Thomas Worthington: Father of Ohio
Statehood,
by Alfred Byron Sears.
The Ohio State University Press, Columbus, for the Ohio Historical
Society, 1958.
Pages 183 - 186:
Meanwhile, so great was the fright at Chillicothe that a mass meeting
was held on August 26 at which a committee was selected to see Governor
Meigs and insist that he exert greater effort in recruiting
troops. The committee was authorized to suggest to the Governor
that he offer two hundred acres of land to each recruit who would serve
twelve months and that he call to active duty every civil and military
officer of the state.
At the earnest suggestion of John Johnston, on August 26 and 27
Worthington organized seven mounted companies of forty men each and
laid out a camp for them on the road to Fort Wayne, which was now
reported besieged by six hundred Indians. The mounted companies
were ordered to elect a commander, to hold themselves ready to march,
and not to forage. Governor Meigs arrived in Piqua on the
twenty-eighth with more troops and stores; the little army proceeded
six miles to Fort Loramie the next day, and the following day marched
to St. Marys. At this time it totaled some seven hundred mounted
troops, temporarily commanded by “General Worthington, General Lytle,
Col. Dunlap and Col. Adams.” On the night of the twenty-eighth,
Colonel Adams was elected commander by the troops, most of which
refused to go any farther, much to Worthington's disgust, until General
Harrison arrived.
On the first of September, Worthington, with eight other whites
dressed as Indians, set out with seven Indian guides to explore the
country adjacent to Fort Wayne. They had covered thirty miles in
two days without finding any sign of hostile Indians when a spy from
Fort Wayne got through to them and reported that there were none
farther east from the Fort than five miles. Nevertheless, the
Indian guides refused to go farther and secretly returned to the army
at St. Marys, much to Worthington's chagrin. The guides reported
that they had been chased by hostile Indians—manifestly untrue—and
consequently Colonel Adams did not move his troops forward as
Worthington had planned but instead sent an express asking for
information and advice. Worthington scratched this entry in his
diary, September 3:
The
army
do not march—the spies return to camp and we are 30 miles in
advance in an enemy country. My plans completely defeated by the
dastardly, cowardly conduct of a dozen cowardly scoundrels in camp,
else we should have been able to have given the indians round the fort
a good flogging.
After Worthington's scouts had pushed forward another four
miles, a runner brought news from Jeremiah Morrow that Governor Meigs
had left Piqua for Urbana and that the Indians were threatening to
leave if Worthington did not return. He went back, on the fourth,
to St. Marys, where he found nine hundred of Harrison's men, who had
just arrived. On the fifth, he reached Piqua, where Harrison was
encamped with 127 of his men. The next day Harrison pushed on
toward St. Marys, picked up Colonel Adams' mounted volunteers at
Shane's Crossing on the St. Marys River, and on the ninth, set out for
Fort Wayne. One battalion of Colonel Adams' cavalry constituted
the right flank of Harrison's army, and another rode a mile in advance
of his columns of infantry. Harrison's force now numbered about
twenty-five hundred men. Fort Wayne was relieved on the twelfth,
the Indians offering practically no opposition.
