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Middletown History Stephen Vail
MIDDLETOWN HISTORY
STEPHEN VAIL
The Man Who Put Middletown on the Map
BY RICHARD O JONES
■ EARLY IN THE MORNING of November 1, 1802, 65-year-old Stephen Vail left his log cabin on the east bank of the Great Miami River on horseback. Accompanied by his neighbor James Sutton, Vail was on his way to the Cincinnati, Hamilton County seat, with important documents, including the maps that would create a village of 52 lots on his property. He had already built the first cabin in the section on what was to become Main Street and his large family several others, with still more already under construction on Third Street.
When he returned that evening, he showed his neighbors the advertisement he had placed in the Cincinnati newspaper.
Middle-Town. The subscriber has laid off a town on the eastern bank of the Great Miami River, about one mile above the prairie, where lots are now ready for sale.
“The town is beautifully situated, on ground high and dry, which has heretofore proved healthy. There is adjoining the town a grist mill, a saw mill, and fulling mill, all going. Water of good quality may be had by digging 15 to 20 feet. From its central situation and many other advantages which it enjoys, expectations are entertained that it will soon become the seat of justice of a county as soon as a division takes place and for this it is calculated — ground for a court house, jail, grave yard, church, et., having been laid off in good situations. The terms of sale may be known, and a plan for the town seen by applying to the subscriber on the premises. Stephen Vail.”
Although he had only been in the section for about two years, Vail clearly had a great vision for the area.
In October 1787, John Cleves Symmes applied to purchase over a million acres of land between the Great Miami and Little Miami Rivers, which had been opened for settlement under the Land Act of 1785. The first families to come to this section of the valley were, like Symmes, from New Jersey, including Daniel Doty and Stephen Vail, who had purchased portions of this land, and began arriving as early as 1796.
Stephen Vail was born October 19, 1739, and fathered 10 children in three marriages. He was a Quaker, and known as a man “quiet and temperate in his manners.” The 1905 Centennial
Aerial view of Middletown. The Great Miami River is near the top of the photo.
History of Butler County called him “a man of great foresight and enterprise, which was backed by the highest character and probity. He was a man who could initiate measures and execute them as well.”
After purchasing the land from Symmes, he made careful plans for his move West. He was already approaching 60 years old, but he was in good health. Still, he sent his oldest sons Shobal and Aaron to go ahead of him in 1797.
In 1800, Stephen Vail came to Cincinnati and purchased land in the downtown section there, and traded one of the lots for a new leather saddle. On this saddle, he rode north to the land north of Dick’s Creek, “above the prairie,” to meet with fellow New Jersey families that had already settled there. He noted that while the land there proved abundant, life was hard for the settlers all around. Although they could grow a lot of corn, they had to grind it by hand, there being yet no mill in that section. Still, Vail saw the potential for the village he named Middletown, including industrial development, and soon began making plans for his country village. Being halfway between Cincinnati and Dayton, he named it “Middletown,” which was a familiar name to the New Jersey transplants, and some sources say it was Stephen Vail’s hometown. Passage by land was still difficult, but the river would provide transportation for produce and other goods. He and his two sons had erected a brush dam across the river north of his proposed town from which “race ways” carried water to power the three mills that he and his sons constructed: a grist mill for wheat and corn, a saw mill for lumber to build a town, and a fulling mill to turn raw wool into cloth.
At least one of his sons, Shobal, had already married and started a family by the time his father arrived. All of Vail’s children joined him in the new settlement, and according to the 1882 History of Butler County, they were all central to the “social, industrial, educational and moral development of Middletown...No family connected with the early days of this settlement made a more kindly impression on men and measures than did these Quaker folks.” Sons Aaron and Randal began doing business on the west bank of the river, building their mills for the convenience of residence farmers, as there was no bridge built yet. Hugh, the youngest son, stayed in town and facilitated the construction of the growing village.
Vail and the other residents of the area believed that Cincinnati was too far away, too inconvenient to be the county seat, and anticipated that Hamilton County would soon be portioned off into others. They were correct, but when the newly-admitted state of Ohio carved out Butler County not quite a year after Vail had filed the plats, the legislature didn’t even consider Middletown and the lots Vail had set aside. Israel Ludlow, the man who platted Hamilton, had set offered an entire block for a courthouse that would be neatly in the center of the new county. Hamilton also had the advantage of being a larger city of 200, nearly double that of the fledgling Middletown.
It would also turn out that John Cleves Symmes had underfunded his speculation and ensuing legal entanglements would complicate the deals he had made. In fact, some of the land Symmes had sold did not actually belong to him, including the acreage above Dick’s Creek that Vail and other early Middletownians had purchased. This made the issuance of deeds and recording of titles to be “a long drawn out affair,” according to George Crout’s A Middletown Diary.
Vail died in 1808 without having actually received title to the properties that he had platted and sold, and neither could he offer his buyers official legal documents, but they made their purchases purely on the strength of his character and reputation. His heirs kept up the fight, and eventually petitioned the Ohio Supreme Court which granted them the authority to issue the deeds Vail had promised.
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