Bennington County VT Archives Biographies.....Smith, Nathan November 25, 1771 - October 28, 1827
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/vt/vtfiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
JP Smith johnnysgarden@cox.net September 6, 2010, 3:57 pm

Source: The Ancestors of Thomas Wilson Faust, 1997
Author: A. Donovan Faust

Nathan Smith was the eldest of his parent's eight children and lived in
Manchester only for the first 20 years of his life. Despite the beauty of
Vermont, much of the land was satisfactory only for grazing, which may have led
him to seek adventure and richer land on the western frontier known as the
Northwest Territory about 1791.
     Nathan was joined in the trek to what would become the state of Ohio by his
brother Abraham, who was only 17 at the time. According to a family history,
they made their way to Pittsburgh by covered wagon and then proceeded down the
Ohio River by raft. The type of raft they used was probably one known as an
Allegheny flat, which was made of heavy planks or logs, had low side rails and
could carry several tons of cargo. Normally, such rafts were considered a
one-way craft, moving downstream by the thrust of the current and steered, with
some difficulty, by a broad tiller. The raft was usually dismantled upon arrival
at the destination so that the timber could be used to construct cabins.
     They then traveled overland through the trackless forest to an area later
designated as Morgan County, probably to a tract of land their father had
purchased in the Duck Creek Allotment. (He never came to Ohio). It was located
some distance northwest of Marietta (now Manchester township), where the first
permanent settlement in the region had been established three years earlier.
     Their arrival unfortunately coincided with the height of warfare with the
Indians in the territory. Just the prior year, an army led by Brigadier General
Josiah Harmar had attempted to wipe out the Indians but was routed. Then only a
couple of months before the Smiths came, the Big Bottom Settlement, which was 40
miles up the Muskingum River from Marietta, was totally wiped out by a Shawnee,
Ottawa, Delaware and Kickapoo raid led by the Shawnee Chief Blue Jacket. Several
months after their arrival, the army of Lieutenant General Arthur St. Clair
attacked the Indians and, as had been the case with General Harmer, was also
soundly defeated. Finally, in July 1794, General Anthony Wayne led an army
against the natives and defeated them at Fallen Timers near present-day Toledo.
Subsequently, a peace treaty was signed with the various tribes that ceded to
the United States, the eastern two-thirds of Ohio. The exception was the Shawnee
chief Tucumseh who would not sign and continued to foment opposition against
white encroachment until his death in 1813, while fighting with British forces
against the Americans in the War of 1812.
     Several years later, the settlers in the area were startled when they felt
the earthquake shocks of 1811 and 1812, which were centered on the New Madrid
fault along the Mississippi River. It was the most massive quake in United
States history. The tremblers were said to have caused church bells to ring in
faraway Washington, D.C.. The earthquakes reportedly were predicted by Chief
Tecumseh, who claimed they would be a signal for all tribes of the Indian
nations in the region to rise again. He traveled the Midwest and South urging
them to come together at his village of Tippecanoe in the Indiana Territory,
from where a united offensive would be launched to drive out the white man.
Unfortunately for his plan, shortly before the signal came his brother Prophet
got into a battle with troops led by William Henry Harison, resulting in
Tecumseh's village being destroyed and the tribes scattered. Thus, active Indian
opposition in the Ohio and Indiana region was largely ended, although it
continued further west for decades.
     Although the Smith brothers came from chill Vermont, they must have been
surprised at the occasional ferocity of Ohio winters. A notation in a family
bible observed that ice froze in the Muskingum River to a depth of nine inches
in 1796 and that a similar winter was experienced in 1799.
     Sometime around 1796, Nathan Smith married Rosanna Deming, whose family had
just settled 15 or 20 miles to the east in what became Washington County.
Virtually no concrete information about her can be found. Some genealogical
records identify her as the daughter of Ezekiel Deming while in others she is
thought to be the child of his cousin Simeon Deming. Both of the Demings came to
the area together. It is known that Nathan's brother Abraham Smith married
Ezekiel's daughter Mary Ann Deming but the same records disagree as to whether
the young women were sisters or cousins. This history assumes the majority
opinion that they were sisters but further research is needed to confirm it.
     Whatever her parentage, Nathan and Rosanna set about establishing a
homestead and raising a family of twelve children. Their first house was
probably like most in the area: a rectangular log cabin about seven to nine logs
high at the eaves with packed earth floors, greased paper windows and crude
handmade furniture. Planks split from tree trunks were used for the heavy doors,
built large enough for a horse to pull in a log for the fireplace at the end of
the cabin. But undoubtedly their living quarters expanded with the family, and
the necessities of life became more readily available as rapidly growing
commerce brought the products of a more advanced lifestyle to the Ohio frontier.
     Nathan Smith died in Morgan County in 1824 when 53 years old and his
youngest child was but three.

Additional Comments:
Nathan and brother Abraham emigrated to the Northwest Territories when Nathan
was 20 years. This likely distressed Mary & John as they lost not only family
but important help on their Vermont family farm. 



This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/vtfiles/

File size: 6.2 Kb