MIAMI COUNTY OHIO - HISTORY [Part 6] (published 1880)
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Historical Collections of Ohio
Henry Howe LL.D.

Traveling Notes

On my arrival at Piqua I had the gratification of being taken in charge
of by the oldest born resident,  and to him I am under "ever so many"
obligations. This was Major Stephen Johnston,  so named from his father,
a brother of Col. John Johnston.  He is by profession a lawyer,  and
although I met many of his profession on this tour,  he is the only one
that I know of whose father was killed and scalped by the Indians and
his scalp sold to the British.  This happened near Fort Wayne,  where he
was a factory agent.  A month later, September 29, 1812, the Major was
born.  This was in a farm house just south of Piqua.

The stock is historic, and heroic.  The Major's mother's maiden name was
Mary Caldwell, and she was born in Bryant's Station, a fort near
Lexington, Ky.,  in 1788, in the pristine days of Boone, Kenton, and
Simon Girty and his red skinned confreres,  the hair lifting war hoops. 
When the Major was thirteen years of age he put on a knapsack, trudged
through the wilderness to Urbana, learned to make saddles, and then for
fourteen years worked as a journeyman saddler in Ohio, Pennsylvania,
Indiana and Kentucky.  In the meanwhile he studied as he stitched until
in 1850, when 38 years old, he launched as a lawyer with six children,
as he says, "tugging at his coat tail."  Prior to this he had been
county sheriff and in the Ohio Legislature;  since been an officer in
the Union army, in the Legislature, President of the Board of Trustees
of the Ohio State University,  Greenback candidate for Governor, etc., 
everywhere a leading spirit,  and being such took me in his cheery
charge.

Piqua's Social Exchange--
After dusk of a fine April day he introduced me to the Social Exchange
of Piqua, located on the pavement in front of the tobacco and cigar
store of Mr. Charles T. Wiltheiss.  There I found a knot of
antediluvians,  old gentlemen of the town lolling in chairs smoking and
chatting over the affairs of the universe,  Jupiter and his moons
inclusive, which they often do there, amid the chirpings of the crickets
and the amiable disputes of the katydids.  Taking a chair and a cigar
with them they answered my questions.  One happened to be:  "Have you
any curious trees about here?"  "Oh yes! something very remarkable. 
About two miles north between the river and the canal,  which are but a
few rods apart,  an elm and a sycamore start out from the ground
together,  go up with embracing bodies and intermingled branches."  The
next day I walked thither with Mr. Wiltheiss,  and found it such a great
curiosity that I had it photographed for the engraving that is given and
named it the "Wedded Trees of the Great Miami."

Ancient Relics--
Piqua is historically and pictorially interesting.  The river winds
around the town broad and mostly shallow, with two long old style
covered bridges half a mile apart stretched across to help out the
scene,  both being in one view.  Only a few miles above was the earliest
point of English Indian trade in Ohio.  The region was a favorite place
with the Indians and the mound builders,  the remains of whose works are
extremely numerous around and especially above the town in the river
valley.  Mr. Wiltheiss has for thirty years been in the habit of opening
mounds, making explorations.  He has in his cigar store a fine cabinet
of relics,  and has made valuable contributions to various
archaeological museums.  He told me that he was unlettered.  But I found
his hobby had educated him,  added interest to his life and made him an
interesting man.  He had been a close observer of nature,  and this is
all in all.  Nature is God's College for Humanity,  where old Sol sits
in the Presidential chair and lights up things.  No one that closely
observes and carefully reflects from his facts can be called ignorant.

A Sad Incident--
It was on Saturday morning, April 17th, that Mr. Wiltheiss and myself
turned our backs on the old upper covered bridge for a walk to the
wedded trees,  the canal on our left and the big Miami on our right.  We
walked on the towing path.  My companion talked all the way,  making the
walk highly enjoyable.  We give some details.
We had gone but a few hundred yards when he said:  "The river at this
spot is very dangerous; many boys have been drowned here.  On the 12th
of July, 1858, a Mr. Jones, who was going to his work in a threshing
machine shop,  saw two boys struggling for their lives in the water, 
whereupon he rushed to their rescue.  He waded across the canal, ran
down the river bank into the water and saved them.  Both are now living,
men about 40 yrs of age, Dr. M'Donald and E.B. Butterfield.  But Jones
lost his own life,  sank through exhaustion and perished,  leaving a
widow and three children fatherless.

Island Formation--
The tremendous freshets late in the Miami, consequent upon forest
destruction,  make great changes.  We soon passed an island made by a
freshet only two years before.  It was like a flat iron in shape,  point
down stream, and at its upper part, where it was separated by a rivulet
from other land, it was about 200 feet across.  Its total length was
some 600 feet.  It was some two feet high, and in some places overgrown
with young sycamore and willow bushes some five or six feet high. 
These,  my companion said, had sprung up in the intervening two years: 
the willows from broken twigs and the sycamores form the seed balls, 
commonly called button balls, that had floated down and lodged in the
rich alluvium.

Thorns--
We passed some locust bushes, with thorns full five inches in length,
whereupon he said:  "This is what we call the sweet locust, because it
bears a bean sweet to the taste, which children often eat.  Some suppose
this to be the the identical species grown in Palestine,  which John the
Baptist, when crying in the wilderness,  ate when he partook of 'locust
and wild honey;'  those thorns also may be the identical kind from which
came the crown of thorns that Christ wore at his crucifixion."  How this
may be I can't say, but doubtless the thorns were like those sometimes
used in lieu of pins by the pioneer women.  Chief Justice Marshall
somewhere speaks of his mother and the old time Virginia women using
such.  This was probably as far back as the time when murderers were
hung on chains by the road side ion Virginia,  a ghastly sight for
travelers in that then wilderness region.  Elkanah Watson, who traveled
through Virginia in the revolutionary war,  speaks of seeing such.
Presently Mr. Wiltheiss pointed out a field where were the relics of a
large circular mound.  It had been an Indian burial place, and proved
for him a rich spot for relics.

Sights, Songs and Sounds--
Pursuing our walk along the beautiful river, I found myself enveloped in
the delights of nature.  It was the breeding season among the birds, and
they gave us their sweetest love notes.  Among the cries were those of a
pair of redbirds, the cardinal, from the opposite side of the Miami.  We
stopped and listened.  The female is red on the breast,  and the back
and wings gray.  The male is everywhere red, excepting a black ring
around the bill, which is also red.  He has a red top knot which he
raises while singing, and lays down when silent.  "Wait," said
Wiltheiss. "I will call them over."  Starting a peculiar whistle in a
twinkling over they came in all their feathery beauty,  and flying
around followed us with their song.
The Indians of the Pacific slope to this day while hunting call various
animals, even squirrels, within the range of their rifles.  How they do
it is a secret,  for if a white man is along they will hide their mouths
with their hands.  This amy be called the Art of the Woods,  to be a
lost art with the extinction of the Indians.
Moving on we were soon saluted by the cackling of hens, the crowing of
roosters, the bellowing of a cow, and the hammering of man driving nails
in a fence from an old brown farm cottage near by,  and then the voices
of two men paddling upstream in a skiff with fish rods along,  going for
black bass,  it being just the biting season.  Vegetable felicity
finally arrested us;  we had reached the wedded trees.
The wedded trees stand on the line of the towing path of the canal,
about six rods west of the river, the flat space between being overgrown
with wild hemp and thistles,  with paw-paws abounding in the vicinity. 
The elm is a large, vigorous tree,  but far smaller than the sycamore, 
which embraces and conceals a larger part of its body and thus they go
up together,  perhaps fifteen or twenty feet, when they branch,  and
with interlocking branches.  Their height is about 70 feet,  and six
feet from the ground, by our measurement, the girth was 24 feet. 
Observing a slit on the river side of the sycamore, I saw it was hollow
within.  I doubted if any human being had ever been inside.  I did not
feel it safe to make the venture.  It might be a harbor for some ugly
reptile.  A sense of duty urged me to the trial.  I was dedicated to
Ohio and must shrink at nothing, and so in I went.  The slit was too
narrow for me to get in without the aid of my companion,  and so I was
put in sideways, much as one would put a board through an upright slat
fence.  My feet sank a foot or two lower than the ground outside.  I
then stood upright, and the top of the slit came up to about my waist;  
but little light came in through it.  Above me the hole went up
indefinitely. The walls were covered with pendent decaying wood.  The
place was gloomy and musty.  I could see but little, and was glad to
quickly get out,  feeling as though I could not commend it for any
permanent habitation.
Aged trees, like the sycamore here, are apt to be hollow within.  This
seems to make no difference with their duration of life.  The famous
Charter Oak lived about 150 years after the secretion of the charter
within,  and in its last years it held all the members of two fire
companies at once.  When it was blown down in a gale about 1854, the
bells of Hartford tolled and a military band played a dirge over its
remains.
The sustaining life of trees appears to be within a few inches of their
bark.  I once saw an aged oak that had been destroyed by fire, and all
that was left of it was less than half its outer shell, and this had
within a surface of charcoal;  yet the shell had sufficient vim to carry
up the sap for its few remaining branches that had put forth leaves. 
That tree, however, was on its last legs.  I visited the spot a year
later and it was gone.  The old sycamore I was slipped into may yet live
a century.  The Charter Oak was perhaps 1,000 years of age.


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