Page:History of Richland County, Ohio.djvu/570

 •<< K

��^

��558

��HISTOKY OF RICHLAND COUNTY

��Rev. Mathews was present and aided in the work.

In 1822 or 1823, there was a division in this church, not on account of any difficulty among the members, but the church had grown rapidly, and a number of memliers desired to Avithdraw, feeling themselves sufficiently strong in num- bers, and organize a United Presbyterian Church. This they did, and afterward Ixiilt a house of worship, about two miles southwest of the old log church. Rev. Arbuthnot and Rev. Johnson were among the first meml^ers of this church, and the principal movers were Daniel Gunsaulus, William Bodley, Daniel Kirkpat- rick and others. The house was a small frame, located on Section 13, and is not now in use, the organization having gone out of existence.

The first two or three years after the first set- tlement here, schools were taught in private houses, and were " select," that is, no puljlic funds were used in their maintenance, there be- ing none to use. The first schoolhouse was erected in 1818, in time for the winter school of 1818-19. It was of logs, and stood upon the land of Daniel Kirkpatrick, Section 8. Robert ^McKelvey taught here the first winter, and John Webber the second.

This township came very near not having a town within its present limits, the present vil- lage of Plymouth being about equally divided by the northern line of the township and county, the northern part lying in New Haven Town- ship, Huron Count}-.

There is this somewhat remarkable fact about the early history of the place — it was a town before any one thought of laying out or plat- ting it. It seemed to be the natural place for a town, these things being governed by a law which is secret and subtle in its operations, and not generally understood, yet an}- violation of it brings sure and certain punishment, as has again and again been demonstrated by the defunct villages all over the country. Generally, towns are planted, as it were, nourished and

��made to grow ; but Plymouth, or Paris, as it was first called, sprang up, grew and developed, like a mushroom in the wilderness. It is lo- cated on Beall's military road. Beall moved very slowly in those da^-s : first, he must cut his way through a dense forest, and, sec- ondly, he desired to keep between the settle- ments and the Indians of the Northwest. His movement was made immediately after Hull's surrender, when it was feared that a British and Indian army would make a raid across the State of Ohio. He took the route that seemed to him best calculated for his purpose, and this happened to be the old Wj-andot trail, before mentioned. Gen. Beall moved slowly and camped frequentl}', and it is not unlikely that after leaving Camp Council (referred to in an- other chapter), he went into camp again upon reaching the headwaters of the Huron River, at this point, and remained in camp here several days. A year after the war, when Abraham Trux and his companions came along this trail, hunting new homes, the}' came upon this spot, where Beall had camped, and cleared off a few acres of ground, as he would naturally do, and did do at every camping place. They thought this would be a good place to stop and build their cabins. The}- were hunters and back- woodsmen ; game was plenty and the country beautiful. They were likely soon to have neighbors, for this open military road would soon become a highway for the incoming emi- grants. They were not mistaken ; neighbors came to them rapidly, and, within the next ten years, sixteen log-houses sprang up where the village of Plymouth now stands, and as yet, no town was laid out. Besides, the country was being rapidly settled. The emigrants dropped into the little town one by one as the years went by, and, thinking the country delightful, went into the neighborhood and located lands. Many of these were Connecticut Yankees, with land warrants in their pockets, which called for a certain amount of land on the Connecticut

��"71

��V

�� �