USA > Ohio > Fairfield County > A complete history of Fairfield County, Ohio > Part 27
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27
But at last the scouts appear. They are sent up from the settlements at Marietta and the mouth of Hocking to recon- noiter the Indian camps. Maywood and Wetzel are on Mount Pleasant, peering out towards Tarhe Town, cautiously. We feel a little more secure. And then we think of the little town nine miles west, controlled and governed by Toby, who, because he is an inferior chief, we feel less afraid of him or his band. We see Maywood cautiously creeping round the point of Cold Spring hill with his canteens filled with fresh water; the sudden meeting of the two squaws; the struggle in the water; the flight to Mount Pleasant; the floating corpse of the drowned squaw ; the savage yell of the war- riors; the siege ; the escape in the night; the rescued girl is safe, and we again drop the curtain.
The treaty of Greenville in 1795 has opened the way for the white man to show himself in the Hocking Valley, for with all the rude uncultured nature of the Wyandots and Dela- wares, they respected their contracts, and kept them, gen- erally, in good faith, especially the better or controlling por- tion of them. I think it due to the Indian tribes to say, that in their intercourse with the settlers of the North American Continent, they have seldom, or never, been the first to break treaties once entered into.
We have seen Zane's trace successfully opened from Wheel- ing to Limestone, in the fall of 1797; but as yet the solitude of the forest reigns, for silence closed in as Zane and his com- pany of choppers į assed on to the west. But at last the sound of the woodman's ax is heard, locally, just over Hocking on the margin of the prairie. Joseph Hunter has wended his
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HISTORY OF FAIRFIELD COUNTY, OHIO.
way from Kentucky over Zane's trace, and is felling the trees and chopping away the brush preparatory to building his little cabin. But with the exception of his wife, and two or three small children, not another human being of his race breathes in the forests between the Muskingum and Scioto, a space of fifty-six miles. Mr. Hunter's family are alone in the wilderness, their only companions a dog or two, and a few other domestic animals. This was in the month of April, 1798.
In the following month we have witnessed the arrival of sev- eral emigrant wagons over the eastern end of the trace. Among these families were the Wilsons, the Greens, the McMullens, the Coopers, the Shæffers, and a few others. In the fall of the same year, a number of other families have arrived and pitched their tents in various localities. Then in the spring of 1799 we have seen the tide of emigration coming in from both directions in considerable force, beginning settlements at Yankee Town, forks of Hocking, Toby Town, Muddy Prairie, Clear Creek, along down the Hocking, on Rush Creek, Pleas- ant Run, Fetters' Run, Ewing's Run, Baldwin's Run and in Liberty. And now the forests were resonant with the sound of the woodman's ax, the tinkling of the cow-bells, the sharp crack of the hunter's rifle, and the emigrant's song-life and activity springing up all over the beautiful valley and its ad- jacent hills and vales, where for countless ages wild nature reigned supreme and undefaced, save by the tomahawk of the untamed savage.
In the fall of the year 1800 we have seen the survey and first sale of lots and location of some of the principal streets of what is the present city of Lancaster. We have seen the first settlers chopping down the superincumbent trees, and con- structing out of their trunks the first rude log-huts, and the mechanics going to work at their respective trades ; and we have carefully observed the growth of the little log-cabin " New Lancaster, " up to the handsome and populous city of Lancaster of 1876. We have been present in imagination at the first elections ; opening and conduct of the first Courts. In the same way we have attended the early class-meetings at the- cabin of Edward Teal, at Beal's Hill, three miles out on Zane's trace ; the coming of Rev. John Wright, in 1801, and the be- ginning of Presbyterianism. Later, Revs. Wise and Stake, and the organization of German Reform and Lutheran Socie-
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ties, followed by other Protestant Societies. The Catholics also started nearly with our first acquaintance. We have marked the beginning of elementary schools, and mechanic arts, and trades, and the professions, and contemplated the active workers.
But, alas! where are these early acquaintances of ours to-day? The very last man and woman who did the active work of Lancaster seventy-six years ago have passed out of sight ! A few of our early acquaintances remain, standing with bending forms and silvered heads just in front of the exit gates of mortal life. Among these we enumerate Flora King, Frederick A. Foster, Dr. Charles Shawk, John T. Brazee, Frederick Schæffer, Father Rhoads, and a few others a little farther back on the highway.
In retrospecting, we contemplate John Creed and Michael Garaghty, President and Cashier of the first bank of Lancaster, the " Lancaster Ohio Bank," both of whom have long since passed away ; and Darius Talmadge, one of Lancaster's most enterprising citizens during more than thirty years. We re- call his memory as a successful and extensive stage proprietor, also a public-spirited citizen, whose place will not soon be filled. It would be difficult, nor would space permit us to record the names of all the men and women who have filled useful positions in Lancaster, in the various departments of its industries and prosperities, and then stepped off the stage. The cold chiseled marble and sand-stone tell us where their forms, no longer seen, were laid. In passing through the cemeteries we read the names, Dr. McNeal, Dr. John Shawk, Samuel Effinger, Samuel F. McCracken, John Latta, James Rice, Gotlieb Steinman, Geo. Boerstler, John B. Reed, Amos Hunter, William Bodenheimer, Henry Arnold, Daniel Arnold, George Ring, Samuel Carpenter, Robert O. Claspill, Robert R. Claspill, with nearly all their wives. And so we might ex- tend the list of the honored dead of Lancaster to many hun- dreds. But they have all fallen asleep, and others are filling their places. The young of forty years ago are growing grey, who in their turn will pass off the boards as the stream of time flows on.
In every locality of the county we have noted the formation of first settlements, from 1799, and watched their progress on up. We have known most of the first settlers, and where
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they built their cabins. There is not one of them alive to-day, and there is very little they did that can be seen. About all we know of them is that they were here, and are gone. If we should visit the cemeteries of the county we could read many of their epitaphs ; but we could not recall their persons.
We remember the first formation of Fairfield County on the 9th of December, 1800, when it took in four or five times its present area-when Newark and Somerset were both in Fair- field County. And as the years passed by in the ceaseless movement of the panorama of time, we have seen the town- ships of the present Fairfield take form, and the outlines of the county established by the formation of Licking, Perry, Hocking and Pickaway counties, at periods between 1807 and 1817. We have seen the villages of the county spring up one after another, and have watched their growth and prosperity, and have formed the acquaintance of many of their business men. We have contemplated the humble beginnings of religious societies worshiping in little dimly-lighted log- cabins; and the embryo schools; the little mills that ground the first corn and wheat ; and we have seen not only the cabins and all their fixtures pass out of existence forever, but the people that made them are mostly gone too from sight. In imagination we have been in company with the early pioneers and marked their struggles in the wilderness, their humble, patient and enduring lives, and how they inculcated religion, and morals, and honesty, and good manners. But that was a long time age. The skip of time has fixed the two epochs, then and now, entirely out of sight of each other. We can see nothing at all of the pioneer age except in fancy. More than two full generations of our race intervene.
We have seen the financial status of the large county of Fairfield in 1806, and that its public taxation amounted to a little less than $2,000. Seventy years afterwards, on one- fourth of the territory, the list is swelled to $250,000 annually. Then labor was twenty-five cents a day ; now a dollar is not enough for the exigencies of the times. Then the wants of the people were few, in conformity to the condition of the new country ; now they are boundless. Our real wants are still few, but our pampered and imaginary ones know no limits. The efforts to gratify them keep three-fourths of the population in debt. The income of three-fourths of the popu-
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HISTORY OF FAIRFIELD COUNTY, OHIO.
lations of all the States of the Union is less to-day than the absolute requirements of the times, made so by the artificial and irrational life of the age. And the future, which it is not our province to comment on, does not promise an improve- ment.
In the log-cabin era the people had time to talk to each other ; time to help each other; time to visit and nurse the sick, and to bury the dead without a dollar's cost; time to walk a mile to help lift up the cow that was down with the hollow-horn ; and time to help pull the grey mare out of the well, or to hunt a neighbor's cow that was lost. Now, you could scarcely find a friend in all your circle of acquaintance that would stop one minute to help you in any exigency. Everything has to be paid for. If your wife or child dies, you can't make a respectable funeral for less than from fifty to a hundred dollars, whether you have five dollars in the world or not. The way things are now, no one has the courage to beard public opinion, and therefore fall they victims before it. Only last evening I met, separately, two old acquaintances on the streets of Columbus. They seemed glad to meet me; but the most brief compliments and inquiries passed, when their impatience appeared-something ahead demanded them. But there is no remedy, and complaints are follies.
As time has sped, together you and I, in fancy, have watched the gradual transformation of the wilderness we entered sev- enty-eight years ago, on the Hockhocking, into the garden. The Indians, and the wild animals, and the log-huts, and the pole-bridges, and the marshes, and the people we knew have all drifted away. The people have grown grey and died, and the domestic animals have turned to dust, with many of their generations. What can we say ? Have the lessons of life made us better men and women ? Has the world of men grown better ? The world is wiser. Is it better ?
No, dear reader, you and I will not part. Death will separate us; but if we have lived pure and good lives here, we shall meet in a purer and better and deathless world. And when the humble compiler of these pages has passed out of sight, its paragraphs will recall to your mind our journey together over a transit of three-fourths of a century of the most important era of earth's history.
ADIEU !
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