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 32
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Well, we have wandered a little from the subject of our sketch. Pierre Dugan and our story-teller have long since left the margin of the lake and the prairie where they caught fish and killed rattlesnakes. The name still remains. The times in which he lived were full of adventure, danger and heroism. The quiet life of the trapper suggests a life as simple and true as that of Natty Bumpo, and out of it, with the known history of the time, another Cooper may narrate the story of the last of the Shawnees.
Dugan, like Natty Bumpo, loved solitude and the wilderness. The fires that shone out from the distant ridge or gleamed at night from the trees along the margin of his lake, with the sound of the woodman's ax by day, suggested that game would soon be scarce, and it was time for him to be hunting a new home. He accordingly packed up his traps, and with his wife, children, and dogs, wended his way to the head-waters of the Scioto, where he " pitched " his cabin and spent the remainder of his life. Once a year he would visit Urbana, to dispose of his furs and skins, and as Judge John Reynolds had become the owner of his old home, he always called on him for his rent, which was duly honored in the shape of a pound of "pig tail " tobacco, or a calico dress for his papoose.
The following story is told of him by Judge E. L. Morgan, and is a fair instance of the simplicity of his character: Having purchased a bag of corn meal of John Taylor, at his mill on King's Creek, and having no horse of his own to carry the meal home, Mr. Taylor kindly offered to loan him a pony he called Gopher. Pierre thankfully accepted the loan, but after looking at. the bag of corn meal, then at Gopher, and finally at himself, concluded that
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the load was too heavy for the horse, but as the bag was too heavy for himself to carry, he compromised the difficulty by shouldering the bag, then led the pony to a stump and mounted his bare back with the bag of meal on his own shoulders, saying as he did so, " that he could carry the bag and Gopher could carry him," and in this way rode home.
LORENZO DOW.
The names of two other men, Lorenzo Dow and Jonathan Chapman, should be mentioned in this connection, not as having been residents of Champaign County, but as occasional visitors, men without an abiding home, and who were strangely identified with the pioneer life of the country ; names that the world would not willingly let die. Lorenzo Dow, at this day, would be called an "evangelist " preacher. Acting on his own responsibility, making appoint- ments wherever it suited his convenience or whim, and making his " circuit " to traverse a large extent of territory, he generally announced long periods in advance when and where he would preach in the vicinity where he hap- pened to be, and was considered remarkably punctual in filling his appoint- ments. These were made a note of and remembered, and multitudes flocked to his ministry. Before the hour appointed, the entire neighborhood might be seen wending their way to the designated spot. His name and fime attracted large crowds. Many anecdotes are told of his eccentricities and blunt rude- ness. It was a rough age, and the "terrors of the law " hurled at his audi- ences in his vehement and impressive manner, was perhaps the best, if not the only way, to reach the consciences of his more rough and lawless hearers. A writer describing him says that, at the appointed time he came to the place of meeting walking very fast, dressed plainly, with a straw hat and white blanket overcoat. He rushed into the midst of the congregation, pulled off his hat and coat and dashed them on the ground in an excited, angry manner, and with great sternness, began his discourse with the words " Hell and Damna- tion !" which were followed by expressions of shocking profanity, which, after a pause, he declared to be the common language of many of his hearers, and then preached a solemn warning sermon against the wickedness of a violation of the second commandment, and was listened to without interruption to the end.
The kindly courtesies extended to him, by persons living in neighborhoods where he had sent notice of his purpose to preach, were not always received with a corresponding good will. An instance in point is given by Dr. Thomas Cowgill, of Salem Township, in an account of an appointment and visit by Lorenzo to Bellefontaine. He had stopped at the house of Eleazer Hunt, in Hardin County. Phineas Hunt, the father of Eleazer, was there with his wagon, and, being about to start for his home in Champaign County, kindly
gave Lorenzo a ride. They reached Bellefontaine at the hour appointed, the people generally, who had heard of the appointment, anxiously looking for him. Judge McCulloch and others went out to meet him, and, seeing the wagon, inquired if Mr. Dow were there. He said, "Yes, my name is Dow." Judge McCulloch then invited him to go to his house for dinner, as there was suffi- cient time before the hour of meeting. Without saying a word, he directed the driver to go a little farther south, where he alighted from the wagon and sat down under the shade of a tree, and made his dinner of some bread and meat taken from his pocket. There was a large crowd in attendance at the meeting,
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and the preacher took occasion to make personal applications of tattling, sland- ering one's neighbors, etc. That evening he had a meeting in the house of Phineas Hunt. Next day, being Sunday, a meeting which had been appointed to be held at Mount Tabor, at 10 o'clock, was well attended. On the road to the meeting, he overtook some persons, and walked a distance on the way with them, and, taking a by-way from the main road, was reminded by one of the company that the highway was the direct road to the place of meeting, but, after telling them to go on the road they were following, continued his journey nearly a mile north of Mount Tabor, and then retraced his steps to the place of meeting. Without stopping at the place where the assembly had met, he walked on past the congregation, down the hill among the bushes and timber, southeast of the church, where he immediately began to preach, the people following him, carrying benches and chairs, though most of his hearers continued standing during the delivery of his discourse. William H. Fyffe sent a carriage to con- vey him to Urbana, where he had an appointment to preach that afternoon at 3 o'clock. He was kindly invited to dinner by several persons, but refused the invitations, and laid down to rest on Judge Reynolds' cellar-door, making his meal, as usual, from bread taken from his own pocket. The meeting was a large one, and the preacher became very earnest, and, in his excitement, when in his gesticulations, the hymn-book slipped from his hand and struck a lady on the head.
The visit to Champaign was held in May, 1826, though it is understood both previous and subsequent visits were made. He is described as being a spare man, of rather small size; his beard was long, reaching to his breast ; his hair a little gray, parted in the middle and reaching down to his shoulders, and his dress very plain, clean and neat. He wore a straw or palm-leaf hat, a black overcoat, which seemed to be the only coat he had on. His eye was calm but piercing. While preaching, he rested on his cane. In manner, he was earnest and impressive, and never hesitated for the precise word he wanted to use. His doctrine appeared to be the same as that held by the Methodists, and he spoke with much severity against proud and deceitful professors of religion. Our description of Mr. Dow is taken from an account of him by Mr. Thomas Cowgill.
In some respects, Lorenzo Dow was a remarkable man ; well fitted to do a missionary work in a rude period, and possessing a certain native eloquence and force that attracted attention and carried conviction to his hearers. His eccen- tricities were not of a character to provoke ridicule or laughter; and while his manners, by the way, were not always tempered by the refinement and cour- tesy which we instinctively assume to be the distinctive mark of a Christian preacher and gentleman, the beneficent purpose of his mission and the work of his life gave character to the man and commanded the respect of his hearers. Still, it is with difficulty we can disguise from ourselves the belief that his eccentricities bordered on insanity, and that an ill-balanced religious zeal enforced the wandering life which he led.
JOHNNY APPLESEED.
The name and life of this strange man are entitled to a place in every sketch, however crude, of the pioneer settlement. The man of to-day, nay, the men who were familiar with the olden time which they made and of which they were a part, and who grew up with the ever-enlarging civilization, are
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living in a changed atmosphere. So suddenly and so strangely has the genius of change and alteration waved his charmed wand over the land that the early settler has changed and kept pace with the changing years, and the unwritten history of the early days is recalled as one remembers a fading dream. The sharp and hard conflicts of life make heroes, and the fierce struggles of war and bloodshed develop them into self-reliant, stubborn and aggressive men, as fierce and sanguinary as their bitter foes.
We are living in the age of invention and machinery. These have destroyed the romance of frontier life, and much of the strange, eventful reali- ities of the past are rapidly becoming mythical, and the narratives of the gen- erations that settled the "Far West," abounding in rich treasures of incident and character, are being swallowed up and forgotten in the surging, eventful present. From the dark stories of Indian warfare, of pioneer suffering and want, we turn with delight to another character, the rarest in all the times of which we write.
Few persons of the present generation ever heard of Jonathan Chapman, and his name is rarely mentioned now, save by the few surviving pioneers who remember his quaint appearance, his gentle ways and his good deeds; and among the heroes of that age, the names of none more deserve to be perpet- uated.
Among the older citizens who saw him frequently in the earlier years were Mr. William Patrick, and, in more recent times, Mr. John H. James, who met with him several times in Urbana. A contributor to Harper's Monthly Mag- azine for November, 1871, gives a sketch of his character and life, and from this and Howe's " History of Ohio" we glean the details of his life, and which, from the recollections of his appearance and labors, are confirmed by those who recall his simple ways.
According to a statement made in one of his less reticent moods, his name was Jonathan Chapman, and he was born in Boston, Mass., in 1775. The first trustworthy trace we hear of him finds him in the Territory of Ohio, in the year 1801, in that section of the country known now as Licking County, where he was engaged in planting apple-seeds in various places on the borders of Licking Creek. The first orchard that originated from this planting was on the farm of Isaac Stadden, in that county. During the next five years, noth- ing is known of his movements ; but the reasonable conjecture is that, as he had a horse-load of apple-seeds when on Licking Creek, he was following the same occupation.
On a pleasant spring day, in 1806, a pioneer settler in Jefferson County noticed a peculiar craft slowly dropping down with the current of the Ohio River. The occupant of the craft had two canoes lashed together, and the cargo was composed of apple-seeds. It was the same Chapman who, five years before, was on the Licking, and now transporting his seeds to the fron- tier, for the purpose of creating orchards beyond the limits of civilization. Arriving at Marietta, he entered the Muskingum ; up this river to the Wal- honding ; up the Mohican, into the Black Fork, and onward to the head of navigation, now designated on the map as Ashland and Richland Counties. As he stopped at every inviting spot to plant the apple-seeds for the future nurseries, the voyage must have been long and toilsome. The strange craft, managed by so strange a man, engaged in so strange an occupation, naturally attracted attention, and he was called Johnny Appleseed, by which name he became known, in subsequent years, from the Ohio to the lakes, and westward
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to the prairies of Indiana. The seeds he gathered from the cider-presses of Western Pennsylvania, but, after the time above mentioned, his journeys were made on foot. Having planted his stock of seeds, he would return to Pennsyl- vania for a fresh supply. Canvas bags being found to be insufficient to endure the hard usage of so long a trip through forests dense with underbrush and briers, leathern ones were substituted, which were sometimes packed on horse- back, but more frequently on his own shoulders.
The region which he made the theater of his operations still possesses a romantic beauty. The margins of the streams, near which the first settle- ments were generally made, were covered with a low growth of timber, while nearer the water a rank mass of long grass, interlaced with morning-glory and wild pea vines, climbing the swamp willow and the clustering alder, grew in rank profusion. The hills were crowned with forest trees, and in the coverts were innumerable bears, wolves, deer, and wild hogs as ferocious as beasts of prey. In the tangled grass lurked the venomous moccasin and rattlesnake, as dangerous and distrusted as the wily Indian. To this day, in the low prairie lands, the farmer cuts his hay or goes through his strip of wild grass suspi- cious of his insidious enemy, and guarding against attack by wrapping bandages of twisted grass from the ankle to the knee. But Johnny would shoulder his bag of apple-seeds, and, with bare feet, would penetrate to some remote spot, where his fancy or judgment suggested a proper place for his future nursery, and then clearing away the grass and tangled vines, would plant his seeds, place a slight inclosure around them, and leave them to grow until large enough to be transplanted by the settlers to their clearings, as they should fill up the country. Many of the places selected are still pointed out-open spots on the loamy lands bordering the streams, hemmed in by giant trees, beautiful still, after the lapse of more than half a century, with all its changes.
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. Generally, even in the coldest weather, he went barefooted, but sometimes, for his long journeys, he would make himself a rude pair of sandals ; at other times wearing any cast- off covering he chanced to find-not infrequently a boot or shoe on one foot and a moccasin on the other. It seemed to be a matter of conscience with him not to buy shoes, and instances are told where, having received the gift of them, he would force them on the first person he saw whom he thought more needy than he, and continue his journey barefoot through mud and snow. His dress was generally composed of cast-off clothing that he had taken in payment for apple trees. In his later years he seems to have considered even this kind of second- hand raiment too luxurious, or probably finding the buckskin breeches and hunting shirt too cumbersome and rigid for his mode of life he discarded them, and substituted as his principal garment a coffee-sack, in which he cut holes for his head and arms to pass through, and pronounced it "a very serviceable cloak, and as good clothing as any man need wear." His headgear was equally unique. His first experiment was a tin vessel that served to cook his mush, and from which he usually ate his meal when he stopped at the settler's cabin ; but this did not protect his eyes from the rays of the sun, and he constructed a hat of pasteboard with an immense peak in front, which, combining utility and economy, became his permanent fashion.
Thus clad, he was constantly wandering, and unexpectedly appearing in white settlements and Indian villages, planting his seeds and dispensing "news
Allen Fondenbach
MAD RIVER. TP.
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right fresh from heaven." But there must have been some rare force of good- ness in his face and ways, and such gentle tenderness and love breathing in every word, for everywhere he was treated with cordiality and respect. With grown-up persons and boys he was usually reticent, but manifested great affec- tion for little girls for whom he always carried a bit of ribbon or gay calico. When he stopped at the settler's cabin, and was pressed to partake of the family meal, he would never sit down to the table until he was assured that there was an abundance for the children. We can hardly wonder that the boys forgot to jeer at his outer appearance, or the rudest frontiersman treated him with respect. To the Indians he was a "great medicine man," and not only treated with kindness by the savages, but from their superstitious observances was one not to be molested. He therefore wandered through hostile regions and dangerous places with impunity, and on many occasions gave the settlers warning of approaching danger in time to enable them to take refuge in their block-houses. An effect of Hull's surrender was to send out large bands of Indians and British, destroying everything before them, and murdering defense- less women and children. Johnny's wanderings showed him the impending danger, and day and night he traveled, visiting every cabin and rousing the people to a sense of their danger by proclaiming "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, and He hath anointed me to blow the trumpet in the wilderness and sound an alarm in the forest, for, behold, the tribes of the heathen are round about your doors, and a devouring flame followeth after them." Refusing all offers of food, and denying himself a moment's rest, he traversed the border day and night until he had warned every settler of the approaching peril.
His diet was as meager as his clothing. He thought it a sin to kill any creature for food, or to allow anything designed to supply man's wants to be diverted from its purpose. He was an earnest disciple of the faith taught by Swedenborg, and always carried with him a few odd volumes, which he was anxious should be read by every one. As he could not carry books for all, he devised an original mode of distributing what he had. These he divided into several pieces, leaving a piece at a log cabin, and at his next round taking up what he had left before, which he replaced by one taken from another. Thus all were enabled to read parts of the same book at the same time, and in process of time the whole volume-a little liable to the objection of a backward course of reading from the unavoidably irregular course of distribution. The book he con- sidered " an infallible protection against dangers here and hereafter." It was his custom, after a weary day's wandering, to lie down on the puncheon floor of the cabin where he was welcomed, and, after inquiring if his auditors would hear " some news right fresh from heaven," he would produce his few well-worn books, among them the New Testament, which he would read and expound with rare enthusiasm. Next to his advocacy of his religious ideas, the absorb- ing object of his life was the cultivation of apple-trees from what he termed " the only proper way "-that is, from seeds. Upon this, as upon religion, he was eloquent in his appeals, and he equally denounced as absolute wickedness all devices of pruning and grafting, and would speak of the act of cutting a tree as if it were a cruelty inflicted on a sentient being.
He was equally faithful in his protection of animals from abuse and suffer- ing. Whenever he saw an animal abused, or heard of it, he would purchase it and give it to some more humane neighbor, on condition that it should be kindly cared for. Lame and broken-down horses were frequently turned loose by emi- grants, being unable to go further. These he would gather up in autumn,
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bargain for their shelter and care until the next spring, when he would lead them to some good pasture for the summer. If they recovered, he would loan or give them away, but always with the condition of their good usage. He was pained that in the " heat of his ungodly passion," he had killed a rattlesnake which had bitten him, and carefully released from his coffee-sack coat a hornet which had become entangled and stung him repeatedly. On another occasion, he put out the fire he had ignited near where he had intended to pass the night because he noticed that it attracted large numbers of mosquitoes, which flew too near the blaze and were burned, saying, in explanation of his conduct-" God forbid that I should build a fire for my comfort which should be the means of destroying any of His creatures." At another time, he removed a fire he had kindled near a hollow log, and slept on the snow, lest he disturb a bear and her cubs which had taken possession of the log.
In business, he was particularly methodical. The location of his nurseries had reference to a probable future demand for his trees by the time they were large enough for transplanting. He would give them away to those who were unable to pay. Old clothing or a little corn meal were always a legal tender, but he preferred to receive a note payable at some indefinite period; but he never gave himself any trouble about its collection. His expenses for food and cloth- ing were trifling, and he had more money than he cared to keep, which he quickly disposed of for wintering infirm horses or for the use of some poor family, whom the ague or accident had impoverished. In a single instance, he purchased a small piece of ground, in Ashland County, but with his customary indifference to matters of value, he failed to record the deed, and lost it.
In 1838, thirty-seven years after his appearance on Licking Creek, Johnny noticed that population was pressing into the State. Hitherto he had just kept in advance of the wave of settlement, but he now felt that his work was done in the region where he had labored so long. He visited every house, and with parting words of admonition, he left them and turned his steps toward the set- ting sun.
During the next nine years he pursued his old employment on the western borders of Ohio and in Indiana. In the summer of 1847, at the close of a warm day, after traveling twenty miles, he entered the house of a settler, in Allen County, Ind., and was warmly welcomed. He declined to eat with the family, but accepted some bread and milk, which he ate on the door-step. Later in the evening, he delivered his "news right fresh from heaven," by read- ing the beatitudes. He slept, as usual, on the floor. In the morning he was found with his face all aglow, but so near death that he was unable to speak. There, at the age of seventy-two, died one of the memorable men of pioneer times ; who never inflicted pain or knew an enemy. " A laboring, self-denying benefactor of his race; homeless, solitary and ragged, he trod the thorny earth with bare and bleeding feet, intent only on making the wilderness fruitful. Now no man knoweth of his sepulchre, but his deeds will live in the fragrance of the apple blossoms he loved so well, and the story of his life will be a perpetual proof that true heroism, pure benevolence, noble virtues and deeds that deserve im- mortality, may be found under meanest apparel and far from gilded hall and towering spire."
JAMES COOLEY.
On other pages the names of James Cooley appears as one among the earliest resident lawyers and active citizens of the village. What we have been
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able to learn of Mr. Cooley, personally, is of a general character, but from all we can gather from the newspapers of that day, and from the testimony of the few survivors who knew him well, he was a man of no ordinary merits. It was a time of able men ; and a young man, whose virtues and talents shall be con- tinued to be praised more than half a century after his death, clearly indicates not only his magnetic power to win and hold personal friendships, but that essentially he stood in the front rank of his associates. He was a man of fine appearance and prepossessing manners, and had secured the confidence of the community. Before his departure to Peru, he had filled several minor offices, and the same year was Prosecuting Attorney for the county.
In 1826, having been appointed to the Court of Peru, Charge d'Affaires of the United States, in July of that year, when making arrangements for his de- parture, "a number of his friends in Champaign and adjoining counties, desir- ous of manifesting their respect for him personally, as well as to bid him an affectionate farewell," requested him to attend a dinner to be given for that pur- pose at Mr. Hunter's hotel, on the 26th of the month. The invitation was accepted, and the dinner presided over by Judge Smith, of Champaign, as Pres- ident, and Judge Paige, of Clark County, as Vice President.
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