In 1836, Peter Goll, Catherine Marguerite Goll, and their son Peter Jr. arrived in German Township, Fulton County, from Grand-Charmont, France. The following year Peter Goll bought 80 acres along the Anse des Feves, or Bean Creek, from the General Land Office in Lima, Ohio. The creek was later renamed the Tiffin River for Edward Tiffin, surveyor general, senator, and Ohio's first governor. The Goll farm eventually grew to more than 600 acres. In 1966, Florence Louys, Peter Goll's great-granddaughter, sold her share to the State of Ohio, and in 1974 the land became Goll Woods State Nature Preserve. A forested remnant of the Great Black Swamp, Goll Woods was also named a National Natural Landmark in 1974, and the Goll homestead was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005. Two deputy U.S. General Land Office surveyors had traversed Goll Woods earlier: Benjamin Hough in 1815 and Captain James Riley in 1821. Hough established the Michigan Meridian in 1815 and held county and state offices in Ohio. Riley's career was far more turbulent. He captained the merchant ship Commerce, which wrecked off the Saharan coast in 1815, and he and his crew were enslaved for four months until British diplomat William Willshire ransomed them. In 1817 Riley published a widely known account of his time in North Africa, and in 1819 Surveyor General Edward Tiffin appointed him a surveyor. After moving to northwest Ohio, Riley named the village he founded in 1822, Willshire, for the man who had rescued him. He returned to New York in 1826 and went back to sea, where he died. By 1860 his book had gone through more than twenty editions, and Abraham Lincoln said it had deeply influenced him.