USA > Ohio > Richland County > History of Richland County, Ohio, from 1808 to 1908, Vol. I > Part 43
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The following facts anent the killing of Peter Lintholm at New Castle were obtained of M. E. Douglas, whose boyhood years were passed in Spring- field township. Peter Lintholm had passed the prime of life when the tragedy occurred that cost him his life. He was called "Old Peter Lintholm," and was rather feeble-minded, and was casily irritated, and upon this occasion was being teased by one Samuel Cristman, whereupon Lintholm struck Crist- man, and the latter stabbed Lintholm with his knife, with which he had been whittling. The knife-blade passed between two of Lintholm's ribs and pene- trated the heart, Lintholm dying almost instantly. At the preliminary hearing before Squire William Douglas, Cristman was bound over to the court of common pleas, where he entered the plea of self-defense, upon which he was acquitted.
Ontario was platted December, 1834, and soon thereafter took the lead of its two sister villages. Upon the opening of the Atlantic & Great Western railroad Ontario was given a station, which is still maintained. The Ontario academy was successfully conducted for a number of years, attended by students from different parts of the country, and which added much to the town's growth and prosperity.
Dr. Abraham Jenner was a prominent citizen of Ontario for many years and represented Richland county in the Ohio legislature in 1858-60. Dr. Jenner was the father of Judge John W. Jenner and the Hon. S. Eberle Jenner, of Mansfield.
Dr. J. W. Craig was a successful physician at Ontario for a long time. He was the father of Dr. J. Harvey Craig, of Mansfield.
As Ontario grew religious congregations abandoned their houses of wor- ship in the country and erected new buildings in the town. Among the number were Bigelow chapel and Taylor's meeting house. The Methodists put up a church building in 1835. In 1850 the United Presbyterians erected a house for worship, as also did the Presbyterians in 1851.
Along the east bank of the Millsborough branch of the Clearfork of the Mohican, a half-mile below the town, is Newton Y. Gilkinson's forestry park, containing about five acres, with four hundred and seventy-seven different . kinds and varieties of trees, native to the soil of Ohio. This is the only for- estry park of the kind in the state, and deserves the attention of the public. Mr. Gilkinson has been years in planting and cultivating the trees of this park-not from pecuniary motives but as a work of love.
Mr. Gilkinson was a soldier in the Mexican War and has now reached the age where the shadows lengthen. When he answers the final roll-call he
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will leave monuments behind him of trees such as no other park in Ohio contains.
RICHLAND VILLAGE.
The village of Richland is in Cass township and was laid out in 1837. A number of houses, forming a little village, had been erected there before the town was platted. John Long was the first settler and started a tannery. The Long cabin was on the State road, running from central Ohio through Mans- field to the lake, at its intersection with the road leading from Wooster to the northwest-then commonly called the Beall trail. Houses of public entertain- ment were called taverns in those days, and at the junction of these roads a tavern had been a necessity long before the town was laid out. The cabin of John Long was the only house at the crossing for some time, but supply came with the demand, and after the land was platted dwellings and business houses were put up, and the village soon had a population of about two hun- dred, with taverns, stores and shops to meet the wants of the trade. John Plank, who had the village laid out, kept the principal tavern of the town, and the place was therefore called Planktown, which name it is commonly known by today.
At this time the State road was the highway of freight transit between the interior of Ohio and Lake Erie. The port of the lake, after the opening of the Erie canal, were market marts for farm produce. Along this State road through Richland village teams hauling grain north and merchandise south passed in great numbers, sometimes as many as two hundred in a day. The village grew quite rapidly for those days, but in 1850 the Cleveland & Colum- bus railroad was built through Cass township, leaving Richland a mile off its line to the east, and a new town-now called Shiloh-was built at the cross- ing. Richland then went into decline, and but little is left of the village today.
As narratives of the murders committed at Richland by Return J. M. Ward have been given to the public in newspapers and in pamphlets, it might seem superfluous to repeat the story here. But as those bloody deeds were committed more than fifty years ago, generations have since come upon the stage of life to whom the narrative may be new. Then, too, this historical chapter would not be complete without at least a resume of Ward's terrible career of crimes. In about 1847, Return J. M. Ward became proprietor of the Eagle house, situated at the northeast corner of Wooster and Norwalk streets. Ward has been described as a large, strong man, with a sinister countenance.
On the south side of Sandusky street, a short distance west of the Eagle house, one Noah Hall kept a store, carrying a line of general merchandise, as was the custom at that time. The store building was an isolated frame structure, with the north end to the street. Hall boarded with Ward and slept at the rear end of the store. There were no "drummers" on the road in those days, and merchants went East twice a year for goods. In March, 1850, Hall collected money preparatory to going to New York to purchase goods for his spring trade. On the morning of March 18 the little village was startled by the report that Hall had been murdered the night previous. Ward directed suspicion against Daniel A. Myers and Thomas McGarvy,
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brothers-in-law. As usual, detectives formulated theories and tried to find evi- dence to sustain then, instead of letting the facts establish a theory, and Myers and McGarvy were arrested and indicted on the charge of murder. Persons charged with certain crimes could elect under the old constitution whether to be tried by the supreme or the common pleas court, and upon being arraigned, April 13, the prisoners choose the latter. They were then remanded to jail and their trial set for the July term. The prisoners elected to be tried separately, and Daniel A. Myers was put on trial for the murder of Noah Hall. William Stevens was prosecuting attorney, and Jacob Brinkerhoff and D. W. Stambaugh represented the prisoners. The trial resulted in a verdict of not guilty, and on July 16 McGarvy was also released and the case dropped from the docket. At the trial of Myers, Return J. M. Ward, the landlord, was the principal witness for the prosecution, and the overzeal he exhibited on the stand to obtain a conviction of the accused caused suspicion to be cast upon himself, which contributed somewhat to the acquittal of Myers. Ward was a too ready witness, too anxious to convict and his testimony bore earmarks of fabrication.
Some time after the Hall murder a pack-peddler by the name of Lovejoy put up at Ward's tavern for the night, and as he did not appear at the break- fast table the morning following Ward, in answer to inquiries, stated that the peddler had left early, and that seemed to end the matter for a time. It has been thought that Ward's wife suspected that her husband had murdered the peddler, for she soon afterwards became insane and was sent to an asylum, where she died. In a general way the suspicion of the public turned to Ward as the murderer of Noah Hall, but there was not evidence sufficient to place a charge against him in a court of justice. It also became the opinion of the public that the peddler, Lovejoy, had met with foul play at the hands of Ward. The distrust and suspicions of the people became so apparent that Ward left the place and later located in Sylvania, Lucas county, and again married.
It has been written that-
"They whose guilt within their bossom lies Imagine every eye beholds their crime."
And thus it was with Ward, and even the soughing of the winds reminded him of the moans of his victims, and the evening zephyrs seemed to whisper accusations against his guilty soul.
Such simple causes lead to the unmasking of crime, that no matter how its perpetrators may endeavor to hide it, "murder will out." The blood of Abel crying out against Cain is the type of all murders. The earth refuses to con- ceal such heinous crimes, and all nature conspires to betray the unlawful shedding of blood. The man who passes from earth in the ordinary course of nature may be missed and mourned for a while, but the community yields to the inevitable, for all are born under the sentence of death. Compared with the vast numbers of people who throng the earth one man is but an atom, a unit of the whole, but as such he is under the ever watchful care of the Father, who gave the command from Mount Sinai, "Thou shalt do no murder." and
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who has declared "That vengeance is Mine." Vice leads to vice and crime begets crime. Ward, having imbued his hands in human blood, was not sat- isfied with his Planktown crimes, but added another to the list by murdering his wife, and to conceal the act attempted to cremate her body, which led to his detection. For this murder he was arrested, indicted, tried and convicted, and was hanged at Toledo, Friday, June 12, 1857.
Several weeks before his execution Ward made a confession of the three murders, in brief, as follows: That having access to Noah Hall's store, he had unfastened the back door during the day, and at midnight "I left my house, entered the store by the back door and found Hall sleeping soundly. I was armed with a heavy iron poker, large at one end and tapering to a point at the other. Having carefully ascertained Hall's position, I struck and stuck the point of the poker through his skull, on the left side above his ear, and then gave him a violent blow with the heavy end of the poker upon the top of his head. I then seized his pillow and held it tightly over his mouth, and with the other hand grasped his throat and choked him until life was extinct."
Upon searching the premises Ward obtained over eight hundred dollars in money, which he buried until after the excitement subsided, after which he used the money in small amounts as he needed it.
In Ward's confession of the murder of the peddler, Lovejoy, he says: "The peddler complained of being tired and retired early. I showed him to his room-a corner room on the second floor. At that time I had no idea of killing him. I awoke about midnight, and the thought struck me that the peddler might have money. There was no lock on his door. I got up, went to his room, opened the door softly and found him asleep. The moon was shining in at the window, making the room almost as light as day. The temptation to kill him was so irresistible that I went and got an axe and with it dealt him a tremendous blow on the top of his head. He scarcely struggled and in a few moments was dead."
How to dispose of the body of the peddler was a question that Ward had not previously considered. He had to act quickly and soon decided to dis- member the body and pack the same into a box, which he did, and before the morning dawn he had the remains boxed up and placed in the cellar. Upon the pretext of going to his father's, at Milan, Ward placed the box with its gruesome contents in his wagon the next morning and drove away. That night he dumped the box, heavily weighted, into the Huron river, near Ab- bott's bridge, and never heard of it afterwards. For this murder Ward obtained fifty dollars in money and such goods from the pack as he could use without creating suspicion against him.
Ward's mind was capable of planning crimes, and he kept his own coun- sel, but the curse of Cain was upon him and he could not rest. He changed locations, but the continued fear of exposure, like the fabled sword of Dam- ocles, was ever suspended over him. He could not escape, and the edict, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed," was meted out to Ward upon the gallows.
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In this series of historical sketches the subject of "good roads" has not heretofore been considered. But as this chapter treats of the county at the intersection of the State road with the Beall trail, the matter will be briefly considered. In everything else the county has progressed marvelously, but with roads there has been but little improvement. The roads in Richland county have been patched up from year to year, and in those seventy-five or eighty years the work and money expended would have made our highways as good and as lasting; as were those of Rome, built centuries ago, and which are still in use. It is a matter of poor economy to be annually repairing roads, with the view of having such repairs last only until a new supervisor comes along the next year. Far better and cheaper in the end to make a large outlay for more permanent results. The great National road was opened in 1818, and notwithstanding the storms and frosts of the eighty-five years of its use its roadbed and its arches are in as good condition today as they were when Henry Clay, Lewis Cass, Thomas H. Benton, William Allen and other states- men made stage journeys to and from Washington over the National pike while serving as senators in the congress of the United States.
SALEM, SHILOH.
To understand the history of Shiloh that of Salem must first be reviewed and conditions considered. Prior to 1828 a town called Salem was laid out in the north part of what is now Cass township, a mile south of the Huron county line, but, as the plat was not recorded, there is no historical date of the survey. The lots were in time declared vacated. Mr. Powers, the founder of the place, had logical reasons to believe that a town was needed there, the site being at the crossing of the Savannah with the Huron road, the latter being at that time a great highway of travel between central Ohio and the ports on the lake. Powers was the first merchant in the place. Shoemakers, blacksmiths and wagonmakers were so necessary in every village that it seemed as though they were indigenous to those localities.
One of the first schools in the township was held in a log cabin at the Salem Corners, on the south side of the Savannah road, and was taught by the Rev. Bennajah Boardman, a Methodist minister. Teachers were paid by sub- scription then, the present common school system not being inaugurated until years afterwards. As a rule, the teachers in those days did not spoil the child by sparing the rod, and as the history in those early schools is recalled they bring to the mind Goldsmith's lines :
"There in his noisy mansion, skill'd to rule. The village master taught his little school ; A man severe he was, and stern to view. I knew him well, and every truant knew; Well had the boding tremblers learn'd to trace The day's disaster in his morning face."
The first church at Salem was a hewn-log structure, built by the Meth- odists in 1823. In about 1816, the Rev. Boardman began holding religious services at the homes of the settlers. He was a Methodist minister and preached
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in that part of the county as such for a number of years. Among the ministers who followed the Rev. Mr. Boardman were the Rev. Erastus Felton, the Rev. Mr. Chase, the Rev. Mr. Goddard and the Rev. Mr. Poe. The Rev. Mr. Board- man finally settled at Salem as a local preacher, where he died in 1858. Among the members of the Salem church were Asa Murphy, Peter and Annie Maring, John, Catharine, Nancy, Betsey and Sarah Long, and John and Hannah Bell.
It is often difficult to obtain historical dates. The date of the running of the first railroad train from Shelby to Mansfield, over the Mansfield & San- dusky road-now a part of the Baltimore & Ohio system-is obtained by its association with another event-with the holding of a meeting to get recruits for the Mexican War.
The first blood in the war between the United States and Mexico was shed April 24, 1846. General Taylor, having been informed that the Mexi- cans were crossing the Rio Grande, above his encampment, sent Captain Thornton with sixty dragoons to reconnoiter. They were surprised and cap- tured. Sixteen Americans were killed in the skirmish. Troops were called for to reinforce General Taylor, and a war meeting was held in Mansfield May 16. For the purpose of running an excursion to Mansfield, to the war meeting, seats were improvised on flat-cars that had been in use in the con- struction of the road. But this train ran only to the north limit of the town, stopping in the vicinity of the present waterworks pumping station.
The late John Rickets fixed the date of the first train of passenger cars running into Mansfield by the record of the birth of a son-June 19, 1846- and remembered the coincidence of the two events.
But not even a coincidence as to the date of the completion of the Cleve- land & Columbus railroad-now a part of the "Big Four" system-through Shiloh can be obtained. Jesse Maring thinks the road was opened in the fall of 1849. Mr. Maring was the station agent of this road at Shiloh for thirty years-from 1851 to 1881.
But, so far as Salem was concerned, the date of the opening of the road was not of so much importance as was the event itself, and the result would have been the same had it occurred sooner or later, for the railroad was run nearly a mile west of the town, and the station that was erected there was in such an undesirable location that it was soon afterwards removed a half-mile further south-still further away from Salem. The new site for the station being at the crossing of the Wooster & Tiffin road, a town was platted there in September, 1852, by Charles R. Squires, who had purchased four acres of land for that purpose. This new town was called Salem Station. Then there were Old Salem and Salem Station, to distinguish the old town from the new. In 1862 the name of Salem Station was changed to that of Shiloh. The Old Salem is now known as a locality, not as a town.
The name "Shiloh" was taken in part as a matter of convenience, as there were two or more other towns in the state called Salem, and partly in patriotic sentiment after the battle of Shiloh-one of the battles of the Civil War, fought April 6 and 7, 1862, and in which the Union loss in killed, wounded and missing was 13,491 men. Shiloh, however, in the scriptural meaning of the word, signifies place of rest, peace. The ark of the covenant, kept at Gilgal,
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during the progress of the conquest, was at Shiloh from the last days of Joshua to the time of Samuel. And it is written that "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, till he shall go to Shiloh."
No reason is now known why Salem was thus named. At it was a religious center, perhaps the name was given from biblical reasons, as some commenta- tors claim that Salem, so-called in Psalm 76, means Jerusalem-"At Salem is His tabernacle; and His dwelling in Zion."
As to names, it has been said that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. In the long sweep of time names may be forgotten, but events will be remembered.
Shiloh has prospered and is one of the promising towns of the county, with natural gas sufficient, at least, for its own heating and lighting purposes. New wells are to be drilled, and even though oil may not be found a greater volume of gas may be tapped, sufficient in quantity to pipe to other towns.
The railroad runs through a slight cut north of the main street. As trains go through this cut, playing, as it were, "hide and go seek" with the town, the passengers get glimpses of the beauty of the village, and often express regrets that they have not a better view of the town.
The Lutheran and Methodist denominations have handsome and com- modius houses of worship. There is a graded school, which, with the churches, bear evidence that both the religious and the educational interests of the place receive proper attention.
The Brenneman block, built in 1873, is a three-story brick building, with a basement at the east end. In the fall of the Centennial year John Bradford Williams rented one of the business rooms in the Brenneman building and opened a dry goods store. He had married the second time just prior to locat- ing in Shiloh. The woman he married was a milliner by trade and hailed from Medina county. To outward appearances they got along nicely for a time, but ere long gossip reports stated that the domestic relations of the Wil- liams family were not of the most pleasant kind. These reports were confirmed by subsequent events.
One night in the fall of 1877 there was a cry of fire-that the Brenneman building was on fire. The fire was in the room occupied by Mr. Williams. By prompt action and hard work the flames were extinguished with but slight damage to the building, but Williams' goods were more or less damaged by both fire and water.
The Richland Mutual Fire Insurance company, of Mansfield, had insur- ance on the stock, and N. S. Reed went to Shiloh to investigate the matter and adjust the claim. He arrived at Shiloh late in the afternoon and was met by Mr. Williams, who escorted him to the store and explained his theory of the origin of the fire, which was this: That it was the work of an incendiary, and, taking Mr. Reed down the stairway into the basement, pointed to a small, open window, through which, as he alleged, the incendiary had gained en- trance. Then they separated until after supper. As usual, Mr. Reed was affable and courteous, and Williams, no doubt, thought he had smooth sailing. At the second interview, however, Mr. Reed remarked: "Say, Mr. Williams,
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in planning this fire there is one thing you forgot-you should have swept that cobweb-net from the window." Whereupon Williams nearly fell from his chair, broke down and confessed and begged for mercy. Williams was arrested, but at the preliminary hearing entered a plea of "Not guilty." At the December term of court, 1877, indictments were found against Mr. Wil- liams and his son Frank on the charge of arson. The latter confessed and turned state's evidence against his father. At his trial John B. Williams was found guilty. and was sentenced to five years in the penitentiary, but was pardoned before the expiration of the term. The son got off with a jail sen- tence of four months. A few months after Williams' conviction his wife- Mary Ann Williams-obtained a divorce.
Mr. Reed did a clever piece of detective work in the case that will favor- ably compare with a Sherlock Holmes story.
The Hon. J. M. Hunter, now a resident of Shiloh, tells of his first trip to that locality. which shows the changes of time. His father was a farmer, then residing in Blooming Grove township. After the completion of the Mansfield & Sandusky railroad, Plymouth, thus having railroad shipping facilities to the lake, became a great grain market. The warehouse at Plym- outh was built across the cut, which was of sufficient depth to permit the cars to pass beneath the building, thus requiring no elevator. The box cars used in shipping were covered with canvas or tarpaulin, and held about a hundred and forty bushels, and wheat in August, 1846, brought forty-five cents a bushel.
It was perhaps the latter part of the summer of 1850, when Mr. Hunter's father was hauling wheat to Plymouth, that J. M. accompanied him upon one of his trips. This the boy considered a great privilege, and it was upon that trip that he first saw the site of Shiloh, and remembers it the more vividly, perhaps, because the street or road was being graded down to make a grade crossing, and that was the first grading the boy had ever seen. At the junction with the New State road west of Shiloh, they got in with a caravan of wheat teams coming from the south, while others were following them from the east. Thus wedged in, it took them hours to get to Plymouth and wait for their turn to unload. Mr. Hunter was then about six years of age. His life has spanned the half-century period in which the world has advanced more than in any other age. During those years we have made history. It would require volumes to give even a syllabus of each of the discoveries, inventions and improvements of the last fifty years. We use the utilities of today, and recall the past only as a matter of sentiment, or for the lesson it teaches. Mr. Hunter has served the people in a number of public offices, the most prominent of which was representing Richland county two terms in the legislature.
H. S. Moser retired from his farm some years ago, and resides in Shiloh. As in the past. he always has a cordial greeting for an old friend.
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