Saint Marys, Ohio
SAINT MARYS, OHIO, a city of Auglaize county, Ohio, U.S.A., on the Saint Marys river and the Miami & Erie canal, about 85 m. W.N.W. of Columbus. Pop. (1910) 5732. Saint Marys is served by the Lake Erie & Western, the Western Ohio (electric), and the Toledo & Ohio Central railways. About i m. west is a feeding reservoir of the canal covering about 17,600 acres. Saint Marys is in the Ohio oil region. The city occupies the site of a former Shawnee village, in which a trading post was established in 1782 by James Girty, 1 from whom the place was for some years 1 James Girty (1743-1817) was one of the notorious Girty brothers, the sons of Simon Girty (d. iTSOi an Irish immigrant. The brothers were taken prisoners by the French and Indian force which in 1756 captured Fort Granville, in what is now Mifflin county, Pennsylvania. James was adopted by the Shawnees and lived among them for three years, after which he acted as an interpreter and trader; he frequently accompanied the Indians against the English settlers, and exhibited the greatest ferocity. He conducted a profitable trading business with the Indians at St Marys in 1783-1794, when he withdrew to Canada upon the approach of General Wayne, and again from 1795 until just before the Warof 1812, when he again withdrew to Canada, where he died. His brother Simon (17411818), who lived with the Senecas for several years after his capture, was even more bloodthirsty; he served against the Indians in Lord Dunmore's War, and in 1776, during the War of Independence, entered the called Girty's Town. Fort St Marys was built in 1784 or 1785 by a detachment of General Anthony Wayne's troops, and in 1812 Ft. Barbee was erected at the instance of General W. H. Harrison by Colonel Joshua Barbee. During the War of 1812 the place was for some time the headquarters of General Harrison's army. St Marys was laid out as a town in 1823, and became a city in 1903 under the general municipal code which came into effect in that year.
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
