USA > Ohio > Perry County > History of Perry County, Ohio > Part 12
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In the midst of this heap, I could distinguish the slight skeleton form, still inclosed in a chemise, the skull wrap- ped about with a colored handkerchief, and the bony ankles encased in the embroidered footless stockings worn by Bul- garian girls. We looked about us. The ground was strewed with bones in every direction, where the dogs had carried them off to gnaw them at their leisure. At the distance of a hundred yards beneath us lay the town. As seen from our standpoint, it reminded one somewhat of the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii.
We looked again at the heap of skulls and skeletons be- fore us, and we observed that they were all small and that the articles of clothing intermingled with them and lying about were all women's apparel. These, then, were all women
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and girls. From my saddle I counted about a hundred skulls, not including those that were hidden beneath the others in the ghastly heap nor those that were scattered far and wide through the fields. The skulls were nearly all separated from the rest of the bones-the skeletons were nearly all headless. These women had all been beheaded. We descended into the town. Within the shattered walls of the first house we came to was a woman sitting upon a heap of rubbish rock- ing herself to and fro, wailing a kind of monotonous chant, half sung, half sobbed, that was not without a wild discordant melody. In her lap she held a babe, and another child sat beside her patiently and silently, and looked at us as we passed with wondering eyes. She paid no attention to us, but we bent our ear to hear what she was saying, and our interpreter said it was as follows: "My home, my home, my poor home, my sweet home; my husband, my husband, my dear husband, my poor husband; my home, my sweet home," and so on, repeating the same words over again a thou- sand times. In the next house were two engaged in a similar way; one old, the other young, repeating words nearly iden- tical : - "I had a home, now I have none; I had a husband, now I am a widow; I had a son, and now I have none; I had five children, and now I have one," while rocking them- selves to and fro, beating their heads and wringing their hands. These were women who had escaped from the mas- sacre, and had only just returned for the first time, having taken advantage of our visit to do so. As we advanced there were more and more, some sitting on the heaps of stones that covered the floors, others walking up and down, wring- ing their hands, weeping and wailing.
The Turkish authorities did not even pretend that there was any Turk killed here, or that the inhabitants offered any resistence whatever when Achmet-Agha, who com- manded the massacre, came with the Basha-Bazouks and de- manded the surrender of their arms. They at first refused, but offered to deliver them to the regular troops or to the Kaimakan at Tartar Bazardjik. This, however, Aschmet- Agha refused to allow, and insisted on their arms being de- livered to him and his Bashi-Bazouks. After considerable hesitation and parleying this was done. It must not be sup- posed that these were arms that the inhabitants had specially
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prepared for an insurrection. They were simply the arms that everybody, Christians and Turks alike, carried and wore openly as is the custom here. What followed the delivery of arms will best be understood by the continuation of the recital of what we saw yesterday. At the point where we descended into the principal street of the place the people who had gathered around us pointed to a heap of ashes by the roadside, among which could be distinguished a great num- ber of calcined bones. Here a heap of dead bodies had been burned, and it would seem that the Turks had been making some futile and misdirected attempts at cremation.
A little further on we came to an object that filled us with pity and horror. It was the skeleton of a young girl not more than fifteen lying by the roadside, and partly cov- cred with the debris of a fallen wall. It was still clothed in a chemise: the ankles were enclosed in footless stockings, but the little feet, from which the shoes had been taken, were naked, and owing to the fact that the flesh had dried instead of decomposing were nearly perfect. There was a large gash in the skull, to which a mass of rich brown hair, nearly a yard long, still clung, trailing in the dust. It is to be remarked that all, the skelctons found here were dressed in a chemise only, and this poor child had evidently been stripped to her chemise, partly in the search for money and jewels, partly out of mere brutality, and afterwards killed. * * At the next house a man stopped us to show where a blind little brother had been burned alive, and the spot where he had found his calcined bones, and the rough, hard-vizaged man sat down and sobbed like a child. The number of children killed in these massacres is something enormous. They were often spitted on bayonets, and we have several stories from eye-witnesses who saw the little babes carried about the streets, both here and at Olluk-Kni, on the points of bayonets. The reason is simple. When a Mohammedan has killed a certain number of infidels he is sure of Paradise, no matter what his sins may be. There was not a house beneath the ruins which did not contain human remains, and the street beside was strewn with them. Before many of the doorways women were walking up and down wailing their funeral chant. One of them caught me by the arm and led me inside of the walls, and there in a
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corner, half covered with stones and mortar, were the re- mains of another young girl, with her long hair flowing wildly among the stones and dust. And the mother fairly shrieked with agony and beat her head madly against the wall. I could only turn round and walk out sick at heart, leaving her alone with her skeleton.
And now we began to approach the church and the school- house. The ground is covered here with skeletons, to which are clinging articles of clothing and bits of putrid flesh. The air was heavy, with a faint, sickening odor, that grows stronger as we advance. It is beginning to be horrible. The school-house, to judge by the walls that are part stand- ing, was a fine large building capable of accommodating 200 or 300 children. Beneath the stones and rubbish that cover the floor to the height of several feet are the bones and ashes of 200 women and children burned alive between these four walls. Just beside the school-house is a broad, shal- low pit. Here were buried 200 bodies two weeks after the massacre. But the dogs uncovered them in part. The water flowed in, and now it lies there a horrid cesspool, with human remains floating about or lying half exposed in the mud. Near by on the banks of the little stream that runs through the village is a saw mill. The wheel pit beneath is full of dead bodies floating in the water. The banks of this stream were at one time literally covered with the corpses of men and women, young girls and children, that lay there festering in the sun and eaten by dogs. But the pitiful sky rained down a torrent upon them and the little stream swelled and rose up and carried the bodies away and strewed them far down its grassy banks, through its narrow gorges and dark defiles, beneath the thick underbrush and shady woods, as far as Pesterea and even Tartar Bazardjik, forty miles distant. We entered the church yard, but here the odor became so bad that it was almost impossible to pro- ceed. We take a handful of tobacco and hold it against our noses while we continue our investigations. The church was not a very large one, and it was surrounded by a low stone wall, enclosing a small churchyard about fifty yards wide by seventy-five long. At first we perceive nothing in partic- ular, and the stench is so great that we scarcely care to look about us; but we see that the place is heaped up with stones
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and rubbish to the height of five or six feet above the level of the street, and upon inspection we discover that what appeared to be a mass of stones and rubbish is in reality an immense heap of human bodies covered over with a thin layer of stones. The whole of the little churchyard is heaped up with them to the depth of three or four feet, and it is from here that the fearful odor comes. . Some weeks after the massacre orders were sent to bury the dead. But the stench at that time had become so heavy that it was im- possible to execute the order or even to remain in the neigh- borhood of the village. We are told that 3,000 people were lying in this little churchyard alone, and we could well be- lieve it. It was a fearful sight-a sight to haunt one through life. There were little curly heads there in that festering mass, crushed down by heavy stones, little feet not as long as your finger, on which the flesh was dried hard by the ardent heat before it had time to decompose; little baby hands, stretched out as if for help; babes that had died wondering at the bright gleam of the sabers and the red eyes of the fierce-eyed men who wielded them; children who had died weeping and sobbing, and begging for mercy; mothers who had died trying to shield their little ones with their own weak bodies, all lying there together, festering in one horrid mass. They are silent enough now. There are no tears nor cries, no weeping, no shrieks of terror, nor prayers for mercy.
The harvests are rotting in the fields and the reapers are rotting here in the churchyard. We looked into the church, which had been blackened by the burning of the woodwork, but not destroyed nor even much injured. It was a low building with a low roof, supported by heavy, irreg- ular arches that, as we looked in, seemed scarcely high enough for a tall man to stand under. What we saw there was too frightful for more than a hasty glance. An im- mense number of bodies had been partly burned there and the charred and blackened remains that seemed to fill up half way to the low, dark arches and make them lower and darker still were lying in a state of putrefaction too fright- ful to look upon. I had never imagined anything so horri- ble. We all turned away sick and faint and staggered out of the fearful pest house, glad to get into the street again.
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We walked about the place and saw the same things re- peated over and over again a hundred times. Skeletons of men with the clothing and flesh still hanging and rotting together; skulls of women, with their hair dragging in the dust; bones of children and infants everywhere. Here they show us a house where twenty people were buried alive; there another where a dozen girls had taken refuge and been slaughtered to the last one as their bones amply testified. Everywhere horrors upon horrors. Of the 8,000 to 9,000 people who made up the population of the place only 1,200 to 1,500 are left, and they have neither tools to dig graves with, nor strength to use spades if they had them.
As to the present condition of the people it is simply fearful to think of. The Turkish authorities have built a few wooden sheds in the outskirts of the village in which they sleep, but they have nothing to live upon but what they can beg or borrow from their neighbors. And in addition to this the Turkish officials with that cool cynicism and utter disregard for European demands for which they are so dis- tinguished, have ordered those people to pay their regular taxes and war contributions just as though nothing had happened. Ask the Porte about this at Constantinople, and it will be denied with the most plausible protestations and the most reassuring promises that everything will be done to help the sufferers. But everywhere the people of the vil- lages come with the same story-that unless they pay their taxes and war contributions they are threatened with expul- sion from the nooks and corners of the crumbling walls, where they have found a temporary shelter. It is simply impossible for them to pay, and what will be the result of these demands it is not easy to say. But the government needs money badly and must have it. Each village must make up its ordinary quota of taxes and the living must pay for the dead.
We asked about the skulls and bones we had seen upon the hill upon our first arrival in the village, where the dogs had barked at us. These, we were told, were the bodies of 200 young girls who had first been captured and particularly re- served for a worse fate. They had been kept till the last; they had been in the hands of their captors for several days- for the burning and pillaging had not all been accomplished
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in a single day -- and during this time they had suffered all that poor, weak, trembling girls could suffer at the hands of the brutal savages. Then, when the town had been pillaged and burned, when all their friends had been slaughtered, these poor young things, whose very wrongs should have insured them safety, whose very outrages should have insured them protection, were taken in the broad light of day, beneath the smiling canopy of heaven, cooly beheaded, then thrown in a heap there and left to rot.
MacGahan.
This is the Poem read by Col. W. A. Taylor, a Perry county boy, on the occasion of the funeral of MacGahan.
I.
Not stately verse, nor trumpets blowing fame, Not praise from lips of matchless eloquence; Not monumental piles nor epitaphs;
Funeral pomp, nor all combined, can make Man other than he fashions for himself Out of warp and woof of Circumstance. A man lies here whose hand ennobled Time, And wrote a deathless page of history : Up from these hills our hero made his way - A western star that shown across the East, Moved forward by the hand of Destiny. Here, knee-deep in the purple clover bloom, He drank life's spring time bubbling at the fount - A school-girl's tenderness about his eyes -- Less'ning a loving mother's daily toil, Content, yet all his soul unsatisfied. Out of such gentle stuff are heroes made - And he who wept a fallen butter-fly,
Rode like a storm-cloud down the long plateaus, Defying Girghis, Turk and Turkoman - Across the Oxus, knocking at the gates Of far, mysterious Khivi, in a realm That filled his boyish dreams of Wonderland; Kings, kahns and caliphs passed him in review - The proud voluptuary and the cringing slave -
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Seraglios, palaces and minarets Revealed their secrets, till the world amazed Rose and reached forth a succoring hand to man; Bulgaria in the wine press of the Turk, Gave blood and tears and groaned upon the rack, Until his mighty thunders 'gainst the wrong Rocked Europe to its base, unloosed the slave And set the sun of Freedom o'er the hills. Where serfs had groped through ages of eclipse. And then, where Stamboul, standing by the sea Looks through the spicy gateways of the East - Youth on his brow and summer on his lips, Crowned more than conqueror and more than king - Dreaming of these green hills, a mother's love, Of wife and babe and kindred's loving touch, With all the world before him, his great soul Ascended to the infinite, and mankind Are better for this hero having lived.
II.
Here where the green hills turn to gray Under the warm Autumnal sun, We lay him, with his honors won, Where first his eyes looked on the day, His work well done.
There where proud Stamboul by the sea Looks through the Orient's purple gate, He met the Apostle's common fate, But ere he died, Bulgaria free Arose in state.
His was God's sword in Gideon's field, That reaped like sheaves the souls of men, Justice, not blood, imbued his pen, And his strong truth became the shield And buckler then.
And his ennobling part to dare - The Apostle's glory in the thralls - Whose triumph when the body falls, Like a broad sun of radiance rare Lights up the walls.
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With him who holds the truth in awe - Nor recks what bitter storms are poured - "The pen is mightier than the sword," And his strong armor without flaw Keeps perfect guard.
O, green hills sloping east and west, To purple eve and crimson day, He comes along the martyr's way, His work with Freedom's paens blessed - He comes to-day.
Here o'er the dust of him whose name Grew from these green hills, far away, Into the Orient's warmer day, Bright'ning the gilded scroll of fame, Fair truth can say.
His hand bore not a hireling blade - His soul was trained to noble deeds, From out the rain he plucked the weeds, And in the battle undismayed, Struck down false creeds.
Fair youth, among the quiet lanes, Came there a vision of the years Before you, telling of the tears, The struggles, triumphs and the pains, The hopes and fears.
And watching as you went afield, Barefoot, to drive the lowing herd, Saw you the dim, far Orient stirred Its dark crimes and its secrets yield At thy stern word?
Did Hesperus at eve proclaim That you at Islam's mystic gate Should change the drifting tide of fate And blow upon the trump of Fame With breath elate?
JEREMIAH RUSK
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That he who drove his father's kine Beneath the northern moon should be The Liberator, and set free The bondsman with touch divine Of Liberty ?
Not where Stamboul's minarets Look down upon Marmora's sea, But in the glad soil of the free, We lay him down without regrets, While Time shall be.
There sleep, O brother of the pen, Till the archangel's trump shall say Night ends in the eternal day, And Truth shall judge who have been men, Who went astray.
Jeremiah M. Rusk.
"The hills are dearest, where our childhood's feet Have climbed the earliest. And the streams most sweet Ever are those at which our young lips drank, Stooped to its waters o'er the mossy bank."
The above sentiment was evidently in the mind of Secretary of Agriculture, Jeremiah M. Rusk, when he stood before the door of the Post Office at Porter- ville and said, "Do you know that this whole country continually spreads out before me day and night, like a vast panoroma? This is the place of my childhood's dreams. Here my parents, brothers and sisters lie buried. This country I love."
The Rusk farm of five hundred acres lay mostly in Perry county. But the house in which Jeremiah Rusk was born stands a few rods across the line in Morgan. We do not hesitate under the circum- stances in calling "Uncle Jerry" as he was familiarly known, a Perry county boy.
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HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY.
Daniel Rusk was one of the pioners of Perry coun- ty. In 1813 he came to Clayton township and set- tled on Buckeye creek. His wife was Jane Falkner. Mrs. Rusk's mother was the first person to be buried in Unity Presbyterian cemetery, in Clayton township. The Rusk family lived on Buckeye till 1826 when they moved to Bearfield township and purchased the large farm on which Porterville now stands. This village was originally known as Ruskville.
It was on this farm that the subject of our sketch was born, on the 17th of July, 1830. The Mother of Jeremiah McLain Rusk was a woman of exalted char- acter and noble ideals. Even in a pioneer home she did not forget to cultivate the culture side of life. The home training had therefore much to do with the suc- cess of the future governor of Wisconsin.
Young Rusk attended a subscription school at first, for the public school was then unknown. After the establishment of the latter, he became a pupil in it and received the nucleus of such an education as could then be obtained.
He was sixteen years old when his father died. Being the youngest of ten children, and the older members of the family having married, the care of the farm largely devolved upon him. Here he early evinced that trait that has been characteristic of him throughout his life-to push work instead of work pushing him. While on the farm he became an expert horseman. There are men yet living in Bearfield town- ship, who remember how adept he was, and how skill- fully he could manage a horse. Many were the races that Jerry ran with the neighbor boys along the Por- terville ridge.
WHERE " UNCLE JERRY " RUSK WAS BORN.
A GRUBBER.
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HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY.
From the farm he went to Zanesville, to become a driver on the stage-coach, between that point and Newark. The coach was of the Concord pattern and four horses were required to draw it. The driver sat on the "near" wheel horse and manipulated the team with a "single " line.
When the present Cincinnati and Muskingum Val- ley Railroad was built, we find Jerry Rusk occupying the position of "boss." He assisted on the tunnel east of New Lexington.
In partnership with William Pettet, he purchased what is known as a "grubber" or "caver." This ma- chine was the first step in the evolution of the thresh- ing machine. A picture of one is here shown.
In 1849 Mr. Rusk was married to Mary Martin, the daughter of a well-to-do citizen near McLuney. It would be a great pleasure to give in detail the subsequent history of this honored citizen. Going to Wisconsin, he became quite wealthy. He served the people in Congress, was elected Governor, and then invited to a place in President Harrison's Cabinet. The life of Jeremiah Rusk should be an incentive to every boy. The push, the energy and the honesty of the man made him successful in all of his under- takings.
William Alexander Taylor.
It was especially fitting that on the day of the burial of Janarius A. MacGahan, at New Lexington, the poem for the occasion should have been written by another Perry county boy. The man who was thus honored, and who did honor to the occasion was Wil- liam A. Taylor, the widely known journalist and author, now a resident of Columbus.
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He was born in Harrison township, April 25, 1837. He attended the public schools, but most largely edu- cated himself, through the kindness of an old friend, Dr. Milliken, of Roseville, who placed his large and splendid general library at his disposal.
Among his teachers was Philander H. Binckley, of Somerset, who directed his early readings and en- couraged his literary tastes. While working on the farm, he began contributing to the county papers, especially the Somerset Review, edited by the late John H. Shearer, and the Democratic Union, edited by the late James Sheward, afterward a distinguished jurist of New York.
When 19 years of age, he began teaching, at the same time reading law with Muzzy & Butler, of New Lexington, and was admitted to the practice at the December term of the Supreme Court in 1858, being examined by Morrison R. Waite, afterward Chief Jus- tice and Noah H. Swayne, afterward Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and Samuel Galloway, a distinguished lawyer and Con- gressman, who rated him 100 in the examination.
In 1858 he became associated with John R. Meloy and Perry J. Ankeney in the publication of the Perry County Democrat, the predecessor of the present Her- ald, of New Lexington. He ceased the practice of law in 1863, and devoted his entire attention to journal- istic and literary pursuits. He went on the Cincinnati Enquirer, first as correspondent and later as a mem- ber of its editorial staff, and continued in active jour- nalism until 1900, during twenty-three years of which period he was connected with the Enquirer.
In 1869 he took the position of editorial writer on the Pittsburg Post, afterward going to the New York
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Sun, the New York World, Pittsburg Telegraph, Columbus Democrat, Columbus Courier, Cincinnati News Journal, and in 1884 again went on the staff of the Enquirer, where he remained until 1900. Dur- ing all these years he contributed largely to the maga- zines and literary publications.
He is the author of a large number of books many of which are standard works of reference, among them being: "Eighteen Presidents and Contemporaneous Rulers, ;" "Ohio Hundred Year Book ; "Primary Tariff Lessons ;" "Ohio Statesmen ;" "The Peril of the Re- public ;" "Ohio Statesmen and Annals of Progress ;" "Roses and Rue" (poems) ; "Intermere" (a narrative of speculative philosophy) ; "Ohio in Congress from 1803 to 1903," and "Twilight? or Dawn?" (poems . He is also the principal author of "The Book of Ohio," an exhaustive illustrated history of Ohio of 1000 folio pages and 2000 illustrations, issued by C. S. Van Tassel of Bowling Green and Toledo.
He is a member of the Benjamin Franklin Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution and of the State Society of the S. A. R., having held the prom- inent offices in both ; of the Ohio Historical and Arch- aeological Society ; of the Old Northwest Genealogical Society and many other social and literary associations. He served as a private soldier in the Army of the Potomac in the Civil War. He was clerk of the sen- ate of the 69th General Asembly ; was the Democratic candidate for Secretary of State in 1892, and for Lieutenant Governor in 1893.
His parents were Thomas Taylor, of London county, and Mary Owens Taxlor, of Fanquier County, Virginia, the latter being the niece of Gen. Simon 12 H. P. C.
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