Among these early settlers who found their way to Fort Wayne in 1819, was Samuel Hanna, pioneer trader, judge, legislator, canal builder, railroad enterpriser, and banker. In many respects, Samuel Hanna was to become Fort Wayne’s most active citizen as the small community grew from a mere village to a city during his lifetime. Born in Scott county, Kentucky, in October, 1797, and later moving to Dayton, Ohio, with his parents, he came to Fort Wayne from St. Mary’s Ohio, where he had been engaged in supplying goods for the government during the Indian treaties of 1818. He was twenty-two years old when he came to Fort Wayne. Hanna built at once a log house on the site which later became the northwest corner of Barr and Columbia streets. Here, having formed a partnership with his brother-in-law, James Barnett, a trading post was opened. Many of their goods which came from the east were purchased from Abbott Lawrence at Boston; the shipments were made by water to New York, thence up the Hudson river and across to Buffalo, and from there to Fort Wayne by way of Lake Erie and the Maumee. Upon the abandonment of the fort by the military, the government sent James Riley, a civil engineer, to Fort Wayne to survey the lands around the fort belonging to the United States, preparatory to the sale of a portion of the military reservation to the settlers. Riley was a noted author of that day, having published in 1817 _Riley’s Narrative_, a 554 page book on his experiences in Africa as a slave of the Arabs. His prominence and the fact that he was well known in Washington because he had spent several years there, lent weight to his recommendations concerning the Fort Wayne lands. On November 24, 1819, Riley wrote a letter from Fort Wayne to B. Sanford, Esq., advising him that he had concluded his surveys for the season but wanted: “... to examine for myself the practicality of so uniting the Wabash with the Maumee as to render intercourse by water between the Ohio river and Lake Erie safe and easy through this channel.... The little Wabash rises in an elevated swamp prairie six miles south of Fort Wayne, and joins the Wabash eighteen miles hence. Thus in high stages of water, a portage of only six miles carries merchandise from the level of the Maumee into the navigable waters of the Wabash (and vice versa).”[5] These observations by Riley on the possibility of a canal were supplemented in the same letter by his early impression of Fort Wayne as a future center of population. He stated to Mr. Sanford: The country around Fort Wayne is very fertile. The situation is commanding and healthful.... Here will arise a town of great importance, which must become a depot of immense trade. The fort is now only a small stockade; no troops are stationed here, and less than thirty dwelling houses occupied by French and American families form the whole settlement.[6]