USA > Ohio > Greene County > History of Greene County, Ohio: its people, industries and institutions, Volume I > Part 11
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Ordered that no board Kiln or any other nuisance Shall hereafter be put on the Pub- lick Ground in the Town of Xenia by any citizen, and it is further ordered that all logs, boards, &c (except it is materials for the building of publick buildings) shall be imme- diately removed.
(Signed) THOMAS HUNTER.
A no less important personage than the famous Indian fighter, Simon Kenton, experienced some discomfiture from the determination of the county commissioners to make the public square a "thing of beauty," for on June 6, 1823, they requested "that the Auditor of this County give notice to James Galloway, Jr., that he have the house now occupied by Simon Kenton as a shop removed off the Publick Ground on or before the first of Sep- tember, next."
To the commissioners a fence around the square seemed an absolute necessity to its beautification and at the same time it would prevent the milch cows, which ran at large through the streets, from browsing under the win- dows of the county temple of justice and would keep the pleasure-loving porkers of the neighborhood from making wallows within the public ground. Accordingly, James Galloway, Sr., was given the contract to build a fence about the public square for one hundred and seventy dollars.
Evidently the peace of the county officials in those early days was dis- turbed by "loafers" who to this day are seen around some court houses. Again, there seemed to be considerable trespassing on the public ground in those days, for the gates thereto were often left open. This state of affairs caused the commissioners to have spread upon their record that "the County
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GREENE COUNTY, OHIO
Auditor is hereby authorized to have the North gate into the Publick Ground nailed up and have the other two gates into the Publick Ground fixed with chains that the gates when opened will shut themselves; and also that he have pieces of plank nailed across inside the windows in the lower part of the Court House in order to prevent people from sitting in the windows."
SALE OF PART OF THE PUBLIC SQUARE.
Watchdogs of the county treasury were these early commissioners of Greene county, and oftentimes their zeal for economy in administration led them into difficulties. Luckily, however, nothing of serious consequence re- sulted from their zeal for eking out the county's money. Since in their judgment the public square was unnecessarily large for the county's purpose, they ordered William Beatty, the director of Xenia, to sell lots off the public ground on the second Friday of February, 1817. To facilitate the sale, five or six written advertisements were posted in public places in Greene county and the date, terms and nature of the sale were published in the Liberty Bell of Cincinnati. On the day of the sale, the directors sold parts of four in-lots. This enterprise had no bad results, but another project of the commissioners would have entailed difficulty had they succeeded in completing it. In 1835 they decided to plat the public square and lease parts of it for long terms. The platting was done and the sale of the leases was advertised. The com- plete story of this sale of parts of the public square is told in another chapter.
Money was dear and hard to get in those early days. When the sheriff was allowed seventy-five cents for furnishing the court and jury with fire- wood and eighteen and three-fourths cents for paper, the money had to be forthcoming. The commissioners rented their office to the pioneer attorney, William Alexander, for one dollar a month, since they had only occasional need of it. However, Alexander understood before he took possession that he must take good care of the room and that the clerk and commissioners could use the office without restraint.
There was another measure of economy taken by the board which seems amusing to us now, but was a very practical measure to them. After the first jail was erected in Xenia in 1804 and 1805 a means of providing heat for the prisoners, many of whom were imprisoned for debt, was necessary. Stoves at that early date were rare, but the progressive board appropriated forty dollars on November 5, 1805, to provide a stove for the debtor's room at the jail and James Collier, the sheriff, was appointed to procure it. In obedience to the order, he made a trip to Cincinnati and brought the stove by team from that young metropolis of the west and set it up for the comfort of the debtors. When the enforcement of the debtor law became lax, the stove was put to little use and on the approach of winter in 1822 the commissioners decided
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GREENE COUNTY, OHIO
to make the stove a revenue producer, and on December 22 of that year they issued the following order :
Ordered that John McPherson have the use of the Stove now in the Debtor's Room in the Jail of the County, for which he is to pay to the Treasurer of Greene County for the County's use, seventy-five cents per month during the time that he keeps it, and is to return said Stove and set it up, fit for use, in the Debtor's Room, aforesaid, at any time when required to do so by the Jailor of said County, after a sufficient time being allowed for the Stove to get Cool.
(Signed) JOHN STERRITT.
COUNTY FINANCE.
If the farmers of 1803 and 1804 had to pay as high a tax rate as the farmers of 1918, there would have been a far greater number of protests then than there were before the board of equalization in 1917. Living was of the simplest kind one hundred years ago and if an associate judge or clerk of the court or any county official had been paid as much as the janitor of the court house in 1918 receives there would have been a taxpayers' league organized within a short time. The following orders of the commissioners in 1805 will give some idea of the salaries paid county officials in those early days :
Ordered that the Clerk of the Board of Commissioners be allowed thirty dollars for his services for the present year.
Ordered that the attorney prosecuting the pleas for the present year be allowed 20 dollars a term.
Ordered that the collectors of County Taxes be allowed ten per cent on all monies by them collected and paid over to the County Treasurer.
Ordered that the Treasurer be allowed three per cent for safe keeping and paying out all publick monies.
It is a long step from the day when corn sold for ten cents a bushel to the year 1918, when it is bringing two dollars a bushel, and there is about an equal disparity between taxes paid in 1803 and those of 1918. In the year of the organization of the county realty values were not taxed and personal property was not levied upon according to its value only in one instance. In the townships of Beavercreek, Cæsarscreek and Sugarcreek horses were taxed at thirty cents a head, cows at twelve and one-half cents each and stallions were taxed according to the rate a season. The only attempt at taxing property ad valorem was in the levy upon houses, mills and the like, which were levied upon at fifty cents on each one hundred dollars. Accord- ing to the act establishing Greene county which exempted all the inhabitants living in the newly erected county north of the eighth range from any tax for the purpose of erecting court houses and jails, the tax paid by the resi- dents of Mad River township was reduced two cents on each horse and one cent on each cow, but the rate on houses and mills and stallions remained
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GREENE COUNTY, OHIO
the same. At their meeting on August 26, 1803, the associate judges re- ported taxes collected as follows :
BEAVERCREEK TOWNSHIP.
241 horses at 30 cents each $72.90
430 cows, at 121% cents each. 54.25
Stallions, Mills and Houses 16.25
CAESARSCREEK TOWNSHIP. $143.40
77 Horses, at 30 cents each $23.10
154 Cows, at 121% cents each.
19.15
Stallions
4.50
SUGARCREEK TOWNSHIP. 46.75
60.90
MAD RIVER TOWNSHIP.
243 Horses, at 28 cents each.
$67.76
492 Cows, at 111/2 cents each.
56.81
Stallions, Mills and Houses.
18.42
143.99
Tavern Lincenses
$20.00
Fines
53.00
73.00
Total
$466.04
CONTRAST IN FISCAL AFFAIRS.
Since that early date in the county's history a wonderful change has taken place in the conduct of the county's fiscal affairs. Real estate was not taxed until several years after the erection of the county and then it was car- ried on by haphazard methods. At present an expert draftsman is platting the whole county in order that the taxation of realty values may rest with equity upon all landholders. Such a plan is absolutely necessary to an in- telligent administration of the county's taxing system and Greene county is one of the few in the country which is thus perfecting its machinery for tax- ation. Moreover, there has been a great change in the wealth of the county since the early days of its existence. In 1917 Greene county was worth, as ascertained from the returns of the assessors, $48,269,640, of which $29,678,840 was the value of the real property and $18,590,800 the value
(8)
123 Horses, at 30 cents each $36.90
192 Cows, at 121% cents each.
23.00
I house I.b0
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GREENE COUNTY, OHIO
of the personal property. On this property thus valued there was levied taxes amounting to $586,240.44, which combined with the special taxes, the dog taxes and the delinquents, totals $632,260.03, the grand total of the levy of 1917. This formidable sum bears a striking contrast to the modest sum of $466.04 raised in 1803, although the former does not represent as much of a burden upon the taxpayers as the latter amount which was paid one hun- dred and fourteen years ago. Many things are taxed today which were not on the duplicate of years ago and on the other hand there are hundreds of outlets for the county's money which were unknown to our grandfathers. It would be hard to imagine the commissioners of the twenties appropriating twenty dollars for canna beds for the lawn of the court house as the com- missioners of 1917 did, and the commissioners of that early decade would have had nervous prostration had the county officials asked them to put an electric fan in the court house for the comfort of the county's servants on the hot summer days. The roads they made in those days were little more than paths cut out through the forest with the stumps of the trees sticking up in the center of the "thoroughfare" to the confusion and discomfort of the traffic, and the expenditure of $68,327.03 for the roads of the county as was noted in 1917 would have been as nearly within the conception of the early commissioners as an aeroplane. Quagmires gave the hogs an oppor- tunity to wallow almost at the door of the court house, yet the county fathers of those early days would have looked with askance at such an ninheard-of expenditure as $5,198.36 for ditches as was noted in 1917. Even the expen- diture for outdoor relief in this latter year far exceeded the first entire levy of the county in 1803, and our forefathers were known far and wide for their charity and hospitality.
Then what did our forefathers spend the money of Greene county for during their incumbency of office? The following is the disposition of the levy for Greene county for 1804, as shown by a report dated August 26, 1803 :
To the Commissioners for selecting a place for the seat of justice. $25.00
To James Snoden for ballot boxes. 2.00
To the lister of taxable property of Beavercreek township. 18.75
To ditto of Sugarcreek township 7.90
To ditto of Mad River township. 12.70
To the Grand Jury of August term. 19.55
To James Barrett and Benj. Whiteman 12.00
To William Maxwell 4.50
To John Paul for attending as Clerk 2 days and making a list for Sheriff. 12.00
To the Sheriff for ex-officio services
20.00
To the Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas. 20.00
To the Grand Jury for term of Supreme Court 10.91
To Grand Jury for December Term .. 8.071/2
To the attorney prosecuting for the State at August Term of Common Pleas 30.00 To ditto October Term of Supreme Court. 20.00
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GREENE COUNTY, OHIO
To ditto December Term of Common Pleas. 20.00
To Sheriff for summoning Grand Jury for August Term. 1.50
To ditto October Term of Supreme Court. 2.00
To ditto December term of Common Pleas. 2.50
To Jacob Shingledecker for repairs done to the Jail.
9.50
To Joseph Vance for carrying election returns of Sugarcreek township to Cincinnati 6.00
To David Huston for ditto, Beavercreek township 6.00 Probable amount of acts not exhibited. 22.00
Collectors' and Treasurer's per cent and Depositum . 173.551/2
$466.04
SIMPLE NEEDS OF THE EARLY SETTLERS.
The wants of the early county administration were simple. No broad county roadways demanded the floating of a bond issue. Instead of having to expend a considerable amount for a modern heating plant, the sheriff was ordered to provide the court with firewood which crackled in the fire- place in the house of Peter Borders or that of William Beatty in Xenia. Electricity was an unheard-of plaything and when the county officer worked at night, he used the tallow candle. Instead of going about in an automobile, the sheriff rode horseback when he summoned the grand juries.
.But now the county spends over a half million dollars annually. This money is spent in a hundred different ways in as many varying sums. Many officials are employed by the county to attend to its affairs and their salaries amount to thousands of dollars annually. To meet these expenses county taxes are levied and in each county in Ohio taxes are divided into five gen- eral funds: State, county, school, township and corporation. The state tax is divided into four funds-sinking, university, common-school and state highway. The county tax is divided into seventeen funds -- county, infirm- ary, children's home, bridge, soldiers' relief, judicial, mothers' pensions, blind, election, county ditch, tuberculosis hospital, county roads, library, county highway, and sinking fund. The township tax is divided into seven funds-general, poor, roads, bridge, cemetery, ditch and miscellaneous. The corporation tax is divided into eight funds-general, safety, service, health, library, cemetery, debt and sinking. Summing up the different funds it is seen that they are thirty-two in number. In the face of the tremendous amount of labor entailed in collecting this tax, the county being the agency for the collection, it is difficult to conceive of one man, like John Paul, doing the work of auditor. clerk and recorder.
Ohio enjoys one of the lowest tax rates in the Union and its average tax of less than a dollar and a half on the hundred dollars is considerably less than half of the rate paid by the taxpayers of Indiana. The low rate in Ohio has been in effect since Governor Harmon forced the Smith one- per cent law through the General Assembly. The tax in Ohio can not legally
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GREENE COUNTY, OHIO
be more than a dollar and a half on the one hundred dollars except for emer- gencies. Before the present taxing system went into operation, rates in Greene county were practically twice what they are today, the reduction in the rate being due to the listing of property at its full value.
EXPENDITURES COMMENSURATE WITH WEALTH.
Residents of the county might feel considerable agitation at the annual expenditure by the county of a half million dollars, but people have more money today than they had over a hundred years ago and they spend it. Even the man with a very modest income spends more money annually in attending the moving picture shows than his grandfather required to supply clothing for the entire family during the same length of time. But a county is a living, breathing organism and Greene county is now composed of thirty- thousand smaller living, breathing organisms. Just as individuals are spend- ing more money today than they ever did before, so is it with the county. The county is but a reflex of the people of which it is composed and no one complains if it spends money. If a man is worth fifty million he could build a beautiful home like that of the Greene County Children's Home, and such a sum is Greene county worth. Thus it has the right to spend money and spends it like a millionaire.
Since the county is but a reflex of its residents, it has the right to con- tract debts, and it is obligated to pay them just as the humblest citizen with- in its borders is obliged to pay his debts. To say that a county is in debt two hundred thousand dollars or twice as much is to assume that it has met with an unusual expenditure, such as, the building of a court house, a jail or macadam or gravel roads, which have demanded the outlay of thousands of dollars. In Ohio, as in most other states, many improvements of a public nature are paid for by an assessment levied against the citizens benefited by the improvement in question. For instance, the digging of a county ditch or the building of a road is met wholly or in part by direct assessment on the property owners affected by the improvement. In the case of some kinds of roads (inter-county) the expense is pro-rated in four ways: the state, county, township and the abutting property owners. The county's part is generally considerable and it must meet the excess in its wonted expenditure by a bond issue.
At present Greene county has a debt of approximately four hundred thousand dollars, about half of which arose from the construction of the new court house. At first glance this sum seems quite large, but in reality it is a comparatively small amount when compared with the total wealth of the county. With a debt of $400,000 and wealth amounting to approximately $50,000,000, Greene county is just in the same position as the farmer of the
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GREENE COUNTY, OHIO
county who has a fifty-thousand-dollar farm and has a four-hundred-dollar mortgage on it.
On the other hand the county can not pay this debt with the ease that might be imagined. The ordinary expenses of the county, commonly known as the "running" expenses, are met month by month and year by year from the ordinary receipts of taxes levied for that purpose. In the past year in Greene county much improvement has been made in county ditches and roads and the like, and this unusual expenditure resulted in the issuing of bonds to the amount of $100,628.90. It should be noted at this point that this year the county paid out $82,783.29 on its entire indebtedness.
PRESENT ERA OF PROSPERITY.
The prosperity of the county may be indicated in a number of ways. In a county the size of Greene, with a county seat the size of Xenia, and with few of the conditions which confront counties and cities of larger size, this county bears little indication of poverty and destitution, there being spent by the county during 1917 only five hundred and seventy dollars for outdoor relief to the poor. It is probable, since the county is now making great preparations toward entering with all its resources and strength into the great World War, the long season of prosperity may decline somewhat. Many of the young men of the county have gone into the national service; three Liberty loans have been floated in Greene county, all of which have been oversubscribed. In addition to these, the county has subscribed more than its quota to the Red Cross and Young Men's Christian Association funds. But withal every one seems to be prosperous and even the present high prices have not affected the general prosperity of the people of the
county thus far. It is true that nearly every commodity costs more in 1918 than it ever did before, but on the other hand better wages are being paid than ever before. Hundreds of workmen in Xenia are receiving from sev- enty-five to one hundred dollars a month. Farmers are getting more than double the amount for their products than formerly. In 1917 hogs were selling for twenty dollars a hundred weight. For their wheat crop for the past (1917) season alone, many farmers received half the cost price of their farms. There is no reason why the farmers should not be prosperous, and with bumper crops there will be more mortgages paid off within the present fiscal year than in any other year in the history of the county.
The county recorder keeps a large and pretentious looking volume on the counter which gives the day-by-day transactions of his office. Here may be seen the record of the mortgages filed and cancelled day by day through- out the year, transfers of property, deeds filed for record, and a number of other things, all of which are concerned with property exchanges. Here,
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GREENE COUNTY, OHIO
for instance, may be seen an indication of the amount that the people of Greene county saved last year : Cancellation of 323 mortgages on 349 city, town and village lots to the amount of $244,672, and of 361 farm mortgages covering 22,770 acres in the amount of $876,838, and of 61 mortgages on lands within corporate limits covering 65 acres to the amount of $50,427, all of which makes a total of $1, 171,937. This means that during the year closing June 30, 1917, the people of Greene county paid off debts in the form of mortgages amounting to over a million dollars. On the other hand, during the same period, new mortgages somewhat in excess of this amount were filed for record. Villages, towns and cities reported 311 mortgages on 697 lots, totalling $381,068; lands within corporate limits, 55 mortgages, covering 70 acres and totalling $57,451; farm mortgages on 22,833 acres, totaling $1,010,089; the aggregate amount on all mortgages filed during the year ending June 30, 1917, was $1,448,608. This on the face of it would make it appear that the county was heavily mortgaged, but the figures when taken in comparison with the wealth of the county-about $50,000,000- show that the mortgage debt of the county is quite small. The average price per acre of farm lands sold in this period was approximately $116, as computed from the transfers of agricultural lands; hence the price of the land mortgaged was about $2,648,628. In order to place these figures in another light for comparison, they are appended in tabular farm:
New Mortgages. No. Acres.
Amount.
Cancelled Mortgages.
Farms
343
22,833 $1,010,089
391 61
No. Acres. 22,770 65
Amount. $ 876,838 50,427
City, town and village lots -3II
709 22,903 $1,448,608
745 22,835 $1,171,937
Deeds.
No. Acres.
Amount.
Average Price per Acre.
Farms
I34
6,419
$744,299
$115.95
Land in corporate limits 22
29
24,153
832.17
City, town and village
lots
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134,70I
273
6,448
$903,153
-
381,068
323
244,672
Land in corporate limits 55
70
57,45I
The above table shows a total of only 273 deeds filed, but there were 770 deeds (594 town lots and 16,273 acres of farm land and land within cor- porate limits) filed in which there were no considerations stated and they
GREENE COUNTY, OHIO
come under the head of "dollar" considerations, the dollar covering the cost of the transfer. It will be seen that practically seven-tenths of the deeds filed in the county do not state the consideration involved in the transfer and it is becoming the custom of real estate men and many other purchasers of property to make no record of the consideration. This is done for various reasons, but principally for the reason that the purchaser does not desire the public to know what he paid for the property.
The recorder's records also show that 1,259 acres of farm land and eighteen town lots were leased during the year ending June 30, 1917, the amount of consideration for these leases being $14,673.
POPULATION STATISTICS.
There is no report on record of the number of people in Greene county in 1803 when it was organized, hence there is no way by which we can deter- mine the exact number of residents here at that time. We do know from totals of the voters given in the poll books of the election of that year that there were four hundred and thirty-nine voters in Greene county in 1803. Since Greene county then included what is now Champaign and Clark coun- ties and extended to the northern boundary of the state, we can not obtain even the number of voters in what is now properly this county. The county first figured in the federal census of 1810, but its population of 5,870 in that year included all the inhabitants living within the present limits of the county with all those then residing in the small part of what became Clark county when the latter was organized in 1817.
The organization of the county was the signal for the influx of settlers, but the great bulk of emigrants did not come until after the danger from the Indians subsided after the War of 1812. The population by the return for 1820 is shown to have doubled. These settlers came chiefly from Pennsyl- vania and Virginia after they had spent a few years in Kentucky, just as did John Paul, Joseph C. Vance, John Wilson, General Whiteman, David Laughead and James Galloway, Sr.
The only detailed census reports for the county that the historian has been able to secure begin in 1840, and these immediately follow. Earlier returns for the county from the federal census returns show the number of people in the county from 1810 to 1840; for 1810, 5,870; 1820, 10,521; and for 1830, 14,801. Hence, in twenty years, the population of the county in- creased 8,131, which is a much greater increase than that between any other two decades in the history of the county.
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