Morgan County Democrat. (McConnelsville, Ohio) 1886-1943, 1938-03-17

father Of VIM. P. Sprague, with his
| family, now occupied by grocery.
The postoffice was located in the
northeast room of the old DR.. Rusk
property, and William Palmer was
| the postmaster.
| Brown and James and Frank Manly
erected two small buildings about
where the M. e. church now stands,
and started the manufacture of
plows, which has since grown into
the Brown Manly Plow company,
making a nationally known and eel
ebrated product.
| Not far from there, in what is
now the park, was an old frame
| foundation, higher on the street
side. A part of the stone walls had
fallen in and some goats owned by
Mr.. Dickerson made that their head
quarters. The Rev. Scovill was the
school teacher and he had to COM
pete with the goats for the atten-
tion of the scholars.
The Guthrie foundry was located
where the plow factory now is, and
at the upper end of town David and
Solomon Beckwith had saw mill
with Lloyd McBee as head sawyer.
Many now living in Malta will re-
call nearly all of these have named
and will later name in this article,
and many of the descendants of
these men reside there today.
The Beckwiths had several OK
teams hauling logs from the coun-
try around nearby. Across from the
saw mill, but across the. run, Sen
eca Brownell some time in the sos,
erected a large building and
slaughtered thousands of sheep,
tanning the hides and curing the
meat, especially the hams, and some
say they were shipped away and
sold as "venison."
The Havener salt works was
turning out thousands Of barrels Of
salt every year, and below, on the
river bank, was Seaman's boat yard,
where coal barges We're built each
year and now and then keel boas,
in which Hall and Ham would ship
a cargo of produce to New Orleans
and bring back sugar and molasses
in return.
William Young and Milton Sea
man owned the Touring mill down
at the Malta end of the dam and
shipped every year large amount
Of -four all along the Ohio and even
down the Mississippi.s
The old ferry was run by William
Young and the power for it was fur
Later a steam ferry was secured
and used until the bridge was built.
The names of those who were in
business and who were the leaders
of the community may be of interest
to my readers. In this list you
will find the name of Dawes, Stur
geon, Timms, Cornelius, Sherwood,
Peter Ham (the father of Geo. S.
Ham and grandfather of Geo. P.
Ham, who used to have a cigar fac
tory in McConnelsville), Young,
Seaman, Lawrence, Scovill, Davis,
Lewis Hall, James Beck Van Horn,
Benjamin. Bumgardner, and those I
have already named in connection
with some special business. If we
could just have them with us to-
day what a volume of interesting
things they could relate.
William Van Horn was among
the very early settlers in Malta.
When he came there were but three
log cabins on the site of the pres
ent town He built cabin near
the mouth of Clements run, and
his land extended back to the hill.
He had put in crop of corn, but
wild game was so plentiful that fire.
quent raids were made on his corn
field. He had two daughters, La
vina and Sarah, who put in most Of
their time driving the deer away
from the corn field. One morning,
in driving some deer from the field,
one of them tried to jump the fence,