Negro Town, Ohio 1812?
Imagine that?
Yes, it is hard to imagine since much of Ohio was a wilderness in 1812, but a diary I am reading by a soldier of the American War of 1812 tells of coming to just such a town. Or, maybe it was a group of Indian huts occuppied by Negroes. Who knows? He said the town was unoccupied, but that it was called "Negro Town."
He was on his way with his military company of volunteers from Pennsylvania to join William Henry Harrison in his efforts to keep the British and their Indians from invading Ohio.
The soldier's description of the town would put it somewhere between the present day Mansfield, Ohio (which is about 60 miles north of Columbus) and Toledo. He does not otherwise mention the town.
Curious? Yes, because it suggests there must have been a community of ex-slaves there, ex-slaves who had joined the Indians or who lived like the Indians. There are accounts of Negroes participating in the various Indian wars in the Ohio River valley prior to the War of 1812, but this is the first time I've run across something that suggests there was an actual community of these people. All the other accounts I've run across refer to individual Negroes, not a group or large number of them.
Does anyone else know anything else about a Negro community in Ohio about that time or earlier?
I did run across an account of Kakaskia, Ill., at the time George Rogers Clark took it from the British during the American Revolution in which the population of that community included Negroes. I don't recall a specific number, and I don't recall whether they were slaves or not. I suspect, however, they were, at least escaped slaves.
My own modern experience caused me one day to discover a small, Negro or "black" as we say today, community all by itself east of Washington Court House, Ohio and south of Columbus, Ohio. I'm not sure exactly where it was, maybe between Washington Court House and Xenia? Anyway, I was going down the road and ran across this small town, laid out in town or city blocks. The blocks of houses were all north of the highway as I was going from east to west. I drove off the highway just for a few moments, and its seemed every house was occuppied by a black family.
I still wonder today about that community. I did not see the name of any town. I wonder why they call came to be there and where they worked?
One other curious note about Negroes in the American wilderness living as Indians. I ran across a story about a battle in Texas between a group of buffalo hunters and some Indians. The buffalo hunters won the battle and later reported hearing someone among the Indians blowing a bugle. They learned the bugler was a Buffalo Soldier, as the Negroes who joined the U.S. Army after the American Civil War were called. He'd deserted and joined the Indians. The buffalo hunters reported killing the Negro bugler when he tired to jump on a wagon and steal something from it. This was in the 1870s in or around the Texas Panhandle. Good story.