KNOX COUNTY OHIO - Norton's History of Knox County [Chapter II] *********************************************************************** OHGENWEB NOTICE: All distribution rights to this electronic data are reserved by the submitter. Reproduction or re-presentation of copyrighted material will require the permission of the copyright owner. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgwarchives.net/ *********************************************************************** File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Dianne Dearring ddearring@mailhost.col.ameritech.net March 15, 2000 *********************************************************************** Typed and submitted by Dianne Dearring, ddearring@ameritech.net History of Knox County. CHAPTER II Continuation of the early outline - more about the first settlers. - Quakers from Maryland find their way in 1806. - Incidents connected with their emigration, and in the movements of other settlers. --Who they were and what became of them. - The privations endured and dangers encountered. - More towns laid out. - The first mills. - The scene of an encounter with indians. - Inconveniences of the country. - Efforts for a new county. - An early election. - Fairfield divided. - Three new counties created by one bill. - Strife for the seat of justice of Knox. The spring of 1806 brought with it a new element into the wilderness region, in the form of the Friends - the forerunners of large numbers of that society, who by their quiet yet industrious ways have contributed very much to the prosperity and peacefulness of our people. The venerable father Henry Roberts may be justly regarded as the head of this emigration from Maryland. In 1805 he left Frederick county, in that State, with his family, and directed his course to the far west, but on reaching Belmont county, found it necessary to winter his family there, and sent his wagon and team back to Maryland with a load of ginseng and snake-root, and on their return with a load of goods, he started with his family and plunder, and on the 7th of April, 1806, he landed at Henry Haines’, in the Ten Mile settlement, and after spending a week looking for a good location, on the 14ths of that month settled down his family at the little prairie five miles above Mount Vernon, of late widely known as the Armstrong section. The family consisted of his wife, his sons - William, now living at Pekin, Illinois; Isaiah, now residing near Pilot Knob, Missouri; Richard Roberts, of Berlin - and a daughter Massah, who married Dr. Timothy Burr, and died at Clinton, March 9th, 1814. Nine acres of that beautiful prairie were at once broken up and planted in corn. It was very hard work to break the virgin soil with a first rate four-horse plow team, but it paid for that labor by one of the finest crops of corn ever raised in this country. In the fall Wm. Y. Farquhar, a cousin of Henry Roberts, came with his family, and after him came Wm. W. Farquhar with his family. They all stopped with Henry Roberts, and thus composed the first settlement of Friends in this district. From this nucleus came the numerous society of Quakers in Wayne, Middlebury and Berlin, in after years. Shortly after this we find another Quaker, Samuel Wilson, and John Kerr in what subsequently became Wayne township, and John Cook and Jacob Cook just above, in what is now Middlebury township, and Amoriah Watson goes from Douglass’ to the tract of land above, where Fredericktown was the next year laid out, and which he subsequently sold to Jacob Ebersole, a place now easy to be identified by all. In the sprint of 1806, there were within the after limits of Knox county but fifteen person who turned out to vote, and but nine liable to perform military duty out to muster. The first grist mill erected in this county was of decidedly primitive character. It was in the Hains, or Ten Mile settlement, and constructed without the sound of the hammer upon iron. It was the joint work of Ebenezer and Abner Brown, assisted by the mechanical skill of the whole neighborhood, and was built on what was called by the early settlers "Big Run," thought in later times it is spoken of as the little Lake, through which the road to Granville has since been laid out. The water has almost disappeared - having been in its appearance greatly changed by ditching, and in some parts obliterated by filling up the hollow. The mill stood where Isaac Beam’s house now is, and the dam was where the bridge now stands in the lane. It was all of wood - a sugar-trough made its meal-trough - a little box the hopper - the stones were about two feet through, and hooped with elm bark for want of iron. It cracked corn pretty well with a good head on, but the stream was generally dry, and the mill was only able to run when big showers of rain came. The building was about ten feet square, of rough logs - not a nail or a bit of iron could be had when it was made. The stones of this ancient of days are certainly a curiosity - they are yet to be seen, being the property of Moses Farquhar, of Berlin, who since that day has attempted experiments with them. Richard Roberts at one time took a grist to this original mill and had it ground. He was then about seventeen years old, and not much acquainted with the milling business, but he was greatly impressed with its mechanism, and read to exclaim, with our old friend Hadly, "The works of God are wonderful, but the works of man are wonderfuller!" He thought that it worked first rate, thought Henry Hains at that time had got a little hand mill which he claimed was a great improvement on the little wooden mill. Mr. Roberts recollects of having at one time packed a bag of corn from Tom Butler’s down on White-woman home, and from thence to a mill near Newark, and back home again, less a heavy toll. While at the mill he saw Hughes, and from his own lips had a true account about the killing of Indian horse thieves, whom Jack Ratliff and himself had pursued into the Owl Creek county and killed as they came upon them in the bottom just below where Fredericktown now stands. The story runs thus: - "One night in April, 1800, two Indians stole their horses from a little inclosure near their cabins, located in some old Indian fields on the Licking. In the morning, finding their horses gone, and tracks about, they were satisfied of their having been stolen, and started of in pursuit, accompanied by a man named Bland. They followed their trail all day, and camped at night in the woods, and making an early start in the morning, surprised the Indians in their sleep. They drew up their rifles to shoot, when one of the Indians, discovering them, clapping his hands on his breast, as if to ward off the fatal ball, exclaimed in piteous tones, ‘me bad Indian! - me no do so more!’ Alas! In vain he plead; the smoke curled from the glistening barrels, the report rang in the morning air, and the poor Indians fell dead." Hughes and Ratliff returned home with the horses and plunder taken from the Indians, feeling as well over their little exploit as any men ever did over a great and glorious action. Ellis Hughes, who was known to very many of our old settlers, died near Utica, in March, 1845, and was buried with military honors. He was believed to be the last survivor of the hard fought battle of Point Pleasant. He was a hardy backwoodsman from Western Virginia. Our old townsman, Wm. Mefford, informs us that when he improved his farm on Mile Run, in Wayne township, he was clearing off ground on which to build his house, and he then plowed up the two Indians killed by Hughes, and also a rusty gun barrel, brass guard, and other pieces of a gun, which had not decayed. This was in 1835; and Jacob Mitchel now has the old relics. George Conkie gathered up the bones and buried them, and the house was built on the spot - the old Peck place on Mile Run bottom, where Mrs. Acre now lives. In early days there was a favorite camping ground for the Indians about three-fourths of a mile from where these Indians were killed. Three old settlers have informed us that about 1808 they saw at one time more than one hundred and fifty warriors camped there. They have several times seen Old Crane, the Wyandot Chief, the Chief Armstrong, and Captain Pipe, with bands of Indians, roving through this country, and we have gathered some very amusing incidents connected therewith, which the limit we have prescribed for this work compels us to omit in this edition. The great inconvenience the settlers labored under for want of building material caused William Douglass, as early as the spring of 1805, to conceive the design of erecting a mill at the seat now known as Banning’s Mill. He then commenced digging the race and building the dam. After getting a saw to running, he set to work building a grist mill; being a man of enterprise, he could not brook the thought that the people in that neighborhood should continue to boil and pound their corn when they could not take time to go to the distant mills. John Kerr, as will be elsewhere noted in this book, erected a little grist mill on the Sullivant track, and laid out the town of Frederick in the first quarter, seventh township, fourteenth range, United States military district, which on the 11th of November, 1807, he acknowledged, in presence of George Chambers, before Wm. W. Farquhar. A full account of the early settlement and progress of this thriving village will be found under the head of Wayne township. In our investigation of early matters, we find that the settlers of this district were solicitous upon three great pints for legislative aid, to wit: the division of Fairfield, the increase of premium upon wolf scalps, and proper encouragement in killing squirrels. The General Assembly, in 1807, passed a bill to encourage killing of squirrels. It went through the popular branch with a rush, but the vote upon the final passage of the bill in the Senate, on the 21st of December, stood 8 ayes to 7 nays. The price for scalping grown wolves was increased, after some time and much petitioning, and the monster Fairfield was dismembered at last. Happy were those old pioneers, at that period of their existence - " All then was happy - possessing and possessed - No craving void left aching in the breast!" In looking over the old petitions and beholding the cramped signatures of a number of these hardy yeomen, whose rough specimen marks of cracked and blistered hands in frontier service, clearly bear witness to their whole heart being in the prayers sent up for these measures, we can well imagine how they must have chuckled with delight, as a Christian over his soul’s salvation, at the realization of their wishes. In those primitive times their attention was not diverted from the real live issues affecting the welfare of themselves and their families to grand humanitarian schemes for the benefit of any other race or people. The squirrels eat the kernels when the corn was in silken tassels, taking it out of their children’s mouths; the wolves prowled about their tracks, destroying their pigs and poultry, and rendered night hideous with their howling, and frightened and endangered the lives of wives and children, so they could not leave home to attend to necessary business at the remote county seat. This was a remarkable epoch in the history of the pioneers of this country. In 1807, at the October election, the section of country known as Fairfield county cast but 213 votes, all told; and now there is scarcely a township in all this country that does not contain more voters. Then the entire vote cast for Governor in the State, as officially published, was 5,616; and now, after the space of fifty-four years, our own county of Knox polls over 6,000 votes, and the old county as it then existed polled at the last election 40,000! What a change in the country we have lived to witness! How striking the contrast in manners, customers, education, intelligence, and in political, religious, and social life! In nothing is the alteration more clearly marked than in the dissemination of information in reference to elections and the system of electioneering. Then every man ran on his own hook - his own race - making the best speed he was capable of - fully impressed with the belief that the devil would take the hindmost. The race was won then by personal merit and cleverness. Now party intervenes; caucuses and juntos dictate; conventions and wigwams gather together political carpenter, joiners, and jacks of all trades, whose special province it is to make platforms out of vagrant material for weak-kneed and spavined candidates to stand on. Then there were no daily papers, and weekly ones only existed in great cities like Boston, New York and Philadelphia. In fact nine-tenths of the then inhabitants had never seen a newspaper. The official count of the cote of that year show more fully than any language could convey the state of blissful ignorance prevailing throughout all this now politically crazy country. There were then two candidates running for Governor, to wit: Return Jonathan Meigs and Nathaniel Massie. The former was voted for under nineteen different names, and the latter under five different styles. The various tickets read: For Return J. Meigs, Return J. Meigs, Jun., Jonathan R. Meigs, Jr., Jonathan Return Meigs, Jonathan Return Meigs, Jr., Return Meggs, Return R. Meags, Jr., Jonathan Meggs, Jonathan R. Meggs, J. Meigs, Jr., Jonathan Meigs, Jonathan J. Meigs, Judge Meigs, John Meigs, Mr. Meigs, J. Maggs, Return Israel Meigs, James Meigs, Johan Meigs. Nathaniel Massie, Nathaniel Massie, Esq., James Massie, Mr. Massie, Daniel Massie. Meigs received 3,299; Massie 2,317; and Return J. Meigs was declared elected Governor by 982 majority. Thomas Kirker, Speaker of the Senate, was then acting Governor. Meigs had been a colonel in the army, and was appointed judge of the territory of Louisiana in July, 1805, and had resided in that country some six months; his wife and family, however, had remained, during his absence, at Marietta, in this State. Massie contested his election; and on the 30th of December, 1807, the General Assembly, in joint session, by a vote of 24 to 20, decided that Meigs was not eligible. The vote of Fairfield was: For Meigs, 167; Massie, 46. In 1810, Governor Meigs was elected by the people, and served as Governor until 1814. He was a gentleman of education and talent, and Meigs county, upon the Ohio river, will perpetuate his name as long as Ohio exists. At the election of 1807, above alluded to, Elnathan Scofield was elected Senator, and Philemon Beecher and Wm. W. Irwin Representatives. The singularity of name borne by Governor Meigs is thus accounted for, as narrated to us by George Browning, Esq., a native of Belpre, and resident in this place since 1829. Jonathan Meigs, the father of Return J., was quite celebrated for his bravery in several Indian campaigns, and when out on one of these perilous excursions, during his absence, his wife was in her confinement, and wrought upon by great anxiety for her husband, kept continually crying out in pain: "Return, Jonathan, oh! Return, Jonathan, to me." About the time Return Jonathan was born, Jonathan returned, and she was quieted down, and at once the name "Return Jonathan" was given to the new comer. The great extent of territory comprised within the limits of Fairfield, and the inconveniences resulting to the settlers in the more new portion of the country from their great distance from the county seat, caused them to agitate the question of a division of the county as early as 1806. At the fifth General Assembly of Ohio, held in Chillicothe, December 1st, 1806, a strong effort was made, and it was "within an ace" of being successful. Elnathan Scofield, Senator, and Philemon Beecher, Representative, of Fairfield county, were particularly friendly to this measure. How near it came to being a success, may be judged of by the following statement upon the Senate Journal, page 115, January 15th, 1807. A message from the House of Representatives, by Mr. Beecher, represented that "the House had passed ‘an act for the division of Fairfield county,’ in which they desire the concurrence of the Senate." On the 16th, the bill was received and read a second time. On the 20th, page 128, Mr. Scofield laid before the Senate a petition, signed by a number of the inhabitants of Fairfield county, praying for a division thereof, and recommending Mount Vernon as the temporary seat of justice in said contemplated division, and also recommending certain persons as suitable characters for associate judges, and the petition was received and referred to the committee of the whole, to whom is committed the bill for a division of Fairfield county. On the 21st, the said bill was taken up, and considered and amended, and continued till Saturday next. At the sixth General Assembly, in December, 1807, we find on the 31st several petitions were presented from Fairfield county for a division of said county, which were referred to Messrs. Scofield, McArthur and Bigger. On the 7th of January, Senate Journal, page 69, Mr. Scofield presented a petition from citizens of Fairfield county living south of the Refugee Tract, whose names are thereunto subscribed, for two counties; the one lying north of Refugee Tract line to be called Center, and the other to be called --------. January 15ht, the bill pending in the Senate, page 83, several amendments were presented to the committee of the whole, one of which is: "Strike out in the 1st section and 6th line, after the word ‘heathen,’ ‘from thence west along the south boundary of said military tract, and insert,’" etc. From which it may be inferred that there were heathen about these parts before these later times. On the 16th of January the bill passed the Senate, and on the 30th of January, 1808, it passed the House and became a law. The second section of the act created the county of Knox. By this bill three of the best counties in the State of Ohio were marked out by metes and bounds, to wit: Licking, Knox and Richland. By the 4th section, the temporary seat of Justice of Licking was to be at the house of Levi Hays, and of Knox county at Mount Vernon. The 7th section provides "that Richland county shall be under the jurisdiction of Knox until the Legislature may think proper to organize the same." Hence, the reader will observe that in these pages we have incorporated several items of the early history of our younger sister - Richland - as well as some incidents of more particular interest to those dwelling in Licking. For the same reason, we have carried the history of Bloomfield, Chester and Franklin - three of the townships at present belonging to Morrow county, though until 1848 part and parcel of old Knox. The same commissioners, who located the seat of justice of Knox county at Mount Vernon, under the join resolution of February 9, 1808, fixed the seats of justice of Licking and Delaware counties at Newark and Delaware. On the 14th of February, in joint ballot, the General Assembly chose the first associate judges of Knox county, Wm. W. Farquhar, John Mills and William Gass. As we have before stated, in the year 1805 some of the inhabitants became desirous of having a town on Owl Creek, and Mount Vernon was laid out accordingly. The proprietors were Benjamin Butler, Thomas B. Patterson, and Joseph Walker. One of the settlers being from the Potomac, and thinking of the consecrated spot on its shores, suggested that, as the stream was so clear and beautiful, the place should bear the sacred name - Mount Vernon - and it was so done. Clinton - one mile and a half north - located the year before, was by its proprietor named after Governor DeWitt Clinton, of New York, and he also showed his regard for his old friend by giving the name to his son - DeWitt Clinton Smith - who was a member of the sixth Legislature of Texas, and now resides in the Lone Star State. And in 1807 Fredericktown was laid out. Thus there were three towns, having a "local habitation and a name," before the county of Knox was created. Neither of them had advanced very far in the scale of citydom up to 1808; of the number, however, Clinton was the most promising. It had, at that time, more houses, shops and workmen, than either of the others. Gilman Bryant opened a grocery store in Mount Vernon, on the lot where Buckingham Emporium now stands. It was a little story and a half sycamore cabin, where he kept powder, shot, lead, whisky, etc., for sale to the Indians and the few whites in 1807. Samuel H. Smith had a pretty good stock of goods and traps at Clinton. Of each of these towns we shall speak more fully under their appropriate heads. Upon the organization of the county, the inhabitants were greatly please. Those who had been compelled to travel to New Lancaster to transact county business, were particularly gratified. The proprietors of town sites and holders of lots therein, were superlatively elated. On the 9th day of February, 1808, James Armstrong, James Dunlap and Isaac Cook were appointed Commissioners to located the seat of justice. In pursuance thereof, the proceeded to discharge the duties imposed upon them, and on the 28th day of March, they appeared before John Mills, Justice of the Peace, and were severally sworn to discharge the duties assigned them as Commissioners as aforesaid. Clinton and Mount Vernon were the principal competitors for the seat of justice. The former place at that time was the larger. It had more goods, more mechanics, more enterprises on foot, more houses, more people, and more hope for the future. It had more of New England families, more of Yankee spirit and shrewdness; and yet, with all their cunning and craftiness - all their money and management - all their efforts and inducements - Clinton lost the selection. Its generals were out-generaled - its managers out-maneuvered - its wits outwitted - its Yankees out-Yankeed by the less showy and pretending men from the Potomac and the Youghiogheny, who had settled at Mount Vernon. The choice of either one for the county seat involved the ultimate ruin of the other. Clinton made a bold effort to keep up against adverse winds. It could not sustain an appeal from the decision of the Commissioners, but still it kept on for several years in its improvements, and until after the war it was ahead of Mount Vernon in many respects. It had the first and only newspaper in the county for two years; it had the first and only church in the county for many years; it had stores, tanyards, shops of various kinds, and greater variety of business than Mount Vernon; but after the war was over it began to decay , and its rival took the lead. The accredited account of the location of the county seat is as follows: - The Commissioners first entered Mount Vernon, and were received with the best cheer at the log tavern of Mr. Butler. To impress them with an idea of the public spirit of the place, the people were very busy at the moment of their entrance and during their stay, at work, all with their coats off, grubbing the streets. As they left for Clinton, all quitted their labor, not "of love;" and some rowdies, who dwelt in cabins scattered round about in the woods, away from town, left "the crowd," and stealing ahead of the Commissioners, arrived at Clinton first. On the arrival of the others at that place, these fellows pretended to be in a state not comformable to temperance principles, ran against the Commissioners, and by their rude and boisterous conduct so disgusted the worthy officials as to the apparent morals of the inhabitants of Clinton, that they returned and made known their determination that Mount Vernon should be the favored spot. That night there were great rejoicings in town. Bonfires were kindled, stews made and drank, and live trees split with gunpowder. Such is a plausible account of this matter, which we have often heard related by our old friend Gilman Bryant, who took great pride in rehearsing a fable calculated to give Mount Vernon the manifest advantage in the estimation of moral and temperance men in these later times. But some of those who lived in the county at that early day give an entirely different version to the subject, and even have gone so far as to aver that the Commissioners themselves delighted, as did the rest of mankind, in taking a "wee drap of the cratur," and could not have been "disgusted by rude and boisterous conduct" to which they were accustomed. And again it is suggested that "the crowd" at that day was not so great in this locality that men who had sense and observation sufficient to be selected for Commissioners, would not have been able to observe and distinguish "the rowdies," and class them where they belonged. Another old settler, whose partiality at that day was for Clinton, avers that the proprietor of Clinton, Mr. Smith, had been very illiberal in his dealings with those who wished to purchase lots in his town. He had adopted a plan of withholding from market the best lots on the plat, and keeping the corner lots to be enhanced in value by the improvements made by settlers upon inside lots. At this course many of them became dissatisfied, and some of the number who had bought of him collogued with the Mount Vernonites against Clinton. We have been told by another old citizen, that two of the men living north of Mount Vernon, and considered as in the Clinton interest, proposed to Kratzer and Patterson to help secure the location of the county seat at Mount Vernon, in consideration of their receiving two lots apiece in the town, and that their favor and influence went accordingly. Any yet another account of this mooted question as to how the preference came to be Mount Vernon, comes to us in this wise; - One of the Commissioners was security for Samuel Kratzer, and had become involved on that account. Kratzer had moved to this place from Lancaster, where he had been acting as land tax collector of Fairfield county, in 1805, and reported himself to have been robbed of the public money while upon the road going to make his return. He was a fine looking, large, fleshy man, and wore tight buckskin breeches. They had holes in them which he alleged to have been shot in the encounter, though they bore the appearance of having been cut; his saddle-bags were also exhibited with horrid gashes in them, and making profert of these he petitioned the Legislature for relief, and at the session of 1806, the bill for his relief was lost by a vote of 10 yeas to 17 nays. - H. J., p. 114. Certain it is, Kratzer lost caste, and broken up and humiliated, he came to the new town site and bought out Patterson’s interest in the town of Mount Vernon, and it is represented that one of the Commissioners was counted on by the settlers as certain for said place. He got another of the Board with him, and Mount Vernon came off victor. Subsequently - and as resulting from this judgment - Kratzer, enabled by the rise of property to pay off his debt, did the fair and just thing by the Commissioner. Mount Vernon at that time was a rough, ragged, hilly spot, with a thick growth of hazel and other bushes, not near so inviting a place as Clinton, where everything appeared enticing to the stranger. Gilman Bryant says that: "The ground north of Butler’s Tavern was then almost wholly in woods. Some timber had been chopped down in places. Main Street was full of stumps, log heaps and trees, and the road up the street was a poor crooked path winding round amongst the stumps and logs." Richard Roberts says that it was very rough and broken where Mount Vernon was located, and was the last spot on God’s earth a man would have picked to make a county seat. Another gentleman residing north of Mount Vernon, and partial to Fredericktown, thinks that by a little management that place might have been made the permanent seat of justice, when the strife was so great between the other towns. They might have got a strip thrown off of Delaware county, which might have been attached, and then Frederick would have been alike central; but Kerr and his comrades had not their eyes open to the importance of getting that five mile range with Knox, and they were left out of doors when the location was made permanent. We have thus minutely given all the statements made to us in regard to the selection of a permanent seat of justice, for it will be a matter of far greater interest to future generations than to the present. Our seventh chapter we devote to Ben. Butler’s version, which will be read with great interest, as he is the only one of the proprietors of the town now living, and was a prominent actor in that affair. With that we leave this elaborately discussed subject.