USA > Ohio > Darke County > The history of Darke County, Ohio, containing a history of the county; its cities, towns, etc.; general and local statistics; portraits of early settlers and prominent men; > Part 24
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In regard to the conveniences and necessities of the community it may as well be stated here that Terry, in 1810, erected a little corn-cracker of a mill at the bend of the creek above the "Dutch Bridge." During the war, the soldiers in the garrison destroyed the mill dam as a cause of disease, under the pretext of military necessity, and it was never rebuilt. After the war, Deans completed their mill, begun three or more years before, and John Devor erected a saw-mill half a mile south of it on the West Branch, at what is now the site of Fox & Bechtold's woolen-mnill. Other improvements, save the clearing of land and erection of log houses, and stables, and cribs, and the occasional bridging of a mud-hole on the old traces of St. Clair and Wayne and the Indian paths by corduroys, there were none. The only modes of travel were on foot or on horseback, as nothing on wheels could get over the the roads nine months of the year.
The organization of the county, under the act of December 14, 1816, may in some particulars be said to have a place in the annals of the town and township of Green- ville, and of some of those particulars only will mention here be made. The same General Assembly that passed that act elected Joseph H. Crane President Judge of the First Judicial Circuit, a position for which he was eminently fitted, and worthily adorned until his election to Congress in October, 1828; and also elected John Purviance, Enos Terry and James Rush Associate Judges of the Court of Common Pleas of Darke County. The appointment of Clerk of that Court, and of the County Recorder, devolved upon the Court. It was intended that Beers should be chosen to the first of these positions, but he wanted a few weeks' residence
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of the prescribed time to render him eligible, and Linus Bascom was chosen as Clerk pro tem., until a subsequent term, and before that subsequent term inter- vened Beers had " lost his grip" and Eastin Morris was duly chosen to that office for the term of seven years. The Associate Judges had met in special term to appoint a County Recorder. There were two candidates. James Montgomery and Abraham Seribner. Montgomery was a fair penman, and Scribner's chirography ยท was. in after years, aptly compared, by David Morris, to a furrow drawn by a shovel plow through a newly cleared field of beech land. The Judges were at a stand, and appointed a committee of two to report to an adjourned session on the qualifications of the candidates. Neither member of the committee could have claimed " benefit of clergy," if his neck had been in jeopardy, for neither could read nor write a word. Scribner made so much sport of the appointment, that at the adjourned session, the Court, to stop his mouth, gave him the appointment, which he held until his resignation in 1822, and, during his whole term, not a single word was ever written by him in the books of his office, the entire clerical labor was performed by Dr. Briggs and Eastin Morris. The Board of County Commissioners selected Beers as their Clerk, which position he held until the Legislature created the office of County Auditor in 1820 or 1821. It may as well be stated here that in 1829, upon the death of David Morris. Beers obtained the office of Clerk, which he held until 1850, when he was chosen President Judge of the First Circuit, which he held until he was superseded under the new dispensa- tion brought in by the constitution of 1851. He also held for a number of years the position of Prosecuting Attorney and Justice of the Peace. He was a sound and able lawyer, regarded as an oracle in legal matters by all his acquaintance, yet he never appeared to advantage as an advocate before a jury, nor in an argument to a court. His decease occurred about 1865.
Soon after the organization of the county, the Commissioners took measures for the erection of a jail, and one of a very humble character was erected on the north part of the public square, not more than thirty feet from the north corner of the city hall. It was constructed with two apartments each about fifteen feet square, the outside walls made of two thicknesses of sound oak timber, hewed one foot square, set on a double platform on the ground, of the same material. and overlaid by another of the same character upon which the roof was raised ; the apartments were separated by a partition similar to the walls. To one apartment was a door, and one window about two feet square ; in the partition was another door leading to the other apartment, which had no other opening, either door or window. When it had inmates in cold weather, the outer room was warmed by a kettle of charcoal, the fumes of which escaped through the window and crevices between the logs of the walls and ceiling.
One of the timbers forming the floor was once ent in two, being severed by an anger furnished to a prisoner through the window by a friend outside, the piece thus cut off was pushed from under the wall, and the party confined escaped. The piece of timber was replaced and fastened, but some years later was by a prisoner loosened and removed, but in endeavoring to escape, he got wedged fast in the opening, and could neither, get out nor get back. The Sheriff found him in the morning, and with some effort released him from what was close confinement. This structure was burned down by an incendiary on the morning of Sunday, May 2, 1827. It was erected by Matthias Dean at a cost of about $200 in county orders that would then bring only about 60 per cent of their face in money. In 1827-28, a new structure for a jail and jailer's residence of brick was erected on the corner occupied by the new building of Matchett, Wilson & Hart. This was a less secure building than the old log jail. Very shortly after it was completed, a noted thief named Jonathan Bayles, who had been committed for horse-stealing, got out of it so mysteriously, that the jailer, William Rush, was indicted and tried for aiding his escape ; the jury before whom he was on trial, after the case was left to them, deliberated for sixty hours without meat or drink (it was not then allowed to feed
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a jury at the expense of the county), and being unable to agree, were with the assent of the defendant discharged, and before another term came on, the state- ment of Bayles, who had been arrested and committed at Fort Wayne for other offenses, explained the manner of his escape, and so completely satisfied every one that Rush had no hand in it, that the Prosecuting Attorney entered a nolle. It may as well be stated here, that this second jail was demolished about 1840, on the erection of another on the southeastern part of the same lot, that is now super- seded by the fourth jail of Darke County. About a year after letting the contract for the first jail, John and James Craig erected the first court house of the county, a frame structure of two stories, about 22x28 feet, the upper story which was reached by a stairway from the court room which occupied all of the lower story, was divided into a clerk's office and jury room. If two juries were in deliberation at once, as was sometimes the case, the second was sent to some private house. This building was erected on the south part of the public square, diagonally across Broadway and Main street from the old log jail. In it, courts were held until the summer of 1834, when it was removed, and with alterations and additions, was converted first into a dwelling-honse, and lastly to a whisky saloon on Third street, southwest of and next to Odd Fellows' Hall. The second court house built by James Craig, who has been named as one of the builders of the first, was located in the center of the public square. Craig took the contract at so low a figure, that he lost from $1,500 to $2,000 in his undertaking. On the erection of the present court house, the second one was demolished to make room for the city hall, a building that neither for convenience, nor as an ornament, is any improve- ment upon the old structure. It may also in this connection be noted that no place of business was provided for any county officer, save the Clerk, until the erection of the second court house, and in that for only a part of them. The Auditor, Recorder, Treasurer, Tax Collector and Sheriff had each to furnish his own quarters, at his own expense. The Commissioners first quartered themselves on their Clerk, afterward, when the office of Auditor was provided for, on him. It may further be stated here, that from 1822 to 1826, the position of Collector of the Taxes was sold at public auction to the highest bidder. This statement requires an explanation. County orders were at a discount in these years of from 37} to 623 per cent; the treasury being generally without funds, they could alone be passed at their face to the Collector in payment of the county taxes levied on chattel property ; for the land tax denominated the State tax, cash or coined money, or what was its equivalent, notes of the bank of the United States, was required ; yet in the annual settlement, a proportion of the land tax was set off to the county, and this proportion the Collector could discharge by turning over to the County Treasurer the orders at their face value which he had bought at 35 to 65 cents on the dollar. This chance of making a little money enabled the Collector to give a bonus for the office. For several years, county orders were a special currency of inferior value, as about the same time, the Bank of the Commonwealth in the State of Kentucky. If you wanted to buy a horse or a cow, ten bushels of wheat or forty acres of land, the price was named as so much in cash. or a different value in county orders.
In 1823, this state of things opened the door for a transaction that gave rise to much excitement, ill blood, and evil speaking, that for several years laid on the shelf a hitherto popular man, then in place as a public officer, although in after years he was acquitted by the people of blame in the matter, save negligence of duty, the fraud mixed up with it being laid to other account.
On the annual settlement with the County Treasurer, the county orders redeemed by him were delivered to the Commissioners and Anditor, and he was credited therefor, and the law then required that they should be burned in the presence of those officials. No schedule of their number, amount or payee was made or kept, but only the aggregate to be inserted in the credit to the Treasurer ; at the settlement of the year mentioned, when the bundle of orders were turned
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over there was no fire handy to carry out the behest of the law, and friction matches had not yet been seen or known. The bundle was left in the Auditor's care, who was to fulfil the omitted duty when he had a fire or lighted candle in his office, and nothing more was thought of it. Some months afterward, several of these orders, distinctly remembered by Treasurer, Collector and Commissioners to be of those previously redeemed, were found in circulation. How they again got out was never definitely proved or known, nor was it ever ascertained what amount had been thus fraudulently re-issued. No accurate investigation ever took place, for the system of keeping books then in vogue in Darke County afforded no means of making an accurate investigation. Some of the orders were tracked very near, but not quite to the Auditor. That officer was many years later placed in a position of trust, in which his securities paid heavily for his default ; his name is omitted, and the matter, only remembered after the lapse of nearly threescore years by less than a dozen persons now living, is only adverted to here, because in the ensuing session of the General Assembly, it gave rise to an enactment, ever since in force, that on the redemption of a county order, the Treasurer should either plainly write or print across the face of it the word "redeemed," with the date of its redemption, and subscribe to the statement his name officially. It may as well be further stated here, that one of those sureties by reason of public sym- pathy for his loss, was some years after chosen to the same position of trust to which his business attainments was not equal, and he had to entrust his duties to subordinates whose raseality in turn made him a public defaulter, and he was sued on his bond. It is not an agreeable duty to the writer to narrate some of these occurrences, but truth requires that history record facts, even if they are unpleasant.
In the succeeding pages of the division of this work allotted to the writer, he must confine himself to the duty before him-the progress of the town and town- ship of Greenville, and in that he must confine himself to narrower limits, and in those limits come to a system and classification.
At the head of what are called the liberal and learned professions, leaving out the clerical, of which but little need be said, stands the law and legal. When courts that ranked above Justices of the Peace were first held in the county, Beers was a law student under the tuition of Gen. William M. Smith, of Dayton, and was admitted to the bar by the Supreme Court within two years after the organization of the county, and, with the exception of Increase Graves, who was only here for a few months in 1820 or 1821, and then went to the North, was the only member of the legal fraternity resident in the county until he was appointed Clerk, in the year 1829. Of him, mention has been previously made, save that he once was a candidate for Congress against John B. Weller, and was defeated. During the twelve years from 1817 to 1829, attorneys from Eaton, Dayton, Troy, and, on some few occasions, from Hamilton, Lebanon, Springfield and Urbana, traveled the circuit with Judge Crane, and had more or less business in the courts at Greenville. Late in 1829 or early in 1830. Hiram Bell. who had studied under John Woods, of Hamilton, located in Greenville, and soon, by his industry, secured a fair practice. In 1833, he was elected County Auditor ; some years later, he was elected to the Lower Branch of the Legislature, in which he served two terms. being once re-elected. At a vet later date. he was elected a Representative in Congress. In 1835. William M. Wilson, also from Hamilton, came to Greenville, and secured a fair proportion of business in his profession. He was elected to the office of Prosecuting Attorney. and, subsequently. to the office of County Auditor, which he held for several years, until he vacated it for a seat in the Ohio Senate.
Bell, who in the contest for Senator was defeated by Wilson, and in a brief period defeated Wilson in the Whig nomination for Congress, died late in Deeem- ber, 1855, and his widow, at a late period, was married to Wilson, who had in the mean time lost his wife, a daughter of Maj. Dorsey. to whom he was married in September, 1837. He attained. by executive appointment, the position of Judge
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of the Common Pleas of this subdivision of the Court of Common Pleas, which office he filled with ability and dignity for the period of about two years. Subsequently, in the summer of 1865. his second wife died, and in a week he fol- lowed her to the grave. Bell left no descendants ; Wilson, by his first wife, had a family of one son and several daughters, who yet survive him. In 1837, near its close, or in 1838, not far from its beginning, came Cyrus F. Dempsey, from Soutli- ern Ohio, near Portsmouth, who had but recently been admitted to the bar. and hung out his shingle. He, unlike Beers. Bell and Wilson, who were then " simon- pure Whigs," was a professed Democrat. He obtained the position of Prosecuting Attorney, and had a reasonably fair share of legal practice ; but he was ambitious of attaining a higher position. and sought to attain it by means that his Demo- cratic brethren considered "not on the square." In a solemn conclave of priests and elders of that tribe, he was, with all due ceremony and the rites of " bell, book and candle," excommunicated from communion with the faithful, and cast out. In a short time after, he left for Fort Wayne, or some place near it, where he soon after died.
This brings us down to the close of 1840. and here we might stay our hand ; but "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth " may as well be spoken. and that requires a statement that. in the later years, chiefly since the incoming of the new constitution, there has come up over the land a swarm of lawyers, like the frogs out of the river of Egypt in the day of Moses. that pene- trate into the kitchens, closets and bedchambers, and, with a few honorable exceptions, are found at marriages in search of divorce cases, and at funerals, hunting partition suits, button-holing clients at market, church and cemetery, "instant in season and out of season," kicking for a job, forcing the conviction upon all who bestow thought upon the matter, of the necessity in this country of institutions like the Brotherhoods of Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn, and the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple.
In the medical profession, mention has already been made of Drs. Perrine and Briggs. In 1828, came Dr. Andrew O'Ferrell, from Kentucky, who died in the winter of 1829-30. and later came Dr. James H. Buell. from Eaton, who remained but for a short period. In the winter of 1830-31, Dr. J. M. P. Baskerville, who for some years was engaged in his profession at Greenville ; later he went to Ver- sailles. He was a native of Virginia ; came here from the vicinity of London, Madison Co., Ohio, to which locality, after several years, he returned, and at which place a few years since he died. About 1834-35, Dr. I. N. Gard came here from Jacksonburg, in Butler County, and engaged in practice, in which he yet, at the age of threescore years and ten, is engaged. Dr. Gard has been, in former years, honored with a seat in the Ohio Senate, and in later years a member of the Board of Trustees of the Southern Ohio Lunatic Asylum, and of other boards of State charities, in all of which positions he has been a faithful and intelligent pub- lic servant. He is now the senior in the medical profession in the county. About a year, more or less, after the advent of Dr. Gard, came Dr. Alfred Avers, also from Butler County. For a time he was a partner of Dr. Gard. In 1838, he married a daughter of the late Judge Beers, who bore to him several children, sons and daughters. Some years ago, on the decease of his father, he returned to the paternal homestead in Butler County, where, after the decease of his wife and eldest daughter, he also, about two years ago, was laid in the narrow house. at the age of about sixty-eight years. In the interval between 1820 and 1840, the town and neighborhood had, at various times, divers and sundry . physical doctors " of the stripe of Hopkins and Myers ; but they were ephemeral, like Jonah's gourd- came up, were bitten by a worm at night, and perished in the heat of the next day. Their names and doings it is unnecessary to record.
The writer would here in this connection mention that in the summer and fall of each of the years 1821 and 1822, the town, as well as the adjacent country, was visited with severe and fatal sickness, of malarial origin. and almost epidemie in.
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its character. Many died of both sexes and of all ages, but the mortality was greatest among those of middle age, both men and women. Again, in the sum- mer and fall of 1829 and 1830. the town, township and county was scourged with a disease, denominated, in common phrase, flux. The mortality was great. chiefly among children, although persons of all ages became victims. In each of these visitations, the medical force of the county being inadequate to the requirements taxing it, physicians were sent for and responded to the calls from Richmond. New Paris, Eaton, Lewisburg, Milton, Troy and Piqua, in the adjacent counties of Wayne, Ind., and Preble and Miami, Ohio. In 1833. when so many localities in the United States were desolated by the cholera, but two deaths from that disease occurred within Darke County, neither of which was in Greenville.
It may be deemed that the next matter that should engage the attention of the narrator should be the educational department of the community of which he is relating the history. John Beers, John Talbot and Henry D. Williams were each of them " schoolmasters" in Greenville and its vicinity during a few years subsequent to their emigration to Greenville ; whether a school of any sort was taught, prior to their arrival, in the town or township, is now, after the lapse of more than sixty years, a matter unascertainable. Talbot, an offshoot of the old Earls of Shrewsbury, ennobled in the fifteenth century in the person of the antagonist of the Maid of Orleans, sometimes taught a country school, and some- times fulfilled the duties of the office of Constable of Greenville Township. He was fond of his bottle, which he kept hid, out in hollow stumps and brush-heaps, near his schoolhouse, in the vicinity of the settlement, near the Prophet's town on Mud Creek, where it was located ; he fell into disfavor and left the country about 1821. Beers each winter was usually located south of town, in the neighborhood of Thompson, Studabaker, Arnold and Freshour, and Williams was usually below, where the Hayes, Westfalls, Popejoy and the Carnahan family were his patrons. Log cabins, in which in place of glass greased paper admitted the light, and a chimney occupied the end in which log-heaps were burned to keep up the requi- site warmth, were the requisite edifices in which they each " taught the young idea how to shoot."
There was a log edifice erected on Lot 32, in Greenville, on which was located the first burial ground, that at times served as a schoolhouse, at others, after the organization of the county. as a room for the grand jury. and once for the sitting of the court. It is probable that Beers, Talbot and Williams each taught, or pre- tended to teach, a school in it at intervals between 1818 and 1824; it was only once occupied afterward for this purpose. In 1827, under Guilford's law to inaug- urate public schools in Ohio, the Trustees divided Greenville Township into school districts, and Greenville District, to get the thing fairly under headway, chose three men School Directors, no two of whom, by reason of feuds and ill-feeling, would speak to each other. The parties alluded to, who may as well be named, John Beers, David Briggs and Linus Bascom, let the year pass away with- ont further action than being sworn into office. In the succeeding year, a new Board was elected and qualified, and proceeded at once to action, and had the old house on Lot 32. to which neither town or district had any title, pulled down, and removed the logs to a half of Lot No. 3, deeded by Bill Wiley in discharge of fines for assault and battery, to the school district.
To aid in the re-erection and fitting-up, a subscription in aid of public funds was taken up, and some forty dollars in work or money subscribed. On the even- ing after the old house had been pulled down, and the logs hauled to the newly selected site, an altercation took place between Abraham Scribner and Isaac Shideler. as to the price and value of the floor in the new schoolhouse, in the heat of which, Shideler, in whose hands the subscription paper had been left. stuck it in the stove, and that was the end of the enterprise; in after years the logs were cut into firewood by Samuel Pierce and others of the vicinity. who needed fuel and were short of funds to buy it. Years afterward. the district erected in place
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of one decent schoolhouse, two "make-shifts," on Lots 3 and 13, that for years were a nuisance, eye-sore and heart-scald to those who had children to be sent to school. But, after an interval of many years, they were superseded by the good sense of the Board of Education of the town, under whom the existing school buildings were erected some years since.
The history of the town of Greenville as a municipal organization here demands a brief notice, and only brief notice will here be given. At the ses- sion of the State Legislature of 1832-33, the first aet to incorporate the town of Greenville was passed. Some matters in that act deserve a passing notice. The elective franchise was restricted to those who had been for six months not only voters of the county and State, but residents of the town, and eligibility to the offices of Mayor and Trustees, forming the legislative council of the town, lim- ited to freeholders. It would probably be well if these provisions had been con- tinued, but under the codes passed under the new constitution of the State, and which abrogated all the old charters of the cities, towns and boroughs of the State, pure and unadulterated Demoeraey intervened to such an extent that the public burdens were imposed and public funds expended by those who were wholly disinterested, bearing no share in the one, nor having any material interest in the other. To make a long story short, it may as well be stated, that, for more than twenty years, the municipal government of the town, from year to year, has been created and controlled, in the main, by men who, with few exceptions, pay no taxes, and care nothing how much others have to pay. It is now a matter of so little interest as to who held office as Mayor, Couneil, Marshal, Clerk and Treas- urer of the Town from 1833 to 1840, that the recapitulation of their names would have little to interest the reader of these pages, and hence the matter is here dismissed.
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