USA > Ohio > Montgomery County > Dayton > The story of Dayton > Part 3
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Meat was roasted by the direct heat of the fire, turned from one side to the other, a job for the smallest child, sit- ting on a low stool with a string in his fingers. Among the Newcom utensils you will see an iron "spider" on three legs, into which the batter for the cornbread was put, and where, between the coals below and those on the cover, it acquired a crisp brown. A broom was made by shaving the end of a hickory stick into withes, which were then bent back and tied in a tight brush. The first candles were home- made wicks dipped into a kettle of melted grease, as many times as were needed for the required size,-"tallow dips" they were called .--- thick at one end and thin at the other,
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The Story of Dayton
which smoked and sputtered in their own dim light. Little use had the early settlers for artificial light! Such tree- chopping, stump-grubbing, log-rolling days as they spent left small necessity for evening lamps.
The furniture of a pioneer home was mainly the product of the ax and the jackknife. Three-legged stools were a necessity, the floor being so uneven that four legs would never all touch at once. A bed in the corner was built of strips held up by poles resting in a forked stick and inserted
A Pioneer Interior.
between the logs of the wall, the surface being covered with dried grass and bear skins. Above the fireplace hung the implement most frequently needed and most hurriedly reached for, the rifle. With it were the powder horn and shot pouch. When an Indian yell split the night air, or a noise at the pigpen said "Wolves," the gun must be where one sweep of the arm would get it. Dried ears of corn, strings of garlic, peppers, pumpkins, and coon skins hung
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A Pioneer Family
thick from the rafters. Shelves supported the few pewter plates and cups which had been brought from Cincinnati. Shallow bowls hollowed out of hard wood or whittled from a crook-necked gourd, served as vegetable dishes. The spoons were few and made of horn. If a visitor came, he took his hunting knife from its sheath and used that.
Each cabin held a spinning wheel, and some of them a hand loom. Without these useful machines little girls would have lacked the necessary petticoats and their father his shirts. The flax and wool out of which they were made had to be raised on the place ; this we know because of fre- quent mention of snakes in the flax patch and wolves in the sheep pen. Each industry met its own problems. The yarn, when spun and carded, was dyed with butternut hulls or madder root, and woven on the hand loom. The cloth was then made up by hand into garments, not by any means as fashionable as those to be found in the department stores now standing on the same spot. If the pioneers had been ambitious about the cut of their clothes, we never should have had Dayton-of that you may be sure. If the wom- en's rough dresses were warm and held at the seams it was all that was necessary. A man's hunting shirt of deerskin with leggins of the same, must have lasted half a lifetime. and a coon-skin cap, such as "Natty Bumpo" wore, never went out of style.
You will be curious to know what, aside from the mush- and-milk which was everywhere the staple food, those early Dayton boys and girls had to eat. The surprising fact was that they had plenty of the luxuries which are now very ex- pensive, but almost none of the plainer things that the poor- est now enjoy. Wild game, venison, and grouse they ate every day ; bread-nice, common bread, they waited years for.
How often it happens during the present Dayton days that the bread for dinner has been forgotten. "Go to the grocery, son, and buy me a loaf," says the mother. Brought home, it takes its place on the table as the least important
Interior of Newcom Cabin. A pioneer bedroom-original furnishings.
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A Pioneer Family
thing, good to hold gravy and to fill up on, but by no means a delicacy. Ah, but if you had to do without it! Let me tell you what a long road it was that led to a loaf of bread in the years of 1796-97.
Corn could be raised in one season, and it was always hoped to get a crop the first summer. Therefore, johnny- cake was the first bread aimed at. But for a wheat loaf, the seed wheat must be brought in pack saddles from Cin- cinnati; it was expensive and they almost counted the grains to see that none were lost. In order to sow it, mellow, even ground must be prepared, therefore, the first step on the long road to a loaf of bread was to cut down perhaps twenty big trees and dig out the roots-two seasons' work at the very least. Plow there was none, so father searched out a three-pronged hickory branch, "ironed" one end of it and held to the other while the horse dragged it around the clearing. Not scientific plowing by any means, but it got things stirred up after a fashion, ready for the wheat to be sown in. Later if the crows were not too industrious and the following winter not too severe; if the rain came when it should and not when it shouldn't; if the Miami did not burst its banks and spoil the furrows,-the grain at last came up and headed out.
When ripe, there was no harvester to be driven around the field, cutting and binding at one stroke. Father did it with a sickle, and you helped. Also, of course, no steam threshing machine to sift the grain from the straw. Again the work was done by father's hands and yours, and two flails. The grain gleaned, threshed, and loaded into sacks, much indeed had been done, but you were still pretty far from a loaf of bread. Bread required yeast, and yeast means the planting of vines,-another season's work,-then hops to be picked and soaked and strained.
At last the loaf of raised dough, which must be baked, and how, without pans or a cook-stove? The forehanded among the Dayton householders had built brick ovens in their yards. (A long branch road here, to find a clay bank,
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The Story of Dayton
make bricks, and do a mason's work with mortar and trowel, father always, and you, too, looking on and handing him tools.) With a big fire kindled in the oven, the bricks made hot, the bread, nicely risen, was pushed in on a long- handled shovel and left to the heat of the bricks and ashes. What came out an hour later was worth talking about! All this at the very least, a two years' job !
Do you wonder that the children watched the growth of the wheat stalks from day to day, knowing that each sun-
Hand made sausage filler, Newcom Cabin.
rise brought them nearer to a loaf of bread? And are you not thankful that machines and modern kitchens have short- ened the road?
As to meat, there was no scarcity of that, as we have seen. When hungry, you took your gun and went over the river to where the Bellevue apartments now stand, and if in twenty minutes, you did not bring down a fat gobbler, you must certainly have been a bad shot. Van Cleve tells us that often there was no breakfast until it was brought
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A Pioneer Family
in from the woods, which emphasized the difference be- tween hunting for fun and hunting as a deadly necessity.
Deer shooting was done at night on the river with a lighted torch fastened to the prow of the boat. The an- imals coming down to drink were transfixed with curiosity or terror, and stood quite still-an easy mark. When the hunt was successful, it was not only a week's supply of food that was brought in, but a fine pelt out of which to make caps and leggings.
Our ancestors made use of everything the woods offered, which was, after all, everything they needed, except that it meant hard work to get it. If a table were lacking, the father felled an oak tree, split a section of the log length- wise, smoothed the flat side with a broad-ax, fastened four straight legs into auger holes on the bark side and said (so we may imagine), "There, mother! There's your table."
If protection was needed under foot on cold mornings, father shot a bear-the rug made from the hide was warm, and the flank steaks juicy. Every flock of migrating birds, flapping their way southward in November, meant at the same time roast duck or goose for dinner and a new set of pillows.
The river literally teemed with fish. We read that two full wagon loads were hauled up at one time in a seine net, let down in mid-channel at the head of Main Street. The woods were a tangle of blackberry and wild grape vines, blueberries, hazel nuts, and wild strawberries abounded in season. The maple trees yielded sap and sugar, the shag- barks dropped hickory nuts, the nests of wild birds were full of eggs, and in the hollows of dead trees honey in the comb lay hidden.
It was a "fruitful wilderness" indeed, and no chance for any boy to go hungry. We may be sure that they did tire of wild fruits and venison, and longed wildly for roast pork and apples, or a slice of bread and butter. It was many a day before these luxuries appeared ; four years un-
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The Story of Dayton
til Daniel Cooper brought the first drove of hogs from Cin- cinnati, and longer before the orchards were in bearing.
At a log-rolling or a wedding, the entire pioneer menu would be set out. Wild turkey, goose, bear steaks, venison, corn-dodgers, rabbit stew, hominy fried in bear's grease, grape preserves and honey, all served on one plate. If the children passed their plates even to the third time, it was because they had earned the right, having worked as hard, at least for their small strength, as the grown people.
Since the father must cut timber, shoot game, plow, and build houses, little of his time was left in which to pound corn, dig potatoes, or take the cow to pasture, therefore, these duties were left to the boy. Since the mother must spin and weave and cook, make candles and soap, cure meat and do tailoring for the family, it is evident that the baby- tending, pumpkin-scraping, bean- shelling, and weeding had to be done by somebody, and that some- body was the boy's sister. Girls of ten and twelve took up from neces- sity tasks for which their mothers Hand hominy mill; original in Log Cabin. had no time. Work that now seems too heavy for a boy of seventeen was then done by one of eight. Results showed that they were never the worse for it. No school for the making of self-reliant men and women like the early Dayton days!
Busy hours brought good appetites and a sound night's rest. Sitting after supper on a stool before the fire, what wonder one grew sleepy and had to be helped up the ladder to the bearskin bed in the loft! Stars peeped through be- tween chinks in the logs, and an owl hooted mournfully in
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A Pioneer Family
a tree. From the woods across the river one could some- times hear a panther scream-a horrid sound, like a big cat or a baby! Wolves, too, prowled around in cold weather and sniffed at the cracks. Reasons enough to cover up one's head in the warm, safe bed and to be glad father had barred the door with the heavy wooden latch.
CHAPTER V. 1795-1800.
Hardships and Progress.
Dayton's first experience with hard times. Titles to land wanted and won. Newcom's Tavern becomes the hub of the Miami universe. Dayton builds a church. Ohio at last a State, and Montgomery a county.
A city, it seems, cannot be a real city without an ex- perience of hard times, and Dayton, on its way to cityhood, must needs have its share. The successful beginning and the prosperity of the subsequent two years came to an end in 1798 when the homesteaders discovered, to their dismay, that titles to their land were lacking. Moreover, it seemed as though such security was not to be had. Symmes had failed to meet his obligations to the Government, and owned no patent. What he did not possess he could not pass on. The four purchasers,-Ludlow, Wilkinson, St. Clair, and Dayton,-could do no better. It was a discouraging situ- ation. The brunt of the misfortune came, of course, upon the hard-working and patient men who had parted with homes in the East and come out to the wilderness at the risk of their lives. Do you wonder that the question on every one's lips was, "Why break roads, build cabins, and plow fields, if they are to be taken from us?"
Under such unsettled conditions the Dayton settlers were restless and unhappy. New people could not be persuaded to take up land, and if they did not come, Dayton could never be Dayton. Several families moved away, leaving empty cabins, which added to the general depression. Not only property rights, but living conditions were under a cloud. Food was scarce. Flour (if they bought it) cost fourteen dollars a barrel, and all merchandise, hauled through the heavy mud from Cincinnati, was high in pro-
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Hardships and Progress
portion. Indian troubles were not as entirely at an end as the treaties indicated. Bears invaded the pigpens, and everybody had the ague. Early writers assure us that there was at least one compensation connected with the last af- fliction, inasmuch as "chill day" for half the town was "well day" for the other half. Therefore, in 1799, when five Dayton citizens wrapped themselves in blankets, shiv- ered and drank boneset tea, the other four shouldered their axes and went to work.
In 1799, Congress attempted to help out this property puzzle by the passage of a bill allowing increased time for payments, and offering, on payment of two dollars an acre, clear title to settlers on the Symmes grant. This, you may imagine, was not wholly satisfactory. Symmes paid, or was to have paid, sixty-six cents an acre; the four subse- quent purchasers, eighty-three cents. To double the orig- inal price was, for most of the settlers, bankruptcy, and a hundred years was a long time to wait for the rise in real estate values on Main Street. The homesteaders maintained, and no one would deny, that between Indians and wolves, ague and mud, hard work and scant living, they earned the land by merely staying on it.
At this juncture Daniel C. Cooper came to the support of his friends' claims and his own. He had joined the Day- ton colony in 1797, pre-empting a large farm south of town. Convinced that Dayton property could not fail to increase in value, he purchased land rights from his fellow citizens until he practically owned the larger part of the town. Through his influence with Government officials, a state- ment was presented to Congress, praying that since "the petitioners had, at vast expense, labor, and difficulty, suc- ceeded in founding a settlement at the mouth of Mad River, they most respectfully submitted that they had not received the benefits and advantages for which they had hoped."
The result of this petition was the opening of a land office at Cincinnati, through which each homesteader finally received a duly registered certificate, tangible proof of his
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The Story of Dayton
ownership. Those who had held out did, however, have to pay a dollar for their town lots and two dollars an acre for land which had been offered them free in the beginning. Nevertheless things went better. More people came in, some glad to find vacant homes ready to occupy. Others built on Main Street lots.
During the winter of 1797, it became necessary to recog- nize definite boundary lines to this region, therefore, Day- ton Township was created. It included six of our present counties, a large and sparsely settled area, of which Dayton was the geographical and business center. At that time wagon parties were continually coming up from Cincinnati to find new homes, settlers driving down from the north to trade, and in spite of the lack of good roads, people went about more or less, made friendships, and transacted busi- ness. All the "trails" centered at Dayton, and Newcom's Tavern, which then stood on the southwest corner of Main and Water streets (now Monument Avenue), was the hub of the Miami universe. One might almost say it was the most important building from here to Detroit. You may see it now, in its hale old age, with logs apparently as sound as when felled more than a century ago, and preserving its character as the type of a pioneer dwelling.
In its youth it represented advanced ideas in city build- ing. Up to this time cabins had been constructed of round logs daubed with clay ; Newcom's house was of hewn logs chinked with mortar. People from "up country" went home and told admiring neighbors about Newcom's. The plan consisted of two large rooms on the first floor with a half-story above. In front of the living-room fireplace sat, in that far-off time, many a backwoodsman, many a soldier or settler, sometimes a government surveyor, or a visiting judge, exchanging news of the day. For, in addition to serving as a dwelling and a tavern, Newcom's was the first store; it housed the first class of school children; court sat in the side room, and church services were held there on Sunday. Legend also calls it the first jail because an ob-
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Hardships and Progress
streperous Indian was once said to have been confined in the corncrib. Whether or not all the stories be true, New- com's was, you may be sure, the place where everybody met everybody else and discussed the news of the day ; who had chills that week, and what they did for them; whether big game had been shot, or new people had come to town. There, muskrat skins could be exchanged for a pound of sugar, or wild beeswax for powder and shot; there preach- ing might be heard on Sunday, and perhaps a lawsuit, if court happened to be sitting.
In the spring of 1799 warnings reached Dayton to the effect that hostile Indians were gathering into bands, evi- dently for no good purpose. For necessary protection, a log stockade was hastily constructed at the head of Main Street, just where the Soldiers' Monument now stands. It was a building large enough to hold all the villagers in an emergency, and with an overhanging second story from which attacking savages could be fired upon. Whether the Indians really meditated attack at this time never transpired, but even in peace they were an unmitigated nuisance. Com- ing in groups to sell maple sugar or skins, they prowled around the settlement in search of what they might carry away, entered doors without knocking, called people by their first names, got drunk and frightened the children.
As it happened, the block-house was never used for de- fense, but as a store-house for grain and as a school-room for Benjamin Van Cleve and his first class of pupils.
An old lady named Mrs. Swaynie, who died many years ago, used to tell a story of her girlhood experiences in Day- ton. Her maiden name was Mary Van Cleve. She lived with her father and mother in the Thompson cabin on the river bank between Jefferson and St. Clair streets. One early wintry night, a band of roving Indians, full of bad whisky and race hatred, surrounded the cabin, and with fierce yells demanded admittance. Not daring to open to them, the parents took Mary out of bed, put her through a hole in the foundation by raising a board from the floor.
Building the First Presbyterian Church.
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Hardships and Progress
While the Indians were raging at the front of the house, the little girl ran through the darkness to Newcom's Tavern for help. In her path was a steep gully, filled with stones and briars; it was cold and dark, and the fearful yells of the savages made her heart come up in her throat. Crying and breathless she reached the welcome shelter where they took her in by the big fire. Mr. Newcom carried her home on his shoulder and the rest of the men drove the Indians away. Do you wonder that the distance she ran that night seemed to Mary "a whole mile," although it was less than two city blocks?
Possessing, at the beginning of the year 1800, a school, a store, and occasionally a court, Dayton began to think about building a church. Daniel C. Cooper had donated for this purpose, two lots on the corner of Third and Main streets, a location apparently too distant from the center of town ever to be needed for business purposes. In mid- summer, after the crops were in, the citizens assembled and together constructed the First Presbyterian Church.
We have no exact record of the way it was accomplished, but we must use our imaginations, prompted by the old rec- ords. The importance of this event lay in the fact that no other church existed north of Cincinnati. People came to Dayton from miles around to hear "preaching." A "cabin raising" was a great event in the pioneer world. It brought men from far and near, and furnished a chance for their wives to exchange gossip and cook a good dinner. How much more would this be the case in the building of the only church in an area many miles in extent !
We can picture, mentally, the crowd assembled on Main Street-pioneers in leather breeches and peltry caps, women in homespun, children to fetch and carry. Two days were occupied in the work ; one in which to get the timber out of the woods, the second for the actual construction of the cabin. Busy wielders of axes felled the trees and cut them into lengths, teamsters hauled the logs to the site, the work- ers together trimmed the ends and fitted them together at
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The Story of Dayton 1
the corners. Larger trees, from three to four feet in diam- eter, out of which to make boards for the roof, were split into four feet lengths and used without planing or shaving. Puncheons for the floor were hewed with a broad ax and laid flat side up. This finished one day's work. The next morning the "raising" took place. A man at each of the four corners notched the peeled hickory logs and fitted them together. When the walls had grown to about eight feet high, the gable was formed by making the end logs shorter, supporting at the apex a single log, the comb of the roof. Upon this basis the clapboards were fitted, the ends resting upon the walls. When night fell, the building was com- plete except, perhaps, for a door-stone or a latch. After a hearty supper, the people separated to assemble the next Sunday for "preaching."
When, a few years later, it was disclosed that the corner of Third and Main streets was really growing in demand for business purposes, the log church was sold and torn down. The twenty-two dollars received for it formed a nucleus for a building fund, which, in 1817, landed the con- gregation in a fine new church on the corner of Second and Ludlow streets. A third and finer church, which succeeded it, now stands pointing its tall steeple to the sky.
On the thirtieth of April, 1802, Congress passed an act authorizing the inhabitants of this part of the Northwest Territory to form a State government. No time was wasted by the pioneers in availing themselves of the new oppor- tunity. On the first of November of the same year, a con- vention assembled at Chillicothe and framed a constitution ; on the twenty-ninth adopted it, and February, 1803, wit- nessed Ohio formally admitted by Congress to the sister- hood of States.
A year later, Montgomery County was established, not as we know it, but including fourteen of our present coun- ties. The sixth section of the same act, providing that "the temporary seat of justice shall be held at the house of George Newcom, in the town of Dayton," established Day-
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Hardships and Progress
ton not merely as a geographical, but as a judicial center in the great west.
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First Presbyterian Church, 1841-1867.
From a drawing by Howard Pyle, showing a Conestoga Wagon and the costumes of the Eighteenth Century in America.
CHAPTER VI. 1805-1811.
Our Commercial Beginnings.
The wood-path and the river as avenues of commerce. Day- ton becomes a thriving business center. Early stores and their customers. A public library. Mud and drops of tallow. Earth- quakes and squirrels.
In the year 1805, land complications being virtually settled and the Indian and rattlesnake having, it was hoped, departed for good, Dayton began to grow. Main Street had by this time been cleared and leveled as far as the junc- tion with Warren Street, and the gully at Third Street filled with walnut logs. Cabins were being replaced by neat frame buildings. The landing place on the river was still occupied by Newcom's Tavern, the block-house, and the five original cabins, but the settlement was spreading to the south. The corner of First and Main had become a busy center, with one large general store, operated by D. C. Cooper, and another by James Steele. H. G. Phillips con- ducted a thriving trade at the corner of First and Jefferson streets.
It was literally "trade," because little or no currency changed hands. Real money was a rare commodity. The products of the region were the universal medium of ex- change, and they came to have a standard value. If a bride bought a muslin dress for a wedding gown, she paid a doe- skin a yard for it, the equivalent of a dollar and a half. A yard of calico, or "print," cost two muskrat skins; stock- ings, one buckskin a pair. A set of dishes was purchased with six bear skins worth five dollars each. The pioneer's dollar bill came from the back of a deer, his "quarter" from a muskrat. A coon skin passed as currency for thirty- seven and a half cents.
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