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GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALLEN CpUNTY.PUBLIC LIBRARY
3 1833 02410 4934
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2010 with funding from
Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center
http://www.archive.org/details/coshoctoncountycOOnich
COSHOCTON COUNTY^
dgnt^trntal IjtBtorti
HON. SAMUEL H. NICHOLAS
1811 ^^M 1911
PIBLISHED BY
The Coshocton County Centennial Commission
HON. S. II. XICIIOI.AS rllARI.ES F. (iO.SSER
R. T. HINT
Ilistoriciil Committee
ILLl'STKATIONS AND PRINTING BY
THE AMERICAN ART AVORKS
W. L. RrssKi.L, Solicitor
Photographs by A. E. Riley Paper furnished by Central Ohio Paper Co., Columbus, O.
1470865
PREFACE
It has been my chief purpose in the preparation of tliis work to so
preserve the chronology of events and connect them as to make a
continuous story of our history.
In the many histories that have appeared the plan of treatment has
been subjective, thus giving the younger readers a distorted idea of
proportion and a chaotic view of the order of events.
It has next been my purpose to confine the historical portion to
such events and characters as have moulded, or produced marked in-
fluence upon, the various phases of our county's progress. Other
things and persons that produced rather incidental effect I have
striven to keep in their proper proportion by treating incidentally and
have therefore eliminated them from the story of the growth and
progress of the county.
The limitation to thirty thousand words has made it necessary to
omit many things of interest which would cast strong side lights on
the struggles of a new civilization and the building of the commercial
character, but I trust I have succeeded in giving a fairly graphic pano-
ramic view of the settlement and development of the county from
an unbroken forest to its present proud state. I have written with
the hope that familiar details might not prove tiresome to the well
informed and the omission of essential general history and local inci-
dents may not leave the local history vague in the minds of the j'outh-
ful and uninformed.
If my efiforts shall inspire in the minds of the youth of the county
a desire to learn its early history and a pride in the achievements of
her sons whose life work has ended, I shall not have written in vain.
Coshocton, Ohio, June 6, 191 1.
The Author
A FOREWORD
That I am a proper person to undertake the history of Coshocton
County, in this its centennial year, with my official duties and private
affairs en my hands, and with no special training in this line, I enter-
tain the gravest doubt.
The uncertainty surrounding many so-called historic facts will de-
mand much research and the collection of legends and folk-lore will
require much more.
I have, however, been long interested in the subject and have long
regretted that someone in the past generation had not given the neces-
sary time to it, as the passing of each generation renders the period
of cur e?rly history more uncertain. As we see th.e subject to-day,
the line which separates historic truth from imaginative fiction is dim
and tortuous.
Some years ago I resolved to undertake this work, if another better
qualified did not soon do so, as a labor of lo\e for my son's delectation.
Learning recently that Dr. Wm. E. Hunt had declined, at his time
cf life, to re-write his Coshocton Historical Collections, I have decided
to undertake the work in the year of the county's centennial and pre-
sent the manuscript and its copyright to the Coshocton Centennial Com-
mission to make such use of it as they may deem proper.
I am reminded, however, of the exclamation of that spiteful old
philosopher, "Oh ! that mine enemy should write a book." So I ap-
proach the subject with fear and trembling.
In attempting to compile from our historians a fairly authentic his-
tory of Coshocton County, probably the most embarrassing circum-
stance is the careless statement by them of important facts. This is
well illustrated by reference to that usually reliable work, "Howe's
Historical Collections of Ohio." On page 466 of A'olume I the au-
thor tells us that the Indian village Goschachgunk (Coshocton) stood
north of the mouth of the Tuscarawas River in the fork formed by
its junction with the Walhonding," while on the very next page he
says this village "occupied the lower street of Coshocton, stretching
along the river bank below the junction."
As a further illustration of this, the story of the murder of the
white woman known as the New Comer is in point.
Air. Howe tells us, on page 468 of his Historical Collections, tliat
this woman was killed by the Indians in White Woman's town ( near
the mouth of Killbuck), December 26, 1761, wdiile Christopher Gist
was in the town. This story is accepted and detailed as fact by Air.
Mitchener on page 108 of his "Historic Events in the Aluskingum and
Tuscarawas VaUeys," except as to the date, while on page 38 Air.
Alitchener copies from the journal of Air. Gist under date of Wednes-
day, December 26, 1750, the story of a white woman who had long
been a prisoner of the Indians and who was on that date brought into
Goschachgunk, and not into White Woman's town, and there murdered
in revolting cruelty, thus confounding two entirely different and dis-
tinct events, for on this date Air. Gist had not yet met Alary Harris,
nor had the white woman known as the "Xew Comer" yet made her
appearance in this part of the country.
It was not, according to Gist's journal, until Tuesday. January 15,
1 75 1, that he arrived at White Woman's town and there for the first
time met Alary Harris, the historic and erratic white woman; more-
over, we have no intimation anywhere in Air. Gist's Journal, nor in
any other work, that Air. Gist was in this part of the country in 1761,
cr that he ever saw the "New Comer," and the spot now called New-
comerstown was not known by that name till about 1755.
So confused, indeed, had Air. Alitchener's mind become on this sub-
ject that on page 108 he has Andrew Burney, the blacksmith, at White
Woman's town burying the body of the New Comer, when, in fact,
Air. Gist tells us that Andrew Burney was the blacksmith at Coshocton,
and that it was he who buried the bofly of the unfortunate white woman
murdered at Coshocton, December 26. 1750.
I might continue these illustrations almost endlessly, but this much
will serve to emphasize my difficulties and account for my failure to
speak with confidence of matters by many students of the subject
thought to be sufficiently established to be regarded as historic.
Sam'l H. Nicholas.
Coshocton, Ohio, April i, 191 1.
HISTORY
The earliest history of Coshocton County, like every
other spot, is written upon and under the surface of
its soil, but unfortunately in a language little under-
stood. Hence, speculation as to who built our mounds,
pur circles, our crescents and other evidences of a dead
civilization, whether of earth or stone or both, is lim-
ited and fashioned by the health of our imagination.
This much is known, that an impenetrable veil hides
the mystery of their origin, their age and their purpose.
The historian, therefore, must curb his curiosity and
his imagination, and content himself with their loca-
tion, description, composition and present condition
of preservation, leaving the rest to the poetic imagina-
tion of the archaeologist and the novelist.
The earliest settlement of mankind in this county,
of which we have any certain history, was that of a
small tribe of Shawaneese Indians on Wakatomika
Creek, at a point about five miles from its mouth.
When this settlement was effected we have no reliable
information, as the headquarters of this tribe was on
the Ohio River, near the mouth of the Great Kanawha,
and the Indians were probably attracted to this lo-
cality by reason of the great droves of moose and elk
that roamed these forests in that day and the grow-
ing scarcity of game near the headquarters of the great
tribe.
The advent, however, of the Delaware Indians into
the country in large numbers a little later, in their en-
forced migration westward, seems to have checked an
extensive immigration of that tribe.
The two tribes, the one coming from the southeast,
the other from the east, met at this point the Cherokees,
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the Wyandots and other tribes from the north and west,
and all dwelt together in a savage peace.
When the Delawares arrived at the "Forks of the
Muskingum," impressed with the abundance of game
and fish and the fertility of the soil of the valleys,
they stopped in their migration until finally forced
westward by the advance of Christian civilization, as
represented by the rum-selling, unscrupulous trader
and the hardy frontiersman.
That these Indians tilled the soil of these valleys,
I am persuaded to believe, for when I was a very small
boy, my grandfather, Samuel Hutchinson, himself an
early settler in this valley, told me that when General
Broadhead came into the valley in 1780 the field across
the canal, just east of the Empire Mills, was in maize,
planted and tilled by squaws. And by way of com-
mentary on the fertility of the soil of these valleys, I
may say it has produced a crop of corn or wheat
practically every season since, unless prevented by
high water.
Numerous villages were established by the red man
in the county, many of which we have no means of
identifying, some uncertain as to name, and nearly
all doubtful as to exact location. The exact location
of the principal and largest village, Gosch-ach-gunk,
(Coshocton), as shown in my Foreword, being in-
volved in some uncertainty. All the writers, however,
I think are right, in a measure, as to its location. The
Indian was not given to crowding or building compact
or orderly towns, so that I think it quite likely that
they occupied both sides of the rivers and the forks
between.
White Woman's Village is variously located by the
writers at three to seven miles above the Forks, near
the mouth of Killbuck Creek. This discrepancy has
lent some credit to the probably mythical legend of
the White Woman's Rock.
If this was the true location of White Woman's
Village, I find no writer willing to give credence to
the story of a white woman springing from that rock
into the swollen waters of the river to preserve life
or virtue. Certainly it was neither Mary Harris nor
the New Comer. Accuracy of location or statement
of exact distances was a matter of but little conse-
quence in those days, so that exact locations of most
of these villages must ever remain in the shadows of
uncertainty.
As much confusion is found in attempting to locate
the other Munsey village up the Walhonding. It is
said by some to have been located ten miles, and by
some twice that distance above the Forks. This village
was known by the two names of Tullihas and Captain
Pipe's Town. The latter name was given to it be-
cause after Chief White Eyes had driven Captain Pipe
out of the village of Ko-gue-thog-ach-ton, near West
Lafayette, he moved to Tullihas and there remained
for some years, active always in his efforts to array
the Delawares against the colonists.
This town was probably located at the confluence
of the Kokosing and Mohican.
The name Tullihas, we are told, means in the Dela-
ware tongue "Owl town."
The only villages we know anything at all about
were along the streams. Whether this is because the
Indian built only upon or near the water, or whether
the early expeditions, travelers, adventurers, traders
or trappers followed the streams as the natural trail,
we cannot tell.
From all sources of information we learn that when
the Anglo-Saxon first came into these valleys, he found
the Indian happy, contented and prosperous, so far as
his demands on life went, living in perfect accord for
a hundred years with his French trading brother.
True, he went on more or less frequent forays into
Pennsylvania and Virginia, collecting scalps and de-
stroying settlements, but these were but the instincts
of nature's first law, self-preservation, working out
through his savage nature.
The finger of the Anglo-Saxon ever pointed west-
ward for the Indian, and the word ever ready on his
tongue was "Go!" William Penn had made his
grandfather his faithful and devoted friend by buy-
ing his land of him, for it was with this tribe that
Penn had dealt, but those that cam.e after him seized
the land and ordered the red man away.
I have searched the records in vain to learn of a
drop of French blood spilled by an Indian or an In-
dian's life taken by a Frenchman prior to the advent
of the Anglo-Saxon, and I am reminded that in Canada,
where the Indian was introduced to Christian civili-
zation by the French, that the same harmonious rela-
tion has always obtained. The Frenchman, however,
did not build towns or settlements; he did not seize
the lands of the red man, though the country at that
time was under the dominion and control of the
French crown, nor did he seek to drive his red brother
from the best hunting, fishing and trapping, but con-
tented himself with an honest and mutually beneficial
commerce. He was not a colonizer or settler, but a
trader, so that we look to the Anglo-Saxon race for
the first settlers in the county.
In this we firid some little confusion again, but not
so great as to render reconciliation impossible.
Mr. Mitchener, at page 267, tells us that Colonel
Charles Williams was the first settler in this county;
that he came here in 1800 from the salt works on the
Muskingum, having originally come there from Wash-
ington County, Maryland, via Wheeling, where he had
married Susannah Carpenter. On page 114, he tells
us that the Reverends David Zeisberger and John
Heckewelder, with eight families, had settled at
Lichtenau (two and one-half miles below Coshocton),
as early as 1776, and again, on page 37, he tells us
that when Captain Christopher Gist came to Coshoc-
ton in 1790, he found there Colonel George Crogan,
Andrew Mantour, Barney Curran and Thomas Burney,
the blacksmith, and that Burney was settled there.
As Captain Gist, who came here in the interests of
the Virginia Land Company, of which George Wash-
ington was a member, was the first visitor to the coun-
try who kept any record of his travels, we may safely
say that until these four men are accounted for, we can-
not definitely decide who was our first settler. Mr.
Mitchener leaves these men with no further informa-
tion as to who they were, where they came from, or
what afterward became of them.
Colonel Gist tells us, however, that Crogan and
Mantour left with him. Curran and Burney therefore
remained. I find Curran two years later as one of the
escort of General Washington up the Allegheny River,
but Burney is no more heard of in any of the annals
of that period. He was the only one of these four
men who had become a settler. Can there therefore
be any doubt that this burly blacksmith was our first
settler so far as written history furnishes any light'?
With considerable pains I have collected sketches
of the other three, which will appear in another part
of this work.
They were all interesting characters, living active,
eventful and useful lives, and I think the reader will
agree with me when he has finished reading the
sketches above referred to, that they were all three at
the Forks at that time in the interest of others higher
in power than themselves, though they appeared on
the surface to be but traders.
Burney left no posterity surviving him, so far as I
have been able to discover, but Colonel Williams left
a family, and his descendants are still citizens of the
county, notably Paul Johnston, the present chief of
police of the city of Coshocton.
We know Burney, as a settler, for less than a month,
during the time Captain Gist was here. We hear no
more of him.
Certain it is that Colonel Bouquet, coming into
the country later (1764), has nothing to say of any
white settlers at the Forks or elsewhere in the county.
This circumstance, however, may be accounted for
by the fact that Colonel Bouquet, though a skillful
and capable soldier of fortune, brave and self-reliant,
was selfish and austere, caring little for others, and
thoroughly devoted to his own ambitions. But Major
Hutchins was of a different type, somewhat loquacious,
and to his pen we are indebted for nearly all we know
of that expedition. He also makes no mention of
white residents at the Forks or elsewhere in the county.
We quite naturally inquire what had become of
Burney? Had he sought a home elsewhere or what
effect on his life had the tomahawk or the stake had?
We cannot tell. Certain it is that no mention is ever
made of him after ly^O by Colonel Gist, not even by
Colonel Broadhead, who led his famous but odious ex-
pedition into this region in the summer of 1780.
From the time that the Virginia Land Company sent
Colonel Gist as its representative in 1750 into this
country, claiming all this territory as its own under a
grant from the British crown, and hence as a British
possession, as against the claim of the French that it
owed allegiance to the French crown, this country had
been the scene of a constant struggle between the two
nationalities of white men, in which the red man had
been enlisted and was inextricably involved. Plied
with liquor and lied to, he was incited first by one and
then by the other to deeds of savage cruelty and blood-
shed, for commercialism placed the same value on
human life then as now.
This struggle continued till 1795 (although
France had ceded the territory to Great Britain in
1758), when the French were finally ousted and the
United States became the recognized sovereignty.
Possibly it is fortunate for us that the historian has
not painted in too vivid colors this awful forty-five
years when the Frenchman and the Englishman were
locked in an embrace of hatred, trying to determine
who should enjoy the sacred privilege of robbing his
red brother, and appealing at the same time to the
savage nature of the red brother to drive his com-
mercial adversary out of the country. How much it
smacks of the commercialism of the present day!
To understand the nature and character of this com-
mercial tragedy between the Frank and the Anglo-
Saxon, it will be necessary to glance into the general
history of this period.
The claims of the two European monarchs to the
various portions of the western continent were based
upon prior discovery by their subjects.
As early as 1673, ^^^^ zealous French missionary,
Pere Marquette, began explorations south from Mack-
inac Island, passing down the Wisconsin River to its
junction with the Mississippi, and thence to the junc-
tion of this river with the Arkansas, claiming the ter-
ritory for the French crown. In 1679 the famous M.
de la Salle followed along a portion of this trail, and
on Peoria Lake, now in Illinois, built a fort, thus tak-
ing formal possession in the name of the French king.
Later, after a visit to France, and having induced
the French government to fit out an expedition, he
started in 1683 to establish a post at the mouth of the
Mississippi. This failed, owing to the murder of de la
Salle by his own men. Shortly afterwards the plans
of de la Salle to take formal possession of all this
country in the name of the French crown, were carried
out by M. D'Iberville, and forts were built in numer-
ous places in the Mississippi valley, one of which was
erected somewhere northwest of the Ohio River, but
just where we are not informed.
Certain it is that from the days of D'Iberville and
Marquette the building of forts seems to have obsessed
the French. In the years following, we are told, they
built a line of them from Fort Duquesne (now Pitts-
burg) , to the lakes, and some even south of Fort
Duquesne along their frontier, the Ohio River.
Long years before this, in 1609, the British monarch
had made public his claim to the greater part of this
territory by granting to the London Company all the
territory along the Atlantic coast for two hundred miles
north and south of Point Comfort, and "up into the
land throughout from sea to sea, west and northwest."
Later, in 1662, Charles II granted to certain settlers
on the Connecticut River all the territory between the
parallels of latitude which include the present state
of Connecticut, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and
thirty years later Massachusetts received a similar
grant between parallels of latitude which include that
state. Later grants of this same territory were made
by the British crown to other of its subjects, and con-
fusion of claims was truly confounded.
In this turmoil of claims of sovereignty and of pri-
vate rights, poor "Lo's" rights were not considered.
He was but a means to an end, and that end was money
or its equivalent.
Into this beautiful valley with every acre of its
fertile soil in dispute, commercial rights to be gained
and maintained by sheer force, no recognized authority
to enforce order, no laws to protect personal or property
rights, came the conscienceless, unscrupulous trader,
the adventurer, the pioneer, the minister of the gospel,
the Indian hater, and, above all, the Indian's worst
enemy, "fire water."
At the "Forks of the Muskingum," as I have said,
dwelt the great Delaware tribe of Indians. Here stood
their council house, and here was the center of the
best hunting, fishing and trapping grounds then known
on the continent. Here with their French cousins they
traded in peace and lived in plenty, till the Briton put
in his appearance, and warfare between him and his
French brother began. The restless, migratory spirit
of the Britisher was as active in that day as at any
period of his life, and he began crowding upon and
across the Ohio River at every ford and ferry.
Long years ot close association with the Frenchman,
fair dealing in trade, intermarriage with their sisters
and daughters, had made the Frenchman their friend
and neighbor, but the black bottle appealed to the
savage nature of the red man's heart in a way and with
a force inconceivable to our race. At first the sober
Indian was always the Frenchman's friend; drunk,
he was every man's enemy. He became demoralized
by frequent use of it, until at last he lost all power
of discernment between friend and foe. His savage
nature answered to the call of the wild and he could
be incited to any act of cruelty or horror if his craving
for liquor was supplied.
The Frenchman saw the futility of his efforts to
stop the British immigration into this country, rich
in furs and trade; he saw the friendship of the red
man alienated by the Briton's barrel of rum, and he
took up the Briton's weapon. The red man became
the slave, the appointed assassin, the tool, the terror,
in turn, of each. A crisis had arrived and it became
necessary to send an expedition to the headquarters
of the Delawares to awe them into submission, as the
treaty of the year before at Sandusky did not include
the Delawares. Colonel Henry Bouquet was chosen
to head that expedition with Captain Thomas
Hutchins second in command.
A word about these two men before taking up that
extraordinary expedition, for, probably, the success
of the expedition depended more upon their person-
ality than upon all else beside. Before General Grant
fought the Campaign of Vicksburg and before Na-
poleon went into Egypt, Colonel Bouquet illustrated
the feasibility of an army carrying its base of supplies
with it, insead of maintaining a connection therewith
by numerous garrisons, which would have so depleted
his forces as to have insured the failure of his under-
taking.
Colonel Bouquet was born in Switzerland, though
probably of French extraction, on the north shore of
beautiful Lake Geneva, in the year 1719. That his
tastes were military is evidenced by his enlistment as
a cadet in the army of Holland at the age of 17. Sub-
sequently he entered the Servian army as a lieutenant,
and by his skill and daring, in Servia's struggle against
the combined armies of France and Spain, he won pro-
motion. The Prince of Orange, learning of his ability
and courage, engaged him in the service of the Re-
public, with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, when he
was but 29 years of age. In 1754 he joined the British
army and was sent to America. From that time till
his incursion into this country we know but little of
him, opportunities for his activities seeming few.
True, in 1758 he was a member of the Forbes' Expe-
dition against Fort Duquesne, but in a subordinate
capacity.
His value as a commander, however, had been
demonstrated at Bushy Run in Pennsylvania the year
before coming here. The results of that campaign had
stamped him as a man of military genius, courageous
almost to daring, resourceful and self-reliant, but,
above all, cautious and cool of head.
So happily were all these characteristics blended in
him that he was looked upon as a commander, espe-
cially equipped and qualified for this hazardous and
important mission. He was now forty-five years of
age, slender in build and of medium height.
Captain Thomas Hutchins was a man of admirable
character and lived rather an eventful life. At the
time of the expedition, of which he was so important
a part, he was thirty-four years of age, but had then
spent eighteen years in the British army. On the
breaking out of the Revolution he sided with the colo-
nists, though he was in England at the time. He was
thrown into prison because of his loyalty to his native
land, and his estate of about sixty thousand dollars
confiscated. On his release he slipped across the chan-
nel into France, whence he shipped for Charleston, S.
C, and joined General Nathaniel Green's army and
was commissioned Geographer-General of the army.
He was the author of many books on geographical sub-
jects, and while a commissioner of Pennsylvania he
ran and established the line between that state and
what is now Ohio. In 1786, as Geographer of the
United States, he established and put into practice the
plan of laying off the public domain by parallel lines
instead of following the tortuous courses followed in
the east. It is said that he first conceived this plan of
survey while on this expedition.
I shall deal with this expedition as with all other
subjects, confining myself to local phases, leaving
other matters to students having more time and space.
Colonel Bouquet's command consisted of about five
hundred regular troops, one thousand Pennsylvania
militia, a corps of Virginia volunteers variously esti-
mated at from two hundred to five hundred, and along
with them were some camp followers of both sexes in
search of missing relatives and friends, who it was
hoped might be still alive.
After many delays caused by non-arrival of troops,
cunning inventions of some Delaware Indians visiting
there at the time, and other causes, Colonel Bouquet
set out from Fort Pitt, October 3rd, 1764, through a
forest traversed part of the way by a narrow trail made
by the moccasined foot of the Indian and the trapper,
away from streams of water which might furnish con-
venient means of transportation, driving before him
cattle and sheep sufficient to subsist his army going and
returning, entering a strange country, infested by a
savage, cruel and cunning foe, momentarily expecting
attack, night and day, rivers to cross, steeps to climb
— a proceeding novel in that day and without prec-
edent. But this self-reliant, courageous, resourceful
but cautious man never hesitated in his purpose and
returned to Fort Pitt with the loss of but a single man,
he having been slain at Coshocton.
We are told that the frosts of the early fall had
painted the trees and bushes a splendor of colors so
remarkable as to attract the attention and challenge
the admiration of those rough soldiers and hardy
pioneers. So charmed were they with it that the woods
were made to resound with stirring song and merry
laughter. This was not, however, a mob idling its
way through the forest, but an organized, drilled
and disciplined army, imbued with the serious
importance of the sacred undertaking before
them, and alive to its dangers, a resolute body
of men determined to do or die. They knew of more
than two hundred of their friends and neighbors, cap-
tives in the hands of the crudest beings on earth, and
they had pledged their lives to restore them to their
sorrowing families and friends. To do this and return
alive, they knew that no precaution for their safety
dare be neglected.
Two companies of axmen traveling parallel to the
trail and on either side of it, cut paths; preceding them
were the Virginia volunteers, who were themselves
preceded by three scouting parties, one deployed in
front and one on either side, while a scouting party
guarded the axmen on either side. Following these
came the regulars in the middle path in double file
flanked by militia on either side, and behind them the
reserve corps and the second battalion of Pennsylvania
militia followed by the officers and pack horses. Fol-
lowing this military organization came the cattle and
sheep driven along the trail by light cavalry, while in
the rear of all was the rear guard. This decorous dis-
position of the forces was maintained throughout the
journey. How the Indian heart must have quailed
at its approach, for so formidable a command had never
been seen in their country. Indeed for the first time
was now the white man invading their country with a
formidable force, and its significance must have been
appalling.
On Tuesday, October 23rd, the little army with all
its camp equipage and followers crossed into Coshoc-
ton County at a point on the line between Bucks
Township, Tuscarawas County, and Crawford Town-
ship, this county, and went into camp about seven miles
from Coshocton near Chili.
A good deal of confusion as to the location of this
camp has occurred, growing out of the assumption by
many writers that Colonel Bouquet followed the
Moravian trail from Painted Post on a branch of
Yellow Creek. At Painted Post Colonel Bouquet
took the right hand or northern branch of the trail,
the left one being the Moravian trail. This carried
him to the Tuscarawas River at the point where Fort
Laurens was afterward built on the Great Trail from
Fort Pitt to Sandusky, to the Indian village, Tuscara-
was. Here he left the trail and continued his march
through the unbroken wilderness without trail or
stream to guide him to Camp Fifteen at the point I
have described at near Chili. Here they remained till
Thursday, the 25th, when they moved on to a point
about a mile above the Forks and built their last camp
>tACK THE CLOTHIER
in their advance movement, having been on the way
just twenty-two days. The length of time consumed
on the trip is easily accounted for by the delay in the
first stages awaiting the return of his envoys to San-
dusky, the slowness with which his cattle must travel,
time consumed in cutting the way through the for-
est, delay in crossing streams and marshy grounds,
necessity at times to rest cattle and men and the ex-
treme caution necessary in invading an enemy's coun-
try under such unusual circumstances. The time now
consumed between these points by the usual course of
travel is about three hours.
Colonel Bouquet had now reached his goal, the heart
of the Indian country. True, there were Indians to
the west, north and south of him, but Colonel Brad-
street the year before had eifected a treaty at San-
dusky with the Wyandots, the Ottawas and other
tribes to the north and west, and only the Delawares
and Shawanees remained of the important tribes. The
Shawanees dwelt mainly on the Ohio near the mouth
of the Great Kanawha and on the Miami, a small
village being situated on Wakatomika in this country.
Formal negotiations for a treaty had been opened
by the Indians with Colonel Bouquet at his Camp No.
13, which was situated on the plains between the city
of Canal Dover in Tuscarawas County and Bolivar,
but, while he accepted some eighteen prisoners de-
livered to him at this point by the two Delaware chiefs
Beaver and Castaloga, and sticks representing eighty-
three more held by the Wolf and Turkey, sub-tribes
of Delawares, he refused to take any of the Indians
by the hand and make peace with them till he had sat-
isfactory terms with Kiyastrula, chief of the Senacas
and Keiffiwantchtha, the Shawaneese chief, who were
present at the conference voicing the desire of their
respective tribes to join in a treaty with the com-
mander. No treaty was entered into at this point and
it was not until his conference at Camp No. 16 near
the Forks that Colonel Bouquet accepted the proffered
hand of his Indian friends, in token of friendship, and
had received the balance of the two hundred and six
prisoners there turned over to him that he closed his
campaign and turned his face toward Fort Pitt.
These were not all the prisoners held by these
tribes, but the season was now far advanced, his pro-
.■■■'•i,;i .'t^ ^ A ^v/j
visions were running low and he knew the Indian
character well enough to know that they could not
be trusted. Impending danger appeals strongly to
the savage heart. He accepted a small stick, repre-
sentative of each captive held by each tribe, with the
promise that in the spring following all would be
brought to Fort Pitt. I may digress long enough to
say that early the next spring this promise was ful-
filled and my memory is that some two hundred and
fifty more were restored to home and friends.
I shall not undertake to describe the heart-melting
scenes that followed the delivery of prisoners either
at Coshocton that fall or at Fort Pitt in the spring.
Such scenes are painful when pictured in maddening
reality. The average imagination will readily repro-
duce them with sufficient accuracy to the reader.
Should you desire to know more of these harrowing
details, I would refer you to Captain Hutchins' graphic
description, where this human drama is enacted before
your very eyes.
The results of this expedition furnish fruitful proof
of the havoc played over Western Pennsylvania and
Virginia in the forays of the marauding, drunken
Indians in the years preceding.
Colonel Bouquet remained at the camp at the Forks
till November i8th, twenty-four days in all. The
return to Fort Pitt was accomplished in ten days, less
than one-half the time required in the advance. The
expedition covered a period of fifty-six days from the
start to its completion.
I have devoted so much space to the Bouquet expedi-
tion because of its historic interest, importance of its
results and its unique character.
British supremacy no longer depended upon mere
paper title, but was now established by conquest, and
when our war for independence closed what had been
Great Britain's was now ipso facto ours and no for-
eigner stood between us and the Pacific Ocean. True,
by the treaty of Utrecht, France had ceded all her
domain to the west of us to Great Britain, but we could
rest easier, now that we knew the fact of possession
was accomplished. The importance of this accomplish-
ment was to be seen a little later. The attitude of
France at the close of our Revolution bears unmistak-
able evidence that not only had she 3delded her pos-
sessions to Great Britain reluctantly, but that by her
kindly offices in that struggle she hoped, possibly ex-
pected, to resume her sway over the broad Mississippi
and on to the setting sun.
From this period on, French influence with the In-
dians declined and the Anglo-Saxon resumed his labors
in what is now denominated the "benevolent assimi-
lation" of the red man; the difference between which
and annihilation is too fine for my mental grasp.
After the Bouquet expedition the next voluntary
visitation to this region by a white man, of which we
have any reliable information, was that of the Rev-
erends David Zeisberger and John Heckewelder in the
early spring of the year 1776. These two Moravian
missionaries, with eight families, numbering thirty-
five persons (we are not informed of what race, but
probably Indian), came from the Moravian missions
in what is now Tuscarawas County, and located a mis-
sion about two and a half miles below Coshocton on the
banks of the Muskingum.
They called the village Lich-te-neau, "the pasture
of light." According to Doctor Hunt this was about
opposite the Randies bridge on the lands now owned
by Charles Huff and Abraham Foster.
Mr. Mitchener tells us that this village, like those
generally established by the Moravians, was laid out
in the form of a cross with a chapel at the junction of
the streets. Here it was, in April, 1776, that the
first Christian sermon was preached in the county so
far as we have any authentic account. We do know
that twenty-six years before on Christmas Day, 1750,
Captain Gist had read the Protestant Episcopal
service at the Forks to the Indians and the few whites
dwelling there at the time and, moreover, knowing the
habit of the French Catholic clergy in that day as well
as since, of ever keeping the sign of the cross in the
van of advancing civilization, it is quite likely that
the name of the Saviour had been heard there many
times and long before, for the French had been in this
locality then for a hundred years.
Mr. Mitchener further tells us that this village was
built on the site of the remains of the earth works of
the ancient mound builders. If this be true, these re-
mains have entirely disappeared. I am disposed to
doubt this statement, as no other writer on the subject
\'IE\VS OF IVrtIONS of roMPOflXG RoOM AND F'Jl'XDkV THE \'AIL Co
mentions this circumstance. He has quite evidently
confounded this spot with the one further down where
stands the mound so familiar to us all.
I think Dr. Hunt much more reliable on this sub-
Mr. Mitchener falls into another error at this point
of his narrative in saying that among the first converts
to Christianity at Lichteneau was Netawatwees.
Netawatawees was at this time head chief of the Dela-
ware tribe. He had formerly lived near Newcomers-
town and had frequently visited Zeisberger at
Gek-el-e-muk-pe-chunk at the mouth of Stillwater, had
assisted Zeisberger in establishing his mission at Schoen-
brun and had embraced Christianity under Zeisberger
before the building of Lichteneau, either at Schoen-
brun or possibly in Pennsylvania or Virginia, where he
had known Zeisberger before the advent of the Mora-
vians into Ohio territory. Certain it is that he was
one of the earliest converts to Christianity among the
Delaware chiefs. It was he who persuaded Zeisberger
to come west of the Ohio River.
The Lichteneau mission was short lived, for in 1779,
three years after its establishment, it was abandoned,
not for want of material on which to work, nor for
failure of conversions, nor for lack of zeal in its mis-
sionaries, but because the war then being waged be-
tween Christian nations negatived every teaching of
Christianity. Constantly were the emissaries of each
arousing the savage nature of the Indian and inciting
him to the commission of the most revolting crimes.
All the good accomplished by these noble, self-sacri-
ficing missionaries was dissipated. From their lips the
Indian heard the blessed message, "Peace on earth,
good will toward men" ; from every other quarter they
were taught violence and bloodshed. With heavy
hearts and bowed heads they returned to the old mis-
sions where their lives would be safer. This was the
first, and so far as I can learn, the last effort in this
county by a Protestant denomination to establish the
cross among the Indians.
If there were any white settlers in this county at that
time Zeisberger and Heckewelder fail to make note of
them. It is, indeed, more than doubtful that there
were any or that any came in for some years after.
The Frenchman had lost influence with the Indian and
in his place had come the Briton and the American.
The hatred of these for each other had increased the
supply of liquor and proportionately the savage cruelty
of the red man. Heckewelder tells us in his journal
that after the breaking out of hostilities between them,
it became practically impossible for a white man to
get into the Delaware country to trade, trap, preach
or tor other purposes. The Delawares themselves,
together with the Shawanees, were inclined to be
friendly to the colonists, but the other tribes were with
the British in sentiment. Every trail that led into
the Delaware country was watched by both sides, and
prisoners were an encumbrance. Hence, to enter the
country meant death at the hands of an allied enemy.
Emboldened by the infrequence of the white adven-
turer into their territory, tribes friendly to the British
were induced to make frequent incursions into Mr-
ginia and Pennsylvania, where they perpetrated
fiendish and revolting crimes and by artifice threw sus-
picion upon the Delawares.
An incident occurred about this time (1778), with-
out some mention of which a history of Coshocton
County would be sadly incomplete, and is usually
spoken of as Heckewelder's ride. The war of the
Revolution was on. From Detroit, the British,
through the Delaware sub-chief Captain Pipe, the rene-
gades Simon Girty, Alexander McKee and Matthew
Elliott and some deserters from Fort Pitt, were bending
every energy to induce the Delawares to join the
Shawanees to the south, the Wyandots and other tribes
to the north and west, in a united effort to attack the
colonists in the rear while the British engaged them
at the front. Three times during the preceding sum-
mer and fall had the tomahawk been sent from the
north, and each time had the eloquent tongue of Cap-
tain Pipe rehearsed to his brethren the wrongs done
them by the white man, reminding them that the burial
grounds of their tribe where lay the sacred bones of
their forefathers, were now the tilling lands of the
white man ; that since the days of Penn the price paid
for their lands had been the blood of their wives and
children, and charging all upon the colonists. To
meet this all the force of character and eloquence of the
great White Eyes and Killbuck, aided by others, was
required. Each time the tomahawk was refused, but
UtSlllt.NLt OF W. A. II IMEBAIGIT.
each time with a lessened vote. The future certainly
looked dark and foreboding. Should this scheme suc-
ceed and this hostile alliance be effected, the colonial
army thus taken in the rear by thousands of blood-
thirsty savages, urged on to deeds of inhuman cruelty
by scarcely less savage British influence, all that had
been gained by the heroic little army in two years of
a desperate struggle with a nation second to none in
the world in military power and achievement would be
lost in a day. Victory would have been snatched from
their hand in the very hour of its achievement.
The gaunt, half-starved and weakened soldiers had
just staggered from that awful camp at Valley Forge.
Shaking off the memory of its sufferings and privations,
repairing its wasted energies from the first fruits of a
new-born spring, its heart leaped once more at the
thought of again following its beloved Washington
to the final achievement of its heart's desire, inde-
pendence of the British yoke. France had acknowl-
edged our independence, but how much did that mean
with Philadelphia in the hands of the British on the
east of them and this horde of threatening savages to
the west'?
A general conference of the Indians was arranged
for in the early spring at the Forks. A crisis had ar-
rived. The Delawares, at that conference, were told
by Captain Pipe, Girty, the British emissaries from
Detroit and the representatives of the Wyandots, the
Shawanees and the other tribes, that General Wash-
ington had been slain, his army destroyed and the
colonists without hope of success, that if they did not
join this alliance they would be treated as a common
enemy by the British and the other tribes of Indians.
Some eight hundred warriors were assembled and the
Delawares seemed confronted by their doom.
The eloquent White Eyes, Netawatwees, Killbuck
and others, true to their promises, still opposed the
alliance, but at length seeing their efforts beaten down
by this appeal to the fears of their people, they ob-
tained a postponement of the decision for ten days
till the truth might be learned. News of the crisis was
sent to Fort Pitt, a hundred and twenty-five miles
away. Ten days only were allowed for covering the
two hundred and fifty miles and obtaining the neces-
sary information. General Hand, the commandant.
recognizing the gravity of the situation, promptly of-
fered a liberal reward to any one who would go to
Goschachgunk in the interest of peace. Heckewelder,
the devoted missionary, taking an Indian convert,
Schli-bosh, undertook the hazardous task. Traveling
day and night without stopping, except to feed their
horses, momentarily expecting attack by some one of
the many marauding war parties, they reached
Gnadenhutten on the eighth day of the armistice, with
two days left of the ten accorded by the agreement to
White Eyes. Here the Indian, Schlibosh, exhausted,
refused to proceed further, but not so the devoted,
determined Heckewelder. With difficulty able to re-
tain his seat in the saddle, accompanied by his faithful
Indian servant, John Martin, whom he found here, he
pressed on and in the morning of the next day he
reached Gosch-ach-gunk to meet the lowering faces of
savages more determined than ever to join their British
cousins and their supply of whiskey. Heckewelder
was at this time thirty-live years of age, quiet, unas-
suming and of a retiring disposition, but fully im-
pressed with the importance of his mission. Loving
both his white brother and his red cousin, all the
fire of his nature was aroused. Rising in his stirrups,
bare-headed, with face flushed, he waved in his hand
the communication from General Hand. At first even
White Eyes refused to take his hand, so successful
had been the cunning inventions of the enemy. By
force of his powerful personality, though physically
exhausted, Heckewelder at length commanded atten-
tion, then interest and finally conviction of the truth
of his message that General Washington still lived,
that in the season before he had defeated the British
army under General Burgoyne, that he had led a sur-
viving army of determined, though lean and hungry,
men from their winter quarters ready to take the offen-
sive, and that the colonists greeted them not as ene-
mies but as brothers. The impending catastrophe
was averted. The British envoys returned to Detroit.
Captain Pipe slunk back up the river to Owltown.
The Wyandots and other hostile tribes ceased their
threats and hope was again restored.
To me this is a scene of surpassing beauty. John
Heckewelder, who had traveled four thousand miles,
bringing the sign of the cross to a nation of savages.
~^^.
,^^
^IV \^
. w.w
C<if,ii(.i-tiix l.ir.in & Mkati.vo ( II
and by the quality of his teaching and example had won
their confidence, arrives on the eve of a tremendous
crisis, when the future of his adopted country seemed
trembling in the balance; exhausted, travel-stained
and anxious, he becomes unconsciously the central
figure in an ever-memorable human drama that shapes
the future of a nation and averts unutterable suffering.
Much doubt as to the date of this ever-memorable
ride has arisen, some writers fixing the date as late as
the early winter. I am convinced, however, that Doc-
tor Hunt, who relies upon the statement of Doctor
Schweinitz, is more nearly correct. He fixes the date
of the conference as the latter part of March and the
end of the ten days as April 7th.
Indians began their campaigns in the spring and
could rarely be persuaded to take up the tomahawk in
the late fall. Moreover, in the spring of this year
gloom overspread this new-born nation deeper and
more universal than ever before. The winter at Val-
ley Forge had left but a single military asset, the un-
conquerable courage of its army and its leader and the
confidence of the people in both. Though the toma-
hawk had been thrice refused in the summer and fall
before, now seemed the psychological hour. By fall,
indeed by midsummer, the battle of Monmouth had
been fought and won and in the fall General Wash-
ington had driven the British army under Lord Clinton
out of Pennsylvania and had gone into camp at White
Plains, New York. It would be too late to deceive the
wily Indian, while in the early spring all circumstances
seemed to point to the truth of their fabrications.
By the spring of 1780, General Broadhead, the com-
mandant of Fort Pitt, giving credence to the stories
still told against the Delawares, was persuaded to be-
lieve that they had forgotten their promises and had
joined their brethren to the north in an alliance against
the colonists. An expedition was fitted out from
Wheeling, General Broadhead assuming command in
person.
General Broadhead was an experienced Indian
fighter, of resolute character, prompt in action, cruel
and of commanding presence.
This expedition is known in history as the Coshocton
Campaign. General Broadhead, with Colonel Shep-
herd of Wheeling second in command, left Wheeling
with about eight hundred regulars and militia. When
they struck the Moravian country near Salem the mil-
itia were with difficulty restrained from attacking these
friendly Indians. The hatred ot the Indian had be-
come so intense that an Indian was an Indian, whether
friend or foe, and a dead Indian, if not a good one,
was at least a safe one.
Traveling with great speed, General Broadhead en-
countered his hrst Delaware Indian on White Eyes
plains, and him they took prisoner. Soon after two
more, whom they were unable to apprehend, were ob-
served and General Broadhead, knowing that they
would give the alarm at Coshocton as quickly as their
legs could carry them, ordered his men forward at
double quick in the hope that he might reach the vil-
lage ahead of the two Indians and by surprise capture
this village. In this he was successful. The army ap-
proached the village in three divisions, one striking it
above, one below and the other in the center. Every
inhabitant of the village, together with some ten or
twelve braves from a village further up stream, were
made prisoners without the firing of a gun.
The campaign had been splendidly planned and ex-
ecuted.
The river, being very much swollen by recent rains,
rendered it impracticable to lead the army across, so
that the villages on the other side and their inhabitants
escaped being captured also.
That there were villages on the west side of the river
at this time is fully established by notes of the expedi-
tion taken by Mr. Doddridge, and in a slight degree
corroborates the opinion expressed by me that probably
this was true as early as 1764, on the arrival of Colonel
Bouquet and his command, for that was but sixteen
years before.
Note the striking contrast between the leaders of
these two great expeditions into this country, though
both were soldiers of high renown and each achieved
complete success.
Colonel Bouquet conducted an army through a hos-
tile country to the very heart of a savage nation, ef-
fected a lasting treaty which saved the lives and homes
of many settlers in Pennsylvania and Virginia and
Eastern Ohio in the years following, restored some tour
or five hundred captives to home and family, accom-
plished all that was desired without the shedding of a
drop of blood.
General Broadhead on the very night of his arrival
in the home of a presumably friendly people, called a
council of war and on the word of a single Indian con-
demned to death sixteen Indians and had them toma-
hawked and scalped. On the next day an Indian,
calling to him from across the swollen waters for an
interview, was guaranteed his safety should he come
over for the conference. While the conference was be-
ing held the very celebrated Indian lighter, Lewis
Wetzel, who had come from Wheeling with General
Broadhead, struck the Indian in the back of the head
in the presence of General Broadhead with a toma-
hawk he had concealed in his hunting shirt, killing him
instantly, and Wetzel was not so much as reproved
by his heartless commander.
About noon of the day after his arrival at Coshocton
and after burning the villages on the east side of the
river, General Broadhead started on his return, carry-
ing with him some twenty or more prisoners. Why he
took prisoners we are left to speculate, as we are why
he had committed murder and worse within the past
twenty-tour hours.
His prisoners General Broadhead placed in the cus-
tody of his militia, the same men, who, he tells us, in-
sisted on murdering the friendly Christian Moravians
at Salem on the journey out and men of about the same
humane impulses as Lewis Wetzel who had but a few
hours before committed cold-blooded murder in his
presence, and of which body of militia this same Wet-
zel was a member.
Before they had gone half a mile the militia began
murdering the prisoners and near a spring on the east
side of the Collier hill near Sixteenth Street the bal-
ance, excepting a few women and children, were
cruelly slain. My reason for fixing this as the true
spot whereon that wanton massacre occurred will ap-
pear in a copy of a letter in my possession written by
Thomas H. Johnson of Pittsburg to the Honorable E.
O. Randal, president of the Ohio Historical Society,
September 14th, 1908, a copy of which Mr. Johnson
very kindly sent me a few days later, and which with
Mr. Johnson's consent will be found in another place
in this volume. The few women and children who es-
Ojsiioiros C
caped the fiendish cruelty of the militia were carried to
Fort Pitt and afterward exchanged for a like number
of white prisoners.
Can the imagination conjure up a scene more cow-
ardly, dastardly or inhuman? Little wonder that we
blush when we remember that such scenes as this were
enacted time after time in our dealing with the red
man from almost our earliest contact with him.
After the scene above described is there much won-
der that it was twenty years before a white man came
into this region to settle? And doubtful it is if any
would have ventured then had it not been that this
cruel, heartless, blood-thirsty scene convinced the red
man that he could not live near his white brother, and
their emigration toward the setting sun again began.
They did not await the coming of the settler; they
began at once, and when a new century was ushered
in but a remnant of that once powerful race remained
in little scattered groups, hardly remembering their sub-
tribal names.
We scoff at the "noble red man." Possibly we are
right, but we do not know. As he is now he certainly
is not noble, but who and what made him what he is?
The dominant race in a country where different races
commingle ever has been, and ever will be, held re-
sponsible for the results of the subordinate race and
why should it not? It fixes the environment and sets
the example. Before we condemn this race wholly
and as a race, let us read his character as written by
those who knew him before he was affected by our
boasted Christian civilization, when his thirst was ap-
peased at the bubbling spring, when he killed to sat-
isfy his hunger only, when he invited his white brother
to occupy his lands in common with him, enjoying to-
gether the chase and its fruits, before he had been
taught that a lie was preferable to financial loss, that
a treaty of peace was not for mutual benefit, but was
to enable the stronger and wiser and more cunning to
triumph over the weaker and more trusting. It is too
late to m.ake recompense to him, but we may still do
justice to his memory by placing the blame where in
justice and humanity it belongs.
We know of one somewhat famous character who
came into the county before the new century. I refer
to the white woman, Marv Harris, the wife of sub-chief
Coshocton Daily Age.
Eagle Feather. Mr. Gist describes her as being up-
wards of htty years of age when he met her in January,
1751, and says that in his talk with her he learned that
she had been with the Indians since she was about ten
years old. Where she came from or by whom she was
captured we are unable to learn, and indeed so much
ot her career is legendary that I shall speak of her in
that branch of this work. She was brought into the
country a captive and I am now about to interest my-
self with settlers, not with captives, tor we have about
reached the period when settlement began in earnest.
That the blacksmith Burney, spoken of by Mr. Gist,
strictly speaking, must be considered and is entitled to
be known as our first authentic settler, there can be lit-
tle doubt, yet the public, I opine, will continue to look
upon Colonel Charles Williams, sometimes called King
Charley, as our real first settler, and I am not surprised
that they should. The name Burney means nothing
to us; no one ever saw him save Captain Gist and he
does not devote a half dozen lines to him in his journal.
The personality of Colonel Williams touched and in-
fluenced everything in this valley. His was the domi-
nant spirit. Friends depended on him, enemies feared
him. A man of robust, powerful physique, bubbling
over with health and nervous energy, rough and un-
couth of speech, ready and willing to fight anybody
anywhere, cunning, resourceful, self-reliant and self-
assertive, a pioneer in every sense of the word.
As I have said, he came by water from Wheeling
via the Ohio and Muskingum Rivers at least as early
as the year 1798 and settled in this county first at
the village of the White Woman. I realize that in
making the statement that Colonel Williams came
into this county before the year 1800 I am in conflict
with both Mr. Mitchener and the Reverend Dr.
Hunt, who agree that he came in the latter year, but
neither of these gentlemen had seen a copy of Colonel
Williams' autobiography.^ I am indebted to James
R. Johnson of this city for a copy of it, and in it
Colonel Williams says that he moved from the salt
wells on the Muskingum to White Woman ^'illage,
that sometime thereafter the Indians in a foray from
^ Since this was written Dr. Hunt has informed nie tb.at he liad seen
Col. Williams' antobiography bnt he was not imjjressed witii its re-
liability on this point as I was.
Lower Sandusky stole his best clothes and his horse,
. together with the horses of some others, that soon after
the Indians stole several more horses and then he and
two Indians started in pursuit, followed the Indians
to Lower Sandusky, where they got the horses, eight
or nine in number, and brought them back. After this
he says he began having ague, which lasted for nine
months, and then he moved to Coshocton where "I
have lived thirty-two years." The autobiography
was written in the winter of 1830 and 1831, so that
he must have moved to Coshocton as early as 1799
and lived for a year at least at White Woman Village,
before that. Hence, I conclude he must have ar-
rived in this county not later than 1798.
If there were other white settlers either at White
Woman or at Coshocton when Colonel Williams
arrived, he fails to make any mention of them. He
does not say specifically that there were none, but
I am inclined to the belief that there were none, for
in his earlier pilgrimages he takes much pains to men-
tion white men whom he met and gives their names.
This was not the hrst trip Colonel Williams had
made into this valley, however. He tells us of two
trips, one alone and one with his brother-in-law.
Carpenter, some time about the year 1793 or 1794, as
near as I can figure it, to Newcomerstown, trading
with the Indians. In these commercial transactions
whiskey, largely diluted with water, was his chief
merchandise. On the second trip they found a man
named Robert Higgins at Newcomerstown who was
anxious to get married. They found "an old woman"
willing to marry him and he and Carpenter then
opened up the first matrimonial bureau in the valley
of which I have any authentic data, for they con-
ducted negotiations and attended to the details of the
wedding, finally wrapping up the newly made bride
and groom in a bear skin and putting them to bed.
Whether this woman was red or white the colonel does
not tell us.
The restless, migratory nature of this extraordinary
man is shown by his wanderings over Western Yiv-
ginia. Eastern Ohio, down the Ohio River to Marietta,
then with surveying parties into the interior of the
wild country, back and forth to his home. In the
fall and early winter of 1792 he is at Fort Miami, near
tela! ottsas}}
Cincinnati, with General Anthony Wayne; later in the
dead of that winter he is poling a sick man, one
William McDaniel, up the Ohio from Marietta nearly
three hundred miles, then back to the Muskingum at
Marietta, and up the Muskingum as far as the salt
wells, thence to White Woman, back to Coshocton, up
to Sandusky, looking for stolen horses, driving cattle
and sheep across the mountains to Pittsburg, and when
the war of i8i2 breaks out he joins General Harrison
and crossing the lake in a row boat, he arrives at De-
troit.
I have devoted so much space to Colonel Williams
for a variety of reasons. As a typical frontiersman,
restless, energetic, yet ambitious to accumulate
worldly goods, he furnishes a splendid example; the
influence of such men on their surroundings, the last-
ing character of that influence being recognized the
world over. It was to the sturdy, unyielding nature,
physical prowess, cunning sagacity of this man more
than all else that white men were induced to take ad-
vantage of the fertile soil, the boundless game, hshing
and trapping advantages that awaited them in these
valleys. Rough and domineering though he was, yet
the settler moving into the country soon recognized in
him a strong sense of crude justice and a familiarity
with the Indian character that meant protection to
family and property.
Until this period the white settler had avoided this
spot as if accursed, though every soldier or traveler
who had visited it had returned to the east with stories
of its extraordinary advantages. In every settlement
it was regarded as one of the favored spots of the conti-
nent, but their admiration and zeal to possess it was
more than offset by knowledge of the forbidding sur-
roundings. Who could hope to live in a place so long
known as the headquarters of so formidable a foe as
the Delawares'?
Colonel Williams came; he not onh^ lived in it a
year, but during that year he followed Indian horse
thieves to Lower Sandusky on foot, entered a war
dance in which between three hundred and four hun-
dred armed and painted braves were engaged, de-
manded the horses, threatened them with dire punish-
ment if the horses were not immediately delivered up,
obtained the horses, delivered a lecture to them on
I'llDMPiiix. M( KkhWN & (_'l).. 1)UV (iOODS.
horse stealing and its punishments and returned to his
home with his own and seven others belonging to other
people, and this, he tells us, was the last horse stealing
indulged in by the Indians in this county. The In-
dians recognized a master spirit and so did their white
brethren.
In the year following his removal to Coshocton from
White Woman's Village the stream of immigration set
in.
On March 20th, 1800, John Adams as president of
the United States issued a land patent to Elijah
Backus for thirty-one hundred and thiry-eight and
eight-tenth acres of land covering the present site of
the city of Coshocton. In the spring following the
town of Tuscarawas, stretching as I remember from the
river to Fifth Street, was laid out. In 181 1 the name
was changed to Coshocton.
In the spring of 1800 many settlers put in appear-
ance in different parts of the country. Ebenezer Buck-
ingham, a Connecticut Yankee with a large family, in-
cluding two sons-in-law and their families, arrived
early in the spring, coming from Cooperstown, New
York, having started on their journey on Christmas
Day, 1799, overland to Pittsburg, and the balance of
the way by water. In this same year came the Car-
penters, brothers-in-law of Colonel Williams, the
Morrisons, William and Samuel, Isaac Evans, who
settled in Oxford Township and gave the name to the
village of Evansburg, and many others. So rapid, in-
deed, was this influx of people that by April 1 st of the
year 1811 the legislature deemed it wise to form a new
county with Tuscarawas village as the county seat.
The name of which village was in the same year
changed to Coshocton as I have already said.
War with Great Britain was again impending.
Nursing her chagrin and refusing to be comforted.
Great Britain sought to renew the conflict and seized
upon the subterfuge of searching our vessels on the
high seas for deserters from her own.
A call to arms followed. That call was heard at the
Forks. In the years that had preceded the martial
spirit of the early settlers had been active and com-
panies of militia had been formed in different parts of
the county. These were voluntary organizations, with
no express authority from the state, and were viewed
Coshocton Natio.nai. I1a>
Inikriok Comioc. ion Xatio.nal Kank.
in two aspects, the first and more prominent being that
of a general frolic and secondarily protection.
In the eastern part of the county Isaac Evans had
early organized a company and so well were they
drilled and trained that at the first call to arms they
were ordered to a point near Columbus, mustered into
the service, provided with uniforms and United States
muskets and later j-oined General Harrison who had
succeeded to the command of the northwest following
the surrender of General Hull.
This company remained with General Harrison's
command until the following spring, taking an active
part in all its operations.
In the northwest part of the county Captain Isaac
Meredith had organized a company, while in the
southern part Captain Tanner had organized another.
At Coshocton Captain William Beard and Captain
Adam Johnson had each organized a company. These
troops were provided with no uniforms and each man
provided his own firearm.
After the departure of Captain Evans with his com-
pany word was received at Coshocton that General
Winchester, who was in command of the American
troops guarding the Michigan frontier like General
Hull, had met with crushing defeat and that the In-
dians, instigated by the British, had fallen upon the
settlers in Northern Ohio and had destroyed everything
before them as far south as Mansfield.
The Coshocton County troops, Colonel Charles
Williams in command, were hurriedly marched to
Mansfield. Colonel Williams it will be remembered,
had been there before when on his way, in 1 798, to San-
dusky in pursuit of Indian horse thieves. It may
readily be imagined that his name had not been entirely
forgotten in the lapse of time, for in a month the pur-
pose of their presence there had been accomplished and
they were returned home.
At another place in this work will be found the
muster rolls of Captain Beard's and Captain Johnson's
companies, they being the only ones extant, the roll of
Captain Beard's Company, for which I acknowledge
obligations to James R. Johnson, never having been
printed before.
This seems to comprise the services rendered by
Coshocton County's sons in this war of 1812, so far as
we have any definite, reliable information.
I have sought, with rather discouraging success, to
learn the number of men at this period and earlier be-
longing to these various military organizations for a
variety of reasons. First of all, it would enable us
to approximate within reasonable bounds the number
of inhabitants of the county at the time. Until the
close of the preceding century I have been able to say
with full assurance that the tide of immigration had
not yet set in, and by reference to the circumstances of
the establishment by Mr. Backus, of the town of Tus-
carawas at the Forks in 1.802, the formation of the new
county of Coshocton by the legislature in 1811, the
organization of these military companies in all parts
of the county prior to 1812 and their readiness for
service in the following year, that the tide had by this
time reached the flood. Modes and means of travel
were limited; the boomer, the speculator of modern
times was unknown, so that the immigrant came with
the purpose of establishing a home and adding to the
material development of the country and not to specu-
late with a view to moving on when he had cleared a
profit on his investment, as does his modern imitator.
Our race, our civilization, in this short period, had
supplanted the redman's, but it must not be forgotten
that the best exponents of race or civilization are rarely
found among the pioneers. He may bring dauntless
courage, a rude but wholesome honesty, a crude but
human sympathy, generosity, wisdom and the many
essentials or adornments of character, but usually the
finer, more ethical and spiritual elements are sadly
wanting, and Coshocton County pioneers were not ex-
ceptions to this rule.
The itinerant protestant preacher, as is usual, was
found making his visitations in the private homes,
holding services in the cabins and public houses and
in the summers and falls in the wood, but among a
community of hardy pioneers struggling to establish
agriculture to the point of producing sufficient to insure
against the grip of hunger in the long winters, conduct-
ing their commerce by barter and trade by reason of
the scarcity of currency, and with facilities for supply-
ing their wants for things which they did not produce
themselves limited to the water courses and the wagon
iJ. Worth Rtcketts.
trails across the mountains, the building ot church
buildings, thereby establishing the gospel in the com-
munity, which was to bring the softening and refining
influences ot a true civilization to these people, was a
slow and very laborious process.
The minister ot that day must be a man of versa-
tility. He must own a horse or be capable of travel-
ing on foot many weary miles through all kinds of
weather, sufficiently adaptable to be willing to take
"pot luck" at the table and sleep with the children or
the hired hand; when he found his meeting invaded
by a crowd of young roughs, drunk and bent on dis-
persing his congregation, he must be able to either dis-
courage them by a powerful appeal to their better
nature or to lick the ring-leaders; but above all and
over all, to achieve success in his calling he must be
able to paint the tortures of the damned in colors so
litelike that the smell of brimstone would last in their
nostrils until his next visit.
Generally these men, if not logicians and profound
students, were possessed of splendid physiques, great
lung capacity, vivid imaginations and a picturesque
vocabulary. Their plan of salvation was largely emo-
tional and full of dynamic power. A camp or brush
meeting was an event. People came many miles, on
horseback, in wagons and on foot, carrying provisions
to last many days. The woods resounded with their
songs and shouts of praise. After a week or more of
this kind of devotion they returned home physically
exhausted, but with spiritual strength renewed. It
was not always that the man who seemed to get the
largest share of this kind of inspiration that retained
it best. Inoculation was not always accomplished with
the loudest and most demonstrative. The dynamic
force often exploded in these people and they were
ready at the next meeting of the kind to absorb another
charge.
At this day and date we are inclined to look back
upon these scenes with slight approval, but remember-
ing the boundless good accomplished in Europe by that
austere man of God, John Calvin, with a plan of sal-
vation the very antithesis of the emotional, and real-
izing the absolute necessity for such a man and such
a theology at that time among those people, we are
moved to exclaim in the language of the old hymn.
JIeRBIc, MnMMINT KrIcIKH FY ( ). S. lilJWEN. WllRKS
^r., Coshocton.
CosirorTON Provision Co
"God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to per-
form." The difference in the times and the people
required different treatment of the subject. Both
plans have served their purpose.
The beneficial that was in Calvin's is preserved to
us, that which is at war with our ideas of a true democ-
racy and the universal love of God have become but
ecclesiastical history. But little of the emotional is
left in our church service. A base imitation is at times
served to us by some mountebank, who, for a consid-
eration, enormously disproportioned to his intellectual
attainments, but in just proportion to his vituperative
language and reckless disregard of truth, imposes upon
us a week or two of his worse than valueless time.
This, however ,is not emotional religion. It is a prosti-
tution of the name of Him who came to earth to call
sinners to repentance and bear the glad tidings of the
Father's love for all his children.
In the early years of the nineteenth century, in spite
of all discouraging surroundings, these devoted min-
isters succeeded in forming little congregations or so-
cieties all over the county, and finally in i8l l a church
of the Methodist Episcopal denomination was erected
in Washington Township and known as Chalfants.
Built of logs, I understand it is still standing. Another
building at another location has since been built, but
the same church organization is in existence to-day.
In another place I shall treat the subject of church
extension more at length. What I have said I hope
may furnish some idea of the early struggle of those
splendid characters doing the Master's work.
During all these years the settlers found plenty for
busy hands to do. Forests of giant trees were to be
cleared for farming, temporary houses were to be made
permanent, permanent homes to be built. Roads were
to be established and built connecting the various set-
tlements. Roads to the outside world for the purposes
of trade were needed.
When a clearing was to be made, a road to be cut
through the forest, or a house to be raised, all the able-
bodied men in the neighborhood assembled, bringing
wives and daughters. Contests in the work were in-
augurated. Feats of skill, strength and daring were
indulged in in friendly contests, resulting occasionally
in loss of temper at the chagrin of defeat followed by
rilur,. CoLorv, Ll'mbki
fjRKKK-AMI.HIf AN WHOLESALE IcF. CreAM.
1470865
a fight or two, but even these were more than half
friendly, for it was but another way of expressing con-
fidence in individual prowess.
In the evening a dance or frolic followed. Such
assemblies constituted the principal social intercourse
of the day. At such, many a husky young frontiers-
man met for the first time the apple of his eye, and
after spending most of the evening in the dance or
frolic he hoisted her to his horse behind him and accom-
panied her to her home, where he spent the remainder
of the evening in the rude courtship of the times.
Modes and means of entertainment were limited.
The general muster which was inaugurated about
this time was another great event in the lives of these
people of simple tastes.
On general muster day Colonel Williams or one of
his successors would appear on the scene, mounted on
the showiest steed in the county, wearing a three
cocked hat surmounted by an enormous cockade of
feathers, shining brass epaulets of heroic size on his
shoulders, a broad sash from shoulder to waist, and a
sword at his side that required the full length of his
arm to draw. Line officers on foot decked in showy
raiment and the rank and file, armed with as many dif-
ferent kind of arms as there were men in line and each
dressed to suit his own taste. During the drill hours,
lined up on either side, were the wives, daughters and
sweethearts of the militia men, giving expression to
their admiration and excitement by sly glances and
much tittering and simpering. When the drill was
ended a few visits to the whiskey barrel and then real
war began. Old grudges were warmed over, new ones
created, and few men returned home unaccommodated
if he really wanted to fight. Bloody noses, black eyes,
and so forth, had disappeared, however, by next gen-
eral muster day and the scene was again enacted.
The husking bee, where the corn of the neighbor was
"husked out" by the neighborhood, brought together
the belles and beaus for a frolic. The finder of each
red ear of corn was privileged to kiss the girl of his
choice, and I am told that no young man ever thought of
going to one of these functions without having at least
one red ear concealed on his person, and some of them
many more. Indeed, at times a single red ear was made
to serve its purpose at every husking bee in a neighbor-
hood. Taffy pullings, quilting bees, log-rollings,
wood choppings, and every other subterfuge was re-
sorted to to bring the people together, and in this way
was the dull life on the frontier made merry and life
worth living. They worked hard and they need must
play hard.
The thrift and rigid economy of these enterprising
people had soon accumulated more cattle and other
live stock than would supply the home demand.
Colonel Williams and others gathered up the surplus
and soon opened a market at Pittsburg, driving herds
of cattle, flocks of turkeys and droves of other domestic
animals across the mountains, bringing back the pro-
ceeds on their persons, thus exposing themselves to at-
tack by footpads, who began to put in an appearance
as soon as this traffic was established. Few of them
were robbed, however, as they rarely traveled singly,
and to attack a party of these resolute, self-reliant men
required a degree of reckless daring, rare even in those
rough days.
At first the settler was compelled to depend largely
on game with which the forests abounded and fish with
which the rivers teemed, but when a crop had been
raised, corn, potatoes, wheat and other cereals and veg-
etables were added to his food supply. While the
corn was in the roasting ear he enjoyed the succulent
morsel from the cob, but when fall came he followed
the plan which his race had learned from the red man
of macerating it in the hollow of a stone or stump
rudely fashioned for that purpose. Some time after
the hand mill made its appearance and then his wants
were readily supplied.
When crushed by either of these methods the finer
particles were baked into cakes, while the coarser were
used as hominy. By 1811 Jacob Waggoner and
Thomas Johnson had built quite a mill (a four burr
affair) on Wills Creek in Linton Township, which I
am informed was the first regular mill established in
the county. Others, however, were soon after built in
various parts of the county.
Salt to preserve meat and hides, as well as to season
vegetables and other articles of diet, was from the first
of great concern. Salt parties were organized twice
a year. Taking a rude, flat-bottomed boat or raft with
provisions to last a week or longer, they "poled" the
Mitchell & Co., (Iknkral Mkki handise.
cratt down the river to the salt wells in Muskingum
County, where they were permitted to evaporate the
salt on the shares — dividing equally with the owner
of the wells. On the return the proceeds were divided,
each man taking a share and each boy a half share.
Any surplus the individual might have, alter supplying
his own needs, he could readily dispose ot to families
not represented in the party. This plan was depended
on tor many years. George F. Cassingham, father ot
former Congressman John W. Cassingham, told me
many years ago that when a boy he had made the trip
several times, receiving his half share on the return.
Until about the year 1808 the settlers depended
largely upon the crude Indian plan of curing hides
for making their foot wear. Quite probably some
leather and possibly some tinished stock had been
brought over the mountains before this, but the reliable
supply was the home made product.
About this time Andrew Lybarger, grandfather of
General E. L. Lybarger, started a tannery at Coshoc-
ton, which under various changes of ownership con-
tinued to run until recent years. This was the first
tannery established in the county. In the years imme-
diately following the Carharts started a tannery at
Roscoe, Thomas Johnson one at Plainfield, George
Wolf at Keene and numerous others followed.
At first clothing was made largely either of the skins
of fur-bearing animals or of cloth spun and woven at
home. Like leather and shoes, probably some came
across the mountains but the chief supply was home-
spun.
A carding mill was started at a very early date at
Plainfield, but when, by whom, how successful or how
long it tiourished, I am unable to learn.
These simple facts are sufficient to assure us that the
early settlers were soon supplied with many of the
necessities and some of the, to them, luxuries of life.
I have said that the establishment and opening of
roads early engaged the attention of the settlers.
They had entered the county either by way of the river,
by the trail made by Colonel Bouquet, or by the old
Moravian trail, which had been followed by General
Broadhead.
Before the establishment of the county the road from
Marietta via Coshocton to Cleveland had been made.
R. X. Kirk. General ("iintra< H'Ii.
liii: A. II. Thomson lV Son Warkiiouse.
■i**">>>P<<i<9ISSI
»» ll ■» 1 ll . Irw ii l ir » ii| » :
'I in. IIkima.n Heating anij I'li-mhinc Co.
By 1812 the legislature had provided for the state road
from Coshocton to Cadiz and Cambridge. In the years
following and ever since, indeed, Coshocton County has
been pretty busily engaged laying out and establishing
public highways.
Public ferries were also designated and established
at a very early day, notably at Coshocton, below New-
comerstown and near Plainheld. I cannot leave the
subject of the early struggle for comfort, convenience
and wealth of the citizens of that day without some
reference to the exalted importance entertained by
them of the Muskingum River. That it was a navi-
gable stream as far as Coshocton they entertained no
doubt, notwithstanding many of them had ascended it
for a long distance on their way hither.
Mr. Backus in dedicating the town plat of Tuscara-
was had taken infinite pains to reserve to lot owners
along the river front the right to build dockage, etc.,
though he dedicated the land in the rear of the same lots
for a public common.
This conviction of its navigability was entertained
for a great many years, during which time quite a traffic
with shallow boats had been established and the depth
of the river learned, but so tenacious were they of this
conviction that they were loath to relinquish the ridicu-
lous idea.
I have been endeavoring to picture in a concrete form
the conditions, surroundings, mental processes, activi-
ties and development of the people who dwelt here
during the period I have covered.
If I have shown an almost ideal social democracy,
with all the elements of society which inspire in one
direction and retard in another the onward niarch of
Christian civilization, the heroic struggle of a people
to conquer the elements of nature which stood in the
pathway to prosperity, with no aid from the outside,
simple in their wants, childish in their tastes and
amusements, frugal and industrious, living almost en-
tirely to themselves without inspiration from the out-
side world, I shall not confess to entire failure.
Until 1820 provisions for the education of their
children had scarcely claimed the attention of the
settlers, so busy had they been with the material affairs
of life. Having been denied more than a mere smatter-
ing of learning themselves, they had not been quick to
^KN i.i.i I. Lii;kak\
J'akk \'n \v I'.im.iaku anu Smmkim, I'aki
recognize the importance of education. Many young
men and probably young women, thirsting for educa-
tion, had made noble individual effort, but books and
teachers were scarce and the state up to this time had
made but little intelligent, effective effort in the as-
sumption of its duty of general education. The gen-
eral government as early as 1803 had granted the one
thirty-sixth part of all its military lands for educational
purposes, but a silly effort by the state to play landlord
and rent those lands had rendered the grant useless.
The organization of schools and school-districts, even
after 1820, was slow and unsystematic, but this fact
must not be charged to the want of appreciation of the
necessity and advantages of education in the people
alone. Until 1827 the state continued to hold its
school lands for rental, getting practically no income
from them. The people were poor and easily fright-
ened at the prospective expense. Moreover, the legis-
lature early began the enactment of the stupid legisla-
tion on school matters which they have so persistently
followed ever since. The experience of nearly a cen-
tury has taught them little or nothing on the subject.
At the present day our school laws cannot by any
stretch of the imagination be regarded as a system.
Having their inception in ignorance of the necessities
of the people, they have since been patched and supple-
mented as suited the selfish desires of those in power.
In another place I shall devote more time to the
details of the establishment of our schools and the
representative teachers from time to time engaged.
To return to the material development of the county.
The rush into the state of Ohio after its evacuation by
the Indians had begun, can hardly be appreciated at
this day when we consider the primitive means of
travel. Sometime before the year 1825 the people
throughout the state had become impressed with the
truth that mere ability to produce with no markets in
which to dispose of the surplus products and transpor-
tation facilities so primitive as to consume the profits of
production, could not mean wealth or development.
The wagon roads, the trails and the rivers would no
longer meet their requirements.
As an indication of the condition of the local
markets at that time, permit me to quote a very few
prices. Cured hams sold at three cents a pound, eggs
Till: Ghav ITakhwake Co.
four cents a dozen, flour one dollar a hundred pounds,
whiskey twelve and one-half cents a gallon. These
figures are taken from the writings left by William
Wing who recently died at Columbus, Ohio, and are
reliable.
The Ohio Canal from Cleveland to Portsmouth was
proposed. It was an enterprise of colossal magnitude
for that time, but the new state was blessed with men
of financial as well as physical courage. The state de-
cided to undertake it, and on the fourth of July,
1825, at Licking Summit in Licking County the first
shovelful of earth was taken in this great work. Fur-
ther adding to the above quotations of prices, I may
say that the workmen received eight dollars for each
full month's work, or thirty and three-fourths cents
per day with boarding and lodging and four "jiggers"
of whiskey per day. At the end of three or four
months, however, the "jiggers" were withdrawn, as
they were interfering with the progress of the work.
On the 21st day of August, 1830, the first boat en-
tered the county via the canal. It was the Monti-
cello from Cleveland. She tied up at the foot of Bou-
quet hill where she remained several days creating much
excitement and drawing a multitude of wild-eyed vis-
itors.
As soon as the canal was finished as far south as
Dresden, boats began carrying freight and passengers
north. Wheat immediately rose to seventy-five cents
a bushel and other products in proportion. Towns
already on the line of the canal began to assume a
new importance and new ones to spring up. They be-
came at once the centers of trade. Whatever was to
be sold abroad must come to them for shipment.
Soon it was learned that it would pay better to ship
flour, meal and other mill products than to ship the
grain. Mills were accordingly built along the line,
operated by water drawn from the canal. Towns in
the vicinity of the canal but not near enough to receive
its advantages, saw their trade diverted and new com-
petition built up.
In competition with this new water course the
natural water courses with their irregular currents,
shallows and unstable supply of water lost their im-
portance.
'^fmmm^mfm^mmmn^immm
Lynlie & GossHR, Clothiers.
' .^[■i^S'i^^'''
I kr.l. II/L lENMlLLEK, TkaNSFER AND StORA
Cleveland, always a good market, Cincinnati and
other growing cities were now accessible by the best
artery of trade in the whole western country.
This was no longer an exclusively agricultural com-
munity. Commerce had established itself among us.
Evansburg, Canal Lewisville and Roscoe were im-
portant shipping and receiving ports. As Roscoe took
on airs of importance Coshocton's star began to wane.
Six years later, 1836, the canal was begun from
Roscoe up the fertile valley of the beautiful Walhond-
ing. On its completion in 1842 Warsaw, Walhonding
and Cavallo were added to the shipping points in the
county.
The commercial importance of these waters con-
tinued until in the late sixties when the railroad sys-
tems of the state had assumed overshadowing im-
portance and that of the canals was retiring.
In 1853, the Steuben ville and Indiana railroad, now
a part of the Pennsylvania system, was built through
Coshocton from Steubenville to Newark. At first its
influence was hardly felt, but in a few years it super-
seded the canal as the principal means of transporta-
tion and the pendulum of commerce moved away from
the canal towns.
In following the drift of the commercial growth of
Coshocton County I have wandered past the period of
the Mexican War, not because it was overlooked, but
because a digression at that time would likely have
broken the proper contemplation of the subject then in
hand.
War with Mexico had long been impending. Mex-
ico had become an independent nation in 1821.
Adventurous American spirits crossed over into the
Mexican province of Texas and became settlers there.
In 1836 she threw oif Mexican allegiance and became
an independent nation, very much to the chagrin of
Mexico. On December 29, 1845, at her own request,
she was admitted to and became a part of our Union.
In the year following the impending storm of war
broke.
I shall not go into the merits or demerits of the causes
that led up to that struggle. For the first time in our
nation's history partisan politics affected the prosecu-
tion of a war. One of the great political parties fa-
vored it and the other opposed.
The loyalty of the people of Coshocton County was
appealed to and the first call to arms was responded to
with alacrity.
By the hfth day of June Captain Jesse Meredith's
company, one hundred and ten strong, embarked on a
canal boat at Roscoe for the front. Though the call of
the president for volunteers was for only hf ty thousand
and Ohio's quota but about twenty-four hundred, an-
other company began forming soon after the departure
of the first. Captain James Irvine, a member of the
Coshocton County bar and later in the war of the
Rebellion, was finally captain of this second company.
This company, however, was composed only in part of
Coshocton County men ; how many I am not able to say.
Serious doubt of their acceptance by the government
had prevented many from entering. At the general
rendezvous of the Ohio troops at Cincinnati every
time a call was made a riot had started among the sol-
diers to decide who should have the privilege of going.
I shall not attempt to follow either of these com-
panies through the services rendered by them. It is
enough to say that each did its full duty.
Of all the men who entered the service of their coun-
try in that war from this county Joseph Sawyer alone
survives. Of him I shall have more to say at another
place in this work.
Whether in sympathy with the war with Mexico or
not, we cannot contemplate the loyalty, bravery and
devotion of these troops without a swelling of pride in
our hearts that on all occasions when called upon our
people have been ready to respond.
To all save a very few the Mexican War is now no
more than a dim memory, an epoch in our history.
To once more take up the thread of the commercial
side of life. I hope I have made it clear that the open-
ing of the Ohio Canal had put this county in commer-
cial touch with the outside world. No longer was the
local market to fix prices on their products, but the
same were to be regulated by the outside demand.
This brought a new element into the problems of life,
the real value of money as contra-distinguished from
its nominal value. To us to whom a dollar in Maine
is a dollar in California, it is difficult to appreciate a
currency which enjoyed only a local circulation and
was of uncertain or no value outside that localitv.
Tfy^Tnci. Qooxx^rxno
Mr
Inukpknuknt I'fH Company. John 1). Stevkn-son, 1
ROPRIETOR.
"Reddog," "wild cat," script and all kinds of mediums
of exchange were in use. True, markets were then con-
trolled by the natural law of demand and supply.
Trusts, cold storage companies, wheat and corn pits
and other combinations for the artificial control of
prices had not come into our commercial life, but an
insufficient general currency had made some other
means of representing value essential to the carrying
on of business.
State banks issued currency of their own, merchants
issued script to their customers, and at lirst no ques-
tions were raised. The dishonest soon saw in this a
plan to get rich quick. Before long the currency was
flooded with fraudulent, so called, money. The hon-
est but unskilled were victimized on every hand. A
panicky condition seized the commerce of the country
and business was paralyzed in some localities. By dint
of industry and economy our people were increasing
their earthly possessions, but they were defrauded in
this manner of the profits. This condition of affairs
continued till state banks were prohibited from issuing
currency, and private script abolished, by law.
I speak of this episode in the life of our people, not
because it was peculiar to them, for the effect was gen-
eral throughout the land, but because it incidentally
robbed them of the profits of earnest endeavor on the
one hand, while it aroused them to the necessity of a
uniform currency on the other. A new nation, founded
on new ideals, was meeting new conditions, the natural
outgrowth of all this novelty. Had I the time and
space how interesting it would be to trace it along its
tortuous course through this labyrinth of semi-darkness
to the light of day which shone when a dollar was worth
a hundred cents wherever found, whether stamped on
metal or printed on paper.
This, of course, would not be a proper place for such
a discussion, and I am only referring to it as an element
which came into the affairs of the people of this county
at that time and produced important effects on their
lives.
I find myself now approaching the most eventful pe-
riod in our nation's life, the War of the Rebellion. To
those yet living it can never become "but a mere mem-
ory," an episode in the nation's life. To them it is
not a mere page of history, a scene or act in the drama
S^MJkiM^C^LA:;^^
of life. To those of us who bear the deep impressions
which such memories leave on the mind of tender youth
it is a living, breathing monster; stripped of teeth and
claws it is no longer able to wound or hurt, but, unable
to die, its repulsive presence keeps us ever mindful of
its horrors and the desolation it wrought.
For a myriad of reasons I cannot follow my inclina-
tion to go into a general discussion of the questions
that throng my mind. My task is with local conditions
and events and I shall digress only where necessary.
A half century has rolled away since the first gun was
fired and with it has disappeared all feeling of bitter-
ness and hatred. It is only when I hear or read some
slighting word of the old soldier that I find myself
unable to control a feeling of resentment, but it is not
toward the brave man who wore a gray uniform, for
such remarks do not emanate from such sources. Four
years under the guns of the boys in blue taught him
to respect and honor them as the man in blue learned
by the same token to respect him in gray.
At the birth of our nation was sown a seed of discord
which sooner or later was certain to ripen into strife,
the fruits of which must be bloodshed and desolation.
As subjects of Great Britain we had instituted and
established slavery. Simultaneously had grown up
with it a strong sense of its moral shame and the com-
mercial error of this kind of labor. These warring
elements had for years preserved a sort of armed neu-
trality. When our constitution was written this an-
tagonism was irrepressible and irreconcilable. The
nation, exhausted physically and financially by its
struggle for independence, a compromise, which could
be no more than an armistice, was effected. The con-
stitution was silent on the subject of slavery. This
left the question where it always had been. Each
partv assured that it could get nothing better than con-
stitutional silence, yielded a dissatisfied assent and
the contention, no nearer settlement than in the be-
ginning, was left to accumulate virulence and heed-
less frenzy.
For a third of a century it smouldered. In the
homes, the stores, the shops, the offices, in the churches
it was the fruitful, the inexhaustible subject of dis-
cussion. But not till 1820 did it assume the absorb-
ing interest politically it ever afterward maintained.
Metzler and Kobkktson Drug Store.
The passage of the Act by Congress known as the Mis-
souri Compromise, which undertook to, and did tempo-
rarily, fix the line of division between free and slave
territory brought to the surface the irrepressible char-
acter of the conflict so long waged beneath the surface.
The flames burst forth and though many efforts in
the years following were made by patriotic men to
control them they continued to burn until quenched
at Appomattox. The Omnibus Bill of 1850, the
Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854, the Dred Scott De-
cision by the U. S. Supreme Court in 1857 were a
series of incidents that served only to irritate the peo-
ple to the point of frenzy. I use this latter word with
a full appreciation of its significance.
All logical, patriotic consideration of slavery and its
relation to the welfare of the country, its moral and
social aspects, its effects upon the laboring classes, the
seriousness of the impending crisis to the nation, in-
deed every consideration that appreciative, sober
thoughtfulness would suggest was silenced by extrava-
gant denunciation and vociferous defiance. The man
who saw in slavery a crime against the laws of God and
morals was denounced as a "Nigger lover." He who
pleaded for the laboring classes, was a heartless
wretch, willing to destroy the property of another that
he might profit by it. One who conscientiously be-
lieved it were better that the nation be severed than
that it try longer to exist half slave and half free,
or than to take the chance of slavery being recognized
as an institution all over the land, or than that we risk
our very national life in a struggle that might so ex-
haust our resources as to render us an easy prey to a
foreign power, and who therefore said "Let them de-
part in peace," was in the eyes of his neighbor dis-
loyal to his country.
Discussions of the various and varied aspects of the
subject, on the stump, in Congress, from the pulpit,
were in intemperate and inflammatory language. In-
stead, therefore, of people coming closer together, by
thoughtful consideration of a subject which meant so
much to all, the breach only widened and soon became
impassable.
In the south the minister of the Gospel saw in the
negro race the sons of Ham destined to be the hewers
'I'liE Luna Tiieatre.
of wood and the drawers of water, the servants, not of
the Most High, but of men.
In the north Wendell Phillips, with matchless
dramatic power, had pictured him as typihed in Tous-
saint L'Ouverture, the negro hero of San Domingo,
whom he elevated to a place above Washington him-
self in these extravagant but moving words, "Fifty
years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of
history will put Phocion for the Greek, Brutus for the
Roman, Hampden tor England, Fayette tor France,
choose Washington as the bright consummate tiower of
our earlier civilization, then, dipping her pen in the
sunlight, will write in the clear blue, above them all,
the name ot the soldier, the statesman, the martyr
Toussaint L'Ouverture."
The southern planter saw in the negro the tempera-
ment and heat-resisting power which had made and
could maintain cotton as king. This meant to him
wealth, position and power.
To the northerner, slavery meant the ultimate de-
struction of white labor; to the moralist, degradation of
both the white and the black races. The true states-
man saw in the severance of the nation the end of its
greatness and usefulness as a civilizing power. Every
man looked trom his own point of vantage and was in-
tolerant of the views of others not in harmony with his
own. How we wish at this late day that the cup might
have passed, that blind fury might have received light
in some other way and the blood and tears and anguish
been spared.
The election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency
made this impossible. An overt act of treason as de-
fined by our constitution followed and the curse of
civilization, civil war, was on.
I have spoken of the period covering the breaking out
of the civil war not in a spirit of criticism or of apology,
but in an etfort to picture the conditions, showing the
varieties of view, intolerance of adverse opinions and
the mental and nervous energies of a young giant na-
tion on the verge of madness. Why revive or attempt
to revive the memories of that appalling time'? Mis-
takes were common on every hand. The passing years
have softened the asperities. There can be but one
opinion now, — however great the suffering and sacri-
fice, the results justified them all. The south rejoices
with the north that slavery is no more, and the events
of each recurring year emphasize the necessity to the
tuture of mankind that this nation should ever remain
as the fathers intended, "one and inseparable."
Secession was formally begun by South Carolina,
December 29th, i860. This was quickly followed by
Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and
Texas, all by the first of February following. But like
"Articles of Nullification," that had preceded seces-
sion, this was but an overt act of treason.
On Friday, April 12th, 1861, Fort Sumter, off
Charleston harbor, was fired on by the confederate
forces under General Beauregard, an overt act of
treason.
On the Monday following, April 15th, President Lin-
coln issued his proclamation declaring a state of war
and calling for seventy-five thousand militia volun-
teers to support the government in upholding the
dignity and sovereignty of the nation. On the next
day word of the proclamation reached Coshocton and
immediately a meeting was held at the law office of
Nicholas and Williams, in a little one-story frame
structure where the Realty Building now stands. At
this meeting were present John D. Nicholas, (late Com-
mon Pleas Judge), Addison M. Williams (the other
member of the law firm), Richard M. Voorhees (at
present Judge of the Circuit Court) , A. L. Harris (then
editor of the Coshocton Age), Reason F. Baker, Cap-
tain James Irvine (a member of the Coshocton bar, a
former Mexican soldier and later Colonel of the 16th
O. V. L), Dr. A. L. Cass, and probably others, but
whose names I am unable to learn.
Judge Voorhees was made chairman and Mr. Harris
secretary of the meeting. A committee consisting of
R. M. Voorhees, Reason F. Baker, A. M. Williams,
Captain Irvine and A. L. Harris, was appointed to is-
sue a call for a public meeting at the court house to
take action upon the proclamation of the president.
This meeting was accordingly called for Friday, April
19th, at 2:00 o'clock. When that hour arrived the
capacity of the court room was overtaxed and a large
overflow stood on the outside. Every section of the
county was represented, loyal Democrats and Re-
publicans joining in patriotic fraternity.
Stirring patriotic speeches were made by John D.
Nicholas, Josiah Given, (afterwards Judge of the Su-
preme Court of Iowa), and Richard Lanning, (after-
ward Major of the 8oth O. V. I) .
A muster roll for volunteers was started and Judge
Voorhees enjoys the proud distinction of being hrst to
attach his name to the roll. A sufhcient number of
volunteers was obtained by Wednesday of that week
to form two companies. It will be remembered that
this meeting was held on Friday. On the following
Friday the companies went to Camp Jackson at Co-
lumbus, Ohio, and the next day, Saturday, April 27th,
were mustered into the service.
In the regimental organization James Irvine was
made Colonel, David W. Marshall Adjutant, John D.
Nicholas, Captain of Company A, and Richard W. Mc-
Clain, Captain of Company D, all Coshocton County
men, and the companies were attached to the 16th
O. V. I.
The term of service of this regiment being short, three
months in length, it saw, as a matter of course, a very
limited service, but we may say in passing that it did
well all that was required of it and at the expiration of
its time, August 18th, was mustered out, most of its
members, however, immediately volunteering in three-
year organizations then forming.
In the short space both of time and space allowed me,
it will be impossible to even briefly outline the serv-
ices rendered by each organization from this county,
though it certainly would be a labor of love to do so.
One incident, however, occurred in the service of these
two companies, or rather the regiment to which they
belonged, the 16th O. V. I., so unique and interesting
in its character that it deserves to be somewhere re-
corded, and as it has never been printed I cannot resist
the temptation to here preserve it.
On the 3rd day of June, 1861, the 16th O. \. I. and
batteries D and F of the First Regiment Ohio \"olun-
teer Artillery attacked the confederate forces at Phil-
lippi. West Virginia. At the first discharge of the
artillery the confederate forces broke and ran. In the
pursuit members of Companies A and D drove some
confederate cavalrymen from a barn where they had
stabled their horses. Blood was discovered in the barn.
On looking about the gruesome sight of a cavalry boot
with part of a human leg still inside of it was dis-
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Coshocton Automobile Compan
covered. Inspection ot the haymow disclosed the poor
soldier to whom but a few moments before they had
belonged. He was lying on the hay, where his com-
rades had hurriedly placed him, in a tainting condition.
He was carefully handed down, the regimental surgeon
called and after his injured leg had been properly
dressed, he was sent to the hospital at Washington
City. His leg had been shot away by a cannon ball.
He was the only confederate soldier wounded on that
day, and so far as we have any history he was the first
confederate soldier to shed blood lor the confederate
cause, certainly the first to be struck by the discharge
of artillery.
The incident was, of course, soon forgotten, but in
July, 1903, the 16th Ohio, to which after the death of
my father I had the honor to be elected an honorary
member, held a reunion at my residence. Learning
that that one-legged soldier was still alive, he was in-
vited to be present. Very much to our surprise and
joy he came. The meeting of those grizzled old vet-
erans was one ot the most touching scenes I have ever
witnessed. All the hate and venom of forty years ago
had melted into love and patriotic fellowship. As I
saw those old "Yanks" showering that old "Reb" with
atfectionate attention I could not realize that they had
once been bitter enemies seeking the life of each other,
and when I heard the old ex-Confederate's address, full
of patriotic sentiment to the boys in acknowledgment
of their address of welcome to him, I could hardly be-
lieve he had ever raised his hand against the old flag
which his forefathers and theirs had baptized with their
blood and shook into the breeze more than a hundred
years before. Good old Ben Wiggins, when intro-
duced to Mr. Hanger on that day, with tears in his
eyes, while shaking his hand, said, "Forty-two years
ago in an old stable in West ^'irginia I saw a part of
a man and to-day for the first time I see the balance of
him."
The cannon ball that on that day cost Mr. Hanger
his leg and very nearly his life was afterwards to be
the foundation of a large fortune. Being poor, after
leaving the hospital he made his own artificial leg.
This he improved from time to time until the Hanger
artificial legs were patented and sold all over the civi-
lized world. At the time he was here he had retired
from business and was enjoying the fruits of his in-
ventive genius, which, he said in his address, had been
first awakened by the discharge of the artillery on that
ever-memorable third day of June, 1861.
Before President Lincoln's second call for volunteers,
the heroic patriotism of Coshocton County was again
manifest. Indeed the events of the entire period from
the beginning to the end of that awe-inspiring struggle
prove the patriotic devotion of Coshocton County's
sons. Hardly had the 16th Ohio moved to the front
than other organizations began forming.
By June 6th, 1861, Captain Josiah Given had re-
cruited a full company in the county awaiting the an-
ticipated call for their services, and on the 13th started
for the front where they were attached to the 24th
O. V. I. as Company K. They had no sooner left than
Captain Wilson M. Stanley went into camp at the same
point, the old fair ground, with his company, afterward
assigned to the 32nd O. V. L, and awaited'orders to go
to the front.
At every demand for more men at the scenes of strife
Coshocton County was found in the forefront with her
volunteers. I am saying this in full memory that later,
in 1863, a draft was instituted and enforced in this
county, but I shall have more to say on that subject
later on.
On the second call of the president for volunteers
Coshocton County was ready and responded.
As soon as the three months or First Call Men, as
they love and deserve to be known, had returned in
August, 1861, Captain John D. Nicholas began re-
cruiting a new company for the three years' service.
This effort was at once joined by others. In a short
time live full companies had been recruited with Cap-
tains Nicholas, B. F. Heskett, William Fatton, D. W.
Marshall and James M. Crooks in command. These
companies were assigned to the pst O. V. I. and Rich-
ard W. McClain, a Coshocton County man was later
made its colonel. This regiment was ready for service
early in October.
Soon after. Captains Pren Metham, George W. Pep-
per, William F. Marshall and others began recruiting
for additional companies. By the beginning of the
new year enough men had volunteered to fill three com-
panies and by the time they were ready to go into camp.
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which they did early in February, enough more had
volunteered to make nearly another company. All
were assigned to the 8oth O. V. I., of which regiment
Captain Metham afterward became the Colonel.
At the opening of the new year Captain John V. His-
lip began recruiting a company and by the I2th of
January reported with a full company at Newark and
was assigned to the 69th O. V. I., and by February 9th
Captain James Stewart had recruited a company and
was assigned to the 76th O. V. I.
In July and August following two more companies
were recruited in the county and assigned to the 97th
O. V. I., Captains C. C. Nichols and Emanuel Shafer
commanding. Besides these two companies a large
part of Company F of the same regiment was recruited
of Coshocton County boys.
In the fall Captains B. F. Sells and O. C. Farquhar
recruited two companies, which were assigned to the
122nd O. V. I., and in October, 1862, started for the
front from Zanesville.
By the end of November Colonel James Irvine had
organized a company of cavalry which in a few days
was assigned to the 9th O. V. C., Colonel Irvine later
becoming colonel of this regiment.
During this period of time, so anxious to enlist were
Coshocton County's sons, that many of them, failing to
get into organizations being formed in the county,
crossed the line into adjoining counties and became
members of companies being recruited at those points,
and were not credited to this county.
This demand on the resources of the county for men
had about exhausted it, and no organizations were re-
cruited for the field until the 69th Battalion was called
out and left for the front about the 10th of May, 1864.
This organization having been formed many months
before as a home guard, was called into the service by
the governor of the state and was assigned, two com-
panies of the original hve to the 142nd and three to
the 143rd.
This chronology of events cannot fail to impress the
reader with the tireless energy and devoted patriotism
of our people of that day and to inspire the question,
why was it necessary in 1863 to levy a draft on the
county to fill our quota of troops. No county in the
state, we can safely say, sent a larger proportion of
soldiers to the front as measured by the number of
men able to bear arms. No county lost credit for so
many men by enlistments outside the county as did this
one. No county was more nearly depleted by the
spring of 1863 of her sons able to bear arms. Was it
because the state of Ohio failed to respond to the call
of the president for volunteers'? The Roster Commis-
sion of Ohio, composed of Ex-Senator J. B. Foraker,
Ex-Adjutant General H. A. Axline and J. S. Robin-
son, tells us that "the State of Ohio exceeded her quota
by 13,387, that in this respect Massachusetts and Illi-
nois alone of all the states can boast as proud a rec-
ord." Hence, how could Ohio be subject to draft at
all, but if so why should Coshocton County be involved
in it with a record so proud as her history shows'?
An investigation of the credit records in the office of
the Adjutant General of the state furnishes evidence
of most stupendous frauds in crediting soldiers of one
county to some other county in which the soldier ac-
credited had never set foot. As late as the year 1881
I made collection of several thousand dollars from
counties in the northern part of this state for bounties
due Coshocton County soldiers who had been surrep-
titiously credited to those counties, and for whose serv-
ices they received credit, and to whom they refused to
pay the promised bounty until an act of the legislature
was passed compelling them so to do.
I am not emphasizing these facts to excuse the man
who resisted the draft, but I am speaking but the naked
truth to clear my county from the imputation that a
draft was necessary to induce her sons to perform their
sacred duty to their country. It is true that there were
some men in the county, as in all the counties in the
nation, who could only be induced to enter the army in
this way, but they were not sufficiently numerous in
this county to have so involved it in shame.
In the presence of all these facts I am privileged to
say, and I say it with a heart swelling with pride, that
Coshocton County as a people was loyal to the old flag,
that she made history for herself in those dark and
trying years of which her sons and daughters will ever
be proud. If thus we feel for our citizenship in gen-
eral, what are we to say of the men who suifered and
died, of those of them with us still and of the wives and
mothers of that heart-straining period? The most elo-
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quent lips that have learned to speak our language have
tried in vain to find language to express our gratitude,
our pride in their achievements and point out the far
reaching benefits to mankind of their devotion and
noble self-sacrifice. The inadequacy of words is only
emphasized by the fruitless attempts. But away down
in the silent recesses of the heart lies graven on the
living tissue the ever present prayer to an ever loving
God that he may at that last day remember what they
did for His cause.
It I have digressed too far and too often from the
purely historical narrative of events to speak of the na-
tion's defenders, let my love of my country and of her
sons who have fought her battles and defended her
honor on every battlefield of her history be my apol-
ogy-
The war over, a million lives sacrificed, untold
millions of dollars lost forever, the people exhausted
by the fierce strain of the four years' struggle, our
foreign commerce demoralized, our finances in an ap-
parently inextricable tangle, agriculture, manufac-
turing and local commerce appealing for muscle and
brains to reestablish them to meet our wants, every-
thing indeed in a chaotic condition, the future looked
but little less hopeless than the past. To the surprise
of the outside world, the ex-soldier had seen all the
war he wanted, his prayer for peace had been an-
swered and soon the hand that had steadied the gun
was directing the plow, swinging the hammer or tend-
ing the loom, and the brain that but recently was di-
recting an army was directing some matter of com-
merce, manufacture or agriculture. Again the hills
and valleys of old Coshocton County wore the con-
tented smile of peace and plenty.
In 1871 Coshocton capital built her first pretentious
factory, the Coshocton Bridge and Axle Works. The
grist mills of the county had depended largely on local
trade and had met with only indifferent success.
None had attracted more than local attention. The
old distillery of Love & Hay had made itself known
but had retired from business. The Bridge and Axle
Works, built by Coshocton capital, was of but little
importance at first and soon got into financial trouble.
After its forced sale and purchase by Houston Hay
Thomas Carton's Suns Shok .Storf.
it became and remained for many years quite a manu-
facturing asset of the town. Other small institutions
like the paper mill sprang up and benehted the town
to some extent, but it was not until two newspaper
men, editors and owners of the two weeklies then
published in the county, saw a future in the novelty
advertising business, that Coshocton began to take on
the appearance of a manufacturing town. These men
were Henry D. Beach of The H. D. Beach Company
and J. F. Meek of The J. F. Meek Company. The
public achievements of these two men are too well
known to justify my recounting them here.
The success of the advertising business is due in a
very large measure to the personality of these two
men, in some respects much alike, but in many more
very dissimilar. I very much enjoy as a pastime the
analysis in private of my friends and acquaintances,
and these two men furnish fruitful material, but many
reasons restrain me, not one of which, however, is that
I should fear by public analysis the loss of the esteem
of either. The building up of these two institutions
was soon followed by the founding of the Novelty
Advertising Company by William Shaw and now un-
der the management of L. P. Gallagher, another man
to whose quiet, thorough and careful business methods
Coshocton owes not a little. These institutions were
followed by many others in a similar line, meeting
varying success. Enough, however, has been accom-
plished in this line to place Coshocton at the head of
the advertising business in America.
In 1899 a Board of Trade was founded and as the
result of its efforts, together with those of its corps
of boosters, Coshocton began to reach out in other di-
rections than the advertising line. The Pope-Gosser
factory was established and as a result of the superior
quality of their ware Coshocton has been placed at
the head of the manufacture of china in the United
States.
The Coshocton Glass Works has reached a very
prominent place in its line by the quality of its ware,
as has the Coshocton Brick Works. It would, how-
ever, occupy too much of my alloted space were I to
go on with the list of manufacturing institutions of
which Coshocton boasts and of which its citizens are
justly proud. I cannot, however, pass the Central
The Cusiiucton Ice Company
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rilANDISE.
Heating Company, of which W. A. Himebaugh is
president, in entire silence. From a broken down
electric light plant has grown the modern electric
plant, furnishing light, power and heat to the city,
with a steam power plant in Coshocton and a water
power plant above Roscoe, and capable of meeting all
the present and prospective requirements of the city.
Again I should like to indulge my propensity for
analysis of character in speaking of Mr. Himebaugh,
but am compelled to refrain. His generous public
spirit seems almost to demand it.
The Clow Works, established some two or three
years ago, promises to be a great boon. The best as-
set of the city of Coshocton, however, is her optimistic,
self-reliant, energetic, courageous, intelligent citizen-
ship and their unalterable faith in the future of their
city. To find a man in Coshocton who does not hope
to live to see her a city of twenty-five thousand people
you must hunt for a very aged person or one suffering
with a speedy, fatal malady.
In the early days of May, 1910, the idea of holding
a Centennial Celebration of our county's birth was
suggested for the first time so far as I am able to learn.
After discussing its various aspects, it was found that
the only apparently insurmountable difficulty was the
question of financing the project. This the gentle-
men having the matter under consideration were
unwilling to assume. For a time it looked as if the
enterprise would have to be abandoned, for we were re-
minded that centennials, beginning with that of the
nation in 1876 at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had
proven to be enormously expensive and had yielded
receipts inadequate to meet them.
Neither the county nor the city, through its officers
was authorized to undertake the responsibilities. We
did not feel justified in calling upon private citizens
to do that which we were so pronounced in our views
would be a failure financially. At last it was sug-
gested that we call upon some secret order and ask it
if it would be willing to assume this grave responsi-
bility. The Elk's lodge had just "put on" a success-
ful Fourth of July celebration and our attention was
naturally attracted to them. In open lodge the proj-
ect was carefully, and as fully as possible at that early
day, outlined to them. The iinancial dangers were
gone into fully, but it was clearly stated that the Cen-
tennial was to be a county affair and the commission
having it in charge would act as citizens of Coshocton
county and not as members of any organization, fra-
ternal, political, religious or otherwise. That if finan-
cial failure followed, the lodge would have the debts
to pay, that if financial success crowned our efforts,
the commission would be free to dispose of its funds
as it deemed fit and wise.
And let it be said to the unassailable civic pride of
that order that it did not ask a promise or statement
even from the gentlemen having the enterprise in hand
that those profits should be handed over to that lodge,
and no such promise has since been made and never
will be. The lodge has relied on the sense of justice
and honor of the commission to deal fairly with it, in
event the balance is found on the right side of the
ledger. Speaking for the commission, I can say that
so far as they are concerned there would have been no
Centennial Celebration if some responsible body had
not assumed this financial risk.
The commission is satisfied with its efforts up to the
present and publicly expresses through this channel
its obligation to the members of its various subordi-
nate committees for their intelligent, tireless energy
in making successful its aims and desires; to the mis-
guided who have from time to time tried to impede its
progress to success it wishes to express its sympathy
and forgiveness and begs to remind them that the
kicker only gets exercise for his legs which are thereby
strengthened for future efforts at kicking at the ex-
pense of want of exercise of head and heart and that
these organs v/ill continue to atrophy and shrivel up.
A plan has been adopted to place in the court yard
a monument to this occasion. In this will appear a
picture of the present day as perfect as human hands
can make it. This will be sealed for one hundred
years and when that has rolled by the generation then
living here may open and read the annals of this day
and view with swelling hearts the civic pride of their
ancestors and predecessors, and we hope it may prove
to them the stimulus for the achievement of a loftier
and more perfect civilization.
The Legend of The White Woman, Mary Harris
That a white woman named Mary Harris came intu this county
some time about the year 1710 there can be no doubt. Where she
came from, who were her parents or when, where or how she died
we have not even rehable tradition.
In some of the forays of the Indians about the year mentioned she
had been captured and brought into the valley when she was about
ten years of age. Soon afterward she was married in the Indian
fashion to an Indian of the Delaware tribe named Eagle Feather,
who was a Munsey Indian and hence belonging to the rougher class
of this tribe.
She and her husband lived together for many years in apparent
Indian domestic felicity. She was very much admired by all the In-
dians of the tribe, not only because of her white blood, but because of
her adaptability to their ways and habits of life, her shrewdness and
cunning and sympathy with their wrongs, and by reason of her strong
personality which manifested itself in entire self-reliance.
Her sympathy with the redman and his wrongs, as she saw them,
finally made of her a very savage of savages. To Mr. Gist in 1751
she complained bitterly of the cruelty and mendacity of the white men
in their relation to the Indian. To her Indian spouse and his asso-
ciates when on the war path she urged vengeance against her own
race and delighted in decorating her home with their scalps.
An Indian woman in the presence of warriors was silent and retir-
ing. Mary Harris was loquacious and self-assertive. At first this
was resented by the braves, both she and her husband reproved for
it, but at last her right to be heard was established and her advice and
criticism listened to.
So wide was her renown that the village in which she and her hus-
band lived and the river on which it was located became known as
Walhonding village and river, or, in our tongue. White Woman village
and river.
Eagle Feather, though a drunken fellow of no particular value, as
the husband of so renowned a woman, began shedding a certain
amount of reflected light and received attentions not merited by his
achievements. He was what is, in this age, called a "hen pecked hus-
band." Occasionally resenting the insinuations against his manhood
he and his wife came to blows, the final result of which encounters
depending largely on the quantity of fire water Eagle Feather had
consumed.
Whatever the results, however, Mary Harris continued to exert a
powerful influence over the braves of the tribe and Eagle Feather
only grew more intolerant of the gibes of his associates.
Along in the early fifties of the eighteenth century Eagle Feather,
returning from a foray east of the Ohio River in quest of scalps and
plunder, brought with him a young white woman whose name and
place of capture are unknown.
This woman was, we are told, both young and beautiful, wdiile Mary
Harris was by this time past fifty years of age, and whatever beauty
she may have had when Eagle Feather was charmed by her, the life
of hardship and exposure she had lived had obliterated.
On the way home Eagle Feather, with his captive, stopped at the
Forks to finish the carousal he and his friends had begun about the
time they started for home. From the Forks they went up the river
to White Woman's Village, and there Eagle Feather notified Mrs.
Eagle Feather of the addition to their family. The average white
man would require no detailed description of what followed in that
household. It is enough for us to know that Eagle Feather and his
companion, whom Mary Harris had already christened the New
Comer, spent the balance of the day in the woods near the village in
company with a bottle of whiskey Eagle Feather had brought along.
After nightfall the two returned to his house and crept softly to
bed, not wishing to disturb the peaceful slumbers of the wife. Next
morning Mary Harris aroused the village with her cries, and when
the neighbors came in she pointed to the body of Eagle Feather with
the head cleft with a hatchet, and told the astounding story that the
"New Comer" had slain Eagle Feather and fled. Pursuit was quickly
inaugurated and the New Comer captured at the village, ever after
until the present day known as Newcomerstown on the Tuscarawas.
She! was brought back, and being questioned described Mary Harris
as coming in the night to the bed occupied by her and Eagle Feather
and of her taking flight and leaving. By a law of the Delaware tribe
the effort at escape justified the taking of a prisoner's life, and as the
New Comer had run away they slew her and later considered the
question as to her guilt of the death of Eagle Feather. Mary Harris's
influence at that time was sufificient to protect her from any charge of
murder and the incident was soon forgotten.
An effort has been made in times past to, in some wise, connect
these two women with the large stone lying near the Walhonding
River and known as White Woman Rock, the story being that one
of them sprang from that rock to save her life or virtue and was
drowned, but this can hardly be the case, as the New Comer was slain
in White Woman village with a hatchet or tomahawk, and Mary Harris
was not of the kind who flee for any reason.
The name given to that rock, I am persuaded to believe, grows out
of a mistake as to the location of White Woman village. For many
years it was supposed that that was its location, but in later years it
is pretty generally believed to have been quite a distance further up
stream.
The French King and Colonel WilHams
An old legend has dwelt in diis county, resurrected every once in
a while in different clothes, which I shall relate in the manner most
usually told.
Colonel Williams had opened a tavern or place for "accommodation
for man and beast" about the time the first traveler came into the
country. This tavern was on Water Street just north of its junction
with Chestnut. Whiskey, the Colonel tells us, was one of his prin-
ciple articles of merchandise.
A Frenchman of unusual presence, education and refinement came
into the French hills seeking a school to teach, and was known as
the French Count. One night some of the settlers from Wills Creek
with the Count came into the Colonel's bar and after sampling the
Colonel's liquors became boisterous and refusing to be quieted at his
request, he lost his temper and pitched the entire crowd into the street,
giving the Count a little extra force to impress the French nobleman
with American independence and disregard for the titles of foreigners.
That it afterward developed that this French nobleman was Louis
Phillippe, afterwards known as the Citizen King of the French.
H this episode ever occurred. Colonel Williams either never knew
the personal importance of his guest on that occasion, or booting a
future king was a circumstance too insignificant to claim the Colonel's
attention in writing his memoirs, for he makes no mention of the event
therein.
I am inclined to give but slight credence to the entire story. That
Louis Phillippe was in the United States at some time between the
years 1793 and 1814, I am inclined to believe, and this for the reason
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that on his escape from France in the former of these years into
Switzerland, penni'ess and with no means of earning a hvelihood, he
began teaching school. School teaching in Switzerland was as near
the brink of starvation as one inured to hardships dare venture at
that time, but by one accustomed to the luxuries of life could not be
endured for long.
About this time French sympathizers with the Bourbons were cross-
ing to this country as rapidly as they could obtain the means of com-
ing, and such people were always ready to divide their smallest store
with their recognized monarch and the members of his family. How
long Louis remained in Switzerland no one seems to know, some
writers taking the view that he remained there till the restoration,
while others locate him in England and elsewhere at different times.
He and the Marquis de Lafayette were warm friends. Indeed, it
was through the personal efforts of Lafayette that Louis was placed
on the French throne in 1830, when restored to the place vacated by
his father's family. How natural that Lafayette should have sug-
gested the new country to the prince, especially as Lafayette held so
deep an interest in American affairs and was so extravagantly loved
in this country.
At any rate, when Mr. Silliman of Zanesville went to the French
court in the early thirties, and there recognized the king and was
recognized by him, it would seem the last suspicion of doubt of the
king's visit to this county is removed, but why the sil'y story of
Colonel Williams' assault on him should be invented I am at a loss
to understand.
The Murder of the Post Boy
Contributed by Jauics R. Johiisan.
This tragic event created a great excitement at the time and has*''
not lost its interest to all who look into the county history.
John Cartmell, who had built a squatter's cabin a mile east of town
and a few rods northwest of where Judge S. H. Nicholas' barn now
stands, had a contract for carrying the mail. His son William, a
mere lad, used to go occasionally in his father's place to carry the mail.
On September 9, 1825, as he was journeying on his horse from
Westchester to Coshocton, when just east of the county line, a man
by the name of Johnson was seen to be traveling with him on foot.
"Where there was a bend in the road, Johnson took a by-path into a
hollow to get a drink at a spring. While there he heard the crack of
a rifle, and as he came again into the road he saw a man with a gun
standing beside the dead boy.
"Someone has shot this boy," says the stranger as Johnson comes
up. What exclamation of horror and surprise Johnson made we are
not told, but he had no doubt as to who had shot the boy. They were
agreed that the}' must go at once and tell the neighbors. They ac-
cordingly started together, Johnson keeping a sharp lookout for fear
the man might shoot him. The stranger remarked that they had better
go in different directions. They then separated and Johnson gave the
alarm at the nearest neighbor's. The stranger disappeared and John-
son was arrested on suspicion and was kept for a time in the Tusca-
rawas County jail, stoutly protesting his innocence. Fie gave as good
a description of the stranger as he could and said he would know him.
Something fixed suspicion on John Funston, who was induced reluc-
tantly to go to New Philadelphia, with a number of men from that
part of the county. These were lined up and Johnson brought out of
jail to pass along the line.
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I'That is tlie man," he said, stopping in front of Funston.
"You are a liar," said Funston.
"Now I know more certainly than ever," said Johnson, "because I
recognize his voice; and if you will look at his hand you will see a
peculiar scar which I saw as he held his gun."
Sure enough, there was the scar. The officers were at once con-
vmced that they had the right man. After trial and conviction he
confessed and Johnson was released. The sherifif's return tells the
rest :
"1825, December 28th received this writ; and on the 30th day of
December, a. d., 1825, between the hours of 12 o'clock noon and 2
o'clock p. M.. I executed this writ by hanging the within named John
Funston until he was dead. No fees charged.
"Walter M. Blake, Sheriff."
William Burns, Sr., witnessed the execution and was familiar with
the whole story. From him have been obtained some of the above
mentioned details which have not yet found their way into the printed
histories.
The boy was buried near his father's cabin, several rods northwest
of where Judge S. H. Nicholas' barn now stands. - The Cambridge
Road at that time ran close by the house and some five hundred feet
farther west than it now runs. In the sandy ground the road may
have worn down several feet lower than the land on each side. The
subsequent leveling down by cultivation will account for the skull
being brought to the surface by William Sprinkle's plow a few years
ago, a smallish, delicate skull, evidently the Post Boy's skull.
There was a large family connection of the Cartmells. Our fellow
townsman, Jacob Richards, is the grandson of one of them. The
name of Nathaniel Cartmell occurs on the Militia Roll in 18 12.
The Oxford Township Stone Fort
On the plains in Oxford Township between the villages of Orange
and Isleta stands a stone building fourteen feet square, ten feet to
the eaves and with gabled roof. The walls are of sandstone twentv-
two inches thick, showing the marks of the mason's tools, and with
a smooth, broad stone lintel above the doorway which shows distinct
evidence of having been rubbed smooth with another piece of stone.
The single doorway above referred to is in the east wa'l, with
walnut jambs and head two inches thick and twenty inches wide, and
fitted for a door on each edge of the jamb, the one on the outside and
the other on the inside, thus providing the opening with double se-
curity.
Coshocton Ciiurches
To the north of this doorway and about two feet from the ground
is a hole about eight inches square. The first story was about seven
feet high and the second about two feet at the eaves and six or seven
at the gable. In the north, south and west walls in the first story
and about midway from the corners are slits, each two feet up and
down, two inches wide on the outside and eighteen inches wide on
the inside. In the north gable is a doorway about two feet by three
feet.
The building is in a bad state of dilapidation at present, the roof
and fioor of the second story entirely gone, the west wall fallen away
and the north wall split almost from top to bottom. There is no evi-
dence of there ever having been a chimney or of any other provision
for fire within.
On the outside walls, in various places, thin films of lead in small
blotches are found where leaden bullets have struck and Battened on
the stone. These are most numerous near the slits above described.
That the structure was built and used as a retreat for safety from
an outside foe there cannot be a shadow of doubt. That it is of
very ancient origin is equally true, but when or by whom built we
are left without a scrap of information.
Of all the persons who have written of the early history of this
section of the country, this is the first time the subject has been men-
tioned, and this circumstance is of itself most remarkable.
The Indians built nothing of its kind. The early settlers were not
known to use stone in building, and especially are we disinclined to
ascribe its erection to them when we reHect that they found an abun-
dance of timber in the immediate vicinity, while the sandstone of
which this is built could only be obtained across the river.
Moreover, the building of a structure so novel in its character would
have attracted the attention of other early settlers in other parts of the
county, but no one seems ever to have heard of it, and its appearance
bespeaks an earlier origin.
DTberville, the successor to de la Salle, who built the French forts
in the seventeenth century throughout the Mississippi valley, in de-
scribing them, locates one "northeast of the Ohio River." Can this
be one of his famous forts? I cannot say. No matter when nor by
whom built it is one of the genuine wonders of this valley famous for
its myths, mysteries and historic interest.
Seeing the First Railroad Train
A ludicrous, but very characteristic, story of our early settlers is
told by W. A. Himebaugh, President of the Electric Light and Heating
Company, as detailed to him by his father.
In the years while the first railroad. The Sterbenville and Indiana,
afterward the Pennsylvania, was building into this county, the county
fair was held in the court yard. A track was marked around the
outer edge, the people occupying the circle within.
There was no fence around the ground, so that when tlie fair
opened the grounds were surrounded by a rope to keep the public
outside until they had paid the admission fee. On the Thursday of
the Fair in the fall, immediately after the railroad was built through,
a big crowd had assembled within the ring and preparations were made
for a great time. So dense was the crowd, indeed, that the officials
had been delayed in getting things into order for the grand display.
Just as they had brought out all the premium stock for display, the
great show of the occasion, and the event for which everybody had
been waiting on tip-toe of excitement, the engine which drew the cue
fei
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daily train blew her whistle ; Init few of the crowd had ever seen a
train of cars, and all were at once seized with the desire to see it, so,
forgetting the fair and all its attractions, they started pellmell for the
railroad, and in the rush they broke down the ropes around the ground,
upset everything in their way, and when they returned later it was
found that there was not time enough left of the day to restore the
breakage, so that the fair was discontinued luitil the foilowine; day.
Location of Certain Historic Spots
Regret that the precise location of many of the historic places and
events in this county have been lost by the carelessness or want of ap-
preciation of their importance, led the Coshocton County Centennial
Commission to appoint a Historical Committee to fix as nearly as pos-
sible such locations as any evidence might be found to establish. Hav-
ing examined all the evidence obtainable, they feel warranted in saying
that they have been able to locate the following with reasonable ac-
curacy.
The final camp of Colonel Houquet, where his treaty with the Dela-
w^are Indians was effected, though somewhat in doubt, this committee
feel warranted in saying was on the crest of the hill north of the mid-
dle basin, about a mile above Coshocton, on what is familiarly known
as Johnston's hill.
The Broadhead Massacre was northwest about one hundred feet of
the big spring on the Collier land between the present site of Coshocton
and Hardscrabble.
The old Indian burying-ground was in the immediate vicinity of the
intersection of Locust and Fourth Streets, where bones are still taken
from the ground at every excavation to any considerable deptli.
The Captain Fleehart Block House was on the river bank west of
Water Street and north of Main Street, the stockade extending into
the present location of both streets and for some little distance up the
river. The house itself was of logs in the usual form, while the stock-
ade was of logs placed in the form of an abatis. When this blockhouse
was built or how long maintained, we are unable to say, but are of the
opinion that it was of recent origin — probably in the early years of
the past century, and was not long maintained.
The tavern kept by Colonel Williams, the first tavern in the county,
was a double log building situated on Water Street a short distance
north of its intersection with Chestnut. Here was not only the first
tavern, but this building was also the first court house of the county.
Colonel Williams' body lies buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery just to
the left of the entrance within a paling fence.
The point at which Lewis Wetzel killed the Indian chief in the pres-
ence of General Broadhead in 1780 is about fifty feet west of the north-
west corner of the Hanley mill very near the south side of Main Street.
All the writers having this part of the country and the Indian ti ues
as a portion of their subject, make frecjuent reference to the Indian
Council House, thus establishing the fact of its existence, but here re-
liable information ceases.
Its location, size and composition are all matters of speculation.
We are told that it was on the second elevation above the river. This
would locate it probably between Second and Third Streets. The town
being quite all south of Main Street, it was likely also in that section.
As the council house was used only on rare occasions, possibly once or
twice a year, it was likely built of poles set into the groun 1. and wdien
in use, covered with boughs. The .size of the crowd might in some
degree affect the size of the council house, but it was re'|uired to cover
only those having seats in the council of the nation or tribe, and hence
was not necessarily large.
West Lafayette College and ('iiuKcHts.
The Coshocton County Bar
It is left for me to write the obituary of the bar as a profession.
The years of my practice have spanned tne immeasurable chasm which
lies between a profession and a business.
When I came to the practice thirty years ago, the practice of the
law was as much a profession as in the days of Cicero and Demosthenes.
Few men without forensic power dared to enter the profession, and
if they did they quietly accepted the retired corner allotted them and
left the then real matters worth while to the management of other
more fortunate members of the profession.
The convening of court was then an event. The members of the
profession gathered around the bench, dressed in double-breasted frock
coats, and there was an air about tlie court room known to the bar
and appreciated by the general public, but which it is impossible to
picture in words.
As a youth I frequently attended the opening days of the term and
shall never forget the depth of the impression of those scenes. It
was not, however, till later that I came to know the men well enough
to appreciate the dift'erence in their temperaments and attainments and
recognize the strong and weak points in their moral and mental struc-
ture.
Not all of them were especially strong men, but some of them were.
To my mind E. T. Spangler was quite the ideal lawyer of the old
school. Slightly above medium height, dark hair and eyes, wiih a
face of faultless masculine beauty, carrying slightly more than a
proper supply of flesh, but with a splendid pose of both head and
body, scholarly and cultured, a Lord Chesterfield in manners, but abso-
lutely free of cant, always dressed neatly and in excellent taste, his
appearance in the court room was an inspiration to the younger mem-
bers of the profession.
His deep voice was resonant, and though he would have spurned to
use it to charm his hearers, yet it did so by its matchless quality. His
discussion of any legal question was interesting because of his logical,
analytical mind, and his influence with a jury was always effective
because of the purity and beauty of his English, richness of his voice
and elegance of his manners.
Associated with him during most of the years I knew him was
Judge J. C. Pomerene, very unlike Spangler in most ways, but pos-
sessing many of the elements wanting in Spangler's composition. Dur-
ing the long years of their association Spangler usually attended to
matters in court while Judge Pomerene held in his mind every detail,
large and small, in their large and varied practice.
Few men in practice, in his day, held in mind a!l the authorities
accessible to this bar on so many and diverse subjects. A tireless
student, thoroughly in love with work, always conservative, never
satisfied until he had read the last word on a subject, and even then
temperate in his statement and claims of the law.
The semi-austerity of Spangler's nature was well compensated by
the affability, urbanity and social impulsiveness of his partner, as was
his disposition to depend upon the application of general principles
balanced by Judge Pomerene's painstaking care in seeking the latest
reported case. They always impressed me as an unusually well bal-
anced combination, safe, strong and thoroughly competent.
For a few years after leaving the bench before his death I saw a
little of Judge William Sample, but so little that I can give but a
glimpse and that rather a boy's impression. Tall, slender, with gray
hair, traveling in an ambling walk as if affected by approaching age,
is the distinct impression I carry of him. What had been his hard-
ships or disappointments in early life, I know not, but the lines of
his face carried rather a forbidding aspect. My imagination could
West Lafayette Bank
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hardly picture to me Judge Sample's face breaking into a smile.
Hence, I am quite sure I have been harsh in judging him, for 1 can
hardly conceive of such a picture being a true or fair one.
That he was a splendid lawyer of his time, dignified, honorable, con-
scientious, there can remain no doubt. Speakuig with a halt in his
voice, no musical note in it, compelling rather by the force of his
vigorous character than by artifice, he was a curious combination of
power impeded by his own imperfections, but wonderfully successful
ni making his hearers listen and in persuading them to follow.
1 saw a great deal of another character just before and for many
years after i came to the bar, whom it is a great pleasure in later years
. to remember, because I did not then realize how rare such characters
are. I refer to Colonel James Irvine. He and his brother John had
been in practice when I was a child, but the brother I only remember
seeing.
As I have said, I saw much of the colonel the last ten or a dozen
years of his life, and became very warmly attached to him. He was
not so successful in the practice as his friends had prophesied for him,
and this is readily accounted for by the fact that he was never in
love with the protession or its learnmg. His taste was entirely out-
side of a law book or the law courts.
The most brilliant conversationalist and versatile entertainer with-
out outside helps this section of the country has ever known, he
possessed the pungent wit, broad humor, exhaustless vocabulary, warm
sympathetic nature that has made many men and women great, but
it made him only beloved by those to whom he chose to exhibit this
side of his nature. He possessed no deceit and if thrown among men
with whom he did not care to exhibit the richness of his talents, no
sort of subterfuge could call him out. He became positively prosy,
but when with those whom he enjoyed he became a fountain of
sparkling wit, repartee, illustration and charm.
Judge John T. Simmons was also a member of the Coshocton bar
when 1 was admitted, but he had about retired and I had but little
opportunity to form an estimate of him.
Captain G. H. Barger was another, but before he became fully
identified with the bar he removed to Columbus and I know personally
but little of him after that.
Of the firm of Nicholas & James I feel some diffidence in speak-
ing. 1 read law with them and was always, while they were together,
more or less about their office.
The preparation of a law suit for trial in their office was worth
going to see and hear. Every scrap of known testimony was analyzed
m advance, appraised, properly tabulated and made thoroughly fa-
miliar ; then the law was chased in its elusive flight through the books,
criticised, applauded or condemned.
Differences of opinions were encountered by the partners at every
turn,' but never abandoned until they agreed, and when all this was
done they were ready to enter court, and I can truly say that I have
never seen cases so well prepared. Try as I might, I never could do
it myself. Their cases were always so well prepared that they could
devote most of their time to the small things, and in jury cases the
experienced lawyer knows what this means.
This firm was not a balanced firm in any sense of the word. They
were litigating lawyers and gave but little heed to anything else in the
profession. In the days they spent together in the practice they worked
almost ceaselessly, yet I never heard either of them speak of hard
work. Indeed, they both enjoyed it. The advance of age, however,
had its inevitable effect and the lives of neither reached the goal to
which they aimed.
I shall not speak of the living members of the profession, but shall
content myself with these few words concerning those who have
passed to a higher and juster judge, except to say that my acquaintance
with the bar of the present day has not lessened my appreciation of the
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noble and honorable profession to which we belong; that while a bnsi-
ness has risen from the ashes of a profession, yet the men who have
assumed the responsibility of that new business are of the same class
and character as their predecessors, and it behooves us all to see that
the cjuality is ever kept at that high standard.
The first term of court held in the county was in an old log building
which stood until a few years ago near the northeast corner of Water
or First Street and Chestnut. This court convened on April ist,
1811. The judge (Honorable William Wilson of Newark, Ohio), fail-
ing to appear, his associate justices Isaac Evans, Peter Casey and
William Mitchell, organized the court with impressive solemnity, ap-
pointed justices of the peace in Washington, Tuscarawas, Newcastle
and Franklin Townships, and adjourned. After that the courts started
off with the usual dignity and have continued ever since.
John Chapman, "Johnny Appleseed"
This quaint character was born in Massachusetts, probably at Spring-
field. Ihe year is not known.
in very early times his lather brought his large family to Marietta,
Ohio, and settled, John, however, not coming west for some years
after.
In early life he became a very devout member of the Swedenburg
church and took to an ascetic, outdoor life. His religious convictions
induced him to devote his lite to the welfare of others, and his love
of the forests called him from the more densely settled portions of the
country.
His time was at first spent in New England, later along the banks
of the Potomac, then to i^ennsylvania, to Ohio and finally m Indiana,
keeping all the time in the van of advancing civilization.
His first appearance in this section was siiortly before the breaking
out of the War of 1812.
After he had decided to devote his life to the welfare of his fellow
man, being wiihout means, he conceived the idea that to plant fruit
trees on the borderline of civilization would be doing a great work
without requiring much capital. Accordingly he would visit the crude
cider mills in the east, gather the seeds, put tnem in little leather sacks
which he made himself, carry them to the frontier where he could
obtain all the free land necessary for his purpose, and set out small
nurseries.
When the trees had reached a proper size they were disposed of
to the settlers in trade if the settler had anything he wished, but if
not the trees were given him if he desired them. All this time he
was teaching his strange religion, both by word of mouth and by books
and tracts, which he made frequent pilgrimages east to obtain, and
for the purchase of wdiich he sold his young trees.
Johnny was a favorite everywhere, in the home of the settler as well
as in the wigwam of the red man. Many highly colored stories have
been told of his early life and much mystery thrown around the reason
for his unselfish devotion to mankind, but he seems to have been only
a plain, sympathetic, eccentric creature with an exalted purpose, but
with a distorted view of his sphere of usefulness.
After crossing the Ohio River the valleys of this county were very
attractive to him. Whenever he reached the Ohio he would fit a
raft, po'e down to Marietta, visit his father's family and ascend to
the Forks, for from this point he had a water route back near the
cider presses and on to Mt. Vernon and Mansfield via the Walhonding
and north via the Tuscarawas.
He "was restless, stopping only long enough in each place to attend
what he had in hand, th.e planting or trimming of a nursery, disposing
UJarsaiu
Mi.Ki: Hants' Hank, Warsaw, Oi
of some trees, distributing his tracts, relieving a suffering settler or
Indian, carrying news about a neighborhood of some threatened out-
break or busying himself in some other way along the lines adopted
as his hfe work, and he was on to another point.
There were things stranger in the life of this peculiar man than
we can understand. The average frontiersman was a man of more
than ordinary courage, yet he carefully barred his doors at night and
observed constant caution to protect himself and family from the sav-
age and the wild beast. If he traveled across the country he was
armed and at nightfall sought a secluded spot to spend the night and
refrained from starting a fire lest the hostile red man be attracted by
the smoke. The prevalence of poisonous snakes made leather foot-
wear of some sort necessary for travel in the forests.
Wild animals were everywhere, but John Chapman went anywhere
and everywhere barefooted, except when the severest weather forced
him to provide moccasins. He never carried a gun, he often spent
one night with Indians on the war path and the next with their intended
victims, but never sought safety from man or beast.
Some Noted Indians
A fairly accurate appreciation of conditions in this part of the
country at the advent of our race here can scarcely be obtained with-
out some understanding of the character of the leading spirits of the
Indian race of that time.
For a great many years the head chief of the Delaware tribe was
an Indian known by the name of Netawatwees. His village was for-
merly near Newcomerstown and latterly at Coshocton. Netawatwees
had become acquainted with the Moravians, Zeisberger and Heck-
ewelder and others at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and orobably united
with that Christian church at that place. At any rate, on the establish-
ment of Moravian Missions later in Tuscarawas County, he was reco<^.
nized as a brother in the church and aided in the establishment at
Lichteneau. He was a man of strong character, exerting a powerful
influence over his people in a quiet and dignified way. From his con-
tact with the Moravian missionaries he had become thoroughly ob-
sessed by the idea that the future of his race depended on a complete
change in their mode of life, that they should give up their migratory
and warlike habits and settle down to the pursuits of agriculture.
He was not a great orator, but swayed his people rather by the
force of his vigorous character and splendid example. In the later
years of his life three powerful characters were developed in his
tribe. I refer to Captain Pipe, White Eyes and Killbuck. Before
speaking of them, however, I desire to correct an unaccountable error
that has crept into the history of the life of Netawatwees, which does
him a grave injustice. Without assigning any reason therefor the
writer of Col. Bouquet's Expedition tells us that before his return to
Fort Duquesne, Col. Bouquet deposed Netawatwees as head chief
of the Delawares, but does not say for what reason or who was placed
in his stead.
This statement has cast a cloud on the memorv of the old chief by
arousing the inquiry, why did Col. Bouquet do so ? What had Neta-
watwees done to gain the disfavor or lose the confidence of Col.
Bouquet? Mr. Heckewelder assures us that this is an error, that
Netawatwees continued head chief up to the time of his death in the
autumn of 1776.
Of the three characters above referred to much might be said of
deep interest had I the time and space. Captain Pipe had never
allowed himself to forget the wrongs done his race bv the white man.
fMid
^^^^HHjjjh^^
Ki^^^B
^^^^^^^^Klmf^.,..:
Ox THE Muskingum.
had the custom of cutting off the legs of the deceased at the knees,
and thus is the siiort stature accounted for.
Such speculation, though innocent in purpose, leads to grotesque
results and tends to deflect the vision from the truth.
The facts known to us are that this burial ground covered about ten
acres, that before it had been disturbed by the cultivation of the soil it
exhibited regular rows of little mounds such as mark graves in the
present day, covering almost the entire surface of the ten acres, that
on excavating human bones were found, lying in proper place with
feet to the east, and covering a space about four to four and a half feet
in length, that on exposure to the air the bones immediately disinte-
grated, that in one or two cases the body bore evidence of having been
encased in wood, fastened together with iron nails. Whether these
latter bodies were interred at or about the same time as the many
thousand others, or whether or not other bodies were similarly interred
as these, we do not know. Near the city of St. Louis a similar bury-
ing ground has been found with the dift'erence that some of the bodies
there were enclosed in stone.
With only these facts before us, it would seem we are unwarranted
in any conclusion as to the people who made the interments in this
ground. If they are the bones of a pygmie race or of any unknown
race, why are their cemeteries so few and far apart? What other
evidences of their presence here are to be found? The perfect regu-
larity of this ground argues strongly in favor of a people well ad-
vanced in some form of a civilization, a race, however, which left but
two evidences of its existence in all this broad land, and those being
burial grounds of the dead and as near the center of the continent as
Coshocton and St. Louis, have been too successful in concealment to
justify our flattering ourselves with the idea that we have uncovered
iheir identity in any respect.
Had they been the bones of the Indian dead carried about from
place to place, disinterred every time the tribe moved, we would
hardly expect regularity in any respect, but if so very regular in every
other respect why should the stature be reduced when laid in the
ground so as to deceive as to the height? Before we may be justified
in the assumption that the legs were disarticulated at the knee, some
evidence must be adduced. Such a course has been pursued in the
past, but it was done by races who placed the bodies of the dead in
some sort of receptacle and the bodies were thus shortened to adapt
them to the size of the receptacle.
It is enough for us to know and chronicle the facts, and we must
leave speculation to the individual imagination.
Elisha Compton and Joseph Sawyer
Two men, Elisha Compton and Joseph Sawyer, at this time occupy
prominent positions in the public mind, the former as the oldest man
and probablv longest living resident in the county, and the latter the last
survivor in the county of the veterans of the Mexican War.
Mr. Compton was born in Culpepper County, Virginia, September
9, 1816, and is therefore in his ninety-fifth year. He settled in Jack-
son Township in April, 1830, where he has lived ever since.
In T841 he was married to Hulda Ann Hayes, who died in 1880, and
is the father of seven or eight children.
Mr. Compton was one of a party of twenty-five, consisting of his
four brothers, Richard, John, Thomas and George, two sisters. Henri-
etta Ricketts and Delilah Tucker, and their families, together with
Salt Peter Cave.
neighbors wlio drove across the country from their X'irginia homes to
this county. They crossed the Ohio River at Wheeling and were nine-
teen days on the way.
Mr. "Compton is in many respects a very rare man. Never robust,
indeed rather delicate in appearance, he has survived to a ripe old age,
with his faculties still quite well preserved. His sight and hearing are
somewhat impaired, but his memory of people and events of recent, as
well as the earlier periods of his life, is truly re narkable.
He takes two daily newspapers, which he has read to him regularly,
and with these together with his daily contact with men, he keeps in
close touch with the happenings of the outside worLl, in which he
evinces the same lively interest he has always maintaine 1.
He was always a great talker and listener, and in this regard I see
no change in him of forty and more years ago. Of an unselfish dispo-
sition, his chief desire in life seems to be to know th:.t his old friends
are prosperous and happy.
Asked as to his h.ealth, he said he had neither an ache nor a pain, that
his infirmities were those of old age only, that he ate and slept well and
enjoyed good health. He seems to think but little of himself, making
no complaints of the ravages ,of old age. He does not see the country
or the people going to destruction because of the changed conditions
around him, but, on the other hand, recognizes them as the natural se-
quences of the growth and development of the country and the progress
of the people. He dees not talk of the short time he has to live, but of
the events of the day and accomplishments of the past and the hopes
of future achievements. He is certainly a most lovable old man and a
splendid example of what a life of rectitude and correct living leads to.
Now in the evening of life, his last labors done, with his mental
faculties fully preserved, his physical powers such as to enable him to
come and go as he pleases, he looks backward over a well spent, indus-
trious life and sees no enemy by the wayside, no wrong done to any
man and feels no regret for folly of youth or overzeal of manhood.
Loving all mankind, he is by all beloved, and when the last summons
shall come his only regret will be that the cord that binds him to his
fellow men must be severed and their companionship loit.
The quiet, modest lives of such men as Elisha Compton mean much
to a community. They are the finger boards along life's highway, but
so much is our attention attracted by the more blustering, self-assertive
man who purposely attracts attention, that we are prone to overlook-
such characters and be dazzled by the more brilliant but less substantial
careers.
It is the custom to point the youth to some great character in our his-
tory and invite or command him to emulate his example, heedless that
there may be some glaring defect of character or habit as marked as the
one that made the example great. The youth, lacking the faculty that
made the example great, may possess the one wdiich proved a cloud to
his career, and emulating the latter, the best he could do, we express
surprise at the disastrous results. But to such careers as Elisha Comp-
ton's we may point without fear of danger, for they have employed well
such talents as have been given them and have hidden or abused none.
Joseph Sawyer was born in Suiifolk County, England, September ii,
1825, and is therefore in the eighty-sixth year of his age. He landed
in America February 12, 1836, and reached Coshocton in ]\Iay of that
year, where he has resided ever since.
When the war with IMexico broke out Mr. Sawyer volunteered in
Captain Meredith's company, which was assigned to the Third Ohio in
command of Colonel Samuel R. Curtis. This company was afterward
commanded by Captain James M. Love, a member of the Coshocton bar
and later a justice of the Supreme Court of Iowa. This regiment was
Indian Mound.
Four National 7Ii(;iiwAys.
not required to do very heavy duty, and on its return after its services
were finished it left Charles McCloskey, one of its members, in Mexico
convalescing from his wounds.
On April i8, 1848, McCloskey returned and his old comrades in
arms prepared a reception for him. Procuring an old cannon, they
began firing a salute, and on the fourth discharge, which occurred pre-
maturely, the left arm of Mr. Sawyer and the right arm of John
Richards, who was assisting Sawyer in ramming, were blown off.
Mr. Sawyer was married to Hannah Montgomery March 21, 1854,
and notwithstanding his loss by the discharge of the cannon has raised
a family of eleven children.
In the survey of the Steubenville and Indiana Railroad Mr. Sawyer
carried chain from Coshocton to Newark and was for many years
afterward in the employ of that company.
At the annual state reunion of Mexican War veterans last year only
thirteen still survived.
This year the reunion is held at Newark, Ohio, June 15th, when but
very few will assemble, as the already thin ranks have been further re-
duced in the past year.
Joseph Sawyer has been a familiar figure about Coshocton all these
years, as he has always been active, energetic and faithful in the dis-
charge of his duties. Of a jovial, unselfish disposition Mr. Sawyer is
universally liked. In the later years, however, the memories of other
days rushing back upon him, the tenderness of his nature is deeply
stirred, and he makes a very pathetic, if admirable, figure, while he talks
of the scenes and people of his younger and more active life.
Early Settlers of Note
Contributed by James R. Johnson.
THE BUCKINGHAMS.
Ebenezer Buckingham, Sr., was born in Greenfield, Conn., Novem-
ber I, 1748; married Esther Bradley, October 20, 1771 ; removed to
Cooperstown, N. Y., and thence to the Muskingum in the early part of
1800. They poled their boat up the river, and located on the White
Woman River at the mouth of Killbuck, — we may suppose at or near
the Newton Speckman farm, so as to be on high ground beyond the
reach of floods. Here they lived from the spring of 1800 till the
autumn of 1802, when, on account of sickness, they removed, with
their large family of children, to Athens County. After the death of
Ebenezer Buckingham, Sr., October 12, 1824, Mrs. Buckingham lived
with her son, Ebenezer Buckingham, Jr., at Putnam, until her death,
June 25, 1827.
This was a remarkable family, who cut a large figure in the history
of this valley and of the state.
(The above is condensed from J. Buckingham's letter from Zanes-
ville, June 24, 1878, published in the Age, July 10, 1878.)
The ague, which drove away the Buckingham family in 1802, was
a most distressing factor in this new country. The rich soil was full
of decaying vegetable matter, and when turned up to the sun produced
malaria, the cause of chills and fever and bilious disorders. Almost
everybody suflfered from it, and it greatly interfered with work and
business.
It had to be met with heroic doses of calomel, jalap and Peruvian
bark in the form of bitters. Many of the settlers preferred to live
on the ridges, to get away from this most discouraging plague. It
gradually disappeared with the clearing of the land and the cultivation
of the soil.
DR. SAMUEL LEE.
The first resident physician did not come any too soon. He came
on horseback from Pouhney, A'ermont, to Granville in the spring of
iSog. in company with Rev. Timothy Harris, a Congregational min-
ister. Two vears later, in 1811, just one hundred years ago, he lo-
cated in Coshocton. I'or some years he was the only physician. His
practice covered the whole county, and, of course, was ver}' laborious.
He lived for many years on the southeast corner of Fourth and
Main Streets, and owned nearly all the scpiare bounded by ^^lain.
Walnut, Fourth and l~ifth Streets. He also owned a large farm east
of town. He served for one term as county treasurer, and was in
the state senate, i8j(>-iS27. He was one of the charter members of
the Presbyterian Cliurcli in 1818, and served as a ruling elder from
1831) to 1874.
When tile time came to erect a church building, in 1834, he headed
the list with the largest individual subscription, one hundred dollars.
He was a lineal descendant of Miles Standish, married Sabra Case of
Granville, and his grandchildren and great-grandchildren are still with
us. He died March 10. 1874, eighty-nine years of age lacking four
days.
ADAM JOHNSTON,
The grandfather of policeman Johnston, was one of the leading citi-
zens in the early days of Coshocton.
He was born in lualtimore in 1773. At the age of twenty-seven he
came to Belmont County, Ohio, where he had many relations living.
Here he clerked in a store and taught school. In September, 1810,
he came to Coshocton. November 12, 1812, he married Sarah, the
daughter of Colonel Charles Williams, — the girl who, at the age of
twelve years, used at times to ride on horseback to the White Eyes
plains to buy a bushel of wheat. The next day she would go with it
to Zanesville to have it ground and return with the flour the third day.
Mr. Johnston was a merchant, surveyor, politician, county clerk,
county recorder, and successively captain, major, colonel and brigadier-
general in the State Militia, in the days when all the able-bodied men
had to muster once or twice a year.
His clear, beautiful handwriting in the records of the clerk's and
recorder's offices will cause him to be favorably remembered as long
as our records are preserved. He was a man of force and character,
trusted for his integrity, and a leader in public affairs. Flis grand-
daughter, Miss Louella Johnston, says that he ])lanned and helped to
build two forts on the Maumee in the War of i8i_>.
lie built the brick house on lot 235 (did number). Water Street,
wlu-re jacoli llarringer now lives. The one-story frame addition on
the south side was built for clerk's and recorder's offices, and .so used
for years.
He died }u\k- 8, |82(;, fifty-six: vears of age, leaving five children.
Muster Roll of War of 1812
.\IL'STh:k POLL
(Ji Capt. Arlam Johnston's Com])any of Pitlemen belonging to the
Second P.attaliun -if the Second Regiment in the Fourth Brigade and
Thirrl Division nhi(j .Militia ;.t a Muster of said Company held at
(Joshr,cton on the thirrj day of .\].ril. Anno Donn'tu' 181 ^
Contributed by James R. Johnson.
1. Adam Johnston, Captain
2. William Morrison, Lieut.
3. Abraham Miller, Ensign
4. Thomas Foster, ist Sergt.
5. John M. Miller, 2nd Sergt.
6. Fred'k Markley, 3rd Sergt.
7. Rob't Culbertson, 4th Sergt.
8. John H. Miller, ist Corp'l
9. Zebedee Baker, 2nd Corp'l
10. J. M. Bantham, 3rd Corp'l
11. John D. Moore, 4th Corp'l
12. George Arnold
13. Samuel Morrison
14. Michael Miller
15. Edward Miller
16. Isaac M. Miller
17. John Steerman
18. Basil Baker
19. Joseph McFarlane
20. James Winders
21. Isaac G. Miller
25-
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
John G. Miller
banie! Miller
Windle Miller
Henry Carr
Thomas Miller
Benjamin Workman
jMatthew Boner
Benjamin Markley
Isaac Hoagland
31. James Bucklew
32. John Baker
33. Matthew Williams
34. Andrew Lybarger
35. Abel Cain
36. Joseph Nefif
37. John Williams
38. John G. Pigman
39. George McCullough
40. John McKearn
41. Allen Moore
Copied from the original Cluster Roll by James R. Johnson, ]\Iarch
30, 191 1.
ROLL
Of a company of volunteers composed of the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Regi-
ment, 4th Brigade and 3rd Division Ohio Militia, who volunteered for
the defense of the Mansfield frontiers under Captain William Beard,
commencing the 26th of August, Anno Domini one thousand eight
hundred and twelve, by order of his excellency. Return J. Meiggs,
Governor of the State of Ohio.
Contributed b\ James R. Johnson.
William Beard, Captain
Richard Fowler, Lieutenant
Solomon Vail, Ensign
Lewis Vail, ist Sergeant
Isaac Meredith, 2nd Sergt.
Thos. P. James, 3rd Sergt.
William Biggs, 4th Sergt.
Samuel Elson, ist Corporal
Abram Fry, 2nd Corporal
Thos. Workman, 3rd Corp'l
Sam Fleharty, 4th Corporal
1. William Clark
2. Reuben Smith
3. Wm. Rawlings
4. George Titus
5. Elijah Shaw
6. James Willis
7. Obed Meredith
8. Henry Hull
9. Thomas Horton
10. Thomas John
11. Wm. Hankins.
12. Martin Cox
13. Joseph Butler
14. Jonathan Darling
15. Robert Giffin
16. Rich Willis
17. Joseph Sovrens
Stephen Miller
John Keasler
Wm. Darling
James Miller
George Mason
Henry Miller
24. Robert Beaty
2v John Norris
i«.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23-
2(5. John Elson 38. Moses Alusgrove
2-. Daniel McLane 39. David Maples
2%. Hugh Aiklv 40. Constant Boan
JO. Robert .-Vddy 41. James Lisk
30. ^^'m. Jones 42. Nicholas Miller
31. Gabriel Evans 43. James Oglesby
},2. Sam Xorris 44. George Emery
33. Sam McFarling 45. John Hill
34. John W'olgomott 46. Thos. Cantwell
35. John Hartley 47. Henry Preston
yc'. John Mnlvane 48. James Clark
2^~. John ^^'aggoner 49. Joseph Beckworth
Copied from the original Cluster Roll by James R. Johnson, Alarch
30. 191 1.
Letter of Thomas H. Johnson
THE PEXXSYL\'AXIA LIXES WEST OF PITTSBURGH
Office of the Consulting Engineer
Thos. H. Johnson.
Pittsburgh, Pa., October 24, 1908.
Hon. Samuel II . Xicholas. Coshocton. Ohio.
Dear Sir: I'ollowing your suggestion. I have made, and enclose
herewith, a fresh copy of my letter to ^Nlr. E. ( ). Randall, and appended
my autograph signature, for the purpose of filing with the records of
the newly organized Historical Society.
Ydurs truly,
Thos. H. Johnson.
THE PEXXSYLVAXIA LINES WEST OE PITTSBURGH
Office of the Consulting Engineer
Thos. H. Johnson
Pittsburgh, Pa.. September 14, 190S.
COPY
Mr. E. O. Randal,
I'irsidiiit Ohio flistorical Society,
. i "hiinhtis. Ohio.
De.\r Sir: I'he generation who were active ])articipants in the
events wdiich constitute the early history of (_)hio having passed away,
it_ seems to mc the imperative duty of those now living, whose early
lite overlapjjcd the survivors of the active participants in the stirring
events of that earlier period, to place of record anv recollections they
may have of the stories told by those old surviv(jrs' tending to identif'v
the localities connected with such historical events. I therefore ven-
ture to submit the following communication relative to certain locali-
ties of historical interest, at and near the town f)f Coshocton, with a
view of its preservation in the Archives of the Societv.
In so doing, it is proper to state, in exjilanation 'of my source of
information, that I was born and raised in that town; that my grand-
mother, the wiflow of David Johnson, of Countv Tvrone. 'Ireland,
married James Renfrew, of Coshocton, and brought her five children
to that_ place about 1820, while some of the Indians still remained in
the vicinity.
From statements of my father, W. K. Johnson, and my uncle, John
Johnson, and also of some of the older settlers who still survived in
my boyhood days, among whom I may mention Captain Neff and
Jesse Workman, I have information which I feel should be placed in
record before it is wholly lost.
First. The Indian Village of "Cush-og-wenk" * (improperly writ-
ten "Gosh-og-wenk" in some of the early documents) was situated
in that part of the present Town plat lying to the southwest of the
Court House, the street of the village being not far from, and probably
a little to the south of Main Street.
Second. The Burying Ground of the Village was on the rising
ground or natural terrace east of Fourth Street, at and in the vicinity
of Locust Street. Of this I have personal knowdedge from having
seen human bones exhumed from excavations for cellars in that vicinity.
Third. Col. Broadhead's expedition of 1780, which resulted in the
surprise and capture of the Village of "Cush-og-wenk," was marked
by two disgraceful incidents — the treacherous murder of an Indian
Chief, by Louis Wetzel, while the Chief was in conference with Col.
Broadhead; and the equally treacherous and disgraceful massacre of
helpless prisoners.
The former incident occurred while Col. Broadhead and the Chief
were standing in the street of the Indian Village. According to re-
ported statements of Mr. Abraham Sells during his life, the spot where
this occurred was a little south of the present Main Street, and east
of Water Street. This is probably as definite as the location can now
be fixed.
In Howe's "Historical Sketches of Ohio" it is stated that the mas-
sacre of the prisoners on the return march began when the\' were
about one-half mile east of the Village and continued along the line of
march until all were killed.
This differs from the story as told me by old settlers, which was
that the army halted at a spring about one mile east of the \'illage,
and that during the halt the prisoners were killed, and that the Indians
had marked the site of this massacre by cutting a tomahawk and scalp-
ing knife in the bark of a beech tree growing on the spot.
The stump of this tree still existed in my younger days, and was
often pointed out to me by my uncle, John Johnson, who never did so
without expressing regret that the tree had been cut, and waxing in-
dignant at the wanton sacrilege of the act.
It seems to me that the latter version is the more probable. This
act of barbarism is far more likely to have occurred while the military
formation was broken during the halt at the spring than while on
the march ; and the incident of the symbols cut on the tree is a very
strong confirmation of this version.
Fourth. Col. Bouquet's expedition, in 1764, established its camp
"on the highlands about one mile north of the mouth of the White
Woman (or Walhonding) River." These "highlands" consist of a
narrow ridge extending for about three-quarters of a mile in a south-
westerly direction, with the valley of the Tuscarawas River on the
one side, and of Mill Creek on the other.
The exact site of the camp cannot now be determined. I have been
told that, as late as about 1840, the lines of earthwork could still be
traced, and that skulls and horns of cattle and sheep still marked the
site where these animals had been slaughtered for food. But, un-
fortunately, no one thought to mark the spot, nor to leave a record
that would make the site recoverable.
The selection of this site is a testimony to Col. Bouquet's military
genius. The top of the ridge is comparatively flat or eentlv round-
ing, and well adapted to the purposes of the camp. The sides are
quite steep, made more so near the top, especially on the Mill Creek
side, bv an outcropping ledge of sandstone. In all that region there
is no other spot that could be so easily defended against attack. The
extreme end of the ridge falls off with a more gentle slope, affording
an easv approach for those having lawful business with the camp or
its commander.
I enclose a blue print map of the region, showing the localities re-
ferred to in this communication. The site of Col. Bouquet's camp
must be taken as only indicating the ridge on which it was located.
The actual site may have been anywhere within, say, a half-mile
along the ridge.
* Xote. In the records of the several expeditions into this region,
the name of this Indian Village is generally misspelled Gosh-og-zcciik.
In the Delaware tongue "Ciish" is Bear. "Ciisli-Oi/" is Black Bear,
and "zi'Oih'' is toz^'ii. In Central P'ennsylvania the word survives in
the names of certain streams, in the following forms, viz. : "Ciisli
Creek" is Bear Creek; "Cusliiaii Creek" is Cub Creek ; "Ciisli-Cusliian"
is Bear and Cub Creek. The termination "zcetik" was Anglicized by
the early settlers, and the place became known as "CusIi-OQ-tozeu."
from which is derived the later and present form "Coshocton."
Trusting that this may be deemed worthy of a place in the iiles of
the Historical Society, I am
Yours uKist respectfully.
Thos. H. Johnson.
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