Page:History of Richland County, Ohio.djvu/277

 HISTORY OF RICHLAND COUNTY.

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��These meetings from year to year are very interesting. The gray-haired veterans are dropping into the grave one by one. and the time cannot be far distant when all those who first set foot on the soil of Richland County Avill have passed away forever. So it has ever
 * )een — so it will ever be.

'•Time rolls his ceaseless course. The race of yore Who danced our infancy upon their knee, And told our marveling boyhood legend's store, Of their strange ventures happed Ly land and sea, How are they blotted from the things that be! How few, all weak and withered, of their force. Wait, on the verge of dark eternity, Like stranded wrecks, the tide returning hoan-e. To sweep them from our sight I Time rolls his cease- less course."

At the pioneer meeting in 1878. Gen. R. Brinkerhoff delivered an address which seems so pertinent to the ol)jects of this chapter that it is inserted in full :

" We of this generation are most happy to meet so many of the generation which preceded us. We rejoice to know that so many of the pioneers of Richland County yet remain, and we extend to one and all a cordial welcome.

■It is now seventy years since the first white man made his home in Richland County, and the dozen years which succeeded his coming are those which Ave regard as ' the pioneer times.' During those years, the forests were subdued, roads were opened, houses were built, farms were inclosed, and the wilderness ceased to be the abode of wild animals and wilder men, and Richland County l)ecame the seat of an organized and permanent civilization. After 1820, the special trials and hardships of a pioneer life were ended, and society was orderh' and comfortable. It is this heroic age, from 1808 to 1820, inclusive, that we celebrate to- da}-. It is an age of scanty records, and yet the deeds of those who lived in it were more influential in shaping the civilization which fol- lowed than all the other years combined. Pioneer times tire tbvnitains in the wilderness

��from which rivers are formed, and whose waters through all the coming ages will flow in the channels first selected.

•■ Richland County to-day. with slight varia- tions, is what the pioneers made it, and it will thus continue through the generations to come, until by some catastrophe, chaos and the Avilder- ness shall return again.

" That I do not exaggerate in this estimate of pioneer times, let us look at the facts of the case in the State of Ohio.

"1. Our constitution and laws, with all their peculiar differences from other States, are sub- stantially what the pioneers made them, and, labor as we will, it is impossible to secure any large . modifications. Take, for example, the restrictions upon our (xovernors, and the foi-m of our courts — our best thinkers belieAC they ought to be changed, and a change has been attempted by constitutional amendments, but the people promptly vote them down exery time.

" 2. Our political divisions into counties and townships, with all their distinctive names and local combinations which so powei-fully affect the daily associations and life of our people, were all substantially the work of the pioneers. The boundaries of Richland County, it is true, were altered in 1845 and 1848 by the creation of Ashland and Morrow Counties, but it was a temporary aberration which the people them- selves of the districts cut oft' would to-day gladly rectify if they could.

•' 3. The location of cities, eounty seats, vil- lages and roads, in which and through which the public and private life of our people must continue fin- the most part to manifest itself, remains almost entirely as the pioneers decreed. Suppose, for example, that Mansfield had been located at Campbells Mill. Avhere James Hedges and Jacob Newman first designed and staked it out, who can tell what its population and local life would have been to-day ? Supposing those two men had been New England Yankees.

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