USA > Ohio > Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume II > Part 123
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THE ORIGIN OF OHIO'S COUNTY CHILDREN'S HOMES.
Given by that of the history of their founder, Mrs. Catharine Fay Ewing.
In 1866 the Legislature of Ohio passed a law, prepared by Hon. S. S. Knowles, a Senator from Washington county, which was amended in 1867, by which the commissioners of any county could purchase lands and erect buildings for a Children's Home, and provide means by taxation for their cost and maintenance of the same by county taxation. The commissioners were empowered to appoint a board of trustees for the same. Children under 16 years of age were eligible for admission, "by reason of abandonment, or orphanage, or neglect, or inability of parents to provide for them."
Ôn their arrival at 16 years of age the trustees were empowered to indenture the children and provide suitable homes for them.
As a result of this law thirty-six of the eighty-eight counties of Ohio have es- tablished Children's Homes, and about 3000 children have been taken from pov- erty and neglect, largely from almshouses from the association with the adult inmates and their vicious degrading companionship.
In the Children's Homes the inmates enjoy a home-life as near the good natural home as possible. "In the nursery or the play-ground, in the dormitory and dining-room, in the school-room and chapel, they find the uplift of education, social, industrious and religious, that prepares them for an early and safe transfer to good homes outside. In these Homes the industrial training begins. House work, garden work, light chores, interest the children, develop a love of labor, and teach them habits of industry, of order and neatness, so necessary for their success in the battle of life. Many poor waifs, ignorant, uncouth and almost repulsive, are received into these Homes. To them it is humanitarianism in the gospel of clean clothes, soap and water, a seat at the table and a nice bed in the dormitory ; is the beginning of a new life, the dawn of a brighter and a better day." It is estimated there are to-day in Ohio 20,000 children suffering from the want of parental love, cheer and guidance, all involved in a good safe home. It is from the families of the wretched largely come the criminal classes that prey upon the public, and fill our prisons and almshouses.
CHILDREN'S HOMES.
The greatest charity of Ohio, the Children's Home, the greatest because in be- half of the weakest and most helpless of its population, owes its origin to one single determined, devoted woman, with a clear intellect and pitying heart in- spired by the Divine Spirit, Mrs. Catharine Fay Ewing, of Marietta. It would be difficult to find in our land a single other woman who has been the author of such great good. She began in poverty, her only capital "Love, Faith and Works," and to-day this capital abides : it is her all, but then it is huge. I called upon her to obtain the story of her life. I found her home a small two-story ancient frame house ; its ceilings low, which gives the place a cozy air, and is saving of fuel, and the stairs to the upper regions short, and that saves from weariness of limbs. In that humble spot beneficent work progresses.
Therein, Mrs. Ewing, a woman of sixty-four years, with the assistance of her niece, a young slender girl, was doing the cooking for a club of twenty college students, who each paid fifty cents a week, and this was about all that kept the wolf from coming and howling at the door to disturb the slumbers of herself, in-
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valid husband and smiling young niece, Miss Hattie. At times Mrs. Ewing was very weary from her labor, but happy, because she was enabled to help struggling young men to get an education.
Aside from this, she had on Sundays a class of sixty scholars, and on Saturday afternoons another, 26 young girls, whom she taught to sew, mostly children of washerwomen. Mrs. Ewing is rather large in person, a blonde, has a face full of benevolence, as it ought to be with Olie whose entire life has been filled with the love and care of helpless little ones. Although she never had a child of her own, she has had 600 under her care, and adopted five of the neglected and forsaken as her own. The story of her life follows as given to me mainly from her own lips.
MRS. CATHARINE FAY EWING was born in Westboro, Mass., July 18, 1822. She was the danghter of a farmer. Eleven years later her parents removed to Marietta. She was bred to the profession of a teacher, and taught a mission school among the Choctaw Indians for ten years. Her salary was her board and $100 a year. While among them her sympathies were aroused for an infant left forsaken and friendless. In a drunken spree this child was killed accidentally by a party of Indians. The sight threw her into a state of nervous prostration, and it was long before she recovered. It resulted in a deter- mination to start a children's home at the earliest opportunity.
Soon after she returned to Marietta, and visiting the county infirmary was so shocked at seeing little children receiving their first impressions of life in the midst of such deg- radation and woe, that she at once took steps to found a home for them. The directors of the infirmary eventually acceded to her prop- osition.
1. This was to take charge of them in a home that she would build for $1.00 per capita a week.
2. They to supply a new suit of clothes when she should take them.
3. They to pay one-half the cost of medical attendance, and in case of death the burial expenses.
Her pecuniary means to carry out her pro- ject were ridiculously meagre. She had saved about $200 in the course of years from her slender salary as a teacher, which with a legacy of $160, and $150 borrowed from a friend, amounted to $500 in all. With this, in 1857, she purchased twelve acres of land on Moss Run, ten miles east of Marietta, and began the erection of a home. There was a cottage on the farm of two rooms when she bought it. Into this cottage on the 1st of April, 1858, she received from the county poor-house nine children, eight of them boys, and all under ten years of age-four of them were babes.
On the Ist of May she took five of these children to the district school. On her arrival she found sixteen men by the door, who told her sbe should not take her little paupers among their children. She replied : "I am not afraid of yon ; I know I am right, and you are wrong ; " and persisting, in she went. The teacher told her that he could not keep them without permission of the three trus-
tees, who were among the sixteen men. Next Monday she went to Marietta, and got an appointment from the court as guardian over the children, which gave her full authority, and the second time she went to school with the children. Again was she confronted at the school door by thirteen men, two of whom were the trustees, who felt chagrined at the idea of the association of their children with paupers, for that neighborhood was composed of old Virginia families, who inherited a full share of their ancestral pride. Time with its developments changed all this, especially as the institution, by the increase of children for that district, lessened their school tax, the State disbursing a certain amount per capita for each scholar.
In the following August the permanent Home Building was finished. It had twenty rooms, and of the joy with which they moved in, why it cannot be written. This building cost full $2000, but she managed it all with the meagre income of which we have spoken and the credit which she got from the builder. In five years she had expended $4000 on the property, and cancelled every debt.
She relates some curious incidents. The name was as an inspiration. "One night after I had been thinking over this matter I had a dream, in which appeared a wall on which in red block letters were two words : 'CHILDREN'S HOME.' I never," she says, "ever mentioned this before to any one, but I do it to you because it is the truth.
"On an afternoon I left the home for a visit of an hour or two with my sister in the neighborhood, leaving the home in charge of my four hired girls, with about twenty-five children. I had been there but a few mo- ments when I seemed to hear a voice saying : 'You must go!' I sprang up to obey the summons, telling my sister. She ridiculed me for my folly. Again I sat down, when again louder than before came the summons :
'Yon must go!' and I went. What pos- sessed me to go into the basement I do not know, but there I went. The four girls were together playing with the babes in the upper rooms. In the basement was a pile of shav- ings, in the midst of which was a meat-block, and there I found the boys, twelve in number, amnsing themselves by bringing hot coals from the kitchen fire, placing them on the block as on an anvil, and beating them with clubs to see the sparks fly. The shavings were smoking in several places, and in one a
MRS. CATHERINE FAY EWING.
Cadwallater, Photo.
THE ORIGINAL CHILDREN'S HOME.
The first Children's Home in Ohio was established by Mrs. Ewing in 1858 on Moss Run, ten miles 'east of Marietta.
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blaze had started. To seize a pail of water and put out the fire was but the work of a moment.
Wanting some lumber for building pur- poses a neighbor whom I shall here call Mr. Smith, a man of bad reputation, brought me what he said was 1800 feet. I told him that I would have my carpenters measure it, and, if they found it correct, would take it at his price. He flew into a passion that I should doubt his word in the matter. My carpen- ters found it some 400 feet short. I took it at that, and gave him my note, payable in three months-amount, $20.30.
In a little short of three weeks, one Friday it was, Smith came to me and said I must be ready for that note on the next Monday, or he would sue me. I was completely taken aback, and asked to see the note. Then I discovered that he had altered the word "months" to "weeks." I was in great dis- tress. The idea of being sued and thus dis- graced before my children and the community was terrible, lone woman as I was. When Smith left I retired to my room, and threw my burden at the feet of Christ. Relief was instant, as it always was. The next morning I answered a knock at the door, and there stood a young gentleman of about thirty years of age in light clothes, and with the blackest eyes I think I ever saw.
He asked : "Are you Miss Fay, the matron of this institution ?" "I am.' Here is a package for you.'
With that he turned on his heel, and before in my astonishment I could even thank him disappeared.
Who he was, where he came from, or where he went, I never was able to learn from that day to this, now over twenty years ago. On opening I found it to contain exactly the amount of my note, $20.30.
"Many of my neighbors had strange ideas of my work. They thought it a mere money- making scheme, and an injury to them, as they paid taxes to the State, and they tried to injure me. At night they opened my gates and let in hogs and cattle upon my garden and fields, and killed my chickens. Once when I went to take one of my children to a home I found on my return fifty-two of my sixty chickens dead.'
In June, 1860, her family were attacked with diphtheria, and sick ness lasted for months. Her hired girls left her, and on the day the last left she was sick also. "I crawled down- stairs and found things in a dreadful condi- tion. The children gathered around me so pleased to have me with them again, and with the help of the two oldest, a girl of twelve and a boy of thirteen, I went to work to get things in order, but soon the sick up- stairs needed my attention. I was too weak to walk ; I had to creep on my hands and knees. There lay six dear children, very sick, one of whom died next day. Thus it went on for weeks. Many a day I had no one to speak to but the children.
"The hardest time came one evening when I knew that one of the little ones could not
live through the night. I dreaded to be alone, and just at night I sent one of the boys to ask a neighbor to come and stay at least a part of the night. He returned with the answer : 'Tell old Kate she was paid for taking care of. the children, and now she might do it.' When the boy told me this I broke down and cried, until one of the chil- dren came and put his arm round my neck, and said : 'God can take care of us.' · So he can,' I said ; 'I will trust in him.' Nor did I trust in vain, for before dark Dr. Beck- with came, bringing his wife with him."
Mrs. Ewing's enterprise was sneered at by many, who regarded it as a great folly ; but her strength was in her utmost faith in God, and in many instances aid seemed to come almost miraculously. Her motto always was "never let up." To pause is misery ; to move is, in some unseen way, joy and per- haps eventual victory.
God raised up friends for her. He always does. The citizens of Marietta and Harmar by two entertainments at one time raised $400, and lifted her out of debt.
At the close of the war two-thirds of the children were soldiers' orphans. At that period the donations were less frequent, and at the same time were more greatly needed ; for the war had caused the prices of goods and clothing to greatly increase. At this period she had thirty-six children. Her al- lowance for the care of each child was raised to $1.25 per week. In her reports to the county commissioners she plead for a Sol- diers' Orphans' Home, and, as a consequence, was the establishment of the noble institution at Xenia.
Early in her career, on account of the many epithets applied to her children by the other children at the district school, and the annoy- ance she had in receiving anonymous letters containing threats of mobbing and burning, she decided to build a school-room and employ a teacher at the home. During the ten years she had charge of the home 101 indigent children were taken care of by her, she finding homes for them as opportunity offered.
Through these years of trial, the greatest care of all being to meet her expenses, she found time to exert an influence upon the public mind to ask for legislation upon the subject of children's homes, and in the years 1866-67 an act was passed by which a home could be established in every county if so de- sired. As soon as this was effected a purchase of a farm of 100 acres was made two miles from Marietta on the bank of the Muskingum for $18,000. When the plan was perfected, and everything was in readiness to receive the children, Miss Fay, who had married six months before Mr. Ewing, a farmer by avo- cation, was soon to remove the family to the Children's Home ; she received a letter asking if she would like the superintendence of the new home, adding that a farmer had been hired to manage the farm. She replied, "When you leave my husband out you leave me out also." Thus was the connection sev- ered between the mother of this first home
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and her family. She elothed them all, as she expresses it, in flannel, and gave them many garments and bedding beside, and near the Ist of April, 1868, these children, thirty-six in number, entered the first home established by law.
This, the first Children's Home on the " Ohio Plan," is justly a matter of pride with
the citizens of Washington county for the great work of good it is doing, and the ability shown in its management. The home has now an average of over one hundred children ranging in age from a few months to sixteen years. The property is valued at about forty thousand dollars. It is supported by direet taxation and the income from the farm.
GREAT TREES.
The valleys of the Muskingum and the Scioto have been noted for immense trees. The most noted was a sycamore, which stood on the banks of the Muskingum at the time of the first settlement in 1788, and is thus described by Dr. Cutler in his journal :
Sunday, Aug. 24 .- Cloudy this morning and very muddy. Attended public worship in the hall at Campus Martius. Hall very full. People came from the Virginia shore and from the garrison. Dined with Generals Parsons and Varnum.
We took a walk out just at sunset, and went as far as the great tree. Measured the diameter-thirteen feet in diameter in the two opposite directions, i. e., at right angles. The tree is broken down : one side is about eighteen feet high ; the opposite is about two feet. The inside of the tree is not only hollow, but burnt so there is but a thin shell. The growth of the tree is sloping ; if cut off about two feet above the ground would contain sixty-four men, allowing eighteen inches to a man. Six horsemen could ride in abreast and parade in the tree at the same time.
We measured the circumference as near the ground as possible so as to take in all the bulges, and made it 463 feet. About two feet above the ground we measured the circumference again, and found it to be 41} feet. This seems to have been the proper place to have measured it to give the proper circumference, and gives the diameter fourteen feet. At the height of sixteen feet the tree was only six feet iu diameter ; at eighteen feet it branched into three large branches which now lie on the ground. General Parsons, elsewhere states Dr. Cutler, measured a black walnut tree near the Muskingum, whose circumference at five feet from the ground was twenty-two feet."
On the Rathbun place, famous for its fine sweet potatoes, near the Children's Home, in the Muskingum valley, is an immense elm which I measured, and found to have, two feet above the ground, a girth of about twenty-four feet ; five feet above the ground eighteen feet ; length of branches from north to south 127 feet. On my way thither, Thursday, May 6, 1886, I called upon Mr. Lewis J. P. Putnam, born March 2, 1808, and great-grandson of General Israel Putnam, called hereabouts General Wolf Putnam, to distinguish him from General Rufus Putnam, his cousin. He told me when a boy he saw that elm. It was then a sapling of say twenty feet high, four inches through, and growing out of the hollow of a stump. This would now make it about a century old from the seed. The average life of an elm is about 170 years. This tree bids fair to become widely famous, for the soil is remarkably generous for tree growth.
Mr. Geo. M. Woodbridge, in connection with the study of the ancient mounds, has been investigating for years the ages of trees hereabouts, and the oldest he has discovered was on the Woodbridge farm about eight miles above the city, nearly a mile back of the river and a mile east of the 7th range line. It was an ash tree. Three feet above the ground its girth was sixteen feet three inches. When cut in logs he counted the concentric rings carefully ten feet from the base with a glass, and made it 300 years.
He took me to the spot and then to the saw-mill of Mr. John W. Gitchell near by, which was rapidly converting the once gigantic trees of the hillside into lumber, and Mr. Gitchell showed me by his mill the stump of au oak about as old and as large.
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Hon. W. M. Farrar writes me that about three-quarters of a mile northwest of Caywood station, on the C. & M. R. R., in this county, is a pair of oak trees that become merged in one. They start from the ground two feet apart. At the height of twenty feet they are four apart. Then the smaller, which is ten inches in diameter, turns nearly at right angles and unites with the larger tree, which is two feet in diameter, and the two become thenceforth one. For references to various noted Ohio trees see Index.
Drawn by Heury Howe in 1846.
HARMAR, FROM THE VIRGINIA SHORE OF THE OHIO.
[On the right appears " the Point" at Marietta with the Muskingum and its falls; also in the distance the towers of the " Two Horn " church ; in front is Harmar.]
Harmar in 1846 .- Harmar is very pleasantly situated on the south bank of the Muskingum, opposite Marietta. It contains 1 Methodist church, a male and female academy, 5 mercantile stores, 1 steam mill, 1 extensive foundry, a large hotel (shown on the left of the view), and had, in 1840, 692 inhabitants. Steam- boat building has been extensively carried on here. It will probably become a manufacturing town, a grant having lately been given by the State to use the waters of the Muskingum at the dam .- Old Edition.
The Fort Harmar, completed in the spring of 1786, stood near the point on the west side of the Muskingum, and upon the second terrace above ordinary flood water. Joel Buell, one of the first settlers at Marietta, was on the frontier as early as 1785, and spent considerable time at Fort Harmar. In his journal he states that the pay of the soldiers was only $3.00 per month, or ten cents a day. "Drunkenness and desertion were prevalent evils. The punishment for drunkenness and other trifling offences was not infrequently flogging to the extent of one hundred or even two hundred lashes, and the death penalty, without the process of court-martial, was inflicted upon deserters. Buell relates that three men, the finest soldiers of the company, deserted at McIntosh, and being captured were shot by order of Major Wyllis, who commanded the fort-an act which he chronicled as the most inhuman that he ever saw."
Drunkenness was common in that day among all classes. A large proportion of the soldiers of the revolution died drunkards. Early in this century if a beggar appeared at one's door, and they often did, and clothed in rags, it was common to characterize him as an " old soldier." It was from this fact arose the old time doggerel :
" Who comes here ?" A grenadier.
" What do you want ? " A pot of beer.
"Where's your money ? " I forgot.
"Get you gone you drunken sot."
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OLD-TIME DRINKING HABITS.
A chaplain of a regiment of the Continental army complained that the men were not punctual at morning prayers. "Oh, I'll fix that," said the colonel, so he issued an order that the liqnor ration would hereafter be given out at the close of morning prayers. It worked like a miracle; not a man was missing.
It is impossible for this generation to conceive of the position of society when the drinking habit was universal among the American people, as it was even down to the period of my youth.
Alcoholic liquids were considered a necessity of life; a sort of panacea for all ills ; a crowning sheaf to all blessings; good in sickness and in health ; good in summer to dispel the heat, and good in winter to dispel the cold ; good to keep on work, and more than good to help on a frolic.
So good were they considered, that their attributed merits were fixed by pleas- ant names. The first dram of the morning was an "eye-opener ; " duly followed by the " eleven-o'clocker " and the "four-o'clocker ;" whilst the very last was a "night-cap;" after which one was supposed to take no more drinks that day, unless he was unexpectedly called up at night, when, as people generally slept in rooms withont fires, he prudently fortified himself against taking cold.
Don't imagine these were all the drinks of the day-by no means. The de- canter was at the dinner-table and stood ready at all times on the side-board of every well-to-do family. My father was not an exception. If a friend had called, he had been welcomed by the " social glass;" if one had departed, a pleasant journey was tendered in a flowing bumper ; if a bargain had been made, it was rounded by a liquid "elincher ; " if a wedding had come off, a long and prosperous life was drunk to the happy pair; if one died, the watchers with the dead (as was the custom of the time) were provided with refreshments through the long solemn hours of night ; ardent spirits were always included, while the bearers at the funeral had set out for them the decanter and glass.
Drinking, all the way from the cradle to the grave, seemed the grand rule. Dinah, the black nurse, as she swaddled the new-born infant, took her dram; and Uncle Sam (I remember him), the aged, gray-haired sexton, with the weak and watery eyes and bent, rheumatic body, soon as he had thrown the last spade- ful of earth upon the little mound he had raised over the remains of a fellow- mortal, turned to the neighboring bush on which hung his green baize jacket, for a swig at the bottle; after which, and smacking his lips the while, he gathered up his tools and slowly and painfully hobbled homeward to attend to his duties to the living-one was to ring the town-bell at noon, the dinner hour, and again at nine at night, to warn the people to close the stores, stop work and pre- pare to retire.
This was in accord with a favorite couplet of the day :
" Early to bed and early to rise, Makes people healthy, wealthy and wise."
An hour later, almost the entire population of the little town, after burying up their fires and blowing out their miserable, dim, little lights, would be laid ont around in horizontal positions in their varions dwellings-some with "night- caps" and some without " night-caps," and some with two " night-caps"-one outside and the other in-sometimes more than that in.
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