USA > Ohio > Clinton County > The history of Clinton County, Ohio, containing a history of the county; its townships, cities, towns, etc.; general and local statistics; portraits of early settlers and prominent men; history of the Northwest territory, Volume 1 > Part 40
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Peter Burr, Jesse Hughes and Thomas Hinkson were the first Associate Judges of Clinton County, elected in February, 1810. They took their seats on the bench on the 28th of March following. Soon after entering upon the discharge of their official duties, they settled among themselves the order of precedence to be observed by them while holding courts in the absence of the President Judge, it being that above given. From Judge Harlan's materials, the following account of these Judges, with succeeding ones, and the early lawyers of Clinton County, are taken:
"Peter Burr was the son of Peter Burr, who was born October 21, 1727, and died January 20, 1795, and of Mary, his wife, who was born August 17, 1730. Judge Burr was born August 4, 1767. He was married in Loudoun County, Va., February 19, 1790, to Hannah, only daughter of David Sewell, an immigrant to this country in 1798. His wife was born in 1769. Judge Burr was a Justice of the Peace in Warren County before the establishment
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of Clinton County. He was one of the two members of the House of Represen- tatives from Warren County in the fourth and fifth sessions of the General As- sembly, serving with Matthias Corwin on each occasion. After serving in the capacity of Associate Judge in Clinton County about three months, a vacancy occurred in the office of Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas for the county, and he was appointed to fill it, first by a pro tem. appointment, June 21, 1810, and afterward for the full term of seven years, June 4, 1811. In 1814, he was elected Clerk of the Supreme Court. He died holding both these offices. Judge Burr had not the qualification for the office of Clerk. He wrote a poor hand, and was wholly unacquainted with the substance and forms of the simplest legal entry. He was a surveyor, and was often appointed by the County Commissioners to survey the proposed routes for new roads. In 1811, he acquired an interest in Lot No. 28, northwest corner of Main and Mulberry streets, in Wilmington. Out of this purchase grew a suit in court, which had not terminated at the time of his death. The names of his children were Han- nah, Ezra, David, Elizabeth, Abigail and John, all of whom are now dead. Judge Burr died August 8, 1816.
"One of the three Associate Judges of Clinton County was Jesse Hughes, or, as he wrote his name later in life, Jesse Hughes, Sr. He was of Welsh descent, born near the Potomac River, in Berkeley County, Va., January 22. 1767. When but a small boy, he was taken by his parents to Chester County. Penn., and he continued to reside there until he was about seventeen years of age. In the year 1784, he was taken by an uncle, a brother to his father, to Jefferson County, Ky. His uncle was one of a considerable colony which emi- grated in that year for the purpose of commencing a new settlement on some of the unappropriated lands of Kentucky. They descended the Ohio River in boats, and landed at the village (now city) of Louisville. After exploring the country to some extent, they made choice of a point for their settlement on the waters of Salt River, now included within the limits of Shelby County. The set- tlers proceeded at once to erect defenses against the Indians and shelter for their families. This, when completed, constituted what in that day was called a fort or station, and was composed of block-houses, stockades and cabins united so as to include an acre or so of ground. In this station young Hughes passed the remaining years of his minority. The station was called Hughes' Station, from the uncle of young Hughes. The location was not far from the Ohio River, then and for years afterward the acknowledged boundary of the Indian country. It lay directly in the usual route taken by the warriors from the Wabash, Eel River and Mississinewa towns on their marauding expeditions against the interior Kentucky settlements. Parties composed of several war- riors would cross the river from the Indian side, and, after separating into squads of two or three, waylay paths, springs and fields where crops were be- ing cultivated, and places where firewood or building material were procured, to capture prisoners or take scalps. In the midst of such dangers, every able- bodied man and every well grown boy became soldiers, subject to be called upon to perform duty as sentinels, to give alarms of danger, as an armed guard to resist attacks, or as minutemen, ready to pursue war parties whose depredations had been discovered in the neighborhood. Scant means are now possessed by the writer of this notice for giving an account of young Hughes services in defense of the station and settlement. No record of them has been preserved; all that is now left of them is the dim and shadowy outline which tradition has handed down. From this source, we learn that he was ready and prompt in the discharge of all his duties as an inhabitant of the station. Of Indian warfare on a more extended scale, it is known that, at the age of nine- teen years, he joined the last expedition of the celebrated Gen. George Rogers
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Clark, in 1786, against the Indian towns on the Wabash and Vermilion. ' Early in life, the precise date not ascertained, young Hughes made a public profes- sion of religion, and was received as a member into the Baptist Church, in which he remained until his death. In the year 1790, Mr. Hughes was married in Bullitt County, Ky., to Elizabeth Drake. This lady was of Dutch descent. She was born in New Jersey December 27, 1793, but emigrated to Kentucky at an early day. At the time of her marriage, she was a member of the Meth- odist Church, but shortly after her marriage united herself to the Baptist Church, and remained a most exemplary member until her death. She died September 27, 1835, in her sixty-second year. In 1803, Mr. Hughes emigrated with his family to the State of Ohio, and settled in the unbroken woods about two miles southeast from Wilmington. His route to Ohio was by Gen. Clark's old war road from the falls of the Ohio to the mouth of the Licking River. opposite Cincinnati, from Cincinnati to Doerfield, thence by the mouth of Todd's Fork, thence up Todd's Fork to Smalley's, adjoining where Clarksville now is. From Smalley's to this place of settlement there was neither road nor path of any kind, and a way had to be cut for the wagons to pass. Early in 1810, Clinton County was established and organized. Mr. Hughes and two others (Peter Burr and Thomas Hinkson), were elected by the General As- sembly Associate Judges of the Court of Common Pleas. He was re-elected to the same office at three successive elections. The term of office was seven years, so that the whole time he sat as Judge was twenty-eight years. Mr. and Mrs. Hughes had eleven children in all, of whom eight lived to maturity and became heads of families, three sons and five daughters. His eldest son and child, David, resided long on his farm adjoining Springfield, Ohio. De- lilah married John Harper. Catharine married Joseph Rogers. Mrs. Harper and Mrs. Rogers both died at Mount Pleasant, Iowa, several years ago. Je- mima married Isma Harris, of Snow Hill; the wife and husband are both dead. Elizabeth married Judge Hugh Smart, of Greenfield, Highland County. The husband is dead; Mrs. Smart still living. Jesse was twice married. He served a term of seven years as one of the Associate Judges of Clinton County. He has been dead several years. Charles D. is our townsman of that name. The youngest of the family, Mary, married Robert Wood of the vicinity of Wil- mington, and died in March, 1881. It is not to be supposed that Judge Hughes owed his elevation to the bench to his knowledge of the law; he made no pretentions to legal learning. He owed far more to his high moral char- acter, good sense, and unimpeachable integrity. Indeed, knowedge of Coke and Blackstone was not regarded in that day as necessary qualification for the office of Associate Judge, or even for the office of President Judge of the Com- mon Pleas. The President Judge of the First Circuit, which extended from the Scioto on the east to the Indian line on the west, and from the Ohio River on the south to the Greenville treaty line on the north, and included Cincin- nati, Lebanon, Dayton, Springfield, etc., was not at the time of his election a lawyer, but a school-master, and was never admitted to practice law until after he served out his two terms, each of seven years, in that important office. (See biography of Judge Dunlavy.) Our sturdy settlers seem to have been of the opinion that good character, sound sense and judgment, and unimpeachable integrity were qualifications quite sufficient to enable a Judge to do justice between man and man in general; and if these were known to be possessed by the Judge, no others were deemed necessary. How far in error were they? The school-master, without a knowledge of technical law, generally found means to arrive at the justice of the case brought before him; and Judge Hughes, without previous study of the law, was seldom at a loss to find law to support the right, and was seldom able to see any to sustain the wrong. Judge Hughes
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was friendly aud affable with all. In the selection of his friends he was more discriminating and select. For his friends he made choice of those living good lives and holding good principles. He lived in times which many of this generation seem to regard as only one remove from utter barbarism. This is a great mistake. Where could be found men of better walk and couversa- tion than Judge Hughes, Judge McManis and Judge Sewell? Or, ascending to a higher rank of Judges, examine the moral standing of Judge Dunlavy, of Judge Collett and of Judge McLean, resident all within twenty miles, and all well known to hundreds still living-every one a Christian gentleman. Judge Hughes died the death of a good man, at the old homestead, on the 9th day of August, 1853.
" Judge Thomas Hinkson, the third in order of precedence of the first Asso- ciate Judges of Clinton County, was born in Westmoreland County, Penn., in 1772. Westmoreland County in that day extended from the mountains.to the Allegheny River, including the town of Pittsburgh, and all the country of the Kiskeminotas and the Youghiogheny. He was the son of an Irishman, who emigrated to Kentucky at an early day, and established a station near the june- tion of Hinkson and Stone Branches of Licking River.
"In 1790, he accompanied the expedition of Gen. Harmar. This was the beginning of a series of expeditions against the Indians in which Mr. Hinkson took a part. In 1794, he accompanied Gen. Wayne as a Lieutenant against the Indians on the Maumee. After the celebrated battle between Gen. Wayne's forces and the Indians near the rapids of the Maumee, Mr. Hinkson returned to Kentucky and was married. He continued to reside on the farm which he inherited from his father, until 1806. He then came to Ohio, and the follow- ing year settled on a farm about eight miles east of the present town of Wil- mington, in what was then Highland County. [Now Wilson Township, Clin- ton County. ] He was soon after elected Justice of the Peace in that county, in which office he continued until 1810, when the county of Clinton was estab- lished, and that part of Highland in which he resided was included in the new county. Ho was now chosen by the Legislature one of the Associate Judges for Clinton County, to serve with Peter Burr and Jesse Hughes. Like his associates, he was a farmer, but was also a storekeeper. In the war of 1812, he is said to have commanded a company of rangers whose duty it was to keep the army advised as to the condition and movements of the Indians, and after- ward to have been appointed Colonel of a regiment. In 1821, Mr. Hinkson re- moved to Indiana, where he died not long after. On the 23d of August, 1776, the Executive Council of Virginia issued an order for conveying 500 pounds of gunpowder to Pittsburgh. In the fall of 1776. Gen. George Rogers Clark and Gabriel Jones, with seven boatmen, conveyed in a boat 500 pounds of gunpow der intended for the defense of Kentucky, from Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh), to Limestone Creek, now Maysville, Ky. Here they hid their cargo in different places in the woods along the banks of the creek, at considerable distances apart, and, after turning their boat adrift, to deceive such bands of Indians as might be pursuing them, directed their steps to Harrodstown to procure an escort for the powder. 'On their. way through the woods,' says Butler. 'the party came to the solitary cabin of Hinkson, on the West Fork of Licking Creek [River]. While resting here, some men who had been surveying happened at the same place, and informed them that as yet the Indians had not done much injury, and that Col. John Todd was in the neighborhood with a small body of men; that if they could be met with, there would be sufficient force to es- cort the powder to its destination. Clark, however, with his usual prompti- tude, after having waited for some time in vain for Col. Todd, set off for Har- rodstown accompanied by two of the men, leaving the residue with Mr. Jones
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to remain at Hinkson's. Soon after Clark had departed, Col. Todd arrived, and on being informed of the military stores left at the river, thinking his force was now sufficient to effect their removal, he marched with ten men for this purpose. When they reached the country about the Blue Licks, they met on the 25th of September with an Indian party, which was following the trail of . Clark and his companions. They attacked the whites with such vigor as to route them entirely, having killed Jones and some others and taken some pris- oners. Fortunately for Kentucky, the prisoners proved true to their country- men and preserved the secret of the stores inviolate, while the party detached from Harrodsburg brought them safely to their overjoyed friends.' The dweller in that 'solitary cabin' was the father of Judge Thomas Hinkson." (Butler's Kentucky, pp. 41, 42.)
"George McManis, the first, was the successor to Judge Burr. He was elected in 1810, and took his seat on the bench September 10, in the same year. He was promoted to the Judgeship from the office of County Commis- sioner, to which he had been elected the spring before. James Wilson was appointed by the court to the place he vacated. He was born in the city of Philadelphia on the 16th day of March, 1766. His parents were from Ire- land, and he narrowly escaped being an Irishman himself, as he was born only an hour after the family landed on the shores of America. Judge Mc- Manis was taken to what afterward became Jefferson County, Ky., in the year 1799. Tho party of emigrants with which he wont began the fourth settle- mont made in . Kentucky, Harrod's, Boone's and Kenton's having preceded it. They descended the Ohio River in boats to near where the city of Louis- ville now is, and erected block-houses and stations as defenses against the In- dians. Here, as soon as his age and strengthi would admit, he learned to be a hunter, woodsman and Indian fighter. He was frequently called out to pursue and destroy the bands of Indians who crossed the Ohio and fell upon the weak and exposed settlements to kill, scalp and plunder. These small affairs more effectually tried the courage and conduct of the parties engaged than the larger and more imposing expeditions, as every man was the keeper of his own scalp. I have no knowledge that Mr. McManis was engaged in more than one of the larger expeditions sent to a distance against the Indians. This was when the Indian towns on Mad River, in this State, were destroyed. On November 17,* he was married in Kentucky to Mary Steward, well known to many of our people. She was born in Virginia November 5, 1770. Mr. and Mrs. McManis had seven children, all born in Kentucky except the youngest, Martha. Margaret, the eldest, was born October 7, 1791, and was married to Warren Sabin on the 1st of April, 1811. Elizabeth, born Septem- ber 8, 1795; was married to Dr. James W. Magee, for many years County Re- corder and Clerk to the Commissioners, January 11, 1818. Mary, born Janu- ary 5, 1797, married William R. Cole, Esq., the attorney, December 15, 1822. Rachel, born February 5, 1799, married Daniel Radcliff, first an attorney, then Justice of the Peace for nine years, and County Treasurer and Collector for eight years. They were married on the 29th of August, 1819. John, born January 5, 1802, was for many years County Recorder, and County Auditor from December 3, 1821, to the date of his resignation, October 19, 1824. He died August 5, 1831. George, born July 27, 1804, married Louisa McElwain November 24, 1825. He was also Associate Judge of Clinton County. He has long been a minister of the Gospel, and at this writing resides in Pot- tawattomie County, Kan., on the Union Pacific Railroad. Phebe, born Decem- ber 31, 1806,' married Perry Dakin on the 29th day of June, 1826. Martha,
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born March 30, 1810, married William Hibben June 30. 1829, Judge Mc- Manis came to what has since become Clinton County, in the spring of 1808. He served as Associate Judge from 1810 to 1824. He died March 16, 1826. His widow continued to reside on the old farm at the head of Indian Creek, Clinton County, until the fall of 1843, when she removed with her son George to Bureau County, Ill., where she died November 5, 1857. Judge McManis died on the anniversary of his birthday, at the precise age of sixty, and his aged widow at the precise age of eighty-seven, on the anniversary of her birth- day.
" Aaron Sewell, better known to many of our people as Judge Sewell, an omigrant to that part of the Northwest Territory now known as the State of Obio, was born in Loudoun County, Va., on the 27th day of August, 1774. His father was David Sewell, born in 1746, and his mother was Mary (Tullis) Sewell. He had one brother and one sister, both older than he. John Sewell, the brother, died a resident of Clinton County, in 1822. His sister, Hannah Burr, wife of Judge Peter Burr, for several years Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas for Clinton County, also died in Clinton County years since. Timothy Sewell, brother to David, emigrated to what is now the State of Ohio at an carly day, and settled west of Lebanon, near the dividing line between Butler. and Warren Counties. His wife was a Tullis. Amos T. (Tullis) Sewell, of Wilmington, for twenty-five years Justice of the Peace, and for a still longer time County Recorder, was a son of this Timothy Sewell, and was named for his grandfather, Amos Tullis. Timothy Sewell, born and raised at Wilming- ton, now of Columbus, and son of the Recorder and Justice, was named for his grandfather. David Sewell, early in 1798, became the owner of one of the Archi- bald Campbell surveys, No. 2250, on the little East Fork, in what is now Clinton County, containing 1,200 acres, more or less, and made arrangements to move to it, with his sons and son-in-law and daughter, the sons to go at once and his son-in-law and daughter to follow at an early day afterward. Up to this timo Aaron had remained a single man. In view of the long journey before the family, ho deemed it best to take a wife to himself, and accordingly on the 5th day of April, 1798, in Frederick County, Va., where the family were living, he was married to Mary Hendricks, a sister to the wife of his brother John. And now, all arrangements being perfected, the party, consisting of the father and mother, John and his family, and Aaron and his family, set out on their journey, and in due time all arrived in safety at Bedell's Station, in what is now Warren County, one mile south of where Union Village (com- monly called "Shaker Town") now is. The precise length of time the family remained at Bedell's Station is left in some obscurity. On one side it is in- sisted that the stay was short, about such as would be sufficient for travelers and their beasts to rest and recruit a little, and the party, at the end of this temporary halt, went immediately to and settled on their lands. On the other hand it is insisted that on their arrival at the station they could not find their land nor any one who could find it, in consequence of which they remained at the station until some time in 1801, or later. As the date of every settlement in the territory now within the limits of Clinton County as early as 1798, or indeed for some years afterward, assumes some importance when endeavoring to fix the date of the first settlement made within the limits of the county of Clinton, I will endeavor to state the facts so far as I have been able to collect them in regard to the time the Sewells, father and sons, settled on the Little East Fork. No great wonder that they were unable to find their lands or any one who could give them information concerning them when the condition of the country is considered. They came in 1798. Bedell's Station, acknowledged to be the first settlement in what is now Warren County, did not exist until
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the fall of 1795. In 1796, a few settlers were located at Deerfield and Waynesville, or where they were subsequently laid out, as some claim. Leba- non was not laid out for five years after the arrival of the Scwells. What would settlers so recently arrived in the country, having houses to build and lands not to clear, but to prepare for a crop by deadening the large trees and cutting away the saplings, while living on wild game, know of lands -lying twenty miles away to the east, on streams not yet named, three miles at least from the nearest sottler, himself at least ton miles from his nearest neighbor? The family tradition states that they, having heard of a surveyor at Xenia who could tell them how to find their lands, applied to him for assistance, and that he found their lands or gave them such information as enabled them to find them. But when was this? Xenia was not laid out until 1803, nor was there a settlement at or near its site before the town was laid out. There is, to my mind, a strong presumption, nearly approaching certainty, that the sur- veyor who aided the Sewells in finding their lands was James Galloway. Jr., afterward better know perhaps as Maj. Galloway. My reasons in part are, first, he was the first surveyor of Greene County, appointed in 1802; and sec- ond, he was, as I have reason to believe, the only deputy surveyor in that re- gion of the county for Col. Richard C. Anderson, the principal surveyor, in whose office at Louisville, Ky., was kept the record of the entries and surveys in the Virginia military district of Ohio. Maj. Galloway had access to these surveys, and thereby could find the chain on which survey No. 2250 depended and abutted. He therefore could have readily led the Sewells to their lands, or without going have informed them of some survey corner well known to some settler from which a line could have been traced directly to some of the corners of the survey for which they were bunting. Besides, Maj. Galloway's father settled on the Little Miami River, about seven miles north of Xenia, in the same year that the Sewells came to Bedell's Station, and brought with him as a part of his family his son, James Galloway, Jr., then a young. single man. It is improbable to suppose that in the year of his arrival, and in all reasonable probability before he had learned to survey at all, that they should have heard of young Galloway, and equally improbable that he should have been able to tell where to find a survey lying in a locality at the time as wild as when Columbus discovered America, situated more than thirty miles from where he resided. (See history of Vernon Township.) The first born of Aaron Sewell and wife was their daughter Elizabeth. The family record shows that she was born July 24, 1799. She was married to Aaron Oxley, a resident of Clinton County, October 20, 1817. She is now deceased. Mr. Oxley had no personal knowledge of the place of Mrs. Oxley's birth, and his entire informa- tion on that subject was what his wife had said concerning it. His statement was that he always claimed Bedell's Station as the place where she was born. The second child of Mr. and Mrs. Sewell was Ezra Sewell, still living and re- siding on the original purchase. He was born March 14, 1801. He says that he always understood that he was born at Bedell's Station. I am informed by another who came to the Sewell neighborhood to reside in the latter part of 1803, that all of the three families were then living on their respective tracts of land, with improvements apparantly a year or so old, or less. From these statements and some corroborating facts and circumstances, I have concluded that the Sewells settled on the Little East Fork, in what i; now Clinton County, not in 1798, but as late as 1801 at least, and maybe later. In 1817, Mr. Sewell was elected by the General Assembly of Ohio one of the Associate Judges of Clinton County to fill the vacancy on the bench occasioned by the expiration of the term of Judge Thomas Hinkson. He was re-elected in 1824, and again in 1831; whole term, twenty-one years. In or about 1823, Judge
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