Ephraim Kibbey – A Pioneer Surveyor and Soldier

His adventure while pursuing Indian horse thieves up the Little Miami.

By Josiah Morrow.

Ephraim Kibbey, the hero of the story I am to relate, was one of the earliest surveyors of land in the Miami country. The stone marking his grave can still be seen in the old graveyard in South Lebanon. He was a native of New Jersey, born midway between Trenton and Newark about 1754 and when a young man became a soldier in the revolution.

After the revolution, John Cleve Symmes of New Jersey, purchased of the Continental Congress the land between the Miami Rivers at $.66 per acre, and was in need of a number of surveyors to survey his large purchase, and he induced Kibbey to come to Columbia, the first town laid out between the Miami’s. The name of Ephraim Kibbey appears on the Pioneer monument at Columbia as one of the 25 persons, 21 men and 4 women, who made the first settlement at that place. The city of Columbia as its founder, Benjamin Stites, called it, was for a time larger than either Cincinnati or North Bend, and extended over a considerable portion of large plane below the mouth of the Little Miami.

On account of the scattered situation of the cabins some of which were more than a mile from the block house on the bank of the Ohio, the settlers were much exposed to danger during the Indian wars. Rev. John Smith, pastor of the Baptist Church of Columbia, was the most prominent citizen of the new settlement. His house was the first one you would reach and going up the Ohio from Cincinnati, being where Pendleton now is. Smith was not only a preacher, but a successful merchant and was prominent in early Ohio politics.

My chief authority in the account of the adventure here given is elder Ezra Ferris, of Lawrenceburg, Indiana, who was a youth at Columbia at the time. Of the historical accuracy of the story, no doubt can be entertained, but I have been led to place the date a year earlier than did elder Ferris, who wrote out his account from memory in 1851. In the autumn of 1792 the smallpox visited the Miamisettlements and a malignant form, and proved more destructive to human life in a few months than the Indians did in as many years. One third of the garrison at Fort Washington fell victims to the disease.

Business was largely suspended in the assembling of the people for public worship or militia training was given up. The Columbia houses most detach from the main settlements were selected for pest houses. Rev. John Smith’s residence being isolated and its owner very benevolent, was, with his consent made a pest house and several of the afflicted were there nursed.

After the disease had subsided the families which had used his residence met there to assist in cleansing it. The walls and floor were scoured in the wearing apparel and bed clothing were washed. The family clothed themselves and old worn-out garments for the day which they intended to burn. The wash close were left out of doors at night to receive the benefit of a white frost in the members of the family sat up during the night by a bright fire waiting for the morning.

When morning came, it was found that all the wash garments and bedclothes had been stolen, and the tracks of moccasins seen along the fence indicated that Indians had been the thieves. Before the stolen property was recovered, a bolder theft was committed. At this time in Columbia the men capable of bearing arms were two or 300 in number; they were organized into militia companies and kept their arms both day and night. They were required to take their guns with them to church or other public meetings and at night to be ready to spring to arms at the sound of a horn. Yet a few nights after the theft of the wash smallpox close, Indians penetrated into the heart of the settlement and stole two horses from the stable of Thomas Hubble.

They had passed through the settled part of the Valley for a mile without detection and to add to the daring of the theft, in order to reach the horses they had cut away the post of the stable door with her Tomahawks. When the alarm was given in the morning many excited men assembled. There were three captains of the militia, Flinn, Hall, and Kibbey, who first proposed with separate companies to search in different directions, but finally agreed to go together. The men fill their sacks with parched corn and set off in the trail of the horses, which it was found, crossed the Little Miami at Flinn’s ford, opposite of Turkey bottom, and passed up the east side of the river.

On the second day of the pursuit captain Hall became of the opinion that there was little prospect of recovering the horses and he returned. On the third day, as they were nearing the Indian towns, Capt. Flinn, the oldest officer and an excellent woodsman, expressed the belief that they were risking too much, but if rim Kibbey, though unwilling to oppose Capt. Flinn’s wishes, said that if seven men would follow him he would keep up the pursuit another day, and seven men volunteered to remain with him. Elder Ferris gives the name of the seven men as John Clawson, Richard M. Gano, Isaac Ferris Jr., Thomas McCardle, Sylvanus Reynolds, Benjamin Stites, Jr., and Ephraim Simpson.

The other men returned home. On the following day Capt. Kibbey and his men being near the site of the old Indian town, old Chillicothe, on the Little Miami, in seeing no prospect of success determined to return. On their return they follow the road cut by Gen. Harmer in 1790 and pass down the east side of the Little Miami to within a mile of seizures Creek and then crossing to the west side pass through the sites of Lebanon, Sharonville, and Reading to the Ohio. On the second day of their journey homeward, being probably somewhere in what is now Warren County, they saw two Indians at a distance coming toward them in bearing large bundles.

They hid themselves by the side of the trail and when the Indians came near they shot and killed them both. The bundles they carried were found to be the stolen clothing of the Baptist preacher, which they restored to the owner. The goods were uninjured except that an attempt had been made to unravel some coverlets to obtain yarn which was of different colors. Capt. Kibbey and his men, says Ezra Ferris, were much applauded for their work in Mr. Smith propose to pay each of them $10 which they refused to accept. Kibbey continued to live in Columbia for some years. In 1791 he was appointed by the court the first clerk of Columbia Township. I was informed by his grandson, Judge John F. Kibbey of Richmond, In., that he built the first stone house in Columbia.

In Wayne’s campaign against the Indians he was captain of the rangers or scouts, and he is commended in McDonald’s sketches as “a bold and intrepid soldier.” After the restoration of peace he resumed his occupation of surveying. In 1799 he undertook to lay out a road from the scenes to the Great Miami, 155 miles in length. At one time while engaged in this work he became separated from his companions and after hunting them for some days he made his way alone to Cincinnati, reduced almost to a skeleton.

About the beginning of the last century he removed to Deerfield or its vicinity. In 1802 he was elected to the territorial legislature, but the formation of a state government prevented the legislature to which he had been elected from assembling. At the first election under the Constitution of 1802 he was chosen a representative to the state legislature from Hamilton County and after the organization of Warren County, he was reelected.

He was thus a member of the two first Gen. assemblies of Ohio. He died April 22, 1809, aged 55 years and was buried at Deerfield. Capt. Kibbey was I believe the ancestor of all the Kibbey families of Warren County. His three sons were: John, of Richmond, Indiana, Joseph, of Warren County, and Ephraim, of Clinton County Ohio. His daughters were Julia Anne, who is said to have been the first female white child born at Columbia, and who became the wife of Capt. John M. Snook, of Warren County; Jerusha, (Mrs. Elijah Ford); Phoebe (Mrs. Joseph Ford) and Elizabeth (Mrs. Oliver Whitaker). His namesake, E. K. Snook, of Lebanon, is his grandson. Joseph H. Kibbey Gov. of Arizona territory is his great-grandson.