Ohio History Journal

WHY IS OHIO CALLED THE BUCKEYE STATE?

AN ADDRESS BY WILLIAM M. FARRAR.

THE name Buckeye, as applied to the State of Ohio, is

an accepted sobriquet, so well recognized and so generally

understood throughout the United States, that its use re-

quires no explanation, although the origin of the term

and its significance are not without question, and therefore be-

come proper subjects of consideration during this Centennial

year.

The usual and most commonly accepted solution is,

that it originates from the buckeye tree, which is indigen-

ous to the State of Ohio and is not found elsewhere. This,

however, is not altogether correct, as it is also found both

in Kentucky and Indiana, and in some few localities in

West Virginia, and perhaps elsewhere. But while such

is the fact, its natural locality appears to be in the State

of Ohio, and its native soil in the rich valleys of the Mus-

kingum, Hockhocking, Scioto, Miamis, and Ohio, where

in the early settlement of the State it was found growing

in great abundance, and because of the luxuriance of its

foliage, the richly colored dyes of its fruit, and its ready

adaptation to the wants and conveniences of the pioneers,

it was highly prized by them for many useful purposes.

It was also well known to and much prized by the

Indians, from whose rude language comes its name,

"Hetuck," meaning the eye of the buck, because of the

striking resemblance in color and shape between the brown

nut and the eye of that animal, the peculiar spot upon the

one corresponding to the iris in the other. In its application,

however, we have reversed the term, and call the person

or thing to which it is applied a buckeye.

In a very interesting after-dinner speech, made by Dr.

Daniel Drake, the eminent botanist and historian of the

Ohio Valley, at a banquet given at the city of Cincinnati

on the occasion of the forty-fourth anniversary of the

174

Why is Ohio Called the Buckeye State?    175

State, the buckeye was very ably discussed, its botanical

classification given, its peculiar characteristics and dis-

tinctive properties referred to, and the opinion expressed

that the name was at first applied as a nickname, or term

of derision, but has since been raised into a title of honor.

This conclusion does not seem to be altogether war-

ranted, for the name is not only of Indian origin, as stated,

but the first application of it ever made to a white man

was made by the Indians themselves, and intended by them as

an expression of their highest sense of admiration.

S. P. Hildreth, the pioneer historian of Marietta, to

whom we are indebted for so many interesting events re-

lating to the settlement at the mouth of the Muskingum,

tells us that upon the opening of the first court in the

Northwest Territory, to-wit: on the 2d day of September,

1788, a procession was formed at the Point, where most of

the settlers resided, and marched up a path that had been

cut and cleared through the forest to Campus Martins

Hall, in the following order:

1st. The High Sheriff with drawn sword.

2d. The citizens.

3d. Officers of the garrison at Fort Harmar.

4th. Members of the Bar.

5th. Supreme Judges.

6th. The Governor and clergymen.

7th. The newly appointed Judges of the Court of Com-

mon Pleas, General Rufus Putnam and Benjamin Tupper.

There, the whole countermarched and the judges, Put-

nam and Tupper took their seats; the clergyman, Rev. Dr.

Cutler, invoked the divine blessing, and the sheriff, Col-

onel Ebenezer Sproat, proclaimed with his solemn O yes!

that a court is opened for the administration of even-

handed justice, to the poor as well as to the rich, to the

guilty and the innocent without respect of persons, none

to be punished without a trial by their peers, and then in

pursuance of law; and that although this scene was exhib-

ited thus early in the settlement of the State, few ever

176   Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

equalled it in the dignity and exalted characters of the

actors; and that among the spectators who witnessed the

ceremony and were deeply impressed by its solemnity and

seeming significance, was a large body of Indians collected

from some of the most powerful tribes of the Northwest,

for the purpose of making a treaty with the whites.

Always fond of ceremony among themselves, they wit-

nessed the parade of which they little suspected the import,

with the greatest interest, and were especially impressed

with the high sheriff who led the procession with drawn

sword; we are told that he was over six feet in height, well

proportioned and of commanding presence, and that his

fine physical proportions and dignified bearing excited

their highest admiration, which they expressed by the

word "Hetuck," or in their language "big buckeye." It

was not spoken in derision, but was the expression of their

greatest admiration, and was afterwards often jocularly

applied to Colonel Sproat, and became a sort of nickname

by which he was familiarly known among his associates.

That was certainly its first known application to an indi-

vidual' in the sense now used, but there is no evidence that

the name continued to be so used and applied from that

time forward, or that it became a fixed and accepted sou-

briquet of the State and people until more than half a century

afterwards.

During all of which time the buckeye continued to be

an object of more or less interest, and as immigration

made its way across the State, and the settlements ex-

tended into the rich valleys, where it was found by trav-

elers and explorers, and was by them carried back to the

East and shown as a rare curiosity, from what was then

known as the "Far West," possessing certain medicinal

properties for which it was highly prized. But the name

never became fully crystallized until 1840, when in the

crucible of what is known as the "bitterest, longest, and

most extraordinary political contest ever waged in the

United States," the name Buckeye became a fixed sobri-

Why is Ohio Called the Buckeye State?      177

quet of the State of Ohio and its people, known and

understood wherever either is spoken of, and likely to

continue as long as either shall be remembered or the

English language endures.

The manner in which this was brought about is one of

the singular events of that political epoch.

General William Henry Harrison having become the

candidate of his party for President, an opposition news-

paper said "that he was better fitted to sit in a log cabin

and drink hard cider than rule in the White House." The

remark was at once taken up by his friends and became a

party slogan of that ever-memorable canvass. Harrison

became the log cabin candidate, and was pictured as sitting

by the door of a rude log cabin through which could be

seen a barrel of hard cider, while the walls were hung

with coon skins and decorated with strings of buckeyes.

Political excitement spread with wonderful rapidity;

there was music in the air, and on the 22d of February,

1840, a State convention was held at the city of Columbus

to nominate a candidate for Governor. That was before

the day of railroads, yet from most of the counties of the

State, large delegations in wagons and on horseback made

their way to the capital to participate in the convention.

Among the many curious devices resorted to to give ex-

pression to the ideas embodied in the canvass, there ap-

peared in the procession a veritable log cabin, from Clarke

county, built of buckeye logs upon a wagon and drawn in

the procession by horses, while from the roof and inside

of the cabin was sung this song:

"Oh where, tell me where

Was your buckeye cabin made.

'Twas built among the merry boys,

Who wield the plough and spade,

Where the log cabins stand,

In the bonnie buckeye shade."

" Oh what, tell me what, is to be your cabin's fate?

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178  Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

We'll wheel it to the capitol and place it there elate,

For a token and a sign of the Bonnie Buckeye State."

From that time forward the buckeye became an impor-

tant factor in the canvass, cabins were multiplied and

drawn in processions at all the leading meetings. The

name was applied to General Harrison as -

" Hurrah for the father of the Great West,

For the Buckeye who follows the plow."

The name was also applied to Mr. Corwin, the candidate

for Governor, as-

" Tom Corwin is a Buckeye boy,

Who stands not for the pay."

And generally as -

"Come all ye jolly Buckeye boys,

And listen to my song."

" See what a host of lumber,

And buckeye poles are here-

And Buckeye boys without number,

Aloft the logs to rear."

But the buckeye was not only thus woven into song and

sung and shouted from every log cabin, but it became a

popular emblem of the party and an article of commerce,

more especially along the old National Road, over which

the public travel of the country was carried at that day in

stage coaches; and men are yet living,who, in 1840, resided

at Zanesville, and can remember seeing crowds of men and

boys going to the woods in the morning and returning

later in the day carrying great bundles of buckeye sticks,

to be converted into canes and sold to travelers, or sent

to adjoining States to be used for campaign purposes.

At a mass meeting held in western Pennsylvania in

1840, delegations were organized by townships, and at a

preliminary meeting held to appoint officers to marshal

the procession and make other necessary arrangements, it

was resolved that each officer so appointed should provide

himself with a buckeye cane as a badge of authority, and

thereupon committees were sent to Ohio to procure a sup-

ply of canes for the occasion; with what success can be

Why is Ohio Called the Buckeye State?  179

judged from the fact that while a procession extending

over two miles in length and numbering more than fifteen

hundred people, halted on one of the Chartiers Creek hills

until the one in front moved out of its way, an inventory

taken showed the number of buckeye canes carried in the

delegation to be 1,432, and in addition over one hundred

strings of buckeye beads were worn by a crew of young

ladies dressed in white, who rode in an immense canoe

and carried banners representing the several States of the

Union.

These may seem to be rather trivial affairs to be referred

to on such an occasion as the present, but they serve to

show the extent of the sentiment that prevailed at the

time, and the molding process going on, so that when the

long and heated canvass finally closed with a sweeping

victory for the Buckeye candidate, the crystallization was

complete, and the name " Buckeye " was irrevocably fixed

upon the State and people of Ohio, and continues to the

present day one of the most popular and familiar sobri-

quets in use.

So early as 1841 the President of an Eastern College

established for the education of young women, showing a

friend over the establishment said, "there is a young lady

from New York, that one is from Virginia, and this," point-

ing to another, "is one of our new Buckeye girls." A few

years later the Hon. S. S. Cox, a native Buckeye, and then

a resident of Ohio, made a tour of Europe and wrote home

a series of bright and interesting letters over the nom de

plume of "A Buckeye Abroad," which were extensively

read and helped still further to fix the name and give it

character. The Buckeye State has now a population of

more than three million live Buckeyes, Buckeye coal and

mining companies, Buckeye manufactories of every kind

and description, Buckeye reapers and mowers, Buckeye

stock, farms, houses, hotels, furnaces, rolling mills, gas and

oil wells, fairs, conventions, etc., and on to-morrow we pro-

pose to celebrate a Buckeye centennial.