220 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE FIRST PIONEERS.

ELIAS HUGHES AND JOHN RATLIFF-HUGHES AS SCOUT AND INDIAN FIGHTER- THE SHOOTING OF A SQUAW BY MCLANE-ARRIVAL OF HUGHES AND RATLIFF ON THE BOWLING GREEN-THEIR SUBSISTENCE-THE SHOOTING OF THE INDIAN HORSE THIEVES-ERECTION OF A BLOCK-HOUSE-MR. BLAND-GREEN AND PIT7ER-JOHN VAN BUSKIRK -ISAAC AND JOHN STADDEN-FIRST MARRIAGE IN THE COUNTY ISAAC STADDEN'S DISCOVERY OF THE OLD FORT -STADDEN'S MEETING WITH THE FORDS AND BENJAMIN-FIRST ELECTION IN THE COUNTY-CAPTAIN SAMUEL ELLIOTT.

"Ask who of all our race have shown

The largest heart. the kindliest hand;

Ask who with lavish hands have strown,

Rich blessings over all the land;

Ask who has sown that we might reap,

The harvest, rich with seventy years;

And every heart and every voice

Make answer: Licking's Pioneers."

B. Clark.

IN the preceding chapter, a history of the white occupation of the territory embraced within the limits of Licking county, has been brought down to the year 1798, at which date the first permanent settlers, Hughes and Ratliff, arrived. It is necessary and proper here to give brief biographical sketches of a few of the most prominent of the early pioneers, whose lives are necessarily a part of the early history of this county.

The acts, achievements and exploits of individual character are history. This is pre-eminently true of the first settlers of a country-the pioneers. Especially is it true in such a country as this was, where the subjugation of the hostile tribes was the condition precedent to its permanent settlement. The pioneers of Licking county made its early history. Elias Hughes and John Ratliff remained here until their death, hence their names are as much interwoven in the history of Licking county, as is the name of George Washington with the history of the United States, or as are the names of General Grant and Abraham Lincoln with the history of the late Rebellion.

Elias Hughes was born near the south branch of the Potomac, a section of country which furnished Licking county with many of its first settlers and most useful citizens. His birth occurred sometime before Braddock's defeat in 1755.

Of his early life little is known until 1774, when he is found in the army of General Lewis, engaged in the battle of Point Pleasant.

General Lewis commanded the left wing of the army of Lord Dunmore, then governor of Virginia, and successfully fought the distinguished Shawnees chief, Cornstalk, who had a large force of Indians under his command. One-fifth of Lewis' command was killed or wounded, but Elias Hughes escaped unhurt in this hard-fought battle, which lasted an entire day. At the time of his death, which occurred more than seventy years after the battle, he was, and had been for years, the sole survivor of that sanguinary conflict.

Hughes is next found a resident of Harrison county, Virginia, where his chief employment during the twenty-one years that intervened between the battle of Point Pleasant, and the treaty of Greenville in 1795, was that of a scout or spy on the frontier settlements near to and bordering on the Ohio river. This service which, with him, was a labor of love, he rendered at the instance of his State, and of the border settlers who had been, for a long time, greatly harrassed by Indians. Hughes' father, and others of his kindred, and also a young woman to whom he was betrothed, were massacred by them. These acts of barbarity made him ever I after an unrelenting and merciless enemy of the Indians, and in retaliation for their numerous butcheries, his deadly rifle was brought to bear fatally upon many of them.

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HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 213

It is but an act of justice to the memory of this pioneer settler, who was well known as an Indian hater and an Indian slayer, that the provocation he had be clearly stated and properly understood. Born and reared on the frontier, among rude, unlettered people; untaught and wholly uncultivated as he was, it is not surprising that under all these circumstances of horrid aggravation, he should have given rather full play to strong and malignant passions, and that he should have cherished even to old age, the more harsh and somewhat malignant feelings of his nature. This he did full-, so long as the Indian tribes sustained a hostile attitude toward the whites.

A word here in reference to a matter well remembered by the old settlers. In 1820 an Indian squaw of the Stockbridge tribe was shot near the county line, between Utica and Martinsburgh. She was taken to Mt. Vernon where she died. One McLane shot her, and was sent to the penitentiary for it. He and four others named McDaniel, Evans, Chadwick and Hughes (not Elias), were engaged in chopping, when this squaw and others of the tribe came along and camped near them. The diabolical proposition was made and accepted, that they should play cards, and that the loser should shoot her. McLane was the loser, and did the shooting. His confederates, or at least some of them, were tried and acquitted. In Norton's history of Knox county it is stated that Hughes shot this squaw, simply to gratify his hatred of the Indian race." How an intelligent man, writing history could justify himself for making such a 'cross mistake, regarding a. natter on which he could easily- get correct information from a thousand residents of this county and of Knox, it is hard to conceive. Elias Hughes had neither part nor lot in the matter, directly or remotely; but condemned the outrage in unmeasured terms. He was not guilty, and this emphatic denial is deemed an act of simple justice to Mr. Hughes.

Indian hostilities were terminated by the treaty of Greenville in 1795, and Hughes' services as a scout were no longer required; he therefore surrendered his commission as captain of scouts, and directed his thoughts to more pacific pursuits. He had been commissioned by that distinguished frontiersman, Colonel Ben Wilson, the father of Daniel D. Wilson and Mrs. Dr. Brice, both of this county.

In 1796, Hughes entered, in the capacity of hunter, the service of a surveying party, who were about to engage in running the range lines of lands lying in what is now Licking county. This party was probably under the direction of John G. Jackson, deputy surveyor under General Rufus Putnam, surveyor general of the United States. The fine bottom lands on the Licking were thus brought to the notice of Hughes, and he resolved to leave his mountain home and "go west." Accordingly in the spring of 1797 he gathered together his effects, and with his wife and twelve children, made their way on foot and on pack-horses to the mouth of Licking. This point was made accessible to horse-back travelers and footmen by the location and opening, the year before, by Zane and others, the road from Wheeling to Maysville; and also of a road previously cut from Marietta up the river.

John Ratliff, a nephew of Hughes, with a wife and four children, came with him, in the same manner, to the mouth of the Licking. Here they remained one year, and in the spring of 1798, both families, numbering twenty-one persons, came in the same manner up the Licking and settled on what is called the "Bowling Green," on the banks of the Licking, four miles east of Newark, a short distance above the mouth of Bowling Green run. This was the first permanent white settlement within the present limits of Licking county.

They found the "Bowling Green," a level untimbered, green lawn or prairie, and they at once proceeded to raise a crop of corn. Whether the Bowling Green was a natural prairie, or had been cleared by the Indians, remains an unsettled question. Their nearest neighbors for two years, lived near Nashport, a. distance of ten miles. One of these was Philip Barrick, who in 1801 moved into this county.

This colony of twenty-one persons was subsisted mainly on the meat of wild animals, procured by the rifles of the settlers, although vegetables and a d considerable corn crop were raised the first season. For many years bear, deer, wild turkeys, and a great variety of smaller game were in such abundance as to supply the full demands of the settlers.

214 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

Fruits, berries, and other spontaneous productions of the earth, also contributed many years, in no inconsiderable degree to the subsistence of the settlers, as did, also, the fish in the streams.

Ratliff, in some particulars, was a different style of man from Hughes. He was much more inclined to the peaceful avocations of life, and for one reared on the frontier, had not been largely engaged in border warfare; though he as well as j Hughes, was considerably devoted to the chase, to fishing, trapping, bee-hunting, as well as to killing wild animals generally.

In 1801 two Indians came to the Bowling Green and stole four horses belonging to Hughes, Ratliff, Weedman, a recent immigrant, and a Mr. Bland, living at the mouth of the Licking, but who was, at this time, visiting Hughes. In the morning, finding their horses missing, the owners determined to pursue and kill the thieves, strongly suspecting the Indians. Hughes, Ratliff, and Bland armed themselves and started in pursuit. Weedman, for some reason, was not of the party. They were enabled to follow the trail, readily tracking them through the grass and weeds, and, overtaking them on the waters of Owl creek, shot them. Bland's flint did not strike fire, but Hughes' and Ratliff's did, and the Indians stole no more horses. When the Indians were overtaken, and it was evident the horses would be recovered, Bland and Ratliff relented, and suggested to Hughes to let the thieves escape with their lives, but the latter was not that kind of a man. He remonstrated in such emphatic terms, using such forcible expletives as to bring his associates to his way of thinking. When Hughes said a thing must be done, and he could do it or cause it to be done, it was done. In this case he had his way, and the Indian horse-thieves paid the forfeit. Hughes knew them, and believed them to have been engaged in stealing horses, and returning them to their owners for a compensation in skins and furs.

This sanguinary transaction necessitated th erection of a block-house on the Bowling Green as a protection against the friends of the horse thieves, who were greatly incensed against th white settlers for killing them; but it never became necessary to defend it.

Bland removed from Pendleton county, Virginia in 17 98, with a wife and four children, coming two hundred miles over the mountains on packhorses, to Marietta, following bridle paths and Indian trails a portion of the way. On reaching the mouth of the Licking he took refuge with his family in a sugar camp. Before he had time to erect a cabin, he had born to him in this sugar camp, a son, whom they rocked in a sugar trough, the only cradle .at hand. Mr. Silas Bland, one of the pioneers of Perry township, was this child of the sugar trough.

The elder Bland, no less than his fellow frontiersmen, Hughes and Ratliff, possessed all the constituent elements of a first class pioneer; and, after acting well his part, he died in Muskingum county.

In 1802 Elias Hughes was elected captain of the first company of militia raised within the present limits of the county. This company he commanded a number of years. The drills of the battalion, to which this company belonged were held at Lancaster.

Hughes had four children born to him on the Bowling Green, making the whole number sixteen, only one of whom, Jonathan, yet remains in the county.

Ratliffs wife died to 1802, and, probably, was the second adult white Person,* and the first white settler to die within the present limits .of this county; the only probable exception being that of Mrs. Jones, who died about the same time on the farm afterward owned by General Munson, in Granville township, four miles west of Newark. Her husband, John Jones, had erected the first cabin in that township, being the one in which she died. Ratliff married again, his second wife being the daughter of a pioneer by the name of Stateler, who lived near the mouth of Rocky fork. He also raised quite a family, but none of them now live-if living at all-in this county. He had a son in the war of 1812, who, after his return from the army, removed to Louisiana. Ratliff finally moved to the south side of the Licking, near the mouth of the Brushy- fork, where he died about the year 1811. Neither he nor Hughes ; seem to have had much success in acquiring prop-

* See chapter on "First White Men," for first death in county.

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erty-there is no evidence that either of them had much ambition in that direction.

Elias Hughes, on all other subjects except Indian warfare, was regarded as of a silent, taciturn disposition, but he was fond of relating his exploits and successes as a scout, and would sometimes sit up whole nights to relate, to willing listeners, his hair-breadth escapes and adventures, the thrilling stories and heroic acts and deeds of renown, in which he had borne a part. He was unassuming, generally mild-mannered, unpretending, unambitious, but firm, determined, unyielding; and when he resolved on a certain line of conduct, he generally pursued it to success or failed only after vigorous effort. Fond of adventure, he displayed in border warfare, in battle, in the pursuit of Indians, the energy, bravery, and self-sacrificing and heroic virtues that belonged so pre-eminently to the early pioneers of the great west.

In the war of 1812, notwithstanding his age, being about sixty years old, he volunteered for the defense of Fort Meigs. On the formation of a company in Newark, he was selected to conduct the men to headquarters, at Worthington, for organization. At the election of company ofcers he was made lieutenant, while the late General John Spencer was elected captain. Three of his sons were also engaged in the war of 1812, one of whom contracted a disease from which he died.

Mr. Hughes lived many years on the North fork, a few miles above Newark, and also several years at Clinton, in Knox county, from whence he removed to Monroe township, near Johnstown.

In 1827 his wife died, and most of his children having married and -moved from the county, he became an inmate of the house of his son Jonathan, who is yet living in the county at the age of eighty-four. Jonathan was born in Virginia in 1796, and was a mere infant when his father reached the mouth of Licking (1797). When, in 1798, the family removed to Bowling Green, he was put into one end of a. salt sack, with an opening for his head, and his brother, David, two years older, in the other end. The sack was, on their daily march, slung across a pack-saddle, and in thi manner the only survivor of the twenty-one mad his advent at the Bowling Green.

For many years Elias Hughes was a pensioner, regularly receiving from a beneficent government an amount of money that enabled him to spend his declining years in the full enjoyment of all the necessaries of life, kindly ministered unto by his son and family, with whom he spent the last seventeen years of his life in the quiet village of Utica.

His life was filled with experiences more diversified than usually falls to the lot of man. He always met adversity, and the stern realities of life uncomplainingly and like a man. Enduring, as he did, for the last sixteen years of his life, the terrible affliction of total blindness, he was deprived of much enjoyment, but he was resigned and patient, thus exhibiting his courage and manhood to the last. His mind turned upon religious matters in these latter years, and he cherished hopes of a happy future.

He died in December, 1844, and was buried with military honors and other demonstrations of respect.

His age is not certainly known, but it is supposed that he was more than ninety years old.

Such was the life, briefly sketched, of one of the most remarkable of the pioneers of this county. It was a life full of privation, adventure, hardship, toil, exposure and excitement, preserved through all to an unusual length.

The two families of Hughes and Ratliff, and that of a man named John Carpenter, of which little or nothing is known, were the sole occupants of the territory now constituting this county, at the close of the last century. Early in the spring of the opening year (1800) of the present century, three more families, Greens, Pitzers and Van Buskirks were added to the number. In August, Isaac Stadden and family came, making the seventh; and in September, Captain Samuel Elliott and family arrived, constituting the eighth. The marriage of Colonel John Stadden and Betsey,

daughter of the aforesaid Green, which took place on Christmas day, 1800, made the ninth family, which was the whole number in this territory when the year closed.

In the spring of 1799, Benjamin Green, a revolutionary soldier, and his son-in-law, Richard Pitzer, left Alleghany county, Maryland, to settle in the Northwest Territory. On reaching the neigh-

216 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

borhood of Marietta, they decided to remain there a year and raise a crop, thus postponing, for a brief period, their removal further westward.

Early in the spring of 1800 they removed their families to Shawnee run, locating about two miles east of the junction of the North and South forks of the Licking, on the farm once owned by Hon. Wm. O'Bannon. Here they remained two years, when they purchased land upon Hog run, within the present limits of Licking township, and removed to this land. (A full account of these two pioneers will be found in a history of that township, as their lives, and that of their families, were mostly spent there. Mr. Pitzer died therein 1819.)

The Greens had a family of fourteen children, eleven of whom were born before their arrival at Shawnee run. John Green, one of the sons, was an extensive contractor on the Ohio canal, and removed to Ottawa, Illinois. He led an active, industrious life, and acquired a large fortune. Isaac, another son, was a man of much intelligence and worth, who represented Licking county several terms in the legislature-being elected in 1841 and 1842. Richard died in 1872, aged eighty-seven, having been seventy-two years a resident of this county. He was the canoe-boy of the Muskingum in 1800, and lived here a longer time than any other person, except Colonel Jonathan Hughes, the salt-sack boy of 1798.

In the spring of 1800, probably not a week after the advent of Green and Pitzer at Shawnee run, John Van Buskirk arrived and entered upon a tract of land of thirty-one hundred acres, on the South fork, in what is now Union township, He had previously purchased it, and at once began erecting buildings, clearing land and raising crops. Mr. Van Buskirk was born in New Jersey, and came with his father's family in 1780 to Brooke county, Virginia, where he grey to manhood, and where, also, he married and lived until his removal to the South fork, as above stated. He was a man o liberal means, being pecuniarily in more independent circumstances than most of the pioneers.

He came to his new home in the wilderness by way of "Zane's trail," as far as Brush creek, in Fairfield county; bringing with him a full supply of wagons and domestic animals, and made the sixth settler within the present limits of the county.

Mr. Van Buskirk was a stout, active, resolute man, a woodsman of the first order, frequently accompanying such chieftains as Captain Samuel Brady and John McCulloch in their expeditions against the Indians. He acted well his part as a faithful, ever ready, efficient pioneer on the frontier of Virginia, in giving protection to the settlers that were endeavoring to establish . themselves in permanent homes on both sides of the Ohio, during the twenty years of Indian warfare ; his residence being at, or near, the mouth of Buffalo creek, in Brooke county, Virginia. Those were years of fierce conflict, murderous warfare, barbarity, blood and carnage.

He remained on his farm at the South fork until 1804, when he removed to Newark and rebuilt the Petticord and Belt mills, which he run persistently, much more to the benefit of the public"than himself, until near his death.

He died on the last day of December, 1840, at the age of almost eight-five years. He was, in the early part of his eventful life, a man of great enterprise and force of character, and while living on the frontier, in common with his fellow frontiersmen, endured many hardships, and had many hair-breadth escapes from marauding Indians in his conflicts with them. As a spy, he was invaluable, and scouted extensively between the Ohio and Tuscarawas rivers. Courage and patriotism were his distinguishing characteristics. His family were the first to enter the territory of this county- from the southeast in a wagon. He left the "Zane trail," east of Lancaster, cutting a road from there to his land on the South fork, in the spring of 1800.

Isaac Stadden and Colonel John Stadden were also pioneer settlers in the Licking valley this year (1800). They came from Northumberland county, Pennsylvania. John was a widower, and had been in the service of some surveying party, this, probably, being the means of bringing to his notice the beautiful valley of the Licking. It was, probably, the same part to which he was attached as axeman, or chain-carrier, that Captain Elias Hughes served as hunter. Isaac Stadden had a wife and two children.

In the spring of 1800, these veteran pioneers came up the Licking valley, entered some bottom

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 217

land, partially cleared, a mile below Newark, now on the Jones farm, built a cabin, prepared some ground and put in a crop.

At the same time the Elliotts were raising corn below them, on the Davis farm, and Green and Pitzer doing the same thing on Shawnee run, on the O'Bannon farm, while near the mouth of Bowling Green run, Hughes and Ratliff were similarly employed. That was all the farming that was being done on the Licking in 1800, between the junction of the North and South forks and the line of Muskingum county.

The pioneers in the sparsely settled Northwest Territory were not then favored with mail facilities, and no communication passed between Mr. Stadden and his wife, during all those weary months that he was engaged in erecting a cabin, clearing land and raising corn, from early spring until late in the summer. A mail was occasionally brought to Zanesville, then the nearest post-office to the settlers on the Licking, but little reliance was placed on it. If letters came through at all from the old settlements, the pioneers were lucky, even if they were a long time on the way. They were subject to high postage-about eight times the present rate.

In September, 1800, Isaac Stadden removed his family from Pennsylvania into the cabin he had erected for them. His was the second wagon that came up the Licking valley. Meanwhile John Stadden, having made the acquaintance of Betsey Green, daughter of Benjamin, became enamored of the fair maid of Shawnee run, and after an honest courtship, of reasonable length for pioneer times, they were married; this being the .first marriage within the territory now embraced in Licking county.

This pioneer marriage was to take place on December 10, 1800, but was not consummated until Christmas of that year. There was not a preacher or squire nearer than Zanesville, and when the late judge Henry Smith, who was then acting magistrate of the Northwest Territory, living at the mouth of Licking, was invited to perform the marriage ceremony in this case, on the tenth of December, he informed Mr. Stadden that the territorial laws required that written notice of the intention of the parties be posted up at three conspicuous places for fifteen days before the wedding, and if that had been done, he would be there. Mr. Stadden's ignorance of territorial law suddenly brought him to anchor. He came home, put up the notices as quickly as possible, and submitted with some disappointment and despondency to the inexorable law of the land-hence the marriage occurred on Christmas instead of December 10th. Squire Smith came up to Mr. Green's, and made John and Betsey one. A child born to them in the latter half of 1801, was the second birth in what is now Licking county, and its decease, before the close of that year, was the second death.

Mrs. Isaac Stadden related to Hon. Isaac Smucker that late in October, 1800, her husband went into Cherry valley to hunt deer, that being better hunting ground than the Licking valley; and that he came home in the evening greatly excited, having discovered the "Old Fort," of which he had not before heard. The next morning they mounted their horses, and took a good look at this great curiosity, riding all around it on the top of the embankment. So far as known, they were the first white persons who saw this great work of antiquity.

During the early years of Mr. Stadden's residence here, Indians were more or less numerous, but were pacifically disposed. Mrs. Stadden once gave a humorous account of the attempt of one of them, who came along frequently, to buy her of her husband, by the offer of a considerable number of skins of wild animals. The offer was made in good faith, and somewhat pressed, but Mr.. Stadden was not much in a trafficking mood on that occasion.

In November, or early in December, 1800, Mr. Stadden went out to hunt deer above the "Old Fort," on Ramp creek. There, toward evening, in a dense forest, he met John Jones, Phineas Ford, Frederick Ford, Benoni Benjamin and a Mr. Denner. Jones and the Fords were married to the sisters of Benjamin. Jones was of Welsh extraction, born in New Jersey, but had lived in the same neighborhood with Mr. Stadden in Pennsylvania, where they had been schoolmates. Neither knew that the other was in the Northwest Territory. Neither had seen the other for many years, and had known nothing of their intervening histories, or

218 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

whereabouts. The romantic interest of such a meeting under such circumstances may be imagined. The Fords were Yankees, and Benjamin, a Pennsylvanian, and all became prominent pioneer settlers.

When met at their camp-fire by Stadden, they were exploring with a view to settlement, and did settle a few months afterward-Mr. Jones on the Munson farm, and the Fords and Benjamin on Ramp creek. Denner became a day- laborer for McCauly, who located near the mouth of Ramp j creek early in 1801. The company accepted Mr. Stadden's invitation to visit him at his cabin, and did so shortly after. Jones raised a crop of corn in the Licking bottoms, near Stadden's cabin in the summer of 1801.

John Stadden moved to Hog run in 1802, and in 1808 was elected the first sheriff of Licking county, in which office he served two years. He was also, for some years, collector of taxes, and held various positions of honor and trust in civil and military life. His son Richard was sheriff of the county from 1834 to 1838, and was, in the last named year, elected a member of the Ohio senate.

Colonel John Stadden was a man of integrity, uprightness, and a fair degree of intelligence. Late in life he removed with his wife to Illinois, where they died. They were honored and highly esteemed while living, and died leaving a reputation untarnished. He and his wife were anions the original members of the first Methodist society formed in the county, by Rev. Asa Shinn, in 1804.

Mr. Isaac Stadden was a carpenter by trade, and brought his tools when he came to the county, which he used to the great convenience of the neighborhood. Especially was he useful in making all the cofns needed by the early settlers, for a number of years. The coffin for Mrs. Ratliff, who died in 1802, was made by him, and so were inany others. They were at first made out of puncheons split out, then hewed and planed.

Isaac Stadden built a "hand-mill" during the winter after he came, for the purpose of grinding the corn grists of a few neighbors, as well as for his own accommodation. This was the first effort at mill building, with the possible exception of one, a "make shift," previously erected by Elias Hughes He raised a crop in 1801, and in the spring of 1802 moved upon land he had purchased further down the valley, upon which he lived until his death, which occurred in 1841. His wife continued to reside upon the same place until she died, July, 1870, at the ripe age of ninety years.

The township of Licking, including the whole of what is now Licking county, except the Refugee lands, and a portion of Knox, was organized in 1801: and in January, 1802, at an election held at the cabin of Elias Hughes, Isaac Stadden was elected justice of the peace the first in the territory now comprising Licking county. Probably Mr. Jane, Maxwell was elected constable at this same election. In a year or two John Warden was elected the successor of Mr. Stadden. He resigned in a short time and William Wright, of Newark, succeeded to the office.

A short time after Isaac Stadden moved upon his own land he formed a partnership with a Mr. John Goldthwaite for the purpose of starting a nursery of fruit trees. This project was a success; and from this nursery came many of the orchard, in this section of the State. Johnny Appleseed had a nursery on what was known as the "Scotland farm," about three miles northeast of Newark, but it did not ainount to much, as it was not enclosed, and the young trees were eaten off by cattle. When she. left her home in Pennsylvania, in 1800, Mrs. Stadden took up and placed in her "chist" three small apple trees, which she planted with her own hands here. One of these trees is yet living. and bearing. Three sons of Isaac Stadden are yet living in this county.

A few days after the Staddens located in Licking valley, Captain Samuel Elliott caine, locating one and a half mile: below the junction of the North and South forks, in September, 1800. In the spring of this year he and his two sons left his mountain home in Allegheny county, Maryland, and came to this valley, where they erected a cabin, planted corn and potatoes. then returned for the family. This cabin was built near the large spring, on the farm now owned by T. J. Davis. He was probably drawn to this point to be near Messrs. Green and Pitzer, who were from his neighborhood in Maryland. In autumn Captain Elliott returned with his wife and twelve children, took possession of their cabin, and harvested the crop.

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Elliott's family constituted the eighth then within the limits of the county, and the colony was not further increased during the year 1800. The marriage of Colonel Stadden and Betsey Green, however, created another family, so that nine families occupied the territory now embraced within the limits of Licking county at the closing of the first year of this century.

While Captain Elliott lived here he entertained, several days, Rev. McDonald, a missionary of the Presbyterian church, who preached the first sermon ever delivered in the territory of Licking county. It was late in 1801, or early in 1802.

The manufacture of a web of twenty yards of nettle-cloth by the wife and daughters of Captain Elliott, while they resided here, was one of the events of the day. In the absence of flax it was the best they could do. Such were the expedients necessity compelled the pioneers to resort to.

Captain Elliott was born near Ballymena, county Antrim, province of Ulster, Ireland, in 1751. On his arrival in America, to 1771, he settled in the colony of Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. Here he lived during the dawning era of the Revolution, and, when the contest commenced, took sides with the struggling colonists. Toward the close of the war he married in Northampton county, Pennsylvania, from where he emigrated to western Maryland, remaining there until his removal to the Licking valley.

In 1802 Captain Elliott erected the first hewed log house in Newark. It stood on East Main street, on Mrs. Fullerton's lot. He moved into it during the same year, and was one of Newark's earliest inhabitants. He soon purchased of General Schenck, one of the proprietors of Newark, some lands lying about a mile west of the village, upon which he settled in 1804, and where he remained until his death, which occurred May 24, 1831.

The death of Mrs. Elliott took place on the same farm, May 19, 1822. Her age was sixty-four years. She was a woman of rare excellence of character, and ruled her household wisely and well, her children becoming useful members of society. She died in communion with the Presbyterian church, and her pastor, Rev. S. S. Miles, commemorated her virtues in an appreciative obituary sketch, published in the Newark Advocate, May 23, 1822, then conducted by Mr. Benjamin Briggs.

Upon the organization of Licking county, in 1808, Captain Elliott became coroner, serving many years in that office, and was succeeded by his son, Alexander, who served many years.

In religion the Elliotts were Presbyterians; and in character, were upright, industrious and highly esteemed in all the relations of life. Three of the boys were engaged in the war of 1812; two of the grandsons, David Taylor and Alexander Elliott, served with honor in the Mexican war, and two, William and Jonathan Taylor, served long and faithfully in the Union army during the late war. William encountered a fatal rebel bullet at Arkansas Post; Jonathan survived the "march to the sea" with Sherman's army. Reuben Lunceford, and a number of other great grandsons, also fought the rebels, including two young Elliotts, who lost their lives in the service. Lieutenant Reuben Harris, a grandson, was long a gallant officer in the navy, and died in the service.

One of the daughters married Dr. Noah Harris, who came to Newark to practice his profession about the year 1808, and had a successful professional career of twenty-five years. He left a number of children who were educated by their mother, who lived to the age of seventy-three, dying at Newark August 16, 1863.

The late Hon. Horatio J. Harris, was a son of Doctor Harris, and a grandson of the pioneer, Captain Elliott. He attained to high position in public life, and may be regarded as a successful politician, who was not without a good share of ability. He was a native of Newark, but removed in early life to Indiana; where he served respectively in the offices of clerk of the senate, State senator, and auditor of State. During General Taylor's' presidential term he was appointed district attorney of Mississippi, having previously moved to that State. Ill health compelled him to resign his position; he came to Newark on a visit to his relatives, where he died, having scarcely reached middle life. He was a young man of much promise.

Sarah, the youngest daughter of Captain Elliott, died in Newark May 13, 1872, aged seventy-four years. She married in 1821, the late General Jonathan Taylor. Mr. Taylor represented this county

220 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

in the general assembly, and was elected to Congress in 1838. He led a very active life and was a commanding character in the community. At the time of his death, his oldest son, David, was a soldier in Mexico, and died shortly after his return. Another son lost his life in the great rebellion. Mrs. Taylor had a fine intellect and excellent judgment. She was a model pioneer woman, who practiced all the matronly virtues, led an industrious, useful life, and died regretted by her many friends.

This closes a sketch of the early pioneers of Licking county, up to the beginning of the year 1801. Of the family of Carpenter, who probably came to the Licking valley in 1800, or before, nothing whatever is known, as before stated; and it is even doubted whether he brought his-family with him. Without including this, the number of families within this territory at the beginning of 1801, was eight, all settlers in Licking valley, and all, except Van Buskirk, within the present limits of 'Madison township. The Fords, Jones and Benjamin, the party mentioned as having been found by Stadden in Raccoon valley late in the fall of 1800, were not settlers of that year; they were here to "prospect" and enter land, and were settlers early in the spring of 1801, when they came with their families. Biographical sketches of them, and other early pioneers will be found in the history of the township in which each settled.

CHAPTER XXV.

PIONEER WOMEN OF THE COUNTY.

SARAH TAYLOR-CATHARINE STADDEN-SARAH DAVIS-MRS. HARRIS-MARY KEMPER-MRS. HENRY SMITH-JEMIMA THRAP-MRS. BENNETT-NANCY SUTTON- MRS. PERKINS-SARAH JEFFRIES-NAOMI TEDRICK-ALMENA ROSE BANCROFT-MRS. MOTHER SPACY-SARRA EVERETT-SARAH DUKE: SARAH E. DORSEY-REBECCA WALCOTT-ELIZABETH SEYMOUR- MRS. MUNSON-MARY MYERS-MARGARET WILSON-HANNAH HORN-LOVINA HUGHES-MINA ADELIA HOWE-MRS. HOSKINSON-ELEANOR DONIVAN-MARY CULLY--HANNAH HARRIS-ELIZABETH SHAFFER.-ELIZABETH MOORE-SARAH HARRIS-RACHEI- YOUNG-MRS. JACOB SPERRY-SARAH ROBERTSON-MRS. COLEMAN ELIZABETH SMOOTZ-MRS. HENRY- SARAH TAYLOR-MARGARET WINEGARNER-MARY SWIGART-SARAH MILLER ELIZABETH ENGLISH-MATILDA COULTER-CATHARINE WILKIN--ABGAIL ROWE- SARAH CONINE-MARGARET WEAVER-SUSAN FRY- MRS. COLVILLE-MRS. ASHBROOK-MRS. BRAKERILL-MRS. PRIEST- MRS. STANBERY - MRS. MAHOLM- ELIZABETH PYLE-RACHEL ABBOTT-MRS. MCMULLEN-MRS. HENTHORN-SARAH KINDLE-MRS. SPELLMAN-HANNAH SARGENT ROWELL-HANNAH REEVES.

"Look where we may, the wide earth o'er,

Those lighted faces smile no more.

We tread the paths their feet have worn.

We sit beneath their orchard trees,

We hear, like them, the hum of bees

And rustle of the bladed corn;

We turn the pages that they read.

Their written words we linger o'er,

But in the sun they cast no shade,

No voice is heard, no sign is made,

No step is on the conscious floor."- Whittier.

THE history of any territory- would be incomplete without some notice of the pioneer women, who, by reason of sex and their limited sphere of action, could not become conspicuous in the great drama of pioneer life, but whose busy hands and feet, and conscientious regard of duty made them great factors in the establishment of the solid foundation upon which the society of to-day rests. The people of to-day hardly realize or appreciate what they owe to the large-hearted pioneer mothers, who braved with their husbands and children the perils of the wilderness; who reared their families in the fear of God, and implanted within them all the virtues necessary to the welfare of humanity, and passed away, leaving to them an inheritance that is invaluable and that should ever be cherished and kept in sacred remembrance.

It is a little thing to preserve their names in the pages of history; yet it is about all that is left to do. These sketches must necessarily be brief;

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 221

their lives were much alike; they met the stern necessities of the hour, and were content in the consciousness of duty nobly done.

Mrs. Sarah Taylor, widow of the late General Jonathan Taylor, was one of these. She was a daughter of Captain Samuel Elliott, the youngest of twelve children, and came from Maryland with her father, who settled in the Licking valley in 1800, when but half dozen families were to be found within the present limits of Licking county. Her husband was a member of the State legislature, and of the Congress of the United States. She was born May 2, 1798, and died May 13, 1872, having been a resident of this county seventy-two years. She had a fine intellect, sound judge ment, good sense, and had, by observation, intercourse with the world and much reading, acquired a large fund of information. She cherished the Christian faith, and had been for more than forty years prior to her death in communion with the Presbyterian church.

Mrs. Catharine Stadden was born in Northumberland county, Pennsylvania, in June, 1780. Her father, Mr. Kleiber was a German by birth. She and her husband, Isaac Stadden, were also pioneers of the Licking valley in 1800, arriving shortly before Mr. Samuel Elliott, and locating about a mile below where Newark was laid out two years after their arrival. Mrs. Stadden lived here seventy years, nearly all the years of her adult life, and they were eventful years-eventful in her own life, eventful in the history of the west, and the history of the world. She died July 3, 1870, in the ninety-first year of her age. She was one of the best of the pioneer mothers; a woman of rare frankness and candor; of integrity of character and fidelity to her convictions, and one whose aim it was to discharge her duty in all the varied relations of life. She cherished the Christian religion during the last sixty years of her life, adopting views known as Socinian, during the latter half of her life, and to which she adhered until her death. Her memory was always well stored with history and incidents of pioneer life, much of which has found its way into other parts of this work.

Mrs. Sarah Davis belonged to the first pioneer family of this county-that of Captain Elias Hughes. She was born in 1790, and came with her father to the Licking valley in 1798, being one of twelve children whom that noted pioneer brought to the Bowling Green, four miles below Newark. In 1808 she married Samuel Davis, who died in 1837. Mrs. Davis survived her husband thirty-two years, dying in 1869, in the eightieth year of her age.

Mrs. Doctor Harris was a pioneer of 1800, being also a daughter of Captain Samuel Elliott, above mentioned. Mrs. Harris was eight years older than her. sister, Mrs. Taylor, and retained a vivid impression of their settlement in the wilderness, being eight years of age at the time. She remained in this vicinity during her long life of seventy-three years, and was the mother of a large family of children. She possessed in an eminent degree those social and domestic virtues which so adorned the pioneer mothers. She died, August 16, 1863

One of the pioneer women of 1803, was Mrs. Mary Kemper, a daughter of Major Anthony Pitzer, who came with her father to Hog run, in Licking township, when she was five years of age. After her marriage she removed to Perry county, near Thornville, and in 1863, to Hamilton county, Indiana, where she died, April 22, 1876, aged seventy-eight years.

Among the pioneer women of 1804 in this county were Mrs. Henry Smith, Mrs. Jemima Thrap, Mrs. Bennett, Mrs. Nancy Sutton, Mrs. Perkins, Mrs. Sarah Jeffries, and Mrs. Naomi Tedrick.

Mrs. Henry Sinith was a prominent and important actor in the pioneer settlement of this county, and spent all of her early life on the frontier. She. was born in 1770, near Hagerstown, Maryland, and settled, at an early period of her life, in the Kanawha country, while the Indians were still making marauding excursions into western Virginia, and on one occasion assisted in defending a block-house against the attacks of the savages. Some time before the close of the last century, she married the late Judge Henry Smith and removed with him to the mouth of the Licking, where, in 1800, he was an acting territorial magistrate. It was he who came up to Shawnee run, twenty-five miles distant, on Christmas day, 1800, to perform the marriage ceremony for Mr. John Stadden and

222 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

Betsy Green, the first couple married in this county. In 1804, she, with her husband and family, settled permanently in Madison township, where she died, October 25, 1866, at the age of ninety-seven.

Mrs. Jemima Thrap was a neighbor of Mrs. Smith in the Licking valley, and came there in the same year. She was born on Ten Mile creek, Washington county, Pennsylvania, near the town of Amity, in January, 1782. When she was three years of age, her parents settled on land near Morgantown, where she grew from childhood to maturity amid all the well known scenes and circumstances of pioneer life. She became a member of the Methodist church in 1802, and in 1803, was united in marriage to Joseph Thrap. In 1805 or 1806 the second Methodist church in this county was organized at the cabin of Joseph Thrap in the Licking valley, and Mrs. Thrap's name was the second one on the list of this class, that of her husband being first; making her the first of her sex to unite with the second organized church in this county. The Thrap cabin was a preaching place many years, and "Mother Tharp," as she was generally called, was noted for her kindness of heart and benevolence; entertaining for years all the itinerant Methodist ministers that came into the valley. She maintained to the end of her life an unblemished moral and religious character, being noted for zeal in the cause of Christianity. She died suddenly July 25, 1867, in the eighty-fifth year of her age.

Mrs. Bennett was one of the oldest children of that noted pioneer hunter, Mr. John Channel, and was also a settler in the Licking valley. She died in Muskingum county at the age of, probably, nearly four score years.

Mrs. Nancy Sutton was born in Fayette county,, Pennsylvania, in 1777, entering into the marriage relation with Jehu Sutton about the beginning of the present century. They settled in Licking township, where they passed the remainder of their lives. Both were consistent members of the Hog Run Baptist church. Mrs. Sutton died June 7, 1874, in her ninety-eighth year.

Mrs. Perkins was a daughter of Mr. Robert Church, a pioneer of Licking valley, and was born in Fairfax county, Virginia, in the year 1791. She died in Newark, May 9, 1880, aged eighty-nine years.

Mrs. Sarah Jeffries was born in Virginia in 1795, and accompanied her father, Mr. Deweese, to the vicinity of Newark in 1804, where she lived the remainder of her life, dying, at the ripe age of eighty-two years.

Mrs. Naomi Tedrick, the last of those above mentioned as pioneers of 1804, was the daughter of one of the Suttons who settled in Licking township, and who came from Fayette county, Pennsylvania. She married Captain John Tedrick, a well known pioneer settler, and was an intelligent woman, a member. of the Baptist church, and much esteemed. She died May 13,1877, at the advanced age of ninety-one.

A few of the pioneer women of 1805, in this county, were Mr,. Almena Rose Bancroft, Mrs. Motherspaw, Mrs. Everett, Mrs. Duke, Mrs. Dorsev, Mrs. Walcott, Mrs. Seymour, Mrs. Munson and Mrs. Myers. The first was one of the original Granville colony, settling in that place in 1805. She died November 4, 1874, aged seventy-three years.

Mrs. Motherspaw was the wife of the late Daniel Motherspaw, and a daughter of John Feasel, who settled in Clay Lick valley in 1805. 805. She was born in 1787, in Shenandoah valley, Virginia, and died at her residence in. Franklin township, April to, 1875. Seventy years of her life were passed in this county. She was a devoted member of the Lutheran church, and a model"pioneer woman.

Mrs. Sabra Everett, daughter of Hiram and Sabra Rose, and wife of Revel Everett, of Hartford township, was born in Granville, Massachusetts, June 22, 1797, and came with her parents to Granville in this county, in the fall of 1805. August 21, 1817, she was married; lived a Christian life of seventy-two years, dying October 30, 1869.

Mrs. Sarah Duke, wife of David Duke, and daughter of the late Nathan Collard, died at her residence in Liberty township September 20, 1877, in the seventy-second year of her age. She was born in Fairfield county, (now Knox county), December 24, 1805, but lived from her infancy in this county. She was a member of the Methodist church from childhood; married Mr. Duke March 1, 1827, and raised a family, of seven sons and one daughter.

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 223

Mrs. Susan E. Dorsey, a daughter of Rufus Enyart, was a much esteemed pioneer woman She came with her father from Miami valley to what is now Hanover township, in 1805, when she was two years old, remaining there until her death, July 12, 1878. September 21, 1826, she married Henry H. Tiebout, who died in 1847, and, in 1849, she married Mr. Owen Dorsey, who died in 1876. She was a member of the Protestant Methodist church forty years.

Mrs. Rebecca Walcott belonged to the original Granville colony, few of whom are probably living at the present time. She was a daughter of Deacon Silas Winchell, and was born in Granville, Massachusetts, February 9, 1805, and was nine months old when the colony reached Granville township. This was an intelligent colony of pioneer, and although means of education were scarce in the wilderness, they looked well to the education of their children. Rebecca Winchell was not only carefully trained in all domestic work, but fairly educated, and was employed in teaching prior to her marriage. She married Horace Walcott April 13, 1829, by whom she had four sons and four daughters. Three of her sons were actively engaged in the late war. She died in May, 1879.

Mrs. Elizabeth Seymour, wife of Adam Seymour, and daughter of John Channel, was born .in Virginia, December 8, 1789, and came with her father to Madison township, where she was married April 14, 1808. She was the mother of nine children: was a member of the Methodist Episcopal church, and greatly beloved by all who knew her. She died at the age of seventy-eight years.

Mrs. Munson was the wife of General Augustine Munson, a prominent man in the Granville colony and in the county. They were married in 1807, and lived upon the farm, where she died, more than sixty years. She was seventy-six at the date of her death, and was an excellent and intelligent New England woman.

Mrs. Mary Myers was born in New Jersey, January 29, 1780. She accompanied her parents to Brooke county, Virginia, where she married John Myers in 1798. In 1805, with her husband and four children, she settled in Union township, this county, on land Mr. Myers purchased of John Van Buskirk. Their neighbors were Cornelius Elliott and Richard Wells, who had preceded them two years. She raised a large family and died July 12, 1870, in her ninetieth year. Hers was a life of much toil and hardship, though prolonged to an unusual length.

The year 1806 brought with it many additional pioneers to this county, among whom were Mrs. Margaret Wilson, Mrs. Horn, and Mrs. Lovina Hughes.

The first was a native of Frederick county, Virginia, and was born in 1792. She was a resident of Newark forty-five years, and died March 8, 1869. She was long a devoted member of the Presbyterian church.

Mrs. Hannah Horn was born in Loudoun county, Virginia, May 25, 1785, and married Henry Horn in 1804. They settled in Union township, where Mrs. Horn died at the venerable age of ninety-one years.

Mrs. Lovina Hughes was one of the earliest residents and oldest pioneers of the county. She was the wife of the venerable Colonel Jonathan Hughes (a son of the first settler, Elias Hughes, and who is yet living in Washington township), whom she married in June, 1817. She was born in Hardy county, Virginia, June 14, 1800, and came with her father, Joseph Davis, to Newark. In 1810 Mr. Davis settled in Washington township, on the farm where Mrs. Hughes died, in her seventy-seventh year, having resided more than. seventy years in the county. For the last forty years of her life she was a member of the Episcopal church of Utica. A husband, five children, twenty grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren survive her. It was one of the greatest pleasures of her declining years, as it was of all the pioneer mothers, to call her children and grandchildren about her and tell them the thrilling stories of pioneer life-a picture so beautifully portrayed by Whittier "

Shut in from all the world without,

We sat the clean-winged hearth about,

Content to let the north wind roar, ,

In baffled rage at pane and door,

While the red logs before us beat

The frost-line back with tropic heat;

And ever, when a louder blast

Shook beam and rafter as it passed,

The merrier up its roaring draught

The great throat of the chimney laughed,

The house-dog on his paws outspread,

224 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

Laid to the fire his drowsy head,

And, for the winter fireside meet,

Between the andirons' straddling feet,

The mug of cider simmered slow,

The apples sputtered in a row,

And close at hand, the basket stood

With nuts from brown October's wood.

Our mother, while she turned her wheel

Or run the new-knit stocking-heel,

Told how the Indian hordes came down

At midnight on Cocheco town;

And how her own great uncle bore

His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore."

Among the pioneer mothers of 1807, were Mrs. Howe and Mrs. Hoskinson.

Mrs. Mina Adelia Howe was born in Granville, Massachusetts, January 18, 1799, and came with her father's family to Granville, in this county, in 1807, where she lived seventy years, dying February 27, 1877, in her seventy-eighth year. She was the daughter of Arunah and Mindwell Clark, and married Daniel Howe at the age of twenty. Mrs. Hoskinson became a resident of Franklin township in 1807, and there passed her long life of eighty-seven years, dying June 24, 1880.

Mrs. Eleanor Donivan was a pioneer of 18o8. She was born in 1792, in Virginia, and died near Chatham, in this county, at the age of eighty-one.

Mrs. Mary Cully, was also a pioneer of 18o8, being a daughter of the veteran pioneer, Thomas Taylor. She died May 2, 1875, in her sixty-seventh year.

Another pioneer of 18o8, was firs. Hannah Harris, a daughter of Mr. Jacob Pugh, a revolutionary soldier. She was born in Hardy county, Virginia, May 10, 1776. She and her husband first settled on the Clear fork, but in 1810, removed to Burlington township, where Mr. Harris purchased and cleared up a farm. Her husband died in 1844; she surviving him thirty-two years, dying December 7, 1872, in her ninety-seventh year.

Mrs. Elizabeth Shaffer was among the pioneers of 1810; was a daughter of Phillip Peters, and was born in Hampshire county, Virginia, September 22, 1790. She married in 18io, and removed to a farm two miles northeast of Newark, where she died in her eighty-sixth year.

Three notable pioneer women of 1812 were Mrs Elizabeth Moore, Mrs. Sarah Harris and Mrs. Rachel Young. These all died within the same decade, and all here more than eighty years of age at the time of death; the first being eighty-three, the second eighty-six, and the third eighty-seven. Mrs. Moore, a native of Adams county, Pennsylvania, was born September 19, 1787; Mrs. Harris came from Ontario county, New York, and Airs. Young from Virginia.

Mrs. Jacob Sperry, Mrs. Sarah Robertson and Mrs. Benjamin F. Coleman were pioneers of 1813. Mrs. Sperry belonged to the extensive family of Wilsons, who were prominent pioneers of the count-. She was accidently killed at the age of eighty-two, near her home in the vicinity of Utica.

Mrs. Robertson was born near Chambersburgh. Franklin county, Pennsylvania, June 24,1791: was married to Major William Robertson, January 28, 1813. They removed to Washington township, and settled near the present site of Utica, where Mrs. Robertson died in her eight-seventh year.

Mrs. Coleman was a native of Rhode Island. and was born in Newport, September 9, 1790. She was a resident of Newark sixty-six years; a member of the Episcopal church, and was nearly eighty-nine at the time of her death.

Mrs: Elizabeth Smoots, Mrs. Sarah M. Henry and Mrs. Sarah Taylor were among; the pioneers of 1815.

Mrs. Smoots resided in Washington township sixty-three years, and died August 7, 1879, aged eighty-seven. She was from Shenandoah county, Virginia.

Mrs. Henry was from Frederick county, Mary land; carne with her parents to Circleville, Ohio, in 1811; married John W. Henry in 1812: removed to Granville township in 1815; to the vicinity of Newark in 1833, where she died in 1877, aged eighty-four.

Mrs. Sarah Taylor was born in Kentucky, and after the death of her husband, the late judge William Taylor, lived some rears with her brother, Stephen McDougal, in Newark, where she died November 8, 1868, in her seventieth year. She was for many years a consistent member of the Presbyterian church of Newark.

Mrs. Margaret Winegarner was born in Loudoun county, Virginia, February 4, 1775, and was re-

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 225

markable for her length of life, being ninety-eight at the time of her death, November 3, 1873. She belonged to along-lived family, one of her ancestors living more than one hundred years. She was a resident of Hopewell township, and one of the first members of Gratiot Baptist church, organized in 1821. She settled in this county in 1816, as did also Mrs. Mary Swigart, who was born in that place, well known in history, as Gettysburgh, Pennsylvania. Mrs. Swigart was long a resident of Newark, but died in Seneca county, Ohio, at the age of eighty-five.

Among the later pioneers of Licking may be mentioned the following: Mrs. Sarah Miller, 1817; Mrs. Elizabeth English, 1817 ; Mrs. Matilda Coul ter, 1817; Mrs. Catharine Wilkin, 181g; Mrs. Abigail Rowe, 1820; Mrs. Sarah Conine, 1821; Mrs. Margaret Weaver, 1823: Mrs. Susan Fry, 1827; :firs. Colville, 1829; Mrs. Eli Ashbrook and Mrs. Brakebill, in 1830.

Mrs. Miller was born in Hardy county, Virginia, January 17, 1795, and died in this count- January 16, 1877.

Mrs. Elizabeth Cook English was born in Greensburgh, Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, December 13. 1800, and died in Newark, in September, 1878.

Mrs. Coulter was the daughter of Caleb Pumphrey, and was born in Ohio county, Virginia, November 9, 1797. Upon their removal to this western wilderness, her mother rode the entire distance on horseback, and the children walked most of the way, and assisted in driving the cows, though the journey was made in March, and while the snow yet covered the ground. Her father was an earnest, energetic Methodist preacher, and much devoted to the interests of his religion, his family and his neighbors. She married John Coulter in 1817, and settled near Chatham; in 1821 she removed to the Clay lick valley, where she died December 12, 1872, aged seventy-five years.

Mrs. Wilkin was born in Shenandoah county, Virginia, March 15, 1802; was married to Jacob Wilkin in 1822, and died November 28, 1875.

Mrs. Rowe was a native of Maryland, and died at her residence in East Newark, December 6, 1875, aged almost seventy-nine years.

Mrs. Conine came from New Jersey; married Richard Conine in 1805, and died near Pataskala, October 7, 1875, at 'the great age of ninety-two years.

Mrs. Weaver, wife of John Weaver, was born in Hampshire county, Virginia, December 29, 1790; was married in 1811, and settled near Homer in 1823, where she died July 10, 1873.

Mrs. Fry was born in Loudoun county, Virginia, September 18, 1790; married Daniel Fry in 1821, and died April 1, 1879, aged eighty-two.

Mrs. Colville died April 3, 1870, in her seventy-ninth year.

Mrs. Ashbrook was the wife of Rev. Eli Ashbrook, and died in Monroe township, aged more than eighty years.

Mrs. Brakebill was a resident of Newark more than sixty years, and died at the great age of ninety.

Mrs. Priest was remarkable for her great age, being, when she died, over one hundred years. She was born in Culpepper county, Virginia, in 1766, where she continued to reside until near the close of the last century, when she came with her husband and six children to the Muskingum and settled near the mouth of Licking. Subsequently her husband died and she removed to this county, settling on Rocky fork, and afterwards moved to Madison township, where she passed the remainder of her days. As evidence of her vigor and strength, it may be stated that she walked every mile of the distance from Culpepper to the Muskingum, the distance being about four hundred miles, and carried an infant child. Her mind was a storehouse of Revolutionary and-pioneer incidents. During the last sixty years of her life she was a member of the Baptist church.

Mrs. Stanbery, wife of Hon. William Stanbery, ' was a lady of much intelligence and force of character, and a resident of this county from 1809 to her death, which took place at "Oakland," Madison township, March 17, 1873, when .she was eighty-seven.

Mrs. Maholm, long a resident of this county, died in her eightieth year.

Mrs. Elizabeth Pyle was from Rockingham county, Virginia, and died May 26, 1874, at Vanattaburgh, in the ninetieth year of her age.

Mrs. Rachel Abbott was born in Frederick

226 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

county, Virginia, August 10, 1782, was married in 1806, came to Ohio in 1812, and died in this county, February 16, 1874, at the advanced age of more than ninety-one years.

Mrs. Hugh McMullen was a daughter of the late David Gillespie, and died in Chicago, Illinois, February 17, 1876, aged sixty-three years.

Mrs. Henthorn, of McKean township, died in June, 1875, at the great age of ninety-six years.

Mrs. Sarah Kindle was more remarkable for age than any other pioneer woman of the county, being one hundred and five years old at the date of her death, which occurred in Union county, December 28, 1870. She was from Virginia, and lived many years on the Flint ridge.

Mrs: Spellman was an early settler of Granville township, and died June 6, 1880, at the age of eighty-one.

Mrs. Hannah Sargent Rowell was born in Pennsylvania in 1783, and died in this county, August 12, 1880, at the great age or ninety--seven years.

It is proper before closing this chapter to mention Mrs. Hannah Reeves, a noted pioneer preacher, who though not a resident of this county, frequently visited it in the prosecution of her work. Mrs. Reeves was a daughter of James and Mary Pearce, and was born in Devonshire, England, January 30, 1800. She united with the Methodist church December 18, 1818, under the preaching of Rev. James Thorn, and immediately began preaching, following itinerant ministry in England until 1831, when she came to America. July 6, 1831, she married Rev. William Reeves at Zanesville, Ohio, but continued her preaching, becoming well known and much respected through this portion of the State. She was a woman of much ability, force and eloquence; very zealous in her labors, making many converts, and attracting large audiences wherever she went. She died at New Brighton, Pennsylvania, November 13, 1869.

"Rest from all bitter thoughts and things!

How many a poor one's blessing went

With thee beneath the low green tent

Whose curtain never outward swings!"

CHAPTER -XXVI.

PIONEER TIMES.

INTRODUCTORY-WHERE THE PIONEERS OF LICKING CAME FROM-THE ABUNDANCE OF FOOD IN THE FOREST-THE TRUCK PATCH-THE GRATER AND HOMINY BLOCK-THE MILLS-THE DIFFICULTIES OF MILLING-THE INDIAN PONE AND JOHNNY CAKE-THE CULTIVATION OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS-BEARS VERSUS PIGS-TAMING WILD TURKEYS-WHISKEY-SHIPPING TO NEW ORLEANS- CLOTHING-THE SPINNING WHEELS AND LOOM-FLAX AND WOOL-NANCY CLARK'S COAT-WHIPPING THE CAT-WOLF VERSUS SHEEP-KICKING FROLICS-WOMAN'S DRESS-HOW THE GIRLS PUT ON STYLE IN FLAX DRESSES-WHITE KID SLIPPERS-A COMPARISON-THE LOG CABIN-NAILS-THE FURNITURE OF THE CABIN-PIGS THE FAVORITE CURRENCY-GOING TO SCHOOL- THE BOOKS, AND HOW THE CHILDREN WERE TAUGHT-THE SPELLING SCHOOLS-THE HOOSIER'S NEST

"So the sun climbs up, and on, and over,

And the days go out and the tide conies in,

And the pale moon rubs on the purple cover

Till worn as thin and as bright as tin;

But the ways are dark and the days are dreary,

And the dreams of youth are but dust in age,

And the heatt gets harden'd and the hands grow weary

Holding them up for their heritage."

Joaquin Miller.

PIONEER days for Licking county and the State of Ohio are gone forever; the wolf, bear, deer, Indian and all associations and reminiscences of those "good old days" have long since faded from sight if not from memory, and the pioneers, most of them, are gone too-

"How few, all weak and withered of their force,

Wait on the verge of dark eternity."

It remains to write their history, and the history of the times in which they lived, as of another race of beings; and, if possible, to impress the best of it upon the character of the present and future generations; for it is a history worthy of imitation

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 227

and preservation. A study of the characteristics of the pioneer fathers and mothers is calculated to ennoble the mind and strengthen the hand for the battle of life.

It would require a volume to tell of their habits and customs; of their trapping and hunting; of their solitary lives in the great woods, surrounded by wild animals and wilder men; of their dress, manners, and peculiar nays; of their cabins and furniture; of the long winter evenings by the log heap fire upon which

We piled, with care, our nightly stack Of wood against the chimney-back-The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, And on its top the stout back-stick; The knotty fore-stick laid apart, And filled between with curious art The ragged brush; then hovering near, We watched the first red blaze appear, Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam On whitewashed Nvall and sagging beam, Until the old rude-furnished room Burst flower-like into rosy bloom."

It was a free, happy, independent life; full of hardships, indeed, but sweetened with innocence and peace; with alternations of labor, pleasure and rest.

The pioneers of Licking were largely from New England, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, who sought to better their condition by making permanent homes in the wilderness west of the Ohio river. They came largely on foot over the Alleghany mountains, many of them having a single horse and wagon; or a two-horse wagon, in which their worldly possessions were carried, and in which the very old or very young, only, were allowed to ride. When once settled and his cabin erected, it was not only a home and shelter for himself and family, but for every stranger who passed that way, "without money and without price." The latch string was always out, for these pioneers were great hearted people, and no man, be he white, black or red, was turned away empty. Their cabins, often not more than fifteen or twenty feet square, made of rough beech logs, with the bark still adhering to them, were frequently occupied by a dozen or even a score of people for a night, and no complaints made for want of room; genuine hospitality always finds room enough and never apologizes for lack of more; and when breakfast time came there was no apology for the scarcity of knives, forks and spoons, for "fingers were made before any of these." The fare was homely, but generally abundant. What to eat drink and wear were questions not, perhaps, difficult of solution in those days. The first was the easiest to solve. The deer, the bear, the wild turkey, the rabbit, the squirrel, all started up and said, or seemed to say "eat me." These had been prepared for the red men of the forest, and were equally abundant for the pioneer. The forest was full of game, the streams full of fish, and wild fruits were abundant. To get bread required both patience and labor ; the staff of life was one of the articles that must be earned "by the sweat of the brow;" it could not be gathered from the bushes, fished from the streams, or brought down with the rifle. Every backwoodsman once a year added to his clearing, at least, a "truck patch." This was the hope and stay of the family; the receptacle of corn, beans, melons, potatoes, squashes, pumpkins, turnips, etc., each variety more perfectly developed and delicious because it grew in virgin soil. The corn and beans planted in May brought roasting ears and succotash in August. Potatoes came with the corn, and the cellar, built in the side of a convenient cliff or hill, and filled with the contents of the truck patch, secured the family against want. When the corn grew too hard for roasting ears, and was yet too soft to grind in the mill, it was reduced to meal by a grater, and whether stirred into mush or baked into Johnny-cake, it made, for people with keen appetites and good stomachs, excellent food. Place before one of those brawny backwoodsmen a square foot of Johnny-cake and a venison steak broiled on hickory coals, and no art of civilization could produce a more satisfactory meal.

Next to the grater comes the hominy block, an article in common use among the pioneers. It consisted simply of a block of wood--a section of a tree, perhaps-with a hole burned, or dug, into it a foot deep, in which corn was pulverized with a pestle. Sometimes this block was inside the cabin, where it served as a seat for the bashful young buck skinned backwoodsman while "sparking" a girl; sometimes a convenient stump in front of the cabin door was prepared for, and made of the best of hominy blocks. When pic-

228 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

raised, the natural relation between pork and beaten corn suggested the grand old idea of "hog and hominy."

Hominy blocks did not last long, for mills came quite early and superseded them, yet these mills were often so far apart that in stormy weather, or for want of transportation, the pioneer was compelled to resort to his hominy block, or go without bread. In winter, the mills were frozen up nearly all the time, and when a thaw came and the ice broke, if the mill was not swept away entirely b3 the floods, it was so thronged with pioneers, each with his sack of corn, that some of them were often compelled to camp out near the mill and wait several days for their turn. When the grist was ground, if they were so fortunate as to possess an ox, a horse, or mule, for the purpose of transportation, they were happy. It was not unusual to go from ten to twenty miles to mill, through the pathless, unbroken forest, and to be benighted on the journey, and chased, or treed by wolves. A majority of the pioneers, however, settled in the vicinity of a stream, upon which mills were rapidly erected. These mills were very primitive affairs-mere "corn crackers''-but they were an improvement on the hominy block. They merely ground the corn, the pioneer must do his own bolting wire sieve was then one of the most important articles of household furniture. It always hung in its place, on a wooden peg, just under the ladder that reached to the loft. The meal was sifted and the finest used for bread. How delicious was that "Indian pone," baked in a large deep skillet, which was placed upon coals raked from the fire-place to the hearth. Fresh coals were continually placed under it and upon the iron lid until the loaf, five or six inches thick, was done through. This was a different thing from johnny-cake ; it was better, and could not always be had, for to make it good, a little wheat flour was needed, and wheat flour was a precious thing in those very early days.

A road cut through the forest to the mill, and a wagon for hauling the grist, were great advantages, the latter especially was often a seven day's wonder to the children of a neighborhood, and the happy owner of one often did, for years, the milling for whole neighborhood. About once a month this good neighbor, who was in exceptionally good circumstances, because able to own a wagon, would go about through the neighborhood, gather up the grists and take them to mill, often spending several days in the operation, and never think of charging for his time and trouble.

The cultivation of domestic animals, both beasts and fowls, for the purposes of food, began early. Cows for milk, butter, beef, and leather, and swine for pork, were bred, ear marked and turned into the woods to browse. "Root hog or die," was the law for man and beast, but the woods were prolific and the hogs grew fat. The young pigs were exceptionally a sweet morsel for the bear. Bruin always singled out these young animals in preference to any other meat; but the pigs were often successfully defended by the older hogs, who, upon the least signs of distress from one of their number, would go boldly to the rescue, and fiercely attack the foe, however formidable; often the pig was released and bruin, or the panther, compelled to ascend a tree for safety.

The boys often found wild turkeys nests in the woods, and would bring home the eggs, and place them, to be hatched, under a trusty old hen, in an outside chimney corner, where they could assist the hen in defending the eggs and brood from the opossum or hawk. A flock of turkeys sometimes originated in this way, but more often, as they grew to maturity, they would fly away into the woods and never reappear. This grandest of birds is identical in civilized and savage life, and is the peculiar production of America. The wild ones were always a dark brown, like the leaves of their native woods, but when tamed, or "civilized," the diversity of color becomes endless.

When corn-bread and milk were eaten for breakfast, hog and hominy for dinner and mush and milk for supper, there was little room for tea and coffee; and at a time when one bushel of wheat for a pound of coffee and four bushels for a pound of tea, were considered a fair exchange, but little of these very expensive articles was used.

Next to water, the drink of the pioneers was whiskey-com or rye whiskey. Everybody drank it. It was supposed to be indispensable to health, and a protection against the morning fogs. It was supposed to be indispensable to strength and endurance during the labors of the day, and to

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 229

sleep at night. It was supposed to be absolutely indispensable to warmth and animation in cold, chilly winter weather. It was the sacrament of . friendship and hospitality; it was in universal use yet there was probably less drunkenness in those days than at present. The whiskey was absolutely pure: it was not drugged, doctored and poisoned as it is to-dill, and, although enough of it would bring drunkenness, it did not bring delirium-tremens, or leave the system prostrated, and the victim with a head-ache upon "sobering up." It was the first thing in demand as an article of commerce Stills for its manufacture sprang up everywhere, all along the stream. Pioneers soon found a market at these stills for their corn, hence corn became the great crop, and whisker the great article of commerce. It was the only thing that would bring money, and money they must have to pay taxes. Whiskey could be purchased for twelve or fifteen cents per gallon and paid for in corn, and the barrel of whiskey in the cellar, was as common as the barrel of cider was later. The whiskey that was not consumed at home was shipped on flat-boats or pirogues* on the Muskingum, Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans and sold for Spanish gold. The rebellion against the government of the United States, commonly called the whiskey insurrection, had its growth out of the hardship of the conch-Irish of western Pennsylvania, who in the mother country had learned to love whiskey and hate gaugers : and this population gave tone and character to the first settlers of eastern Ohio. There was this apology for the production of whiskey, that it was the only means of disposing of surplus crops, or bringing money into the country.

The hardy pioneers, after disposing of their cargo of whiskey in New Orleans, would set out for home a distance of say fifteen hundred miles. Think of it, ye who ride in palace coaches at the rate of forty miles an hour while reclining in cushioned seats, smoking your cigar, and reading in your morning paper the happenings of yesterday in Europe and America. While apologizing some what for those whiskey days, it may be well to say the whiskey was not probably of any special benefit, was not to be compared to the pure water of

*A canoe dug out of a log, or two canoes lashed together.

their springs, and that too many of 'the pioneers drank too much of it, and that too often it made their eyes and noses red, their children ragged and their wives wretched, as it does to-day.

In clothing the pioneers conformed to the circumstances in which they were placed. The almost universal costume for the men was the linsey-woolsey hunting shirt, or wamus, blue, butternut, or red, according to the fancy of the wearer; buckskin pants and moccasins, and sometimes, in winter, a waist-coat of the skin of a panther, wild cat or spotted fawn. In summer, when it could be had, linen was made up into wearing apparel. The flax was grown in the summer, scutched in the fall, and during the long winter evenings was heard the, buzz of the little flax wheel, which had a place in every- cabin. Even those who are not pioneers can remember this flax wheel, for it was in use as late as 1850, or later. It stood in a corner, generally read- for use by having a large bundle of flax, wrapped around its forked stick. a thread reaching to the spindle, and a little gourd filled with water hanging conveniently at the bottom of the flax-stick, and whenever the good pioneer mother lead a little ,pare time from cooking for a dozen work-hand:, caring for a dozen children, milking a dozen cows, and taking care of the milk and butter, besides doing all the housework and keeping everything clean and neat as a pin, she would sit down to this wheel and with foot on the treadle and nimble fingers, pile. thread upon thread on the spindle, to be reeled off on a wooden reel that counted every yard with a snap, and then it was ready for the Great loom that occupied the loft. This loom was a wonder-it would be a wonder to-day, with its great beams, larger than any beams they put in the houses of to-day-its treadles, its shuttles, etc. Day after day could be heard the pounding of that loom, the treadles went up and down, the shuttles flew swiftly from one hand to the other through the labyrinth of warp, and yard after yard of cloth rolled upon the great roller.

And then this cloth was to be cut into little and big clothes and made up with the needle; and, remember, this and a great deal more than any one can think of was to be gone Through with every year. Wool went through about the same operation; only it was spun on the large wheel, colored with but-

230 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

ternut bark and other things, but woven on the loom and made up for winter clothing.

Judge William Johnson, in an address at a pioneer meeting, says regarding this matter of clothing:

"But innovations were soon made. My father had brought out a huge trunk full of coarse broadcloth, and this tempted the young men to have coats to be married in. They would bargain with my father for the cloth and trimmings, and with my mother for making the coat, and pay both bills by grubbing, making rails or clearing land. It may seem odd at this day that a woman of small stature, besides doing her own housework, should make two hundred rails a day with her needle and shears, and find time for reading and mental culture every day. I never think of my mothers tailoring skill, without being reminded of one instance. a young man had purchased the cloth for his wedding coat, and, as a measure of economy, employed one Nancy Clark to make it up. Nancy was an expert on hunting-shirts, buckskin breeches and 'sich', but had never cut a coat, so my mother cutout the coat. Nancy made it up, but on the eve of the wedding, when tried on, instead of allowing his arms to hang gracefully by his side as became a bridegroom, it turned him into a spread eagle with arms extended upward. The wedding day was at hand, and in his perplexity he brought the coat to my mother to diagnose its disorder, and if possible, administer the proper remedies. She found there was nothing more serious than that Nancy had sewed the right sleeve in the left side, and the left sleeve in the right, and put them upside down. As luxury and extravagance in dress increased, an old tailor with shears, goose and sleeve-board began to 'whip the cat' around the neighborhood, and my mother's occupation, except in her own family, was gone. The custom of whipping the cat, both for tailors and shoemakers, was in vogue many years after, and, like the schoolmaster boarding around, had this advantage, that if they received poor pay for their work, they were led and lodged while they were about it.

"But the material for winter clothing was hard to get. As the woolen goods wore out, my father bought sic sheep to commence with, and within the first week the wolves chased the old dog under the cabin floor, and killed two of them within a few . yards of the cabin door. On account of the scarcity of wool, many a night I sat up until midnight, with a pair of hand-cards mixing wool with rabbit' s fur, and carding them together, while my mother spun and knit them into mittens and stockings for her children to wear to school."

"Kicking frolics" were in vogue in those early times. This was after wool was more plenty, and it was carded, spun, and wove into cloth. Half a dozen young men and an equal number of young women (for the "fun of the thing" it was always necessary to preserve a balance of this kind) were invited to the kicking frolic. The cabin floor was cleared for action and half a dozen chairs, or stools, placed in a circle in the center and connected by a cord to prevent recoil. On these the six young men seated themselves with boots and stockings off, and pants rolled up above the knee. Just think of making love in that shape. The cloth was placed in the centre, wet with soap-suds and then the kicking commenced by measured steps driving the bundle of cloth round and round, the elderly lady with gourd in hand pouring do more soapsuds, and every now and then, with spectacles on nose and yard-stick in hand, measuring the goods until they were shrunk to the desired width, and then calling the lads to a dead halt. Then while the lads put on hose and boots the lasses, with sleeves rolled up above the elbow, rung out the cloth and put it out on the garden fence to dry. When this was done the cabin floor was again cleared and the supper spread, after which, with their numbers increased somewhat, perhaps, they danced the happy hours of the night away until midnight, to the music of a violin and the commands of some amateur cotillon caller, and were ready to attend another such frolic the following night.

The costume of the women deserves a passing notice. The pioneers proper, of course, brought with them something to wear like that in use where they came from; but this could not last always, and new apparel, such as the new country afforded, had to be provided. Besides, the little girls sprang up into womanhood with the rapidity of the native butter-weed, and they must be made both decent and attractive, and what is more, they were willing to aid in making themselves so. The flax patch, therefore, became a thing of as prime necessity as the truck patch. On the side next to the «-oods the flax grew tall, slender and delicate, and was carefully pulled by the girls and kept by itself to make finery of. The stronger growth did well enough for clothing for the men, and warp for the linsey-woolsey, and even every-day dresses for the women, but for Sundays, when everybody went to "meeting," the girls, especially, wanted something nice, just as they do to-day. This fine flax, therefore, was carefully pulled, carefully rotted, carefully broken, carefully scutched, carefully hackled, carefully spun, carefully dyed in divers colors, and carefully woven in cross-barred figures, tastefully diversified, straining a point to get Turkey-red enough to put a single thread between the duller colors to mark their outline like the circle around a dove's eye. Of such goods the

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 231

rustic beauty made her Sunday gown, and then with her vandyke of snow-white homespun linen, her snow-white home-knit stocking, and possibly white kid slippers, she was a sight for sore eyes and often for sore hearts. No paint or arsenic was needed, for active exercise in the open air under a sunbonnet, or a broad-brimmed hat, made by her mother out of rye straw, gave her cheek an honest, healthful glow, and to her eyes the brightness and beauty of a fawn's. Possibly those white kid slippers have caused a nod of skepticism. This is the way it was done. Her brother, or lover, shot six fine squirrels; she tanned the skins herself in a sugar trough, and had them made up at considerable expense and trouble to wear on Sundays and state occasions. Possibly it may be wondered how the slippers would look after walking five or ten miles through the mud to church, as was frequently done. There were ways of doing these things that were only whispered among the girls, but have leaked out; and the same process was indulged in more or less by young men, who were fortunate enough to own a pair of fine boots; and that was, to wear the every-day shoes or boots, or go barefoot to within a few- rods of the "meeting house," and then step into the woods and take the wraps from the precious shoes and put them on.

It is just barely possible there is a lady in today's society, who, with five pounds of colored hemp on the back of her head and thirty-five yards of silk velvet in her train, would be uncharitable enough to laugh at these pioneer mothers and daughters; if so, those whose opinions are worth anything fully understand that there . has more work and worth, more value to the world and the community in which she lived, in the little finger of one of these pioneers than in the whole body, train, hair and all, of the aforesaid "lady." By the testimony of all history, luxury tends to degeneracy. If the clothes of the pioneers were poor, they made up in brain and heart. The tables are turned-the vacuum of brain and heart is filled with fine clothes. Let it be remembered that the solidity and value of this beautiful structure called society, lies in the foundation-in the pioneer fathers and mothers, and it is only because of this solid foundation that the structure is able to stand at all.

The houses, or huts, in which these pioneers lived have been often described; their form and proportions, and general appearance have been repeatedly impressed upon the mind of the student of history. They were built of round logs with the bark on, outside chimneys of mud and sticks, puncheon floors, clapboard roof, with and without a loft or second floor, and all put together without a nail or particle of iron from top to bottom. These buildings stood many a year after the original inhabitant moved into better quarters. They served for stables, sheep pens, hay houses, pig pens, smith shops, hen houses, loom shops, school houses, etc. Some of them are yet standing in this county, and occupied, to some extent, in some portions of the county as dwellings.

A second grade of log cabin, built later, was quite an improvement on the first, being made of hewn logs, with sawed lumber for door and window frames and floors. Glass also took the place of paper windows of the old cabin; nails were also sparingly used in these better cabins. When nails were first used, for a few years a pound of them was exchanged for a bushel of wheat. They were a precious article, and were made by hand on a blacksmith's anvil, out of odds and ends of old wornout sickles, scythes, broken clevis pins, links of chains, broken horse-shoes, etc., all welded together to eke out the nail rods from which they were forged. The first cabins were erected ready for occupation in a single day. In an emergency, the pioneers collected together, often going eight or ten miles to a cabin-raising, and in the great woods, where not a tree had been felled or a stone turned, began with dawn the erection of a cabin. Three of four wise builders would set the corner-stones, lay on the square and level the first round of logs; two men with axes would cut the trees and logs; one with his team of oxen, a "lizzard" and a log-chain would "snake" them in; two more, with axes, cross-cut saw and frow would make; the clapboards; two more, with axes, cross-cut saw and broad-axe would hew out the puncheons and flatten the upper side of the sleepers and joists. Four skillful axemen would carry up the corners, and the remainder with skids and forks or hand-spikes would roll up the logs. As soon as the joists were laid on, the cross-cut saw was brought from the woods, and two men went to work cutting out the door and chim-

232 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

ney place: and while the corner men were building up the attic and putting on the roof, the carpenters and masons of the day were putting down the puncheons, laying the hearth and building the chimney high enough to keep out the beasts, wild or tame. In one corner, at a distance of six feet from one wall, and four from the other the bed post is placed only one being needed. A hole is bored in the puncheon floor for the purpose of setting this post (which is usually a stick with a crotch or fork in the upper end) in; or if any auger is not at hand, a hole is cut in the puncheon floor and the fork sharpened and driven into the around beneath: rails are laid from this fork to the wail, and usually nice, straight hickory poles form the bottom, upon which strait- or leaves are placed and the blanket put on. This makes a comfortable spring bed and is easily- changed and kept clean. Often the chinking and daubing of the walls, putting in windows and banging the door were left until fall or some leisure time after the corn crop and the contents of the truck patch were secured. Often the pioneer did not erect a cabin at all until a crop ryas secured-living, meanwhile, in their covered wagons, and cooking beside a log in the open air, or erecting a "pole cabin," or "brush cabin," mere temporary affairs, to shelter the family until time could be had for erecting a permanent one. The saving of the crop was of more importance during the summer season than shelter; but when the first frost carne, a sure indication of approaching winter, active preparations were made for the permanent cabin, arid the work was pushed forward until a snug cabin stood in the midst of the forest, with a clearing around it, made principally by cutting down the trees for the building. Every crack was chinked and daubed with ordinary- clay mixed with water, and when completed, and a fire of hickory logs in the -neat fire-place, no amount of cold could seriously- disturb the inmates. The heavy door ryas hung on wooden hinges, and all that was necessary to lock it at night was to pull the latch-string inside, and the strong wooden latch held it fast against wild animals or storms. Thieves there were none, and even had there been, there was nothing in the but of a settler to tempt their cupidity. Many of these cabins have no loft or second floor, but when this was added it ryas used as a sleeping room for the younger members of the family, and as a general store-room for the household goods, and often for the corn crop and the contents of the truck patch.

Regarding the furniture of these cabins, Judge Johnson says:

"The furniture of the backwoods matched the architecture well. There were a few quaint specimens of cabinet work dragged into the wilderness, but these were sporadic and not common. f can best describe it be what I saw in my father's house. First of alt a table had to be improvised, and there was no

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 233

cabinet-maker to make it, and no lumber to make it of. Our floor was laid with broad chestnut puncheons, well and smoothely hewn, for the obsolete art of hewing timber was then in its prime. Father took one of these puncheons, two feet and a half broad, putting two narrow ones in its place, bored four large augur holes and put in four legs, or round poles with the bark on. On this hospitable board many. a wholesome meal was spread, and many an honest man, and many a wayworn stranger ate his fill and was grateful.

"On great occasions, when an extension table was needed, the door was lifted off its hinges and added to the puncheon What we sat upon at first I cannot conjecture ; but I remember well when my father loaded his horses down with wheat and corn, and crossed the country a distance of eight or ten miles,. and brought home, in exchange, a set of oak splint-bottomed chairs, some of which are intact to this day. Huge band-boxes made of blue-ash bark, supplied the place of bureaus and wardrobes; and a large tea-chest, cut in two, and hung by strings in the comers, with the hollow- sides outward, constituted the bookcases. A respectable old bed-stead, still in the family, was lugged across from Red Stone. An old turner and wheelwright added a trundle-bed, and the rest were hewn and whittled out according to the fashion of the times, to serve their day and be supplanted by others as the civilization of the country advanced.

"But the grand flourish of furniture was the dresser. Here were spread out, in grand display, pewter dishes, pewter plates, pewter basins and pewter spoons, scoured as bright as silver, as who should say-'that woman's daughter will make you a good wife, my boy.'

"Money was scarce, but our fathers learned to live without it. All was barter. The preacher's stipend, the lawyer's fee, the schoolmaster's salary, the workman's wages, the shoemaker's account, the tailor's bill were all paid in barter.

"I have seen my father; when he had a surplus of grain and a deficit of pigs, fill two sacks of corn, and on the backs of two horses, carry it to a distant part of the neighborhood and exchange it for four shoats, and in each sack thrust one shoat tail foremost and another head foremost, tie up the mouths of the sacks, mount them on horseback, rip a hole in the seam of the sack for each snout to stick out, and bring them home to be fattened for next years pork. Here was a currency-a denomination of greenbacks which neither required the pen of the Chancellor of the Exchecquer to make it legal tender, nor the judgment of the Chief justice to declare it constitutional. The law of necessity governs in every case, and wise men may fret every hair off their heads without changing the .results."

At a little later time, say from 1820 to 1840, the pioneers were living a little easier. Their farms were partially cleared, many of them were living in hewed log houses and many in frame and even brick houses. Most of them had barns and innumerable out-houses. They generally had cattle, horses, sheep, hogs and poultry, and were living in comparative comfort. Their neighbors were near and always dear. Their schools and churches had improved somewhat, yet even at this late day there were hundreds of log school-houses and churches. About three months in a year was all the schooling a farmer's boy could get. He was sadly needed at home from the age of five years, to do all sorts of chores and work on the farm. He was wanted to drive the cows to water and to pasture; to feed the pigs and chickens and gather the eggs. His duties in the summer were multifarious; the men were at work in the field harvesting, and generally worked from early morning until late at night, and the boys were depended on to "do the chores;" hence it was. impossible to spare them to attend school in summer. There was no school in spring and fall. In winter they were given three months' schooling-a very poor article of schooling, too, generally. Their books were generally anything they happened to have about the house, and even as late as 1850, there was no system in the purchase of school books. Mr. Smucker says his first reading books at school were Patrick Gass' journal of the Lewis and Clark expedition to the mouth of the Columbia river in 1804-5-6; and Weem's Life of Washington. Parents of children bought whatever book pleased their fancy, or whatever the children desired them to purchase. A geography was a geography, and a grammar a grammar, regardless of who was the author. This great confusion in school books made trouble for the teacher, but that was of small moment. He was hired and paid to teach whatever branches, out of whatever books the parents thought was best. The branches generally taught in the early schools, however, were reading, writing, spelling and arithmetic, and, later, geography and grammar. Boys attending school but three months in a year made but little progress. They began at the beginning of their books every winter, and went as far as they could in three months; then forgot it all during the nine months out of school, commencing again the next winter just where they commenced the previous one. In this way they went over and over the same lessons every year under different teachers (for many of the teachers only taught one term in a place), often getting no further in arithmetic than "vulgar fractions" or the "rule of three," and in their old Webster's spelling books the first class probably got as far as "antiscorbutic" and may be through; while the second class would get as far as "cessation," and the third class

234 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

probably not through "baker," certainly not beyond "amity." There were always three or four classes in spelling, and this exercise was the last before school was dismissed in the evening. Their old books were conned over year after year until they were worn out and the children grew up to manhood and womanhood, and never knew, and perhaps do not know to this day, what was in the back part of them. That was the kind of a start many a great man had. These schools cannot be despised when it is remembered that the greatest and best of the nation, including such men as Abraham Lincoln, Edwin M. Stanton and Stephen A. Douglas, were among the boys who attended them.

There was always much competition in the spelling classes as to who should get the "head mark." In the later schools it was the custom that the best speller might stand at the head until he missed, when the one who spelled the word correctly should take his place, and he then stood next to the head; but they did things differently in the earlier schools, the head of the class once gained and held until , the last spelling at night, the head mark was received and the lucky scholar then took his place at the foot of the class, to again work his way gradually to the head. These classes sometimes contained thirty or forty scholars, and it was something of an undertaking to get from the foot to the head. Spelling-schools were the beauty and glory of school-days. The scholars were always coaxing the teacher to appoint a night for a spelling-school, and were usually gratified one or two nights in a month or oftener. A night was chosen when the moon shone, and the sleighing was good, and then the entire neighborhood and perhaps the adjoining neighborhood would turn out to the spellingschool; whole families came on the great two-horse sled, including the old lady and gentleman, all the children, little and big; even the baby and the dogs came. Schools in adjoining districts sent their best spellers to try and carry off the honors. The old log school-house was crowded, and the :great box stove, cast at the Diary Ann furnace, and which stood in the center of the room on a box o bricks, was red hot, and kept so during the entire evening. Two good spellers were designated by the teacher to choose sides, and everybody was chosen in one class or the other; then the spelling began, the words being given out by the teacher, first to one class then to the other, beginning at the head. A tally sheet was carefully kept to see who missed the most words. After recess the "spelling down" was indulged in; the two classes stood up, and whenever a word was missed the speller sat down, and the one who stood up after all had been spelled down, was the hero or heroine of the hour, and always chosen first in future contests. The result was that the participants usually became correct orthographers.

The following poem, originally published in the Cincinnati Chronicle in 1833, portrays so graphically life in a log cabin, that it is eminently worthy of preservation. Although written by a "Hoosier" and intended to portray Hoosier life, it applies equally well to log cabin life everywhere.

"Suppose, in riding through the West,

A stranger found a ' Hoosiers nest,'

In other words a buckeye cabin '

Just big enough to hold Queen Mab in;

Its situation low but airy,

Was on the borders of a prairie

And fearing he might be benighted,

He hailed the house and then alighted.

The 'Hoosier' met him at the dour,

Their salutations soon were o'er;

He took the stranger's horse aside

And to a sturdy sapling tied,

Then having stripped the saddle off,

He fed him in a sugar trough.

The stranger stooped to enter in,

The entrance closing with a pin.

And manifested a strong desire

To seat himself by the log-heap fire,

Where half a dozen Hoosieroons,

With mush and milk, tin-cups and spoons,

White heads, bar;. feet, and dirty faces,

Seemed much inclined to keep their places.

But madam anxious to display

Her rough and undisputed sway,

Her offspring to the ladder led

And cuffed the youngster up to bed.

Invited shortly, to partake

Of venison, milk and Johnny cake,

The stranger made a hearts meal,

And glances round the room would steal.

One side was lined with divers garments,

The other spread with skins of ' garments;'

Dried pumpkins overhead were strung,

Where venison hams in plenty hung;

Two rifles were placed above the door,

Three dogs lay stretched upon the floor-

In short. the domicile was rife

With specimens of Hoosier life.

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 235

The host, who centered his affections

On game, and range and quarter sections,

Discoursed his weary guest for hours,

Till Somnus' ever potent powers,

Of sublunary cares bereft 'em.

"No matter how the story ended

The application I intended

Is from the famous Scottish poet,

Who seemed to feel as well as know it,

That buirdly chiels and clever hizzies

Are bred in sic a way as this is."'

CHAPTER XXVII.

PIONEER SOCIETY.

CALL FOR A MEETING AT THE COURT HOUSE-ORGANIZATION OF THE SOCIETY-CONSTITUTION-FIRST ELECTION OF OFFICERS- MEETINGS-PIONEER PAPERS-MEMBERSHIP, ETC.

"And while in life's late afternoon,

Where cool and long the shadows grow,

I walk to meet the night that soon

Shall shape and shadow overflow."

-Whittier.

THE following notice appeared in the papers of Newark, of April 20, 1867

"The undersigned citizens of Licking. county are impressed with the importance of preserving accurate and full descriptions of the antiquities and ancient works of our county, many of which have already been partially or wholly obliterated; and they also deem it equally important to collect and preserve all the leading facts and incidents connected with the early settlement of the different sections of Licking county, by neighborhoods and townships. This work, if done at all, must be done largely by the present generation. If not clone, soon important facts in our history will Ix lost and we will have only. the unreliable vagueness of uncertain tradition instead of authenticated truthful history.

"\\'e, therefore, with a view to the accomplishment of these purposes, call upon all our fellow-citizens, of concurrent opinions, to meet with us at the court house on Wednesday evening, 'May 1st, at eight o'clock, then and there to consider and discuss the important matter herein presented.

William Stanberry,

Adam Seymour,

J. N. Wilson,

Isaac Smucker,

William Spencer,

Enoch Wilson,

Daniel Forry,

Joel M. Dennis,

T. J Anderson

Albert Sherwood,

John McMullen,

John Johnson

James Pittsford,

James R. Stanberry.

William Veach

John Cunningham,

Erasmus White,

Henry Smith.

NEWARK, April 20, 1867.

"Pursuant to the foregoing call a meeting of the pioneers was held at the court house, May 1, 1867. Hon. William Stanberry presided, and Isaac Smucker was appointed secretary. On motion, Dr. J. N. Wilson, Colonel William Spencer, and T. J. Anderson, were appointed a committee to prepare a constitution and by-laws for a pioneer, historical and antiquarian society, which the meeting had decided to organize. Said committee, after deliberation, presented a constitution which was adopted by the meeting, and the following officers were elected pursuant to its provisions

"President, Hon. William Stanberry; vice-presidents, Dr. J. N Wilson, Thomas J. Anderson, Daniel Forry; recording secretary, Isaac Smucker; corresponding secretary, Colonel William Spencer; Treasurer, Enoch Wilson.

"The foregoing, as far as they are living, have remained in office during the entire thirteen years of the existence of the society. Rev. P. N. O'Bannon was elected in place of Hon. William Stanberry, deceased, but he also died lately; Captain M. M. Munson has been serving as vice-president since the decease of Dr. Wilson, and Hon. C. B. Griffin has been corresponding secretary since the death of Colonel Spencer.

"The society met again May 13, 186'7, when many persons were appointed to write papers on subjects connected with our early history.

"This meeting was followed by another held in the O'Bannon grove, on the Fourth of July, when papers were read by Revs. C. Springer, and P. N. O'Bannon, and by the secretary.

"The next meetings were held August 27, and October 14, 1867 a number of historical papers were read at each of those meetings, which were held in Newark, and many names added to the list of members.

"Our nest meeting was held in Granville, on New Year's day, 1868, where also a number of papers were read, the principal one being by Captain Munson, giving a history of Granville town and township. The meetings that succeeded this during 1868, were held April 7th, May 20th July 4th, and October 15th. Historical papers were read at all of them.

"The meetings of 1869 were held on the seventh of April (when the history of our Welsh settlements was read); on the nineteenth of May, and on the fourth of July.

"There were but two meetings held in 1870-the first, May 18th, and the last, July 4th, which was the great pioneer camp meeting at Pataskala, where were present about three .thousand persons. Pioneer papers were read at both the foregoing meetings.

"Two meetings were held in 1871-the first, May 15th, at Alexandria, and the other, July 4th, at Utica. Pioneer papers

236 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

were read at both meetings. The local history of the county hating been so nearly completed by this time, it ryas found to be unnecessary to hold more than one meeting a year, which has been annually held on the fourth of July, since 1871, at all of which historical papers have been read. Down to the present time there have been written and published one hundred and fifteen pioneer papers and local historical sketches; also ten pamphlets, which combined, embrace all the incidents, facts and events connected with the local history, both early and late, that were deemed worth recording. They cover the entire historic period of the Licking valley, from 1751, when Christopher Gist and his associate, Montour, passed through it, as explorers, to the present day, not omitting descriptions of the elaborate works of the Mound Builders, and the Indian villages that existed here previous and subsequent to the settlement on the Bowling Green, of the Hughes and Ratliff colony, in 1798.

"Of the foregoing papers, one hundred and fifteen ht number, judge Scott, Judge Brumback, Rev. W. Bower, Mrs. Stadden, Rev. Mrs. Springer, Rev. S. P. Hildreth, D. D. Woods, Jacob Winter, William Knowles, Jacob F. Corvine, Governor Greiner, Dr. J. H. Coulter, Captain E. Z.. Clark, Colonel John Noble, Rev. Israel Thrap, Captain M. M. Munson, J. G. Brooke, Major Pratt, John White and M. L. Wilson, each prepared one; Captain Joseph M. Scott and Revel Everett, each wrote two; Rev. H. M. Hervey, Dr. J. N. Wilson and B. C. Woodward, each prepared three; Rev. T. W. Howe, General Rufus Putnam and A. B. Clark, each furnished four; William Wing and C. B. Griffin, each wrote five; Rev. C. Springer, our lately deceased chaplain, prepared and read seven, and the remainder were written by the secretary, Hon. Isaac Smucker. Of the pamphlets, Rev. H. M. Hervey furnished No. one; Jacob Winter wrote No. four; Samuel Park prepared Nos. five and six; Captain Joseph M. Scott is the author of No. eight; and Hon. Isaac Smucker is responsible for Nos. two, three, seven, nine and ten.

"The Licking County Pioneer, Historical and .antiquarian society has two hundred and eleven names on its list of members proper, of which eighty have deceased, leaving a membership of one hundred and thirty. The Antiquarian members have numbered forty-seven, of whom nine have died, leaving thirty-eight as the present number. The number of corresponding members on the list is one hundred and seventy-one, of whom twelve are dead, leaving the number, at present, one hundred and fifty-nine. The list of honorary members consists of ninety persons, of whom only seventy-eight are living.

"A recapitulation of memberships shows the following result at present:

Pioneer members proper .........................................130

Antiquarian members .............................................. 38

Corresponding members .........................................159

Honorary members .................................................. 68

Whole number of members now ............................. 395

"The library of the society consists of more than five hundred bound volumes and pamphlets, many of them valuable. It also possesses a large variety of relics and curiosities and numerous ancient manuscripts and coins; and the collection of Indian and Mound Builders' ornaments and implements is by no means inconsiderable. Mention might also be made of the numerous specimens of Continental and Confederate paper money and other issues of paper, intended to circulate as money. owned by the society. .The society has been, and continues to be from month to month, reasonably successful in accomplishing the object and purposes for which it was organized thirteen years ago.

"It is a matter worthy of congratulation that the commissioners have regarded the society as so much of a county organization as to dedicate to its use an admirable room on the lower floor of the court house. For that act of thoughtful consideration and kindness they have entitled themselves to the grateful regard of all the members of the society. It is certainly no small accommodation to be furnished with a room having ample facilities for the display and safekeeping of the library and collections, and of dimensions adequate to the demands of all business meetings it may be found necessary to hold. The considerate kindness of the commissioners puts the society in a position to appeal to the public with confidence for generous additions, from time to time, to the library and numismatic departments, as well as to the cabinet of fossils, relics, curiosities. geological specimens, petrifactions, and ancient manuscripts."

Mr. P. N. O'Bannon, for many years president of the society, died September 13, 1880, aged nearly seventy-four years. Mr. Isaac Smucker has been the secretary of the society since its organization. To his indefatigable labors is the accuracy of the society's reports due. In fact, no man in Ohio has done so much for the history of his own county and its preservation.

PAGE 237 - BLANK

PAGE 238 - PICTURE OF JOHNNY APPLESEED

HISTORY LICKING COUNTY - 239

CHAPTER XXVIII.

JOHNNY APPLESEED.

" Give fools their gold, and knaves their power;

Let fortune's bubbles rise and fall;

Who sows a field, or trains a flower,

Or plants a tree, is more than all. "--Whittier.

A HISTORY of Ohio and especially of Licking county, would be incomplete without some I account of this very eccentric individual, known as Johnny Appleseed, from the fact that he was the pioneer nursery than of Ohio.

Johnny Appleseed deserves a place in history among the heroes and martyrs, for he was both in his peculiar calling. His whole life was devoted to what he considered the public good, without regard to personal feeling, or hope of pecuniary reward. \ of once in a century is such a life of self-sacrifice for the good of others known. There has been but one Johnny Appleseed; it is hardly possible there will ever be another.

He was born, according to one or two authorities, in Massachusetts, about the year 1775: was first heard of in Ohio about the year 1801, and was known to have traversed Licking county soon then after, The date of his birth is shrouded in uncertainty. Mr. C. S. Coffinberry writes the following regarding this matter: "He was born in the State of Massachusetts, but at what period the writer never knew. As early as 1780, he was seen in the autumn, for two or three successive years, along the banks of the Potomac river, in eastern Virginia." If this be true, he must have been born some years before 1775. Why he left his native State and devoted his life to the planting of .apple-seeds in the west, is known only to himself. He may have been insane; he was generally so considered to a certain degree. He was certainly eccentric, as many people are who are not considered insane; it is hard to trace eccentricity to the point where insanity begins. He was certainly smart enough to keep his own counsel. Without doubt his was a ,very affectionate nature; every act of his life -reveals this most prominent characteristic. From this fact alone writers have reasoned, and with good ground, that. he was crossed in love in his native State, and thus they account for his eccentricity. . This is only supposition, however, as he was very reticent on the subject of his early life. He was conscientious in every act and thought, and a man of deep religious convictions. He was a rigid Swedenborgian, and maintained the doctrine that spiritual intercourse, could be held with departed spirits; indeed, was in frequent intercourse himself with two of these spirits of the female gender, who consoled him with the news that they were to be his wives in the future state, should he keep himself from all entangling alliances in this. So kind and simple was his heart that he was equally welcome with the Indians or pioneers, and even the wild animals of the woods seemed to have an understanding with Johnny and never molested him. He has been variously described, but all agree that he was rather below the medium height, wiry, quick in action and conversation, nervous and restless in his motions; eyes dark and sparkling; hair and beard generally long,, but occasionally cut short; dress scanty, and generally ragged and patched; generally barefooted and bareheaded, occasionally, however, wearing some old shoes, sandals or moccasins in very cold weather, and an old hat some one had cast off. It is said he was seen sometimes with a tin pan on his head, that served the double purpose of hat and mush-pot, at other times with a cap made by himself of paste-board, with a very broad visor to protect his eyes from the sun.

His diet was very simple, consisting of milk, when. he could get it, of which he was very fond; potatoes and other vegetables, fruits, and meats; but no veal, as he said this should be a land flow-

240 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

ing with milk and honey, and the calves should be spared. He would not touch tea, coffee or tobacco, as he felt that these were luxuries in which it was wicked and injurious to indulge. He was averse to taking the life of any animal or insect, and never indulged in hunting with a gun.

He thought himself "a messenger, sent into the wilderness to prepare the way for the people, as John the Baptist was sent to prepare the way for the coming of the Saviour." He gathered his apple seeds, little by little, from the cider presses of western Pennsylvania and putting them carefully in leather bags, he transported them, sometimes on his back, and sometimes on the back of a broken down horse or mule, to the Ohio river, where he usually secured a boat and brought. them to the mouth of the Muskingum, and up that river, planting them in wild, secluded spots all along its numerous tributaries. Later in life, he continued his operations further west. When his trees were ready for sale, he left them in charge of some one to sell for him. The price was low-"a fippenny-bit" apiece, rarely paid in money, and if people were too poor to purchase, the trees were given them. One of his nurseries was located on the farm of the late judge Wilson, in Mary Ann township. His residence in this vicinity covered the period of the war of 1812, and several years following it. He would occasionally make trips further west, and return again after an absence of two or three months. On these excursions he probably visited his sister, Persis Broom, who lived in Indiana.

Mr. C. S. Coffinberry, an early settler of Mansfield, Ohio, who was personally acquainted with him, writes thus: "Although I was but a mere child, I can remember as if it were but yesterday,, the warning cry of Johnny Appleseed, as he stood before my father's log cabin door on that night-the cabin stood where now stands the old North American in the city of Mansfield. I remember the precise language, the clear, loud voice, the deliberate exclamations, and the fearful thrill it awoke in my bosom. `Fly'. fly! for your lives! the Indians are murdering and scalping the Zimmers and Copuses.' These were his words. My father sprang to the door, but the messenger was gone, and midnight silence reigned without.

* * * Jonathan Chapman was a regularly constituted minister of the church of the New Jerusalem, according to the revelations of Emanuel Swedenborg. He was also a constituted missionary of that faith under the authority of the regular association in the city of Boston. The writer has seen and examined his credentials as to the latter of these." He always carried in his pockets books and tracts relating to his religion, and took great delight in reading them to others and scattering them about. When he did not have enough with him to go around, he would take the books apart and distribute them in pieces.

It does not appear that he operated as largely in this county as in those further north, and especially those immediately bordering on the Muskingum. In Knox, Ashland and Richland counties he was well known, and many old settlers yet remember him. He had nurseries near Mt. Vernon, and several in Richland county. He often visited Hon. William Stanberry, and always manifested his eccentricities by sleeping out on the porch. Being once interrogated as to his views about "hell," he replied that he thought it resembled Newark, except that it was on a larger scale. Mrs. Stadden, who knew him well, did not think much of him; however this might be, he did a great deal of good.

Besides the cultivation of apple-trees, he was extensively engaged in scattering the seeds of many wild vegetables, which he supposed possessed medicinal qualities, such as dog-fennel, penny-royal, mayapple, hoarhound, catnip, wintergreen, etc. His object was to equalize the distribution, so that every locality would have a variety. His operations in Indiana began about 1836, and were continued for ten years, In the spring of 1847, being within fifteen miles of one of his nurseries on the St. Joseph river, word was brought to him that cattle had broken into this nursery and were destroying his trees, and he started immediately for the place. When he arrived he was very much fatigued; being quite advanced in years, the journey, performed without intermission, exhausted his strength. He lay down that night never to rise again. A fever settled upon him, and, in a day or two after taking sick, he passed away. "We buried him," says Mr. Worth, "in David Archer's graveyard, two and a half miles north of Fort Wayne."

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY - 241

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE WELSH HILLS SETTLEMENTS.

THOMAS PHILLIPS A\D SONS-THEOPHILUS REES-OTHER EARLY WELSH EMIGRANTS-THEIR SETTLEMENT IN PENNSYLVANIA-THEIR PURCHASE OF LAND IN GRANVILLE TOWNSHIP-THEIR APPEARANCE JN THE WELSH HILLS-"JIMMY JOHNSON." THE LEWISES AND OTHERS-THE ADDITIONS TO THEIR NUMBERS- SAMUEL WHITE, SR. JONATHAN WHITE-SAMUEL WHITE, JR.-DR. THOMAS AND SONS- A FEW OF THE SETTLERS SUBSEQUENT TO 1810-THE BOUNDARIES OF THE WELSH SETTLEMENTS-ITS TOPOGRAPHY HARDSHIPS AND ADVENTURES OF THE EMIGRANTS-GRADUAL INTRODUCTION OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE-THEIR RELIGION-THEIR PATRIOTISM AND OBEDIENCE TO LAW AND ORDER-THEIR HONESTY A\D ADHERENCE TO THE PRINCIPLES OF JUSTICE-GRADUAL AMERICANIZATION.

"Lives of good men all remind us

We may make our lives sublime;

And departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time."

IN 1787 John H. Phillips and his two younger brothers, Thomas and Erasmus, sons of Thomas Phillips, a Welshman of large fortune. were students at a college in Wales. John H. was the reputed author of some seditious or treasonable literature, and, to avoid arrest and punishment, he decided to emigrate to America. Accordingly he sailed for Philadelphia, accompanied by his brothers, who were more or less implicated with him, ar riving in the above named year. They soon went to live in a Welsh settlement in Chester county, in the vicinity of Philadelphia. Here they met with Chaplain Jones, a Welsh minister, a sketch of whose life appears elsewhere. General Anthony Wayne was also a resident of Chester county, arid when he organized the expedition against the Indians in the Northwest territory, in 1792, through the influence of Chaplain Jones he appointed John H. Phillips a member of his staff.

These sons of Thomas Phillips succeeded, after much persuasion, in obtaining the consent of their father, who was a man of wealth, to close his business affairs and follow them to America.

Mr. Theophilus Rees, a neighbor and friend of Thomas Phillips, both residents of Carmarthenshire, in South Wales, who likewise was a man of liberal means, after a full consideration of the subject, also decided to try his fortune in the New World, and forthwith proceeded to make arrangements to that end.

They accordingly closed up their business, and, when that was accomplished, they bade adieu to their native hills in "Wild Walia," and sailed in the ship Amphion, Captain Williams, April 1, 1795 (or, as some accounts have it, 1796), for the United States, where they arrived after a passage of nine weeks.

Many of their old Welsh neighbors, by arrangement. through the kind generosity of Messrs. Rees and Phillips, came as emigrants in the same ship with them, though many of them were unable to pay their passage, but agreeing to do so upon earning money enough after their arrival here.

In October after their arrival, most of this colony removed to Big Valley, in Chester county, Pennsylvania, where there was a Welsh settlement. Messrs. Rees arid Phillips resided some time in or near Philadelphia; but both removed to the Welsh settlement in Chester county, Pennsylvania. Here, however, they did not remain long, but soon, probably in 1797, together with others who had crossed the Atlantic with them, removed to Bulah, Cambria county, Pennsylvania, where they formed a portion of a considerable Welsh settlement. In this community Mr. Phillips' son, Thomas, who came over in 1787, died in 1801. The other son, Erasmus, died in Philadelphia some years later.

In 1801, or earlier, when all this county constituted Licking township, Fairfield county, Thomas Phillips and Theopbilus Rees purchased two thous-

242 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

and acres of land situated in what is now the northeast quarter of Granville township. It bordered on the McKean township line and extended almost to Newark township. They purchased this land of Mr. Sampson Davis, a Welshman of Philadelphia, who was then an extensive dealer in western lands. The purchase was made upon condition that the land proved as represented, the purchasers not having seen it. Chaplain Jones, Morgan Rees, and Simon James were selected to view the land. They accepted the commission, discharged the duty assigned them, and, upon their report, the contract was ratified. Mr. Rees and ! his son-in-law, David Lewis, visited this purchase in 1801.

In 1801 David Lewis and David Thomas, left Bulah, Pennsylvania, to settle on the Welsh Hills. On arriving at Marietta they found stonemasons' work and remained until the spring of 1802; when they came up the Muskingum and during said year built cabins on the Welsh Hills. In the same year Mr. Theophilus Rees with his family, and ' Simon James without his family, left their homes in Bulah, Cambria county, Pennsylvania, for the purpose of permanently occupying and improving the Welsh Hills purchase.

Mr. James was to build a cabin on the Phillips tract, clear some land, then return to Cambria, which he did. He, however, removed, with his family, to the Welsh Hills settlement in 1804.

Upon the arrival of this colony of emigrants at or near Wheeling, they fell in with a frontiersman, hunter, scout and Indian fighter named Jimmy Johnson, who felt quite willing to be transferred to regions further west, as his business had become very dull in that section.

Mr. Rees thinking that an expert in those occupations, and a man of such diversified genius and talents might be useful to him in his wilderness home, engaged him to accompany him, agreeing to sell him one hundred acres of land, to be paid for in such services as he might be able to render. David Thomas stopped in Newark, and lived in a cabin on the Park House lot until he could build a cabin on his land, when, late in the same year, or early in 1803, he removed to the Welsh Hills and occupied his cabin.

Mr. David Lewis, also, stopped in Newark and worked as a stone mason, but his father-in-law, Theophilus Rees, having given him one hundred acres of his land, Mr. Lewis soon took measures to occupy it, and with the help of Patrick Cunningham and his sons, erected a cabin upon it. This cabin was probably erected in 1802. But Theophilus Rees, Simon James, and Jimmy Johnson, established themselves on the Hills in 1802 ; Mr. Rees most likely temporarily occupying, with a portion of his family and laborers, until a better one could be erected: and Messrs. Johnson, Thomas and Lewis constructing cabins for themselves and families, Simon James' occupancy, however, in accordance with the original intention, was only temporary. Theophilus Rees, David Lewis, David Thomas, Simon Jams, and Jimmy Johnson were the Welsh Hills pioneers. Thomas was afterward known as " Big Davy Thomas," to distinguish him from a smaller man of the same name, who was also a son-in-law of Theophilus Rees, and who, in 1810, settled on the purchase of Mr. Rees, he having been presented with one hundred acres of it.

Theophilus Rees, the patriarch of the Welsh Hills, was a gentleman and a scholar: a man of integrity and great usefulness to his countrymen and his church. He spoke the English language imperfectly, but after the arrival of the Granville colony in 1805, he was a regular attendant upon the services of the church in Granville until the organization of the Welsh Hills church in 1808.

John H. Phillips, the youthful seditious writer, who left his country to secure his own safety, arrived for the first time on the Welsh Hills in 1803, or the year after, but remained only a short time. He returned to Chester county, where his family lived, and superintended the construction of a bridge over the Schuylkill near Philadelphia. In 1806 he returned to the Welsh Hills, where he taught school, and made himself generally useful for eight years, when he removed to Cincinnati where he died in 1832. He was one of the earliest school teachers in the Welsh Hills, and a man of fair abilities, good scholarship, and made his mark wherever he went. He held some official positions in Cincinnati, and was highly esteemed there.

Thomas Phillips was largely engaged in business

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 243

in Cambria county, Pennsylvania, and moving on his land immediately was found impracticable. He, however, visited it in 1804, accompanied by his wife, whose adaptation to frontier life, business capacity, energy and force of character were proverbial. They remained some time, and then returned to Cambria county, with a determination to bring their business affairs there to a close. This was accomplished in two years; and in 1806 Thomas Phillips and family returned to the Welsh Hills where he lived until his death, which occurred May 26, 1813. Mrs. Phillips died some years before in Philadelphia, whither she had gone on business.

Mr. Phillips, like his neighbor and friend, Deacon Rees, was a well educated gentleman of large experience and extensive information and reading.

In 1803 James Evans, James James, and a Mr. Shadwick who, however, was not a Welshman, settled on the Welsh Hills.

Thomas Cramer, son-in-law of Jimmy Johnson, and his brother, Peter Cramer, came from West Virginia in 1804, as did also Mr. Simon James, who, two years before, accompanied the Rees colony. During the years 1805 and 1806, John Price, Benjamin Jones, John H. Phillips and Thomas Powell were added to the list of Welshmen in the Welsh Hills' settlement.

Samuel J. Phillips and Thomas Owens were among the Welsh settlers of 1807 and 1808; Jacob Reily and a Mr. McLane, not Welshmen, were immigrants of the same year. Morris . Morris; David James and Joseph Evans, father of Joseph and Lewis, of Newark, came in 1809; and "little" David Thomas, son-in-law of Theophilus Rees, and Mr. Samuel White, sr., came in 1810. Mr. White was a son-in-law of Thomas Phillips, and though not a Welshman, albeit his wife was a native of Wales, he yet became very closely identified with the history of the Welsh Hills' settlement. He was born March 4, 1762, in Peterborough, near Boston, in Massachusetts, and entered college upon reaching manhood; but before the completion of his college course, he commenced a seafaring career which he pursued for twelve years. He visited the four quarters of the globe while a seaman, and during the time, was shipwrecked near Cape Horn. He thereupon resolved to abandon the life of a sailor, and returning to Philadelphia,. entered the service of Thomas Phillips as a teamster in 1797. Mr. Phillips was running a wagon line between Philadelphia and Cambria county. Mr. White, in the same year, married the daughter of his employer, and in 1810, removed to the Welsh Hills. Soon after his arrival the large hearted settlers of the "Hills" met in force, and welcomed the newcomer by building him a cabin. These pioneers spent their Christmas of 1810, in this delightful and hospitable way, finishing the cabin ready for its occupant the same day.

Mr. White was a man of more than ordinary intelligence and education; possessing an inquisitive mind, and an independent, frank, upright character. He was the father of a number of sons, and died September 13, 1851, at .the ripe age of eighty-nine.

Jonathan White, son of the foregoing, was born in Cambria county in 1800, and came to the Welsh Hills with his father in 1810. He became a good scholar under the teaching of Rev. Thos. D. Baird, of Newark, and was a young man of very fine talents, excelling in oratory. He died in 1827, in Stark county, Ohio, where he was engaged as canal contractor.

Samuel White, jr., was born in the Welsh Hills settlement, March 3, 1812. He was the first student on the list on the first day of the first term of Granville college. He remained there some time, but difficulties, growing out of the discussion of the slavery question, led him to complete his education at Oberlin. Leaving college in 1836, he entered the law office of the late Colonel Mathiot, and was admitted to the bar in 1837. In 1843 he was a successful candidate for the State legislature and became a leader in that body. In 1844 he received the nomination of the Whig party for Congress in the district composed of the counties of Knox, Licking and Franklin, in opposition to Colonel C. J. McNulty, one of the most able and accomplished stump speakers and political campaigners in Ohio. They conducted the canvass with extraordinary vigor, and it is generally conceded that it was owing to the herculean labors of Mr. White during. this campaign that he contracted a fever which so utterly prostrated him as to end in his death, which occurred July 20, 184. Columbus Delano took his

244 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

place on the ticket, and was elected by a majority of twelve votes.

Samuel White, jr., for some time edited, in part, the Newark Gazette; but in this vocation it cannot be said that he exhibited extraordinary ability. He was not remarkable as a writer. He made the reception speech in 11843, on the occasion of the arrival of John Quincy Adams in Newark, which was universally conceded to have been a preeminent success. He was a man of remarkable force and power as a public speaker. It is undoubtedly true that his equal as all orator, before a promiscuous assembly-, and in cases of a certain kind before a jury, has never been produced in this county. His sarcasm was withering: his invective powerful. He was exceedingly reach- and pointed in repartee, and of very great severity in his strictures upon party measures and pare leader. In declamatory harangues and satirical orator- he was perfectly over whelming. In aptness of scriptural quotations he could not be excelled. To work .up all audience to the fever heat of excitement, and to sway the multitude by inflammatory appeals, were to hint matters of easy accomplishment. He was indeed a man of wonderful power, and his early death is probably all that prevented him from taking a front rank among the popular orator: of America. In logical argumentation, in philosophical reasoning, ill legal acumen or ability he did not excel, but in the elements of a popular stump orator, young as he was, he has had but few equals and fewer superiors. Many still remember that he and E. B. Taylor, a Democrat, made much music of the rambling, discordant sort, during the famous log cabin and hard cider campaign of 1840. They were often flitted against each other in the three or four subsequent contests, producing uniformly music of the harshest sort.

Samuel White was fearless, independent, out spoken, frank, honest, never uttering opinions he did not believe, and always gave expression to thoughts he entertained, without "fear, favor or affection." In the famous crusades of his times against slavery and intemperance, he was always i the front rank, playing well the part of Richard, the lion-hearted.

He asserted the right of free discussion-in deed he became the acknowledged champion of freedom of press and speech, and 'more than once braved ignorant, - infuriated, brutal mobs, who tyrannically denied the liberty 9f speech. He never shrank. from the open avowal of his sentiments under any amount of popular odium, and therein he attained, in those heroic times, to the highest point of independent manhood..

Mr. Isaac Smucker, speaking of him politically, says:

"He and I held opposing political opinions, but we were in harmony on the question of the right of free discussion, and now, after he has been a tenant of the. tomb more than a third of a century, I avail myself, with the highest degree of pleasure, of the opportunity to bear testimony to one of nature's highly gifted ones, with whom I was not in political harmony, and sometimes not on terms of friendly personal relations. Put he had a noble nature and was, therefore, playable, forgiving, generous. magnanimous."

'A Welshman, who passed current on the "Hills" as Dr. Thomas, settled there about the year 1834. He derived most of his consequence from the fact that he placed five sons in the Baptist ministry, who were all inure or less distinguished. They were named David., John, Benjamin, Daniel, and Evan, and all entered the pulpit very young. David, the eldest, was, for a number of years, pastor of the church in Newark as was also, Benjamin. David was a man of ii wonderful volubility in the pulpit, and stood in the first class of the school known as "revival orators." His brothers also, had similar gifts, and all were liberally endowed with talents as public speakers. They were remarkable men. whose fame spread abroad and who made considerable stir in the world as pulpit orators of more than average natural powers. They never enjoyed superior educational advantages, nor attained to any distinction. in scholarship.

From the foregoing it will be seen that the purchase of Messrs. Rees and Phillips formed the nucleus of the Welsh settlement ill this county. Theophilus Rees settled on his half of the purchase, and surrounded himself by his sons, Theophilus and John, and his sons-in-laws, the two David Thomas and David Lewis, and his hunter. "Jimmy Johnson," giving to each of them about one hundred acres of his land.

Mr. Thomas Phillips settled upon his portion of the purchase, and likewise surrounded himself by his sons, John H. and Samuel J., and his sons-in-

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 245

law, Thomas Owens, Samuel White, William Morrison and John Evans. To all of them he gave one hundred acres of land, but the two last named sons-in-law did not occupy their land. Morrison lived on land in the vicinity, but Evans never came to Licking county. To a granddaughter Mr. Phillips gave two hundred acres of land, but she never occupied it

It is impracticable to give the names of the emigrants from Wales who settled in this county subsequent to 1810. Additions were made to their number from year to year, so that, notwithstanding the numerous deaths and removals, the number of Welsh inhabitants in Licking county, including those who are in whole or in part of Welsh parentage, cannot be much less than twenty-five hundred at the present time. They live principally in the Welsh Hills settlement, and in the city- of Newark, and village of Granville.

Of those immigrants from Wales, who settled in the Hills subsequent to 1810, there were Daniel Griffith (1812), Walter and Nicodemus Griffith (1815), David Pittsford (1816), and Hugh Jones (1819).

Edward Price and Edward Glenn came in 1821, and Rev. Thomas Hughes in 1822.

Of those members of the families of Messrs. Rees and Phillips, who came from Wales in 1795, Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, wife of "Little " David Thomas, and daughter of Theophilus Rees, was the last survivor. She died May 3, 1855, after a residence in America of sixty years.

The portion of Licking county in which the first Welsh settlers orated, has ever since been known and designated as the "Welsh Hills settlement." It was originally limited to the northeast quarter of Granville township, but the settlement gradually extended in all directions, and its present boundaries, though somewhat indefinite, may be given with some degree of approximation to accuracy. It is mainly- in the townships of Newark and Granville, but extends slightly into the townships of Newton and McKean. It begins at Sharon valley, at a point about two miles northwest of Newark, and extends in a northwesterly direction into McKean township, and is between five and six miles long. It has a width of four miles or more, extending on the northeast into Newton township; its southwestern boundary being in Granville township, near the village of Granville. It is all between the road running north from Newark to Utica and that running west to Alexandria.

The country embraced in this settlement, belongs to the class known as "hilly," but it may be regarded as fertile, particularly in the production of cereals. It was originally all heavily timbered, but is now mostly cleared land. Farms are not generally large, and. timber for present and prospective purposes is found on each of them with rare exceptions.

A considerable quantity of level or slightly undulating land is found on most of the farms, which produces corn and the different varieties of grasses well. Soft water springs abound, and it may be considered one of the best watered sections of the county, although the streams are small.

The settlement has always been regarded as one of rare salubriousness; healthfulness being the rule among the hardy, robust inhabitants, and sickness the exception.

The earliest settlers on the Welsh Hills endured great hardships and privations, both in reaching their wild western homes, and during the first few years after their arrival. They had to cut out roads to enable them to get to their land with wheeled vehicles; and the roads over which they traveled from the Ohio river, were of recent construction, arid but little better than trails through the woods. They generally came in wagons, but a few are said to have brought their families in canoes to Zanesville.

Indians often visited the Welsh settlers in early times, but they were not hostile. A sort of a chief named "Big Joe," and a few of his followers were frequently visitors at the house of David Lewis, and are still distinctly remembered by one of the members of his family, Mrs. Ann Cunningham, wife and John Cunningham, and who was often present during their visitations. They did no particular harm, but frightened the women and children, and were not, therefore, welcome visitors.

Wolves were very troublesome to the Welsh pioneers, as well as all other pioneers of this county.

It is related of the son of Theophilus Rees,

246 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

that on one occasion, when some distance from the house in the night, a pack of wolves surrounded and treed him, and then proceeded to gnaw at the trunk of the small tree, and make other menacing demonstrations as he sat on the lower limb. Fortunately their progress was arrested by some of the settlers, who were drawn thither by the unusually fierce howlings of the hungry beasts. On frequent occasions in the night, the wolves would gather in force around persons passing from one cabin to another, who had to be relieved by their friends armed with guns and torches.

Mrs. Cunningham, above mentioned, states that one night while her brothers, sons of David Lewis, and herself, were engaged in boiling sugar water, near their father's house, a pack of wolves surrounded them, and made such threatening demonstrations as to render it necessary for their parents to disperse them, which they did by the aid of fire-brands and perhaps powder and lead. They were held at bay by the children, by the free use of fire-brands, but the almost entire exhaustion of these brands before the arrival of assistance, rendered their position extremely perilous. Bears were numerous, and there were a few panthers, both very formidable foes.

Most of these Welsh emigrants, had a limited knowledge of the English language; they also tenaciously maintained the necessity and importance of perpetuating their own language. In this, however, they did not differ from the Germans and other foreigners. Settled together, on contiguous tracts of land, and forming a community by themselves, they were enabled for many years to carry out their wishes in this regard, and the Welsh language, and no other, continued to be spoken in many of these families for a long series of years. The views these people entertained; their inability to converse in English, and the utter ignorance of the Welsh language on the part of those composing contiguous neighborhoods, made their condition, of necessity, one of isolation, and apparent exclusiveness, or, it appeared, clanishness. But if this was a fault it grew out .of the necessities of their condition

Free intercourse with their American fellow-settlers was at first, and for many years, almost impossible, and this condition of things continued until that world-wide renowned institution, the American common school-that entering wedge for civilization-was established in and around this settlement. Many of the older persons of this settlement never acquired a knowledge of the English language, but their children and grandchildren did, and gradually that language worked its way through the entire settlement. All their descendants of the present generation both understand and speak it with facility, and receive most of their education and training in it. Religious instruction is still continued in their own language, in three churches in Granville township and two in the city of Newark.

The Welsh pioneers and their descendants, as well as the present Welsh population of Licking county, may be characterized as pre-eminently religious, adhering, generally, either to the Baptist, Methodist or Congregational churches. They are, with rare exceptions, Calvinistic in their views, holding those peculiar tenets, probably, in their milder forms. They are Calvinists, at all events, whether Baptists, Methodists or Congregationalists.

Probably a larger proportion of them are churchgoers and church-members, .than is to be found among any other nationalities, native or foreign.

They spend very much more time in their churches for the purpose of receiving and imparting religious instruction, and for devotional exercises, than is usual with other churches and with other classes of citizens: neither are they surpassed by other churches, or systems of moral training, in their efforts at, and success in, developing a high order of consistent Christian character. They sustain five churches in this county exclusively, besides forming an integral portion of a number of others, in which they receive religious instruction in the English language. Prominent among these is the Welsh Hills Baptist church, organized with Welsh members in a great part, and since, mostly sustained by them.

The Welsh are, also, generally friends of temperance. When the Maine law was in issue in 1853, they were its unflinching friends, and have always been opposed to free drinking. They were especially zealous during the Washingtonian movement in 1841, and for several subsequent years.

During all the weary years in which the fierce

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 247

battle between slavery and freedom was raging, this Welsh population stood with great unanimity on the side of freedom.

When protection and free trade were contending for supremacy in the governmental policy, the Welsh voters generally rallied under the protection flag.

When the Federal Union was imperiled by traitors, they were almost universally loyal to the government that had given them freedom and protection, and many of them went forth to deadly conflict on the battle-field. But few of them, if any, to their honor be it spoken, gave manifestations of sympathy with treason during the devastating war made by traitors in the interest of slavery, and against the government. The Welshmen of Licking were patriots, and many of them offered up their lives as a sacrifice upon the altar of their country.

They have always given encouragement to schools and other agencies for mental and moral improvement. They are accustomed to read, reflect, reason and mature their opinions, and when formed, they adhere to them with great tenacity indeed they are proverbial for firmness, unyielding determination and decision of character. They hold their opinions because they believe them to be correct, and they never give them up for the sake of accommodation. They are positive men-men of strong convictions, that cannot be surrendered to please anybody. They have always been up to the average standard of intelligence and general information. Sustaining, as they do, churches, schools, and the press, they could not fail to reach a good degree of enlightenment.

They place a full estimate on the value of money, but are, nevertheless, scrupulously honest and conscientiously upright; generally manifesting a high degree of integrity in their business relations.

The present occupants of the Welsh Hills, decendants of the pioneer settlers, have become considerably Americanized, readily adapting themselves to American institutions, language, customs, habits and modes of thought. They are distinguished for all the qualities of good citizenship, and justly claim a good degree of exemption from debasing habits, indulgence in groveling propensities, drunkenness, and the debauchery, vice and crime which degrade humanity.

CHAPTER XXX.

HISTORICAL "SCRAPS."

DIMENSIONS OF THE COUNTY-MILITARY AND REFUGEE LANDS-PRIMITIVE GOVERNMENT-EARLY SETTLERS AND SETTLEMENTS-EARLY PREACHERS-TABLE OF CHURCHES-NUMBER OF MILES OF RAILROAD, TURNPIKE AND CANAL THE LOG-CABIN-HARD-CIDER-COONSKIN CAMPAIGN OF 1840-EARLY MAIL MATTERS-PROMINENT MEN OF THE COUNTY.

"Breathes there a man with soul so dead,

Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land !"

THE extreme width of Licking county is twenty-two and a half miles, from north to south, thirty miles from east to west. These dimensions would give the county six hundred and seventy-five square miles of territory; but as the original surveyors of 1796 failed to give a straight line on the northern boundary, a strip of sixteen miles in length, and about three-fourths of a mile in breadth, was lost, which reduces the figures to six hundred and sixty-three miles. A tract of nearly two miles by two and a half in extent is also lost at the southeast corner of the county, which still further reduces the territory almost five square miles, leaving a sum total of only six hundred and fifty-eight square miles.

The eastern half of the county is generally characterized as hilly, and only moderately

248 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

productive, yet nearly all cultivable; while the western half is level or rather undulating, and with a very small proportion too uneven or steep for the plow. It is beautifully diversified by hill and dale -by high, irregular ridges and level plains-by sterile hills and fertile, alluvial bottoms-by- the rough "hill country" of the eastern half of the county, and by- the level and undulating lands of the western half. The eastern half is varied here and there by beautiful landscapes, high peaks, dark glens, inaccessible bluff's, cavernous dells, abrupt acclivities, rugged hillsides, craggy cliffs, such as are found on the "Flint Ridge," at the "Licking Narrows," along the Rocky fork, and in some other localities.

Nine-tenths or more of the county is situated within the old United States Military District, and is, therefore, to that extent composed of United States Military lands that is, lands set apart by Congress in June, 1796, for the payment of certain claims of the officers and soldiers for services rendered during the Revolutionary war. The narrow strip of two and a half miles wide, along the southern border of the county belongs to the Refugee tract-a tract of land dedicated by Congress in April, 1798, to the payment of the claims of those refugees whose possessions in Canada and Nova Scotia had been confiscated by the British government, upon the alleged ground that their owners had abandoned them, and had joined the colonists in their struggle for independence.

The United States Military lands amounted to two million six hundred and fifty-thousand acres. The tract was bounded on the east by the west line of the seven ranges; on the south by- Congress lands and by the Refugee tract. on the west by the Scioto river, and on the north by- the Greenville treaty boundary- line.

The Refugee tract was four and a half miles wide, and forty-eight miles long, extending eastward from the Scioto river, and contained one hundred thousand acres. The , villages of Gratiot, Linnville, Amsterdam, Jacksontown, Hebron, Brownsville, Luray and Kirkersville are near to or upon the north line of the Refugee tract. Etna and Bowling Green townships are wholly within it; and the southern portions of Harrison, Union and Licking townships are also in the Refugee tract.

The territory which now constitutes Licking county, was within the limits of Washington county (the first county organized in the Northwest Territory), from 1788 until 1798, when, by the organization of Ross county, it became a portion of it, and so remained until the year r Boo, when Fairfield county being established, it was thrown into it and continued to be a portion of said county until 1808, when the organization of Licking county was effected.

The first Territorial legislature of the Northwest Territory met at Cincinnati, September 16, 1799; and Ross county's representatives in that body were Edward Tiffin, Thomas Worthington, Samuel Findlay, and Elias Langham ; and their only constituents living within the present limits of Licking county, were the families of Elias Hughes, and John Ratliff, consisting of twenty-two persons. The second session, with the same representatives, was held at Chillicothe, in November, 1800. The third session, with the same representatives, except Samuel Findlay, met at Chillicothe, November 23, 1801.

The Territorial delegates in Congress were General William H. Harrison, who served from 1799 until 1800. William McMillen succeeded him, but served only until 1801, when Paul Fearing took his seat as such and served until 1803.

In November, 1802, a constitutional convention j was held at Chillicothe, and formed the first con! stitution for the State of Ohio. At that time we were part and parcel of Fairfield county, and that county was represented in said convention by Henry Abrams and Emanuel Carpenter.

The first permanent white settlement made within the present limits of the county- was effected in 1798, by Elias Hughes and John Ratliff. They came to the Bowling Green (now in Madison (township), on the Licking, from western Virginia and were the only settlers until early in the year 1800. The two families spent the preceding year at the mouth of the Licking, and in the spring of 1798 they ascended said stream some twenty miles, and there squatted, both families numbering, upon their arrival, twenty-one persons; During the year 1799 a son was born to Elias Hughes, thus increasing the colony to twenty-two. The first death was

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 249

that of an infant child of John Stadden, whose birth and death occurred in the latter part of the year 1801. The first marriage within the limits of Licking county, was that of the parents of the aforesaid child-John Stadden and Elizabeth Green-which took place on Christmas day in the ; year 1800. John Ratliff died on the south side of the Licking, near the mouth of the Brushy fork, about or in the year 181 x. A few of the descendants of Hughes and Ratliff still reside in the county.

In the year 1800, Benjamin Green and Richard Pitzer settled on the Shawnee run, two miles below the junction of the North and South forks, having come from Alleghany county, Maryland. In the same year Captain Samuel Elliott, from the same county, settled half a mile above them. And in the same year Isaac Stadden, an emigrant from Northumberland county, Pennsylvania, settled half a mile above Captain Elliott. His brother John, an unmarried brother, accompanied him. He remained unmarried, however, only until the Christmas of this year. And it was during this year also that John Van Buskirk left Brooke county, Virginia, and settled upon a thirty-one hundred acre tract of land he had purchased, situated in the valley of the South fork (now in Union township), some eight miles or more above the mouth of the South fork. His death occurred December 31, 1840.

Isaac Stadden was the first civil officer elected within the limits of the county. At an election held in January, 1802, at the cabin of Captain Hughes, he was chosen a justice of the peace of Licking township, then Fairfield county, and Elias Hughes, was elected captain of militia, at the same time and place. John Stadden became the first sheriff of Licking county, in 1808, and served as such, and as collector of taxes until 1810. Captain Elliott was elected coroner of the county in 1808 and served as such for a score of years or more. He had been a soldier in the Revolutionary war. His death took place in . May, 1831, in his eightieth year. Benjamin Green lived until 1835, dying at the age of seventy-six years.

The year 1801 brought with it quite a number of settlers. John Larabee ascended the Licking river in a canoe to the mouth of the Bowling Green run, where he landed, and near that point on the south side of the Licking, he occupied a hollow sycamore tree, while he cleared some land, and raised a few acres of corn. He served throughout the whole Revolutionary war, and probably also in the Indian wars afterwards. Mr. Larabee died February 6, 1846, aged four score and six years. James Maxwell came up the Licking with Mr. Larabee, John Weedman and a Mr. Carpenter. Maxwell was the first school .teacher, and made that his life-long profession. He was also the first constable, having been elected to said office, January 1, 1802, at the same time and place of the election of Captain Hughes and Isaac Stadden, esq.; Samuel Parr this year settled on the Licking bottoms, just below the junction of the North and South forks. James Macauley and James Danner located themselves near the mouth of Ramp creek, where the first named built a "tubmill," or "corn-cracker," the first water power concern within the present limits of the county. Phillip Barrick settled near the "Licking Narrows." . John Jones built his cabin in the Raccoon valley, five miles from the mouth of Raccoon creek, and Phineas and Frederick Ford and Benoni Benjamin theirs in the Ramp or Auter Creek valley, some miles from the mouth of Ramp or Auter creek. Phillip Sutton, Job Rathbone, and John and George Gillespie settled in the Hog Run valley. In September of this year, John Edwards came to the South Fork valley, from Brooke county, Virginia. He was distinguished as a hunter and an expert with the rifle, having been engaged as a spy for some years on the frontiers of Virginia, as well as the Northwest Territory. In coming he blazed the trees and killed the game for their subsistence, while others cut out the road, where necessary, and still others followed with the wagon, which contained his family- and household effects.

The year 1802 brought many immigrants. Alexander Holmes and James Hendricks came from Brooke county, Virginia, and settled in the South Fork valley near the residence of their brother-in-law, John Van Buskirk, Theophilus Rees, David Lewis, David Thomas, James Johnson, and Simon James came this year, most of them settling on the Welsh Hills. Jacob Nelson settled in the Licking valley, and not long thereafter built a mill, a mile or more below the junction of the North and South

250 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

forks. Newark was laid out this year by General W. C. Schenck; and Abraham Miller, John Warden and Henry Claybaugh came from the South branch of the Potomac, and settled in its immediate vicinity. Michael Thorn, Frederick Myer, and Henry Nets' located at or near the Little Bowling Green, on the southern borders of the county, during this year. They were from the Monongahela country, in West Virginia. Adam Hatfield, James Black, Richard Parr, Samuel Elliott, Henry Claybaugh, Samuel Parr, and Samuel Elliott, jr., built and occupied cabins in Newark this year, except the younger Elliott, who probably had a tenant in his. The senior Elliott built the first hewed log house with shingled roof. Black kept a tavern on the lot now occupied by the Park House. Beall Babbs, James Jeffries and Mrs. Catharine Pegg, settled in or near Newark during . this year. Jonathan Benjamin, father-in-law of John Jones and the Ford brothers, located on Ramp or Auter creek, in the spring of 1802. He had passed through the French and Indian wars, and through the Revolutionary war, also, and had been a frontiersman from his youth up. Mr. Benjamin died in 1841, at the great age of one hundred and three years. Patrick Cunningham, Abraham Johnson, Abraham Wright, James Petticord, Edward Nash, Carlton, Benedict, Aquilla, and two John Belts settled about and in Newark, except Cunningham, who first lived neighbor to John Jones, having built the second cabin within the present limits of Granville township. He was from Tyrone county, province of Ulster, Ireland; the others were from Washington county, Pennsylvania. A considerable colony from Brooke county, Virginia, also settled in the South Fork valley. In 1803, John Evans settled in the North Fork valley, seven miles north of Newark, and in the spring of the same year Evan Payne and Jacob Wilson located in the same valley about a mile above the mouth of the North fork. They, as well Evans, were Virginians. John Simpson, Robert Church, William Schamahorn, Richard Jewell, Edward Crouch, William and John Moore, Thomas Seymour, and William O'Bannon settled within the present limits of Madison township, during this year also.

In 1804, Thomas Cramer, Simon James an Peter Cramer settled on the Welsh Hills; Evan Humphrey and Chiswold May settled near the Big Spring in Newton township. These were all Virginians. Daniel Thompson, his son-in-law, Daniel Enyart, and Matthias and Hathaway Denman also came this year and settled in Hanover township; and Moses Meeks, William Harris, Charles Howard and John and Adam Myers settled in Bowling Green township; Maurice Newman settled in Newark; John and Jacob Myers, Daniel Smith and James Taylor settled in Union township; John Channel, Thomas Deweese and Henry Smith settled in Madison township. Mr. Smith had officiated for some time as Territorial magistrate, under a commission from Governor St. Clair. He became one of the early time magistrates of Madison and associate judge in the county.

In 1805, Rev. Joseph Thrap settled in the eastern borders of the county; George Ernst and John Feasel came from Shenandoah county, Virginia, and settled in Clay Lick valley; Elias and John Farmer came from Bedford county, Pennsylvania, and settled a few miles southwest of Newark: John and Jacob Switzer came to the Clay Lick from. "the glades" of Pennsylvania; John Siglar settled in Hog Run valley; John Price, W. H. Mead and perhaps David Beaver located in the South Fork valley, as did David Herron and David Hatfield, in Newark; General John Spencer settled on Spencer run, in Newton township; Archibald Wilson, jr., settled in Newark. The most valuable addition to the inhabitants of this year was the Granville colony, an account of which appears elsewhere. Several emigrants also came to the Welsh Hills during this and the succeeding year, among whom were John Price, Benjamin Jones, John H. Phillips and Thomas Powell.

In 1806, the upper valley of Raccoon creek, now Monroe township, was settled by George W. Evans, and soon thereafter by Charles and George Green. Henry Drake also located in the upper valley of the South fork, now Harrison township, during this year. Chester and Elisha Wells and s John Hollister settled near the mouth of the e : Rocky fork. Samuel Hand, James Holmes, and David Benjamin settled in the South Fork valley. Evan Pugh and Archibald Wilson settled north of Newark, in North Fork valley. The upper valley of

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 251

the North fork, now Burlington township, was settled by James Dunlap, Nathan Conard and others. William Hull and Isaac Farmer located this year in the vicinity of the Flint ridge.

In 1807 John Cook Herron built and occupied a cabin in the Raccoon valley, now St. Albans township. Granville township, Fairfield county, was organized this year. It embraced the western half of the present county of Licking, except the Refugee lands, Licking township, embracing the eastern half, with the same exception.

In 1808, Joseph Conard settled in the North Fork valley, near the present village of Utica. He came from Loudoun county, Virginia, and was the first settler within the present township of Washington. In this year (1808), the county of Licking was organized.

In 1809, Henry Iles settled within the present limits of Bennington township. In 1810, the Wakatomika valley was first settled by Samuel Hickerson, followed next year by James Thrap. Daniel Poppleton rendered a similar service within the present limits of Hartford township, in the ,year 1812. Joseph and Peter Headly started a settlement on the head-waters of the South fork (now in Jersey township), in 1815. Etna township, too, was settled in 1815, if not a little earlier, by John Williams, the Housers and others. Isaac Essex settled there in 1816. In the year 1818 David Bright located in the northeastern part of this county, and was the first settler of Fallsbury township, while in 1821, Rena . Knight built a cabin and opened a clearing near the head of Brushy fork, at a point now in Liberty township Thus one locality after another became settled, and finally fully occupied in every section of the county.

In 1802, a Presbyterian minister, named McDonald, came along and preached two sermons to the settlers in the Licking valley. In 1803, Rev. John Wright, also a Presbyterian preacher, delivered two sermons in Newark. Thomas Marquis, another Presbyterian minister, gave the people o Raccoon valley a sermon or two during this year. During the autumn of this year, Rev. Asa Shinn, of the Methodist church, commenced preaching, as an itinerant minister, at Benjamin Green's, the Hog Run settlement, and before his year closed he there organized a society, or church, and that was the original, or pioneer church organization in the county. He, probably, sometimes, preached in Newark also; certainly his successor on the circuit, Revs. James Quinn and John Meeks, did, and also formed a small church organization as early as 1805, which was the second in our county. The Congregational church of Granville, organized before the Granville colony left New England, was the third religious society of Licking county, and the Methodist society, organized in 1806, or a little later, near the Bowling Green, was, probably, the fourth. A Methodist society, near the eastern borders of this county, organized about the same time, and often ministered to by the Rev. Joseph Thrap, was most likely the next in order and the fifth in number. The Welsh Hills Baptist church was organized September q, 1808, and was the sixth and next in order. In the autumn of the same year the First Presbyterian church of Newark was organized, and, was the seventh in order, in the county, although there may have been a Methodist church organized earlier in the South Fork valley.

The Revs. Joseph Williams and James Axley were itinerating Methodist ministers in 1805. Rev. Peter Cartwright preached to the Methodist societies in 1806, as did also Rev. John Emmett. Rev. James Scott, a Presbyterian minister, also preached in Newark during this year. Rev. James Hoge, of the same denomination, visited and preached to the people of Granville during the year, as did also Rev.. Samuel . P. Robbins, of the Congregational church, and Rev. David Jones, of the Baptist church. In 1807, Revs. Joseph Hayes and James King were the itinerant ministers who ministered regularly to the Methodist churches hereabouts. Sometimes, too, Revs. Jesse Stoneman and Robert Manly ministered to them, as did also Rev. Levi Shinn. In 1808 the Revs. Ralph Lotspeitch and Isaac Quinn were. the regular Methodist preachers. Elder James Sutton and Mr. Steadman appeared as Baptist ministers. Rev. Timothy Harris, a Congregational minister, took charge of the church in Granville this year and continued his ministration until 1822. His ordination there was conducted by Revs. Lyman

252 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

Potter, Stephen Lindley, Jacob Lindley, John Wright and James Scott. In 1809 Revs. Benjamin Lakin, and John Johnson were the Methodist itinerants. Revs. Thomas Powell and John W. Patterson (Baptists), commenced their ministerial services in Licking county. In 1810 the latter took charge of the Welsh Hills church, and in the next year of the Hog Run church, also. Rev. James B. Finley was the Methodist itinerant of, the year 1810.

The following table exhibits the number, location and denomination of the churches at present in the county, the number of Christian societies, represented by one or more church buildings, being twenty-seven, twelve of them having each only one edifice, the others being divided among the remaining fifteen denominations, forty being the highest number owned by any one, that being the Episcopal Methodist:

The total valuation of church edifices in the county is three hundred thousand dollars, and they are supposed to furnish sittings for more than twenty thousand persons.

The Methodists were the first denomination to organize, being in 1804; the Congregationalists were the second, being in 1805: the Baptists and Presbyterians the next, being in 1808 ; the Covenanters organized in 1813 the Lutherans in 1817. The others afterwards.

There are at present within the county limits twenty-five miles of turnpike, being the National road running across the southern part of the county and about the same number of miles of canal; both of these great internal improvements being built

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 253

between the years 1825 and 1835. There are at present about one hundred miles of railroad in the county, as follows: Straitsville division of the Baltimore and Ohio road, ten miles; Central Ohio division of Baltimore and Ohio road, thirty-two miles; Northern division of same, thirteen miles; Pittsburgh, Cincinnati & St. Louis, twelve miles; and the Ohio Central road (the new road not yet completed, passing through Granville), about thirty miles.

A most extraordinary political excitement pervaded Licking county, as well as the country at large, during the year 1840-the year of "the log-cabin hard-cider and coon-skin campaign." As indicated, it was not a local but a general tornado raging with more or less fury, in all the States of the American Union, but in none of them was the hurricane wilder than in Ohio, and in no locality did it raeg more furiously than in "Old Licking." The people were wont to meet in immense crowds, and became intensely excited under the declamatory harangues of wranglers, demagogues and stump orators. The inflammatory appeals of the party press of the country, addressed to the passions, superadded to the fanatical and exciting speeches of the heated partisans, and candidates for public offices, roused the people as they had never been roused before, and worked them up to fever heat, producing a state of wild delirium among them, hitherto unparalleled in the history of the country and never afterwards approached in infuriated fanaticism. The stormy passions of the masses were lashed into uncontrollable fury; often displayed an intensity of feeling wholly unknown before, and manifested a degree of extravagance and wildness in the discussion of political questions that was a marvel to the few sober-minded men of both parties, that remained in a measure unaffected in the midst of the frenzy that had seized upon the multitudes. These abnormal manifestations characterized -one portion of the people, while the other portion, little, if any less excited or delirious, erected their lofty hickory poles, surmounted them with huge hickory brooms, and displayed the living rooster in .various ways and in every conceivable manner, as the representative of antagonism to the .coon, while their speeches about equaled in defamation of character the ribaldry of the doggerels sung by the former. And all this frantic madness resulted from the determination of the party of the first part, to prevent the re-election of Martin Van Buren and Richard M. Johnson, and substitute for them General William H. Harrison and John Tyler-this and nothing more. The question was, shall we elect General Harrison or Martin Van Buren President? Licking county decided by about two hundred majority in favor of the latter. The great gathering of the clans during the year was in Newark, on the fourth of July, Thomas Corwin being the Whig orator of the occasion, and John Brough the Democratic. Sam. White and Joshua Mathiot were the chief local orators of the former, and B. B. Taylor and James Parker of the latter.

The delirium manifested itself in the oft-repeated gathering together by the populace, in immense meetings, at distances so remote as to necessitate an absence of a number of days, to the partial neglect of their usual avocations. The further irrational manifestations of the excited crowds while going to and returning from those monster meetings, as well as while present at them, consisted of singing songs and rolling balls-of riding from place to place in canoes on wheels, and of hauling with oxen or horses, from town to town, miniature log cabins, erected upon wheels partially covered with coon-skins (the ridge-pole of the roof being generally embellished with one or more live coons), and to whose corners were clinging, by way of adornment, full grown statesmen, nibbling at corn-dodgers or sections of johnnycake and sipping at a gourd of hard cider, and at intervals singing; on the highest attainable key, doggerel songs in the interest of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too." A few of the trades and industries and arts were also represented in miniature, on wheels, at the great conventions, and temporarily operated, sometimes while in motion. Some large log cabins, built of heavy logs, and furnished with buckeye chairs, were built in which to hold neighborhood meetings, and in front of which the trunk of the largest accessible buckeye tree was erected, surmounted with a cider-barrel and a gourd attached. One of these log cabins, with the usual adjuncts, was erected in Newark and used for

254 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

many months for the practice of the oratory, the. eloquence, the minstrelsy peculiar to that year.

The Whig victory of 1840 was, in the opinion of its leaders, a crushing blow to the Democracy. So badly was the party defeated that it was doubtful if it ever again could rally,. "unless with a change of name or a change of principles." During the administration under Van Buren, the country was plunged into one of its financial crises-its currency ten, fifteen, and sometimes twenty-five per cent. below par, and the laboring man had his wages cut down almost to a starving point. In May, 1837, less than three months after the administration commenced, every bank in the United States, with few exceptions, suspended specie payments, and refused to redeem its wild-cat issues of notes. Had the President been firm the banks would not have had the vantage ground. But the treasure of the people was locked up in bank vaults-the government had nothing with which to pay its debts or its current expenses, and President Van Buren called Congress together in extraordinary session. Then the banks were masters of the situation, and the President had a stormy four years of office.

General Harrison, who four years before had but seventy-three electoral votes for President, against one hundred and seventy-six for Van Buren, at the election of 1840 had two hundred and thirty-four electoral votes to sixty for Van Buren.

The popular vote for Harrison and Tyler showed almost as overwheming a majority as that of the Electoral colleges. The leading and more thinking men of the party who achieved this unprecedented triumph were afraid they had an elephant on their hands that they could not manage. But the men who voted to make times better, who were promised "two dollars a day and roast beef" if Harrison was elected, and but "six and onefourth cents a day and a sheep's pluck" under Van Buren, were jubilant. They demanded a universal rejoicing-a day of jubilee for the salvation of the country. In many places they did rejoice with bonfires, illuminations, the firing of cannon, and with other demonstrations of joy. In Newark the rejoicing was to be one that would astonish the natives, and it did astonish them-to be an illumination of the whole country, as far as the town could be seen, by a unique bonfire, and it was a unique one. Around the public square, in the center of the town, on each of the four streets, they planted innumerable barrels of tar, digging holes so as to cover one-third or one-half of the barrel. The heads were knocked in, and shavings and pieces of dry wood, all well smeared with tar, were placed on top. The whole county was advised of the grand event to come off on a particular night, which, after consulting the almanac, they found would be a dark one, without any moon. From all the country round-in wagons and buggies, on foot and on horseback--came the delighted Whigs, brimful of joy and expected satisfaction.

The night was an excellent one to show off- a bright light, for the almanac was correct-there was no moon. The fire was applied to the shavings; and soon a bright blaze of fire was around the square; the jubilant Whigs cheered, and all seemed happy. But their joy was transient. As soon as the shavings and light wood burned down to the tar the light was absorbed by a suffocating smoke, and the square and the whole town were enveloped in it. Efforts were made to rekindle the tar by the addition of more fuel, but as the pine wood and shavings burned out the smoke became greater than ever. The Whigs were crestfallen; the Democrats who ventured out were elated. As if by a sudden impulse, every supporter of Van Buren that owned or could borrow a lantern of any kind put a lighted tallow candle in and went out to see what they called the "gloom ination." The fires had to be extinguished, ' and for days the smell of tar was in and around the town of Newark. The Whigs were the worstbored men ever seen in that region. The mere mention of the grand illumination acted as quickly as the sight of a red shawl does on a mad bull, exciting them to rage. But in the end the tables were turned, the biters were bitten.

The death of General Harrison, after being president one month, devolved the executive office on Vice-President Tyler. He was made the scapegoat for the violated promises of good times which came not.

Ohio in 1840 elected Thomas Corwin over Shannon for governor, by a clear majority of over sixteen thousand votes, an immense majority in

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 255

that day when the vote of Ohio was much less than half that which is now annually given.

In 1842 the same candidates for governor were again in the field, and Shannon beat Corwin by a plurality of nearly two thousand, and the Democracy from, what Governor Wood called, "benighted Ashtabula to intelligent Hamilton county," were uproariously happy. During the contest they worked to "right the wrongs of 1840 in 1842," and to their great surprise they were successful. Remembering the faux pas of the Whigs two years before, in their celebration at Newark, when their illumination was but a "gloomination," the Licking county Democracy declared their intention of . showing the silly Whigs how to do the thing right.

In the same public square the Democratic leaders had collected a large quantity of dry elm logs, from ten to fifteen feet long. These they had split in long strips. Procuring the longest pole they could get, they fastened a couple of slips of light timber at a distance from the bottom sufficient to allow the pyramid of elm sticks to reach it. Above they had empty tar barrels around the pole, the lower end resting on the intended pyramid. The barrels, as they were put on the pole, were filled with shavings, straw, etc., all well saturated with tar and turpentine-and then the pole, thus decorated, was, with much difficulty, raised to a perpendicular and the end firmly secured in the ground. The pyramid of dry elm was then made by placing the upper end of the sticks against the cross-pieces at the foot of the barrels, with barrels, shavings, and other combustibles .placed in its center and between the sticks, so as easily to be fired.

At the appointed hour; in the sight of thousands collected to see it, the mass was fired. hike the evening of the Whig celebration, the night was a fine one. Not a breath of air was to be felt. In a few moments the fire found its way through the barrels, which acted as a chimney, and the flame :shot upward, as a pillar of fire by night, until it almost seemed to reach the heavens. But the best laid plans "o' mice and men gang aft aglee." Just as it reached the highest point a breeze struck it, and the column of fire seemed gently to bend, until it finally wrapped the cupola of the court house, then one of the most costly in the State.

A panic swayed the crowd; for a moment men stood aghast, and a rush was made. The pyramid was torn down, and the pole with the barrels on it was promptly razed. The court house was saved, and with it, perhaps, other buildings, and that. ended the Democratic illumination by bon-fire. If the Whigs, two years before, were chagrined at their failure to illuminate, the Democrats were doubly so in 1842 at their success. The one almost smothered the town in tar-smoke; the other came near burning down the town to make a light. Terms were finally made between the parties. Each was to ignore in speech any mention of the ill-success of the other.

This manner of conducting a presidential campaign continued many years after 1840, though, perhaps, few were characterized with such intense excitement, bitterness of feeling and universal interest. Even yet the people are much given to bonfires and processions, cannon, music, pole-raising, etc., in the conduct of political campaigns; but it would seem as if they were growing less conservative in this respect, and more and more inclined to listen to speech-making, and to indulge in the quiet reading of newspapers, and the forming of .their opinions in less demonstrative and a more sober and sensible mariner. The campaigns are being conducted more and more on the principle of appeal to the judgment and higher intellectual faculties, rather than the passions and prejudices.

The advance in mail facilities, and the increase in post offices from time to time, well illustrates the growth of the county. During the first five. years after the first settlement of the county, Zanesville was the nearest post office. Newark was then made a post town, and some years thereafter a post office was established in Granville. A post office. Was established in Utica about the .year 1815. A weekly mail, carried on horseback, supplied these offices. A post office was established in Hanover at Chester Wells, and another between Newark and Utica, called Newton Mills. These were the principal offices before 1825, except those at Johnstown, Vandorn's, and Homer, numbering eight in all, which were chiefly supplied by the two mail routes, one crossing the county east and west, the other

256 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

north and south, run by two-horse, and sometimes four-horse stages, twice a week. After 1828 came the ponderous, fast-going four-horse coach, running daily at about seven miles per hour. Afterwards came the packets, and the pony express-now the principal mails are carried daily or several times a day, in railroad cars moving at the rate of thirty miles an hour. The post offices now number thirtyfive in all, there being one or more in almost every township of the county, so that probably not a man in Licking county lives more than five miles from a post office. ,

The prominent men of the county are thus mentioned by Hon. Isaac Smucker in his Centennial history; he forgets, in his modesty, to place his own honored name in the list

"It may not be amiss to give the names of some of those who commenced their career here during the first half and finished it during the last half of the century. Conspicuous among this class were Captain Bradley Buckingham, David Moore, Isaac Stadden, Colonel Robert Davidson, Rees Darlington, Benjamin Briggs, Major John Stewart, Colonel W. W. Gault, John Cunningham, esq., Stephen McDougal, Sereno Wright, major Elisha Warren, Judge Bancroft, William Hull, John Van Buskirk, Captain Samuel Elliott, William Gavitt, Captain Willard Warner, James Gillespie, James Holmes, Colonel William Spencer, Richard Lamson, Peter Schmucker, Amos H. Caffee and many others.

"To give a measure of completeness to this Centennial history of Licking county, I beg leave also to bring to notice some of the gentlemen who have most conspicuously identified themselves with our county during the latter half only of the Centennial period now closing. Prominent among the list given under this head are Jonathan Taylor, Joshua Mathiot and Daniel Duncan, who were all elected to Congress, as well as to other positions of honor and responsibility. Another trio of this class consisted of Israel Dille, Dr. J. N. Wilson and Lucius Case, all men of intelligence, extensive information-and talents, echo were largely influential in giving direction to public sentiment. They were original thinkers, zealous investigators, enthusiastic students. The taco first named pushed their invest igalions in the direction of philosophy'and the natural sciences, with diligence and a good degree of success. The tastes of the latter led him to the study of jurisprudence and political economy; hence he became prominent as a lawyer, and as an active and influential debater in the Constitutional convention of 1851-52. Conspicuous also among our latter-ltalf-century men was he who was familiarly called Sam. Wbite. He was at influential legislator for a time, and moreover attained to the highest reputation among us as a popular orator, and an un faltering friend of freedom! Colonel B. B. Taylor, too, for brief time as senator and political orator, filled a large space in the public eye. James Parker and James R. Stanherry also obtained distinction as public speakers, not only at the bar and before political assemblies, but also as grave and dignified senators. Amorig others of our modern legislators were Samuel D. King, George H. Flood, P. N. O'Bannon, Daniel Duncan, W. B. Woods, Charles Follett, Willard Warner, Dr. Walter B. Morris, R. B. Truman, George B. Smythe, John F. Follett, C. B. Giffin, William Parr, William Bell, J. B. Jones, J. W. Owens, W. D. Smith and others, who exerted a degree of influence as members of our State legislature.

"Among those of our citizens other than legislators who have 'done the State some service,' and acquired honorable distinction in other departments of the public service, or in the line of their own chosen pursuits, are Presidents Pratt, Going, Bailey, Hall, and Talbott, of Denison university; Judges Searle, Buckingham, Brumback, and Follett; W. D. Morgan, T. J. Davis, M. \I. Munson, L. B. Wing, L. B. Clark, Dr. J. R. Black, T. J. Anderson, Colonel William Spencer, William P. Kerr, J. W. Webb, C. H. Kibler, Rev. Ebenezer Buckingham, Rev. .Alexander Duncan. Dr. Edward Stanbery, Rev. H. M. Hervey, Rev. Isaac N. Walters, Dr. Daniel Marble, and mane others that might be named, including the still living former residents of Licking county, Samuel Park, esq., of Illinois, a voluminous and widely known writer on various subjects; Dr. Z. C. McElroy, of Zanesville, a strong, vigorous and original thinker, and an extensive contributor to the best medical journals of Europe and America; and Dr. T. B. Hood, of Washington city, echo made an honorable, widely extended, and well known reputation for himself while in the service of the medical department during the late rebellion, as well as since the close of the war, as an author, to the performance of his duties in the surgeon general's department of the Government.

"And I also avail myself of this occasion to make mention of other gentlemen who were natives of Licking county or residents of it in early life, that attained to a good degree of dirtinction in other sections of our country, both in military and civil life. And first of those whose military services brought them prominently before the country I name General Samuel R. Curtis, General William S. Rosecrans, General Charles Griffin, General B. W. Brice, General W. D. Hamilton, General Charles I R. Woods, General Willard Warner, General William B. Woods. Of eminent civilians those whose names occur to me at this moment, were Horatio J. Harris, a senator in Indiana, and a United Mates district attorney in Mississippi; Ed. Royce, who attained to the position of President of the Republic of Liberia; James F. Wilson, long a distinguished member of Congress from Iowa; James B. Howell, a United States Senator from Iowa; General Willard Warner, a member of the United States Senate from Alabama; Hon. William B. Wood.,, a judge of the Federal courts in Louisiana and other southern States; and George H. Flood, American minister to the Republic of Texas; "Johnny Clem," a favorite orderly of General Thomas and now an officer in the regular army, also acquired a national reputation as the youngest and smallest soldier in the Union army, as well as for gallant conduct. Colonel W. H. Hollister, too, has acquired wide-spread fame as one of the largest of American land-owners and stock raisers. He is a native of Licking county, now a citizen of California. Thomas Jones, the sculptor, and Rev: Dr. Rosecrans, the popular Roman Catholic bishop, are also entitled to mention in this connection, the latter being a native, and the former a resident in early life, of Licking county. Mr. Jones has been a resident of Cincinnati for many years, and has a national reputation. Bishop Rosecrans ryas an honored citizen of Columbus, who enjoyed the confidence of the entire community."

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CHAPTER XXXI.

THE OHIO CANAL.

LICKING SUMMIT THE PLACE OF BEGINNING-THE OPENING CELEBRATION-LOAN OF FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS NEGOTIATEDCOMMENCEMENT OF THE WORK-THE FIRST CONTRACTS-THE GRANVILLE FEEDER-THE LENGTH AND COURSE OF THE CANAL-ITS REVENUE AND MANAGEMENT.

"We make of Nature's giant powers

The slaves of human Art."

-Whittier.

A LARGE majority of the people of Ohio know but little at present about the great Ohio canal, and the interest taken in it at the commencement of j the work. It was considered one of the greatest undertakings of the age, and indeed, was the beginning of that grand series of internal improvements which has greatly assisted in placing Ohio among the foremost States of the Union. The following history of this great work is taken mostly from the writings of Colonel John Noble, one of .the contractors in the work, and from those of William Wing, esq., deceased. Mr. Wing was also a contractor on the canal, and died in Columbus, Ohio, February 13, 1878, in his seventy-ninth year. He was an honorary member of the Licking County Pioneer society, and contributed liberally to its historical records. He was well versed in the pioneer history of Central Ohio, and has left behind him writings of much historical value.

As the canal. had its beginning in Licking county, it is eminently proper that its history should appear in this work.

Before the building of the canal this county had no outlet for produce, except by wagons to the lake, or by wagons to the Muskingum river, and thence by boat to New Orleans. The country was full of produce for which there was, no market. Ham was worth three cents per pound; eggs, four cents per dozen; flour, one dollar per hundred; whiskey, twelve and a half cents per gallon, and other things proportionately cheap.

The commissioners appointed by the legislature to carry on the work appointed judge D. S. Bates, an experienced engineer of the State of New York, and in their wisdom, made "Licking Summit," in this county, the place of beginning. They then gave notice to all concerned throughout Ohio and the adjoining States, that a commencement of the excavation would be made on the fourth of July, 1825.

Samuel Forrer, of Dayton, was appointed principal acting engineer; John Forrer, local engineer on the Summit, and he immediately prepared a few rods of ground, where the line of the canal would pass through a field, for the public demonstration.

The invited guests included many of the notables of the State and nation, among whom were Governor De Witt Clinton, of New York; Messrs. Rathburn and Lord; General Edward King, of Chillicothe; General Sanderson, of Lancaster; Governor Morrow, of this State; Ex-Governor Worthington; Hon. Thomas Ewing, who was the orator of the day, and many others. Governor Clinton was expected to throw out the first spadeful of earth. This gentleman had proven himself the great friend of internal improvements, having been the principal promoter in the building of the Erie canal in his own State.

A correspondence between leading friends of the enterprise resulted in the appointment of a , committee to carry out the wishes of the commissioners. This committee consisted of judge Wilson and Alexander Holmes, of Licking, and Judge Elnathan Schofield, one of the earliest surveyors in this section, and John . Noble, of Fairfield county. This committee, at their first meeting, engaged, Gottleib Steinman, a hotel keeper of Lancaster, to furnish. a dinner, upon the ground, for the invited guests; and as many more. as would

258 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

pay for a dinner ticket, at one dollar and fifty cents a ticket. This proved to be a losing business for Steinman. It happened to be wet two or three days before the Fourth, and as there were no houses near the site of the entertainment, rough booths were constructed in the woods; tables and seats were made of plank, hauled from saw-mills at a considerable distance from the place. All the fancy part of the dinner, including pastry, etc., were prepared at Lancaster, twenty-two miles south. The entire preparation was made under the most unfavorable circumstances. The roasts and broils were prepared on the ground. The Fourth opened fine and clear; the dinner was good, and enjoyed by all that partook; but of the thousands who attended, many prepared for the emergency by bringing a hamper of provisions with them.

The ceremonies began according to programme. Governor Clinton received the spade, thrust it into the soil, and raised the first spadeful of earth, amid the most enthusiastic cheers of the assembled thousands.

This earth was placed in what they called a canal wheelbarrow, and the spade was passed to Governor Morrow, a statesman and a farmer. He sank it to its full depth, and raised the second spadeful. Then commenced a strife as to who should raise the next. Captain Ned. King, commanding the infantry company present from Chillicothe, raised the third; then some of the guests of Governor Clinton's company threw in some dirt, and the wheelbarrow being full, Captain King wheeled it to the bank. It is impossible to describe the scene of excitement and confusion that accompanied this ceremony. The people shouted themselves hoarse. The feeling was so great that tears fell from many eyes.

The stand for the speaking was in the woods. The crowd was so great that. one company of cavalry was formed in a hollow square, around the back and sides of the stand. The flies, after three days' rain, were so troublesome, that the horses kept up a constant stamping, much to the annoyance of the crowd. Caleb Atwater, the noted antiquarian, was present, and made the following remark afterward at Lancaster: "I suppose it was all right to have the horses in front of the speaker's stand, for they cannot read, and we can."

Governor Clinton and friends, Governor Morrow, Messrs. Rathburn and Lord, with many others were invited to Lancaster, where they were handsomely entertained by the citizens. Rathburn and Lord were the men who negotiated the loan of four hundred thousand dollars for Ohio; and the Lancaster bank was the first to make terms with the fund commissioners to receive and disburse the money.

The wages for work on the canal were eight dollars for twenty-six working days, or thirty and. three-fourth cents per day, from sunrise to sunset. The hands were fed well and lodged in shanties, and received their regular "jiggers" of whiskey the first four months.

Micajah T. Williams and Alfred Kelley were the acting commissioners, and proved themselves faithful public servants. They were often passing up and down the line, and saw the evil effects of the "jigger" of whiskey. They left notice at each contract station that they would not pay estimates monthly if the contractors furnished whiskey on the work-an order that caused much grumbling among a certain class of the men, but it was promptly obeyed by the contractors. A jigger was small, not a gill in measure, but fifty or sixty men taking four of these per day-at sunrise, at ten.. o'clock, at noon, at four. o'clock, and before supper-would exhaust a barrel of whiskey in four or five days. Men from Fairfield, Hocking, Gallia and Meigs counties, and all the country around, came to work on the canal. Farmers and their sons wanted to earn this amount of wages, as it was cash-a very scarce article-and they must have it to pay taxes and other cash expenses.

Before the canal was finished south of the Summit, the north end from Dresden to Cleveland was in operation; and wheat sold on the canal at seventyfive cents per bushel. Corn rose in proportion, and the enemies of the canal, all of whom were .large land holders, or large tax payers, began to open their eyes. One of these, a Mr. Shoemaker, of Pickaway county, below Tarlton, was a rich land owner, and had opposed the building of the canal, as it would increase his tax and then be a failure. This gentleman, for such he was, said that his boys, with one yoke of oxen and a farm cart, hauled potatoes to Circleville and sold them for forty cents

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 259

per bushel until they had more money than sufficed to pay all his taxes for a year. This was an article for which, before this, there was no market, and he was now a convert to improvement. Wheat raised from twenty-five cents to one dollar per bushel before the canal was finished.

The contracts for building the canal were made soon after breaking the ground at Licking Summit. The first at Newark embraced all the section from the point of breaking ground, south, including the embankment of the Licking Summit reservoir to the deep cut, so called, and there was one section at the south end of the cut let, about, this time, to Colonel Noble. At these lettings, statements were posted up for the information of bidders, of the quantity and different kinds of work in each section, and also their estimates of the value of doing the same. Bidders from New York were present, and obtained some of the heaviest jobs-as the reservoir job and some others. The price of excavation and embankment was from nine to thirteen cents per cubic yard; grubbing and clearing, per chain, two to ten dollars, according to circumstances. But little masonry was let in this division; and the work here was let about ten per cent. below the engineer's estimates. , Colonel Noble probably took his contract on the engineer's estimates, as it was deemed necessary that that section should be finished, in order to afford drainage when the deep cut should be put under contract. It is said that the colonel was at considerable expense in procuring machinery to pull down the large elm trees, of which there were many on the section, and that the attempt to get them out in that way was not a success. His contract, therefore, did not prove a profitable one.

The next letting at Newark included the deep cut, so called, and the South Fork feeder. The length of this cut was about three miles. At the deepest place it was about thirty-four feet, descending gradually in either direction to about eight feet at either end, so that it would average about twenty-four feet the whole length. It was divided into two sections, and the whole was let at fifteen cents per cubic yard; the north half to Scoville, Hatha way & Co., of New York, and the south half Osborn, Rathbum & Co., of Columbus. The first named party sub-let their job to Hampson & Parkinson, of Muskingum county, who carried it on for a time and abandonded it at very considerable loss, it is said. The other party, under the firm name of Osborn, Williams & Co., prosecuted their work to final completion, and undertook the unfinished part of the north section; but they obtained, at different times, of the commissioners, an advance on the price originally agreed upon, so that at the close they were paid about thirty cents a yard for the work. Probably the average was twenty-five cents per yard cost to the State.

It is somewant singular, that on the highest part of the cut there was a swamp of a few acres, where the water stood in the spring of the year, and as it was raised by heavy rains, the water flowed from the swamp north to the waters Of the Licking, and south to the tributaries of the Scioto. The feeder above mentioned, being mostly common work, was let at low rates, probably below the estimates.

The next work was also let at Newark. It commenced at the north end of Licking Summit, thence northward to Nashport, including all the heavy work, and the dam at the lower end of the Licking Narrows. The letting embraced some twelve to fifteen locks, two aqueducts and culverts, with the usual excavation and embankment. The masonry of the locks was bid in at from two dollars to two dollars and fifty cents per perch of sixteen and one-half cubic feet, which included a lock finished, except the excavation of the pit and embankment around the lock. The other masonry was let at proportionate rates, and the other work went very low. There was great competition. The next letting was at Irville, in Muskingum county; commencing at the north end of the above described work, extending north to Roscoe, upon which there was considerable heavy work let at about the same rates as above, competition being no less.

The next work was let at Lancaster, commencing at the south end of Colonel Noble's job, thence southward to Circleville. This. included some heavy work, also. There were some twenty or - twenty-five locks, a few culverts and aqueducts, a o dam at Bloomfield, and about the usual amount of t earth work. All were let at low prices; the first & six locks south of Licking Summit at three dollars

260 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

and fifteen cents a perch; the face stone were hauled from the neighborhood of Lancaster, an average distance of eight miles. Lower down, about Carrol, Lockport and Winchester, the locks were about two dollars and fifty cents a perch. The light locks, just above the junction of the main canal with the Columbus feeder, were let at j three dollars and twenty-five cents a .perch.

At these prices it required the closest economy to do the work without loss. Some of the jobs awarded were abandoned and afterwards re-let at better prices. The price of labor was very low. Wages did not rise above ten dollars per month for four or five years. There was no "eight hour system;" the men worked all day. Very few Irish or other foreigners had arrived at that time, and the work was mostly done by native Americans.

It was a great undertaking for the State to build the canal; and although its working has never paid the interest on its cost, yet, it has, without doubt, paid for itself many times over by the increased wealth it brought to the State, and the great increase in values of every marketable thing, covering a large extent of country.

The Granville feeder extended from Licking Summit to Raccoon creek, at Paige's woollen factory, about a mile and a quarter southeast of Granville. In order to have navigation as near Granville as possible, the commissioners agreed to make the feeder navigable for boats as far as Paige's factory, provided the people of Granville would make it navigable from thence to the bridge at the Lancaster road. This they agreed to do. It involved considerable expense, as a dam, guard-lock, lift lock and about a half mile of canal had to be built to render it navigable.

A warehouse was erected at the head of navigation, and a boat built there by the Troy and Ohio line, under the superintendence of a Mr. Wallace. This is believed to have been the first canal boat built south of Cleveland.

The feeder was used for navigation until the Granville furnace was abandoned in 1838, since which it has become dilapidated and out of repair.

The "Grand Canal," as it was first called, passes entirely across the State, connecting the waters of Lake Erie with those of the Ohio river. It is three hundred and six miles long, exclusive of the lateral canal to Columbus, eleven miles, and the Dresden side cut, together with slack-water navigation to Zanesville, seventeen miles more, making in all three hundred and thirty-four miles, including its various windings. It commences at Cleveland and passes up the Cuyahoga river to the old portage, between it and the Tuscarawas river; by the city of Akron and over to the Tuscarawas, down whose valley it follows to Massillon, Dover, New Philadelphia, Newcomerstown, Caldersburgh, Coshocton and Dresden, where it leaves the Tuscarawas, or rather the Muskingum as the river is called below Coshocton, and takes a southwesterly direction, passing Nashport, and striking the Licking river just beyond the eastern line of Licking county, passing up that river to Newark; thence up the South fork to Hebron, Deep Cut, Baltimore and Carrol, reaching the Scioto river just within the limits of Pickaway county, eleven miles south of Columbus. From this point it follows the Scioto valley to the Ohio river, passing the towns of Bloomfield, Circleville, Westfall, Chillicothe and Piketon to Portsmouth. It is owned and controlled by the. State, and is under the immediate supervision of the board of public works, who appoint all its officers and have entire charge of all its affairs. It is divided into three divisions, each of which is in charge of a chief engineer, who looks after repairs and other matters and makes a yearly report to the board. Collectors are stationed at various places.along the canal, whose business is to collect tolls and water rent. A specified amout of toll is paid by those who run the boats, both upon the boat and cargo, the rate depending upon the value or quality of the cargo. It varies from two or three mills to two or three cents per mile. The boats are owned by private individuals, who have the use of the canal by paying the tolls. Before the days of railroads these boats did a through business, and some of them were "passenger packets," which were lightly and neatly built, and arranged for carrying passengers, and made much quicker time than! the freight boats. Since the advent of railroads, however, this class of boats has, of course, disappeared, and those carrying freight now do only a local business, the railroads doing all . through business. The boats

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 261

will carry from fifty to eighty tons, and draw from two to three feet of water. Their principal business now is to transport coal, wheat, building stone and any freight that does not require quick transportation.

In 1861 the canal was leased to a company for ten years, and at the end of that time the lease was renewed for ten years, but the company abandoned the lease in 1878, the State taking possession again in May, 1879. For several years prior to leasing it the canal had been a heavy yearly expense to the State, the receipts falling much below the. expenditures; since taking possession again in 1879, however, the receipts have largely exceeded the expenditures, and the State, probably for the first time in the history of this enterprise, is now making money out of it.

CHAPTER XXXII.

RAILROADS.

SANDUSKY, MANSFIELD, AND NEWARK-CENTRAL OHIO-BALTIMORE A\D OHIO-PAN HANDLE-THE STRAITSVILLE ROAD--OHIO CENTRAL.

"The mothers ran out with their children about,

From every log cabin they hail;

The wood-chopper he stood delighted to see

The law-makers ride on a rail.

The horses and cattle, as onward we rattle,

Were never so frightened before."

THERE are four railroads centering in the city of Newark, but as three of them are at present controlled by one corporation (the Baltimore & Ohio) the number is practically reduced to two-the Baltimore & Ohio and the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati & St. Louis; the latter better known as the "Pan Handle." Three of these roads were completed to Newark between the years 1852 and 1855; half a century after the town was laid out.

The Sandusky, Mansfield &. Newark railroad was the first one completed to Newark. A portion of this .road was one of the first built in Ohio-the northern portion. It extended, when completed, from Sandusky City to Newark, a distance of one hundred and sixteen and one-half miles. This road (now a part of the Baltimore & Ohio) has had more charters, amendments, consolidations, reorganizations and adjustments than any in Ohio. It probably never paid expenses, unless it does so under its present management. Very few roads running due north and south, as does - this one, have paid for the building. The great travel and carrying business of this country seems to be east and west, and generally only roads built in conformity with this law, put money in the pockets of the stockholders. The germ of this road sprang into life between Monroeville and Sandusky City, and was chartered March 9, 1835, under the name of the Monroeville & Sandusky City railway. At that early day immense freight wagons were doing the carying trade for the country, and Lake Erie was the great outlet for grain and produce for the interior of Ohio. Pork, wheat, whiskey, furs, peltry, and everything else then produced in Ohio, were wagoned to the lake and shipped on vessels for Buffalo and points further east. Portland (Sandusky City) became a great market, or at least, a very important point for Ohio people, and a few enterprising men thought by building a railroad from this point south, they could get this entire freight business from their southern terminal point. When their road was first built wooden rails were used, and the cars were small box concerns, on wooden wheels, and were hauled by horses from Monroeville to Sandusky. It was not long, however, until steam-power superceded horse-power, but for a longtime the road bed was "wooden,' that is, the cars run on wooden rails upon which was fastened a piece of strap iron.

On the-twelfth of March, 1836, a charter was

262 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

obtained for a road from Mansfield to New Haven. The building of this road interfered somewhat with the business of the first road, and yet was of but little value without the co-operation of the first; hence a plan of consolidation was soon agreed upon, the gap between New Haven and Monroeville filled, and the road became one continuous line from Mansfield to Sandusky City, a distance of fifty-four miles. It was then called the Mansfield & Sandusky City railroad.

The Columbus & Lake Erie road was chattered March 12, 1845. This was Newark's first railroad, and extended from Newark to Mansfield, a distance of sixty-two and one-half miles, connecting there with the Mansfield & Sandusky City road, thus opening up direct communication with the lake.

Another corporation, the Huron & Oxford road, extended from Huron to the line of the Monroeville & Sandusky City road, a distance of eight miles, and was chartered March 12, 1845.

Each of these companies had stock subscriptions and executed separate mortgages. November 23, 1853, the three companies consolidated under the name of the Sandusky, Mansfield & Newark railroad company.

The wooden road-bed is thus described:

"The construction of the road-bed was solid, if a multiplicity of timbers could make it so. First a mud-sill was laid down lengthwise of the road; strong cross-ties were then spiked on this mud-sill; into these 'gains' were cut, and these received the wooden rails, sawed to fit them. These mils were about five inches wide at the top, broadening at the bottom where they entered the gains, and were about seven inches high. On these the 'ribbon' was spiked, being a strip of hard wood, about two and a half inches wide, by one inch thick, and on this the strap-iron mil was laid. Spikes were driven through the strap-mil and the ribbon, into the large wooden mil beneath; the heads of the spikes being sunken into 'eyes' in the straprails, leasing a smooth surface for the wheels. This superstructure required fully three times as much timber as the present system of ties and iron mils."

About a year before the consolidation of the three roads forming the Sandusky, Mansfield & Newark road, the Columbus & Lake Erie road was finished to Newark. This was one of the greatest events in the history of this city; secon only to the opening of the canal.

The building of this road had been agitate nearly twenty years. As early as 1834-5, meetings were held by the citizens for the purpose of organization, and to obtain a survey of the route. It was a mighty undertaking, however; the country was yet sparsely settled and the people too poor to engage in such an enterprise, and it was not until ten years later that a charter was obtained, and nearly another decade before the road was finally finished for the passage of trains over the entire line.

Under the corporate name of Sandusky, Mansfield & Newark railroad, it was operated but a short time, with little better financial result than under the separate corporations, notwithstanding a new and consolidated mortgage was made and bonds issued. Proceedings were soon commenced in the Erie Common Pleas court, to bring all the creditors into court and sell the road to extinguish the several liabilities. It was found that the value of the road and property would pay but a small portion of the liabilities of the several corporations, and a plan of capitalization and reorganization was proposed and submitted to the stockholders and creditors, for an adjustment of the stock and a compromise of the liabilities of the company.

A large number of stockholders and creditors of the several companies had not converted their securities into the consolidated company, and some that had were unwilling to accept the terms of readjustment, and on the eighth of April, 1856, the legislature passed an act to aid in carrying out this adjustment, entitled "an act for the relief of the stockholders and creditors of the Sandusky, Mansfield & Newark railroad company."

Under this act and by virtue of a decree of the court in the case referred to, the road and property were sold and the company reorganized; and under the act of April 4, 1863, the directors of the old consolidated company conveyed, by deed, the franchise, or right to be a corporation, to the reorganized company.

A large majority of the stockholders and creditors accepted the terms of the new arrangement and surrendered the old securities.

By the terms of adjustment a large amount of the old stock and debts was sunk, and the remainder passed into new hands. Since the reorganization, the Huron branch, as it was called,

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 263

being the old Huron and Oxford road, has been abandoned and the rails removed.

Up to the time of the transfer to the Baltimore & Ohio road, this road had not, probably, been able to pay a dividend to its stockholders; and often was not able to pay its interest promptly, but managed to maintain the road and rolling stock in good condition. It had always been a favorite project with this company to extend their line by building a road south from Newark into the coal region of Perry county, but nothing was done in that direction, and February 13, 1869, a contract was entered into by and between the Sandusky, Mansfield & Newark, the Ohio Central and the Baltimore & Ohio railroads, whereby the first named came under the control of the last named, and is now operated by that extensive corporation. The second railroad that favored Newark with its presence, was the Central Ohio. It was not much behind the Sandusky, Mansfield & Newark, having been finished to Newark in 1854. The charter for the building of this road was granted February 8;.1847; to run from Columbus, Ohio, through Newark and Zanesville to such a point on the Ohio river as the directors might select. The work was commenced in June, 1850, on that portion between Columbus and Newark, and rapidly pushed forward. Those were hard times, however, for building railroads; money was hard to get, and the new road labored continually under financial embarrassment; and before it could be finished and equipped; it was overtaken by-insolvency. In May, 1859, it was placed in the hands of a receiver, and in that condition operated until its final sale and reorganization -or-capitalization in 1865. By the terms of reorganization concessions were made by all classes of creditors and stockholders, by which nearly four millions of dollars of stock and debt were sunk. .

The road runs in an easterly direction from Columbus to the Ohio river at Bellaire, a distance of one hundred and thirty-seven miles, thirty-three miles (that part between Newark and Columbus), of which is partly owned by the "Pan Handle" road, that company having purchased an undivided half in 1863, for seven hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.

There are five tunnels on this road, east of Zanesville, with an aggregate length of one thousand eight hundred and seventy feet.

November 21, 1866, the company reorganized, entered into a contract for operating the road, fixtures and equipment, with the Baltimore & Ohio railroad company, for a term of twenty years, subject to termination in five years at the option of either party upon notice; the Baltimore & Ohio, among other things, agreeing to pay for the first five years as rent, quarter-yearly, the balance of gross earnings and receipts from the road after deducting sixty-five per centum thereof, and sixty per centum after five years, agreeing and guaranteeing that the amount to be paid shall not be less than one hundred and sixty-six thousand dollars for each year. This contract went into effect December 1, 1866.

The Baltimore & Ohio road which yet operates this Central Ohio, and also the Sandusky, Mansfield & Newark, has grown from insignificant proportions to one of the largest trunk lines in the country. This road was commenced in 1830, its object being to open a line of communication with the west, and the undertaking was looked upon at that day as one of almost unparalleled magnitude. The following items in the early history of this road would, doubtless, cause a ripple of humor in the minds of some of the railroad kings of to-day. In July, 1832, the following appears in print:

"Many passengers and large quantities of freight pass daily on the railroad to and from Baltimore, to the Point of Rocks on the Potomac, at which latter place a new village is being built very rapidly. The entire journey 'out and home', one hundred and forty miles, is now made in seventeen continuous hours, giving ample time to view the Point of Rocks, one of the most agreeable- excursions that can. be found in the country, and on many accounts highly interesting."

Securing control of the Central Ohio in 1866, and of the Sandusky, Mansfield & Newark in 1869, its way to Lake Erie was open. Not satisfied with these acquisitions; wishing an outlet to Chicago and the great Northwest, and not being able to get control of any road in that direction, it boldly advanced the capital, purchased the right of way, and built a road to Chicago, from a point in northern Ohio on its line nearest to that place. This it accomplished in 1873, pushing a road through in a bee line from Chicago Junction, in Huron county, Ohio, to Chicago. This accom-

264 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

plished, and it had a through line to Chicago from Baltimore and Washington, and was in a position to compete with the other large trunk lines of the country. The business on the Central Ohio and the Sandusky, Mansfield & Newark has largely increased since these roads passed under control of the Baltimore & Ohio. A single track carries the trains of this road and the Pan Handle between Newark and Columbus.

The Pittsburgh, Columbus & Cincinnati railroad constitutes the line from Columbus, Ohio, to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and was the third road to pass through Newark, following closely, however, the other two. It is familiarly known as the "Pan Handle route" so called from the narrow neck, or section, of West Virginia extending up and along the Ohio river, across which the Pittsburgh & Steubenville road (being a part of this, line) passes. The road runs in an eastwardly direction from Columbus to Pittsburgh, one hundred and ninety-three miles, and is the shortest and most direct line between these two cities. That part of the road lying in Ohio is one hundred and fifty miles long, from Columbus to Steubenville.

The Steubenville & Indiana railroad company was chartered February 24, 1848, and under its charter and amendments thereto commenced work in November, 1851, on the eastern division, opening the road for traffic from Steubenville to Newark, in April, 1855. This line, with a branch from the main line to Cadiz, eight miles in length, constituted the road of the Steubenville S Indiana railroad company. The delay in building the road from Steubenville to Pittsburgh, the want of. proper connections east or west, and the unfinished and poorly equipped condition of the road, gave insufficient earnings to pay interest and current expenses; the company became greatly- embarrassed and fell in arrears to laborers and for supplies, and was annoyed and perplexed with suits and judgments which it was unable to fund or pay, and, finally, proceedings were commenced in the court of common pleas, of Harrison county, Ohio, for the foreclosure of mortgages and sale o the road, and Thomas L. Jewett was appointed receiver on the second day of September, 1859. On the first of October, 1864, the receiver, on behalf of the company, purchased an undivided half of that part of the Central Ohio between Newark and Columbus, as before stated, for seven hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, thus giving the company an independent outlet and direct communication with railroads running west from Columbus.

Meantime the work on the Steubenville & Pittsburgh road was rapidly pushed forward to completion, and on the first of October, 1865, the receiver concluded an arrangement with the lessees of that road for operating the whole line from Columbus to Pittsburgh. The road received the name of Pittsburgh, Cincinnati & St. Louis, .and December 28, 1867, it was reorganized under the name of the Pan Handle. Upon completion it was leased to the Pennsylvania railroad company, by which it is now operated. The construction and equipment of this road cost, in round numbers, twenty million dollars. This corporation has just now (December, 1880) completed a beautiful brick depot building and a freight house at Newark. The freight house is of brick and stone, is very large, and both buildings are very substantial.

What is known as the Straitsville railroad, was projected as early as 1854. It was intended to be j operated in connection with the Sandusky, Mansfield & Newark road, to tap the coal-fields of Perry county. Moore & Company were the contractors, and the construction of the road-bed was pushed forward to completion, or nearly so. Some of the bridges were built and timber for many others purchased, when the enterprise was overtaken with financial disaster and the work suspended. It remained in this condition nearly twenty years. Those who thought of the old road bed at all-and no doubt there were stockholders across whose minds flashed occasional recollections of money sunk there in supposed the project abandoned forever. However, during the "flush" times succeeding the war, when a good many people ran wild after the almighty dollar, a "coal" company was formed in Newark, at the head of which were J. L. Birkey, William Shields, Lewis f Evans, and some other well-known active business men. They "purchased" a large amount of coal lands in. Perry county, borrowed money largely, and proposed making themselves and

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 265

everybody else rich in a few days-or years. In order to get transportation for the coal with which they proposed to supply the United States, they revivified and put new life into the old railroad project. With commendable perseverance and industry they completed this road to Straitsville about 1875, beginning the work probably in 1873, or just before the beginning of the great financial panic. When this great coal scheme burst, and scattered fragments like a bomb-shell, a good many people in Licking county were hurt, and the old wounds are not yet entirely healed. One good it accomplished, however, was the completion of the Straitsville road, thus enabling Newark to get cheaper coal. Soon after completion, this road passed into the hands of the Baltimore & Ohio company, which still continues to operate it.

In 1870 a railroad was projected from Toledo to Pomeroy, on the Ohio. It was intended to tap the coal-fields in the southern part of the State. It was called the Atlantic & Lake Erie; General Thomas Ewing was president. It met the usual fate of new roads; struggling along about nine years, when (in 1879) it was sold for debt, and passed into new hands. During these years the road-bed had been mostly constructed, the work being pushed vigorously all along the line. At present (December, r 88o), the larger part of the road from Fostoria, south, is finished, so that construction trains are passing over it, and it is called by the new company "The Ohio Central." It passes through the counties of Lucas, Wood, Seneca, Wyandot, Crawford, Marion, Morrow, Knox, Licking, Fairfield, Perry, Athens, and Meigs. Erom the south it enters Licking county near Licking Summit, passing north along the canal to within two or three miles of Newark, when it makes a bend west, passing through Granville, Alexandria and Johnstown, leaving the county at the northwest corner. Its line is generally through a very rich farming country.

CHAPTER XXXIII..

AGRICULTURE.

THE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES OF 1831 AND 1848-AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS.

"Henceforth to labor's chivalry

Be knightly honors paid;

For nobler than the sword's shall be

The sickle's accolade.

"Lay all the bloom of gardens there

And there the orchard fruits;

Bring golden grain from sun and air,

From earth her goodly roots."

-Whittier.

HE first Licking county agricultural society was formed in 1832. General Thomas W. Wilson was elected president, and Israel Dille, secretary. The society held a fair every year on some out-lots or on .lands adjacent to Newark, the above named officers continuing to act as late as 1838, and probably later. The late General Lucius Smith and the late E. S. Woods served this first society as treasurer during a portion, at least, if no during the whole time .that. it .continued .to hold annual fairs, which was, as above stated, certainly as late as 1838. The records of 1834 show that the former was treasurer then. Israel Dille, esq., delivered addresses at the fairs in 1833 and 1834.

1837.-The list of the premiums awarded at the fifth annual fair held on the ninth and tenth days of October, 1837, aggregated only ninety-nine dollars and -fifty cents. Five dollars was the largest premium awarded to any' one person, very few receiving even that small sum, and all were paid in salt spoons, dessert spoons, tea spoons, sugar tongs, sauce ladles, cream ladles, butter knives and the like.

Rev. William Wylie, Dr. John J. Brice, Colonel

266 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

James Parker, and Mr. H. S. Sprague, highly respectable gentlemen, representing the clerical, medical, military, legal, and artisan-mercantile professions, were appointed a sort of a committee ' at large on miscellaneous articles, who reported in writing to the extent of two or three newspaper squares, that they had, "in pursuance of the duty assigned them, examined all the articles coming within the range of their inspection, and asked leave. to present to the favorable consideration of the society, and through it to the public the following articles," to wit: A tin reflecter, made by Isaac Smucker, to whom was awarded a cream ladle valued at one dollar and fifty cents; and to E. R. Phelps they awarded a salt spoon, north a dollar, for a turning machine. The only other miscellaneous article offered was a "power press," made by E. S. Scripture, who, however, obtained no premium, but the committee spoke well of it as a "simple, cheap, and durable machine, well adapted to the making of cider and cheese, and anything ; else in which the application of power or pressure is required." The committee recommended a ' discretionary premium, but the society awarded none, at least none appears in the list of premiums, ` which occupies half a column of the Licking Ohio Democrat. The editor of said paper (Mr. Clark Dunham), of date November 15, 1837, says "the fair went off with its usual eclat, and that he was pleased to see that interest taken in the society, which the good it is annually accomplishing, renders it worthy of receiving. The society, during the five years in which it has been in operation, has exerted a very beneficial influence upon the farming interest, which may be seen in the improvement in stock, particularly in cattle." Addresses were delivered at this fair by Hon. Israel Dille and by Robert H. Caffee, esq., a young lawyer who had just been admitted to the bar, son of the late Amos H. Caffee, esq., one of our most prominent citizens. The succeeding issue of the Democrat contains those addresses, Mr. Dille's occupying more than four columns of tire paper, and Mr. Caffee's more than two columns. Both addresses are yell written and instructive.

1838.-The fair for 1838 was held November 1st, the premiums awarded amounting to eighty-six dollars, only three of them being five dollar premiums. Basil Beall, Horace Wolcott and T. Morris were the three lucky ones. Mr. Beall, for raising ninety-five bushels of corn per acre; Mr. Wolcott, for raising thirty-nine and one-half bushels of wheat per acre; and Mr. Morris, for exhibiting the best bull.

Interest in the society was evidently on the wane. The premiums were generally smaller than heretofore, the aggregate of awards amounting to less in dollars or spoons than the previous year; and the list of premiums awarded was somewhat reduced in number. Mr. Dille, the secretary, in remarking officially upon the fair, admitted that the articles presented were not of so varied a character as at former exhibitions, yet he insisted "that as a fair, it was very creditable to our county, and tended to prove that the influence of the society had been highly beneficial, and that the blight of the season had been baffled in some measure, by industry and skill."

At the fair in 1838, it was resolved to hold a meeting of the members of the Licking County Agricultural society, at the court house, in Newark, on the first Monday of December next, to appoint delegates to meet at Columbus, with delegates from other counties in the State, for the purpose of forming a State agricultural society, a measure that had been recommended by the directors of the Licking county society, on the eighth of October, and which had met with a favorable response in many portions of the State. This meeting was held in pursuance of the foregoing resolution, on the day named, and Hon. Israel Dille, General Thomas W-. Wilson, and Judge Levi J. Haughty were appointed to represent Licking count- in the State convention at Columbus, held on the nineteenth and twentieth days of December. It was a numerous meeting, in which all sections of the State were well represented, and a State agricultural society was organized, in which the three above named delegates took an active part, Mr. Dille being appointed one of the vice-presidents, and a member of the executive committee, and General Wilson and Judge Haughey were among those chosen directors.

The instrumentality of the society in taking the preliminary steps looking to the establishment of a State agricultural society, was its principal achievement in 1838. Its revenues were small,

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 267

exceedingly small; the number of its members was small; its exhibitors were small in number; its premiums were small in amount, and awarded to a small number of exhibitors; the attendants at its fairs were small in number; indeed, it was the "day of small things" with it from beginning to end; nevertheless it served a valuable purpose and made itself efficient for good as was manifest in our improved and constantly improving stock, and in the better culture of the farms of our county. How long the society continued to hold annual fairs after the one above named, held in 1838, it is impossible to state with certainty. But it is known that the annual fairs were omitted for a number of years before the organization of the present society, which has held its thirty-third annual fair, and which was established in 1848. In brief, the original society of x832 died some years before the organization of the present very flourishing society, in 1848, but just when it "ceased to be" is not known; but it certainly was between the years 1838 and 1848. It had its day, served its generation well in a small way, accomplished some good, and died, probably a victim of the political tornado of 1840.

The present Licking County Agricultural society was organized in 1848. The preliminary steps for its organization were taken at their monthly meeting in January, 1848, by the Madison Township Farmers' club, which, on motion of James H. Moore, appointed a committee of. three to prepare an address in favor of the encouragement of agriculture by the establishment of a county agricultural society. The committee, which consisted of judge William O'Bannon, David Smith, esq., and the secretary of the club, Mr. B. F. Wheeler, acted promptly and their address was adopted by the club, and published in the Newark Advocate of February 5, 1848, accompanied by some favorable editorial remarks. The address concluded with a resolution calling upon the farmers of Licking county to meet on the ensuing fourth day of March, at the court house, in Newark, for the purpose of forming themselves into an association for the advancement of the interests of agriculturalists in the county. The proposed meeting was held accordingly, its officers being General Jonathan Taylor, president; Judge O'Bannon, vice-president; and Mr. William S. Wright, secretary.

Thirty-three persons present at that meeting having manifested a wish to organize a county agricultural-society, it was on motion of David Smith, esq., resolved to appoint a committee of five gentlemen to report a constitution and by-laws for the government of said society, about to be formed; whereupon David Smith, esq., General Thomas W. Wilson, Henry C. Taylor, James H. Moore, and Major Elisha Warren were appointed said committee, who reported a constitution and by-. laws, which were adopted by the meeting. The organization of the society was then completed by the election of officers, Thomas W. Wilson being elected president; Henry C. Taylor, vice-president; Israel Dille, secretary; E. S. Woods, treasurer, and Elisha Warren, P. N. O'Bannon, Benjamin Turner, J. H. Moore and William S. Wright, were chosen directors.

The fair was held October 11th and 12th. Premiums to the amount of one hundred and fifty-eight dollars and fifty cents were awarded. Addresses were delivered by Israel Dille, esq., and by M. B. Bateham, esq., editor of the Ohio Cultivator, an agricultural paper published in Columbus. The members of the society this year numbered one hundred and eighty-seven. James H. Moore was the representative to the State society.

1849.-The officers of the society in 1849 were Henry C. Taylor, esq., president; P. N. O'Bannon, vice-president; James H. Moore, secretary; H. S. Sprague, treasurer; Andrew Taylor, David Smith, W. S. Wright, J. M. Fleming, and V. B. Alsdorf, directors. Henry C: Taylor and James H. Moore, were chosen delegates to the State agricultural convention. The membership this year numbered one hundred and thirty, and paid two hundred and thirty-nine dollars and fifty cents in premiums. This year's fair was a great improvement on that of the preceding year. Its revenues, including a balance in the treasury for last year, of one hundred and eighty-three dollars and forty-seven cents, amounted to five hundred and thirty-five dollars and ninety-five cents, and the expenditures footed up to three hundred and twenty-six dollars and thirty-five cents. The Licking Herald said: "The attendance was very large and that in every point of view was exceedingly gratifying, and that

268 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

its benefits could not fail to be seen and felt in all departments of agriculture and the mechanics arts." The fair was held on the third and fourth days of October. From this time forward the president of the society was usually the representative in the State agricultural convention.

1850 - The officers of the society for 1850 were as follows: Henry C. Taylor, president: P. N. O'Bannon, vice-president; George F. Moore, secretary; H. S. Sprague, treasurer; William S. Wright, A. Taylor, William Barrick, David Smith, and T. S. O'Bannon, directors. The fair this year was held October thirtieth and thirty-first. Professor Pratt, of Granville college, delivered an able and interesting address. The members numbered one hundred and fifty, and two hundred and , ninety-one dollars were paid as premiums. Mr. George F. Moore represented the society in the annual meeting of the Ohio State board of agriculture this year. There was an increased interest manifested in the fair, the attendance being much larger than in any previous year. Professor Pratt's a address was published. State fairs were inaugurated by the State board of agriculture this year.

1851 - Henry C. Taylor was elected president of the society for 1851; P. N. O'Bannon, vicepresident; George F. Moore, secretary; H. S. Sprague, treasurer ; T. S. O'Bannon, W. S. Wright, David Smith, Andrew Taylor and William Barrick, directors. The secretary wrote to the Western Agriculturist that "the fair went off well, one hundred cattle, near two hundred sheep and one hundred and sixty horses being exhibited." This. the fourth fair held by the society, was doubtless a greater success than those that preceded it. The members this year numbered two hundred and fifty-six, and the amount of premiums paid was two hundred and fifty-six dollars. The president represented the society this year in the State Agricultural convention. The fair was held October 16th and 17th.

1852.-For 1852 the officers chosen were P. N. O'Bannon, president; William S. Wright , vice- president; George F. Moore, secretary; H. S. Sprague, treasurer, and T. S. O'Bannon, Joh Reed, Samuel Bowlsby, James A. Taylor and E Follett, directors. The fair was more largely at tended than ever before; the receipts were larger, also, and the entries numbered more than seven hundred, among them being one of the swine family that weighed nine hundred and ninety pounds. It was held October 14th and 15th. On the last day Hon. Isaac J. Allen, then of Mansfield, gave an admirable address, which, like that of Professor Pratt, was published in pamphlet form. William S. Wright was delegate in the State board meeting.

1853.-The officers in 1853 were William S. Wright, president; J. A. Tavlor, vice-president; G. F. Moore, secretary; H. S. Sprague, treasurer: William Barrick, Jonathan Smith, V. B. Alsdorf, J. H. Moore and H. B. McClelland, directors. Total number of members this year was three hundred and ninety-seven, and the treasurer reported the receipts to be one thousand one hundred and two dollars and forty-seven cents, and the expenditures nine hundred and ninety-two dollars and forty-seven cents, showing the profits to have been one hundred and ten dollars. The fair was held October 7th and 8th, and was eminently successful in both the number of entries and the excellence of articles and animals exhibited. The best yield of corn on a single acre, reported this year, was one hundred and forty bushels, for which the first premium was awarded to Charles H. Coe. William S. Wright was the delegate to the State Agricultural convention.

One of the most important events in the history of the society, during the year 1853, was the purchase by it of a portion of the grounds they now own and occupy, including the part known as the "Old Fort." The purchase first made was a tract of twelve and eighty-six one-hundredths acres, the deed for which, made by Henry Holler and wife, bears date December 13, 1853, the consideration being eight hundred and thirty-five dollars and ninety cents. Another purchase of twenty-nine and ninety-eight one-hundredths acres was made of Nathan H. Seymour, the deed bearing date December 22, 1853, the consideration being two thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight dollars. The money for paying for the foregoing tracts of land was principally raised by subscriptions obtained from the people of the county at large.

1854.-The officers of the society in x854 were William S. Wright, president; Jonathan Smith,

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 269

vice-president; H. S. Sprague, treasurer. Eli B. Beckwith was elected secretary and served as such until May, when he resigned. E. Abbot and M. M. Munson served temporarily to the close of the year. Kinsey Hull, George F. Moore, E. Abbot, Jacob Winter, and P. N. O'Bannon, were elected directors.

A very successful fair was held on the new fair grounds on the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth days of October, the premiums awarded amounting to five hundred and seventy-seven dollars and twenty-five cents, the receipts from memberships and admissions being a little in excess of that sum. A rain on the two last days seriously affected the receipts, and impaired the usefulness of the fair, this year. The State fair, which was held on the grounds of the society the week after, also tended to diminish the number of attendants, as many of our people who attended only one fair, preferred to be present at the State fair, and many, also, who intended to be at both, were prevented by the rain from being at the county fair. Hon. Samuel Shellabarger was the orator of the society this year, and delivered an able address, which came out in pamphlet form. W. S. Wright was the delegate to the State board convention.

The successful State fair held on our fair grounds this year was one of the important events of 1854. An addition of about four acres to the fair grounds of the society, as a gift virtually, from Mr. William S. Wright, the .deed bearing date December 13, 1854, was a matter of no small importance to the society, and the generous act deserves honorable mention. Including this gift, the. grounds of the society aggregated nearly forty-seven acres in 1854. In 1869, for the sum of two hundred and fifteen dollars, Abraham Lucas and wife conveyed a small parcel of land to the society for road purposes, the deed, bearing date September fourteenth of said year; and on the twenty-third of April, 1870, Evan Jones and wife sold to the society about five and one-quarter acres of ground for the sum of thirteen hundred and sixty dollars, which, added to the previous purchases, not including the roadway, made an aggregate of a fraction over fifty-two acres, which is the extent at present of the society's domains, obtained at a cost of five thousand four hundred and nine dollars. The grounds are thought by some to be inadequate to the wants of the society, and a further addition to them is urged.

The "old fort," which is, in its entirety, within the grounds of the society, and outside of which, and nearly all around it, are the hundreds of sheds for the sheltering and safe keeping of the stock on exhibition at the fairs, is one of the most interesting and extensive of the works of the Mound Builders in the Ohio valley. A description of it will be found in the chapter on Newark township.

1855.-The following gentlemen composed the board of officers of the Licking County Agricultural society in 1855: Jonathan Smith, president; Thomas S. O'Bannon, vice-president; William M. Cunningham, treasurer; Thomas J. Davis, secretary; E. Abbott, Jacob Winter, David Smith. John Brumback, and William Alsdorf, directors. Fair was held September 25th, 26th, and 27th. Premiums were awarded to the amount of seven hundred and fifty dollars.. Professor Armor delivered the address, which was well received, and a copy solicited for publication. The fair was successful. Ladies' riding match was one of the features of the fair of 1855, Thanks were voted to the Utica band, for services. The receipts from all sources amounted to two thousand six hundred and ten dollars.

1856.-The officers in 1856 were: Jonathan Smith, president; Thomas S. O'Bannon, vicepresident; Thomas J. Davis, secretary; William M. Cunningham, treasurer; William Alsdorf, Joseph Pence, James Pittsford, John Brumback, and. George W. Penny, directors. The fair was held on the eighth and ninth days of October, and was successful, the receipts amounting to nine hundred and seventy-four dollars and fifty cents.

1857.-In 1857 the officers were: Thomas S. O'Bannon, president; William Alsdorf, vice-president; T. J. Davis, secretary; William M. Cunningham, treasurer; Joseph Pence, James Pittsford, William Maholm, J. S. Griffith, and Daniel Gardner, directors. Fair was held on the seventh and eighth days of October. The receipts from all sources, reported. by the treasurer, amounted to one thousand four hundred arid sixty-four dollars and forty-two cents.

1858-The officers for 1858 were; William Als-

270 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

dorf, president; Joseph Pence, vice-president William M. Cunningham, treasurer; Thomas J Davis, secretary; William Maholm, Jacob S. Griffiths, William S. Wright, John A. Miller, and George J. Hagerty, directors. Fair was held October 6th and 7th. Eleven hundred and eightyeight membership tickets were sold. The total receipts from all sources during the fair amounted I to two thousand one hundred and three dollars and seventy-five cents, and the secretary officially declared this fair the largest ever held in the county.

1859.-The officers of the society for 1859, were William Alsdorf, president: William Maholm, vicepresident; M. M. Munson, secretary; William M. Cunningham, treasurer: William Sherman, David Smith, I. C. Ball, and O. H. Wood, directors for one year, and Jacob S. Griffith, James Pittsford, Nelson Hardesty, and William Shields, directors for two years. The constitution of the society was so amended, since the last annual election, as to require the election of a board of directors of eight members, half of whom were to serve one year and the other half two years. Fair was held on the fifth, sixth and seventh days of October. Receipts one thousand six hundred and thirty-three dollars and sixty-four cents. Number of membership tickets, one thousand and eighteen-seven hundred and fifteen dollars and sixty-four cents realized from sale of tickets.

1860.-The election of officers of the society for the year 1860 was held December 17, 1859, and resulted as follows: President, William Alsdorf; vice-president, William Maholm : treasurer, William M. Cunningham; secretary, M. M. Munson; directors, Willis Robbins, Christopher Stark, William Sherman and David Smith, to serve two years. Fair was held October 3rd, 4th and 5th. Total receipts two thousand and forty-three dollars.

1861.-Election of officers for 1861 was held December 13, 1860, with the following result: President, William Maholm: vice-president, James Pittsford; treasurer, William M. Cunningham, secretary, Alexander Adair; directors, J. Bently Sutton, James Y: Stewart, William J. Cully, and Alpheus Reed. Fair was held on the second, third and fourth days of October. The attendance was large.

1862.-The following is the list of officers of the society for 1862, elected December 14, 1861, to-wit: President, James Pittsford : vice-president, David Smith; secretary, A. Adair; treasurer, T. J. Davis; directors, William Sherman, Willis Robbins, M. M. Munson, and James Larimore. Fair was held on the first, second and third days of October, with a fair attendance.

1863.-The officers for 1863, the election being held January 3d, of said year, were as follows James Pittsford, president; David Smith, vicepresident.; A. Adair, secretary; T. J. Davis, treasurer: William J. Cully, James Y. Stewart, T. B. Sutton, and Alpheus Reed, directors. The fair was held September 30th, and October 1st and 2d, with a large attendance. The society numbered over three hundred members.

1864.-The officers of the society for 1864, the election being held January 16th, of said year, were as follows: David Smith, president: William J. Cully, vice-president: Thomas J. Davis, treasurer; Waldo Taylor, secretary: James Larimore, Willis Robbins, M. M. Munson. H. L. Reed, directors. The revenues of the society- this year were as follows:

Received for membership tickets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$322 00

Received for single admission tickets ................................ 887 20

Received for children's admissions ..................................... 38 30

Received for license of sting ............................................... 25 00

Received for license of eating houses .................................. 30 00

Received for rent of grounds ............................................... 100 00

Received for per centage on entries ..................................... 144 00

Total receipts ................................................................... $1,546 50

1865.-Officers for 1865 were as follows: David Smith, president; William J. Cully, vice-president; Thomas J. Davis, treasurer; Isaac W. Bigelow, secretary: Toel L. Tyler, Thomas Maholm, Charles H. Gardner, and John AI. Fulton, directors. Fair was held on the fourth, fifth and sixth days of October, and was more largely attended than any previous one.

1866.-The officers of the society for 1866, election being held January 13, 1866, were as follows:Joel L. Tyler, president: Henry L. Reed, vice-president, Thomas J. Davis, treasurer; I. W. Bigelow, secretary. I.. B. Wing, M. M. Munson, James Larimore, Thomas S. O'Bannon, directors; A. Stevens, to fill vacancy occasioned by C. H. Gardner's resignation, and Jeremiah Grove, to fill

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 271

vacancy occasioned by the resignation of Joel L. Tyler. Revenues amounted to two thousand four hundred and twenty dollars and fifteen cents. Fair was held on the third, fourth and fifth days of October.

1867.-The election of officers for 1867 took place June 12th of said year, with the following result: William Veach, president; John M. Fulton, vice-president; Isaac W. Bigelow, secretary; Thomas J. Davis, treasurer; J. Woolard, Charles Stewart, Thomas J. Maholm, and H. A. Fleming, , directors. Six hundred and forty-two membership tickets were sold at the fair this year; six thousand three hundred and eighty-two single tickets and three hundred and forty-four children's, the largest number of any previous fair; the total receipts, including a balance of eleven dollars and eleven cents, being two thousand seven hundred and thirty-six dollars and ninety-five cents, not counting a balance due for pasture, of sixty dollars. The fair was held on the second, third and fourth days of October.

1868.-The officers of the society for 1868 were as follows: William Veach, president; John M. Fulton, vice-president : I. W. Bigelow, secretary; Waldo Taylor, treasurer; M. M. Munson, Wm. D. Smith, George P. Eaton, and James Wiley, directors. John M. Fulton and Joel L. Tyler were appointed delegates to an agricultural convention in the Miami valley. Fair was held October 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th. Revenue, including four hundred and nineteen dollars and fifty-six cents of a balance, three thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine dollars and fifty-six cents. . The constitution was so amended as that the board of directors shall hereafter be composed of nine members, three of whom to be retired at the end of each year.

1869.-The following gentlemen composed the board of officers in 1869: Henry L. Reed, president; William D. Smith, vice-president; Isaac W. Bigelow, secretary; Waldo Taylor, treasurer; William R. Seymour, Joel L. Tyler, and M. M. Munson, directors for three years; James Wiley, Andrew Weiant, and John M. Fulton, directors for two years; Jesse R. Moore, L. B. Wing, G. J. Haggerty, directors for one year. There were sold nine hundred and fifty-seven membership tickets, ten thousand six hundred and forty-six admission tickets, and six hundred and forty-one children's tickets, realizing three thousand six hundred and eighty-two dollars and sixty cents for tickets. Whole receipts, four thousand five hundred and seven dolars and ten cents. Fair was held on the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth days of October.

1870.-Officers of the society for 1870 were as follows: Henry L. Reed, president; William D. Smith, vice-president; M. M. Munson, secretary; David Smith, treasurer; L. B. Wing, Jesse R Moore and George J. Haggerty, directors elected. The fair was held this year on the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh days of October. The legislature authorized a levy of ten thousand dollars to pay for additional ground, and for paying for some additional necessary buildings, such as a dining hall and fine arts hall. Said levy was made and collected, and the society relieved of its embarrassment.

1871 - The following officers were elected for 1871: Joseph White, president; William R. Seymour, vice-president; Isaac «'. Bigelow, secretary; David Smith, treasurer; Henry L. Reed, John M. Fulton and Andrew Weiant, directors. The total receipts from all sources, including a balance of seventy-three dollars and fourteen cents and ten thousand one hundred and twenty-four dollars and sixty-eight cents from the county, in pursuance of the act of the legislature authorizing a special levy in favor of the society, also a citizens' subscription of seven hundred and seventeen dollars, and receipts from the sale of tickets and rents at horse fair, amounted to nineteen thousand one hundred and ninety-one dollars and thirty cents. The fair was held on the third, fourth, fifth and sixth days of October. Four thousand dollars were paid as premiums this year. The number of members was twelve hundred and sixty-nine, and the entries numbered three thousand eight hundred. The display was largely in excess of all former fairs.

1872.-The officers of the society elected for 1872 were as follows: Joseph White, president; William R. Seymour, vice president; Isaac W. Bigelow, secretary; David Smith, treasurer; Samuel Motherspaw, Harvey Gates and Lewis Evans, directors elected. The fair was held on the first, second, third and fourth days of October. The total receipts were six thousand three hundred and

272 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

ten dollars, and premiums paid, three thousand two hundred and fifty dollars.

1873.-The following gentlemen served as officers of the society during the year 1873: L. B. Wing, president: William Parr, vice-president: I. W. Bigelow, secretary: David Smith, treasurer; N. C. Fleming, James Kirkpatrick and James Richardson, directors elected. The fair was held September 30th and October 1st, 2nd and 3rd. L. B. Wing was the delegate to the State agricultural convention. The receipts were more than six thousand dollars, seventeen thousand four hundred and sixty-five tickets having been sold. There were large receipts from other sources.

1874.-The following were elected officers for 1874, to-wit: L. B. Wing, president: Hiram Hitt, vice-president; C. A. Stevens, secretary; David Smith, treasurer; Henry L. Reed, John Montgomery and Martin D. Hartshorn, directors elected.

The receipts from horse fair in July amounted to .......................... $2,637.50

Receipts from the annual October fair ........................................... 6,370.34

Total ............................................................................................... $8,907.84

The fair was held September 28th, and continued four days. Lucius B. Wing was the delegate to the State agricultural convention, which was held at Columbus, January 6, 1875. The members of the society numbered eight hundred and sixty-four, and seventeen thousand four hundred and fifty-nine tickets were sold. About two thousand entries were made, and the fair throughout was a success. The premium awards amounted to three thousand three hundred dollars.

1875.-The officers elected in 1875 were as follows: Joseph White, president; C. R. Woods, vice president; C. A. Stevens, secretary; David Smith, treasurer; A. Weiant, J. N. Lawyer, and Stephen Hoskinson, directors. Fair was held October 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th. The attendance was large, the receipts amounting to about six thousand five hundred dollars, the premiums awarded amounting to five thousand dollars, and the members of the society numbered one thousand two hundred. An indebtedness of one thousand five hundred dollars was created this year by the erection of a structure known as the amphitheater. The entries exceeded those of an previous year, and the fair throughout was regarded as pre-eminently successful. Henry L. Reed represented the society in the State agricultural convention.

1876.-The officers in 1876 were: James Pittsford, president; J. M. Kirkpatrick, vice-president; Edward Thomas, secretary; David Smith, treasurer; Francis Burkham, Allen T. Howland, and Samuel F. Van Voorhies, directors elected. Fair was held on the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days of October, and was a success. Isaac Smucker was selected to prepare a centennial history of Licking county, pursuant to a resolution of the Ohio State board of agriculture, which he read at the fair grounds, July 4, 1876, taco thousand copies of which were afterwards published in pamphlet form, by order of the society. James Pittsford represented the society in the State agricultural convention.

1877.-The officers of the society in 1877 were as follows: Henry L. Reed, president;. Harvey Gates, vice-president; Edward Thomas, secretary; James Pittsford, treasurer; Willis Fulton, Henry Moore, and Thomas Montgomery directors. Fair was held October 2nd, 3d, 4th, and 5th, and was well attended. The receipts into the treasury of the society, in 1877, amounted to five thousand two hundred' and thirty-eight dollars. The membership this year numbered one thousand four hundred. Henry L. Reed represented the society in the State agricultural convention, held January 9, 1878.

1878.-The following is a list of officers elected in 1878: William Parr, president; G. W. Ingraham, vice-president; J. F. Lingafelter, secretary; I. W. Bigelow, treasurer; Andrew Weiant, Henry L. Reed, and James Richardson, directors elected. Fair was held on October 1st, 2d, 3d, and 4th, and as an exhibition was a success. Receipts in 1878, five thousand one hundred and thirty dollars and ninety-four cents. William Parr was the society's delegate in the State agricultural convention, held January 8, 1879.

1879.-The following is a list of the officers of the Licking County Agricultural society, elected in 1879: William Parr, president; M.M. Miller, vice-president; J. F. Lingafelter, secretary; I. W. Bigelow, treasurer; Josiah McKinney, W. R. Osborn,

HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY. - 273

J. H. Bland, directors elected. The fair was held September 30th, and October 1st, 2d, and 3d, and was the thirty-second annual fair held since the organization of the present society, in 1848. Total receipts in 1879, six thousand thirty--three dollars and twenty cents, which indicates the continued success of the society. By the death of President Parr, before the fair, the duties of president devolved on the vice-president.

1880. - The following is a list of the officers of the Licking County Agricultural society for the year 1880: M. M. Miller, president; Thomas W. Montgomery, vice-president; J. F. Lingafelter, secretary; I. W. Bigelow, treasurer; Andrew Weiant, Henry L. Reed, and James Richardson (one year), Josiah McKinney, W. R. Osborn,, and J. H. Bland (two years), V. V. Lake, Harvey T. Black, and Henry Moore (three years), directors. Fair was held September 28th, 29th, 30th, and October 1st, and the receipts were six thousand six hundred and twentyeight dollars and thirty-five cents.

Pursuant to a resolution of the society, Isaac Smucker prepared the foregoing outline history of the county agricultural societies.

The following relating to the products of this county is taken from the State Agricultural Report for 1879, and from it may be gleaned some interesting facts connected with that most important branch of industry:

"Wheat, thirty thousand nine hundred acres sown. producing four hundred and seventy thousand eight hundred and fiftyone bushels, or about fifteen and one-fourth bushels to the acre. This is several bushels above the average in the State, showing this county to be somewhat superior for wheat culture. Rye, one thousand three hundred and forty-two acres sown, producing nineteen thousand and eighty-five bushels; buckwheat, four hundred and ninety-three acres sown. product, five thousand six hundred and eight bushels; oats, eleven thousand six hundred and nine acres, product, three hundred and sixty-three thousand and sixty-two bushels; barley, fifteen acres, product, four hundred and thirty-eight bushels; con. fifty-five thousand four hundred and nineteen acres, product, two million three hundred and fifty-one thousand five hundred and fifty-one bushels; timothy, thirty thousand eight hundred and sixty-five acres sown, product, forty-two thousand six hundred and eighty-five tons of hay; clover, three thousand one hundred and forty-five acres, product, two thousand eight hundred and ninety-three tons of hay, and one thousand five hundred and eighty bushels of seed; flax, two hundred and twenty-nine acres, product, two thousand four hundred and twenty-four bushels of seed; potatoes, one thousand six hundred and sixty acres. product, one hundred and twenty-two thousand two hundred and forty-eight bushels. This is an average of nearly seventy-four bushels to the acre-an average reached by but few counties in the State. Sweet potatoes, fourteen acres, product, five hundred and twenty-three bushels; tobacco, two acres, product, one thousand nine hundred and seventy pounds; sorghum, one hundred and fifty-nine acres, product, two hundred and forty-six pounds of sugar, and twenty thousand five hundred and forty-six gallons of syrup; maple sugar, nine thousand and twenty-one pounds, and thirteen thousand five hundred and eleven gallons of syrup; hives of bees, three thousand three hundred and eighty-two, product, forty-nine thousand nine hundred and thirty-one pounds of honey. Only six counties in the State produce more honey than this. The total number of acres of land in the county is three hundred and seventy thousand. six hundred .and. seventy-six, of which, one hundred and thirteen thousand eight hundred and three acres are cultivated, one hundred and seventy-eight thousand four hundred and thirty-eight pasture, seventyfour thousand nine hundred and sixty-nine wood-land, and three thousand four hundred and sixty-six uncultivated or waste land. It will be seen that the waste land in the county is much less than would be surmised, considering the large surface of hill, or upland; in this, also, it compares favorably with any other in the State.

"In the production of butter it excels, the number of pounds being eight hundred and sixty thousand eight hundred and sixty-nine; few counties in the State excel this amount. The production of cheese was six thousand nine hundred and ten pounds, which compares favorably with other counties of the State. outside of the Reserve. It is a fact worth noting that the production of butter in the State has been steadily increasing for the last two decades; having advanced from thirty-eight million four hundred and forty thousand four hundred and ninety-eight pounds in 1860, to fifty million three hundred and thirty-two thousand and twenty-three pounds in 1878.

"Of live stock, this county contained-horses, eleven thousand seven hundred and thirty-three, valued at six hundred and thirty-eight thousand eight hundred and eighty-three dollars ; cattle, twenty-seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-four, valued at five hundred and sixty-five thousand six hundred and seventy-seven dollars ; mules, one hundred and eighty, valued at ten thousand two hundred and ninety dollars; hogs, thirty-three thousand nine hundred and eighty-nine, valued at ninety-six thousand one hundred and eighty-one dollars; sheep, two hundred and nineteen thousand eight hundred and eighty-five, valued at five hundred, and thirty-six thousand nine hundred and ninety-one dollars. In the raising of sheep and the production of wool, this county largely excels; indeed this may be said to be the "banner" wool county in the State. No other county can show a number of sheep equal to the above. Harrison comes the nearest, but falls more than twenty-five thousand short. Regarding the wool product, it was nine hull' dred and seven thousand one hundred and eighty-four pounds, which is more by several hundred thousand pounds than most other counties, and excels Harrison, which stands second-best, by more than one hundred and sixty thousand pounds. The county had five hundred and twenty-two sheep killed by dogs, which is a large number, but less in proportion than some other counties. It is worthy of note that the number of sheep killed by dogs within the State has gradually decreased in the last decade. The destruction of sheep reached its height in 1869, when it appears that fifty-two thousand four hundred and eleven were killed; .in 1878 the number was only twenty-four thousand six hundred and eighty-four, or less than half.

274 - HISTORY OF LICKING COUNTY.

"In horticulture, the county is not behind ; indeed, in many productions of this character, it excels. The number of acres in orchards is six thousand nine hundred and thirty-three; producing six hundred and twenty thousand six hundred and fortytwo bushels of apples, forty-nine thousand two hundred and five bushels of peaches, and two thousand and sixteen bushels of pears. Few counties in the State produce in excess of the above figures, the larger majority falling much behind them. The grape and wine production is comparatively good, but this industry is yet evidently in its infancy."