If you have a question about the area that's always nagged at you, we have something that can help. Our feature OKI Wanna Know this week dives into the past with WVXU's Bill Rinehart.
Eric Bender of Montgomery says he's a history buff and has read a lot about the first European settlers to come through the area — specifically the French, who were trying to lay claim to what we now call Ohio.
"They took, I believe it was seven lead plates that were inscribed and planted them at the confluences of the Ohio and various rivers. To my knowledge, the one where the Great Miami and the Ohio meet, I've never heard of any attempt actually to find it."
There's a lot to uncover here. So we turn to Mike Mangus with the Department of History at Ohio State University. He says in 1749, the British and the French were contesting land along the Ohio River. The governor of New France sent Joseph Celeron de Blaineville to bury lead plates at junctions along the river.
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"You'd put up a little sign up on a tree, usually made of tin or copper, and you would say, 'Near this spot there is a plate buried' claiming this land for whoever, in this case, for France; in the case of Celeron, to try to solidify France's claim for modern day Ohio."
Mangus says it's believed Celeron buried six plates along the Ohio River, including near Wheeling, Point Pleasant, and the Great Miami River. Mangus says the plates were about 8 by 12 inches, and a quarter-inch thick, with words chiseled into the surface, and two have been found.
"The first one that was found was actually the plate at Marietta where the Muskingum flows into the Ohio River," Mangus says. "It was actually discovered in 1798. It was supposedly discovered by two kids after a flood had taken place."
Mangus says about two-thirds of the plate was broken off, melted down and used to make bullets. He says the remainder was used for target practice, because the kids apparently didn't know what they had.
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"Rumor is that there was a gentleman in Marietta that heard about the plate. Rumor got around that there was all this strange writing that no one knew, and he headed over to take a look at it and he said 'Well, I speak a little bit of French and that's French!' and figured out that it must have been a plate planted by the French to claim Ohio for France."
That plate is now at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Mass.
Mangus says another plate was found by Point Pleasant, supposedly in 1846. It's on display at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, and is in better shape. It's complete and the engraving is still legible. Sort of.
"Modern day critics complain that the engraver actually was an awful speller. He was not the most literate French person in the end," Mangus says. "There's some criticism that he didn't know where to put the accent marks in the French words."
Mangus says he's not aware of any organized, academic attempt to find the remaining plates. And if there were, he says it'd be challenging, in part because rivers change course, and what was a riverbank in 1749 might not be one today.
"With all the times rivers flood here in Ohio, there's a good chance they might be in the middle of a river."
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He says even if you found a plate, you might not recognize it for what it is. Lead is a soft metal, and the engraved lettering may have been rubbed away.
"Archeologists, all the time as they're digging down through all the different layers of the past, you can come across something that looks just like a piece of sheet metal or something like that, and there's nothing on it now," he says. "It might have been one of the most important things that could have been discovered in the region, but just because of wear and age, no telling."
Mangus says lead just doesn't last long, whether it's buried, or even out of the ground, like the one at Richmond, Va.
"Supposedly even the lead plate touching plexiglass, the plexiglass would cause it to deteriorate. I gotta imagine that out in the environment over 300 years, about 300 years, there's probably not too much left, unfortunately."
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