History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 39

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1202

USA > Ohio > Franklin County > Columbus > History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I > Part 39

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Wild deer were often seen in the vicinity of the borough. They sometimes approached the cornfields near Franklinton, and loved to linger in the woods where now rise the monuments of Green Lawn Cemetery. When the first trees were cut down in the Capitol Square, these meekeyed creatures came to browse upon their branches. Jonathan Neereamer, a Councilman of the borongh, frequent- ly shot deer in the forest which covered the territory now known as East Park Place. His son tells the writer that he killed one on the ground contiguous to

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Broad Street, north side, east of Garfield Avenue. In Jannary, 1825, John Otstot, as he informs the writer, saw five deer feeding together near the old cemetery, on Livingston Avenue. These were the last deer seen by Mr. Otstot in the neighbor- hood of Columbus. In the year 1835 he killed one in the Nine Mile Woods, near Dublin. Mr. John Barr informed the writer that deer were seen between Alum Creek and the Big Walnut as late as 1845. On November 13, 1855, Mr. William Neil saw two wild deer in his woods two miles north of the city.4 A buck's horn was unearthed six feet below the surface during the excavation for the water- works building in 1871.5 Judge Christian Heyl relates in his autobiography the following incident :

Peter Putnam, one of the first settlers of Columbus, went out hunting one day, and shot an old buck, but when he approached the fallen animal to cut its throat it gave a kick with its hind legs which knocked the knife out of old Peter's hand, then sprang up and gave him fight. Putnam retreated behind a convenient tree followed by the enraged buck, which kept him dancing around that tree for some time. Finally the huck drew off and disappeared, giving Peter an opportunity to hunt for his knife, which, however, he was unable to find. He went home without game or knife, altogether chopfallen.

" The hunting or killing of deer," say, Martin, " was successfully practiced by candle- or torchlight, at night, on the river. The deer, in warm weather, would come into the river after night, to eat a kind of water grass that grew in the stream, and the hunters, by taking a canoe, and a bright light in it, could let it float down the stream, and the light appeared to blind the deer until they could float near to them, and shoot them with ease."

So numerous and mischievous were the squirrels of the early Ohio woods as to become, like the wolves, a subject of legislative persecution. A statute passed December 24, 1807, contained these curious provisions :

SECTION 1. That each and every person within this State who is subject to the payment of a county tax, shall, in addition thereto, produce to the clerk of the township in which he may reside, such number of squirrel scalps as the trustees shall, at their annual meeting, apportion in proportion to their county levies, provided it does not exceed one hundred nor less than ten.

SECTION 2. That the trustees shall, at their annual meeting, make out an accurate state- ment of the number of squirrel scalps each person has to produce, which list or statement shall be given to the lister of personal property, who shall, at the time he takes in the returns of chattel property, notify each person of the number of squirrel scalps which he had to furnish.

Section three levies a fine of three cents for each scalp short, and provides a bounty of two cents for each one in excess of the number required. Section four makes it the duty of the Township Clerk to receive the scalps and destroy them by burning, or otherwise.

The grounds for this statute, and the facility with which its requirements were met, are indicated in the following passage from the diary of Joel Buttles :

The grey and black squirrels were sometimes so numerous as to cause much destruction to the corn crop, men with dogs and guns not being able to protect it. At one time I knew sixty- seven killed off of one tree; but this tree stood in the midst of a cornfield into which the squirrels from the surrounding woods had gathered to feed upon the corn. When the dogs were sent into the corn, the squirrels retreated as best they could, getting up the first tree they could reach. I

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have known boys to go to the river in the morning and kill as many squirrels with clubs as they could carry home, in half an hour. This is explained by the fact that, in the fall season of the year, this squirrel seems to be migrating, and all over the country travelling in some particular direction.

Mr. Joseph Sullivant believed that these migrations were caused, in part, by the restlessness of the little animals produced from the torments of a grub which lodged itself under their skin.

John M. Kerr avers that while the migratory squirrels were swimming the Scioto, just below the mouth of the Whetstone, he has often waded into the stream and killed, in a few minutes, as many squirrels as he could carry home.

The Columbus Gazette of April 25, 1822, says: "On Friday and Saturday last, there were about nine thousand squirrels killed in this county, near five thousand of which were killed in this immediate vicinity."

The same paper of August 29, 1822, contains the following account of the prep- arations for a " grand squirrel hunt," which has deservedly conspienous mention in all the early chronicles of the borough :

The squirrels are becoming so numerous in this county as to threaten serious injury if not destruction to the hopes of the farmer during the ensuing fall. Much good might be done by a general turn out of all citizens, whose convenience will permit, for two or three days, in order to prevent the alarming ravages of those mischievous neighbors. It is there- fore respectfully submitted to the different townships, each to meet and choose two or three of their citizens to meet in a hunting caucus at the house of Christian Heyl, on Saturday the thirtyfirst instant, at two o'clock P. M. Should the time above stated prove too short for the townships to hold meetings as above recommended, the following persons are respectfully nominated, and invited to attend the meeting at Columbus :

Montgomery, Jeremiah McLene and Edward Livingston ; Hamilton, George W. Williams and Andrew Dull ; Madison, Nicholas Goetschius and W. H. Richardson ; Truro, Abiathar V. Taylor and John Hanson ; Jefferson, John Edgar and Elias Ogden ; Plain, Thomas B. Patterson and Jonathan Whitehead : Harrison, F. C. Ohnsted and Captain Bishop; Sharon, Matthew Matthews and Bulkley Comstock; Perry, Griffith Thomas and William Mickey ; Washington, Peter Sells and Uriah Clark ; Norwich, Robert Elliott and Alanson Perry ; Clinton, Colonel Cook and Samuel Henderson ; Franklin, John McElvain and Lewis Williams ; Prairie, John Hunter and Jacob Neff; Pleasant, James Gardner and Renben Golliday ; Jackson, Woolery Conrad and Nicholas Hoover ; Mifflin, Adam Reed, and William Dalzell.

In ease any township should be nnrepresented in the meeting, those present will take the liberty of nominating suitable persons for said absent township.

SAMUEL G. FLENNIKEN.

LUCAS SULLIVANT. . RALPHI OSBORN. GUSTAVUS SWAN. JOHN A. MCDOWELL. C. HEYL.

The meeting held pursuant to the foregoing call was well attended, and adopted a series of resolutions dividing the county, for the hunt, into two districts, viz .: 1, All east of the Scioto "south of the mouth of the Whetstone and east of' the Whetstone River ;" 2, "all west of said boundary." A field marshal was appointed for each district, Lucas Sullivant for the first and Ralph Osborn for the second. It was arranged that the hunters should meet and the scalps be counted on the west side of the Scioto, opposite the mouth of the Whetstone, " the scalps to be given in upon the honor of the hunters." A match was arranged between the distriets, and stakes provided for as follows :

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Resolved, That for the purpose of proper refreshments, and to encourage attention to so desirable an object, the hunt shall be for one barrel of whiskey.

The days appointed for the chase were Saturday, Monday and Tuesday, September 7, 9 and 10. The Gazette of September 12, 1822, thus announces the result :

The hunt was conducted agreeably to the instructions in our last paper. On counting the scalps, it appeared that nineteen thousand six hundred and sixty scalps were produced. It is impossible to say what number in all were killed, as a great many of the hunters did come not in.

The count showed a majority of five or six thousand scalps in favor of the western district.

According to Doctor Kirtland, wild turkeys were at one time more numerous in Ohio than tame ones are now. They were partial to the Central Ohio woods, and to none more so than those around Columbus. . Attracted by the neighboring cornfields they frequently ventured close to the borough. One morning while the door was open at the Merion domicile, says Mrs. Stewart, " the dog ehased a wild turkey into the house, and it took refuge on the bed, where it was caught. It weighed twenty pounds." A citizen now living assures the writer that he has shot a great many wild turkeys between Parsons Avenue and Franklin Park. Mr. John Otstot says he saw a flock of twenty or more near the present Asylum for the Insane in 1829 or 1830. On another occasion a flock alighted in a West Side cornfield, just north of the present State Street Bridge. They were fired on by sportsmen whose attention they attracted, and seattered in a panic. Several of the bewildered birds flew towards the town, and one of them, striking a building, was so injured by the shock as to be easily captured. The nest of the wild turkey was made upon the ground, and nsually contained ten or fifteen eggs which were of buff or cream color, with blotches of dark umber-brown.

Quails in large numbers frequented the cornfields near Franklinton. John M. Kerr tells the writer that he has often had good success in shooting them there.

Wild ducks made bold to swim in the ponds in and about the borough. Har- rison Armstrong says he has seen them visit the Hoskins Pond, where the Fourth Street Markethouse stands, and that he has shot them there from a neighboring log stable. Another citizen informs the writer that he has shot wild ducks on a pond just east of Grant Avenne, on the grounds of the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb.

Wild geese frequently made their diurnal and nocturnal flights over the borough, and bluebirds and nuthatches merrily chirrnped the approach of spring in the neighboring thickets. Flocks of blackbirds chattered noisily in the environs of the borough and the early city. For many years, during the city period, a numerous and noisy family of swallows inhabited the cornices of the Fourth Street Markethouse.6

The species of house swallow commonly known as the martin was an inhabi- tant or rather a guest of the borough, invited and entertained by special arrange- ments for his comfort. During the twenties and early thirties, nearly every door- yard in town had its martinbox nailed to a tree, or erected on a pole. The unsightliness of these boxes, and the chatter and insolence of their legionary occupants, impelled some one to write as follows, September 22, 1831, to the Ohio State Journal:

Theram Leonardo

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I certainly do not know of any other way in which so much additional beauty may be given to Columbus at so little expense, as by merely taking down the martinboxes. The Martin is a savage bird, beyond all question, and to retain him among us may justly be con- sidered as a badge of barbarism, for we find that the Indians have always been fond of him. It is doubtless an amusement to them to see him everlastingly engaged in warfare with all other birds. We are told by Wilson that the Choctaws and Chickasaws cut off all the top branches from a sapling near their cabins, leaving the prongs a foot or two in length, and hang on each one a gourd or calabash hollowed out for their convenience. Wilson adds that " on the banks of the Mississippi, the negroes stick up long canes with the same species of apartment fixed to their tops, in which the martins regularly breed."

The writer goes on to condemn the martin as unlovely, noisy and a vicious perseeutor of other and better birds. Yet this winged villager, whatever enmities his pugnacity evoked, no doubt had qualtities which made him both a welcome and useful visitant in those days, and which contributed to the animation of bor- ongh life. Doctor Wheaton thus deseribes, in his report, the evening scenes around the village haunts of the martins :

After the breeding season is over, these birds congregate towards night in large flocks, and having selected a suitable cornice on some high building, make preparations for spend- ing the night. The retiring ceremony is very complicated and formal, to judge from the num- ber of times they alight and rise again, all the while keeping up a noisy chatter. It is not until twilight deepens into evening that all are huddled together in silence and slumber, and their slumbers are often disturbed by some youngster who falls out of bed, amid the derisive laughter of his neighbors, which is changed to petulant scolding as he elambers over them to his perch, tumbling others down. All at once the scene of last night's disturbance is quiet and deserted, for the birds have flown to unknown southern lands, where they find less crowded beds, and shorter, warmer nights.7

Apropos of the martins the following paragraph from the Ohio State Journal of July 25, 1859, may here be reproduced :

Just before the city council met, a large, beautiful martin flew in through an open window, and after circling about the ceiling a few moments rested upon the frame of the lifesize and lifelike painting of Dr. Goodale, just above the President's head. There sat the beautiful bird nodding approvingly to the action of the council, and blinking with suspicious eye.

The floeks and flights of pigeons in the Central Ohio woods were phenomenal. These birds were accustomed to alight in great numbers, amid the Franklinton cornfields, and were sometimes taken by traps in the immediate vicinity of the Columbus borough. A citizen informs the writer that he used to set his traps for them at the present corner of Town and Fourth streets. The flights of these birds over the town were sometimes marvelous to behold. In 1835 or 1836 their numbers on the wing were so great as to fairly darken the sky for half a day at a time. Their general course was from west to east, probably in the direction of their grand roostingplace near Kirkersville, Licking County. The height at which they soared placed them beyond the reach of firearms.

Wild pigeons were plentiful in the woods about Columbus in the spring of 1852 and autumn of 1853 and 1854; in March, 1856, they flew over the city in myriads. In the Ohio State Journal of February 24, 1860, we find these state- ments :

The number of wild pigeons caught in the country the past few days is almost incredi- ble. We noticed on the streets the other day three wagon loads of the blue-winged birds, all

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canght by one company of trappers. The city market is flooded with them, all fat and in good condition for the table. They sell here for fifty cents a dozen, and thousands are shipped to the cast where $1.25 and $1.50 a dozen is readily given for them.

The same paper of March 7, 1861, says :

Wild pigeons made their appearance in this locality as early as the nineteenth of Jan- uary, and thousands of them have been taken with nets, sold in our market, and shipped to the eastern cities. From January 19 to April 6 there have been shipped by the American and Adams Express companies from this point four hundred and three barrels [a total of 161,200 birds]. About one third of that amount were dressed, one barrel containing four hundred pigeons.

In 1869 the birds were again plentiful, and in March, 1870, their flights over the city were immense. The price at which they were sold in the Columbus market in 1870 was as low as sixty and seventy cents per dozen.

Of the night birds which infested the unregenerate forests about the borough mention is rarely made, but we may well believe that the mottled owl, common in this region, habitually intoned in the midnight woods " its wailing screech." In 1846 a fine specimen of the snowy owl - head snowwhite and body same with black spots - was captured nine miles west of the city. In June, 1870, a large gray hawk settled down upon one of the trees in the Capitol Square. The perching of a transient flock of parroquets on a tree in the same neighborhood in July, 1862, has already been noted. During the years next preceding the borough period par- roquets were occasionally seen in the woods of the neighborhood. A gray eagle, which measured six feet from tip to tip was shot near Green Lawn Cemetery May 10, 1859. Another bird of the same species which had gorged itself with young lambs, was caught four miles south of London, Madison County, February 22, 1856. The eagle's nest at Marble Cliffs in the early part of this century has been referred to in a preceding chapter. The Ohio State Journal of April 25, 1860, contains the following curious record :

During the recent boisterous weather, when a strong wind from the lake was blowing, several lake fowls were conveyed inland, and when no longer able to combat the elements, dropped throughout the country. A beautiful large loon was deposited alive within the enclosure of the Penitentiary, captured, killed, and now Doctor Hamilton has it stuffed and placed in the rooms of the Columbus Scientific Association. Another loon was lodged in the steeple of the Holy Cross Church, where it died. A large cormorant, as big as a hen, fell on the farm of Mr. Price, in Gahannah ; also a longbilled lakehird, name not known. These latter fowls were brought to Secretary Klippart, who has had them stuffed, and will preserve them as mementoes of the storm.

During the period of the Civil War - 1861-1865 - the quantity of game of all kinds in the forests of Central Ohio considerably increased, owing to the absence of the practised hunters, and the absorbed attention of the people.

The finned inhabitants of the primitive Franklin County waters have been less copiously chronicled than the feathered inhabitants of the air, yet the local historian is confronted with some fish stories of considerable magnitude. To be- gin with, a citizen whose memory goes back to the twenties has personal recol- lection of " a peculiar fish, about four feet long, weighing fifteen or sixteen pounds, and possessed of a long snout in the form of a spatula," which, once upon a time, long, long ago, was taken at Billy's Hole in the Scioto. [The writer may here re-

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mark that, for want of space, it is scarcely possible to record all of the wonderful things which are said to have happened at Billy's Hole. ]

Mr. John Otstot says: "The fish known as redhorse was caught in the Scioto with a brush drag, made by tying brush together with grapevines. This drag, with some men standing on it, was drawn along the bed of the river, driving the fish before it. The fish were taken in this way in great numbers, some being entangled in the brush, Among the redhorse captured were specimens three feet long. Suckers, catfish, gars and waterdogs were also taken. The fish caught were laid in heaps which were distributed by asking a blindfolded man who should , take this one - and this." Every little stream, continues Mr. Olstot, was in carly times " full of fish."8

Several black bass weighing from three to four pounds each, and two blue catfish, were caught in the Scioto in October, 1854.9 Mr. Moler caught a catfish weighing over thirty pounds in the same stream June 16, 1855.10 In June, 1857, a catfish weighing fortytwo pounds was caught in the river two miles below the city. There are probably local anglers living who can tell of fish still larger than this caught in the Franklin County waters, but a historian feels bound to keep within the horizon of his information.

In 1875, seventyfive thousand young shad from the Rochester, New York, hatchery, were deposited in the Whetstone just above the Waterworks. Hon. John H. Klippart, under whose supervision this deposit was made, informed the writer that these fish would annually descend to the Mississippi River, and, if undisturbed, regularly return, in season, to their spawning grounds in the Whet- stone.

In June, 1876, nearly eighty thousand young shad from the hatchery of the United States Fish Commission on the Delaware River were deposited in the Scioto. During the same month and year Secretary Klippart made a shipment of live fish from the Scioto River to the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia. After Mr. Klippart had stocked the Whetstone and Scioto with shad, the annual return of the fish was much hindered by the dams in the Scioto, but fish weighing from one to five pounds each, resulting from his deposits, were taken from the river in 1883.

In the way of snake stories the chronicles of the borough period show nothing to surpass, in lively interest, that told by Mr. Joseph Sullivant of the rattlesnake den at Marble Cliffs. It has already been repeated in a preceding chapter. With a single other story illustrative of the prevalence of snakes in the early woods around Columbus, the subject may be relegated to the imagination of the reader. It runs as follows :

In very early times, it was a custom along the Scioto bottoms, for the pioneer farmers to turn their horses out to graze in the limitless forest, the natural growth of "woods pasture " being very luxuriant. John C. - , the founder of one of the first families of the Buckeye State, had brought out to the Wild West, besides a beautiful young wife, what was almost equally valued by an enterprising Virginia emigrant, two or three very fine blooded horses. After tethering them about his cabin long enough, as he fondly supposed, to insure their return home, he turned them out to "range." They stayed away two or three days. The owner began to fear the pickings might prove so abundant that he would lose his " impo'ted stawk fo'eve'." Forth he started on the search, provided with bridles, and a very long black hairrope halter.

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Among the terrors to the newcomers of that day were many awful stories of large snakes - copperbeads, blacksnakes, rattlesnakes and divers other reptiles, the very enumeration of which makes one's flesh creep. Our friend hunted long and faithfully, prolonging the weary task late in the night. It was moonlight, early in the fall of the leaf. The poor fellow, nearly discouraged by not having discovered a single trace of his beloved horses, was sad of spirit. He felt lonely and nervous. He began to think of the serpents and did not know what moment be might put his aching foot into the very coil of some dreaded monster. He had thrown his bridles and the rope halter over his shoulder. Passing over a heap of dry leaves, he heard an ominous rustle. Hastily casting his eye behind him, sure enough ! there was the enormous blacksnake right at his heels. Instantly John broke off at his best speed. Soon he glanced back to see if the danger was over, when there ran the serpent as close as ever. He wondered at its rapidity in running, and endeavored to outdo himself. He now passed a small stream and the rustling ceased. Thinking he had left the reptile safely in the rear, he sat down on a log to rest his tired limbs.

He resumed his way, and soon, as he crossed another pile of leaves, the rustling was heard again ; again he looked back, and there was another, if not the same serpent, as large as the first, and nearly as close to his legs. Off he started again as fast as possible, and still more frightened. Ever and anon John would look back but there was the snake still in hot pursuit. John was ready to drop with fear and fatigue. At last, while his head turned to the rear to see if he had yet made good his escape, he ran against a huge log, and in ntter exhaustion fell flat on the other side. Concluding it was all up now he exclaimed : " Well, then, just bite and be d-d!" Wondering why he was not bitten, while thus in the pur- suer's power, he rose cantionsly to a sitting posture, and found instead of a snake, bis black hair halter innocently coiled at his side, which he had mistaken for the great enemy. It was a snake humbug.11

NOTES.

1. In 1839, Mr. Alfred Kelley, then residing on East Broad Street, published the fol- lowing " Notice to Sportsmen :"

"All persons, whether men or boys, are warned not to come into any of my fields or on my premises, near the city of Columbus, with guus. Having this day had several panels of fence and a large patch of grass burned in consequence of wads on fire, being carelessly shot into dry stumps or grass, I am resolved to put a stop to the practice of shooting on my prem- ises, and if this warning fails to accomplish the object, I shall resort to more effectnal measures.

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History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 39

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co Publication date: 1892 Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co. Number of Pages: 1202

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1202