Crawford County, Ohio - Chapter 5: Organization of the County, 1912 (part 2 of 2)

The natural outlet to secure the best market for Bucyrus was Portland (Sandusky) on the Lake, and constant trips through the woods to that point soon made a road. Travel to Marion after 1823 soon made a road to that point, another bore southwest to Little Sandusky (the present Wyandot road), where it joined the north and south road from Columbus to Upper Sandusky, and from where it continued its route southwest to Marysville and Bellefontaine. The road built by Harrison in 1812 from Franklinton (Columbus) to Upper Sandusky, as far north as Norton, in the northern part of Delaware county, was a part of the present Columbus and Sandusky Pike. In 1820 Kilbourne had continued this road north bearing east, following the Whetstone, as his Columbus and Portland road. Settlers continued drifting to the west, and in 1822, Kilbourne laid out his direct road north to Sandusky, the present Sandusky pike, 106 miles from Columbus to the Lake, and several miles shorter than the shortest of the three roads that then ran from Columbus to Sandusky. On this road he laid out the towns of Claridon in Marion county, Bucyrus in Crawford county, and Caroline in Seneca county. Later this road became the most traveled from Columbus to the Lake. John Kilbourne, a nephew of Col. Kilbourne, in his Ohio Gazetteer of 1826, says: "During the last session of the Legislature (Dec. 1825) the author petitioned for the grant of a turnpike incorporation to construct a road from Columbus to Sandusky city, a distance of 104 miles in a direct line. An act was accordingly passed therefor. But whether the requisite funds to make it can be raised is yet (March 1826) somewhat uncertain. But its benefits and advantages to above one half the northern and western part of the state are so obvious that the presumption is that it will be made."

When the county was organized in 1826, these were the routes of travel, called high ways, as they went from one point to another over the highest and best ground. The road from the east, from Gallon to Bucyrus, was a mail route, with a tri-weekly line of stages in 1826, and yet that road from Galion to Bucyrus, with its half dozen turns and curves today, is an air line in comparison to the way it wandered through the country in its stage coach days, and it was a road in name only. As late as 1834, the father of R. W. Johnston of Galion was a teamster with headquarters at Mansfield. He hauled goods from Philadelphia or Baltimore to the merchants at Mansfield, the freight charges being from $4 to $5 per hundred pounds. He used one or more six horse teams for the hauling. In February, 1834, he had a consignment of goods for E. B. Merriman at Bucyrus. He had four horses to draw the wagon that delivered the goods. When he started to return the spring thaw had set in and when in the present Beltz neighborhood the empty wagon drawn by four horses became so mired that he had to go to the nearest farm house to get teams and men to push, pry and pull the wagon out of the swampy ground in which it was embedded. In 1845, E. B. Monnett, taking four sacks of wheat across one of the Plains roads to the mill at

Wyandot, found four horses unable to drag the light load over a county road, and additional assistance had to be secured to extricate the wagon. In 1858, on the State Turnpike between Bucyrus and Chatfield, a road built thirty years previous, and built, too, partly by donations from Congress, George Donnenwirth with a light load of beer was mired, compelled to shoulder each keg, and carry it across the impassable road, and leave the horses to pull the empty wagon to higher and better ground, reload his beer, and proceed on his way. In 1824, when Aaron Carey was made postmaster at Bucyrus a weekly line of stages was established from Columbus to Sandusky. It gave the passengers exercise during the wet season, as at the worst parts of the road, several miles of which were in Crawford county, the passengers all walked to enable the horses to drag the empty coach over the bad places. One of the necessary articles carried by all coaches was an axe, which was used to cut down saplings, for use as poles with A\'hich the driver and passengers would pry the heavy coach out of some chuck-hole in which it was stalled. Frequently, through the plains, the driver left the road, where on the right or left he was able to find better ground. Where the road passed through the swampy ground it was made of corduroy, trunks of trees laid sidewise. Heavy straps were stretched across the interior of the stage, to which the unfortunate passenger desperately clung to avoid being thrown from his seat, as the heavy and cumbersome coach bounced and rocked, and lurched and rolled over this rough roadway. Here is an advertisement of this mail route taken from the Columbus Gazette, of Aug. 28, 1823:

Thus, the first regular mail arrived in Bucyrus on a government schedule of 80 miles in 54 hours, and it can be imagined that the entire village turned out to greet the first arrival and hold a jollification over the important event, and Zalmon Rowse and Merriman and

Norton were the envy of their neighbors when the driver of the coach accepted drinks at their expense, and condescended to converse with them as equals, and every small boy inwardly resolved that when he became a man the height of his ambition would be reached if he could only become the driver of a stage coach.

This stage route was from Columbus to Norton, to Marion, to Bucyrus; then to Sherman (now Weaver's Corners 15 miles southwest of Norwalk) ; then to Oxford (now Bloomingville nine miles northwest of Norwalk), and to Perkin and Sandusky City.

A year later, in September, 1824, John Kilbourne commenced his advocacy of a turnpike over about this same road from Columbus to the lake, one so constructed that it would be "navigable" at all seasons of the year. In an article in the Columbus Gazette of Sept. 23, 1824, he says that the freight rate from New York to Sandusky City is $1.75 per hundred weight (112 pounds), and that if a pike road were built from Sandusky to Columbus, goods could be shipped from New York to Columbus, at $2.75 per cwt., which is but a fraction over one-half what we now pay from Philadelphia to Columbus. He then adds :

Ten days from Columbus to New York, and this Mr. Kilbourne says was the "quickest" route. Three days from Columbus to Sandusky indicates the stages through Bucyrus did not travel the road after night, but made their journey only during daylight when the driver could pick his way over the road and dodge the tree stumps which might wreck the coach.

Prior to 1826 Bucyrus had a mail coming from Bellefontaine once a week, through Little Sandusky. A man named Snyder was the carrier, and he made the trip on horseback, but sometimes when the road was particularly bad, he made the entire journey on foot, with the mail sack swung over his shoulder. Prior to the weekly stage line from Columbus to Sandusky the man who carried the mail \\hen he reached Bucyrus, found the road to the north so impassable that he left his horse at Bucyrus, shouldered his mail sack, and made the trip to Sandusky and back on foot. Mail delivered at Bucyrus at that time included all the settlers within a radius of probably eight or ten miles from that village. In 1826 there was but one post office in that part of the county which is now Crawford county, and that was at Bucyrus; in v/hat was then the Richland county part of Crawford county there was a post office at Gallon and at Tiro (three miles north of the present Tiro). In that part of Crawford which in 1844 became \A/yandot county there were post offices at Upper Sandusky and Little Sandusky.

These were the roads and their condition, the post offices and their locations, when the county was organized in 1826. There was but one village in the present Crawford county, Bucyrus ; one settlement in the Richland county part. Galleon, located at the crossing of the two roads, with half a dozen houses, a settlement which thrived and prospered until the present Gallon was laid out in 1832 when the buildings at the Corners gradually became deserted and crumbled to decay, and when 50 years later the territory of the original settlement became a part of Gallon, but one house was standing on what was in early days one of the two business centres of the county.

The only stores in the present county were at Bucyrus, those of E. B. Merriman, Henry St. John and Samuel Bailey, or his successors Bowers & French ; there were several shops at Bucyrus, and two or three at the Corners at Galleon ; there were three distilleries, all in the Richland county part ; one ran by John Adrian, near where Leesville now is ; another by Nathan Merriman, near Galleon, and the third by JTames Nail, on the Whetstone, southwest of Galleon. There had been a distillery I'un by McMichael & Rogers on the banks of the Sandusky, the site of the present electric light works, but it had been discontinued. Carey had a grist mill in Bucyrus, and the McMichael mill was a mile up the river, while a mile south west on the Sandusky was the mill of William Young. The other grist mills were in the Richland county part, Hibner's mill, northwest of Galleon, where the C. C. & C. road now crosses a branch of the Glen Tangy, Hosford, Park, Sharrock and Nail had mills along the Whetstone. There were saw mills in many of the townships along the various streams. There was a Methodist and a Baptist church in Auburn township (then Richland county), but no church yet erected in the Crawford county part; there was a log school house in Bucyrus, one in the Blowers settlement, Liberty township, and one in Auburn township. There were taverns at Bucyrus, one at the northeast corner of Sandusky and Perry, run by Robert More, while across Sandusky avenue on the Carey lot was a tavern kept by Samuel Roth, who was also Justice of the Peace. At the Comers (Galleon) William Hosford had a tavern, and there were several houses along the main roads, not exactly taverns but recognized as places for the entertainment of travelers.

The following is the estimated population of the county in 1826; also the populations in 1830 and 1840. The population of 1826 is estimated at one-half of the official population of 1830, and is probably a very close and fair estimate :

It will be seen by the above that the estimated population of Crawford county when it was authorized to organize as a county, was 2,389, of which 1,578 were in the Crawford county part, and 811 in the Wyandot section. In 1836 the population was 4,770, of these 3,156 being the Crawford part and 1,622 Wyandot. In 1840 the population was 13,167, Crawford having 8,899 ^"^ Wyandot 4,268.

The Richland and Marion county figures at the bottom give the population of those sections that are now a part of the present county, so the long columns are the population of the present Crawford county at the three dates given.

As nearly as can be gathered from pioneer statements and records, the following is a list of those in Crawford county in 1826, with the dates of their first arrival. Those marked with a ( § ) had been residents and moved away prior to 1826; those marked with a double tin the census of 1910, many names were omitted, notably in the first ward. The population in 1910, was several hundred above the United States census figures given in this table.