Centennial History of Columbus and Franklin County. William Alexander Taylor
of the town council.
Some of the Original Bidders.
There are now (in 1858) but two men remaining in Columbus who were here at the sale of lots in 1812 and purchased property, and have remained citizens of the place ever since, viz: Messrs. Jacob Hare and Peter Putnam, and each one still owned the lot he purchased at that time, over forty-five years before. Among the first settlers, however, were George McCormick, George B. Harvey, John Shields, Michael Patton, Alexander Patton, William Altman, John Collett, William McElvain, Daniel Kooser, Christian Heyl, Jarvis Pike, Benjamin Pike, George Pike, William Long, Townsend Nichols, and Dr. John M. Edmiston. Dr. Edmiston was the first physician to locate in the new town—Drs. Parsons and Ball practiced in Columbus, but resided in Franklinton. About the year 1815 or 1810 Dr. Parsons removed over to Columbus, where he resided ever after.
Aboriginal and Modern Roads.
As suggested in the beginning of this chapter, the white man's lines of travel, in the beginning of the march of civilization, followed very closely along the lines of the aborigines, who in turn unconsciously absorbed the engineering knowledge of the elk, the red deer and the buffalo. Certain it is that when the white man came to Ohio he found an extensive system of highways on land, as well as upon the waterways, along which travel and traffic ebbed and flowed as seasons changed and pleasure, war or necessity required.
Rev. John Heekmelder, who made a study of this system in the eighteenth century, and not only located but made a complete map of the land lines, which in his day were as clearly defined as are the highways of today, albeit they, as a rule penetrated dense and almost limitless forests.
Many of these road beds still exist in Ohio which were known to the pioneers of well-nigh a century and a half ago, still so solidly packed as to resist the steel plough-shares of the farmer where they fall inside an enclosure devoted to agriculture. Nearly all these land lines, and probably in a majority of cases, were laid along elevations above the bottom lands and always along the line of least resistance, quite clearly establishing the fact that the bison, the elk, deer and other four-footed animals were the original engineers and the road builders for bipeds. Aboriginal man, when he came, preempted the highways of his quadruped predecessors. The white man, following the aborigine, utilized portions of these highways, but shortened up distances by paralleling them, in part, along the bottom lands or lower down the slope, and this general plan was followed throughout the state during the first era of road building.
Better grades and better material have been called into practical operation in these days, but nearly every important highway built during the century and converging upon Columbus either follows or lies parallel to an ancient line of travel, for two centuries ago—before that time and since that time— the point now Columbus was a center of population, barbarian commerce, and travel, from opposite the mouth of the Kanawha to the mouth of the Maumee from southeast to northwest; from the mouth of the Miami to the mouth of the Cuyahoga from southwest to northeast; from Sandusky bay to the mouth of the Scioto from north to south, and from the mouth of the Captina to the headwaters of the Wabash, where St. Clair was vanquished, from east to west, and all these lines crossing at a common center were at the junction of the Scioto and the Olentangy.
Modern Lines of Travel.
The twentieth century lines of travel and traffic converging here are practically the same as to numbers, but incomparable when it comes to the solution of modern problems of economics, travel and transportation. Instead of seven or eight thoroughfares, including the rivers, radiating to the four corners of the state, there are now eighteen steam railways reaching out from the center, with direct contact and connections with the trunk lines across the continent, and eight operating and other developing electric lines entering and radiating therefrom, sufficient in motive power and equipment to have removed all the savage population of a century and a half ago, along with their personal belongings and lares and penates, within the Ohio valley to the foot hills of the Appalachian range in twenty-four hours. Hence it may be set down among the verities that while nearly all roads in Ohio led to Columbus in aboriginal days, all (and of course more) roads lead to Columbus in these more progressive days.
CHAPTER II. FIRST PEOPLE; FIRST EVENTS; FIRST FOOTPRINTS; FIRST SUCCESSES.
Rome of Ancient Legends; Columbus of Modern Days.
A large portion of the subsequent history of Rome would no doubt be lacking in interest, at least among the younger readers, were it not for the legends of the laying of the foundations of the Eternal City, mythical and credulity-testing though they may be. The story of the abandoned Romulus and Remus being suckled and reared to vigorous youthhood by a female wolf may have been mercifully invented to soften the memory of the wife of some guardian who had the two boys in charge. The narration of the just-before-dawn vigil of the two youths on the two convenient hills, "looking out for signs," and seeing diverse numbers of vultures, leading to the straining of their fraternal relations, some seven hundred years before the Christian Era, may have been an early form of the snipe hunting expeditions of, say, A. D. 1850, and down to the present day, among the youths of Columbus and outlying country.
The building of the walls of Rome by Romulus, and the contempt shown toward the architect and his work by Remus, who leaped over them and who was chased thence and founded the City of Rheims. according to his own ideas of municipal architecture, may be readily toned down to a foolish boyish quarrel of some minor detail, and the story of the Sabine women is an old-new-endless one of the selection of the loveliest. Young ladies being scarce in Rome, the boys over there no doubt challenged the Sabine youths to play a prehistoric game of baseball. Their sweethearts came out. of course, to cheer and encourage them, but when the Roman Senators shut out the Sabine Slashers in the ninth inning, with a score of 21 to O. not only the game was lost, but the girls also, and they naturally clung to the Senators ever after.
This may not be the exact narration of the events in their order, but they would naturally and perfectly furnish the historical raw material out of which the classic poets formed the finished story.
But in any event, and without regard to the accuracy of detail, they told about the first people and the first things and the original methods, without which in some form the rest of the story—called in courtesy History—would be desperately dry reading and spiritless. One must know of the beginning before one can teach the lesson of successive comparisons in the progress of events. The great things of the present are the grown-up children and grandchildren of the comparatively little things of the past. We must know something of the parent before we can properly estimate the child, as well as something about the child before we can fully analyze the matured individual, or, analyzing backward, properly estimate the progenitor. The very mysticism and glamour of the classic poets which surround the practical beginnings of Rome enhance the interest, to most readers, in the story of its subsequent progress. So also as to Columbus.
Christopher Gist, Agent of the Ohio Company.
The first white men to visit the present site of Columbus were Christopher Gist, of Maryland, and George Croghan, an English trader, piloted by one Andrew Montour, a French-Indian half breed of the Senecas, no doubt, sometime during the winter of 1750-1751. At, and preceding this period, the English colonies of the east and northeast were deeply interested in curbing, and eventually eliminating, the Canadian French influences. This was especially true with an association of Virginia and Maryland planters and English merchants, who realized the vast importance of keeping the French traders, and French influence of all kinds, out of that vast territory lying south of the present Canadian line.
These men probably never thought of what the future had in store in the shape of trade and commerce, exceeding for a single business day from nine to three all the trade then being contended for during an entire year.
A long line of English trading posts were being stretched across the practically unknown continent parallel with the 38th degree, and Mr. Gist was the active agent of this association, with -well-nigh unlimited discretionary powers.
One of these English trading posts was established