HARRISON COUNTY

 

Page 887

 

            HARRISON COUNTY was formed January 1, 1814, from Jefferson and Tuscarawas, and named from Gen. Wm. H. Harrison.  It is generally very hilly; these hills are usually beautifully curving and high cultivated.  The soil is clayey, in which coal and limestone abound.  It is one of the greatest wool-growing counties in the Union, having in 1847, 102,971 sheep, and in 1887, 137,891.

 

            Area about 320 square miles.  In 1887 the acres cultivated were 53,153; in pasture, 122,743; woodland, 34,105; lying waste, 489; produced in wheat, 198,991 bushels; rye, 1,465; buckwheat, 346; oats, 196,930; barley, 575; corn, 517,601; broom corn, 1,000 lbs. brush; meadow hay, 62,708 tons; clover hay, 1,050; potatoes, 33,324 bushels; butter, 415,440 lbs.; cheese, 10,000; sorghum, 2,645 gallons; maple syrup, 2,851; honey, 14,559 lbs.; eggs, 414,588 dozen; grapes, 8,900 lbs.; wine, 90 gallons; sweet potatoes, 141 bushels; apples, 18,558; peaches, 8,199; pears, 1,305; wool, 826,386 lbs.; milch cows owned, 4,993.  School census, 1888, 6,529; teachers, 181.  Miles of railroad track, 55.

 

 

Townships

And Census

1840

1880

 

Townships

And Census

1840

1880

Archer,

1,009

   785

 

Moorefield,

1,344

1,075

Athens,

1,435

1,221

 

North,

1,090

1,410

Cadiz,

2,386

3,116

 

Nottingham,

1,368

   964

Franklin,

   941

1,216

 

Rumley,

1,027

1,261

Freeport,

1,294

1,319

 

Short Creek,

2,023

1,831

German,

1,349

1,311

 

Stock,

   826

   713

Greene,

1,465

1,659

 

Washington,

1,004

1,211

Monroe,

   896

1,364

 

 

 

 

 

 

            Population in Harrison in 1820 was 14,345; in 1830, 20,920; 1840, 20,099; 1860, 19,110; 1880, 20,456, of whom 18,272 were born in Ohio; 915 in Pennsylvania; 341 in Virginia; 54 in New York; 46 in Indiana; 17 in Kentucky; 230 in Ireland; 104 in England and Wales; 30 in German Empire; 10 in Scotland; 8 in British America, and 3 in France.

 

            In April, 1799, Alex. HENDERSON and family, from Washington county, Pennsylvania, squatted on the southwest quarter of the section on which Cadiz stands; at this time Daniel PETERSON resided at the forks of Short Creek, with his family, the only one within the present limits of Harrison.  In 1800, emigrants, principally from Western Pennsylvania, began to cross the Ohio river; and in the course of five or six years there had settled within the county the following-named persons, with their families, viz.:

 

            John CRAIG, John TAGGART, John JAMISON, John M’FADDEN, John KERNAHAN, John HUFF, John MAHOLM, John WALLACE, John LYONS, Rev. John REA, Daniel WELCH, William MOORE, Jas. BLACK, Samuel DUNLAP, James ARNOLD, Joseph and Samuel M’FADDEN, Samuel GILMORE, James FINNEY, Thos. and Robt. VINCENT, Robert BRADEN, Jas. WILKLIN, Samuel and George KERNAHAN, Thos. DICKERSON, Joseph HOLMES, James HANNA, Joseph, William and Eleazer HUFF, Baldwin PARSONS, James HAVERFIELD, Robert COCHRAN, Samuel MAHOLM, Hugh TEAS, Jos. CLARK, Morris WEST, Jacob SHEPLAR, Martin SNIDER, Samuel OSBORN, Samuel SMITH, and perhaps others, besides those in Cadiz and on Short Creek; Thomas TAYLOR, John ROSS, Thomas HITCHCOCK, Arthur and Thomas BARRETT, Robert and Thomas MAXWELL, Absalom KENT, John PUGH, Michael WAXLER, Wm. M’CLARY, Joseph, Joel and William JOHNSON, George LAYPORT, William INGLES, Thomas WILSON, and perhaps others on Stillwater; John M’CONNELL, George BROWN, John LOVE, William and Robert M’CULLOUGH, BROKAW and others, on Wheeling creek.

 

            Robert MAXWELL, William and Joseph HUFF and Michael MAXLER were great

 

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hunters, and the three former had been Indian spies, and had many perilous adventures with the Indians.  On one occasion, after peace, an Indian boasted, in the presence of Wm. Huff and others, that he had scalped so many whites.  Towards evening, the Indian left for his wigwam, but never reached it.  Being, shortly after, found killed, some inquiry was made as to the probable cause of his death, when Huff observed, that he had seen him the last time, sitting on a log, smoking his pipe; that he was looking at him and reflecting what he had said about scalping white people, when suddenly his pipe fell from his mouth, and he, Huff, turned away, and had not again seen him until found dead.

 

            Besides frequent trouble with Indians, the first settlers were much annoyed by wild animals.  On one occasion, two sons of George LAYPORT having trapped a wolf, skinned it alive, turned it loose, and a few days after it was found dead.

 

            One mile west of the east boundary line of Harrison, there was founded, in 1805, a Presbyterian church, called “Beach Spring,” of which Rev. John REA was for more than forty years the stated pastor.  Their beginning was small; a log-cabin, of not more than 20 feet square, was sufficient to contain all the members and all that attended with them.  Their log-cabin being burnt down by accident, a large house, sufficient to contain a thousand worshippers, was raised in its room, and from fifty communing members they increased in a short time to nearly 400, and became at one period the largest Presbyterian church in the State.—Old Edition.

 

            Cadiz in 1846.—Cadiz, the county-seat, is a remarkably well-built and city-like town, 4 miles southeasterly from the centre of the county, 115 easterly from Columbus, 24 westerly from Steubenville, and 24 northerly from Wheeling.  It contains 1 Presbyterian, 1 Methodist Episcopal, 1 Associate (Seceder), and 1 Associate Reformed Church.  It also contains 2 printing presses, 12 dry-goods, 7 grocery and 2 drug stores, and had, in 1840, 1,028 inhabitants.

 

            Cadiz was laid out in 1803 or ‘4, by Messrs. BIGGS and BEATTY.  Its site was then, like most of the surrounding country, a forest, and its location was induced by the junction there of the road from Pittsburg, by Steubenville, with the road from Washington, Pa., by Wellsburg, Va., from where the two united, passed by Cambridge to Zanesville; and previous to the construction of the national road through Ohio, was travelled more, perhaps, than any other road northwest of the Ohio river.  In April, 1807, it contained the following named persons, with their families: Jacob ARNOLD, innkeeper; Andrew M’NEELEY, hatter and justice of the peace; Joseph HARRIS, merchant; John JAMISON, tanner; John M’CREA, wheelwright; Robt. WILKIN, brickmaster; Connell ABDILL, shoemaker; Jacob MYERS, carpenter; John PRITCHARD, blacksmith; Nathan ADAMS, tailor; James SIMPSON, reed-maker; Wm. TINGLEY, school-teacher, and old granny YOUNG, midwife and baker, who was subsequently elected (by the citizens of the township, in a fit of hilarity) to the office of justice of the peace; but females not being eligible to office in Ohio, the old lady was obliged to forego the pleasure of serving her constituents.

 

            The first celebration of independence in Cadiz was on the 4th of July, 1806, when the people generally, of the town and country for miles around, attended and partook of a fine repast of venison, wild turkey, bear meat, and such vegetables as the country afforded; while for a drink, rye whiskey was used.  There was much hilarity and good feeling, for at this time men were supported for office from their fitness, rather than from political sentiments.

 

            About one and a half miles west of Cadiz, on the northern peak of a high sandy ridge, are the remains of what is called the “standing stone,” from which a branch of Stillwater derived its name.  The owner of the land has quarried off its top some eight feet.  It is sandstone, and was originally from sixteen to eighteen feet high, about fifty feet around its base, and tapered from midway up to a cone-like top, being only about twenty feet around near its summit.  It is said to have been a place of great resort by the Indians, and its origin has been a subject of specu-

 

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lation with many people.  It is, however, what geologists term a boulder, and was brought to its present position from, perhaps, a thousand miles north, embedded in a huge mass of ice, in some great convulsion of nature, ages since.—Old Edition.

 

            CADIZ, county-seat of Harrison, 125 miles northeast of Columbus, is on the Cadiz branch of the P. C. & St. L. Railroad.  County Officers in 1888: Auditor, George A. CREW; Clerk, Martin J. McCOY; Commissioners, M. B. FREBAUGH, Robert B. MOORE, Andrew SMITH; Coroner, Charles McKEAN; Infirmary Directors, John B. BEADLE, John BARCLAY, John W. McDIVITT; Probate Judge, Amon LEAMMON; Prosecuting Attorney, Walter G. SHOTWELL; Recorder, Albert B. HINES; Sheriff, Albert B. QUIGLEY; Surveyor, Jacob JARVIS; Treasurer, Samuel A. MOORE.  City Officers in 1888: A. W. SCOTT, Mayor; W. H. LUCAS, Clerk; William McCONNELL, Treasurer; Walter WHITMORE, Marshal; John C. BAYLESS, Chief of Police.

 

            Newspapers: Flambeau, Prohibitionist, C. B. DAVIS, editor and publisher; Republican, Republican, W. B. HEARN, editor and publisher; Sentinel, Democratic, W. H. ARNOLD, editor and publisher.  Churches: 1 Presbyterian, 1 Methodist Episcopal.  Banks: Farmers’ and Mechanics’ National, Melford J. BROWN, president; C. O. F. BROWN, cashier; First National, D. B. WELCH, president; I. C. MOORE, cashier; Harrison National, D. CUNNINGHAM, president; John M. SHARON, cashier; Robert LYONS, Richard LYONS, cashier.  Population, 1880, 1817.  School census, 1888, 592; O. C. WILLIAMS, school superintendent.  Capital invested in manufacturing establishments, $20,000.  Value of annual product, $28,000.—Ohio Labor Statistics, 1888.

 

TRAVELLING NOTES.

 

            Came last evening (June 7) from Steubenville by the P. C. & St. L. R. R., and thence by a short line of railroad eight miles to Cadiz, which I found much as I left it in the last days of February, 1847.  The old county buildings looked as of yore.  They were the last things I had sketched in Ohio on my tour of 1846-1847, and two days later I was in a stage-coach going over the mountains on my way home.  I am told Cadiz has a large proportion of colored people; on the cars were some finely dressed people of color.  The place it is claimed contains more wealth than any other of its size in the State.  The banking capital is especially large.  Here reside families who having accumulated fortunes from prosperous farming, largely wool-growing, and tired of the isolation of farm-life make it their permanent home.  Among its good things is a public library of 4,000 volumes, which speaks well for the character of its population, and especially so for Mrs. Chauncey DEWEY, its founder.

 

                Eminent Characters.—Cadiz is on a hill, as it should be, for it has been the home of some eminent characters.  Bishop Simpson, whom Abraham Lincoln said was the most eloquent orator he ever heard, was born here.  Secretary STANTON began his law practice in Cadiz, and it has been long the residence of John A. BINGHAM, the silver-tongued orator of national fame.  Prof. David Christie, author of “Pulpit Politics” and “Cotton is King,” was born in this county, edited a paper here, the Standard, and afterwards was a professor at Oxford.  He and Simpson in their younger days were great friends, and vied with each other in the writing of acrostics.  I knew Christie in the anti-bellum days—a somewhat tall, large man.  He had shaved his beard and dyed his hair, and he told me, because, in the eyes of the public, a man had about outlived his usefulness if he showed sings of getting “snowed up.”  Judge John Welch (see p. 275) is also a native of this county.

 

                Mr. BINGHAM has recently returned from Japan, where he has been twelve years our ambassador.  I called upon him at his residence early this morning, a plain, square brick house with a hall running through the centre.  He personally answered my ring, and I made an appointment to meet him again in the afternoon.  But we stood on the porch and talked some time.  He is seventy-one years of age, a rather large gentleman, a blonde, with mild, blue eye and kindly face—an elegant, easy talker, scattering unpremeditated poetical similes through his speech.  To illustrate, I had passed some compliments upon the beauty of the country around, whereupon he replied:

 

                Mr. Howe: if you can sketch for your book the hills which girdle this village and the fields of green and primeval forests, all seen under your eye from my door, you will have a picture of quiet beauty scarcely surpassed anywhere, certainly not in any part of this great country of ours, so far as I have seen, and I have seen much the greater part, nor in that foreign land, Japan, the ‘Land of the Morning,’ famed for its landscapes.”

 

Page 890

 

Top Left: BISHOP SIMPSON                                     Top Right:  JOHN. A. BINGHAM

 

Bottom Picture

Drawn by Henry Howe in 1846.

COUNTY BUILDINGS, CADIZ.

 

 

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            Thinking that this speech of beauty about Cadiz from this eminent man should be preserved for the gratification of its people after he had passed away, I wrote it from memory and presented it for his inspection on my second call, when he went on to thus comment: “The Japanese had called Japan the ‘Land of the Rising Sun,’ but the expression ‘Land of the Morning’ I believe is original with me.  We cannot tell from whence thoughts come.  They drop from the brain like rain from heaven.  I used the expression in a speech I made at Yokohama in the fall of 1873, which was reported by an English gentleman, Mr. DIXON, and printed both in Japanese and English.  Five years later Mr. DIXON published a work upon Japan and entitled it ‘The Land of the Morning.’  The expression pleased the Japanese, and now it stands for all time.”

 

                He thought he could improve his little speech to me, and at my request, after some reflection, thus wrote in my note-book:

 

“Dear Mr. Howe:

                The hills and primeval forest and green fields which girdle this village make a picture of quiet beauty which, I think, is scarcely surpassed in any part of our country which I have seen, or in Japan, the Land of the Morning.

                                                                                “JNO. A. BINGHAM.

                “CADIZ, OHIO, JUNE 8, 1886.”

 

                I give both for the benefit of the young, to illustrate the respective qualities of amplification and terseness in composition.

 

                Animal Intelligence.—I now return to an incident in my morning call.  As we stood at the door, in the mild rays of the early sun, two house-dogs came up to welcome me, Jack and Jake.  Jack was a smart little black-and-tan, and observing my evident pleasure in their approach, Mr. BINGHAM said: “He has made the half circuit of the globe.  I brought him from Japan, but he is a native of London; his ancestry known way back to the time of Queen Anne.  The other dog, Jake, is a Newfoundland, with a cross of the St. Bernard.  As for him,” and he said it with evident pride at the thought, “he is a native of this great State.”  Then he continued: “It was a mystery to me how he got into the yard when the gate was closed, it swinging outward, and asking my little grandson, he replied, ‘Why, grandpapa, don’t you know there is a knot-hole near the bottom; he puts his nose in that and backs with it.’  ‘Then how does he get out?’  ‘Oh, he pushes!’”  I might have told him, if I could have foreseen the fact, that one day I was to own a dog that would open a door with a latch or one with a knob—the first by striking, the other by placing his paws on each side of the knob and rubbing.  And he is yet living, answering to the name of Black Ear, but we do not consider him as extra intelligent—that is, for a dog.

 

                The intellects and passions of our animals, as far as they go, I believe, are identical with our own; and it is certainly enlarging to us to study their qualities and be pleased with their joys.  And as for the insect world, we are of those who can stoop down and watch with solid satisfaction a procession of ants, bringing up huge stones from out their underground habitations.

 

                Furthermore, if one could not come into this world as a human being but could as an ant, he should be advised to embrace the opportunity, as thereby he could act as a teacher, illustrating, as an ant certainly does, the good effects of systematic industry which, in the case of the ant, seems cheering.  For if not, after having deposited his stone, why should he hurry back, fast as his little legs can carry him, for another?

 

                An Old Contributor.—I called to-day upon Mr. W. H. ARNOLD, editor of the Sentinel, who remembered my former visit; his age at the time six years.  His father, Mr. William ARNOLD, who died in 1874, aged seventy-six, contributed about all the historical material for my article on Harrison county.  He was a native of Fayette county, Pa.; came here at the age of twelve; was justice of the peace thirty-three years, during which time he married 300 couple.  In the war of 1812 all his brothers were in the army, and he, being too young for service, made gunpowder for the soldiers during every winter of the war.  Powder was then very scarce, and as the government seized it wherever they could find it, and he could get a higher price for it in Steubenville, he took it there and sold it.  The hut where he made it was about half a mile north of the town.  He was a remarkably fine rifle-shot; one moonlight night he shot eleven wild turkeys near his powder-mill.

 

                Bishop Simpson’s Early Days.—On inquiry, I learn that the house in which Bishop SIMPSON was born (June 20, 1811) stood on the site of the National Bank.  He derived his name, Matthew, from his bachelor uncle, Matthew SIMPSON.  He was a State Senator for many years, and by profession a school-teacher and a man of superior acquirements; a walking encyclopædia; unprepossessing in appearance; small head and body.  He lived to a great age, dying somewhere in the nineties.  To eke out a living he manufactured reeds for the old hand-loom for home-made linen and jeans, and sold them to the country people, who wore homespun.  The BISHOP’S father died when he was two years of age, and his uncle became his foster-father and took great interest in the lad.  To his care the Bishop got his intellectual bent.

 

                An old citizen, Mr. H. S. McFADDEN, says to me: “The Bishop was an awkward, gawky, barefooted boy, and, when about seventeen, so shy that he was afraid of society, and so miserable in health that it was supposed he would soon perish of consumption; tall of his age and round-shouldered.  He wrote acrostics for the Harrison Telegraph, and was fond of visiting the printing office.  The people here were astonished at his success in life.”

 

                The Itinerant’s Nest.—On a corner near the

 

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border of the village I was pointed out a long, low, old cottage, in which Bishop Simpson passed many of his boyhood days.  It was then the home of William TINGLEY, his mother’s brother, a man of note in his day.  He was for forty years clerk of court, was prosperous, had excellent sense, and some sheep-raising man—it must have been—told me he was in his day the “bellwether” of the Methodist church here.

 

                The sight of an old time weather-beaten structure like this, brown as a rat too, is always picturesque.  This was particularly so, from its associations; attached to it and facing the street was another cottage of a single room in front, overgrown with vines.  This the good man built solely for the accommodation of travelling Methodist ministers, a nest for itinerants.  As I entered it, I felt, from its peculiar moral associations, I was more blessed than to have entered a palace.  Here many a brother in Israel, in the olden time, after ambling for many a weary mile through the wilderness on his little nag, often eating parched corn for his sustenance, and preaching the same old sermon a thousand times, has looked forward to this little nest provided for him by Brother TINGLEY as one of the choice havens, where he could rest under the protecting wings of a brother’s love, and smoke his pipe in peace.

 

                Comic Anecdotes.—This advent of the itinerants to the cabins of the pioneers, in the lonely wilderness condition of the country, was always a great blessing aside from their especial mission as spiritual messengers.  They were eminently a social body of men, and were welcomed with a hospitality that knew no bounds.  Of course they had bouncing appetites.  Their outdoor lives insured that, especially with their occasional fasts, when lost or belated in the wilderness.  To feed them well was the pride of the log-cabin dwellers; whenever they tarried forays were invariably made upon the poultry.  So certain was this that the term “chicken-eaters” was often applied to the circuit riders.  Many comical anecdotes were told in this regard, and none enjoyed them better than the circuit riders themselves.

 

                One of them, whom one may call Brother BRANNEN, as the story goes, who used to amble on his nag through Eastern Ohio, early in the century, was especially favored with gastronomic powers.  His voice and person were huge as his appetite, and he seemed proud of his eating capacity.  He used to say that “a turkey was an unhandy bird—rather too much for one person and not quite enough for two.”  On one occasion he stopped at the cabin of a widow, who was of course all aglee to give him the best she had.  After a little the good brother, going out to attend to his nag, was attracted by the sound of a child crying, and tracing his way by it found the widow’s son, and he perhaps her only son, seated behind a corn-crib with a chicken under his arm.  “What’s the matter, sonny?” said he, in tender tones.  “I am crying,” he replied, “because mother sent me out for this chicken, and what between the hawks and the circuit riders it is the last chicken left on the place.”

 

A WALK AND A SHEEP TALK.

 

            Last evening, June 9, near sunset, I took a walk with Mr. Stewart B. SHOTWELL, and ascended Boyle’s Hill, half a mile west of the town.  As we neared the summit a flock of sheep in their timidity descended the other side.  We could see over a large part of Harrison county.  Cadiz loomed up pleasantly on a companion hill.  Under our eyes was the great dividing ridge, on one side of which the flowing waters descended and made their way into the Tuscarawas, on the other into the Ohio.  The view was a succession of rolling grass-carpeted hills interspersed with forests.  A warm rain had clothed them in the richest green, on which flocks of sheep were grazing.  Down in a little modest valley a train of cars was approaching Cadiz on the short junction railroad.  Dwindled by distance and our height, it seemed as a little toy affair, a child’s plaything, playing bo-peep as it dodged in and out from behind the hillocks that at times hid it from view.  The sky was somewhat overcast and the setting sun was reddening a mass of striated clouds over a scene of pastoral beauty.

 

            Bah!—As we stood there on the very summit enjoying the scene to the full, and talking largely about sheep, there was a pause in our conversation, and we were about to leave, when I was astonished by a loud Bah!  I then saw what had before escaped my eye.  The sheep, which had fled at our approach and got out of sight, had taken courage and again mustered to the number of hundreds in a huge triangular mass on the grassy slope below us.  At its very apex, and not sixty feet away, was the bellwether of the flock, all of which had stood in silence looking up at us, and apparently listening to our conversation; and I could not help thinking that this startling bah! from the bellwether was expressive of his

 

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contempt at our conversation upon wool.  By this time the shadows of evening were settling upon Cadiz, but I could discover nothing Spanish in the air.

 

            Sheep Statistics.—Harrison, by the statistics of 1880, to the square mile leads all other counties in Ohio in the number of sheep and production of wool; the number of sheep was 209,856 and pounds of wool 1,090,393.  Licking county, Ohio, which has nearly double its area, exceeded it about one-quarter in sheep, having been 251,989.  Venango county, Pa., had 461,120 sheep and produced 2,416,866 pounds of wool.  This we believe is the largest sheep-producing county in the Union, while Harrison ranks the third.  Ohio is the greatest sheep-producing State.  Its number in 1880 was 4,902,486, sheep clip 25,003,756 pounds; next was California, 4,152,349 sheep, clip 16,798,019 pounds; Texas 2,411,633 sheep, clip 6,928,019 pounds; Michigan 2,189,389 sheep, clif 11,858,497 pounds; New Mexico 2,088,831 sheep; clip 4,019,188 pounds.  Missouri and Wisconsin next lead each with less than a million and one-half of sheep.  The entire number of sheep in the United States exclusive of spring lambs was, in 1880, 42,192,074, or a little less than one sheep to one person.

 

                “Wool,” said Mr. BINGHAM, “is the prime clothing for man.  As sheep increase civilization advances.”  Beside carrying a blessing in the way of warmth and clothing, there is a good moral thought in the fact that wool is the natural outgrowth of an animal divinely chosen as the type of innocence and amiability.  “Feed my lambs.”  And then the care of sheep seems to have a reflex action upon the owners in the character of their visitors and the things they see, as is illustrated by the old hymn:

 

     “While shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground,

     The angel of the Lord came down, and glory shone around.”

 

                Job, I take it, is an especially interesting character to this people, he owned so many sheep: in the early part of his life 7,000, and in the latter part 14,000, and they tell me he ought to have lived in Harrison county, for the climate is so healthy that he would have escaped at least one of his evils—boils.

 

                Great as were Job’s possessions, there are to-day in Australia sheep ranges, the property of single owners, whereupon are raised over 150,000 sheep; 20,000 is but a moderate sized range.  Three acres there is generally allowed for a single animal, sometimes ten acres.  Sheep are not seen there in flocks, owing to the scant herbage; there sheep consequently are scattered over vast areas, a range for a flock of 200 requiring as much land as an Ohio township.  What may seem strange, one may travel over a station whereupon are tens of thousand of sheep, and not have over three or four of the animals in one view in any place.

 

                The great drawback to Australia has been the terrible drouths by which in entire districts the sheep all perish.  Of late years this evil has been lessened by the sinking of artesian wells and extensive tree planting, by which the annual rainfall has been increased.  The lives of the wool-growers there are desolate from the vast size of their ranges, their nearest neighbor often being fifteen or twenty miles away.  In 1888 Australia had about eighty millions of sheep, and the United States about fifty millions, so the former is now the greatest wool-producing country on the globe, we ranking second, South America third and Russia the fourth.

 

                Profits of Sheep-raising.—As our talk upon the sheep industry in Harrison county began on Boyle’s Hill, it was finished in Mr. SHOTWELL’S office in the evening, of which I took notes, and here repeat verbatim.  “I do not know,” said he, “a single farmer who has followed for life the growing of sheep, without diversion to other crops, but what has become wealthy.  Land pastured by sheep improves year by year from their droppings.  The tendency of sheep in summer is to seek the highest point of a hill to get the cool breezes.  In winter they also get near the summit, but on the leeward side if there be any wind; the coldest air, being the heaviest, always sinks into the valleys.  The result is that the rain distributes their manure from the top to all the lower parts of the field.

 

                “Some years ago the late Judge BRINKERHOFF, of Mansfield, was riding with me in this region, and inquired, ‘Why is it that your hills are all so fertile?  Our hill-tops are generally poor soil; our best lands are the valleys.’  ‘Because,’ I replied, ‘we raise sheep.’  The products of the hill soil—hay, grass, corn, oats, etc.—are of a more nutritive nature than those of the rich bottom lands of the Tuscarawas and Ohio valleys, although the growth is not so rapid.  Our experienced farmers therefore pay five cents more a bushel for our hill corn than for that raised elsewhere.  This hill land will produce from twenty to forty bushels more to the acre than the alluvial soil.  I own valley lands on the Tuscarawas and Stillwater, and I get nearly twice the quantity per acre of corn, grass, etc., from the hills, and the richest of butter and cheese is made from hill grass.

 

                “As I have spoken of the profits of sheep-raising, I will give you some statistics.  On a farm of a quarter of a section, 160 acres, 325 sheep can be conveniently pastured.  Such a farm would be valued at about $5,000.  The value of such a flock now would be about $650.  With proper care and feeding corn and hay, all of which one man alone could do, the annual clipping would be about seven pounds per sheep; total, 2,275.  At 33 1/3 cents, the present price, this gives $758.33 for the wool.  Then the increase of sheep is

 

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double at the end of the year, which, at $2 each, is $650.  This added to the product of the wool, gives $1,308 as the annual production of the farm.  There is still another item of profit.  With a view to avoid over-stocking, the farmers select in the fall their largest, strongest sheep of the older class, and fatten them over winter, and in the spring, after clipping, they are sold East for mutton purposes.  About 200, generally wethers, are annually sold on such a farm, at $5 each, thus enhancing the total profits to $2,308.

 

                “The more you feed and care for a sheep in the winter, the heavier and better in the staple will be his fleece.  Just after the war wool brought as high as $1.10 per pound.  The very old ewes are sold in the fall at fair prices—say $2 each—are shipped eastward to the neighborhood of the cities, and then sold to a class of farmers who manage to have them drop their lambs early in February, feed the ewes on milk-producing slops, which rapidly fattens and increases the weight of the lambs.  These lambs are tender and delicious, and often bring $5 each.  The ewes are then clipped and slaughtered, the carcass thrown to the hogs, and the pelts turned over to the leather men.  The large bank deposits in our town are mostly from the wool-growers of Harrison county.

 

                “The sheep, as his coat shows, belongs to a cold climate; hence he flourishes in the mountain countries of Europe north of the 40º latitude, or in Australia south of the 40º latitude, where it is alike cold.”

 

                Sheep-raising in Texas is comparatively a failure.  To find there the proper climate, elevation is required, and then grass is scant.  On the warm lowlands his wool is not required, and nature allows him to grow hair.

 

                The most certain productive crop in our county is the corn, which averages seventy-five bushels to the acre—have known 120 bushels.  The average wheat is twenty-five bushels—have known forty.  Oats average from sixty to 100 bushels; hay, one and a half to two tons—often have the heaviest hay on the summit of the hills.

 

            We append to the sheep statistics from Mr. SHOTWELL, some items from an article, “The American Wool Industry,” by E. H. Ammidown, in the North American Review, August, 1888.

 

            The American wool-clip amounts to about 300,000 pounds per annum, and varying in value from $75,000,000 to $95,000,000.  It stands sixth in value as an American agricultural product, being surpassed only by corn, hay, wheat, cotton and oats.  Our 50,000,000 of sheep are worth over $2 each, say in all $100,000,000.  If the annual product of mutton for food, and the increase of the flocks, were added to this, it would totalize $125,000,000.  Sheep husbandry is the only great farm industry in which every section of our country shares.  The annual gain from the fertilization of the soil by the droppings of the sheep is estimated to be fully $50,000,000.

 

                If this industry was abandoned, the decline in value of the sheep-farm lands, comprising 112,000,000 of acres—much of which would be then unused and all deteriorate in fertility—at $2.50 an acre, would be $280,000,000.  So the advantages of continuing the industry seem imperative to the well-being of the country.  We now supply one-sixth part of the wool produced in the world, so far as is statistically known.

 

REMINISCENCES OF EDWIN M. STANTON.

 

            Edwin M. STANTON, the great war Secretary, had his beginning in Cadiz as a lawyer.  The great example of his life was intensity of purpose.  Not another member of Mr. LINCCOLN’s Cabinet, not even Mr. LINCOLN himself, could perhaps here compare with him.  He was a giant in will, with mighty passions to enforce it.  To crush out the rebellion at all hazards absorbed his full powers.  Governor MORTON, in acknowledging on a certain occasion receipt of money from Mr. STANTON, wherein authority was assumed to meet a great patriotic end, wrote him: “If the cause fails, you and I will be covered with prosecutions, and probably imprisoned or driven from the country.”  To this STANTON replied: “If the cause fails, I do not wish to live.”  Whatever he undertook he went in to the death.  If death was to come, it would be for him no more than for others; he could die but once.  His care was in what he engaged, and, as a lawyer, never undertook what he thought was a bad case.  The cause succeeded, but his intense labors, under the might of an intense patriotism, killed him as effectually as ever soldier was killed by bullet.

 

            It has been our privilege to make the acquaintance here of Mr. Stewart B. SHOTWELL, attorney-at-law, who was a student two years in the office with Mr. STANTON.  To us, in conversation, he made the following statement:

 

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Drawn by Henry Howe in 1886.

PORTRAIT AND BIRTHPLACE OF GENERAL G. A. CUSTER.

 

Page896

 

            STANTON I knew intimately.  He first studied law in Steubenville with Daniel L. COLLIER.  He came to Cadiz in 1836, and went into partnership with Chauncey DEWEY, and remained here until 1840, the partnership existed until 1842.  DEWEY was an old lawyer of the Whig persuasion, and shortly after his coming, STANTON was elected prosecuting attorney on the Democratic ticket—an office he held three years.

 

                DEWEY was a man of very decided ability, had been educated at Schenectady, a pupil of the celebrated Dr. NOTT, was a thoroughly read lawyer, and had especial ability with a jury.  STANTON was then but twenty-two years of age, with broad shoulders, but light in person, weighing about 125 pounds, and height five feet eight inches.  He was very near-sighted.  The people here at first called him “Little STANTON.”

 

                He appreciated the ability and skill of his senior partner, at once placed himself under his tutelage, and owed much of his early success to him.  He would often say to us, “Well, we are all DEWEY’S boys.”  Often, in coming into the office in the morning, DEWEY would say, “STANTON, what do you think about this case?”  After STANTON had expressed his ideas, DEWEY would take pen and put the points as he thought they should be presented, and hand the paper to STANTON, and STANTON invariably followed his guidance: he was his mentor.  Mr. DEWEY was then forty years of age; he died in 1880, aged eighty-four.

 

                STANTON was very methodical, kept his papers and office in perfect order, and his industry was marvellous.  He would read law sixteen hours a day and keep it up ever.  I never saw a man with such capacity for work.  I have known him to work all day in court and until nine o’clock at night, trying cases and then filing them.  Then he would get into his buggy, ride to Steubenville for some paper or authority bearing on the case, be back at court-time next morning, after riding a distance of fifty miles, and work all day fresh as ever.  He was physically compact; put up exactly for the labor a lawyer has to endure.

 

                Ordinarily he cared nothing for society of women, but he was exceedingly attached to his first wife.  When she died he shut himself in his room and spent days in grief.  Then seeing it was breaking him down, he rallied and plunged into business.

 

                He seemingly was of a cold nature; never any gush.  He was thoroughly upright; and if he had an important case he would make full preparation to win, even eating in reference to it, so as to have full possession of his powers.  He was temperate; but sometimes, if he had a tight place to go through, would take a little stimulus.  He spoke with ease, voice on a high key, and monotonous in manner, but strong and combative, hanging on with a bull-dog like tenacity, brow-beating and ridiculing witnesses.  He did not care if the whole public was against him.  He would face them all, and feel he was their master.

 

                I once heard this anecdote, which illustrates how everything had to bend to his main purpose.  He had travelled into the then wilderness of Illinois, in pursuit of evidence in an important case, when, in a cabin where he had put up for the night, he found the family were originally from Steubenville and neighbors, living within a square of him.  They had known him in his child days; he had been playmate with their son, but he had outgrown their recollections.  Any other man, in the glow of feeling consequent upon such a discovery, would have made himself known, but he refrained, from the thought that it might in some way militate against his success in the main object of his journey, if it should be known he was in the country, and so left as he came—an entire stranger.

 

                Ordinarily men would wilt under his denunciations; sometimes feel like retorting with physical violence.  He knew this, and sometimes, when the court adjourned, asked the sheriff to take his arm and accompany him to his office, as I believed for protection.  This was not from cowardice, but because he felt it was wise to avoid a physical combat.  He stood in awe of no human being.  Every man was alike so far as that was concerned.  His moral courage was immense.  His likes and dislikes were very strong, and with his especial friends he was exceeding social and courteous.  He was profound in legal principles, a safe lawyer in a good case; but if he thought a case was desperate, would not go into court.  The stories of his rough language to the people who came to the war-office are true.  Simon CAMERON, his predecessor, when he sent for Gen. McCLELLAN, would wait for hours; when STANTON summoned him there was no delay.

 

TRAVELLING NOTES.

 

VISIT TO THE BIRTHPLACE OF A HERO.

 

            After Cadiz, my next objective point was New RUMLEY, a hamlet high on the hills, three miles northeasterly from Scio, at which last I arrived by the cars about noon.  New RUMLEY is a spot of historic interest, for here was born, Dec. 5, 1839, Gen. Geo. A. CUSTER, the famed cavalry leader of the war.  I wished to sketch his birthplace and learn of his beginnings.  I had scarcely got off the cars at Scio, and was standing on a narrow platform running from the depot on a line by the railroad track, when a young man at my side cried, “Look out!”

 

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It was the Pittsburg and St. Louis express coming at forty or fifty miles an hour, and close on to us.  In a twinkling I saw an object coming for me, end over end.  I gave a spring and as it came threw my entire weight on my right leg, and as it passed it struck the other a stinging but glancing blow on the inner side.  Then I saw it was the Scio mail-bag.

 

            I limped up to the village tavern, dined and then found a farmer who was going within two miles of New RUMLEY, and would take me in his wagon there for a consideration.  I got in, we turned round a little hill, left Scio behind, and went up the valley of Alder creek, Thursday, 1 P.M., June 11, 1886.  My companion was a little man with black hair and little black beads of eyes set back far in his head, his face thin and shrivelled, and, what is rare for a farmer, he wore glasses.  He said his age was forty-three years, his name G. M. TOUSSAINT and that he and Gen. Pierre Gustavus TOUSSAINT Beauregard, of the Confederate army, were second cousins, their grandfathers having been brothers.  It enhanced my interest in him to thus learn he was of French Huguenot stock, for I have a sprinkling of the same blood in my veins.

 

                A Ride with a Farmer.—The wagon we were in was on springs, drawn by two mares, each having a little colt trotting lithe and pretty by its side, so we counted in all six, two of a kind, two men, two mares and two colts.  He was anxious to know my business; thought I had something to sell.  Upon telling him, he said his wife went to school with CUSTER.  He was quite a dressy young man, and when he came home on furlough from West Point, brought home among other things full twenty pair of cadet’s white pantaloons for his folks to wash.  My companion was a horse-fancier, and bragged about his horses; they were of an honored ancestry, and he went on to give their pedigree.  On naming over their ancestors, he was astonished that I had never heard of them; he doubtless would have been more astonished if I had told him what was a fact, that in my entire life I had never put a horse in a carriage, nor had buckled on a curry-comb.  The colts as I looked down upon their petite, graceful-rounded forms, each trotting by the side of its mother, looked very sweetly.  I asked him about how much each would weight.  He replied two hundred pounds.  I could scarcely believe this until he told me he had failed only a few days before in an effort to carry one of them into his barn.

 

                A Bit of Natural History.—The valley we were passing up was perhaps a third of a mile wide, with bounding hills of some two hundred feet high.  We passed some sheep grazing.  At one place they stood still and in silence in a ring, perhaps fifty of them, their heads down to the ground and noses together; their bodies ranged like the spokes of a wheel from a centre.  I inquired, “What is that for?”  There had been a slight shower, and the sun had come out warm.  “The flies bother them, stinging their noses,” he said.  In the fence-corners were other sheep and their noses were also to the ground.  I subsequently learned it was an instinct of nature.  There is a peculiar fly, the Oestrus ovis, which crawls into the nostrils of a sheep and deposits an egg.  This hatches a worm which makes it way into the brain, and invariably kills the sheep.  From this doubtless originated the expression as applied to a human being, “He has got a maggot in his head.”

 

                Everything that has life, man, animal or vegetable, appears to receive injury from some other life.  The innocent sheep are not the only victims to the winged enemies.  Late in the summer there is a large fly, the Oestrus bovis, large as a bumble-bee, which annoys cattle, punctures the skin, and deposits an egg along the spine.  Under the spring sun that egg develops into a grub with an ugly black head, and makes his way out of the hole to the infinite annoyance of the animal.  The grub is thus occupied for weeks, while the itching at times is so intolerable that the animal runs around the field with tail out, perfectly frantic.  Then the common expression among the farmers is that it has “the warbles.”  Often twenty or thirty grubs will at once make their way out.  When an animal has largely been infected with the pests, it injures the hide for the purpose of leather.

 

                Having come out, the grub goes into the ground and after a little he puts on wings—they are not angel wings—and some day he starts on his aerial flight, becomes the great ugly fly we have described, to follow the same egg-hatching, egg-depositing business of his illustrious ancestors.  The fly from which the horse gets into his greatest trouble is the Oestrus equi.  He often alights on the front of the horse, where stinging him the animal nips at, catches and swallows the fly.  That is just what the fly was after—to be swallowed.  Housed in the stomach of the horse, he then proceeds about his business, to lay eggs.  These hatch grubs sometimes to the number of a hundred or more, which attach themselves to the coats of his stomach and feed thereon and often to the death of  the horse.  This affliction is called “the bots.”

 

                Friend TOUSSAINT opened upon another topic dear to his heart—religion.  A neighbor of his was far gone in consumption; notwithstanding, seemed as worldly-minded as ever

 

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“I told him,” said he, “he ought not to be thinking about driving sharp trades—that he ought to go and get religion, for in a few weeks probably, he would have to meet his God.  For ought he knew, it might be no more than two weeks.”  Then he dwelt upon the influence of religion here on earth, illustrating it by the story of a travelling man he once read of, who stopped at a strange house in a wild, lonely spot, and he didn’t like the looks of the people, was on a sort of tremble; was afraid he might be robbed and murdered in his sleep.  But when bed-time came, his ferocious-looking host opened a little cupboard, took out a book and said, “Let us pray,” whereupon a load was lifted from the heart of the travelling man, and he slept that night “like a top.”  Thus my friend with interesting talk upon horses, sheep, CUSTER and religion, beguiled the way.

 

                New RUMLEY appears.—A mile or more before reaching New RUMLEY I saw in the far distance, on the top of a very high hill, a cluster of trees, roof tops, and a church spire, and that my companion pointed out as New RUMLEY.  I looked at it with intense interest, the birthplace of a hero; ached to be there.  When we had ascended nearly to the top of the hill, the horses rested for a few moments, while the colts kneeled down each beside its respective mother, and rested also, while I made notes.  Another short pull up hill, then a sudden turn to the right, and we were in New RUMLEY.  The first objects at its entrance I found to be two churches, just alike, facing each other as sentinels, on opposite sides of the road.  They were freshly painted, and white as snow.  It was pleasant thus to have the gospel greet one at the very threshold of the place.  I couldn’t help thinking so, but the huge white forms, spread out to the right and left of me so broodingly, somehow made me think of angels’ wings, ready to bear people up to heaven.  On one side of the street it was done after the manner of the Methodist brethren, and on the other of what they speak of abridgingly as the “You Bees,”—and spell out “United Brethren.”

 

                New RUMLEY is little more than a name—a hamlet set on a hill—a single street with a single store, that of T. H. Cunningham, and a few scattered dwellings, of which only three or four can be seen at one view.  The highest part is where they put the angels’ wings, and the birthplace of him whom Sitting Bull called the “Yellow Hair.”  From thence the street descended; there was a sort of hollow spot in the wavy ground and then it ascended in a lesser wave, and where its farther course was hidden by trees.  Where it went then I know not, only I was told the followers of Martin Luther had a sanctuary somewhere there.  I went into the store, a little room, and made the acquaintance of Mr. CUNNINGHAM, an elderly person.  Some barefooted boys seeing me, a stranger, go in, entered and stood in silence listening.  Where they came from I don’t know, but men and women lived together around in little, half-concealed cottages, and where that happens, boys and girls will spring up fresh and healthy as daisies in an old cow-pasture.  I inquired if there was a General CUSTER growing up among them; got no reply.  The boys seemed to think with the poet.

 

Das Schweigen ist ihr bester Herold.”

 

That is—“Silence is golden.”

 

                Custer’s birthplace in the early part of this century, 1820, was a log tavern, kept by one Andrew Thompson.  It was clapboarded fifty years ago.  It is brown, going to decay, some clapboards off, and others hanging by a single nail.  Locust trees stand before it; their fragile leaves tremble in the softest zephyrs.  I borrowed a backless chair and drew the pretty scene shown, with the conical spire of the “You Bees” in the distance.

 

                Having made the sketch, I went to the house.  Some women were sitting in the front room, sewing and chatting, passing away their lives in simplicity and comfort apparently, with little possessions and little cares.  They were simply clad.  There was no bric-a-brac about to dust, no card basket for calling visitors.  No splendid equipage with liveried footman and gaily attired visitors had ever called to inspire jealousy and create heartaches up to that door, but the air was pure, and on June days it oft came in laden with the fragrance of new-mown hay.

 

                The place seemed as the top of the world, and the eye possessions of its inhabitants vast.  From it to the west I could look down the pretty valley through which I had come with friend TOUSSAINT of pious frame and sprightly colts, and then all around met my eye a leafy world of hills for miles and miles away; and in one spot far to the north, a little village peeped forth in the vast outspread of living green.  A Sabbath-like calm rested upon all things.  This was the high spot of earth, where the “Yellow Hair” first opened his eyes; where the wintry winds have a high old time, and silvery toned bells wake the echoes on Sabbath day mornings.  A Sabbath in the country.  How beautiful it is!  Rest, music, prayer and thoughts of the heavenly choir.  Glory Hallelujah!

 

                The high places of earth like this are the glory spots for the lifting the heart of man.  Earth and sky are there full spread before his vision to bring his spirit into the very presence of the Infinite.  At night the stars pass over him in their grand procession athwart the mighty dome, and by day the bright sun moves over the vast expanse, the sun, blessing mother of morning, noon and night, which in its day’s journey typifies the life of man.

 

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            And cloud land is all above him, ever moving between earth and sky, and ever changing in its forms, its lights and its shadows, which it runs over the whole earth; often throwing all around in gloom while the far distant peaks stand out like hope, bright in the light of a heavenly effulgence.  Clouds seem as if from the hands of God while dispensing refreshing showers, and by their beauty oft fill the sensitive heart with gratitude in its sense of possessing such an exquisite source of joy; and this sense will sometimes give expression as here in my verse.

 

 

Summer Clouds.

 

The gorgeous Alps of summer skies

     In softest tints oft mass in view,

Where seraph forms in fancies’ dreams

     Recline beneath the tender blue.

 

And floating on their beds of fleece,

     Those spirits of the azure deep

Look down upon our earthly fields,

     Where Time his generous harvests reap.

 

While we in Fate’s remorseless chains

     May hapless seem in vales of woe;

Still onward float the beauteous clouds,

     Still cheer us with their genial glow.

 

O summer clouds! our hearts like thee

     But take their beauty from on high;

The light that gives the charm to life,

     The love that soothes us when we die.

 

 

Parting Day.

 

By the patriarch’s dying couch

     Some angel hand the curtain lifts;

While parting day’s celestial tints

     Enchanting spread beyond the rifts.

 

Then grandly glows the might dome,

     While silence rests on earth below;

Save where the distant tides of life

     In dying murmurs faintly flow.

 

Then soft and sweet, bright isles of bliss

     Seem floating in an ocean sky;

A spirit realm of light and love—

     The happy immortality.

 

In mantling night the vision melts,

     While worlds afar their glories spread;

And thus alike through mists and stars

     The soul of man is upward led.

 

The wondrous orb, great source of light,

     To other lands glad morning brings;

Day never ceases with his work,

     Nor Time to speed with aging wings.

 

 

 

                Ride with a Doctor.—The next point was to get back to Scio, so I took the ridge road; thought I could, notwithstanding the lameing blow of the mail-bag, manage to walk there.  In a few minutes I was overtaken by a gentleman in a buggy, with a little two-year-old girl on his lap, and I accepted his invitation to the seat beside him.  It was Dr. George LYLE, a country physician, educated in Cincinnati, and I found knew some of my medical friends there.  He told me he had been a schoolmate of CUSTER.  He described him as an apt scholar, a leader among the boys, mischievous and full of practical jokes; withal very plucky.

 

                One evening, at some lecture where the audience were on the ground floor, a ragamuffin of a boy unable to get in flatted his nose against the window pane and made wry faces at George, whereupon the latter drove his fist through the glass into his face.  The next day three boys accosted him, saying they were going to thrash him.  He replied by drawing a pocket-knife, saying—“I will fight all three of you at a time, but if you come all at once you shall have this,” at the same opening the blade.  The boys pursued the topic no further. Das Schweigen ist ihr bester Herold.” 

 

                Presently the road narrowed to a mere lane, now in the woods and then in the open, when some flies lit behind the horse’s ears, when he stopped the vehicle, stood upright, gathered the lash and stock tightly in his hand, and with the tautened curve thus made at the end of the whip, slowly, carefully slid it under the offending insects.  They respected the hint for the time, but came again, when he stopped the carriage, got out and gathering twigs of leaves from the woods put them as a defence in the trappings of the horse’s head.  Then the little one said something in its baby tones, making a request, I did not hear what, when again went into the woods and returned with flowers in his hands and love in his heart, and taking her in his lap we soon descended a hill, made a turn and then were in Scio.

 

A TALK WITH JOHN GILES OF SCIO.

 

            After supper in the tavern at Scio, I was enjoying a quiet smoke, when I heard a voice at my side.  It was that of an old man of about seventy years of age, who had accosted me.  He was in his shirt-sleeves, tall, patriarchal white beard and hair, blue eyes, fresh complexion and expression of great amiability.  It was John GILES, of Scio.  He wanted to tell me what he knew about the CUSTERS, and I let him.  The original spelling was Kuster.  Their first ancestor in this country

 

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was from Hesse-Cassel, came over in the Revolutionary war time and fought “mit de Hessians.”

 

                Emanuel CUSTER, the father of the General, was a blacksmith and justice of the peace.  “My wife and Squire CUSTER are cousins,” said he, “and he married us.”  I used to keep school, and taught George his A, B. C; his father and myself were always great friends.  George was irrepressible as a boy.  One thing I recollect.  His father and myself were walking by a barn yard, when we heard a child screaming; a moment later little George, then a boy in his frock, appeared bursting through a line of currant bushes, with a huge gander fastened by his talons to his back.  George had been attracted by the sight of young goslings, and going for them the gander had alighted on him and was whipping him with his wings.

 

                “About this time we organized a military company, ‘cornstalk militia,’ in New RUMLEY, and the child followed us about all day.  From that moment his passion to become a soldier originated and grew with his years.  His family tried in vain to dispel this ambition.  He desired to go to West Point, but his father told him as he was personally a Democrat and Mr. BINGHAM, the member of Congress in whose power it lay to obtain a cadet warrant, a Whig, he would not give it to him.  How he obtained it Mr. BINGHAM had told me only two days before this conversation with Mr. GILES.

 

                “I received,” said Mr. BINGHAM, “a letter from CUSTER, then at school at Hopedale, in Greene township, asking for the appointment.  This was about the year 1857.  Its honesty captivated me.  It was written in school-boy style.  In it he said that he understood it made no difference with me whether he was a Republican boy or a Democrat boy-—hat he wanted me to understand he was a Democrat boy.  I replied, if his parents consented, I would procure it for him.

 

                “He was at West Point but three years.  Such was the want of officers at the beginning of the war, that his class, before graduating, were commissioned; he as Lieutenant of Cavalry in a company commanded by Captain Drummond, son of Rev. Dr. Drummond, of this place (Cadiz).  He was in the first battle of Bull Run.  The day after I saw a young officer ride up to my door in Washington and dismount.  He had long, yellow hair hanging like Absalom’s.  He came up to me and introduced himself as Lieutenant CUSTER.  Up to that moment I had never seen him.  In the December before he had passed his twenty-first birthday.  He said: “Mr. BINGHAM, I have been in my first battle, and I’ve come to tell you I’ve tried not to show the coward.”

 

                Mr. GILES told me he was a soldier in the Potomac army, and at one time was in camp near the command of CUSTER.  “One evening,” said he, “I heard footsteps approaching my tent; a moment later in came General CUSTER to see me.  He inquired why I had not called upon him.  I replied, I had so desired, but I thought it would not do; he had now got to be a great man, a General, and I was only a common soldier.  “Humph,” he rejoined, “I thought you knew me better, that I was above all such nonsense as that, especially with an old friend, and the friend of my father.”  And then he playfully added: “I expect the old man is the same darned old Copperhead yet, aint he?”  I had to acknowledge I thought he was.

 

                Mr. GILES took me to his cottage, close by, and showed me finely framed and colored portraits of the General’s parents. In his simplicity—stranger as I was—he wanted to loan them to me.  It seemed like sacrilege to accept his offer—would not take such a responsibility of their safe-keeping, even had I wanted them.

 

                CUSTER’S father had a large, strong-looking face, with a straight, firmly set mouth.  On seeing that expression one could easily imagine how, having been born a Democrat, he had set that mouth of his grim and defiant to die one.  From him it was that his son got his light golden hair, and the impulse that belongs to that temperament.  The portrait of the mother was in profile.  She was a brunette.  The whole air of the woman showed a high degree of refinement, with a tinge of sadness resting upon her countenance.  “She never had,” said GILES, “any especial social opportunities, but she was a born lady, thoughtful, dignified and always inspiring high respect.  At the time of the massacre, with CUSTER was killed his two brothers, Thomas and Boston, both officers, Captain CALHOUN, her brother-in-law—that is, her sister’s husband—and Mr. REED, a civilian, on a visit to the General; also Louis CLEM, younger brother of Johnnie CLEM, the drummer boy of Shiloh.  The mother never rallied from the terrible blow; it broke her heart, and she sank and died.  The father is still living in Michigan; but as long as I knew him, on any allusion to the death of his sons, he would swell up and leave the room.

 

                As I pass these notes over to the printer, I copy from a note-book: “Died July 13, 1889, John GILES, of Scio:” that is, three years after this talk.

 

            We annex some items, mainly from Whitelaw REID’s “Sketch of CUSTER,” wherein are given some of the brilliant points of his brilliant military career.  At the battle of Williamsburg he accompanied the advance as aid-de-camp under

 

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Gen. HANCOCK, and captured the first battle-flag ever captured by the army of the Potomac. . . . He was the first person to cross the Chickahominy, which he did by wading up to the armpits in the face of the enemy’s pickets. . . . At Gettysburg he held the right of the Union line, and utterly routed Hampton’s cavalry.  In this battle he had two horses shot under him, and in the course of the war eleven horses. . . . At the battle of Trevillian Station five brigades attacked his one.  Against such odds he fought for three hours.  His color-bearer was shot, when the flag was only saved by CUSTER tearing it from its standard and concealing it around his body. . . . At Winchester he took nine battle-flags, and took more prisoners than he had men engaged. . . . When Sheridan arrived at Cedar creek, after his famous ride, he said, “Go in, CUSTER.”  CUSTER went in, drove the enemy for miles, captured a major-general, many prisoners, and forty-five pieces of artillery.  For this he was brevetted Major-General of Volunteers.  It would be beyond our limits to recapitulate his many successes; but he was the first to receive the white flag from Gen. Lee, and Sheridan presented Mrs. CUSTER the table on which Lee signed the surrender. . . . He never lost a gun or a color; he captured more guns, flags, and prisoners on the battle-field than any other general not an army commander, and his services throughout were most brilliant.

 

                Gen. CUSTER was nearly six feet in height, of great strength and endurance, broad-shouldered, lithe and active, with a weight never above 170 pounds.  His eyes were blue, his hair long and golden.  At the age of twenty-three he was made a brigadier-general; at twenty-five a major-general, the youngest man of his rank in the army.  REID says: “For quick dashes and vigorous spurts of fighting he had no superiors and scarcely an equal.  His career was disastrously closed in an attack, on the 25th of June, 1876, on an Indian encampment, on Little Horn river, in Montana, when his command of 277 cavalrymen were overwhelmed by about 1600 Sioux Indians, under SITTING BULL, and massacred to a man—not one spared to tell the tale.  The old chief, a year or two later, was asked at a conference the particulars, whereupon SITTING BULL replied, “I do not know where the Yellow Hair died.”

 

                Gen. TERRY, who commanded the forces of the expedition, in all amounting to about 1,400 infantry and cavalry, and against whose implied orders the attack had been made, arrived with the main body upon the scene a day later.  He ordered the burial of the slain, and in 1879 it was made a national cemetery.

 

                MATTHEW SIMPSON, D.D., LL.D., was born in Cadiz, 20th June, 1811, and died in Philadelphia, Pa., 18th June, 1884.  His father died when he was two years of age.  His uncle, from whom he was named, was a man of literary ability and gave his mind a literary bent.  He graduated at what is now Allegheny College, and at eighteen became a tutor.  He first began the practice of medicine; and then, at the age of twenty-two, entered the ministry, the Pittsburg Conference.  He preached first on the St. Clairsville Circuit; in 1837 became Vice-President and Professor of Natural Sciences of Allegheny College, and in 1839 was chosen President of Indiana Asbury (now De Pauw) University, Greencastle, which position he held for nine years and gained great popularity.

 

                Appleton’s “Cyclopædia of American Biography” says: “His eloquence made him in great demand on the pulpit and on the platform.  His personal qualities gave him an extraordinary influence over students, and made him efficient in raising money for the endowment of the college.  In 1844 he was elected to the General Conference, and in 1848 he was re-elected.  He appeared in 1852 in the conference as the leader of his delegation, and at this conference he was made bishop.”

 

                In 1857 he was sent abroad as a delegate to the English and Irish Conference of the Wesleyan connection, and was also a delegate to the World’s Evangelical Alliance which met in Berlin.

 

                His preaching and addresses made upon this tour attracted great attention, particularly his sermon before the alliance, which extended his fame as a pulpit orator throughout the world.  After its adjournment he travelled through Turkey, Palestine, Egypt and Greece.  In 1859 he removed from Pittsburg to Evanston, Ill., and became nominally President of Garrett Biblical Institute.  Subsequently he removed to Philadelphia.  His powers as an orator were displayed during the civil war in a manner that commanded the admiration and gratitude of the people.

 

                President LINCOLN regarded him as the greatest orator he ever heard, and at his funeral in Springfield Bishop SIMPSON officiated.  He made many addresses in behalf of the Christian Commission, and delivered a series of lectures that had much to do with raising the spirit of the people.  His official duties took him abroad in 1870 and 1875.  In 1874 he visited Mexico.  At the Ecumenical Council of Methodists, in London, he was selected by the representatives of all branches to deliver the opening sermon.  After the

 

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news of the death of President Garfield, he delivered an address at Exeter Hall.  He was selected by the faculty of Yale to deliver a series of addresses before the students of the theological department, which were published as “Lectures on Preaching” (New York, 1879).

 

                In later years his appearance was patriarchal.  His eloquence was simple and natural, but increasing in power from the beginning to the close.  It was peculiar to himself and equally attractive to the ignorant and the learned.  One of his natural advantages was his remarkable voice.  When he was at his best few could resist his pathetic appeals.  Though his eloquence is the principal element of his fame, he was a man of unusual soundness of judgment, a parliamentarian of remarkable accuracy and promptitude, and one of the best presiding officers and safest of counsellors.  He was present in the General Conference in Philadelphia in 1884.  Though broken in health, so as not to be able to sit through the sessions, his mind was clear and his farewell address made a profound impression.  Bishop SIMPSON published “Hundred Years of Methodism” (New York, 1876), and “Cyclopædia of Methodism” (Philadelphia, 1878, 5th ed. Revised 1882).  After his death a volume of his “Sermons” was edited by Rev. Geo. R. Crooks, D.D. (1885).  A window in his memory is to be placed by American admirers in City Road Chapel, London, where John Wesley preached.

 

                JOHN A. BINGHAM, late United States Minister to Japan, sometimes called “the silver-tongued orator,” and so long and highly eminent and useful in the councils of the nation, was born January 21, 1815, in Mercer, Pa.  In his childhood he resided four years in Ohio; then passed two years and a half in learning printing in Mercer; was then educated in the Mercer Academy and Franklin College, and in 1840 came to Ohio and followed the practice of the law.  In the Harrison campaign he took an active part as a Whig orator, and twice held public discussions with Edwin M. STANTON, having been challenged by him.

               

                In the National Whig Convention of 1848 he proposed a resolution which it was thought too dangerous to adopt, but which was the key-note to his subsequent course, viz.: “No more slave States; no more slave Territories; the maintenance of freedom where freedom is, and the protection of American industry.” He was first elected to Congress in 1854, and served in all sixteen years; in 1873 he was appointed by Grant Minister to Japan, where he resided until the advent of Mr. Cleveland’s administration.

 

                In the sixteen years of his service in Congress he served on the most important committees.  For four years he was chairman of the Judiciary Committee.  He was chairman of the managers on behalf of the House on the trial for the impeachment of President JOHNSON.  He was author of the first section to the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, save the introductory clause thereof.  He was appointed special judge-advocate for the trial of the assassin of Abraham LINCOLN.  He was given other important official trusts, spending in all eighteen years in Washington, giving unwearying labor to the nation in its most eventful period.  Besides his many speeches in Congress, he has spoken in half the States for “the Union and Constitution.”

 

            FREEPORT is eighteen miles southwest of Cadiz, on the C. L. & W. Railroad, and on a branch of the Tuscarawas river.  Newspaper: Press, independent, McMATH & WILLAIMS, editors and publishers.  Churches: one Methodist Episcopal, one Presbyterian, one Friends.  Population, 1880, 387.

 

            SCIO is on the P. C. & St. L. Railroad, nine miles north of Cadiz.  It is the seat of Scio College, E. J. MARSH, president.  Newspapers: Herald, independent, Herald Printing Company, editors and publishers; Collegian, students of Scio College, editors and publishers.  Churches: one Presbyterian, one United Presbyterian, one Methodist.  Bank: Scio (Hogue & Donaldson); R. S. Hogue, cashier.  Population, 1880, 509.

 

            BOWERSTON is on the P. C. & St. L. Railroad, eighteen miles northwest of Cadiz.  Newspaper: Gazette, independent, Charles G. ADDLEMAN, editor and publisher.  Churches: one Methodist, one United Brethren, one Lutheran.  Population about 500.

 

            JEWETT is on the P. C. & St. L. Railroad, seven miles north of Cadiz.  First house was built in 1803, by George Dowell.  The village was laid out in 1851, by John STALL, and called Fairview.  Name was changed to Jewett in 1881.  Churches: one Presbyterian, one Methodist Episcopal, one Lutheran Evangelical.  Population about 600.

 

            NEW ATHENS, on the St. Clairsville and Cadiz pike, seven miles south of Cadiz, is the seat of Franklin College.  Bank: John DUNLAP, Jr.  Churches: one Presbyterian, one United Presbyterian, one Protestant Episcopal.  School census, 1888, 156.

 

            DEERSVILLE is twelve miles west of Cadiz.  School census, 1888, 99.

 

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            HOPEDALE is six miles northeast of Cadiz.  It is the seat of Hopedale Normal College; president, W. G. GARVEY.  School census, 1888, 106.

 

            HARRISVILLE is ten miles southeast of Cadiz.  Churches: one United Presbyterian, one Methodist Episcopal, one Methodist Protestant.  School census, 1888, 143.

 

  

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