OHERIE-L Archives

From: Maggie Stewart-Zimmerman <>
Subject: The Bullskin Road (3)
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1998 01:05:24 -0500

The Road went north from Goshen to those families of the
Obannon Church (the Millers at Murdock and Bowmans unknown) who
lived in Warren County. At Murdock it went on north to Lebanon
(OH 48). Then an angling Indian path was followed (OH 123) to
the ford over the Great Miami at Franklin. This put them on
the west side of the River, where Elder Jacob Miller lived on
Bear Creek (1800).

The exact route north, on the west side of the Great
Miami, is not known. There are a couple early references
(1830's) to an old River Road on the banks of the Great Miami.
Probabilities are that it followed the Soldier's Home Road
along the River and then went nearly strait north on the
Gettysburg Road to the Wolf Creek Road, the Salem Road and the
Covington Road (Stillwater River).

The John Aukerman family likely used this road to the
Great Miami River Ford, then followed what became the extension
of the Kanawha Trace, along the Twin Creek, into Preble Co OH.
The John Bowman family likely used this route for their
migration from the Obannon to Montgomery County about 1800.
David Miller left about 1802, and already others of the Obannon
Brethren had moved north.

These families seem to have been displaced from their
Hamilton County homesteads (now Clermont and Warren) when the
government gave these lands to the Virginia Military District
and Ohio land grants were given as bounties to Revolutionary
Veterans in lieu of their cash pay. Local settlers, like the
Aukermans and Bowmans, could not purchase their homesteads and
had to move.

Most of the earliest Brethren settlers to Ohio seem to
have stopped among the Brethren already at Obannon/ Stonelick,
before they found lands north (the Land Office was in
Cincinnati, a days walk away), then followed one or the other
of the Indian Roads north. Many Brethren moved up the Bullskin
Trace to the east side of Dayton, to Green and Clark Counties
OH, to the old Beaver Creek and Donnels Creek Church areas.
Other Brethren crossed the ford on the Great Miami, and settled
in the fertile lands west of the River, the Lower Miami Church,
the Bear Creek Church, the Stillwater Church.

This thread:

• The Bullskin Road (3) by Maggie Stewart-Zimmerman <>