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Ferris' School-House

Page 372   So called in honor of old Col. Abram Ferris, a man of wealth and
fame, who resided in the neighborhood - was once an honored representative 
of the county in the State Legislature, but has recently passed from earth 
away, honored. bemoaned, and missed.  Here, too, was the residence of the 
lamented George H. Dunn, favorably known all over the State and throughout 
the Union, as an efficient member of the Congress of the United States.  
We have few such men as was George H. Dunn.  Hon. G. P. Buell, Dr. 
McCullough, P. L. Spooner, of legal notoriety, and Abram Rollen, all men 
of worth and distinction, do, or did, reside here.  Mr. Rollen nearly lost 
one of his hands by a hay screw, and would have quite but for the skillful 
treatment of my friend, Dr. Brower.  He thinks there is no such man as 
Dr. Brower, and well he may.
  Two men - strangers - have been found dead here; but how they came to 
their death remains a sealed book.  I must not omit to record the name of 
my very kind and cherished friend, Robert Duck, nor of his very estimable 
and intelligent widow, Mrs. Duck, nor of her only and kind son, Robert, 
all of whom I claim as special friends of mine, loved and cherished truly; 
and the same just tribute I here accord to my friend, Wm. Hamilton, and 
family.  Nor can I fail to acknowledge my personal obligations to my 
lamented friend, Barkdoll, and family, for the great kindness shown me 
when I taught school in their district, years ago.  The children, too, 
were exceeding kind and dutiful, and my little Caroline, now Mrs. ___, was 
almost an exception.  These things I never can forget.  Well, here too is 
my good old friend, Thomas Annis, a real pioneer, a most excellent man, 
with a most excellent and intelligent family, surrounded by all the 
comforts and conveniences of life; and the same may be said of good old 
father Mason, father Hibbites, and families, etc.  Friend Danford and 
others have removed, and the blessing of their friends abide with them.



Hardensburgh

Page 373    Here lived and died the venerable General Zebulon Pike, of 
revolutionary and historical notoriety - honored in life, and lamented in 
death.  Soon that valorous band of patriots will all have passed away;
peace to their memory and their dust.  Anderson F. Gage, my early friend, 
and son-in-law to the lamented  general, lives here, in honor and in peace,
enjoying an abundance of the good things of this life - cheered and cared 
for, in the time of his breavement and affliction, by as kind good sisters 
as ever blessed a brother. He also has many Indian trinkets and curiosities 
- beads which he took with his own hands from the necks of skeletons, which 
he exhumed in plowing his own fields.  They are a curiosity, to say the 
least of them, and evince skill and ingenuity in a savage state.  Such 
evidences of a former race are abundant all around this region.
  My friend, Samuel Morrison, one of the best men,  best scholars, and 
prettiest scribes, son of Ephraim Morrison, a first settler, suffered the 
amputation of a leg, under the influence of choloroform, without 
sensation of pain.  O, the wonders of the age!  What will not science yet 
accomplish?  Mrs. Lancaster was here thrown from a runaway horse, and had 
her leg broken, and the bone fairly pinned her to the earth; and yet the 
skillful management of Dr. Brower and a kind providence preserved both 
"life and limb".A man by the name of Dodd hung himself in the county jail.
 Good old father and mother Rabb, and Brown, and Miller, and Guard, Levi 
Miller, Ezra Gard, and John Morrison, all excellent men and women, early 
settlers, have passed from earth away, to "a better inheritance above," 
without a single doubt.  John Morrison was a mechanical genius truly; 
invented the hay-screw, that has revolutionized the entire west.  
The first one was laid off with square and compass, and a spiral line, and 
cut with a chisel.  Compared with those of the present day, it was a 
coarse, ungainly thing, like Fulton's first steamboat; but then it 
possessed all the merit of originality, and won for the originator 
everlasting gratitude and enduring fame.
  Mrs. Sarah Bonham, daughter of old Father Guard, and sister to my friend, 
Bailey Guard, who has lived all her days, nearly, in and about the Big 
Bottom, informs me that savage tribes of Indians, and howling beasts of 
prey, clustered all around and about "the paths her infant feet have trod;" 
that she once ran afoul of a great big black bear in going to the stable; 
that she made haste to report; that dogs and men were soon in hot pursuit;
and Bruin, for his presumption, paid the fordeit of his life; that her 
father once wanted just two dozen turkeys for the Cincinnati market; said 
he would shoot all just in the left wing, and let his trusty and well-
trained dog pick them up; that he soon returned with his full complement, 
every single one of which had the bone of the left wing broken, and not a 
single wound beside.  This shows how plenty such game was in those days, 
and what "sharp-shooters" our sturdy pioneers were.
  Here the sainted good old Father Jones, an early and an efficient 
minister of the gospel of Chirst, met with a fearful runaway, but was, as 
by miracle, through faith and prayer, saved from harm.  I seem to hear 
him tell the story now.  And here, too, my cherished pupil, Mrs. West, 
daughter of my early friend, Walter Hays, was thrown from her carriage, 
and taken up a mangled and bleeding corpse.-See "Lament."  Here my sainted 
father-in-law, Noyes, lost a fine horse overboard and drowned, in being 
ferried across the Miami, and horses, wagon and all swept away by a strong 
current, in attempting to ford Tanner's Creek;lost one horse, and escaped 
death himself only as "by the skin of his teeth."  How true it is that 
"dangers stand thick all through the ground,"etc.  My old and early 
friends, Joseph and Jacob Hays, have my lasting gratitude for personal and 
kind favors; the latter of whom has had the misfortune to lose his sight.

                 May he, "by the eye of faith," 
     "______read his title clear To mansions in the skies."  


Barb Boese     barbwire@midusa.net