Coshocton County, Ohio - Chapter 18, 1876

Chapter 18

The Coshocton County Bible Society was organized in April, 1830. It has distributed by sale and gift some six thousand dollars' worth of Bibles and Testaments in the county, and paid over to the American Bible Society for its benevolent work in the home and foreign field some twelve hundred dollars.

Sunday-School Association

Some ten years ago, a county sunday-school association was formed, but after a brief period became extinct. W. H. Robinson was Pres. ; Dr. E. Sapp, V. P. ; J. Glover, Treas. ; J. R. Johnson, Cor. Sec; W. J. Moffit, Rec. Sec In the summer of 1876, a new association was organized. Pres., Joseph Frew ; Sec, L. Disney ; Treas., J. G. Magaw.

Temperance Movements

The various temperance movements of the country at large have always been to greater or less extent engaged in by the people of Coshocton county. And in few regions has there been either more need for the work or more faithfulness in it. Records which, if given in detail and in such way as to make the account one of personal and local interest, would perpetuate family shame and mortify personal and local pride, tell in general that Coshocton county has contributed its full quota of victims to " the monster evil."

From the days of the Washingtonians, on through Sons of Temperance, Cadets of Temperance, Good Templars, "Women's Leagues, there have always been those to " lift up the standard against the enemy." The records of many of these organizations and societies are not now to be had, and it is not deemed best to make herein transfers from them, at best only partial.

In earl}^ days, every shop, tavern, and trading-place sold whisky. In 1820, there were not less than thirteen such places in Coshocton county, then including the lower half of Holmes county, and having a population of 7,086.

In 1876, with a -population of some 23,000, there are in the county forty-five drug-stores, saloons, etc., paying tax to the United States government on sales of liquor.

Lodges of Good Templars are at this date reported in West Bedford, Mohawk Village, and Coshocton ; and Women's Leagues in Warsaw, Jacobsport, and Coshocton.

Among the more noticeable movements, we mention two, partly because the record of these was more distinctly made and can now be readily traced.

In the month of March, 1870, in the village of Coshocton, a meeting was called (and held in the Frame Presbyterian Church) to devise, if possible, some more efiicient measures looking to the removal of the evils of intemperance from our community. After some discussion, it was resolved to put in the field, at the approaching spring election, a ticket pledged to pass and enforce the " McConnellsville Ordinance," as it was commonly called, or some other of similar sort. Each of the great parties had already presented its ticket. In due time, after a brief but vigorous campaign, the following "Citizens' Ticket" was elected : Mayor, Hiram Beall ; Clerk, H. 0. Smith ; Treasurer, G. F. Cassingham; Marshal, John Taylor; Councilmen, F. E. Barney, W. S. Tidball, Wm. E. Hunt, Geo. Ross, J. S. Williams, and Josiah Glover.* The average vote for the gentlemen on this ticket was one hundred and forty-three ; the total number of votes cast in the corporation that year being three hundred and fifty.

The ordinance having been passed, and vigor displayed as to the enforcement of all temperance laws, four saloons were closed entirely, and the others put under much restraint. But eminent legal ability soon discovered weak places, and the delinquents always got the benefit of them, and of doubts. The tax-payers grew restive under the expenses of trials, etc., and public sentiment, never really as to majority, but only by plurality, on the side of this movement, failed to support the movement, and in due course put into the controlling municipal places those who, while preserving the form of the ordinance, had no sympathy with its spirit.

The recent famous " Crusade," or '- Prayer Work," or " Women's Whisky War," as variously termed by the journals of the day, may be said to have been commenced in Coshocton, February 15, 1874.

On the evening of that day (Sabbath) a mass meeting of " the friends of temperance " in the village of Coshocton was held in the Methodist Episcopal Church, to consider the new movement, and the propriety of inaugurating it here. The meeting was presided over by the mayor, and addressed by a number of speakers, the general drift of whose remarks was in favor of " the movement" already sweeping up from the southwestern part of the state, and immensely "written up" in the papers.

On the 21st of February (Saturday), " the visiting band " of women, led by the venerable Mrs. D. Spangler (after frequent conferences among themselves, and direct or indirect conference with those who professed that " the secret of the Lord was with them;" and who, " knew that the Lord was in this movement," and that all the pains and toils would be light when the success was achieved), began their visitation of the saloons. The day was exceedingly stormy ; efi^brts were confined to pleading with those in the business to give it up. After some days, the prayer exercises were entered upon. Usually the ladies were allowed to come into the premises, the proprietor often, however, being out at the time. But at length the exercises were conducted upon the pavement, often in the chill March winds and amid the rain and snow. Meanwhile public meetings were held every evening, at which addresses were made by popular speakers more or less in sympathy with the work, and relations of the experience of reformed drinkers and reports of the women's work were given in. At these great crowds were present, filling the largest rooms available - the Methodist Episcopal Church, Central Hall, the Presbyterian Church, and the Opera House. Morning prayer meetings of large proportions also were held. Pledges were circulated ; the newspapers and the lawyers were completely enlisted to put no hindrance in the way, but rather to help "the women," with whom, in their sorrows and general purposes, there was as yet almost universal sympathy, whatever might be thought of some of the methods. Still, no " surrenders " were made, and it was evident, possibly with a view to what followed, that larger sales than ever were being made, especially by a drug store or two, whence flasks were being largely carried out, which probably came into play when the saloons were more closely guarded, or even practically closed.

At length "pickets" were set in each drinking place or as a guard before the door. Two women, often closely blanketed and with warm bricks at the feet, sat hour after hour, until relieved by others sent out by "the oflicer of the day," by authority of " the League." At length, after days of uneasiness and nights of anxiety and devising, the establishment having the smallest stock and doing the smallest trade surrendered, with the understanding that the liquors should be purchased by the League or its friends, and also the U. S. internal revenue license. And then followed another and another - the liquors were poured into the gutter, the brass band played, the church and courthouse bells rang, the men shouted, the women sang and cried and prayed ; the strange enthusiasm was felt in every home to g-reater or less extent. Then came a lull. Prosecutions, under the temperance ordinance, were now tried. Money was wanted, and came in slowl3\ Somehow a great deal of liquor was still drunk. Although a few hundred dollars' worth had been captured, it was known that there were thousands of dollars' worth still in the town. With little observable signs of trade - none when the pickets were around - the breath of many still had the odor of beer, or what even seemed more discouraging, whisky; because indicating a readiness to take the stimulant in even more concentrated and damaging form. One man coming out of a meat shop connected with a saloon, with a large basket exhibiting some fine beefsteaks only, he was closely watched, and was detected in distributing flasks to his thirsty old customers assembled in a hay-mow.

Curiously enough, as some thought, the establishments which had females connected with them were the most pertinacious in their rejection of all terms proposed by the League. Still the women held on, evincing the depth of their feeling and the strength of their purpose. At length more surrenders, mainly of empty barrels and old fixtures, were made. These were, in two cases, sold at auction - the proceeds to go to the proprietors.* Glasses brought five dollars a piece, and other things in similar proportion. But now the actual results of this work, as done elsewhere, were beginning to come out in the papers. Little difficulties began to grow up inside " the League." It Avas apparent that some were chiefly interested in the movement from its bearing upon personal notoriety, political preferment or supposed party gain, or sexual advancement or denominational popularity. Soon there was talk about bad faith and broken pledges, of divers sorts. An election was approaching, and interest began to center in it. The temperance people were unfortunate in their selection of a ticket, and on the first Monday of April received an unmistakable blow. A few weeks later the temperance ordinance, passed by the temperance council of 1870, was ''modified,"

What Occurred at the county seat, with slight mutations, occurred at the villages all through the county. Probably the point of most interest after Coshocton was Warsaw, which, like Coshocton, has always been a little unfortunate in having some of the meanest whisky or whisky-drinkers in the country. To their credit, be it said, that many who "signed the pledge" during this movement, are still keeping it, as some of them had done before for many months, in connection with other movements ; and several of those who then relinquished the business have not since engaged in it.

Whatever results followed - whatever extravagances marked its course - no thoughtful one can deny, that in the attention aroused to the monster evils of intemperance in the discussions pertaining to it, in the more thorough instruction of the young, the crusade accomplished much good. The estimate of female influence and essential divinity may be lower. The idea that those who can not prevail with God, and over the passions and appetites of those whom they love and by whom they are loved - their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons - to the inducing of them to give up the use of drinks, can yet without fail prevail over those, it may be, alien to them in race and religion, to resist their passion for easy living and the love of gain ("the accursed thirst for gold," as the poet says), may not be so generally accepted as it once was; but the crusade was no failure, in at least some important aspects. And though, with some, " distance may lend enchantment to the view," its work in Coshocton county was as eifective as elsewhere, where it encountered the same conditions.

And what is true of this is also true of the many movements preceding it. People who talk of " no progress" in this great subject, must surely look out only to the narrow circle of their own personal grievances, or have queer ideas of progress. They certainly can not stand with the writer of these sketches, and see the river of fire in its tortuous flow along the years covered by this work. They would at least see indications that the springs of the river were very certainly, if gradually, losing their volume and depth of color. Even in the face of the saddening and disgraceful fact that there are in Coshocton county to-day so mau}^ drinking places and so much intemperance, no one who has studied the whole movement will say there has been no progress, unless determined to argue in advance "that the former days were better than these days." From the days that church authorities in Coshocton county must spend hour after hour in cases of discipline arising out of intemperance - from the days that a popular politician could haul a barrel of whisky to the public square, in front of the polls, and, tying a couple of tin-cups to the barrel, after knocking out the head, sing out : " Come on, boys ! " there would seem to have been at least some change. From the days when every store kept liquors to the days of back rooms and screens - from the time when the use of liquors was universal to even those in which it is even very general, some progress has been made.

Secret Orders

In early days there was a famous society called the " Hoo ! Hoo ! Society," composed of a rollicking set of fellows. Unfortunately for the historian, all their proceedings were conducted by " a dark lantern," but it is said that getting "on the gridiron" or "riding the goat" were tame things compared with their rites and ceremonies.