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HISTORY OF FAIRFIELD COUNTY |
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CHAPTER VIII. |
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GENERAL GEORGE SANDERSON'S NOTES. |
General Sanderson came from Kentucky to the Hocking Valley,
with his father, in 1798, when he was a boy, and spent his long life in
and about Lancaster. He was identified with the beginning and progress
of the town and county, and filled several positions of trust and
honor, and died in 1871, at a ripe old age.
About the year 1851, he prepared a small pamphlet of some sixty
or seventy pages, which he entitled "A brief history of the early
settlement of Fairfield county." The pamphlet was published by "Thomas
Wetzler, then of Columbus, and was distributed variously over the
county; but at the end of thirty years, the compiler of this work with
great difficulty and search, at last unearthed a single copy in a mutilated
condition. Extracts from its pages follow, which, though in part a
repetition of matter incorporated in other pages of this volume, will be
excused, because a history of Fairfield county would be incomplete,
without the notes of General Sanderson. His sketches were, in fact,
outside of its political and religious history, the only history of the
county, ever written. The pamphlet formed the text of Howe's History
of Ohio, so far as Fairfield county was concerned. But the extracts
are chiefly valuable, on account of the familiarity of their writer
with the scenes he describes. The following are extracts:
"The present generation can form no conception of the wild and
wilderness appearance of the county in which we now dwell, previous
to the settlement of the white people. It was in short a country,
Where nothing dwelt but beast of prey, The lands watered by the sources of the Hocking River, and now comprehended within the present limits of the county of Fairfield, were, when discovered by some of the settlers of Marietta, owned and occu- pied by the Wyandot tribe of Indians, and were highly prized by the occupants as valuable hunting grounds, being filled by almost all kinds of game and animals of fur. The principal town of the Nation, stood along the margin of the prairie, between the mouth of Broad Street and Thomas Ewing's canal basin, and extending back as far as the base of the hill, south of the Methodist Church. It is said that the town contained, in 1790, about one hundred wigwams, and five hundred souls. It was called Tarhe, or in English, Cranetown, and derived its name from that of the principal chief of the tribe. The chief's wigwam stood upon the bank of the prairie, near where the fourth lock is built on the Hocking Canal, and near where a beautiful spring of water flows into the Hocking River. The wigwams were built of the bark of trees, set 40 |
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on poles, in the form of a sugar camp, with one square open, facing a
fire, and about the height of a man. The Wyandot tribe at that day
numbered about five hundred warriors, who were a furious and savage
people. They made frequent attacks on the white settlements along
the Ohio River, killing, scalping and capturing the settlers, without
regard to sex, age or condition. War parties on various occasions
attacked flat boats descending the river, containing emigrants from the
Middle States, seeking new homes in Kentucky, by which, in many
instances, whole families became victims to the tomahawk and scalping
knife.
"The war chief had a white wife in his old age. She was Indian in
every sense of the word, except her fair skin and red hair. Her history,
as far as I have been able to learn it, is this: Tarhe, in one of his
raids on the frontier settlements along the upper Ohio, near Wheeling,
had taken her prisoner and brought her to his town on the Hocking.
She was then about eight years old, and never having been reclaimed
by her relatives and friends, she remained with the nation, and
afterwards became the wife of her captor.
"On the 17th of May, 1796, Congress, with a view, no doubt, to an
early settlement of their acquired possessions by the treaty of Green-
ville, passed an act granting to Ebenezer Zane three tracts of land, not
exceeding one mile square each, in consideration that he would open a
road on the most eligible route between Wheeling, Virginia, and
Limestone, (now Maysville,) Kentucky. Zane performed his part of
the contract the same year, and selected one of his tracts on the Hocking,
where Lancaster now stands. The road was only opened by blazing
the trees and cutting out the under brush, which gave it more the
appearance of an Indian path, or trace, than a road, and from which
circumstance it took the name of Zane's trace---a name it bore many
years after the settlement of the country. It crossed the Hocking at a
ripple, or ford, about three hundred yards below the turnpike road,
west of the present town of Lancaster, called the crossing of Hocking.
This was the first attempt to open a public highway through the interior
of the Northwestern Territory.
"In 1797, Zane's trace having opened a communication between the
Eastern States and Kentucky, many individuals in both directions,
wishing to better their conditions in life by emigrating and settling in the
back woods, then so called, visited the Hock-Hocking for that purpose;
and, finding the country unsurpassably fertile and abounding with
springs of the purest water, determined to make it their new home.
"In the spring of 1798, Captain Joseph Hunter, a bold and enter-
prising man, with his family, emigrated from Kentucky and settled on
Zane's trace, upon the bank of the prairie west of the crossings, and
about one hundred and fifty yards north of the present turnpike road.
Captain Hunter cleared away the brush, felled the forest trees, and
erected a cabin, at a time when he had not a neighbor nearer than the
Muskingum and Scioto Rivers. This was the commencement of the
first settlement in the upper Hocking Valley; and Captain Hunter is
regarded as the founder of the flourishing county of Fairfield. He
lived to see the county densely populated, and paid the debt of nature
in the year 1829.
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"The general government directed the public domain to be surveyed.
The lands were first laid off in full sections, and subsequently
in half and quarter sections. Elnathan Schofield, our late fellow
citizen, was engaged in that service.
"In 1800, 1801 and 1802, emigrants continued to arrive and settle-
ments were formed in the most distant parts of the county, cabin-raisings,
clearings and log-rollings were in progress in almost every direction.
The settlers lent each other aid in their raisings and other heavy
work requiring many hands. By thus mutually assisting one another,
they were all enabled, in due season, to provide themselves cabins to
live in. The log cabin was of paramount consideration. After the
spot was selected, logs cut and hauled, and the clap-boards made, the
erection was but the work of a day. They were of rude construction,
but not always uncomfortable.
"About this time merchants and professional men made their
appearance. The Reverend John Wright, of the Presbyterian Church,
settled in Lancaster in 1801; and the Reverend Asa Shinn and
Reverend James Quinn, of the Methodist Church, traveled the Fairfield
circuit very early.
"Shortly after the settlement, and while the stumps remained in
the streets, a small portion of the settlers indulged in drinking frolics,
ending frequently in fights. In the absence of law, the better disposed
part of the population determined to stop the growing evil. They
accordingly met, and resolved, that any person of the town found intoxi-
cated, should, for every such offense, dig a stump out of the street or
suffer personal chastisement, (the chastisement consisted of so many
stripes on the bare back, well laid on.) The result was, that after several
offenders had expiated their crimes, dram drinking ceased, and for
a time all became a sober, temperate and happy people.
"In April, 1799, Samuel Coats, Senior, and Samuel Coats, Junior,
from England, built a cabin in the prairie, at the crossing of Hocking,
kept bachelor's hall, and raised a crop of corn. In the latter part of
the year, a mail route was established along Zane's trace, from Wheeling
to Limestone. The mail was carried through on horseback, and,
at first, only once a week. Samuel Coats, Sr., was the post-master,
and kept his office at the crossing. This was the first established mail
route through the interior of the Territory, and Samuel Coats was the
first post-master at the new settlement.
"The settlers subsisted principally on corn bread, potatoes, milk
and butter, and wild meats. Flour, tea and coffee were scarcely to be
had, and when brought to the country, such prices were asked as to
put it out of the power of many to purchase. Salt was an indispensable
article, and cost, at the Scioto Salt Works, five dollars for fifty
pounds; flour cost $16 per barrel; tea, $2.50 per pound; coffee, $1.50;
spice and pepper, $1.00 per pound.
"The early settlers were a hardy and industrious people, and for
frankness and hospitality, have not been surpassed by any community.
The men labored on their farms, and the women in their cabins. Their
clothing was of a simple and comfortable kind. The women clothed
their families with their own hands, spinning and weaving for all their
inmates the necessary linen and woolen clothing. At that day no cabins
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were found without their spinning wheels, and it is the proud boast
of the women that they could use them. As an evidence of their
industry and saving of time, it may be mentioned, that it was not an
infrequent thing to see a good wife sitting, spinning in her cabin, upon an
earthen floor, turning her wheel with one foot, and rocking her baby
in a sugar trough with the other.
"The people of that day, when opportunity afforded, (which was
not often,) attended public worship; and it was nothing new, or strange,
to see a man at church with his rifle---his object was to kill a buck,
either going or coming.
"In 1799, Levi Moore, Abraham Bright, Major Bright, Ishmael
Due and Jesse Spurgeon, emigrated with their families from Allegheny
county, Maryland, and settled near where Lancaster now stands. Part
of the company came through by land from Pittsburg, with their horses,
and part of their horses and goods descended the Ohio River in boats
to the mouth of the Hocking; and thence ascended the latter in canoes
to the mouth of Rush Creek. The trace from Wheeling to Hocking,
at that time, was, almost in its entire length, a wilderness, and did not
admit of the passage of wagons. The land party of men, on reaching
the valley, went down to the mouth of Hocking and assisted the water
party up. They were ten days in ascending the river, having upset
their canoes several times, and damaged their goods."
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