FROM THE ARCHIVES

(By Stephen Kelley from the People’s Defender 1984)

In our study of the history of this area, we frequently encounter the names of individuals who, although they never made this county their home, nevertheless were highly responsible for the early settlement and development of Adams County. One of these individuals was Duncan McArthur, soldier, surveyor and politician of Ohio. You will remember in last week’s column McArthur was mentioned as one of the builders and proprietors of the Marble Furnace in Bratton Township. For almost two decades he and Thomas James, Chillicothe entrepreneur, operated the iron smelting enterprise that gave employment to hundreds of Adams Countians.

McArthur was born in New York State in January 1772 to Scottish immigrant parents. He was raised on the frontier of western Pennsylvania and joined the militia of that state in 1790. After just a few months in the military, McArthur was a member of General Josiah Harmar’s disastrous campaign against the Miami Indians and their allies near present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana. Until his discharge from the militia in 1792, McArthur distinguished himself in battle with the Indians on a number of occasions.

Following the winter of 1792-93 working as a salt boiler in Kentucky, young McArthur became acquainted with the intrepid Nathaniel Massie, soldier, explorer, surveyor and developer. Massie had already founded Manchester and was using it as a base of operations for his surveying forays into the wilderness that blanketed southern Ohio.

In the spring of 1793, McArthur was hired by Massie to work as chain carrier on his surveying crew. It was that year Massie and his crew began platting the rich bottoms and terraces surrounding the confluence of Paint Creek and the Scioto River. During this surveying project, in which armed guards stood sentry duty for protection against the Indians, McArthur first saw the beautiful valley and gently rolling hills to which he would later return and spend the remainder of his life. It was on this site where the two rivers converged that Massie would later found the city of Chillicothe, Ohio’s first capital.

The year 1794 saw McArthur hired by the State of Kentucky to work as an Indian “spy”. He, along with a number of other bold individuals such as Adams Countian Nathaniel Beasley, patrolled the Ohio River for several miles on each side of Limestone (Maysville). Their job was to protect the settlers in the Washington-Limestone area from the warring Shawnee.

The Shawnee, based in the southern Ohio area, frequently sent small war parties on raids into northern Kentucky. As a result, several settlers had been killed, theft by the Redmen was commonplace and panic on the Kentucky frontier became a regular occurrence. It was up to McArthur and his comrades to prevent such depredations by either encountering and fighting these raiders, or at the least, warning the settlers when it was believed Indians had crossed the Ohio and were in the area.

Interspersing his fledgling career as surveyor with that of spy, trapper and hunter, McArthur continued to gain firsthand knowledge of the vast area that is now Ohio. Keenly observing the wiley Massie while he grew in wealth and political stature and located and acquired a fortune in land, McArthur became determined to learn then science of surveying himself and strike out on his own.

In February 1796, McArthur was married to Nancy McDonald. One month later, he helped Nathaniel Massie survey the new settlement of Chillicothe. For services rendered on that project, Massie paid McArthur with one town inlot, one outlet plus one hundred fifty acres of land overlooking the future city. Through the ensuing years, McArthur’s holdings were greatly enlarged. It was on this acreage that Duncan and Nancy moved in 1797 and in 1804-05 built their beautiful mansion they named, Fruit Hill.

McArthur began his own surveying company in 1797. His independence as a surveyor coincided with a blossoming military career. In 1798, due to his reputation gained earlier as a Kentucky spy, he was appointed as captain in the militia by Arthur St. Clair, Governor of the Northwest Territory. Just a few years later, in 1806, while serving as a member of the Ohio House of Representatives, McArthur was elected a colonel in the 2nd Division of the Ohio militia. Interestingly, the commanding general of that unit was none other than McArthur’s old friend and former employer, Nathaniel Massie. Following Massie’s resignation from the militia in 1808, the Ohio General Assembly commissioned McArthur a Major General and placed him in command of the 2nd Division.

We will tell you more about General Duncan McArthur next week.