A Visit to Marietta

The Marietta Times, May 19, 1870

From the Jackson Standard, D. Mackley, Editor.

The convention met at ten o'clock and its proceedings were conducted in an orderly, business-like manner. The official proceedings will be found in another column.

At three o'clock, buggies arrived to take us on a little excursion. We first visited Marietta College. President Andrews is a very pleasant gentleman, and was very kind in taking us through the College buildings. The library is large and well selected. The rooms we visited contained some thirty-three thousand volumes. President Andrews told me that he is always anxious to receive donations of old books, old magazines. He said many of these are destroyed every year to get them out of the way, when they might be of much use as additions to the College library.

The cabinet of minerals is very interesting. So are the specimens of insects, &c. One thing interested me very much. This was the fragment of the meteor which fell in Morgan County [Muskingum County], May 1, 1860. This fragment weights 110 lbs. It is of a dark color and looks a good deal like a chunk of pig-iron.

I was at Berlin when this meteor passed through a small portion of our atmosphere. It was at midday, and it looked nearly as large and bright as the sun. I wrote a short account of it for the Cincinnati Commercial. Prof. Evans, then of Marietta College, seeing the account, corresponded with me, and he used by account of what I had seen in a pamphlet he afterwards wrote. Prof. Evans held that the main meteor was one-third of a mile in diameter and moved at the rate of, I think, seventeen miles per second.

The theory of Prof. Evans was that the meteor merely glanced through a small space of the earth's atmosphere and then moved off into space. The intense heat caused by friction in the atmosphere caused the outer surface to melt and scale off the main body. These fragments which fell to the earth are the broken pieces of these scales.

There are now three large College buildings, the third one being designed for the library exclusively. It is not yet finished.

From the College we went to the Children's Home. This is located on the east side of the Muskingum River, a mile or more above its mouth. It consists of over a hundred acres of land. The building was a farm house and is not fully adapted to the purpose for which it is now used. But the house and grounds are fine.

We had a good drink of Lemonade, when the children gave us apples, and then we visited the different rooms. In the first room were five little children, from two to five years of age. I noticed one little sick child sitting on its low seat, which warmed my deepest sympathies. It was pale and emaciated, its little hands appearing almost transparent. The development of its features showed a precocity almost startling. It was born in the Infirmary, and the ladies and gentlemen in charge informed us that they believed that its life had only been preserved thus far in consequence of the extreme care that had been taken of it. When I looked upon this patient, innocent, suffering child, born in the Infirmary, I was most forcibly reminded of Dickens' child of the Marshalsea - Little Dorrit.

We visited another room where there were some half dozen children of a larger size. Then we visited the school room. It was rather close and quite warm. A little boy was requested by one of the ladies in charge to sing. He sang an appropriate verse and was joined in the chorus by all the children. A little negro girl was then requested to sing a verse, and all the children joined in the chorus with her. One little negro boy was so sleepy that I thought evry minute that he would fall prostrate upon the floor. A little white boy was in nearly the same condition.

These children were all clean and neatly dressed. Many of them were as fine and intelligent looking children as you would see anywhere. There were fifty-six of them, and they are being sent two or three every day to the country, as good homes can be procured for them, and others are coming in daily. This is an institution organized under a general law of the State, but it is said to be the only one yet organized under this law. Those in charge appear to be thoroughly interested in the work they are engaged in, and they regard it not so much as a duty for which they are paid, as a Christian duty for which they expect a higher reward hereafter. This institution reflects great honor upon the State of Ohio for passing such a law, and upon the people of Washington County who have carried the law into practical operation. It is a great advance in the direction of a higher and nobler Christian civilization.

As we were leaving, these little waifs all came out, some three or four of them being of the lately despised African race. They clapped their little hands and cheered us. May God bless them.

As we returned to the city, we crossed the bridge and drove through Harmar and then back to the hotel. Our meeting at night was pleasant and agreeable. Too much smoking, but no drunkenness.

I had resolved to start home on Friday morning, but several citizens urged me to go out to Cow Run. My friend Stimson was particularly solicitous that I should go, and finally I consented.

We started at seven o'clock in buggies and express wagons and had nine miles to go. We went over the hills, a pretty rough country. Judge Chamberlain took me and Dumble of the Marietta Register, Chapman of the Pomeroy Telegraph, and McFarland of the Portsmouth Tribune. We arrived at Cow Run at ten o'clock. This is a small branch which empties into the Little Muskingum. The bottom is narrow, and steep hills arise on both sides. The derricks occupy a distance of half a mile up the bottom, and then up the little hollows on the right haand side as you go up the little creel. Then they are scattered up the steep hill on the right, to its very summit. Where there is a narrow branch, or level space on the steep hillside, there a derrick towers up. But they are the most numerous on the little bottom of Cow Run. They are thick as the chimneys in a closely built town. 

Did you ever see one of these derricks? Four sills, some twenty feet long, are framed together and made level. A piece of hewn timber, eight inches square and fifty feel long, is set upon each corner of this frame, and the tops are drawn in until they approach within eight feet of each other. They are then fastened by cross pieces and braces. In the center at the top is a pulley, over which a rope passes. One end is fastened to the top of the drill, and the other passes around a shaft. Upon this shaft is a drum. Around this drum passes a belt. The belt passes around another drum at the engine, and thus the rope is wound around the shaft and draws the drill up towards the pulley at the top of the derrick.

There are over one hundred derricks in view at one time. Derricks are being erected. They stand over new flowing wells. They stand over wells where the oil is being pumped up. They stand over weels which are being repaired and over abandoned wells. The wells all have names, such as "School House Well," "Eureka Well," "Grecian Bend Well," &c. A well was put down on the lot owned by the school district, and now the district has realized from it ten thousand dollars. They do not know what to do with the money. The party who bores pays the owner of the "territory" one-third of the oil as royalty, or rent.

A company over on the Little Muskingum, two miles north, forces water over one hill and to the top of another into two great tanks, and from these all the engines are supplied with fresh water. This company charges $25.00 per month to supply each engine, when it runs day and night. 

The wells now produce in the aggregate, 400 barrels crude of oil, worth eleven cents per gallon, or $4.50 per barrel. Pipes lead from the different wells to one point, and there a powerful little engine forces the oil through a pipe, over a high hill, five miles, to the Ohio River. A dial indicates the amount of pressure. When I saw it, 320 pounds to the inch was being put on. As the Ohio River must be lower than Cow run, I suggested to the engineer that a siphon might be used instead of an engine. But he said the friction of the oil in the pipe would render this impracticable.

I learned a great many interesting things about this oil business, but I fear I shall be tedious. I will, however, note a few more things about it.

The drill weighs from twelve to fourteen hundred pounds. Some have a number of wooden rods attached to them and then the rope. some have no rods, but the rope is fastened directly to the drill. These rods are thirty-six feet long and screwed together. The drill is worked the same as the pump. A cross beam is balanced in the center, and the engine at one end, and of course the other end of the beam has a corresponding motion. To this end is fastened the rope. So the drill is raised a foot or two and permitted to drop. A man keeps turning the drill, which is thus made to fall each time in a differen tposition, and thus the hole is made round. By this turning, a screw is all the time being operated at the upper end of the rope, and the drill is each time lowered, or screwed downwards, as the hole deepens.

The wells are from 200 to 1,600 feet deep. One is being drilled which is now over 1,600 feet deep, and it has cost $30,000.

Some wells will "flow," or throw up a barrel or two of oil every half hour. This may continue a month or more, when the periods will change, and the flow will be once an hour. After a month or so the period may again be changed. Sometimes the oil will be thrown fifty feel above the top of the derrick. Gas is almost constantly coming up. It can be seen like the glimmering of heat on a very warm day. This gas has a most pungent and disagreeable smell.

The oil does not look like I supposed it did. It is very thin and fluid and of a sky-blue-slate color. It is quite cold. It is very inflammable, and frequently the gas becomes ignited and flashes to the oil. Then there is an explosion, and the derricks, tank &c., are gone beyond redemption, as they are always thoroughly saturated with oil. It is too dangerous a place to have drunken men, and no one is permitted to sell whisky there.

The surface of the water in Cow Run is covered with floating oil and exhibits every color of the rainbow, as seen when light is resolved into its original elements by the prism. Sunlight has been decomposed by some unknown process in nature and stowed away deep in the bowels of the earth, perhaps millions of years before Moses was hidden in the bullrushes, or Abraham went forth to battle. And now it is brought forth, and from this long hidden light is made the rich and glorious aniline dyes, which far surpass the famous Eastner purple, and now the beautiful woman of 1870 is arrayed in silks, the colors of which far surpass the glories of the court of Solomon.

But I must let Cow Run slide.

And now a parting word to Marietta. It is a fine old place. I did not see a drunken man, nor a doggery, nor did I hear an oath sworn in the place. Of course there is vice and immorality there, and even crime. But these are rare. The people are refined. There is more aristocracy of learning than of wealth. The place is behind the age in some things. The streets are not graded, and when it is wet weather they are mud holes. 

I never saw so many trees in a city. Looking down from the top of the College buildings, one can scarcely see the houses. It looks like a dense forest. And what is more beautiful is, that the great bulk and body of these trees are maples. There are some elms and other trees, including evergreens. But then it is one great maple forest. I consider the American maple the most beautiful tree in the world. And the elm next. 

My old friend, Col. David Alban, drew a little on his imagination. He said that the whippoorwill could be heard in the heart of the city - that this lonely bird had never forsaken Marietta since it was originally settled in 1788. But he finally took that back and said that it might be on the hills back of the city where it could be heard.

I have left myself no room to speak of the many worthy men whom I met in Marietta. I will only mention one, the chairman of our evening meeting, S. S. Knowles, Esq. He is every way worthy, and I was gratified to hear that there is a strong inclination to send him to Congress. He is about the only man in Marietta who showed a decent respect to Mrs. Longley and Miss Bates when they were in the place.

 

The Rambles of a Day – The Thoughts of a Lifetime

The Marietta Register (semi-weekly), August 5, 1887

‘Tis the morning of the 30th of July and with diligence I am to seek the ground on Bear Run, Lawrence Township, chosen for to-day’s gathering. The circumstances made it natural that I should, as I drove along, think of the past dwellers by the road side.

As I enter my buggy I look across the way. Four brothers once were mine. The grave has them all. The playmates of my youth, our neighbors’ children, one by one have dropped by the wayside, and gone out of my sight.

I turn a corner. There lived my early school teacher, Wm. Slocomb, and just beyond, on the other side of the way, my Latin instructor and spiritual teacher, the Rev. L. G. Bingham. Across the square lived Royal Prentiss, the editor of the American Friend and Marietta Gazette of long years ago. Further on and yet within the corporation, were Michael Deterly and Robt. Williamson, both sturdy, trusted men. Outside the city limits and yet near my starting point, were the homes of Dr. Jonas Moore, Samuel Gates, Ebenezer Gates and such like men – all gone. Beyond the creek, the first house was the home of Isaac Maxon, for many years the editor of the Whig paper of early days. Then Stephen Hildreth’s and his son Calvin’s. Then the old homes of O. L. Recard and Zebulon Jennings. Each one of all these, receiving from me now but a passing remark, deserves at the hand of the historian each a chapter. Next we come to Rose’s Mill, on Little Muskingum. Who that ever knew them has forgotten Elisha Rose and his wife Rebecca? This mill, the second from the mouth of the creek, was one of the six that ground the grain and cut the logs of the early comers here.

Soon we find ourselves in Lawrence Township, the history of the erection of which is as follows: At the June session, in the year 1815, of the County Commissioners (the board consisted of the following members: Nathaniel Hamilton, Daniel Goodno and Henry Jolly, Esq.), on the petition of Nathaniel Mitchell, John Mitchell, Elisha Rose, John Sharp, and sundry other inhabitants of the Township of Newport, praying that a new town may be laid out and set off from the Township of Newport, it was:

Resolved by the board, that the tract of country contained within the following limits, viz: the whole of the original surveyed township number three in the 7th range, together with sections numbered 17, 18, 22, 23, 24, 28, 29, 30, 32, 34, 35, and 36 in the second township of the 7th range, be and the same is hereby established into an incorporated town, to be called and denominated Lawrence, and the inhabitants residing within said district are declared to be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of incorporated towns within this State. The electors within said town will meet at the house of John Mitchell on the second Saturday of July next, at 10 o’clock A.M., to elect township officers according to law.”

At the March (1816) session of the Commissioners, a petition to throw back all the above named territory except section 3, into Newport Township, signed by William Hill, Mathew Miner, Jasher Taylor, John Hill and others, was presented. A remonstrance, signed by Samuel Dye, James Mitchell, Ezekiel Dye and sundry other inhabitants of the town of Lawrence, was also considered and by vote of the Commissioners the lines of the town remained unchanged.

At a subsequent date, the territory south of the east and west line of section 3 was restored to Newport Township. The road which passes by Peter Becker’s (whose house is in Newport Township) soon crosses the west, north and south line of Lawrence Township and you find yourself among the citizens of that good old township, named after Commodore Lawrence, of deserved fame, acquired during the war with Great Britain in 1812. When the war of the Rebellion was upon us this grandly named old township was not forgetful of duty, but furnished two hundred men for the Union army. Of these, many went to return no more. The bodies of a few of the dead were sent home , but many were buried in far off fields. May ministering angels watch over their sleeping dust.

Lawrence Township, as now organized, embraces 36 sections of 640 acres each and consequently has within its limits twenty-three thousand and forty acres of land. I can distinctly remember when not one-third of this area was in the hands of the inhabitants, but was owned by the Government. I believe that now every forty acres has its owner and they chiefly residents of the township.

The wealth of the coal and oil in the bowels of the earth within the limits of the township no one can estimate. Millions of dollars have followed the search for oil alone, and new wells are constantly rewarding those who search.

Soon we pass the home of Joseph Caywood – one of nature’s noblemen. Thence to the place of Esq. Samuel Dye, the father of James H. and Jonathan Dye, of Marietta. I could write pages about his goodness and kindness as a neighbor. Everybody loved him. For years, without opposition, he was elected a Justice of the Peace. His kind heart often controlled his actions. I remember once when, as a magistrate, he held a claim against a neighbor for collection, he came to town and sold his last cow to raise money to pay it rather than, as he said, to take from his neighbor’s children the milk that nourished them. I care not what theologians say, but it seems to me “that such are of the kingdom of heaven.”

I could linger just here and beginning with this old man call around me the spirits of a large number of those who in early days lived in the cabins of Lawrence – but I must away. I reach the mouth of Bear Run, cross the bridge and find myself among improvements without number, where but a few years ago the wilderness was.

Derricks, many in number, tell the story of oil search. At no distant day I propose, with the excellent aid of my friend, Archie Dye, to write up the “Oil Excitement” of 1861 – ’62 – ’63 – ’64. And if he gives me in perfection all he knows of this, as his good wife and daughter did in the preparation of one of the best dinners I ever sat down to, the world will be amazed as well as amused. I must not dwell on this dinner, but I may be allowed to say who with me sat at the table. Forty or more years ago, Marietta had a Mechanic’s Lyceum – the membership made up chiefly of mechanics, but allowing a few who had not the good fortune to have a trade to enjoy its privileges. One of the active, useful members of that club was Thomas Clogston. I remember him well. Outside of the Lyceum and the trade bench, he was a power; his example, his life, pure and noble, aided in building up good morals and intelligence. In the midst of his great influence for good he was cut down, and in the Mound Cemetery at Marietta you read: “J. Thomas Clogston, died June 28, 1846, aged 35 years, 1 month and 21 days.”

I often met and took council with him, but death separated us and I soon, in the hurry of life, lost sight of his family. At this dinner table, after the lapse of 40 years, I once more saw his good wife, and two ladies whom I here met proved to be the little girls that I oft-times saw seated upon their father’s knee.

Pic-nics, harvest homes, of this day, take the place of log rollings and corn husking of other days. They are all much alike, made up chiefly of the young who mean to have a good time. The gathering this day was like all others of the kind. Everybody enjoyed it.

The drive from Archie’s Dye’s to Marietta up the hill along the ridge and down to Eight Mile, brings you in sight of the knobs of East Lawrence and West Independence and of the homes chiefly on high airy places of the dwellers in this the most beautifully picturesque part of Washington county.

I can’t dwell to tell you of the clever fellows I met and what they are all about. Gracy, McGee, Gilbert, Noland, and a host of others living hereabouts are not living in vain. I left them all feeling to cry out: “Let fate do her worst, there are relics of joy, Bright dreams of the past which she cannot destroy.

G. M. W. [George Morgan Woodbridge]

Soldier Burials

The Marietta Register (Semi-Weekly), June 7, 1887

At Yankeeburg Graveyard, Newport Township:

Revolutionary War
Oliver Woodward

War of 1812
Isaac Lackey
Jotham Wright
Austin Peckens
Joseph Johnson
Daniel Dick

War of the Rebellion
John Mahoney
Taylor Mahoney
Alfred Hemeger

Lower Newport:

Stephen Osborn - War of 1812

Newell's Run:

William Vanway - War of the Rebellion

Union Chapel, Lawrence Township:

Jacob Newland - War of 1812
Henry Newland - War of the Rebellion

Valley Graveyard, Marietta Township:

Col. Van West - War of 1812
John Stephenson - War of 1812
John Miller
Sereno Dye
Joseph Snider
Mathew Thorniley
John McCloskey
Thos. Alcock
James Bean
John Stucky
Owen Miller