USA > Ohio > Knox County > Past and present of Knox County, Ohio, Vol. I > Part 5
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OTHER THEORIES ADVANCED.
In summing up all that can be learned about the county-seat contest, it may be stated that probably the above was one of the chief reasons the commissioners had in mind when locating it here. The looks and actions of a town and its people often gain or lose much of it.
Then another theory, quite plausible, is the one which states that Pio- neer Smith, of Clinton, proprietor of that town plat, held his lots too high, at least reserved all the corner and valuable sites and then offered the poor ones at lower figures, but this soon disgusted the people, who, even in the surrounding country, felt a sympathy for the then lesser struggling Mt. Vernon. Even some had removed from Clinton on account of this thing and located in Mt. Vernon. Here, then, is another reason for Clinton's defeat.
A third one is still more in keeping with the affairs of men then as well as today .- that is, that two men in the country, just north from Clin- ton, told Mr. Kratzer and Mr. Patterson, who were interested in the site at Mt. Vernon, that in case they would give them each two town lots in their place, that they would use their influence in having Mt. Vernon secure the county seat, and that by their influence the place was finally made the seat of justice. But whether there was actually any bribery practiced in the transaction none can tell.
CHAPTER V.
EARLY SETTLEMENT.
To have been a pioneer in so good a portion of the state of Ohio as Knox county has proved to be, was indeed a fortunate honor to have been conferred upon these sturdy first settlers who wended their way hither more than a century ago from older settled, prosperous sections of the eastern states. They came. they saw, they conquered, and verily they builded better than they knew or conceived of at the time they were felling the first giant forest kings, preparatory to raising them an humble cabin home, in what was then but a desolate wilderness, inhabited with Indians and wild and dangerous animals.
To begin with, it may be said that from the best authority we now pos- sess-the early histories of Ohio and the former annals of Knox county- it is believed that the first settlers in the various townships of this county were as follows :
Clinton township-Andrew Craig, prior to 1801, the first also in the county, though he proved not to be a permanent settler.
Berlin township-Henry Markley, in 1808, from Bedford, Pennsyl- vania.
Brown township-Charles McKee, from Ireland, in 1809.
Butler township-George Lepley's father, with others, emigrated from Virginia and Pennsylvania in 1805 or possibly a year or so later.
Clay township-Levi Herrod, from Greene county, Pennsylvania, in 1804
College township was first settled prior to 1812 by squatters who soon left and a non-resident, living in Pennsylvania, sold a four-thousand-acre tract of heavy timbered land to the Episcopal church for college purposes, and this colony really became the first actual settlers in 1825-6.
Harrison township-Andrew Castro, prior to 1808. The second (some claim the first ) settler was Jeremiah Biggs, who settled in 1808.
Howard township-Abraham Welker, from Harrison county, Ohio in 1806-7. Paul Welker came immediately.
Hilliar township-Dr. Richard Hilliar, in 1806, from England.
Jackson township-Robert Eaton, of Wheeling, Virginia, 1810.
Jefferson township-Among the first to locate were Isaac Enlow and Nicholas Helm, soon after the close of the war of 1812-14.
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Liberty township -- A colony from Washington county, Pennsylvania. which arrived in the spring of 1805 and included these: Francis Atherton, Francis Blackney, Thomas Fletcher, George Ginn, Francis Hardesty and Alexander Dallas.
Middlebury township-William W. Farquhar, a Friend, from Mary- land, settled in 1808.
Milford township-Thomas Merrill and James Pell, of Massachusetts, settled in the spring of 1812.
Miller township-John Vance, Jr., from Virginia, in 1808.
Monroe township-Among the first (if not, indeed, the first) to locate here was Joseph Coleman, 1807.
Morgan township-John Green, 1806.
Morris township-William Douglass, from New Jersey, settled in 1804. Pike township-Henry Lander, prior to 1816.
Pleasant township-Among the earliest settlers was James Colville, from Washington county, Pennsylvania, in 1803-4 and had a crop growing in 1805.
Union township-George Sapp, Sr., who entered the first land in 1806. Wayne township-Nathaniel Michael Young, of New Jersey, in 1805.
While Andrew Craig is claimed to be the first settler in the county, he can hardly be considered an actual settler, as he remained but a short time. So pioneers generally give credit to Mr. Young.
THE ADVENT OF THE WHITES.
Having given an outline of where and by whom the first settlements were effected in the county of Knox, an endeavor will be made to trace the wanderings of those of the white race who were within the limits of the county long before the actual settlement began, which was in fact about 1803.
James Smith is supposed, according to the best authority extant, to have been the first white man to set foot on this fair and fertile domain. He was a native of Pennsylvania. He was captured at, or very near the quaint little town of Bedford, Bedford county, at the age of eighteen years. by the Indians, in the spring of 1775, a short time before the defeat of Braddock. He was taken to the Indian village on the Allegheny, opposite Fort Duquesne, and compelled to run the gauntlet, where he nearly lost his life by the blow of a club from a stalwart savage. After his recovery and the defeat of General Braddock, he was taken by his captors on a long journey through the forest to the village of Tullihas, in what is now Coshocton county, Ohio. Here he was adopted by the Indians into one of their tribes.
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The ceremonies consisted first of plucking all the hair from his head, except a scalp lock which they adjusted according to their fashion; in boring his ears and nose, and placing ornaments therein ; in putting on breech clouts, and in washing him several times in the river to wash out all the white blood in his veins. This last ceremony was performed by three young squaws, and as Smith was unacquainted with their fashion, he thought they intended to drown him and resisted at first with all his strength, to the great amuse- ment of the multitude on the river's bank. One of the young squaws finally remarked, "Me no hurt you," and he than gave them the privilege of dousing him as much as they desired. When brought from the river he was allowed to dry his clothes, and in solemn council, after an impressive speech by the chief, he was admitted to full membership in the tribe. In his journal he says he always fared as they did, no exceptions being made. He remained in Tullihas till the next October, when he accompanied his adopted brother, Tontileaugo, who had a Wyandot wife, to the shore of Lake Erie on a visit to that nation. On his journey he passed through what is now known as Knox county. He remained among the Wyandots, Ottawas and Mohicans about four years, traversing all parts of northern Ohio. He un- doubtedly hunted over Knox county, as the streams here afforded good hunting and fishing grounds, and was probably the first white man who saw these valleys in their virgin beauty. At the end of four years he es- caped and made his way to Pennsylvania where he published a memoir from which the above facts are obtained.
Christian Fast, another Indian captive, aged sixteen years, as well as John Leeth, a native of South Carolina, both traversed the wilds of Knox county before any settlement was made.
After these, no doubt the next whites to pass over this county were the band of Moravians who, as prisoners of war, were taken from the Mor- avian towns to Upper Sandusky by the British emissaries. They crossed the very land on which the city of Mt. Vernon now stands. The date of this passage of innocent men, for a religious cause, was 1781.
Again, during the Indian war from 1788 to 1795, the noted scout and Indian fighter, Capt. Samuel Brady, on more than one occasion passed through Knox county. In 1792 he headed a party of scouts and moved up the Kokosing or Owl creek to the present site of Mt. Vernon.
It is believed. from good evidence, that the renegade, Simon Girty, and his brothers, with the notorious British agents, Elliott and McKee, went through this section many times, going to and from old Fort Pitt. The date of such trips was about 1785.
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Just prior to the actual settlement of Knox county by Andrew Craig, William Leonard, in company with a band of scouts, came into this terri- tory as early as 1799. Leonard purchased land on Owl creek and returned with his family and became a permanent settler of this county.
CONCERNING ANDREW CRAIG.
Historian A. Banning Norton, a native of Knox county, says this of him who is supposed to have been the first white man to have a real abiding place-a home-in this county :
"From our researches into early statements we are led to believe that Andrew Craig was the first white man who located within the present limits of Knox county. He was, at a very early day, a sort of frontiersman, fond of a rough-and-tumble life, a stout and rugged man-bold and dare-devil in his disposition-who took delight in hunting, wrestling and all athletic sports, as well as hail fellow well inet with the Indians then inhabiting the county. He was from the bleak, broken mountainous region of Virginia and as hardy a pine knot as ever that country produced. He was in this country when Ohio was in its territorial condition. When this wilderness region was declared to be within the county of Fairfield, the sole denizen in this entire district whose history is now being written tabernacled with a woman in a rough log hut close by the Indian field, about one-half mile east of where Mount Vernon city now stands and at the point where Centre run empties into the Kokosing river. There Andrew Craig lived when Mt. . Vernon was laid out in 1805; there he was when the county of Knox was organized, its oldest citizen, and there he continued until 1809. Such a harem-scarem fellow could not rest easy when white men got thick around him, so he left and went to the Indian village, Greentown, and from thence migrated to a far-out frontier, preferring red men to white men for his neighbors."
This region was settled, at first, largely from Pennsylvania, Virginia. New Jersey and Maryland, with not a few from New England. They were generally Revolutionary stock, and for this reason Ohio has always taken much interest in national affairs. Then the war of 1812 had its effect upon the minds and patriotism of the sons of the Buckeye state. In the treaties and government control, a great part of the territory was reserved to soldiers and relatives. These lands amounted to more than two million, six hundred thousand acres. All of the present county of Knox was therefore from out some part of the "military lands" set apart by Congress, except fractional parts of Middlebury, Berlin and Pike townships.
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The first permanent settlement in the county was made by Nathaniel Mitchell Young, "the ax-maker," who came in 1803, soon after Andrew Craig, and followed up Owl creek to a point some ten miles beyond Craig's cabin, settling on a branch of that stream, in what is now Wayne township.
This settlement, later known as the "Jersey settlement," receives at- tention in the chapter on Wayne township.
Pioneer historian Norton speaks as follows concerning the persons who came in to build for themselves homes between 1803 and 1809 :
"After many years of solitary residence on the beautiful Kokosing, the solitude of Craig's retreat is broken by the entrance of a lone Jerseyman, who, in the spring of 1803, penetrates some ten miles farther into the wilder- ness, so as not, by too close proximity, to annoy another, and there raises a a cabin and settles down. This follower of the trade of Vulcan soon gets in readiness to strike, and sets about supplying the sons of the wild forest with the first axes they had ever seen, and by making for them tomahawks and scalping knives, he soon acquired the name of the 'ax-maker,' which for more than almost a century has attached to Nathaniel Mitchell Young.
"A year passes before another white man came in to his kingdom of the 'green glad solitude' which he was a ruler of, as far as white men were concerned Then came a sturdy backwoodsman, who by the crack of his rifle broke the silence. This was pioneer number two, William Douglass, who drove his stakes where James S. Banning later lived, near the old town of Clinton, hard by Mt. Vernon. Next in order was Robert Thompson, who located on the rich bottom lands on Owl creek, where Mt. Vernon is now situated. George Dial, of Old Virginia, came up the creek and finally pitched his tent near the present college town of Gambier. Capt. Joseph Walker, from Pennsylvania, settled on the bank of the creek near the site of Mt. Vernon. John Simpkins, another Virginian, located with his son Seeley a mile above Douglass, where George Cassil's farm was later known. While these plain men from New Jersey, Virginia and Pennsylvania were making ready their cabins for occupation. and making a little clearing, a stray Yankee. solitary and alone, with a speculative eye and money-making dispo- sition is, with pocket compass, taking his bearings through the dense forest. questioning about the chance of making a fortune by laying out a town and selling lots to those who may come after him into this charming new coun- try. Having, as he believed, found the exact spot for his future operations, he blazes a tree and then wends his way to the nearest town, Franklinton, west of the Scioto, where he obtains chain and compass, and paper, and re- turns and lays out the town of Clinton, in section 4, township 7, range 4, of the United States military district, with its large public "green," its North
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street and South street, its Main street, First, Second, Third and Fourth streets, with one hundred and sixty lots, and then, taking his town plat in his pocket, walks to New Lancaster, being the first white person ever known to have made the journey in that direction from this infant settlement, and there, before Abraham Wright, a justice of the peace, acknowledges the important instrument, and on the 8th day of December, 1804, places it upon record. This was Samuel H. Smith, first surveyor of Knox county, for many years a resident, its leading business man and largest landholder.
"Shortly afterwards a large accession was made to the population of the county by the emigration from Ten Mile, Washington county, Pennsyl- vania, of John Mills, Henry Haines, Ebenezer and Abner Brown; and Peter Baxter. These all settled a short distance south of Owl creek. This set- tlement, increased by the Leonards, was in 1805-6 the largest and best community in the county, and upon its organization and for several years thereafter, it furnished the leading men.
"Benjamin Butler, Peter Coyles and Thomas Bell Patterson, in the spring of 1805, augmented the Walker settlement, where Mount Vernon was soon located. William Douglass was soon joined by James Loveridge, who pulled from far away Morris county, New Jersey, and with his good wife takes quarters July 6th upon the clapboards in the garret of his little log cabin where he lived the first year. The next year Loveridge goes off on the pretext of hunting a lost cow, and goes to the land office, and enters and pays for the tract of land, where he soon erects a dwelling and resides for many years. Upon this land was an uncommonly good spring, which caused him to select it. Smith, the Yankee, claimed to have bought this land and was offering to sell it out, but Loveridge went to the records at the land office and found it had not yet been taken, and upon his return home with his patent, Bill Douglass laughed heartily at the Jersey Blue over-reaching the cunning Yankee Smith. In 1805 this settlement was made up of Douglass, Loveridge, Smith and Watson. The old ax-maker. in the meantime, was followed by some of his relations and friends who established what has ever since been styled the 'Jersey Settlement.' Jacob Young, Abraham Lyon and Simeon Lyon are the first to settle upon the south fork of Owl creek, and are succeeded by Eliphalet Lewis, John Lewis and James Bryant. They found the Indians very numerous, and through the kind feelings toward the ax-maker, they were friendly, and really quite an advantage in ridding the county of wolves, bears and other animals."
North and west of the embryo settlements all was one vast wilder- ness for many long miles. Newark had been laid out by General Schenck, but it only contained about the same number of people that were to be counted in this section. The nearest mill in 1805 was at a point in Fairfield
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county, and it took James Loveridge the journey of one hundred and twenty- five miles to procure a wagon load of flour, a barrel of salt, a barrel of whisky, etc. Salt, whisky and flour were the great staples of frontier life.
THE QUAKERS COME IN.
In the early spring of 1806 the advent of the society of Friends com- menced to increase the settlement. The venerable Father Henry Roberts headed this Quaker colony from Maryland. He left Maryland with his family, his home county being Frederick, and directed his course like the star of empire, westward. He wintered in Belmont county, and sent his wagons back to Maryland loaded with ginseng and snake root, and on their return with a load of goods started with his plunder and his family. April 7. 1806, landing at the house of Henry Haines, in the Ten Mile settlement, named from the location in Washington county, Pennsylvania, from which the first settlers emigrated. After spending a week looking for a suitable location, on the 14th of the month he settled down with his family at the little prairie five miles above Mt. Vernon, later known as the Armstrong section. The family consisted of his wife and two sons, Isaiah and William, and Richard Roberts and a daughter, Massah.
Nine acres of this fine prairie land was at once broken up and planted to corn. It was very hard work to break the virgin soil with a first rate four-horse plow, but it paid for the labor, as he raised one of the best corn crops ever harvested in Knox county.
William Y. Farquhar, a cousin of Henry Roberts, came with his family, and after him came William W. Farquhar with his family. They all stopped with Henry Roberts and thus completed the first settlement in the Friends district. From this beginning came the numerous society of Quakers in Wayne, Middlebury and Berlin townships in after years.
In the spring of 1806 there were but fifteen persons within what is now known as Knox county who turned out to cast a vote and only nine fit for drill in the "training day" occasion that year.
The white male inhabitants of Knox county, above the age of twenty- one, in 1820 numbered about twelve hundred and ninety. These were scat- tered over the county in about the following numbers :
Hilliar township, twenty-one; Bloomfield, sixty-nine; Morgan, one hundred and fifty-two; Miller, seventy-two; Jackson, one hundred and seventy-eight; Chester, one hundred and twenty-two; Wayne, one hundred and sixty-eight; Morris, one hundred and fifty-seven; Union, one hundred and forty-four : Clinton. two hundred and seven.
CHAPTER VI.
PIONEER MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.
With wants but few, no pioneer will crave A crown in life nor plaudits at his grave; He leaves behind the slavery of style, The myrmidons of pride, deceit and guile, Enlisting with the cohorts of the free, The motto on his shield is "Liberty."
What cares he for the monarch's crown, For prince or plutocrat, for fame's renown, The turmoil and the strife of endless greed ? With honest toil supplies his simple need; He seeks not glory, yet the future years Weave bright laurels for the pioneers.
The days of pioneering in Ohio and the Middle West are forever gone -no more new country to explore and develop. The "good old times" are gone forever. It now remains for those of this generation to record a few of the interesting incidents that transpired in this county, when the Indian had just bid a long farewell to these beautiful valleys and table-lands and when civilization had fairly commenced its grand march of achievement through the sturdy traits of character found in the little colonies making up the first settlement here and in adjoining counties, over which Knox was the dominating power.
While it would require volumes larger than this to recite the unique customs and manners of those who built the first human habitations here- abouts; of what they wore and how they procured it, etc., perhaps the following will suffice to introduce the reader to the ways of doing things in our grandfathers' days, in this section of the Buckeye state.
The pioneers here came largely from New England, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland and New York States. They came on foot, on horse- back, with single-horse rigs and some with large double-teamed. heavy
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wagons. Some meandered their way here from the East in a lumber wagon drawn by oxen. It required from two weeks to two months to make the journey into this county, from where the pioneer had been reared. Streams had to be crossed without fine steel bridges spanning their waters; no cheerful hotel to stop at nights, and no "honk" of the modern automobile to frighten the half-broken teams which conveyed the family into the coun- try. The new cabin was built quickly and its latch string was ever out for the reception of strangers, without money and without price. These "mansions" in the forest land of Knox county were, many times, not to ex- ceed twelve by twenty feet in size, yet they could shelter from the storm almost any number who happened to be within their walls when bed time came. What to eat did not materially concern the good house wife, for her husband's trusty rifle was sure to provide plenty of the finest game and the soil was productive in yielding many good vegetables in their season. To obtain bread-corn or wheat-required some skill and much hard work. Again, the corn and beans planted in the spring brought the table a plenty of roasting ears and succotash by autumn time. When the corn became too hard to eat as roasting ears, it was grated and, still later in the year, ground. Plenty of juicy venison, with a "quarter section" of steaming Johnny cake, were food articles fit even for royalty and the very material upon which the good blood and brawny muscles of the frontiersman was made sixty and eighty years ago. But the days of the hominy block, the horse mill and tedious trips to the nearest water mill at which flour could be ground, have all passed and the "city roller mills" do this work.
Cooking in those early days was carried on by vastly different methods than those which now obtain in the kitchens of Knox county. Without stoves, the trammel and hooks hung in the fire-place corner. By chains were suspended the mush-pot and tea kettle at meal time. Iron-ware was ex- tremely scarce, and often the good woman of the cabin had to make coffee. boil potatoes and fry meat in the same iron vessel. When there was no lid for the pot, a flat stone was heated on the embers and cleaned off and laid on top of the pot to confine the steam as much as possible. Here was made what was known as board-cake or bannock. This was similar to the hoe- cake of Maryland and Virginia, where a large planter's hoe was used by the slaves in their cabins, for the baking of their corn bread. But here a wooden board was used. The meal with a little warm water and a few pinches of salt were mixed into a batter and this was plastered onto the clean board and set up at the proper angle before the burning embers of the fire-place. This, it is related, was a fine lay-out for the family. The finger marks of the dear, unselfish mother were ofttimes seen imprinted in the well-baked and crisp
-
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crust. Did you ever see these things? No, you did not live in the pioneer days before ranges and natural gas stoves that belong to another generation, yet in your veins runs the same blood of the dear old people who did live that way and made the state of Ohio famous for her statesmen and business men.
Hogs were ear-marked and turned out into the woods to "root hog or die" and these pigs made fine meat, eating as they did from the nuts and other forest growth. The bear seemed to take special pains to supply his own larder with a fat pig every now and then, when the faithful old house- dog was not on the alert.
Returning to the subject of eating, it may be said that the pioneers here had a variety of diet about after this fashion: When corn bread and milk were eaten for breakfast, hog and hominy was eaten at dinner, and mush and milk for supper (it was not called "six o'clock dinner" those days). There was little room for tea and coffee then, especially when the pioneer had to exchange one bushel of wheat for a pound of coffee and four bushels for a pound of tea, which was the rule in the country for the first twenty years after Knox county was settled.
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