The Bluffton news. [volume] (Bluffton, Ohio) 1875-current, 1954-06-24
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Indian war-path from the Ohio River
to Braddocks headquarters during
the French and Indian War led right
up the Sycamore hill and wound
through the wilderness all the way to
Detroit. The Shawnees still used it
on their raids into Kentucky and
their trips there after salt.
GAS the canoes nosed against the
river bank where the tall, twin syca-
mores stood which gave that street
its name, there was a burst of gunfre
and the battle was on. 1t was diff
ficult to sneak up on the Indians any
time, anywhere.
"The fight was short but a fierce
one. Nobody was killed but about
30 of the Kentuckians were wounded
severely. After the landing and the
rout of the savages Clarke's men
built two small log cabins on the
river bank, one to hospitalize the
wounded and the other to house
military stores.
Capt. Hugh McGary and Thomas
Vickerey, a scout, were left in charge
of the cabins and wounded while the
expedition went on its way. When
it returned Ia days later the army
brought 16 Indian scalps but Is more
of it's own men were missing.
''The log cabins put up that day
August l, 1780,-by Clarke were the
first buildings on the site of present
Cincinnati-built eight years before
the first white settlers set foot on the
land.
Both cabins still were standing in
1882 when Clarke's expedition against
the Indians at Piqua came by them.
When the army was returning, Capt.
William McCracken, of Clarke's Light
Horse Cavalry, died from his wounds
when being carried on a litter down
the Mount Auburn hill. He was
buried beside one of the cabins and
the other one was pulled down and
its debris piled over McCracken's
grave to protect it from wild animals.
-Four years later, when Benjamin
Sites and a posse from Washington,
Mason County, Kentucky, returned
that way from pursuit of Indian
horsethieves into Greene County, the
wreckage of one cabin still covered
McCracken's grave and the other still
stood, occupied by a dirty family of
squatters. Who they were, where
they had come from or what became
of them never was ascertained. No
body cared.
September %, 1888, when the first
owners, with a guard of 60 Kentucky
rifemen, came from Lexington to lay
out the town which later became Gin
cinnati, no vestige nor indication of
either cabin remained on the river
bank. Everything was gone.
Though the rubbish from Nc
Cracken's burial place was gone, the
grave itself had not been molested.
Never since disturbed and never re-
buried, McCracken's bones, if any are
left, still molder under the pavements
where feet of countless thousands
walk in the vicinity of Sycamore
Street and the levee. The fate of the
squatter family still is a mystery"
So goes the story of the twin cabins
under the tall, twin sycamores.
The inlet where Clarke's Kentucky
volunteer army landed and fought the
Indians figured prominently in Gin
cinnati and in Ohio history. 1t and
another one a few blocks upriver
were the only places where a land
ing could be made in the then sheer,
40-foot river bank.
The inlet later was called "Yeat-
mans Cove" from Griffin Yeatman's
tavern, built there before the 1800s.
The smaller and up-river inlet was at
the mouth of Deer creek Cater the
old canal bed and today filled-in Egg
gleston Avenue). 1t was named
"Dorsey's Cove" because the cabin of
a freedman stood there.
In this connection an item from a
court record of April, 1894, is inter
esting: "James Dorsey, a free negro
convicted of larceny, was whipped
through the principal streets of the