Sea captain, surveyor and Ohio's last frontiersman James Riley will be travelling throught he Time Machine to visit the Bluffton Senior Center on Friday, April 21. Captain Riley will arrive at 1:00 p.m. and begin his presentation at 1:30. He needs to be back in The Time Machine by 4:00 p.m. or he will morph to become Darrell Groman.
As a surprise to all, Captain Riley will be accompanied by another Time Machine traveler, Henry Wing. Mr. Wing is a resident of rural Putnam County and is a member of Riley's surveying company. Mr. Wing will show and discuss his extensive collection of surveying instruments to those who are interested, before he morphs to become Keith Sommer.
Captain Riley will talk about the little-known facts about his life as a sea captain, as a local surveyor, about Riley Creek and how the creek was named. As a sea captain, he and his crewmates were shipwrecked off the coast of West Africa in August 1815, were held captive as slaves of Arab owners on the Sahara Desert for 36 days, were bought out of slavery by British Consulate Officer William Willshire and was author of the book "Riley's Narratives" in 1817.
Riley's best-selling book gave an account of his days on the Sahara Desert and was one of the most important books about slavery during the Antebellum period. As a teenager, Abraham Lincoln considered "Riley's Narratives" to have been one of his six most-significant books.
In 1819, Captain Riley was appointed as a deputy surveyor by the Surveyor General of the Northwest Territories, Edward Tiffin, to lead a surveying company for the newly-opened lands of NW Ohio. Captain Riley platted the village of Willshire in 1822, was elected as a Representative to the Ohio State House and had returned to the sea as a merchant ship captain, when he died at sea.
"Those who live upstream Riley Creek don't know what has been going on downstream Riley Creek. And, those who live downstream Riley Creek don't know what has been going on upstream Riley Creek." Captain Riley will discuss little-known aspects about the 26 miles of Big Riley and Little Riley Creeks: from Riley Creek Baptist Church in Orange Township Hancock County, past Big Rock, past Joseph DeFord's cabin and grist mill, through Shannon and Bluffton, the rich farmlands of the old German Settlement, past Thomas Gray's cabin, Rileyville and the Shumacher Homestead in Richland Township of Allen County, on past John Stout's grist mill, through Columbia, Pendleton, Pandora, Riley Township Putnam County and downstream past Riley Creek United Methodist Church as it merges with the Blanchard River in Ottawa Township Putnam County.
Captain Riley's friends, Darrell Groman and Keith Sommer, are local historians and members of the newly-established Bluffton Historical Society. Groman has resided upstream Riley Creek in Bluffton since 1956 and has been an optometrist downstream Riley Creek in Pandora since 1986. Sommer is a life-long resident on a farm in rural Putnam County.
