here built
their modest dwellings and tilled the few acres won from the dense
forest and luxuriant prairie. The dusky aborigines, driven from all
other parts of Ohio, clung tenaciously to this comparatively neglected
spot, and the smoke from the log hut of the settler rose within sight
of the Indian wigwam. The two races were at peace with each other, for
neither cared to convert a passive neighbor into an active enemy. The
Indians had realized their inability to drive back the constantly
advancing wave of civilization, and the white settlers had no desire
to provoke the savage retaliations of their dusky neighbors unless
compelled by necessity to do so.

In the neighborhood of the junction between the Sandusky and Tymochte
rivers, in Wyandot county, a remnant of the once powerful Wyandot
tribe still remained. One of their villages was at Upper Sandusky, and
another at Springville, in Seneca county. A small band of Senecas were
also located in the neighborhood, and some scattered Ottawas had their
wigwams on Blanchard's Fork, a few miles to the west of the Wyandot
settlements. An Indian trail led from Upper Sandusky to Springville,
and thence, through the Black Swamp, to Perrysburg. At the latter
place it crossed the Maumee, and reached the shore of the Detroit
river opposite Malden, in Canada. Some of the Indians living in the
North-west of Ohio had sided with the British in the war of 1812, and
these annually crossed over to Malden to receive their presents of
guns, ammunition and blankets. The Canadian Indians sometimes visited
their dusky brethren in Ohio, and thus the trail was frequently
traversed.

Among the settlers who had located themselves in the neighborhood of
the Wyandot villages was Elijah Brayton, a thrifty farmer from New
England, who had established himself near the Tymochte river in what
is now Crawford township, Wyandot county. In the year 1825, Mr.
Brayton was thirty-nine years of age, and his family consisted of his
wife and their six children, William, Harriet, Lucy, Matthew, Mary and
Peter. In that year Mr. Brayton was busy erecting a mill on the
Tymochte, and towards the fall of the year he went to Chillicothe for
the purpose of bringing up the mill-stones. The journey at that time
was long and tedious, and the home affairs were entrusted in his
absence to Mrs. Brayton and the eldest son William, then a lad of
sixteen.

On the 20th of September, 1825, William Brayton, with his younger
broth