almost common group. Amid that pure association, Hannah Simpson was trained in the quiet sincerity and gentle simplicity that were most lovable among the characteristics of her famous son.

Samuel Ely came in 1805 to the mouth of Clover nearby, where his house sheltered sixteen children ; but Jonas Burnet, his neighbor, with nine children, did not come till seven years later. Jesse Justice, who joined with the Simpson farm on the north in 18o6; but the lands to the southeast were taken still earlier by George Swing, whence a long line of teachers, divines and both State and National judges. In the same survey—Walters', No. 926, of 2,000 acres—lived John S. and Susan Sheldon Johnson, the parents of my house and classmate, William C. Johnson, a past commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, having retired as such in September, 1899, with the highest honor that can be attained by a soldier of the Union. While but a young lieutenant in the Union Army, his after success in civil life proved him a proper person to be the third born in Clermont to hold the title of commander-in-chief with Generals Grant and Corbin. There is an inspiration in the success of those "country boys of Clermont" that should be held in special view by the youth of the region made notable by their effort.

At the Ohio Wesleyan University in the Clermont student group of four beginning in 186o, of which' I was the careless Gallio, the first to reach the goal of life was the noble Captain William H. Ulrey, mentioned on a previous page as a grandson of the pioneer, Jacob Ulrey, whose family worshiped at Old Bethel with the ancestors of commander-in-chief William C. Johnson, another of the four. Still another was James W. Swing, a descendant of the pioneer George Swing, who also worshiped there. After service in the Union Army, James W. Swing went to the Pacific coast, where his gifts of speech and song gained him much note in evangelic work. Another settler on the Walters' Survey was 'John Blair, whose family intermarried with David White's. The tract settled by Daniel Teegarden, 'in I800, was occupied in 1813 by Captain Andrew Pinkham, from Nantucket, Massachusetts. Okey Vanosdol and Levi Tingley, both soldiers of the Revolution, formed a part of the congregation, at "Old Bethel," although they lived

on Poplar. In fact, the people gathered there from miles around and included Methodist families from both Williamsburg and Bethel.

The influence of that little country church starting with the enthusiasm of Rev. John Collins is typical of what was happening at various places in the county, only, that the results have become better known through the shinning success of the Grant-Simpson family. Others can be traced through much satisfaction. From that little congregation George P. Jenkins, a grandson of John Jenkins, the pioneer, entered the ministry and became a noted college president, and his son, Oliver, is a leading professor in the Stanford Univercity, the wealthiest many times over of all the educational institutions cf America. The example of the first to heed the persuasion of Collins was felt about Tuckerton, in New Jersey, for a generation, as is proved by the coming of the Petersons, the Johnsons, the Beebees, the Homans and other relatives and former neighbors, until lands farther west gained attention.

It is idle for those who would dispute concerning spiritual motives to decry the influence of the pulpit in promoting the early settlements. The theme of spiritual devotion runs all through the story of America from the discovery to the latest missionary appeal. Whether such zeal has conformed to the highest ideals or been soiled by paltry purpose, depends upon whether the questioning mind has been trained to doubt or belief. "Without an opposing bias, the social instinct trusts in hope ; and so the call of Faith to come to western wilds reached many willing cars. And when they had come to the promised land, a church was a rational, as well as a pious, source of satisfaction.

The first attempt at civilization in Ohio was the Moravian missionary effort on the Tuscarawas. The second was made at Marietta, by soldiers of the Revolution, who largely followed the Congregational methods of Massachusetts. The next at Columbia, which was the second- all white attempt in the State, was made by an almost purely Baptist band. "Denhamstown," more religious than commercial in its nature, was a Baptist venture, and must be regarded as the introduction of Christianity into Clermont. The enterprise of Francis McCormick, James Sargent, Hatton Simmons, Philip Gatch, and

The organization of the Baptist church at Bethel, in 1799, was followed in the Witham Settlement by the formation, on September 2, 1802, of a society known as the Ten Mile Baptist church. The membership included many of the pioneers for miles around. The Rev. William Robb and Rev. Maurice Witham were the preachers and the families of Ridley, Bennett, John, Reeves, Prickett, Donham, Lindsey, Layock, Ferguson, Long, Gray, Gilman, McCord and Behymer—all of long continuance—furnished the members, of whom some -were east of Twelve Mile, who in later times formed another society that eventually found a home in New Richmond, while the parent church became fixed in Amelia. While William Robb was promoting the Baptist faith, Alexander Robb having married Barbara Light came, in 1804, from near Pittsburgh, to live north of what was to be New Richmond. His son, James, married Catharine, a daughter of Christian and Catharine Teegarden Husong, who were settled on the East Fork in Batavia township about 1804. The third son among the six children of James and Catharine was Charles Robb, whose literary talent has won a note that deserves lasting memory. His life began January 5, 1826, and went the way of a country boy, through a common district school, until he was old and able enough to be a teacher, where he had been a pupil. He married early with a daughter of the neighboring pioneer Fergusons. Under chance, he was a farmer and, in love with nature, he followed the plough to the end of the furrow. Taught by his own effort he gained the reputation of an earnest and thorough school master. When but twenty-two years old he joined with the progressive spirit that organized the Clermont County Teacher's Institute, of which he was chosen the first secretary. When but thirty-one years old, he was nominated by the then young Republican party as State Senator from Brown and Clermont. Living on the border, he felt that duty called him to cross the river and set an example by enlisting with the First regiment of Kentucky Union volunteers, of which he was appointed commissary sergeant—a course that was patriotic, but not favorable to promotion. After over three years' service, he came back to his farm. Meanwhile, guided by inborn aspirations, he mastered

a fine, pure, graceful command of English expression, and became known as a pleasing speaker and a charming writer of elegant verse.

Long before the time of written speech, bards sang valorous hymns before the waiting battle lines, and lulled leisure with aesthetic song. Thus, as n other climes and ages, when the rude toil of the pioneers had filled their fields with plenty, the pipes of Pan began to please and the dawn of American poetry reached its fairest glow. But more recently, the "ornaments of wreath and rhyme" have had less notice amid "the madding crowd's ignoble strife" for place. Yet none of the time used their talent to better purpose than those who wrote the song that sweetened the life and strenghtened the will of the Nation, when millions fought for the sentiment of a Union and Liberty that should be one and forever. The splendid fame achieved by the masters of American poetry during the middle decades of the. Nineteenth century inspired their fellow citizens with a peculiar pride in what could be done at home. Outside of a closely associated group of Atlantic writers favored by an older culture, a more special training, and a far larger popular sympathy, no other part of the Nation gave finer proof of the poetic principle than the Land of the Blue Limestone and the Home of the Blue Grass. Without seeking farther cause than may be seen along the waving line of hill tops or in the vales flecked by shadows from sailing clouds, it is enough to remember that the land fostered the philanthropy of Thomas Morris and John Rankin ; the piety of William B. Christie, William H. Raper, Randolph Sinks Foster and David Swing; the eloquence of Thomas L. Hamer and Robert Todd Lytle ; the fadeless fame of Grant and the lofty rank of Corbin ; the gentle worth of John M. Pattison; and the educational merit of John Hancock and Frank B. Dyer.

Among these, conspicuous among many whose endeavor has added luster to the Land of Old Clermont, Charles Robb appeared, not as a bard sublime,

Because of the antique authors at hand, and few at that, of which Pope was read the most, his earlier work was too much encumbered by worn-out mythological illusions. But while in the army, absent from books, mingling with multitudes of men, and sharing in heroic actions, his thought gained a closer and natural touch with the life he wished to make a pleasant thing. He inherited what should have made his rural life independent. Like Burns he was quick to learn and wise to know, with a soul that soared fancy's flights, but he lacked in prudence, and much of his fortune went to pay the debts of misplaced confidence in luckless friends. After leaving the army, until his death, on September 20, 1872, seemingly little was written because of broken fortune and spirit. In 191o, after nearly forty forgetting years, his niece, Mrs. M. L. Robb Hutchinson, has most worthily satisfied her own affection and gratified many by collecting and republishing his works in a neat volume of two hundred and two pages, entitled "Robb's Poems."

With no more fitting place within the scope of this work, it is well to include other literary mention in this connection. In the literary development before the Civil War, a congenial company of people in Southern Brown and Clermont formed a most delightful literary society known as "The Poet's Union." The first president was Dr. Thomas W. Gordon, of Georgetown, where he lived from 185o as a noted physician, author, lecturer, editor and scientist of National reputation. With him, Robb was secretary. The "Union" promised much influence. But men were soon called to struggle on the tented field for a much larger Union, and the ladies gave their energy to many local soldier's aid societies.

Ten years before Mary E. Fee attained much attention to her poems, published under the pen name of "Eulalie." In 1854 her choicer writings were published in a volume with the pretty name of "Buds, Blossoms, and Leaves." In the same year she was married to John Shannon, of New Richmond. Shortly after, they went to the then "new country," California, where she entered on a prosperous literary career that soon ended in failing health and death.

hood, Eliza Archard, entered a career of most pronounced success in newspaper work. After achieving National fame with the initials "E. A.," she was married, in 1869, to Dr. George Conner, of Cincinnati. As her reputation as a writer ripened, a prevailing desire to see and hear the gifted woman made her appearance on the platform as a brilliant lecturer on social topics one of the memorable literary events of every circle that secured her presence. In no place was the greeting more appreciated than among the people of her nativity.

While the rustic muse of Brown and Clermont was promoting sweeter thought and kinder manners through the benign influence of the Poet's -Union, the line of Lytle was adorning civic achievement with the polish of letters. Robert Todd Lytle, the second son of Major General William Lytle, born in 1804 in the Lytle home at Williamsburg, and a frequent visitor there after becoming a resident of Cincinnati, was not exceeded in distinction by any man of his associated age. In 1828 he was a member of the State House of Representatives. In 1832 he was a member of Congress. He was a Major General of the Ohio Militia. He was made Surveyor-General of Public Lands by President Jackson, who also appointed him to a position akin to that of Comptroller General of the Currency. As a public man he was popularly called "Orator Bob," because of his graceful eloquence ; and, in party strife, he was considered the match for Thomas Corwin. When twenty-one he was married to Miss Elizabeth Haines of New Jersey, whence their only son, born November 2, 1826, was named William Haines. In social life, General Robert Todd Lytle was honorable, high minded and sincere, spurning trickery as the meanest of faults. He was generous and self-sacrificing. In fact, he had all the virtues except being true to himself, when over-pressed by the all Prevailing custom of his time. When every prospect was otherwise radiant, he was warned, because of failing health, to milder climes, and so died at New Orleans in his thirty-fifth year.

William Haines Lytle accomplished much that was worthy of his brilliant father and nobler grandfather, and also added features peculiar to himself. In the old Cincinnati College, of which his grandfather was a founder, he mastered the course as the youngest and first of his class. In his twenty-second

year he was captain of a company in the Mexican war. In 1852 and '53 he was a member of the State House of Representatives. In 1857 he was the Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor. While defeated, his worth was handsomely appreciated by the successful Governor, Salmon P. Chase, who appointed him Major General of Ohio Militia, thus making him the third of the family to hold that high rank in Ohio. The young man, with an ample fortune to gratify a refined taste for simple elegance, had no desire for extravagant luxury or wasteful habits. Scorning all dishonorable association, he lived in sincerity as a quietly merry gentleman, enjoying a classic library with kindred minds, and loving life with rational pleasure. He practiced poetical composition for his own keen delight in obtaining the choicest expression possible for a pleasing thought. When finished, his poems were regarded with diffidence or as a personal affair in which strangers would not and need not be concerned. He did not write for publication. In "Lines to My Sisters," written in camp, and for them only, the motive of his composition truly appears :

In this wise, to answer the promptings of a vastly sympathetic soul, he wrote his "Antony and Cleopatra," beyond all comparison the finest dirge in the English, or any other language. But for the earnest, almost forcible, intervention of his friend, William W. Fosdick, then "The Poet Laureate of the West," the manuscript would have been the only evidence of its authorship which has been strangely misrepresented as something done on the battlefield. But the fortunate publication of the poem in the Cincinnati Commercial, on Thursday, July 29, 1858, settles all such controversy, although the fact has been strangely ignored.

Three years later, William Haines Lytle, as a volunteer for the Union, was winning the proud name of "The Soldier Poet of America," without whom no history of Old Clermont can be written. For though not a resident of the county, his line

is woven into every page of its origin and his own. No adequate mention of his noble service and glorious death can be made within the limits of this work ; and a justly curious reader must be referred to the Memoir by Professor Venable in the first edition of General Lytle's Poems, as published in 1894. Out of respect to the author's restraint, that was almost a foible, his poems have no commercial circulation. A limited edition vanished into the libraries of appreciating culture.; and even critics of much repute are classing him among the "One Poem Poets." But no one blessed by the wand that gives a love for the beautiful can read the volume without admiration for the exquisite taste that pervades a score of

The departure of the youthful general from his home, glowing with happy memories and generous wealth, to dare the painful perils of many battles unto the supreme hour when his life paid the price for a brief delay that saved thousands in the dire defeat of Chickamauga, forms a story that none can study without wonder at the grandeur of his soul. If the noblest of chivalry and the purest of minstrelsy had wandered from the realms o romance to be mingled in a mortal design, no fitter type for the purpose could have been found than General William Haines Lytle.

Eighteen hundred and ninety-four also witnessed the collection, reprinting and publication of "Tracadie and Other Writings," by Charles James' Harrison, an adopted son of Clermont, from New Brunswick. He soon gained such attention as a thorough select and public school teacher, at Boston, in Stonelick township that he was appointed one of the Board of School Examiners on June 7, 1870, and, on August 8, 1872, he was reappointed for a full term of three years. But in 1874 he was elected Auditor of the county, and, in 1876, he was reelected, after which he returned to teaching until made to retire because of failing sight and hearing. While otherwise capable, he still lives at great age as the "Last Leaf," where

he can neither hear the voice nor see the tears of sympathy. But the metrical tale of Tracadie and other Poems remain

Having digressed from a consideration of the pulpit some pages back for a look at Literature, I will now return to churchly affairs. The settlers on Bullskin and Indian Creek, in a territory now including more than four townships, were first supplied with a Methodist meeting house that stood a mile or more southwest of the site of Felicity, that was called the Hopewell church. That house, made of logs in 1805, was was probably used while the roof lasted, for the Methodists went to a house built at Felicity twenty years later for all denominations—a method then practiced. An exact date has not been found for the building of the Indian Creek meeting house, that was not far from the Wood and Manning "Station," and that was called the Calvary Methodist church, but it was the next after "Hopewell."

While the Methodists and Baptists were possessing points of lasting advantage in the western and central parts, the moral farces of Presbyterianism were advancing on the eastern side of Old Clermont. The minutes of the Transylvania Presbytery of Kentucky mention a meeting held on April I, 1798, at Cabin Creek, near Maysville, at which a settlement of people living on Eagle Creek, Straight Creek and Red Oak Creek, asked to be taken under the care of the Presbytery, and be known as the Congregation of Gilboa. Over this charge the first minister is said to have been the Rev. John Dunlavy, a brother of Judge Francis Dunlavy, the first presiding judge of the first judicial circuit of Ohio. He served several regular appointments in Kentucky during 1797, after which he came over into Ohio, where he preached more terror than consolation. One of the most remarkable features of the frontier were the great "revivals," which, in some degree, seem to advance as the Indian retreated. In considering that singular

phase of "Muscular Christianity," the devout will find a spiritual explanation, while the skeptical will offer something more material ; but both will admit the fitness in the most remarkable of all such manifestations occurring at and about the Cross Creek district, west of Pittsburgh, whence went the fiends that made the horrible massacre at Gnadenhutten. For no, other place in America had greater need of an awful repentance than Cross Creek. From that first large "Experience" of the kind in the Ohio valley, the strange custom, for it quickly grew common, spread southward to the upper Valley of the Cumberland, and then northward into Kentucky and across the Ohio. Wherever announced, the crowds gathered beyond the capacity of any building; and so the meetings were held in the open air. In expectation of great things, the people came from far and prepared to stay long, which caused the gatherings to be called "Camp Meetings." Once begun, the plan was continued after the necessity had passed, and till after it had ceased to be regarded as a means of grace. When in full swing, under the sway of a popular preacher, the scenes at those meetings have little place or practice in the present pale of belief. The multitudes present, and the distance from which they came, have no parallel in the churches now. Under the spell of "conviction," the audience often fell prostrate upon the ground, where many passed into trances that lasted for hours. Others, amounting to hundreds at a time, went into convulsions, called "the jerks." The writings of the preachers show that the name of "jerks" was in frequent and solemn use intended to portray an intense form of piety. Others jumped, rolled or danced with a strength that spurned control. Some sang, shouted or yelled and even barked like dog's. Many received nicknames expressing the peculiar nature of their religious enthusiasm, such as "roller," "jumper," or "shaker."

John Dunlavy was a master of the art of exciting that kind of repentance. He was the regular pastor of the Eagle Creek Presbyterian church, and as such, he held the first full camp meeting in Ohio, beginning Friday, June 5, 18o1, and lasting four days. He is mentioned in the History of the Presbyterian Church in Kentucky, as "One of the most gloomy, reserved and saturnine men that ever lived. His soul seemed to be in harmony with not one lively or social feeling. There was no

pleasure in his company." Yet he obtained such influence with honest, well-meaning, conscientious men, that when he became an acknowledged "Shaker" in 1804, and a leader in that ill-fated movement, over twenty families from Eagle Creek and Red Oak followed him to an almost utter extinction. Among these was the earliest of the pioneers of Brown, Belteshazzer Dragoo and his numerous family, except that the sons of age refused to go, and one of the minors refused to stay among the Shakers.

There was much unrest among numerous Presbyterians who stopped short of Dunlavy's example. Among these, most of the Eagle Creek congregation became "New Lights," who finally chose the name of "Christian church," which is elsewhere sketched in this work. The remnant of the Red Oak church refusing to follow the zealot, Dunlavy, retained the distinction of being the oldest church society in what is Brown county. In 1805 the Rev. James Gilliland became the pastor and filled that relation nearly fifty years, during which he maintained a much noted, "Latin School," that gave a larger chance for many early students in the county. The Presbyterian settlers between White Oak and Indian Creek were so encouraged by occasional services at their homes, that a congregation, with the name of Smyrna, built a log church house in 1808, about one mile east of Felicity. Rev. Robert B. Dobbins served as pastor and also preached to a small congregation at Williamsburg. The Baptists appear to have organized on Upper Straight Creek in the early days of the State, but no exact date has been found. They also made an attempt on the Adams county side as early as 1806, near the site of Aberdeen. Otherwise than noted, the religious services were held at the homes most convenient for the people and the purpose until later than the war of 1812. Even in Bethel, with dedicated ground from the start, the first subscription for a meeting house was not made until 1816. In Williamsburg the only other town, preaching was made in the taverns, in the log court house or in the school house until 181o, when the new stone court house was available for large occasions.

No inquiry about the past has been more fruitless than a search for the earliest schools. An attempt to gain such information nearly a generation ago, while some of the pioneer pu-

pils could yet be seen, had no general and but little local results. A comprehension of the loneliness that did not afford a pupil of school age to the square mile was a form of comparison slowly Obtained. Yet the school enumeration, if one had been-made when the State was formed, would have been less. The immigration of children, was light and schools were not until the need was increased by the native born. Before that a few were taught at home, or waited without. Effort has failed to find a date or place for the first school in the largest settlement that therefore had the densest population. An upper story or loft of the old log court house was reached by an outside stairway, where tradition tells, or told, that some one kept a "quarter" now and then. In or before 1804, a log building about forty feet square, was built on ground now occupied by the Masonic Hall, on Lot No. 4o. The door opened on Main street some fifty feet east of Second street, opposite to a huge fire place, in front of which, the benches were arranged so that the oldest sat next to the walls. That room was the best of its kind until a better came fifteen years later. No account remains of the beginning of the schools at Bethel. Ten years had passed before the little round log school houses began to lift a curling smoke from lonesome points along the muddy roads. The early teachers were mostly non-resident and "boarded round" with their patrons, for all the t chools were supported by subscription and the "teacher's keep was part of the pay. The course of study was restricted to the famous fundamental branches known as the "Three R's."

The first physician on the east side of the old county was Dr. Alexander Campbell, near Ripley, whose practice was in Adams and early Clermont, where he came in 1804, after serving a term in the Kentucky Legislature. In 1807, he was elected to the Ohio Legislature from Adams county, and in 1808 and in 1809 he was Speaker of the House. While Speaker he was elected to the United States Senate, in which he served four years. After the formation of Brown county, he was State Senator in 182.2 and in 1823. In 1832 he was elected a State Representative for Brown county. In 1820 he was a Presidential elector for Monroe, and in 1836 for Harrison. He was a candidate for Governor in 1826. Through all this polit-

ical action, he was sternly opposed to slavery. His death in Ripley in 1857 closed the career of one of the most notable of the early physicians.

The same year, 1804, brought Dr. Levi Rogers to Williamsburg to act as the first physician in central Clermont. He was Sheriff of Clermont in 1805-6-7 and 8. In 1810 he moved to Bethel and in 1811 he was elected a State Senator. In the War of 1812 he served as Surgeon of the Nineteenth infantry. He was also a lawyer and served in 1800 as Prosecuting Attorney. Beside all his political and legal activity he was a preacher of much note. This brilliant man died in 1815 in his forty-seventh year. But he left a son, Dr. John G. Rogers, who married Julia, a daughter of Senator Thomas Morris, whose bridesmaid was Hannah Simpson, afterwards mother of General Grant. When those who wrote about the "lowly origin of Grant" were busy, they should have mentioned his mother's girlhood friends. Something more than eighteen months later, the medical bridegroom, then lacking but two days of twenty-five years, was the physician at the birth of General Grant ; and on the same date was in attendance when the mother of General Corbin was born. On the west side Surgeon General Richard Allison, the first settler at the mouth of Stonelick, as previously stated, lived there parts of several years, and answered calls for his art. In March, 1815, he laid out the elegant plans on his estate, for the town called "Allisonia," of which he had high hopes ; but his death, March 22, 1816, stopped the projects. His wife, Rebecca, a daughter of General David Strong, of the Revolution, after three years of widowhood, married the noted Methodist minister, Samuel West, the ancestor of Major S. R. S. West, and his son, Colonel Samuel A. West. The only daughter of Rebecca Strong West, also named Rebecca, married John Kugler, a capitalist of western Clermont. These three, Campbell, Rogers and Allison, were the only regular physicians in the region before the War of 1812. Another three, in as small a compass of space, time and population, with as large a percentage of success, will be hard to find. Yet, from their much varied employment and absence, one can but wonder whether their patients fared best with much faith and few drugs, or with few calls and strong doses.

The time for the specialists had not come. The helpful spirit worked on broad plans. The cure of bodily ills and the care of spiritual trouble were equally assured by some who delighted in prayer and advised physic. The confidence in bitters and barks, in liniments and blisters, in teas and sirups, in herbs and spices, in poultices and plasters, and in many unlovely combinations, was mixed with pious zeal, if not blessed with benediction. As for the science of healing as practiced by college taught men, the first generation of the pioneers was largely born in ignorance, lived without advice and died unvexed. In comparison between the relative merit or mistakes of either nature or art there was much skeptical opinion, of which traces are still visible.

The first merchants were traveling traders and then peddlers, who also gathered the gossip and spread the news with at art that made them welcome to the cheer of the lonely cabins. Their mode of life had perils as well as pleasures, for when one ceased to come, tales were told of dark deeds and tragic fates that had happened somewhere and might happen again where the secret hills were high or the hiding waters were deep. One of these peddlers, James Burleigh by name, having grown too fat for the road, retired in or about 1800 to a cabin in Williamsburg, on Lot 270, on the north side of Main street, between Fourth street and Mulberry Alley, where, nearly midway from that alley, he kept the first store between Newtown and Chillicothe and probably a hundred miles east of Dayton. In a Centennial address on July 4, 1876, to an acre full of people, which, strange to say, is the oldest surviving story of the old county seat, I wrote from what had been witnessed by some then living. To nobody's greater surprise than my own, that address was requested for publication and has been reprinted and quoted almost beyond recognition.

Only a carping critic will object to the statement in this relation, that the conversation and correspondence following that address, is the origin of the long and persistent attention to early days in Old Clermont that is embodied in and forms the design of this work. No sufficient reason appears for changing the lines about that store written nearly thirty-seven years ago.

heard went common then—'as big as Burleigh.' He gave his name to the place where he lived, and to this day it is called the 'Burleigh Lot,' though few know the reason, and the young suppose it to come from the burrs to be gathered there. His manner of business would now be unique. Upon a table, or under it, his stock was arranged in reference to the demands of trade—the last article called for being at the top, the rest according to fate."

Still later, a store was kept by Isaac Lines, across Broadway from the new stone court house. In 1812 the northeast corner at Main and Fourth streets was fitted with a house, of which the frame still stands, in which William Waters and Benjamin Ellis conducted a store in earnest. Waters, from New Jersey, was a relation, probably a younger brother of Josephus Waters, the pioneer at Levanna. Ellis became a noted merchant in Cincinnati, and his son, Washington Ellis, born and schooled in Williamsburg, acquired vast wealth in New York City. He had the confidence of Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, when he was Secretary of the Treasury in Lincoln's cabinet. In this wise Washington Ellis suggested and helped Chase to plan the National banking system, without which Grant and his soldiers might have failed to save the Union. As a consequence, Ellis has the distinction of organizing and operating the first of all our National banks. And thus another son of Old Clermont climbed to the pinnacle heading his path.

A liberal student of that time is more willing to believe than to doubt that goods were brought to stated points for trade during the years before the people began to cluster for hamlet and village convenience. The absence of mercantile conditions among the thousands living in a stretch of sixty miles, between the extremes is incredible ; but such incidents were so infrequent, so unstable or so unsuccessful that no sufficient account has been preserved and no certain statement can be made. Apparently the staples of food and clothing were produced in each of the lonely homes. And the little they knew or sought from abroad was brought by the ever-welcome talkative traveling traders, of whom none knows a name.

the pioneers than the paucity of postal affairs. One reason urged before Congress to secure Zane's Trace was a quicker post road to Kentucky. Over this Trace the first mail in Ohio was carried in 1798, and in May, 1799, a post office was established in Chillicothe, through which mail was carried to Maysville, across the southeastern corner of what was to be Brown county, and thence to Cincinnati, but no mail stopped between those places. On October 24, 1799, General Rufus Putnam wrote to Thomas Worthington at Chillicothe for information about "the practicability of a mail being carried through there to Cincinnati, on account of roads, waters, means of subsistence and distance between stages"; all of which was to enable General Putnam to point out to the Post Master General how the service could be improved "without additional expense"—that was, how the mail could go more directly to. Cincinnati than by Maysville. That project, hindered by lack of subsistence between Chillicothe and Williamsburg, only became possible when a cabin was built on the site of Newmarket. Then on October 5, 1802, a commission was made out constituting William Lytle, "Deputy Post Master for Clermont County." There was a tradition that the mail was kept in John Lytle's house on the hillside facing the southern end of Front street. But a bill, still preserved, presented by John Charles in August, 1803, has this item : "Building closet and making alphabet case for Post Office, $8.00." That closet and case, as one piece of work, is still in place at "Harmony Hill." On July 8, 1806, Lytle resigned the office in favor of his brother-in-law, Samuel W. Davies ; but on Davies' removal soon after, Nicholas Sinks was appointed and the mail was handled at the Morris tavern, until taken by Benjamin Ellis to his store at the corner of Fourth and Main streets. That post office "for Clermont county, at Williamsburg," served all the people in the old county until post offices were instituted at Ripley, New Richmond and Bethel in 1815-16. Batavia was made a post office in 1818; Neville and New Richmond in 1819; Georgetown in 1822; Felicity and Goshen in 1823 ; Withamsville, Higginsport and Perin's Mills in 1830 and Owensville in 1833.

The pulpit, the bar, the medicine case, the teacher's desk, the counter, all came before the editor's table. The postal

charge of twenty-five cents for a light letter and other packets in proportion, limited everything by mail. Lytle's account show that while living in Williamsburg, before 181o, he was a subscriber to the Scioto Gazette, United States Gazette, National Intelligencer, and the Cincinnati Liberty Hall. In 1809 he added the Western Spy and Duane's Philadelphia Aurora. But nothing was printed in Old Clermont until Friday, January 15, 1812, when Thomas S. Foote and Andrew Tweed published the first number of The Political Censor, for which the type had been set by Charles D. McNanaman, in a house on Lot No. 4o, and between the big log school house and Jessamine alley. The size of the sheet was nine and one-half by fifteen and one-half inches. From all that can be learned that little paper, like all its successors for forty years to come, would now be remarkable for what it did not contain. Whoever searches a file of very old newspapers for local happenings is most likely to be disappointed unless he has learned to expect nothing. The fashion of the old printers was to exclude every local item or name that did not pay the price. The state of Europe was spread for attention, but local names only appeared in advertisements. Except as a relic there was no especial historic loss when "The Censor" ceased, after living about a year. The second newspaper was printed by David Morris and George Ely in a house still standing on Main street, exactly opposite Burleigh's store, heretofore mentioned. The first number of this second paper, named The Western American, appeared Saturday, August 5, 1814. The size of the sheet was twelve by nineteen inches, folded into four pages with four columns to the page. On July 4, 1818, the first number of the Clermont Sentinel was published by Printer-Editor C. D. McNanaman. How long it lived is not known, but in 182o, William A. Cameron started the Farmer's Friend, which probably lived more numbers than any of the other three.

After these four papers, the first paper in Brown county was published in June, 182o, at Levanna, by General James Loudon, William Butt and Daniel Ammen, with the expressive name of The Benefactor. Perhaps no paper of its class had a more distinguished management, and yet few had more trouble . After struggling into the second year The Benefactor

was taken to Georgetown, where from May 16, 1822, till January, 1824, it was partly owned and managed by United States Senator Thomas Morris. After that General Thomas L. Hamer became the editor and Jesse R. Grant a contributor. The first paper printed in Batavia was published May 24, 1824, and named The Western Patriot.

The Political Censor was sold by Foote and Tweed to James Finley, who moved the publication to West Union, where Adams county received the benefits until 1824. Thus for eight and one-half years from the first number in all the big county, no newspaper was printed outside of Williamsburg. One reason for the sale and early removal of The Political Censor may have been its fierce opposition to the war of 1812. And, admitting the truth of the description of the time as herein presented, the most martially inclined must agree that the people of Old Clermont had little use for war.

The Conditions of That Era—Roads—Population—Cities-Effect of Napoleonic Wars—No Leisure Class Then—Renewal of the 'Long Conflict for Ohio. The Declaration Before the Preparation For War—Clermont's Answer to the First Call—Jacob Huber—Hull's Surrender—Colonel Mills Stephenson—Fort Stephenson—Perry's Victory and Captain Stephen Smith—Officers from Old Clermont—Deplorable Loss of the Muster Rolls—List of Revolutionary Soldiers in Clermont and Brown—Captain Jacob Boerstler's Company—Captain Robert Haines Company—General William Lytle in the War of '12—His Service in Promoting Old Clermont Reviewed and Censure Refuted—Ohio in the War of '12—The Migration from the Sea Board to Old Clermont after the War of '12—Captain Matthew Pease at the Execution of Louis XVI.

After reviewing the civic and social affairs of the people living between the Little Miami and Eagle Creek a hundred years ago, cultured sympathy should seek a wider view of the conditions that disturbed their peaceful purpose. For, without some consideration of these conditions, readers accustomed to think of Ohio as one of the foremost States, and in some respects, the leader, will expect to be delighted with accounts of more than she was able to perform in the second war for independence. Instead of being the center of population, wealth and influence, and having most of the great railroads across the continent tributary to her trade, Ohio, then, was the frontier State, for Indiana was not admitted till 1816, and all to the west: was a wilderness. There was not a mile of solid road and scarcely a bridge forty feet long in all that is north of the Ohio. Adding a fair percentage of increase to the census report of 1810, the population was about three hundred thousand souls of both sexes, both old and young; and the total aggregate of the State's revenues about

one hundred thousand dollars. By far the larger part of all that population was along or close to the Ohio river. The fighting power, man to man, was relatively much less then than now, for the scene of conflict was along the Great Lakes. The march of an army across the State, with a wagon train for food and ammunition, and for cannon trucks for which roads had to be cut through the woods, for which swamps had to be made solid with corduroy, and for which ferries had to be provided, was a toilsome task for months. Now twenty railroads, managed under military necessity, each in a single night can whirl a thousand men from the river to the lake and have them in line for breakfast. Of the present list of eighty-eight counties but thirty-six were formed then, and of those, three included all of the territory bordering on Lake Erie and extending southward over several tiers of counties, as now organized. That region now containing Cleveland, Sandusky and a score of lesser cities then numbered a population of about thirteen thousand, only a little more than Old Clermont held at that date. Cincinnati, then holding the paramount position in the Ohio valley, numbered nearly three thousand. The second place that ha .s redeemed its promise to fill the full measure of a city was Dayton, then numbering less than five hundred people. The reason of this slow growth of central and northern Ohio must be sought afar in the Napoleonic wars that made Europe a battlefield and the ocean a graveyard for hips, so that enlistment in the armies was safer than emigration to America. As the receipts of foreign population ceased, the enterprise of the seaboard states languished and the flow of people to the West dwindled, and those who came taking the course of least resistance, scattered along the Ohio rather than take a rougher road to the interior. In the midst of those conditions of unrest provoked by foreign strife, the young nation entered upon the war of 1812 with much disapproval from the peace at any price people.

The sparse population on the frontier was founding homes. Everything was second to the imperious necessity of raising a cabin, clearing a patch and planting a crop. Of the leisure class there was none. Wheelwrights, plowmakers, wool carders, broom-makers, millers, blacksmiths, tailors and shoemakers constituted the range of special callings, and each of those,

when he ceased to be a journeyman. had his clearing, without which no one could claim respectable consideration. Statesmen and preachers were farmers, alike proud of broad acres and long boundaries. Upon such a people the war fell with heavy discomfort. There was no violent interest in the outrages on the distant and almost forgotten ocean. But the Indian outbreaks surely traced to the aggressive and ever hostile spirit of the British toward both the mouth and the source of the Mississippi, roused their vengeance against the threatened and renewed peril in the Northwest, and excited their gravest apprehension for the control of their trade "down the river," which was their sole outlet to the world. A large per cent. of the people had personal memories of the atrocities flowing from Detroit but a few years before, and the belief was common that the aggravating depredations on the Wabash were the result of British intrigue. It was known by all that Tecumseh, the greatest of Indian chiefs, and his brother, the celebrated "Prophet," had lived until 1808 at Greenville, only a two days' heavy march from Williamsburg, after which all their energy had been given to the hostility that went to defeat on November 7, 1911, at Tippecanoe, where William Henry Harrison started on a straight path to the White House. The old "Border Men" knew that the conflict was only a renewal of the struggle for the Ohio that began under Washington sixty years before. At the call to arms there was no faltering among the pioneers of Ohio. But the strife came at a time that did not test the nerve of those born on her soil. There were probably not fifty boys, at that time, born in Ohio, who had reached the age of fourteen years. Therefore, it is not well to boast of the deeds done by the "Sons of Ohio" in the War of '12. Such credit belongs to the States whence the pioneers came. But we can be justly proud of the spirit of the "Fathers of Ohio," who were true to the best traditions of their blood and proved themselves worthy sires of their noblest posterity.

The war was declared June 19, 1812. According. to American custom, the declaration came before the preparation, and, as often happens, the onset occurred where little was expected. As seen in history, there were three lines of conflict. The first, and, because of England's great navy, the most exposed, was

the Atlantic coast ; the next was the Canadian border ; the third and most remote was the mouth of the Mississippi. Which of these was the most important is a fruitless question. The loss of any part would have been a mortal hurt to our Nation. By position, Ohio was most concerned for the Northwest, of which the State was the first born. There were to occur that first most shameful and finally the most brilliant events of the conflict. England's easily seen purpose was to hold the Great Lakes and all the vast tributary basin of the St. Lawrence river. For this scheme Detroit was the indispensable key. For the defense of this position, President Madison called on Ohio for twelve hundred men for six months, who were mustered in at Dayton on April 24, 1812, and started north at once. Then, with the declaration of war on June 19, the President called for fifty thousand, but as they gathered, the army and all the nation except the navy seemed to stand and wait for what would happen at Detroit. The northwestern corner of Ohio, or what is now called the Toledo district, thus became the field of the war, in which the burden of backing up the regulars under General Hull fell upon Ohio and Kentucky. What happened came quick and heavy. On July 16, just one day short of four weeks from the declaration of war, Hull basely surrendered his army and the forts at Detroit. For that cowardice or treason, or both, he was tried and condemned to death, but his execution was not ordered by the President.

Among those answering the "first call" and mustered in at Dayton was the Williamsburg Company of Riflemen, officers and men, fifty-seven strong, who fortunately did not arrive in time to be included in the awful tragedy of the surrender. But they were met and driven back by an overwhelming force of the victorious British and Indians, at the disaster of Brownstown, where they learned that the dreaded Tecumseh was not a myth. For, they lost Captain Jacob Boerstler, Abner Arthur, Watson Stephens, William Wardlow, Daniel Campbell and Daniel McCollum. Mention is made of Captain Boerstler's death on a page with an account of Thomas Foster's heroism in carrying his captain from the field. Captain Boerstler was a brother of Anna Maria, the wife of Jacob Huber, who came in 1806 from a part of Pennsylvania near to Antietam battle-

ground. I have noted with curiosity that the famous historical romance of Katy Catoctin is laid in that celebrated locality, and uses the very rare name of Boerstler with the same pronunciation that was brought to Clermont in the long ago. I have also heard that a substantial family there resented the use of their name in the fiction. Jacob Huber came to buy the pioneer mill of Lytle. which is still standing as a fine example of old-fashioned solid frame work. One of Huber's daughters, Caroline, married Judge Owen T. Fishback and thus became a mother of the notable judicial family of United States Judge Philip B. Swing. Another daughter, Harriet, married Major S. R. S. West, elsewhere mentioned in this work. Captain Boerstler married Sallie Robbins acrd lived in a house on Main street, on the eastern end of Lot 269, which for sixty years was the home of John Park. The light still gleams through the window to which she came from a bed of sickness to look upon her husband "marching away so brave and grand," while she wept for the never-to-return—the first of many soldier's widows in Old Clermont. While bearing the name of Williamsburg, the company represented families scattered from White Oak to Stonelick.

Between Arnold's treason and the fall of Sumter no other event caused such consternation to the people of America as Hull's surrender. Before the slowly carried news of that day could be answered the season was gone. Yet, a winter campaign was undertaken, which met a terrible defeat, on January 22, 1813, just .a few miles beyond the Ohio line on the river Raisin in the 'Territory of Michigan, where Kentuckians and some from Ohio suffered the most terrible massacre in their history. When the tidings went back and forth, it was known that Ohio had offered fifteen thousand troops and that Kentucky was ready to go in a body. Then arms and supplies became the problem, for it was impossible to equip one-fourth of the volunteers. Two armies had been wiped out. Then the soldiers clamored for General Harrison, the hero of Tippecanoe. With the broken battalions still left, and while awaiting the long weary march of the re-enforcements, he built Fort Meigs, on the Maumee, just above the present town of Perrysburg. At the same time another fort was built about thirty miles to the east, where it now stands restored to per-

fect condition in the center of the city of Fremont. The purpose was to hinder the British, who commanded the Lake. from ascending the Sandusky and thus be able to strike the re-enforcing columns on the flank, the strategic importance of the position was vital to the Americans. The construction was entrusted to Colonel Mills Stephenson, the pioneer of Eagle Creek, and so was named for him. The fine restoration ennobled by the memory of Croghan's brilliant victory, on August 2, 1813, and adorned with a splendid soldiers' monument and a beautiful library building is in all respects a most remarkable memorial of one whose name confers honor upon the story of the old county of which he was a part. The attack on Fort Stephenson occurred as a part of the campaign against General Harrison's Army that has come to be called "The Siege of Fort Meigs." For the relief of Fort Meigs a call was made for a mounted force to move forward with all speed. That call was answered by a company of forty-nine mounted volunteers, of whom Captain Robert Haines was the commander. That company recruited from Southern Clermont and was mustered in July 27, and were discharged August [3, when the need for which they were called had passed. After their defeat at Fort Stephenson, the British retreated towards Detroit, to await the result of the impending naval battle for the control of Lake Erie. After Perry's victory, on September to, 1813, the British army having no support by water, retreated into Canada closely followed by Harrison's re-enforced army. Among those re-enforcements was another company from Clermont, commanded by Captain Stephen Smith. After Perry's victory Captain. Smith's company was ordered to march the prisoners under guard to Newport Barracks, at the mouth of the Licking. In that exacting march, because of the sickness of the officers of higher rank, the command fell to Sergeant William H. Raper, then just twenty years old ; yet, in spite of a serious mutiny among the prisoners, they were safely brought according to orders. Two of his brothers, Sergeant Holly and Corporal Samuel were in Captain Boerstler's company and so was the old British soldier of the Revolution, John Naylor, which forever answered any criticism of their British service. Daniel Kain, the eldest brother of Captain Thomas Kain, went with

his neighbors as major of the battalion to which they belonged. Both of them were subsequently honored .with the rank of colonel in the militia establishment, but Daniel preferred the title borne iii the war, and was therefore always designated as "The Major." Henry Zumatt, pioneer in the New Hope section, because of much training in the Indian wars and fine soldierly quality, was commissioned as a colonel and served in the Fourth Ohio brigade until his death, in 1814, at the age- of forty-three, was greatly lamented. Captain William McMains, of Miami township, with Lieutenant William Glancy, of Stonelick township, recruited a company that represented that portion of the county, but no account of their service was put on record. Captain John Shaw, with Lieutenant Elijah Nichols, and Ensign Hugh Ferguson, went with a fine company from the riverside that started out too late to overtake an enemy. Captain Abraham Shepherd, on the edge of Adams county, raised a company that probably marched north by the Scioto to General Harrison's headquarters at Franklinton, by the mouth of the Olentangy. A personal appeal to the office of the adjutant-general of the State obtained explicit confirmation of the deplorable statements of former historians that Ohio has, properly speaking, no record of her soldiers in the second war for independence. No adequate expression of contempt for the neglect that wrought this condition is appropriate for this page. The suggestion that the record was suppressed in order to lessen the responsibility for bounty or pension claims is simply infamous.

In fact, there is more satisfactory information obtainable about a greater number of people in Old Clermont who served in the first war for independence than can be easily found about those who were in the second war. While regretting the oblivion that should have been avoided, candor suggests that no chance should be omitted that will help to perpetuate the little still known about our patriot sires. Amid their life of unutterable seclusion, the innate ideality that belongs alike to the untutored child and the lettered sage found expression in forms that made the pioneers intensely patriotic, or deeply religious and generally both. A reader, intent upon amusement, may tire of frequent allusion to their Revolutionary recollections or pious aspirations. Both those happy in reviewing and

revering the memory of thrice honorable forefathers should be pleased with the results of much inquiry that has taken many days of my life, and which should be treasured by many of their descendants. The results of that inquiry were condensed for the pages of Mitchell and Thirey's work on Clermont, published in 1902. After ten years little or no change has been found. No claim was made then or now for absolute accuracy in giving or omitting names obtained from various sources. That more can be added by others is probable, and that a search for the official record of a few will be disappointing is also probable ; for the Revolutionary archives have suffered some devastation. Acknowledgment was then made to the late Royal J. Bancroft for aid, found in his "Sketches of Revolutionary Service," published in The Clermont Sun during May, June, and July, 1901, in which he mentioned one hundred and twelve Clermont families having Revolutionary antecedents. A division is made between modern Brown and Clermont and some from Adams county may be found in this

John Aldridge

Lieut. Joseph Alexander

Adam Bricker

David Brannen

Ramoth Bunting

Lawrence Byrn

James Carter

Andrew Chalmers

James Chambers

Edward Coen

Lieut. William Cowen

Benjamin Davis

Jeremiah Day

John Denine

Robert Dickey

Robert English

Christopher Hartman

Benajah Hill

John Hulick

James Johnson

Ignatius Knott

Barton Lowe

Robert Leeds

Hezekiah Lindsey

Mordecai Love

Absalom Smith

John Smith

Obadiah Smith

Serg. John Stewart

Philip Stoner

Jesse Swem

Richard Taliafero

John Thomas

Okey Vanosdol

CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES - 379

William White

Nicholas Wood

Thomas Wood

Fogus McClain

Nicholas Devore

Samuel Jones

John Laney

Job Lecroy

Benjamin Leeton

Patrick Lemrick

James Leonard

Alexander McCoy

Valentine McDaniel

Walter McDaniel

Charles McManis

George Marshall

Jacob Middleswart

Elijah Moore

Daniel Morford

William Newberry

John Parke

Drummer Samuel Pickerill

Joseph Potter

William Rains

Lawrence Rainey

Thomas Rattan

William Reeves

Joab Reid

James Rice

James Rounds

Lemuel Rounds

Joseph Liming

Capt. Daniel Feagins

Richard Rollison

Jacob Metzger

Charles Canary

Christian Shinkle

Christopher Barr

Samuel Adkins

Moses Leonard

Col. Robert Higgins

Any one attempting to compile a similar list of the War of 1812 will be much helped by the following privately preserved and published roll of the companies commanded by Captain Jacob Boerstler, in 1812, and by Captain Robert Haines in 1813.

Captain Jacob Boerstler, killed at Brownstown, Lieutenant Thomas Kain, promoted to captain, August 13 ; Ensign Thomas Foster, promoted to lieutenant, August 13; Sergeants Daniel Campbell, Edward Brown, Holly Raper, John Conrey ; Corporals, Samuel Raper, John Hankins, Jasper Shotwell (promoted ensign, August 13), Cornelius Treble ; Musicians Augustine Munson, Oliver Hays.

Isaac Colthar
James Denham
Daniel McCollum
Hugh Wardlow
James Colthar
John Feight
Peter Smith
John W. Feight
James McCann
George McMillen

380 - CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES

William Compton
Thomas Williams
Richard Dennis
Hiram Harris
John Davis
William Digley
George Neff
James Chambers
Daniel Gould
John Oakman
John Frazee
John Reed,
Michael Ellsberry
Jonas Tolliver,
Abner Arthur (killed)
Watson Stephens (killed)
Samuel Malott
John D. Walker
Jonathan Little
Joseph Wood
William Davis
Simon Kenton,
William Wardlow (killed)
Peter Waits
Lewis Davis
George Hunt
Charles Waits
John Buchanan
Joseph Brunk
Reuben Waits
John Naylor,
Richard Smallwood
Archibald Gibson
John Losh
Joseph Martin

Captain Robert Haines, Mounted Volunteers ; Captain Robert Haines ; Lieutenant Hugh Ferguson ; Ensign Jonathan Donham ; Sergeants James Robb, Hezekiah Lindsey, Isaac Ferguson, James Arthur ; Corporals Thomas Littleton, Nathan Sutton, William Donham, Thomas Welch.

John Whitaker
Daniel Snider
Aquilla McCord
Nicholas Pritchet
Peter Bolander
John Mattox
Elijah Malott
Daniel Apple
George Lewis
Reuben Lord
Samuel Long
Hamilton Miller
David Rardin
William Nichols
Philip Nichols
John Behymer
Levi Behymer
Martin Behymer
Jacob Kinsey
James Fitzpatrick
Henry Cuppy
Francis Ferguson
John Morin,
Edward Chapman
Robert Chapman
Edward Roberts
Josiah Bettle
John Dillman

CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES - 381

Michael Lane
David White
William Bell
Benj. Morin
Jacob Short
Horatio G. Cleft
William Laycock
Levi Pinkham
John C. Dial

Among all of his time in the county he founded, the highest military rank was reached by William Lytle. On August 10, 1804, he was commissioned a lieutenant colonel ; and on February 20, 1808, he was made a major general of the Ohio militia. As a promoter of settlements his life was full of mental activity. He rode here, there and everywhere within the sphere of his influence to show his own lands or tracts that were entrusted to his management, and that meant nearly every tract that was for sale. His critic has stated that he sold anything a purchaser fancied. In one sense the assertion is truthful ; but the inference that he acted without authority, or that he was not particular and surveyed with wanton disregard to future trouble is an insult to a noble memory that should not pass without contradiction and a fairer statement. Few men have been more methodical or left finer proof of the sincerity of a vast volume of business. As his mission in Clermont was accomplishing his ambition went to other scenes and his great earnings were invested in new enterprises farther west. A mansion was built in Cincinnati near the spot where he had landed with his father on April 12, 1780, when not a stick had been disturbed by white hands on the site of Cincinnati. To that mansion, one of the finest of that age west of the mountains he went in 1810 from Williamsburg, feeling that he had waved a transforming wand over the land, and that he was to be the wealthiest man in the Ohio Valley. The papers that had accumulated in the old stone Land Office were carefully assorted, tied with tape and packed in chests that have not to this day been entirely rehandled. Among these papers are carefully filed letters of authority for all that he sold for others along with the notes taken in the field and calculated in the office. Instead of being careless, his work was a marvel of minute method. He was one of the founders and was president of the board of trustees or manager of the Cincinnati College, since developed into the University of Cincin-

382 - CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES

nati. His benefactions were large for that time. He was too busy for public office, too earnest in building larger. When he thought his greatness was a ripening, his schemes were crushed in the financial panic that resulted from the War of 1812, and much of his wealth vanished. On May 26, 1830, he was appointed Surveyor-General of public lands by President Jackson. On March 17, 1831, he died in the fine old home that was saved from the wreck of his vast fortune to become, still more famous as the home of his distinguished son, Robert T., and of his brilliant grandson, the "Soldier Poet." While regretfully watching the demolition of the historic home for the creation of Lytle Park, I heard one of a passing throng ask, "Who was Lytle, anyhow ?" As another answered, "Some old congressman, I guess," there was less wonder about the destruction of Cincinnati's noblest relic.

Although the rolls in proof are not to be found, the report was made that "During the War of 1812, including events immediately before and after, the State of Ohio furnished 23,951 soldiers of all arms, including officers, musicians, rangers, scouts, spies and teamsters, being over thirty-three per cent. of the entire male population of the State, above twenty-one years of age ; more than fifty per cent. of those subject to military duty and nearly fifteen per cent. of all the military forces of the United States called out during hostilities." In that record Old Clermont had filled her quota.

When the import of the redemption of their land from Hull's shameful surrender and the awful massacre on the Raisin by Croghan's defense, Perry's victory and Harrison's triumph on the Thames and the battle of New Orleans had dawned on the nation ; and when the ocean also had been freed from British tryanny, Americans took heart again and began anew with larger plans. A result of the war was a commercial ruin along the seaboard that caused many sea-faring people to move westward. Of these a number amounting to a small colony ,came to the vicinity to be called Amelia. Of them, one, Matthew Pease, had, been a captain whose life of much adventure had included visits to Paris, where he saw the execution of King Louis XVI. Moved by pity for their misfortunes, he helped a considerable number of the fugitive noblemen to escape by secreting them in his ship, when detection

CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES - 383

would have sent him to the guillotine. Captain Pease was remembered as a quiet, unob trusive gentleman, whose appearance gave little suggestion of his connection with affairs as thrilling as any in the pages of romance. The quality of that immigration came into contrast with elements from the south and southeast to the frequent amusement of all, but nothing remains in the fusion to suggest the origin of either.

CHAPTER XVII.

AFTER THE DIVISION OF OLD CLERMONT.

The Agitation for New Counties—Comparative Population of New Counties—Relative Importance of Old Clermont—Township Histories — New Enterprise — Bridges — New County Seat for Clermont—New Richmond—Batavia County Seat for Brown—Ripley— Bridgewater—Georgetown—The Woods Family—The Court House for Brown County—Coincidence in the Growth of Brown and Clermont—Better Roads—The Coming of Pikes from the Markets—A Tram Way—The Plank Road Delusion—The Canal Era—Thomas Morris—The Ohio Canal System a Victory for the Union—The Effect of the Canals—Brown and Clermont Classed as Anti-Canal Counties—The Use of Steam for Transportation—The First Railroads—The Prosperity of the Flat Boat Times—Flour, Pork and Whisky—The Temperance Movement—The River Trade and Slavery—The Underground Railroad.

As the tide of immigration grew stronger, the settlements were made farther and farther from the Ohio, until convenience demanded more frequent points for the administration of government. The agitation for new counties became a controlling factor in the elections. Much was made of the charge that Thomas Morris contrived a division of Old Clermont to gratify a spite against people at the old county seat. As a fact, he was not a member of the General Assembly during the six years between 1814 and 182o, when that question was debated and decided ; and there is no evidence that his presence would have changed the result. The time had come for fixing the permanent form of other counties, as had been done in Hamilton county. Clermont, next to the east, had a surplus of area and population over the standard. Seven sections were also elsewhere clamoring for county rights. The combined interests passed the Act of December 27, 1817, which partioned the counties of Adams, Clermont and Highland, and

386 - CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES

thereby erected the county of Brown. When the census of 1820 was taken two years later, the new Clermont had 15,820 people ; Brown had 13,356; four of the other new counties combined had 13,690; the other two new counties combined had 17,962. The total of Brown and Clermont all but equalled the total of the other six counties in question. Moreover, the dividing line between Brown and Clermont is now the longest mutual county line in Ohio, and the distance between the remotest points in Brown exceeds that of any county in the State. The division of Old Clermont was a necessity, but the surveying was very painful to Williamsburg, and forthwith the location of the two new county seats was hotly contested.

Without a study of the population of that period, even' thoughtful readers will not comprehend the local significance of the dissolution of Old Clermont. According to the census of 1820, when the intervention of two years could have made but little difference in the comparison, without the division of the county, Old Clermont would have ranked as the second county in Ohio, Hamilton alone being ahead. And with the change, the New Clermont was twelfth and Brown the fourteenth among the thirty-six counties then existing.

Any comprehensive statement of the families then present, like that made for the territorial time, is something far beyond the scope of this history. An attempt carried through several weeks and even months portended such proportions that the undertaking was relinquished as something far beyond any general interest. Every patron of this work has been requested for such work, and others have no greater right to special consideration.

From the proud position of being the logical, central capital of a most important section of the State, Williamsburg was suddenly confronted with a prospective loss of all such prestige by a line passing Within sight of her roofs. But with the advantage of sufficient public buildings, attention was taken from the impending removal of the county seat by other schemes, of which a narration will have more general interest than a recital of what has had more or less explicit attention in various township histories prepared by those nearer in time and place than can ever happen again. Whoever has a

CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES - 387

copy of such work is earnestly advised to treasure his possession carefully, for the sources of such recitals have failed ; and rhetoric must be invoked to retouch the fading tints of tradition.

In 1818, the first year of the new counties, New Clermont appropriated nearly a thousand dollars for road and bridge work, more in fact than all before for that purpose. Alexander Blair was appointed to superintend the construction of a bridge across the East Fork, and men of high standing were placed in charge of the improvement of the leading highways and new roads were laid in every direction. But the bridge at Batavia was not built until 1825, and that was replaced by another for which two thousand eight hundred and thirty-three dollars were appropriated in December, 1829. By authority of the state a toll bridge was built in or about 1818, at Milford, over which all that was tributary to the Anderson State Road and northeast from Little Miami, was accommodated. In 1822.a bridge over Twelve Mile was granted, but a bridge westward from central Brown was not authorized until 1838, and finished until 1845. That bridge was built in two sections. across the island at the foot of Main street and lasted until swept away by a flood in 1858. The replacing single span bridge burnt by Morgan's Raiders, July 15, 1863, as told in another page, was probably the largest piece of destruction by them. suffered in the county. The people of southern and central Clermont and far into Brown regarded the Union Bridge across the Miami, below Newtown, as the greatest local event of that half of the century. The story of that bridge belongs to Hamilton county, and, strange to say, has little mention there, but the importance was much to those who waited for it until 1836. Everywhere else in both Brown and Clermont bridge construction seems to have waited until the building of toll roads started the custom.

The agitation for a new county seat insisted that Williamsburg was on one side of the county, and with fine consistency, urged a removal to New Richmond, where the machinery of county government was taken in August, 1823. The November term, and then the M arch term of 1824 were also held there in a building donated for the purpose. Although the miracle of navigation by steam had been ex-

388 - CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES

emplified on the Ohio in 1811, by the first voyage along western waters by a self-propelling vessel, and although steam boats were coming to be a regular condition, no assertion of the superiority of a location on the river could be made to prevail against the obvious inconvenience of the place for a majority in the county.

In or about 1807, General Lytle succeeded in selling Survey Number 1774 to George Ely, who had come from New Jersey. With, an enterprising spirit, he foresaw that his thousand acres occupied a fine position on the Donnell's Trace and that a town at the crossing of the East Fork was needed for the convenience of the valley. Being elected sheriff for 1814 and 1815, he heard much of the expected change in county boundaries, and so planned with John Collins and the County Clerk, David C. Bryan, to be ready for new things. On October 24, 1814, they recorded a plat previously prepared, for a town named Batavia. .Ten years later that town was fixed upon as the county seat with fair approval. One hundred and forty-four square rods of land were reserved for the expected county buildings. In the meantime a fine stone church for that day was built by the Methodist people under the leadership of Ezekiel Dimmitt, the earliest pioneer of the vicinity. That house was begun in 1817, and slowly finished. But it was very useful, both as a church and as a school house. When the future of the town came to the turning point, the church house was offered for a court house until a special house could be provided. The proposal was decisive and the courts were held there from May 14, 1824, until the court house still in use was accepted on New Year's Day, 1829. That building cost three thousand four hundred and eighty-three dollars, under contract with Ezekiel Dimmitt, but Dimmitt lost not less than fifteen hundred dollars in the transaction.

While these affairs were occurring in Clermont, the people—in Brown had trouble in gaining stable conditions. As in the mother county, a determined effort was made to locate the county seat on the river. The law creating the county required the courts, before the selection of a permanent seat of justice, to be held in Dr. Alexander Campbell's house in Ripley. At a date not stated, but early, Colonel James Poage made sedate by the loss of much of his former wealth, came from Virginia

CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES - 389

to mend his fortunes by the improvement of a thousand-acre tract, whereon he platted a town in the time of the War of 1812, that was first named Staunton, but soon changed to Ripley to honor a popular general of that (lay. Such was the origin of a town that has prospered exceedingly with the growing trade on the Ohio, and has endured much from the wrath of its waters. The story of the town is enough for a volume ; but, like all the sisterhood of towns in which it stood the tallest in all that was Old Clermont, the incidents of that growth are a result rather than a part of the impulsions which I have sought and tried to record, before a deeper dust shall have settled over all.

On March 27, 1818, the commissioners for the State reported that they had selected a place on the east side of Straight Creek, near where the state road from West Union to Cincinnati crossed that creek. On February 8, 1819, that report was enacted by the General Assembly. As the time was near for holding a court, the people interested made a "building frolic" and in two days had a log house ready for the court. But the court and all favorable to Ripley made such protest that' another report was secured in favor of Dr. Campbell's house. Accordingly, after one and possibly a second term of court, at "Bridgewater," as the Straight Creek site was named, the law was given at Ripley, where a court house was commenced in 1829, that cost three thousand three hundred and fifty dollars. The power of the state was again invoked, and another commission, on May 13, 1821, reported not to the General Assembly, but to the Judges of the court directing them to meet in the previously laid-out town of Georgetown, whither on the next day the court went and has remained ; but several years passed before the grumbling at the decision had ceased.

Georgetown was to have far more than village celebrity. Therefore some account of its beginnings that have been obscured, should have a place, in this special inquiry into the earliest conditions. James Woods came from Ireland to the frontier, then in Washington county, Pennslyvania. His settlement in that nursery of Scotch Presbyterians is all but positive proof that he belonged with the faith or that he was very fond of contention, for Washington county was not a peace-

390 - CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES

ful place for a non-subscriber to the prevailing creed. When others began to move on to Kentucky, James Woods ,came also and planted a strong family about Cynthiana, among whom Allen, Samuel, Nathaniel and Anna, ultimately settled in Brown county at an early date. But this is certain. Allen, before leaving Kentucky, was the father of a family among whom was a son born at Cynthiana, October 4, 1805, and also named Allen, who was a youthful favorite in Georgetown, until 1832, when he moved to Felicity and then to a beautiful home near Chilo, always respected and successful, and always growing larger and wiser until Dr. Allen Wood was the personification of the ideal, capable, courtly, benevolent healer, with whom fancy loves to linger.

The worth of that family of mingled Brown and Clermont lineage requires a tribute to the memory of his eldest son, First Leiutenant Frank H. Woods, of the Fifty-Ninth Ohio, who was with Company K., that was made up of men from both sides of the county lines. His last work at the university before starting for the tented field was in a crowded display debate on "Emancipation as a Military Necessity," at a time when college boys rushed in where senators feared to speak. By some chance, the opponent to his conservative argument was my much more youthful self, who looked to him as an elder brother, whose love never failed. Brilliant, social, eloquent, he had all to live for, and so was called to die for all. While serving as an aide on the staff of General Durbin Ward and gallantly directing an order on the fatal field 91 Chickamauga, he fell near to where and when they killed the "Soldier Poet," General William Haines Lytle ; so great a cost it was to save the Union.

Allen Wood, Sr., then came to Ohio not before 1806, and settled, where, on December JO, 1819, he completed the formalities of dedicating the site of Georgetown. As the prospect for the county seat grew clear, others came forward to share the expected benefits. On May 15, 1820, James Woods and Henry Newkirk made additions. On September 27,1821, James Woods made a second addition. On the same day Abel Reese added some lots, and on the next day, Newkirk made his second addition. On July 3o, 1822, the plat was increased still more by Andrew Donaldson. On August 1, 1823, the com-

CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES - 391

missioners of the county contracted to pay one cent less than four thousand dollars for a court house that was accepted August 2, 1824, and lasted twenty-five years. On May 22, 1849, the commissioners contracted for a new court house that was accepted in 1851 and is still in use. It is tedious and of slight interest to the average reader to follow the story of the various jails, except as special incidents occur to vary the monotony of a repulsive topic that may be passed with the remark that both counties have what are considered secure places of detention, that are in sufficient accord with modern humanities.

In the thirty years from 1820 to 185o, the population of Brown and Clermont with a singular coincidence of growth had all but doubled and lacked but two hundred and thirteen of numbering fifty-eight thousand souls. Judged by the vanquished wilderness and the open fields, a prodigious task had been overcome. Judged by present convenience, a magical transformation was still to be wrought. Among a people intent upon fields and flocks, the change was to drift from abroad. Commercial activity was to furnish the impulse. The immigrant toiling over Zane's Trace to be a farmer soon forgot the inconvenience amid the labor at hand. The trader perplexed with daily delay, fretted for something better.

Thus better roads grew from the market at Cincinnati or the river landings, not toward them. Until 1830 the roads around Cincinnati were all primitive, all what country people call "mud roads," even when the dust is thickest. People of this day are slow to perceive the rapidity of the change. What is called Macadamized roads was not then invented in and about London or in England until 1816. Eleven years later, 1827, the Cincinnati, Columbus and Wooster Turnpike Company was chartered, and by 1835, it had reached Milford. In 1836, the Milford and Chillicothe Turnpike Company was chartered by an Act of the Legislature. The people were very cautious in granting a franchise those days. Then the work proceeded in two directions. By one way Newberry and Goshen obtained notice on the maps. By the other way, Boston, Monterey, Marathon and Fayetteville were brought into plainer view. In 1831 the Ohio Turnpike was chartered to connect Cincinnati and Portsmouth, but the pike part

392 - CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES

stopped long at Bethel, while Tobasco, Withamsville, Amelia and Bethel gathered trade from the crossing roads and branching lanes. The Batavia and Maimi Bridge Turnpike was incorporated in 1834 to extend eastward, the prospective advantage of Union Bridge. That pike approached Batavia about the close of the Mexican war and was in full operation. Then the Batavia, Williamsburg and Brown County Turnpike Company continued to work during 1850-51, but plank was tried instead of stone. For a time much was expected of wooden roads. The plan to change the forest of oaks into solid highway s was deemed so feasible that saw mills were built every few miles between Batavia and Fincastle for the express purpose, and portions of the way were graded and covered, but as the boards warped and got out of place, such patches soon became the worst of all and the plan proved worse than a failure for the attempt to remove the planks from the mud was often more difficult.than successful. The road from Milford to Goshen was first made by stretching thousands of logs end to end in a double track that were hewn to a broad face for the wheels of one side and into a gutter or rut for the wheels of the other side of the vehicles, which all traveled east on one side and west on the other, and at the same rate per hour or day. The new tram way was fine for heavy loads, but as a driver wished to go faster, or when the logs were worn, the inventer was reviled and the failure was worse than folly. The Milford, Edenton and Woodville highway was incorporated in 1851, as a plank road, but the real work was made with stone. About the same date a plank road was started from New Richmond to Amelia and changed to a pike. The river steamboats afforded such convenience that the pike up the river to New Richmond waited until 1865. The Ripley and Hillsboro Turnpike Company, chartered in 1835, completed five miles in four years. The Zanesville and Maysville Turnpike followed Zane's Trace through the southeastern corner.

All these pikes were toll roads under laws that required the bridging of all water ways in their course. Otherwise with the exception of a few bridges here and there the entire region passed through the Civil War. Then the era of free pikes began under varying conditions that have resulted in a net work of solid roads and frequent bridges that once seemed beyond the possible.

CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES - 393

People remote by either time or distance cannot easily credit the statement that the agitation for solid roads came later than the once eager strife for water ways. The craze for canals found no favor with those for whom the most sanguine promoter could figure no plan that would help the "Pocket," as they called the region east of the Little Miami. Thomas Morris fully represented his constituents in his opposition ; and neither he nor his people submitted without protest to a scheme in which they were to share the cost with only a reflex interest in the doubtful benefits.

But it was different with those under the spell of the popular illusion. The growth of art has been not a discovery of the spiritual, but a conquest of the material. Every step of progress measures a victory of mind over matter. For ages the conflict was with the four elements, earth and air, fire and water. Knowledge came little by little, some through fear, often with gladness. As men grew, many water ways were used to gather grain along the fertile Nile, or from Babylonian plains or amid the bloom of far Cathay. The long stretches required a portage between the levels. The commerce of antiquity was mainly a robbery, of the producer who was forced to carry his own fruits from boat to a lower boat. Cycles passed and eras changed before man learned that water will lift as well as carry the boat and its burden. It passes belief that America was discovered long before the simple secret of the canal lock was solved. But once learned, Europe was agog to adjust the routes of travel and some of their lock work was reckoned among the wonders of the world. The canal fashion spread to America,. and some of the fathers of the republic were thrilled with enthusiastic prophecies of where the Mississippi and the eastern seaboard would be wedded with water ways by which boats would climb mountains and skip as lambs along the hills. Others viewed the prospect with alarm, and trembled for the freedom which was threatened by a menacing combination that not only defied nature, but also intended to centralize tyranny and strangle liberty. To all Thomas Morris predicted, the utter failure of the "ditches" in Ohio. The final destruction by the flood of 1913 of the little left before is an awful confirmation of his prediction.

The first actual step in the direction of constructing canals

394 - CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES

in Ohio was taken in 1817, by the same General Assembly that divided Old Clermont for the formation of Brown. After eight debating years, on February 4, 1825, the legislature. by a vote of six to one, resolved to proceed with the construction of the Ohio System of Canals. On July 4, 1825, Governor DeWitt Clinton, the great apostle of the canal period, came out from New York to Licking Summit, in Licking county, and lifted the first shovel full of earth and then Governor Jeremiah Morrow, of Ohio, lifted the second shovel full in the task. On January 22, 1833, the Canal Commissioners reported that their work was completed except some terminal work on the locks at Portsmouth and Cincinnati. At the summit of usefulness in 1850, with 788 miles in full operation the approximate cost of the canals in the state was sixteen million dollars. The cost in human life was fearful. The fierce fevers and distressing chills that lurked along the sluggish waters seized the diggers and boatman with a peculiar violence that far exceeded any previous form of ague. That virulent sickness received the special name of Canal Fever, which numbered its victims with many thousands. Of twenty-three civil engineers employed, six died in the work and others were impaired for life. The mortality among the less intelligent was still greater. Men grew weary, wages became higher and the contractors mostly were ruined financially and forced to quit. In spite of all, the big ditches grew longer with a minimum water top of forty feet, a bottom width of twenty-six feet and a depth of four feet.

There is a disposition to deprecate the Ohio canals as a plan that failed and wasted the cost, while the good that was done could and should have waited. Such opinion is poorly formed or meanly held. Anything good should have all time for its own, and forget that lofty ideals are not all of recent growth. Perry's victory and the Battle of New Orleans closed the long war for the inland North America. Yet these victories in reality opened a new strife for trade. The natural outlet of the Great Lake region destined for One of the mightiest peoples of time is through the St. Lawrence river and beneath the British flag. Foreseeing this calamity and perceiving their opportunity, the people of New York lined under the leadership of DeWitt Clinton and cut the Erie canal. No doubt the prophet was opposed by much honest ignorance. But the

CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES - 395

grain and ore and timber and all the accessory exports and imports of the lake region took the direction of least resistance with a result that has made New York City the capital of the world. The state that bravely did the work quickly took the rank and title of the Empire State of the Union. No honest intelligence doubts the source of such supremacy. Incited to great design by that noble example, the thoughtful men of Ohio took early note that as the Hudson and Mohawk offered the shortest lines and gentlest grades between the lakes and the seaboard, so did some of their valleys seen in the relation between the lakes and the vast waters to the south. Many complacent people swollen with pride of our resourceful prosperity smile benignly at the slow times and poky ways of our ancestors, and perhaps of their own lives, of whom in the way of enterprise, they are not fit to tie their shoes. The juster view of more extensive intelligence compels the opinion that the fore fathers living within restrictions not yet relieved by the divinities of invention, fostered projects and cherished designs that would unnerve their progeny quite as much as our work would astonish them. The legislators of Ohio, representing the plain farmers and largely composed of men also tillers of the soil, entered upon the adoption of the project that, to their apprehension, would join the lakes with the south, and in connection with Lake Erie and the Erie canal, would unify the commerce of America. It was one of Ohio's great battles for the Union. As the canal came winding through the fertile plains and was fixed in the lovely landscapes, and as the welcome boats glided slowly but surely through the passes of the hills and entered the locks to climb the grades or sink to lower levels, the useful arts began to multiply and replenish the desires of life. Man took note of a brighter opportunity. Mines were opened. Greater mills were built. Larger homes Were seen. With but forty-five thousand people, and from the eighteenth place in 1800, Ohio had reached a population of two millions in fifty years and taken the third place on the roll of the United States.

The freight on goods from the coast to the interior of Ohio was reduced from $125.00 per ton to $25.00 per ton. Although the people of Brown and Clermont undoubtedly received a modified share in this production, they were classed

396 - CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES

with the "anti-canal counties," which were disposed to look askant at the artificial navigation with a multitude of locks, aqueducts, culverts, dams and reservoirs, that were alternately blocked with ice, threatened with flood, and strangled by drouth. They did not ascribe all the magnificent growth of the state to the canal power which, like the fly on the wheel, assumed control of the movements. And thus, perforce, they labored and waited depending upon the river and the growing power of steam.

The use of steam first for mills and then for transportation is a strange chapter in the story of progress. In the summary of all that nations have done to vanquish time and conquer space, and among all that man has won to broaden life and sweeten hope, there is no more splendid achievement emblemed, even among the other quenchless stars that deck the fadeless field of England's deathless glory than the steam engine. How the great English invention was adopted and extended over the United States is a school-boy's lesson. George Stephenson's road from Liverpool to Manchester, the first rail road of all, after ten intense and often distressing years, was formerly inaugurated September 15, 1830, a date within the memory of a few still living. How recent the event, yet how vast the change. Since the Land of Blue Limestone emerged from Silurian Sea, nothing of greater material importance to humanity has been more rapidly accomplished or thoroughly achieved. On March 11, 1836, the Little Miami railroad was chartered and the first stumbling experiment in railway construction in the Mississippi valley began on the eastern bank of Deer Creek, within a few rods of where the first authentic landing on the site of Cincinnati had been made with the boyish William Lytle, just fifty-six years before. Sometime in 1840 the first locomotive in all the West came to and for some months halted at Covalt's Station, as Milford ought to be called. In 1844, the western side of Clermont had been tracked and the mouth of the O'Bannon had been reached. The foundation of the immense Pennsylvania railway system practically occupies the western division of the Old Round Bottom Road,. the first interior white man's road in Ohio. Within ten or twelve years, or by 1856 or 57, the Cincinnati and Marietta railroad was running to Loveland over a track

CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES - 397

through Goshen township. That railway used the Little Maimi track to Cincinnati, where transfers were made to the Ohio and Mississippi railroad to St. Louis, whence a road was under construction toward, but still far short of Kansas City before 186o. The Baltimore and Ohio, the Marietta and Cincinnati, the Ohio and Mississippi, and the Missouri Central railroads stretching from Washington through Cincinnati to St. Louis, along the Potomac, north of the Ohio and south of the Missouri river, constituted the main strategic line of the Union in the approaching Civil War. Of that line Cincinnati was the locking place and the junction of the Little Maimi, with the incomplete Marietta & Cincinnati railroad at Loveland, was the key to the mustering and employment of the central forces of the Union. Amid the excitement of the time the condition was accepted without analysis, and amid the surge of armies and clash of battles, little comment was made upon the immense aggregate of soldiers passing to and fro through the Cincinnati region. The nearest available site to the junction for the prodigious mustering was found between Loveland and Milford out on the Hamilton county side of the Maimi, and became famous as a drill ground for hundreds of thousands and then as a vast hospital known as Camp Dennison. While the ceaseless course of time was being ordered for all this busy life and stern array along the western hills of Clermont, other plans as yet noiseless of renown were being accomplished to the eastward.

The fertile hills and teeming plains were working wonders for the people along the river. Before steam had proved its current-defying power, and for a score of succeeding years, the wealth of products was boated to southern markets, just as many of the immigrants had come, in flat bottomed barges that were built for one downward trip and then to be broken. These boats were loaded with flour and meal and the fierce blood of the corn near at hand, at the mouth of the streams or safely up by the little mills that hindered their hurry to the sea. But economy in freight was all important in the long voyages, and many had learned on the western slopes of 'the mountains that grain and hogs could be reduced many fold into barrels of whisky and pork, both in great demand down the river, the pork for the slaves and the whisky by the drivers.

398 - CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES

And thus for awhile distilleries were as numerous as the mills for grinding.

As the evil of the custom came into clearer view, conscience warmed and warned. For no stated reason except that the old practice of meeting there was not forgotten, the first convention in the cause of temperance in the two counties met in Williamsburg, February 17, 183o, and organized with Thomas Poage, of the Ripley family, as president ; Major Daniel Kain, vice-president ; Rev. Robert B. Dobbins, of Felicity, secretary, and John Foster, treasurer. Though small at first, the association grew numerous and influential. Ten years later the "Washingtonians" thrilled the nation with a call to neither touch, taste, nor handle intoxicating liquors. Then until the Civil War, the topmost heights of platform eloquence trembled with denunciation of the moral delinquency of the drunkard without a remembered recognition of the physical disease of the victim, as now set forth by the most profound students of the evil. The "Washingtonians" were succeeded by the "Sons" and Daughters" of Temperance, and by the "Good Templars," of which scores of "Divisions" and "Lodges" rose, flourished and ceased, as a part of the social scheme of the times when a "Temperance Lecture" by General "Sam Carey" or the Rev. "Young Max Gaddis" was the largest occasion until it happened again. As in all that is human, while many applauded, some refused belief and not a few derided. But the position reached is briefly told in a statement that Brown and Clermont are classed among the "Dry counties" and that "Prohibition" is said to be "Out of politics."

Agitation of the slavery question was largely influenced by the "River trade." With all the inborn propensity to ramble that had brought Europeans to America, their descendants found their only chance in a trip down the river, where they saw the "Peculiar institution" under conditions greatly differing from the patriarchal life in Kentucky. All such visitors to the slave, markets were not made bitterly hostile to slavery. Some were lulled by the profits and did not or would not think of the gathering woe. They rejoiced in the friendship that clamored for whisky and were delighted with a system that cheapened cotton and paid a still higher price for pork. The system doubled the wealth of England over and

CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES - 399

over, until the smart of Saratoga and the shame of Yorktown were all but forgotten. In the arrogance of that time their sneering wits asked who reads an American book? The produce of the Ohio valley went with the current to the cotton fields and no farther. The cotton went to English mills that sent their muslins and other things that could not be made in America to be delivered by canals to the people by the Ohio, where the circuit began. A couple of years were required to come round back to where the food for the slave was raised. The plan was the best yet tried in Ohio, and was supposed to be the best that could be, and people were warned against any disturbances of the hypothesis.

Others, however, came back with other views. When but nineteen years old, Abraham Lincoln helped to guide a flat boat to New Orleans, and did the same again three years later. Six years later, or in 1837, Thomas Morris saw some trading wagons loaded with slave children in Washington, which so unnerved him that he was not able to do his part in Congress that day. But he became so nerved two years later that he made his famous prophecy in the Senate that the slave would yet go free. About the same time or a little sooner, Boerstler Huber named for his uncle, Captain Jacob Boerstler, killed at the battle of Brownstown, after learning to tan with his father, Jacob, went on a flat boat to New Orleans, where he sought work at his trade. but was met with the answer, "No, I bought a tanner yesterday." Stung by the insult, "Boss" Huber, as he was appropriately called, came back to the tan yard at Williamsburg and assumed the position of General Passenger Agent of the Underground railroad by the Old Boone Trail to or rather from Xenia. For, after Ohio had become populous and the Blue Grass region of Kentucky had grown opulent in slaves who longed for freedom, the fugitives -turned north and guided by the same stars that watched over Lytle, took his course to the unknown land of their hope. As sympathy met them and covered their course with a mantle of charity, even as the epic goddess protected her Trojan son, popular fancy combined all hidden paths of light into one comprehensive idea and jocosely named it the "Underground railroad."