A big event from 250 years ago will start the Pickaway County commemoration of “America 250” this weekend. The 1774 Treaty of Camp Charlotte will be marked by a ceremony and presentations Saturday, and a bus tour Sunday.

The Camp Charlotte Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution are hosting Saturday’s event at Ohio Christian University (northwest of Circleville) starting at 1pm October 12th. A banquet (already full) will be that evening, then a bus tour will leave OCU to acquaint riders with key sites of the events of 250 years ago.

The treaty ended frontier warfare that Mingo Chief Logan started after his family was massacred by unscrupulous frontiersmen that spring. It culminated in “Lord Dunmore’s War” where Virginia frontier troops fought the Shawnee at Point Pleasant, West Virginia, while attempting to meet colonial governor Dunmore as he was marching Pennsylvania troops to meet at the center of the Shawnee nation on the Pickaway Plains.

The effort succeeded in quelling the Shawnee, and the peace treaty ended most frontier warfare for several years. It may have allowed the colonists to focus on their growing rebellion with their mother country.

Kevin Driesbach, president of the Pickaway County Sons of the American Revolution, explained the weekend events to me, and you can hear him in his own words. He said one of the speakers Saturday is a woman from California who is descended from Chief Cornstalk of the Shawnee, who will speak from her ancestor’s perspective.

Chief Logan did not want to sign the upcoming peace treaty, so instead walk away from the negotiations and explained himself under a huge elm tree nearby. “Logan’s Lament” was recorded and made famous, and so was the Logan Elm.

Driesbach said this will be a huge educational event, with presentations, ceremonies, interpreters in period garb, and authentic reproductions – including firearms made from wood from the Logan Elm that died in the 1970s.

He said the bus tour leaves Ohio Christian University at 9am Sunday, and if the 55 seats on it are not enough, it will make another run past landmarks from 250 years ago.

Dunmore’s “Camp Charlotte” is a few miles east of Circleville, with a marker by the side of State Route 56. Driesbach said it’s unclear which Charlotte it’s named after: the queen of England, or Dunmore’s wife.

Driesbach said the Pickaway Plains Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution are working with the Camp Charlotte Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, and both will use this event to start celebrating the 150th anniversary of the American Revolution in Pickaway County.

Learn more:

Camp Charlotte Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution (Facebook page).
Ohio Historical Marker on the “Treaty of Camp Charlotte” on “Clio: Your Guide to History.”
Chief Logan, on Wikipedia.
An early transcript of Logan’s Lament in the National Archives.
Logan Elm State Memorial Park, owned by Ohio History Connection and managed locally by the Pickaway County Park District.

Find more in the article on the Scioto Post, including the video interview.

Kevin Coleman covers local government and culture for the Scioto Post and iHeart Media Southern Ohio. For stories or questions, contact Kevin Coleman or the iHeart Southern Ohio Newsroom.

Beth Christy