“I cannot, in justice to my feelings, close this communication without saying a word in commendation of General Harmar. I knew him intimately, for I was favored with his personal friendship and was in service under his immediate command for four years, eight months, and twenty-one days. Throughout the whole of the campaign of which I have been writing, I was quartered within twenty feet of the General’s marquee. “The reader will perceive from this fact that I had the best opportunity of observing everything that happened. My recollection is greatly assisted by my orderly book, in which I recorded every order given by the General and every circumstance I thought worthy of being remembered. But to conclude, I regard General Harmar as a veteran soldier, an accomplished gentleman, and especially as a sincere friend of the poor soldier. DAVID H. MORRIS” FORT WAYNE SENTINEL, March 4, 1843 [Illustration: THE FATHER DREW THEM TO SHORE] SPEECH OF JAMES McGREW Ladies and Gentlemen: As I stand in your presence, I remember that my father, John McGrew, was born in York County, Pennsylvania, in 1766, ten years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I remember that he was married in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, and moved to near Georgetown, Kentucky, in 1788. He was one of those men who commenced the settlement of the Ohio Valley, the centennial of which is being so generally celebrated this year. I remember that in 1788 my father’s brother, sick on a flatboat that was decoyed to the shore just above the mouth of the Licking River opposite where Cincinnati now stands, was thought to have been tomahawked, for he was never heard from afterward. It was the custom of the Indians to tomahawk all sick persons who could not be carried into captivity. I also remember that my father was in the bloody and disastrous Indian fight just across your own Maumee River in 1790. I say I remember these facts. Yes, as they with a multitude of other events come rushing upon my memory, I feel as though I belonged in the dim distance of the past age. Yet, I am glad to be among you today to assist in calling up these recollections and in doing honor to the brave and heroic men—and women, too, God bless them—who blazed their way through the dense forests of this northwestern region ninety to one hundred years ago.