History of Belmont and Jefferson Counties, Ohio, and incidentially historical collection pertaining to border warfare and the early settlement of the adjacent portion of the Ohio Valley, Part 68

Author: Caldwell, J. A. (John Alexander) 1n; Newton, J. H., ed; Ohio Genealogical Society. 1n
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Wheeling, W. Va. : Historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 728

USA > Ohio > Jefferson County > History of Belmont and Jefferson Counties, Ohio, and incidentially historical collection pertaining to border warfare and the early settlement of the adjacent portion of the Ohio Valley > Part 68
USA > Ohio > Belmont County > History of Belmont and Jefferson Counties, Ohio, and incidentially historical collection pertaining to border warfare and the early settlement of the adjacent portion of the Ohio Valley > Part 68

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David Jennings, the representative in Congress from the 10th Ohio District, having resigned the post, Mr. Shannon was elected to fill the vacancy, and served in the Ninteenth Congress from 1st Monday of December, 1826, to 4th March, 1827.

-By this time he had accumulated enough money to become a leaf tobacco merchant. He bought the property upon which he resided, refitted it and at once began to handle leaf tobacco. He purchased nothing but yellow tobacco, which commanded very high prices in the eastern market, and he made money rapidly.

In the year 1829 he was elected as Senator for Belmont county in the General Assembly and served the full term. In 1837 he was again elected to the General Assembly as Senator for Bel- mont county, and was continued as a member of that body by re-elections until 1841.

Mr. Shannon and Colonel Benjamin Mackall, in 1833, formed a partnership in the mercantile and leaf tobacco business at Barnesville, which partnership continued until 1841, having a very successful career. At the dissolution of that partnership Colonel Mackall retired and George Gilliland, a nephew, and Joseph Fry, a son-in-law of Mr. Shannon, became partners with him in the business. That partnership continued until Mr. Shannon's death, which occurred on the 16th day of March, A. D. 1843.

The popularity of Mr. Shannon was an astonishment to every- body-he was never defeated for an office.

BENJAMIN LUNDY. BY R. H. TANEYHILL.

Whatever may have been the estimate placed upon the "Old Abolitionists" by their contemporaries ; whatever may have been the opinion entertained of them by those who had to grap- ple with the mighty questions precipitated by their agitation of American slavery ; however they may have suffered in the ear- lier stages of that agitation from the scorn, contempt and hatred of their fellow men; and however much they may have been whipped and scourged by the storm of passion they aroused and that finally swept the country on to civil war, it is certain that when the cold, calm and unyielding pen of the historian shall assign them their station in the annals of mankind, and when the unerring criticism of the ages shall fix upon them their worth, they will have aceorded to them the character of Apostles of freedom and the place of teachers to this busy century. They taught the nations of earth the way to the best political rule and to the highest Christian civilization. And so they will remain the lights of liberty and the heroes of human rights until that government "of the people, for the people, and by the people" shall sway in every land, and shed its blessings on every people.

And that Belmont county furnished out of her midst the first American citizen who deelared American slavery a crime; who organized the first society whose sole object was to strike that crime ont of being ; and who edited the first newspaper that dar- od hurl the curses of outraged humanity against African slavery in the United States, is assuredly the proudest memory that can thrill the hearts of her children.

The pioneer Abolitionist in the United States was Benjamin Lundy, and he began his labors as such at St. Clairsville, Bel- mont county, Ohio. Ile there formed the first society, whose only and avowed purpose was the overthrow of African slavery

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HISTORY OF BELMONT AND JEFFERSON COUNTIES.

in the United States, and he there edited the first newspaper devoted to bringing into odium the monstrous crime of that slavery and to finally driving it from the nation.

Mr. Lundy was born in the state of New Jersey on the 4th day of January, A. D. 1789, at the town of Hardwick, Sussex county, Both his father and mother were Quakers, and he, of course, was born in the communion of that church. When he was a mere boy he gave assurance of future greatness, by doing things on his father's farm that required strength far above that possessed by him. He was of a quiet and gentle . disposi- tion and by an accident came very near losing his hearing-re- maining through life partially deaf. He was about five feet five inches high and so slightly built that he appeared to be delicate. His face was a little florid, eyes pale blue and his hair bright anburn with a strong tendency to curl. His beard was light and he wore it like the Burnside style. Such are the outlines and features of him, who put in motion a set of ideas that have shaken a continent and are still thrilling the world.

The bodily powers of Mr. Lundy not increasing with his years, induced him to seek the Great West with a hope to strengthen his physical powers by the change of residence. So in 1808 he went to the vicinity of Wheeling, Va., and after working at several places west and east of that town, finally set- tled there to learn the trade of a saddler. Having finished his apprenticeship, he went to Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, but in a short time went back to New Jersey, where he was married. Soon after his marriage he returned to Ohio, settled at St. Clairsville, and set up the trade of saddle and harness maker.

When Mr. Lundy was learning his trade at Wheeling, that town was one of the great channels through which passed the slaves from the breeding lands of Maryland and East Virginia to the labor fields of the "sunny South." Gangs of slaves of both sexes, of from fifty to a hundred persons each, were often driven through the streets of that town, handeuffed in couples with a chain running between the couples to the length of the gang. Those gangs so handcuffed and secured were called "chain gangs of slaves." It was such seenes as those that met the eyes, and wrung the heart of Mr. Lundy and caused him to write in his diary: "My heart was greatly grieved by the great abomination. I heard the wail of the captive; I felt his pang of distress, and the iron entered my soul." Nor are those reflections and feelings of Mr. Lundy to be wondered at, when we remember his temperament, the influence under which he had been raised and the training he had received.

In the year 1815 he called a meeting of his neighbors to be held at his own house in the town of St. Clairsville, to organize an anti-Slavery Society. Only six persons attended that meet- ing, but they formed what they called a "Union Humane So- ciety." That was the first Abolition Society ever organized in the United States. It was a small beginning of a counter-wave to the flood that was overflowing the nation. In a few weeks the house of Mr. Lundy was too little to hold the members of that society, and in six months from its "small beginning" the "Union Humane Society" had over four hundred members, and among them some of the best citizens of Belmont county.

Mr. Lundy believed that God had put on him the duty to free the black man, and he entered upon the discharge of that duty with the fervor of a reformer and the zeal of an enthusiast. Not satisfied with simply organizing an Anti-Slavery Society and bringing his fellow-citizens into sympathy with its object, he be- gan to write articles against the "great abomination." On his twenty-sixth birthday, Mr. Lundy wrote his first article upon the abolition of American slavery. He entitled the article, "The Appeal to Philanthropists." That "appeal" contains nearly every thought ever urged against African slavery in the United States, and whatever was afterwards said or written upon that subject is only a repetition of that "appeal" or an elaboration of its ideas. In addition to the "appeal" he wrote several articles for the "Philanthropist," a paper then printed and published at Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, and edited by one Charles Osborne, a Quaker gentleman. The general bearings of that paper were against slavery, but discussed the question rather ab- stractively. Shortly after he had written those articles for the "Philanthropist" he became an assistant editor of that paper. So soon as Mr. Lundy had assumed the character of editor, he did an act that happily illustrates the force of his feeling against slavery, and the dogged determination of his mind to wrestle with its crime. In order to have funds with which to make the paper a more powerful one, he puts his entire stock of harness and saddles into a flatboat to take them to St. Louis to sell. The trip down the river was a slow one, and he did not reach St. Louis until late in the fall of 1819. He found all business at

a standstill, and everybody excited over the admission of Mis- souri as a State, with the memorable proviso known as the "Missouri Compromise." A fiery discussion was going on in the newspapers of the city, and Mr. Lundy, indiscreetly, yet manfully entered the arena of discussion as a combatant for freedom. That course inflamed the public against him, and he could get no sale for his goods only at disastrous prices. Get- ting out of them all he could, he, to save all the money possible, made the journey home on foot, although it was the "dead of winter of 1820-1." "Tis said calamities never come singly, and so Mr. Lundy found it to be in his case, for when he got back to Mt. Pleasant, Mr. Osborne had sold out his establishment, and the press and type shipped to Jonesboro, Tennessee,

But the loss of his property, the unexpected destruction of the business, to give strength and prosperity to which he had sac- rificed his means ; with mid-winter upon him, without friends, among strangers, and his money scant, all scemed to form a grand stimulating componnd that gave fresh vigor to the energy of Mr. Lundy. He at once resolved to start a newspaper of his own, exactly suited to his conception of the needs of the tre- inendous situation, for the charge of which he felt it his duty to act. Having gone on foot to several of the adjacent towns, on the hunt of a printer, willing to print his paper for him, he at last discoved the object of his wish at Steubenville, Ohio. That town was twenty miles distant from Mt. Pleasant, but Lundy undaunted by obstacles and undismayed by his poverty, carried his manuscript and selections in his pocket, to that town on foot, had his paper printed and then walked back to Mt. Pleasant, car- rying the first issue of the Genius of Universal Emancipation on his shoulders, Six persons took the paper. Lundy bowed to fate, but trusting in God and the "sacredness of the cause," straightened himself to a loftier mein and went on with his paper, going to and fro on foot. He continued to be his own mail car- rier, carrying his manuscript and selections one way, and the Genius of Universal Emancipation the other. Such zeal, such labor, such worth, can not be defeated ; and so in a few months his efforts brought him a considerable list of subscribers-enough to pay him well. Just as he had made the Genius of Universal Fmancipation a newspaper success, he received a pressing invita- tion from the editor of the Philanthropist, then published at Jones- boro, Tennessee, to come there and print his paper at that office. Mr. Lundy very foolishly accepted the invitation, He went to Jonesboro and remained there three years publishing his paper, but an abolition paper at the very heart of Tennessee, was too much for the "hot bloods" of that region to tolerate. He was often insulted as he passed about the streets, and threatened with personal violence, and on one occasion two ruffians locked him in a room, brandishing pistols in his face, declaring that "if he didn't git out of thar, they'd be the death of him," but he stayed in Jonesboro until it suited him to leave it.

The first "Anti-Slavery Convention" ever held in the United States, met at Philadelphia in the winter of 1823-4. Mr. Lundy made the journey of six hundred miles to attend its sittings. While at that convention he was induced to remove his paper to the East, and by an unlucky choice, located its publication at Baltimore, Maryland. Mr. Lundy left Jonesboro for Baltimore on foot, with knapsack on his back. He went by the way of North Carolina. At Deep Creek, that state, he made his first public "Anti-Slavery" speech. He spoke in a beautiful grove near, "Friends' Meeting House," directly after divine service. He also spoke in the meeting at another time, and made speeches at some house raisings, and at a "militia muster." While at Deep Creek, he organized an "Abolition Society." He once spoke at Raleigh, that state. As he went through Virginia, he made speeches at several places and organized one Abolition So- ciety,

He arrived at Baltimore, about the first of October, 1824, and the first issue of his paper was made October 10, 1824, being No. 1, fourth volume. Not long after his arrival at Baltimore, the masters of a considerable number of slaves, informed Mr. Lundy that if he would find homes for them, they would set them free. He immediately went North to secure them homes. Being de- tained much longer than he had expected to be, Mr: Lundy found on his return to Baltimore, that his wife had died in his absence, after giving birth to twin babies. That was the might- iest sorrow of his life, and from the shock, he never entirely re- covered. Kind friends, however, had provided homes for his children, of which he had five.

In the year 1828 Mr. Lundy went to New England on a lec- turing tour. Arriving at Boston he visited the clergymen of the city, and eight of them subscribed for his paper and prevail- ed upon him to hold an anti-slavery meeting. The meeting was

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HISTORY OF BELMONT AND JEFFERSON COUNTIES.

held and largely attended by the people. At the close of the meeting several of the clergymen addressed the people, concur- ving in the views of Mr. Lundy. He went on to New Hamp- shire and Maine lecturing when he could get the privilege. As he was returning he spoke in the principal towns of Massachu - setts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. He also traversed a large part of the state of New York, speaking at many of its promi- nent towns. It was on this tour at the city of Boston that he first. met Mr. William Lloyd Garrison, who was then quite a young man and a boarder at the house where Mr. Lundy so- journed. During his stay at Boston he had frequent conversa- tions with Mr. Garrison, and at last converted him to his views on the slavery question. In a short time Mr. Garrison be- came an active worker in the canse of abolition. So it may be truly said that Mr. Lundy cleared away the mists from before the face of that mighty luminary of universal emancipation, whose light continued to grow brighter and brighter until every spot of our fair land was made bright by the light of liberty.

Many of the slaveholders of Maryland at that time were heart- ily tired of slavery and emancipated their slaves whenever homes could be found for them "out of the state." A statute of the state of Maryland in force at the time forbade the perfect liber- ation of the slaves unless the master had them sent out of the state. Mr. Lundy was therefore constantly employed in behalf of the freedmen, finding them homes and getting them to them. Some of them he sent to Hayti, others to Canada and on one oc- casion Mr. Lundy made a trip to Texas to make the effort to secure from the Mexican government a large tract of land on which to put emancipated slaves, but he failed to obtain the land. In 1829 he visited Hayti and went many times to Canada to see how " his people " were getting along.

Mr. Lundy was a man who always bridled his tongue and pointed his pen with caution. He detested slavery but loved and pittied the slaveholder, and so while he handled the crime of slavery with no soft hands, he stroked the owners of the slaves with the gentlest touch. But an abolitionist and his abolition newspaper in the Monumental city, in the very midst of slave- dealers and the markets for slaves, were things not to be borne without resistance. Lundy must leave ; willingly well, but leave he must.

In the winter of 1829, he was met on the street by Austin Woolfolk, a notorious slave trader of that day, and assaulted and nearly beaten to death by him. Woolfolk was brought be- fore Judge Nicholas Brice for that offense, but Woolfolk was summarily set at liberty by "his Honor," with the remark that "Lundy had got no more than he deserved." Brice, not con- tent with his brisk behaviour as to Woolfolk, tyranically di- rected the Grand Jury to indict Lundy for publishing an in- cendiary newspaper, but the Grand Jury, having more sense and better principles than Brice, ignored the bill.

Mr. William Lloyd Garrison went to Baltimore, September 1, 1829, and became the associate editor of the Genius of Universal Emancipation. As is universally known, Mr. Garrison was a strong and fearless writer, and in a short time rendered himself subject to the fury of the "chivalry." An occurrence soon took place that gave him ample play to his ablest powers as a writer. A vessel commanded by a native of the same town with Mr. Garrison (Newburyport, Mass.) sailed with a cargo of slaves from Baltimore to New Orleans. Mr. Garrison, in the next issue of the paper, in a scathing editorial, discussed the cap- tain, the cargo, and the trip of the slave ship. So terrible was the invective, so scorching the eloquence, and so burning the rebuke of the slave traffic contained in that editorial, that a criminal prosecution was forthwith began against the writer. Of course he was convicted, and a fine of fifty dollars imposed upon him for the infraction of the law. Mr. Garrison, in that celebrated editorial, had called the coast-wise slave trade "do- mestic piracy," and as one of the "gentry" which owned the slaves had gone with the vessel, he brought suit for the "libel" against him. The jury awarded a verdict of one thousand dol- lars against Mr. Garrison, and judgment was entered according- ly ; but it stands an unpaid judgment to this day. When Mr. Garrison was poor he could not pay it, and when he became wealthy he would not pay it.

Mr. Garrison had to remain in prison until his friend and fel- low Abolitionist, Arthur Tappan, of New York, could go from that city to Baltimore to pay his fine and have him released. Mr. Garrison was in prison forty-nine days. On the very day that Mr. Tappan paid the fine, llon. Henry Clay arrived at "the city of monuments," to pay Mr, Garrison's fine and have him set at liberty, but he was too late, as Mr. Tappan had al- ready paid the fine and Mr. Garrison was again free.

In a short time after those prosecutions of Mr. Garrison and outrages upon Mr. Lundy, the partnership between those gen- tlemen was dissolved. The publication of The Genius of Uni- versal Emancipation was transferred to Washinton, D. C .; Mr. Lundy removing to that city. Mr. Garrison went back to Bos- ton, and on the 1st day of January, 1831, he issued the first number of his illustrious Abolttion paper, The Liberator.

So soon as Mr. Garrison became associate editor of the Genius he denounced slavery as "the sum of all crimes," and demanded its immediate and uuconditional abolition. He branded all other schemes about it, as mere shifts and tricks for its perpet- uation. "Liberty" he said "was the right of the slave, and it was the duty of the master to give it to him." Mr. Lundy was in favor of any scheme that brought liberty to a slave. He fa- vored colonization, manumission and emancipation, and hoped by those instrumentalities, to gradually do slavery away. Mr. Garrison believed the American Constitution, to be a bulwark around slavery, and denounced it as "a covenant with death and a league with hell." Mr. Lundy believed that the American Constitution simply treated slavery as an existing condition of a part of the people, and in no manner stood in the way to the final emancipation of that body of the people.

From 1830 to 1835, Mr. Lundy was constantly engaged in providing homes for slaves set free, and getting them to their homes.

He continued the publication of the Genius of Universal Emancipation, at Washington, D. C., until 1836, when he removed to the city of Philadelphia. After his arrival at Philidelphia, the name of his paper was changed to The National Enquirer and in a short time to that of Pennsylvania Freeman. On the 17th day of May, 1838, Pennsylvania Hall, owned by abolitionists, was burned by a mob. Mr. Lundy, preparatory to his removal to the West, had collected his property in one of the rooms of that " Hall." and his books, papers, clothing and household goods were consumed in the burning. In July, 1838, Mr. Lundy started for the state of Illinois, where his children then resided. He reached that state in September, and finally settled at Low- ell, La Salle county. He purchased a press and started the Genius of Universal Emancipation once more, but in August, 1839, he contracted a prevailing disease and died on the 22d day of that month. He was buried at the town of Lowell.

The Genius of Universal Emancipation, from its start at Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, until one year after its first publication at Baltimore, was a " monthly." From that time on until it ceased to be published it was a weekly. Mr. Lundy learned the print- ers' trade at Jonesboro, and when going about in behalf of the freedmen, if his money failed him, he would work at his trade to make money to keep him going.

JOHNNY APPLESEED.

Among the pioneers of the Ohio Valley there lived a very singular yet conspicuous man-John Chapman,* better known as " Johnny Appleseed." It was thought by persons acquainted with him that he possessed supernatural powers. He was born in the vicinity of Boston, Massachusetts, in 1773. Being of poor parentage, and the vicissitudes then attending the American colonists, he only obtained a limited education, learning to read and write. He was religiously inclined, and at an early age embraced the doctrine of Emanuel Swedenborg. So strong was his faith in that doctrine that, although in after life ho seldom enjoyed the society of brethren or friends favorable to his re- ligious belief, he never renounced the faith, continuing a stead- fast adherent until death.

Possessing a philosophical mind, he was scarcely a man when he commenced the production of apples on the Van Mous prin- ciple. We have seen some very fine apples that were grown on his seedling trees. On one of them the fruit is quite interest- ing and is a freak of nature. It is a large, yellowish-green apple, divided by elevations and depressions on the surface into fine sections, the elevations being sweet and the depressions sour. The tree is growing in the western part of Holmes county, Ohio, and is in a healthy condition. Abont the year 1830 it was claimed by some persons that the notable Belmont apple was the product of one of Chapman's trees, and from his nursery in the west end of Belmont county, hence the name. This, however, is a mistake; that apple is from scions brought by a Mr. Beam from Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, to Bel- mont county, Ohio, and grafted into one of Chapman's seedling trees.

Some historians have given his name as Jonathan Chapman, but we have seen his auto- graph.

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HISTORY OF BELMONT AND JEFFERSON COUNTIES.

Mr. Chapman's passion for producing apples from seed was remarkable, and some persons well acquainted with him be- lieved he was governed by instinct in his theory of ameliora- tion. How he obtained the idea of growing choice apples from seed, and opportunities for the sale of his trees, we will not dis- cuss. It is enough to know that before the close of the eight- centh century he was seen with an ax in his hand and a bag of apple seeds on his back, wending his way through the settle- ments to the wilderness, there to practice his cherished theory.

His method of operation, after securing a suitable situation, was to clear away the underbrush, deaden the trees by gir dling them, and then sow his apple seed. This done, he enclosed it with a brush fence. During the summer season he cultivated his young trees, looked up suitable places for other nurseries, and cleared the land. He did not purchase the land, but ob- tained permission to use it for his purpose, and generally selected a rich, fertile spot on the bank of some stream. In the fall he returned to the settlements, procured another stoek of seed, and at the proper season again wended his way to the wilderness and repeated the previous year's opperations.

The western country was rapidly settled, and as soon as the pioneers made their clearings, Johnny was ready with his apple trees, and if every one within his reach did not plant an orehard it was not his fault. The price of the trees, or when they were paid for, was of little consequence. He seemed to derive a sat- isfaction amounting to delight when he saw his trees transplanted in the orchard.

His benevolence was unbounded. He generally went bare- footed, but if he had a pair of shoes and saw any one whom he thought needed them, he would take them off and give them to the person.

His first operations were in Venango, Pa., in the vicinity of French creek. We next hear of him in 1801. With a quantity of apple seeds in small leathern bags and carried on a horse, he crossed the Ohio river from the Virginia shore near Wellsburg, and staid over night with a settler living in the valley. After making himself and his business known, the settler urged him to commence a nursery in that neighborhood. This he refused to do, saying : "They are starting one up the river on the Vir- ginia side, and they talk of improving apples by grafting," Said he : "They cannot improve the apple in that way-that is only a device of man, and it is wieked to cut up trees in that way." "The correct method," he said, "is to select good seeds and plant them in good ground, and God only can improve the apples." He said he intended going further from the settle- ments, where he would not be troubled with the stock destroy- ing his trees before they were ready for sale ; and when the set- tlers came and made their "clearings," he would be ready for them with his "good trees." In the morning, after making en- quiry about the best route to the Muskingum, he started on his journey.

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History of Belmont and Jefferson Counties, Ohio, and incidentially historical collection pertaining to border warfare and the early settlement of the adjacent portion of the Ohio Valley, Part 68

Author: Caldwell, J. A. (John Alexander) 1n; Newton, J. H., ed; Ohio Genealogical Society. 1n Publication date: 1880 Publisher: Wheeling, W. Va. : Historical Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 728

Author: Caldwell, J. A. (John Alexander) 1n; Newton, J. H., ed; Ohio Genealogical Society. 1n
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Wheeling, W. Va. : Historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 728