This survey was performed in late June and early July 1816, by surveyors Joseph Wampler and William Brookfield under the auspices of Bourne and Josiah Meigs, Surveyor General of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. He was appointed to that position by Edward Tiffin, Surveyor General of the United States. They moved to higher ground after being flooded out.Īlexander Bourne led a surveying team to plan and plat Perrysburg. They returned to settle in the floodplain below Fort Meigs, calling the settlement Orleans. Two critical battles with the British were fought at the fort during the War of 1812.Įarly settlers in the area fled to Huron during the War of 1812.

Wood, for whom the county would be named. Fort Meigs was constructed on a bluff above the Maumee River, and built from a design by army engineer Captain Eleazer D. The installation was named Fort Meigs in honor of Ohio's fourth governor, Return Jonathan Meigs. Later he was elected as the country's ninth president. Harrison was General Anthony Wayne's former aide-de-camp. When the war clouds of 1812 began to edge toward Northwest Ohio, General William Henry Harrison ordered the construction of the fort, beginning in February 1813. Other veterans who received land grants for their service during that war also settled in this area. He settled on a 160-acre land grant, signed by President James Monroe, on River Tract #64 in Waynesfield Township. Īfter the war and the 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs, which extinguished the Ottawa claim to this area, Spafford returned to the area. Two years later, 67 families lived in the area, but most fled at the outbreak of the War of 1812. He left there in 1810 following appointment as US Customs Collector and postmaster for the new port at the Foot of the Rapids of the Miami of the Lake Maumee River. He drew the first map laying out Cleveland and named the city. In 1796, Spafford, a native of Connecticut, was a surveyor for the Connecticut Land Company. In 1810, early European-American settlers here were Major Amos Spafford (1753-1818), his wife Olive (1756-1823), and their four children. Also known as the Ottawa, they had controlled much of the territory along the Maumee River in present-day northwestern Ohio. They had occupied this territory since the turn of the 18th century, after having settled in the region of the French trading post at Fort Detroit.

Perrysburg lies near the center of the Twelve Mile Square Reservation, a tract of land ceded in 1795 to the United States of America by the Odawa people following their defeat in the Northwest Indian Wars. Perrysburg is home to Fort Meigs, the largest wooden walled fortification in North America.

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