{83} CHAPTER X

Thunder storm—Hospitable reception at Potts’s—Georgetown—Little Beaver creek—State division line—Faucetstown—Croxton’s—Squire Brown’s.

A ferry two miles below Beaver is a handsome situation, beyond which the banks are high on both sides, and the river does not exceed one hundred and fifty yards wide.

About half past seven, it began to rain with heavy thunder and sharp lightning. We huddled into the stern under the awning, and I sculled with one oar to keep the boat in the channel, in hopes of getting to Georgetown; but the storm increasing, we judged it more prudent to stop at nine o’clock where we saw a light on the left bank. We were received very hospitably in their small log house by Mr. and Mrs. Potts.[58]Our landlady gave us bread and milk, which after changing our wet clothes, we supped on sumptuously. We then made some milk punch, which our landlord partook of with us with great gout, entertaining us with some goodsongs, and long stories about his travels. Time thus passed away while the storm pelted without, and it was not until eleven o’clock that we stretched ourselves on the floor, with our feet to the fire, and enjoyed a good nap, resisting the kind importunities of the Potts’s to take their own bed, their other one being filled with their five children. And here I must remark that throughout this whole country, wherever you see a cabin, you see a swarm of children.

At six o’clock on Sunday morning the 19th July, we left Potts’s, after having recompensed them for their hospitality. This was ten miles below Beaver, and two and a half above Georgetown. There are three small islands in that distance called First, Second, and Grape island.

{84} I landed at Georgetown on the left, which contains about thirty houses in a fine situation, on a narrow plain extending from the high river bank, to the hills which surround it like an amphitheatre. Though it is a post town, and a considerable thoroughfare of travellers, it is nevertheless on the decline, there being only twenty-five houses inhabited.[59]A shower coming on, I took shelter in the house of a very communicative elderly man, whose wife was young and very handsome, though an half blood Indian.

Little Beaver creek[60]nearly opposite to Georgetown, is ahandsome little river, about thirty yards wide; half a mile below which, we saw the division line between Pennsylvania and Virginia on the left, {85} and between the former and Ohio on the right, which were cleared of wood forty feet wide in their whole length some years ago; a new growth of trees, bids fair to obliterate very shortly these temporary boundaries.[61]

Near this on the left bank opposite a small island, is a curious stratum of slate, covering a substratum of coal, which also shews itself.

A mile below this is Custard’s island, a mile long, opposite the lower end of which on the left, is the very pleasantly situated house and farm of Mr. Stewart, in passing which we were asked by some people at the landing, if we had seen a man polling up a skiff yesterday on his way to Pittsburgh, and they pointed out his house on the opposite bank, which he had left yesterday; which was matter of astonishment to us, how the man we hailed in this skiff above Beaver, could have surmounted so many ripples and rapids in so short a time; it evinced uncommon strength, activity, and perseverance.

A mile and a half below Stewart’s, we passed Faucetstown, a hamlet of five or six houses and a ferry, from whence is a road thirty miles to Warren in Ohio. Here I observed some seines for fishing, made by fastening bushes together with the tough and flexible stalks of the wild grape, with which this whole western country abounds.

Two miles below Faucetstown, on the right, is a remarkable rocky cliff, three hundred feet perpendicular, from which to Baker’s island of a mile in length, is two miles, and from thence about a mile further, we passed on the right, Yellow creek,[62]a handsome little river thirty yards wide, with Mr. Pettyford’s good stone house well situated on its left bank.[63]

{86} From Yellow creek the appearance of the soil and country is better than above it, and the river is very beautiful, being in general about a quarter of a mile wide, interspersed with several islands, which add much to its beauty; some being partly cultivated and partly in wood, some wholly in wood, and some covered with low aquatick shrubs and bushes; and all fringed with low willows, whose yellowish green foliage, contrasted with the rich and variegated verdure of the gigantick forest trees, the fields of wheat and Indian corn, and the dwarf alders, other shrubbery and reeds of the inundated islands, which they surround, mark their bounds as on a coloured map. First Neasley’s cluster of small islands, two miles below Yellow creek; then Black’s island a mile and a half long, two miles below them, and lastly, Little island close to the west end of Black’s, joinedby a sand bar to the right shore, where Jacob Neasley has a good two story wooden house, with a piazza.[64]

Four miles further we stopped at Wm. Croxton’s tavern, the sign of the Black Horse, on the Virginia side, and got a bowl of excellent cider-oil. This is stronger than Madeira and is obtained from the cider by suffering it to freeze in the cask during the winter, and then drawing off and barrelling up the spirituous part which remains liquid, while the aqueous is quickly congealed by the frost. Croxton and his wife had a youthful appearance, notwithstanding they had eight children, seven of whom were living.

He was born in this neighbourhood, lived here during the last Indian war, and cultivated a bottom opposite, through which flows a rivulet called Croxton’s run, which turns a grist and saw mill.[65]On the United States appropriating the N. W. territory, now the state of Ohio, he lost all that property by its being purchased by others, before he became informed of the necessity of his securing his tenure by obtaining a grant from the government. He complained {87} of a toothache, from the torture of which I relieved him, by burning the nerve with a hot knitting needle, which however did not prevent him from charging us for our cider.

On the opposite bank a mile below Croxton’s, a Mr. White of Middleton in Virginia, is building a fine house of hewn stone; and a mile further on the same side, we admired the romantick situation of a farm house, with a garden tastily filled with a profusion of flowers; opposite to which on the Virginia side, is a remarkable cliff near the top of the highriver hill, occasioned by a large piece of the hill having broken off and fallen down.

Four miles below Croxton’s we passed Brown’s island, containing three hundred and fifty acres of first rate land, on the right, and opposite the lower end of it on the left we stopped for the night at Brown’s, who is a magistrate, and has a noble farm and a house very pleasantly situated on a high bank, with a steep slope to the river.

We found the squire weighing sugar, which he had sold to Mr. Sumrall of Pittsburgh, who owns some regular freighting keel boats, who with one of them was now on his return from Cumberland river, and had also stopped here for the night.

The negroes, cattle, offices, and the appearance of every thing here, indicated the greatest abundance of the produce of this plentiful country. Neither the old squire nor his wife, ever knew confinement by accident or bad health, until about two months ago, when by a fall from her horse, she dislocated her hip, and broke one of her knees. Her son restored the limbs to their places, and she employed no surgeon, but is curing herself gradually, though slowly, by an embrocation of camphorated spirit.

After supping with the old gentleman, near his old wife’s bed side, on apple pye, bread, butter and milk, he kissed her, and then shewed us to a room {88} with four beds in it, one of which he occupied himself, and gave us possession of another, which we were not allowed to possess in peace, as its indigenous inhabitants, indignant at our intrusion, assailed us all night with such fury, as to drive us from their quarters at the first dawn of day. The old man had entertained us until a late hour, by narrating to us his situation, and that of his family. His children have all good farms, and he intends making no will, that they may inherit equally, (according to the very equitable law of this countryrespecting intestate inheritance) whatever he may die possessed of, which he gave us to understand was very considerable.—One daughter is married to a Mr. Madan, an Irishman, to whom he gave a farm with her, which Madan sold for a thousand dollars five years ago, and removed to St. Genevieve on the Mississippi, where he is now a land surveyor with an income of two thousand dollars per annum. Two years ago, squire Brown, notwithstanding his age, about seventy, paid his daughter a visit, a distance of a thousand miles.

Though he does not keep a tavern, he knows how to charge as if he did, we having to pay him half a dollar for our plain supper, plainer bed, and two quarts of milk we took with us next morning; which was very high in a country where cash is very scarce, and every thing else very abundant.

FOOTNOTES:[58]The creek at this place is still known as Potts Run.—Ed.[59]Georgetown was founded in 1793 by Benoni Dawson of Maryland, who named it in honor of the city of that name, now in the District of Columbia. It is “a prosperous-looking, sedate town, with tidy lawns running down to the edge of the terrace.” See Thwaites,On the Storied Ohio(Chicago, 1903).—Ed.[60]This is a valuable stream for water works, though wildly and romantically hemmed in by vast hills on both sides. There are two grist mills, a saw mill, and a large paper mill, all within two miles of its mouth; the latter has been lately erected, and is owned by Jacob Bowman of Brownsville, John Bever of Georgetown, and John Coulter, who resides at the mill. Over this creek, about a mile from its mouth, a new toll bridge was erected in the summer and fall of 1809, on the road leading from Washington county to New Lisbon, Canton, Worster, &c. state of Ohio. About a mile above Little Beaver, in the bed of the Ohio, and near the north western side, a substance bubbles up, and may be collected at particular times on the surface of the water, similar toSeneca oil. When the water is not too high, it can be strongly smelt while crossing the river at Georgetown: It is presumed to rise from or through a bed of mineral coal embowelled under the bed of the river. The virtues of the Seneca oil are similar to those of theBritish oil, and supposed to be equally valuable in the cures of rheumatick pains, &c.—Large quantities of the Seneca oil is collected on Oil creek, a branch of the Allegheny river, and sold at from one dollar and a half to two dollars per gallon. The mode of collecting it is this; the place where it is found bubbling up in the creek is surrounded by a wall or dam to a narrow compass, a man then takes a blanket, flannel, or other woollen cloth, to which the oil adheres, and spreading it over the surface of the enclosed pond, presses it down a little, then draws it up, and running the cloth through his hands, squeezes out the oil into a vessel prepared for the purpose; thus twenty or thirty gallons of pure oil can be obtained in two or three days by one man.—Cramer.[61]The boundary is now marked by a stone monument. On the historic controversy concerning this boundary, see Michaux’sTravels, vol. iii of this series, p. 170, note 31.—Ed.[62]A few miles up this creek are several valuable salt springs; at two of which quantities of excellent salt is made.—Cramer.[63]For the historic incidents connected with Yellow Creek and Baker’s bottom, see Croghan’sJournal, vol. i of this series, p. 127, note 93, and Thwaites,On the Storied Ohio.—Ed.[64]This group of islands is still known as Kneistly’s Cluster. See Thwaites,On the Storied Ohio.Jacob Kneistly (or Nessly) was of Swiss origin and emigrated to this region from Pennsylvania about 1785.—Ed.[65]Croxton’s Run was the scene of one of the last Indian fights in this vicinity (1787). Fourteen hunters were attacked here by a party of wandering Shawnees, and four of the whites killed.—Ed.

[58]The creek at this place is still known as Potts Run.—Ed.

[59]Georgetown was founded in 1793 by Benoni Dawson of Maryland, who named it in honor of the city of that name, now in the District of Columbia. It is “a prosperous-looking, sedate town, with tidy lawns running down to the edge of the terrace.” See Thwaites,On the Storied Ohio(Chicago, 1903).—Ed.

[60]This is a valuable stream for water works, though wildly and romantically hemmed in by vast hills on both sides. There are two grist mills, a saw mill, and a large paper mill, all within two miles of its mouth; the latter has been lately erected, and is owned by Jacob Bowman of Brownsville, John Bever of Georgetown, and John Coulter, who resides at the mill. Over this creek, about a mile from its mouth, a new toll bridge was erected in the summer and fall of 1809, on the road leading from Washington county to New Lisbon, Canton, Worster, &c. state of Ohio. About a mile above Little Beaver, in the bed of the Ohio, and near the north western side, a substance bubbles up, and may be collected at particular times on the surface of the water, similar toSeneca oil. When the water is not too high, it can be strongly smelt while crossing the river at Georgetown: It is presumed to rise from or through a bed of mineral coal embowelled under the bed of the river. The virtues of the Seneca oil are similar to those of theBritish oil, and supposed to be equally valuable in the cures of rheumatick pains, &c.—Large quantities of the Seneca oil is collected on Oil creek, a branch of the Allegheny river, and sold at from one dollar and a half to two dollars per gallon. The mode of collecting it is this; the place where it is found bubbling up in the creek is surrounded by a wall or dam to a narrow compass, a man then takes a blanket, flannel, or other woollen cloth, to which the oil adheres, and spreading it over the surface of the enclosed pond, presses it down a little, then draws it up, and running the cloth through his hands, squeezes out the oil into a vessel prepared for the purpose; thus twenty or thirty gallons of pure oil can be obtained in two or three days by one man.—Cramer.

[61]The boundary is now marked by a stone monument. On the historic controversy concerning this boundary, see Michaux’sTravels, vol. iii of this series, p. 170, note 31.—Ed.

[62]A few miles up this creek are several valuable salt springs; at two of which quantities of excellent salt is made.—Cramer.

[63]For the historic incidents connected with Yellow Creek and Baker’s bottom, see Croghan’sJournal, vol. i of this series, p. 127, note 93, and Thwaites,On the Storied Ohio.—Ed.

[64]This group of islands is still known as Kneistly’s Cluster. See Thwaites,On the Storied Ohio.Jacob Kneistly (or Nessly) was of Swiss origin and emigrated to this region from Pennsylvania about 1785.—Ed.

[64]This group of islands is still known as Kneistly’s Cluster. See Thwaites,On the Storied Ohio.

Jacob Kneistly (or Nessly) was of Swiss origin and emigrated to this region from Pennsylvania about 1785.—Ed.

[65]Croxton’s Run was the scene of one of the last Indian fights in this vicinity (1787). Fourteen hunters were attacked here by a party of wandering Shawnees, and four of the whites killed.—Ed.

Back to Index Next