Page:History of Richland County, Ohio.djvu/453

 HISTORY OF RICHLAND COUNTY.

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��friends that the brutes would partly climb the fence and squeal for the food she was cooking for herself Finall}-, she decided to be further from the road, and went to work to gather stone for a foundation of the house she proposed to build. She put up the walls with her own hands, and when they were finished, a carpen- ter was employed to erect an ancient log cabin. The chimney she put in herself She owned no furniture except an old chest, in which she kept a few bedclothes, which her mother, probably, assisted her to make. The cooking w^as done in a fireplace of her own build, and the bread she ate was baked in an oven of her own make. During the early part of her hermitical life, she subsisted on food prepared in ordinary ways, and when she agreed to board persons wiiom she employed, her table was as well furnished as that of her neighbors ; but, in the decline of life, she gave waj- to the most barbarous methods of providing food. The grain which tenants raised on her farm was usually sold, and she would go over the field after the crop was gathered and pick up what was needed to sat- isfy her wants. One of her neighbors visited her once, early in the spring, and she was found gathering " greens," the onl}' article of diet in her possession, and she allowed " it didn't make bad eatin' either." Mr. Gr. went to her house one time, when the weather was inclement. She was busy mashing wheat between two stones. Corn was ground in a similar way. A large hearth was connected with the fire-place, and when she wished to sleep, one corner was swept clean, and she would lie down upon the floor, with her feet toward the fire ; a stone served the purpose of a pillow, and boards were used as comfortables and quilts, not for the ostensi- ble purpose of keeping the cold away, but as a shield against wind and rain. She had no bed, and her few bedclothes were devoted to the better purpose of keeping the hay drj- in the barn and in the curing piles in the field. In the summer, she usually went to mill herself, carry-

��ing half a bushel of grain on her shoulder. In the winter, when the gi'ound was covered with snow, a hand-sled was brought into requisition. Her cabin finally fell into decay ; she occupied it many years after the roof was so wretched that there was only one spot under it that she could keep dry when it rained.

It would be doing injustice to the memory of tMs peculiar woman not to add that she was not of the mean, miserh' nature which gi-asps for possessions, without any respect to the rights of propert}', justice and moralit}- ; but, on the contrar}-, she exercised the most delicate discernment of justice as she understood it ; was conscientious to the last, and scrupulously honorable in all her business I'elations. As an example of her nice regard of equity, this will answer : Her fire went out in the old chimney, and the house was destitute of matches ; she went to a neighbor to get fire ; she carried an armful of wood to pay for it from her own place. It is not known that she loved more than one person, and her father spurned his presence on account of an expression that he carelessly made when his associates were jest- ing him about '-his girl." He brought an apple from the orchard, and the lioys accused him of getting the apple on purpose to see '• Kat}-." He replied that he did not care so much for " Kat}" " as for her property. In speaking of herself, she always used the plural pronoun, "We are well ; we have plenty to eat," and like expressions. She was robbed, in 1865, of over $200. A person was arrested and tried, but he was discharged. Xo clew was ever obtained of the" guilt}- part}-. She died at the residence of a brother, near Fredericktown, a few years ago. Several years previous, she went blind, which necessitated her being taken from the home in the woods before her departure to the final rest.

George William Kincaid, a soldier of 1812, resides with his son-in-law, on a lot of the northwest corner of Section 29. He is the

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