Ohio History Journal

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his pedantry, King James, little understood the hidden meaning

of the sea-to-sea extension. Under this charter of 1609, modi-

fied by that of 1612, Virginia held until the formation of the

federal constitution in 1788.

 

In reading of Mr. Avery's work we are tempted to halt and linger at

particularly important and interesting events. The reader reluctantly

leaves his story, which we again commend to both the general reader

and the close student. Both the author, Mr. Avery, and his publishers,

The Burrows Brothers Company, have embarked upon a stupendous

undertaking. This second volume offers indisputable evidence that they

are equal to its accomplishment. We know nothing to compare with it in

the efforts of American publishers for an American history.

 

 

 

ETNA AND KIRKERSVILLE.

We pass from the stately splendors of Mr. Avery's description of

a continent's colonization to the graphic portrayal of the quiet rusticity

in the little interior, obscure hamlets of ETNA AND KIRKERSVILLE, Licking

County, Ohio, -- a charming bit of reminiscent retrospect by Morris

Schaff- (Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Boston and New York, 1905.) This

little modest volume of some 138 pages came to our notice as we grazed

among the late issues upon the bookseller's counter. The clear and un-

pretentious style of the author at first caught our eye and then our view

was riveted by the interesting sketches of the unimportant and almost

insignificant life of the early settlers in Ohio. The author does not deal

with great or striking events or distinguished personages. His facile

pen draws with artistic touch and poetic sentiment "the simple life" of

the pioneer country folk.

The township of Etna was organized in 1833, and is in the extreme

southwestern corner of Licking County, Ohio. It is a true rectangle, two

and one-half miles wide and a little over eight miles long, stretching due

east and west on both sides of the National Road that runs through the

middle of it. It is a part of the Refugee Tract, a grant of 100,000 acres

donated by Congress in 1798 to citizens of Canada and Nova Scotia who

abandoned their settlements in consequence of having given aid to the

colonies in the War of the Revolution, allotting to each "in proportion to

the degree of their respective services, sacrifices, and sufferings." The

Refugee tract is a strip four and one-half miles wide and forty-eight miles

long; beginning on the Scioto at Columbus, and running easterly almost

to the Muskingum.

The village of Etna, which reposes in the middle of the township

and from which it gets its name, was laid out by Lyman Turrell, a Ver-

monter, in 1832, the lots selling at from $3.00 to $5.00 apiece. "If there be

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a place in this world that can lay an undisputed claim to being rural if not

obscure, I firmly believe it is my native township of Etna. And yet the

clouds float over it in beautiful colors, the stars come out joyfully, the

dew falls, the corn ripens, and the sun shines sweetly there." Between

1815 and 1825 emigrants poured like a tide into Central Ohio, and by

1830 there were enough settlers in Etna to ask for a local government

of their own. Mr. Schaff describes the civil features of the village gov-

ernment in which the justice of the peace was the highest and most

important official-- and the attainment to which office was the height of

the communal ambition. He pictures the administration of justice and the

settlement of legal disputations. Mr. Schaff's father came from Belmont

County, Ohio, in the winter of 1829 or 1830, and after "declining to buy

what is now a part of the great city of Columbus, bought a farm in Etna."

Upon that farm on December 29, 1840, the author was born and there

spent his early boyhood days until about the age of ten when the family

moved to near the village of Kirkersville, which town, some four miles

from Etna, was founded about 1831 and was named for Thomas Kirker,

acting Governor of Ohio in 1808.

"It would be difficult to portray the simplicity and naturalness of

society as it was in Etna when I was a boy, say in 1845 to 1850. There

was no class founded on wealth, no one distinguished by either learning,

ancestry, achievement, or pretentious estate,-we were all on the same

level, wore the same homemade clothes, read or studied in dimly lighted

rooms or by the light of wood fires, looked each other in the face when

we met at each other's doors, all unconscious of that restless kingdom

known as society, and in blessed, happy ignorance of what is now called

refinement and culture, and in a perfect freedom from the weakening, tor-

menting, pessimistic fastidiousness that afflicts modern life. It is true

there were the asperities and crudeness of uncut marble about all social

life, but viewed in the light of philosophy born of experience and close

observation of this drama called life, the conditions might almost appear

ideal."

He describes the social life, the establishment of the churches by

the different denominations and the rigid lines that separated the various

religious beliefs.

"I was present also at the dedication of the Disciples, commonly

known as Campbellite church, that stands on the north side of Licking, in

the angle formed by York street and the Refugee Road, in 1856. It was

a great occasion; for Alexander Campbell, the founder of the church

itself, was present, and hundreds of people, old and young, from far and

near, came to see that wonderful man. He was very tall, had white

bristling hair, worn in the Andrew Jackson style, and very dark, lively

black eyes overarched with mantling white eyebrows."

In striking contrast to the ecclesiastical features of this little society

was the grandiose military spectacle of the village militia.

"In my early boyhood, about the time of the Mexican War, there

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was a militia company in Etna. The hat they wore was very much like,

if not an exact copy of, the one worn at West Point, except that it had

a white and red pompon somewhat larger than the black one worn by the

cadets. In my eyes, as this company paraded west of the schoolhouse

in Etna village, they looked like warriors of many a bloody field; and

when they came marching along with their flint-lock muskets with savage-

looking fixed bayonets, -keeping step to two screaming fifes, the fifers

swaying proudly, and a bass drum beaten in lofty style by Henry Neff, a

heavy-browed Pennsylvanian, one of the village carpenters, -where is the

rustic heart that would not beat fast at such a spectacle of martial glory?

Thumping away with great flourishes and casting from time to time a

fierce look at us small boys chasing along in bulging-eyed awe, Mr. Neff

was something immense. I have seen Generals Scott, Grant, McClellan,

Sherman, Sheridan and all the great generals who led the gallant old

Army of the Potomac, but none of them were ever half so grand, in my

eyes, as Henry Neff marching at the head of the militia company, Captain

James Conine commanding."

Our city high school graduate of to-day would smile at the meagre

pedagogical opportunities that Mr. Schaff enjoyed a little more than half

a century ago. "The village schoolmaster taught nothing beyond arith-

metic, reading, geography, and elementary grammar; he had never had

the opportunity to fit himself to teach more. But he had walked the up-

ward winding ways and paths of many virtues, -virtues whose paths and

ways are greener than the ways and paths of abstract sciences; he taught

us all to tell the truth, to have patience, to have courage, and to be respect-

ful to our elders. He won many a boy's heart, and he won mine. I

used to write to him when I was at West Point, and more than once,

as I walked my post in the dead hours of night, I remembered him, and

wished that, when the day came for me to graduate, he might be present

and share my pleasure."

Mr. Schaff, with an intense love of nature inborn and deeply fostered

by his early environment and with the sympathy and the poetic feeling that

reminds us of Thoreau, describes the forests, the fields, the trees, the

banks and the runs, the swamps and their borders, the flowers and the

birds and the game of those early days. "There is nothing so everlast-

ingly and sweetly companionable as brooks and country roads. And in

the mind of the farmer's boy who aimlessly wanders along their winding

banks, or barefooted, hatless, and oftentimes coatless, loiters along their

dusty way, what seeds of delicious memories they sow! He never forgets

the shallow fishing-hole with its little poising-dace, nor does he forget the

silent, outstretching old road with its barways leading into quiet pastures,

its roadside bushes and persistent flowers, the vagrant thistle with its

royally tinted and girded bloom where bumble-bees, idler than himself,

bury themselves in dreamy sleep, and where the little yellow-bird feeds

when autumn comes on, mounting thence as he draws too near, and

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throwing back cheerily to him its delicately undulating notes. Yes, brooks,

lanes, and country roads, you carry mankind's sweetest memories."

Mr. Schaff refers to the famous Bloody Run Swamp. "The head

of this swamp, now practically all cleared fields, when I was a boy was

about a half mile east of Kirkersville and reached to the old bed of

Licking Creek, a distance of two and a half miles. It was about a half

mile wide and was a thickly matted growth of willows, young elms, water

beeches and alders. In the middle were several islands covered with big

timber where the last of the wild turkeys roosted. Except in winter,

when it was frozen over, it was difficult, and when the Bloody Run was

high, it was dangerous to penetrate it, so deep and treacherous was the

mud. I have no doubt that it was made originally by beavers damming

Bloody Run, and later widely extended by the accumulation of heavy

drifts in Licking."

This swamp, long since disappeared, was in its day fraught with

historic memories. "Christopher Gist, the first white man, except captives

among the Indians passed by the swamp in 1751. In his diary he says he

camped at the Big Lake, now the Reservoir, and on the 15th of May 'set

out from the Great Swamp'."

Of the prehistoric features of his native village, Mr. Schaff says:

"So far as I know there is but one prehistoric relic in the town, and

that is in the Hampton woods, on the Fairfield line, and marked by a

circle on the map. It is a small circular fort, with walls about three

feet high and about thirty feet in diameter. In my day it was in the

heart of heavy oak timber, just on the divide between the waters flowing

north to the-Licking Valley and those bearing off to the southwest to

find their way into Poplar Creek, and then on to the Scioto. It is easy

to speculate over its location, and the reasons in the minds of its builders

and defenders; but it has occurred to me that perhaps the mound builders

of Circleville, on their way to the old fort at Newark, came up the Scioto

to the mouth of Big Belly, thence up the Walnut to the mouth of Poplar

Creek, which they followed in their canoes to the swamp at its head,

within a few miles of this spot. Somewhere on their line of portage to

Licking a defense of some kind may have been necessary, and maybe that

was the reason for its location; or it may have been thrown up during

a campaign.

Perhaps the most valuable feature of Mr. Schaff's little volume is

his account of the projection and building of the National Road, the

Appian Way of the early Middle West.*

"In the first place, long before a pioneer traversed the woods, the

Indians were coming and going from one hunting-ground to another; and

before them the mound-builders, and before the mound-builders, the

 

*A very complete and admirable account of the building of this

road written by Mr. Archer Butler Hulbert will be found in the 9th

volume of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical publications.

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buffalo. Starting then with the latter, we have the prairie meadows on

the Darby plains west of and about Columbus, and at Gratiot and along

the Muskingum salt wells or salt licks, where the buffalo and elk would

go in great numbers from their feeding grounds. Would they not natur-

ally follow the South Fork, going east after crossing the divide of Black

Lick? Besides, it is the very shortest line of travel. Again, the early

surveys of the National Road show an ancient mound on the east bank

of the Big Walnut, where it is crossed by the National Road. This

mound was built and the country around it occupied in all probability

about the same time as the celebrated works at Newark. Would not

the people of these communities visit back and forth, and would they

not follow the trails the buffalo had already made through the forest?

Furthermore, the beaver dam on the Heffner, now the Essex farm, to

be mentioned more particularly later, would it not draw the Indians going

from Black Lick and Big Walnut to the hunting-ground around the great

Bloody Run Swamp?. And what was more, Flint Ridge, in the eastern

part of the county, lies almost due east and on the very line of the old

road, where for ages the Indians got the material for their flints; would

it not draw them for many a mile, just as the salt licks on the other side

of it drew the buffalo and elk? Moreover, and above all, for man and

beast it offered the only easy passage between Bloody Run Swamp.

Bloody Run, and the South Fork of Licking. These are all mere guesses,

but I think fairly well based on plausible theories. But however all this

may be, the most of the pioneers of Etna came in over this old 'Hebron'

dirt road, a glorious passageway beneath majestic timber."

"The present generation, save those reared along it, are completely

ignorant of its history, and therefore cannot realize how great a part

this highway played in the nation's early life."

"To fully appreciate its national importance, it must be borne in

mind that in the early days of our country the commerce of the Missis-

sippi and Ohio valleys, obeying the law of commercial gravity, was find-

ing its markets down the Mississippi, and that there was wide and deep

political discontent over the indifference of New England and the middle

coast states to the welfare of the West; and so rapidly were these alienat-

ing forces increasing, that the chances are that, had its construction been

delayed twenty years, the West would have broken from the East, and

organized an independent government with the capital at Louisville, St.

Louis, or New Orleans."

"At once on its completion as far as the Ohio River, a mighty tide

of emigration set in, as though a magic bugle had been heard from the

river's banks, or from the top of the Alleghanies. High and low, and

everywhere among the mountains and down over the misty Blue Ridge

of old Virginia, the people heard of it, and with a better faith than that

of the Crusaders, teams were harnessed, the household property of manor-

houses as well as of many a cabin was packed, a good-by was waved to

the old home, and off they started for the National Road."

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"Built as it was by the government, brushing the mighty trees out

of its path as though they were reeds, carrying its level high over ravines

and marshes and surging creeks, cutting boldly down through hills, march-

ing on mile after mile, it possessed then, as it possesses now, the myster-

ious power of statehood; making every one who traveled it feel that in

no sense was he an intruder, but inspiring him, on the contrary, with a

feeling of self-respect and a lofty national pride. It was called the

National and United States Road, and brought the government as a

concrete reality for the first time to the immigrants, and sons of the

Revolutionary soldiers. It is interesting to imagine the expression on

their faces, as, emerging from some narrow, winding, grass-grown, muddy

country road, this great highway broke on their vision for the first time.

Its royal breadth; its bridges of cut stone spanning the runs and creeks,

their guards carried up three and a half feet, with a wide, heavy coping;

its defiance of every obstacle, and the obvious thoroughness of its con-

struction and disregard of expense, must have made their simple hearts

beat fast. The falling in, too, with people from all quarters of the country

must have had a quickening effect on the natures of these children of

provincialism, born in little, isolated, secluded cabins. It must have been

like a draught of champagne to them when they met the stages, heard

their echoing horns, and caught for the first time that look of superiority

and indifference which personages of average importance are likely to

assume when traveling on stages or in Pullman cars. Surely, as they

trudged on in their surprise and exultation, the National Road must have

seemed to them, not an ordinary highway, but something endowed with

might. But a youthful spirit, the genius of the land, was walking at

their side, and as the stages dashed westward, with kindling hopes and

animated faces they followed on."

"As soon as the road was located, the land all along it was rushed

into the market in lots to suit purchasers. Some bought whole sections,

others a few acres, and with almost magical speed the woods were peo-

pled. The building of the road itself gave employment to many men and

teams, as all the stone for bridges and for macadamizing had to be

hauled from quarries eight or ten miles distant. It must have been a

busy scene, as the road made its way between Kirkersville and Etna.

The axemen went first, cutting a swath eighty feet wide through the

timber; others, as fast as the trees fell, cut them into logs which teams

dragged off to one side. Men then grubbed around the huge stumps

till they could be pried up, when they followed their magnificent trunks,

to rot under the shade of their more fortunate fellows. Then came

ploughs and scrapers, till the grading was done. Hundreds of men found

employment, and under their labor the road almost walked across the

land. Often when we boys could get our mother into a reminiscent mood

(how provoking aged people are who have had thrilling experiences: and

sailors and soldiers, too, who have seen real war and have behaved with

courage, - how provoking they are to children in letting go only in little

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driblets of what is so interesting in their lives!), when we could induce

the dear old lady to tell about those days, how delightful was her story!

She would tell us how the camp-fires of the workmen lighted up the

night all along the line; about the bustle, the teams coming and going,

and on Sundays the drunken carousals and rioting; and finally the awful

death of so many of them by the scourge of cholera which swept the

entire country. Well, we never wanted to hear much about the funeral

processions that were remembered so distinctly, while our mother never

remembered half enough about the fights to suit us."

"As fast as the road was completed the stream of emigrants-we

called them 'movers'-began, which, for over thirty years, poured along

it. My remembrance begins about 1845 or 1846, and at that time and

till 1852 the stream that had set in in 1830 poured on. I do not believe

that from the last of March till the snow began to fall, the farmer's boy

ever looked off from the fields to the road that his eye did not fall on the

white canvass-covered wagons of the movers."

Here is the stage time-table for the winter arrangement of 1835-6.

"The Mail Pilot Line leaves Columbus for Wheeling daily at 6

A. M., reaching Zanesville at 1 P. M. and Wheeling at 6 A. M. next

morning.

"The Good Intent Line leaves Columbus for Wheeling daily at 6

P. M., through in 20 hours to Wheeling (127 miles), in time for stages

for Baltimore and Philadelphia."

"What would I not give to witness once more the arrival of the

stage at 'Kirk.' Lo! the vanished past is beckoning, and behold, I am

on the broad porch of the Kirkersville tavern, and I hear the rumble of a

stage coming through the covered bridge at the east end of the town.

There the horn blows and it is coming at a round gait. The seats on

top are full, and a young lad, one about my own age, sits up there, on

easy terms with his elders. What a fortunate boy! It is the great south-

western mail. A fresh, glistening team-big roans-emerges from the

wide-open door of the old, low, whitewashed, broad-fronted tavern barn,

and steps grandly forward, ready to replace the incoming team. The

usual crowd of stable boys and idle loungers are standing around; towns-

people and those who have come in to trade gather also, for the arrival

of the stage is the one important event in the life of Kirkersville. Uncle

Davy Neiswonder, a middle-sized man with rubicund, attractive counte-

nance, his hair as white as snow, contrasting well with his rosy cheeks,

appears, hat in hand, to welcome the guests or exchange greetings with

the passengers. The stage rolls up at a swinging trot, the driver, Frank

Jackson, grim and dignified, draws up his leaders; their breasts are white

with foam from champing bits, and from their panting sides perspiration

rises in feathery steam; he throws down the lines, stable boys fly to

unhitch, the bay team moves off proudly, the fresh relay team wheels

into their places, the lines are tossed up to the driver, who gathers them

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and calls out, 'Let them go'; and the superb roan leaders, that have been

prancing, waiting for the word, dash off."

But after all Kirkersville attained to something more than local

fame.

"It was in the summer of 1865, just after the end of the Great

Rebellion, when I was stationed at Watertown arsenal near Boston.

Colonel Kingsbury, our commanding officer, was a classmate of General

Sherman; and when the latter came to Boston, he hurried out to the

arsenal to see his old cadet friend. During the visit our Colonel gave

him a fine dinner, to which all of us young bachelors were invited. While

at the table Sherman, who talked as usual most familiarly and interest-

ingly, said to Major Shunk who sat just opposite me, 'Well, Major, I

knew your father, Governor Shunk of Pennsylvania,' and after some in-

quiries in regard to the Major's family, turned his emitting dark brown

eyes on me and asked in his customary direct manner, 'Well, Captain,

where are you from?' Whereupon all the youngsters lowered their eyes

into their plates with the broadest grins, for only a short time before

Major Shunk, in buying a series of maps, had told the book agent that

he would take them, that he found them sufficiently minute in their deline-

ation as they gave Kirkersville, and they had had the usual fun out of

it. With some embarrassment I answered, 'General, I have the honor to

come from the adjoining county to yours. You are from Fairfield, I am

from  Licking; but I don't suppose you ever heard of my town--it's

Kirkersville.' 'Kirkersville!' exclaimed Sherman with enthusiasm, 'Kirk-

ersville! Why, I've been there many a time. I know it well; it had the

biggest pigeon roost in the world,' and he brought his hand down with

a bang. I wore a smile of triumph as I looked up and down the table."

And here Mr. Schaff proudly calls attention to a little map in his

book in which is presented a circle with a radius of twenty miles of

which Kirkersville is the centre and within the circumference of which

circle there were born or during their lives resided sixteen characters of

more or less national renown. Among them were Generals W. T. Sher-

man, P. H. Sheridan, W. T. Rosecrans, Irwin McDowell, S. R. Curtis,

Charles Griffin, C. R. Woods and B. W. Brice; Justice W. B. Woods of

the United State Supreme Court, Senator Allen G. Thurman, of Ohio,

Samuel S. Cox, member of Congress, Willard Warner, United States

Senator from Alabama, James F. Wilson of Iowa, James B. Howell,

United States senator from Iowa, and Thomas Ewing, the distinguished

orator governor of Ohio.

 

ANCIENT INDIAN GIANTS.

The Baltimore American is responsible for the following interest-

ing article concerning what it designates as prehistoric Indian giants.

Gigantic skeletons of prehistoric Indians, nearly eight feet tall, have

been discovered along the banks of the Choptank River. Maryland, by

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