USA > Ohio > Coshocton County > Centennial history of Coshocton County, Ohio, Vol. I > Part 8
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Kline, Julius J.
Bartraim, Charles
Lowry, John
Bartraim, Frederick
McKee, Shakespeare
Brown, Henry
McClain, Thomas
Burns, Samuel
McMichael, Jacob
Burt, Richard W.
Madden, Thomas
Burt, Benjamin
Miller, Cannon
Butler, Robert
Miller, H. W.
Cooper, James
Miller, Samuel
Cressup, Van Orin
Moore, Edward
Day, Lewis
Morrow, Elisha W.
Darnes, John
Morgan, Absalom L.
Deviney, Jacob
Neff, J. Franklin
Dillon, John
O'Harra, Francis W.
Felver, Lyman
Osterhould, D. F.
Fenton, Richard
Parker, Joseph
Fisk, Jonathan
Ross, Absalom P. C.
Foster, Crispen
Sawyer, Joseph
Fulks, James M.
Scott, James
Gardner, Adam B.
Shannon, Thomas
Goodwin, Samuel M.
Shaw, Albert
Griffith, James
Shaw, John
Harbison, Robert
Shaw, Daniel
Hattery, Charles
Smith, Henry
Hazlett, William
Stizer, David
Hoover, Jonas S.
Taylor, William
Hunt, Jacob S.
Van Dusen, Nathaniel
Jennings, Robert
Van Horn, Robert
Johnson, Edward D.
Williams, James H.
Jones, Levi
Woods, William M.
Kitchen, George
Kitchen, Armstead M.
Wright, William Wright, Charles
Going to war by canal boat was not quick business. It took two days to reach Zanesville. There the Coshocton boys boarded a steamer and within a week were camped near Cincinnati. A month after leaving home they were on a New Orleans steamer, equipped
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HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
with arms and ammunition as Company B of the Third Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry. They camped on the memorable battlefield of "Old Hickory" Jackson near New Orleans. A stormy voyage of a week took them to Brazos, Santiago, where they started on the march to the Rio Grande. Three deaths had occurred: George Kitchens, John Darnes and Samuel Miller.
In August the Third Ohio garrisoned the city of Matamoras. In In the fall and winter the Coshocton company lost by sickness: A. J. Darling, William Gardner, Henry Brown, Charles Wright and Joseph Parker. Captain Meredith resigned to return home.
The sunny days of the Mexico February saw our boys at Fort Camargo on the San Juan where the government supplies were kept for General Taylor's army. In March came the order to go to Monterey. Their route lay under the skirmish fire of General Urea's Mexicans. March 16th our troops routed the enemy and gave hot chase as far as Caderaeda. A week later they joined General Taylor's forces and camped on the battlefield of Buena Vista until May, when the regiment was ordered to the gulf. Robert Harbison, another of our Coshocton soldiers, rests in a grave at Mear. His company, mustered out upon the return to New Orleans, had seen a year's serv- ice, and Coshocton welcomed back her sons.
While they were returning home another company, partly recruited from this county and led by James Irvine, a Coshocton lawyer, was on its way to Mexico as Company G of the Fourth Ohio. These troops did garrison duty at Matamoras until ordered in Sep- tember to Vera Cruz which had surrendered to Scott earlier in the year.
At this point the Fourth Ohio was assigned to General Joe Lane's brigade in the division under command of General Robert Patterson. On the march to the City of Mexico the Coshocton volunteers went through the "baptism of fire" at the National Bridge. They came upon Major Lally and his plucky four hundred holding the position against Mexican thousands. The Fourth Ohio, as advance guard, went to the major's assistance. When the Mexicans were driven back it was found that Coshocton boys had been severely wounded.
In an engagement at Huamantla the Fourth Ohio had charge of prisoners, much to the relief of Iturbide. The son of the Mexican emperor, when brought with a troop of prisoners to the rear guard,
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HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
asked Captain Irvine what troops guarded the prisoners. He looked his gratitude when he learned who they were and that he was safe from the vengeance of the Texas rangers whose gallant, daredevil leader, the famous Captain Walker, had fallen that day.
Continuing the march, General Lane's brigade consigned super- fluous baggage to flames at Jalapa, and by forced march hurried to Pueblo, arriving at the crucial moment to rescue from Mexican ven- geance eighteen hundred sick and wounded American soldiers lying in Pueblo hospitals. These had become the object of Santa Ana's hatred in the maddening hour when one after another of Mexico's strongholds had fallen-when in a few minutes six thousand Mex- icans were routed from the Contreras gateway to the capital city- when San Antonio fell-when the citadel of Chapultepec itself was carried by storm and the conquering forces swept into the city. No Mexicans could stand before the tumultous onslaught of the Amer- icans rushing upon batteries and breastworks, and hacking their way through in hand to hand fighting, swinging rifles like clubs and mow- ing down resistance with bayonet and sword. Santa Ana fled in the night and with a force stole upon the Pueblo hospitals to wreak vengeance.
It was then that Lane's troops with the Coshocton boys among them hurled themselves upon Santa Ana. The brigade was in three attacking columns, one headed by the Fourth Ohio. Up the streets of Pueblo they fought their way, driving back the Mexicans who made their last stand in the plaza, the public square in the heart of the town.
The firing, the clashing of swords, the cursing, the groans of the wounded and dying reached the sickbeds in the hospitals where hearts beat high with fever of anxiety. In the plaza, men flung themselves panting against the walls; some toppled over the shrubbery at the fountain, and the water reddened. Santa Ana's force was finally overcome. The struggle left Coshocton boys in the hospitals. When the Fourth Ohio finally marched from Pueblo it was to return home.
JOE SAWYER, LAST MEXICAN WAR SUR- VIVOR IN COSHOCTON COUNTY.
CHAPTER VII.
THE FASTER PACE SET BY THE RAILROAD - LAST OF THE STAGE COACH-COUNTY POLITICS BOIL- ING-MEDILL AND HIS "HUNKER" EDITORIALS- FROM COSHOCTON PUBLISHER TO CHICAGO MIL- LIONAIRE.
It was the time when people here were marveling over stories of the railroad built in the East. The road destined to run through this region was still in a pigeon-hole in a city desk. Life moved leisurely with the canal and the stage coach. No one was in a rush then. James K. Johnston recalls that in the presidential campaign of 1848 the news of Taylor's election was unknown in Coshocton for two weeks.
About the liveliest thing was county politics, and it was boiling. It boiled in the Republican which was then edited by J. Medill who years afterward owned the Chicago Tribune and became a million- aire ten times over.
Mr. Medill called the opposition a party of "hunkers,"", and af- fectionately referred to his esteemed contemporary as "the brazen- faced runt." He denounced the caucus system as rotten, and advo- cated the popular vote, giving to every man an equal voice in selecting the ticket. He was applauded in the county by those who opposed an "invisible purgatory established by the wire pullers about Co- shocton, through which a man was compelled to pass if he would aspire to the honors of a candidate,"[.
Those were days too when a candidate's knowledge of German especially recommended him because of the difficulty, under which Germans labored in transacting business at the courthouse. : There was a courthouse, two stories; high, which supplanted the old tavern arrangement. It rose in 1824, and for half a century was a general meeting place. The bell which rang to pioneer Coshocton is the same that tolls the hours in today's courthouse.
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HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
A considerable part of the county was settled by Germans, par- ticularly the northeastern townships, and they were among the thriftiest, most industrious citizens. Their ministers preached to them in their native language, and their boys and girls studied the German testament in school. The "Pennsylvania Dutch" dialect was spoken; all their thinking was in it; all life outside the schoolroom was discussed in that German dialect, so it could scarcely be otherwise than that generations grew up almost as thoroughly German as those who first came to the county in the early thirties.
In the fifties Coshocton wheat was down to sixty-two cents and flour $4.50 a barrel, but there dwelt in the land a spirit of peace and plenty. Rollicking young blades went forth New Year's nights to shoot a thundering blunderbuss near the window of ye lady fair until she opened the door and welcomed them to the midnight glass and cake. Those were the joyful young days of our grandfathers and grandmothers, when they laughed and drank to the toast:
Corn in the big crib and money in the pocket,
Baby in the cradle and pretty wife to rock it.
The bridging of the Tuscarawas and the Walhonding between Coshocton and Roscoe marked the passing of the picturesque ferry. In time came a curious caravan over the wagon-road across coun- try-the pioneer circus, whose resplendent features even in that prim- itive stage were much like the familiar sight of after days. There, in the grand parade which marked the entree into Coshocton, were the elephants, advertised to stand on their heads: the girl bareback rider in all the stern-faced glory of her "youth, beauty and talent;" the wonderful "Human Fly" who would walk a plank with head hanging down; the festive clowns with donkey and trained zebra; and the free show of tight-wire balancing by Mademoiselle Isabelle. It was dazzling and thrilling-a pulse-quickening change from such amusements as the singing school, the spelling bee, the quilting, the corn husking, the house warming, the shooting match, the fox hunt, and the wax-figure show.
And as the amusement side of life was undergoing a subtle change, the whole scheme of civilization was about to be revolution- ized by the great engine of progress, the railroad. There was to be a new pace, a faster pace set in life. And that was little more than fifty years ago.
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HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
The railroad route straight through the middle of the valley touched Coshocton, and marvelous was the transformation from a trading center around Second Street to the beginning of today's city.
In that time of railroad building is when those scenes were enacted which Robert Louis Stevenson vividly pictures-the roaring camp life springing up at each stage of construction and then dying away again, an epical turmoil conducted by amiable gentlemen in frock coats, with a view to a fortune and a subsequent visit to Paris. And after the line was surveyed, and every foot of grading, cutting and bridge- building had been done through every section, hilly and level, and the first train went shrieking on its way, the speed of the thing excited the breathless wonder of the multitude. Mother Robinson, whose home is with her daughter, Mrs. McCabe, in Walnut Street, was among those that saw the first train here.
Money to help build the road had been raised by the county and the townships along the route, in response to pleasing and persuasive speakers sent through the country by the promoters to interest the farmers. The county took $100,000 of the railroad stock, Lafayette Township $20,000, Tuscarawas $30,000, Franklin $15,000, and Vir- ginia $15,000. To raise the money, bonds were sold bearing seven per cent interest. "This debt," Charles Robinson says, speaking of Virginia Township, "being as a millstone about the neck of the farmers for years. Then land in the hills was valued higher than the bottom land. Land that today on the bottoms near Adams Mills would bring $75 an acre, in 1850 to 1860 was considered valueless. It was covered with drift and frog ponds, a vast amount of clearing was going on, and at every freshet the river became loaded with logs and drift, which was deposited on all low lands. But with time con- ditions greatly change. This waste land has been cleared and in the last decade has become very productive and valuable; and on the other hand the hill land with extensive farming and washing has de- preciated in productiveness and in value. Fifty-five years ago the farmers in the hills paid the bulk of the taxes and hence the bulk of this bonded indebtedness."
The Coshocton holdings in the road were subsequently swallowed in receivership proceedings. The Steubenville & Indiana in course of time became the Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Rail- road, more familiarly the "Panhandle" of the Pennsylvania Lines.
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HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
For years William K. Johnson and later his brother, Joseph K. John- son, served from this county on the board of directors.
The railroad brought Coshocton into direct touch with the in- dustrial centers of America. Busy Main Street presented a sharp contrast to the village roadway of the long ago. The business center had shifted from Second Street toward the railroad. The last of the stage coach was seen.
In a newspaper time-table it was advertised that "The Lightning Express runs through from Coshocton to Columbus in two hours and eighty-five minutes." Those eighty-five minutes must have sounded quicker.
The early railroad days, strangely enough, saw little mining de- velopment. The Coshocton County hills past which the S. & I. spiked its rails had not yet begun to yield their coal riches. As late as 1856 the Coshocton Democrat deplored the lack of attention given to coal development.
That paper then reveled in type that was fringed with whiskers, shrieking about the Age's personal abuse, meanness and slander, and defending Democratic commissioners against charges of extrava- gance. Reporting a slavery debate in a New Castle church the paper said "Farmer Waters of Tiverton and of plain, blunt speech enriched by a Scotch brogue, talked for an hour about the black Republican party. Eli Nichols and his four sons sung out for proofs, and a red- headed skeezic got up and kicked around, making an awful noise, all to confuse the eloquent farmer who made old Eli grunt at every lick. Eli then got up and howled."
The newspapers of that period were marred by a vulgarity that will not be repeated here. As a slight indication, toned down for today's reader, the Democrat said of a speaker at a Canal Lewisville meeting that he made use of the words "constitution" and "consti- tutional" just three hundred and sixty-five times, scratched his head with one hand, and the seat of his pants with the other, and caved in, evidently out of material.
The paper charged ballot-box frauds, declaring that non-resident railroad workers and other transients voted in the county, all of which reminds us that in the frauds and tricks that go to make up the worst form of practical politics, the "good old days" were always the equal of ours politically and often superior.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN STONE, THE OLD HOME OF ELI NICHOLS, ERECTED IN THE FOREST NEAR NEW CASTLE.
CHAPTER VIII.
BREAKING OF OLD PARTY LINES-PASSING OF THE WHIG-BRIEF SUPREMACY OF THE "KNOW-NOTH- INGS"-THE COUNTY TREASURY ROBBERY. - THE CRISIS OF '61.
Changing politics throughout the land had sounded the knell of the Whig in the fifties, but here and there he still held on. This was the case in Coshocton County. The party no longer had its local organ, the Democratic Whig being supplanted by the Republican under Medill. The Whigs were slipping fast when they reached for the last chance thoughtfully held out by the publisher of the Demo- crat, who let them have a column or two in his paper to talk to the people.
The Whigs in the end had been powerless to keep the question of slavery out of politics. All along the Whigs of the North had known that opposition to slavery meant breaking with the Whigs of the South who were for slavery above everything else. The an- nexation of Texas foreshadowed the importance that slavery was soon to assume. With the passing of the Whig, those elements in this county that still avoided the subject of slavery joined a movement which grew out of a secret, oath-bound organization, said to have been called "The Sons of '76," or "The Order of the Star-Spangled Banner."
Members that had not been admitted to the higher degrees were for a while kept in ignorance of the name and purpose of the organ- ization, and their answer of "I don't know" to questions regarding the society gave them the title of "Know-Nothings." The party held secret meetings. It drew voters tired of slavery agitation, and ultimately revealed itself as opposed to foreigners and the Catholic church. What fleeting power it attained in Coshocton County is told in the memoir of Captain B. F. Sells.
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By way of preliminary the captain's brief portrayal of his early years gives an insight into the life of the times: young Coshocton then had little time for play; a round of wood-chopping, corn planting, hoeing, driving cows, picking brush in clearings, raking after the cradle in the harvest field, and getting three months' tuition in school at two dollars. The girls helped pick brush in the clearing, milked and churned, ran the spinning wheel, worked at quilting and sewing, while the mothers managed the loom, making linsey for coats and trousers, and flannel for dresses.
It was after young Sells returned from the Mexican War that the Democrats nominated him for county auditor, and he went from the furniture store to the courthouse. Two years later, 1854, he was renominated.
"By that time," the captain relates, "a new political party, known as the Know-Nothing party, had secretly sprung into existence, and at the election defeated the whole Democratic ticket, not only in Ohio but throughout the country. Our whole county ticket went down in the landslide."
The son of Coshocton's first cabinetmaker went back to the furni- ture shop and undertaking business. Gradually the "Know-Nothing" or American party lost its identity in the general drift of northern Whigs, Free-Soilers, Abolitionists and others toward the new or- ganization rallying round the campaign cry, "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Men and Fremont"-the cradle of the Republican party which was rocked by many a hand in Coshocton County; the party destined thenceforth to oppose the Democratic party that now included the southern Whigs.
In this year, 1856, the Rev. William E. Hunt came to the Presby- terian church in Coshocton. The frame building, almost hidden by the foliage on the Public Square, stood opposite the present Park Hotel, and was the first church building erected here. The parsonage faced it, across the street.
The pastor, witnessing the scenes in the swiftly-moving panorama then just unfolding in Coshocton life, conferred a public service a score of years later by writing his "Historical Collections of Coshoc- ton County." Most of those interesting pages were reproduced in the compilation by N. N. Hill, Jr., for Graham's history of the county. Mr. Hunt's work appeared in Howe's "Historical Collections of
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HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
Ohio" and the "Magazine of Western History." To his record of the county special appreciation is due for data included in the Centennial History.
Annals of the county's achievements may well forego extended reference to criminal records. Murder trials and other court pro- ceedings, while important as news in the day's paper and living in public memory as noted achievements of the local bar, are not within the scope of general history, excepting incidents bearing upon official and political conditions.
On a January day in 1859 the county was startled by the robbery of the treasury. It was after midnight when Hiram Taylor, passing through Court Square, heard a muffled call of "Help!" from the treasurer's office. There was a general alarm, the sheriff and others forced open the door, and came upon Treasurer Ketchum, bound hand and foot and with a gag partly covering his mouth.
To the roomful which hurriedly gathered at the call of the court- house bell he told this story: He had stayed in the office to accom- modate witnesses with their fees before they left for home after a trial that evening. Two strangers came into the office and asked about a delinquent tax. He was examining the books when suddenly a shawl enveloped his head, and he was bound and gagged. About eighteen thousand dollars was taken from the safe.
It was not until years afterward that the real story came out. As Shakespeare hath it ---
Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.
In a country home along Riverside Drive, with a fine lawn and a grove of pines, lived a principal actor in this rather melodramatic episode. James M. Brown had money. Men who had gone to him to borrow told about it to others that needed money. Dire extremity pays dearly. Brown quietly added to his, fortune. Had he chosen to run for office, he might have posed as a benefactor of the com- munity, and found men who paid him well ready to declare no office too good for him.
Though not himself in politics there came a day when a politician turned to him. Samuel Ketchum, county treasurer, had been privately
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HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
speculating and losing. His accounts were heavily overdrawn. He wanted a loan from Brown to tide him over. He got it. While the treasurer put the money into the county strong box with something of relief, Brown carefully folded away a note for eighteen thousand dollars and thought unutterable things.
From time to time the treasurer made payments on the note. Where the money came from was not apparently of particular mo- ment. Brown may have known, or he may have suspected. Nothing in any of his recorded financial transactions ever indicated any ques- tion on that score. Tainted money aroused no delicate compunction. Just so it was money.
Knowing the county treasurer and his affairs as intimately as he did Brown called at intervals for money-and got it from the nervous hand of the treasurer, becoming more nervous with repeated helping from county funds. The strain was beginning to tell on Ketchum. He could not nerve himself to defy the other. Yet to go on meant ruin and worse.
The situation was made acute by the approaching examination of the treasurer's accounts by the commissioners. On the eve of the examination Brown came to the office of the troubled official. There was a way out of the mess, simple and easy: a sham robbery to cover the whole thing.
The treasurer thought it all over. As things were, he knew he stood in the shadow of the penitentiary; that certain exposure stared him in the face tomorrow unless he adopted the expedient that was offered. Before assenting to the plot there was one thing he de- manded: Brown must give back the notes that he held against him, including one secured by the mortgaged home in West Lafayette. But Brown hadn't the paper with him; he would give it all back later, along with a share of the night's loot from the treasury.
And so Ketchum handed over the keys, and Brown bound and gagged him in the most approved burglar style; then carried away every dollar. Following the mysterious robbery people sympathized with the treasurer, and there was much hunting by old sleuth and voung sleuth, but no one looked in the courthouse.
By degrees suspicion was directed toward the man on the river road. He had presented a package of stained and musty currency to a Cadiz bank for redemption. He was seen with unusually large
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HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
rolls of money and told of getting it from Kentucky people, but inquiry revealed none such.
The net was tightening. Action was brought against him. Whether or not he suspected betrayal, he turned on Ketchum with a suit for four thousand dollars which was alleged to be due on a note. Then Ketchum told the story as outlined here, and he and Brown were tried.
The celebrated case was fought two years and carried to the Su- preme Court. Ketchum's attorneys were Voorhees and Campbell, Brown's were Nicholas and James, and the State counsel included Spangler, Dimmock and Sample. It was a decade after the robbery when the prisoners were sentenced to five years. Ketchum's health broke, he was pardoned and came to his home in West Lafayette to die. Brown was pardoned later. His property was sold, but court expenses swallowed the proceeds, and the treasury never got back its own.
Meanwhile the mind and heart of the county knew deeper trouble. The shadow of the black slave was clouding the destiny of men. Fremont had lost, but the cause lived and grew and elected Abraham Lincoln president on the Republican platform against slavery, and for a protective tariff, and condemning threats of secession. The South seceded, and the nation faced the crisis of '61.
CHAPTER IX.
COSHOCTON COUNTY IN THE CIVIL WAR-TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED WHO SERVED THE COUNTRY-HONORS WON ON THE BATTLEFIELD- WOMAN'S PART IN THE STRUGGLE.
Strike-for your altars and your fires; Strike-for the green graves of your sires, God and your native land.
In all the land no hearts responded quicker to this stirring appeal of Fitz-Greene Halleck's lines than did our boys of Coshocton County. Two thousand five hundred strong-that is the impressive showing of troops enlisted from here in defense of the Union. At this writing, 1909, forty-four years since Lee surrendered at Appomattox, there are four hundred of the boys in our county, the last of the two thou- sand five hundred who wore the good old blue.
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