Massacre at Beaver Hat Town
Beaver Hat Town, now covered by the area from Schellin Park to the Wooster Cemetery, is reportedly the sight of one of the grisliest events in Wooster’s history. As local historians tell it, a band of 16 Sandusky Indians approached the Raccoon Creek settlement, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and befriended its residents.1 Overnight, it is said that the indigenous people attacked the town from within, burning several houses and killing five settlers in the process.2 In response, Captain George Wilkes led a group of 30 white men to pursue the Native Americans. Upon reaching the indigenous settlement in the apple chauquecake (Beaver Hat Town), the men massacred the natives in the area. The legend goes that Wilkes, having been kidnapped by Native Americans at a young age, knew the language of the area. Using this to beckon an absent fishing indigenous person back to the encampment, the group succeeded in exacting its revenge against the alleged Sandusky perpetrators.
1 Lindsey Wilger Williams, Old Paths in the New Purchase(Wooster, OH: Atkinson’s Printing, Inc., 1983).
2 Ben Douglass, History of Wayne County, Ohio (Indianapolis, IN: B. F. Bowen & Company, 1910).