Centennial History of Columbus and Franklin County. William Alexander Taylor
The future historian must answer this question.
The First Political Millennium.
This condition arrived in 1840 and continued throughout the presidential campaign of that year. It was hoe cake, the coon skin and hard cider for the present—"Two dollars a day and roast beef" for the future. The hoe cake, the coon skin and the hard cider came all right. The two dollars a day and roast beef did not appear in a well-defined form, but the people, without much regard to party divisions, did help to send one of Ohio's grandest and most patriotic citizens to the presidential chair—the heroic figure who most largely, from his headquarters on the west side of the river, directed the western and northern campaigns in the war of 1812, sometimes in personal command on the firing line, and whose military genius is not yet fully appreciated, whose achievements as a statesman were cut short by the untimely hand of death.
The First Paper Mill.
The first paper mill was erected in 1839-40 by Henry Roedter and John Siebert, a mile or two above the upper end of Franklinton, where they for some time carried on the paper making business. It did not. however, succeed well, and Roedter soon passed out of the concern and removed to Cincinnati. It was then for a time owned and worked by Siebert and Ernst Frankenberg, and succeeded no better. It then passed into the hands of Asahel Chittenden, who removed the machinery to a new brick building, erected for that purpose, just above the National road bridge in Columbus, where it was worked for some time by J. L. Martin and R. H. Hubbell, and then by William Murphy until it was destroyed by fire in 1848. It was then rebuilt and worked by Mr. A. B. Newburgh until the fall of 1849, when it finally closed its business. The same building was afterward converted into a machine shop, owned by Messrs. Swan and Davis, and in July, 1854, it was again destroyed by fire—building, machinery and all.
The First Newspaper.
The first newspaper in Franklin county was established at Worthington by Colonel James Kilbourne, grandfather of Colonel James Kilbourne, the present Columbus manufacturer, in 1811, and named the Western Intelligencer. In 1814 the paper was removed to Columbus, and it finally evolved into the Ohio State Journal of the present day. A full account of that evolution and the evolution of the Press Post, along with the rise and fall of a long line of newspapers down to the present time, finds a conspicuous place elsewhere in these volumes.
The First Turnpike.
The Columbus and Sandusky Turnpike was the first joint stock company road constructed, any part of which was in Franklin county. On the 31st day of January, 1826, an act was passed by the legislature incorporating John Kilbourne, Abram I. McDowell, Henry Brown, William Neil, Orange Johnson, Orris Parish and Robert Brotherton, of Franklin county, and nineteen others, named in the act and residing along the line of the road in and about Delaware. Bucyrus and Sandusky, and their associates, by the name of "The Columbus and Sandusky Turnpike company," with a capital of one hundred thousand dollars, with power to increase the same to two hundred thousand dollars: the stock divided into shares of one hundred dollars each; the company to be governed by a board of nine directors.
The charter was accepted by the. company, and by an act of Congress passed March 3, 1827, there was thirty-one thousand eight hundred and forty acres of land given to the state of Ohio in trust for the use of the said company, to aid them in the construction of the road. Without unnecessary delay the road was surveyed and located. Colonel Kilbourne was the surveyor and Orange Johnson, Esquire, was one of the locating commissioners and the principal agent for the company from first to last. The road was nearly eight years in constructing and was finished in the fall of 1834. It is one hundred and six miles in length, from Columbus to Sandusky, and cost seventy-four thousand three hundred and seventy-six dollars, being an average cost of a little over seven hundred and one dollars per mile. The charter required that at least eighteen feet in width should be made "an artificial road, composed of stone, gravel, wood or other suitable materials, well compacted together, in such manner as to secure a firm, substantial and even road, rising In the middle with a gradual arch." Upon a proper construction of this clause has hung all the troubles between the road company and the traveling public. The company seem to have supposed that a properly formed clay road would meet the requirements of the charter, while the public seem to have expected a stone or graveled road. The charter required that the governor should, at the proper time, appoint an agent to examine the road and report his opinion in writing to the president of the company, whether the same be completed agreeably to the provisions of the charter: and Nathan Merriman was appointed the agent for that purpose, and he reported "that he had examined the road and that, in his opinion, the same was completed agreeably to the provisions of the act incorporating said company." And thereupon the company erected their gates and exacted toll from those traveling the road. The road was quite an important public improvement at that time, but it was only a clay or mud pike, and in the spring and wet seasons of the year it was in places almost impassable; and to be obliged to pay toll at such times was grievously complained of and the gates occasionally torn down: but the agent of the company would immediately re-erect them. The subject was finally brought before the legislature and on the 28th of February, 1843, the act incorporating the company was unconditionally repealed; and it was further provided that it should not be lawful thereafter for said company to erect or keep up any gate or collect any tolls on the road. At the same session, in March, 1843, commissioners were appointed for that purpose, who surveyed and laid out a state road from Columbus to Sandusky upon the bed of the turnpike; and on the 12th of March, 1845. an act was passed establishing the same a public highway. Until this time the toll gates had been kept up and toll received, notwithstanding the repeal of the charter. But immediately after the passage of this act the gates on the road were torn down by an excited populace and never more erected. There was but one gate on this road within the bounds of Franklin county, and that was about two miles north of Columbus. The company claim that these acts of the legislature were unconstitutional; that their road had been made according to the provisions of the charter, and relied most particularly upon the decision of the state agent, who had formally accepted the road, and they kept applying regularly to each successive legislature for relief.
At the session of 1843-4 a committee, of which Dr. S. Parsons was chairman, reported in favor of the road company conveying to the state all their rights, interests and privileges in the road, and that the state pay the stockholders severally the amount of their stock in state bonds, and that the road be declared one of the public works of the state and placed under the control and supervision of the board of public works.
In 1847, by a resolution of the legislature, the subject was referred to the attorney general (Henry Stanberry, Esquire), and in his report he did not directly give an opinion on the constitutionality of the repeal, but says: "I am of opinion that a wrong has been done the company," etc. At the session of 1856-7 a bill passed the senate to authorize the company to bring suit against the state for injustice done in the repeal of the charter; but the bill was lost in the house and the project was never revived.
The Columbus and Worthington Plank Road or Turnpike, the Columbus and Portsmouth Turnpike, the Columbus and Harrisburg Turnpike, the Columbus and Johnstown Turnpike Road, the Columbus and Sunbury Turnpike and Plank Road, the Columbus and Granville Plank Road or Turnpike.
The Columbus and Groveport Turnpike, the Cottage Mills and Harrisburg Turnpike, the Franklin and Jackson Turnpike, the Columbus and Lock win (Lockbourne) Plank Road, the Clinton and Blendon Plank road, and other state and county highways which radiated from Columbus in all directions between 1826 and 1856, indicated how securely the city was attracting to herself the great possibilities incident not only to her outlying townships, but the adjoining counties east, west, north and south, two or three tiers deep with the great National Road bisecting the state east and west from Virginia to Indiana and the west and the great State Road—the first above named—bisecting it north and south, from Sandusky to Portsmouth, from Lake Harbor to navigable rivers, crossing at right angles under the shadow of the dome of the capitol.
Originally all these were toll roads, and one by one were bought by the county and the cost of purchase assessed against the abutting farm owners within prescribed limits, the last toll road disappearing about 1891-2. Free turnpikes, with the mile limit on either side, has given the country a good highway system, touching almost