Ohio History Journal

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492 Ohio Arch

492       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

From the ruins of this first estate, we have the smiling land-

scape, the green grass, the fertile fields of waving grain. We

have the advantages, ease, comfort, conveniences, luxuries of

modern civilization. For the generation that first came to this

goodly land, and rough-hewed the way there is lasting remem-

brance and perpetual honor. In their lives there was a serious-

ness of purpose that is not characteristic of the later generation.

In the midst of difficulties and dangers there was exhibited to

an unusual degree the qualities of fortitude and endurance.

The Indian trails and wilderness roads have disappeared.

The horseback riders from New York, Pennsylvania, Connecti-

cut no longer pass along the old highway bordering these

grounds. The stage coach, the wonder and admiration of seventy

years ago, has ceased to pitch and creak and roll its heavy way

eastward and westward. The moving wagons, that so frequently

lined this road when Ohio was a new state and Indiana and

Illinois almost unknown territory, have passed into a faint tra-

dition. To-day the merchants in Franklinton do not ship their

goods over the Alleghany Mountains in a Conestoga wagon.

There are those here to-day in the fifth generation from

the first settler. They can daily witness many marvelous things

unknown to their forefathers in this country, and beyond the

realm of their conception or dreams.

There has been material progress and a marked change

in social life. We do not look back with regret to the good

old times, rather we rejoice in the good new times, and look

forward to an ever changing, and ever better condition of

human existence. But when we come to estimate the sterling

qualities that make a man or woman, we shall probably never

find them in a finer combination, or a higher degree of develop-

ment, than in the pioneers who located a century ago in Franklin

County.

ADDRESS BY EDWARD L. TAYLOR, SR.

[Edward Livingston Taylor, Sr., was not able to be present on

account of illness. The address was read by his son Edward Livingston

Taylor, Jr., Prosecuting Attorney for Franklin County.]

The Livingston and Taylor families represented here to-day both

had their origin in Scotland. Their ancestors had lived there for many