Coshocton County, Ohio - Chapter 5: Pioneer Coshocton, from "king Charley's" Tavern> Where~z0uis,; Philippe .of: France Clashed with American Sovereignty, 1909

Clashed With American Sovereignty Down To The Forties

In the evening of the Indian life in this region the horseman riding over the lone trail through the woods watched with gun in hand to guard against attack from wild beast or lurking savage skulking behind trees; for Indians were slow to go when new traders and settlers and travelers began arriving. Some natives with human heart and human emotion could not bring themselves to leave forever the graves of those they mourned. Others simply were not yet disposed to abandon their old hunting ground.

In this contact with savagery the vanguard of civilization had need for men of forceful character, of daring and resolution, with a dash of adventure. This frontier, with all its wealth of timbered soil, still had its perils; a frontier life near hostile Indians; a hardy, wellscarred, pioneer life under stern conditions; not, however, without its fascination of forest haunt and rough cabin, and dread of savage attack.

Dr. Joseph Doddridge vividly pictured it. Speaking of "Indian summer," for instance, he assigned to those beautiful days in autumn a terrible significance instead of the romantic suggestion conveyed by the term. The frontier settlers, explained the doctor, had no peace from Indian alarms and attacks except in winter. During spring and summer there was constant need for watching. It was only with winter's approach that relief came. But after the first days of cold there came warm, smoky, hazy weather to tempt the Indians to renewed incursions on the frontier - an "Indian summer" for blood and mischief.

settler in what is now Coshocton County was the bluff, hearty, hailfellow-well-met Charley Williams, roving from Virginia and locating here in 1799. The date is from his autobiographical sketch, the original manuscript of which passed into the possession of Joseph Miser of Keene. Mr. Williams' writing and his private ideas of spelling were deciphered by Mr. James R. Johnston. The document by Mr. Williams is dated August 25, 1831, and his notation therein regarding thirty-two years' residence in Coshocton would indicate his arrival here in 1799. This incident of the date has its bearing on a subsequent historical experience of a French king in Coshocton.

"I ben a man of strong mind but no larnen and fought it to the last," Williams declared with engaging frankness. According to his own account early life on the border was a round of "injin" killing, whisky trading, fur-selling, and high living, dancing, card-playing, horse-racing and spending money as fast as it was made. Speaking of his fiancee, Miss Susanna Carpenter, he wrote:

"T had to steel hur a way and wee was poor onable to get lisens for want of mony but all Cam right thar was a jestes of the pes in virginy and hee agread to mary mee for a buckskin and wee went over the river in Ohio thar wee got mared on a big rock in the woodes."' The narrative continues that some of the wedding guests went barefooted, and that at the dance afterward "som bar footed."

When at thirty-five Williams came up the Muskingum with his wife and two children, they camped for a season in an open spot in the wilderness, named after its eastern owner, Denman's prairie, a few miles up the Walhonding. The following year they came down to the forks, selecting the same bank of the Muskingum where the Delaware capital had stood. Williams started a salt works.

Other settlers were coming. The woodman's ax rang through the forest. Log cabins rose in little clearings here and there over this region. The bear-killing, deer-killing, pone-eating life of the white man had begun, mixed with much corn planting, cattle raising, whisky trading, and some Indian killing.

For travelers passing this way there were tavern accommodations in the rambling log cabin of Charley Williams, under whose hospitable roof the lively-spirited made merry over cup and song, while the dancing few shuffled over the rough floor to the tremulous strains of the fiddle and

Shuffle-shuffle went the feet. The back-woodsmen put in all their fancy steps, Charley Williams most frolicsome of all. The pace was hot. The skirts of the pioneer daughters swished through the air to the vibrant music and

"Balance the next; three hands round; Ladies swing out; and gents swing in; Three hands out and go it ag'in; Gents swing out and go it ag'in."

In the breathing spell one night while the "gents" smiled and breathed hard and the ladies looked moist and happy the tavern door was flung open. All eyes turned to the stranger on the threshold.

He was dressed in black from head to foot. A fold of his long cloak was held back by the gauntleted hand resting on his hip. Though he had but one attendant the man in black wore an air of consequence as though he boasted a train of courtly followers. His manner jarred on the democratic simplicty of the landlord.

While the guest was served,.the landlord's aversion, formed instinctively, did not diminish. Nor was the dislike one-sided. The stranger, haughtily disdaining any condescension to commonplace conversation, steadfastly held aloof. But soon his caustic comment on the accommodations of the tavern reached Williams, and the blood of the southerner rose. There was a short, sharp exchange of hot words. The man in black rose abruptly, nearly overturning the table.

"T don't care what devilish trash you are," and the knuckles of his fist whitened. "'I'll not be attacked by every stinkin' upstart that comes to our country!"

The onlookers were expectant. The stranger rested his contemptuous gaze on the landlord, then shifted it to the guests as he announced coolly:

Whatever of surprise the exiled prince of singular vicissitudes may have expected to follow his announcement there was one hearer who refused to be nonplussed or impressed.

With that he threw open the door. There was no mistaking the hint. The royal visitor from France saw there was no alternative. With another shrug he passed out of the tavern. It is even said, in the brief chronicle from which this account has been somewhat embellished, that the royal exit was assisted by the toe of "King Charley's"' boot, while the sovereigns looking on cheered.

There has been some skepticism over the visit of Louis Philippe to Coshocton. It is known that the prince sailed from New York for England just before 1800, the year which some have recorded as the date of Charley Williams' arrival in this region. However, accepting the earlier date of 1799 as the year of "King Charley's" coming, it requires no stretch of the imagination to view his tavern in full blast on the banks of the Muskingum at the time of the titled Frenchman's travels through the American wilderness.

Whether or not the prince's Coshocton experience with democratic sovereignty instilled any of those ideas of advanced political liberalism which he afterward took with him to the throne is perhaps open to speculation. But that the king cherished some resentment toward the keeper of a tavern at the forks was told in after years by George W. Silliman, one-time lawyer of Coshocton, who went abroad as the bearer of dispatches when his grandfather, Major Cass, was in the diplomatic service. Silliman said that, in conversation with Louis Philippe, the king recalled that he had been "shabbily treated" at the tavern which from the description given was believed to be Williams' inn at Coshocton.

No more picturesque stage setting presents itself in all the drama of pioneer Coshocton than the inns which greeted travelers in those early years. It was not long until houses of public entertainment appeared every few miles along the new highways and at river ferries. One was "The Blue Ball" on the Cadiz road in what is now Oxford Township. Another in that direction held forth at the sign of George Washington on a white charger. "The Black Horse" inn was in Franklin Township on the road from Zanesville. There were several on the road along the Walhonding.

"King Charley's" tavern at the forks was the social and political center, and the nearest approach to a newspaper. Genial, whole-souled Charley Williams was popular, even more so after the episode of the French king. Conscious always of his own deficiencies he learned what reading and writing he could from William Whitten. This blacksmith-tutor was elected the first justice of the peace. The election was characteristic. The settlement here had risen to the need of some government. "A dozen men met in the tavern at "King Charley's" invitation. Nobody could buy. It was the "king's' treat. They toasted him and severally toasted one another. When all were in a highly receptive mood for the consideration of candidates the host nominated his choice and the guests whooped unanimous approval.

This region was originally included in Washington County, which embraced eastern Ohio in the territorial days. Later Washington was divided into numerous counties. One was Muskingum which included this.

April 1, 1811, Coshocton County was organized by the Legislature then in session at Zanesville. It included a part of what is now Holmes until that county organized thirteen years afterward.

Concerning the meaning of the name Coshocton this interesting contribution is offered by Thomas H. Johnson, chief consulting engineer of the Pennsylvania Lines: In the Delaware tongue "Cush" is bear; "Cush-og" black bear and "Wenk" is town. In Central Pennsylvania the word survives in the names of several streams in the following forms: Cush Creek, Bear Creek; Cushian Creek, Cub Creek; Cush-Cushian, Bear and Cub Creek. The terminal "Wenk" was An-

The United States government awarded tracts of land in Ohio to soldiers of the Revolution. Some tracts remaining were ordered sold by Congress. Coshocton County was in the military land district. Among the earliest settlers were soldiers of the Revolution.

Title to the land here is traced back three hundred years, through copies of the earliest documents on record, by Solomon Mercer, abstractor, whose desk incidentally with a separate drawer for each township is a map of Coshocton County. Mr. Mercer's records covering this county begin with the first charter of Virginia, 1606, and continue through the treaty between Great Britain and the United States, 1783, with George III's relinquishment of all claims to the States; the cession from Virginia to the United States, 1784; the Land Ordinance; the act of Congress, 1796, regulating the granting of land for military service and for the Society of the United Brethren "for propagating the gospel among the heathen."'

Four thousand acres at the forks were granted in 1800 to Elijah Backus of Marietta. President John Adams signed the deed. Backus sold the tract in 1801 to those well-known surveyors, John Matthews and Ebenezer Buckingham, Jr., for $10,000. These early residents, April 30, 1802, laid out on paper the town lots and streets for the place growing around "King Charley's" tavern. They named it Tuscarawa. The Legislature changed the name to Coshocton, January 30, 1811, when the plan of the town was established.

Williams' tavern stood in what is now Water Street, at the northeast corner of Chestnut. It faced the river, its friendly light guiding the ferryman in the night. In time a two-story frame addition was built to the log house, and the long, rambling structure was still standing until twenty years ago.

Williams was accompanied here by his brothers-in-law, the Carpenters, and William and Samuel Morrison who went to Holmes County. A brother of Williams was also early on the ground, along with Isaac and Henry Hoagland, with their families; Buckingham's father and sister; William Scritchfield and daughter who married George McCullough, probably the first pioneer wedding here.

A flourishing town rose on this flourishing frontier, instinct with the spirit of Americanism, the new life challenging the old, the new land of men and women who could dare and do, the new Coshocton with no Yesterday, only Today and the promise of Tomorrow. The game of civilization was on. The optimism of the hour rang from the anvil and blazed from the iron under every swing of Asher Hart's strong arm. It echoed in Tom Evans' shoe shop, Zebedee Baker's saddler shop, Abe Sells' furniture shop, and Joe Neff's tailor shop. It bustled in Jim Calder's store, hummed in J. Fulton's mill, and smelled to high heaven in Andy Lybarger's tannery. It paraded in Wilson McGowan's gold-headed cane and pig-tailed wig, and rustled in the law papers of Aaron Church and Wright Warner. It quick-stepped in Adam Johnston, that hustler of them all, the storekeeper and postmaster who married "King Charley's" daughter, became the county's first recorder and clerk of courts, and served as all-round official; his son, William A. Johnston, saw marvelous changes in eighty-five years until the end in 1908; his grandson, Paul B. Johnston, is lieutenant of police in Coshocton.

A thing unknown today was early Coshocton's experience with a malarial condition. There was an ague epidemic, and half the town had chills and fever. Wherefore the arrival of Dr. Samuel Lee in 1811 was welcomed.

The country round began changing from howling wilderness to cultivated acres. The story of first families was the story of log-cabin life. Amorg those near town were the Cantwells, Fultons, Moores, J. Workman, and the ferrymen John Noble and Benjamin Fry. Before them Isaac and Henry Evans, Charles and Esaias Baker were the first white men to plant corn along the Tuscarawas about 1801, at what is now Orange. Seth and Thomas McClain were in Lafayette Township, 1804, also Thomas Wiggins, and in 1806 George Miller.

In nearby Franklin Township was a dash of the Virginia spirit which radiated southern hospitality and good cheer. That was in the home of Major William Robinson, who had been led captive through here by Logan twenty-seven years before. When he came to Franklin

Township in 1801 his son Benjamin accompanied him. Later came three other sons and six daughters. More 1801 pioneers in the neighborhood were Michael Miller and his family.

On Denman's "prairie" in Bethlehem Township were James Craig and Ira Kimberly in 1801. John Bantham, a Marylander in the Revolution, and Henry Carr reached that section in 1806. Other early settlers were William Speaks who served in the Revolution, Samuel Rea and Andrew Wilson in the War of 1812, Joseph Burrell and Adam Markley.

Virginia's representation among first families included the Darlings in the Walhonding Valley, 1806, whose neighbors were the Butlers, the Merediths, the Giffens, Duncans, Elys, Pigmans, Johns, Coxes and John Elder.

Two Virginians, Garrett Moore and James Oglesby, were early in Keene Township, preceding the New Englanders. East of Canal Lewisville was the home of the McGuires.

Along Wills Creek in 1806 were the Miskimens, the McCunes of Revolutionary stock, and the Addys, contemporaneous with the Oxford Township pioneers: the Wolfes, the Leighningers, the Waggoners, Mulvains and Loos family.

About the same time the McCoys, Wrights, Norrises and Tiltons were in Virginia Township; the Ashcrafts, Hardestys, Chalfants and Croys in the southwest; and the Drapers of Virginia in the northwest.

Early in the nineteenth century the Wolfords, the Haines and James families arrived in Bedford Township; while in Adams Township, then a part of Oxford, were Robert Corbit, William Norris, Robert McFarland and John Baker, founder of Bakersville.

But it means pages to name the county's early settlers, so elsewhere between these covers the ancestral roll has a place of its own. They were the earliest of the wilderness conquerors, men in a world of new-found freedom. Theirs was the fighting chance: the chains of British bondage had been broken; here as freemen they were to prove themselves empire-builders in the heart of the forest, by sheer strength of might.

The militant spirit found vent in militia organization. Very soon after their arrival they formed companies. Colonel Charles Williams was in command. In 1809 there were first and second battalions of the second regiment, fourth brigade, third division of the Ohio militia.

When these were on parade we may well believe all Coshocton and his Wife and his Daughter were there to see and admire the lines ''Forward right - Quick MARCH - Oblique left - Halt - Dress!" and to applaud as the battalion wheeled, right-about faced, and charged the mimic enemy on the run. Of course, as there always has been in mi!- itary drill and ever will be, they had their awkward squads and the raw recruit who would stare straight ahead at a pretty face while a purple-faced commander shrieked "Eyes left!' Something of a despairing pang that he never could master the intricacies of the back step, side step, change step, or support - ARMS! runs through the statement of David Wolgamot in the record: "I do hereby resign my commission as lieutenant because I am too big a fool in the military."

Generally speaking our early Coshoctonian was a good shot, liked the dance, had his social glass, and relished sport. They went in for horse racing, and over a straightaway course, now [fifth Street, Peter Casey's "Whistle Jacket" and "Highflyer'" and Colonel Williams' "Medley" made the dirt fly.

The first court in the county was held in 1811 on the second floor of "King Charley's" tavern. Doubtless, after the court had "taken in" evidence at the bar below, the judicial ascent up the outdoor stairs was attended with becoming gravity. By grace of the Legislature and the old constitution, three citizens served as associate judges on the common pleas bench in those days, along with the president judge who was the only one expected to know the law. He was absent the first session in Coshocton. The three associates were there - Peter Casey, Isaac Evans and William Mitchell. Their commissions from the Legislature were there, bedizened with all the impressive verbiage of legal ponderosity. Adam Johnston was there, and they forthwith appointed him clerk. Notwithstanding all the machinery of the law there, the temple of justice was without a case. Some one discovered the court could order elections for justices of the peace, which solemn duty was painstakingly performed, and court adjourned.

Later that year, at the second term, the docket swelled with three cases. Two were dismissed. One was continued, proof that even in those times justice was initiated into the law's delays. Thomas L. Rue was appointed temporary clerk. The first grand jury was impaneled as follows: James Tanner, foreman, James Craig, Benjamin Fry, Samuel Clark, Samuel Hardesty, John Hanson, Isaac Workman,

Charles Miller, Michael Miller, Philip Waggoner, W. Miller, Francis McGuire, Henry Miller and John Mills. These fourteen men good and true reported "No business."" Court appointed William Lockard county surveyor, and adjourned.

At the December term there was a suit for $9.56 by Charles Williams against Adam Markley. "King Charley" retained Zanesville counsel, Lewis Cass, who won the verdict of the county's first petit jury - John D. Moore, Frederick Wolford, William Beard, John Hanson, John G. Pigman, H. Ballentine, Philip Wolfe, George Smith, John Bantham, W. Miller, John McKearn and Elijah Moore. Court appointed Wright Warner prosecuting attorney for the county. Fights and slander suits were filling the docket.

The whipping-post was here. Passing counterfeit money cost one man thirty-nine lashes across his bare back, besides $20 fine and thirty days in jail. This jail of oak logs was built by Adam Johnston where the present courthouse stands. Cornelius P. Van Kirk was the first sheriff.

Whatever of religious observance there was in those first years little survived in the public memory and nothing at all in current chronicles, save that an occasional traveling minister gave a talk at a home meeting. "There was not a praying family in the town in 1810," wrote the Rev. Mr. Calhoun. For a while after that, the Rev. Timothy Harris, a Congregationalist, held occasional meetings in people's cabins.

The schoolmaster arrived early. Israel H. Baker taught in Franklin Township in 1806. About that time boys and girls up the Walhonding were writing with a quill and spelling through a reader. Joseph Harris was teaching near the Evans settlement up the Tuscarawas. ''King Charley" sent his daughter up there. She was a girl of dash and spirit who liked a swift gallop over the Indian trail through the forest. She knew the saddle before she was in her teens. It was her mission, before Coshocton had a mill, to ride six miles into the country for a sack of grain and take it to Zanesville. When Adam Johnston won her for his bride, her schoolmaster came here from the country to sharpen the quills and intellect of young Coshocton.

Bass Fishing In Middle Basin, Coshocton

to help humanity beaming large as the patch on his knee. As Happy would express it he "wouldn't hoit a fly." He carried apple seeds found around Pennsylvania cider presses, and planted them here and there along his route through the wilderness. He planted a nursery in New Castle Township and Tiverton Township, returning at intervals from long trips to care for the young trees and sell them to settlers. "Johnny Appleseed" they called him. But back in the East he had been John Chapman, which was a time he wanted to forget along with a romance and a disappointment.

And the pioneer life moved on, the new country in the making - a victory of peace wrested from the forest by stout hands that cracked and crinkled and brave hearts that knew no despair. Then a shadow darkened the cabin homes. Grave-faced men gathered at "King Charley's" tavern and counciled over news of war.

Their old enemy's hand was raised against them. British intrigues among the Indians to strangle the young republic and yoke it again to the king's dominion were aggravated by British searching of ships to capture American citizens. The war of 1812 found volunteers in plenty from Coshocton County.

At that day hostile Delawares and Shawanees had gone westward to the Maumee country where Tecumseh was inciting them to recover lands lost by the Wayne treaty, but Harrison dealt them a finishing stroke in the battle of Tippecanoe on the Wabash.

A camp of Delawares and Mohawks near Mansfield was ordered to move. The Indians protested against leaving their home. Colonel Williams and his Coshocton troops were on their way to the front. An Indian was killed. A few days afterward eight settlers were tomahawked.

"Johnny Appleseed" rushed from Mansfield down the Walhonding Valley through Coshocton County to warn the settlers. The tin can fell off his head unheeded. A bareheaded, barefooted Paul Revere he was now, on a day and night run. He pounded on cabin doors, panting and almost breathless, calling out with gasping pauses between words, "Fly! - Fly for your lives! - Indians are murdering and scalping - at Mansfield!' Then away he dashed. Yet the incident had its grotesque features, painfully serious as it was. Families fled precipitately from cabins to block-houses, peering cautiously

Colonel Williams' command was detailed to protect the Mansfield frontier. The "Washingtonian Yellow Jacket Riflemen" they were called, and in their white-fringed, yellow hunting shirts, with knapsacks and rifles slung over shoulders, and powder horns filled from the saltpetre caves near Roscoe, they marched to the music of fife and drum. Captain Isaac Meredith commanded a company, Captain Tanner another, Captain Beard a third, and the fourth mustered as follows - the only roll preserved:

BENJAMIN WORKMAN JOHN STEERMAN THOMAS L. RUE, Sutler DR. S. LEE, Mustering-in Surgeon Fragmentary information regarding men who served from this county supplies the following names of

JAMES WILEY ROBERT CORBIT JAMES BIGGS JOHN G. PIGMAN ANDREW WILSON (AMES LAURIE ROBERT PLATT JAMES McCUNE At the outset a Coshocton County company had joined General

Hull's forces that marched to defeat on the Maumee. Following Hull's surrender there to the British the Coshocton company was permitted to come home on parole.

A company that Isaac Evans organized had reported to General Harrison, and worked on the construction of Fort Meigs on the Maumee. There in 1813 the Americans were attacked by the British and Indians, and the result added one more victory to the chain of victories on land and water which finally vanquished the British. The Coshocton company at Fort Meigs had seen six months' service when it came home. Colonel Williams' command returned from Mansfield after serving a month. Again the ax of the pioneer rang through the forest.

In 1814 Colonel Williams was sent to the State Legislature from this county. To quote his original orthography: "I was elected to lagater and my elexon was countested and sent hom cam hom and was sent back."

There were about three hundred voters, and most of them ever ready to argue politics. Colonel Williams fervently led the partisans of Jefferson and stoutly upheld the simplicity of the sage of Monticello who preferred pantaloons to knee breeches, hated even the title of Mister, and was opposed to taxing whisky. The declining Iederalist party, with its national leaders that stood aloof and made no attempt to gain the people's confidence, had its followers in Coshocton County who were of the elements that subsequently formed the Whig party. These congregated at a tavern conducted by the quietly persuasive Wilson McGowan in Second Street, now the Farmers' Hotel. Here the talk was directed against the incipient doctrine of "State sovereignty," the thing which had been growing ever since men wanted each State to take care of its own war debt instead of being called upon to help pay other States. The company in McGowan's tavern listened approvingly to the argument that the colonies had not fought each for its own independence, but each for the independence of all, and that the sovereignty acquired in that struggle was a national sovereignty raised by the common fight for liberty.

Colonel Williams, well aware of his limitations in statecraft and speechmaking, maintained his political prestige by giving picnics and dances, a practice which has its modern counterpart in Tammany Hall clambakes and free outings provided by metropolitan politicians. The colonel by this time rejoiced in the affectionate designation of "Old" Charley Williams, the usual mark of social esteem.

At times there were political discussions in which the argument of the fist altered some face if it didn't change any opinion. Although dueling was never in fashion here there were numerous fistic meetings by agreement to settle differences, or prove who was the '"'best''? man by beating the other fellow to a palpitating pulp.

After the war of 1812 the steady growth, which ever since has been a distinguishing feature of Coshocton, advanced the riverside hamlet to a fair-sized village. Abraham Wisecarver, hatter, was there. John Crowley, carpenter, came in 1815; for a while he ferried, and eight years later was elected sheriff. John Darnes, carpenter, and Richard Stafford, wagon-maker and later justice of the peace, arrived from Virginia. Albert Torry, blacksmith, came from Maine. ~James

Renfrew, Sr., started a new store here. Samuel Burns, hatter and justice of the peace, came from Philadelphia, 1816. More newcomers included Otho and Daniel Cresap, Hezekiah Robinson, William Carhart, John McCullough, Sanford Madden, John Forrest, John Smeltzer, and members of the houses of Boyd, Gault, Thompson, Squires, Roderick, Slaughter, Neldon, Borden, Luke, Heslip, Powelson, Ravenscraft, Winklepleck, McNabb, Lemert, Mulford

But why extend the list when the pioneer story of our county is the story of all who came in the earliest decades of its first century; and these are listed elsewhere as the honored grandsires in whose names their descendants today find ancestral pride - the colonists who blazed the path for civilization through this wilderness.

Coshocton was yet the only town in the county, but in its early stage there was much the same color which after villages took on. There was Benjamin Ricketts' store in Second Street, nearly a hundred years ago, and the store of Robert Hay and James Renfrew, with the atmosphere of tobacco, groceries, powder, lead, crockery, scythes, china, tinware, chains, bridles, whips, hats, flints, knives, cambric, bombazet and iron. The goods came by boat from Pittsburg down the Ohio and up the Muskingum to Coshocton.

Daybook and ledger accounts of Benjamin Ricketts have been preserved and are in the possession of W. S. Hutchinson, whose wite is a granddaughter of Coshocton's early storekeeper. From the books comes a story of prices. The farmer's wife bringing eggs to the store got eight cents a dozen, and for her butter twelve and a half cents a pound. She paid for coffee fifty cents a pound, sugar twelve and a half cents, calico fifty cents a yard, a paper of pins twenty-five cents. Tea cost two dollars a pound.

Wheat in 1818 sold at seventy-five cents a bushel in this county, dropped to fifty cents in the next few years, and in 1823 fell as low as thirty cents. At the same time corn went from thirty-three cents down to twenty. Oats was thirty-three a bushel.

Whisky cost thirty-seven cents a gallon. One hundred cigars, thirty-seven and a half cents - the book calls them cigars. What localtanned leather could do toward cheapening footwear is shown in the price of shoes, ranging from a dollar and a quarter to two dollars thirty-seven and a half cents a pair.

Accounts were settled frequently in grain, maple sugar and livestock. Occasionally there was an entry of ferriage for wagon, twentyfive cents - not an inconsiderable item of expense which stared the shopper in the face every time he would cross the river to trade within our gates.

There is an entry of "a half-gallon of whisky when fishing," which indicates that a fisherman in those days went into action with what Grover Cleveland has since called a properly stimulated mental equipment.

A farmer on the Tuscarawas - '"up the Skarwas," as some styled it - came to town on a December day in 1821 with a drove of eleven hogs for which he got $3.75 a head.

While riding through the woods on the road to Coshocton the postboy, William Cartwell, was shot, and the mailbag rifled. Farmer Johnson happened near and caught a glimpse of the murderer. When Johnson reported the crime at New Philadelphia, the law held the witness until three hundred men had been summoned and lined up in the street. Johnson looked searchingly into the faces. Suddenly he pointed an accusing finger at John Funston, with "That's the man!" Funston, white to the lips, retorted "You're a har!' but he was jailed, and afterward he confessed. In the close of 1825, four months after the murder, people from Coshocton County joined a throng of thousands in Tuscarawas that saw the murderer swing from the gallows.

Wild beasts were killing so many sheep, hogs and calves that the State put a premium of $2.40 on every wolf scalp, and $1.50 on panther and wildcat scalps, which resulted in some lessening of the forest terrors.

Travel in the north was saved the dangerous fording of the Killbuck by Adam Johnston building a toll-bridge in 1818. A tollbridge was thrown across Wills Creek by Thomas Johnston, associated with others.

There was scheming to draw new county boundary lines. A county seat was elaborately laid out on paper by Jonathan Clark in the southwestern corner of Coshocton County. Clarksville had two lots for a courthouse, one for a stone market house, two for an

Another lost town was Millsville, mapped out by John Mills on the banks of the Tuscarawas "at the great bend" near the present Orange. It also had its public square and Main and Walnut streets - on paper.

While the county still included part of Holmes, there was agitation to locate the capital where Keene now is because it was more central. The separation of the Holmes portion from the county ended courthouse expectations at Keene.

Those who know the average American farm of today may have some faint conception of the pioneer life and its struggles to clear the way through the wilderness here, to cut down forests, to "grub" over hills of tangled brush, and to heave out great heaps of rocks. Pioneers worked hard - too hard. Theirs was the hardship and privation of the farm, theirs the year's of struggle, toiling from sunrise to sunset. Dreary enough had been the trip into the forest, but drearier and more appalling still was the prospect which faced the pioneer's family upon reaching the lone spot in the wilderness that was to be their home. The nearest neighbor was miles away. The dismal silence of night was broken only by the hoot of an owl or the howl of a wolf.

Theirs was the courage, the strength, the faith and the will that filled hearts in the making of the country. While they were not readers of Shakespeare, they had the soul to appreciate the beautiful in nature, hanging finer landscapes before their eyes than any paintings on palace walls, but they were also conscious of other things than «poetry. This was usually at such God-forsaken season when the heel of winter stuck in muddy hills and bottoms, and spring was nowhere except in the green-covered almanac hanging on the wall.

There was no poetry in being routed out of a warm feather-bed before daylight on a raw, chilly morning to go out into the cold world and a colder kitchen. Many a winter morning the pioneer cracked the ice in the water bucket to fill the washpan and went outdoors to do his spluttering. It seemed warmer there with the faint dawn just streaking the darkness over the hills.

grinding his face with the towel that he'd plow the clearing that day soon as they were through milking, though there was snow on the ground and he would walk in a cold, wet furrow and in a mighty hard row of stumps.

He could see his wife coaxing the flint spark to light the kindling, and then hover over the feebly burning flicker, the while she wrapped her cold hands in her apron, and pranced a queer little warming-up prance, and tried to smile while her teeth chattered.

There is a cherished picture of the pioneer's pretty daughter at her spinning wheel which we would a deal rather hang on memory's wall than the one painted here, but simple candor compels closer inspection. Those candlestick, tallow-dip days appear decorative only when drawn by an artist. Grim reality saw them as part of a life that was a bare existence, deprived of reasonable comforts and conveniences, and reduced to the elemental necessities of food and shelter. The wife and the daughter often worked in the field.

Nor did such days pass with the passing of the pioneer. They came to succeeding generations, and much of the hardness has never yet quite left the farm, even in the comforts of later times, bought with years of rigorous self-denial. Those who know farming know the farmer's story. Dreamers never can; they dream the dream of independence on the farm; they sing the song of statistical prosperity ; their pet theory is that all the farmer needs is the scientific wisdom handed down by the silk-hat agriculturists who compose crop reports.

Aye, give the farmer the scientific wisdom to harness the clouds and hold back floods; scientific wisdom to sprinkle gentle, growing showers in time of parching drought; scientific wisdom to comprehend the joyous independence of those years when he has gotten less for his grain than it cost to raise. Not to digress too far, but talking with Thad Haight about book farming:

"Those fellows make me mad sometimes," the "Granger" said. "A paper farmer tells how to take care of hay when it's cut, saying not to leave it lay in the field but go around with a fork and turn it over and over to get it nice and dry and have a pretty crop of hay. He never thinks when a thundering big rain's coming a man's got to hurry in his hay almighty sudden. But every fellow thinks he knows how to make a farm pay. A fellow bangs out agricultural ideas on a

As our pioneers gradually chopped out a destiny in the forest, and figuratively as well as literally were able to come out of the woods, the log church was built. Besides the regular religious services there were camp meetings attended by the whole countryside.

Chalfant's meeting-house, built by the Methodists in Washington Township, 1811, is recorded as the oldest in the county. The Methodist church at West Bedford was organized several years later. Presbyterian ministers preached in Coshocton as early as 1812. The Elliotts and others in Millcreek Township, 1821, "deeply sensible of the importance and necessity of true religion, and earnestly desirous of promoting its influence," organized the congregation of St. Mark's parish in communion with the Protestant Episcopal church. Baptist preachers were heard in the county in its earliest years, and in 1825 a Baptist congregation met in homes and schoolhouses in Oxford and Lafayette townships. These were the forerunners of organized religious work in the county. What grew from them and what crowned the labors of denominations that came afterward will be considered in a separate chapter.

After James Calder went to the wall in Coshocton he crossed the river to start a new town, 1816, and called it Caldersburg. Later it was named Roscoe, after an English author. There was a tavern, a long, rambling log structure, and mine host was William Barcus. Occasionally a traveling preacher would hold a meeting in the dining room of this roadhouse. The hymn, prayer and sermon heard here , offered a new feature in tavern life by way of contrast to that at the other end of the ferry where 'King Charley's" roadhouse reveled in dance, court and election.

With the capital acquired by making salt at three dollars a bushel James LeRetilley started a store in Roscoe in 1825 in partnership with William Wood and afterward George Bagnall. At this time a new era dawned in pioneer life - the building of the Ohio Canal.

The engineers brought the $5,000,000 waterway along the west shore of the Muskingum to reduce the expense. This was Coshocton's disadvantage and Roscoe's opportunity. Much of the enormous wheat crop from the cleared forest land that was shipped by canal was loaded

It had been a brave undertaking to dig the waterway of commerce through the wilderness and around towering hills. Those were the times when the country had no outlet for its produce except by few river floats and jolting, corkscrew mires called wagon roads. With the coming of the canal, wheat climbed to a dollar a bushel, and potatoes for the first time began to have a price - forty cents a bushel. There were farmers who had opposed giving right of way through the land - the usual opposition to progress; but canal prosperity converted them.

Crops were finding markets and dollars. The peopling of the wilderness began in earnest. The canal was making Ohio famous. The country was awakened to new commercial importance, and Roscoe was a booming center.

The town stirred with shipping life and scenes. There were the fleets of freighters that moved commerce between the Ohio River and Lake Erie. There was the passenger packet, the sight of which involved uneasy speculations concerning the disposal of passengers in the fiddle-case cabin. There was the confusion of the towpath, the tangle of long ropes, the teams - and their drivers, puffy-faced with mule talk, picturesque profanity, how-de-do and whistling the balance. Here, too, the barefoot Garfield drove the towpath mule, the canal-boy stage of that historic life which ended in the White House.

Roscoe doors opened as near to the water's edge as they could, in hospitable welcome to canal travelers. A center of grain traffic was LeRetilley's big warehouse towering above the canal boats. At night the tavern lights beamed cheerfully upon the scene.

"The Renfrew," one of the first boats on the canal, was built in the Roscoe yard. There were half a dozen stores, several mills, and the tamous distillery begun by William Renfrew and Robert Hay aud continued by Love & Hay; this was lost by fire and afterward established in Coshocton where its product attained such reputation that forty thousand gallons once went in a single shipment to California.

The water power of the rivers harnessed at Roscue turned the wheels of her mills. Altogether the outlook for a flourishing town seemed propitious. Early investors in Roscoe's real estate future were Leander Ransom, engineer on the canal construction, and Noah H. Swayne, then practicing law in Coshocton and afterward justice in the supreme court of the United States.

The Walhonding Canal, feeding the main waterway at Roscoe with enormous wheat shipments from the Walhonding valley and adjacent territory, was building a busy town in Tiverton Township - Rochester. The roads leading to the canal terminal were covered for miles with wagons bringing wheat from as far as Mt. Vernon. But with the passing of canal transportation Rochester vanished - and today has risen again in Cavallo on the Mohican.

Looking back upon the picture of our county in the canal era the landscape for the most part was just emerging from forest solitude with signs of civilization. At lengthened intervals the log cabin, with its space of cleared land about it, sending its thread of blue smoke curling up into the sky; stumps everywhere; sometimes the felled trees lying yet upon the soil; saw mills and corn-crackers along the creeks, with little whisky mills grinding corn; and pigs in all directions.

Townships had then begun their story of early settlers, and several towns had their first doctors, teachers, preachers, storekeepers, blacksmiths, wagonmakers, shoemakers, postmasters - a marvelous transformation from the wilderness which "Old Charley" Williams could remember. He lived to see the canal era and the dawn of "'the roaring forties."

"As I remember," he commented, and the spelling is his, "wee was the hapest pepel in the world ontill our countery was fild with spahlen davels - thay get between the pepel - then it was a grat thout to get every man what hee could - oppose one another - geten werse - tha plarsh thar fais with religen now makes them werse." He died in 1840 and was laid beside his wife, the first grave to the left as you enter Oak Ridge Cemetery.

In the picture of those days was the mail coach with puffy sides of shining red, rolling joyfully past corn fields and fields of wheat and stumps, past rail fences and through woods, stopping to water at the sign of "The Blue Ball" or "The Black Horse," and rattling gaily into town scattering pigs before it.

Over the western hills where Eli Nichols owned much of New Castle Township the hamlet of New Castle, planned by Robert Giffen, advanced from its solitary log-cabin and tavern state into a merger with its rival, West Liberty, affluent with half a dozen houses including one of brick. A few miles away, on the old site of Captain Pipe's Indian village, Walhonding was just springing up with the canal, and coming so fast that a bill was introduced into the legislature to form a new county, making Walhonding the seat, but the bill lost by one vote. Mount Airy was on a ridge with some cabins, a blacksmith forge and a log school with a schoolmarm, wife of Parson Alsach; but the place rose only to vanish with other lost towns of the county.

Southward, in Pike Township, there was the flourishing village of West Carlisle with its two churches, three stores, tavern, tannery and the shops of blacksmiths, wheelwrights, carpenters, shoemakers, tailor and hatter. There also was the home of William Brown who kept store, served as postmaster under Monroe, J. Q. Adams, Jackson and Van Buren, was a sure shot, a good horseman, and a Christian gentleman.

In Perry Township rose Dr. E. G. Lee's New Guilford, and nearby John Conway's Claysville, afterward consolidating as East Union, with two-score houses and several shops where the sound of hammer and saw and anvil swelled the chorus of peace.

West Bedford, or Heaton's Town in those days, had grown from a road house of 1817 to log-house stores, blacksmith shop and tannery. Washington Township was clearing her fine farms. In Virginia the Scotts, of good old stock and well esteemed, were developing much land; a store was beginning the future New Moscow.

Franklin Township had Frew's Mill, now Wills Creek. Linton Township, when it couldn't ford the creek, ferried at Jacobsport, now Plainfield, then the home of a tannery. A toll bridge succeeded the ferry. There was a ferry at Linton Mills. A mill was the beginning of Bacon Run. Maysville flickered about a blacksmith's forge, then flickered out. Folks in that section were digging deep wells, and from every sixty gallons of water pumped up they extracted a bushel of salt.

called Van Buren, which has grown since into Spring Mountain. Millcreek Township, then as now, had no town lot, and was farming; likewise Bethlehem, rafting logs of oak, walnut, poplar and sycamore down the Killbuck to Roscoe and Coshocton.

In Clark Township Eli Fox's mill was grinding at Helmick. Blissfield was unknown yet, and where Bloomfield stands today, partly in this county and partly in Holmes, there were in the forties a few log cabins with the county line running between them.

A tavern and straggling cabins in the wilderness started New Bedford in Crawford Township, with Chili growing later out of a blacksmith shop.

In Adams Township Bakersville was in a grist-mill stage; in White Eyes William M. Boyd's mill was the forerunner of Jacktown, afterward Avondale, now Fresno.

Keene had emerged from Jesse Beal's forest as a little leaky logcabin school, and advanced to tavern and stores. West Lafayette was in its roadhouse cradle. On the Walhonding Canal Warsaw grew into a flourishing grain center where shortly before only a tavern had stood. Along the Ohio Canal the immense grain shipping started Canal Lewisville with three warehouses, while struggling young Newport, nearby was lost. Evansburg, afterward Orange, flourished as a canal port with warehouse, tannery, tavern and store.

Country

THE COLONISTS OF THE EARLIEST DECADES IN THE COUNTY'S FIRST CENTURY, INCLUDING THOSE WHO CUT THE PATH FOR CIVILIZATION THROUGH THE WILDERNESS, WHO HEARD THE HISS OF THE SNAKE ON THE CABIN FLOOR, AND THE HOWL OF THE WOLF AT THE DOOR; THEIR'S WAS THE COURAGE, THE STRENGTH, THE FAITH, AND THE WILL THAT FILLED HEARTS IN THE MAKING OF THE COUNTRY.

Station

THE SICKLE AND CRADLE DAYS - BARREL AND TIN CUP TEMPERANCE - THE COSHOCTON COUNTY LINE OF THE "UNDERGROUND RAILROAD" FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM - "ALL ABOARD FOR MEXICO!'

In those days when Coshocton County was compelled to harvest wheat by main strength instead of by machinery the workers were stimulated by the ever-present beverage from the bottle on the table, the jug in the field, or the barrel in the-cellar. Nor is there any evidence that drunkenness cursed the community when whisky was plenty and pure and*not paying millions of taxes to the government. That the privilege was abused is probable, as all privileges have been abused from time immemorial. But condemnation was directed toward the abuse, not toward temperate drinking, and there are those who retain the belief that the barrel and tin cup hospitality of our pioneers was nearer true temperance than the sneaking, hypocritical drinking behind the door.

The farmers in those early times started from home before daylight to help a neighbor cut his wheat. They toiled under burning skies, reaping their slow way with the hand sickle, their stooped figures bowed by the weight of drudging years. And to thrash the grain * they pounded it with a flail on the barn floor.

In time came the cradle, and the first step in harvest progress. The strong-armed pioneer swung the cradle with mighty sweep, cutting in one day acres of grain where the sickle had cut sheaves.

Meanwhile there was a cloud growing, at first "no bigger than a man's hand," but it spread until it darkened the land to break in the storm of '61. Through the canal years slaves were escaping from the South, and friendly abolitionists were helping them along the way through Obio to Canada. Coshocton County was on one of Ohio's many lines of the "underground railroad" from slavery to freedom.

tolerance of slavery, many having brought with them the Virginia notion of the South's peculiar institution, there were others in Coshocton County with whom New England ideas prevailed. Their ageressive stand against slavery promoted a sentiment ready to support the fleeing slave.

There has been a list compiled by Professor Siebert in Ohio State University naming the Coshocton County operators of the "underground railroad" - abolitionists who threw open their doors to the fleeing black man and braved the existing laws protecting the slaveholder's claim of ownership. These were the conductors who helped along the fugitives passing through this county, providing them with food, shelter and raiment:

Despite the efforts of the Whigs to keep the slavery question out of politics, it rose persistently. Some, who were not inclined to go the full limit of abolitionists, gave up the idea of abolishing slavery in southern states, but would "draw a ring of fire around them." These Free-Soilers had their followers in Coshocton County.

The South was scheming to maintain its system of slavery by controlling Congress. To offset the creation of free States in the North, the South worked to extend slave territory in the Southwest. There was emigration to the Rio Grande country, then part of Mexico, and they called it Texas. The day came that General Sam Houston and his seven hundred Texans routed Santa Anna and his five thousand Mexicans on the San Jacinto, and Texas was freed from Mexico. When the young Republic of Texas with her slave-holding tendency applied to Congress for annexation, the question whether or not to admit her became the burning issue in the presidential campaign of 1844 - an issue that was stormily debated in taverns and stores of Coshocton County.

Here as elsewhere men's hats were thrown high for the peerless Henry Clay, that prince of compromisers whom the Whigs nominated for president, and who was supposed to be against the annexation of Texas. But Polk, the Democratic candidate who favored annexation, was elected, partly by reason of the votes thrown away on the Free Soil nominee. Polk's election was taken as a sign of popular approval of annexation, and Congress admitted Texas.

Mexico claimed the rich valley of the Rio Grande and insisted on a boundary farther east. General Zachary Taylor advanced to the Rio Grande, and on a spring day in 1846 the news came to Coshocton County that the Mexicans had fired upon our flag.

At the call for troops Coshocton sons came to the front as the county's fathers did in 1812 with a full quota of defenders, and more. They exceeded a hundred and ten, those young volunteers, among them several who were destined yet to serve their country in another war, including the corporal, B. F. Sells, who as captain led a valiant company in the Rebellion, and for years was one of only two Coshocton survivors of the Mexican War. The last is Joseph Sawyer.

In June, 1846, the Coshocton County volunteers started south. There was a throng to see them off, such a throng as had never assembled here before: people from the homes that the boys were leaving; women and girls forcing a cheerful goodby through tears. They crowded down the Roscoe shore to the canal boats to keep the boys in sight to the last minute. "AIl aboard for Mexico!" The boats drew away, the crowd cheered, there was an answering roar from the troops, and they were off. This is the official roster of the

Going to war by canal boat was not quick business. It took two days to reach Zanesville. There the Coshocton boys boarded a steamer and within a week were camped near Cincinnati. A month after leaving home they were on a New Orleans steamer, equipped with arms and ammunition as Company B of the Third Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry. They camped on the memorable battlefield of "Old Hickory" Jackson near New Orleans. A stormy voyage of a week took them to Brazos, Santiago, where they started on the march to the Rio Grande. Three deaths had occurred: George Kitchens, John Darnes and Samuel Miller.

In August the Third Ohio garrisoned the city of Matamoras. In In the fall and winter the Coshocton company lost by sickness: A. J. Darling, William Gardner, Henry Brown, Charles Wright and Joseph Parker. Captain' Meredith resigned to return home.

The sunny days of the Mexico February saw our boys at Fort Camargo on the San Juan where the government supplies were kept for General Taylor's army. In March came the order to go to Monterey. Their route lay under the skirmish fire of General Urea's Mexicans. March 16th our troops routed the enemy and gave hot chase as far as Caderaeda. A week later they joined General Taylor's forces and camped on the battlefield of Buena Vista until May, when the regiment was ordered to the gulf. Robert Harbison, another of our Coshocton soldiers, rests in a grave at Mear. His company, mustered out upon the return to New Orleans, had seen a year's service, and Coshocton welcomed back her sons.

While they were returning home another company, partly recruited from this county and led by James Irvine, a Coshocton lawyer, was on its way to Mexico as Company G of the Fourth Ohio. These troops did garrison duty at Matamoras until ordered in September to Vera Cruz which had surrendered to Scott earlier in the year.

At this point the Fourth Ohio was assigned to General Joe Lane's brigade in the division under command of General Robert Patterson. On the march to the City of Mexico the Coshocton volunteers went through the "baptism of fire" at the National Bridge. They came upon Major Lally and his plucky four hundred holding the position against Mexican thousands. The Fourth Ohio, as advance guard, went to the major's assistance. When the Mexicans were driven back it was found that Coshocton boys had been severely wounded.

In an engagement at Huamantla the Fourth Ohio had charge of prisoners, much to the relief of Iturbide. The son of the Mexican emperor, when brought with a troop of prisoners to the rear guard, asked Captain Irvine what troops guarded the prisoners. He looked his gratitude when he learned who they were and that he was safe from the vengeance of the Texas rangers whose gallant, daredevil leader, the famous Captain Walker, had fallen that day.

Continuing the march, General Lane's brigade consigned superfluous baggage to flames at Jalapa, and by forced march hurried to Pueblo, arriving at the crucial moment to rescue from Mexican vengeance eighteen hundred sick and wounded American soldiers lying in Pueblo hospitals. These had become the object of Santa Ana's hatred in the maddening hour when one after another of Mexico's strongholds had fallen - when in a few minutes six thousand Mexicans were routed from the Contreras gateway to the capital city - when San Antonio fell - when the citadel of Chapultepec itself was carried by storm and the conquering forces swept into the city. No Mexicans could stand before the tumultous onslaught of the Americans rushing upon batteries and breastworks, and hacking their way through in hand to hand fighting, swinging rifles like clubs and mowing down resistance with bayonet and sword. Santa Ana fled in the night and with a force stole upon the Pueblo hospitals to wreak vengeance.

It was then that Lane's troops with the Coshocton boys among them hurled themselves upon Santa Ana. The brigade was in three attacking columns, one headed by the Fourth Ohio. Up the streets of Pueblo they fought their way, driving back the Mexicans who made their last stand in the plaza, the public square in the heart of the town.

The firing, the clashing of swords, the cursing, the groans of the wounded and dying reached the sickbeds in the hospitals where hearts beat high with fever of anxiety. In the plaza, men flung themselves panting against the walls; some toppled over the shrubbery at the fountain, and the water reddened. Santa Ana's force was finally overcome. The struggle left Coshocton boys in the hospitals. When the Fourth Ohio finally marched from Pueblo it was to return home.