OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Tidbits of Ohio -- Part 48B

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Historical Collections of Ohio
And Then They Went West
Know Your Ohio
Tid Bits - Part 48 B
by Darlene E. Kelley
Notes by
S. Kelly 
Adams Cty Historical Society.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Tid Bits - Part 48 B.
Adams County ( Cont ) 
Townships

              Liberty Township

Liberty Township was organized December 06, 1817 from territory taken
from the north end of Sprigg Townhip.
Under the territorial organization, what is now Liberty is included
mostly in Manchester Township; the western portion, however, was within
the limits of Cedar Hill. The first election in Liberty Township was
held at the house of David Robe in April 1818.

It is said that Governor Thomas Kirker was the first settler, but it is
more accurate to say he was among the first pioneers of this region. His
cabin was erected on Zane's Trace on what is known as the old Kirker
farm in southeastern part of Liberty Township. James January came as
early as 1796 and one year later opened a tavern on the Trace at the
foot of the hill west of West Union on the Swearengen farm. About this
date also came Needham Perry, Alexander Meharry, Richard Askren, John
Mahaffey, Reverand Thomas Odell, David Robe, George Dillinger, Bezebel
Gorden, Colonel John Lodwick, Daniel Marlett, James Wade and Joseph
Wade. Later, James McGovney, John Stivers, Conrad Foster and Lewis
Coryell.

There were many Indians in this region when the first settlers came,
after the treaty of Greenville, and they annoyed  
the pioneers greatly by begging and pilfering, and occasionally stealing
horses. William Crawford, in order to protect a valuable horse from
being stolen, built a stable in one end of his cabin in which he secured
the animal at night.


            Manchester Township

Manchester was the name of one of the territorial townships formed at
the organization of Adams County in September 1797. It included a part
of what is now Tiffin, Oliver, and Scott; all of Winchester, Wayne, and
Liberty; and most of Sprigg Township as now constituted, including the
present township of Manchester, its northern limit extended to the Wayne
County line, north of the site of the city of Columbus.

In the spring of the year 1793, the settlers at Manchester commenced
clearing the out-lots of the town; and while so engaged, an incident of
much interest and excitment occurred. Mr. Andrew Ellison, one of the
settlers, cleared a lot immediately adjoining the fort. He had completed
the cutting of timber, rolled the logs together and set them on fire.
The next morning, a short time before day break, Mr. Ellison opened one
of the gates of the fort and went out to throw his logs together. By the
time he had finished this job, a number of the heaps blazed up brightly,
and as he was passing from one to the other, he observed, by the light
of the fires, three men walking briskly towards him. This did not alarm
him in the least, although, he said, they were dark skinned fellows; yet
he concluded that they were the Wades, whose complexions were very dark,
going early to hunt. He continued to right his log heaps, until one of
the fellows siezed him by the arms, and called out in broken English, "
How do? how do?" He instantly looked in their faces, and to his surprise
and horror, found himself in the clutches of three Indians. To resist
was useless. He there
for submitted to his fate, without any resistance or an attempt to
escape.

The Indians quickly moved off with him in the direction of Paint Creek.
When breakfast was ready, Mrs. Ellison sent one of her children to ask
their father home; but he could not be found at the log heaps. His
absence created no immediate alarm, as it was thought he might have
started to hunt after the completion of his work. Dinner time arrived,
and Ellison not returning, the family became uneasy, and began to
suspect some accident had happened to him. His gun rack was examined,
and there hung his rifle and his pouch in their usual place. Mr. Massie
raised a party and made a circuit around the place and found, after some
search, the trails of four men one of whom had on shoes; and as Ellison
had shoes on, the truth that the Indians had made him a prisoner was
unfolded. As it was almost night at the time the trail was discovered,
the party returned to their station. Next morning early, preparations
were made by Massie and his party to pursue the Indians. In doing this
they found great difficulty, as it was so early in the spring that the
vegetation was not of sufficient growth to show plainly the trail of the
Indians, who took the precaution to keep on hard and high land, where
their feet could make little or no impression. Massie and his party,
however, were as unerring as a pack of well-trained hounds, and followed
the trail to Paint Creek, when they found the Indians gained so fast on
them that pursuit was vain. They therefore abandoned it and returned to
the station.

The Indians took their prisoner to Upper Sandusky and compelled him to
run the gauntlet. As Ellison was a large man and not very active, he
received a severe flogging as he passed along the line. From this place
he was taken to Detroit, where he was generously ransomed by a British
officer for one hundred dollars. He was shortly afterwards sent by his
friend the officer to Montreal, from whence he returned home before the
close of summer of the same year.

Another incident connected with the station at Manchester occurred
shortly after this time. John Edgington, Asahel Edgington, and another
man, started out on a hunting exedition towards Brush Creek. They camped
out six miles in a
north-east direction from where West Union now stands, and near where
Treber's tavern is now situated, on the road to Chillicothe to
Maysville. The Edgingtons had good success in hunting having killed a
number of deer and bears.
Of the deer killed, they saved the skins and hams alone. The bears, they
fleeced; that is, they cut off all the meat which adhered to the hide
without skinning, and left the bones as a skeleton. They hung up the
proceeds of their hunt on a scaffold, out of the reach of the wolves and
other wild animals, and returne home for pack horses. No one returned to
the hunting camp with the two Edgingtons. As it was late in December, no
one apprehended danger, as the winter season was usually a time of
repose from Indian incursion. When the Edgingtons arrived at their old
hunting camp, they alighted from their horses and were preparing to
strike a fire, when a platoon of Indians fired upon them at the distance
of not more than twenty paces. Asahel Edgington fell to rise no more.
John was more fortunate. The sharp crack of the rifles, and the horrid
yells of the Indians, as they leaped  from their place of ambush,
frightened the horses, who took track towards home at full speed. John
Edgington was very active on foot, and now an occasion offered which
required his utmost speed. The moment the Indians leaped from their
hiding place they threw down their guns and took after him. They pursued
him screaming and yelling in the most horrid manner. Edgington did not
run a booty race. For about a mile the Indians stepped into his tracks
almost before the bending grass could rise. The uplifted tomahawk was
frequently so near his head that he thought he felt its edge. Every
effort was made to save his life, and every exertion of the Indians was
made to arrest him in his fight, Edgington, who had the greatest stake
in the race, at length began to gain on his pursuers, and after a long
race he distanced them, made his escape, and safely reached home. This
truely was a most fearful and well contested race. The big Shawanee
chief, Captain John, who headed the Indians on this occasion, after
peace was made and Chillicothe settled, frequently told of this sketch
of the race. Captain John said that " the white man who ran away was a
smart fellow; " that the " white man run and I run; he run and run, at
last the white man run clear off from me."
[ for more of Manchester see part 47. ]

The first mill erected in the county was a little " tub-wheel " built by
Nathaniel Massie on Island Creek about two miles from Manchester. Before
the completion of this mill, the settlers at Manchester went to
Limestone to have their grinding done, or used a small handmill at the
Stockade. Some of the pioneers pounded their corn into a course meal on
a block, sifting the larger particles out for hominy. The younger
members of the family were kept busy shelling, drying and pounding, or
sometimes grating on the cob, corn for meal, as both processes were slow
and laborious.

The first steamboat to ply the waters of the Ohio was the " New
Orleans," built at Pittsburg, and which came down past Manchester in
December 1811. The next was the " Aetna," early in the spring of 1812.
Before this date, pirogues and flatboats were cordelled on the waters of
the Ohio when ascending the stream. It took four weeks to go by one of
these pirogues from Cincinnati to Pittsburgh. Jacob Myers, who owned a
fleet of four pirogues, advertised in " The Centinel of the Northwest
Territory," in 1793 that he would insure passengers on his boats against
harm from the Indians, as his crafts were armored and provided with
portholes.


             Meigs Township

Meigs Township was formed at the December session of the Board of County
Commissioner in 1806, and was named for Return Jonathan Meigs, the
Second Governor of Ohio. The elections were ordered to be held at the
house of Peter Wickerham who then conducted a tavern at the brick
residence of Jacob Wickerham at Palestine.

Jacksonville, a hamlet of Meigs, was laid out by William Thomas in 1815,
and named in honor of " Old Hickory " then a
military hero of the country.  A post office was establihed about the
same time with James Dunbar as postmaster. Later the district was called
Dunbarton.

Newport, at the junction of west Fork and east Fork of Ohio Brush Creek,
was laid out by James Kirkpatrick in 1819. At the time the Marble
Furnace, within a few miles of the settlement was flourishing. The
comercial importance of the village was indeed here.

Mineral Springs in Meigs Township was a health resort and laid out with
in a four mile radius. These celebrated springs were situated nineteen
miles north of Rome on the Ohio River, in a delightful valley and flow
from the base of a mountain surrounded by scenery the most picturesque
and beautiful. The chemical analysis of these waters show them to be
very highly charged with gas, and contain 
205.35 grains of solids to the gallon. These are composed of chloride of
magnesia, sulfate of lime, carbonate of lime, chloride of calcium,
chloride of sodium, oxide of iron and iodine. There was a large and
commodious hotel with hot and cold baths, and numerous cottages for the
accomodation of guests.   

Peebles, located in the north part of Meigs Township sprang up with the
completion of the railroad through Meigs Township. It was named for John
Peebles who helped subscribe liberally to the completion of the
railroad. It had the largest school in the
district.

In the vacinity of the Spoull Bridge over the Ohio Brush Creek in the
Meigs Township was the pioneer home of Peter Shoemaker, a brother of
Simon Shoemaker, a pioneer, also of that vacinity. In the summer of
1796, a daughter of Peter Shoemaker's was stolen by a band of Indians
and carried to their village on the Little Miami in the vacinity of the
present town of Xenia. In after years, this daughter, who had grown up
and married an Indian, was discovered by some whites and returned to her
kindred on Brush Creek, where she afterwards married and reared a
family. There was another version of the story, but this we do know, is
that she had a daughter from her marriage to Samuel Bradford  in 1811,
and after his death, married Colonel S.R. Wood.

In May, 1827, in the palmy days of the old stage coach line from
Maysville to Chillicothe, the mail was robbed between West Union and
Sinking Springs. As the bag was never recovered, it was supposed that it
had been thrown into Ohio Brush Creek after being rifled of its
contents. Suspicion pointed to a prominent resident of Jacksonville as
being concerned in the robbery, and who fled the country, and William
McColm, then postmaster at West Union, offered a reward of fifty dollars
for his apprehension and confinement. The robber was never caught. This
was the first robbery of the mails in this area.

David Bradford, was the daredevil who drove a stage couch from Maysville
to Chillicothe before the days of canals and railroads in this region.
The Fristoe Hill at the crossing of Ohio Brush Creek was the longest and
the steepest on the route, and was cnsidered then a very dangerous place
of descent with a loaded stage coach or wagon. One one occasion, when
there had been a heavy fall of sleet and the road was covered with a
thick coat of ice, people in the vacinity wondered how Dave Bradford
would get down Brush Creek Hill and when he finally arrived at
Jacksonville, he was told of the great risk of attempting to descend the
hill with his coach. But David seemed little concerned about the matter;
however, it was observed that his drinks of " old double distilled "
were larger than usual, and that at his departure he had taken an extra 
" bumper " with Matt Bradney, who had come to town the night before and
was weaterbound at the village tavern. But the "bumper" with Bradney
meant more than a nerve stimulent to Bradford, it was a seal of a solemn
vow to Bradney that he would not again permit his negro, " Black Joe "
Logan, to butt the life out of him as he had nearly done at the Noleman
Camp Meeting the summer previous, when Bradney and " Big Dow" Woods had
attempted to drive Logan from the camp grounds while he was peaceably
caring for Bradford's team and carriage.
So, seating himself on the box of his stage, he cracked the whip ad set
out on a swinging trot for Brush Creek Hill. On arriving at the point
where begins the descent down to the valley of Brush Creek, he halted
his team and unhitched it from the coach. Then he hitched a favorite
horse to the end of the tongue, and mounting the animal began to ply the
whip, and yell like an Indian, making the descent of the long steep
grade without a single mishap; remarking that it was 
" a dammed poor horse that could not outrun a stage coach."


             Monroe Township 

Monroe Township was organized from territory belonging to Tiffin
Township, June 23, 1817. It was named in honor of President James
Monroe. Its boundaries are; beginning on Brush Creek at the upper corner
of William Stout's farm; thence on a line to three mile tree below
Kirker Mill; thence on a divide line to Clark's Meeting House; keeping
on a direct course to Sprigg Township; being bound on the west by Sprigg
Township line and Island Creek to its mouth; on the south by the Ohio
River; and on the east by Brush Creek. The first election was held at
the house of Arthur Ellison on July 26, 1817.

John Yochum, whose name appears in the early land records as an
assistant to Massie and other surveyors, settled on Gift Ridge in 1795.
[ Gift Ridge was a name given to that portion of the highlands of Monroe
Township where the first settlers of Manchester located their one
hundred acre tracts of land given them by Nathaniel Massie after a
residence of two years at Manchester, in accordance with the terms of
the agreement made between them on December 29, 1780. Massie reserved
one thousand acres on the high tablelands overlooking the Ohio River
about one mile below Wrightsville. Here he built Buckeye Station in
1796. ]  Yochum cleared the first patch of ground on the Fenton Farm,
and while doing so lived under the shelter of two huge rocks which are
pointed out to visitors to this day as " Yocum's Hermitage." Following
Yocum came the Utes, Wades, Naylors, Washburns, Whaleys and many other
pioneers of Adams County. Zephaniah Wade, an associate of John Yochum at
Gift Ridge erected a cabin in the latter part of the year of 1795, and
there his daughter Christiana, was born November 20, 1795. She later
married a Trenary and moved to Manchester. She was probably the first
white child born in the county outside the Stockade at Manchester.
Nathaniel Washburn settled at the head of Danalson Creek in 1796, and
soon after built a small mill, known as Washburn's Mill for many years.
James Hemphill settled on Beasley's Fork in 1797 and it is said cleared
the first ground on that stream where Newton Wamsley lived. The Grimes
family settled at the mouth of Ohio Brush Creek in 1796, where Nobel
Grimes in 1798 laid out the old town of Washington, for several years
the seat of Justice for Adams County. Here also were the Stephensons,
the Bradfords, the Sherards, Faulkners, ad many other early pioneer
families. It is said the first school house in the township was on the
old Lewis Bible farm and was built in 1802 with James Lane its first
teacher.

Monroe Township was the home of many old soldiers of the Revolution.
Among them was Henry Aldred, who is buried in Beach's cemetery on the
McColm farm. He was wounded at the siege of Charleston by the British,
which lamed him for life. He had an enduring hatred for everything
English. Living in the vicinity of Aldred's home in Monroe Township was
John Pike, who had been in the English Navy. At a log rolling at old
Edward Hemphill's Pike was relateing his experience in the navy and
asked Aldred if he remembered what fine music they had as they marched
into Charleston after its surrender. This so infuriated Aldred that,
crippled as he was, it took several of the bystanders to keep him from
striking Pike with a handspike.

Old Donald Sherwood, a relative of the wife of Stephen Beach, a pioneer
on Brush Creek, was known as the " foolish
Yankee." Among other things related of im is that while living in a
cabin near the mouth of Brush Creek, before a settlement was made there,
he tracked a large bear into a cave in the hills, and, Putnam-like, with
torch and gun, entered it, and shot the bear which weighed over three
hundred pounds.

Captain William Faulkner, or Falconer, a soldier of the Revolution and
also of the War of 1812, was an early settler at the mouth of Brush
Creek. He is buried in the old orchard on the Grimes farm. He was a
Catholic, and it is related of him that when his wife died, he had her
buried at the chimney of his house. he then built a kitchen, adjoining
and laid the hearthstone over her grave. He would enter the kitchen,
sprinkle water over the hearthstone and exclaim; " You are well rid out
of this hell's kitchen, my dear."

Henry Malone, who was bron at Pleasant Bottoms on the Hemphill farm near
the Brush Creek, Jan. 26, 1815, related that it was said by all the old
Revolutionary soldiers in the area that William Floyd or Flood ( as he
was sometimes called,) was an illegitimate son of General David Morgan.
Floyd is buried on the hillside near Cedar College schoolhouse. Mr.
Malone said that when he was about eight years of age, the Methodists
held a meeting at the home of Stephen Beach, who then lived on the
opposite side of Brush Creek. One Monday morning, a young man in company
with Mr. John Brooks came to the ford and called to him to bring his
father's canoe and ferry them over the creek. He did so, and the young
man gave him a six and one-qarter cents silver piece, which was the
first money he had ever earned. That young man was Henry Bascom, then
preaching his first sermons in the pioneer settlements in Adams County.
Mr. Malone said he gave that piece of silver to his mother to help keep
old Abraham Jones from being sold as a pauper as was the laws in those
days, and remarked that although now eighty five years old, he had been
"keeping paupers" ever since.

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

To be con't in Tid-Bits part 48 C.