Page:History of Richland County, Ohio.djvu/245

 HISTORY OF RICHLAND COUNTY.

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��CHAPTER XXiy.

EARLY SETTLEMENTS AND THEIR EXTENSION.

The Territory of Richland Count/ — First Settler and Settlement — The Newmans and Brubakers — The Newman Cabins — "Pole" Cabins — Catharine Brubaker — First Saw-Mill — Arrival of Michael Newman — The Fountain Cabin — Early Settlers on the Black Fork — First Gbist-Mill — Laying out a Town — Jacob Newman — Michael and "Mother" Beam — Second Settlement in the County — The McClueb Settlement — First Roads — Settlements in 1809 — Settlements in 1810 and 1811 — Opening of the County by the Army in 1812 — Settlements in 1814 and 1815 — Wagon Trains and other Means of Transportation — Products and Prices — "Taverns'" and Towns — Social Matters — Ring Fights — Wood Choppings, Quiltings, Corn Huskings, etc. — Wolf Pens — First Temperance Society — The Irish Schoolmaster — Fourth of July and Militia Musters — Ax Presentation — Agricultural Statistics — Health — Congressmen from Richland.

��" Should auld acquaintance be forgot An' never brought to min' ? " — Vld Son//.

" 1 hear the tread of pioneers, Of nations yet to be, The first low wash of waves where soon Shall roll a human sea." — Whidier.

WHEN Gen. James Hedges was sent West to " spy out the land." the territory now embraced in Fairfield. Licking, Knox. Richland, and parts of Morrow and Ashland Counties, con- stituted one count}', called Fairfield, with the county seat at Lancaster. But few settlers were

��man. Several white men were here before Jacob Newman, and some of them became, afterward, permanent settlers. Gen. Hedges himself was here a year or more before Newman, and after- ward became a permanent resident of Mansfield, but he was not here as a settler in 1807, when Jacob Newman came— he was simply in the em- ploy of the Government as surveyor : and the same luay be said of his employes. Thomas Green, who established the Indian village of Greentown. might have been called the first set-

��then in Knox and Licking (1805-6), and none i tier in Richland County, had he been consid-

��whatever in the others. This territory was then covered thickly with the original forest, and was the favorite himting-grounds of the Indian tribes of the Northwest. Hedges began the survey in 1806. and in February, 1808. "Old Richland ' came into existence, not as a county proper, but as a township called '' Madison," not having a sufficient number of votes within its limits to en-

��ered a settler at all in the proper sense of that term ; but. although here years before Mr. Hedges, he Avas looked upon as a renegade, and not a settler, though he lived many years at Greentown, and his name is perpetuated in the history of that village, and the name of the township, which is now Avithin the limits of Ashland County. Other renegade white men,

��title it to a county organization. It therefore { may, and probably did, occupy the village tem-

��remained under the jurisdiction of Knox Count}' until 1813, and included nearly- all of Ashland, and part of Morrow, within its limits. The ques- tion of who was the first permanent white settler within this territory, has Ijeen settled beyond any reasonable doubt. The man was Jacob New-

��porarily. Just what date A])raham Baughman and John Davis came, has not been ascertained ; but the}' came to the neighborhood of Green- town at a Aery early date : it might have been before 1807. V)ut there is no evidence of it. They are mentioned in Knapp's history as

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