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HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY 65
have been shipped, and the home market supplied with grindstones and
material for building.
Salt-licks extended parallel with the ridge, and were the general
resort for. deer. They came in large numbers and wore a path that
aftenvard separated the lands of Nathan Tuttle and Ezekiel Sayles.
During the dry season the surface of the licks is covered with an efflorescence
of salt deposit that is very marked. In the early days, when salt
was expensive and difficult to procure, the settlers dug a pit, into
which they sank a section of a holloAv tree, and took from this reservoir
the water from which they made salt. One of these salt springs was
considered so valuable by its first proprietor, Fosdick, that for many
years he refused to sell the adjacent land. Later, Prof. B. L. Hill and
others made explorations for it, but AA'ere unable to find it, the floods of
spring having swept it away. They found salt water, however, and
proved the truth of the reports they had received from the early settlers.
Traces of the mound builders can be found in various places in the
township. Mr. Henry Hoak, while excavating for a cellar on his farm,
in the western part, discovered some fragmentary skeletons. One of
these, buried in the clay sub-soil, and therefore better preserved than
those found in the sand^had a skull only nineteen inches in circumference,
which would almost indicate idiocy. The under jaAV was extremely
massive, the arms of unusual length and the height less than four feet.
Yet the individual evidently was not idiotic, as she had attained an
extreme old age, which the idiot savage cannot do. The mound at this
place covers an eighth of an acre. The collection of Hudson Tuthill
contains a number of relics of this pre-historic people.
Tn 1852 II. L. Hill plowed up a French hatchet near the roots of a
large stump. The tree had been cut doAvn over tAventy years before.
It was very large and near the heart of the tree Avere tAvo or three plain
hacks as if made by a hatchet. Outside of these hacks could be counted
219 rings, indicating the time that had elapsed since the marks Avere
made, and bringing the date to a time parallel with the coming of the
French to settle Canada.
The first settlement \A'as made in 1808 by a party of seven adventurers:
John Hoak, John McLaughlin, George Miller, Nathaniel Burdue, Benjamin
Pratt, Richie and Howard. They launched a rude boat at the mouth
of Walnut Creek, Pennsylvania, loaded it with provisions, fanning tools
and thirty barrels of whiskey, and sailed up the lake in the spring.
Meeting rough weather they threAV overboard the whiskey, and when
the storm subsided cruised about and gathered it up again.
When they found the mouth of the Huron the sand-bar kept them
from getting ashore, and they Avere obliged to dig a channel for their
boat from the lake to the river. They selected a field of eighteen acres
of land. afterAvards composing the Kline and Minuse Farm in Milan
Township, and put in a corn crop. After planting tlieir corn and hoeing
it they left it and returned for their families, leaving an Indian to guard
it. Tt Avas not until the autumn that they appeared again with their
boat loaded with their goods, and their Avomen and children on horse-
Vol. I— 6