In 1825, Brother Nathan moved his family to Fort Defiance.
We were still without religious services, and a house of worship, and Brother Nathan applied to the Ohio Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and in 1827 Rev. Elias Partee was sent to Fort
Defiance Mission. Rev. Partee soon gathered the men together with their axes and teams, logs were cut, hewed and hauled to a lot presented by the proprietors of the town plat, and a church erected.
It was a simple structure--walls, windows, roof and floor--but no chimney. In this we worshiped when the weather was warm; when cold we held our meeting in private houses. When the brick count house was built, our meeting were held there, our society having outgrown the small accommodation of its pioneer life.
My father bought land on the opposite side of the Augaize River, one mile from Defiance, improved it and moved his family there. My brother Nathan settled five miles up the Auglaize; brother Elias, three; brother Robert on the same stream near where Charloe now stands, and brother James on the Maumee, ten miles above Fort Defiance.
Brother Nathan sowed wheat largely, and when his grain was cut (they used sickles), he proposed to his harvesters to pay them an extra shilling a day instead of providing (as had been the custom) with whisky, as he was a man temperance principles. Of the twenty men, only one preferred the whisky, and he was dismissed.
This was the first public movement towards temperance in our region.
Of my father's family, but two remain--my brother Robert and myself. My sister Mary married Mr. Thomas Warren, of Defiance, and died in a little less than a year afterward. I married Rev. James B Austin, of the Ohio Conference of the Methodist Church; at the time of his death; in 1857, he was a member of the Cincinnati Conference. Brother John died while a young man and single.
Mrs. Ruth (Shirley) Austin 1883
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