The mysterious ruins: Rescuing the Spafford farmstead from the forgotten war of 1812

Abstract

The Amos Spafford farmstead (33Wo50) of Port Miami in northwest Ohio disappeared from the historical record after the War of 1812. Port Miami, a Franco-American village, was the first U.S. federal customs facility established in Ohio in 1805. It was destroyed in 1812 by a British and Native American detachment led by Captain Peter Latouche Chambers (British 41st Regiment of Foot), the Shawnee leader Tecumseh, and the Wyandot leader Roundhead. Port Miami’s destruction became lost over the years to the historical memory and consciousness of Ohio. Salvage excavations of the Spafford farmstead (1810–1823) in 1977 and its history provide an archaeological window within which to view Port Miami’s obliteration and its recovery to the community heritage of the state.

Keywords

War of 1812 farmstead Port Miami Amos Spafford Tecumseh Roundhead Peter Latouche Chambers Northwest Ohio

Introduction

For many people, early Euro-American settlement and history of Northwest Ohio began with the building and siege of Fort Meigs in 1813 during the War of 1812. After the war, the earliest towns like Port Lawrence (now Toledo), Perrysburg, and Maumee were platted in 1816 and 1817 (Andreas and Baskin, 1875; Porter, 1987; Sherman, 1976; United States Congress, 1832–1861a; Wendler, 1988). Our knowledge of the people, events, and cultural lifeways prior to this date survive only as bits and fragments of historic memorabilia and reminiscences of early pioneers recorded in print during the latter half the 19th century by local historians. These bits and fragments come down to us in a jumbled format, missing some pieces altogether because time warps and distorts the historical record. This imperfect knowledge becomes part of a community’s historical memory, consciousness, and heritage.

Just as individuals have memories of themselves through time so do communities (Thelen, 1989: 1118). Collective memory is the representation of the past shared by a group or community (Kansteiner, 2002: 180). The origins of a community until its demise constitutes the sum of its individuals’ memories told as stories, legends, and folklore transmitted orally and in writing from one generation to the next. What survives becomes history. To quote one historian, “The past is a foreign country …” (Lowenthal, 1985: xvi). The past is founded on memory. The reason the past seems so strange today to people is due to the alteration and loss of memorial knowledge because people select, distill, distort, and transform the past to meet the needs of the community at various periods in history.

Historical background

One such case of historical memory loss of the past was encountered in 1977 with the Strzesynski site (33Wo50). The University of Toledo in Ohio, in cooperation with the Toledo Area Aboriginal Research Society (TAARS), conducted routine monitoring of key historical points of interest along the lower Maumee River for endangered prehistoric and historic archaeological sites. With the aid of metal detectors in thick weeds and underbrush of the Maumee River floodplain, 33Wo50 was located just southwest (upriver) of Fort Meigs, a national monument and battlefield of the War of 1812 (Figure 1). Fort Meigs is owned by the Ohio History Connection, formerly the Ohio Historical Society, in Columbus (Ohio History Connection (OHC), n.d.-a; Stothers and Cufr, (1980): 13).

Figure 1.

Location and topographic profile of 33Wo50.

David M. Stothers, University of Toledo archaeologist, made plans, with permission of the property owner, to inspect and assess the site in August of 1977. Surface collected artifacts consisted mostly of historic and some prehistoric artifacts including military artifacts of the War of 1812 from what appeared to be at the time a plow-disturbed, refuse pit. Construction activities, evident within the vicinity of the site, indicated the deep, silty, alluvial soil was being mined by mechanized machinery for fresh fill dirt to finish landscaping the backyard of the property-owner’s newly built house.

One month later, archaeological mapping and test excavations were conducted for seven days at the plow-disturbed site. Plans for full-scale excavations of the site were terminated by the property owner because some coins recovered from the excavations gave the property owner the idea that buried treasure lay beneath the ground of the site. The site was monitored over the years from Fort Meigs to determine its surface condition. However, the site would have to wait another 32 years before the complete story of its existence could be told based on the excavations, material culture, and faunal remains recovered in 1977.

The University of Toledo, assisted by TAARS, practiced salvage or rescue archaeology of endangered archaeological sites in the 1960s and 1970s. As survey and excavation teams jumped from one threatened site to another, some appeared as insignificant based on low archaeological visibility and low cultural density. 33Wo50 was one of these sites that took a backseat to further research. The site records consisting of the excavation field journal, maps, unit graphs, photographs, faunal remains, and man-made material culture were placed into storage in 1978 in the hope that the property owner would change his mind and allow further excavations of 33Wo50. This never happened. In 2007, Stothers decided to re-examine the site collection and its significance in the hope that the site’s story could be told and preserved for posterity. The author, who was a field supervisor at 33Wo50 in 1977, was asked to review the site records, analyze the material culture and artifacts, research the site’s early history, and prepare a co-authored report on the archaeological and historical investigations. Unfortunately, Stothers died before this reassessment was completed. The relationship between the historic occupation of 33Wo50 and the Amos Spafford farmstead is examined in detail against the backdrop of the War of 1812 in this article.

The war of 1812 landscape at the Maumee Rapids

Few places in America have experienced extensive and dramatic change of their historical and cultural landscape like that of the lower Maumee River of Northwest Ohio. The area has several War of 1812 sites and locations like Fort Meigs (1813), Fort Miamis (1794, 1813), the Spafford Family Cemetery (1810–1823), and British gun emplacements in Maumee City and Fort Meigs Union Cemetery (1813) which provide valuable clues to the war’s past at the Maumee River rapids.

Fort Meigs, a National Historic Register and Landmark Site, dominates the historical landscape (Figure 2; Johnson, 2011; Nelson, 1999; OHC, n.d.-b; Spencer, 1988). The War of 1812 fort rests on a large bluff-top overlooking the south bank of the Maumee River. The fort’s stockade is 2500 yards in circumference, making it the largest reconstructed wooden fort in America. The site contains one suspected and two known cemeteries related to the War of 1812. These are the garrison burials just west of the stockade; the “Pittsburgh Blues” cemetery just south of State Route 65; and the massacred remains of Kentucky militia (Colonel William Dudley’s detachment) situated on a knoll east of the stockade’s southeast angle, and an unmarked and recently discovered cemetery suspected to be the Spafford Family Cemetery near the southwest corner of the stockade (Averill, 1886: 36, 39; Nelson, 1986: 132–133, 141; Pickard and Johnston, n.d.).

Figure 2.

Fort Meigs and 33Wo50.

The Spafford Family Cemetery (Justus, 2003: 12, Justus, 1995: 12; Smith, 1948: 204–205) is suspected to be the mortuary component of the historic occupation at 33Wo50. Several wooden coffin burials and coffin hardware such as hinges, nails, screws, and shroud pins were salvaged (Pickard and Johnston, n.d.). The skeletal remains consisted of five adults, one child, and one newborn infant (Sciulli, 2003; The Blade, 2002, 2003a, 2003b). These burials were deposited in a single metal casket in Fort Meigs Union Cemetery on May 10, 2003 (Figure 3), where the graves of 23 other Spaffords are buried.

Figure 3.

Spafford family reburial (Tonya Spafford Cannon at Fort Meigs Union Cemetery—upper left; reburial headstone—upper right, and close-up of headstone—below).

Fort Miamis is located on a blufftop overlooking Audubon Island on the north bank of the Maumee River (Figure 4). The south side of the fort falls off steeply to the Maumee River. Remnants of the fort’s earthworks are still visible. The fort was originally built in the spring of 1794 by the British of Canada in their support of the Native American Confederacy to secure the Old Northwest Territory against the newly formed U.S. expansion and settlement west. The decisive victory favored the United States when Major General Anthony Wayne’s Legion defeated the Indian confederacy of the Great Lakes at the battle of Fallen Timbers on August 20, 1794. Fort Miamis was re-occupied by the British army in Canada from Fort Malden and the Indian confederacy led by the Shawnee leader Tecumseh during the first and second sieges of Fort Meigs in 1813.

Figure 4.

Fort Miamis looking East.

Archaeological test excavations at Fort Miamis were conducted in 1981 by G. Michael Pratt of Heidelberg College in Ohio. Pratt identified structural remains of the fort and recovered artifacts from both the 1794 and 1813 occupation periods by the British and Native Americans (Pratt, 1985; Society for American Archaeology, 1982: 664; United States National Park Service, 2006: 2).

The mysterious ruins

One War of 1812 site at the Maumee rapids is no longer visible on the historical landscape. All physical remains are buried within the floodplain by recently deposited alluvium on both sides of the Maumee River. While those on higher ground (Maumee City) were destroyed or buried by urban development and sprawl. The historical record provides clues to these mysterious ruins.

Private Elias Darnell, a member of Brigadier General James Winchester’s brigade of Kentucky militia and U. S. regulars, took some time out from his soldierly duties on January 16, 1813 during the War of 1812. Sitting on the bank of the Maumee River near the Maumee Rapids, he recorded in his journal the solemn appearance and majestic beauty of the surrounding rural landscape draped in a blanket of white on a cold and wintry day. Darnell remarked “The inhabitants have fled, and the Indians or British have burned their houses, leaving some of the chimneys standing” (Darnell, 1854: 32; Darnell, 1914: 32).

One month later, Captain Daniel Cushing, commander of an artillery company at Fort Meigs, noted that his gun crew test-fired a cannon ball at an abandoned house on the opposite side of the Maumee River that belonged to Jean-Baptiste Beaugrand, a Franco-American merchant and store owner. The ball fell short having hit the ground but bounced into the building (Lindley, 1975: 98–99).

In June of 1813, Samuel Williams of Chillicothe, Ohio wrote the editor of the Weekly Register in Baltimore, Maryland regarding the first siege of Fort Meigs in May of 1813 (Williams, 1813: 321). Williams remarked about the ruins of a small village at the Maumee rapids. More importantly, he provided the newspaper with a map (Figure 5) of the area showing the mysterious ruins on both sides of the Maumee River. And, in 1815, one of the first written histories of the War of 1812 described the Maumee River near Fort Meigs and stated that before the war there was a flourishing French settlement on the river, extending for several miles above and below the foot of the rapids (Fay and Davison, 1815, vol. 1: 15). This settlement was given the official name of Port Miami by the U.S. government, named in honor of the District of Miami, which was a treasury department customs district and port facility established on January 18, 1805 (United States Congress, 1805).

Figure 5.

The mysterious ruins at the Foot of the Rapids of the Miami (Maumee) River in June 1813 (Williams 1813: 321). 33Wo50 is indicated by the red star.

But what was the community like represented by these ruins before the War of 1812 and what happened to make it ruins? In 1809, Port Miami was described as a rural village of about 100 inhabitants, 20 houses, and other outbuildings (Cumming, 1810: 32). In 1812 before the war, the population increased to about 67 French and English-speaking families (about 400 men, women, and children) (Kaatz, 1952: 32, 35). The north bank of the Maumee River was mostly inhabited by Franco-Americans known as Canadiens, with some English-speaking Americans of British, Scotch, and Irish heritage. The south bank was inhabited by English-speaking settlers from New England and New York State who lived and worked as farmers growing grain crops and raising livestock.

Port Miami was a troubled and deeply divided community. Issues which divided the community concerned Ohio’s northern boundary with the Territory of Michigan, Justices of the Peace and their legal authority and powers, lack of a standard in weights and measures for commerce, vice and immorality over horse racing, drinking to excess, frolicking and dancing, unequal payment of taxes, and improper expenditure of tax money (Knopf, 1957–1962a: 42; Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society (MPHS), 1910a: 446; MPHS, 1910b: 462–463). These issues divided the community into a pro-Michigan and pro-Ohio factions. The Canadiens were considered miserable farmers and mistrusted by inhabitants of the south bank who paid little attention to agriculture and who depended principally on hunting, fishing, and trading with Native Americans for a living. They were mistrusted by Anglo-American settlers of both factions because some Canadiens were too close to Native Americans because of occasional intermarriage with native women who fostered economic and social bonds, considered a liability during war.

In 1908, after the Fort Meigs dedication ceremony, a young boy took local historian John Gunckel to a place on the south river bank near Fort Meigs where hundreds of “bullets” (musket balls) and other artifacts were being collected, including an 1813 copper cent, which had washed-out during a recent flood (Evers, 1908: 21–23; Oblinger, 1909). Gunckel concluded the artifacts were the result of a brief, but hotly contested skirmish fought on May 5, 1813 during the first siege of Fort Meigs. But had Gunckel made his assessment too quickly? It apparently never occurred to him that these artifacts might be related to the mysterious ruins Darnell, Cushing, and Williams commented on.

These small anecdotes, some embedded almost as afterthoughts, suggest that Major General William Henry Harrison had not built Fort Meigs in a sparsely inhabited and unsettled wilderness. There was an American settlement that predated the founding of Maumee Town and Perrysburg in 1816 and Fort Meigs in 1813. Was the Strzesynski site (33Wo50) part of the mysterious ruins? This question would eventually be answered by examining the historical records and archives of Canadian and American institutions.

War comes to the Maumee Rapids

The War of 1812 is one of America’s most obscure and forgotten wars (Hickey, 2001, 1995: 1). To its participants it had different meanings: it was a burdensome sideshow for Great Britain to its greater struggle against Napoleonic France; it was American aggression in its purest form for Canadian peoples, it was the last chance to regain ethnic and cultural survival for Native Americans of the Old Northwest; and it was a confused war with divided loyalties between the merchant class in New England and the war hawks in the West for Americans (Errington, 2001: 326; Taylor, 2010; Tucker and Heyman, 2012: 53).

In January 1812, Amos Spafford, the federal customs collector and inspector of the revenue at Port Miami, urged Acting Governor Reuben Attwater at Detroit to equip the village’s militia company with 25 or 30 firearms and ammunition from the public store at Detroit (MPHS, 1903: 525). A month later, he wrote Secretary of War William Eustis in Washington City expressing alarm about rumors of war in the summer and the repair and buildup of British Fort Malden across Lake Erie. The massing of Potawatomis and other Indians near Fort Defiance, some 60 miles southwest of Port Miami, threatened destruction of the settlement and 400 settlers, unless a sizeable militia force to counteract the threat could be stationed in the area (Knopf, 1957–1962b: 61). In April, news came from Port Miami and Frenchtown of conflicts with the Indians—houses were burned, cattle killed, and settlers scalped (Barlow, 1969: 102). Spafford reported two notable incidents in this regard—one that occurred 20 miles east of Sandusky involving the murder of two young men in a most deplorable manner and the another at Fort Defiance where three white men were brutally hacked to pieces by tomahawks through the instigation of a Shawnee Indian (Knopf, 1957–1962c: 152; United States Congress, 1832–1861b: 807).

President James Madison declared war on Great Britain on June 18, 1812. Shortly thereafter, Brigadier General William Hull and his American Northwestern Army reached Detroit on July 7. Hull failed to accomplish his goal during the month of August tasked by the U.S. War Department of providing security to residents of the Michigan Territory, invade Upper Canada and destroy British influence over the Indians, and controlling the shores of western Lake Erie (Figure 6; Rauch, 2012: 131–132). A series of strategic and tactical blunders revealed Hull’s timidity and indecisiveness on the battlefield where the old Revolutionary War general procrastinated until forced to surrender.

Figure 6.

The Detroit region in August 1812.

Hull was convinced of his own pending disaster and massacre when the American garrison at Fort Dearborn (now Chicago) was captured and massacred on August 15. The next day Hull surrendered Detroit to Major General Isaac Brock who threatened to attack it. Hull signed a capitulation agreement and relinquished control of the American Northwest Territory to the British and their Indian allies (Cruikshank, 2001a: 146–147). Hull was tried for treason and condemned to hang by a court-martial board, but he was pardoned by President Madison for his long service and heroism during the Revolutionary War.

The destruction of Port Miami

The British terms of capitulation of Hull’s army at Detroit demanded the immediate surrender of all American federal and militia troops, including those at Port Miami and Frenchtown. On August 20, 1812 a British and Indian detachment from Fort Malden accepted the surrender of Frenchtown (Cruikshank, 2001b: 176). The Wayne Stockade and two detached block-houses, one further up the River Raisin and the other near the mouth of Rivìere-aux-Loutres (Otter Creek), were burned to the ground (Cruikshank, 2001c: 175). Disgusted with the Indians’ behavior, Chambers decided they should return to Fort Malden.

Captain David Hull, who was captured at Frenchtown, was the militia commander at Port Miami (United States Congress, 1831, 1836). A Canadien named Amable Bellair from Port Miami came forward and told Chambers there were 180 American soldiers at the Maumee rapids. Chambers quickly changed his mind about the Indians returning to Malden. Moments later, Doctor William Fairfield, also from Port Miami, appeared with a white flag of truce and told Chambers there were only a few sick Ohio militia there. Captain Charles Askin stepped forward and told Bellair, in French, that if he was lying about the number of American soldiers at the rapids, he would be hanged (Cruikshank, 2001d: 243–247; Knopf, 1957–1962d: 188–189). Bellair maintained he was telling the truth, despite the threat. Chambers then made plans for the next day to proceed to the Maumee Rapids.

Early on August 21 at Port Miami, Lieutenant Caris and his detachment made ready to evacuate the settlement from the impending British and Indian surrender party. He informed the remaining residents, about 25 families or 100 individuals, that he and his detachment would quickly evacuate to Lower Sandusky (now Fremont, Ohio). He invited them to take what provisions they needed from the blockhouse and advised them to immediately evacuate the settlement for their own safety. Early that afternoon, a white captive, who had lived many years among the Ottawa, rushed into Spafford’s house and informed him that an Indian war party of about 50 were some 15 miles distance from the rapids (Evers and Evers-Ross, 1909: 57; Whittlesey, 1867: 348–351). With little time left to escape, Spafford gathered his family, the Wilkinsons, two other families, and quickly headed for the river where they dislodged and launched a large wooden barge that had descended the river the year before from Fort Wayne. Raising a square sail made from a bed blanket, they rowed downriver and made cover under old Fort Miamis, when they saw flames rising from their deserted homes. While the Indians looted and plundered the houses, Spafford and his little band of fugitives sailed downriver to Maumee Bay, where they made their way eastward on Lake Erie, hugging the shoreline, and keeping out of range of rifle shot. The party descended the Huron River in Ohio making it to the Quaker settlement at Milan (Hosmer, 1858: 11–12, 26–27).

The Daniel Purdy family, who lived on the flats near the Spaffords, watched as the Wyandot, led by Roundhead, arrived first, drove off 16 head of cattle, other livestock, and plundered their neighbors’ vacant houses. The Purdys hastily left with the Philothe Clark family and 11 other families by wagon south for Urbana (Ohio) (Evers, 1908: 22–23; Foster, 1996: 133–135). Other Port Miami residents hid in the woods upon arrival of the Indians and watched from concealed positions as their houses were ransacked, feather beds ripped open with the contents scattered to the winds, money and valuables stolen, and their homes burned to the ground (Evers and Leeson, 1897, vol. 1: 362–363).

Chambers was stunned to see Port Miami pillaged and burned when he and his party arrived about 2 o’clock in the afternoon that day. Tecumseh managed to stop the Wyandots from burning all the houses in the settlement and personally saved long-time resident Lewis Bond’s life (Cruikshank, 2001d: 246).

The Indians confiscated horses and mules, shot and killed cattle and hogs, drove-off other livestock, and destroyed 26 of 30 houses in the settlement. Tecumseh himself set fire to the garrison block-house, which was still burning when Chambers’ party arrived. The Indians also unearthed the dead bodies of settlers from their family graves, stripped their scalps, and later sold these as trophies for the same price, as if they had been scalped from the living. The Canadien inhabitants complained to Chambers that American Captain Henry Brush’s detachment robbed them of horses and other valuables, when they passed through the settlement three days earlier. Again, Chambers was disgusted with the Indians’ behavior, and reprimanded a British Indian Department official named Clark for not preventing the destruction of the houses and personal property protected under the surrender agreement signed by Brock and Hull (Knopf, 1957–1962c: 188).

To Chambers surprise, there were only a few sick and helpless Ohio militia of Caris’s detachment in one of the vacant, unburned houses. When Bellair entered the building where Chambers and Lewis Bond, a Port Miami resident, were sitting, Chambers damned Bellair and violently pushed him out of the room telling Bond to take and hang Bellair as he was the “damned rascal” responsible for bringing the Indians to the rapids. Askin quickly took Bellair into custody by relieving him of his pistols, as it was obvious he had lied at the Raisin. However, Chambers and Askin had no one to guard Bellair as a prisoner, and when some Wyandots came forward and begged Chambers to free Bellair, Chambers reluctantly consented for fear of a mutiny by his Indian allies. Bellair received his pistols back and quickly fled the scene leaving Port Miami (Antal, 1998: 112–113; Evers, 1908: 23; Knopf, 1957–1962c: 188; Naveaux, 2008: 29).

When Captain William Elliott and Lieutenant Bender arrived later that afternoon on the gunboat Chippewa with two other vessels, the British loaded all the confiscated public property into the boats, and five additional canoes they took from residents for the trip back to Malden. Seized were 77 barrels of pork, 18 barrels of flour, 9 barrels of whiskey, 2 barrels of salt, a musket bayonet, a cartridge box, and some soap and candles (Cruikshank, 2001e: 177). No arms or ammunition were found by the British, but Chambers suspected these items were hidden from sight somewhere within the village (United States Congress, 1831, 1836).

It was not long before the Indians plundered and confiscated supplies in the boats. To make matters worse, they murdered and scalped one of Bender’s Canadien boatmen, and shot another. The expedition left at midnight from Jean-Baptiste Beaugrand’s house and trade store going down the river to Lake Erie and then to Malden skirting the western shoreline. But after six or seven miles, the boat crews began to fall asleep one-by-one and were forced to land on shore to sleep before continuing to Malden (Antal, 1998: 112–113, 140; Esarey, 1922, vol. 2: 93–94; Knopf, 1957–1962c: 188).

The Port Miami affair caused bitter feelings and prejudice among some of the British who participated in the operation. Chambers arrived back at Amherstburg on August 23, only to learn that the Indians had stolen his horse during his absence. He and Matthew Elliott had a vicious quarrel about the Indians’ conduct and the shooting incident at the Maumee Rapids. Several days later, Colonel Henry Procter wrote General Brock at Niagara that he was sending Chambers back to maintain harmony and peace in his command (Antal, 1998: 112–113, 140; Cruikshank, 2001d: 246–247).

Later that month, a British expedition, commanded by Major Adam C. Muir, returned from Fort Wayne and stopped at Port Miami (Figure 7). Frustrated in their attempt to capture roaming cattle and hogs now wild, four of the last five houses and outbuildings still standing were burnt and destroyed by the Indians before departing to Malden. The only house left standing and unharmed belonged to Jean-Baptiste Beaugrand, Cushing’s artillery target in February 1813, because of the respect the Indians had for him (Au, 1981: 39; Lindley, 1975: 98–99; MPHS, 1909: 169–171).

Figure 7.

Known settlers at Port Miami 1805–1812. 1: Steven Hoyt (Hoit), Thomas Dicks, and Neley Denton, Amos and Chloe Hecox, Amos and Olive and Aurora Spafford, David and Almira Hull (Daughter), and Antoine LaPoint. 2: Thomas Leaming. 3: Jean Baptiste Beaugrand, Lewis Bond, François Desforges, [Jacques] Gabriel Godfroy, Joseph Loranger, Gabriel St. Michel, François Valliquet, Major John Whipple, Samuel H. Ewings, and Daniel Murray. 4: Alexander and Samuel Ewings, John Askin Sr. (absentee Detroit), Whitmore Knaggs, William Brown (absentee Detroit), Archibald Lyons (absentee Detroit), and Conrad Ten Eyck. 5: François Marie Navarre dit Hutro and family, Joseph Cavalier dit Rangeard/Ranjard and family, Pierre Malosh (Maloche). 6: John (Andrew) Race (Rall). 7: John Carter. 8: Samuel H. Ewings. 9: Peter Manor or Peter Menard dit Perish Montour. 10: Jean Baptiste Monmini.

Rediscovery of the Spafford farmstead

Site 33Wo50 occupies the northeast part of “Spafford’s Grant,” a 160-acre tract of land that borders the Maumee River on the south bank between river tracts 64 and 65 in Township 1 of the U.S. Twelve Miles Square Reserve of the Miami (Maumee) River of Lake Erie (OHC, n.d.-c). The tract was granted to Amos Spafford’s heirs by patent deed from the federal government on February 23, 1818. It rests upon an alluvial, floodplain terrace at 193 m of elevation (585 feet AMSL). Strzesynski purchased the 23-acre lot containing the site in May of 1977 (Office of the Wood County Recorder of Ohio (OWCR), n.d.-a). Test excavations were conducted to determine the nature and extent of both prehistoric and historic components. Only 21.3% (44.9 m²) was excavated of the estimated 210 m² of site area before the property owner terminated archaeological investigations (Figure 8).

Figure 8.

1977 Test excavations of 33WO50.

Three trenches (1 × 5 m) and three rectangular units (1.5 × 1.2 m) were placed over the site area and excavated from surface level down to 42 cm where sterile, yellow-brown, clayey silt subsoil appeared (Figure 9). All excavation units were shovel stripped in levels of 2–3 cm until the base of the plow zone about 33.0 cm below surface. Each successively stripped level was cleaned by a hand-trowel and examined for subsurface, structural, and nonstructural features and cultural materials. The soil from excavation units were sifted in tripod screens of a quarter inch wire mesh. Features were numbered serially regardless of unit designation. Features were then cleaned, graphed (recorded dimensions, provenience, depth, soil context, and associated cultural materials), cross-sectioned, and photographed using a 35-mm camera with black and white and color film. Recovered artifacts were bagged and labeled in the field with provenience data and transported to the archaeological laboratory at the University of Toledo for cleaning, cataloging, and cross-mending of broken artifacts prior to analysis.

Figure 9.

Excavations looking Northeast (Ft. Meigs in background).

The excavations disclosed five, plow-disturbed features which appeared as light-colored, organic stains in the surrounding dark-colored alluvial silt and loam that formed in highly calcareous, Wisconsin glacial till. The features contained historic building rubble and debris with a rich assortment of diagnostic artifacts. This house structure was probably a pioneer log house, and not a cabin, shack, or wood-frame house. The majority of diagnostic artifacts date between 1806 and 1830. There is a fine distinction between a log “cabin” and a log “house.” Log cabins were first generation, temporary structures used by the frontier’s earliest settlers. Builders constructed cabins with unhewed logs laid horizontally one upon the other, then filled the interface between logs with moss or straw, and daubed the gaps with wattle and mud or mud alone. Log houses were substantial, second generation structures built with hewed logs shaped by axe or adze and laid horizontally one upon the other. Settlers stopped the cracks between logs with stone and filled them with limestone mortar. They also covered the interior walls with a thin veneer of plaster painted with white-wash. Builders created log house roofs by neatly arranging shingles fastened with nails to wooden sheeting. Log houses commonly boasted a wooden floor, a door with a milled frame, glass windows with milled sashes and frames, and a fireplace with chimney. Settlers from New England inspired both styles of horizontal log construction found within this area (Hutslar, 1992: 76–77; Kniffen and Glassie, 1966: 49; Kniffen, 1965: 559; Schlereth, 1992: 195–217, Schlereth, 1983: 125–142).

Stratigraphic soil deposits

The soil of the site area is classified as Genesee silt loam, which occurs on level to nearly level (0%–2% slope) bottoms (flats, rises, and natural levees) of floodplains along major rivers and large creeks of the area (Rapparlie and Urban, 1966: 53). This soil has slow or very slow surface runoff. It frequently floods for very brief periods of time during seasonal periods. The soil is deep and well drained and generally does not require tile drains for agricultural use. This type of soil is classified as prime farmland for corn and soybeans where protected from flooding and is suitable for pasture and hay land (Robbins and Lantz, 2007: 77–79).

Table 1 shows the cultural strata and features of the Genesee silt loam soil. The plow zone was restricted to the Ap and Bw1 soil horizons of the brown-to-pale brown, silt loam soil. There was some mixture of historic and Late Woodland components at the base of the Bw1 and top of the Bw2 soil horizon (32–34 cm in depth). This is followed by a thin layer of Late Woodland materials exclusively in the Bw2 horizon between 34 and 42 cm in depth, which appeared to be a buried, plow zone protected from recent agricultural activities at the site. Excavations did not proceed below the Bw2 horizon except for Features 2 and 4 which were purposely cut into the Bw3, C1, and C2 soil horizons. These features extended in depth to 167 cm The dolomite or limestone bedrock occurred at 183 cm in depth.

Table 1.

Cultural strata and features in Genesee silt loam soil.

Soil Horizon (Typical Pedon)	Depth (cm/in.)	Excavated cultural strata or levels	Features
Ap Brown (10YR 4/3) to pale brown (10YR 6/3) silt loam	0–17.7/0–7	Plow zone pre- and post-War of 1812 (0–32 cm)	Feature 1 (0–35.5 cm)
Bw1 brown (10YR 4/3) silt loam	17.7–33.0/7–13	Plow zone pre- and post-War of 1812 (0–32 cm); Mixed pre–post-War of 1812 and Late Woodland (32–34 cm)	Feature 3 (17.7–32 cm); Feature 5 (17.7–32 cm); Feature 2 (17.7–97.7 cm)
Bw2 brown (10YR 4/3) silt loam	33.0–48.2/13–19	Buried plow zone (32–42 cm); Late Woodland (34–42 cm); Sterile (>42 cm)	Feature 2 (17.7–97.7 cm); Feature 4 (34–167 cm)
Bw3 brown (10YR 4/3) loam	48.2–81.2/19–32	Not excavated	Feature 2 (17.7–97.7 cm); Feature 4 (34–167 cm)
C1 brown (10YR 4/3) loam with prominent white (10YR 8/2) gastropod (snail) shells	81.2–119.3/32–47	Not excavated	Feature 2 (17.7–97.7 cm); Feature 4 (34–167 cm)
C2 dark yellowish-brown (10YR 4/4) loam with prominent white (10YR 8/2) gastropod (snail) shells	119.3–152.4/47–60	Not excavated	Feature 4 (34–167 cm)
Dolomite (limestone) bedrock	>182.8/72	–	–

Features and artifacts

A total of 7723 cultural artifacts and ecofacts were recovered from the excavation units and four archaeological features. This is reduced to 5979 after removal of 844 animal bone fragments, 36 pieces of mollusk shell, and 864 prehistoric artifacts not considered for functional classification and analysis. The artifacts represent 6 categories and 20 classes of functional activities of the Spafford occupation (Table 2).

Table 2.

Functional categories and classes of historic material culture.

Functional category/class	Percent	Quantity
Foodways	53	3185
Consumption		2853
Preparation and storage		328
Procurement		4
Household-structural	36	2145
Hardware		1146
Architectural-construction		986
Household furnishings		13
Personal	4	212
Indulgences		99
Clothing		56
Medicine		35
Military Service		6
Recreational		6
Jewelry		5
Monetary		3
Protection		1
Communication		1
Manufacture–maintenance	0	14
Clothing		12
Ammunition		2
Agricultural	0	4
Livestock		3
Labor		1
Commercial goods	0	3
Unknown	7	416
Total:	100	5979

Feature 1 in Trench 1 was a circular-shaped, light-colored stain in a dark brown, silt loam matrix mottled with humus. It measured 0.6 × 0.4 m and 35.5 cm deep below surface level (Figure 10). The profile or cross-section showed limestone mortar and hand-made brick prevalent in the upper 6 cm of the feature. Both prehistoric and historic artifacts were mixed throughout the feature from top to bottom because of agricultural plowing. Artifacts consist of grit-tempered pottery sherds, chert cores, primary decortication flakes, secondary chert flakes, hand-wrought and machine-cut iron nails, glazed and painted polychrome sherds of refined white earthenware, and thin, green-tinted, window (flat) glass. This feature is interpreted as a Late Woodland hearth mixed with intrusive historic materials because of agricultural plowing.

Figure 10.

Hearth (Feature 1, top view—left and cross-section—right).

Feature 2 (Trenches 1 and 2) was a light-colored stain in a dark brown, silt loam matrix that measured 2 × 2 m and 80 cm deep filled with building rubble and debris (Figure 11). The plow zone extended from surface level to a depth of 30 cm in the trench units. Historic materials were confined to the plow zone. Below the plowzone (32–42 cm in depth) was a light scatter of prehistoric pottery and chipped stone debris mixed with some historic ceramics and brick fragments. Undisturbed, yellow-brown, silty, clay loam subsoil, devoid of any cultural materials, appeared at 42 cm of depth below surface level.

Figure 11.

Log house rubble and debris (Feature 2, top view—above and cross-section—below).

Cultural materials from this feature and the unit fill consist of limestone rock slabs, part of the domestic structure’s fireplace, or structural foundation. A wealth of artifacts comes from this feature and the general fill of Trenches 1 and 2. The artifacts are generally consistent with that of a domestic dwelling structure or house buried beneath the ground. Three coins were recovered (Figure 12). One is a silver, Spanish-colonial, milled, pillar dollar (8-reale denomination) with Mexico City mint-mark and a date of 1742. The 8-reale was equivalent to 1 Spanish dollar. In 1793, the United States established Spanish currency as legal tender which remained so until Congress passed the Coinage Act in 1857 that demonetized all foreign currency (Harper, 2013: 35; Kagin, 1984: 70, f.n.3). The Spanish 8-reale pillar dollar was minted between 1732 and 1772 (Kraljevich, 2011: 1). The second coin, also Spanish colonial, is a silver piece-of-eight with no visible mint-mark and date. The 8-reale pillar dollar was sometimes cut into eight equal wedges with each piece equal to two-bits or 0.25 cents (Bowers, 1984: 1–2; Ross, 2013: 35). The final coin is a U.S. Liberty Head (draped bust) large copper penny with a date of 1806 (Krause and Mishler, 1996: 1040).

Figure 12.

Coins (top: 1742 8-reale Spanish-Colonial milled dollar; center: 8-reale Spanish-Colonial piece-of-eight; bottom: 1806 large Liberty Head, draped bust, copper penny).

A few artifacts are related to War of 1812 military uniforms and equipment are present (Figure 13). Two, brass, one-piece, U.S. Artillery Regiment buttons (foliated script “A”—1st and 3rd Regiments) (Chartrand, 1992: 148) manufactured between 1813 and 1814 were recovered. Exact duplicates are shown in Albert (1997: 51–52, AY 36) which have a manufacturer’s mark of “Leavenworth Hayden & Scovill” of Waterbury, Connecticut. The foliated script “A” artillery buttons were present at the military arsenal in Philadelphia by June 19 of 1813 (Wyckoff, 1984: 40–41).

Figure 13.

War of 1812 military artifacts ((a) foliated script “A” first Artillery Regiment brass button; (b) foliated script “A” third Artillery Regiment brass button; (c) U.S. general service button; (d) brass clip; (e) brass sling clasp; and (f) dagger or sword brass scabbard chape).

A third military fastener is a pewter, one-piece, U.S. General Service button dating between 1808 and 1845 (Wyckoff, 1984: 84). This button was worn on the fatigue uniforms of enlisted men (Albert, 1997: 19–20). An order was placed with Henry Grilley and Company of Waterbury, Connecticut in November of 1808 for U.S. coat and vest buttons of this type (Campbell, 1965: 5). Other artifacts include bullet buttons used during the War of 1812, a brass bayonet or sword scabbard chape (tip), a musket sling clasp, and a brass clip. There is no record of any unit of the first or third Artillery Regiments at Fort Meigs during the War of 1812. Only a company of the second Artillery Regiment under Captain Daniel Cushing was attached to the American Northwest Army at Fort Meigs beginning in February of 1813.

Since the foliated script “A” artillery buttons were not manufactured before 1813, these may represent a member of the Spafford household, like son-in-law Almon Gibbs, who may have saw military service in another part of the war theatre. Spafford himself went to Cleveland, Ohio and joined the American Northwest Army under Major General William Henry Harrison working as a personnel and supply specialist for the army.

Personal artifacts consist of a brass locket with interior glass cover, a brass dangling pendant-broach, brass straight pins, large and small plain flat disk (one-piece) buttons with soldered wire loop and Sanders-type shanks (post-1813) (Albert, 1997: 7), bone and shell buttons, glass necklace beads, a pocket folding-knife with plain bone handle, and two silver-plated brass broaches which were Native American trade goods. These could have been part of a fur trader’s goods being transported up the Maumee River that Spafford would inspect as customs collector and have placed a bond on the cargo. Or, possibly these broaches were lost from the clothing of a Wyandot during the destruction of Port Miami in August of 1812.

Tablewares (Figure 14) are most prevalent. A plain (molded raised-rim) creamware plate (10 in.) is one of the three earliest ceramic vessels in the material culture assemblage. This plate is very similar to some plates from an assemblage of 74 vessels dated ca. 1800 excavated at Royal Oak, a coaching inn, in Eccleshall, Staffordshire (UK) and a group of 178 vessels recovered from Haregate Hall in Leek, Staffordshire (UK) (see Barker, 2007: 37, Figure 2; Barker, 2007: 39, Figure 3). Most of these vessels date between 1795 and 1805 with a deposition date between 1805 and 1810. Creamware is a fine lead glazed earthenware with a cream color appearance that originated in England and was popular in Europe and America during the late 18th and early 19th centuries (Massey, 2007:15). Creamware was popular from 1775 to 1820. By 1790, it was the cheapest refined earthenware of commercial markets (Noël Hume, 1991: 126–128; Miller, 1991a: 5, Miller, 1993: 4–6, Miller et al., 1994: 222–223).

Figure 14.

Table and food preparation wares ((a) creamware plate, 8 in.); (b) transfer-printed brown creamware bowl; (c) transfer—printed brown creamware cup; (d) transfer-printed pearlware sugar bowl with finial; (e) “mocha” banded bowl; (f) scalloped blue and green edged plates; (g) incised “cross-hatched” bone fork or knife handle with nails; (h) brass ladle handle; and (i) brown- slip stoneware crock.

After the War of 1812, decorated vessels such as dipt, painted, shell edge, and printed vessels start to become more popular than undecorated creamware (Miller, 1991b: 5). The other two creamware vessels in the 33Wo50 assemblage are transfer-printed, underglaze, brown cup and bowl. The cup has a floral design and the bowl a rural country scene probably dating between 1812 and 1823. Creamware continued to be produced throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries in specialized vessel forms and in small quantities. Other notable tableware artifacts include a blue transfer-printed pearlware sugar bowl with finial, a dipped mocha bowl with fronded device; green and blue edged plates; a knife or fork with incised bone handle, a “Britannia” brass soup ladle (handle), gray salt-glazed stoneware crocks and jars with interior Albany slip; and kitchenware bowls of glazed and slipped coarse earthenware and redware.

Household-structural artifacts were recovered related to the architecture, hardware, and interior furnishing of the log house. Log houses, unlike cabins and shacks, had hand-hewn logs lacking the bark of cabins. At least one artifact recovered was a piece of unfired wood lath with plaster still adhering to the wood. Log houses had wood lath with plaster for the interior partition of rooms. Also recovered were white lumps of highly oxidized and porous limestone mortar used in hewed log houses for chinking, whereas log cabins used wattle-and-daub and other chinking techniques during this period for the area. David Hull, Spafford’s next-door neighbor before and after the War of 1812, had log houses in 1815 on the hillside between Fort Meigs and the Maumee River. Architectural items are green-tinted, window (flat) glass; unbranded, hand-made (local) orange-colored chimney brick some with limestone mortar veneer on the interior; discolored lumps of white and extremely porous, heat-oxidized, limestone mortar some showing fine, wood-grain, linear striations of hewed-log planking on the interior; white-washed plaster; some charred wood (not charcoal); and large limestone slabs and cobbles of the structure’s foundation or fireplace procured from the Maumee River channel. Hardware artifacts are an iron, screw-driver (bit and shaft), a brass furniture tack, iron hinges, over a hundred hand-forged and machine-cut iron nails and a U-shaped iron staple, a threaded iron screw, iron spikes, and an iron door latch. Household furnishings include two, federal-style rosette drawer pulls of a cabinet or dresser, a coarse earthenware flower pot, and a porcelain vase or bowl.

Feature 3 (Figure 15) in Trench 2 was a light-colored, organic stain in a dark-colored soil matrix that measured 0.7 × 0.5 m with an unknown depth. Cultural contents consisted of a scattered concentration of animal bone, fire-cracked rock, chert debitage, and one grit-tempered pottery rim sherd located 6 m from the east wall and 2 m from the west wall of Trench 2, and 6 cm below the surface. Archaeological work at the site was terminated before this feature could be excavated and the contents examined.

Figure 15.

Log house rubble and debris (Feature 3).

Feature 4 (Figure 16) was a light-colored, organic stain in a dark-colored soil matrix that appeared in test unit D (1.5 × 1.5 m) excavated initially to the base of the plow zone at 32 cm in depth. This unit was expanded to 1.5 × 10 m with the recovery of dense concentrations of material culture. It was excavated to a depth of 80 cm to determine the bottom of the feature. The feature’s final dimensions were not determined before excavations were shut-down by the property owner. Feature 4 revealed architectural details of a log farmhouse, site stratigraphy, and sequence of events during its occupation (Figure 17). The stratigraphic sequence of soil layers from top to bottom shows a plow zone with artifacts, followed by house rubble and debris, a burned and fire reddened layer representing the original house and floor structure, and a cellar hole below the floor of the house. The artifacts from the plow zone and house rubble and debris layer seem to suggest a second, later rebuilt house at the same location.

Figure 16.

Log house rubble and debris (Feature 4).

Figure 17.

Stratigraphic profile of Feature 4 showing burned structure floor and fire-reddened clay below rubble debris layer and above cellar hole.

Cultural contents consisted of large limestone rock slabs and cobbles which formed the foundation of the house structure over the cellar hole. Heat-oxidized limestone mortar, wooden lath, and plaster from the structure’s interior walls, fire-reddened clay, and pieces of burned wood (not charcoal), with mortar still attached, indicate a hewn log house whose walls collapsed from burning and slumped into the cellar hole after the wood-plank floor disintegrated. The collapsed chimney is indicated by the hand-made brick present in this feature. Some of the highly corroded sheet iron still had charred wood attached to it. Much of the window (flat) glass was deformed and discolored by burning or heat-oxidation. Other artifacts included hand-forged and machine-cut iron nails, brass one-piece buttons with quality marks, glazed refined white earthenware, bone buttons, bottle glass, a glass medicine vial, brass and iron hinges, brass straight pins, an iron-threaded screw, and an unmarked stem fragment of a white clay tobacco pipe. Three of the iron nails are brads (small nails with L-shaped heads) used in finishing work of the structure’s wooden floor.

Feature 5 in Trench 2 was a light-colored organic stain which contrasted with the dark-colored soil matrix. The upper portion of the featured contained a concentration of animal bone. Below this were numerous pieces of glazed ceramics, charcoal, animal bone, and brick fragments. This feature though outlined and cultural contents noted at surface level was not excavated before excavations were terminated by the property owner.

Faunal remains

Only 541 fragments of bone and shell of vertebrate and invertebrate animals, fish, reptiles, and freshwater clams were recovered from the excavations (Lee and Glaze, 2009). Some of the bone could be identified as to species, but most were identified only at the family level given the fragmentary nature and nondiagnostic parts of the bone and shell material. Domesticated species (Table 3) consist of cow (Bos taurus), hog (Sus scrofa), and chicken (Gallus domesticus). Although few, these species provided the greatest quantity of edible meat and were year-round food resources in the diet of the historic occupants.

Table 3.

Domesticated and nondomesticated (Wild) fauna from historic features (weight in grams).

Species or Taxon	Feature 1 no./wt.	Feature 2 no./wt.	Feature 4 no./wt.
Domesticated
Cow (Bos taurus)	–	1/0.5	–
Hog (Sus scrofa)	1/3	3/45.5	–
Domestic chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus)	–	5/3.0	–
Nondomesticated (wild)
Vertebrates
White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)	1/1.1	2/2.3	–
Eastern cottontail rabbit (Sylvilagus floridanus)	–	–	1/0.5
Even-toed ungulates (Artiodactyla)	–	1/0.6	1/0.3
Gray Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis)	–	2/0.4	–
Freshwater Catfish (Ictalurus sp.)	–	1/0.1	–
Bird (Aves)	–	9/1.4	–
Surface-feeding ducks (Anatinae)	–	1/0.3	–
Small-to-large mammals (Mammalia)	–	112/173.1	14/10.1
Bony fish (Osteichthyes)	–	36/3.9	2/0.3
Frogs and toads (Anura)	–	3/0.3	–
Pidgeon (Columbidae)	–	2/0.6	–
Small squirrel (Sciuridae)	–	1/0.1	–
Medium rodents (Rodentia)	–	2/1.0	–
New world rats, mice, etc. (Cricetidae)	–	–	1/0.1
Invertebrates
Mucket (Actinonaias)	–	1/6.6	–
Bivalve clams (Bivalvia)	–	1/0.7	–
Pointed campeloma (Campeloma decisum)	–	1/1.4	–
Long fingernail clam (Musculium transversum)	–	1/0.1	–
Snails (Gastropoda)	–	2/0.4	–
Total	1/1.1	177/192.3	19/11.3

The presence of bone waste with cut-marks from pig and cow, including portions of the feet and teeth, suggest these animals were butchered at the site for domestic consumption, and not raised to be sold to local markets at Frenchtown and Detroit. Tool marks indicate the use of knives and saws, but not cleavers, in the butchery of carcasses into halves or quarters. Five butchered vertebrate specimens of hog from Feature 2 are spare rib cuts, and one nonbutchered specimen is a hind-shank tibia from a juvenile, representing low-value pork cuts suggesting individual rather than communal portions. Communal portions for human consumption were popular before 1800 in the form of stews and pottages. After 1800, individual portions for consumption of meat, potatoes, and vegetables became the norm.

Wild (nondomesticated) species were recovered from features and the general fill of excavation units. Faunal remains from the plow zone could not be attributed to the historic occupation since the earlier Late Woodland component was mixed with historic deposits because of agricultural, plowing activities that postdate the historic occupation. However, the nondomesticated faunal remains recovered from the historic features can be attributed to the historic occupation with a high degree of confidence despite some mixture. Nondomesticated or wild fauna consisted of animal, bird, fish, rodent, reptile, and freshwater clams of various species identified in Table 3.

33Wo50’S hidden secret

Who owned and occupied the log farmhouse at 33Wo50? Amos Spafford filed a petition with Thomas Worthington, a U.S. Senator from Ohio, on December 20, 1811 asking Congress to pass a law that would give him the right of preemption to be the first to purchase the lot on the south side of the Maumee Rapids where his farm and port facility was located (American Antiquarian Society, (1816): 55). He based his claim on being a federal agent conducting federal business at the site. Unfortunately, lawmakers failed to act on Spafford’s petition due to Congress’s preoccupation with the pending war with Great Britain. His petition seems to have been lost, mislaid, or temporarily delayed until after the war.

Spafford's petition resurfaced in a report to Congress by the Committee on Public Lands in February of 1816 (United States Congress, 1853: 86). The report recounted Spafford’s history at the Maumee Rapids and reaffirmed that when General William Hull surrendered Detroit to the British in August of 1812, Spafford and his family, with other American families, fled the rapids to the interior of Ohio, leaving their homes and property to be “plundered, burnt, and destroyed” by the enemy. The report concluded by noting that Spafford had incurred considerable expense in erecting the necessary buildings to accommodate his family and carry out the duties of his office as customs collector and inspector of the revenue. Congress approved Spafford’s right of preemption to his tract of land upon which his farmstead and port facility stood.

The Spafford family returned to the Maumee Rapids in the Spring of 1814 with other settlers when the British and Indian threat subsided because of the American victory at the Battle of Moraviantown on the Thames River in Canada on October 5, 1813. They erected new houses while living in tents, taking wooden planks from abandoned flatboats used in shipping supplies from Fort Defiance to Fort Meigs. After the war ended in December of 1814, these settlers used timbers and pickets from the blockhouses of Fort Meigs, which was also abandoned by the American army (Evers and Leeson, 1897, vol. 1: 50–51; Hosmer, 1858: 49; Whittlesey, 1867: 351).

This was the secret concealed from archaeologists in the rubble and debris of site 33Wo50 in 1977. It was not a single house that archaeologists had test excavated, but two separate houses built on the same site during back-to-back occupations. The Spafford houses most likely represent a pre- and post-War of 1812 frontier farmstead. A British and Native American surrender party destroyed the original Spafford house constructed in 1810 on August 21, 1812. The Spaffords rebuilt their home on the same site in 1814. Did Spafford receive any compensation from the American government for the loss of his farmstead? Secondary sources tell us he did, and that he was instrumental in getting other Port Miami settlers compensation who suffered similar losses during the War of 1812. But these original claims remain elusive in Congressional records and the National Archives of the United States.

Tracking the Spafford farmstead through time

In 1816, land speculator Frederick A. Stuart of Albany, New York, through his agent John E. Lasher, proposed to plat a new town between river tracts 64 and 66 of Township 1, U.S. Twelve Miles Square Reserve, to take advantage of steamboat transportation just beginning on the Great Lakes (Dana, 1861: 575; Doyle, 1919: 48; Evers and Leeson, 1897, vol. 1: 54; Musham, 1945; Simonis, 1979: 14). This new means of transportation after the war greatly assisted in the western movement of people from the Atlantic seaboard states west to the Mississippi River and beyond.

The town platted between river tracts 64 and 66 was named “Orleans,” nick-named “Queen City of the North,” and was expected to rival, genuinely or in jest, New Orleans. To promote this venture, Dr. JB Stewart commissioned the steamer the Walk-in-the-Water in 1818 to travel the Great Lakes with Orleans as its western terminus, and J.J Lovett, a former Congressman, was hired to be resident agent in the town. The town’s promoters and backers suffered serious setbacks when bad news was received that the Walk-in-the-Water on her maiden voyage in 1818 failed to get past the harbor of Port Lawrence (now Toledo, Ohio) because the side-wheeler drew too much water (Mauer, 1946: 17–18; The Blade, 1837; Western Reserve Historical Society, n.d.). Thus, competing developers platted Perrysburg in 1817, a mile downriver on higher and dryer ground below the Maumee Rapids. Orleans was described in March 1818 as a few log houses at the foot of the hill upon which Fort Meigs stood. The banks had overflown, which piled up huge masses of ice against the houses, the water flowed through the windows, and the swine and other domestic animals had been swept from the yards (Evans, 1904: 206). The final blow sealing Orleans’ fate as ghost town occurred when the ship owners of Lake Erie petitioned Congress to move the customs house from Fort Meigs to Port Lawrence in 1821 (United States Congress, 1820: 142), and Wood County officials moved the county seat from Maumee to Perrysburg in 1823 (United States Congress, 1832–1861a: 656).

There were two extant surveys of Orleans—the 1814 A. S. Bugbee survey and the 1825 Seneca Allen survey (Franks, 2011: 2; OWCR, n.d.-b; Toledo-Lucas County Public Library, n.d.). Both surveys (Figure 18) originate at the same initial point within Township No. 1 and both are of interest to the Spafford grant and the second or post-War of 1812 Spafford house and farmstead. These plat maps contain numbered lots and named streets.

Figure 18.

Orleans plat surveys (A.S. Bugby 1814—top and Seneca Allen 1825—bottom). Courtesy of Gary Franks, Public Engineer.

Amos Spafford described his farm on June 9, 1816 in relationship to Orleans in a letter to Josiah Meigs, Commissioner of the General Land Office in Washington City (Carter, 1933–1944, 10: 650–651). The farm was located on lot 23, 140 rods (2310 feet) west of the east boundary of Township 1 of the U.S. Twelve Miles Square Reserve. This lot measured 80 rods (1320 feet) east–west along the Maumee River and 80 rods (1320 feet) north–south in depth. Lot 23 contained Spafford’s house, garden, and three-fourths of his outbuildings. Unfortunately, Spafford does not describe the outbuildings or provides measurements on any of the structures. The remaining one-fourth of his property occupied 330 feet of the west side of lot 24, which was vacant at the time, and east (downriver) of Spafford’s farmhouse. Spafford’s lots 23 and 24 were part of Spafford’s Grant and not part of the Orleans plat (Franks, 2011: 3).

The War of 1812 claim by Captain David Hull (United States Congress, 1831, 1836) for destruction of his farm and house may provide some details of Spafford’s farmstead and what his house contained since both were next door neighbors in 1812 and both suffered property destruction by the Indians at Port Miami. Hull’s claim (Table 4) shows a house, barn, store, and warehouse as tavern keeper at Port Miami. Hull, like Spafford, also farmed growing grain crops and raising cattle and hogs. Obvious differences stem from the fact that Hull was a tavern keeper. Spafford would not have needed the store and excessive quantities of whiskey and food that Hull maintained at the time for his tavern guests.

Table 4.

Captain David Hull’s claim for property confiscated, lost, or destroyed by the British and Indians, August 21, 1812.

Personal property and goods	Estimated value (dollars)
One house burned	500.00
One barn burned	100.00
One store burned	100.00
One warehouse and outhouse	150.00
One bed and appurtenances	50.00
Household furniture	500.00
Twelve barrel of whiskey, 420 gallons at $1.50 per gallon.	630.00
Thirty tons of hay at $5.00 per ton	160.00
Garden destroyed	50.00
Fences and other improvements destroyed	100.00
Seven cows and calves	140.00
Two 2-year-old neat cattle	20.00
Five yearlings	37.00
Thirty hogs	150.00
Five barrels of pork	100.00
Three barrels of flour	24.00
Four barrels of salt	40.00
Four cwt (hundred weight) of sugar	50.00
Three hundred pounds of bacon	37.50
Merchandise	1400.00
One month’s service for the protection of Fort Meigs during the spring of 1814	30.00
Total	$4459.00

The location of Amos Spafford’s lot and rebuilt house and farm described in 1816 is the same house and lot identified in the original patent deed of “Spafford’s Grant” (160 acres) issued by the federal government in the name of his heirs on February 23, 1817 (OWCR, n.d.-c). His last will and testament of April 1817 left the western half (80 acres) of “Spafford’s Grant” to wife Olive and the eastern half (80 acres) to his son Aurora (OWCR, n.d.-d). Spafford died in October 1817 (Barber, 1933–1947; National Genealogical Society, 1939: 119).

Residents left Orleans, one-by-one, many moving to Perrysburg. Among those who eventually left were David Hull (tavern keeper), Joseph Vance (dry goods store owner), Jacob Wilkinson (steamboat business), John Hollister (freight hauling service), J.J Lovett (agent for Orleans), Joshua Chappel, Samuel Spafford, and David Hawley—all of whom relocated to the towns of Perrysburg or Maumee. Samuel Spafford, oldest son of Amos Spafford, opened the Exchange Hotel in Perrysburg in 1825 (Andreas and Baskin, 1875: 26; Evers and Evers-Ross, 1909: 240; Evers and Leeson, 1897, vol. 1: 361, 368). Ironically, it was Amos Spafford, who, after being asked by Ohio’s governor Return Jonathan Meigs, gave Perrysburg its name in 1816 (Hosmer, 1858: 51). In 1823, Aurora and Mary Spafford built a new wood-frame house on the bluff above the flats (now the Perrysburg Historical Museum owned by Judith Justus and her husband). By 1830, there were no families left in the abandoned platted town of Orleans.

What happened to the Spafford farmhouse below Fort Meigs after the collapse of Orleans? In 1833, Joseph Creps came to Perrysburg where he worked for merchant John Hollister hauling goods by wagon from Perrysburg to Grand Rapids, returning with animal furs and skins (Evers and Leeson, 1897, vol. 1: 367–368; James and James, 1875: 14). Creps cleaned and converted one of the abandoned structures of Orleans into a home. The Chadwick family occupied the abandoned red farmhouse of the Spafford family. The 1832 flood washed away most of the abandoned houses of Orleans. The ruins of the old Spafford red farmhouse were still barely visible adjacent to the site of Fort Meigs in 1843 (Whittlesey, 1867: 351). The Maumee flooded again in 1847, 1849, and 1855. Years of flooding, inundation, and ice flows took its toll on the floodplain below Fort Meigs. The abandoned Spafford farmhouse and outbuildings, left to deteriorate in the weather, eventually rotted and collapsed to the ground. With the passage of time, all the structures that once stood on the floodplain became buried by the river’s annual inundation and silting. The earliest plat map of the area made in 1858 shows no buildings or structures where the old Spafford farmstead once stood (Andreas and Baskin, 1875; Doyle, 1919: 99; Evers and Leeson, 1897, vol. 1: 364; Waggoner, 1888: 672).

Discussion

Historical and archaeological investigations of 33Wo50 have identified the Amos and Olive Spafford farmhouse among the ruins of Port Miami at the Maumee rapids. 33Wo50 was part of the Port Miami ruins and the farmstead house and federal port facility owned and occupied by Amos and Olive Spafford from 1810 to 1823. The original log house was destroyed by a British and Indian surrender party from Fort Malden, Canada on August 21, 1812. The second farm and house were rebuilt between 1814 and 1816 on the same site was abandoned in 1823. These remains were back-to-back occupations of the same site spanning only 13 years. There is also a post-occupational phase of the rebuilt farm and house based on some material culture or artifacts recovered in 1977 that dates after 1823. In time, 33Wo50 and Port Miami disappeared from both the historical and archaeological record for some 205 years until rediscovered. This site begs the question of why should we remember this small American village and federal port facility that vanished from the historical landscape of the Early American Republic and the human drama of the War of 1812?

33Wo50 is not just an early American frontier and pioneer farmstead of common and nonaffluent people, part of a little-known Franco-American village of the Detroit region, in local and regional context of history. The site represents the first federal customs and port facility established in 1805 in Ohio caught in the War of 1812 on the national and international world stage. Understanding the unique circumstances and divided loyalties of French and American citizens of Port Miami during the war and in peacetime offers a rare glimpse into humanity at a moment in time.

The test excavations of the Spafford farm and house were also instrumental in identifying the location and extent of other Port Miami houses that lay buried in alluvial silt along both sides of the floodplain terrace of the Maumee River at the foot of the rapids. The archaeological potential of excavations of other Port Miami houses and outbuilding structures is possible even though the Maumee City area is both residentially and commercially impacted by urban development.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author biography

Patrick M Tucker received his Master of Arts and Education (M.A.Ed.) in Anthropology from the University of Toledo, OH. He was Adjunct Professor of Anthropology for the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Toledo in Ohio (USA) from 2014 to 2017. He is currently a historical archaeologist in Firelands Archaeology, Amherst, OH. His research interests include historical archaeology, protohistoric archaeology, and ethnohistory.

References

Albert

(1997) Record of American Uniform and Historical Buttons Bicentennial Edition, Alexandria, VA: O’Donnell Publications.

American Antiquarian Society (ed) (1816) Early American Imprints, 1801-1819: 39585: U.S. 14th Congress, 1815-1817, House Report and Bill on the Petition of Amos Spafford, 22 February 1816. 39586 (microfiche 1242). 2nd Series. Washington, DC: U.S. Congress, p.55.

Andreas

Baskin

(1875) An Illustrated Historical Atlas of Lucas & Part of Wood Counties, Ohio, Chicago, IL: Lakeside Building.

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