Ashland County, Ohio - Chapter with an unread heading (no. 3 of those read), 1863

Ir is a fact probably not generally known, but yet one well authenticated, that the lands which now produce most abundantly of the great cereal staple of Ashland County were regarded by the early settlers as utterly valueless for purposes of cultivation. The bottom or valley lands were the first and only sought by the pioneers. The monarch oaks and luxuriant herbage which adorned the sides and summits of the lofty hills, at length suggested to those who had a better knowledge of agriculture as a science, that such productions could not spring from a soil naturally sterile.

This idea of the barrenness of the upland soil is supposed to have had its origin in the fact that*the substance of its surface had been for a considerable period annually exhausted by fire. These fires, for obvious reasons, rarely swept over the lower plains; and hence their fertility continued unimpaired. The practice of devastating by fire the upland forests, and thus defeating the operations of nature, doubtless had its origin with white hunters from the tramontane regions, who had introduced this with other more flagrant "vices of civilization" among the aborigines, after the latter had become instructed in the use of fire-arms and the practices of the white hunters. The effect of the fires was to change the natural qualities, of the soil - to incrust the surface of the earth with a material similar to a vast sheet of brick; and where anything like pulverized earth made its appearance, it bore the semblance of white brickdust. Notwithstanding this periodical exhaustion, the natural vigor of the soil, during each spring following the autumnal burning, would become so far recuperated as to produce a very rank growth of vegetation, known as sedge-grass, pea-vines, etc. This vegetation afforded excellent pasture from early spring until about August. The sedge-grass, when cut in July, or earlier, afforded very nutritious and palatable food for domestic stock during the winter months. In the lapse of time it became a matter of necessity with the cultivators of the soil upon the bottom and valley lands, to fight and subdue these autumnal fires for the protection of their own fences, cabins, granaries, and other property; and after a few years of rest from the exhausting process, the uplands very soon resumed their natural fertility; a radical chemical change became apparent all over the surface of. the soil, and efforts at cultivation demonstrated the fact that those rejected acres are now among the most fertile of any in Ohio for the production of the staple which is the chief source of our agricultural wealth.

The early labors of the husbandman were not attended with very good success. To account for this, we must consider that the implements of the farmer were rude and imperfect - principally the tiller's own handicraft - and that the seeds first planted and sown were placed in ground but partially cleared, covered with stumps and roots, and shaded by trees of the larger growth. Hence the "soft corn," water-soaked potatoes, and perhaps the "sick" and smut-stricken wheat, which were sources of general complaint among the early cultivators. The absence of foreign demand for produce during the first twenty years offered no incentive to a production beyond family' and neighborhood wants. Aside from the supply of such wants, there was no stimulus to agricultural enterprise. It is related, on good authority, of a merchant in Wooster, who had accumulated in store a considerable quantity of wheat, for which he had paid the farmers, as an especial favor, twenty-five cents per bushel in goods, that, finding his grain would not pay cost of transportation to the lake markets, he transferred his wheat from the warehouse to the street, where it was partly devoured and partly trodden under foot of swine and other animals. Except spasmodic demands, explained among the narratives of the early settlers, the first encouragement the farmers of Ashland County received for growing grain or domestic animals for market was after the completion of the New York and Erie Canal, in 1825, and the opening of the Ohio Canal, at Massillon, in 1827. The construction of the Sandusky, Mansfield, and Newark Railroad to Mansfield, in July, 1846; of the Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati Railroad, in 1849; and of the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne, and Chicago Railroad, at a more recent date, multiplied rival markets, gave value to productions of the farm that before had been worthless, and has secured a reward to every department of agricultural enterprise and an increase in the value of real estate that are far beyond the most sanguine hopes of those who first settled the country.