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FRANCIS JOSEPH HIRT

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GUSTAVUS G. REINIGER

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THE STAIB FAMILY

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ELIJAH MUSGRAVE

JOHN DOCKWEILER

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WILLIAM ARNOLD

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GEORGE HECK

The subject of this sketch is now the oldest settler in the township.  The writer has not been able to trace any one who settled here before Mr. Heck and is still living.  Mr. Aiken was a very respectable pioneer and he died but a few years ago.  He came about the same time that Mr. Heck arrived.
     The grandfather of Mr. Heck came from Germany.  George Heck was born Oct. 5, 1797, near the mouth of Hocking river, in Athens county, Ohio.  He grew up on his father's farm there.  He married Sarah Grelle, who was a widow with four children.  Samuel Grelle, Esq., late county commissioner, is one of them.  With her he had ten

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children, of whom five are still living, the others having died in childhood.  The oldest one living is his daughter, Catharine, wife of Harry Fiser; next, Elizabeth, wife of Thomas Bowlin, and Maria, wife of John Strebin, all living in the state of Indiana; Daniel G. Heck,  the popular superintendent of the Seneca County Infirmary, and John, the youngest son, who is living near his father on the old homestead.  The children all have families and are all doing well.
     Soon after the land sales, Mr. Heck's father bought, at the Delaware land office, the southwest front quarter of section twenty-five, in this land office, the southwest front quarter of section twenty-five, in this township, and made a deed for it to his son George.  Three years after he was married he moved onto the land there.  Mrs. Heck died on the 18th Dec., 1840.  About one year thereafter, he married Sarah, the sister of John Kerr, Esq., now residing in Tiffin.  She dropped dead the sister of John Kerr, Esq., now residing in Tiffin.  She dropped dead on the floor in 1875 after living on the old homestead with Mr. Heck thirty-five years.  At breakfast, on the morning of the day she died, she told Mr. Heck her dream of the previous night.  She said she dreamed that their canoe got loose (their house stands near the river), and drifted to the other side of the river; that she walked after it on the top of the water, and as she reached the other shore, she stepped onto a log, and looking back saw her steps on the log.
     Mr. Heck says:
     I am my father's youngest son.  I had one brother and four sisters, and am the only one remaining of my father's family.  My parents talked German to each other, but always English to us children, and therefore I never learned the German.
     We hired a team and moved up here in the spring of 1823, by the way of Upper Sandusky along the Negrotown road, as it was then called.  It was not the present Negrotown road, but a trail by that name that wound through the woods in all directions.  Anderson's and Crocker's were all the houses between Mexico and Tiffin, and they were cabins in the woods.
     When we arrived here and found our land, we hunted for, and found, a suitable place to locate near the bank of the river in the woods.  We unloaded and the team returned.  I paid the man $20 to bring us here, and that left me but $5, all told, and here I was with a wife, five children, five dollars, no house, no team, no neighbor and no friend near.  I cut four, put them into the ground in a square, laid poles across them, made some clap-boards and covered the shed, and here we camped until my brother-in-law, Peter Baum, who had married may wife's sister, helped me cut some logs, which, for want of a team, we carried together and built a cabin.  For want of other material to make a floor, I took the bark of large elm trees and spread it one the ground, which answered very well.  There was a spring on the bank of the river, near this cabin, and here we lived two years, when I built a better log house and moved into it.  There was two years, when I built a better log house and moved into it.  There was not a stick cut on this land nor in the woods for miles around.  There were neither roads nor bridges.  When I was a boy grown up, my father moved

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with his family to Perry county, where I was married.  From there I came here.  We had a couple of cows, and after struggling along during that summer, fall and winter as bets we could, my father brought to me a yoke of oxen the following spring.  This was a sort of God-send and I began to take courage.  Some time afterwards I went back to Perry county and brought home a young brood mare I had left there.  My father brought me flour twice, which kept us from starving, and some of the other settlers also.  When they found out that we had flour, they came for several miles around to borrow some, to be paid back some time in kind.  We had good flour, but some who returned flour brought a very inferior article.  Foncannons never brought theirs back until two years afterwards, and others never made return at all.  Then the clothes I brought with me were worn out, and how to get others I did not know.  I killed two large bucks and took the skins to the Mohawk squaws, on the Van Meter section, who tanned them for me.  I paid them for it with a few pounds of flour.  I cut a pair of pants out of these skins and my wife helped me sew them.  For three years I wore these every day, and they were the most serviceable pants I ever had.  I got Jacob Price to tan a skin also, out of which we made a pair of pants for Samuel Grelle, but whenever they got wet and dry again, they became as stiff as boards.  Price did not understand tanning deer skins as well as the Mohawk squaws.
     When James Aiken came here, he was a single man.  William Anderson came here also about the time we did, and Aiken married Anderson's daughter.  They lived on the Negrotown road.  Aiken was a Virginian, but lived at Delaware a short time before he came here.  He was here when I came.  Anderson's land joined mine on the east.
     The first wheat I raised I took to Moore's mill, near Lower Sandusky to get it ground.  We all took sick and had a great deal of trouble with the diseases incident to life in the forest.
     Soon after my arrival here I became acquainted with Hard Hickory, of the Senecas.  He was a very intelligent Indian and spoke English very plainly.  He prided himself on his French blood.
     They camped near our house, and brought their camp equipage with them in their canoes.  One night Hard Hickory and another Indian killed two deers near my house.  The Indians fixed a candle over their heads in teh canoes, and while the deers were feeding on the tender grass in the river, they would look at the light, while the Indians, sitting in the dark beneath, could row almost up to them and kill them.  They put two forks into the ground and a pole across them about four feet up.  The meat was cut into pieces, laid on this pole and dried by a fire made beneath.  The meat was salted a little before it was dried, and when thus well cured, it was put into a square pack, the skin of the deer wrapped around it and tied with strings of raw hide.  A crooked stick was fastened on the back of a pony and a pack of this dried venison, called "jerk," fastened to each end, to be taken home.  This drying and packing and cutting up of the meat was all done by a squaw.
     One time when Hickory camped here, and before I had a team, I borrowed one of his ponies to go to Tiffin for a half bushel of salt.  He was always kind to me.  There was also a Taway Indian through here occasionally they

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called Pumpkin.  He was the biggest Indian I ever saw, and the most savage looking.  Everybody, even the other Indians were afraid of him.  He was fully six feet high, had a glaring look, showed his teeth very much and he must have weighed fully two hundred pounds.
     Somewhere down about Cold creek a white man by the name of Snow, had his cabin.  One time, in the absence of Snow, Pumpkin came into the house and killed Mrs. Snow.  He then cut her open and took out of her womb a full grown babe, stuck it on a stick and roasted it over the fire in the house.  The white neighbors gave the alarm and the Senecas caught Pumpkin and brought him to Snow, telling him that he should kill him or do anything else he pleased with him.  Mr. Snow, fearing the consequences, let Pumpkin run.  Soon after that, Pumpkin stole a corn hoe from my neighbor,,,, Aiken.  Aiken told Pumpkin to leave the country and never show his face again.  It was not long after that, when Pumpkin got into a fight with a Wyandot and killed him.  They made him sit on a log, when some six of them plunged their tomahawks into his brain.
     Joseph Foncannon, two of his brothers and his father, settled near the mouth of Honey creek, in Eden.  Joseph was married.  His wife was a Poorman.  Peter Lott, David Fought and Frederick Wagner also came in soon.  Peter Baum settled near Mexico.  He moved to Missouri afterwards, where he and his wife both died.  Baum was never satisfied anywhere.
     We raised hemp and flax and spun and wove tow-linen.  Many a cold day I chopped in the woods all day in two-linen pants, and bare feet in shoes full of water and ice.  Sometimes the ice packed around my feet so tight that when I came into the house I had to hold them to the fire a while before I could get them off; but I never had my feet frozen.  I often had to go to Tiffin on cold days in winter with tow-linen pants on.  We lived very fine after we could raise sheep and have the whole family dressed in linsey-woolsey.
     One time my father paid us a visit, and when he started back my wife gave him a loaf of bread to take along on the road.  He met a man on the road near Upper Sandusky, who was nearly starved.  He had not eaten a mouthful of bread for three weeks, and had lived on boiled nettles and milk.  He had a little but near the road.

ANTON KOENIGSAMEN

was born June 26th, 1796, in Dreyson, in the Palatinate of Bavaria.  On the 26th of Jan., 1816, he was married to Margaret Rauth, of Boerstadt, in the Palatinate also.  She was born July 28th, 1796.  They settled in this town of Boerstadt, where he followed the trade of a cabinet maker, until he moved with his family, then embracing six children, to America.  He landed in New York in the fore part of Oct., 1832, after a short voyage of thirty-two days, and soon after located in Hamburg, Berks county, Pennsylvania, working at his trade.
     My old friend Martin Kingseed was noticed under the head of Fostoria, in chapter XXXVII.  He was the oldest son of the family, and was born Nov. 19th, 1817.  The other five were Catharine, Peter,

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Christian, Magdalena and Margaret.  From Berks county Mr. Koenigsamen, in April, 1833, moved to Pine Grove, in Schuylkill county, Pennsylvania, where he located on a farm and undertook farming.  The mountains and the stony fields were not congenial to him, and in 1834 he sold out and came to Ohio by wagons.
     After a journey of six weeks he reached Tiffin, on the 18th of June 1834.  Here he stayed a few weeks, and bought ninety-four acres of land six miles south of Tiffin, on the Sandusky river, in section fourteen.
     Here he opened up a farm, the land being all in the woods.  He had but few neighbors.  William Hitt joined on the east of him, Richard Connor on the south.  Across the river lived Alex. Bowland and William McCormack.
     Starting here in the woods he experienced all the hardships of foreigners who had not practical knowledge of clearing land, for this was a peculiarly American science.  Farmer in Europe are not compelled to remove the forest in order to make a farm.  The first year is generally the hardest, because while you are not able to raise anything, you are compelled to buy all you need need, and live out of pocket.  So with Mr. Koenigsamen, but the next year he had cleared ten acres and began to raise provisions.  Mr. Koenigsamen speaks very feelingly of the kindness of his old neighbors in assisting him with everything needful until he got a better start in the world.  The readiness and willingness with which neighbors would come to a raising or logging has frequently been mentioned.  So here.  Help was never refused.  Now the opening grew larger, and grain was being raised in abundance.  Everything prospered, and the family were happy until, on the 19th of May, 1842, Mrs. Koenigsamen died, a few days after giving birth to her tenth child.  The babe died six weeks thereafter.
     Five years later, in 1847, Mr. Koenigsamen was again married, to Catharine Bauer, of this township, with whom he had three children, Joseph, Emelia and Catharine.
     On the 26th day of October, 1862, his second wife also died.  The elder daughters then took charge of the household, and the youngest, Emelia, is now the matron of the homestead.
     For several years past his oldest son, Martin, has been in the habit of arranging surprise parties at the old homestead upon the anniversary of the old gentleman's birthday, when all the children would meet there, with their wives, husbands and children, and have a good time all around.  They had another big time there again this year, when they celebrated his eighty-fourth birthday, showing him all honor

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and filial affection possible, and gladdening the evening of his life with renewed assurances of their love and devotion.
     Mr. Koenigsamen is still in the enjoyment of good health, and rather robust for his age.  He enjoys his old pipe and a good joke as much as ever, and promises fair to so continue for many years yet to come.  His son Anthony lives with him, and has charge of the farm.

- END OF CHAPER XLI - SENECA