Reese, agent of the Population Land company, to lay out the town of Erie, in 1796. In the year 1800 he went south, where he married Miss Mary West of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, at Charlton Creek, near Canonsburgh, Washington county, Pennsylvania, and returned with his bride through the unbroken wilderness on horseback to Erie. He immediately engaged in the transportation business on the lakes, in command and as part owner of the schooner Harlequin. In 1803 he sailed the schooner Good Intent; in 1804, the schooner Wilkinson, and in 1805 and after the schooner Ranger. In 1809, in company with Rufus S. Reed, esq., he purchased of Alexander McIntosh of Moy, Canada, the schooner Charlotte, and refitting her into a two topsail schooner, changed her name to the Salina, in honor of the great carrying trade she was designed to

enter.

The Salina, with Captain Dobbins in command, was actively engaged in transporting salt from Schlosser, at the head of the Niagara portage on the upper Niagara river, to Dunkirk, Erie, Cleveland, Sandusky and other upper lake ports for distribution in the south, by wagon portage to the rivers, and bringing return cargoes of skins, furs, etc., for the Hudson Bay and Northwest Fur companies, in transit for an eastern market. In 1812, while lying at anchor at Mackinaw, loaded with furs valued at over two hundred thousand dollars, and having Rufus S. Reed and William W. Reed of Erie, as passengers on board, the Salina was surprised and captured by a British fleet of gunboats, and the fort on the island surrendered

to a superior force Indians. These acts were vices the Americans in that section had of the declaration of war by Great Britain. The cargo of fur was secured by the captors, and Rufus S. Reed and W. W. Reed, with other paroled prisoners, were put on board the Salina. That vessel and the schooner Mary, ballasted with provision and both despatched as cartels, under the guidance of Captain Dobbins, who was not paroled, for Malden. These vessels, on arrival in the Detroit river, were seized by General Hull, in command of the American forces at Detroit, and at the surrender of Detroit by Hull were included in the surrender and fell again into the hands of the British. Captain Dobbins made his escape, in disguise, to the Canada side of the river during the capitulation, and footing it down to the mouth of the river at Bar point, procured a dug-out canoe, and with a price set upon his head, dead or alive, and the Indians on his trail, paddled out into Lake Erie and headed for the American shore, landing for rest and sustenance on the Middle Sister, Put-inBay and Cunningham islands on his way, and finally reaching Sandusky bay in safety.

From Sandusky he sallied forth on horseback through the wilderness to Cleveland, thence to Erie in an open sail boat. When he reported the disastrous news of the loss of Mackinaw and Detroit to the Commanding General Mead, he immediately despatched him. on horseback as bearer of dispatches to the government at Washington. On ar

rival and delivery of the dispatches to President Madison, Captain Dobbins was admitted to a cabinet meeting, and the grave question of frontier and lake defense and protection was discussed. As a result, Captain Dobbins received a commission as master in the United States navy from President Madison, and was furnished with directions and means to commence the building of a fleet for the defense of the lakes. He returned to Erie, employed all the wood and iron working men he could find, and with his own hands cut the first tree used in the construction of the fleet. After getting the timber supply well under way at Erie, Captain Dobbins repaired to Black Rock in search of a skilled shipwright. At that place he found Ebenezer Crosby, an old ship carpenter, whom he employed under written contract for "twenty shillings and a pint of whisky per day," to take charge of the construction of the vessels at Erie. Returning with Crosby to Erie, he proceeded to lay the keels and got in frame two fine gunboats, Porcupine and Tigress, before the gang of shipbuilders under Noah Brown, from New York, arrived and took charge for the government. Relieved of the construction of the vessels, Captain Dobbins next appeared in company with Lieutenant-Commander Perry, who had arrived and taken command at Erie, on his way to Buffalo and the Niagara river, to take part with General Brown in the seige of Fort George on Lake Ontario. He accompanied Perry to the falls, and returned to Black Rock to defend and protect some merchant ves

sels which were being converted into gunboats at Scajaquada creek, Black Rock. As Fort George fell, Fort Erie was evacuated, and Captain Dobbins was enabled to sail his fleet of converted craft out of the Niagara for Erie, with Commander Perry on board the Caledonia as the flag ship, on the passage up, barely escaping capture by the British fleet, which was sighted in the offing. Arriving finally at Erie, the vessels were all gotten safely over the bar, and with the vessels then in building, were prepared for warlike purposes, and finally composed the famed fleet of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry.

Subsequently Captain Dobbins was actively employed in transporting guns, ammunition and supplies for the fleet from Buffalo to Erie, in open boats, and during the winter, in the latter part of December, 1812, he discovered and led an expedition out on the ice. twenty miles, to the centre of the lake, to recover his old schooner, Salina, which had got away from her captors, and, with a valuable load of British supplies, had drifted with the ice down the lake and was frozen in, in the solid mass, some twenty miles from the shore, off Erie. After removing a large quantity of her cargo of "Scotch pork," and other British army supplies, the torch was applied and the Salina disappeared in smoke and water. Captain Dobbins was engaged during the greater part of this winter and following spring in transporting, as best he could over the ice on the frozen lake or along the shore in open boats, the guns and ammunition required for the vessels in