USA > Ohio > Washington County > Belpre > A history of Belpre, Washington County, Ohio > Part 4
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MARY BANCROFT DAUGHTER OF CAPT. EDMUND AND ELIZABETH ATHERTON BANCROFT. BORN NOVEMBER 14, 1752, PEPPERELL, MASS. MARRIED CAPT. WILLIAM DANA. NOVEMBER 28, 1770.
DIED DECEMBER 31, 1831.
IN THE YEAR 1789, IN COMPANY WITH HER HUSBAND AND CHILDREN, SHE MOVED TO BELPRE, OHIO, WHERE SHE SPENT
THE REMAIN- DER OF HER LIFE.
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OLD BRICK MEETING HOUSE, BUILT 1821 STOOD IN ROCKLAND CEMETERY
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friends but Mr. Atherton and Captain Blanchard. Mr. Atherton informed me that sister Sparrow had lost her little girl. What a distribution of Providence, there was enough to feed and clothe, still they must be afflicted. In- finite Wisdom no doubt thought it best. What ever is, is right, but we all mourn the loss of so sweet a child. My blood thrilled in my veins and though at so great a distance have very sympathetic feelings for the parents. I wish you would write me the manner of her death, and how you all are and everything that concerns my family. It would seem like a feast. Be assured now I have begun to write it seems like a visit. The hurry in which I have lived has kept me from almost every duty; and care for the safety of my own in the new world has kept me continually busy ; there seemed not a moment to spare. The attention of a family that has but one cow and that wants everything is great and but one woman to do the whole, but I have not lost my spirits. It is now eleven at night, all are at rest and it rains very fast, and has for this thirty hours as fast as I ever knew it. The river rises and falls at an amazing rate. Everything grows as fast as we could wish but I fear we will still have to grind in a hand mill. As it grows late and our house is very wet must bid you adieu. Your affectionate daughter,
Mary Dana.
The next letter was written two years later and indi- cates the changed conditions.
September 8, 1792.
Honored Sir:
I once more give myself the satisfaction to inform you and all my friends that we are all alive and in as good health as it is common for us to be. Various have been the scenes I have passed through since I left your peaceful dwelling. We lived in peace and safety as we thought for one year without a guard for selves or family.
At length an army was sent out against that injured nation for cruelties they were often committing upon per- sons or families.
A year ago last February three small settlements mov- ed together. A garrison was created and block houses
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built. We continued there with two families in every house, one above and one below, three miles from our usual dwelling. We continued there nine months but before the defeat of the army we returned and lived in our own house all winter.
In the course of the winter Mr. Dana built a decent block house nigh a quarter of a mile from our other. I now live in a snug garrison where there are seven families.t Nobody pretends to walk any distance without an instru- ment of death on his shoulder, continually looking for dan- ger and trial. All necessary business is performed with alacrity and fortitude. Everything around us is flourish- ing and we are supported and prospered beyond our expec- tations. This letter I send by Mrs. Battelle who is about to set out for Boston. She has been in this country nigh four years and is now going to visit her friends. Me thinks it would add to my happiness to hear from every branch of my family; their situation, their prosperities, their adversities, although at so great a distance I should share every adversity, and partake of the prosperity. Not a single line have I received from any of you since I left you, and this wretched writing I hope will put you in mind, or one of my brothers, to write the first opportunity. I must conclude with sending duty and respects and love for my- self and family.
Your dutiful daughter, MARY DANA.
These letters reveal many of the privations of settlers in a new country with no public means of travel, and no mails, the only means of transporting letters being in the knapsacks of travelers, and sometimes years passed before they heard from friends in the old home.
Mrs. Dana was daughter of Capt. Edmond Bancroft, of Pepperell, Mass. She brought up a family of eleven children and did her full share in promoting the welfare of Belpre.
The pioneer wives and mothers deserve more honors than we can express for the preseverance and heroism with which they endured the privations of those early years.
¡Doubtless Stone's Garrison.
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CHAPTER IV
MUTUAL INSURANCE SOCIETY
OON after the commencement of the war, the inhabitants who owned cattle and hogs, formed themselves into a Society for the mutual in- surance of each others stock against the depre- dations of the Indians; and also for carrying on their agri- cultural labors. Each one was accountable for any loss in proportion to the amount he owned. For this purpose the animals were appraised at their cash value, and recorded in a book by the Secretary. Quite a number of cattle and hogs were killed or driven away by the Savages during the war, the value of which was directly made up to the owners by the company. Horses they did not attempt to keep during the war as they were sure to be stolen, and were a means of inviting the Indians into the settlement. It was a wise and salutary arrangement and found to be very useful in equalizing the burdens and losses of a com- munity who had located themselves in a wilderness and had to encounter not only the toil and privations of re- claiming their new lands from the forest but also to contend with one of the most subtle. revengeful, and wilv enemies the world ever produced. The leading men in Belpre had been acquainted during their service in the Army. at a time which tried mens souls, and they felt a degree of kind- ness and interest in each others welfare not to be found in any other community. Their mutual dangers and suffering bound them still closer together in the bonds of friendship. There was also an amount of intelligence and good sense rarely found in so small a number, as will be more dis- tinctly shown in the biographical sketches (See Chapter VIII.)
FLOATING MILL
Early in the summer of 1791, the settlers, being disap- pointed by the Indian war in completing the mill, com- menced on the Little Hocking, concluded to build what
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might be called a floating mill. This could be anchored out in the river and be safe from destruction by Indians. The labor of grinding corn on a hand mill for a community of more than one hundred and fifty persons was a task only known to those who have tried it.
Griffin Greene, Esq., one of the Ohio Company direc- tors, and also an associate in Farmers Castle, had traveled in France and Holland three or four years before, and in the latter country had seen a mill erected on boats and the machinery moved by the current. He mentioned the fact to Captain Jonathan Devoll, an ingenious machanic, of ar- dent temperament and resolute to accomplish anything that would benefit his fellow men; and although Mr. Greene had not inspected the foreign mill so as to give any definite description, yet the bare suggestion of such a fact was suffi- cient for Captain Devoll, whose mechanical turn of mind immediately devised the machinery required to put it in operation. A company was formed and the stock divided into twelve shares of which Captain Devoll took one-third, and Mr. Greene about one-fourth; the rest was divided among five other persons. When finished it cost fifty-one pounds eight shillings, Massachusetts currency, according to the old bill of expenditures. The mill was erected on two boats one of them five and the other ten feet wide and for- ty-five feet long. The smaller one was made of the trunk of a hollow Sycamore tree and the larger of timber and plank like a flat boat. They were placed eight feet apart and fastened firmly together by beams, running across the boats.
The smaller on the outside supported one end of the shaft of the water wheel and the larger the other; in this was placed the mill stones and running gear, covered with a tight frame building for the protection of the grain and meal and the comfort of the miller. The space between the boats was covered with planks forming a deck fore and aft of the water wheel. It was turned by the natural current of the water, and was put in motion or checked by pulling up or setting down a set of boards, similar to a gate in front of the wheel. It could grind from twenty- five to fifty bushels of grain in twenty-four hours, accord- ing to the strength of the current. The larger boat was fastened by a chain cable to an anchor made of timbers and filled with stones, and the smaller one by a grape vine
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to the same anchor. The mill was placed in a rapid por- tion of the Ohio a few rods from the shore and in sight of the Castle. The current here was strong, and the posi- tion safeguarded from Indians. With the aid of a bolting cloth in the garrison, turned by hand, very good flour was made, when they had any wheat. The day of the comple- tion was a kind of jubilee to the inmates of the Castle, as it relieved them from the slavish labor of the handmill, which literally fulfilled the prediction to Adam: "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread." The float- ing mill was a great relief, and was visited by all the settlers on both sides of the Ohio for a distance of twenty miles, in their canoes, the only mode of transportation at a period when there were neither roads nor bridges in the country.
MURDERS AT NEWBURY.
This settlement was begun at the same time with that at Belpre, considered a part of it and called the "Lower Settlement." The location was six miles below Farmers Castle and was commenced by about fourteen associates. On the breaking out of hostilities, Jan. 2nd, 1791, they left their new clearing and joined the garrison at Belpre. Find- ing it out of their power to cultivate their land at so great a distance, early in the Spring of 1792, the men returned and built two blockhouses, with a few cabins and enclosed the whole with a Stockade on the bank of the river oppo- site a spot called "Newbury bar," and moved back their effects. There were now four or five families and eight single men; in all about twenty souls. A man by the name of Brown, from headwaters, with his wife and four chil- dren, had recently joined the settlement, and commenced clearing a piece of land about eighty rods from the garri- son. On Sunday, March 15th, a mild and pleasant day, his wife went out to see him set some fruit trees they had brought with them. Not apprehending any danger from the Indians so near the garrison, she took along with her the children, carrying an infant in her arms, and leading another child of two years old by the hand, while Persis Dunham, a girl of fourteen, the daughter of widow Dun- ham, and a great favorite with the settlers, for her pleasant disposition, kind consiliating manners, and beautiful per-
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son, led another child, and the fourth loitered some dis- tance behind them. When they arrived within a short space of Mr. Brown, two Indians sprang out from their con- cealment; one seized Mrs. Brown by the arm and sunk his tomahawk in her head. As she fell he aimed a blow at the infant which cut a large gash in the side of the fore- head and nearly severed one ear. He next dashed his hat- chet into the head of the child she was leading, and with his knife tore off their scalps. The other Indian fell upon Persis and the remaining child, sinking his tomahawk into their heads and tearing off their scalps with the re- morseless fury of a demon.
The men in the garrison, hearing their screams, rushed out to their rescue; but only saved the little fellow who loitered behind, and commenced firing at the Indians. Brown, whom they had not discovered before, now came in sight but being without arms could render no assist- ance. The Indians immediately gave chase to him but he escaped and reached the garrison. As the men were not familiar with Indian warfare, no effective pursuit was made; whereas had there been several backswoodsmen among them they would doubtless have been followed and killed. When the bodies of the slain were removed to the garrison, the poor little infant was found in a state of insensibility lying by the side of its dead mother. It finally revived and was nursed with great tenderness by the fe- males at Farmers Castle, where the child was soon after brought, whose deepest sympathies were awakened by its motherless condition and ghastly wound which had nearly deprived it of all its blood. By great care it was restored to health, and the father, with his two remaining children, returned to his relations. Newbury was again deserted and so remained until the end of the war.
SCARLET FEVER.
In the summer of 1792, in addition to their other cal- amities, the inhabitants of Farmers Castle were assailed with Scarlet Fever and putrid sore throat. It commenced without any known cause or exposure to contagion. The disease was sudden and violent in its attacks and very fatal, some of the children died within twenty-four hours. It was of a very putrid type and the seat of the disease
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confined chiefly to the fauces and throat, many having no scarlet effloressence on the skin. It continued for several weeks and overwhelmed this little isolated community with consternation and grief. Medicine seemed to have little or no effect in arresting the progress or checking the fatal termination of the disease.
It gradually subsided after carrying off ten or fifteen children. Like many other epidemics it was most fatal in the first few days of its appearance. It was confined to Belpre, while Marietta and the other settlements escaped its ravages. In the Summer and autumn the inhabitants were more or less affected with intermittent fevers of a mild type, to the production of which, no doubt, the swamp back of the garrison afforded a large share of the malaria. Bilious fever also occasionally attacked the new settlers but the disease was seldom fatal and gave way to simple remedies.
SCHOOLS
No people ever paid more attention to the education of their children than the descendants of the Puritans. One of the first things done by the settlers of Belpre, after they had erected their own log dwellings, was to make provision for teaching their children the rudiments of learning, read- ing writing and arithmetic.
Bathsheba Rouse, the daughter of John Rouse, one of the emigrants from near New Bedford Mass. was em- ployed in the summer of 1789 to teach the small children, and for several subsequent summers she taught a school in Farmers Castle. She is believed to have been the first female who taught a school within the present bounds of Ohio. During the winter months a male teacher was employed for the larger boys and young women. Daniel Mayo was the first male teacher in Farmers Castle. He came, a young man from Boston, with the family of Col. Battelle, in the Fall of 1788, and was a graduate of Cam- bridge University. The school was held in a large room of Col. Battelle's block house. He was a teacher for sev- eral winters, and during the Summer worked at clearing and cultivating his lot of land. He married a daughter of Col. Israel Putnam and after the war settled in Newport, Ky. Jonathan Baldwin, another educated man, also taught
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school a part of the time of their confinement in the garri- son. These schools had no public funds as at this day to aid them but were supported from the hard earnings of the honest pioneers. (They received a small sum from the Ohio Company.)
RELIGIOUS SERVICES
The larger portion of the time during the war relig- ious services were held on the Sabbath in Farmers Castle by Col. E. L. Battelle. The people assembled in the large lower room in his block house which was provided with seats. Notice was given of the time to commence the exer- cises by his son Ebenezer, then a lad of fifteen or sixteen years, and a drummer to the garrison, marching up and down beating the drum. The inmates understood the call as readily from the "tattoo" as from the sound of a bell, and they attended very regularly. The meeting was open- ed with prayer, sometimes read from the church service and sometimes delivered extempore, followed by singing, at which all the New Englanders were more or less proficient. A sermon was then read from the writings of some stand- ard divine and the meeting closed with singing and prayer. Occasionally, during the war, Rev. Daniel Story visited them and preached on the Sabbath, but these calls were rare, owing to the danger from Indians of intercourse be- tween the settlements. After the war his attendance was more regular, about once a month; on the other three Sun- days religious services were continued by Col. Battelle, at a house erected on the Bluff, which accommodated both the upper and middle settlements until the time when they were able to build another and more convenient place of worship. The holy day was generally observed and hon- ored by the inhabitants but not with the strictness common in New England. Very few of the leading men of that day were members of any church ; yet all supported religion, morality and good order.
OF THE SPIES AND RANGERS.
To the vigilance and courage of the men engaged as spies and rangers may in part be attributed the fact, that so few losses were sustained by the inhabitants during the Indian war, compared with that of most other border settle- ments. This species of troops were early employed by the
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Ohio Company at the suggestion of Gen. Rufus Putnam, who had been familiar with their use in the old French war and subsequently taken into the service of the United States. The duty of the spies was to scour the country every day the distance of eight or ten miles around the garrisons, making a circuit of twenty-five or thirty miles and accomplishing their task generally by three or four o'clock in the afternoon. They left the garrison at day- light, always two in company, traveling rapidly over the hills and stopping to examine more carefully such places as it was probable the Indians would pass over, in making their approach to the settlements, guided in this respect by the direction of the ridges or the water courses. The circuit in Belpre was over on to the waters of the Little Hocking river, and up the easterly branches across to the Ohio, striking this stream a few miles above the entrance of the Little Kanawha and thence by the deserted farms down to the garrison. The spies from Waterford made a traverse that intersected or joined their trail, forming a cordon across which the enemy could rarely pass without their signs being discovered. While they were abroad the inhabitants, at work in their fields or traveling between stations, felt a degree of safety they could not have done, but for their confidence in the sagacity and faithfulness of the spies. Their dress in summer was similar to that worn by Indians. Their pay was five shillings, or eighty cents a day as appears from the old pay roll. They were amen- able to the commanding officer of the station but under the direct control of Col. Sproat, who was employed by the United States. They had signs known to themselves, by which they recognized a ranger from an Indian even when painted like one.
The men who served at Belpre, but not all at the same time, two or three being a proportion for each garrison, were Cornelius Delano, Joel Oaks, Benjamin Patterson, Joshua Fleehart, George Kerr, John Shepherd, and James Caldwell. The first two were New England men; the other five had been brought up on the frontiers.
SMALL POX.
In September, 1793, the small pox was introduced within Farmers Castle, whose walls could not protect them from this insidious foe, by Benjamin Patterson one of the
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spies. He was at Marietta where it prevailed and think- ing himself exposed to the contagion was inoculated by Dr. Barnes who was then there, and engaged him to inoculate the rest of the family.
Great was the consternation of the married females and children when the news of the Small Pox being among them was known. Their sufferings and losses from the Scarletina were still fresh in their minds, and the dreaded name of Small Pox seemed like the final sealing of their calamities. Few, if any of the inhabitants, except the officers and soldiers of the army had gone through with the disease, and as there was no chance of escaping it, a meeting of the inhabitants was directly called. It was voted to send for Dr. True to come down and inoculate them in their own dwellings. The Doctor accepted the invitation and Farmers Castle became one great hospital, containing beneath each roof more or less persons sick with this loath- some disease. The treatment of Dr. True was very suc- cessful, and out of nearly one hundred patients not one died.
Of those under the care of Dr. Barnes in Major Good- ales garrison, a colony which moved out of Farmers Castle in the spring, two or three died; among them was a child of Mr. Patterson. The cause of its fatality was the failure of those first inoculated to take the disease, probably from deteriorated matter; and several took it in the natural way, so that on the whole they got through with this pest very favorably.
CHAPTER V
DOMESTIC MANUFACTURES
m
ANY families who had been brought up on the frontiers depended entirely on the skins of animals for clothing. Whole households from the oldest to the youngest were clad in dress-
ed deer skins. Some of them possessed great skill in making them soft and pliable, equal to the finest cloth. Before the introduction of sheep, buckskin panta- loons were in general use by all the farmers boys. The New England settlers with most of the frontier inhabitants made cloth of various materials. For the first two or three years, hemp was raised in small quantities; water rotted and made into cloth by the industrious females of the garri- son. Flax was also raised. "In the year 1790, Captain Dana sowed a piece of flax, pulled it early in June, while it was in the blossom, water rotted it in a swamp near the river, had it dressed out and spun in the family, and woven into substantial cloth by his son William. It was made into shirts and trousers for the boys and worn at the celebration of July 4th in Belpre, showing an activity and dispatch which few in this day can equal."; Nearly every family had their spinning wheels, and looms. With these the girls and young women used to congregate in companies of ten or fifteen in the spacious rooms of the block houses and cheer each other in their labors with song and sprightly conversation. They used also to stir up their ambition with trial of skill in spinning the largest number of skeins in a given time. For the first few years cotton was raised in small quantities and manufactured into stockings or cloth. with hemp or flax. The rich virgin soil of the bot- toms, and the long warm summers of this climate caused it to flourish and be nearly as productive as it now is in Tennessee. After a few years the early frosts of Autumn destroyed much of it before the floss was formed and taught them that this was not the proper climate for cotton.
¡Manuscript Notes of Judge Barker.
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Capt. Devoll invented a machine with rollers which sep- arated the seeds from the cotton in quite an admirable manner but not quite equal to Whitney's celebrated gin. He also constructed a mill with wooden rollers, worked by oxen, for crushing the green stalks of Indian corn, from the juice of which a rich syrup or molasses was made in considerable quantities. When carefully purified it an- swered well for sweetening puddings, pies, etc.
About the year 1800 Dr. Spencer of Vienna, Wood County, Va. raised in his garden cotton the stems of which were eight or ten feet high and produced forty pounds of long, fine cotton in the seed on three square rods of ground. It was planted early in April by a colored woman who had been familiar with the culture in the South. It must be recollected that cotton at that period was worth forty or fifty cents a pound, and was just coming into cultivation as a staple in the Southern states. Rice, of the variety called upland, was also raised in small quantities, during the early years of the settlements; showing that this climate could produce several articles, now brought from abroad, should the necessities of the people ever require it. Silk worms were raised by the females in Gen. Putnams family and the cocoons reeled and spun into strong sewing thread as early as 1800. They were fed on the leaves of the white mulberry, raised from seeds brought from Conn. Sheep were not introduced until after the war, in 1797 or 98; the first came from Pennsylvania. For more than twenty years nearly all the clothes worn in the families of farmers, and many in town for every day dresses, were made in the houses of the wearers by their wives and daughters.
STONES AND GOODALES FORTS OCCUPIED.
Early in the Spring of 1793 the large community in Farmer's Castle found themselves so much straitened for room and withal it was so inconvenient cultivating their lands at such a distance from their dwellings that they con- cluded to divide their forces and erect two additional gar- risons, to be occupied by the families whose lands lay in the vicinity. Accordingly one containing two block houses was built a mile below, inclosed with palisades and called "Goodale's garrison," and one on the bank of the Ohio two miles above, called "Stone's garrison," and the families
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