OHIO STATEWIDE FILES OH-FOOTSTEPS Mailing List Issue 64 ************************************************************************ USGENWEB ARCHIVES(tm) NOTICE Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgenwebarchives.org ************************************************************************** OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest Volume 05 : Issue 64 Today's Topics: #1 Sycamore Twp pt1 - hamilton county [Tina Hursh ] #2 Oh-Madison Co. Marrbook (Marriage [Archives ] Administrivia: To unsubscribe from OH-FOOTSTEPS-D, send a message to OH-FOOTSTEPS-D-request@rootsweb.com that contains in the body of the message the command unsubscribe and no other text. No subject line is necessary, but if your software requires one, just use unsubscribe in the subject, too. ______________________________ ------------------------------ X-Message: #1 Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 21:27:33 -0500 From: Tina Hursh To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-Id: <1.5.4.32.20050514022733.00d5137c@mail.hbcsc.net> Subject: Sycamore Twp pt1 - hamilton county Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" "History of Hamilton County" ~ compiled by Henry A. Ford, A. M. and Mrs. Kate B. Ford (1881) Sycamore Twp. pages 388-390 transcribed by Linda Boorom SYCAMORE. FORMATION AND GEOGRAPHY. The original Sycamore township was a new creation of the general reorganization of the townships of Hamilton county, after the erection of Ohio as a State and the setting off of Butler and other counties from the territory of Hamilton county. It was defined as comprising "all that fractional township No. 5, in the first entire range, and four tiers of sections on the eastern side of town four, same range; also, so much of the second entire range as lies north of the same." These tracts include the whole of what is now Symmes township, and all of the present Sycamore township, except the two westernmost tiers of sections. The township was but little larger then than it is now, having thirty-nine full and twelve fractional sections, the latter lying altogether on the west bank of the Little Miami river. Sycamore township is now bounded on the east by Symmes, on the south by Columbia, and on the west by Springfield townships. Butler county bounds it for about two and a half miles on the north, and Warren county for three and a half miles. It is an approximately exact parallelogram of seven sections long by six broad, thus containing forty-two sections. Some unevenness is manifest in the original running of the section lines, and the section corners on the east line of the township are considerable north of the northwest corners of the same sections in Sycamore. This breaks up the north line of the township badly at the northeast corner; it otherwise is pretty nearly a right line. The present township comprises the whole of town four, in the first entire range, and the southernmost tier of sections in town three, of the second entire range. Sections numbered only seven, thirteen, nineteen, twenty-five, and thirty-one, are thus, as in Springfield, duplicated in the township. It is the largest township in the county, having a total of twenty-nine thousand two hundred and ninety-one acres, or nearly a square mile more than forty-two exact sections contain. Springfield, which is the next township in size, and contains just as many sections, has but twenty-five thousand eight hundred and ninety-six acres -- one thousand five hundred and fifty-five less than Sycamore, and nine hundred and eighty-four, or more than one and a half square miles, less than it would have were all its sections full and exact. The irregularity of surveys in the purchase could hardly be better illustrated. The Miami canal leaves the township at the northwest corner of section thirty-two, in Lockland, having flowed through all the westernmost tier of sections north of that, in a course of nearly six miles. The Cincinnati & Springfield railroad, -- otherwise the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati & Indianapolis, or Dayton Short Line railroad -- comes into the township at the south part of Lockland, half a mile south of the canal, and runs diagonally across the two western tiers of sections and part of the third, leaving Sycamore about two and one third miles from the northwest corner, after traversing the township a length of a little more than six miles. The Marietta & Cincinnati railroad has only about half a mile of track in Sycamore, crossing the extreme southwest corner, between Madiera station, in Columbia township, and Allandale, in Symmes. The Miami valley, or Cincinnati & Northern railway, spans the entire township with nearly eight miles of track, crossing the Montgomery pike and entering Sycamore exactly at the centre of the south township line, and making gradually northeastward until it leaves the township precisely one mile west of the northeast corner, or two miles east of the point of entrance. The Montgomery, Lebanon & Dayton turnpikes, with an abundance of admirable wagon-roads and otherwise, intersect the township in all directions. No stream of large size touches the township. The East fork of Mill creek, with one of its larger tributaries, heads in the counties to the northward, and flows through the northern and western townships to a junction with the West fork a little way beyond the township line, near Hartwell. Carpenter's run flows toward the East fork from the direction of Montgomery. Three or four small affluents of the Little Miami, on the eastern side of Sycamore, penetrate the township to the breadth of one to three miles. The southernmost tier of sections is almost altogether devoid of water courses. The general character of the surface of the township resembles that of Springfield and the Hamilton county plateau. On the west, however, the Mill Creek valley in which lie the Miami canal and the Short Line railway, is broad and flat; and parts of the southeastern and eastern districts are on the low ground of the Little Miami country. The rest of the township is emphatically hill country, though not of a description unfitting it for the production of large and valuable crops and for stock-raising. Most of the township is given up to farming, not much of it, away from Reading, being devoted to suburban residences, and this place, with Montgomery and Shawn, being the only villages of account in the entire township. JUSTICES OF THE PEACE. In the creative act of the county authorities in 1803, the electors of the new township were directed to meet at the house or John AYRES, in the village of Montgomery, and choose three justices of the peace. ~page 389~ The following memoranda of Sycamore justices in later years have been preserved: 1819 -- Peter BELL, Benajah AYRES, Hezekiah PRICE, Jonathan PITTMAN. 1825 -- James J. WHALON, Nicholas SCHOONMAKER, James ROSEBROUGH. 1829 -- SCHOONMAKER, AYRES, Matthew TERWILLIGER, Henry MORSE. 1863-9 -- James AYDELOTTE, Daniel B. MYERS, Michael WILLIAMS. 1870 -- MYERS, AZDELOTTE, L. MELENDY. 1872 -- Same, with William A. AYDELOTTE. 1873-4 -- MELENDY, the AYDELOTTES, John TODD. 1875 -- MELENDY, TODD, W. A. AYDELOTTE, Okey VAN HISE. 1876 -- AYDELOTTE, VAN HISE, TODD, Jacob VOORHEES. 1877 -- VOORHEES, TODD, VAN HISE, F. MOSTELLER. 1878-9 -- MOSTELLER, VOORHEES, TODD. 1880 -- TODD, VOORHEES, Thomas W. MYERS. THE FIRST IMMIGRANT to the territory now covered by Sycamore township was James CUNNINGHAM. He was born in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, and emigrated to Kentucky while still a comparative youth, about 1785, there engaging, with four others, in building cabins for settlers, about four miles back of the present site of Covington. They were presently assailed by the Indians and one killed, when CUNNINGHAM and the remaining three decided to abandon their business in that quarter and settle upon the Beargrass creek, near where Louisville was afterwards founded. He was there married to Miss Janette PARK, of another Pennsylvania family, in 1787, and in the second year thereafter, the first year of Cincinnati or Losantiville, and on the twenty-sixth of May, 1789, he entered a land-warrant which entitled him to locate on a half-section of land, which he chose on the west half of section twenty-eight in what is now this township, in the valley of the East fork. He soon began improvements upon his place, assisted by Arthur, Andrew, and Culbertson, his brothers-in-law and three of the first settlers of Reading village. They were the first to make a clearing in Sycamore township. It is supposed, as there was then comparative peace between the white settlers and the Indians, that CUNNINGHAM moved his family to the place and resided there until the Indian troubles of the next winter, when he removed to Cincinnati, where he is known to have bought a lot and built a cabin near the corner of Walnut and Second streets. He afterwards entered the Government service for a year or so as a teamster, and in the fall of 1793 removed finally to his farm, where the rest of his life was passed. He built and ran the first saw-and grist-mills in this part of the county, and about 1808 had a distillery in connection with the grist-mill. Among his surviving descendants are: a son, Francis CUNNINGHAM, lately living north of Sharon, on the old place, near the county line; two grandsons, Elmore W. CUNNINGHAM, of Cincinnati, and James F. CUNNINGHAM, of Glendale; and a granddaughter, the wife of Mr. Andrew ERKENBRECKER, of Cincinnati. James CARPENTER was also a very early comer to the sections embraced in Sycamore township. He located on section fifteen, west of Montgomery, probably in the autumn of 1793, or the spring of the next year, and removed thither from Columbia. Adjoining him on the west was Price THOMPSON, a soldier of the Revolution, who located a land warrant on the northeast quarter of section twenty-one, November 26, 1792. Other pioneers here were David and Abner DENMAN, whose sisters married THOMPSON and Benjamin WILLIS. Another of this party, Elihu CRAIN, a distant relative of THOMPSON's; and Richard and Samuel AYRES. For the sake of company and mutual protection they put up their cabins near each other, where the sections fifteen and sixteen corner with sections twenty-one and twenty-two, or about where the Plainfield school-house is. Others who came to the settlement after Indian hostilities ceased are mentioned by Mr. OLDEN in his Historical Sketches, as James and John MATHERS, Daniel and Nathaniel REEDER, Joseph McKNIGHT, Morris OSBORN, Moses HUTELINGS, Matthias CROW, Henry, Benjamin, and Isaac DEVIE, Nathaniel JARRARD, and Samuel KNOTT, all of whom date by residence here back of 1797. He adds that "the settlement was never annoyed by Indians, and there was nothing to encounter but the wild animals and the almost interminable forest." John CAMPBELL, who built a fortified station on the Great Miami, opposite Miamitown, also made a settlement In Sycamore, probably in the summer or fall of 1793, on the forfeiture part of section twenty, southwest of CCUNNINGHAM's. But few settlers clustered around him for years; he did not consider it necessary to fortify his cabins; and the history of his improvement here is wholly uneventful. Some other early settlers of Sycamore were John GOLDTRAP, on section twenty-two, where now is the Jacob SHUFF place; James and John WALLACE, on section twenty-one, now the COOPER farm; the PARK brothers, with or near CUNNINGHAM, on section twenty-eight; and near Montgomery Ely DUSKEY, Moses and Joseph CRIST, Joseph TALLMAN, and Andrew LACKY. William R. MORRIS was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, September 12, 1836. His father is of Scotch extraction, and his mother of Irish descent. William R. MORRIS, sr., married Sarah Lydia POWERS, sister of Hiram POWERS, the sculptor. William R. MORRIS, jr., was one out of a family of nine, three sons only surviving to maturity. In May, 1865, he married Hattie, daughter of Captain Charles ROSS, of Cincinnati, one of the old pioneers. Mr. MORRIS is the father of three sons and four daughters. Educationally, he attended St. Xavier college, Cincinnati, and Oxford college, for three years each, preparing himself for the bar. For several years MORRIS engaged in the wholesale grocery business at Toledo, though he is now a gentleman of rest, enjoying the fruits of his industry, residing at Carthage, Ohio. FORTIFIED STATIONS. The only pioneer outpost in this direction which seems to have been occupied as a regular station-house was ~page 390~ Henry RUNYAN's, about a mile and a half north of Reading. Mr. OLDEN says: "Near the spring, east of the Dayton turnpike, stood the old station-house." Mr. RUNYAN was a Virginian, but emigrated from Kentucky, where he had lived since 1784, and had there been married to Mrs. Mary BUSH, of Bourbon county. Upon two land warrants, May 9, 1790, he located the west half of section nineteen, the northernmost section of that number in the township, being fourteen miles from the Ohio, and then a long way back in the wilderness. It is believed that he did not move upon the tract within the period required by SYMMES' contracts, and that he consequently forfeited a little over fifty-three acres in the northeast corner of it. He soon, however, put up his cabin and made a clearing, and in 1792, according to his son Isaac, who is still surviving at a very advanced age, he removed permanently to the place. Mr. OLDEN thus presents some of the recollections of Isaac RUNYAN: Mr. RUNYAN remembers the first school-house in the neighborhood. It was built of buckeye logs, and stood in the field south of Mr. John RICK's present residence. It was a rude cabin, with the ground for a floor. The benches were made of slabs, with wooden pins for legs. A few openings were left in the sides of the cabin, which, being covered with greased paper, served for windows. There Mr. RUNYAN took his first lesson in Dilworth's speller and reader. The first religious meetings were held in the woods, where the people seated themselves on logs or on the ground, as they found most convenient. The first preacher that came to the settlement was a Mr. COBB. The men dressed in the hunting-shirt and knee-breeches, and the women wore the petticoat and short gown, all made of linsey-woolsey, or homespun cloth. The principal sports or recreation among the men were had at the log-rollings and cabin and barn-raisings, and consisted chiefly in wrestling, jumping, pitching quoits and target-shooting. Spinning and sewing-parties, apple-bees and corn-huskings, after the country had been settled a few years, were frequent, where not only the young of both sexes, but often the old and middle-aged, were brought together, when, after completing the work which the company had been invited to perform and partaking of a bountiful supper, they all joined and spent the remainder of the evening, and often the entire night, in plays and dances that formed the social glee. The dance consisted of "Nae cotillion brent new frae France," but the genuine old Virginia reel. And those who joined in the dance paid the fiddler, whose charges were fixed and well established at a h'penny bit, or six and one-fourth cents, a reel. No trouble is known to have occurred with the savages at RUNYAN's station. VOORHEES' station was situated upon section thirty-three, near the present towns of Lockland and Reading. It was not a block-house, or even stockade, but a large, strong log cabin, which answered for both residence and defence, and was frequently mentioned in the early times, in speech and print, as VOORHEES' station. This cabin is said by Mr. OLDEN to have been situated on the west side of the East fork of Mill creek, several hundred yards east of Mr. BRECK's residence in Lockland. He further says: "This old house was torn away in 1817 by Thomas SHEPHERD, who then owned the place, and the logs sold to Adrian HAGEMAN, who used a portion of them in the erection of a house on lot No. 49, next south of where the new Catholic church stands in Reading. This house is still standing; it was weatherboarded many years ago, and is now occupied by John O'NEAL, the constable. It was a strong family which made this improvement -- almost enough in itself to make an effective garrison. Abraham VOORHEES was the head and front of it; and with him were his sons-in-law, Thomas HIGGINS and John RYNEARSON, with their families, and his five sons, Abraham, Miney, Garret, John and Jacob. They began their improvements in the spring of 1794, and in the fall of the same year moved their families to the station. They were soon after joined by another and still larger family, nearly all of them adult persons. The parents were Henry and Margaret REDINBO, of the Pennsylvania German stock, who removed from Reading, in that State, in the spring of 1795; their eight sons were Solomon (drowned on the journey westward), Frederick, John, Phillip, Samuel, Andrew, Henry and Adam; and the daughters were Ann, Barbara and Margaret. In August of the same year they obtained a deed from Judge SYMMES of the south half of section twenty-seven, west of the VOORHEES tract, built a cabin and log barn on the property since owned by Dr. Thomas WRIGHT, and there settled. The parents both lived to the age of ninety-four years, and died in the same year, 1828 or 1829. The younger Abraham VOORHEES was a blacksmith; and as soon as the progress of settlement, or the near prospect of it, would justify, he built a shop near his cabin, on the east side of the new road running from WHITE's to RUNYAN's station. Mr. OLDEN says this shop was "at a point where now stands the dwelling and storehouse of James BROWNE, on the northeast corner of Main and Columbia streets, in Reading. There he carried on his business for several years, using a hickory stump as an anvil." He also, in partnership with his brother Miney, built and ran a pioneer saw-mill on the west bank of Mill creek, in what is now Conklin's addition to Lockland. The elder VOORHEES laid out upon his land the adjacent village of Reading about 1798, and had it called at first Voorhees-town, but allowed it afterward to be named Reading, at the suggestion of the senior REDINBO, from the latter's birthplace in the Keystone State. Another incident of this period, occurring south of the present site of Reading, is thus related by Mr. OLDEN: During the autumn of 1794, William MOORE, who was a great hunter, and who made his home at COVALT's station, on the Little Miami river, while out on one of his hunting excursions, wandered to the Great Lick, as it was then called, about a mile and a half east of White's station, and on the lands now owned by John HAMEL, in the southeast quarter of section thirty-two. He there killed a deer, which he skinned, and had prepared the saddle for packing, and while in the act of washing his hands in the brook, and at the same time amusing himself by singing an Indian song he had learned while a captive among the Shawnees, he was suddenly alarmed by a voice joining in the song in the Indian tongue. He instantly sprang to his feet and ran for the thick wood on the west, closely pursued by several Indians. As they did not fire, they evidently intended capturing him. The foremost in the pursuit was quite a small Indian, but very fleet on foot. He was gaining rapidly on MOORE, when, fortunately, they came to a large fallen tree, the body of which was some four feet in diameter. MOORE placed his hand upon the log and leaped it at one bound. The Indian, being unable to perform this feat, was compelled to go round the tree. This gave MOORE a fresh start, and after a long and closely contested race, he reached WHITE's station, with the loss of his gun and coat, and also his game. ______________________________ ------------------------------ X-Message: #2 Date: 14 May 2005 17:12:32 -0000 From: Archives To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <20050514171232.12217.qmail@mail.best1-host.com> Subject: Oh-Madison Co. Marrbook (Marriage Records) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Madison County OhArchives Marriage Book.....Marriage Records Index - Partial Marriage Book More to Come ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/oh/ohfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Marsha Sparks sparksm@columbus.rr.com May 14, 2005, 1:12 pm Abstracted By: Marsha Sparks Madison County, Ohio., Marriage Index before 1900. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GrLst GrFst GrMid BrLst BrFst BrMid Lmm Ldd LYr Mmm Mdd MYr Bk Pg By Comment - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cain David Aaron Jennie 1857 June 20 1857 Abbott William West Sarah 1870 Mar 24 1870 Gates Ezra Abby Harriett 1829 Jan 8 1829 Abby Lucian Banmeter Cynthia 1835 Oct 1835 Willis Don Abernathy Cynthia Ann 1841 Oct 21 1841 Timmons Lewis Abernatha Eliza Jane 1844 May 7 1844 Abernathy I. N. Buzick Lizzie 1868 Aug 8 1868 Ablgency James F. Schnell Martha 1852 Dec 15 1852 Williams Clement Acres Martha 1866 Oct 27 1866 Ackison William Tillman Susan 1848 Jan 9 1848 Powell Oliver Ackley Addie 1897 Apr 28 1897 Gifford Moses H Acre Nancy 1846 Apr 2 1846 Acres Daniel Garrison Elenor 1831 Feb 24 1831 Dawson William Acres Hannah 1824 May 4 1824 Acres James Binnegar Ann R. 1827 Apr 29 1827 Hanson Daniel Acres Jane 1826 Apr 2 1826 Smith Joseph Acres Nancy 1825 June 9 1825 Stricklaw Peter Acton Emeline 1856 Feb 28 1856 Cross G. P. Acton Lena 1874 Oct 27 1874 Reece Samuel Acton Mary Ann 1855 Nov 8 1855 Acton Meshesh Wilson Elizabeth F. 1849 Nov 4 1849 Acton Peyton Collins Florence 1878 May 13 1878 Arthur Charles Acton Rachel 1867 Jan 1 1868 Acton Richard Lewis Menerva A. 1850 Apr 30 1850 Acton Samuel Cregohry Emaline 1840 Apr 5 1840 Acton Thomas Lewis Messourie 1853 June 9 1853 Adair Anderson McCoy Margaret Jane 1837 Feb 25 1837 Brake Perry T. Adair Angelino 1881 Aug 30 1881 Adair Benjamin Cochran Ann 1845 Oct 23 1845 Street William Adair Bethier E. 1868 Jan 28 1868 Dickison Joseph M. Adair Catharine 1838 Mar 1 1838 Melvin Bartholomew Adair Elizabeth 1826 Aug 1 1826 Johnston James B. Adair Elizabeth 1828 Nov 23 1828 Rubert Eli Adair Jane 1836 Mar 24 1836 Adair John Plymell Berther 1840 Oct 18 1840 Adair John E. Hobbe Clair E. 1893 May 21 1893 Adair John S. Crisman Elizabeth 1844 June 20 1844 Adair Joseph E. Winder Elizabeth 1824 July 29 1824 Adair Joseph Reagway Ailly 1840 Mar 5 1840 Boyd James Adair Julia Ann 1841 Feb 3 1841 McCarty Thomas Adair Margaret J. 1871 Mar 23 1871 Burrell Samuel Adair Nancy 1832 Oct 7 1832 Little Benjamin Adair Nancy 1842 Dec 27 1842 Humble Uriah Adair Peggy 1813 Sept 8 1813 File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/oh/madison/vitals/marriages/marriage13mb.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/ohfiles/ File size: 5.7 Kb -------------------------------- End of OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest V05 Issue #64 ******************************************