Mail deliveries in the rural areas were unknown, but a post office was established in Dayton in 1804, and by 1810 mail was being brought from Cincinnati by horseback once a week.
The township people seldom had an opportunity to see a newspaper, and it was a treat, indeed, when a copy of “The Ohio Watchman,” a 12- x 20-inch paper printed in Dayton, fell into their hands. Often the paper would be passed along from home to home many weeks after its date of printing.
In these crude surroundings our forefathers lived. They built their cabins amid mud, stumps, poison ivy, mosquitoes, rattlesnakes, wolves, and wildcats.
It was in this environment that babies were born and grew to healthy adulthood, although they entered this world without benefit of sanitary facilities and hospitals, and often even without the presence of a doctor or midwife.
To imagine that wilderness civilization—without telephones, electricity, bathrooms, furnaces, automobiles, trains, airplanes, radio, and television—is difficult. But it is even more difficult to comprehend that these improvements date back only a few short years to the lifetimes of our own grandparents.
But amid the physical changes, one thing has not changed: the spirit that conquered the wilderness. Thanks to that spirit, even greater advancements, no doubt, are ahead.
And through those years to come, the Pioneer Home in Carillon Park will remain as a symbol of hardships overcome, of progress through work, of the strength of character that has built our America.
