ISRAEL HAMILTON.

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JOHN HAMILTON.

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DR. ADAM MOSGROVE.

SIMON KENTON.

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GENERAL SIMON KENTON. *

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JOHN REYNOLDS.

     He was a man of simple tastes, quiet, unpretending and unambitious.  He was a man of enlarged views, and, in an early day, took an active interest in all matters of public concern.  The marked features of his character were great integrity and rare common sense.  He never neglected his business, prospered in his undertakings, contributed to the prosperity of all connected with him, and had the open hand of a true charity.  He died at an advanced age.

HENRY WEAVER.

came from Kentucky when a youth, and soon became one of the first shots with the rifle in the country.  The killing of a white man by the Indians in the southwestern part of the county alarmed many settlers, and most or all who came with him from Kentucky returned, he alone remaining.  About 1830, he opened a store in a small frame building on the corner of the public square, where the WEAVER hardware store now is.  He had a judicious eye for a speculation or
purchase, invested his profits in loans, mortgages and profitable enterprises, and

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died a few years since at an advanced age, having accumulated perhaps the largest private fortune of any citizen of the county.  In advanced life, his appearance showed little of the encroachments of age, and he continued the practice of horseback-riding to the last.

SAMUEL M'CORD.

one of the earliest residents of the county, and among the first to be chosen Sheriff.  He opened the first store in town, and always had an interest in the general prosperity.  The crushing of his foot by a saw-log, in 1844, gave him much inconvenience for the remainder of his life.  He was fond of a practical joke, and was in the habit of attending auctions and bidding on all goods offered, apparently for the purpose of exciting a spirited bidding among the bystanders, and as a consequence had his cellar full of useless “traps.”  He built, in 1821, the brick residence on the corner of Scioto and Locust streets, which, for many years, was considered a model house.  During a long life, he continued the hospitalities of the early pioneer, and the stranger and friend were made welcome.  The table always had an extra cover laid for the probable guest.  He died in 1849 at a green old age.

WILLIAM M'DONALD.

for many years a prominent citizen of Urbana, and partner in the mercantile firm of W. & D. McDONALD.  He represented the county in the State Legislature, and was considered a man of good sense, general intelligence and great integrity.

SAMUEL KEENER.

was from Baltimore.  Had been formerly connected with a wholesale drug

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     William SWEET, son of Azel SWEET, had a decided talent for portrait painting.  Travel and study would have given him a name in his profession.  He was making arrangements for a residence in Europe for the prosecution of his profession, about 1840, when he died, at the age of twenty-five or thirty-years.
     Andrew WAY had considerable talent as a portrait painter.  He studied in Europe, and is said to have painted a number of historical pictures.  He lives in Baltimore.
     John Q. A. WARD, son of John A. WARD, a man of rare talent as a sculpture, and, by his designs and works, ahs now an enviable reputation.  Emphatically a "home-made" man, having never had leisure to study the works of art in an old world.  Central Park, New York City, contains a number of his works.  The plaster statuette of Simon KENTON, to be seen in the Citizens' Bank, was designed and made by him.
     Edgar WARD, son of John A. WARD, has talent for figures and landscape painting.  He excels in depicting the country life of the old world.  Several of his pictures were on exhibition at the Exposition in Chicago.  He has spent some time in Europe, and is now in Paris.
     Warren CUSHMAN, a native of Woodstock, has a studio in Urbana, and has painted portraits of a large number of the citizens of town.  In crayon drawing, he has been very successful, and has made one of the very best of the many portraits of President HAYES.
     Mr. DeVoe, in connection with his photographic gallery, paints in oil colors, making landscapes a specialty.
     Miss Lillie KING paints both in oil and water colors, and, in some of her sketches and paintings, has shown considerable talent in landscape and natural objects.

ODDS AND ENDS.

     Changes in fashion are so gradual we scarcely notice them, but it may not be uninteresting to note a few.
     As the century came in, much of the fashion that prevailed during the Revolution began to make way for a simpler dress.  The three-cornered hat, the cue, the Continental coat, with its lappels and buff facings, the breeches, knee-buckles and garters, were hardly suited to a new country, and, of necessity, made way for buckskin, tow shirts, coon caps and linsey-woolsey.  Yet at the time of which we write, the “gentleman of the old school,” who prided himself on his “blue blood,” held with pertinacity to his cue and his buckles.
     A majority of the early settlers wore the buckskin hunting-shirt and trowsers.  There was no economy or comfort in it after linsey-woolsey could be obtained.  After they had become wet, no amount of manipulation could restore their wonted pliancy; and the boy running daily through the woods and high grass, soon found his trowsers not only rigid, but, in spite of his best endeavors, by skrinkage leaving a wide margin between his feet and the trowsers.
     It is difficult to find a true dandy of that period.  The common feeling was one of contempt for those who made a display of dress.  At the log-rollings, corn-huskings and general social gatherings, there was rivalry for partners, pride in athletic sports, and in neatness of personal appearance; but, so far as we have been able to learn, the animal we call a “dandy” was not known in the earlier part of the century.  The same feeling of contempt for fashionable dress continued a marked trait of the rural population until, perhaps, within the present generation.

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     The girl of the period dressed in homespun, showed the deft hand in the adjustments which give a charm to the humblest materials, at home, went barefoot, tied up her hair in a knot with a string, wore sun-bonnets or hats made of straw, and, when she was married, put on a cap.
     The changing fashions brought the “swallow-tailed” dress-coat and pantaloons into use, and a disuse of the cue, or “pig-tail,” as it was styled among the profane among the younger set.  The older class still held to the cue and kneebreeches.  The clergy were in the habit of railing at the frivolity of the age.  Martin Hitt wore what was then and has since been called the “shad-belly,” cue, breeches and buckles, which he held to be the true dress of a gentleman as long as he lived.
     About the year 1820, the Methodist Episcopal Conference sat in Urbana, of which Henry T. Bascom, then a young man, was a member.  Bascom was a little foppish in his dress, and carried a light cane, and gave great offense to the “shad- bellies” for preferring broadcloth to jeans, and a fashionable swallowtail to the distinctive style of the minister.  Bascom had a ready answer, that he had no objection to a suit of the simplest sort, but his clothes had been given to him, and he was too poor to throw them away, and would be glad to receive another suit of plainer cut!
     William Ward, more commonly called Col. Ward, who was grandfather of the families bearing the name in the vicinity of Urbana, during his life held to the old style of dress.  Solomon Vause, discarding the rest, retained the cue until his death, which happened in 1837.
     About 1830, the “shad-belly” and “pig-tail” were to be seen only on men of advanced age, though occasionally a young man affected the latter.  About this time, singing-schools were places of common interest.  One of them was
conducted by Samuel MILLER, afterward a man of some note in the village, who wore his hair in a cue.  Some of the young fellows of the town started a manuscript newspaper, called The Wasp, of which half a dozen copies were
gratuitously circulated.  The Wasp was used to lampoon the follies of the day, and MILLER’s cue came in for a share of the ridicule, and was called the “ skillethandle.”  MILLER was not invulnerable to the satire, and cut off the handle.
     The style of wearing the hair during the first forty years underwent several changes.  The young man of fashion at the first tied his back hair in a bandage of ribbon, leaving the extremity loose, and no Chinaman ever guarded his pig-tail with more jealous care.  By 1830, the fashionable man “roached” his hair, and trimmed behind to a moderate length.  By 1840, the hair of the back part of the head, in a line drawn from ear to ear across the crown, was cut very short, and the front part permitted to grow to the length of six to eight inches, which was nicknamed by the unfashionable “soap-locks.”
     The men of eighty years ago were all clean shaven, which was the custom generally until a very recent day.  In 1840, the men who wore whiskers were the “border ruffian” and the Mississippi steamboat poker player.  The long beard and waxed mustache in the rural districts were a curiosity, and the big watch chain, flowing beard and fierce looks plainly indicated the proprietor to be somebody.  In recent times, it has become almost universal to let the beard grow.  The exceptions are to be found mainly among the “oldest settlers,” who, to this day, wear clean shaved faces.  Among these, we now recall the faces and names of Judge John TAYLOR, John ENOCH, Samuel HUMES, Robert M. WOODS, John H. JAMES, John EARSOM, James McLEAN, William PATRICK, John HURD, Jacob MINTURN, Simon EARSOM and others.

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Gabriel Kenton, Mad RiverTp.

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Mrs. Mary A. Kenton, Mad River Tp.

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to the unabridged. Untrained in the schools, circumstances suggested analogies and expressions stronger and more expressive than its Latin synonym.
     Abram SMITH in the early settlement of Salem Township, bought a tract of land on what is now the Urbana pike, about three miles southeast of West Liberty, and paid at the rate of $2 per acre.  David OGDEN sold the same land to Abraham HERR about 1850, for $50 an acre.  The property to-day is owned by Joseph MILLER, and would probably sell in the market for $100 per acre.
     Daniel LOUDERBACK, of Mad River, purchased, in 1820, 160 acres of land, valued at $50.  He has held continued possession until 1880, and the same land is now valued at $70 per acre.  Taxes have advanced in the same ratio.
     Mr. Solomon VAUSE’s farm in Union Township, in 1830 valued at $5 per acre, has been in the uninterrupted possession of Robert M. WOODS till 1880; assessed value, $50 per acre.  In 1832, taxes $1 per 100 acres; in 1880, 50 cents per acre.
     In 1830, and onward for many years, the town held weekly lyceums, composed of the attorneys, preachers and young men of literary tastes, where questions of popular interest were discussed in the presence of enthusiastic audiences, of which the ladies composed a large part.  By 1840, an essay or lecture was added to the amusement of the evening.
     In 1850, or later, public lectures were read at certain intervals.  Members of the bar and other scientific and literary gentlemen of the community responded to the call, and a course of lectures was given during the winter months.
     By 1870, the public lecturing business had become one of the fixed “institutions” of the country.  Bureaus were established at various centers to facilitate the securing of prominent and popular essayists and orators, when a choice of names was offered and terms arranged without an extended correspondence.  Under this system, a committee have continued until the present a winter course of lectures by many of the distinguished public speakers.
     It is elsewhere stated, that, in the earlier period of the State’s history, the squirrels were accustomed to travel in countless numbers from the north to the south.  The squirrels then were a nuisance, and their destruction encouraged by a squirrel tax.  So effective has been the course pursued, but more particularly by the bands of young hunters, that the squirrels are becoming very scarce, and in one or two more decades will be so rarely seen as to be a curiosity.  The last emigration of the squirrels from or through Champaign County was in 1836.  They came from the northwest, moving across the county diagonally, and crossing open fields, fences and houses in their course.  They were rarely seen in numbers together, but, singly, each seemed to be striving to reach its destination. In the fields one might have been seen in every space of fifty yards square.  Thousands were killed by the boys with clubs in mere wantonness, and a large proportion of the squirrels were found to be infected with “warbles,” a probable larva of the gadfly.  The “stampede” continued about a week, but was at its height not longer than twenty-four hours.  The remaining time was filled by scattering ones, which had perhaps lagged behind from weariness.
     In 1830, and for many years thereafter, the “martins,” as the summers came, were very numerous.  In 1880, they are little seen.  The birds which are found in the groves and in the trees of town, are the thrush, catbird, robin, blue-jay and turtle dove.  In the country, the prairie blackbird, the woodpecker, sap-sucker, crow and blackbird - the last in numbers - the others less

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numerous than they were ten years ago.  No flock of wild turkey has been seen since 1840, and no wild deer since 1835.  The pheasant is occasionally found, but is almost exterminated.  Quails are becoming numerous - protected for a limited time by law.  In 1875, a few pairs of English sparrows were first noticed in Urbana.  In 1835, wild geese and ducks were abundant, but annually have become less and less numerous, and, in 1880, are rarely bagged by the hunter.
     Every national census has recorded the names of residents in every township who have long passed the year allotted by the Psalmist as the measure of human life.  The two oldest, of whom we have any record, are Stanhope, of Concord, mentioned in the notes on that township, and James GALES, of Urbana Township - both colored men.  GALES is still living on a farm about four miles south of Urbana.  The oldest citizens of Urbana remember his coming to Urbana fifty or sixty years ago, and say he was an old-looking man then, and the uniform testimony is that he cannot be less than one hundred and twelve years old.  The record in the family Bible, in the possession of his son, Cal GALES, makes him one hundred and twenty.  He is a native of Berkeley County, Va., and his occupation generally was that of a farm hand.  He goes about the house and yard, but his senses and appearance all indicate the feebleness and breaking of old, old age.
     In a hurried manner, we have reviewed the early beginnings and progress of the county until the present.  The log cabin has made way for the commodious dwelling; the tinder-box, with its lint and flint, for the lucifer match; the pine knot and the cotton-wick in the bowl of grease, tallow candle, lard oil, to kerosene and gas; hard, constant, manual toil in the workshop and the field, for machinery - lifting the burden of labor. Instead of the transient, expensive weekly newspaper, the mammoth daily, from every city; the lumbering coach and weekly mail exchanged for the palace car, steam and telegraph; the science of politics and the rights of man better understood than ever before art, science, literature and religion cultivated and maintained; human life lengthened.  These are among the landmarks in the progress of a lifetime; and, dispassionately surveying what was, compared with what is, and as indicative of what may be, the general verdict will be, “the latter times are better than the former.”