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 68
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While some admire portraits, and perpetuate their own family group in that way, the favorite scheme in pictures is the landscape. It manifests itself in snow-clad hills, tree-clad hills, mist-wreathed hills and night- shadowed hills; there are hills to the left, hills to the right, and some- times hills at the top of the picture, and always at the bottom of it; the hills are eternal in pictures. Between the hills there are meadows, flower- studded fields or perhaps a river ; a picture is an expression both of the painter and of the collector; the patron of art buys a picture because it means something to him.
There is art in hanging a picture; connoisseurs of art study the lights and shadows as well as the artist; sometimes a picture is hung in a bad light and buyers are not attracted toward it. When the light is right and the picture is shown to advantage, people want it. Connoisseurs have pictures sent to their homes on approval, and when the light is unfavor- able they do not invest their money.
The boy is the picture of his father; the girl is the image of her mother. "So God created man in His own image; in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them," but some of the the critics say that the "works of art" seen on the streets are not included in this picture gallery.
CHAPTER XLIX
LEFTOVER STORIES-THE OMNIBUS CHAPTER
The old Southern Mammies who were reputed to concoct such "toothsome" viands in the line of foods, did not always follow formulas in their culinary processes ; they used a "little o' this and a little o' that," and their leftover dishes were sometimes their best productions. An Omnibus Chapter always catches incidents that did not properly belong somewhere else, and stories that would have been incorporated in other chapters had the material been available when they were written; a platform speaker once said that what he thought of afterward was more worth while than the thoughts that came to him when he was speaking and many stories would have fitted themselves in elsewhere had the material presented itself before the "elsewhere" door was closed against them. The old fashioned Whatnot had a little of everything on it, and the Omnibus Chapter has a little of everything in it.
There was a period of fifteen years dating from 1840, when the sugar camp on the McDonel farm at the corner of West Market and McDonel streets was the mecca of all the young people in the community. From 1840 until 1855, there were young people at the McDonel farm, and the sugar camp was at its best; when the sap started to flow every spring the camp was the rendezvous and there were frequent wax parties there; the whole community was given to the picnic habit, and there was no place for courting like the sugar camp. The McGuire home was another place where the young people went early and stayed late-they all liked Aunt Jane McGuire; at those dinner parties they used to have roast pig, leg o' mutton, turkey, chicken, duck-nine kinds of pie with preserves and everything else gastronomic; there were no war measure restrictions and everything was made at home, and they say there were no "dyspeptics" in that day and age, but with so much "high living," they must have been laying the foundations for later ailments. Those were "the days of real sport."
John Meily who died at Christmas in 1883, was a tapestry artist and many people have coverlets and carpets that were woven by him. Some of the coverlets he made now rank with the most beautiful tapestries ; he used complicated patterns and sometimes fashioned his own designs; he always wove the name and the date into the fabric when he made cover- lets to order for others; his daughter, Olivia Meily, became the wife of Lima's most widely known citizen-Senator Calvin S. Brice. When John Meily was a weaver in Lima there were not so many wheels of industry. The Meily coverlets are highly valued today.
The ashery was a financial asset to the Allen County settler, that the active men and women of today know nothing about only as a story that is told; when the settlers were clearing the land they found a market for the ashes from the oak and walnut timber that was burned in such prodigious wastefulness-would have been wastefulness had there been any market for timber; the ashes from the clearing brought two cents a bushel while house ashes from the hearth brought three cents-the quo- tations always meaning "in trade." The ashery operator never paid the money; he always conducted a trading post in connection with the ashery. From the wood ashes thus collected from the settlers large quantities of black salts, pearl ash and soda were manufactured; it was
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done by leaching, burning, grinding and mixing, but none ever under- stood the process except employes of the factory.
It was before the visit of the city girl at a farmstead who inquired, when she saw honey on the dinner table : "Do you keep a bee?" that the Allen County settlers used to roam the forests in search of wild honey. The expert bee hunter would watch the course of the "busy bee," and trace it to the hollow tree where the colony was laying up its store for winter. An old account says "Joseph Ward's father," used to take two barrels of wild honey to market at one time; he would get fifty cents a gallon for wild honey at Urbana. Usually the settler cut the bee tree in order to secure the honey. It was necessary to strain it because the comb would be injured in the tree when falling and in its wild state the bees were not supplied with frames by an apiarist with commercial instinct; oftentimes bee trees were cut with immense stores of honey in them.
The city girl who asked the farm family if they kept a bee was as unfamiliar with country life as the woman from the city who visited in the country. While she was used to milk "bottled in the country," she was alarmed when she saw the farm woman take off the cream, and she asked about the "yellow skum" on it. However, that story is offset by another-the farmer who visited in the city saw the hostess combine so many things in a dish for his breakfast, that when he asked if it were hash, she said it was the "review of reviews."
In these days of war time saving when people are economizing on fuel, someone suggested that the poet, William Cullen Bryant must have been facing an empty coal bin when he penned the lines : "The melancholy days have come, the saddest of the year."
The Lima Rabbit and Cavy Breeders Association was organized March 11, 1917, with Eugene O'Keefe as president and E. A. Enslin as secretary ; it has forty-five members some of whom live outside of Allen County ; only the breeders of rabbits and guinea pigs are interested to become members. The local association is affiliated with the Ohio State Breeders and Fanciers Association, and with the National Breeders and Fanciers Association of America. On November 30, 1920, it opened its first championship show in Memorial Hall, and rabbit sandwiches were served to some of the favored guests. The members say there is a future for the rabbit breeding industry. The meat of the rabbit is regarded as a table delicacy.
W. F. Bolender of Allentown exhibits a tracing wheel that had been made in the blacksmith shop by his father and used in setting wagon tires. Now that the automobile is in such general use, he does not often have use for the tracing wheel. The "chariot of fire" sounded the knell of the blacksmith repair industry.
"Don't that jar you," said a nervous little woman operating an elevator in a Lima office building ; she was "going down," when some impatient tenant on the top floor began an incessant ring, and all she could do was endure it. The elevator was full of passengers and all were in sympathy with the operator. She must listen to the ringing on the return trip while they escaped it. Someone explained the condition as a result of the pressure of twentieth century civilization.
The story is told of Isaac McGrady, who was a celebrated hunter among the Shawnees, and one day in the fall of the year in the early '40s, he went hunting with another pioneer known as Uncle Ben; they carried their grub and were away for all day. About 2 o'clock in the afternoon they were crossing the Auglaize in a canoe and while McGrady was rowing the boat Uncle Ben carelessly allowed his powder horn to
Vol. I-34
20И A /9 ДИАЛЯО
CLOTHING CONPI
ONE CIRCUS DAY IN LIMA
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fall in the water; they were at the middle of the Auglaize when the accident happened ; the loss of the powder was serious and McGrady was displeased about it. Uncle Ben said that if McGrady would "sit still in the boat," he would dive and get the powder horn ; after a while McGrady became anxious about Uncle Ben in the water. When he looked over the side of the boat into six feet of water, there sat his friend on the bottom of the stream taking his own time in transferring the powder from the McGrady powder horn to his own, thinking all the while that he was shut off from view because he was under the boat. While Uncle Ben seemed to "trust in God," he had never heard the rest of the story- "and keep your powder dry."
In the annuals of the Welsh settlement is the story that one time when James Nicholas was away for the night, leaving his wife and her babe alone in a cabin that as yet had no door shutter other than a bed quilt, the wolves came howling about the place; it was her first night alone. Mrs. Nicholas had the courage born of despair, and with her babe in her arms she climbed to the joists and spent the night in safety. While the pioneers were seldom afraid of the daylight dangers, it required courage on the part of a woman to spend the night alone. Mrs. Nicholas died in Sugar Creek township, January 7, 1894, and the Gomer school closed for her funeral. "She was grandma to all of the children in the community ; they all knew her and loved her." The first funeral in the Welsh community was of a child named Mary Roberts who died October 1, 1833, and Mrs. Nicholas made the shroud from the wedding dress of the child's mother. While she was a little bit timid alone in a cabin without a door when the wolves were howling around it at night, Mrs. Nicholas was for many years a useful woman in the community.
When the story is told again that Col. William Crawford who was tortured in Wyandot County had his last drink of water from a spring on the Lippincott Pure Bred Stock Farm near Beaver Dam, turn to the story and read it. An unknown informant said: "It's no kind of an Allen County history if you don't have that story," and when appealed to for corroboration, Eugene Lippincott said he had always heard that while in the hands of his captors, Colonel Crawford had been allowed to drink from an unfailing spring, the water found within three feet of the surface, which still supplies water at the farm.
As inspector of weights and measures in Allen County outside of Lima, the work of R. E. Neidhardt of Spencerville is similar to that of John Sharffey at the Lima City Market. Mr. Neidhardt's work is per- formed under the direction of the county auditor; he tests scales for their accuracy and inspects measures as to accuracy and sanitation. A little grit collected on scales sometimes throws them out of balance when the dealer does not mean to practice deception. The inspection of weights and measures is as much a protection for the dealer as for the customer ; sometimes scales get out of adjustment and weigh heavy as well as light. Mr. Neidhardt finds that ninety per cent of the scales that need adjustment cheat the merchant himself. In adjusting scales he always explains certain mechanisms, and the dealer is glad of his visit. Gasoline pumps and measures come under his supervision, and accuracy and clean- liness are the requirements. There used to be stories told of subterfuges in weighing-balancing the scales with a few grains of shot, thus changing the weight in favor of the dealer, but with an inspector coming around at inopportune times, there is little opportunity were there any inclination to subterfuge. It is a standing joke about the dealer buying on one scale and selling on another, but the inspector relieves him of such embar-
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rassment. Mr. Neidhardt finds that dealers welcome his visits, and cooperate with him in his examinations.
It is the practical thing to have scales at home, and thus the customer has some check on the dealer; stockmen prefer selling livestock from their own scales and thus escape the shrinkage occurring from driving animals to market; who knows a story about a farmer salting his sheep or cattle and allowing them to drink water before weighing them. A buyer went into the pasture with a farmer to look at some calves, and insisted on taking them along thinking to escape from buying several gallons of water by not allowing the farmer an opportunity to water them. The buyer did not know the location of the cement water trough back of the barn, and the farmer lured him into the garage to see a new automobile ; when they rounded up the calves again the water line had been lowered several inches on the immense tank back of the barn; the buyer had been thrown off his guard and he bought the water. The shrewd stock buyer always watches the salt and water question. They used to say the dairyman always forded the stream when bringing his milk to town. The stories told about the pioneers sometimes reflected on their honesty ; it is one thing to tell a story and another thing to prove it; sometimes those who related such stories did not believe them.
While she was housebound with rheumatism only a short time befoe her death, Mrs. Elizabeth Ann McDonel-McClain-Roney exhibited a cane which she used in getting about the house that was made from a piece of the timber taken from the second Allen County courthouse. It was made by Barney Bowers who brought it to her husband, J. L. Roney ; she prized it and said that when she was done with it, she would be glad to have it added to the curio collection in the rooms of the Allen County Historical and Archeological Society.
While Senator S. D. Crites of Elida is a fearless hunter, and fre- quently goes into the "big woods," he is modest about it. While a dozen deer heads are mounted and on exhibition at the Farmers bank, there are many things in his curio collection that were found in Allen County. Mr. Crites has the horn of an elk that was found in a depression on the Pfeiffer farm near Ash Grove cemetery ; it is a suggestion that elk were at one time found in the Allen County forest; they were extinct before the advent of the Allen County settlers. Deer stories are frequently told, but the elk is prehistoric in Allen County. The antler was plowed up in 1910, and Mr. Crites has the theory that in prehistoric times an elk had been crossing a body of water on the ice that must have filled the depression there.
In his curio collection in Elida, Mr. Crites has the root of a wild cherry that is coiled as a reptile ready to spring upon its victim; it was obtained while grubbing on one of his farms; while the coil remains unchanged, W. P. Furry had fashioned the mouth with a pocket knife, making it slightly more realistic; he used beads for the eyes, and one instinctively shudders who sees it. He has an extensive Indian relic collection, showing that the Shawnees did not all live in Shawnee. Many of the Indian relics were found on the Crites farm in American township. Mr. Crites has homemade tools-axes, hammers, etc., with the name Cy Crites set into them with a die, and bearing the date 1840, showing that blacksmiths once made such things instead of buying them.
There was an exhibit of apples, A. D. 1920, in the Farmers' bank at Elida that resembled a display at a Horticultural Society meeting ; while the story of the Swedenborgian, John Chapman-Johnny Appleseed, has already been given, Mr. Crites has a seedling apple tree in his own door yard from which he exhibited the apples; his exhibit attracted others,
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and in a little while there was a great collection of apples and seed corn on exhibition. The tree in the door yard is a graft from a seedling tree developed in the Crites family in the early history of Allen County.
Mrs. Harriet Bowsher Shappell of Shawnee who was born in 1836, was the first white child born in Shawnee-the undisputed home of the Shawnees, while they lived in Allen County. As a child she played in the Indian huts which then so thickly dotted the community; while the Indians had been removed to the reservations four years before her birth, many of their homes were still standing there; in 1917, when the Centennial log cabin was standing in the Lima public square, Mrs Shappell frequently spent some time in it ; she was an honored guest at the cabin. Her parents are shown in "quaint and ancient" costume in the history. Mrs. Shappell relates that the first Lucifer matches she ever saw were used by some cattle buyers who came along in 1839, and they lighted their pipes without the necessity of securing a coal of fire from the hearth ; the settlers always kept fire alive because they knew nothing about matches; sometimes when the fire went out they were reduced to the necessity of borrowing fire ; sometimes they would fire a gun, and the flash would ignite shavings or straw, and they would be more careful the next time.
With everybody interested in sports and the Hon. B. F. Welty, famous for his attack on Federal Judge K. M. Landis of Chicago because of his relation to National baseball, it is of interest to know that there was a baseball club organized May 4, 1865, in Lima and that in 1867, there was a Lima Gymnastic Association ; now there are all kinds of ball games, and there are athletic teachers in public schools.
In his Boucher Family Genealogy, Mayor F. A. Burkhardt tells of a "porch party" in 1866, at the Bowsher homestead in Shawnee; it was the first big porch in the rural community, and the neighborhood assem- bled there for a porch warming party ; the affair was given out "word of mouth" in advance, and it attracted visitors from long distances ; they almost all came on horseback, and it was a great social opportunity. In modern society porch parties are nothing unusual at all.
There are always persons who will do things "on a banter," and it is related that one time when it was raining hard all day, Cole Pangle, who was a moving spirit in the business community of Lima, said he would pay $1 to any one who would sit on a chair in the rain in the center of the public square for one hour. Joshua Hover, who would always "take a dare," offered himself. He filled his pipe with fresh tobacco and went out to earn the money. The incident is still a "bright spot" on the mental horizon of some of the "oldest inhabitants" who tell about it. It was a "wet rain," and one said, "a peculiar soaking drizzle," and while Mr. Hover was the only one who received the money, he was not the only one who got wet that day; they all watched him.
It was in August, 1850, that the traveling circus caused the first flutter of excitement in Lima ; one summer morning the advance bill posters came in without warning upon a village of 1,500 to 2,000 people, and by night everybody had seen the flaming poster banners covering the town; there were hand bills distributed, and every available wall was plastered with lithographs-something never before seen in the community. The blend- ing of riotous colors left nothing to be desired; it was wonderful if not harmonious-a reproduction of the period half a century, aye, three- score and ten years ago. The circus was in advance of the railroad, and all the young men who could secure a mount joined the circus at Allentown. It was a motley crowd when from instinct the elephants refused to cross a bridge, and drew the circus wagons through the
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Ottawa river; in the 1906 history, Dr. Samuel A. Baxter describes the circus, and the article is worth reading because it reflects the atmosphere of the period. In 1852, when Rivers' circus was in Lima there was a riot started in which Rivers was struck on the head, and his death resulted from it. Lima has always been visited by circuses since the beginning, seventy years ago. Lima adults have always been able to find children who wanted to go to the show.
The first sewer of any magnitude was built through Main street from North street, having its outlet in the Ottawa river; when digging this sewer through the public square, workmen found logs in a good state of preservation, and while some argued that they might have been fallen trees that once grew there, others said they must have been placed there as corduroy because of the mud in the public square; the sewer was five feet in diameter, and John P. Haller who was the contractor walked through the length of it from North street to the river; it was his final inspection of it. Mr. Haller was the builder of the county infirmary and of the second Allen county court house; a man's works do not always live after him ; he died June 3, 1886, and the Doric columns of the courthouse that had been his pride did not long survive him. In 1920 there was a great deal of sewer work being done in Lima.
Saw mills, grist mills, molasses mills, cider mills-the settlers had all kinds of mills when water power was used in propelling them; there were more mills along the Auglaize than along the Ottawa. There was once a flax mill where the Shawnee road splits one form of it coming into Lima at Baxter street, and the other at West street; there was a flax mill on one fork, and a brewery on the other "fifty years ago." The Shawnee trail was always a feeder for Lima, and the flax mill was a landmark known to all. While the pioneers raised flax and made their own linens from it the youngsters of today would not know what it was if they saw a whole field full of it .. No doubt there are families in Allen County who treasure linens that were made by their ancestry from flax grown in Allen county. The same thing is true all over the country.
When Governor James M. Cox was conducting his presidential cam- paign in 1920, he said at Middletown: "I count it always a happy day that brings me back to the soil of Butler County ; you know we always like to ramble in the gardens of the past; we like to browse about in the pasture of yesterday, and it is always an infinite satisfaction to live over again in part the days I spent in Middletown," and that is the feeling that comes to anyone with sentiment, who visits again the places once sacred to him; that is the feeling that comes over one in reading about the things of the long ago; that is why some persons enjoy local history.
"Well now, that's funny," said a Lima business man, unable to find a charge account in looking through his records ; the customer had come in to pay for an $11 pair of shoes, and no one remembered selling them to him, and there was no charge against him; the man did not remember who had waited on him; it had been about one year ago. The dealer thought himself a careful business man, and always sent monthly state- ments of accounts; there was no record of such a transaction, and all the customer remembered was that he owed $11 for the shoes. It was not conscience money ; the man had neglected payment, but supposed there was an account against him. Moral: Never be certain of anything.
While the fair ground race tracks are elsewhere mentioned, a group of Lima citizens said there was once a quarter of a mile race track along the Shawnee road that was never part of any county fair, but was the scene of many races; it was a straight course and they used to try out running horses there; the speed of many a colt was tested on this track;
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its promoters were John Bashore and Benjamin C. Faurot; the races on this short track attracted many spectators. One of the men remarked : "It seems like I can see John Bashore's spotted horse going down that track as plain as if it had been yesterday," and they wanted it mentioned in history again.
It was one cloudy Sabbath morning in May, 1853, that three children belonging to Daniel Jones on Leatherwood Run were lost in the woods; they were Evan, Elizabeth and Mary. They went after the cow and found her, but she escaped from them again; in the chase the children became bewildered and wandered into the dense forest; the little one was only three years old, and it was a case of "babes in the wood." They encountered swamps, and waded water and "cooned" the logs; they were frightened at every forest sound; the boy carried three-year old Mary on his back until all were exhausted, and when they found a dry place. they stopped to rest and darkness caught them there; they had come into the edge of a clearing where there were some friendly brush- heaps, and they crawled under one and spent the night there. A hard rain came down and the famished children were without food or shelter; they did not have much stored up vitality with which to resist the elements.
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