USA > Ohio > Ross County > Pioneer record and reminiscences of the early settlers and settlement of Ross County, Ohio > Part 13
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al of arms-and legs -- Baldwin giving with ringing voice the orders, "From the right shoulder-strike!" "From the left shoulder -- strike!" "With the right foot-kick!" etc., greatly to the amuse- ment of the throng of spectators always present on the Bloodhounds' muster days.
Baldwin did not always need the serv- ice of his rough constituency. On one occasion, when imprisoned in the jail for debt, or perhaps for some wild freak when in one of his whirlwinds of dissipation, he awoke to the consciousness that his fellow- prisoners were not of the kind with which he could enjoy companionship. Being locked up with a lot of thieves and low marauders was more than his dignity and pride, which chanced then to prevail, could stand; and so he kicked the door down, and the jail-birds out, saying, "I'm a gentleman, and I can not share my apartments with such as you."
With the organization of the State gov .| ernment there came into office several al-5 ready prominent Chillicotheans, Edward Tiffin being elected Governor, Nathaniel Massie Speaker of the Senate, Michael Baldwin Speaker of the House, and Will- iam Creighton, Jun., Secretary of State. The first General Assembly met in the old stone State-house at Chillicothe in March. 1803, and not long after the first great seal of the State was devised, exhibiting a sheaf of wheat and a bundle of arrows in
TIIE GOVERNOR'S ROOM, FRUIT HILL.
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OHIO'S FIRST CAPITAL.
the foreground, with rugged hills beyond, supposed to represent in idealized or con- ventionalized forms Mount Logan and the other elevations which form a sort of mountain chain east of the old capital. Years afterward, when the great internal improvement was effected of which De Witt Clinton was the father, a canal-boat was added as emblematical of commerce.
Governor Tiffin made an excellent helmsman for the new ship of state, and in 1805 was unanimously re-elected. The most notable official act of his guberna- torial career was the arrest of the Burr- Blennerhasset expedition. There are a few old citizens who can remember Ohio's first Governor-the mild-mannered, pure, and scholarly man, who, after serving as the Chief Executive of the State, was United States Senator, and then refused other important offices because he could not wean himself from his Ohio home.
Michael Baldwin, the irrepressible and incorrigible, was no more dignified, abste- mious, or moral in his position as Speak- er of the first Ohio House of Represent- atives than he had been in former years or lesser stations. He presided over the Chamber in 1803, 1804, and 1805. It is a matter of tradition that for his own pe- cuniary benefit, and for the entertain- ment of those among the legislators who had a penchant for gaming, he establish- ed in his rooms the game of " vingt-et- un," himself acting as banker and dealer, and as a matter of course winning more frequently than any of the other players. On one occasion, after much drinking and a late sitting at the gambling table, Baldwin found himself in possession not only of all the money of his companions, but of many of their watches. In the morning the House of Representatives was found to be without a quorum; but Baldwin, accustomed to heavy drinking and late hours, was in his place back of the Speaker's desk. Rapping savagely with his gavel, he demanded the roll-call of the House, and then sent the sergeant- at-arms out with orders to bring in the delinquent members. After an hour or so that functionary returned, followed by about a dozen members of the Ohio Legis- lature, whose blood -shot eyes, suffused faces, unsteady, shambling steps, and gen- eral air of shamefacedness indicated the late hours they had kept and their heavy indulgences. With much austerity of manner, Baldwin reprimanded the tardy
members, reminded them of the cost to which the infant State was subjected by payment of their per diems, and was pro- ceeding to further elaborate his censure
WILLIAM ALLEN.
on their late arrival and the consequent delay of legislation, when one of the de- linquents, exasperated beyond control, cried out: "Hold on there, Mr. Speaker, hold on! How could we tell what time it was when the Speaker of the House hac all of our watches ?"
Before and during the time when the State government was being organized. many local improvements were being made, which rendered the town more worthy of the honor which had been con- ferred upon it. Gradually the institu- tions of civilization were springing up in the new settlement. In 1800, Nathaniel Willis, grandfather of the poet, establish- ed in Chillicothe one of the earliest news- papers west of the Alleghanies, the Scioto Gazette, which has been published con- tinuously ever since, and is now the old- est newspaper in Ohio. Churches were organized, and houses of worship built. schools provided, business projects enter- ed upon, and an era of prosperity inaugu- rated which was unrivalled in any of the Western settlements. A little later than this period the Madeira House was built- a hostelry which in early times was known to all Western travellers, and famed for many years as the best tavern between Baltimore and Cincinnati. And here in this new town, then containing only a few hundred people, singular to state, in
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the year 1814, was issued the first number of the pioneer religious journal of Amer- ica, the Weekly Recorder, founded and for several years successfully edited by John Andrews, a Presbyterian preacher.
Thomas Worthington, as has been stat- ed, came from Virginia in 1798. Before leaving, he and his brother-in-law, Ed- ward Tiffin, liberated a large number of slaves, some of whom, however, chose to remain with their masters, and accompa- nied them to Chillicothe, where a few of their descendants remain to this day. Worthington at first located in the vil- lage which Massie liad laid out two years before, but he soon removed to a log-cab- in on the plateau two miles northwest of Chillicothe, where he afterward built the large stone house known as "Adena."
The visitor finds this historic and pic- turesque house in almost exactly its origi- nal condition, and is received hospitably by a son of the old Governor, himself al- inost fourscore years of age. The house, we are told, was fully completed in 1806, the work having been begun in 1798, and progressing very slowly on account of the hugeness of the undertaking in a pio- peer settlement, and the difficulty of ob- hining many of the materials.
Thomas Worthington, on coming to / hio, was possessed of considerably more of this world's goods than most of the pioneers enjoyed, and coming from a liome of old-style luxury, he naturally desired to form one in the West which should supply some of the elegancies as well as the necessities of life, and one in which he could comfortably entertain his friends. Accordingly he took great pains to select a picturesque location upon the great tract of land which he bought, and employed that famous architect, the elder Latrobe, of Washington, to design his dwelling - place. The work was done strictly in accordance with the plans he furnished, and mostly by workmen who were sent West by him. The edifice rose slowly, and the utmost care was taken to secure thoroughness and insure durabil- ity. The heavy stones, quarried in the vicinity, were carefully laid by experi- enced masons in walls two feet thick, and all of the wood-work was made massive and strong, but simple. The nails and the iron and brass work were brought from Philadelphia, and the glass from Pittsburgh, at great cost. The marble for mantels was packed on horses across the
mountains from the Quaker City at an ex- pense of seven dollars for every hundred- weight. The cost of the house was, for the time, enormous, twice what it would have been a score of years later; but when completed, it was a marvel of beauty and luxury to the backwoodsmen-a palace in the wilderness. People flocked to Adena from all parts of the country round about, even from Kentucky, to gaze upon the massive walls of this many- chambered two-story stone mansion. The novelties of papered walls, the large panes of glass, curtains, and marble mantel- pieces, we are told, seemed especially to attract attention, and excite amazement and admiration. The house was seldom without visitors. During the earlier years of their occupancy the Worthingtons en- tertained hosts of people, among them some of the most eminent men of the time, who came to consult with their host upon grave public questions, as well as to enjoy the hospitality of the finest house in the West. Aaron Burr was at Adena not long before the dark close of his brilliant, audacious schemes. John Polk, James Monroe, Henry Clay, Lewis Cass, William Henry Harrison, Daniel Webster, and Thomas Corwin were among those whose foot- steps have echoed in the old-fashioned hall, or upon the stone-floored veranda. And to this list may be added Paul Cuffey, the celebrated preacher; Judge Bibb, of the Supreme Court; Poletica, the Russian diplomate; General Macomb, commander of the army under Monroe; De Witt Clin- ton and Thomas A. King, Governors of New York; Thomas Ewing, Samuel F. Vinton, James Brown, member of Con- gress, and afterward ambassador to Paris; and a host of lesser lights among the statesmen of a past generation. Early in the history of the State, when the line of Indian battle had scarcely swept west- ward beyond the Miamis and the White- water, and when the settlements along the Scioto were still occasionally startled by rumors of danger, there was a great gathering of the braves of different tribes at Greenville, under Tecumseh, and his brother the Prophet. The Governor dis- patched Thomas Worthington and Dun- can McArthur to ascertain the object of such an assemblage. The commissioners were entirely convinced of the sincerity of Tecumseh in his protestations of pacific intentions toward the United States; but as there was a deep-seated and wide-spread
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OHIO'S FIRST CAPITAL.
feeling among the whites that the Indians had gathered for the purpose of attacking the scattered settlements, and making a general massacre, Tecumseh, Blue Jacket, Tahre (the Crane), and a chief called the Panther, were induced by Worthington and MeArthur to accompany them to Chil- licothe, to more effectually allay the fe- verish excitement and apprehension of the people. Tecumseh made a speech which gave the settlers perfect assurance of safety, and won for him many warm friends and admirers. He was the guest
TECUMSEH'S TOMAHAWK, AT ADENA.
for a fortnight of Mr. Worthington, and on departing left his tomahawk as a souve- nir. It is still treasured among the arti- cles of historic bric-à-brac at Adena.
Governor Worthington was not des- tined to enjoy an old age of retirement and rest in the happy home which he cre- ated. Active in the service of the State and the nation from the time he settled in Ohio until his untimely death (in 1827, at the age of fifty - four years), he had but little time to pursue the pleasures of study or the amenities of social life, and was only at Adena during the rare and brief intervals of absence from public duty. The great influence he brought to bear in securing the organization of the State government won for liim the re- spect and gratitude of its people, and they evinced their appreciation of his charac- ter and work by electing him Senator from the new State-a position in which he became the participant in most of the important measures of the administrations of Jefferson and Madison. At the close of his career in the Senate he was elected Governor of the State, in which capacity he was the promoter of all those wise and beneficent measures which were the foun- dation of Ohio's prosperity. He founded, in 1815, the State Library, selecting in Philadelphia, with the aid of his son, the present occupant of the old homestead, the first installment of books which were placed in the Capitol at Columbus, the
nucleus of a vast library. He was elected Governor a second term, and on his retin- ment from the office was given impo" the appointments which still kept hitch they service of the State. For over t .. E upant. in public life, no man in Ohio did : life form the character and advance the I' his ests of the State.
Half a mile from Adena, and upon the same plateau, is Fruit Hill, the residence of two Governors-originally the home- stead of Duncan MeArthur, and latterly of William Allen.
Stern, rugged Duncan McArthur, whose name was a household word throughout the West-scout, surveyor, soldier, famous both as General and as civil leader-lived here in a log-cabin, and before the erec- tion of the Worthington mansion built a large stone house on the site of the pre- sent structure. The original residence was, however, almost entirely destroyed by fire, and only a small portion remains, incor- porated with the newer but still ancient pile of substantial masonry. MeArthur's career was a curious one, and yet one which has had many parallels in the history of the Northwest. He was born in Dutchess County, New York, in 1772, and when eight years of age removed with liis father to the Pennsylvania fron,- tier. His parents were natives of the Highlands of Scotland, and his mother belonged to the Campbell clan, so cele- brated in Seottislı history. Young McAr- thur had a generous strain of the sturdy blood of the Highlands in his veins, and probably inherited something of the Scotch love of action and adventure, for at the age of only eighteen years we find him a soldier under General Harmer in his campaign against the Indians. In 1792 he acted with so much intrepidity at one of the most fiercely fought battles of the time that he immediately became a hero in the eyes of the hardy frontiersmen.
From that time on until after the set- tlement of Chillicothe he was constantly braving the dangers of the wilderness, ei- ther as a spy among the Indians or as a surveyor with Massie. He assisted Mas- sie in laying out the "ancient metropo- lis," and in the course of his business be- came a rich landholder, and settled on one of his large traets, now known as the Fruit Hill estate. He was a member of one of the early Legislatures, and being a high officer in the militia, on the break- ing out of the war of 1812 went to De-
VOL. LXIII .- No. 378 .- 55
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HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
ttroit, and was there, with the regiment he of mmanded, included in Hull's surrender. ica, ur his return as a prisoner of war on mense majority to Congress, a for sevethe Democratic party elected him John A Flirty years TheE ich he resigned to go into the a front of action as Major- ed, cz le?
Și in the
+ er the "general call" he andusky plains an army of
nearly eight thousand men, mostly from the Scioto Valley, which, history says, "was almost wholly stripped of its male population." This general turn - out of the militia bore evidence that Massie, McArthur, and the few pioneers who fol- lowed them into the valley of the Sci- oto and made its first settlement had in- fused something of their own daring into the mass of the community. After the resignation of General Harrison, the com- mand of the North western army devolved upon McArthur, and from that time un- til the declaration of peace he conducted a most energetic and effectual campaign. Returning to his home, he again held many civil offices within the gift of a grateful State, and ten years after the close of the war in which he had won such high military honors was elected to Congress, in which body he became a ,"trong supporter of what was then call-
51 the American system, and exerted a large influence in its favor, for although an uneducated man he had practical busi- 1 ness habits, energy, perseverance, and the soundest of judgment. His enormous s private business needing all his attention, The declined re-election for a third term, but a few years later he was brought forth from his retirement by the anti-Jackson party, which elected him to the Guberna- torial chair. Upon the expiration of his term of office he was a candidate for Con- gress, being put into the field to heal dis- sensions in the party. Upon McArthur's · nomination the other candidates with- drew, and his friends everywhere were very confident that the ex-Governor, an old politician, and popular man of af- fairs, could sweep the district against a young and comparatively unknown man, a mere stripling- William Allen. Be- tween McArthur and Allen there was a hot fight, or rather between Allen and the ex-Governor's friends, for McArthur him- self made but little effort in the canvass, probably thinking it unnecessary. Some of his enemies used as a campaign docu- ment against him a small handbill headed
with rude wood-cuts of coffins, and de- tailing in horrible colors the shooting of four deserters at the Chillicothe camp during the war of 1812 by McArthur's or- ders. This act, which was probably noth- ing more than one of the stern necessities of war, and perfectly justifiable under the circumstances, was denounced as the act of a blood-thirsty monster, and perhaps with some effect. It was the old cam- paign cry against McArthur, and had been used every time he was a candidate for office. Allen entered the contest with vigor, made speeches in almost every school-house through the country, and was elected by a majority of one in a total of ten thousand votes. This was the close of McArthur's political career and the open- ing of Allen's. By an accident McArthur met with in Columbus, while Governor, he was terribly maimed, and remained until his death a prisoner at his home.
The young man who won the victory over the ex-Governor of Ohio, and who was destined to hold the highest position within the gift of the State, came to Chil- licothe as a poor boy one winter early in the twenties. He was a native of North Carolina, and born in 1806. His life, how- ever, from early childhood until his eight- eenth year, when he came to Ohio, was passed in Virginia. Making the entire journey from Lynchburg to Chillicothe on foot, and a large portion of it alone, he was warmly welcomed on his arrival by his half-sister and her husband, the mo- ther and father of Allen G. Thurman, with whom he made his home. He at- tended for a time the "old academy," and then began the study of law. Young Allen was tall and large of his age, and he exhibited a mental precociousness which was in keeping with his physical advancement. He was soon admitted to practice at the bar, and almost immedi- ately thereafter developed very unusual oratorical ability. After his first politic- al success he rose rapidly in the favor of the public, and in 1836 was elected United States Senator. When he took his seat the year following he was the youngest man who ever had a place in that body, being in his thirty-first year. It is a fact not generally known that William Allen was offered the Democratic nomination for the Presidency in the Washington Convention of 1848. The friends of Cass and Van Buren being unable to agree, and the dissension having developed to
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THE SUMAC-GATHERERS.
such a degree that it was feared neither in the event of nomination could concili- ate the partisans of his opponent, Allen was strongly urged to allow his name to go before the Convention as a com- promise candidate. He declined on the ground that such action would be trea- chery to Cass, whose friend and adviser he was. After a second term in the Senate, Mr. Allen went into the retirement of pri- vate life. Marrying a daughter of Gov- ernor McArthur, and taking up his resi- dence at Fruit Hill, he made no effort to emerge from his seclusion until 1873, when he accepted the Democratic nomination for the Governorship. Thus came before the people, in a personal canvass, a man who almost forty years before had enter- ed the United States Senate, but who, from his long retirement, was almost un- known to the younger generation of poli- ticians. On the expiration of his term of office, Governor Allen sought no further political preferment. He remained at Fruit Hill enjoying his books, and al- most to the very last superintending the great farm which surrounded his home. His tall, erect form was a familiar sight upon the streets of Chillicothe, and as he was easily accessible, hosts of visitors from the town and from abroad, the distin- guished and the obscure, sought "the sage of Fruit Hill," to converse with him and to receive his counsel. Even in the last few weeks of his life his physical and mental vigor seemed scarcely impaired. His voice was strong and clear, and as he warmed with the growing interest of con- versation upon some broad topic, his man- ner became strangely impressive, and his words as eloquent as when he was a score of years younger. There was no indica- tion of the near approaching close of life's earth chapter in the early summer of 1879, and yet, after a few days' illness, Death laid his hand upon the silvered, venerable head, and the clear blue eyes were closed forever.
The Governor's room in the old stone house, from which we have wandered to recount the lives of its two famous oc- cupants, is still undisturbed. The vine which shades the window looking out upon the lawn and hill-slope, and upon Chillicothe beyond, has been bared by winter winds, and grown green again, but the fragrance of its blossoms floats through the open casement into a lonely chamber. By the reading table, with its homely de-
vice for holding books, there is a vacant, well-worn easy-chair, and all of the sim- ple articles of furniture throughout the room remain in the position in which they were arranged by its departed occupant. Over thirty years of the Governor's life were passed at this historic house, and his powerful personality seems still to per- vade the place.
A great concourse of people attended the funeral of the widely known and well-loved old man, and a long proces- sion wound down the half-mile hill, and through the hushed streets of the town, and up to the summit of another high hill, following the remains of the last of Chil- licothe's Governors to their final resting- place. No more beautiful cemetery can be found in the West than Chillicothe's city of the dead, overlooking the peaceful, sunny valley of the Scioto and its ram- bling, village-like city of the living. Poor mortality could have no resting-place hal- lowed by more harmonious beauty of na- ture, and glorious immortality no more suggestive earthly symbol or assuring mystic promise, than is here afforded.
Here sleep a goodly company of the distinguished dead-Massie, Tiffin, Wor- thington, McArthur, Allen, and many more, younger men-who by civil means fostered and with arms defended the State which their predecessors founded.
THE SUMAC-GATHERERS.
I.
WAS on a visit to my friend Mr. Bur- I ney, living at his place called Glenbur- ney, in the Shenandoah Valley, in Vir- ginia. It was in the month of September, 187-, and the weather was the most beau- tiful imaginable. Certainly nothing is more exquisite than the fall in Virginia, and the airs were so mild even toward night that the family would go out to the porch after tea and sit there, watching the faint flushı die across the mountains in the west, or the moon rise over the shaggy battlement of the Blue Ridge, which was not more than two or three miles, as the crow flies, from the Glenburney house.
I looked at the exquisite landscape from the porch on the evening of my arrival. Night was near. The air was perfectly still. Along the west, seen across rolling fields and a belt of woods, from which peeped up the roofs of the little village of Milldale, lay the long range of the North
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Mountain, of a deep rich purple, crowned with a bright orange, shading off into del- icate green. Far off to the south west rose the Massanutten like a purple wave; with Strasburg under the crest, and to the east the Blue Ridge shut in the prospect-a prostrate giant, touched on its summits by the fading light, and slowly merging its bald outline in the gloom. A moment came at last when you could not tell where the mountain ended and the sky began. Was it a cloud, or a range of heights? The question remained unan- swered. There was no moon, but the whole universe seemed to be pervaded by stars. The dusky twilight charmed and soothed, and looking toward the Blue Ridge, where the little twinkling lights of night seemed to spring up from the very horizon, I said to my friend Burney,
"I really seem to have wandered away into star-land."
"I see you are looking at the mount- ain," he replied, with a smile. "But you are mistaken if you suppose that those lights are stars: they are the fires of the sumac-gatherers."
"The sumac-gatherers ?"
"Yes; the work of collecting sumac is in full progress. Those brilliant stars of your fancy are fires in front of tents d'abri -small shelter affairs."
I looked again, and more attentively. Even then it was difficult to believe that the twinkling lights were not stars. They covered the side of the mountain far and near. The wooded declivity rising almost directly from the banks of the Shenan- doah was brilliant with them, soft glow- worms glimmering in the autumn night.
" Tell me who the sumac-gatherers are ?" I said.
"Have you never heard of them be- fore ?" said my friend, with a smile. "Well, that proves, my dear Willing, that you are a stranger to ‘Old Virgin- ny'-since the war at least. Sumac-gath- ering has become an industry, with army head-quarters, so to say, at Richmond, but corps head-quarters at Winchester and elsewhere. The Virginia mountain su- mac is said to be the best in the world aft- er the Sicilian, and here you see how it is procured."
I began to be much interested by this time, and said: "I always make it a point to confess my ignorance where I am ig- norant. What is sumac, and what is it good for ?"
"It is a small shrub," my friend replied, "with lanceolated leaves, which turn of a bright crimson at this time of the year, and are used for tanning fair leather and dyeing. With the various mordants the sumac makes a variety of very rich and beautiful dyes of great excellence, which are chiefly used in calico-printing. Vir- ginia seems to be the favored region for this valuable shrub. It thrives here with- out cultivation, covering the whole mount- ain with its blaze of scarlet. It is, besides, in shape a very beautiful plant. Do you see that ailantus-tree there with its Ori- ental leaves ? The sumac closely resem- bles it."
"And they are gathering it-I mean the people in the tents d'abri yonder ?"
"Yes. They have now been engaged for some days. They make it a sort of frolic. They are poor 'mountain people,' as we call them, and the sumac crop is a very important source of revenue to them. The leaves and twigs on which they grow bring a cent a pound at Winchester, where there is a large sumac factory, and many a poor family depends for its brown sugar and Rio coffee throughout the winter on this industry. They pitch their tents, wives, children, and all, with provisions and cooking utensils, and by daylight and all day long everybody is engaged pulling the leaves and making up bundles. At night they talk and laugh and sing around the fires in front of the little tents-you see them yonder-and then lie down on their 'pine-tag' beds, and go to sleep under the stars."
Having given me this explanation, my hospitable host changed the subject to politics and the question of the Virginia State debt, but this topic failed to interest me. It has been said that everybody has a "wild side" in him-something which makes him revolt from convention and commonplace, and thrill with vague plea- sure at tle unconventional, nomadic, and new. Here was something of this sort. These people, taking their wives and chil- dren and pitching their tents on the mountain- side, interested me. Looking toward the glimmering glow-worm lights, I could fancy the groups around the fires, and hear their songs in imagination, and live their wild careless life with them. No doubt this attraction rose from con- trast. I had come from a Northern city, where I resided, to spend a few weeks in the valley, and the scenes around me were
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