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The following is an account of the appearance and
pretensions of Joseph C. Dylks, in Guernsey county,
in 1828.
Religious impostors have flourished in almost every
portion of the historic period, and these religious cheats
have always found ready subjects to impress with their
views, however visionary, and to mold into material to
promote their ulterior schemes and purposes, however absurd
and wicked. Such an impostor was Joseph C. Dylks,
whose advent, teachings, journeyings and unhallowed
pretensions are here truthfully rehearsed, and form one of
the most interesting and curious episodes in the history of
the Ohio Valley.
In August of 1818, about the middle of the month, a
camp-meeting was held on the lands of one Casper Overley,
two and a half miles northwest of Salesville, in the
immediate vicinity of the Methodist Episcopal chapel, called
Miller's meeting house, under the auspices of the
United Brethren church. On Sunday the attendance
was very large, the in-gathering being from more than twenty
miles around. The Rev. John Crum, presiding
elder, addressed the congregation at the afternoon service.
He had proceeded half way in his discourse, and had the
entire attention of the audience when during a solemn
silence a tremendous voice shouted "Salvation!"
followed instantly by a strange sound, likened by all who
heard it to be the snort of a frightened horse. The
minister was take by surprise and stopped preaching.
All eyes were turned to the spot whence the sound seemed to
proceed, and were fixed on a stranger of odd appearance
seated about midway in the congregation. He sat
steadfastly in his seat, with a countenance of marked
solemnity, and totally unmoved by the excitement he had
produced. The stranger was Joseph C. Dylks, the
noted "Leatherwood god." The shout and snort of
Dylks are described by every one who heard them as
imparting to all within their sound both awe and fear.
Some of the men jumped to their feet, women shrieked aloud,
and every check blanched. No one had seen him enter.
Dylks appeared to be between forty-five and fifty
years old. He was five feet eight inches tall, and
straight as an arrow, with large and flashing eyes and a
mass of hair that reached nearly to the middle of his back.
His face was hale and tinged with melancholy. His
acquaintance was sought by members of the congregation and
he visited much among them and sometimes led at the meetings
in the Temple. In three weeks he quietly made
proselytes and then announced in public that he was "God."
Strange to say so many believed that the "Dylksites" got
possession of the Temple. Religious fanaticism never
spread faster, and even the Rev. Samuel Davis and the
Rev. John Mason were led astray. Dylks'
star, however, which had rushed to the zenith so rapidly,
shortly began to wane. The unbelievers called for a
miracle as evidence of his truth, but as none came they grew
bolder, and as he had stated that no one could take a single
hair from his head, he was knocked down by a party and a
handful of hair removed. He was then taken before
Esquire Omstot, at Washington, but managed to escape and
ran out of the Esquire's office and up the pike, followed by
a shower of stones thrown by the angry mob. He was
afterwards concealed by some who believed him to be their
"God," and strange to day, proselytes were more numerous
than ever. In October, however, he left with three of
the better class of his converts on a journey to
Philadelphia, whither he promised to bring down from heaven
the "Celestial City." When near Philadelphia he
disappeared and they returned home. He was never seen
afterwards, but the Dylksites never lost their faith in him.
EARLY SUPERSTITION.
Although the
settlers here were generally of a religious nature, and
drunkenness and quarrels almost unknown, yet many believed
in witchcraft and some professed to be witch doctors with
the power to counteract the influence of evil spirits.
In every neighborhood there were a few families who had
brought with them the superstitions of their forefathers,
and the result was that some poor man or woman was reputed
to be a witch. Not much proof was required. If a
woman had very dark eyes, or stepped stealthily, or spoke in
a low tone of voice, and the gossips said she was in league
with the prince of the black art, it did not take long to
fasten the reputation upon her, and the ignorant looked with
awe and fear upon the poor hunted, watched creature.
And so they greased their broom handles, and laid dead
snakes head foremost in the paths, and hung
horse-shoes over the cabin doors, and were careful to spit
in the fire, and not look over their left shoulders when
they passed the abode of the doomed one. But sometimes
here wrath fell upon them, and the oxen would lie down in
the furrow, and no power could move them, not even hot
coals, nor boiling soap, when poured upon them. One
time, when the family of a poor man rose in the early
morning, one of them lay still, and slept heavily and
breathed noisily. On examination it was discovered
that he had been witch-ridden; his sides were black and blue
from the kicking heels that had urged him on to his best
paces, and the corners of his mouth were torn from cruel
bits guided by jerking hands. People who were objects
of the witch's spite found a brood of downy young chicks in
their chests, and piles of sprawling kittens under the
half-bushel; and they overheard deep, cavernous voices, and
fine piping ones, in conclave at midnight up in the air and
the tree-tops, and under the dead leaves, and beside the
chimney, and tracks, with a cloven hoof in among them, were
discernible. think of the misery of a poor creature
reputed to be a witch, met in her own lowly cabin by a
weeping mother beseeching her to remove the spell of
incantation that her sick child might recover! No
denial of the absurd charge could avail her; no sympathy
offered was accepted; and the foolish mother could do no
more than return home, burn some woolen rags to impregnate
the out-door air; stand the child on its head while she
could count fifty backward; grease its spine with the oil of
some wild animal; cut the trim hairs off the tail of a black
cat, and bind them on the forehead of the persecuted one,
while she repeated certain sentence in the Lord's
prayer. Then, in her own language, "If the child died,
it died; and if it lived, it lived."
One very singular old man, a soldier of the Revolution,
known to all the early settlers of the county, was
remarkable for his peculiarities, his drolleries, and his
fund of big stories. One of his little boys was a very
good child, and he accounted for it from the fact that the
prospective mother had read a book of sermons, and the
result had made a favorable impression upon the mind of the
boy. Relating this to a neighbor, he said: "Oh, he's
the piousest little cuss you ever saw!"
Hauling logs out in the clearing one day with his hired
man, the two sat down to rest and make plans for brush and
log heaps. In an idle way the man said he would be
satisfied if he had as much money as he wanted - say, a
wagon loaded with needles, and every needle worn out with
making bags to hold his money.
"Poh!" said the soldier; "now, I wish I had a pile so
big that your pile wouldn't be enough to pay the interest on
mine so long as you could hold a red-hot knitting needle in
your ear!"
He used to say to his nephew, in his strange, weird
way:
"After I'm dead I mean to come back, an' set round on
the stumps, an' watch you, an' see how your're gittin'
along. I'll set in the holler younder, in the gray o' the
evenin', an' obsarve you; see 'f I don't."
And, though a half-century has elapsed since the old
man was gathered to his fathers, the pioneer or his children
never pass the "holler," a round, scooped-out basin in an
old roadside field, without thinking of the words of the old
man; and involuntarily they turn their gaze upon the few
gray stumps remaining, and they seem to see him sitting
there with his queer, baggy breeches, fastened by a wide
waistband, his shirt collar opened, and his long white locks
tossed by the dallying breezes from the south.
Another superstitious old man used to divine secrets,
tell fortunes, foretell events, find the places where money
was buried, cure wens by words, blow the fire out of burns,
mumble over felons and catarrhs, remove warts, and, with his
mineral ball, search out where stolen goods were hidden.
The "mineral ball" to which the superstitious ascribed such
marvelous power, was no less than one of those hairy calculi
found in the stomachs of cattle, a ball formed compactly of
the hair which collection the tongue of the animal while
licking itself. This man, one of that class whose
taint infects every neighborhood, could not, from any
consideration, be prevailed upon to leave a graveyard first
of all.
"Why, drat it!" he would say, "it's sure and sartin
death; never knewed a fellow to leave the graveyard furst
but what he'd be the next 'un planted there!"
When an old neighbor of his died suddenly this man
said, with his thumbs hooked into his trousers' pockets
restfully:
"W'y, drat him, he might a knowed more'n to leave the
graveyard fust, man! As soon as I seed him do it, I
says to myself, says I, 'Dan, you're a goner; you're
done for; they'll tuck you unter next time, an' nobody but
your booby of a self to blame for it!' "
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