Corys enlighten CCGS on local Rev War history

On Thurs­day, Oct. 18 the Craw­ford County Chap­ter of the Geneal­ogy Soci­ety met in Galion at the Peace Lutheran Church. Twenty mem­bers responded to Ken Mast for roll call. Mary Fox opened the meet­ing by ask­ing for Com­mit­tee reports. Ruth Mast, Chair­man for the Pio­neer Fam­i­lies said that there was one request for appli­ca­tion. Ken Mast reported that a slate of offi­cers for next year is ready for elec­tion at the Novem­ber meet­ing. A let­ter from Matt Ross stated that the money left over after the pur­chase of the new Micro reader will be used for the repair of many of the Micro­film strips. After the Trea­surer, Mary Lou Hast­ings gave her report Mary sug­gested that we give $100 toward the pur­chase of raf­fle tick­ets from O.G.S. for a car which will be raf­fled off after the end of the year. No deci­sion was made as to who would win the car if one of the tick­ets won.

In the absence, of Dr. Wen­ner, Melissa Lep­pert read his sec­re­taries report from last months meet­ing. Mary said that she and Kevin retrieved the box of books that were stored at AAA given by Dodie Eicher when she down­sized in N. Dakota. Mary asked if the mem­bers agreed with her that she should give them to the Bucyrus Library. It was unan­i­mous that she give them to the Geneal­ogy room at the library for those who come for research. Books to be given are the 1902 His­tory of Craw­ford Co. indexed by Carl Shu­maker; Hopley’s two vol­ume His­tory, Fam­i­lies of Craw­ford County; Ceme­tery Vol­ume 2A Oak­wood and Fairview ceme­ter­ies; and from War­ren Lutz garage sale, 1870 and 1850 Cen­sus books.

Since there was no more new busi­ness, Kevin Kohls, pro­gram chair­man intro­duced Mark Cory and wife, Tami. Mark is a teacher at Colonel Craw­ford and his pas­sion for His­tory is very evi­dent in his rapid fire descrip­tion of the last days of the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War which hap­pened in our own back­yard of Craw­ford Co. Deb­bie inter­acted with him in telling what the wives were doing to help in the war.

Ohio was still not a state so it actu­ally was in the North­west Ter­ri­tory. Colonel Crawford’s cam­paign to the San­dusky Plains orig­i­nated in Penn­syl­va­nia . 480 Vol­un­teers all mounted and well armed gath­ered for assem­bly at Mingo Bot­tom. Their course was through unbro­ken for­est, to the Tus­carawas River. On the banks of this river were the destroyed towns of Schoen­brunn, Gnadenhut-ten and Salem. They passed through Craw­ford County and got as far as Upper San­dusky with­out meet­ing the enemy.

The Amer­i­cans had advanced about 2 miles north of Upper San­dusky when they met the enemy. There were the Delaware, and the Wyan­dots under the com­mand of British Cap­tain Elliott. Being greatly out­num­bered they were able to cir­cle south and west and do a retreat that night. Colonel Craw­ford and Dr. Knight got sep­a­rated and were cap­tured near the town of Leesville.They were taken to the head­quar­ters of the Delaware Indi­ans and Col. Craw­ford was burned at the stake.

The remain­ing troups under the lead­er­ship of Col. David Williamson reached the town of Wyan­dot where they saw in the dis­tance a large force of mounted Indi­ans and Butler’s Rangers fol­low­ing in pur­suit. What tran­spired next was the Bat­tle of Olen­tangy. The bat­tle did not last long as a thun­der storm came and they couldn’t keep their pow­der dry. After the bat­tle was over the Amer­i­cans buried their dead.

Three sol­diers were buried at the site of the bat­tle which occurred in a cow pas­ture which is across Parcher road and is included in Tom Shawk’s farm. Mark’s hope for the future is to find the graves, re bury the 3 sol­diers at Hanna School in North Robin­son with full mil­i­tary hon­ors as a trib­ute to our Rev­o­lu­tion­ary heritage .