USA > Ohio > Guernsey County > History of Guernsey County, Ohio, Volume I > Part 37
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delphia, he was largely engaged in the manufacture of ship's irons, chain cables, anchors, etc. There seem to have been unions at that time. The Con- gressional Records of 1833-34 show that he represented the "Iron Masters Union of Pennsylvania," before the ways and means committee of Congress, of which Henry Clay was chairman. He made a report in opposition to Mr. Clay's tariff bill, as it affected the iron workers of Pennsylvania. Henry Clay, in his speech in favor of his tariff bill, made an attack on John Sar- chet's report read before the committee. He charged him with being a native of the island of Guernsey, and that the principal business of its inhabitants was smuggling, and said that John Sarchet came before the committee of ways and means with dirty hands. Albert Galliten, of Pennsylvania, in reply to Mr. Clay, defended John Sarchet and his report, and declared Mr. Clay had not answered it, nor could it be answered, and said if John Sarchet came before the ways and means committee with "dirty hands," they were hands made dirty with honest toil.
The next was Peter Sarchet's house on the first lot west of the public square on Main street. It was a two-story hewed log house, built near the centre of the lot, fronting to the east with a porch on that front full length of the building. He later sold to George J. Jackson, who was in some way connected with the Wyatt Hutchison family. He died in the house, and his widow remarried. Mrs. Sarah Baldwin lived in it and died in it within the memory of the writer. After the formation of Guernsey county, the two upper rooms of the house were used for county offices, and were occupied by the clerk, recorder, commissioners, sheriff and collector.
In 1826, while thus occupied, during the night it caught fire from a de- fective chimney, wood being used for fuel. The fire was discovered by a passerby, who gave the alarm. The fire had not made much headway and was soon put out. Some of the logs behind the chimney were burnt off, and others charred into charcoal. But for this midnight passerby, the building and all of the county records would have been destroyed. The county com- missioners, William McCracken, Turner G. Brown and William D. Frame. decided to erect two fireproof offices west of and connecting with the old court house. These were of brick, arched over head with brick, and floored with brick. One was for the auditor and commissioners, and the other for the clerk and recorder. Daniel Hubert, father of A. J., of this city, painted the sign, costing five dollars. The first to occupy these offices were the com- missioners above named, and Robert B. Moore, auditor, and Moses Sarchet, appointed to succeed C. P. Beatty, clerk, and Jacob G. Metcalf, recorder.
Peter Sarchet, after he sold his property, removed to the "old salt
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works," in Muskingum county, later known as the Chandler salt works, where the three brothers were engaged in the manufacture of salt. These salt springs, or seeps, had been used by the Indians in a very primitive manner for making salt. The Sarchets sunk a well, to obtain more and stronger salt brine, on the sayso of the Chandlers, who were then the owners of the land. This venture did not improve or strengthen the salt water, and after some years of hard labor, with but little profit, they threw up their lease, which they had from the Chandlers, before its expiration, the result of which were law suits by the Sarchets against the Chandlers for misrepresentations, and 'a suit by the Chandlers to compel a fulfillment of the lease, and the result was, a loss to all hands and the engendering of bad blood.
Some years later the Chandlers began the boring of a well, and while engaged at the work, a hoax was perpetrated, which is set down in Ohio history as "The Disastrous Hoax." What is given here is condensed from Hildreth's history. In 1820 Samuel Chandler was boring a salt well near Chandlersville, nine miles southeast of Zanesville. Some ill-disposed person dropped into the well some pieces of silver, and when the borings were brought up, the sand when examined proved to be rich with silver. The dis- covery of a silver mine spread like wildfire. A company was soon formed, incorporated, and called, "The Muskingum Silver Mining Company." A lease was secured from Chandler to sink a shaft down to the silver vein near his salt well. After the company had expended ten thousand dollars in an effort to develop the silver mine, the bubble burst. Chandler sued the com- pany for damages to his salt well, which it had to pay. The above is the history, but there is something between the lines which was always hinted at by the mining company, but was never known, how much Chandler had to do with the hoax, but first and last he received the benefit, and left the Musk- ingum Silver Mining Company to hold the sack. Perhaps the phrase, "salt- ing the mine," had its origin at the Chandler salt works. This silver mine hoax was many years ago, and is almost forgotten, but the salting of mines still goes on. The wise man saith, "Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright ; but they have sought out many inventions." Is this salting of mines one ?
COUNTY'S PIONEERS (NO. 5). (Herald, December 10, 1902.)
The second Guernsey colony was composed of the families of James Bichard, Sen., two William Ogier families, James Ogier's, Thomas Naftel's,
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Thomas Lenfestey's, widow Mary Hubert's, and John Marquand's, and of young men Peter Langloise, John Robin, Peter Corbet, Peter and Nicholas Bichard, John and Peter Torode, Paul Robert, Nicholas Peodvin, John Carlo and John DeLarue. These emigrants were in Cambridge in time to help at the raising of the three Sarchet houses and to erect houses for themselves for the coming of winter. At a raising of the Thomas Sarchet house a large log slipped off the skids, and struck James Bichard, grandfather of the writer, on the head. For a long time he was thought to be killed. He revived, but carried to his death a dent in his skull, as a reminder of that raising.
William Ogier built a cabin on the now John M. Ogier lot on Wheeling avenue. The Marquands, Huberts and Lenfesteys built cabins on the three lots of the square next east. On the square opposite, on Wheeling avenue, the Bichards and Naftels built cabins. The prices of these town lots ranged from thirty-two dollars and fifty cents to thirty-four dollars. Besides these, George R. Tingle built a cabin on the now Odd Fellows block lot, and the Mottie family a cabin on the middle Farrar lot on Wheeling avenue. The John Beatty house, the Judge Metcalf house, and the Sarchet houses and cabins, in addition to those mentioned, made up the Cambridge of the wilder- ness in the winter of 1807-8.
The Marquand family later settled north on Wills creek. A few years after the second colony, other Guernsey families came. Among these were William Lashure, who built a house on the lot west of Noel hotel, Thomas Ogier, who built a stone house on his farm north of Cambridge. He had been detained in hiding from the wrath of the Cossack soldiers that were stationed on the island, one of whom he had killed, while pillaging his orchard. Thomas DeBartram bought lot 83, on which was a cabin, the first house built on Steu- benville avenue. The lot is now occupied by the Presbyterian church, Doc- tor Milligan's and Doctor Moore's residences. The lot had been used by Sandy and Miller, Scotchmen, on which was erected a whip-saw mill and the cabin. These men sawed the first lumber used about the cabins and the houses of Cambridge. It would seem strange today to see two men whip-sawing lumber, yet at the price, three dollars per hundred or half the lumber, they made good wages. Thomas De Bartram was the first tailor, and had the dis- tinction of bringing the first "goose" to Cambridge. James S. Reitilley bought lot 16, now the Burgess, Schaser and Zahniser lot, on which was built a cabin. Enoch Rush built a cabin on lot 28, now the Ramsey Cook lot, and John Maffit a cabin on the east Farrar lot. So up to this time. 1810, Cam- bridge was a log-house town, with the Col. Z. A. Beatty frame house partly built, located on the lot now occupied by the John M. Ogier residence, on West Wheeling avenue.
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John Robin married into the Hubert family, and Peter Langloise mar- ried into the Bichard family. They both settled south on Wills creek. Daniel Ferbrache settled on government land two miles north of Cambridge, and paid for it with the gold coin Betty Pallet tried to steal. A Mr. Cumin, an Englishman who traveled through the South and West, published a history of his travels. Traveling from the West over the Zane trace, in 1808, in what he called "the stage wagon," he stopped at the Harvey tavern over night, at Zanesville. From there to Wheeling the stage wagon was in charge of George Beymer. He was the senior brother of the Beymer family at Wash- ington, and resided at this time in now Centre township, in a tavern cabin located a short distance off the foot of the four-mile hill, Craig postoffice. Its site was later known as the old Endley brick tavern, on the old Wheeling road, kept by Major John Woodrow. The stage wagon reached the Enslow tavern, located southeast of New Concord, which was in now Westland township.
The most of the early settlers west of Cambridge came by water, up the Muskingum to Duncan's Falls or Zanesville. There were two traces west from Cambridge, one to Duncan's Falls and the other to the falls above. The Zane trace west from Cambridge followed an Indian trail, to what was called "The Dead Man's Ripple," on the Muskingum river, so called because the remains of Duncan were found there. He lived near the falls, a hermit life, and it was supposed he was murdered by the Indians. Thus giving it the double name, "Duncan's Falls," and "Dead Man's Ripple." Ebenezer Zane was not pleased with the location, as he had the privilege of locating a sec- tion of land at the crossing of the Muskingum river. He moved up to the upper falls, and opened the trace back intersecting the other near the Enslow tavern. There had been a settlement there as early as 1802, by Adam McMur- die. He sold to Enslow in 1805. The deed of conveyance speaks of build- ings and orchards. The tavern was on a high hill, later known as Frew's tavern, where the stage wagon stopped for dinner. Cumin speaks of the orchards, and of the splendid view he had from the hill top. At the tavern was an extra horse, belonging to the proprietor of the stage wagon. Cumin rode this horse ahead of the stage wagon to the Beymer tavern.
He speaks of the horrible road from Enslow's to Wills creek, and of the beauty of the landscape at Cambridge, as seen from the western hilltop as he approached the town, and of crossing a rickety toll bridge over Wills creek. That toll bridge was located at the bend in the creek, above the Baltimore & Ohio railroad, being the point where the Zane Trace crossed the creek and the Indian trail that led to Sandusky. It was near this point that the Indian massacre occurred in 1791, and where the killed, Mr. Linn, Thomas Biggs
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and Joseph Hedges, were buried. At the time Cumin crossed the toll-bridge there was a ferry over the creek, south of the Cleveland & Marietta depot. The ferry boat was made with two canoes, fastened together and covered with puncheons. In 1809, Beatty and Gomber erected a toll bridge at that point, which remained there until after the erection of the present old bridge, in 1828. Cumin speaks of the cabin town of the Guernsey settlers, and of their clean looking and thrifty surroundings. He also publishes a letter written by a lady traveler from Cambridge in 1809, in which slie gives a glowing description of the "cabin town" and Guernsey settlers. He says nothing of any mail on the Trace from Wheeling to Zanesville, but there was no postoffice at Cambridge. Col. Z. A. Beatty and Cyrus P. Beatty, who was the first postmaster, did not get to Cambridge until the fall of 1809. But this mail was a sort of rural route, and the mail carrier distributed pack- ages and letters along the line.
The heads of most of the Guernsey families brought with them certifi- cates of good moral and Christian character as members of the Wesleyan Methodist societies of the island, which gave as their sole reasons for leaving the island "the fall of trade," signed by Jean De Caueteville, superintendent of the Wesleyan Methodist societies, of Guernsey, Alderney, Jersey and Sark, and on these certificates the Methodist Episcopal church was organized in 1808. The reader of French and English history will remember that in the years 1805 and 1806 Napoleon Bonaparte was making preparations to invade England, crossing the channel with a large army in boats. England, for pro- tection, stationed troops on all her channel islands. On the island of Guern- sey was a large force of Russian Cossack soldiers, who made it their prin- cipal business to plunder from the small Guernsey farmers, to which class most of the Guernsey farmers belonged. Strict embargo laws were in force, the trade of the island, which was largely commercial, was cut off and the business of the island was totally suspended. It was that depression, per- haps the first, which caused the colonists to leave the island.
Many of the readers have read the interesting and descriptive letter of John M. Ogier, of Cambridge, who visited the island last summer, describing its beauty and great prosperity. Its immense daily trade with England of fruits and vegetables, as well as its large commercial trade with other coun- tries, would perhaps excite wonder that these Guernsey emigrants should leave such a beautiful and prosperous island. But let another Napoleon arise in France, and control all Europe with strict embargo laws enforced, close up all of the commercial ports, and make preparations to invade England. Then the Guernsey of today would begin to decline, and its great productiveness and
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trade would cease. General Sherman said a great truth in a blunt way when he said, "War is hell," and the effects of this hell continues for years after the war is over. The effects of the war of the Rebellion continued for more than twenty years. William Berry, in his history of Guernsey, says that it was more than twenty years after 1805 and 1806 until prosperity began to be restored on the island.
COUNTY'S PIONEERS (NO. 6).
(Herald. December 17, 1902.)
The year 1807 was called the "hard year" by the early settlers. They had just made some clearings, which they had planted in corn. Bread is the first great necessity. Corn pone and mush were relied upon by most of the settlers. The corn that they had planted was peeping through the hills when there came a great horde of squirrels from the South. The corn patches were literally alive with squirrels, digging up and eating the sprouted corn. Seed corn was hard to get, and a long journey had to be made to get seed for plant- ing, which put the second planting into June. When this second crop was but matured into hard roasting ears, there came an early frost in September, which cooked the fodder and corn into a black and withered state. I have heard these settlers say that the mush and corn pone made from this corn when ground was as black as a hat. And to make the matter worse, in the early settlements in the East and South on the Ohio river, the wheat that was harvested, threshed and ground into flour was not fit to eat by either man or beast. This wheat goes down into history as "sick wheat."
The depredations of the squirrels led the Legislature of 1807-08 to pass a law encouraging the killing of squirrels. This law made it imperative that every person who was a taxpayer in the county should furnish a certain number of squirrel scalps at the time of tax paying, the number to be fixed by the township trustees, and any person delinquent was liable to the same penalty as delinquent tax-payers on land or personal property, and any per- son producing to the collector more than the required number was to receive two cents for each scalp. This law is to be found in Volume 5. Ohio Laws. The law was never enforced. An overruling providence sent on the squirrel desperadoes the most severe winter of 1807-8, known in the history of Ohio both for cold weather and snow, and the great horde of squirrels almost all perished with hunger. These early Guernsey settlers subsisted through that winter on game, black mush and black corn pone, potatoes, cabbage and turn- ips. I have heard my uncles say that the people had two ways of keeping
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warm, one was to chop and carry in wood to keep up the fires day and night. the other was to carry water from the distant springs to thrown on the chim- neys to keep the cabins from burning up.
War followed the advent of the Guernsey settlers to the western wilder- ness. Grim-visaged war stared them in the face in their cabins and log house homes. The war whoops of the Indians, encouraged by English emis- saries, rang through the forest. The great chief Tecumseh, with his shrewd. cunning and wily tread, was everywhere inciting the Indians to rapine and murder. The Guernsey settlers carried their guns to their work in the clear- ings, and moved about in pairs for protection. At night the cabin doors were barricaded and they slept on their arms. Daily came the word from the nearby frontiers of the capture of women and children and the burning of homes. It may be that these Guernsey settlers looked back to their island home with longing eyes. But few of them were yet naturalized citizens, but they did not hang their harps on the willows and cry out, "How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" They were made of sterner stuff. Great Britian had no more loyal subjects than the Guernsey islanders, and here in the country of their adoption, Ohio found no more loyal citizens. Amid the dark and depressing hour the little Methodist spark was kept aglow. Few they were, but true to their chosen church they chung together. William Ogier was a local preacher, Peter Sarchet an exhorter, and Thomas Sarchet a class leader, and regular Sunday school meetings were held at the different houses, called "French meetings," and these social meetings in their own tongues continued to be held for more than three years. The writer in boy- hood attended these meetings, and has now a very distinct recollection of the seeming fervour and zeal manifested, although understanding but little of the hymns, prayers and preaching. Thomas Sarchet attended the first session of the Ohio conference at Chillicothe in 1812, and brought back with him to Cambridge William Mitchell, the senior preacher of the Zanesville circuit. who resided in his home for the next conference year, and who was the first Methodist preacher to reside in Cambridge. John Strange, the junior preacher, rode to the different charges, carrying a rifle on his shoulder. The stagna- tion and depression caused by the war ceased, business began to revive, the settlers were encouraged, emigration began to increase, and in 1823 Thomas Sarchet, speaking of the church's early beginning, says: "We struggled on ; my wife and myself did all that we could to render the preachers comfort- able, and to open up a way for their usefulness in the community." At length the Americans began to come in, and the church to take a hold upon the peo- ple. Among these Americans were Jacob Shaffner, J. S. White, Joseph Wood.
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Thomas McIlyar, Andrew Metcalf, Daniel Davis, John Davis, Joseph Cock- erl. Edward Mulkins, Hamilton Robb, Joseph Neeland, Levi Rhinehart and others.
The National road was now located through Cambridge. Its completion was to open up a market for surplus grain, which had no cash value before. The gradation was made through Cambridge in 1827-28. Casper W. Weaver, the superintendent, gave notice to all contractors that the road would be open for through travel from Bridgeport to Zanesville, October 1, 1828. Whether there was any formal demonstration made at Cambridge, there is no record left to show. The Guernsey Times passed into the hands of Nicho- las Bailhache during the years 1828-29, and of the two years there are no files or local record to be found.
The great National highway, over which flowed the great moving tide of emigration westward for thirty years, was to the state of Ohio what the Appian Way was to ancient Rome, but with this difference, the Appian Way was designed to gratify the pomp and vanity of emperors and empires, kings and princes, consuls and pro-consuls, but the National road was designed to meet the wants of a free and progressive people, and to aid in building up and strengthening a great and growing republic. The Appian Way outlived its nation. The old pike served in its day and generation, a complete suc- cess, and when its glory departed as a national highway, the nation was all the stronger because it had been made.
We hear no more of the clanking hoof, And the stage coach rattled by ; For the Steam King rules the traveled world, And the "Old Pike's" left to die.
And now we have passed over more than twenty years of the trying times of the Guernsey settlers, and down to the time when the dark cloud of isolation began to be dispelled, and the dawn of brighter days to appear. For the next quarter of a century the great tide of emigration, stage coaches, road wagons, emigrant wagons, horsemen and footmen moved over the highway. "Westward ho!" was still the cry. The other day a monument was erected almost to the west line of the state of Indiana, to mark the center of popula- tion of the republic for 1890. Where will the next center be? Still farther west, the answer might be, but there is no longer any west. West is a mere relative term. The answer must be, "The boundless continent is ours," and we are again sailing over the seas from whence the star of empire took its westward way.
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LOCAL HISTORICAL SKETCH.
(Jeffersonian, November 22, 1893.)
We have a very distinct recollection of a moving day in the spring of 1833, when my father moved from the old house, corner of Seventh street and Wheeling avenue, in which the writer was born, and a part of which still remains a connecting link between the past and the present, to our new home, corner of West Eighth street and Steubenville avenue, Cambridge. These three score years of Cambridge life, measuring up its growth, with some historical reminiscences, social, political, religious and otherwise, we wish to give to the readers of the Jeffersonian, in a series of papers, as there are but few links now in Cambridge that can bind together 1833 and 1893 in one continuous chain of events. Of our new home, now the Burgess prop- erty, we wish to speak from our boyhood remembrance.
We saw it grow from the clay and water in the mortar box, tramped by oxen, paddled and tempered with spade, the brick hand moulded, and hacked and dried ready for the kiln, and from the wood-heated arches, after being cooled, carried and laid one by one in the wall.
"Mort and more mort, brick and more brick," was the cry of the masons on the scaffold, as the hod carriers scaled the long, inclined, slatted gangway, sweating under their loads, as the walls raised up from pudlock to pudlock to completion. The old pudlock way, with scaffold on the outside, bound to- gether by poles and withes, is a thing of the past, as is also the header and stretcher bond of the wall. Then the wall went up round by round, giving to the whole structure a gradual, equal settling.
Now the walls are run up on outside course first, by a skilled workman. Then comes a slashing of mortar and brick behind, and the result is that few, if any, of the brick houses of today are without cracked walls and cracked plastering, the result of an unequal settling and an improper bond.
We live today, we say, in a new age, an age of progress, but in it is much that is shoddy, much that is superficial, that won't stand the blast of time. There is a change of architecture. It is not the imposing Doric, the graceful Ionic, the magnificent Corinthian, or the arch-surmounting Etruscan, but a blending together, destroying the distinct features of each in a conglomeration of designs, that was to be seen everywhere in the Columbian architecture of the late White City on the lake. But enough of this. The growth of Cambridge, from 1806 to 1833, had been slow. Emigration was deterred from fear of the Indians, though they had been subdued and brought to terms of peace in their defeat by General Wayne, in 1794, and had entered into the "treaty of
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Greenville," yet they roamed about filled with hatred and revenge at the en- croachments of the whites into the occupancy of their hunting grounds.
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