The first session of the Supreme Court was hold in this old log-cabin, on the 25th of October, 1803, the judges present being Samuel Huntington and William Sprigg. The third judge, Jonathan Meigs, was unable to be present, but Arthur St. Clair, of Hamilton county, attended the sitting in all the glory of a cocked hat and other military paraphernalia. The only business transacted by the court was to admit Richard Thomas to the practice of law.
The descendants of pioneers cling with tenacity to the memories of olden times, and are proud of the historic struggles made by their ancestors to establish schools, churches, and good government in a wilderness known only to savage life for untold ages. Although there was little cause for litigation, it was necessary to hold the courts of justice open, as it was to encourage schools and churches that directed society in the enlightened paths of virtue and higher plane of civilization.
Workers in religious denominations met with more or less encouragement, and mapped out their fields upon a large scale for future operations. And fathers and mothers, doctors, ministers, and lawyers worked harmoniously together to instruct, educate, and elevate coming generations, and many lived to witness the fruits of those exertions with pride and satisfaction.
Colonel Charles Whittlesey, in an address before the “Northern Ohio Historical Society,” November, 1881, says: “If our representative men are prominent, it may be a source of honorable state pride, for, while great men do not make a great people, they are signs of a solid constituency. Native genius is about equally distributed in all nations, even in barbarous ones; but it goes to waste wherever the surroundings are not propitious....
“Cromwell was endowed with a mental capacity equal to the greatest of men; but he would not have appeared in history if there had not been a constituency of Round-heads, full of strength, determined upon the overthrow of a licentious king and his nobility....
“Washington would not have been known in history if the people of the American Colonies had not been stalwarts in every sense, who selected him as their representative. In these colonies the process of cross-breeding among races had then been carried further than in England, and is now a prime factor in the strength of the United States.
“I propose to apply the same rule to the first settlers of Ohio, and to show that if she now holds a high place in the nation, it is not an accident, but can be traced to manifest natural causes, and those not alone climate, soil, and geographical position.”
No doubt, the admixture of races has in some cases added something favorable to the physical and mental powers of manhood; but, perhaps, in regard to the superiority of the men of the North-west, more must be attributed to the natural conditions and surroundings which secured freedom from all corroding influences of avarice, added to the alert outdoor life among Indians and savage beasts, with the rifle and attendant athletic exercises, that gave mental stimulation without subsequent exhaustion of mind or body. The rising Squirrel Hunter is no drone; he represents a bundle of activities that scorns a leisure that breeds an indolent stupidity.
First School-house in Circleville, Ohio. Cost $10,000 in 1851. In 1879 was remodeled by the School Board at a cost of $39,300.