school in the Maumee Valley. Another important settler, Judge James Wolcott, came somewhat later, in 1826. In 1821 Wolcott married Mary Wells, the daughter of Captain William Wells and the granddaughter of the Miami Indian Chief Little Turtle. The Wolcott home, built along the Maumee River in 1827, became the social center of the community.


John E. Hunt
1798 - 1877

Despite the growing numbers of farmers and traders in the Maumee Valley, all of northwestern Ohio except the military reserves established in the Treaty of Greenville remained Indian territory until 1817.

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In a treaty signed at the foot of the rapids near Maumee on September 29, 1817, the Indians gave up all rights to lands in Ohio, keeping for themselves only about three hundred thousand acres in nine reservations. The former Indian lands were then sold at an auction at Fort Meigs. Through the efforts of Amos Spafford, the settlers were allowed to purchase the properties they had occupied and improved.

In 1816 the settlers no longer needed military protection. The United States government resurveyed the sixteen military reserves, and ordered that the land should be sold at auction. In the new survey the land along the river was divided into river tracts instead of the square sections normally platted in the Northwest Territory. The first public sale took place at the land office in Wooster, Ohio, in February 1817. Two groups of Cincinnati land speculators formed companies for the purpose of buying land along the Maumee River within the Twelve Miles Square Reserve. To avoid bidding against each other for the same tracts, the Piatt Company and the Baum Company merged to form the Port Lawrence Company. They purchased river tracts one, two, three, and four at the foot of the rapids, and tracts eighty-six and eighty-seven on the opposite side of the river, for a total of 974 acres. They paid an average of $48.13 per acre, with 25 percent of the total of nearly $47,000 payable in thirty days and the balance to be paid in three equal annual installments.

The Port Lawrence Company laid out a town, which they called Port Lawrence, along the Maumee River at the mouth of Swan Creek. They planned between three and five hundred lots, designating three for public uses, such as schools and churches, one for a court house and jail, and two outside the town to be used for burials. The proprietors sold seventy-nine lots at the first sale, held in Port Lawrence on September 20, 1817. William Oliver and Martin Baum, both members of the Port Lawrence Company, bought two lots and built a log warehouse, resembling a blockhouse, on the north side of Swan Creek near the Maumee River.

The Warehouse, 1817 - Toledo's First Building

The Port Lawrence Company lacked the money to make the second payment when it came due in 1818, and the land reverted to the government. The proprietors owed about $20,000 for river tracts one and two, and in 1821 they arranged with the government to give up those tracts and apply the payments they had made on them to what they still owed on the other tracts. In 1826 the University of Michigan, in selecting land for its own use, chose river tracts one and two. In 1832, as Ohio's canal building plans advanced, and William Oliver realized that one of the towns along the Maumee River could become an important port, he traded other land he owned to the University to get back the two river tracts.

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Oliver, in partnership with Martin Baum and Micajah Williams platted a new Port Lawrence, recorded in Monroe County, Michigan, on December 20, 1832.

Frederick Prentice
1822 - 1913

Despite the failure of the first Port Lawrence and the departure of many of its residents, others continued to arrive. The proprietors had hired Joseph Prentice to build their warehouse in 1817, and on December 22, 1822, his son, Frederick Prentice, was born in a small frame house on Perry Street between Summit and St. Clair Streets. This was the first white child born in Port Lawrence. Joseph Trombley owned a log house on Superior Street in 1823. Further down the river, Benjamin F. Stickney lived in a brick residence on Summit Street. Noah A. Whitney and Coleman I. Keeler, Sr., lived on what is now Collingwood Boulevard, some distance from the river. Seneca Allen, a civil engineer, came to the Maumee Valley with his wife in 1816, settling near Waterville. In 1818 they moved to the settlement near Fort Meigs, and in 1824 they took up residence in Port Lawrence.

The first store in Port Lawrence, John Baldwin & Company, operated from the first floor of the old warehouse for several years. John T. Baldwin and Cyrus Fisher came to Port Lawrence in 1823, bringing with them a supply of dry goods sufficient to open a store. The Baldwin family lived in the old warehouse until 1833. Baldwin also owned the schooner Vermillion which he sailed between Port Lawrence and other cities on Lake Erie. On July 13, 1833, John Baldwin bought the first land in the new Port Lawrence. He paid $25 for lot eleven, consisting of forty feet on the north side of Summit Street near the corner of Monroe Street.

Sanford L. Collins came to Port Lawrence in 1831 to work in a new dry goods and grocery store to be established at Fort Industry on Jefferson Street. The old fort had been built as a French trading post about 1670, and had passed into the possession of the British, who had abandoned it in 1796. United States troops had rebuilt it as a fort sometime between 1800 and 1803. With both Fort Meigs and Fort Miami only a few miles away, Fort Industry functioned more as an outpost than as a fort. It remained standing until about 1843.

The plat of Port Lawrence filed in 1832 included the part of the present city of Toledo bounded by Jefferson Avenue, Swan Creek, Superior Street, and the Maumee River. The proprietors hired an agent to manage the property for them. Stephen B. Comstock acted as the first agent, selling a total of fifty-four lots during 1833 and the first half of 1834. He was succeeded by Andrew Palmer, who sold thirty-five lots during 1834 and 1835.

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Some of the sales required the purchaser to make some improvements, such as, "to build two good houses and paint white."

Having decided that the town would make better progress if each one of them looked after his own interests, the proprietors met in July 1835 to close out the affairs of the Port Lawrence Company. They made plans for grading streets, building a pier, and putting in sewers and culverts on Monroe Street, all to be completed when the new town of Toledo was incorporated. They set aside lots 198 and 319 for public schools, lots 175 and 366 for the first two religious groups to build churches, and five acres for cemeteries. The proprietors gave Mrs. Harriet Daniels lot 335 as a wedding present, since her marriage to Munson Daniels was the first in Toledo. The widow of General Vance received lot 215. The proprietors held out eight lots for a hotel they planned to build, and the remainder they divided among themselves. They also agreed that each of them, in proportion to his original investment, would buy shares of stock in the Erie & Kalamazoo Railroad Company "to promote the general prosperity of the town."

Major Benjamin F. Stickney, an Indian agent for the United States, decided in 1832 that progress in Port Lawrence was too slow. He owned a large tract of land just down the river from Port Lawrence, on which he determined to start his own town. He gave a grand ball in the Port Lawrence blockhouse in January 1833 to celebrate the platting of his new town, which he named Vistula. After two false starts, Stickney hired Edward Bissell to come from Lockport, New York, to make Vistula a reality. The two began to clear and to level the land, to build houses and roads, and to construct docks along the river between Elm and Lagrange Streets. They sold the first lots on December 19, 1833. The town prospered during 1834 and 1835. On October 2, 1835, when the Vistula Company met in Buffalo, New York, to close out its affairs, the proprietors agreed to arrangements similar to those made in Port Lawrence for lots to be used for schools and churches after the incorporation of the new town of Toledo.

Other businessmen with money to invest speculated in land along the Maumee River, surveying and platting several rival towns during those same years. Some of these towns competed with Port Lawrence and Vistula, while others existed only on paper. Orleans of the North, surveyed in 1817, was doomed because a rock bar across the Maumee River stopped the larger lake ships. The town died in 1820, when nearby Perrysburg became the county seat of Wood County.

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A Plat Map of Manhattan, 1835

The Towns Along the Maumee River, 1835

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Though speculators built a sawmill, several stores, and two or three houses, Marengo, platted in 1836 about three miles down the river from Perrysburg, lasted only a short time. East Marengo disappeared even more quickly. Stephen B. Comstock, one of the Port Lawrence investors, planned a new city between that town and Marengo, near what is now Walbridge Park. Comstock sold lots in Austerlitz, despite the dense forest that covered the site.

Up the river from the present city of Rossford, a store, a tavern, and a few houses, all built about 1833, made up the town of Oregon. It lasted only until 1840. Lucas City, surveyed in the spring of 1836 on the east side of the river, never became reality. On the west side and further down the river from Port Lawrence and Vistula, hopeful investors laid out the city of Manhattan in 1835. They built docks and warehouses, and opened a large hotel in 1836. The Bank of Manhattan, organized on March 25, 1836, was the first banking institution in the area. Of all the "paper towns," only Manhattan, which eventually disbanded to become part of Toledo, offered any real competition for Port Lawrence and Vistula.

By 1833 the rivalry between Port Lawrence and Vistula jeopardized the success of both towns. The business interests of both communities proposed that they merge to become one city with one name and one government. After considerable agitation each town had secured its own post office about 1832, but the United States customs office remained in Maumee. In addition, both towns had contributed to the building of a national road, which ended at Maumee, leaving Port Lawrence and Vistula with no passable road to other parts of Ohio. Both towns wanted to mark the navigation channel in the river and improve facilities for lake shipping. Both recognized that whichever Maumee River town became the terminus for the canal soon to be built, would survive and prosper. Discussion of a possible merger went on throughout the summer of 1833. During the fall the proprietors of both towns called a public meeting to consider the question. Sentiment strongly favored uniting the two towns, but neither group would consider accepting the other's name, so an entirely new one had to be found. Several accounts credit different people with the suggestion, but the only certainty is that the new name of Toledo was derived from the ancient city of Toledo in Spain.

In 1834 Dr. Jacob Clark stopped in Cleveland on his way to Toledo from New York State. In Cleveland he was told that Toledo was located in the midst of a great marsh, and that its inhabitants were practically all Indians, frogs, or muskrats. Arriving by boat, he found forests and high banks on both sides of the Maumee River. An old log warehouse stood near a dock at the foot of Monroe Street. The only hotel, the Port Lawrence House, later named the Indiana House, at the corner of Summit and Perry Streets had no beds available, so he spent the first night on the floor.

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Port Lawrence and Vistula, 1834

An Artist's Conception of Toledo, 1837

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The following morning he went out to look at the town. He climbed about twenty-five feet up a steep hill to reach the river bank, from which he could see open space and then an Indian trail leading toward Lower Town. Upper Town included the area between Jefferson and Perry Streets, as far as Swan Creek and the city limits. An old blockhouse and the old Fort Industry stood at Jefferson and Summit Streets, with the hotel, a frame house, a brick house, and a few small buildings scattered along the river. Middle Town consisted of an old log house occupied by a washer-woman. Lower Town extended from Oak to Magnolia Streets. A store stood at the corner of Summit and Lagrange Streets, along with two houses, a hotel, an office, and at the foot of Lagrange Street, a warehouse. A few houses lined the river as far down as Bush Street, where Major Stickney lived, and a half mile further, Colonel Wilkinson. Only an Ottawa Indian village occupied the forest beyond that point.

The Front Page of the First Toledo Blade

Dr. Clark decided to stay in Toledo. In 1834, in partnership with J. Irvine Browne, he issued the town's first newspaper, the Toledo Herald. Publication stopped temporarily when Browne became ill. When it resumed early in 1835, the name was changed to Toledo Gazette. A group of Toledo businessmen hired George B. Way to be the editor of Toledo's second newspaper, the Toledo Blade. The first issue appeared on December 19, 1835.

Edward Bissell started a sawmill between Elm and Chestnut Streets in 1834. That same year a foundry opened on Lagrange Street, and Shaw & Babcock established a brickyard. Toledo's second hotel opened in 1835, when a residence on Summit Street between Locust and Lagrange Streets was enlarged to become the Mansion House, later the Franklin House. The first livery stable located there that same year. By 1836 Toledo claimed seven hotels, six warehouses, thirty-five stores, two sawmills, four lumber yards, twelve lawyers, three schools, and two newspapers. By the time Toledo incorporated as a city, on January 7, 1837, as many as two thousand people lived in the city and the surrounding area.

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