Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume I, Part 35

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio
Number of Pages: 1006

USA > Ohio > Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume I > Part 35

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).

William Woodward. - I approached the person very cautiously till within about a chain's length undiscovered ; I then stopped and spoke; the person I spoke to was Mr. William Woodward, the founder of the Woodward High School. Mr. Woodward looked up, hastily cast his eyes round, and saw that I had no deadly weapon; he then spoke. "In the name of God," said he, " who are you ?" I told him I had been a

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prisoner and had made my escape from the Indians. After a few more questions he told me to come to him. I did se. Seeing my situation, his fears soon subsided; he told me to sit down on a log and he would go and catch a horse he had in the lot and take me in. He caught his horse, set me upon him, but kept the bridle in his own hand. When we got into the road, people began to inquire of Mr. Woodward, " Who is he-an Indian ? " I was not surprised nor offended at the inquiries, for I was still in Indian uni- form, bare headed, my hair cut off close, ex-

cept the scalp and foretop, which they had put up in a piece of tin, with a bunch of turkey feathers, which I could not undo. They had also stripped off the feathers of about two turkeys and hung them to the hair of the scalp; these I had taken off the day I left them. Mr. Woodward took me to his house, where every kindness was shown me. They soon gave me other cloth- ing; coming from different persons, they did not fit me very neatly; but there could not be a pair of shoes got in the place that I could get on, my feet were so much swollen.

McDonald gives in his Sketches the following incidents of Indian history at Manchester :

Ellison's Captivity .- In the spring of the year 1793, the settlers at Manchester com- menced clearing the out-lots of the town ; and while so engaged, an incident of much interest and excitement occurred. Mr. An- drew Ellison, one of the settlers, cleared a lot immediately adjoining the fort. He had completed the cutting of the timber, rolled the logs together and set them on fire. The next morning, a short time before daybreak, Mr. Ellison opened one of the gates of the fort and went out to throw his logs to- gether. By the time he had finished this job, a number of the heaps blazed up brightly, and as he was passing from one to the other, he observed, by the light of the fires, three men walking briskly towards him. This did not alarm him in the least, although, he said, they were dark skinned fellows ; yet he concluded they were the Wades, whose complexions were very dark, going early to hunt. He continued to right his log-heaps, until one of the fellows seized him by the arms, and called out in broken English, " How do ? how do ?" He instantly looked in their faces, and to his surprise and horror, found himself in the clutches of three Indians. To resist was useless. He there fore submitted to his fate, without any resist- ance or an attempt to escape.

The Indians quickly moved off with him in the direction of Paint creek. When break- fast was ready, Mrs. Ellison sent one of her children to ask their father home; but he could not be found at the log-heaps. His absence created no immediate alarm, as it was thought he might have started to hunt after the completion of his work. Dinner- time arrived, and Ellison not returning, the family became uneasy, and began to sus- pect some accident had happened to him. His gun-rack was examined, and there hung his rifle and his pouch in their usual place. Massie raised a party and made a circuit around the place and found, after some search, the trails of four men one of whom had on shoes ; and as Ellison had shoes on, the truth that the Indians had made him a prisoner was unfolded. As it was almost night at the time the trail was discovered, the party returned to their station. Next morning early, preparations were made by

Massie and his party to pursue the Indians. In doing this they found great difficulty, as it was so early in the spring that the vegeta- tion was not of sufficient growth to show plainly the trail of the Indians, who took the precaution to keep on hard and high land, where their feet could make little or no im- pression. Massie and his party, however, were as unerring as a pack of well-trained hounds, and followed the trail to Paint creek, when they found the Indians gained so fast on them that pursuit was vain. They therefore abandoned it and returned to the station.

The Indians took their prisoner to Upper Sandusky and compelled him to run the gauntlet. As Ellison was a large man and not very active, he received a severe flogging as he passed along the line. From this place he was taken to Lower Sandusky and was again compelled to run the gauntlet, and was then taken to Detroit, where he was generously ransomed by a British officer for one hundred dollars. He was shortly after- wards sent by his friend the officer to Mon- treal, from whence he returned home before the close of the summer of the same year.

Attack upon the Edgingtons .- Another incident connected with the station at Man- chester occurred shortly after this time. John Edgington, Asahel Edgington, and another man, started out on a hunting expedition towards Brush creek. They camped out six miles in a north-east direc- tion from where West Union now stands, and near where Treber's tavern is now situ- ated, on the road from Chillicothe to Mays- ville. The Edgingtons had good success in hunting having killed a number of deer and bears. Of the deer killed, they saved the skins and hams alone. The bears, they fleeced ; that is, they cut off all the meat which adhered to the hide without skinning, and left the bones as a skeleton. They hung up the proceeds of their hunt on a scaffold, out of the reach of the wolves and other wild animals, and returned home for pack horses. No one returned to the camp with the two Edgingtons. As it was late in December, no one apprehended danger, as the winter season was usually a time of repose from Indian incursions. When the Edgingtons

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arrived at their old hunting camp, they alighted from their horses and were prepar- ing to strike a fire, when a platoon of In- dians fired upon them at the distance of not more than twenty paces. Asahel Edgington fell to rise no more. - John was more fortu- nate. The sharp crack of the rifles, and the horrid yells of the Indians, as they leaped from their place of ambush, frightened the horses, who took the track towards home at full speed. John Edgington was very ac- tive on foot, and now an occasion offered which required his utmost speed. The mo- ment the Indians leaped from their hiding- place they threw down their guns and took after him. They pursued him screaming and yelling in the most horrid manner. Edgington did not run a booty race. For about a mile the Indians stepped in his tracks almost before the bending grass

could rise. The uplifted tomahawk was frequently so near his head that he thought he felt its edge. Every effort was made to save his life, and every exertion of the In- dians was made to arrest him in his flight. Edgington, who had the greatest stake in the race, at length began to gain on his pur- suers, and after a long race he distanced them, made his escape, and safely reached home. This truly was a most fearful and well contested race. The big Shawanee chief, Captain John, who headed the Indians on this occasion, after peace was made and Chillicothe settled, frequently told the writer of this sketch of the race. Captain John said that "the white man who ran away was a smart fellow;" that the " white man run and I run ; he run and run, at last the white man run clear off from me."

The first court in this county was held in Manchester. Winthrop Sar- gent, the secretary of the territory, acting in the absence of the governor, appointed commissioners, who located the county seat at an out-of-the- way place, a few miles above the mouth of Brush creek, which they called Adamsville. The locality was soon named, in derision, Scant. At the next session of the court its members became divided, and part sat in Manchester and part at Adamsville. The governor, on his return to the territory, finding the people in great confusion, and much bickering between them, removed the seat of justice to the mouth of Brush creek, where the first court was held in 1798. Here a town was laid out by Noble Grimes, under the name of Washington. A large log court-house was built, with a jarl in the lower story, and the governor appointed two more of the Scant party judges, which gave them a majority. In 1800, Charles Willing Byrd, secretary of the territory, in the absence of the gov- ernor, appointed two more of the Manchester party judges, which balanced the parties, and the contest was maintained until West Union became the county seat. Joseph Darlinton and Israel Donalson, were among the first judges of the Common Pleas. In 1847 on the publication of the first edition of this work both of these gentlemen were living in the county, Gen. Darlinton being at the time clerk of the court, an office he had held since 1803. They were also members of the convention for forming the first Constitution of Ohio, only three others of that body being then living.

WEST UNION IN 1846 .- The annexed view shows on the left the jail and market and in the center the Court House and county offices. These last stand in a pleasant area shaded by locusts. The Court House is a substantial stone building and bears good testimony to the skill of the builder, ex-Gov. Metcalfe of Kentucky, who commencing life a mason, acquired the sobriquet of "Stone Hammer." The first court house was of logs. West Union contains four churches, one Associated Reformed, one Presbyterian, one Methodist, one Baptist ; two newspapers, a clas- sical school, and nine mercantile stores. It had in 1820 a population of 406; in 1840, 462. (Old edition.)

West Union is on a high ridge on the old Maysville and Zanesville turnpike, about ten miles from the Ohio at Manchester and one hundred and six from Columbus. It is nine hundred and ten feet above sea level, four hundred and ten above Lake Erie and four hundred and seventy-eight above the Ohio at Cincinnati. It is the only county seat in Ohio not on the line of a railroad. County officers in 1887: Probate Judge, Isaac N.

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Tolle ; Clerk of Court, William R. Mahaffey; Sheriff, W. P. Newman ; Prosecuting Attorney, Philip Handrehan; Auditor, J. W. Jones; Treas- urer, W. B. Brown; Recorder, Leonard Young ; Surveyor, A. V. Hutson ; Coroner, George W. Osborn ; Commissioners, J. R. Zile, Thomas J. Shelton, James H. Crissman.

The name of West Union was given to it by Hon. Thos. Kirker, one of the commissioners who laid it out in 1804, and one of its earliest settlers. In 1880 its population was 626; in 1886 school census, 317. It has one bank, that of Grimes & Co .; and three newspapers, viz., New Era, Repub- lican, Mrs. Hannah L. Irwin, editor ; People's Defender, Democratic, Joseph W. Eylar, editor, and Scion, Republican, Samuel Burwell, editor. It has also a Children's Home with forty-one children. The buildings are large, and the appointments excellent.

Drawn by Henry Howe in 1846.

THE COUNTY BUILDINGS, WEST UNION.

In reply to an inquiry, Hon. J. L. Coryell of West Union has sent us a communication giving brief mention of valued characters identified with the history of Adams County. Such an one upon every county in the State would be a benefit serving to bind the people of the commonwealth in closer fraternal bonds through the greater mutual knowledge thus obtained, and minister to a laudable pride in the possession of the laws and institu- tion that could give the highest wealth of character. He was prompted to thus aid us through his memory of the old edition, a copy of which he earned when a youth by chopping wood at twenty-five cents a day. Thus writes the Judge.

" Adams is an old and pretty good county and has an excellent history. She has had many good men, denizens, citizens and residents, native and to the manor born. Among the former were Gov. Thomas Kirker, John Patterson, marshal of Ohio about 1840, John W. Campbell, congressman, and U. S. Judge. Col. J. R. Cockerill who died in 1875 succeeded Gen. J. Darlinton as clerk of court. Darlinton was a good and useful man. Cockerill was one time member of Congress, Colonel of 70th O. V. I., a highly valued citizen. He was the father of Col. John A. Cockerill who was born near the Serpent Mound: at about fifteen years of age was a drummer boy at Shiloh. He afterwards edited papers in Adams and Butler counties and was managing editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer ; later traveler and correspondent in the far East, Turkey, etc .; then edited the Post Dis- patch of St. Louis; now is the managing editor of the New York World, a brilliant young man. Joseph McCormick, a native of this county, was

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Attorney-General of Ohio about 1850. General A. T. Wikoff of Columbus, Presi- dent Cleveland & Marietta R. R., is a native of this county; John P. Leedam, formerly clerk of our courts, then member of Congress and now Sergeant- at-arms of House of Representatives, is a citizen of this town. J, H. Roth- neck, a native of this county, is now a Supreme Judge in Iowa. David Sinton of Cincinnati, so noted for his benefactions, was reared in this town where his parents died. Dr. Thomas Williamson, forty years a missionary to the Dakota Indians, was reared and educated in this county."

MANCHESTER, one of the oldest settlements in the State, is on the Ohio, sixty miles east south-east of Cincinnati, twelve miles above Maysville, Ky. and at the foot of the Three Islands. It was widely known early in this century to the traveling public, being a point of transshipment on the great stage route east from Lexington to Maysville and from here through Chillicothe, Zanesville, Wheeling, etc. Up to 1846 it was an insignificant place having at that time not exceeding fifty dwellings. It is now the largest town in the county. It has churches, two Methodist and one Presbyterian. Newspaper, Signal, Independent, J. A. Perry, editor. Banks, Farmer's, W. L. Vance, president, L. Pierce, cashier ; Manchester, R. H. Ellison, president, C. C. W. Naylor, cashier.

Edward R. Gregory, Photo., Manchester, 1887.

THE LOWER OF THE THREE ISLANDS AND LANDING, MANCHESTER.

Industries and Employees .- Manchester Planing Mill Co., twenty-eight hands ; L. W. Trenary, Lumber, twelve hands; S. P. Lucker & Co., Carriages, eight hands ; Manchester Rolling Mills, six hands; Weaver & Bradford, fruit jugs, etc., five hands. State Report 1887. Population in 1880, 1455 ; school census in 1886, 643.

Manchester was the fourth point permanently settled in the State which has developed into a town, the other three being Marietta, Gallipolis and Cincinnati, the last named originally called Losantiville.

Those who have seen only the rivers of the East, as the Hudson, Dela- ware, Connecticut, etc., can have no adequate idea of the topograph- ical features of the Ohio. Those streams come up within a few feet of the meadow lands or hills wherever they bound them. Not so the Ohio. This stream occupies an excavated trough, where in places the bounding hills rise above the water 500 and 600 feet.

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The river is highly picturesque from its graceful windings, softly wooded hills and forest clad islands. In but few places is it more pleasant than at Manchester.

The islands in the river are all very low. They were originally formed on sand-bars where floating trees lodged in seasons of freshets and made a nucleus for the gathering of the soil which is of the richest. In the June freshet they are overflown, when with their wealth of foliage they seem as huge masses of greenery reposing on the bosom of the water.

Those born upon the Ohio never lose their interest in the beautiful stream; and few things are more pleasant for the people who dwell along its shores than in the quiet of a summer's evening when their day's work is done, to sit before their doors and look down upon the ever-flowing waters. Everything is calm and restful : varied often by the slow measured puff of an approaching steamer, heard, may be, for miles away, long before she is seen, or if after dark, before her light suddenly bursts in view as she rounds a bend.

Up to within a few years the barren hills in this and some other river coun- ties remained in places the property of the general Government. They afforded, however, a fine range for the cattle and hogs of the scattered inhabitants and no small quantity of lumber, such as staves, hoop poles and tan bark, which were taken from the public lands. Dr. John Locke, one of Ohio's earliest geologists, from whose report made about the year 1840 these facts are derived, thus describes the peculiar people who dwelt in the wilderness.

The Bark Cutters .- There is a vagrant class who are supported by this kind of busi- ness. They erect a cabin towards the head of some ravine, collect the chestnut-oak bark from the neighboring hill-tops, drag it on sleds to points accessible by wagons,

where they sell it for perhaps $2 per cord to the wagoner. The last sells it at the river to the flat boat shipper, at $6 per cord, and he again to the consumer at Cincinnati, for $11. Besides this common trespass, the squatter helps himself out by hunting

Moss ENC.CO.N.Y.

COL. JOHN A. COCKERILL, MANAGING EDITOR " NEW YORK WORLD."

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deer and coons, and, it is said, occasionally by taking a sheep or a hog, the loss of which may very reasonably be charged to the wolves. The poor families of the bark cut- ters often exhibit the very picture of improvi- dence. There begins to be a fear among the inhabitants that speculators may be tempted to purchase up these waste lands

and deprive them of their present "range " and lumber. The speculator must still be a non-resident, and could hardly protect his purchase. The inhabitants have a hard, rough region to deal with and need all of the advantages which their mountain tract can afford.

Mr. Coryell, from whom we have elsewhere quoted, has given us these facts illustrating the changed condition of this once wilderness.

" In 1871 Congress gave all vacant land in Virginia military district to Ohio, and her legislature at once gave them to the Ohio State University. Her trustees had them hunted up, surveyed and sold out, and they are all

Indian Grayrs.

E. G. Squier and E. H. Davis, Surveyors. PLAN OF THE SERPENT MOUND.

now on the tax duplicate, and one half our tobacco, for which this county has become somewhat noted, is produced east of Brush creek. Tan bark, hoop poles and boat gunnels are no longer a business. Portable saw mills have peregrinated every valley and ravine, and very much of the timber (and there was none finer) has been converted into lumber for home con- sumption and shipment to Cincinnati via river and railroad. Ten years ago Jefferson township, east of Brush creek, polled 500 votes, to-day 1000, brought about by sale of cheap lands and immigration from the tobacco counties of Brown and Clermont and also Kentucky."

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THE SERPENT MOUND.

Probably the most important earthwork in the West is The Serpent Mound. It is on Brush creek in Franklin township, about six miles north of Peebles Station on the C. & E. Railroad, twenty-one miles from West Union, the county seat, thirty-one miles from the Ohio at Manchester, and five miles south of Sinking Springs, in Highland County. The engraving annexed is from the work of Squier and Davis on the "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Val- ley," who thus made this work known to the world by their survey in 1849. Their plan annexed is in general correct, but the oval is drawn too large in proportion to the head; and the edge of the cliff is some distance from the oval. The appendages on each side of the head do not exist. They have been shown by Prof. Putnam to be accidentally connected with the serpent. The mound was erected doubtless for worship, and appended to their description of it they make this statement :

" The serpent, separate, or in combination with the circle, egg, or globe, has been a predominant symbol among many primitive nations. It prevailed in Egypt, Greece and Assyria, and entered widely into the superstitions of the Celts, the Hindoos and the Chinese. It even penetrated into America, and was conspicuous in the mythology of the ancient Mexicans, among whom its sig- nificance does not seem to have differed materially from that which it possessed in the Old World. The fact that the ancient Celts, and perhaps other nations of the old continent, erected sacred structures in the form of the serpent, is one of high interest. Of this description was the great temple of Abury, in Eng- land-in many respects the most imposing ancient monument of the British islands. It is impossible in this connection to trace the analogies which the Ohio structure exhibits to the serpent temples of England, or to point out the extent to which the symbol was applied in America-an investigation fraught with the greatest interest both in respect to the light which it reflects upon the primitive superstitions of remotely-separated people, and especially upon the origin of the American race."

Public attention has recently been attracted to this work through the exer- tions of Professor F. W. Putnam, of the Peabody Museum of Cambridge, Mass., who by the aid of some Boston ladies in the spring of 1887 secured by sub- scription about $6,000 for its purchase and protection, as it was fast going to destruction. The purchase includes about seventy acres of land with the mound, the title vesting in the museum attached to Harvard University. This he has laid out in a beautiful park to be free to the public, and with the name " The Serpent Mound Park." It is in a wild and picturesque country and must eventually be a favorite place of public resort. The Professor, who is an accom- plished archæologist, regards this as one of the most remarkable structures of its kind in the world. His description of the work is as follows :

" The head of the serpent rests on a rocky platform which presents a pre- cipitous face to the west, towards the creek, of about 100 feet in height. The jaws of the serpent's mouth are widely extended in the act of trying to swallow an egg, represented by an oval enclosure about 121 feet long and 60 feet wide. This enclosure consists of a ridge of earth about five feet high, and from eighteen to twenty feet broad. The body of the serpent winds gracefully back toward higher land, making four large folds before reaching the tail. The tail tapers gracefully and is twisted up in three complete and close coils. The height of the body of the serpent is four to five feet, and its greatest width is thirty feet across the neck. The whole length of the mound from the end of the egg on the precipice to the last coil of the tail is upwards of 1,300 feet.

The Serpent Mound is not in a conspicuous place, but in a situation which seems rather to have been chosen for the privacies of sacred rites. The rising land towards the tail and back for a hundred rods afforded ample space for large gatherings. The view across the creek from the preci-

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pice near the head, and indeed from the whole area, is beautiful and impres- sive, but not very extensive. To the south, however, peaks may be seen ten or fifteen miles away which overlook the Ohio River and Kentucky hills, while at a slightly less distance to the north, in Pike and Highland counties, are visible several of the highest points in the State. Among these is Fort Hill, eight miles north in Brush creek township on the extreme eastern edge of Highland County. Fort Hill is one of the best preserved and most interesting ancient enclosures in the State. It is estimated that in the limits of Ohio alone are 10,000 ancient mounds and from 1500 to 2000 enclosures. The importance of the study of the subject, the present method of procedure and the general progress are thus dwelt upon in a lecture delivered by Prof. Putnam, Oct. 25, 1887, before the Western Reserve Historical Society.

The proper study of history begins with the earliest monuments of man's occupancy of the earth. From study of ancient implements, burial- places, village sites, roads, enclosures and monuments we are able to get as vivid and correct a conception-all but the names-of pre-historic times as of what is called the historic period.

The study of archaeology is now assuming new importance from the improved methods of procedure. Formerly it was considered sufficient to arrange archæological ornaments and implements according to size and perfection of workmanship and call it a collection. But now extended and minute comparison Formerly mounds were plored when trenches in two directions and countered, removed and considered essential to mound that it be sliced R and every shovelful of every section photo- are now also examined first gently uncovered as to harden them, when moved without fracture. cavation of the earth- I. C. Foulk, Photo. Hillsboro. HEAD of the SERPENT MOUND. ments, ornaments and more important than objects themselves.

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Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume I, Part 35

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893 Publication date: 1907 Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio Number of Pages: 1006

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio
Number of Pages: 1006