Major Jonathan Haskell

Major Haskell was born in Rochester, Mass. in 1764 and entered the Army when twenty one years of age and served to the close of the war. He came to Marietta in 1788 and in 1789 joined the Belpre Association. On the breaking out of the Indian War he received a commission as Captain in the regular service and went to Rochester, Mass., where he recruited a Company of soldiers and returned with them to Marietta, in December, 1791, where he was stationed for the defense of that and the surrounding settlements, as soldiers had been withdrawn from Fort
Harmar in 1790.

He remained in Marietta until 1793 when he was commissioned Captain in the second sub legion under Gen. Wayne and joined the army on the frontier that summer.

He was stationed at Fort Saint Clair, where he remained until June, 1794 when he was appointed to the command of the fourth Sub-division with the rank of Major, although his commission was not filed until Aug. 1796.

After the war Maj. Haskell returned to his farm in Belpre where he died in 1814.

A letter written by him to Griffin Greene and Benjamin I. Gilman gives a very graphic account of the celebrated campaign under General Wayne.

LETTER FROM CAPT. HASKELL TO GRIFFIN GREEN AND B. I. GILMAN.

The last time I wrote you was from Fort St. Clair, the date I have forgotten. In June last I was relieved from the Post and joined the fourth Sub-legion which I have commanded ever since. The 28th of July the army moved forward, consisting of about 1900 regulars and 1500 Militia from Kentucky, by the way of the battle ground, now Fort Recovery, then turned to the eastward and struck the Saint Marys in 20 miles, where we erected a small fort, and left a subaltern Command.—Crossed the St. Marys.—In four or five days march found the Anglaize,—continued down that river to where it formed a junction with the Miami of the Lakes—100 miles from Greenville by the route we took.—At this place we built a garrison and left a Maj. to command it, and the army proceeded down the river toward the Lake, 47 miles from this garrison until the 20th inst. In the morning about nine o'clock we found the Indians who had placed themselves for us. When the attack commenced we formed and charged them with our bayonets and pursued them two miles through a very bad thicket of woods, logs, and underbrush and with the charge of the Cavalry routed and defeated them. Our line extended in length one and a half miles and it was with difficulty we outflanked them. The prisoner, (a white man) we took, says they computed their number as 1200 Indians and 250 white men, Detroit Militia, in action. Our loss in the engagement was two officers killed, four officers wounded; about thirty soldiers killed and eighty wounded. The Indians suffered most, perhaps 40 or 50 of their killed fell into our hands. The prisoner was asked why they did not fight better. He said: we would give them no time to load their pieces but kept them constantly on the move. Two miles in advance of the action is a British Garrison established last Spring around which we marched within pistol shot. In the day time it was demanded but not given up. Our artillery not being sufficient and the place too strong to storm, it was not attempted but we burned their outhouses, destroyed their gardens, corn fields, and hay, within musket shot of the fort and down beyond them 8 or 9 miles without opposition. The 27th inst. we arrived here where our fort is and are to halt a few days to refresh. We have marched about 60 miles through the Indian villages and settlements and have destroyed several thousand acres of corn and all kinds of vegetables; burned their houses, furniture, tools, etc. A party have gone on to Fort Recovery for a supply of provisions for us. It is said that when they return we go up the Miami 60 miles to where the St. Marys forms a junction with the St Joseph and destroy all the corn in the country.

In great haste, I am, gentlemen,
Your humble servant,
To J. HASKELL.

GRIFFIN GREEN,
B. I. GILLMAN.

Letter received by Mr. Gilman at Harmar Point, Oct. 13th, '94 and sent to Mr. Green.

Dr. Hildreth adds the following very appropriate words which give an insight into conditions at that time.

"This letter describes, in plain terms the ruin and devastation that marked the course of the American Army. It might have been considered a wise policy to devote to destruction the dwellings, corn fields, gardens, and in fact every species of property that belonged to the hostile Savages, but it was also a most cruel policy. The British troops, in their inroads among the rebel settlements of the Revolutionary war, never conducted more barbarously. The Indian villages on the Miami and the Anglaize were snugly and comfortably built—were furnished with many convenient articles of housekeeping and clothing. They had large fields of corn and beans, with gardens of melons. Squashes and various other vegetables. Mr. Joseph Kelley of Marietta, then a boy of twelve years old, and for several years a prisoner with the Indians, who treated him kindly, and was adopted into a family as one of their children, was living at that time at the junction of the St. Marys and the Auglaize, the spot where Maj. Haskell says the army would next go, to complete their work of destruction. Mr. Kelley was there when an Indian runner announced that the American troops had arrived in the vicinity of the village. His friends had not expected them so soon, and with the utmost haste and consternation, the old men, with the women and children, the warriors being absent, hurried aboard their canoes, taking nothing with them but a few clothes and blankets, not having time to collect any provisions from their fields and gardens.

The Sun was only an hour or two high when they departed, in as deep sorrow at the loss of their country and homes, as the Trojans of old when they evacuated their favorite city. Before the next day at noon their nice village was burnt to the ground; their cornfields of several hundred acres, just beginning to ripen, were cut down and trampled under foot by the horses and oxen of the invaders, while their melons and squashes were pulled up by the roots. The following winter the poor Indians, deprived of their stock of corn and beans, which were grown every year and laid up for their winter food as regularly as among the white people, suffered the extreme of want. Game was scarce in the country they retreated to on the west of the  Miami, and what few deer and fish they could collect barely served to keep them alive. It was a cruel policy, but probably, subdued their Spartan courage more than two or three defeats, as for many years thereafter, until the days of Tecumseh, they remained at peace.

Source: A History of Belpre, Washington County, Ohio, by C. E. Dickinson, 1920, Transcribed by C. Anthony