She was not the very first white woman to settle in the wilderness that eventually became Vermilion, Ohio. But she and her baby daughter were certainly among the first. One thing (among many others) that makes her a unique personage nearly 200 hundred years after her entrance into what was a rather bucolic, but occasionally a fierce, environment is the fact that there is a detailed account of her early days in the place the Ottawa Indians called Oulanie Thepy - or in the King's English, Vermilion Creek.
Charlotte Tuttle was born in Prattsville, New York on March 28, 1792. She was the fifth child, the fourth daughter, of revolutionary war veteran Charles, and Anna Finch, Tuttle of that place.
On March 15, 1809 she married Frederick Sturgis/Sturges of Roxbury, New York. On October 3, 1810, just eight weeks after the birth of a daughter they named Eunice, the tiny family travelled on horseback to Vermilion. Arriving on November 7th they settled along the eastern bank of the river. The following spring Frederick's father, a sea captain, and mother, also named Eunice, came west to join them. Eventually the family kept a tavern, and ran a ferry boat in that locale.
The aforementioned narrative of her experience(s) in this wilderness recounts several days toward the end of the War of 1812 , and includes Commodore Perry's Battle of Lake Erie (September 10, 1813) near South Bass Island. The story was dictated to, and transcribed by, Attie Davis - a granddaughter who lived in Berlin Heights. And while it is somewhat convoluted it is nonetheless comprehensible (PJ 3-03 series).
In April of 1818 Frederick died. In January the following year she married George Austin. George was one of eight children born to Captain William and Mrs. Austin. Captain Austin was the first or second man to settle along the shores of the lake in Vermilion, and his wife was the first white woman to settle in the agrestic region. Charlotte and George had 7 children.
After George passed (1826) Charlotte went to live with her
daughter Eunice who had married Sylvester A. Pelton on December 21, 1828. They eventually lived in a big home on Huron Street near Lake Erie. That home is now the residence of Vermilionites Jim and Cathy Weber.
If Charlotte is not interesting enough more than a few of her relatives certainly are. Her granddaughter, Anna Maria, married William Goodell son of Jotham Goodell and sister of Phoebe Judson and journeyed west to Washington State. Her youngest daughter, Elizabeth "Libby" (b. 1826) traveled west in 1854 with Anna Maria where she married another Vermilion native, Captain Henry Roeder, in Whatcom County, Washington.
When Anna Maria's husband, William Goodell, was killed in 1863 she returned with her children to Vermilion to tend to the needs of her ageing parents and grandmother Charlotte. Those she left behind are, today, widely celebrated pioneers of the Oregon Territory that later became Washington State.
On September 11, 1877 Charlotte Tuttle Sturges Austin turned away from this life and took her place in history and eternity. And if ever there were someone who one would call the "Mother of Vermilion/Oulanie Thepy " it would most certainly be someone such as she.
Ref: A Pioneer's Search For An Ideal Home; Phoebe Goodell Judson; University of Nebraska Press (1984); The Descendants of William and Elizabeth Tuttle; George F. Tuttle; Tuttle and Company (1883); Blockhouses and Military Posts of The Firelands; Cherry (1934); Special Thanks to Robert D. Smith, St. Louis, MO
Written on 8/13/06
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