On April 10, 1861, a special visitor checked into the West House hotel in downtown Sandusky; he was special enough that the desk clerk wrote a note in the guest register. After fifty years, John Garrison, at nearly 90 years old, paid a visit to his old homestead that became the city of Sandusky.
John Jay Garrison was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1772, but like many easterners of his time, the lure of plentiful land in the west led him eventually to Ohio. In 1810 he bought four thousand acres of land in what was then Huron County, at ninety cents an acre (about $22 an acre in today's money). But when he arrived to claim his land, much of it was underwater, and it was twelve miles from Lake Erie. So he set out to find better land nearby along the shore.
He settled on a spot along Sandusky Bay that he thought would develop into a significant place for business, but was then occupied by camps of native people, most likely Wyandot and/or Ottawa. It was known by many settlers as Ogontz Village (seen here on a map from 1808). He set up a shop there and conducted most of his business with the native people and settlers traveling through the area.
But within the year, with war brewing between the Americans and the British and their native allies, Garrison decided it would be unwise to stay along what was then the frontier between combatants. On the advice of a Native man named Semo whom he befriended, he left the Sandusky bay area, not to return until his visit fifty years later.
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| Image from Find a Grave |
In his later life, Mr. Garrison spent time in Michigan and Illinois, until ultimately settling in Cedar Falls, Iowa, where he died on January 18, 1865.
