USA > Ohio > Miami County > Piqua > The first century of Piqua, Ohio > Part 25
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flax ; laid it on the grass to bleach ; then broke it in a brake; then scutched it on a board with a wooden knife; then mother put it through the hackle and spun it into yarn, and an old woman who occupied the little house in the yard wove it into cloth, which supplied the family.
The wool taken from the sheep was brought home, carded and spun into yarn and woven into blankets and coverlids. Mother colored the yarn red, blue and white, and had it made into coverlids, sending them to Dayton to be woven.
Mother frequently gave corn meal to the Indians in exchange for relics, such as bowls, baskets, spoons, etc. My mother gave me two silver spoons, which the Indians had stolen from the white people. They are marked with initials. I gave one to my son Charles and one to my son Frank.
After we children were grown, our home was the center of life and gayety. My father was very hospitable and fond of en- tertaining his friends. He was charitable to the poor and raised to manhood several poor children.
When harvest time came they would first cut wheat with a sickle, (sixty men at a time working in the field), then they cut with a cradle, and after that with a reaper.
Then they threshed with a flail, which consisted of two long, round sticks of hickory wood, in the ends of which were bored holes, tied together with leather straps. One served as a handle and the other was hurled skillfully through the air and thus flailed the grain. It took a great deal of sleight-of-hand to use a flail all day to the best advantage possible. The wheat was then put on the floor and tramped by horses, then cleaned and sent to the mill.
My father would often take the wheat to Cincinnati to sell. It would take eight days to make the round trip. On one of these trips he brought a wagon load of goods for a merchant. The man being unable to pay the obligation, he took in payment the lot on Main street, north of Ash street, on which are now built five business houses. He paid the sum of sixty dollars for the lot, which is very valuable property now. The lots were equally divided among his daughters. I have still in my posses- sion the lot next to the bank.
Mrs. Rachael Johnston Davies and Mrs. Margaret Kirk spent many an hour in the camp of the Shawnees, playing under
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the trees and receiving the kindest and most devoted attention from the squaws. Mrs. Rachel Davies was carried from her father's house on the back of a squaw, "Aunt Betty" by name, while Mrs. Kirk followed at her side.
The Indians lived all about them and soon became fast friends of the family, often coming to the house, not infre- quently to exchange some article they had made for food.
Mrs. Davies still has a large bowl, carved from the knot of a hickory tree, which they gave her mother for corn meal.
Mrs. Johnston always came to the monthly meetings of the Piqua Female Bible Society, riding horseback and frequently bringing her daughter riding behind her.
These meetings were held in Mrs. Campbell's stone house, located at the corner of Water and Downing streets.
After a few years, as the family prospered, they moved from the log cabin to a brick house, which they built nearby on what is now known as the Ashton farm.
When on the farm we used to make a great many things. For instance, we made candles out of tallow, first by taking wicks, stringing them on sticks and dipping them in hot tallow until they were large enough for candles. Afterwards we had tin molds. The wicks would be hung in these and the tallow poured around them. In order to save time we very often made our candles at night.
When I was a child at Upper Piqua we had no matches, and if we wanted to start a fire we would take two pieces of flint, strike them together so as to make a spark, which would drop into a piece of punk. This punk would ignite and burn like a match. This was placed in the stove or fireplace with straw and kindling, and the fire was made.
Rachel Johnson was married to Samuel Davies July 7th, 1841, in the old home at Upper Piqua, at 7 o'clock in the morn- ing by Rev. Meeks.
After the ceremony we were driven to Dayton in a two- horse carriage; remained there until next day and then drove to Seven Mile, Butler county, to the old Davies homestead. After a visit of one week we returned to Lockport, where Mr. Davies had built a log cabin, between the canal and the river, where we lived for three years.
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Mr. Davies at that time was engaged by the state in build- ing all the locks on the canal at that point, building nine locks. It took five years to complete the contract. The stone used in the construction of these locks was brought from the quarries at Dayton, Ohio.
Then we moved to Piqua, Mr. Davies going into the grocery business in 1843, and continuing in this business until his death.
He built the present home, corner Wayne and Greene streets, in 1847, where I have lived nearly all my married life.
Mrs. Davies celebrated her 100th birthday anniversary Dec. 7, 1912.
MRS. ELLA GILL SEDGWICK
Ella Gill was a granddaughter of Hugh Scott, the pioneer who came to Piqua in 1808 and bought a part of the Henderschott farm, just north of Camp street. His large log house was on the east side of River street, near the intersection of Broadway, and one of the large boulders used as a corner of the foundation may yet be seen in the door-yard of Davis McClay. The Gill home was the little brick house near the large elm tree on north Broadway. After her marriage Mrs. Sedgwick moved to Deer Lodge, Tenn., where she died in 1911. Her reminiscences were written in 1901 and 1904.
Mr. Editor: However far from home one may wander, neither time nor space can obliterate from memory the place of his birth, and the heart still yearns for the old home and the scenes of his childhood. In those days the flowers seemed to be sweeter and the grass greener, and while we may have out- grown those crystal lenses, yet the recollection of those happy days comes to the writer like the strains of music on far-off waters. Our hearts throb to the touch of happy or sad associa- tions of the old home, the hills and woods around it, the house filled with kinsfolks from near and from far, the family all gath- ered home, children and grandchildren, and sometimes there were so many the house could hardly hold them. The dear home faces so tenderly beloved smile upon us again, and the air is jubilant with the merry voices of lads and lassies.
It is strange, and yet not strange, how these old associa- tions cling to us. Their magic is the "Golden, olden glories of the days gone by." Is it not Holmes who tells us how sitting with the old American millionaire in a Paris cafe, he sees him dreamily clink the ice in his wine glass and presently tell how the sound always recalls the boyhood days when the cow-bell
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tinkled as he drove the herd in the gloaming to the old New Eng- land pasture three thousand miles toward the sunset?
Transplanted, but never alienated, our hearts turn so often the homeward way that after years of absence we determined once more to visit our childhood's home. We could hardly wait for the day to come for the home going. But at last the train pulls us out from the station, onward past the suburbs, beyond the few scattering habitations that cling to the outskirts of the town, past solitary farm houses already closed and darkened for the night. Mile after mile is left behind, but by and by familiar landmarks appear. Station after station is passed, then Troy and we know the next will be near home. With eager eyes we look out to catch the first glimpse of the lights of the city as they twinkle here and there in the darkness. The brakeman calls "Piqua," and with baggage all gathered up we are ready to alight.
"There are many kinds of pleasure that human spirits know, But I am going to ask you to just be bold and dare, And look on life's pleasures and frankly tell me then, If any has a rapture like getting home again?"
From week to week we have been reading the Improvement Notes by the Editor, trying to imagine some of the changes tak- ing place, and, while in the city, contrasting the old with the new. It is not the old town of thirty years ago. We went away from the dingy, old depot on the corner and when we came back found in its place a handsome new depot with its richness of finish. Street cars and many other improvements have brought about a great change. The great stacks and large buildings indicate that Piqua's progress has been great in manufacturing, and it has grown to be a prosperous city, an educational center, a city of churches and schools and Woman's Clubs. Wealth has found out this beautiful spot, has bought up the wooded hills and fields, dotting them with pretty homes which have a hospitable look which corresponds with the welcome within. With so many of the homes fringed with velvety lawns and made fragrant with blooming flowers, and the streets ornamented with grand old trees, so that when we see them in the fresh green of summer or the golden glow of October, they are vistas of sylvan beauty, it is no wonder that some enthusiastic son or daughter exclaims, "Piqua, the beautiful;" and as they "Often in thought go up and down the pleasant streets of the dear old town," it is not strange
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that the old associations can bring back its absent sons and daughters.
"I want to gather up recollections and wind a string of nar- rative round them," said Oliver Wendell Holmes of certain old houses.
A very slender thread will serve to bind together some of the old houses in Piqua. Scattered here and there are dwellings of the old inhabitants that were once upon a time consecrated to the "open-handed spirit; frank and blithe of ancient hospital- ity," but the whirligig of time has brought many changes. Time with his crumbling touch has leveled to the dust some of the memorable tenements standing in our childhood days, but there are other old houses, and the sight of these recalls the names of the former occupants, and as their faces pass in mental fancy they are followed by the children of these homes, now grown to manhood, the brows of many of whom are already decorated with the silvery crown of gray.
Oh, quarter of a century has brought many changes! The familiar faces have disappeared, many of them, and the ones that remained had changed, and when I began to inquire about old friends it was only to learn that so many of the well-known cit- izens had, "after life's fitful fever," found a resting place in the beautiful Forest Hill. As we went here and there it was with pleasure that we sometimes came across some old homestead that seemed unchanged, it was like meeting a familiar friend. The old stone mansion known as the Campbell homestead, on the corner of Downing and Water, whose history dates far back to the pioneer days of Piqua, after standing years and years be- came an obliterated past a few years ago. On the corner of Downing and Greene is the Geyer homestead, a home of good cheer in which generous hospitality was offered with cordial kind- ness that is still remembered. One would hardly recognize it now with its beautiful addition making it a handsome modern residence.
The Dorsey home on Wayne street is still occupied by a Dor- sey. Near by stands the old Leavell home, but Judge Leavell has gone to that home whence no traveler e'er returns, and the family are all gone. Only a little ways is the Dills' house, but no longer occupied by a Dills.
On Main street stands the Ashton home. It has withstood the storms of more than a half century, yet old Time has wrought
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but little change. It is still occupied by the son of Dr. Ashton.
Not far away we noticed the old Sage home, and just be- yond is the old home where George Johnston and his wife came to "set up a fireside." They were identified with the little vil- lage for many years and watched its growth with pride.
We passed the old Scott homestead nestled among the trees, but those who were born and grew up beneath the roof-tree are gone and strangers sit under the shadow of the old trees. In the Schmidlapp home we found a handsome library consisting of standard works of literature and fiction, papers, periodicals, etc. The reading room, furnished with nice chairs and tables, well lighted, is a very pleasant place to enjoy the written treasures found there. Over on Downing street stands the old homes of the Rouzers, Bowdles, Clarks and Uptons, still possessing the appearance of earlier days. Farther south the Crozier home- stead, once the home of Piqua's pioneer carriage-builder, is now a handsome modern residence.
On Wayne street the Davis and Jones' homesteads. Across the street the home of S. S. Mckinney, one of Piqua's ablest jurists. We might recall others if time and space permitted.
It is evident, at a glance, that the hand of improvement has been at work on the school houses. With a golden wand in his hand, the magician has cried, "Presto, change," and where we taught in the days of yore is a beautiful new building instead of the old yellow brick we remember.
Returning to visit our Alma Mater after these many years' of absence memory failed to identify the new High School with all its improvements, but out on the grounds the old and the new are pleasantly commingled, for it must be the same trees, only broadened and lengthened with the years. Inside,
"We see the flash of merry eyes, We see the gleam of old-time smiles, We live again the old-time whiles."
The children were there, but they were not our school-mates, but their children; but no doubt while the conduct and welfare of the school are in the hands of another generation, the loyalty to its tenets and devotion to its interests are as staunch as ever. One wonders sometimes if the children appreciate their advan- tages and teachers ; for their opportunities are exceptionally fine, surrounded with the abundant blessings of highly graded and well disciplined schools.
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By such the imagination cannot depict the simplicity and poverty surrounding some of the district schools of the moun- tains. The schooling of many of the children begins in a log school house, and their biggest ambition is to get enough "book larnin' " to sometimes teach; but with schools open but two or three months in the year it is not surprising that they do not make much progress.
We noticed many beautiful churches, but Greene street church has a place in our hearts no other can fill. Across the chasm of the years there comes with a haunting charm the echoes of the grand old hymns, sung so sweetly that one felt that "surely the angels must put their harps in tune with the song that mortals sing;" but we missed many of the familiar faces of men and women we were wont to revere in our childhood.
Out-door associations are not less abundant. There was hardly a spot that we had not learned by heart. "The rose breath of friendship haunts with undying sweetness" many of these places, and revisited after so many years we recall a hun- dred of these associations. The well-remembered elm, our ren- dezvous in so many childish games, under whose spreading branches were held for years and years our family reunion. The old elm has seen the years come and go and through all the changes has quietly gone on growing, while the low graves of the household, gathered one by one, and
"Out yonder in the moonlight Wherein God's acre lies Go angels to and fro singing their lullabies."
Upon the long knoll slope is the old coasting path where, "with mittened hands and caps drawn low," boys and girls shot across the flashing crust on the old bob sled. There was the Indian mound where we used to search for Indian relics, but not a vestige of this remains; the old wooden bridge north of town; the Johnston school house where the children used to climb the hillside to study their spelling book and multiplication table, but that, too, has vanished with the years. "Swift Run," run- ning dark and cool through dim and hidden channels, singing the song without words, and we hear the "voices of other summers blending with the murmur of running water."
On the hill, open to the morning sun, the old Johnston bury- ing ground, and as you walk among the worn headstones and past the veiling grass, you read the time-dimmed letters which tell that it is the resting place of a generation long asleep.
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Out past "Swift Run" and through the woods to the Hunt- ers' old home, back over the sweep of the years, our thoughts turn to the happy gatherings there. Some of our most pleas- antly treasured memories linger about "Beech Grove" picnics. From the heart we could say with Lowell, "What is so rare as a day in June, for then, if ever, come perfect days," and perfect picnics.
Another favorite haunt, the old deserted house standing back from the road in a narrow green dell. It was said to be haunted, and there was such a suggestive stillness that by "spreading imanigation's wildest wing," one could almost believe that ghosts frequented the old house. There is the particular bit of woodland with its cherished associations that recalls as if by magic days when we wandered through it in search of spring blossoms. Over on the hillside, where the hickory and walnut trees are shifting in their tints of green and gold and hung heavy with nuts, we find the deepest charm. It unseals the fountain of old-time memories and we are a child again gathering the shagbarks on our old nutting ground. "Only a nut," we say; "yet the little vanished thing leaps back familiar across the gulf of time and drops from boughs which memory as well as present vision halos literally into old gold."
Slowly we wandered out River street. Yes, it was the same -the same landscape, more houses, but the same beautiful fields, the canal still threads its winding way, while beyond the level towpath flows the Miami river, ever old, ever new. The old river road had not changed, and sometimes one could almost imagine that they had never left the old home at all. "Those peaceful narrow stretches of water highways! Happily I shall voyage thither sometime again ; if not, these things shall linger with me as a sweet and tranquil memory of a passage of very happy hours."
Mr. Editor : If one loves to delve in older memories rehab- ilitating a time long past one can find many things in the history of the early settlers of Piqua that will be of interest. Much of it has long since faded into half-written history, but in the al- most obliterated trails of these pioneers lie innumerable unwrit- ten chapters, both of the pathos and romance of their lives, and we wish that they had not been too busy to record the happen- ings by the way, and that much more had been preserved and handed down to us, thus helping us to know more of the life they
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lived. Some of the present occupants of the soil can trace their ancestry back to those earlier settlers, and the spot where they built should be held dear to our hearts and consecrated to our memories.
There is always enough that is beautiful and pathetic in an account of the olden times, but when one can deal in reminis- cences handed down by one's own the interest becomes akin to pride, and one feels that they had a share in the making of this great country.
Many years ago before it was the fashion to treasure every scrap of history or tradition of the long ago, a little girl used to find her greatest pleasure in listening to her grandmother's talk about the people that she had known, and the events of her past ; now that she is grown up she still wonders if anything can be more delightful than to listen to the stories that fall from the lips of those who lived in Piqua when it was a tiny village, or even before it had attained the dignity of a village.
One hails with delight the chance that brings to light un- expected wealth of legend and story, and it was a day of real pleasure that we spent in one of Piqua's homes looking over many valuable reminders of the past. It was as if time had heeded the injunction, "Turn backward, turn backward in thy flight," a hundred years or more.
There was the foot-stove with an interesting story suggested by its antique aspect, of the time when it was carried by some fair lady of "ye olden time" to the "meeting house" where such a thing as a fire was unknown, even on the coldest winter's day.
There was a quaint blue pitcher that was in use in an old home in Salem in the days of witchcraft ; pictures of old houses, and books yellow with the mellowing touch of time; candlesticks and a spinning wheel which "must have enjoyed their youth-time when grandmother enjoyed hers."
Then there was an immense key that might almost have served as a weapon of defense against the wily red man himself, that once was used to unlock one of the doors in an old house that passed as a mansion in the earliest history of Piqua.
The country about Piqua is made interesting by its associa- tions, for many historic memories cluster about its hills and beautiful winding river. Here was the territory on which was fought many a battle between the whites and the Indians. Then the whole region is overflowing with memories of war like 1812.
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In 1790 my grandfather, Hugh Scott, was with General Har- mar when he set out for the territory of the northwest to chas- tise the hostile Miami Indians.
Pressing forward into what was then an almost unbroken wilderness they reached the spot where Piqua now stands, mak- ing it for a short time their headquarters. Today the world does not hold a more beautiful section of country, and in those early days so manifest were its beauties, the Indians with their usual choice of picturesque spots had made this their favorite camping ground. They paddled up and down the beautiful Miami in their light birchen canoes, and gathered in happy idleness upon its shores. No white man was here and the soldiers saw only the wigwams of the dusky sons of the forest, not dreaming of the to-be-Piqua, or of the influx of settlers who would redeem its sunny meadows from the wilderness.
Grandfather went back to his Kentucky home, but in 180S, drawn by the never forgotten loveliness of the Miami valley, he returned to find a few settlers had gathered around the rude be- ginning of the village in the wilderness whose solitude Job Gard was the first to disturb. A new home was added to those al- ready built. His farm is now covered by the growth of the city. The house that stands there now is comparatively new, but it is built upon the foundation that was laid for the first home.
In the closing years of 1700 there was a household flitting from Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Floating down the Ohio in a flat- boat to Fort Washington, now Cincinnati, and from there to Dayton, which was then only a block house, they stopped for a time, when my great-grandfather built the first brick house and planted some trees, one of which, gnarled and decayed with age, was cut down at the time of the centennial. One of those pio- neer maidens married Mr. Landon and went with a colony to Fort Wayne, where they built a few log houses close to each other, for they did not dare live far apart when the war path of blood-thirsty hordes was not far away and their camp fires in sight. The story of the Indian raids upon the lonely border is full of strange and romantic interest.
Scores of stories cling to those who were taken captives. There was a constant dread of attack from the Indians, and when Mrs. Wills, one of their near neighbors, was carried away through the pathless wilderness, it was considered unsafe to re- main longer.
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One evening a little company in nine wagons started on their perilous trip through the Indian country. The woods were dense and it seemed almost impossible to keep the trail. They went warily, keeping eye and ear open and muskets ready in case signs were discovered in the forest of the presence of lurking foes. Soon after starting dark clouds rolled up and overspread the heavens, and there were the distant mutterings of a storm and soon it began to rain. Grandma said she never saw such rain. They reached Piqua in safety, but found afterwards that a band of Indians had started to waylay them, but the heavy rains had so filled up the wagon tracks that they could not tell that the party had already passed by, and so they were saved. A new home was built, but soon after Mr. Landon was murdered by the Indians, perhaps in revenge for the death of Monotour, an Indian who had been killed by some of the pale-faces.
It was a very unsafe region to live in, and one woman who lived near Piqua. used to sit and sew with a rifle across her knee while her husband kept his musket within easy reach. When the men went to the field to work they carried their muskets along, and while some plowed and hoed the others stood as sentinels, but the fascinations of pioneer life seem to have been irresistible to those first settlers.
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