Warren County
Local History by Dallas Bogan |
Contributor: |
Dallas Bogan on 13 September 2004 |
Source: |
The following is taken from Dallas Bogan's book, "The Pioneer writings of Josiah Morrow." |
Return to Index to see a list of other articles by Dallas Bogan |
Some incidents and scenes illustrative of life in the interests
of the Ohio Valley in the days of the pioneers will be here given. They have
been collected from sources both published and unpublished. They are all from
actors in the scenes described and I believe them all to be authentic.
Unfortunately most of the analysts of pioneer history gave too much attention
to the stories of western adventure, the battles, murders and activities during
the Indian wars, with occasional accounts of the hunter's prowess. Our early
western literary men seemed never too weary in writing of the perils of border
life and much that they wrote was semi-historic and semi-fictitious. The time
has already come when the plain and un-varnished story of the every day life
of the early settler is of more interest and value than his daring adventures
with Indians and wild animals.
Most of the first towns in Ohio in addition to the smaller lots on the town
plat had large lots, usually of four acres each, on the outskirts. These larger
ones were called outlots. Previous to 1794 there were at Cincinnati a large
number of these outlots which were partially cleared but without buildings upon
them. The larger trees on them had been deadened by girdling them with the ax
and they were left to decay while still standing. Most of them had become very
dry and combustible. In May, 1794, one of the owners was engaged in burning
brush on his own lot when the high wind from the west spread the fire over the
whole clearing.
The conflagration spread farther and farther east. The dry bark, with pieces
of the outer wood and dead branches, were blown as fire brands until more than
one hundred acres of dead forest trees were in flames. Only one small building
belonging to Thomas Gowdy, a lawyer, was endangered by the
fire. This stood on Main street between Seventh and Eighth and was the only
one in the vicinity. It was saved by water thrown upon it from buckets. Most
of the owners of the lots were engaged in trying to save the rails of the fences
they had built but the greater portion of the fences were destroyed.
Judge Matson, an early settler of Hamilton county, who wrote
out an account of this conflagration in 1845, says it was the first fire at
Cincinnati and the most extensive as respects to the space it covered.
In the early settlements of the Miami country as well as thruout the whole
Ohio valley there was much difficulty in obtaining specie for small payments.
The first currency at Cincinnati was raccoon and other skins, but that place
being a garrison town in the Indian wars, a fair supply of specie was obtained
in the payment of the soldiers. The soldiers, however, were generally paid in
gold or in Spanish silver dollars and there was still difficulty in obtaining
money for small sums.
In this perplexity the settlers declined it necessary to coin for themselves
"cut money." They would cut a silver dollar into four pieces, each
passing for twenty cents, and sometimes divided the cut-quarter into two pieces
for twelve and a half cent pieces. Some of the others of this triangular money
found it agreeable to make five quarters out of a single silver dollar, the
fifth one being made perhaps to pay the expense of the coinage. These light
weight and wedged shaped quarters were called sharp skins and became unpopular.
As late as 1806 a business house in Philadelphia received over one hundred pounds
of cut silver brought by a Kentucky merchant. Charles Cist
relates that he was then an apprentice in the Philadelphia house and this cut
silver was taken in a dray under his direction to the U.S. mint for coinage.
The Philadelphia house accepted it only at its real value much to the loss and
vexation of the Kentucky merchant.
At this period the western merchants often made change for sums smaller than
12 1-2 cents in pins, needles, writing paper, etc. It is said that the first
considerable quantity of copper coins was brought to Cincinnati in 1794 by a
merchant named Bartle who secured a barrel of copper cents. These coins were
then large and heavy, and many persons, it is said, thought themselves insulted
when they were offered copper money for change.
Cut money was used for a considerable period in Lebanon and in Warren county.
When the supreme court of Ohio held one session each year at each county seat
of the state, a defendant was arraigned in the supreme court of Warren county
in November, 1805, on an indictment for stealing from Ephriam Hathaway the tavern
keeper in Lebanon "one pocketbook, one Spanish milled dollar and one cut
eight part of a Spanish milled dollar," the whole value of 110 cents. The
defendant, who was a boy, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to be whipped on
his naked back three stripes.
Hon. Oliver H. Smith, a distinguished lawyer, congressman
and senator of Indiana went to that state in 1817, the year after its admission
into the union. In his reminiscences he has given us a vivid picture of the
scenes in which his life as a young lawyer were passed. He writes:
"The whole middle, north and northwest portion of the state were an unbroken
wilderness. When I first visited the ground on which Indianapolis now stands,
the whole country east to Whitewater, and west to the Wabash, was a dense unbroken
forest. There were no public roads, no bridges over any of the streams. The
traveler had to literally swim his way. No cultivated farms, no houses to shelter
or feed the weary traveler or his faded horse. The courts, years afterward,
were held in log huts and the juries sat under the shade of the forest trees.
I was circuit prosecuting attorney at the time of the trials at the falls of
Full Creek where Pendelton now stands. Four of the prisoners were convicted
of murder and three of them hung for killing Indians. The court was held in
a double log cabin, the grand jury sat upon a log in the woods, and the foreman
signed the indictment which I had prepared upon his knee. There was not a petit
juror that had shoes on, all wore moccasins, and were belted about their waist
and carried the side knives used by hunters. The products of the country consisted
of peltries, wild game killed in the forest by the Indian hunters, the fish
caught in the interior lakes, rivers and creeks, the papaw, wild plum, haws,
small berries, gathered by the squaws in the woods. The travel was confined
in the single horse and his rider, the commerce to the pack saddle, and the
navigation to the Indian canoe. Many a time and oft have I crossed the swollen
streams by day and by night, sometimes swimming my horse and other times paddling
the rude bark canoe of the Indian. Such is a mere sketch of our state when I
traversed its wilds and I am not one of its first settlers."
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This page created 13 September 2004 and last updated
28 September, 2008
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