History of Richland County, Ohio : (including the original boundaries) ; its past and present, containing a condensed comprehensive history of Ohio, including an outline history of the Northwest, a complete history of Richland county miscellaneous matter, map of the county, biographies and histories of the most prominent families, &c., &c., Part 63

Author: Graham, A. A. (Albert Adams), 1848-
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Mansfield, O. : A. A. Graham & co.
Number of Pages: 968

USA > Ohio > Richland County > History of Richland County, Ohio : (including the original boundaries) ; its past and present, containing a condensed comprehensive history of Ohio, including an outline history of the Northwest, a complete history of Richland county miscellaneous matter, map of the county, biographies and histories of the most prominent families, &c., &c. > Part 63

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

Very early the next morning, the news spread through the neighborhood that Bushong Excitement ran high. Some said, " Kill him, and throw his body on the pile." Others said, " Hang him," and for a time it seemed that the man would be lynched ; but a few negative words by Dr. Eels and a few other dispassion- ate persons calmed their vengeance. He was roughly handled and uncomfortably tied on his horse and escorted toward Bellville by twenty or more men. They were met about one mile from town by the Constable, R. Evarts, who unbound him and walked with him to town. had murdered his family, consisting of his wife and four children, the oldest, Mary, aged twenty-two years, the youngest, Susan, aged fifteen, and two sons. The neighbors soon gathered, and found Mrs Bushong lying on the hearth, before the fire, where she had been sit- ting in a chair, browning coffee in a skillet, with her head literally mashed by an ax, and a por- tion of her blood and brains were mingled with the coffee. The two girls were found in a room up-stairs. Mary had received a heavy blow with the poll of the ax on the front of her The preliminary trial was held before Esquire Heath, which ended by noon, and preparations were made to send him to jail. Bushong re- monstrated against being tied, and pledged his honor and life that he would go quietly and civilly to jail, which was accepted, and the two started on their way, arm in arm, in a single head, which glanced and left the skull un- broken. Susan was struck with the edge of the ax, making a deep wound the full length of the bit, one end of which was above the left eye and the other end below the right eye. Both were alive and in great agony. The sons were sleeping in a room adjoining that in which ! buggy, and Horace Baker and Hugh Oldfield

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followed behind, as a precaution against his escape.

On the way to Mansfield, in answer to ques- tions, he said he had been so troubled about his affairs that he did not sleep much for sev- eral weeks. and not any the last three nights. He said last night he and his wife talked about matters until after midnight-he could sell out and pay the debt. but his wife would not sign the deed, and said she would never leave the place. Mary had caused him some trouble also.

He further said he had invested all his money in that place and now could not make the pay- ments, and in a few days their home would be sold and they would be turned out as beggars -" we had better all be dead," he exclaimed. The day of the murder he intended to go to Mansfield, and he and his wife got up early, to make ready. The Constable inquired whether he remembered all the transaction, to which he answered, " It seems like a dream-something I did while asleep."

About one mile south of Mansfield there is a deep depression near the road, which contained a dense thicket at that time. Here the pris- oner made an effort to extricate his arm from the arm of the Constable and escape. The officer said to him, "It is your honor or your life. If you attempt to leave this buggy, I will kill you." He remained quiet, but moaned, as if in great distress.

His trial opened in the Common Pleas Court July 10, 1841, and lasted six days, Judge Par- ker presiding. Brinkerhoff and Stewart were Prosecuting Attorneys, and Bartley and Delano conducted the defense. The jurymen were Jonas Stought, James Drennan, Pascal Whit- ing, John McCool, George Bull, Uriah John- ston, John Harman, William Cadwell, Jacob Stinneman, Jonas Gerhart, David Robinson and William Boggs. The witnesses were nu- merous. There were several old acquaintances and relatives of his from Pennsylvania, and

physicians who had made insanity a study, present. The physicians testified that they had before them a well-defined case of monomania. Insanity being the only issue, the pleas and the charge to the jury were short, and inside of twelve hours a verdict was returned of "Not guilty."

Amos Hartly entered the southwest quar- ter of Section 31 in an early day. He was of rather an impatient turn of mind. One sum- mer, the weather was very showery, and to cure hay was next to impossible. He employed labor to mow several acres of grass for him, which he turned several times and had it about ready to draw to the barn or stack, when a rain- storm would soak it again. The next day, the turning was repeated, the wagon was brought to the field, a thunder-shower was on hand, and Mr. Hartly, seeing that he would again be caught, lifted the wagon-hammer from the tongue, threw it heavenward, and ran to the house, got fire and burned the hay. Mr. Hartly's mother and first wife committed suicide on the farm he owned.

The Ebersoles came to Knox County at a very early day, and settled near Fredericktown. There were six or eight children in the family, and were possessed of peculiar ways. The father was very wealthy. "Catharine, the her- mitess, received, as a part of her inheritance, over two hundred acres of land in Jefferson Township, the greater part of the south half of Section 32. She caused a house to be built on it, and, about 1840, she moved to it. For a number of years she lived somewhat after the manner of people in general ; but as she grew older, the more abject she rendered her own condition, until her hovel became an object of curiosity and her doings the gossip of the com- munity. The frame house she had built was located near the road, which made it too public for her love of seclusion ; and while she yet occupied it, pigs out on the commons occasion- ally passed along the road, and she told her

HISTORY OF RICHLAND COUNTY.

439

friends that the brutes would partly climb the fence and squeal for the food she was cooking for herself. Finally, she decided to be further from the road, and went to work to gather stone for a foundation of the house she proposed to build. She put up the walls with her own hands, and when they were finished, a carpen- ter was employed to ereet an ancient log cabin. The chimney she put in herself. She owned no furniture except an old chest, in which she kept a few bedclothes, which her mother, probably, assisted her to make. The cooking was done in a fireplace of her own build, and the bread she ate was baked in an oven of her own make. During the early part of her hermitical life, she subsisted on food prepared in ordinary ways, and when she agreed to board persons whom she employed, her table was as well furnished as that of her neighbors ; but, in the decline of life, she gave way to the most barbarous methods of providing food. The grain which tenants raised on her farm was usually sold, and she would go over the field after the crop was gathered and pick up what was needed to sat- isfy her wants. One of her neighbors visited her once, early in the spring, and she was found gathering "greens," the only article of diet in her possession, and she allowed " it didn't make bad eatin' either." Mr. G. went to her house one time, when the weather was inclement. She was busy mashing wheat between two stones. Corn was ground in a similar way. A large hearth was connected with the fire-place, and when she wished to sleep, one corner was swept clean, and she would lie down upon the floor, with her feet toward the fire ; a stone served the purpose of a pillow, and boards were used as comfortables and quilts, not for the ostensi- ble purpose of keeping the cold away, but as a shield against wind and rain. She had no bed, and her few bedclothes were devoted to the better purpose of keeping the hay dry in the barn and in the curing piles in the field. In the summer, she usually went to mill herself, carry-

ing half a bushel of grain on her shoulder. In the winter, when the ground was covered with snow, a hand-sled was brought into requisition. Her cabin finally fell into decay ; she occupied it many years after the roof was so wretched that there was only one spot under it that she could keep dry when it rained.

It would be doing injustice to the memory of this peculiar woman not to add that she was not of the mean, miserly nature which grasps for possessions, without any respect to the rights of property, justice and morality ; but, on the contrary, she exercised the most delicate discernment of justice as she understood it; was conscientious to the last, and scrupulously honorable in all her business relations. As an example of her nice regard of equity, this will answer: Her fire went out in the old chimney, and the house was destitute of matches ; she went to a neighbor to get fire ; she carried an armful of wood to pay for it from her own place. It is not known that she loved more than one person, and her father spurned his presence on account of an expression that he carelessly made when his associates were jest- ing him about "his girl." He brought an apple from the orchard, and the boys accused him of getting the apple on purpose to see "Katy." He replied that he did not care so much for "Katy " as for her property. In speaking of herself, she always used the plural pronoun, " We are well ; we have plenty to eat," and like expressions. She was robbed, in 1865, of over $200. A person was arrested and tried, but he was discharged. No elew was ever obtained of the guilty party. She died at the residence of a brother, near Fredericktown, a few years ago. Several years previous, she went blind, which necessitated her being taken from the home in the woods before her departure to the final rest.

George William Kincaid, a soldier of 1812, resides with his son-in-law, on a lot of the northwest corner of Section 29. He is the

HISTORY OF RICHLAND COUNTY.

440

only soldier of the war of 1812 living in the township, at this time, (March, 1880). His father's name was John Kincaid; he was a soldier of Lee's legion, in the Revolutionary war. George William was born, in Philadel- phia, June 23, 1790, and was twenty-one years old when he enlisted. His regiment was sent to Canada, where he took part in several of the most noted battles, and remembers many inci- dents connected with the campaign. At the battle of Fort George, a Scotch Colonel, named McDonald, was taken prisoner, who had been shot in the knee. He pleaded piteously for his life, saying : "Don't kill me until I have time to save my soul !" The prisoner also said that his mother's predictions came true -that he would be brought home a cripple or dead. In the bombardment of Fort McHenry, the wife of a Sergeant in Mr. Kincaid's regiment came to her husband, with a small bucket in her hand. He accosted her in this language : "What in the name of God are you doing here ?" She answered : " If you die, I want to die with you." He took the bucket, which she had set down, and gave it to her, and told her to leave. She set it down, and in a few moments stooped to pick it up, when a shell struck her, severed her body above the hips, and cut off two limbs. Mr. Kincaid was one of the soldiers sent to re- enforce the army engaged in the battle of Thames, in Upper Canada, and arrived on the field as Tecumseh was killed. He declares that a ball, shot by Col. Johnston's Sergeant, ended

the career of the desperate chief. instead of Col. Johnston killing him. Mr. Kincaid remembers sitting on the knee of Gen. Washington, and of seeing Lady Washington get in and out her carriage. He came to Richland County in 1837. He was married to Anna Bond, and is the father of fourteen children. He was wounded in the hand, while in the service, and is a pensioner.

William Galispie, interred in the Bellville cemetery, was a Major throughout the Revolu- tionary war. He was blind during the last thirteen years of his life. and died. February 17, 1841, aged one hundred and four years.

Samuel Poppelton, Sr., was one of the Green Mountain Boys, who fought with Col. Ethan Allen. He claimed the honor of having placed the American flag on the walls of Fort Ticonder- oga, at its surrender, with his own hands, and heard the historic words : " By the authority of Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." uttered at that time, he being Color Sergeant. He died about 1842, in the ninety-ninth year of his age. He is buried south of Bellville. Frosts and storms have robbed his old sand- stone of its inscription.

This history is particularly indebted to Mr. Reuben Evarts for this chapter. The official records of the township are all destroyed, of proceedings previous to 1850 ; what is inserted regarding early elections and officers, was ob- tained from other sources.

JOHN LEEDY.

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HISTORY OF RICHLAND COUNTY.

CHAPTER XLVII.

EARLY HISTORY OF MADISON TOWNSHIP AND MANSFIELD.

MADISON TOWNSHIP-ITS FORMATION, PHYSICAL FEATURES AND POPULATION-SURVEY-EARLY SETTLERS-MANS- FIELD -ITS LOCATION AND SURVEY -ESTABLISHED ON ROCKY FORK -NAME -FIRST SETTLERS - FIRST CABIN -- FIRST WHITE CHILD -PIONEER MATTERS -A NUMBER OF FIRST THINGS-GEN. CROOKS -THE BLOCK HOUSES -- JOHN M. MAY-THE STURGES FIRM-INDIANS-WHAT REV. JAMES ROWLAND AND OTHER PIONEERS SAY -- EARLY HOTELS, ETC.

TN 1807, Madison Township included the territory at present embraced in Richland County. It was named after President Madi- son, and was then under the jurisdiction of Knox County. In 1812. it was divided. Greene being created from its eastern part. A third division occurred August 9, 1814, leaving Mad- ison the northwestern township in the county, with a territory eighteen miles square. Thus it remained until 1816, when it was reduced to its present dimensions-six miles square in the center of the county. It is generally rolling, and in places even hilly, but there are no prominent landmarks. North of the city of Mansfield, there is a ridge whose general course is northwest and southeast. over which the At- lantic & Great Western Railway passes. suffi- ciently elevated to divide the waters of Black Fork and Rocky Fork; the grade along the road being about fifty feet to the mile over this ridge. The tributaries of these two streams carry off the water; and in addition to these, numerous and beautiful springs burst from the ground in different parts of the township. One of these, on Fourth street, probably had an in- fluence in determining the location of Mans- field. Two others, the Laird and John's Springs which will receive more particular mention in the history of the water-works, now furnish the city with pure spring water. Another of importance is located in the south- eastern part of the township, on Rocky Fork,

where the first settlement was made, and others of more or less importance in various places. It was once densely covered with every species of hard-wood. and its agricultural resources are fully equal to those of any other in the county.

The substratum of its population was of the best material. It was largely Pennsylvania German-either Lutheran or Reformed-and Pennsylvania Calvinistic Scotch-Irish. The former was the better judge of the qualities of the soil, and the more careful and skillful culti- vator of it. But in public spirit, and in ap- preciation of the importance of private and public education, the Scotch-Irish were supe- rior. In the intermingling of the two elements. enterprise and conservatism. materialism and idealism were happily balanced and blended ; and it would be hard to find a more desirable population than this combination furnished. To these have been added, in minor propor- tions, the more cosmopolitan elements of the Marylander, the Jerseyman and New-Yorker. with now and then a Yankee, with his native acuteness, smartness, pushing enterprise and passion for progress and improvement ; and notwithstanding his ever-present assumption. that whatever there is good in America came over in the Mayflower, has made himself a val- uable and valued ingredient in the population of the township. The presence of the German element was influential in bringing in large

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numbers of European Germans, with their in- defatigable industry and marvelous economy and thrift ; their passionate desire for the own- ership of real estate enough to absolve them from the payment of rent; their skill in me- chanics, agriculture and horticulture ; their universal instruction in the primary depart- ments of letters and science. They have proved themselves the best of citizens, the friends of common schools, of the Republic, of civilization, of law and order. Such a founda- tion readily explains the marvelous beauty and solidity of the superstructure that in so few years has attained such vast proportions.

The history of the city and township is so interwoven that it cannot be written sep- arately. They have run together in the race of progress, and whatever has been the measure of success, it belongs equally to both. It may, or may not be new to a majority of its citizens, to hear that Mansfield was not born on its pres- ent location. It first saw the light on the south- west quarter of Section 25, about three miles southeast of its present location, on Rocky Fork, at what was Beam's, afterward Campbell's and now Goudy's mill. As this location and its first settlers are fully described in another chapter, it will not be dwelt upon here.

Gen. James Hedges was the pioneer of the township. He was here as a Government Sur- veyor in 1806, a year before the first settlement was made. The name is a well-known and honored one, is interwoven in the warp and woof of Mansfield history, and still stands high in the roll of its honored citizens. Hedges was accompanied by Maxfield Ludlow and Jon- athan Cox. These, and their attendants, whose names are not given, drew their lines through the woods, and rolled themselves in their blank- ets by their camp-fires, before any white man built his cabin within the limits of the town- ship.

In looking for the first settlers of any town- ship or county, it is natural to turn to their

eastern boundaries, and to the banks of any stream that may cross them ; for the Indian trails were generally along the streams, except where they diverged to some prominent spring, or to cross from one stream to another. These trails were the highways of the wilderness, and were generally followed by the advancing pio- neers. True to this principle, the first settle- ment is found on Rocky Fork as above de- scribed. Here Jacob Newman was induced by his friend and kinsman, James Hedges, to build the first cabin, the first, not only in the town- ship, but in the county also. It came very near being the first in the future city, for it was built near the boundary line of the town that was then staked out. These pioneers knew that a new county would soon be created here, and determined to profit by it. They thought if they laid out a town on the Rocky Fork, near that beautiful spring, and induced settlers to come in, it would grow up into a city and become the county seat. They laid out the future city, but it never went any farther at that place. It was not platted or recorded, and no settlements made within its limits. For some reason it was abandoned, and the present site determined upon. What their reasons were is a matter of uncertainty. but it is conjectured that the "big spring" on Fourth street had some influence; that Gen. Hedges had, proba- ably, some intimations as to the future bounda- ries of the new county, and thought this would be a central location ; and Doctor Bushnell says a very potent reason was in the fact that Mr. Hedges had entered for himself the section upon which the city now stands, and wanted the new city located upon it, and that he actually paid these early settlers $1,500 in silver as an inducement. However this may be, their city on Rocky Fork was abandoned ; they came up that stream and laid out the present city on the 11th day of June, 1808. The men who thus established the foundation of this monu- ment to their memories, were Joseph Larwill,

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of Wooster. James Hedges and Jacob Newman. They agreed to name the new town Mansfield. after the then Surveyor General of the United States, Col. Jared Mansfield, under whose in- structions Hedges and his companions were working. Col. Jared Mansfield was born in New Haven, Conn., in the year 1759, and during his lifetime occupied various prominent and responsible positions under the United States Government. He was a graduate of Yale College in 1777. and taught school, first in New Haven and afterward in Philadelphia. Becoming known to Mr. Jefferson, he received the appointment of Professor of Natural Philos- ophy at the Military Academy at West Point. The publication of his mathematical and physi- cal essays, about this time, enhanced his repu- tation, and he took a high stand among the scientific men of the nation. He was appointed Surveyor General about the year 1803, an office before held by Gen. Rufus Putnam. Col. Mans- field subsequently resumed the Professorship of Natural Philosophy at the Military Academy, where he continued until a few years before his death. when he retired to Cincinnati, and sub- sequently died while on a visit to his native city, February 3, 1830, aged seventy-one years. He was a near relative of the now venerable author and scholar, E. D. Mansfield. who resides near Cincinnati.

The original plat of the city was a square, of which the public square was the center. It extended north one block beyond Fourth street ; south across Ritter's Run, one block beyond First street ; east one block beyond Water street, and west one block beyond Mulberry. It was mainly on the southeast quarter of Section 21, the south side, however, extending a little more than a square into the southwest quarter of Section 22. Since that time, it has extended over the entire section (21), and into all the ad- joining sections, its growth having been mainly west and north. James Hedges entered the two quarter-sections upon which the town was plat-

ted ; also two other quarter-sections, lying east and north of the town.

New towns, in those days, did not spring into life as rapidly as in these days of steam and electricity. It is a common thing now to build a new town in a few days or weeks, make and lose fortunes on it. abandon it, and start another at some distant point on a new railroad, with, perhaps, the same result. But, in those days of stage-coaches and Pennsylvania " schooners," with their four yoke of cattle, things moved correspondingly slow. People were not whirled through the world on "lightning expresses," or crammed with telegraphic news from "all parts of the world." The future city was not an ex- ception in this particular. So far as can be ascertained, but one actual settler was obtained in 1808. This was Samuel Martin, who came from New Lisbon. This is about all that is known of him. He built the first cabin ; such, at least, is the testimony of many of the oldest settlers, though, like every other matter depend- ing on the memory of the "oldest inhabitant," it is contradicted, yet the weight of testimony is in his favor. The question as to where that first cabin was built, is one more difficult of solution. It is one upon which, one would think, those who were here first could hardly be mis- taken : but it must be considered that their attention was not ealled to this matter for years afterward, and being considered (if considered at all) a small matter, it passed from their minds entirely. Looking back afterward, through the mist of half a century, with its changes, the exact spot might not be so readily ‹letermined. It remains to give the evidence, pro and con, and form a judgment accordingly.

Mr. C. S. Coffinberry, writing from Constan- tine. Mich., under date of February 17, 1873. says : "The first house built in the town of Mans- field was built by George Coffinberry, in 1809, in the month of August in that year, on the site now occupied by the North American Hotel, at the southwest corner of the public square. The

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HISTORY OF RICHLAND COUNTY.

building was a small log cabin." The above is an extract. The writer must be mistaken, for there is much evidence that the first cabin was not built in 1809, but 1808, and not on the North American corner, and, as before stated, not by George Coffinberry. Mansfield H. Gil- kison, who is now living in Mansfield, and who was born in this çabin (the one referred to in the above extract), says it was built in 1810, and was the second cabin in the town.

Mrs. Elizabeth Baughman, who is still liv- ing, and who is the daughter of Capt. James Cunningham, one of the earliest pioneers in the county, in a letter to the Shield and Banner, in 1873, says : " A log cabin was afterward erected on the present site of Mansfield. It stood, I think, near where Mr. Keating now lives, at the northeast corner of the park, and a man (whose name I have forgotten) moved into it ; but, for selling whisky to the Indians, in violation of law-a Congressional act, I suppose-he had to leave the country. *

* One of the * proprietors of the then contemplated town of Mansfield, got father to consent to move into the cabin to board the coming surveying party, and entertain persons who might come to buy town lots, etc. * The day following, they removed to the cabin spoken of, which was, as father always claimed, the first house built in Mansfield, and the only one here at that time."

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Author: Graham, A. A. (Albert Adams), 1848- Publication date: 1880 Publisher: Mansfield, O. : A. A. Graham & co. Number of Pages: 968

Author: Graham, A. A. (Albert Adams), 1848-
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Mansfield, O. : A. A. Graham & co.
Number of Pages: 968