IN the preceding chapter, a history of the white occupation of the territory embraced within the limits of Licking county, has been brought down to the year 1798, at which date the first permanent settlers, Hughes and Ratliff, arrived.  It is necessary and proper here to give brief biographical sketches of a few of the most prominent of the early pioneers, whose lives are necessarily a part of the early history of this county.
     The acts, achievements and exploits of individual character are history.  This is pre-eminently true of the first settlers of a country - the pioneers.  Especially is it true in such a country as this was, where the subjugation of the hostile tribes was the condition precedent to its permanent settlement.  The pioneers of Licking county made its early history.  Elias Hughes and John Ratliff remained here until their death, hence their names are as much interwoven in the history of Licking county, as is the name of George Washington with the history of the United States, or as are the names of General Grant and Abraham Lincoln with the history of the late Rebellion.
     Elias Hughes was born near the south branch of the Potomac, a section of country which furnished Licking county with many of its first settlers and most useful citizens.  His birth occurred some time before Braddock's defeat in 1755.
     Of his early life little is known until 1774, when he is found in the army of General Lewis, engaged in the battle of Point Pleasant.
     General Lewis commanded the left wing of the army of Lord Dunmore, then governor of Virginia, and successfully fought the distinguished Shawnees chief, Cornstalk, who had a large force of Indians under his command.  One-fifth of Lewis' command was killed or wounded, but Elias Hughes escaped unhurt in this hard-fought battle, which lasted an entire day.  At the time of his death, which occurred more than seventy years after the battle, he was, and had been for years, the sole survivor of that sanguinary conflict.
     Hughes is next found a resident of Harrison county, Virginia, where his chief employment during the twenty-one years that intervened between the battle of Point Pleasant, and the treaty of Greenville in 1795, was that of a scout or spy on the frontier settlements near to and bordering on the Ohio river.  This service which, with him, was a labor of love, he rendered at the instance of his State, and of the border settlers who had been, for a long time, greatly harrassed by Indians.  Hughes' father, and others of his kindred, and also a young woman to whom he was betrothed, were massacred by them.  These acts of barbarity made him ever after an unrelenting and merciless enemy of the Indians, and in retaliation for their numerous butcheries, his deadly rifle was brought to bear fatally upon many of them.

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     It is but an act of justice to the memory of this pioneer settler, who was well known as an Indian hater and an Indian slayer, that the provocation he had be clearly stated and properly understood.  Born and reared on the frontier, among rude, un lettered people; untaught and wholly uncultivated as he was, it is not surprising that under all these circumstances of horrid aggravation, he should have given rather full play to strong and malignant passions, and that he should have cherished even to old age, the more harsh and somewhat malignant feelings of his nature.  This he did fully, so long as the Indian tribes sustained a hostile attitude toward the whites.
     A word here in reference to a matter well remembered by the old settlers.  In 1820 an Indian squaw of the Stockbridge tribe was shot near the county line, between Utica and Martinsburgh.  She was taken to Mt. Vernon where she died.   One McLane shot her, and was sent to the penitentiary for it.  He and four others named McDaniel, Evans, Chadwick and Hughes (not Elias), were engaged in chopping, when this squaw and others of the tribe came along and camped near them.  The diabolical proposition was made and accepted, that they should play cards, and that the loser should shoot her.  McLane was the loser, and did the shooting.  His confederates, or at least some of them, were tried and acquitted.  In Norton's history of Knox county it is stated that "Hughes shot this squaw, simply to gratify his hatred of the Indian race."  How an intelligent man, writing history could justify himself for making such a gross mistake, regarding a matter on which he could easily get correct information from a thousand residents of this county and of Knox, it is hard to conceive.  Elias Hughes had neither part nor lot in the matter, directly or remotely; but condemned the outrage in unmeasured terms.  He was not guilty, and this emphatic denial is deemed an act of simple justice to Mr. Hughes.
     Indian hostilities were terminated by the treaty us Greenville in 1795, and Hughes' services as a scout were no longer required; he therefore surrendered his commission as captain of scouts, and directed his thoughts to more pacific pursuits.  He had been commissioned by that distinguished frontiersman, Colonel Ben Wilson, the father of Daniel D. Wilson and Mrs. Dr. Brice, both of this county.
     In 1796, Hughes entered, in the capacity of hunter, the service of a surveying party, who were about to engage in running the range lines of lands lying in what is now Licking county.  This party was probably under the direction of John G. Jackson, deputy surveyor under General Rufus Putnam, surveyor general of the United States.  The fine bottom lands on the Licking were thus brought to the notice of Hughes, and he resolved to leave his mountain home and "go west."  Accordingly in the spring of 1797 he gathered together his effects, and with his wife and twelve children, made their way on foot and on pack-horses to the mouth of Licking.  This point was made accessible to horse-back travelers and footmen by the location and opening, the year before, by Zane and others, the road from Wheeling to Maysville; and also of a road previously cut from Marietta up the river.
     John Ratliff, a nephew of Hughes, with a wife and four children, came with him, in the same manner, to the mouth of the Licking.  Here they remained one year, and in the spring of 1798, both families, numbering twenty-one persons, came in the same manner up the Licking and settled on what is called the "Bowling Green," on the banks of the Licking, four miles east of Newark, a short distance above the mouth of Bowling Green run.  This was the first permanent white settlement within the present limits of Licking county.
     They found the "Bowling Green," a level untimbered, green lawn or prairie, and they at once proceeded to raise a crop of corn.  Whether the Bowling Green was a natural prairie, or had been cleared by the Indians, remains an unsettled question.  Their nearest neighbors for two years, lived near Nashport, a distance of ten miles.  One of these was Philip Barrick, who in 1801 moved into this county.
     This colony of twenty-one persons was subsisted mainly on the meat of wild animals, procured by the rifles of the settlers, although vegetables and a considerable corn crop were raised the first season.  For many years bear, deer, wild turkeys, .and a great variety of smaller game were in such abundance as to supply the full demands of the settlers.

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     A few days after the Staddens located in Licking valley, Captain Samuel Elliott came, locating one and a half miles below the junction of the North and South forks, in September, 1800.  In the spring of this year he and his two sons left his mountain home in Allegheny county, Maryland, and came to this valley where they erected a cabin planted corn and potatoes, then returned for the family.  This cabin was built near the large spring, on the farm now owned by T. J. Davis.  He was probably drawn to this point to be near Messrs. Green and Pitzer, who were from his neighborhood in Maryland.  In autumn Captain Elliott returned with his wife and twelve children, took possession of their cabin, and harvested the crop.

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     Elliott's family constituted the eighth then within the limits of the county, and the colony was not further increased during the year 1800.  The marriage of Colonel Stadden and Betsey Green, however, created another family, so that nine families occupied the territory now embraced within the limits of Licking county at the closing of the first year of this century.
     While Captain Elliott lived here he entertained, several days, Rev. McDonald, a missionary of the Presbyterian church, who preached the first sermon ever delivered inthe territory of Licking county.  It was late in 1801, or early in 1802.
     The manufacture of a web of twenty yards of nettle-cloth by the wife and daughters of Captain Elliott, while they resided here, was one of the events of the day.  In the absence of flax it was the best they could do.  Such were the expedients necessity compelled the pioneers to resort to.
     Captain Elliott was born near Ballymena, county Antrim, province of Ulster, Ireland, in 1751.  On his arrival in America, in 1771, he settled in the colony of Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia.  Here he lived during the dawning era of the Revolution, and when the contest commenced, took sides with the struggling colonists.  Toward the close of the war he married in Northampton county, Pennsylvania, from where he emigrated to western Maryland, remaining there until his removal to the Licking valley.
     In 1802 Captain Elliott erected the first hewed-log house in Newark.  It stood on East Main street, on Mrs. Fullerton's lot.  He moved into it during the same year, and was one of Newark's earliest inhabitants.  He soon purchased of General Schenck, one of the proprietors of Newark, some lands lying about a mile west of the village, upon which he settled in1804,and where he remained until his death, which occurred May 24, 1831.
     The death of Mrs. Elliott took place on the same farm, May 19, 1822.  Her age was sixty-four years.  She was a woman of rare excellence of character, and ruled her household wisely and well, her children becoming useful members of society.  She died in communion with the Presbyterian church, and her pastor, Rev. S. S. Miles, commemorated her virtues in an appreciative obituary sketch, published in the Newark Advocate, May 23, 1822, then conducted by Mr. Benjamin Briggs.
     Upon the organization of Licking county, in 1808, Captain Elliott became coroner, serving many years in that office, and was succeeded by his son, Alexander who served many years.
     In religion the Elliotts were Presbyterians; and in character, were upright, industrious and highly esteemed in all the relations of life.  Three of the boys were engaged in the war of 1812; two of the grandsons, David Taylor and Alexander Elliott, served with honor in the Mexican war, and two, William and Jonathan Taylor, served long and faithfully in the Union army during the late war.  William encountered a fatal rebel bullet at Arkansas Post; Jonathan survived the "march to the sea" with Sherman's army.  Reuben Lunceford, and a number of other great grandsons, also fought the rebels, including two young Elliotts, who lost their lives in the service.  Lieutenant Reuben Harris, a grandson, was long a gallant officer in the navy, and died in the service.
     One of the daughters married Dr. Noah Harris, who came to Newark to practice his profession about the year 1808, and had a successful professional career of twenty-five years.  He left a number of children who were educated by their mother, who lived to the age of seventy-three, dying at Newark Aug. 16, 1863.
     The late Hon. Horatio J. Harris, was a son of Doctor Harris, and a grandson of the pioneer, Captain Elliott.  He attained to high position in public life, and may be regarded as a successful politician, who was not without a good share of ability.  He was a native of Newark, but removed in early life to Indiana, where he served respectively in the offices of clerk of the senate, State senator, and auditor of State.  During General Taylor's presidential term he was appointed district attorney of Mississippi, having previously moved to that State.  Ill health compelled him to resign his position; he came to Newark on a visit to his relatives, where he died, having scarcely reached middle life.  He was a young man of much promise.
     Sarah, the youngest daughter of Captain Elliott, died in Newark May 13, 1872, aged seventy-four years.  She married in 1821, the late General Jonathan Taylor.  Mr. Taylor represented this county

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in the general assembly, and was elected to Congress in 1838.  He led a very active life and was a commanding character in the community.  At the time of his death, his oldest son, David, was a soldier in Mexico, and died shortly after his return.  Another son lost his life in the great rebellion.  Mrs. Taylor had a fine intellect and excellent judgment.  She was a model pioneer woman, who practiced all the matronly virtues, led an industrious, useful life, and died regretted by her many friends.
     This closes a sketch of the early pioneers of Licking county, up to the beginning of the year 1801.  Of the family of Carpenter, who probably came to the Licking valley in 1800, or before, nothing whatever is known, as before stated; and it is even doubted whether he brought his family with him.  Without including this, the number of families within this territory at the beginning of 1801, was eight, all settlers in Licking valley, and all, except Van Buskirk, within the present limits of Madison township.  The Fords, Jones and Benjamin, the party mentioned as having been found by Stadden in Raccoon valley late in the fall of 1800, were not settlers of that year; they were here to "prospect" and enter land, and were settlers early in the spring of 1801, when they came with their families.  Biographical sketches of them, and other early pioneers will be found in the history of the township in which each settled.

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