Ohio History Journal

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PIONEER DAYS IN CENTRAL OHIO

PIONEER DAYS IN CENTRAL OHIO.1

IT is pleasant, my friends, to realize the sentiment that,

not only peace has its triumphs as well as war, but that

domestic and home life hath its excitements and enjoyments

as well as the political arena.

In this day of public strife-in the middle of a campaign

in which the embattling squadrons of the several political

parties of the day are arrayed against each other in the con-

test for civil power-we rest on our arms, and come together

as under a flag of truce; nay, more, forgetting all differences

or grounds for hostility, we meet as friends and neighbors,

irrespective of all divisions on public questions, to interchange

kindly civilities, for mutual congratulations on the joys and

happiness with which God has blessed us in our present

social relations of life, and to contrast the same with the

character and conditions of our fathers, the early settlers and

pioneers of this part of our beloved State.

In the few remarks I may submit it is my purpose, how-

ever I may sometimes wander from the straight path I have

allotted to myself, to speak of the early settlements in Cen-

tral Ohio, and of the character and life-incidents of the set-

tlers.  In speaking of them I do not propose to recount his-

tory, but rather to refer to times and events that in a long life-

time, relating back to the beginning of the present century

have fallen under my own observation.

I came with my father's family to Licking county in 1809.

We settled in Newark, then a small hamlet composed of a

few straggling hewed log houses, or log cabins proper, chiefly

on the east and north line of the public square of that now

 

1 An address delivered at Mansfield, Ohio, September 15th, 1885, before

the Richland County Historical and Pioneer Society. This address was

the last delivered by Mr. Curtis (his death occurring a few weeks later),

and is printed from the manuscript in the author's handwriting, now in the

possession of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society.

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