Ohio History Journal

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Editorialana

Editorialana.                        283

 

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

prancing, waiting for the word, dash off."

But after all Kirkersville attained to something more than local

fame.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

which Kirkersville is the centre and within the circumference of which

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

orator governor of Ohio.

 

ANCIENT INDIAN GIANTS.

The Baltimore American is responsible for the following interest-

ing article concerning what it designates as prehistoric Indian giants.

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

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