USA > Ohio > Fairfield County > A complete history of Fairfield County, Ohio > Part 23
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During his residence in Fairfield the Indians were about. He spoke of their coming into Lancaster with their handy- work to trade for goods and trinkets.
He mentioned his neighbors in the neighborhood of Basil, during his residence there, previous to 1813 : Joseph and Sam'l Heistand, the Walterses, Mr. Saliday, John Zeigler, Nicholas Radibaugh, John Houser, Jacob Weaver.
When he landed at his place near Basil, it was all wild woods. He cleared off the ground and built a small hut of round logs, to live in. He next cleared and fenced a small field, and planted it with corn and "truck " (truck, in the vernacular of the pioneer age, meant all kinds of garden veg- etables, including potatoes, turnips, and the like). He had two small glass windows of four 8-by-10 lights each, put into his cabin, which circumstance brought upon his family the reputation of being aristocrats. He remembered that the women sometimes placed their spinning-wheels up in the wide fireplaces, to secure the better light that came down the spa- cious chimney.
From his little farm, near Basil, he returned to Lancaster and remained awhile. When in 1813 he moved to Columbus, he loaded two six-horse wagons, partly with his household goods, and partly with flour. He went on foot himself, with his ax, and cut out a road some part of the way. There were few cabins between the two places. It took them three days to get through. The first house he occupied in Columbus was a rough log-cabin. In it he followed baking and tavern-keep- ing. The first evening of his arrival there the supper was set on the lid of his dough-trough, rested on the heads of two up- turned flour-barrels, and the participants sat upon flour-barrels.
He occupied the log-house as a tavern and bake-house two years, and then, in 1815, built the Franklin House on an ad- joining lot, and moved into it, where he kept hotel for twenty- eight consecutive years. The location of the old Franklin
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House. on High street, east side, a little south of the present Cotton Block, will be remembered by all who have been famil- iar with Columbus. In 1841 he traded the hotel for a farm on Alum Creek, and removed to it, where he continued to live twenty-one years, or until 1862, when he again returned to Columbus.
Mr. Heyl was a generous and kind man, and in trying to help others lost much of his property by going their security.
Mr. Heyl related an occurrence that took place when he was moving from Lancaster to Columbus, in 1813. They had ar- rived with the two six-horse wagons on the south vicinity of Columbus, where it became necessary to pass over lands owned by one John McGowen. Mr. McGowen refused to allow the wagons to pass over his grounds. There seemed no other way to get the teams into the village, and a negotiation was en- tered into, which ended in Mr. Heyl agreeing to give McGowen a bottle of whisky for the privilege, and the teams passed over. On the following day the lord of the soil presented himself at the cabin of Mr. Heyl, with his half-gallon bottle, and got it filled.
In Mr. Heyl's parlor hung a photograph representing four generations in a group-himself; his oldest son, Lewis; his grandson, Henry ; and great grandson, Reney.
He detailed the great squirrel-hunt of 1816, an account of which is given elsewhere in this volume, and in which he was a participant. He stated the number of scalps returned at 15,000, and thought the wager, to be paid for by the party having the fewest number, was a barrel of whisky. He gave the number of men engaged at two hundred. The Scioto was the dividing line; one hundred of the men taking the east, and the other hundred the west side. Columbus was the rendezvous. The hunt lasted but a single day. He stated the squirrels were so numerous that, in some places, a racket made by knocking on the fence, or otherwise, started them so that dozens were seen running up the same tree.
Mr. Heyl related an incident. Both himself and his brother Coonrad married into the Alspaugh family, who were early settlers near the rock-mill, Fairfield County, and where the descendants of the Alspaugh's still reside. He had gone with his wife to visit her people in that neighborhood, and while there word was brought to him that his brother had fallen
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from the Court-house in Columbus, and received dangerous injury. They at onee started on horseback. His oldest son, Lewis, was a baby. He held the baby in his arms, allow- ing his horse to follow at his pleasure that of his wife, who rode in the path before him.
When Mr. Heyl came to Columbus there were but fifteen families there, the heads of which he named as follows : John Carr, John Collet, Michael Patton, William McElvane, Benj. Thompson, John McGowen, Daniel Kutzer, Samuel Keys, George McCormie, George B. Harvey, Benjamin Johnson, Peter Putnam, John Putnam, Alexander Patton, and himself.
Wheat at that early day there sold for from fifty to seventy- five cents a bushel ; corn twelve and a half cents; whisky six dollars a barrel ; oats ten cents a bushel. He bought a cow for twenty dollars, and delivered two hundred bushels of oats in payment. This was in 1841, while he was living on his Alum Creek farm.
Mr. Heyl named his family still living. He had five sons, but no daughters. Lewis was the oldest. Lewis, John K. and George, were residing in Philadelphia. William and Charles were in Columbus.
Christian Hyel is lingering on the verge of time. He has outlived his generation. He has lived through nearly three full generations of men. All he knew and associated with in Fairfield County and in Franklin County; sixty-five years ago, has faded out of sight. What he did is as nothing to the bust- ling throng that tread the earth ; all has been covered over by the debris of time. He resides with his son Charles, his companion having passed away some years ago. He is feeble, but his mind is clear.
RECOLLECTIONS OF JOHN SEE.
Mr. See is a son of George See, who came to Fairfield County in 1805, and settled on the place now owned by George Huffman, adjoining the present See farm, in Berne Township. This farm he purchased of William Carpenter. It consisted of 160 acres. Mr. See has lived the past threescore years on the same spot. He was born in 1816. He remembers the sickle-
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mill and the flax-mill; and also of seeing the remnants of the Indian wigwams on the plat of Tarhe Town, where the rail- road shops now stand. He spoke of the first school he attended. It was taught in a little log-building a short dis- tance below the Prindle farm. The teacher at that time was Bartholomew Foley. Thomas Paden and Hocking H. Hunter subsequently taught in the same house, in about 1828. He named the following persons who were patrons of the school when he attended it: James Pierce, father of the late John Van Pierce ; O. Lewis, David Reece, Isaac Kuntz, John Pane- baker, Jacob Iric, Simeon Bixler, Mr. Shellenbarger, father of Reuben Shellenbarger; Peter Tool, Henry Crawfus, William Jackson, father of 'Squire Thomas Jackson; Thomas Mason and David Carpenter. William Jackson lived where Reuben Shellenbarger now lives. The first preacher he remembered hearing was the Rev. Samuel Carpenter, in the school-house below Prindle's.
The boys of the settlement wore tow and flax-linen in sum- iner, and linsey in winter. The women wore linen dresses in summer, and in winter linsey and striped flannel. Their cloths were all home-made, and were colored with bark and copperas, and sometimes with indigo. The boys got but one pair of shoes in the year; and sometimes went barefooted half the winter. He sometimes went to his partridge-traps through the snow with his feet tied up in flax-tow to keep them from freezing, for the reason that he had no shoes.
He said deer were so plenty that they could be seen every day. He had seen fourteen of them at one time within one hundred yards of his father's house. Any man who had a gun could go into the woods almost any day and shoot a deer. He had known instances where the dogs chased deer into the ponds, among the bushes, and kept them at bay until the men went in and killed them with clubs.
He related the killing of two bears, the manner in which it was done being quite primitive, and new to the present gen- eration. The first one was driven under cover of the top of a large fallen oak, by dogs, which were holding it bay, when Mr. See's father and William Garvin came up. They climbed on the limbs above, where the bear was plainly in view below, and succeeded in knocking it in the head with a chopping-ax. It weighed three hundred pounds. The spot where this took
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place was within one mile of the See house. The other one was killed by Mr. Duhma, with a handspike. The occur- rence took place on the farm now owned by Daniel Akers. The bear had got into the hog-pen, with the intention, doubt- less, of carrying off a shoat. Mr. Duhma, hearing the disturb- ance, came armed with a handspike, and, entering the pen, with one stroke broke the animal's back, after which he easily dispatched it. This one weighed four hundred pounds.
Barring the master out was practiced; and on one or two occasions they had rough times with their old Scotch teacher, who would not submit to their terms. Mr. See spoke of the manner of living of the early times. Sometimes breadstuffs could not be had in sufficient quantities, and they were obliged to pound corn in the hominy-block, sifting the finest of it out for meal, and boiling the coarser part for hominy. Boiled wheat was also a very common article of food. Wild- honey was abundant, and bee-trees were to be found in all parts of the country.
He related the following characteristic incident: David Reece lived then on what is now known as the Pardee farm. He had a young bearing orchard. On one occasion he sur- prised three half-grown chaps stealing apples. He asked them what they wanted them for. They replied that they wanted them for dumplings. He said, "Come along with me." He shut them into his loft over night, and until the afternoon of the following day, when he ordered the girls to make for each of them twelve large apple-dumplings, which he re- quired them to eat, and then start for home.
[This story has been told me slightly different, by another, but the main points were true .- ED.]
At that time corn was a drug at 12} cents per bushel, and wheat the same at 25 cents. Oats would bring from 8 to 10 cents. Mr. See said he had often sold partridge for ten cents a dozen. On one occasion he traded a mud-turtle to William Peck for a small glass salt-cellar. A man's wages was twen- ty-five cents a day in trade, except in the harvest-field, when fifty cents was paid in cash. Rye was a good article in trade. It was made into whisky at the little still-houses all over the country.
17
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It was a common thing to work in the clearings at burnin g logs and brush until midnight, or later. They drank rye-cof- fee, sassafras, spice-wood and birch teas. A large proportion of the meat eaten was from the woods, such as deer-meat, bear- meat and wild-turkey ; and, in winter, partridge.
RECOLLECTIONS OF MRS. RACHEL YOUNG.
Rachel Young was born in Huntingdon County, Pa., May 1st. 1784. In 1799, in company with her parents and three or four other families, she came to Fairfield County, Ohio, ar- riving there on New-Year's Day. They floated down the Ohio river on a flat-boat to the mouth of the Hocking. From there they ascended that stream in canoes to the falls, where Logan stands. There the canoes were unloaded and dragged over the falls, where they were re-loaded, and paddled up to the mouth of Rush Creek, the present site of Sugar Grove, where they were abandoned, and the goods and stores packed on horse- back, the most of the company traveling on foot through the forest up Hocking to where Mr. Prindle now lives, two miles below Lancaster. From there they proceeded in the same manner to the neighborhood of Bremen, or rather the pres- ent site of Bremen, where they all settled, in the beginning of 1800. In their passage up the Hocking, obstructing logs were severed with a cross-cut saw, and removed from the stream to allow the canoes to pass. Some of the men had been out the previous spring and cleared off some ground, and planted corn and potatoes, and also put up some rude cabins.
The company numbered fifteen souls, including one child, whose name was Joseph Ashbaugh. The following are the names of the fifteen : Elizabeth Miller and her mother, An- drew Ashbaugh, Joseph Ashbaugh, Frederick Ashbaugh, Jos. Miller, John Ashbaugh, Sr., and wife, John Ashbaugh, Jr., and wife, three daughters of John Ashbaugh, Sr., Joseph Ash- baugh, the baby, and Rachel Miller, now Rachel Young.
Mrs. Young was married to Edward Young on the 2d of April, 1802, and remained in married life fifty-eight years ; and, on her ninety-third birth day, had been a widow seven_
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teen years. At that time she had six children living, viz. : three sons and three daughters. She became a member of the Presbyterian Church in 1820, and has lived a Christian woman and worthy pioneer mother. She was ninety-three years old on the 1st of May, 1877.
The men who came out the previous spring and made the preparations for emigrating were: Joseph Miller, and John and Joseph Ashbaugh. The spot where they made the first opening has since been known as the James Neely farm, now belonging to the estate of the late John C. Weaver.
The first school Mrs. Young remembered in the Bremen neighborhood was near William Black's present residence. This she thought was in 1803. The first preachers who held meetings in the settlement were Rev. Cradlebaugh, of the German Reform Church, and Rev. John Wright, Presbyterian. This was also about 1803.
On one occasion, when Mr. Young came to see her as a suitor, he shot a bear on his way. He sent some parties back to skin and dress Bruin, while he remained with the object that was the cause of his visit. On another occasion she went out on the hill to cut a rock, [a rock was a five-pronged switch formed into a kind of reel, upon which the hatcheled flax was wound preparatory to spinning-the best of the kind were found in the tops of dogwood saplings .- ED.] and while she was looking round for a good one, a very large bear came walking leisurely along in unpleasant proximity, but as he did not show any disposition to molest her, she con- cluded the best plan for her to adopt would be to not molest him, and so each party took the course that suited them best.
The first hog killed in the settlement was a small shoat, which made a part of her wedding-dinner. After the cere- mony of the dinner, dancing was introduced, John Ashbaugh being the fiddler.
Mrs. Young spoke of a method of salting down pork at that early day, which the writer remembers as having been prac- ticed. She said coopers were at first not to be found, and the settlers dug troughs from the trunks of large trees, and used them as meat-tubs. She remembered that at one time she had five wild-turkeys salted down in one of these troughs. She spoke of a turkey-pen they built near her house, in which she caught twenty-one turkeys within less than two weeks.
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She and Catharine Ashbaugh were the ones that went in the pens to catch them.
She also spoke of another matter which perhaps few, even of the oldest inhabitants, have any recollection of, as it was not everywhere known. I allude to the art of manufacturing fine linen from the fiber of wild-nettles. The wild-nettle grew in some sections in great abundance, and always on the low and richest soil. It was a weed that grew up from three to four feet high, and bore a remote resemblance to the bone- set, or ague-weed. Its fiber was as fine as the finest flax, and the nettle-weed was treated in the same way that flax was, by roting, breaking, scutching and spinning, with the exception that it was mowed down instead of being pulled up by the root, as flax was.
The nettle has nearly entirely disappeared from the country, and is seldom seen, and never, except in remote and wild spots. Few of the present living generation have ever seen it at all. A peculiarity of the nettle was that it had on its stem a prickly beard, that, upon touching with the hands or other parts of the body, inserted itself into the skin, producing a most intolerable itching and burning sensation scarcely to be endured ; hence, everybody soon learned to go round the "net- tlepatch."
Every family manufactured their own clothes. Hand-cards were used in preparing wool for spinning. The young people went to meeting barefooted ; sometimes carried their shoes and stockings in their hands to near the meeting-house, and then sat down and put them on.
Mrs. Young was present at the first Fourth of July celebra- tion held in Fairfield County, half a mile west of Lancaster, but did not remember the whisky-barrel and the fight, but she remembered that the wild meat was roasted before a big fire.
The first wedding in her neighborhood was that of James Wilson and Patsey Hammel. The first death was that of a Mr. Hamerly. The first birth in the new settlement was David Ashbaugh.
The writer was present at the celebration of Mrs. Young's ninety-third birthday, on the first day of May, 1877, at the residence of Jacob Moyer. She was in fine spirits, cheerful, and her memory very little impaired. There were present on
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that occasion two sons and two daughters, fifteen grandchild- ren, and thirteen great-grandchildren of the venerable mother.
REMINISCENCES BY DR. CHARLES SHAWK.
" My father, Dr. John M. Shawk, came from Lexington, Ken- tucky, to Lancaster, in 1801, and purchased from Ebenezer Zane the lot upon which I now live, on Main street. Lancas- ter was then principally a forest of trees and underbrush. He hired the father of Jacob Gaster, well known here, to clear off the ground and inclose it, and then returned to Lexington. In 1806 he removed to the place, living first where the canal now is, and on the south side of the mouth of Main street. The same building was afterwards moved on rollers up to his lot on Main street, and is at present a part of the same build- ings occupying the grounds. To move it to this spot, the trees and stumps had to be cut out of the way. I was six years old when my father came here, and have resided on the same spot ever since. The house my father first lived in-the one removed on rollers-was built by Dr. Irvin."
Dr. John M. Shawk was a practicing physician up to the time of his death, in 1846. His wife was Susanna Stoy. Dr. Stoy was distinguished for his art in curing rabies canina (hydrophobia), which art also descended to the Shawk family, through Susanna, and has been successfully practiced by the present Dr. Charles. Mrs. John Shawk was a highly educated lady, and possessing also a strong mind. She was a mother of the old type, of whom there are few left, and whose places will not be filled until another revolution in the human race takes place, and another era sets in. She died in 1863, at a very advanced age.
The following are some of Dr. Shawk's recollections of the early days of Lancaster. The first elections he remembers were held in the Court-house. He remembers when Governor Worthington made a speech in the Court-house yard when he was a candidate, and how the people cheered him because he was a favorite. This was about 1810. He remembered that Governor Worthington, assisted by Judge Abrams, surveyed
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the lands lying south of Lancaster and extending down into Hocking County, or what is now Hocking County. Judge Abrams was a successful hunter. He (the Doctor) said he saw him bring a huge bear into Lancaster about the year 1810.
The Doctor spoke of the streets being full of stumps, and that Main street sometimes became so deep with mud that wagons stalled in it, and had to be pried out. On that account Wheeling street was the principal thoroughfare. Main street was at one time bridged with poles, which, in early times, were called corduroy bridges. There was a swale crossing Main street about where Shawk's alley is, extending up towards the Talmadge House. He had seen people watering their horses there; and there was a pond that sometimes became so deep that it would nearly, or quite swim horses. At that time, about 1806, there were not more than six or eight cabins on Wheeling street, and on Main not exceeding thirty.
The fights on muster and other public days were vivid in his recollection. He said that bears and deer often came into town. In 1817 he shot and killed a bear on Kuntz's hill. Wild-turkeys were seen in immense flocks, especially in the beach woods; and they likewise often came into the village, which at that time was full of forest trees. A man by the name of John Rhoads killed a huge panther near Mr. Stukey's, below town. It measured seven feet from the tip of the tail to the point of the snout. The Indians came every fall from Sandusky, to hunt. He sometimes went to their camps and saw them beat their breasts and grunt their songs.
RECOLLECTIONS OF CATHARINE RUTTER, OF PLEASANT TOWNSHIP.
Catharine Rutter came with her late husband, Balser Rutter, from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in the year 1815, and settled in Pleasant Township, on the same place where, with her son, she still resides, at the age of 85 years. She is a re- markably active, social and intelligent old lady, and in the possession of all her faculties, scarcely perceptibly impaired. She has a good recollection of the state of the country at that
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time, and of the way people lived, and of the incidents of the surrounding settlement.
She named the following as her principal neighbors at the time of her settlement there, in 1815: Thomas Anderson, Henry Hockman, John Burton, Tewalt Maclin, Jacob Maclin, Mr. Harmon, Daniel May, Henry Culp, Thomas and David Ewing, James Duncan, Christian Neibling, John Feemen, Benjamin Feemen.
She spoke of the new and wild state of the country, and of the manners and customs of the people, and how almost im- perceptibly everything had changed, until not even a vistige of the good old times was to be seen. She lamented the de- parture of the better days, because she believed people were far happier, better contented, and more social and kind to one another then than they are now. They had fewer wants than at present, but enjoyed life far better. They worked hard, and sometimes lived hard, but were never seriously pinched, because at that time the new farms yielded plenty. When they first arrived, in the fall of the year, they had nothing pre- pared for the winter, and their neighbors brought them sup- plies. One man brought a full sled-load of cabbage-heads.
They spun and wove their own clothing, at first carding the wool on hand-cards. Her oldest daughter, Susanna, spun in one summer fifty pounds of wool, besides helping with other work. Susanna is now Mrs. Henry Bell, of Lancaster.
They attended church at the Court-house, in Lancaster, to hear Revs. John Wright and Stake preach. The first wed- ding she was at in the settlement was that of Nellie May to William Creighton. This was in 1816 or 1817. The first funeral she remembered was that of a Mr. Bope-first name not remembered-probably in 1817. He was uncle to Philip Bope, now of Lancaster.
Mrs. Rutter was a weaver, and, besides weaving for her own family, wove also for some of her neighbors. She had her spinning-wheels and reel set away as relics of a departed age, and to be viewed by coming generations as curious imple- ments belonging to a forgotten era, and, perhaps, at a time when not a living soul should know anything of their use.
She recurred to the house-raisings, log-rollings, quiltings, sewings and pumpkin-butter boilings, and other gatherings peculiar to the times, and thought they were the most enjoya-
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ble occasions of her whole life, but occasions never again to be enjoyed. And as we talked on of the log-cabin and pioneer age, we fell into a sympathetic relation that recalled happy memories, and joys, and loves, and loved ones departed, that filled the heart with thrilling comforts worth more than all the gold of earth, for the writer came up from the begin- ning of the century through all the experiences of frontier life.
RECOLLECTIONS OF ANDREW HUNTER, OF HOCKING TOWNSHIP.
Andrew Hunter was the son of John Hunter, who emigrated from Virginia in company with Maurice Reece, Jesse Reece, Solomon Reece and James Hunter, in the year 1800, and settled one mile and a half west of Lancaster, on the same spot of ground where Andrew now lives. Mr. Hunter was born there in 1806, and has spent his life on the same farm.
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