Page:History of Richland County, Ohio.djvu/247

 HISTORY OF RICHLAND COUNTY.

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��to see it peopled by its thousands ; its well- cultivated farms take the place of its dense forests; its thousands of cattle and other domes- tic animals, in place of its wolves and bears ; its beautiful towns and farmhouses, in place of the wigwam of the savage. He was a bo}' of nine or ten when this cabin was erected, but remembers it well, and sa^'s it was a little log pen, with a roof over it ; a wide fireplace occu- P3'ing nearly all of one end, with a stick and mud chimney running up on the outside, no floor but mother earth; windows made of a little twelve-l)y-tweh'e piece of oiled paper, put in where a log was sawed oft' for the purpose. It contained but a single room with a loft over- head ; was made of rough, round beech logs with the bark on ; chinked and daubed with sticks and mud to keep out the wintry blast. The door was so low that a man of ordinary height must stoop to enter ; but the latch-string always hung out, for these pioneers were men of large and open hearts, warm hands, and no stranger was turned away empty. Indian or white man, it mattered not. he was welcome to unroll his blanket by the great log fire, and par- take of the homeh" fare of venison and corn bread, served upon a table of puncheons.

The Newmans lived in this little hut aljout two years, when, by hard work, having accum- ulated some means, they began to feel aristo- cratic, and erected a new cabin. This cabin is also shown in the sketch. It was of hewed logs, was built about eight or ten feet from the old one, and a covered porch extended from the old one over tliis space. By the time they were ready to erect this larger and better cabin the}- had a saw-mill in operation, and this enabled them to put a board floor in it, and. as it was a half-story higher than the old one, a board loft was put in, which was reached by a ladder and used as a sleeping-room. The doors and win- dow frames were made of sawed lumber ; the logs were nicely hewed and fitted, and they were able to procure glass for windows. The

��usual gi-eat cheerful fireplace occupied the end, and the never-to-be-forgotten iron crane was suspended therein, with its numerous hooks upon which to hang the iron cooking kettles.

It was not often that an early settler of Rich- land County was found who could afford to have a cabin like this hewed-log one of the Newmans. The earliest settlers often lived for weeks and months, with their families, in what was called a  pole cabin ;"' that is, a cabin made of small poles and sticks, and covered with Ijrush and bark. These could be erected by the head of the fiimily, without assistance, in twenty-four or fort^-eight hours, and during the summer sea- son were not unpleasant habitations. Hundreds of these brush cabins were erected. The set- tlers generally arrived in the spring, and the first consideration was to put in a crop of corn or wheat, and establish a  truck " patch ; there- fore they put off building their permanent cabins until fall, or until the spring crop was attended to, and in the mean time these tempo- rary brush structures were erected to shelter the family. Sometimes the}- brought tents which they pitched upon the bank of some beautiful stream, and lived in them until they could make a little clearing in the gi-eat woods, and put in the spring crop ; at other times they camped out without shelter except such as their covered wagons aflforded. They did their cook- ing by a fire in the open air and used their wagons for sleeping-rooms.

It maj^ be imagined what these five pioneers at the Newman caliin did during the long sum- mer, autumn and winter of 1807, occupying their solitary cabin far in the deep, dark woods, surrounded by wild animals and wilder men. There was much more to do than could be ac- complished in one season ; indeed, years must elapse — years of the hardest kind of pounding — before a home could be shaped out of this wil- derness. Catharine Brubaker, the pioneer woman of the county — the first wliite woman to settle in Richland County, so far as known —

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