USA > Ohio > Highland County > Hillsboro > Hillsboro crusade sketches and family records > Part 6
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see no harm in it; so he sold. But he was miser- able because of the women's prayers, songs, and entreaties, and he decided to close his establish- ment, and seek a better way.
There was a feeling of real interest in dispos- ing of the liquors of his saloon, so that no one should be harmed by them ; therefore we entered into a business contract, each choosing a "days- man " to settle prices, and so on. The ladies of the committee determined that the liquor owned by Mr. Uhrig should be bought and burned, as none of our Society wished to injure the young man's worldly prospects; his store also under- went a process of invoicing, and upon a fixed day the ladies met, and purchased all there was for sale. As I was a little late, I found no choice in the trophies; but spying a handsome Cognac bottle, I found that it belonged to the partner's wife. In his boyhood days he had been our little neighbor, so I said: "Henry, won't you ask her to sell it to me?" He returned from her room quickly with her consent, and the price affixed; to-day that Cognac bottle, so delicately painted, has a place of honor, as a relic of the "Hillsboro Crusade," in the castle of Lady Henry Somerset, in England.
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XI.
T' HE Highland News, one of the leading jour- nals of our town, edited by Mr. J. L. Board- man, a champion for temperance and a loyal friend of the woman's movement, on March 10, 1873, had the following :
"The record of the day is not complete without some mention of the outdoor mass-meeting, held on the pub- lic square about four o'clock in the afternoon.
"Mr. Uhrig having yielded to the entreaties of the ladies, closed his saloon, and surrendered his liquors. It was determined that the whisky should be burned. A large concourse of people assembled to witness the ceremony.
"The ladies of the Association came in procession from the church, and formed a circle around the three barrels, being marshaled by Mr. Jacob Sayler, who, at their request, had charge of the proceedings.
" After a prayer by Rev. S. D. Clayton, the heads of the barrels were broken in, and the liquor set on fire. The scene was one of solemn joy, never to be forgotten by those who participated in it.
"As the words of prayer were borne heavenward on the wings of the evening air, tears of thankfulness flowed from many eyes, and in the hush which followed the fervent" Amen,' voices, all tremulous with emotion, joined in the grand old 'John Brown' chorus.
"Even the boys forgot their usual shout and whistle, and the dear familiar hymns, that have cheered and
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helped us all along the weary way, seemed the fittest expression of our joy. When all was over, the ladies and gentlemen of the Association returned to the church to unite in a song and prayer of solemn thanksgiving to God, being more than ever convinced that he who began the work has continued it, and will in his own good time and way complete it.
" MRS. DEAN K. FENNER, Secretary."
About the beginning of April, 1874, the morn- ing meetings were resumed, and, by special in- vitation from the "powers that be," they were held alternate weeks in the Presbyterian and Methodist Churches. It must not be forgotten that, in addition to the injunction case, which had been tried at the February term of court, Mr. Dunn had also brought suit against the Cru- saders for alleged trespass, and asked ten thou- sand dollars damages. This suit was not to comne on for some months, owing to the fact that the parties were not ready for trial. Meantime, the women decided not to "trespass" upon the Palace Drugstore, as there was plenty to do in other directions, and they had no desire, even in appearance, to defy the law. But from an article taken from the Highland News about that time, it would seem that our temperance gentlemen were not so minded; for they were busy in the line of legal suasion. In order to give the situa-
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tion, as its was regarded in this region in 1874, this clipping will be useful
"MR. DUNN IN TROUBLE AGAIN-HE IS BOUND OVER ON EIGHT ADDITIONAL CHARGES OF ILLEGAL LIQUOR- SELLING.
" Since our last issue, the temperance men have been making things rather uncomfortable for Mr. Dunn, of injunction notoriety, and have pretty effectually stripped him of the borrowed plumage he has hitherto been al- lowed to wear as a seller of liquor only in strict accord- ance with the law. He has been arrested, and bound over to court on eight distinct charges of illegal selling.
" All these cases but two are for selling liquor to be drank on the premises, and the proof against him is clear in every case. The other two cases are for selling liquor to minors, and in these also the evidence is strong and direct.
"This is all there is in the cry of 'persecution,' which is being raised by his friends and sympathizers."
The only remaining saloons were the two we first visited, kept by John Bales and Robert Ward, and they were still visited with songs, prayers, and earnest entreaties, until it really seemed a question as to how long they could re- sist, and how long the Crusaders could patiently endure.
These men were very different in their tem- peraments. Bales had one song, which he never failed to sing: " Just as soon as the druggists all sign the pledge, and quit selling'contrary to law,
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then I will quit, and join in with the temperance people, heart and soul."
Poor Ward always agreed that liquor-selling was a " bad business," and protested that when- ever he could sell his house, he would "quit the business entirely." But when one of our wealthy citizens (to gratify his noble Crusade wife) offered him his price for the property, cash down, with a view, we have always believed, of handing it over to her for Crusade headquarters, the in- fatuated Ephraim proved his devotion to his idol by asking five hundred dollars more for his house. Thus the sale was lost.
Quite a new line of activity opened up about this time for temperance workers. The Consti- tutional Convention had at last finished its labors, and Ohio was required to consider the new con- stitution. In consequence of the great pressure brought upon the members of this Convention · by the temperance movement, they saw plainly that, in order to meet the question fairly, they would have to submit to the people a choice as to which of two clauses should be inserted in the constitution-one favoring the system of license to sell intoxicating liquors, the other opposed to license. 'Tis true the women had no vote on the subject, but they would be the greatest suf- ferers should the State license this terrible traffic. So when meetings were appointed throughout
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the county in school-houses and churches, the Crusaders accepted the many calls that were made upon them, and in little groups of three, four, or six, sought quietly the rural gatherings, where, from full hearts (and many times bitter experiences), they reasoned with their neighbors of " righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come," and, from the kindly letters received and published, one might well suppose the novel work of the women during those days of toil and danger, was not in vain. As a tribute to the author of the following letter, we feel that it should be published in our " Crusade Sketches." In his little town, Belfast, Highland County, Mr. Isaac Hottinger, a sensible farmer, had stood like a granite statue against taunts, ridicule, and sarcasın, voting the only Prohibition ticket for so many years, that he naturally hailed the new movement with enthusiasm :
BELFAST, March 21, 1874.
EDITOR NEWS,-To-day, after religious service was ended in the Methodist Episcopal Church, Isaac Hottin- ger moved that we extend our hearty congratulations and sympathies to the noble women of Hillsboro for their zealous labors to supress intemperance. Rev. Mr. Am- brose called for a vote of the House, and I believe it was carried unanimously, and Isaac Hottinger was appointed a committee to report the same to the women of Hills- boro, through the columns of the News.
So far as I have heard our people express their minds,
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they are on the side of the women in this temperance movement. It is the foundation principle of this Gov- ernment that a majority shall rule. Now, if we were to ask every voter in our nation, "Are you in favor of the sale and use of liquor for a beverage?" two-thirds would say, No. Then, why are things in such a de- plorable condition? The answer is obvious. We are too busy trying to make money, and more anxious for political party victories, than we are for the cause of temperance.
There is one thing certain to my mind: If the women had a vote, they would "right-about-face " the liquor-business in short meter.
God grant that the temperance-ball that was started in Hillsboro may roll on, until it shall break down the reign of King Alcohol, and bind him in chains so strong that he will never again be set free to ravage and de- stroy our homes ! Yours, for temperance,
ISAAC HOTTINGER.
XII.
A N evening service of much interest was held in the Methodist church about the 20th of April. The Rev. S. D. Clayton was called upon for a speech. He responded in an earnest, rous- ing address, taking for a text the reply of a saloon-keeper in a town near by, when a broken- hearted mother besought him to sell no more liquor to her only son. Said he: "Madam, your
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son has as good a right to fill a drunkard's grave as any other mother's son, and I will sell to him as long as he has money to pay for it." I only wish a reporter had been on hand, that the words of power and pathos on that occasion could have been preserved; but they were not lost.
From the News of May 13, 1874, we clip the following notice:
"Last Saturday, while the ladies of the Temperance League were holding their usual religious exercises in front of Bales's saloon, he got angry, and seizing Mrs. Pickering and Mrs. Shinn by the shoulder, pushed them roughly off the sidewalk. Mrs. Pickering had him ar- rested for assault, and taken before 'Squire Stoddard, who, after a full hearing, held him to bail in the sum of one hundred dollars."
This notice records the first act of "self- defense" undertaken by our Crusaders; for their uniform creed and practice had been kindness, prayer, and Christian effort; and while the inci- dent was greatly deplored by the leaders of the "band," yet the kindly and most efficient legal efforts of our friend, the youthful county attor- ney, Mr. Dumenil, gave such satisfactory results that we, as Crusaders, felt compensated in the evident sympathy created for the humane side of the question by his noble efforts. Mr. Dumenil has since pleaded for "the right" in a wider field in his Kansas home, where his merits soon
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procured for him position and power to make his principles felt.
At a morning meeting in the old Crusade Church, about the 25th of May, 1874, a message came telling of the arrest of Cincinnati's Cru- saders, and a city missionary who had for a long time been preaching on the streets of the city unmolested.
After prayer was offered in behalf of the per- secuted ones, the president was requested to write to her friends, Mesdames William I. Fee and S. K. Leavitt, expressive of the heartfelt sympathy of our entire Association in this their time of trial. The meeting for the next morn- ing was to be appropriated to prayer and sup- plication for their particular cases. Before our meeting adjourned, Mr. Sayler came in with the cheering news that the Rocky Fork Distillery was about to close for want of customers, and that the Lynchburg Distillery was closed. These being two of Highland County's "high towers of iniquity," much joy was felt upon the report, and the grand old doxology was sung " with the spirit and the understanding," and we were dis- missed by Brother McSurely with a tender bene- diction in reference to the treatment of Cincin- nati's noble women.
Some time before a committee had been empowered to name a number of gentlemen
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who would serve in a county and township tem- perance organization. The following gentlemen agreed, and a more judicious selection could not have been made: General McDowell, Judge Mathews, Drs. P. H. Wever, H. S. Fullerton, and Marshall A. Nelson. The accepted mission was at once entered upon by this committee, and the Crusaders responded very heartily to all invitations to aid in this work of the new tem- perance organization.
XIII.
N view of the increasing business that seemed to be opening up before our Association, a meeting of the Executive Committee was called, and the appointment of two vice-presidents re- sulted-Mrs. John A. Smith and Mrs. Judge Evans-and our women felt greatly strengthened by the addition of two such aids for future conflicts.
When we assembled the following morning for the appointed prayer service in behalf of our brave but persecuted Cincinnati sisters, it so turned out that the Pittsburg Crusaders were in like peril, and although their names were then less familiar than since, sympathy in the same glorious cause made us one in the Master.
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Further reports gave the assurance that these noble women were persecuted even more cruelly than Cincinnati's martyrs! And so our tears and our songs, our prayers and our rejoicings in being among those who were counted wor- thy to suffer persecution for Christ's sake, caused us to sit together in a heavenly place that morning.
Much enthusiasm was felt and expressed by ministers and laymen. Dr. McSurely on that morning expressed his opinion as to the political drift of the movement. He seemed to believe that "the contest would finally be between American ideas of liberty and right, and the German infidel idea of uncontrolled license, not only in regard to temperance but to all the prin- ciples of truth for which our Puritan ancestry braved the terrors of the New England wilder- ness, and which they sealed and established with their blood !"
After a lapse of nearly twenty years, these words of our faithful Crusade friend and brother seem prophetic, as we scan the existing struggle (political) between right and wrong, and witness the "Sunday-closing" experience of American statesmen against the uncontrolled and "infidel" ideas of foreign powers, the worst element of which has the privilege of the ballot on Ameri- can soil. It is well that the women still "cling
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to the promises and look up," as the old colored Baptist brother said he did when he fell; for our God's promise is sure and steadfast. " The way of the wicked he turneth upside down;" and . "though it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come."
There was much accomplished during the weeks following,-boxes packed and sent to flood-sufferers; meetings for the young people and the children; visitations to the prison by our faithful committee, Miss Julia Brown, Mrs. Stevenson, Mrs. Pickering, and others. But, above all, the county meetings at church and school-house were vigorously sustained.
About the 23d of June it was suggested and approved, at the morning meeting, that arrange- ments be made for having a grand temperance picnic at the fair-ground on the Fourth of July, and that a notice and general invitation be pub- lished in the town papers and by posters, so that all good friends of the cause throughout the county might have ample time to make their plans to join us. After much labor and great executive ability on the part of the officers in charge, committees were decided upon as fol- lows : Arrangement, speakers, music, program, reception of delegates from townships, marshal of the day, chairman, secretary, and reporter.
The day's success proved to many a doubter
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the coming, quiet, orderly beauty in store for humanity, when "righteousness shall cover the earth " and "the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us." There was fine music (gratis) from the Hillsboro orchestra, and good speaking. Large, spreading oaks shaded the beautiful green sward below, on which each township delegation was received by a committee of Hills- boro Crusaders, and welcomed under their own marked bower. Many smiling visitors from the town, also, who had failed to join in the saloon feature of our work, were free to appreciate and commend the "lovely effects of the Crusade in the Fourth of July celebration," especially when they saw the honest joy it gave the Crusading ladies to provide the best they had for the re- freshment of the wives and children of the ex- saloon-keepers.
The first business of note after the successful "Fourth" was the resignation of our valued recording secretary, Mrs. D. K. Fenner, who had served us so faithfully from the first day of our work, and had kept the record so much in the spirit of our Crusade that no word of bitterness or malice could be found upon the "minutes," although diligent search was made (as confessed by Mr. Dunn's attorneys), hoping thereby to establish the plea of persecution against their client. Mrs. Fenner's needed absence from home
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made her resignation a necessity, hence we sub- mitted. But in the good providence of God, who "sets one thing over against another," we were greatly rejoiced to find that Miss Virginia H. Wever was willing to serve us, and her name being duly presented, she was elected unani- mously by a rising vote, and from July 13 to October 29, 1874, we rejoiced in her prompt, efficient aid, and in her unusual ability as a parliamentarian, which at that early date of our Crusade was rare.
The absorbing theme in hamlet, county, and town now was the approaching test-vote-license or no license. To this end Rev. Dr. Leonard, then of Cincinnati, had been invited to Hills- boro, and on the evening before the election made one of his masterly efforts in Music Hall, which had a very fine effect upon the minds of our people. As usual, the amiable Crusaders had worked hard all the weeks of the past "no- license campaign," and now, at the crisis, they could not use the only effective weapon in such an emergency; but they felt assured that their cry would be heard at the court of heaven; hence, an all-day prayer, song, and conference meeting was held on the day the men voted. The burden of the prayers that day was: "O, Lord, help the men to vote right in thy sight, and hasten the day when the curse of home may
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be banished from this and every land!" And all the Crusaders (women and men) said, Amen.
At the evening service, after learning of our victories, General McDowell, the uniform friend of the ladies in their efforts in the temperance work, paid a high tribute to their efficiency in : the late conflict, and said emphatically: "It is my opinion that the work and speaking of the women saved the township and county on the 18th." Thereupon the Rev. S. D. Clayton arose and said: "Yes, General, when I heard of the vic- tory in Liberty Township and Highland County, I said, and now repeat it, 'May the Lord bless these earnest, noble women!' and he will."
XIV.
A T the close of the summer of 1873, Auxiliary Temperance Leagues had been formed in almost every township of Highland County. The license clause of the new State Constitution had been defeated, and, although all had not been ac- complished in our own community that was de- sired or sought after, yet there was a state of reformation and safety existing that furnished at least great hopes for the future.
A call came about this time from a duly-au- thorized group of Christian ladies-women who 9
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had "drawn near to God in saloon prayer-meet- ings"-and "as they recounted the wonders of the great uprising" at the restful retreat, Chautau- qua, their hearts "burning within them" for still greater work, so this call was made upon every League of temperance women in the Crusade States. They were requested to call Cconventions for the purpose of electing a woman from each congressional district as delegate to an organiz- ing Convention, to be held in the city of Cleve- land, O., November 18-20, 1874.
The history of that memorable Convention at Cleveland and its origin was so well delineated by the graceful pen of our Crusade sister, Mrs. W. A. Ingham, of Cleveland, for the Louisville Convention of the National W. C. T. U., that I wish every White-ribbon sister had a copy of it in her own scrapbook. We poor mortals fail, ofttimes, to take in the meaning of events as they pass, but afterward the handwriting of di- vinity becomes legible. Surely it was so with some of us in the case of that first National Tem- perance Convention of women.
It was my high privilege to have received the majority vote from our district as the delegate to that Convention; and but for the fact that our be- loved State president, Mrs. Prof. McCabe, of Del- aware, Ohio, would be there, and with her gentle, sweet, cultured womanhood afford an apology for
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such a venture, I should hardly have felt that I could accept; for Conventions had always been associated in my mind with men of business, of Church or State, and especially with political nominations. True, I had been led by the Spirit and the convulsion of events to pray in saloons and on the street; but what would we gain by bearing the persecutions resulting from holding Conventions? After the lapse of twenty years, let the organized power of woman in the temper- ance reform of the world answer this question!
The minutes of our Association, so accurately and beautifully kept by our secretary, Miss Wever, during these days and weeks of uneventful toil, show much of interest, but of such a purely lo- cal character that we must not overburden our pages. The morning prayer-meetings, evening mass-meetings, three times each week in the dif- ferent churches, the children's gatherings once a week, and the young people's three times each month, with much interest in connection with many other avenues of usefulness, continued until January 1, 1874, when the ministers expressed a desire to hold religious services each in their own churches, hoping thereby to conserve the spirit- ual developments of the Crusade in a more per- sonal and pronounced way than could be done in the general temperance-meetings. They can not be accused of a sectarian spirit in this; for in the
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language of one of their number, our faithful Crusade Brother Cowden, of the Methodist Epis- copal Church, they all agreed. He said at an evening meeting just before the program was changed: "I shall not be here many weeks longer; but no matter where I shall go in the providence of God, or how long I shall live, we can never forget the pleasant hours spent in Hillsboro, and particularly the pleasantness of the temperance work -- where Christians forgot their denominational lines and escaped from their sectarian prejudices, to labor as one Church, as one family in Christ, for the great cause of temperance! I confess the closer I am brought into relationship with our Churches, and the more I know about them, the more I love them."
When the time came around for the observ- ance of our Crusade anniversary, December 23, 1874, there was but one feeling. Our grand army of pledged children being, as the Crusaders felt, their brightest trophies of the year's work, it was determined to make it a children's pass- over; and most happy was the thought, for at two o'clock in the afternoon on the 23d, parents and children, Crusaders and ministers, all com- bined to raise a grateful Ebenezer in the old church, where, one year before, a few women had timidly sung, "Give to the winds thy fears!"
A meeting of the temperance women was
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called for March 8, 1875, at the Methodist Epis- copal church. A letter was read from Mrs. William I. Fee, of Cincinnati, urging the ladies of Hillsboro to give their aid in getting up the State Temperance Fair, to be held in Cincinnati the second week of April. The Crusaders, old and young, entered into the scheme with zeal. A Committee of Arrangements was formed of the following ladies, who were to meet for further consultation at Mrs. Thompson's on the next day: Mesdames Rev. Weatherby, James Patter- son, D. K. Fenner, Miss Virginia H. Wever, Miss Ella Dill. Very soon a beautiful contribution of fancy and useful articles was ready, and, at the time appointed, the ladies elected to sustain the Hillsboro table at the fair were off for the scene of action. A beautiful canopy of drab material, ornamented with golden letters, shaded with black and red, handsomely formed, gave forth from the old Hillsboro table this sentiment:
"DEATH TO THE TRAFFIC,
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