USA > Ohio > Richland County > History of Richland County, Ohio, from 1808 to 1908, Vol. I > Part 42
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Roads had to be made and streams bridged. What stupendous work was done by the pioneers-work of which no written record has been left of its doing, for although they made history, they did not write it. It is a fact that the typical pioneer said but little about his exploits, and vaunted not of his work. It is the same with soldiers. Take the men who served a few months in the Civil War, what stories they spin, as did Othello tell the fair Desde- mona, the hair-breadth escapes, of battles and of sieges in which they were engaged, while the veterans who served from the start to the finish of the war, say but little about the bloody conflicts through which they passed. They were brave in war, but are not boastful in peace.
It has been stated that the pioneer annalist left his diary to his son, who lost it in moving to the far West, and that thereby the story of the lives of the first settlers exist largely in tradition.
In an address delivered in the Lutheran church, Mansfield, September 15, 1885, the late Hon. Henry B. Curtis, in speaking of the character of the pioneers, said in substance that it is a great mistake to suppose that our fathers were of less culture in the arts and sciences, and all the elements of civilization, than the succeeding generations. On the contrary, the natural character of the men, and the advantages they had received in earlier life, gave them an ascendancy to which the first generation that followed could not attain for the want of these accessories. So that it often happened that the growing family of sons and daughters in the absence of schools were wholly or largely depend- ent upon their parents for such teaching and instructions as other pressing labors would permit them to give. Hence in contemplating the character of our fathers we must go back beyond the generation that succeeded and remem- ber the men in their individual and collective relations; in the great qualities that fitted them to lay the foundations of government.
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In the years of the past there were more demonstrative manifestations of feeling at revival meetings than are exhibited today. Two churches promi- nent in such exhibitions were Center church in Perry and Easterly's in Worth- ington township. At these "shouting" was a nightly occurrence. One Adam Bechtel, who had been unable to "get through" at a revival at Center church, prayed one night that a sign might be given him. A few hours later the Bible fell from a shelf, and upon picking it up Mr. Bechtel opened it at the passage, "Ile brought me up also out of a horrible pit." This converted Bechtel and gave the religious excitement new impetus.
Pioneer ministers did not receive large salaries, but did their full share of the world of civilization.
ADARIO.
Adario is the only town in Butler township, and was founded in 1838 by Henry Foulks and was called Lafayette. The name was changed, it seems, to conform to that of the postoffice, but the place is still called by many people by its old-time name in honor of the Marquis d' La Fayette, the liberty-loving Frenchman who came to the aid of the American colonies in the darkest time of the war of the revolution.
Butler is the northeast township in the county, and was mapped and organized March 5, 1849, after Ashland county was created. The township is six miles in length from north to south, and is four miles in width-a strip of two miles was given it from Clearcreek township on the east, and a two- mile strip from Blooming Grove on the west. As Clearfork was formerly in Richland county and lies so close to Adario, this sketch may deal with the Clearcreek country.
Adario's part in the history of Richland county towns has not been a prominent one. The people of that part of the county are industrious and law abiding, and the village has two churches-Methodist and Disciple-and its schools are noted as rating well with others elsewhere.
A single exception to the rule of good deportment among the Lafayette people was the case of Parson Montgomery, but his was a case wherein a man's great intellect became unbalanced, resulting in his downfall and degradation.
Adario has a lovely site, and Butler township as fine lying land and as beautiful farms as there are in the county. The surface is level, but is suf- ficiently rolling for proper drainage. The roads are equal to the best, making country trips both pleasant and desirable.
As you drive, farm after farm can be seen stretching toward the horizon- to the line where the firmament seems to come down to encircle the green, fruitful earth with the blue canopy of the skies.
A level country is conducive to evenness of life. John Brown's scheme did not thrive upon the plains of Kansas; but, with a change of venue to the mountains of Virginia, he nursed his purpose and matured his plans to pre- cipitate an insurrection. But before he went to Kansas he had dwelt amid the solitudes of the Adirondacks, where no voice spoke to him but the scream- ing winds which in winter sweep summits in hurricane blasts, making the
PUBLIC SQUARE, MANSFIELD
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isolation of the mountains conducive to gloomy and, perchance, misanthropic thoughts.
Thomas Ford and his son Elias came from Jefferson county in April, 1819, and entered the northeast quarter of section 22, in Clearcreek township. The journey was made in a one-horse wagon which contained, besides them- selves, such tools and implements as would be needed in clearing land and building a cabin. They found tolerably well-defined roads until after leaving Uniontown-as Ashland was then called-about two miles west of which they entered an unbroken wilderness, and had to cut their way through the forest to the land they had entered. Their first work was to erect a place of shelter, which was a little cabin with a bark shed-roof. The father returned to his home in the East and Elias remained to get the place in readiness for the advent of the family in the fall. Elias Ford, who at that time was about twenty years of age, had a lonesome summer, but a very busy one. The Indians infested the country during the hunting seasons, and were his only "neighbors." Rattlesnakes were so numerous that Mr. Ford had to have his bed suspended from the rafters to keep the venomous reptiles from sharing it with him, and having once retired to his swinging bunk, he did not dare to leave it till daylight the next morning lest he would tramp upon the snakes crawling over the floor.
In front of his cabin a fire burned all night to keep off the wolves and drive away the mosquitoes. His dog was a faithful sentinel at his door, and his gun was within reach each day and night. In November of that year the father and family joined Elias, and a larger cabin was erected for their com- fort. Within a radius of six miles there were but four settlers to assist at this raising.
At that time there was neither a schoolhouse nor church in the township, and the cabin of Mr. Ford was used for a place of religious worship for eleven years-until "Ford's meeting house" was erected in 1830. The pioneers, as a rule, were regular attendants upon religious meetings, men and women often going five or six miles on foot to hear the gospel preached and to worship. At night they found their way through the forest by carrying lighted torches of hickory bark.
On the 10th of October, 1830, Thomas Ford departed this life, aged fifty- seven years, and his funeral was the first religious service held in Ford's meeting house.
To show the needs and generosity of the pioneers the following incident is given: In the spring of 1822, Mr. Ford had purchased three bushels of frost-bitten cornmeal, which he supposed would be sufficient to sustain him until he could realize something from the ripening of a small piece of rye which he then had growing. This meal, however, as a matter of economy. and in order to lengthen out its days, was baked and eaten without subjecting it to the usual process of sifting-as he well knew that if his little stock should become exhausted before his rye harvest he would not be able to obtain any more supplies. The little sack of corn and the growing field of rye were watched with intense solicitude. A short time before the latter was ready for the sickle he was called upon by two neighbors, who informed him that their
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families were entirely out of breadstuff, and appealed to him for relief in their extremity. Mr. Ford produced his sack of cornmeal, poured its contents upon his puncheon table and divided it into three equal parts, and his neigh- bors gratefully received each his third and the other third was returned to his sack. When the little field of rye, which was the only one in the neighbor- hood, was harvested it was found scarcely adequate to supply himself and neighbors, although it was the only grain of any kind then immediately attainable; and it was consumed without having been ground-the grain being boiled and eaten with milk, or being cooked by frying. That was the most trying season for the settlers of the township-the succeeding harvests being generally sufficient to afford materials for bread.
John Ford, a son of pioneer Thomas Ford, married a Miss Barnes and settled in Washington township, where he was a prominent farmer for many years, and was a justice of the peace. He was the father of S. N. Ford, W. E. Ford, E. C. Ford and T. W. Ford, of Mansfield. Another son of pioneer Thomas Ford was Colonel Thomas H. Ford, father of P. P. Ford, of Mansfield.
While the pioneers were yet few in numbers, the Clearcreek neighborhood was thrown into a high state of excitement by the following occurrence: Sarah Brink, the eighteen-year-old daughter of Thomas Brink, who resided in the southern part of the township, started one evening on an errand to the house of Nathaniel Bailey, situated about a mile distant; became lost in the woods and wandered about for three days and nights. The whole neighborhood was searching for her, but as the weather was intensely cold, after the second day all hope was abandoned of finding her alive-that she must have perished or been devoured by the wolves. But the morning of the fourth day found her yet alive, though her limbs were frozen, and she was nearly famished. She heard the barking of a dog, and following the sound came to an Indian camp near the western shore of the lower Vermillion lake. The Indians gave her attention and care and returned her to her home. But she was crippled for life in consequence of the loss by freezing of nearly all the toes from both feet.
The round-up of the great wolf hunt of 1828 was made near Adario. No wolf was captured, but a number of wild turkeys and deer were secured.
Butler is not behind some of her sister townships in spook stories. There is a place called Spook Hollow southwest of Adario, where apparitions are said to be occasionally seen.
Adario has no railroad as yet, but a trolley line is expected to pass through there in the near future.
Looking at the map of thirty years ago, the Kirks and the Fords seem to have been the largest land owners there at that period.
WINCHESTER AND HEMLOCK FALLS.
Winchester was platted on the southwest quarter of section 9, in Worth- ington township, March 31, 1845. The land was owned by Noble Calhoun and the name was suggested by George Hammon, a Virginian, in honor of Winchester, the beautiful town of the Shenandoah valley-a town and valley since made memorable in history and in song by "Sheridan's Ride" and other incidents of the Civil War.
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The Winchester site is on the left bank of the Clearfork of the Mohican, about half-way between Butler and Newville. The principal reason for the founding of the town was on account of the mills and the industries which had gathered around them. The site is near the center of the township, and Newville is near the north line, and as the elections were held there many voters had to go five miles to their polling place; and the idea of a town near to the center of the township became quite popular with many people.
David Herring built mills at this point late in the '30s. There were a grist mill, a saw mill and a woolen mill. The grist mill was the largest in the county at that time and the building stands intact today. There were three sets of buhrs, two for custom and one for merchant work. A number of buildings were erected in the vicinity of the mills, and a store of general merchandise and other. lines of trade were conducted and business seemed to increase and require more facilities. And a town was platted upon the opposite side of the river on account of that being the more desirable site. Lots were sold and dwellings were built and soon the place contained eight or ten families. But ere the village got fairly started the town of Butler- first called Independence-was laid out upon the line of the railroad then being built from Mansfield to Newark, and as the railroad town was within two miles of Winchester the rest of the story need not be told, further than to state that where Winchester once stood there are now fields of waving grain, and the fine old structure that was once a grist mill is now used for a barn. By becoming surety for friends, David Herring became financially embar- rassed and finally lost all. He died in 1872, and his widow, Mrs. Hannah L. Herring, now resides at No. 15 North Walnut street, Mansfield.
In the erection of the Herring grist mill a beam fell, crushing a man to death, and the blood stain remains upon the timber until this day.
The Clearfork flows through an alluvial valley, bordered with hills of modified drift, generally sandy, in places composed of coarse, waterworn pebbles and boulders. A freshet of this stream, locally known as the "great flood," occurred on June 28, 1838, the day of Queen Victoria's coronation. And when the flood was at its height a Miss Duncan was rescued from the island in a canoe and, declining a seat, stood with one foot upon each side of the little shallop and from a bottle drank to the health of the crowd upon the shore.
The "island" is above the mills, and there, near the cabin, which for years stood between the head race and the river, is where a legend claims a "pot of gold" is buried, and for which considerable search has been made. And there lights are seen to glimmer as though to indicate the place where the treasure is hidden.
Hemlock Falls is usually associated with Newville, but the place is more properly connected with Winchester. The falls is two miles south of New- ville and two miles cast of Winchester, making the distance relatively the same. But the geological and other features for which the falls locality is noted begin at Winchester and extend down to and around the falls, making the two places bound together by chains of rock-ribbed ridges and everlast- ing hills. The falls is about a mile-as the road goes-south of the Clear-
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fork, and the water is a spring run that leaps over a ledge of rocks that extends for a mile or more along the east side of a vale, which is a spur of the main valley. The little stream which here leaps over the precipice first runs over slanting rocks for perhaps fifty feet, then plunges over and down, making a direct leap of twenty-five feet into a basin below. Like other streams, this is not nearly so large as it was when the country was first settled, but even now whenever there is a freshet the altisonant roar of the waterfall can be heard more than a mile away with a sigh and moan like that of distress.
Hemlock Falls is interesting in its rough, wild beauty and in the geolog- ical formations and physical features of its ledge of rocks, especially those south of the falls, where here and there grotesque grottos, curious corridors and capacious caverns abound. It was in a cave beneath the falls, as McGaw states, where Philip Seymour first saw Lilly Pipe, and of which meeting he gives such a graphic description. The parties had taken shelter there from a terrific storm, one of the most violent that ever visited that part of the country.
In viewing these massive rocks innumerable marks and indentations are seen upon their otherwise smooth surface, which are clearly wave marks, made by the surging waters of a lake that was but is not.
"What are the sad waves saying?" can here be changed to what have they here written in the centuries agone, when the valley lying west was a lake, as was, perhaps, the entire valley of the Clearfork.
The surface of this part of Ohio was once covered with ice. The origin of this condition was in the continual accumulation of snow over the glacial region in excess of the melting power of the summer sun. The extent of the glacial region is now pretty accurately known. In America the glacial sheet extended to the south of New England and southwestward from New York to the Mississippi. In Ohio the line of its southern boundary entered the state in Columbiana county, and ran nearly due west to the vicinity of Loudon- ville, in Ashland county ; thence south, bearing a little west, to a point not far from Lancaster; thence southwest, leaving the state in Clermont county, about twenty miles above Cincinnati. To this limit the ice of the glacial period extended in its southern movement, and as it withdrew the ice in melting left the material it had picked up in its long journey from the north to mark its former presence.
There is no doubt that great changes have taken place in this valley since the preglacial period, but what they have been can only be learned through geology. The date of the close of the glacial period has been approximately estimated at not far from ten thousand years.
A theory in explanation of the wavemarks upon the rocks at Hemlock Falls is that a post glacial gorge between the hills dammed up the river, thus inundating the valleys above. The waves of the lake may have surged and tossed against these Hemlock Falls rocks for centuries, leaving their marks as wave-prints of time.
At last the gorge gave away, gradually perhaps but more likely broke suddenly through and tore the dam from its summit to its base to make a passage, and the rocks lying here and there down the river were thus strewed
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by the flood which was precipitated down the valley on account of the disruption and avulsion of the gorge.
Names have been given to a number of the rocks of the locality of the falls. One is called Threshing Floor, and rises perpendicularly three hundred feet above the river. The top is about forty feet square, and is nearly upon a level of the surface of the land upon the east. In the pioneer times the top of this rock was used as a floor upon which to tramp out wheat. There is a story that one of the horses used to tread out the grain fell over the rocks, whereupon the owner of the beast remarked, jokingly, "Well, that 'hoss' will never fall again."
Hemlock Falls is interesting in its physical geography and in its historical associations. There is a fascination in its picturesque, rugged beauty that charms the eye, while it both interests and instructs the student of nature.
"Under the Hemlock wild flowers grow,
And the green banks slope to the stream below."
There are writers who seem to think that truth is not as interesting to the reader as are some fancies of their own brain which they give forth to the public as legends and traditions. Why not give the facts of history-why not tell the truth ?
" "Tis strange-but true; for truth is always strange, Stranger than fiction."
And truth can be as entertainingly written and can be clothed in as fine a garb as can any fiction that the most visionary romancer can invent.
MILLSBOROUGH, NEW CASTLE, ONTARIO.
On account of their proximity sketches of Millsborough, New Castle and Ontario may be given in the same chapter.
Millsborough was platted in October, 1831, and was the first town in Springfield township. It was laid out on part of the northeast and northwest quarters of section 28. The plat contained thirty inlots, two streets, six alleys and a public square. The main street was called "Portland," on account of it being the road north to Portland-now called Sandusky-on Lake Erie. The location of the town is picturesque, being situated among the rolling hills and narrow valleys of the east branch of the Clearfork of the Mohican. The stream furnished ample water-power for mills and other purposes, and John Garretson erected a grist mill where the road crosses the stream. and on account of this enterprise the town was founded. James Woods, father of Harvey Woods, built a grist mill a mile down the stream, now known as the Otto mills. The Garretson mill is no more. These mills, with a saw mill or . two, gave the town the name of Millsborough.
It is interesting to learn how towns got their names. Mansfield was named for Colonel Jared Mansfield, who platted the town June, 1808. Gan- ble's Mills was changed to Shelby, to have a name indicating a town instead of a grist mill, and the latter name being in honor of General Isaac Shelby.
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an officer of the War of the Revolution, and also of the War of 1812, and who commanded Kentucky troops at the battle of the Thames October 5, 1813. In addition to his other public services, General Shelby was governor of Ken- tucky, and in the civil as well as in the military service of his country, he discharged faithfully, honestly and well the duties of the several positions given him, and the name has seemed to be talismanic, for but few towns can point with more pride to their past history or to brighter prospects for the future than Shelby.
Bellville was named for its founder, Robert Bell.
Newville was founded by John Frederick Herring, and was named for his former home town-Newville, Pennsylvania.
Lexington was named in commemoration of Lexington, Massachusetts, where the first blood was shed in the War of the Revolution, April 19, 1775.
New Castle, as has been claimed, was named for Henry Cassell, who owned land upon which the town was platted. But, for orthographical and other reasons, this claim has been doubted, and there are assigned to prove that the name was given in honor of the New Castle-upon-Tyne, a city and seaport in England. Great things were expected of the town in a commercial way, it being a station on the crossroads of travel and traffic, from the East to the West and from the South to Lake Erie on the North.
Ontario took its name from Ontario county, New York, the native place of Hiram Cook, who owned the land upon which our Springfield township, Ontario, stands.
In addition to his mills, Garretson erected other buildings and opened a public house at Millsborough, and after conducting it for some time sold the same to John Martin, who "kept tavern" there for a number of years. Land- lord Martin was the father of Captain Martin, who headed a company of Richland county militiamen for the Ohio-Michigan boundary line war in 1835.
At Millsborough was established the first postoffice in the township. The town grew and had a prosperous trade, with two stores of general merchandise, with shops of the several lines of trade usual to villages at that time. During the '30s the town bid fair to hold its own in the march of time. But fate is an uncertain quantity, playing as fickle with towns as with individuals, and Millsborough is now a village of the past. But few houses remain, while ruins of others can be seen with the timbers rotting where they fell. The causes which led to these results are at least twofold-two rival towns were founded in close propinquity to Millsborough, and a few years later the Ohio & Pennsylvania was built and the town of Crestline was started at its crossing of the Cleveland & Columbus road, four miles northwest of Millsborough, and Crestline, being a railroad junction town, with shops and division yards, it had the advantage from the start over its neighboring villages, and as Crestline increased in population and importance and went up high in the scale of progress Millsborough went the other way, downward to the lowest notes.
New Castle was laid out and its plat recorded in December, 1834, and was the rival of Millsborough from its start. Being situated on the Mansfield &
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Bucyrus stage line, at the juncture of a cross-road, it had certain advantages over Millsborough but lacked the water-power facilities of the latter.
But soon another Richard was in the field, and Ontario was created within a mile of New Castle on the west, with a situation more elevated and command- ing and was upon cross stage lines. New Castle had taverns, stores and shops and all villages were more or less "wet" in those days. But neither "wet" nor "dry" conditions will save a town when fate points at it its gaunt finger and says "Go." And New Castle, with graceful genuflexions, acquiesced in the survival of the fittest.
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