USA > Ohio > Knox County > A history of Knox county, Ohio, from 1779 to 1862 inclusive > Part 2
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The great inconvenience the settlers labored un- der for want of building material caused William
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Douglass, as early as the spring of 1805, to conceive the design of erecting a mill at the seat now known as Banning's Mill. He then commenced digging the race and building the dam. After getting a saw to running, he set to work building a grist mill; being a man of enterprise, he could not brook the thought that the people in that neighborhood should continue to boil and pound their corn when they could not take time to go to the distant mills.
John Kerr, as will be elsewhere noted in this book, erected a little grist mill on the Sullivant track, and laid out the town of Frederick in the first quarter, seventh township, fourteenth range, United States military district, which on the 11th of November, 1807, he acknowledged, in presence of George Cham- bers, before Wm. W. Farquhar. A full account of the early settlement and progress of this thriving village will be found under the head of Wayne township.
In our investigation of early matters, we find that the settlers of this district were solicitous upon three great points for legislative aid, to wit: the division of Fairfield, the increase of premium upon wolf scalps, and proper encouragement in killing squir- rels. The General Assembly, in 1807, passed a bill to encourage killing of squirrels. It went through the popular branch with a rush, but the vote upon the final passage of the bill in the Senate, on the 21st of December, stood 8 ayes to 7 nays. The price for scalping grown wolves was increased, after some time and much petitioning, and the monster Fair- field was dismembered at last. Happy were those
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KNOX COUNTY.
old pioneers, at that period of their existence-
" All then was happy-possessing and possessed- No craving void left aching in the breast!"
In looking over the old petitions and beholding the cramped signatures of a number of these hardy yeomen, whose rough specimen marks of cracked and blistered hands in frontier service, clearly bear witness to their whole heart being in the prayers sent up for these measures, we can well imagine how they must have chuckled with delight, as a Christian over his soul's salvation, at the realization of their wishes. In those primitive times their at- tention was not diverted from the real live issues affecting the welfare of themselves and their fami- lies to grand humanitarian schemes for the benefit of any other race or people. The squirrels eat the kernels when the corn was in silken tassels, taking it out of their children's mouths; the wolves prowled about their tracks, destroying their pigs and poultry, and rendered night hideous with their howling, and frightened and endangered the lives of wives and children, so they could not leave home to attend to necessary business at the remote county seat. This was a remarkable epoch in the history of the pioneers of this country.
In 1807, at the October election, the section of country known as Fairfield county cast but 213 votes, all told; and now there is scarcely a township in all this country that does not contain more voters. Then the entire vote cast for Governor in the State, as officially published, was 5,616; and now, after the space of fifty-four years, our own county of Knox
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polls over 6,000 votes, and the old county as it then existed polled at the last election 40,000 !
What a change in the country we have lived to witness! How striking the contrast in manners, customs, education, intelligence, and in political, religious, and social life! In nothing is the altera- tion more clearly marked than in the dissemination of information in reference to elections and the sys- tem of electionecring. Then every man ran on his own hook-his own race-making the best speed he was capable of-fully impressed with the belief that the devil would take the hindmost. The race was won then by personal merit and cleverness. Now party intervenes; caucuses and juntos dic- tate; conventions and wigwams gather together political carpenters, joiners and jacks of all trades, whose special province it is to make platforms out of vagrant material for weak-kneed and spavined candidates to stand on. Then there were no daily papers, and weekly ones only existed in great cities like Boston, New York and Philadelphia. In fact nine-tenths of the then inhabitants had never seen a newspaper. The official count of the vote of that year shows more fully than any language could convey the state of blissful ignorance prevailing throughout all this now politically crazy country. There were then two candidates running for Gover- nor, to wit: Return Jonathan Meigs and Nathaniel Massie. The former was voted for under nineteen different names, and the latter under five different styles. The varions tickets read: For Return J. Meigs, Return J. Meigs, Jun., Jonathan R. Meigs, Jr., Jonathan Return Meigs, Jonathan Return
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KNOX COUNTY.
Meigs, Jr., Return Meggs, Return R. Meags, Jr., Jonathan Meggs, Jonathan R. Meggs, J. Meigs, Jr., Jonathan Meigs, Jonathan J. Meigs, Judge Meigs, John Mcigs, Mr. Meigs, J. Maggs, Return Israel Meigs, James Meigs, Johan Meigs. Nathaniel Massic, Nathaniel Massie, Esq., James Massic, Mr. Massie, Daniel Massie. Meigs received 3,299; Mas- sie 2,317; and Return J. Meigs was declared elected Governor by 982 majority. Thomas Kirker, Speak- er of the Senate, was then acting Governor.
Meigs had been a colonel in the army, and was appointed judge of the territory of Louisiana in July, 1805, and had resided in that country some six months; his wife and family, however, had remain- ed, during his absence, at Marietta, in this State. Massie contested his election; and on the 30th of December, 1807, the General Assembly, in joint session, by a vote of 24 to 20, decided that Meigs was not eligible. The vote of Fairfield was: For Meigs, 167; Massie, 46. In 1810, Governor Meigs was elected by the people, and served as Governor until 1814. He was a gentleman of education and talent, and Meigs county, upon the Ohio river, will perpetuate his name as long as Ohio exists. At the election of 1807, above alluded to, Elnathan Scofield was elected Senator, and Philemon Beecher and Wm. W. Irwin Representatives.
The singularity of name borne by Governor Meigs is thus accounted for, as narrated to us by George Browning, Esq., a native of Belpre, and resident in this place since 1829. Jonathan Meigs, the father of Return J., was quite celebrated for his bravery in several Indian campaigns, and when out on one
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of these perilous excursions, during his absence, his wife was in her confinement, and wrought upon by great anxiety for her husband, kept continually crying out in pain : "Return, Jonathan, oh! return, Jonathan, to me." About the time Return Jona- than was born, Jonathan returned, and she was quieted down, and at once the name "Return Jonathan" was given to the new comer.
1
The great extent of territory comprised within the limits of Fairfield, and the inconveniences re- sulting to the settlers in the more new portion of the country from their great distance from the county scat, caused them to agitate the question of a division of the county as early as 1806.
At the fifth General Assembly of Ohio, held in Chillicothe, December 1st, 1806, a strong effort was made, and it was "within an ace" of being success- ful. Elnathan Scofield, Senator, and Philemon Beccher, Representative, of Fairfield county, were particularly friendly to this measure. How near it came to being a success, may be judged of by the following statement upon the Senate Journal, page 115, January 15th, 1807. A message from the House of Representatives, by Mr. Beecher, repre- sented that "the House had passed 'an act for the division of Fairfield county,' in which they desire the concurrence of the Senate." On the 16th, the bill was received and read a second time. On the 20th, page 128, Mr. Scofield laid before the Senate a petition, signed by a number of the inhabitants of Fairfield county, praying for a division thereof, and recommending Mount Vernon as the tempor- ary seat of justice in said contemplated division, and
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KNOX COUNTY.
also recommending certain persons as suitable char- acters for associate judges, and the petition was re- ceived and referred to the committee of the whole, to whom is committed the bill for a division of Fairfield county. On the 21st, the said bill was taken up, and considered and amended, and contin- ued till Saturday next.
At the sixth General Assembly, in December, 1807, we find on the 31st several petitions were pre- sented from Fairfield county for a division of said county, which were referred to Messrs. Scofield, Mc Arthur and Bigger.
On the 7th of January, Senate Journal, page 69, Mr. Scofield presented a petition from citizens of Fairfield county living south of the Refugee Tract, whose names are thereunto subscribed, for two coun- ties; the one lying north of Refugee Tract line to be called Center, and the other to be called -. January 15th, the bill pending in the Senate, page 83, several amendments were presented to the com- mittee of the whole, one of which is: "Strike out in the 1st section and 6th line, after the word 'heathen,' 'from thence west along the south bound- ary of said military tract, and insert,"" etc. From which it may be inferred that there were heathen about these parts before these later times.
On the 16th of January the bill passed the Senate, and on the 30th of January, 1808, it passed the House and became a law. The second section of the act created the county of Knox. By this bill three of the best counties in the State of Ohio were marked out by metes and bounds, to wit: Licking, Knox and Richland. By the 4th section the ten-
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porary scat of justice of Licking was to be at the house of Levi Hays, and of Knox county at Mount Vernon. The 7th section provides "that Richland county shall be under the jurisdiction of Knox until the Legislature may think proper to organize the same." Hence, the reader will observe that in these pages we have incorporated several items of the carly history of our younger sister-Richland -as well as some incidents of more particular in- terest to those dwelling in Licking. For the same reason, we have carried the history of Bloomfield, Chester and Franklin-three of the townships at present belonging to Morrow county, though until 1848 part and parcel of old Knox. The same com- missioners who located the seat of justice of Knox county at Mount Vernon, under the joint resolution of February 9, 1808, fixed the seats of justice of Licking and Delaware counties at Newark and Delaware.
On the 14th of February, in joint ballot, the Gen- eral Assembly chose the first associate judges of Knox county, Wm. W. Farquhar, John Mills and William Gass.
As we have before stated, in the year 1805 some of the inhabitants became desirous of having a town on Owl Creek, and Mount Vernon was laid out accordingly. The proprietors were Benjamin But- ler, Thomas B. Patterson, and Joseph Walker. One of the settlers being from the Potomac, and thinking of the consecrated spot on its shores, sug- gested that, as the stream was so clear and beautiful, the place should bear the sacred name-Mount Vernon-and it was so donc.
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KNOX COUNTY.
Clinton-one mile and a half north-located the year before, was by its proprietor named after Gov- ernor De Witt Clinton, of New York, and he also showed his regard for his old friend by giving the name to his son-De Witt Clinton Smith-who was a member of the sixth Legislature of Texas, and now resides in the Lone Star State. And in 1807 Fredericktown was laid out. Thus there were three towns, having a "local habitation and a name," before the county of Knox was created. Neither of them had advanced very far in the scale of city- dom up to 1808; of the number, however, Clinton was the most promising. It had, at that time, more houses, shops and workmen, than either of the others.
Gilman Bryant opened a grocery store in Mount Vernon, on the lot where Buckingham Emporium now stands. It was a little story and a half syca- more cabin, where he kept powder, shot, lead, whis- ky, etc., for sale to the Indians and the few whites in 1807. Samuel H. Smith had a pretty good stock of goods and traps at Clinton. Of each of these towns we shall speak more fully under their appro- priate heads.
Upon the organization of the county, the inhab- itants were greatly pleased. Those who had been compelled to travel to New Lancaster to transact county business, were particularly gratified. The proprietors of town sites and holders of lots therein, were superlatively elated.
On the 9th day of February, 1808, James Arm- strong, James Dunlap and Isaac Cook were ap- pointed Commissioners to locate the seat of justice.
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In pursuance thereof, they proceeded to discharge the duties imposed upon them, and on the 28th day of March, they appeared before John Mills, Justice of the Peace, and were severally sworn to discharge the duties assigned them as . Commissioners as aforesaid.
Clinton and Mount Vernon were the principal competitors for the seat of justice. The former place at that time was the larger. It had more goods, more mechanics, more enterprises on foot, more houses, more people, and more hope for the future. It had more of New England families, more of Yankee spirit and shrewdness ; and yet, with all their cunning and craftiness-all their money and management-all their efforts and in- ducements-Clinton lost the selection. Its generals were out-generaled-its managers out-manœuvered -its wits outwitted-its Yankees out-Yankced by the less showy and pretending men from the Poto- mac and the Youghiogheny, who had settled at Mount Vernon. The choice of either one for the county seat involved the ultimate ruin of the other. Clinton made a bold effort to keep up against ad- verse winds. It could not sustain an appeal from the decision of the Commissioners, but still it kept on for several years in its improvements, and until after the war it was ahead of Mount Vernon in many respects. It had the first and only newspaper in the county for two years; it had the first and only church in the county for many years ; it had stores, tanyards, shops of various kinds, and greater variety of business than Mount Vernon ; but after the war was over it began to decay, and its rival
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KNOX COUNTY.
took the lead. The accredited account of the loca- tion of the county seat is as follows :- The Com- missioners first entered Mount Vernon, and were received with the best cheer at the log tavern of Mr. Butler. To impress them with an idea of the public spirit of the place, the people were very busy at the moment of their entrance and during their stay, at work, all with their coats off, grubbing the streets. As they left for Clinton, all quitted their labor, not " of love ;" and some rowdies, who dwelt in cabins scattered round about in the woods, away from the town, left " the crowd," and stealing ahead of the Commissioners, arrived at Clinton first. On the arrival of the others at that place, these fellows pretended to be in a state not comformable to tem- perance principles, ran against the Commissioners, and by their rude and boisterous conduct so dis- gusted the worthy officials as to the apparent morals of the inhabitants of Clinton, that they returned and made known their determination that Mount Vernon should be the favored spot. That night there were great rejoicings in town. Bonfires were kindled, stews made and drank, and live trees split with gunpowder.
Such is a plausible account of this matter, which we have often heard related by our old friend Gil- man Bryant, who took great pride in rehearsing a fable calculated to give Mount Vernon the manifest advantage in the estimation of moral and temper- ance men in these later times. But some of those who lived in the county at that early day give an entirely different version to the subject, and even have gone so far as to aver that the Commissioners
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themselves delighted, as did the rest of mankind, in taking a "wee drap of the cratur," and could not have been " disgusted by rude and boisterous con- duct" to which they were accustomed.
And again it is suggested that "the crowd" at that day was not so great in this locality that men who had sense and observation sufficient to be se- lected for Commissioners, would not have been able to observe and distinguish "the rowdies," and class them where they belonged.
Another old settler, whose partiality at that day was for Clinton, avers that the proprietor of Clin- ton, Mr. Smith, had been very illiberal in his deal- ings with those who wished to purchase lots in his town. He had adopted a plan of withholding from market the best lots on the plat, and keeping the corner lots to be enhanced in value by the improve- ments made by settlers upon inside lots. At this course many of them became dissatisfied, and some of the number who had bought of him collogued with the Mount Vernonites against Clinton. We have been told by another old citizen, that two of the men living north of Mount Vernon, and con- sidered as in the Clinton interest, proposed to Kratzer and Patterson to help secure the location of the county seat at Mount Vernon, in considera- tion of their receiving two lots apiece in the town, and that their favor and influence went accord- ingly.
And yet another account of this mooted question as to how the preference came to be Mount Vernon, comes to us in this wise :-
One of the Commissioners was security for Sam-
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KNOX COUNTY.
uel Kratzer, and had become involved on that account. Kratzer had moved to this place from Lancaster, where he had been acting as land tax collector of Fairfield county, in 1805, and reported himself to have been robbed of the public money while upon the road going to make his return. He was a fine looking, large, fleshy man, and wore tight buckskin breeches. They had holes in them which he alleged to have been shot in the encounter, though they bore the appearance of having been cut ; his saddle-bags were also exhibited with horrid gashes in them, and making profert of these he petitioned the Legislature for relief, and at the ses- sion of 1806, the bill for his relief was lost by a vote of 10 yeas to 17 nays .- H. J., p. 114.
Certain it is, Kratzer lost caste, and broken up and humiliated, he came to the new town site and bought out Patterson's interest in the town of Mount Vernon, and it is represented that one of the Commissioners was counted on by the settlers as certain for said place. He got another of the Board with him, and Mount Vernon came off vic- tor. Subsequently-and as resulting from this judgment-Kratzer, enabled by the rise of property to pay off his debt, did the fair and just thing by the Commissioner.
Mount Vernon at that time was a rough, ragged, hilly spot, with a thick growth of hazel and other bushes, not near so inviting a place as Clinton, where everything appeared enticing to the stranger. Gilman Bryant says that : "The ground north of Butler's Tavern was then almost wholly in woods. Some timber had been chopped down in places.
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Main Street was full of stumps, log heaps and trees, and the road up the street was a poor crooked path winding round amongst the stumps and logs." Richard Roberts says that it was very rough and broken where Mount Vernon was located, and was the last spot on God's earth a man would have picked to make a county scat.
Another gentleman residing north of Mount Vernon, and very partial to Fredericktown, thinks that by a little management that place might have been made the permanent seat of justice, when the strife was so great between the other towns. They might have got a strip thrown off of Delaware county, which might have been attached, and then Frederick would have been alike central ; but Kerr and his comrades had not their eyes open to the importance of getting that five mile range with Knox, and they were left out of doors when the location was made permanent.
We have thus minutely given all the statements made to us in regard to the selection of a permanent seat of justice, for it will be a matter of far greater interest to future generations than to the present. Our seventh chapter we devote to Ben. Butler's version, which will be read with great interest, as he is the only one of the proprietors of the town now living, and was a prominent actor in that affair. With that we leave this elaborately discussed sub- .ject.
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KNOX COUNTY.
CHAPTER III.
KNOX COUNTY ORGANIZED.
THE FIRST TERM OF COMMON PLEAS .- REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS ON SEAT OF JUSTICE .- THE FIRST CRIMINAL TRIALS .- "THIE ENFORCEMENT OF THE LAWS" UPON HEDRICK'S BARE BACK .- FORTY STRIPES LAID ON A POOR WHITE MAN'S NAKED SKIN !- THE PUBLIC WHIPPING ON THE PUBLIC SQUARE OF MOUNT VERNON .- ACTION OF THE COUNTY COMMISSIONERS, A. D. 1808 .- THE FIRST OFFICERS, AND SOME ACCOUNT OF THEM .- THE FIRST GRAND JURIES AND FIRST PETIT JURIES .- THIE FIRST ELECTION .- FIRST LICENSED PREACHERS, MERCHANTS AND TAVERN KEEPERS .- EXTRAORDINARY WOLF SESSION .- RIGID HONESTY AND ECONOMY OF OFFICERS.
ON the first of May, 1808, the faces of old and young, great and small, of the male and female, upon Owl Creek's "stormy banks," were anxiously turned to the south to catch the first glimpse of that august personage, "the Court," then expected to make a first visitation to Mount Vernon. Ben. Butler and Aunt Leah had their house all "in apple-pie order" for their grand reception; Jim Craig, at his house on the corner of Mulberry and Gambier, had laid in a fresh supply of whisky and other refreshments; Gihan Bryant had got a bran new horn for his customers, and had rubbed his little store up until the stock looked as bright as a dollar; and Sheriff Brown had caused the little wagon maker shop of Coyle & Sons to be swept out and supplied with 3
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HISTORY OF
smooth round logs for the jurymen and others in attendance to sit on. Every man and boy that had been fortunate enough to kill his deer had buckskin leggins and a new hunting shirt, and every woman that had a wheel had spun and dyed and made her- self and little ones a good homespun garment. Some few who could stand the expense had bought of store calico three to five yards, at seventy-five cents a yard, and fitted themselves with a two or three breadth dress, the third breadth made into gores, so as to be wider at the bottom, as their abil- ity enabled; for in those days there were no fash- ionable women to parade the streets with fifteen to eighteen yards in a dress, and no disposition for extravagant displays of wearing apparel. The Court traveled on horse-back-handed the saddle- bags to "Knuck Harris," and, after rest and refresh- ment, bright and early on the morning of the 2d of May "opened" and proceeded to business. The whole population-men, women and children- were out in their best rig, to witness this great event; and we give the following faithful transcript of the entire proceedings:
FIRST COURT OF COMMON PLEAS IN KNOX COUNTY.
" The State of Ohio, to wit :
" Agreeable to an act of the General Assembly of the State of Ohio, passed on the 17th day of February, 1808, for establishing and organizing the county of Knox :
" Be it, therefore, remembered and known, that we, William Wilson, President, John Mills and Wm. Gass, Associate Judges for said county of Knox, did on this day, to wit: Monday, the second day of May, in the year of our Lord 1808, meet at Mount Vernon, the temporary seat of justice for the county aforesaid, and
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KNOX COUNTY.
proceeded to the appointment of a clerk for the said county, where- upon it was declared by the Court that Chas. Loffland was duly elected pro tempore, who came into Court and was duly qualified as the law directs.
" Samuel H. Smith, Esq., was duly elected surveyor of Knox Co
" Present : William W. Farquhar, gentleman."
" The State of Ohio vs. Wm. Hedrick-Felony .- William Wal- lace, William Bowen and Joseph Cherry Holmes entered into recog- nizance of $100 each to appear at the next Court of Common Pleas and testify against William Hedrick.
" James Armstrong, James Dunlap and Isaac Cook, gentlemen, who was appointed by the Legislature on the 9th of February last for fixing the county seat in the county of Knox, made their report to the Court of Common Pleas for the county aforesaid that Mount Vernon should be the seat of justice for said county.
" WILLIAM WILSON."
Such is the beginning of the minutes of the first Court. The "Report" reads as follows:
" To the Hon. William Wilson, Esq., President, and John Mills, William Gass and Wm. W. Forker, Esqs., Associate Judges of the Court of Common Pleas in and for the County of Knox, in the State of Ohio :
" May it please your Honors, In conformity to an act of the Leg- islature of the State of Ohio, passed the 28th of March, 1803, en- titled an act establishing seats of justice, we, the subscribers, were appointed by a Resolution of both Houses of the Legislature, passed on the 9th of February, 1808, commissioners for fixing the Parma- nent seat of justice in and for s'd county of Knox. We do hereby make report to your Honors, that, Having Met and attended to the duties of our s'd appointment in s'd county on the 28th of the present Inst., and Having paid due Regard to the centre, Extent of population, Quality of soil, as well as the General convenience, we Hereby declare that the Town of Mount Vernon is the most suitable place for the Courts of s'd county to be held at, and we do hereby declare the said Town of Mount Vernon the parmanent seat of Jus-
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