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 30
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"Happy the man whose wish and care A few paternal acres bound- Content to breathe his native air In his own hallowed ground."
and there are exemplifications in Allen County.
While all industries are essential to civilization, in the countries where the methods of agriculture are crude there is not much progress along any line of development. The stranger who rides along some of the well-improved highways of Allen County today in a modern touring car is hardly cognizant of the fact that only a few years ago very dif- ferent conditions existed in this country. The Irishman with his spade and the woodman with his ax have transformed the whole face of Allen County, although there is authority for the statement that the Black Swamp once covered it. Since "Egypt is the gift of the Nile," Allen County may be the gift of the Black Swamp.
The information in one of the Allen County histories is: "Evidences are found on every hand that the old Black Swamp once extended over the entire surface of Allen County," and only through the printed page will succeeding generations know about it. In Slocum's History of the Maumee Basin, which includes Allen County, is the statement: "The difficulty attending the transportation of supplies through the Black Swamp region accounted in most part for the privations and sufferings," and many years ago a frontier poet penned the lines :
"The roads are impassable, Not even jackassable- And those who would travel 'em Should turn out and gravel 'em."
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Slocum says, further: "It was impossible to move a wagon through the mud even without a load; it would mire and be completely blocked ; pack horses were brought into use; many horses and their packs were lost by the thoughtless, careless, and sometimes dishonest, drivers," and the old saying "It's a poor driver who can't hit a stump" has no local significance at all. There is very little waste land in Allen County today.
Dr. Edward Orton, geologist of Ohio and professor of geology in Ohio State University, has issued the statement that the highest point- 1,032 feet-is at Westminster. Lima is 263 feet above Lake Erie and Delphos is 188 feet, and it seems that the alluvial deposits in the fertile valleys of Allen County reached their present day state of cultivation after many years of hard labor on the part of Allen County agricultur- ists. To write the history of Allen County without mentioning the Black Swamp would be like eating an egg without salt, or like Hamnlet with the ghost left out of the story. It seems there is some direct rela-
MODERN THRESHING MACHINE
tion between this swamp of early history, and the products later taken from Mother Earth in this locality. The natural gas and oil develop- ment seem to have been the sequence to the story.
In writing about some waste land several centuries ago, the "Shepherd of the Hills" rather accurately describes the territory ceded by the Amer- ican Indians to the United States Government through the instrumen- tality of Anthony Wayne. In a dissertation on wilderness conditions, barrenness and standing water, the Psalmist David certainly caught the . vision of the Old Northwest when he penned the words: "He turneth the wilderness into standing water * * the hungry to dwell that they may prepare a city for habitation; and sow the fields and plant vineyards which may yield fruit. * * * He
* And there He maketh blessed them also that they are multiplied greatly," and since there are landmarks everywhere that only exist in the records of explorers, it is an easy matter to accept the story of the Black Swamp. If there was a time when the Northwest Territory was submerged, as scientists assert, and huge blocks of ice traveled slowly down from the north, nature later shaking off the chill and allowing the heart of the earth to
Vol. I-15
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grow warm when the loosened ice ridges broke away and the smitten waters flashed-well, the Black Swamp seems a remote possibility.
One theory is that the water stood in the Black Swamp all summer, keeping the water high in the rivers, with heavy frosts equalizing and conserving the moisture. However, an Allen County soil analysis reveals a black loam with clay subsoil adapted to the production of all kinds of grain, grasses, fruits and vegetables. The virgin soil produced corn year after year without crop rotation, and the time was when the people lived on corn-fried mush for breakfast, with pone and pork for dinner, and mush and milk again in the evening. However, the world today knows no better menu-few better dishes-than the concoctions made from corn meal; the pioneers did not sip bouillon from the side of a round spoon, and while there was little detail of polite style, "swish" meant they were not starving themselves. The man who had plenty of such diet never realized his strength-could "lift a barrel of whisky, lick a bear or beat an old maid in a hugging match."
RECLAMATION OF BLACK SWAMP
The simple life will always have its appeal-the quiet surroundings where one may listen to the twitter of the birds and the croak of the frogs-pass the fried mush again. "Backward, turn backward, O time in your flight; make me a child again," but "stop, look and listen": Would I live my life over again? What? And go through with the mumps, measles, itch, stump-toe, stone-bruises, boils, toothache, worms, milk-sickness and ague; work for board, clothing and three months at school in winter ; get up at 4 o'clock in the morning and walk out to the barn through oozy mud in order to put in an eight hour day-eight hours in the morning and again in the afternoon; feed the sweet pigs, squeeze the milk out of old boss, split half a cord of wood and pile it in the kitchen before breakfast; eat a delightfully informal breakfast with an appetite like a roaring lion-flapjacks and fried pig; flee again to the barn and yoke the oxen ready to harrow half a day on the back forty, listen for the dinner horn and gulp down some more pig with half-baked hot biscuits, and do it all over again in the afternoon?"
But here is another picture taken from the Burkhardt Genealogy, with the setting in historic Shawnee: "Memories of the old cider mill
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HISTORY OF ALLEN COUNTY
by the roadside, the spring and quaint little milk house at the foot of the hill, the old orchard where apples and pears were of matchless pro- fusion, the broad and stately cedars in the front yard, the pathway bor- dered with roses and rare flowers, the garden so well kept where grew the many good things that graced the great spreading board! These are the memories that sweetly break in upon us and prompt the word 'In the good old days.'" It would be difficult for the stranger passing through Allen County today to conceive of the log cabin in the clear- ing, out of which the smoke curled from a stick-and-clay chimney, but there are men and women who remember all about it, and who still talk of "the good old days" in the history of Allen County.
Instead of the lowing of many herds today the traveler of yesterday
AN UNBROKEN ALLEN COUNTY FOREST
heard the ring of the woodman's ax, or the crack of the huntsman's rifle as he was endeavoring to supply his table with meat from the wild animals in the unbroken forest. The fact that more than 2,000 hunters' licenses were issued A. D. 1920, in Allen County would indicate that there is some game, and November 15th two Lima hunters, R. C. Whit- ley and Charles McCauley, shot a red fox, and a newspaper clipping says : "Only a short time remains for Brer Rabbit; the season opens on cottontails on November 15th and lasts until January, the limit being set at ten for one day to be shot between one hour before sunrise and one hour after sunset; hunters and trappers are oiling up their para- phernalia in preparation for a busy season," and there is a further state- ment : "Raccoon, opossum, skunk and mink may be taken from Novem- ber 1st to February, the muskrat season extending till March."
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HISTORY OF ALLEN COUNTY
There is a widespread lament that the turtle dove, wild pigeons and the common gray squirrel of the woods have gone the way of the buf- falo and the American Indian, in the advance of civilization. Before the forests were cleared away and the lands were drained by artificial methods, the Auglaize and Ottawa were pretty streams; they were skirted by the forest with shady nooks and shadows on the water; their water was clear as crystal before the streams were contaminated by the advance of civilization. In the days of the purity of its waters there were fish in Hog Creek, and it is related that E. H. Binkley, who was a Lima merchant in the 30's, went one rainy afternoon to fish in the stream and remained so long that his wife became alarmed and organized a search- ing party. There were always grappling poles in the houses near the streams. When Binkley and his fishing partner returned to the scattered village the sapling they carried on their shoulders was literally filled with fish, and they supplied every family in the village.
In 1866 the Ohio Legislature began enacting drainage laws and through the evolution of the open ditches, wooden ditches and tile drain- age, the wet land has been made most productive; as the land was drained, there were abundant crops and Allen County farmers prospered with the rest of the world. Men of today say that drainage is only in its infancy-that ditches fifty or sixty feet apart are splitting areas, and gardeners are draining even closer and the result is noted in the changed chemical condition of the soil. While tile is imported, there is a factory at Beaver Dam and at Delphos in Van Wert County. While ditching is a back-breaking process, the short-lived wooden ditches demonstrated their practicability. The ditching machine saves the drudgery today. Improvements and inventions always come along as they are needed in any community. While the McCormack reaper appeared in 1831, what would Allen County farmers have done with modern harvesting machin- ery in the swamps and among the stumps of that day and generation?
While the tiller of the soil with his broad acres surrounding him, and with long distances to the homes of his neighbors has no need of sewers, gas mains and conduits, the water pipe systems and the wires overhead have begun to trouble him, and at last he has been overtaken by the complexity of civilization. However, there are fewer things to vex him, and since there are drainage and bridges he no longer swims the streams endways when he wants to change his environment tem- porarily. The Auglaize and the Ottawa of the Auglaize, swelled by the waters of Leatherwood Run, Pike Run, Tawn Run, Sugar Creek and Riley Creek, and the ditches drained into them, combine forces in carry- ing the surplus water toward Lake Erie, and still the ditching machine is busy on city sewers and rural drains. While the best farm lands in Allen County are remote from Lima, the southeast, perhaps, being thin- ner than the land in the other three corners, there are possibilities of 100 bushels of corn to the acre, and intense cultivation with conservation of soil fertility is the watchword of the future.
While Allen County agriculturists limit their activities to the staple crop productions, sugar beets and onions are specialties in nearby coun- ties; there is soil in Allen County adapted to the sugar beet industry and there have been splendid results from alfalfa culture. The Allen County community centers are poor hay and grain markets because of the livestock production, and the inclination of local farmers to import stockyard feeders and winter them. Ensilage and alfalfa fit steers for grass and they are sold off the grass on the summer and fall markets. While Allen County farmers are conservative and a little slow about adopting fads, there are many silos in use, the dairy farmers almost all
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HISTORY OF ALLEN COUNTY
having them. While some silos are allowed to remain unfilled because of corn shortage and labor difficulties, the practical livestock man rec- ognizes their usefulness.
The story is told that because of the shortage of both food and feed, the settlers used to cut down lynn and other trees in winter time in order that their cattle might feed on the small and tender branches; there was always a food problem and a feed question, and many subter- fuges were resorted to to save man and beast from perishing. The 1920 slump on prices, when reconstruction seemed to hit the farmer first, caused many Allen County farmers to become borrowers of money with their crops in storage. The World war taught people many things. While the original flora of Allen County comprised 400 varieties, and the genera showed 900 species, the pioneers knew many secrets that had been forgotten in the community. The wild lands were heavily timbered, and there were many hardwood varieties. There was oak, ash, hickory, walnut, beech, elm, sycamore, buckeye, locust, hackberry,
The Ea
Chica
HEREFORD CATTLE
willow, gum, basswood, pawpaw and maple, and maple sugar and syrup from the sap tided them over many difficulties.
Time was when the forest furnished many table delicacies. When the sugar supply was limited the present day citizens were without resource or recourse, the ancient art of sugar-making having departed with the sugar camp and the Allen County forest. When spiles were made by hand, the settlers tapped the trees, dug out the sugar troughs and boiled the sap and supplied their own commodities. Sugar camps and wax pullings! Some of the fathers and mothers know about them. It was great amusement to "stir' off the wax" and have a party. The pioneer housewives also made soap, using ash hoppers to leach the lye after which they boiled cracklings in it. The mothers had many secrets that are unknown to the daughters-not because the daughters could not meet the requirements, but because the circumstances surrounding their lives are different, and economics of the long ago would be extrav- agances today. Sometimes the ashhopper was a tree gum and some- times forks were used to hold the clapboards, or a dugout sugar trough supported them. The ashhopper and soap-making have long been con- signed to oblivion in Allen County. They used to take ash barrels to
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HISTORY OF ALLEN COUNTY
the school houses, and the teacher would fill them with wood ashes; the housewives did that because there would be no tobacco spit in the ashes ; sometimes the careless teachers would burn the barrels for them.
The pioneer Allen County farm woman used to mount a horse and go to Lima or Section Ten with a basket of eggs and she was always the purchasing agent for the family; there were up-on-blocks in the town, and when a woman in a long riding habit approached, the clerks in the stores would assist her to dismount lest she break the eggs in the basket; the senseless trail of the riding habit was an incumbrance to her. This farm woman always marketed eggs, butter, beeswax, gin- seng and dried fruits-the products of her own industry, carrying home
AN OLD-TIME RAIL FENCE
in exchange coffee, sugar and calico. With sassafras and spicewood tea she knew how to defeat the high cost of living, but advance of civil- ization robbed the woman of today of all such resources. Oh, the milk separator, the egg incubator-the dairy and poultry yard industries of today-yield half the living, and still there are women who look after them. There are silos and manure spreaders, and the barnyard equip- ment is still in its infancy.
While wild animals and reptiles were numerous in 1831, when the goddess of justice first assumed her duties in Allen County, the day of the elmpeeler hog that could climb a sapling and drink out of a jug has been lost sight of in the dim distance. The hogs that were fattened on the mast from the oak, beech and hickory trees must have belonged to the herd that was stampeded in 1812, when they were driven through
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HISTORY OF ALLEN COUNTY
the wilderness. When the Indians had scattered the herdsmen the hogs were left running wild. It is said the wild meat was never so nutritious as that cured from the domesticated animals, and livestock specialties through grades and thoroughbreds have changed the order of things in Allen County. There are antlers shown today from deer that once roamed the local hillsides, and some have been killed in the streets of the towns. A hundred species of furbearing animals and as many kinds of beautiful birds could be found in the primeval wilderness, while marsh, creek, river, forest, and even the open spaces were inhabited by venomous reptiles. The departure of the Indian marked the depart- ure of the wild life of the Allen County forest.
Some years ago a local nature student wrote: "But why leave a knowledge of birds to poets and naturalists? Go yourself to the fields and learn that birds do not exist solely in books, but are concrete, sen- sient beings whose acquaintance may bring you more unalloyed happi- ness than the wealth of the Indies." but the writer of the period did not take into consideration present-day conditions ; the barbed wire fences
THE COWS IN PASTURE
do not afford them nesting places, and the feathered tribes find but little shelter. An Audubon Society would find little to do in Allen County today. The marsh the blackbird loved has become the site of the factory. The whistle is of steam rather than the thrill of the bird stealing forth on the morning air. Civilization is stalking forward and the Smithsonian Institute seeks in vain to secure some of the extinct species of American birds. The fact is at last coming home to people that pioneer conditions no longer exist in Allen County.
A writers says: "The woods of our youth may disappear, but the thrushes will always sing for us. Their voices endeared by cherished associations arouse echoes and awaken memories before which the years will vanish," and John Burroughs once wrote: "One may go black- berrying and make some rare discovery; while driving his cow to pasture he may hear a new song, or make some new observation; secrets lurk on all sides and there is some new thing in every bush," but the young- ster of today will have difficulty reconciling such statements to any time in the history of Allen County. "And in keeping of them there is great reward" seems to be true under present day condition, since
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HISTORY OF ALLEN COUNTY
the wild life has given way to improved livestock conditions. While the automobile conflicts with the horse-breeding industry, Belgian and Percheron horses are still on the market. In the past the horse-breed- ing industry claimed much attention from Allen County farmers. While there are more silos in the western part of the county, there are more beef types than dairy cattle. There are Shorthorns, Herefords and Angus herds, and while some stock farms bear names there is no local statute offering protection when a man has capitalized a name- associated it with some particular branch of animal husbandry.
While the first man in the world was placed in a garden, there is no record extant that he labored until after having eaten an apple one day at the instigation of the woman God had given him; immediately Adam and Eve began hustling for a livelihood and no doubt they turned their attention to agriculture. Notwithstanding the adage, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away," Dr. William McHenry, who was always interested in farm life, induced many Allen County farmers to start apple orchards, thus supplementing the effort of "Johnny Apple- seed," and horticulture seems to have claimed its share of attention. Daylight saving has never been taken seriously, farmers always having their prescribed three meals and stopping at the sound of the dinner horn-not another lick when dinner is ready. The settler would let the handspike fall at the toot of the dinner horn, and since the bills of fare were never written in French, not much time was lost at.the dinner table. God's time has always prevailed in the country, while the indus- tries regulated by the sound of the whistle have had no daylight saving difficulties.
The habits and customs of the people, as well as the industries of Allen County, have changed almost completely in the last half century. The mills for grinding corn were once so few and so far between that meal was often made by rubbing the ears of corn over a grater made from a sheet of tin with perforations-holes punched in and mounted on a board with a rounded surface to it. While it was a makeshift, it produced the results. The garments were made from home-made cloth-linen or woolen; the settlers raised the flax and the sheep, and carding, spinning and weaving-they did it all. They manufactured jeans, linsey-woolsey, flannels, blankets, comforts and coverlets. The women would shear sheep or hackle the flax and they were equally dexterous making blankets or sheets. Those so fortunate, as to have heirlooms of towels or table linen prize them today. Linen or woolen clothing were equally serviceable, and as the woman said of the boy who was hung by the seat of his trousers in the apple tree, "He was there till we cut him down." Not so much can be said of some of the hand-me-down garments in the ready-to-wear stocks today.
There are still some old-fashioned folk in Allen County. In some of the homes the tables are set and the food is placed before the guests and pot luck is not the worst misfortune. Sometimes there is a turkey- red table cloth with high cake stands, and the napkins are placed in tumblers by the plates. The observing traveler forecasts rather accu- rately whether the householder is a native, and the earmarks brand him if he is from some other commonwealth. "A Pennsylvanian lives here," said the wise passerby, "and a Virginian lives there," and perhaps the farmer himself would be unable to fathom the distinction. Machinery plays an important part today in off-setting the drift of labor from the farms, and labor-saving devices lure the young man to remain in the country. A hale young fellow employed in a Lima factory said he had only been off of a farm a few months, and his wife had come
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HISTORY OF ALLEN COUNTY
from another. They liked it in town because they had a little time for themselves. They had only known the servitude of farm life, and yet they were a son and a daughter of two wealthy Allen County farmers. They would not go back to the long hours and drudgery of life in the country.
The following is an adaptation from the Welsh settlement story of agriculture; the methods practiced in other communities were similar, the Welsh always considered excellent farmers: The plows used by the settlers had wooden moldboards with cast-iron points; then came the cast-iron moldboards followed by the steel plows; today the plows are chariots and the plowman rides, having a spring seat and being shaded by an umbrella. In the old days Allen County farmers sowed their seed broadcast, and the parable of the Sower meant something to them; today when people are studying soils the parable is adapted to the change, and the men with a grain bag crossing the field is not even a memory to some active agriculturists. Time was when the harrows
A BUNCH OF DUROCS
used to brush in the grain were small trees; nevertheless they mixed the seed with the loose soil, and today the seed bed has become the problem of agriculture; when the letter A harrow came along, much had been accomplished in solving it. At first wooden pegs were used, and then came the iron harrow teeth in use today in that style of harrow.
The broadcast method of sowing grain was superseded by the drill dropping the seed in rows, and securing greater uniformity. However, "the harvest is great and the reapers are few" had been written long before this change in depositing the grains of wheat. In the evolution of harvesting methods have come the reap hook or sickle, the grain cradles with the best man cutting the widest swath, never failing to whet a banter into his blade, and the test of strength was to cross the field in the shortest space of time; it was a good man who led the har- vesters; with the sickle he saved about half an acre of grain in a day, but with the cradle a good man would cover three or four acres-yes, if there were a whisky jug in the field.
The hand rake reaping machine-the Ball Harvester-had its day, followed by the McCormick self-binder, and then the horsepower was
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HISTORY OF ALLEN COUNTY
followed by the tractor-just close your eyes and witness the panorama, and admit that there have been many changes in agriculture. When the wheat had passed through the sweating process came the threshing time, and the settler used the flail-a dangerous, treacherous thing, made from two pieces of wood skillfully fastened together with hickory bark or whang leather. With it a strong armed man beat the grain off of the straw, and when the straw was removed from the threshing floor the grain was lifted and cleaned for the market. They would shake it on a quilt or wagon cover, allowing the wind to separate the chaff, or there was a ring for the tramping and the horses were brought into service. The boys would ride them, and the men would stir the straw, allowing the dislodged grains to settle to the bottom; finally when the horses and the straw were worn out, the process of blowing out the chaff remains unchanged, until the advent of the threshing machine.
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