The illumination was seen by a considerable number of persons and the report was heard extensively ... It is suspected that the meteor was seen further north, by a greater number of persons ...
COMMENT: This account was written by Sereno Edwards Dwight (1786-1850), a son of Yale President Timothy Dwight, who was at the time an attorney in New Haven. It was frequently reprinted. In 1817 Dwight was ordained as a Congregationalist Minister, and served as Pastor of Boston’s Park Street Church until 1816. He was for a year Chaplain of the U.S. Senate, and served as President of Hamilton College in Clinton from 1833-1835. He was author, among other works, of a 10 volume life of Jonathan Edwards.
Battle at Fort Meigs
Huron, May 3, 1813. To Erastus Granger, Esq. Dear Sir, I left Lower Sandusky [Ohio] about 8 o’clock this morning. The British have attacked Gen. [William Henry] Harrison at the Miami [Maumee] Rapids; the attack commenced on Thursday [April 29], about the middle of the day and was continued when I left Sandusky.
Mr. Titus Hayes went from Sandusky on Thursday, for Miami, but could not get through; he got on Friday morning within a quarter of a mile of the Fort [Fort Meigs]; he thinks it is completely invested; there was a continual discharge of cannon and small arms.
We know not the force on either side; we hope Harrison will hold out, but are not without fears of a defeat. It is the opinion of many that the British have drawn all their forces from below, for this attack.
Yours, in haste. CALVIN PEASE.
COMMENT: Gen. Harrison did hold out against a major attack by British troops and their Indian allies. Fort Meigs was constructed in February 1813, the largest wooden walled fortification in North America. Calvin Pease (1776-1839) was an Ohio judge and state senator. Gov. Meigs of Ohio made him responsible for maintaining lines of communication between the Forts in Ohio, and he organized the riders that carried dispatches for General Harrison during the siege of Fort Meigs in May 1813. He was writing to Erastus Granger (1765-1826), a judge in Buffalo.