Page:Women of Ohio; a record of their achievements in the history of the state (Vol. I).djvu/30

26 and finally at the settlement 14 miles below, on the right bank of the Ohio, called Belpre.

As far as is known, all of the Rouse children survived their dreadful journey. What is more, they grew up healthy and happy and at least three of the girls — including Bathsheba, first Ohio school teacher — married men who became leaders in the Northwest Territory and known throughout the nation.

When MRS. SIMON KENTON, second wife of the Kentucky Indian hunter, (before her marriage the beautiful Elizabeth Jarboe), accompanied her husband to an isolated trading post near Springfield, Ohio, he was already famous. So much so that settlers, hunters, pioneers who, like Kenton, had been tragically unfortunate in obtaining right to the lands they had risked all to discover, established a beaten path to the Kenton doorway. They came — and stayed.

Nor was it for the wife of the popular General Kenton to betray that tradition of Kentucky hospitality which he carried with him across the Ohio. So Elizabeth endured in silence the greatest trial of any housewife — the dwindling of her family’s meager resources in ill judged hospitality.

Once the door of Mrs. Kenton’s cabin opened suddenly to admit a savage, stark naked and brandishing a tomahawk. Elizabeth did not quail. The Redskin then snatched up her eldest daughter and carried the child away. The child was returned. The mother was asked what punishment should be meted out to the Indian. “Nothing,” said Elizabeth, with grim philosophy, “Just so he will promise not to do it again.”

These few highlights, selected from innumerable such records, should illuminate the life led by the pioneer woman of Ohio in virtually every early settlement, from the mouth of the Muskingum to the mouth of the Big Miami, from what was to become the great midwestern city of Cincinnati to the little station on the Western Reserve that grew up to be the metropolis of Cleveland. This was their life. And this is the sort of women that many—not all, but astonishingly many— of them were.