USA > Ohio > Brown County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 25
USA > Ohio > Clermont County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 25
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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
about the house. Their father, James Kain, on contract, re- ceived "400 acres on Clover Lick Creek" for clearing eighty acres of the farm by the rising home. The first part of the building, that was finished two years later, was one-story, made of sawed logs, covered without, and ceiled within with fine poplar lumber. The interior was then lathed with riven strips and plastered, the first mention of plastering in the county.
On October 14, 15, 16, 1800, at an election held in Cincinnati, William Lytle was chosen, by a vote of 153 over 146 for Fran- cis Dunlavy, to fill the remainder of the term made vacant in the Legislature by the removal of Aaron Caldwell from the Territory. The election, according to the custom then, was held at the court house by the Sheriff from 10 a. m. to 5 p. m., and might be prolonged three days.
A letter dated November 10, 1800, states: "Mr. Charles is working," and "Mr. Howard by spells." Howard was the pioneer who gave the name still in use for a very deep pond in the East Fork, and of him nothing more has been found. But "Mr. Charles" was John Charles, the first stone mason in the county. His chief work in 1800 was the stone building known as the "Land Office." Many incidents in the intense mental and physical activity of more than forty years of busi- ness, with all sorts of people, confirm the estimate that Wil- liam Lytle had no disposition to gain and hoard idle dollars. His ambition craved a vast estate, which he founded in the midst of a not easily imagined physical and personal peril, at an age when most of youths incline to
"Caper nimbly in a lady's chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute."
As he attained financial opportunities, he spent money as generously as he had freely and bravely risked his life in the raids on the border, not blindly, but with a keen understand- ing of the desired purpose. Having reached the reputation of a large landowner and dealer, he appreciated the advantage of a prosperous appearance. The business could have been done in a cabin. But he was planning to have the prestige of the Prothonotary of the new county, which would be en-
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THE LAND OFFICE, BUILT IN 1800 In Williamsburg, for General William Lytle, probably the oldest stone building still standing in Ohio
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hanced by a stable aspect. Therefore, while the four rooms of solid, sawed-log walls were taking the shape that some, in this day, would call a bungalow, "Mr. Charles" was finishing the still more important office for Lytle's personal work, and for the public records of the county, that were made and kept there until succeeded by the buildings on the Public Square, nine years later. This "Old Stone Land Office," so far as I have learned, is the oldest stone structure still standing in Ohio. The amount of business transacted within its walls may be judged from the "Lytle Papers," which show that over two hundred acres were sold and bought there in one year. The office was aligned with Second Street, but the house some yards away, as the home of a surveyor, was "set with the compass," overlooking the fine southward sweep of bottom land that the proprietor chose from all his many thousand acres for his own plantation. The plan included a two-story main frame building, filled between the framework with brick, not to be had until 1802, but that is another story. Then, John Charles, for his "work on Harmony Hill," received in part, on account of $801, a deed for two hundred and thirty- one acres, in Young's Survey, 2055, on the most northerly stretch of Stonelick Creek, in Stonelick township, where he, "Mr. Charles," built a superior two-story, hewed-log house, chinked with stone and lime mortar, and still standing as a rare example of that style of pioneer building. The place be- came the home of the pioneer, Zebina Williams, and is now owned by his grandson, Albert Williams. The house has melancholy interest, as long being the home of the mother of Lydia Osborne, the Lost Child, whose story may be conveni- ently found by most readers in the section given to Clermont county in Howe's Historical Collections of Ohio.
After the death of Ebenezer Osborne, broken hearted be- . cause of his daughter Lydia's tragic disappearance, Mrs. Os- borne, her mother, became the wife of John Charles. While living in old age in the Stonelick home, a stranger, who had wandered westward as a trapper or trader, told of having seen a white woman with Indians once, living about Muncietown, who said that she had been found by them, when lost in the woods. The tale awakened the sorrow of the aged mother, so that some of her sons took up the trail of the tribe and found
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the woman, who answered to her name, and remembered their mother to their satisfaction that she was their lost sister. She had been found near "Lydia's Camp," in Perry township, by a passing band and taken to their village, where she had grown up as one of their own, and taken an Indian husband. She . was interested in the story of her family and wanted to see her mother. But she resolutely refused to leave her own children and the friends who had done much to relieve her misfortune. Against all persuasion, she decided not to visit her mother and revive emotions that must have ended in deep- er sorrow for all. She accepted her fate, from which there was no escape. The sorry story was taken to the mother. whose grief was soon to cease. The tribe also soon went beyond the Mississippi. At a time when the press gave scant notice to local happenings, the discovery of the family was not men- tioned. In fact, they were more inclined to conceal than to disclose or renew their trouble. The printed accounts of the Lost Lydia all close with the sentence: "The lost was never found." Whether the sequel, as it was told to me by Thomas Sloane, a grandson of Mrs. Osborne-Charles, strengthens or weakens the tragic interest of the story of the Lost Child, is a question about which opinion may well and easily differ.
Among others who came with Lytle, or soon followed him from Lexington. was Roger W. Waring, and his sister, Dor- cas, who was to be a living link with the present. Others doubtless were a part of the population at the new county seat in territorial days for brief periods. But one family that came to make much mark was that of Nicholas and Margaret Pence Sinks, who came from Rockingham county, Virginia, to Newtown, in 1797, to follow tanning. and then to Williams- burg, in 1801, for the same purpose. Richard Hall came from Pennsylvania to be one of the garrison at Gerard's Station, where he was said to be in command. From a sketch of that station, his title is not clear. But he came to Stonelick town- ship in 1800 and was addressed by all as "Captain." Some of the Fletchers were at Covalt's Station, as told on previous pages, and some at Gerard's Station, to which the people, once at least, retreated from Covalt's. From this combination, Wil- liam. David and Jesse Fletcher came to Stonelick township and were neighbors of Hall. The Fisher family, now prom-
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inent in Clinton, can trace back to Adam Fisher, who settled in Washington township, where he raised a son. David, who was a member of Congress in 1847-48, while living in Clinton county. Thomas Jones, a Revolutionary soldier, and a broth- er-in-law of Adam Fisher, settled there at the same time. Christopher Armacost came from Maryland in 1801 to that vi- cinity, and raised a large family.
Thomas West came in 1801 from forty miles south of Alex- andria, Virginia, with five sons and two daughters, to improve a large tract southwest of Bethel. Shortly after, John Colthar and four sons came from New Jersey to begin the first settle- ment in the northwest corner of Clark township. In 1801 Rob- ert Curry began a clearing south of what is Georgetown. One of his sons, William. was a sheriff of Clermont county. Hen- ry Ralston came the next year. Henry Zumatt, who was later to be a colonel, came from Kentucky in 1801, to make a home about one mile south of New Hope. Issachar Davis and Jona- than Moore came to Pleasant township in 1801 or 2. James and Charles Waits settled in 1802 on Four-Mile Creek, in Sterling township. Nathan and Jane Stewart Wood came from that camping place on the westward march of many fam- ilies, Washington county, Pennsylvania, to their since con- tinuous stay in Brown county. Isaac Reed settled near Bethel, whence his descendants soon took homes farther north, on both sides of the present county line. Thomas Brady was the first of a family in Brown that dates from 1800. John and Elanor West were among the first in Byrd township, where, by one account. they came in 1798, and certainly not much later. In 1801, John Brown came over from Kentucky and located on Upper Straight Creek. Others followed Lytle's im- posing train of five wagons and went farther westward to the valley of the East Fork; and some crossed the Miami from Symme's Purchase, looking for more and cheaper acres; and others came from the East, where the call of the West was beginning to be heard. Maryland lost two brothers, Daniel and William South, who added much to Miami township and then more eastward. as their descendants traveled up the val- ley of that "Fork of the Miami." In a study of "The Olden Time," the common recurrence of names in different locali- ties suggests the question of a common origin. This is more
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likely to happen if the name is otherwise somewhat uncom- mon. There is nothing to show that James and John Prick- ett, heretofore mentioned pioneers of Franklin township, in Brown, were relatives of John and Isaiah Prickett, who brought families to Union township in Clermont county, or that any of them were connected with the Revolutionary sold- ier, Josiah Prickett, who established his family in Stonelick township. Yet the supposition of a common origin is not im- probable, for they all came from Pennsylvania to Old Cler- mont, between 1798 and 1801 ; and well authenticated instances of similar migrations of even larger connections are not un- usual. But every such trace is lost and their descendants meet as strangers.
Christopher Hartman, a Revolutionary soldier from New Jersey, came to be a neighbor of the Dickey brothers, in Jackson township, Clermont county, in 1801, then in his fifty- second year. His descendants gave his name to one of the largest "Reunions" in the northern townships of Brown and Clermont counties. One of Hartman's neighbors was Icha- bod Willis, who came to Williamsburg in 1801, and after five years made a final home in Jackson township, in Clermont. Another neighbor was William Hunter, who was the first man on record to bring a wagon through from the East over Zane's and Donnell's Trace to Williamsburg, where he arrived No- vember 1, 1798. The same wagon then went to the mouth of Bullskin, to bring his family up north through Denhamstown over the Trace that was soon to be the Round Bottom Road. Other wagons may have preceded Hunter's over one or both of these roads, but such a fact has not been noted. The inci- dent has peculiar value in fixing a date for the use of that his- toric highway.
In Byrd township and all to the north and west that was a part of Adams county, notwithstanding the early protection and prestige of the fort at Manchester, the occupation seems to have been still slower. The actual settlement of the chief landholder, General Nathaniel Beaseley, is not certain ; but he laid out the town of St. Clairsville-now Decatur-and built the first house there in 1802. The name was changed because of the prior and larger claim of St. Clairsville, the seat of just- ice for Belmont county. General Beaseley intended his town
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to be the county seat of Adams county, as a compromise in the contention for that honor between the Manchester and Adams- ville or "Scant" factions. But the course of such empire took the way that went to West Union, and all that section of Old Adams became a part of Brown. Henry Knox settled on the East Fork of Eagle Creek in 1796. In 1801, Stephen Reynolds fixed his home far up on the West Fork of Eagle Creek, south of Carlisle. John and Margaret Wright, of Virginia, came from Lexington, Kentucky, with seven children, in 1801, and opened a large farm north of Decatur. James Moore had come from Pennsylvania still earlier to Byrd township, where his son, James, Jr., born in 1800, was the first native child in that part of what is Brown county. Before Ohio was a State, the Abbotts planned to settle on the upper course of Straight Creek, where John Abbott came in 1800, some time ahead of the rest. Abraham Shepherd settled in what is Jefferson town- ship in 1802, and became a man of much note in the war of '12 and in civil life. Stephen Pangburn, Silas Bartholomew, and Isaac Washburn came to that township about that time.
Mordecai Winters brought his family in 1795 from Virginia to Lexington, Kentucky, when he followed Lytle in 1800, and stopped in the southern part of Williamsburg township. In 1801 his oldest son, William Winters, came with his wife, Nancy, and their oldest son, John, to a tract of eight hundred acres on Upper Indian Creek, in the southern part of Tate township, between Bethel and what is now Felicity. There he was soon joined by Mordecai, with his younger brothers and sisters. And that was the beginning of settlement in that large scope. About the same time, Mordecai's brother, James Winters, settled on upper Clover, in Tate township. Both of these homes in time held large families that spread across the line, and also made the name of Winters frequent and honor- able in Brown county.
David and Daniel Snell, brothers, from Maryland, settled in 1801 on Donnell's Trace to Chillicothe, a mile and a half east of Williamsburg. David was killed in the battle of Lundy's Lane. Daniel married Edna Malott and of their eight children, Holly Ann married Thompson Smith, who were the parents of Adella, the wife of Joseph Harvey Smith, of Wil- liamsburg. Peter M., a son of Daniel, married Kate McAdams,
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and their son, Oscar, achieved the fine distinction of being for a series of years the editor-in-chief of "The American Invent- or," one of the leading scientific periodicals of his time. While such duty was performed elsewhere his ability deserves men- tion in the land of his birth.
Oscar Snell was born December 9, 1849, in Williamsburg, where his schooling hardly reached the ordinary amount of the rudimentary branches, until his seventeenth year gave a chance to study philosophy, astronomy, botany and geology, as explained in the ponderous volumes of that day. Then and at once the boy, hungry for the unexplained reason of every- thing, glowed with an innate perception of natural phenomena, that easily passed all competition. Before manhood took the place of boyish grace, he could minutely describe the notable achievements of mechanism. His life was given to scientific books. His, energy shunned no detail, and he dreamed large designs as he turned from recorded knowledge to the field of invention. But the genial currents of his thought were chilled by conditions, for which he was not responsible. The struggle for existence in Williamsburg became the foundation for much larger employment.
Knowing the need of written expression, he studied the pages of the masters and acquired a rapid, vigorous command of words to tell what he wished others to know. At last the chance came, even beyond his expectation. On Saturday, September 3, 1885, he relinquished the lever of a saw mill, and on the following Monday took up the editorial charge of the American Inventor, a promotion without a parallel in recent literature. For big business reasons nothing was said of his antecedents at the time, for which he cared nothing in the whirling haste of new duties. After three years of able, suc- cessful writing, he accepted larger pay as a designer for a large machine-making company. With still larger plans, he was accepted in Chicago as an expert mechanical advisor. As such he received fees that would have seemed fabulous in his earlier, and perhaps happier, manhood. In addition to a large personal consulting practice, he had a fine stated salary as the special expert of the Automatic Electric Company, which re- garded him as the foremost man of his kind. In every rela- tion, he was an inventor-an improver-to whom the world is debtor for scores of useful devices.
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While he had the magic wand of skill, he lacked the touch of gold. To those who measure success with dollar marks he was a failure, for his large earnings vanished and he left no fortune. To him an invention accomplished was like a charm- ing story that gives the mind a keener desire for stranger nov- elty. He delighted in discovery and let others plan the profit. This counts as folly with careful souls. It seems different to . such as enjoy the ardent chase more than the glutton feast. However much he may have felt or deplored his inaptness for the prudential paths of finance, he was fully conscious of his superb ability, which, as he knew, is far more rare than wealth. This pride tended less to arrogance and more to a seclusion that had more of sorrow than scorn. He could not bring the mass to his height of information, and he would not go to their level. His study, filled with costly books, became, except in office hours, the retreat where he lived in the lonely reading that made his fine memory a living cyclopedia of his- toric and scientific learning. Friends once enjoyed with glad- ness, vainly offered their homes to win him from the solitude in which he was found lifeless on April II, 1905, after a day's absence from his accustomed walks. It is told that he grew to be strangely gentle in this loneliness, where his strong men- tality must have contemplated the oblivion against which he once strove with exulting ambition. Be that as it was, none can dispute the fact that, as a master of the useful arts, as a scientific editor, and as a prolific inventor, Oscar Snell stands first among all who have gone from Old Clermont.
In 1802, except for the need or fancy of a hunter or camp- ing traveler, not a stick had been cut from all the heavy forest between the "Big Field" by Williamsburg and Jacob Moyer's cabin on the upper O'Bannon by Goshen. Into that wide soli- tude, Conrad Harsh, a gentle, quiet, but persevering man, came from Pennsylvania in that year and went out on the Round Bottom Road to the site of what is known as Boston, but is officially named Owensville. His clearing soon includ- ed a log shop for his trade as a blacksmith-the first one men- tioned in Clermont. There may have been, indeed, must have been, others before him, but no previous name as such has been handed down. Christopher Gist's Journal, an official au- thority, tells that on Christmas Day, 1750, he found Thomas
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Burney settled as a blacksmith among the Delaware Indians at Newcomerstown, on the "Muskingom," with several other white people working for the Indians, who entreated him to stay and instruct them in better modes of living. Going one hundred and forty miles farther west, Gist found "Mr. Henry," a white man, settled in the Shawnee town near Xenia, three hundred and fifty miles west of the Forks of the Ohio, where Fort Pitt, of Braddock's Defeat, was yet to be. Such incidents suggest that those who came to live along the creeks by the Ohio, or at Denhamstown, or Williamsburg, were not behind the Indians in needing smith work, but there is nothing before the coming of Harsh to show how or by whom it was done. Tradition claims that Harsh made the first "grain cradles," the all but forgotten "harvester" of the pioneers, used in Western Clermont. His improvements marked the fork of the road northward from the Round Bottom Road, and toward Lebanon by a crossing on the Miami called Deerfield, a name especially appropriate to the vicinity where Gist saw the deer and buffalo like cattle in a settled region. Conrad Harsh mar- ried Eva Hockensmith, who died in 1801, and then he married Nancy Hockensmith. An elder sister, Mary Hockensmith, was married to Benjamin Whitmore, and they came and set- tled with their brother-in-law, Harsh. When these humble, useful people died, their names also disappeared, but their in- fluence lasted longer.
John Pattison, with two children and a brother, William, came from near Dublin, Ireland, to America, where the third child, named William, Jr., was born, in 1768. After service in the Revolutionary Army, these patriotic immigrants came to the frontier of that day in Washington county, Pennsylvania, whence, in 1792, they followed the Ohio down to Limestone Point and Fort Kenton, and to a final home near Augusta, Kentucky, where they both reached the age of one hundred and three years. The sons and daughters of both married with names that became household memories in Old Cler- mont. The first to come over the Ohio was William Pattison, Jr., married in 1790 to Martha Bodel, who bore nine children, of whom John Pattison, Jr., the first of the four in Kentucky, was born, in 1792. In 1802 William Pattison, Jr., brought his family to Miami township, and, in 1803, to his permanent
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home near Conrad Harsh, where his wife died in 1810. In 1812 he married Ann Hamilton, the mother of five more, making fourteen children for the father, who, in turn, added largely to the county. In 1814 John Pattison, Jr., married Mary, the elder daughter of Benjamin and Mary Hockensmith Whit- more, and became the father of eight children. Of them, the second son was born in 1819, and was the third in the Amer- ican line to receive the name, William. That William married Mary Duckwall.
Of their children, it was my happy fortune in the former "select school" days to become the boyhood and lifelong friend of Louis A. and John M. Pattison. The progression of the lively, friendly, attentive and straightforward Louis into a prosperous and successful merchant went the course expected by his associates. The future of the bright, affable and stu- dious John, whose busy ways left no time for idle mischief, was not so apparent. A score of years was to pass before companions realized that he was winning a place among the favorites of fortune. The large family and his father's small store mainly kept to help against much competition in a trade for small farm products did not promise much aid for the col- lege course he wanted to take. Such use was made of the chances at home by his eighteenth year that a teacher's cer- tificate was gained, and a school through a fall, winter and spring was taught two miles from his father's home in Owens- ville, out on the Deerfield Road toward Williamsburg. What- ever work was found to do when school was "out" was done with a mighty purpose. Meanwhile, in his sixteenth year, in 1864, in the extreme need of the campaign that was urging to- ward Appomattox, he volunteered in the One Hundred and Fifty-third Ohio infantry, and served with. that regiment in Virginia, where he took priceless lessons in discipline and pa- triotism.
"With gear gathered by ev'ry wile That's justified by honor,"
he entered the Ohio Wesleyan University, and was grad- uated in the full classical course, made still more profitable by teaching now and then while studying always. This was fol-
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lowed by a course in law, most intently read while acting as superintendent of the Higginsport schools. While there, his friends included every teacher, met in Brown county. He made friends everywhere, not by magic, but by a simple, gen- tle, kindly, unaffected manner that disarmed rivalry and made its weapons harmless. His first election was a tribute from friendship that was stronger than party restraint. When ad- mitted to the bar, he went at once into the strong competition of Cincinnati, where, with the first chance, he was nominated for the General Assembly, in which a membership would mean much to the unknown young lawyer. Then, as now, there were many young men in the city from Brown and Clermont in all sorts of business. Of these a considerable number, otherwise in opposition to his party, conferred and agreed that they would "give Johnnie" their best help at the polls. As a result, "the new man from Clermont" lead his ticket in Ham- ilton county and was safely elected. That personal interest which placed the man above his party was manifest in more than a normal vote, whenever his name was up. That vote came not from a thoughtless kindness, but from men who followed moral standards as high as his own.
While in college at Delaware, an acquaintance with Alethea, a daughter of the great linguist, Professor William G. Wil- liams, became the guiding star of his life. While their mar- riage attained an ideal of domestic felicity, it also prepared the way of financial opportunity, not through the wealth, which was only moderate, but through the social help of Professor Williams. The Union Central Insurance Company, organized in 1867 as a protective philanthropy for and by influential, yet often financially unfortunate ministers of the Methodist Epis- copal church, through correct management and obvious utility rapidly exceeded the intention, but not the control, of those who founded the enterprise. Prominent among those found- ers, all personal friends, was Professor Williams, with the added, but scarcely needed, influence of several near relatives in the management. The modest company rated in 1868 in the first official report at one hundred and thirty-three thou- sand two hundred and ninety-eight dollars and eighty-nine cents, has grown in forty-four years to be Ohio's largest finan- cial institution, with total admitted assets officially stated at
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