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CHAPTER XV.
Pgs. 62-65
- A SETTLEMENT IS MADE ON ROCKY FORK, AND “SMOKY
ROW: IS LAID OUT
- JOHN PORTER’S GRIST MILL - POPE CUTS HIS WHEAT
- DEATH OF THOMAS BEALS - ELIJAH KIRKPATRICK, LEWIS SUMERS, GEORGE ROW,
JOSEPH MEYERS, ISAAC LAMAN AND GEORGE CALEY COME TO NEW MARKET –
ADAM LANCE, GEORGE FENDER AND ISAIAH
ROERTS JOIN THE FINLEYS ON WHITEOAK - THE VAN METERS SETTLE ON THE EAST FORK -
ROBERT AND TARY TEMPLIN SETTLE ON LITTLE ROCKY FORK, AND SIMON SHOEMAKER,
FREDERICK BROCHER AND TIMOTHY MARSHON LOCATE AT SINKING SPRINGS - ADAM MEDSKER
AND ROBERT BRANSON ARE BURIED AT NEW MARKET - BENJAMIN CARR, SAMUEL BUTLER, EVAN
EVANS, EDWARD WRIGHT AND WILLIAM LUPTON SETTLE ABOUT LEESBURG - LUPTON BUILDS
THE FIRST SAW MILL AND JAMES HOWARD THE FIRST CORN MILL IN THAT NEIGHBORHOOD -
THE FRIENDS ERECT A MEETING HOUSE, WHILE MRS. BALLARD IS THE FIRST TO BE BURIED
IN THE GRAVEYARD.
Late in November, 1799, one
Mareshah
Llewellyn pitched his tent on the
banks of the Rocky fork, two miles south of where Hillsborough now stands. He had set out from the pine hills, near
the Catawba River, North Carolina, early in the
preceding March for the
Northwestern
Territory with the double purpose of finding more
productive land and better hunting grounds.
Llewellyn was of Welsh origin,
his ancestors having emigrated to America during the time of
Charles II, and gradually as their
wild and roving inclination predominated in any of the lineal descendants, the
family name worked itself back from the shores of the Chesapeake into the almost
desert of sands, swamps and pines which characterizes a large part of the “old
North State.” The inhabitants of this
region are, or rather were, at the time of which we speak, sixty years ago, very
poor and as a general thing depended much upon hunting in the mountains
bordering Eastern Tennessee. They, however, retained many of the
mountains bordering Eastern Tennessee. They, however, retained many of the
follies which their ancestors had brought with him from the old country, not the
least of which was that of family pride.
Llewellyn was a young man of
twenty-three or four, stout, hearty and not bad looking for the region in which
he had the fortune to grow, but all these good qualities could not overcome the
deep seated prejudice of old George Smith was an Englishman and despised the Welsh and constantly swore he would shoot his
daughter’s suitor if he ever caught him in the vicinity of his cabin. The very natural result of all this was
that Peggy determined to do as she
pleased in the trifle of marrying. So she
and the Welshman stole a march on the old man while he was attending as a
witness at Rutherford Court House, and packing their worldly goods on a pretty
stout old horse, which Mareshah
happened to buy on a long credit, they set off one bright moonlight night for
Tennessee. After two weeks pretty
brisk traveling they reached Elizabethtown, on
the head waters of the Holston, where they were
legally married. From this place they
pushed on to Kentucky,
camping out of course at night.
Llewellyn died some successful
hunting as he passed along, frequently stopping two or three weeks at a good
point for that purpose, and thus supplied the wants of himself and wife. The skins he saved for market, which, by
the time he reached Boonville, on the Kentucky River,
had accumulated to a pretty good horse-load.
So he and his wife of course had to walk.
They spent some time at Boonville, where he exchanged his bear and deer
skins for some necessaries, not the least of which was a strong and large iron
handmill for grinding corn. Again they
set out for the North, but by the time they reached the Blue Licks the horse’s
back had become very sore and the weather so excessively warm, that they, as
well as the horse, were about tired out, so they stopped and took employment
with some men who were boiling salt at the Licks.
They continued thus employed until the first of October, when they again
bundled up, adding a small sack of salt to the saddle, and started North,
crossing the river at Limestone. After a
few days travel they
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stopped, struck a camp and
Llewellyn took a two weeks’ hutn. Not meeting the success, however, he had
anticipated, he determined to move further to the North, as there were some
settlers scattered at intervals of eight and ten miles in the region in which he
then was. They passed on, looking out
more for hunting than farming grounds, until they reached the banks of Buckrun,
named for the great quantity of deer which early herded in the region through
which it flows, where they again stopped for some weeks. His success was pretty satisfactory here,
but he, one day, discovered the smoke of a cabin in his range on Flatrun and
concluded that the locality was rather too hampered for good winter hunting. So he pulled up stakes and pushed out
farther to the northward and did not halt, except for rest at night, till he
arrived at the Rocky fork. This region
seemed to promise freedom from interruption, as well as good hunting, and he
determined to stop and construct a camp for winter. He accordingly selected a site on the
sunny side of a thickly wooded hill, near a good spring, and put up a half faced
camp of poles; fixed up the spring with a bark spout, and settled down for the
winter. This was the first settlement
made on the Rocky Fork and was on the west side of the present road leading to
Hillsborough, known as the old West Union road, about three hundred yards north
of the creek. In the spring
Llewellyn cleared out a small corn
patch south of his house and raised corn, pumpkins, &c. During the summer, having concluded to
stay awhile longer at this place, he went to work and built a cabin. In the fall he gathered his corn and
ground meal on his hand mill for bread, which was a great luxury, being the
first they had tasted since they left
Kentucky. In the
course of the next two years Wm.
Dougherty, James Smith, Job Smith, Robert Branson, George Weaver and
George Caw settled in the neighborhood of
Llewellyn, who still continued to
hunt and grind corn on his hand mill for the new settlers.
Robert Branson died in the summer of 1801.
In the course of a few years, however, he grew weary of the mill business
and as game had become rather scarce, he determined to move farther away from
the settlement, and accordingly left. The
remains of his house stood until within a few years, but it, together with the
cabins and improvements of his neighbors, has entirely disappeared.
In the fall of 1800 a settlement was
formed three or four miles south of New Market by a jolly set of Irishmen as
ever collected together this side of their native Island. Their names were
Alexander Fullerton, John Porter, Samuel McQuitty, William Ray, William and
James Boyd, James Farrier, Hector Murphy
and Alexander Carrington. “A little stream” – in the language of
a gentleman of New Market, who furnished this information – “bearing the classic
name of Smoky Row – in the memory of a cherished locality in sweet Ireland –
wended lazily through the lane of John Porter, who was moved to profit thereby.
John¸ in the course of a few years,
set about building thereon a grist mill of most singular construction and when
it was completed greatly rejoiced thereat; and as he viewed it zigzag walls and
peculiar adaption to the object for which it was designed,
Nebuchadnezzar, when viewing his
capital and exclaiming, ‘Is this great Babylon which I have built,’ could not
have felt a greater swell of pride. A
thunder gust was seen forming itself in the West, affording a prospect of
speedily trying the capacity of the mill for business. A sack of corn was dashed into the hopper
– a jug of whisky worthy the occasion was speedily procured and all things made
ready – when the winds blew and the rain descended and the flood came of such
unusual height, that at one mad rush the dam, the mill, the race and all were
swept.
John hastily snatching up the jug and leaping form the floating wreck to the bank, waived high his
jug in defiance of the storm and mingled his shout and huzza with the roar of
the thunder and the flood.
Mr. John Porter was not, however, the
man to quail before adversity, so he rallied his energies and built a horse
mill, which he kept in good repair till the year 1812, when he volunteered to
fight the British and lost his life at the battle of Brownstown.”
In the spring of 1801
Elijah Kirkpatrick moved from
Chillicothe and settled with his family on Smoky Row. He was the first collector of taxes in
Highland
county.
Lewis Summers moved into New Market from Pennsylvania early in the same spring, also
George Row and
Joseph Myers. No other persons moved during the summer. In the fall
Isaac Laman and his family moved out
from Virginia
and settled in the town, also George
Caley. Nobody died in the town up to
this time and there was no serious sickness.
The first buryings at the New Market graveyard were
Adam Medsker, who had recently moved into the neighborhood, and
Robert Branson, from the Rocky Fork.
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This was in the summer of 1801. Old
Robert Finley was the first preacher in New Market and doubtless the first who preached within the
present boundaries of Highland
county. The preaching was in the woods. During the year 1801-2,
Rev. Henry Simth, a Methodist
preacher from Virginia,
occasionally preached in New Market.
The same fall
Adam Lance and George
Fender moved from Virginia and
settled in the neighborhood of the
Davidsons and Finleys on
Whiteoak, and Isaiah Roberts moved up
from Chillicothe the next fall and settled on Whiteoak on the farm on which his
son Isaiah now resides;
James McConnel also came up from the same place the same fall and settled in
the same neighborhood, and two years afterwards came
Joseph Davidson.
Joseph VanMeter and
Isaac Miller came from Mill Creek,
Fleming county, Kentucky,
and settled on the East Fork of the Little Miami in the spring of 1801. Mr.
VanMeter, Joseph’s father, and
Isaac’s guardian, gave each of them a hundred acres of land, axes, hoes,
plows and enough corn meal to last them during the summer. Meat he refused, saying they might hunt
for that in the woods. Accidentally they
lost one of the hoes on the way, so after they had put in their crop of corn and
it had grown sufficiently to require hoeing, they were at a great loss for
another hoe, it never occurring to them that one could plow and the other follow
him with a hoe. They saw no way of
working their corn but for both the plow at the same time till that part was
done and then both go to work with the hoes.
They deliberated over the difficulty and finally came to the conclusion
that they could not do without another hoe.
The nearest settlement was New Market, fourteen miles. So
Isaac agreed to go there and try to borrow a hoe. Accordingly he shouldered his rifle one
afternoon and struck out through the woods for New Market, where he arrived in
good time, and fortunately succeeded in borrowing a hoe of
John Eversol, on the promise that if
it was damaged in any way it was to be paid for.
The young pioneers had a hard time the first summer. Neither were very successful in hunting
and sometimes they almost starved, having nothing for days together to eat but a
piece of corn bread, washed down with a gourd of water. The Indians were all around them and had
plenty of venison and other game to sell them, but they had nothing to buy with.
Robert and
Tary Templin came up from
Chillicothe in the spring of 1801, and made improvements
on lands which they had purchased of
Henry Massie. Robert settled on a
branch of the Rocky Fork, known at present as
Templin’s or
Medsker’s Run, and
Tary on the Little Rocky Fork on the
place recently owned by Bennett Creed. They were both at that time unmarried. They were among the first settlers of
Chillicothe, having gone in the company which
went with Gen. Massie in the spring
of 1796 to locate Chillicothe
and make the settlement in the vicinity of Station Prairie.
In the civil arrangements of Ross
county, Paxton
Township in which Bainbridge now is, was laid off in the winter of
1800. Geographically its boundaries
embraced nearly all of what is now the country west of Scioto township,
extending north to the vicinity of Chillicothe, thence extending west over what is now Ross, Fayette and
Highland
counties. The place of holding the
elections, musters, &c., for this great old township was at the house of
Christian Platter, one mile east of
where Bainbridge now stands.
The settlement at Sinking Spring did
not receive any additions until 1800, when
Simon Shoemaker,
sr. came with his family form
Virginia
and settled in the neighborhood. During
the four preceding years Frederick
Broucher had been engaged slowly in clearing out a small farm and building
and preparing his home for the accommodation of the travel, which began to be
considerable along the trace on which he had located. His house was the first tavern out of
Chillicothe on the trace.
Timothy Marshon cared nothing for the
elegancies of life, and but little for the comforts. So he was contented to inhabit the little
cabin built by Wilcoxon, or rather his wife and children
inhabited it, for he was most of the time in the woods hunting. He therefore had done little or nothing
towards making an improvement, depending solely for a substance on the bear,
deer, &c., which abounded in the surrounding hills.
During the winter of 1801 George Caley and
Peter Hoop set out from New Market for a “good hunt.” They
traveled all over the country which is now occupied by the town of
Hillsborough
and the surrounding farms, but could find nothing. After wandering about for a long time in
search of game, they became very much fatigued and hungry, and to make their
miseries complete, they discovered they were lost. They continued, however, to travel on, and
finally when hopeless and almost famished, they joyfully discovered just at
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nightfall the cabin of Tary Templin,
where they were kindly received and cared for by that most worthy man.
When
N. Pope’s field of wheat ripened, he found it necessary to send off, not only for hands to cut it,
but the request that they would bring with them sickles, as there were none in
his neighborhood. Accordingly, he
dispatched two of his sons with orders to go down Paint until they got the
promise of a sufficient number of hands and a keg of whisky. The hands arrived in force, and pitched
into the little field and soon cut it down.
They then went to work and gathered it all to one point, made a temporary
threshing floor, and with flails made of young hickories, threshed it all out
and cleaned it before night. Some of them
then went hunting, and others out to cut a bee tree in the neighborhood. At night they had a feast of venison,
honey, whisky, &c. This was the first
harvesting done in Highland.
Hardins Creek was a favorite range
for bears about 1801-2.
Samuel Pope killed three bears on
this stream in one day. In the fall of
1802, William Pope, while ranging
through these woods with gun and dogs, started up a very large bear, which he
shot at and wounded. It soon got into a
fight with the dogs. He loaded his gun as
quick as possible, by which time the bear had caught and was killing one of his
dogs. He rushed up to the bear in hopes
to rescue his dog, and put the muzzle of the gun against it to shoot it whilst
it held the dog in its deadly embrace.
The gun missed fire, at which the bear released the dog and pitched at the
hunter. He gave back a step or two, in
doing which he fell over a log backwards.
The bear caught him by the heel which stuck up over the log. The dogs now rushed to the rescue of their
master, and seized the bear in the rear, which was thus forced to release its
hold on the hunter’s foot, who raised and joined in with the dogs, and finally
killed it by repeated and well directed blows with his tomahawk. It was with the greatest difficulty he got
to the camp, where he lay three weeks with his foot swung up to a sapling. He was badly wounded, and left the bear
lying where he had killed it.
The first road cut from the Falls of Paint to the settlement on Lee’s Creek was cut by
Pope and
Walters for the accommodation of
their friends who were moving out from Quaker Bottom, after which the
neighborhood began to settle pretty rapidly.
Daniel, John and
Jacob Beals, sons of old Thomas Beals, came with their
widowed mother, and were the first to communicate the sad intelligence of the
death of the venerable and loved Thomas,
the preacher, which happened on their way out, and was caused from a hurt
received by his horse running under a stooping tree. He died in a few house afterwards in the
woods on the banks of Salt Creek. His
sons and others who were with him found it utterly impossible to get plank or
any material out of which to make a coffin, so they went to work and cut down a
walnut tree and made a trough, which they covered with a slab. Thus prepared, they performed the sad
rites, and the remains of the pure and good man were left to repose amid the
profound solitudes of the unbroken forests.
The Friends’ meeting of Fairfield in this county, have recently sent down a
committee for the purpose of enclosing the grave, which was done by erecting a
permanent stone wall around it. About
this time, Benjamin Carr, father of Hezekiah Carr, near Leesburg,
Samuel Butler,
father of
Nathan Butler, Evan Evans and their
families moved from Virginia.
Edward Wright came to the falls of
Paint from Tennessee
in 1801, where he took the fever and died.
Shortly after his widow, Hannah
Wright, and her two sons, William
and Dillon, moved up to Hardins
Creek. In 1803
William Lupton moved out from Virginia, and bought out
N. Pope and built a saw mill on
Lees Creek, in the course of the next two years. The first corn mill in that neighborhood
was built by James Howard on
Lees Creek. The first Friends’
meeting house in the present county of Highland
was a log structure erected in 1803-4, on the ground now occupied by the brick
meeting house near Leesburg, and Barshaba
Lupton and a few other old Friends’ were its founders. The first burial at that graveyard was a
Mrs. Ballard, in 1804.
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