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 49
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There was a small furnace in connection with old "Bull" Forge, on the lower waters of Ohio Brush Creek, which was erected and managed by a Mr. Kendrick about the year 1818.
There was a forge at old Steam Furnace, and one, Brush Creek Forge, on Ohio Brush Creek, near where the Forge Dam Bridge now spans that stream at Satterfields'. (See Brush Creek Forge.)
These all were what is known as the cold-blast, charcoal furnace, with water power, except the Steam Furnace, and produced from one to two tons each of iron per day. They were kept in blast from seven to ten months in the year, and gave employment to hundreds of men in the various divisions of the industry. Competition in the Hanging Rock, Youngstown, and Pittsburg fields, with better means of trans- portation of the product, together with more extensive ore beds, and the use of coke and coal in place of the more expensive charcoal to make the blast, caused the abandonment of the Brush Creek iron fields.
It is said that the quality of iron made here was of the very best. The ores lie in basins of limited extent, and irregular form, in the cliff limestone capping the hills in the region of Brush Creek. The natives speak of the "top hills" as being the place of deposit of the ore. "The ore seems originally," says Locke, "to have been pyrites in huge nodules, and collections of nodules in the rock. Where these became uncovered and exposed to the influence of water, and the lime, which is more or less intermingled, a decomposition ensued, the sul- phur was abstracted, and the hydrated peroxide of iron remained. Wherever the ore is covered by stone and the agency of water ex- cluded it is still nodular pyrites, somewhat decomposed. In one in- stance a drift was made into an ore bed, under the rock at Brush Creek furnace, and plenty of heavy, beautiful, gold-like ore procured, but so full of sulphur that it could not be worked.
Marble Furnace.
The valley of the east fork of Ohio Brush Creek has long been celebrated for its beauty of scenery and fertility of soil. In the early pioneer days, Massie, Lytle, O'Bannon, and others risked life and limb to make entries and surveys of these very valuable lands. The Shaw- nees, who had wrested the region from savage rivals long before the coming of the whites, held this valley as one of the richest fields for the chase, while the stream now known as East Fork afforded an abund- ance of fish of the finest and gamest kinds, as it does to this day, even against all the destructive influences and cunning inventions of civiliza- tion. In the bottom to the north of the site of the old furnace there was a Shawnee village, and there the land had been cleared ; there under the rude cultivation of the patient and industrious squaw, the lazy war- rior saw the broad acres of maize to supply the wants of hunger, flour- 26a
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ish and grow as of magic. While along the narrow valleys and up the broad hillsides the sugar maple (acer sacharinum), grew native mon- archs of the soil. This was in every sense of the term the Indian's par- adise. He esteemed it as such, and defended it against the encroach- ments of civilization to his utmost endeavor. Here, as late as 1805, remnants of Shawnee families, whose ancestors had resided in the val- ley, came to fish and hunt and take a last farewell at the graves of their forefathers. The white man's ax had even then so marred the for- ests as to make scenes once familiar unknown. It may properly here be remarked that in this valley a race of people, nothing of whom was known to the Indians, once flourished, who builded enduring monu- ments to the memory of their rulers, and constructed as an altar of worship to the Great Being that most remarkable effigy, the study and wonder of civilized man, the Great Serpent Mound.
While surveying in this valley, Massie discovered iron ore of very fine quality on the bordering hills, and later Thomas James and Duncan McArthur, afterwards governor, built the furnace known as Marble Furnace, and began a great industry, which was carried on for years. This was in the year 1816, and the furnace was in full operation in that year. The name "Marble" was given to the furnace from the fact that the stack was built from a fine white limestone quarried near by, which, when dressed and bush-hammered, had, at a distance, the appearance of white marble.
The stack of the furnace stood on the lot now owned by Charles Miller. It was so located that from the cliff to the rear a kind of trestle bridge was constructed, over which trucks were propelled carrying charcoal, limestone, and iron ore to the top of the stack. The power to supply the blast was furnished by a canal or race leading from the creek above.
There were here at times from 400 to 600 men employed in the various divisions of the work, including wood-choppers, colliers, fur- nace men, ore diggers, teamsters, and so forth. The pig-iron was hauled overland to Benner's forge on Paint Creek, to Chillicothe, or to the Ohio River at Manchester, via West Union. While the hollow ware made at the foundry was distributed throughout the settlements for miles about. One of the prominent characters at the furnace for many years was Robert Ivers, a kettle moulder. Afterwards Peter Andrews and others built the cupola and molded stoves, kettles, pots, and dog-irons. Among the wood choppers Fred Griffith, Mathew Gor- man and Abraham Wisecup were unequaled. It is said that either of these persons could cut seven and one-half cords per day, a feat never performed by any other person of the hundreds of choppers who worked at the "coalings." Twenty-five cents a cord was the price paid in those days. David Gardner was overseer of the ore diggers, who received from thirty to forty cents per day in "Furnace Scrip." There was a double log cabin on the lot where the old frame building now stands, which was in early days a famous boarding house. Just across the creek from it stood Joseph Thompson's cabin, where whiskey was sold, and many a foot race, wrestle, or fight has taken place on the his- toric spot for a quart of Thompson's "old Monongahela," made up
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some one of the spring branches that flow into Brush Creek. Labels were a deception then, as now.
About the year 1830 work at the furnace ceased, from the fact that charcoal can not compete with stone coal, that ox teams can not com- pete with more modern means of transportation, and limited supply of ore can not compete with supplies almost inexhaustible. In 1834 *Henry Massie, one of the proprietors of the furnace, sold his interest to McArthur and James, and they disposed of 1,200 acres of furnace land, including the old furnace, to Jacob Sommers, then a resident of Middlebury, Loudon County, Virginia. Here in December, 1835, he came with his family and moved into the old brick house built by Henry Massie, where now resides Captain Urton, a son-in-law of Mr. Som- mers.
Brush Creek Furnace.
This furnace stood on Cedar Run, about two miles from its con- fluence with Ohio Brush Creek. It was erected in the year 1811 by Paul and McNichol, of Pittsburg, and furnished employment to several hundred men for a period of twenty years. Paul and McNichol were succeeded by James Rodgers & Co., and they by the Brush Creek Fur- nace Company, who conducted the business until 1826, when James T. Claypool & Co. became the proprietors. In November of this year the company advertised for fifty or sixty wood choppers, "to whom prompt and liberal wages will be given." "Also ox drivers and ore diggers. Ox drivers will be given $28 a month, $5 of it in cash." The company advertised "Hollo-ware, pig-metal and castings of every de- scription, suitable to the wants of the country." This company con- ducted a general store at the furnace, at which the furnace hands and their families were compelled to purchase their goods and groceries. Corn, oats, wheat, and farm products were taken in exchange for goods from the store, or for the products of the furnace and forge conducted in connection therewith.
Claypool & Co. were succeeded by William K. Stewart & Co., in 1834-5. At this time the supply of ore in the vicinity was thought to be exhausted, and operations at the furnace had ceased. But the new pro- prietors opened new beds of ore and carried on a profitable business for several years thereafter, until competition in other fields became too great to realize profits in the Brush Creek fields. In the year 1838 Mr. Stewart, with twelve laborers, in a period of 120 days made a blast which produced over 200 tons of pig-iron.
Brush Creek Forge stood on the west side of Brush Creek, near the present "Forge Dam" bridge, at Satterfield's. The old dam across the creek was constructed to furnish power to propel the machinery at the forge. The pig-iron from the furnace was here made into wrought- iron blooms. John Fisher, a prominent character of the county in those days, was proprietor of the forge and a member of the furnace company. During the flood of 1832 the back-water from the Ohio River rose in Mr. Fisher's dwelling, which stood in the bottom, back from the forge.
" It is said that the only son of Henry Massie is buried near the old brick residence built by him in 1826. and now occupied by Captain Urion. Mr. Massie's wife died here. but was interred at Chillicothe. The stone from which the sarcophagus over her grave was built, was quarried at Marble Furnace and hauled by ox teams to Chillicothe.
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"Bull Forge," so called from the fact that the power to drive its machinery was had from a great tread-wheel forty feet in diameter, propelled by oxen, or "bulls." This forge was on Ohio Brush Creek, near its mouth, on what was known as the Wilson farm. It was owned by a Mr. Kendrick, from Chillicothe. A small furnace was also built and operated here-the ore being dug on the creek hills in the vicinity.
FUGITIVE SLAVES AND THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD.
The ordinance of '87 contains among other things the well-known provision with reference to Negro slavery: "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said (Northwest) territory, otherwise than for the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." This forever prohibited slavery in Ohio and the other states carved out of the territory for the government of which the ordinance was framed by the second continental congress, but it contained a provision recognizing the institution of slavery in the other states and territories, providing "that any person escaping into the same (Northwest Territory), from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in one of the original states, such fugitive may be claimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or services as afore- said. And the constitution of the United States afterwards adopted contained the provision that "no person held to service or labor in any one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in conse- quence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such ser- vice or labor, but shall be delivered upon claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
Upon these basic principles of our organic law, the owners of slaves pursued such of them as escaped into free territory, and if ap- prehended carried them back into slavery. There were persons and communities in the free states that lent assistance in secreting fugitives and in assisting them to escape from their pursuers to the English provinces-particularly the Dominion of Canada. In these days such violators of law would be condemned as "Anarchists," and perhaps "en- joined" by the federal courts from such acts of violence, and in cases of bloodshed, as often occurred, would be hanged, as was Parsons and his associates in Chicago in recent years.
The Virginia Military District in Ohio, including Adams County, was largely settled by persons from the slave-holding states, particu- larly Virginia and Kentucky; yet a majority of these opposed Negro slavery-or at least the extension of it-and all opposed for a period of years the agitation of the questions on social, religious, and constitu- tional grounds. Many of the early settlers of Adams County had freed their slaves in the south, but brought with them Negro servants, who remained here in about the same status with reference to their former masters as while in slave territory.
In the old records of the Court of Quarter Sessions, September term, 1799, we find that "Nathaniel Massie's Mike appeared in court to claim his freedom. The court ordered him (Mike) home and stay until next court, to be confronted by his master."
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Mike seems to have obeyed the court and stayed at home until the December term, 1800, when it appears on the record of the court that "On the motion of Mike, a Negro man, the court rule he shall be heard after the prisoner, McGinnis." And, later, "Mike came before the court and pleads for his freedom, whereupon the court rule and order him to have his trial at the next term, and that the sheriff give Nathan- iel Massie due notice thereof." Said notice was, "that, whereas, Mike, a Negro man, has been repeatedly before the court in making com- plaint of his being held in bondage contrary to law; and the court has ordered him on to trial at our next Court of General Quarter Sessions at Washington in and for said county in March next." John Beasley was presiding judge of this court, Nathan Ellis sheriff, and George Gor- don clerk. The court also directed the sheriff to "summon Thomas McDonald, if he may be found in your bailiwick, to personally appear before the court * * on the second Tuesday of March next, then and there in our said court to give evidence and the truth to say on the behalf of Mike v. Nathaniel Massie, in a Plea of Freedom." Joel Bailey was also summoned as a witness for Mike.
A. the March session, 1801, ne case was disposed of as shown by the records, and closed with the following entry : "The rule of the court in this suit is to proceed no further therein, and order said suit dismissed from the docket, which is accordingly done."
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It is said that many of the wealthier families in the early days of the county held Negro servants practically in bondage. The Early family had three Negros, brought from Kentucky as slaves, one of whom, a little boy, remained in the family until he became of age. The Means family had a number of Negro servants, as late as 1835.
Jeremiah Pittinger came to Adams County from the State of Maryland, in 1825, and brought as a servant in the family, Dinah, a negro woman, who lived with the family during his lifetime. She then went with a daughter, Julia, the wife of John Morrison, of Eckmans- ville, and served in his family until her death in 1878, at the age of 106 years. The old cherry chest in which she brought her worldly be- longings from Maryland, is now in the possession of Mrs. Alexander, a daughter of Mr. Morrison.
The following certificate of manumission given Dinah by John Schley, father of the popular admiral, the hero of Santiago, is worth preserving. State of Maryland, Frederick County, ss. I hereby cer- tify that the person to whom this is given, named Dinah, a black- woman, about thirty years of age, five feet eight inches tall, has a scar on lower part of the left ear, and has a mole on left side of her face near the nose, and has a scar on her left cheek and is the identical negro woman heretofore manumitted by John Campbell and Eliza- beth Campbell on or about the eleventh day of April, 1805, as appears by said manumission on record in my office, and the affidavit of John Pittinger on file in my office.
In testimony whereof I have hereunto subscribed my name and affixed the seal of my office this twentieth day of June 1824.
John Schley, Clerk of Frederick County.
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The newspapers of that period carried advertisements like the fol- lowing, from The Village Register, West Union, Ohio, April 27, 1824:
100 DOLLARS REWARD
RAN AWAY from the Kenhawa Salt Works, on or about the twen- ty-eighth of December, last, a bright mullato man, about three-fourths white, named William, the property of William Brooks, of Franklin County, Virginia. He is about twenty-nine years old, nearly six feet high, his head woolly, and inclined to be yellow; he is a raw boned stout fellow, tolerably thin visage, straight built, the middle finger of his right hand is cut off at the first joint; very fond of spiritous liquors, and when drunk, inclined to misbehave. The above reward will be given to any person who will return him to the subscriber at the Ken- hawa Saline; or fifty-dollars if secured in any jail so that I get him again.
Joel Shrewsbury.
There was but little abolition sentiment in Adams County until about 1840. The Covenanters about Cherry Fork and the Brush Creek settle- ments were, from principle, opposed to Negro slavery. At this time a few "agitators" like Rev. Dyer Burgess who had stirred up dissensions among the people of the county over the question of Free Masonry, began to discuss publicly the question of Negro slavery. These "agi- tators" were very abusive of those who counseled obedience to the law, and denounced the "government as a covenant with hell.' The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law gave the "agitators" renewed oppor- tunity for vituperation, and the slave hunters legal sanction to their many revolting acts of cruelty toward captives taken in free territory. There were, as there would be today, men in every community without reference to creed or political affiliations, who for the sake of reward, would at the risk of life, pursue the fugitives to captivity for the hope of gain. A party of these pursuers from the vicinity of Clayton, headed by James Taylor, Godard Pence, and Harvey Beasley, in 1851, caught sixteen negroes near Thornton Shelton's, in Sprigg Township. Tay- lor, a powerful man himself, knocked one negro down time and again with a handspike before Pence a desperate character could secure him with ropes.
William Gilbert was shot and killed by a fugitive whom he had pursued over the county line into Brown County, at the crossing of Brushy Fork near the old store . The negro was captured the next day near Clayton by some of the Martins and a posse from Maysville. This was in 1850, and John Laney informed the writer that he and old Dr. Norton, of near Decatur, who was accompanying Laney to answer a sick call, as they approach the crossing at the creek, heard the shot, and the sound of voices. On near approach, William Paul and others were stooping over Gilbert who was mortally wounded. Dr. Norton whose house was an "under ground station" refused to attend Gilbert but rode on to Laney's house. Gilbert survived three days after removal to his home.
On the other hand, there were individuals in every community who from "broadness of mind and bigness of heart" would render as-
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sistance to the fleeing slave and help him on to a place of security from cruel pursuers.
A powerful negro named Ned Abney had by working overtime purchased his freedom from his master in the south: He came to Adams County in the vicinity of Cherry Fork and labored at any kind of work to secure money to purchase the freedom of his wife and child left behind. In time he had accomplished the task of freeing his wife who joined him where he had secured a domicile in the vicinity of Red Ook, in Brown County. But there lay before them the task of now accumulating enough to purchase their child in the far south land of slavery.
"Pony" Joe Patton, as he was familiarly known from the fact that he imported and bred Canadian ponies, learning the story of Abney's life, resolved to secure the child and deliver it to its parents. He ac- cordingly fitted up a light wagon and started south to sell lightning rods. He traveled into Tennessee, found the master who held Abney's child, became intimate with his household, and after due preparation stole the child out at night, and drove until daylight directly south. Then he rested his pony and while so doing cut down the bed of his wagon and covered the "boot" of it with canvas. Under this he stowed away the child, and then by a circuitous route turned to the northward to the point of his destination in Ohio, which he reached in safety after three weeks travel, where he delivered his protege to its delighted parents. The old gray pony made many a trip over the under- ground route from Red Oak to stations across Adams County carrying fugitive mothers and children to safety and freedom, but this "incur- sion into the enemy's country," as Patton termed it, was the greatest and most trying of all.
After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Laws it became necessary for the sympathizers with the runaway slaves to use the utmost pre- caution in assisting them to places of safety. The runaways who crossed the river in the vicinity of Ripley would be piloted by some one after night to Red Oak or Decatur in Brown County. From there some con- ductor, "Pony" Patton, old Johnny Thompson, of Cherry Fork, or old Jim Caskey, of Grace's Run, would take them to Daniel Copples in Liberty Township, Adams County, known as "Station Number 2" or to Gen. William McIntyre's, on Grace's Run, in Wayne Township, known as "Station Number 3": and thence to the vicinity of Sinking Springs in Highland County, "Station Number 4."
This was the so-called "underground railroad" across Adams County, although other persons besides those above named frequently sheltered and fed the weary fugitives.
On Grace's Run about midway between Cherry Fork and Young- ville was the residence of Gen. William McIntyre whose wife was Martha Patton, familiarly known as "Patsey" McIntyre. She was a large strong-minded woman, and from her observations and experience in Virginia where she and her husband had been reared, she had learned to detest the institution of slavery, and had allied herself with those active in assisting fugitive slaves across the border. The home of Gen. Mc- Intyre was known as Station Number 3," as above recited, and many a fugitive has found shelter and protection under the roof of the old red
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brick known as the abode of "Patsey" McIntyre. Tradition says, and the fertile imaginations of unscrupulous writers have added largely to tradition,that upon one occasion "Patsey" met a party of slave hunters from Kentucky at her door who had sworn with terrible oaths that they would enter and search the house for runaways, with a teakettle of boiling water and stood them off until a pitchfork from the loft could be procured for her, when she defied the pursuers and drove them from the premises.
The widow of the late George Patton, of Harshaville, a daughter of "Patsey" McIntyre, related to the writer that many slaves had been sheltered in her father's house, and that persons had made inquiry for them, but never threatened such violence as above narrated. She said that once a party of Kentuckians among whom was a Col. Marshall, a brother of the learned barrister Judge James H. Marshall, of Hillsboro, from whose facile pen the story "Treason Trial in Ohio," in this volume comes, came to her father's house and inquired for run- away slaves. They had been in the neighborhood a day or two search- ing for fugitives and it had been noised about that the negroes were secreted in her father's house, and neighbors and friends anticipating that there would be an attempt to search the premises, gathered in soon after the coming of the Kentuckians. Gen. McIntyre assured the hunters that no fugitives were in the house, and the Kentuckians insist- ing that there were, "Patsey" McIntyre told them that if they did not leave, she would scald them-the parties then being near the spring back of the house, where Mrs. Patton, then a girl, and her sister were washing clothes. The Kentuckians then went to West Union and got out a warrant to search the premises for "clothing secreted," but neither the "clothing" nor any fugitives were found.
A Preacher that Didn't Materialize.
It must not be imagined that all the "sympathizers" were of the "Pony" Joe Patton class-for they were not as a body different from other men. They perhaps did sympathize with the fugitive blacks and would give shelter, raiment and food in exchange for much hard labor. Illustrative of this, the writer was informed by an intelligent old negro who ran away from slavery, that when he came to the vicinity of Cherry Fork he was sheltered by a good man in sympathy with the movement to free the blacks, who at the end of a hard year's work, dressed him up in an old pigeon-tailed coat and a bell-crowned fur hat and insisted that the object of his sympathy and charity receive them in consideration of services rendered, assuring him that with such an outfit he might cease manual labor, and live in elegance and ease as a minister come to lead the fallen of his race in the way of glory and righteousness. "But," said the old negro, "When I look in de glass and sees de tail of that coat, and that hat only held off'n my shoulders by my ears, I said, 'No,' I can't preach-you may pay me de cash !"
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