USA > Ohio > Champaign County > History of Champaign County, Ohio, Its People, Industries and Institutions, Volume I > Part 19
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shoe cobbler : a man by the name of Downey was undoubtedly the first of a number of blacksmiths who have held forth in the little village. The town will never be any more than a mere trading center, but it has been a valuable asset to the farming community of which it is the center. There are now two general stores in the village-E. E. McDonald and Mr. Brockney.
HAZLETON.
A village of Salem township which never got beyond the paper stage was platted as "Hazleton" for David Hurley in 1837. The village was located on fractional section 4, township 5 and range 12. The village may be better identified by stating that it was at the crossing of the Ludlow Line and the road running from Middleburg to Urbana, and near Judge John Taylor's mill. The original plat contained thirty-two lots, but as far as is known the proprietor, Hurley, never sold any lots. Hurley had bought one hundred and four acres of fractional section 4 in September, 1830, from Ruhannah Taylor, this amount covering the northern half of the section. The history of the village stops short with its platting and recording-that is, its history begins and closes on May 2, 1837.
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CHAPTER IX.
CONCORD TOWNSHIP.
Concord township was a part of the original Mad River township which had been organized in 1805 and was set off from that township in 1811. The exact date of its organization by the commissioners is lost, but the record of an election held on October 8, 1811, furnishes indisputable proof that the township was in existence at that time. It is more than probable that it was created in that same year and that the election on the date mentioned was the first held in the township. Another point of uncertainty concerns the original limits of the township. The earliest record in the commissioners' minutes gives the boundaries of the township as it existed in 1817, but whether this was its original limits, or its limits as changed between the date of its organization and 1817, are facts which can only be ascertained from the commissioners' records. Their absence, therefore, makes it impossible to state with certainty what the limits of the township were prior to 1817.
The limits as defined in 1817 were as follows: "Beginning at the south- east corner of the fourth township in the twelfth range; running north to the northeast of the same; thence west to the county line; thence with said line to the south boundary of said range; thence east to the place of beginning." This description shows that the township in that year included all of its present limits ; all of Johnson except the southern tier of sections; the two southern tiers of sections of the present Adams township; and the southern tier of sections of the present Harrison township.
Johnson township was detached in 1821 and this restricted Concord to township 4, of range 12, but the commissioners' records do not state when the northern tier of sections was detached from Concord and attached to Harrison. The latter township was organized in 1815, but at that time it did not have the northern tier of sections of township 4 in range 11. It is probable that Concord received its present limits at the time Johnson was cut off in 1821. It now contains thirty sections of land, six sections from east to west and five sections from north to south.
It would be interesting to know who suggested the name of "Concord" as the name of the new township in 1811. It is not beyond the range of
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probability that some of the pioneers who petitioned for the organization of the township had fought at Concord bridge in 1775-"By the rude bridge that arched the flood." Be that as it may, the township was so named and it has honored the oirginal Concord of Massachusetts, even though it may not have been named in its honor.
At the election of 1811 which has been previously mentioned, there were only thirty-five votes cast, and all of these were not residents of the Con- cord township of today; some undoubtedly lived within the present limits of Johnson, Adams or Harrison, which townships were in part at that time attached to Concord. The complete poll-book is given verbatim:
POLL BOOK OF CONCORD TOWNSHIP, OCTOBER 8, 1811.
Poll Book of the election held in Concord township. In the county of Champaign. on the eighth day of October, A. D., one thousand eight hundred and eleven. Samp- son Talbot, Thomas Stretch and Joseph Hill, Judges; William Stretch and Daniel Jackson, Clerks, of this election, were severally sworn as the law directs, prevlous to their entering on the duties of their respective offices.
NAMES OF ELECTORS.
Felix Rock, Silas Johnston, Adam Wise, George Faulkner, Phillp C. Kenton, James Johnston, Philip Comer, Walker Johnston, Archibald McGrew, Sr., Christian Stevens, William Kenton, Jr., James McLaughlin, Jark Kenton, Elijah T. Davla, Ezekiel A. Smith, Sampson Talbot, Thomas Stretch, Joseph Hill, William Stretch, Daniel Jackson, Robert Blaney, Jacob Sarver, Samuel Mitchell, Sr., Joel Fuson, Abraham Custor, William Custor. Isaac C'ustor, Mathew MeGrew, James Mitchell, Thomas Kenton, Thomas Daniel, Samuel Smith, Marcus Clark, Benjamin Line, Joseph Hurings.
This election was held at the home of Robert McFarland, who located near Concord chapel, but no record seems to have been preserved of the officials elected at this election. There is not only no record of the officials selected at this election of 1811, but the late T. S. McFarland, who was the best informed man on the early history of the township, stated that the first officers were elected in 1818. Writing in 1872, McFarland stated in the "History of Champaign and Logan Counties" (p. 299) that the first election of officers was in 1818 and at this time the following were elected: Trustees, Philip Kenton. George Robinson and John Bouseman; clerk, John Daniels. The same authority gives the following list of clerks during the early history of the township: Robert McFarland, the father of T. S. McFarland, was elected in 1819 and served for thirteen consecutive years, his house serving as the election place for several years; and following McFarland came in order Joseph Hough, Stilly McGill, James Russell, D. H. Neer, L. M. Steward,
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Philip Comer, Austin Heath, John Russell (later secretary of state of Ohio), R. G. Allen, Fleming Hall. Joseph Groves and N. D. McReynolds.
FIRST SETTLER IN TOWNSHIP.
There seems to be no question that Joseph Hill was the first settler within the present limits of Concord township. Hill settled in section 8 in 1802 and for many years prior to the setting off of Concord township was a constable. He was the father of Joseph Hill, later superintendent of the Panhandle railway, with headquarters at Logansport, Indiana. When Hill arrived on the scene in February, 1802, he found on the tract he had entered a "squatter" by the name of Isaac Anderson. Anderson had made some few improvements, but not having any title to the land, he was forced to move. This Anderson left a reputation in Concord and Mad River town- ships as the laziest man in the community and many are the stories of the effort he put forth to keep from doing anything.
It is not possible to trace the settlers in the order of their arrival in the township, but a number of the first arrivals will be briefly noticed. Follow- ing close after Hill in 1802 came Sampson Talbot who settled just west of the Arrowsmith mills in the southern part of the township. Talbot had served as a justice of peace for a number of years before Concord was set off from Mad River township. He was famous for the large number of marriage ceremonies which he performed, his unique method of conducting the ceremony making him a favorite with the young couples of the com- munity. He died in 1846 and is buried on the old Talbot farm. The land has been in the Talbot family since it was entered in 1803. It is now owned by Mary R. and Laura C. Talbot, granddaughters of Sampson Talbot.
Adam Wise came to the township prior to 1805 and settled on the late Oliver Taylor farm in section I in the southeastern corner of the township. His grandson, James Stevens, of Kingston, lived to be nearly one hundred years old. Another early settler in the southeastern part of the township was Alexander Dunlap, who located on the farm later owned by S. M. Pence. Dunlap prided himself on being a little different from ordinary men. On one occasion, in 1830, he decided to make the race for the Legislature, and he proceeded to announce his candidacy in a manner befitting his peculiarities. It ran as follows :
Take notice. that I offer as a candidate to represent Champaign county In the next legislative session of Ohio in the ensuing election October next. I am a Republican.
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I am against the black and colored people being on the same footlug as the whites iR. I am in favor of gineral Anndrew Jackson being president to take seat in March next. I adds no more at present, but remains a candidate. Aug. 4th, 1830. ALEXANDER DUNLAP.
His originality availed him nothing-he was defeated. Dunlap had two sons and two daughters and all of them lived to ripe old ages, but only one of the daughters ever married. William, the youngest son, evidently was a chip off the old block ; he became wealthy, but later in life developed a consuming desire to light cigars with five-dollar bills. It is needless to add that he spent his declining days in the county infirmary.
SOME OTHER EARLY ARRIVALS.
The Mitchell family were early settlers in the vicinity of Northville. James Mitchell. Sr., was an old man when the family located in the township in 1806. He had three sons, John, Samuel and James, Jr., and all three of the sons married and settled in the vicinity of Westville. In 1809 the first member of the Longfellow family arrived in the township, Joseph Long- fellow, a native of Delaware, later resident of Kentucky and still later of Concord township, Champaign county. He was a cousin of Henry Wads- worth Longfellow, the poet. The trip of Longfellow and his wife from Delaware to this county is fraught with a great deal of interest and is worthy of being perpetuated in the history of the township.
They emigrated in a one-horse cart from Delaware to Kentucky and the same vehicle furnished their only means of transportation from the latter state to Champaign county. The harness for this one horse was homemade and there was not a bit of iron used in its construction. They stopped only a short time in Kentucky and then set out again on the long trip for Ohio. They packed their household goods in the cart, but when this was done there was not room for either of them to ride. Not only that, but there were two things necessary to take along which had to be carried-he wanted his gun, and she insisted that a bread tray could not be left behind. So, armed with the gun and bread tray, respectively, the couple-and both were over sixty years of age-started with their cart and faithful horse for the land of promise, for Concord township, Champaign county, Ohio. And they walked the entire distance, he leading the horse and she following with her bread tray to give notice if anything should fall off the cart. Thus came to the county the first members of a family which have become well known and substantial citizens and are represented by many descendants today.
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Longfellow was not a large man physically, but he was a man of unusual energy and physical endurance. He fought during the War of 1812 and returning to his farm in this township, continued to reside on it until his death, December 1, 1865, being one hundred years old at the time of his death. He voted for George Washington for President in 1788 and voted at each succeeding Presidential election down to and including the second elec- tion of Lincoln. He was the father of twenty-two children and a number of these children attained positions of honor in their respective communities.
PREVALENCE OF "MILK-SICKNESS".
Henry Bacome entered land in 1810 west of Concord chapel. In this settlement there was prevalent a peculiar disease which was commonly known as "milk-sickness," but just what the disease was, or how to treat it, the pio- neer physicians were never able to determine. Bacome moved his cabin three times in order to escape the disease, but it caught him before he moved the fourth time. He believed it came from the water : others thought it came from buckeye sprouts ; still others thought that it came from the dew on fleabane; as a matter of fact, the disease completely baffled the best physicians of the time and there are those yet today who maintain that the disease was largely a matter of imagination.
FATHER OF THIRTY-TWO CHILDREN.
Felix Rock was one of the early settlers and located on the farm in sec- tion 9 which he sold to Daniel Kizer when he removed to Iowa in 1844. The entire Rock family died shortly after they went West. The farm which was later in the hands of the Taylor family for many years was entered by John Tippin and was sold by him to John Daniels. John Duckworth, an Englishman, came to the township from Warren county, Ohio, in 1815 and entered the northwest quarter of section 9, and, interesting to note, he paid for it by cutting wood at twenty-five cents a cord. The Harbours were Carolinians who came to the county in 1805. It is probable that Jesse Harbour accumulated more children and more acres of ground than any pioneer in the county. T. S. McFarland is responsible for the statement that Harbour had thirty-two children and that "he gave each child eighty acres of land, or its equivalent, when they arrived at the age of maturity." William Harbour, a brother of Jesse, arrived from Carolina in the same
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year. Jesse Harbour entered his first land in the northwestern corner of the township, about a mile west of Heathtown. He died in 1865.
AN EXPERIENCE WORTH RECORDING.
Longevity was one of the characteristics of the early settlers of Con- cord township. Feather beds are said to be an excellent safeguard against lightning, but Thomas Tipton, one of the early settlers of Concord township, put them to another practical use. He conceived the notion that he would live an untold number of years if he would but sleep between two feather beds, in summer as well as winter, and he succeeded in warding off the Grim Reaper until he was one hundred and eleven years old. It is not known whether he missed a night or two away from his feather beds, but his experi- ence is worth recording. Tipton sold his farm to Peter Baker. It was the southwest quarter of section 29.
Many of the settlers who entered land before 1820 found themselves unable to meet their payments and had to relinquish their patent. In many cases this seemed unfair and local historians have expressed themselves in no uncertain terms regarding the injustice of the act of Congress which com- pelled some of the best of the settlers to give up their farms. Some tracts changed hands very frequently in the first few decades. The records show that one farm, originally entered by Joel Harbour passed through the hands of Joel Fuson, James Bacon, William Snodgrass and William Werden before 1819. Another farm which eventually became the property of Jesse Neer was entered by Samuel and John Hogg and passed through the hands of a man by the name of Taylor (not Judge John Taylor). George Gideon and John Shriver.
AN INTERESTING DOCUMENT.
Along the western side of the township Thomas and William Stretch located early in its history. These two brothers served as constable in their township and the bond which they signed upon assuming the duties of their office is an interesting document of ancient Champaign history. This unique instrument is given verbatim:
Know all men by these presents. That we. Thos, Stretch and Win. Stretch of the township of Mad River, county of Champaign and State of Ohio, are held and firmly bound to Ezekiel Arrowsmith, Treasurer, or his successor in office in the just sum of four hundred dollars, for which payment well and truly to be made. we bind
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ourselves, our heirs, executors and administrators firmly by these presents and sealed with our seals and dated this 10th day of October, 1809.
The condition of this obligation is such that if the above, Thos. Stretch and Wm. Stretch or his attorney do, and shall in all things well and truly observe and perform and faithfully and impartially act, which on the part of them the said Thos. Stretch, Constable for the above mentioned township and county, in the time, manner and way the law directs during the time he shall remain in office; then this obligation will to be vold and of no effect, otherwise to remain in legal force.
THOB. STRETCH, WM. STRETCH.
DISPOSITION OF SCHOOL LANDS.
One of the old township records presents some interesting facts con- cerning the school sections. Every sixteenth section of land was set aside for school purposes and it was the duty of the township trustees to take charge of this land. In the case of Mad River township the school land was rented to various parties for a number of years. The old record shows that George Stonebarger was the first renter to lease a part of section 16, township 4, range 11-the only school section in the township. His lease extended the legal limit of fifteen years. He was to clear a certain amount of land, keep it under cultivation, plant so many apple trees, sow so much timothy and clover seed and in other ways perform certain acts as specified by law.
EARLY CONFUSION IN BOUNDARIES.
As has been stated the township began its legal existence in 1811 and before that time had been attached to Mad River. Local historians in writ- ing of the township in former years seemed to have confused the original Concord township with the township as it is today. It must be remembered that the township included nearly all of Johnson and part of Adams between 1811 and 1817, and that from 1805 to 1811 it was a part of Mad River town- ship. Many of the officials listed by local historians as belonging to Concord township, were, it is true, residents of the present Concord, but the territory now composing the township was a part of Mad River. For instance, the Stretch brothers, whose bond has been given, lived in what is now Concord township, but they were officials of Mad River township and not Concord township. The late T. S. McFarland in his historical monographs on Con- cord township names a group of officers of Concord who were in office prior to 1811, and this means that they were elected for Mad River, since Concord had no officials of its own until after 1811.
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To quote from T. S. McFarland: "Caleb Carter and Isaac Anderson were the first trustees of the township. John Clark's name also appears as one of the early trustees of the township. George Mahin's and Joseph Hill's names appear as witnesses in connection with the leasing of school lands. Also Daniel and Charles Rector were among the prominent men of their day. James Montgomery, we believe, was a Methodist minister and an associate of the Rectors. John Kain entered the first record of the stock mark, July 13, 1805. Kain lived then on what is known as the Strother Smith farm in Jackson township, in the identical house in which the writer's grandfather died in 1811. This same house is now [written in 1881 ] occupied by Will- iam Kesslar and the chimney still bears the marks of an earthquake which took place in December, 1811. Elijah Weaver was among the early officers of the township, with William Weaver and Joseph Diltz as his securities."
It is evident that all of the officers mentioned by McFarland in the pre- ceding paragraph were elected for Mad River township. The records of Concord after it began its independent career in 1811 have been searched with a scrutinizing eye by the township's historian, McFarland. and there are few facts worthy of perpetuation which have escaped his keen eye. It is safe to say that no township in the county has had more written about it than Concord, and certainly a greater fund of miscellaneous facts concern- ing its early settlers have been preserved than of any other township in the county.
THE COMING OF THE M'FARLANDS.
Robert McFarland, the father of Thomas Sims McFarland, was a native of Rockbridge county, Virginia, and was taken by his parents when still a child to Tennessee and shortly afterwards to Kentucky. In 1807 Robert McFarland came to Champaign county to make a permanent location, a prospecting trip with Martin Hitt and Joseph Diltz during the year previous having convinced the young man that the county was a suitable place in which to settle. The impelling reason for McFarland's leaving Kentucky was his intense hatred of slavery. In October, 1807, the McFarland family arrived in the county and stopped for a short time in the northern part of the present Union township. They unloaded their goods by an oak log on Tuesday and by Friday they were ready to move into their rude cabin, although the floor was but partly laid and the roof not yet in place. Their beds were the rudest sort. built out from the wall, the one corner being nothing more than a forked stake securely driven into the ground. In this cabin William
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McFarland and his family and Joseph Gray, his father-in-law, lived from October until the following spring. They then moved to Salem township on a tract about half way between Urbana and West Liberty. Still later the two families located about two and one-half miles southeast of Westville in Mad River township.
Robert McFarland bought the farm of Henry Bacome and this became the McFarland homestead for more than a century. It had joined the old Concord chapel in Concord township. In the winter of 1811-12 Robert McFarland built a cabin on his newly-acquired farm and in April, 1812. moved into his new home.
ATROCIOUS DEED OF REDSKINS.
On the farm on which McFarland moved in the spring of 1812 there was probably the best preserved Indian village standing at that time in the county. About two hundred yards west and south of Concord chapel was a deserted Indian village of fourteen huts. They were still in a good state of preservation and had been deserted within the previous decade. Many stories are told of the Indians who roamed the woods in the early days of Concord township. As far as known the only persons killed by the Indians within the township were Arthur Thomas and his son. They were killed in August, 1813, by the Indians and the blood-thirsty savages after shooting them, scalped them, hung them by their heels, and capped their cruelty by disemboweling and tying their intestines around their necks. The bodies were found the next day and taken to Urbana where they were buried in the old graveyard.
Concord township was evidently a favorite spot of the Indians. In addi- tion to the village near Concord chapel they had one between Muddy creek and the present village of Northville. They also had a village in the south- eastern corner of the township near the confluence of Muddy creek and Mad river. Numerous Indian relics have been found on the old Johnson farm along Mad river in the northeastern corner of the township and this would indicate the location of an Indian village there at one time.
RACE SUICIDE WAS DISCOURAGED.
The families of most of the old settlers of Champaign county were fully in accordance with the views of a former President of the United States regarding race suicide. Concord township, according to McFarland, boasted
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"at one time of six families in which there was one hundred and forty-seven children and no miscount." This would make an average of twenty-four and one-half children to the family, which, necessarily, indicates that at least one family had more than twenty-four. Reference has been made to Jesse Harbour who became the father of thirty-two children, but data is not avail- able to show who the other five advocates of anti-race suicide may have been. The father of T. S. McFarland had a family of nineteen children and thirteen of these were living in 1881, their average ages at that time being fifty-six years.
THE FOLEY-WILKINSON FRACAS.
In the history of a township which has been in existence for more than one hundred years, as has been Concord township, there may be found a vast number of incidents of infinite variety, some of which have a certain his- torical value, but most have only such interest as attaches to rambling reminiscences. Thus it is with Concord township. An example of one of these incidents which has been repeated over and over for a hundred years is the story of the Foley-Wilkinson fracas.
Near Concord chapel at the beginning of the township's history there lived a family by the name of Foley-parents and four sons, the latter rang- ing in age from eighteen to twenty-six years. These four sons were big, muscular fellows and, if tradition carries a modicum of truth, they had little else to recommend them except their physical prowess. They were quarrel- some, lazy, shiftless and were usually described with an assortment of adjec- tives. none of which were complimentary. They mowed down every aspir- ant for athletic honors until they met one Thomas Wilkinson. Hence this story.
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