They Saw
Born
COMPUTER
VERSION – Edited by David R. Schichner
This
work is for free use, and is not to be reproduced for profit.
By
DORA
DAVIS FARRINGTON, M.A.
Associate Professor of English (retired)
Copyright, 1941, by
DORA DAVIS
FARRINGTON
THEY
SAW
z
THE
DAVIS-ALLISON STUDIES IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I. THEY SAW
Pioneer adventures of the Davis-Allison Family and
allied branches in twelve states from
VOL. II. GENEALOGY
From the marriage of Nehemiah Davis and Mary
Allison in 1805, the record of each of their descendants to 1940 is given as
fully as known. Two historical sketches precede: one,
the Davis Family from 1638 to 1805 in
COMPILED BY DORA DAVIS FARRING TON
Assisted by
Charles Logan
Robert Lee Davis
Elizabeth Davis Alexander
Olive DeWitt Coker
Annie Boyd Young
By deed and voice and pen
Unloosen thongs and challenge wrongs
In all the deeds of men,
And fearless fight till truth and right
By honor are attained,
And strongholds storm till every form
Of bondage is unchained.
Harry Webb Farrington
"The present is the most equivocal of all tenses. Men and communities keep alive and vigorous on the memory of a great past and the hope and intention of a great future. The present is only a bridge between experience, which is the past, and the faith and will for tomorrow."
To Phyllis Dora
a descendant of
typical American pioneers who, with thousands of other pioneer families, have
become the advance guard of America in establishing homes, schools, churches,
government, agriculture, industries, professions, and the arts, in communities
often inconspicuous and unknown, planted from ocean to ocean. On the personal
faith and high moral and spiritual vision of American pioneers of the past, our
democracy is founded. From the outreaches of this pioneer spirit spring our
great humanitarian movements. May the citizens of today become the pioneers of
the greater future, with the faith and courage to forget self in building
TO THE
READER
The heart of this book is a romance of 1805. That
year in The Ohio wilderness, a young man from New England, Nehemiah Davis 2nd,
married Mary Allison, a vivacious Girl of a
PATRONS
CHARLES LOGAN
whose clear vision saw the relation of family history to national history, whose patriotism and sound judgment contributed outstandingly towards the solution of the American Indian problem, and whose initiative and generosity first made possible the printing of this book, together with
Mr. LEWIS MARSHALL BRAKE
Dr. ALICE M. CLARK BROOKS
Mrs. CHARLES LOGAN
Mr. GEORGE E. DEWITT
Mr. GRASSON W. KAULL
Mrs. JESSE LEE PAYNE
Mrs. RUTH K. TUTHILL
Mrs. SAMUEL WILLIAMS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FRONTISPIECE: Campus Martius in 1791 Page
TO THE READER ix
PATRONS x
TABLE OF CONTENTS xi
PREFACE xiii
FROM
Francis Davis Sails for
Francis and Gartrett Face a New Country 6
What the Wilderness and Homer Taught 11
Glimpses of the Family: 1673-1776 13
After the War, Three Brothers Sail for
The
BOUND FOR THE
Robert Allison Heads for
On the Trail 27
In
The Allisons Land at
What Campus Martius Looked Like 34
Life in
As Nancy and Charlie Saw
Then Came the Indian War 44
Kinney's Garrison and Lowell 50
At Last, Home and Romance 52
Henceforth, Mary and Nehemiah 2nd:1805 55
ON THE
The Home on the
Hunting 65
Family Life at Racoon Island 67
Pastures Green and Meadows New: 1839 70
BUILDING INTO
1839-1879 Page
Floating to
Buying and Building in the Three Counties 77
The Squire's Home 79
The Mexican War: Robert Allison Davis: 1846 92
Mary Allison Has a Ninetieth Birthday: 1879 96
Glimpses of Forty Years: 1839-1879 100
And Schools? 103
Asenath and Hardin 105
Two Others There Were 110
With Captain Grasson DeWitt: 1858 115
With Reuben Davis-Wheat: 1887 124
With Bob - The Dust Bowl: 1939 132
ON TO
To
In Early
The
TheOilBoom:1914 151
Desert Pioneering Below Sea Level 158
OUTREACHES OF THE PIONEER SPIRIT
The Indians and the Family Change:1790-1890 167
A Frontier on a Mountain Top:1896-1923 173
These Things Shall Be Added: 1940 180
EPILOGUE 187
PREFACE
In writing of what pioneering means, and of what
any typical American family contributes towards creating from ocean to ocean
the
Fortunately, from 1784 on, the family is blessed with a wealth of first-hand source material as well as records and verifiable tradition for two centuries before that. Picture two life-spans that cover 156 years from 1784 to 1940, so that my generation heard its stories of 150 years ago from the lips of people who then were actors and observers! Such priceless first-hand source material came from my Great-great-aunt, Nancy Allison Frost, Mrs. Stephen Frost, who was born in 1784 and died in 1892 at the age of 107, with her mental faculties unimpaired. I was twelve years old then. Many of my family heard these stories from her lips and those of her younger sister, our Great-grandmother, Mary Allison Davis, who was born in 1789 and died in 1882 at 93 years of age, with all her faculties alert.
In presenting my Great-great Aunt Nancy may I cite extracts printed in newspapers?
A special correspondent of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, in a story dated April 24, 1890, wrote:
"Mrs. Nancy Frost, of
She has been a great reader, has a wonderful memory, and keeps posted on everything pertaining to the welfare of the country. She was as much interested in the last presidential campaign as any politician, and she will not converse with any man long without finding out his politics. She is a strong Republican."
The Marietta Leader, in a feature story of 1888, published this:
"Mrs. Frost has always been noted as a woman of remarkably keen, active, and vigorous mind, with a memory of remarkable tenacity. These characteristics she still retains, apparently without the slightest diminution. A conversation of five minutes' duration impresses one with the fact that hers is a mind of unusual vigor, even for one in the prime of life. What is most remarkable is that her memory is apparently as tenacious of the events of yesterday, a year, or five years ago as it is of the facts of her early life.
"She has always taken the greatest interest in public affairs. Born three years before the Constitution was framed, she has gathered the salient facts in the history of the country as they occurred, and is able to recall them with remarkable vividness and accuracy. From early youth she has been a constant reader of the newspapers, and she has followed the career of every public man of note in the country. Few, who have not made the study of American history a specialty, can talk with as much intelligence upon historical subjects as this old lady of one hundred and two years. Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Monroe, are personalities real to her. She is intensely patriotic, and withal something of a partisan. As Federalist, Whig, and Republican, she has adhered with remarkable consistency to the same political ideas from the origin of the Government to the present time.
"Hers is a race which has given its best to
the service of the country. Her grandfather, who lived to be 104, was a soldier
of the French and Indian War. Her father, Robert Allison, was a private soldier
in the Continental Army during the Revolution, while his brother, Hugh, rose to
the rank of lieutenant in the same service. Both served throughout the War.
Another uncle was killed in battle with the Indians along the
To my Great-great Aunt Nancy, I am indebted for
most of my knowledge of the Campus Martius period and
the
The pioneer episodes of this volume, covering in
all 12 states, reveal the trend of American pioneering from
To many people I am indebted for making available excerpts from old county histories, copies of old deeds, and legal documents filed in county seats in Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland; Ohio, Illinois, Kansas, and Iowa, among them particularly to Mrs. J. S. Clark of Gallipolis, Ohio, and Mrs. W. 0. Alexander of Eldorado, Texas; Mrs. Albert Pierce for a copy of Clay Chapel History; Mrs. E. R.Wallace for Miss Celicia Cole's Scrapbook covering family news for about 100 years; Mr. Robert Lee Davis for the memorandum book of Reuben J. Davis, over 100 years old; Miss Amy Davis for pictures of Ohio scenes, and to Mr. and Miss Freeman for New England scenes.
Especially am I deeply grateful to Mr. Charles Logan Davis for the suggestion that I study my family, for the large mass of correspondence collected over forty years that he turned over to me, and for his constant inspiration and helpfulness; and to Miss Olive M. Jones for her encouragement to undertake this task, her appreciation of pioneering in America, and her practical aid in many ways.
Twice I crossed the
The Author
October, 1941
xvi
FROM
THEY SAW
FRANCIS
Butting fog, wind, and storm, a sailing vessel
tossed across the Atlantic four seasick months from
Among the passengers talk ran high on the rising
rebellion blazing behind them in old
There these burning issues had first fired their
imagination! There they had left behind them a family record of resistance to
tyranny. Their grandfather, John Davis, for the sake of his religious and
political convictions, had exchanged his native Grampian Mountains of the
Scottish Highlands for the liberty of
Why?
As for answer, a speaker recalled them to the
pitching cabin. "Mind you not what His Majesty's Scotch father, King James
VI, said when he followed Good Queen Bess to
"Ay," answered another voice, "and
for these past three score years and more our Puritan brothers have fled to
3
A flash of memory brought the old, familiar household phrases to the three onlookers. "The worth of the individual! Freedom of worship! Self-government! Church and State ardently to be upheld, but each as separate entities!"
"Ay," shouted another voice against the crash of a wave shivering the boat, "and mind you that glorious day in 1628 when our House of Commons sat for their last session? How, facing slavery to a King, Sir Dudley Digges in agony cried out, 'Let us sit in silence! We are miserable, we know not what to do!'?"
"At that, 'Nay,' roared Sir Nathaniel Rich, 'We must now speak or forever hold our peace!' And then, with hearts breaking at the prospect of precipitating civil strife, how they found their voices and wrested from the King his signature to the Petition of Right, like men that remembered Magna Carta wrested from King John in 1215?"
"Ay," came a tumult of voices in anger. "And the next year King Charles recanted! He sent his soldiers tramping into the courtyard of the Commons! He arrested some members! Others he took to the Tower!"
"But though bitterness may best be forgotten, remember this," said a quiet voice.
Startled, the crowd turned towards the dignified speaker.
"When our twelve Puritan leaders met at Cambridge on the 26th of August in 1629, and resolved to buy land from the Massachusetts Bay Colony provided they could secure a charter allowing us to form and administer our own government, they still expected us to remember that we are Englishmen!
"Our representative form of government has grown stronger and stronger since Good King Alfred's day. Magna Carta and the Petition of Right have confirmed it as shall many other writs to come! And they who stay in England to fight the issue through with life itself-which God protect-are brothers to us who go to America there to create, under God, the best we know in England and the best we can learn in America. Here or there, the struggle for liberty is one!"
Prophetic were the words. By 1640, when the Long
Parliament was summoned which beheaded King Charles, the Puritan exodus had
brought 26,000 to
From Magna Carta to the American Revolution has it been the destiny of mankind to right wrongs. For this, great leaders of these traditions and ideals, and a noble army of rank and file have laid down their lives. The 561 years between the Magna Carta and the Dedaration of Independence is but one day historically in the process of rallying all nations to their birthright of life, liberty, and justice. The 155 years between the Declaration of 1776 and the momentous Statute of Westminster in 1931 is but the glorious noon of that day, casting its brilliant rays on the new British Commonwealth of some six free and equal Dominions-with others to come-cooperating willingly to build equality of right between nations in this chaotic world. Nor shall the sun set on this day until in final victory brave hearts and cool heads everywhere build these ideals into actualities.
As the group broke up, the three brothers fell to coinparing the words they had heard with the views of their father and grandfather. Typical men were John and Philip Francis Davis, not leaders but the solid rank and file; men of standing and responsibility in their own communities; men of stalwart character and ability, to whom ideals counted more than the property they owned, and freedom than life.
Their grandfather had watched the struggle develop
in
Nineteen years before, a strange coincidence had
governed the choice of the day that Philip Francis Davis and his wife chose for
the christening of their youngest son, Francis. The place was the church at Thombury,
But, curious to relate, the date chosen seems
destined to make him an American and the founder of the American family of
FRANCIS
AND GARTRETT FACE A NEW COUNTRY
Romance marks for Francis Davis the first
historical date in
A lovely town it was in which the two had met. Two
years before their marriage, Amesbury had separated from its mother town,
To the east of the twin towns lay the salt marshes
of the
Who were their neighbors? What did pioneer life mean at Amesbury in 1649?
Their neighbors, like themselves, were picked and chosen more exclusively than people of any other colony in history. This the colonists knew and took pride in.
Of the first 1000 people who in 1630 came over in sixteen
ships--and that includes women, children, and servants --over 100 men were
graduates of
Sternly the lazy and shiftless were ordered away, for these frontiersmen, threatened by forests, marshes, blizzards, and starvation, had houses, roads, and schools to build, and government to establish. Crops they had to raise themselves and keep food to last through cruel winters. Fish their own rods caught, and game their own guns brought down. Busy people all this meant, always wary of Indian attacks.
For Gartrett and Francis, housing, the first problem of all newly married couples, was more than ordinarily difficult in Amesbury. People camped at first in some temporary shelter like a canvas tent, a hut of boughs, or a wigwam Indian-style, until they could erect-no, not a log cabin, for this neither Indians nor English had ever seen until the Swedes arrived a hundred years later-but a "fair" or frame house. Of course all the men helped Francis build his, and when they tied the roof-tree to the chimney, the women helped Gartrett cook and serve dinner. Later, all the community swarmed to the house-warming festivities. That was the custom.
Perhaps their new home faced one side of the Commons, a wide-shaded Green running the length of the settlement, and the favorite site for two or five acre home plots, with each man's farm some distance out of town. Not until such coveted sites were gone did one build elsewhere. Central to everyone along side the Commons stood the community structure serving for school and town meetings on weekdays, and Church on Sundays.
Convenient it certainly was to live near the meeting. house! In the days before newspapers, groups gathered around its doors, tacked with notices carrying news of town and colony. Besides local and Court orders, and regulations enacted by the town-meeting attended by all citizens, the men studied the tax rates, road-building and patrol assignments, and drill dates. And the women noted the spinning regulations, announcements of quilting bees, fruit-peeling parties, and other community events. There, both men and women kept track of the rate of exchange posted for corn, beans, and wampum, all used as money. A hundred or more phases of life those doors announced and ruled.
There, too, stood the whipping post and stocks, and from there at night went out the Watch with lanterns, two together, "a young man with one of the soberer kind," as ordered. Even magistrates took their turn to guard the lightless town. "Past midnight and all's well!" would ring their cry, or "One o'clock and fair wind," or "Five o'clock and cloudy sky" unless startled by fire or Indians. Then they beat the alarm drum, or shot their muskets three times in the air to arouse the citizens to action.
On the Green, too, drilled the Training Band, or local militia. However popular the drills for wives and children to watch, they were serious business, ordered by the General Court. So also was the Garrison House, often a private home well fortified, where women and children could be protected when Indians went on the war path. There, bullets, powder, and tinder-boxes were guarded carefully.
During the anxious days of King Philip's War in
1675-1676, 500 white men were killed or captured, and sixteen
But individuals sometimes met a tragic fate. Francis and Gartrett must have warned their children and grandchildren to be wary, for one day in 1697 a neighbor's son, seven-year old Sammy Gill, while picking berries in the woods was carried off by Canadian Indians. Though at once the alarm drum beat for the militia, and they hunted far and wide, the men never found Sammy.
Occasonally, too, a
resident of the town was shot from ambush and killed, or a shed in the fields
fired at. So agonizing were the stories from other towns, that Amesbury and
The best known man in
9
One day three Quaker women, tied to the rear end
of an ox-cart, were dragged by Court Order from
How daring the stand of Major Pike, all the
neighbors knew. Before that, in 1669, Thomas Macy, overseer of the School and
deputy of the General Court, had sheltered four Quakers overnight in his home
during a severe storm. His defiance of Court orders finally compelled him and
his family to flee in an open boat to
Then the witchcraft delusion swept the Bay Colony!
Repeatedly Major Pike dared protest in Court, where, as a magistrate, he took
testimony. Unhappily, an Amesbury woman of unusual talent, Susannah Martin, was
hanged for alleged witchcraft, dying heroically. In
How deeply these events stirred Francis and Gartrett Davis and their family can well be imagined. Except
for their immediate circle, Francis was alone in New England, for Gideon had
lost the gamble on the voyage from
But to Francis and Gartrett four children had been born, Francis 2nd in 1652, Gartrett in 1654, Gideon in 1656, and Anna in 1659. For six generations the records of Amesbury were to carry the dates of the births and marriages of the family of Francis Davis.
10
WHAT
THE WILDERNESS AND HOMER TAUGHT
Naturally Francis and Gartrett
planned for the education of their four children. But the Massachusetts Bay
Colony had also planned before
Picture the General Court of the colony in session
at
And who were the people represented by the delegates?
Educated men, yes; stalwart men
and cultured women; idealists who in
For the American wilderness had taught these pioneers the foremost law of education: that a man's dignity depends on the quality and spirit of his work, be it mental or manual or a well-rounded combination.
With Homeric simplicity,
And so the first class went up to Harvard in 1638,
sons of parents acquainted with hand-labor, whether or not with professional
skill. But they were sons of parents who had souls: souls
sensitiye to beauty of literature in Shakespeare and
Virgil and Homer; sensitive to beauty of architecture in the old cathedral
towns of
The delegates founded a college not to train their sons and their neighbors' sons to get a job or to assume airs of superiority. They founded a college to develop an all-round human being such as the Creator intended by virtue of the instincts and endowment of man. They founded a college that independence of character might blend with dependence on culture, the practical science of living blossom into the fine art of life, and the primitive instincts flower into the inner discipline of liberty, whose source is religion.
In 1640, in order that "ye learning may not be buried in ye grave of our fathers in ye church and commonwealth," the Colony ordered a second step. Every township of fifty families was required to maintain a school teaching reading, writing, ciphering, and beginning Latin. In 1662 it was further ordered that every town of 100 families or over should support a grammar school to prepare for entrance to Harvard. And every settlement under fifty families, or any family alone in the wilderness, was bound by law to see that, through the teaching of parents or private tutor, each child was taught to read, write, and cipher.
Such was the spirit of responsibility shown by
12
THEY SAW
FROM
GLIMPSES
OF THE FAMILY 1673-1776
Just how the family built themselves into Amesbury during the next century, one can only infer from items buried in town, county, and colony archives, items so brief as to be tantalizing and yet so alluring as to arouse any detective flair a reader may have.
Francis 2nd, for instance, when 21, witnessed a
legal document of
But like most men of the colony, he gave close attention to public affairs. Read this record from the New England Historical and Genealogical Register: "The names of all those persons of Eamsbury (Amesbury) who took ye oathe of Allegiance and Fidelity before Major Pike, ye 20th of December, 1667..." And in that list of 53 names, the total number of males above sixteen years resident in Amesbury, the seventeenth is "Ffrancis Davis."
Over to
Rather more intimate is a petition he signed, addressed to "The General Court from Amesbury, Mass., in relation to a Military Officer," dated 1680. It respectfully begged, in view of the lamentable fact that they were without officer to conduct and instruct them in military exercises," that "Your Honors would be pleased to confirm and establish our choice of our well respected and esteemed friend, Sam Foot... to be our Lieutenant who is ye most suited and best disposed person among us for ye place and purpose... and his faculty in military discipline."
Did the 59 signers give a dinner in honor of Sam Foot's appointment, one wonders? Certainly, the first time Sam Foot drilled the Train Band on the Commons, Francis Davis 2nd and the other members must have given him a ringing cheer, and the on-lookers must have watched a first class demonstration of army maneuvers.
The last entry records that his estate was
administered on September 4, 1710, after an inventory ordered May 11th. The story behind that matter-of-fact notation, family tradition
supplies. On the night probably of April 12, 1710, he was returning from
a trip "down
At least one item of the estate of Francis 2nd survives today, a cane he inherited from his father, Francis Davis, the American founder of the family. Of heavy brown wood is the cane, with ivory head attached by a silver band carrying the initials, "F. D." and the date, "1647." That cane descended not to his oldest son, John, but to a younger son, Francis 3rd, and from him has been handed down to males in the direct line, bearing the name, Francis Davis.
Besides John and Francis 3rd, there were five other children of Mary Taylor Davis and Francis 2nd, Thomas, Samuel, Gartrett, Phoeba, and Mary.
For John, comparatively few records remain. When
born late in 1674, he was called John 3rd. Does that "3rd" indicate a
namesake of his mother's brother or grandfather? In the
On December 22, 1707, runs the Amesbury record, he
married Ruth Badger Jewell, widow of Thomas Jewell. Later are registered the
dates of their six children, Nehemiah, Mary, Timothy, Alice, Ruth, and
Benjamin. But why did he sell his Amesbury homestead to his brother, Francis
3rd, in 1740, as a deed shows? Why leave the heart of Amesbury for the suburbs
of
For Timothy, their third child, three dates still
exist: his birth, February 1, 1712, his marriage on November 8, 1736, to Judith
Pettingill of
Three of those sons left New England together to
pioneer to the
But before they pioneered, they first had to face the issue of the Revolutionary War, tyranny or freedom! As in 1638 three young men, Gideon, Philip, and Francis Davis, left their native country to espouse liberty, so Benjamin, Reuben, and Nehemiah took up arms to defend it in 1776.
SAIL FOR THE
Reuben was the first called upon to announce where
his loyalty lay, to
For ten years past, exciting events had aroused
all
In the General Assembly of New Hampshire, fiery
debates blazed against tyranny. Naturally the orations stirred Reuben,
Nehemiah, and Benjamin Davis, for their cousin, Francis 4th, sat in the
Assembly and the State Constitutional Convention later. The issue was
preparedness. To know where each citizen of
Two years, that was, after the Boston Tea Party led by Joseph Dyar following secret sessions with Thomas Jefferson and other patriots. It was Joseph's wife, Elizabeth Nichols, who made the dye used to disguise the party as Indians, and helped them apply it to their faces before they slipped from her house by night to the Harbor. Well the three Davis brothers came to know the story, the exploits of Joseph as sea captain carrying supplies for the American Army, and his adventures the nine times he was captured by the British, for his younger brother was afterwards connected with the family by marriage.
On that registration day, down in Philadelphia, sat another man allied by marriage with the Davis family, George Clymer, listening to the debates which, under John Hancock, led three months later to the Liberty Bell ringing news of the Declaration of Independence, which he signed.
On that April 12, some men risked unpopularity by
writing their names boldly for the King, and went to
Nehemiah, too, was a Minuteman. In the list of
Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors, his record runs: "Nehemiah Davis,
Private in Capt. Moses Whiting's Co. of Minutemenm Col. Jno. Greaton's Regt., which marched on the alarm of April 19,
1775. Served in Nantasket in June
under Lt. James Morton, driving ships from
With the War over and peace signed, Nehemiah
fulfilled his heart's desire. In 1787, at the house of Edmund Coffin in
Shapleigh, he was ordained a Baptist minister. Perhaps Reuben was present, for
"a humble and pious man who, though poor, labored gratuitously upon the Sabbathand toiled hard upon a new farm through the week. He was wont to say that he had travelled three hundred miles barefooted to preach the Gospel."
17
Back of this meagre
record flames an ardent fire kindled from a personal experience of God.
That living coal touched Isaiah's lips in the
Something of this vision inspired the work of
Nehemiah Davis in
1798 was the year of the great adventure. That
year a deed in the County Court House at Alfred, now in
In the party with the Rev. Nehemia were is year-old son, Nehemiah Jr.; Benjamin and his wife Anna and perhaps some children; Reuben and his six children, Reuben J., Nehemiah 2nd, Judith, Betsy, Sally, and Timothy. Both Reuben and Nehemiah had lost their wives before pioneering.
Long they must have debated the three main routes
leading from New England to the newly acquired
All three routes they daringly rejected. Instead,
the
Perhaps the only comparable water trip in pioneer
annals is that of the Donelson family, described in
the Life of Andrew Jackson, by Marquis James. From Virginia by inland waterways
to the State of Tennessee, 120 women and children with 40 men travelled by boat 985 miles, ten years earlier than the
Davis party, down the Holston and Tennessee Rivers
and against current up the Ohio and Cumberland. On the way they faced storms,
ice, food scarcity, and the loss of some of their party by Indian massacre.
"A project as audacious as any of its kind in our history," says James
of the four-months trip. Certainly the trip of the
From time to time the
How attractive the long-sought
"Elder
Reuben and his six children lingered several
months at
When the family left for the Hockhocking
to join Benjamin on Sugar Creek, Reuben bought 80 acres, soon added to; Reuben
J., 180 acres; and young Nehemiah 2nd, 80 acres, with other parcels later, all
in
Still stands Reuben Davis's two-story log cabin on
Sugar Creek, with this inscription on a tablet over the door: "The oldest
house in
The next year Reuben bought 640 acres for $600,
according to a deed filed at the Athens County Court House under date of November
28, 1800. He must have liked
As Nehemiah 2nd swung his ax to bring trees
crashing down on his clearing in the primeval forest, did he dream of the bride
he would one day escort there? Hardly could he have guessed that her family,
the Allisons, had already come from
20
THEY SAW
21
BOUND
FOR THE
1784
THEY SAW
BOUND FOR THE
ROBERT ALLISON
HEADS FOR
Why
From
For one thing, Robert, then twenty-nine, left a
record as a soldier in the Revolutionary War. Says a
communication from the War Department of the
And Elizabeth Phillips left a home of comfort,
where, after the death of her father who came from
Together they headed for
For the answer, suppose we look at the newspapers of that day and the camps of the Revolutionary soldiers.
Was one reason the advice of George Washington,
their beloved commander? In the farewell address to his officers, he exclaimed:
"The extensive and fertile regions of the West will yield a most happy
asylum to those who, fond of domestic enjoyment, are seeking for personal itidependence." In his earlier days he had selected
40,000 acres for himself in the
Had the action of the Continental Congress some effect in voting, at the outbreak of the Revolution, to give western land as bounties for military service? Finally when paid by Congress with certificates worth only about twelve cents on the dollar, these soldiers, impoverished by their neglect of land and professions during an eight-years war, were glad to buy land from the government with these certificates "not worth a continental," as they put it. These western lands with their fertility, timber, fur, and game, offered another chance to start life anew.
Was there a more ringing challenge, perhaps, in the founding of the Ohio Company of Associates by Revolutionary soldiers in 1786? Three years earlier, while waiting in camp for the signing of the Treaty of Paris, 283 of their leaders had signed a document, variously known as the "Pickering Plan," the "Newburgh Petition," and the "Army Plan," setting forth in a letter to General Washington their hope for a colony in the West, their plans for founding one, and their opinions on the principles of governing such a colony. But Congress took no action on their petition.
On January 25, 1786,
Among their directors were General Rufus Putnam,
General Samuel Holden Parsons, General James M. Varnum,
and Dr. Manasseh Cutler, a Yale graduate of the three professions of law,
ministry, and medicine. So earnestly did the directors work,
that on August 27, 1787, the Continental Congress, meeting in
That however, is far from the significant part of
the story. The significant thing was that ideas on government had been forged
by patriots who had given not only time and hearts to the Revolution, but
brains to thinking through the problems that would confront the country once
independence was won. They were men willing to take responsibility for
colonizing and organizing the
These Directors refused to buy the land from Congress unless Congress at the same time would pass a bill afterwards known as "The Ordinance of 1787." Of this act, proclaimed Daniel Webster, "no legislative enactment, proposed and accomplished in any country, in any age, by monarch, by representatives, or by the people themselves, has received praise so exalted."
In that Ordinance Congress promised, July 13, 1787,
to respect in the
Further, the compact provided that the Northwest
Territory, instead of remaining a perpetual dependency, should go through
certain stages to statehood on free and equal terms with the original thirteen
states. That principle, won by what became the states of
So this was the news of the day published in the
papers of
No wonder that
And so, about 1784, the Allisons
left
26
THEY SAW
BOUND FOR THE
ON THE TRAIL
About five years elapsed from the time that Robert
and Elizabeth Allison with their son left
Nor did pioneers attempt it singly. Individuals and families would wait at some frontier town for a company to be formed with a guide. A typical newspaper advertisement of the period runs: "A large company will meet at the Crab Orchard [a town] the 19th of November in order to start the next day through the Wilderness. As it is very dangerous on account of the Indians, it is hoped each person will go armed."
With but three known taverns along the route, the few cabins on the trail would hospitably invite the travellers to walk "into the fire," and offer them deer meat and Indian meal before making room for them to lie down before the fireplace in blankets on the floor. The exchange of eastern and western news was fair reward to isolated people. But most of the time, "the trail" meant camping in the thick woods.
What Robert and Elizabeth encountered can best be
learned from old diaries of the period, written by other travellers.
"Saturday, April 8,1775. We all pack up and
started across
Wednesday 12th. This is a
rainy morning. But we pack and go on. We come to
Once safe in
Perhaps the Allisons
stopped off in
Perhaps another reason for the Allisons'
tarrying in
IN
Just about a year after Charlie and Nancy Allison
had waved good-bye to the Adventure Galley as it floated down the Youghiogheny to
On April 1,1789 or very
near that date, as
He went ahead, leading the horse and watching the
trailer around curves and over bumps. Mother walked behind, most of the way,
leading the cow and carrying four-months-old Polly in her arms. Sometimes she
sat down with them too, and sometimes
Pittsburgh was the largest town west of the
Alleghenies with about 150 houses, brick or wood, scattered around, and two
dogs to a man," as an Army Colonel put it. Through this gateway to the
farther west, a great horde of peope kept continually
pouring from
In the busy town of
Finally they were ready to carry all their equipment down to the flatboat on which a Mr. and Mrs. Hewlett were also travelling. Tools were the most important thing -the axe, adz, augur, hammer, plowshare, saws-and then guns and ammunition. Food stuffs they carried with them to last through the first winter and spring until harvest - especially seeds of all sorts, fruit-tree saplings, wheat flour, salt, sugar, browned barley as a coffee substitute, yeast, vinegar, and iron pots and kettles. And then for clothing there was Mother's spinning wheel and all that went with it as well as wool, ginned cotton, and cloth. Things that would last a lifetime, and things to use immediately they had to remember.
The last day on shore was such a busy day for the grown-ups that Nancy and Charlie had plenty of time to become acquainted with the flatboat.
Why, it looks like a box!" cried Charlie. So it did. It had a flat bottom and solid walls of planks built up about 8 feet, with corners squared. A big box it was, about 40 feet long and 12 feet wide, roofed over at the rear.
Along the narrow stern passage-way with its 40-foot steering oar Nancy and Charlie raced, and up the ladder to the roof of the cabin. It made a splendid look-out, they thought. On the fore-deck they saw their cow and horse and those of the Hewletts, fenced in. Down the front ladder they scrambled to the door leading into the cabin. Inside, along the middle passage-way they discovered rooms with bunks against the wall, store-rooms, and a kitchen with a wooden fireplace daubed thick with clay.
Before they went to bed that night they knew everything Father could tell them about the boat. The four side oars, 30 feet long, were just to take the flatboat in and out of the current. At night they would tie up near some bank, because, they could not see to navigate. "But what makes us go?" asked Charlie.
"The current," replied his father. "Now in November we'll float down between three and four miles an hour. But if we had gone down last April, we would have been racing twice as fast with the spring freshet. All we have to do is to keep a sharp lookout and steer."
"When will we reach
"Oh, that depends on rain and fog and wind," came the reply, "If this good weather keeps up, we'll be there in three or four days. Over in town they told me of one trip that took twenty-one days because of ice and a hard blow."
At dawn the next morning they untied and pulled
out into the current. As they watched
"Oh, this is jolly!" sang out the children, swinging their legs from the cabin roof and chattering about the few hamlets disappearing upstream.
But Father and Mr. Hewlett exchanged glances.
True, the beautiful
31
THEY SAW
BOUND FOR THE
THE ALLISONS LAND
AT
1789
On the morning of Wednesday, November 11, 1789, Charlie's seventh birthday, the Allison children were awake at sunrise.
"Oh, we're still tied to the shore,"
exclaimed
"In about three hours after the mist rises from the river so we can see the snags and shoals," her father answered, pinching her fondly under the chin.
Well did
"
Breakfast was hurried that morning, for Mrs. Allison and Mrs. Hewlett wanted to wash and dry and pack their dishes and kettles, and wash and dress the two Allison babies in readiness to land.
Everybody was on deck by the time the men gripped their oars to steer the flatboat out of the current. Toward the mouth of the Muskingum they headed the boat. "Oh, look!" cried Charlie. "There are some men on the bank watching us!"
They looked. Against the background of giant
poplars with leaves a golden yellow in the bright fall sun, stood a group of
men at Picketed Point. Toward the Point Father and Mr. Hewlett poled the boat,
past
The right side of the flatboat struck the beach gently. Down went the oars. The men on shore tossed over one end of a wild grape vine to Mr. Allison. He caught it and pulled the flatboat close to the bank. Then he and Mr. Hewlett jumped out and returned the greetings of the settlers.
"Little girl," said one of the men on
shore, smiling at
"Thank you," said
The rest of that day was very busy. Father inspected the cabins built at the Point, while Charlie and she played on the bank near the boat, and mother and Mrs. Hewlett watched them. After he had arranged with the owner of a half-finished cabin, the men and Charlie helped carry their belongings up on shore and set them in the cabin. They did not unpack much, however, because Father said in a few days they were to live in one of the blockhouses of Campus Martius, a fort three-quarters of a mile up the Muskingum. There the Ohio Company of Associates had set aside quarters for newcomers.
Then they said good-bye to the Hewletts, who were going to another settlement. Before the day was over, they all wondered why the flatboat following them so closely had not put in to shore. Later they learned that from a high rock on the opposite bank the Indians had seen it and the people on board.
33
THEY SAW
BOUND FOR THE
WHAT CAMPUS MARTIUS
LOOKED LIKE
Robert Allison was very fortunate to be able to
rent quarters in the Campus Martius, more fortunate
than he knew at the moment. Within its stockade resided the Directors of the
Ohio Company of Associates and officers of the
The quarters he rented were supposed to be
occupied by newcomers only until they could build. As it turned out, the
outbreak of the Five-year Indian War prevented Robert Allison from ever
building in
The fortress of Campus Martius,
or Field of Mars, was "the finest fort in the
Standing on an elevated plain thirty feet above
the banks of the
These four blockhouses were connected by fourteen two-story houses, eighteen feet wide, with walls four inches thick, and roofs covered with four inches of clay tamped on to prevent fiery darts of the Indians from setting the buildings afire. The whole, forming one continuous structure, contained 72 rooms. Three barricades surrounded it; one of sharp-pointed palisades sloping outward, another a line of sharp pickets upright in the earth, and the outer one a barrier of trees with sharpened boughs.
Above a tower room over one of the two gates rose a cupola for a bell, sent by Marie Antoinette of
LIFE IN
Life in
After a flowery oration by General Varnum, there followed fourteen toasts, interrupted by a
thunder storm which drove the guests briefly to shelter in cabins nearby. Among
those toasts were The United States, The Congress, His Most Christian Majesty,
the King of France, The New Federal Constitution, His Excellency, George
Washington, His Exellency, Governor St. Clair, and
The Western Territory. Though the Allisons missed the
first Fourth of July celebration, they took part in many others like it at
Almost any event offered occasion for pomp and
ceremony in that hospitable settlement, the headquarters of the whole
Another time, when twelve or thirteen Indian
chiefs in a pirogue, a form of canoe, stopped off at
So Colonel Oliver marched a group of settlers under arms to the Point, received their guests officially, and led them back, Indian file, in mud up to their knees! In the inner court of the Campus Martius waited all the other settlers. As soon as their guests entered the gates, the settlers and the Guard in uniform presented arms, cannon was fired, and the guests escorted to the house of General Putnam, on one side of the court.
One of the men present, supposedly Major Anselm
Tupper, put the incident into humorous verse, a proof that the spice and gayety
of life were not lacking in
"Up from the Point through mud in style
March the red guests in Indian file.
To find their seats now one and all
Proceed to Major Putnam's Hall
Where tables spread in high Bon Ton
With smoking dainties thereupon.
Another of a smaller size
With Major Putnam's pumpkin pies.
The Chieftains eat, and some look sly:
Said, 'Good big squaw make good big pie!'
The last line refers to the belief of the writer that Mrs. Putnam "was the most fleshy and heaviest woman in the country." Probably Betsy Allison and all the other women helped Mrs. Putnam that day with the cooking.
That food was plentiful in
What that "etc." stands for may be
guessed from the knowledge of woods full of buffalo, elk, opossums, and
rabbits, as well as bears, wild cats, panthers, wolves, and other game; and
fish so plentiful in the river that their flopping against the boats prevented
people from sleeping on board. The record catch was a pike six feet long,
weighing almost a hundred pounds. But every Saturday night,
So fertile was the soil down even to seven feet, that
The first winter the Allisons
were in
Salt was the