HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.

PRELIMINAKY HISTORY.

America was discovered by Columbus in 1492. Eiforts were early made by Spain, France, and England to establisli colonies in iSforth America. More, however, than a century elapsed before many permanent settlements were made. In 1568, the Spaniards established a small colony in Florida. The French, in 1605, planted a small colony in Kova Scotia, and in 1608 founded the city of Quebec. In 1607, the English made a settlement at Jamestown in Virginia, i^ew York was settled by the Dutch in 1614. In 1620, the Pilgrim Fathers landed on Plymouth Pock, and commenced the settlement of New England.

The tract of country called JSTew England, granted in 1620 by James I., king of England, to the Plymouth Company, extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean. This grant was substantially confirmed by William and Mary, in 1691, by a second charter specifying the territory granted as lying between 42 deg. 5 min. and 44 deg. 15 min. north latitude. Previously, however, to the latter grant, Charles I. [1663] granted to the duke of York and Albany the province of New Y^ork extending to tlie Canada line; its extent westward was not definitely stated. Under these conflicting grants, disputes arose between some of the states as to the extent of their respective territorial rights and jurisdiction. This controversy was not settled until several years after the Pe^t)lution.

The French colonists extended their settlements along the shores of the St. Lawrence and the great lakes westward as far as to Lake Superior, and established trading posts at



various places, and missionary stations among several tribes of Indians. And for the protection of the fur trade, small stockade forts were erected. France also, on discoveries by exploring parties of her subjects, based a claim to all the country lying between Kew Mexico and Canada in the valleys of the Mississippi and its tributaries, on both sides of that river.

Protestant England and Catholic France were rivals in acquiring and colonizing territory, establishing trade with the Indians, and propagating among them their respective systems of religion. One of the reasons assigned by Cotton Mather in his Ecclesiastical History of Sew England, for planting British colonies in this country was, that it would be a service unto the church of great consequence to carry the gospel into those parts of the world, and raise a bulwark against the kingdom of Anti-Christ which the Jesuits labor to rear up in all parts of the world."

France, in the prosecution of her designs, earW made settlements and established trading posts, between the Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico ; one of which was Post Vincennes, in the western border of the present state of Indiana. ...