USA > Ohio > Ashland County > A History of the Pioneer and Modern Times of Ashland County > Part 2
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HISTORY OF ASHLAND COUNTY.
In the SOCIAL CUSTOMS of our times, it may be doubted whether we have made improvement upon those of our ancestors. A contemporary gives this brief and faithful contrast between those of the old and latter days :-
"In days of yore friends and neighbors could meet together to enjoy themselves, and with hearty good will enter into the spirit of social amusements. The old and young could then spend evening after evening around the firesides with pleasure and profit. There was a geniality of manners then, and a corresponding depth of soul, to which modern society is unaccus- tomed. Parties were not so fashionable then as now, but the old-fashioned social reunions were vastly bet- ter than the more gaudy and soulless assemblies of the present day. Our ancestors did not make a special invitation the only pass to their dwellings, and they entertained those who called upon them with a hospitality which has nearly become obsolete. Modern social intercourse is for the most part hollow and heartless. Most of those who give parties do so for the sake of making a vulgar display, to excite the envy and admiration of their silly companions. During the week preceding the giving of a party, the hostess is continually fretting at the trouble she is undergoing, to meet what she supposes her circle demand of her.
"The evening of the party arrives, and she must be extremely polite to those she dislikes, and main- tain for hours an appearance of cordiality, while her guests are enjoying the entertainment prepared at vast expense, and secretly ridiculing the vanity and ostentation that have provided the repast. Such is too often the substitute for the informal gatherings
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which were a feature in the days of our grandfathers. They did not feel obliged to spend a thousand dollars for an evening's entertainment for fear they might be outdone by their neighbors. Guests did not assemble then to criticise the decorations, furniture, manner, and table of those who invited them. They were sensible people, and visited each other to enjoy them- selves and promote the enjoyment of those around them. Perhaps it may be said that our ancestors were not refined like their descendants of the present day. If they had been, in the sense in which the word is now understood, this generation would have been more hollow and heartless than it now is. They had clear heads and warm hearts; they believed in the earnestness of life and in the power of human sympathies. They would have tolerated in their descendants with an ill grace the utter disregard of the duties of life which now prevails, and the so- called accomplishments, which are designed to cover up the faults and follies of modern society, would have received no favor at their hands. They taught their children to be useful, and always insisted that the useful should be a foundation for the ornamental. We have reversed all this, and everything like a true social development has gone out of date. Why may not the middle classes of the present day, who make vain attempts to rival the show and heartlessness of the wealthy, perceive that by the cultivation of real social feelings they can produce a state of society among their own circles which would be of immense advantage to themselves, their children, and their neighbors? Let the more sensible of them establish a new order of things, open their houses after the fashion in the olden time, and they can soon turn
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the current of fashionable folly, and really enjoy the sweets of life."
The simple tastes, habits, and wants of the pioneers may excite the patronizing sympathy of the parvenu of our day. We may ignore our obligations to the pioneer race, and congratulate ourselves that our lot has been cast in a more advanced era of mental and moral culture. We may pride ourselves upon the developments which have been made in science and art, and that our standard of civilization is im- measurably in advance of that of our fathers. But in all these assumptions are we not, as we are in many other things that belong to our generation, "too fast?" If the people of the "olden time" had less for costly apparel and ostentatious display, they. had also more for offices of charity and benevolence. If they had not the trappings and splendors of wealth, they had at least no infirmaries and no paupers-very few lawyers, and very little use for jails. The type of the Christianity of that period will not suffer by a comparison with that of our own day. The com- mand to "Love thy neighbor as thyself" was then more faithfully observed than now. The vain and thoughtless may jeer at their unpretending manners, customs, and costumes; but in all the elements of true manhood and true womanhood, it may be safely averred that they were more than the peers of the generation that now occupy their places. Has it never occurred to you, reader, that we may be largely indebted to the characteristics of our pioneer fathers for that vigor and valor which have stimulated their descendants to go forth and fight our country's bat- tles? That race have left their impress upon our times in more ways than one. Rude and illiterate,
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comparatively, they may have been; but they were undoubtedly men of strong minds in strong bodies- made so, albeit, by their compulsory self-denial and their very privations and toil. It was the mission of many of them to aid in the formation of our noble commonwealth, and wisely and well was that mission performed. Had their descendants been faithful to their teachings, there would have been harmony now where violence and discord reign. In those days our mountains and our valleys could say, "We nurse a race who ne'er hath bowed the knee to aught but God." They were the men to found and maintain an empire. They realized the beau ideal of the poet :- " What constitutes a State ? Not high-raised battlements, or labor'd mound, Thick wall or moated gate; Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crown'd : No ! men, high-minded men ; Men, who their duties know ; But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain,- These constitute a State."
The "Pioneer Times" have the greenest spot in the memories of those who lived in them. Their practices of self-denial - their very privations and sufferings-are consecrated things in the memory.
A few years ago, one who had witnessed all the stages of our material development - the gradual redemption from our wilderness condition to our recent full estate of national prosperity-and having himself, by years of industry and economy, gathered about him all the comforts and luxuries of modern life, had an irrepressible longing to be among the men and scenes of by-gone days. He would again become a pioneer in a new country. He sighed par-
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ticularly for that unbounded HOSPITALITY which dissolves-
"As wealth accumulates and men decay."
He could not, of course, hope to realize those halcyon days except in a new country. He therefore again, old as he was, resolved to sacrifice the comforts and luxuries of his Ashland County home-the results of the toil of his own hands-and seek a new one in the West. With this view, he traveled over Iowa, Minnesota, etc. There he found the wilderness, true enough, but he could not find THE MEN. The old race was not there. He discovered an utter absence of all the types and shadows of the Pioneer Times with which he had been familiar in his early man- hood. Instead of the matron and maiden decked in home-made tow-cloth and linsey-woolsey, he found hoops, silks, satins, and an exuberance of vanity and pretension. In place of the large-hearted humanity of the days of yore, he found selfishness, and a race for accumulation even more intensified than had developed itself in the modern times among our- selves. Far beyond the rising tide of population, he found the locomotive and its "train" of vice and social demoralization. Our friend returned home, well persuaded that no condition of society now exists upon the face of the globe that affords a parallel to the times for which he sighed and with which he was once familiar.
The last eighteen months have been peculiarly destructive of life among the aged. Twenty-two, at least, of the pioneers of the county have within that time been gathered to their fathers. The last will soon disappear from among us. May the present
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generation, who should be in the enjoyment of the fruits of the valor and toil of their predecessors, ever nourish a grateful sense of their obligations, and never omit opportunity to offer kindly ministrations to those who survive, and smooth their pathway to the tomb. May no neglects furnish occasion for a future poet to write of the last of the pioneers, in the spirit of Scott touching the last of the min- strels :-
" The last of all the bards was he, Who sung of border chivalry ; For, well-a-day ! their date was fled, His tuneful brethren all were dead ; And he, neglected and oppressed, Wished to be with them, and at rest."
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CHAPTER III.
Refuse Lands-Condition of early Agriculture-The opening of Markets, etc.
IT is a fact probably not generally known, but yet one well authenticated, that the lands which now produce most abundantly of the great cereal staple of Ashland County were regarded by the early set- tlers as utterly valueless for purposes of cultivation. The bottom or valley lands were the first and only sought by the pioneers. The monarch oaks and luxuriant herbage which adorned the sides and sum- mits of the lofty hills, at length suggested to those who had a better knowledge of agriculture as a science, that such productions could not spring from a soil naturally sterile.
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This idea of the barrenness of the upland soil is supposed to have had its origin in the fact that the substance of its surface had been for a considerable period annually exhausted by fire. These fires, for obvious reasons, rarely swept over the lower plains; and hence their fertility continued unimpaired. The practice of devastating by fire the upland forests, and thus defeating the operations of nature, doubtless had its origin with white hunters from the tramontane regions, who had introduced this with other more flagrant "vices of civilization" among the aborigines, after the latter had become instructed in the use of fire-arms and the practices of the white hunters. The effect of the fires was to change the natural qualities of the soil-to incrust the surface of the earth with a material similar to a vast sheet of brick; and where anything like pulverized earth made its appearance, it bore the semblance of white brickdust. Notwith- standing this periodical exhaustion, the natural vigor of the soil, during each spring following the autumnal burning, would become so far recuperated as to pro- duce a very rank growth of vegetation, known as sedge-grass, pea-vines, etc. This vegetation afforded excellent pasture from early spring until about. August. The sedge-grass, when cut in July, or earlier, afforded very nutritious and palatable food for domestic stock during the winter months. In the lapse of time it became a matter of necessity with the cultivators of the soil upon the bottom and valley lands, to fight and subdue these autumnal fires for the protection of their own fences, cabins, granaries, and other property; and after a few years of rest from the exhausting process, the uplands very soon resumed their natural fertility; a radical chemical 3
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change became apparent all over the surface of the soil, and efforts at cultivation demonstrated the fact that those rejected acres are now among the most fertile of any in Ohio for the production of the staple which is the chief source of our agricultural wealth.
The early labors of the husbandman were not attended with very good success. To account for this, we must consider that the implements of the farmer were rude and imperfect-principally the tiller's own handicraft-and that the seeds first planted and sown were placed in ground but par- tially cleared, covered with stumps and roots, and shaded by trees of the larger growth. Hence the "soft corn," water-soaked potatoes, and perhaps the "sick" and smut-stricken wheat, which were sources of general complaint among the early cultivators. The absence of foreign demand for produce during the first twenty years offered no incentive to a pro- duction beyond family and neighborhood wants. Aside from the supply of such wants, there was no stimulus to agricultural enterprise. It is related, on good authority, of a merchant in Wooster, who had accumulated in store a considerable quantity of wheat, for which he had paid the farmers, as an especial favor, twenty-five cents per bushel in goods, that, finding his grain would not pay cost of transportation to the lake markets, he transferred his wheat from the warehouse to the street, where it was partly devoured and partly trodden under foot of swine and other animals. Except spasmodic demands, explained among the narratives of the early settlers, the first encouragement the farmers of Ashland County re- ceived for growing grain or domestic animals for market was after the completion of the New York
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and Erie Canal, in 1825, and the opening of the Ohio Canal, at Massillon, in 1827. The construction of the Sandusky, Mansfield, and Newark Railroad to Mans- field, in July, 1846; of the Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati Railroad, in 1849; and of the Pitts- burg, Fort Wayne, and Chicago Railroad, at a more recent date, multiplied rival markets, gave value to productions of the farm that before had been worth- less, and has secured a reward to every department of agricultural enterprise and an increase in the value of real estate that are far beyond the most sanguine hopes of those who first settled the country.
CHAPTER IV.
Johnny Appleseed.
AMONG those whose names stand conspicuous in the memorials of the early settlers, is that of Jonathan Chapman, but more usually known as Johnny Apple- seed. Few were more widely known or more exten- sively useful to the pioneers than this blameless and benevolent man. The evil that he done, if any, appears not to have been known; the good that he accomplished was not "interred with his bones," but "lives after him," and bears its annual fruit over a surface of over one hundred thousand square miles- extending from the Ohio River to the Northern chain of lakes. Few men, as unpretending, have been more useful to their race in their day and generation. Many of the best orchards now in Ashland County
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are of trees which had their first growth in his forest- environed nurseries. He had one near where Lei- digh's Mill now stands, from which the early fruit growers of Orange, Montgomery, and Clearcreek obtained their principal supplies of trees. The orchards of Mr. Ekey and of Mr. Aton, in Clear- creek, and of the late Elias Slocum, now occupied by Ephraim Slocum, one mile and a quarter east of Ash- land, were from seed planted by him in the nursery above mentioned. He had also a nursery between the present town of Perrysville and the old Indian Green Town; another between Charles's Mill, in Mifflin Township, and Mansfield, on the farm now owned by Mr. Pittenger; another on the farm of the late John Oliver, in Green Township, northwest of Loudonville, on the Perrysville road,-and, although beyond the jurisdiction of this work, it may not be improper to add that one of his nurseries was within the present city limits of Mansfield, on a lot now owned by A. S. Newman, near Smith's brickyard. He doubtless had nurseries within this county other than those mentioned.
A letter from Hon. John H. James, of Urbana, Ohio, dated June 11, 1862, says: "The account of Johnny Appleseed, about which you inquire, is con- tained in a series of letters addressed to the Cincin- nati Horticultural Society, at their request, on 'Early Gardening in the West.' These letters have been usually printed in the Cincinnati daily papers, as a part of the Society proceedings. That letter was republished in the Logan Gazette, of which I am able to send you a copy this mail."
The following is part of the communication referred to by Mr. James :---
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"The growing of apple-trees from seeds gave em- ployment to a man who came hither before this was a State. I first saw him in 1826, and have since learned something of his history. He came to my office in Urbana, bearing a letter from the late Alex- ander Kimmont. The letter spoke of him as a man generally known by the name of Johnny Appleseed, and that he might desire some counsel about a nursery he had in Champaign County. His case was this: Some years before, he had planted a nursery on the land of a person who gave him leave to do so, and he was told that the land had been sold, and was now in other hands, and that the present owner might not recognize his right to the trees. He did not seem very anxious about it, and continued walking to and fro as he talked, and at the same time continued eating nuts. Having advised him to go and see the . person, and that on stating his case he might have no difficulty, the conversation turned. I asked him about his nursery, and whether the trees were grafted. He answered no, rather decidedly, and said that the proper and natural mode was to raise fruit trees from the seed.
"He seemed to know much about my wife's family, and whence they came, and this was on account of their church. He did not ask to see them, and on being asked whether he would like to do so, he de- clined, referring to his dress, that he was not fit, and he must yet go some miles on his way. He was of moderate height, very coarsely clad, and his costume carelessly worn. His name, as I learned afterward, ยท was Jonathan Chapman.
"In 1801 he came into the territory with a horse load of apple seeds, gathered from the cider presses
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in Western Pennsylvania. The seeds were contained in leathern bags, which were better suited to his journey than linen sacks, and, besides, linen could not be spared for such a purpose. He came first to Licking County, and selected a fertile spot on the bank of Licking Creek, where he planted his seeds. I am able to say that it was on the farm of Isaac Stadden. In this instance, as in others afterward, he would clear a spot for his purpose, and make some slight inclosure about his plantation-only a slight one was needed, for there were no cattle roaming about to disturb it. He would then return for more seeds, and select other sites for new nurseries. When the trees were ready for sale, he left them in charge of some one to sell for him, at a low price, which was seldom or never paid in money, for that was a thing the settler rarely possessed. If people were too poor to purchase trees, they got them without pay. He was at little expense, for he was ever welcome at the settlers' houses.
"In the use of food he was very abstemious, and one of my informants thinks that he used only vege- table diet. At night he slept, of choice, in some adjoining grove.
"He was a zealous propagator of the doctrines of Emanuel Swedenborg, and he possessed some very old and much-worn copies of some of his works, which he continually lent where he could find persons to read them. It is said that he even divided some of his books into pieces of a few sheets each, and would leave the fragments at different places in succession, and would diligently supply the parts, as if his books were in serial numbers.
"Nearly all the early orchards in Licking County
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were planted from his nursery. He also had nurseries in Knox, in Richland, and in Wayne Counties. As new countries opened, he moved westward, and he was seen in Crawford County about the year 1832, after which I trace him no further, until I learn of his death, at Fort Wayne. The physician who attended him in his last illness, and was present at his death, was heard to inquire what was Johnny Appleseed's religion-he would like to know, for he had never seen a man in so placid a state at the approach of death, and so ready to go into another life."
The accomplished pen of Miss Rosella Rice con- tributes the following agreeable sketch of the old man :-
"He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in the year 1775. No one knows why Johnny was so eccentric. Some people thought he had been crossed in love, and others, that his passion for growing fruit trees and planting orchards in those early and perilous times had absorbed all tender and domestic feelings natural to mankind. An old uncle of ours tells us, the first time he ever saw Johnny was in 1806, in Jefferson County, Ohio. He had two canoes lashed together, and was taking a lot of apple seeds down the Ohio River. About that time he planted sixteen bushels of seeds on one acre of that grand old farm on the Walhonding River, known as the Butler farm.
" All up and down the Ohio and Muskingum, and their then wild and pretty tributaries, did poor Johnny glide along, alone, with his rich freight of seeds, stopping here and there to plant nurseries. He always selected rich, secluded spots of ground. One of them we remember now, and even still it is
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picturesque and beautiful and primal. He cleared the ground himself, a quiet nook over which the tall sycamores reached out their bony arms as if in pro- tection. Those who are nurserymen now, should compare their facilities with those of poor Johnny, going about with a load in a canoe, and, when occa- sion demanded, a great load on his back. To those who could afford to buy, he always sold on very fair terms; to those who couldn't, he always gave or made some accommodating trade, or took a note pay- able -some time - and rarely did that time ever come.
"Among his many eccentricities was one of bear- ing pain like an undaunted Indian warrior. He gloried in suffering.
"Very often he would thrust pins and needles into his flesh without a tremor or a quiver; and if he had a cut or a sore, the first thing he did was to sear it with a red hot iron, and then treat it as a burn.
"He hardly ever wore shoes, except in winter; but, if traveling in the summer time, and the rough roads hurt his feet, he would wear sandals, and a big hat that he made himself, out of pasteboard, with one side very large and wide, and bent down to keep the heat from his face.
"No matter how oddly he was dressed or how funny he looked, we children never laughed at him, because our parents all loved and revered him as a good old man, a friend, and a benefactor.
"Almost the first thing he would do when he entered a house, and was weary, was to lie down on the floor, with his knapsack for a pillow, and his head toward the light of a door or window, when he would say, 'Will you have some fresh news right from
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Heaven?' and carefully take out his old worn books, a Testament, and two or three others, the exponents of the beautiful religion that Johnny so zealously lived out-the Swedenborgian doctrine.
"We can hear him read now, just as he did that summer day when we were busy quilting up stairs, and he lay near the door, his voice rising denun- ciatory and thrilling-strong and loud as the roar of waves and winds, then soft and soothing as the balmy airs that stirred and quivered the morning-glory leaves about his gray head.
"His was a strange, deep eloquence at times. His language was good and well chosen, and he was un- doubtedly a man of genius.
"Sometimes in speaking of fruit, his eyes would sparkle, and his countenance grow animated and really beautiful, and if he was at table his knife and fork would be forgotten. In describing apples, we could see them just as he, the word-painter, pictured them -large, lush, creamy-tinted ones, or rich, fra- grant, and yellow, with a peachy tint on the sunshiny side, or crimson red, with the cool juice ready to burst through the tender rind.
"Johnny had one sister, Persis Broom, of Indiana. She was not at all like him; a very ordinary woman, talkative, and free in her frequent, 'says she's' and 'says I'8.'
"He died near Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1846 or 1848, a stranger among strangers, who kindly cared for him. He died the death of the righteous, calmly and peacefully, and with little suffering or pain.
"So long as his memory lives will a grateful people say : 'He went about doing good.'"
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