GOSHEN

Clermont County Genealogical Society

GOSHEN

The Land of Milk & Honey

Glimpses of the Most Peaceful and
Prosperous Business Village of Clermont,
With Glances at its By-Gone Days,
and Memories of its Olden Inhabitants.

"Another land, more bright than this, to our dim sight appears; and on our way to it again we'll all be pioneers"--

So sing the sons and daughters of those who first surveyed and settled this beautiful country, whose history forms such a large and honorable part of the annals of Ohio. Our fathers were identified with and associated by common interests, and they were more equal-in fortune, in birth and education, and as a neighborhood assimilated in manners, customs, habits and tastes to a greater degree than any other of the Ohio settlements. They came originally from the best families of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky, with abundant energy and physical vigor, substantial, practical agriculturists, unambitious of professional or political promotion or individual notoriety, singularly straight-forward in their objects, and prompt in all their duties and in meeting every obligation. The day in which they lived, and the circumstances surrounding them, rendered them self-reliant in thought, action and purpose, and by the help of God and in their own strength, by the help of good constitutions and their own common sense, they gained the respect and confidence of all with whom they came in contact. The beautiful farms and comfortable homesteads, all over Clermont County, given us by our fathers, are perpetual mementoes of their industry and good management.

Goshen is most pleasantly situated on the old and excellent Cincinnati, Columbus and Wooster turn-pike, in the center of the most northern township bordering on the Quaker county of Warren and was settled in the first year of the century.

The earliest pioneers in this region embraced Jacob Stroup,Jacob Myers, Andrew Shaderly, Peter and Adam Leever,Lewis Fryberger, John Irwin, Daniel and David Roudebush,Jesse Wood, Isaac Leonard, Fredrick Weaver, Isaac Leming,Joseph Harvey, Benjamin Thacker, George, Daniel and Era-stus Holmes, and Doctors S. G. Meek, Daniel Lyman and Samuel Cox.

General William Lytle entered, surveyed, and patented most of the lands in this vicinity, and in 1801 sold 250 acres to Lewis Fryberger; in 1804 and 5,450 to Jacob Stroup; in 1804, 100 to Jacob Myers; in 1802, 500 to Daniel Roudebush; in 1805, 250 to Andrew Shaderly; in 1806, 150 to John Irwin, while in 1808 Peter Leever got a large tract from Win. Neville and in 1806 Jacob Myers got 1024 from one Phillip Stonever. It is located mainly on Lytle's Survey, No. 2377, of 500 acres surveyed and entered February 16, 1794, with a small part in Richard Stark's Survey No 2753.

Lou Cooper and John Winnings laid it out December 17,1816, into 86 lots. Jesse Wood made an addition on March16, 1818, of 82 lots. Dr. S. G. Meek and others, another one of 99 lots in November 25, 1833. Daniel Roudebush anotherof 27 lots on February 16, 1836, and Win. Haight the last of 11 lots February 2, 1874. April 24, 1849, Auditor John Ferguson and Recorder L. B. Leeds renumbered the town.Among the old time marriages we notice Peter Emery and Elizabeth Apple, November 19, 1802; Lewis Fryberger and Rachel Custard, April 22, 1803; Henry Shederly and Polly Fisher, April 26, 1810, and Philip Shederly and Betsey Fisher, July 6, 1811.

Shiloh Lodge, I.O.O.F., No.232, was instituted March 27, 1854, and has a membership of over fifty, and Goshen Lodge No. 119, F. and A. M., was organized forty years ago and is in most flourishing condition. Its Seminary is one of the best institutions of learning in Southern Ohio, and under the auspices of such well and favorably known educators as Geo. H. Hill, W. 0. Hopkins and C. M. Riggs, has achieved a deserved reputation. The town is only two or three miles from the Marietta railroad on which Hill's and Goshen Pike Stations are the points for its passenger and freight traffic. This township is, in proportion to its area and population, the wealthiest in the country, and is noted for its magnificent hay and grass farms. This village is unincorporated and being free from all rowdyism or disorders, requires no municipal system or officers to preserve the quiet of the town. The largest and most successful business house in the county is the mammoth store of John Holmes, and in no other town in our knowledge is there such universal prosperity as here. We give the population of the township for the last four decades:

In 1840, 1445; in 1850, 1937; in 1860, 1837; in 1870, 1876, and next year will exceed over 2200.

The year 1824 was memorable for the quadrangular race for the Presidency with General Jackson, W. H. Crawford, Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams as the candidates, and as a clue of how the people voted that year, we give the result in the township at the October election.

Governor-Jeremiah Morrow, Democrat, 81; Allen Trimble,

National Republican, 19.

Congress-J. W. Gazley, Democrat, 30; James Findlay, Democrat, 27; Benj. M. Piatt, National Republican, 38.

Two Representatives-Thos. Gatch, 100~, A. V. Hopkins, 93. Commissioner-John Boggess, 96. Auditor-A. Foote, 92. Coroner-Robt. Tweed, 87.

The judges of the election were: Andrew and Peter Fryberger and Jesse Smith. The clerks, E. Whitacre and James Van Benthuson.

In the eastern part of the township is the "Shilo Camp Meeting Ground," which well indicates how the Methodist Church has kept onward pace with the great march of civilization.

"From the white tents of the crusaders
The phantoms of glory are gone,
But the zeal for humanity's welfare
In humanity's heart lives on"--

As is well illustrated out in the woods at this popular "Camp Ground," where the Methodists at their annual meeting feel a little of the traditional fervor of their honorable sect stirring in them. Here you find "the good old Methodist hand-shake," and something in the hearty clasp speaks of a sincere good will that is decidedly pleasant, and here the stirring old hymns of the days of Wesley echo through the woods, making it, as it were, a kind of rich martial music.

There is no doubt but that the intense excitement of this Camp-meeting partakes largely of animal magnetism or extreme nervousness, but there is equally no doubt but that the mystic element of Divine grace is there and performs a godly work. Call it what you like but when a man passes through such an experience, however induced, it separates the life that is passed from the life that follows by a great gulf. We must not forget glorious old James C. McCord whose universality of love stamped him as a man among millions and a natural born leader, or Geo. W. Boutell, the storekeeper at Charleston, who forty odd years ago was a leading business man in Cincinnati, and one of the boys that run the old fire department, or Harvey Irwin, the best known in the township, and who has a heart big as a mountain, and who as an old time magistrate carried his docket and all his official papers in his hat.

One of the most exciting political campaigns in Ohio was that of 1859, and was peculiarly hot in Clermont from the fact of the race of Dr. John E. Myers, of Goshen, and the

Hon. Judge Philip B. Swing, of the United States District Court, for Representative to the Legislature, and from the further singular coincidences that the Democratic and Republican candidates for Sheriff and Commissioner were respectively cousins. Dr. Myers beat Judge Swing after an animated flight, and while the county got a splendid legislator in the former, the country subsequently got an able and upright jurist in the latter. We give the vote of that year in Goshen township.

Governor-R. P. Ranney, Democrat, 196; W. Dennison, Republican, 158.

Senator-C. A. White, Democrat, 195; C. F. Campbell, Republican, 158.

Representative-Dr. J. E.. Myers, Democrat, 203; P. B. Swing, Republican, 149.

Sheriff-Nick Gatch, Democrat, 191; N. B. Gatch, Republican, 160.

Auditor-N. M. Preble, Democrat, 193; M. S. Dimmitt, Republican, 160.

Treasurer-Shad Dial, Democrat, 195; J. H. Sharp, Republican, 158.

Recorder-W. B. C. Stirling, Democrat, 194; John McDonald, Republican, 158.

Commissioner-F. J. Roudebush, Democrat, 193; Richard Roudebush, 159.

Coroner-Joshua Sims, Democrat, 193; H. Davis, Republican, 159.

Infirmary Director-H. Mount, Democrat, 193; Thos. Marsh, Republican, 159.

The township has: No. of acres, 20,330; Value of lands, $723,580~, Value of chattels, $273,880; Amt. of taxes, $14,358.47. And while it ranks tenth in population, sixth in area, it is seventh in the amount of taxes it pays. It was formed out of Miami (called Obanion a while) township which with Williamsburg, Washington, Ohio and Pleasant (now in Brown), constituted the original five townships when Governor St. Clair organized the county on December 9, 1800. The following county officials have been furnished from Goshen:

Clerks-John S. Stiles, 1866 to 1869; W. B. Applegate, 6 month in 1869.

Treasurer-Abram Teetor, 1847 to 1851.

Auditor-John Beatty, 1837 to 1839.

Associate Judge-John Beatty, 1824 to 1831 and 1844 to 1851.

Commissioners-John Randall, 1830 to 1833; Abram Teetor, 1835 to 1839, and 1843 to 1846; Benjamin Brown, 1852 to 1855, and Joseph Trump, 1867 to 1869.

Representatives-Festus Dunning, 1835; Dr. John E. Myers, 1859 to 1861, and Abram Thetor, 1865.

The only sensation here lately was the divorce granted by Judge Cowen last Wednesday to Mary E. Barker, near Hill's Station, from her husband, Werner Barker, for his extreme cruelty.

The vote of this township stood in the following years to wit.~

Governor, 186 1-Jewett, Democrat, 168; Tod, Republican, 143.

Secretary of State, 1862-Democrat, 172; Republican, 144. President, 1864-Lincoln, 182; McClellan, 166; 1872, Greely, 219; Grant, 210; 1876, Tilden, 219; Hays, 210.

Governor, 1879-Foster, 216; Ewing, 216; Piatt, 21.

The country around the town is generally level, and the farms everywhere in a good state of cultivation on which large quantities of fruit of all varieties, considerable wheat and immense tonnage of hay are raised. The farm houses are most generally solid and elegant structures, while in the town the fine residences, shady streets and beautiful surroundings, all point to good local government and property of the people and good order in society. The three church edifices, Methodist, Presbyterian and Universalist, afford religious accommodations for large and well supporting congregations.

It is a sad thought that the early pioneers are fast passing away, and soon not one will remain to tell us of the early homes in the wilderness. If the beautiful and fashionably dressed young ladies and lasses, and the strong and enterprising men and boys of our readers will believe us, the early settlers were clad in home-spun and home-made linen and woolen apparel. Who is so ignorant as not to have heard of flax patches where half the courting was one in olden tirnes, and when the flax got ripe all the boys and girls gathered far and near and pulled and spread it. It was called a frolic, which ended with a regular "hoe-down, double-shuffle dance. "After the fiber, softened by the dews and rains, which was called "rotting the flax," it was taken up and bound, and either stacked or broken on a machine called a brake, then spun on a wheel and runoff on a reel and woven on a loom. The winter garments were mostly made from wool, spun on the small and big wheeL The mother who could not take care of her children, do the cooking, washing, ironing, and attend to other household duties, and spin her twelve cuts of yarn a day, was not considered extra smart. After the yarn had been spun, it had to be dyed and prepared for the loom, and some would be dyed a copperas color, and some blue, brown, green and red - the more fastidious and tasteful wearing stripes and checks. Spinning, quilting, apple-peeling and wool-picking frolics were all the rage in the good old days when a woman was a woman, and false teeth, face powders and other counterfeits to deceive the rough sex were unknown.

Our grand-mothers, like the daughters of Eve had a taste for a variety of colors and beauty of combination, and in those halycon days the fair sex attired themselves in dresses of their own making, spinning, coloring and weaving. They used but six yards of linen or linsey, instead of from fifteen to forty as do the modern belles of the period. They made young men bow as low and smile as sweetly as do the ladies of our time in the cities with their rustling silks, satins and muslims. They could ride to a quilting on an ox-sled or on a "sapling-jumper," and dance merrily to the music of a single fiddle, and such dancing! A real double-shuffle, in which there were grace, activity, life, spirit, and the genuine poetry of action, with none of your sliding, languishing, die-a-way notions of the belies that flirts in the fashionable, modern drawing or ball room. When the dance was over they could walk home a distance of five or ten miles, unless their beaux (and they all had beau, and some of them a score or more) had a horse with saddle and pillion, when they would mount a stump or climb upon the fence, and spring on the horse behind the rider and ride home. If they were engaged to be married and the day fixed, she would clasp her plump, well-muscled arm around him, he clasping one hand in his. How all the young men enjoyed riding over hills and rough places as it made your sweet-heart clasp to you, and how the heart swelled and beat as one felt the electric squeeze of the angelic creature by starry moonlight. Girls were then scarce and in demand as the young men outnumbered them two to one. We fear the gentler sex has not improved in health and true unalloyed happiness since those days of innocent romps and jollity, though they may have extended their skirts from two feet to twelve, and we are of the opinion that their sleep is no sounder nor their dreams more pleasant than those of their grand-mothers. Let us take you, in imagination, to one of the log cabins of olden times, probably many miles from the nearest neighbor, built in the midst of a grand old forest. They were built one story high, with a loft or garret for the boys to sleep in, which was reached by inserting their toes in the openings between the logs in one corner of the house, or on a rude ladder made of a straight sapling of linden wood or poplar, split into halves, with rungs for steps, making it convenient to draw up or for its removal from the cabin. A small hatch-way was left in the upper floor or a window cut in the gable for ingress and egress, and the process of mounting the ladder was called "cooning it to bed. "This department was the storeroom for trophies of the chase of the traps, antlers of deer and elk, and skins of the bear, panther, wolf, fox, raccoon, mink and rabbit, together with the holiday or Sunday apparel of the family. It also served the purpose of drug-store, and around the walls and pendant from the roof in sacks and bunches were sarsaparilla, ginseng, snake-root, catnip, tansy, garlic, sage, dog-fennel and pennyroyal, and mayhap a bottle of bitters -the pioneer's medicine - a kind of root doctor.

Spring-time brought work - spinning and weaving the summer linen, and rising in the morning continued on page 33

at four, the lady of the house built the fires, made up her own beds, awoke and dressed the children, made up the trundle-bed, shoved it under the "big bed," put on the teakettle and mixed the Indian meal for the johnny-cakes and com-dodgers.This done she prepared the frugal meal and set the table. after which she blowed a merry peal on the tin horn to call the men to breakfast.Next she nursed the baby, but that could be done while she was knitting the socks and stockings.The men came in.She must spring up, lay the sweet smiling little baby in the cradle, one loving kiss, a short "God bless you, my darling," sets the vituals on the table, "jogs" the cradle with her foot each time passes to keep the baby quiet, the self-rocking cradle being the invention of a later day.Breakfast over, the dishes put away, the children sent to school, she sprinided the linen on the grass and now spinning is resumed.She takes the wheel Out on the puncheon floor, takes her darling babe from the cradle and while her foot is busy with the treadle it serves as a motion to quiet the little beauty.While singing and musing, she can sing right merrily too "Home Sweet Home," my own home, be it ever so poor, is home.But it is time to prepare dinner and greens must be picked, potatoes washed, meat put on to boil and venison or bear meat to be broiled or baked, and if the husband is a good shot a turkey is swung up before the large fire-place to broil.Then down to the wheel or into the loom banging away as she sends the swift flying shuttle through the double-threaded web.The horn is again blown, the vituals taken up and the meal is eaten with the baby on the lap.The pewter dishes washed and put away the floor must be scrubbed, for she has no carpet, and the bleaching cloth is to be watered again. Then back to the wheel till time for supper, which over, she goes to the pasture to milk the cows, put the children to bed and takes again to the ever busy wheel until the husband retires to his couch.She must stop now, for he does not like the buzzing noise, but no bed comes to her relief yet for the children's clothes are to be mended, stockings darned, and thus she toils on until late in the night, and such was the life led by many of our mothers and grand-mothers.We will add that these scenes so feebly narrated here have passed, and in a few years more those who have participated in them will have become pioneers to another country, and be then followed by a ceaseless stream of emigrants from this changing world.

Contrasting the poetry of the West with the contemporary poetry of the East, one is struck with the fact that while that of the East is full of the fire of thought and the stirrings of purely mental life, that of the West is the interpretation of nature - cool, reposeful, dewy as the valleys and streams whose beauty has inspired it. While Whittier was writing his Voices of Freedom," and Lowell penning his calm philosophy into rhythmic periods, our Western poets were translating the meaning of river, hill and sunset sky. The early poetry of Ohio mirrors the serenity of mind and the purity

of the moral atmosphere, out of which it sprang, and more than all details of history will it embalm the fair lovliness of the scenery and the simple beauty of the early life of the pioneers.

CLERMONT SUN Wednesday, November 26, 1879 submitted by Barbara J. McCarthy



 
 

BIRTHS
Birth Records
*
Early Clermont Co. Births 1856-1857
*
First Presbyterian Churches of Monroe
At Nicholsville & Bantam
*
Baptisms of Children
*
Anderson Township Births 1906-1907
*
Old Bethel Church Baptisms
*
Old Bethel Church Baptisms 1894-1908
*
Early Births 1856
*
MARRIAGES
Early Marriages 1800 - 1808
*
 Marriage Book 13 1874-1876
*
Goshen M. E. Church
Marriage

*
DEATHS
Funerals Conducted by Rev. Hezekiah Hill 1862-1908
*
The Old Village Graveyard

Deaths of Residents Over 75 in 1875

Infirmary Discharges That Mention a Burial Place

Death Dates from I.O.O.F. Lodge #313

Early Clermont Deaths from The Ohio Sun
*
Obituaries From the Clermont Sun 1890-1891

Early Deaths from Clermont Sun 1855
*
More Deaths 1857-1859
*
Stirling & Moore Funeral Records 1888
*
1880 Mortality Census
*
Census
Goshen 1875 Quadrennial Census
*
Quadrennial Census, Batavia, 1847

Quadrennial Census, Batavia, 1855

History
Incidents in The Early History of Clermont County
*
Stonelick Historical Notes
*
Vacation of a Road in
Union Township

Brown and Clermont County Families Mentioned
in the 1880 Clinton County History
*
Day Book For Clarke & Frambes Mills 1838
*
Immigration
Early Naturalizations from Common Pleas Minutes
*
Citizenship Papers 1844-1900
*
Names of New Found Naturalization Applicants
*
Military
Veterans in Various Cemeterys
*
Revolutionary War Soldiers

Clermont Courier Ads November 18, 1863
*
Mexican War Veterans
*
Revolutionary War Veterans
*
Post Office
Post Marks of Clermont County
*
Clermont Postmasters 1800 - 1930
*
Early Unclaimed Letters

More Unclaimed Letters Unclaimed Letters 1855
*
Bible Records
Manning Bible
*
Banister Bible

Bible Records of James McKinnie 1830

Bible Records Index Volume Two

Bible Records Index Volume Three
*
Churches
Old Bethel Church and Cemetery

History of Old Bethel Church 1868

Calvary Church and Cemetery Washington Twp
*.
Edenton Church 1861

Places

Perin Mills in 1863
*
Goshen- Land Of Milk and Honey

First Settlers of Jackson Township

Legal Voters of Goshen Township 1855

Batavia in1847
*
Poll Book Goshen Township 1853
*
1840 Account Book, Laurel Ohio

Edenton School # 4 Pupils

Pensions

Pensions 1890

More Pensions 1890
*
Other
Indentures 1825 - 1831

Index To General Store Account Book 1816-1819

Vital Statistics From An Old Record Book

Items from Clermont Courier 1836
*
Clermont Pensioners 1883

Ohio Pioneers That Moved to Texas

Persons on the Petit Jury 1880

Jails and Sheriffs
*
Items From Early Clermont Courier 1852
*
Meeting of Patriarchs 1882
*
Surrender Records From Childrens Home
*
Gazetteer 1882
*
Potpourri

Articles From The Clermont Sun 1889
*
River Boatmen
*
Sale of Delinquent Lands
*