OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Tidbits of Ohio -- Part 45

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Historical Collections of Ohio
And Then They Went West
Know Your Ohio
by Darlene E. Kelley
Tid Bits - Part 45.
notes by
S. Kelly.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

          Ohio, The Buckeye State

The name Buckeye as applied to the State of Ohio is an accepted one and
is so well recognized and so generally understood throughout the United
States. It  originates from the Buckeye tree which is indigenous to the
State of Ohio. It is found in the rich native soils of the Muskingum,
Hocking, Scioto, Miamis, and Ohio, where in the early settlement of the
State it was found growing in great abundance, and because of the
luxuriance of its foliage, the richly colored dyes of its fruit, and its
ready adaption to the wants and convenience of the pioneers, it was
highly prized by them for many useful purposes.

It was also well known to and prized by the Indians from whose rude
language comes its name " Hetuck, "  meaning the eye of the buck,
because of the striking resemblance in color and shape between the brown
nut and the eye of that animal, the peculiar spot upon the one
corresponding to the iris in the other. 
In its application, however, we have reversed the term and call the
person or thing to which it is applied, a buckeye.

In a very interesting after dinner speech made by Dr. Daniel Drake, the
eminent botanist and Ohio valley historian, at a banquet given at the
city of Cincinnati,
Ohio on a anniversary of the State, the buckeye was very ably discussed,
its botanical classification given, its peculiar characteristics and
distinctive properties referred to, and the opinion expressed that the
name was at first applied as a nickname or term of derision, but has
since been raised into a title of honor.

This conclusion does not seem to be altogether warrented, for the name
is not only of Indian origin as stated, but the first application of it
ever made to a white man was made by the Indians themselves, and
intended by them as an expression of their highest sense of admiration.

S.P. Hildreth, a pioneer historian of Marietta, Ohio, to whom we are
indebted for many interesting events related to the settlement at the
mouth of the Muskingum, tells us that upon the opening of the first
court in the Northwest Territory, on the 2nd day of September, 1788, a
procession was formed at the point where most of the settlers resided,
and marched up a path that had been cut and cleared through the forest
to Campus Martius Hall, in the following order:
   1st. The high sheriff with drawn sword.
   2d.  The citizens.
   3d.  Officers of the garrison at Fort 
          Harmar.
   4th. Members of the bar.
   5th. Supreme judges.
   6th. The governor and clergymen.
   7th. The newly appinted judges of the 
          Court of Common Pleas, General
          Rufus Putnam and Benjamin 
          Tupper.

There the whole countermarched, and the judges, Putman and Tupper, took
their seats; the clergyman, Rev. Dr. Cutler, invoked the divine
blessing, and the sheriff, Col Ebenezer Sproat, proclaimed with his
solemn O yes ! that a court is opened for the administration of
even-handed justice, to the poor as well as to the rich, to the guilty
and the innocent, without respect of persons, none to be punished
without a trial of their peers, and then in pursuance of law; and that
although this scene was exhibited thus early in the settlement of the
State few ever equalled it in the dignity and exhalted character of the
actors; and that among the spectators who witnessed the ceremony and
were deeply impressed by its solemnity and seeming significance was a
large body of Indians collected from some of the most powerful tribes of
the northwest, for the purpose of making a treaty with the whites.
Always fond of ceremony among themselves they witnessed the parade of
which they little suspected the import with the greatest interest, and
were especially impressed with the high sheriff who lead the procession
with drawn sword; we are told that he was over six feet in height, well
proportioned and of commanding presence, and that his fine physical
proportions and dignified bearing excited their highest admiration,
which they expressed by the word "Hetuck," or in their language " big
Buckeye."  It was not spoken in derision, but was the expression of
their greatest admiration, and was afterwards often jocularly applied to
Colonel Sproat, and became a sort of nickname by which he was familiarly
known among his associates. That was certainly its first known
application to an individual in the sense now ued, but there is no
evidence that the name continued to be used and applied from that time
forward, or that it became a fixed and accepted sobriquet of the State
and people until more than half a century afterwards; during all of
which time the Buckeye continued to be an object of more or less
interest, and as immigration made its way across the State, the
settlements extended into the rich valleys where it was found by
travelers and explorers, and was by them carried back into the east and
shown as a rare curiousity from what was then known as the " far west, "
possessing certain medicinal properties for which it was highly prized.
But the name never became fully crystallized until 1840, when in the
crucible of what is known as the " bitterest, longest, and most
extraordinary political contest ever waged in the United States," the
name Buckeye became a fixed sobriquet of the State of Ohio and its
people, known and understood wherever either is spoken of, and likely to
continue as long as either shall be remembered or the English language
endures.

The manner in which this was brought about is one of the singular events
of that political epoch.

General William Henry Harrison having become the candidate of his party
for President, an opposition newspaper said
" that he was better fitted to sit in a log cabin and drink hard cider,
that rule in the White House,"  The remark was at once taken up by his
friends and became a party slogan of that ever memorable canvass.
Harrison became the log-cabin candidate, and was pictured as sitting by
the door of a rude log-cabin though which could be seen a barrel of hard
cider, while the walls were hung with coon skins and decorated with
strings of Buckeyes.

Political excitement spread with wonderful rapidity; there was music in
the air, and on the 22nd of February, 1840, a State convention was held
at the city of Columbus to nominate a candidate for governor. That was
before the day of railroads, yet from most of the counties of the State
large delegations in wagons and on horseback made their way to the
capital to participate in the convention. 
Among the many curious devices there appeared in the procession a
vertitable log-cabin, from Clarke county, built of Buckeye logs, upon a
wagon and drawn in the procession by horses, while the roof and inside
of the cabin was sung this song:

     " Oh where, tell me where
       Was your Buckeye cabin made ?

       Twas built among the merry boys
        who weld the plough and spade,
        Where the log-cabins stand,
        In the bonnie Buckeye shade."

        Oh What, tell me what, is your                  cabin's fate ?

        We'll wheel it to the capital and                 place it there
elate,

        For a Token and a Sign of the bonnie
        Buckeye State."

>From that time forward the buckeye became an important factor in the
canvas;
cabins were multiplied and drawn in processions at all the leading
meetings. The name was applied to General Harrison as;  

  " Hurrah for the father of the Great West,
 For the Buckeye who follows the plough." 
The name was also applied to Mr. Corwin, the candidate for governor, as
---
 
       " Tom Corwin is a Buckeye boy,
          Who stands not for the pay."

And generally as 

       " Come all ye jolly Buckeye boys,
         And listen to my song.
         See what a host of lumber,
         And Buckeye boys without number,
         Aloft the logs to rear."

But the Buckeye was not only thus woven into song and sung and shouted
from every log-cabin, but it became a popular emblem of the party and an
article of commerce more especially along the Old National Road over
which the public travel of the country was carried at that day in stage
coaches, and men are yet telling who in 1840, resided in Zanesville and
can remember seeing crowds of men and boys going into the woods in the
morning and returning later in the day carring great bundles of buckeye
sticks to be converted into canes and sold to travellers, or sent to
adjoining States to be used as campaign purposes.

At a mass meeting held in Western Pennsylvania in 1840, delegations were
organized by townships, and at a preliminary meeting held to appoint
officers to marshal the procession and make other necessary
arrangements,it was resolved that each officer so appointed should
provide himself with a Buckeye cane as a badge of authority,and
thereupon committees were sent to Ohio to procure a supply of canes for
the occasion, with what sucess can b judged from the fact that while a
procession extending over two miles in length and numbering more than
1,500 people, halted on one of the Chartiers creek hills until one in
front moved out of the way, an inventory taken showed the number of
buckeye canes carried in the delegation to be 1,432, and in addition
over 100 strings of buckeye beads were worn by a crew of young ladies
dressed in white, who rode in an immense canoe, and carried banners
representing the several States of the Union.

These may seem to be rather trivial affairs to be referred to on such an
occasion as the present, but they serve to show the extent of the
sentiment that prevailed at the time, and the molding process going on,
so when the long and heated canvas finally closed with a sweeping
victory the crystallization was complete, and the name " Buckeye " was
irrevocably fixed upon the State and people of Ohio, and continues to
the present day one of the most popular and familiar sobriquets in use.

So early as 1841, the president of an Eastern college established for
the education of young women, showing a friend over the establishment
said: " There
is a young lady from New York, and that one is from Virginia, and this,"
pointing to another,"  " is one of our new Buckeye girls." A few years
later, Hon. S. S. Cox, a native Buckeye, and then a resident of Ohio,
made a tour of Europe, and wrote home a series of bright and interesting
letters over the nom de plume of " A Buckeye Abroad," which were
extensively read, and helped still further to fix the name and give it
character.
 
When the first ' log-cabin' was hastily put up, the softness and
lightness of its wood made the buckeye log was precious; for in those
times laborers were few and axes once broken in hard timber could not be
repaired. It was, moreover, of all the trees of the forest, that which
best arrested the rifle-bullets of the Indian.

When the infant Buckeyes came forth to render these solitary cabins
vocal, and make them instinct with life, cradles were necessary, and
they could not be so easily dug out of any other tree. Thousands of men
and women, who are now active and respectable performers on the great
theatre of Western society, were once rocked in Buckeye troughs.

Every native of the valley of the Ohio should feel proud of the
appellation, which, from the infancy of our settlements, has conferred
upon him; for the Buckeye has many qualities which may be regarded as
typical of a nobel character. 

It is not merely a native of the West, but peculiar to it; has received
from the botanists the specific name Ohioensis, from its abundance in
our beautiful valley; and is the only tree of our whole forest that does
not grow elsewhere. What other tree could be so fit an emblem of Ohio
native population?

In those early days, when a boundless and lofty wilderness overshadowed
every inhabitation, to destroy the trees and make way for the growth of
corn was the great object. Now, the lands where the buckeye abounded
were, from the special softness of its wood, the easiest of all others
to 'clear,' and in this way it afforded valuable through negative
assistance to the ' first settlers.'

Foreign sugar was then unknown in these regions, and our reliance for
this article, as for many others, was on the abounding woods. In
reference to this sweet and indispensable acquisition, the buckeye lent
us positive aid; for it was not only the best wood of the forest for
troughs, but everywhere grew side by side with the graceful and
delicious sugar maple. 

In the period of trying deprivation, to what quarter did the first
settlers turn their inquiring and anxious eyes?  The Buckeye tree, and
it proved a friend indeed, because, in the simple and expressive
language of those early times, it was " a friend in need.' Hats were
manufactured of its fibers --- the tray for the delicious 'pone' and
'Johnny-cake,' the venison trencher, the noggin, the spoon, and the huge
white family bowl for mush and milk, were carved from its willing trunk;
and the finest 'boughten' vessels could not have imparted a more
delicious flavor or left an impression so enduring. He who has ever been
concerned in the petty brawls, the frolic and fun of a family of young
Buckeyes around the great wooden bowl, overflowing with the 'milk of
human kindness,' will carry the sweet remembrance to the grave.

In all the woods there is not a tree so hard to kill as the Buckeye. The
deepest  'girdling' does not 'deaden it,' and even
after it is cut down and worked up into the side of a cabin, it will
send out young branches, denoting to all the world that Buckeyes are not
easily conquered, and could with difficulty be destoyed.

The Buckeye has generally been condemned as unfit for fuel, but its very
incombustibility has been found an advantage, for no tree of the forest
is equally valuable for 'backlogs,' which are the sine qua non of every
good cabin fire.
Thus treated, it may be finally, though slowly, burnt; when another of
its virtues immediately appears, as no other tree of our woods affords
so great a quantity of alkali; thus there is piquancy in its very ashes
!

The bark of our emblem plant has some striking properties. Under a
proper method of preparation and use, it is said to be very efficacious
in the cure of ague and fever, but unskillfully employed, it proves a
violent emetic; which may indicate that he who tampers with a Buckeye
will not do it with impunity. The fruit of the Buckeye offers much to
interest us. The capsule or covering of the nut is beset with sharp
prickles, which, incautiously grasped, will soon compel the aggressor to
let go his hold. The nut is undeniably the most beautiful of all which
our teeming woods bring forth; and in many parts of the country is made
subservient to the military education of our sons who, assembling in the
' 'muster-field ' ( where their fathers and elder brothers are learning
to be militiamen ), divide themselves into armies, and pelt each other
with the Buckeye balls; a military exercise at least as instructive as
that which their seniors perform with Buckeye sticks. The inner covering
of the nut is highly astringent. Its substance, when grated down, is
soapy, and has been used to cleanse fine fabrics in the absence of good
soap. When the powder is washed a large quantity of starch is obtained,
which might, if times of scarcity could arise in a land so fertile as
the native soil of this tree, be used for food. The water employed for
this purpose holds a solution an active medicinal agent, which, unwarily
swallowed, proves a poison; thus again admonishing those who would
attempt to 'use up' a Buckeye, that they may repent of their rashness.

Who has not looked with admiration on the foliage of the Buckeye in
early spring, while the more sluggish tenants of the forest remain
torpid in their winter quarters ? And what tree in all our wild woods
bears a flower which could be compared with that of our favorite ? We
may fearlessly challege for it the closest comparision. In early putting
forth, and the beauty of its leaves and blossoms, are appropriate types
of our native population, whose rapid and beautiful development will not
be denied, while the remarkable fact that almost every attempt to
transplant it into our streets has been a failure, shows that it will
die in captivity, a guarentee that those who bear its name can never be
enslaved. How befitting for the Buckeye to be our accepted sobriquet.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Tid Bits continued in part 46.