The Dorastus Snow Family and a Wartime Raid in Margaretta Township

 According to the September 1860 Firelands Pioneer, Dorastus P. Snow was the first white settler in Margaretta Township. He built a log house and also constructed a grist mill on Cold Creek. In 1813, there were three families living in the area of Cold Creek, those of Dorastus P. Snow, and the families of Mr. Butler and Mr. Putnam.

A copy of the map of Dorastus Snow's property along Cold Creek in 1823

In June of 1813, while the men were in the fields, the women and children of the families were attacked by sixteen Odawa (Ottawa) men allied with the British who controlled Fort Detroit during the War of 1812. The women were told they would be taken to Detroit. Mrs. Hannah Snow, however, was physically unable to travel due to an illness (or pregnancy), so she and three of the children were killed, while the rest of the group was taken to Detroit and given over to the British agent named Ironside. All the survivors were eventually returned to safety by the Fall of the same year, when United States forces established contact with the British in Detroit.

After life returned to normal at the end of the war, Dorastus Snow married Anna Faulk in 1818, and they had a son named Charles Snow. (After Mr. Snow’s death in 1824, Anna married Philip Cowell, and they had several children.) The Firelands Pioneer lists the children of Dorastus Snow from his first marriage as: Henry, Alanson, Willard, Electa, and Laura. 

Charles and Willard Snow are both buried in the Castalia Cemetery of Margaretta Township.  The inscription on Willard Snow's tombstone (pictured below) is in memory of his mother and brother who were murdered in 1813. (Though the stone reads 1812, all other sources indicate that the killings took place in 1813.) Willard Snow died on January 22, 1875. He was a Veteran of the Civil War, having served in the 40^th Illinois Volunteer Infantry.

 

There are several accounts of the Snow Massacre. You can read about it in Lewis Cass Aldrich’s A Standard History of Erie County, Ohio, as well as The History of the Firelands, by W. W. Williams, both available at the Archives Research Center of the Sandusky Library.

Venice Mill

Pictured above is the Venice Mill, run by the Gallagher brothers, John R., Arthur P., and James S. Gallagher, dating back to the 1930s or 1940s. The site is now occupied by the Margaritaville restaurant. 

According to an article in the July 3, 1988 issue of the Sandusky Register, the Gallagher brothers purchased the Venice Mill in 1897, which had formerly been run by several generations of the Heywood family. Russell Heywood purchased the old mill in Venice in 1831, at the southeast corner of what now is Fremont Street and Venice Road, along with the rights to Cold Creek and five hundred acres of land. A second mill was built by Mr. Heywood in 1841, but was destroyed by fire. An early canal system transported the wheat and flour from the mills to the bay, where it was shipped by boat. Later railroad cars transported the grain. Members of the Gallagher family operated the mill until the late 1940s. The family also owned a flour, feed, and coal business in Sandusky on East Water Street. This building still stands and is known as the Granary. In 1955 Harold Coker bought the old mill. He and his wife Gertrude built a restaurant and bar known as the Old Mill on the site of the Venice Mill. Three of the original walls from the mill were used in the new tavern. In the early 1980s John Kubicek and Nick Porozynski remodeled the Old Mill tavern and re-named it Margaritaville. An early history of water powered historic mills, found on the back of an old menu from Margaritaville, is now housed at the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center. 

This old flour sack from the Venice Mill, when it was run by the Gallagher family, is at the Follett House Museum.