USA > Ohio > Historical collections of Ohio, containing a collection of the most interesting facts, traditions, biographical sketches, anecdotes, etc., relating to its general and local history : with descriptions of its counties, principal towns, and villages > Part 9
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BELMONT COUNTY.
The remainder of the sketch of Gov. St. Clair, we give in ex- tracts from the Notes of Judge Burnet, who was personally ac- quainted with him. Beside being clearly and beautifully written, it contains important facts in the legislative history of Ohio.
During the continuance of the first grade of that imperfect government, he enjoyed the respect and confidence of every class of the people. He was plain and simple in his dress and equipage, open and frank in his manners, and accessible to persons of every rank. In these respects, he exhibited a striking contrast with the Secretary, Colonel Sargent; and that contrast, in some measure, increased his popularity, which he retained, unimpaired, till after the commencement of the first session of the legislature. During that session, he manifested a strong desire to enlarge his own powers, and restrict those of the Assembly ; which was the more noticed, as he had opposed the usurpations of the legislative council, composed of himself, or in his absence, the Secretary, and the Judges of the General Court ; and had taken an early opportunity of submitting his views on that subject to the General Assembly.
The effect of the construction he gave, of his own powers, may be seen in the fact, that of the thirty bills, passed by the two Houses, during the first session, and sent to him for his approval, he refused his assent to eleven; some of which were supposed to be of much importance, and all of them calculated, more or less, to advance the public interest. Some of them he rejected, because they related to the establishment of new counties ; others, because he thought they were unnecessary or inexpedient. Thus more than a third of the fruits of the labor of that entire session was lost, by the exercise of the arbitrary discretion of one man.
This, and some other occurrences of a similar character, which were manifest deviations from his usual course, not easily accounted for, multiplied his opponents very rapidly, and rendered it more difficult for his friends to defend and sustain him. They also created a state of bad feeling between the legislative and executive branches, and eventually termi- nated in his removal from office, before the expiration of the territorial government.
The governor was unquestionably a man of superior talents, of extensive information, and of great uprightness of purpose, as well as suavity of manners. His general course, though in the main correct, was in some respects injurious to his own popularity ; but it was the result of an honest exercise of his judgment. He not only believed that the power he claimed belonged legitimately to the executive, but was convinced that the man- ner in which he exercised it, was imposed on him as a duty, by the Ordinance ; and was calculated to advance the best interests of the territory.
Soon after the governor was removed from office, he returned to the Legonier valley, poor, and destitute of the means of subsistence ; and unfortunately, too much disabled, by age and infirmity, to embark in any kind of active business. During his admin- istration of the territorial government, he was induced to make himself personally liable for the purchase of a number of pack-horses and other articles necessary to fit out an expedition against the Indians, to an amount of some two or three thousand dollars, which he was afterwards compelled to pay. Having no use for the money at the time, he did not present his claim to the government. After he was removed from office, he looked to that fund as his dependence for future subsistence ; and, under a full expectation of receiving it, he repaired to Washington City, and presented his account to the proper offi- cer of the treasury. To his utter surprise and disappointment, it was rejected, on the mortifying ground, that, admitting it to have been originally correct, it was barred by the statute ; and that the time which had elapsed, afforded the highest presumption that it had been settled, although no voucher or memorandum to that effect could be found in the department. To counteract the alledged presumption of payment, the original vouchers, showing the purchase, the purpose to which the property was applied, and the payment of the money, were exhibited. It was, however, still insisted, that as the transaction was an old one, and had taken place before the burning of the war office, in Philadelphia, the lapse of time furnished satisfactory evidence that the claim must have been settled, and the vouchers destroyed in that conflagration.
The pride of the old veteran was deeply wounded, by the ground on which his claim was refused ; and he was induced, from that consideration, as well as by the pressure of poverty and want, to persevere in his efforts to maintain the justice and equity of his demand ; still hoping that presumption would give way to truth. For the purpose of getting rid of his solicitations, Congress passed an act, purporting to be an act for his relief; but which merely removed the technical objection, founded on lapse of time, by authorizing a sett'ement of his demands, regardless of the limitation, This step seemed
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necessary, to preserve their own character; but it left the worn out veteran still at the mercy of the accounting officers of the department, from whom he had nothing to expect, but disappointment. During the same session, a bill was introduced into the House of Representatives, granting him an annuity, which was rejected, on the third reading, by a vote of 48 to 50.
After spending the principal part of two sessions, in useless efforts, subsisting, during the time, on the bounty of his friends, he abandoned the pursuit in despair, and returned to the Legonier valley, where he lived several years in the most abject poverty, in the family of a widowed daughter, as destitute as himself. At length, Pennsylvania, his adopted state, from considerations of personal respect, and gratitude for past services, as well as from a laudable feeling of state pride, settled on him an annuity of three hundred dollars, which was soon after raised to six hundred and fifty dollars. That act of beneficence gave to the gallant old soldier a comfortable subsistence for the little remnant of his days which then remained. The honor resulting to the state, from that step, was very much enhanced, by the fact, that the individual on whom their bounty was bestowed, was a foreigner, and was known to be a warm opponent, in politics, to the great majority of the legislature and their constituents.
He lived, however, but a short time to enjoy the bounty. On the 31st of August, 1818, that venerable officer of the Revolution, after a long, brilliant and useful life, died of an injury occasioned by the running away of his horse, near Greensburgh, in the eighty-fourth year of his age.
Bridgeport, on the west bank of the Ohio, opposite the city of Wheeling, and on the National road, is an important point for the forwarding goods to the West. It contains 1 church, 1 grist and 1 saw mill, 3 stores, 3 forwarding and commission houses, and had, in 1840, 329 inhabitants.
In the spring of 1791, the cabin of Captain Joseph Kirkwood, at this place, was attacked at night by a party of Indians, who, after a severe action, were repulsed. This Captain Kirkwood " was the gallant and unrewarded Captain Kirkwood, of the Delaware line, in the war of the revolution, to whom such frequent and honorable allusion is made in Lee's memoir of the Southern campaigns. The state of Delaware had but one continental regiment, which, at the defeat at Camden, was reduced to a single company. It was there- fore impossible, under the rules, for Kirkwood to be promoted ; and he was under the mortification of beholding inferior officers in the regiments of other states, promoted over him, while he, with all his merit, was compelled to remain a captain, solely in consequence of the small force Delaware was enabled to maintain in the service He fought with distinguished gallantry through the war, and was in the bloody battles of Camden, Holkirks, Eutaw and Ninety Six."
Captain Kirkwood moved to this place in 1789, and built his cabin on the knoll, about thirty yards west of the present residence of Mr. M'Swords. At the time of the attack on the cabin, there was an unfinished block-house standing on the highest part of the knoll, only a few yards distant. On the night of the attack, a party of fourteen soldiers, under the command of Captain Joseph Biggs, together with Captain Kirkwood and family, were in the cabin. About two hours before day break, the captain's little son Joseph, had occasion to leave the cabin for a few moments, and requested Captain Biggs to accompany him. They were out but a few min- utes, and although unknown to them, were surrounded by Indians. They had returned, and again retired to sleep in the upper loft.
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when they soon discovered the roof in a blaze, which was the first intimation they had of the presence of an enemy. Captain K. was instantly awakened, when he and his men commenced pushing off the roof, the Indians at the same time firing upon them, from under cover of the block-house. Captain Biggs, on the first alarm, ran down the ladder into the room below, to get his rifle, when a ball entered a window and wounded him in the wrist. Soon the Indians had surrounded the house, and attempted to break in the door with their tomahawks. Those within braced it with puncheons from the floor. In the panic of the moment, several of the men wished to escape from the cabin, but Captain K. silenced them with the threat of taking the life of the first man who made the attempt, asserting that the Indians would tomahawk them as fast as they left. The people of Wheeling-one mile distant-hearing the noise of the attack, fired a swivel, to encourage the defenders, although fearful of coming to the rescue. This enraged the Indians the more ; they sent forth terrific yells, and brought brush, piled it around the cabin, and set it on fire. Those within, in a measure smothered the flames, first with the water and milk in the house, and then with damp earth, from the floor of the cabin. The fight was kept up about two hours, until dawn, when the Indians retreated. Had they at- tacked earlier, success would have resulted. The loss of the In- dians, or their number, was unknown-only one was seen. He was in the act of climbing up the corner of the cabin, when he was discovered, let go his hold and fell. Seven of those within were wounded, and one, a Mr. Walker, mortally. He was a brave man. As he lay, disabled and helpless, on his back, on the earth, he called out to the Indians, in a taunting manner. He died in a few hours, and was buried the next day, at Wheeling, with military honors. A party of men, under Gen. Benjamin Biggs, of West Liberty, went in pursuit of the Indians, but without success. A niece of Captain Kirkwood, during the attack, was on a visit about twenty miles distant, on Buffalo creek. In the night, she dreamed that the cabin was attacked, and heard the guns. So strong an impression did it make, that she arose and rode down with all her speed to Wheeling, where she arrived two hours after sunrise.
After this affair, Captain Kirkwood moved with his family to Newark, Delaware. On his route, he met with some of St. Clair's troops, then on their way to Cincinnati. Exasperated at the Indians, for their attack upon his house, he accepted the command of a com- pany of Delaware troops, was with them at the defeat of St. Clair, in the November following, " where he fell, in a brave attempt to repel the enemy with the bayonet, and thus closed a career as hon- orable as it was unrewarded."
Elizabeth Zane, who acted with so much heroism at the siege of Wheeling, in 1782, lived many years since about two miles above Bridgeport, on the Ohio side of the river, near Martinsville. She was twice married, first to Mr. M'Laughlin, and secondly to Mr. Clark. The anecdote we derive from a published source.
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BELMONT COUNTY.
When Lynn, the ranger, gave the alarm that an Indian army was approaching, the fort having been for some time unoccupied by a garrison, and Colonel Zane's house having been used for a magazine, those who retired into the fortress had to take with them a supply of ammunition for its defence. The supply of powder, deemed ample at the time, was now almost exhausted, by reason of the long continuance of the siege, and the repeated en- deavors of the savages to take the fort by storm : a few rounds only remained. In this emergency, it became necessary to renew their stock from an abundant store which was deposited in Colonel Zane's house. Accordingly, it was proposed that one of the fleetest men should endeavor to reach the house, obtain a supply of powder, and return with it to the fort. It was an enterprise full of danger ; but many of the heroic spirits shut up in the fort were willing to encounter the hazard. Among those who volunteered to go on this enterprise, was Elizabeth, the sister of Colonel E. Zane. She was young, active and athletic, with courage to dare the danger, and fortitude to sustain her through it. Dis- daining to weigh the hazard of her own life against that of others, when told that a man would encounter less danger by reason of his greater fleetness, she replied, " and should he fall, his loss will be more severely felt ; you have not one man to spare ; a woman will not be missed in the defence of the fort." Her services were then accepted. Divesting herself of some of her garments, as tending to impede her progress, she stood prepared for the hazardous adventure ; and when the gate was thrown open, bounded forth with the buoy- ancy of hope, and in the confidence of success. Wrapt in amazement, the Indians beheld her springing forward, and only exclaiming, "a squaw," "a squaw," no attempt was made to interrupt her progress: arrived at the door, she proclaimed her errand. Colonel Silas Zane fastened a table cloth around her waist, and emptying into it a keg of powder, again she ventured forth. The Indians were no longer passive. Ball after ball whizzed by, several of which passed through her clothes : she reached the gate, and entered the fort in safety ; and thus was the garrison again saved by female intrepidity. This heroine had but recently returned from Philadelphia, where she had received her education, and was wholly unused to such scenes as were daily passing on the frontiers. The distance she
had to run was about forty yards.
Among the best sketches of backwoods life, is that written by Mr. John S. Williams, editor of the American Pioneer, and published in it in October, 1843. In the spring of 1800, his father's family re- moved from Carolina and settled with others on Glenn's run, about six miles northeast of St. Clairsville. He was then a lad, as he re- lates, of seventy five pounds weight. From his sketch, "Our Cabin ; or Life in the Woods," we make some extracts.
Emigrants poured in from different parts, cabins were put up in every direction, and wo- men, children and goods tumbled into them. The tide of emigration flowed like water through a breach in a mill-dam. Every thing was bustle and confusion, and all at work that could work. In the midst of all this, the mumps, and perhaps one or two other dis- eases, prevailed and gave us a seasoning. Our cabin had been raised, covered, part of the cracks chinked, and part of the floor laid when we moved in, on Christmas day! There had not been a stick cut except in building the cabin. We had intended an inside chinmey, for we thought the chimney ought to be in the house. We had a log put across the whole width of the cabin for a mantel, but when the floor was in we found it so low as not to answer, and removed it. Here was a great change for my mother and sister, as well as the rest, but particularly my mother. She was raised in the most delicate manner in and near London, and lived most of her time in affluence, and always comfortable. She was now in the wilderness, surrounded by wild beasts ; in a cabin with about half a floor, no door, no ceiling over head, not even a tolerable sign for a fireplace, the light of day and the chilling winds of night passing between every two logs in the building, the cabin so high from the ground that a bear, wolf, panther, or any other animal less in size than a cow, could enter without even a squeeze. Such was our situation on Thursday and Thursday night, December 25th, 1800, and which was bettered but by very slow degrees. We got the rest of the floor laid in a very few days, the chinking of the cracks went on slowly, but the daubing could not proceed till weather more suitable, which happened in a few days ; door-ways were sawed out and steps made of the logs, and the back of the chimney was raised up to the mantel, but the funnel of sticks and clay was delayed until spring. . .
Our family consisted of my mother, a sister, of twenty-two, my brother, near twenty-one and very weakly and myself, in my eleventh year. Two years afterwards, Black Jenny
*
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BELMONT COUNTY.
followed us in company with my half-brother, Richard, and his family. She lived two years with us in Ohio, and died in the winter of 1803-4.
In building our cabin it was set to front the north and south, my brother using my father's pocket compass on the occasion. We had no idea of living in a house that did not stand
Our Cabin; or Life in the Woods.
square with the earth itself. This argued our ignorance of the comforts and conveniencies of a pioneer life. The position of the house, end to the hill, necessarily elevated the lower end, and the determination of having both a north and south door, added much to the airi- ness of the domicil, particularly after the green ash puncheons had shrunk so as to have cracks in the floor and doors from one to two inches wide. At both the doors we had high, unsteady, and sometimes icy steps, made by piling up the logs cut out of the wall. We had, as the reader will see, a window, if it could be called a window, when, perhaps, it was the largest spot in the top, bottom, or sides of the cabin at which the wind could not enter. It was made by sawing out a log, placing sticks across, and then, by pasting an old newspaper over the hole, and applying some hog's lard, we had a kind of glazing which shed a most beautiful and mellow light across the cabin when the sun shone on it. All other light entered at the doors, cracks and chimney.
Our cabin was twenty four by eighteen. The west end was occupied by two beds, the center of each side by a door, and here our symmetry had to stop, for on the opposite side of the window, made of clapboards, supported on pins driven into the logs, were our shelves. Upon these shelves my sister displayed in ample order, a host of pewter plates, basins, and dishes, and spoons, scoured and bright. It was none of your new-fangled pewter made of lead, but the best London pewter, which our father himself bought of Townsend, the man- ufacturer. These were the plates upon which you could hold your meat so as to cut it without slipping and without dulling yo: r knife. But, alas! the days of pewter plates and sharp dinner knives have passed away never to return. To return to our internal ar- rangements. A ladder of five rounds occupied the corner near the window. By this, when we got a floor above, we could ascend. Our chimney occupied most of the east end ; pots and kettles opposite the window under the shelves, a gun on hooks over the north door, four split-bottom chairs, three three-legged stools, and a small eight by ten looking- glass sloped from the wall over a large towel and combcase. These, with a clumsy shovel and a pair of tongs, made in Frederick, with one shank straight, as the best manufacture of pinches and blood-blisters, completed our furniture, except a spinning-wheel and such things as were necessary to work with. It was absolutely necessary to have three-legged stools, as four legs of any thing could not all touch the floor at the same time.
The completion of our cabin went on slowly. The season was inclement, we were weak-handed and weak-pocketed ; in fact, laborers were not to be had. We got our chim- ney up breast high as soon as we could, and got our cabin daubed as high as the joists outside. It never was daubed on the inside, for my sister, who was very nice, could not
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BELMONT COUNTY.
consent to " live right next to the mud." My impression now is, that the window was not constructed till spring, for until the sticks and clay was put on the chimney we could possibly have no need of a window ; for the flood of light which always poured into the cabin from the fireplace would have extinguished our paper window, and rendered it as useless as the moon at noonday. We got a floor laid over head as soon as possible, per- haps in a month ; but when it was laid, the reader will readily conceive of its imperviousness to wind or weather, when we mention that it was laid of loose clapboards split from a red oak, the stump of which may be seen beyond the cabin. That tree grew in the night, and so twisting that each board laid on two diagonally opposite corners, and a cat might have shook every board on our ceiling.
It may be well to inform the unlearned reader that clapboards are such lumber as pio- neers split with a frow, and resemble barrel staves before they are shaved, but are split longer, wider and thinner ; of such our roof and ceiling were composed. Puncheons were planks made by splitting logs to about two and a half or three inches in thickness, and hewing them on one or both sides with the broad-axe. Of such our floor, doors, ta- bles and stools were manufactured. The eave-bearers are those end logs which project over to receive the butting poles, against which the lower tier of clapboards rest in forming the roof. The trapping is the roof timbers, composing the gable end and the ribs, the ends of which appear in the drawing, being those logs upon which the clapboards lie. The trap logs are those of unequal length above the eave bearers, which form the gable ends, and upon which the ribs rest. The weight poles are those small logs laid on the roof, which weigh down the course of clapboards on which they lie, and against which the next course above is placed .. The knees are pieces of heart timber placed above the butting poles, successively, to prevent the weight poles from rolling off.
The evenings of the first winter did not pass off as pleasantly as evenings afterward. We had raised no tobacco to stem and twist, no corn to shell, no turnips to scrape ; we had no tow to spin into rope-yarn, nor straw to plait for hats, and we had come so late we could get but few walnuts to crack. We had, however, the Bible, George Fox's Journal, Barkley's Apology, and a number of books, all better than much of the fashionable read- ing of the present day-from which, after reading, the reader finds he has gained nothing, while his understanding has been made the dupe of the writer's fancy-that while reading he had given himself up to be led in mazes of fictitious imagination, and losing his taste for solid reading, as frothy luxuries destroy the appetite for wholesome food. To our stock of books were soon after added a borrowed copy of the Pilgrim's Progress, which we read twice through without stopping. The first winter our living was truly scanty and hard ; but even this winter had its felicities. We had part of a barrel of flour which we had brought from Fredericktown. Besides this, we had a part of a jar of hog's lard brought from old Carolina ; not the tasteless stuff which now goes by that name, but pure leaf lard, taken from hogs raised on pine roots and fattened on sweet potatoes, and into which, while rendering, were immersed the boughs of the fragrant bay tree, that imparted to the lard a rich flavor. Of that flour, shortened with this lard, my sister every Sunday morning, and at no other time, made short biscuit for breakfast-not these greasy guin-elastic biscuit, we mostly meet with now, rolled out with a pin, or cut out with a cutter; or those that are, per- haps, speckled by or puffed up with refined lye called salæratus, but made out, one by one, in her fair hands, placed in neat juxtaposition in a skillet or spider, pricked with a fork to prevent blistering, and baked before an open fire-not half-baked and half-stewed in a cooking stove.
In the ordering of a good Providence the winter was open, but windy. While the wind was of great use in driving the smoke and ashes out of our cabin, it shook terribly the timber standing almost over us. We were sometimes much and needlessly alarmed. We had never seen a dangerous looking tree near a dwelling, but here we were surrounded by the tall giants of the forest, waving their boughs and uniting their brows over us, as if in defiance of our disturbing their repose, and usurping their long and uncontested pre- emption rights. The beech on the left often shook his bushy head over us as if in absolute disapprobation of our settling there, threatening to crush us if we did not pack up and start. The walnut over the spring branch stood high and straight ; no one could tell which way it inclined, but all concluded that if it had a preference, it was in favor of quartering on our cabin. We got assistance to cut it down. The axeman doubted his ability to control its direction, by reason that he must necessarily cut it almost off before it would fall. He thought by felling the tree in the direction of the reader, along near the chimney, and thus favor the little lean it seemed to have, would be the means of saving the cabin. He was successful. Part of the stump still stands. These, and all other dangerous trees, were got down without other damage than many frights and frequent desertions of the premises, by
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