USA > Ohio > Adams County > A history of Adams County, Ohio, from its earliest settlement to the present time, including character sketches of the prominent persons identified with the first century of the country's growth > Part 16
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A few rods to the southeast of this old inn, at the roadside, stands an elm tree near which it is said Asahel Edgington was killed by the Indians in 1793, a full account of which occurrence appears elsewhere under the chapter devoted to "Adventures and Conflicts with the In- dians."
Some fifty or sixty rods to the northeast of the house, in a field near the roadside, is the grave of Zachariah Moon, a member of a Ken- tucky regiment in the war of 1812, who died here and was buried by his comrades when returning home after the close of the war.
In 1825 John Treber removed to a farm in the vicinity, and his son Jacob Treber took charge of the old tavern and conducted it until about the time of the Civil War. William Treber, his son, now resides here.
Observations of a Traveler.
In August, 1807, Dr. F. Cumming, while touring the western country, traveled afoot across Adams County along the old stage line from Ellis' Ferry (Aberdeen) to the Sinking Springs; and thence to Chillicothe. The following interesting notes are taken from his "Sketches of a Tour :"
"Thursday, Friday and Saturday, I was employed in rambling about the woods, exploring and examining a tract of land, of a thou-
* Wife of Jacob Treber, son of John Treber, the pioneer.
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sand acres, in the State of Ohio, which I had purchased when in Europe last year, and which had been the principal cause of my present tour. As it was only six miles from Maysville, I crossed the Ohio and went to it on foot. I had expected to find a mere wilderness, as soon as I should quit the high road, but to my agreeable surprise, I found my land surrounded on every side by fine farms, some of them ten years settled, and the land itself, both in quality and situation, not exceeded by any in this fine country. The population was also astonishing for the time of the settlement, which a muster of the militia, while I was there, gave me an opportunity of knowing-there being reviewed a battalion of upwards of five hundred effective men, most expert in the use of the rifle, belonging to the district of ten miles square.
"And now I experienced amongst these honest and friendly farmers real hospitality, for they vied with each other in lodging me at their houses, and in giving me a hearty and generous welcome to their best fare. Robert Simpson, from New Hampshire, and Daniel Kerr and Thomas Gibson, from Pennsylvania, shall ever be entitled to my grate- ful remembrance. I had no letters of introduction to them, I had no claims on their hospitality, other than what any other stranger ought to have; but they were farmers, and had not acquired those contracted habits, which I have observed to prevail very generally amongst the traders in this part of the world.
"On Saturday, I returned to Ellis' Ferry, opposite Maysville, to give directions for my baggage being sent after me by stage to Chilli- cothe.
"On the bank of the Ohio, I found Squire Ellis seated on a bench under the shade of two locust trees, with a table, pen and ink, and sev- eral papers, holding a Justice's Court, which he does every Saturday. Seven or eight men were sitting on the bench with him, awaiting his awards in their several cases. When he had finished, which was soon after I had taken a seat under the same shade, one of the men invited the Squire to drink with them, which he consenting to, some whiskey was provided from Landlord Powers', in which all parties made a liba- tion to peace and justice. There was something in the scene so primitive and so simple, that I could not help enjoying it with much satisfaction.
"I took up my quarters for the night at Powers' who is an Irish- man from Ballibay in the county of Monaghan. He pays Squire Ellis eight hundred dollars per annum for his tavern, fine farm and ferry. He and his wife were very civil, attentive, and reasonable in their charges, and he insisted much on lending me a horse to carry me the first six miles over a hilly part of the road to Robinson's tavern, but I
declined his kindness, and on Sunday morning, the ninth of August, after taking a delightful bath in the Ohio, I quitted its banks. I walked on towards the northeast along the main post and stage road seventeen miles to West Union,-the country becoming gradually more level as I receded from the river, but not quite so rich in soil and timber.
"The road was generally well settled, and the woods between the settlements were alive with squirrels, and all the variety of woodpeckers with their beautiful plumage, which in one species is little inferior to that of the bird of Paradise, so much admired in the East Indies.
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"I stopped at twelve miles at the house of Squire Leedom, an in- telligent and agreeable man, who keeps a tavern, and is a justice of the peace. I chose bread and butter, eggs and milk for breakfast, for which I tendered a quarter of a dollar, the customary price, but he would re- ceive only the half of that sum, saying, that even that amount was too much. Such instances of modest and just honesty rarely occur.
"West Union is three years old since it was laid out for the county town of Adams County. The lots of one-third of an acre in size, then sold for about seventy dollars each. There were upwards of one hun- dred lots, which brought the proprietor above three thousand dollars. It is a healthy situation, on an elevated plain, and contains twenty dwelling houses, including two taverns and three stores. It has also a court house and a jail, in the former of which divine services was per- forming when I arrived, to a numerous Presbyterian congregation. One of the houses is well built with stone; one of the taverns is a large frame house, and all the rest are formed of square logs, some of which are two stories high and very good.
"Having to get a deed recorded at the clerk's office of the county, which could not be done till Monday morning, I stopped Sunday after- noon and night at West Union, where my accommodation in either eating or sleeping, could not boast of anything beyond mediocrity.
"Monday the tenth of August, having finished my business and breakfasted, I resumed my journey through a country but indifferently inhabited, and at four miles and a half from West Union I stopped for a few minutes at Allen's tavern, at the request of a traveler on horse- back, who had overtaken and accompanied me for the last three miles. He was an elderly man named Alexander, a cotton planter in the south- west extremity of North Carolina, where he owns sixty-four negro slaves besides his plantations-all acquired by industry-he having emigrated from Larne in Ireland in early life with no property. He was now going to visit a brother-in-law at Chillicothe. He had traveled upwards of five hundred miles within the last three weeks on the same mare. He had crossed the Saluda Mountains, and the States of Tennessee and Kentucky and had found houses of accommodation at convenient dis- tances all along that remote road, but provender so dear, that he had to pay in many places a dollar for a half bushel of oats.
"Allen's is a handsome, roomy, well finished stone house, for which, with twenty acres of cleared land, he pays a yearly rent of one hundred and ten dollars, to Andrew Ellison, near Manchester. He himself is four years from Tanderagee, in the County Armagh, Ireland, from whence he came with his family to inherit some property left him by a brother who had resided in Washington, Kentucky; but two hundred acres of land adjoining my tract near Maysville, was all he had been able to ob- tain possession of, although hisbrother had been reputed wealthy. Ihave met many Europeans in the United States, who have exeprienced sim- ilar disappointments.
"My equestrian companion finding that I did not walk fast enough to keep up with him, parted from me soon after we left Allen's. At two miles from thence I came to Brush Creek (at Sproull's), a beautiful river about sixty yards wide. A new State road crosses the river here, but 9A
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as I had been informed that there was no house on it for ten miles, I preferred keeping up the bank of the river on the stage road, which led through a beautiful but narrow unsettled bottom, with Brush Creek on the right, and a steep, craggy precipice on the left, for a mile and a half. I then ascended and descended a steep and barren ridge for a mile, when I forded the creek to Jacob Platter's finely situated tavern and farm on the opposite bank.
"Having rested and taken some refreshment the growling of dis- tant thunder warned me to hasten my journey, as I had five miles through the woods to the habitation. The road was fine and level-the gust approached with terrific warning- one flash, of lightning succeed- ing another in most rapid succession, so that the woods frequently ap- peared as in a flame, and several trees were struck in every direction around me, one being shattered within fifty paces on my right, while the thunder without intermission of an instant was heard in every variety of sound, from the deafening burst, shaking the whole atmosphere, to the long solemn cadence always interrupted by a new and more heavy peal before it had reached its pause. This elemental war would have been sublimely awful to me, had I been in an open country, but the frequent crash of the falling bolts on the surrounding trees, gave me such incessant warnings of danger, that the sublimity was lost in the awe. I had been accustomed to thunder storms in every climate, and I had heard the roar of sixty ships in the line of battle, but I never be- fore was witness to so tremendous an elemental uproar. I suppose the heaviest part of the electric cloud was impelled upon the very spot I was passing.
"I walked the five miles within an hour, but my speed did not avail me to escape a torrent of rain which fell during the last mile, so that long before I arrived at the hospitable dwelling of the Pennsylvania hunter who occupied the next cabin, I was drenched and soaked.most completely. I might have sheltered myself from some of the storm under the lee side of a tree, had not the wind, which blew a hurricane, varied every instant, but independent of that, I preferred moving along the road to prevent a sudden chill; besides every tree being a conductor, there is greater danger near the trunk of one, than in keeping in a road, however, narrow, which has been marked by the trees being cut down.
"My host and his family had come here from the back part of Penn- sylvania last May, and he had already a fine field of corn and a good deal of hay. He had hitherto been more used to the chase than to farming, and he boasted much of his rifle. He recommended his Penn- sylvania whiskey as an antidote against the effects of my ducking, and I took him at his word, though he was much surprised to see me use more of it externally than internally which I did from experience that bathing the feet, hands and head with spiritous liquor of any sort, has a much better effect in preventing chill and fever, either after being wet or after violent perspiration from exercise, than taking any quantity into the stomach, which on the contrary rarely fails to bring on, or to add to inflammatory symptoms. A little internally, however, I have found to be a good aid to the external application.
"I found at my friendly Pennsylvanian's, a little old man named Lashley, who had taken shelter at the beginning of the gust, which be-
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ing now over, he buckled on his knapsack, and we proceeded together. He had traveled on foot from Tennessee River, through a part of the State of Tennessee quite across Kentucky, and so far in Ohio in nine days, at the rate of thirty-six miles a day. He had assisted in navigating a boat from Indian Wheeling, where he lived, to Tennessee, for which he got thirty dollars, ten of which he had already expended on his jour- ney sofar back, though using the utmost economy. He remarked to me, that although he was upwards of sixty years of age, and apparently very poor, he had not gotten gratuitously a single meal of victuals in all that route. Are not hospitality and charity more nominal than real virtues?
"The country for the next five miles is tolerably well improved, and there is a good brick house which is a *tavern owned by one Wicker- ham at the first mile, and a mile further is Horn's tavern, where the stage sleeps on its route to the northeast to Chillicothe.
"Old Lashley complaining of fatigue, we stopped at Marshon's farm house, ten miles from Brush Creek, where finding that we could be ac- commodated for the night, we agreed to stay, and were regaled with boiled corn, wheaten griddle cakes, butter and milk for supper, which our exercise through the day gave us a good appetite for, but I did not enjoy my bed so much as my supper, notwithstanding it was the sec- ond best in the house, for besides it was not remarkable for its clean- liness, I was obliged to share it with my old companion; fatigue, how- ever, soon reconciled me to it, and I slept as well as if I had lain down between lawn sheets.
"Marshon is from the Jerseys, he has a numerous family grown up, and is now building a large log house in which he means to keep a tavern. Three of his sons play the violin by ear-they had two shocking bad violins, one of which was of their own manufacture, on which they scraped away without mercy to entertain us, which I would have most gladly excused, though I attempted to seem pleased and believe I suc- ceeded in making them think I was so.
The land here is the worst I had seen since I had left the banks of the Ohio; it had been gradually worse from about two miles behind Squire Leedom's, and for the last two miles before we came to Mar- shon's it had degenerated into natural prairies or savannas, with very little wood, and none deserving the name of timber, but well clothed with brush and low coarse vegetation.
"On Tuesday morning the eleventh of August, we arose with the dawn, and notwithstanding there was a steady small rain, we pursued our journey having first paid Marshon fully as much for our simple and coarse accommodations, as the best on the road would have cost, but our host I suppose thought his stories and his son's music were equiv- alent for all other deficiencies.
"The land was poor, and no house on the road until we arrived at Heistand's tavern, four miles from Marshon's, where we met the Lex- ington stage. Heistand is a Pennsylvania German, and has a good and plentiful house, in a pleasant situation, called the Sinking Springs, from
*This house is yet standing at Palestine, and is the present residence of Jacob Wicherham, a grandson of Jacob Wicherham who erected it in 1800. It was the first plastered building in Adams County.
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a great natural curiosity near it. On the side of a low hill now in culti- vation, are three large holes, each about twenty feet deep and twenty feet in diameter, about sixty paces apart, with a subterranean communi- cation by which the water is conveyed from one to the other, and issues in a fine rivulet at a fourth opening near the house, where Heistand's milk house is placed very judiciously. The spring is copious and the water very fine."
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CHAPTER XIV.
COUNTY AFFAIRS
The County Buildings-The Wilson Children's Home-Roster of County Officials-Justices of the Peace of Adams County-Receipts and Expenditures of the County for the Year 1824.
There never were any county buildings erected at Manchester, al- though it was the first seat of justice in Adams County, the first session of the Court of Quarter Session having convened there September 12, 1797.
Court House and Jail at Adamsville.
At this time there was great rivalry among the new towns for the location of the county seat, and the Adamsville people, led by John S. Wills, succeeded in having the seat of justice removed from Manchester to that place, where the court convened at the following December ses- sion. This place was near the site of the present village of Rome, and remained the seat of justice for Adams County just one year. There is no record of there having been a court house built there, but that one was provided from some source is shown by the fact that John Reed of that vicinity had Noble Grimes indicted by the grand jury, June, 1799, for "wilfully and feloniously taking plank from the court house in Adamsville to the value of five dollars." The Court of Common Pleas had approved plans for a jail there, and the Board of County Commis- sioners on June 28, 1798, had made a levy on the county to raise funds to put up the structure, but the county seat soon thereafter being re- moved to Washington at the mouth of Ohio Brush Creek. the jail was erected there. This was a log structure and was erected in the spring of 1799. On the night of December 27, of that year, this jail was burned by an incendiary. The Board of County Commissioners at their March session, 1800, offered a reward of $200 for the apprehension of the person who committed this crime, but he was never discovered.
Public Buildings at Washington.
From the records it appears that Noble Grimes furnished a house for the use of the Courts and the County Commissioners until the latter part of the year 1802, when a log court house was erected on grounds after- wards donated to the county by Thomas Grimes and his wife. We find that "Noble Grimes was allowed $50 for house rent, wood, candles, etc., for use of the Courts up to December 12, 1799," a period of one year. And as late as December 10, 1803, there is an entry on the journal of the County Commissioners stating that "Noble Grimes is al-
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lowed $10 for the use of a house for the court and jurors to sit in, for firewood, candles, and a man to attend to supply the house with fire, water, candles, etc."
It is stated in the Adams County atlas that there was a large hewed log court house, at Washington, with a jail in the lower story. This house could not have been built earlier than the autumn of 1802. There is an entry on the court records approving an account of Richard Grimes for one thousand feet of plank for the court house at Washington. And another on commissioners' journal allowing an item of five dollars to Noble Grimes for repairs on court house. It would appear from a search of the records that the jail at Washington was a separate build- ing from the court house and that the statement in the Adams County atlas is erroneous. In 1806, after the removal of the county seat to West Union, Thomas Grimes and his wife Polly deeded to the County Commissioners "for the use and behoof of the county," inlots numbers 41, 42, 44, 45, 56, 57, 58, and 59, on which the public buildings in the town of Washington stood. And the said Commissioners "ordered that the aforesaid lots, the *court house, and the iron of the jail be sold at public sale on the first Tuesday of August next, giving eighteen months credit. The lots probably included what was known as the "jail bounds" on which the "stray pen" was situated and where certain classes of prisoners had the privilege of exercising. At March session of the Court of Quarter Sessions, the prison bounds were altered as follows: "Begin- ning at the northeast corner of the public grounds ; thence with the said public grounds and course west thirty-six poles; thence south to the river Ohio at water's edge : thence up it to the bank of Brush Creek at water's edge; then from the beginning cast forty poles; thence south to the bank of Brush Creek at water's edge and down it to the river bank at water's edge." These bounds of the jail included several acres of land lying in the angle formed bv the junction of Brush Creek with the Ohio River, and besides the uses above named afforded a field of labor for indigent prisoners.
County Buildings at West Union.
West Union became the county seat in 1804. The town was laid off the week beginning Monday, March 19th. There was then but one building, a log cabin, on the town plat. It had been erected by Robert McClanahan but not occupied a short time before the platting of the town. It stood on lot 46, afterwards known as the Lee corner on Main Street.
The Board of County Commissioners met in this house June 1I, 1804, and it is said the *courts met here until the erection of the log court house in 1805.
The following entry on the commissioners' journal shows clearly that there was a court house on the Public Square in West Union prior
#The journal of the County Comissioners contains the following entries with referenc to the sale of the public property at Washington:
August 5. 1806. Commissioners met and sold property. Old court house with two lots on which it stood, and the other six lots in the public square. Also plank in the court house. four boxes of glass, the iron of the old jail. etc., etc.
September 2, 1806. Robert Simpson (one of the commissioners.) was allowed for cash paid for whiskey for use of the sale of the public property at the mouth of Brush Creek, fifty cents. [This was the price of one gallon .- ED.]
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to the one erected by Foster and known as the "old log court house." The order for Joseph Darlinton to sell court house could not have refer- red to the one at Washington for the credit fixed for that sale was eighteen months, and the "removal" of the building was for the purpose of clearing the square for the structure erected by Mr. Foster .:
"West Union, July 2, 1805.
"Ordered that Joseph Darlinton sell to the highest bidder on the thirteenth inst., the old court house, giving six months' credit, on the purchaser giving bond and security. Ordered also that the purchaser of the said court house shall remove the same off the public grounds in thirty days from the purchase."
THE FIRST COURT HOUSE was erected in 1805. The contract was let to William Foster at his bid of $709, with Benjamin Sutton, Needham Perry, and John Thomas as sureties on his bond. The struc- ture was erected on lot 63 in the Public Square, with the side facing Main Street five poles from it, and the east end adjoin- ing Market Street. It was thirty feet long, twenty-four feet wide and two stories high.
It was specified that it should be built of oak, poplar, walnut, or blue ash logs, eight inches thick and none less than twelve inches on face. There was an outside stone chimney with fireplace four and one-half feet wide below and above, on the north side, and seven feet from the inside of northwest corner. The lower story was twelve feet in the clear and the upper eight feet, with a banistered stairway on the north side leading up to it. A door three and one-half feet wide was in the east end fronting Market Street, and the bench for the Court was on an elevated platform on the south side of the lower room. In this room were four windows, two on the south side, one of which was in the center between the bar and bench, and two in the west end equal distance from each other. There were four windows above, two in south side, one in the north side near northeast corner, and one in the west end near northwest corner suiting the two rooms in the upper story. The lower windows each had twenty lights of glass and the upper ones twelve each. The windows in court room had double shutters fastened with iron bolts and bars. The contract specified that the lower story should be finished by the twenty-fourth day of August, and the upper one by the fourth of October, 1805. Some of the logs of this building are now in a dwelling occupied by John Knox just south of the Presbyterian Church in West Union, on the Beasley Fork pike.'
THE FIRST JAIL at West Union stood on lot 67, now the site of the brick dwelling of Miss Sarah Boyle. It stood three rods north from Main Street with the end fronting Cherry Street and the old Bradford Hotel. It was a most remarkable structure, of hewed logs, eighteen by twenty-four feet, and two stories in height. It was constructed of two walls, one within the other, and the space between was filled in with up- right hewed logs each one foot square. Both the upper and the lower floors were laid with hewed logs one foot thick, and the partitions be- tween the rooms of which there were four, two above and two below, were of logs of that dimension. The door in the east end was made from two-inch oak plank with upright and cross-bars of heavy iron laid over it. The windows, of which there were four, were each two feet square and heavily screened with iron cross-bars. It was erected in
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1805 by James Brownfield, and cost $590. It was afterwards removed to the northeast corner of the Public Square, by Morris McFadden, at a cost of $378, where it stood till 1858.
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