Chapter I

Three Men and a Dream

The lead rider pulled his horse up short. A slight tug on the bridle turned his steed crossways of the narrow trail. His two companions stopped also and looked back over their shoulders where their leader was pointing.

"Yes, sir, men, we're doin' the right thing. When we get back from Greenville, that there will be the town of Saint Marys, Ohio, and we'll own it ! "

The man in the brown linen suit looked thoughtfully. He saw only a few shanties, the deserted fort and stockade where only five years ago the generals Lewis Cass and Duncan McArthur had negotiated a peace treaty with the Indians.

Although that treaty had brought practically all of the northwest quarter of Ohio, much of Indiana and part of Michigan under the control of the whites, the whites had been slow to enter these new lands. They wanted to see first if the red men would really respect and honor their part of the bargain.

In 1818, at Saint Marys, the U. S. Government had bought millions of acres from the native tribes for less than one-tenth of a cent per acre. In 1820, the Congress, yielding to pressure for land expansion, agreed to sell these public lands for $1.25 per acre. For $100 a man could buy 80 acres of land !

The man turned his head forward and stated, "There's a lot of work to be done before the town of Saint Marys is a town. And tell me, Mr. Murray, where are all these people coming from and how can they make a living where there is nothing but wilderness. You've made it here for years by trading for the Indian's furs. Now they are gone—or going; but where are the people, Mr. Murray, where are the people?"

Murray seemed not to hear. Instead it was the other rider who spoke up.

"Now Houston we've been over this a hundred times. Look at what John Manning has done at Piqua ! When he came there, there was nothing. He started a mill. bought grain from the scattered farms and started shipping down the Miami. As more people came in, he laid out the town. I was looking for an opportunity to grow with, so I started my store there and done right well. But there are other places coming on that offer big chances to the man who's not afraid. But that country south of here is all 'old country'; this is the 'new country' and our town is the gate. "We're at the front door to ten thousand miles of America ! "

Murray turned slightly in the saddle. Raising his right arm so that the fringing on his deerskin jacket shimmered in the slight breeze, he pointed southward.

"There are your people ! Listen ! Hear that ring of an axe against timber! That's John Armstrong clearing an 80, and you can't hear them from here, but there are others. And there will be more, many more.

John's right, Bill, we're at the front door to the next fifty years. This country's gonna grow and everything they buy will come through here, and everything they sell will come through here. And when they get that canal dug —whooee ! But right now we gotta get these papers to Greenville. Court stuff's your field, John, so let's get going!"

It was a long hard day through a wilderness trail, a trail that had been opened first by General Mad Anthony Wayne in his march against the ferocious opposition of the Indian tribes. The Indians had seen their lands taken and occupied by the invading hoards of whites streaming over the mountains and down their beautiful Ohio.

Another trail led southward from this coming town of Saint Marys, a trail that had been beaten by ancient tribes. Long before this time peoples of the Miamis, Shawnees, Wyandottes, Delawares, Hurons and so many others had come to use it as a highway to the Kentucky hunting grounds and the salt licks of the blue grass country. Only fourteen miles long, this trail had connected the Saint Marys River with the Great Miami River at the place which had come to be known as Loramie's Store. So important was this as a trade route, that even in those earliest pioneer days, trading posts were established at both ends of the portage.

In 1745 a French-Indian trader was engaged at Loramie. However, he changed his allegiance from the French to the English. Angered at losing such a profitable post, a French army detachment and about 240 Indians descended on