Family lore has it that William Templeton (II) was born along with our Nation, in 1776. Lewistown, Pennsylvania, was a wild and woolly place at the time -- maybe not so much a place as an "idea", then -- and the sturdy Scots-Irish that were settled along the Juniata River were being heavily recruited for militia rifle companies in the nascent nation's Continental Line and, perhaps more compelingly, by their local militia leaders. William's father joined his neighbors as a Ranger in what is now Huntingdon County's Militia and left his wife, Allie, to handle the homestead and to provide caring hands for his newborn son through the Fall of 1776.

He may have been christened "William D. Templeton," inasmuch as his son enumerated himself as "William D. Templeton, Jr." in Trumbull County, Ohio's 1870 census. What we know of William are only sketchy references to a story that looks westward toward the frontier. The bare facts and Family stories point to a man that was comfortable being on his own in the wilderness, that sought opportunity with an entrepreneur's spirit, but with an eye toward an assured return -- he worked for government contractors delivering mail while he cleared the virgin woodlands of the newly-opened Northwest Territory. General "Mad Anthony" Wayne's defeat of the confederated tribes and their French trapper and British Army supporters at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in August, 1794, reverberated in Pennsylvania. At the time, the settlers of western Pennsylvania were in open rebellion against the United States with a list of grievances including a ruinous tax on whiskey, an apparent inability or willingness of the Government to protect them from Indian raids, and Britain's maintenance of military trading posts in the Northwest Territory from which they were believed to incite the Indians. The rout of the Indians and general destruction of their crops that followed the Battle of Fallen Timbers rendered the Indian tribes destitute. They ceded their lands to the U.S. in the Treaty of Greenville, August of 1795, opening the Ohio Valley to American settlers.

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William Templeton, Jr., followed his fortunes west from his birthplace, out of Fort Pitt and into the forest of north east Ohio as a young man of nineteen. The young pioneer would have searched out a spot that could offer whatever security that terrain and distance from possible hostile natives may provide, and have the requisite water and arable land to promise a good return. An important consideration may have been a natural salt lick on the property, since he was engaged in the commercial production of salt for a period before settling down to farming for his living. William laid claim to a tract where Austintown now lies, and built a log cabin on it. "A true pioneer, he was the first resident of Austintown, Mahoning County, Ohio," wrote his grandson, George Bostwick Templeton, saying that he had found his claim as early as 1795.

The Ohio Gazeteer doesn't list Austintown Township — located 12 miles southeast of Warren and sporting a population of 1,242 a full thirty-two years later — until 1817. Two years after clearing his first farmstead from of the woods, William sold the property and bought nearby land. "In this way, he cleared and developed three or four farms," according to Judge G. B. Templeton.

Before he took a wife, William Templeton contracted to carry the U.S. postal route from Pittsburgh to the Western Reserve Area of the Connecticut Land Company in Warren, Ohio. He started carrying this route in 1798, before local historians of the Post Office have records of commercial mail coming to that area of the frontier. "He carried the first mail between Warren and Pittsburg (sic) when there was but one house in Warren. He helped erect a log hut for a post office. There were at that time about four houses in Youngstown," writes Belle (Templeton) Hine of her grandfather. With the characteristic understatement of his era, Judge Templeton later wrote in a newspaper article, "At that time there was not a bridge between those two points (Pittsburgh and Warren) and he frequently experienced many difficulties in going over the route."

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In 1805, William Templeton married Elizabeth Hampson, a girl that was born in New Jersey. She was the daughter of Michael Hampson and Jane (Ayers) Hampson, one of the earliest families to settle the Northwest Territories. He had probably met her along the way of acquainting himself with new neighbors that were taking advantage of land claims offered to former Revolutionary War veterans in "land as compensation", in-kind payment for their earlier service. Whether it was William, the son, or his Revolution veteran father that established the first Templeton farm near Austintown, we're not certain. We haven't documented the first Ohio claim, so whether it was a claim based on the account of his father's Revolutionary War service, or on his own hasn't been established by us, yet. But, this is where the elder William Templeton died and was buried. William and Elizabeth worked at clearing land and establishing their farm for a while before their first son, Robert, was born in 1808. Two years later, William D., Junior, was born and soon after, Jane Emmeline followed. However, unsettling raids by the Shawnee Chief Tecumseh and his confederated tribes, and rising tensions with the British military muscling in on the verdant hunting grounds of the western Great Lakes interrupted William and Elizabeth's plans for adding to their family.

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It is ironic that while the Scots-Irish that had been so recently cowed into submission by the Federal Government with George Washington's intercession in the "Whiskey Rebellion" pressed on west to clear small farmsteads out the Ohio Valley forests and pushed over the Cumberland Gap into unmapped Kentucky and Tennessee Indian hunting grounds, it was a "Great Power" European War that created opportunities on the American frontier. The President James Madison and his Secretary of State, James Monroe, saw a chance to wrest control of Canada and the rich trapping grounds of the Great Lakes region from English control while Britain was distracted by its war with Napoleon in Europe. But tensions between American settlers and the Indians (and their British provocateurs) had been growing for awhile. By the time Congress declared war between the United States and Great Britain on June 1, 1812, the men of the Northwest Territories had, for two months, already been rallied into three regiments of Militia by Governor Return J. Meigs.A

The first muster of Ohio militia under colonels McArthur, Cass and Findlay were just undisciplined enough, with parochial and personal objectives taking precedence over concern for Hull's campaign to occupy Detroit, so that many a conscientious man in Ohio did not join the local militia. Those that did join may have deduced that their mustering commanders were "only small-town politicians in uniform," and were certainly aware that their military units "lacked clothing and blankets, weapons and accoutrements were in poor repair, and there was no 'powder fit for us' in the Ohio magazines." What's more, no suppliers had been contracted to provide for their incipient campaign.E

Even among those that continued under those conditions, many volunteers dropped out from the march to Detroit because of the difficulty of traversing the swampy and inhospitable forests that beset the column.After Hull had been routed from Detroit, General William Henry "Tippecanoe" Harrison was given command of the "crusade to recover Detroit." He cobbled together an army of Kentuckians under Winchester, a column of 1,200 Ohio militia and a third force of Virginia and Pennsylvania troops under Brigadier General Leftwick. With a rear guard of Kentucky militia, Harrison directed these elements to converge upon and "take Detroit before winter." And then it rained. For two months it rained. By the end of November, 1812, streams were swollen and much of Ohio was impassable swamp. The subsequent winter's campaign was beset with intemperate weather, inept commanders in the field, uncertain communications with other commands, soldiers lost to short militia enlistments, and failing support of promised reinforcements. H Winchester's ignoble defeat at Frenchtown (and the subsequent massacre of American prisoners by their Indian jailers) froze Harrison's advance. He fell back to encamp on the Maumee River, but with his new Fort Meigs only partly built, his Ohio and Pennsylvania militia's six-month tour of duty ended in February, 1813, these men were glad to go home.

William Templeton enlisted in the military effort of the War of 1812. Just when, and with what unit, we haven't established with certainty. But, the fact that Colonel (and, later, Judge) William Rayen raised the first militia regiment in the Western Reserve in the Trumbull County area, some ultimately serving under Harrison.B Given the fact that one of William's daughters married one James Rayen, we suppose that William was enlisted in Colonel Rayen's Third Regiment, Ohio Militia, though his name does not appear in the only muster list we've found.C [NOTE: a permutation of Rayen's command known as "The Ohio Militia" was sworn into Federal service, and William does not appear on the National Archive roster of that unit.D]

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We believe that William Templeton withstood the hardships of frontier warfare in western Ohio since, in March of 1837, he sold his Austintown properties and took the cash to the northwest-Ohio country that Harrison's intrepid soldiers slogged through, and paid cash for tracts in that frontier, on favorable terms.F If William's "bachelor" move (his wife did not, apparently, follow with him, though perhaps, 3 or 4 sons could have accompanied him) to the un-cleared wastes of Putnam and Allen Counties were not an earnest effort to carve a better living out of the land, to drain swamp and clear fields for productive plantings, they were certainly a profitable speculation on the transaction of clearing a homestead and reselling the developed land to newcomers, much in the manner that he'd enlarged his original Connecticut Company salt-lick claim by way of improving a clearing with a cabin, clearing fields, and reselling to newcomers, back at the turn of the Century.Whatever his motives, William did return to Trumbull County in October of the same year,, and there, with a few men, founded the community and raise the buildings that, through his efforts along with his neighbors, became Jackson Township, (Old) Trumbull County, Ohio.G

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William's wife, Elizabeth, died August 21st, 1841, in Jackson Township, not long after her husband's return from the West. William and his still-at-home children stayed at the Jackson home until 1847, whereupon they "broke up housekeeping and left." William, the father, lived with his sons John, and Michael's family, for some time after, then moved in with his second son, William D. Junior. He died there, March 6, 1856.

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NOTES:

1. Historical Significance of Fallen Timbers, "Fallen Timbers Officer Roster" by T.F. Beauvais, http://www.heidelberg.edu/FallenTimbers/FTroster/significance.html, Archeological Project of Heidelberg College, 2002.
2. Encyclopedia of American History (Seventh Edition), Richard B. Morris and Jeffery B. Morris, eds. HarperCollins, New York, 1996, p. 573.
3. 00XX RMT, email from Richard Parker.
4. 0014 FHT-GLT Papers, Letter from Frank Harold Templeton to Oma Loverne Templeton: ". . . article is believed to be an item written for a newspaper by 'Judge' George Bostwick Templeton."
5. 00XX RMT, email from Richard Parker, editor of Ohio Postal History Journal É
6. 0015 FHT-GLT Papers, Letter from Belle (Templeton) Hines recording interview with Michael Templeton, April, 1906.
7. 0014 FHT-GLT Papers, op. cit..
8. "Abstract of Graves of Revolutionary Patriots", Daughters of the American Revolution, 19__.
9. 0016 FHT-GLT Papers; "...notes and clippings in possession of Fanna B. Wright and Gertrude Inez Streator. June 23, 1944."
10. 0015 FHT-GLT Papers, Belle (Templeton) Hines, ibid.
11. 0015 FHT-GLT Papers, ibid. A. Eltling, John R., Amateurs, to Arms! - A Military History of the War of 1812, Da Capo Press, New York, NY, 1995, p. 25.
A.
B. See"Biography -- Judge William Rayen," on this site and "Youngstown City Schools", www.youngstown.k12.oh.us/rayen/judgerayen.html -- 2002/11/24
C. Historical Society, History of Trumbull and Mahoning Counties, Ohio, Vol I., H.Z. Williams & Bro., Cleveland, 1882. SEE ALSO: Ohio History Society, "Roster of Ohio Soldiers in War of 1812", searchable database, http://www.ohiohistory.org/onlinedoc/war1812/roster/1812/txt/page0069.txt, 2002.11.26.00:36
D. "Patrick" of Rootsweb Warr of 1812-L email, Mon, 21 Jul 2003 22:40, regarding search of Ancestry.com CD Resource:

"There are no Templetons in the Ohio militia. I checked the entire rooster (580,000+) for all the militias and there is only one Templeton, a Joseph Templeton in the Miss. militia. (...) Might keep in mind that if the regiment he may have served in was not sworn into the Federal service then the records would be at the state level archives. Rayen's unit was a federally sworn unit. I notice that you call it the THIRD. In the records it listed only as Rayen's Ohio Militia with no numerical designation."

E. Eltling, op. cit. p. 25.
F. [See "Land Patent" record.]
G. 0014 FHT-GLT Papers, Templeton, George Bostwick, "Family History", ca, 18??; [also:] Hine, Belle T., 0015 FHT-GLT Papers, " A short history of the Templeton family", April 1906. [See "Land Patents," Bureau of Land Management archives, www.glorecords.blm.gov -- 2003/7/23.
H. Eltling, op. cit. p. 55-66.