Hospitality of farmers--Primative dispensation of justice--Ellis’s
ferry, and Powers’ tavern--Squire Leadham--West Union--Allen’s--A
North Carolina cotton planter--Brush creek--J. Platter’s--A thunder
storm--A hunter’s cabin--Old Lashley--Marshon’s.
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, I was employed in rambling about the
woods, exploring and examining a tract of land, of a thousand acres,
in the state of Ohio, which I had purchased when in Europe last year,
and which had been the principal cause of my present tour. As it was
only six miles from {180} Maysville, I crossed the Ohio and went to
it on foot. I had expected to have found a mere wilderness, as soon
as I should quit the high road, but to my agreeable surprise, I found
my land surrounded on every side by fine farms, some of them ten
years settled, and the land itself, both in quality and situation,
not exceeded by any in this fine country. The population was also
astonishing for the time of the settlement, which a muster of the
militia, while I was there, gave me an opportunity of knowing--there
being reviewed a battalion of upwards of five hundred effective men,
most expert in the use of the rifle, belonging to the district of ten
miles square.
And now I experienced amongst these honest and friendly farmers real
hospitality, for they vied with each other in lodging me at their
houses, and in giving me a hearty and generous welcome to their best
fare. Robert Simpson from New Hampshire, and Daniel Ker and Thomas
Gibson from Pennsylvania, shall ever be entitled to my grateful
remembrance. I had no letters of introduction to them--I had no claims
on their hospitality, other than what any other stranger ought to
have.--But they were farmers, and had not acquired those contracted
habits, which I have observed to prevail very generally amongst the
traders in this part of the world.
On Saturday I returned to Ellis’s ferry opposite Maysville, to
give directions for my baggage being sent after me by the stage to
Chilicothe.
On the bank of the Ohio I found squire Ellis seated on a bench
under the shade of two locust trees, with a table, pen and ink,
and several papers, holding a justice’s court, which he does every
Saturday.[134]--Seven or eight men were sitting on the bench with him,
awaiting his awards in their several cases.--When he had finished,
which was soon after I had taken a seat under the same shade, one
of the men invited the squire to drink with them, which he {181}
consenting to, some whiskey was provided from landlord Powers, in which
all parties made a libation to peace and justice. There was something
in the scene so primative and so simple, that I could not help enjoying
it with much satisfaction.
I took up my quarters for the night at Powers’s, who is an Irishman
from Ballibay, in the county of Monaghan. He pays squire Ellis eight
hundred dollars per annum for his tavern, fine farm and ferry. He and
his wife were very civil, attentive, and reasonable in their charges,
and he insisted much on lending me a horse to carry me the first
six miles over a hilly part of the road to Robinson’s tavern, but I
declined his kindness, and on Sunday morning, the 9th of August, after
taking a delightful bath in the Ohio, I quitted its banks. I walked on
towards the N. E. along the main post and stage road seventeen miles
to West Union,--the country becoming gradually more level as I receded
from the river, but not quite so rich in soil and timber.
The road was generally well settled, and the woods between the
settlements were alive with squirrels, and all the variety of
woodpeckers with their beautiful plumage, which in one species is
little inferiour to that of the bird of Paradise, so much admired in
the East Indies.
I stopped at twelve miles at the house of squire Leadham, an
intelligent and agreeable man, who keeps a tavern, and is a justice of
the peace. I chose bread and butter, eggs and milk for breakfast, for
which I tendered a quarter of a dollar, the customary price, but he
would receive only the half of that sum, saying that even that was too
much. Such instances of modest and just honesty rarely occur.[135]
West Union is three years old since it was laid out for the county town
of Adams county. The lots of one third of an acre in size, then sold
for about seventy dollars each. There were upwards of one {182} hundred
lots, which brought the proprietor above three thousand dollars. It
is in a healthy situation, on an elevated plain, and contains twenty
dwelling houses, including two taverns and three stores. It has also
a court-house and a gaol, in the former of which divine service was
performing when I arrived to a numerous Presbyterian congregation. One
of the houses is well built with stone; one of the taverns is a large
framed house, and all the rest are formed of square logs, some of which
are two stories high and very good.
Having to get a deed recorded at the clerk’s office of the county,
which could not be done until Monday morning, I stopt Sunday afternoon
and night at West Union, where my accommodations in either eating or
sleeping, could not boast of any thing beyond mediocrity.
Monday the 10th August, having finished my business and breakfasted, I
resumed my journey through a country but indifferently inhabited, and
at four miles and a half from West Union, I stopped for a few minutes
at Allen’s tavern, at the request of a traveller on horseback, who
had overtaken and accompanied me for the last three miles. He was an
elderly man named Alexander, a cotton planter in the S. W. extremity
of North Carolina, where he owns sixty-four negro slaves besides his
plantation--all acquired by industry--he having emigrated from Larne
in Ireland, in early life, with no property. He was now going to visit
a brother-in-law near Chilicothe. He had travelled upwards of five
hundred miles within the last three weeks on the same mare. He had
crossed the Saluda mountains, and the states of Tennessee and Kentucky,
and had found houses of accommodation at convenient distances all along
that remote road, but provender so dear, that he had to pay in many
places a dollar for half a bushel of oats.
{183} Allen’s is a handsome, roomy, well finished stone house, for
which, with twenty acres of cleared land, he pays a yearly rent of one
hundred and ten dollars, to Andrew Ellison, near Manchester.[136] He
himself is four years from Tanderagee, in the county Armagh, Ireland,
from whence he came with his family to inherit some property left him
by a brother who had resided in Washington, Kentucky, but two hundred
acres of land adjoining my tract near Maysville, was all he had been
able to obtain possession of, although his brother had been reputed
wealthy. I have met many Europeans in the United States, who have
experienced similar disappointments.
My equestrian companion finding that I did not walk fast enough for
him, parted from me soon after we left Allen’s. At two miles from
thence I came to Brush creek, a beautiful river about sixty yards wide.
A new state road crosses the river here, but as I had been informed,
that there was no house on it for ten miles, I preferred keeping up the
bank of the river on the stage road, which led through a beautiful but
narrow unsettled bottom, with Brush creek on the right, and a steep,
craggy precipice on the left, for a mile and a half. I then ascended
and descended a steep and barren ridge for a mile, when I forded
the creek to Jacob Platter’s finely situated tavern and farm on the
opposite bank.
Having rested and taken some refreshment, the growling of distant
thunder warned me to hasten my journey, as I had five miles through the
woods to the next habitation. The road was fine and level,--the gust
approached with terrifick warning--one flash of lightning succeeding
another in most rapid succession, so that the woods frequently appeared
as in a flame, and several trees were struck in every direction around
me, one being shattered within fifty paces on my right, while the
thunder without intermission of an instant was heard in every variety
of {184} sound, from the deafening burst, shaking the whole surrounding
atmosphere to the long solemn cadence always interrupted by a new and
more heavy peal before it had reached its pause. This elemental war
would have been sublimely awful to me, had I been in an open country,
but the frequent crash of the falling bolts on the surrounding trees,
gave me such incessant warnings of danger, that the sublimity was lost
in the awe. I had been accustomed to thunder storms in every climate,
and I had heard the roar of sixty ships of the line in battle, but
I never before was witness to so tremenduous an elemental uproar. I
suppose the heaviest part of the electrick cloud was impelled upon the
very spot I was passing.
I walked the five miles within an hour, but my speed did not avail me
to escape a torrent of rain which fell during the last mile, so that
long before I arrived at the hospitable dwelling of the Pennsylvania
hunter who occupied the next cabin, I was drenched and soaked most
completely. I might have sheltered myself from some of the storm under
the lee side of a tree, had not the wind, which blew a hurricane,
varied every instant--but independent of that, I preferred moving
along the road to prevent a sudden chill; besides, every tree being
a conductor, there is greater danger near the trunk of one, than in
keeping in a road, however narrow, which has been marked by the trees
having been cut down.
My host and his family had come here from the back part of Pennsylvania
only last May, and he had already a fine field of corn and a good deal
of hay. He had hitherto been more used to the chase than to farming,
and he boasted much of his rifle. He recommended his Pennsylvania
whiskey as an antidote against the effects of my ducking, and I took
him at his word, though he was much surprised to see me use more of it
externally than internally, which I did from experience that bathing
the feet, hands and head {185} with spirituous liquor of any sort,
has a much better effect in preventing chill and fever, either after
being wet of after violent perspiration from exercise, than taking any
quantity into the stomach, which on the contrary rarely fails to bring
on, or to add to inflammatory symptoms.--A little internally however I
have found to be a good aid to the external application.
I found at my friendly Pennsylvanian’s, a little old man named Lashley,
who had taken shelter at the beginning of the gust, which being now
over, he buckled on his knapsack, and we proceeded together. He had
travelled on foot from Tennessee river, through a part of the state
of Tennessee, quite across Kentucky, and so far in Ohio in nine days,
at the rate of thirty-six miles a day. He had assisted in navigating
a boat from Indian Wheeling, where he lived, to Tennessee, for which
he had got thirty dollars, ten of which he had already expended on his
journey so far back, though using the utmost economy. He remarked to
me, that although he was upwards of sixty years of age, and apparently
very poor, he had not got gratuitously a single meal of victuals in
all that route. Are not hospitality and charity more nominal than real
virtues?
The country for the next five miles is tolerably well improved, and
there is a good brick house which is a tavern owned by one Wickerham at
the first mile, and a mile further is Horn’s tavern, where the stage
sleeps on its route to the N. E. towards Chilicothe.
Old Lashley complaining of fatigue, we stopped at Marshon’s farm
house, ten miles from Brush creek, where finding that we could be
accommodated for the night, we agreed to stay, and were regaled with
boiled corn, wheaten griddle cake, butter and milk for supper, which
our exercise through the day gave us good appetites for, but I did
not enjoy my bed so {186} much as my supper, notwithstanding it was
the second best in the house, for besides that it was not remarkable
for its cleanliness, I was obliged to share it with my old companion;
fatigue however soon reconciled me to it, and I slept as well as if I
had lain on down between lawn sheets.
Marshon is from the Jerseys, he has a numerous family grown up, and
is now building a large log house on which he means to keep a tavern.
Three of his sons play the violin by ear--they had two shocking bad
violins, one of which was of their own manufacture, on which they
scraped away without mercy to entertain us, which I would most gladly
have excused, though I attempted to seem pleased, and I believe
succeeded in making them think I was so.
The land is here the worst I had seen since I had left the banks of the
Ohio; it had been gradually worse from about two miles behind squire
Leadham’s, and for the last two miles before we come to Marshon’s it
had degenerated into natural prairies or savannas, with very little
wood, and none deserving the name of timber, but well clothed with
brush and low coarse vegetation.
FOOTNOTES:
[134] Captain Nathan Ellis with five brothers embarked at Brownsville
in 1795, and floating down the Ohio, stopped at Maysville. Finding the
Kentucky lands well occupied they crossed to the Ohio shore and Nathan
Ellis established the ferry bearing his name. The title of the town
was later changed to Aberdeen in honor of his native place. On the
organization of Adams County, Ellis was appointed justice of the peace,
which office he filled until his death in 1819.--ED.
[135] Cuming was following the road known as Zane’s Trace, laid out
across Ohio from Wheeling to Maysville in 1796. From Ellis’s Ferry it
passed northeast through Adams County, up Brush Creek, through the
southwestern corner of Highland County, to Byrington and through Perry
Township in Pike County, down the valley of Paint Creek to Chillicothe.
William Leedom (Leadham) kept a tavern where Bentonville, Adams County,
now stands.--ED.
[136] The Indian captivity of Andrew Ellison is a well-known tale
of Ohio pioneer life. Authorities differ in details; we follow the
tradition handed down in the family. Andrew Ellison, born in 1755, came
to Kentucky as a young man, and in 1790 accompanied Massie into Ohio,
settling near Manchester. One day in 1793, while at work on his farm,
he was surprised and captured by a band of Indians. Pursuit failing
to overtake them, Ellison was carried to the Chillicothe towns where
in running the gauntlet he was severely beaten. Later being taken to
Detroit, he was ransomed for a blanket by an English officer, and being
supplied with food and clothing walked back across the state of Ohio,
arriving at his home in the early autumn. Four years later, he took
up a large tract of land on Brushy Creek, building thereon a stone
house--one of the best in the state at that time.--ED.
{187} CHAPTER XXX
Heistant’s--Lashley goes on before--Sinking springs--Fatiguing
road--Broadley’s--Musical shoemaker--Talbot’s--Dashing
travellers--Bainbridge--Platter’s--Irish schoolmaster--Reeves’s--
Paint creek--Cat-tail swamp--Rogers’s North fork of Paint--Arrival
at Chilicothe--Meeker’s.
On Tuesday morning the 11th August, we arose with the dawn, and
notwithstanding there was a steady small rain, we pursued our journey,
having first paid Marshon fully as much for our simple and coarse
accommodations, as the best on the road would have cost, but our host
I suppose thought his stories and his son’s musick were equivalent for
all other deficiencies.
The land was poor, and no house on the road until we arrived at
Heistant’s tavern, four miles from Marshon’s, where we met the
Lexington stage.
My morning walk had given me an appetite for breakfast, which my fellow
traveller not being willing to be at the expence of, declined, and
saying that as I walked so much faster than him I would soon overtake
him, he went on, intending to satisfy his stomach occasionally with
some bread and cheese from his knapsack, and a drop of whiskey from his
tin canteen, from which he had made a libation at first setting out,
and had seemed surprised at my refusal of his invitation to partake.
Heistant is a Pennsylvania German, and has a good and plentiful house,
in a very pleasant situation, called the Sinking springs, from a
great natural curiosity near it. On the side of a low hill, now in
cultivation, are three large holes, each about twenty feet deep and
twenty feet diameter, about sixty paces apart, with a subterraneous
communication by which the water is conveyed from one to the other,
and issues in a fine rivulet at a fourth opening near the {188} house,
where Heistant’s milk house is placed very judiciously. The spring is
copious and the water very fine.[137]
After a good breakfast I walked on alone, and at about a mile, I
entered on a dreary forest having first passed Irwin’s tavern, a
pleasant situation where the stage sleeps going towards the S.
westward. Three miles from Irwin’s, is over very broken, but well
timbered hills, to the left of which on Brush creek, I was informed,
that there is a fine settlement, but it is not in sight of the road.
The next two miles was through a beech bottom, which was rendered so
miry by the rain that poured on me all the time, that it was most
laborious walking through it. About the middle of it, I met three men
in hunting shirts with each an axe in his hand. Their appearance in
that solitary situation was no ways agreeable; however, we gave each
other good day, and they told me that old Lashley had desired them
to inform me that he would await me at Bradley’s, the next house,
but when I came there, he had just departed, so that I might have
very soon overtaken him, had I not preferred being alone, to effect
which the more certainly, I stopped to rest, as it was a house of
private entertainment. Bradley and his wife are about sixteen years
from Stewartstown, county Tyrone in Ireland, and have a daughter
lately married to a young shoemaker named Irons at the next cabin,
where I stopped to get my shoes mended. I here found a dozen of stout
young fellows who had been at work repairing the road, and were now
sheltering themselves from the increasing storm, and listening to some
indifferent musick made by their host on a tolerably good violin. I
proposed taking the violin while he repaired my shoes. He consented and
sat down to work, and in a few minutes I had all the lads jigging it on
the floor merrily; Irons himself, as soon as he had repaired the shoes,
jumping up and joining them.
{189} Seeing no prospect of the storm ceasing, I satisfied my shoemaker
for his trouble, with something more agreeable to him than my musick,
and then set off to reach Talbot’s, said to be a good tavern, three
miles further.
The road led over the highest hill which I had yet seen since I left
the Ohio, and afterwards through a level, well wooded, but thinly
inhabited country.
In an hour I was at Talbot’s, which is a good two story house of
squared logs, with a large barn and excellent stabling, surrounded by a
well opened and luxuriant farm, with a fine run of meadow.
The landlord and his family are seven years from Nenagh in the county
Tipperary, and is the first Irish settler, I had seen on my tour,
from any other part than the north of Ireland. He had kept Ellis’s
ferry on the Ohio, where Powers now resides, for some years, and has
lately rented this house and farm from Mr. Willis of Chilicothe, the
contractor for carrying the mail from Wheeling to Lexington.
Observing a new stage wagon in the yard, my host informed me that it
was one which Mr. Willis intended in a few days to commence running
between Chilicothe and Ellis’s ferry, so that it, and the one already
established, will each run once a week on different days.
I shifted my wet clothes, and then (there being no doctor nearer
than Chilicothe, twenty-four miles) prescribed medicine and regimen
for Talbot’s little daughter, who was suffering under a severe and
dangerous attack of a nervous fever.
Three young men on horseback arrived soon after me, and were shewn into
the same room. They talked a little largely, according to a very common
custom among young travellers, intimating that they were just returning
from the Olympian springs in Kentucky, a place of very fashionable
resort, where they had been on a party of pleasure, and where they
{190} had attended more to cards, billiards, horse jockeying, &c. than
to the use of the waters for medicinal purposes. I am however much
mistaken, if they had not been travelling on business, and took the
opportunity of visiting those celebrated springs, which are the Bath of
Kentucky, and which they now affected to speak of as the sole cause
of their journey.[138] I listened with much amusement to their dashing
conversation, knowing tolerably well how to estimate it, in a country
where vanity in the young and ambition among the more advanced in life
are predominant features. I do not confine this remark to the state of
Ohio, where probably there is less of either than in the older states,
in which, particularly to the southward of New England, they seem to be
national characteristics.
We supped together and were then shewn to our beds by the landlord,
who probably thought that the custom of two in a bed was general in
America, by his shewing the whole four into a room with two beds: I
followed him however down stairs, and soon had a good bed prepared for
me in a room by myself.
On Wednesday morning the 12th August, I proceeded through a wilderness
of fine land well adapted for cultivation, and finely timbered to
Bainbridge, a hamlet of eight cabins, a large stone house building,
a blacksmith shop, a post-office, and a store kept by William Daly
for Humphrey Fullerton of Chilicothe. Daly told me that he had a good
deal of business for the five months he had been here, there being a
populous and well cultivated country in the neighbourhood on Buckskin
and Paint creeks, at the falls of the latter of which, about a mile to
the northward of Bainbridge are some of the best mills in the state,
owned by Gen. Massey, who is also proprietor of Bainbridge, which he
laid out for a town about a year ago, selling the lots at about thirty
dollars each.
{191} The reason assigned for the lands being generally so badly
settled along the roads, is, that they belong to wealthy proprietors,
who either hold them at a very high price, or will not divide them into
convenient sized farms.
From Bainbridge to Reeves’s on the bank of Paint creek, is through
a fine well wooded level, with hills in sight from every opening in
the woods, about a mile distant. I passed a finger post on the left,
a mile from Bainbridge, pointing to the westward and directing to
Cincinnatti seventy-three miles, and immediately after I left Platter’s
tavern and well cultivated farm on the right, a little beyond which is
a school-house, where I observed the schoolmaster, an Irish looking
old man, with silver grey locks and barefooted, his whole appearance,
and that of the cabin which was the school, indicating but little
encouragement for the disseminating of instruction.
A mile from Platter’s I stopped at Reeves’s, where I had been informed
I could be well accommodated, although it was not a tavern, and I
proved my information to be correct, as I immediately got the breakfast
I asked for, excellent bread, and rich milk, neatly served, in a large
handsome and clean room, for which it was with difficulty I could
prevail on Mrs. Reeves to accept any recompence.
This house is charmingly situated near the bank of Paint creek, and
was the best I had seen since I entered the state of Ohio, it being
spacious, of two lofty stories, and well built with very handsome
stone. It is surrounded on all sides by a noble and well improved
farm, which nine years ago, when Reeves came here from Washington in
Pennsylvania, was a wilderness. He built his handsome house about five
years ago, and at some distance on the bank of the creek, he has a
large tanyard and leather shop, from whence one of his men, ferried me
across the creek in a canoe.
{192} Paint creek is a beautiful little river about forty yards wide,
running easterly to join the Scioto near Chilicothe.
My walk from hence to the north fork of Paint creek, was a most
fatiguing one, being thirteen miles, mostly along a very rich bottom,
with the creek on the right, and steep hills on the left, over spurs of
which the road sometimes leads, which was always a relief to me, after
wading for miles through the mud below. This tract is tolerably well
settled, the soil being esteemed as rich as any in the state. At eleven
miles from Reeves’s, is a hamlet of six or seven cabins called Cat-tail
swamp, and two miles further I came to Rogers’s on the bank of the
north fork of Paint.
Reeves’s appears to be the best land and the best improved farm on
this side the Ohio, but Rogers’s, nearly as good a soil, is I think
superiour in beauty of situation. The house which is a story and a half
high is of square logs, and commodious enough for a farm house. It is
on a moderately high bank, from whence they descend to the river by a
flight of wooden steps, at the foot of which is a most beautiful spring
which flows into a cask sunk on purpose, and from thence is conveyed by
a small spout into the river, whose bank is guarded by a natural wall
of soft slate, which I think could be easily wrought into good covering
for houses. Nature has formed natural stairs of the slate, by which one
may descend to any depth into the river for bathing, washing linen,
or for any purpose which may be necessary, in proportion as the river
rises or falls. A swimmer may also enjoy that invigorating exercise
charmingly, as though the river is only about thirty yards wide, it is
at this place sufficiently deep, and the current is moderate. Rogers
has been here about nine years from Virginia, and was one of the first
settlers in this part of the country.
{193} I supped and slept here, and next morning, Thursday the 13th
August, after refreshing by swimming in the river, I pursued my way
to Chilicothe four miles, the first mile and half of which was over a
chain of moderately high and not very steep hills of a tolerably good
soil, to colonel M’Arthur’s elegant stone house and noble farm.[139]
The other two miles and a half was through a level plain, passing
a neat house and handsome improvement of Mr. Henry Massey’s, just
before entering Chilicothe, which I did at eight o’clock, stopping at
Muker’s tavern, as the breakfast bell rang, which summoned seventeen or
eighteen boarders and travellers to an excellent breakfast with good
attendance, to which I did ample justice, after my bath and walk.
FOOTNOTES:
[137] Sinking Springs is in the southwestern corner of Highland County,
Ohio.--ED.
[138] Olympian Springs was in Bath County, Kentucky, a few miles
southeast of Owingsburg. Its popularity has declined; in 1880 there
were but twenty-five inhabitants at the place.--ED.
[139] The home of General McArthur was known as “Fruit Hill.” Duncan
McArthur was of Scotch parentage, born in New York in 1772. Left early
to his own resources, he volunteered under Harmar in 1791, worked at
the Maysville salt-works, and in 1793 became chain-bearer for General
Massie in the latter’s survey of Ohio lands. McArthur’s industry and
capacity soon secured his promotion to the position of assistant
surveyor, and by judicious choice of lands he acquired wealth and
prominence. Having been major-general of Ohio militia for some years,
his services were called for in the War of 1812-15, and he was at
Detroit when it was surrendered by Hull. Released on parole, he was
elected to Congress, whence he resigned to become brigadier-general
in the army, and served in the Western division thereof throughout
the war. Later began his political career, consisting of two terms in
Congress (1822-26), and the governorship of Ohio (1830). But as an
anti-Jacksonian, he failed of re-election, and retired to “Fruit Hill”
where he died in 1840.--ED.