USA > Ohio > Highland County > The County of Highland : a history of Highland County, Ohio, from the earliest days, with special chapters on the bench and bar, medical profession educational development, industry and agriculture and biographical sketches > Part 7
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It perhaps would not be out of place here to speak of General McArthur personally, as pioneer, citizen, governor, and to drop upon the grave of this honest man a sprig of evergreen due the memory of one who, unaided by wealth and culture, reached at last the highest place in the gift and heart of his fellowmen. Duncan McArthur was born in Duchess county, N. Y., January 14, 1772. His parents were natives of Scotland, his mother of the Campbell clan, so widely known in Scottish story. She died while Duncan was quite young. When about eight years of age the father and family moved to the western frontier of Pennsylvania. The war with England was then in progress, and schools were impossible; but young McArthur at the age of thirteen had learned to read and write fairly. His father was very poor and as soon as the work of his own little farm was done, Duncan was hired out to work by the day or month to other farmers in the neighborhood. At this time there was no wagon road across the Alleghany mountains, and all the merchandise, powder, lead, iron, pots, kettles, blankets, rum, and other necessary articles were carried over on pack horses. Young McArthur frequently engaged in the business of conducting trains over the mountains; the excite- ment and danger of the undertaking being greater inducement to this fearless boy than the small wages received for his service. It was almost a daily occurrence to see these moving trains of pack horses, loaded with articles of value, in single file, cautiously making their way over the rugged and stupendous Alleghanies, often along paths barely wide enough for a single horse, from which the least devia- tion would send horse and load into the awful abyss below. But such were not the only dangers that beset the journey; the Indians fre- quently lay in ambush to kill the packers and rob the trains. When McArthur was eighteen years old he bade adieu to home and friends and joined Harmar's army, and from that time he became identified very closely with the history of Ohio. His career is an interesting and instructive one. Without the aid of a single friend, without education or wealth or the associations of society, so essential to mental improvement, he step by step advanced his way, a farmer boy, a packer, a private in the army, a salt boiler, a hunter and trapper, a spy on the frontier, a chain carrier, a surveyor, a member of the
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legislature, and finally governor of his adopted state. McArthur became wealthy, and through the honors conferred upon him by his fellow citizens he was brought in contact with the cultured and refined of society. Yet the fads of social etiquette never disturbed his broad good sense ; he never forgot the fierce struggle of his early years and the frank and generous nature of the pioneer never left him. "He was physically a splendid specimen of manhood, six feet in height and as straight as an arrow, hair and eyes as black as night, complexion swarthy; his whole frame perfectly developed and step as elastic and light as a deer." Although some details of his charac- ter, developed in the hard struggle for wealth, cannot be presented for imitation, in his unity of purpose and of effort he furnishes us with a noble example. The nobility of principle, the freedom from tortuous policy, the direction of the energies to the attainment of one worthy end, makes practicable what is called in the Scriptures the "single eye," not complex, no obliquity in the vision, looking straight on, taking in one object at a time. If we look into the lives of men who have vindicated their right to be held in the world's memory, we shall find that all their actions evolve from one comprehensive princi- ple, and converge to one magnificent achievement. Such a man was Duncan McArthur.
In 1799 Henry Massie determined to connect his town of New Market with the settlement at the Falls of Paint and Chillicothe, and early in the spring he began the cutting of a pack horse trace to those places. On reaching the Falls settlement he found the way open from there to the town of his brother on the Scioto. Gen. William Lytle, who in an early day had emigrated to Kentucky from Penn- sylvania, and took an active part in the desperate Indian fights upon the borders, made a trace from Williamsburg, then called Lytlestown, to New Market. The town of Lytlesville had been laid out some time before by General Lytle, and in December, 1800, it was made the seat of Clermont county, extending northward from the Ohio far inland on the west line of Ross and Adams. A pack horse trace hav- ing been cut through to Cincinnati, a means of communication was thus established by way of New Market to Chillicothe, and from that place on to Marietta, Zanesville and the old states beyond the moun- tains.
During the summer of 1799 but little improvement was made in the town of New Market. Wishart's hotel survived, and now and then received a stranger guest or a party of surveyors, but no new houses were erected, though some effort had been made to separate the town from the wilderness by chopping out a few trees and underbrush, so that the crossing of the main streets might be discerned. In the fall much dignity was conferred upon the town by the establishment of the postoffice of New Market, and the appointment of "mine host" of the tavern as postmaster. When this dignity was conferred New
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Market had but one house, and that almost obscured by the rank growth of butter weeds, which were then in bloom, and filled the air with their silky petals. The hotel was without a sign, but it needed none, as it was the only visible stopping place in the whole region. A pole fence surrounded the tavern, which consisted of a single room twelve by sixteen feet, while stalks of corn earless and dry, and pump- kins, yellow and golden, served as ornaments to embellish and suggest. But the place had become a post town and such dignity must not be disregarded. The burly Scotch landlord by some method managed to get a barrel of whisky and two tin cups, and was prepared to honor the name and station he so proudly occupied. It was quite an inter esting sight upon mail day when the solitary dweller was aroused from his drowsy slumber, by the clear ringing notes of the postman's horn, and to see what polite show of respect was accorded the impor- tant mail carrier, clad in buckskin hunting shirt, coonskin cap, and fully armed with heavy dragoon holsters under bearskin cover. But keeping postoffice in an uninhabited town soon became monotonous and as no letters arrived Wishart concluded he would make custom by an effort of his own. So he wrote to every person that he knew, and some he had only heard of. This for a short time proved success- ful, and answers came from far off friends and quaint replies from unknown parties, until the office became noted for the influx of docu- ments. But the postmaster found no profit in this method, and quit writing letters and resigned his office at about the same time.
In the same year, 1799, Jacob and Enoch Smith enlisted the serv- ice of a surveyor, and platted' a town at the Falls of Paint, which they called New Amsterdam. In 1799, also, the first improvement in the newly laid out town of Greenfield was made. Job Wright, an odd, easy going fellow from the bluffs southwest of Chillicothe, disliking to live in a thickly settled portion of the county because of his hunt- ing and fishing proclivities, gathered up his wife and children, gun and dogs, started out in search of a more congenial clime, and finding Greenfield destitute of inhabitants and the hunting and fishing fine, determined to settle there, and built a cabin for the shelter of him- self and family. This was the first house of any kind built in Green- field, and was on the northeast corner of Main and Washington street, on the ground since occupied by the Franklin House. Job was by trade a hair sieve maker, and followed his trade when he could not hunt nor fish. These hair sieves in those days were necessary articles in the economy of housekeeping. Wire sieves could not be obtained at any price, and corn meal either ground or pounded is not first class eating until the bran is separated from it. By his trade Job managed to obtain bread for his family, but for his main living depended upon his fishing rod and gun. He had one favorite fishing hole, at a promi- nent rock, some fifty yards above where the bridge now is, which bears his name even now, and is still the lurking place of the fierce
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black bass. Job Wright remained at Greenfield for some years, but as the town grew, population crowded the quaint specimen from his favorite places and he again departed for parts unknown.
In the spring of 1796 John Kincade, with his family, left Vir- ginia for the Northwest Territory. He was a veteran of the Revolu- tionary war and desired to locate his hard-earned Virginia land war- rant and secure for himself a home to shelter his old age. Bringing his goods upon pack horses, he came to Point Pleasant, crossed the Ohio at that place, continued his journey to the west of the Scioto river, and at last reached a large and beautiful spring of pure water near the banks of Sunfish creek. This spot so pleased Kincade that he determined to locate the land around that spring and there build himself a home. Kincade settlement soon became known and, in the next year or two quite a number of families located in the vicinity. In 1798 Charles and James Hughey bought land of Joseph Karr in this neighborhood, and both families settled on their pur- chase, increasing the settlement to thirteen persons. In a little while after this the number was increased by the arrival of two families from Pennsylvania, and in the winter of 1799, Reuben Bristol, from Kentucky, and Abraham McCoy, an Irishman, became established settlers. Then thirty-three persons, all freeholders, constituted the neighborhood, a happy, peaceful community, lacking no essential thing to make them happy, having none of the vices which mar the peace and morals of society, without a code of laws for government and control, without taxes, and without the petty strife of partisan politics, the bitter cup in civilized life. These people were by no means ignorant and uncultured, or destitute of the means of mental improvement and enjoyment. Many had books and all had Bibles, and the Sabbath day was more carefully observed in its sacred char- acter and purpose than now when in the midst of our boasted advance in morality and civilization.
In November, 1799, Mareshah Llewellyn came to Highland county and settled upon Rocky Fork about two miles south of Hillsboro. He was a native of North Carolina, of a Welsh family that came to America during the reign of Charles II, and as they were of a wild and roving disposition, the name was found, not only upon the shores of the Chesapeake, but amid the sands and swamps of the old "North State" and the mountains of eastern Tennessee. Llewellyn was twenty-four years of age, strong, good looking, and polite, yet notwithstanding all these good qualities, he could not persuade old George Smith to give him Peggy for wife, but in lieu thereof Smith swore that he would shoot Llewellyn if he caught him paying any attention to his daughter. This action did not agree with the mind and heart of Peggy, and she determined to have her own way in the selection of her husband, and selecting a time when her father was called away from home as a witness at
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Rutherford Court House, they packed their worldly goods on a tough old horse that Mareshah bought on a long credit, and on a bright moonlight night they started for Tennessee. In about two weeks of brisk travel they reached Elizabethtown, on the head waters of the Holston, where they were legally married. Thence they traveled to Kentucky, camping out at night. Llewellyn did some very successful hunting upon this journey, and by this means supplied himself and wife with food and material for raiment. They at last reached Boonville on the Kentucky river, where they tarried for some time, exchanging bear and deer skins for some nec- essaries, among which was a large sized hand mill for grind- ing corn. Once more they started north, but by the time they reached Blue Lick the horse's back was so sore that they could travel no further. Finding employment in boiling salt they remained during the summer at Blue Lick, and when October came, bundling up their goods they again started on their journey. After various stops the wandering pair finally settled on Rocky Fork at a fine spring on the west side of the road now known as the West Union and Hillsboro pike.
During the fall of 1799, New Market improved largely, and some six or seven cabins were visible from the tavern door. Much of the dense undergrowth had been cut out, and the timber cleared or thinned out in the surrounding forest, which gave to the town the appearance of being the center of a logging camp with the bushy tops of the fallen trees yet remaining uncleared. Winter firewood was near and plentiful and the blue smoke going up from the wide chim- neys gave evidence of cheerful comfort within. The permanent settlers in New Market in the year 1800 were Eli Collins and family, Isaac Dillon, Jacob Eversole, John Eversole, Christian Bloom, Robert Boyce, Jacob Beam, John Emrie and the plucky landlord of the hotel, William Wishart. Jonathan Berryman was on his farm, adjoining the town. He had cleared and cultivated a few acres, and was known as the most successful farmer in the community. He had raised more corn than would supply his own wants and found ready sale for his surplus at his own crib. Oliver Ross had erected a house on his land east of town, the best in that region. Houses in that day consisted of a single room which answered the purpose of kitchen, parlor and bedroom. Ross, however, built his house of hewed logs, clapboard roof, with one room in front and one back of it which served as a kitchen. He had cleared some land and raised some corn, and under a special license from Governor St. Clair opened a tavern. Robert Huston had built upon his land and tended a patch of corn. This was the condition of things in and about New Market in the year 1800.
All the necessaries, save corn and wild game, were brought from a distance-Manchester or Chillicothe-yet the people were con-
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tented and happy and were able to control their appetites by the amount and variety of the supply of provision on hand, and when spring returned, it found them in good condition for work in forest and field, the hominy and bear meat fully agreeing with their diges- tion. Now and then an effort was made by some lady, who had brought a small quantity of tea from her old home, to make some dis- play of the lost art of tea making, when some special occasion demanded extra exertion at entertainment. We give one instance for the edification and comfort of the tea lovers of the present age. A small number of ladies had gathered at a neighbor's cabin to enjoy social converse and the detailing of events so common among the fair women of all lands. To meet the demands of this visit the very best the house could furnish was prepared and it was decided to brew a cup of tea as extra fare to grace the board. But no fire proof vessel could be found except an old broken bake-oven, such as was used to bake cornpone. With this they went to work, beginning with the substantials. First there were some nice cakes made and fried in bear's oil in the one vessel; then some short cakes were made and baked in it; then some fine venison steaks were fried in the same vessel, after which it was used to carry water from the spring, some hundred yards away, and finally the tea was made in this precious old oven, and pronounced by all present to be most excellent.
In the spring of 1800 New Market was highly honored by a visit from Governor St. Clair, who, on a journey from Chillicothe to Cin- cinnati, stopped at Ross' tavern, which greatly vexed our friend Wishart of the New Market hotel. Ross was an Irishman, of broad, good sense, and much blarney, and doubtless brought all his charms to bear upon the fun-loving governor, who shortly after his return to Chillicothe sent Ross a commission as Territorial justice of the peace, making him the first officer of the law within the present limits of Highland county. This honor highly elated Squire Ross, and was an added dignity to the town of New Market. The commission did not arrive quite soon enough for the purpose of certain parties in the neighborhood of New Market. John Emrie and Squire Ross's eldest daughter, Margaret, had concluded to get married, and as it was neces- sary to have legal sanction to this contract as well as witnesses, a man by the name of John Brown was brought up from Amsterdam to per- form this interesting ceremony. The ceremony was performed at eleven o'clock a. m. Dinner was served at twelve noon, and the rest of the day was spent in shooting at mark, romping with the girls, and a grand old dance at night.
In this same important year, 1800, the seat of government was removed by act of Congress from Cincinnati to Chillicothe, and the erection of a state house was commenced at that place to accommodate the Territorial legislature and the various courts. Chillicothe, after this, besides the seat of justice of the Highland settlements we have
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described, became the most important place in the Northwest, the center of wealth and fashion, drawing its trade and extending its influence for hundreds of miles, bringing to its busy crowded streets the mixed population from everywhere.
In 1800 John Coffey, Lewis Lutteral, Samuel Schooley, Joseph Palmer, James Curry, James Milligan and William Bell came to Greenfield and began house building and other improvements with the view of permanent settlement. Mr. Bell died the following spring, leaving a wife and six children, three sons and three daugh- ters. The sons all married and remained in Greenfield, and in the course of a few years were the leading business men in the town. Joseph and Charles were the first blacksmiths, and Josiah was the first hatter in the town. They all saved money, and quitting their old industries, engaged in the dry goods business and became the prominent merchants in the town. Joseph removed from Green- field to Washington, Fayette county, where death found him in 1854. John Coffey resided many years near Greenfield, and filled several important offices in the church and state. James Curry did not remain very long in Greenfield, removing with his family to Union county and settling on a farm on Darby creek, where he died in 1834 at a ripe old age, respected and honored by all. "When quite a young man James Curry had been with the Virginia forces in the bloody battle of Point Pleasant. He served as an officer in the Virginia Continental line, during the greater part of the Revolutionary war, and was taken prisoner by the British when the American army sur- rendered at Charleston, S. C. During his residence in Ohio he was extensively known among the leading men of the State. He was several times elected to the State legislature, and was one of the electors by whom the State was given to James Monroe in 1820. The last of many public trusts which he held was that of associate judge for this county." Otway Curry, his youngest son, was born in Greenfield in 1804, and grew to be a lad of much promise. His father bestowed great care upon his education. intending that his son should become a lawyer. But this was not in harmony with the boy's wishes and likes. His was the poetic temperament, and the musty tomes of legal science had no charms for him, much to his father's regret, and while Otway made the effort to please his father, his heart was not in the study, but far away in an ideal world. To escape from this ordeal, he ran away from home and study, and reached Cincin- nati unknown and without money. He engaged with a man to learn the carpenter trade, leaving him some leisure to indulge the poetic inspirations that filled his mind. He remained in Cincinnati some years, and became noted as the poet of the west. His contributions to magazines and newspapers were short, but full of the elements of poetic fire, and many a sweet, pathetic note of his has cheered and made better the vigorous toilers of the west. He became editor of
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the Chillicothe Gazette in 1853-4. In the fall of 1854 he quit edi- torial work and removed to Marysville, Union county, for the pur- pose of practicing law, but sickened and died in the February follow- ing his removal, after an illness of a few days.
The first school, so far as we have been able to learn, was taught outside the town of Greenfield in a little cabin, by Judge Mooney, in 1803-4. No house was erected for school purposes in that town until 1810. This building was of round poles or logs and shingled with clapboards. The room was sixteen feet square; half of the floor was of split puncheons and the other half was native earth. The earth floor was toward the fire-place, which filled one end of the building. A door was cut out, and a log removed for a window, with broad rails with wooden pins for seats. This constituted the con- venience of these early schools. Coarse paper, quill pens, maple bark ink, Webster's blue-backed spelling book, Pike's arithmetic; bare feet from April to December, and a teacher with a well-seasoned rod, were the incidents essential to the culture and enlargement of the mental vision of the youth of that early day. But the history of the county will show that from the rude log school house have come men and women who not only had the capacity to understand and direct material events, shaping the character and destiny of the country by their clear and cultured view of the true elements of social economy, but were graced with every virtue that made them leaders and seers in social progress, intellectual and moral. This school house was replaced by a larger building of hewed logs in 1815, and occupied the ground afterward enclosed and used as a grave- yard. This house served the school purpose of Greenfield until 1837, when James Anderson and Thomas Boyd were employed to build two frame school houses, which were used for many years. Greenfield did not go forward at a rapid pace for some years after its first settlement, and as one of her good citizens remarked, "up to the year 1814 it was green enough." Most of the lots up to that date were covered with hazel brush, grape vines, and running brier. There were some progressive people in the town and they urged the necessity of clearing out and the further improvement of the place if the future of their city would be assured and permanent. Two or three taverns, which were mere excuses for the name, were run- ning; their only means of existence was the ability to keep whisky on hand to satisfy the native thirst of the local and traveling public. The first public house of any note was erected by Francis P. Nott, in 1804. A man by the name of Simpson also "kept tavern in the town," and he was followed by Noble Crawford, who erected a stone building, the first of its class in the town. This hotel had a good reputation far and near. T. McGarrough owned this house for sev- eral years, and kept it for a place of rest and comfort for the emigrants in their journeys in search of homes. The building
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remains to mark the flight of time, and it has been said that if the covering could be removed from the door arch the date of its erection could be learned, for there, cut in the solid rock, are the words "Travelers' Rest, by Noble Crawford, A. D. 1812." Unlike the rock-built pyramids that dot the valley of the Nile, it does not repre- sent the tragic history of a vanished race, but stands a living witness, marking a century of progress and civilization, amid homes of affluence and wealth, in the midst of a little city filled with enlight- ened and christian citizens, with the smoke of numerous factories curling in fantastic shapes above the domes and steeples, of beautiful churches, and commodious halls and city buildings.
CHAPTER V.
CLEAR CREEK AND OTHER SETTLEMENTS.
N THE spring of 1800 Hugh Evans with his sons and sons-in-law came into the present area of Highland and settled upon Clear creek, on a tract of three thousand acres surveyed for him by General Massie some years before. Evans came from Penn- sylvania with his numerous family, first to Kentucky, at a time when there was danger from hostile Indians, and he and others were escorted by soldiers to Maysville. He settled near Paris, Ky., and thence after Wayne's treaty of peace he started with his family for Ohio, first, however, coming over in 1799 with his sons to his land on Clear creek and building the cabins. From New Market there was no trace leading to the land located by Evans, and they were com- pelled to follow the compass to reach their destination. Hugh Evans, the father, built his cabin on the farm afterward owned by Daniel Duckevall. William Hill settled just below on the creek ; Amos next, then came Daniel, Samuel, Joseph Swearinger, George, Wilson, and Amos Evans. This was the extreme frontier settlement, no other white man to the north, in a dense, dark forest, peopled only by the wild game that seemed to be placed there to meet the demands of the hour. The first thing they could do was to make sugar from the hard maple, which was very plentiful then, and enough sugar was then made to last a year. Then they cleared about ten acres ready for planting by the last of May. The ground was new and rich, and the corn planted made a vigorous growth and yielded a very large crop, while the pumpkins in golden globes covered the ground, and potatoes and turnips were almost measureless in quantity and quality. When the corn had ripened fully, Mr. Evans went to work and constructed what was called a sweat mill, which answered the purpose, and gave ample supply of new, fresh meal. Doubtless it would be of some interest to describe this new mill for the edification of the present dwellers amidst the new process roller mills. The first thing neces- sary in making a sweat mill is to find a sycamore gum three feet long, with a hollow two feet in diameter. Into this is fitted a dressed stone, with a hole in the center. This stone is about nine inches
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