USA > Ohio > Women of Ohio; a record of their achievements in the history of the state, Volume I > Part 5
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40
The mansion they built there is also described in the pamphlet. Completed in 1800, it cost more than $40,000.00. And this was $40,000.00 at its buying
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power of more than 100 years ago. The house was frame and painted white, a main building of imposing size with wings at each side. Galleries 40 feet long curved forward at either end of the main house to connect with offices. The forest in front of the house was cut, to provide an unobstructed river view.
Imagine the amazement of travelers descending the Ohio as this won- derful island home burst on their gaze. They must have rubbed their eyes. They must have been astonished to realize that it was not a momentary mirage, an enchanted illusion.
But no, it was a real house, beautifully furnished, equipped with library and laboratories far in advance of those privately owned by most students and scientists of that day.
Space is lacking to tell of Harman's telescope, his contrivances for elec- trical experiment, his pharmacy, his law library, his Greek and Latin classics, his bass viol and violincello. For this highly gifted and deeply unfortunate man was even, it seems, a talented musician.
So was Margaret. She sang beautifully, to the more or less unappreciative ears, perhaps, of most of their many guests.
But she sang also ,not wisely but too well, to one who seemed to have been very able to convey his admiration.
Who was the gallant listener ?
None other than Aaron Burr. None other than the man who came within one vote of being president of the United States. The gifted, yet ill-starred lawyer, soldier and statesman, whose main function in history seems to be that of showing how poor a loser even a great man can be.
For after Burr was again defeated in 1804 in an election for governor- ship of New York, his anger against Alexander Hamilton, a strong Federalist, was fanned to flame by contemptuous criticism Hamilton was alleged to have expressed. Burr challenged him to a duel, killed him and turned many more decent men against himself.
Wild with jealousy, eaten up with ambition, he came west to rehabilitate his shattered fortunes. A fine way to do this, from Burr's point of view, would be to separate from the Union that part west of the Alleghanies, conquer Mexico and set up an empire of his own.
This sort of thing required, of course, plenty of money as well as a persuasive tongue. On learning of the Blennerhassett fortune, Burr decided to let this much talked of scientist and visionary, in on the game. He thought it ought to be easy money-and it was, for a while.
For Margaret Blennerhassett too, had big ideas. She was not at all a bad woman, apparently and her life was certainly a tragic one. But like her poor husband, she seems to have been dreadfully lacking in common sense.
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She used to go riding around the island and to Marietta and Belpre. The Blennerhassetts had plenty of boats and plenty of slaves (since Virginia claimed sovereignty over the Island) to row them. Margaret used to wear a crimson velvet habit and being an exceptionally handsome young woman, she must have made an eye-filling picture. Burr found his task of selling her his racket pleasant as well as profitable. As for Burr himself, it was the day of polished villiany, if any. Racketeers could not then have succeeded as diamonds in the rough.
So Margaret sang and Aaron Burr sighed audibly and Harman Blen- nerhassett took to sighing too, when he began to realize the path of treachery as well as the depths of poverty, into which Burr was leading him. He wanted to quit but his wife would not let him. She had planned to be at least a duchess and saw no reason to change her mind. Perhaps Emperor "Aaron the First," would make Harman ambassador to England. Burr would mention such things when the poor man wavered. Burr made the island his headquarters and assembled supplies, for which Blennerhassett paid.
Then the Big Shot had to go on to recruit his forces if possible, at Chilli- cothe and other places, among them Cincinnati. To this city as a background for part two of the story, we will shortly follow him.
So it may as well be told now that, after seeing their lovely home wrecked and their island devastated by Virginia soldiers, who had gotten wind of Burr's plans, the Blennerhassetts left hurriedly to join their Master Mind at Lexington.
Blennerhassett and Burr were later arrested in Mississippi Territory. Margaret, with her two sons, awaited them at Natchez. Both the No. 1 conspirator and the dupe were imprisoned. The outcome of Burr's trial never cleared from his name the dark stain of treason although he finally obtained liberty of body.
There seems to have been general sympathy for the Blennerhassetts and when Harman too, was freed, various people at various times tried to help them. Their lack of good horse sense seems to have really been their greatest difficulty. Anyhow, they went through a great variety of vicissitudes before Harman died in 1828 on the Island of Guernsey, England. Margaret, broken in health and spirit, came back to this country only to witness close up the physical and economic incompetency of two of her sons. She died in New York in 1842.
Now we must flash back to Cincinnati, where, in pursuit of his then thriving scheme, Burr visited the home of the Hon. John Smith, one of the two first senators that represented Ohio in Congress. Smith was not only a senator. He was "Elder Smith" a preacher. He was Merchant Smith, with a fine store at Columbia, where he sold among other commodities, the whisky he made, as Distiller Smith, in a building adjoining the farm-house on the Little Miami River.
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Burr rode out from Yeatman's Tavern at Cincinnati to the Smith farm, about 12 miles away, on horseback, according to a fictional version of the famous Burr conspiracy told by William Henry Venable in "A Dream of Empire."
As Venable tells the story, Burr found Farmer Smith quite willing to give ear to artful suggestions but whether in the capacity of Senator Smith, the versatile Ohio statesman lent approval, the reader is left to figure out. Besides, Burr discovered another beautiful lady at the Smith home. Not a new lady, to be exact, but an ex-flame with whom this great lover of yesterday had previously played fast and loose according to his carefree habit.
The romance, according to "Dream of Empire" flared anew during the week they spent at Elder-Farmer-Senator Smith's fine log farmhouse. There they watched the flames in the big stone fireplace or gazed dreamily through the window of a cozy adjoining room. Suddenly-as the story goes-Burr took the lady's hand and drew from her finger a diamond ring, gage of the love he had allowed to languish, and with it etched the lady's name "Salome," with his own beneath it, on the window pane.
Then, true to form, Burr took advantage, according to the "Dream of Empire" author, of the lady's apparent devotion to urge that she turn over money left her by her dead husband for "investment" in his great scheme.
And right here he made a bad mistake.
The lady thought things over afterward-and so realistically that she decided it was time the president of the United States should know what was going on. Thus Salome, ex lady love, became the nemesis of Aaron Burr.
But her name, with Burr's intertwined, stayed on the window while the pane of glass remained intact, which was until quite recent years. People came from far and wide to see it.
Among residents of the locality especially interested in the old house, although when they first saw it, about six years ago, the window had been broken, were Judge and Mrs. Simon Ross of Terrace Park.
The place so intrigued them that presently they purchased it and set to work to see how well the century old dwelling of the famous Elder Smith could be restored.
Thus it was that the room in which Aaron Burr had held tryst with the woman whose beauty he had flouted became another lawyer's library and the one in which the fickle lover and the all too thoughtful lady watched the burning backlog became a charming post-Colonial period living room.
But of the beautiful home of Margaret Blennerhassett on Blennerhassett Island nothing but a few foundation stones remains. It was burned to the ground. Some choice pieces of the furniture were salvaged and may be seen at the State Memorial Museum at Marietta. When, however, the story is told of their former ownership, most visitors are disinclined to take its romantic details seriously. They cannot accept truth so very much stranger than fiction.
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MARGARET SOLOMON, last of the Wyandot Indians in Ohio, was first of her tribe to serve as Christian missionary in the state. Throughout the region, extending approximately from the center of the state to Lake Erie, she was known to redskins and white skins alike as "Mother Solomon" and it is doubtful if any woman of either race was ever more admired and trusted by both.
In what is now Wyandot County, this daughter was born to John Grey Eyes, stalwart and influential Wyandot chief, in 1816. When Margaret was five years old something happened which not only determined the course of her own life, but more or less the lives of all within the sphere of her later influence.
The first industrial school, similar in many fundamentals to our present industrial and household arts courses, was opened in Upper Sandusky. Mar- garet was the very first pupil enrolled in the school. There she learned cooking, spinning, carding flax and wool, sewing. There she learned also how to read and write the English language, something most unusual at that time for any Indian, boy or girl.
The old Wyandot Mission in which Margaret was taught the principles of Christianity and deeply imbued with religious zeal, is said still to stand in Upper Sandusky. It was built in 1821, largely through the efforts of the Rev. James B. Findley, leading Methodist missionary to the Wyandot tribe. Interspersed among the huge trees that shade the little stone building are the graves of many of the bravest of the Wyandots, many of whom were Margaret's own converts when she determined to carry the gospel of peace on earth and goodwill to men herself to her own people.
When Margaret was 18 years old, she brought a new worker into the missionary field. This was through her marriage to Chief Solomon, whom she persuaded to educate himself for the ministry and who, indeed, was later officially ordained. The couple had eight children but all of them died in infancy. So it was well for Margaret that her empty arms could find solace in ministration to the children of her race. She did.
But early in the 1840's something happened. A catastrophe befell the Wyandots. The great white father at Washington decreed that they must leave the rich hunting grounds of their ancestors. That they must go west- ward, beyond the mountains, perhaps beyond the great river that flowed downward through distant plains.
Here was a test indeed of the white man's religion which his brother, the Wyandot, had accepted so trustfully. Was this treating your brother as yourself? Was this permitting the red brother to enjoy in peace his land and the fullness thereof?
It might to some extent have consoled the outraged Wyandots could they have known how constantly the quite sane, quite sensible, physically, mentally, and spiritually, precepts of Christianity have been denied in prae-
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tice by the vast majority of their advocate. But of course they could not know this. And even if they had, it might not have helped the situation. Anyhow the Wyandots were fighting mad, nobody more so than Margaret's husband and convert, Chief Solomon.
It took all the influence Margaret had to persuade Chief Solomon and the other leaders of her people to accept the decree of the white father, to say farewell to their lands and homes. The wonder is that any influence, wifely or religious or both, could extend so far. It did, though. So the Wyandots moved by wagon train to Kansas and settled there in 1843.
Now comes the sequel. Mother Solomon's soul was at peace, no doubt. But her heart, it seems, was not. The heart of the woman, like the heart of many and many another, remained with her old memories, cried out for her old home. Finally her husband died and the longing to see the land of her birth, the place where her children were buried, became insupportable.
So Mother Solomon sent a written message to the great white father at Washington, pleading that she might return to her homeland, Wyandot County, O. One holds one's breath at this point, lest stupidly and senselessly, the request would have been refused. So many mistakes are due to stupidity rather than to any innate love of injustice.
But it turned out all right. Mother Solomon's request was granted and she came back to Ohio. It was some homecoming. When the little mission church at Upper Sandusky was restored, in 1889, it was Mother Solomon who centered all eyes and ears, as she chanted the native songs of her tribe at the dedication.
After her return to her native land, Mother Solomon lived in a little frame cabin near Hayman's Mill. She died there Aug. 17, 1890. She was buried in the Old Mission Cemetery, where her ashes rest, close to those of tribal chiefs.
In view of the fact that she helped, as early as 1816 to establish the Wilmington Library Association and that she was the only woman member in all the 23 years of its existence, records of Wilmington, Ohio, do not say as much as they probably should about MARY FALLIS PIERCE.
Mary Fallis was like other woman pioneers facing danger and hardship like a man. She was unlike most of them apparently in considering herself man's intellectual equal. She joined enthusiastically in a project for estab- lishing a library at Wilmington before they had anything but tallow dips -- certainly no pioneer could waste daylight to read by. There is good reason to suspect that Mary's ideas of mental equality may not have found favor with all the good wives of Wilmington-or with all the good men either. But at least one man seems to have approved.
This was Richard Pierce, proprietor of the Pierce Home Tavern. He married Mary Fallis. Even so, there is something to be said perhaps, for the negative side. For although the library association Mary helped to found
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"MOTHER SOLOMON" 1816-1890 Last of Wyandotte Indians in Ohio
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lasted only 23 years, the inn conducted by her husband remained famous for more than a century. Almost, indeed, to the present day.
Back in 1830, when Daniel O'Connor was striving to free Ireland from the domination of English landlords, when Orangemen and Catholics of North Ireland fought at the drop of a hat, there occurred a seemingly trivial inci- dent in Baileborough County, Ireland, which had yet a profound influence on the destiny of America. Three young people, John and MARY SHERIDAN, and Jimmy Minaugh, brother of Mary, were having a holiday at an Irish fair. All three were in high spirits; Mary and Jimmy were dancing on the village green, when suddenly a taunt thrown at Jimmy by an Orangeman started a fight. Mary, fearing that her brother was getting the worst of the combat, quickly removed her shoe and stocking; thrust a stone into the toe of the stocking, and tossed it to her borther. With this improvised weapon, Jimmy lambasted his tormentor quickly and effectively. Having done so, and being therefore in great danger of the law, he made his escape.
No more was heard of Jimmy Minaugh for some months. But finally one day a letter came for the Sheridans-a letter from Jimmy in America. Jimmy wrote that "money grows on trees here" and that there was a job waiting for his brother-in-law on the Erie Canal if only he would sell his few possessions and bring his wife and children to Albany.
It took some months of persuasion before John Sheridan could get Mary's consent to leave her beloved Ireland. However, she was persuaded at last ; and with her husband and her two children set sail in the winter of 1831 for Boston.
The voyage was marked by suffering and tragedy. There was not enough money to pay for cabin passage, so the Sheridans were herded together with others of their kind under a make-shift protection on deck. The deck pas- sengers had to do their own cooking; and the food was for the most part so mouldy or so infested with weevil that even the most skillful cooks among them could not have made the stuff palatable. There was no privacy on deck; even the more personal affairs had to be performed in the presence of strangers. Everyone was seasick; and everyone was in hourly fear of death. For the wintry winds tossed the little packet about as if it were an eggshell.
But the tragedy that came on their third week out made all of their other suffering seem as nothing by comparison. For cholera broke out among the deck passengers taking as one of the first of its victims Rose, the small daughter of John and Mary Sheridan. In vain did Mary Sheridan plead with the captain to let her keep the body of her child until the packet landed in Boston where a decent land burial might be given.
The captain pointed out as gently but as firmly as he could that to do so would only endanger the lives of other passengers. So Mary herself sewed the frail body of her child into some of her own homespun linens and stood by while the captain intoned the burial service and then plunged the pathetic bundle into the sea.
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Arriving in Boston at last, the long trek to Albany had to be made by stage and by hired wagon; and arriving in Albany, John Sheridan with the help of Jimmy Minaugh, now used to American ways, managed to construct a rude log cabin for his little family. And there in March, 1831, was born Philip Sheridan, later to become one of the heroes of the Civil War.
In 1833 the Sheridan family moved to Somerset in Perry County. John Sheridan was employed on the new national pike known as the Maysville Pike, and important because it was to join the western country to the east. The pike ran from Zanesville, Ohio through which the Cumberland road passed, to Maysville, Kentucky, crossing the Ohio River by ferry and was for years one of the main arteries of travel.
Though life in the village of Somerset would have been comparatively easy for Mary Sheridan, she insisted on moving to the country where she could cook for her husband and the other workmen and where she could teach her growing sons to work in the garden which she planned to have. So. for several years, while the work on the pike continued, the Sheridans lived in a cabin on the farm owned by General Richey.
When she left Ireland, Mary Sheridan could neither read nor write. But by the time she had moved her family to the cabin home, and the older of the two sons was ready for school, she made up her mind to accomplish both. With the help of the teacher-who boarded round-she learned to read and subsequently she acquainted herself with some of the world's best literature. Ambitious for her children to a great degree, she kept them at their lessons despite their easy going father.
After several years on the turnpike, John Sheridan got a contract of his own; he then persuaded his wife to move the family to Somerset, where the boys entered the village school.
Sheridan's contract did well enough and the family fortunes would have done well, too, had not some unwise investments been made. Plunged into poverty again, Mary Sheridan was obliged to take her boys out of school; Patrick the older was employed by a wagoner who made trips from Zanes- ville to Boston; and Philip was employed by the village store-keeper where he was paid the sum of two dollars a month.
With his mother prodding him, Philip took to study when he was not busy at the store. He engaged himself in reading the history of his country, the political maneuvers of the statesmen of the day, and the military achieve- ments of Napoleon.
It was a happy time for Mary when, as often occurred, her son was called upon to settle arguments about affairs both past and present as they were discussed in the village store.
Mary's ambition for her son was a priesthood, and to this end she exhorted the boy constantly. But Philip had heard of West Point; he had seen the youthful Sherman when he returned as a graduate from that insti-
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tution ; he had even talked to Sherman; and he made up his mind that if ever an opportunity came, he would ask for an appointment. When Philip was seventeen the opportunity did come; the youth, whom General Richey, then a member of Congress, had recommended failed in his examinations, Phil asked for and got the appointment. Though his mother protested against the boy's becoming a soldier when she had gentler pursuits in mind for him, she was genuinely proud to know that her son had been elevated to so high a post by a gentleman of such distinction in the state as General Richey.
Every one knows of the contribution to American history made by General Philip Sheridan; of his dashing and splendid victories; of his being made general of the United States Army ; of his subsequent mission to Europe where he was feted and honored by the great warriors of his day.
But few know of the humble little Irish woman who saw to it that the boy improved his time and talents; who educated herself even while doing all the menial work for a large family. Few know of her devotion to her adopted country even though she never gave up her love for her native land. Never a soldier who came to her door that was turned away empty-handed ; and never an Irishman fleeing from the pestilence and famine with which Ireland was beset, but what was given a haven in the Sheridan home as long as he wanted it.
General Phil Sheridan was known for his fearlessness-a trait which he might well have inherited from his mother. Survivors of the Sheridan family are fond of telling how, when Micheal Sheridan, the youngest of the family, was a baby, he attempted to make friends with a baby pig. The mother of the brood was near. Enraged at the intrusion, the sow rushed on the child and seized his hand in her savage jaws. Mary Sheridan, hearing the child's scream, rushed out, threw herself between the boy and enraged sow, and by sheer force of will wrenched the animal's jaws open the while she got the frightened child to pull his hand out. The Sheridan children remembered to the end of their days this illustration of their mother's bravery. Who shall say that she was not the guiding star in General Sheridan's achievements ?
Besides her illustrious son Philip, Mary Sheridan gave two other sons to the service of her country. John and Micheal Sheridan, both fought on the Northern side during the Civil War, John as a private; Micheal as a colonel. She lived to see them return; she lived to see the honors which were heaped on her sons, especially on General Philip Sheridan. She died in 1888 only a short time before death took also the famous and dashing "Colonel Phil."
A gallant and quick-witted woman was MARY HUMBARGER COLBORN, but one whose gallantry and sharp wit might never have become known had she not been married to one Ephriam Colborn, one of Perry County's fore- most citizens in his day.
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Ephriam Colborn studied law and was admitted to the bar; but he never practiced his profession since he was much more interested in writing. He was for a time owner and publisher of The Perry County Democrat, puh- lished in Somerset in the early 1850's. Since Mr. Colborn came to disagree- ment with the Democratic principles sometime later, he left that party and joined the Republican party soon after it was organized in 1854. Subsequently, in 1861, he was appointed postmaster at New Lexington, and his wife was appointed his assistant.
It was during her term as assistant postmaster that Mrs. Colborn showed her bravery and presence of mind. Her husband had ridden out with several other men to discover the whereabouts of Morgan, the raider. Colborn and his men struck the Morgan trail and followed it up, unaware that they were soon to come upon the enemy. Before they could escape from the trap in which they found themselves, they were surrounded and ordered to halt. One of the men turned his horse and dashed through the woods; but Colborn and the other man thought it better to stay and parley with the raiders. The two men were taken prisoner and compelled to ride some forty miles before they were finally set free. Then their horses were taken from them and they were obliged to make their way back to New Lexington as best they could.
Meantime, Mrs. Colborn was in charge of the post-office alone. When a detachment of Morgan's raiders entered the village, she calmly collected all postage stamps and government papers into a little bundle and pinned them to her flannel petticoat. Then she stood ready to defy anyone who came intending to plunder a government post. She remained at the post-office day and night until her husband returned.
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