The history of Champaign county, Ohio, containing a history of the county; its cities, towns, etc.; general and local statistics; portraits of early settlers and prominent men; history of the Northwest territory etc, Part 23

Author: Ogden, J. W. (John W.); Beers (W.H.) & Co., pub
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago : W.H. Beers & co.
Number of Pages: 926

USA > Ohio > Champaign County > The history of Champaign county, Ohio, containing a history of the county; its cities, towns, etc.; general and local statistics; portraits of early settlers and prominent men; history of the Northwest territory etc > Part 23

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In the cultivation of wheat, greater changes have perhaps taken place than in the planting and gathering of corn. The land was plowed the same as for corn, and harrowed with a wooden-toothed harrow, or smoothed by dragging over the plowed ground a heavy brush, weighed down, if necessary, with a stick of timber. It was then sown broadcast, or by hand, at the rate of about a bushel and a quarter to the acre, and "harrowed in" with the brush. Though corn-meal, baked in the shape of pone-dodger or hoe-cake, was the main reliance for bread, and continued to be for many years, yet wheat was raised at an early day. The kind usually sown was a red wheat, and went by the name of red chaff. There was no classification as regards quality or freedom from foreign seeds and dirt into first, second or third class.

Occasionally, a field would be grown producing what was called " sick wheat," so named from its tendency to cause vomiting. Various devices were adopted to obviate this, but none of any avail; but it was commonly understood that the best thing to be done with it was to convert it into whisky. We have been unable to ascertain whether the "sick-wheat " was the product of a particular variety of wheat, or from certain localities, from the condition of the undrained soil, or made its appearance generally the same year. It has been described as differing little or none from the wheat now grown, except in the appearance of a red spot on the grain or an indication of sprouting. Some have claimed that it was simply malted wheat. Whatever the cause, it has totally disappeared. The harvest of 1875 yielded a grain which some of the old settlers said was identical with the sick wheat of fifty years ago. That year was attended with

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HISTORY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY.

heavy and continuous rains. Thousands of bushels in the county were not cut. A large proportion of the wheat harvested sprouted in the shock, and a large part of this, when thrashed and ground, was unfit for bread, and, in some cases, the unground grain was refused by the hogs.

The wheat harvest ripened in the earlier part of July, and farmers expected to be pretty fairly in the field by the 4th of the month. The implement used was either the sickle or cradle, and, not infrequently, both in the same field. The sickle was at the first the only instrument; but by 1820, the cradle had begun to be in common use. The former, almost identical with the " grass- hook" now in use, has been so completely superseded by later inventions that one is rarely to be seen except in the cabin of the old settler. The stalks of wheat were grasped in the left hand, and cut by drawing the knife close to the hand. The result was generally a " pretty close shave," and few middle-aged farmers of to-day can be found whose little finger or the lower part of the hand does not show the ugly scars received from the sickle teeth. When a sufficient quan- tity was cut to make a good-sized sheaf, it was bound and thrown aside, to be afterward placed in "stooks " or shocks, twelve bundles or sheaves making a stook, and " capped" in the same manner as now. The sickle was gradually exchanged for the "cradle," which came into general use about the years 1825-30.

The cradle was a scythe fastened to a frame of wood, with long, bending teeth or strips of wood, for cutting and laying the grain in swaths. The "reaper " has well-nigh as effectually displaced the cradle as the latter did the sickle. Life on the farm necessarily compels the husbandman to be a "jack-of- all-trades," and there were many farmers over the county who could not only make a tub or a barrel but the frame work and fingers for the cradle. Jacob Gardner is the first one of whom we have any knowledge who made the making and repairing of cradles a regular business. Mr. Gardner lived on Court street, below North Main, and had his shop in the back part of his lot. He still occupies the old premises, broken with the infirmities of age, and rarely ventures out, unless to meet with his old Masonic brethren, of Harmony Lodge, with whose history and prosperity he has been long identified.

There were very few farmers who did not know how to swing the scythe and cradle, and there was no more pleasant picture on the farm than a gang of work- men in the harvest-field, nor a more hilarious crowd. Three cradlers would cut about ten acres a day. One binder was expected to keep up with the cradle. Barns for the storage of the unthrashed grain are a comparatively " modern invention," and, as soon as the shock was supposed to be sufficiently cured, it was hauled to some place on the farm convenient for thrashing and feeding and there put in stack. The threshing was performed in one of two ways-by flail or tramping with horses, generally the latter. The flail was used in stormy weather, on the sheltered floor, or when other farm-work was not pressing; the thrashing by tramping, commonly in clear weather, on a level and well " tramped " clay floor, or, in later days, if the space was sufficiently large, on the barn- floor. The bundles were piled in a circle of about fifteen to twenty feet in diameter, and four to six horses ridden over the straw. One or two hands turned over and kept the straw in place. When sufficiently tramped, the refuse straw was thrown into a rick or stack, and the wheat cleared by a "fanning- mill," or, sometimes, before fanning-mills were introduced, by letting it fall from a height of ten or twelve feet, subjected to the action of the wind, when it was supposed to be ready for the mill or the market.

URBANA

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HISTORY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY.

The next step was to get the wheat to market. At a very early day in the raising of wheat, the acreage sown was small, and fifteen bushels to the acre was considered a good return, and the immigration into the county gave a home mar- ket for the surplus raised. This, however, did not continue many years, as each year added to the number of producers, and, as early as 1830, the hauling of wheat and other products of the farm to distant markets was the general prac- tice. Sandusky, Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati were the centers of trade for this section ; Dayton a little later superseding Cincinnati, owing, probably, to the supposed advantages of better roads and time saved, as well as extensive mills and breweries and enterprising grain-dealers. The " national road " was not completed through the State until some years afterward. The custom was for several farmers to go in company. The roads were heavy and full of marshy places, and the frontiersman's skill with the ax, and ingenuity in " fixing up " disabled wagon, were always in requisition. When heavy loads were hauled, it was not unusual to take relays of horses, with provender for the trip, the exchange of horses being made at about the half-way house on the road. Teamsters car- ried their provisions with them, and camped out wherever nightfall overtook them, or, if corn and hay taken for the trip were consumed, to turn into the yard of one of the inns to be found along the line of all the great thoroughfares, " for man and beast." As small as the tavern fares were, the prices of wheat, barley and clover seed were insufficient to justify any expenses for travel that might be avoided, hence the teamster carried with him his food and some rough bedding. From 1830 to 1840, and perhaps later, the Salem Township " barrens " raised heavy crops of fall barley, which were hauled to the breweries or grain-dealers in Dayton. The last few years have hardly averaged a hundred acres to the county.

Laborers were abundant, and the farmer had little or no difficulty in supply- ing himself with "hands," either for the season or for an emergency. Almost every one could swing the cradle or scythe, or perform any other work in the harvest field. Before the introduction of the reaping machine, expert hands from settlements in the northern counties would go to some of the lower counties, and continue along with the ripening grain on their return trip. Jour- neymen and others working at trades in the towns, would also go to the country in harvest and take a hand in the field. The rule was, not only with the hired laborer but with the farmer and his boys, to be at work with the early light. The eight and ten hour rule did not enter into the arrangement. A day's work on the farm was the labor that might be performed between "sun and sun," and this was understood and accepted on the part of employer and employe, though it was usual to perform the " chores " after the return from the field, making an additional hour or two.

There was no fixed price for produce or stock. Judge John Taylor, whose father settled in Mad River Township in 1808, says, " the first purchase his father made of corn was a few bushels only, and cost 50 cents a bushel, and, at the same time, paid $12 for a cow and calf, and $5 for a brood sow. The mar- ket place was Cincinnati, and it took eight days to make the trip. I took a load containing eight barrels of flour and sold to a merchant named Ruffner, at the rate of $1.25 a barrel, and received for the load two barrels of salt." The time is not stated, but must have been about the year 1815. Making the usual estimate of five bushels of wheat to the barrel of flour, gives the price of wheat to be 25 cents per bushel, less the hauling to Cincinnati. He also adds, " that in the winter of 1815, he and Emanuel Metz hired to John Pence and John Norman to manage

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and drive teams, attached to rough mud-sleds, which were loaded with flour to be delivered in Wahpokenetta; and in the next summer (1816), his employers built boats to carry the flour down the Auglaize River to old Fort Defiance, thence down the Maumee to the lake and into Canada, and in the venture lost both time and money." "The price of labor was 50 cents a day, which was also the wages of a hand in the harvest field. A good farm hand could be hired from $8 to $10 a month." In 1830, wheat hauled to Dayton sold for 37} cents a bushel. In 1879, the average price for the year was $1.07.

The swine of the early settlers, compared with the hogs of 1880, would present as wide a contrast as it is possible to conceive. Whatever the breed may have previously been or called, running wild, as was customary, the special breed was soon lost in the mixed swine of the country. They were long and slim, long-snouted and long-legged, with an arched back, and bristles erect from the back of the head to the tail, slab-sided, active and healthy ; the " sapling-splitter" and "razor back, " as he was called, was ever in the search for food, and quick to take alarm. He was capable of making a heavy hog, but required two years or more to mature, and, until a short time before butchering or marketing, was suf- fered to run at large, subsisting mainly as a forager, and in the fall fattening on the " mast." Yet this was the hog for a new country whose nearest and best markets were in Cincinnati and Baltimore, to which places they were driven on foot. Persons then, as now, engaged in the purchase and driving of swine or cattle as a special occupation, and, by means of trustworthy agents, visited dis- tant sections to buy up large droves. Judge John Reynolds, in connection with his other enterprises, was also a stock-dealer. It was not uncommon to see a drove of hogs driven into the public square to be weighed, preparatory to starting them on their long journey. As each porker was caught, it was thrust into a kind of leather receptacle, commonly the harness breeching, which was suspended to steelyards. As soon as the hog was fairly in the breeching, the whole was lifted from the ground, and thus. one by one, the drove was weighed and a minute made of each, and, with a pair of shears, a patch of bristles was cut from the hindquarters as evidence of the fact that the pig had been weighed. Two or three days' drive made the hogs quiet enough to be driven along the highway without trouble, moving along at an average gait of eight to ten miles a day. Much difficulty was experienced in keeping together in herds the hogs bought in distant and sparsely-settled neighborhoods, where they were but little han- dled and rarely fed. The highways, even when well-opened, led through hazel brush and fallen timber, and even down to a late day, rarely fenced on both sides. Every strange sight and sound gave an alarm, and the hogs scattered in every direction, to be gathered together again at their former haunts. This dif- ficulty was obviated, we are informed, by Mr. John Earsom, an old settler, who was engaged in collecting hogs from distant settlements into one drove, by entic- ing them into a pen and then running a " stitch " through the eyelids and secur- ing by a knot. Thus blinded, the hogs seemed instinctively to keep the road, and once started could easily be driven by a person on horseback. Two or three days' drive made them comparatively quiet and tractable, and, reaching their destination a clip of the scissors or knife made all things right again. Another pioneer adds to this statement that, in order to catch the hogs, shelled corn was trailed from the brush into a strong rail pen, having a " slip-gap." As soon as the hogs were in the pen, the gap was closed, and, by means of a long pole with a hook on the end, which was made to catch behind the foreshoulder of the leg, the hog was drawn to a convenient place; a strap with a slip-noose, which was

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placed just behind the tushes of the upper jaw, drew the animal to the desired spot, when the stitches were made without further trouble and the brute then released.

Almost every farmer raised a few hogs for market, which were gathered up by drovers and dealers. The delivery of hogs began usually in September, and the business was carried on past the middle of winter. The price ranged in an early day at about $1.25 per 100 pounds, though at times running up to $3.25 or $3.50, with a fair margin after driving to Cincinnati or Baltimore. About 1840, the hog trade was brisk and speculation ran high. Mr. Andrew Wilson, Jr., then about twenty-two years of age, made a specialty for sev- eral years of buying up and driving herds of swine to distant markets, and was understood to have realized a handsome fortune in the trade, as fortunes then were counted, which afterward was lost in wilder speculation. Judge John Taylor [elsewhere spoken of in this sketch], about the same time was supposed to be hopelessly insolvent in consequence of some pecuniary ventures, but, as might have been expected of an old pioneer, he disregarded the importunities of his friends to avail himself of the law touching insolvent debtors, and entered the field as a buyer and drover of hogs. One or two seasons enabled him to pay the old score and lay the foundation for the competence of an honored old age.

In no stock of the farm have greater changes been effected than in the hog. From the characteristics of this wild animal, long-legged, slab-sided, roach- backed, muscular, tall, long, active and fierce, it has been bred to be almost as square as a store box, quiet as a sheep, taking on 250 pounds of flesh in nine or ten months. The swine no longer grows to be a hog, but goes to the butcher at not over a year old, and is a "pig." They are now ranked into distinctive breeds, which, so far as Champaign is concerned, has mainly narrowed to two- the Berkshire and the Poland-China-in the breeding of which the county seems to be the dividing line between the north and south parts of the State.

In cattle and horses, Champaign for many years has claimed a high grade. Ex-Gov. Vance, in his association with the public men of the county, met with those who were taking an active interest in the improvement of stock, and at an early day brought into the county thoroughbred short-horns and horses. The result encouraged others to make like importations, and in a short time the breeding of thoroughbred stock-of horses, cattle, sheep and swine-was made a specialty by many. Of short-horn breeders, honorable mention may be made of Charles Lincoln, Rowland C. Moulton, Parker Bryan, Samuel Cheney and others ; while farmers in every section of the county, engaged in breeding cattle for market, owned and kept a thoroughbred animal for use. Thirty to forty years ago, the breeding of cattle for feeding was carried on more ex- tensively than to-day. The competition by reason of the occupation of immense tracts of the unoccupied Western territory, by persons owning immense herds of cattle, which may be fatted and shipped to market at four years old, at an aver- age cost of $4 each, and the discrimination of railway companies in freights against the "local," or intermediate shipper, is rapidly driving the raising of fat cattle, as a business, out of this section. The discriminations made' against dealers living along the line of a railroad, and in favor of great railroad centers, and the rebates made to shippers at certain shipping points, the ten- dency of which has been, and is, to operate in the interest of capital and against the small dealer more certainly than the competition furnished by Texas and the Western Territories, are gradually undermining this important trade.

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HISTORY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY.

Whatever temporary advantage the policy pursued may give, we may reason- ably hope that the pressure of public sentiment, or the force of a national law, may compel equitable rates of transportation on the part of an organization which threatens to be the overshadowing monopoly of the nation.

Under the act of the General Assembly of the State to authorize the organ- ization of the residents of any county or district into societies for the improve- ment of agriculture, the required number of citizens met in Urbana in 1838, and in accordance with the act, organized the " Champaign County Agricultural Society." Unfortunately, the early records of the society have been lost, or, more probably, none were ever made, and the first minutes we find of its trans- actions date 1856.

It is difficult now to give the names of all who were directly concerned in the meeting called for the purpose of adopting a constitution and electing offi- cers, and the proceedings of the first annual exhibit. Among those who took an active interest at that time were James C. Smith, John H. James, Philander B. Ross, Joel Funk, Joseph C. Brand, Lemuel Reynolds, A. F. Vance, John Thompson, Ed L. Morgan, William Patrick, Samuel Humes, Absalom Fox, Newton Harr, John Kenaga, James A. Nelson, William McDonald, Abram Herr, Dr. Adam Mosgrove, James Rawlins, Perry G. Madden, Jesse Phillips, R. M. Woods, Matthew Stewart, J. Pence, D. Loudenback and many others from all parts of the county. Mr. William Vance was elected President, and John H. Jones, Secretary, William Ward and Samuel Keener, Vice Presidents, Smith Minturn, Treasurer, and John Reynolds, Abram Showers, Isaac Smith, John Enoch and Henry Van Meter, Managers. The first annual fair was com- paratively an insignificant display of the stock and agricultural products of the county ; but few fairs have been held since more productive of substantial good or which have elicited more general and enthusiastic interest. The horses and stock lined the fence on North Main, beyond the town limits, and the Court House yard was covered with the varied products of the farm.

Since that day, county agricultural societies have been organized through- out the State.

Champaign, in addition to the competition resulting from the associations of the counties adjoining on every side, has also found an active and enterprising competitor in a district fair, organized and conducted under private auspices, and holding their annual exhibit at Mechanicsburg, in Goshen Township. This association is entitled : " The Central Ohio Fair Association," a more detailed account of which will be found in the record of Goshen Township.

GENERAL PROGRESS.

A general description of the physical geography of the county has already been given, in which notice was taken of the quantity and waste of timber. Many localities which a hundred years ago were bare of trees, have since been covered with a dense forest. The western portion of the county still retains a heavy growth of beech and other trees, the primeval forest but slowly and surely making way for the plowshare. Scarcely a division of the county can be found where the second growth, or " fallen timber," has not appeared. The barrens of Salem indicate a second growth. A story is told of a man who "entered " at the land office a tract of land lying in Salem, who afterward, learning that it was in the barrens, exchanged it for a tract of woodland, hardly worth a quarter of its value. On the Mechanicsburg pike, near the old St.

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HISTORY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY.

George's Chapel, where Mr. James Fulton lives, and along through that quarter, was an open " barren " country, all of which was afterward covered with forest trees, of which large fields remain still. On the lower section of Dugan, on the farm lying at the junction of the Ludlow road and the Milford pike, the clumps of timber back some distance from the road have sprung up within the past fifty years. On the other hand, there has been a vast waste of timber, a hundred-fold greater than that of eighty years ago. Then there was an immense superabundance, and the difficulty was how to get rid of it, and in its stead make a fruitful field. To-day, the forest trees have a specific value, and the harvest goes on for the money that is in it, taking no thought of restoring the waste by a new growth, or of protection from storms or protecting growing crops. The theory that the denuding the land of its forests tends to diminish the rainfall and in the end impoverish the land, is not confirmed by the state- ments of Prof. Henry, of the Smithsonian Institution, after years of observa- tion. Yet, though this be true, and Champaign still have an abundance of cer- tain kinds of timber and to spare, still, as a matter of " dollars and cents," the present cutting joined with the total neglect of planting a new growth, the future will deem a great waste. Forty years ago, with an occasional corn-field or open plain, almost the entire road from the eastern city limits, beginning at the lands of John Kenaga and Joseph Eichelberger, was an unbroken forest to the county line ; and a large part of this was unfenced. The past twenty years have cleared away many acres. The same may be said of almost every other quarter of the county. The black walnut, wild cherry and poplar were found in all sections-immense specimens of the latter in the western townships-all of which are being rapidly removed. In the woods, and along the highways, were found thickets of red and yellow wild plums, growing as large as the large domesticated blue plum of the garden, and equal to any ; also a blue grape, of good size, remaining long on the vine, slightly musky in flavor, but considered a fine grape. Forty years ago, the fields abounded in wild strawberries of delicious taste and fragrance. Few were raised in gardens, or were made a special crop. The berries, compared with the fruit and varieties now found in the gardens, were small, but they were abundant, and Saturday found the schoolboy, with his tin pail, looking for the tempting fruit. The grapes and strawberries are no longer to be found. Here and there may be found a clump of wild plums, but of stunted growth and bearing a fruit inferior to that of the old settlement.

Efforts have been occasionally made to raise the wild plum, but without satisfactory results. The tree in the wild state grows in groves, and its wild nature has been overlooked. The plantings made have been single trees, and the treatment the same as other fruit trees, which may possibly explain the failures. In 1880, several bushels of wild plums were sold in the Urbana market, which shows that the " plum thickets " of the county are not altogether destroyed. The new settler fancied, and with some truth, that the highlands were the more healthful. The nearness of a spring generally dictated the place for the cabin. The latter was made from the timber growing on the ground. A clearing was then effected by chopping off the trees of the field intended for cultivation ; and a larger " opening" begun by cutting a small kerf around the body of the trees, usually called the " deadening," and the neighbors, at a given time, with their oxen, met to drag the fallen logs into heaps for burning. Large portions of the county were heavily timbered, and many of these places were wet and miry. The shade trees and luxuriant growth of underbrush and

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vegetation prevented the rapid exhalation and escape of the rainfall, and the streams were kept constantly full, and the rains kept up a uniform supply. The rainfall of the past ten years will probably equal that of any decade within the previous sixty years, but the effects are of no long continuance. A drought is felt much sooner than formerly. The pent-up waters which gradually oozed from the marshy flat, or percolated through the gravelly bank, have been liber- ated by the destruction of the trees, the diversion of the surplus water into new and few channels, and by means of underdrains, so that the rivulet in a few hours becomes a foaming brook, and the modest stream a torrent. There is as much effort and expense put forth to-day to get rid of the surplus water as the early pioneers employed to get rid of the trees, and a recent agricultural journal gravely asserted but a short time since that in the next century there will be more anxiety and labor employed to take the tile up than were had in putting them in place. Whatever the future may do, the course adopted is drying the land.

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The history of Champaign county, Ohio, containing a history of the county; its cities, towns, etc.; general and local statistics; portraits of early settlers and prominent men; history of the Northwest territory etc, Part 23

Author: Ogden, J. W. (John W.); Beers (W.H.) & Co., pub Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Chicago : W.H. Beers & co. Number of Pages: 926

Author: Ogden, J. W. (John W.); Beers (W.H.) & Co., pub
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago : W.H. Beers & co.
Number of Pages: 926