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 70
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While the more thrifty Allen County pioneers sometimes had potatoes on the dinner table, they could live without them. The transition from wilderness conditions to the cultivated fields and their products meant self-denial of the strictest nature to the settlers in any frontier com- munity. Conditions imposed by the War of the Nations have caused people of today to understand the privations of yesterday. Time was when the Allen County housewife went to the woods for her brooms, sometimes making them herself from hickory saplings. That long ago most families swept their door yards, and they wore out a lot of hickory brooms. The settlers used to dig sassafras roots for the family beverage, and from them the housewives would brew a tea that served as an excellent spring tonic. Who has not heard the stories of how sassafras and spicewood tea thinned the blood after the families had consumed salt pork and but few vegetables all winter? The town people know that spring is coming again when they see sassafras on the market.
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In the days when Allen County pioneers lived on salt pork, there was little said about balanced rations-there were no discussions of diet, and printed menus were an unknown quantity. While it requires an epicure to order a dinner from the modern bill of fare, the chefs of today under- stand the digestive requirements and dinners are planned with some consideration of the stomach and its duties. There was always better health conditions in some families than in others. Here and there a pioneer mother varied her cooking by serving something from the kitchen garden, instead of a continued meat diet. In other households it was heavy diet all of the time, and under these conditions sleepers had dreams and they usually told them. While in some households there was plenty of protein in the bill of fare, nothing was ever said about balanced rations for man or beast. It is just as necessary for humanity as for the lower animals. While people have not always understood about it, vegetable diet always has given them better digestion.
While the pioneer doctor prescribed medicine for others, many times he only ordered vegetables for his own household. The law of balanced rations is not new at all. People simply did not understand it. There are men today who follow it in the care of livestock, who are very indis- criminate in what they eat themselves. When one thinks of the heavy diet of the settlers in winter-always ate meat to keep them warm, it is little wonder the blood used to run thick in the spring time, and there was need of the quinine bottle on the shelf where all could help them- selves. Diet had a whole lot to do with it. When the settler's diet was always the same, "Yesterday, today and forever," he wondered why so many ills overtook him. In the light of domestic science as it is under- stood today, there are not so many ailments of domestic character.
It is generally understood that the best spring tonic is plenty of fruit and green stuff. The doctor is seldom consulted because of improper diet. As long as the U. S. Government expends a quarter of a million dollars annually for garden seed, every Allen County family with a plot of ground available should appeal to the local congressman for a supply, thus defeating the medical man in the community. Some of the medical men advise diet instead of writing prescriptions. When nature is given a chance it corrects its own mistakes. "An apple a day keeps the doctor away," and the same thing is true of vegetables. While some political economists aver that government seeds is a waste of money, and they always manage to have good gardens and the necessary variety in food products, there is no gainsaying the fact that the best spring tonic is a variety of early vegetables. How is your garden? Are you thinking about the welfare of your immediate household in these twentieth century days when the world is full of economic problems?
The day was in Allen County, although in the beginning of this sec- ond century in local history the earmarks are not quite so distinct, when the passerby recognized the Pennsylvania, Virginia, New York or New England farmstead because of the character of the improvements upon it. This settler came from Pennsylvania and that one from New England, but the passing years have amalgamated conditions. While some of the landmarks remain unchanged, intermarriage has removed the lines of demarcation, and little is said in Allen County about where a citizen came from. The topic uppermost today is whether or not he is making the best of his opportunity. It is said that when dreams come true all the human family will come again to the house where it was born, and while some foreigners have become naturalized, the majority of Allen County citizens have not wandered far from the place of their nativity. While most of its residents are 100 per cent American, some
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have claimed citizenship without a proper understanding of American institutions.
In a survey of nationalities while standing in the doorway of this second century of local history, it is evident there is a greater percentage of foreign born population today than at any time in the preceding cen- tury. There are people in Allen County today who have not acquired sufficient knowledge of English to speak it-a citizenship requisite of the U. S. Government not many years hence, if this country is to preserve its traditions-one country, one flag and one language, and the hope of the future is the language of the country. The Welsh in Allen County were among its pioneers, and theirs is a commendable example. They are not hyphenated Americans, and English is their tongue as they cross the threshold of this second century in local history. One always enjoys a visit where he may remain only as long as he wishes, and leave when he is ready and some of these aliens are having a good time in this country without thought of assuming citizenship.
President Benjamin Harrison said: "The gates of Castle Garden never swing outward," and there is an universal sentiment that foreigners be required to communicate only in the language of the community. Yiddish is not American, and yet men and women in Allen County con- tinue to speak it who reared their families in this country. While there were not many overseas citizens in Allen County in its first half century, at the end of 100 years it had a cosmopolitan population. "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin," and besides its native sons and daughters there are: English, Welsh, German, Irish, Norwegians, Swedes, Jews, Slavs, Poles, Italians, Greeks, Lithuanians, Hungarians, Russians, Austrians, Japanese, Chinese, French, Belgians, Bohemians, half breed Indians, and from time out of mind that old riddle:
"Black upon black and black upon brown, Three legs up and six legs down,"
has had local significance. The negro riding a brown horse with a black kettle on his head seems to have tarried indefinitely in Allen County.
It seems that the all-inclusive word Buckeye means all things to everybody, and just why a native of Ohio should be called a "Buckeye," and how the name originated are queries that Allen County residents have talked over and wondered about. In his "Memoirs of the Early Pioneer Settlers of Ohio," published in 1884, by Dr. S. P. Hildreth, among the early settlers of Marietta, we are told: "Col. Ebeneezer Sproat, who had been appointed sheriff, opened the first court ever held in Ohio, September 2, 1788, marching with his drawn sword and wand of office at the head of the judges, governor and secretary, made an imposing and august spectacle. Mr. Sproat was a large and dignified looking gentleman, and he was at once christened by the large crowd of Indian spectators as 'Hetuck,' or 'Big Buckeye.' From this no doubt originated the name of 'Buckeye,' now applied to the natives of Ohio, as the phrase was familiar to all the early settlers of Marietta."
While only natives of Allen County are designated as "Buckeyes," the foreigners now living in the community are peopling it more rapidly than the American born families, and there are all kinds of propoganda- a veritable melting pot of republicans, democrats, prohibitionists, socialists and laborites with all of the isms including rheumatism, and yet it does not follow that homespun necessarily means homebrew notwithstanding the 1920 crop of dandelions in Allen County. From the earliest dawn of Allen County history, its inhabitants have been governed by the Bible
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injunction that men should marry, and that women should be given in marriage ; that they should multiply and replenish the earth. Sometimes family relations have become a mathematical equation with which the thirty-second problem of the Euclid is an easy comparison, and the gossip must either hold her tongue in polite society or run the risk of talking about somebody's relatives. Men have been several times married, and there are combination families-mixed sets of children, examples of "your children and my children imposing on our children," and all have been inclined to make the best of it.
After all, what generation of the past has been more abreast of the times-more up-to-date and progressive, than the men and woman of today? What is the matter of Allen County as it enters its second century of local history ? Does the slogan : "Allen County never failed," mean anything to you? The character and nature of the improvements, now that all the descendants from the pioneers have become bona fide citizens of Allen County, indicate the degree of thrift and the lines :
"Go make thy garden as fair as thou canst, Thou workest never alone; For he whose plot lies next to thine, May see it and tend to his own,"
is a safe rule in any community. As he did yesterday, the passerby of today will comment on the surroundings, and the careful husbandman will see to it that his farmstead is free from negligent criticism. What is said of the husbandman applies to the business and professional man.
In the old days when there were livery barns in every town, and the well-to-do families all maintained driving horses, people traveled leisurely along the highways and byways of Allen County. However, Dobbin was too slow and the speed maniacs seem to have the right-of-way on all the public highways today. They whiz by the farmsteads so rapidly that they do not seem to see the details, and yet if a place is in deshabille everybody notes it. The livery barn has long since been converted into a garage, and there are all descriptions of cars and trucks at your service. The child of the future will know as little about the livery barn of other years as of the American saloon, and yet there was no sorrow on its trail. The livery barn, the saloon, the rural community centers- well, civilization has changed its methods today. While the twentieth century method of cross-country travel is different today, and some people seem to hold their breath in passing, the average tourist usually has a rather comprehensive idea of wayside attractions.
While in the architecture of the past the cabin roofs were held in place by weight poles, and the primitive American dwelling was con- structed without nails, and there were stick-and-clay chimneys every- where, that kind of domicile long since had its day. It exists only in memory and in souvenir form as in Lincoln Park today. With increased wealth came more commodious homes, and the hardwood floors of today are in decided contrast with the puncheon floors split from native timber. Even the time honored hod carrier who did nothing but carry brick and mortar up a ladder has been supplanted in the sky-scraper buildings, where even the wheel barrows are taken up by lifting machinery. Before the building is finished the hod carrier puts in his appearance. The hoist- ing machinery cannot do it all. In the architecture of yesterday the bath- room was an unknown quantity, and only when boys went swimming did they bathe at all. In most families they washed their feet when compelled to, and a washrag for the "neck and ears" was brought into
Vol. 1-35
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requisition when clean underwear was given them. In some of the yesterdays no underwear was worn, and there was just as little bathing- Allen County not being unlike the rest of the world.
When the grandmothers of the present generation used to scour their kitchen tables with the daylight streaming through greased paper windows, nothing was said about home sanitation. Instead of the sani- tary plumbing of today the dishwater was thrown out at the kitchen door, creating constant danger of diphtheria and yet the children sur- vived it-did they? With diphtheria thus invited, were there not more deaths from that dread disease? Then people never had heard of anti- toxine treatment for it. With the open fire place form of ventilation, there was less tubercular trouble, but there was more diphtheria. Home sanitation had not been taught in school and in society. The children of today have no conception of the hardships of the pioneers. They did not say hardships because they knew nothing better. They under- went privations cheerfully. What does the present generation know about the chinked and daubed log cabin of other days?
What do the youngsters of today know about the broad fireplace and the mantelpiece where the grandfathers and grandmothers always looked for their pipes and their spectacles, and where they kept the family Bible; while the fathers and sons visited the woods with their chopping axes when these mammoth fireplaces must be kept aglow, the time came when there was no more fire wood and today they haul coal from the towns, and furnace heat is another story ; when they stand over a hot air register they no longer freeze one side while scorching the other ; some would not care to reverse the sun dial record of their years and return to such primitive conditions. A lot of heat units went up the chimney with the smoke when there were wood fireplaces in all the houses in Allen County. If there were plenty of wood who would sacrifice the straight saplings for cabin logs today? Whose tongue does not trip and become twisted in repeating half a dozen times: six long, slim, slender, slick saplings?
While the stick chimneys frequently caught fire, there was always someone at home to bring a pail of water, a precaution rendered neces- sary because of the intense heat going up the chimney from the old- fashioned fireplace, both the backlogs and the foresticks asserting them- selves in an effort to warm the room, and thus insure the comfort of those sitting in the firelight. Aye, when the father made the shoes while the mother knit the stockings for the household, they had the full realization of sitting before the fire and freezing one side and burning the other-cold chills running up their backs. With registers and radi- ators all over the modern house, there is little suggestion of the old time methods of warming the cabin, and yet there are some who would gladly turn back and live the old days over again. If Rip Van Winkle were to come again he would miss a lot of things in Allen County. He would miss all of the old time industries. He would miss both the home- spun garments and the homespun characters who made them. While the mothers and daughters remain, the spinning wheels and looms are gone the way of the world. There is no household today where all the food is prepared on the hearthstone as it is brought by the men and the boys from the clearing or the forest.
Where are the industries of the past in Allen County as well as in the rest of the world? Ask of the winds, and ask of the older men and women in the community. From them you will hear of the changes wrought by the onward march of civilization. In the reconstruction period following the Civil war the changes became apparent. The
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shackles had been removed from the slaves and they were removed from the household. The spinning wheel and the loom were left in the distance by the factory and the industrial combinations in the commercial world. The slow but sure processes of the past have all been supplanted by the rush and bustle of the present, and as people have had need of them inventions have met every necessity and overcome every difficulty. There have always been seed time and harvest in Allen County. However, the methods of preparing the seed beds and of planting have changed, and the care of the products is different from the days of the forefathers, when the reaping hook accomplished what is done with improved har- vesting machinery today.
Who remembers when the dealer weighed commodities over the counter to you with the old time steelyards, instead of using the com- puting scales of today? They said the butcher always put his hand on the scales, and the customer paid for something not delivered to him when the grocer or the butcher handed him the package. Some one says :
"The sugar prices still remain, Both lofty and unstable ; We'd bring them down by raising 'Cane,' If only we were 'Abel,'"
and again the World war reconstruction period presents even worse difficulties. The high cost of living, the profiteer and the "rent hog," are economic terms unknown at the close of the Civil war. However, some of the economists say the present high cost of living may be reduced when the men and women of today are willing to return to the simple life of the pioneers.
Query : Is it the producer or the consumer who regulates the price of commodities ? Politicians say the law of supply and demand always will control the situation. When the grandmothers cooked before the fire they knew how to get along without commercial commodities, and yet in these days of high prices the people seem to pay them without protest, and the profiteers have their own way about everything. The Arkansaw Traveler may have been improvident, but he was not alone in the world. When it is raining one cannot repair the roof, and at other times it does not require attention, although an enterprising manufac- turer of patent roofing has put it into the mouth of the field robin to sing, "Lee-ke-ruf, lee-ke-ruf," and there are fewer makeshift methods today. The man of today knows that "A stitch in time often saves nine," as well as the modern woman knows that it frequently saves expo- sure, and the thrifty twentieth century citizen is inclined to take time by the forelock, and look after such trivial things.
The Lord Byron quotation about truth being stranger than fiction, says if the truth "could be told, how much would novels gain by the exchange? How differently the world would men behold? How often would vice and virtue places change?" And while the passerby along the Allen County public highway only yesterday saw the farm boy pump- ing water for cattle or expending his energies turning the grindstone, today power is applied to everything. It is an easy process to attach a gasoline engine and put into motion all sorts of machinery. While the boy used to turn the corn sheller, or pull one end of a cross-cut saw with someone at the other end, adjuring him not to ride it, the boy of today escapes it. The farm boy of the twentieth century hardly comprehends what was required at the hand of his counterpart a generation ago. When a boy had $1 a month spending money he appreciated it, and applied it
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on his personal expenses. Some boys had no money at all. The boy on the Allen County farm is no longer a slave to his environment. The element of drudgery has been removed from it.
Time was when homemade bread figured in family life. There used to be biscuits for breakfast, but today the farm boy asks for town bread. He is no longer ridiculed by his city cousins-perhaps because he has his hair cut oftener by an up-to-date barber. What has become of the old fashioned mother who used to invert a milk crock over her boy's head while she trimmed his locks at the edge of it? They called it bob- bing the hair. When the farm boy appears on the street today his garb is the same as that worn by the boys in town. There are no longer any fights between the town and country boys. When the country boys used to come to town they often had to "clean up" on the town boys. The old line of social demarcation between town and country has prac- ically disappeared from the face of the earth. One time the question as to who was the best man always had to be settled with the clenched fists. Ruffians pulled their coats at the slightest provocation. When the bullies used to form a ring and fight to settle the question of manhood there were always abettors, but since liquor has been eliminated, such things do not occur in the community, and people are forgetting about them.
While farmers used to fence against outside livestock now they are in no danger from it; they must fence to keep their own stock in bounds or difficulty follows; a woman in a town complained about her neighbor having open post holes and her chickens fell into them; the neighbor reminded her that the post holes were on his own ground, and that if her chickens had been at home they would not have fallen into them ; what was the poor woman to do about it? The bees from an apiary went to a neighbor's well for water; the neighbor killed them because they annoyed him ; he told the apiarist to halter them and restrain them.
While there were 576 persons credited to Allen County 100 years ago when it was given its name and outline, it included four townships now in Augliaze County, and the population was not sufficiently congested for the question of rights and privileges to be questioned in Allen County society ; through the process of shifting bounderies the county lost its earliest development, but it retained its determination and the Allen County of today is the result; the trees and the wild life of the forest knew nothing of political boundaries, and what is common history in Amanda is true in Monroe or any other township; it was the prime purpose of the settler to lay the ax at the root of every tree, and there was none to constrain him; none with a vision of the future.
When Allen County was an unbroken forest the settler went forth chopping down trees or girdling them, thus interfering with the circu- lation of the sap and ultimately causing their decline, but all of that is so long ago that the youth of today does not understand the meaning of deadening, and of the cabin in the clearing so common in the early history of Allen County. There were lease fields on many of the older farms, some one camping in the woods long enough to clear them and taking the crops from them until they were paid for their labor; they would cut all kinds of timber without discrimination, not even sparing shade trees near their humble dwellings although those who came after them would have appreciated such forethought ; then reforestration would not have been such a prime necessity. It is a case of hindsight being better than foresight, and reparation will not come in the next century. Black walnut and white ash timber was frequently used in making fence
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rails, the splitters of the past having no thought of future scarcity ; they were prodigal in destroying it.
Today in some parts of the country connoisseurs are visiting old farmsteads, and carrying away walnut fence rails from which artistic and rustic picture frames are made, and artistic and rustic are the words that describe them; sometimes the fungous growth is left on them. Trees of all sizes and varieties were regarded as encumbering the ground, and the ambition of the settler was to rid the earth forthwith of its ear- liest product, not taking into the account the wisdom of the Almighty in thus clothing it ; he must have a place to grow his food products. There are bureaus of forestry now, and every effort is being put forth in State and Nation to perpetuate the life of the native trees; in the log-rolling days of Allen County history, the settlers burned up many fortunes although at the time there was no market for the splendid timber that must be removed in order that the pioneer might tickle the bosom of Mother Earth, and coax from it his sustenance. From the twentieth cen- tury vantage ground it looks like profligate waste, but the Allen County settler is exempt from censure since there were no transportation agencies opening to him the markets of the world, such as are vouchsafed to his posterity just now beginning the second lap in the century run in Allen County history.
In the mind of the settler, he must rid the ground of its encumbrance, and the cultivated field would then become a possibility ; the pioneer lived up to the light he had, and his problem was to rid the land of the magnificent forest that had been accumulating through the ages; his interpretation of the Bible injunction about earning his bread by the sweat of his brow was its appeal-he must enter the forest with his ax and grubbing tools ; he must overcome the wilderness and the Black Swamp in Allen County. While the settler was confronted with the gigantic trees of the forest, the question confronting his posterity and not many generations removed from him is where the next cord of stove wood is coming from ; in the meantime the average Allen County farmer visits a coal yard in town; in war times the fuel administrator ruled against him, and the miners' strikes are of vital concern to him. The set- tlers were busy from morning till night, their work always crowding them ; while the same conditions prevail today, it is less laborious and machinery does the most of it.
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