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THOMAS EWING, son of the last named, was born in Ohio
county, West Virginia, December 28th, 1789. The following
autobiographical sketch, kindly furnished for these pages by this now great
and venerable man, will be read with especial interest:
My father settled in what is now Ames township, Athens
county, early in April, 1798. He removed from the mouth of Olive Green
creek, on the Muskingum river, and the nearest neighbor with whom he had
association, was, in that direction, distant about eighteen miles.
There were a few families settled, about the same time, on or near the
present site of the town of Athens, but no road or even pathway led to
them; the distance was about twelve miles. There was also an old
pioneer hunter encamped at the mouth of Federal creek, distant about ten
miles. This, as far as I know, comprised the population statistics of
what is now Athens county. I do not know the date of the settlement in
what was called No. 5 - Cooley's settlement - it was early.
At the time of my father's removal, I was with
my aunt, Mrs. Morgan, near West Liberty, Virginia, going to school.
I was a few months in my ninth year. Early in the year 1798, I think
in May, my uncle brought me home. We descended the Ohio river in a
flat boat to the mouth of Little Hocking, and crossed a bottom and a pine
hill along a dim foot path, some ten or fifteen miles, and took quarters for
the night at Dailey's camp. I was tired and slept well on the
bear-skin bed which the rough old dame spread for me, and in the morning my
uncle engaged a son of our host, a boy of eighteen, who had seen my father's
cabin, to pilot us.
I was now at home, and fairly an inceptive citizen of
the future Athens county. The young savage, our pilot, was much struck
with some of the rude implements of civilization which he saw my brother
using, especially the auger, and expressed the opinion that with an axe and
an auger a man could make everyting he wanted except a thing he wanted
except a gun and bullet molds. My brother was engaged in making some
bedsteads. He had already finished a table, in the manufacture of
which he had used also an adze to smooth the plank, which he split in good
width from straight grained trees. Transportation was exceedingly
difficult, and our furniture, of the rudest kind, composed of articles of
the first necessity. Our kitchen utensils were "the big kettle," "the
little kettle," the bake oven, frying pan, and pot; the latter had a small
hole in the bottom which was mended with a button, keyed with a nail through
the eye on the outside of the pot. We had no table furniture that
would break - little of any kind. Our meat - bear meat, or raccoon
with venison or turkey, cooked together and seasoned to the taste (a most
savory dish) - was cut up in morsels and placed in the centre of the table,
and the younger members of the family, armed with sharpened sticks, helped
themselves about as well as with fourtined forks; great care was taken in
selecting wholesome sticks, as sassafras, spice-bush, hazel, or hickory.
Sometimes the children were allowed, by way of pic-nic, to cut with the
butcher-knife from the fresh bear meat and venison their slices and stick
them, alternately, on a sharpened spit and roast before a fine hickory fire;
this made a most royal dish. Bears, deer, and raccoons remained in
abundance, until replaced by herds of swine. The great west would have
settled slowly without corn and hogs. A bushel of seed wheat will
produce, at the end of ten months, fifteen or twenty bushels; a bushel of
corn, at the end of five months, four hundred bushels, and it is used to
much advantage for the last two months. Our horned cattle do not double in a
year; hogs, in the same time, increase twenty fold. It was deemed almost
sacrilege to kill a sheep, and I remember well the first beef I tasted. I
thought it coarse and stringy compared with venison. We had wild fruits of
several varieties, very abundant, and some of them exceedingly fine. There
was a sharp ridge quite near my father's house, on which I had selected four
or five service or juneberry bushes, that I could easily climb, and kept an
eye on them till they should get fully ripe. At the proper time, I went with
one of my sisters to gather them, but a bear had been in advance of me. The
limbs of all the bushes were brought down to the trunk like a folded
umbrella, and the berries all gone; there were plenty still in the woods for
children and bears, but few so choice or easy of access as these. We had a
great variety of wild plums, some exceedingly fine—better, to my taste, than
the best tame varieties. I have not seen any of the choice varieties within
the last thirty years.
We, of course, had no mills. The nearest was on Wolf
creek, about fourteen miles distant"; from this we brought our first
summer's supply of breadstuffs. After we gathered our first crop of corn my
father instituted a hand mill which, as a kind of common property, supplied
the neighborhood, after we had neighbors, for several years, until
Christopher Herrold set up a horse mill on the ridge, and Henry
Barrows a water mill near the mouth of Federal creek.
For the first year I was a lonely boy. My brother
George, eleven years older than I, was too much a man to be my
companion, and my sisters could not be with me, generally, in the woods and
among the rocks and caves; but a small spaniel dog, almost as intelligent as
a boy, was always with me. I was the reader of the family, but we had few
books. I remember but but one beside " Watts' Psalms and Hymns " that a
child could read—The Vicar of Wakefield," which was almost committed to
memory—the poetry which it contained, entirely.
Our first neighbor was Capt. Benjamin
Brown, who had been an officer in the Revolutionary war. He was a man of
strong intellect, without much culture. He told me many anecdotes of the war
which interested me, and, among other things that I remember, gave me an
account of Doctor Jenner's then recent discovery of the kine
pox as a preventive of the small pox, better than I have ever yet read in
any written treatise, and I remember it better than any account which I have
since read. He lent me a book—one number of a periodical called the
"Athenian Oracle"—something like our modern "Notes and Queries," from which,
however, I learned but little. I found, too, a companion in his son, John,
four years my senior, still enjoying sound health in his ripe old age.
In 1801, some one of my father's family being ill,
Dr. Baker, who lived at Waterford, eighteen miles distant, was
called in. He took notice of me as a reading boy, and told me he had a book
he would lend me if I would come for it. I got leave of my father and went,
the little spaniel being my traveling companion. The book was a translation
of Virgil, the Bucolics and Georgics torn out, but the
Ćneid perfect. I have not happened to
meet with the translation since, and do not know whose it was. The opening
lines, as I remember them, were—
" Arms and the man I sing who first from Troy,
Came to the Italian and Lavinian shores,
Exiled by fate, much tossed by land and sea,
By power divine and cruel Juno's rage;
Much, too, in war, he suffered, till he reared
A city, and to Latium brought his gods—
Hence sprung his Latin progeny, the Icings
Of Alba, and the walls of towering Rome."
When I returned home with my book,
and for some weeks after, my father had hands employed in clearing a new
field. On Sundays, and at leisure hours I read to them, and never had a more
attentive audience. At that point in the narrative, where
Ćneas discloses to Dido his purpose of
leaving her, and tells her of the vision of Mercury bearing the mandate of
Jove, one of the men sprang to his feet, declared he did not believe a word
of that—he had got tired of her, and it was all a made up story
as an excuse to be off—and it was a d d shame after what she had done for
him. So the reputation of Ćneas suffered
by that day's reading.
Our next neighbors were Ephraim Cutler,
Silvanus Ames, William Brown, a married son of the Captain;
and, four or five miles distant, Nathan Woodbury, George Wolf, and
Christopher Herrold—and about the same time, or a little later, Silas
Dean, a rich old bachelor, Martin Boyles, and John
and Samuel McCune. Mr. Cutler and my father
purchased "Morse's Geography," the first edition, about 1800, for his oldest
son, Charles, and myself—it in effect became my book, as Charles
never used it, and I studied it most intently. By this, with such
explanations as my father gave me, I acquired quite a competent knowledge of
geography, and something of general history.
About this time the neighbors in our and the
surrounding settlements, met and agreed to purchase books and to make a
common library. They were all poor, and subscriptions small, but they raised
in all about one hundred dollars. All my accumulated wealth, ten coon-skins,
went into the fund, and Squire Sam. Brown, of Sunday
creek, who was going to Boston, was charged with the purchase. After an
absence of many weeks, he brought the books to Capt. Ben. Brown's in
a sack on a pack horse. I was present at the untying of the sack and pouring
out of the treasure. There were about sixty volumes, I think, and well
selected ; the library of the Vatican was nothing to it, and there never was
a library better read. This, with occasional additions, furnished me with
reading while I remained at home.
We were quite fortunate in our schools. Moses
Everett, a graduate of Yale, but an intemperate young man, who had been
banished by his friends, was our first teacher; after him, Charles Cutler,
a brother of Ephraim, and also a graduate of Yale. They were learned
young men and faithful to their vocation. They boarded alternate weeks with
their scholars, and made the winter evenings pleasant and instructive. After
Barrows' mill was built at the mouth of Federal creek, I being the
mill boy, used to take my two-horse loads of grain in the evening, have my
grist ground, and take it home in the morning. There was an eccentric person
living near the mill whose name was Jones (we called him Doctor); he
was always dressed in deer-skin, his principal vocation being hunting, and I
always found him in the evening, in cool weather, lying with his feet to the
fire. Pie was a scholar, banished no doubt for intemperance ; he had books,
and finding my fancy for them, had me read to him, while he lay drying his
feet. He was fond of poetry, and did something to correct my pronunciation
and prosody. Thus, the excessive use of alcohol was the indirect means of
furnishing me with school teachers.
My father entertained the impression that I would one
day be a scholar, though quite unable to lend me any pecuniary aid. I grew
up with the same impression until, in my nineteenth year, I almost abandoned
hope. On reflection, however, I determined to make one effort to earn the
means to procure an education. Having got the summer's work well disposed
of, I asked of my father leave to go for a few months and try my fortune. He
consented, and I set out on foot next morning, made my way through the woods
to the Ohio river, got on a keel boat as a hand at small wages, and in about
a week landed at Kanawha salines. I engaged and went to work at once, and in
three months satisfied myself that I could earn money slowly but surely, and
on my return home in December, 1809, I went to Athens and spent three months
there as a student, by way of testing my capacity. I left the academy in the
spring with a sufficiently high opinion of myself, and returned to Kanawha
to earn money to complete my education. This year I was successful, paid off
some debts which troubled my father, and returned home and spent the winter
with the new books which had accumulated in the library, which, with my
father's aid, I read to much advantage. I went to Kanawha the third
year, and after a severe summer's labor I returned home with about six
hundred dollars in money, but sick and exhausted. Instead, however, of
sending for a physician, I got Don Quixote, a recent purchase, from
the library, and laughed myself well in about ten days. I then went to
Athens, entered as a regular student, and continued my studies there till
the spring of 1815, when I left, a pretty good though an irregular scholar.
During my academic term I went to Gallipolis and taught school a quarter and
studied French.1 I found my funds likely
to fall short, and went a fourth time to Kanawha, where, in six weeks, I
earned one hundred and fifty dollars, which I thought would suffice, and
returned to my studies; after two years' rest the severe labor in the
salines this time went hard with me.
After finishing my studies at Athens, I read
Blackstone's Commentaries at home, and in July, 1815, went to Lancaster to
study law. A. B. Walker, then a boy of about fifteen years,
accompanied me to Lancaster to bring back my horse, and I remained and
studied law with Gen. Beecher. I was admitted to the bar in
August, 1816, after fourteen months' very diligent study - the first six
months about sixteen hours a day.
I made my first speech at Circleville, the November
following. Gen. Beecher first gave me slander case to study and
prepare. I spent much time with it, but time wasted, as the cause was
continued the first day of the court. He then gave
Source: History of Athens County, Ohio - By Charles M. Walker, Publ.
Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1869 - Page 395 |
