KNOX COUNTY OHIO - Norton's History of Knox County [Chapter II]
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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.