USA > Ohio > Hardin County > A twentieth century history of Hardin County, Ohio : a narrative account of its historical progress its people and principal interests, Vol. I > Part 6
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McDonald township has a great number of gravel pits from which material has been taken for building the fine pikes in this and other communities. The part onee thought worthless because it was under water part of the year has since been drained, and is now a part of the great onion field that has made the county famous. While the river was not of much use to the early settlers except for water power, some families had canoes made by the Indians or hollowed out of logs in spare moments, and with them they eould float down the river to the old Fort Me Arthur, and later on to Kenton, though the current was sadly blocked by refuse and drift wood. The earliest known saw mill was erected by Jacob Kimberlin on the bank of the river, and supplied the pioneers with rough lumber. This was about 1837. Hunting was the winter occupation of the men, and it was not always for sport, as the family had to be supplied with meat, and the skins were needed to pay the taxes and buy such supplies as could not be bartered for. Many a marriage license has been paid for with coon skins killed by the pros- pective groom, and the price of hundreds of wolf scalps went to purchase luxuries for the families that would now be considered the most common necessities. In the fall the corn was brought up to the house for fear the wild animals would carry it all away, and stacked along a pole to be husked. At night the wolves, coons and squirrels would come up for the corn, the wolves to devour the small animals, and the coons and squirrels for the ears, when the pioneer would get up with his lantern and proceed to gather in part of his harvest by killing the coons with a elub. His wife or one of the boys would go one way with the tin lantern, a sort of tin box punehed full of holes with a tallow candle inside, and the farmer would go the other. Blinded by the "glaring" light the animals became confused, and fell an easy prey to the club. The wolves, for all their ferocity, were cowardly creatures, and it is not on record that they ever killed anyone, though they destroyed pigs, sheep and calves by the dozen.
A great part of IIardin county was free from underbrush when the pioneers came, as the Indians would not allow their hunting grounds to become obstrueted, but in McDonald township there was a perfeet wilderness of undergrowth. This furnished a fine lodging place for game, and so numerous did the wolves become that the county had to offer a bounty for their destruction. It was impossible for the men with the work of building cabins and raising crops on the little fields that had to be painfully cleared to keep all their live stock in secure pens,
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and many of the early animals driven through the woods to Hardin county were eaten by wolves and other wild animals. Every man had to be on the alert day and night as a great squealing in the log pen or commotion among the cattle, announced the presence of some marauder bent on obtaining fresh meat. The pioneer mothers often were left alone in the rude cabins and sat up all night with the trusty guns in their hands to defend the home and family. Until about 1832 Indians were numerous in the woods near McDonald and Roundhead townships, and often visited the homes of the settlers, but they were generally friendly and peaceable after the ill feeling of the war died out.
It is believed that the pioneer children received some instruction il reading, writing and arithmetic in the cabins of the settlers and also that some of them attended the early schools of Roundhead township, but the first real schoolhouse was a log cabin near where the present White Schoolhouse stands and may have been taught by some member of the McArthur or Campbell families in 1836. One of the very earliest teachers in the township was a Mrs. Marmon, but little can be learned of her. The first preaching was in cabins by the Methodist circuit riders, and the Presbyterian pioneers and those of other faiths united in these services. There was a little band of men and women who held to the Disciple faith, and these organized the first permanent organization in the township. This was known as the McDonald Christian Church and the present structure known as the Flat Branch Church is the lineal descendant of that first log cabin "meeting house." The Methodists continued their meetings in cabins when they could not go to Roundhead, and later on came substantial churches.
McDonald township pioneers: 1818-1822, Peter C. McArthur; 1818-1822, Daniel Campbell; 1822, Donald McArthur and part of fam- ily ; 1830, Alexander and Mary Given and family; 1829, Isaac Holt and family ; 1825, William McDonald; 1822, Daniel McDonald and family ; 1830, David Poe and family ; 1834, John and Mary Fuls and family ; 1835, John and Elizabeth Hites and family; 1837, John and Rebecca Zimmerman and family, and Andrew and Ruth Zimmerman with fam- ily ; 1832, Ezekiel Storer; 1834, William Connell; 1833, Michael Fickel ; 1832, James Hays and family ; 1834, Enoch and Delilah Harvey and fam- ily ; 1839, James Wilson and family ; 1834, Moses Vansky; 1836, John Hatfield and family ; 1833, Andrew and Ann Hemphill ; 1836, Christian and Margaret Zahller and family ; 1834, Benjamin and Margaret Right- mire; 1835, Samuel and John Bell; 1836, Thomas Coil; 1832, Jacob and Anna Fuls, and 1833, William Hemphill.
Although the early records of Pleasant township are destroyed, there is every reason to believe that it came into existence the same year that Kenton was laid out (1833). Among the earliest settlers of this sub-division of the county were the pioneers of Kenton, but they are mentioned in another chapter, so the country outside the present city
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HISTORY OF HARDIN COUNTY
limits will be considered here with its residents prior to 1840. The township is a very large one, and but for the river on the south would be a perfect square in form. It contains about 24,320 square miles of almost perfectly level, fertile soil, well drained and productive. Its name is taken from the fact that it is pleasantly located and prosperous in every way, being one of the largest and most highly improved of the townships of the county. Kenton, the county seat, lies partly in this township, the part across the Scioto being in Buck, and it also contains the little village of Grant on the Big Four railroad.
When John Johnston came to this township from Marion county in 1828 he found not a single settler within the limits of the present bonndaries, and had to open his own road for his ox team from the Old Sandusky Road to Ft. McArthur, where he rested for some days before beginning to make a home for his family in the green woods. To him must be accorded the honor of first settler in this beautiful township, and he spent the remainder of his long life near the spot where he first made his home in the wilderness. Shortly after this some cabins began to appear on the site of Kenton, but neighbors were few and far between in those days. Like most of the other townships, Pleasant was settled in little groups, the river and other streams furnishing locations that pleased the pioneers, and we find them grouping together as near as possible. There was the Castor Settlement, about Sections 23 and 24, where Rev. J. C. Castor, the Holmes family, the Spitzers and other families gathered ; the strip along the river, Sections 1, 2, and 3, where the Allens, the Wagners, one branch of the Houser family, the Wilson family, and others, located; the Cessna Settlement near the Cessna Township line, where the family of Jonathan Cessna, the Gardners, the Harveys, the Dinwiddies, the Kyles and others took up land; the little group near Ft. McArthur; the Davis Settlement near the present village of Grant, where lived the Kellogg and Carothers families, and many other little groups of sturdy men and women in those days. In those days people five and ten miles away were counted as neighbors, and there was a spirit of helpfulness and kindness among the people here and there in the forest that their descendants do not always have. It was nothing uncommon for men to go ten and twelve miles through the woods on foot or horseback to help a neighbor, and in times of sickness and trouble the brave pioneer ladies went alone through the boggy forests to minister to the wants of the unfortunates.
In many cases the pioneer men came here and picked out homes, building cabins and doing a little clearing and then went back to get their families. In these cases the dates seem to conflict, as the ones given are when they actually settled in the county. Jonathan Cessna was here two years before bringing his family, but the date when he settled here is given in 1833. He took up a large tract of land near the western boundary of the township, part of which is still owned by his
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son, Dr. B. F. Cessna, and part of which was given by Dr. Cessna to the Ohio Wesleyan University at Delaware, and is now known as the College Farm. This land lies on the north side of the Lima pike and is part of the original tract purchased from the government by Jonathan Cessna. Philip Davis also selected his farm near the northern part of the town- ship in 1836 and did not bring his family to the new home until two years later. His son, the venerable A. J. Davis, still owns the home farm, though at present he is living in Kenton.
The soil of Pleasant township is exceedingly fertile, and was, when the white men came here, covered with heavy timber. Much of this timber was burned on the ground to get rid of it, but a great deal was worked up in the pioneer mills of Kenton and shipped out when the railroad was first completed (the Big Four). Quite early in the history of the town there were little factories for making staves and getting out timber, so that there are quite a number of very old frame houses that date from a little later than pioneer days in this part of the county. Down along the river was the Gary Mill, built by John Houser, where, when the water was high, grinding could be done, and thus save the tedious journey to the Logan or Wyandot county mills; and in many ways the settlers of this township were favored. Of course the citizens and their families suffered all the agonies of ague and other diseases, but they were much closer to a physician than their neighbors on all sides, except those close to Roundhead and the village of Huntersville.
Able Allen, Samuel Wagner, Rev. Castor, Jonathan Cessna, David Kellogg, William Williamson, John Pfeiffer, Philip Davis, Isaiah McCon- nell, Nicholas Hill, Joseph Schoonover, John Wilson and several others of the pioneers of Pleasant township are among those whose names are still represented here. These inen settled with their families in various parts of the country north of the river, and did valiant work in helping make the land what it is today. Many of the pioneers have left no inale descendant or else their children have moved to other states, but their names will ever be held in grateful remembrance. The little private cemeteries here and there over the county are filled with un- marked graves of men and women who literally gave their lives to the work of foundng Hardin county, and the work of whose hands is still apparent in the cleared fields and good roads of which we are justly proud.
The first schools were located in the northern and southeastern parts of the township, one near Grant being established in 1836 on the David Kellogg farm, with Rachel Kellogg as teacher, and another in 1838 near the present Henpeek schoolhouse taught by William Williams. These buildings were of rough logs, as were all the other school buildings that sprang up a few years later to accommodate the increasing popula- tion of school age. Another log schoolhouse stood in the woods on the
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HISTORY OF HARDIN COUNTY
bank of Tymochtee creek south of the present Gray Eagle school, which was called the Tymochtee School until moved to its present location, when the name was changed. This was before 1840 and the early teachers' names have not been preserved. Church services were held in different cabins until log houses could be erected for that purpose, or schoolhouses were used. Many of the pioneers of the eastern part of the township went to the Kelly cabin to worship in Goshen township, while those near Kenton could easily reach the churches there, but still we find two Methodist organizations each with a congregation of eighteen or twenty before 1840, outside the village. One of these, which later became the Liberty Chapel, a short distance west of the Dunkirk pike north of Kenton, began its history in 1839, and was composed of mem- bers of the Badley, Dinwiddie, Cessna, Johnston, Kyle, Miller, Kinnear and other families. The other later was called the Grant Church, but in pioneer times was known as the Pleasant Grove Church, and was organized in 1838 by Rev. Enos Holmes. The Osborn, Holmes, Letson, Cloud, Wilson and one branch of the Castor families attended services in the cabin of Isaac Osborn and were gathered into a church that still exists, though the early members are gone. Later on came other organi- zations, but in pioneer times these two little churches were all there were in Pleasant Township outside of Kenton.
Pleasant township pioneers: 1828, John and Catherine Johnston and family ; 1830, John II. Houser and family; 1833, Able II: Allen ; 1835, David Kellogg and family ; 1833, Isaiah Trumph and family ; 1832, Levi and Mary Hosman and family; 1833, Benjamin Faught; 1834, William and Catherine Williamson and family, and Joseph Paver; 1836, Philip and Mary Davis; 1831, Robert and Catherine Smith; 1838, John and Phoebe Wilson and family; 1834, Samuel Wagner; 1839, Gotfried and Mary Hoppe; 1833, Sampson Shadley; 1834, Rev. J. C. and Anna Castor ; 1833, Jonathan and Catherine Cessna and family ; 1835, Morgan and Catherine Gardner and family; 1833, John Gardner and John C. Dille ; 1834, John Pfeiffer, Bernard Matthews and family and John Marks; 1832, John Ryan; 1835, William, James, Brice, John and Heze- kiah Harvey ; 1836, Nicholas and Elizabeth Hill and family and Isaiah and Ann McConnell with family; 1839, Wilmot and Elizabeth Munson and family ; 1838, Joseph and Margaret Schoonover and family; and 1839, Richard F. and Catherine Holmes with family.
In 1836 Jackson township, named for Andrew Jackson, was organ- ized, though there were but seven voters at the first election. This town- ship originally embraced part of Wyandot county, but when that county was organized in 1845, the boundary came far over into Jackson, leaving it a very small area. However, a part of Blanchard on the west was added to Jackson to make it of better shape and size, and it is now a regularly laid out rectangle, composed entirely of Congress lands. The soil is rich, but as the whole township is flat and low, the settlements grew
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HISTORY OF HARDIN COUNTY
slowly at first. Clearing and grubbing are slow work when the land is covered to a great extent with water, and as ehills and fever also flour- ished in this part of the new county, it was natural that some of the parts more susceptible to drainage were settled first.
In looking over the past records of the county, it would seem our forefathers always liked to locate by streams. Just why this was true when the streams could not be used for shipping, or to furnish a road- way through the forest, is not known, but usually the first sites in each community were selected by the river banks. A pioneer lady gives it a reason that the ladies liked to have plenty of soft water in which to wash their garments, and household linens, and this may be the reason. Before the days of cisterns the pioneer women had few conveniences, so plenty of soft water may have attracted them to the banks of the little rivers. In Jackson the first settlers made their homes on the banks of the Blanchard, in many instances camping in tents or rude shelters until a cabin could be ereeted. This is what James E. Hueston and his wife did in the summer of 1824, long before Hardin county was organized, for they were the first pioneers in this township.
Game was plentiful in the dense forests, and the pioneer who owned a gun and knew how to use it, had no fear of starvation, though his fields were small and full of stumps, but milk sickness and malaria frightened away many prospective settlers. It was easy to sell the skins of animals but the prices were very, very low ; often ten and fifteen eents all that could be obtained for coon and other skins. Wild turkey abounded, but when the mast failed they were too poor to be of any use to the pioneers, and if fat could not be sold, as there was no market. The mills of Wyandot and Logan counties had to be pat- ronized for meal, and often salt which cost from six to eight dollars per barrel had to be obtained from Bellefontaine, or upper Sandusky. It was a comparatively easy matter to piek a road through the forest over an Indian trail to a settlement, but when a wagon was necessary, it was quite a different matter.
Jackson township contains about twenty-four square miles of rich land and since it has been drained the old diseases have entirely disap- peared. After the pioneer period the towns of Patterson and Forest were laid off, but these are described elsewhere, and a home market was thus obtained where supplies from the farm could be exchanged for dry goods and food products from a distance, but in the early days the Jackson settlers did without or obtained their goods at long intervals from the stores at the older settlements. The first sehool was taught in a log building on Thomas Hueston's land, and John MeVitty, an early resident of the township, was the first teacher. The preaching was in eabins by circuit riders and local ministers of the Methodist faith, and there is no record of any permanent church until after 1840, though the little groups that gathered to listen to the Gospel in the
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HISTORY OF HARDIN COUNTY
log huts formed the charter membership of several flourishing eongre- gations of the present day.
Jackson township pioneers: 1824, James E. IIueston; 1833, John Ropp; 1829, John ITiffine and family ; 1830, Thomas and Ann Hueston ; 1835, William and Mary Copeland and family, David Kellogg and family, and Joseph Bames; 1834, William Pisel; 1836, Robert Briggs and family ; 1837, John Me Vitty ; 1836, Henry Zimmerman ; 1837, David and Almira Warner and William C. and Maria Dewitt; 1836, Will and Mary Higgins; 1835, Edward Warner; 1834, John Packer; 1834, John Ilowey : 1833, Robert S. Wilson and family; 1834, Thomas Keteh ; 1835, William Pepperton ; 1836, Stephen and Ann Purdy; 1837, John Zimmerman and Jacob and Sarah Zimmerman; and 1838, Reuben Hamline.
Although at present Liberty township is one of the most important in the county, it was settled rather more slowly than several of the others, for various reasons. It was near the Hog Creek Marsh, which for many years furnished a convenient hidingplace for all sorts of wild animals to prey upon the live stock of the pioneers, and it was not near the old Indian camps that naturally attracted the early settlers. Although Indians abounded in the woods, yet they seemed to make their camps along the Scioto and at Grassy Point, so that Liberty township in the extreme northwestern part of Hardin county did not have a great many inhabitants before 1840. It was after that period when the animals were driven out of the Marsh by fire in summer, and when the town of Ada with its Normal School began to attract attention, and the whole country had evidences of civilization that Liberty en- tered upon an era of prosperity which has been the wonder of even her progressive citizens ever since. While there were some families living within the present bounds of the township, and many of their descend- ants still survive, there was a great influx of people just after the pioneer period, and to name them would occupy too much space. The school, the town and the country attraeted an intelligent and pro- gressive class of men and women, and at present the township is noted for its prosperity. Of Ada and the University extended mention is made elsewhere, as of the many advantages of the whole township. Among the people who may be said to belong later than the pioneer period are the following families, with many more who might be named : Anspae, Ahlefeld, Park, Shadley, Stokesbury, Melhorn, Garlinger, Gil- bert, Shanks, Mustard, Tressel, Lehr, Klingler, Asire and Runser.
The township was organized in 1837 and is composed of six seetions of Congress lands. It touches Hancock county and Allen on the north and west and is a fertile, comparatively level tract of fine land, well wooded originally, except the part included in the low marshy lands. Deer, bears, wild cats and smaller animals used to live in the tall, coarse grass along Hog creek and in the swampy lands, but sinee this fertile
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HISTORY OF HARDIN COUNTY
tract has been drained there are fine farms where once the foes of the settler had their hiding places. It was nothing for a pioneer to be aroused from his sleep by the squealing of a pig, and on rushing out to find that his fat porker was being carried off by a hungry bear. Many a pioneer woman has held the lantern, a crude affair of tin punched full of holes, while her husband clubbed coons to death, or with steady aim brought down a robber bear. Often the deer would feed with the cattle in winter when hunger made them tame, and if they were not too much reduced by lack of food to be worth killing, the fam- ily would have venison to vary their diet of salt pork and corn bread.
When George Hackett put up a little water mill to grind corn on Hog creek the Liberty settlers thought the era of prosperity had dawned for them, but very soon he had to discontinue the business. About 1836, Jacob Sapp put up a little horse mill, a great improvement over the hand mills that turned out two or three bushels of meal per day, and the settlers stopped going to Logan and Allen counties to have their corn ground. Huntersville at that time was a thriving little place not far away, and there the farmers went for necessary supplies, and their mail. Few letters were written in those days as the mails were expensive and uncertain-an ordinary letter costing twenty-five cents. Any unwary settler who went back east on horseback to visit or on business scarcely had room for his garments in his saddle bags, as peo- ple beseiged him to carry letters and parcels home for them and save postage. With nothing to sell but skins and a little corn, it is not to be wondered at that letters were few and far between in the new settlements.
Liberty township has many churches at present, but there is no record of any organization existing before 1840. The people who were Presbyterians went to Huntersville, the Disciples of Christ and the Methodists met in cabins and schoolhouses, the members of German churches had their services occasionally in homes or schoolhouses, but the permanent organizations that have resulted in good congregations housed in fine churches came later. The earliest settler in the township, James M. Candler, who came from Virginia in 1829 and to Liberty township in 1832, was a minister in the Christian or Disciple church and was active in organizing churches of this denomination in his own and other pioneer communities. He also assisted in getting up the first school which was taught in a cabin on his farm. The Methodist circuit riders also held services in various cabins, and later organized churches, and at present the town of Ada and the surrounding country are dotted wth houses of all denominations dedicated to the service of God. Among the early school teachers were Roxanna Vincent. John Cooney, Eli Strock, all of whom were paid by subscription since there were no sehool funds at that time.
Liberty township pioneers: 1832, James Marshall Candler and
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HISTORY OF HARDIN COUNTY
family; 1834, John and Elizabeth Shuster; 1835, Eli Pugh, Thomas Ryan, George and Sarah Hackett, and John and Jane Latimer; 1836, John Wilson, Issam and Anna Kinkle, Richard and Rebeeea Johnson, Noah Thorne, David Sleichter, John and Sarah MeElroy, Amariah and Cassander Thorne and Hugh and Susanna MeElroy and family; 1839, Geo. Dougherty and family; 1838, Samuel Wingate; 1836, John and Hezialı McBride; 1838, Daniel and Mary Emerson and William and Catherine Ansley ; 1839, Elijah Wilson and William and Sarah Clappin ; 1838. Nicholas and Charlotte High and family; 1839, Jacob Sapp; 1838, Philip and Mary Hoon and John Hoon; 1839, Robert Hindman and Lewis Long.
Washington township was organized in 1835, and lies in the north- ern part of the county between Jackson and Blanchard. It is six sections long and six wide, and consists for the most part of level, fertile lands. The low, marshy tracts once considered worthless have been thoroughly drained and are now some of the most valuable farms in this sub-division. Of course the Hog Creek Marsh was not drained in pioneer times, nor until long afterward, so that the presence of this great boggy tract was a serious drawback in early times. It furnished a secure hiding place for hundreds of wild animals, that preyed upon the precious livestock of the settlers, and therefore Washington town- ship was not held in such high repute by the first inhabitants of the county as it now is, since the undrained acres have given way to fine, fertile fields.
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