Ohio History Journal

OHIO

Archaeological and Historical

 

QUARTERLY.

 

 

VOL. II.              MARCH, 1889.               No. 4.

 

SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF HISTORIC TRAVEL

OVER NEW YORK, NEW JERSEY, VIR-

GINIA AND OHIO, IN THE

SEVEN YEARS FROM

1840-1847.

 

Read at the fourth annual meeting of the Ohio Archaeological and

Historical Society, at Chillicothe. February 1, 1889.

 

I propose this evening to give you some reminiscences of

my travels in search of history over the four States of New

York, New Jersey, Virginia and Ohio, from 1840 to 1847.

They will consist largely of recollections of men of mark

that I met. To render them more valuable I will present

some facts of my early days, and show how I was led into a

pursuit so out of the ordinary course.

I was born in a State that is more indebted to Ohio than

any other-Connecticut. Its people early in this century,

say about 1820, were noted as the best educated in the

Union. When I was a boy I never knew a native who

could not read and write, and so homogeneous was our

population that my native city, New Haven, with 7,000

people, had not a dozen families foreign born. Connecticut

was the first to establish public schools, which she did by

the large school fund derived from the sale of her Ohio

lands, comprising the twelve lake counties known as the

441

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442    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

 

Connecticut Reserve. It was therefore proper that a Con-

necticut man should try to do a good thing for Ohio.

It was just after the close of the last war with the British

that I put in an appearance. This was in the fall of the cold

summer of 1816, when there was a frost every month of the

year. Nothing could be expected to start big. I was not

an exception. A rustic coming in and seeing me, but a

three pounder, carried around on a pillow, exclaimed in

the dialect of the rural regions, "Dew tell! what a leetel

fellow! he's scurcely wuth the raisin."

Religion, patriotism and learning had full possession of

our place. It was the seat of Yale college, where even

the old bricks seemed to ooze knowledge. My father was

the College bookseller. His was then the most famous

bookstore in New England, and the gathering point for

scholarly men from far and wide. Thus was I in my boy

days brought in the presence of much learning. It stared

at me in rows from the shelves; a back stare it was. It

walked in the front door personified singly or in twos;

bowed and blandly said "Good morning." Polite learning

that, often old fashioned, attired in short breeches, buckle

shoes and broad brimmed hat.

The Bookstore was a great educating spot for me. In

winter, gentlemen of literary and social propensities from

far and near, would often sit around the wood stove and

under the genial influence of a good fire, talk down the

hours. It was not all solemnity around that stove.

I remember in my boyhood days of tumbling from chairs

in convulsions of laughter at droll stories I heard. But then

I got up again, and made full compensation by a tearful

indulgence through some subsequent sorrow:

"The heart that thrills to sweetest pleasure

Throbs to saddest notes of woe."

This much listening developed in me an overweening

love of humor, and that has often prevented me from be-

ing sad, even where a solemn sense of duty told me I

ought to be very much cast down, there being at times

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Some Recollections of Historic Travel.   443

 

with us all a natural demand for lugubriousness. Else

why should we be provided with such convenient muscular

arrangements for drawing down the corners of our mouths

and shedding tears?

In those charming days of youthful romance and young

life's dreams, I derived untold benefit from my brother;

some five years older than myself, who could sketch from

nature, a rare accomplishment with American youth of

that day. He often took me on his sketching and fishing

jaunts, and taught my boy eyes to derive pleasure from

the ever-changing beauties of the woods and waters, the

clouds and mountains, of the surpassingly picturesque

country around my native town. And thus this love of

nature and love of humor, has smoothed my solitary

tramps through successive years over varied States, for

my eyes were continually pleased with the attractions of

our earthly dwelling place, and my love of humor and

sociality opened the hearts of strangers with whom I was

in daily contact; and so I was never lonely, and never sad,

and everywhere was received with kindness.

Among the habitues of my father's bookstore were

college professors, eminent lawyers, and judges, and country

parsons; some of the latter splendid specimens of virtuous,

grand old age, fathers in Israel, settled for life, who

ministered to their people in joy and in sorrow, from

the cradle to the grave. There in my boy days, I often

saw and listened to the conversation of such men as

Noah Webster. Benjamin Silliman, Jeremiah Day, James

L. Kingsley, Roger M. Sherman, Eli Ives, Nathaniel W.

Taylor, etc., and that strange, unearthly, spiritual being,

the poet Percival. Men of such intellectual mark, united

to moral worth, as I then used to see, I have since rarely

met. Simple, dignified manners, cautious in statement, and

absence of expletives, and of cant expressions, were prom-

inent characteristics.

In 1828 was issued the first edition of Webster's

Dictionary, now a power in our land, and in two quarto

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444    Ohio Archaecological and Historical Quarterly.

 

volumes. The imprint of my father was on the title-

page; he printed it in an office, at the time owned by him.

I, as a boy, often carried proofs to Mr. Webster's residence.

Mr. Webster was then just seventy years of age, and im-

pressed by the calm grandeur of his person, and the at-

mostphere of moral purity that seemed to envelop him.

He was eminently religious, and of a nature ever ready to

shudder at a scene of woe, or shrink from a thought of

wrong. I do not remember to have seen him smile, he

was a too much pre-occupied man for frivolity, bearing as

he did the entire weight of the English tongue upon his

shoulders.

The most constant visitor of the bookstore was that

strange, unearthly being, the poet Percival; and I cannot

but regard it as having been a privilege to have known

him and heard him converse. He was then considered as

possessing more general learning than any other man on

the globe, unless it was Humboldt. We are certain this

continent never had his equal.

Everything, home, family, friends, was sacrificed to his

love of knowledge, which it has been said, was so intense,

that life to him for the pleasure of its acquisition had an

inexpressible value.

Percival was always a wonder to everybody. He moved

under the elms with a bent head, introspective, hearing

nothing, seeing nothing, buried in abstraction, living in

an ideal world. And his own townsmen even were wont

to pause, and turn and gaze upon him as he slowly glided

past, as though he was an inhabitant of another sphere, and

he was as one such. His own beautiful lines describe the

source of his joys:

"The world is full of poetry,

The air is living with its spirit

And the waves dance to the music of its melodies,

And sparkle in its brightness;

Earth is veiled and mantled in its beauty;

And the walls that close the universe

With crystal in, are eloquent with the voices

That proclaim the unseen glories of immensity."

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Some Recollections of Historic Travel.  445

 

Now, I come to my life-directing incident.  Although

bred in the atmosphere of books, one day early in 1838,

there was brought into the bookstore for a subscriber, a

book entitled, "Historical Collections of Connecticut,"

which impressed me more than any I had seen.       The

author, the pioneer of works on this plan, was John W.

Barber, an engraver, then forty years of age and a fellow-

townsman.

Mr. Barber in a little one-horse wagon went over Con-

necticut from village to village, taking pencil sketches and

collecting material for the same.  Never had a book been

published on any State that had so fired the patriotism of

its people.  Every man in Connecticut, after he got it and

saw what a grand little State she was, how glorious her

history, furnishing to the army of the Revolution, as she

did, more soldiers, more food and general supplies, in pro-

portion to her population, than any other, felt as though

he had grown at least two inches taller. Benson Lossing,

also an engraver, told me forty years ago, that this book

had made him an author.

When I saw this book, I felt I would like of all things,

to dedicate my life to traveling, and making such for

what Abraham Lincoln calls "the plain people," an ex-

pression which gives the idea of the possession of the solid

virtues and the recipients of the simple home joys, and is

therefore peculiarly grateful to the honest heart.

Two years passed; in the interim my father had died;

I had learned to sketch from nature, made a small book

which, published by the Harpers, went through many

editions, and passed nearly two years with an uncle, a

stock-broker in Wall street, an uncongenial spot, where I

felt that Tophet was not afar.

The spring of 1840 arrived, when one day I walked into

Mr. Barber's office, and inquired if he had thought of

making a book on New York State.    He replied, "Yes,"

but it was a great undertaking. When I told him I would

like to join him in such an enterprise, his face broke into-

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446    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

 

smiles, and like a good man as he was, thereupon on go-

ing home, as he knew me only in a general way, he con-

sulted with his wife.  Now she happened to have been,

when a maiden under the simple name of Ruth Green,

the identical school-marm that had taught me my letters,

when taking a pin in her fingers, and pointing to the suc-

cessive letters of the alphabet, she said, "What's that?"

Her report in regard to me was according to the first

letter of the alphabet, with a number at the end, thus, A

No. 1.

A few days later, Mr. Barber and myself had invaded

the Empire State, going up the North River in a naval

way, by steamer.

On reaching Albany we tarried there several days,

sketching, visiting libraries, etc.  Ere our return we went

north from Albany and visiting the battlefield of Still-

water or Saratoga, took home from thence some bullets

and dead men's bones, which are now in the rooms of the

New Haven Historical Society.

After this trip we never were together.  He went by

public conveyances to large places, while I mostly went

afoot, carrying my drawing materials and change of cloth-

ing in my knapsack.     I zigzagged from county-seat to

county-seat, collecting materials and taking sketches.  I

was well educated for roughing it, having passed two

years of my youth as a rodman in railroad surveying.

Was on the first railroad survey in Connecticut, that from

Hartford to New Haven, in 1835. Twice I footed it across

the State; once across the northern portion, once across

the southern, from the Hudson to Dunkirk.

This was late in the fall of 1840, when, after giving my

vote for "Tippecanoe and Tyler too," I went up the

Hudson river by steamer.   Toward the close of the day

there appeared on deck, some thirty miles below Albany,

a colored man who, walking to and fro, rang a bell, ting-

a-ling, ting-a-ling, and between each ting-a-ling he called

out in   plaintive  tones, Cook-Sack-ee!  Cook-Sack-ee!

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Some Recollections of Historic Travel.  447

 

Then the boat stopped:  "All ashore that's going!" rung

out on the air, and I walked the plank.

 

Cooper the Novelist.-A few days later I was in Coopers-

town, by the Lake Otsego, in the stone mansion of a man of

genius, James Fenimore Cooper, the great American nov-

elist, then in the zenith of his fame. He was a large man

every way, lordly and imperious in his manner, and with

weighty voice.  He was then, I should judge, about 50

years of age.

What he said in this interview I trust I shall be ex-

cused for not remembering, but it is often the case,

when I am in the presence of a character of world-wide

fame, I am so intent on studying his person and manner

that I do not give full attention to his words. I only re-

remember that I felt as a light boat lying along-side a huge

man-of-war, and he firing big guns-boom! boom! boom!

Wherever night caught me in my travels, there I brought

up and never was denied shelter in a farm-house but on

one occasion.  In the room  I entered were two young

rustics visiting two young ladies, and perhaps indulging

in the illusions of hope.

Two Jacks were enough for two Gills; for when my re-

quest was made to the old people, from the corner of one

eye I noticed the chin of one of those girls slowly move

from right to left. When I saw this I silently laughed;

that laugh went all over me and must have lodged some-

where in my boots, for when I struck the road three

minutes later, out it came loud and merry, and filling

the air, cheered the way.

I have noticed through life, that when you get a knock-

down, the next thing in order is "a set up." Some people

ignorant of this go out and hang themselves.  What a

pity! At the next house, a mile further on the road, hav-

ing told who I was and my business, the old man at the

door replied, " Friend H., thou art welcome, thee can stay."

When this was said, I presume the illusions of hope were

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448   Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

 

in a state of favorable progress in the house I had left be-

hind.

Reaching Dunkirk I turned and took the back track on

the line of counties bordering on Pennsylvania, and had

walked perhaps one hundred miles when a gentleman,

Mr. Church, whose guest I was, and a son-in-law of the

elder Prof. Silliman, the "father of science" in this coun-

try, and one of Nature's noblemen, wished to send a horse

to him in New Haven as a present. Nothing could have

been more opportune; the ground was covered with snow,

and it was terrible work to walk day after day upon its

slippery hail-like surface.  So I made my way home on

him; often taking my knapsack from his back and placing

it on a snow bank for a seat, pulled out my portfolio

and sketched a distant view of a town.

Weeks thus passed, and one bright morning in Febru-

ary, 1841, I crossed the ferry from Jersey City and landed

in New York, and then rode the full length of Broadway

on his back out into the country towards my home. It

was a beautiful winter morning, just the hour the down-

town merchants were thronging to their places of busi-

ness.  The sidewalks were filled with multitudes of ele-

gantly dressed men, and it seemed as though every eye

was upon me, for I was a conspicuous object, with my

knapsack strapped to my horse, long hair streaming from

behind my cap, and a pair of scarlet leggings covering my

limbs from ankle up to my thigh.   I did not care, for

from my elevated perch I looked down upon them, and

would not have exchanged situations with the proudest

and wealthiest of them all. I had a vocation that I loved,

one that would benefit the world, and competition with no

one.

Thirty years later I again approached New York, cross-

ing the same ferry, when occurred a little incident I can-

not forbear to introduce here.  I was standing in the

crowd that thronged the forward deck, all looking toward

the vast city that lay stretched for miles before us, illu-

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Some Recollections of Historic Travel.  449

 

mined by the light of the declining sun, when I said to a

tall, fine-looking young man that stood by me, "How

greatly yonder city has grown since I first knew it, and

how vast the amount of poverty, wretchedness and woe

that lies therein."  Upon this he straightened up, and

swelling out like a turkey-cock, as though transported

with the thought, he exclaimed in pompous tones, "Yes,

and a d    d sight of splendor and magnificence, too."

Late the next afternoon, as I descended Milford hill,

my native city, New Haven, hove in sight with its heaven-

pointed spires, its background of bold, beautiful moun-

tains, and its long, picturesque harbor.  Down that hill

the British red-coats had descended just seventy-two years

before, and the grave of their adjutant was hard by; he

had been shot by a farmer's boy of the neighborhood.

I entered the town, and just as I got opposite the jail

facing the public square, my horse, that had always be-

haved with the propriety of a saint, took a mean advan-

tage; he shied with me on his back, red leggings and all,

straight up to the jail door, amid roars of laughter

from  a gang of coarse stablemen and other grinning

fiends, that stood idling in front. I think I must in some

unknown way have offended that horse, and his sense of

justice told him it was time I should go to prison.

A grateful memory is in the acquaintance I made that

evening, at the supper table of Prof. Silliman, with a

very old man, aged 85 years, but whose intellect was yet

clear and vigorous.  This was Col. John Trumbull, the

aid of Washington at the beginning of the Revolution,

and the great historical painter of our country. He was

the son of that governor of Connecticut, who was the only

governor anywhere, under both the Crown and the Re-

public.  Through some little matter that Trumbull felt

involved his self-respect, I forget what it was, he resigned

his position and left the army. It almost broke his heart,

he did so love the cause.

Soon after he went to London to study painting under

Vol. II-29

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450    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

Benjamin West. He was seized as a spy and was for

several months in prison.  King George befriended him

so far as to say, "I pity the poor young man from my soul.

Tell him that I pledge my royal word that in the worst

possible event of the law his life shall be safe."

His battle pieces, "Bunker Hill," and "The Death of

Montgomery at Quebec," have never been equalled in ex-

pression and artistic power by any American historical

composition.  These and "The Signing of the Declara-

tion of Independence," have preserved for all time, ac-

curate portraits obtained by years of labor and travel in

America, England and France, of the prominent char-

acters engaged in the great struggle.  The originals, as

the public well know, are in the rotunda of the capitol at

Washington, and engravings of them every school-boy is

familiar with.

Col. Trumbull was of medium size, a blonde, with a

clear-cut profile.  He was a very handsome, refined man,

exceeding modest, and like George Washington, he had a

mild blue eye, with the same drooping upper lid.   On

looking back, I think I was blessed in having had an

interview with such a great and beneficent character.

The work on New York we published in the fall of 1841,

and then in the spring of 1842, Mr. Barber and myself

began New Jersey.   That State has a noble history; it is

a State, too, where laws are executed and crime punished.

Its crowning feature is the possession of such a noble

institution as Princeton College.  It would confer honor

upon any State.

New Jersey finished, I personally invaded Virginia in

the spring of 1843, my associate being only pecuniarily

interested with me.

When a mere lad he had remonstrated with the deacons

in his church upon the institution of the "negro pew."

"Why," said he, "do you put the colored people way off

in a distant corner of the meeting-house by themselves, as

though they were so many baboons, for the boys to make

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Some Recollections of Historic Travel.    451

 

fun of and grin at?" It seems to me cruel and unchristian ?

He would not go into a slave land, because he said he

would not go where he could not speak his mind.

As Captain John Smith made his first settlement at

Jamestown, I made my first landing in Virginia at that

point in a steamer from Baltimore, which was en route up

the James for Richmond.   So in my starting I went back

to first principles. It seems that the colony, being almost

entirely composed of men, had for years a lonely time.

Their hearts were aching for the smiles of women, and

their ears longing to hear the merry voices of children

ringing out on the air.  Even the cry of one lusty infant

waking up from his nap and kicking his little legs, hungry

and bawling for his supper, would have been sweeter mu-

sic to them   than that of an entire brass band.    The

Virginia Company took pity on their forlorn condition

and sent over first ninety and then sixty virtuous, but poor

young maidens, as wives for the planters; and we may

add, beautiful; that is, as women go, which sometimes

is not astonishing.

Why some newspaper reporter was not about to report

the scene when the women went ashore is not an honor to

the fraternity. We may imagine the scene. The girls

doubtless went ashore two-by-two, arm in arm on their

way to the company's office, while the bachelors stood in

lines through which they passed.   The girls were gig-

gling, blushing, hanging down their heads and stumbling

in their excitement against one another; while the men

looked on, sedate, solemn as owls, their eyes so widely

stretched to drink in the charms, that the corners entirely

dissappeared and became round like the eyes of so many

fish. And when one pair of these fish-shaped eyes lit

upon a damsel of extra charms, we venture to say he

nudged his elbow into his neighbor's ribs and exclaimed,

"Oh, Tim, ain't she a daisy?"

These girls were sold for tobacco; the first lot for 100

pounds each, the second for 150. That is 18,000 pounds

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452   Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

 

for the entire lot, or an average of 120 pounds each and

about a pound of tobacco for a pound of girl. And when

there was a damsel sold of choicest beauty and charms,

over whom there was a warm competition, it is pre-

sumed there was planked down the choicest quality of

"Jeem's river."

History tells us there was a dignity about a debt for a

wife that did not appertain to any other debt. He must

be a poor shoat that did not pay up in full. Any man of

delicate sensibilities would feel uncomfortable to think that

say twenty pounds of his wife still belonged in equity to the

company.   It should dignify tobacco to every womanly

mind to think now useful it might again become in the

line of matrimony.

The family joys now began to swell the hearts of the

planters.  Between the rows of their tobacco plants, the

footprints of little ones soon met their eyes and lightened

the toil of its production.

When I went ashore at Jamestown, the great puffing

monster leaving me alone soon disappeared around a

bend. I looked on the country in front. It was flat as the

river behind, not even a dwelling in sight, not a human

being, all a solitude.  The bachelors were gone with their

great fish-eyes.  The giggling girls were gone.  The to-

bacco was gone, not even an old dry quid lying around

anywhere.

All there was to be seen to arrest the eye, the only relic

where had once been a busy town, was the tower of an

old church, burnt two centuries before.  It was a ruin,

overgrown with ivy, and built of brick imported from

England in the days of "the Jeems."  It stood on

the edge of a clump of woods and its rear was the old

church-yard with the graves of the long forgotten dead.

Drawing my portfolio from my knapsack, I rapidly

sketched the tower, and from that, original engravings

have been made for many different books in the last forty

years.  I then buckled on my knapsack and crossed

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Some Recollections of Historic Travel.     453

 

the fields for Williamsburg on the York, seven miles dis-

tant. The day was pleasant, the air soft and balmy; but

I was in a land of slaves. I had come from a land of free-

men. What were my emotions? Grand and glorious. I felt

the nation owed a debt of gratitude to old Virginia.

Her very form was grateful to my eye on the map, and

when it was marred by the excision of West Virginia,

I felt as though a sacrilege had been committed. The

memories of the great men she had given to the country in

the time of her great struggle, and in the forming years

of her government, crowded upon me. Washington, Patrick

Henry, John Marshall, Jefferson, Madison, and a host

of others, prove that slave owners can be men of the loftiest

patriotism and possess the brightest virtues that adorn

humanity.

I was soon to meet slavery, and it struck me, not as

presented at the hands of a kind Christian gentleman

who felt for the best welfare of a mass of humble depend-

ents, but a few removes from savage Africa; but it struck

me butt-end first from the hands of a negro driver, a Virginian,

the first white man I was to meet on my introduction to

Virginia soil.

After walking a mile across the fields I discovered a

body of men whom I approached to inquire my way, and

found them to be a gang of slaves, working a few feet only

apart, and in their midst stood a solitary white man, their

overseer. They were armed with heavy hoes, mattocks I

think they called them, and were busy grubbing the

ground. They looked stolid, stupid and sad, as they lifted

up their course implements and sunk them in the earth.

It was a novel sight to the overseer, my appearance,

a stranger on foot and bearing a knapsack. On learning

I had just landed and was from the North, he opened

on the subject of their "peculiar institution." In less

than two minntes that man said to me in a calm voice:

"I'd as lief kill a nigger as kill a dog." With this a

sardonic grin spread over his countenance and I looked

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454    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

 

around to see what effect his words had upon this group

of abject beings. They looked as before, stolid, stupid, sad,

while their course implements continued to go up in the air

and descending, cleave the earth-God's earth.

Moments come to us all, supreme moments when im-

pressions are made that will last forever; these are at

times when our intellects are as crystal and every chord in

our being is attuned to the touch of the most delicate har-

monies.   A  few  weeks after my interview   with the

overseer I was out one morning in Richmond enjoying

the beauty and silence of its environs where the city was

losing itself amid grassy hills and soft green foliage.

The dew was glistening around my feet and the shadows

long over the landscape were streaked here and there in

golden streamers from the rising sun. My intellect was

clear as crystal. God had given another morning to the

world, fresh and all glorious, and it was to me a moment

of supreme enjoyment when suddenly I was startled by

the laugh of a child, a laugh so joyous that I instantly

turned to learn its source; my eye lit at once upon a little

fellow, black as ebony, about five years of age, standing

close by me, not twenty feet away, attired in a single gar-

ment, apparantly oblivious to my presence. He had seen

something, I know not what, perhaps the gambols of

some young dogs that had amused him and his face was

so beautiful in his joy, that I felt like taking him to my

heart.

And this child was a slave, and happy in his ignorance.

I thought sadly, "Poor little fellow! You do not know your

fate. These rich, these powerful ones around you have a

mortgage upon you from your very birth. They will say,

You shall neither learn to read, nor write, nor own a home,

nor possess property except by our permission.  Even

your wife and children, if you ever obtain them, we shall

tear from you at our option, and you shall see them no more,

nor learn their fate.

"The great Master has placed you and us in a world of

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Some Recollections of Historic Travel.    455

 

beauty and mystery and has given to every human being

that immortal principle that yearns for its knowledge and

enjoyment. But the refined and beautiful things shall be

closed to you, for you are born a slave; and if necessary

to enforce obedience we shall pursue you with the lash of

the task-master even to the brink of the grave."

This picture, this speech, flashed through my mind in

connection with that joyous laugh and happy face beautiful

in its innocence, the face of a weak, helpless child, and an

entire commonwealth, more than a million strong, arrayed

against it. Yet it is but right to say that among that mil-

lion were multitudes who looked upon their position with

sadness, but were powerless to prevent it.

They felt how monstrous that system, that accursed en-

tail from their fathers that could only exist by repressing

and crushing in ere, they could bud, the noblest instincts

and yearnings of humanity. This, as in the mysterious

case of Casper Hauser who was imprisoned from infancy

without being allowed to learn to talk, was defined by the

German jurists as the "Nameless crime against the human

soul."

Within a short time I had visited Williamsburg, York-

town, and Hanover Court House, taken sketches and col-

lected some highly valuable historical material.  I had

met some of the most charming of people among the

aristocracy, and been the recipient of their hospitality.

Their frankness, simplicity and ease of manner was grate-

ful.

At Williamsburg I called on Beverly Tucker, the Presi-

dent of the College, William and Mary. He was an old man

with long, gray hair streaming down his back; and one

of great learning. How he came to speak of it I do not

recollect, but he told of the affection of the students for

him, that if any indignity was offered him they would risk

their lives in his behalf. As he spoke his eyes filled with

tears. I was indeed surprised at this exhibition of tender-

ness of emotion and child-like simplicity. No Northern

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456   Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

 

College President would have so exhibited himself. But

it was "Old Virginia" all over. Her good people carried

their hearts on their sleeves.

He was the Uncle of Judge Randolph Tucker who ad-

dressed you last spring at Marietta; so the latter told me.

I had gone up to him at the close of his speech and told

him who I was, when he looked as though Rip Van

Winkle had appeared, and then exclaimed, "Is it pos-

sible!"  In like manner was Senator Daniel astonished

at the close of his Marietta address, when the throngs had

crowded around, shaking his hands for his patriotic speech

I made myself known to him. Whereupon he dropped

mine, and raising both of his aloft, and then placing

a palm on each shoulder, looked me square in the face

and exclaimed, "My Heavens, there have been two men

I have been wanting to see from boyhood, Peter Parley

and Henry Howe, and now I see one of them!"        On

comparing notes, I found he was born the very year I was

traveling over his beloved Virginia, 1843, and five years

before my Virginia tour I was face to face and talked with

Peter Parley.

At Richmond I bought a horse, designing to ride him

over the State, and started for Petersburgh, distance some

twenty-five miles. That horse was a regular pounding

machine. It took fifty miles of riding to get there-twenty-

five miles by road, and twenty-five miles up and down in the

air. Then I discovered he was blind of one eye. I next day

rode him back to Richmond, and returned him to the former

owner; and he said, "He is not blind, Mr. Howe; he is only

a leetle wake in one eye."

Nothing was left me but to walk, and I did walk in my suc-

cessive trips more than a thousand miles.

A few weeks later I reached Red Hill, once the seat of

Patrick Henry. It was then the residence of his son, John

Henry, who had a plantation with several hundred slaves.

The mansion which I sketched overlooked a beautiful,

fertile country to the east. To the west, sixty miles away

• 16
 

Some Recollections of Historic Travel.   457

 

loomed the long, blue line of the Blue Ridge, with those

two exqusitely rounded cones, the Peaks of Otter. The

graves of Patrick Henry and wife were in a grove at the

foot of the garden, with no monument over them. They

were fenced around with wooden paling.

When I arrived at the house, near the close of the day,

I found Mr. Henry absent, and being a stranger and on

foot, Mrs. Henry, a dark, sallow and sickly looking woman,

was afraid to receive me, so I was turned over to the tender

mercies of the negro overseer. I liked it because of its

variety. He was a silent, sedate personage, and lived with

his wife in a cabin with but a single room, except a loft

under the roof, to which I was consigned for the night,

going up thither by a ladder, and happier than a crowned

monarch, I slept in peace. I saw I was a mystery to the

overseer. He evidently regarded me with suspicion, perhaps

an emissary of abolition. There were hundreds of field

negroes on the place, and only a single white family. Not

many years before had occurred a bloody insurrection, and at

times the timid felt alarmed.

Next morning Mr. Henry returned, and for a day or two

I was his guest. He was a large, dignified man, with little

vivacity, and no special intellectuality. He told me con-

siderable of his father, and I took notes; but got not much

of value. It was accounted for by the fact that his father

died in 1799, in his infancy, and he did not remember

him.

There is not, perhaps, in history another instance of an

orator having such power over a multitude. His very

notes instantly thrilled the hearer, and such was the sonor-

ous quality of his voice that President Madison, who once

heard him, said it reminded him of a trumpeter on the

field of battle sounding the charge. His audiences seemed

as mere puppets in his hands. This was shown on an

occasion when he was illustrating some point; he said, "If

we go, we go all together." As he said this, he clasped

his hands, and swayed his person from right to left! Upon

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458   Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

 

this, the entire body of his hearers moved with him, just

as a forest of tree tops are swayed when stricken by a mighty

blast.

Roanoke, the seat of the eccentric John Randolph, who

had then been dead some ten years, consisted of two plain

cottages, and was in a dense woods, with no sign of cul-

tivation. I saw there his favorite servant, termed by Ran-

dolph his "ever and affectionate Juba," and I said to him,

"You lost a fine master when Mr. Randolph died."  "Yes,"

he replied, " he was more than a father to me."

Mr. Randolph was greatly beloved by his servants, and

on his return from Congress was met with joy. In bitter-

ness of sarcasm and celerity of wit he had no equals. The

expression "dough face" originated with him, and was

applied to show his utter loathing of that class of North-

ern politicians who cringed to the behest of the Southern

"fire-eaters."  His quickness of repartee was illustrated

when he met face to face a gentleman on Pennsylvania

Avenue with whom he had a quarrel, when the other ex-

claimed, "I never turn out for a blank fool!" " I do,"

retorted Randolph, at the same time bowing courteously

and gliding past. This was James H. Pleasants of the

Richmond Whig, who died as a fool dieth, being killed in

a duel. I personally knew him and his slayer, young Ritchie,

of the Richmond Enquirer.

The higher class of Virginia planters were a fine body

of men, mostly untraveled, frank and simple-hearted as

children.

The subject of slavery was almost universally touched

upon when I was a guest among these generally hospitable

people. I never introduced it; but they did almost uni-

versally. They mourned the existence of slavery; but

they felt themselves in the midst of a mass of savages who

had got to live as well as themselves, and they knew no

way to extricate themselves. Some of their first men ex-

pressed their abhorrence of it to me privately in a manner

that they said would have been dangerous for them to

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Some Recollections of Historic Travel.  459

 

have expressed publicly.  My sympathies were touched

at the difficulties of their position.

If the North had understood the South, and the South

the North, the war would not have ensued; slavery would

probably have continued for generations to come. At the

outbreak of hostilities the cry at Washington was "On to

Richmond!" but before that city was reached enough

young men had been slain to have filled three lines of

coffins to have extended as a pavement every foot of the

way thither.  The South Carolinians prided themselves

on theirs being called the "Game-cock State," but they

had no idea that for firing on the American flag they were

to be so completely divested of their feathers.

Late in the fall and early winter I was weeks footing it

through western and southwestern Virginia until I reached

that point where Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, a

trinity of States unite, each sending high in air mountain

tops. I was for weeks footing it through the mountains.

The population was very sparse, that of an entire county

in some cases could be got into one of our churches.

Their houses were generally cabins and of a single room,

standing in the narrow valleys of the mountain streams,

and often miles apart. The people dressed in homespun

and lived the life of half hunters, half agriculturalists.

One day I entered a cabin of a single room and was

struck by the extraordinary neatness within.  A  white

coverlet was on the bed and other things in keeping.  A

fine looking old man in a hunting shirt, and an old woman

with a pipe in her mouth, were seated by a fire listening

to a little girl reading.  He said he was a poor moun-

taineer and ignorant of the world.  Neither of the old

couple could read; but they were trying to do their duty.

The secret of all this was the little book the child held in

her hand   known   in  Christian  lands as the "New

Testament."

One night I was lost in the mountains; I was walking

on a sort of road through the woods; it was so dark I

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460   Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

 

could scarcely see. The air was moist, the dry leaves over

my head were gathering moisture.   This condensed and

fell in drops on the dead leaves beneath, in a monotonous

pat! pat!! pat!!!  I kept on lifting up my legs at every

step to prevent falling over obstructions; I could not see,

when I heard the barking of a dog. That was more than

music.  A few moments later a light burst through the

gloom, and in a twinkling I was at an open cabin door,

where a mother stood and several children, who, aroused

by the barking, had come out to see what was up. I

found shelter.  The father was away but returned after I

had retired.

The cabin was a single room of perhaps twenty feet

square.  My supper was soon prepared; when ready, the

mother took a sheet of tin, put at the end flat down about

two inches of dipped candle, and then lighting it, shoved

it horizontally into the crevice of the log chimney.  It

pointed to the table, a small affair, say a yard long; upon

it was a collation of cold food, some potatoes, hoe-cake or

corn bread baked on the hearth, and cold meat, perhaps

bear's meat, for it was common in the mountains and tastes

like ham.  That very day I had seen a pet bear beside a

cabin.

The candle burnt out, my supper ended, and I took a

seat before the fire, which lit up the faces of mother and

children as they circled around; they gazed into mine all

absorbed as I tried to enlighten them as to the far-away

country and people among whom I lived. After a while

it struck me that the old mother did not exactly under-

stand me, and I inquired.    She replied she understood

some things, but it was mostly "too high larnin' for her."

Her oldest child, a daughter of sixteen, plump, merry, and

rosy, who told me she weighed just 136 pounds, appeared

to understand better. She said she "could read and write

a little and craved larnin'."

These poor, simple, ignorant, but virtuous people looked

upon me as a superior being from another world.   The

• 20
 

Some Recollections of Historic Travel.    461

 

old mother believed in witchcraft.  "What!" said I, "you

believe in witches?"  "Yes," she replied, "I know it, for

when I was a leetle gal I was at a camp meetin' and there

was an old woman there who was possessed by a witch;

and when the time for barking came on, she went out into

the woods, and I followed and she barked just like a leetle

fiste." I could not gainsay her, for seeing is believing, and

she had seen it with her own eyes and heard it with her own

ears, and I had not.

The pleasure which comes from the using of our muscular

system when everything is in high working condition is

beyond words. My physical vigor in this pedestrian ex-

cursion through southwestern Virginia was brought up to

the highest point of perfection.

The season was most propitious; it was the early winter,

the climate bracing, the scenery wild and picturesque, and the

semi-civilized people I was among supplied me with a fund of

thought and amusement. Poets and preachers they say are

sometimes inspired. Theirs is brain inspiration. Mine was

of a different character.

I had to walk so much that my locomotive muscles had

become like whip chords, and full of high spirits; it seemed

as though my limbs were inspired. I suppose this might

be called "leg inspiration." I remember one day in par-

ticular when near the Tennessee line when I had walked

about fifty miles, that in the last two hours it seemed as

if something had broken loose; I rather flew than walked.

David Livingstone, the African traveler, relates in his

African Experiences that when he had got broken into

walking he felt as though he had no feet. For my part I felt

as though I had no legs. They were wings.

In December of 1845, after the publication of my Vir-

ginia, I went to Charleston.  Mr. Calhoun was then so

powerful in the state that it was a common saying that

when he took a pinch of snuff all of South Carolina

sneezed.  He had expressed his gratification with my

Virginia work coupled with the desire that such an one

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462   Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

 

should be made upon his State, and that was my errand.

The project failed through the timidity of a gentleman

there.

Ohio, the young and rising State next attracted me, and

proved a mine of ungathered history; all one had to do was

to travel and pick it up.

Cincinnati was my first point, where I arrived in Jan-

uary, 1846. It was then the most important city of the

west, the center of its highest refinement and cultivation;

especially noted for its public spirit and its many people

of mark.

The river was the grand artery of commerce, and the

landing a scene of bustle and business, with the discharge

of goods and the movement of steamers:-its varying

stages and phases was in everybody's thoughts and talk.

"How's the river to-day?  Good stage of water, eh!"  Their

very slang came from it. When one wanted to express

his contempt for another he would say, "0, he's a nobody-

nothing but a stern wheel affair--don't draw over six

iuches."

One day I was in the rooms of Dr. Randall, the Secre-

tary of the Cincinnati Historical Society, when in bounced

two laughing, merry, country girls. Some jokes passed

between them and the Doctor, and then they bounced out.

They were Alice and Phoebe Cary, girls respectively twenty-

six and twenty-two years of age, then just rising into fame.

The portraits as published are not at all as they were then.

Phoebe had a round, chubby face and seemed especially

merry. Alice I saw years later at a concert by Jenny

Lind. She was then small and delicate, with an oval

face, expression sedate and thoughtful. She was attired

in Quaker-like simplicity, her dark hair parted in the

middle and combed smooth over the brow. No maiden

could look more sweet and pure than she on that evening.

Her appearance remains as "a living picture on memory's

wall."

I was again in the city a few months later when the war

• 22
 

Some Recollections of Historic Travel.   463

 

broke out with Mexico, and the news came by river of

our victories in the two opening battles, the 8th and the

9th of May, Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma.     The

whole town was alive with excitement, and I remember a

little lieutenant from  the                       Barracks over in Newport

seemed especially jubilant.                    A  soldier who was present

told me that just before the opening of the first battle,

General Taylor rode in front of his line from right to left.

He was seated on his horse like a woman, and facing his

men said: "The bayonet, my hardy cocks-the bayonet

is the thing."

The most eminent character of the Cincinnati of that

day was Judge Burnet.  His notes on the History of the

Northwest, were published about that time. He had come

from New Jersey to Ohio in 1796 and died in 1853.  He

was, when I saw him, seventy-six years of age, a thorough

gentleman of the old school, of Scotch descent, his com-

plexion dark, eyes black, and general expression forbid-

ding, and manner reserved and dignified. He walked with

a cane, his hair in a queue, and I think he wore a ruffled

shirt.  I had been introduced to him the summer pre-

viously by Henry Clay, at Mr. Clay's Kentucky home. The

latter had invited me out to take tea, and when I arrived

there, Messrs. Clay and Burnet, with their wives, were in

the garden.  After a little Mr. Clay said, "These ladies

have some conspiracy together, let us go in." We took

our seats and presently tea was brought to the parlor and

served there.  The Judge soon left and I was alone with

Mr. Clay.  He was at the time seated over a rug his feet

resting on the words,

"PROTECTION TO AMERICAN INDUSTRY."

He pulled out his snuff box, spread a red bandanna

handkerchief over his lap, and leaning forward talked to

me in a kindly manner in those sonorous tones that had

swayed multitudes.  In the course of the conversation he

inquired: "How is my old friend Wm. E. Robinson?" I

replied that he is now the Congressional reporter of the

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464   Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

 

New York Tribune under the pen name of Richelieu.

"You should," he replied, "pronounce that name Risheloo."

Seven years before when alone in the private parlor of

Daniel Webster, in the Astor House, just prior to his de-

parture on his celebrated visit to England, I had been

joked by him.   To have been corrected by Henry Clay

and joked by Daniel Webster are among my choice rem-

iniscences.

Mr. Clay was idolized by the people. When he walked

through the market at Lexington, the children would run

and catch the skirts of his coat and exclaim. "How do

you do, Mr. Clay?" and often thrust flowers in his hands.

"I am of different politics from Mr. Clay," said my land-

lord, MacGowen, an Irish Democrat at Lexington, "but

I have been a neighbor for years and can not help loving the

man." When Mr. Clay was defeated for the Presidency,

multitudes wept.  When the news came of his defeat,

I was at a public meeting of the Whigs in my native city,

who were condoling with each other, while outside the

young Democrats were marching and singing through the

streets:

"0, Cooney, Cooney Clay!

You never can be President,

I hear the people say."

 

At that meeting, an old, gray haired gentleman arose,

Zebul Bradley, the silversmith.  When a man has such

an old time Hebrew name as Zebul, one may be pretty

sure he has been Bible bred, and where, when in dis-

tress, he will go for comfort.  Raising his hands and

looking aloft he exclaimed, "The Lord reigns ! "  Then

Zebul the silversmith sat down.   It was the shortest

speech I ever heard, and in the light of succeeding events,

the most pungent.

My first point after leaving Cincinnati was Marietta.

I went there to begin at the beginning. I was for several

days the guest of Dr. Hildreth and his charming family.

He was then about sixty years of age and one of the most

• 24
 

Some Recollections of Historic Travel.    465

valuable men New England gave to Ohio. I found him

quiet and kindly, the ideal of a revered family physician.

It was most fortunate for Marietta that it had such a faithful

delineator of her valued historic characters.

I believe he was fully impressed with the moral responsibil-

ity of writing for the public. He seemed to delight in resting

upon the good points of men's characters. In one instance

he speaks of a gentleman whose orchard was being plun-

dered by boys. He got under the tree in which they

were, ere they discovered him; when he gently told

them those were not his best pears, they must come with

him and he would show them a better tree, and in future

when they wanted more fruit, come to him and he should be

pleased to give it to them. After this the boys had no desire

to steal his fruit.

The next character of especial note I saw was in Circle-

ville, Ohio's first historian, Caleb Atwater. He was a

graduate of Williams, was educated as a lawyer; had

been in the Ohio Legislature, post-master of Circleville

and Indian Commissioner to Prairie du Chien, under

Jackson. Mr. Atwater when I saw him was sixty-eight years

of age, a large, heavy man, who seemed when he was talking

as though he was thinking aloud. He was a queer talker

and appeared to me like a disappointed, unhappy man.

One of his favorite topics was General Jackson whom he

had visited at the Hermitage where the General had en-

tertained him talking, I presume, between the whiffs of

his corncob pipe which he smoked even when in the

White House. Although born in Massachusetts, he was a

descendant of David Atwater, the original progenitor of

all the Atwaters in America. David was one of the leading

settlers in New Haven in 1638. One of my four great-grand-

fathers was a Caleb Atwater, so I have some of the same

blood in my veins.

But all of that old New England stock is nearly rela-

ted.  Almost the entire emigration    to New   England

was in the fourteen years from 1628 to 1642 when in all

Vol. 11-30

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466    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

20,000 people came over.  After that there was no emi-

gration only as the scattering flakes after a snow squall.

These 20,000 married young, had large families and at

the beginning of this century their descendants had increased

to over a million. The result is as genealogists ascertain they

are about all in some degree of cousinship to the rest; by

some lines often near and by others remote.

Mr. Atwater did good service by his work on Western

Antiquities and this leads me to speak of two other archae-

ologists of the Scioto Valley, whose acquaintance I made,

Ephraim George Squier and Dr. Edwin Hamilton Davis.

They were then engaged in making their explorations

and surveys. Dr. Davis was a native of Chillicothe and

was then about thirty-five years of age. He was a very

reserved and somewhat diffident gentleman and of the

highest character. The latter part of his life was passed

in New York, pursuing his archaeological studies. Mr.

Squier was an entirely different man. He had come from

the East to assist Mr. Seneca W. Ely, now the agri-

cultural editor of the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, to

edit the Chillicothe Gazette. He was then about twenty-six

years of age, a blonde, small and boyish in figure, but one

of the most audacious spirits I have known. In coming

to Columbus with a friend of mine just prior to the open-

ing of the Legislature, Squier said to him that he was

going to get the clerkship of the House. Surprised, the

other replied, "Why, Squier you can't do that, you have just

come to the State, you are not even a citizen." "I don't care,

I shall do it." And he did it. He had a talent for manage-

ment and notwithstanding his insignificant presence could

make his way everywhere, with no fear of power, station nor

weight of intellect and character.

One day he was riding out with the same friend, when

they came in sight of some ancient works. He thereupon

inquired about them. The latter told him, on which he

became greatly interested, and said that would be his field of

work, he did not care about politics.

• 26
 

Some Recollections of Historic Travel.      467

 

In the course of conversation Squier asked if there was

anybody in Chillicothe interested in archaeology.   "Yes,

there is Dr. Davis, who, ten years ago, assisted Charles

Whittlesey in his explorations and surveys of the Newark

antiquities, and is still gathering relics."  The result was

he united with Davis, who furnished the funds, and they

worked together.

The publication of their great work by the Smithsonian

Institution set Squier upon a pedestal.  John F. Stephens'

work upon the Antiquities of Central America, issued in

1841, had created a great sensation, showing that country

was a rich field for archeological research.  Squier, on the

publication of their work, applied for and obtained the

position of special charge of affairs to Central America,

his object to investigate archaeology and kindred topics.

Both he and Dr. Davis died last year.

Some thirty years ago I was walking down Broadway,

when I saw on the opposite side of the street, E. Geo. Squier

walking arm in arm with a huge man, who was lame and

wabbled from side to side.   The contrast was remarkable

between the little incisive man and the giant.  The latter

was Chas. Fenno Hoffman, the poet, and author of that

then popular convivial song, which elderly people will

remember:

"Sparkling and bright in liquid light

Does the wine our goblets gleam in,

With hue as red as the rosy bed,

Which a bee would choose to dream in.

Then fill to-night with hearts as light

To loves as gay and fleeting

As bubbles that swim on the beaker's brim,

And break on the lips while meeting."

In view of the subsequent history of those two men that

scene is not to be forgotten.  Both eventually brought up

in lunatic asylums, and Hoffman died in one.     But that

was natural; what else should be expected of those-and

I say it with all due respect to the members of this Society -

what else should be expected to become of those who fol-

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468    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

 

lowed such moneyless callings as writing poetry and study-

ing archaeology?

It was a great gratification to me that at that period I

saw Thomas Ewing and Thomas Corwin, Ohio giants in

the political world; and in later years William Allen.  It

was in 1837 when Mr. Allen took his seat in the United

States Senate, and at an earlier age than any other Sena-

tor was ever elected.  I was at the time engaged in rail-

road surveying in Connecticut, and the leader of our party

I remember was enthuisastic over a brilliant speech the

young Senator from Ohio had made.    It was the custom

in that day to fasten nicknames upon prominent public

men. Mr. Allen was called by his opponents the "Chinese

Gong," from the tremendous strength of his voice, and

when the Chinese gong went out of use, and the people

knew not its horrid din, changed the epithet to the "Fog

Horn." At one period it was "Earthquake Allen," and be-

cause he had used in a speech the expression "an earth-

quake of indignation." Mr. Ewing was called by the

Democrats " Solitude Ewing, " from a speech he made in the

Senate, wherein speaking of the disastrous effect of the

removal of the deposits by Gen. Jackson, he said, "Our

canals have become a solitude and the lake a desert waste

of waters."  This term was certainly poetical, having in

it the element of pleasing melancholy.  Not so the term

applied in that era to the Democratic member of Congress

from Mercer county, who got fastened upon him the

epithet of "Sausage." And this was the way of it: William

E. Robinson, the waggish reporter, "Richelieu," of the

New York Tribune, had given a comic description of the

Hon. Wm. E. Sawyer's bringing to the house a cold lunch

and spreading it on his desk, and partaking of it in the

presence of his fellow-members while business was going

on.   Cold sausage, as described, was the principal article

of the menu.    The Democratic majority expelled Mr.

Robinson, but he came back some years later as the Dem-

ocratic member from the Brooklyn-New York District.

• 28
 

Some Recollections of Historic Travel.   469

 

Mr. Sawyer was ever after known as "Sausage Sawyer." It

was a cruel epithet to apply to a worthy man.

There were some Ohio men I then met, I will now

speak of.  Young they were and could not dream of the

honors awaiting their coming years.  Once when in the

office of the Cleveland Herald, of which Mr. Harris was

the editor, there came in a youth of scarcely twenty years.

I was at once interested in him, for he was a native of my

town, and his father a friend of my father, and a gentle-

man of unusual elegance and acquirements.   The young

man was pale, slender, nimble in his movements, quick

as a flash with an idea, and enthusiastic.  The reflection

I had was "how young you are to be so interested in poli-

tics," for that was what I supposed brought him to the

office.  But he has made an honored record, - GEORGE

HOADLEY.

While, in 1846, I was sketching Athens University, a

group of students looked upon my work with absorbing

interest.  It was probably the first time they had seen

any one sketch from nature. Among them was one who

was to add to Ohio's honored names in the literary and

political world.  Love of nature, and love of humor are

generally wedded qualities, are certainly so in his case.

His brilliant description of a daily phenomenon first gave

him wide notice and the pleasing sobriquet of SUNSET,

while his superabounding wit from that day to this, has

been as a medicine for the alleviation of human woe, and

places S. S. Cox well on the pedestal among the bene-

factors.

In my boy days I often saw in my father's bookstore a

Yale student.            He was tall, broad, even as a youth heavy

and strong.                He had been quarried from the granite hills

of New Hampshire; and now for full half a century,

has been one of Ohio's solid possessions. He was even then

noted for his strong common sense and masculine grasp of

intellect. He was a warm admirer of Daniel Webster,

whom in some important respects he resembles, and of

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470    Ohio Archaological and Historical Quarterly.

 

the many eulogies pronounced upon that great man, his

tribute to his " Life and Services" is regarded by the family

and friends of Mr. Webster as the most truthful and

masterly.  For a large part of his life, Yale College has

been glad to have him as a member of its corporation,

which perhaps is as great an honor as being a cabinet

minister, but he has even been that, and twice a minister

abroad to the Courts of Austria and Russia.  I am here

proud to speak of him as my life-long friend, ALPHONSO

TAFT.

They were building a railroad from a town on the lake

shore to a point a few miles south, but were not running

regular trains.  I went out of the lake shore town in a

train consisting of a locomotive, tender, and a single

baggage car, with a few rough seats, what they called in

those days a "Jim Crow car." There were but three or

four passengers. One of them was a young man of great

height, slender, pale, and then just twenty-three years of

age.  He was attired with great neatness, and looked to

me like a college student, pale and thoughtful.  He sat in

statue-like silence.  Not a word escaped his lips; but I

noticed he had his eyes well open, nothing seemed to fail

his observation.   My   saddle-bags, containing  valuable

drawings and notes, had been taken in charge by the rail-

road man, and I knew not its whereabouts.    In talking

with him about it I showed, as I felt, a nervous anxiety,

This young man heard my every word, and a feeling of

shame came over me with the thought, he must think I

was foolishly fussy.

Since that day our country has gone through much.

We of advanced years, who have lived through its periods

of deadly peril and suffered the agonies of its sore adver-

sities, alone can tell how much.

To hold high official position is well enough.   The

time is coming when no man can repeat our long list of

Presidents.  Human applause and honor, to have your

name on every tongue is well enough; but as compared to

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Some Recollections of Historic Travel.   471

 

some other things, is as mere sounding brass and tinkling

cymbal. But to have rendered great service through great

love to one's country, and such a country as ours, with

which the best hopes of humanity are identified, is everything.

It is this that will immortalize a man, and what is better,

render his last days his best days. And where is the living

man, who from that period to this, has done such an extended,

united to such a great service, to these United States,

as the silent, reflecting youth who sat by me on that day-

JOHN SHERMAN.

A young man said to me in one of the interior towns,

"There is an odd character here you ought to see. He

writes humorous verses, is much of a wit, and is deserving

of a place in your book." I replied, "Ohio has a good

many odd people, and I have not time to give them all a

call." The young man eventually moved to Cincinnati,

became a member of its literary club, and I was associated

with him for years, and learned to love and respect

him. He was one of its most popular members, over-

flowing with good fellowship, cheery, fond of the humor-

ous, and never known to get angry except in indignation

at some vile project in view, or some oppressive act com-

mitted upon the weak and helpless. In those days there

was nobody around to tell him, that he was to become

twice Governor of Ohio, and then President of the United

States-RUTHERFORD B. HAYES.

I now regret I did not see that comical character, Judge

Elisha W. Howland, that he wanted me to call upon. But he

is going into my second new edition.

Two or three years after my visit, the name of the town

was changed from Lower Sandusky to Fremont, in honor

not of 'a then political character, but of the great Path

Finder over "the Rockies." Mr. Hayes, as the lawyer for

the petition, presented it to court, and finished by offering

the only remonstrance against the change. This was in

the form of humorous versification, consisting of seven

verses from the pen of Judge Howland, which Mr. Hayes

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472    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

read to the Court, and I have no doubt with a gusto. I give

you three of them.

"There is a prayer now going round

Which I dislike to hear,

To change the name of this old town,

I hold so very dear.

"They pray the Court to alter it,

I pray to God they won't;

And let it stand Sandusky yet,

And not John C. Fremont.

"Therefore my prayer shall still remain

Until my voice grows husky,

0, change the people, not the name

Of my old home, Sandusky."

Many of the other eminent characters of the Ohio of

that day whom I met, time will not allow me even to name,

but they will largely be found in the traveling notes of my

Centennial edition, with other reminiscences.

I had designed to walk over the State and did walk about

100 miles when I bought a horse, large, white, and a racker.

The name of my companion was Pomp; but a more un-

pretentious creature never lived; he was humility itself.

I bought him of a family physician in Delaware. As I rode

him out of the gate, the wife and children of the doctor

wept; and the doctor himself smiled, but it was to conceal

his true feelings. Poor fellow! he was later one of the

many, who leaving their little families behind, started over-

land to California to better their condition, and perished on

the way.

My advent in a little town often created a sensation,

especially when I took a chair and, sitting in it in the

center of a street for an hour or more, took a sketch.

"What is that blank fool doing there in a chair?" was not

an uncommon query from those within my earshot, and ever

amused me. A knot generally gathered around, and thus

was I protected from being run over by some passing

vehicle.

Wherever I went I generally found some local chron-

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Some Recollections of Historic Travel.      473

icier of events, or else some old people who could tell me

incidents of pioneer life. Everything was thrown open

to me. Very many sent me communications after I left.

I collected everything that had been published. While I

am gathering materials for a book, it absorbs all there is of

me; I take it to bed with me, I rise in the morning with

it, and it accompanies me everywhere I go. Things appar-

ently remote often lead up to the absorbing topic. Every

man of sense who forms a love for a subject and works,

will excel. When one of my books is published, that

which has been a subject of entire absorption changes to

one of a like repulsion.    It recalls memories of labor

and anxieties. So I can well appreciate the feelings of

Goldsmith, who, on having a certain question put to him

replied, "Oh! don't ask me, I don't know anything about that

subject; I once wrote a book upon it."

On the first of September my work was done. A little

over seven years of my life had been passed in this kind

of labor, given to my country. Then for thirty years

thereafter I was a citizen of Cincinnati, and under my

roof-tree buckeyes sprouted, grew and blossomed. There

I led a very retired life, my travels mainly from my house

to my office, but the many books that I made from that point

went out all over the land, to perform a mission and to show

I was still living. Then that also ended. Now, after an

interval of years, I am again in action, working while it is yet

day, which to each of us is brief and can be told in these few

lines of mine:

LIFE OUTLINED.

A strange world this, with its ever-changing chimes,

Peals of joy from virtues, wails of woe from crimes;

Where the pressing present crowds back the fading past,

And on a brighter morrow the eye of man is cast.

'Tis here we are born, play, work, laugh and sigh,

Love, wed, rear children, grow old and then die;

Still on the world moves, and we are forgot;

Few know, and less care-oblivion's our lot.

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474    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly^.

 

Still eyes shall weep, sad vigils keep

As death the reaper cuts the lines,

And ages roll and dirges toll

And the winds go moaning through the pines.

Yet marriage bell o'er hill and dell

Will proclaim the sweet old story

And children's prattle and drum's wild rattle

Tell of happy youth and glory.

HENRY HOWE

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