Springfield is a long straggling village, on a fine flat, sheltered on the north by a small chain of low but abrupt hills, and bounded on the south by the beautiful river Muskingum. The road or street is of clean gravel, and the cabins are distinguished from those I had hitherto seen by their chimneys of brick, instead of stone or logs. There are some good brick houses building, and some taverns and some stores, which give it a thriving appearance. There is also a fine grist and saw mill at the falls of the Muskingum at the upper end of the town. That river is about a hundred yards wide at the ferry just below the falls, which are formed by its being precipitated in a sheet, over a rock of about three feet perpendicular depth, which extends quite across, and is a fine object in the surrounding picturesque scenery. Another good object is a cliff impending over the falls, which terminates the chain of low hills behind Springfield.
I crossed the ferry to Zanesville, and dismounted at an inn where the stage generally stops. On entering I walked into a room, the door of which was open, where the first object that met my eye was the {203} corpse of a female, laid out in her shroud on a bier. There was no person in the room but another female who was seated near the corpse, and to whom I apologized for my abrupt entrance, explaining my reasons as being in advance of the stage. She answered by wishing she had some mode of preventing the stage from driving up to the house, as her sister had died that morning, and it would be inconvenient to accommodate travellers that night, on which I remounted, rode to the post office, where I found the stage delivering the mail, from whence in consequence of my information, the driver took us to Harvey’s very good inn, where we found an excellent supper, clean beds, a consequential host and hostess, and the highest charges I had hitherto paid in Ohio.
Zanesville was laid out for a town six or seven years ago. It contains forty houses much scattered and does not seem to thrive so much as Springfield, which is only two or three years old, contains fifty houses, and bids fair to become of more consequence than Zanesville,[147] notwithstanding the latter is the county town of Muskingum county. It was named after Mr. Zane of Wheeling, who as a recompense for opening the first road from Wheeling to Chilicothe, got a grant of three sections of land of six hundred and forty acres each. On one section he founded Zanesville; on another, New Lancaster, and the third is part of the rich bottom on the bank of the Scioto opposite to Chilicothe.
FOOTNOTES:
[143] Pickaway Plains, in Pickaway County south of Circleville, was said to contain the richest land in Ohio. It was a noted rendezvous for the Shawnees; from hence started the army that Lewis defeated at Point Pleasant (1774), and here at a camp which he called Camp Charlotte in honor of the queen, Lord Dunmore made the peace that ended the war. Here, also, Chief Logan’s famous speech was delivered.—Ed.
[144] Nathaniel Willis, the grandfather of the poet by that name, was a printer, who prided himself on having been a participant in the Boston Tea-party. During the Revolution, he was proprietor of the Boston Independent Chronicle. On peace being declared, he went to Virginia, and at Martinsburg published for a few years the Potomac Guardian. Tempted by reports from the new territory, he once more removed and established (probably in 1800) the Scioto Gazette at Chillicothe, the third newspaper of the state. He was also, for a time, state printer, and as Cuming informs us connected with the forwarding of the mail.—Ed.
[145] The site of New Lancaster had previously been that of a well-known Indian village called Standing Stone from an eminence in the vicinity. It was the most southwestern town of the Delawares in Ohio, and was also called French Margaret’s Town, because a daughter of Madame Montour had at one time resided therein. As an American settlement it was laid out by Zane in 1800; later, “New” was dropped from its title by legislative enactment.—Ed.
[146] A hasty and temporary way of clearing land, by notching the bark all round the trunks of the large trees, which kills them, and in a few years they fall by their own top weight aided by the least gust of wind, if not cut down in the interim at the increasing leisure of the cultivator.—Cramer.
[147] Since it has been determined that Zanesville is to be the seat of the state government at least for a time, the town is making a rapid progress in population, buildings, and improvements generally. The country around it is also opening into fine farms on both sides of the river. Furnaces and forges are erecting in the neighbourhood, saw and grist mills, and a paper mill not far distant.—Cramer.