FIRST SETTLERS.

     The first settlers of Sandusky County, outside of the old military reservation of Lower Sandusky, and excepting the French and captive settlers on the Sandusky prairies, penetrated the forest near the eastern border, and were mostly eastern people, who had temporarily located in the fire lands.  Land east of the reserve line was selling at prices ranging from two to four dollars per acre.  Preferable land on this side was surveyed and platted in 1819 and 1820 preliminary to being placed on the market at one dollar and a quarter an acre.  Emigrants, when on the ground, with their goods packed in large covered wagons, sought out a dry spot in the trackless wilderness, cut out roads just wide enough to pass through and erected temporary cabins.  Two or three families usually came together, and gave each other such assistance as was needed in raising a house, which was made of small logs.  Notches were cut in on each side at the ends, so that the hastily built structure might stand more firmly.  Mud, plentifully mixed with leaves, was used to fill the cracks, and a chimney of sticks was built outside.  These cabins were little better than Indian huts, but the lone pioneer was unable to erect a hewed-log house such as he heard his eastern parents talk about.  He was almost a solitary adventurer in an inhospital forest.  Having provided a shelter for his family, this advance guard of the pioneer army next set to work to prepare a spot of ground for corn, which in new settlements then was the staff of life.  He did not cut down all the trees, as is done in modern clearing, but only the underbrush and saplings, the larger trees were girdled to prevent them from leafing.  These advance settlers often planted considerable corn, without even clearing away the water-soaked logs, which covered more than half the surface.
     Skirmishers of the pioneer army made their appearance in Townsend in 1818, and about the same time in Green Creek and York.  This year also the incipient village of Lower Sandusky extended up the river, as far as the second rapids, and a few openings were made in the forest adjoining the bottoms below town.
     Sandusky county did not present the true picture of pioneer life until after the public lands were platted and placed upon the market.  Huron County was by that time well advanced in settlement and general improvement under rapid way.  The fame of the exhaustless fertility of Sandusky's fertile vegetable soil had reached New York, and a stream of emigration turned westward.  Some came in large covered wagons all the way, but by far a larger proportion utilized lake transportation from Buffalo to Huron, and thence in wagons.  Many Huron settlers abandoned unfinished improvements, and began anew in the adjoining forest of Sandusky, York, Townsend and Green Creek Townships received their immigration mostly from New York.
     Below the falls of the Sandusky the dry

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JONAS SMITH.

     Among the earliest settlers of the central part of Ballville Township was Jonas Smith.  He was born in Seneca County, New York, Nov. 27, 1807, a son of Mr. Stelphen Smith.  He married Feb. 19, 1829, Miss Mary Gilmore, daughter of James and Elizabeth (Bailey) Gilmore in Pennsylvania.
     On the 6th day of June, 1833, he came to Lower Sandusky, on his way to Fort Seneca, to locate a home for himself and family.  On

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the 22nd of June he entered a tract of government land, since known as the Slope place.  On this he built a log cabin and moved into it on the 9th of July.  Here the family lived and shared the usual hardships of pioneer life for fifteen years.  In the fall of 1847 they moved upon the southeast quarter of Section 10, Ballville Township, where they established a permanent home.  Among their first neighbors were the families of John Dawson, Peter Strohl, and Henry Robinson  A plank road passed their home a few years later.
     Mr. Jonas Smith was a public spirited citizen.  He helped build the first Duesler schoolhouse.  There were only five householders in the district when they met to elect directors, and the majority of them got office.
     The first religious services held in the townships were conducted by a Methodist minister, Rev. Pietzel.  Mr. Smith became a member of his little pioneer society, and served several years as class leader.  Meetings were held in private houses, schoolhouses, and in the summer time in the woods in the shade of forest trees.
     A new Lutheran minister, named Livingood, had his home with the family of Mr. Smith, held meetings, and formed a society which prospered for a few year, but disbanded after he went away.
     Jonas Smith was a county commissioner when they built the first court house at Lower Sandusky, and he helped select the site.  Mr. Smith had previously been elected justice of the peace of Ballville Township in 1835, and held the office  nineteen years.  He served as commissioner six years and as sheriff four years.
     While justice of the peace he performed marriage services for about one hundred pioneer couples.  As most of the settlers were poor, his business consisted chiefly in the settlement of disputes and the collection of debts.  The Yankee clock and fanning mill peddlers gave him lots of business.  The sold their wares on time and took notes of the farmers.  When pay day came and there was a default in payment the peddlers would sue, take judgment, and the farmer would of course take as long a stay of execution as they could, and sometimes when the articles would be re-taken and offered for sale there were no bidders.
     When Mr. Smith first began to serve as justice, it was lawful to put a man to prison for non-payment of a debt.  He issued some executions which read, "If no property is found, take the body of defendant."  But the defendant usually planned some compromise to keep; out of jail.  During the first ten or twelve years there were no jury trials held before a justice of the peace.  He thinks people were more honest in pioneer days than later.  He never had a collection of a forged note.
     While sheriff he took about twenty persons to the penitentiary, usually in lots of three or four at a time.  Among these was a man named Rose, who killed a man (in Washington Township).  Another time he took down some thieves and counterfeiters.  He never had serious trouble with them.  One culprit was the man who robbed the jewelry store of L. Leppelman, which some of you remember.  He with an accomplice, had unlocked the store and had carried the show-case from the counter, bodily, up towards the court house, where they took what they wanted.  They were speedily apprehended, tried, convicted, sentenced and landed in the pen.
     During the first years of his pioneer life, Mr. Smith said he never rode a horse to mill, for the reason that he hadn't any.  He drove oxen.  He sometimes went to mill at Venice, taking two or three days to make the trip.  The roads were so bad at times that he had to let his oxen stop to rest every ten rods.
     The dense forests shaded the ground so that water did not run off or evaporate, and there were miry swales where the water stood all the year round, where now, since the country is ditched and undrained, there is solid ground, and one would not suppose a swale ever existed.  Sometimes the water of a swale was dammed back by a large log two or three feet thick, the removal of which would almost drain the swale.  Mr. Smith sometimes cut down trees in the woods in a line with the path on which the children went to school so that they could walk the logs and keep out of water.
     A stranger once came near Lower Sandusky, and seeing some men digging a ditch, asked

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them how far it was down to town.  They said about four feet.
     Mr. Smith remembered the building of Stems' and Hedges' mills, near Green Spring, and he sometimes patronized the Parmeter mill two miles north of the Springs.
     He was here when there was but one brick house in Lower Sandusky.  That was the old Beaugrand house, where later Jacob Strohl had a "tinker shop," for the repair of guns; and stood near where the Wheeling & Lake Erie depot now stands. 
     Mr. and Mrs. Smith celebrated their golden wedding, Feb. 19, 1879, and during this period of their married life, 52 years, death had never visited their family.  Their children all became heads of families.

MISS HARRIET A. HULBURD.

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REUBEN RICE.

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JUDGE WILLIAM CALDWELL.

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has put up a comfortable house, but has had too much reverence for his primitive dwelling to remove it.  He has erected a neat frame barn, a garden surrounded with a picket fence.  His stock has increased.  The improvements of his neighbors have reached him, and he can now look out without looking up.  A school district has been organized, and a comfortable log schoolhouse has been erected.  And she, the better part of his household, must not be lost sight of, and she need not be.  She is busy with her domestic affairs.  There is quiet and even loneliness about her, but depend upon it.  there are in yonder schoolhouse, some half dozen that she cares for and hopes for.

PAUL TEW.

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