USA > Ohio > Biographical and historical memoirs of the early pioneer settlers of Ohio, with narratives of incidents and occurrences in 1775 > Part 24
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In November following she writes, "I have received yours of October 20th, which was a cordial to me." Speaking of a dear Christian uncle who was on his death-bed, she says, "O, that it were possible I could see him; he could teach me how to live, and show me how to die. O, that my last end may be like his. Surely never were religious privileges so great as those which I now enjoy."
From this time to 1820, a regular correspondence was kept up with her brother Samuel. Her letters are filled with the reflections of a Christian and pious heart, and the most affectionate expressions for her brother Samuel and his family. In May, 1820, after a visit from one of her Marietta acquaintances, she writes : "Mr. Cram tells me that you have taken a few scholars. Does it not interfere with your studies ? It appears to me that clergymen in general, ought to devote more of their time to the cause of Christ: else how can they expect that their preaching will be blessed to the souls committed to their charge?" He, good man, would have been very happy to have given all his time to the work of the gospel; but the smallness of his salary, a mere pittance, and the increasing wants of a growing fam- ily, compelled him to this extra labor, for their support.
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But his time was short, and in about three years after that period he received a summons from his divine Master, to enter into the joy of his Lord.
From 1820 to 1823 the correspondence is continued, and would fill a small volume. They contain evidences of a constant growth in grace, increasing love for her family and all around her, and anxiety for their salvation. During this time many interesting events took place, such as the mar- riage of a beloved daughter, the arrival of her sons to man- hood, and entry into business, in wide and distant parts of the country. "We are all scattered, my dear brother ; but, O, if we can all, through grace in the dear Redeemer, meet at last in heaven, what a mercy! When I think of the sep- aration between yourself, Isaac, and myself, it is a comfort to me that we do meet at a throne of grace."
The epidemic fever which prevailed along the waters of the Ohio in 1822, again visited that region in 1823, with fatal severity. By this visitation Mrs. Gilman lost one of her sons, and also her dearly beloved and venerated brother Samuel, who died in August. Her letter to his widow is Super, 2 full of ardent piety and heavenly consolation, and breathes a depth of affection for the departed, and calm resignation to the divine will, which only the Christian can feel. Its pe- rusal cannot fail to soften the heart of the most obdurate un- believer, and soothe the sorrows of the desponding mourner. It is dated at Cincinnati, November 3d, 1823, where she then was, to attend on her husband in a dangerous illness.
"With a heart filled with anguish, my dear sister, do I now address you. My tears had not ceased to flow for the best of sons, when I was called in Providence to wecp afresh for the dearest and best of brothers. And is my be- loved brother Samuel gone forever? Shall I never more hear his pleasant voice? Never more hear him pray? Never more see him break the bread, bless the cup, and give us all
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to drink? O, no! he has gone forever from our view, and the places which knew him shall know him no more, forever. The loss to me is great; but to you my beloved sister, and the dear fatherless children, is irreparable. Permit me then to tell you, how much we all sympathize with you, on this sorrowful occasion. But for your comfort, remember, that although the affliction is great, your heavenly Father is able to support you, and has said, He would never leave you, nor ever forsake you. He has promised to be the widows' God, and a father to the fatherless. Be grateful to Heaven, that you were blest with his society, comforted with his ad- vice, and consoled by his prayers so many years. You have now, my dear sister, a double part to act, that of a father and mother, to the children committed to your care. For their sakes, sink not under this deep affliction. Spread all your wants and trials before your heavenly Father, who will never lay upon you more than you can bear, and will work all things for good to those who put their trust in him. The Lord will not forsake his dear children, and though He cause grief, yet will He have compassion according to the multi- tude of his mercies; for whom the Lord loveth, He chas- teneth. 'The mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord of hosts.' Take these precious words of your God, my dear sister, to yourself. They belong to you. Live upon them; and may our blessed Redeemer comfort you with the conso- lations of his Holy Spirit. I am extremely anxious to hear the particulars of my dear brother's sickness and death. I want to know every word that passed from his lips. What were his views in the near approach of the king of terrors? Was his mind clear, or did he sink down under the weight of his disease, without feeling his situation and sufferings ?"
In February following, she writes, "I received your
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communication, my dear sister, and thank you kindly for it. But O, my dear Patty, it was not half so particular as I wished. I wanted you to write just as if you were talking with me. I feel very anxious about you, but desire to com- mend you to that merciful Being, who is husband of the widow, and father of the orphan. Look daily to Him, my dear, for comfort under this severe and trying affliction. 1 wish you would begin a letter to me soon; and if you re- collect anything of my brother which you have not told me, add it to the letter from time to time, until you have filled it. Kiss the dear children for their aunt, and tell them never to forget the advice, the prayers, and dying words of their loving father. From your ever affectionate sister, H. Gilman."
Mrs. Robbins was herself sick at the time of her husband's death, and, therefore, could not be so particular in her ac- count of his last moments as Mrs. G. desired.
The foregoing extracts are sufficient to show the relig- ious and social character of this excellent woman.
Before her own death, which took place at New York, in 1836, she was called to mourn the loss of her dear husband and several of her children ; but that God whom she had so faithfully served and trusted in all her life, did not leave her in these trying moments, but was with her and supported her, according to his promise. Like gold tried in a furnace, her Christian graces were purified, and shone brighter and brighter under every new affliction; and she has gone to in- herit that crown prepared for all those who love and obey him.
In person, Mrs. Gilman was of a medium hight, with a handsome, well-formed frame; her manners graceful and very attractive, combined with a dignity that always com- manded respect; face full and round; features of the exactest proportions, with a naturally sweet expression; hair black; eyes dark, and full of intelligence. When
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engaged in animated conversation, her face ana eyes were radiant with meaning, giving an interest to her expressions very striking and pleasing to the beholder. Her voice was full of harmony, while her powers of conversation were un- rivaled; having a volubility and flow of language which few could equal, whether male or female. Her love and care for her husband and children were unbounded, and no sacrifice of personal comfort too great for their happiness.
Her memory is still dear to many who knew her in Mari- etta, and the history of her life and Christian character, are the rightful heritage of that place.
MRS. MARY LAKE.
AMONGST the early pioneers of Marietta, were many excel- lent women. The times of the Revolution tried the temper and spirit of females, as well as the men, and they, by their example and encouragement in the common cause, often accomplished much good for the country. Some showed their patriotic spirit by manufacturing garments for the half- naked soldiers, while others nursed the sick and wounded, soothing the last moments of the dying by their merciful ministrations. The names of deserving females should be preserved with as much care and veneration as those of the men who fought their country's battles. The scripture bio- graphical sketches of Sarah, Deborah, Miriam, Susannah, and many others, may be ranked amongst the most inter- esting of that species of writing.
Mrs. Mary Lake was a native of Bristol, England. Her
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father was a silk-weaver, and her maiden name Mary Bird. She was born in 1742, and about the year 1762 married Archibald Lake, a sea-faring man, and moved to St. Johns, in Newfoundland. Here he followed fishing on the Grand Bank, which, at that day, was a profitable calling, as the strict observance of lent in Catholic Europe caused a great demand for fish. When that place came into the possession of the French, he moved his family to New York, and worked in the ship-yards.
At the period of the American Revolution, he was living in the city, and embraced the cause of liberty. After the disasters of Long Island, when Gen. Washington evacuated the city, the family followed the army into their canton- ments up the North river. The general hospitals being es- tablished, first at Fishkill, and then at New Windsor, she was employed as matron, to superintend the nursing of the sick, and see that they were provided with suitable nourish- ment, beds, &c., and the apartments kept clean. Here, under the direction of the surgeons, she became familiar with all the details of treating the diseased, in fevers, small- pox, and various other ailments, acquiring a tact and confi- dence that remained with her the rest of her life, and was of great use to the poor and destitute sick on the frontiers. The more poverty-stricken was the sick family, the greater was her obligation to wait upon them.
Her meek, quiet spirit was once a little tried by a man in the garrison at Marietta, whose wife had sickened and died, notwithstanding her unremitting care of her. The family had just moved into the country, and was excessively poor, needing all the common necessaries of life to be supplied to them during her sickness, by her neighbors. In examin- ing an old family chest for articles to lay out the dead in a decent manner, Mrs. Lake discovered a large stocking leg, filled with silver dollars, several hundred in number. On
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questioning the man why he feigned such extreme poverty, with all this money in his possession? he replied, quite un- concerned, "O, that is to buy land with."
Her husband was appointed a deputy-commissary to the hospital, and ranged the adjacent country, providing vege- tables, and other necessaries suitable for the sick. It is well known that Gen. Washington often visited the hospitals to examine the condition of the sick and wounded soldiers, en- courage those who were in despair by his voice and kind looks, and inquire into their wants, which were always supplied, so far as he had the power to direct. In these benevolent visits, Mrs. Lake more than once received his personal thanks . in their behalf, for her tender, vigilant, and unremitting care of the sick; an evidence that she richly merited praise; for Washington flattered no one with undeserved commendation.
After the peace, when the hospital was broken up, and ,. army disbanded, the family returned to New York, and her husband resumed his former occupation.
She became pious when quite young, and united with Dr. Rogers' church, one of the oldest in the city, of the Presby- terian order, and at the close of the war it contained but two churches of this denomination. Her early piety and religious feelings were no doubt the secret impulses which supported and urged her on in this work of charity and mercy; for her pay while thus employed was no better than that of. all the others engaged in their country's cause-de- preciated, worthless, continental paper. But love for her divine Master, and charity for the sick and distressed, con- strained her, and she felt it a duty to do all in her power for their relief.
After the war, ship-building was a poor business, and hearing accidentally from Gen. Putnam, of the new colony forming at Marietta, in the rich country of the Ohio, they became attracted by the glowing descriptions published, of
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its advantages and future prospects. Having little to expect where they were, hope pointed them to plenteous and happy days in the west. In 1789, he moved his family, consisting of eight children, to Marietta. Three of the sons, James, Thomas, and Andrew, were young men and able to assist in their support. The spring after their arrival, the small- pox broke out amongst the inhabitants, who were chiefly living in Campus Martius, in such close quarters that it was very difficult to prevent its spreading by contagion. The larger number of the settlers had never gone through with the disease, and were to be inoculated. This was done by the physician, and Mrs. Lake's skill as a nurse was now in full requisition, and was unsparingly applied. Her experi- ence was of great use, even to the surgeons, who were all young men, and had seen but little of this disease except in 'books, in directing the regimen and treatment during its course. Her services on this trying occasion, when several who took it by contagion died, were often spoken of by the inhabitants in after years, as well as at the time, with grati- tude. The kind, benevolent heart and Christian feeling of Mrs. Lake, led her constantly to endeavor to do good to the souls, as well as the bodies, of her fellow-creatures.
Probably one of the first Sunday schools in America was " taught by her in 1791, and continued for several years during the Indian war, at Campus Martius, in Marietta. Having brought up a family herself, and knowing the advantages of early religious instruction, she took compassion on the younger children of the garrison, who were spending their Sabbath afternoons in frivolous amusements, and established a school in the single and only room occupied by the family. After the regular religious exercises of the day by Mr. Story were closed, which consisted of only one service, or half the day, she regularly assembled as many of the children as she could persuade to attend, and taught them the Westminster
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catechism, and lessons from the Bible, for an hour or more. The school usually contained about twenty. She was very kind and affectionate toward them, so that they were fond of assembling and listening to her instructions. Her explana- tions of scripture were so simple and child-like that the smallest of the little ones could understand them, and ren- dered very pleasant by her mild manner of speaking. The accommodations for the children were very rude and simple, consisting only of a few low stools and benches, such an article as a chair being a rarity in the garrison. One of the scholars, then a little boy of four years old, says that one day, being scant of seat, he was placed, by the kind old lady, on the top of a bag of meal that stood leaning against the side of the room. The seed thus charitably sown in faith and hope, was not scattered in vain, as several of her scholars are now prominent members of the church. This school was kept in the lower room of the northeast block-house.
Soon after the peace of 1795, she moved with the family on to a farm, eight miles up the Muskingum.
She died in 1802, aged sixty years.
Her children were all pious, and two of her sons, now very aged men, are reckoned amongst the elders of Israel, adorning that religion instilled into their youthful minds by their pious mother.
REV. DANIEL STORY.
Soon after the organization of the Ohio Company at Bos- ton, in the year 1787, it seems that the enlightened men who directed its concerns, began to think of making arrangements for the support of the gospel, and the instruction of youth in their new colony, about to be established in the western wilderness. Having been and brought up in a land where more attention was paid to the religious, moral, and literary instruction of the people, than at any other spot on the globe, being the country of the Puritans, and themselves the descendants of the Plymouth colonists, they naturally turned their attention to its vast importance to the settle- ment just budding into existence under their care. Accord- ingly a resolution was passed, at a meeting of the directors and agents, on the 7th of March, 1788, at Providence, R. I., for the support of the gospel, and an instructor of youth; in consequence of which, the Rev. Manasseh Cutler, one of the directors, in the course of that year engaged the Rev. Daniel Story, then preaching at Worcester, Mass., to go to the west as a chaplain to the settlement at Marietta.
Mr. Story was born in Boston, in 1755, and graduated at the Dartmouth College, in Hanover, N. H. He was an uncle of the late Judge Story, of Cambridge, Mass.
After a tedious and laborious journey over the Allegheny mountains, he arrived at Marietta, in the spring of 1789, and commenced his ministerial labors. The settlements were just beginning, and situated at various points, a consider- able distance from each other. Nevertheless, he visited them in rotation, in conformity with the arrangement of the di- rectors, by which he was to preach about one-third of the
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time at the settlements of Waterford and Belpre. His first visit to Waterford was in the summer of that year, and as there was no house large enough to contain all the people, he preached under the shadow of a wide-spreading tree, near the mills of Wolf creek, a temple not reared by the hands of man.
During the Indian war, from 1791 to 1795, he preached the larger portion of the time in the northwest block-house of Campus Martius, in Marietta. The upper story in that building was fitted up with benches and a rude, simple desk, so as to accommodate an audience of a hundred and fifty or two hundred persons. It was also used for a school, which was first taught by Maj. Anselm Tupper.
During this period. a committee appointed by the direct- ors, to report on the religious and literary instruction of the youth, resolved that one hundred and eighty dollars be paid from the funds of the company, to aid the new settlements in paying a teacher, with the condition that Marietta sup- port him for one year, Belpre seven months, and Waterford three months. If they complied with this arrangement, that sum was to be divided amongst them in proportion to the time. Near the same period, twenty dollars were appropri- ated to pay Col. Battelle for his services on the Sabbath, already performed at Belpre. These testimonials sufficiently prove the interest the directors of the company felt for the spiritual welfare, as well as the temporal comfort of the colonists.
Mr. Story also preached occasionally at a large room in the upper story of a frame-house in the garrison at the Point, being at the junction of the Muskingum with the Ohio on the left bank ; Fort Harmer being on the right bank. At periods when the Indians were quiet, he visited and preached at the settlements of Belpre and Waterford, fif- teen and twenty miles from Marietta. These pastoral visits
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were made by water, in a log canoe, propelled by the stout arms and willing hearts of the pioneers. There were no roads at that day, by which he could travel by land, and be- side there was less danger in this mode, than by the obscure paths of the hunters.
In the year 1796 he united and established a Congrega- tional church, composed of members residing in Marietta, Belpre, Waterford, and Vienna in Virginia. In 1797 he vis- ited his native state, and remained there until he received a call to the pastoral charge of the church he had collected in the wilderness. He was ordained on the 15th of August, 1797, in Danvers, Mass., there being no clergyman to per- form that office on the west side of the mountains, to the care of the church in Marietta and vicinity. It was com- posed of thirty-two members, nine of whom were officers of the Revolution. The ordination sermon was preached by Rev. Manasseh Cutler, and printed at the time, a few copies of which are yet extant. This relation continued be- tween Mr. Story and the church until the 15th of March, 1804, when he was dismissed at his own request, his health being too much impaired for the performances of a pastor any longer. He died the 30th of December following.
After the Marietta Academy was built in 1797, public wor- ship was held in that edifice, it being constructed and so finished as to answer for that purpose.
Mr. Story was in the ministry for some time before he came to Marietta, and when selected by Dr. Cutler, the choice was much approved by those who knew him. In coming to Marietta, then a wilderness, he sacrificed his in- terest and his comfort; but knowing the necessities of the people, he was willing to part with many things for their good and the cause of his divine Master. What little wealth he possessed was invested in new lands before coming out, with an expectation of a reasonable support from the Ohio
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Company, until the rents of the lands set apart for the sup- port of the gospel should be available; but this was pre- vented by the Indian war, and no money was raised from that source until the year 1800. The inhabitants were gen- erally much impoverished from the same cause, and most probably his receipts for preaching from 1789 to 1797, could not have paid for his board and clothing. He was obliged to draw upon his former earnings, by the sale of some of his lands. However, the hospitality of one or two kind Christian friends, who gave him a welcome seat at their ta- bles during a part of this period, relieved him from some of his difficulties. At his death, the proceeds from the sale of his remaining lands were insufficient to discharge the debts incurred while laboring in the new settlements; so that, like a faithful servant, he spent not only his life, but all his substance in the service of the cause to which he was devoted.
In person he was rather tall and slender; quick and active in his movements ; manners easy, with a pleasant address ; cheerful and animated in conversation; and always a wel- come guest in the families he visited. After the war he fre- quently went out to the new settlers, and sometimes spent a week at their houses, in the most familiar and pleasant intercourse. His sermons were practical; logically and me- thodically written after the manner of that day; and were said, in matter and manner, to be fully equal to those of the best preachers in New England. In prayer he was greatly gifted, both in diversity of subject, propriety and fervency, as well as in beauty of language. He was never married, but lived a single life after the manner and advice of St. Paul. Placed as he was, in the midst of a people trembling for their lives, and filled with anxiety for the support of their families, in the midst of the careless habits and dissolute manners of the soldiery, it is not to be expected that much
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could be done, by a humble minister of the gospel, in ad- vancing the spiritual condition of the people; nevertheless, he did what he could for the support of the cause in which he was engaged, and his name is still held in grateful re- membrance, by the few living remnants of the first settlers of Marietta
DR. JABEZ TRUE.
DR. JABEZ TRUE was born in Hampstead, N. H., in the year 1760. His father was the Rev. Henry True, a native of Salisbury, Mass., and was for many years the pastor of a church in the former place. When a boy he was a student at the old Dammer Academy, and completed his education at Cambridge University. In 1752, he was settled in the ministry after the Puritan order. In the French war he served as the chaplain of a brigade of the colonial troops at Ticonderoga and Fort Edward. He was a fine scholar, of sound judgment and exemplary piety, "making Revela- tion his guide, and Reason its companion," as is inscribed on his tombstone.
It was the custom of that day, before many high schools or academies were founded, for the clergymen of New Eng- land to fit young men for college. Mr. True had a class of this kind before the war of the Revolution, in which was his son Jabez. He read a competent share of the classics to pre- pare him for the study of medicine, which, in due time, he pursued under the instruction of Dr. Flagg, of Hampstead,
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an eccentric man, but eminent in his profession, and highly esteemed by his friends. He completed his studies some- time after the commencement of hostilities between the colonies and the mother country, when feeling the spirit of resistance strong upon him, he engaged in the war as a surgeon on board a privateer-ship from Newburyport, a small seaport in the northeast corner of Massachusetts, dis- tant about twelve miles from his home, and sailed for Europe. After a short cruise and limited number of captures, the pri- vateer was wrecked on the coast of Holland, thus abruptly terminating his hopes of a fortune.
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