150 - HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY to the Russian army, fell sick, and MacGahan devoted himself to the duty of nursing his countryman. His devotion cost him his life. As Greene was recovering MacGahan sickened of malignant typhus ; and a few days later they laid him in his far-off foreign grave, around which stood weeping mourners of a dozen nationalities." In an issue of the New Lexington "Herald," of February, 1897, judge Martin W. Wolfe penned an able article, in which he reviews the brilliant career of this famous Perry countian. We give the article in full : "From many a district school house in our favored land have issued youths of humble origin, who by their virtues and attainments have adorned society and honored their country. J. A. MacGahan, one of the most eminent journalists of the world, was a graduate of one of those colleges for the people. There are few, indeed, who have not heard of J. A. MacGahan, the immortal chevalier of the press, philanthropist, author, traveler, hero, patriot — yet few know of his origin, his early career and the general current of his life, so full of romance and stirring interest.. Among the hills of Perry county (at a place called Pigeon Roost) J. A. MacGahan was born of humble, but respectable Irish American parentage, June 12, 1844. Of his youthful career history bears but little records, save that it was spent in the obscure labors of a farm. He received a plain, common school education, such as are rural schools of the fifties afforded. In early life he evinced great fondness for penmanship and composition. In the former he excelled, in the latter he foreshadowed more of the fluency and power of the pen, which in after years immortalized his name. In short, he is a forcible illustration of the repeated fact that the germ of genius is often hidden in very common mould, and which springs up into glorious efflorescence, at a time and in a place least expected by the common observer. "At an early age he left the parental. roof to seek his for- tune. After a varied experience he went abroad to study the HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY - 151 languages. He was not only a good English scholar, but spoke readily the languages of Western Europe and was well versed in the Slavonic dialects of the East. When in 1870 the first thunder peal of the Franco-Prussian war rolled over Europe we see him at a law school in Brussels. Having had some experience as a writer he was attached to the staff of the New York Herald. He at once joined the army of Bourbake, witnessed its disastrous defeat, and with much danger and. suffering, accompanied its retreat into Switzerland, a full description of which was given in his letters to the Herald. Though he did not achieve renown in that brief campaign, it burst the chrysalis of comparative insignificance and formed the first cleat to the ladder on which he speedily rose to the dizzy heights of fame.' We next find him in Paris during the time of the Commune, writing vigorous and graphic descriptions of the scenes and incidents of that time. On one occasion he was arrested. and was preserved from death at the hands of the infuriated Communists only by the intervention of the minister of his country. During the summer of 1871 -he traveled through Europe and in the autumn of that year was in Russia, where information reached him that an assault was to be made on Khiva. It was Russia's boldest move to-- ward India, and he was ordered by the Herald to accompany the army of the Czar.. "In the depth of an Arctic winter when a thick mantle of snow covered the hardened earth, the frozen lake, the icebound river under its monotonous pall, our intrepid hero set out from Saratof, on the Volga, moving southward to join the advancing column at Kazala, a distance of 2,000 miles. For six long weeks, when the mercury in the thermometer ranged from 30 to 50 degrees below zero, the journey continued across the ice-bound Russian steppes, the Ural mountains, the boundless morasses and arid wastes of the tundri —those broad, level, snowy plains over which the icy winds of Northern Siberia, capable of converting mercury into a solid body, came rushing down in furious blasts with an uninterrupted sweep of a thousand miles and howling over the naked wilderness and around them as though all the demons of the steppe were up in arms. And so the days passed until Kazala is reached, only to find that the Russian column under the Grand Duke, Nicholas, had taken up its march and that the 152 - HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY. campaign against Khiva was already well advanced. Then he prepared for what proved to be one of the most daring rides ever made by Man. He was now in the heart of the mysterious regions of Asia. It was a journey of six hundred miles through silent desolation, with three hundred miles of arid desert on which the gun glares fiercely down from the pitiless sky until the sands gleam and burn under the scorching heat like glowing cinders. "To start almost alone in search of the Russian army, a mere speck on those huge steppes; with no plan possible, except to ride as far and as hard as' might be; without knowing when one well is left, where the next drop of water will be found ; with few provisions and those bad; with untrustworthy guides and weak horses; enduring a broiling sun by day and a deadly chill by night; sleeping on a poisonous upaslike weed, beneath which lurk scorpions, tarantulas and immense lizards or on the sandy floor of this desert ocean where eternal silence reigns, save the bark of the jackal or the howl of the hyena, as they sound dismally from time to time through the loud roaring of the storm; with the knowledge that the country was filled with beaten enemies, always glad to fall in with a stranger alone, and now especially fierce and envenomed; and the uncertainty of the reception when he reached his goal — such a feat may well have made the Russians wonder. For twenty-nine days he wandered through the Kyzil-Kum in search of Gen. Kaufmann, chased by Cossacks sent in hot pursuit for his capture, but through his pertinacity, shrewdness and good nature he eluded them all as well as the Russian general who detained him at Khalata and by a circuitous route joined the Russian army on the far-famed Oxus just as the advance guard was in a heated engagement with the Turcoman cavalry. "In keeping with his characteristic fearlessness he dashed into the raging battle, wrote a description of it and completely won the admiration of the Russian soldiery and of that intrepid leader, Gen. Kaufmann himself. Henceforth he accompanied the Russian army and ere long stood before the gate of Hazar-Asp — the grand entrance into the city of Khiva. He was one of the first to enter the portals of that city, and his description of its capture stands on record as a masterpiece of its kind. Upon his return to Russia the Czar conferred on HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY - 153 him the Order of St. Stanislaus for his personal bravery. The information which he gained during the progress of this expedition was afterward published by MacGahan in book form under the title, "Campaigning On the Oxus and the Fall of Khiva," and is the best book on Central Asia and nomadic 14e in our language. "Another turn of the wheel found him lecturing before the geographical society of New York, then visiting his parents in Perry county, and in the fall of 1873 in Cuba reporting the Virginius complications. In the spring of 1874 he was in London, whence he was ordered by the New York Herald to Spain to report the Carlist outbreak of that year. He joined the army of Don Carlos and accompanied it for ten months, continuing a voluminous and graphic correspondence with his journal during the progress of the campaign. While in Spain he fell into the hands of the Republicans, was mistaken for a Carlist and condemned to execution, but his life was again saved by the interventions of the American. minister. Thence he went to England and in 1875 sailed with Captain Young in the Pandora to the Arctic regions, making the last search undertaken for the lost crew of Sir John Franklin's expedition. On his return to England he published an account of his experiences with the title, "Under the Northern Lights," which brought its author great renown. "In the spring of 1876 while in London he read a brief dispatch in a newspaper of the commission of horrible barbarities by the Bashi-Ba-zouks in Bulgaria. He had lived and worked in the East, and more clearly than any living man, recognized the hidden significance of this news froth the Balkans. He determined at once to go to that country and witness for himself and to the world the 'truth or falsity of these statements. He at once signed articles with the London Daily News and in June, 1876, took his departure to join the Turkish army in the capacity of war correspondent of his journal. The horrible evidences of the malignant cruelty Which had characterized Turkish warfare in Bulgaria roused in the American feelings of the most intense indignation, and in vivid, soul-stirring words did this heroic man pour the whole strength of his powerful mind in the exposure of the most ghastly and wholesale massacres of modern times. Strong in his majesty as protector of the defenseless, MacGahan almost 154 - HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY. excelled himself. His revelations of the Bulgarian horrors, struck home to every heart. He caused the pulse of Europe and America to quicken, and the hearts to bleed for the cruelty and barbarously oppressed Bulgarians. Never before had., such enthusiasm been raised in the annals of newspaper correspondence. Concerning this extraordinary correspondence Mr'MacGahan's Forbes, long associated with MacGahan, says : MacGahan's work in exposing the Bulgarian atrocities of 1876 produced very marked results. As mere literary work there is nothing that I know of to excel it in vividness, in pathos, in burning earnestness, in a glow that thrills from heart to heart. His letters fired Mr. Gladstone into a convulsive paroxyism of revolt against the barbarities they described. They stirred England to its very depths, and men traveling in railway carriages were to be noticed with flushed faces and moistened eyes as they read them.' Lord Beaconsfield, the premier of England, tried to whistle down the wind, the veracity of the exposures MacGahan made. He ordered a fleet to the Dardanelles, and dispatched a British official, Walter Baring, to Bulgaria with intent to break down the testimony of MacGahan by cold official investigation. But lo! Baring was an honest man with a heart, and he who had been sent out to curse MacGahan, blest him instead altogether, for he more than confirmed his figures and pictures of murder, brutality and atrocity. England was compelled to repudiate her old ally ; withdraw her fleet from the Bosphorus without landing a man or firing a shot, and permit MacGahan to continue his memorable ride writing sheaves of letters and painting in cold type what he saw. To the pen of Perry county's gifted son, an All-wise Providence assigned the immortal honor of sustaining the dauntless spirits of the Bulgarians, and of exciting the profound, active and practical sympathy of united Europe. "Obscure, alone and unheralded, J. A. MacGahan entered on his task of exposing Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria. Thousands of miles from the land of his birth, with the broad waters of an ocean between him and his home, this Ohio journalist, animated by that spirit of liberty inherent in an American, addressed himself to the apparently chimerical undertaking of striking the chains from off the lives of a race whom Turkish masters had almost succeeded in unmanning. HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY - 155 "Honest, fearless and untiring, the pen of MacGahan recited those bloody chapters of Turkish cruelty, which roSultan'scivilized world to indignant protest against the Sultan's. ferocious spoliation, rapine and inhumanity. "The callous Russian paled with anger ; the sympathetic European wept the hapless fate of murdered sire and dishonored matron. The Bulgarians heard the voice of God in the burning words of MacGahan's descriptive writings, and hailed him as the Messi'MacGahanr race, sprang to arms with the rallying cry of '`MacGahan, Liberator of Bulgaria!' "In every hamlet he passed through he said : 'The Czarleayingvenge this! Courage, people, he will come.' And on leaving the unhappy Bulgarians he said to them: 'Before a year is past you will see me here with the army of the Czar.' "This assurance was verified by the event. Soon after his arrival at the Royal Court of St. Petersburg, the decree went forth for the immediate mobilization of the Russian hosts at Kishenhoff, where they were reviewed by the Czar. of all the Russias. Then the order to cross the Pruth was given as MacGahan had foretold our knight errant rode with the advance guard. The Russians, from the patient Moscovite to the Cossack of the Don, marched to battle for a nation's. freedom, and the strange cry of liberty flew from lip to lip of their bearded legions. The eloquent appeals of MacGahan became battle cries for the victorious mountaineers of Bulgaria as they charged with the irrestible force of Alpine-avalanches, the reeling fronts of Moslem columns. The most valiant of Russians, intrepid Skobeleff, and the most devoted leader of Bulgaria's risen hosts were alike inspired to deeds of deathless heroism by the noble utterances of MacGahan; their sanctified blades flashed Christian freedom as they cleft the turbaned heads of brutal Turks, and with holy ardor Tartar, Russians and Cossack sought immortality among the thickest battle, that a circling world might recite the heroic requiems of their American composer, historian and worshipped chief.' "Through the changing fortunes of the war grave and gay, MacGahan passed alike the idol of the Russian army and the Bulgarian people. The assault at Skobeleff on the Gravitza redoubt was immortalized by his pen. When 156 - HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY. Plevna fell our hero was in the van during the mad rush toward the Bosphorus. The triumphant advance was never checked until the spires and minarets of Constantinople were in sight, Bulgaria was redeemed, and the power of the Turk in Europe was broken, the aggrandizement of Russia was complete—and all because J. A. McGahan had lived sand striven. "Scarcely had the rolling thunders of war ceased and the sunlight of peace burst upon the disenthralled country when his eventful career suddenly came to a close. While preparing to attend the international congress at Berlin, he was stricken down with a malignant fever, and died at San Stefano, a suburb of Constantinople, after a few days' illness, June 9, 1878. "On his death a bright star went out from the firmament of genius but the results of his efforts will endure as long as Christianity. It is not too much to say that this dauntless Perry county boy, who was laid in his all too premature grave on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus, still lives in the hearts of grateful millions, whose spirits have been stirred within them by the touching pathos of his eloquent pen. "In Bulgaria's story and legend, MacGahan's memory will eventually find its truest record. In the little principality his name is enshrined on the hearts of people as Liberator ; on the anniversary of his death, prayers for the repose of his soul are said in every hamlet throughout Bulgaria; and to the sweetly melancholy strains of the folk-songs the story of his labors is to-day sung by the Bulgarian peasant. "MacGahan was principally the man for the place and times in which his lot was cast. He was a type of a class of journalists whose names can be numbered on the fingers of one hand Russel, Sala, Stanly, Forbes, MacGahan. But the greatest and noblest of them all was J. A. MacGahan, of Khiva, and San Stefano. "It will be long before one so gifted shall wear his mantle as an equal. A few years ago the government of the United States removed his remains to Perry county, the place of his nativity and early home, where with appropriate civic ,ceremonies they received honorable sepulcher in a soil consecrated to liberty. In the language of a versatile writer, "'I trust that a suitable monument will be erected over his HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY - 157 mortal remains, but no matter of what materials it may be composed, it cannot be so enduring as the fame of him it is built to commemorate. When it begins to crumble and decay, and centuries perhaps have passed, pilgrims to this spot, descendants maybe of the very people he did so much to free, will again and again repeat the story of the modest Ohio boy, who was born and brought up amid these hills, but who became hero, sage, philanthropist, and whose mission and influence embraced the world and encircled the globe."! On March 5th, 1884, a resolution passed the Ohio House of Representatives providing for a committee to consider the question of the removal of the remains of MacGahan to his native land. On April 12th, of the same year, a resolution passed the Senate providing for a committee of four, to consist of the President, or President pro tern. of the Senate, the Speaker, or Speaker pro tern of the House, Hon. John O'Neil, Senator from this district, and Hon. H. C. Greiner, Representative from Perry county, to visit the Secretary of the Navy at' Washington and request that a war vessel be ordered to Constantinople for the remains of the distinguished American. This committee at once visited Washington. 'The success of its mission can be best portrayed in the disinterment with great honors, of the body, May 1st, and under the direction of Admiral Baldwin, the remains, of this noted Perry county boy were placed on board the United States steamer, Quinnebaugh and transported to the steamer Powhatan, on the arrival of the former vessel at Lisbon. The latter vessel reached the port of New York, August 21st. The New York Press Club, through the columns of the city papers of August 25th, gave notice that the 158 - HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY. following program would be carried into effect, in honor of this chivalric knight of the pen : "Early on Tuesday morning the committee of the club, accompanied by a guard of honor consisting of eight gentlemen who acted as correspondents during the late war, will proceed to the Navy Yard and formally receive the remains from the naval authorities. The body will arrive at noon at some point in the city, hereafter to be designated, where a procession will be formed. The remains will then be conveyed to the Governor's room in the City Hall. Members of the Press Club, the Ohio committee, relatives and admirers of the deceased and journalists generally are invited to assemble at the Press Club at 11 o'clock a. m. From that point they will proceed to the point of landing on the New York side and join the committee in the procession to the City Hall. There the body, in charge of the guard of honor, will lie in state till half—past four p. m. At that hour the guard will be relieved by pallbearers representing the different city journals, who will escort the remains, the Ohio committee and relatives to the Pennsylvania Railroad depot at the foot of Cortlandt street." The remains of MacGahan arrived at Columbus, Wednesday, August 27th accompanied by P. A. MacGahan, brother of the deceased, Representative Greiner, Senator O'Neill and Hon. John Ferguson. They were met at Union depot by an immense concourse of people. The United States Barracks Band, headed the procession, which was composed of the military of the city, G. A. R. Posts, police department, state and city officials, Governor's guards, and members of the press acting as pall-bearers. The hearse was drawn by six white horses to the Capitol, where the body lay in state. Governor Hoadley, on behalf of the State of so many great sons, received the body with a most eloquent tribute to the heroism of one who had carried the less0n of true Americanism to a foreign land. The HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY - 159 Governor showed, impressively how MacGahan was by nature an opponent to oppression, that he died young, but not untimely, and his remains had been returned to the home of his fathers, and Ohio would preserve and honor them. The remains in charge of the committee reached Zanesville, Thursday, August 28th, where they were -received by a committee of the Press, G. A. R. Post, and a large concourse of citizens. The remains were deposited on the day following in Mt. Calvary Cemetery vault, until the time of final sepulture at New Lexington, Thursday, September 11. Of the exercises attending the final interment, we quote from the New Lexington "Tribune" : "All day Wednesday, Wednesday night and Thursday till 9 o'clock the casket lay on an elevated platform in the center of the court room, faithfully guarded by members of the New Lexington Guards, detailed for the purpose. One guard, uniformed and armed, was constantly stationed at the head, and another at the foot of the casket. Another was stationed just outside of the court room door, at the head of the stairs, another at the outside door of the Court House, and still another at the gate leading into the yard. "The outer casket, a very beautiful one, was bought by the journalists of New York. The body came from Constantinople in a hermetically sealed leaden casket, in which it was placed at the time of the disinterment, and this of course was inclosed in the new one. Three large wreaths rested upon the casket, as it lay in the Court House here. Inscriptions upon ribbons attached showed that one was the gift of journalists of New York and another of the Press Club of the same city. The remaining large wreath was still unfaded and fresh, having been placed upon the casket after its arrival here by the widow and other friends of the deceased. On the casket was a handsome plate, bearing the inscription: 160 - HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY. J. A. MACGAHAN, Born June 12, 1844, Died June 9, 1878. "At the, head of the casket was placed a large photograph of the dead journalist as he appeared in life, in citizen's dress, and at the foot was a full-length likeness of him, in the costume of a war correspondent, as he roughed it with the boys or slept or dined in the tents of generals. All day Wednesday and until late Wednesday night, and a good part of Thursday forenoon callers, embracing gentlemen, ladies, youths and children, streamed in and walked around the casket, passing from the right to the left, all gazing intently at the picture of the dead journalist, and many stopping to read the plate and the inscriptions attached to two of the large wreaths which rested upon the casket. "A goodly number of business houses and private residences had been draped in black with white intermingled Wednesday and many flags put out, but early Thursday morning this became almost universal all along Main street, and also received more. or less attention in other parts of the town. A beautiful arch was erected over Main street between the Court House and Park, which was wrapped with alternate or intermingled flags and black and white, festooned with wreaths of evergreen. Near the arch, and spanning the same street, was stretched a large streamer, on which was printed in bold letters 'BULGARIA'S LIBERATOR.' Other large streamers were placed across Main street, erected by the G. A. R. Post, and proclaiming a welcome to their brethren from all parts who came to par-. ticipate in the ceremonies attending the obsequies. The Court House and yard, the postoffice, St. Rose Church and New Lexington Cemetery were all appropriately decorated. Arches we're raised over the cemetery gates, and over the-head of the open grave on the MacGahan lot was placed a large banner, on which were painted the words, 'Rest in Thy Native Land.' Many of the decorations of business. houses and private residences were very fine, and produced a pleasant effect. These decorations, in the aggregate, were HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY - 161 much admired by visitors and received numerous compliments. "At about 9 :30 the casket was removed from the Court House to St. Rose Church, where the usual religious services were conducted by Bishop Watterson, of Columbus, assisted by a number of priests from St. Josephs and elsewhere. The Bishop preached an able and interesting sermon upon 'The Power and the Responsibility of the Newspaper Press.' "Not one in twenty of the people in town could get into the church, and the heat was so oppressive that many who did get in were compelled to retire. About 11:30 the casket was brought from the church and the procession began to form, under the direction of Hon. H. C. Greiner, assisted by several aides. The guard of honor consisted of a detachment of the New Lexington Guards. The procession moved along Main to Brown street, then down Brown to Cemetery avenue, then out along this avenue to the cemetery, then along the streets of the same to the southern part of the grounds, where the MacGahan lot had been selected by the committee. for that purpose. Arrived at the open grave, the platoon of Grand Army men, who had preceded the pro-. cession, formed themselves around the grave and speakers' stand in a circle large enough to accommodate the clergy, pallbearers, relatives, press, members'of the legislature, etc., when the remainder of the procession opened ranks and let the hearse, clergy, relatives, etc., pass through to the grave. After the usual religious ceremonies, the people gathered around the stand that had been erected near by to be used for the public exercises. Hon. H. C. Greiner acted as chairman. The exercises consisted of 'Eulogy on Life and Character of J. A. MacGahan,' by E. S. Colborn; poem, written for the occasion by W. A. Taylor ; an address on the 'Office of the Newspaper Correspondent," by Judge Silas .H. Wright. "The number of persons present is variously estimated. Eight to ten thousand would in our opinion not be a wild estimate. It is safe to say that half as many people were never in town at any one time before. This county alone brought its thousands and the trains from east and west, north and south came in loaded down, the one from Zanesville and the east being unprecedented. Notwithstanding the 11 H. P. C. 162 - HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY. overwhelming crowds of people, the best of order was preserved, and the proceedings and the events of the day were creditable alike to all, residents and strangers. "The great event has come and gone, and the mortal remains of the famous Ohio boy, who perished so honorably and so bravely in a far distant country, now reposes in his native land, to be disturbed not again till time shall be no more. "The Nation, the State and the people of this county have heartily united in paying a just tribute to a brilliant genius, to a patient hard worker, to a brave, noble man, who lived and toiled for others more than himself ; who freed a nation of people, who opened the way for the story of the Cross, and who, with young wife and child awaiting his return to Russia, stopped amid malaria and malignant disease to lay down his life for a friend. When qualities like these cease to attract the admiration and love of man or woman, the world will scarce be worth living in, and finis may be appropriately written upon its outer walls." The grave of MacGahan has not remained unmarked. To the teachers of Perry county belongs the honor of placing at his grave, a mark that is as enduring as the fame of the one that rests beneath. It was fitting that the teachers of his native county; should do this for him, who himself was a product of her public schools. At the Teachers' Institute, in August 1900, the present writer in a brief address, reviewed the life of this renowned citizen, and asked that the teachers take the initiative, in placing a fitting memento at his sepulchre. He called attention to the many granite bowlders scattered throughout the northern part of the county and suggested that they would in many ways be appropriate for a memorial. The teachers at once took up with the idea and in a few minutes a collection was taken, sufficiently large, to cover the expenses of securing the bowlder. Mr. George W DeLong of Corning HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY - 163 and the writer went to Thorn township and selected a suitable specimen, which with the word MacGahan upon it, is the only marker for this chivalrous knight of the pen. THE ARTICLE THAT CAUSED THE RUSSO-TURKO WAR. This article was penned to the London Daily News by Mr. MacGahan. It is dated August 2, 1876, from Tartar Bezarjik. Since my letter of yesterday I have supped full of horrors. Nothing has as yet been said of the Turks that I do not now believe; nothing could be said of them that I should not think probable and likely. There is, it seems, a point in atrocity beyond which discrimination is impossible, when mere comparison, calculation, measurement are out of the question, and this point the Turks have already passed. You can follow them no further. The way is blocked up by mountains of hideous facts that repel scrutiny and investigation, over and beyond which you: can not see and do not care to go. You feel that it is superfluous to continue measuring these mountains and deciding whether they be a few feet higher or lower, and you do not care to go seeking for mole hills among them. You feel that it is time to turn back; that you have seen enough. But let me tell you what we saw at Batak. We had some difficulty in getting away from Pestara. The authorities were offended because Mr. Schuyler refused to take any Turkish official with him, and they ordered the inhabitants to tell us that there were no horses, for we had to leave our carriages and take to the saddle. But the people were so anxious that we should go that they furnished horses in spite of the prohibition, only bringing them at first without saddles, by way of showing how reluctantly they did it. We asked them if they could not bring us saddles, also, and this they did with much alacrity and some chuckling at the way in which the Mudir's orders were walked over. Finally we mounted and got off. As we approached Batak out attention was drawn to some dogs on a slope overlooking the town. We turned 164 - HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY. aside from the road, and passing over the debris of two or three walls and through several gardens, urged our horses up the ascent toward the dogs. They barked at us in an angry manner, and then ran off into the adjoining fields. I observed nothing peculiar as we mounted until my horse stumbled, when looking down I perceived he' had stepped on a human skull partly hid among the grass. It was ,quite hard and dry, and might, to all appearances, have been there two or three years, so well had the dogs done their work. A few steps further there was another and part of .a skeleton, likewise, white and dry. As we ascended, bones, skulls, and skeletons became more frequent, but here they had not been picked so clean, for there were fragments of half dry, half putrid flesh attached to them. At last we came to a little plateau or shelf on the hillside, where the ground was nearly level, with the exception of a little indentation, where the head of a hollow broke through. We rode toward this with the intention of crossing it, but all suddenly drew reign with an exclamation of horror, for right before us, almost beneath our horses' feet, was a sight that made us shudder. It was a heap of skulls, intermingled, with bones from all parts of the human body, skeletons nearly entire and rotting, clothing, human hair and putrid flesh lying there in one foul heap, around which the grass was growing luxuriantly. It emitted a sickening odor, like that of a dead horse, and it was here that the dogs had been seeking a hasty repast when our untimely approach interrupted them. In the midst of this heap, I could distinguish the slight skeleton form, still inclosed in a chemise, the skull wrapped about with a colored handkerchief, and the bony ankles encased in the embroidered footless stockings worn by Bulgarian girls. We looked about us. The ground was strewed with bones in every •direction, where the dogs had carried them off to gnaw them at their leisure. At the distance of a hundred yards beneath us lay the town. As seen from our standpoint, it reminded one somewhat of the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii. We looked again at the heap of skulls and skeletons before us, and we observed that they were all small and that the articles of clothing intermingled with them and lying about were all women's apparel. These, then, were all women HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY - 165 and girls. From my saddle I counted about a hundred skulls, not including those that were hidden beneath the others in the ghastly heap nor those that were scattered far and wide through the fields. The skulls were nearly all separated from the rest of the bones—the skeletons were nearly all headless. These women had all been beheaded. We descended into the town. Within the shattered walls of the first house we came to was a woman sitting upon a heap of rubbish rocking herself to and fro, wailing a kind of monotonous chant, half sung, half sobbed, that was not without a wild discordant melody. In her lap she held a babe, and another child sat beside her patiently and silently, and looked at us as we passed with wondering eyes. She paid no attention to us, but we bent our ear to hear what she was saying, and our interpreter said it was as follows : "My home, my home, my poor home, my sweet home; my husband, my husband, my dear husband, my poor husband; my home, my sweet home," and so on, repeating the same words over again a thousand times. In the next house were two engaged in a similar way; one old, the other young, repeating words nearly identical : — "I had a home, now I have none; I had a husband, now I am a widow; I had a son, and now I have none; I had five children, and now I. have one," while rocking themselves to and fro, beating their heads and wringing their hands. These were women who had escaped from the massacre, and had only just returned for the first time, having taken advantage of our visit to do so. As we advanced there were more and more, some sitting on the heaps of stones that covered the floors, others walking up and down, wringing their hands, weeping and wailing. The Turkish authorities did not even pretend that there was any Turk killed here, or that the inhabitants offered any resistence whatever when Achmet-Agha, who commanded the massacre, came with the Basha-Bazouks and demanded the surrender of their arms. They at first refused, but offered to deliver them to .the regular troops or to the Kaimakan at Tartar Bazardjik. This, however, AschmetAgha refused to allow, and insisted on their arms being de livered to him and his Bashi-Bazouks. After considerable hesitation and parleying this was done. It must not be supposed that these were arms that the inhabitants had specially 166 - HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY. prepared for an insurrection. They were simply the arms that everybody, Christians and Turks alike, carried and wore openly as is the custom here. What followed the delivery of arms will best be understood by the continuation of the recital of what we saw yesterday. At the point where we descended into the principal street of the place the people who had gathered around us pointed to a heap of ashes by the roadside, among which could be distinguished a great number of calcined bones. Here a heap of dead bodies had been burned, and it would seem that the Turks had been making some futile and misdirected attempts at cremation. A little further on we came to an object that filled us with pity and horror. It was the skeleton of a young girl not more than fifteen lying by the roadside, and partly covered with the debris of a fallen wall. It was still clothed in a chemise; the ankles were enclosed in footless stockings, but the little feet, from which the shoes had been taken, were naked, and owing to the fact that the flesh had dried instead of decomposing were nearly perfect. There was a large gash in the skull, to which a mass of rich brown hair, nearly a yard long, still clung, trailing in the dust. It is to be remarked that all the skeletons found here were dressed in a chemise only, and this poor child had evidently been stripped to her chemise, partly in the search for money and jewels, partly out of mere brutality, and afterwards killed. * * * * At the next house a man stopped us to show where a blind little brother had been burned alive, and the spot where he had found his calcined bones, and the rough, hard-vizaged man sat down and sobbed like a child. The number of children killed in these massacres is something enormous. They were often spitted on bayonets, and we have several stories from eye-witnesses who saw the little babes carried about the streets, both here and at 011uk-Kni, on the points of bayonets. The reason is simple. When a Mohammedan has killed a certain number of infidels he is sure of Paradise, no matter what his sins may be. There was not a house beneath the ruins which did not contain human remains, and the street beside was strewn with them. Before many of the doorways women were walking up and down wailing their funeral chant. One of them caught me by the arm and led me inside of the walls, and there in a HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY - 167 corner, half covered with stones and mortar, were the remains of another young girl, with her long hair flowing wildly among the stones and dust. And the mother fairly shrieked with agony and bet her head madly against the wall. I could only turn round and walk out sick at heart, leaving her alone with her skeleton. And now we began to approach the church and the schoolhouse. The ground is covered here with skeletons, to which are clinging articles of clothing and bits of putrid flesh. The air was heavy, with a faint, sickening odor, that grows stronger as we advance. It is beginning to be horrible. The school-house, to judge by the walls that are part standing, was a fine large building capable of accommodating 200 or 300 children. Beneath the stones and rubbish that cover the floor to the height of several feet are the bones and ashes of 200 women and children burned alive between these four walls. Just beside the school-house is a broad, shallow pit. Here were buried 200 bodies two weeks after the massacre. But the dogs uncovered them in part. The water flowed in, and now it lies there a horrid cesspool, with human remains floating about or lying half exposed in the mud. Near by on the banks of the little stream that runs through the village is a saw mill. The wheel pit beneath is full of dead bodies floating in the water. The banks of this stream were at one time literally covered with the corpses of men and women, young girls and children, that lay there festering in the sun and eaten by dogs." But the pitiful sky rained down a torrent upon them and the little stream swelled and rose up and carried the bodies away and strewed them far down its grassy banks, through its narrow gorges and dark defiles, beneath the thick underbrush and shady woods, as far as Pesterea and even Tartar Bazardjik, forty miles distant. We entered the church yard, but here the odor became so bad that it was almost impossible to proceed. We take a handful of tobacco and hold it against our noses while we continue our investigations. The church was not a very large one, and it was surrounded by a low stone wall, enclosing a small churchyard about fifty yards wide by seventy-five long. At first we perceive nothing in particular, and the stench is so great that we scarcely care to look about us; but we see that the place is heaped up with stones 168 - HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY. and rubbish to the height of five or six feet above the level of the street, and upon inspection we discover that what appeared to be a mass of stones and rubbish is in reality an immense heap of human bodies covered over with a thin layer of stones. The whole of the little churchyard is heaped up with them to the depth of three or four feet, and it is from here that the fearful odor comes. Some weeks after the massacre orders were sent to bury the dead. But the stench at that time had become so heavy that it was impossible to execute the order or even to remain in the neighborhood of the village. We are told that 3,000 people were lying in this little churchyard alone, and we could well believe it. It was a fearful sight—a sight to haunt one through life. There were little curly heads there in that festering mass, crushed down by heavy stones, little feet not as long as your finger, on which the flesh was dried hard by the ardent heat before it had time to decompose; little baby hands, stretched out as if for help; babes that had died wondering at the bright gleam of the sabers and the red eyes of the fierce-eyed men who wielded them; children who had died weeping and sobbing, and begging for mercy; mothers who had died trying to shield their little ones with their own weak bodies, all lying there together, festering in one horrid mass. They are silent enough now. There are no tears nor cries, no weeping, no shrieks of terror, nor prayers for mercy. The harvests are rotting in the fields and the reapers are rotting here in the churchyard. We looked into the church, which had been blackened by the burning of the woodwork, but not destroyed nor even much injured. It was a low building with a low roof, supported by heavy, irregular arches that, as we looked in, seemed scarcely high enough for a tall man to stand under. What we saw there was too frightful for more than a hasty glance. An immense number of bodies had been partly burned there and the charred and blackened remains that seemed to fill up half way to the low, dark arches and make them lower and darker still were lying in a state of putrefaction too frightful to look Upon. I had never imagined anything so horrible. We all turned away sick and faint and staggered out of the fearful pest house, glad to get into the street again. HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY - 169 We walked about the place and saw the same things repeated over and over again a hundred times. Skeletons of men with the clothing and flesh still hanging and rotting together; skulls of women, with their hair dragging in the dust; bones of children and infants everywhere. Here they show us a house where twenty people were buried alive; there another where a dozen girls had taken refuge and been slaughtered to the last one as their bones amply testified. Everywhere horrors upon horrors. Of the 8,000 to 9,000 people who made up the population of the place only 1,200 to 1,500 are left, and they have neither tools to dig graves with, nor strength to use spades if they had them. As to the present condition of the people it is simply fearful to think of. The Turkish authorities have built a few wooden sheds in the outskirts of the village in which they sleep, but they have nothing to live upon but what they can beg or borrow from their neighbors. And in addition to this the Turkish officials with that cool cynicism and utter disregard for European demands for which they are so distinguished, have ordered those people to pay their regular taxes and war contributions just as though nothing had happened. Ask the Porte about this at Constantinople, and it will be denied with the most plausible protestations and the most reassuring promises that everything will be done to help the sufferers. But everywhere the people of the villages come with the same story—that unless they pay their taxes and war contributions they are threatened with expulsion from the nooks and corners of the crumbling walls, where they have found a temporary shelter. It is simply impossible for them to pay, and what will be the result of these demands it is not easy to say. But the government needs money badly and must have it. Each village must make up its ordinary quota of taxes and the living must pay for the dead. We asked about the skulls and bones we had seen upon the hill upon our first arrival in the village, where the clogs had barked at us. These, we were told, were the bodies of 200 young girls who had first been captured and particularly reserved for a worse fate. They had been kept till the last; they had been in the hands of their captors for several days—for the burning and pillaging had not all been accomplished 170 - HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY. in a single day — and during this time they had suffered all that poor, weak, trembling girls could suffer at the hands of the brutal savages. Then, when the town had been pillaged and burned, when all their friends had been slaughtered, these poor young things, whose very wrongs should have insured them safety, whose very outrages should have insured them protection, were taken in the broad light of day, beneath the  smiling canopy of heaven, cooly beheaded, then thrown in a heap there and left to rot. MacGahan. This is the Poem read by C0l. W. A. Taylor, a Perry county b0y, on the occasion 0f the funeral of MacGahan. I. Not stately verse, nor trumpets blowing fame, Not praise from lips of matchless eloquence; Not monumental piles nor epitaphs.; Funeral pomp, nor all combined, can make Man other than he fashions for himself Out of warp and woof of Circumstance. A man lies here whose hand ennobled Time, And wrote a deathless page of history : Up from these hills our hero made his way — A western star that shown across the East, Moved forward by the hand of Destiny. Here, knee-deep in the purple clover bloom, He drank life's spring time bubbling at the fount — A school-girl's tenderness about his eyes — Less'ning a loving mother's daily toil, Content, yet all his soul unsatisfied. Out of such gentle stuff are heroes made — And he who wept a fallen butter-fly, Rode like a storm-cloud down the long plateaus, Defying Girghis, Turk and Turkoman — Across the Oxus, knocking at the gates Of far, mysterious Khivi, in a realm That filled his boyish dreams of Wonderland; Kings, kahns and caliphs passed him in review — The proud voluptuary and the cringing slave — HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY - 171 Seraglios, palaces and minarets Revealed their secrets, till the world amazed Rose and reached forth a succoring hand to man; Bulgaria in the wine press of the Turk, Gave blood and tears and groaned upon the rack, Until his mighty thunders 'gainst the wrong Rocked Europe to its base, unloosed the slave And set the sun of Freedom o'er the hills. Where serfs had groped through ages of eclipse. And then, where Stamboul, standing by the sea Looks through the spicy gateways of the East — Youth on his brow and summer on his lips, Crowned more than conqueror and more than king— Dreaming of these green hills, a mother's love, Of wife and babe and kindred's loving touch, With all the world before him, his great soul Ascended to the infinite, and mankind Are better for this hero having lived. II. Here where the green hills turn to gray Under the warm Autumnal sun, We lay him, with his honors won, Where first his eyes looked on the day, His work well done. There where proud Stamboul by the sea Looks through the Orient's purple gate, He met the Apostle's common fate, But ere he died, Bulgaria free Arose in state. His was God's sword in Gideon's field, That reaped like sheaves the souls of men, Justice, not blood, imbued his pen, And his strong truth became the shield And buckler then. And his ennobling part to dare — The Apostle's glory in the thralls — Whose triumph when the body falls, Like a broad sun of radiance rare Lights up the walls. 172 - HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY. With him who holds the truth in awe — Nor recks what bitter storms are poured — "The pen is mightier than the sword," And his strong armor without flaw Keeps perfect guard. O, green hills sloping east and west, To purple eve and crimson day, He comes along the martyr's way, His work with Freedom's paens blessed — He comes to-day. Here o'er the dust of him whose name Grew from these green hills, far away, Into the Orient's warmer day, Bright'ning the gilded scroll of fame, Fair truth can say. His hand bore not a hireling blade — His soul was trained to noble deeds, From out the rain he plucked the weeds, And in the battle undismayed, Struck down false creeds. Fair youth, among the quiet lanes, Came there a vision of the years Before you, telling of the tears, The struggles, triumphs and the pains, The hopes and fears. And watching as you went afield, Barefoot, to drive the lowing herd, Saw you the dim, far Orient stirred Its dark crimes and its secrets yield At thy stern word ? Did Hesperus at eve proclaim That you at Islam's mystic gate Should change the drifting tide of fate And blow upon the trump of Fame With breath elate ? HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY - 173 That he who drove his father's kine Beneath the northern moon should be The Liberator, and set free The bondsman with touch divine Of Liberty? Not where Stamboul's minarets Look down upon Marmora's sea, But in the glad soil of the free, We lay him down without regrets, While Time shall be. There sleep, O brother of the pen, Till the archangel's trump shall say Night ends in the eternal day, And Truth shall judge who have been men, Who went astray. Jeremiah M. Rusk. "The hills are dearest, where our childhood's feet Have climbed the earliest, And the streams most sweet Ever are those at which our young lips drank, Stooped to its waters o'er the mossy bank." The above sentiment was evidently in the mind of Secretary of Agriculture, Jeremiah M. Rusk, when he st0od before the door of the Post Office at Porterville and said, " Do you know that this whole country continually spreads out before me day and night, like a vast panoroma ? This is the place of my childhood's dreams. Here my parents, brothers and sisters lie buried. This country I love." The Rusk farm of five hundred acres lay mostly in Perry county. But the house in which Jeremiah Rusk was born stands a few rods across the line in Morgan. _ We do' not hesitate under the circumstances in calling " Uncle Jerry" as he was familiarly known, a Perry county boy. 174 - HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY. Daniel Rusk was one of the pioners of Perry county. In 1813 he came to Clayton township and settled on Buckeye creek. His wife was Jane Falkner. Mrs. Rusk's mother was the first person to be buried in Unity Presbyterian cemetery, in Clayton township. The Rusk family lived on Buckeye till 1826 when they moved to Bearfield township and purchased the large farm on which Porterville now stands. This village was originally known as Ruskville. It was on this farm that the subject of our sketch was born, on the 17th of July, 1830. The Mother of Jeremiah McLain Rusk was a woman of exalted character and noble ideals. Even in a pioneer home she did not forget to cultivate the culture side of life. The home training had therefore much to do with the success of the future governor of Wisconsin. Young Rusk attended a subscription school at first, for the public school was then unknown. After the establishment of the latter, he became a pupil in it and received the nucleus of such an education as could then be obtained. He was sixteen years old when his father died. Being the youngest of ten children, and the older members of the family having married, the care of the farm largely devolved upon him. Here he early evinced that trait that has been characteristic of him throughout his life—to push work instead of work pushing him. While on the farm he became an expert horseman. There are men yet living in Bearfield township, who remember how adept he was, and how skillfully he could manage a horse. Many were the races that Jerry ran with the neighb0r b0ys along the Porterville ridge.