USA > Ohio > Jefferson County > Steubenville > Century History of Steubenville and Jefferson County, Ohio and Representative Citizens, 20th > Part 3
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83
January 9.94
July .3.89
February .2.75
August .3.97
March .3.38
September .3.48
April
.3.53
October .3.18
May .3.85
.4.01
December .3.34
Annual menn for 3; years
41.48
The enrly settlers of the county found not only the valleys but tops of the hills covered with an almost unbroken forest, including white and block oak, sugar and other maples, beech, poplar, black and white walnut or butternut, hickory, chest- unt, locust, gum, honeysuckle, sassafras. mulberry, wild cherry, will cucumber, mad other varieties too numerons to mention, in fact, n complete list would fill a volmine. Of course, there were the native berries of various kinds, the pawpaw, wild grapes, ete., while the woods abounded with game. the favorite being the deer and wild turkey. while the rivers and all the smaller strenms abounded in fish. Here and there were Indian villages where maize or Indian corn wis cultivated, with other vegetables und a little tobuero, although for reasons herenfter given there was little of this in Jefferson County. It was n primeval wil- derness, the paradise of the hunter and the trupper.
The hilltop furms of Jefferson County average about 1,300 feet above tidewater. The highest recorded elevation in the comty, and the highest in the state with one exception, necording to the Ohio Geo- logical Survey, is about one mile east of Bloomfield, in Wayne Township. It meas- ures 1.434 feet above the sea, or 861 feet above Lake Erie, which is 573 feet above mean tide. What has been taken as low water mark in the Ohio River at Stenben- ville is 64016 feet above mean tide, or 671% feet above the lake. This should probably be reduced several inches since the record- breaking drouth of 1908, but the height is sufficient to demonstrate the absurdity of
November 3,16
June
27
AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS
a scheme once suggested of feeding the waters of the upper Ohio by means of a drainage canal from Lake Erie. A few years since a force from the United States Geological Survey ascertained that the sur- face of the ground at the southeast corner of the court house in Steubenville was 715 feet above the sea, and inserted a plate in the foundation of the building with the following inscription.
Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis.
Steubenville 728
Mingo 667
Gould's 670
Tunnel No. 1 (old) 833
Smithfield Station 773
Tunnel No. 2 (old) 943
Reed's Mill 811
Skelleys (Creswell)
841
Tunnel No. 3 (old) 1063
Bloomfield Station 901
Unionport 946
County Line 991
E S GEOL Fine for disturbing this STA Ohio
GICA
UNITED
$ 250 Fin
Elevation
mark
Above
Sea
SURVEY
715
Feet
Datum
Steuben- ville
B.M.
Other elevations at railroad stations in the county are given in part as follows, No. 4, about a mile west of Cadiz Junction, the tracks having been possibly raised a, in Harrison, the measurements showing few inches since these figures were ascer- tained : 1,178 feet. This is a divide, separating the headwaters of Cross Creek and other Cleveland & Pittsburgh R. R. streams flowing eastwardly across Jeffer- Hammondsville 688 Yellow Creek (Linton) 694 Empire 694 son County into the Ohio from the Conot- Toronto 698 ton and other tributaries flowing west and southwest into the Tuscarawas and Steubenville $63 Muskingum.
Portland .. 663
The summit of this line is at old tunnel
Dlg ized by Google
CHAPTER II
PRIMEVAL MAN
Leaves an Interesting Relic-The Mound Builders and Early Indian Artists.
As an introduction to a paper by G. Frederick Wright, the well-known geolo- gist, who has given special study to glacial conditions in Ohio and elsewhere, read be- fore the Ohio State Archeological and His- torical Society on February 18, 1886, the author said: "As yet no implements have been found in Ohio which can certainly be aseribed to the glacial age," Such relies had been discovered in the valley of the Somme, near Abbeville, in northern France, nearly fifty years before, and some ten or twelve years previons others had been found near Trenton, N. J., on the Delaware River, thus demonstrating that if primeval man originated in what is called the Old World he was not confined there. But if mun could and did exist in the Delaware Valley at that early date, why not in the Ohio Valley? If his migra- tion was from west to east, which, however. is only a theory, he should have been here first. Although Prof. Wright does not seem to have heard of it until later, an im- plement chipped from a pebble of black fint had been found eight feet below the surface at Madisonville, Ohio, eleven miles northeast of Cincinnati, in a depression connecting the Little Miami River with Mil! Creek. about five miles back from the Ohio River. It will be remembered that this section was covered by the glacier. An- other similar implement, which was found shortly after at Loveland, on the Little Miami, in the same neighborhood, induced Prof. Wright to visit the locality, with the
result of confirming the authenticity of the find. Subsequently. in 1887, another was discovered. These instruments are rudely chipped pointed stone weapons from two to six inches long, and one to four and one- half inches wide, roughly made predeces- sors of later flints and arrow heads.
The immediate results of these und per- haps one or two other isolated finds were rather to excite controversy than to settle the question of human existence in the Ohio Valley during the glacial or pregla- einl period. It remained for a Jefferson Connty scientist to make a further discov. ery which practically closed the discussion hy conclusive evidence. Mr. Sam Inston, to whose labors and discoveries we have referred on preceding pages, is entitled to this credit, Ilis discovery consisted of a chipped chert or flinty implement one and three-quarter inches long and three-qnar- ters of an inch wide in its broader part. with a projecting shoulder on one edge. giving to it the charneter of what in abo- riginal usage would be called a knife. The object was found a mile and a half below Brilliant, and about eight and one-half miles below Steubenville. Prof. Wright. in an article published in the Popular Sei- ence Monthly for December, 1595, gives the following account of this discovery, writ- ten by Mr. Huston himself:
** Steubenville. O., August 13, 1895. "Prof. G. F. Wright.
" My Dear Sir: Below Brilliant, Jefferson County, Ohio, is a very fine remnant of high level river terrace.
28
Digmed by Google
29
AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS
. Its length is two miles and maximum width over a quarter of a mile. On the West Virginia side of The Ohio River at that point the bluffs rise to a height of over 300 feet, directly from the water. at ordinary levels. On The Ohio side there is a flood plain from fifty to 100 yards wide and from twenty to thirty feet above low water. Along the west side of this flood plain is loented the river divi. sion of the Cleveland & Pittsburgh Railroad, along the foot of the high level terrace. This terrace ranges from sixty five to eighty feet above low water. Exea- vations in this terrace to a depth of forty-three feet show it to consist of interstratified sand, fine gravel, and clay in small quantities, all, with rare exceptions. cross-bedded. Coarse gravel is found at the top ot the terrace; bul, except for two or Three feet on top. only rare pieces of gravel occur of more than one half eubie inch in size. Two small ravines eut through the terrace at Brilliant. A mile below these, Block House Run, and a mile and a half below. Riddle's Run, cut through the terrace down to the flood plain of the river. Otherwise the surface of the terrace is n plnin. A half mile of turnpike was built on it, in which the original surface varied less than two feet. Indian mounds and intrusive burials ocenr nl enmorous places on the Terrace, but the stratification und cross- bedding of The sands and gravels of it are such that intrusive burials or excavations can not be made with. out leaving evidence so distinet as to be readily seen, and at the face of an exeavation a slip or talos is easily detected. Over three years ago a sandpit was worked in this lerrnee at its southern extremity below Riddle's Run. While the excavation was being made, and at a noon hour. I found a plainly marked but rude flint implement imbedded in the freshly exposed face of the stratified sand and gravel, under about eight feet of andisturbed cross-bedded stratification, only the point of the implement showing on the perpendicular fuce of the exenvation. The condition of the straci- feation in nll of the superinenmbent eight feet, which WIR closely examined by me, was such us to convince me that the implement was not intrusive, but had been deposited with the remainder of the material of the terrace. The condition of the face of the excavation nhove the find is fairly, but not as clearly as would be desired, shown by the photograph taken by Mr. Doyle, of the now abandoned samlpit. where the find was mide, where slije and tulos cover the face. ** Sam Huston, **
Prof. Wright, with Mr. Huston, F. C. MeClave and the writer, visited the place where the implement was found and made a careful study of the site and surround- ings, which fully corroborated Mr. Hus- ton's descriptions, which were preserved by Doyle's photographs. During that visit Prof. Wright also made an examina- tion of the high level deposits, and in the article above referred to gives the follow- ing as the result of his investigations:
"As shown in the accompanying illus- tration, the Ohio River occupies a narrow valley which might almost be called u
garge, which it has eroded in the nearly parallel struta of the coal measures to an average depth of about 300 feet. This gorge is continnous from Louisville. in Kentucky, to the headwaters of the Alle- gheny and Monongahela Rivers, a distance of more than 1,200 miles. All the tribn- taries of the river occupy gorges of sim- ilar depth. This erosion has evidently taken place with considerable rapidity con- segment npon an elevation of the continent at the close of the Tertiary period, giving a steep gradient to streams which, during the most of the Tertiary period, had been very sluggish. The evidence of this is seen in the narrowness of the gorge and in the gentleness of the slope above the 300-foot line.
"Along the 300-foot level there is a line of rack shelves which contains a shallow de- posit of loam und pebbles. This is very conspienans on the Allegheny River and far some distance below Pittsburgh, but rather less as far down as Steubenville. Still, those high-level deposits are clearly marked there on both sides of the river. The most significant thing about these high-level terrnee deposits is that they con- tain grauite pebbles, which are a sure in- dientiun that the deposit is post glacial : for none of the tributaries of the Ohio River have access to granite rock. except as fragments have been brought over from ('anada by the glacial movement and de- posited within their reach."
While there has been considerable dis- enssion concerning the age of the gravel deposits on these high rock shelves, some contending for two glacial periods with a long interval between, during which the rock gorge was made. Prof. Wright he. heves there is only evidence of one such epoch, and that these high-level deposits were produced partly by an extensive fill- ing up of the Allegheny gorge as far as Pittsburgh and somewhat below, and lower down by the effect of the Cincinnati ice dam, which set back the water up to this level, and is sufficient to account for many of the facts. Uutler this view these de-
Dlg ized by Google
30
HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY
posits would coincide approximately with what Dana calls the "Champlain epoch," during which there was considerable de- pression of land at the north, the influence of which may have been felt as far sonth as the latitude of Pittsburgh. To this Mr. Wright adds :
"But whatever may be the difference of opinion about the age of these high level gravels, there is no disagreement about the glacial character and relatively late age of the lower terraces along the Ohio River, such as occor at Steubenville and Brillinut. The rock gorge extends on the average a hundred tert below the present bottom of the river, having been filled up origi- nally by gravel not only to that extent, but to the level of the terrace in which the implement was found, That this extensive deposition of gravel in the old rock gorge is connected with the glacial period is clearly shown by the fact that these lower terraces can be followed up the bank of every stream which comes out of the glaeinted region to the old ice border, where they emerge into the moraines which were deposited directly by the ice. Only those streams which rise in the glaciated area have These lerruces. The contrast between the Monongahela and Allegheny in this respect is very marked. The Allegheny River throughout its course was gorged with this glacial gravel, but the Monongahela River neither bad gravel within reach nor the floods of water coming from the melting ice to distribute it if that had been within reach, therefore the gravel terraces are absent. The northern tributaries of the Ohio had both these ad- vantages (or disadvantages), and therefore have the terraces, On the Ohio these are always larger and higher where a tributary comes in from the glaciated region to the north, as, for example, at the mnoulh of Big Beaver Creek, where the terrace is 130 feet above low water mark. But down the river the supply of gravel diminished, and the terrace becomes corre- spondingly lower, being at Steubenville and Brilliant only seventy or eighty feet above low water.
"So far as direct evidence is concerned in estimat- ing the age of implements in these terraces. it relates to the question whether or not they have been found in undisturbed strata of the original terrace. If they are so found they are as old as the disposition of the gravel, which took place in glacial times; for since that period of deposition the action of the present river has been confined to eroding an inner channel, and to working over gravel within the limits of its own flood plains. No disturbanees by present Hond, could affect The gravel of the eighty-foot terrace. Thal has remained constant from the time of its original dleposition."
This now famons implement was taken to the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at Spring- field, Mass., in August, 1895, and submitted to a number of experts, when the corrobo- rative indications of its antiquity were readily and emphatically recognized. Prof.
F. W. Putnam remarked upon the distinct- ness with which the patina or velvety ox- idation had been preserved, indicative of the conditions in which it was said to have been found, and in itself bearing evidence of great antiquity. F. H. Cushing, the famous Znni ethnologist, declared that there could be no question that it was a finished implement and not a "reject" and that not only had it been finished by careful chipping all along the edge, but it lad been finished twice, having been at least once reshaped upon its rutting edge; and, what is of special significance, that it had been sharpened not by the more modern processes in which the chips were broken from the edge by pressing against it with a piece of bone, but by the older process of striking against the edge with another stone. The type of the implement also was pronounced by Mr. Cushing to be the earliest known, although from the con- venience of the form it has always con- tinned in nse. It was one, however, which appeared at the very dawn of Inman development.
"Thus," as Prof. Wright says, "the cir- enmstantial evidence connected with the implement itself confirmas in a remarkable degrre the direct evidence respecting it. And it deserves to be placed, as it donbt- less will be, among the most important discoveries heretofore made connecting man with the Glacial period."
As to the ability of man to live in this valley during the retreating ice front of the Glacial period, it is no more than the Esquimaux do in Greenland and Alaska' to-day, the former country being timber- less and the latter forested in the southern part, as was the Ohio Valley in Glacial times. Previous to the introduction of fire- arms, those tribes used bone and stone im- plements, just as did their prehistorie southern neighhors. The habitations of Glacial man, when he had any, have long ago disappeared, and it is not likely that his permanent abodes were often located on the lower terraers where they were sub- jert to floods, and it is only here and there
Digitized by Google
4
31
AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS
we find a memento of this long forgotten race. But, as concluded by Prof. Wright, "the clear testimony of the ancient chipped knife discovered by Mr. HInston, at Bril- liant, Ohio, must go far to close the ques- tion of man's antiquity on the Western Continent and to dispel the doubts upon the subject which, for one reason or another, have heretofore existed."
The inquiry naturally arises, how long is it since primitive man ranged along this valley? That he was contemporary with the mastodon is indicated by finding re- mains of that mammoth animal in the same river terraces that held our human imple- ment. About five years ago a mastodon skull was found while excavating for sand in the river terrace opposite the lower end of Steubenville, which was added to Mr. Huston's collection. But the mastodon lived almost down to the beginning of the historie period, and was possibly hunted by the "mound builders." Some very wild estimates have been given as to the first appearance of man upon the earth, some placing it as high as 100,000 years. This is pure guesswork, and not very good guessing at that. Fortunately, in this see- tion, we have a great time keeper, which marks, at least approximately, the close of the Glacial period. Previous to that period there were no Niagara Falls and no Lake Erie. The recession of the falls from Queenstown heights back seven miles to their present location, represents the ero- sion of the Niagara River. Careful mens- nrements by the United States surveyors and others have placed the average rate of recession at not less than three feet per annum, and during a portion of the way it may have been more rapid. This gives an outside limit of 11,000 years since the falls were at Queenstown, and it is possible that the limit may not be over 7,000, a thousand years before the building of the great pyra- mid of Cheops. Investigation of northern Ohio streams flowing into Lake Erie con- firms these figures, so that it is safe to say that an estimate of 10,000 years since the
first appearance of man in the Ohio valley is not an unreasonable limit.
It is a long gap from the original pre- historie man to the mound builders. Even if we knew exactly who the mound builders were, it is conceded that they must have had their rise and fall at a period far sub- sequent to that which we have just been considering. In contradistinction to Glacial and pre-Glacial man, the mound builders have left quite voluminous, if not very def- inite, traces of their existence. Extended earthworks that have in turn been taken for fortifications, municipal boundaries. cemeteries and temple sites, crumbling skeletons, implements of the chase or war, honsehold ornaments and utensils, with a few doubtful hieroglyphic characters, have enabled writers with vivid imaginations to create an empire of, at least semi-civilized, people, who were the projenitors of the Mexicans and Pernvians and who were finally overcome either by their own inter- necine wars or by the Indians, or both. Latest researches do not confirm these con- clusions. A recent writer (Fowkes) sums up that :
"So far as has yet been discovered, these people could not build a stone wall that would stand alone, or even wall up a spring. They left not one stone used in building that shows any marks of a dressing tool. Their mounds and embankments were built by bringing loads of earth, never larger than one person could carry, in baskets or skins, as is proven by the hundreds of lens-shaped masses observable in the larger mounds. They had not the slightest knowledge of the economie use of metals, treating what little they had as a sort of malleable stone; even galena, which it seems int- possible they could have without discovering its low inelting point, is always worked, if at all, as a piece of wInte or olber ornamental stone would be. They left nothing to indicate that any system of written language existed among them, the few "hieroglyphics" en "inseribed tablets" having no more significance than the modern carving by a boy on the smooth bark uf the beech, or else being deliberate frauds-gen- orally the laller, in the case of the more elaborate specimens. They had not a single beast of burden. Beyond peddling from tribe to tribe a few ornamente or other small articles that a man could easily carry in a canor, they had no trade or commerec. A close study of the enclosures leads to the conviction thal the popu- lation was not numerous except in the immediate vicinity; they were not necessarily built synchronously -in fart, some have the appearance of being of much more uneient date than others only a few miles dis-
Digliced by Google
32
HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY
Jant. What their use may have been has always been a very puzzling question, any conjecture finding many difficulties lo overcome. Among other suggestions is the plausible one that they were intended as a means of defense to the villages built within Them. They (The people) were, no doubl, many thousands in num. ber, bul lo suppose them lo 'equal or exceed in num. ber those now living in the same region of country' is absurd. Nearly all the enclosures of Ohio and of the allied works of the Kanawhn Valley, whose condi- tion is such as to admit of it, have lately been care- fully surveyed, and not a single 'exnel square' or 'per- feet cirele' has been found among them, though some of the works approach very closely to these forms."
This is a pretty strong indictment, not of the real monnd builders, but of the fic- titious characters that parade under that title in many publications. While their habits were certainly different from their snecessors, if not their posterity, the red Indian, as a whole, it would be hard to prove their civilization to be markedly, if any, higher, although it may have had a different form. Some fairly worked orna- ments have been found in their mounds, but none that could not be duplicated or excelled by the Southern Indian tribes. There is no evidence that they ever formed a confederacy like the Iroquois, or had an individual chieftain, who was the equal of King Philip, Pontiac, Logan, Tecumtha, or many others who might be mentioned. But while we might proceed to pronounce in detail what the mound builders were not. this does not throw much light on whom they were. That some of them inhabited Jefferson county is evident from mounds found along the river terraces, although the umber is not great. There is one monnd of considerable size below Portland Station used as a private graveyard. There are, also, monnds in Wells, Cross Creek, Ross, Saline and other townships, perhaps ten or twelve in all. When the first settler- in the valley inquired of the Indians con- verning these mounds, they could tell nothing about them, they had existed as far back as their traditions extended. and that is all they knew. There is a tradition of the Delaware Indians that, during the migration of that tribe from the West they came to a river beyond which dwelt a people called Tallegwi, who gave them per-
mission to pass through their territory, but when the migrators divided, the Tallegwi attacked that portion which had crossed the river, and drove them back with great slaughter. A long and bloody war ensned, in which the Tallegwi made fortifications of earth and made a brave defense, hut were gradually driven backward, building forts and other defenses as they went, until they finally passed beyond the Ohio. The Detroit River has been identified by Heck- welder as the meeting place of the tribes. when some of the defensive works of the Tallegwi were pointed out to him, as well as monnds where were buried bones of some of the slain,
Mr. Fowkes, whom we have quoted above, furnishes some original testimony on this subject, which is worthy of record. In the summer of 1887, while at Munissing. Mich., he met William Cameron, a man of thorongh education and extensive reading. who for more than sixty years-he then being eighty-four-had almost literally lived in the woods. He resided first among the Chippewas, who told him that when they first came into the country they found the Sioux in possession, and a war of sev- eral years' duration followed. They finally obtained firearms from the French and drove the Sioux westward. Afterward. C'ameron went among the Sionx, and heard substantially the same story from the old chiefs. They added that in going westward they came to a race of people who lived in mounds, which they piled up. These people were large and strong, but cow- ardly. As flu Sioux expressed it, " If they had been ,as brave as they were big, be- tween them and the Chippewas we would have been destroyed: but they were great cowards, and we easily drove them away."
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.