COLD SPRING — When auditors asked Campbell County Public Library Director Mike Doellman to bring out all the old books for an examination last year, he had no idea he would uncover pieces of the county's history.

        Resting in a cardboard storage box was a personal ledger, the pages filled in with quill and ink, by Gen. James Taylor, one of the founders of Newport and Campbell County.

Michael Doellman, director of the Campbell County Public Library, found this 1795 map in storage at the Newport branch. (Patrick Reddy photo) | ZOOM |

        Rolled up on a shelf at the Newport branch library at Fourth and Monmouth streets were original maps dating to 1795, one showing the original plats for Newport and two others of a portion of Ohio along the Scioto River designated as part of the 1795 Treaty of Greenville.

        “I had to look at them a couple of times to convince myself that they were originals,” Mr. Doellman said of the various documents and maps. “I was amazed that they were just sitting around.”

        He was unable to find any information as to where the historic documents came from or how long they had been gathering dust at the library. He did make immediate plans to restore and display them.

        Gen. Taylor's ledger, which documents various transactions by the famous and very rich general from 1801 through 1821, is now kept at the Archives of the Steely Library at Northern Kentucky University.

        It includes transactions involving whiskey, land, crops, goodsand slaves.

        There are several notations where Gen. Taylor sold slaves at auction in Northern Kentucky during and after the War of 1812.

        “It was sad to look at those notations and realize it was the sale of a human being. But it's a part of our history here,” said Mr. Doellman, who came to the Campbell County libraries as director in late 1999.

        One map of Newport, an original 1794 plat, is in bad shape, with some location names barely legible while others, such as the identification of the Licking and Ohio rivers, are plain.

        Another Newport map, dated 1796, is obviously a copy but still quite old and bears the signature of Gen. Taylor.

        Among the streets outlined with the different plots and their owners just above the Ohio River are Taylor and Belle Vue streets. Belle Vue Street would become part of Ky. 8, which runs through Newport, Bellevue and Dayton.

        Two larger maps, both originals, are of an area in eastern Ohio that is identified as “1795 Virginia Military Land, Ohio north of the Treaty of Greenville line.”

        No cities are listed, but the Scioto and Little Scioto rivers are identified.

        The Treaty of Greenville was a treaty between the United States and 12 American Indian tribes — the Wyandots, Delawares, Shawnees, Ottawas, Chippewas, Pattawatimas, Miamis, Eel Rivers, Weas, Kickapoos, Piankeshaws and Kaskaskias.

        It covered an area north of the Ohio River all the way to Lake Erie, south into Kentucky and west into Indiana. The tribes agreed to cede to the U.S. several pieces of land, including one identified as “one piece of land, six miles square, at the mouth of the Chikago river, emptying into the southwest end of Lake Michigan, where a fort formerly stood.” That's now part of the city of Chicago.

        The tribes also ceded the post of Detroit and all the land around Detroit “of which the Indian title has been extinguished by gifts or grants to the French and English governments ...”

        Mr. Doellman said he hopes to contact someone who can begin the restoration of the maps and preservation work on the ledgers so they can be displayed at the Cold Spring library branch or possibly at the new Newport branch to be built on Sixth Street across from Newport High School.

        Also found in the boxes:

        • A book written about the Ohio River flood of 1883.

        • A program from the 1902 dedication of the Newport library.

        • A catalog of books held by the library in 1901.

        • A ledger with the library fund accounts, including the $25,000 given to the Newport library by Andrew Carnegie to build the library building that still stands at Fourth and Monmouth streets.

        The Newport library became part of the Campbell County Public Library district in 1978.
       

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