FAIRFIELD COUNTY OHIO BIOS,CHANEY part 1
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	Personal Recollections

of Judge John Chaney, of Winchester

At my strong solicitation, Judge Chaney consented to give me the following 
statement of his private and public life. He remarked that he had often been 
ased for similar statements, and that he had concluded now, in view of the 
near approach of the close of his very long and somewhat eventful life, and 
because he was pleased with the plan and design of the history of Fairfield 
county, to give me the statement, especially as I assured him that his 
numerous and life-long friends asked for it.

"I was born in Washington County, Maryland, on the 12th day of January, 1790. 
At the age of four years, and at the beginning of my recollections, my father 
removed to and settled in Bedford County, Pennsylvania.  When I was fourteen 
years old, my father died. The family then consisted of my mother, three 
sisters, one brother and myself.  Three or four months subsequent to my 
father's death, my brother died. The death of my father left the family very 
poor.  He was a generous man, and underwrote his friends, who were 
unfortunate, until he lost his farm, which was a good one, and nearly all his 
loose property. From my fourteenth to my twentieth year the care of the 
family devolved almost entirely on myself.
In the fall of the year 1810, I came west to Fairfield County, Ohio, stopping 
first on the spot where the village of Waterloo now stands, on the Ohio 
canal. I did not remain there long, but went over into Pickaway County, where 
I stayed until the fall of 1812, when my health having become poor, I 
returned to Bedford county, Penn.

In the fall of 1815, my health having been restored, I again came west and 
settled in Bloom Township, near its northern border, in the same community 
where I have resided up to this time; my present home being in the village of 
Canal Winchester, which was a few years since struck off into Franklin County 
with a tier of sections, the Fairfield line skirting the east border of the 
village.

In the fall of 1816, I married Mary Ann Lafere, of Bloom Township, and went 
to housekeeping in a log-cabin fourteen feet square.  Its floor was made of 
rough puncheons split out of forest trees. It had a clapboard roof and 
clapboard loft, was one low story high, had a stick and mud chimney, wide 
open fireplace with the primitive back wall, jams and hearth. It was a very 
rude and humble home, but we were as happy as kings. Our living was that of 
the frontier settlers. We worked hard and were poor; but did not doubt the 
future, for our aims were set.  We intended to live correct and honourarble 
lives, and take the chances of the coming years. There were wolves and wild 
turkeys in great abundance, and now and then a bear. There were hawks of a 
great many varieties, which have nearly entirely disappeared; and the owl 
were hooting about the woods all the time. The whole country was new and 
wild. The little farms were small, and fenced in with rails; and the dwelling 
houses were log-cabins; and the stables and barns were built of logs.

At the time of my settlement in Bloom Township, the price of a day's work was 
a bushel of wheat, or two bushels of corn. Cash was seldom paid for work, and 
when it was, twenty-five cents a day was the wages. Almost everything was 
paid for with trade. A few things had to be paid in cash.  The taxes were 
cash; and coffee and a few other commodities commanded cash, when anybody 
could get it to pay with. Our markets, whatever they amounted to, were at 
Lancaster and Franklinton. The little mills of the settlements sometimes went 
dry, and we had to go all the way to Chillicothe or Zanesville to get our 
grain ground. The streams were not bridged, and in the muddy seasons of the 
year the roads were sometimes desperate. I made rails for fifty cents a 
hundred, and cut cord wood for twenty-five cents a cord.

My sisters having married, I went and brought my mother out to this county. 
She subsequently went back on a visit, but was taken sick there and died, and 
was buried beside my father.  I went, and was with her during her last 
illness.

Our schools were the primitive schools of the early West. After the passage 
of the first Ohio School Law, we built a little log school-house at the 
cornerings of sections 1, 2, 11, and 12. We obtained a lease of the land for 
that purpose for thirty years. The log school house stood a great many years, 
when it was removed, and a brick built on the same ground, which is still 
standing.

(I am not positive whether he said the brick house was built on the same 
site, or in the same district. - Ed)

We accepted the situation, and struggled on to better times and better life. 
There were no inducements to change our habitation. Ohio was rapidly filling 
up, and with every revolving year conditions were improving. Markets were 
improving, and by slow degrees we began to have better roads. Rough bridges 
began to be constructed over the smaller streams. The first bridges were made 
of logs cut from the forests for sills and butments, and the top, or 
platform, was made of slabs split from sections of trees, and generally hewed 
to a level, on the upper side, with the broad-ax, or leveled down with the 
foot-adz. These were the first or primitive bridges; but after saw-mills 
became plenty, oak planks of the thickness of one and a half or two inches 
were used for the platform.

Cont.