History of Logan County and Ohio, Part 37

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?; Battle, J. H; O.L. Baskin & Co
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Chicago, O.L. Baskin
Number of Pages: 798

USA > Ohio > Logan County > History of Logan County and Ohio > Part 37

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The first reliable trace of this character in the territory of Ohio is in 1801. At that time he came with a horse-load of apple seeds, which he planted in various places along the Lieking Creek, the first orchard originated by him being on the farm of Isaac Stauden, in Licking County. He is next heard of on a pleasant day in the spring of 1806. A pioneer settler in Jefferson County, Ohio, noticed a pe-

culiar craft, with a remarkable occupant and a curious cargo slowly dropping down with the current of the Ohio River. With two ca- noes lashed together, he was transporting a load of apple seeds to the western frontier. With his canoes he passed down the Ohio to Marietta, where he entered the Muskingum, ascending the stream of that river until he reached the mouth of the Walhonding, or White Woman Creek, and still onward, up the Mohican into the Black Fork, to the head of navigation, in the region now known as Ash- land and Richland Counties, in Ohio.

He was quite as earnest in the propagation of his religious views as of his apple-trees. Wherever he went, he carried and distributed books relating to his seet's peculiar tenets, and when his stock ran low he would tear a book in two, giving cach part to a different person. His aim was to follow the life of the primitive Christians, taking no thought for the morrow, and leading a moral, blameless life. " His personal appearance was as singular as his character. He was a small, 'chunked' man, quick and restless in his motions and con- versation. Ilis beard and hair were long and dark, and his eye black and sparkling." This is hardly the picture of him remembered at the present day in Logan County, but it may be accounted for by the fact that age had probably "dimmed the fire of his eye " be- fore the living generation knew him. Ile lived the roughest kind of a life, sleeping a large part of the year in the woods with such accommodations as the bare ground or a hollow log afforded. During the most severe weather of the winter, he usually spent his time in the white settlements, but even then, though barefooted, the rigor of the weather could not restrain him from taking short journeys here and there. In the matter of dress, he carried his cccentricity to the farthest extreme. Hle exchanged his seedlings for old garments, and douned them without regard to their size or

IHISTORY OF LOGAN COUNTY.

design, and frequently had nothing but an in- verted coffee-sack, through which he thrust his head and arms, for an outer garment. In the matter of head covering, he was especially careless. A. times, he wore a cap fashioned from the skin of some animal or cloth, and frequently a cast-off tin can did service in preserving his head from exposure to the ele- ments.

For a time, it is said, Johnny Appleseed wore an old military chapeau, which some officer had given him, and, thus accoutered, he came suldenly upon a Dutchman, who had just moved into the country. The sides were ripped, and the loose ends flopping in the wind, made it seem a thing of evil. Decked with this fantistic head-gear, Johnny came noiselessly upon the pioneer, and, without ut- tering a word, thrust his face, completely cov- ered with a wilderness of black hair, out of which peered the unnatural light of his dark eyes, into the astonished man's presence. The backwoodsman, suddenly confronted by such an apparition, would not have been more disconcerted had he met a painted savage in the act of appropriating his hair, and he never ceased to relate what a scare he got from Johnny, standing with bare feet and "one tam muscle-shell cocked on his head." His tenderness for all of " God's creatures " was proverbial, and many incidents in this con- nection are related. In the " Historical Col- trations of Ohio " is found the following: "On of cool, autumnal night, while lying by his camp fire in the woods, he observed that the mosquitos tos into the blaze and were

burnt. Johnny, who wore on his head a tin utensil, which answered both as cap and inusb-pot, filled it with water and quenched the fire, and afterward remarked, 'God forbid that I should build a fire for my comfort, that should be the in ans of destroying any of His creatures.' Another time, he made his camp- fire at the end of a hollow log in which he it .-

tended to pass the night, but finding it occu- pied by a bear and her cubs, he removed his fire to the other end, and slept on the snow in the open air rather than to disturb the bear. On one occasion, while on a prairie, a rattle- snake attacked him. Some time after. a friend inquired of him about the matter. lle drew a long sigh, and replied, .Poor fellow! he only just touched me, when I, in an un- godly passion, put the heel of my scythe upon him and went home. Some time after, I went there for my scythe, and there lay the poor fellow, dead.""

Hle was a zealous Christian, and was always to be found where religious services were held, if in the neighborhood. At one time, when he was at Mansfield, anitinerant preacher holl an out-door service, and Johnny was enjoying the sermon, lying on his back upon a piece of timber. The minister was describing the Christian's way of trial, on his journey to the better land. and had described the tedious journey of a bare- footed man through the wilderness. Pausing in his description of such physical difficulties, he cried out, in an elevated tone, " Where is the barefooted Christian traveling to heaven ?" Throwing his feet high in the air, Johnny re- sponded, " Here he is!" It was not quite what the speaker expected, but the audience, doubtless, recognized the fitness of the re- sponse. Speaking of his bare feet, it is ro- lated that by constant exposure, and the roughness of his way through the wilderness, his feet became incredibly tough and insensi- ble to cold. It appears to have been almost a matter of principle with him not to wear shoes, as he was seldom without money to dis- pense in charitable ways. A writer relates that on one occasion, on an unusually cold day in carly winter. while traveling along the muddy thoroughfare, his bare feet exposed to the bleak air and colder snow mixed with the "slush," a kindly settler, possessing a pair

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HISTORY OF LOGAN COUNTY.

of shoes too small for his own comfort, gave them to Johnny Appleseed. A few days af- terward, the donor met him plodding along as usual, barefooted and half frozen. Hle at once took him to task for not wearing the shoes presented a short time before, when Johnny confessed that he overtook a poor family mov- ing west, and their need of clothing so moved upon his sympathies, that he gave them the shoes. At another time, he attempted to cross Lake Erie barefooted on the ice in company with another man. Night overtook them be- fore they had completed the journey, and, in the bitter coldness of the night, his companion froze to death. Johnny, by rolling violently about the ice, kept warm, and in after times appeared none the worse for his trying adven- ture.

In the early part of the war of 1812, he was very active in Richland and Knox Counties, carrying the news of approaching danger to the whites settled along the river courses in these counties. He did not seem to have any fear of personal violence to himself, and often in the dead of night a settler would arouse his neighbors with the announcement that Johnny Appleseed had brought news of the approach of danger. Ilis word was never doubted, and no further confirmation of the tidings was asked. Ilis form of announcing approaching dangers was dramatic in the extreme, and those who remember his solemn utterances speak of the thrill that they sent through his awe-stricken auditors. Itis usual announce- ment was, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and he hath anointed me to blow the trumpet in the wilderness, and sound an alarm in the forest; for, behold, the tribes of the heathen are round about your doors, and a devouring flame followeth after them."

Hle was faithful to his trusts, and his word was as good as his bond. Norton, in his History of Knox County, relates that, "in 1819, Isaiah Roberts, then on his way to

Missouri, finding no boat at Zanesville ready to start on the trip down the river, footed it to Marietta, and on the road met Johnny Appleseed, who promised to call at his father's in Knox County, and tell him when he parted with him, etc. Shortly afterward, Johnny made his appearance one night abont dark, and was cheerfully received. He then had on an old tattered coat and slouch hat, with hair and beard uncut and uncombed, and bare- footed. After eating some supper, he espied a copy of Ballou on the Atonement, which he took and read for some time by candle light, thinking at first it was good Swedenborg doc- trine, and desired to take it with him, but after reading further, and finding the kind of doctrine it inculcated, he threw it down, ex- pressing his disappointment, and, in a few moments after, stretched himself out and went to sleep."

It was his custom, when he had been hos- pitably received into some ca! in after a weary day's journey, to take his favorite position, stretched out on the floor, and after asking his entertainers if they would hear " some news right fresh from heaven," produce a tattered New Testament and read and ex- pound its pages until. carried away with his earnestness, the settlers looked upon him with reverence due a prophet.

About 1830, he left this region and went to the newer portion of the West. " The last time he was in this country," says Norton, " He took Joseph Mahaffey aside, and pointed out to him two lots of land at the lower end of Main street, Mount Vernon, west side, about where Morey's soap factory was carried on, which he said belonged to him, and some time he might come back to them. The tail- race of the Clinton Mill Company passed along there, and some of the ground has since been washed away by the water, and upon another portion stands the Mount Vernon Woolen Factory building." In the same

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HISTORY OF LOGAN COUNTY.

work, it is said that the Rev. John Mitchell, when traveling on the Plymouth circuit in 183%, met Johnny wending his way along the road on foot and in his shirt sleeves. He told him then he was living " out West."

Johnny's mission was to prepare the wilds for the approach of civilization ; he was "the voice of one in the wilderness, crying, prepare ye the way." But the accelerated advance of the white settlements began to overtake him. For nearly forty years he had been able, single-handed, to carry on his self-appointed mission in advance of the "star of empire," but now he found the church and schoolhouse on every hand ; towns were springing up like mushroom growths, and the busy hum of vil- lages and the echo of the stage-born warned him that he must make a long stride to the west if he was to lead the advancing hosts. It was with this feeling that he visited the cabins where he had been a frequent and wol- come guest. With parting words of admoni- tion, mingled with words of oracular prophesy he took his way to the frontier. This was about 1832, and during the succeeding decade lie pursued his work on the western borders of Ohio and in Indiana, pushing his journey at times far into the wilds of Illinois and lowa. " In the summer of 1814, when his labors had literally borne fruit over a hundred thousand Square miles of territory, at the close of a warm day, after traveling twenty miles, he ent red the house of a settler in Allen county, Indiana, and was, as usual, warmly welcomed. le declined to eat with the family, but ac- copied some bread and milk, which he partook of sitting on the door-step and gazing on the setting sun. Later in the evening, he delis- "red his " news fresh from heaven," by real- ing the beatitud .s. Declining other accom- mo lation, he slept as usual on the floor, and in the early morning he was found with his features all aglow with a supernal light, and his body so near death that his tongue refused

its office. The physician who was hastily summoned pronounced him dying, but added that he had never seen a man in so placid a state at the approach of death. At seventy- two years of age, he ripened into death as naturally and beautifully as the seeds of his own planting had grown into fibre, and bud and blossom, and the matured fruit."

So passed away this self-denying benefactor of his race, whose memory will linger in the hearts of the present generation for years to come, and their children will learn to rovere the decaying monuments of his industry, as the memorial of one whose mind, though seemingly unbalanced, swayed to the brighter side of human nature.

Mr. Joshua Antrim is authority for the statement that "the first white settler in Logan County was Job Sharp." He was born in New Jersey and went early in life to Virginia, where the fame of the Mad River valley induced him again to strike his tent and seek fairer fields. He arrived in what is now Zane Township on December 25, 1801, with his wife, three children and his brother- in-law, Carlisle Ilaines. Here, in midwinter, surrounded by all the circumstances of savage life, unaided and alone, they reared their " three-faced camp." They were Quakers, and nature seemed to respond to their peace- ful sentiments by revealing her stores unsolic- ited. On the very day of their arrival, a thin coating of snow revealed, by the dead bees on its surface, the presence of four large trees stored with honey. With the character- istic vigor and prudence of this seet, Mr. Sharp, in the following spring, sat out the first apple orchard, containing about four acres, the remains of which are still pointed out. A pear tree, standing by the door of the house, sprang from the riding switch which Mrs. Sharp brought from Chillicothe. " Ilere, too," says Mr. Antrim, "in 1805, was built the first grist-mill. It was run by the water

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HISTORY OF LOGAN COUNTY.

that came from two fine springs on the premises, which were united near the head- gate, the traces of the ditch still being visi- ble. Though built simply for the use of the family, the mill soon attracted custom from a long distance about, and was kept busy serv- ing the publie of that day. Here, too, the first respectable hewed log house was erected in ISOS. It had a shingle roof, two stories -- three rooms and a cellar below, and two bed- rooms above, and is still doing service. The first roof, it is said, was put on with wooden pins, and the lumber was all sawed with a whip-saw. During the four years succeeding Mr. Sharp's advent, a number of his relatives and acquaintances settled about him, and, most of them being Quakers, in 1807 built a meeting-house." In this community the first birth was in 1804, a son, David, to Thomas and Esther Antrim.

During this period a sparse population spread pretty generally over the county, the location of the cabin being influenced con- siderably by the abandoned Indian improve- ments. A considerable portion of this earliest settlement was made by squatters. The character of the country at this time was very favorable to this class of people. Game was found here in great abundance, the In- dian improvements were made fruitful at slight expense of labor, and there were no considerable settlements for a hundred miles about. A writer who was over this section of country, and observed this class of people, describes the squatter as follows: " The improvements of a backwoodsman are usually confined to building a rude log cabin, clearing and fencing a small piece of ground for raising Indian corn; a horse, a cow, a few hogs and some poultry, comprise his live stock; and his farther operations are per- formed with his wife. The formation of a settlement in his neighborhood is hurtful to the success of his favorite pursuit, and is the

signal for removing into more remote parts of the wilderness. In case of his owning the land on which he is settled, he is content to sell at a low price, and his establishment, though trifling, adds much to the comfort of his successor."* Of the succeeding class of settlers, who came in principally after the war of 1812, the same writer-an English traveler-says: "The next class of settlers differs from the former, in having considera- bly less dependence on the killing of game, in remaining in the midst of a growing pop- ulation, and in devoting themselves more to agriculture. A man of this class proceeds on small capital; he either enlarges the clearing's began in the woods by his back wooodsman predecessor, or establishes himself on a new site. On his arrival in a settlement, the neigh- bors unite in assisting him to erect a cabin for the reception of his family; some of them cut down the trees, others drag them to the spot with oxen, and the rest build up the logs. In this way, a house is commonly reared in one day. For this well-timed assistance, no immediate payment is made, and he acquits himself by working for his neighbors. It is not in his power to hire laborers, and he must depend, therefore, upon his own exertions. If his family is numerous and industrious, his progress is greatly accelerated. He does not clear away the forests by dint of labor, but girdles the trees. By the second summer after this operation is performed, the foliage is completely destroyed, and his crops are not injured by the shade. He plants an orchard which thrives abundantly under every sort of neglect. His live stock soon becomes much more numerous than that of his backwoods predecessor; but, as his cattle have to shift for themselves in the woods where grass is scanty, they are small and lean. He does not sow grass seed, to succeed his crops, so that his land, which ought to be pasturage, is *Flint's letters from America, 1818

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HISTORY OF LOGAN COUNTY.

overgrown with weeds. The neglect of sowing grass seed deprives him of hay, and he has no fodder laid up except the blades of Indian corn, which are much withered and do not appear to be nutritious food. The poor animals are forced to range the forests in winter, where they can scarcely procure any- thing which is green, except the buds of the underwood, on which they browse. Trees are sometimes cut down that the cattle may eat the buds. Want of shelter completes the sum of misery. Hogs suffer famine dur- ing the drought of summer and the frosts and snows of winter, but they become fat by feeding on the acorns and beechnuts which strow the ground in autumn. Horses are not exempted from their share in these common suff rings, with the addition of labor, which most of them are not able to undergo. * * * The utensils used in agriculture are not nu- merons. The plough is short, clumsy, and is not calculated to make either deep or neat furrows. The harrow is triangular, and is yoke l with one of its angles forward, that it may be less apt to take hold of stumps of trees in its way. Light articles are carried on hors back, heavy ones by a coarse sledge, by a cart or by a way m. The smaller im- plements are the ax, the pick-as, and the cradle-seythe-by for the most commendable of backwool apparatus. * * To-day I have seen a number of young women on horse- back with packages of wool, going to or re- turning from the carding machine. At some of the houses, the loom stands under a small porch by the door.

The early population of Logan County was quite cosmopolitan in its character. The main avenue by which the tide of immigra- tion rea hed this section of the country was up the vall y of the Miami, in the trail of the varios expeditions that had been sent against the hostile telles. This line of travel proved most accessible to the older settlements of

Kentucky and Virginia ; the country was al- so best known to these people, who had made up the major part of the old invading forces, and it was those people who first came upon the ground as settlers. Later. Pennsylvania contributed a large clement, composed of Germans and the old Quaker stock, and the Western Reserve, a large number of New England families. There seems to have been no regular advance northward in this county, but, the natural restrictions having been ro- moved, the eager emigrants rushed in, spread- ing here and there over the county, as their fancy and judgment moved them. A settle- ment was early formed in what is now Zane Township ; Perry was invaded in 1804-5-6 ; Rush Creek about the same time ; Lake in 1-06: Pleasant in 1809; Richland in 1810, and other parts of the county down to 1810. The Lewistown Reservation kept back the settlements in the northwest part of the coun- ty for a number of years, which accounts for the late settlement of parts of Stokes, Wash- ington and Richland Townships. The fol- lowing table of population shows the growth of the subdivisions of the county, as well as that of the whole :

Tow ' SHIPs. 1220 1890 1810 150 1800 150 1850

Bloomfield.

564 071

Bokes C'reck ...

653 1,06> 1,811 1,613

Harrison. ..

087 012 001 081

Jeflerson

1,527 1,866 1, 859 1,484 1,578

lake. 1,175 1,767 3.149 3,753 1,613

Liberty

807 1,240 1, 1$1 1,621 1,666

MeArthur

1,674

1.406 1,5;1

Miani ..

1.100

1,768 2,162

1,203 1,320 1,111 1,372 1,801

1,011,1,837 1,110

922 1,008

Pleasan

991 1.123

Richland.

1,111 1, 150 1, 401 1,761

Rush Creek

1,077

2,011 2,2 **

Stakes.

678 1,095

I nion ..

729

812 861

Washington

517

Zane.

1.021 1.000 1,101

939

The enumeration the above table includes the whole township save in that of 1870 and

241

HISTORY OF LOGAN COUNTY.

1880. In these years the villages of Logan County were enumerated as follows :

Towss.

1870 1880

West Mansfield.

885

West Ridgeway.

100

Zanesfield.

282

807

Bellefontaine.

3,182,4,001

West Liberty

715

Huntsville

222

436

Degraff.

624

985

Quincy

320

440

East Liberty*

196

225

Logansville

Bellecenter ..

276

434

Rusbylvania.

310

467

Middleburg%

223

The population in the whole county in 1820 was 3,181; in 1830, 6.432; in 1840, 14,013.

The rapid increase of population after the close of the war of 1812 soon made Urbana at an inconvenient distance from the outly- ing portions of Champaign County, and, in 1814, an effort was made to divide it into three parts, Logan on the north and Clark on the south. This movement was successful, and on December 30, 1817, the act was passed erecting Logan County. The " Act to erect the county of Logan," is as follows :

"SEC. 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Ohio, that so much of Champaign County as lies north of the line, beginning on the east line of Miami County, between Sections 33 and 34, in the third township, thirteenth range, and running east twelve miles, with the sectional line between the third and fourth tier of sections, thence south one mile, thence with the sectional line between second and third fier of sections in said range, to the line between the United States land and the Virginia Military Land, and thence east to the line of Champaign County, thence north with said line to the Indian boundary line; thence west to a point so that a line drawn from said point due south will strike the Indian boundary line at the point where the line between the counties of Miami and Champaign strike said line: thence south with said line between the counties of Miami and Cham- paign to the place of beginning. And, also, includ- ing the United States Reservation at the Rapids of

*Figures taken from 1860 ; no separate census given in 1870.

the Miami of the Lake: which shall be known by the name of Logan: Provided, that the jurisdiction of the said county of Logan shall extend over all that territory lying north of said county, and all crimes that shall be committed within the territory aforesaid, shall be considered as having been com- mitted within the said county of Logan."

Section 6 provides, "That the courts of said county of Logan shall be holden at the house of Edwin Mathers, or some other con- venient place in the town of Belleville, until the permanent seat of justice shall be estab- lished for the said county of Logan." It was further provided, that "this act shall com- mence and be in force from and after the first day of March next." It is signed by Duncan MeArthur, Speaker of the House of Repro- sentatives. and by Abraham Shepherd, Speak- er of the Senate, and dated December 30, 1812.

The territory out of which Logan County was thus organized consisted of what was known as the Congress and Virginia Military Lands. The former was so-called because they were sold to purchasers by the immediate officers of the general government, conform- ably to such laws as were enacted by Con- gress. They are surveyed into townships of six miles square each, under authority, and at the expense of the National Government. The latter is the name given to a body of land between the Scioto and Little Miami Rivers, and bounded on the south by the Ohio River. The State of Virginia, from the indefinite and vague terms of expression in its original charter of territory from James I., King of England, in the year 1600, claimed all the continent north of the Ohio River, and of the north and south breadth of Virginia. After the war of the revolution, among the various territorial compromises, Virginia agreed to relinquish all her claims northwest of the Ohio River in favor of the General Govern- ment, upon condition of the lands referred to

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History of Logan County and Ohio, Part 37

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?; Battle, J. H; O.L. Baskin & Co Publication date: 1880 Publisher: Chicago, O.L. Baskin Number of Pages: 798

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?; Battle, J. H; O.L. Baskin & Co
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Chicago, O.L. Baskin
Number of Pages: 798