Ohio History Journal

THE PATHFINDERS OF JEFFERSON COUNTY, OHIO.

 

SUPPLEMENTARY TO VOL. VI. OF OHIO ARCH. AND

HIST. SOCIETY PUBLICATIONS.

 

BY W. H. HUNTER.

 

 

 

INTRODUCTORY.

This supplement to The Pathfinders of Jefferson County

(a paper on the early settlements of Eastern Ohio, inspired by

the celebration of the centennial of establishment of Jefferson

County, August 24, 25 and 26, 1897), was commenced with view

of correcting errors in the main publication, issued by the State

Historical Society (Vol. VI); but the accumulation of data in

the hands of the compiler made a more extended paper than

at first contemplated. Letters from descendants of Pathfinders

called attention to the fact that the names of the Fathers had

not been given, while much had been written of their achieve-

ments. This defect has been corrected, in degree at least, in

the following pages, which, it is believed, contain the names

of a majority of the first settlers, these names having been

gathered from many sources, principally legal documents. The

compiler is not responsible for the variety of name-spelling;

the names are given as he found them. Gathering material for

this supplement has not been without effort and expense; but

the compiler did the work as a duty falling upon him as a citi-

zen; not because he felt he was more competent to perform

the task of gathering and compiling the data, but others did not

care to delve in the musty past. There is much work yet to

do to complete the history of Jefferson County; there are jour-

nals in the Court House, from any one of which a historian can

gather data for a valuable book, and it is desired by the writer

of this that some one who has leisure will take up the work and

put in enduring print these records. To do this is certainly the

(132)

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The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.   133

 

duty of some citizen who expects no compensation beyond satis-

faction of what is called patriotic yearning. At least, this work

should be undertaken by some one whose whole time is not

devoted to necessary business effort.

 

 

ORIGINAL BOUNDARIES OF COUNTY AND TOWNSHIPS-NOTES

OF PATHFINDERS.

The original boundary of Jefferson County was: Beginning

on the bank of the Ohio River at the intersection of the western

boundary of Pennsylvania, down the river to the present town

of Powhattan; west to near the west line of what is now Bel-

mont County; north to near the present Town of Sandyville in

Carroll County; west to Muskingum (now Tuscarawas River),

up the Tuscarawas and across Portage to the Cuyahoga River;

down the Cuyahoga to Lake Erie; easterly to Pennsylvania line

and south to the place of beginning. The remainder of Harri-

son and Carroll Counties and a portion of Tuscarawas County

were added January 31, 1807, but in the meantime other coun-

ties were organized; the dates thereof are noted on page 217

(Vol. VI.)

The first civil-township division made of Jefferson County

was under the State Constitution, on the 10th of May, 1803,

as follows:

Warren Township - Beginning on the Ohio River at the

lower end of the county; thence west with the county line to

the center line of the Seventh Geographical Township and Third

Range; thence north with said center line until it strikes the

north boundary of Eighth Township and Third Range; thence

east with the township line to the Ohio River; thence down the

river to the place of beginning.

Robert McCleary, who settled within the lines of this town-

ship in 1790, was appointed the first Justice of the Peace for the

county. William Wells, who was an early settler on Yellow

Creek, was also commissioned a Justice of the Peace by Gov-

ernor St. Clair, the date being July 15, 1798. Other Justices in

the county at that time were, D. L. Wood, Philip Cable and

David Vance.

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134      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

The first election in Warren was at George Humphrey's

mill; Robert McCleary and George Humphrey were elected

Justices; Joseph McKee, James Reilly and John Patterson, Trus-

tees, John McElroy, John Humphrey and Benedict Wells hav-

ing previously served as Trustees. Warrenton was laid out by

Zenas Kimberly in 1802. The first house was built on the site

of the town in 1800 by John Tilton, who settled in 1785 and

who founded Tiltonville in 1806. Solomon Schamehorn set-

tled permanently in 1797; the Lisbys in 1801, William Lewis

1801.

The first deed recorded in Jefferson County was for land

in Warren Township, being that of the United States to Ephraim

Kimberly for 300 acres near Indian Short Creek. The warrant

was issued to Kimberly for services as a soldier in the Revo-

lutionary War. The deed was given under seal at Philadel-

phia, 1795, and signed by George Washington. The tract was

surveyed by Absalom Martin, and included the mouth of Short

Creek. The southwest corner is marked by a stone monument.

Among the Pathfinders in the territory then included in

Warren Township were: Alexander and James McConnell,

David Rush, David Barton, John Winters, Samuel Patton, James

Campbell, John Edwards, Peter Snedeker, John Henderson,

Robert and William McCullough, Joseph Moore; all these in

1798-99. The Alexanders, Mitchells, Clarks and Pickens also

came before 1800 and settled on what is now known as Scotch-

Ridge, in Belmont County, where is located perhaps the oldest

grave-yard in the original county. This division is noted in

detail in account of townships erected from the original War-

ren Townships - Warren and Wells.

Short Creek - Beginning at the southwest corner of War-

ren Township; thence west with the county line to the western

boundary of the county; thence north with the county line to

the northwest corner of the Eleventh Geographical Township

and Seventh Range; thence east with the township line until the

line strikes the northwest corner of Warren Township; thence

south to the place of beginning. Two Justices; election held at

the house of Isaac Thorn. There were early settlements, men-

tion of which is made in notes of townships organized later in

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The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.            135

 

the southern part of the county. The township name is pre-

served in Harrison County. According to Record Book A,

Isaac Thorn laid out a town named Thornville in 1802.

The territory included in the original Short Creek Town-

ship was early settled, there being squatters well up the valley

before the Revolutionary War, Jesse DeLong having been born

in this valley about 1776, and died at the age of 106 years. Jo-

seph Huff (1) was living with his family near the site of New

Athens in 1784.

Short Creek Township, when organized, included the site

of one of the very first colleges in the West. Franklin Col-

lege (2) was not founded by Dr. John McMilan, but the fact

 

1 In 1800 Joseph Huff, an Indian fighter of note during the turbulent

times, killed an Indian on the headwaters of Short creek, near what is

now Georgetown, Harrison county. In relating the incident, he said he

was in the woods and seeing the Indian, he fixed the sight of his gun

in range with the Indian's pipe, and the savage immediately fell dead!

This would indicate that White Eyes was not the last Indian killed in

Jefferson county. In writing to the compiler of this incident A. J. Ham-

mond of Cadiz, says: Mrs. Capt. McCready of Cadiz, has in her pos-

session a deed made to Joseph Huff for the farm on which her father

lived, about one mile from New Athens, dated 1806, and signed by

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. This farm was sold to Judge

McFarland in 1824, and when the contract was closed Mrs. Huff pointed

to a row of six apple trees, and said she planted those trees forty years

ago, which would be 1784. One of these trees still lives and had quite

a crop on it last year [1897]. Notwithstanding this positive statement,

made on authority of well-connected tradition, Curtis Wilkin, a relative

of Joseph Huff, writes that Joseph Huff did not settle on Short Creek

previous to 1796; and that William Huff, and not Joseph, killed the

Indian in the manner stated. Still, his wife may have planted the trees

before her marriage; there can be no question as to the trustworthiness

of the authority for the statement that the trees were planted in 1784.

Mr. Wilkin also writes that the home of Joseph Holmes was the frontier

house on Upper Short Creek for three years.

Richard Wells, a relative of the Doddridges and of Bezaleel Wells,

and an early land speculator in this region, while walking on the river

front near the site of the old water works, between Market and Adams

streets in 1800, shot an Indian on the Virginia side of the river.

2 The Charter of Franklin College is dated January 22, 1825, the

names of Incorporators being Rev. John Rea, Salmon Cowles, John

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136        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

that his nephew and pupil, also Dr. (William) McMilan, was

the first President, gave the erroneous impression.

The Town of Cadiz, laid out in 1804 by Zaccheus Biggs

and Zaccheus Beatty, was in this territory, being at the head

of the Short Creek Valley, three branches of the creek having

their sources within or near the corporation lines.

Archer - Beginning at the northwest corner of Short Creek

Township; thence north with the county line until it strikes the

north boundary of the Thirty-fourth Section in the Thirteenth

Township and Sixth Range; thence east with the said line until

it strikes the western boundary of the Second Range; thence

south with said range line until it strikes the Short Creek Town-

ship line; thence west with the line to place of beginning.

Three Justices; election at Jacob Ong's mill. The name of this

township is preserved in Harrison County.

Steubenville - Beginning at the northeast corner of Archer

Township, thence east to the Ohio River; thence with the me-

andering of the river until it strikes the line at Warren Town-

ship; thence west with the line of Warren Township until it

 

Walker, David Jennings, William Hamilton, John McCracken, John

Wylie, James Campbell, David Campbell, John Trimble, John Whan,

Daniel Brokaw, Alexander McNary and Alexander Hammond. To these

were added by election the same year: Rev. Thos. Hanna, John Mc-

Laughlin, Stephen Caldwell, Joseph Grimes and Matthew      Simpson,

uncle of the Bishop, Rev. Wm. McMilan of Canonsburg, Pa., was

elected President, and John Armstrong of Pittsburg, Professor of Mathe-

matics.

The leading spirit in this enterprise [founding Franklin College]

was Rev. John Walker, a minister of the secession church. Mr. Walker

was a fit son of that particular branch of the church: a church charac-

terized by its zealous orthodoxy and sturdy theology. .. . He was a

man of deep conviction on the subject of equal rights. Hence he entered

into the anti-slavery contest with all the ardor of his impetuous nature,

and during that long controversy was one of the leading anti-slavery

spirits of the West. . . . For some time previous to the founding of

Franklin college an academy had been conducted under his auspices at

New Athens under the name of Alma academy, in active rivalry with a

similar institution at Cadiz. . . .By the superior tact and energy of

the Rev. John Walker, the charter [dated January 22, 1825,] was ob-

tained for the academy at New Athens. . .. Dr. William McMilan

was elected President and John Armstrong Professor of Mathematics.

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The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.           137

 

strikes the southeast corner of Archer Township; thence with

the line of Archer Township to the place of beginning. The

township embraced Island Creek, Cross Creek and Salem Town-

ships. Four Justices; election in the Court House, Steuben-

ville, January 18, 1803, Zaccheus Biggs presiding. John Black

was elected Township Clerk; Zaccheus Biggs, James Dunlevy

and James Shane, Trustees; Richard Johnson and Jonathan

Nottingham, Overseers of the Poor; Thomas Hitchcock, Wil-

liam Engle and Richard Lee, Fence Viewers; Matthew Adams

and Samuel Hunter, Appraisers of Houses; Andrew McCul-

lough, Lister of Taxable Property; Thomas Gray, George

Friend, Daniel Dunlevy and Thomas Wintringer, Supervisors

of Highways; Anthony Blackburn and Andrew McCullough,

Constables.

According to a statement made by Mrs. Polly Johnson, her

father, Augustine Bickerstaff, came to Steubenville from Fay-

ette County, Pa., in 1798, the site of the city at that time be-

. .Dr. McMilan was the nephew of Dr. John McMilan, [one of] the

original founder[s] of Jefferson college at Canonsburg, Pa., of which

institution he had been for some time President. He had thus been

associated with, and reared under, the tuition of that noble band of men,

the Smiths, Powers, McMilans and Ralstons, who were so instrumental

in planting the seeds of Presbyterianism and sound learning in the

country west of the Alleghanies. .. . John Armstrong was the mathe-

matical oracle of Western Pennsylvania. He made all the almanacs and

solved all the mathematical propositions for Western Pennsylvania.

Learned societies in Europe recognized his attainments by

admitting him to their fellowships. . . . What are the results? In

this small college, with its two professors, were educated such men as

the Hon. John Welsh of the Supreme Court of Ohio; the Hon. William

Kennon, a member of Congress during Jackson's administration, a friend

and advisor of the President; Wilson Shannon, a former Governor of

Ohio; Dr. Joseph Ray, the well-known mathematical writer, whose works

have maintained a longer popularity and gained a wider circulation than

perhaps any other mathematical works ever written; besides giving to

the church such men as Drs. Johnson, Bruce, Henderson, Walkinshaw.

. Surely this is harvest enough for less than seven years ..

Dr. McMilan died in 1832. . . . A Board of Regents was appointed

as Trustees of a Medical Department of the college [to be established in

Wheeling,] consisting of J. C. Bennett, Jonas Crumbacker, John C.

Wright, Samuel Stokely, Alexander Campbell, S. H. Fitzhugh, James

Garver, Peter Yarnell, John Truax, P. Doddridge, James Baker, W. A.

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138        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

ing a thicket with only a few cleared lots here and there. "With

our family came - Morris West, Gabe Holland, Nathan Case-

bier, John Johnson, Adam McDowell and Josiah Hitchcock.

We found a ferryman named Hanlin at the river who brought us

across. There was hardly to be found a soul in what is now

the suburbs of Steubenville. There was one, John Parker, who

was a trapper on Wells Run [Lincoln Avenue]. Bezaleel Wells

was quite a young man and resided where Mr. Browning now

lives. Father paid Wells, who was a real good, noble man, in

sugar, molasses and other farm     products, for a farm.    When

we first came father used to fetch salt on horseback over the

mountains, until Hans Wilson opened a store; it was in that

store I first saw calico and other goods offered for sale. I

went to school three years after we came [1801], in a log hut,

about a mile from our house, but only in the Winter as we

had to work hard during the other seasons. The Winter teacher

Ward, A. A. Lewis, S. P. Hildreth and John J. Johnson. The Regents

nominated the following Professors for the Medical Department: John

Cook Bennett, John McCracken, John Baxter, (New York) Chancey

Fitch Perkins, (Erie, Pa.) Edson B. Olds, (Circleville, Ohio) James

Chew Johnson, (Louisville, Ky.) James Garver, (Wheeling) A. J. Smith,

(Louisville) Anderson Judkins, (Steubenville). This was such a formid-

able array of professors and so alarmed the Trustees with their President

and one professor that nothing ever came of the project. [Dr. McMilan

was succeeded by Rev. Richard Campbell; he by Rev. Johnson Welsh.]

In 1837 the Board appointed Dr. Joseph Smith, then pastor of a church in

St. Clairsville, the paternal grandson of the Rev. Joseph Smith, one of

the pioneers of Presbyterianism in Western Pennsylvania, and the ma-

ternal grandson of Dr. James Powers, his worthy coadjutor. He was

thus from the same stock, and reared under the same tuition with Dr.

McMilan. . . . The anti-slavery agitation was becoming more and

more intense. The people who attended the ministrations of Rev. John

Walker were almost to a man stronglyanti-slavery. The Presbyterian Gen-

eral Assembly was divided. The congregation of Crabapple [near New

Athens] was divided, although Rev. Jacob Coons, the pastor, was strong

anti-slavery. . .. Dr. Smith opposed agitation of the question  ....

Mr. Coons left Crabapple and removed to New Athens and organized a

Presbyterian church. Dr. Smith resigned the Presidency. . . . The

majority of the Board was composed of anti-slavery men but it was not

their intention to commit the college to this principle, [but the appoint-

ment of Dr. Coons to the Presidency, was evidence that the Trustees

opposed compromise. Coons was succeeded in a year by Rev. Mr. Bur-

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The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.            139

 

was called Madcap; a very clever man from        Baltimore named

McCulley, taught in the summer."

Mrs. Johnson also stated that she remembered hearing

Lorenzo Dow preach on the street in Steubenville in 1799 or

1800. It is known positively that Dow was in the Short Creek

Valley in 1798 and preached to the pioneers. He was known

to deliver eloquent discourses to an audience composed of one

person.

Michael Castner, grandfather of Thomas P. Spencer, Esq.,

who built a mill at the head of Willis Creek at the beginning of

the century, was on the site of Steubenville while it was a wil-

derness, - before the place was considered as a town-site. He

owned a store on the Monongahela River and one in Kentucky,

riding on horseback from one to the other, and going through

this region, he frequently stopped on the site of Steubenville.

He bought a thousand acres of land in what is now Island Creek

Township, and he was one of the pioneer merchants of Steu-

nett, an Associate Reformed minister of near Pittsburg, but of Southern

birth and reticent on the slavery question.] He resigned in a year, the

prospects being discouraging, followed by Prof. Armstrong .    ...

They [the Board] resolved to  . . . throw themselves entirely upon

the anti-slavery sentiment of the country  .... [as] the place had

come to be regarded as the hot-bed of Abolitionism in Eastern Ohio.

. . . . [Rev. Edwin H. Nevin succeeded Mr. Burnett.] His eloquent

denunciation of the monster iniquity, aided by the hot shot of Rev. John

Walker, began to tell upon the community. . .. The college had be-

come involved in debt, and the creditors sued for their claims. ...

The consequence was that the property of the college was taken in execu-

tion, and sold under the hammer of the sheriff. . .. The college

[property] was purchased by the colonization or pro-slavery party, and

under the name of Providence college, they succeeded in establishing a

rival institution. [The Trustees erected a building on the church lot and

President Nevin continued his work.] The anti-slavery men had now

fairly won the field   .  ...                                         President Nevin, in having the bell cast

for the college placed upon it:                             "Proclaim  Liberty Through All the

Land." [Dr. Nevin was succeeded (1845) by Rev. Alexander D. Clark

who resigned in 1861]. . . . Her [Franklin college] sons are found

occupying positions all over the land. .. . She has given to the Senate

of the United States a Cowan, a Fowler and a Sharon, and to the House

of Representatives, a Kennon, a Bingham [also Minister to Japan] and a

Lawrence. The Democratic candidate for Governor of Ohio in 1871 was

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140       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

benville. Michael Castner built the fine old mansion near the

Two Ridges Church now (1899) occupied by Dr. John Kilgore.

His remains are interred in the Two Ridges churchyard. The

grandfather of William Dean Howells settled near the Castner

mill about 1819, after a short sojourn on Short Creek. During

the summer of 1898 Orlin M. Sanford, Esq., of Pittsburg, found

the old fireplace and numerous bits of crockery at one time uten-

sils of the Howells family. He also found the luxuriant thyme

bed mentioned by William C. Howells in his Story of Ohio-

1813-1840. There are still remaining traces of the old mill.

George Adams, father of Henry Adams now (1898) living

in Steubenville Township, at the age of seventeen joined General

Wayne's army, his parents then living in Fayette County, Pa. He

aided in building Fort Recovery at which place he was stationed.

He settled on Section 32, Steubenville Township, 1796.

Laban Parks came to the Ohio country from Virginia as a

soldier and was stationed at Fort Carpenter, being in the fort at

the time the Johnson boys made their famous escape from the

Indians. He came to Steubenville in 1797, but settled in what

is now Wayne Township in 1800. Colonel Todd, who for many

years kept a tavern on the site of Garrett's Hall on Market

Street, took a prominent part in the Western Whisky Insur-

rection.

Philip Smith, who was with the Crawford Sandusky Expe-

dition, settled near Steubenville in 1799, where he lived until

1812, then removing to Wayne County.

James Hunter was the first (Sept. 18, 1798) white male

child born on the site of Steubenville, and John Ward the second,

born in October of the same year, Joseph B. Doyle of The

Herald (1898) being a descendant of the same family. The first

 

likewise a son of Franklin - George W. McCook. She is represented

in halls of medical science by an Armor; on the Supreme Bench of Ohio

by a Welsh; on that of Alabama by a Bruce, and in the Theological

seminaries of the country by a Bruce, a Clark and a Henderson. Seventy-

five per cent of her graduates have entered the Christian ministry, and

some of the most distinguished and useful men who adorn the pulpit are

found among them. - From Address of President A. F. Ross at the

Semi-Centennial Celebration of Franklin College, New Athens, June

23, 1875.

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The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.    141

 

white female child was Sarah Ward, born in 1801. Hannah

Hunter, Ann Margaret Ward and Avery Brown followed.

Other early settlers of Steubenville Town and Township

were: John England, Martin Andrews, Moses Hale, Squire Jen-

kinson, John Galbraith, Philip Cable, Eli H. McFeely, Bezaleel

Wells, George Atkinson, James Johnston, Thomas Dadey, Robert

Carroll, Thomas Kell, John Wilson, Brice Viers, John C. Wright,

Nicholas Murray, John Hanlin, John Moody, John Ralfe, Solo-

mon Silby, James Wallace, Thomas Hamilton, James Wilson,

James Means, James Dick, Joseph Beatty, John McMillan, George

Dohrman, Matthew Roberts, William Lowry, J. G. Henning,

David Larimore, Thomas Scott, Moses Hale, William R. Dickin-

son, Samuel Williams, John Jenkinson, P. Snyder, J. C. Fisher,

Samuel Tarr, Andrew and Robert Thompson, William Kilgore,

Hugh Sterling, Samuel Patterson, Arthur Phillips, James Turn-

bull, Alexander Armstrong.

Rev. Lyman Potter, one of the first Presbyterian ministers,

owned the land on which Mingo Junction was built. Jasper

Murdock, a son-in-law, an early Presbyterian missionary in the

Ohio country, owned adjoining land.

John Rogers, according to a sketch written by Very Rev.

Dean Hartnedy, was probably the first adherent of the Catholic

Church to settle in Steubenville Township, locating on Cross

Creek in 1792. Previous to the War of 1812, he had a mill in

operation, and made powder for the regiment organized in

this county. William Arnold, whose people settled at Cadiz,

at the age of sixteen, manufactured powder and carried it to

Steubenville during that war.

Previous to 1812 the town of Steubenville was supplied with

water from Springs west of Seventh Street, conveyed by-means

of hollow logs connected with the springs and laid tinder the

streets after the manner of modern water-pipe lines. Cisterns

were also provided and water was also furnished by water-haul-

ers who obtained their supply from the river. Peter Snyder,

the first distiller, fell into one of the wells which caved in and

buried him.

Mary McGuire, at whose house St. James Episcopal Church

was organized, came from Maryland with her son-in-law, Benja-

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142        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications,

min Doyle, in 1798, and bought a portion of what is now known

as the Infirmary farm, which was afterward purchased by the

father of Gen. William Gibson; the latter was born on this farm.

Benjamin Doyle was one of the most prominent of the Pathfinders.

He established a tannery in Steubenville, in 1798, perhaps the first

manufacturing industry in the city. Mrs. McGuire was the

great-great-grandmother of Joseph B. Doyle of The Steuben-

ville Herald, and of Charles Gallagher, Cashier of the Steuben-

ville National Bank. Mrs. McGuire's husband died in Wash-

ington County, Pa., before she came to Ohio with her daughter

Priscilla Doyle. Benjamin Doyle, the husband of Priscilla, who

held a county office, provided the first public well in the town,

this well being on Market street, near the Court House.

In this township was the Mingo Indian Village³ noted in

history, and to which village Mary Jamison⁴ was brought and here

she lived with the Senecas, her captors. Near here was fought

the battle between Col. Buskirk and his followers, the avengers

of Mrs. Buskirk so cruelly murdered, and the Indians, in I793^.5

Knox Township - Beginning at the northeast corner of

Steubenville Township; thence west to the western boundary of

the county; thence with the county line until it strikes the line

of Columbiana County; thence east with the line of Columbiana

County to the Ohio River; thence with the meandering of the

river to the place of beginning. Two Justices; election at the

house of Henry Pittenger.

 

3 When Logan removed to the Muskingum in 1774, after the killing

of his relatives opposite the mouth of Yellow creek, the Senecas deserted

Mingotown and it was never after occupied by the Indians. How long

the Indian village had been occupied is unknown, still it is believed the

Senecas lived there in 1755. - Caldwell.

4After the conclusion of the French-English war, Mary Jamison,

learning that she was to be given up to the whites in accordance with

the treaty, escaped into the wilderness with her half-breed children, and

remained hidden until the search was over. She lived to an advanced age

but never lost her attachment to Indian life. The Six Nations gave her a

large tract of land known as the Garden Tract, which action was after-

wards confirmed by the state of New York.

5 In 1828 George Adams felled a large tree on the site of the Buskirk

battle, cutting through a leaden ball an ounce in weight, supposed to

have been discharged during the battle.

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The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.            143

 

Knox included the whole of the northern part of the county

and embraced the Yellow Creek region memorable as the scene

of interesting history.  Through this country marched Bouquet⁶

and his intrepid army of fifteen hundred daring souls, to the

Muskingum, in October, 1764, and the brave hearts who built

Fort Laurens fourteen years after, followed the same trail.      It

was on or near this historic stream Logan was encamped, when

through the machinations and intrigue of Dunmore and Connelly⁷

the Indian chief's relatives were inveigled to their murder in

6 Early in October, [1764] the troops left Fort Pitt and began their

westward march into a wilderness which no army had ever before sought

to penetrate. Encumbered with their camp equipage, with droves of cattle

and sheep for subsistence, and a long train of packhorses laden with pro-

visions, their progress was tedious and difficult, and seven or eight miles

were the ordinary measure of a day's march. The woodsmen of Virginia,

veteran hunters and Indian fighters, were thrown far out in front and on

either flank, scouring the forest to detect any sign of lurking ambuscade.

The pioneers toiled in the van, hewing their way through woods and

thickets; while the army dragged its weary length behind them through

the forest, like a serpent creeping through tall grass. The surrounding

country, whenever a casual opening in the matted foliage gave a glimpse

of its features, disclosed scenery of wild primeval beauty. Sometimes

the army defiled along the margin of the Ohio, by its broad eddying cur-

rent and the bright landscape of its shores. Sometimes they descended

into the thickest gloom of the woods, damp, still, and cool as the recesses

of a cavern, where the black soil oozed beneath the tread, where the

rough columns of the forest seemed to exude a clammy sweat, and the

slimy mosses were trickling with moisture; while the carcasses of pros-

trate trees, green with the decay of a century, sank into a pulp at the

lightest pressure of the foot. More frequently the forest was of a fresher

growth; and the restless leaves of young maples and basswood shook

down spots of sunlight on the marching columns. Sometimes they waded

the clear current of a stream with its vistas of arching foliage and spark-

ling water. There were intervals, but these were rare, when, escaping

for a moment from the labyrinth of woods, they emerged into the light

of an open meadow, rich with herbage, and girdled by a zone of forest;

gladdened by the notes of birds, and enlivened it may be, by grazing herds

of deer. These spots, welcome to the forest traveller as an oasis to a

wanderer in the desert, * * * On the tenth day the army reached the

River Muskingum. - Francis A. Parkman.

7 It was the general belief among the officers of the army of the

colonists that Lord Dunmore received, while in Wheeling, advices from

the British Government of the probability of the approaching war which

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144        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

order to incite savage wrath to the heat of war. It was in this

territory the Castleman girls were captured by Indians; and it

was on this soil William Carpenter shot and killed White Eyes,

the dissipated son of Col. White Eyes,8 the staunchest friend

the patriots had among the Indians; and he, too, passed along

Yellow Creek with the soldiers on their way to build Fort Lau-

rens, and to suffer in the siege of the first American fort on the

Ohio frontier. The salt springs early discovered in this territory

were a very important factor in the settlement of the Ohio

country.

Jacob Nessley, who had fruit orchards on the Virginia side

of the river, was early to take up land on the Ohio side, having

picked out large tracts as soon as the Government survey was

made and he was one of the most enterprising of the pioneer

land speculators. Joshua Downard was in the Yellow Creek

Valley in 1785, returning for permanent settlement in 1796.

He was a notable factor in the development of the township,

and like many of the sturdy Pathfinders lived to an advanced

age, being more than one hundred years old at his death. Other

early settlers were:   James Alexander (1796), Isaac White

(1798), James McCoy (1799), Baltzer Culp (1800). Squatters

at the mouth of Yellow Creek were driven off and their cabins

destroyed by fire by Ensign Armstrong in 1785. Mention is

made of other Pathfinders in accounts of the townships formed

out of Knox and organized later.

William Wells, one of the first Justices, bought land in Feb-

ruary, 1798, from Robert Johnson of Franklin County, Pa., be-

resulted in the independence of the colonies from Great Britain, and that

afterwards all his measures in reference to the Indians, had for their

ultimate object an alliance with the savages for aid to the mother country

in the expected contest with the colonies. - Caldwell.

Capt. John Stewart's narrative of the battle of Point Pleasant includes

much to show that Dunmore and Connelly were conspiring against the

Americans and that the Indians who fought Lewis had information of

advantage to them from Dunmore's scouts.

While White Eyes started from Fort McIntosh at the mouth of the

Beaver river, he did not reach the site of Fort Laurens, dying of small-

pox on the way, August 10, 1778. The statement often printed that he

was killed at Fort Laurens by an American soldier is untrue. Fort

Laurens was not built until after the death of White Eyes.

• 13
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.          145

 

ing lots 4 and 5 in the Ninth Township, Second Range, at the

"mouth of Little Yellow Creek." The same year Wells sold to

James Clark.

At the first election, over which James Pritchard presided,

John Sloan was elected Clerk; Overseers of the Poor, Thomas

Robertson, Jacob Nessley; Trustees, William Campbell, Isaac

White, Jonathan West; Fence Viewers, Peter Pugh, Henry

Cooper Alexander Campbell; Appraisers of Houses, John John-

ston, J. P. McMillen; Lister of Taxable Property, Isaac West;

Supervisors of Roads, John Robertson, Calvin Moorehead, Rich-

ard Jackman; Constable, Joseph Reed. In 1803 an election

was held. Sloan was reelected Clerk; Trustees, William Stokes,

Thomas Bay (who was with Williamson at Gnadenhutten, and

a squatter on Yellow Creek territory in 1785), and Henry Pit-

tenger; Fence Viewers, Joseph Reed, William Campbell, William

Sloan; Appraisers of Houses, Robert Partridge, Thomas Robert-

son; Lister of Taxable Property, Isaac West; Supervisors of

Roads, Peter Pugh, James Latimer; Constable, David William-

son; Justices, J. L. Wilson, James Ball.

In dividing the county into civil townships⁹ little or no at-

 

9 Before Jefferson county was divided into the five civil townships of

Warren, Steubenville, Knox, Short Creek and Archer in 1802, there were

other civil divisions. Richland township - Jacob Coleman being Tax

collector for 1799, the returns having been made to Jacob Martin, Wil-

liam Wells and Alexander Holmes, Commissioners; York - Thomas

Richards being Collector in 1798; Kirkwood - Thomas Richards also

Collector for this township, in 1739; Warren - John McElroy, Collector

for 1798 and 1799; he produced a discharge signed by William Bell and

Benj. Doyle, two of the former Commissioners; Wayne - David Moodey,

Collector for 1799; Wayne is again mentioned in the Commissioner's

Journal for 1802, in that John Hannah, Collector for the townships of

Richland, Wayne, Knox, St. Clair and Beaver, had made returns. In the

same record it is noted that the County Tax Listers had made returns:

Robert McCleary for Warren, John Matthews for Cross Creek, Charles

King for Steubenville, George Day for Wayne, Isaac West, Jonathan Para-

more and Enos Thomas for St. Clair. The Lister for Beaver had not made

returns.

Township 1, range 1, takes in the northeast corner of Wells township.

Wells township includes fractional township 1, range 1. Had the sur-

veyed township been complete it would have extended east of Warrenton

six miles, or to the Pennsylvania line.

Vol. VIII-10

• 14
 

146       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

tention was paid to the surveyed township lines, Smithfield,

Wayne, Cross Creek and Salem, being the only civil townships

identical with the surveyed, and consequently several of the civil

townships embrace fractional parts of several surveyed town-

ships, making it quite difficult to ascertain the territory embraced

in the original townships, out of which the townships, as now

constructed, were made; but with the assistance of George P.

Harden, the County Auditor (1898), the compiler has been en-

abled to give the lines accurately, together with the names of the

original townships out of which the new divisions have been made

from time to time.

The first civil township made from the original five was

Springfield, which territory was separated from Knox, the date

of action by the County Commissioners being December 6, 1804,

"a considerable number of the inhabitants [of Knox] having

made application to be set off in a township by themselves."

The boundaries of the new township were recorded as follows:

"Beginning at the northwest corner of Steubenville Township

as formerly laid out, [now the northeast corner of Island Creek

Township] and running north on the line between the Second

and Third Ranges [between Island Creek and Salem, Knox and

Ross, Saline and Brush Creek] to the northern boundary of the

county; thence west with the county line to the northwest cor-

ner of the same [now in Carroll County]; thence south with the

western boundary of the county, to the northwest corner of

Section Thirty-three in the Thirteenth Township, Sixth Range;

thence a straight line, through the center of said township, east

to the southwest corner of Section Sixteen in the Tenth Town-

ship and Third Range; thence north to the northwest corner

of said section; thence east to the place of beginning." Spring-

field as then constituted was much larger than now, as it em-

braced Brush Creek, Ross, half of Salem, a large portion of Car-

roll County and about the seventh part of Harrison County.

The first election was called to be held at the house of David

Lyon in Springfield, (Gillis' Town as the settlement was then

often called). When Carroll County was organized (1833), al-

though a part of this township naturally belonged to the new

county, protest of the people kept the territory in Jefferson.

• 15
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.     147

 

Solomon Miller, from Fayette County, Pa., was the first

settler (1800) within the lines of the township as now consti-

tuted. He took up Section Ten and made improvements, but be-

ing unable to pay for the land, was dispossessed, and this sec-

tion was entered in 1802 by Henry Miser. However, undaunted,

as was characteristic of the spirit that gave the pioneer cour-

age, Miller afterward entered Section Eleven and began life

anew. Stewart McClave settled on Section Six in 1801, and the

worthy progeny of a noble sire still possess the land. He was

the grandfather of John McClave, Esq., of the Jefferson Bar.

Following these Pathfinders came John Stutz, Joseph Gordon,

Jacob Springer, Thomas Peterson, James Albaugh, James Rut-

ledge, James Allman, Henry Isinogle, Robert Young, Adley Cal-

houn, William Jenkins, James Campbell, S. Dorrance and Philip

Burgett. The latter, it is asserted, with John Lucker, manufac-

tured the first salt produced on Yellow Creek, the experiment

resulting in a bushel of salt.

Circle Green, one of the oldest Methodist Episcopal Churches

in the county, was organized in Springfield Township by Rev.

William Knox in 1809. A house of worship was built of hewn

logs, each male member donating his labor in the construction.

The first members were: James Rutledge and family, John

Kirk and wife, W. Taylor and wife, William Scarlott and family,

Alexander Johnston (father of Judge William Johnston) and

family, Francis Johnson and wife, James Forster and wife,

Henry Forster and wife. The old log church was occupied until

1829.

The first division of Archer (June 12, 1805) made a township

including Wayne (the name given the new township), part of

Green and German in Harrison County, and part of Salem in

Jefferson, the boundaries being: "Beginning at the southeast

corner of the Ninth Township in the Third Range, [southeast

corner of Wayne as now constituted] and running west with the

line of Warren and Short Creek, [Smithfield and Wells] to the

southwest corner of Section Seven in the Tenth Township of

the Fourth Range; north with the line of said section to the

northwest corner of Section Nine in the Eleventh Township,

Fourth Range; thence with the line of Springfield Township,

• 16
 

148      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

east [along the north line of Wayne] until it intersects the line

of Steubenville Township, [the line between Cross Creek and

Wayne] south to the place of beginning." This division left

the remainder of Archer in what is now Harrison County. The

election was called to be held at the house of Joseph Day. The

elections in Archer having been held at the house of Nicholas

Wheeler, and his house falling in the new township, the election

was called for the house of George Pfautz.

Mention is made (page 214, Vol. VI) that John Mansfield

was the first white child born in Wayne Township (1797). His

father and mother Thomas and Mary (Hill) Mansfield, the father

of English and the mother of Scotch-Irish ancestry, came from

the Cumberland Valley to Western Pennsylvania, and becoming

acquainted with Joseph Dorsey, one of the energetic land specu-

lators in the Ohio country after the survey, the latter agreed

to enter a section in Jefferson County for him. The proposi-

tion was accepted in good faith on the part of Mansfield, and

he moved upon Section Four in what is now Wayne Township,

the land ever since being known as Dorsey's Flats. After

Mansfield had built a house and cleared ten acres, Dorsey re-

fused to convey the title and Mansfield was forced to vacate.

He then entered Section Three which is still possessed by his

descendants. An apple tree planted by Mansfield in 1798 still

bears fruit (1898). He was the father of twenty-two children,

six by his first wife (Jane Shaw), all but one dying in infancy,

and sixteen by his second wife (Mary Hill), all but one growing

to manhood and womanhood. Mrs. Mary Mansfield who shared

the hardships of the trying pioneer life with her sturdy husband,

frequently traveled the pathless wilderness to attend Episcopal

Church services at Charles Town (now Wellsburg, Va.) At the

Mansfield house was held the first Methodist Episcopal meet-

ings in Wayne Township, and here were heard the eloquent,

scholarly, J. B. Finley and others of the itinerant giants, whose

appeals to the unsaved were ever earnest and fervent, whose

words of comfort were as a benediction to the righteous. Thomas

Mansfield was the grandfather of Judge John A. Mansfield.

James and Anthony Blackburn and John Maxwell, all from

Fayette County, Pa., settled in 1798. Other Pathfinders were -

• 17
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.     149

 

Michael Slonecker, William Wright, John Lyon, Lewis Thock-

morton, John Dickey, Richard Coleman, John Barrett, Jacob

Shaw, James Tipton, John Tipton, Robert Christy, William

Sprague, Hugh Trimble, Joseph McGrail, Thomas Carr, John

Thorn, William Elliott, Samuel McNary, Jacob William, Zebi-

dee and Christopher Cox, Thomas Bell, John Edington, John

McClay, Sylvester Tipton, Henry Ferguson, John Matthews,

John Kinney, Richard Ross, John Johnson, Jacob Vorhes, Mor-

ris Dunlevy, David Milligan, John Scott, Archer Duncan, Nicho-

las Merryman, James McFerren, William Ferguson, Thomas

Rowland, William Hervey, Joshua Cole, Michael Stonehocker,

Henry Beamer, Leonard Ruby, Manuel Manly, Tobias Shanks,

Nicholas Wheeler, John Dayton, John Welch, John Vanhorn,

Charles Stewart, Abel Sweezy, William Elliott, Elijah Cox,

Thomas Arnold, George Hazelmaker, John Matthews, Richard

Boren, Methiah Scammehorn, James Barber, James Sinkey, Amos

Scott, Benjamin Bond, John Jones, Thomas Lindsey, Gabriel

Holland, Patrick Moore, Robert McNary, John Hedge, Andrew

Duncan, Peter Beebout, Thomas Moore, Andrew      Johnson,

Thomas Riley, Finley Blackburn.

Bloomfield was laid out by David Craig in 1817, and was

an important place, being midway between Cadiz and Steuben-

ville. The first teachers in the village were: Isaac Holmes,

John Houghey, Joseph Dunlap, all Irish schoolmasters.

The first mill in Wayne Township was built on Cross Creek,

(where Skelley's Station now is) about 1803, by Matthew Mc-

Grew.

On McIntyre Creek in this township, was established a colony

of manumitted slaves by Nathaniel Benford of Virginia, in 1829,

which colony is treated in a chapter beginning on page 274 (Vol.

VI). Of the original colonists there were living in Septem-

ber, 1898, Collier Christian, Mrs. David Cooper, Mrs. Patrick

Smith, Mrs. Paige Carter, Mrs. Martha Adkins, all feeble in old

age.

The first division of Short Creek Township which resulted

in the organization of Smithfield, was made November 7, 1805,

the boundaries being recorded as follows: "Beginning at the

southwest corner of Section Four in Township Seven of Range

• 18
 

150      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

Three [southeast corner of Mt. Pleasant as now constituted];

thence west with the line between the counties of Belmont and

Jefferson to the southwest corner of Section Thirty-four in the

same township and range; thence north with the range line to

the northwest corner of Section Thirty-Six in Township Eight

of Range Three; thence east with the township line [between

Wayne and Smithfield] to the northeast corner of Section Six.

Township Eight, Range Three, to place of beginning." In this

was embraced Mt. Pleasant; and all west of the west line of

the new township (part of Green and all of Short Creek, Harri-

son County, as now constituted) retained the name of Short

Creek. The election was called for the house of William Story.

The Commissioners at this time were Andrew Anderson, John

Jackson and Benjamin McCleary, and John Ward, Clerk.

The township derived its name from the village, laid out by

James Carr in 1802, on land entered by Horton Howard, a land

speculator and a promoter of Quaker colonies. With his part-

ner Abel Townsend, Howard entered considerable land in the

southern part of the county. Among those buying land from

Howard in Smithfield Township were: Caleb Kirk, W. A. Jud-

kins, Joel Hutton, Casparius Garretson, William  Wood and

James Carr. The first settlement was made by two squatters,

named Simpson and Tyson, who were on the land near the vil-

lage before the survey but were forced to vacate in 1800, the

section having been entered by William Kirk. Among the first

permanent settlers in and about the village were Quakers from

North Carolina, including Richard Kinsey, Christopher Kinsey,

Mason Miller, Richard Jelkes, Malachai Jolly. These came in

1798 and 1799; John Morton, Cadwallader Evans, Joseph Mc-

Grew, Samuel Cope, James Purviance, John Naylor, Caleb Kirk,

Thomas Carr, Richard Logan, James McGrail, John Cramblet,

John Wallace, Nathaniel Kellims, John McLaughlin (member of

Legislature in 1804), Nathaniel Moore, Walter Francis, Daniel

Haynes. These came during 1799-1803 and settled in various

parts of the township, the four latter near Adena, where Jacob

Holmes, the Indian scout, had a Government grant, on which

land was built one of the first Methodist Episcopal Churches

(about 1800) northwest of the Ohio river. Daniel Haynes lived

• 19
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, O.     151

to the age of one hundred and one years. During his life he re-

lated to his descendants, who still possess the land takenup by him,

that about 1802 the family of John Jamison, composed of hus-

band, wife and several children, the wife riding a cow with a babe

in her arms, came from the Ohio River, up Short Creek to

near Adena, and squatted on his land. They possessed noth-

ing, and the settlers jointly built them a cabin. As was the

custom, Jamison was permitted to crop all the land he could

clear in order to give him a start. This was the first Ohio ex-

perience of the noted Jamison family of Harrison County, the

family of squatters probably following a branch of Short Creek

to a point near Cadiz.

The Holmes Church was organized by Jacob Holmes,

Charles Moore, Richard Moore and Isaac Meek. In 1810, when

a new church was built, the land was deeded to Jacob Holmes,

John Stoneman, William Story, Jacob Jones, James Smith, S.

Moore, E. Pierce, R. Moore and John Barkhurst, most of whom

had settled at least ten years previously. Elias Crane, a local

preacher, delivered the sermon on the cornerstone laying occasion.

J. B. Finley (1814) organized a Methodist Episcopal class in

Smithfield Village. Among the members were:  Benjamin

Roberts, John Stout, James Coleman, Pollard Hartgrove, David

Long, Thomas Mansfield, John Dougherty. Another M. E.

Church was organized in 1815 and a building erected on the

farm of James Wheeler who came from Maryland in 1803 and

bought land from Nathaniel Kellims. The Trustees were: James

Wheeler, Jacob Cramblet, Thomas Kems, Dennis Lowry, Wil-

liam Whitten. This church has not been in existence for near

eighty years.

According to an extended paper on "Pioneer Experience,"

written by John S. Williams who was editor of "The American

Pioneer," published in Cincinnati in 1843, he came with a party

of Quakers from Beaufort, South Carolina, in 1800, the party in-

cluding his mother, sister and brother, Joseph Dew, Levina

Hall and Jonas Small and families. On arrival at Redstone, Pa.,

they found several families starting on the return, being dissatis-

fied with the new country's prospect. They had concluded it

more comfortable to continue to endure the sight of slavery

• 20
 

152       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

so abhored, than to found a home in the wilds of Ohio. Among

these were Jonas Small and Francis Mace. The others came on,

and were met at Steubenville by Horton Howard, who escorted

them to the Short Creek and Wheeling Creek Valleys. They

stopped over night at Warren (Warrenton). A portion of the

company of twelve families, went from Warrenton to John

Leaf's, in the Concord (Colerain) settlement, where there was

already a Meeting, and Joseph Dew and Mrs. Hall to Mt. Pleas-

ant, the others going to Smithfield.

The Quakers established a Meeting in 1800, near the site of

the village, the names of the first members being: Benjamin

Townsend, Jemima Townsend, Malachai Jolly, James Carr, Wil-

liam Kirk, George Hammond, James Hammond, Daniel Pur-

viance. The first marriage in the Meeting (1801) was that of

Evan Evans and Mary Brite.

The first school in the village (1802) was taught by

Shackelford and Miss Armilla Garretson, the latter having lost

both her legs and one arm. Joel Hutton, the first shoemaker,

also taught. The first house in the village was built by Wash-

ington Whitten. The first tannery was managed by Belford

Griffith. The first blacksmith was William Carr and Abel Carey

was the first hat maker. The first hand grist mill was oper-

ated in 1804 by Isaac Wickersham, but shortly thereafter James

Carr built a mill run by horse-power. However, it is quite cer-

tain that Jacob Ong operated a water mill on Piney Fork at an

earlier period, his mill being mentioned in the Commissioners'

journal of 1802-4, and tradition is, that he had Indians for cus-

tomers. John Leech built a mill on the same creek in 1804, as

did also Abner Hutton about the same time. James McGrew,

who, it has been said, built the first water mill in the township,

did not build until after the other mills were in operation. The

widow of John Sherrard (who was with Crawford in his expedi-

tion against Sandusky), and four sons, including Robert A.,

father of the late Hon. Robert Sherrard, came from Pennsyl-

vania and settled at Smithfield in 1804, and shortly thereafter

moved to what is now Warren Township and built a mill near the

mouth of Rush Run. The first physician in Smithfield Village

was Dr. William Burrell (1806).

• 21
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, O.     153

 

In this township was established (1800) the first Associate

Reform (now Piney Fork United Presbyterian) Church in the

county. The first ministers were Alexander Calderhead (twelve

years), Rev. Thomas Hanna, Rev. John Walker, Rev. Joseph

Clokey.

The Pork-packing industry became important as a great

wealth-producing factor as early as 1815, at which time the

Quaker philanthropist, Benjamin Ladd, engaged in this busi-

ness, he having many establishments in operation. Between 1820

and 1840 the pork-packing industry of Smithfield and Mt.

Pleasant, John Hogg being at the head of the business in the

latter place, was greater than that of Cincinnati, then considered

the most extensive pork-producing city in the country. Mr.

Hogg was one of the most enterprising of the pioneers, having

at one time a dozen tanneries in operation in different parts of

the country.

June 4, 1806, the Sixth Township of the Second Range,

was separated from Steubenville Township, and named Cross

Creek Township, leaving Steubenville composed of the territory

now embraced in Steubenville and Island Creek Townships. The

election was called for the house of John McCullough.

Cross Creek Township was surveyed into sections by Alex-

ander Holmes in 18o1, and in 1802 into quarter sections by Ben-

jamin Hough.

Among the first settlers were: William McElroy, a soldier

of the Revolutionary War, William Whitecraft, George Mahon,

James and Daniel Dunlevy, Augustine Bickerstaff, John John-

son, Eli Keily, John Rickey, George Halliwell, John McConnell,

John Long, John Scott, Moses Hunter, (1797-1800) ; John Ekey,

James Thompson, John Permar, James Scott, Thomas White,

Jacob Welday (a German), Hugh McCullough, John Foster,

John Williams, Joseph Dunn, Nathan Caselaer, Samuel Smith

(who laid out New Alexandria in 1832, and was the first to in-

troduce horse-mills in this country), George Brown, William

Moore, John McCann, Aaron Fell, William Hanlon, J. A. J.

Criswell, John Lloyd, James Maley, Jonathan Hook, Peter Ekey,

David Powell, Robert Hill (just over the line in Steubenville

Township, in 1798, and descendants still possess the land),

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154       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

Thomas Johnson, William Cassell, John McConnell, William Mc-

Connell, William Woods, Charles Maxwell, the Stokes and the

Dinsmores (1800-9). Robert McConnell came about 1811, and

settled on land now occupied by Joseph and Robert H. McCon-

nell; Thomas Elliott, Andrew Anderson, John Wright, Samuel

Irons, John McDonald.

In 1810 George Mahon built the first hand-mill, to which he

applied horse-power two years later. The first water-mill was

built by Nathaniel McGrew in 1806. Other early mills were

operated on Cross Creek and McIntyre, the first saw-mill having

been built by Charles Maxwell in 1807. A cotton factory was

built near the mouth of McIntyre Creek in 1814, and in 1827 it

was changed to a woolen factory by John and James Elliott and

George Marshall, it then being the most extensive factory of

the kind in the county, perhaps country, outside of Steubenville.

The first distillery was built by Daniel Dunlevy on Section

Thirty-three in 1803. Following this one others were built and

operated by John McConnell, William McConnell and Nathaniel

Porter. Many of the Pathfinders became skilled in this man-

ner of reducing for market the bulk of their fruit and grain in

Western Pennsylvania, and if hedges could have spoken there

might have been record of skill acquired before leaving Ireland.

In this township was organized the first Protestant Episco-

pal Church northwest the Ohio (St. James, 1800), the vestry

of which has the oldest and most complete church record in Ohio

- names of members, baptisms, marriages, deaths. This record

also preserves the first petition and the names of the signers,

all of whom were of this parish (1816), asking the General Con-

vention to establish a diocese in the Western country. (See

page 262, Vol. VI. Omit from the petition-signers the name of

James Dunlevy erroneously printed).

While there were schools in Cross Creek Township as early

as 1800, as noted on page 247 (Vol. VI), the first schoolhouse

was built in 1804, near the present No. 4 schoolhouse, on land

owned by Mrs. Usher Stark, the first teacher being an Irishman

named Green. In 1807 a school was taught in a log cabin in

District No. 1 by a teacher named Evans. In 1809 a subscription

school was taught in the Long settlement by Mr. Morrow, the

• 23
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.    155

 

subscription price being $1.50 per quarter for each pupil. In

1806 Richard McCullough taught a school in District No. 5.

Up to 1816, when Rev. Mr. Snodgrass organized the Cross

Creek Church, the Presbyterians of this township attended ser-

vices at the Steubenville or Two Ridges Churches. The Meth-

odist Episcopal adherents held services at the dawn of the cent-

ury in the cabins of the settlers. The Methodist Episcopal

Church of New Alexandria was organized after separation from

the Old Log Church, in 1838, at which time lots were deeded

to the church by Nathan Thompson, the Trustees being: John

Thompson, James Holmes, John Casy, Sr., Andrew Scott, Wil-

liam Elliott, John Moore, William Fields, John George, Mat-

thew Thompson.

It was in this township "Billy McConnell, the Witch Doc-

tor," lived, of whom Prof. Christie wrote an interesting work

about 1830, but now out of print and impossible to obtain, the

copies then in circulation having been destroyed in more recent

years by descendants of persons mentioned in the book.

John Rickey came to the Northwest Territory from Penn-

sylvania in 1800, and settled near the site of Cross Creek Pres-

byterian Church, on Dry Fork. He had been a Captain with

Abercrombie in the French-English War, and was a Colonel in

the Revolutionary War. He died in April, 1823, at the age of

ninety-eight years, having been thrown from a spirited horse

upon which he was riding from Dry Fork to Steubenville, via

what is now Wintersville, and falling under the wheels of a

wagon at which the animal scared, he was so seriously injured

that he died shortly thereafter. He was a very prominent man

in the affairs of the county, and was one of the first elders of

the First Presbyterian Church of Steubenville. His son, John

Rickey, was in the Second War for Independence. To the son

of the latter, Hon. Joseph M. Rickey, for eighty-four years a

resident of Jefferson County, the compiler is indebted for much

information contained in The Pathfinders of Jefferson County,

given him in conversation and afterwards noted. An aged man

at his death, he was closely linked with the past through his

grandfather and father, retaining by a marvellous memory all

historical facts that came to him. He died in Cleveland, No-

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156       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

vember 9, 1898; a man of worth, noble, honest. His grandson,

Leo Dautel, of Cleveland, married a great-granddaughter of

Adam Poe, noted in Jefferson County history.

At the session Cross Creek10 Township was organized (June

4, 1806) the County Commissioners set off the Sixth Township

of the Second Range and named it Island Creek Township,

leaving Steubenville Township composed of fractional parts of

Townships Two and Three of fractional Ranges One and Two.

Then, by another resolution, the fractional part of Township

Three of Range One was cut off Steubenville and added to

Island Creek.

Among the first settlers were: Isaac Shane, Michael Cast-

ner, James Shane, Daniel Viers, Jacob Cable, Philip Cable, An-

drew Ault, James Ball, William Jackson, Richard Lee, John

House, Daniel Arnold, John Simpson, Richard Brisbane, James

Patterson, Charles Armstrong, Wm. Jackman, Adam Hout, John

Moore, Charles Porter, Thomas Fleming, Andrew       Huston,

Joseph Howells, James Crawford, Abel Crawford (the latter own-

ing the Red Mill, near Mt. Tabor early in the century), John

Rhinehart, Moses Arnold, John Frederick, George Watson,

Samuel Hanna, James Ekey, Rutherford McClelland.       The

fathers of Judge William Day and Judge Phillips of Iowa, the

father of the late Judge William Lawrence of Ohio, and father of

Hon. Joseph Fowler, ex-United States Senator of Tennessee, were

early settlers of this township. Joseph Howells was the grand-

father of William Dean Howells. The first settler was the father

of Ephraim Cable, a squatter (and was of part Huguenot blood),

for he built a block-house at Cable's Ferry (now Cable's Bend) in

1785, and here Ephraim was born two years later. Ephraim mar-

ried Sarah Clemens who bore him fourteen children, and the name

and stock still endure.

There was evidently a large population in this township in

1800, as in that year what is still the Island Creek Presby-

10 The most of the settlers of Cross Creek township were Scotch-Irish

of firm religious conviction, and might be classed as Episcopalians,

Methodists and Seceders, [Presbyterians] who worshiped God in Spirit

and Truth, under the forest trees or in the humble cabins, without vanity

or the taint of hypocrisy. - From T. A. Thompson's unpublished contri-

bution to the Centennial history.

• 25
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.     157

 

terian Church, was organized by Rev. Mr. Snodgrass, and two

years later the Two Ridges Presbyterian Church was organized

by the same minister, who also preached in Steubenville.

The first elders of the Two Ridges Church were: James Cel-

lars and James Bailey; Samuel Thompson, Andrew Anderson

and George Day were soon thereafter added, and in 1817

Thomas Elliott and Thomas Hunt were elected elders. Rev. Mr.

Snodgrass was succeeded by Rev. William McMillan who also

had charge of Yellow Creek (Bacon Ridge) Church. During

his pastorate James Torrance, Benjamin Coe, Henry Shane,

William Winters, James Milligan and David Gladden were

elected elders.

The first Methodist Episcopal Church was organized by

Rev. J. B. Finley at the house of Adam Jackman, in 1814. The

first members were: Richard Coulter and wife, Adam Jackman,

Mary Jackman, Margaret Jackman, Isabel Whittaker, Jane Rat-

tison, George Alban, Garrett Albertson, William Nugent, Richard

Jackman, Jane Jackman, John Armstrong, James Crawford, Mar-

tin Swickard (with Crawford in his expedition, dying at the age

of ninety-six), Margaret Swickard, Jacob Vail.

There were schools at a very early date, but there is no

record, except that the statement is made on authority of tra-

dition that the members of these churches at first held services

in private residences and school houses. The Mt. Tabor school,

although evidently not the oldest in the township, is the oldest

of which the compiler can find information. This school was

held in a log house, first built for a habitation, in 1812, the first

teacher being William Jackman. Marks of the foundation of

this educational institution, whose archetype was everywhere in

this part of Ohio early in the century, are still (1898) visible.

In 1814 a log structure was erected in the Mt. Tabor District.

Destroyed by incendiary fire four years later, a brick house was

erected, in which school was taught during the earlier days by

Lancelot Hearn, John Hawhey, John Beebout, George Arm-

strong, James Mitchelltree. The late Judge William Lawrence,

who was born in Smithfield township, attended this school.

Andrew Ault, who came to Island Creek from Pennsylvania

in 1797, was a son of a privateer during the Revolutionary War,

• 26
 

158      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

who was captured while bringing prizes into the Port of Phila-

delphia, he not knowing the British were in control, and was

sent to England as a prisoner.  He escaped and returned to

America, building near Redstone the first linseed-oil mill in the

West. Descendants still own the land in this township upon

which Andrew settled.

Andrew Huston, of the blood of Gen. Sam Houston of Texas

fame, came from the Cumberland Valley, and settled in Island

Creek Township in 1809, locating at the mouth of Wills Creek,

the house being on the site of the present (1898) Steuben-

ville Water Works. He afterward removed to the central part

of the township, where was born John Andrew Huston,

father of Sam Huston, the County Engineer, the homestead still

standing. Sam Huston has in his possession an iron toma-

hawk found in Wills Creek and an iron Indian axe found near

Richmond, in Salem township.

Michael Myers (an Indian scout and who was an uncon-

scious tool of Connelly in aiding to incite the Indians, which re-

sulted in the Dunmore War), owned the site of Toronto, a por-

tion of which town is in Island Creek Township.  [See pp.

155-8.]

Island Creek, Wills Creek and Town Fork of Yellow Creek,

furnished power for many early flour mills, there yet being re-

mains of these early industrial enterprises. What is now known

as Bray's mill, a half mile above the mouth of Island Creek, was

built about 1800 by Jacob Cable, to which, in 1824, John Bray

and William Findlay attached a woolen-mill.

On the 3d of March, 1807, Smithfield Township was di-

vided, that part of Seventh Township of the Third Range remain-

ing in Jefferson County after the civil organization of Belmont

County being set off, leaving Smithfield a complete township.

The new township (civil) was named Mt. Pleasant after the town

established by Robert Carothers and Jesse Thomas, the first

proprietors, in 1802. The village was first called Jesse-Bob

Town, which so shocked the good taste of the Quakers from

North Carolina, that they not only changed the name to one

more euphonius and appropriate, but left record of opinion ex-

• 27
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.    159

 

pressed as to the Scotch-Irish Pathfinders, that "they were an

uncouth, thriftless set."

The election was called for the house of Benjamin Scott in

the Village of Mt. Pleasant, the officers to elect being mentioned

as Township Clerk, three Trustees, two Overseers of the Poor,

two Fence Viewers, two Appraisers of Houses, one Tax Lister,

two Supervisors of Highways, two Constables and a Treasurer.

There is much interesting history associated with Mt. Pleas-

ant, and many pages of the main part of this work are de-

voted to its relation. Perhaps other townships are even more

historically interesting, but in no other township has history

been so well preserved as in Mt. Pleasant. Mrs. Anna E. With-

row, who heard Rev. Joseph Anderson, the first minister of

the third Presbyterian Church in the Ohio country, preach, and

is still (1898) living, has kept many historical facts fresh in her

wonderful memory and to her historians of the township are in-

debted for data of much interesting history.

Among the first settlers (additional to the names given on

page 214) were: Robert Hurford and Aaron Thompson, (Pa.,)

Robert Blackledge, James, Jesse and Aaron Kinsey, Amassa

Lipsey, Jeremiah Patterson, Faith Patterson, Enoch Harris, (N.

C.,) Isaac Ratcliff, Joseph Steers, Merrick Starr, John Hogg,

Archibald Job (descendant of the noted Defoe family), William

McConnaughy (soldier of the Revolutionary War and in the

Battle of Bunker Hill), Joseph Gill (Va.), William Hawthorne,

Aaron Packer, Samuel Irons, Mrs. Elizabeth Sharon (grand-

mother of the late Senator William Sharon of Nevada), Eli Kirk

(a pioneer hatter, and grandfather of Mrs. James W. Gill of

Steubenville, and father of Robert Kirk, at one time Lieut. Gov-

ernor of Ohio), Elisha (a woolen manufacturer), Caleb and Sol-

omon Bracken, Thomas, Clark and Matthew Terrell, Osborne

Ricks, George Washington Mitchell, Porter Mitchell, Robert

Evans, R. B. Smith, James Johnson, Joseph Kithcart (tanner

and surveyor), William Woods, Isaac Brown, Jacob Flanner

(uncle of Abbie), Paren Cuppy (who killed an Indian on the

stream in Smithfield Township named for him), James Taylor

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160      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

(manufactured nails for John Hogg), Edward Lawrence, Wil-

liam Robinson, William Chambers, William Lewis.

The land upon which the village of Mt. Pleasant was es-

tablished was so attractive on account of beauty of location,

as early as 1800, that twenty men camped on the site, awaiting

chance to purchase the section. The competition was so in-

tense that it was decided by lot which one should be privileged

to buy the land, the lot falling to Robert Carothers, who was

there in 1796, and his name still remains as a sign on a building

erected by him early in the century.

Benjamin Scott was very early in the Short Creek Valley,

and his wife's mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Davison, was the first

buried in the township, the grave being on the Kithcart farm,

on a knoll, near a buckeye tree. The date of interment was

February, 1800.

William McConnaughy crossed the river at Charles Town

(Wellsburg), to the mouth of Short Creek, and ascending the

hills, settled on Irish Ridge, his being the second team to pass

over the road. The first was that of John Taggart.  In 180₇

Taggart brought apple-seeds from the East, and the trees grown

from them still bear fruit.

Nathan and Ann Updegraff came from Virginia and settled

on Short Creek where he built a mill in 1803, the site being

two and one-half miles northeast of the village. Nathan was a

very prominent man in the affairs of Pennsylvania before going

to Virginia, and he was one of the representatives of Jefferson

County in the Constitutional Convention in 1802.

The first store in Mt. Pleasant was established by Enoch

Harris in 1804; the second by Joseph Gill (from Virginia) in

1806, and the third by John Hogg in 1812. Both Hogg and Gill

were men of large affairs and were among the leaders in the bus-

iness enterprises of Eastern Ohio. Hogg engaged in the man-

ufacture of woolen goods, flour, leather and often reduced the

leather to harness and saddles, and during the Second War for

Independence he employed many workmen in producing sad-

dles, harness, belts and cartridge-boxes for the American troops.

The pork-packing industry carried on by these men was very

• 29
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.          161

 

extensive in its magnitude. Before the Stillwater Canal" was

in operation Mt. Pleasant was the most extensive wheat market

in the state, there being numerous mills in the Short Creek Val-

ley reducing the grain to flour which found profitable market

on the Lower Mississippi. Those were bustling and prosper-

ous times for the peaceful village that now so quietly sleeps on

the pleasant mount overlooking the wide expanse of beauti-

ful productive country watered by Short Creek, the eye al-

most reaching the very source of the stream in the hills upon

which stand Cadiz, in Harrison County.

Hogg also manufactured nails, which were so high in price

compared with farm produce, that the necessity was very urgent

if the settlers used them. It is related that Robert Harriman

of Hammond's Cross Roads, carried two bushels of oats to Mt.

Pleasant and received in exchange one pound of nails! In Mt.

Pleasant there were numerous blacksmiths, cabinetmakers,

tailors, hatters, weavers, shoemakers, spinners, tanners and

printers - there was publishing in Mt. Pleasant quite early in

the century; Mt. Pleasant was not only an industrial center,

it was the literary center of Eastern Ohio between 1817 and

1854: Here Charles Osborne, afterward associated with Ben-

jamin Lundy12 issued in 1817, The Philanthropist, a journal

 

11 Many lives were sacrificed in the construction of the Ohio canal

system. James Hunter, from Westmoreland county, Pa., a Pathfinder of

Wayne county, Ohio, grandfather of the compiler, was a contractor in the

construction of the canal in the Stillwater country, and died of malarial

fever in 1829.

12 A work was published in Philadelphia, in 1847, by William Parish,

under the title "The Life, Travels and Opinions of Benjamin Lundy,

including Journeys to Texas and Mexico; with a Sketch of Contemporary

Events, and a Notice of the Revolution in Hayti." Compiled under the

direction and on behalf of his children. The matter of the book (316

pages) is largely made up from correspondence with a half sister, and

extracts from The Genius of Universal Emancipation. In speaking of

him this sister writes: "His kind disposition and engaging manners soon

won my attachment, and I received many demonstrations of kindness

from him. . .. My recollections of him were always so gentle and

tender that I could not bear to hear a word said in disapprobation of

him." [Lundy's mother's name was Shotwell, she dying when Lundy

Vol. VIII-11

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162        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

devoted to the discussion of sociological and religious problems.

Here, in 1821, Lundy published The Genius of Universal Eman-

cipation, the first abolition paper in America. [See pp. 283-4.]

The Osborne printing house was purchased by Elisha Bates,

who continued The Philanthropist as a magazine up to 1822.

 

was five years of age. Before removing to Handwich, N. J., where Lundy

was born in 1789, the parents lived in Bucks county, Pa. His father was

a Quaker preacher. Lundy lived in Mt. Pleasant before going to Wheel-

ing where he learned the saddlery trade.] "On leaving Wheeling I re-

turned to Mt. Pleasant, where I became acquainted with William Lewis

and his sisters, one of whom I afterwards married. Here I published,

anonymously, my first poetical effusion. It was an answer to a tirade

of a bachelor against matrimony. . . . I was married and set up in

business at St. Clairsville. . . . I began with no other means but my

hands and a disposition for industry and economy. In little more than

four years, however, I found myself in possession of more than three

thousand dollars worth of property. .. . I had lamented the sad con-

dition of the slave. . . . I called a few friends together and unbosomed

my feelings to them. The result was the organization of an anti-slavery

association, called the Union Humane Society. [This was in 1815.]

Soon after this occurrence, proposals were issued by Charles Osborne, for

publishing a paper at Mt. Pleasant, to be entitled The Philanthropist.

. . .    At length Charles proposed to me to join him in the printing

business, and take upon myself the superintendence of the office. [With

this view he took his stock to Missouri with expectation of disposing

of it.] I had lost at St. Louis some thousands of dollars, and had been

detained from home a year and ten months. The tide of misfortune to

me was caused by the utter stagnation of business which at that time

[1819] overspread the whole country, and occasioned the sacrifice of prop-

erty to an incalculable amount. Before I left St. Louis I heard that as

I had staid from home so much longer than had been anticipated, Charles

Osborne had become quite tired of the employment of an editor, and had

sold his printing establishment to Elisha Bates, and also that Elihu

Embree had commenced the publication of an anti-slavery paper called

The Emancipator, at Jonesborough in Tennessee, . . . On my way

home I was informed of the death of E. Embree; and as E. Bates did

not come up to my standard of anti-slavery. I determined immediately

to establish a periodical of my own. I therefore removed to Mt. Pleas-

ant and began the publication of The Genius of Universal Emancipation.

... .In four months my subscription list had become quite large. . ..

When the friends of Elihu Embree heard of my paper they urged me

to remove to Tennessee. . . . After having issued eight numbers, I

started for Tennessee. . . . I rented the printing office and immedi-

• 31
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.           163

In this year Horton Howardl²a began the publication of The Ju-

venile Museum, a semi-monthly magazine. From 1827 to 1832

Elisha Bates published The Miscellaneous Repository. In 1837

Bates published a religious journal devoted to discussion of the

questions then disturbing the equanimity of the Quaker Meet-

ing, questions which rent the Meeting in twain. At about the

same time John Wolf published The Life Boat. Numerous books

were also issued from the Bates press, including Borton's Poems,

in 1823; The Juvenile Expositor, by Elisha Bates, in 1823; Sacred

History, in 1854. Hunt's Hymns were also published by Enoch

Harris, Bates' printer.

The first tavern in the village was established in 1806 by

Benajamin Scott. Dr. William Hamilton was the first physician

and Dr. Isaac Parker the second. In 1835 Dr. Hamilton es-

tablished in Mt. Pleasant one of the first asylums in the state

for care of insane patients.

Dr. Robert E. Finley, who studied medicine under Dr.

Hamilton, manufactured salt on Short Creek in 1817, his broth-

ers, Patrick and Thomas, being associated with him.

Up to the Second War for Independence Mt. Pleasant con-

sisted of only a few log cabins, but one of the results of that

war was to quicken industrial enterprise in Jefferson County,

and Mt. Pleasant as well as other villages felt the benefit of the

 

ately went to work with the paper, working myself at the mechanical as

well as editorial department." [The first publisher of anti-slavery liter-

ature died in Lowell, Ill., August 21, 1838.]

A copy of this most valuable contribution to the history of the period

is in possession of the State Library, and the compiler is indebted to the

kindness of Hon. G. B. Galbreath, the Librarian, for opportunity for its

perusal. In writing he says: "We do not permit works of this character

to go out, but as you have done much to preserve the history of Ohio,

the library is at your service to the fullest extent."

12a "The first United States government land office for the sale of the

public land in the northwestern part of Ohio, was at Delaware, O.,

where, in 1820, I bought 160 acres of land. The register was Platt Brush,

and the receiver was Horton Howard, a Quaker, whose handsome daugh-

ter I thought a great deal of." From a letter written March 11, 1887,

to James H. Anderson, of Columbus. O., by the Hon. M. H. Kirby, of

Upper Sandusky, O., a distinguished man, then about 90 years old.

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164        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

awakening. Joseph Steers, a miller of notable enterprise, hav-

ing heard of Joseph Howells¹³ as a skilled mill-wright, brought

him from Waterford, Va., in 1813, for the purpose of add-

ing machinery to his flour-mill for manufacturing woolen

goods. Howells came to Brownsville, Pa., with his family, in a

wagon, and then down the river to the mouth of Short Creek

in a boat. Going up the creek to near Mt. Pleasant, he found

that Steer's mill had been destroyed by fire. He aided in the

reconstruction and put in the woolen-mill plant. The work was

most difficult to perform, much of the machinery being made

by hand, the spindles by local blacksmiths.      From  Mt. Pleas-

 

13 My father moved his family into Steubenville [from Mt. Pleasant]

in 1816, when I had just entered upon my tenth year. I was rather a

forward boy, and especially interested in manufacturing and mechanical

work, of which I had a good conception for one of my years, so that now

I have a good recollection of what I then saw. When recurring to that

time, say August, 1818, and onward for a few years, I am rather surprised

at the variety, as well as extent of manufactures, in which the people

of South-eastern Ohio and the adjacent parts of Pennsylvania and Vir-

ginia were engaged. The town of Steubenville, where the inhabitants

numbered about 2000, was a center of these operations, that was typical

in its way of the whole. The chief manufacture of the place was woolen

cloth, carried on by a company founded about 1812 on a more extensive

scale than any in the state or west of the Allegheny mountains at that

time. . . . There were paper mills at Mt. Pleasant and Steubenville.

... . .James Watt did a driving business as a wheel-wright, making

hand spinning-wheels. An iron foundry was carried on by Martin Phil-

lips, [in which President McKinley's father was employed.] Connected

with it Adam Wise had a machine shop. Mr. Wise made the first plows

of the country with iron mould-board, [John Rickey of Cross Creek,

having made the model.] - William C. Howells in Howe's Historical

Collection.

"Twenty-five acres was the extent of the available land [in the Wills

Creek farm] the rest being hillside on which nothing but trees would

grow; and being one of the first places settled in the country, the land

was worn out and hopelessly poor. The man who had cleared it had

planted an apple orchard and peach orchard of five or six acres, so that

when there was a fruit season there were plenty of apples and peaches.

He had improved it with a log barn and two log cabin houses, but he

had cut every stick of timber off the land that could be worked into

staves and shingles or rails. . . . It may seem a strange way of living

now, but it was very common for the log cabins to have no windows

• 33
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.           165

 

ant Howells moved to Steubenville, and from Steubenville, in

1819, to the headwaters of the South Branch of Wills Creek.

He was employed as wool-sorter for the Wells woolen-mills up

to 1826. The Gills and Brackens also manufactured woolens in

Mt. Pleasant.

There was an early Methodist Episcopal Church, perhaps

1808 or 1810, one of the first pastors being Rev. Dr. David Mc-

 

whatever. In extreme cold weather the door would be closed, and like-

wise at night, but mostly by keeping a good fire the door could be left

open for light and ventilation, and the chimneys were so wide and so

low, very often not as high as the one-story house, that they afforded as

much light as a small window. These chimneys were always outside the

house at one end, and it was very common for them never to be finished

or built beyond the fire-place. The manner of building them was to cut

through the logs at the gable end, a space of six or eight feet wide and

five or six feet high; and logs were built to this opening like a bay

window; this recess was then lined with a rough stone wall up as high

as this opening; from that point a smoke-stack was built of small sticks

split out of straight wood and laid cob-house fashion to the heighth de-

sired, and then plastered inside and out with clay, held together by straw.

A very common event was for these chimneys to take fire, in which case

it was necessary to use water bountifully or pull them down. Ours had

so settled away from the house that we steadily expected it to pull itself

down. But like the tower of Pisa it stood against all the gravity that

affected it, I suppose, till the house went also. The repairs delayed our

moving till after New Year's, 1819.

"Just before we moved out, my Uncle Powell and his family, who

had stopped on their way from England near Richmond, Va., long

enough to spend all the money they had, came to Steubenville, and as

he had engaged a farm that he could not enter upon till spring, he took

the house we lived in. He, however, had a team of horses and an old

stage coach in which the family had traveled from Virginia, that still

bore the lettering, 'Richmond and Staunton Mail Stage,' which was a rather

stunning thing in itself, while it served them some of the purposes of a

wagon. When we moved, we used this to transport the family and most

of the goods, by making repeated trips. On the last trip out, as it was

late at night, the man who drove the wagon stayed till morning. After

unhitching, he left the coach standing in the lane, where it terminated on

the brow of a very steep hill. It had not stood there long till an enter-

prising old sow, making a survey of the machine, got her nose under a

wheel, when it started down the hill. We heard the rumbling, and just

got out in time to see it going over a grade of thirty-five degrees, and

landing in a thicket of bushes. The next day, after great labor, the run-

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166        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

Masters, at whose home Dr. Stantonl3a met Lucy Norman, who

became his wife and the mother of Edwin M. Stanton. In

the division in 1830, the Mt. Pleasant church entered the new

Methodist Protestant Church as a body. Dr. McMasters was

the father of Mrs. Anna E. Withrow, for whom Anne E. Dick-

inson was named, her mother, Mary Edmondson, having been a

teacher in Mt. Pleasant. Mrs. Withrow heard the first minister

of the Mt. Pleasant Presbyterian Church preach, and partici-

pated in the celebration of its centennial in 1898. Her grand-

father, Merrick Starr, was a cooper, and made barrels on the

site of the village in 1800.

A bank was established in 1816, with Joseph Gill as Presi-

dent and Lewis Walker, Cashier. In 1841, as has been men-

tioned (pp. 238-239), John W. Gill and Thomas White estab-

lished a silk factory.  There was a paper-mill in Mt. Pleasant

as early as 1816, at which paper fine enough for bank notes was

manufactured.

 

ning gears were got up, but the body was a wreck, and was left there, in

which situation we children made many imaginary trips in it between

Richmond and Staunton.

"At the foot of our hill was a saw mill and flouring mill. But the

charm of the region was the old mill, a short distance above the others.

My sister Anne, as next in age to me, was frequently my companion in

my adventures over these odd places, and the hills and valleys through

which the cattle would stray, and it is wonderful what strolls we would

have, and how we clambered over rocks and through thickets. In one

of these fields was a large patch of thyme growing, that had spread

from an old garden. In summer, being long in bloom, it was very pretty,

and with its flowers and fine odor, it remains a picture to me yet. I

often go back to Castner's old mill, on a little bunch of thyme, and never

see any without going there.

"Among the features and country and place where we lived snakes

were prominent. Rattlesnakes had pretty well disappeared, but black-

snakes, a kind of small anaconda, were plenty, and in the streams were

water snakes beyond count-a terror to boys, who would not bathe in them

unless it was very warm, when snakes were risked, as they would have

been if they had been alligators. But the copperheads were the really

dangerous serpents of that time and locality." - William C. Howell's

Recollections.

13a The father of Edwin M. Stanton, while on his way to visit a

patient in the country, was murdered by an unknown assassin.

• 35
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.      167

 

Ellwood Ratcliff, son of Isaac, was an early wagon manu-

facturer at Trenton. He sold a wagon to William Hasting for

$18, receiving $12 in beef and $6 in money, no one piece of

which represented a greater amount than six and one-fourth

cents.  Ratcliff manufactured hames which he split out of tree-

stumps, and hauling them to Steubenville exchanged them for

wagon iron, money then not being a factor of exchange.

Near Mt. Pleasant, at the foot of Hoge's Hill, was estab-

lished the Short Creek (Mt. Pleasant) Presbyterian Church, in

1798, the third church of this denomination in the state. [See

page 259; other Mt. Pleasant religious history pp. 259, 262-268.]

What is now the thriving town of Dillonville, was at a very

early period known as Annadelphia, where a paper-mill and two

grist mills were in operation.

June 4, 1806, Short Creek Township was again divided, one

division retaining the name of Short Creek and the other Cadiz

(both now in Harrison County). The election in the first town-

ship in the new division was called for the house of William

Thorne, in Thornville (laid out in 1803), and for the other at

the house of Jacob Arnold, in the town of Cadiz.

The movement of the Pathfinders at that period was up the

fertile Short Creek Valley, and a road leading from opposite

Charles Town to Cadiz was very early constructed. There were

numerous settlers, not only in the valley, but over the divide at

Cadiz and on the headwaters of Stillwater. As evidence of the

large early population along Short Creek and its branches, it

is only necessary to note that two Presbyterian churches were

organized about 1802, one (Crabapple) near what is now New

Athens, and the other (Beech Springs) near what is now Union-

vale, the latter by two missionaries, Rev'ds. Messrs. Patter-

son and Maundry. Rev. Joseph Anderson was the first min-

ister of these churches. In 1804 Dr. John Rea,¹⁴ grandfather

 

14 The field covered by these two societies, [Crabapple and Beech

Springs] at the time of our settlement, was very extensive and the labor

proportionately great. Crabapple claimed as having within her bounds

the whole extent of country between the south fork of Short creek and

the farthermost part of Nottingham. Beech Springs was equally, if not

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168       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

of Mrs. Alfred Day of Steubenville, became the pastor, serv-

ing Beech Springs for more than half a century. The joint

call was signed by John Miller, S. Dunlap, W. Watt, Henry

Ferguson, Jesse Edgington, Daniel Welch and William Har-

vey.   The first elders of Crabapple were: Robert McCul-

lough, William   McCullough and David Merrit.         Robert Mc-

Cullough represented Crabapple in Presbytery (Ohio) in 1801.

The first elders of Beech Springs were: James Kerr, Sr., John

McCullough, Dr. Thomas Vincent.

Among the first settlers¹⁵ (1801) the names being gathered

by Hon C. A. Hanna of Chicago, were the following: James

 

still more extensive, including the entire region of country from the

Piney Fork and the Flats, on west to Stillwater. All passed under the

name of Beech Springs. All was Jefferson county and Steubenville was

the Seat of Justice. Over all this extensive field claimed by both churches

we had to travel. Wherever one was found, or whenever we heard of one

in our connection, him we must visit; day and night, summer and win-

ter - all seasons of the year; without a road in most places save the

mark of an ax on the bark of a tree, or the trail of an early Indian. No

man that now comes in among us at this distant day, and highly im-

proved state of the country, can as much as conjecture the labor and

fatigue of the pioneers in the primeval forests of Ohio, out of which the

savage had just begun to recede, but continued still in large encampments

in some places, near the skirtings of the little societies, where the few

came together to worship under the shade of a green tree. The two

churches under our care lay nearly twelve miles apart. Many Sabbath

mornings in the dead of winter, I had to travel ten miles to the place of

meeting in Crabapple, having no road but a cowpath, and the underwood

bent with snow over me all the way. Worn down by fatigue, and fre-

quently in ill-health, I was more than once brought near the confines of

the grave. In all this region there were but two clerical brethren that

could afford me any assistance, where there are now two Presbyteries

and well nigh thirty preachers. - Extract from sermon delivered at

Beech Springs church by Dr. John Rea, January, 1851, after a half

century of labor in this field.

15 Of these [the settlers] it is known that the McFaddens, Craigs,

Jamisons, Gilmores, Hannas, Reas, Welches, Moores, and Lyons came

from Washington county, Pa.: the Arnolds, Dunlaps, Dickersons and

Maholms from Fayette county; and many of the others were from

the same districts. The probability is that many of these settlers were

• 37
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, O.     169

 

Arnold, Arthur Barrett, James Black, Robert Braden, George

Brown, George Carnahan, John Carnahan, Samuel Carnahan,

Joseph Clark, Robert Cochran, John Craig, Thomas Dickerson,

Samuel Dunlap, James Finney, Samuel Gilmore, Eleazer Huff,

Joseph Huff (in the valley in 1784), William Huff, James Hanna,

James Haverfield, Thomas Hitchcock, Joseph Holmes, Wil-

liam Ingles, John Jamison, Joel Johnson, Joseph Johnson, Wil-

liam Johnson, Absalom Kent, George Layport, John Love, John

Lyons, William McClary, John McConnell, Robert McCullough,

William McCullough, John McFadden, Joseph McFadden, Sam-

uel McFadden, John Maholm, Samuel Maholm, Robert Max-

well, Thomas Maxwell, William   Osborne, Baldwin Parsons,

John Pugh, Rev. John Rea, John Ross, Jacob Shepler, Samuel

Smith, Martin Snyder, John Taggart, Thomas Taylor, Hugh

Teas, Robert Vincent, Thomas Vincent, John Wallace, Michael

Waxler, Daniel Welch, James Wilkin, Thomas Wilson.

Dr. Rea was born in Tully, Ireland, in 1772, the son of

Joseph and Isabel Rea. He came to America in 1790, resid-

ing in Philadelphia for a short time. He came West to Wash-

ington County, Pa., making the entire distance on foot and

without a companion.  Here, in 1793, he was married to Eliz-

abeth Christy. A few years after, having been encouraged by

James Dinsmore, he entered Jefferson College, graduating in

1802. His biographer, Rev. W. F. Hamilton, says: "Dr. Rea

was in an eminent sense a pioneer minister. His early labors

were largely evangelistic. Several churches now exist on ter-

ritory once wholly occupied by him. It may be safely said

that no man exerted a greater influence than did he in form-

 

in Harrison [Jefferson] county before 1800. . . . We know that Alex-

ander Henderson "squatted" on the land near Cadiz, now known as the

Walter Jamison farm [on a branch of Short Creek] as early as April,

1799, having removed from Washington county with his family about that

time; and that Daniel Peterson then resided with his family at the forks

of Short creek. - Hon. Charles A. Hanna, "The First White Settlers of

Harrison County."

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170        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

ing the religious character of the early inhabitants of a large

section of Eastern Ohio.

The six early Presbyterian Churches in the region from

Newels Town (St. Clairsville) to Cadiz, including Richland,

(St. Clairsville) McMahon's Creek, Short Creek (Mt. Pleasant,)

Crabapple and Beech Springs, gave unmistakable evidence to

the ethnologist of the strength of character of the pioneers of

the southern part of Jefferson County; and if the ethnologist

make further inquiry he will accept as true the statement that

the fathers of the sturdy men who came to this wilderness to

erect homes, were pioneers of Pennsylvania¹⁶ and were soldiers

on the side of liberty in the Revolutionary War. Another fact

is evident to those who hunt out musty records to preserve the

truth of history: The Presbyterian Church kept no records.

The Presbyterians are individualists, and thus being the anti-

pode of socialists, the church was not a civil community or-

ganized to relieve the individual of responsibility. The head of

a family was expected to keep the records thereof - to note in

his family Bible the marriages, births and deaths of his family.

This is the reason more names of early settlers in this region

cannot now be obtained for preservation in enduring print.

The first elders of the Short Creek (Mt. Pleasant) Church

were: Richard McKibben, Thomas McCune,¹⁷ (the latter a sol-

 

16 Many of the names of actors in the various dramas set forth [in

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County] are familiar in this locality, and

Old Paxton [Paxtang] Church Yard is full of them. - Extract from a

letter from Hon. W. F. Rutherford, Historian of Paxton (Paxtang, Pa.)

Church.

17 I learn that Col. Thomas McCune came from near Philadelphia, and

his mother's name was Rotherham. The Rotherhams were called fight-

ing Quakers because they fought for their country in the Revolution.

They were expelled from the Friends' Society for this offense; but after

this expulsion they formed another organization called "The Fighting

Quaker Church." Col. McCune could trace his ancestry back to the time

of the persecution in Scotland. His family name was then spelled

"McEuen." One of the McEuens wrote a book on Religious Liberty,

and on account of it the family was persecuted; some members were

burned at the stake and others fled to the north of Ireland, where the

• 39
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, O.          171

 

dier of the Revolutionary War, although his mother's people

were Quakers, which sect as a rule, opposed the war for various

reasons) James Eagleson and James Clark (1798); Thomas Ma-

jor and Adam    Dunlap (1808); John Alexander and Jacob Tull

(1829); David Baldridge, John Theaker and John Major (1832).

Of those who served as precentors the names of the following

have been preserved: John Alexander, Joseph Kithcart, Cun-

ningham Kithcart, Archibald Major, Amos Jones and William

McGee.

Rev. Dr. Bejamin Mitchell was the second pastor of the

Mt. Pleasant Church, succeeding Rev. Joseph Anderson in 1829,

the year the foundation of a church building was laid in the vil-

lage. He, too, was one of the physically rugged pioneer preach-

ers, and related that he was compelled to eke out the stipend

called a salary, by labor with his ax, six days of the week; and

he preached three and four times each Sunday. He served this

church more than fifty years, and the church had but two pas-

tors in eighty years! He was born at York, Pa., and his father,

Joseph Mitchell, was a Major in the Revolutionary War.

 

name was changed to McCune. The McCunes came to America early in

its history. Thomas served well in the Revolutionary war, reaching the

rank of Colonel. He helped guard the Hessians after their surrender,

and often told of their endeavor to keep fire, their only fires being of

cedar fence-rails which they had to carry a mile. Col. McCune was a

strict observer of the Sabbath. All the shoes of the family were put in

order on Saturday, and he attended to this duty himself. The coffee to

be used on the Sabbath was ground the previous evening. On one occa-

sion a minister unexpectedly came in upon them on Sabbath and there

was not enough coffee ground. Here was a dilemma, but it was met by

Mrs. McCune taking the mill to the orchard. On another Sabbath a

large flock of wild turkeys came near the house. "Thomas, can't you kill

one with a stick?" "Not to-day, Mary." "Well, if you won't, I will,"

she replied, and seizing a stick, she succeeded in killing a fine large one,

which Thomas gallantly carried home: but his wife could never dis-

tinguish between the sins. Col. McCune lived and died on the farm now

owned by John Weatherston, while Adam Dunlap tilled the adjoining

farm now owned by Mrs. [Sarah] Jenkins, [who is a daughter of Nathan

and Ann Updegraph.] - T. M. McConahey, at celebration of the cen-

tennial of the Mt. Pleasant Presbyterian church, August 31, 1898.

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172       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

The Presbytery of Ohio, with which Jefferson County his-

tory is linked, and particularly that part of which we now

write, was formed out of Redstone in 1793,18 and extended to

the Scioto River. On October 11, 1819, the Synod of Pittsburg

resolved that "so much of the Presbytery of Ohio as lies north-

west of the Ohio River including the Rev'ds. Lyman Potter,

Joseph Anderson, James Snodgrass, Abraham Scott, John Rea,

Thomas Hunt, Thomas B. Clark and Obediah Jennings, with

their respective charges, should be formed into a separate Pres-

bytery, to be known as the Presbytery of Steubenville." The

boundaries then fixed were: Beginning at the mouth of Big Yel-

low Creek, thence by direct line in northwest course to inter-

section of the west line of the Seventh Range with the south

line of the Western Reserve; thence south along said west line

to the Ohio River and up the river to the place of beginning.

The Presbytery included the churches of Richland (1798), Short

Creek (1798), Steubenville (1800), Island Creek (1800), Crab-

apple (1801), Beech Springs (about 1802), Cedar Lick (Two

Ridges, (1802), Richmond (Bacon Ridge, 1804), Tent (Cen-

ter, 1803), Cadiz (about 1817), Nottingham (about 1816), Mc-

Mahon's Creek (Belmont County, perhaps in 1806). The first

meeting of Steubenville Presbytery was held October 19, 1819,

Joseph Anderson, Moderator, and Lyman Potter delivered the

sermon. All the ministers were present, together with Robert

Brown, David Hoge, Stephen Coe, James McLean, elders. At

its organization Steubenville Presbytery contained twelve

churches, eight ministers and nine hundred members. St.

 

18 The first Protestant sermon delivered west of the Alleghenies was

by a Presbyterian minister, Rev. Dr. Beatty, the occasion being a thanks-

giving celebration the Sunday following the occupation of Fort Duquesne

by Forbes, Saturday evening, November 25, 1758, Dr. C. Beatty being the

Chaplain of Forbes' forces. - From Notes and Queries, edited by Dr.

W. H. Egle, and published annually by Hon. M. W. McAlarney, editor

of The Harrisburg Telegraph.

Dr. C. Beatty was the father of Major Erkuris Beatty, and therefore

the grandfather of Dr. C. C. Beatty, the founder of the Steubenville

Seminary. The grandfather was a pupil of the Old Log College, and

the grandson was a graduate of Princeton.

• 41
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.            173

 

Clairsville Presbytery was formed from a portion of this terri-

tory, at Mt. Pleasant, October 3, 1838.

While churches were not established at Nottingham         and

Cadiz until ten years later, Dr. Rea preached to the Presby-

terian settlers of these communities as early as 1806. At Not-

tingham services were held up to 1821, in a tent erected (1808)

by Abraham Brokaw, Robert Baxter, John Glenn and Adam

Dunlap.   Rev. Thomas B. Clark was ordained in 1811, and in

1821 a log church was built on the tent site by Abraham

Brokaw, Archibald Todd, Adam Dunlap, Samuel Laferty,

Thomas Morrow.

Nottingham Church¹⁹ was near the road or trail (1802)

leading to the West, through Steubenville and what is now

 

Dr. C. Beatty was a Chaplain of the English Provincial forces in

1756, and at Fort Allen he complained that the troops neglected the daily

religious services held by him. It was then suggested that if the grog

ration be distributed just after the sermon, the attendance would be in-

creased. The chaplain agreed to the proposition and thereafter he

made no complaint of small attendance. He was at the bloody battle of

Bushy Run. September 21, 1766, with Dr. Duffield, he made a trip to the

Tuscarawas valley and there preached to the Indians. - From the Beatty

Family Record. The statement made (p. 254) that Rev. David Jones was

the first person to preach the Gospel in the Ohio river country, (1772)

has reference to that part of the river country on which Jefferson county

bordered.

19 In the call that was made out in 1805 by the church of Crabapple

and vicinity for the labors of John Rea the one-half of his time, the rep-

resentatives of Nottingham interest signed said call with the express un-

derstanding that a part of the pastor's services would be employed in

this [Nottingham] region if desired. Fifty pounds per annum was the

sum specified in the call, one-half in cash and one-half in produce; the

latter to be delivered at a certain flouring mill near the mouth of Big

Short Creek. In keeping with these conditions the supplies of grain

increased rapidly, at such prices at 20 to 25 cents a bushel for wheat,

and 12 to 25 cents for corn and rye. It soon became necessary for

the minister to have his large stock of produce manufactured and put

into the market, that he might procure funds wherewith to replenish his

library, and supply the wants of his household.  When a sufficient

number of barrels and lading were ready to fill a flatboat, a man of

approved character and ability was employed to take oversight of the

cargo, and ship it down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to some Southern

• 42
 

174        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

Cadiz, and on this road, near Nottingham,²⁰ William Ingles, in

this year, built the first public house in Harrison County, unless

Jacob Arnold's tavern on the site of Cadiz was previously built,

which is questioned. It was near here Captain William       Boggs

and a party of scouts from Fort Henry were surprised in camp

by Indians, in 1793, and Captain Boggs killed.

As has been mentioned, the Short Creek (Mt. Pleasant)

Church, was first in the valley, near the waters of Short

Creek, having been removed to the village at about the begin-

ning of the pastorate of Dr. Mitchell.    According to a sketch

contributed to the centennial history by Rev. D. L. Dickey and

L. C. Reed, the spot on which Short Creek Church was organ-

ized, is still pointed out; the farm    then belonged to John

Mitchell, now (1898) to Robert Finney. Two persons, at least,

 

port, make sale, and bring back [on foot] the returns, which, after pay-

ing expenses, were quite small. - Dr. T. R. Crawford, in "Forty Years

Pastorate and Reminiscences."

20The first settlements made in this vicinity [Nottingham] were

made from 1798 to 1803. Abraham Brokaw, John Glenn, William Ingles,

George Laport, Thomas Wilson, Arthur Barrett, - - Jones, - - Mof-

fit. These were but the advance of a great mass of people that in a few

years scattered over a large tract of country, so, as by magic, the North-

west territory was settled, and signs of civilization were evident, by

subdued forests, newly erected dwellings, followed by the school house

and the church building. ..       When peace was ratified with the

Indians, and Ohio admitted into the Union, the tide of immigration began

to flow strongly in this direction. In 1802, the great western thorough-

fare passed not more than three quarters of a mile from [the site of]

Nottingham church, which was the route from    Pittsburg by way of

Steubenville, and from Central Pennsylvania by way of Charles Town,

forming a junction in this [Jefferson] county, which induced the location

of Cadiz [1804]  then running west nine or ten miles, forked on the

lands of William Ingles. The right branch of this road passed through

the "White Eye" plains, and on to the Sandusky region; the left branch

running by way of Zanesville into the Scioto and Miami valleys. Howe,

in his Historical Collections of Ohio, says, "that previous to the con-

struction of the National road through Ohio, this road was perhaps

traveled more than any other route in Ohio." - Forty Years Pastorate

and Reminiscences by Rev. Dr. T. R. Crawford, pastor of the Nottingham

Church.

• 43
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.    175

 

were buried in the first church yard. According to the same

authority, there was also a church tent (a covered stand for

the minister and leader of the choir) on the Maxwell place,

about four miles east of Mt. Pleasant, now (1898) owned by

Smith Haythorn. The first house of worship, a rude log struc-

ture, without fire place or stove, was built at the foot of Hoge's

hill, and Tradition says Henry West, Hugh McConahey and

William Pickens built the pulpit, which was afterward removed

to the church built in the village. "At this house the people

worshiped for twenty years. Nothing marks the spot now

[1898] but a few half-hidden tombstones that mutely appeal

for remembrance for over a hundred buried dead."

Joseph Anderson, who, in his time, served Richland, Mt.

Pleasant, Crabapple and Beech Springs, and, no doubt, preached

at other points in the county previous to the coming of Drs.

Rea and Snodgrass, came to Ohio from Pennsylvania in 1798,

and left the valley for Missouri in 1830, dying, according Mr.

T. M. McConahey, at Monticello on the forty-seventh anni-

versary of his installation, August 20, 1847. His first wife was

a daughter of Rev. Joseph Smith who preserved many historical

data in "Old Redstone," published many years ago.

Dr. Rea was pastor (as supply) of the Cadiz Church until

October 17, 1822, when Rev. Donald Macintosh was called.

Rev. Macintosh was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, and was edu-

cated at Jefferson College, Canonsburgh, Pa. He served the

Cadiz Church until 1826, when Rev. John McArthur was in-

stalled pastor of the Ridge and Cadiz Churches, serving eleven

years. McArthur's successor in the pastorate of the Cadiz

Church was Rev. Dr. James Kerr, who was the most scholarly

of all the ministers of the Presbyterian Church of Eastern Ohio,

pioneer or modern. He was born in Wigton, Scotland, De-

cember, 1802, and was graduated by the University of Glasgow

at the age of twenty-seven. He came to America in 1832, and

began missionary work in Virginia under license of the Presby-

tery of Baltimore. In 1838 he was called to the Cadiz Church

where his labors were finished April 19, 1855. His great intel-

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176       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

lect had vent not only in the pulpit-he was the author of at

least two theological works of force. In speaking of Dr. Kerr,

Dr. T. R. Crawford, a contemporary, and for forty years pas-

tor of the Nottingham Church, said: "Dr. Kerr was a true

specimen of a learned, earnest, unwavering Scotch minister.

He was a man of positive character and convictions, forcible in

argument, concise in his words, and scholarly in research, af-

fecting no oratorical flights and fancy pictures, and his appeals

were directly to the understanding and to the heart. He was

remarkably consistent in every sphere of life-citizen or minis-

ter." A son, James W. Kerr, is an elder of the church so long

served by the father, and a daughter who inherits her father's

intellectual powers, is the wife of Rev. Dr. Cyrus J. Hunter,

of the Uhrichsville Presbyterian Church. Rev. Dr. William M.

Grimes, who succeeded Dr. Kerr, was not a Pathfinder, but

no minister was beloved to a fuller degree of warmth by the

grandchildren of the Pathfinders than was this sweet soul,

whose earthly labors closed November 23, 1886.

The first elders of this church were Matthew McCoy, John

Hanna and William Ramsey (great grandfather of A. J. Ham-

mond of Cadiz.)

The Associate Reformed Church mission at Cadiz was one

of the first west of the Ohio River, there being preaching at

this station as early as 1810, and in November, 1813, Rev. Wil-

liam Taggart was installed pastor, one-half his time in Cadiz

and one-half time at Uniontown, Belmont County, and received

the munificent salary of $180 for each charge. He served these

churches for a quarter of a century. The first elders were:

Robert Orr and Joseph McFadden.

The Associate Congregation of Cadiz was organized in

1813, and Rev. John Walker was installed, in 1814, pastor of

Cadiz, Unity (Belmont County) and Mt. Pleasant. The first

elders of the Associate Congregation of Cadiz were: Thomas

Maxwell, William Braden and Joseph Braden, installed in 1814.

Rev. Walker laid out the town of New Athens where he

opened a classical school, and finally procured a charter for

• 45
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.          177

 

Franklin College, one of the first colleges west of the river. He

was prominent as a conductor of the Underground Railroad,

and his strong anti-slavery sentiment expressed in pulpit and in

the hall almost disrupted the college.

The adherents of other churches were also early in the

Short Creek Valley as well as in other parts of Jefferson County,

for the Pathfinders were not ungodly.    The first preaching by

a Methodist Episcopal minister in the Northwest Territory was

at the mouth of the creek. Here, in 1781, John Carpenter built

what has always been known as Carpenter's Fort and should

not be confounded with the Carpenter's Blockhouse, built in

1785, by George Carpenter, two miles up the river, and near the

mouth of Rush Run.        At Carpenter's Fort, in    1787, Rev.

George Callahan, circuit rider of the Virginia District, preached

to the squatters; and Gen. Butler, who drove the squatters off

the land, noted in his journal (1785) that "the people of this

country [Short Creek] appear to be much imposed upon by a

sect called Methodist and are become great fanatics."

If religious opportunities indicate the character of the peo-

ple of a community, certainly the first settlers of this county

were not lacking in this evidence of intellectual development.

Very shortly after the organization of the Short Creek Presby-

terian Church, and the same year the Concord Friends' Meet-

ing was organized in Colerain (1800), Jacob Holmes²¹ and his

 

21 The following valuable information about Jacob Holmes is from

a letter from a grandson to The Steubenville Gazette:

In Vol. VI. of the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society publi-

cations I read an article written by W. H. Hunter, entitled The Path-

finders of Jefferson County. As my parents were raised in that county,

permit me to correct several errors. On page 163 mention is made of

"Jacob Holmes who was early in this county," etc.

Jacob Holmes was my grandfather, and my information is derived

from Jacob Holmes himself, from his wife and from my mother. The

matter to which I refer is in an old manuscript by Eli McFeely in which

he details his first meeting and introduction to Jacob Holmes, giving the

date of this meeting as about the middle of July, 1838, and the place "the

summit of McDowell's hill." When introduced by his friend "S. B.,"

he saw in Jacob Holmes "an aged but erect man" who proceeded to give

 

Vol. VIII--12

• 46
 

178        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

neighbors built a Methodist Episcopal Church up the Short

Creek Valley (about fourteen miles from the mouth of the

creek) on lands given him for services as an Indian scout. The

date of this building has been disputed in recent years; but the

basis of the claim that the Holmes church was one of the very first

Methodist Episcopal Churches erected in the Northwest Terri-

tory still obtains. Jacob Holmes (a Welshman,) was fervent in

 

an account of his early life in the western country, including the date and

place of his birth, etc. Now, in July, 1838, Jacob Holmes was living in

Highland county, Ohio, some six miles north of Hillsborough. He was

then nearly seventy years of age, but had the appearance of being much

older. Instead of being an erect man, he was much stooped, was in de-

clining health and could not have "ascended to the summit of McDowell's

hill by the sinuous path," even if he had been in Jefferson county at that

time. So I concluded that Mr. McFeely wrote the interview some time

after the meeting took place and was mistaken in the date. He is also

wrong as to the birthplace of Jacob Holmes as well as to John Huff being

killed by the Indians with Dan McIntyre, and David Cox and others in

the ginseng party. John Huff, my grandmother's brother, married Sallie

Johnson, a sister of John and Henry Johnson, who were captured by the

Indians, killed their captors and returned home. John Huff settled at

Columbia on the Ohio river, a few miles above Cincinnati, at about the

close of the last century, and lived to be an aged man, dying there some-

thing over fifty years ago. Besides his sister (my grandmother) he had

a brother, Eleazar Huff, and a son in the vicinity of my father's farm in

Highland county, and he frequently visited his relatives there. He was

a tall, stoutly built man, having the reputation of being a perfect athlete

in his younger days.

Jacob Holmes was born December 8, 1768, in Rockingham county,

Va. While Jacob was a small boy his father moved to Bedford county,

Pa., and a few years later to Washington county, Pa., near Catfish, now

Washington; then a few years later to what is now Brooke county, W.

Va., and settled on Buffalo creek, not far from the Ohio river. Here

our subject grew to manhood, and in 1791 was married to Elizabeth,

daughter of Michael and Hannah Doddridge Huff. Shortly after his

marriage he was employed by the United States Government as an Indian

scout, and in company with his brother-in-law, Kinsey Dickerson and a

man named Washburn, was thus employed for three years. For his

services he received a tract of land on Short creek, a few miles north

of where Mt. Pleasant now stands. To this place he moved his family

in the spring of 1796, my mother being but six weeks old. He resided

• 47
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.           179

 

his devotion to the polity of the Methodist Church; he settled

on Short Creek in 1796, and gathered about him men of like

religious views, and it is natural for those who have studied

the character of the Pathfinders to recognize the adage, that

"Where there is a will there is a way," and believe that Holmes

and his neighbors built a place of worship within four years

after the settlement was made.

 

on this farm some twenty-five years when he sold to a man named

Comley and removed to the northern part of Harrison county. The

farm on which he then located is now in Carroll county. He resided

here until 1832, when he again sold out and removed to Fairfield township,

Highland county. In the summer of 1838 he again sold out and bought

a farm one mile north of Kenton, Hardin county, to which he moved in

the spring of 1839, and there he died October 14, 1841.

On October 30, 1840, he requested all of his children to meet at his

home in a family reunion and take dinner with him. This was on the

Presidential election day for Ohio, at the close of the noted Tippecanoe

campaign. The children all met except Mrs. Augustine Bickerstaff of

Steubenville, her health not permitting. My mother made the trip on

horseback from Highland county, Ohio, a distance of one hundred miles.

Her sister, Mrs. Nathaniel Moore, who resided near Little York (Upde-

graph postoffice) in Jefferson county, also came on horseback. He and

his wife and children (one excepted) all ate dinner at the same table on

that day, and after the meal was over he preached to them and offered a

fervent prayer for their temporal and eternal welfare. He and his wife

are buried in the Grove cemetery at Kenton, and this is the inscription

on his tombstone: Jacob Holmes, died October 14th, 1841, aged 72

years, 10 months and 6 days. On the tombstone of his wife: Elizabeth

Holmes, died January 27, 1857, aged 84 years, 8 months and 5 days.

The Holmes and Huff families all settled in Jefferson, Harrison and

Tuscarawas counties in the early opening of the eastern part of the state.

In Howe's Historical Collections of Ohio (the old edition) in his account

of Harrison county, several of the Huffs are mentioned. In his account

of Guernsey county, my grandmother's brother, John Huff, is mentioned;

so he was not killed with the ginseng party on Cross creek.

Ambrose W. Moore, who was your Sheriff some thirty years ago, is

a grandson of Jacob Holmes. There was a large family of his brothers

and sisters who some years ago nearly all lived in Jefferson county. His

father and mother both died in Smithfield where they had removed a

few years before their decease. - Curtis Wilkin, Kenton, O., March 6,

1899.

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180        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

The Dickerson Methodist Episcopal Church²² (a few miles

southeast of Cadiz, and in this same valley) was organized in

1802, when Thomas Dickerson came to the land on which the

present [1899] church stands, and began to hold prayer-meet-

ings. In 1804 a class was organized and Dickerson was made

leader.

There was great activity by the Methodists in all this

region even before the beginning of the century. In  1794-5,

the circuit in which this part of Jefferson County was included,

embraced Washington County, Pa., Ohio and Virginia, both

sides of the river, from   Pittsburg to Marietta.    In this year

Charles Conoway was the presiding Elder and Samuel Hitt and

Thomas Haymond were ministers. Hitt had means of support,

 

In answer to further inquiries, Mr. Wilkin writes:

It is possible but not at all probable, that Jacob Holmes returned to

Jefferson county after leaving Highland for Hardin county, in 1838. At

that time he was a broken-down man, suffering from asthma. He made

the trip on his saddle-horse Old Lion, which he continued to ride until

a few months before his death. If this circumstance mentioned by Mr.

McFeely ever took place (and I presume it did) Mr. McFeely is mistaken

in regard to date.

Joseph Huff [the Indian fighter, who settled on Short creek as early

as 1784] was the brother of my grandmother, the wife of Jacob Holmes.

My grandfather, Michael Huff, had the following sons: Michael, who

was killed by the Indians on the Mississippi river, in the early settlement

of Illinois; Joseph, who I think died in Harrison county many years ago,

not far from where his father settled in Jefferson (now Harrison) and

near Georgetown; William, who died near the same place; John, who

died at Columbia, a short distance above Cincinnati, about 1842; Samuel,

who died in Highland county, about 1846; Eleazar. who died in High-

land county in 1833. The old Huff Bible that contains the record of all

the Huff family, is now in possession of David C. Holmes of Kenton, a

grandson of Jacob Holmes.

22 The history of the Dickerson church commences at the beginning

of the century. As early as March, 1801, Joseph Holmes [grandfather of

Major J. T. Holmes of Columbus] moved to the farm on which he lived

and died, [then in Jefferson county, now on the ridge dividing two forks

of Short creek, near the point where Athens, Cadiz and Short Creek

townships join.] Soon after the following settlers came into the settle-

ment: Joseph Huff, William Walraven, Thomas Dickerson, Eli Dicker-

• 49
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, O.          181

 

but the two other ministers received each £24 (Pennsylvania

money). In 1796, Valentine Cook was the Presiding Elder, and

Andrew Nichols, John Seward, Shadrack Johnson and Jona-

than Bateman were the ministers. In 1797, Daniel Hitt was

Presiding Elder, and N. B. Mills and Jacob Colbert, minis-

ters. In 1797, N. B. Mills and Solomon Harris were the min-

isters with 427 members. In 1799, Thomas Haymond and Jesse

Stoneman rode the circuit.       In June Haywood died, aged

thirty-five years. A decrease of 106 members was reported this

year, but the following being a year of revivals, the member-

ship increased to 521.    During this year Joseph Rowen and

John Cullison were the ministers. In 1801, the immense district

was divided, the part embracing Jefferson County, being named

Pittsburg District; Thornton Fleming as Elder and Benjamin

Essex and Joseph Hall, ministers. The Ohio Circuit was dis-

banded and the West Wheeling Circuit formed of territory in-

cluding Jefferson County.     In 1802 Joseph Hall; 1803 John

Cullison; 1804 Lashley Mathews, were the ministers. Mathews

 

son, William Scoles, James and Thomas Worley, Abraham Holmes and

William Welling. In 1802 Thomas Dickerson settled on the farm on

which the Dickerson church was located. . .. During the same fall

he organized a prayer-meeting circle which held weekly meetings..

This was the first organized religious society in the county of Harrison,

as now composed. In 1804 a society of Methodists was organized with

Thomas Dickerson as class-leader. . .. The first quarterly meeting

was held on the farm of Joseph Holmes, in the summer of 1805. This

meeting was conducted by Rev. Asa Shinn. Methodists from beyond

and about Wellsburg, on the Ohio and from the Holmes church [built

in 1800,] on Short creek, came to the meeting. . . . . The meeting

was held in the grove; the seats were made of rails, logs and puncheons.

In two trees standing about six feet apart a notch was cut in each tree,

and in those notches was placed a puncheon sixteen inches wide, and on

this the preacher laid the Bible. . . . The organization of the Dickerson

church is clearly traceable to the labors of Bishop Asbury and Bishop

McKendry, from the fact that the first members came from Virginia and

Pennsylvania. . . . By a revival here in 1829, under Thomas M. Hud-

son, this minister received into the Cadiz church many interesting young

men, five of whom became ministers; Bishop Simpson was one of them.

- Address of Joseph Holmes at Dedication of Dickerson church, Octo--

ber 7, 1888.

• 50
 

182      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

was a soldier of the Revolutionary War. By will he left his

horse and saddle, all he had of this world's goods, to be sold

and the proceeds to be used for the benefit of the church. In

1805, James Hunter was the Presiding Elder, and John West

and Eli Towne, Ministers. In 1806, Thornton Fleming was

Presiding Elder with David Stevens and Abraham Daniels as

ministers. In this year a "preaching place was found at the

home of John Permar [in Steubenville] where many were con-

verted." In 1807, William Knox, James Reiley and J. G. Watt;

1808, Robert R. Roberts and Benedict Burgess; 1809, James

Quinn, Joseph Young and Thomas Church. Young left this

record: "I found my circuit included the whole of Jefferson

and Belmont Counties. At St. Clairsville we preached in the

old log Court House (upstairs)." During this year Obediah

Jennings, a very prominent citizen of Steubenville, was a con-

stant attendant at the Methodist meetings, was converted, and

afterwards became a noted Presbyterian minister. He moved to

Virginia where his daughter became the wife of Gov. Henry A.

Wise and she was the mother of O. Jennings Wise, who was a

prominent Confederate officer. In 1810, a society was organized

in Steubenville by William Lamden, the place of meeting being

the home of Bernard Lucas. Those at the organization were:

Bernard Lucas, Margaret Lucas, Matthew   Worstel, Rachel

Worstel, William Fisher, Margaret Cummings, Archibald Cole,

Elizabeth Cole, Nicholas Murray, Mary Murray, Hugh Dunn,

John Dougherty. In 1811, William Lamden and Michael Ellis

were the ministers. This was a year of revivals in Steuben-

ville, and the Methodists became strong enough to begin

the erection of a place of worship (50x75 feet) on a lot

donated by Bezaleel Wells, on the southeast corner of Fourth

and South streets.  In 1812, the Ohio District was formed,

with Jacob Young as Presiding Elder, and Michael Ellis and

John McMahon, ministers. This year the Ohio Conference

was formed. At the first session (October 1) Abel Robinson

and William Knox were appointed ministers of this district. In

1813, the Ohio Conference was held in Steubenville, the Meth-

• 51
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, O.     183

 

odist Episcopal Church having greatly increased in numbers in

this vicinity. Bishops Asbury and McKendrie graced the min-

isterial assembly by their presence. In 1815, J. B. Finley, the

giant of Methodism, a former Presbyterian, a former intrepid

Indian fighter, a college-bred man, learned, eloquent, enthusi-

astic, was appointed minister of the Steubenville Circuit with

J. Powell as assistant. Under Finley's administration most of

the Methodist Societies in the county were organized. Accord-

ing to Finley's autobiography, the year 1815 was noted for re-

ligious controversy, when Armenianism and Calvinism "grap-

pled in strong, if not loving, embrace."

Among the first settlers of Cadiz, which was laid out in

1803, were: Jacob Arnold, tavern keeper; James Simpson, Man-

ufacturer of reeds for hand spinning-wheels (the father of Bishop

Simpson); William Tingley, school teacher (brother of Bishop

Simpson's mother); William Arnold, powder manufacturer;

Thomas Hogg (brother of John), merchant; Andrew McNeely

(father of Cyrus McNeely, founder of the Hopedale College),.

hatter and Justice of the Peace; John Harris, merchant; John

Jamison (the founder of the noted Jamison family in Harrison

County), tanner; John McCrea, wheel-wright; Robert Wilkin,

brickmaker; Connell Abdill, shoemaker; Jacob Myers, carpen-

ter; John Pritchard, blacksmith (father of Mrs. Chauncey Dew-

ey); Nathan Adams, tailor.

Here Bishop Matthew Simpson was born June 20, 1811,

the son of James and Sarah (Tingley) Simpson, the father com-

ing from Northern Ireland in 1793 to Huntington County, Pa.,

and afterward to Western Pennsylvania, and then to Cadiz.

He had four brothers, Andrew, John, William, Matthew, and a

sister Mary. The mother, born in New Jersey, was a daugh-

ter of Jeremiah Tingley, who came to Ohio and settled near the

mouth of Short Creek in 1801,23 the daughter being about

 

23 My mother, Sarah Tingley, was born in New Jersey, some twenty

miles from South Amboy, but in her youth was taken to the neighbor-

hood of Amboy. Her father's name was Jeremiah Tingley. During the

War of the Revolution he was drafted and served a term in the army;

and then as the war continued he enlisted for an additional term, and

• 52
 

184       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

twenty years of age. Here James Simpson and Sarah Tingley

were married and shortly thereafter made their home in Cadiz,

although there is belief about Hopewell Church that Bishop

Simpson was born on Warren Ridge. Bishop Simpson stated

during his life, on the occasion of receiving a cane made of a

portion of one of the logs used in the construction of the Holmes

Church, that his mother attended services in the hallowed sanc-

tuary in her early womanhood. Her father and mother were

buried in Hopewell grave-yard.

Matthew Simpson's father died when the son was but two

years of age. Matthew, the uncle, took charge of the boy and

gave him a thorough education, and no one ever lived was a

more apt pupil. He could read and spell at the age of three

years, and before he was fifteen he had not only mastered Latin,

Greek, Hebrew and German languages, but thoroughly learned

the printing trade, wrote poetry, spent much time in the Court

House listening to the arguments of the giants of the early Bar,

and drinking deeply from this fountain; not only all this-he

attended Dr. John McBean's classical academy and as well

learned something of the reed-maker's trade in his Uncle Mat-

thew's shop. He never attended Franklin College as many sup-

pose, although his Uncle Matthew was one of the first direc-

tors; he was well educated under the tutition of his uncle and

 

was present at several battles, but was not actively engaged. At the

close of the war he received a soldier's claim for lands in Western Vir-

ginia and purposed to move West, but the agent who pretended to lo-

cate the land deceived him, and he never recovered it. On the way

West, in 1790, he was taken ill at Winchester, Va., and after recovering

remained a number of years in that region. He was brought up, as was

my mother's mother, a Baptist, but there being no Baptist church near

Winchester, she attended Methodist preaching and was awakened and

converted. In 1801 the family removed to Ohio, and settled on Short

creek, near [now] Hopewell [M. E. church, on Warren Ridge,] where

grandfather Tingley died, and where, June 10, 1806, my mother was

married. She was the first member of the family who joined the Meth-

odists, but the entire family followed her example. My mother was born

May 23, 1781. - Statement made by Bishop Simpson.

• 53
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.    185

 

Dr. McBean before Franklin was organized. Shortly after at-

taining the age of fifteen years, he walked near ninety miles

to Uniontown, Pa., where he entered Madison College, but was

so far advanced that Dr. Elliot, the head-master, frequently left

his department in young Simpson's charge. He read medicine

under Dr. McBean and received a certificate that entitled him

to the privilege, but he did not practice, the direction of his

early bent having been changed, and he entered the ministry

of the church of his mother. In the reed factory of his Uncle

Matthew also worked Curtis Soule, afterwards Bishop, and

down the valley about fifteen miles, at Mt. Pleasant, was born

Stephen Mason Merrill, also a bishop of the Methodist Episco-

pal Church.

The town being at the crossing of two of the most im-

portant thoroughfares, it grew rapidly, and the many hotels and

the many fine brick buildings erected gave evidence of early

prosperity, the beginning of the great wealth that now obtains.

There was manufacturing of all sorts-furniture, shoes,

wagons, nails, stoves, leather, flour, guns, powder, fruit, bran-

dies, whisky, crude farm implements. The pork-packing indus-

try was carried on extensively for years by Samuel McFadden,

one of the early merchants (grandfather of the compiler), and

son, H. S. McFadden (father of H. H. McFadden, of The

Steubenville Gazette). The Kilgores (afterwards of Steuben-

ville) were also early manufacturers. William Frey and Joseph

R. Hunter (father of the compiler) were furniture manufactur-

ers, the latter shipping large quantities to St. Louis. The sen-

ior Matthew Simpson was an inventive genius, inventing among

other machines, one to facilitate the production of reeds, with

which machine he manufactured a superior reed, resulting in a

wide demand. He also invented a loom for weaving stocks,

the fashionable neck-wear for gentlemen at that time.

The Short Creek Valley from Cadiz to Mt. Pleasant, and

including the region about New Athens and Crabapple Church,

just over the divide on the headwaters of Wheeling Creek, was

noted for its warmth of abolition sentiment from 1820 down to

• 54
 

186       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

close of the "irrepressible conflict"-abolition of slavery pure

and simple; the hard-headed, austere Seceders, the followers of

Dr. John Walker and other ministers of his kind, would tol-

erate no compromise, and they looked upon Benjamin Lundy's

colonization schemes with almost the same disrespect that they

would consider any half-way measure proposed by the pro-

slavery advocates. Franklin College, founded by John Walker,

was long recognized as the fountain head of the abolition sent-

iment of Eastern Ohio, and it is but natural that the people

first to drink of the stream were powerfully influenced; and

further, it was in accordance with the eternal fitness of things

that numerous "underground stations," so called because slaves

were surreptitiously conveyed along certain routes, kept hid

during the day, and hurried during the night season from one

station to another, on their way to Canada, should be estab-

lished in this valley.

Of course there were stations at the mouth of Short Creek,

one kept by George Craig and one by William Hogg. One

was kept by Joseph Medill (grandfather of W. L. Medill, Esq.),

on Warren Ridge, near Hopewell M. E. Church. There were

many in Mt. Pleasant, the slaves being kept during daylight

in any of the houses in the village, and there is authority for

the statement that one good Friend kept a number of strong

negroes on his farm from corn-planting until after harvest! The

house of Rev. Benjamin Mitchell was a noted station, there be-

ing a trap-door in the kitchen floor through which runaway

slaves reached a large hole in the ground when slave hunters

were searching the premises.  The Updegraff house, a mile

west of Mt. Pleasant, and that of David Robinson, west of

Trenton, were also well known to the slave on his way to lib-

erty. The Bracken house in Mt. Pleasant was so constructed

that the negroes could enter an attic by means of a trap-door in

the roof after climing a ladder. Benjamin Ladd (the Quaker

philanthropist) kept the Smithfield Station. The one at Lloyds-

town, named for Jesse and Isaac Lloyd, was kept by Eli

Nichols; one at Unity kept by Rev. John Walker, the coura-

• 55
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.            187

 

geous Seceder minister; at Hammonds Cross Roads. by Alex-

ander and John Hammond, John Hammond, Jr., and Joseph

Rodgers now (1899) of Cadiz, being conductors between

this  point  and   Hopedale;    one   at  the   house   of James

Hanna, near Georgetown; one at the house of Cyrus Mc-

Neely (founder of Hopedale College), between Hopedale and

Unionvale; one at the house of Judge Thomas Lee, near Cadiz;

one at Millers Station by David Ward; one at Richmond by

James and William Ladd, and from here the negroes were con-

ducted to the home of Judge Thomas George,²⁴ on Yellow Creek,

 

24Judge Thomas George kept the underground railway station on

Yellow creek, at Moores Salt Works (now Pravo.)  He was the leader

among the early Presbyterians; and under the influence of Rev. John

Walker, (who was, the compiler believes, the John Walker who founded

Franklin college, and of the courageous blood of the Minister-Colonel

of Londonderry fame,) he could not have been otherwise than an active

abolitionist.

James George (grandson of Judge Thomas George) has kindly given

the compiler the following relating to the Yellow creek division of the

underground railway:

"Judge Lee was station agent at Cadiz; James Ladd and brother at

Richmond: David Ward at Millers Station (then Works Post Office):

Dr. A. Lindsay, Salem Metropolis; Thomas George, Moores Salt Works;

James and William   Farmer, Salineville; -- Horton, Salem. There

was another line through from Cadiz by way of Scroggsfield and Mechan-

icstown [Carroll county,] Dr. Lindsay having removed from  Annapolis

[was Salem, in Jefferson county,] to one of these places, but cannot give

particulars.

"We were located about half way on the line from Cadiz and Mt.

Pleasant to Salineville. Henry Crabbs kept a station on the hill, over-

looking the George station in the valley. The Richmond station kept by

the Ladds, was on a sidetrack, which was used in emergency.

"The line on which Moores Salt Works was located was in operation

from 1827 to 1837, but some of the older citizens say the first date should

be earlier. Station agents rarely knew beforehand that fleeing slaves

were to arrive, and they were received because conveyed by known

friends. In 1830 Old Man Work brought through two slaves, arriving

at the house of Judge George a little before daylight. They were

secreted in the barn, fed and cared for by George until opportunity gave

chance to take them to Salineville. In 1830 the writer has knowledge

• 56
 

188        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

and then to Salem, in Columbiana County, from which point the

negroes had comparatively safe passage into British posses-

sions.

 

of a gang of five males and three females going through. This party

was conveyed to George's by the Ladds, kept until night and conveyed

to Farmer station at Salineville. In 1834 a gang composed of seven

men, two women and a child, was brought to George's station, and

hidden in the loft of a brick house occupied by Robert George. They

were conducted to Salineville by the conductors, Robert, Thomas and

A. W. George.

"A remark which may not be out of place: On the line to Saline-

ville was a small village, on the corner of whose street lived a man

antagonistic to abolitionism and was dreaded by the conductors. The

night the last mentioned party went through, the village was very dark

and the rain poured until after they passed this residence, after which

the clouds broke and the night was clear. No doubt a Providential

interference. In an old diary I find mention of many fugitives passing

through, but no incidents are mentioned. In 1837 a woman was brought

to George's from Ladd's and covered with straw in the barn, and was

jabbed with a pitchfork by a hired man who was feeding the stock.

Another incident occurred in 1840. A gang of twenty was conveyed

from Crabbs'. Arriving at about daylight, he ran them into a pine

hollow. Early in the morning, a laborer on his way to work, seeing

the negroes, reported at Judge George's that 'the hills were covered

with d    d niggers; they would all be killed if something was not

done.' The Judge joked with him and assured him that it was all imagi-

nation; but the Judge took in the situation and gave the laborer employ-

ment. [Those who harbored fugitive slaves ran great risk, the penalty

in Ohio being $1000 fine and imprisonment.] During the day these

slaves were removed to Crabbs' barn, where they were fed by Mrs.

Annie Crabbs, and during the night they were conveyed to Salineville

and then to Salem. Shortly after this came three robust negroes armed

with revolvers. They were on foot and claimed they had purchased

their freedom. In 1847 a mother, daughter and son came to our station,

conveyed by conductors under David Ward. Judge George, taking a

fancy to the boy, concluded to keep him, and sent the mother and

daughter to North Salem. A party from New Lisbon wanting help,

employed the mother and daughter. Jacob Clinton, working for George,

got an idea there was reward for information of fugitive slaves. He

succeeded in corresponding with the owner, the result of which proved

beneficial to all concerned. A plot was concocted: Clinton was to go

to New Lisbon [now Lisbon] and represent himself as a son of Judge

• 57
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.          189

 

While at the time and in the region of which we write,

there were two Quaker Meeting Houses, one at West Grove

(Hicksites and Orthodox occupying the same house, but hav-

ing separate graveyards²⁵) and one at Harrisville (Wilburite),

 

George and convince the mother that her son, who was at George's,

was very lonesome and wanted his sister for company. After some

persuasion the mother yielded, and the daughter was given up. Clinton

had scarcely got out of sight when suspicion arose. A runner was

sent to Salineville. The runner, returning, reported the suspicion well

based. At once a company was organized at New Lisbon, headed by

David George, and followed Clinton to Wellsville, but too late to

catch him, the boat having gone. In the meantime the negro boy kept

by George was hidden in a coal bank. While Dr. Farmer and Judge

George were talking the matter over, a fine team drove up, a stylish

person alighted and came into the house. He asked if a colored boy

was there, and being informed there was, said: 'I am So and So, from

New Lisbon; the mother sent me after the boy; the little sister is very

lonesome and wants her brother for company.' Farmer and George

taking in the situation, made things so hot for the gentleman that he

was glad to drive off toward Steubenville. The mother and boy were

immediately sent to Canada."

25 The bitterness of feeling between the two factions of the Quaker

church (Hicksite and Orthodox) was intense, and those familiar with

the disruption in 1828, are not surprised over the fact that separate grave-

yards are used for burials. The Orthodox Friends had Hicksites arrested

and brought before court both in criminal and civil cases. The only

court record the compiler has been able to find is of the case of "Jonathan

Taylor, Rouse Taylor, Isaac Parker, Jas. Kinsey, Horton Howard,

who sue for the Society of Friends, consisting of the Ohio Yearly

meeting, vs. Holiday Jackson, James Toleston and Nathan Galbraith;

action in trespass; $5000 damages for disturbing plaintiff's house and

injuring property. Sept. 9, 1828." In 1831 the record shows, "judgment

for defendant for costs." The records for 1832 show payment of $19.79

costs. The Friend, or Advocate of Truth, a Quaker magazine published

in Philadelphia, tenth month, 1828, contains reports of the "riot" at

Mt. Pleasant from the Hicksite point of view, the writers employing the

most vigorous language in denouncing the actions of the Orthodox.

Those who have looked upon the Quaker as one of gentle spirit would

be astounded by reading the charges made against the members of the

Orthodox branch by the followers of Hicks. It was even charged that

Jonathan Taylor feigned injury in order to procure indictment against

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190        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

the majority of those taking part in assisting slaves to Canada

were Seceders, who hewed straight to the line of principle, re-

fusing to accept compromise either in religious or civil affairs.

They were Scotch-Irish people - sturdy, longlived, austere,

honest. They defied in America law they considered unjust,

with the same courageous spirit their fathers fought against

oppression in Scotland and Ireland - with the same spirit that

comes of the knowledge of right, that made the fathers rebel

against the power of George III. These aided the slave to lib-

erty. They maintained the Standards of their church and no

matter whether the transgressor be a member of his own house-

hold the prosecutor insisted that punishment follows convic-

tions.²⁶ There was no sentiment in their theology, no fraternity

 

Hicks. No matter which account of the disruption be accepted, the

reader must conclude that on the occasion of the division there was

more evidence of war-like spirit manifested than in any other church

quarrel in the county.

26 In reference to the statement that the Seceders insisted on strict

observance of the rules of their church, it is recorded that John Car-

nahan, a member of the Cadiz church, was brought before the session by

his wife on the (then) serious charge of "occasional hearing."  After

the churches had united, forming the United Presbyterian church, a

Methodist minister was invited to fill the United Presbyterian pulpit,

and Mrs. Carnahan refused to attend the service, declaring that as the

Methodist minister was a very good man, she would like to hear him in

her church on a week-day, but as for going to hear him on the "Sab-

bath," she would not; she could not countenance such profanation of

the Lord's Day. Alexander Hammond of the Unity Seceder church

was sessioned on the charge of profaning the "Sabbath," in that he

went to hear his brother-in-law (a Presbyterian) preach. His brother,

John Hammond, defied the elders to "session" him, and by standing

against them he won a victory for individual liberty and for Presbyterian-

ism, and opened the way for the revolution - Rev. Mr. Neviu, President

of Franklin College, preaching at a Methodist camp-meeting on invi-

tation of Rev. Edward Smith, known in the neighborhood as "Bully"

Smith. It has been charged that the lack of blood affection among the

Seceders was due to the austerity of their Scotch blood. While this is

true to a degree, the time had much to do with it. This stoicism also

obtained among the early settlers from New England. About the year

• 59
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.      191

 

of feeling toward their fellows, and consequently members were

frequently before the elders for what would now seem the

most trivial violation of the church law as set down in the

Standards - for "occasional hearing" (attending service in an-

other communion on the "Sabbath day"), for calling the Sab-

bath "Sunday," singing other than David's psalms in worship,

performing any but absolutely necessary labor on the "Sabbath

day," etc. Rev. Dr. Alexander Campbell, the founder of the

Disciples Church, was deposed from the Seceder Church be-

cause he favored union of the churches. The influence of these

people was great and their rigidity of principle was a greater

power along religious and civic lines than the laxity which now

obtains.

Among the first settlers of that part of the Short Creek

Valley now in Harrison County, were: Simpkins Herriman,

John Matson, William Wiley, Alexander Hammond, James

Beatty, Samuel Beatty,-    Ayers, -    Worley, John Booth

(miller), Isaac Booth, Edward Hagan (miller), James Patton,

Hugh Rodgers, Col. Joseph Holmes (brother of Jacob Holmes),

James Carrick, George Riggle (operated the first mill at George-

town, and for whom the village was named), William Ram-

sey, Samuel Moore, Lemuel Lamb (built a horse-mill near

Georgetown), Aaron Mercer (operated a woolen-mill near

Georgetown), James, John and William   Kerr, James Adams,

Samuel Hanna, Thomas Dickerson, John Beatty, John Wal-

raven, John Martin, Robert Minteer, Dr. Gaston, William and

 

1822, John M. Goodenow and Benjamin Tappan, both distinguished

men, of high degree, were practitioners at the Steubenville bar. Tappan

was on the bench in 1823, in which year Goodenow asked to be appointed

Prosecuting Attorney, and although Tappan was his brother-in-law,

they having married sisters of John C. Wright, also a distinguished

lawyer, all becoming more noted in after years, he protested to his

associates on the bench against Goodenow's appointment, maintaining

his objections with numerous unbrotherly charges; among them, that

he broke jail in New England and ran away from justice; that he was

a d   d rascal, and that his knowledge of law was so meagre that he

was unfitted for the office.

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192       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

Joseph Huff (noted Indian fighters), James Wilkin (built the

first mill within the bounds of what is now Harrison county),

James Taggart, Milo Courtright, John Heberling. At a very

early date there were several machine shops in Georgetown

devoted to the manufacture of threshing machines, which work

continued up to the time consolidated capital destroyed the pos-

sibility of individual effort.

On Friday, June 12, 1807, the County Commissioners or-

dered that "so much of the seventh range of townships as lies

west of the Townships of Springfield, Archer and Cadiz, be at-

ached to the said townships respectively." This order took in

all of what is now Harrison County and a portion of Carroll

and Tuscarawas Counties, Jefferson County extending to the

west line of the Seventh Range.

At the same meeting, the Commissioners, "on application,

set off and incorporated the Tenth Township of the Third Range

into a separate township and election district, to be distin-

guished and known by the name of Salem Township, and the

first election to be held at the house of Jacob Coe."

This township was originally a part of Steubenville, out of

which German (Harrison County), Salem, Island Creek and

Steubenville were erected.

Among the Pathfinders²⁷ (1798-1808) were Jacob Coe,

James Moores, Henry Miser, Edward Devine, Joseph Talbott,

Rev. Joseph Hall (one of the pioneer Methodist Episcopal min-

isters), Henry Hammond (brother of Charles Hammond, the

able lawyer and most noted of the early Ohio editors, whose

work received Jefferson's praise), Joseph Hobson, Stephen Ford,

Baltzer Culp, William Farquhar, John Collins, Ezekiel Cole,

John Walker, John Johnson, William Bailey, James Bailey, James

McLain, Adam Miser, William Smith, John Andrew (a soldier

 

27 Henry Hammond, brother of Charles Hammond, of The Cin-

cinnati Gazette, [now (1899) The Commercial Tribune] must have settled

here, [near East Springfield,] before 1804, for he caught a land turtle

and cut his initials on its shell; in 1850 he found the same turtle with

1804 and the initials distinctly visible.-Isaac Shane, in a letter to the

compiler.

• 61
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0     193

 

of the Revolutionary War and a Colonel in the War of 1812;

his remains are buried in the graveyard on the hill at Salem Vil-

lage); John Gillis, Sr., Francis Douglas, William Leslie, David

Lyons, John Hogue John McComb, Thomas and Patrick Har-

denmadder, Daniel Markham, Benjamin Hartman, Isaac Hel-

mick, John Sunderland, John Wilson, William Mugg, William

Vantz, Henry Jackman, Jacob Vantz, Andrew Strayer, Benjamin

Talbott, Jacob Ong, John Watson, Joseph Flenniken, Adley Cal-

houn, Jacob Leas, Christian Albaugh, James Rutledge (from

Pennsylvania, and of the same family as the Signer of the Declar-

ation of Independence, the latter's people moving to South Car-

olina, and his remains lie at Charlestown), Isaac Shane, Aaron

Alien, Robert Douglas (potter), Thompson Douglas (gunsmith),

Thomas Calhoun, John McCullough, David Watt, David Rog-

ers, George Hout, Henry Morrison (first settler on Mingo Bot-

tom in 1793, and was in the War of 1812 with Col. Duvall), Wil-

liam McCarel, Dr. Anderson Judkins, William Bahan, Charles

Leslie, Thomas George, Thomas Orr, William Blackiston,

Samuel Bell, David Sloane, Richard Jackson (the grandfather

of Mason Jackson, a Baron, title given by the late King of

Wurttemberg), Levi Miller, Stewart McClave, Richard McCul-

lough, John Collins, John Stutz, John Wolf, William Dunlap,

William Davidson, William Alexander, John Markle (an early

school teacher), Adam Winklesplech, -- Stout (storekeeper),

William Leas.

In 1800, Joseph Talbott, a Friend, settled on the site of

Richmond, having purchased a quarter-section of land from

Bezaleel Wells in 1799, but he did not lay out the town until

1815. This year he employed Isaac Jenkins to survey the land

for lots, 60x160, with streets 60 feet in width. The first house

was built by Benjamin Hartman who opened a tavern and also

followed blacksmithing. The first store was kept by Allen Far-

quhar, and the first physician was Anderson Judkins. The vil-

lage was incorporated in 1835; John Tyball and Samuel Han-

son were elected Justices and James Ball, Clerk. Adam Stew-

art was the first Mayor, James Riley, Recorder; William Far-

Vol. VIII-13

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194        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

mer, Thomas Burns, Henry Crew, John McGregor, E. M. Pyle,

Trustees.

Richmond is the seat of the only college²⁸ in Jefferson

County, the institution having been established in 1835.

Salem was laid out in 1802 by Isaac Helmick, on Section

Thirty-two, entered by Henry and Adam Miser, whose de-

scendants still own considerable of the land. The village grew

to such importance that its people set up a strong claim for the

location of the county seat. There was a large settlement of

Germans in this part of the county, and descendants still pos-

sess the land. The first house was built by John Sunderland,

the first storekeeper was     Harrison, followed soon by John

Wilson and - Hutchinson, and the first tavern keepers were

Simmons and William       Mugg.    Jacob Vantz and William

Smith, who came from Maryland, were the first hatters; Nich-

olas Wheeler and Mrs.          Leslie were the earliest school

teachers whose names have been preserved by tradition. Wil-

liam McGowan and son David, the latter the founder of the

McGowan wholesale grocery house of Steubenville, located in

Salem in 1820, and engaged in the manufacture of woolen goods,

an industry very profitably pursued throughout this whole

 

28 Richmond college is the outgrowth of a select school taught in

Richmond, Salem township, Jefferson county, in 1832 by Rev. J. C.

Tidball. The charter was granted January 22, 1835, and [Judge] Thomas

George, Isaac Shane, William Blackiston, Henry Crew, Stephen Ford,

Thomas Orr, David Sloane, Nathaniel Myers, John Cook, William

Farmer, Samuel Bell, A. T. Markle and James H. Moore were directors;

but the college was not really established until 1843. In October of that

year, Rev. John R. Dundass was chosen President and D. D. McBryer,

Professor of Languages and Natural Science. In 1845 a brick building,

32 x 45 feet, was erected for the accommodation of the college, on land

bought from Joseph Talbott and on land donated by Thomas Howard.

The Building Committee was composed of Thomas Barnes, E. M. Pyle,

Henry Crew. In June, 1846, John Comin was elected Professor of

Languages and Moral Science, and William Sarver was chosen Pro-

fessor of Mathematics and Natural Science. In 1846 D. D. McBryer

was chosen President, and several chairs were added and filled as fol-

lows: Hebrew and Evidences of Christianity, Rev. William Lorimer;

Ancient and Modern History, Rev. B. F. Sawhill. In September, 1848,

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The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.           195

 

country at that time. Adam Winklesplech (grandfather of D.

W. Matlack of Steubenville), was an early merchant, coming to

Jefferson County before the Indians had been sent to reser-

vations farther west.

As has been noted, Salem was very ambitious. It grew so

rapidly, that shortly after it was laid out James Kelly made

an addition and erected an immense flour mill. During the

"town-booming" period of 1815, which lasted until the financial

panic of 1819, banks were organized with remarkable facility

throughout the country, two of these "wild cat" institutions

falling to the lot of the Village of Salem, but of only one have

we the least record, and this record is the story of a murder.

Dr. G. W. Duffield was the President of the Salem     Bank, and

when it failed in 1818, suits were brought against him to re-

cover on the notes. During the trial before Jacob Vantz, Jus-

tice of the Peace, in the village, on the 9th of July, 1818,

J. R. W. Sloane, [father of Prof. Sloane of Columbia college, author

of the best life of Napoleon ever written, and other important works,]

was elected President. In 1850 the Presbytery of Steubenville took the

college under its charge, and Rev. Cyrus C. Riggs was chosen Presi-

dent, with Rev. W. Easton and J. R. W. Sloane added to the Faculty.

The Presbytery held the college in charge only one year. In 1854 the

Pittsburg M. E. Conference took charge, and M. S. Bonafield and C.

R. Slutz composed the Faculty with Rev. S. H. Nesbit, President. In

1860 Col. J. T. Holmes was elected President, which position he held two

years, he then giving up the work to enter the Federal army. Since

then the college has passed through many hands with varying success.

In 1872, under the charge of Prof. Lewis Ong, larger buildings were

erected, the corner-stone having been laid August 8. Addresses were

delivered on this occasion by Rev. J. R. W. Sloane, J. B. Dickey,

John Marvin and W. B. Watkins. After Prof. Ong came Dr. G. W.

McMillan who is now (1899) in charge. - From a Sketch of Richmond

College written for "The Pathfinders of Jefferson County."

Hon. William Lawrence, of Bellefontaine, O., on November 1, 1833,

became a student in Rev. John C. Tidball's academy, then situated about

three miles from Knoxville, on the road to Steubenville. The academy

was about 1835 removed to Richmond. He continued at the academy

until the spring of 1836. In the fall of 1836 he entered Franklin College,

at New Athens, from which he graduated with class honors in the fall

of 1838.--From a sketch of Judge Wm. Lawrence, by his son, John

M. Lawrence, A. M.

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196      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

spirited words passed between Duffield and David Redick, the

attorney for the prosecution. The trial adjourned and Redick

followed Duffield to the street, and throwing his weight upon

him bore Duffield to the ground. Duffield, feeling his life in

danger, stabbed his antagonist in the neck with a doctor's

lance. Redick died as result of the wound while being con-

veyed to Steubenville in a wagon. Duffield was indicted and

tried during the August term and was acquitted. The form of

indictment in 1818 was the same as that used in the terri-

tory in 1798, and related that the accused, "not having the fear

of God before his eyes, but being moved and seduced by insti-

gation of the devil," committed the crime. Like in most cases

of the suspended "wild cat" banks the only asset remaining of

the Salem bank was a table, which afterward became the prop-

erty of John M. Goodenow. The only asset of one of the

banks in the county was a keg filled with nails, having a mere

covering of gold and silver coins!

John Andrew, whose grave in the Salem Cemetery is

marked by a small sandstone, with the inscription, "John An-

drew, a native of Marseilles, in the South of France; a soldier

of the Revolutionary War and of the War of 1812," was one of

the Pathfinders of Jefferson County, coming here at the opening

of the century. He came to America with Lafayette, and was

with Wayne in storming Stony Point, on the night of July 16,

1779, and was one the eighty-three patriots wounded in the bold

attack on the British stronghold, he receiving a bayonet-thrust

entirely through his abdomen, and strange as it may seem, he

lived, none of the intestines being seriously injured. In the

same battle he received a sabre-stroke across the temple and

cheek, leaving a scar which he carried to his grave. When the

Jefferson County troops were called out to fight the British in

the Second War for Independence John Andrew was made

First Lieutenant (Colonel) of the regiment, and he served with

honor and distinction until peace was declared. The date of

his death is unknown, but is supposed to be 1835. Although

a native of Southern France, the name, Andrew (or Andrews

as it often appears in public documents), would indicate that

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The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.     197

 

this hero whose bones are an honor to the ground that received

them, was of Scotch parentage; not only this, the fact that the

first Associate Reform Church in the township was organized

at his house would convince the compiler that Col. John An-

drews was of the blood of John Knox.

Gen. George A. Custer, one of the most brilliant of the

soldiers developed by the War Between the States, was born

within a few miles of Salem, in territory out of which Salem

Township was erected, December 5, 1839, of Hessian parent-

age, the father being a pioneer in this county. Gen. Custer

was killed with his whole command of 277 cavalrymen, by the

Indians under Sitting Bull, at Little Horn River, Mont., June

25, 1876. His brothers, Thomas and Boston, and a brother-in-

law, were in the command and met the same fate.

William Vantz, son of Jacob Vantz, the Justice and hatter,

was appointed Postmaster of Salem by President Monroe and

held the office for fifty-three years.

When Harrison County was organized in 1814, a portion of

the Village of Salem fell within the lines of the new civil

division.

East Springfield was laid out in 1803, by John Gillis, sur-

veyor, school-teacher, and Sheriff of the county during 1806-8.

The village is noted in the early records as Gillis Town. The

first residents were Francis Douglas (County Sheriff from 1797

to 1804), William Leslie, David Lyons, John Hogue, John Mc-

Comb, Thomas and Patrick Hardenmadder (the two latter in

the War of 1812), Richard Jackson (clock and silversmith). The

first tavern was kept by John Hogue; Charles Leslie kept the

first store. William Dunlap, for many years a merchant of

Steubenville, was also an early merchant of East Springfield.

Rev. Dr. William Davidson's father was an early resident.

David Lyons and Daniel Markham were the blacksmiths, who

manufactured all the axes, chains and nails needed in the neigh-

borhood, the former making nails and the latter saddle tacks.

John Wolf²⁹ was one of the first Justices.

29 John Wolf, Esq., was here [East Springfield] in 1807. It is related

that after being notified of his election, and returning home, he told

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198        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

The town being on the mail route between Steubenville

and Canton, after roads were opened, it became a town of con-

siderable importance and much business was transacted. Here

the stage horses were changed and hotels flourished, and these

were prosperous days for the village. General musters³⁰ of the

militia of all this region under command of Gen. Samuel Stokely,

were held here with all the pomp and circumstance, excite-

ment and turmoil usually attendant on such occasions, and so

thoroughly enjoyed by the fathers. The military spirit was in

evidence in the days of the prosperous village.

The citizens of the village built a school-house soon after

the town was laid out, there being enough settlers in the neigh-

borhood (there being no more than a dozen families in town

in 1809) to support a teacher by subscription.    The names of

the first teachers are lost in oblivion, but the earliest known

were John (Jack) Gillis (the founder or his son), Dr. Markle,

Mr. Byers (from New England), Isaac N. Shane, Charles Mc-

Gonnigal, Benjamin F. Gass, Daniel Langton (also kept a

store), John Bell, James Foster. Mr. Foster employed original

methods of punishment; he, perhaps, was not as severe in his

"corrections" as distinguished earlier "professors," but the re-

sults were altogether as beneficial: His offending pupils were

his wife that he was Squire. The children took it up and were calling

one another Squire. Mrs. Wolf ordered them to shut up, declaring,

"There's nobody Squire but your father and me." When David Tod

(a Democrat) was running for Governor my father told the joke to

Joe Geiger, who wrote some doggeral verses, one of which I remember:

 

Be silent, each little young sappy,

Or I'll tickle your back with a rod:

There's none but myself and your pappy

Shall ever be Governor Tod.

 

Geiger applied it to the politics of the times. - Letter from Isaac Shane

to the compiler.

30We boys had fine times during the general musters. Here alone

we got gingerbread, which to our taste was next to ambrosia, the food

of gods. Whisky, too, was plenty--a good kind, that Tom Corwin

called the great leveler of modern society not that indescribable chem-

ical compound of our times, that violates law and fills jails.-Letter

from Isaac Shane to the compiler.

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The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, O.          199

 

punished by being compelled to wear an old, soiled red cap,

made after the fashion of a Turkish fez, to their disgust and

amusement of the other pupils. The cap, when not employed

in endeavor to force the recalcitrant child to keep within the

lines of rectitude, was worn during school hours by the teacher

himself.

The people of Salem    Township had means of grace very

soon after settlements were made. Joseph Hall, a pioneer itin-

erant Methodist Episcopal minister, organized a society in 1800,

at the house of his father-in-law, James Moores. He also held

services alternately at the houses of Stephen Ford and Henry

Jackman up to 1808, when a log church was built on the lands

of Henry Jackman. The first class of this society was com-

posed of James Moores and wife, Elizabeth, Henry Jackman

and wife, Christine, Joseph Hall and wife, Deliah, Stephen Ford

and wife, Ruth, George Hout and wife, Christine.          James

Moores was the leader. Rev. Mr. Hall organized a Methodist

Episcopal Church society at the houses of Henry (Harry) Ham-

mond and William    Davidson, in East Springfield in 1808, al-

though Isaac Shane writes the compiler that the Protestant

Episcopal communion, under charge of Rev. Intrepid Morse,³¹

 

31 While the real history of the Protestant Episcopal church of Jef-

ferson county goes back to the close of the last century, (Rev. Dr.

Doddridge noting the date as 1796 when he first held services in Steuben-

ville, and 1800 at the Widow McGuire's, then in Steubenville township,

the beginning of St. James church now in Cross Creek township,) the

official history of this communion began in 1819, the time Rev. Intrepid

Morse took charge of the parishes of St. Paul (Steubenville,) and St.

James (Cross Creek,) under Rev. Philander Chase, first Bishop of Ohio,

and thus the record of early labors of the indefatigable Dr. Doddridge

were "officially" obliterated. It was in the following year Rev. Mr.

Morse began holding services at East Springfield. Whether Dr. Dodd-

ridge held services in Salem township at an earlier period, the compiler

is unable to state as a fact, but it is presumed that he did, for he was

a missionary of great energy and kept alive the spark of Episcopacy

wherever he found even the faintest glow. The reason Dr. Doddridge's

work in this county was not recognized in the official history of the

church is given by local churchmen to be the result of rivalry between

Dr. Doddridge and Dr. Chase, resulting in considerable bitterness of

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200        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

was first to hold services in the village.    As Rev. Mr. Morse

was not in this region before 1819, it is evident the Methodist

Episcopal was in the field here before the Protestant Episcopal.

The first Methodist Episcopal class in East Springfield was

composed of the Rileys, the Rutledges, Johnsons and Morri-

sons. In 1826, Mr. Shane writes, the citizens of East Spring-

field built a church which was jointly used for Divine services

by Methodist Episcopal and Protestant Episcopal communions ;

but the latter being in the majority, the church was called the

Protestant Episcopal Church. The Methodist Episcopal adher-

ents erected a church building of their own in 1846.

An Associated Reform       Church was organized in Salem

Township in 1805 by Rev. Alexander Calderhead, who, in 1800,

organized a church on Piny Fork, in Smithfield Township.

This was the beginning of the United Presbyterian Church of

Richmond. The organization was made at the house of Col.

John Andrew(s), where John Collins, John Walker and John

Johnson were ordained elders.      The following year what was

then called a tent (covering for the preacher, clerk and pre-

 

feeling. Dr. Doddridge came into the field early, and held regular

services long before the Diocese of Ohio was formed, working with

the same spirit that characterized his labors in the Lord's vineyard on

the Virginia hills, his task being an arduous one, and when the Diocese

was formed he naturally believed that he was entitled to the Episcopal

office. When Dr. Philander Chase was selected, it was but natural that

he should feel injustice was his lot, and he perhaps expressed resentment.

At all events, the official history of the Protestant Episcopal church

in Steubenville begins with the coming of Rev. Mr. Morse. Two sons

of Bishop Chase were wedded to daughters of Bezaleel Wells - Rev. Dr.

Philander marrying Rebecca and Rev. Dudley, Sarah. Rebecca becom-

ing a widow, married Rev. Intrepid Morse. Rev. Mr. Morse entered

into rest in February, 1866, after almost half a century of arduous labor

as a missionary and beloved stated rector. His labors were exacting,

but the results were a benediction upon the head of this indefatigable

worker for the advancement of the church: he saw the seed sown by

Dr. Doddridge grow into a great tree, whose branches were wide-

spreading. St. Paul's became, in his life-time, a great factor in religious

as well as social affairs of the community. His wife, Rebecca Wells,

followed him to their eternal home four years later.

• 69
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.   201

center), was erected on the farm of James McClain. It was

made of clap-boards worked out with the pioneer tool, known

as a frow, and was 5x6 feet. In April, 1811, Rev. George Bu-

chanan, born in the York Barrens (Pa.) and a pupil of Alex-

ander Dobbins, from whose classical school came many

Ohioans, became pastor. In 1816, a hewn-log building, 24X²⁸,

was erected on the farm of David Andrews, and was called

the Union Church. Rev. Buchanan was succeeded in 1831 by

Rev. Hugh Parks who was followed by William Lorimer. In

1836 a brick church was erected in Richmond, which was used

until 1851, when a building 42x60 feet was erected.

A Friends' Meeting was organized at the house of William

Farquhar in 1803, the society having been composed of William

Farquhar and wife, Elizabeth, Joseph Hobson and wife, Ann,

Joseph Talbott and wife, Mary, Benjamin Talbott and wife,

Susannah, Jacob Ong and wife, Mary. In 181₅ a log meeting

house was built, which was replaced by a brick five years later.

This meeting did not grow as did the other religious organi-

tions and became extinct years ago, giving evidence of the

truth of John Wesley's idea that new blood is essential to the

spiritual as well as material expansion of the Church.

Mt. Hope Methodist Episcopal Church was organized in

1830, holding services for ten years at the house of James Rut-

ledge, when a log structure was built, this house being re-

placed by a frame one in 1860. The first class leader was

James Cowden.

The East Springfield Presbyterian Church was organized

in 1847, at which time Stewart McClave, William Palmer, George

Hammond, John Calhoun, Joseph Clemens and Caleb Wag-

goner were the trustees. Previously the Presbyterians in this

immediate neighborhood found the Gospel expounded to their

liking along Calvinistic lines at either Bacon Ridge or at the

Two Ridges Churches. Having obtained sufficient funds, these

trustees erected a church building in East Springfield, which

was dedicated in 1850, Rev. Dr. C. C. Beatty preaching the

sermon. This church was finally organized by Rev. Cyrus

Riggs and John Knox, Rev. Mr. Riggs being the first min-

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202      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

ister. He was succeeded by Rev. John Walton, who served six

months, followed by Rev. Mr. Lafferty, who served seven years.

Other ministers were: Rev. J. S. McGuire, Rev. C. W. Wy-

coff, Rev. William Eaton.

Rev. Mr. Riggs also organized a Presbyterian Church in

Richmond in 1852; John McGregor, Benjamin S. Bailey and

William Patterson were the first elders.

A Lutheran Church (St. Paul's) was organized in Salem in

1814, which was the first German church in the county, there

having been a large early settlement of Germans only in this

part of the county, and the influence of these settlers comes

to, and is maintained by, the third generation, the thrifty spirit

of the fathers being the inheritance of the children. Hon. John

Gruber (father of David M. Gruber, Esq., of the Steubenville

Bar), who represented Harrison County in the Legislature of

Ohio in 1836-7, and who was a lawyer of great force, was of

this settlement, and a characteristic example of the rectitude

and ability of these people. The founder of St. Paul's Luth-

eran Church was Rev. John Rinehart, and the first elders were:

Jacob Vantz, Andrew Strayer. The other ministers were: Rev.

James Manning (1825-34), Rev. Benjamin Pope (1839-43), Rev.

Amos Bartholomew, 1843-48), Rev. George Baughman (1849-

50), David Sweeney, David Sparks, James Manning, Jacob

Singer, Joseph Roof, D. M. Kemerer.

Salem Township Pathfinders were exceedingly active in in-

dustrial pursuits, Town Fork of Yellow Creek, Cedar and Clay

Licks furnishing unlimited power for flour-mills and distilleries.

Ross Township was set off as a civil division by the County

Commissioners in 1812, it then being Township Twelve of

Range Three, and was a complete surveyed township until the

northern tier of sections was taken off to aid in the formation

of Brush Creek Township.

Some years previous to 1800 and as late as 1805, "squat-

ters" built cabins on Yellow Creek, subsisting on game and

fish, and as salt was a product of this region, these "squatters"

had little trouble in obtaining such merchandise needed by

them in barter for this mineral. Among these squatters were:

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The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.    203

 

William Castleman, Mark Dike, John Bruce, John Davis, Jacob

Drake and William Rook.

Among the first permanent settlers (1798-1813) were:

Thomas George, Allen Speedy, Arthur Latimer, Stephen Coe,

Ludowich Hardenbrook, Joseph Elliott, William Scott, John

Farquhar, Henry Crabbs, Joseph Reed, Isaac Shane, Thomas

Bay, Mordecai Moore, "Daddy" Dixon, Robert Barnhill, John-

son McEldery, Alexander Johnston, William Grimes, Captain

Allen (War of 1812), Henry Gregg (grandfather of Richard

Henry Gregg, Esq., of the Steubenville bar), coming from Red-

stone with his brother Richard in 1802, the latter attaining the

age of 105 years; Robert George and Thomas George, his son

(from what is now Dauphin County, Pa.), came to Jefferson

County in 1805, and settled on Section Twenty-eight, in what is

now Ross Township; Andrew Griffin, Benjamin Shane, John

Shane.

James Shane came to Washington County, Pa., from New

Jersey in 1794, and in 1798 crossed the Ohio River at Cable's

Ferry and located on Wills Creek.  Here he married Hannah

Rex, of Greene County, Pa., and in 1810 moved to Island

Creek Township, and then to Ross Township. His son, Isaac

Shane, is now (1899) keeping hotel in East Springfield.

Mordecai Moore, Sr., who was with Captain William Har-

baugh in the War of 1812, settled in Ross Township in 1815.

Salt boiling was the first important industry of Ross Town-

ship. Jack Peterson, who had been a constable under the Ter-

ritorial Government, drilled the first well with view of obtain-

ing salt water, employing a spring pole for a motor; but not

until 1815, when Mordecai Moore introduced shallow pans, did

the business of salt making rise to the dignity of a commer-

cial factor; and although Moores Salt Works is still the name

of the scene of industrial activity, salt-boiling has not been en-

gaged in for years. It was near here, at the mouth of Brim-

stone Run, that the Indians gathered Seneca (petroleum) oil

by means of blankets spread upon the surface of the water.

On Section Thirty-three stand the remains of an ancient

fortification, supposed to be the work of the so-called Mound

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204                Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

Builders.³²       It is on a bluff, circular in form, the radius being

250 feet. The north side of the bluff is 200 feet high and very

precipitous.   On the southwest the fortification is 100 feet

high and slopes gradually to the creek. When first noted by

the Pathfinders the ditch was forty feet deep and large trees

were growing in it.

The first grist mill ran by water power was built by Stephen

Coe in 1808, near the site of Mooretown, but many others fol-

lowed and distilleries were also numerous. The products-

flour, whisky and salt, were hauled to the mouth of Yellow

Creek and from there were taken down the river to New Or-

leans on flatboats.   When the canal was opened wheat was

hauled to Massillon and Bolivar (the site of Fort Laurens), but

pork then became the leading product of that portion of Ross

Township then and now known as Bacon Ridge. Pork was

hauled to Pittsburg and Baltimore in wagons drawn by six

horses and "teaming," as it was called, was an important busi-

ness. Smoked hams sold for six cents a pound, butter was

five and six cents a pound, and eggs two cents the dozen. The

 

32 While many of the archaeologists hold the view that a race of men,

now extinct, different in most distinguishing characteristics from the race

recognized as the American Indian, built the mounds and fortifications

found in various parts of the country, there being perhaps ten in Jef-

ferson county, notably in Warren, Wells, Cross Creek, Ross and Saline

townships, W. H. Holmes of the National Museum, does not class the

so-called Mound Builders as a different race, but the progenitors of

the American Indian. Mr. Holmes is of the noted Short Creek valley

Holmes family. He was with the Haden Expedition; for years he was

in the United States Government Geological Survey Bureau, and is

now in the National Museum. No one has had better opportunity for the

study of archaeology and ethnology than he, and having peculiar talent

for research along this line, he is a recognized authority. There were

mound builders, but those who raised the earthworks were of the race

known as American Indians.

A mound on the farm of William Medill of Warren township, was

partly opened a few years ago. Remains of bodies were found in well-

made sarcophagus, the bodies being in sitting posture. A pipe repre-

senting a bear's head, arrow-heads and other stone implements, a copper

needle and a piece of mica were recovered.

• 73
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.    205

people made their own clothing--linen for summer and

woolens for winter. The women wore linsey or flannel for

common and calico for dress occasions.

Bacon Ridge Presbyterian Church was organized by Rev.

George Scott in 1804. Among the first members were: Arthur

Latimer, John P. McMillen, Stephen Coe, Thomas Bay, Calvin

Moorehead, Aaron Allan, Andrew Dixon. The first minister

was William McMillen, who served two years. The first church,

like all the pioneer religious houses, was built of logs, and

served its purpose until 1820, when a brick edifice (30x50) was

built on Section Twenty-five, standing until other churches in

the same territory, and nearer the homes of the people, reduced

the congregation. The third church building erected by this

congregation was a frame, 30x44 feet. Among the first min-

isters whose names have only been preserved by tradition,

were: Thomas Hunt (7 years), James Robertson (7 years), J.

R. Dundas was the minister from 1840 to 1844, followed by

Cyrus Riggs.

The beginning of the Yellow Creek United Presbyterian

Church was the Associate Congregation (Seceder) organized in

1814 by Rev. E. N. Scroggs. Rev. John Walker and Dr. Ram-

say were among the early ministers. The first preaching ser-

vices were at the house of Thomas George (afterwards noted as

an underground railway station), then in a tent, and in 1828

a brick house of worship (30x40 feet) was erected; but in 1850

a larger house was built, and this one is still occupied. Other

ministers who served this congregation were: Rev. John Don-

aldson, Rev. James Patterson, Rev. John Easton, Rev. T. Simp-

son. Among the first members were: Henry Crabbs (Krebs)

and wife, Anna, Hamilton Walker and wife, Mary, William

Kelly and wife, Christine, Nathan Barr and wife, Margaret,

Samuel Dorrance and wife, Mary, John Jordan and wife, Mary

Ann, Thomas George and wife, Jane, John Kean and wife,

Mary, and Sarah Story. Thomas George and Henry Crabbs

were ruling elders.

While the followers of the scholarly and powerful Wesley

did not build a church as early as did the followers of the cour--

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206       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

ageous Knox, they held Methodist Episcopal services in the ter-

ritory long before the township was organized, meeting places

being at private houses. For years preaching services were

held at the home of Richard Jackman (maternal grandfather of

Richard Henry Gregg of the Steubenville Bar), on Bacon Ridge.

Alexander Johnston (father of Judge William Johnston, one of

the most noted of the natives of Jefferson County, becoming

distinguished as a lawyer, statesman and politician), who came

from Pennsylvania to Ohio about 1800, was a Methodist Epis-

copal minister, following farming during the week days and

preaching on Sundays. He became quite wealthy; the Scotch

are often as thrifty as the Anglo-Saxon Quakers. He owned

a very large tract of land in the township, including the farms

now (1899) owned by John Lysle and Matthew Stevenson.

Alexander Johnson's son, Alexander, was also a Methodist

Episcopal minister; a man of wonderful talent, he having writ-

ten a commentary on the Bible, declared by those who read

the manuscript (it was not published) to have been the scholarly

effort of a deep mind.

Mt. Zion was the first Methodist Episcopal Church and

was organized in 1834, the class being composed of James Tay-

lor and wife, Hettie, Henry Gregg and wife, Susannah, Ben-

jamin Elliott and wife, Nancy, Jane Jackman, with Thomas

Taylor as leader. The church was organized by Rev. Edward

Taylor.

The Pine Grove Methodist Episcopal Church was organ-

ized in 1838, Samuel N. Heron being the class leader. Rev.

Samuel Wharton first preached in a log school house, and a

class was formed the following year by Rev. Thomas Thomp-

son. The class was composed of Andrew Saltsman and wife,

Catharine, Solomon Hartman, Mrs. Rebecca Schonehart and

daughter, Julia Ann, Matthew Roach and wife, Elizabeth, Rob-

ert Mills and wife, Elizabeth. In 1841, under the ministrations

of Rev. John Murray and Rev. George McClusky, a brick church

was built.

In speaking of the morality of the Bacon Ridge region,

Isaac Shane writes: "The morals of our neighborhood were

• 75
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.   207

 

fairly good. While my father [James Shane] had many crim-

inal cases before him, the offenders came mostly from the Yel-

low Creek settlements. William Johnston, a law student in

Steubenville, and afterwards a Judge in Cincinnati, started, as

I suppose, on Bacon Ridge, the first temperance society in the

county, the members signing a very strict pledge. This was

in 1833."

In regard to schools Mr. Shane writes: "The early schools

were taught on subscription. There were no school houses. A

teacher would get the use of some cabin or outhouse, or a

farmer's kitchen, in which to hold his school. He would seat

it in a very primitive way; but it served its purpose: the chil-

dren learned to read, write and cypher, and all were pleased.

The teachers were persons of very common scholarship.

The first I call to mind was Mr. -    Dixon, Thomas Riley

and --   Baker; next came Henry Crabbs and Samuel Mc-

Cutcheon. The schools were held sometimes one month, some-

times three, according to the money raised. The schools were

kept in winter, but seldom in summer; nor were they kept

every winter.  The predominating religious influence being

Presbyterian, the parents were encouraged by the ministers to

educate their children. About 1820, under a then new law,

townships were districted and school houses built; but still the

distilleries outnumbered the school houses four to one. The

first school house in our neighborhood [Bacon Ridge] was built

on lands now owned by John Lysle, and then a marked im-

provement was noticed both in schools and teachers. Samuel

McCutcheon and Henry Crabbs continued to wield the birch,

and after them came Peter Eckley (uncle of Hon. E. R. Eckley

of Carrollton), Joseph Shane [uncle of Isaac Shane] and James

Clendenning; and in 1837 the first female teacher came among

us-a Miss Hartshorn."

In this neighborhood and under these conditions, was

reared Judge William Johnston, one of the most notable men

the State of Ohio ever produced from Pennsylvania blood. He

was educated in the Ross Township schools, studied law under

John C. Wright (member of congress from 1821 to 1829,

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208       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

brother-in-law of John M. Goodenow, member of Congress

from 1829 to 1831, and of Judge Tappan, United States Sen-

ator from 1839 to 1845), became Prosecuting Attorney of Car-

roll County, and served that county in the State Legislature in

1837.. He had long been recognized as an advocate of the

proposition for Ohio to adopt the Pennsylvania and New York

common school system, and was at last given opportunity to

draft the law providing for the common school system now in

force, although improved as years gave note of imperfections.

It was in support of the common school law that he made one

of the most notable oratorical efforts ever made in Ohio, not

only in its immediate influence that resulted in the passage of

the bill, but in its lasting influence upon the state. After de-

scribing the difficulties encountered by himself in obtaining the

rudiments of an education in the days of Henry Crabbs and

Thomas Riley, he insisted that the boys and girls should have

a better chance than he had had on the banks of "Yaller

Crick," as he pronounced the name of the stream in imitation

of the boys reared in the wilds of Ohio. "The old Irish school

master," he said, "holds forth three months in the year [quot-

ing Johnston's own words] in a poor cabin, with greased-paper

window panes. The children trudge three miles through win-

ter's snow and mud to school. They begin at a-b, ab, and get

over as far as b-oo-b-y, booby, when school gives out and they

take up their spring work on the farm. The next winter, when

school takes up, if it takes up so soon again, having forgotten

all they had been taught previously in the speller, they begin

again at a-b, ab, but year after year never get any further than

b-oo-b-y, booby."

Judge Burnet of Cincinnati, at the time, said it was the

most powerful speech on education ever made in Ohio. Samuel

Medary, in The Statesman, gave him the name of "Booby"

Johnston in a disrespectful spirit, but the name stuck and be-

came a title of which his friends were ever proud. From this

time forward Johnston's great ability was recognized and appre-

ciated. He removed to Cincinnati, and his oratorical efforts in

behalf of General Harrison in his Presidential campaign pro-

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The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.     209

 

cured for him appointment as Surveyor General of the district

composed of Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. He afterwards be-

came Judge of the Superior Court in Cincinnati. He was ap-

pointed by President Lincoln as a member of commission to

revise the statutes of the United States, his ability as a lawyer

being thus recognized by highest authority. As orator he was

second only to Tom Corwin: Both reared under like condi-

tions; with scarcely any opportunity, viewed from the stand-

point of to-day, to obtain what is called education, both reached

the highest rung of the ladder whose steps are reached only

by education. We may sneer as we are wont at the "Irish"

school master and at the log-cabin school of the pioneers, but

have the new masters and the finely equipped modern schools

of Ross Township produced in all these years since the con-

summation of his efforts to make the attainment of education

easier, the equal of William Johnston? After all, the greatest

factor in the production of men of vast brain force may not

be in the standing of the master, nor in the architecture of

the school house. Judge Johnston was "witty and powerful in

argument.   His lighter characteristics enabled him to amuse

and hold an audience, while his powerful logic convinced their

minds."  After serving four years on the bench he became

a candidate for the United States Senatorship in the triangu-

lar contest that resulted in the election of Banjamin Wade,

also of Scotch blood. In 1850 he was the Whig candidate for

Governor, making a hard but ineffectual campaign, as he said

himself, "to save his party from the wreck then pending."

Judge Johnston was not only the author of the Ohio common

school law;33 he began the agitation that resulted in remov-

ing from the statutes of Ohio the very obnoxious inheritance

 

33 Jefferson county has done more, perhaps, than any other county

in Ohio for advancement of the public school system. Aside from the

efforts of William Johnston, noted elsewhere, Mordecai Bartley, also

of Pennsylvania blood, performed a great service, in that he was the

first person to propose in Congress conversion of the Section Sixteen

lands into a permanent fund for support of the common schools, and

by his influence secured passage of law to this end. Mordecai, Bartley,

Vol. VIII-14

• 78
 

210       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

from England, that most absurd of all laws, providing for im-

prisonment of indigent debtors.

While a boy on Yellow Creek he developed mechanical

genius in the manufacture of spinning wheels, and at his home

in Cincinnati his recreation was taken in a workshop fitted with

all sorts of mechanical tools, which he could handle with the

skill of a master. His brother, Michael, was also a mechanical

genius, and when he lived in Steubenville he kept a drug store

and manufactured clocks, the clock now in use in the Steuben-

ville National Bank having been made by him. Judge John-

ston's mechanical skill was of great advantage to him in his

practice as a patent attorney. He was long associated with

Tom Corwin, the two successfully defending Governor Bebb,

indicted on the charge of murder, he having shot a man, who

with others, was engaged in charivari at the Governor's house,

on the occasion of the home-coming of his son, Michael, and

bride, from New England in May, 1857. Johnston's efforts in

this noted case gave him wide prominence. He was also as-

sociated with Reverdy Johnson in a Revolutionary War claim

against the United States Government; they winning in the

legal contest, received a fee of $100,000.

In 1887 Judge Johnston published "Arguments to Courts

and Juries," an 8vo. of 543 pages, consisting principally of his

own arguments made in many important cases, adding greatly

to his reputation as a legist.

In early life William Johnston wedded Elizabeth, daughter

of William Blackstone, a prominent Friend of Smithfield Town-

ship, two sons and two daughters resulting from the union; the

sons are dead, the daughters living. He died in 1891, aged

eighty-five years.

When Columbiana County was taken off of Jefferson and

 

thirteenth Governor of Ohio, was born in Fayette county, Pa., in

1783, and in 1809 settled near the mouth of Cross Creek (Mingo). He

was Adjutant of the Jefferson county regiment in the Second War for

Independence, and afterwards settled in Richland county. He served

four terms in Congress, during which he succeeded in procuring the

important school legislation above mentioned.

• 79
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.    211

 

made a separate civil organization in 1803, a portion of the ter-

ritory forming Brush Creek Township was included in the new

county; but in 1832 the Legislature re-arranged the line which

replaced Brush Creek in Jefferson County, and in 1833 the

County Commissioners took from Ross Township the northern

row of sections, adding them to Brush Creek. This action left

Ross an incomplete surveyed township while Brush Creek is

only a part of Township Twelve of Range Three. These di-

visions of the country into incomplete surveyed townships add

materially to the difficulty of distributing the Section Sixteen

school fund.

Among the first settlers were: Martin Adams (Justice of

the Peace, miller and distiller; he gave a portion of his farm for

the site of Chestnut Grove Methodist Episcopal Church),

Thomas Gillingham (agent for a company of Pennsylvania

Quakers engaged in salt boiling), Henry Emmons, Matthew

Russell, Thomas Adams, Jacob Ritter, Abraham Croxton,

Joshua Downard, John Hutton, William Kerr, Samuel Clark,

John Adams, Elisha Brooks, Cyrus Moore (soldier of the War

of 1812), Kenneth McLennan, John C. McIntosh.

It was in this township, it is believed, Joshua Downard first

settled, and who, in company with John Hutton, was the first

person to engage in the manufacture of salt, having discovered

a salt spring about 1796 while hunting game. This was cer-

tainly the beginning of an industry that added greatly to the

wealth of the county, the sale of this important product at $10

a barrel in the early days, along with whisky, brandy and flour,

laying the foundation of fortunes still possessed by descendants

of Pathfinders. Perhaps the most extensive of the salt boilers

was the Quaker company of Bucks County, Pa. (Nathan Har-

per, Joseph Potts & Co.). Jacob Nessley, Sr., the great grand-

father of J. N. McCullough, the noted railroad man, owned

considerable salt land in the northern part of the county, and

his son, Jacob Nessley, Jr., engaged in production. Most of the

descendants of these men are wealthy in inheritance of property

and in the German thrift of their ancestors. Joshua Downard

• 80
 

212      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

came to Brush Creek in 1784, and his son, Joseph, was born on

the North Fork of Yellow Creek in 1796.

The beginning of Chestnut Grove Methodist Episcopal

Church was early in the century, and the claim is made that

meetings were held by followers of Wesley before the last cen-

tury closed. It is at least known that services held about 1800,

at the house of Jeremiah Hickman, at the mouth of Yellow

Creek, were the beginning not only of Chestnut Grove, but also

of the societies at Irondale and Highland Town. It is known

that Rev. William Tipton preached at Hickman's in 1822. The

meetings were afterwards held at the house of Theophilus Kirk,

near where Hammondsville now is. The first class was com-

posed of Susan Kirk, Susan Cox, Mary Cox, Amy Drew, David

Walter, Mary Walter, James Ewing, Sarah Ewing. The early

ministers were William Tipton, John E. McGrew, John R.

Shearer.

Chestnut Grove Church, when finally established, occupied

a stone church building on the farm of Martin Adams within

sight of his distillery. At the request of his housekeeper, Mrs.

Agnes Hartley, Adams built a stone Lutheran Church, but

before the building was finished Mrs. Hartley died, and it was

occupied by the Methodist Episcopal communion, it being free

to all denominations in accordance with Adams' desire.

"The Old Log School House," noted in the writings of Dr.

Alexander Clark, has, perhaps, given Brush Creek Township its

widest prominence. The first school house in the township

was built in 1814. Samuel Clark, father of Rev. Dr. Clark, di-

vine and author, was the first teacher in this building. He was

employed for three months at $10 per month by Matthew Rus-

sell and Moses Marshall, and he was boarded free by Marshall.

But the "Old Log School House" made famous by Dr. Clark

was built in 1830 by James Clark and Charles Marshall, at the

cost of $30 and a liberal supply of liquor from Adams' distillery,

the building being in sight of the distillery as well as of Chest-

nut Grove Church. William Kerr was the first master. The

first election of school officers was on September 8, 1830, at the

house of Martin Adams, when Samuel Clark was selected as

• 81
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.        213

 

Clerk, and John Adams, William Kerr and Elisha Brooks, Di-

rectors.

Monroeville is the only village in the township.   It was

founded by Charles Croxton and named for the President.

Saline Township, like Brush Creek, was organized out of

Knox, and includes within its bounds the very historically inter-

esting territory just below the mouth of Yellow Creek, the site

of Logan's camp in 1774, from which place his relatives were

inveigled to the Virginia shore and killed, this being one of the

movements in the conspiracy to incite the Indians against the

American settlers, the result being Dunmore's War. The ex-

act location of the camp is now believed to have been the site

of the old McCullough mansion, a few yards south of the creek,

and a few feet west of the river. Viewing the ground as it now

lies, it is but natural to accept the statement that the house is

on the site of Logan's camp. The ground is high with full view

of a beautiful stretch of the river. Peace obtained among the

Indians and whites at that time, and there was not the least

necessity for a fortified location. Logan had no reason to even

suspect harm to his relatives and followers when they crossed

the river to the Greathouse cabin, at the instigation of the un-

conscious tools of Dr. Connelly. The prospect from    Logan's

camp must have been beautiful; it is inspiring to-day. This

region was certainly attractive when Bouquet's army passed

through to the Tuscarawas Valley, in October, 1764, for

Hutchins mentions that the soldiers from Pennsylvania and Vir-

ginia were delighted with the richness of the soil.³⁴ The Ameri-

can soldiers going to and from Fort Laurens over tile trail,

34 On Thursday, the 11th [1764] the forest was open and so clear of

undergrowth, that they [Bouquet's army on the way to the Tuscarawas]

made seventeen miles. Friday, the 12th, the path led along the banks

of Yellow Creek, thro' a beautiful country of rich bottom land on which

the Pennsylvanians and Virginians looked with covetous eyes, and

made a note for future reference. The next day they marched two miles

in view of one of the loveliest prospects the sun ever shone upon. There

had been two or three frosty nights, which had changed the whole aspect

of the forest. Where, a few days before, an ocean of green had rolled

away, there now was spread a boundless carpet, decorated with am

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214      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

afterward the wagon road upon which Yellow Creek Valley

wheat was hauled to the canal at the very edge of the old fort,

must have made notes for future consideration; and this may all

account for the early settlement of Saline. Fish and game were

at hand and subsistence was not difficult to obtain. Nature was

a most bountiful provider to the Pathfinders of the Yellow Creek

country. Martin Saltsman, an early settler of Knox, in his

lifetime made the statement that he would kill more than fifty

deer in what is now Ross Township, in a hunt of a few days.

The Indians were so enamored with Yellow Creek that they

gave up these bountiful hunting grounds with reluctance.

While Jacob Nessley, Sr. (coming from the German set-

tlements of Lancaster County, Pa.), did not settle on the Vir-

ginia side of the river until 1784, he was in this region much

earlier, and of this fact he left an enduring monument. On the

river bank, a short distance south of the mouth of Yellow Creek

and in sight of the McCullough mansion, is an overhanging

rock, upon which is carved "Jacob Nessley-1776." The tra-

dition is, as related by William G. McCullough (a great grand-

son, 1899), that Jacob was prospecting in Virginia, and crossing

the river to the Ohio side (Indian country) was chased by the

Indians. Reaching this overhanging rock, he jumped into the

river; he then dived and coming to the surface under the rock,

he remained in hiding, and the Indians supposing him drowned,

left him to his fate. As soon as the way was clear, he returned

to Virginia, obtained a tool and cut his name and the date upon

the surface of the rock as noted.

Samuel Vantilberg settled in what is now Saline Township

in 1796; William McCullough about 1800; Jacob Nessley, Jr.,

endless variety of the gayest colors, lighted up by the mellow rays of

an October sun. -Hutchins as re-written by Graham in the "History

of Coshocton County."

There are peculiarities in the soil drained by Yellow Creek. The

north side of the headwaters is sandy, including portions of Springfield

township and the adjoining part of Carroll county, always noted as

the peach belt. This region is called Sandy Valley by the historians.

While much of the land is very rugged that portion of it is rich in

minerals-salt, coal, iron, potter's clay.

• 83
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.    215

 

came earlier, perhaps, for he bought large tracts of Yellow

Creek land from the United States Government, Jeremiah Hick-

man, James Rogers, the Crawfords, Jacob Groff, Charles Ham-

mond (for whom Hammondsville was named), William Maple,

Benjamin Maple, the father of Andrew Downer, and the House-

holders also came before the dawn of the century.

There were many more settlers near the mouth of Yellow

Creek but the names are in oblivion. It is known that there

was a very formidable blockhouse on a point immediately south

of the creek's mouth, erected, perhaps, by squatters previous to

1784. While the site has been washed away, the foundation

was seen by persons now (1899) living. This blockhouse, until

very recently supposed to have been west of the creek's mouth,

on Blockhouse Run, was so constructed on the first river bank

that it was surrounded by water, and had command not only

of the river, but likewise of a vast expanse of territory, the most

natural point in all this region for defensive works.

As further evidence of the early presence of settlers it is

only necessary to mention that, according to Tradition, an Irish

master, named McElroy, taught a school in a log cabin at the

mouth of Yellow Creek in 1800, and at about the same time

there was a school on Pine Ridge; in 1804 there was one on

Yellow Creek, above the site of Hammondsville.   A stone

hotel was built at the mouth of the creek, and when destroyed

by fire two years ago (1897) the date of its erection (1803) was

discovered carved in a chimney stone. The first road in the

country was made from a point opposite Charles Town (Wells-

burg) to Yellow Creek in 1804. It is possible that the masons

who built the hotel also built the two stone-arch bridges, one

over the mouth of Wills Creek, the other over the mouth of

Island Creek, both doing service to-day. They are of the arch-

itecture of the bridges afterwards adopted for the National

Pike. A stone school house was erected on the McCullough

farm, and the supposition is, it was built by the masons who

built the hotel and bridges, and consequently was the work of

Pathfinders. As convincing evidence of the early building of

this school it is stated that the Nessleys and McCulloughs not

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216       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

only erected the building but supported the school, which, in a

few years, rose to the dignity of an academy.  Here Jacob

Nessley McCullough was educated, and certainly from the

world's point of view, he was the most successful native of the

county, having accumulated ten millions of dollars before his

death.

As has already been noted, the first religious services held

in Saline Township were at the mouth of Yellow Creek. In

1800 the settlers organized a Methodist Episcopal society in

Jeremiah Hickman's cabin. From this beginning grew other

Methodist Episcopal Churches in this township; other com-

nunions were not early in this field. The first settlers, it is

supposed, aside from the Nessleys and McCulloughs, came from

Virginia and Maryland at the time Asbury, the missionary of

Wesleyanism, had filled the people of those regions with the fire

of religious enthusiasm, and it still glowed in the pioneers who

settled in Saline. The same year a church of this denomina-

tion was organized in Sugar Grove (now as well as then, Knox

Township), not far from Yellow Creek.

On the DeSellem farm, near Port Homer, are evidences

of ancient fortifications as well as mounds, from which the

owner has collected many relics of the stone age, including a

carved stone column fifteen inches in height.

On Yellow Creek are remains of white pine forests de-

stroyed by the Indians, who tapped the trees for rosin which

they used for salve and to facilitate the kindling of fire. Of the

evergreen trees indigenous to the rugged hillsides and deep

ravines, that once echoed with the warwhoop of hostile sav-

ages, the hemlock only remains.

The product of the numerous distilleries, flour mills and

salt wells, hauled to the mouth of Yellow Creek, and in after

years also to Port Homer, the latter established by W. H. Wal-

lace, a man of great business energy up to a few years ago,

brought about an activity of trade on the water front of Saline

Township that, if repeated to-day, would astonish the great

grandsons of the Pathfinders. Flatboat building was then an

important industry of itself, but linked with the milling, salt-

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The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.    217

 

boiling and distilling, together with the hauling of the products

on both sides of the river at this point, perhaps as many men

were employed in industrial pursuits as now. At times the im-

mense storehouses at these two points would be filled from base-

ment to roof with the three main products, hundreds of men

being constantly employed in handling. But to-day, aside from

the fact that there are yet living on the scene of the activity of

other days some of the heirs of the fortunes made, there re-

mains no more evidence of the prosperous times than there is

evidence of the industrial pursuits of the Indian and of his an-

cestor, the Mound Builder. The information in either case is

largely traditional and conjectural. We do know this, that with

less expenditure of nerve-force the fathers made greater for-

tunes than many of the sons are able to duplicate under the

changed conditions which mark advanced civilization.

Knox Township, as at present constituted, is very small

compared to the territory included in the call for election held

on April 3, 1802, at the house of Henry Pittenger, "In con-

formity to an act of the General Assembly of the Territory of the

United States northwest of the Ohio River, entitled 'an act to

establish and regulate township meetings,' passed on the 18th

day of January, in the year of our Lord, 1802." Other town-

ships organized out of the territory left a township named for

the first Secretary of War, only twenty-four sections of Town-

ship Eight of Range Two and fractional part of Township Four

of Range One.

The geographical features of Knox Township are more

like the primeval state than those of any other like civil division

in the county, there having been little change in the original

surface of the precipitous hillsides and dark ravine, at the bottom

of which still flows the same clear stream-Hollow Rock, Car-

ters, Jeremeys or Croxton's. It was on Carter's Run, at the

(now) intersection of the roads from Knoxville and New Somer-

set to the Hollow Rock Campmeeting Grounds, that Michael

Myers, in 1774, killed two Indians. This was shortly after he

had aided Cresap to kill the two Indians in a canoe while acting as

unconscious agents of Dr. Connelly who was devoted to the idea

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218      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

(being a Tory) that if the Indians were incited to take the war-

path, the agitation for American independence from the crown

would cease, and it was his scheme to force the Indians to fight

by using frontiermen whose hatred of the savage required but

little urging to inflame it into the heat of war spirit. Myers

was an easy victim of Connelly's machinations, and he was a

notable factor in bringing about the Dunmore War. In a state-

ment made by Myers in 1850, he gave an account of the affray

to Lyman C. Draper, he then being about 105 years of age but

in full possession of his mental faculty. In May, 1774, he crossed

the Ohio River to a point near the mouth of Yellow Creek,

in company with two other men, for the purpose of looking

at the country. They went up the creek two or three miles

and stopped at a spring (Hollow Rock) where they camped

for the night. Having spancelled their horse they turned him

loose to graze, and kindled a fire.  Soon after they heard

the horse's bell tinkling as though he were running rapidly. At

first Myers suspected that a wolf had scared the horse, and,

taking up his rifle, ran to the point of the hill, where he saw

the horse standing still and an Indian stooping at his side,

trying to loosen the spancels. Myers, without further investi-

gation, shot the Indian; and as soon as he reloaded ran up

the side of the hill and discovered a large number of Indians

encamped. One Indian with a gun ran toward him, but kept

his eyes on the horse. Myers immediately discharged his gun

at the second Indian, and without knowing the result of the

shot, wheeled and ran toward the spring, but he found his com-

panions had left the camp. Myers returned to the Virginia

side, where he found them. The next morning several Indians

crossed to Virginia and inquired at the Baker cabin (where Lo-

gan's relatives were afterwards murdered) as to who had killed

the two Indians the previous evening, but Greathouse (by whose

name the Baker cabin is often called to this day) would not

permit any one to give the Indians the least satisfaction. This,

of course, added fuel to the fire. The encampment discovered

by Myers, no doubt, was a part of the Logan camp. Myers

always claimed that he was one of the party firing on the boat

• 87
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.    219

 

load of Indians who crossed the river to investigate the mur-

der of Logan's people.

The scene of this incident was very near the place where

Henry Pittenger afterward settled-where Rev. William Pitten-

ger, author of "Daring and Suffering," one of the most thrilling

narratives of the War Between the States, was born, and within

a mile of Sugar Grove Methodist Episcopal Church, in whose

graveyard is buried the remains of one of the historically noted

men of this county. The grave is marked by a very pretentious

marble stone:

MICHAEL MYERS,

DIED AUGUST 11, 1852, AGED 107 YEARS.

Soldier, rest, thy warfare o'er;

Dream of battlefields no more.

All thy conflicts now are past;

To thy home thou'rt gone at last.

The remains of Katherine Stickler, his wife, are at his side,

Mrs. Myers having died in 1861, at the age of ninety-six years.

A son, William Myers, died in Toronto, April 19, 1899, aged

eighty-eight years, and his wife, Cynthia Myers, died two

months later. The Myers estate possesses the very venerable

long rifle which did much execution in the hands of its owner.

This rifle is a prototype of the weapon used not only by the In-

dian fighters but by the riflemen who won distinction in the

Revolutionary War. This weapon was unknown in what was,

and what is now, called the "tidewater" regions, where the inac-

curate musket and shot-gun were employed. The long rifle was

brought to the Pennsylvania frontier by the Swiss Germans,

and of course found its way to Virginia, the Carolinas; and the

bold men of the mold of Myers who ventured into the Indian

country previous to the Revolutionary War, coming, as they did

from Pennsylvania or the Virginia Valley (including Maryland),

had this most effective arm. While the long rifle was very

heavy, the physical training of the Pathfinders enabled them to

handle it as readily as the light breech-loader of to-day. The

great advantage of the rifle to the pioneer was its accuracy,

thus saving ammunition, which was of vast importance. Even

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220        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

the fifteen-year-old sons of the pioneers learned to bring in a

piece of game for each bullet discharged, so unerring was the

aim demanded. Such a sharp-shooter was Michael Myers. Such

were the men with Morgan not only in Dunmore's War, but in

many battles of the Revolution. Such was Cresap (a companion

of Myers) and his company.      Such were Brady, and the Wet-

zels.  Such was Robert McClelland, whose cousins, Robert,

John, Rutherford and William McClelland, settled in Knox.

Such was Martin Swickard, a hero of the tragical Crawford Ex-

pedition, an early settler of Knox, whose body honors its soil.

Without the long rifle and the men trained in the backwoods to

handle it with the minimum waste of ammunition, the historian

would have chronicled a very different account of the Revolu-

tionary War than that of the triumph of American arms. We

had the guns and the keen eyes to aim them.³⁵ The Myers rifle

 

35 The rifle at this time was a weapon unknown to New England,

and unused in the eastern districts of the other colonies. The infantry

arm of the period was a smooth-bore musket. .. . It was very inac-

curate, and of short range. When Putnam gave the command at Bunker

Hill, "Wait till you see the white of their eyes," he did so because

the musket and shot-guns could not be relied upon to hit a man at

much greater distance. The [long] rifle [such as Myers employed] had

been introduced into Pennsylvania about 1700 by Swiss and Palatine

immigrants, and was made by them at various border towns in that

colony twenty to thirty years before the Revolution. Our frontiersmen,

appreciating the superior accuracy of the grooved barrel, adopted the

rifle at once, and improved upon the German model with such ingenuity

that within a few years they had produced a new type of fire-arm,

superior to all others, the American backwoods [long] rifle. . . . These

rifles were used along the frontiers of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia

and the Carolinas. So the call of Congress for riflemen was, in fact,

a call for the backwoodsmen of the Alleghenies. . . . John Adams wrote

to Gerry, after the resolution had passed, "These are all said to be

exquisite marksmen, and by means of the excellence of their firelocks,

as well as their skill in the use of them, to send sure destruction to

great distances."  It was plain enough that a corps of such sharp-

shooters, hardy, indomitable, experienced in forest war, would be the

right material to meet British regulars. . .. The call for riflemen

reveals a subtler policy than appears on the surface - a policy no doubt

suggested by the only man in Congress who knew the backwoodsmen

• 89
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.          221

is six feet in length, and during his life-time he called it "Lim-

ber Jennie."

Sugar Grove graveyard is one of the oldest burying grounds

in the county, and perhaps, the oldest in the northern portion,

but the marked graves do not give the least clew to date of first

burials. If the field-stones used to mark graves were ever carved

 

like a brother, who had marched with them, camped with them, fought

side by side with them--by Washington himself ... The readiness

of the backwoodsmen to take up arms was in striking contrast to the

state of affairs along the coast. Massachusetts had scarce a dozen ser-

viceable cannon, and for half of these there was no ammunition. In

the whole colony of New York there were only a hundred pounds of

powder for sale. The men who hastily assembled at Cambridge, after

the affair at Lexington, were enthusiastic but unruly. . . . But the men

of the wilderness were always ready. Over every cabin door hung a

well-made rifle, correctly sighted, and bright within from frequent wiping

and oiling. Beside it were tomahawk and knife, a horn of good powder,

and a pouch containing bullets, patches, spare flints, steel, tinder,

whetstone, oil and tow for cleaning the rifle. A hunting--shirt, mocas-

sins, and a blanket were near at hand. In case of alarm, the backwoods--

man seized these things, put a few pounds of rockahominy and jerked

venison into his wallet, and in five minutes was ready. It mattered not

whether two men or two thousand were needed for war, they could

assemble in a night, armed, accoutred, and provisioned for a cam-

paign. ... But the West had wars of its own to fight. The Indians,

finding that the great barrier chain of the Alleghenies was no longer

impregnable to the white invaders, grew desperate, and fought with

redoubled fury. Moreover, one of the first acts of the British govern-

ment, after the Revolution began, was to incite the savages to attack

the colonies in the rear...  Yet, with characteristic generosity, rifle-

men were spared. The first men who marched to assist New England

in her sore need were pioneers of the great West. . .. Volunteers had

poured into the little recruiting stations in such numbers as to embarrass

the officers, who fain would have been spared the duty of discriminating.

One of these officers, beset by a much greater number of applicants

than his instructions permitted him to enroll, and being unwilling to

offend any, hit upon a clever expedient. Taking a piece of chalk, he

drew upon a blackened board the figure of a man's nose, and placing

this at such distance that none but experts could hope to hit it with

a bullet, he declared that he would enlist only who shot nearest to

the mark. Sixty-odd hit the nose. . . . The other Maryland company

[there were two] was led by Michael Cresap, a famous border warrior,

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222        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

with name and date the rude lettering long ago was obliter-

ated by the elements. Many of these stones have sunken be-

neath the surface, and the luxuriant grass, briars and weeds rot-

ting year after year for more than a century, make soil that

adds to the depth of the stones that mark the graves of cour-

ageous Pathfinders long forgotten. On Timothy Ridge, in Ross

 

[a friend and companion of Michael Myers, the two coming to Jefferson

county at about the same time, and were in the canoe together when

the first Indians were killed, at the instigation of Dr. Connelly (or

Conolly) on the water front of Jefferson county, the beginning of the

Dunmore war, and really the first blood of the Revolution] whom Jef-

ferson wrongly accused of killing the [relatives of] Indian chief

Logan. . . . About two-thirds of the riflemen were of Scotch-Irish

descent, and nearly all the remainder were "Pennsylvania Dutchmen"-

that is to say, of Swiss or Palatine origin. Many of the Marylanders and

Virginians were immigrants from Western Pennsylvania. [More likely

from the Cumberland and Susquehanna valleys, long before Western

Pennsylvania was settled.] The famous rifle corps which Morgan after-

wards formed from marksmen picked from the whole army is usually

referred to as "Morgan's Virginians," but as a matter of fact, two-thirds

of them were Pennsylvanians, including a considerable number of Penn-

sylvania Germans. [Burgoyne at Yorktown declared this to be the finest

regiment in the world.] . . . When Congress drew its first levies from

the backwoods, it did not alone secure the services of the finest marks-

men living. Something more was gained. It was the moral effect, upon

the camp at Cambridge, of independence typified by flesh and blood,

clad in American garb and wielding an American weapon. . . . The

riflemen were at once employed as sharpshooters and kept the enemy

continually in hot water. Heretofore the British outposts had been safe

enough within stone's throw of the American lines, but they now found,

to their cost, that it was almost certain death to expose their heads

within two hundred yards of the riflemen. . .. In the British camp the

riflemen were called "shirt-tail men, with their cursed twisted guns, the

most fatal widow-and-orphan makers in the world." . . . The tactics

of the backwoodsmen were essentially different from those practiced by

the best military authorities. It was the rule of troops to attack in solid

formation, reserving their fire till very close quarters. Bayonets were

feared more than bullets. The standard infantry musket was very inac-

curate and had no rear sight. The musketry instructions simply required

each soldier to point his weapon horizontally, brace himself for the

vicious recoil, and pull the ten-pound trigger till the gun went off. The

idea was that, by dropping so many bullets in a given time upon a certain

• 91
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.          223

 

Township, are the unmarked graves of twelve surveyors killed

by the Indians during the War of 1812. To-day their names

are unknown, but the place of burial has been kept sacred by

successive occupants of the Hugh Leeper farm.         "Old Mor-

tality" could have found much work in this county where old

 

area containing a given number of the enemy, so many men would

probably be hit. But the backwoodsman was a hunter, who shot to

kill. . . . The backwoodsman fought always as a skirmisher, taking

advantage of every available cover. . . . The British regarded such

tactics as "sneaking" and "cowardly." "Come out and fight in the open,

like men," they would say. . .   The backwoodsmen were simply a

century ahead of the times in their methods of war. The British them-

selves soon found it expedient to hire Indians and Hessian jagers to

fight our sharpshooters, but neither of these mercenaries proved a match

for the tall woodmen of the Alleghenies. .. . We have seen that the

backwoodsmen of the Alleghenies were the first to formally threaten

[Hanover and Hannastown Resolutions, the first, June 4, 1774] armed

resistance against Great Britain, the first outside colonies to assist New

England, the first troops levied by an American Congress, the first

to use weapons of precision, and the first to employ the open order

formation [inherited from Scotch forefathers] now universally prescribed.

From the beginning to the end of the war these hardy pioneers were

everywhere, doing the right thing at the right time, harrassing the

enemy, picking off officers and artillerymen at long range, stubbornly

holding their own in the line of battle, advancing to some forlorn hope,

covering a retreat to save the army from disaster, or disappearing like

magic before a superior force, only to reassemble for attack upon some

unsuspecting outpost or detachment. Lithe, sinewy, and all-enduring,

keen-eyed and nimble-footed, unencumbered with baggage, subsisting

on next to nothing, making prodigious marches over rough mountains

or through an ice-clad wilderness, they were men of heroic mould,

admired alike by friend and foe. Coming straight from the absolute

freedom of a primeval forest, they appreciated the reasons for military

discipline, and submitted to it without a murmur. Always cheerful and

ready for any undertaking, they were regarded by Washington himself

as the corps d'elite of the Continental army. And in the darkest hour

of the Revolution, when half the army was in open mutiny, the great

commander, sick at heart but still indomitable, declared to his friends

that if all others forsook him, he would retire to the backwoods and

there make a final stand against Great Britain, surrounded by his old

comrades of the wilderness. [Among these were the early settlers of

Ohio.] -Horace Kephart in Harper's Magazine, May, 1899.

• 92
 

224       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

graveyards receive not the least care. Sugar Grove was used

as a graveyard before the Methodist Episcopal Church of this

name was established, the date of the latter being 1800. The

belief that this church was founded by James B. Finley is er-

ror; Finley was not in Jefferson County before 1808. A school

house was built near the log church the same year. There was

a school known as "Shelleys," near Osage, established, as near

as Tradition can fix the date, in 1800, and inasmuch as we know

there were settlers in the neighborhood previous to that time,

it is safe to assume that this date is correct. There is also a

graveyard here supposed to be older than the school, and there

was a Baptist church on the site as early as 1800, possibly earlier.

Richard Johnson (a German, and grandfather of Rezin

Jonnson of Island Creek Township, and of S. E. Johnson, edi-

itor of The Cincinnati Enquirer) was also a companion of

Myers, coming to this region first after the Revolution. He

had been, at the age of fifteen, a captain in Braddock's army,

and was a rifleman in the Revolutionary War, serving on Wash-

ington's staff. He was seven feet in height, and it was said of

him that he could hit a fly across the river with his long rifle

He settled on what is now (1899) known as the Bustard farm,

in Steubenville Township, in 1799. He was near a hundred

years of age at his death, and at ninety was a physical stalwart.

His son, Derrick, was a captain in the War of 1812.

The Bustard farm, on which Richard Johnson settled, is the

scene of a skirmish between Virginia ginseng diggers, about

1785, in which Anderson was killed.  His companion,

Josiah Davis, escaped a like fate by swift running.

Among the other riflemen acting as scouts in the territory

now included in Jefferson County, were George Cox, John

Haverstock, John and Thomas McDonald, Joseph Ross, Jacob

Holmes, Joseph and William Huff, Augustine Bickerstaff and

Richard Wells. In 1800, the last named, while at the foot of

Market Street, Steubenville, shot an Indian on the other side of

the river. All were expert with the rifle and it is safe to as-

sume that most of these men were in the Revolutionary War.

• 93
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.    225

Most of them afterward settled in this county and became

very prominent as citizens. Michael Myers settled at the mouth

of Croxton's Run, where he built a grist mill, kept a taven,

ran a river ferry and was Justice of the Peace.

The Sugar Grove M. E. Church was organized in that part

of Knox Township now Saline, by J. B. Finley, in 1800, with

Charles Hale as class leader, the first members of the class be-

ing Jacob Nessley, Randall Hale, James Pritchard, Nathan

Shaw, Joseph Elliott, Benjamin Elliott, Robert Maxwell, John

Sapp, John Christian, Jacob Buttenburg, John Herrington.

The Knoxville United Presbyterian Church was organized

by Rev. Samuel Taggart and John Donaldson in 1837, the first

elders being Isaac Crafton, Samuel White, Gileod Chapman;

Dr. Watt, J. Stokes and Isaac Grafton, Trustees.

The first Methodist Episcopal sermon delivered in New-

burg (afterward Sloans, now Toronto) was in 1837, by Rev. J.

M. Bray, who is now (1899) living at the age of ninety years.

A church of this denomination was not regularly organized,

however, until about forty years later.

The Knoxville Methodist Episcopal people held class meet-

ing in a school house in 1830, with Henry Cooper as leader. Af-

terward Methodist Episcopal services were held in a brick

church erected by the Presbyterians. This house having been

destroyed by a storm, was rebuilt by the united efforts of the

Methodist Episcopal, Presbyterian and United Presbyterian

people, but in after years the Methodist Episcopal congregation

erected a frame church 32x53 feet.

Rev. Joshua Monroe organized a Methodist Episcopal

Church in New Somerset, in 1836, the first members being

Mary Hartman, Susan Hartman, Catherine Saltsman Martin

Saltsman (one of the first settlers of northern part of the county,

and an expert rifleman), Jane Saltsman, Philip Saltsman, Delila

Saltsman, Susanna Hulman, William Barcus, Hannah Barcus.

The first ministers were: Joshua Monroe, John Minor, Dr.

Adams, Philip Green, David Merryman, Simon Lock, Harry

Bradshaw, J. C. Kent, Thomas Winstantly, Walter Athey,

George McCaska(y), William Devinna, Edward Taylor, Wil-

Vol. VIII--15

• 94
 

226      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

liam Knox, A. H. Minor, Theophilus Nean, Chester Morrison,

George Crook, R. L. Miller and John Wright (who reorganized

the Knoxville Methodist Episcopal church after the question as

to ownership of the joint church building in that village was

settled).

The Disciples Church of New Somerset was organized by

Rev. John Jackman in 1841, the first members being Matthias

Swickard and wife, G. H. Pentius and wife, Joseph Marshall and

wife, Daniel Householder and wife, John Billman and wife,

Hannah Zeatherberry, Jennet McGee, Emily Coffman and Mary

Householder. The first regular minister was Charles Van Vor-

hes, followed by John Jackman, Mahlon Martin, Eli Regal, Cor-

nelius Finney, Thomas Dryal, J. M. Thomas, J. D. White, Ma-

son Ferry, J. A. Wilson, Robert Chester, D. O. Thomas. A

brick church (28x40) was erected the year after the organiza-

tion; and the influence of Alexander Campbell is still potent

in Knox Township.

Knoxville was laid out by Henry Boyle in 1816, and in the

same year, one of wonderful activity in town building, Baltzer

Culp laid out New Somerset. Newburg (Sloans, now Toronto).

was laid out by John Depuy in 1818, on a portion of the land

given Michael Myers as reward for services as an Indian scout,

and his son, Michael, kept the first hotel. Joseph Kline was

the first merchant and James Toland the first blacksmith.

Among the first settlers of Knox Township were: Thomas

McLean, John Edminston, Charles Watt, Robert McClellan,

James Alexander, George Culp, John Bray, Martin Swickard

(with Crawford in the Sandusky Expedition).

The early history of Wells Township belongs to Warren,

out of which Wells was created in 1823, and the two townships,

now civil divisions of Jefferson County, made of the original

Warren Township, should, perhaps, be treated as one in a story

of the Pathfinders, but as the data collected recognize township

lines as now marked, the compiler follows the map. Wells has

the distinction of being partly composed of fractions of Town-

ship One of Range One, although within its lines is Township

Five of Range Two. Wells was named for Bezaleel Wells, the

• 95
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.    227

 

son of Alexander Wells and Leah (Owings) Wells, one of the

founders of Steubenville and for whom Wellsburg was named,

he having resided in that village and at one time was Clerk of

Brooke county.

The settlement of Wells Township was early. It is known

that a blockhouse was erected at the mouth of Blockhouse Run,

below Brilliant, perhaps in 1790, for the protection of settlers,

as the Indians considered this their country up to the Wayne

Treaty of 1795. The erection of this blockhouse has been taken

as evidence of large early settlement; but this is questioned,

for there is tradition to the effect that this fortification was a

small cabin with gun-holes, built by Daniel Scamehorn and

Henry Nations, the first settlers. There may have been others

who took advantage of the blockhouse, but as to this the com-

piler has no means of verification. In 1793 both Nations and

Scamehorn were captured by the Indians and killed. It was

near this point that a Mr. Riley, two sons and a daughter were,

in 1784, surprised by Indians and murdered. (See page 183.)

Among the first settlers whose names are still preserved,

were: Daniel Scamehorn, Henry Nations, Philip Doddridge

(the founder of Brilliant), Thomas Taylor, Henry Oliver, Eben-

ezer Spriggs, John Barret (settled in 1799 and was appointed

Justice of the Peace by the Governor holding the office for

thirty-eight years, and as Justice he performed the first mar-

riage ceremony in this part of the county), John Jackson, (mil-

ler), Daniel Tarr (soldier of the War of 1812), Smiley H.

Johnston (a descendant, in direct line, of Oliver Cromwell),

Joseph Hook, Samuel Dean, James Everson, William Roe, Na-

thaniel Dawson, William Louiss, Robert Shearer, E. Willet,

John Putney, John Armstrong, Archibald Armstrong,

Sprague, James Davis, James Moore, John Burns, Gideon Gos-

well, Israel Cox, Henry Swearingen, Ira Dalrymple, J. McCul-

ley, Amos Parsons, John Rickey, Jacob Zoll, Benjamin Linton,

Matthew Thompson, Harden Wheeler, Joseph Rose, Henry

Hicks, John Jacks, the Doughertys, Milhollands, Grahams.

Philipsburgh (afterward LaGrange, now Brilliant), so called

in honor of the founder, was laid out by Philip Doddridge

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228      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

in 1819, on land purchased from James Ross. It was not only

an attractive site for a town, the river bottom at this point be-

ing wide and backed by beautiful, sloping hills, but it was a very

important location from commercial point of view. In the early

times all roads led "to a point on the Ohio River opposite

Charles Town," and at this point Philipsburg was built. The

early records make frequent mention of roads building from all

directions to intersect this one very important thoroughfare;

important in the fact that great droves of cattle were brought

over it on the way to the eastern markets, crossing the river

here. Philipsburg was also a shipping point for flour and

whisky, large quantities of these products having been hauled

over the Charles Town (Wellsburg) road from long distances

back in the country to the river for shipment in flatboats to

points on the Mississippi. Before the town was laid out there

was accommodation for man and beast at the ferry-landing.

The first tavern was kept by Matthew Thompson and Nathan

Dawson, the latter having charge of the bar, apparently the

most important adjunct of the pioneer hostelry. So-called tem-

perance hotels were opened in opposition to Thompson's but

none were successful; Thompson himself at one time discarded

the bar and called his house Tempo Tavern, but the ex-

periment resulted in failure. The action of a hotel proprietor

could not change the appetites of his customers. Nathan Daw-

son (mentioned above) served as President of the Board

of Trustees for many years, evidence that the Pathfinders

did not ostracise those engaged in the sale of intoxicants. Philip

Doddridge built a hotel immediately after he laid out the town.

The building was purchased by James H. Moore, who not only

conducted the tavern, but was postmaster after 1822. Harden

Wheeler and Joseph Rose opened a store the same year.

There were schools in this territory long before Warren

Township was divided; but on September 1, 1826, the trustees

of Wells Township (John Barret, Thomas Taylor and Belford

Griffith), met at the house of the clerk, R. A. Sherrard (son of

John Sherrard who was in the Crawford Sandusky Expedition),

the clerk was instructed to divide the township into seven dis-

• 97
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.    229

 

tricts, which was done as follows: No. I, Point Finley; No. 2,

Middle School; No. 3, Jefferson; No. 4, Adams; No. 5, Monroe;

No. 6, Center; No. 7, LaGrange. Other districts were or-

ganized later.

The first election was held at the home of the widow Mc-

Adams, April 1, 1823, when David Humphrey, Archibald Arm-

strong and Richard Sperrier were selected Trustees; R. A.

Sherrard, Clerk; John McAdams, Treasurer.

The excellence of the water power of Wells Township alone

is evidence of early industrial activity that long ago was hidden

from the present by oblivion. We only have knowledge of the

fact that John Jackson erected a flour mill on McIntyre Creek

(so called because a man named McIntyre was killed on this

stream by Indians, in what is now Wayne Township, in 1792,

and his remains were buried under a hickory tree at the head-

waters) in 1808, but inasmuch as there were settlers (called

squatters) as early as 1784, it is safe to say that mills had

been in operation and worn out before Jackson built his mill,

but definite information cannot be obtained. Benjamin Linton

who came from Maryland, operated an early mill and distillery

on Salt Run and continued this business with marked success

for many years.

The Old Tent Presbyterian Church (now Center) is one of

the historical land-marks of Wells Township. The first meet-

ings that resulted in the organization of one of the first churches

of any denomination in the Northwest Territory, were held

at the house of John Armstrong, in what is now Wells Town-

ship, at the beginning of 1800. Who the minister was is not

now known. In 1803 meetings were held in a tent from which

fact the church is yet called the Tent Church, getting the name

Center from a town laid out in after years, but the town never

got beyond the blacksmith-shop and hotel stage, although the

"annual musters" were held on the site, it being almost midway

between Warrenton, Smithfield and Mt. Pleasant. The date of

the first church building is also lost, most probably the

following year, for there must have been a large increase of

Presbyterian population at that time, the first settlers of the im-

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230      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

mediate vicinity now having had time to inform their friends in

Pennsylvania of the beauty of the country and superior soil.

The deed for the property, however, was not made until 1826.

This property, including graveyard, was conveyed to the trus-

tees by John Jackson. A Scotchman named Robinson was the

first minister of whom there is the slightest memory. John

Armstrong, at whose house the first services were held, was the

first to be buried in the churchyard, the date of interment being

July 16, 1810.

Several years ago Sam Huston, the County Engineer,

while superintending road work, found in an undisturbed glacial

gravel bed, two and one-half miles below Brilliant, in Wells

Township, a gert stone knife, one of the oldest relics known to

man, creating wide interest in the archaeological world. Thou-

sands of fine specimens of stone implements have been, and are

daily, found on the surface, between Mingo and Yorkville.

The organization of Wells Township left Warren only a

small portion of its former territory, and it now consists of frac-

tional Township Four of Range Two. Had Township One of

Range One of the survey, known as the Seven Ranges, been

complete, the line would have extended six miles east of Warren-

ton (taking in the width of the river) or to the Pennsylvania

line, thus making Warren Township of geographical interest.

On account of early settlement Warren Township ought to

be the most interesting township from historical point of view

in Ohio, but data as to the activities of the Pathfinders are so

fragmentary that the compiler is almost discouraged in efforts

to put them together. Warren Township has the distinction

of having been settled earlier than Marietta, and the settlers

were good, substantial people, although they were stigmatized

as "squatters" by the Federal Government in 1785.  These

people were real settlers in the sense that they had built cabins

and blockhouses and cultivated crops for subsistence.  They

possessed horses, for we know John Carpenter, after making a

clearing in 1781, on the site of Portland, took two horses to

Fort Pitt, with which to convey salt; we know that a son of

John Tilton was killed by Indians while up Short Creek after

• 99
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.       231

 

his father's cows. We know they had houses, for Ensign Arm-

strong and Col. Butler sent out to dispossess these settlers, make

report (1785) that they had not only driven them off, but had

destroyed their cabins. They were religious people, perhaps to

a greater degree than were the people who settled Marietta,

coming, as they did, from those parts of Maryland and Virginia

where Bishop Asbury labored so successfully that he made com-

parison in his journal of the strong religious feeling of the

Southern people with the absolute lack of it in New England.

So religious, in fact, were these settlers on the bottom lands of

Jefferson County-Mingo Bottoms, extending from what is now

Mingo Junction, to the present southern line of the county-

that Col. Butler reported that they were great fanatics.  We

know also, that Rev. George Callahan³⁷ held the first Methodist

Episcopal services in the Northwest Territory, 1787, at Car-

penter's Fort. The settlers driven off, having no other place to

settle, Virginia being taken, they returned after the soldiers

had gone, and we find them gathered about a minister two

years after. The magnificent prospect of the fertile soil and

luxuriant growths of the bottom land were too attractive for

the Pathfinders to give it up. In order to avoid possible re-

discovery by the troops, and perhaps, also, to escape the miasma

in the river bottom, many took to the hills, following Short

Creek to its headwaters, where (near New Athens) as early as

1784 Joseph Huff's family planted an apple orchard. Had Mar-

ietta such evidences of settlement before 1784?

John Tilton and family (his wife being Susannah Jones)

came from Maryland and located, with others, on the site of

 

37 In one of his most able biographical sketches, published from

time to time in The Lancaster (O.) Gazette, C. W. L. Wiseman makes

mention (July 15, 1899: "The Holmes Family,") of Rev. George Cal-

lahan: "Rev. George Callahan, a farmer and Methodist preacher, lived

in this neighborhood, [Union township, Licking county] many years.

His wife was a Wells. He was born in Pennsylvania, in 1766, and

died in Jersey township, Licking county, in 1839. He was the first

circuit rider in Western Pennsylvania, and in 1785 [1787] crossed the

Ohio and preached at Carpenter's fort."

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232        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

Tiltonville, in 1784. They built cabins and a blockhouse, and

cultivated the ground. John Carpenter had settled above and

was living in a cabin, afterward enlarged to a fort,³⁶ the exact lo-

cation of which is unknown, three different possible sites being

conjectured, one at the mouth of the creek, one against the hill

on the north side of the creek and west of the Cleveland and

Pittsburg Railroad; the other, the most plausible of the three,

viewing the necessities of the builder with the eye of the present,

is the south bank of the creek, near the stone house of Wil-

 

36 It [Carpenter's fort] was built in the Summer of 1781, by John

Carpenter, who resided at the time on Buffalo Creek, some miles east

of the Ohio River. In his hunting expeditions he was in the habit of

crossing to the west side of the river for the purpose of hunting game

along the Short Creek valley, when he determined to be the first to

get possession of these lands [Short Creek valley,] which everybody

believed would in due time belong to the United States. He determined

to take the risk, which he did, by building a cabin and clearing off a

piece of ground ready for planting corn the next season. But not thinking

it safe to remove his family across the river, he took a couple of horses

across and started to Fort Pitt for the purpose of getting a supply of

salt, which they were compelled to carry across the country on pack

horses. On the way he was captured by a band of Wyandotts and

taken to the Moravian towns [on the Tuscarawas] where his dress was

changed for an Indian outfit, and was then taken to Sandusky, where

he was kept a prisoner until the following Spring, when he escaped

and made his way to Fort Pitt, from where he returned to his family,

which he removed across the river to his improvement [near the mouth

of Short Creek] he had made the previous Summer. One day while

at work in his own patch he was fired on by an Indian from the adjoining

woods and severely wounded. The Indian attempted to scalp him, but

was drawn off by Carpenter's wife, a stout, resolute woman, who

went to his assistance and made such a vigorous resistance that her

husband escaped into his cabin, and the Indian fled.

After Col. Williamson's unfortunate expedition, which resulted in

the massacre of the Moravian [Delaware] Indians, and the destruction

of their towns on the Tuscarawas, a court of inquiry was called at Fort

Pitt to investigate his conduct. John Carpenter was summoned as a

witness on behalf of the accused, and identified his clothing as that

found by Williamson in possession of the Moravians, poving a valuable

witness for the officer. - Supposed to have been written by the late

Joseph McCleary, Esq.

• 101
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.    233

 

liam Stringer (built by John B. Bayless in 1838). James Max-

well had built a cabin about 1772, certainly previous to Dun-

more's War, at the mouth of Rush Run. George Carpenter,

afterward a son-in-law of John Tilton, built a blockhouse below

the mouth of Rush Run in 1785.

In the graveyard at Tiltonville, known as the Indian Mound

Cemetery, is the grave of Susannah, wife of John Tilton, there

being a monument to her memory, the inscription noting that

she had "departed this life October 15th, 1838: aged 88 yrs. 9

mo & 20 Days." Near this stone, only a few months ago was

one over the grave of Susannah, her daughter, bearing the

death-date of 1792, but the stone has since disappeared. Near

the grave of Mrs. Tilton is that of Elizabeth Morrison, the in-

scription on the stone giving the date of death as September 18,

1798, and her age seventy-three years. Mrs. Tilton was the

mother of seventeen children, among them Joseph, Caleb and

two named John, one son of this name having been killed by

Indians, the other was named for him. Caleb was born on the

site of Tiltonville in 1785. William Stringer is a descendant of

John Tilton, his mother having been a daughter of Joseph Til-

ton. A great-great-great grandson of John and Susannah Til-

ton (to William and Minnie (Stringer) O'Brien) was born Fri-

day, July 7, 1899, on the site (or near the site) of Fort Carpen-

ter, and but a few yards from the corner of Township One of

Range One, on the land given Ephraim Kimberly by the Gov-

ernment, the conveyance being the first deed recorded in Jef-

ferson county.

The foot of Hoge's hill, where the Short Creek (now Mt.

Pleasant) Presbyterian Church was organized in 1798, and

where Joseph Anderson was ordained the same year, is in

this township. Not only this-it is the belief of many, and there

is basis for this belief, that Hopewell Methodist Episcopal

Church, situated on Warren Ridge (between Rush Run and

Short Creek), four miles west of the river, is the oldest Metho-

dist Episcopal Church organized and built in the Northwest

Territory.

• 102
 

234       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

It has been shown that the first Methodist Episcopal ser-

vices in the territory were held within a short distance of the

site of Hopewell, in 1787. The settlers were of this denomina-

tion. After they were driven off by the Federal troops they re-

turned, many of them going up the creeks to the ridges; and it

was most natural action for them to continue religious services;

therefore it is not mere conjecture to state that a house of wor-

ship was soon erected, being but a few days' work for exper-

ienced woodmen to build a house of logs. The old church was

only a few feet from the present building, and the church-yard

is filled with graves whose marks testify to very early burials.

The older stones (flag-stones from the neighborhood) are now

beneath the surface, and when exposed by excavating about

them, show neither date nor name, although some have initials

very crudely scratched with the point of a hunting knife, evi-

dently. One of these found by Miss Jones, daughter of Thomas

T. Jones, a descendant of an early settler, in 1899, bore the

date of 1799. She made no note of the fact, but the date was

impressed upon her mind because she was a student of local his-

tory and was examining the gravestones with view of obtaining

basis for fixing the date of the church's establishment. Bishop

Matthew Simpson, in a biographical sketch, mentions that his

grandfather, Jeremiah Tingley, settled on Short Creek in 1801,

and that the family attended Hopewell Church. The old log

building had a neatly constructed gallery in it, certainly built

long after the church was erected, and men now eighty-five

years of age, with good memory back to childhood, declare that

the gallery was an old structure then. There were Methodist

Episcopal ministers in this neighborhood in 1794, as in that

year "Samuel Hitt and John Reynolds came upon the site of

Steubenville and preached a few sermons amidst much opposi-

tion."  We know there were Methodist Episcopal people on

Warren Ridge with ability to erect a church; there were min-

isters in the neighborhood, and it seems beyond dispute that

Hopewell was built at least as early as 1798, two years before

Holmes Church, which has claimed the distinction as the first

Methodist Episcopal Church built northwest of the Ohio; and

• 103
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.     235

 

Tradition says, that in the early days, there being close asso-

ciation by inter-marriage of members of the two congregations,

as well as by blood and ties of friendship, much rivalry ob-

tained as to which of the two churches was the older, with the

argument always in favor of Hopewell.

The Oliver Methodist Episcopal Church, between Hope-

well and Smithfield, was established in 1800, and Good Intent

Church and McKendrie Chapel, the two latter on the Rush Run

side of Warren Ridge, were established later.

Rev. Nicholas Worthington (uncle of Mrs. William Medill

of Tiltonville), whose father was one of the first settlers of the

Beech Bottoms, on the east side of the river, preached at all of

these churches in early manhood and entertained Lorenzo

Dow and Bishop Asbury in the first half of the century. He is

now (1899) living in Bridgeport at the age of ninety, but too

feeble to give information of these early churches.

Ebenezer Liston (father of Thomas Liston, living in Tilton-

ville (1899) at the age of ninety, and who remembers seeing

James B. Finley at his father's house just below Tiltonville)

was one of the early Methodist Episcopal Ministers of this re-

gion. Thomas Liston was a flatboat builder when that in-

dustry, allied with milling, was the greatest industrial factor of

the county. The water-front of Warren Township in the early

days was such a scene of industrial activity that has not ob-

tained since the building of steamboats and railroads. Then

hundreds of skilled mechanics were employed day and night in

constructing boats to convey to the Southern markets the pro-

ducts of the many flour mills and distilleries on the creeks. On

the river-front there were immense warehouses, filled from base-

ment to roof with flour and other products of grain, ready for

shipment to Southern ports. Hence the name Portland, in

which village still stand three-story warehouses, as evidence of

former prosperity. It is said by persons still living that in the

first quarter of the century and up to 1850, one standing at any

point on Short Creek could see, at any hour of the day, as many

as thirty four- and six-horse wagons, on the way to the river

loaded, or returning empty.

• 104
 

236       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

Among the early millers were: Joseph Tilton, -   Nichols,

William Smith, Robert Patterson, James Hodgens, Joseph

West, John C. Bayless (had two stone mills on Short Creek),

John Bone, the Sherrads. Of the early boat-builders only a

few remain in the memory of the living: Thomas Liston, Joseph

Large, Nathan Borran, Stephen King, James Attis, Nathaniel

Sisco, Charles Wilson, John Driant, Joseph Hall. Charles

Noble was a wagoner.

Joseph and Ralston McKee operated a three-story stone

woolen mill (50x100) four miles at Short Creek, at which was

manufactured Persian and common cloth and the finest woolen

blankets ever made in Ohio.

Among the early settlers were: John Tilton, Joseph Tilton,

James Johnson (father of the heroic Johnson boys), James Per-

due, John Russell, James Maxwell, John Carpenter, George

Carpenter, William and Joseph Pumphrey, Thomas Taylor,

Thomas Sprague, Joseph Dorsey, William Rowe, Capt. Daniel

Peck (soldier of the War of 181₂), Joseph McKee, Solomon

Schemehorn, William Lewis, Jeremiah Tingley, John McCor-

mick, John Humphrey, James Reilly, John Patterson, Solomon

Lisby, Joseph Chambers, Adam McCormick, Erasmus Beckett,

John Bowne, Charles Oliver, John B. Bayless, Richard Hay-

thorne (on whose farm, near Hopewell Church, the two John-

son boys escaped from the Indians), James Hodgens, William

Smith, Moses Kimbal, Charles Jones, Joseph Medill, Martin

Becket, Henry Brindley, Enas Kimberly (the first County Re-

corder), Robert McCleary, Charles Kimbal, Benedict Wells,

George Humphrey, John McElroy, Alexander and James Mc-

Connell, David Rush, David Barton, John Winters, Samuel

Patton, James Campbell, John Edwards, Peter Snedeker, John

Henderson, Robert and William McCullough, Joseph Moore,

John Dawson.

The settlers on the river front of Warren Township had a

regularly organized government with seat at Mercer Town in

1785, and John Carpenter and Charles Norris were Justices.

Warrenton was laid out by Enas Kimberly in 1802, but

there was a considerable settlement at this point long before

• 105
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.        237

 

the tract was divided into town lots, and there is record of an

agreement made by Zenas Kimberly (February, 1799) with pos-

sible lot buyers in Warrenton.    Tiltonville was laid out in

1806 by John Tilton. Zenas Kimberly was granted ferry license

at Warrenton in 1798, and John Tilton was granted a like license

at Tiltonville in 1797. These records alone give evidence of

very early settlements.

The Methodist Episcopal Church was organized at Tilton-

vile in 1825; previous to this date the adherents of this denom-

ination attended services in the neighborhood.

During the year 1798 two Indians became intoxicated with

liquor bought at tavern on the site of Warrenton, and returning

to their camp, on the creek above Portland, were followed by

a party of white men who saw them drinking, and being in a

drunken stupor, both Indians were killed without the least de-

fensive effort.  The bodies were buried, and years after the

bones were plowed up by the Stringers, who own the land.

Portland, in the early days, was a drover's stopping place,

cattle from the back country for the Eastern market being driven

here because of the fact that in certain seasons the river was

fordable, and thus expense of ferryage was saved.

 

FIRST PURCHASERS OF LAND.

After the survey of the first seven ranges by the Federal

Government the lands were offered for sale in New York in

1787, and the sales were afterward continued in Philadelphia

and Pittsburgh. In 1801 a land office was opened in Steuben-

ville.²⁸ Much of the land was bought by speculators, who after-

38 The land sales in New York continued two years -from 1787 to

1789 - in which portions of the territory were sold in townships and

sections, and in which very few actual settlers participated. These sales

were known as the Coffee House Sales. Soldiers of the Revolutionary

War who made settlement even previous to Dunmore's war, were ousted.

We know that John McKinley, who settled at the mouth of Indian

Wheeling Creek and then united with the Virginia Line, and was with

Crawford at Sandusky, was captured with Crawford and met death by

decapitation, had no claim in the land office for the property that seemed

to belong to his heirs. The aggregate returns from the New York sales

• 106
 

238       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

ward disposed of their holdings to settlers. The records in the

Jefferson County Recorder's office show very few of the gov-

ernment deeds, but it was not necessary to have the deeds re-

corded both by the Land Registrar and County Recorder. The

names of first purchasers following are taken from Book A of

the county records, and are given because they represent many

of the Pathfinders:

1788. United States Government to William      Linn, to

William Bowne (three tracts), to Isaac Craig, to Robert John-

son (four tracts), to John D. Mercier, John Crawford; Samuel

Holden Parsons to Moses Cleaveland (the site of Cleveland).

1789. United States Government to John Hopkins, to

William Duer, Joseph Hardy, George Carpenter (settled in War-

ren Township in 1785) to Jacob Miller, William Duer to Nathan

McFarland, Joseph Hardy to John Johnson.

1790. James Gray to Thomas Leiper, John and Joseph

Scott to Richard Platt.

1791^. Robert Kirkwood to John McKnight.

1792. John Hopkins to William Duer, James McMillen

to John Waggoner.

1794. United States Government to Ephraim      Kimberly

(the first deed recorded in Jefferson County).

1795. William Duer to Laben Bronson, John D. Mercier

to Jacob Croes.

1796. William Linn to Bezaleel Wells, Jacob Martin to

Dunham Martin, Isaiah Linn to Jacob Nessley, William Bowne

to Jacob Nessley, Bezaleel Wells to Jacob Nessley, Thomas

Edgington to Ahasel Edgington, Earnest Matthew to Andrew

 

amounted to $72,974. In 1796 the sales were made in like manner in

Philadelphia and Pittsburg. In the first city the returns were $5,120; in

the second, $43,446. Sales were continued until July 1, 1800, when

under the act of May 10, 1800, a land office was opened in Steubenville.

Land offices were also opened in Marietta, Chillicothe and Cincinnati.

After the lands were surveyed into townships they were divided into two-

mile blocks, among the surveyors of the latter being Eli Schoefield,

Alexander Holmes, Zaccheus Biggs. Among the surveyors who divided

the lands into sections and quarters were, Alexander Holmes, Levi

Barker, Benjamin Hough, Philip Green, Benjamin Stickney.

• 107
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.     239

 

Woods, Obadiah Hardeslay to Henry Lingo, William Hill to

Thomas Edgington, same to John McCullough.

1797. William Hill to Ebenezer Zane, Dr. Robert John-

ston to John D. Mercier, the same to Absalom Martin, the same

to John Connell, Jacob Nessley to Adam Kendig, Isaac Taylor

to Abraham Cuppy, Bezaleel Wells to Peter Sunderland.

1798. Addison Alexander to William Stoaks, Abner and

Jesse Barker to James Alexander, Laben Bronson to Isaac

Cowgill, same to George Cookes, same to Hugh McCoy, Robert

Caldwell to James Marshall, *John Carpenter to *George Car-

penter, Jacob Croes and A. Ridgely to Thomas and Joseph Mc-

Cune and James West, Thomas Edginton to Ahasel Edginton,

William Engle to David Edwards, William Hill to David

Swearngen, Dr. Robert Johnston to Thomas Edginton, same to

William Wells, Zenas Kimberly to purchasers of lots in Warren,

Absalom Martin to *William Bailey, John D. Mercier to Wil-

liam Bailey, same to Daniel Harris, John McCullough to James

MacMahan, Moses McFarland to Stephen Miller, Jacob Miller

to Henry Miller, Stephen Miller to George Miller, James Mar-

shall to Isaac Meek, Jacob Nessley to Christian Kendig, same to

John Nessley, same to Jacob Nessley, jr., James Ross to Solo-

mon Fisher, William Skinner to Sarah Chambers, *John Tilton

to Jacob Croes, William Skinner to Z. Scigg and others, same

to *Joseph Tilton, United States to Isaac Craig, David Vance to

William Vance, Williams Wells to *James Clark, Bezaleel Wells

to William Sharon, same to Henry McGarrah, to William At-

kinson, to Zenas Kimberly, to the Justices of the Court of Com-

mon Pleas (site for Court House), to William Smith, Hans Wil-

son, James Bryan, Valentine Ault, Thomas Tipton, Abraham

Lash, James Wood, James Bailey, Zephaniah Beal, jr., Robert

Meeks, Alexander McClean, James Eagleson, *George Atkin-

son, Jacob Moore, David Williams, Allen Stewart, William In-

gle, John Roland, Samuel Meeks, Jacob Repshire, James Mc-

Gowan, Samuel Hunter, Thomas Atchison, John McNight,

William Clark, Abel Johnson, William Johnson, Archibald Al-

lison.

1799. Laben Bronson to Stephen Miller, same to Josiah

• 108
 

240       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

Dillon, to George Cookes, to Robert and Caleb Russell, John

Perry, Zephaniah Beall, jr., to Peter Pugh, *John Carpenter to

John Humphrey, Robert Caldwell to James McMillen, same to

Samuel Osborn, same to Josiah Reeves, to John Jackson, George

Cookes to Joshua Hatcher, same to Elijah Martin, Joseph Dor-

sey to Jonathan Nottingham, George Edginton to William En-

gle, Thomas Edginton to Daniel Arnold, same to Moses Coe,

to Joseph Gladden, to William Hill, John Rowland to William

Hill, Zenas Kimberly to Peter Kellar, same to Richard Ball, to

Stephen Miller, Evan Philip, Joshua Hatchet, John McIntire to

Samuel Adams, Richard Newsam to William Speer, James

Pritchard to William Sloan, James Ross to James Lockard,

Jacob Repshire to Richard Newsam, Jane Ross to Bezaleel

Wells, Robert Troup to Daniel McElherrah, same to William

Griffith, to William Smith, to John Simmonson, Bezaleel Wells

to John Ward, Peter Snider, Rezin Beall, Archibald Woods to

Ebenezer Zane, B. Wells to John Milligan, same to Samuel

Hunter, William Wells to James Clark, Bezaleel Wells to House

Bentley, to Jacob Repshire, to Henry Maxwell, John Meddigh

to Thomas Haselet, James Hervey, James Shane.

1800. Ezekiel Boggs to Alexander Boggs, Col. Thomas

Butler to Amos Wilson, Isaac Craig to Thomas Fawcett, James

Cosenhover to James Ross, Francis Douglas (sheriff) to Zenas

Kimberly (the first sheriff's deed), Joseph Dorsey to Hugh

McConnaghey, Thomas Edginton to George Alban, same to

Daniel Viers, Jesse Fulton to Nicholas Teale; Robert Johnston

to Francis Douglas, same to John D. Mercier, same to John

Miligan, Zenas Kimberly to *John Buchannan, John Med-

dagh to James Brandon, Stephen Miller to Neal Mahon Daniel

McElherran to Stephen Kukyendoll, Olcott Nathaniel to John

Johnson, Boyldwin Parsons to Adam Synder, same to Thomas

Harper, Peter Pugh to John Robertson, John Skinner to John

Shaffer, same to Henry Christman, Bezaleel Wells to                                      ob

Miller, same to William Boggs, to Nicholson Bousman to C                           -

nigham Sample, to Abraham   Clements, Alexander Young,

* The names marked with asterisk represent settlers here previons to 1785.

• 109
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.   241

David and Benjamin Newell (founders of St. Clairsville), Hans

Wilson, Stephen Ford, Matthew Adams.

1801. House Bently to David Williamson, John Connell

to John Kerr, John Carpenter to Henry Brindley, Joseph Dor-

sey to Andrew and Robert Moodie, same to James Crow,

Thomas Edginton to Goudy's heirs, same to Richard Jackman,

same to Abraham Barr, Solomon Fisher to James Heaton, John

Johnson to Richard Johnson, Stephen Kuykendoll to Thomas

Richards, Zenas Kimberly to William McMunn, Peter Kinshale

to William Shields, Elijah Martin to Joseph Arwin, Daniel Mc-

Elherran to Arthur Elbert, Joshua Mersereau to Samuel Salo-

man, David Newell to Samuel Hatcher, same to William Smyth,

to Knox & Wilson, Samuel Osburn to John Armstrong, John

Potts to Robert Johnston, William Sharran to House Bently,

Joseph Townsend to Horton Howard, Nathan Updegraff to the

same, Bezaleel Wells to Andrew McMechan, to James Wood,

David Hoge, Thomas Vincent.

1802. Rezin Beall to Martin Snider, James Brandon to

Margaret Cuppy, Thomas Beck to Robert McCleary, William

Clark to Rezin Beall, Stephen Carton to Joseph Pumphrey,

Joseph Dorsey to Jasper Murdock, William Engle to Andrew

Betz, to John Edginton, to Mason Metcalf, to Joseph Lewis,

David Edwards to James Reed, John Edgington to William

Ingle to William Abrams, Levi Joans to John Dunkin, Robert

Johnston to William Whitcraft, Abel Johnson to Barnard Wint-

ringer, Adam Kendig to John Graff, Zenas Kimberly to John

Humphreys, Joseph Lewis to John Galbraith, Daniel McElher-

ran to Henry Watt, Robert Meeks to John Williams, Christian

Smith to Boggs and Beatty, William Sharron to John Moore,

Jonathan Taylor to Joseph Potts, Nathan Harper and others,

Daniel Turner to Daniel McElherran, John Ward to Obadiah

Jennings, Bezaleel Wells to Valentine Smith, Jonathan Taylor

to *William Wallace, Benjamin Doyle, Francis Mitchell, Alex-

ander Young to John Smuns.

1803. Matthew Adams to Patrick McCraig, Archibald Al-

lison to Samuel McCollom, Thomas Bendure to William Ben-

dure, John Bever to Sampel Dorrans, Daniel Collins to Thomas

Vol. VIII-16

• 110
 

242       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

Gray, Isaas Craig to Constance Murdock, Richard Cook to

John Wilkison, Joseph Dorsey to John McElroy, Thomas Edg-

ington to Peter Coe, to Samuel Edwards, John Fergison to

Andrew Dickey, John Galbraith to David Hull, Thomas Hortel

to Joseph Wallace, George Humphreys to William Brownlee,

George Heip to Dennis Cassat, John Johnson to Andrew Fer-

rier, James Lucas to John McGuire, Thomas Leiper to Michael

Castner, to Daniel Tradway, same to Moses Ross, Thomas Kells

to Ferrier, Thomas McNary to William Kinney, Joshua Mer-

seveau to Abraham Riddle, Thomas McNary to James Sinkey,

John McGuire to Barnhard Wintringer, Daniel McElherran to

William Brown, same to William Gillispie, Boyldwin Parsons to

Benjamin Miller, Nathaniel Randolph to John Shimphin, John

Stotts to James Vanater, John Frayer to Joseph Updegraff,

Bezaleel Wells to Abraham Crozier, to George Mahon, James

Lucas, Alexander Snodgrass, Robert Abrams, Reuben Bailey,

Augustine Bickerstaff, Abraham Risher, John Wilkinson to

Benjamin Rutherford, Bezaleel Wells to Martin Andrews, John

Galbraith, Charles King, William Welch to Thomas Wells.

1804. Col. Thomas Butler to Amos Wilson, John Broome

to Jacob McKinney, Robert Lee, Robert Carithers to Jesse

Thomas, same to John Thomas, Peter Coe to James McElroy,

Benjamin Doyle to Robert Brownfield, jr., Francis Douglas,

Sheriff, to Titmothy Spencer, Thomas Edington to Alexander

Thompson, John Forshey to Benjamin Montgomery, James

Farquhar (record of his name and progenitors), David Hull to

John Williams, Howard Horton to Nathan Harper, Aaron

Hoagland to Samuel Conaway, Richard and Armstrong Jack-

man to William, Richard, Thomas and Adam Jackman, Robert

Johnson to George Humphrey, Zenas Kimberly to John Horl-

seng, Daniel McElherran to Thomas Halea, Joseph Pumphrey

to George Backhurst (for the use of meeting house), same to

Elias Pegg, Elias Pegg (covenant with Joseph Melholim), same

to Silas Pumphrey, Jane Patterson (administrator) to Michael

Harmon, James Reed to Abraham Cozier, Benjamin Ruther-

ford to Thomas Wilson, Samuel Tipton and Mary McGuire

(contract), Bezaleel Wells to Archibald Richmond, Robert Mc-

• 111
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.    243

 

Cleary, Robert Boden, Alexander Snodgrass, John Brooks, John

Robertson, Jacob Cable, Jacob Cox, David Powell, William Por-

ter, Mary McGuire, Joseph Hobson, Amos Wilson to William

Jackman, sr.

1805. John Adams to Morgan Vanmeter, same to Robert

and Andrew Moodie, to James Reeves, to Absalom Elliott, to

Jonathan Nottingham, Samuel Adams to William McAdams,

Reasin Beall to Benjamin Hough, John Bever to John Hales,

Benjamin Biggs to Peter Hone, Blair & Ross to Robert Carroll,

House Bentley to Andrew Bell, Zaccheus Biggs to Joseph Steer,

George Bahver to Alexander Cassle, Benjamin Biggs to Jacob

Zoll, George Brokaw to Nathan Updegraff, Robert Caruthers

to Abigail Stanton, same to William Cash, to Joseph Gill, to

Isaac Clendinen, Joshua Kirk, Robert Dunbar (indenture to

Frances Mitchell), William Engle to John Hunter, Thomas

Edington to Samuel Thompson, Andrew Ferrier to Caldwell &

Coulter, Michael Teall to Gideon Forsyth, Morgan Vanmeter to

William Knotts, William Welsh to Philip Delany, William Wal-

lace to John Hinkston, Bezaleel Wells to Charles King, to

John Phillips, George Williams to James Heaton, Samuel

Salters, Thomas Dadey, Pheneas Ash, Peter Ash, Eli Way,

Thomas Haslette, Andrew Anderson, John McDowell, John

Young to Thomas Donaldson, Thomas Healea to Stephen

Ayers.

1806. John Adams to George Adams, Jacob Arnold

to Joseph McConnell, Zaccheus Biggs to John Perry, Peter

Beam to Valentine Sailor, same to Yost Leonard, same to

Andrew McNeely, same to Moses Chaplaine, same to Ben-

jamin Stanton, Robert Carrel to Reton Wilson, John Crague

to John Hedges, John Craig to *Jessie Edington, same

to Frances Bell, to William Hany, John Couzins to John White,

John Dorsey to *Robert Hill, John Edginton to Samuel Ar-

buckle, same to Isaac Jenkinson, Michael Haman to John Rine-

hart, James Harrah to William McFerren, Thomas Healey to

George Taylor, same to Thomas Kells, William Hervy to Jacob

Swinehart, Samuel Hurford to Jacob Beam, same to Odadiah

Jennings, Isaac Helmick to Thomas Deady, Peter Keller

• 112
 

244      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

to Arthur Gillis, Joseph Lewis to Joseph Foulke, Alexander

McCleary to James Sinkey, Alexander McClean to William Mc-

Clean, George Pfouts to George Heliwick, same to Jacob Leva-

good, to Simeon Pfouts, David Pfauts to John Bower, David

Robertson to Joseph McKee, Nathan Shepherd to Charles

Barkhurst, to Joshua Barkhurst, Jesse Thomas to Enoch Harris,

Bezaleel Wells to William Ross, John Boyl, Brice Viers, Isaac

Jenkinson.

Since much of the first seven ranges first offered for sale

in New York in 1787 and purchased by persons who did not be-

come settlers, very few of the first deeds were recorded in Steu-

benville, such action being unnecssary. This note is made for

benefit of descendants of first land owners who make inquiry at

the Recorder's office and are disappointed in not finding the

names for which they seek. The accompanying list of first

purchasers of lands includes 1806, a portion of the latter year

having been taken from Book B. The date of record is not

necessarily the date of purchase; property may have been bought

in 1787 and not recorded until years after. Even to-day an oc-

casional deed from the United States to Pathfinders is sent in

for record. Many tracts purchased from the Government by

settlers have not been recorded, yet division of this property is

on record.

1806. Book B. John Thomas to Joseph Gill, Robert Car-

ithers and Jesse Thomas to Joseph Gill, John Thomas to Curlis

Grubb, Zenas Kimberly to Samuel Peck, Samuel Peck to Henry

Stewart, John Hoopes to Moses Mendenhall, Aaron Brown to

John Shepherd, Moses Chaplaine to Joseph McKee, John Ekey

to Ephraim Lacey, David Robertson to John Fritch, John

Fritch to Moses Neal, Absalom Elliott to Benjamin Parsons,

Jesse Edginton to William McCaulley, John Black to John Hun-

ter, John Black to Zaccheus Biggs, Richard Jackman to Thomas

Edginton, Aaron Brown to Abigail Stanton, Jesse Thomas to

Abigail Stanton, John Thomas to John Stewart, Thomas Ed-

ginton to John Rider, John Fuller to John Nicholson, Bezaleel

Wells in trust to William Downard for heirs of Peter Snider,

same to Henry Silver Thorn, Robert McCleary to Andrew

• 113
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.    245

 

Bell, Cadwalader Evans to Jonathan Grave, same to Enos

Grave, Benjamin Stanton to John and Joseph Longstreth, Hugh

Tease to James Taggart, Horton Howard to Jacob Jones, Jesse

Thomas to Daniel Michner, John and David McCrory to Thomas

Edginton, Daniel Swearingen to John Stonebraker, Zenas Kim-

berly to Robert Blair, John Fuller to Samuel Anderson, Peter

Keller to Nicholas Teal, Zaccheus Biggs to John Pritchard,

same to Jacob Brown, Samuel Coopse to Ellis Willits,

Abraham Crazier to Benjamin Hough, Tunis & Annesley to

Jenkinson & Ritchie, Samuel Boyd to John Pritchard, United

States to Samuel Boyd, Cadwalader Evans to John Martin,

Alexander Crawford to Ephraim   Kelly, Zaccheus Biggs to

Robert Johnson, United States to George Leporth, United

States to John Hanna, Matthias Stull to Christopher Sharer,

Zaccheus Biggs to Samuel Boyd, to Martin Snyder, David

Beatty to John Milligan (executor), to David Milligan, Bezaleel

Wells to Benjamin Farmer, John Kay, John Gibson, Thomas

Mansfield to Matthew Coulter, Benjamin Hough to Robert Car-

rel, Daniel Dunlevy to George McConnell, Isaac Helmick to

Hiram Swain, George McConnell to Nicholas Davis, to James

Cook, to Robert McCrackin, Robert H. Johnson to James

Cloyd, John Simpson to Margaret Brisbon, Jesse Thomas to I.

and 0. Olston, Thomas Vickers (letter of attorney to Jonathan

Taylor), John Stapler to Jonathan Taylor, Zaccheus Biggs to

John Pugh, John Connell to James Dunlevy, Horton Howard

to Jonathan Taylor, Robert Carithers to William Guthery, Isaac

Helmic to Daniel Black, Abel Walker to John Young, John

Young to Robert Cummins, Henry Moisser to Adam Moisser,

United States to William Waggoner, John McConnell to John

Long, James Dunlevy (sheriff) to John Ward, Reuben Pearson

to Joshua Swim, Jesse Edginton to James Kerr, William Baker

to John Lloyd and Robert Miller, Robert Carithers to Benja-

min Scott, Matthew Adams to John C. Bayless, Zaccheus Biggs

to Joseph Harris, David Hoge to John Galbraith, William Mc-

Pherrin to James Gilcreast, Abraham Cazier to Jonathan Goss,

House Bentley to Brice, Viers.

• 114
 

246       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

 

 

PATHFINDERS AS ROADBUILDERS.

The Pathfinders were roadbuilders. The paths they found

were Indian trails, which they soon learned to follow with

the adroitness of the Indian himself. The first roads were

mere bridle paths leading from habitation to habitation. In

1801 a road was laid out from Pultney Village (just below the

site of Bellaire, founded by Daniel McElherran, a land specula-

tor), to Newels Town (St. Clairsville) and one from the site of

Martin's Ferry to intersect a road from Peter Henderson's to

Tilton's Ferry (Tiltonville). This road was continued in 1804

to the mouth of Yellow Creek, and afterward to the Pennsyl-

vania line. Previous to this, however, a road leading westward

from "opposite Charles Town," known in after years as the

Wellsburg Road, was constructed, and many of the roads for

the construction of which the County Commissioners were pe-

titioned, were to intersect these two early thoroughfares.

Zane's Trail was for many years the only thoroughfare east

or west. This trail was so constantly used that at times and

places it was worn into ruts so deep that a horse could have

been buried in any one of them. However, Ebenezer Zane was

employed by the Government to make a wagon-road from op-

posite Wheeling to Chillicothe, for which work he received in

compensation three sections of land; on one section he founded

Zanesville, on another New Lancaster, and the third was in the

Scioto Valley, opposite Chillicothe. Before the road was ac-

cepted Zane was required to drive a wagon over it, a most dif-

ficult task.

The petitions following are given largely because they con-

tain names of Pathfinders prominent in affairs of the county.

Efforts to identfy the roads mentioned in detail proved futile.

The first mention of roads in the journal of the County

Commissioners was on August 14, 1802, when it was ordered by

the Commissioners that "the road tax be uniformally half the

county tax, throughout the county." The United States Gov-

ernment donated three per cent. of receipts of land sales for

road purposes, and consequently efforts were made for road-

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The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.    247

 

building in all directions. Reading road petitions was the main

action of the Commissioners, and the roads petitioned for were

invariably surveyed and approved but all were not constructed.

The second record of road matters in Book A, Commis-

sioner's Journal, was made Friday, June 15, 1804, John Ward,

Clerk: "Ordered that William Wells [appointed Justice by

Governor St. Clair in 1798] receive out of the County Treasury

$9 in full for services of viewers and surveyors in laying out

a road from the mouth of Yellow Creek to the western boundary

of Pennsylvania."

On November 3, 1804, a petition was presented for a road

from the southeast corner of Jonathan West's field, past school

house near James Pritchard's to intersect state road at 12-mile

tree. James Latimer, John Robertson and William Stoaks,

viewers; John Gillis, jr., surveyor.  This road was through

Knox Township.

Same date. Beginning at Ohio River, opposite King's

Creek, at Isaac White's Ferry; across Town Fork of Yellow

Creek, near where James Shane is building a mill; to intersect

state road from Stillwater to the northeast corner of the seven

ranges, at Springfield. John Andrews, William Campbell and

Michael Myers were appointed viewers and John Billis sur-

veyor.

Same date. Beginning at extension of Clay Lick Road, on

dividing ridge in the 26th Sec., 11th Township, 4th Range;

crossing Alder Lick Fork and Dividing Fork of Kennotten-

head; to intersect the great road leading from George Town,

on the Ohio; to the Moravian Town on the Muskingum. John

Sunderland, John Gillis, sr., and John Myers, viewers; John

Gillis, jr., surveyor.

Same date. Beginning on the Ohio at the mouth of Jere-

mias Run; to intersect road from Steubenville to mouth of Yel-

low Creek [state road built along the river in 1804] at 12-mile

tree; to cross Town Fork of Yellow Creek at James Fitzpat-

rick's; to James McCammis'; to intersect state road at Spring-

field. Jacob Nessley, William Sloane and Amos Wilson, view--

ers, and John Gillis, surveyor.

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248       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

Same date. Petition for alteration of road down Cross

Creek; past Moodie's mill; to intersect road from Steubenville

to mouth of Short Creek. John Carr, John Andrews and John

Miller, viewers; Benjamin Hough, surveyor.

Same date. John Taggart complained of a road having

been laid out by Robert Carothers (Road Commissioner) from

mouth of Short Creek to Duncan Morrison's. Robert Moodie,

John Carr, John Adams, George Carpenter, Thomas Harper,

viewers.

November 4, 1804. Draft of road, beginning on new part

of ridge road south of Short Creek, past mills on Long Run;

to the three forks of Short Creek; ordered made. Abner Wells,

Charles Moore and Jacob Holmes, viewers; Benjamin Stanton,

surveyor.

Same date. Beginning at 15th-mile tree, on road leading

from Steubenville to Henderson's; to 17-mile tree on road from

[opposite] Charles Town to Henderson's. John Crague, James

Arnold, viewers; William Holson, surveyor.

November 8, 1804. Survey of road from mouth of Salt

Run; to intersect road opposite Charles Town [Wellsburg] to

Cadiz. Ordered opened. Ebenezer Sprague, Christopher Van-

odoll, John Jackson, viewers; John McElroy, surveyor.

June session, 1805.  Beginning at Baldwin Parson's mill

on Short Creek; to Smithfield; to intersect Charles Town

[Wellsburg] road near Archibald Armstrong's. Nathan Shep-

herd, Malachia Jolly, John Stoneman, viewers; William Den-

ning, surveyor.

Beginning at Joseph Steer's mill on Short Creek; to mouth

of Piney Fork; along ridge between Piney Fork and Dry Fork

to Nathaniel Kellim's; to intersect Charles Town road between

the 13th and 14-mile trees. Charles Cuppy, John McMillen,

sr., William Gillespie, viewers; William Holson, surveyor.

Beginning upper end first narrows of Cross Creek, below

Joseph Tominson's; down the creek with cart road; thence to

"where old man Riddle formerly lived, to old Mr. Smith's;"

to intersect road from Steubenville, near Smith's lime kiln,

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The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.   249

above Bezaleel Wells' saw mill. Jacob Welday, William For-

cythe, Samuel Hunter, viewers, Isaac Jenkinson, surveyor.

Beginning at south boundary line of county; thence to

Jacob Ong's mill on Cross Creek to 14-mile tree on state road

to New Lisbon. William Carr, Mason Metcalf, John Kimber-

lin, viewers; John Gillis, surveyor.

Beginnig on road leading from [opposite] Charles Town,

to Henderson's; between 17 and 18-mile tree to Mr. Cutshall's

mill on Cross Creek.  Samuel Dunlap, John Crague, John

Wiley, viewers; William Holson, surveyor.

September, 1806. Beginning at Cadiz; thence past Thomas

Dickerson's smith shop, past school house on Joseph Holmes'

land; thence to John Colbert's, to intersect the Short Creek

Road; thence toward Newels Town until it strikes the county

line. Joseph Huff, Samuel Huff, Josephine Holmes, viewers.

Beginning at mouth of Big Yellow Creek: thence to James

Andrew's mill, to James Glenn's, to intersect road from oppo-

site King's Creek, on the Ohio, to Springfield. Philip Salts-

man, John Wells, Aaron Allen, viewers.

Beginning at road from Charles Town to Cadiz between

the 20th and 21st-mile trees, to Baldwin Parson's mills on Short

Creek. George Moore, John Craig and Levi Muncy, viewers.

Benjamin Scott presented a petition to change part of road

from Belmont County line through his lands. Jonathan Lup-

ton, Nathan Lupton, Joseph Steer, viewers, and Joseph Steer,

surveyor.

Thomas Parviance complained of damage sustained by alter-

ation on road from Charles Town to Cadiz. Joseph Porter,

John Baird, Daniel Dunlevy, John Ekey and James Forcythe,

reviewers. Robert Christie made like complaint, and Elias

Pegg, Joseph Mahollen, Thomas Fleming and William Sharron

were appointed viewers. Samuel Cope also complained and

James G. Harra, Samuel McNary, John Kenney, Jesse Edgin-

ton and William Harvey were appointed reviewers.

December, 1806. Beginning at the town of New Salem,

past the farm of John Ax; thence past farm of George Pfautz,

past farms David Custard, Daniel Bair; thence down Knotten-

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250      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

head, past sugar camp to mouth of Alder Lick Fork, to inter-

sect the Charles Town Road. John Myser, Jacob Whitmore,

John Wiley, viewers.

Beginning at James Forcythe's mill on McIntire's Fork of

Cross Creek, past John Iam's; thence on the old path which

leads from the Charles Town Road to the Steubenville Road

which passes Bezaleel Wells' saw mill. Samuel McKinney,

Joseph Porter, Daniel Dunlevy, viewers.

Beginning at the town of Cadiz, to James Finney's, to

Gutshall's mill.  Jesse Edginton, William Marshall, Thomas

Ford, viewers; William Denning, surveyor.

Beginning southeast corner Jonathan West's field; to 12-

mile tree on state road. Favorably reported. William Stoaks,

James Latimer, viewers.

At this session John Tagart was awarded damages sus-

tained in construction of that part of state road laid out by

Robert Carothers from mouth of Short Creek to Duncan Mor-

rison's.

Nov. 4, 1805. Beginning at Forcythe mill on Cross Creek;

to Joseph Tomlinson's; thence to left of old Mr. Riddle's; to

intersect Steubenville Road on Bezaleel Wells' Mill Run, at the

foot of the hill. Samuel Hunter, Joseph Porter, John Ekey,

viewers; David McClure, surveyor.

Beginning at the Short Creek Road where Carpenter's old

trail leaves it; thence along dividing ridge between Short Creek

and Wheeling Creek; to John McConnell's horse mill; thence

along ridge between Brushy Fork and Bogg's Fork of Still-

water; intersecting Steubenville Road.  Joseph Huff, Samuel

Huff, John McConnell, viewers; William Holson, surveyor.

Beginning at 17-mile tree on Charles Town Road; thence

to Baldwin Parson's mills on Short Creek.  Samuel Dunlap,

John Wiley, John Crague, viewers; William Holson, surveyor.

Beginning at the mouth of Piney Fork of Short Creek;

thence along side of creek to Arnold's Town. Joshua Meeks,

Jacob Holmes, William Gillespie, viewers.

Beginning on the Charles Town Road, "near McAdams

and west of him;" thence to Eli Kelly's; to Thomas Cantwell's

• 119
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.   251

 

old cabin; under the hill on the west side; to cross the creek

above Israel England's sugar camp; thence up Cross Creek to

Forcythe's mill; thence up the dug hill west of John Akey's; to

intersect Steubenville Road, on the ridge near Matthew Huff-

stater's field; also a branch from the mouth of Dry Fork of

Cross Creek, to intersect said road at John Akey's.  Daniel

Dunlevy, Joseph Porter, Christopher Lantz, viewers; Daniel

McClure, surveyor.

Beginning at the plantation of Jacob Sheplar, on road from

Steubenville to Cadiz; thence to plantation of John Bake, on

dividing ridge between Stillwater and Knottenhead; thence to

the range line. John Lyons, David Ensloe, Samuel Holmes,

viewers; William Holson, surveyor.

David Robinson, Nathan Shephard, George Humphrey,

Abraham Cuppy and Elias Pegg were appointed to investigate

grievance of John McCullock by reason of road from the house

of William Sharron to Joseph Steer's mill.

James Bailey, George Alban, Thomas Nicholson, Richard

Johnston and Thomas Hitchcock were appointed to view a re-

monstrance against road from Bezaleel Wells' saw mill to Cross

Creek.

June, 1806. Review of part of road from William Shar-

ron's, past Steer's mill; intersecting road from Warren Town

to Morrison's tavern; to-wit, from Rush Run Road to Jeremiah

Ellis' line; ordered. Joshua McKee, Nathan Updegraff, James

Carr, viewers, John McElroy, surveyor.

Beginning at 16-mile tree on road from Charles Town to

Henderson's; thence to Martin Synder's on road from Steuben-

ville to Cadiz. John Croskey, jr., Samuel Holmes, Daniel

Welsh, viewers; William Holson, surveyor.

Petition for road from Short Creek Road near mouth of

Long Run; thence up run by Abner Wells' mills and intersect

Chillicothe Road near house of John Wells. Jonathan Wilson,

Israel Jenkins, John McConnell, viewers.

Beginning at state road near Massam Metcalf's; thence so

as to pass between farm of Abraham Bear and farm lately oc-

cupied by John Brisben, dec., until it intersects road laid out

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252       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

from Isaac White's Ferry on the Ohio, to Springfiel, at Thomas

McCamis'. Thomas McCamis, Arthur Latimer, Massam Met-

calf, viewers; Daniel McClure, surveyor.

Beginning at mouth of Long Lick Run, through lands of

Robert Hill and others, to intersect road down McMahan's Run

to Steubenville, above Bezaleel Wells' saw mill. John Miller,

John Adams, John Ekey, viewers; Daniel McClure, surveyor.

Beginning at Baldwin Parson's mills on Short Creek, past

Alexander Cassil's fulling and saw mills; thence past Bradway

Thompson's and Samuel Hanna's; to intersect road from Cadiz

to Newels Town [St. Clairsville]. Andrew Richey, Samuel

Dunlap, John Wells, viewers; James McMillan, surveyor.

William Storer, Malachia Jolly and John McLaughlin were

appointed to review part of road from Charles Town to Cadiz.

Beginning at Cadiz; down Standingstone Fork of Still-

water; to intersect road from George Town to Middle Mora-

vian Town. Abraham Leeport, Michael Worley, Joseph Huff,

viewers; Isaac Jenkinson, surveyor.

Beginning at the mouth of Wills Creek; up the creek by

Michael Castner's saw mill; to intersect road from Steuben-

ville; by Uriah Johnson's saw mill at or near Samuel Thomp-

son's. Andrew Anderson, James Dunlevy, Brice Viers, viewers;

Isaac Jenkinson, surveyor.

Beginning at s. w. corner George Richey's field on state

road; through Elliot's lane to Christopher Lance's; to intersect

road leading from Bezaleel Wells' saw mill; over Cross Creek

at Thomas Armstrong's. George Day, Thomas Nicholson,

Jesse Wintringer, viewers; Isaac Jenkinson, surveyor.

Beginning at Cadiz; thence to John McConnell's horse mill;

thence to county line; to intersect road from St. Clairsville.

John McConnell, Davis Drake, James Crague, James McMillen,

viewers.

Beginning at mouth of State Lick Run; thence up the hill

"where Joseph Cook has already dug a road;" thence to the

middle fence in John Phillips' plantation; thence along state

road to ridge leading to George Mahon's horse mill; to intersect

a new road from Steubenville, past Wells' saw mill on Cross

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The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.    253

 

Creek.  David Powell, Daniel Treadway, Thomas Wintringer,

viewers.

Beginning at the mouth of Rush Run; up the run to Joseph

Pumphrey's saw mill; to finally intersect Warren Town [War-

renton] Road, near "little Isaac Lemasters';" also, another road

to begin near Thomas Brown's, and to intersect road from

mouth of Rush Run to Steer's mill, near Elias Pegg's. George

Carpenter, Joseph Boskhimer, David Purviance, viewers; Wil-

liam Noughton, surveyor.

Beginning at road from Warren Town to Smithfield at or

near house of William Sharran; to Joseph Steer's mill; to inter-

sect the road leading from Warren Town to Morrison's, on the

Chillicothe Road. Nathan Updegraff, James Carr, Joseph Mc-

Kee, viewers, John McElroy, surveyor.

Beginning at the Charles Town Road, at Leeport's old

place; thence up Macintire's Fork of Cross Creek; thence to

James Roberts' saw mill; thence to intersect road leading from

Warren Town to Duncan Morrison's, near John Fuller's. John

Craige, George Moore, John McFadden, viewers.

Beginning at road from Tilton's Ferry to St. Clairsville,

at corner James West's field; to intersect road up Little Fork of

Short Creek, near Henry West's mill; thence to continue along

said road to fording below the meeting house; to intersect road

from Steer's mills to Wheeling. Thomas McCune, Joseph Til-

ton, Adam Dunlap, viewers, and John McElroy, surveyor.

James Bailey, William Bailey, William Campbell, James

Pritchard were appointed viewers to investigate complaint of

Henry Hannah as to road laid out to intersect the road from

opposite King's Creek to Springfield. The same viewers were

appointed on the same complaint of John P. McMillen.

March, 1807. Beginning at a school house near the Widow

Wycoff's, on road laid out from mouth of Island Creek to said

school house; thence along the line between Daniel Arnold's

and Martin Swickart's lands, to where said road strikes John

Rider's corner; to intersect the Quaker Road; thence to the

mouth of John Rider's lane; thence to hill descending to Shane's

mill on the Town Fork of Yellow Creek. George Friend, Wil-

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254       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

liam Friend, William Campbell, Arthur Latimer, viewers, and

John Milligan surveyor.

Beginning at mouth of Right-hand Fork of Short Creek;

up said fork to intersect road from Arnold's Town to Baldwin

Parson's mills. John Craig, George Moore, James G. Harra,

viewers.

June, 1807. Beginning at the place where the road from

Baldwin Parson's mill intersects road from Charles Town to

Cadiz, about two and one-half miles from Cadiz; thence past

the plantation of Morris West on road from Cadiz to Steuben-

ville; past the plantation of Samuel Smith; to intersect the road

leading down dividing ridge between Stillwater Cannotton

[Connotton] at the plantation of Otha Baker. William Moore,

Samuel Osburn, Henry Hemry, viewers, and William Holson,

surveyor.

Beginning at Nicholas Cutshall's mill; thence past the farm

of Christopher Shaffer; past farm of John Stull; past farm of

Daniel Shawber; to intersect road from Steubenville to n. w.

corner of the Seventh Range. Solomon Miller, George Pfautz,

Solomon Fisher, viewers, and John Milligan, surveyor.

Beginning at the line between Jefferson and Belmont, on

dividing ridge between Wheeling and Stillwater, where the road

from St. Clairsville intersects said line; to Jacob Vanpelt's; to

Benjamin Wardings; thence by near James Perdue's; thence to

intersect the Steubenville Road. David Drake, Joseph Covert,

John Chadwallider, viewers.

Beginning at or near the 16-mile tree on road leading from

Cadiz to Steubenville; thence to David Parkhill's mills; thence

to New Salem. John Kinney, Jesse Edginton, Peter Hesser,

viewers.

Beginning at state road from Warren Town past Mt.

Pleasant, east of fields belonging to William McKahc; thence

to saw mill of Asa Cadwallader; past lands of Judge Martin

and Joshua Howard, so as to intersect road from Warren Town

to Smithfield. Joseph McKee, Joseph Steer, David Robert-

son, viewers.

Beginning near William Engle's; thence west along divid-

• 123
 

The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.   255

ing ridge between main branch and Brushy Fork of Stillwater

until it comes to the head of a large run; to Daniel Easley's

mill on Big Stillwater. William Huff, David Drake, John Mc-

Millan, viewers.

Beginning at Mr. Shepler's on the Chillicothe Road; thence

to the Clear Fork of Stillwater; down said fork to Adam Far-

rier's mill; thence to the point where the George Town Road

crosses it. Samuel Boyd, Abraham Leeport, John McKonkey,

viewers.

Michael Castner complained of the course through his

property of road from the landing of Philip Cable on the Ohio,

to Springfield, and asked permission to change road at his own

expense. James Moores, jr., Thomas Frazier, Samuel Thomp-

son, viewers.

William Marshall, John Ekey and Joseph Tumbleson were

appointed viewers on a change in the road from the Steuben-

ville Road to James Forcythe's mill; William Denning, sur-

veyor.

December, 1807. Petition presented for alteration of road

from Steubenville, past Mr. Wells' saw mill on Cross Creek;

alteration to be made between Steubenville and the First and

Second Ranges. Jacob Fickus, David Hull, Moses Hanlon,

viewers, and Isaac Jenkinson, surveyor.

Petition for alteration of road from Steubenville to Heze-

kiah Griffith's Ferry opposite Charles Town; the alteration to

begin at upper end of Mingo Bottom: down the Ohio River

until it intersects road from Moodey's Mill to Edgar's Ferry.

Robert Hill, Brice Viers, John Baird, viewers.

Petition for alteration of road from Warren Town to Smith-

field; alteration to begin on Peter Hone's land; down the hill to

the fording next below Thomas Adam's saw mill. John Kerr,

Joseph Kerr, Joseph Steer, viewers.

Beginning at the Steubenville Road at intersection of road

from Forcythe's mill; along line between James Connell and

Andrew Elliott's land; north across James Connell's plantation

to a hickory on the line between Connell's and Stephen Brown's

land: to lane to Andrew Richey's; to corner of Thomas Mans-

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256       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

field's field; to mouth of William Sherrow's lane; to John Cree-

sand's hill; to intersect state road between 9 and 10-mile trees.

Thomas Patton, William Floyd, Thomas Latta, viewers.

Thomas Adams asked for alteration of road crossing Short

Creek at upper end of his mill-dam. John Kerr, Joseph Steer,

George Humphreys, viewers. This closed the road business be-

fore the County Commissioners up to January, 1808.

 

PATHFINDERS RECEIVING MONEY FOR KILLING WOLVES AND

PANTHERS.

The Commissioners each year fixed the price paid for

panther and wolf scalps, and the Commissioners' journal con-

tains record of orders issued to persons who had presented evi-

dence of such service to the county. At first 50 cents was paid

for the scalp of a wolf or panther under six months of age,

and for above six months of age, $1. The premium was in-

creased to $1 and $2; and on June 3, 1803, the increase reached

$1.50 and $3.00. The names are given below simply because

they represent early settlers.

1801. Order in favor of Sampson King, Esq., in conse-

quence of a certificate for a wolf's head; signed by James Clark,

Esq., in favor of William Wells.

1802. John Clemments, signed by Lewis Throgmorton,

John Hannah, John Mizer, William McCalley, Henry Barber,

Christopher Vannoysdol, Joshua Nap, Frederick Zephernick,

John Galbraith, John Shannon, Enos Thomas, John Reed,

Joseph Reppy, Robert McCleary, Hans Wilson, John Edwards,

Michael Miers, William Thorn.

John Hardenbrook, John Hannah.

1803. Andrew Lockhart, John Downs, Allen Leiper, John

Lashly, Joseph Rippey.

1804. Moses Hoagland, William Roach.

1805. Robert Maxwell, Abraham Dinters, William Rip-

peth John Ross, William McCleary, George Layport, John

Castleman, Robert McClish, Richard Castleman, John Stull,

John Moody.

1806. George Helwick, Peter Thomas, Francis Dorsey,

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The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.    257

Josiah Johnston, William Gray, Henry Cutshall, S. Salmon,

John Rowland, James Crawford, Robert Carson.

1807. James Crawford, Isaac Laport, Levi Quaintance,

M. Willis, Jesse Parmore, Cornelius Vanosdel, William Deviers,

William Moore, Josiah Johnston, George Free, James Hoag-

land, William Floyd, John Bates, William Davis, Nathan Staf-

ford, Isaac White, Philip Harkey.

1808. Robert Hill, Robert Carson, David Pugh, Thomas

Bruce, George Pfoutz, William Rippey, Jolly Rutter, Joseph

McGrew, Joseph Johnston, Robert Meeks, William Stringer,

James Davies, Thomas Bruce, George Fitzpatrick, Peter John-

ston, James Glass, Benjamin Cable, Caleb Wheeler, Adam Kim-

mel, Joseph Parmore, William Johnston, William Melva,

Reuben Pfoutz, Philip Saltsman, John Miser, George Knee,

George Brown, Benjamin Johnston.

1809. Benjamin Tipton, George Dewalt, William Smith,

Abraham Walter, Jonathan Seers, Aaron Hoagland, David

Davis.

1810. James Blair, Charles Carter, George Johns, Adam

Simmon, Jacob Stringer, Abraham Walter.

 

OFFICERS OF JEFFERSON COUNTY REGIMENT IN THE SECOND

WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE.

Staff-Officers.- John  Andrew, Lieutenant  [Colonel];

Thomas Glenn, Major; James Campbell, Major; George Dar-

row, Major; Jacob Frederick, Major; Mordecai Bartley, Adju-

tant; Thomas Campbell, Surgeon; Jacob Van Horn, Quarter-

master; John B. Dowden, Sergeant Major; John Patterson,

Quartermaster Sergeant; John McClintock, Drum Major, John

Niel, Fife Major.

Captain Aaron Allen's Company.- Lieutenant, John Van-

tillburg; Ensign, William Mills; Sergeants, James Clare,

Richard Shaw, John Farquar, Thomas Henderson; Corporals,

Christopher Abel, Hugh Levington, James Johnson, David

Workman. One hundred and twenty-one men.

Captain Thomas Latta's Company. - Lieutenant, Hugh

Christy; Ensign, William Pritchard; Sergeants, George Brown,

Vol. VIII-17

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258       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

Alexander Patterson, George Ermatinger, John Haughey, Isaac

Holmes; Corporals, Cornelius Peterson, William Bety, James

Haley, Matthew Palmer. One hundred and fifty-nine men.

Captain John Alexander's Company. - Ensign, David

Jackson; Sergeants, John Lynch, Robert Blackford, Hugh Mc-

Gee; Corporals, Jeremiah Argo, Charles A. Lindsey, Thomas

Marshall, William Ross. Seventy-one men.

Captain John Allen Scroggs' Company. - Lieutenant,

John Ramsey; Ensign, John Caldwell; Sergeants, William Wil-

kin, William Dunlap, William Holson, William Robertson,

Samuel Avery, Joseph Haverfield, John Connoway, John Wal-

lace. Fifty-six men.

Captain James Alexander's Company. - Lieutenant, Henry

Bayless; Ensign, John Myers; Sergeants, James Andrews,

Alexander Barr, Martin Saltsman, James Tolan; Corporals,

David Wilkinson, Amos West, John Anderson. Sixty men.

Captain Nicholas Murray's Company.-Lieutenant, Nathan

Wintringer, Ensign, John Carroll; Sergeants, Philip Fulton,

Joseph Batcheldor, James Carnehan, George Beatty; Corporals,

James Patton, Samuel Wilson, James Haskell, George Atkinson.

Forty-four men.

Captain William Faulk's Company. - Lieutenant, John

Berkdell; Ensign, Jacob Crauss; Sergeants, John Kester, John

Cannon, John Hughston, John Chancy; Corporals, Addison

Makinnen, Rudolph Brandaberry, Andrew Armstrong, James

Henderson. Seventy-three men.

Captain Jacob Gilbert's Company.-Lieutenant, John Tee-

ton; Ensigns, Abraham Fox, Conrad Myers; Sergeants, David

Shoemaker, Samuel Outer, Michael Coyin; Corporals, Michael

Shaffer, Randall Smith, Peter Miller, John Eaton, John Lepley.

Eighty-three men.

Captain Joseph Holmes' Company. - Lieutenants, William

Thorn, John Ramsey; Ensign, Garvin Mitchell;  Sergeants,

Francis Popham, James Gilmore, Alexander Smith, John Mc-

Culley; Corporals, Edward Van Horn, John Pollock, Thomas

McBride, Joseph Hagerman. Eighty-four men.

Captain James Downing's Company. - Lieutenant, Peter

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The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.       259

Jackson; Ensign, Thomas Smith; Sergeants, John Forcythe,

John Bosler, Michael McGowen, Samuel Richards; Corporals,

Abraham Bair, Benjamin Akison, John Worden, Joseph Bash-

ford. Eighty-one men.

Captain Joseph Zimmermans Company. - Lieutenant,

James Kerr; Ensign, Conrad Myers; Sergeants, George Schultz,

George Estep, William Rouch, Christian Krepts; Corporals,

George Switezer, Ezekiel Moore, John Lawrence, Samuel Meek.

Fifty men.

Captain David Peck's Company. - Lieutenant, Joseph

Davis; Ensign, Jacob Sheffer; Sergeants, John Stoakes, Daniel

Higgins, Dudley    Smith, Jesse   Barnum; Corporals, John

Vaughn, James Davis, James Miller, William McKonkey.

Seventy-nine men.

Captain William Stoakes' Company. - Lieutenant, Thomas

Orr; Ensign, John Caldwell; Sergeants, John Elrod, John Para-

more, David Kinsey, William Bashford; Corporals, Benjamin

Dean, Williamson Carothers, Isaac Vail, John Palmer. Ninety

men.

 

NOTES.

The pages referred to below are in The Pathfinders of Jef-

ferson County, Vol. VI., Ohio Archaeological and Historical

Society publications.

 

NOTE TO PAGE 96.- Hon. Charles A. Hanna of Philadelphia, who

has (1899) ready for the press a history of the Scotch-Irish families in

America, has much basis for the statement that before the Scotch-Irish

came to America they were a composite race, having in their veins the

mixture of bloods that made possible the distinctive American blood

of which much has been noted by writers, -the original British, Irish,

Scotch, Norman, Danish, Saxon,--each adding points of excellence

to the whole not strongly characteristic of the others.

NOTE TO PAGE 103. -The statement made here that Pennsylvanians

who had gone to North Carolina inspired the Mecklenberg Declaration,

has been investigated and found to be true. It is certain that Patrick

Jack, who carried the Mecklenberg Declaration to Philadelphia, was

a cousin of John Jack who participated in the Hannastown Declaration.

Hon. C. A. Hanna made a personal investigation with the result, that

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260        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

the people of Mecklenberg county at that time were evidently from

Pennsylvania.

NOTE TO PAGE 103.--  Cumberland county [Pa.,] which lies west

of the Susquehanna, may be said to have formed the frontier, was

then [1763] almost exclusively occupied by the Irish and their descend-

ants; who, however, were neither of the Roman faith nor of Celtic

origin, being immigrants from the colony of Scotch, forming a numer-

ous and thrifty population in the North of Ireland. They were staunch

and zealous Presbyterians. . . . They were, nevertheless, hot-headed

and turbulent, often setting law and authority at defiance.--Parkman.

[They defied the law of the Quaker proprietors that protected the Indian

in his outrages on the settlers. - Compiler.]

NOTE TO PAGE 111. - What tribe of Israel can be named in which we

may not find Scotch-Irish? The volume entitled History of the Ken-

tucky Revival and its Attainment of Perfection in Shakerism, was writ-

ten by a Scotch-Irish preacher, who attained note in Keutcky eighty

years ago by his encouraging the so-called "jerks," until, with several

brother ministers and many parishioners, he danced over into the Ohio

sect of Quakers, in Ohio being known as the "Shaker' Asph."- Chan-

cellor McCracken, New York University.

NOTE TO PAGE 117.- In his graphic description of the conflict on

the Heights of Abraham, Parkman says: Could the chiefs of the gallant

army have pierced the secrets of the future, could they have foreseen

that the victory which they burned to achieve would have robbed Eng-

land of her proudest boast, that the conquest of Canada would pave the

way for the independence of America, their swords would have dropped

from their hands and the heroic fire have gone out from their hearts.

NOTE TO PAGE 144. -The cause of the killing of the Conestoga

Indians at Conestoga and in the Lancaster jail by the Paxtang Boys,

members of the Paxtang Presbyterian church, in 1763, is given in

minute detail by Parkman in "Pontiac's Conspiracy." Along thinly

settled borders of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, 2,000 persons

had been killed or carried off and an equal number of settlers driven

from their homes, and the Quaker owners of the province remained

inactive except in taking measures for the protection of the Indians

as they did in the case of the Conestogas. Parkman says: "The frontier

people of Pennsylvania, goaded to desperation by long continued suf-

fering, were divided between rage against the Indians and resentment

against the Quakers, who had yielded them cold sympathy and inefficient

aid. The horror and fear, grief and fury, with which these men looked

upon the mangled remains of friends and relatives, set law at defiance. . .

They fiercely contended that they were interposed as a barrier between

the rest of the province and a ferocious enemy; and that they were

sacrificed to the safety of men who were indifferent to their miseries,

and lost no opportunity to extenuate and smooth away the cruelties

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The Pathfinders of Jefferson County, 0.         261

 

of their destroyers. They declared that Quakers would go farther to

befriend a murdering Delaware than to succor a fellow countryman;

and that they loved red blood better than white, and a pagan better

than a Presbyterian ... They interpreted the command that Joshua

should exterminate the heathen as injunction that the Presbyterians

should exterminate the Indians. ... It is not easy for those living

in the tranquility of polished life fully to conceive the depths and force

of that unquenchable, indiscriminate hatred which Indian outrages can

awaken in those who have suffered."

NOTE TO PAGE 147.- When the Friends took a lot of land belonging

to the Delawares, the latter objected and the Friends, rather than have

their tranquility disturbed by shedding blood themselves, bribed the

Iroquoise to remove the Delawares. The one division of the Delawares

came to the Tuscarawas valley.

NOTE TO PAGE 168. - Even previous to the murder of settlers that

ushered in Pontiac's war, Moravian Indians in the Lehigh valley were

blamed with aiding and abetting the bad Indians, and murders during

the war revived the former suspicion and the expediency of destroying

the Moravians was openly debated. Toward the end of the Summer

of 1763 several murders of settlers were committed in the neighborhood.

and the Moravian Indians were loudly accused of taking part in them

and these charges were never fully refuted. - Parkman.

NOTE TO PAGE 191.- Col. Hamtramck was born in Quebec in 1756,

and died in Detroit in 1803. He was given the land upon which Mt.

Vernon, Ohio, is located. The original slab covering his grave had

upon it these words: "Sacred to the memory of John Francis Ham-

tramck, Colonel of the U. S. Reg't of Infantry and Commandant of

Detroit and its Dependencies. He departed this life April 11, 1803,

aged 45 years. True patriotism and a zealous attachment to national

liberty, joined to a laudable ambition, led him into military service at

an early period of his life. He was a soldier even before he was a man;

he was an active participator in all the dangers, difficulties and honors

of the Revolutionary war, and his heroism and uniform good conduct

procured for him the personal thanks of the immortal Washington. The

United States in him have lost a valuable officer and a good citizen,

and society a useful and pleasant member; to his family the loss is

incalculable, and his friends will never forget the memory of Hamtramck.

This humble monument is placed over his remains by the officers who

had the honor to serve under his command -a small but grateful tribute

to his merit and worth."

NOTE TO PAGE 205.- Gen. Arthur St. Clair retired to his farm in

Westmoreland county, Pa., after serving fifteen years as Governor of the

Northwest Territory. He was broken in health, spirit and fortune,

and although he had advanced thousands of dollars to his country during

the Revolutionary War, his property was sold by the sheriff to satisfy

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262        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

creditors. He died in a log house near Ligonier, where he kept an

ordinary, August 31, 1818, death resulting from an accident by which

he was thrown from his wagon. When the mutterings of the Revolution

began St. Clair became active on the side of the patriots, and with his

own hand wrote the resolutions at the noted Hannastown meeting, May

16, 1775. He served through the war and rose to the rank of Major-

General. He was appointed Governor of the Northwest Territory by

Congress, October 5, 1787, serving until 1802.

NOTE TO PAGE 264. -Thomas Shillitoe was born in London, Feb-

ruary, 1754. He was first placed in a grocery as a clerk; then in a

brandy store, but as he objected to the liquor traffic he apprenticed

himself to a shoemaker. Although his parents were members of the

Church of England, he became a Friend, advancing rapidly, becoming

a noted traveling minister. He kept full record of events, and from his

journal this narrative is taken.

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