USA > Ohio > Ross County > Chillicothe > Ohio centennial anniversary celebration at Chillicothe, May 20-21, 1903 : under the auspices of the Ohio State Archaelogical and Historical Society : complete proceedings > Part 49
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Those who first settled here were largely of the independent classes of the communities from which they came. Their average intelligence was probably superior to that of any European state. "Few were uninstructed; few were learned." Among them none was very poor ; none very rich. Patents of nobility and the serf- dom of a peasant class were equally unknown.
Ohio being the most westerly of the eastern states and the most easterly of the western states, the abundance and variety of her natural resources were such as to fix the choice of the most desirable emigrants on this soil, so that we had the selection of the best from the oncoming tide that swept athwart the continent.
The instinct of the buffalo directed his migration to the points of least resistance, in crossing the mountain ranges from the East. The wisdom of these selections was confirmed by the sagacity of the savage and later by the science of the engineer. Over these trails came the pioneers and Washington's early en- gineering was one of his greatest contributions to the conquest of Ohio.
Scotch-Irish, Cavalier, Puritan, nor Huguenot could have been drawn thither to become the subjects of France, so that the shot fired by Washington in the Pennsylvania forest a third of a century before the Marietta settlement was the opening of the contest which made that settlement and the settlement of Ohio possible, for the destruction of the French power in the Ohio Val- ley was the keynote of the glorious epic of our history.
These influences, which for want of space, I have little more- than hinted at, are what have contributed to the evolution of the Ohio man. The product of that evolution has won his way in every department of human activity; in science, in art, in liter- ature, in adventure, in discovery, in invention, in politics, in education, and in spiritual warfare, not only here at home but in:
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distant lands against the strongholds of superstition and unright- eousness.
I have met him in all the various occupations and positions of life from the Executive Mansion to the Dakota "shack ;" from the general of the army to the private soldier pacing his lonely beat on the far Pacific; and have found him for the most part aggressive, self-reliant, self-respecting, patriotic, loyal to his state and proud of his birthright.
It is an interesting fact that the great event which seemed the ripe fruition of a thousand years of struggle, the adoption of our Federal Constitution was coeval with the first white settle- ment in Ohio. Then the United States for the first time could be said to exist as a people, to have acquired a name and a unity as a government and assumed its place among the nations. Then it was that these magnificent valleys and forests and uplands cried aloud to the new civilization that the time was ripe for the com- ing of their legitimate occupants. And at once this territory became the great central way station, so to speak, in the rapid, but triumphal march of that civilization athwart the continent, which, beginning at Jamestown and Plymouth early in the 17th century, now, at the opening of the 20th century, has plumed itself for a further and bolder flight westward from the vantage ground of the Pacific slope.
So rapid was the movement that, whereas a few years before the admission of Ohio into the Union the center of population was at tide water at Baltimore, only forty years later it was here at the "Ancient Metropolis" where we meet to-day.
The East heard that cry and realizing that these lands be- longed to the first comer who had the courage and enterprise to occupy them, that they were to be the rich reward of the most fleet-footed pioneer and that no human power could close a fertile wilderness which offered such abundant resources to all industries and such a sure refuge from all want, the human tide began to flow in this direction.
Following what a recent author calls the "Historic High- ways," marked out by the buffalo and the redman, across moun- tain and moor, came the tread of the emigrant which was the great incident of our history for the next quarter of a century.
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In 1790 there were 4,200 white people between the western boundary of Pennsylvania and the Mississippi River. At the second census, in 1800, Ohio alone had a population of 45,365, which was increased in the next two years to 230,000, and in 1816 it was estimated at 400,000. In 1820 it was 580,000, and the state had advanced from the eighteenth in rank to the fourth.
In the East dull times, the coast blockade, taxes and a dis- ordered currency so accelerated the tide of emigration in this direction that the exodus became alarming. One hundred moving families crossed the Muskingum at Zanesville in a day says a historian of that time. Measures were taken in some of the sea- board states, notably Virginia and North Carolina, to stop the rapid depletion of their population by legislation, but nothing came of it, and the tide was unceasing.
At first the immigration was attracted to certain points of original settlement, of which there were five in the state, and all by persons of different antecedents. At Marietta, the first white settlements, the pioneers were from Massachusetts and other New England states. For the most part they were the descendants of the English Protestant pioneers who came to our shores in search of religious freedom. Devout to a degree, when "they first landed they fell upon their knees, and, that pious duty performed, they fell upon the aborigines." In the century and a half between their landing and the settlement of their descendants in Ohio, they had drawn widely apart from the Virginia and other colonies and had acquired an individualism all their own.
At Cincinnati, on what was known as the "Symmes Pur- chase," lying between the Great and Little Miami Rivers, the pioneers were chiefly from New Jersey, with a mixture of Hugue- not, Swedish, Holland and English blood.
In the Virginia Military District, extending from the Scioto to the Little Miami Rivers with its centre at Chillicothe, the first settlers were principally from Virginia and were of English line- age with a mixture of Norman and Cavalier.
On the "Seven Ranges," so called, being the first of the sur- veys and sales of public 'lands in Ohio, the first settlers were prin- cipally from Pennsylvania, some of Quaker stock, introduced
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by William Penn, others of Dutch, Irish, Scotch and Scotch-Irish stock.
On the Western Reserve they were from Connecticut with centre at Cleveland.
West of the "Seven Ranges" to the Scioto River and south of the Greenville Treaty line was the United States Military Reservation where the first settlers were holders of bounty land warrants for military service and they came from all the original states and from beyond the sea.
Knowledge of the Ohio country was general in the colonies before and during the war of the Revolution, so that the patriots were not only fighting for their independence but for the rich in- heritance awaiting them and their children beyond la belle riviere.
Longfellow says of the Puritan colony: "God sifted three kingdoms to find the seed for this planting."
With equal propriety it may be said that He sifted every civilized nation to find the seed for the planting of Ohio.
In the very nature of things those centers of settlement were isolated, self centered, and had all they could do in their unequal struggle for subsistence and their battle for life. They occu- pied the several isolated positions with all the peculiar prejudices. and predilections of men of different races and conditions, in- tensified by the circumstances of their isolation, except that they were without animosity toward each other, because they were enlisted in a common cause, to subdue the wilderness and estab- lish a clear title to their domain.
In the Indian wars and the second war with Great Britain Ohio furnished her full quota of men, some twenty thousand. Those soldiers came together from all those centers of original settlement in a common cause and the barriers of prejudice, social and racial, which had held them apart, were consumed in the fires of patriotism and, permeated by the swift contagion of a generous enthusiasm, they rapidly coalesced, socially, became better acquainted, more homogeneous, and the result was frequent intermarriages, so that the state became fertile of heroes and statesmen.
At the opening of the Revolutionary War Patrick Henry said :
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"British oppression has effaced the boundaries of the sev- eral colonies ; the distinction between Virginia, Pennsylvania and New England is no more. I am not a Virginian but an Ameri- can."
The same result was seen among our early settlers; the common danger and the common purpose drew them closer to- gether, and they were no longer Virginians, Pennsylvanians or New Englanders, but Ohioans.
Thus Cavalier and Roundhead, and Huguenot, Catholic and Protestant, Puritan and Baptist and Quaker, Scotch-Irish and Anglo-Saxon and Teuton and Celt coalesced, strongly welded by the common interest and the common danger.
A good illustration of the diverse elements of that pioneer time is found in the antecedents of the leading men. For example Gov. Tiffin was English; Gov. Worthington and Gen. Harrison were from Viriginia; Gen. Meigs from Connecticut; Governor Morrow from Pennsylvania; Gen. McArthur from New York; Gen. Cass from New Hampshire, and so on.
These many and diverse elements which, in the older communities, were widely separated by racial, religious and social prejudices, here became mingled, acting and reacting upon each other so that each community came to present in itself a fair epitome of the national life and to illustrate the operation of the peculiar forces that wrought out the great transformation.
Many of the immigrants from the older states brought with them the refining influences of their former homes but these were gradually lost sight of or greatly modified in the rough, hard, grinding life of the pioneer, and under the influence of the ma- jority who were of less refinement and less education.
War is not a refining influence. Many of these had taken part in our revolutionary struggle. More of them had fought and bled and suffered with Harmar and St. Clair in their dis- astrous campaigns of 1790 and '91 ; they were victorious with the "lion-hearted hero of Stony Point" in his decisive battle with the allied tribes in 1794; they were at the front in all the stirring scenes of those troublous times.
Later the colonial immigrants and their descendants were reinforced by the human tide setting in from Europe which, 35 o. c.
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while adding largely to the industrial forces, brought little of a refining nature. Thus was built up in all this Ohio country a sturdy, virile population bent on developing a virgin soil which at length grew so strong, so self-reliant, so prosperous that it aspired to take the lead in a broader arena and give its intensely practical character to the national life.
After all perhaps men best interpret the operation of the ethnological forces and. influences we are considering. And Ohio men have been in evidence not only here in the state, but in every pulsation of the national life for the greater part of the century. In war and peace the Ohio man has ever been well to the front. There were Grant and Sherman and Sheridan, our great military trio of the Civil War, around whom clustered a galaxy of gallant men scarcely less deserving, though less prom- inent ; and Lawton and Funston and Anderson and Keifer, who in more recent years showed that our valor is not a thing of the past.
In the last third of a century Ohio gave to the country five of the six presidents elected by the people.
Among her statesmen and orators may be named Corwin, the golden-mouthed; the rugged and forceful Wade; Stanton, the Carnot of the Civil War; Brough, the sturdy and self-reliant war governor.
Among her financiers we gave Ewing and Corwin and Chase and Sherman and Windom and Foster who held high the nation's credit.
We gave Sherman and Day and Hay, statesmen who gave to the world a new diplomacy founded in justice and equity.
We gave Chase and Waite and McLean and Swayne and Matthews who adorned the national jurisprudence in their ju- dicial deliverances.
In Art we gave Powers and his deft chisel which wrought imperishable beauty in marble.
In Letters we gave Howells and Buchanan Reed whose work will live to reflect honor on their state.
In Invention we gave Edison, the wizard of Enlo Park, who has illumined the world with the magic of his genius.
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In pulpit oratory we gave the matchless Simpson whose elo- quence was the inspiration of the religious world.
And these are but samples, so to speak, of those who might be named did time permit.
If I were called upon to mention one man who, more than any other, interprets these conditions and influences, I would name one who was so recently the victim of a virulent cancer on our body politic-William McKinley.
In a just and mighty war he was a faithful and gallant sol- dier; in the midst of disturbed industrial conditions he was a wise legislator; while mighty questions of state were pending he was a self-controlled, effective and conciliatory executive, bringing harmony out of political chaos, shattering vicious finan- cial heresies, and preserving the nation's credit; when the nations were at odds to resolve grave international questions he was a consummate and successful diplomatist. Through all the exact- ing responsibilities of his active career he was a model husband. In life and in death he was a gentle, humble, Christian gentle- man. He has written a new volume of glorious history worthy to stand beside those other luminous volumes written by the pen of Lincoln and the sword of Grant, and he has already taken his place with his most illustrious predecessors as Ohio's repre- sentative in our radiant national trinity: Washington, Lincoln, Mckinley.
Yet after all the appearance of the men I have named was probably more an incident of those conditions and influences than a direct result. A democracy cannot afford to devote itself to the production of great men even if it knew how to produce them. The sole agency of a democracy is to give every man an equal chance to develop what is in him, be it much or little. The great man when he does appear will take care of himself. How to in- duce nature to bring him forth is beyond human knowledge. There are few subjects about which so much has been written and so little is known. Schools and universities may theorize about the process but all their teachings are but the working tools wherewith he must work out his own destiny and achieve his own measure of greatness.
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It is the province of the ethnologist not only to investigate the mental and physical differences of mankind and the organic laws upon which they depend, but to deduce from such investigations principles for human guidance in all the important relations of social and national existence.
The original Ohio man was a pioneer, and his descendants naturally inherited the spirit of the pioneer. To the building up of other states, Ohio has contributed more largely in propor- tion to population than any of her sisters. In 1900 no less than I,250,000 natives of Ohio were living in the other states and terri- tories of the Union. In Indiana were 200,000; in Illinois 140,- 000 ; in Iowa and Michigan 80,000 each; in Pennsylvania 60,000; in New York and California 30,000 each; in Colorado 25,000; in Massachusetts 5,500; in Washington 20,000; in Oklahoma 15,000; in Texas 10,000; in Montana 7,000; and in far off Alaska 700.
Thus as Ohio at the first gathered to her arms emigrants from all the states and from beyond the seas to build up this magnificent commonwealth, so now she pays the debt by sending out some of her sons and daughters to carry our enterprises and our culture to build up other communities.
Then let us each in his place do our utmost to keep bright these pleasing visions of that early time; learn to know ourselves, our neighbors, and as far as may be our destiny, and, looking with seeing eyes, let us strive to realize what our history means in all its great proportions. Let us be liberal as our institutions. and the principles we profess are liberal and thus make of our- selves a people who, if occasion requires, may re-enact the heroic deeds and reproduce the consummate work of those whose mem- ory we delight to honor. In proportion as we shall render our- selves able and willing to do this may we renew our youth and secure our age against decay.
Let us learn the great lesson of the Old Testament: that Hebrew valor was invincible only so long as patriotic instincts and training held them up to the plane of pure, patriotic obliga- tion, for it will be the same with American valor.
This state and this nation have had, are having and are to have marvellous growth. Before many years the Anglo-Ameri-
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can under the stars and stripes will dominate the North American continent and will have spread further beyond the seas. When that time comes may he be found to have preserved in its purity a government whose institutions are more conducive to the great- est freedom and welfare of mankind than the world has ever seen ; and may he who at the distance of another century shall stand here to celebrate Ohio's bi-centennial have reason to exult, as we do now, in the glorious spectacle of a free, happy, virtuous and united people.
Our father's God, from out whose hand The centuries fall like grains of sand, We meet to-day, united, free, And loyal to our land and thee, To thank thee for the era done,
And trust thee for the opening one.
O, make thou us, through centuries long, In peace secure, in justice strong ; Around our gift of freedom draw The safeguards of thy righteous law; And, cast in some diviner mold, Let the new cycle shame the old.
THE PART TAKEN BY WOMEN
IN THE
HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF OHIO.
MRS. JAMES R. HOPLEY. -
Mr. President and Friends:
Centered to-day, as are the sentiments of all present upon this spot, this hour and this occasion, Mecca of the absent, as this is, for pilgrimages innumerable of patriotic thoughts, and surrounded, as we doubtless are, by clouds of witnesses - a choir invis- ible - of those who once here lived and wrought, we must give up re- luctantly any one of these precious moments - pearls upon a golden thread - to the consideration of any theme apart from this hour .. And yet, in search of a text for this brief address, and for the source of those qualities which rather distinctly mark the women of my native state, the telepathy of the past spelled the name of that other Commonwealth, which, MRS. JAMES R. HOPLEY. with Virginia, Connecticut, and the other immortal eleven - but which more than them all - fur- nished Ohio's ideals and antecedents - Massachusetts.
You perhaps are a Virginian? Then together we may re- count the glories of our inheritance, for I too am descended from Virginia. We shall say "Remember Mount Vernon and Monti- cello," and those of us who are of Huguenot blood will recall that three of the seven who presided over Congress during the revolutionary period were Huguenots - Jay, Laurens and Boudi- not. It is written that "in moral fibre the Puritans and Hugue-
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nots were one," but the latter had the added virtue of the French- man's love of beauty, contributing a vast share to the culture and prosperity of the United States.
The Puritans of New England and Marietta had provided for this region a fundamental and far-reaching law, but it re- mained for the descendants of the Huguenots, Scotch-Irish and Cavaliers of Virginia and Chillicothe to give this territory state- hood and the daughters of these have kept the altar fires of patriotism burning brightly ever since.
Are you from Connecticut? What a proud brow you should bear! Wonderful daughter of a wonderful mother, and in turn mother of wonderful sons! As thick as the stars appear in the milky way so numerous are their names.
Are you from New York? Then you will never forget the names of Alexander Hamilton and General MacArthur-nor will we.
Are you a Pennsylvanian? You then, come from the home of the most eminent American-save one-Benjamin Franklin ; and from the state which boasts the progenitors of the fighting McCooks, Generals Grant and Rosecrans and William Mckinley.
Did your forefathers journey hither from New Jersey? Then you hail from the home of John Cleves Symmes and of the Zanes-highest type of the frontiersmen.
Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maryland and Kentucky sent here their no less famous "good and great" but the WOMEN of Ohio must trace their type to that state under whose ideals they have become what they are. I refer to Massa- chusetts and especially to the first Puritan women who set foot upon her shores for their ideals have persisted here, more or less distinct, surrounded but not as yet submerged by many other types. There, spiritually, was conceived a new creature, though bleak indeed was this western Eden. Not in a garden of dreams "where every prospect pleaseth" but from the arms of a rock-ribbed coast she sprang, facing, with fearless eyes, the early morning breaking coldly over stormy waters. She came, not to tempt, but to oppose evil; not seeking indulgence but op- portunity to serve, and thus coming the flaming sword of the
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Angel of the Lord was bared, not to drive her forth, but to widen her realm - and she inherits the land.
This type, which produced women of independent thought, yet women who were home-loving, not self seeking, great moth- ers serving, but exacting honor and obedience, wives, who were helpmates, not dictators nor dependents, was transplanted here, and the intelligence and moral force always associated with the women of Ohio, infused with their strongest trait - a bequest also from Pennsylvania and the South - a passionate devo- tion to home - are elements which constitute many an unrecorded but never obliterated chapter in the history and development of Ohio.
To-day the women of this state are the conservators of the strong original type, and here, we believe, it is perpetuated with fewer of its early faults and more of its virtues, than in any other state of the Union. It is with pleasure that the text of what must be briefly said is presented, for in it is summed up the whole. It is from Emerson: "What is civilization? I answer: - THE POWER OF GOOD WOMEN." .
Confronting the subject assigned, "The Part Taken by Women in the History and Development of the State," the ques- tion arises, "for what have Ohio women been conspicuous?" The asnwer is a simple one - Ohio women never were and are not now "conspicuous." To be conspicuous has never been thought by them desirable. They have written ; have sung; have moulded in clay ; have carved in stone; have had place and power ; but froward, notorious, conspicuous in the common sense, they have never been. In this their inheritance is revealed. Among all those who thronged the decks of the Mayflower can one be named whose dress, feature, or personal conduct, history has re- corded? In all the realm of national poetry, whose theme is of those earliest days, but one woman's name is familiarly known to us and that through a story of the heart. In this Priscilla was not conspicuous since there have been hundreds as steadfast, as true and as plain spoken.
Again, in civil life: who condemned and burned the witches? Not the WOMEN of Salem! Education and religion are those higher and grander callings, always appropriately associated with
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women throughout the civilized world, and if, in obedience to what was believed by them to be a divine command, certain Puritan women should have "preached the Word" it is not for us to say that their purpose was to render themselves conspicuous. In history it is true the name of brave Molly Pitcher is boldly written, yet it was hardly for this that she risked her life.
To be conspicuous, to have one's name and habits familiarly known of the public, was evidently never the ruling passion of the early Massachusetts woman and such aversion is a charac- teristic of the mass of Ohio women to-day. Queen Elizabeth on this point is thus reported "she who is common to all may with ease become the common object of applause." That such applause is by the greater number undesired proves here the survival of the early type. And yet, no one familiar with the history of our times and those a little more remote, is unaware that such sentiments, far from hindering intellectual development, encourage and pro- tect it. The great woman always gets a chance to develop, while she who will not think quietly, nor talk gently, bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, and "in a word, let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious grow up through the common" is again and again pushed aside, still shouting her claims to prece- dence, still loudly demanding recognition. Strength will always find need waiting her ministration; Courage her cause to cham- pion; Love her sacrifice and crown; Genius her altar at which to preside; Music her melodies to be released and Intellect her tongue and pen. Read the letters of Margaret Winthrop or those of Abigail Adams to her husband. All may there see one of the several reasons why these men were great and did their work well. Margaret Fuller and hosts of later writers attest the truth of the assertion, that self-expression and intellectual development were not retarded because the home was recognized as woman's place and sphere ; and very largely because such ideals prevail in Ohio the part taken by women in the history and development of the state has been important and far-reaching in its effect.
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