USA > Ohio > Wyandot County > The History of Wyandot County, Ohio, containing a history of the county, its townships, towns general and local statistics, military record, portraits of early settlers and prominent men etc > Part 34
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The chimney was likewise an important part of the structure. In some
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cases it was made of stone, and in others of logs and sticks, laid up in a manner similar to those which formed the walls of the house, and plastered with mud. It was built outside of the house, and at one end. At its base a huge hole was cut through the wall for a fire-place. The back and sides of the latter were formed of large flat stones, when such could be procured, otherwise irregularly shaped stones, held to their place by a slab wall locked around them, and covered with mud, were utilized.
An opening was chopped or sawed in one side of the cabin for a door- way. Pieces of hewn timber, three or four inches thick, were fastened on each side with wooden pins, or in rare instances with heavy iron nails, and these formed the frame on which the door (if there was one) was hung, either by wooden or leather hinges. The door itself was a clumsy piece of woodwork. It was made from a plank rived from an oak log, and held to- gether by heavy cross-pieces. There was a wooden latch upon the inside, raised from without by a string or thong of deer-skin, which passed through a gimlet hole. From this mode of construction arose the old and well- known phrase, indicating the hospitality of its inmates, "You will find the latch-string always out." When on rare occasions, it was pulled in, the door was considered fastened. Many of the pioneer cabins had no door of this kind until they had been occupied for years. Instead of the door on hinges, a blanket or some old garment was frequently suspended before the opening to guard the occupants of the cabin from sun or rain.
The window was a small opening usually near the door, and in most cases devoid of frame or glass. In lieu of the latter, greased paper was often used, in rare instances thin deer skin well greased, and sometimes an article of the housewife's limited wardrobe constituted a curtain.
The floor of the cabin was made of puncheons. These were pieces of timber split from trees about twelve to eighteen inches in diameter, and hewed smooth as possible with a broad-ax. They were usually half the length of the floor surface. Indeed some of the cabins earliest erected had nothing but earth floors. Occasionally there was one which had a cellar- that is, a small excavation under the floor- to which access was had by removing a loose puncheon. Very commonly the cabins were provided with lofts. The loft was used for various purposes, and among others as the "guest chamber," which pioneer hospitality was offered to the wayfarer and the stranger. It was reached by a ladder, the sides of which were split pieces of sapling.
Although the labor of building a rough log cabin was usually performed in two or three days, the occupants were often employed for months in finishing and furnishing it. The walls had to be "chinked and daubed," various conveniences furnished, and a few rude articles of furniture manu- factured. A forked stick set in the floor and supporting the ends of two poles, the other extremities of which rested upon the logs at the side and end of the cabin, formed the basis for a bedstead. A common form of table was a split slab supported by four rustic legs, set in auger holes. Three- legged stools were formed in similar simple manner. Pegs driven in auger holes in the logs of the wall supported shelves, and upon others were dis- played the few articles of wearing apparel not in use. A few other pegs, or perhaps a pair of deer horns, formed a rack where hung the rifle and powder horn, which no cabin was without. These, and a few simple articles in addition, formed the furniture and furnishings of the pioneer's cabin. In contrast with the rude furniture fashioned by the pioneer with his poor tools, there were occasionally a few souvenirs of " the old home."
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The utensils for cooking and the dishes for table use were few. The best of the latter were made of pewter, and the careful housewife of the olden time kept them shining as brightly as the pretentious plate in our latter-day fine houses. Knives and forks were few, crockery very scarce, and tinware by no means abundant. Food was simply cooked and served, but it was, as a rule, of the best and most wholesome kind. The hunter kept the larder well supplied with venison, bear meat, squirrels, wild turkeys, and the many varieties of small game. Plain corn bread, baked in a kettle in the ashes, or upon a board or board chip, in front of the great, open fire-place, was a staple article of food. Corn was either pounded into coarse meal, or carried a long distance to mill to be ground. The wild fruits in their season were made use of, and afforded a pleasant variety. In the lofts of the cabins was usually to be found a collection of articles making up the pioneer's materia medica-the herb medicines and spices-catnip, sage, tansy, fennel, boneset, wormwood and pennyroyal, each gathered in its season; and there were also stores of nuts, strings of dried pumpkin, with bags of berries and fruit.
Well water was generally drawn up with what is called a "sweep," which was a long, heavy pole, hinged in a fork at the top of a tall post, and a rope or chain attached at the end over the well, with the bucket. Water could be drawn more rapidly with this simple apparatus than with the windlass or any modern pump.
The habits of the pioneers were of a simplicity and purity which was in conformance with the character of their surroundings and belongings. The days were full of toil, both for man and woman. The men were engaged constantly in the rude avocations of pioneer life-cutting away the forest, logging, burning the brush and the debris, preparing the soil, planting, harvesting, and caring for the few animals they brought with them or soon procured. The little openings around the log cabins were constantly made larger and the sunshine year after year admitted to a larger area of the virgin soil, which had been growing rich for centuries, and only awaiting cultivation to give evidence of its fertility.
While the men were engaged in the heavy work of the field or forest, their helpmeets were busied with a multiplicity of household duties, provid- ing for the day and for the year; cooking, making or mending clothes, spinning and weaving. They were heroic in their endurance of hardship and privation and loneliness. They were, as a rule, admirably fitted by nature and experience to be the consorts of the sturdy, industrious men who came into the wilderness of Western Ohio. Their cheerful industry was well directed and unceasing. Woman's work, like man's, in the years when this country was new, was performed under many disadvantages, which have been removed by modern skill and science, and the growth of new conditions.
The pioneer woman had not only to perform what are now known as household duties, but many which were removed in later years. She not only made clothing, but the fabric for it. Money was scarce, and the markets in which satisfactory purchases could be made were far away. It was the policy of the pioneer (urged by necessity) to buy nothing which could be produced by home industry. And so it happened that in nearly all of the cabins was to be heard the drowsy sound of the softly whirring spinning wheel, and the rythmic thud of the loom, and that women were there engaged in those old, old occupations of spinning and weaving, which have been associated with her name in all ages but our own. They are
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occupations of which the modern world knows little, except what it has heard from the lips of those who are grandmothers now. They are occupa- tions which seem surrounded with the glamour of romance as we look back upon them through tradition and poetry, and they invariably conjure up thoughts of the virtues and graces of the generations of dames and damsels of the olden time. The woman of pioneer times was like the woman of whom Solomon sang: "She seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands; she layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff." Almost every article of clothing, all the cloth in use in the old log cabins, was the product of the patient woman-weaver's toil. She spun the flax, and wove the cloth, for shirts and trowsers, frocks, sheets and blankets. The linen and the wool. the "linsey-woolsey " woven by the housewife, formed nearly all of the articles of clothing worn by men and women.
These home fabrics were died with walnut bark, indigo, copperas, etc., and striped or checkered work was produced by first dyeing portions of the yarn their respective colors before it was put into the loom.
Nearly every farmer had a patch of from a quarter to half an acre of flax, which was manufactured into cloth by the family. The flax. before it was ready for spinning, had to be put through the process of "hackling " and "scutching," and the latter of these operations frequently furnished occasions for " bees," at which the people combined industry with merri- ment and sociability. Clothes entirely of home manufacture were almost universally worn during the early years, and the wearing of " store " clothes was thought by many to be an evidence of excessive vanity.
Men in the pioneer days commonly wore the hunting-shirt, a kind of loose frock reaching half way down the thighs, open before, and so wide as to lap over a foot upon the chest. This generally had a cape, which was sometimes fringed with a piece of raveled cloth of a color different from that of the garment. The hunting-shirt was always worn belted. The bosom of the garment answered as a pouch in which could be carried the various articles needed by the hunter or woodsman. The shirt, or more properly, coat, was made of coarse linen, of linsey or deer-skin, according to the fancy of the wearer. Breeches were made of heavy cloth or of deer- skin, and were often worn with leggings of the same material, or of some kind of leather. The deer-skin breeches or trousers were very comfortable when dry, but when they became wet, were cold to the limbs, and the next time they were put on, were almost as stiff as if made of boards. Hats or caps were made of the various native furs, in crude form, each man being his own hatter until, a few years after the first settlements, men who followed hat-making as a trade came into the country and opened little shops, in which they made woolen hats.
The pioneer women were clothed in linsey petticoats, coarse shoes and stockings, and wore buck-skin mittens or gloves, when any protection was needed for the hands. To a wardrobe of this kind were added a few articles obtained from some distant village, or brought from their old homes in the East. Nearly all of the women's wearing apparel, however, like that of the men, was of home manufacture, and was made with a view to being comfortable and serviceable. Jewelry was very rarely seen, but occasionally ornaments were worn which likewise had been brought from former homes.
The Bible was to be found in the cabins of the pioneers almost as fre- quently as the rifle. In the cabins of some families, a few other books were occasionally to be met with, such as "Pilgrim's Progress," Baxter's
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" Saints' Rest," Hervey's " Meditations," Æsop's "Fables" and the like. The long winter evenings were spent in poring over a few well-thumbed volumes by the light of the great log fire, or in knitting, mending, curing furs, etc.
The pioneers had many discomforts to endure, and some dangers to en- counter. True, when Wyandot County was settled, the danger of Indian depredations had passed away forever, but a vaguely defined apprehension existed in the minds of not a few of the first settlers, that they were not entirely secure in their forest homes. The larger wild beasts were a source of dread, and the smaller ones a source of much annoyance to those who first dwelt in this region. Added to this was the liability to sickness, which always exists in a new country. Then, too, in the midst of all the loveli- ness of their surroundings, there was a sense of loneliness which could not be dispelled, and this was a far greater trial to many men and women on the frontier of civilization, than is generally imagined. The deep-seated, constantly-recurring feeling of isolation made many stout hearts turn fond- ly back to remembrance of the older settlements, the abodes of comfort, the companionship and sociability they had abandoned.
However, the traveler always found a welcome at the pioneer's cabin. It was never "full." Although there might be already a guest for every puncheon, still there was "room for one more." If the stranger was in search of land, he was doubly welcome, and his host would volunteer to show him all the first-rate claims in "this 'ere neck of the woods," going with him for days, showing the corners and advantages of every "Congress tract " or unclaimed section within a dozen miles. To his neighbors, the pioneer was equally liberal. If a deer was killed, the choicest bits were sent to them-a half-dozen miles away, perhaps. When a "shoat" was butchered, the neighbors were also kindly remembered. If a new-comer came in too late for " cropping," the neighbors would supply his table with the same luxuries they themselves enjoyed, and in as liberal quantity, until a new crop could be raised. Often the neighbors would also cut and hew logs, and haul them to the place of the new-comer's future residence, con- cluding the jubilee task with a grand house-raising. The first night after completing the cabin, they would have a "house-warming" and a dance, as a sort of dedication. The very next day, the new-comer was about as wealthy as the oldest settlers.
As the settlement increased, the sense of loneliness and isolation was dispelled, the asperities of life were softened, its amenities multiplied. Social gatherings became more numerous and more enjoyable. The log- rollings, harvesting and husking bees; the occasional rifle matches for the men, and the quilting parties for the women, furnished frequent occasions for social intercourse. Hospitality in the olden time was simple, unaffected and unbounded, save by the limited means of the people. Whisky was in common use, and was furnished on all festive occasions. Those of the set- tlers who could afford it, had a barrel stored away, and there were very few so poor that they could not have at least a jugful. The liquor at first in use was brought from the Monongahela country. It was the good old- fash- ioned whisky -" clear as amber, sweet as musk, smooth as oil"-that the octogenarians and monogenarians of to-day recall to memory with an unc- tious gusto, and a smack of the lips, which entirely outdoes the descriptive power of words. A few years after the first settlements were made, stills were set up in the large towns to supply the home demand, and corn whisky was manufactured, which, although not held in as high esteem as the "old Monongahela," was used in large quantities.
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Commercial transactions were generally carried on without money, that is, by exchanges of commodities, called "barter" in the books. In this system, sometimes, considerable ingenuity was displayed. When commod- ities were not even in value, credit was given. But for taxes and postage neither the barter nor the credit dodge would answer, and often letters were suffered to remain a long time in the post office for want of the 25 cents in money demanded by the Government. With all this high price on postage, by the way, the letter had not been brought several hundred miles in a day or two, as now-a-days, and delivered within a mile or two of the person addressed; but it had been weeks on the route, and delivered, probably, at a post office five, ten or twenty miles distant. Peltries came nearer being money than anything else, as it became the custom to estimate values in peltries; thus such and such articles were worth so many peltries. Even some Tax Collectors and Postmasters were known to take peltries and ex- change them for the money required by the Government. Orders on the store were abundant, and served as a kind of local money. When a day's work was done by a working-man, his employer would ask: "Well, what store do you want your order on?" The answer being given, the order was drawn, which was nearly always honored.
When the first settlers came into the wilderness, they generally sup- posed that their hard struggle would be principally over after the first year; but alas! they often looked for "easier times next year" for many years before realizing them; and then they came in so gradually and obscurely as to be almost imperceptible. The sturdy frontiersmen thus learned to bear hard- ships like soldiers on duty. The less heroic would sell out cheap, return to their old homes East and spread reports of the hardships and privations on the frontier, while the sterner class would remain and also take advantage of these partially improved lands thus abandoned, and in time become wealthy.
At one time, tea retailed at $2 to $3 a pound; coffee, 75 cents; salt, from $5 to $6 a bushel of fifty pounds; the coarsest calico, $1 a yard, and whisky, $1 to $2 a gallon, and all this at a time, too, when the poor pio- neers had no money to buy with, except the little they sometimes obtained for peltries.
About 1837, a farmer would haul his wheat to Sandusky City, over swampy roads, requiring six to eight days to make the trip, and sell his grain for 60 cents a bushel. On returning, they brought out merchandise, at the rate of 50 cents a hundred weight.
Flour, for some time, could not be obtained nearer than Zanesville or Chillicothe. Store goods were very high, and none but the most common kinds were brought here, and had to be packed on horses or mules from Detroit, or wagoned from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, thence floated down the Ohio River to the mouth of the Scioto, and then packed or hauled up. The freight was enormous, often costing $4 a ton.
Bread, the "staff of life," was the most difficult of all to procure, as there were no mills in the country to grind the grain. The use of stump mortars and graters already referred to, were tedious and tiresome proc- esses. A grater was a semi-cylindrical piece of thickly perforated tin, fastened upon a board, and operated upon as is a nutmeg grater. The corn was taken in the ear, and grated before it got dry and hard. By and by a horse grist mill was put up here and there, and then water grist mills along the principal streams; but all these together could not keep pace with the demands of the rapidly growing settlements. When there was water
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enough to run the mills, the roads were too muddy and small streams too high for teaming and taking the grain to the mills. Horse mills were tuo slow. and thus the community had to plod their weary way along until steam flouring mills were introduced.
The implements used by the first farmers in this State would, in this age of improvement, be great curiosities. The plow was of the wooden mold-board, bar-share pattern, difficult to describe. The reapers were the sickle and the cradle. Harrows, with wooden teeth, were simply brush heaps dragged over the ground. Hoes were almost as heavy as grubbing boes. Threshing machines were flails, or the grain was trodden out by horses or oxen. A sheet or quilt, with a stout person at each end to swing it simultaneously, sometimes constituted the fanning mill, or sometimes the grain and chaff would be dipped up with a pail, held aloft and slowly poured out, while the wind was blowing. Handbreaks were used for break- ing flax and hemp.
When the earliest pioneer reached this Western wilderness, game was his principal meat, until he had conquered a farm from the forest or prairie. As the country filled up with inhabitants, game grew correspondingly scarce, and by 1840-50, he who would live by his rifle would have had but a precarious subsistence had it not been for "wild hogs." These animals -the descendants of those left by home-sick emigrants who had returned East-multiplied and thrived in a wild state, their subsistence being chiefly acorns, nuts, sedge stalks, and flesh of carcasses and small vermin. The second and third immigration to the country found these wild hogs an un- failing source of meat supply for a number of years. In some sections of the West, they became altogether too numerous for comfort, and the citi. zens met, organized and adopted measures for their extermination.
Meanwhile, during all the early years of the settlement, varied with oc. casional pleasures and excitements, the great work of increasing the area of tillable lands went steadily on, and true, the implements, as already men tioned, were few and of the most primitive kind. yet the soil which held in reserve the accumulated richness of unnumbered centuries, produced splen did results. Although the development of the country and the improvement of individual condition was slow, nevertheless it was sure. Hence year by year, the log houses became more numerous, and the forest shrank away before the woodman's ax. The settlers brought stock into the country as they became able, and each one had his horses, oxen, cows, sheep and swine. Among the earliest evidences of the reward of patient toil were the double cabins of hewed logs, which took the places of the earlier hut like structures. Then frame houses began to appear, and hewed-log barns, and later, frame barns were built for the protection of stock and the housing of the crops. Simultaneously with the earliest indications of increasing thrift. society began to form itself; the schoolhouse and the church appeared, and advancement was noticeable in a score of ways.
Still there remained a vast work to perform, for as yet only a beginning had been made. The brunt of the struggle, however, was past. The pio- neers had made a way in the wilderness for the advancing hosts of the army of civilization.
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CHAPTER VI.
CIVIL HISTORY.
THIS REGION PRIOR TO 1845-ORGANIZATION, ETC., OF WYANDOT COUNTY-ACT OF CONGRESS RELATING THERETO-PUBLIC SALE OF TOWN LOTS IN UPPER SANDUSKY-NAMES OF PURCHASERS-TOWNSHIPS-PUBLIC' BUILDINGS-NO- TABLE PROCEEDINGS OF COURTS-RESULTS OF ELECTIONS-OFFICERS ELECT- ED.
A GLANCE AT THIS REGION PRIOR TO THE FORMATION OF WYANDOT COUNTY. A S already explained, the Wyandot Indians were the acknowledged owners of all this region prior to September 29, 1817. They then ceded (with the exception of some small reservations, also heretofore described) their land- ed possession to the United States Government, and agreed to retire to, and re. main within their reservations, with the privilege granted them, however, of hunting over any and all parts of the broad domain so lately theirs, until the same was required for actual occupation, and improvement by the whites. During the two or three years immediately succeeding this cession of lands, certain officials, styled Deputy Surveyor Generals, acting under the orders of 'the Surveyor General of the United States, ran out the township and sectional lines over a large portion of this, the new purchase. A region, which it appears, remained without the limits of civil jurisdiction, until by an act of the State Legislature passed February 12, 1820, to take effect on the 1st day of April following, a number of counties were erected from the new purchase, or what was then termed the "Old Indian Territory." Among them Crawford, Hancock, Hardin, Marion and Seneca. As these counties (except Seneca) originally embraced the territory now known as Wyandot County, we will glance at the their original dimensions.
Hancock County, to include Townships 1 and 2 south, and 1 and 2 north, in Ranges 9, 10, 11 and 12. Hardin County to include all the last-men- tioned ranges, south of said second townships, and running south with the range lines to the northern boundaries of the organized counties. Craw - ford County to include Townships 1, 2 and 3 south, in Ranges 13, 14. 15, 16 and 17, and all that may lie between the same and the west line of Rich- land County. Marion County to include all of the last-mentioned ranges south of said third townships, and to run south with said range lines to the northern boundaries of the organized counties, and east with the township lines to Richland County line.
By the provisions of the same act-the act passed February 12, 1820- Crawford County was attached to Delaware for judicial purposes. The former county in part then embraced all that portion of the present county of Wyandot designated Townships 1, 2 and 3 south, in Ranges 13. 14 and 15 east, and it was while under the jurisdiction of the Delaware County officials, and by virtue of an order issued from the Court of Common Pleas of Delaware County, directed to the qualified voters of Crawford Township, in Crawford County, that the first election was held within the present lim- its of Wyandot County. Crawford Township then comprised the present townships of Crawford, Tymochtee and Sycamore. In pursuance of the
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