CHAPTER XXIX
Hospitality of farmers—Primative dispensation of justice—Ellis’s ferry, and Powers’ tavern—Squire Leadham—West Union—Allen’s—A North Carolina cotton planter—Brush creek—J. Platter’s—A thunder storm—A hunter’s cabin—Old Lashley—Marshon’s.
Hospitality of farmers—Primative dispensation of justice—Ellis’s ferry, and Powers’ tavern—Squire Leadham—West Union—Allen’s—A North Carolina cotton planter—Brush creek—J. Platter’s—A thunder storm—A hunter’s cabin—Old Lashley—Marshon’s.
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, I was employed in rambling about the woods, exploring and examining a tract of land, of a thousand acres, in the state of Ohio, which I had purchased when in Europe last year, and which had been the principal cause of my present tour. As it was only six miles from {180} Maysville, I crossed the Ohio and went to it on foot. I had expected to have found a mere wilderness, as soon as I should quit the high road, but to my agreeable surprise, I found my land surrounded on every side by fine farms, some of them ten years settled, and the land itself, both in quality and situation, not exceeded by any in this fine country. The population was also astonishing for the time of the settlement, which a muster of the militia, while I was there, gave me an opportunity of knowing—there being reviewed a battalion of upwards of five hundred effective men, most expert in the use of the rifle, belonging to the district of ten miles square.
And now I experienced amongst these honest and friendly farmers real hospitality, for they vied with each other inlodging me at their houses, and in giving me a hearty and generous welcome to their best fare. Robert Simpson from New Hampshire, and Daniel Ker and Thomas Gibson from Pennsylvania, shall ever be entitled to my grateful remembrance. I had no letters of introduction to them—I had no claims on their hospitality, other than what any other stranger ought to have.—But they were farmers, and had not acquired those contracted habits, which I have observed to prevail very generally amongst the traders in this part of the world.
On Saturday I returned to Ellis’s ferry opposite Maysville, to give directions for my baggage being sent after me by the stage to Chilicothe.
On the bank of the Ohio I found squire Ellis seated on a bench under the shade of two locust trees, with a table, pen and ink, and several papers, holding a justice’s court, which he does every Saturday.[134]—Seven or eight men were sitting on the bench with him, awaiting his awards in their several cases.—When he had finished, which was soon after I had taken a seat under the same shade, one of the men invited the squire to drink with them, which he {181} consenting to, some whiskey was provided from landlord Powers, in which all parties made a libation to peace and justice. There was something in the scene so primative and so simple, that I could not help enjoying it with much satisfaction.
I took up my quarters for the night at Powers’s, who is an Irishman from Ballibay, in the county of Monaghan. He pays squire Ellis eight hundred dollars per annum forhis tavern, fine farm and ferry. He and his wife were very civil, attentive, and reasonable in their charges, and he insisted much on lending me a horse to carry me the first six miles over a hilly part of the road to Robinson’s tavern, but I declined his kindness, and on Sunday morning, the 9th of August, after taking a delightful bath in the Ohio, I quitted its banks. I walked on towards the N. E. along the main post and stage road seventeen miles to West Union,—the country becoming gradually more level as I receded from the river, but not quite so rich in soil and timber.
The road was generally well settled, and the woods between the settlements were alive with squirrels, and all the variety of woodpeckers with their beautiful plumage, which in one species is little inferiour to that of the bird of Paradise, so much admired in the East Indies.
I stopped at twelve miles at the house of squire Leadham, an intelligent and agreeable man, who keeps a tavern, and is a justice of the peace. I chose bread and butter, eggs and milk for breakfast, for which I tendered a quarter of a dollar, the customary price, but he would receive only the half of that sum, saying that even that was too much. Such instances of modest and just honesty rarely occur.[135]
West Union is three years old since it was laid out for the county town of Adams county. The lots of one third of an acre in size, then sold for about seventy dollars each. There were upwards of one {182} hundred lots, which brought the proprietor above three thousand dollars.It is in a healthy situation, on an elevated plain, and contains twenty dwelling houses, including two taverns and three stores. It has also a court-house and a gaol, in the former of which divine service was performing when I arrived to a numerous Presbyterian congregation. One of the houses is well built with stone; one of the taverns is a large framed house, and all the rest are formed of square logs, some of which are two stories high and very good.
Having to get a deed recorded at the clerk’s office of the county, which could not be done until Monday morning, I stopt Sunday afternoon and night at West Union, where my accommodations in either eating or sleeping, could not boast of any thing beyond mediocrity.
Monday the 10th August, having finished my business and breakfasted, I resumed my journey through a country but indifferently inhabited, and at four miles and a half from West Union, I stopped for a few minutes at Allen’s tavern, at the request of a traveller on horseback, who had overtaken and accompanied me for the last three miles. He was an elderly man named Alexander, a cotton planter in the S. W. extremity of North Carolina, where he owns sixty-four negro slaves besides his plantation—all acquired by industry—he having emigrated from Larne in Ireland, in early life, with no property. He was now going to visit a brother-in-law near Chilicothe. He had travelled upwards of five hundred miles within the last three weeks on the same mare. He had crossed the Saluda mountains, and the states of Tennessee and Kentucky, and had found houses of accommodation at convenient distances all along that remote road, but provender so dear, that he had to pay in many places a dollar for half a bushel of oats.
{183} Allen’s is a handsome, roomy, well finished stone house, for which, with twenty acres of cleared land, he pays a yearly rent of one hundred and ten dollars, to AndrewEllison, near Manchester.[136]He himself is four years from Tanderagee, in the county Armagh, Ireland, from whence he came with his family to inherit some property left him by a brother who had resided in Washington, Kentucky, but two hundred acres of land adjoining my tract near Maysville, was all he had been able to obtain possession of, although his brother had been reputed wealthy. I have met many Europeans in the United States, who have experienced similar disappointments.
My equestrian companion finding that I did not walk fast enough for him, parted from me soon after we left Allen’s. At two miles from thence I came to Brush creek, a beautiful river about sixty yards wide. A new state road crosses the river here, but as I had been informed, that there was no house on it for ten miles, I preferred keeping up the bank of the river on the stage road, which led through a beautiful but narrow unsettled bottom, with Brush creek on the right, and a steep, craggy precipice on the left, for a mile and a half. I then ascended and descended a steep and barren ridge for a mile, when I forded the creek to Jacob Platter’s finely situated tavern and farm on the opposite bank.
Having rested and taken some refreshment, the growling of distant thunder warned me to hasten my journey, as I had five miles through the woods to the next habitation. The road was fine and level,—the gust approached withterrifick warning—one flash of lightning succeeding another in most rapid succession, so that the woods frequently appeared as in a flame, and several trees were struck in every direction around me, one being shattered within fifty paces on my right, while the thunder without intermission of an instant was heard in every variety of {184} sound, from the deafening burst, shaking the whole surrounding atmosphere to the long solemn cadence always interrupted by a new and more heavy peal before it had reached its pause. This elemental war would have been sublimely awful to me, had I been in an open country, but the frequent crash of the falling bolts on the surrounding trees, gave me such incessant warnings of danger, that the sublimity was lost in the awe. I had been accustomed to thunder storms in every climate, and I had heard the roar of sixty ships of the line in battle, but I never before was witness to so tremenduous an elemental uproar. I suppose the heaviest part of the electrick cloud was impelled upon the very spot I was passing.
I walked the five miles within an hour, but my speed did not avail me to escape a torrent of rain which fell during the last mile, so that long before I arrived at the hospitable dwelling of the Pennsylvania hunter who occupied the next cabin, I was drenched and soaked most completely. I might have sheltered myself from some of the storm under the lee side of a tree, had not the wind, which blew a hurricane, varied every instant—but independent of that, I preferred moving along the road to prevent a sudden chill; besides, every tree being a conductor, there is greater danger near the trunk of one, than in keeping in a road, however narrow, which has been marked by the trees having been cut down.
My host and his family had come here from the back part of Pennsylvania only last May, and he had already a fine field of corn and a good deal of hay. He had hithertobeen more used to the chase than to farming, and he boasted much of his rifle. He recommended his Pennsylvania whiskey as an antidote against the effects of my ducking, and I took him at his word, though he was much surprised to see me use more of it externally than internally, which I did from experience that bathing the feet, hands and head {185} with spirituous liquor of any sort, has a much better effect in preventing chill and fever, either after being wet of after violent perspiration from exercise, than taking any quantity into the stomach, which on the contrary rarely fails to bring on, or to add to inflammatory symptoms.—A little internally however I have found to be a good aid to the external application.
I found at my friendly Pennsylvanian’s, a little old man named Lashley, who had taken shelter at the beginning of the gust, which being now over, he buckled on his knapsack, and we proceeded together. He had travelled on foot from Tennessee river, through a part of the state of Tennessee, quite across Kentucky, and so far in Ohio in nine days, at the rate of thirty-six miles a day. He had assisted in navigating a boat from Indian Wheeling, where he lived, to Tennessee, for which he had got thirty dollars, ten of which he had already expended on his journey so far back, though using the utmost economy. He remarked to me, that although he was upwards of sixty years of age, and apparently very poor, he had not got gratuitously a single meal of victuals in all that route. Are not hospitality and charity more nominal than real virtues?
The country for the next five miles is tolerably well improved, and there is a good brick house which is a tavern owned by one Wickerham at the first mile, and a mile further is Horn’s tavern, where the stage sleeps on its route to the N. E. towards Chilicothe.
Old Lashley complaining of fatigue, we stopped at Marshon’sfarm house, ten miles from Brush creek, where finding that we could be accommodated for the night, we agreed to stay, and were regaled with boiled corn, wheaten griddle cake, butter and milk for supper, which our exercise through the day gave us good appetites for, but I did not enjoy my bed so {186} much as my supper, notwithstanding it was the second best in the house, for besides that it was not remarkable for its cleanliness, I was obliged to share it with my old companion; fatigue however soon reconciled me to it, and I slept as well as if I had lain on down between lawn sheets.
Marshon is from the Jerseys, he has a numerous family grown up, and is now building a large log house on which he means to keep a tavern. Three of his sons play the violin by ear—they had two shocking bad violins, one of which was of their own manufacture, on which they scraped away without mercy to entertain us, which I would most gladly have excused, though I attempted to seem pleased, and I believe succeeded in making them think I was so.
The land is here the worst I had seen since I had left the banks of the Ohio; it had been gradually worse from about two miles behind squire Leadham’s, and for the last two miles before we come to Marshon’s it had degenerated into natural prairies or savannas, with very little wood, and none deserving the name of timber, but well clothed with brush and low coarse vegetation.
FOOTNOTES:[134]Captain Nathan Ellis with five brothers embarked at Brownsville in 1795, and floating down the Ohio, stopped at Maysville. Finding the Kentucky lands well occupied they crossed to the Ohio shore and Nathan Ellis established the ferry bearing his name. The title of the town was later changed to Aberdeen in honor of his native place. On the organization of Adams County, Ellis was appointed justice of the peace, which office he filled until his death in 1819.—Ed.[135]Cuming was following the road known as Zane’s Trace, laid out across Ohio from Wheeling to Maysville in 1796. From Ellis’s Ferry it passed northeast through Adams County, up Brush Creek, through the southwestern corner of Highland County, to Byrington and through Perry Township in Pike County, down the valley of Paint Creek to Chillicothe.William Leedom (Leadham) kept a tavern where Bentonville, Adams County, now stands.—Ed.[136]The Indian captivity of Andrew Ellison is a well-known tale of Ohio pioneer life. Authorities differ in details; we follow the tradition handed down in the family. Andrew Ellison, born in 1755, came to Kentucky as a young man, and in 1790 accompanied Massie into Ohio, settling near Manchester. One day in 1793, while at work on his farm, he was surprised and captured by a band of Indians. Pursuit failing to overtake them, Ellison was carried to the Chillicothe towns where in running the gauntlet he was severely beaten. Later being taken to Detroit, he was ransomed for a blanket by an English officer, and being supplied with food and clothing walked back across the state of Ohio, arriving at his home in the early autumn. Four years later, he took up a large tract of land on Brushy Creek, building thereon a stone house—one of the best in the state at that time.—Ed.
[134]Captain Nathan Ellis with five brothers embarked at Brownsville in 1795, and floating down the Ohio, stopped at Maysville. Finding the Kentucky lands well occupied they crossed to the Ohio shore and Nathan Ellis established the ferry bearing his name. The title of the town was later changed to Aberdeen in honor of his native place. On the organization of Adams County, Ellis was appointed justice of the peace, which office he filled until his death in 1819.—Ed.
[134]Captain Nathan Ellis with five brothers embarked at Brownsville in 1795, and floating down the Ohio, stopped at Maysville. Finding the Kentucky lands well occupied they crossed to the Ohio shore and Nathan Ellis established the ferry bearing his name. The title of the town was later changed to Aberdeen in honor of his native place. On the organization of Adams County, Ellis was appointed justice of the peace, which office he filled until his death in 1819.—Ed.
[135]Cuming was following the road known as Zane’s Trace, laid out across Ohio from Wheeling to Maysville in 1796. From Ellis’s Ferry it passed northeast through Adams County, up Brush Creek, through the southwestern corner of Highland County, to Byrington and through Perry Township in Pike County, down the valley of Paint Creek to Chillicothe.William Leedom (Leadham) kept a tavern where Bentonville, Adams County, now stands.—Ed.
[135]Cuming was following the road known as Zane’s Trace, laid out across Ohio from Wheeling to Maysville in 1796. From Ellis’s Ferry it passed northeast through Adams County, up Brush Creek, through the southwestern corner of Highland County, to Byrington and through Perry Township in Pike County, down the valley of Paint Creek to Chillicothe.
William Leedom (Leadham) kept a tavern where Bentonville, Adams County, now stands.—Ed.
[136]The Indian captivity of Andrew Ellison is a well-known tale of Ohio pioneer life. Authorities differ in details; we follow the tradition handed down in the family. Andrew Ellison, born in 1755, came to Kentucky as a young man, and in 1790 accompanied Massie into Ohio, settling near Manchester. One day in 1793, while at work on his farm, he was surprised and captured by a band of Indians. Pursuit failing to overtake them, Ellison was carried to the Chillicothe towns where in running the gauntlet he was severely beaten. Later being taken to Detroit, he was ransomed for a blanket by an English officer, and being supplied with food and clothing walked back across the state of Ohio, arriving at his home in the early autumn. Four years later, he took up a large tract of land on Brushy Creek, building thereon a stone house—one of the best in the state at that time.—Ed.
[136]The Indian captivity of Andrew Ellison is a well-known tale of Ohio pioneer life. Authorities differ in details; we follow the tradition handed down in the family. Andrew Ellison, born in 1755, came to Kentucky as a young man, and in 1790 accompanied Massie into Ohio, settling near Manchester. One day in 1793, while at work on his farm, he was surprised and captured by a band of Indians. Pursuit failing to overtake them, Ellison was carried to the Chillicothe towns where in running the gauntlet he was severely beaten. Later being taken to Detroit, he was ransomed for a blanket by an English officer, and being supplied with food and clothing walked back across the state of Ohio, arriving at his home in the early autumn. Four years later, he took up a large tract of land on Brushy Creek, building thereon a stone house—one of the best in the state at that time.—Ed.