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HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY 135
former days had a force that ran a couple of saAvmills. There are also
two other small streams strongly impregnated with mineral substances,
but the one stream of importance is Cold Creek that rises near the
center of the township and finds its way to Sandusky Bay. It is scarcely
over four miles long, and when it took its natural channel flooded over
level land that became the paradise for muskrats, otter, and mink. It
noAV runs in an artificial channel or mill race, and has a power sufficient
to run several mills. Where this stream rises it seems to boil up
from a great depth in crevices of the limestone rock. Not over half a
mile from this was at one time a narrow stream that had its rise in
another spring. By artificial aids this was greatly enlarged, and it
excavated for itself a large basin nearly fifty feet in diameter. Any
one standing on its shore could .see large trees lying on the bottom,
but no one knows hoAV they came there. This was called little Cold
Creek. That the two streams had a secret connection underground no
one doubted who watched the increase of one when the other decreased;
and, therefore, it was thought wise to connect the tAvo. After much
expense and trouble this was done, but the result was far from satisfactory,
as the waters ran in an opposite direction to that desired. Cold
Creek has a fall of fifty-seven feet. The water of the springs is so
strongly impregnated Avith mineral substances that whenever it drips
on anything it covers it with a coating which becomes hard and assumes
fanciful forms.
Margaretta was first called Patterson, on the map issued by the
Firelands Company soon after their lands were surveyed. It was so
named for Hugh Patterson, a British Indian trader, who talked of
purchasing the township. Rev. Joseph Badger, a pioneer missionary
of the Western Reserve, who labored among the Wyandot Indians most
of the time from 1805 to 1810, speaks of him as exerting a most pernicious
influence in trying to prejudice them against the United States
Government and the missionary, by telling them falsehoods, and trying
to persuade them to join the British against the United States. He
says: "On the 28th of July, 1805, the head chief, Crane, sent for me
to write for him. After we had taken supper one of the women made
a candle of beeswax, and I seated myself on the floor, beside a bench,
and wrote as dictated by the old chief, through an interpreter. He
addressed the governor at Detroit, giving an account of one Williams,
and requested that Williams and Hugh Patterson and one other person
be removed from among them without delay, as they were constantly
contriving mischief and troubling his people."
At a meeting of some of the settlers of the Firelands at Huron, on
the 4th of July, 1812, it was resolved unanimously that it was wrong
for the township to bear the name of so disreputable a character, and
it Avas referred to Alajor Frederick Falley (who held a contract of
purchase of the township at that time) to find another name. He
replied that his mother, his sister, and several nieces were named
Alargaret, and that the name of the township should be Alargaretta,
and it Avas accordingly so named.