USA > Ohio > Brown County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 34
USA > Ohio > Clermont County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 34
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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
While these affairs were occurring in Clermont, the people- in Brown had trouble in gaining stable conditions. As in the mother county, a determined effort was made to locate the county seat on the river. The law creating the county required the courts, before the selection of a permanent seat of justice, to be held in Dr. Alexander Campbell's house in Ripley. At a date not stated, but early, Colonel James Poage made sedate by the loss of much of his former wealth, came from Virginia
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to mend his fortunes by the improvement of a thousand-acre tract, whereon he platted a town in the time of the War of 1812, that was first named Staunton, but soon changed to Rip- ley to honor a popular general of that day. Such was the ori- gin of a town that has prospered exceedingly with the grow- ing trade on the Ohio, and has endured much from the wrath of its waters. The story of the town is enough for a volume ; but, like all the sisterhood of towns in which it stood the tall- est in all that was Old Clermont, the incidents of that growth are a result rather than a part of the impulsions which I have sought and tried to record, before a deeper dust shall have settled over all.
On March 27, 1818, the commissioners for the State re- ported that they had selected a place on the east side of Straight Creek, near where the state road from West Union to Cincinnati crossed that creek. On February 8, 1819, that re- port was enacted by the General Assembly. As the time was near for holding a court, the people interested made a "build- ing frolic" and in two days had a log house ready for the court. But the court and all favorable to Ripley made such protest that another report was secured in favor of Dr. Camp- bell's house. Accordingly, after one and possibly a second term of court, at "Bridgewater," as the Straight Creek site was named, the law was given at Ripley, where a court house was - commenced in 1829, that cost three thousand three hundred and fifty dollars. The power of the state was again invoked. and another commission, on May 13, 1821, reported not to the General Assembly, but to the Judges of the court directing them to meet in the previously laid-out town of Georgetown, whither on the next day the court went and has remained ; but several years passed before the grumbling at the decision had ceased.
Georgetown was to have far more than village celebrity. Therefore some account of its beginnings that have been ob- scured, should have a place in this special inquiry into the earliest conditions. James Woods came from Ireland to the frontier, then in Washington county, Pennslyvania. His set- tlement in that nursery of Scotch Presbyterians is all but posi- tive proof that he belonged with the faith or that he was very fond of contention, for Washington county was not a peace-
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ful place for a non-subscriber to the prevailing creed. When others began to move on to Kentucky, James Woods came also and planted a strong family about Cynthiana, among whom Allen, Samuel, Nathaniel and Anna, ultimately set- tled in Brown county at an early date. But this is certain. Allen, before leaving Kentucky, was the father of a family among whom was a son born at Cynthiana. October 4, 1805, and also named Allen, who was a youthful favorite in George- town, until 1832, when he moved to Felicity and then to a beau- tiful home near Chilo, always respected and successful, and al- ways growing larger and wiser until Dr. Allen Wood was the personification of the ideal, capable, courtly, benevolent healer, with whom fancy loves to linger.
The worth of that family of mingled Brown and Cler- mont lineage requires a tribute to the memory of his eldest son, First Leiutenant Frank H. Woods, of the Fifty-Ninth Ohio, who was with Company K., that was made up of men from both sides of the county lines. His last work at the uni- versity before starting for the tented field was in a crowded display debate on "Emancipation as a Military Necessity," at a time when college boys rushed in where senators feared to speak. By some chance, the opponent to his conservative ar- gument was my much more youthful self, who looked to him as an elder brother, whose love never failed. Brilliant, social,. eloquent, he had all to live for, and so was called to die for all. While serving as an aide on the staff of General Durbin Ward and gallantly directing an order on the fatal field of Chickamauga, he fell near to where and when they killed the "Soldier Poet," General William Haines Lytle ; so great a cost it was to save the Union.
Allen Wood, Sr., then came to Ohio not before 1806, and set- tled, where, on December 10, 1819, he completed the formali- ties of dedicating the site of Georgetown. As the prospect for the county seat grew clear, others came forward to share the expected benefits. On May 15, 1820. James Woods and Henry Newkirk made additions. On September 27, 1821, James Woods made a second addition. On the same day Abel Reese added some lots, and on the next day, Newkirk made his second addition. On July 30, 1822, the plat was increased still more by Andrew Donaldson. On August 1, 1823, the com-
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missioners of the county contracted to pay one cent less than four thousand dollars for a court house that was accepted August 2. 1824, and lasted twenty-five years. On May 22, 1849, the commissioners contracted for a new court house that was accepted in 1851 and is still in use. It is tedious and of slight interest to the average reader to follow the story of the various jails, except as special incidents occur to vary the mo- notony of a repulsive topic that may be passed with the re- mark that both counties have what are considered secure places of detention, that are in sufficient accord with modern humanities.
In the thirty years from 1820 to 1850, the population of Brown and Clermont with a singular coincidence of growth had all' but doubled and lacked but two hundred and thirteen of numbering fifty-eight thousand souls. Judged by the van- quished wilderness and the open fields, a prodigious task had been overcome. Judged by present convenience, a magical transformation was still to be wrought. Among a people in- tent upon fields and flocks, the change was to drift from abroad. Commercial activity was to furnish the impulse. The immigrant toiling over Zane's Trace to be a farmer soon forgot the inconvenience amid the labor at hand. The trader perplexed with daily delay, fretted for something better.
Thus better roads grew from the market at Cincinnati or the river landings, not toward them. Until 1830 the roads around Cincinnati were all primitive, all what country people call "mud roads." even when the dust is thickest. People of this day are slow to perceive the rapidity of the change. What is called Macadamized roads was not then invented in and about London or in England until 1816. Eleven years later, 1827, the Cincinnati, Columbus and Wooster Turnpike Company was chartered, and by 1835, it had reached Milford. In 1836, the Milford and Chillicothe Turnpike Company was chartered by an Act of the Legislature. The people were very cautious in granting a franchise those days. Then the work proceeded in two directions. By one way Newberry and Goshen obtained notice on the maps. By the other way. Boston, Monterey, Marathon and Fayetteville were brought into plainer view. In 1831 the Ohio Turnpike was chartered to connect Cincinnati and Portsmouth, but the pike part
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stopped long at Bethel, while Tobasco, Withamsville, Amelia and Bethel gathered trade from the crossing roads and branch- ing lanes. The Batavia and Maimi Bridge Turnpike was in- corporated in 1834 to extend eastward, the prospective advan- tage of Union Bridge. That pike approached Batavia about the close of the Mexican war and was in full operation. Then , the Batavia, Williamsburg and Brown County Turnpike Com- pany continued to work during 1850-51, but plank was tried instead of stone. For a time much was expected of wooden roads. The plan to change the forest of oaks into solid high- ways was deemed so feasible that saw mills were built every few miles between Batavia and Fincastle for the express pur- pose, and portions of the way were graded and covered, but as the boards warped and got out of place, such patches soon became the worst of all and the plan proved worse than a failure for the attempt to remove the planks from the mud was often more difficult than successful. The road from Mil- ford to Goshen was first made by stretching thousands of logs end to end in a double track that were hewn to a broad face for the wheels of one side and into a gutter or rut for the wheels of the other side of the vehicles, which all traveled east on one side and west on the other, and at the same rate per hour or day. The new tram way was fine for heavy loads, but as a driver wished to go faster, or when the logs were worn. the inventer was reviled and the failure was worse than folly. The Milford, Edenton and Woodville highway was incorporat- ed in 1851, as a plank road, but the real work was made with stone. About the same date a plank road was started from New Richmond to Amelia and changed to a pike. The river steamboats afforded such convenience that the pike up the river to New Richmond waited until 1865. The Ripley and Hillsboro Turnpike Company, chartered in 1835, completed five miles in four years. The Zanesville and Maysville Turn- pike followed Zane's Trace through the southeastern corner.
All these pikes were toll roads under laws that required the bridging of all water ways in their course. Otherwise with the exception of a few bridges here and there the entire region passed through the Civil War. Then the era of free pikes began under varying conditions that have resulted in a net work of solid roads and frequent bridges that once seemed be- yond the possible.
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People remote by either time or distance cannot easily credit the statement that the agitation for solid roads came later than the once eager strife for water ways. The craze for canals found no favor with those for whom the most san- guine promoter could figure no plan that would help the "Pocket," as they called the region east of the Little Miami. Thomas Morris fully represented his constituents in his op- position ; and neither he nor his people submitted without pro- test to a scheme in which they were to share the cost with only a reflex interest in the doubtful benefits.
But it was different with those under the spell of the pop- ular illusion. The growth of art has been not a discovery of the spiritual, but a conquest of the material. Every step of progress measures a victory of mind over matter. For ages the conflict was with the four elements, earth and air, fire and water. Knowledge came little by little, some through fear, often with gladness. As men grew, many water ways were used to gather grain along the fertile Nile, or from Babylonian plains or amid the bloom of far Cathay. The long stretches required a portage between the levels. The commerce of antiquity was mainly a robbery of the producer who was forced to carry his own fruits from boat to a lower boat. Cycles passed and eras changed before man learned that water will lift as well as carry the boat and its burden. It passes belief that America was discovered long before the simple secret of the canal lock was solved. But once learned. Europe was agog to adjust the routes of travel and some of their lock work was reckoned among the wonders of the world. The canal fashion spread to America, and some of the fathers of the republic were thrilled with en- thusiastic prophecies of where the Mississippi and the eastern seaboard would be wedded with water ways by which boats would climb mountains and skip as lambs along the hills. Others viewed the prospect with alarm, and trembled for the freedom which was threatened by a menacing combination that not only defied nature, but also intended to centralize tyranny and strangle liberty. To all Thomas Morris predicted, the utter failure of the "ditches" in Ohio. The final destruction by the flood of 1913 of the little left before is an awful confirma- tion of his prediction.
The first actual step in the direction of constructing canals
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in Ohio was taken in 1817, by the same General Assembly that divided Old Clermont for the formation of Brown. After eight debating years, on February 4, 1825, the legislature by a vote of six to one, resolved to proceed with the construction of the Ohio System of Canals. On July 4, 1825, Governor De. Witt Clinton, the great apostle of the canal period, came out from' New York to Licking Summit, in Licking county, and lifted the first shovel full of earth and then Governor Jeremiah Morrow, of Ohio, lifted the second shovel full in the task. On January 22, 1833, the Canal Commissioners reported that their work was completed except some terminal work on the locks at Portsmouth and Cincinnati. At the summit of usefulness in 1850, with 788 miles in full operation the approximate cost of the canals in the state was sixteen million dollars. The cost in human life was fearful. The fierce fevers and distress- ing chills that lurked along the sluggish waters seized the dig- gers and boatman with a peculiar violence that far exceeded any previous form of ague. That virulent sickness received the special name of Canal Fever, which numbered its victims with many thousands. Of twenty-three civil engineers employed, six died in the work and others were impaired for life. The mor- tality among the less intelligent was still greater. Men grew weary, wages became higher and the contractors mostly were ruined financially and forced to quit. In spite of all, the big ditches grew longer with a minimum water top of forty feet, a bottom width of twenty-six feet and a depth of four feet.
There is a disposition to deprecate the Ohio canals as a plan that failed and wasted the cost, while the good that was done could and should have waited. Such opinion is poorly formed or meanly held. Anything good should have all time for its own, and forget that lofty ideals are not all of recent growth. Perry's victory and the Battle of New Orleans closed the long war for the inland North America. Yet these victor- ies in reality opened a new strife for trade. The natural out- let of the Great Lake region destined for one of the mightiest peoples of time is through the St. Lawrence river and beneath the British flag. Foreseeing this calamity and perceiving their opportunity, the people of New York lined under the leader- ship of De Witt Clinton and cut the Erie canal. No doubt the prophet was opposed by much honest ignorance. But the
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grain and ore and timber and all the accessory exports and im- ports of the lake region took the direction of least resistance with a result that has made New York City the capital of the world. The state that bravely did the work quickly took the rank and title of the Empire State of the Union. No honest intelligence doubts the source of such supremacy. Incited to great design by that noble example, the thoughtful men of Ohio took early note that as the Hudson and Mohawk offered the shortest lines and gentlest grades between the lakes and the seaboard, so did some of their valleys seen in the relation between the lakes and the vast waters to the south. Many complacent people swollen with pride of our resourceful pros- perity smile benignly at the slow times and poky ways of our ancestors, and perhaps of their own lives, of whom in the way of enterprise, they are not fit to tie their shoes. The juster view of more extensive intelligence compels the opinion that the fore fathers living within restrictions not yet relieved by the divinities of invention, fostered projects and cherished de- signs that would unnerve their progeny quite as much as our work would astonish them. The legislators of Ohio, represent- ing the plain farmers and largely composed of men also tillers of the soil, entered upon the adoption of the project that, to their apprehension, would join the lakes with the south, and in connection with Lake Erie and the Erie canal, would unify the commerce of America. It was one of Ohio's great battles for the Union. As the canal came winding through the fertile plains and was fixed in the lovely landscapes, and as the wel- come boats glided slowly but surely through the passes of the hills and entered the locks to climb the grades or sink to lower levels, the useful arts began to multiply and replenish the desires of life. Man took note of a brighter opportunity. Mines were opened. Greater mills were built. Larger homes were seen. With but forty-five thousand people, and from the eighteenth place in 1800, Ohio had reached a population of two millions in fifty years and taken the third place on the roll of the United States.
The freight on goods from the coast to the interior of Ohio was reduced from $125.00 per ton to $25.00 per ton. Al- though the people of Brown and Clermont undoubtedly re- ceived a modified share in this production, they were classed
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with the "anti-canal counties," which were disposed to look askant at the artificial navigation with a multitude of locks. aqueducts, culverts, dams and reservoirs, that were alternately blocked with ice, threatened with flood, and strangled by drouth. They did not ascribe all the magnificent growth of the state to the canal power which, like the fly on the wheel, assumed control of the movements. And thus, perforce, they labored and waited depending upon the river and the growing power of steam.
The use of steam first for mills and then for transporta- tion is a strange chapter in the story of progress. In the sum- mary of all that nations have done to vanquish time and con- quer space, and among all that man has won to broaden life and sweeten hope, there is no more splendid achievement em- blemed, even among the other quenchless stars that deck the fadeless field of England's deathless glory than the steam en- gine. How the great English invention was adopted and ex- tended over the United States is a school-boy's lesson. George Stephenson's road from Liverpool to Manchester, the first rail road of all, after ten intense and often distressing years, was formerly inaugurated September 15, 1830, a date within the memory of a few still living. How recent the event, yet how vast the change. Since the Land of Blue Limestone emerged from Silurian Sea, nothing of greater material im- portance to humanity has been more rapidly accomplished or thoroughly achieved. On March 11, 1836, the Little Miami rail- road was chartered and the first stumbling experiment in rail- way construction in the Mississippi valley began on the east- ern bank of Deer Creek, within a few rods of where the first authentic landing on the site of Cincinnati had been made with the boyish William Lytle, just fifty-six years before. Sometime in 1840 the first locomotive in all the West came to and for some months halted at Covalt's Station, as Milford ought to be call- ed. In 1844, the western side of Clermont had been tracked and the mouth of the O'Bannon had been reached. The foun- dation of the immense Pennsylvania railway system practical- ly occupies the western division of the Old Round Bottom Road, the first interior white man's road in Ohio. With- in ten or twelve years, or by 1856 or 57, the Cincinnati and Marietta railroad was running to Loveland over a track
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through Goshen township. That railway used the Little Maimi track to Cincinnati, where transfers were made to the Ohio and Mississippi railroad to St. Louis, whence a road was under construction toward, but still far short of Kansas City before 1860. The Baltimore and Ohio, the Marietta and Cin- cinnati, the Ohio and Mississippi, and the Missouri Central railroads stretching from Washington through Cincinnati to St. Louis, along the Potomac, north of the Ohio and south of the Missouri river, constituted the main strategic line of the Union in the approaching Civil War. Of that line Cincinnati was the locking place and the junction of the Little Maimi, with the incomplete Marietta & Cincinnati railroad at Love- land, was the key to the mustering and employment of the cen- tral forces of the Union. Amid the excitement of the time the condition was accepted without analysis, and amid the surge of armies and clash of battles, little comment was made upon the immense aggregate of soldiers passing to and fro through the Cincinnati region. The nearest available site to the junction for the prodigious mustering was found between Loveland and Milford out on the Hamilton county side of the Maimi, and became famous as a drill ground for hundreds of thousands and then as a vast hospital known as Camp Dennison. While the ceaseless course of time was being ordered for all this busy life and stern array along the western hills of Clermont, other plans as yet noiseless of renown were being accomplish- ed to the eastward.
The fertile hills and teeming plains were working wonders for the people along the river. Before steam had proved its current-defying power, and for a score of succeeding years, the wealth of products was boated to southern markets, just as many of the immigrants had come, in flat bottomed barges that were built for one downward trip and then to be broken. These boats were loaded with flour and meal and the fierce blood of the corn near at hand, at the mouth of the streams or safely up by the little mills that hindered their hurry to the sea. But economy in freight was all important in the long voyages, and many had learned on the western slopes of the mountains that grain and hogs could be reduced many fold into barrels of whisky and pork, both in great demand down the river, the pork for the slaves and the whisky by the drivers.
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And thus for awhile distilleries were as numerous as the mills for grinding.
As the evil of the custom came into clearer view, con- science warmed and warned. For no stated reason except that the old practice of meeting there was not forgotten, the first convention in the cause of temperance in the two counties met in Williamsburg, February 17, 1830, and organized with Thomas Poage, of the Ripley family, as president ; Major Dan- iel Kain, vice-president ; Rev. Robert B. Dobbins, of Felicity, secretary, and John Foster, treasurer. Though small at first, the association grew numerous and influential. Ten years later the "Washingtonians" thrilled the nation with a call to neither touch, taste. nor handle intoxicating liquors. Then until the Civil War, the topmost heights of platform eloquence trembled with denunciation of the moral delinquency of the drunkard without a remembered recognition of the physical disease of the victim. as now set forth by the most pro- found students of the evil. The "Washingtonians" were suc- ceeded by the "Sons" and Daughters" of Temperance, and by the "Good Templars." of which scores of "Divisions" and "Lodges" rose, flourished and ceased, as a part of the social scheme of the times when a "Temperance Lecture" by General "Sam Carey" or the Rev. "Young Max Gaddis" was the larg- est occasion until it happened again. As in all that is human, while many applauded, some refused belief and not a few de- rided. But the position reached is briefly told in a statement that Brown and Clermont are classed among the "Dry coun- ties" and that "Prohibition" is said to be "Out of politics." ~ Agitation of the slavery question was largely influenced by the "River trade." With all the inborn propensity to ramble that had brought Europeans to America, their de- scendants found their only chance in a trip down the river. where they saw the "Peculiar institution" under conditions greatly differing from the patriarchal life in Kentucky. All such visitors to the slave markets were not made bitterly hos- tile to slavery. Some were lulled by the profits and did not or would not think of the gathering woe. They rejoiced in the friendship that clamored for whisky and were delighted with a system that cheapened cotton and paid a still higher price for pork. The system doubled the wealth of England over and
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over, until the smart of Saratoga and the shame of Yorktown were all but forgotten. In the arrogance of that time their .sneering wits asked who reads an American book? The prod- uce of the Ohio valley went with the current to the cotton fields and no farther. The cotton went to English mills that sent their muslins and other things that could not be made in America to be delivered by canals to the people by the Ohio, where the circuit began. A couple of years were required to come round back to where the food for the slave was raised. The plan was the best yet tried in Ohio, and was supposed to be the best that could be, and people were warned against any disturbances of the hypothesis.
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