Page:History of Richland County, Ohio.djvu/253

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��HISTORY OF RICHLAND COUNTY.

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��• Jonathan Prosser jumped off his horse and told Brodie he was going to whip liim. I saw there was to he a figlit. so I and 83'lvenus Day mounted a big stump on the square to see the fun. A crowd gathered and joined hands, forming a ring around the champions. Pi'osser and Brodie stepped into this ring, stripped and prepared for battle. They looked like giants.

•' The fight soon commenced, and was going on in due order, according to the rules of the ring, when suddenly Bill Slater, who was out- side, made a rush to break through the ring. As he came up, Burrell let go and knocked him down like a l)eef I thought he was dead.

•• The ring was re-formed, and the light con- tinued as before. Pretty soon, however, Slater came to, and, raising up, caught Burrell l)y the leg, threw him down. and. getting on top of him, began pounding him. This brought on a general fight, and all hands went in with a will. The result was, the Clearforkers came out ahead."'

The early settlers were a rough, hardy set of backwoodsmen; and, if they were always ready for a fight, the}' were also always ready to help each other on any and all occasions, and for this purpose would put themselves to great in- convenience and go great distances. Did one of them want a cabin raised, he had only to let his neighbors (and all were neighbors who lived within a circle of five or ten miles) know they were wanted on a certain day, and they would be there, the only compensation asked being a generous supply of whisk}-.

Log-rollings were almost an every-day occur- rence; every settler would have one or more of these gatherings every 3'ear. Settlers would come for miles around, with their handspikes, oxen and axes; the logs were cut, hauled to- gether and piled in great heaps, to be set on fire after drying. The younger members of the community, girls and boys, piled the brush and smaller sticks in immense heaps; and boys, not very old, can remember when these heaps were

��set on fire at night, and how all the young peo- ple for miles around gathered, and played '•goal ■' and "round-town"' by the light of the cracking brush.

Then there were • wood-choppin"s "" and •• cpiilt- in's,"" where everybody, old and young, would go — the men with their teams and axes, the women with their needles. Aunt and Uncle Somebody would get wood enough in a few hours, delivered at their cabin door, to keep the great fireplace roaring the whole winter; and enough quilts and things to keep them warm in spite of the snow that drifted through the clapboard roof upon their beds. The de- lightful part came in the evening, when the older people went home, and the younger danced the happy hours of the night away to the music of the violin and the orders of some amateur cotillion caller.

The red man of the forest was often the silent and amazed spectator of these happy gather- ings. In the simplicity of his heart, he did not dream the white people were •' like the leaves of the forest," and that the}- would soon over- run and possess all the soil that for centuries had been the hunting-grounds of his tribe. He could not realize the fate that awaited him, so beautifully expressed in Longfellow's verse —

" Wrapt in thy scarlet blanket, I see thee stalk through

the city's Narrow and populous streets, as once by the margins

of rivers Stalked those birds unknown, that have left us only

their footprints. What, in a few short years, will remain of thy race but

the footprints?"

In later years, when Johnny Appleseed's or- chards began to bear fruit, ■' parin" bees ' were in order, and also " corn-huskin's."' These were gotten up on the principle that ■• many hands make light work," and, in addition to the work accomplished, they furnished excuses for social gatherings. Fashionable calls, were, of course, unknown; work was the order of the day, and. all feeling the necessity of continual labor, the}-

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