John Dillingham,

This is a published account of the life of my 3X great grandfather, John Dilllingham, 1773-1861 (father-in-law of the first Calvin Crofford).  There is much written about him - he was quite a character and influential in settling the Liberty Township in Indiana.  He lived through many hardships at sea and on land, including tragic encounters with Indians which cost the lives of some of his family.  His life spanned 88 years and covered territory from New England to Indiana.

                      BIOGRAPHY OF JOHN DILLINGHAM

by Amos Felt, for “The Fire Lands Pioneer,” presented in June, 1867, and               appearing in their journal for June, 1867, on pages 70 -- 73.
 John Dillingham and his family were among the early settlers of the Fire Lands.  Where he was born I do not recollect, but I think that he said in Rhode Island, and that his father’s family were formerly from the vicinity of Cape Cod.  He had two or three brothers and a sister or two.  He lost his mother when quite young, and his father married a Quakeress for his second wife.Early in life he took to the ocean, intending to follow the water, but when about seventeen years of age the brig on which he was went to Lisbon for salt, and on her return trip met with adverse winds and calms, so that they were more than double the time that they intended.  Their store of provisions was exhausted and they were about casting lots to see who should be food for the rest, when they discovered a vessel; but she did not heed their signal of distress.  They soon after saw land, and another vessel came to their relief, enabling them to get into harbor, which was Hartford, Conn., I think. After making a few more voyages he quit the sea, and before he was twenty-one years of age he married Clarissa Olcott, of East Hartford, Conn., by whom he had six children, namely, Henry, Clarissa, Betsey, Sally, Fanny, and Polly, all of whom are dead; and the dust of two of them is mingled with that of the Fire lands.Within a year after his marriage he enlisted as third Sergeant under a Captain Miles, who was recruiting for General Wayne’s army, to fight the Indians.  His Captain retained him for some time in the recruiting service before he joined his regiment, which was somewhere on or near the Ohio River.  He serve his time out under General Wayne, but was not in the battle of the Falling timbers, being detailed to guard the Maumee River to attack the Indians.Many were his hairbreadth escapes while he was in the service.  He used to relate to me the following:  At one time he was detailed to carry dispatches from some post between Cincinnati, and where General Wayne was encamped the winter before the war closed, and on his return, a little before sunset, he passed an old dry tree that had fallen and was on fire.  He concluded that it was the work of the Indians and that it was not safe to stop there for the night, so he pursued his journey.  In about a mile he met six or seven men that were on their way to Wayne’s camp.  They inquired if there was any fire or chance to make any.  He told them there was one about a mile ahead of them, and they beset him hard to turn about and go and stay with them that night.  He told them he did not consider it safe and that it was a plan of the Indians to decoy some one, that they might murder him.  They only laughed at him and he put ahead until it was about dark, then left the trail and put off to one side, dug away the snow and made a hole in the ground, got some dry wood and made a little fire, took his blanket and covered himself so as not to have an light seen, and sitting, slept what he could.  The next day he arrived at his post safe.  In a few days he heard of those men being killed by the Indians that night by that fire.
After Mr. Dillingham had served his time out and got his discharge, he returned to his family in Connecticut, but after working in one place and another, some of the time by-the-day, he concluded that Connecticut was not the best place for him.  He took his little family and started for the far West.  He made a stand in the town of Stafford, between Leroy and Batavia, Genesee County, New York, where he lived until 1809.  He then moved to Ashtabula County, in this State [Ohio] then to Mentor, Geauga County, thence to Tinker’s Creek, near Cleveland.  Here he buried his first wife[i] and two of his daughters, Clarissa and Polly, having buried his third daughter, Sally, in Stafford.
He married Hannah Hicox, of Cleveland, for his second wife.  She bore him fourteen or fifteen children, among whom were Sally, Ann, John, Hannah, Betsey, King, Esther, Olcott and Comfort.  They had three births that were twins.  The most of the children died in infancy and I never knew their names.When the war of 1812 broke out Mr. Dillingham was living on Tinker’s Creek, and he either volunteered or came as a substitute to Camp Avery.  After staying there some five or six weeks, his son Henry became dissatisfied with living at home with a step-mother, came out to see him and prevailed on him and his Captain to let him serve out his father’s time.In the Spring (that is 1813) he moved to Bloomingville, and there kept a kind of log tavern, and he and Henry carried the mail from Cleveland to Camp Seneca, where Gen. Harrison was encamped.Now let me digress to relate a few incidents connected with those times.  Soon after Major Croghan beat the British and Indians off from Fort Stephenson, now Fremont, the Indians divided into two small bands of some two or three hundred each, and roamed through different sections of the country.  One party made for Bloomingville, where there was a small settlement that had been posted up in a blockhouse.  It stood on the opposite side of the road from the old brick building, built by a company that styled themselves the Commercial Bank of Sandusky Bay.  The inhabitants thought there was no danger, and had mostly left the blockhouse and gone to their homes.  It seems to me that there was a hand of Providence in their escaping the tomahawk and scalping knife.Two men, John Paxton and Seth Harrington, both good hunters took it into their heads to go to a deer lick soon after the battle at Fort Stephenson.  The lick was situated somewhere near the road then leading from Huron through Bloomingville to Lower Sandusky, and some distance West.  Some time past the middle of the afternoon they mounted their horses and started.  The road ran some of the way across prairie and other places on ridges.  As they went off the prairie onto the ridge, some two miles from the blockhouse, they discovered a few Indians coming onto the other end of the ridge.  Paxton drew his rifle to fire, but Harrington caught it and told him not to, for there were more behind them, and that they were intending to attack the settlement.  They wheeled their horses and made for the blockhouse, and rallied the settlers as soon as possible.  By that means the settlement was saved.One more incident of this affair and I will resume my narrative.  A Mrs. Wood, a widow, sister of Captain Harrington, as he was always called (for they elected him their Captain that night,) after carrying in what wood and water she might want, went upstairs and brought down a one-tined pitchfork, which she said she was going to fight the Indians with, if they attacked them while the Captain drilled the men.  She took her post with them, with her one tined pitchfork.Mr. Dillingham took the mail to carry from Cleveland to Camp Seneca, where General Harrison was encamped.  Colonel Proctor, the British commandant at Malden, was desirous of getting hold of Harrison’s dispatches, to get some clue of this intentions, and had offered the Indians a large reward if they would take the mail and bring it to him.  General Harrison was aware of their intentions and frequently sent out detachments from Colonel Ball’s squadron of mounted riflemen, to clear them from the mail route.  At one time they came upon fourteen of fifteen Indians secreted in a thicket of hazel brush, and killed all but one, who broke through the horsemen, and as they fired at him, fell over an old log and pretended to be dead, by that means getting away.  At another time they killed nine.  This I had from Henry Dillingham, who carried the mail part of the time instead of his father, and saw the Indians after they were killed.About the close of the war Mr. Dillingham bought a farm a little below the head of Cold Creek, where Mr. Petingill built a gristmill afterward.  In the Fall of 1815 he bought of John Beatty two hundred acres of land, lying in 3rd section of Perkins Township, on Pike Creek, about half way between Bloomingville and Sandusky City.  Here he made considerable improvement, but finding that Beatty’s title to the land was not good, he exchanged with him for land in the first section of Norwalk Township, where he lived from October 1819 until June 1836.  He sold the latter tract to Mr. Chas. Jackson, and moved to Porter Co., Indiana, with most of his family, and there he died some four or five years ago, aged about ninety, his wire having died some two years before him.Henry Dillingham married Amanda Page, and began a farm on Pike Creek, the next lot south of his father’s.  After living on it a year he sold out to a man by the name of Rodgers, who let it go back to Mr. Beatty.  He moved to his father-in-law’s and stayed a year, then back to Pike Creek in March, and lived there until the 1^st of October, 1819, then to the first section of Norwalk, where he lived, I think, about two years.  He then moved to Ridgefield and made the first beginning in what is called the Webb settlement, where he lived until 1837, when he sold to a man by the name of Baldwin, who afterwards sold to Daniel Ruggles.  In June 1839, he moved to Porter County, Ind., where he died, in January 1850.  They had six children born on the Fire Lands, namely, Harriet, Rebecca, Adelia, Clarissa, Lyman, and one that died and was buried on the farm in Ridgefield. Betsey Dillingham, the second daughter of John Dillingham, died the 28^th of July, 1818, on Pike Creek, and was buried on her father’s farm, on a ridge the east side of the creek, where there were four others buried – a man and his son, Clark by name, in one grave.  The other two were Titus Allen, a son of Justes Allen, aged about fifteen, and an infant child of Zina Rhoads.  The last time I was there the graves were not to be found.  The farm had been divided and the ridge had been built on, near where the graves had been.Fanny, the fourth daughter of Mr. Dillingham, was married Amos Felt, the writer of this article, October 7^th, 1819, by Julius House, Esq. They were the first couple that he married.  She died May 26^th, 1840, aged 37 years, 1 month and 9 days.  She had eight children.  Three died young, and two have since followed her – Almira, the wife of Wesley Laylin, and Julia R., the wife of J. C. Waggoner.Sally, the eldest child of Mr. Dillingham by his second wife, married Edward Cole, of Bronson.  They moved to Porter County, Indiana, in 1837, where they still remain, and, it is said, have accumulated a large property.Mr. Dillingham was a very stirring, active man, a great lover of handsome cattle – red and brindle being his favorite colors.  But he was a poor feeder and quite often lost much stock.  He was rather of a roving mind for one that married so young.  I once asked him how he came to quit a sailor’s life.  He said that his education was poor, that he could never rise above a common sailor, and that, he thought, was rather a low calling for him.He was rather quick and passionate, yet free-hearted in company and full of life.  From the days of President Jackson to the end of his life he was a rank Democrat.

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[i] In the book “The Descendants of Thomas Olcott” Clarissa is said to have died May 13^th, 1809, in Manchester, Connecticut.  “The Descendants of Thomas Olcott,” by Goodwin, Nathaniel Case Tiffany; Burnham Press, Hartford, CT 1845.