PIKE COUNTY.

THE HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY - ITS PHYSICAL FEATURES - ITS SETTLEMENT AND ORGANIZATION

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THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION

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little of "Hurricane Toms" but these walls, and they were not a very definite memento of the past.
     In 1800 some thirty cabins were found erected up and down the river Scioto within the limits of Pike County, and quite a large immigration came from Pennsylvania of German extraction.

EARLY SETTLERS.

     Immigrants began to arrive soon after and the Chenoweths and Noland did not remain masters of the wilderness long.  Since writing the history of Scioto County it has been ascertained that Hezekiah Merritt was really the first settler of Scioto County and in 1815 the part of the county where he lived was a portion of the new county, Pike.  The following is an interview with John Merritt, son of Hezekiah, in 1870, in relation to his father's family:
     "In 1795 they left Pennsylvania to seek a home for themselves and little ones in the great and unexplored West, and came to Manchester, Adams Co., Ohio, bringing with them five children, of whom I was the eldest.  It was immediately after Wayne's treaty with the Indians.  They came via the Ohio River.  On arriving in Manchester my father met two of his brothers, who told him that he had passed as good land as he could find below.  Colonel Nathanie Massie was then organizing a party to go to Chillicothe to lay out that town, and the three brothers went with it.  When they had reached Paint Creek they were attacked by a party of unfriendly Indians, who killed one of the men.  One Sticklett, who was a prisoner with the Indians, came over to the Massie party, which turned back to Manchester.  After a while my father, in company with two other men, went up the Ohio and Scioto rivers, on an exploring expedition, and were so well pleased with the lay of the land in and about where Lucasville now is, that they were induced to make a lodgment there.  My father came back to Manchester and took his family up to where Lucasville is, and landed on the twenty-fourth day of December, 1795, - the day before Christmas.  I claim that my father was the first white man who settled on the Scioto River, along its whole length."
     "Will you now inform us what was your father's next procedure, and how the earliest settlers contrived to live?
     "My father made a camp[, and the next spring erected a log cabin.  He put in several acres of corn, for which he had to go to Limestone (now Maysville) for the seed.  My mother was a good gardener, and our family fared better than most of the early settlers on this account.  We had to grind our corn in a small hand-mill.  The only food raised by most settlers at first was corn, and for the remainder of their subsistence they depended upon wild game, of which there was an abundance.  Sometimes this was their only dependence."
     "Did you not have a cow?"
     "Yes, but she died on the way to our new home on the Scioto.  My father was a millwright, and had built a horse-mill at Manchester, and went back to dispose of it, which he did for a cow, which gave us milk for a couple of years, when my father was forced to kill her to keep his family from starving.  She produced sixty pounds of tallow, though she had had but two feedings of corn, and she stole them.  Then we were without a cow, but families had begun to come in pretty thickly, and my father built a floating mill for grinding corn.  It was a rude structure but answered a purpose.  This mill gave him some advantage, as the settlers brought their corn to be ground, and with the toll he was enabled to buy another cow, after which we never suffered for want of one.  My father's family, in the meantime, was increasing, and I was growing up to manhood.  Six children my mother bore him in Ohio.  Andrew, Moses and myself still live, certainly; and Heze-

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kiah, who was in the late war, may possibly be alive, though I am not able to say, for we never knew what became of him.  I lived with and labored for my father till I married, and obeyed him as I did when a child, for I felt it to be my duty to do so.  My father lived seven years on the land near Lucasville."
     Probably the very next settler in the county was Jno. Kincaid who settled at the Big Springs, now marked as Kincaid Spring.  He settled there in 1797, and was at teh time the first pioneer of all that country and township.  But like the Chenoweths, he was not monarch of all he surveyed long, for the next year or two came Jno. Parker, Ezekiel Moore and son Joseph, Geo. and Isaac Peniston who all settled in that part of the county.  Then, to the Chenoweth settlement, came Snowden Sargent in 1797, and Jas. Sappington came with him.  They arrived at their location the first week in April, 1797.  Wm. Beekman settled over on Grassy Fork of Sunfish, in Mifflin Township, in the spring of 1801, about one mile from Latham.  Daniel Daily came also in 1801 and settled on part of what is now known as the Vanmeter farm, in Seal Township.  He married Susannah Wynn in 1802, and died in 1862, in the eighty-fourth year of his age.  His son, Wm. Daily, was born Oct. 3, 1808.  Presley Boydston was another of the early pioneers, and came in the spring of 1799.  He located and purchased 1,400 acres of land in Scioto Township and afterward sold 200 acres to Thornton W. Sargent, son of Snowden, and the remaining 1,200 he retained, dividing it among his children, the largest part going to Elizabeth, who married Jno. Barnes, he making it his home with them after the death of his wife.
     John Barnes and wife were married before they came and had four children - John, James, Allen and William.  Old John Barnes died about the year 1812.  He came in 1801, and purchased land in the Pee Pee Township, a part of which is in the present limits of Waverly. 
     The Wynns were another family of pioneers, who left their impress upon the stage of events.  William S. D. Wynn came in 1801, and his son, William S. Wynn, was then six years old, having been born Oct. 22, 1795.  The old man was a Justice of the Peace of Seal Township in 1835, and was in the war of 1812.  In a sketch of the life of William S., which he gave in 1868, he said: "My father moved into Pike County in the round year of 1800, when there were but very few people in it.  There were not then much more than half a dozen family names, among whom were the Chenoweths, Sargents, Mustards, Barneses, Guthries, Noland and Roderick.  If there were any more they have escaped my memory."
     The Wynns settled below Piketon.  Near them, and the same year, Patrick Johnson settled on the river, and John Barnes was a neighbor an d located above him.  The Vanmeter farm is a part of the Wynn homestead.
     John Satterfield came in 1802, and became a soldier in the war of 1812.  His wife lived to the remarkable age of over 100 years, a hale, hearty woman and of great memory.  She did not know the year she was born, and the family Bible was with some of the other children, but thinks it was in 1771, and it could not have been later than 1774, for she remembered several incidents in the Revolutionary war.  She died in the winter of 1874-'5.
     Rev. William Talbott, of the Methodist Episcopal church, made his home in Pike County in the spring of 1799.  His son, Benjamin Talbott, from whom a sketch was received a few years since, was born in the county, or what afterward became Pike County, May 4, 1810.  There were none of the early pioneers who left a greater impression

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he removed with his family and began to clear away the forest to found the long expected home.  The remainder of his children by his second wife (eight in number) were born here.  Their names in order of birth are:  Thomas, George, Jane, Betsy, Nancy, James, Polly and Samuel, all of whom are now dead.  They left large families, and together they and their children and grandchildren now number between 200 and 300 persons.

GOVERNOR ROBERT LUCAS.

ITEMS OF INTEREST.

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NOMINATIONS FOR OFFICE

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BEFORE IT BECAME PIKE COUNTY.

WHEN ORGANIZED.

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A.

     "Resolved, By the General Assembly of the State of Ohio, that Edward W. Tupper, of Gallia County, and George W. Barnes and John Davidson, of Highland County, be and they are, hereby appointed Commissioners to fix the seat of justice in the county of Pike."  Adopted Jan. 28, 1815.

B.

     Report of Commissioners appointed to locate the seat of justice in Pike County: 

C.

TAKEN FROM THE COURT RECORDS.

D.

ELI SARGENT'S REPORT.

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FROM THE JOURNAL.

THE GEOLOGY OF PIKE COUNT.

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WAVERLY STONE.

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TOPOGRAPHY.

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TIMBER.

     The timber of Pike County has been and is now an important element in the industries of the county.  Large quantities of land have been bought up exclusively for the timber upon it, and there are still vast forests waiting to be converted into lumber, staves, heading, tubs, etc.  The poplar timber on Sunfish Creek and its different tributaries is as good as can be found anywhere.
     There are other kinds of timber of great value.  Hickory is one of the principal, aside from oak, of different kinds, which abound all over the timbered portion of the county.  The sugar maple also grows in extended forests, and in many cases are preserved for sugar orchards.

ORIGIN OF NAMES.

     The surveys of the lands along the streams in Pike County were made soon after the treaty with the Indians was concluded, by which their lands in Ohio were ceded to the United States.  For months and even years afterward, bands of Indians strayed over their old hunting grounds.  Surveying parties were, therefore, accompanied by scouts, who were,  armed for the double purpose of keeping off the Indians and to procure game for the surveyors.  When on Grassy Fork, near its mouth, not far from where Latham now is, a half mile or more, a hunter killed a small deer and dragged it to the water to wash off the clotted blood.  As he did so a school of sunfish was attracted to the blood, which they devoured.  The name of Sunfish was given to the main stream.
     Grassy Fork of Sunfish took its name from the fact that the grass along its banks grew luxuriantly.
     Chenoweth's Fork of Sunfish took its name from the Chenoweths, who settled on the prairie in Pee Pee Township.
     Bear Creek was named in consequence of the hunters killing a bear on it.
     The name of Camp creek was given to the stream on which a party of surveyors had camped on several occasions.
     John Beasley, one of the surveying party referred to above, gave "No Name" to the stream or creek which still bears the name.  Crooked Creek, which flows southerly through the town of Waverly, was given the name from its winding course.

ZANE'S TRACE.

     This trace is well known to early old settlers in Central and Southern Ohio.  Zane was given three sections of land for laying out this trace, and on these sections, it is stated, three different towns were laid out, Zanesville, which was named after him, being one of the three.  There were no roads in those days, and this trace, known as Zane's trace, was said to have commenced at the Ohio River, opposite Maysville, come up through Adams County to the ridge in Sunfish Township, along which it continued till it reached Byington; thence down Sunfish Creek by Big Spring; thence up Kincaid's Fork to Lunbeck's Hill and along that ridge in an easterly direction till it passed MR. Gault's in Perry Township; thence down the Paint Valley to Chillicothe or Indian Oldtown.
     As late as 1825 wolves were quite numerous in Pike County.  Ten years later few were found within its limits.  The Ohio Canal was completed to Waverly, Sept. 6, 1832.  The canal-boat Governor Worthington was the first boat through from Waverly to Portsmouth.  It was owned by James Emmitt & Co., and started a little ahead of time.

    
John W. Washburn