Benjamin Franklin Stickney: His remarkable life and times

If it hadn't been for Benjamin Franklin Stickney, the number of Toledoans partial to the University of Michigan fight song would be considerably greater than it already is.

Among his many achievements, Mr. Stickney played a significant role in keeping Toledo in Ohio during the 1820-36 dispute between Ohio and Michigan known as the Toledo War.

On the other hand, Ohio almost lost Toledo because of Mr. Stickney.

If that sounds confusing, then you have some idea of the man himself. Mr. Stickney, one of Toledo's founding fathers, was controversial and complicated, to say the least. He was brilliant as well, and a man of numerous talents. Historian. Linguist. Author. Mineralogist. Land speculator. Spy. Postmaster. Justice of the peace. Indian agent. Mr. Stickney, who played a role in the starting this newspaper, was all of those things and more.

Yet little has been written about him, and it's difficult to track his past. No picture or painting is known to exist of the man named for his mother's uncle, the Benjamin Franklin. When Mr. Stickney died of an apparent heart attack on the front porch of a North Toledo business on Jan. 6, 1852, the incident warranted only three paragraphs in that day's edition of The Blade.

Still, a major street, a school, a hall, and an auditorium were named for Mr. Stickney, raising the question: Why do we know so little of a man who did so much?

Jim Marshal, manager of the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library's local history and genealogy department, had this thought:

“There were a number of people at that time instrumental in the formation of the county and the city, and there just isn't a lot about them. It wasn't until later that we took a look at the more prominent people and they became more revered. Things were moving too quickly at the time to take time out to recognize [people like Stickney]. Also, newspapers served different functions back then and there were no magazines, so there is a lack of a written record.”

Ken Dickson wants to set the record straight. He's five years into writing a biography of Mr. Stickney. For Mr. Dickson, a 53-year old history buff, such an effort is a no-brainer.

“This guy was phenomenal,” he says.

Mr. Dickson retired last year from Bowsher High School, where he spent 31 years teaching math. He lives in a two-story Point Place home on Maumee Bay that resembles a ship. The water - the Great Lakes in particular - always has been his first love and the subject of most of his writings, but once he started looking into Mr. Stickney's life he became inspired to continue.

“Stickney has always been interesting to me,” he explains. “I wanted to know more about the man. What I always heard about him was couched in negative terms. [But] I get suspicious when someone always quotes the same source. The more I found, I learned he was a fascinating person.”

Although Mr. Stickney was a prolific writer who often penned five to six letters a day to various friends and fellow intellectuals, much of his writings are scattered. His early and later work cannot be found. This has made Mr. Dickson's task a difficult one and explains, in part, why it has become a lengthy effort. Nevertheless, it hasn't diminished his effort.

“I like the hunt,” he says. “The high for me is being able to solve the problem.”

Although some institutions bearing the Stickney name have disappeared, it remains on Stickney Avenue, which runs by Forest Cemetery, where Benjamin Franklin Stickney probably is buried
Enlarge

Background provided by Mr. Dickson and research conducted by The Blade have produced this picture of Mr. Stickney's life:

He was born around 1773 in Pembroke, N.H. His mother, Ruth Brown Coffin, was a favorite niece of Benjamin Franklin, whom she named her son after.

Legend has it that Mr. Franklin, pleased with his niece's choice of name, presented a silver tankard to his namesake, which was passed down to Stickney heirs and donated to the Toledo Museum of Art in 1915. Research conducted by the museum, and uncovered by Mr. Dickson, found that the tankard was made in 1797, seven years after Mr. Franklin died. The tankard, which used to be on display at the museum, has since been relegated to storage, according to museum officials.

Mr. Stickney is believed to have been a farmer in his early adulthood, though there is no concrete proof available. Mr. Dickson recently uncovered information that placed Mr. Stickney in Washington social circles in the early 1800s, which would mean he came from a more prominent family than had been previously thought.

In 1802, at the then-advanced age of 29, Mr. Stickney married Mary Stark, daughter of Gen. John Stark, a notable Revolutionary War figure. The marriage had a signifi cant impact on Mr. Stickney's career. In 1805, he became Pembroke's justice of the peace and postmaster. Five years later, he penned an article on his father-in-law, which became the definitive biography of the man and gained Mr. Stickney a measure of notoriety.

When war with Britain appeared eminent in late 1811, William Eustis, secretary of war in the Madison administration and a friend of General Stark's, asked Mr. Stickney to sneak into Canada and scout the strengths and posi tions of British and Canadian troops. Mr. Stickney's report con- firmed what Mr. Madison had already assumed: U.S. troops could not mount an invasion of Canada.

Mr. Stickney's success earned him another assignment from Mr. Eustis. In March, 1812, he was named Indian agent at Fort Wayne in the Indiana Territory.

By the time he arrived in Fort Wayne, Mr. Stickney already had fostered a reputation as an odd personality and independent thinker. The eccentric rap came largely from Mr. Stickney's decision to name his sons One and Two.

His apparent reasoning, according to legend, was that the boys could name themselves when they grew older, but they never did. Mr. Stickney had wanted to name his three daughters after states, but his wife forbid it for the first two. He won out after the birth of his last child, born at Fort Wayne in 1817. He called her Indiana.

War broke out shortly after Mr. Stickney arrived in Fort Wayne, where he was given the unofficial rank of major, a title he kept the rest of his life. He helped defend the fort and then traveled with U.S. troops for the duration of the war. During these travels he visited the Maumee Valley for the first time.

Graves of a son and a granddaughter are in Forest Cemetery. Stickney named his sons One and Two, encouraging a reputation for eccentricity.
HO Enlarge

By 1815, Mr. Stickney's family had joined him in Fort Wayne. At that point, he was at odds with most of his colleagues, who tried to get him removed from office by raising bogus charges against him involving fraud and deceit. Mr. Stickney was exonerated at a court hearing and retained his position - but not for long.

While he had few friends among the whites, Mr. Stickney was respected by the area's various Native American tribes, who were impressed with his knowledge of their language and his concern for their well-being. Mr. Stickney disdained the practice of selling liquor to the Indians.

After he learned that liquor sales were largely controlled by a Native American named Jean Baptiste Richardville, Mr. Stickney had Mr. Richardville's bar near the fort destroyed. Mr. Richardville never forgot it and used his considerable influence to have Mr. Stickney removed from office.

Perhaps Mr. Stickney's most significant achievement at Fort Wayne had nothing to do with his job. In 1818, in an article published in Western Spy, Mr. Stickney claimed that by flooding a seven-mile low-land prairie between the Wabash and Maumee rivers, it would be possible to sail from the St. Lawrence River through the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River and into the Gulf of Mexico.

Mr. Stickney contacted Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York, who at the time was overseeing construction of the Wabash and Erie Canal. Mr. DeWitt wrote Mr. Stickney: “I have found a way to get into Lake Erie and you have shown me how to get out of it. You have extended my project 600 miles.”

The Stickneys moved in 1820 to the Maumee Valley, where Mr. Stickney was named subagent for the Ottawas. He had already become involved in real estate two years earlier when he bought property in Port Lawrence, one of two settlements that now comprise downtown Toledo.

Mr. Stickney initially lived at Fort Miami in Maumee, but later moved to Port Lawrence and built a house near Swan Creek. The Port Lawrence settlement initially stagnated, so Mr. Stickney sold his properties there and in 1823 bought a large tract beginning at today's Cherry and Summit streets and running to Detwiler Park. The area was then wooded and wild, but Mr. Stickney cleared a spot and built the area's first brick home where Riverside Hospital is now located. In time, the area became a village known as Vistula. In 1833, Vistula merged with a revitalized Port Lawrence to form the city of Toledo.

Mr. Stickney continued his work with the Ottawas, the Wyandotes and other tribes. He even mastered their languages. In all Mr. Stickney knew 20 Native American dialects. Noted in his writings, he authored dictionaries on the Ottawa and Wyandote languages, which Mr. Dickson has been unable to locate.

In addition, Mr. Stickney wrote a history of the Ottawas which was lost for 150 years until Mr. Dickson and his wife, Bonnie, found it in 1998 at the Massachusetts Historical Society.

But Mr. Stickney's main interest was Governor Clinton's canal project, which he later described as “the great object of my life.” It was the canal that also sparked, beginning in 1820, the greatest controversy of Mr. Stickney's life, adding to his eccentric reputation.

The state of Ohio had been charged with building the canal's Ohio segment. It eventually became clear that the likely terminus would be at north Toledo, which would greatly enhance the value of Mr. Stickney's property.

But Mr. Stickney, who had considerable influence over the people in his then-Swan Creek neighborhood, decided that resulting state taxes would be prohibitive. So Mr. Stickney concocted a scenario that determined that Toledo and everything west of the city on a straight line to the southern end of Lake Michigan was actually in the Michigan territory, where they would not have to pay any taxes.

Mr. Stickney sold the idea to his Port Lawrence neighbors, who agreed to unofficially secede from Ohio in 1821. He then had himself named a Michigan justice of peace over the newly seceded territory, which covered 468 square miles.

By 1823, however, Mr. Stickney began to change his mind. He had envisioned Toledo becoming the key port in southeastern Michigan, but he discovered that the citizens of Monroe had no intention of letting that happen. Then he found out canal officials, peeved at the rebels for snubbing the state, had decided to built the terminus at Perrysburg.

Mr. Stickney, a man with considerable panache, asked Port Lawrence residents to change their mind and return to Ohio or lose the canal and all the revenue it would bring. The resulting aye vote ticked off the Michigan territory authorities and launched a squabble that lasted 13 years. The bickering intensified in the mid-1830s as the canal construction neared.

Although no fighting ever took place, the pesky Michigan militia made life miserable for Toledoans beginning in summer, 1835. They arrested scores of Ohio sympathizers and carted them off to jail in Monroe. Mr. Stickney, who had become justice of the peace for the disputed territory in 1823, was arrested on several occasions himself.

The only bloodshed of the conflict occurred when Two Stickney stabbed Monroe County deputy sheriff Joseph Wood with a penknife in July after Mr. Wood attempted to arrest him. Mr. Wood was not seriously hurt. Two Stickney fled to Columbus.

Meanwhile, Benjamin Stickney worked to solve the border dispute, largely through a lengthy letter-writing campaign. He persuaded the Ohio Legislature to create a new county in the disputed territory - it was named for then-Gov. Robert Lucas - and helped guide the process that resulted in Ohio gaining official jurisdiction over the county. Mr. Stickney was present in Washington in 1836 when Congress ruled in favor of Ohio, settling the dispute for good. To appease Michigan authorities, the territory got the Upper Peninsula and statehood the following year.

“Everything that happened was orchestrated by Stickney,” says Mr. Dickson. “I think the guy saw the opportunity and went for it. Just like today, that's how wealth was being created, in land speculation.”

Once victory was achieved and the canal terminus was set for Toledo, Mr. Stickney began living in Washington. He returned to his Toledo home only in the summer to escape the oppressive heat there. By that time, he had become wealthy from the sale of his now-valuable lands to immigrants the Stickney family helped draw to the area.

Mr. Dickson says he has had little success in tracking Mr. Stickney's post-Toledo activities in Washington, though he knows Mr. Stickney became an active supporter of the Whig party.

Not much has been noted about Mr. Stickney's role in the founding of The Blade. In his book, The Blade of Toledo, the late John Harrison reported that Mr. Stickney and a group of other businessmen met early in 1835 at the Mansion House, a hotel and tavern on Summit Street. Their intention was to start a rival paper to the already established Toledo Gazette that better supported their views. Mr. Stickney and several others promised to provide financial support. Critical to the start-up, however, was finding the right editor.

Mr. Stickney likely played a role in that decision as the investors chose George B. Way, a lawyer and Mr. Stickney's stepson, to direct The Toledo Blade, which published its first issue on Dec. 19, 1835. Mr. Stickney's first wife, Mary, had died in 1828, and he married George Way's mother, Mary Matilda Way, in 1835.

Meanwhile, Mr. Stickney continued expanding his business ventures. So astute was Mr. Stickney that even while he was pushing for the canal project he already understood the future was in railroads, so he invested in the fledging Lake Erie and Kalamazoo Railway.

Despite his odd personality and unconventional ways, Mr. Stickney did have his share of admirers and was a strong leader.

“I think they considered him an extremely intelligent person, otherwise they would not have followed him,” Mr. Dickson says. “He liked to control things from behind the scenes and the events always seemed to work out in his favor. A person of his ability creates his own luck. I don't think he left anything to chance.”

However, some historians have a different view of Benjamin Stickney.

“He was considered a nut case,” Mr. Dickson says.

Nothing hurt Mr. Stickney's reputation more than an article he wrote for The Blade in 1850 in which criticized the U.S. Army's brutal treatment of Native Americans. In the article, Mr. Stickney suggested that if the government wanted to get rid of the Indians it would be better to start feeding them enormous quantities of rich food and whiskey. He was widely criticized for the comments.

Mr. Dickson, noting how Mr. Stickney was an Indian ally at Fort Wayne and was a Native American linguist, believes Mr. Stickney was being facetious in his remarks. Yet, he contends, Mr. Stickney's life has been measured, in part, by the article.

“Historians are using this statement in 1850 to determine his policy on Indians, and it came back and bit him,” Mr. Dickson says. “I think he was talking about the futility of war, that it is ridiculous and useless.”

Mr. Stickney carried controversy with him to his grave, which likely is at Forest Cemetery on Mulberry Street. He left his money to his youngest daughter, Indiana; his second wife; and his sisters. His other three children, who were cut off, hired Toledo lawyer Morrison Waite - for whom the high school in East Toledo is named - to contest the decision, but he failed.

Mr. Dickson believes that a considerable number of Mr. Stickney's papers were destroyed by his children after they learned they had been disinherited. He keeps busy tracking down the papers that are left so he can finish his book.

The work is important, he believes, because the Stickney name has been disappearing from the cityscape over time. Stickney Elementary School closed years ago. Stickney Hall, formerly a downtown landmark, has vanished, too. Even Stickney Avenue, one of the city's oldest roads, has been shortened; DamlierChrysler is changing the name of a section of the street which now serves as a feeder to the new Jeep plant.

“As each succeeding generation gathers new landmarks to celebrate their achievements, the footprints of past pioneers rapidly disappear,” Mr. Dickson says. “Before the sands of time completely eliminate Stickney's footprints from the Maumee Valley, his story needs to be documented and told.”