Crawford County, Ohio - Chapter 4: Settlement of the County, 1912 (part 2 of 2)

But the pioneers had their pleasures as well. They had their cabin-raisings and their logrollings ; and they had their shooting matches, for markmanship with the rifle was their highest sport. Then there were the quilting-bees and the husking-bees, and after the work was over many provisions were eaten and much whisky drank. Whatever the occasion for the gathering may have been it was followed by a most bounteous meal of the wholesome provisions that the forest and the farm could supply, and' always enjoyed, for good appetites were never lacking in those early days. The natural result of these gatherings and the dances with which the occasions closed, were the Aveddings, where the bride was complimented and admired, resplendent in a new calico gown that cost $1 a yard and was made by herself out of five yards of goods; the happy groom, envied and congratulated, his hair smoothed and plastered to his head and polished and glistening with a superabundance of bear's grease. And after the wedding the feast, the long table so crowded and covered with the good things prepared that no one could see that a table cloth was lacking. After the feast all the young folks escorted the bridal couple to their new home, which was another little log cabin in the forest, but its building and furnishing had been the willing work of the young husband for many an evening after his day's work had been completed on his father's farm.

Sometimes and frequently, the angel of death invaded the household, and a parent or child was called away. If a child, it was the father who went sorrowfully to the woods and selected the straightest tree from which he made the little coffin, lovingly staining the wood with walnut, and tenderly covering his rough work with ferns and flowers, and the neighbors came from miles around, and in some pretty and quiet spot on the little farm the body was placed in its last earthly home, one of the elderly pioneers conducting the services with preaching and with prayer. If it was the husband called away, the duties of caring for the family fell upon the stricken wife, and many a boy of eight or nine became the useful assistant of the widowed mother as the provider for the younger members of the family. If help was needed, the pioneer neighbors, after their own hard day's work was done, assembled of an evening at her little clearing, and prepared the land, and planted the seed, and harvested the crop, and kept up their kindly work until the children were old enough to care for the family.

So the pioneers of Crawford settled the county, passing through frequent trials and undergoing many privations, with certainly one redeeming feature in their own experience in the wilderness, and that was that by the time the first settler placed his foot on Crawford soil, the Indians had been so thoroughly whipped and cowed into submission that no settler's cabin in this county was ever burned, and no pioneer was ever murdered and scalped by the savage tribes, as was so frequent and so harrowing in the eastern and southern counties in the earlier days.

Slowly but surely the primitive cabins gave way to those of hewn logs and to the double log cabins ; and these were in turn followed by a few frame houses, and an occasional brick residence. Each year the acreage of cleared land increased; new roads were laid out and the earlier ones improved; little settlements were started which became villages, grew into towns, and expanded into cities, and the wilderness of a century ago became the rich and fertile fields and farms, and the busy and prosperous villages and cities of today.

On Feb. 12, 1820, the Legislature passed an act erecting a county which they named Crawford, after Col. William Crawford, who was burned at the stake in 1782 within the confines of the county then created. In 1820 the present county of Crawford had within its borders