Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1880-06-10

the bar, married and settled down to
practice"
At the altitude of more than SIX
hundred feet above the Ohio River, We
came to an old brick town on the top
of the hill, which presented rather
snowy appearance with its spire or two,
its cluster of big blick hotels and a
tall, modern school-hOuse, almost like
some baronial palace of the sixteenth
century, such as are seen in Germany
on the old high Ioads-the whole de
fined against the loftier sky. The Ma
tional road goes right through the mid
die of this town and makes its prin-
cipal street, and as the town is on the
spine of the hill, there is no room for
other streets, except two, parallel with
the road, which lie down the hillsides,
and are crossed from above by some
short descending streets and lanes
Most of the houses of ST. Clairsville
are of smoky brick or of frame, and a
few blocks of stone, and in the middle
of the place, where there is a VIDE
cross-street, stands an old Court house,
erected in 1914, with a cupola and
spire and a sort of brick choir in the
rear of it where the Judges sat facing
the audience in the little amphitheater
Of the Courtroom. Behind the Court
house is the Jail; then comes church
and an old Presbyterian church-y ard,
with venerable graye-slabs and some
monuments, in it. Opposite the side
and the front of the Court house, are
two old stage hotels, one built in 1919,
where General jackson used to halt over
night on his way fiom the Hermitage
to Washington City. Here, also, have
often stopped Henry Clay, Tom Ewing,
Lewis Cass, Stephen A. Douglas and
ali the celebrities in the early balf OIL
our century. St. Clairsvllle has pop
ulation of about twelve hundred leo
pie, and still presents tolerably busy
appearance. There were once fourteen
large stores IN the town, where the peo-
pie in that and the distant western
region of the country bought their
supplies. In deep valley under the
south of the town a narrow-gauger rail-
road starts, and descends by the bed of
a little stream to the Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad, seven miles distant
Standing at the center of the place,
one sees on the surrounding hills some
comfortable and rather ponderous
brick mansions of a Pennsylvania
form, where once the richer lawyers,
merchants and money lenders took
their ease at an altitude above the
reach of all epidemics, surrounded by
orchards, forest groves and acclivitous
fields of wood and oats.
JEwETT's FIRST HOME.
The street which crosses the Nation
al road at the Court house, falling into
the valley Oh the south, has one stout
old brick house two stories and a gar
ret high, half way down the hill, EN-
powered in a garden and fruit trees
There, according to the local legend,
Hugh J. Jewett went to housekeeping
when he had married the daughter OF
Ezer Ellis. Some say the house was
built by Ezer Ellis, his father-in law,
who also lived there. II is plain, un-
attractive brick tenement, hardly ro
mantle, but there the young emigrant
lawyer of Maryland had bis bright ex-
perience in the birth of children, fam
lily cares and the first delights of love.
They say that he boarded at one of the
hotels some Of the time before he mar
ried; perhaps at the St. Clair Hotel, in
the days when the road was dusty with
stages, and flocks of cattle and sheep
and the ever moving caravan of Con
estoga wagons.
After eating supper l called on Mr..
Hunt, editor of one of the two papers
in the place, who is also the Supervisor
Of the Census for this district. He
said: THAT old gentleman with gray
hair you see sitting IN chair on the
pavement in front of his house is Judge
Kennon, who married sister of dew
ett's first wife. He is full of informa-
tion and would be glad to impart it to
you, but it is difficult for him to artic-
ulate, as he was struck with paralysis
some time ago while arguing the Camp
bell will case at Wellsville with Gener-
al Garfield, Judge Black and others
Mr.. Hunt introduced me to Mr.. Swaney,
one of the elder lawyers of St. Clairs
vile. who: sitting in his comfortable
parlor, spoke as follows:
A REMINIscENCE
81 do not know why Mr.. Jewett set
tied in St. Clairsville; perhaps it was
because We had a good many Quakers
in .hose days, but they are few now
1t was understood here that his mother
was a Quaker preacher, and his parents
may have had family friends Of thai
sect hereabout, but think he had to
make his own way without any assist
ance, and our Bar was very strong
one, so that it was pretty hard for a
new man to step into practice here
He arrived among us somewhere about
1885. He taught school about the
country for year or two, part of the
time at East Richland, some miles west
Of us. He then came here and went
into the law office of Benjamin Cowen,
and then formed a partnership with
Isaac Eaton, now of Kansas, and
of the Democratic National
Committee, who became his brother-in-
Iaw. He married here and lived among
us twelve or fifteen years. He was an
Industrious lawyer, working hard and
his cases diligently. faithful
10 his clients, but his success
was not what he expected. L
that he once told me walking
along the street that he felt so much
discouraged and oppressed with
his worldly cares that he some
times felt like wishing that the ground
would open and swallow him. He was
never much a man of the crowd. The
few people who knew him we'll liked
him. Others, forgetting that he was
raised in a plain, Quaker way, mistook
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