History of Knox County. - 7

HISTORY OF KNOX COUNTY.

CHAPTER I

SKETCH OF THE COUNTRY AND SETTLEMENT PRIOR TO ORGANIZATION - TRAVERSED BEFORE THE TERRITORY OF OHIO WAS NAMED BY ONE OF ITS SUBSEQUENT SETTLERS. - ITS INHABITANT BEFORE THE STATE WAS ORGANIZED. - ITS CITIZENS WHEN FAIRFIELD COUNTY WAS CREATED. - WITH INCIDENTS OF FRONTIER LIFE AND ADVENTURE.

The country having for its name Ohio was constituted, under General Arthur St. Clair, a territorial government in the year 1788, and he continued as Governor until the adoption of the State Constitution in 1803.

By his proclamation the county of Fairfield was created December 9th, 1800, and the district of which we now treat was included therein until the month of February, 1808, when it was, by enactment of the Legislature, organized into a separate and distinct county, honored with the name of General Henry Knox, a distinguished officer of the revolutionary army, who was subsequently Secretary of War in Gen. Washington'' administration.

The first white man know to have viewed this section of country was John Stilley, who, when a captive among the Indians, traversed the White Woman and Owl Creek from its month in a northwesterly direction, as early as June, 1779, nine years

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before the name of Ohio had been given to this territory, and when the savages and wild beasts roamed at will throughout its vast extent.

The first settlers in this district were from Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and its inhabitants, at every period of its history, have been chiefly from the middle States.

From our research into early statements, we are led to believe that Andrew Craig was the first white man who located within the present county limits. He was, at a very early day, a sort of frontier character, fond of rough and tumble life, a stout and rugged man - bold and dare-devil in disposition - who took delight in hunting, wrestling and athletic sports, and was "hail fellow well met" with the Indians then inhabiting the country. He was from the bleak, broken, mountainous region of Virginia, and as hardy a pine knot as ever that country produced. He was in this country when Ohio was in its territorial condition, and when this wilderness region was declared to be in the county of Fairfield, the sole denizen in this entire district, whose history is now being written, tabernacled with a woman in a rough log hut close by the little Indian Field, about one-half mile east of where Mount Vernon city now exists, and at the point where Centre Run empties into the Ko-ko-sing. There Andrew Craig lived when Mount Vernon was laid out in 1805 - there he was upon the organization of Knox county, its oldest inhabitant - and there he continued until 1809. Such a harum-scarum fellow could not rest easy when white men got thick around him, so he left and went to the In-

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dian village - Greentown - and from thence migrated further out upon the frontier, preferring red men for neighbors.

After many years of solitary residence on the beautiful Ko-ko-sing, the solitude of Craig's retreat is broken by the entrance of a lone Jerseyman, who, in the spring of 1803, penetrates some ten miles further into the wilderness, so as not, by too close proximity, to annoy each other, and there raises a little log cabin and settles down. This follower of the trade of Vulcan soon gets in readiness to blow and strike, and sets about supplying the sons of the forest with the first axes they had ever seen, and by making for them tomahawks, scalping knives, etc., he acquires the sobriquet of the "axe-maker," which for more than half a century has attached to Nathaniel Mitchel Young.

A year passes by before any white accession is made to society on Owl Creek. Then a stalwart backwoodsman breaks the silence by the crack of his rifle, and at the spot where James S. Banning now lives, near Clinton, the pioneer, William Douglass, drives his stake.

The skillful navigator plies his oar, and Robert Thompson ascends Owl Creek to where Mount Vernon now stands, and on the rich bottom land, about one mile west, commences another improvement. George Dial, of Hampshire county, Virginia, in another pirogue comes up the creek, and, pleased with the beautiful country about where Gambier now flourishes, pitches his tent at the place now occupied by John Troutman. Old Captain James Walker, from Pennsylvania, settles on the bank of

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the creek where Mount Vernon now is. John Simpkins wanders from Virginia, with his son Seeley for his capital, and squats about a mile above Douglass, where George Cassel's beautiful farm now exists. While these plain men from Virginia, New Jersey and Pennsylvania are preparing their cabins for comfortable occupation, and making little clearings, a stray Yankee, solitary and alone, with a speculative eye and money-making disposition, is, with pocket compass, taking his bearings through the forest, soliloquizing about the chance of making a fortune by laying out a town and selling lots to those who may come after him into this charming new country. Having, as he thought, found the exact spot for his future operations, he blazes a tree, and wends his way to the nearest town - Franklinton - west of the Scioto, then a place of magnificent pretensions, where he gets chain and compass and paper, and returns and lays out the town of Clinton, in section number four, township seven, range four, United States military district, with its large "public green," its north street and south street, its main street, first, second, third and fourth streets, and one hundred and sixty lots, and, taking his town plat in his pocket, he walks to New Lancaster, being the first white person ever known to have made a journey in that direction from this infant settlement, and before Abraham Wright, Justice of the Peace, acknowledges that important instrument, and on the 8th of December, 1804, places it upon record. Thus Samuel H. Smith, subsequently the first surveyor of Knox county, for many years a resident, its leading business man, and

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largest land holder, made his entrance into this district.

Shortly afterwards a large accession was made to the population of the country by the emigration from Ten Mile, Washington county, Pa., of John Mills, Henry Haines, Ebenezer and Abner Brown, and Peter Baxter, who settled a short distance south of Owl Creek, where the Beams, Merrits and Lafevers have since lived. This settlement, by the increase of the Leonards, was in 1805 and '6 the largest and best community in the country, and upon the organization of the county, and for several years thereafter, it furnished the leading men.

Ben. Butler, Peter Coyle, and Thomas Bell Patterson, in the spring of 1805, augment the Walker settlement, where Mount Vernon was located shortly thereafter. William Douglass is joined by James Loveridge, who emigrates from Morris county, New Jersey, and with his wife takes quarters on the 6^th day of July upon the clapboards in the garret of his little log cabin, and is mighty glad to get such a shelter as that to spend the year in. The next year Loveridge starts off, under pretense of hunting a cow, and goes to the land office and enters and pays for the tract of land, where shortly after he erected a dwelling, and has ever since resided. Upon this land there is an uncommon good spring, which caused him to select it, and he tells with much glee the circumstances under which he obtained it. The only Yankee then in the country claimed to have located it, and proposed to sell it to him at a higher price than the government rate, which was then $2 per acre. Concealing his inten-

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tion from all but his wife, Loveridge slipped off and examined into and purchased it himself from the government, and when he returned with his patent, Bill Douglass laughed heartily at the Jersey Blue overreaching the cunning yankee. Amoriah Watson, of Wyoming county, Pa., also put up with Douglass, and thus this settlement was made up of Douglass, Smith, Watson and Loveridge, in 1805. The old axe-maker, in the meantime, is followed up by some of his relations and friends, who start what has ever since been known as the Jersey settlement. Jacob Young, Abraham Lyon and Simeon Lyon are the first to settle upon the South Fork of Owl Creek, and are succeeded by Eliphalet Lewis, John Lewis, and James Bryant. The Indians they found very numerous, and through the kind feelings towards the old axe-maker, they were very friendly, and really quite and advantage in ridding the country of wolves, bears, and other varmints.

In the winter of 1805-6, that settlement entered into a written agreement to give nine bushels of corn for each wolf scalp that might be taken, and three of the men caught forty-one wolves in steel traps and pens! The description of these pens, and one of the stories told of their operation, we give in the words of an old settler:-"Wolf pens were about six feet long, four wide, and three high, formed like a huge square box, of small logs, and floored with puncheons. The lid, also of puncheons, was very heavy, and moved by an axle at one end, made of a small round stick. The trap was set by a figure 4, with any kind of meat except that of wolf's, the animals being fonder of any other than

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their own. On gnawing the meat, the lid fell and caught the unamiable native. To make sport for the dogs, the legs of the wolf were pulled through the crevices between the logs, hamstrung, and then he was let loose, when the dogs soon caught and finished him. In Delaware county an old man went into a wolf trap to fix the spring, when it sprung upon him, knocking him flat upon his face, an securely caught him as though he were a wolf. Unable to lift up the lid, and several miles from any house, he lay all one day and night, and would have perished but for hunter, who passing by heard his groans, and came to his rescue."

North, west and east of these embryo settlements all was wilderness for many long miles. A place bearing the name of Newark had been laid out by Gen. W. C. Schenck, but it had not any greater population than these little scattered settlements aforementioned. The principal towns of note to the early settlers were Lancaster, Chillicothe and Zanesville. Neither of them were much larger then than our usual crossroads villages now are. The people were exceedingly neighborly, and performed all manner of "kind chores" for each other, in going to mills, laying in goods, dividing what they had with each other,&c. The nearest mill in 1805, was in Fairfield county. Our old friend James Loveridge informs us of a trip he made to that mill, which was seven miles up the Hockhocking river, from Lancaster. It belonged to Loveland &, and was situated in a little crack between some rocks, and he went down into the mill from on top of the roof. He made the trip there and

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Back, about 125 miles, and brought home with him in his wagon about 900 pounds of flour, one barrel of whisky, and one barrel of salt. How the settlement must have rejoiced at the arrival of the great staples of frontier life, salt, whiskey and flour!

Knox County - 15.

CHAPTER II

CONTINUATION OF THE EARLY OUTLINE - MORE ABOUT THE FIRST SETTLERS. - QUAKERS FROM MARYLAND FIND THEIR WAY IN 1806. - INCIDENTS CONNECTED WITH THEIR EMIGRATION, AND IN THE MOVEMENTS OF OTHER SETTLERS.-WHO THEY WERE AND WHAT BECAME OF THEM. - THE PRIVATIONS ENDURED AND DANGERS ENCOUNTERED. - MORE TOWNS LAID OUT. - THE FIRST MILLS. - THE SCENE OF AN ENCOUNTER WITH INDIANS. - INCONVENIENCES OF THE COUNTRY. - EFFORTS FOR A NEW COUNTY. - AN EARLY ELECTION. - FAIRFIELD DIVIDED. - THREE NEW COUNTIES CREATED BY ONE BILL. - STRIFE FOR THE SEAT OF JUSTICE OF KNOX.

The spring of 1806 brought with it a new element into the wilderness region, in the form of the Friends - the forerunners of large numbers of that society, who by their quiet yet industrious ways have contributed very much to the prosperity and peacefulness of our people. The venerable father Henry Roberts may be justly regarded as the head of this emigration from Maryland. In 1805 he left Frederick county, in that State, with his family, and directed his course to the far west, but on reaching Belmont county, found it necessary to winter his family there, and sent his wagon and team back to Maryland with a load of ginseng and snake-root, and on their return with a load of goods, he started with his family and plunder, and on the 7^th of April, 1806, he landed at Henry Haines', in the Ten Mile settlement, and after spending a week looking for a good location, on the 14th of that

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month settled down his family at the little prairie five miles above Mount Vernon, of late widely known as the Armstrong section. The family consisted of his wife, his sons - William, now living at Pekin, Illinois; Isaiah, now residing near Pilot Knob, Missouri; Richard Roberts, of Berlin - and a daughter Massah, who married Dr. Timothy Burr, and died at Clinton, March 9th, 1814. Nine acres of that beautiful prairie were at once broken up and planted in corn. It was very hard work to break the virgin soil with a first rate four-horse plow team, but it paid for that labor by one of the finest crops of corn ever raised in this country. In the fall Wm. Y. Farquhar, a cousin of Henry Roberts, came with his family, and after him came Wm. W. Farquhar with his family. They all stopped with Henry Roberts, and thus composed the first settlement of Friends in this district. From this nucleus came the numerous society of Quakers in Wayne, Middlebury and Berlin, in after years. Shortly after this we find another Quaker, Samuel Wilson, and John Kerr in what subsequently became Wayne township, and John Cook and Jacob Cook just above, in what is now Middlebury township, and Amoriah Watson goes from Douglass' to the tract of land above, where Fredericktown was the next year laid out, and which he subsequently sold to Jacob Ebersole, a place now easy to be identified by all. In the sprint of 1806, there were within the after limits of Knox county but fifteen person who turned out to vote, and but nine liable to perform military duty out to muster.

The first grist mill erected in this county was of

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decidedly primitive character. It was in the Hains, or Ten Mile settlement, and constructed without the sound of the hammer upon iron. It was the joint work of Ebenezer and Abner Brown, assisted by the mechanical skill of the whole neighborhood, and was built on what was called by the early settlers "Big Run," thought in later times it is spoken of as the little Lake, through which the road to Granville has since been laid out. The water has almost disappeared - having been in its appearance greatly changed by ditching, and in some parts obliterated by filling up the hollow. The mill stood where Isaac Beam's house now is, and the dam was where the bridge now stands in the lane. It was all of wood - a sugar-trough made its meal-trough - a little box the hopper - the stones were about two feet through, and hooped with elm bark for want of iron. It cracked corn pretty well with a good head on, but the stream was generally dry, and the mill was only able to run when big showers of rain came. The building was about ten feet square, of rough logs - not a nail or a bit of iron could be had when it was made. The stones of this ancient of days are certainly a curiosity - they are yet to be seen, being the property of Moses Farquhar, of Berlin, who since that day has attempted experiments with them. Richard Roberts at one time took a grist to this original mill and had it ground. He was then about seventeen years old, and not much acquainted with the milling business, but he was greatly impressed with its mechanism, and read to exclaim, with our old friend Hadly, "The works of God are wonderful,

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but the works of man are wonderfuller!" He thought that it worked first rate, thought Henry Hains at that time had got a little hand mill which he claimed was a great improvement on the little wooden mill.

Mr. Roberts recollects of having at one time packed a bag of corn from Tom Butler's down on White-woman home, and from thence to a mill near Newark, and back home again, less a heavy toll. While at the mill he saw Hughes, and from his own lips had a true account about the killing of Indian horse thieves, whom Jack Ratliff and himself had pursued into the Owl Creek county and killed as they came upon them in the bottom just below where Fredericktown now stands. The story runs thus: - "One night in April, 1800, two Indians stole their horses from a little inclosure near their cabins, located in some old Indian fields on the Licking. In the morning, finding their horses gone, and tracks about, they were satisfied of their having been stolen, and started of in pursuit, accompanied by a man named Bland. They followed their trail all day, and camped at night in the woods, and making an early start in the morning, surprised the Indians in their sleep. They drew up their rifles to shoot, when one of the Indians, discovering them, clapping his hands on his breast, as if to ward off the fatal ball, exclaimed in piteous tones, 'me bad Indian! - me no do so more!' Alas! In vain he plead; the smoke curled from the glistening barrels, the report rang in the morning air, and the poor Indians fell dead." Hughes and Ratliff returned home with the horses

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and plunder taken from the Indians, feeling as well over their little exploit as any men ever did over a great and glorious action. Ellis Hughes, who was known to very many of our old settlers, died near Utica, in March, 1845, and was buried with military honors. He was believed to be the last survivor of the hard fought battle of Point Pleasant. He was a hardy backwoodsman from Western Virginia.

Our old townsman, Wm. Mefford, informs us that when he improved his farm on Mile Run, in Wayne township, he was clearing off ground on which to build his house, and he then plowed up the two Indians killed by Hughes, and also a rusty gun barrel, brass guard, and other pieces of a gun, which had not decayed. This was in 1835; and Jacob Mitchel now has the old relics.

George Conkie gathered up the bones and buried them, and the house was built on the spot - the old Peck place on Mile Run bottom, where Mrs. Acre now lives. In early days there was a favorite camping ground for the Indians about three-fourths of a mile from where these Indians were killed. Three old settlers have informed us that about 1808 they saw at one time more than one hundred and fifty warriors camped there. They have several times seen Old Crane, the Wyandot Chief, the Chief Armstrong, and Captain Pipe, with bands of Indians, roving through this country, and we have gathered some very amusing incidents connected therewith, which the limit we have prescribed for this work compels us to omit in this edition.

The great inconvenience the settlers labored under for want of building material caused William

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Douglass, as early as the spring of 1805, to conceive the design of erecting a mill at the seat now known as Banning's Mill. He then commenced digging the race and building the dam. After getting a saw to running, he set to work building a grist mill; being a man of enterprise, he could not brook the thought that the people in that neighborhood should continue to boil and pound their corn when they could not take time to go to the distant mills.

John Kerr, as will be elsewhere noted in this book, erected a little grist mill on the Sullivant track, and laid out the town of Frederick in the first quarter, seventh township, fourteenth range, United States military district, which on the 11th of November, 1807, he acknowledged, in presence of George Chambers, before Wm. W. Farquhar. A full account of the early settlement and progress of this thriving village will be found under the head of Wayne township.

In our investigation of early matters, we find that the settlers of this district were solicitous upon three great pints for legislative aid, to wit: the division of Fairfield, the increase of premium upon wolf scalps, and proper encouragement in killing squirrels. The General Assembly, in 1807, passed a bill to encourage killing of squirrels. It went through the popular branch with a rush, but the vote upon the final passage of the bill in the Senate, on the 21st of December, stood 8 ayes to 7 nays. The price for scalping grown wolves was increased, after some time and much petitioning, and the monster Fairfield was dismembered at last. Happy were those

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old pioneers, at that period of their existence -

" All then was happy - possessing and possessed -

No craving void left aching in the breast!"

In looking over the old petitions and beholding the cramped signatures of a number of these hardy yeomen, whose rough specimen marks of cracked and blistered hands in frontier service, clearly bear witness to their whole heart being in the prayers sent up for these measures, we can well imagine how they must have chuckled with delight, as a Christian over his soul's salvation, at the realization of their wishes. In those primitive times their attention was not diverted from the real live issues affecting the welfare of themselves and their families to grand humanitarian schemes for the benefit of any other race or people. The squirrels eat the kernels when the corn was in silken tassels, taking it out of their children's mouths; the wolves prowled about their tracks, destroying their pigs and poultry, and rendered night hideous with their howling, and frightened and endangered the lives of wives and children, so they could not leave home to attend to necessary business at the remote county seat. This was a remarkable epoch in the history of the pioneers of this country.

In 1807, at the October election, the section of country known as Fairfield county cast but 213 votes, all told; and now there is scarcely a township in all this country that does not contain more voters. Then the entire vote cast for Governor in the State, as officially published, was 5,616; and now, after the space of fifty-four years, our own county of Knox

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polls over 6,000 votes, and the old county as it then existed polled at the last election 40,000!

What a change in the country we have lived to witness! How striking the contrast in manners, customers, education, intelligence, and in political, religious, and social life! In nothing is the alteration more clearly marked than in the dissemination of information in reference to elections and the system of electioneering. Then every man ran on his own hook - his own race - making the best speed he was capable of - fully impressed with the belief that the devil would take the hindmost. The race was won then by personal merit and cleverness. Now party intervenes; caucuses and juntos dictate; conventions and wigwams gather together political carpenter, joiners, and jacks of all trades, whose special province it is to make platforms out of vagrant material for weak-kneed and spavined candidates to stand on. Then there were no daily papers, and weekly ones only existed in great cities like Boston, New York and Philadelphia. In fact nine-tenths of the then inhabitants had never seen a newspaper. The official count of the cote of that year show more fully than any language could convey the state of blissful ignorance prevailing throughout all this now politically crazy country. There were then two candidates running for Governor, to wit: Return Jonathan Meigs and Nathaniel Massie. The former was voted for under nineteen different names, and the latter under five different styles. The various tickets read: For Return J. Meigs, Return J. Meigs, Jun., Jonathan R. Meigs, Jr., Jonathan Return Meigs, Jonathan Return

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Meigs, Jr., Return Meggs, Return R. Meags, Jr., Jonathan Meggs, Jonathan R. Meggs, J. Meigs, Jr., Jonathan Meigs, Jonathan J. Meigs, Judge Meigs, John Meigs, Mr. Meigs, J. Maggs, Return Israel Meigs, James Meigs, Johan Meigs. Nathaniel Massie, Nathaniel Massie, Esq., James Massie, Mr. Massie, Daniel Massie. Meigs received 3,299; Massie 2,317; and Return J. Meigs was declared elected Governor by 982 majority. Thomas Kirker, Speaker of the Senate, was then acting Governor.

Meigs had been a colonel in the army, and was appointed judge of the territory of Louisiana in July, 1805, and had resided in that country some six months; his wife and family, however, had remained, during his absence, at Marietta, in this State. Massie contested his election; and on the 30^th of December, 1807, the General Assembly, in joint session, by a vote of 24 to 20, decided that Meigs was not eligible. The vote of Fairfield was: For Meigs, 167; Massie, 46. In 1810, Governor Meigs was elected by the people, and served as Governor until 1814. He was a gentleman of education and talent, and Meigs county, upon the Ohio river, will perpetuate his name as long as Ohio exists. At the election of 1807, above alluded to, Elnathan Scofield was elected Senator, and Philemon Beecher and Wm. W. Irwin Representatives.

The singularity of name borne by Governor Meigs is thus accounted for, as narrated to us by George Browning, Esq., a native of Belpre, and resident in this place since 1829. Jonathan Meigs, the father of Return J., was quite celebrated for his bravery in several Indian campaigns, and when out on one

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of these perilous excursions, during his absence, his wife was in her confinement, and wrought upon by great anxiety for her husband, kept continually crying out in pain: "Return, Jonathan, oh! Return, Jonathan, to me." About the time Return Jonathan was born, Jonathan returned, and she was quieted down, and at once the name "Return Jonathan" was given to the new comer.

The great extent of territory comprised within the limits of Fairfield, and the inconveniences resulting to the settlers in the more new portion of the country from their great distance from the county seat, caused them to agitate the question of a division of the county as early as 1806.

At the fifth General Assembly of Ohio, held in Chillicothe, December 1^st, 1806, a strong effort was made, and it was "within an ace" of being successful. Elnathan Scofield, Senator, and Philemon Beecher, Representative, of Fairfield county, were particularly friendly to this measure. How near it came to being a success, may be judged of by the following statement upon the Senate Journal, page 115, January 15th, 1807. A message from the House of Representatives, by Mr. Beecher, represented that "the House had passed 'an act for the division of Fairfield county,' in which they desire the concurrence of the Senate." On the 16th, the bill was received and read a second time. On the 20th, page 128, Mr. Scofield laid before the Senate a petition, signed by a number of the inhabitants of Fairfield county, praying for a division thereof, and recommending Mount Vernon as the temporary seat of justice in said contemplated division, and

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also recommending certain persons as suitable characters for associate judges, and the petition was received and referred to the committee of the whole, to whom is committed the bill for a division of Fairfield county. On the 21st, the said bill was taken up, and considered and amended, and continued till Saturday next.

At the sixth General Assembly, in December, 1807, we find on the 31^st several petitions were presented from Fairfield county for a division of said county, which were referred to Messrs. Scofield, McArthur and Bigger.

On the 7th of January, Senate Journal, page 69, Mr. Scofield presented a petition from citizens of Fairfield county living south of the Refugee Tract, whose names are thereunto subscribed, for two counties; the one lying north of Refugee Tract line to be called Center, and the other to be called --------. January 15ht, the bill pending in the Senate, page 83, several amendments were presented to the committee of the whole, one of which is: "Strike out in the 1st section and 6th line, after the word 'heathen,' 'from thence west along the south boundary of said military tract, and insert,'" etc. From which it may be inferred that there were heathen about these parts before these later times.

On the 16th of January the bill passed the Senate, and on the 30th of January, 1808, it passed the House and became a law. The second section of the act created the county of Knox. By this bill three of the best counties in the State of Ohio were marked out by metes and bounds, to wit: Licking, Knox and Richland. By the 4th section, the tem-

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porary seat of Justice of Licking was to be at the house of Levi Hays, and of Knox county at Mount Vernon. The 7th section provides "that Richland county shall be under the jurisdiction of Knox until the Legislature may think proper to organize the same." Hence, the reader will observe that in these pages we have incorporated several items of the early history of our younger sister - Richland - as well as some incidents of more particular interest to those dwelling in Licking. For the same reason, we have carried the history of Bloomfield, Chester and Franklin - three of the townships at present belonging to Morrow county, though until 1848 part and parcel of old Knox. The same commissioners, who located the seat of justice of Knox county at Mount Vernon, under the join resolution of February 9, 1808, fixed the seats of justice of Licking and Delaware counties at Newark and Delaware.

On the 14th of February, in joint ballot, the General Assembly chose the first associate judges of Knox county, Wm. W. Farquhar, John Mills and William Gass.

As we have before stated, in the year 1805 some of the inhabitants became desirous of having a town on Owl Creek, and Mount Vernon was laid out accordingly. The proprietors were Benjamin Butler, Thomas B. Patterson, and Joseph Walker. One of the settlers being from the Potomac, and thinking of the consecrated spot on its shores, suggested that, as the stream was so clear and beautiful, the place should bear the sacred name - Mount Vernon - and it was so done.

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Clinton - one mile and a half north - located the year before, was by its proprietor named after Governor DeWitt Clinton, of New York, and he also showed his regard for his old friend by giving the name to his son - DeWitt Clinton Smith - who was a member of the sixth Legislature of Texas, and now resides in the Lone Star State. And in 1807 Fredericktown was laid out. Thus there were three towns, having a "local habitation and a name," before the county of Knox was created. Neither of them had advanced very far in the scale of citydom up to 1808; of the number, however, Clinton was the most promising. It had, at that time, more houses, shops and workmen, than either of the others.

Gilman Bryant opened a grocery store in Mount Vernon, on the lot where Buckingham Emporium now stands. It was a little story and a half sycamore cabin, where he kept powder, shot, lead, whisky, etc., for sale to the Indians and the few whites in 1807. Samuel H. Smith had a pretty good stock of goods and traps at Clinton. Of each of these towns we shall speak more fully under their appropriate heads.

Upon the organization of the county, the inhabitants were greatly please. Those who had been compelled to travel to New Lancaster to transact county business, were particularly gratified. The proprietors of town sites and holders of lots therein, were superlatively elated.

On the 9th day of February, 1808, James Armstrong, James Dunlap and Isaac Cook were appointed Commissioners to located the seat of justice.

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In pursuance thereof, the proceeded to discharge the duties imposed upon them, and on the 28th day of March, they appeared before John Mills, Justice of the Peace, and were severally sworn to discharge the duties assigned them as Commissioners as aforesaid.

Clinton and Mount Vernon were the principal competitors for the seat of justice. The former place at that time was the larger. It had more goods, more mechanics, more enterprises on foot, more houses, more people, and more hope for the future. It had more of New England families, more of Yankee spirit and shrewdness; and yet, with all their cunning and craftiness - all their money and management - all their efforts and inducements - Clinton lost the selection. Its generals were out-generaled - its managers out-maneuvered - its wits outwitted - its Yankees out-Yankeed by the less showy and pretending men from the Potomac and the Youghiogheny, who had settled at Mount Vernon. The choice of either one for the county seat involved the ultimate ruin of the other. Clinton made a bold effort to keep up against adverse winds. It could not sustain an appeal from the decision of the Commissioners, but still it kept on for several years in its improvements, and until after the war it was ahead of Mount Vernon in many respects. It had the first and only newspaper in the county for two years; it had the first and only church in the county for many years; it had stores, tanyards, shops of various kinds, and greater variety of business than Mount Vernon; but after the war was over it began to decay , and its rival

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took the lead. The accredited account of the location of the county seat is as follows: - The Commissioners first entered Mount Vernon, and were received with the best cheer at the log tavern of Mr. Butler. To impress them with an idea of the public spirit of the place, the people were very busy at the moment of their entrance and during their stay, at work, all with their coats off, grubbing the streets. As they left for Clinton, all quitted their labor, not "of love;" and some rowdies, who dwelt in cabins scattered round about in the woods, away from town, left "the crowd," and stealing ahead of the Commissioners, arrived at Clinton first. On the arrival of the others at that place, these fellows pretended to be in a state not comformable to temperance principles, ran against the Commissioners, and by their rude and boisterous conduct so disgusted the worthy officials as to the apparent morals of the inhabitants of Clinton, that they returned and made known their determination that Mount Vernon should be the favored spot. That night there were great rejoicings in town. Bonfires were kindled, stews made and drank, and live trees split with gunpowder.

Such is a plausible account of this matter, which we have often heard related by our old friend Gilman Bryant, who took great pride in rehearsing a fable calculated to give Mount Vernon the manifest advantage in the estimation of moral and temperance men in these later times. But some of those who lived in the county at that early day give an entirely different version to the subject, and even have gone so far as to aver that the Commissioners

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themselves delighted, as did the rest of mankind, in taking a "wee drap of the cratur," and could not have been "disgusted by rude and boisterous conduct" to which they were accustomed.

And again it is suggested that "the crowd" at that day was not so great in this locality that men who had sense and observation sufficient to be selected for Commissioners, would not have been able to observe and distinguish "the rowdies," and class them where they belonged.

Another old settler, whose partiality at that day was for Clinton, avers that the proprietor of Clinton, Mr. Smith, had been very illiberal in his dealings with those who wished to purchase lots in his town. He had adopted a plan of withholding from market the best lots on the plat, and keeping the corner lots to be enhanced in value by the improvements made by settlers upon inside lots. At this course many of them became dissatisfied, and some of the number who had bought of him collogued with the Mount Vernonites against Clinton. We have been told by another old citizen, that two of the men living north of Mount Vernon, and considered as in the Clinton interest, proposed to Kratzer and Patterson to help secure the location of the county seat at Mount Vernon, in consideration of their receiving two lots apiece in the town, and that their favor and influence went accordingly.

And yet another account of this mooted question as to how the preference came to be Mount Vernon, comes to us in this wise; -

One of the Commissioners was security for Sam-

KNOX COUNTY - 31

uel Kratzer, and had become involved on that account. Kratzer had moved to this place from Lancaster, where he had been acting as land tax collector of Fairfield county, in 1805, and reported himself to have been robbed of the public money while upon the road going to make his return. He was a fine looking, large, fleshy man, and wore tight buckskin breeches. They had holes in them which he alleged to have been shot in the encounter, though they bore the appearance of having been cut; his saddle-bags were also exhibited with horrid gashes in them, and making profert of these he petitioned the Legislature for relief, and at the session of 1806, the bill for his relief was lost by a vote of 10 yeas to 17 nays. - H. J., p. 114.

Certain it is, Kratzer lost caste, and broken up and humiliated, he came to the new town site and bought out Patterson's interest in the town of Mount Vernon, and it is represented that one of the Commissioners was counted on by the settlers as certain for said place. He got another of the Board with him, and Mount Vernon came off victor. Subsequently - and as resulting from this judgment - Kratzer, enabled by the rise of property to pay off his debt, did the fair and just thing by the Commissioner.

Mount Vernon at that time was a rough, ragged, hilly spot, with a thick growth of hazel and other bushes, not near so inviting a place as Clinton, where everything appeared enticing to the stranger. Gilman Bryant says that: "The ground north of Butler's Tavern was then almost wholly in woods. Some timber had been chopped down in places.

32 - HISTORY OF

Main Street was full of stumps, log heaps and trees, and the road up the street was a poor crooked path winding round amongst the stumps and logs." Richard Roberts says that it was very rough and broken where Mount Vernon was located, and was the last spot on God's earth a man would have picked to make a county seat.

Another gentleman residing north of Mount Vernon, and partial to Fredericktown, thinks that by a little management that place might have been made the permanent seat of justice, when the strife was so great between the other towns. They might have got a strip thrown off of Delaware county, which might have been attached, and then Frederick would have been alike central; but Kerr and his comrades had not their eyes open to the importance of getting that five mile range with Knox, and they were left out of doors when the location was made permanent.

We have thus minutely given all the statements made to us in regard to the selection of a permanent seat of justice, for it will be a matter of far greater interest to future generations than to the present. Our seventh chapter we devote to Ben. Butler's version, which will be read with great interest, as he is the only one of the proprietors of the town now living, and was a prominent actor in that affair. With that we leave this elaborately discussed subject.

History of Knox County. - 33

CHAPTER III

KNOX COUNTY ORGANIZED. THE FIRST TERM OF COMMON PLEAS. - REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS ON SEAT OF JUSTICE. - THE FIRST CRIMINAL TRIALS. - "THE ENFORCEMENT OF THE LAWS" UPON HEDRICK'S BARE BACK. - FORTY STRIPES LAID ON A POOR WHITE MAN'S NAKED SKIN! - THE PUBLIC WHIPPING ON THE PUBLIC SQUARE OF MOUNT VERNON. - ACTION OF THE COUNTY COMMISSIONERS, A.D. 1808. - THE FIRST OFFICERS, AND SOME ACCOUNT OF THEM. - THE FIRST GRAND JURIES AND FIRST PETIT JURIES. - THE FIRST ELECTION. - FIRST LICENSED PREACHERS, MERCHANTS AND TAVERN KEEPERS. - EXTRAORDINARY WOLF SESSION. - RIGID HONESTY AND ECONOMY OF OFFICERS.

On the first of May, 1808, the faces of old and young, great and small, of the male and female, upon Owl Creek's "stormy banks," were anxiously turned to the south to catch the first glimpse of that august personage, "the Court," then expected to make a fist visitation to Mount Vernon. Ben. Butler and Aunt Leah had their house all "in apple-pie order" for their grand reception; Jim Craig, at his house on the corner of Mulberry and Gambier, had laid in a fresh supply of whisky and other refreshments; Gilman Bryant had got a bran new horn for his customers, and had rubbed his little store up until the stock looked as bright as a dollar; and Sheriff Brown had caused the little wagon maker shop of Coyle & Sons to be swept out and supplied with

34 - HISTORY OF

smooth round logs for the jurymen and others in attendance to sit on. Every man and boy that had been fortunate enough to kill his deer had buckskin leggins and a new hunting shirt, and every woman that had a wheel had spun and dyed and made herself and little ones a good homespun garment. Some few who could stand the expense had bought of store calico three to five yards, at seventy-five cents a yard, and fitted themselves with a two or three breadth dress, the third breadth made into gores, so as to be wider at the bottom, as their ability enabled; for in those days there were no fashionable women to parade the streets with fifteen to eighteen yards in a dress, and no disposition for extravagant displays of wearing apparel. The Court traveled on horse-back - handed the saddlebags to "Knuck Harris," and, after rest and refreshment, bright and early on the morning of the 2d of May "opened" and proceeded to business. The whole population - men, women and children - were out in their best rig, to witness this great event; and we give the following faithful transcript of the entire proceedings:

FIRST COURT OF COMMON PLEAS IN KNOX COUNTY.

" The State of Ohio, to wit:

"Agreeable to an act of the General Assembly of the State of Ohio, passed on the 17th day of February, 1808, for establishing and organizing the county of Knox:

"Be it, therefore, remembered and known, that we, William Wilson, President, John Mills and Wm. Gass, Associate Judges for said county of Knox, did on this day, to wit: Monday, the second day of May, in the year of our Lord 1808, meet at Mount Vernon, the temporary seat of justice for the county aforesaid, and

KNOX COUNTY - 35

proceeded to the appointment of a clerk for the said county, whereupon it was declared by the Court that Chas. Loffland was duly elected pro tempore, who came into Court and was duly qualified as the law directs.

"Samuel H. Smith, Esq., was duly elected surveyor of Knox Co.

"Present: William W. Farquhar, gentleman."

"The State of Ohio vs. Wm. Hedrick - Felony. - William Wallace, William Bowen and Joseph Cherry Holmes entered into recognizance of $100 each to appear at the next Court of Common Pleas and testify against William Hedrick.

"James Armstrong, James Dunlap and Isaac Cook, gentlemen, who was appointed by the Legislature on the 9th of February last for fixing the county seat in the county of Knox, made their report to the Court of Common Pleas for the county aforesaid that Mount Vernon should be the seat of justice for said count.

"WILLIAM WILSON."

Such is the beginning of the minutes of the first Court. The "Report" reads as follows:

"To the Hon. William Wilson, Esq., President, and John Mills, William Gass and Wm. W. Forker, Esqs., Associate Judges of the Court of Common Pleas in and for the County of Knox, in the State of Ohio:

"May it please your Honors, In conformity to an act of the Legislature of the State of Ohio, passed the 28th of March, 1803, entitled an act establishing seats of justice, we, the subscribers, were appointed by a Resolution of both Houses of the Legislature, passed on the 9th of February, 1808, commissioners for fixing the Permanent seat of justice in and for s'd county of Knox. We do hereby make report to your Honors, that Having Met and attended to the duties of our s'd appointment in s'd county on the 28^th of the present Inst., and Having paid due Regard to the centre, Extent of population, Quality of soil, as well as the General convenience, we Hereby declare that the Town of Mount Vernon is the most suitable place for the Courts of s'd county to be held at, and we do hereby declare the said Town of Mount Vernon the parmanent seat of Jus-

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tice in and for s'd county of Knox. Given under our hands and seals this 29th day of March, 1808.

"JAMES ARMSTRONG, [SEAL.]

"JAMES DUNLAP, [SEAL.]

"ISAAC COOK, [SEAL.]

"Commissioners.

"The first Grand Jury Impanneled. - Matthew Merrit, foreman, John Herrod, Samuel H. Smith, James Walker, Jr., David Miller, Joseph Walker, Gilman Bryant, James Walker, Sen., William Douglass, Ziba Leonard, Stephen Chapman, Benj. Butler, Jonathan Hunt, Ichabod Nye.

"Fighting cases first disposed of. - State of Ohio vs. John Williamson. - For fighting yesterday with William Herrod. The Court do assess him in a breach of the peace, &c., in the sum of $1.60 and costs. State of Ohio vs. William Herrod. For fighting John Williamson yesterday. Fine $1.60 and costs.

"Preachers next in order. - William Thrift, a Baptist minister, is authorized to solemnize marriages.

"Traders Licensed. - Samuel Kratzer and Stephen Chapman are authorized to retail good, wares and merchandize in Mount Vernon, on paying into the treasure $5.

"Tavern-keepers Licensed. - Samuel Kratzer is licensed to keep a house of entertainment in the town of Mount Vernon for one year, on paying $6. Daniel Ayres is licensed to keep in Fredericktown, on paying $5.

"First Will admitted to Probate. - The last will and testament of William Leonard was proven.

"The First Trial by Jury. - State of Ohio vs. William Hedrick. - Indicted for stealing a watch from William Bowen. Plea - Not guilty.

"Jury. - James Loveridge, Henry Smith, Aaron Brown, James Smith, Benjamin Brown, John Beam, William Nash, Daniel Demick, Michael Brown, Peter Baxter, Archibald Gardner, and Levi Herrod. Verdict - Guilty.

"Judgment. - Fine $5, pay the owner, William Bowen, $15, and be whipped on his naked back ten stripes, imprisoned one month, pay the cost, and stand committed until the sentence is complied with.

"Second Trial. - State of Ohio vs. William Hedrick. - Indictment for stealing bay mare, property of William Wallace.

KNOX COUNTY - 37

"Jury. - John Baxter, William Herrod, William Biggs, Daniel Ayers, Nicholas Kyle, John Shinabery, James Craig, James Smith, Thomas Merrill, Dorman Lofland, James Pell, and Thompson Mills.

"Judgment. - Prisoner be whipped 20 lashes on his naked back, and pay a find of $20, and be imprisoned one month, and pay the owner $70, the value of the mare, pay the cost, and stand committed, &c.

"Third Trial. - State of Ohio vs. William Hedrick. - Indictment for stealing one pair over-alls, the property of Joseph Cherry Holmes.

"Jury. - James Loveridge, Henry Smith, Aaron Brown, James Smith, Benjamin Brown, John Beam, William Nash, Daniel Demick, Michael Brown, Peter Baxter, Archibald Gardner, and Levi Harrod.

"Judgment. - Prisoner be whipped on his naked back five stripes, pay a fine of $2, be imprisoned one month, pay the owner $5, double the value of the over-alls, pay cost, and stand committed, $c.

"Fourth Trial. - State of Ohio vs. William Hedrick. - Indictment for stealing one bell and collar, property of William Wallace.

"Jury. - Parts of the former.

"Judgment. - Prisoner to be whipped five stripes on his naked back, pay a fine of $1, pay the owner $1.50, the value of the bell and collar, pay the costs, and stand committed, $c."

The State pays its first fee. - On motion, a certificate was issued by the Commissioners in favor of Samuel Kratzer, Esq., for his services, for $6, in acting on the part of the State against William Hedrick, who was found guilty of felony.

The sentence of the Court - when, where, by whom and how executed. - The judgment of castigation was executed upon the public square of Mount Vernon, shortly after the adjournment of Court, in the presence of all the people. Silas Brown was the Sheriff, and it fell to his lot as such to serve the

38 - HISTORY OF

"legal process" upon the body of William Hedrick. There was a small leaning hickory tree upon the east side of the public square, between the present Norton building and High street, and a little south of where the jail was afterwards built, and this tree bent in such way that a man could walk around under it. To this delectable spot the culprit was taken, and his hands were stretched up over his head and tied to the tree, and the stripes were applied by said Sheriff to his naked back. He was struck forty times with a heavy raw-hide whip.

A spectator pleads for mercy. - The first few blows with the raw-hide were across the kidney. Mr. Bryant, one of the bystanders at once called out the Sheriff to whip him elsewhere - that was no place to whip a man - he should strike higher up; and the rest of the lashes were applied across the shoulders.

How Hedrick acted. - The criminal sobbed and cried piteously, and when released went off weeping and groaning. In many places the skin was cut and broken, and the blood oozed out, making a pitiable spectacle. And yet such was the feeling against him that few seemed to sympathize with the scourged. As he started off he said to the spectators, "You should not blame me for this, for it is not my fault." Bob Walker replied, "No, by G-d, you wouldn't have stood up and been whipped that way, if you could have helped it." And at this prompt retort to Hedrick's explanation or apology, the crowd laughed loudly and uproariously. From Gilman Bryant, Samuel H. Smith, Ben. Butler, Jonathan Hunt and Stephen Chapman of

KNOX COUNTY - 39

the Grand Jury, and James Loveridge and the Herrods of the Petit Jury, and Richard Roberts, all of whom are yet living, and who witnessed this scene, we have gathered this account of the first and last judicial punishment by whipping in the county of Knox. And scarcely any of the present citizens are aware that such punishment of criminals was ever the law of the land in which they have the good fortune to live.

THE FIRST ELECTION AT MOUNT VERNON

On the 4th day of April, 1808, the entire people of the county voted at Mount Vernon. The officers of election were Ebenezer Brown, Jabez Beers and Samuel Kratzer, Judges; Wm. Gass and Robert Anderson, Clerks. They were here from the most remote points, as well as from the vicinity of Mount Vernon. The election of the first officers in a new county brings out every body. They elected them by the following votes: John Lewis, for Commissioner, received 56 votes, John Herrod 52, and Joseph Walker 48. Silas Brown was elected Sheriff. Jonathan Craig, for Coroner, had 45, and Francis Hardesty 1 vote. Then for Trustees - for be it remembered, the whole county composed the district - George Downs had 41, Henry Roberts 36, and Joseph Coleman 36. The vote for Overseers of the Poor was, Moses Craig 22, James Walker 2, Alexander Walker 12. The candidates for Supervisor were Sam. Kratzer, who received 35, and Peter Baxter 36. For Fence Viewers, George Zin, Michael Click and Jesse Severe were candidates.

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For "House praisers," Archibald Gardner and James Craig each got 12 votes. For Constables, Gabriel Wilkins received 30, Philip Walker 21, Jonathan Hunt, Jr., 15, Dave Miller 3. For Treasurer, Ben. Butler had 12 votes, and James Walker, Jr., 2. None of these parties are now living but Ben. Butler and Jonathan Hunt, who many long years ago dropped the junior and became a senior, and is now one of the oldest of men.

DIVISION OF THE COUNTY INTO FOUR TOWNSHIPS, AND WHAT THEY WERE.

The following entry we find on a piece of paper in James Smith's hand:

"Knox County:

"Know ye, that on the 2d day of May, 1808, at a meeting of a Board of Commissioners for said county, to wit: Joseph Walker, John Harrod and John Lewis, Commissioners in and for said county,

"Ordered, that the following bounds be laid off into a separate township, to wit: beginning at the west boundary line of said county, between the 6th and 7th township line, and running east to the west of the thirteenth range line, thence north to the center of the 7th township line, thence on the east to the east line of the 13th range, thence north to the county line, which shall be called and known by the name of Wayne township.

"Ordered, that the following bounds be laid off into a separate township: beginning at the north-east corner of Wayne township, thence east to the west side of the 11th range, thence south to the center of the 6th township, thence west to the west line of the 12th range, thence south to the south line of the 6th township, thence west on the said line of the side line, which shall be called and known by the name of Clinton township.

"Beginning at the center of the 11th range line where it intersects Licking county line, thence north to the center of the 6th township line, thence west to the west line of the 12th range, thence south to the line between the 5th and 6th townships, thence

KNOX COUNTY - 41

west to the west line of the county, thence with the county line to Licking county to the place of beginning, which shall be know and called by the name of Morgan township.

"Ordered, that the following bounds be laid off into a separate township, laid off as follows: beginning at the north-east corner of Clinton township, thence eastward to the Muskingum county line, thence with the line of said county to the Licking county line, thence west to the middle of the 11^th range, thence north to the center of the 6th township, thence west to the west side of the 12th range, thence north to the place of beginning, which shall be called and known by the name of Union township."

Those who are curious to know what these townships comprised, will find that Wayne at that time embraced all of the present townships of Franklin and Chester, in Morrow county, Middlebury, and Berlin, Wayne, and the north half of Morris.

Clinton included Bloomfield, now in Morrow county, Liberty, north half of Pleasant, Monroe and Pike, and the south half of Morris.

Union took in Brown, Jefferson, Union, Howard, Butler, Jackson, three-fourths of Harrison, and the east half of Clay.

Morgan consisted of the west half of Clay, south-west quarter of Harrison, south half of Pleasant, and all of Morgan, Miller, Milford and Hilliar.

THE SECOND, OR FALL TERM KNOX COMMON PLEAS

Was held on Monday, the 5th day of September, 1808. What was then transacted we will briefly state.

A Grand Jury was called and sworn for the body of this county, to wit: Jabez Beers, foreman, Ziba Leonard, John Johnson, James Walker, Jacob

42 - HISTORY OF

Young, Benjamin Butler, Wm. Nash, John Butler, David Miller, John Merritt, Wm. Douglass, Jas. Walker, Jr., James Craig, who after being sworn, retired out of Court, and after some time returned with the following presentments, to wit:

"The State of Ohio vs. Samuel H. Smith. - On a presentment for selling goods without license. A true bill, to which the defendant plead guilty. Court on consideration of the offense doth find the defendant in the sum of $2.50, and costs of the prosecution.

"Ordered, that the Grand Jury be adjourned till to-morrow morning, nine o'clock, who met according to adjournment.

"The State of Ohio vs. Michael Brown. - On an indictment. True Bill.

"The State of Ohio vs. Aaron Brown. - On an indictment. True Bill.

"The State of Ohio vs. James Click. - On an indictment. True Bill.

"The State of Ohio vs. Sarah Hartley. - On an indictment. True Bill.

"Samuel Kratzer vs. Robert Walker. - In trespass. Dismissed at plaintiff's cost.

"Ordered, that Edward Herrick be appointed a prosecuting attorney for this county.

"James Scott, who is a regular Minister of the Presbyterian Church, is licensed to solemnize marriages.

"John Armstrong vs. John Kerr. - In trespass. James Bryant came into Court and undertook for the defendant, that in case he should be cast in this suit, that he would pay and satisfy the condemnation of the Court, or render his body to the prison in lieu thereof.

"John Wood is licensed to keep a tavern, on payment of $4.00.

"'On the motion of Samuel H. Smith, it is ordered that license be issued to him to sell and retail goods, wares, and merchandize of foreign growths and manufactories, at his store in the town of Clinton, for one year,' on payment of $10.00 "Samuel H. Smith is licensed to keep tavern at Clinton, on payment of $5.00.

KNOX COUNTY - 43

"Jacob Young vs. Abraham Lyon. - Plaintiff's attorney ordered to amend writ by adding the words, 'on the case.'

"On motion, Court adjourned till to-morrow at 9 oçlock.

"Tuesday, September 6th, 1808.

"James Craig vs. Archibald Gardner. - On an appeal from a judgment rendered by Samuel Kratzer, Esq. This came ye defendant by his attorney, and pleads non-assumpsit, joinder and issue. Whereon came a jury, to wit: Daniel Johnson, Ichabod Nye, Wm. Casper, Stephen D. Menton, John Click, Thomas Bowen, Moses Craig, Wm. Bowen, Robert Anderson, Jesse Proctor, Gilman Bryant, Alexander Walker, who upon their oaths say that they find for the plaintiff, and assess the damages to $25.261/2 cents damages.

"Joseph Butler vs. Elizabeth Vandever. - On an appeal from Abraham Darling. Judgment awarded for the defendant's cost.

"The State of Ohio vs. Michael Brown. - Samuel Kratzer, Samuel Baxter and Polly Miller entered into $100 recognizance to appear and testify on the part of the State.

"State of Ohio vs. Aaron Brown. - James Walker, Jr., Benjamin Butler and Wm. McBride entered into recognizance of $100 to appear and give evidence on the part of the State.

"Jacob Young vs. Abraham Lyon. - Samuel H. Smith came into Court and undertook for the defendant, that in case he should be cast in this cause, that he would pay and satisfy the condemnation of the Court, or render his body to prison in lieu thereof.

"Thomas B. Patterson, for the use of Moses Bixby, vs. Samuel Kratzer. - In debt. The defendant came into Court and acknowledged the services of the writ; declaration filed and continued.

"The Court proceed to the appointment of a Clerk pro pem pro, when James Smith was elected.

"Ordered, that Edward Herrick be allowed $25 as prosecuting attorney for this term.

"Court adjourned till the Court in course.

"WILLIAM WILSON.

"John Armstrong vs. John Kerr. - The declaration being filed this the 5^th day of Nov., 1808, the defendant is ordered to plead to the same within twenty days; otherwise judgment.

"EDWARD HERRICK,

"Att'y for Plaintiff."

44 - HISTORY OF

THE FIRST SPECIAL TERM OF COURT.

At the request of Michael Brown, John Click and Aaron Brown, a Court of Common Pleas of the Associate Judges was opened at Mount Vernon the 5th of December, 1808. Present, Wm. W. Farquhar, John Mills, and Wm. Gass, Esqrs.

"The State of Ohio vs. M. Brown. - On an indictment found by the Grand Jury, a true bill, thus appeared the prisoner, and pleads not guilty; the Court then proceed to the evidence of John Williamson, Samuel Kratzer, Samuel Baxter, Polly Miller and Stephen Chapman, on the part of the State, and Thompson Mills and Michael Mills on the part of the prisoner. The Court, upon a full investigation, do order that he do give bail of two persons, which shall be bound in two hundred dollars each, for his personal appearance at the next term, then and there to abide the order of Court; otherwise to be remanded to jail.

"The State of Ohio vs. A. Brown. - On an indictment for a breach of the peace. The Court order him to enter bail in one surety of fifty dollars.

"The State of Ohio vs. John Click. - On an indictment for a breach of the peace. The Court order him to give bail in $50.

"William Fuller became surety for Aaron Brown, and Gilman Bryant for John Click.

"Ordered, that the Court do adjourn.

"JOHN MILLS."

THE FIRST ELECTION BY TOWNSHIPS - SPECIMEN OF A POLL

BOOK - REFLECTIONS

At the October election the first regular vote was taken for State and county officers, the terms of those elected in April having been, in Clerk Lofland's phrase, only "pro pempore." The following poll-book of one of the most populous townships shows who were voted for:

KNOX COUNTY - 45

Poll-book of an Election held in the Township of Wayne, in the County of Knox, and State of Ohio, the 11th day of October, 1808, at the house of Daniel and Abner Ayres, in the town of Frederic. John Kerr, Chairman, Nathaniel M. Young, John Cook, Henry Roberts, Judges, and Jacob Young and Wm. W. Farquhar, Clerks of the Election, were duly sworn as the law directs, previous to their entering on the duties of their respective offices.

Certified by me,

Wm. W. FARQUHAR, A.J.

1 Casper Fitting, 13 Henry Markley,

2 Joseph Talmage, 14 Nathaniel M. Young,

3 Amariah Watson, 15 John Walker,

4 Abraham Lyon, 16 William W. Farquhar,

5 Joshua Vennom, 17 Jacob Young,

6 Samuel Wilson, 18 John Cook,

7 Charles McGowen, 19 Richard Hall,

8 Joshua Milligan, 20 Thomas Durbin,

9 Ruben Skinner, 21 Samuel Durbin,

10 Jacob Cook, 22 Jeduthan Dodd,

11 Henry Roberts, 23 Thomas Townsend,

12 John Kerr,

"Samuel Huntingdon had at the above election, for Governor, a majority of 23 votes (all cast;) Jeremiah Morrow, for Congress, received 21, and Philemon Beecher 2.

"Wm. Trimble and Jacob Burton had a majority of 21 votes each for the Senate.

"Hezekiah Smith had 2 votes for Senator, and Elnathan Scofield 2.

"Alexander Holden, for Representative, had 20 votes, and Jeremiah R. Munson 2.

"For Commissioners - Wm. Douglass had 21, Calvin Shepherd 2, Henry Markley 23, Matthew Merritt 21.

"For Coroner - John Merritt had 21.

"For Sheriff - Silas Brown 13, Ichabod Nye 9.

"John Harrod had 2 votes for commissioner, and Joseph Walker 2,

"Attest: Wm. W. FARQUHAR,

"JACOB YOUNG,

Clerks."

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Fifty-four years have not yet passed by, and yet earth has closed upon all the above list of voters and voted for: and at this day there are but seven of the above numbered who have any "kith and kin" within our county limits. Of 126 voters at an election in the entire county, in 1808, but seven are now living - the mementos of the past - the connecting link of the living and the dead; soon, alas! the last one of the pioneers will have departed from among us. Is it not, then of the utmost importance to gather from the lips of the few who stand, as we write, at the very threshold of death, their recollections, and to treasure up, for future generations, an account of their perils and sufferings, and the incidents connected with the first settlement of the great and glorious land?

DOINGS OF THE COUNTY COMMISSIONERS - THEY ARE DEATH ON WOLVES, AND "DOWN ON" ROADS, BUT DETERMINED TO DO THE FAIR THING FOR THE TAX-PAYER.

"A Board of Commissioners for the county of Knox was seated at Mount Vernon, on Monday, the 24th day of October, 1808.

"Present: Gentlemen Henry Markley, Matthew Merritt and William Douglass, Commissioners, who, at their first meeting, proceeded to the appointment of a Clerk, and James ----- was duly elected Clerk, and qualified accordingly; then, according to law, proceeded to cast lots relative to their ceasing to continue in the office, and it is by them declared that Henry Markley continue in said office three years, Matthew Merritt two years, and William Douglass one year. Ordered, that this Board do adjourn until next Friday."

Thus simply and concisely is given the proceedings of the first meeting of the Commissioners of Knox county of which we have any record. On

KNOX COUNTY - 47

Friday, the 28th of October, the following business was transacted:

"Ordered, that the Clerk issue an order on the County Treasurer of this county for the sum of one dollar and fifty cents for killing one wolf, proven before Wm. Y. Farquhar, Esq., in favor of James Durbin.

"Ordered, that an order issue in favor of James Smith for the sum of two dollars, for carrying returns of the annual election to the town of Newark.

"P.S. - The above meeting was intended for the purpose of examining and regulating the papers and books relative to the Commissioners.

"Ordered, that this Board do adjourn until the first Monday in December next, unless occasion Require a sooner meeting of this Board."

"Occasion" did "Require" a "sooner meeting," for we find that wolves had been killed, and it was a "case of emergency," justifying an extraordinary meeting of the Board of Commissioners at Mount Vernon, on the very next day, and we give the journal entry in its own words:

"Ordered, that an order do Issue to the County Treasurer of this county, in favor of Jesse Morgan, for the sum of three dollars, for killing two Grown Wolves.

"Ordered, that an order do Issue to the Treasurer of this County, in favor of Jonathan Morgan,* for the sum of three dollars, for killing two Grown Wolves.

"Ordered, that this Board do adjourn until the next meeting in course."

At the December term, 1808, the Board was in session two days. On the 5^th an order was granted

* QUERY - Was not Morgan township named after the distinguished wolf-killer, to whom we find many orders to have been issued for killing wolves? May not a spirit of regard for such public benefactors have caused the old settlers to perpetuate the name of Morgan?

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Philip Walker, constable, of seventy-five cents for one day's attendance on the Grand Jury at the May term; to William W. Farquhar, Esq., $4.50 for one day's attendance on a call court, on an indictment of the Grand Jury, on the case of M. Brown; to John Mills $3 for the same; to William Gass $3 for the same; and the following wolf orders: To John Simpkins $1.50 for killing one grown wolf, proven before Samuel Kratzer, J. P.; to John Butler $3 for killing town grown wolves, proven before Abraham Darling, J. P. On the 6^th day of December:

"Ordered, that the Treasurer of this County, do pay the following sums to the following persons: To James Dunlap $22 for fixing the county seat of this county; to Isaac Kook $22 for the same; to James Armstrong $22 for the same.

"Ordered, that 10 cents be erast off the Collector's Duplicate, for an error made by the lister, who personally appeared and confessed the same, in favor of Samuel Lewis.

" Ordered, that the Treasurer of this County, do pay to James Smith, Clerk, $6.67 for his services in elections until the said term, likewise 75 cents for Blank Books.

"A petition was handed the Board, praying a view of a Road from the town of Clinton Running to intersect the County Line, near the south-west corner of the County; which review they declare Inexpedient and Rejected.

"A petition was handed the Board, praying a view of a Road from the town of Clinton through the Settlement of Skenk's Creek to the Eastern Line of Knox County, and it is declared by the Board that the said petition is rejected.

"A petition was handed the Board, Praying a view of a Road from Mulberry street, in the town of Mount Vernon, to Wm. Douglass' mill, and they declared the same Inexpedient.

"Ordered, that the Treasurer of this County do pay Archibald Gardner the sum of $1.50 for killing one Grown Wolf, proven before Samuel Kratzer, Esq.

KNOX COUNTY - 49

"Ordered, that the Treasurer of this County do pay to Henry Markley the sum of $15 for to defray expenses and charges relative to procuring a Duplicate from Fairfield county to enable the collector to collect and pay the taxes on Resident Lands in this county.

"Ordered, that the Treasurer do pay to Silas Brown $13.33 for his services eight months in criminal cases; for do. In elections, $4; the above allowances for the year 1808; 3 hasps and 1 lock, $2.50; summoning 2 Grand Juries, $2 each; and fifty cents for the diet of Wm. Hedrick, prisoner.

"Ordered, that this Board do adjourn until the next meeting in course, unless necessity require an extraordinary meeting."

Such was the action of Markley, Merritt and Douglass, in the year 1808. How economically our affairs were managed in the early days of the Owl Creek Republic! Officers then were simple-minded, and wrote with grey goose-quills; expending but 75 cents for blank-books; gold pens were then unknown, nor steeling either. The item of "stationery," which has since figured so extensively in county exhibits, was not then in the official dictionary. Blessed days were those, when an "error of 10 cents was ordered erast," and "confession" of the same made by the collector upon the county records in favor of the aggrieved sovereign; when roads through "the settlements on Skenk's Creek" and to "county lines," as well as from "Mount Vernon to Mill," were declared by our pioneer board "Inexpedient," and "the petitions" of interested citizens were "rejected;" when it took only "50 cents" to pay "the Diet" of prisoners, and the "chief end of man" was to kill grown wolves, and of County Commissioners and Clerk to receive certificates of proof thereof and issue orders to pay for their scalps!

50 - HISTORY OF

CHAPTER IV

THE COUNTRY AS SEEN IN 1801. - A TRAGEDY IN OWL CREEK IN 1800, AND THE PLACE OF ITS OCCURRENCE. - REMINISCENCES OF EARLY SETTLERS AND THEIR FAMILIES. - THE FIRST TERRIBLE STORM VISITS MOUNT VERNON. - THE FIRST DOCTOR AND HIS RECEPTION. - THE BUTLERS, THE WALKERS. - GILMAN BRYANT, JIM CRAIG, AND THEIR EXPLOITS. - WHO GAVE THE NAME TO MOUNT VERNON. - WHO BUILT THE FIRST CABIN? - EARLY PREACHING. - FIGHTING AND OTHER INCIDENTS OF THE FRONTIER, AND AMUSING EVENTS OF THE ANCIENT TIMES.

The first of our race known to have been within the limits of this county, as stated heretofore, was John Stilley. The second, of whom we have reliable information, was the reckless frontiersman, Andy Craig. And from all we can learn, we are of the opinion that contemporaneous with him was the oddest character in all our history, Johnny Chapman, alias Appleseed, who was discovered in this country when the Walkers, and Butlers, and Douglass and others landed here, and whose name is found recorded among those voting at the first election ever held in this district.

Ben. And John Butler, in September, 1801, made a trop up Owl Creek as far as to the mouth of Center Run, and camped overnight about one hundred yards north of the Owl Creek bank. At that time Andy Craig was living there in a little log hut, with a great raw-boned woman as his wife. She

51 - KNOX COUNTY

had been married to some man about Wheeling, when Andy took up with her, and they ran off into the Indian country together. She was a trifling, coarse piece, and said Ben: "I'd as soon have slept with a man as her, and why he should have taken her into the wilderness for a sleeping companion I can't see." Not a white person was then living in our route from Lewisville up to where Mount Vernon now is, and not a settlement had been made in Knox, Morrow, Richland, Ashland, Wayne, or any part of the country watered by Owl Creek, the Mohican, and their tributaries. An old Indian Chief with his Tribe was then camped near by, and they had a grand pow-wow there. The Indian Field, in the bend south of the camps, was covered with beautiful grass, and looked charming.

The Butlers were greatly pleased with their exploration, and returned by the mouth of Owl Creek to Lewisville. In 1803, John settled near the mouth of the stream. In the spring of 1805, Ben. takes up his residence in Mount Vernon. During the intermediate time the Indians held undisputed possession. Andy Craig, having fallen into their customs and mode of life, remained with them; and after settlers began to pour in, he pulled up stakes, and went up to Greentown and continued in their company. There were three beautiful spots of ground without timber, and known from that time as the "Indian Fields." The one we have named was the "Little Indian Field," and contained about twenty acres, know to settlers of many years as on the Ann Carter tract, now owned by Judge Hurd. It is in Clinton township.

52 - HISTORY OF

Another "Indian Field" contained about forty acres, upon the John Ash tract, now owned by Amen M. Shipley. It is in Howard township.

The ten-mile settlers selected a beautiful level prairie for their commencement of operations.

The beautiful little prairie in Morris township, where Henry Roberts settled, was also a choice spot. And the Me-me-kausen prairie down the creek, now known as the Darling prairie.

These were all favorite places of resort for the Indians as long as they were in this country. Armstrong with his Tribe once every year visited the Indian Fields on Owl Creek, and hunted and fished, and camped by the waters of the stream they loved until the war of 1812, when they had reason to cease their visits in this direction.

This country is described by those who knew it at that early day as the most beautiful region the eye ever rested upon. The work of nature was captivating. Subsequent cultivation by man has added to its interest, though, in some respects, it may have marred the beauty of the original scene.

Beyond the recollection of the oldest inhabitant now living within our borders, a tragedy was enacted on the point of bluff between Centre Run and Owl Creek, of which much has been said by old citizens, but very little is known. The exact time of its occurrence is usually stated at about 1805, but in fact it must have occurred as early as 1800, if not before that. Two slaves had run away from their master, Tumlinson, who lived in Virginia, and had got into this part of the country and taken up with squaws. Their pursuers tracked

53 - KNOX COUNTY

them through Zanesville and up Owl Creek, and finally came upon them at Andy Craig's. One of the boys was mulatto; and, recognizing his master's son as he approached with two other men, sprang to the bank and into the Creek, pursued by the men, who overtook him in the middle of the stream, and a deadly struggle took place, in which he killed his young master, but was then overpowered, taken to the hut, tied, and shortly after placed on the horse his young master had rode, and the company started for Virginia with him. The second night after leaving Craig's, they built a camp-fire, and left the mulatto tied by it, when they went out for game. On their return, he was found to have been shot, but neither could say that he did it. The belief was, that they had become tired of taking him along, and as he was surly and troublesome, he was killed to get rid of him, and out of revenge for the loss of Tumlinson.

Ben. Butler informs us that on his trip to Owl Creek in 1801, Andy Craig told him the particulars of this fight; and that in 1805, when he made a trip out to the Sandusky plains, he saw the negro who escaped, and was then living with a squaw among the Indians, and talked with him about this affair.

Dr. J. N. Burr and J. W. Warden, in hunting over the ground where this scene occurred, came across the bones of Tumlinson, who had been buried there.

Among the early settlers of this part of Ohio were the Virginia family of Butlers. They were John, Thomas, Benjamin, Joseph, Isaac and James,

54 - HISTORY OF

and all made their settlements upon Owl Creek and Whitewoman and at first, and subsequently lived upon these streams or their tributaries, and in the division and formation of counties were found in Knox and Coshocton, in what was about the same neighborhood in those times. John settled in 1803, on land which he bought of Capt. Taylor, at the mouth of the Mohican, near where Cavallo was located. He died on Mohican, in his 85th year. Thomas died in his 84th year. Joseph died about 1837. Isaac was drowned in Whitewoman, about 35 years ago. James died on his farm on Mohican, about 1832. They were hardy, sinewy men, good hunters, and well calculated to endure the hardships and privations of frontier life.

Ben. Butler, in his 84th year, is yet of vigorous physical frame and of strong mind. Few men of forty can be found with more rugged constitution. The Butlers were always fond of fun and frolic, and never occupied a back seat when any sport or fighting went on in early days. Ben. is about five feet nine in height, weighs about 150 pounds, is straight as an arrow, and fleet as an Indian. He is ready to-day to run a foot race with any man of his age in the world, and a few years since gave a public challenge through the press to run for a wager a foot race with any man of his age in the State or nation.

He was born in Monongahela county, Va., April 18th, 1779, and when just turned of twenty years he married, on the 2d of May, 1799, Leah Rogers, of Crab Orchard, Va., then in her sixteenth year, and by her had fourteen children, seven boys and

55 KNOX COUNTY

seven girls. Betsey, their oldest child, was born in Monongahela county, Va., February 22d, 1800. She married John Rouse, who died at Racine, Meigs county, leaving five children. Betsey is now living with them at that place. Hiram was born on the Tuscarawas river, about two miles from Coshocton, In October, 1801; he is dead. Ben. was born on Whitewoman, July 31, 1804, and is also dead. Joseph was born in Mount Vernon, the 23d of October, 1806. Matilda in Mount Vernon, October 8th, 1808; she married Charles Critchfield, and is now dead. Huldah was born on his farm down the creek where he has ever since lived, in 1801. Reasin was born August 12^th, 1812, and is now dead. Laban R., born March 7th, 1814, married Lucinda Peckham, and lives in Union township. Maria was born October 1st, 1815; married S. W. Sapp, and is now dead. Polina, born August 31st, 1817, married Robert Grimes, and lives in Iowa county, Iowa. Hetty, born July 5th, 1819, wife of John Carpenter, with her two boys and tow girls, lives at the old farm with Ben. Squire John, born in 1821, and George Washington, born in 1823. Squire John married Mary Jane, daughter of Joseph Workman, and George W. married Miss Lydick, daughter of another old settler. They live in Union township. Joseph married Polly Biggs, and lives in Newcastle; Huldah married Joseph Jones, and lives in Knox county, Ill. Three of the boys and three girls are dead; the rest living, together with seventy-five grandchildren. "Pretty well done, is it not," said Uncle Ben. to us this 8th of June 1862, "for old Virginia and a little Quaker gal!"

56 HISTORY OF

In 1800, Ben. Butler settled in the neighborhood of Dresden, and raised a crop on land belonging to Major Cass. In 1801, he moved to Lewisville, two miles above Coshocton, and in 1802, he settled on Whitewoman above the mouth of Kilbuck, and from thence to Mount Vernon in April, 1805, where he resided until 1809, when he moved down the creek, where he has ever since resided. Before he moved to Mount Vernon he had bought thirty-six acres of land of Joe Walker, which he had purchased of Matthews and Nigh, and Matthews executed the deed to Butler. Patterson, Walker and himself conceived the plan of laying out a town on their possessions, and accordingly in July, 1805, it was surveyed by Bob. Thompson, and taken to Lancaster, and recorded in Fairfield county records.

Captain Walker's house was the first one within the town plat; the next buildings were two little log stables, built by Ben. Butler, on the corner now owned by Adam Pyle - Gambier and Main streets, not-west corner. In one of these log stables Ben. Butler lived and kept entertainment until he built his log cabin on the corner, which for many years continued the principal tavern of Mount Vernon. He paid for shingles and work on that house $150. This was the building wherein the Commissioners, who came to locate the county seat were most hospitably entertained. Ben. moved into it in the fall of 1805, and lived in it until 1809. It continued as the war office under successive administrations.

Ben. bought two hundred acres on Licking, and built a log cabin on it, intending to move his family there in 1809, but having met with a favorable offer

57 KNOX COUNTY

he sold it to Hanger, who occupied the place until his death.

The most extraordinary event of those early times was a terrible tornado in the summer of 1806, which played havoc with the early settlers. It came up suddenly, and was very violent. It tore off the roofs of all the houses, killed most of the stock running about, and tore down all the large white oak trees that were on Ben.'s thirty-six acre tract, as also many trees on Walker's land. In its course it took in Andy Craig's old stand on Center Run. Ben. had nine head of horses; as the storm came up they attempted to run out of its way; two of them were killed; one of the horses ran all the way to Craig's, and jumped into his garden patch; its skin was torn and flesh scratched in many places by limbs of trees hurled against it by the storm as it ran to get out of its reach. Walker had some horses killed; also Patterson and Kratzer, and a little fellow from Virginia who lived on the hill, named Zinn.

A little doctor named Henderson was with us when we laid out the town. He was from Baltimore, Maryland, and proposed that we should call it after Washington's home-place, and we all sanctioned. When it came to giving any name that pleased Washington, it pleased all proprietors.

Henderson was a clever young fellow; his father made a regular doctor of him, and started him out with a good horse and outfit, but he was too d---d lazy to practice. The first time Ben. saw him, Patterson came out into the lot where he was plowing, and introduced him to Ben., who was mad at

58 HISTORY OF

the infernal beech-roots catching the plow so much, and when Patterson said he was a doctor, and Henderson spoke up and said he had just been inoculating a child, and wanted to inoculate Butler's, Ben said, "G---d d---n you, haven't I moved away up here to get rid of the d---d small-pox, and now d---d if you shall inoculate my child. I didn't know exactly what inoculating then meant, but I was mad, and I threatened to put my knife into him, and scared him so that he would not attempt to 'noculate any more in that town. He stayed about for a time, until he ran away with a woman, and no other doctor dared to show his face there during my stay. We had no lawyers either in them days."

The first election Ben. recollects of attending, the neighbors and himself went down to Dresden and voted in 1803 or 1804. Another election he recollects of was held at Bill Douglass'. David Johnson wanted to be a constable, and 'lectioneered hard, and agreed to take on executions and for fees raccoon skins, if he was elected. But when the votes were counted, he was beaten by Dimmick. The was the first time he voted a ticket. In old Virginia it had been always the custom to vote by singing out the name of the candidate voted for. Speaking of raccoon skins: old Amos Leonard preached Presbyterian doctrine, and would often say when he commenced, "Now, you had better pay the preacher a coon skin or so." It was with him "poor preach and poor pray." "Once I passed along where he was preaching, with corn on my back, to feed about one hundred hogs that I had

59 KNOX COUNTY

about where Norton's mill is, and seeing Walker listening to him, I hallooed to him to come along with me - that he could learn no good from Amos - that he knew nothing; and Walker came along with me. Another Sunday I was out hunting calves with my brother Tom, and when we had found them and were driving them along the road, preacher Leonard took off his hat and shook it at them, scaring them off, so I told him if he ever did so again, preacher as he was, I would whip the hide off of him; and I would have done it, too, for at that day I could whip anybody; I was little, but never saw the man I couldn't whip.

"Leonard went on to his meeting, and took satisfaction out of me by preaching at me. Captain Walker said to me the next day: 'Oh! You ought to have been at meeting just to hear Leonard abuse you; he laid it on to you severely.' I thought that may be so. Many a man can whip with the tongue that is afraid to try it with the fist."

One of the greatest fights of that early date was between Ben. Butler and Jim Craig, in which Craig was badly whipped. Butler's hand had been tied up from a hurt, but he took off the poultice and gave him a severe thrashing. The next day Jim and Ben. met together and took a drink over it; the quarrel was dropped, as Jim said he deserved the whipping and would not fight it over again.

When Ben. bought his land of Captain Walker he had no thoughts of laying out a town, nor had Walker. He gave $2 an acre for it.

Ben. helped dig the first grave, that of Mrs. Thomas Bell Patterson, the first person that died

60 HISTORY OF

in Mount Vernon. He says that Col. Patterson was a very smart man, much smarter than any in the town now.

The old school house stood near where the market house stands, and the public well, with a sw3eep or pole, was north of it, nearly in the centre of High street. He helped wall the old well.

Gilman Bryant said, that he came to the county in 1807, and landed in Mount Vernon from his pirogue in March, and at that time there were only three families living within the then limits of the town, viz; Ben. Butler, who then kept a sort of tavern; James Craig, who kept some sort of refreshments and whisky, on the corner, east side of Mulberry and north of Wood street; and another family, who lived south of Craig's on the opposite side of the street. These buildings were all log. On the west side of Mulberry, opposite to -----, was a little pole shantee, put up by Jo. Walker, a gunsmith, who had a little pair of bellows in one corner, and tinkered gun-locks for the Indians. Further west, on what is now Gambier street, and beyond the town plat, stood the building occupied by ---- Walker, also a log. There was also at that time a small log house with a roof, but the gable ends not yet filled, standing on the west side of Main street, between the present market house and where the court house stood in 1849, which would be in High street. There was at the time living in the neighborhood, and recollected by Mr. Bryant Colville, on his farm east of town; Bob. Thompson, where Stilley now lives; Andrew Craig, at or near the old Indian fields (on Centre Run, above Tur-

61 KNOX COUNTY

ner's mill); old Mr. Walker, near Banning's mill, on the left hand side of the road; and old Mr. Hains, south of town. Mr. Bryant brought eight barrels of whisky by water to Shrimplin's mill on Owl Creek, and from thence had it hauled by Nathaniel Critchfield's team, Joe driving, to Mount Vernon. Tradition says that the first log shelter occupied by old man Walker was made of little round poles by Casper Fitting in 1802, but we can find nothing to sustain a claim to its erection at so early a period. Fitting, doubtless, was the builder, we should think about 1804, though it may have been in 1803; however as our own recollection does not extend quite that far back, we give it as it has been told to us.

Joseph Walker, St., of whom we have been speaking, emigrated to this county from Pennsylvania about 1804, and settled near where we now write. Philip, Joe, Alexander, James, Robert and John were his sons, and two daughters - Sally, who married Stephen Chapman, and lives three miles south of this town, and Polly, who married Solomon Geller, a Pennsylvania Dutchman, who was one of the early settlers of Mount Vernon, and subsequently moved into what is now Morrow county. Joseph Walker, Sr., and his wife, both died many years ago, and their bodies were buried in the Clinton graveyard, with no stone to mark the spot where they lie, and this record, it is hoped, may server to perpetuate their memory. From all accounts, they were very worthy pioneers.

James Craig, one of the three men living in Mount Vernon in the spring of 1807,was grit to

62 HISTORY OF

the back bone, and was constantly harrassed by peace officers. It became almost an every-day occurrence with him to have a fight; and, if no new comer appeared to give his fighting life variety, he would, "just to keep his hand in," scrape up a fight with his neighbors or have a quarrel with his wife - all for the love of the thing, for "Jamie was the broth of a boy." He had as high as four fights in one day with Joe Walker, who was also a game chicken! When arraigned before court for assault, etc., he would always put on his most pleasing smile, and say to the judge: "Now, will yer honor jist please be good to the boy, for he can't help it."

We have been told by an early settler of a little incident, illustrating the sports of the pioneers in 1807, at James Craig's house, after he had moved out to the log cabin, erected, and yet leaning, not standing, on D. S. Norton's farm, south of High street extension, on the Delaware road. Craig had tended a few acres in corn, and had the only corn for sale in that part of the county. Mrs. Rachel Richardson sent her son Isaac to buy some for bread, and, after spending a short time in the village, he went out to Craig's, got his corn, and stayed all night. The family had just got to sleep, laying down on the floor, when the wild fellows of the town came in to the doors and fired a volley over their heads. Craig at once sprang out of bed in his shirt-tail, grappled with one of them, and in a short time all present were engaged in a lively little fight, just for the fun of the thing. "Knuck Harris," a "colored gemmen," the first one ever in Mount Vernon,

63 KNOX COUNTY

and Joe Walker, are recollected as having been among the parties.

One of the most noted fights that ever came off in this county was between James Craig and his son-in-law, Jack Strain, and two of the Georges of Chester township. It occurred in this way: Old Jim was, as he said, in a fighting humor, when, in company with Jack, coming along the road home on foot they met the Georges near Clinton riding sprucely on horse-back, and required that they should get off their horses and fight them. Parson George explained that they were in a hurry to go home, and had neither time nor disposition for a fight. But Jim swore that they must get off and fight; and, there being no way of getting past them, as they held possession of the road, they reluctantly got off their horses and "pitched in." Jack soon whipped his man, but it puzzled Jim to make his fight out, and the conclusion arrived at was, that they had taken too large a contract when they undertook to whip the Georges. Jim, in after years, would revert to this one fight with regret, as it was entirely uncalled for and only provoked by his own determination for a trial of strength.

After the marriage of Jack Strain into his family, old Jim counted himself almost invincible. Jack was a very powerful and active man, unsurpassed for thews and sinews, bone and muscle.

The great fight of the county might, with propriety, be called that of Strain with Roof. The county pretty much en masse witnessed it. It was a regular set-to - a prize fight not inferior, in the public estimation to that of Heenan and Sayers.

64 HISTORY OF

Jack fought with great spirit; he fought, if not for his life, for his wife; for old Jim swore that he (Strain) should never sleep again with his daughter if he didn't whip him.

When Craig was indicted the last time for fighting he told Judge Wilson "not to forget to be easy with him, as he was one of the best customers the court had."

In wrestling with Tucker, Jim had his leg broken, which he often regretted, as he couldn't stand on his forks right. He was not a big, stout man, but struck an awful blow, and was well skilled in parry-ing off blows. He called his striking a man giving him a "blizzard." He was a backwoodsman from Western Virginia, but of Irish extraction Fond of grog, fond of company, fond of fighting, fun and frolic - kind-hearted, except when aroused by passion, and then a very devil. He fought usually as a pastime, and not from great malice. His wife was an excellent, hospitable and clever woman. We have heard very many anecdotes of Craig, but have space for only one more. One of the last kind acts of the old settler was his endeavoring to treat Bishop Chase when he first visited our town. Jim having heard much said of him as a preacher and a distinguished man, met him on the street, and, desiring to do the clever thing by the Bishop, accosted him with an invitation to treat. The Bishop was somewhat nettled at the offer, but declined going to a grocery with him, whereupon Jim pulled a flask from his pocket and insisted upon his taking a drink there. The Bishop indignantly refused, and Jim apologised, if the Bishop considered it an

KNOX COUNTY 65

insult. "Bless your soul, Bishop, I think well of you, and have no other way to show that I am glad you have come to our county but by inviting you to drink. Don't think hard of me."

Craig's family consisted of eight girls, and he often regretted that he had no boys to learn how to fight. If the girls did not fight, they did run, and run well too. One of them, we recollect, was very fleet; many a time did she run races in the old lane, between Norton's and Bevans', and beat William Pettigrew and other of the early boys, notwithstanding the scantiness of her dresses, which then were made of about one-third the stuff it takes for a pattern in these fashionable days of 1862.

At one time old Jim was singing to a crowd, when a smart young man, in sport, winked to those present and kicked his shins. The wink having been observed by him, he instantly drew back his fist and drove it plum between his eyes, felling him to the ground, at the same time exclaiming: "There, take that, d---n you, and don't you ever attempt again to impose on 'old stiffer!' "

66 HISTORY OF KNOX COUNTY

CHAPTER V.

RESUME OF THE COUNTY SEAT QUESTION.-- THE GRAPES WERE SOUR AND MOUNT VERNON IS DISCOVERED BY THE CLINTONIANS TO BE INELIGIBLE AND UEALTHYY. --THE LEGISLATURE OF 1808-9 WERE IN SOME DOUBT. --THE ANTIVERNONITES THINK THE COUNTY SHOULD BE ENLARGED.-- THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF OHIO THINK NOT.--AGITATION CONTINUES 1810-11 AND 1811-12.--THE DREAM IS OVER--THE INHABITANTS BEG FOE ROADS--THE GREAT CLINTON LIBRARY STRUGGLES FOR LEGISLATIVE RECOGNITION, AND THE LIGHT EXPIRES!

THE indomitable will of Samuel H. Smith and his associates from New England, among whom we may mention the Nyes, Ichabod, captain of the troop of horse, and his brother Samuel, Henry Smith, Samuel's nephew, Dr. Timothy Burr, the Barneys, Alexander Enos and others, kept the country in commotion about the seat of justice. No stone was left unturned, no effort untried, to bring about its transfer to Clinton. Petitions were drawn up and runners traversed the country for signers. From the official record we give the following exhibit of the disposition made of them:

December 26th, 1808, Mr. Holden presented to the House sundry petitions from a number of the inhabitants of Knox county, setting forth that they feel much aggrieved in consequence of the ineligible and very unhealthy situation of the present seat of justice of said county, and for various other reasons

67 HISTORY OF KNOX COUNTY

therein stated, praying that commissioners may be appointed to fix the seat of justice for the said county of Knox in some more eligible and healthy situation; which said petitions were read and referred to a committee of Mr. Holden, Mr. Owings, of Fairfield, and Mr. Blair, of Franklin and Delaware, to report their opinion thereupon by bill or otherwise.

Mr. Merwin, (Elijah B.) of Fairfield, presented, on the next day, a remonstrance from sundry citizens of Knox county against action as prayed for in above named petitions.

The cunning old fox managing the Clinton claim devised an additional scheme whereby to bring about such increase of territory northward as would throw Mount Vernon farther from the centre than Clinton, and accordingly we find that-

Mr. Holden presented to the House petitions signed by sundry inhabitants of Knox county, setting forth that it will be greatly to their advantage, and to the advantage of the public in general, to have the county extended so far north as to take in one tier of townships, as it will be perceived, by the map of the State, that the county lying north of them, known by the name of Richland, is much larger than Knox, and by attaching one tier of townships to said county of Knox it will be giving a more equal number of square miles to each county than there is at present; which was received and read, and referred to the same committee to whom was committed, on the 26^th inst., the petitions, remonstrances, &c., on the subject of the seat of justice of Knox county.--House Journal, page 93, Dec. 30th, 1808.

68 HISTORY OF KNOX COUNTY

On the 30th of December, on motion of Mr. Thomas Morris, of Clermont, and seconded, Ordered, that Mr. George Clark, of Columbiana and Stark, be added to the committee appointed on the 26th inst., on the subject of the seat of justice of Knox county, and the matters from time to time to them referred.

On the 12th of January, 1809, on motion, and leave being granted, Mr. Holden presented at the clerk's table two remonstrances, of the same purport, from sundry inhabitants of Knox county, remonstrating against petitions presented to this House, praying for a review of the scat of justice of said county, and a removal of it from Mount Vernon to some more eligible and healthy situation. The remonstrants therein set forth that they are fully of opinion that, unless a fraud or neglect be made to appear against the first viewers appointed by the Legislature at the last session for the purpose of permanently fixing the seat of justice of said county, that your honorable body wiII not grant a view barely for the purpose of gratifying self-interest; that, in consequence of the seat of justice being established at Mount Vernon, a number of lots have been purchased and improved, and also that upwards of $400 have been appropriated for the building of a jail, and for other reasons, by the aforesaid remonstrants set forth more particularly, praying that the said petition praying for the removal of the seat of justice aforesaid may be rejected; and the same being received and read, were referred to the committee upon that subject appointed on the 26^th ult.

On page 115, House Journal, January 14th, 1809,

69 HISTORY OF KNOX COUNTY

the following entry stands: "On motion, and by leave of the house, Mr. Holden, from the committee appointed on the 26th ult., presented at the clerk's table a report, as follows: 'he committee to whom was referred the petition of sundry inhabitants of the county of Knox, praying that one tier of townships lying south of Richland county be attached to the said county of Knox; also sundry petitions from the inhabitants of said county, praying that commissioners be appointed to review and fix the seat of justice of said county in some more healthy and eligible situation than Mount Vernon; have, according to order, had under their consideration the said petitions, and are of opinion that the prayer of the said petitions is unreasonable, and ought not to be granted.'"

Monday, January 16th, said report came up, and it was Ordered, that it be committed to a. committee of the whole House, and made the order of the day for Saturday next.

On the 25th of January, House Journal, page 181, Mr. Merwin moved for the order of the day, whereupon the House, according to order, resolved itself into committee of the whole House, and, after some time spent therein, Mr. Speaker resumed the chair, and Mr. .Jewett reported that the committee, according to order, had under their consideration a report of the select committee, made on the. 14th inst., on the petitions from sundry inhabitants of Knox county, and had agreed to the said report; and the same being read was agreed to by the House, viz: that the petitions aforesaid are unreasonable, and ought not to be granted.

70 HISTORY OF KNOX COUNTY

At the 9th session of the General Assembly, held ai Zanesville, December 3d, 1810, the subject of removal of the county seat from Mount Vernon was again agitated. By the Senate Journal, page 163, we find that Mr. Trimble presented a batch of petitions, praying a review, which was referred to a committee. On page 166, we find Mr. Trimble, from committee, reported that, in their opinion, commissioners ought to be appointed to examine and make report to the next Legislature the place they think proper for the seat of justice of Knox county. The said report was read. A motion was made that said report be committed to a committee of the whole Senate, and made the order of this day; and on the question thereon it was decided in the negative. On motion, Ordered, that the further consideration of said report be postponed till the first Monday in December next.

At the next session it received its final quietus. Mount Vernon had improved in the intermediate time very much, and thenceforth its star has been in the ascendant. Clinton continues but a few years longer as a business place, and after the departure of its chief worker to other parts, its people moved to Mount Vernon, Fredericktown, and elsewhere, and not one of the old inhabitants there remains to tell that Clinton has been an important town in the history of Knox county.

On the 23d of January, 1809, Mr. Holden presented at the clerk's table a petition from sundry inhabitants of the county of Licking, also a petition from sundry inhabitants of the counties of Licking, Knox and Richland, setting forth their remote situ-

71 HISTORY OF KNOX COUNTY

ation from water carriage, and the necessity of having good roads; that they have no road whereby they can receive letters or any kind of intelligence, or any property from any part of the United States, or this State, except by chance or private conveyance, nearer than Newark or Zanesyille, and praying for the establishment of a road from Newark, in Hocking county; thence to Mount Vernon, in Knox county; thence to Mansfield, in Richland county; and thence to the mouth of the river Huron, Lake Erie, &c.; which were read.

On motion, and on leave being granted by the House, Mr. Merwin presented at the clerk's table a petition from sundry inhabitants of Fairfield county, of a similar nature to the before mentioned petitions, praying for the establishment of a road from Lang- caster, in said county, through Mount Vernon, in Knox county to the Portage, in Cuyahoga.--House Journal, page 177

Among the questions of great moment at this time to time people of the State was, whether the Clinton Library Society should be incorporated or not. It appears that Samuel H. Smith and other live Yankees of Clinton had conceived the idea of founding a vast and comprehensive library at that point, amid at the session of the General Assembly of 1807 Mr. Dillon laid before the Senate a petition of Samuel H. Smith and others of the town of Clinton and its vicinity, in Fairfield county, for the incorporation of the "Clinton Library amid School or Academy Society." After its reference to a committee, and about two months travail, it finally got through the Senate on the 6^th of February, 1808.

72 HISTORY OF KNOX COUNTY

In the House it had a perilous trip, was attacked upon several sides, discussed elaborately, and at length went down before the storm.--House Journal, page 171.

At the next session our literary friends at Clinton again pressed their favorite measure; they petitioned, implored, entreated, supplicated and prayed, they had lobbies on the ground to leg for it, and triumphantly they carried it through the House into the Senate, with an amendment to it, that was not very acceptable; but this thue the grave and reverend Senators were obdurate and flint-hearted, and page 114 of the Senate Journal of the Seventh General Assembly shows how they "killed it."

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!"

With a pluck worthy of a noble cause, the Clintonians beseeched and beset and besieged the next General Assembly for an act that would enable them to preserve their fine library from destruction by those literary Goths and Vandals--the moths and vampires; but all their efforts were unavailing, and posterity have been thus deprived of an accumulation of books that might in time have eclipsed the far-famed library of Alexandria. One of the oldest inhabitants has kindly placed in our hands one of the books, bearing the Clintonian mark, which he bought at the winding up of the concern for the just sum of 18 3/4 cents lawful money.

Indignant at the conduct of the illiterate General Assembly, the stock-holders withdrew from the enterprise, and sold at auction the library for $7.50 and the book-case for $10; and thus terminated a great

73 HISTORY OF KNOX COUNTY

measure which agitated three sessions of the General Assembly of our State costing the people in time consumed upon it by their Representatives, Senators, etc., from eight to ten thousand dollars, and illustrating fully the character of the greater part of special and local legislation which, like much of a general character, may be termed all "cry and no wool," and show no substance, all ending in smoke. At the time, however, the natives of Mount Vernon regarded it as a seven horned monster that would drive them out of existence, and they looked with holy horror at having such an incorporated body at Clinton, which might accomplish their overthrow and cause them to lose the county seat. The sons of some who shook in their breeches with dread, may now shake in their boots, convulsed by laughter at this reminiscence.

74 HISTORY OF KNOX COUNTY

CHAPTER VI.

TRANSACTIONS OF THE YEAR 1809.

THE COMMISSIONERS IN TROUBLE ABOUT TAXES,---THE HEAVY BRAIN ON THE TREASURY FOR WOLF SCALPS.--THE CLERKS BRAIN BECOMES CONFUSED BY REPEATED DEMANDS.--THE WOLVES INVADE THE TOWN.---DOINGS OF THE COURT AND COMMISSIONERS.--THE COUNTY JAIL COMPLETED---THE FIRST SETTLEMENT WITH THE TREASURER, AND SKETCH OF THAT OFFICER.

IN the beginning of this year the people of the COUNTY were in sore distress at prospects of heavy taxation, the money in the treasury having been exhausted in paying the commissioners who had located the county seat, the heavy demands for killing wolves, and such like expenses.

On Monday, the 23d of January, 1809, the commissioners met at Mount Vernon, and were in a "peck of trouble," if we may judge from the following entry:

" The board, taking into consideration the situation of the taxes on resident and non-resident lands, the board, on an investigation of the business, do order Every paper Bud document thereunto belonging to be forwarded to the Auditor of State.

" Ordered, that the board do adjourn until next Monday."

Among the orders issued this year, we find the following for killing wolves:

"To George Cooper $1.50 for killing one grown wolf, proven before John Green.

75 HISTORY OF KNOX COUNTY

" To John Cook $4.50 for killing three grown wolves, proven before W m. W. Farquhar

" To James Black $3 for killing two grown wolves, proven before Wm. Y. Farquhar.

" To John Jenninings $1.50 for killing one grown wolf, proven before John Green.

" To Ephraim McMillen $3 for killing two grown wolves, proven before Abraham Darling.

" To Levi Herrod for killing two grown wolves, proven before John Green

" To Francis Hardista $3 for killing two grown wolves, proven before Matthew Merritt.

" To John Lash $1.50 for killing one grown wolf, proven before Jolmn Green.

" To George Sap $3 for killing two grown wolves, proven before Abraham Darling.

" To Joseph Harriss $1.50 for killing one grown wolf, proven before John Green.

" To Francis Hardista $3 for killing two grown wolves, proven before M. Merritt.

"To George Sap $1.50 for killing one grown wolf, proven before Abraham Darling.

" To Joseph Bryant $1.50 for killing one grown wolf. "

"To Ephraim McMillen $4.50 for killing three grown wolves."

So much in the habit of issuing wolf orders had James Smith, clerk, gotten by this time, that we find on the journals an order issued for commissioner's services reading thus :

" Ordered. that the treasurer pay to Henry Marklcy the sum of $3.50 for killing two wolves as services as commissioner of this county."

The day's services being confounded in the clerk's mind with wolf scalps.

Notwithstanding the abundance of game of this kind, and the facility with which the old sportsmen could take the scalps, the howling varmints seemed

76 HISTORY OF KNOX COUNTY

to be on the increase, and, like grey hairs, for every one plucked two took their place, and hence our commissioners grew more determined to extirpate them, and made the following order on the 7th of June, 1809 :

" Ordered. that all persons who shall kill and procure the scalps of grown wolves and panthers within our Balawick, and produce a certificate thereof, according to law, after this date, shall be allowed $2. and all those who shall kill and procure the same of wolves and panthers and scalps of six months and under shall be allowed $1."

The first demands made upon the treasury under this act were by John Mitchell and Francis Hardista, each of whom had killed a grown wolf. For a time these inhuman devils disputed the mastery with the white man, and it seemed somewhat doubtful which would come off victor in the contest and retain possession of the lands upon Owl Creek. They neither had fear of the church ecclesiastic or the military power; they frightened the women and children, and hung about the heels of men, setting all laws and threats at defiance. One old settler has told us of his having on a Sabbath day killed a large wolf near God's barn at Clinton which was making off with one of Sam. Smith's geese, while the people were serving the Lord ; another of his friends having been present with the whole military of the county parading on general muster day, when a fierce black wolf attacked one of George Zin's pigs within a stone's throw north-east of the public square, when the army gave pursuit, and it was finally killed by Captain Joe Walker ; whereupon a grand spree was taken by the whole military and

KNOX COUNTY. 77

citizens of the town, glorifying over the great engagement till whisky was drank to more than the value of the wolf scalp.

Grand events those in the hardy pioneer's life! And yet, at this day not a spot bears the name of Wolf, nor does a creek or branch commemorate such achievements. And posterity, were it not for these pages, we fear, would be in blissful ignorance of the fact that there were any other inhabitants of these classic lands than owls and Indians when the men of the hunting shirt and rifle first navigated this famous river in scallops and pirogues.

THE THIRD TERM OF DISTRICT COURT, AND WHAT WAS DONE THEN.

" Court of Common Pleas was opened at Mount Vernon the 2d day of January, 1809. Present : Gentlemen the Honorable William Wilson, President, John Mills and Wm. Gass, Associate Judges. A Grand Jury was called and qualified for the body of this county, to wit : Jas. Walker, Sen'r, foreman, Eleazer Biggs, John Baxter, John Beam, Joseph Walker, Levi Herrod, Nathaniel Critchfield, Wm. Herrod, David Johnson, Jas. Strange, Jas. Walker. Jr.. Wm. Cooper and Jonathan Craig, who , after receiving their charge, Returned out of Court.

"On the 2d day of the Term the Grand Jury returned, but found no Indictments.

" Ordered, that the Court adjourn until 2 o'clock this evening.

"The Court opened according to adjournment. Present : as before. John Armstrong vs. John Kerr--On Trespass. Continued by consent of parties.

"Jacob Young vs. Abraham Lyon--On an action of Trespass on the case. Continued by consent of parties.

" The State of Ohio vs. Aaron Brown.--On an Indictment. The defendant plead guilty, and is fined $1.00 and the costs of prosecution, and stands convicted until the whole be complied with.

78 HISTORY OF

"License is granted to William Perrine to retail goods for three months, on payment of $2.50.

"John Green is admitted Administrator of Isaac MeClary. Bond, $1000. Abner Brown and John Herrod securities.

"License is granted to Benjamin Tupper to sell goods three months, on payment of $2.50.

" The State of Ohio vs. John Click.--Nolle is entered by Herrick, att'y.

" Thomas Parr vs. John Craig.--William Walker undertook for the defendant in case he should be cast he would satisfy the condemnation of the Court, or render Iris body a prisoner in lieu thereof.

"Court adjourned till to-morrow morning, 9 o'clock.

"The Court opened according to adjournment, and present, as yesterday.

" Thomas B. Patterson, for the use of Moses Rigly, vs. Samuel Kratzer.--Parties agreed to reference to the Court, who adjudged $2.55 debt and costs for tire plaintiff.

"Court adjourned till 2 o'clock.

"2 o'clock P. M.

"William Wallace is authorized to keep a public house of entertainment for one year, on payment of $5.00

"William Fuller is licensed to keep a public house of entertainment on the road leading from Mount Vernon to Newark. on payment of $4.00.

" Ordered, that the Court adjourn until the Court in course.

"WILLIAM WILSON."

THE COUNTY JAIL BUILT, AND ITS FIRST OCCUPANT---ACCOUNT OF ITS SUBSEQUENT CAREER, AND THAT OF ITS SUCCESSOR.

On the 6th of June, 1808, the commissioners of' this county, finding the great want of a jail in said town, and by virtue of the powers vested in Them by law,

" Ordered, a jail to be built, 24 feet long, 16 feet wide, 9 feet high, with square timber of one foot square, including the upper and lower floor, and a petition of like timber, with a good shingle roof, and stone or brick chimney, three windows, with iron grates, of 6

KNOX COUNTY 79

lights each, and 2 sufficient doors, one on the outside and one in the petition in the inside, and the walls, petition, and lower floor lined with 3 inch plank, spiked on with spikes 7 inches. The front door marked A and petition door B to be of 11/2 inch stuff; C chimney. The jail to be built on the public square of said town, on a corner."

On the 31st of January The following entry is made upon The journal :

"This day the board has proceeded to the Ex'n of the jail. and finding the same unfinished they do allow tine undertaker's thereof until the first day of May next to finish the same, agreeable to tire article of agreement in that case made and provided."

On the 2d of May, 1809,

"Ordered, that the commissioners do receive tIre jail from tine bands of John Mills, Alexander Walker, and James Walker, Sr., provided that the said Mills and others do saw down the corners of said jail, and then our Clerk shall have authrority to issue orders on the treasury for the sum of 433 dollars and 50 cents, as shall appear by a reference to the agreement, and that the Clerk issue orders of such sizes as the Claimants may desire, with their proper numbers to tine above amount."

The jail being Then declared completed, The commissioners ordered 50 cents to be expended by Joseph Walker for two steeples and hasp for The jail. The calaboose having been duly prepared, The officers of the law became exceedingly self-import-ant, consequential and overbearing. Michael Click, an old Dutchman, who was fond of grog, was taken up, "tight as a musket," and locked up in the quarters. The constable had gone down street and was boasting of his exploit in taking up Mike, when the voice of the old fellow was heard just behind them,

80 HISTORY OF

shouting at the top of his lungs: "By tam, they can't keep me in their tammed shall-I am trumps, by G-d." He had crawled up the chimney till he got near the top and stuck fast, when, as he said, he "swelled and bursted" it open, and then jumped to the ground, a free man once again. The chimney was repaired at the expense of the county, and Click, several weeks after, when confined "broke out," and, meeting Judge Wilson on the street, narrated his several jail exploits in great glee, vowing that they never could keep old Mike in that jail any longer than it suited him to for he had lent a hand when it was built and knew all its weak points. For several years, however, this little log concern served as a nominal terror to evil doers. At length so many escapes were made from it, that its fate was sealed, and it was sold to Wm. Y. Farquhar, who moved it to the outskirts of town and constructed out of it a sort of a tobacco house.

The commissioners, on the 4th of December, 1823, determined to erect another jail and jailor's house, on the square, of brick, which remained an eye-sore to the people of the town until about 1850, when John Armstrong, Street Commissioner, and A. Banning Norton, Councilman of the Third Ward, in grading and excavating the north-east part of the public square, with "malice aforethought" undermined it, and caused the removal of that pile of rubbish.

KNOX COUNTY. 81

FOURTH TERM COURT OF COMMON PLEAS----1st DAY OF MAY, 1809.

"Grand Jury--David Demmick, foreman, Moses Craig, Wm. Downs, Jas. Craig, David Johnson, Jeremiah Brown, Charles Cooper, Ziba Leonard, Nathaniel M. Young, John Kerr, John Cook, James Loveridge, James Walker, Jr., who returned out of Court, and after some time returned in Court, with the following indictments, to wit :

"The State of Ohio vs. Wm. Wallace--For salt and battery, a true bill, and pleads guilty, the Court do say, that the defendant do pay a fine of $1 and costs of this prosecution.

"The State of Ohio vs. Wm. Cooper.--For same offense, the same fine is assessed.

" The State of Ohio vs. Wm. Cooper--Same, and same fine.

" The State of Ohio vs. Wm. Critchfield---For same offense.

" The State of Ohio vs. Peter Baxter.--For same offense.

" Luke Walpole vs. Wm. Wallace--James Craig becomes security.

" Thomas Parr vs. James Craig--Judgment by confession for $91.81 and costs of suit.

" Wm. A. Enui vs. Samnuel Kratzer.--Jndgment by confession, $66.92 and costs.

" John Beesy vs. Samuel Kratzer.--Michael Click becomes security.

" Wm. Douglass vs. John Young. --Nathaniel M. Young becomes security.

" One o'clock P. M.

" John Armstrong vs. John Kerr---Tried by Jury, and defendant not found guilty of Trespass. The plaintiff, by E. Herrick, his attorney, gives notice of an appeal.

" Wm. Biggs, who sues as well for himself as for the State of Ohio, vs. William Darling--Ordered, that the plaintiff appear in Court to-morrow morning and en ter security for costs, or he become non plus.

" License issued to Benj. Topper to retail goods 4 mouths for $3.33. 1/3.

" James Smith is appointed clerk for seven years.

" Court adjourns till to-morrow morning at 9 o'clock.

82 HISTORY OF

" May 2--9 o'clock A. M.

" The Biggs case is disposed of by the following entry : Ordered, that the plaintiff be non-suit for not entering security for costs.

" Edward Herrick is allowed $25 for each term as prosecuting attorney.

" Ordered, that the clerk have authority to issue license to John Baxter and Michael Click each to keep a public house of entertainment until next term, on their paying the proper sum.

" Adjourned till the next Court in course."

IMPORTANT ACTS OF COMMISSIONERS IN REGARD TO RATES OF TAXATION AND OTHER MATTERS--PECULIARITY OF THE OLD CLERK IN SPELLING--HIGH AUTHORITY QUOTED.

On the 5th of March " a petition was forwarded to tIre board of Commissioners of this county, praying for a Road Leading from the town of Mansfield on a South East direction, to intersect with the State road near the fifty-four mile tree, to run on a straight direction as the ground will admit, to intersect the State road, arid the board do declare that the same is inexpedient."

" The tax on William Douglass' mill is ordered to be taken off, as it is a public benefit.

" James Morgan is ordered to be taxed four-fold for refusing to give in five horses to the lister of Union Township."

On the 7th of June the Commissioners " Ordered, that tire rates of licens* of Taverns hereafter obtained for one year in this county shall be as follows : In the town of Mount Vernon, on the Public Square, and on Market Street, shall be rated at six dollars ; all Taverns in the Town of Frederick and in the Town of Clinton, and on the road leading from the Town of Mount Vernon to Newark, within the county of Knox, at Five dollars; all Taverns in any other part of Town of Mount Vernon, at five dollars; all taverns on roads leading through any part of the county, or Richland county, at four dollars."

The rates of taxation on the county levy were established as follows:

" The first clerk was a very good pensman, a gentleman and scholar ; but like General Jackson, he had his peculiarities of spelling and pronunciation, as. for instance, license without the E final, and gentlemen with a J.

KNOX COUNTY 83

" On each stud horse and jack at the rate of what he stands at tire season."

" On each other horse, mare, mule and ass, 30 cents.

" On each head of neat cattle, 10 cents; on houses, and other property made subject to taxation by law, one-half per cent. on its appraised value."

At this time horses were valued for Taxation at $30 per head, and cattle at $10. The trouble about the tax duplicate and matters connected therewith was satisfactorily adjusted, as appears by the foflowing entry on the 27th of June :

" This day we have prepared our duplicate for Collection, and prepared our Returns for the Auditor of the State of Ohio."

Great was the relief of the board at having arranged matters, which had troubled them from January till June 27th!

"James Smith is appointed collector of the Taxes for the year 1809, and gave bond.

In September, 1809, we find : " On return of a Road laid out from Mount Vernon to a point on Mohicking the viewers return the same unprofitable, and the same is Rejected."

KNOX COMMON PLEAS--FIFTH TERM--SEPTEMBER 4, 1809.

" Grand Jury.--Jabez Beers, Joe Walker, George Downs, Gilman Bryant, John Baxter, George Lybarger, Henry Roberts, Thomas Townsend, Jonathan Hunt, Sen'r, John Green, James Craig, Samuel Wilson, Benj. Thompson, and Wm. Johnson, returned into Court and brought in the following Indictments:

" The State of Ohio vs. Henry Smith--For retailing liquors contrary to the statute of this State ; a true bill ; who appears and pleads guilty. The attorney for the State of Ohio will no further prosecute this Indictment.

"Ed. Herrick, Pro. Att'y.

84 HISTORY OF

" Same vs. Benjamin Butler--For retailing S. liquors contrary to the statute of this State ; who comes forward and puts in his plea--Guilty. Tine Court, in consideration of his offense, do assess his fine to $3.

" Same vs. Samuel Martin---For same. Henry Roberts, John Harod and James Bryant enter into recognizance of $50 each to give evidence in this case.

" Same :vs. Wm. McDougal.--For retailing goods without license. Pleads guilty, &c.

" Luke Walpole vs. Wm. Wallace--Trespass on tIre case. Judgment by confession, $91.88, and Interest from 11th Jan'y, and costs.

" The State of Ohio vs. Peter Baxter.--For assault and battery.

" Jury.--James Walker, Jr., Peter Kyle, Sr., James Bryant, Abraham Sperry, Alexander Walker, John iowa, Daniel Demmick, Isaac Bonnett, Charles Cooper, James Walker, Sr., John Click, David Pettigrew, who do say tIre defendant is guilty.

" The State of Ohio vs. Wm. Critchfield.--Assault and battery. Defendant pleads guilty, and is fined fifty cents and costs.

" John Barry vs. Samuel Kratzer.--On the case. Judgment confessed by defendant for $200, with interest from 26th April, 1806.

" The State of Ohio vs. Peter Baxter--John Merritt becomes his security in $50 for his appearance next Court.

" The State of Ohio vs. John Morryson --For assault and bat-tery. Jury's verdict--Not guilty.

" John J. Bruce vs. Thomas B. Patterson, Joseph Walk-er, Gilman Bryant--This cause is to be continued until 1st of October for answer to bill of plaintiff.

" Wm. Douglass vs. John Young.--On the case. The parties appeared and settled.

" Christian Shoolts vs. James Walker, Jr.--On the case. Settled.

" John Byard vs. Wm. Walker--On the case. Settled.

" Sylvanius Lawrence, for the use of Benjamin Rush, vs. George Davison.--Nathaniel Spurgeon and Wm. Critchfield appeared and undertook for the defendant's appearance, &c.

" License is granted to Henry Smith to keep public house for one year.

" The State of Ohio vs. Peter Baxter--On Indictment. Defendant pleads guilty, and is fined 50 cents and cost.

85 HISTORY OF KNOX COUNTY

"Robert Dalryrmple vs. Joseph Talmage--On the case. Continued till next term.

" 5th September.

" Michael Click, John Baxter, Samuel Lewis and Abner Ayres obtain licenses for houses of public entertainment.

" Wm. McDonald and Benjamin Tupper are each licensed to sell goods.

" Samuel H. Smith is also licensed to retail goods one year, on payment of $10.00.

" Letters of administration on Michael Shinabery's estate are issued to Catharine Shinabery. Gilman Bryant and George Downes, securities; John Mills, Matthew Mant and James Smith, appraisers.

" Court adjourned till tire next Court in course."

THE FIRST SETTLEMENT OF THE COUNTY TREASURER.

The first fiscal year of Knox county made the following showing on settlement of the Treasurer with the Commissioners, and " from a full investigation of all the accounts and monies paid into his hands as Treasurer, that the said Treasurer has paid and accounted with us for above,

The same twenty-three dollars seventy cents and four mills, which is as follows:

Dr. Treasurer to am't of monies Due to the county. ... $906.60.4

Cr. By monies paid and accounted for from June last until this day, June 6th, 1809 930.30.8

To order in your favour on settlement 23.70.4

Balance 906.60.4

930.30.8

" Ordered, that Henry Hains be allowed the sum of $23.70.4, which is a balance due him on settlement as Treasurer of Knox county, and the Treasurer is ordered to pay the same."

86 HISTORY OF KNOX COUNTY

THE TREASURER OF KNOX COUNTY FOR SEVEN YEARS--HIS

MELANCHOLY EXIT.

Henry Haines, first Treasurer of Knox county, was one of the best men in The county at its organization. He was a native of _____, and settled on the tract of land, since owned by Beams and others, next to the Merritts.

He had been a man of education and property, and was in easy circumstances. He was a very in-. genious, handy man, had a turning lathe, made chairs, farmed, etc. He became deranged on the subject of religion, was an active and leading member of the Disciple or Christian denomination, at that time called "New Lights." He officiated with James Smith in the first conference held in the county, of which David Young, of Zanesville, was Presiding Elder.

Haines became a loud exhorter, and, becoming deranged, got a tin horn and rode around the town and county, day and night, notifying the people to prepare for judgment, as the world was coming to an end. He proclaimed the same doctrine in his derangement that Millerites subsequently did.

When he became ungovernable he was Taken to Dr. R. D. Moore, who confined him in a mad shirt, or straight jacket, and treated him for several weeks until he was restored to reason ; but he said if he ever became insane again he would kill Dr. Moore. Shortly after this the doctor removed To Fayette county, Pa., and Haines again became deranged, and was missing for some time. Search was made for him, but The first information that his family

KNOX COUNTY. 87

received of his whereabouts was in a letter from Dr. Moore. He had made his way into Connellsville for the purpose of killing the doctor, and had stolen the family silver spoons to pay his way in. Upon arriving there hie had become rational again, and he told what his purpose had been, and stayed several weeks with the doctor, and was treated very kindly by him. Not long after this he took a rope and hung himself to a Tree on his own farm.

88 HISTORY OF KNOX COUNTY

CHAPTER VII.

THE SEAT OF JUSTICE FOR THE LAST TIME. BEN. BUTLER'S VERSION OF THE WAY MOUNT VERNON WAS MADE THE PERMANENT COUNTY SEAT, SHOWING THAT OLD VIRGINIA WAS UP TO TRICKS.

THE only one of the proprietors now living related to us the following interesting story: --

" When I moved my family to the thirty-six acres of land which I had bought, I had no thought of ever laying out any portion of it in town lots, or of any town ever being laid out there, nor at that time had Walker or Patterson. The idea, when suggested, was pleasing, and we at once took up with it. Clinton had been laid out by Sam Smith, and had never been paid out, I believe. It was started chiefly on the donation principle. Those who would put up buildings had their own time to pay for their lots, if ever they could.

" When we got word that the Commissioners were coming on to locate the county site, we were greatly stirred up about how we should manage. Kratzer and Williamson and Walker came to see me about it, and we all had a general consultation. I thought we had no chance of getting it, for I told them that they had, at Clinton, Bill Douglass' mill and a lot of good houses, and Sam. Smith's big

89 HISTORY OF KNOX COUNTY

brick house, and a plenty of smart Yankees to manage, aid they had at Frederick Johnny Kerr's mill and a lot of rich Quakers around it, and both those places looked

(Picture of Benjamin Butler J.P.)

better then than our d---d little scrubby place; and Sam. Kratzer asked me what I would do about it? And I said to them that I had studied out a pretty d---d bad trick that I could manage if they would only go into it, and if they wouldn't there wasn't a d---d bit of chance for us; and they said, let's hear it; and I told them I would give $10 myself, and each of

90 HISTORY OF KNOX COUNTY

them must give $10, to make up a purse and get liquor for the devils we had, and engage them to go up to Clinton and Frederick, and get drunk, and fiddle and fight and play hell generally when the Commissioners came up there to look, and that we would get two good yoke of oxen to work on the streets, and the rest of the men must take hold and spade and shovel and pick and roll logs and dig up stumps, and be fixing up the streets right , while all tine women and girls must get out into their gardens, hoeing and weeding and working like good fellows, and I would have the best victuals cooked and the best cheer the little old tavern could afford, so as to please the bellies of the Commissioners, and we might then conic out first for the county site selection .

" My plan struck their fancy, and Sam. Kratzer, although he was a great Methodist, didn't say a d---d word about its being a sin to cheat them that game, but at it he went, and they all fell into time plan. And we had a clever fellow named Munson, from Granville, and a big fellow named Bixbee, from over about Big-belly, and they agreed to go along and each to captain a gang of the rowdies, and see that it was played out right.

" It was Thursday afternoon when the Commissioners first came to our town, and they rode up and asked nine if they could get to stay all night, and I told them that it was hard fare we had, but if they would put up with it they could, and they stopped. 1 guessed who they were at once, and passed the word around, and everything went on as we had planned it, and the next morning about

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daylight the busiest set of bees ever collected about a hive were at work, hammering, pounding, digging, hoeing, scraping and working on the streets and in the lots. Leah had breakfast bright and early ; I had their horses all cleaned up and well fed, and ready after they eat to start. They wondered at the work they saw going on, and if it was kept up always as they had seen it in town, and I told them we were all poor and hard working, and we never lost any time in our little town. They said they were going up to Clinton and Frederick to see those places, and were going to fix the county seat, and wanted me to go along, but I tried to beg off-that I was poor and must work, and couldn't lose time, as it would take them two or three days to determine it. They said no, it wouldn't take them that long, and I knew d---d well if the trick was played out well by the rowdies that they would soon be back, so I sort of hesitated as though I would and I wouldn't go , and finally told Kratzer if he would go too, I would, as I would like to see them fix the county seat up there, and then Jim Dunlap, who was a jovial fellow about 35, spoke up and said to conic ahead ; the other two were sort of gruff, it seemed to me, and didn't say much, but looked solemn. They asked if we didn't expect to get time county seat at Mount Vernon, and I told them no, that we were too poor to try for it; that I felt too poor really to go up with them, for some fellow might come along and stop with me, who would want me to go with him and look at land, and every fellow that I showed hand to, gave me $2, which helped right smart. There were three sorts

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of poor---God's poor, the devil's poor, and poor devils, and that we were all poor devils; but Sam. Smith was long headed, and Johnny Kerr had lots of rich Quakers to back him, so us poor devils were left out of the question.

" We then rode together up to Clinton, and there the rowdies were cutting up, and the fiddle going, and shouting and cursing being done of the tallest kind, and when we went to go into the tavern there was a rush to the door way, and two men scuffling and fighting, and before the Commissioners could get in they were jammed and scuffed about, and in the din and confusion, and yells of "pull them off,' "part them,' "don't do it,' "fair play', by G-d, hit him again, d-n him,' "let "em fight it out,' and all such calls, the Commissioners backed out from the tavern, and proposed to go and look at Fredericktown. About that time old Sam. Smith came up, and when he found out they were the Commissioners, and going, he tried the hardest kind to get them to stop, but it was no go; they had seen enough of that place then, but promised him to call again tomorrow. On the way to Fredericktown I talked much with them, and apologized for the way our people up there had acted, and they asked me if they cut up like Indians all the time, and I told them that about Clinton and Frederick there were a great many rich men's sons, and they had no trades, and would frolic a little just to put in their time, but they were a mighty clever set of people, &c. And I pointed out to them the pretty scenery, and bragged on the land around, but said not a word for Mount Vernon. When we got to

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Frederick, they stopped at Ayres' tavern, and found a good deal such quarreling going on as at Clinton, and I got afraid then that they might see through it, and suspect that we had a hand in getting it up, and so I got down about the mill, and sat on the logs awhile with Kratzer and Patterson, and left them up at time tavern to see the fighting in the yard, and just before going in to dinner I called one of time rowdies to nine and told him it was all working well, and gave him more money, and told him to swear the others not to revulge on them ever, amid we would make it right with "em. After dinner the Commissioners sauntered around, and I proposed going back and leaving them, as they would want to stay all night there, and I had some work to do and chores to attend to at home before night; but they would have me wait a while longer for them, and I did it. While there sitting on a log, we bet two gallons of wine with Johnny Kerr, as to which place would get the county seat. When they were ready they started, and we rode back to Mount Vernon, where Mrs. Butler had the best kind of a supper cooked up, and it put them in right good humor. She knew how to fix things up right on such an occasion.

" The men about Mount Vernon were all quiet, and kept so, and when Dunlap asked Coyle's two boys to take a dram with him, they hung back and hesitated, until I told them to come up and take a drink with the gentleman-that there was no harm in it; and they poured out the least bit of drains they ever took in their lives. The next morning the Commissioners got ready to start, and I had

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got Knuck Harris, the only nigger in the country then, to sleek their horses off, and they came out looking first rate. Dunlap was a funny fellow, and he thought he could hop, and bantered some of the boys to hop, but they were afraid they would be beat by him, and said it warn't no use to try, as they knew he could beat them. But I told him to make his hop, and he went out in the road and gave a sample; I went over it just a little, amid we hopped several times, until I concluded to show him what Ben. could do, and I hopped so far over his furtherest mark that they all laughed him right out, and he gave it up, saying I could hop sonic. In those days I never found the man that could beat me. When they were about starting I asked them if they were not going back to Clinton and give it another look, but they said no, and the Clintonites never saw them any more. They wanted to go to Delaware, and asked me to pilot them a part of the way, whieh I did, and when I got out with them back of George Lewis' place, I tried to find something out of them as to what they had determined on, but they evaded my questions, and gave me little satisfaction. On bidding them good-by, I hoped they were not put out with our place on account of the hard fare I had given them-that I had nothing nice to give them, as I kept only a little log tavern, and supplied my table by hunting and butchering. One of them remarked that if they ever came this way again, they were well enough suited to call on me. I then said that I was poor, and felt discouraged, and thought that I would quit off and go some where else and make a

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better living for myself and family. Dunlap then said I was doing well enough, and must not get out of heart. And so we parted. When we got back to town all the men gathered around me to find out what was our chance. I told them what had passed between us, and that I was satisfied it would be found that our side was ahead, and I called them all up to take a good drink at my expense on Mount Vernon being made the permanent county seat. That little trick of ours, I am sure, made the scales turn in our favor, and when we knew that it was established at Mount Vernon, you can imagine that we had loud rejoicing over it"

In this time of war, when time public mind is educated to believe that it is fair in any way to gain an advantage over an enemy, there will be but few who will not consider this little county seat contest to have been properly conducted upon the part of the Vernonites. The rule that "all is fair in politics" having of late years gained general acceptation and credence, those who have dabbled in governmental affairs will say that this was rightly done, and all who have won in matters of love, and who has not, will concede that " the end justifies the means," and all who believe that " whatever is right," will determine that Mount Vernon honorably, justly and legitimately became the permanent seat of justice of Knox county.

JONATHAN HUNTS RYDER.

Jonathan Hunt informs us that he was one of the volunteer workers on the streets at the time the Commissioners came on, and that Gilman Bryant

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sort of bossed the work, and, being a cripple, he tended on them and gave out time whisky and water, cheering them up as he came around, saying: "Work like men in harvest, but keep sober, boys." Mike Click, and John Click, his brother, drove the oxen." Mike was a bully hand with a team, and made them tear up stumps, haul logs, plow and scrape, as necessary' Men never worked better on a road than that force then did. They chopped down trees, cut off logs, grubbed, dug down rough places, filled up gulleys, burned log heaps, and made a wonderful change in the appearance of things. It was the first work ever done on the streets of Mount Vernon

KNOX COUNTY. 97

CHAPTER VIII.

SIXTH TERM OF COURT-JANUARY 1st, 1810.

THE LAW AND THE TESTIMONY. --COURT, FINANCE, AND ELECTION, 1810.

"Grand Jury.---Isaac Bonnett, foreman, David Miller, Peter Bricker, Abner Brown, Jr., John Johnson, Casper Fitting, Francis Hardesty, Josiah Talmage, Willis Speakman, Wm. Darling, Robert Dalrymple, Joseph Coleman, David Johnson, John Merritt, James Walker, Jr.

"Indictments were found vs. Henry Smith, Eli Freeman, John Click, Thomas McBride.

"Robert Dalrymple vs. Joseph Talmage.-This case was tried a jury, who do find for the plaintiff and do assess his damage by $1.

"Wm. Sapp was appointed guardian for John Melton, and gave bond in $50. "John Green, administrator of Isaac McClary, was allowed till next September Term to settle.

"William Wallace was licensed to keep public house on paying the proper sum.

January 2d.

"Isaac Applegate, by his Agent, Israel Ross, vs. Thomas B. Patterson.--On Saassarara. Ordered that a Declaration be filed vs. two o'clock.

"The Case of John J. Brice vs. Thomas B. Patterson, Gilman Bryant, and Joseph Walker.--In Chancery-is disposed of by ordering defendants to pay $50, in nine months, or make a deed and to pay costs.

"Robert Dalrymple vs. Joseph Talmage.-By consent of parties this action is to he open for a new trial, and continued on the Issue Docket.

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"Plumb and Murray are Licensed to retail goods three months.

"Notice is given of an appeal in the cases of Dalrymple vs. Talmage, and John J. Brice vs. Patterson, et als.

"Letters of administration are granted to __________Simpkins on the Estate of John Simpkins. Joseph Coleman and Sele Simpkins securities for $400.

"And tire Court adjourned till Court in Course."

SEVENTH TERM-COURT OF COMMON PLEAS-3Oth APRIL, 1810.

"James Colville appears as an Associate Judge in place of Wm. Gass.

"Grand Jury-Joseph Walker, foreman, Nicholas Riley, Jas. Walker, Jr., Daniel Demmick, George Davis, Jonathan Craig, C. Loffland, Wm. Fuller, Jacob Lybarger, C. Cooper, Peter Majors, Henry Haines, John Ervin, Nathaniel Critchfield.

"Bills of Indictment were found vs. Ichabod Nye, Samuel Nye, Alexander Enos, Richard Alspaugh.

"But one case was tried by Jury-that one vs. John Click, for assault and battery.

"Another State case for assault and battery vs. Thomas McBride was disposed of by tire Court assessing a fine of $1 and costs, and two cases were dismissed at defendant's cost, and one at the plaintiff's cost.

"Ordered, that an additional Justice of the Peace be added to the township of Morgan.

"Benjamin Barrey was Licensed to keep public tavern at Clinton, on payment of $5.

"This term continued two days, and the above is the business transacted."

THE JAIL BOUNDS DEFINED.

Special Term-2d day of June, 1810.

"Ordered, that the jail bounds of this county be as follows, to wit: Front street, thence to include all the balance of the town of Mt. Vernon lying North said street, which does include the Jail of said county."

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"LO! THE POOR AFRICAN" DEMANDS ATTENTION.

"The Court convenes at 2 o'clock P. M. to determine the negroe's case.

"The State of Ohio vs. Ned Jackson, a negro-For Larceny. The criminal comes forward and pleads not guilty, and the Court, from the testimony given, do consider and order that the said criminal be confined in jail until the Court in course."

HAVING A QUAKER JUDGE CAUSES A QUAKER MEETING--4th

DAY, 6th MONTH.

"Court met. Present: John Mills, Wm. W. Farquhar, and James Colville."

The record is silent as to the cause of their meeting-- only sheweth that the three gentlemen met and adjourned until the Court in Course.

EIGHTH TERM-COURT OF COMMON PLEAS-3d SEPTEMBER, 1810.

"Grand Jury-Robert McMillen, foreman, John Wood, Wm. Wallace, ,John Herrod, John Shrimplin, John Merrit, Silas Brown, John Hown, John Wheeler, David Johnson, Nathaniel Critchfield, Ziba Leonard, Jas. Wallace, Jr.

"Bills of Indictment were presented against Robert Davidson and James Butler, each of whom were on plea of guilty of assault and battery, fined $2 and costs."

The cases must have been exceedingly aggravated, or the Court become more severe upon the offenders, and doubled the fine.

Three causes were tried by jury, to wit: Robert Dalrymple vs. Joseph Talmage; Lawrence, for use of Rush, vs. George Davidson; and Martha Zenick, by her guardian and father, vs. David Miller and Mary Miller. This time Dalrymple was awarded $5 damages, but neither party, as usual in law, was

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satisfied with the decision ; hence, on the next page we find, side by side with each other, the following entries:

"Robert Dalrymple vs. Joseph Talmage.--Notice is hereby given by the plaintiff of an appeal.

"Robert Dalrymple vs. Joseph Talmage.--Notice is hereby given by the defendant of an appeal.

"The Jury in the second case gave judgement for the defendant. George Davidson, for costs, and the plaintiff gives notice of appeal."

In the Zenick case. the Jury, "upon their oaths. do find the defendants guilty, and assess the dam-ages of the plaintiff to $30." This was the first slander suit ever tried in Knox county. The defend- ants moved, in arrest of judgment, "that the words contained in the third count in the plaintiff s declaration are not actionable," but, having been over- ruled in this effort, then gave notice of an appeal. This was a case of unusual interest, and William Guardian, for failing to appear as evidence in It. was fined $1.

Three cases were dismissed at plaintiff's cost. Three judgments were entered by default, and one by confession. the highest amount of any judgment was that of Josiah Morriss vs. David Debel. alias Debolt, for $70 and costs. A Case of David Miller vs. Martha Zenick, on the case, was dismissed with judgment for costs vs. plaintiffs. Such was the business of two days of the 7th regular term.

"On the 5th of September George Coffinbery was Licensed to keep a publick house of entertainment in the town of Mansfield for one yea r on his payment of $4.

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"John Green, Esq., was still further allowed 3 years to settle the Isaac McClary estate.

"Catharine Shinabery. Ex. of M. Shinabery, dec'd, settled with the Court.

"Daniel Demmick was Licensed to keep a publick House of entertainment for one year. and Michael Click also.

"Henry Markley was allowed for 12 1/2 days services as Commissioner.

"Matthew Merritt vas allowed for 9 days services as Commissioner.

"William Douglas was allowed for 10 days services as Commissioner.

"Edward Herrick was allowed $25 as Prosecuting Attorney for the Supreme Court for 1810."

COUNTY SETTLEMENT--5TH SEPTEMBER, 1810.

"The Court met with the Commissioners for the purpose of settling with the Court in County Charges, &c., which is as follows, (to wit):

"County of Knox, Dr., for, including from the June, 1809, to Sept. 6^th, 1810;

Commissioners of Knox County $137 27

Associate Judges 109 44

Elections 48 75

Roads 130 82

" 3 10

Treasurer 40 46

Boarding & Imprisoning Negro 2 75

" " 1 83

Coroner 3 50

Iron-Negro 5 25

Wolf Scalps 67 50

Collector's fees 102 59.8

Clerk's fees 41 00

Clerk to Commissioners from Jan'y, 1808 87 17

Shieriff's fees 28 6 1/2

Prosecuting Attorney 100 00

Repairs of Jail 9 47

Jury Boxes 1 00

102 HISTORY OF

Delinquents in Tax $24.20

Listing Townships $73.00

Petit Jurors 15.15

Postage of Letters .95

Witnesses 4.00

Grand Jurors 60.00

$1,194.16 1/2

Cr. By County Levy for 1809 $265.98

By Land Tax, 1809 252.52

By Draft on District Collection 118.30

By fines, &c 48.55

By stores and taverns 73.32

$759.67

"Ordered, that the Court do adjourn until the next meeting in course."

VOTE FOR GOVERNOR IN 1810.

The vote of Knox county in 1810 stood: For Return J. Meigs, 97 ; Thomas Worthington, 90. All the votes cast in our county at that election were 187. Our county was then on the winning side, as Meigs carried the State by 2,193 majority.

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CHAPTER IX.

SKETCH OF THE FIRST WHITE MAN KNOWN TO HAVE BEEN UPON THE KO-KO-SING--THE INDIAN CAPTIVE IN 1779.--THE ADJUTANT IN 1812 AND COMMISSIONER IN 1824.

THE first of the citizens of Knox county to tread upon its soil, was John Stilley. . In the month of June, A. D. 1779, he was a captive among the Indians upon the banks of Ko-ko-sing. We have thoroughly investigated the early history of this country and can learn of no white person who penetrated the wilderness prior to that time. His father was one of the pioneers of Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, who was killed by the savages when John was but a small child. Immediately after his father was massacred, John (about the year 1774) was taken, with one of his little sisters, by his brother-in-law, Kennedy, to his home in the back part of Washington county, where he was living exposed to the privations, toils and sufferings incident to border life. At that time the people of the new country were in constant dread of the savages, and sleeping or waking they were alike in danger of becoming their prey. In the spring of 1779, when the corn was just sprouting out of the ground, a baud of Indians of the Wyandot tribe one night attacked the house of Kennedy, took Kennedy, his

HISTORY OF KNOX COUNTY 104

wife and one child, John Stilley and his little prattling sister, plundered the house of such things as they fancied, set fire to the house, and burned it to the ground. While they were witnessing the destruction of the house and its contents, they became alarmed by the approach of some of the whites living nearest to Kennedy, and hastily. seized his horses, and took to flight. One of the neighbors, called Captain Jack, an old Indian hunter, living about two miles from Kennedy's, thought on the evening of that day that there were Indians about, and being unable to get to sleep on account of this presentiment, kept his family awake until about midnight, when he swore that he "smelt Indians," and seizing his rifle, powder-horn and bullet-pouch went out to his nearest neighbor, and while there discovered the fire in the direction of Kennedy's, and with such of the settlement as could be hastily gathered together came up to the ruins of the house, hurrying the Indians away with their captives and plunder. They followed close in pursuit, and came so nearly up to them when crossing the river that Captain Jack shot the Indian having young Stilley in charge across the right hand, cutting off his thumb. They. heard the crack of rifles, and the balls whistled by them as they crossed the river. The Indian held young John in his left hand, and swam his horse over the river and rode some distance with the reins in his mouth. The band of Indians-sixteen in number-hastened rapidly across the country with their prisoners, crossing the White Woman near its mouth, and following on up the Ko-ko-sing, as Stilley distinctly

HISTORY OF KNOX COUNTY 105

recollects, until above where Fredericktown has since been built, and thence on out to the Sandusky plains. They camped one night at the Little Indian Fields, near the present site of Mount Vernon.

This country was then an unbroken wilderness. They did not see a single white man, or the trace of one, this side of the Ohio river ; nor could John Stilley. recollect of seeing one of his own race for five years, except a few prisoners who were at times brought through the country where he was, and occasionally his sisters and brother-in-law. They were parceled out by the captors as suited their fancy and were some times for months without seeing each other. John was a stout, hearty boy, fond of rough exercise and having not a particle of fear he soon became a great favorite with the tribe, and was often taken by the warriors in their hunting expeditions. He was several times brought with a portion of the tribe down to the Ko-ko-sing and White Woman country, and remembers that this was considered the most beautiful part of their hunting grounds. It then looked to him far handsomer than it ever has since, and because of its prepossession appearance he determined. when he started in the world with thoughts of settling down permanently in one place, to make this his home and final resting place.

After the Revolutionary War was over and peace established, Kennedy and his wife and the two children were delivered up at Detroit. The Indians had taken a great liking to John, and determined to keep him. He was adopted into the tribe, had learned their language, and almost lost his own.

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Trained up as their little Indians were, he had fallen into their ways, and fell in love with their mode of life, so that he had no desire to return to the white settlements. He bore no marks of ill treatment, unless we except that the end of his nose had been bitten off by one of the Indians in a fight. In all their sports and games he took part, and was a worthy "boba-sheeby." Our old settlers, who recollect the "whoop" that Uncle John could give when so disposed, say that he surpassed the real Indian in that line. He has often spoken to us of the events of his captivity, and how he was for a time fascinated with their wild and roving life. He subsisted for days upon a little corn parched and pounded up, and used to affirm to us that he never relished any thing so well in his life as that simple food.

But he was not doomed to live always a savage life. His family determined to rescue him from their wiles and allurements. His brother-in-law, with several others, undertook this mission, and at length succeeded in getting him away from them while they were camped down on Detroit, not far from where Malden has since been built. He remained with Kennedy and his friends at Detroit some months. There was then a British Fort there, and the village was the smallest kind of a four-cornered place.

It is a satisfaction to know that several of the gang who captured Stilley and Kennedy's family were afterwards in one of their marauding editions overtaken by justice. The Poes met and killed them near the mouth of Yellow Creek. Stil-

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ley and his sister became conversant with this fact shortly after the occurrence from Indians concerned in that dreadful fight.

John Stilley with other prisoners retaken from the Indians, to the number of about ninety, embarked in a vessel at Detroit, and landed in Sandusky Bay, and hired two Indian pilots to guide them back to the settlements. When they got pretty near the Ohio River, they began to talk over their Position, where they were from, and with sadness parted with each other, scattering in different directions, never more to meet. Some were from Kentucky, others from Virginia and Pennsylvania. But few of them crossed the river with Stilley into the edge of Allegheny county. Stilley says that he then passed through the Ko-ko-sing and White Woman country, and not a particle of improvement was discerned from the time he was first taken through it by the Indians.

After remaining in his native country a short time he became restless, and longed for a newer condition of things . His desire for adventure took him to the "dark and bloody ground." He went alone-a poor boy., but strong of heart, and with resolution indomitable. Alone, and in a light canoe of his own make, he navigated the rivers, and landed at the Limestone, about three miles from where the city of Maysville now stands. The only settlements then commenced on the Ohio River in his way were at Wheeling, Gallipolis, Marietta, and at the mouth of the Kanawha. These were all very small. He pushed his way into the interior of Kentucky, and voyaged along

108 HISTORY OF KNOX COUNTY

the waters of the Elkhorn, and was struck with the surprising beauty of the country, and the nobleness and generosity of the people with whom he fell in company, and there he sojourned for some time. "There was," he said, "a considerable settlement along the waters of the Elkhorn, and above and between Paris and Lexington more white people than I had ever seen before. Lexington I thought a mighty clever town. We could raise along the old Elk's horn quite a number of men to take a fight every now and then, and I felt that I was man enough for any of them in any way. they were a mind to take me. I knew Simon Kenton personally and right intimately, and a mighty true man he was too. He then lived down, I think, sort of northwest of Paris. He did not live as high as I did. He kept four-minute men down there always ready. We kept watch miles along the river for a while, and went back and forth twenty-five miles ; I was one of them. I also knew Neal Washburn well, and I tell you he was a real brotherly feeling man. The Kentucky hunters were as good men as God ever made. They were the clear noblemen spit-all soul-all bravery- all generosity. Would to God there were more such in the world." * * * "I remained upon Elkhorn enjoying myself finely, farming a little, and hunting more, and wrestling and fighting, and all that, till the pesky Indians up in the Maumee country, and in the Miami, got to cutting up so intolerable bad that we couldn't stand it any longer-they were depredating and thieving, and murdering and scalping, and I got my blood up

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and concluded to try my aim on them, so I "listed among the first in the country, and there was no better shot with a rifle among the crowd."

John Stilley. served for four months as one of the Kentucky volunteers, and upon discharge of the company, by General Wayne, returned to the Elkhorn country. But he did not long remain quiet. Repeated acts of cruelty and inhumanity on the part of the savages and their worse than savage allies. again rendered it necessary for the Kentucky boys to shoulder their rifles and march into the enemy's country to avenge the wrongs of their countrymen. Stilley then served five months, and said he would like to have continued with old Mad Anthony the rest of his days, but the old hero said he did not require his services any longer. He returned to Kentucky and remained farming, hunting, and shooting at a mark, until the country, where he was, became too thickly settled for him to enjoy life there, amid then he concluded to look up again the fine country which he had admired so much, when a boy, on the Ko-ko-sing.

He is found living in this county in 1806, making his location, building his log cabin and settling down for the remainder of his term on earth. His wife, Rebecca, daughter of old Robert Thompson, the surveyor and pioneer, rests by his side beneath the soil of Knox county. The Stilley farm, west of Mount Vernon one mile, where their sons Morgan F. and Gilman B. and daughter Dorcas now live, was cleared off and first cultivated by Thompson and Stilley from 1805. Of John Stilley's twelve children-Sarah E., wife of Jacob Maxteller, is in

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this township ; Julia Ann, wife of Col. Benjamin F. Smith, in Minnesota; Joel F. in this county, Rebecca Kimbal in Morrow county ; Nancy, wife of Wm. McFarland, deceased, in Oquawka, Ill., and the others, not above named, are dead.

In our chapter upon the military of Knox county it will be seen that the bellicose spirit of John Stilley is made manifest. In the war with Great Britain he served as Adjutant of Col. Kratzer's Regiment, Ohio volunteers, until honorably discharged . He again entered the service when Fort Meigs was attacked by the British and Indians, and received another honorable discharge . We became conversant with the events in the life of this worthy old settler several years ago, when forwarding an application for a land warrant, which he desired mainly as evidencing an evidence of appreciation of his services and sufferings by his government, but the lamentable delays of officials in the great circumlocution departments at Washington prevented his receiving this just acknowledgment of his country's gratitude. On the 10th of March, 1852, he died of palsy, at his home, in Clinton township. His widow, after his death, received the tribute of a land warrant for 160 acres.

John Stilley was a true hearted, a brave man- ready, whenever occasion offered, to assert his rights and evidence his courage. He performed four tours of service, and under the most trying circumstances acquitted himself handsomely. He was a great admirer of General Wayne and General Harrison, and never grew tired of praising them. We might give many anecdotes and incidents connected with

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the life of this worthy old pioneer-who first walked upon the banks of Owl Crock, (Koo-koo-san he said it was pronounced by the tribe who captured him.) We have thought a chapter in the History of the county to be justly due to John Stilley--the old Adjutant--the old Commissioner--the old citizen who was proverbial for his honesty and integrity--and who possessed, at four score years, as good a memory, as sound judgment and irreproachable character as any man ever within the limit of Knox county.