USA > Ohio > Allen County > A standard history of Allen county, Ohio : an authentic narrative of the past, with particular attention to the modern era in the commercial, industrial, educational, civic and social development > Part 29
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SUGAR CAMP IN SHAWNEE
the main thoroughfare, and the maples along it are a monument to D. D. Nicholas, whose recollections are found in manuscript in different homes and in the churches of the community. On September 13, 1918, the Welsh held a meeting commemorating seventy-five years of their local history. When the Nicholas, Watkins and Roberts families located there, they may have had a vision that in time their fame would be heralded around the world. The 1920 census gives the population as 1,083, show- ing a loss of five persons in ten years. While every town has its indi- viduality, Gomer is specially favored from the viewpoint of beauty.
The incorporated places in Allen County are: Beaver Dam, with a population numbering 394; Bluffton, 1,950; Delphos (in Allen County), 3,169; Elida, 509; Harrod, 389; Lafayette, 383; Lima, 41,306; Spencer- ville, 1,543; West Cairo, 380, showing that out of a total population of 68,203 in Allen County, only 17,180 persons live in the country. The average population of the twelve townships not including Ottawa is not quite 1,500, and yet the son of the soil must feed the world. "I am the vine and ye are the branches," and in the ensuing pages everything shall be written in terms of Allen County. However, due effort will be made to give proper credit to the different towns and townships constituting Allen County.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE WHOLE WORLD KIN
Some one has said: "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin," and in the pages of this centennial history the purpose is to write about everything in terms of Allen County.
It is related that the time came when the slogan "Lima never failed" had to be reconstructed, and it appeared again, "Allen County never failed," and it develops that in its first half century of local history the population was mostly from the older Ohio counties, notwithstanding the Dayton colony at Fort Amanda. While Allen County began its separate existence February 12, 1820, it is little wonder that for eleven years it was attached to Mercer County. In June, 1826, Morgan Lippincott, Joseph Wood and Benjamin Dolph, thinking they were the only settlers in the county, went out hunting in the woods and came across the McClure settlement, Samuel McClure thinking himself alone. The Jacobs and Purdy families were along Sugar Creek about that time and neither knew of the other.
An old account says that John P. Mitchell walked nine miles to a mill and brought home a bushel of corn meal on his back and that he divided it among half a dozen families, showing the neighborly spirit had early manifestation. Who said anything about the hospitality of the past? Conditions are different today. It is said there are lone indi- viduals in Allen County who have at least 100 blood kin-always a lot of relatives when there is money-but none are called upon to divide their scanty store. As time has cycled by, the small clearings of the settlers have expanded into splendid farmsteads, and the wilderness has been transformed into the fields of waving grain. There is "plenty in basket and store" for all. Statisticians show that the most favorable portion of the world, all things considered, is a zone extending around the globe only a few 'degrees in width north and south of the fortieth parallel of north latitude; within this zone the world's greatest events have transpired, here have lived the largest number of the world's great- est men and women. Allen County is within this zone.
While the year 1843 is on record as the coldest in history, the tem- perature in January, 1918, duplicated it. Saturday, January 12, 1918, was an outstanding day in the history of Allen County; those who quit their homes did it from necessity. The year 1919 was prolific of wind- storms in Allen and adjoining counties; in the afternoon, November 29, 1919, a "twister" visited Amanda Township, unroofing buildings, destroy- ing trees and doing much damage; at the farm of Ira E. Coon it brought disaster. Mr. Coon owns and operates a dairy and about 4:00 o'clock, accompanied by his wife and two sons, he went to the barn to do the milking; a few minutes later the sky darkened and a hugh black wall of clouds, accompanied by a terrific wind, was headed in their direction. They immediately recognized their danger.
Mr. Coon and the twelve-year-old boy rushed to the north side of the barn to secure the doors; they had not reached them when a titanic rush of the tornado forced down the walls and sides of the building. The dismayed father called to the son with him to run east to the gate opening into the road. Just at this time the entire building collapsed and Mr. Coon was frantic from fear for the safety of his wife and ten- year-old son. As the debris of the wreck had been flung toward the
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HISTORY OF ALLEN COUNTY
north he hurried to the south side of the barn in search of his wife and son. In the meantime the woman had noticed the increased force of the wind, and she saw the walls giving way. Realizing that she could not escape toward the house with her son, she clasped him in her arms and threw herself into the concrete trench at the back of the stalls. As it happened, this trench was wide and deep and to it she owed her life and the life of the boy. They found refuge just "in the nick o' time." The mows above them, filled with hay and shredded corn fodder, came down with a crash and they were covered in the trench.
Hoping against hope, Mr. Coon called his wife and from her place of refuge she answered him. She and the boy were uninjured, although pinioned into the trench by the heavy joists that prevented the hay from
A WOMAN OF THE PAST IN ALLEN COUNTY
pressing down upon them. With his help they crawled from under the timbers and by holding to each other while the wind was still blowing with tremendous force, they reached the house in safety. Their first thought was for the welfare of their little ones. Miss Hazel Sunderland, who lived with the family, had hurried to the cellar with the five-year- old daughter and the baby, and they soon joined them. The oldest boy who left the building at the height of the storm had been caught up by the wind and forced through the barnyard gate and another gate across the road into the field. Fortunately both gates were standing open because they had just brought in the cattle. The boy was carried along by the storm until he tumbled into a large open ditch which hap- pened not to have water in it. He had sufficient presence of mind to lie close to the bottom of it until the wind lulled, when he joined the frightened family at the house again and there was rejoicing in the house- hold. The five-year-old daughter summed up the whole situation in
AN OLD-TIME INDUSTRY-WEAVING
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HISTORY OF ALLEN COUNTY
relating the circumstance to her grandmother, saying: "I was getting washed and had no skirt on when Hazel wrapped a shawl around me and took me down cellar. I did not cry until Mamma came in crying and said, 'I wonder where that poor boy is,'" and it seems that all had been accounted for but the boy who had gone out into the storm before the collapse of the barn. Twelve of the dairy cows were crushed to death and many of the others were badly injured, although the family escaped with their lives. While others suffered from the storm, the Coon farmstead seemed to get the worst visitation of all.
Notwithstanding some of the severe temperature and storm visita- tions, the story goes that local climate is such that when one sees a man again he seems ten years younger. When seen a second time he seemed twenty years younger, and the next heard from him he had died of cholera infantum, and yet there are favorable conditions prevailing in Allen County. The local climate is of the continental type slightly modified by proximity to the Great Lakes characteristics, "fairly cold winters with moderate snowfall; comfortable summers with sufficient rainfall, the climatic conditions distributed uniformly throughout the year," and the old saying :
"March wind and April showers Bring the pretty May flowers"
holds good in Allen County. The prevailing winds are from the south- west, and there are about 270 days in the year without rain or snow. The altitude of Lima is 875 feet, with only a few higher points in the county.
Distance has been annihilated and the sky seems to come to the ground all around Allen County. Under modern living conditions "Only over night from anywhere" would be a comprehensive watchword for the whole community. While business and social activities naturally have their centers, Allen County is being studied as a whole rather than with undue reference to any one locality. "I am the vine and ye are the branches" is construed to mean Allen County and its multiplicity of interests. While the ouija board has been working and the war of the nations has leveled many differences, there are problems that remain to be solved, and Allen County as a unit is the plan in correlating the developments of its first 100 years in history.
When a full century has cycled into eternity, there are few of the original pioneers left in any community. While the older Ohio counties had part in peopling Allen County, there were settlers from Pennsylva- nia, New York, Maryland, Virginia, the New England states, and there were some immigrants from overseas who helped reclaim the wilderness along the Auglaize and the Ottawa of the Auglaize-Hog Creek. For economic reasons settlers always began their activities along the run- ning streams. However, the biographers or genealogists who do the advance work on county histories always find the names of the settlers in counties as old as Allen on the tombstones in the cemeteries rather than in the numerous business and telephone directories. While the historian sometimes visits the cemeteries in quest of legendary data, the advance man is more interested in the names appearing in local direc- tories.
Every stage of America's development has produced a special type of pioneer, and some one has said that if they all had their lives to live over again they would make the same mistakes as when they were on the stage of action. Since threescore-and-ten years has been desig- nated as the dead-line, and those who cross it are said to be living on
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HISTORY OF ALLEN COUNTY
borrowed time, one finds spiritual comfort in reading "The hoary head is a crown of glory," but another sacred writer says, "And if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow," while in the circle of one's acquaintance there are always those of whom one thinks with the Prophet Joel: "For the harvest is ripe" and yet King Solomon says "For as he thinketh in his heart so is he," but so many of the Allen County pioneers had adopted Paul's formula : "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, what- soever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things," that their lineal descendants are inclined to think of them as having attained to the ageless life through the process of transition, and to exclaim again with Paul, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory ?"
THE BIBLE THE SETTLER'S DAILY PORTION
While the worthy sons of noble sires are not yet all removed from the face of the earth, from the nature of the question there are none of the first and few of the second generation of Allen County settlers on the stage of action today. In this connection it has been suggested that the first generation should apply to those living in Allen County prior to 1850, since in the history of the Daughter of Allen County, Susannah Russell, who was born in 1817, was in the third generation, her mother, Isabel Russell, being a daughter of Peter Sunderland, all of whom lived at Fort Amanda. It would seem that the majority of Allen County citizens standing in the threshold of the second century in local history are in the third and fourth generations, with some fam- ilies looking forward over the fifth and sixth generations in local citi- zenship. In some families as many generations lie buried as are priv- ileged to enter this second century in local history. There are men and women who look backward over their parents and grandparents and forward over children and grandchildren in local history; there are some who look backward and forward over the same number of generations.
PIONEER FRYING PAN.
BED WARMING PAN AND TIN LANTERN.
(Courtesy of S. P'. Orth.)
OLD-TIME HOUSEHOLD UTENSILS.
FOOT WARMER.
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HISTORY OF ALLEN COUNTY
THE '80S WERE EPOCHAL YEARS
Some one has written "The transition from the old to the new began in 1880, when many of the former industries were fast passing away, especially those relating to the woods-the native timbers," and since then local civilization has been facing changed conditions. The church, the school, the local government-everything is changed within the recol- lection of adults of today. "There's a long, long trail a-winding into the land of my dreams," and the old-fashioned folk are not as yet all departed from earth. The caricaturist still finds living examples of everything. While the man who is comfortable in his knowledge of being rightly clothed need beg no favors of the world, and many citizens of Allen County have attained to that-neither underly nor overly dressed-sometimes men are ashamed of the way women clothe them-
MR. AND MRS. BOWSHER-THEY HAVE 500 DESCENDANTS
selves-undress too aply describing some of them. The question arises, Why should the race deteriorate in the hands of the twentieth century ? In Old Memories is the couplet :
"I see every vista as lightly I go Down through the valley of Sweet Long Ago."
What matter where the Allen County settlers came from since they had mutual desires-were a community of interests and by the silent process of assimilation their past has not been remembered against them. Many of them came into the Allen County wilderness to better their conditions in life, and they soon developed into the permanent citizen- ship of the country. As time cycled by the small clearings expanded into the splendid farms so much in evidence todav, and local enthusiasts say that Allen County now occupies a front line in agriculture and livestock production. With all the world a stage, the descendants from the men and women who listened to the howling of the wolves as an accompani-
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HISTORY OF ALLEN COUNTY
ment to their wilderness activities in reclaiming the wilds of Allen county, have sufficient evidence of the parts as played by the pioneers.
While it is said that the pioneers offered the helping hand, and there was old-fashioned hopsitality, there is a fellowship of service today, although it manifests itself very differently. The pioneer woman would be called throughout the whole settlement to make the shrouds, and to lay out and dress the dead. and she never turned any one from her door hungry, but the community is more complex today and combined effort takes care of such things. While woman's sphere is the same as the one occupied by man, it seems that human ministrations always have fallen to her hand. While some of the pioneers were live-with-able enough, their dire necessities made some of them alert for the nimble penny, and making a living always has developed human traits. A man was more comfortable who could say "Here it is, friends." when unex- pected guests arrived, than when the query would arise "Where is it?"
THE WOLF A TERROR TO SETTLERS
when something must be set before them. Half the poetry is robbed from a childhood that knows no privations. With hot air registers and steam radiators, what do the children of today know of the open fire- place, and of the members of the family burning one side while freez- ing the other? They do not possess the heritage of corn bread baked before the fire on an open hearth.
"There is a wilderness glory in a new land such as the pioneers found in Allen County, and when the ravages of time relegate it to the fog banks of memory, it forms wraiths for the imagination to tumble up like the clouds formed and touched by the afterglow. Those nearest to an epoch or event may not always be its best historians, and so we may still be too near our pioneer life to properly record its trials and triumphs," says an Allen County Historical Society writer; "but we can file here some plain facts and figures by which future historians may be aided in convincing a doubting world that man, in his long journey from east to west-from darkness to partial light-came into Allen County
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HISTORY OF ALLEN COUNTY
when it was a glory wilderness, stamped it with his civilization and lo, the forests fell and the swamps dried up, and thus order came out of chaos. Glory wilderness it must have been when giant trees stood almost touching each other in the Allen County forest, the streams flow- ing unhindered to the sea and the wild animals had shelter," and yet because civilization had not claimed him for her own, the American Indian had no conception of the possibilities about him.
There are climaxes when the ax of time responds to the stroke of progress, and whether one's circumstances are better or bitter depends upon the one in question. The settlers were men of vision who had the courage of their conviction, and while life has its compensations today, there are those who still crave the privileges vouchsafed to the pioneers, declaring they lived in the romantic period of Allen County history. Fairy stories have their place in family life, and some of the traditions handed down from one generation to another seem like stories told even though every word is fact, and the young people in Allen County homes of today have little conception of primitive conditions ; older people owe it to them, in the man-onward rush of the twentieth
SPINNING WHEELS
century, to anchor them a while in memory's doorway where they may listen to the footfall of the ages. At this centennial period there are a great many yesterdays in the history of Allen County, and today tells its own story. The log-rolling and wool-picking social epoch is so far in the dim past that most men and women have either never heard or have forgotten those stories of the long ago.
Since all Virginians are cousins, the complications in Allen County are not unfathomable, and the celebrated fisherman Izaak Walton once wrote in his diary "I love the world." While not all share his optimism, there are some who think enough of posterity to leave their hieroglyphics behind them. Some one writes: "It seems needless to urge the value of history upon mankind, since no tribe, race or nation has ever progressed very far before it began to invent and make use of some means for the preservation of its story. Even the savage tribes left crude record of their prowess in the chase or upon the field of battle. These various records were carved in the barks of trees, written upon scrolls of papy- rus, traced upon the faces of sun-dried bricks and tiles, or chiseled in the long enduring granite. History is the torch by which our steps are lighted and its neglect is a long backward stride toward savagery. The wisdom of remote ages recognized this fact; however, they were not as
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HISTORY OF ALLEN COUNTY
wise as the Grecians in the choice of their methods for the preservation of history; they devoted their poets and prophets to it, while Athens adorned and illustrated it by the splendid creations of her painters and sculptors. All history is wrought from the threads of local thought, deed and adventure that became racial or national when they affect the char- acters and destinies of races and nations. But with all its want of con- sideration for the common people, and its imperfect realization of the higher missions of the government, the world would still be savage and sitting in darkness were it not for the survival of history," and while in the light of human progress it seems worth while to begin a second century in local history by erecting milestones more frequently, in order to guide the uncertain footfall of succeeding ages, this is the time to register the prophecy that the next 100 years will produce nothing better than its men and women.
Just as the boy of ten is going-on-eleven, Allen County is entering upon its second century, and some are still ambitious about the future -would like to live again. While they were transforming the wilderness
OX-YOKE AND TIN LANTERN
conditions, it was a man's measure of strength to boast of the number of cords of wood he could chop in a day, and the womanly boast was of the number of skeins of yarn she could spin; the man who led the harvesters in swinging the cradle had his counterpart in the woman who turned out the most handmade garments; the wood cutters and the har- vesters alike whetted a banter into their blades, and there was always someone ready to accept the challenge; across the field of time they went again, always exerting themselves to the utmost-those fathers and mothers in the wilderness days of Allen County history. Thus the hewers of wood and stone and the drawers of water along the centennial trail builded this splendid community out of the material at hand-builded better, perhaps, than they knew, and, looking backward over their splen- did achievements, the men and women of today gain fresh inspiration.
In the dawn of its second century there can be few pioneers in any community. Few of the seeming pioneers in Allen County today are the sons and grandsons of the early settlers. The majority are de- scended from families who came later than 1850, and the worst hard- ships had been past before their arrival. Dr. James Baldwin says of the pioneer: "The world may forget what he suffered and what he accom-
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HISTORY OF ALLEN COUNTY
plished, but his monument shall remain as long as our country endures. What is his monument? It is the Old Northwest itself, now the center of the republic and the crowning factor of our country's greatness." There is a bit of healthy sentiment couched in the following words: "The foundation thus laid by our fathers carries with it a privilege and a responsibility that should awaken loyalty in every heart."
At the half-way point in this first centennial of Allen County history -to be exact, on September 22, 1871-in a speech made at the Allen County Fair Grounds, T. E. Cunningham said: "Looking backward over a half century, behold what has been accomplished! The immense forests our fathers and mothers found have melted away, and now in their stead are ripened fields of grain. The cabins they built are replaced with comfortable farm mansions. The corduroy roads over which they plodded their way back to the old settlements have been replaced by railroads. We have very much for which to thank our Heavenly Father ; we have much to be proud of in history; but the proudest of all we should be of our ancestry, who, amidst poverty, sickness and privations, laid broad and deep the foundation of our present history." Mrs. Mary E. Mehaffey recently exclaimed: "Oh, those happy days of the long ago. The people all came together and had such good times without doing any harmful things ; we were people of intelligence and we would meet and discuss the issues of the day. We did not consider the financial cir- cumstances of our friends." And where is the historian of today to find ink of deeper hue-more brilliant color-into which he can dip his goose quill of the twentieth century-the modern typewriter-when describing the developments of the subsequent half century, covering the period from 1870 to 1920 in Allen County history ?
CHAPTER XIX
AGRICULTURE IN ALLEN COUNTY
The fact remains unquestioned that the civilization of any country does not advance more rapidly than does its agriculture. The pioneers found that the chemical analysis of Allen County soil required a mixture of elbow grease and industry-a startling fact, yet nevertheless true, if they were to dig their living from it. The old idea of agriculture was to raise more corn and hogs in order to buy more land in order to raise more corn and hogs-an endless chain theory-that caused some men to become land poor before intensive farming was under consideration at all. Progress and improvement along all lines of human activity are more rapid today than at any time in the history of the world. It is an undeniable fact that agriculture is keeping pace with other industries. It is the fundamental occupation and all others are dependent upon it.
Some one says: "The farmer has the privilege of going out in the morning sun and taking off his hat to the beauties of the world. God is the great artist who, with sunshine, rain and soil-shower, can combine colors and produce a burst of glory. The mansions in the skies are not more delectable than the landscape, and some of the habitations of earth." "The earth is the Lord's," and yet the hand of man has rendered some beauty possibilities an offense against the landscape-nothing cheerful, and all shade and shrubbery a minus quantity. Too many farm homes fail to combine the artistic sense with utility. It was Alexander Pope who said :
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