The negroes, cattle, offices, and the appearance of every thing here, indicated the greatest abundance of the produce of this plentiful country. Neither the old squire nor his wife, ever knew confinement by accident or bad health, until about two months ago, when by a fall from her horse, she dislocated her hip, and broke one of her knees. Her son restored the limbs to their places, and she employed no surgeon, but is curing herself gradually, though slowly, by an embrocation of camphorated spirit.
After supping with the old gentleman, near his old wife’s bed side, on apple pye, bread, butter and milk, he kissed her, and then shewed us to a room {88} with four beds in it, one of which he occupied himself, and gave us possession of another, which we were not allowed to possess in peace, as its indigenous inhabitants, indignant at our intrusion, assailed us all night with such fury, as to drive us from their quarters at the first dawn of day. The old man had entertained us until a late hour, by narrating to us his situation, and that of his family. His children have all good farms, and he intends making no will, that they may inherit equally, (according to the very equitable law of this country respecting intestate inheritance) whatever he may die possessed of, which he gave us to understand was very considerable.—One daughter is married to a Mr. Madan, an Irishman, to whom he gave a farm with her, which Madan sold for a thousand dollars five years ago, and removed to St. Genevieve on the Mississippi, where he is now a land surveyor with an income of two thousand dollars per annum. Two years ago, squire Brown, notwithstanding his age, about seventy, paid his daughter a visit, a distance of a thousand miles.
Though he does not keep a tavern, he knows how to charge as if he did, we having to pay him half a dollar for our plain supper, plainer bed, and two quarts of milk we took with us next morning; which was very high in a country where cash is very scarce, and every thing else very abundant.
FOOTNOTES:
[58] The creek at this place is still known as Potts Run.—Ed.
[59] Georgetown was founded in 1793 by Benoni Dawson of Maryland, who named it in honor of the city of that name, now in the District of Columbia. It is “a prosperous-looking, sedate town, with tidy lawns running down to the edge of the terrace.” See Thwaites, On the Storied Ohio (Chicago, 1903).—Ed.
[60] This is a valuable stream for water works, though wildly and romantically hemmed in by vast hills on both sides. There are two grist mills, a saw mill, and a large paper mill, all within two miles of its mouth; the latter has been lately erected, and is owned by Jacob Bowman of Brownsville, John Bever of Georgetown, and John Coulter, who resides at the mill. Over this creek, about a mile from its mouth, a new toll bridge was erected in the summer and fall of 1809, on the road leading from Washington county to New Lisbon, Canton, Worster, &c. state of Ohio. About a mile above Little Beaver, in the bed of the Ohio, and near the north western side, a substance bubbles up, and may be collected at particular times on the surface of the water, similar to Seneca oil. When the water is not too high, it can be strongly smelt while crossing the river at Georgetown: It is presumed to rise from or through a bed of mineral coal embowelled under the bed of the river. The virtues of the Seneca oil are similar to those of the British oil, and supposed to be equally valuable in the cures of rheumatick pains, &c.—Large quantities of the Seneca oil is collected on Oil creek, a branch of the Allegheny river, and sold at from one dollar and a half to two dollars per gallon. The mode of collecting it is this; the place where it is found bubbling up in the creek is surrounded by a wall or dam to a narrow compass, a man then takes a blanket, flannel, or other woollen cloth, to which the oil adheres, and spreading it over the surface of the enclosed pond, presses it down a little, then draws it up, and running the cloth through his hands, squeezes out the oil into a vessel prepared for the purpose; thus twenty or thirty gallons of pure oil can be obtained in two or three days by one man.—Cramer.
[61] The boundary is now marked by a stone monument. On the historic controversy concerning this boundary, see Michaux’s Travels, vol. iii of this series, p. 170, note 31.—Ed.
[62] A few miles up this creek are several valuable salt springs; at two of which quantities of excellent salt is made.—Cramer.
[63] For the historic incidents connected with Yellow Creek and Baker’s bottom, see Croghan’s Journal, vol. i of this series, p. 127, note 93, and Thwaites, On the Storied Ohio.—Ed.