Ohio History Journal

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DEDICATION OF THE LOGAN ELM

DEDICATION OF THE LOGAN ELM.

 

 

BY MISS MAY LOWE, CIRCLEVILLE.

The second day of October, 1912, marked an epoch in the

history of Pickaway county, Ohio, for that day witnessed an

event unusual even in the history of a nation. This was the

transfer, with appropriate ceremonies, of the famed "Logan

Elm," which, with the turning over of certain papers at the hands

of the President of the Pickaway Historical Association to the

President of the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society,

passed forever from the county to the state.

For a number of years some of the residents of Pickaway

county had regretted the fact that many objects which played

an important part in the early history of the region were being

ruthlessly destroyed, one by one, or were carelessly left to pass

into oblivion, unmarked in any way which would show future

generations that this locality, "more than any other in the West

deserves to be called classic ground."

One of these objects (our most important landmark, in a

certain sense) was the Logan Elm-that grand old monarch of

the forest, which stands seven miles south of Circleville, and

which was a witness of some thrilling deeds enacted in that

bloody prelude to the drama of the American Revolution (the

Dunmore war), and whose leaves, rustling in the Autumn breeze,

first heard the utterance of those impassioned words which, be-

ing repeated to the gifted Thomas Jefferson, were pronounced

by him to be a production unsurpassed by any single passage of

either Demosthenes or Cicero, and which, transcribed by the

statesman in his "Notes on Virginia," were preserved for future

generations as "Logan's Speech." But the Indian chief gave

expression to these words, not as a speech but as an expression

of feeling, leaping from his heart to his lips, and in explanation

of his refusal to join in a conference between Lord Dunmore

and his officers and the Indians of the Pickaway Plains, with a

view to discussing terms of peace.

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