Look for Adventures Right Where You Live!

A grand adventure for me usually does not begin with something planned or expected but rather something unexpected and unplanned.
For example, one afternoon some years back coming out the back door of the federal courthouse in Columbus, Ohio, I chanced to spot this large, ugly, brown and yellow boulder right in the middle of an otherwise smooth, even expanse of a soft green grass.
Hmmm? The big question in my mind was why would something so ungainly be in the middle of an otherwise beautiful lawn?
I walked over and noticed a weathered copper plaque on one side of the boulder. It said that boulder marked the spot of the first cabin built in what is now Columbus, Ohio. That cabin was built in 1797 by its first inhabitant, John Brickell, who then lived the rest of his life in what became Columbus.
Information on that plaque is mildly interesting, but most interesting is the realization that today it sits in a spot where there are large, modern buildings all around.
Think about it? That man, John Brickell, building a cabin in what in 1797 had to be nearly pure wilderness only a few years removed from the days that Indians camped on that very spot.
Yet, today, think of all that is there that he could hin no way have envisioned when he lived there and what we today could in now way imagine what was there when he lived there.
There is more to the story of the ugly boulder.
The boulder no longer sits in the middle of the lawn. It has its own place and a better place near a sidewalk.
Yet, that ugly boulder may not truly mark the spot where that first cabin was built, and maybe it never did. The boulder was moved from where I first saw it several years ago by more than the length or width of any pioneer cabin. Furthermore, several articles you can find on line about John Brickell say his first cabin was at the site of the former old Ohio State Penitentiary. If, so, that would place his cabin a couple of blocks to the north and east from of where the boulder is today.
No, matter the fact that there is anything at all to mention the first cabin built in Columbus is worthwhile. Some information on the plaque is interesting, too, but when I first saw it, the information just tended to whet my appetite to learn more about John Brickell.
The Internet was just a sparkle in someone's brain when I found that ugly boulder, and information on John Brickell could only be obtained at a library, maybe.
Today, several Internet sites tell you all about John Brickell, and one has his own account of his life up until the time he built that first cabin. He gave the account in 1842, two years before he died. At that time, he said he might give more information later, but as far as I know, he never did.
I provide a link to that site, but further explanation of some of its points may helpful for you to understand John Brickell and what happened around him during the late 1700's in Ohio.
For example, the plaque says he was born at Stewart's Crossing southwest of Pittsburgh in 1781. Again, through the marvel of the Internet you can quickly learn that Gen. Edward Braddock crossed the Youghiogheny River with his army there in June 1755 on his way to oust the French at a post that is now the location of Pittsburgh. A few days later Braddock and most of his army were ambushed and killed by Indians. One of the soldiers with him who escaped death or injury was George Washington.
Brickell captured by and then adopted by the Indians in 1791. He gives some excellent information on life with the Indians and their clashes with the Americans.
There is, for example, a reference in Brickell's account to being in an Indian village in the early winter of 1791 when Indian warriors returned from a battle with the Americans carrying a great deal of plunder. That battle was fought on Nov. 4, 1791 when many of the 1,100 or so American soldiers led by Gen. Arthur St. Clair were massacred at what is now the small town of Fort Recovery, Ohio. St. Clair had been a general during the American Revolution and was governor of the Northwest Territories, of which present day Ohio was a part, when he led that army to such a terrible defeat in 1791.
Brickell also recounts the event that forced the Indians to give him up, the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794. Especially interesting is Brickell's recollection of how upset the Indians were after that battle over their betrayal by the British who'd encouraged them to fight the Americans.
If you want to feel particularly sad, read Brickell's account of how his adopted Indian father, Big Cat, reacted when Brickell, given the choice, elected to return to his own family rather than stay with his adopted father.
Another curious bit is Brickell's description of how the Indians used a candle to hunt deer at night much in the way some hunters, illegally, use a spotlight to hunt deer at night today. The light from the candle or spotlight cause a deer to stop and become an easy target. But for Brickell's account, it would never have occurred to me that the Indians would have known how to “spotlight” with a candle.
Anyway, here is a photo of the boulder with the plaque marking the spot of John Brickell's first cabin. The link to Brickell's account is provided above.