USA > Ohio > Champaign County > The history of Champaign and Logan counties : from their first settlement > Part 13
USA > Ohio > Logan County > The history of Champaign and Logan counties : from their first settlement > Part 13
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Err Randel came 1810.
Liberty Township.
Samuel Newel came from Ky., about 1806 or 1807; his brother came about the same time, and also the Blacks; Captain Black was a Captain in the war of 1812, and in Wayne's army. Hugh Newel, John Newel and Thomas Newel all came from Ken- tucky. Samuel Newel was for many years a member of the Legis- lature of Ohio, and held several county offices; his son Joseph likewise filled several important positions, both in the State and county. Judge MeBeth, father of Newton McBeth, of Bellefon- taine, came in 1811 : Judge MeBeth died while a member of the Legislature of Ohio. The following are also early settlers : Dr. John Ordway, Dr. Leonard, James Walls, Garrett Walls, John ' Cornell, Richard Roberts, Huston Crocket, Cartmel Crocket, Rob- ert Crocket, Hiram M. White, George White, John M. Smith, Benjamin Ginn, Thomas Miller, Milton Glover, Ralph E. Run- kle, Dr. Taylor, Rev. Jeremiah Fuson, Joshua Buffington, George F. Dunn, Samuel Taylor. All of the above are early settlers in Champaign and Logan counties.
CHAMPAIGN AND
Bokescreek Township.
Simpson Hariman came here at an early days from Pennsylvania, and taught school twenty years ( or eighty terms). The follow- ing are early settlers : Alexander McCrary, John W. Green, John Bell, Ben., Jesse Fosett, Elijah Fosett, Archibald Wilson. Charles Thornton, Andrew Roberts, Scranston Bates, Ebenezer Hathaway, Lewis Bates, Gardner Bates, Bliss Danforth, Jacob Keller, James R. Curl, Levi Lowering, Saul Smith, Henry Bell, Moses Bell, Jacob Early.
Rush Township, Champaign County.
NAMES OF FIRST SETTLERS.
Hezekiah Spain, Jordon Reams, J. P. Spain, Hurburd Crowder, William Spain, Thomas Spain, John Peterson Spain, Jr., Daniel ispain and John Crowder all came from Dinwiddie county, Vir- ginia, 1805.
Joshua, Stephen, Daniel and Edwin Spain came from Virginia L607.
Thomas Good came from Virginia 1807.
Samuel Black, 1810.
Peter Black, son of the above, 1810.
Most all the following named persons are from the New Eng- land States :
Thomas Erwin, Jacob Fairchild-, Erastus Burnham, Anson Howard, Pearl Howard, Sylvester Smith, John McDonald, Ste- phen Cranston, Ephraim Cranston.
The above are the first settlers in the vicinity of Woodstock.
Samuel Calendar came from New York 1814. He has two sons wow living in North Lewisburg, Ohio-Joha and Elisha Calendar. PIe was a soldier in the war of 1312.
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Perry Township.
What is now Perry township was first settled in 1805, by John Garwood, who, with his family, emigrated from Culpepper county, Virginia. His son, John Garwood, was the first Justice of the Peace, who held the office for many years. Levi Garwood was associate Judge for Logan county, for three successive terms. His son James is still living in the township, having been a resident about sixty-seven years. John Garwood built the first mill shortly after arriving here, prior to which they had to go forty miles down Darby Creek to mill. Samuel Ballinger, from New Jersey, and James Curl, from Virginia, came here about 1808, of whom a large number of descendants still remain. Thomas James located here in 1810, and his son Thomas occupied the same farm until recently. Many of the family are still here. Christopher Smith moved in about 1812, and was Justice of the Peace for some time. Many of the universal Smith family still remain. Anthony Bank, colored, settled here in 1810. Isaac Hatcher came from Virginia in 1816, and was noted as being wealthy for those days. Richard Hum- phreys, from Wales, located here about the same time. Josiah Austin, from New Jersey, settled here in 1820, and his son C. H. Austin now occupies the same farm. William Skidmore, from Columbiana county, settled on Millcreek in 1821, and his sons Jo- seph, Daniel, Joshua and Isaac, still reside in the same neighbor- hood, with a large retinne of descendants. The first Post-office established was called Garwood's Mills, Isaiah Garwood being the first Postmaster. East Liberty is now located on the old farm of John Garwood, and is noted for its fine fountains or overflowing wells. Herbert Baird, a Methodist minister from Petersburg, Va., came here in 1829. On this farm in 1841 a tragedy occurred, re- sulting in the death of Ballard, Baird's son-in-law, who was killed in a quarrel by a man named Ford, the only murder ever being known to be committed in the township. Ford was tried and ac- quitted on the grounds of self defense. The first physician in the township was Dr. J. W. Hamilton, from Pennsylvania, who loca- ted in 1836, and still resides in East Liberty.
Thus from an unbroken wilderness in 1805, has arisen a popu- lous and highly cultivated region, dotted with School-houses and Churches, and other evidences of thrift and prosperity.
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JOHN ENOCH.
The gentleman whose name is at the head of this article, like Governor Vance and Henry Weaver, whose names may be found in these sketches, is identified with the history of Champaign and Logan counties. He was born in Butler County, Ohio, in the year 1802. He commenced business in life under rather gloomy circumstances. He told me he had very little besides a good con- stitution and a "will to try." He learned early in life to " paddle his own canoe." I think he told me he had but one week's schooling.
Ho was married early in life to Miss Kelly, a sister to Peter Kelly, now deceased, formerly Sheriff of Logan county. He told me he had but two dollars in money when he was married, and he gave that to Billy Hopkins to marry him. Mr. Enoch is a practical farmer and stock merchant. Considering the difficulties he had to overcome, perhaps there are but few who have been more success- ful in life than he has.
There is no business on a farm but what he can make & full hand at, from cutting cord wood to splitting rails, putting up fence, plowing, planting, or driving oxen. In the latter employment, it has been said he is one of the best in the State. He says, however, very much of his success in business isdue to the industry, economy and prudence of his amiable Indy. Like himself, she inherited a good constitution, and with her early training in all the depart- ment- of honsekeeping she entered on her duties as a wife and mis- tress of her own house, with confidence and self-reliance. Mr. Enoch told me her prudence and timely counsel had saved him from a great deal of trouble. One little circumstance will illustrate this: Mr. Enoch never allowed any of his hands to "play off"' on him in any business, for, as I have said, he was a good hand atany work on a farm. All he wanted was an honest day's work, and that he was bound to have. Moreover, he never wanted any one to do any more in a day than he could. He had a lot of hands
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husking corn and he thought they were not doing him justice, and resolved on discharging them. As usual he consulted Mrs. Enoch. She remarked that it might be in the condition of the corn. He said he would go into the field and husk one day, and then he would know what the trouble was. He did so, and at night when he re- turned home, his wife asked about the corn. He said he was per- fectly satisfied it was the corn, and not the hands, that was at fault. The husk was unusually close to the ear, and the ear was small.
Mr. Enoch has one of the best farms in the State, in the quality of the soil, timber and water. It is true it is not as large as some, there being only about two thousand acres, but in the above qual- ities, I believe it unsurpassed. His farming land lies on Mad River and Mackacheek, and is watered by those beautiful streams, and is about two miles from the village of West Liberty, all under fine cultivation, with good and substantial buildings.
JOHN SHELBY
Was an early settler in Logan county. He came here about the year 1810. He was ten years in the Legislature of Ohio, giving en- tire satisfaction to his constituents. His widow is now living near Huntsville, and is now eighty-five years old.
RIDDLE & RUTAN.
Abner Riddle and William Rutan are early settlers in Logan County. They now live in Bellefontaine, and are engaged in banking and trading in stock. I have been acquainted with those gentlemen from their boyhood. Both of them were mechanics, and poor ; but, like others mentioned in these sketches, by dint of close application to business, fair dealing and promptness in their business engagements, they have accumulated comfortable fortunes. I might speak of others, who, perhaps, have excelled them in the accumulation of property ; but, I have named them because I have known them from their youth, and because they are about a fair average of the business men of our country, who commenced busi- ness without capital and have made it a success.
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NOAH Z. McCOLLOCH,
Has held several offices in the County of Logan. He has been Auditor, and Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas, and Clerk of the Supreme Court, and Associate Judge of the Court of Common Pleas In all those important trusts, he showed marked ability and the strictest integrity.
JOHNNY APPLESEED.
W. D. Haley contributed to Harper's Monthly, for November 1871, an account of this strange and remarkable character, w ] roamed about the State of Ohio from the opening of the present century to his death in 1847. Col. James, of Urbana, who was some aquainted with him, he having called on him several times at Urbana, thinks Mr. Haly a little extravagant in his description ' of his personal appearance.
This strange personage was frequently in Champaign and Logan counties, and had nurseries in each of these counties about 1809, but I have not been able to find the location of but one of them. His nurseries in Champaign, I think, were in the south-west part of the county. The location of one mentioned above is in Logan, and on the farm now owned by Alonzo and Allen West, on Mill Branch about six hundred yards west of their residence. Waller Mar- shall and Joshua Ballenger, both inform me they have trees in their orchard from this nursery bearing good fruit. Job Inskeep Just now informs me he heard him say he had another one somewhere on Stony Creek.
The " far West " is rapidly becoming only a traditional designa- tion : railroads have destroyed the romance of frontier life, or have surrounded it with so many appliances of civilization that the pio- neer character is rapidly becoming mythical. The men and wo- men who obtain their groceries and dry-goods from New York by rail in a few hours have nothing in common with those who, fifty years ago, " packed " salt a hundred miles to make their mush pal- atable, and could only exchange corn and wheat for molasses and
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calico by making long and perilous voyages in flat-boats down the Ohio and Mississippi river- to New Orleans. Two generations of frontier lives have accumulated stores of narrative which, like the small but beautiful tributaries of great rivers, are forgotten in the broad sweep of the larger current of history. The march of Titans sometimes tramples out the memory of smaller but more useful lives, and sensational glare often eclipses more modest but purer lights. This has been the case in the popular demand for the dime novel dilutions of Fenimore Cooper's romances of border life, which have preserved the records of Indian rapine and atrocity as the only memorials of pioneer history. But the early days of Western settlement witnessed sublimer heroism than those of hu- man torture, and nobler victories than those of the tomahawk and scalping-knife.
Among the heroes of endurance that was voluntary, and of action that was creative and not sanguinary, there was one man whose name, seldom mentioned now save by some of the few surviving pioneers, deserves to be perpetuated.
The first reliable trace of our modest hero finds him in the Ter- ritory of Ohio, in 1801, with a horse-load of apple seeds, which he planted in various places on and about the borders of Licking Creek, the first orchard originated by hin being on the farm of Isaac Stadden, in what is now known as Licking County, in the State of Ohio. During the five succeeding years, although he was undoubtedly following the same strange occupation, we have no authentic account of his movements until we reach a pleasant spring day in 1806, when a pioneer settler in Jefferson County, Ohio, noticed a peculiar craft, with a remarkable occupant and a curious cargo slowly dropping down with the current uf the Ohio River. It was "Johnny Appleseed," by which name Jona- than Chapman was afterwards known in every log cabin from the Ohio River to the northern lakes, and westward to the prairies of what is now the State of Indiana. With two canoes lashed togeth- er he was transporting a load of apple seeds to the Western fron- tier, for the purpose of creating orchards on the farthest verge of white settlements. With his canoes he passed down the Ohio, to Marietta, where he entered the Muskingum, ascending the stream of that river until he reached the mouth of the Walhonding, or White Woman Creek, and still onward, up the Mohican, itto the
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Black Fork, to the head of navigation, in the region now known as Ashland and Richland counties, on the line of the Pittsburg and Fort Wayne Railroad, in Ohio. A long and toilsome voyage it was, as a glance at the map will show, and must have occupied a great deal of time, as the lonely traveler stopped at every inviting spot to plant the seeds and make his infant nurseries. These are the first well-authenticated facts in the history of Jonathan Chap- man whose birth, there is good reason for believing, occurred in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1775. According to this, which was his own statement in one of his less reticent moods, he was, at the time of his appearance on Licking Creek, twenty-six years of age, and whether impelled in his eccentricities by some absolute misery of the heart which could only find relief in incessant motion, or governed by a benevolent monomania, his whole after-life was devoted to the work of planting apple seeds in remote places. The seeds he gathered from the cider-presses of Western Pennsylvania ; but his canoe voyage in 1806 appears to have been the only occa- sion upon which he adopted that method of transporting them, as all his subsequent journeys were made on foot. Having planted his stock of seeds, he would return to Pennsylvania for a fresh supply, and, as sacks made ofany less substantial fabric would not en dure the hard usage of the long trip through forests dense with un- derbrush and briers, he provided himself with leathern bags. Se- curely packed, the seeds were conveyed, sometimes on the back of a horse, and not unfrequently on his own shoulders, either over a part of the old Indian trail that led from Fort Duquesne to Detroit, by way of Fort Sandusky, or over what is styled in the appendix to "Hutchins's History of Boguet's Expedition in 1764" the "sec- ond route through the wilderness of Ohio," which would require him to traverse a distance of one hundred and sixty-six miles in a west-northwest direction from Fort Duquesne in order to reach the Black Fork of the Mohican.
This region, although it is now densely populated, still possesses a romantic beauty that railroads and bustling towns can not oblit- erate-a country of forest-clad hills and green valleys, through which numerous bright streams flow on their way to the Ohio ; but when Johnny Appleseed reached some lonely log cabin he would find himself in a veritable wilderness. The old settlers say that the margins of the streams, near which the first settlements
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were generally made, were thickly covered with a low, matted growth of small timber, while nearer to the water was a rank mass of long grass, interlaced with morning-glory and wild pea vines, among which funeral willows and clustering alders stood like sentinels on the outpost of civilization. The hills, that rise almost to the dignity of mountains, were crowned with forest trees, and in the coverts were innumerable bears, wolves, deer and droves of wild hogs, that were as ferocious as any beast of prey. In the grass the massasauga and other venomous reptiles lurked in such numbers that a settler named Chandler has left the fact on record that during the first season of his residence, while mowing a little prairie which formed part of his land, he killed over two hundred black rattlesnakes in an area that would involve an av- erage destruction of one of these reptiles for each rod of land. The frontiers-man, who felt himself sufficiently protected by his rifle against wild beasts and hostile Indians, found it necessary to guard against the attacks of the insidious enemies in the grass by wrap- ping bandages of dried grass around his buckskin leggings and moccasins; but Johnny would shoulder his bag of apple seeds, and with bare feet penetrate to some remote spot that combined pic- turesqueness and fertility of soil, and there he would plant his seeds, place a slight enclosure around the place, and leave them to grow until the trees were large enough to be transplanted by the settlers, who, in the meantime, would have made their clearings in the vicinity. The sites chosen by him are, many of them, well known, and are such as an artist or poet would select-open places on the loamy lands that border the creeks-rich, secluded spots, hemmed in by giant trees, picturesque now, but fifty years ago, with the wild surroundings and the primal silence, they must have been tenfold more so.
In personal appearance Chapman was a small, wiry man, full of restless activity ; he had long, dark hair, a scanty beard that was never shaved, and keen black eyes that sparkled with a peculiar brightness. His dress was of the oddest description. Generally, even in the coldest weather, he went barefooted, but sometimes, for his long journeys, he would make himself a rude pair of san- dals; at other times he would wear any cast-off foot-covering he chanced to find-a boot on one foot and an old brogan or a moccasin on the other. It appears to have been a matter of con- science with him never to purchase shoes, although he was rarely
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without reoney enough to do so. On one occasion, in an unusually cold November, while he was traveling barefooted through mud und snow, a settler who happened to possess a pair of shoes that were too small for his own use forced their acceptance upon Johnny declaring that it was sinful for a human being to travel with naked feet in such weather. A few days afterward the donor was in the village that has since become the thriving city of Mansfield, and met his beneficiary contentedly plodding along, with his feet bare and half frozen. With some degree of anger he inquired for the cause of such foolish conduct, and received for reply that Johnny had overtaken a poor, barefooted family moving west- ward, and as they appeared to be in much greater need of cloth- ing than he was, he had given them the shoes. His dress was generally composed of cast off clothing that he had taken in pay- ment for apple-trees ; and as the pioneers were far less extrava- gant than their descendants in such matters, the homespun and buckskin garments that they discarded would not be very elegant or serviceable. In his later years, however, he seems to have thought that even this kind of second-hand raiment was too luxu- rious, as his principal garment was made of a coffee-sack, in which he cut holes for head and arms to pass through, and pronounced it " a very serviceable cloak, and as good clothing as any man need wear." In the matter of head-gear his taste was equally unique ; his first experience was with a tin vessel that served to cook his mush, but this was open to the objection that it did not protect his eyes from the beams of the sun ; so he constructed a hat of paste- board, with an immense peak in front, and having thus secured an article that combined usefulness with economy, it became his permanent fashion.
Thus strangely clad, he was perpetually wandering through for- osts and morasses, and suddenly appearing in white settlements and Indian villages ; but there must have been some rare force of gentle goodness dwelling in his looks and breathing in his words, for it is the testimony of all who knew him that, notwithstanding hi- ridiculous attire, he was always treated with the greatest re- spect by the rudest frontiers-man, and, what is a better test, the boys of the settlements forbore to jeer at him. With grown-up people and boys he was usually reticent, but manifested great af- fection for little girls, always having pieces of ribbon and gay calico to give to his little favorites. Many a grandmother in Ohio
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and Indiana can remember the presents she received when a child from poor homele -- Johnny Appleseed. When he consented to eat with any family he would never sit down to the table until he was assured that there was an ample supply for the children ; and hissympathy for their youthful troubles and his kindness toward them made him friends among all the juveniles of the border -.
The Indians also treated Johnny with the greatest kindness. By these wild and sanguinary savages he was regarded as a "great medicine man," on account of his strange appearance, ercentric actions, and, especially, the fortitude with which he could endure pain, in proof of which he would often thrust pins and needles into his flesh. His nervous sensibilities really soom to have hogy la acute than those of ordinary people, for his methyl of treating the out- and sores that were the consequences of his barefooted wan- derings through briers and thorn- was to wear the wound with a red-hot iron, and then cure the burn. During the war of 1s12, when the frontier settlers were tortured and slaughtered by the savage allies of Great Britain, Johnny Appleseed continued his wandering :, and was never harmed by the roving bands of hostile Indians. On many occasions the impunity with which he ranged. the country enabled him to give the settlers warning of approach- ing danger in time to allow them to take refuge in their block- honses before the savages could attack them. Our informant re- fers to one of these instances, when the news of Hull's surrender came like a thunder-bolt upon the frontier. Large bands of In- dians and British were destroying everything before them and murdering defenseless women and children, and oven the block- houses were not always a sufficient protection. At this time Johnny traveled day and night, warning the people of the ap- proaching danger. He visited overy cabin and delivered this mes- sage: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and he hath anointed me to blow the trumpet in the wilderness, and soul an alarni in the forest : for, behold, the tribe- of the heathen are round about your doors, and a devouring fame followeth after them." The aged man who narrated this incident said that he could feel even now the thrill that was caused by this prophetic announcement of the will-looking herald of danger, who aronsed the family on a bright moonlight midnight with his piercing voice. Refusing all offer- of food and denying himself a moment's rest, he traversel
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the border day and night until he had warned every settler of the approaching peril.
His diet was as meagre as his clothing. He believed it to be a sin to kill any creature for food, and thought that all that was necessary for human sustenance was produced by the soil. He was also a strenuous opponent of the waste of food, and on one occa- -ion, on approaching a log cabin, he observed some fragments of bread floating upon the surface of a bucket of shops that was intended for the pig -. He immediately fished them out, and when the housewife expressed her astonishment he told her that it was an abuse of the gifts of God to allow the smallest quantity of any thing that was designed to supply the wants of mankind to be diverted. from its purpose.
15 % instance, as in his whole life. the peculiar religious ideas. pleseed were evanslifted. Hewas a most earnest Hh caught by Emanuel Swedenborg, and himself have frequent conversations with angels and spirits ; 1 o of the latter, of the feminine gender, he isserted, had revealed to him that they were to be his wives in a future state if he ab- stained from a matrimonial alliance on earth. He entertained a profound reverence for the revelations of the Swedish seer, and always carried a few oll volumes with him. These he was very anxious should be read by every one, and he was probably not only the first colporteur in the wilderness of Ohio, but as he had no tract society to furnish him supplies, he certainly devised an original method of multiplying one book into a number. He divided his Look into several pieces, leaving a portion at a log-cabin, and on a sul equent vi-it furnishing another fragment, and continuing this proces as diligently as though the work had been published in se- rint numbers. By this plan he was enabled to furnish reading for Several people at the same time, and out of one book ; but it must have been a difficult undertaking for some nearly illiterate back- wood-man to endeavor to comprehend Swedenborg by a backward course of reading, when his first installment happened to be the Last fraction of the volume. Johnny's faith in Swenenborg's works was so reverential as almost to be superstitious. He was once asked if, in traveling bar-footed through forests abounding with venomous reptiles, he was not afraid of being bitten. With his pe- culiar smile, hedrew hi book from his bosom, and said, "This book is an infallible protection against all danger here and hereafter."
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