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CHAPTER XII.

THE ERA OF PEACE.

Joy Occasioned by the Close of the Indian War—The Avocations of Peace Resumed— Improvements—Scarcity of Money—Dress of the Early Settlers—Spinning and Weaving— Cotton Grown Upon the Bottoms—The High Price of Salt—A Company Formed to Manufacture it—A Capital of Seventy-five Dollars—Great Numbers of Emigrants Upon the Ohio in 1796—Bad Impression of the Ohio Company’s Lands Still Operates Against Development— Slow Increase in Population—Settlement of the College townships—The Streams the Main Thoroughfares for Travel—Most of the Settlers Situated Upon Them—Location of Different Classes of Inhabitants—Aspect of the Country in the Year 1800—Large Tracts Still Wild—Abundance of Game—Indians Visit the Lands Yearly to Hunt Until the Winter of 1811—Annoyance Caused by the Smart Animals—Vast Pigeon Roosts—Introduction of Fruit—Fine Cattle—Belpre as a Dairy Region—Merino Sheep Brought Into the Country by Israel Putnam and Paul Fearing—Sixteen Hundred Acres of Land for a Ram—Depredation by Wolves—The Western Reserve Opened to Settlement by Connecticut—Effect Upon the Marietta Group of Settlements—Unevenness in the Distribution of Population—The Hill Lands Generally Refused by the First Settlers—The Second Period of Emigration—Various Elements of Population—Scotch Pioneers—Quakers in Barlow and Adjoining Townships—Effect of Therr Arrival Upon the Value of Lands—German Settlers—Good Results of Their Industry and Frugality— Irish Population—Settlements of Colored People—Emigration From Washington County to the West.

PEACE came to the pioneer settlements after the war as the springtime comes to nature after long weary winter. Peace was the sunshine under which the land blossomed with prosperity.

The close of the war brought joy almost unspeakable to the long imprisoned and sorely harassed settlers in the Ohio company's purchase, and to all the people of the far-reaching frontier—not alone to those in the territory northwest of the beautiful river, but to all along the border of Pennsylvania, of Virginia, and of Kentucky. One old time writer says: "Never since the golden age of the poets did the 'siren song of peace and farming' reach so many ears and gladden so many hearts as after Wayne's treaty in 1795."

The Marietta, Belpre, and Waterford settlers relieved from the restraint of garrison life—and relieved from the necessity of it—went fearlessly forth to pursue those avocations from which they had been in a great measure debarred ever since their arrival in the country. Each man took possession of his own land,* and if a cabin had not before been erected upon it, proceeded to build one. The work of clearing land and sowing seed was carried on as it had never been before. The virgin soil which had been for ages shaded by the heavy forest was bared to the sunlight, and plenteous yields of grain and corn appeared to attest its richness. Men labored cheerily

* A few individuals had seen fit to venture beyond the protecting walls of the garrison before the Indian war was at an end. The family of Levi Chapman, it is said, was the first that left any of the stockades to settle on a farm in Washington county. Chapman, with a family of eight boys and four girls, arrived in Marietta in 1794, and in the same year located on Duck creek, where the village of Whipple now stands, a detachment of soldiers going out with him as a guard, and assisting him to erect a block-house. Harvery Chapman, the youngest son of Levi is still living (at Kenton, Hardin county, Ohio), at the age of ninety-three years, and is the only one of the family left. He was about seven years of age when the family came to Marietta. Some of the descendants of Levi Chapman are now living upon Duck creek, some in Marietta, and others in Zanesville.

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and with a will now that they were assured of the safety of their homes and families. Every endeavor possible was made to secure the advantages which had so long been denied these distressed and well-nigh helpless people. There seemed a general desire to make present industry atone for the enforced idleness of the past. As fast as was possible in the sparsely peopled district, roads were opened and bridges built, though for many years the rivers and the lesser streams were the highways and byways of communication and commerce. Mills were erected to accommodate the increased needs of the people, and new commodities—articles usually thought necessities, but which were luxuries to the pioneers who had long been without them—were brought into the country. Not many articles, however, were brought, for there was but little money in the settlements. So far as was possible the pioneer men and women confined themselves to the use of those materials for clothing and those food staples which they could produce by their own labor. The skins of animals were very commonly made into clothing. There were many men in the country who had complete outfits of deerskin, and a few families in which little else was used.

For several years buckskin was retained in use by those following agricultural occupations, and was almost universally employed for trousers for men and boys. The men wore what were commonly called hunting shirts—garments resembling coats, made to fit the form quite loosely, and worn belted or tied about the waist with a sash or deerskin thongs. These hunting shirts were ordinarily made of "linsey woolsey," woven by the women of the wearer's household. Hemp and flax were raised in abundance, and there were few women who were not adepts in weaving it into cloth. Spinning and weaving were with them almost constant occupations. In nearly every cabin there was a wheel and a loom. The patient toil of deft fingers kept the family clothed and saved the outlay of money from the scanty store, for finer, but not more serviceable cloth. Only a small proportion of the residents in the Ohio company's territory wore any other than homespun clothes, though there were, of course, some who maintained the old custom of dressing in finer fabrics, and in a style of stately elegance. Cotton was grown in small quantities for a few years, and upon the rich bottom lands a very fair yield was obtained, but it was soon demonstrated that the climate was not sufficiently warm for the profitable growing of this crop and its culture was given up. There were many, however, who wore cloth made from cotton grown by themselves along the Ohio and Muskingum. Captain Jonathan Devol constructed an ingenious machine by which the seed was separated from the fibre. Cotton was not the only product of the semi-tropical regions which the pioneers raised within the present limits of Washington county. Rice of a very good quality was grown at an early day. Neither of the southern staples, however, was found to be so practically successful as to warrant the continuance of their culture after money became so plentiful that they could be purchased when needed.

There was one article which, perhaps, more than any other, the early settlers felt the need of, and which was very scarce and very dear. It was salt. The price in cash for one bushel of coarse salt was eight dollars. Those who had money could illy afford to pay such a price, and there were many who could not if they would. Some persons experienced considerable inconvenience from being deprived of a sufficiency of this important food condiment. So great was the need that a company was formed for the operation of the salt springs in the upper Muskingum county. It was known to the settlers that the Indians had made salt somewhere in the vicinity of Salt creek (a small stream that flows into the Muskingum at Taylorsville, Muskingum county, which locality was known before the slack water improvements were made at Duncan's Falls). An attempt made to discover these springs, however, during the Indian war, was unsuccessful. In 1796, an exploring party sent out for the purpose, found the valued saline springs. When they returned with the good news a company was immediately organized by the inhabitants for prosecuting the manufacture of salt. Some idea of the dearth of money at this time may be suggested by the statement of the fact that the number of shares was set at fifty and the shares were worth one dollar and fifty cents each.

A capital of seventy-five dollars, however, was sufficient for the accomplishment of the company's purposes. A party of men were sent to the locality of the springs. They sunk a well fifteen feet deep and three feet in diameter, near the edge of the creek. A section of a hollow sycamore tree was put down to exclude the fresh water and a common sweep and fall was rigged for drawing the precious salt water to the surface.

In the meantime men had been sent to Pittsburgh, and with a portion of the company's modest capital had bought twenty-four iron kettles. These were boated down the Ohio to the Muskingum, and up the latter stream to Duncan's Falls, from whence they were "packed" on horses seven miles to the well. A furnace was built in which the kettles were set, and a shelter being provided the work of making salt was begun. The fires were kept up night and day, the fifty associates of the company being divided into ten squads of five men each, who worked for two weeks at a time, and divided the watches to suit themselves. An enormous quantity of wood was burned, a yoke of oxen being kept constantly employed in hauling and a man in cutting it. At the best only about one hundred pounds of salt could be made each day and night, and it was of a poor quality, being dark colored and strongly tinctured with a bitter substance—probably muriate of lime. It was probably worth when manufactured about three dollars per bushel, but even had it cost as much as the salt brought over the mountains the manufacture would have been advantageous as the outlay was principally that of labor instead of money. The work of salt boiling was carried on for several years, the men often enduring great hardship, and on one occasion, at least, during the first winter, in intensely cold weather, narrowly escaping death, from being lost in the woods while attempting to make their way to Marietta for the purpose of securing provisions.

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During the year 1796 great numbers of emigrants, many of whom had been anxiously awaiting the close of the Indian war, came down the Ohio. It is estimated that upwards of a thousand Kentucky boats or "broad: horns" floated down the river. Each boat had on board from one to two families or men. Kentucky, which before the settlement of Marietta had a population of more than thirty thousand, received large accessions from this emigration, and the group of settlements in the Symmes purchase were considerably increased in strength. A few of these pioneers, mostly from Virginia, were destined for Chillicothe, which was founded this year by Nathaniel Massie, and others located at Manchester on the Ohio in the present limits of Adams county), which, under the name of Massie's station, had been established in the spring of 1791. Nearly all of the Virginia emigrants located in the military district reserved by the Old Dominion between the Scioto and Little Miami. The Symmes Purchase settlers were almost to a man from New Jersey. The settlement of the Ohio company's purchase depended now, as originally, almost entirely upon New England. The impression that the lands owned by this company were very sterile, had gained wide credence, and many who would doubtless have settled within the limits of the tract had they depended upon personal examination for their knowledge, being prejudiced, passed by. The increase in population was very slow, but most of the newcomers, like the original settlers, were men of far better character than the majority of those in other pioneer communities. If the progress of settlement and improvement in the Ohio company's territory was less in degree than in the richer regions farther west, it was better in kind. The undesirable elements of frontier society were in a very small minority. The majority of the emigrants were men of small fortune, liberal education, good morals, and indomitable energy. They were men who were satisfied to make the slow but sure advancement in condition which a capital of industry insures.

All of the emigrants who owned or desired to own lands in the Ohio company's purchase stopped at Marietta prior to making permanent locations. In the spring of 1797 a number of men, among whom were Alvan Bingham, Silas Bingham, Isaac Barker, William Harper, John Wilkins, Robert Linzee, Edmund, William and Barak Dorr, John Chandler mid Jonathan Watkins,* urged by General Putnam, settled in the college townships, now known as Ames and Alexander, in Athens county. They loaded their effects in canoes, floated down the Ohio to the Hockhocking, and rowed up that stream to the place of their destination. Upon the bottoms along the river and upon the site of Athens was thus begun the settlement of the interior of the purchase.

One of the prominent pioneer interior settlements within the county of Washington was in Barlow township. It was the most remote from the settlements on the Ohio and Muskingum, being about the same distance from each. The nearest settlement upon the westward was on Federal creek, sixteen miles distant. The settlement

* Charles M. Walker's History of Athens County.

was made by James Lawton and Nathan Proctor with their families in 1800, and the spot was probably chosen chiefly for the reason that it was near the intersection of the trails or traces which led from Belpre to Waterford and from Marietta to Athens.

Other settlements were formed about the same time in various localities remote from the Ohio and Muskingum but the majority of the early residents were located along the principal streams, and in the vicinity of the old and, by this time, well established communities of Marietta, Belpre and Waterford, and there were several of the back townships which were without any inhabitants at the beginning of the present century; and were very thinly settled a score of years later. The lands adjoining the streams were the first to be improved, for two reasons. First, they were richer and offered a better return for the husbandman's labor in clearing and tilling; and secondly, their location upon the streams made them more readily accessible. The streams were the thoroughfares on which nearly all traffic and communication was carried on. The best road within the boundaries of Washington county was probably that from Marietta to Zanesville, opened in 1798, but even this was, during the greater part of the year, practically impassable for laden wagons. The interior of the county was a wilderness penetrable only with great difficulty, and the few settlers who had taken up lands remote from the streams were almost completely isolated from fellowship with men. In the eastern end of the county the same order of things prevailed as in the western. The lands first bought from the Government and earliest settled were along the Ohio. The only practical difference between the development of the territory included in the seven ranges and that in the Ohio company's purchase was that in the former the population was made up almost entirely of Virginians and Pennsylvanians, and that the settlement was later than in the Ohio company's lands. Through all of these lands the slow, laborious task of clearing away the forest and rearing homes went on continuously, and lives were wrought out in patient, honorable heroism, which has been in a measure lost sight of in the glare of more startling, but not more valuable achievement.

While that portion of Washington county west of the Muskingum and along its eastern shore was the especial field of the New England settlers, they also pushed their way into some of the lands farther eastward which were not included in the Ohio company's purchase. The country around Marietta was of course settled by them and at an early day. Later, but still in the closing years of the past century, many of the immigrants from Massachusetts and her neighboring States made themselves homes within the present boundaries of Newport township, also in Fearing and in the southwestern corner of Lawrence. At a later period the country north of Fearing was thinly settled by the same class.

By the year 1800 the aspect of the country was very materially changed. Many of the log cabins on the farms had by this time been replaced by more commodious and comfortable frame houses, and the little barns hastily erected for the shelter of a single yoke of oxen, perhaps,

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or the storage of a small crop had given way to larger ones which still were not two ample for the harvests of corn and grain from the broad, newly cleared acres. More thorough methods of tilling the soil were adopted, as the practice became possible and improved implements could be either manufactured or procured from the east. But even the best of these were very primitive and ill adapted to the purposes designed and had to be made up by the increase of energy in their use.

Notwithstanding the advancement that had been made, very large portions of the country at present embraced in the limits of Washington county were in almost as wild a state as they were prior to the original settlement. There were large tracts of unbroken forest in which the game was still so plentiful that the Indians regarded them as good hunting grounds. They came into the country in large bands annually until the last grand hunt in the winter of 1810—11, and until that time bear continued in considerable abundance. Deer were also very plenty until this hunt was held. It was evidently the purpose of the Indians to destroy or drive the game from the country, as they had done in 1788 and 1789. After the hunt the carcasses of many deer were found in the woods bordering the settlements in Washington and Athens counties, which appeared to have been wantonly killed by the savages.* The buffalo and the elk were not exterminated until x800.

The smaller kinds of animals were to be found in vast numbers. The woods were alive with wolves, foxes, opossums, rabbits, raccoons, ground hogs, squirrels and birds, and they proved a serious pest to the farmers. The wolves and squirrels were especially troublesome, the former prowling in the vicinity of the sheep pens and often committing depredations, and the latter overrunning the cornfields and completely ruining the crops, unless a constant watch was kept over the fields. Immense flocks of pigeons darkened the air in the fall by their flight, and broke down the branches of the forest trees where they alighted in countless number. A good idea of the vastness of these flocks is given by an observant and perfectly credible tourist of 1803:

The vast flight of pigeons in this country seem incredible. But there is a large forest in Waterford, containing several hundred acres, which has been killed in consequence of their lighting upon it during the autumn of 1801. Such numbers lodged upon the trees that they broke off targe timbs; and the ground below is covered, and in some places a foot thick, with their dung, which has not only killed all the under-. growth, but all the trees are as dead as if they had been girdled. 1-

A letter received in 1803 by the writer of the above, from a friend in Marietta, says:

I have visited two pigeon roosts and have heard of a third. Those I have seen are astonishing. One is supposed to cover a thousand acres; the other is still larger. The destruction of timber and brush on such large tracts of tand by these small animals is almost incredible. How many millions of them must have assembled to effect it, especially as it was done in the course of a few weeks.:

Orchards of thrifty trees gave a home-like appearance

* Reminiscences of Judge Ephraim Cutler in Charles M. Walker's History of Athens County.

t "journal of a Tour into the Territory Northwest of the Alleghany Mountains," by Thaddeus Mason Harris.

+ Letter from the Rev. Daniel Story to Thaddeu Mason Harris, dated Marietta, June 3, 1803.

to many of the farms, and early in the present century were so well advanced as to be of very great value. The earliest introduction of fruit was in the year 1794. Israel Putnam, the son of Colonel Israel and grandson of General Israel, the wolf-slayer, when he arrived at Belpre' on the second of May, in the year mentioned, unloaded among his other effects a few apple scions, which were set in his brother's garden. In 1796 he sent from the east a larger lot of scions, which were distributed among the settlers by William Rufus Putnam, to whom they were consigned. They were carried across the mountains in saddle-bags, and being well packed in beeswax, arrived in good condition, and nearly all of them were successfully engrafted. The list, by which it appears

there were twenty-three varieties, has been preserved, and we here give it a place. It included Putnam sweets, Seek-no-farthers, Early Chandlers, Late Chandlers, Gillyflowers, Pound Royals, Naturalings, Rhode Island Greenings, Yellow Greenings, Golden Pippins, Long Island Pippins, Tollman Sweetings, Streaked Sweetings, Honey Greenings, Kent Pippins, the Cooper apple, Streaked Gillyflowers, Black Gillyflowers, Beauties, Queenings, Englins Pearmain, Green Pippins, and Spitzenbergs. Thus early were the best varieties of apples known in New England introduced in the pioneer western settlement.

Over twenty years later, in 1818, the same Israel Putnam who had made this beginning in fruit culture, established a nursery at his home upon the Muskingum, in old Union township, from which came nearly all of the apple trees in Washington county until comparatively recent years. The scions from this nursery were also brought out from New England, and included almost exactly the same variety as that given in the foregoing list, showing that the selections made in 1796 were satisfactory ones. Among the several new varieties were the Calvert Sweetings, Newton Pippins, and one which was given the name of the Muskingum apple.

Fine cattle were brought into the country by Colonel Israel Putnam, father of the Israel Putnam to whom the people were indebted for the introduction of fruit. He brought oxen of a superior breed to Marietta in 1788, and, in 1795, procured cows from which he raised some of the best stock in the settlements. It was largely through the good beginning made by him, and his practical, intelligent devotion to agriculture and stock raising, that Belpre became a famous farming locality at an early day, and especially noted for its dairy products. Large quantities of superior cheese were made and shipped down the river, and Belpre was as much noted for the quantity and quality of the cheese manufactured by her farmers as are now some of the grazing counties in the Western Reserve.

Sheep raising was also begun at an early day, and the Hon. Paul Fearing was one of the first who paid any attention to this department of husbandry. The earliest mention of Merino sheep, however, occurs in the journal of the younger Israel Putnam, under date of September, 1809. It describes his journey to Wakatomica, and his return with two full bred Merino rams arid fifteen half

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bred rams, which he put with his ewes at his farm upon the Muskingum. It appears from the record that he continued improving his flock until the year 1812. Paul Fearing was similarly engaged at about the same period, and paid very close attention to the care of his flocks, raising several hundred choice sheep from a few which he purchased at enormous expense. Benjamin Ives Gilman, it appears, was associated with him for some time. Merinos had then only recently been imported by the leading farmers in the eastern States, and these men, in what was at that time the far west, showed a very remarkable progressiveness and enterprise in thus early availing themselves of the costly means of improvement. It appears from an old letter (February 14, 1814) that Messrs. Fearing and Gilman bought of Colonel Humphrey, the noted importer, one full-blooded Merino ram, for which they gave sixteen hundred acres of land. Sheep raising was during the early years of the settlement, and as late as 1825, attended with some difficulties which the farmers of the present day do not experience. The chief danger to the flocks was from wolves, which were still numerous. Israel Putnam lost ninety-seven sheep in eight months, from wolves or dogs—chiefly the former. Benjamin Dana, who owned a large farm twenty miles up the Muskingum, and kept about a thousand head of Saxons, in order to preserve them from the wolves drove them into small yards every night. These yards or pens were surrounded with high fences, sloping inward. Wolves could readily get in but could not get out, and never harmed the sheep, it is said, after finding they were entrapped. They were frequently found among the sheep in the morning and killed.

It had been confidently expected that after the close of the Indian war the Ohio company's settlements would .quickly receive large accessions of population, and yet such was not the case. The student of history who seeks the cause will find it in the opening of the Connecticut Western Reserve. The Ohio company's leading spirits, and the friends of the organization had not feared the result of Virginia's action in reserving in 1784 a large tract of land for her Revolutionary soldiers. It could have little effect upon the weal or woe of the Muskingum settlements. The Ohio company did not look to Virginia for settlers. A considerable amount of emigration was diverted from the pioneer colony of the northwest by the well advertised attractions of the Symmes' purchase, but had no other divergence in the stream occurred the company's lands would have been quite thickly settled, in all probability, by the close of the first decade of the present century. Connecticut, it will be remembered, did not make her deed of cession until 1786. Definite action tending toward the colonization of her immense reservation (three million three hundred and sixty-six thousand nine hundred and twenty-one acres by actual survey) was not taken until 1795. In that year the State sold her lands for one million two hundred thousand dollars to the Connecticut Land company composed of forty-eight shareholders. The survey of the Western Reserve quickly followed, and the draft, or division, followed that. Thus there was thrown upon the market a large body of fine lands, to which the people of Connecticut who entertained ideas of emigrating westward naturally looked for their future homes. The prospective opening of the Reserve had deterred many from locating elsewhere, and the mother State had done all in her power to direct the minds of her people to the New Connecticut. Now that it was open and ready for settlement, a current of emigration immediately set toward it, flowing feebly and slowly at first, but with strength and volume constantly increasing until the waves of population had covered all northeastern Ohio. The pioneers of the Reserve were nearly all from Connecticut, a State in which the Ohio company's influence had been extensively exerted, and which was commonly supposed would prove as rich a source of emigration to the company's territory as Massachusetts. As the Connecticut Reserve was less remote from the mother State by which its interests were sedulously fostered, it was not strange that it received nearly all of the emigrants who went westward from Connecticut and many from the contiguous commonwealths, and that the development of the Ohio company's purchase was retarded proportionately.

Another cause of the slow increase in the population of the Ohio company's purchase and of Washington county was the almost universal belief that the hill lands were entirely valueless. The fact that the bottom lands were the first settled has been heretofore alluded to. A map of the county in 1810, indicating habitations and improvements would show very few settlers except along the streams. The country immediately surrounding some of the oldest settlements would appear unbroken by civilization. For many years those who sought lands on finding that the rich alluvions had been taken up, journeyed on to find what they desired farther westward in Ohio or in Indiana or Illinois. It was only when these more desirable lands farther westward had increased considerably in price that the hill land came into general demand. Another era of settlement and development then began in Washington county. The emigrants of this period—say from 1820 to 1835 or 1840—coming in from the middle as well as the New England States, and even from foreign shores, changed and improved in a marked degree the condition of the country. In 1805 Watertown was probably the only township in Washington county of which the whole territory had been dotted with improvements and which exhibited anything like evenness in the distribution of its inhabitants. It was the first township generally improved although its settlement did not begin until after that of several other localities, and did not progress so fast. The cause of its evenness of development probably lay in the fact that its surface was, as compared with other portions of the county, not roughly broken or hilly. What we may call the second period of settlement resulted in giving other townships something of the advantages already possessed by Watertown. The new settlers taking up lands which the original pioneers had refused had a hard task before them, and saw smaller prospective rewards for their labor; but they were generally men of smaller expectations and humbler hopes than their predecessors, and they were

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more easily satisfied. Most of them were men of small means, but sturdy ability to labor, and possessed those well grounded habits of industry and economy which are always productive of thrift, whatever may be the nature of the surrounding circumstances. To their energy and frugality the people of the county are indebted for a vast increase in the value of its lands. From the comparative sterile hills, which the New Englanders as a rule despised and avoided, they have wrung, by patient toil, a livelihood, and in very recent years their gains have been largely increased by scientific, sensible application of those fertilizing elements which the hill soil has lacked.

The elements making up the population of the second period of emigration are varied and several of them possess features of especial interest, which are much more fully treated elsewhere in this volume, than in the present chapter.* Beside the population derived from the eastern and middle States the county has a considerable number of Scotch, Quakers and Germans. Each of these elements has a strong showing in the neighborhood, and one of them—the German—is to be found in all parts of the county.

The pioneers of the Scotch nationality located in Bar--low township. The first family of this people in the county was probably that of John Harvey who arrived in 1817, and the second, William Andrews. John Flemming came in about 1820, and the settlement was farther increased by the addition of the Breckenridge family. These pioneers from Scotland were followed by other settlers, and in a few years so many had arrived that their population spread into the adjourning townships of Dunham and Warren, and even in Belpre. The immigration began as has been stated in 1817, was encouraged in 1828, and for a considerable period later, by Nahum Ward, esq., of Marietta, a large landholder, who went to Scotland, and there published "A Brief Sketch of the State of Ohio, one of the United States of North America, with a map delineating the same into counties." Both through Mr. Ward's endeavors and independent of them, the Scotch immigration increased until the neighborhood, of which the Barlow settlement was the beginning, became thickly populated with the people of the canny race, who prospering themselves, enriched the country in which they had made their homes.

The Quaker element in Washington county is principally confined to the western part, though a few reside in the east end. Wesley was the township first settled by these people, and they came in from the north in 1840. A movement had been made toward the Ohio, from Jefferson and Belmont counties, and many Quakers had located in Morgan county, where the names of Penn and Pennsville have been left as indications of the nature of the population which filled that portion of the county. From the township of Penn a slow but steady stream of immigration flowed into the extreme western tier of townships in Washington county. Wesley in which the

* In the several township histories many facts in regard to nationality and characteristics of population are given as welt as statements in regard to dates of settlement and names of pioneers. Hence the whole subject is in this chapter merely treated in a general way.

first settlement was made, has now the largest number of this class, but Decatur, Fairfield and Palmer have a considerable element. The whole western end of the county has been materially benefitted by the Quaker settlers. Wherever they have gone, land has increased in value, and the moral well being of the people has been enhanced.

By far the largest foreign element in the county is the German. The settlement by people of this nationality may be said to have commenced early in the thirties1832–'33–'34—being the years when the pioneer families arrived. Fearing township was the locality in which the earliest settlers made their homes, and they soon spread into Marietta township, Adams, Salem, Liberty, Lawrence, and Newport, and now there is no township in the county which has not at least a liberal sprinkling of German population. The largest immigration was from 1840 to 1850 and was nearly equalled in the decade following. One feature in the German settlement was the establishment of the village of Bonn, in Salem township, by Nahum Ward, esq., who induced many Germans to come to this country, and endeavored to build up for them and by them a little manufacturing centre. Spinning and silk manufacturing were the principal industries entered upon. They did not, however, meet with remarkable success, and the village of Bonn, of which very sanguine hopes were one time entertained, amounted to little more than a convenient trading place for the German settlers in Salem and the north part of Fearing. While the Germans generally in Washington county and especially those of them who were early settlers, were of Protestant faith, a Catholic element of considerable strength has slowly gathered in Muskingum, Watertown, Adams, and Warren. The latter township has a large German population, amounting probably to a third of the entire number of inhabitants and in the country back from the river fifty per cent. while a large portion of the original German settlers west of the Muskingum and east of it but in its immediate vicinity were of foreign birth. The majority of those in the eastern end are native born.

There is a considerable element of Irish population in the territory included in the old township of Union (now divided between Muskingum, Watertown, and Adams). Probably fifty per cent. of the inhabitants of this part of the county are Irish born, or of Irish descent. The work on the Muskingum improvements brought many laborers into the county, a large proportion of whom were Irish. When the Government work was completed, many of these men found themselves in possession of sufficient amounts of money to make the first payments upon, or buy outright, small farms. They naturally located in as compact a body as possible, and took up all the purchasable farming lands in the territory described. .

There remains one other class of population to be spoken of. In addition to their scattered population, the colored people have in Washington county several distinct settlements. The first colored man who owned land in the county was undoubtedly Richard Fisher, a mulatto, who prior to 1800 dwelt in Salem township, on the west fork of Duck creek. It does not appear that more

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, OHIO - 101

than a score of individuals of the colored race lived in the county at any one time until about 1835, when a little community came into being in Barlow township, which increased both numerically and in property until its people were able to have their own church and school, and live in almost every sense independent of outsiders. Many of these colored people have accumulated 'modest properties, and some own large farms and live surrounded by every comfort possessed by their white neighbors. There is another and much smaller colony of colored people in Warren township, and a third in the south part of Adams. This is made up of families from Virginia, who, during and after the war of the Rebellion, became residents of Belmont county, and in 1875 made themselves homes at their present location. Their advancement in condition has been equal in result to that of the Barlow colored settlers, and attained much more quickly. They have a church of their own, and are in a generally prosperous state.

Another movement remains to be mentioned. While Washington county was receiving a slow but steady flow of emigration, a stream had set forth to the ever receding great west. From the land first settled by the sterling men of Massachusetts and her sister States of the Atlantic seaboard, the sons of those pioneers were going out as pioneers to the regions beyond the Mississippi. This was not an emigration effected through any colonization scheme, but by individual choice and independent action. It was, therefore, slow and its result not conspicuous. It was a powerful agency, however, in modifying the relative proportions of the two great elements in the population. Nearly all of the newcomers—the settlers who belong to what we have called the second period of emigration—were of foreign birth, and almost to a man those who removed were native born Americans. This being the fact, it follows as a matter of course that the western, part of the county suffered most by the emigration. Upon the other hand the eastern end gained quite largely through an emigration from Belmont and Monroe counties. These causes combined soon became of sufficient force to be of some importance as affecting the relative political strength of the east and west sides of the county.

In the west, too, there has been some effect, however small, resultant from Washington county emigration. Marietta has borne no slight share in the great duty of social transmission, and so when the centennial anniversary of the settlement of Ohio, shall have come her citizens can claim some degree of proprietorship in the advancement which has been made in Kansas and Iowa, and Minnesota, and all the younger States in the newer west

An eloquent and renowned orator on the occasion of the two hundredth anniversary of the settlement of a Massachusetts town, which has a namesake in Washington county, used these words: "While our thoughts today are carried back to the tombs of our fathers beyond the sea, there are millions of kindred Americans beyond the rivers and mountains whose, hearts are fixed on the Atlantic coast, as the cradle of their political existence. . . . A mighty wilderness has been colonized almost within our day."

And now a mightier wilderness has been added to the realm of civilization, and while our thoughts, as the first century of western life draws to a close, are carried back to the tombs of our fathers—not in old England, but in New England—there are others beyond farther rivers and more distant mountains, whose hearts are fixed upon the shores of the Ohio, the Muskingum, and Lake Erie, as the land of their nativity or of ancestral recollection.