USA > Ohio > Biographical and historical memoirs of the early pioneer settlers of Ohio, with narratives of incidents and occurrences in 1775 > Part 29
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In this wide-spread distress, a general clamor arose against the merchants, and against the courts ; but more especially against the lawyers who executed the decrees of the courts, in collecting the debts due to the more wealthy portion of the people. Private contracts, as early as 1782, had been made to give place to the payment of public taxes, from an idea
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that the scarcity of specie did not admit of the payment of both. The former, therefore, were made payable in other property than money, by an act called "the Tender act." By this, executions issued for individual demands, might be satisfied by neat cattle and other personal property, on an appraisement by impartial men. This only suspended the payment of debts; as many would not collect under it, but waited for its expiration, in a year from its origin. It was the first signal for hostilities between creditors and debtors, the rich and the poor, the few and the many.
With such high-wrought notions of freedom, in a people just escaped from the fetters of the mother country, it was a difficult matter for their rulers to make laws that satisfied them. They, therefore, commenced holding conventions of the disaffected, in which they censured the conduct of their public officers. They voted the senate and the judicial courts to be grievances, and called for a revision of the constitution, which they had so lately formed, and was con- sidered one of the best in the Union. Advantage was taken of these commotions to clamor against lawyers, and in their public addresses to say, that this class ought to be abolished, and none of them returned as representatives in the General Court for 1786. So far was this principle carried, that in the House of that year a bill was passed, "to admit all per- sons of a moral character into the practice of the law, be- fore the judicial courts;" also to fix their fees, and oblige them to take an oath, previous to their pleading, not to re- ceive more than the lawful fees, of their clients. When the bill came to the Senate, they laid it over, for examination, to the next Assembly. As this body had continued to act with wisdom and dignity, opposed to the wild, Jacobin princi- ples of the disaffected people, they, at a convention of dele- gates from fifty towns in the county of Hampshire, held at Hatfield, on the 22d of August, published a statement of 25
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their grievances in twenty articles; the first of which was " the existence of the Senate," as if this body was one cause of their troubles ; fifth, "the existence of the Courts of Com- mon Pleas and General Sessions of the Peace;" so that every man might do what was right in his own eyes. In the eighteenth they voted that their representatives be instructed to use their influence in the next General Court, to emit paper-money, subject to a depreciation, making it a tender in all payments, equal to silver and gold, to be issued in order to call in the state securities; thinking, no doubt, that an abundance of paper-money would relieve all their embarrassments. The state of Rhode Island was then try- ing this experiment, and its results only added to their trou- bles instead of relieving them.
The last of August, a body of more than a thousand of these misguided people, led on by designing demagogues, assembled at Northampton, took possession of the court- house, and prevented the sitting of the court. The same thing was attempted at Worcester, and the courts adjourned without doing any business. Amidst these scenes of com- motion and misrule, the inhabitants of Boston and several of the adjacent counties remained firm and true to their government, constitution, and laws; supporting their excel- lent governor, Mr. Bowdoin, in all necessary measures for the public weal, and advancing money from their private resources, when the time came for calling out an armed force in aid of the laws.
A similar effort was made to put down the court at Springfield, by a body of men under Daniel Shays, but it was prevented by an assembly of six hundred well armed citizens, from the most respectable and influential inhabit- ants of the county of Hampshire, who took possession of the court-house, and protected the judges in their official duties, so that, although this was the stronghold of the
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insurrection, there was yet patriotism enough amongst them to save from utter ruin the forms of civil society.
The General Court met at Boston in October, and finding that the opposition to the courts of law, and the necessary restraints of government were increasing, rather than di- minishing, they authorized the governor to call out the militia for their protection. Accordingly, four thousand four hundred men were assembled and put under the command of Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, who marched to Worcester and protected the sitting of the court. Gen. Shepherd also col- lected nine hundred of the militia at Springfield, where was the arsenal of the state, and principal deposit of arms. On the 25th of January, Shays, with eleven hundred men, well armed, attempted to drive Gen. Shepherd from the town, but was defeated without any serious attack, by discharging one round of artillery amongst the insurgents, by which three men were killed and one badly wounded. Well know- ing the badness of their cause, the main body broke and fled. They were pursued by the state troops a short dis- tance, without overtaking them, and took up their quarters in the town of Hadley, from the inclemency of the weather, being in the midst of a severe winter. A company of men from Brookfield, amongst which was Capt. Stone, vol- unteered in putting down this rebellion, in which was en- gaged his brother Francis Stone, and some of the connections of his wife. "The morning after the arrival of the army at Hadley, information was received that a small number of Gen. Shepherd's men had been captured at Southamp- ton, and that the enemy's party still continued there. The Brookfield volunteers, consisting of fifty men, commanded by Col. Baldwin, were sent in sleighs with one hundred horse, under Col. Crafts, to pursue them. They were soon found to consist of eighty men with ten sleighs, and at twelve o'clock the same night, were overtaken at Middlefield.
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They had quartered themselves in separate places, and about one-half of them, with one Luddington, their cap- tain, being lodged in a house together, were first sur- rounded. It was a singular circumstance, that among the government's volunteers happened to be Gen. Tupper, who had lately commanded a continental regiment, in which Luddington had served as corporal. The general, ignorant of the character of his enemy, summoned the party to sur- render. How astonished was the corporal at receiving the summons in a voice to which he had never dared to refuse obedience! A momentary explanation took place, which but hightened the general's commands. Resistance was no longer made, the doors were opened, and a surrender was agreed upon. By this time the rest of the party had paraded under arms, at the distance of two hundred yards, where they were met by a number of men prepared for their re- ception. Both sides were on the point of firing, but upon an artful representation of the strength of the government's troops, the insurgents laid down their arms, and fifty-nine prisoners, with nine sleigh loads of provisions, fell into the hands of the conquerors, who returned to the army on the day following."*
The insurgents under Shays having taken a strong posi- tion on the hills of Pelham, were summoned by Gen. Lincoln to lay down their arms, and subscribe the oath of allegiance to the state, or he should be obliged to attack them and ap- prehend their leaders, thus occasioning much bloodshed. To this they replied that they were willing to disband, but could not until they heard from the General Court on the matter, to which body they had sent a messenger with a petition.
* Minot's History of the Rebellion.
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"On the next day three of the insurgent leaders came to head-quarters with the following letter :
' THE HONORABLE GEN. LINCOLN: SIR : As the officers of the people, now convened in defense of their rights and privi- leges, have sent a petition to the General Court, for the sole purpose of accommodating our present unhappy affairs, we justly expect that hostilities may cease on both sides until we have a return from our Legislature. Your honor will, therefore, be pleased to give us an answer.
Per order of the committee for reconciliation.
FRANCIS STONE, chairman, DANIEL SHAYS, captain, ADAM WHEELER.
Pelham, January 31st, 1787.'"*
To this communication, Lincoln returned a decided nega- tive. The Legislature met on the 3d of February, and de- clared the commonwealth in a state of rebellion, approved the governor's doings, and proceeded in earnest to put down the insurrection. The insurgents did not wait for the return of their messenger from Boston, but on the 3d of February, left the hills and marched to Pelham, where provisions were more plenty. They were pursued by Lincoln, through a tremendous snow-storm and excessive cold, to Petersham, a distance of thirty miles without halting, a march unequaled in the American annals. About one hundred and fifty were taken prisoners, and the rest dispersed over the country, some to their own homes, but the leaders and the most vio- lent of their followers, fled from the state into New York and Vermont.
In both these states they found many abettors, and during the following spring, occasionally made inroads into the
* Minot's History of the Rebellion.
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commonwealth for plunder and the capture of persons par- ticularly obnoxious to them. It was late in the year before order was entirely restored in the disaffected portions of the state. The leniency of the government finally pardoned nearly or quite all who were concerned in the rebellion, and thus ended one of the most dangerous and singular insur- rections that ever happened amongst a free people.
On the formation of the Ohio Company, Capt. Stone sold his farm in Brookfield, and invested the proceeds in two shares of the Ohio Company lands, being about two thou- sand acres. To this he was doubtless the more readily in- duced from the ill conduct of several of his near connections in the late insurrection, and that he might still be favored with the society of such men as Gen. Putnam, Tupper and Goodale, with whom he had been so long and so intimately associated. In the fall of 1788, he visited Marietta and made preparations for the reception of his family. On the 4th of July, 1789, he left Brookfield with a wagon drawn by four oxen, containing his household goods and three chil- dren. Two cows were driven on ahead, while his wife traveled the whole distance on horseback to Simrel's ferry, the western rendezvous for emigrants to Marietta. At Buf- falo, or Charleston, he bartered one yoke of the oxen for provisions to support his family until he could raise a crop himself. He reached Belpre the 10th of December, and put up a log-cabin on his lot, drawn the winter before, making the floors and doors from the planks of the boat in which he descended the river. His farm lay in the wide bottom, opposite and a little below the mouth of the Little Kenawha, and is now in the possession of his son, Col. John Stone. In the Indian war he moved his family into Farmers' castle, and was one of the most active and efficient de- fenders of that garrison. In the spring of 1793, he, with several others, erected a palisade and several block-houses
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on his own farm, and remained there until the peace of 1795. In 1792, he was appointed treasurer of the county of Wash- ington, by Winthrop Sargent, then acting as governor of the Northwest Territory. After the peace he was employed by the Ohio Company, with Jeffery Mathewson, to complete the surveys of their lands, which was done in a masterly manner.
He died after a short illness, on the 25th of March, 1801, aged fifty years.
Capt. Stone was a man with a well-formed, agreeable person, gentlemanly manners and social habits. By his cotemporaries he was highly esteemed, and his early death greatly lamented. A number of his children and grand- children are living in Ohio, holding respectable stations in society.
COL. ROBERT OLIVER.
COL. ROBERT OLIVER was born in the vicinity of Boston, in the year 1738. His parents were emigrants from the north of Ireland. When he was quite young they moved to the town of Barre, Worcester county, Mass., and purchased a farm. His early years were devoted to agriculture, which gave him a hardy, vigorous frame, fitted to meet and sustain the fatigues of the camp. His education was good for that period, em- bracing reading, writing, and arithmetic, which, added to his naturally strong mind, prepared him for transacting any ordinary public business, as well as his own private affairs, in a creditable manner.
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About the year 1775, he married Miss Molly Walker, by whom he had a large family of children.
At the commencement of the Revolution, he entered the service as a lieutenant, marching with a company of minute men to Cambridge, where he was advanced to a captaincy by the provincial government, in the third Massachusetts regiment. In 1777, he was commissioned as a major, and in 1779, promoted to a lieutenant-colonel of the tenth regi- ment, and at the close of the war a colonel by brevet. In the campaign which humbled Gen. Burgoyne, he was en- gaged in all the principal battles, and especially in storming the German lines on the 7th of October, under Col. Rufus Putnam, to whose regiment he was attached. He was cele- brated as a disciplinarian, and for a time acted as adjutant- general of the northern division of the army. Baron Steuben highly applauded his superior tact in the discipline and evolutions of the troops.
At the close of the war, having served through the whole period, he returned to his family and purchased a farm in the town of Conway, Mass. Nearly eight years of the most valuable period of his life were spent in the service of his country, for which he received payment in final settlement securities, which, in the market, were worth about ten cents on the dollar.
In the fall and winter of 1786-7, true to the cause of liberty and the country he had assisted in gaining its inde- pendence, he volunteered in suppressing the insurrection in Massachusetts, under Shays and others, which came nigh overturning the government, then barely established, in tu- mult and ruin.
The Ohio Company was soon after formed, and he invested the remains of his property in two shares of their land, and moved his family to Marietta in the summer of 1788, where he was united with many of his old friends and companions
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in arms. In 1789, in company with Maj. Haffield White and Capt. John Dodge, both Massachusetts men, he erected a saw and grist-mill on Wolf creek, in Waterford, about a mile from its mouth. These were the first mills ever built in the present state of Ohio. The situation is very pictur- esque and beautiful, with solid limestone banks, overhanging cedar trees, and other evergreens. There is a considerable rapid, or falls, at this spot, making a suitable site for a mill. The drawing which accompanies this memoir, is a good rep- resentation of the mills and scenery, with the log-cabins of the three proprietors as built in 1789.
In 1790, after the death of Gen. Parsons, he was elected a director of the Ohio Company, and was a very active and efficient member of that important board. In forming the settlements at Wolf creek and Waterford, he was one of the principal leaders, giving energy and zeal to these frontier establishments, and by his military knowledge, directing the best models for their works of defense against the attacks of the hostile tribes. So formidable and strong was the post at Waterford, that the Indians did not venture a serious attack upon it, but only killed their cattle and such of the inhabitants as they found outside of its walls. After the destruction of the Big Bottom settlement, in January, 1791, and the war was fairly commenced, he removed his family to Marietta, where his services were constantly needed as a director of the company ; who, for the first year or two of the war, provided the means, and were at all the expense of defending the country, so that their continual watchful- ness was as much required as that of the civil government of a province in the time of actual war or invasion. Some estimate may be formed of their duties, when it is stated that they expended upwards of eleven thousand dollars of the company funds in providing for and protecting the colonists.
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ROBERT OLIVER.
In the formation of the first territorial Legislature in 1798, he was elected a representative from Washington county. Out of the assembled representatives, the gover- nor selected five men who were to act as a legislative council, performing the duties of a Senate. Col. Oliver was one of this number, and in company with Jacob Burnet, James Findlay, H. Vanderburg, and David Vance, was commissioned by John Adams, then president of the United States, on the 4th day of March, 1799. In 1800 he was elected president of the council, and continued in that post until the formation of the state government in 1803. When the standing and character of the men who constituted the council is considered, it was no ordinary honor to be elected as their presiding officer.
Col. Oliver possessed a clear, discriminating mind, and was truly dignified in his manners; had a perfect command of his passions, and was very amiable in his intercourse with his associates. He had a good fund of anecdote, which he related in a very interesting manner.
After the close of the Indian war, he returned to his farm at the mills, where he resided until his death. He was ap- pointed by Gov. St. Clair lieutenant-colonel of the first regiment of territorial militia, and colonel of the second regiment, in 1795. He also appointed him one of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas in the same year, and made a very efficient magistrate. He was a man of great activity and usefulness, both as a civil and military officer. Soon after the territory became a state, the men whose eyes had grown dim, and their heads gray in their country's service, were "laid upon the shelf," if they differed in political opinion from the ruling powers. Col. Oliver was a disciple of Washington, and followed his political pre- cepts ; therefore he received no more favors from the govern- ment. The inhabitants of his township, however, thought
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him still a worthy man, and elected him a justice of the peace, and kept him in office as long as he lived.
In person, he was about five feet ten inches high, stoutly built, and commanding appearance; face full, mild, and bland, with a pleasant expression when in conversation with his friends, but severe and terrible to the vicious and undeserving. His head was finely formed, but early be- came bald. Once, at Chillicothe, in a convivial party, one of the company, an influential and noted man of that day, being rather full of wine, laid his hand familiarly and some- what roughly on the bald head of the colonel. With one of his stern looks he thus addressed him: "General, you must not lay your hand on my bald pate, which has many times stood where you would not dare to show your face."
In early life he became a professor of religion, and although his calling exposed him to the dissolute habits of an army, and was not calculated to promote his growth in grace, yet he was always a consistent follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, and at the formation of the first Congregational church in Marietta, in 1796, he was a member, and re- mained an ornament to the profession of a Christian.
He died in May, 1810, aged seventy-two years.
The impress of his character still remains on the early settlement he formed, and it is hoped will long remain for their best good.
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MAJ. HAFFIELD WHITE.
MAJ. HAFFIELD WHITE was a native of Danvers, Mass. At the commencement of the war, on the 19th of April, 1775, by the attack of the British troops on the militia, at Lexington, and the destruction of the stores at Concord, he was an officer in a company of minute men. The news of that attack was spread through the country with great rap- idity ; and men who in the morning were thirty miles from the scene of action, were on the ground before night, in time to harass the jaded and retreating Britons, from their first inroad into the possessions of the Massachusetts yeomanry. The result of that day taught them to be cautious in ven- turing far beyond the cover of the guns of their navy, into the land of these modern Spartans. The alarm reached Danvers in time for Lieut. White, with the company of minute men, to reach the flanks of the flying enemy, and, from behind the stone walls, throw several destructive fires into the ranks of the British. His own men suffered con- siderably ; losing eight killed out of the company. Soon after this affair he was commissioned as a captain, and raised a company of men, which was among the most effi- cient and active in the service, especially at the crossing of the Delaware, and battle of Trenton, in December, 1761; many of them being sailors, and very useful in manning the boats to cross the army. He was with Gen. St. Clair in the retreat from Ticonderoga; and under Col. Francis fought manfully at the battle of Hubbardstown; thereby checking the pursuit of the British troops, and enabling the Ameri- cans to reach Stillwater, and form the nucleus of that army , which soon after conquered Burgoyne, and turned the tide
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of conquest against our foes. He was engaged in many of the battles that preceded this overthrow, and thus shared in the glories and triumphs of Saratoga, on the 13th of Octo- tober, 1777. At the time of the retreat from Ticonderoga, he was paymaster of the regiment, and in that disastrous affair lost a large sum of money, which was not allowed by the United States. When Col. Pickering took charge of the commissary department of the army, being acquainted with the integrity and activity of Capt. White, living in the same town, he was selected for one of his assistants, and remained in that branch of the service until the close of the war, when he was made a major.
At the formation of the Ohio Company, he became one of the proprietors, and was appointed, by the directors, com- missary and conductor of their first detachment of pioneers, which left Danvers in December, 1787. On their arrival at Marietta, he was continued as their steward for the first year; after which that office was no longer needed. His son Pelatiah was one of the forty-eight who landed from the May-flower at Marietta, on the 7th of April. In 1789 he engaged with Col. Oliver and Capt. Dodge, in erecting mills on Wolf creek. When the war with the Indians commenced, he left the mills, as they were much exposed to hostile at- tacks, and came to Marietta, where he remained until after the peace of 1795. He then resumed his possessions, a farm, near the mills, and lived with his son until his death.
In person Maj. White was below the medium size, but thickset and robust; very active, and brisk in his motions ; prompt to execute any business on hand in the most expe- ditious manner; complexion florid, and sanguine tempera- ment. He was a brave soldier, and a very useful and industrious citizen.
DEAN TYLER.
DEAN TYLER, EsQ., was a native of Haverhill, Mass., and liberally educated at one of the New England colleges. He possessed a brilliant mind, an agreeable person, and refined manners.
In early life he formed an attachment to a young lady, who returned it with equal affection. But the wayward course of lovers sometimes crosses all their purposes; a misunderstanding occurred, which induced Tyler to embark for Europe, to flee from that which had really become necessary to his happiness. He took passage in a letter of marque for Bourdeaux. On the voyage out and back, he met with some fighting, some storms, and had sev- eral narrow escapes. These incidents probably helped to cure him of his jealousy, or whatever it was that caused him to go on this adventure. He returned with a full de- termination to confess his fault, and unite himself with her whom he had so abruptly parted from. But it was too late; he had broken the heart of his loved one, and the first news he heard on landing, was, that she was dead-had died of a . broken heart. The shock entirely overcame him; he was attacked with a violent illness, followed with delirium, and narrowly escaped that death he would willingly have suf- fered, could it atone for his error. His recovery was slow and tedious ; and it was a long time before he could attend to any business.
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