The Bicentennial Minute
Last week, the Bicentennial Minute explained how the proprietors of St. Marys — Murray, Houston and McCorkle, acquired the underlying section ground where St. Marys is now situated by virtue of their purchase in 1821 of Land Patents from the United States at the Piqua Land Office. As noted last week, they then began to offer town lots for sale; however, they could not transfer ownership of a lot until they filed a plat with the proper authorities showing how the town was configured.
In February of 1805, shortly after Ohio entered the Union, the General Assembly enacted a law providing how town plats could be filed. The law required proprietors to “cause a true and accurate map or plat hereof to be recorded in the recorders’s office of the county where the (town) lie, before any ... lots ... could be offered for sale.” The map was to set out all the public ground within the town such as “streets, alleys, commons or other such public uses.” Lots were to be numbered progressively indicating their precise length and width. There were penalties for failure to comply with these requirements.
At the time the founders were promoting their new venture of selling lots of the town of St. Marys, the location of the town was in Mercer County. The General Assembly created Mercer County and 13 other counties on Feb. 12, 1820. The lawmakers erected these 14 new counties from the land ceded by the Indians in the recent treaties – the Treaty of Ft. Meigs and the Treaties of St. Marys. This 1820 legislation attached the newly created Mercer county to Dark (aka Darke) county. Thus for typical government services, limited as they were, the county officials of Darke County were responsible for governmental functions in the newly formed Mercer County.
So it came to be that when Murray, Houston and McCorkle, finally got around to officially recording their plat, they had to travel to Greenville, county seat of Darke County to file the plat in the Recorder’s office. They actually signed the document on Aug. 8 and filed it on Aug. 23 1823, thereby officially creating the town of St. Marys.
The town they created contained 68 lots. The lots described in the original plat were fairly large. This may be because early settlers not only built a house but smaller outbuildings, such as a detached summer kitchen or a barn or coop.
The plat provided for a large public square. The founders anticipated that St. Marys would be a county seat as they named the street on the east side of the square Court Street.
The names of the streets are fairly prosaic such as North, South, High and Main Streets. They named two streets for prominent historic individuals, that being Wayne Street, obviously for Anthony Wayne, and Perry Street for Oliver Hazard Perry, the hero of the naval battle on Lake Erie. Front Street, on the east side of the plat, was for fronting the St. Marys River being the center of commercial activity in those early times.
Spring Street transformed into Wharf Street as you followed it to the river. In 1823, the St. Marys River was still a means of transportation. The public wharf was most likely located at the site of the new Municipal Building. Just across the way, at the location of the Ft. Barbee apartments was a well known spring. Old pictures show a public fountain at this location, hence the original name of the hotel was “The Fountain Hotel.”
One odd fact about the original plat is that does not parallel the section lines and is tilted to the northwest. It appears that their intention was to have the eastern border of the town, as represented by Front Street, parallel the river bank. A few of the later subdivisions platted at the time of the building of the canal followed this orientation, but all later plats parallel the north south section lines. A glance at a modern map of St. Marys clearly shows this as the middle of the town seems off-center. As a result there is no road that passes straight through St. Marys without making some kind of turn. Youcan blame the founders of St. Marys for the intersection of Main Street and Indiana Ave. as one example.
The proprietors described the size of the lots in terms of “poles.” This was a common unit used by surveyors for many years. An Englishman created this system around 1600 and it was used for hundreds of years thereafter in English speaking countries. These dauntless early surveyors used a linked chain 66 feet long. (See accompanying picture). One-fourth of a chain was 16 ½ feet which was known as a “rod” or a “pole.” They described Main and Wayne Streets as 5 poles (82.5 feet) wide with most other street as 4 poles (66 feet) wide. Interestingly the lots on the east side, nearest the river, were smaller (5 poles square) while most of the other lots were 5 poles (82 ½ feet) by 10 poles (166 feet).
Now platted, the proprietors were still faced with the vexing problem of selling their new creation. That story will be the subject of the next Bicentennial Minute.