BELMONT COUNTY OHIO - HISTORY: Part 2 (pub 1880)

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>From the The Ohio Biographies Project
http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~usbios/Ohio/mnpg.html
a part of The U.S. Biographies Project
http://members.tripod.com/~debmurray/usbios/usbiog.html

Transcribed by Deb Murray.

---------------

"Historic Collections of Ohio" by Henry Howe.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE IN 1846. - St. Clairsville, the county-seat, is situated on an elevated
and romantic site, in a rich agricultural region, on the line of the National road, 11 miles
west of Wheeling and 116 east of Columbus.  It contains six places for public worship: 2
Friends, 1 Presbyterian, 1 Episcopal, 1 Methodist, and 1 Union; one female seminary,
twelve mercantile stores, two or three newspaper offices, H. Anderson's map~engraving
and publishing establishment, and, in 1840, had 829 inhabitants. Cuming's tour,
published in 1810, states that this town "was laid out in the woods by David Newell in
1801. On the south side of Newell's plat is an additional part laid out by William
Matthews, which was incorporated with Newell's plat on the 23d of January, 1807, by the
name of St. Clairsville."  By the act of incorporation the following officers were
appointed until the first stated meeting of the inhabitants should be held for an election,
viz., John Patterson, President; Sterling Johnston, Recorder; Samuel Sullivan, Marshal;
Groves Wm. Brown, John Brown, and Josiah Dillon, Trustees; William Cougliton,
Collector; James Colwell, Treasurer, and Robert Griffith, Town Marshal. The view given
was taken from an elevation west of the town, near the National road and Neiswanger's
old tavern, shown on the extreme right. The building in the distanee, on the left, shaded
by poplars, is the Friends' meeting-house; in the centre is shown the spire of the
court-house, and on the right the tower of the Presbyterian church .- Old Edition.
ST. CLAIRSVILLE, the county-seat, is on the St. Clairsville road, a short line connecting
on the north with the C. L. & W. R. R., and on the south with the B. & O. R. R. County
officers in 1888: Probate Judge, Issac H. Gaston; Clerk of Court, William B. Cash;
Sheriff, Oliver F. Foulke; Prosecuting Attorney, Jesse W. Hollingsworth; Auditor,
Redney R. Barrett; Treasurer, George Robinson; Recorder, John M. Beckett; Surveyor,
Chalkley Dawson; Coroner, Andrew M. F. Boyd; Commissioners, William J. Berry, John
C. Israel, Morris Cope.  Newspapers:  Belmont Chronicle, Republican, W. A. Hunt,
editor;  St. Clairsville Gazette, Democratic, Isaac M. Riley, editor.  Bank: First National
Bank, David Brown, president, J. R. Mitchell, cashier.  Churches : 1 Methodist
Episcopal, 1 Presbyterian, and 1 United Presbyterian.  Population in 1880, 1,128. School
census 1886, 407; L. H. Watters, superintendent.
The village has increased but little in the last forty years.  Recently a magnificent
court-house has been erected, at an expense of about $200,000.  In the spring of 1887 St.
Clairsville was visited by the most severe tornado known in Eastern Ohio, which did
much damage. Although always small in population, the town has long been regarded,
from the eminent characters who have dwelt in the place, as an intellectual centre.
St. Clairsville derives its name fiom the unfortunate but meritorious Arthur St. Clair.  He
was born in Scotland, in 1734, and after receiving a classical education in one of the
most celebrated universities of his native country, studied medicine; but having a taste
for military pursuits, he sought and obtained a subaltern's appointment, and was with
Wolfe in the storming of Quebec.
After the peace of 1763 he was assigned the command of Fort Ligonier, in Pennsylvania,
and received there a grant of  l,000 acres.  Prior to the Revolutionary war he held several
civil offices.  His military skill and experience, intelligence and integrity were such that,
when the revolutionary war commenced, he was appointed Colonel of Continentals. In
August, 1776, he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier, and bore an active part in the
battles of Trenton and Princeton.
He was subsequently created a Major-General, and ordered to repair to Ticonderoga,
where he commanded the garrison and, on the approacb of Burgoyne’s army, abandoned
it.  Charges of cowardice, incapacity and treachery were brought against him in
consequence.  He was tried by a court-martial, who, with all the facts before them,
acquitted him, accompanyingtheir report with the declaration that “Major-General St.
Clair is acquitted, with the highest honor, of the charges against him."  Congress
subsequently, with an unanimous voice, confirmed this sentence.  The facts were, that the
works were incomplete and incapable of being defended against the whole British army,
and although St. Clair might have gained great applause by a brave attempt at defence,
yet it would have resulted in the death of many of his men and probably the capture of
the remainder; a loss which, it was afterwards believed in camp, and perhaps foreseen by
St. Clair, would have prevented the taking of Burgoyne's army.
In daring to do an unpopular act, for the public good, St. Clair exhibited a high degree of
moral courage, and deserves more honor than he who wins a battle.
St. Clair served with reputation, until the close of the war.  In 1785, while residing on his
farm, at Ligionier, he was appointed a delegate to the Continental Congress, and was
soon after chosen president of that august body.  After the passage of the ordinance for
the government of the Northwestern Territory he was made governor, and continued in
the office until within a few weeks of the termination of the territorial form of
government, in the winter of 1802-3, when he was removed by President Jefferson.
The remainder of the sketch of Gov. St. Clair we give in extracts from the notes of Judge
Burnet, who was personally acquainted with him.  Beside being clearly and beautifully
written, it contains important facts in the legislative history of Ohio.
During the continuance of the first grade of that imperfect government, he enjoyed the
respect and confidence of every class of the people.  He was plain and simple in his dress
and equipage, open and frank in his manners, and accessible to persons of every rank.  In
these respects he exhibited a striking contrast with the secretary, Col. Sargent; and that
contrast, in some measure, increased his popularity, which he retained unimpaired till
after the commencement of the first session of the legislature. During that session he
manifested a strong desire to enlarge his own powers, and restrict those of the assembly;
which was the more noticed, as he had opposed the usurpations of the legislative council,
composed of himself, or in his absence. the secretary, and the Judges of the General
Court; and had taken an early opportunity of submitting his views on that subject to the
general assembly. . . . 
The effect of the construction he gave, of his own powers, may be seen in the fact that of
the thirty bills passed by the two houses during the first session, and sent to him for his
approval, he refused his assent to eleven; some of which were supposed to be of much
importance, and all of them calculated, more or less, to advance the public interest. 
Some of them he rejected because they related to the establishment of new counties;
others, because he thought they were unnecessary or inexpedient.  Thus more than a third
of the fruits of the labor of that entire session was lost, by the exercise of the arbitrary
discretion of one man.
This, and some other occurrences of a similar character which were manifest deviations
from his usual course not easily accounted for, multiplied his opponents very rapidly, and
rendered it more difficult for his friends to defend and sustain him.  They also created a
state of bad feeling between the legislative and executive branches, and eventually
terminated in his removal from office, before the expiration of the territorial government.  
The governor was unquestionably a man of superior talents, of extensive information and
of great uprightness of purpose, as well as suavity of manners.  His general course,
in the main correct, was in some respects injurious to his own popularity ; but it was the
result of an honest exercise of his judgment.  He not only believed that the power he
claimed belonged legitimately to the executive, but was convinced that the manner in
which he exercised it was imposed on him as a duty by the ordinance, and was calculated
to advance the best interests of the Territory.
Soon after the governor was removed from office he returned to the Ligonier valley, poor
and destitute of the means of subsistence, and unfortunately too much disabled by age
and infirmity to embark in any kind of active business.  During his administration of the
territorial government he was induced to make himself personally liable for the purchase
of a number of pack-horses and other articles necessary to fit out an expedition against
the Indians, to an amount of some two or three thousand dollars, which he was afterwards
compelled to pay. Having no use for the money at the time, he did not present his claim
to the government.  After he was removed from office, he looked to that fund as his
dependence for future subsistence, and, under a full expectation of receiving it, he
repaired to Washington City, and presented his account to the proper officer of the
treasury. To his utter surprise and disappointment it was rejected, on the mortifying 
ground that, admitting it to have been originally correct, it was barred by the statute; and
that the time which had elapsed afforded the highest presumption that it had been settled
although no voucher or memorandum to that effect could be found in tbe department. To
counteract the alleged presumption of payment, the original vouchers showinmg the
purchase, the purpose to which the property was applied, and the payment of the money,
were exhibited. It was, however, still insisted that, as the transaction was an old one, and
had taken place before the burning of the war office in Philadelphia, the lapse of time
furnished satisfactory evidence that the claim must have been settled, and the vouchers
destroyed in that conflagration.  The pride of the old veteran was deeply wounded by the
ground on which his claim was refused, and he was induced from that consideration, as
well as by the pressure of poverty and want, to persevere in his efforts to maintain the
justice and equity of his demand, still hoping that presumption would give way to truth. 
For the purpose of getting rid of his solicitations Congress passed an act, purporting to be
an act for his relief; but which merely removed the technical objection, founded on lapse
of time, by authorizing a settlement of his demands, regardless of the limitation. This
step seemed necessary, to preserve their own character; but it left the worn out veteran
still at the mercy of the accounting officers of the department, from whom he had nothing
to expect but disappointment.  During the same session a bill was introduced into the
House of Representatives, granting him an annuity, which was rejected, on the third
reading, by a vote of 48 to 50.
After spending the principal part of two sessions in useless efforts, subsisting during the
time on the bounty of his friends, he abandoned the pursuit in despair and returned to the
Ligonier valley, where he lived several years in the most abject poverty, in the family of a
widowed daughter, as destitute as himself.  At length Pennsylvania, his adopted State,
from considerations of personal respect and gratitude for past services, as well as from a
laudable feeling of State pride, settled on him an annuity of $300, which was soon after
raised to $650. That act of beneficence gave to the gallant old soldier a comfortable
subsistence for the little remnant of his days which then remained. The honor resulting to
the State from that step was very much enhanced by the fact that the individual on whom
their bounty was bestowed was a foreigner, and was known to be a warm opponent, in
politics, to the great majority of. the legislature and their constituents.
He lived, however, but a short time to enjoy the bounty. On the 31st of August, 1818, that
venerable officer of the Revolution, after a long, brilliant and useful life, died of an injuiy
occasioned by the running away of his horse, near Greensburgh, in the eighty-fourth year
of his age.
Charles Hammond, long an honored member of the county bar, was born in Maryland,
and came to Belmont county in 1801 and was appointed prosecuting attorney for the
Northwest Territory.  During the war of 1812 he published the Federalist at St.
Clairsville.  In 1824 he removed to Cincinnati and attained a high position as editor of
the Cincinnati Gazette.  He was the author of the political essays signed "Hampden,"
published in the National Intelligencer in 1820, upon the Federal Constitution, which
were highly complimented by Jefferson.  He died in Cincinnati, in 1840, where he was
regarded as the ablest man that had wielded the editorial pen known to the history of
Ohio.
"I know of no writer," writes Mansfield, "who could express an idea so clearly and so
briefly. He wrote the pure old English - the vernacular tongue, unmixed with French or
Latin phrases or idioms, and unperverted with any scholastic logic.  His language was
like himself - plain, sensible and unaffected. His force, however, lay not so much in this
as in his truth, honesty and courage, those moral qualities which made him distinguished
at that day and would distinguish him now. His opposition to slavery and its influence on
the government was firm, consistent and powerful.   Probably no public writer did more
than he to form a just and reasonable anti-slavery sentiment.  In fine, as a writer of great
ability, and a man of large acquirements and singular integrity, Hanimond was scarcely
equalled by any man of his time.
St. Clairsville is identified with the history of BENJAMIN LUNDY, who has been called
the "Father of Abolitionism," for he first set in motion those moral forces which
eventually resulted in the overthrow of American slavery.  He was of Quaker parents, and
was born on a farm in Hardwick, Sussex county, N. J., January 4, 1789.  When nineteen
years old, working as an apprentice to a saddler in Wheeling, his attention was first
directed to the horrors of slavery by the constant sight of gangs of slaves driven in chains
through the streets on their way to the South, for Wheeling was the great thoroughfare
from Virginia for transporting slaves to the cotton plantations.  He entered at this time in
his diary: "I hear the wail of the captive; I felt his pang of distress, and the iron entered
my soul."
Lundy married, settled in St. Clairsville, working at his trade, and soon began his
life-work, the abolition of slavery, finally learning in later years the printer's trade to
better effect his purpose.
He formed an anti-slavery society here in 1815 when twenty-six years old, called 'the
Union Humane Society," which grew from six to near five hundred members, and wrote
an appeal to philanthropists through-out the Union to organize similar co-operating
societies.  He had written numerous articles for The Philanthropist, a small paper edited
at Mt. Pleasant, in Jefferson county, by Charles Osborne, a Friend, and then sold his
saddlery stock and business at a ruinous sacrifice to join Osborne and increase the
efficiency of his paper.
In 1819 he removed to St. Louis where the Missouri question - the admission of  Missouri
into the union with or without slavery - was attracting universal attention, and devoted
himself to an exposition of the evils of slavery in the newspapers of that State and
Illinois.  In 1822 he walked back all the way to Ohio to find that Osborne had sold out his
paper, when he started another, a monthly, with six subscribers which he had printed at
Steubenville and called the Genius of  Universal Emancipation.  This was soon removed
to Jonesboro, East Tennessee, and in 1824 to Baltimore, to which place he walked and
held on his way, in the States of South and North Carolina and Virginia, anti-slavery
meetings among Quakers and formed abolition societies among them.
In 1828 he visited Boston and by his lectures enlisted Wm. Lloyd Garrson in the abolition
cause and engaged him to become his associate editor.  By this time Lundy had formed
by lecturing and correspondence more than one hundred societies for the  gradual though
total abolition of slavery."  In the winter of  1828-29 he was assaulted and nearly killed in
Baltimore by Austin Woolfolk, a slave-dealer.  He was driven out of Baltimore and
finally established his paper in Philadelphia, where his property was burnt in 1838 by the
pro-slavery mob that fired Pennsylvania Hall.  The following winter he died in La Salle,
Illinois, where he was about to re-establish his paper.
In his personal appearance Lundy gave no indication of the wonderful force of character
he possessed.  He was about five feet five inches in stature, very slenderly built, light
eyes and light curly hair and hard of hearing.  He was gentle and mild and persuasive
with pity, not only for the slave, but he ever treated the slave-holders with the kindliest
consideration.