USA > Ohio > Montgomery County > Memoirs of the Miami valley > Part 55
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The sawmills of old time long ago melted into the Sheets Manu- facturing company, which has of late been incorporated as the Ohio Spoke and Bending company, and maintains a large factory, and sawmills and warehouses which outstrip any industry of this nature in Shelby county at this date (1919). The Sheets Grain company have a large elevator from which they shipped, last year, between seventy and eighty carloads of oats, thirty-five to forty carloads of wheat, and ten carloads of corn, the latter grain being fed out to hogs in this country, and the third in volume as a local crop. At the Botkins Grain company elevator and mill, about 100,000 bushels of oats are handled annually, and 35,000 bushels of wheat. The mill produces daily twenty-five barrels of "Kitchen Queen" flour, and all varieties of feed and farmers' supplies and implements are han- dled, including seeds, coal, salt, fence posts, feeders, and tankage. The elevator is of early date, started at least fifty years ago, and owned by Smith, Hastings and others, being at present in the hands of a stock company, of which L. F. Hemmert is manager. Earl Woodell buys live-stock for Ed. S. McClure and ships from this point at least one carload weekly, the shipments being about evenly divided between cattle and hogs. Milk and poultry go to market in considerable quantities from Botkins over both steam and trac- tion roads. The retail business of the town is brisk. Sidewalks are good, and the streets well piked and kept oiled. Electric lighting is obtained from the Western Ohio lines. The Shelby County bank is noted in another sketch-also the Botkins Herald. The population of Botkins is easily seven hundred, and growing.
Anna is situated almost centrally in the wide expanse of wealthy farming country which characterizes Shelby county north of the Miami gorge. Land was first entered in this north territory in 1831, but the first settlers who arrived to stay were George Turner, Joseph Green and John Munch, in 1832. David Taylor, his wife and eight children came in 1834, Alfred Staley in 1833, and immigration fol- lowed rapidly from that time forward. The first schoolhouse was built in 1836, and stood on the corner of what became "Loramie cemetery," between Botkins and Anna. Its first teacher was Will- iam D. Johnston, the second, Wesley Shorts, and the third, Jonathan Counts. This was in the greased-paper window epoch of the dis- trict ; but in 1840 a second building, while similar, was lighted with real glass. William Wilson and E. T. Mede were early teachers there. The Beck schoolhouse, James Beck, teacher, was put up in 1844. Hewed logs, instead of round, came into vogue by this time, and in 1854 the state law provided better(schools at public expense.
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THE STORY OF SHELBY COUNTY
St. Lawrence Catholic church in this vicinity was established very early. Montra tileyards were established on the farm of William P. Davis, and were as near Anna as Montra. The town of Anna was platted by John L. Thirkield in 1867. Ten years later it was incorporated upon the petition of Abraham Clawson, F. S. Thirkield, Louis Kah, P. W. Young, J. D. Elliott and thirty-two others. The first mayor was L. Applegate. The old Toland elevator here was built in 1867 by John Thirkield, Toland being owner for the past thirty years. About 65,000 bushels of corn and oats are shipped out annually, these grains being the heaviest local crop, with some wheat. At the Anna Farmers' Exchange (or Co-operative company) elevator, the larger of the two, and built forty-five years ago, the shipment is somewhat larger, Anna being estimated as "a 125-car town."
The livestock shipments are important, H. Hemmert and Bil- lings Brothers of Anna being engaged in the business. From July 1, 1918, to July 1, 1919, 79 carloads of hogs and 33 of cattle went to market from Anna station on the B. & O. railroad.
Burden, Cook & Co. have a large sawmill and lumber plant, and ship an important quantity of milled lumber.
Anna is the prettiest town in the county today. It is rather quiet, and the well-chosen home of many retired farmers, who make it difficult to find a neglected spot between the two railroads which practically bound it on the east and west. "The young people go away," one of the inhabitants remarks, regretfully. But there are many more young folks growing up there and it is evidently a good place to start from. Its two churches are both well-filled on Sun- days. The Methodist, which is the older building of the two, holds open air service on the wide green sward south of the church on summer Sunday evenings. The Lutheran church, organized in 1832, has a beautiful edifice, built in 1907, with a seating capacity of one thousand, which is occasionally filled to the doors. The church surroundings are perfectly kept, and all the citizens take natural pride in its ornamental quality. Pretty homes and lovely lawns, shrubbery and flowers are characteristic of the village. The streets are neatly guttered and piked, and oil keeps down the dust. Paving is to begin in 1920. Electric lighting came with the traction rail- road, and a good town hall and fire department are maintained. The population is five hundred.
Swanders is only a few houses in the vicinity of the crossing of the B. & O. railroad and the pike, but has taken on importance as a grain shipping station, and a large elevator is maintained there, which ships as high an average as any that have been mentioned.
Of the villages projected in the west central portion of Shelby county, Northport and Cynthian never grew much farther than the paper plat, and are remembered chiefly because of the fine class of settlers in those parts, from which have risen a number of the county's most prominent citizens. William Mills bought, in 1825, the town plat of Cynthian-and it remained a farm. Basinburg was merely a light case of "plat" fever, which seemed to rage in the vicinity in 1839, only Newport surviving of them all. Churches are
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the better evidence of the actual life that pertains in all these settle- ments. The Cynthian Christian church, organized in 1833, by the families of Samuel Penrod and his neighbors the Shorts, Manns, Butts, and others, met in a log schoolhouse, and built a church on "Panther run" in 1851, at the point now called Oran, a postoffice being stationed there. A small community centres there, but it is scarcely a hamlet. The German Baptist or Dunkard sect organized in 1848, meeting at private homes, or in the Christian church, until 1866, when they were numerous enough to build the Loramie German Baptist church. The Methodists built at Newport, in 1873, having organized the year before through the efforts of Dr. Reaner and Mrs. Henry Sweigart.
Lockington, situated about eight or nine miles southwest of Sidney, was platted on the land of David Mellinger in 1837, its posi- tion, at the junction of the feeder canal with the main waterway, giving fair promise of future prosperity. Here was the highest point of the canal between its two extremities, the water being transferred, through a series of six locks, to a level sixty-seven feet below, and crossing over Loramie creek in an aqueduct. The water power attracted mills, and the year 1830 saw the first flouring mill erected, on the Loramie, by a man named Steinberger. A sawmill had pre- ceded it, at the same site, built by one Aldrich-a flood carrying it away. It was rebuilt and run in connection with the flour mill, and in 1837 John Brown added a woolen mill. Robert Ewing, a pur- chaser, built a new mill in 1844, after which the successive owners were D. K. Gillespie, John Johnston, John Fuller, and O. C. Horton. It was burned in 1872, but rebuilt by Rasor & Brother, and operated for a good many years, but it is now abandoned. In the town of Lockington a sawmill was erected by William Stephens in 1845. It afterward passed to Reed brothers, but was allowed to run down. Rasor & Brother bought the site in 1860 and built a new mill with feed milling attachment, but sold in 1873 to the Summit Paper Milling company, from whom it passed to the Baileys. It was oper- ated by water power, with turbine wheels. It was devoted by the Baileys to lumber milling, and the business for a long term of years was a large and prosperous one. The abandonment of the canal has changed the conditions which once bid fair to make a city of Lock- ington. However, it has remained an incorporated village, where a large elevator built by D. K. Gillespie, and now owned by C. N. Adlard, makes a shipping point over the Western Ohio for the grain of the district, and where public attention is once more turned in connection with the Conservancy dam which is being built across Loramie basin at this point. Anent the speculation, which is rife, concerning a possible occult purpose in the Conservancy program, is it-or is it not ?- of interest to quote from a historian of previous date, who wrote, forty years ago, "With the sixty-seven feet fall at this little town, water-power enough could be utilized almost to drive the industrial wheels of a world." A slight exaggeration, perhaps, but in the direction of truth.
Kirkwood, on the B. & O. railroad, at the east side of the Miami river, is another shipping point with a large grain elevator, which gives it local importance. It was platted under the name Pontiac,
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THE STORY OF SHELBY COUNTY
for the Gillespie & Robinson brothers, in 1868-9, and consisted of only nine lots. and probably a dozen houses are all that have been built there since, though the country around is well populated. It is, in fact, one of the oldest settled districts in the county, the Can- nons coming in 1806, and followed soon after by other familiar old names of Shelby county history. William Berry built the first frame house, and also the first flouring mill, the mill dating from before 1812, for it ground meal for Harrison's soldiers on their march to the northwest. A blockhouse stood near the mill for the protection of the settlers. Another stood near the home of Edward Jackson, who afterward built the first brick house of the district. Isaac, son of Thomas Young, who is credited with planting the first orchard, was the first white child born in this vicinity. The first schoolhouse was also built on his land. Preaching was heard as early as 1816, by missionaries of the United Brethren and the Methodist "persua- sions," in private cabins, log schoolhouses and, finally, in churches of their own, the United Brethren building first in 1847, on the land of R. W. Valentine-James Fergus being the builder, with the superin- tendence of the preacher, George Warvel. The Methodists organ- ized as early as 1832, but did not build a church until 1843, when a chapel was erected on the land of Israel Post. The society became known as "Orange chapel." Wesley chapel is the home of a Meth- odist society organized in 1833, who built a church of brick, close to the Miami county lines, the majority of the members belonging to Miami county. Spring Creek Baptist church was first known as Salem church, and dated from 1816. It was organized as an inde- pendent church in 1840, when their house of worship was still a log cabin on the bank of Spring creek. In 1842 a neat church was built on a lot loaned to the congregation, and in 1867 a more substantial one was built on a lot given to the church by John F. Hetzler, just north of the Miami county line. Kirkwood (as the village of Pontiac was renamed in 1879) was the second baptismal name of D. K. Gil- lespie, who bought the elevator there from its builder, G. W. Holley, and began buying grain in 1864. The elevator of the present day is owned by Adlard & Persinger, of Sidney, and is one of the most important in the county.
The southeastern part of Shelby county received its first settler in 1814, when Henry Sturm and family arrived and settled near where New Palestine was located later. With Mr. and Mrs. Sturm were their twelve children. Samuel Robinson, a son-in-law, fol- lowed in 1815, and the Medaris brothers, John R. and Abraham, came in 1817. Other very early names of this vicinity were Ells- worth, Princehouse, Tuttle and Richardson, Larue, Frazier, Kizer and Apple. John Platt, John Dickinsheets, Dr. John C. Leedom and many others came between 1830 and 1845. Dr. Pratt spent one year in the settlement, about 1820, and was followed by Dr. Little. John Medaris built the first brick house in 1824, near Plattsville, and also erected the first mill, a "corn cracker"; and William Ellsworth, Abraham Medaris, and Samuel Robinson all built sawmills on Leatherwood creek, which were operated by water-power. In 1854 the Hageman brothers' steam sawmill was built near Plattsville, and in 1865 John Sargent and John Neal built one on the Sturm farm
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near Palestine. The Harbaugh portable sawmill, which made its advent in 1879, did an extensive business for years.
Salem Methodist church was organized in 1825, and worshiped in a log church until 1840, when it disbanded, part of the members going to form the society of Charity Chapel Methodist Protestant church, which, after twenty-five years or so, also faded out of exist- ence, part of the membership going into the Charity Chapel Christian church, and building a new church in 1878, near the old chapel. The Spring Creek Christian church was organized in 1851 by J. T. Hunt and James Skillen, with a membership of sixty-one, in which were included all the Sanders and many others, among whom the names of Hall, Heninan, Cramer, Sherwood, Williams, Luseney and Wiles are preserved. Their first chapel was built in 1852, and a second, larger, in 1868. In New Palestine the present church of the "Chris- tian" denomination was built in 1881, and is the dominating congre- gation of the district.
Plattsville, laid out on the Medaris land in 1844, and New Pal- estine, planned for Ephraim Davidson in 1832, are still too small to aspire to the title of village, but nevertheless are social centres of local population, with flourishing lodges; and each of them also a church centre for the surrounding country. Plattsville has two churches, the Methodist Episcopal, once known as Antioch M. E. church, and the Universalist, which was organized in 1877.
Ballou was never more than a name, and Tawawa was the now abandoned name of the postoffice, only, at Palestine. The south- eastern corner of Shelby county experienced the same historic tor- nado recorded in Logan county about 1825, but the storm had not gathered its full intensity until farther east, and few settlers in Shelby were affected by it.
Pasco is the name of a rural settlement east of Sidney, where is located the Gold Coin flouring mills, and near which is a well kept cemetery, one of the oldest in Shelby county.
A point of interest in the natural features of Shelby is the great boulder which from time immemorial has stood, curiously isolated, in the heart of a pretty ravine about two miles east of Sidney. It is estimated to be the largest single boulder in Ohio.
"What's in a name?"
There are more than a score of Sidneys in the United States. The majority of them derive the name from the same source as Sidney, Ohio, but through different channels. Out of many thou- sands of English boys who have been christened Sidney at the bap- tismal font, many of them emigrated to America, bringing with them the traditional veneration, in which they had been trained, toward the great English poet, knight and statesman, Sir Philip Sidney, proclaimed "the father of English literary criticism" by the scholars of succeeding centuries. It was in Sir Philip's honor that his name- sake, Charles Sidney Starrett, donor of the town plat, affixed the name of Sidney thereto.
If Sidney has grown up into a bustling manufacturing town instead of developing slowly into a lovely pastoral village, with libraries and a college-a seat of learning as well as of justice-it has done no more violence to the name of Sidney than many a George
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THE STORY OF SHELBY COUNTY
Washington, or Thomas Jefferson, or Rose, or Lily, has done to those hopeful titles.
Sidney was not "carved out of the heart of a forest," as has been truly said of many frontier towns. The seventy acres were a thor- oughly cleared and cultivated farm, said to have been first planted to corn in 1809 by William Stewart. No wolf or deer was ever shot in the public square. The original plat included fifteen blocks, the northern border of the town being North lane, and the southern boundary what is now Water street. West lane, now broadened into an avenue, marked the western limit, and Miami avenue and East lane that on the east. These narrow confines seemed the horizon line, apparently, at that date. The plat occupied the second rise of land in the bowl of the valley, well above the flood line of the bottoms. But it long ago burst out of this little strait jacket in the hollow of the river's arm, where its infancy was spent, and, climbing the hills, spreads itself to north and west, as the future beckons it.
Dingmansburg, on the east heights across the Miami river, was already a name and a mail route station between Chillicothe and the northwest, before Sidney was summoned into existence. It was the location of the numerous family whose name has clung to it for a century, the new name, East Sidney, never having effaced the identity of the older hamlet. It has maintained a separate existence for nearly a century, fed by accessions from the Sidney population ; but now, in 1919, its citizens have petitioned to be taken into the city, and given a share in the public utilities and the maintenance thereof.
The well advertised original sale of lots in the new county seat took place in the spring of 1820, attracting the attention, among many others, of John Blake, who was then a late arrival from Eng- land, having come with his wife and eight children to find a new home in the United States. En route to Sidney, the Blakes met Thomas English, also from England, who was persuaded to accom- pany them and undertake the building of a home, when a lot had been purchased. Mr. English, being a builder, accepted the propo- sition, and arriving at the sale himself invested in real estate and became a Sidney pioneer. Mr. Blake is credited with having been the first man to purchase a lot. If he was not that, he was, at all events, the first home builder of the newcomers. The Blakes moved into a small log house already standing, which may possibly have been the little block house of 1812, but this is not definitely known.
Mr. English sawed the lumber for the new house, and with the assistance of Elisha Montaney erected the building, which stood immediately east of the alley on the north side of the public square. When finished, the big house was said to be "the finest house in half a day's travel." In it, September 11, 1820, was born William Bar- tholomew Blake, the first Blake and doubtless the first white child born in Sidney. In December of the same year, Mr. Blake secured a license "to vend merchandise" in Sidney, and until April, 1823, when Jesse Bryan was licensed, this was the only store in the settle- ment. Amos Evans also began "keeping store" at his house in October, 1823. But in the meantime, Mr. Blake had been licensed in September, 1821, to keep a tavern in his house. This was followed
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by a similar license to Francis Kendall in November, 1822; atter which no other tavern was licensed in Sidney until May, 1830, when Abraham Cannon secured a license to open his house for tavern purposes.
The growth of the town was rather slow. There does not appear at any time to have been a rush of settlers to the county seat, but rather a steady tide (among whose names are many already noted as pioneers) that gradually filled the town. Building was generally of wood, but not of logs. There is little or no tradition of log houses here. Brick was not used for several years after the town began, but when it appeared it met with popular favor. Brick structures of the '20s are still standing in Sidney.
Values in town lots seem to have varied greatly with the loca- tion. John Carey paid $125 for his lot facing the public square, in 1820. The lot on Miami avenue, where the Methodists built their first church, brought the town director only sixteen dollars ten years later,-but possibly the fact that it was for church purposes had to do with the low figure. Glances at the development of the community as shown in other sketches will show that whatever the difficulties of building and choosing sites had been, there was gathered before 1830 a fair sized community of citizens of charac- ter and steadfast purpose. The crudeness of 1820 and the ensuing few years was wearing off. It is not probable that the court records of 1830 show twelve cases of assault and battery out of thirty-six for the term, as in September, 1821. Since cases of disagreement had to be settled in court at last, more of them were taken there first. Civilizing influences of church and lodge were gaining the ascendancy.
John Blake, pioneer householder, tavern keeper and merchant, engaged in buying and selling horses soon after settling in Sidney, and in 1826, on his return from the south whither he had taken a herd of fifty horses, he was waylaid and murdered for the money which he carried, and the family, the eldest of whom were hardly grown, were left fatherless. However, they were a numerous flock, and the race survived, the name of Blake being still numerous in Sidney, while the daughters, who married well-known young pioneer citizens, have left many descendants of other surname. One became the wife of Sheriff Kennard, and their daughter, Mary Blake Kennard, was the only child ever born on the public square, notwithstanding the sheriffs of more than half a century had their homes in the official residence adjacent to the jail. (Miss Kennard became Mrs. Henderson.) Ann Blake married Dr. H. S. Conklin, and Elizabeth Blake, who was a native of Sidney, married Robert Fry, and was the mother of Mrs. John Edgar and Mrs. E. W. Bing- ham. Thomas Blake, who was only five years of age when the family came to Sidney, married Ruth Ann Robinson, daughter of a pioneer citizen. Their one surviving son is Hamlin B. Blake, who was born in a home two blacks from the northwest corner of the square and at his marriage moved to a home two blocks from the northeast corner of the square, where he has resided ever since. Two sons, W. R. and G. Thaleon Blake, are expert civil engineers, and a grand- son, Eugene Blake, is at present city engineer of Sidney. Other
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THE STORY OF SHELBY COUNTY
branches of the Blakes are still represented, Mr. O. Buck Blake, now aged eighty-seven, being the oldest living native of the city. The Blake family continued to operate the tavern until 1831, when it was purchased by John W. Carey, a son of Cephas Carey of Hardin. Mr. Carey enlarged the house and added a story, blazoned the name National Hotel across the front, and opened it to the traveling public. It attained some celebrity, and is shown in Howe's Historical Collections, the illustration being made in 1846,-when it was still the principal hotel in Sidney, notwithstanding it had several ambitious rivals. Of all the frame buildings on the square the old tavern was perhaps the only one to stand out its days on the lot where it was built, others being removed bodily to make room for brick construction which came on with the approach of the canal, when Sidney began to dream of being a city some day. The tavern, a tavern no longer, was torn down in 1882, to make way for the erection of the first Thedieck brothers' big store (burned in 1914 and rebuilt in the same place ; now the finest commercial build- ing in Shelby county). At this time, among other sentiments ex- pressed, the Shelby County Democrat said: "The science of the beautiful declares the old building must go-though its timbers are dry and hard enough to withstand the elements for many years to come." All of which was true, but if the "science of the beautiful" is not asleep in some enchanted palace a long way from Sidney, the time is ripe for a similar declaration regarding a large number of the buildings still facing the public square in the Year of Grace, 1919.
The old building at the northwest corner of the square, once heralded as "The Sign of the Stage Coach," though built of brick, and added to and upon during the thirties, is one of the survivals, which though substantial, is not ornamental. It is said, concerning this and other relics of the same era, that they were sought to be condemned as "unsafe" as early as the fifties; but after sixty-five years all are "still going strong." The first three-story building in Sidney is that which at present houses the popular Voiretta cafeteria on the ground floor. It was erected in the thirties by Guy C. Kelsey, and has survived many shocks of time and attacks of public safety boards, being now owned by W. K. Sterline, and Harriet and Fernande Kelsey, descendants of the builder. Tradition says that people came from miles around to gaze upon the wonder of its tower- ing height. It was somewhat dwarfed, however, when the Philip Montanus building went up on the east side of the square in 1839.
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