Page 23 

A Map of the Old Northwest, 1797

On January 7, 1837, Toledo incorporated as a city within the state of Ohio. Nearly three weeks later, on January 26, 1837, Michigan joined the Union as the twenty-sixth state. On June15,1836, Congress established Michigan's southern boundary, thus ending a longstanding dispute over the boundary line between Ohio and Michigan.The dispute had originated with the Ordinance of 1787, and the inaccurate maps of the time. It became an issue only when engineers and surveyors arrived to determine which Maumee River town would become the Lake Erie port on the canal then under construction in Ohio. They favored the new city of Toledo, but both Ohio and Michigan claimed the strip of land Toledo occupied, and both desired the benefits to be gained from a prosperous commercial center. During the spring and summer of 1835 the dispute between the state of Ohio and the Michigan Territory became an open conflict known as the "Toledo War."

At the end of the American Revolution the United States gained possession of not only the thirteen colonies, but all the territory northwest of the Ohio River. To provide for the formation of future states, Congress passed the Ordinance of 1787, which created the Northwest Territory.

Page 24 

In Inaccurate Map Showing Lake Michigan Too Far North

Congress passed the Ordinance of 1787 before many white people had seen the Northwest Territory. Settlers had just begun to move into the Ohio country, where the regions affected by the boundary lines remained Indian territory. The lawmakers, and indeed many of the settlers, had little knowledge of the geography of the new territory, and the maps available then added to the uncertainty. The maps differed in various details, in particular the location of the southern end of Lake Michigan. The map Congress used in drawing the Ordinance Line in 1787 showed the lake lying considerably to the north of its actual position. In reality a line drawn from the southern tip of Lake Michigan would not intersect with Lake Erie or the boundary line between the United States and the British territory at all, and it would cross the Maumee River far to the southwest of its mouth.

On April 30, 1802, Congress authorized the people of the Ohio Territory to call a constitutional convention to prepare for statehood. The delegates, meeting in Chillicothe, discussed the problem of the northern boundary of Ohio and the inaccurate maps. They argued that Congress intended that the Ordinance Line reach Lake Erie north of the Maumee Bay, and that they should adopt this line without reference to the position of Lake Michigan. A hunter who happened to be in Chillicothe while the convention was in session told some of the delegates that he had spent many years in the area of Lake Michigan, and that the maps he had seen showed the lake miles north of its true position.

Page 25

The Ohio lawmakers decided to take no chances with the state's northern boundary. The constitution that they adopted on November 29, 1802, gave the Ordinance Line as the northern boundary, with an important condition. If later surveys should show that the southern tip of Lake Michigan extended so far south that a line drawn due east would not intersect Lake Erie, or would intersect the lake east of the mouth of the Maumee River, the boundary line would become a line drawn directly from the southern end of Lake Michigan to the most northern part of the Maumee Bay. Congress admitted Ohio to the Union as a state on February 19, 1803, without reference to its northern boundary. Despite the provision of the Ordinance of 1787 that the area north of the line should remain a part of Ohio until ready for statehood itself, the state of Ohio took in only the territory south of the line. Congress created the Territory of Michigan on January 11, 1805, with its southern boundary the Ordinance Line.


A Corrected Map Showing the Two Ohio-Michigan Boundaries

Michigan claimed all land south to the Ordinance Line and extended its territorial laws over the area. For several years no one objected to this arrangement. Finally, Amos Spafford, representing about fifty families in the settlement at the Maumee River rapids, wrote to the Governor of Ohio on January 23, 1812, asking whether Ohio and Michigan had reached any understanding about the boundary. The majority of those he represented considered themselves citizens of the state of Ohio and felt no obligation to obey Michigan's laws. They asked to have Ohio laws extended to include them. Congress ordered that the boundary line be surveyed, but the War of 1812 intervened and nothing further was done until 1816. The surveyor, William Harris, completed his work in 1817, based on the Ohio Constitution. When the governor of Michigan complained, President Monroe ordered that the line again be surveyed, this time in accordance with the Ordinance of 1787. John Fulton completed the second line in 1818. Ohio claimed the Harris Line as its boundary, and Michigan claimed the Fulton Line. Between the two lines lay a wedge-shaped strip stretching from the Indiana border, where it was five miles wide, to Lake Erie, where it was eight miles wide.

Though Congress recognized the problem that the two lines presented, it did nothing to resolve the issue, and Michigan continued to claim jurisdiction over the area. Ohio created Wood County in 1820, giving it jurisdiction up to the Harris Line. In 1821 Wood County tried to collect Ohio taxes in the disputed strip, but the settlers had little interest in politics and refused to pay. Michigan organized Port Lawrence Township in the disputed area in 1827, and in 1831 asked Congress for permission to call a constitutional convention and apply for statehood. Congress denied the request because of the unresolved boundary question.

Page 26 

The canal and the question of which town on the Maumee River would become its northern outlet to Lake Erie finally drew attention to the boundary issue. The state of Ohio had begun some years earlier to build a canal to connect Lake Erie with the Ohio River at Cincinnati. The canal had been completed as far north as Piqua, but until about 1833, there was no interest and too few people to warrant extending it on to the lake. Ohio was ready in 1835 to continue the canal northward, but officials had to first determine what city would be the northern port. Though Maumee hoped to become the port city and profit most from the commerce the canal would bring, navigation that far up the Maumee River would have required a dam to make the water deep enough for large ships. The surveyors and state officials determined that Toledo would be the better choice for the northern outlet of the canal. However, since the state of Ohio was building the canal, the northern port would have to be a city within Ohio. Maumee fell under Ohio's jurisdiction, but Toledo lay between the Harris and Fulton Lines in the area claimed by both Ohio and Michigan. Residents of Toledo believed the city's future growth depended on the canal and they urged the Governor of Ohio to exercise jurisdiction over the disputed strip.

Michigan Governor Stevens T. Mason
1811 - 1843

The Michigan Territorial government passed a Pains and Penalties Act on February 12, 1835, intended to prevent Ohio from extending its jurisdiction into the disputed strip. This legislation provided fines of up to $1,000 and up to five years in prison at hard labor for accepting an office or carrying out any official function by any authority other than Michigan's within territory Michigan claimed. In addition, despite the earlier denial from Congress, Michigan's new territorial governor, Stevens Thomson Mason, called a constitutional convention to meet in Detroit on the second Monday in May to prepare for Michigan's entrance to the Union with the Fulton Line as its southern boundary. The Ohio Legislature passed an act on February 23, 1835, extending the northern boundaries of Wood, Henry, and Williams Counties to the Harris Line. It also created Port Lawrence and Sylvania Townships, directed that township officers be elected on the first Monday in April, and ordered that the governor appoint three commissioners to begin on April 1 to survey and re-mark the Harris Line.

Ohio Governor Robert Lucas arrived in Perrysburg with the boundary commissioners on March 31, on the way to survey the Harris Line. His military staff joined him and immediately raised a volunteer militia of about six hundred men. They camped at Fort Miami while they waited for orders from the governor. Governor Mason moved into Toledo with about one thousand Michigan troops about that same time.

Page 27 

Ohio Governor Robert Lucas
1781 - 1853


Governor Lucas had encouraged President Andrew Jackson to appoint two special commissioners to try to settle the matter peacefully. They arrived in Toledo on April 3, and made their recommendations on April 7. The commissioners advised that the Harris Line be surveyed, and that the people in the disputed strip be left to make their own choice of government until the next session of Congress. Lucas agreed and disbanded his military force. He hired S. Dodge, an engineer for the Ohio Canal, to survey the Harris Line, beginning immediately at the northwestern corner of the state. On April 25, with about half of the line completed, the surveying party camped in Henry County about one mile south of the Harris Line. They planned to spend the next day, a Sunday, in camp, but about noon the Michigan posse showed up to arrest them. The surveyors escaped across the Fulton Line before the force of about fifty mounted men armed with muskets reached the camp, but nine Ohio guardsmen barricaded themselves inside a log cabin and were captured. They escaped, but were captured again and taken to the jail in Tecumseh, Michigan. Work on the Harris Line stopped.


A Map of Ohio Before the Creation of Lucas County

Michigan held elections for township officials in the disputed strip on April 1, and on April 4 for delegates to the constitutional convention. On April 6 Ohio elected township officials in the disputed strip, and on April 8 the Monroe County sheriff and his posse moved into Toledo and began arresting those who had been active in the Ohio elections. Governor Lucas called the Ohio Legislature into special session on June 8, 1835, to pass a law against kidnapping Ohio citizens. Also on that day, the legislature created a new Ohio county in the disputed strip, and named it for Governor Robert Lucas. It was formed from the northern part of Wood County and part of the northwestern corner of Sandusky County, and Toledo was made the temporary county seat. The legislation required that a session of the court of common pleas be held in the county on the first Monday in September. Governor Lucas appointed a three-man delegation to meet with President Jackson and advise him of Ohio's actions, and to ask that the resurvey of the Harris Line be completed without further difficulty and that Michigan stop arresting Ohio citizens. They reported that the President agreed to their requests, but he ordered that they avoid any hostilities until Congress had time to act.

Michigan posses raided in the disputed territory throughout the summer of 1835, arresting Ohio sympathizers. More than one important citizen was taken off to the Monroe County jail, some on more than one occasion.

Page 28 

Just after the township elections in April, some thirty-five or forty Michigan militiamen broke into the home of Major Benjamin Stickney in the early morning hours and seized Dr. Naaman Goodsell and George McKay. After some rough treatment, the two men were lodged in the Monroe County jail. Stickney's daughter was slightly injured in the episode. On another occasion the two escaped a pursuing force of three or four hundred of the Michigan troops.


Two Stickney
1810 - 1862

In July the deputy sheriff of Monroe County came to Toledo to arrest George McKay and Two Stickney, the younger of Major Stickney's two sons. Neither man went quietly, and in the scuffle, Two Stickney stabbed the deputy sheriff, Joseph Wood, in the left side with a small knife. A physician treated Wood's wound, which was not serious, and the deputy left for Monroe the following morning. This was the only blood shed in the "Toledo War." Stickney escaped over the Fulton Line. When Governor Mason later asked Governor Lucas to give up Two Stickney so he could be punished for his assault on the Michigan deputy sheriff, the Ohio Governor refused on the grounds that the stabbing had taken place within Ohio. After Stickney's escape, the posse arrested his father, Major Benjamin Stickney, and George McKay, along with about six others. Major Stickney resisted strenuously, with his whole family joining the struggle. Two men tried to hold him on a horse for the trip to Monroe, but he fell off repeatedly until they finally tied his feet under the horse's body. Michigan continued to arrest Ohio citizens without regard to President Jackson's agreement with Ohio that the survey should be completed and such arrests should stop. Therefore, on August 29, 1835, the President removed Mason as acting Governor of the Michigan Territory.

Governor Lucas found himself in a difficult position. The legislation creating Lucas County required that the court of common pleas be held in the new county on September 7. Holding that court would positively prove Ohio's jurisdiction over the disputed area. However, the Michigan militia had orders to arrest any Ohioans holding court in Toledo, and Governor Lucas had agreed to avoid hostilities over the boundary question until Congress could make a decision. Since he could not use force to hold the court, he decided to use strategy. Reasoning that September 7 began at midnight, and that the legislation had not specified an hour for the court to open, the officials agreed that one hour was as good as any other. Twenty volunteers were selected to act as guards, and the party left Maumee at one o'clock in the morning to hold court in Toledo. The Court of Common Pleas in and for the County of Lucas and State of Ohio opened for the first time at three o'clock on the morning of September 7, 1835, in a frame school house between Washington and Monroe and Michigan and Erie Streets, then just outside Toledo.

Page 29 

Junius Flagg of Toledo acted as sheriff, and the court appointed Dr. Horatio Conant of Maumee clerk. The business of the court consisted of appointing John Baldwin, Robert Gower, and Cyrus Holloway county commissioners, and approving the clerk's bond.


The First Lucas County Courthouse, 1835

According to legend, the clerk recorded his minutes on loose pieces of paper, which he then placed in his tall bell-shaped hat. When the court adjourned, those present went to the tavern kept by Munson Daniels nearby to drink to their success. The celebration was interrupted when someone came into the tavern and warned of a large force of the Michigan militia heading their way. The report turned out to be false, but the men ran to their horses and took the road to Maumee at top speed. When they paused for breath on the hill across Swan Creek near where the Oliver House now stands, they discovered that the clerk of the court had lost his hat containing the minutes of the proceedings. Without the written record, the whole undertaking would be a failure. The clerk and two guards went back on foot to search, and soon recovered the hat with the papers safe inside. The party fired two salutes and returned to Maumee, arriving soon after daylight.

Disregarding his removal as acting governor of the Michigan Territory on August 29, Stevens T. Mason led the Michigan militia to Toledo on September 6 to prevent any Ohio judges holding court the following day. They camped that night, expecting to fight the next morning, but when they reached Toledo, they found no Ohio soldiers. Disappointed, some of the Michigan volunteers stayed in Toledo for three days, drinking, carousing, and plundering, especially in Major Stickney's vegetable garden. The Michigan militia disbanded on September 10, and since the Ohio militia had already gone home, the "Toledo War" was over.

Dr. Horatio Conant
1785 - 1879

Public sentiment recognized the jurisdiction of the Lucas County Court of Common Pleas, ending all resistance to Ohio's authority. President Jackson appointed Charles Shaler to replace Mason, but he declined, and John Horner became acting governor of Michigan. Governor Horner and Governor Lucas established friendly relations between Ohio and Michigan, and the Harris Line survey was completed in November, while everyone waited for Congress to convene in December. On June 15, 1836, after months of study and debate, Congress passed the Clayton Act, admitting Michigan to the Union, and fixing the Ohio-Michigan boundary at the Harris Line. The legislation came during an election year, and in deciding in Ohio's favor, Congress almost certainly considered Ohio's electoral vote, since Michigan remained a territory with no electoral vote.

Page 30 

The approximately 450 square miles in the Toledo strip went to Ohio, but as a compromise, Congress gave Michigan the Upper Peninsula, taking about 9,000 square miles of valuable iron, copper, and timber land from the Wisconsin Territory.

Top of Page