Page:History of Richland County, Ohio.djvu/164

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��HISTORY OF OHIO.

��ernment amounted to 9,933,150 acres, of which amount, however, 3,569,314 acres, or more than one-third, was held by non-residents. Of the lands occupied by resident land-owners, there appear to have been 100,968 acres of first-rate, 1,929,600 of second, and 1,538,745 acres of third rate lands. At this period there were very few exports ft"om the farm, loom or shop. The people still needed all they produced to sustain themselves, and were yet in that pioneer period where they were obliged to produce all they wanted, and yet were opening new farms, and bringing the old ones to a productive state.

Kentucky, and the country on the Monongahela, lying along the western slopes of the Alleghany Mountains, having been much longer settled, had begun, as early as 1795, to send considerable quan- tities of flour, whisky, bacon and tobacco to the lower towns on the Mississippi, at that time in the possession of the Spaniards. At the French set- tlements on the Illinois, and at Detroit, were being raised much more than could be used, and these were exporting also large quantities of these materials, as well as peltries and such commodities as their nomadic lives furnished. As the Missis- sippi was the natural outlet of the West, any at- tempt to impede its free navigation by the various powers at times controlling its outlet, would lead at once to violent outbreaks among the Western settlers, some of whom were aided by unscrupulous persons, who thought to form an independent Western country. Providence seems to have had a watchful eye over all these events, and to have so guided them that the attempts with such objects in view, invariably ended in disgrace to their per- petrators. This outlet to the West was thought to be the only one that could carry their produce to market, for none of the Westerners then dreamed of the immense system of railways now covering that part of the Union. As soon as ship-building commenced at Marietta, in the year 1800, the farmers along the borders of the Ohio and Musk- ingum Rivers turned their attention to the culti- vation of hemp, in addition to their other crops. In a few years sufficient was raised, not only to furnish cordage to the ships in the West, but large quan- tities were worked up in the various rope-walks and sent to the Atlantic cities. Iron had been discovered, and forges on the Juniata were busy converting that necessary and valued material into implements of industry.

By the year 1805, two ships, seven brigs and three schooners had been built and rigged by the

��citizens of Marietta. Their construction gave a fresh impetus to agriculture, as by means of them the surplus products could be carried away to a foreign market, where, if it did not bring money, it could be exchanged for merchandise equally valuable. Captain David Devoll was one of the earliest of Ohio's shipwrights. He settled on the fertile Muskingum bottom, about five miles above Marietta, soon after the Indian war. Here he built a "floating mill," for making flour, and, in 1801, a ship of two hundred and fifty tons, called the Muskingum, and the brig Eliza Greene, of one hundred and fifty tons. In 1804, he built a schooner on his own account, and in the spring of the next year, it was finished and loaded for a voyage down the Mississippi. It was small, only of seventy tons burden, of a light draft, and intended to run on the lakes east of New Orleans. In shape and model, it fully sustained its name, Nonpa- reil. Its complement of sails, small at first, was completed when it arrived in New Orleans. It had a large cabin to accommodate passengers, was well and finely painted, and sat gracefully on the water. Its load was of assorted articles, and shows very well the nature of exports of the day. It con- sisted of two hundred barrels of flour, fifty barrels of kiln-dried corn meal, four thousand pounds of cheese, six thousand of bacon, one hundred sets of rum puncheon shooks, and a few grindstones. The flour and meal were made at Captain Devoll's floating mill, and the cheese made in Belpre, at that date one of Ohio's most flourishing agricultural dis- tricts. The Captain and others carried on boating as well as the circumstances'of the days permitted, fear- ing only the hostility of the Indians, and the duty the Spaniards were liable to levy on boats going down to New Orleans, even if they did not take it into their erratic heads to stop the entire navi- gation of the great river by vessels other than their own. By such means, merchandise was car- ried on almost entirely until the construction of canals, and even then, until modern times, the flat-boat was the main-stay of the shipper inhabit- ing the country adjoining the upper Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

Commonly, very little stock was kept beyond what was necessary for the use of the fiimily and to perform the labor on the farm. The Scioto Valley was perhaps the only exception in Ohio to . this general condition. Horses were brought by the emigrants from the East and were characteristic of that region. In the French settlements in Illi- nois and about Detroit, French ponies, marvels of

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