Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1883-03-15
ST. CLAIRSVILLE.

We clip from the Cincinnati Neps
of Sunday, March 4th, the following
historical mention of St. Clairsvilie
the County Seat o. Belmont County, in
"Rambling Notes Of Travel" written
from Mt. Vernon, D., March 1st, 1888
st. Clairsville derived its name from the
unfortunate, but gallant General Arthur St.
Clair, governor of the Northwest Territory.
1t is located en- romantic site, on the line of
the old National road, eleven miles west OF
Wheeling. 1t has produced many men dis
tingu:shed in the national and State councils.
or these was Benjamin nuggios, the great
lawyer, and United States senator from Ohio
from 1916 to 1888. Here lived Wilson Shan
non, who vas elected the Democratic COVER
nor il 1888, and in 1s42 was minister to Mex.
leo under Tyler, and governor cf Kansas
while territory. He was in Congress in
1854 and voted for the original Kansas Ne
braska bill of Douglas. The Kennon family
has been very prominent, of which, William
Keunon was in Congress from 1926 to 1888,
and from 1855 to 1887, and William Kennen,
Jr., from 1847 70 1s49. The former also was
on the supreme bench. The other congress
men from Belmont County have been James
Caldwell, 1918 TO 1877; John Patterson, 1923
to 1895; David Jennings (resigned), and
Thomas Shannon, 1925 to 1897; john Daven-
port, 1927 to 1929; James Alexander. Sr.,
1887 to 1889; Benjamin s.. Cowen, 1s41 to
1S43, and Lorenzo Danford, 1873 to 1879.
General st. Clair was born in Scotland in
1874, classically educated, and was subal-
tern officer under Wolfe in storming Quebec.
After the peace of 1853 he was assigned the
command of Fort Ligonier, in Pennsylvania,
and there he received a grant of 1000 acres.
Prior to the revolution he was the first
prothonotary of Westmoreland County, Pa,
and in that struggle was promoted to briga-
dier generalship, and bore an active part in
the battles of Trenton and Princeton. As
territorial governor, his strong federal ideas
kept him in hot water with the General As
sembly, whose bills he vetoed to the number
of eleven. He was finally removed by JEFF
ferson. St. Clair never recovered from the
defeat he met at the hands of the Indians, ,and
the early pioneers being staunch Jefferson
Republicans could not brook his Federal
sentiments. After his removal from the gov
ernor's Office, he retired to Ligonier Valley,
poor and destitute of the means of subsistence,
and unfortunately, too much disabled by age
and lnfirmity to embark in any other kind Of
active business. Congress ungratefully turn
ed deaf ear to the veterans just claims, but
finally his State from adoption gave him an
annuity for the little remnant of his days that
yet remained. His lands had been sold by
the Sheriff, and all the veteran possessed was
a house in the valley, on an uufrequented
road, where with his widowed daughter he
kept on inn, to which people largely resorted,
though out of the way, merely to give aid to
the old soldier He Was often succored by
the Masonic order, which erected at his death
a neat monument to his memory in the
Greensburg, Pa, cemetery.
Half'a century ago there lived three famous
brothers-in-law in Steubenvllle, viz: Judge
John NJ. Goodenow, Judge Benjamin Tap
pin, and Judge John G. Wright. The feud
between the first two became SO hot that
Goodenow, to escape Tappan's spiteful ami
mostly, removed to this town. Judge Wright
then went to Cincinnati, and became the edi-
tor of the Gazette, and Judge Tappan was
''cock of the walk in the Steubenville re-
gion. He was man OF pronounced infdel
ideas on religious topics, and was often the
recipient of tracts and pamphlets containing
marked passages sent by preachers and travel
ing missionaries. AS general reply to all
such proselyting religious literature the iras-
chile old judge went to the Jefferson Demo
crat. then published at Carrollton,1 Ohio, by
Joseph Gable, who afterward was in Congress,
and had printed two hundred large pamphlets
entitled "Hume on Miracles" Then when
ever he received any tracts or documents
from munster or deacon he would send in
return one Of these printed effusions; and IL
is needless to add that soon afterward he
ceased to receive any more communications
from the godly people seeking hts redemp-
tion. His son, Rev. Eli T. Tappan, D. D.,
was several years president of Kenyon Col
lege, but had none of his distinguished
fathers loose opinions Of sacred matters.