USA > Ohio > Seneca County > History of Seneca County, from the close of the revolutionary war to July, 1880 > Part 64
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Nearly all my pen-pictures of persons are from my best recollec - tions. The editors of the newspapers of Tiffin were so kind as to call upon the people of Seneca county during last fall and winter very frequently, to furnish me with such material as might aid in this enter- prise. A few have responded Others saw proper to ignore the call. It would have been a very easy task to have told me of some worthy ancestor, who drove his stake in these Seneca woods for a home, and where he came from, what family he had, who his neighbors were, when he died and how he had lived.
I described those I could remember. If others have not been noticed, will you just be so kind as to blame yourself ? My purpose was history more than biography, and I picked out such characters as connected history with their lives. In writing of these, it was a pleas- ure, and like living again with friends I loved, and whose memory I am still left to cherish.
Now, dear reader, you and I are about to part. If the perusal of the preceding pages has instructed, amused or entertained you, it is well. If I have failed to warm up in your heart a feeling of love or veneration for your worthy ancestors, who selected the woods of Seneca county to build homes for themselves and their children; if a glance over Seneca's past and the efforts and struggles of the frontier settler to redeem and build up this heaven-blessed country, will not wake up in the bosom of the living generation, the love and gratitude so nobly earned and so highly due your ancestors, I shall regret that I have failed in my mission, and will hope that I may never find it out.
Oh! that we had the capacity to comprehend the toils, sufferings and hardships, the deprivations and distresses these pioneers of the new civilization endured, in rescuing this land from the grasp of the British lion and his savage ally through two bloody wars; could we but recall the manly strife, the fortitude, the patriotic devotion to country and
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cause that inspired those men to actions and deeds of noble daring and doing, how much more than we do, would we revere their memories and carry, within our bosoms, hearts more grateful for all we enjoy.
Let me, in conclusion, quote the language of Dr. C. G. Comyges, of Cincinnati, in closing a short biography of Governor Tiffin.
Scattered here and there in our primitive settlement, a few venerable men and women are found, the remnants of a glorious race and an heroic age. The wild solitude of nature, the wild animals they hunted, the savage men who disputed their settlements, the companions of their joys and sorrows, are all gone, and they appear like strangers from a distant land. What- Ohio is to-day in her majestic strength: what are her extensive and various benevolent institutions; what is her superb system of education; what is the sublime patriotism that rallied her sons to the dread conflict, growing brighter and stronger to the end, giving the great names that shine brightest in the dark splendor of war; what she is in conspicuous statesmanship, and in the vastness of her material forces and moral power, comes from the noble race of pioneers thus passing away.
Crown their deeds with praise; crown their memory with gratitude; let their hardihood, labors, self-denials and deep piety excite their descendants and those who occupy the fields of their conquests, to emulate their courage, their toil and their public virtne.
A people, to be truly free, must be both virtuous and intelligent.
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APPENDIX.
NO. I.
THE EARTHQUAKE-THE GREAT HURRICANE-THE JERKS-THE MORMONS VAN BURENITE SALUTATORY-THE OLD STATE HOUSE,
CCURRENCES of great importance at the time, but seldom, if ever. mentioned in these days, are recorded here for several reasons: First of all, to add to the general interest of this enterprise, and secondly, to pre- serve, as much as possible, records of events that at one time or other at- tracted the attention of the entire country, and defied the power of science to account for some of these wonderful manifestations.
A quantity of other matter is added here for the convenience of the student of history, and for ready references to the subject embraced : some of these are statistical, and others are historical in their nature. These are hoped will prove a benefit as well as a pleasure to the reader, though, in fact, form- ing in themselves no part of the history of Seneca county.
PHYSICAL AND MENTAL PHENOMENA. THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE.
On the 15th day of December, 1811, the first great shock of an earthquake occurred, that shook the whole majestie valley of the Mississippi to the cen- ter, and made the Allegheny mountains tremble beneath its gigantic throes. ' Its convulsions agitated even the waves of the Atlantic ocean. The sub- terranean forces which produced such results must have been of inconceiv- able magnitude.
The region on the west bank of the Mississippi and in the southern part of the state of Missouri seems to have been the center of the most violent shocks. They were repeated at intervals of two or three months. These shocks, in their terrible upheavings of the earth, equal any phenomena of the kind of which history gives any record. The country was very thinly settled, and there were but few educated men in the whole region who could philosophically note the phenomena which were witnessed. Fortunately. most of the houses were very frail, being built of logs. Such structures would sway to and fro with the surgings of the earth, but they were not easily thrown down. Vast tracts of land were precipitated into the turbid.
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foaming current of the Mississippi. The graveyard at New Madrid was at one swoop torn away, and with all its mouldering dead, swept down the stream.
Most of the houses in New Madrid were destroyed. Large regions of for- est. miles in extent, suddenly sank out of sight, while the waters rushed in forming, upon the spot, almost fathomless lakes. Other lakes were drained. leaving only vast basins of mud, where, apparently for centuries, in the solitudes of the forest, the waves had rolled.
The whole wilderness of territory extending from the mouth of the Ohio, three hundred miles, to the St. Francis, was so convulsed as to create lakes and islands, ravines and marshes, whose numbers never can be fully known. Some of the effects produced were very difficult to account for. Large trees were split through the heart of the tough wood. The trees were inclined in every direction, and were lodged in every angle towards the earth or the horizon. The undulations of the earth resembled the surges of a tempest- tossed ocean, the billows ever increasing in magnitude. At the greatest ele- vation these earth billows would burst open, and water, sand and coal would be ejected as high as the loftiest trees. Some of the chasms thus created were very deep.
Wide districts were covered by a shower of small white sand, like the ground after a snow storm. This spread of desolation rendered the region around quite uninhabitable for a long time. Other immense tracts were flooded with water from a few inches to a few feet deep. As the water sub- sided a coating of barren sand was left behind.
Indeed, it must have been a scene of horror in these deep forests, and in the gloom of the darkest night, and by wading in the water to the middle to fly from those concussions, which were occurring every few hours, with a noise equally terrible to beasts and birds and to man. The birds themselves lost all power and disposition to fly. and retreated to the bosoms of men- their fellow sufferers-in this general convulsion. A few persons sank in these chasis, and were providentially extricated. A number perished who sank with their boats in the Mississippi. A bursting of the earth just below the village of New Madrid arrested the mighty Mississippi in its course, and cansed a reflux of its waters, by which, in a little time, a great number of boats were swept by the ascending current into the mouth of the bayou, carried ont and left upon the dry earth when the accumulating waters of the river had again cleared the current.
The following is from " The Great West." " There were a number of severe shocks, but the two series of concussions were particularly terrible. far more so than the rest. The shocks were clearly distinguished into two classes- those in which the motion was horizontal, and those in which it was perpen- dicular. The latter were attended with explosions, and the terrible mixture of noises that preceded and accompanied the earthquakes in a louder degree, but were by no means so desolating and destructive as the other. The houses crumbled. the trees weaved together, the ground sunk, while ever and anon vivid flashes of lightning, gleaming through the troubled clouds of night, rendered the darkness doubly horrible. After the severest shocks. a dense, black cloud of vapor overshadowed the land, through which no struggling sunbeam found its way to cheer the heart of man. The sulphur-
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ated gases that were discharged during the shocks tainted the air with their noxious effluvia, and so impregnated the water of the river for one hundred and fifty miles as to render it unfit for use.
In the intervals of the earthquake there was one evening, and that a brilliant and cloudless one, in which the western sky was a continued glare of repeated peals of subterranean thunder, seeming to proceed. as the flashes did. from below the horizon. The night, which was so conspicnous for sub- terranean thunder, was the same period in which the fatal earthquakes at Caracas, in South America, occurred, and it is supposed that these flashes and those events were part of the same seene.
One result from these terrible phenomena was very obvious. The people in this region had been noted for their profligacy and impiety. In the midst of these scenes of terror, all. Catholics and Protestants, the prayerful and the profane, became one religion, and partook of one feeling. Two hundred people, speaking English, French and Spanish, crowded together, their faces pale, the mothers embracing their children. As soon as the omen which preceded the earthquake became visible, as soon as the air became a little obscured, as soon as a certain mist arose from the east, all in their dif- ferent languages and forms, but all deeply in earnest, betook themselves to the voice of prayer. The cattle, much terrified, crowded about the people, seeking to demand protection or community of danger.
The general impulse. when the shocks commenced, was to run. And yet, when they were at the severest points of their motion, the people were thrown upon the ground at almost every step. A French gentleman told me that in escaping from his house. the largest in the village, he found that he had left an infant behind, and he attempted to mount up the raised piazza to recover the child, and was thrown down a dozen times in succes- sion. The venerable lady in whose dwelling we lodged, was extricated from the ruins of her house, having lost everything that appertained to her estab- lishment which could be broken or destroyed. The people at the Little Prairie who suffered most, had their settlement, which consisted of a hun- dred families, and which was located in a rich and fertile bottom, broken up. When I passed it and stopped to contemplate the traces of the catastrophe, which remained after several years, the crevices, where the earth had burst, were sufficiently manifest, and the whole region was covered with sand to the depth of two or three feet. The surface was red with oxydized pyrites of iron, and the sand.blows. as they were called, were abundantly mixed with this kind of earth and with pieces of pit coal. But two families re- mamed of the whole settlement. The object seems to have been in the first paroxysms of alarm,to escape to the hills. The depth of water that soon covered the surface precluded escape.
The people, withont exception, were unlettered backwoodsmen, of the class least addicted to reasoning. And yet it is remarkable how ingeniously and conclusively they reasoned, from apprehension sharpened by frar. They observed that the chasis in the earth were in the direction from sonth- west to northeast, and they were of an extent to swallow up not only men, but honses, down depp into the pit. And these chasms occurred frequently. within intervals of half a mile. They felled the tallest trees at right angles to the chasm, and stationed themselves upon the felled trees. Meantime
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their cattle and harvests, both there and at New Madrid, principally per- ished.
The people no longer dared to dwell in houses. They passed that winter and the succeeding one in bark booths and camps, like those of the Indians, of so light a texture as not to expose the inhabitants to danger in case of their being thrown down. Such numbers of laden boats were wrecked above the Mississippi and the lading driven into the eddy at the mouth of the bayou at the village, which makes the harbor, that the people were amply provided with provisions of every kind. Flour, beef, pork, bacon, butter, cheese, apples, in short everything that is carried down the river, was in such abundance as scarcely to be matters of sale. Many of the boats that came safely into the bayou were disposed of by the affrighted owners for a trifle, for the shocks continued daily, and the owners deeming the country below sunk, were glad to return to the upper country as fast as pos- sible. In effect, a great many islands were sunk, new ones raised, and the bed of the river very much changed in every respect.
After the earthquake had moderated in violence, the country exhibited a melancholy aspect of chasms, of sand covering the earth, of trees thrown down or lying at an angle of forty-five degrees, a split in the middle. The Little Prairie settlement was broken up. The Great Prairie settlement, one of the most flourishing before, on the west bank of the Mississippi, was much diminished. New Madrid dwindled into insignificance and decay, the people trembling in their miserable hovels at the distant and melancholy rumbling of the approaching shocks.
The general government passed an act allowing the inhabitants of the country to locate the same quantity of land that they possessed here in any part of the territory where the lands were not yet covered by any claim. These claims passed into the hands of speculators, and were never of any substantial valne to the possessor. When I resided there, this district, for- merly so level, rich and beautiful, had the most melancholy of all aspects of decay. The tokens of former cultivation and habitancy were now memen- tos of desolation and desertion. Large and beautiful orchards were left un- inclosed, homes were deserted, and deep chasms in the earth were obvious at frequent intervals. Such was the face of the country, although the peo- ple had for years become so accustomed to frequent and small shocks, which did no essential injury, that the lands were gradually rising again in value, and New Madrid was slowly rebuilding with frail buildings adapted to the apprehensions of the people."
THE GREAT HURRICANE.
Another very wonderful phenomenon that occurred a few years after the great earthquake is also worthy of special record.
On the 18th of May, 1825, and after quite a number of new-comers had settled in Seneca, there occurred one of the most violent tornadoes of which history gives any account. It has usually been called the " Burlington storm," because its greatest severity was experienced in that township. It commenced between one and two o'clock in the afternoon in Delaware county, upon the upper waters of the Scioto, and in the very heart of the state. It seemed for a time to sweep the surface of the earth with indescrib-
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able fury. It then apparently rose in the air, rushing along above the tops of the highest trees. Soon it descended with increased violence, and tore its destructive way through Licking. Knox and Coshocton counties. Its gen- eral course was a little north of east.
The force and violence of the wind, which accompanied this tempest, have probably never been equalled in a northern latitude. Gigantic forests were instantly uprooted, and enormous trees were hurled like feathers through the air. Some were carried several miles. There was no strength of trunk or root which for a single instant could withstand the assault. Cows, oxen, and horses were lifted bodily from the ground and carried to the distance of one or two hundred rods. There was a creek, flooded with recent rains, over which the tornado passed. The gale so emptied it of its flood that in a few minutes there was only a small, trickling stream to be seen in its bed.
There had been so much rain that the roads were very muddy, and the fields were like sponges saturated with water. The tornado seemed to dispel every particle of moisture, and both roads and fields were left dry and almost dusty. The track of the tornado through Licking county was about two- thirds of a mile in breadth, gradually increasing as the blast advanced. The air was so filled with trees, buildings, and every kind of debris, whirled as high af the clouds, that the spectacles resembled immense birds pressing along in Imrried flight.
The very ground trembled beneath the gigantic tread of this terrific storm. Many persons who were at a distance of more than a mile from the track of the tornado, testified that they distinctly felt the earth to vibrate beneath their feet. Those who experienced the fury of the tempest state that the roar of the wind, the darkened sky, the trembling of the earth. the crash of falling timbers, and the air filled with trees, fragments of houses and cattle. presented a spectacle awful in the extreme.
The cloud from which this terrific power seemed to emerge, was black as midnight. It was thought by some careful observers that it rushed along at the rate of about a mile a minute. It sometimes seemed to sink low to the ground, and again to rise some distance above the surface. Tremendous as was the velocity of the storm, sweeping in one continnous course, it is re- markable that no one could tell from the fallen timber in which direction the wind had blown, for the trees were spread in every way.
There were well authenticated incidents which seem almost ineredible. An iron chain about four feet long, and of the size of a common plow chain, was lifted from the ground and hurled through the air with almost the veloe- ity of a shot from a gun, for the distance of half a mile, and was there lodged in the topmost branches of a maple tree. A large ox was carried eighty rods and was then so buried beneath a mass of fallen trees that it required several hours' chopping to extricate the animal, which, strange to say, was not ma- turially injured. From the same field with the ox, a cow was carried forty rods and was lodged in the thick branch of a tree. The tree was blown down. and the cow was killed. An ox cart was carried through the air forty rods, and was then dashed to the ground with such violence as to break the axle and to entirely demolish one of the wheels.
Colonel Wright had a house strongly built of heavy logs. His son was standing in the doorway when the gale struck him, and hurled him across
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the room with such violence as to kill him instantly. The house was torn to pieces. A coat, which was hanging up in the same house, was found six months afterward in Coshocton county, more than forty miles from the de- molished building. It was taken back to Colonel Wright's, and was clearly identified. Many light articles such as shingles, books and pieces of furni- ture were carried twenty and thirty miles. A little girl, Sarah Robb, twelve years of age, was taken from her father's house, lifted several feet from the earth, and carried more than an eighth of a mile, when she was gently de- posited upon the ground. unharmed as the gale left her. Fortunately, the tornado passed over a wilderness region very sparcely settled, and but three lives were lost.
THE JERKS.
.Having thus alluded to remarkable physical phenomena, we ought not pass in silence a mental phenomenon. totally inexplicable upon any known principles of intellectual philosophy, and yet thoroughly attested by com- petent witnesses.
The Rev. Joseph Badger was the first missionary on the western reserve. He graduated at Yale college about the year 1755, and was the highly esteemed pastor of the Congregational church in Blanford, Massachusetts. for fourteen years. He was a man of enterprising spirit as well as fervent piety, and became deeply interested in the religious welfare of the Indians in northern Ohio. Aided by a missionary society, he visited the country, and was so well satisfied that a field of usefulness was opened before him there, that he returned for his family and took up his residence among the Wyandots of Upper Sandusky, extending his labors to the tribes on the Maumee.
His work amongst the Indians and the scattered inhabitants of the re- serve, was very arduons, but interesting and valuable. He was appointed by Governor Meigs, chaplain in the northern army as war broke out with England. He was in Fort Meigs during the memorable seige of 1813, and was afterwards attached to General Harrison's command. Mr. Badger had a high reputation for sound judgment, energy of character and superior intellectual endowments. He died in 1846, at the age of eighty-nine.
Quite a powerful revival of religion commenced under his preaching in the towns of Anstinburgh, Morgan and Harpersfield, where, at that time (1803), he was alternately preaching. The revival was attended by a strange bodily agitation called the jerks. We find in " The Historical Collections of Ohio" a very graphic account of this strange occurrence.
It was familiarly called jerks, and the first recorded instance of its occur- rence was at a sacrament in East Tennessee, when several hundred of both sexes were seized with this strange and involuntary contortion. The sub- jeet was instantaneously seized with spasms or convulsions in every muscle, nerve and tendon. His head was thrown backward and forward and from side to side with inconceivable rapidity. So swift was the motion that the features could no more be discerned than the spokes of a wheel can be seen when revolving with the greatest velocity. No man could voluntarily ac- complish the movement. Great fears were often awakened lest the neck should be dislocated.
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The whole body was often similarly affected, and the individual was driven, notwithstanding all his efforts to prevent it, in the church over pews and bences, and in the open air over stones and the trunks of fallen trees. so that his escape from bruised and mangled limbs seemed almost miraen- lons. It was of no avail to attempt to hold or restrain one thus affected. The paroxysm continued until it gradually exhausted itself. Moreover, all were impressed with the conviction that there was something supernatural in these convulsions and that it was opposing the spirit of God to attempt, by violence to resist them.
These spasmodic convulsions commenced with a simple jerking of the fore-arm. from the elbow to the hand, violent, and as ungoverned by the. will as what is called the shaking palsy would be. The jerks were very sud- den, following each other at short intervals. Gradually and resistlessly they extended through the arms to the muscles of the neck. the legs and all other parts of the body. The convulsions of the neck were the more fright- ful to behold. The bosom heaved, the features were greatly distorted and so violent were the spasms that it seemed impossible but that the neck must be broken. When the hair was long, as was frequently the case with these backwoodsmen, it was often thrown backward and forward with such velo- city that it would actually snap like a whip-lash. We are not informed whether the victim suffered pain under these circumstances or not.
An eye-witness gives the following graphic description of the inexplicable phenomena: " Nothing in nature could better represent this strange and unaccountable operation than for me to goad another alternately on one side with a piece of red hot iron. The exercise commonly began in the head, which would fly backward and forward and from side to side with a quick jolt, which the person would naturally labor to suppress, but in vain: and the more any one labored to stay himself and be sober, the more he stag- gered and the more his twitches increased. He must necessarily go as he was inclined, whether with a violent dash on the ground and bounce from place to place like a foot-ball, or hop around with head, limbs and trunk twitching and jolting in every direction, as if they must inevitably fly asun- der. And how such could escape without injury, was no small wonder amongst spectators.
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