USA > Ohio > Ashland County > History of Ashland County, Ohio > Part 8
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"Jonathan Harvout built a small horsemill, about one mile northwest of Ashland. on lands recently owned by James Wells, about the year 1830. It had a brief career. and was used mostly as a chopmill by the farmers.
"Joseph Sellers put up a small watermill, on Clear Creek, two miles west of Savannah, in 1830. It struggled along a few years and went down.
"Colonel John Murray erected, for himself, a grist and sawmill, on Mohican creek, one and a half miles north of Orange, in 1831. It did considerable busi- ness in wet seasons, but finally became of little value, because of a want of water.
"George McCartney constructed a small watermill in connection with a carding machine-on lands since owned by the late Samuel Urie, in Milton town- ship, in 1830. It had insufficient power, and the enterprise failed and brought disaster upon its owner.
"William Goudy and sons put up the present large gristmill at Jeromesville, about the year 1836. It passed through many hands. and is vet regarded as a valuable property. It has fine water power. It has a good sawmill connected with it.
"Armstrong Meanor erected a small gristmill three miles north of Loudon- ville. on the Hayesville road, near a small stream, about the year 1831. It was subsequently rebuilt.
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"About the same time (1831), Mr. Newman built a gristmill three miles northeast of Hayesville, on a small stream in the Finley settlement. It was carried on for many years, and did a prosperous business. A new mill, not known as Smith's mill, was erected in the neighborhood some twenty years since, and the old mill is going to decay.
"Jacob Mason built a small undershot mill about four miles north of Ash- land, on Leidigh's run, in 1831. It was used principally as a chopmill for a distillery. It has long since disappeared.
"Daniel Beach built a sawmill in 1824, and a gristmill on Vermillion river one mile north of Ruggles corners, in 1832. It run to about 1858, and is now in ruins. It passed through four or five hands.
"Daniel Carter, Jr., put up a watermill two miles east of Ashland, near the Wooster road, in 1832. It did a fair business eighteen or twenty years. It is now in ruins.
"The Loudonville mill-a frame-two runs of stones, was built by Alexander Skinner in 1818; Caleb Chapel was carpenter and first miller. He died in 1821, and T. J. Bull became the owner of the mill; he sold to Thomas Carlisle; and in 1835 the mill became the property of Gray & Freeman, of Cleveland. They run it until 1845; then it passed into the hands of James Christmas and John C. Larwill, and in 1861, A. A. Taylor, who erected a new mill."
Haney and Smith, from Rochester, New York, put up a large flouring mill on the Lakefork, three miles southeast of Mohicanville, in 1836. It had fine water power and did a thriving business.
Michael Diblebess erected a small mill on the Catotaway in Montgomery township in 1840. It made some flour and had a hand bolt.
Thomas Stringer erected a large gristmill on the Blackfork below Perrysville in 1839. He owned it but a short time. It had a stirring career and passed through many hands.
John Scott, Sr., put up a valuable gristmill one mile north of Hayesville, on the Ashland road, in 1846.
In. 1874 Messrs. Roop, Coble & Myers erected a large brick mill in Ashland, driven by steam and complete in its machinery.
References are frequently made to the distilleries of the olden time, from which it might be inferred that the pioneers were noted for intemperance, but such is not the fact. Chopmills and distilleries were then considered necessities. There was a surplus of corn and of rye, while there was neither a purchaser nor a market for them. Transportation by wagon to the eastern markets was at- tended with much expense. The only way surplus corn and rye could be made available was to convert them into whiskey, which could be exchanged for groceries and other goods. The result was that many distilleries were erected, which since our improved modes of transportation have long since gone out of commission. But whiskey is still an "institution," nevertheless. It pays an enormous revenue, and is feared alike by moralists and politicians. It has been said that "the mills of the gods grind slow but execedingly fine." But the mills of the pioneers ground not only exceedingly slow, but exceedingly coarse.
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REMINISCENCE OF PIONEER TIMES.
In those early days when mills were distant, the pioneers often pounded corn in a hominy block. When sifted, the finest meal made bread, the next mush and the third grade was grits, or hominy. These, with butter and milk, constituted a large part of the daily food. The mush made by the pioneer women was remembered by the pioneer boys long after they became men as the best they had ever eaten, and it was a compliment to their wives if they said they made as good mush as their mothers had.
An Ashland county farmer gave an interesting account, a few years before his death, of the conditions that prevailed in his part of the county in the '40s. He said: "I had to go as far as forty-five miles to the city of Akron to get a grist of flour. The home mills were run by water then, but owning to drought we were compelled to go elsewhere. We would drive mostly with oxen. I remember one night when I came to Huron with a load of wheat on my way to Milan, here all hauled their wheat at that time, I stopped at Ruggles' Corners. There were two hotels there, and I counted one hundred teams, all headed for Milan with wheat. I will never forget the time I walked to Savannah, a distance of four miles, through the mud, and carried butter and eggs, which I sold at the store at five cents a pound for butter and three cents a dozen for eggs."
The late Francis Graham, father of Mrs. J. H. Black, of south Main street, Mansfield, in giving reminiscences of pioneer life, a few years before his death, stated that he located at Ashland, then called Uniontown, in 1821, and engaged in the mercantile business. Uniontown then contained about fourteen or fifteen houses. The prices quoted by Mr. Graham were, no doubt, the same at Mansfield that they were at Uniontown. The products of the country brought low prices at that time, from the fact that there was no market or demand for It was difficult for people to get money to pay their taxes. Wheat was twenty-five cents a bushel, oats from twelve to them beyond home consumption.
fifteen cents, and corn from fifteen to twenty cents. Butter from five to six cents a pound, and eggs from four to five cents a dozen. Maple sugar was an important article of trade in Ashland county, not from the high prices it com- manded, for it only brought from five to six cents a pound, but from the large quantity made, some "camps" making a yield of from fifteen hundred to twenty-five hundred pounds a season. One season Mr. Graham bought maple sugar that filled forty-two barrels, of about two hundred and fifty pounds to the barrel. About the year 1825 John Stewart, for many years surveyor of Rich- land county, built a flouring mill on Bentley's Run, a branch of the Rockyfork, three miles southeast of Mansfield. Mr. Stewart advertised that he would pay thirty-one and one-fourth cents cash per bushel for good merchantable wheat delivered at his mill. The farmers for twenty-five miles around hauled their wheat to this mill, pleased with the idea they could sell it for cash. Money con- tinued scarce until after the opening of the New York and Erie canal, after which produce of all kinds gradually advanced in price and the volume of currency increased. . Swindling, theft or robbery was of rare occurrence in northern Ohio at that time, Mr. Graham stated.
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Wolves were both numerous and troublesome when Ashland county was first settled, and the pioneers had to put their sheep and hogs in enclosures at night to protect them. When driven by hunger the wolves would sometimes succeed in getting inside of these enclosures and kill pigs and sheep. Upon such occasions they usually gorged themselves to such an extent that they could not get out of the pen as easily as they had entered, and were killed the next morning by the proprietor.
Of the wolf stories told the following are given: A farmer was riding along a path one evening and when nearing his home discovered in the gloaming a pack of wolves ahead of him. One broke from the pack and jumped at his horse's head. The frightened animal sprang so suddenly to one side that the farmer was unhorsed and falling to the ground was at once attacked by the wolf. His half wolf-dog came to his rescue and attacked the wolf with such ferocity that it turned from him to defend itself and ere the pack could come to its relief, the farmer had taken refuge in a tree, where he remained until the wolves had left. The horse did not wait to see the program through, and the . dog put in his appearance at home the next day and his looks indicated that his fight had not been a "glove contest."
Hogs in those days ran at large and in the fall they fattened on chestnuts and acorns, then so plentiful in the forest. And one day as the farmers were making hay a wolf chased a pig into the meadow. It was followed by the drove of hogs, which came to the relief of the pig, and, catching the wolf, tore it into shreds in a few moments.
Although those old stage days are numbered with the past, many things con- nected with that period are interesting to the people of today. The stage was the only public mode of travel then, and stage drivers were important personages in their time and were character readers of both men and horses. They were terse and sententious in expression upon lines of their duties and could be enter- tainingly loquacious in narrating events of the past and in giving the history of the country through which their line passed. They would talk to their horses, which, as a rule, intelligently obeyed the orders given them.
A story is told of a stage driver who had inherited a farm, bade good-bye to the hardships of the road and settled down to the pleasures of sheltered prosper- ity. After enjoying the seclusion and quietude of the farm for a week, he went out to the road to see the stage pass. The driver gave him a salute, and, snapping his whip, the horses started ahead on the gallop, the coach bounded on and disappeared. The farmer felt lonely, and as he leisurely walked back over the fields to his new home, he formed the resolution to again go on the road. Accordingly he packed his carpet bag, went to the nearest stage office, reentered the service, and two days later drove down the same road on the same coach, snapping his whip and waving a good-bye to his farm. He had one week of farm life, and that was enough for him. He preferred the excitement of the road and liked to be in close touch with the living, moving world. He left a record of having driven one hundred and thirty-five thousand miles during his stage service-more than five times round the globe.
When stages were relegated to the past in England, stage men refused to realize the fact that their occupation was gone. This was not the case in
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America, where, with Yankee shrewdness, they adjusted themselves early in the day to altered conditions and obtained employment with the railroad com- panies, and many were advanced in position, and finally obtained wealth. American stagedrivers accepted the railroad and profited by it, and we should accept the improved utilities of our generation.
What changes a hundred years have brought. Ohio is but one of five great states that have been created from what was once known as the "territory lying northwest of the river Ohio." Our forty thousand square miles of area are covered with all the improvements, conveniences, facilities, beauties and adornments of christian civilization, and Ohio is but typical, not only of that original northwest territory, but also of that further west lying still beyond and stretching away to the golden shores of the Pacific.
THE PIONEER PERIOD.
When the term pioneer is used it includes the women as well as the men of that period, for the women shared with the men the dangers, work and hardships of the early settlements, and besides their household duties often assisted in the fields and had at times to defend their homes against the attacks of the Indians.
It was not "lady" then, but that better word, "woman." And although clothed in homespun and her hands hardened with toil, she had nobility of soul and character, her courage did not falter at the approach of danger and her deeds well deserve to be written in history and sung in song. The pioneers are sometimes spoken of as an unlettered people. Some of them were, perhaps, while others had scholastic attainments. All classes from the Atlantic states were represented here.
It is true, that that was an age of scanty records, and yet the deeds of those who lived in it were more influential in shaping the civilization which followed than all the other years combined. Pioneer times are as fountains in the wilder- ness from which rivers are formed, whose waters through all the coming ages will flow in the channels first selected. Ashland county today with slight variations is what the pioneers made it and it will thus continue through gener- ations to come. That I do not exaggerate in my estimate of pioneer times, let us look at the facts of the case in the state of Ohio.
1. Our constitution and laws with all their peculiar differences from other states, are substantially what the pioneers made them, and labor as we will it is impossible to secure any large modifications.
2. Our political divisions into counties and townships, with all their dis- tinctive names and local combinations, which so powerfully affect the daily associations of our people, were all substantially the work of the pioneers.
3. The locations of cities, county seats and roads, in which and through which the public and private life of our people must continue for the most part to manifest itself remain almost entirely as the pioneers decreed.
4. Our religious institutions and tendencies are mainly as the pioneers made them. Men in communities or as individuals develop according to their faith.
Unlike an animal, a man's life is the outgrowth of what he believes,
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and what he believes is for the most part what he is taught in his youth. So a community develops according to its faith, and its faith in its fountain head is the faith of the men who founded it.
In accordance with this law the faith of Ashland county, not only in re- ligion but also in politics is stamped with the image and superscription of John Wesley, John Calvin and Thomas Jefferson, the faith of the pioneers, and so it will remain for generations to come.
5. The equality of our social life with none very rich, and but few very poor, we owe largely to the pioneers. They were mostly men of moderate means and fulfilled the prayer of the Psalmist who desired neither poverty nor riches. There were no great landed proprietors to absorb the public domain and crowd our population into tenant homes, and the result is that today the average size of the farms in Ashland county is less than one hundred acres, and the great body of our farmers own the land they till, and non-resident proprietors are few and far between. The advantages of this are immense and will continue a subject of thankfulness for generations to come.
So in every direction we look we have reason to rejoice in the legacies we have received from the pioneers of Ashland county ; they were wise and prudent in their generation and it is just and fitting that we should honor their memory.
The pioneers of Ohio were a different type of men from those who, for the most part, have settled the prairie states to the west of us. They were hardier
and more adventurous, and for the simple reason that the dangers to be en- countered and the difficulties to be overcome were greater. Ohio was a gigantic. forest, which to subdue was a work in itself so enormous as absolutely to appal the average civilized man. The men in war who volunteer to lead a storming column in battle are honored for life if they survive. So it seems we should honor those who volunteered to charge upon the howling wilderness of Ohio during the early years of the present century.
No wonder Ohio stands today the foremost state in the Union. Her people are the descendants of the mighty men of valor who conquered the wilderness.
REMINISCENCES OF A PIONEER.
Pioneer Jonas H. Gierhart gave the following account of his early life in Jackson township. He removed from Maryland to the vicinity of Polk in July, 1817. The township was then unorganized and formed a part of Perry. His nearest neighbor resided about two miles south of him, while on the north, he believed there was not a single white family between him and the lake. When he came to the county with his wife and child, he placed the two latter in temporary charge of the family of Martin Hester, (being the place owned by David and Henry Fluke,) in Orange township, about three miles distant from the tract he owned. The land above mentioned was in its wild condition, not a tree or shrub being cut, and of course without a cabin to afford him and his little family shelter. On the first day he made a small clearing, and prepara- tion for raising a cabin. £ This work he done himself, although utterly inexperienced in the use of the woodman's axe, as he had never in his life
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chopped a cord of wood, made a fence rail, or cut down or even deadened a tree, having previously worked only upon farms long cultivated. On the second day his wife requested to visit the home her husband was engaged in preparing, and accompany him to it with their child. They accordingly set out on horse- back, and in due time reached the place, when he proceeded with his work, and Mrs. Gierhart employed herself with her needle and the care of their little child. One of the mares had been belled and hobbled, and, with her mate, was permitted to range for such food as the woods afforded. Thus the day nearly passed, and toward evening the sound of the bell had disappeared, and Mr. Gierhart, taking in his arms his little child, and leaving his wife under the shelter of a tree, started in search of his beasts. His animals had wandered a much greater distance than he had supposed; but he finally recovered the one that had been hobbled, and mounting it with his child, set out on his return to his wife. He had not traveled far before he discovered that he was unable to find the blazed timber; and concluded it the safer way to make for the Jerome Fork, where he would be enabled to intersect the trail that led from Martin Hester's to his land. On his way he met an old hunter, named John McConnell, to whom he explained his situation, and asked aid in finding his way back to his wife. Mr. McConnell gave it as his opinion that he could not that night reach the place, but proposed that he remain at the house of Mr. Hester, then not far distant, until mornong. On their way to Hester's they struck the blazes which led to the place where he had parted with his wife; and committing his child to the care of Mr. McConnell, with directions to leave it with Mrs. Hester, he determined, against the protest of Mr. McConnell, who assured him of the impossibility of success, (as night was then rapidly approaching,) to go to the
relief of his desolate wife. He accordingly pressed forward on his way, guided by the blazed trees, and continued until the darkness rendered the marks upon the trees undistinguishable. Here was before him a "night of terror" indeed- such a one as he had never passed, and never dreamed that he would be called upon to pass. The thought of a helpless wife, in the depth of a wilderness of which the savage beast was the almost undisputed monarch, and no possible hope of affording any relief before the dawn of another day, was enough to wring any soul with agony. Despite the darkness, he plunged blindly forward a few rods in what he supposed might be the right direction, and then, impressed with the utter hopelessness of proceeding farther, halted; and, raising a voice, the power of which was made terrible by his agony, called to his wife. Its echoes reached her, and were recognized. She sent forth her answer, but her voice having less compass than that of her husband, the sound did not reach his ear. In his despair he laid himself down beside a tree, and maintained his sleepless vigils until morning, when he resumed his search, and finally came upon the trail he was seeking. Pursuing it rapidly, he soon reached Mrs. Gierhart, who
had wisely maintained her position throughout the night, notwithstanding the distraction of mind which her anxiety for the safety of her husband and child her own lonely situation, and the distant howling of wolves, were all calculated to inspire. Soon after he had found his wife, and while they were yet relating to each other the experiences of the night, they heard the blowing of horns, and
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were soon met by neighbors, who had been alarmed by Mr. McConnell, who had started forth at the first dawn of day in pursuit of the lost husband and wife.
AS TOLD BY THE PIONEERS.
The principal occupation of the first pioneers of Ashland county was clear- ing the land and farming. In the spring of the year considerable maple sugar was made, which was exchanged for salt and groceries. Clothing was mostly manufactured at home, as each farmer kept a few sheep, and the wool was spun and wove into cloth by members of the family, and made into clothing for winter. A small piece of ground was sown in flax by each farmer, from the lint of which the summer clothing was manufactured; all the labor of producing this clothing being performed at home. All farm products were sold at very low prices- wheat seldom so high as forty cents a bushel, and corn brought from eight to fifteen cents. A first class cow would sell for eight or ten dollars, and all other farm products at equally low rates. Even at these rates it was almost impossible to get the cash. Money was scarce and almost all kinds of business was carried on by barter. The merchants would sell their goods to the farmers on time, the farmer agreeing to pay with wheat, or pork, when he slaughtered his hogs. The wheat and pork were again exchanged by the merchant for goods. Thus trade was carried on with a small amount of money. The wheat was made into flour and packed in barrels, the pork was also packed in barrels, and a consider- able quantity of corn converted into whiskey.
The pioncers were also always ready to help each other or a stranger on any and all occasions, and for this purpose would put themselves to great inconvenience and travel great distances. Did one of them want a cabin raised he had only to let his neighbors know (and all were considered neighbors within a circle of five or ten miles) and they would be there promptly.
Log-rollings were a weekly occurrence; every settler would have one or more of these gatherings every year until his lands were well cleared. Settlers for miles around would come with their axes, oxen and hand spikes; the logs were ent, hauled together and piled in great heaps to be set on fire after drying. The younger members of the community, girls and boys, piled the brush and smaller sticks in immense heaps; the boys not yet old can remember when these heaps were set on fire at night, and how all the young people for miles around gathered and played "goal" and "round-town" by the light of the crackling brush.
Cornhuskings are even yet occasionally indulged in by the farming com- munity, though rarely, and will soon be entirely unknown. A night was selected for the cornhusking when the moon was full. Sometimes the corn was husked as it stood in the field, and large fields were thus cleared of corn in a single evening. At other times the owner of a cornfield would go through it a day or two before the husking was to take place, jerk the ears from the stalk and haul them to some dry spot in the meadow, where they were piled in a huge circle. About this circle, on the outside, the men would gather in the evening, and amid the rattle of husks and the general hilarity the yellow ears would flow toward
PARTIAL VIEW OF LOUDONVILLE
MAIN STREET, LOUDONVILLE
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the center of the circle in a continual stream, while the huskers buried them- selves deeper and deeper in the husks, until they emerged and stood upon the inner line of the circle, with a great pile of corn in front and a pile of husks in the rear.
Occasionally the corn was as nearly as possible divided into two heaps; captains or leaders were chosen by the men, who in turn choosing their men arranged themselves in opposition. Each of the opposing parties endeavored to get through first, the bottle being passed frequently, each one helping himself to as much of the contents as he desired. The successful captain was elevated upon the shoulders of his men and carried around the pile amid prolonged cheers. Sometimes the beaten party was aggravated until knockdown's ensued, after which all would repair to the house of the host and partake of the good things prepared for the occasion.
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