USA > Ohio > Brown County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 21
USA > Ohio > Clermont County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 21
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39
George Earhart with his wife whose maiden name was Elizabeth Fanchon came from Pennsylvania by way of Co- lumbia, whence they followed Absalom and Sarah Day, their daughter, to a permanent home in Brown County near the line and by the road from Mt. Orab to Williamsburg. Their eld- est child, John. was an excellent mechanic in woodwork and built himself a superior house on the spot where the Hon. James E. McKever lives. The other children of George Ear-
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hart were George, Jr., Huldah, Tryphenah, Mary, Sanford, Samuel and Peggie, who left connections that were in a large sense the foundation of that part of Brown. By them in both time and place were the homes of John Anderson and Moses Leonard, whose wife, Elizabeth, was a sister of Anderson, who was born in Maryland, February 10, 1773, and so had but a child's hazy memory of the Revolution. But Leonard, born in Pennsylvania, in 1759, was in the battle of Brandywine. A chapter would not suffice to name the numbers and worth of the posterity of these families-the Days, Earharts, Ander- sons-and Leonards, who broke the solitudes of the interior of Brown County on the western side.
Still farther south a family of most useful mechanics grew up in the home of Henry Willis, whose daughters at a later date married to the names of West, Davis, Parke and Bred- well. Aaron and Brazilla Osborn, brothers, came to Bethel in 1799, and so did Brazilla's daughter, Mary, who received a lot from Denham, as the first born in the town. Still farther south, the Sargent neighborhood which might mean a town- ship, now was enlarged by Samuel Walraven, Joshua Pigman and Daniel Judd, whose families still continue. Walraven and Judd intermarried with the Sargents, and Judd, in particular, became a much whispered name in connection with the Under- ground Railroad. On the west, Adam Simmon's class was increased by a local preacher-the Rev. George Brown-who possessed the usual zeal and piety of the early itinerants. Wil- liam Slye bereft of a leg in the Revolution, came there at that time, but his descendants went still farther.
Fine illustration of pioneer ways is found in the story of Daniel Feagins, who held the rank of Captain in the Revolu- tionary army. He came down the Ohio in 1786 with several families on an "Ark" that like all others touched at Limestone Point, where Kenton told them of the certain danger at that time of going farther. All but Feagins persisted and perished. After living ten or twelve years on the Kentucky side, he crossed over with his wife Violet and several of their nineteen children and made the first break in the forest a little south of where Georgetown was to be founded a generation later. His elder sons, Daniel and Fielding, who came to Ohio, served in the border war under Kenton. While Fielding and his brother-
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in-law, Absalom Craig, were hunting back of Augusta, Craig was killed in the act of stooping to drink from a spring, while the other escaped by instant flight. Afterwhile, Fielding was asked for food at his Ohio cabin by two Indians. Making sure that one wore the bullet pouch used by Craig when he was killed, Fielding, determined on revenge, followed and shot the wrongful or unlucky possessor of the fatal pouch-wrong- ful, if the actual despoiler of Craig-unlucky, if not guilty but merely wearing a tell-tale trophy that linked a double trouble. The second Indian fled, as had been done in Kentucky by young Feagins, who buried his victim on the west bank of White Oak about a mile below Georgetown, threw the owner- less rifle into deep water, and kept the deed secret, until the skeleton was exposed in 1832, by the wash of a flood. The incident will be better understood by modern readers with the explanation that, in those days with little ornament, the natural love for some distinct article was often gratified by an inlaid rifle stock, by an engraved powder horn, or by a beaded bullet pouch. Captain Feagins and most of the family drifted onward and elsewhere before a civilization that perplexed him with complex customs. His still-house caused Christian Smith, who settled near him about the same time, to sell out and go to Lewis township. William Lyon, who helped in the early surveys, was close to Feagins and left many to remember him.
Jacob Miller came to Lewis township about 1800, but his name appears in the petition of 1798. James Roney came at that time. William Moore, another signer of the petition, set- tled near Georgetown in 1798, where he raised twelve children, whose children have had much respect. James Moore came about the same time to Jefferson township. Joseph Laycock with his family came from Virginia in time to sign the petition of 1798. Another of his early coming is found in the birth of his son, William, on April 3, 1799, in Union township. An- other son, Levi, born in Virginia in 1793, married Mary, a daughter of Joseph and Elizabeth Mann Washburn. who came in 1800 from Pennsylvania to Jefferson township. James and John Henry, who also signed the authentic petition, probably came from Mason County, Kentucky, where the name was frequent. William Cochran, born in Ireland in 1722. after Revo- lutionary service in Pennsylvania came by Kentucky to the
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eastern edge of Huntington township in 1796, where he was followed eight years later by his son, the noted General John Cochran. William Cochran must be noted among the earliest born of all who are buried within the present limits of Brown County, but his last years belong to the Adams County history.
Fergus McClain, named in the petition of 1798, was a refugee from the Whisky Insurrection in Pennsylvania, who found safety in the obscurity of Eagle Creek at that time. Tradition claims that he was a Free Mason. If so he was the first to live within the limits of Brown and Clermont. The Isaac Ellis in the petition was a brother of Amos Ellis, but his pos- terity went farther west, and nothing is left but this brief notice. John Mefford came to the same neighborhood, and so did John Redmon, Robinson Lucas, Uriah Springer, James and John Prickett and their families. The presence of these people in or before 1798 is proved by their names or some of the family on the petition. Most of these soon after went farther back from the Ohio and began the settlement of Franklin township in Brown County, where they were joined by John and James Lindsey, Joseph Abbott, Greer Brown and James Dunn. These names mainly represent heads of large and well grown families much united by intermarriage.
Matthew Davidson, the first name on the petition, was a stone cutter by trade and built the stone jail in Washington, Mason County, Kentucky, where he lived ten years before settling in Ohio. The family founded by John and Mary Housh Evans came to Huntington township in 1800, whence a large and influential connection has gone abroad. Nicholas Devore did Revolutionary service from Pennsylvania and his wife, Sarah Decker, came from a family that did the same. They were among the first that went to Kenton's Station, whence their son, David Devore, came to Red Oak in 1800, where he lived and prospered sixty useful years, esteemed for intelligence and respected for integrity. The first cabin in Levanna was raised in 1799 by John Liggett. About the same time William Park from Ireland and by Pennsylvania came to Lewis township with his wife and eight children. Stephen Bolender came to the same township with his wife and nine children.
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Notwithstanding every foot of the land was set apart as a reward for the Revolutionary service of the officers and sol- diers of Virginia and, despite the surprising number of patriots that came at dates that meant middle life for all, and old age for many, very little was actually occupied by the patriot to whom the warrant for the land was given. So universally were these warrants transferred that it is claimed that hardly an officer of Virginia's line came to Ohio and took personal possession of his Bounty land. One was Colonel Robert Hig- gins, whose father was a native of Dublin, Ireland, who was born in Pennsylvania and moved to Virginia from where he went as captain of a company. He was soon promoted a colonel, but was unfortunately captured at Germantown and remained a prisoner till the surrender of Cornwallis. It is told that he came to Ohio, before any settlement, to locate his own warrant, under which he surveyed one thousand acres of the fine valley at Higginsport. In 1798 he came to the op- posite side of the river, from which he moved in the spring to his land-his own in a peculiar sense, where his name has had the leading place.
The general downward course of the Little Miami through and from Milford is southward until the great division of the river is reached, where the united stream takes the direction of the East Fork and trends west with lofty banks that curve around a river plain that is bounded a mile farther to the west by the bending hills that stretch away toward Cincinnati. On the Clermont side the hills rise quickly from the water's edge and go to Mt. Carmel through a survey of nine hundred seventy-seven acres that has the significant number of 1775, and bears the name of George Washington, to whom it was given by his grateful Virginia in part for his service. The view of the Forks of the Miami from these hills is a scene of surpassing beauty, of which the Clermont side is known as Milford, which had much more significance in early days. The ripple below the mill that gathered a settlement there was the first safe ford out from the Ohio, whose highest flood barely reaches the pond below. We have seen that McCormick and Gatch chose the vicinity for their earthly paradise. We have also noted that the people first impressed with the peculiar characteristic of the west side named it Round Bottom. Ama-
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teur speculators unmindful and probably unaware of the rare and early romantic interest have substituted the double name of Terrace Park for what should have been COVALTS. Through this valley and by that station was much of the im- migration that came from Cincinnati or that went farther west.
In the wilds of Western Maryland there was a log structure known as Davenport's Meeting House, in which Thomas Scott, afterward Judge Scott of Ohio's Supreme Court, and Edward Tiffin, afterward first State Governor of Ohio, used to preach. In that house, Henry Smith and Francis McCormick preached their first efforts. That meeting house stood on the head waters of a stream called Bullskin. Whether these circum- stances had anything to do with a transfer of that peculiar name to a creek in Clermont and to the large Methodist migra- tion to its waters has not been decided. but the coincidence seems more than accidental. The location of the Sargent and Simmons people on the Ohio, and of the McCormick and Gatch congregation on the Miami, both at vitally central approaches to Old Clermont, must have had fine influence for their church.
However this may have been, the Bullskin landing was a noted debarking point for Methodist families from the eastern churches, and for many others, who got both spiritual and secular information from the circuit riders who served as colonizers as well as evangelists. Under authority of the Quarterly Court of Hamilton County in 1796, a road was laid out from the mouth of the Little Miami, thirty-two miles up the Ohio River by Ichabod Miller assisted by John Whet- sone and Ignatius Ross. We can be certain of that road hav- ing nothing but commercial reasons, which regarded Bullskin as a controlling point for the settlement of the interior. That road to Bullskin and Donnell's Trace to Williamsburg laid a year later were, at that date, Cincinnati's most ambitious at- tempts at road making. For the military roads to the north- western forts were not directed by civil authority. To Bull- skin landing, the most important then on the Ohio side be- tween Manchester and Columbia, there was a trace to other landings and ferries to the east. The united travel from all climbed the hills toward Felicity which was not, and went to Denhamstown and Williamsburg and farther west. Several
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years passed before this road was legally laid, but for a score of years, it was popular as "the Augusta and Round Bottom Road," only second in importance to the Chillicothe road, of which it was a branch with the forks at Williamsburg. To the north of this there was no road and no need for any for some years. The extension of Zane's Trace from Chillicothe in a southwesterly course to Maysville, passed through the southeastern portion of Huntington township to what was called Massietown, and is Aberdeen. The settlements in Brown as yet were not definite enough to attract or direct a fixed way through the woods where each could wander as he thought most convenient.
Such was the chance or lack of chance for travel in 1800, when Nathaniel Donham came out to Pierce township to found a proudly permanent connection, after twenty-five years of wandering, from New Jersey to Round Bottom, where he had lived about Covalt's Station for the preceding six years. Hez- ekiah Lindsey and Rev. William Robb came at the same time to the same vicinity, and helped to form a Baptist society. The Fitzpatricks settled nearby. George Richey was added to the Bullskin settlement, near to Peter Goslin, and along with the five Miller families. Philip Moyer and two brothers, Thomas and Levi Hunt, settled farther north, near the Bolenders of Lewis township. John Behymer began his farm on the edge of Anderson township, in Hamilton County, but his children soon crossed the line into Clermont. Maurice Witham, a Baptist preacher, was one of the first of a very considerable number who followed him from Maine, and formed the set- tlement now called Withamsville. His children were grown and some married with families, so that the Bennetts, Warrens, Bradburys and Lanes, of or from that neighborhood, revere his memory. Daniel and Joshua Durham and John White all came to that part in 1800 and all are represented to this day by more or less numerous descendants. Timothy Day and James Phillips gave a start to the Mt. Carmel settlement, but most of their interests belonged to Hamilton, of which the larger part was still wild land. Samuel Davis came to be a neighbor of the Teals and Aveys by taking his chance across from Perintown. Andrew Shetterly was another member of the Pietist church in Pennsylvania that came to Goshen, which
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was farther increased by John Irwin. Ephraim McAdams, mentioned as an early purchaser of lots in Williamsburg, spent much time there before the coming of his family, which sub- sequently became a large connection. The Crane family came to Bethel, where their descendants are both numerous and influential. The South and Frazee families both date their residence in Bethel from 1800. Jeremiah Smith came then to near Felicity, where he had the first chair shop.
For more than a hundred years the name of Roudebush has meant hard sense, fair dealing and honest thrift. The parents of the Clermont branch were Daniel and Christina Snively Roudebush, who came from Maryland and Pennsylvania, through Kentucky, to Goshen township, whence their de- scendants have spread over Clermont and intermarried with other families, with an increased influence. It has been claimed that some one or more of the connection have held honorable position in the public service for almost a hundred years. To politicians this may seem the limit, but to one who has confi- dence in the American people, it seems the height of com- mendation.
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Among the hundred families who came in, or before 1800, were four brothers: William, Dory, John and Peter Malott, of whom the first three were Revolutionary soldiers. William and John settled near Perintown, and the other two north- east of Williamsburg, one being on the Brown County side. Their lot, generally, was one of hardy toil on the farm or in the woodland. Among the multitude of their descendants were two brothers. William Warren, and Wellington, and a sister, Josephine, who, by some occult selection, received a remark- able degree of literary instinct, which prompted them to give their short lives to books, and their zeal to composition, which, in Warren, reached such proficiency as would have made him famous if he had lived longer, or lived where fortune smiled on such endeavor. From a log school house, by a rude deaden- ing, where crude teachers had scarcely more than read the text they tried to teach, Warren, by no choice of his own, was brought in his seventeenth year into a neighborhood where he was made welcome to the writer's library, which opened a new heaven to his hitherto fettered aspirations and unlet- tered surroundings. Thenceforth, he was a slave to books,
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and, with incredible speed, became a fellow spirit with the masters of literature. Out of great love for their inspirations. he began to answer his favorite authors with his own thoughts. wreathed into pretty story and graceful song, which found a place in eastern periodicals and caused the editors to ask for more, with a compensation that lured him to deeper study. But the most, and what seemed much to some, that could be done for the shy boy, was to make him editor of a hot political weekly, where he was all out of tune. For people could not see the visions which glorified a life otherwise marred by a long wasting consumption, that closed his life July 15, 1869, before he was twenty-five years old. His tales and poems, collected to · a surprising number by his proudly sympathetic brother and sister, are pervaded by a delicate taste, and among them are many fine thoughts and much verse of perfect measure and exquisite beauty. This much, at least, in the story of the land of his trials, is due to the melancholy memory of the gifted boy, whose gentle life, though chilled with penury, was robed with finest fancy, decked with poetic gems, and thrilled with delicate harmonies.
William McMahon lived on the lower East Fork in 1800, and near were three brothers, William, James, and George Davison. To the north were another three brothers, John, Jacob and Frederick Long. The last was a Methodist preach- er, with such strong, emotional speech, that his sayings are still quoted.
After the Allisons, who did not last, the first permanent set- tlement in Stonelock township was made by John Metcalf, a brother of Governor Metcalf, of Kentucky. While not so noted in that day as the governor, his descendants probably more than leveled the difference. The two-story hewed log house he biult in 1809 is still good, and so is the two-story stone house built in 1819, end to end with the first. Mrs. Metcalf was Susan, a daughter of John Shields, who came from Mary- land to Columbia in 1792, and then to Miami township. Eliza- beth, a sister of Susan, married John Glancy, and his brother. William Glancy, married Elizabeth, the oldest daughter of John and Susan Metcalf. Mary, the second daughter, mar- ried George, a son of Francis McCormick. Nancy, the third daughter, married Elnathan Whetstone. Milly, the youngest,
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married Timothy Kirby, a celebrated pioneer surveyor and landholder north and west of Cincinnati. He also owned many thousand acres in Brown and Clermont counties. The daughters of Timothy and Milly Kirby married ; Colonel Donn Piatt of great editorial fame, and General Henry B. Banning, of military and congressional note.
Abel Reese was about the first Methodist in the neighbor- hood of Georgetown, his cabin being an early preaching sta- tion for miles around. As he always fed the congregation between sermons, the services were very popular. Modern people know little how that custom prevailed. It was made necessary by the distance that was traveled to hear the in- frequent sermons that, when the preacher did come, were con- tinuous through the day, and sometimes longer, except pauses for refreshment. Men who never bid a stranger to their ta- ble may now gain a reputation for liberality through a sub- scription. In the olden time it was as pious to feed the hungry, as it was to taste the bread and sip the wine at a communion service.
George, John and Daniel Evans, about this date, took up land near the mouth of White Oak, and Colonel James Poage came to the site, where he projected the town of Ripley twelve years later.
Another very notable man of that day was Colonel John Boude, born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1765. He started to Kentucky in 1793, and finally settled opposite Augusta, where he established a ferry that became noted as the eastern end of the Round Bottom road. It is claimed that he built the first brick house in all that part of the country, in 1817.
The first settlement on upper White Oak was made in 1800, in the northern part of Scott township, by Robert Wardlaw, from Virginia, by way of Kentucky, who came with married and well grown children. Of these, William, a soldier in Cap- tain Jacob Boerstler's company, from Old Clermont, was killed at the battle of Brownstown.
Benjamin Gardner served New York in the Revolution with a zeal worthy of his ancestors, who left England ninety years before that for conscience sake. He came to Brown in 1800, with several children, among whom was Matthew Gardner, who left the Quaker faith of the family and became the lead-
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ing local apostle, founding the Christian church, between the Miami and Scioto.
Joseph and Deborah Norman Dugan came to the settlement, now called Higginsport, in 1800, with three children, to whom nine more were added. One of the sons, Jesse, married Chris- tina Heizer, and of their children, Maria was married to Amos F. Ellis, in 1858. This amiable and accomplished woman was gaining much attention to her writings, mostly poetical. But the promise of a literary career was broken by lingering ill- ness, and shortened by early death.
Major Joseph Shaylor was one of the few officers of the Revolution who became a part of the regular army. His serv- ice in the Revolution began as an ensign, June 25, 1776, and continued with several promotions until the disbanding of the army, June 3, 1783, thus lacking but a few days of seven years. He entered the new organization of the army with a subse- quent service of the most arduous kind on the frontier, until retired by age. While stationed at Fort Washington, like his associate. General Allison, he bought a "plantation." as it was called in his letters, on the East Fork, about the mouth of the run that bears his name. There he passed the re- mainder of his eventful life, and was buried, but where was a matter for a liberal reward offered by, and obtained from, eastern relatives, not trained to respect the western spirit that scoffed at any claim or even mention of ancestral consequence. The arrogance of family pride may become one of the most contemptible of follies. But a pride in personal affairs, so ex- aggerated as to slur or ignore ancestral worth, is one of the most despicable of vanities. Such false sentiment or rather brutish indifference, is like tuneless ears that hear the noise of music, but not the soul-thrilling harmonies they cannot ap- preciate. Such untaught independence, without sympathy for the fine affection that renders honor to the worthy dead, should go its callous course in silence, and with pity. But when such ignorance grows insolent and flaunts for notice, the offense and the offender should be marked with the shaming brands of scorn.
An unmarked grave is a possibility for a soldier in war, but it is a painful thought that so many of our brave defenders have fared no better in peace. Year by year their diminish-
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ing bands of comrades meet to strew flowers upon the in- creasing graves that too often are only known by a faded flag, that should be replaced with marble and bronze. Major Shay- lor's case was not exceptional, for there are several hundred graves of the heroic defenders in the cemeteries of Brown and Clermont, going to a nameless fate. And this is in face of the nation's offer to mark every such grave upon proper proof. The indifference seems equally deplorable in all the counties around. We would that a word could be spoken to break this apathy before it is too late, for yet another sacred spot.
It is possible that John and Jasper Shotwell came to Wil- liamsburg in 1797, and it is certain that they were there before 1800; for there is proof that Jasper loaned a thousand dollars, which was a remarkable transaction in those days. Benjamin Frazee was in or about Bethel before 1800, and so were James and Josiah Boothby, Joseph Trout, Samuel Brown, James South and Samuel Nelson. Amos Smith was midway on the road to Williamsburg, where Samuel Armstrong tarried a few years, and had sufficient influence to be one of the first commis- sioners.
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