OHIO GENEALOGY EXPRESS


A Part of Genealogy Express
 

Welcome to
Mahoning County, Ohio
History & Genealogy

20th Century History of
Youngstown & Mahoning Co., Ohio

and Representative Citizens - Publ. Biographical Publ. Co.
Chicago, Illinois -
1907
-------------------ok**
 

CHAPTER XIII.
SETTLEMENT AND ORGANIZATION OF MAHONING COUNTY
Lines of Development - Date of the First Settlement on the Reserve - First Wheat Cut on the Reserve -
First Postal Service - Early Conditions of Life - A Primitive Mill - Old Time Threshing - Bounty on Wolf Scalps -
Olden School Days - Early Youngstown Citizens - Draft of 1812 - Homemade Soap - The Old Ash Hopper -
Soap Spookery - The Old Ashery - The State Driver - Matches Unknown - If Fires all Went Out -
Wild Pigeons; Where are They?  Pioneer Milling Enterprises - Slavery -
County Seat Located - Early Elections - First County Seat Issue - Useless Legislation -
Renewal of the Strife - Some Interesting Old Letters - County Seat Charged
Pg. 97

     The conditions of life in the wilderness made it necessary to obtain food from the soil as soon as possible.  It was also of vital importance to be within reach of some channel, however difficult and obstructed, through which trade with the outside world could be carried on.  As Lake Erie was the best natural highway available for settlers in the Western Reserve, there was a strong tendency to build homes near its shores. This, however, was checked in the earliest period of settlement by the menacing attitude of the English north of the lake, and at its western end, and their influence over the Indian tribes of the region.  Home-seekers felt safer, and more surely in American territory when within easy reach of the Ohio.  Moreover, the soil was more productive, as a rule, and the danger from malaria less, at a good distance from the lake.
     The result was a double line of development, one-half governed by trade, and the other by farming. For a time the latter so far prevailed that Cleveland had a hard and seemingly doubtful race with other towns in the Connecticut Reserve.  As late as 1812, when the first bank was established in the Western Reserve, it was not located in Cleveland, but in Warren, Trumbull County.

DATE OF FIRST SETTLEMENT ON THE RESERVE.

     The conditions of life in the wilderness made it necessary to obtain food from the soil as soon as possible.  It was also of vital importance to be within reach of some channel, however difficult and obstructed, through which trade with the outside world could be carried on.  As Lake Erie was the best natural highway available for settlers in the Western Reserve, there was a strong tendency to build homes near its shores.  This, however, was checked in the earliest period of settlement by the menacing attitude of the English north of the lake, and at its western end, and their influence over the Indian tribes of the region.  Home-seekers felt safer, and more surely in American territory when within easy reach of the Ohio.  Moreover, the soil was more productive, as a rule, and the danger from malaria less, at a good distance from the lake.
     The result was a double line of development, one-half governed by trade, and the other by farming.  For a time the latter so far prevailed that Cleveland had a hard and seemingly doubtful race with other towns in the Connecticut Reserve.  As late as 1812, when the first bank was established in the Western Reserve, it was not located in Cleveland, but in Warren, Trumbull County.

FIRST WHEAT CUT ON THE RESERVE.

     The first wheat reaped by white men within the limits of the Reserve was cut near Conneaut in 17967.  That was the year when the first settlement was made in Cleveland, and the date shows that the pioneers lost no time in getting land under cultivation and crops in the ground

FIRST POSTAL SERVICE.

     The first regular postal service in the Western Reserve was established and opened in October, 1801.  The route extended from Pittsburg to Warren, passing through Beavertown, Georgetown (on the Ohio River), Canfield and Youngstown.  The mail was carried on horse back and delivered once in two weeks.  The first mail contract was awarded to Eleazer Gilson, of Canfield, and was for two years, at the price of $3.50 per mile per year, counting the distance one way.  Samuel Gilson, a son of the contractor, carried the mail the greater part of the time, and as one source of information says, "on foot, carrying the mail bag on his back," but it is probable that it was only distributed on foot in the different towns, as, according to old documents and papers, bequeathed by the late Elmer Kirtland, through Miss Mary Morse, to the Western Reserve Historical Society, the route between the towns was covered on horse-back.  Calvin Pease was appointed postmaster at Youngstown, Elijah Wadsworth at Canfield, and Simon Perkins at Warren, these three men being the first post masters on the Reserve.  In 1803 the population warranted a weekly delivery, requiring three days each way.  A proposal to carry the mail, dated 1805, reads:
     "I will engage to carry the mail from Pittsburg, via Canfield, Poland and Youngstown, to Warren, once a week, for $850 a year."
     Detroit was added to the route in 1805, but not until 1823 was there mention of stage coaches, or any vehicle for the accommodation of passengers.  The quarterly account of Dr. Charles Dutton, who was the second postmaster on the Reserve, being appointed in July, 1803, shows the amount of business done by the office at that time.  The amount collected on letters was $35; on newspapers, $3.79; total, $38.79.  Postmaster's commission, $13.19; paid general postoffice, $25.60; total, $38.79.

EARLY CONDITIONS OF LIFE.

     A description of the conditions under which the early settlers lived, and their manner of life may be found in a small history of Ohio, by Caleb Atwater, published at Cincinnati in 1838.
     He says in substance: "The people were quite uncouth in their aspect, but not so unhappy as one would suppose.  The greatest difficulty with which they had to contend was sickness.  The farmer kept many dogs to guard his sheep, hogs, fowls and himself.  His fences were very high ones, and his dogs were always ready to defend their master's family and property.  Hogs became so numerous in the woods that many of them became wild and multiplied until the War of 1812 gave their flesh a value, and they were killed.  Cattle and horses had multiplied greatly in the meantime, and the people had begun to drive them over the mountains at an early day to market.
     The people lived in log houses, raised Indian corn for their bread, and as to meat, they found deer and wild turkeys in abundance in the woods.  Domestic fowls and hogs multi

Page 99 -
plied wonderfully in a country where there was so little winter for which to provide (here he seems to be referring chiefly to the southern part of the State, and as for pleasure carriages, we do not believe there was one in the State when it was first organized.  Not a few persons wore moccasins of deer skins for coats or hunting skirts and pantaloons.  Thus dressed, equipped with a large knife and a good rifle gun, the men went about their daily business.  When the State was first organized we do not believe there was even one bridge in it.  The loads were few, and it was no easy matter for a stranger to follow them.  For ourselves we preferred following a pocket compass or the sun to most of the roads in the Virginia Military Tract, and this even ten years after the organization of the State government.  Travelers carried their provisions with them when starting from any of the towns into the then wilderness."  What was true in this respect of the Virginia Military Tract was doubtless true of the Western Reserve at this early period.
     Captain J. C. Hartzell, a prominent citizen of Sebring, who has at different times contributed much interesting pioneer information to local journals, describes in a recent article, the days "when our good old mothers told time by a noon mark, and made not only their own soap, but most other useful and needful things in housekeeping.  They baked their own bread in a clay or brick or stone out-oven, and lighted the home with a lard lamp or cruisie, a strip of canton flannel, or a bit of candle wick in the melted lard or candle, dipped, and later along moulded them in tin moulds.
     "Then they made their own sugar, and plenty of it; made their own clothes from wool off the sheep's back to the woven web, the warm and durable linsey-woolsey dress, or from the flax patch to the linen coat, gown, or towel; doctored their own or neighbors' families with medicines of their own garnering from gardens, field, and forest. * * * Each old pioneer opening in the virgin forest would have a most interesting story to tell of the be ginning of civilized home life, if there were only some ready writer to set it down in good black print, while there are vet a few, a very few, of the living witnesses of the labor in that struggle with the wilderness."

A PRIMITIVE MILL.

     The Captain thus describes a primitive hand mill:  "I am reminded of an old hand mill, the stones of which are buried in the earth, and form part of the foot-walk from the front door of the old Snode home to the little entrance gate into the yard.  They are about two feet in diameter, and furrowed faces tell truthfully that this low estate in which we find them to day was not the intent of the original designers.  Our good mother Snode says they were brought along with the family pioneer wagon from New Jersey, when they came to this neighborhood.  The old parchment deed for the home farm, signed, I think, by James Madison, President, is still in their possession.  Mother Snode is ninety years old (1907), and has spent nearly her entire life near where she now resides.
     "The mill, of which the stone above mentioned formed a part, was most likely the first grain-grinding machine in the settlement.  The stones are perhaps two and a half or three inches thick.  The upper stone, or runner, has an oblong eye in the center, and hole or socket not far from the outer edge, a stout stick reaching from the socket to a fixed timber above, with a like socket directly over the center of the stones all loosely fitted, composed the mill.  The grinding, or power, was after the Armstrong patent.  The family used it and it was free to the neighbors, and the toll executed by the proprietor was good neighborship.  Mrs. Snode says that she has often ground grain upon it, and eaten corn cakes and mush, and all the good things that came from the king of grain.  Then in her home you will find an old sun dial, which, with the aid of the compass made the noon mark nearly accurate.  Here are also the cards that prepared the wool for the spinning wheel, the big wheel, the little wheel, and the reel, sickles for cutting grain, an old platter with the date of 1702, an old

Page 100 -
shackle, such as were used in slavery days, and the same as you may see any day when convicts are employed on public works.  Except the shackle, the implements could have been duplicated in almost any pioneer homestead.

OLD-TIME THRESHING.

     "In separating the grain from the straw, the flail was the primitive implement, but quite as commonly the grain was thrown upon the great threshing floor, and two teams of horses put upon it, and round and round they walked, and on a cold snappy day the work was accomplished with less labor, though by no means a light job.  Flax was pulled just before the ripening point, tied in small bundles and again thinly and evenly spread upon the green meadow and turned until the woody stalk was rotted; then it was broken, scutched, hatcheled, and prepared for the spinning wheel *  *  * 'Tis a long job forward from the little handmill (above-mentioned), which might have reduced from one to two bushels of grain to fine meal in a day, to the Pillsbury mills with their daily output of 35,000 barrels of flour.
     "Old things are passing away.  Very few are now here who have lived in these primitive times and seen the wild deer scudding through the native forest on the very site of our thriving town, with its great stacks belching forth clouds of black smoke that hide the noonday sun, but tell of a busy human hive underneath.

BOUNTY ON WOLF SCALPS.

     "My Uncle Jake, father of the elder Mrs. Diver of Beloit, used to tell me the tales of the long ago, when wild game was plentiful.  He said wolves were such a scourge that the State offered a bounty of $5 each for wolf scalps.  His people lived then south of Damascus, and he knew the lair of wolves near by; year after year, as the pups came on, he would capture and scalp them.  I believe he said scalps were receivable for taxes, and he felt safe for his tax money as long as his wolves were not waylaid in this, to him, useful employment; but after a time Abner Woolman, grandfather of our Abner on the hill, invaded Uncle Jake's wolf preserve, and, not regarding family ties or maternal affection, killed both the mother and her children, and so destroyed Uncle's infant industry, very much to his disgust.

OLDEN SCHOOL DAYS.

     "In his old wagon house I attended a geography school in the winter evenings.  The itinerant teacher had a set of Pelton's outline maps, and the class, when the term was over, certainly had a good understanding of the physical earth, oceans, gulfs, bays, lakes, rivers, inlets, countries, population, chief cities.  States and their capitals, boundaries, etc., etc., and all of this set to a song.  Each pupil, as the lesson went on, took a turn at the maps with a pointer, somewhat resembling a billiard cue, and pointed to each place and gave answer as to the length of the river, or height of a volcano, or other mountain, etc., as requested by the teacher.  That was a good school, and the knowledge we gained in that old wagon house has stood us in good stead all along the journey of life.  Some changes have been made in boundaries and States, but otherwise the old world is about the same as we left it when we quit Uncle Jake's wagon shed."
     The Captain, who refers to himself in the article so extensively quoted, as "a link between the old and the new," came upon the scene after the roughest and most primitive conditions of pioneer life had been supplanted, to some extent at least, by the comforts and conveniences of a more cultivated society.  The world as he knew it "was a pretty comfortable world, and the men who made it so were, many of them, still in the vigor of mature manhood, but many of the primitive habits and customs, either of choice or necessity, still clung to the old homes for a long time, and ye scribe might write on and on to tell of our school life, spelling schools, and the old literaries on the hill, the old fulling, grist, and sawmills;" religion, also, "for we had the gospel preached to us, and none of your snippet, two-for-five sermons, but good, two-hour, all-wool-and-yard-wide sermons."

Page 101 - BLANK PAGE

Page 102 -

[ PICTURE OF:  VIEW OF ENTRANCE TO CALVARY CEMETERY, YOUNGSTOWN;
SCENE IN MILL CREEK PARK, YOUNGSTOWN; AND
VIEW OF ENTRANCE TO OAK HILL CEMETERY, YOUNGSTOWN]

Page 103 -

"Every tinkle on the shingles
   Wakes an echo in the heart,
And a thousand dreamy fancies
   Into busy being start.
And a thousand recollections
   Weave their bright hues into wood
As I listen to the tinkle
   Of the rain upon the roof."

     Dr. Manning, who settled in Youngstown in 1811, said: "The qualifications for a school teacher in those days were few and moderate.  If a man could read tolerably well, was a good writer, and could cipher as far as the rule of three, knew how to use the birch scientifically, and had firmness enough to exercise this skill, he would pass muster."

EARLY YOUNGSTOWN CITIZENS.

     Some further reminiscences of those times are found in a letter from Roswell M. Grant, uncle of the late President Grant, who, in writing from Mayslick, Ky., Sept. 7, 1874, in answer to an invitation to attend the reunion of old citizens and pioneers held at Youngstown that year, said in part:
     "My father sold his tan yard to John E. Woodbridge, and moved to Maysville, Ky., leaving Margaret and myself with Colonel Hillman, about the year 1820.  Colonel Hillman about the same time sold his farm and moved over to town to keep a hotel.  At that time the citizens were as follows:  1st, above Colonel Rayen was J. E. Woodbridge; 2d, John F. Townsend, hatter; 3d, Colonel William Rayen, farmer; 4th, William Sherman hatter; 5th, opposite, George Tod; 6th, Mr. Abriam, chair maker; 7th, Samuel Stuart, tavern (Colonel Hillman bought Stuart out); 8th opposite, Dr. Dutton; 9th, Esq. Baldwin, farmer; 10th, Kilpatrick, blacksmith; 11th, Henry Wick, merchant; 12th Hugh Bryson, merchant; 13th, Lawyer Hine; 14th, Mr. Bissell; 15th, Mr. Bruce, shoemaker; 16th, Rev. Mr. Duncan.  The above are all the citizens there were in Youngstown from 1805 up to 1810.
    "I well remember the Indians coming down the river in canoes, and camping in Colonel Hillman's sugar camp, at the lower end of the farm, and upon the river bank.  They would stay some days.  Also, the old chief would come to see Colone Hillman to settle some dispute between them.  They would bring some thirty or forty warriors with them.  They would stop at the plum orchard at the upper end of the plum orchard at the upper end of the farm.  These visits were often.  I had forgotten to mention the names of Mr. Hogue, a tailor, and Moses Crawford, who lived below Judge Tod's, on the bank of the river.  Crawford tended Colonel Hillman's mill.  Bears, wolves, deer, and wild turkey were plenty.  I went to school in the old log school-house eight years; to Master Noyes five years of the time.  David Tod, Frank Thorne, and myself were leaders in all mischief; so said Master Noyes.

DRAFT OF 1812

     "In the War of 1812, the whole country was drafted, and rendezvoused in Youngstown.  After they left, Captain Applegate, Lieutenant Busnell, and Ensign Reeves enlisted one hundred men for one year.  During the enlistment Captain Dillon's son, with an elder fife, and myself with a drum, furnished the music.  Colonel William Rayen commanded the regiment.  Judge Tod had a Colonel's commission in the regular army.  Colonel Hillman volunteered, and after arriving at Sandusky, General Harrison appointed him Wagon-Master General of the United States Army.  John E. Woolbridge was paymaster.  Mr. Hogue, Moses Crawford, Dr. Dutton, Henry Wick, Hugh Bryson, and Mr. Bruce, were all the men left in Youngstown during the war.  I had forgotten Mr. Thorne, a cabinet maker, who lived near the old school house.
     "Jesse R. Grant left Judge Tod's in 1810.  Went to Maysville, Ky., and finished his trade with my brother Peter.  Went to Deerfield, O., about the year 1815.  Took charge of my father's old tan yard.  Sold out and went to Ravenna.  Carried on the business until 1821.  He then went to Point Pleasant, forty miles below Maysville.  Sunk a tan  yard there.  Same year he married Miss Hannah Simpson, where

Page 104 -
U. S. Grant was born April 27, 1822."
     With the permission of Captain Hartzell, we also publish the following articles, which, under the title, "Some Reminiscences of Ye Olden Time,"  appeared in the issue of The Sebring News, Jan. 29th of the present year (1907):
     "Some time ago, as I was rambling through one of our big potteries, I noticed a vessel containing soft soap.  The same looked mighty famliar and I made inquiry, only to find that soft soap was imported from England and finds its uses in all potteries.

HOMEMADE SOAP.

     "When I was a boy, both soft and hard soap, in fact all soap, was made by the good house motliers.  In our home I was the general roustabout, a very present help in time of need - if I could be found.  The old Mahoning formed the north boundary of our farm and its purling, laughing, hurrying waters, as they glide over on and on to join the brimming river, chattering as they go, often beguiled me from duty's path and I often found congenial company with neighbor's boys, though if they were not present, the river was always interesting.  And why not, for when I was a boy, any boy or man could fish with hook and line, seine or gig; so that there were times when, mother being about to set in with her annual soap-making, and wanting me to set up the ash-hopper and such like needful work, I had a foreboding of the coming siege and retired to the river for a rest, and vacation.  But when the head of the house came home, there was always a settlement in which no compromises were admitted and I paid up.
     "In those days every home used wood for fuel and the big wide fire-places eat up a big lot of timber - good timber, too - and the ashes thus resulting during the entire year, were saved and safely garnered to the soap-making season.  And when the time was ripe, always spring time, when grass greened and robins came back to their old haunts, then the old ash hopper went into commission again, repairs, if needed, were made, and serious work began.

THE OLD ASH-HOPPER.

     "The hopper itself was a crude affair, a thick wide slab four or five feet long from the sawmill nearby with a gutter dug in the center the whole length of the slab to catch the drip, furnished the bottom and the foundation.  The hopper part was of very simple construction, made of any sort of boards cut in three and a half or four foot lengths, made wide at the top and narrow at the lower edge, the boards fitting into the groove of the slab bottom.  And now we are ready for operation.  First, the handy lad is sent to dig sassafras roots to put in the hopper for a starter, and after being lined on the inside with rye straw the ashes are filled in slowly, and tamped down solid until the hopper is filled.  When all this is in order, water is poured on the top, perhaps a pail or two a day, and when the mass is well wet and the lye begins to dry from the groove to the vessel placed beneath for its holding, we may say the enterprise is well started.
     "All the waste fat from the butchering and from the cooking, with the meat rinds sliced from the hams and bacon, having been hoarded, are now brought into use and are added to the kettle of lye as needed, the kettle is hung over a fire and the sequence of it all is soap, the same as our potters are bringing over from 'Merrie England' today.

SOAP SPOOKERY.

     "There was a goodish bit of spookery about our soap-making of years agone and a common inquiry when neighbor women met was about the soap.  Aunt Susan would say, 'Well, Mary has had good luck with her soap,' or mother would take her visitors out to see her soap, thrust in her long paddle to the bottom of the kettle and pry up the mass until it would bulge and crack and split into a thousand tumbling bits, and finally settle back into a solid, livery whole.  Then they would say, 'You had good luck this time!'
     A barrel or two of soap was made in this way each year and when the soap gave out, one neighbor would send to the other for a pail of soap, borrow it.  Hard soap was made by a

Page 105 -
little different handling.  To me there was always a bit of mystery in the getting of good soap, but none at all about making and filling the hopper.

THE OLD ASHERY.

     "As time passed on, my uncle, Nick Eckes, built an ashery on the side or slope of a hill near North Benton, on a farm now owned and occupied by Walter Miller, and after that my architectural genius, so often called out in the building of our home soap factory, was allowed a vacation in that direction, but continued to develop as we shall see further on.
     "Uncle Nick, to my mind, was a wonderful man.  His ashery had several great kettles set in arches where he boiled the lye after it had been leached through hundreds of bushels of ashes.  The hoppers were permanent and set well above the boiling kettles, and there he made potash, pearlash, soap and the like, barreling up the two first named and wagoning them to market in some far off place, most likely Pittsburg.  He went from house to house with his great wagon and team and gathered the ashes for which he paid ten cents a bushel in trade.  He had a high seat on his wagon and a good sized box on either end with secure lid and all fast to the seat.  As he sat in the middle of the seat with his treasures on either side where he could lift the lid and take out vast quantities of all sorts of valuables, he was, to my mind, a man to excite a barefoot boy's ambition.

THE STAGE DRIVER.

     "There was only one other man his superior in position, culture and training to whom we boys offered unstinted homage and admiration and that was the jolly stage driver, who blew his horn, cracked his long-lashed whip over his four-in-hand team and went sailing into town, where he delivered and took on mail, passengers and such light merchandise as he could carry.
     "In a talk with Uncle John Schaeffer on this line, he very well remembered the same and said when the mail was first started (I think the route was from Cleveland, then a straggling village of a few thousand inhabitants, to Steubenville, the land office of these parts), the road was new and not the best.  There were two bad chuck holes, one on either side of his house and the stage drier told him that if he would fill them up he would give him a free ride in his coach to Salem and back.  The offer seemed so generous that Uncle fulfilled his contract with pick and shovel and the stage driver was as good as his word.
     "When the stage coach went flying by, my, oh my!  The driver fairly scorned the earth and he certainly was a grand figure, so grand that none of us boys could ever hope to gain such a high position.  When I was a boy, there were no railroads, telegraph, telephones and such like conveniences and yet we didn't seem to miss them and managed to get along fairly well.

THE FIRST SETTLEMENT.

     "My forebears came from near Bethlehem, Pa., and settled about five miles north of Sebring, near the time Ohio was admitted into the Union.  The first settlement was made just north of the forty-first parallel and in what has long been known as the Connecticut or Western Reserve, and by an original charter for the colony, belonged to the State of Connecticut.  Connecticut finally disposed of the same to the Connecticut Land Company, and by this land company to actual settlers.
     "The reserve was mostly settled by down East Yankees, a most intelligent, orderly and enterprising people.  Our family formed a colony of Pennsylvania Germans, but good neighborship always prevailed and the location was a happy one.
     "The writer was born in the year in which Queen Victoria began her long; reign in England, and the pioneers had passed through the hardships incident to hewing homes out of virgin forests, inhabited by wild game and roving bands of Indians, and had secured homes of great comfort.  When I put in ray appearance, the men and women who had borne

Page 106 -
the hardships of real pioneers, who had wielded the axe and the rifle, were still living, and I still have a most vivid memory of them and stories of the life they lived.

MATCHES UNKNOWN

     "Matches for lighting fires were not then known, or at least I have no recollection of them.  The evening fires in the great fireplace before retiring, were banked.  The manner of it was this way:
     "The fireplace was furnished with heavy dog irons and against the back wall was placed a great log, preferably of green wood.  Lighter wood was laid upon the dog irons and an iron crane was swung in the side of the wall, provided with adjustable hooks to accommodate pots and kettles with any length of bail.  The foresticks having been pretty well burned out in the evening, the brands were laid in the center and well covered with such cold ashes as had accumulated on the generous and always hospitable hearth.  In the mornings, all the first fellow up had to do was to stir up the heap, only to find that the trunks had been turned into a fine heap of glowing coals and so we soon had a blazing, cheery-looking and very comfortable kitchen.  Sometimes, however, there were lapses and there were no glowing coals in the heap.  Maybe the brands were too dry or the cover too thin - something anyway.  Often your scribe has been ruthlessly, cruelly, dragged from his trundle bed when it seemed as if he had only begun to sleep and rest his tired body from the toils of the previous day, and was sharply ordered to run quickly over to either Uncle Billy's or Uncle John's for fire, which was brought in a brand or a small torch of the ever-present hickory bark.
     "Well, you youngsters say, that was tough and not near so sleek and handy as to dray a match over him, and zip, there you have it.  But, now, just see here.  The times of which I wright, an insurance company, either life or fire, was not known in our neighborhood, and although many, in fact, I believe the most of our old neighbors lived in log houses with chinked walls and clapboard roofs, and the same often held in place by heavy poles and a bit of chimney laid up in clay mortar, I never knew a fire to occur in my youth, either of a house or a bam.  While today, with our better houses and all the convenient knick-knacks we have about us, the fire losses are appalling.

IF FIRES ALL WENT OUT??

     "Well, I was often worried; suppose the fires in the neighborhood should all go out, what would we do then?  So one day, I was telling my Uncle John of my gloomy forebodings, and he went into his house and took down his rifle from the wooden hooks over the door, her abiding place when not in use.  She had a flint lock.  Every family had a little store of punk, and hunters carried it.  Punk is a dry, white fungus and is found on decaying logs and timber and catches a spark, and if you have the flint and the steel you are independent of these dangerous, modern, ready-made fire brands, called matches.  So Uncle John, gun in hand, placed a bit of punk in the pan of his rifle, pulled the trigger, and lo, in the wink of an eye, my fears were allayed; no more forebodings of disaster to disturb my mind in the line of fire.
     "We had a number of these old pioneer hunters in our neighborhood and their prowess in the chase had supplied the pioneer families with meat and they always talked of their rifles most affectionately and gave to them, in speaking, the feminine gender.  The butts were often ornamented with inlaid silver, shell or bone devices, and the old powder horns were also  decorated.  Bullet pouches were real curiosities.
     "When I was a lad, the larger game was mostly gone, but the wood was full of gray and black squirrel, and both pheasant and quail were plenty.  The old rifles were mostly out of commission and were not much used except at butchering time, or at an occasional shooting match on the river bottom.  But those days passed all too soon; the old hand-made flint and cap-locks gave way to the muzzle-loading

Page 107 -
cap-lock shot gun, sometimes single and often double-barreled, and then game began to thin out.

WILD PIGEONS: WHERE ARE THEY?

 

PIONEER MILLING ENTERPRISE.

 

SLAVERY.

     "For nearly half a century after the first permanent settlements were made in Ohio, this Commonwealth, always opposed politically to slavery, was curiously tolerant of the presence

Page 108 -
of slaves from the States where slavery existed, if they were brought into Ohio by their masters for temporary purposes.
     It was not merely that Southern slave holders were free to visit Ohio, bringing their slave servants with them, but that slave owners used to rent the services of their bondmen to farmers living on the free soil side of the Ohio, when there was unusual need of help, as at harvest.  It is estimated that fully 2,000 slaves from Kentucky and the Virginia of those days were sometimes employed in Ohio at the same time.
     Shortly before 1840 this condition finally and completely passed away.  It became practically certain that slaves brought into Ohio would be set free or aided to escape, and many citizens of this State took an active part in helping them flee to Canada.  A new impatience of all contact with slavery came to be a marked phase of public opinion in Ohio.  Long before the Civil War this State had become one of the most active in movements for the curbing and undermining of slavery as an institution.

COUNTY SEAT LOCATED.

     The County of Mahoning was created by the legislative act of Feb. 16, 1846.  For forty-five years previous to that date it had been included within the limits of Tnimbull County, in accordance with the proclamation of Governor St. Clair, July 10, 1800, which declared that "all the, territory included in Jefferson County, lying north of the forty-first degree, north latitude, and all that, part of county, Wayne County included in the Connecticut Western Reserve, should constitute a new to be known by the name of Trumbull, and that the seat of justice should be at Warren."  There was a good deal of dissatisfaction among the citizens of this part of the Reserve at the selection of Warren as the county seat.  While Warren was nearer the center of the territory, Youngstown was the; larger village, and nearer the center of population.  Some, of the most influential men on the Reserve, however, were interested in Warren, either through holding land there or by being actual residents of the place.  Prominent among them was Judge Calvin Pease, who was brother-in-law of Hon. Gideon Granger, Postmaster-General of the United States.  Mr. Granger, besides his interest in Pease, was himself the owner of large tracts of land which was enhanced in value by the location of the seat of government at Warren.
     "Under the old territorial law the Governor had authority to appoint officers for any new county he might choose to erect.  The justices associates. of the peace constituted the general court of the county, five of their number being designated justices of the quorum, and the others associates.  They met quarterly, and were known as the 'court of quarter sessions.'  In this body was vested the entire civil jurisdiction of the county, local and legislative as well as judicial."
     An account of the first court held in Trumbull County, with a list of the officers appointed by the Governor, may be found in the chapter devoted to the Bench and Bar.

EARLY ELECTIONS.

 

COUNTY SEAT ISSUE.

 

USELESS LEGISLATION

 

THE RENEWAL OF THE STRIFE.

 

SOME INTERESTING LETTERS.

 

THE SALARY LAW.

 

ANOTHER PROPOSITION.

 

HE URGES ECONOMY

 

DISCUSSES LEGISLATION.

 

ANOTHER COUNTY.

 

[ PICTURES OF: NEW MAHONING COUNTY COURTHOUSE, YOUNGSTOWN (now in course of construction; OLD MAHONING COUNTY COURTHOUSE AT CANFIELD (With addition) New the North Eastern Ohio Normal College); and MAHONING COUNTY COURTHOUSE. YOUNGSTOWN.)

 

AFTER WARREN PEOPLE.

 

COUNTY SEAT CHANGED.

 

 

 

END OF CHAPTER XIII -

< CLICK HERE TO RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR HISTORY PUBLISHED 1907 >

.

CLICK HERE to RETURN to
MAHONING COUNTY, OHIO
INDEX PAGE
CLICK HERE to RETURN to
OHIO GENEALOGY EXPRESS
INDEX PAGE

FREE GENEALOGY RESEARCH is My MISSION
GENEALOGY EXPRESS
This Webpage has been created by Sharon Wick exclusively for Ohio Genealogy Express  ©2008
Submitters retain all copyrights