The History of Warren County, Ohio, Part 48

Author: W. H. Beers & Co.
Publication date: 1882
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1081

USA > Ohio > Warren County > The History of Warren County, Ohio > Part 48

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The first schoolhouse was a low, rough log cabin, put up by the neighbors in a few hours, with no tool but the ax. It stood on the north bank of Turtle Creek, not far from where the west boundary of Lebanon now crosses Main street. The first teacher was Francis Dunlevy, and he opened the first school in the spring of 1798. Some of the boys who attended his school walked a dis- tance of four or five miles. Among the pupils of Francis Dunlevy were Gov. Thomas Corwin, Judge George Kesling, Hon. Moses B. Corwin, A. H. Dunlevy, William Taylor (afterward of Hamilton, Ohio), Matthias Corwin (afterward Clerk of Court), Daniel Voorhis, John Sellers and Jacob Sellers.

"As the cold weather of 1798 commenced, this school was crowded with young men of a much larger size than had attended during the summer. At

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Christmas, it was determined to bar out the master, according to the custom of the times. The object in part was a mere frolic, in part to secure the holidays free from school, and sometimes the master was required to treat. When the barring out was successful, there was a regular and sometimes tedious negotia- tion between scholars and teacher, and the terms of pacification were required to be stipulated with precision. But the teacher was not easily thwarted. He was opposed on principle to treating, and he had served in so many campaigns against the Indians that he had imbibed a spirit which knew not how to submit or suffer defeat. After having been driven from the window by long hand- spikes, with which he was several times severely struck, he retired for a time. Returning, he ascended, unobserved by the boys, to the top of the chimney, made of 'cat and clay,' and very large. He suddenly descended down the chimney, though a brisk fire was burning. The boys, astonished at his appear- ance from this unlooked-for point, capitulated with as much coolness as, under the circumstances, they could command. Defeated in their Christmas frolic, on New Year's Day the boys gathered recruits from the young men who did not attend school, and took much pains to secure every possible point of ingress. The fire-place was well guarded, the window secured and the door barricaded with large logs piled against it to the top. As the master approached, a loud note of defiance went up from the inmates. The scene was the more exciting as many of the neighbors had come to witness the siege, which was to result in the triumph or defeat of the young men. After surveying the field as well as he could from the outside, Judge Dunlevy soon determined on his mode of as- sault. Taking a large green log which had been brought for firewood on his shoulders, he stepped off some ten paces from the door, and then rushed with his utmost speed, bringing the end of the log against the top of the door. The concussion was so violent as to break the door and displace the logs on the in- side so much as to open a hole, through which he instantly entered, to the ter- ror and consternation of the boys. For a moment, there was some show of re- sistance, notwithstanding the fort had been captured. But this soon subsided. There were no more attempts to bar out Francis Dunlevy." Another teacher, who succeeded Dunlevy, it is said, not long after was barred out, and treated the boys to a gallon of stew.

The settlements at Bedle's Station and on Turtle Creek, about the present site of Lebanon, formed in some respects a single neighborhood. The men met at the same house-raisings and log-rollings; the women, at the same social gatherings; and the children attended the same school. They attended also, for the most part, the same churches-the Presbyterian Church, near Bedle's Station, and the Baptist Church, east of the site of Lebanon.

In order to form a path for the children to the schoolhouse, the settler sometimes harnessed a horse to a log and dragged it through the tall and dense weeds and spice-bushes. Smooth foot-paths winding through the deep woods led from one cabin door to another. When a settler was sick, the neighbors aided him, freely planting his corn for him, tilling or gathering it, or, in win- ter, supplying his family with firewood already chopped. Cincinnati being the nearest point at which merchandise could be purhased, two or three neigh- boring women would mount their horses on a summer morning, ride to that village, thirty miles distant, do their shopping and return the same day, a large portion of the journey being through an unbroken wilderness, without a single house on the road.

The following is a list of the names of pioneers who settled in the town- ship before the close of the last century. It is not claimed to be by any means complete, but it is as complete as the writer was able to make it after extended researches:

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William Bedle, Francis Bedle, Joseph Bedle, James Blackburn, Daniel Banta, Benjamin Bundy, Robert Benham, Ichabod Corwin, Matthias Corwin, Joseph Corwin, David Corwin, Elder Daniel Clark, James Cowan, Daniel Cory, Noah Cory, Francis Dunlevy, William Davis, William Dill, Lewis Drake, Peter Drake, Joseph Dill, Ithamer Drake, Levi Estell, Samuel Gallaher, Joseph Hatfield, Nathan Hathaway, Ichabod B. Halsey, Daniel Hole, Aaron Hunt, Silas Hurin, Jacob Holloway, Thomas Humphreys, John Hormel, Teter Kesling, Henry Kes- ling, Thomas Lucas, Job Mulford, Isaac Morris, Benjamin Morris, Samuel Man- ning, John McCain, Patrick Meloy, James McCreary, James Norris, John Os- born, Augustine Price, Wyllis Pierson, David Reeder, John Shaw, Peter Sell- ers, Jacob Sellers, Jonas Seaman, Matthias Spinning, Samuel Sering, Henry Taylor, John Terry, Jonathan Tichenor, John Tharp, Jacob Trimble, Aaron Tullis, Jedediah Tingle, Cornelius Voorhis, James Voorhis, Edward Woodruff, Moses Williams, Enos Williams, Peter Yauger.

The following article on the health of the early settlers of the Turtle Creek Valley was written by A. H. Dunlevy in 1879. It is given at length for the reason that, in addition to the subject of health, it gives much history of the earliest settlers in the neighborhood in which the author passed his boyhood: " There is no one living here now who was so early in this neighborhood as myself. I knew all the sites of the graveyards before there was any burial here, and some two years before there was a death in all the neighborhood around Lebanon, as since laid out. I was present at the burial of the first grown person who died in this county. This was in the fall of 1799, and was a young man named John Price, who accidentally shot himself. He was bur- ied in the old Presbyterian graveyard. There had been one burial a short time before -- a child of old Daniel Banta, who settled as early as 1795, in the fall of that year, about a mile east of Genntown, now called. All the Bontas in the neighborhood are his descendants, as I remember.

" It is generally believed that a new country, wooded with a dense forest and immense growth of weeds and grass, is uniformly unhealthy. This, I am sure, is a mistake. If the new country is naturally well drained, I think the less of the bare surface of the ground exposed to the hot sun of summer, the greater the health. In giving the proof of this position, I might refer to many facts, but this would require too much time, and I will only give the facts on this subject, in relation to our neighborhood -- that in which I was reared for sixteen years of my early life. That neighborhood was bounded by the North Branch of Turtle Creek and the Dayton road on the east, the Hamilton or Shakertown road on the south, and extending two and a half miles west, then two miles north, then two and a half miles east to the section line on which the Dayton pike is laid. This neighborhood had its school property in 1798, most of the houses in its center. In this neighborhood I was raised, and not only knew every resident in its bounds, but was familiar with every acre of its surface, and I therefore speak with certainty.

" Its inhabitants, from 1797 to 1800, consisted of the following families, with their children, thence soon after born: Ichabod Corwin and thirteen children; John Shaw and twelve children; Jacob Sellers and four children; Peter Sellers and four children; Wyllis Pierson and seven children; Benjamin Bundy and five or six children, and Jacob Holloway and five children, as I recollect; Noah Corey and four children; Jedediah Tingle and thirteen children; David Reed- er and four children; Jonathan Tichenor and four children; Edward Wood- ruff and six children; Matthias Spinning and seven children; Francis Dunlevy and eight children; James Blackburn and seven children; Daniel Corey and eight children; James McCreary and five children; Samuel Gallaher and eight children. These were the original settlers in this neighborhood, with a few

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exceptions, where they soon left it, and that which I consider the most remark- able fact is that all these children of the eighteen families above named, and consisting of 125 children in all, were raised to maturity without one death in any of the families, with the exception of one child still-born, not included in the above enumeration. I might name other families which came into this neighborhood at different periods after these original settlers, and the same health attended them.

" The only two deaths in the neighborhood, until 1810, were a hired hand of Ichabod Corwin, about 1806, and a child of William Stevens, about 1809, both of consumption, and both recent settlers in the neighborhood. Such is my recollection, and I think I am entirely correct, as I have thought of those remarkable instances of general health so long and so frequently, that, had there been any mistake, I should have been able at some time to remember it. " I do not confine myself to this neighborhood particularly so much because I think it was more healthy than others at that time, but because I was ac- quainted here, and must confine myself to some boundary, otherwise I would not know where to stop. Still, on account of its perfect drainage, I think it was more healthy than others. Until 1810, there was no bilious fever known in this county, and I never knew a case of intermittent, or ague, generally called, which originated in said neighborhood, until the year 1830. In 1810, there were several cases of bad bilious fever and two deaths of grown persons within the neighborhood. One of these was Peter Sellers, father of Dr. Sell- ers, of Lebanon, and the other Mr. Jacob Sellers, a near neighbor and relative of Peter Sellers. There were a few cases of this fever in this neighborhood during that year, but all the others recovered.

"In the year 1814, the cold plague, as called, prevailed generally all over the United States, and in Lebanon, a town of some one thousand inhabitants, there were many deaths, but in the above neighborhood I recollect of but three cases of cold plague; one of these, James McCreary, died; the other two recov- ered.

"In the year 1819, there was much sickness throughout the Miami coun- try, the first year of general sickness which had been known here from the first settlements, except the year of the cold plague. The spring and summer, up to the middle of July, had been very wet. It then became very dry and hot, and scarcely any rain fell from the middle of July until the last of October. This sudden drought and heat soon poisoned the surface water, and seriously affected wells and springs; and the consequence was that dysenteries or bloody flows prevailed to an extent never known before or since. In one of the above families, that of Jedediah Tingle, there were three or four deaths, two of them, at least, from dysentery. One, I think, was supposed to be from consumption. These cases of fatal dysentery were evidently the result of bad water. Mr. Tingle, from his first settlement, had used a spring which had heretofore afforded healthy water; but the dry, hot weather of 1819 so affected this spring that it became green, and the water contracted a bad taste and smell. This in- formation I had from neighbors who sat up with and nursed the sick in the family at that time; and Mr. Tingle was so thoroughly convinced of that fact that he immediately afterward dug a well and abandoned the old spring as a supply of water for the family.

'Now, I attribute the uncommon health of the above neighborhood, first, to its almost perfect natural drainage; in which area of two and a half by two miles it had but two or three swamps or bogs, so common in new countries, and these were very small, and two of them were on hillsides, so as to drain them pretty well; and secondly, the well and spring water in all this neighborhood was, from the very fact of its perfect drainage, pure and healthy, with the one exception which I have referred to-that of Jedediah Tingle's spring.

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" And now, in the close of this long article, let me say that my object was to show the importance of perfect drainage to the health of families and com- munities. Long observation has convinced me that more of our sickness is the result of impure water, not only the water used for drinking and house use generally, but the water arouud our dwellings, in the form of pools or mud- holes, however small, than from all other causes of summer diseases.

" In my limits of the above neighborhood, I purposely left out forty acres of the original farm of Ichabod Corwin, because it lies on the east side of the North Branch of Turtle Creek, and forms almost the entire part of the original plat of Lebanon. I could not undertake to give the particulars of the health of the whole town. But besides this, there were on this plat originally some three pieces of swampy ground, naturally well drained, but, by the improve- ment of its streets, this drainage has been much impeded, and, as I have long thought, thereby seriously affecting the health of the most populous portion of Lebanon. These swampy places have been covered up, but the old channels which supplied them with water remain, while the original drains have been impeded by filling them up without culverts, and thereby the water is retained to stagnate and penetrate the wells in the country, and render their water un- healthy. This has been my opinion for years, but I have been alone on this subject, and perhaps may be in error."

The early records of the township are lost, or at least are not in the cus- tody of the present township officers. From other sources, we are able to learn the names of those who held the office of Justice of the Peace. Robert Ben. ham and Samuel Sering appear to have held this office under the government of the Northwest Territory before the organization of the State; whether they held the office after they became residents of the township does not appear. At the first elections of Justices in Warren County, Turtle Creek Township was not organized, but persons residing within the limits of the township were elected to the office. Matthias Corwin aud John Miller were commissioned Justices of Deerfield Township, and Wyllis Pierson of Franklin Township, prior to 1804.

The following-named persons were commissioned Justices of the Peace for Turtle Creek Township prior to 1825: Enos Williams, Matthias Corwin, Silas Hurin, John T. Jack, James Long, Patrick Meloy, John Welton, Wyllis Pier- son, Abram Van Vleet, Benjamin Sayres, John M. Houston, James Cowan and Jeremiah Smith. Several of these served for a number of successive terms.

The copy of an old receipt, the original of which is in the possession of the writer, is given for the purpose of indicating the character of the currency of former days:

LEBANON, 26 June, 1820.

Rec'd of John Hart, Esq .. Treasurer of Turtlecreek Township. one Book and four notes of hand-One on Jabish Phillips for $13.46, one on S. & J. Welton for $11.00, one on J. Davis and Jonathan Davis for $5.50 and balance $10.87} on Foster, Drake & Earn- heart. As also nine dollars Cincinnati Corporation paper, one dollar Steam Mill paper, and ten dollars fifty-six and one-fourth cents, fin all $20.56}-all of which is property of the Township. GEO. KESLING, Treas. T. T.

TWO INDIANS KILLED ON TURTLE CREEK.

The following, furnished by Herschel W. Price, of Butlerville, is the only history which has been preserved of the killing of Indians within the limits of Warren County :

In July. 1792, two men, with Mrs. Coleman and Oliver M. Spencer, then a lad, were returning in a canoe from Cincinnati to Columbia. They were fired on by two Indians in an ambush on the bank; one of the men was killed, the other wounded; Mrs. Coleman jumped from the canoe into the river and was saved. Young Spencer was taken prisoner and carried to the Maumee, where

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he remained about eight months, and was ransomed. A narrative of his cap- tivity, written by himself, has been published.

When the captivity of the lad was learned at Columbia, the settlers were called on to pursue the Indians. They were unsuccessful in their pursuit. One party followed a trail to the forks of Turtle Creek, where they abandoned the search and disbanded to return home. Among the party was Henry Bolt- zelle, who discovered a smoke in the woods close to the fork of Turtle Creek now within the limits of Lebanon. Cautiously making his way toward the smoke, he saw an Indian leaning against a tree and eating meat from a large bone. Boltzelle aimed at the savage and shot him dead. As he fell, he gave a yell, which was answered by a whoop from another Indian near by. Having reloaded his gun, Boltzelle waited for the second Indian to appear, and killed him. Having buried the two Indians in the sand near the creek, Capt. Bolt- zelle carried home with him as trophies of his victory a fine silver-mounted rifle of English manufacture, and a bullet-pouch made of panther-skin, with the panther's paw for the lappel. In the pouch were the scalps of four white men. To this day, the gun and bullet-pouch are relics in the possession of one of his great-grandsons, in Paulding County, Ohio. Boltzelle was a Pennsylvania Dutchman; he married and settled in Sycamore Township, Hamilton County, where he lived to a ripe old age. His family name was afterward changed to Bolser.

SHAKER SWAMP.

Before the construction of the Warren County Canal, the waters of Shaker Creek, flowing westward, united from the waters of Miller's Run, which came in from the south. The two streams meeting on level ground, on the water- shed between the two Miami Rivers, spread over a large tract of several hun- dred acres, which was known as Shaker Swamp. Through this swamp, which was covered with woods and decaying logs and branches of fallen trees, the waters had no distinct channel, but tended toward the northwest and entered a branch of Dick's Creek, through which they flowed to the Great Miami. About 1825, the Shaker Society cut an artificial channel for Shaker Creek for the purpose of shortening the creek through the lands of the society, and about 1835, the Warren County Canal was constructed along the eastern borders of the swamp. At one time, it was proposed to convert the swamp into a reser- voir for the purpose of feeding the canal, but this was never done. The waters of Shaker Creek were intercepted by the canal, into which it flowed from the east. On the west embankment of the canal, at the point of confluence, a waste- weir was constructed for the passage of the surplus water. The waste-weir was found not to answer the purpose intended, in times of freshet, for the want of sufficient fall, and, eighteen months afterward, it was removed to a point a mile and a quarter farther north, whence the surplus water flowed into Dick's Creek. Thenceforward, so long as the canal was kept in operation, the waters of Shaker Creek flowed into and were mingled with the waters of the canal. About 1848, a breach was made in the west bank of the canal, not far from the waste-weir, which was never repaired, and about the same time the canal was abandoned by the State as one of its public works. After the abandonment of the canal, the waters of Shaker Creek flowed along the line of the canal and were discharged through the breach, and overflowed, in times of freshets. one or two hundred acres of land, which had not been overflown before the con- struction of the canal. Litigation thus arose, which was settled in the Supreme Court of the State. The Supreme Court held that the owners of land along the line of the canal had not the right to keep up its embankment for the purpose of diverting the waters of Shaker Creek from their natural course, after the canal had been abandoned by the State. In later years, the bed of the canal

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has been utilized as a township ditch, established by the Township Trustees under the authority of law, for the purpose of discharging the waters of the swamp and Shaker Creek into Dick's Creek. Nearly all the land formerly in- cluded in the swamp has been reclaimed.

THE SHAKERS OF UNION VILLAGE.

The history of the introduction of Shakerism in the Turtle Creek Valley has been given in the general history of the county. Within two or three years after the arrival of the Shaker missionaries, in March, 1805, a society was col- lected of about one hundred and fifty persons, nearly all of whom were residents of the western part of Turtle Creek Township, and had been prepared for the new religion by the excitements of the religious revival through which they had passed. Many of the converts were land-owners and men of high standing in the community, some of them men of considerable intelligence, and all of them, perhaps, sincere and honest.

The advent of the Shakers caused great excitement, and awakened great opposition against them for a number of years. Great bitterness existed in some cases among those whose relatives joined the society. The Shaker writers claim that the members of the Christian, or New-Light, denomination-a branch of Christians which originted in the West in the great Kentucky revival, and from which nearly all the Shaker converts were derived-were the leaders of the opposition against them. Col. James Smith, who had been a prisoner among the Indians from 1756 to 1759, and was led out of the Presbyterian Church in Kentucky by the great revival, and for awhile was a follower of Bar- ton W. Stone, was a writer of bitter pamphlets against the Shakers. In 1810, he carried on, in the columns of the Western Star, a controversy with Richard McNemar. of Union Village, in which he exhibited great bitterness against the new communities. There was at that time much fear of Indian incursions, which continued until the battle of Tippecanoe, and Col. Smith, among other charges against the Shakers, accused them of endeavoring to incite the Indians against the whites by telling them that they had been unjustly deprived of their lands, and by other means -- a charge which probably had its only foundation in the fact that large numbers of half-starving Indians had encamped at Union Village and been supplied with food by the Shakers. Many men living in the vicinity of Union Village believed that the leaders of the new sect were design- ing impostors, living in secret sins of the darkest dye, and were ready to wage a war of extermination against them, or drive them from the county. Reports. without any foundation, were freely circulated of their keeping women and children in the community against their consent, and holding them by force in bondage from which they were seeking to escape.

MOB AGAINST THE SHAKERS.

These unfounded charges against a peaceful and harmless sect were widely promulgated and received with ready ears, and in August, 1810, a mob was raised and marched against the Shakers. Unfortunately, it has always been too easy. especially among a backwoods people, to convince the multitude that they are justified in taking into their own hands the redress of their own griev- ances, and in all communities there are always too many who are ready to assist in riotous proceedings. If there is any innate meanness in a man, it is most likely to display itself in the time of a mob. The men who composed the mob were collected from regions around Union Village, a considerable proportion, it is said, being from Dick's Creek, in which region its leader preached. It is said that none who participated in the riotous proceedings were from Lebanon, with the exception of one elderly woman, a member of the Seceder Church from

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Jabez Hollingsworth

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North Carolina. In the crowd were a number of women, more fierce for the destruction of the Shakers than any of the men. There were some hundreds of persons collected together by this mob. According to the accounts of the Shakers, there were 500 armed men, exclusive of those drawn to the scene by curiosity, which is probably an exaggerated estimate. A number of cool-headed and law-abiding men, having a great abhorrence of mobs, went to Union Vil- lage while the mob were assembling, for the purpose of preserving the peace. Judge Francis Dunlevy, then President Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, read the riot act, and, in the name of the State, commanded them to disperse. Joshua Collett and Matthias Corwin, Sr., and other intelligent men, did all in their power to protect the Shakers from violence. These efforts were success- ful, and, after some parleying, the crowd slowly and angrily dispersed.

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The History of Warren County, Ohio, Part 48

Author: W. H. Beers & Co. Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Number of Pages: 1081

Author: W. H. Beers & Co.
Publication date: 1882
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1081