Page:History of Richland County, Ohio.djvu/622

610 hundred and ten feet, and then abandoned the enterprise.

The wooded portions of the hill are covered with a dense growth of chestnut, hickory and oak timber. There are men living on the hill now who can remember when the tall chestnut trees — now 100 feet high — were no thicker than a man's thumb. When the aborigines held possession, they burned the forests over annually to prevent the undergrowth from obstructing the distant view of game. Heavy timber would not be affected by the fire, but the land was no doubt impoverished by consuming the decaying vegetable matter.

In early times, there was a saline spring about half a mile west of Windsor Station, which spread out over a low, flat bottom-ground, forming an extended marsh, which the early settlers called "The Deer Lick." This was a place of great resort, both of the Indians and also of the eary hunters, to kill deer. It was once owned In' Jacob Gardiner, a son of Archibald Gardiner, the first settler in those parts. Gardiner was one of the best riflemen in the country. He made a small pen of poles, at a convenient angle, covered it with bark and brush, in which he would secrete himself and await the approach of the deer, which resorted here generally by moonlight, in the autumn of the year, to lick at the saline fountain. Many were the splendid specimens that were dragged out of that marsh.

On the east side of the hill there is a picturesque looking cavern, that was called "The Snake Den," under whose massive rocks the rattlesnakes took refuge and propagated their fearfully hated race. John Dickson once improvised a party of snake hunters and made a raid on the den, killing seventy-five and wounding others.

In the first stages of its settlement, progress was necessarily very slow. Things did not go by steam in those days. The early settler labored under immense disadvantages and crushing embarrassments. When the scanty supply of flour or meal ran out, he must drop his ax or plow, and travel perhaps ten or twenty miles to a mill, or five to a blacksmith shop. When his salt ran out, he must go or send seventy miles, and pay $10 a barrel for it. Instead of the shapely plank to lay his cabin-floor, he must split up huge trees and hew puncheons for a floor. Then rushing waters must be bridged, swamps must be corduroyed, before travel was possible. Under such difficulties, it would be wonderful if education was not neglected - schoolhouses dispensed with for some time. Yet, considering these disadvantages, our fathers exhibited a praiseworthy energy in that direction, and schools were inaugurated in rude log cabins, and the most erudite of the settlers chosen as a teacher.

Among the first enterprises was the manufacture of whisky; corn, being very low in price, could be made into whisky and sold at 25 cents a gallon. It constituted the chief article of commerce in those days, considerable being sent to Michigan, and was considered "legal tender " in any kind of trade. A few yards from where Windsor Station now stands, a distillery was run by a Deacon Williamson, who came from Jefferson County, Ohio, in 1817. The good Deacon, who was indeed a worthy man, would, after putting his buzzing, seething enginery in operation, take his seat at the place where the precious fluid made its exit, and, rubbing his hands together, would begin to sing — "Come, Thou fount of every blessing."

There was one or two more in the township, one of which was run by Jacob Osbun, near the infirmary, but was soon abandoned. The state of public sentiment changing on that matter, as soon as the temperance agitation commenced, yet how harmless, comparatively speaking, was the liquor manufactured then to the poisonous "rot-gut" sent out by the millions of gallons at the present day.