Deserted Camp Historical Marker and Starbucktown

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Deserted Camp

Situated here on the high banks of Todd’s Fork stream, Deserted Camp received its name from the desertion of a French soldier. He abandoned U.S. General Benjamin Logan’s small military encampment to warn members of the Shawnee peoples of the army’s imminent attack. In the wake of the soldier’s desertion, General Logan and his small militia proceeded to raid and massacre noncombatant Shawnee villages along the Mad River valley. Among the soldiers in Logan’s small army were Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton and Col. Robert Patterson.

This type of violence intensified during the Northwest Indian Wars of 1786 as indigenous peoples in the region, such as the Shawnee, resisted settler intrusion into their territories. In 1795, after the Battle of the Fallen Timbers, the United States signed the Treaty of Greenville with several Native American peoples, opening up southwest Ohio for white settlement, while displacing many Native Americans to the North.

Later, Deserted Camp became the corner point of five military surveys. Although the Greenville Treaty was intended to create a line of separation between colonial and indigenous lands, settler encroachment on Native American territories beyond the established Greenville boundary inevitably resulted in further conflict and the forced removal of Native American peoples further to the west throughout the 19th century.

Starbucktown

Adjacent to Deserted Camp, Starbucktown was founded by the Quaker Starbuck family in the decades between the 1795 Greenville Treaty and the 1830 Native American Removal Act. The Starbucks were some of the founders of Nantucket Island in the colony of Massachusetts in 1659, where they became Quakers and were involved in the whaling industry. During the Revolutionary War, the British blockaded Nantucket and caused much damage to the ships and the people there, so many left. Following colonial independence, they migrated to North Carolina.

However, like many Quakers who migrated to the South, the Starbucks soon found that they were unable to reconcile their anti-slavery convictions with the pervasive system of slavery there. So they moved again, from the Carolinas and Tennessee to the Northwest Territory, settling in Ohio and Indiana. Once here, they began the arduous task of clearing the hardwood deciduous woodlands for crops — one acre at a time. Starbucktown would become a small rural village along Todd’s Fork that served the communities of early 19th century Quaker farmers and other settlers new to the area.