USA > Ohio > Brown County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 32
USA > Ohio > Clermont County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 32
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No inquiry about the past has been more fruitless than a search for the earliest schools. An attempt to gain such infor- mation nearly a generation ago, while some of the pioneer pu-
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pils could yet be seen, had no general and but little local results. . A comprehension of the loneliness that did not afford a pupil of school age to the square mile was a form of com- parison slowly obtained. Yet the school enumeration, if one had been made when the State was formed, would have been less. The immigration of children was light and schools were not until the need was increased by the native born. Before that a few were taught at home, or waited without. Effort has failed to find a date or place for the first school in the largest settlement that therefore had the densest population. An upper story or loft of the old log court house was reached by an outside stairway, where tradition tells, or told, that some one kept a "quarter" now and then. In or before 1804, a log building about forty feet square, was built on ground now occupied by the Masonic Hall, on Lot No. 40. The door opened on Main street some fifty feet east of Second street, opposite to a huge fire place, in front of which, the benches were arranged so that the oldest sat next to the walls. That room was the best of its kind until a better came fifteen years later. No account remains of the beginning of the schools at Bethel. Ten years had passed before the little round log school houses began to lift a curling smoke from lonesome points along the muddy roads. The early teachers were most- ly non-resident and "boarded round" with their patrons, for all the schools were supported by subscription and the "teach- er's keep was part of the pay. The course of study was re- stricted to the famous fundamental branches known as the "Three R's."
The first physician on the east side of the old county was Dr. Alexander Campbell, near Ripley, whose practice was in Adams and early Clermont, where he came in 1804, after serving a term in the Kentucky Legislature. In 1807, he was elected to the Ohio Legislature from Adams county, and in 1808 and in 1809 he was Speaker of the House. While Speak- er he was elected to the United States Senate, in which he served four years. After the formation of Brown county, he was State Senator in 1822 and in 1823. In 1832 he was elected a State Representative for Brown county. In 1820 he was a Presidential elector for Monroe, and in 1836 for Harrison. He was a candidate for Governor in 1826. Through all this polit-
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ical action, he was sternly opposed to slavery. His death in Ripley in 1857 closed the career of one of the most notable of the early physicians.
The same year, 1804, brought Dr. Levi Rogers to Williams- burg to act as the first physician in central Clermont. He was Sheriff of Clermont in 1805-6-7 and 8. In 1810 he moved to Bethel and in 1811 he was elected a State Senator. In the War of 1812 he served as Surgeon of the Nineteenth infantry. He was also a lawyer and served in 1809 as Prosecuting Attorney. Beside all his political and legal activity he was a preacher of much note. This brilliant man died in 1815 in his forty- seventh year. But he left a son, Dr. John G. Rogers, who married Julia, a daughter of Senator Thomas Morris, whose bridesmaid was Hannah Simpson, afterwards mother of Gen- eral Grant. When those who wrote about the "lowly origin of Grant". were busy, they should have mentioned his moth- er's girlhood friends. Something more than eighteen months later, the medical bridegroom, then lacking but two days of twenty-five years, was the physician at the birth of General Grant; and on the same date was in attendance when the mother of General Corbin was born. On the west side Sur- geon General Richard Allison, the first settler at the mouth of Stonelick, as previously stated, lived there parts of several years, and answered calls for his art. In March, 1815, he laid out the elegant plans on his estate, for the town called "Alli- sonia," of which he had high hopes; but his death, March 22, 1816, stopped the projects. His wife, Rebecca, a daughter of General David Strong, of the Revolution, after three years of widowhood, married the noted Methodist minister, Samuel West, the ancestor of Major S. R. S. West, and his son, Colo- nel Samuel A. West. The only daughter of Rebecca Strong West, also named Rebecca, married John Kugler, a capitalist of western Clermont. These three, Campbell, Rogers and Al- lison, were the only regular physicians in the region before the War of 1812. Another three, in as small a compass of space. time and population, with as large a percentage of success. will be hard to find. Yet, from their much varied employ- ment and absence, one can but wonder whether their patients fared best with much faith and few drugs, or with few calls and strong doses.
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The time for the specialists had not come. The helpful spirit worked on broad plans. The cure of bodily ills and the care of spiritual trouble were equally assured by some who delight- ed in prayer and advised physic. The confidence in bitters and barks, in liniments and blisters, in teas and sirups, in herbs and spices, in poultices and plasters, and in many unlovely combinations, was mixed with pious zeal, if not blessed with benediction. As for the science of healing as practiced by col- lege taught men. the first generation of the pioneers was large- ly born in ignorance, lived without advice and died unvexed. In comparison between the relative merit or mistakes of either nature or art there was much skeptical opinion, of which traces are still visible.
The first merchants were traveling traders and then ped- dlers, who also gathered the gossip and spread the news with an art that made them welcome to the cheer of the lonely cab- ins. Their mode of life had perils as well as pleasures, for when one ceased to come, tales were told of dark deeds and tragic fates that had happened somewhere and might happen again where the secret hills were high or the hiding waters were deep. One of these peddlers, James Burleigh by name, having grown too fat for the road, retired in or about 1800 to a cabin in Williamsburg, on Lot 270, on the north side of Main street, between Fourth street and Mulberry Alley, where, near- ly midway from that alley, he kept the first store between Newtown and Chillicothe and probably a hundred miles east of Dayton. In a Centennial address on July 4, 1876, to an acre full of people, which, strange to say, is the oldest surviv- ing story of the old county seat, I wrote from what had been witnessed by some then living. To nobody's greater surprise than my own, that address was requested for publication and has been reprinted and quoted almost beyond recognition. Only a carping critic will object to the statement in this rela- tion, that the conversation and correspondence following that address, is the origin of the long and persistent attention to early days in Old Clermont that is embodied in and forms the design of this work. No sufficient reason appears for chang- ing the lines about that store written nearly thirty-seven years ago.
"James Burleigh was so grossly fat that the saying still
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heard went common then-'as big as Burleigh.' He gave his name to the place where he lived, and to this day it is called the 'Burleigh Lot,' though few know the reason, and the young suppose it to come from the burrs to be gathered there. His manner of business would now be unique. Upon a table, or under it, his stock was arranged in reference to the demands of trade-the last article called for being at the top, the rest according to fate."
Still later, a store was kept by Isaac Lines, across Broad- way from the new stone court house. In 1812 the northeast corner at Main and Fourth streets was fitted with a house, of which the frame still stands, in which William Waters and Benjamin Ellis conducted a store in earnest. Waters, from MO. New Jersey, was a relation, probably a younger brother of Josephus Waters, the pioneer at Levanna. Ellis became a noted merchant in Cincinnati, and his son, Washington Ellis, born and schooled in Williamsburg, acquired vast wealth in New York City. He had the confidence of Chief Justice Sal- mon P. Chase, when he was Secretary of the Treasury in Lin- coln's cabinet. In this wise Washington Ellis suggested and helped Chase to plan the National banking system, without which Grant and his soldiers might have failed to save the Union. As a consequence, Ellis has the distinction of organ- izing and operating the first of all our National banks. And thus another son of Old Clermont climbed to the pinnacle heading his path.
A liberal student of that time is more willing to believe than to doubt that goods were brought to stated points for trade during the years before the people began to cluster for hamlet and village convenience. The absence of mercantile conditions among the thousands living in a stretch of sixty miles, between the extremes is incredible; but such incidents were so infrequent, so unstable or so unsuccessful that no suf- ficient account has been preserved and no certain statement can be made. Apparently the staples of food and clothing were produced in each of the lonely homes. And the little they knew or sought from abroad was brought by the ever- welcome talkative traveling traders. of whom none knows a name.
No single condition is more significant of the loneliness of
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the pioneers than the paucity of postal affairs. One reason urged before Congress to secure Zane's Trace was a quicker post road to Kentucky. Over this Trace the first mail in Ohio was carried in 1798, and in May, 1799, a post office was estab- lished in Chillicothe, through which mail was carried to Mays- ville, across the southeastern corner of what was to be Brown county, and thence to Cincinnati, but no mail stopped between those places. On October 24, 1799, General Rufus Putnam wrote to Thomas Worthington at Chillicothe for information about "the practicability of a mail being carried through there to Cincinnati, on account of roads, waters, means of subsist- ence and distance between stages"; all of which was to enable General Putnam to point out to the Post Master General how the service could be improved "without additional expense"- that was, how the mail could go more directly to Cincinnati than by Maysville. That project, hindered by lack of sub- sistence between Chillicothe and Williamsburg, only became possible when a cabin was built on the site of Newmarket. Then on October 5, 1802, a commission was made out con- stituting William Lytle, "Deputy Post Master for Clermont County." There was a tradition that the mail was kept in John Lytle's house on the hillside facing the southern end of Front street. But a bill, still preserved, presented by John Charles in August, 1803, has this item: "Building closet and making alphabet case for Post Office, $8.00." That closet and case, as one piece of work, is still in place at "Harmony Hill." On July 8, 1806, Lytle resigned the office in favor of his brother-in-law, Samuel W. Davies ; but on Davies' removal soon after, Nicholas Sinks was appointed and the mail was handled at the Morris tavern, until taken by Benjamin Ellis to his store at the corner of Fourth and Main streets. That post office "for Clermont county, at Williamsburg," served all the people in the old county until post offices were insti- tuted at Ripley, New Richmond and Bethel in 1815-16. Bata- via was made a post office in 1818; Neville and New Rich- mond in 1819; Georgetown in 1822; Felicity and Goshen in 1823; Withamsville, Higginsport and Perin's Mills in 1830 and Owensville in 1833.
The pulpit, the bar, the medicine case, the teacher's desk, the counter, all came before the editor's table. The postal
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charge of twenty-five cents for a light letter and other pack- ets in proportion, limited everything by mail. Lytle's account show that while living in Williamsburg, before 1810, he was a subscriber to the Scioto Gazette, United States Gazette, Na- tional Intelligencer, and the Cincinnati Liberty Hall. In 1809 he added the Western Spy and Duane's Philadelphia Aurora. But nothing was printed in Old Clermont until Friday, Janu- ary 15, 1812, when Thomas S. Foote and Andrew Tweed pub- lished the first number of The Political Censor, for which the type had been set by Charles D. McNanaman, in a house on Lot No. 40, and between the big log school house and Jessa- mine alley. The size of the sheet was nine and one-half by fifteen and one-half inches. From all that can be learned that little paper. like all its successors for forty years to come, would now be remarkable for what it did not contain. Who- ever searches a file of very old newspapers for local happen- ings is most likely to be disappointed unless he has learned to expect nothing. The fashion of the old printers was to exclude every local item or name that did not pay the price. The state of Europe was spread for attention. but local names only appeared in advertisements. Except as a relic there was no especial historic loss when "The Censor" ceased, after liv- ing about a year. The second newspaper was printed by Day- id Morris and George Ely in a house still standing on Main street, exactly opposite Burleigh's store, heretofore mentioned. The first number of this second paper, named The Western American, appeared Saturday, August 5, 1814. The size of the sheet was twelve by nineteen inches, folded into four pages with four columns to the page. On July 4, 1818, the first number of the Clermont Sentinel was published by Print- er-Editor C. D. McNanaman. How long it lived is not known, but in 1820, William A. Cameron started the Farmer's Friend, which probably lived more numbers than any of the other three.
After these four papers, the first paper in Brown county was published in June. 1820, at Levanna. by General James Lou- don, William Butt and Daniel Ammen, with the expressive name of The Benefactor. Perhaps no paper of its class had a more distinguished management. and yet few had more trou- ble. After struggling into the second year The Benefactor
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was taken to Georgetown, where from May 16, 1822, till Janu- ary, 1824, it was partly owned and managed by United States Senator Thomas Morris. After that General Thomas L. Ha- mer became the editor and Jesse R. Grant a contributor. The first paper printed in Batavia was published May 24, 1824, and named The Western Patriot.
The Political Censor was sold by Foote and Tweed to James Finley, who moved the publication to West Union, where Adams county received the benefits until 1824. Thus for eight and one-half years from the first number in all the big county, no newspaper was printed outside of Williamsburg. One reason for the sale and early removal of The Political Censor may have been its fierce opposition to the war of 1812. And, admitting the truth of the description of the time as herein presented, the most martially inclined must agree that the people of Old Clermont had little use for war.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE ERA OF THE WAR OF 1812.
The Conditions of That Era-Roads-Population-Cities- Effect of Napoleonic Wars-No Leisure Class Then-Re- newal of the Long Conflict for Ohio. The Declaration Be- fore the Preparation for War-Clermont's Answer to the First Call-Jacob Huber-Hull's Surrender-Colonel Mills Stephenson-Fort Stephenson-Perry's Victory and Cap- tain Stephen Smith-Officers from Old Clermont-Deplor- able Loss of the Muster Rolls-List of Revolutionary Sol- diers in Clermont and Brown-Captain Jacob Boerstler's Company-Captain Robert Haines Company-General William Lytle in the War of '12-His Service in Promoting Old Clermont Reviewed and Censure Refuted-Ohio in the War of '12-The Migration from the Sea Board to Old Clermont after the War of '12-Captain Matthew Pease at the Execution of Louis XVI.
After reviewing the civic and social affairs of the people liv- ing between the Little Miami and Eagle Creek a hundred years ago, cultured sympathy should seek a wider view of the conditions that disturbed their peaceful purpose. For, with- out some consideration of these conditions, readers accus- tomed to think of Ohio as one of the foremost States, and in some respects, the leader, will expect to be delighted with accounts of more than she was able to perform in the second war for independence. Instead of being_the center of popu- lation, wealth and influence, and having most of the great railroads across the continent tributary to her trade, Ohio, then, was the frontier State, for Indiana was not admitted till 1816, and all to the west was a wilderness. There was not a mile of solid road and scarcely a bridge forty feet long in all that is north of the Ohio. Adding a fair percentage of in- crease to the census report of 1810, the population was about three hundred thousand souls of both sexes, both old and young ; and the total aggregate of the State's revenues about
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one hundred thousand dollars. By far the larger part of all that population was along or close to the Ohio river. The fighting power, man to man, was relatively much less then than now, for the scene of conflict was along the Great Lakes. The march of an army across the State, with a wagon train for food and ammunition, and for cannon trucks for which roads had to be cut through the woods, for which swamps had to be made solid with corduroy, and for which ferries had to be pro- vided, was a toilsome task for months. Now twenty railroads, managed under military necessity, each in a single night can whirl a thousand men from the river to the lake and have them in line for breakfast. Of the present list of eighty-eight counties but thirty-six were formed then, and of those, three included all of the territory bordering on Lake Erie and ex- · tending southward over several tiers of counties, as now or- ganized. That region now containing Cleveland, Sandusky and a score of lesser cities then numbered a population of about thirteen thousand, only a little more than Old Clermont held at that date. Cincinnati, then holding the paramount po- sition in the Ohio valley, numbered nearly three thousand. The second place that has redeemed its promise to fill the full measure of a city was Dayton, then numbering less than five hundred people. The reason of this slow growth of central and northern Ohio must be sought afar in the Napoleonic wars , that made Europe a battlefield and the ocean a graveyard for ships, so that enlistment in the armies was safer than emigra- tion to America. As the receipts of foreign population ceased, the enterprise of the seaboard states languished and the flow of people to the West dwindled, and those who came taking the course of least resistance, scattered along the Ohio rather than take a rougher road to the interior. In the midst of those conditions of unrest provoked by foreign strife, the young na- tion entered upon the war of 1812 with much disapproval from the peace at any price people.
The sparse population on the frontier was founding homes. · Everything was second to the imperious necessity of raising a cabin, clearing a patch and planting a crop. Of the leisure class there was none. Wheelwrights, plowmakers, wool card- ers, broom-makers, millers, blacksmiths, tailors and shoemak- ers constituted the range of special callings, and each of those,
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when he ceased to be a journeyman. had his clearing, without which no one could claim respectable consideration. States- men and preachers were farmers, alike proud of broad acres and long boundaries. Upon such a people the war fell with heavy discomfort. There was no violent interest in the out- rages on the distant and almost forgotten ocean. But the In- dian outbreaks surely traced to the aggressive and ever hostile spirit of the British toward both the mouth and the source of the Mississippi, roused their vengeance against the threat- ened and renewed peril in the Northwest, and excited their gravest apprehension for the control of their trade "down the river," which was their sole outlet to the world. A large per cent. of the people had personal memories of the atrocities flowing from Detroit but a few years before, and the belief was common that the aggravating depredations on the Wabash were the result of British intrigue. It was known by all that Tecumseh, the greatest of Indian chiefs, and his brother, the celebrated "Prophet," had lived until 1808 at Greenville, only a two days' heavy march from Williamsburg, after which all their energy had been given to the hostility that went to defeat on November 7, 1911, at Tippecanoe, where William Henry Harrison started on a straight path to the White House. The old "Border Men" knew that the conflict was only a renewal of the struggle for the Ohio that began under Washington sixty years before. At the call to arms there was no faltering among the pioneers of Ohio. But the strife came at a time that did not test the nerve of those born on her soil. There were probably not fifty boys, at that time, born in Ohio, who had reached the age of fourteen years. Therefore, it is not well to boast of the deeds done by the "Sons of Ohio" in the War of '12. Such credit belongs to the States whence the pio- neers came. But we can be justly proud of the spirit of the "Fathers of Ohio," who were true to the best traditions of their blood and proved themselves worthy sires of their noblest posterity.
The war was declared June 19, 1812. According to Ameri- can custom, the declaration came before the preparation, and, as often happens. the onset occurred where little was expected. As seen in history, there were three lines of conflict. The first, and, because of England's great navy, the most exposed, was
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the Atlantic coast; the next was the Canadian border; the third and most remote was the mouth of the Mississippi. Which of these was the most important is a fruitless question. The loss of any part would have been a mortal hurt to our Nation. By position, Ohio was most concerned for the North- west, of which the State was the first born. There were to occur that first most shameful and finally the most brilliant events of the conflict. England's easily seen purpose was to hold the Great Lakes and all the vast tributary basin of the St. Lawrence river. For this scheme Detroit was the indis- pensable key. For the defense of this position, President Mad- ison called on Ohio for twelve hundred men for six months, who were mustered in at Dayton on April 24, 1812, and start- ed north at once. Then, with the declaration of war on June 19, the President called for fifty thousand, but as they gath- ered, the army and all the nation except the navy seemed to stand and wait for what would happen at Detroit. The north- western corner of Ohio, or what is now called the Toledo dis- trict, thus became the field of the war, in which the burden of backing up the regulars under General Hull fell upon Ohio and Kentucky. What happened came quick and heavy. On July 16, just one day short of four weeks from the declaration of war, Hull basely surrendered his army and the forts at 'Detroit. For that cowardice or treason, or both, he was tried and condemned to death, but his execution was not ordered by the President.
Among those answering the "first call" and mustered in at Dayton was the Williamsburg Company of Riflemen, officers and men, fifty-seven strong, who fortunately did not arrive in time to be included in the awful tragedy of the surrender. But they were met and driven back by an overwhelming force of the victorious British and Indians, at the disaster of Browns- town, where they learned that the dreaded Tecumseh was not a myth. For, they lost Captain Jacob Boerstler, Abner Ar- thur, Watson Stephens, William Wardlow, Daniel Campbell and Daniel McCollum. Mention is made of Captain Boerstler's death on a page with an account of Thomas Foster's heroism in carrying his captain from the field. Captain Boerstler was a brother of Anna Maria, the wife of Jacob Huber, who came in 1806 from a part of Pennsylvania near to Antietam battle-
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ground. I have noted with curiosity that the famous his- torical romance of Katy Catoctin is laid in that celebrated locality, and uses the very rare name of Boerstler with the same pronunciation that was brought to Clermont in the long ago. I have also heard that a substantial family there resented the use of their name in the fiction. Jacob Huber came to buy the pioneer mill of Lytle, which is still standing as a fine ex- ample of old-fashioned solid frame work. One of Huber's daughters, Caroline, married Judge Owen T. Fishback and thus became a mother of the notable judicial family of United States Judge Philip B. Swing. Another daughter, Harriet, married Major S. R. S. West, elsewhere mentioned in this work. Captain Boerstler married Sallie Robbins and lived in a house on Main street, on the eastern end of Lot 269, which for sixty years was the home of John Park. The light still gleams through the window to which she came from a bed of sickness to look upon her husband "marching away so brave and grand," while she wept for the never-to-return-the first of many soldier's widows in Old Clermont. While bearing the name of Williamsburg the company represented families scat- tered from White Oak to Stonelick.
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