And this is the story of pedagogue John
Of Kentucky, and how it befell
That, in the heroic old days that are gone,
He did what he had to do, well.
God set him his task in the woods of the West
To teach and to tame what was wild;
To give his heart’s love and the blood of his breast
For the good of the pioneer’s child.
No story of Theseus or Hercules strong
More beautiful is, nor so true;
The meed of devotion to duty is song:
Then pay John McKinney his due.
JOHN FILSON.
Matthias Denman, Robert Patterson and John Filson laid out the town of Losantiville, now the city of Cincinnati, in 1788. Filson, schoolmaster and surveyor, went out to explore the woods between the Miamis, but never returned.
JOHN Filson was a pedagogue—
A pioneer was he;
I know not what his nation was
Nor what his pedigree.
Tradition’s scanty records tell
But little of the man,
Save that he to the frontier came
In immigration’s van.
Perhaps with phantoms of reform
His busy fancy teemed,
Perhaps of new Utopias
Hesperian he dreamed.
John Filson and companions bold
A frontier village planned,
In forest wild, on sloping hills,
By fair Ohio’s strand.
John Filson from three languages
With pedant skill did frame
The novel word Losantiville
To be the new town’s name.