USA > Ohio > Franklin County > Columbus > History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I > Part 23
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" In the vicinity of the town is a large milling establishment, erected by Lucas Sullivant, Esq., in his life time, and now owned and worked by some half dozen men, under the name of the Ohio Manufacturing Company. From one to two miles below Franklinton on the Scioto are Moeller's Mills and carding machine, erected by John Ransburgh, about the years 1813-14, and which were long known as Ransburgh's Mills.
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" On the bank of the river in the north vicinity of the town is the old Franklinton bury- ing ground. It embraces a beautiful little loeust grove, enclosed with a board fence. This, it was supposed, was to be the final resting place of the pioneers who led the way in the set- tlement of this once wilderness. But of late years a number of removals have been made from thence to Green Lawn, amongst whom were the remains of Lucas Sullivant and wife, Lyne Starling, and General Foos and wife. But still the Franklinton graveyard is rather a neat and handsome village cemetery, and is as well calculated to call up a train of solemn and interesting reflections as any other spot of ground in the county."
As to the creation of other townships in the county Martin says : "Previous to our ro- duction of territory, in I808, by the creation of Delaware County, the number of townships had inereased to nine, but by the organization of Delaware County the number was reduced to the five following, to wit: Franklin, Sharon, Pleasant, Montgomery and Hamilton -- which have been divided and subdivided until they now number eighteen, the names and dates of the establishment of which are as follows :
Blendon . March 6, 1815
Norwich
. December 7, 1813
Clinton
July 1, ISIL
Perry
June 27, 1820
Franklin
May 10, 1803
Plain
Mareh 4, 1810
Hamilton
March 9, 1807 Pleasant
July 1, 1807
Jackson March 6, 1815 Prairie . December 28, 1819
Jefferson September 6, 1816
Sbaron
March 4, 1816
Madison . March 4, 1810
Truto
. March 4, 1810
Mifflin
September 2, 1811
Washington March 4, 1810
Montgomery March 9, 1807
Brown March 3, 1830
6. An act of the General Assembly passed December 4, 1809, provides: "That there shall be erected and established in each county, whenever the commissioners may deem it necessary a good and convenient courthouse, and a strong and sufficient jail or prison, for the reception and confinement of debtors and criminals, well secured by tunber, iron gates, bolts and locks, and also a whipping post ; and every jail so to be erected shall consist of not less than two apartments, one of which shall be appropriated to the reception of debtors, and the other shall be used for the safe keeping of persons charged with, or convicted of crimes ; and the commissioners shall from time to time alter or rebuild any of the aforesaid buildings, which have heretofore, or may hereafter be built, as circumstances may require."
7. Howe's flistorical Collections.
8. Martin's History.
9. Ibid.
10. Hon. George M. Parsons.
Il. Biographical sketch of Lyne Starling, at his death ; by Hon. Gustavus Swan.
12. Ibid.
Joseph Sullivant, writing in the Sullivant Memorial, narrates this anecdote of Lyne Starling : " I was once in his room when Edmund Starling was visiting him. He was lying on his bed and had just made rather a boasting statement as to his wealth, when, turning to his brother, he said : 'Edmund, that is pretty well for the fool of the family, is it not ?' 'Yes,' said Edmund, 'but I don't understand about the fool.' Lyne continued : 'Do you recollect hearing of old Mrs. Doake in Virginia, who used to do the weaving for our family ?' Edmund assented, and Lyne said : ' When I was a boy I went with my mother to carry some yarn to Mrs. Doake, and, being very bashful, did not enter the house, but stood outside by the door, where I heard distinctly every word that was said. The old woman was very particular in her inquiries about every member of the family, and wound up by saying, 'and how is that poor simpleton, Lyne?' We all laughed , as he did also, saying: ' Well, after all, I think the fool of the family has done pretty well ; but the fact is, that speech has stuck in my craw for fifty years.' Whether this speech of the old weaver had stimulated him through life or in any way influenced his career cannot be known, but, pecuniarily, he was the most successful of his family."
13. Pioneer History ; by S. P. Hildreth.
CHAPTER IX.
FRANKLINTON. III.
As yet, the Franklinton settlement was but an island of civilization in a vast surrounding wilderness. It was at best a raw, ungainly frontier village. The country roundabout was settling up gradually, but many of the squatters had no neighbors nearer than fifteen, or even twenty miles, and everything was yet in the rough. "When I opened my office in Franklinton in 1811," says Judge Gustavus Swan; " there was neither church, nor seboolhonse, nor pleasure carriage in the county, nor was there a bridge over any stream within the compass of an hundred miles. The roads at all seasons of the year were nearly impassable. Goods were imported, principally from Philadelphia, in wagons; and our exports, consisting of horses, cattle and hogs, carried themselves to market. The mails were brought to us once a week on horseback, if not prevented by high water. I feel safe in asserting that there was not in the county a chair for every two persons, nor a knife and fork for every four."
" The proportion of rough population," continues Judge Swan's biographer, "was very large. With that class, to say that 'he would fight,' was to praise a man ; and it was against him if he refused to drink. Aged persons and invalids, however, were respected and protected, and could avoid drinking and fighting with impunity; but even they could not safely interfere to interrupt a fight. There was one virtue, that of hospitality, which was not confined to any elass."1
The hardships endured by the pioneers in the wilderness were many and severe. The journey from the East, usually made in wagons, by a road which was merely a trail through the woods, was tedious and perilous. Including unavoida- ble interruptions, it sometimes lasted for three months. Mountains and swollen streams had to be erossed, often with great difficulty and danger. Arriving at their destination the emigrants found themselves alone in the wild forest. In not a few instances their stock of provisions gave out, leaving them to such subsistence as they could gain from roots and wild game. Siekness was frequently brought on by the privation and exposure.
A spot being chosen for a clearing, the larger trees were girdled, the smaller ones cut down and burned. Corn was then planted by cutting holes in the ground with a hoe, or an axe and dropping a few kernels into each cavity. When buck- wheat was sown, it was necessary to watch it, at the ripening season, to keep the wild turkeys from destroying it. A gentleman whose father settled in Blendon Township in 18072 informs the writer that the wild deer were accustomed to come into the elearing around the family cabin to browse on the branches of the fallen
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FRANKLINTON. III.
165
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Photograph by F. II. Jlowe, 1892. THE LINCOLN GOODALE STORE, FRANKLINTON.
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.
trees. The settler was a soldier of the War of Independence, and had brought with him the long rifle which he had used in the battle of Bunker Hill. With this weapon, rested on the comb of the roof, he frequently shot the deer by moonlight, from the top of his cabin. The surrounding forest was very dense and the trees very large. Of roads there were none; logs and swamps were frequent. The family obtained its first supplies of corn from Pickaway County, in exchange for baskets manufactured at the home fireside. Night seldom failed to bring visita- tions of vagrant wolves, howling dismally. Sometimes, to make their musical powers more impressive, these serenaders gathered in a circle around the cabin. Cows and other stock were permitted to range at will in the woods, and were hunted up and driven home in the evening. The animals hunted for the salt licks, and doing so would sometimes wander away for several miles. On one occasion a neighborhood damsel named Jane got over the creek, while driving the cows home, by holding on to the caudal extremity of one of the animals and making it swim. "She didn't get very wet," observed the narrator. "There wasn't much on her to wet -- only a linen frock."
The cabin of the Ohio pioneer was usually laid up with round logs, notched into one another at the ends, and chinked between with wooden blocks and stones. The chimney was built outside of the walls, of crossed wooden strips, daubed with elay. At the base it expanded into a large open fireplace, with a firm lining of stones. The roof was made of clapboards, five or six feet long, riven from oak or ash logs, and held down by being weighted with stones or poles. Not a nail was used in the construction of the entire building. Greased paper was used in lieu of glass in the windows, which were sometimes curtained with a dilapidated garment. The door was hung on wooden hinges, and fastened by a latch raised from the out. side by a string passed through a gimlethole. To lock the door it was only neces- sary to draw the latelistring in ; hence, to be hospitable, in current phrase, meant to leave the latchstring out. A ladder communicated with the " loft," or space be. tween the upper floor and the roof, sometimes used for sleeping purposes. The floor was laid with puncheons, of which also a stationary table was built, sur- rounded by benches consisting of slabs supported by wooden pins let in with an auger.
Few frontier housekeepers were so fortunate as to possess any porcelain dishes. The table utensils were mainly articles of wood or pewter. Knives and forks were rarities. Baking was done by spreading the meal dongh on a clean board, and placing it before the fire, under watch of one of the juvenile members of the family.
Eastern-made fabrics were so scarce and expensive as to be beyond the reach of most of the settlers. Deerskin, flax and the fiber of the nettle were therefore used in the fireside mannfacture of materials for clothing. By the mixture of flax and wool, when wool could be obtained, a coarse cloth was made called linsey woolsey. " Sheep's gray " was a compound of the wool of black sheep and white. The spin- ning wheel, kept constantly going, furnished the yarn from which woolen and linen cloths were woven. Deer hides were first thoroughly soaked in the nearest running stream, then scraped and dried. They were next tramped in a leathern bag filled with water mingled with the brains of wild animals. After each tramp- ing, the hides were thoroughly wrung out. To keep them soft, they were some-
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111.
times smoked. Finally they were colored with ochre, rubbed in with pumice. A single family would sometimes dress as many as a hundred deerskins in this way, in the course of the winter. To manufacture the buckskin thus produced into gloves. moccasins, and other articles of clothing, furnished useful occupation for many a leisure hour in the wilderness solitudes.ª
A buckskin suit over a flax shirt was considered full dress for a man. The outside masculine garment was a hunting shirt, with a cape around the shoulders and a skirt nearly to the knees, the front open, with heavy foldings, on the chest, and the whole fringed and belted. Trowsers of heavy cloth or deerskin were worn, or in lieu of them, buckskin leggings. Women who were so fortunate as to have shoes, saved them for Sunday use, and carried them on the way to church, until they neared the " meetinghouse," when they sat down on a log to draw them on. The men went barefoot, or wore moccasins. Their buckskin elothes were very comfortable when dry, but just the reverse when wet. Hats and caps were made of the native furs.
The pioneer women bad abundant opportunity and no end of incentive to practice the poetical philosophy that " beauty unadorned's adorned the most." Their usual garments were made of linsey-woolsey, or a homemade mixture of linen and cotton, and were fabricated with little regard for ornament. Yet the ingenuity of the sex seldom failed to find some resource for personal embellish- ment. A typical belle of the wilderness has been thus described : " A smiling face, fresh but dark, a full head of smoothly combed hair tied up behind in a twist knot; a dress, made out of seven yards of linsey-woolsey, closely fits the natural form and reaches to within six inches of the floor. It is fancifully and uniquely striped with copperas, butternut and indigo, alternating. The belt is made of homespun, but is colored with imported dye, and a row of buttons down the back is also set on a bright stripe. Heavy cowhide shoes conceal substantial feet and shapely ankles."
Books were rare in the frontier settlements, and schools were a long time coming. A wilderness schoolhouse, says one of the chroniclers of the period, con- sisted of " a log cabin with a rough stone chimney ; a foot or two cut from the logs here and there to admit the light, with greased paper over the openings; a large fireplace, puncheon floor, a few benches made of' split logs with the flat side up, and a well developed birch rod over the master's seat." A teacher who received a sal- ary of ten dollars a month, payable in produce, was considered fortunate.
In a Centennial Address of July 3, 1876, Ilon. Henry C. Noble, of Columbus, described some of the social customs of the pioneer period : " A wedding engaged then, as now, the attention of the whole neighborhood, and the frolic was antici- pated by old and young with eager expectation. In the morning the groom and his attendants started for his father's house to reach the bride's before noon, for the wedding, by the inexorable law of fashion, must take place before dinner. ... The horses, for all come on horseback, were caparisoned with old saddles, old bridles, or halters, packsaddles with a blanket thrown over them, and a rope or a string for a girth or reins as often as leather. They formed a procession as well as they could along the narrow roads. Sometimes an ambuscade of mischievous young men was formed, who fired off their guns and frightened the horses, and caused the girls to shriek.
168
HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.
The race for the bottle took place by two or more of the young men racing over this rough road to the bride's house, the victor to receive a bottle of whisky, which he bore back in triumph, and passed along the procession for each one to take a drink in turn. Then came the arrival at the bride's house, the ceremony, the dinner, and the dance, all conducted with the greatest fun and frolic till morning. Sometimes those who were not invited wonld revenge themselves by cutting off the manes, foretops and tails of the horses of the wedding party.
The logrolling, harvesting and husking bees for the men, and the quilting and apple- buttermaking for the women, furnished frequent occasions for social intercourse, and gave ample opportunity for the different neighborhoods to know the good or bad qualities of each other.
Rifleshooting was a pastime which men loved, as it gave them an opportunity of testing their skill with that necessary weapon of defense, and means, often, of subsistence. When a beef was the prize, it was divided into six quarters by this queer arrangement: The two hindquarters were the highest prizes, the two forequarters the next, the hide and tallow the fifth, and the lead shot into the mark the sixth.
A recent writer+ draws the following spirited picture of an old-time apple- cutting frolic : " The middle-aged and the young of a whole neighborhood as- sembled at some spacious farmhouse to peel and parc great heaps of apples for drying, or make into 'butter' by stewing in boiled cider.
The love-fortunes of men and maids were determined by the counting of apple-seeds ; and whoever removed the entire skin of a pippin in one long ribbon, whirled the lucky streamer thrice around his head and let it fall behind him on the floor, and in the form it took a quick fancy read the monogram of his or her intended mate.
After the apples were cut, and the cider boiled, the floor was cleared for a frolic, teclini- cally so called, and merry were the dancers and loud the songs with which our fathers and mothers regaled the flying hours. The fiddler was a man of importance, and when, after midnight, he called the "Virginia Reel," such shouting, such laughter, such clatter of hilarious feet upon the sanded puncheon floor, started the screechowl out of doors, and waked the baby from its sweet slumber in the sugar-trough. I will not deny that Tom Wilkins, who came to the frolic dressed in a green hunting-shirt and deer-skin trousers, drank some- thing stronger than hard cider, and was bolder than he should have been in his gallant attentions to Susan. But let by-gones be by-gones. The apple cutting was fifty years ago, and Tom and Susan have danced the dance of life, and their tombstones are decorous enough.
These pictures of pioneer life, prosaically described, became doubly interest- ing when animated and idealized in song. No one was more adept at this than the late Ilon. John Greiner, of Columbus. At a meeting of the Franklin County Pioneer Association, August 7, 1869, Mr. Greiner was introduced with the an- nouncement that he would sing an old-fashioned song to an old-fashioned tunc. Stepping forward, amid many plaudits, he sang to the tune "Old Times," the following ditty of
THE EARLY PIONEERS.
What care we for the flight of time, the hasty flight of years ;
The world's the same as ever to the early pioneers. In memory of the olden time, of youth's bright sunny day, We'll have a good old-fashioned song, in the old-fashioned way.
Once Columbus was a pawpaw patch, no Capitol stood here ;
No public institutions were there dreamed of, thought of, near ; The people in log cabins dwelt, the latchstring in the door, Opened to the jolly neighbors, dancing on the puncheon floor.
Andrew Wilson
BORN IN COLUMBUS FEBRUARY 1806
.
*
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FRANKLINTON.
A clearing in the wildwood, and a section square of land, An axe upon his shoulder, and a rifle in his hand ; A wife and towhead children and an honest heart, sincere, Were all the worldly riches of the early pioneer.
Game bounding through the forest, and game whirring on the wing : The perch, the trout, the salmon from the silver waters spring ; Wild honey in the beegum -- boiling sugar into cake, With beauty in the wilderness, life wasn't hard to take.
*
Then men, all honestly inclined, in great and little things, Formed neither combinations, cliques nor thieving whisky rings ; Officeholders could be trusted - unsophisticated loons, They'd no more rob the public than steal your silver spoons.
Then farmers sweat in harvest. from sun to sun, all day, With sickles, scythes and cradles, toiled in cutting grain and hay ; Now cutters, planters, mowers, reapers to the fields they haul, And ride and drive like gentlemen, and scarcely work at all.
The ladies dressed in homespun, and the linsey-woolsey gown, Was worn by the upper-crust, in country, and in town ;
The house was kept in order, and the rooms were neat as wax, And the wheel was kept a whirling while a spinning of the flax.
The beau who went a sparking staid until the break o' day Sometimes till after breakfast-he couldn't tear himself away ; Sometimes he got the mitten, and a flea put in his ear, Which made it quite unpleasant for the early pioneer.
Your grandmothers, fair ladies, all were modest and demnre : No flattery ever sought or gave, of this you may be sure ; But, home from meetings Sunday nights, 'twere worth a sparkling gem To have seen these good old pioneers a sitting up to them !
The foregoing poetry is not classic; it is not even grammatical, but it is the gush of a heart full of enthusiasm for the " old times," and glows in every line with the frank and free, albeit untrained spirit of the conquerors of the wilderness. More graceful, but scarcely so truthful, or nearly so realistic, are the musical lines of William D. Gallagher .
A song for the early times out West. And our green old forest home, Whose pleasant memories freshly yet, Across the bosom come : A song for the free and gladsome life, In those early days we led, With a teeming soil beneath our feet, And a smiling Heaven o'erhead ! Oh, the waves of life danced merrily, And had a joyous flow, In the days when we were Pioneers Fifty years ago!
The hunt, the shot, the glorious chase, The captured elk or deer ; The camp, the big bright fire, and then
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.
The rich and wholesome cheer :-
Tbe sweet sound sleep at dead of night, By our campfire blazing high- Unbroken by the wolf's long howl, And the panther springing by, Oh, merrily passed the time, despite Our wily Indian foe, In the days when we were pioneers, Fifty years ago !
This is excellent poetry, but the pioneer's time did not pass quite so merrily as the poet would have us think. Life on the border was, for the most part, a very serious matter. Sickness added its hard lines to those of privation and hard- ship. Fever and ague prevailed in autumn, and made life miserable until the winter frosts set in. Sometimes the ague gave place to a bilious fever of a malig- nant type. Franklinton, owing to its low situation, and want of drainage was par- ticularly exposed to these diseases.
After the Treaty of Greenville, the Indians mostly disappeared from the neigh- borhood, but a few still lingered about. One of these, known as Billy Wyandot, because of his connection with the tribe of that name, had his lodge on the west bank of the Scioto near the present crossing of the Harrisburg Pike. Here, we are told, he had many a drunken bout with boon white companions. Once, in his youth, Billy had seen a large black bear swimming across the river at that point, and had plunged in, and slain the audacious prowler, in mid stream, with his hunt- ing knife. Proud of this exploit, the old Indian, one winter day, insisted on show- ing a couple of visitors, with whom he had been drinking freely, how he had killed the bear. Against remonstrance, he plunged into the swirling current, laden with floating ice, and after whooping and floundering awhile in the antics of in- toxication, sank and was drowned in the act of killing an imaginary bear.5
After Harrison's victory of the Thames, in Canada, bands of Indians from the villages on the headwaters of the Scioto frequently came to Franklinton to trade with Lincoln Goodale, Starling & DeLashmutt, R. W. McCoy, Henry Brown, Samuel Barr, and other storekeepers, as the merchants were then called. These Indians brought furs, skins, baskets, maple sugar, cranberries, dry venison, and other articles, for which they would accept pay only in silver. Having obtained the coin, they bought ammunition, tobacco, knives, " squaw-axes, " "squaw-cloth " (broadcloth), pigments for tattooing, blankets, brightly colored calicoes, and finally a supply of whisky for the " high drunk " with which they usually closed their trading transactions. These orgies, in which the whole band participated except a few old men and women, who abstained to take care of the rest, were accom- panied with much singing, dancing, brawling and fighting. They no doubt con- tributed not a little to make Franklinton life interesting in a certain way.
During one of these trading expeditions, a massive Indian named Bill Zane, . while yet under the influence of his debauch, took offense at Mrs. Lucas Sullivant because of the accidental loosening of one of his bundles left at her residence, and was about to stab her with his hunting-knife when Mr. Sullivant rushed in, seized the savage by the throat, and hurled him out of doors. The marks of Zane's hunt- ing-kuife, with which he had angrily scratched the measure of a piece of calico on the chairboard, were for a long time preserved as family mementoes of this episode,6
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III.
Another adventure, curiously illustrative of the condition of the settlement and the spirit of the times is thus narrated :
In 1809, while some of Lucas Sullivant's workmen were plowing in the Dutch Prairie,7 "a nearly grown black bear came along very leisurely, without appar- ently being in the least disturbed by the immediate vicinity of the men and horses. One of the men, unbitching his horses, took a singletree, with a heavy tracechain attached, and mounting his horse, rode up alongside of the bear, and began thrashing him with the chain. The bear at first showed fight, but, wine- ing under the heavy blows, he started off at a lively pace, the man following, and with an occasional application of the tracechain finding little difficulty in driving bim in any direction he chose, and finally, in about a quarter of a mile, succeeded in guiding him right into the dooryard of the Mansion House, where he was im- mediately attacked by several dogs. A fierce battle ensued, in which the bear killed one of the dogs, and fought his way across the garden into the next lot, where he took refuge in the angle formed by the fence and house, and, protected in his rear, stood at bay. . .. A crowd of men and boys, with fresh dogs soon gathered, and a regular bearbaiting commenced.
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