The Bluffton news. [volume] (Bluffton, Ohio) 1875-current, 1952-09-11

bration have been under way for a
long time-local observance in every
county, town and village and a giant
one at Columbus, the seat of govern
ment. 1t is to be an all-year affair.
In the bedlam of barkers, the bal
lyhoo, the blare of brass and the har-
angue and Establishments of politi-
clans will be voices unheard-little
whispers of the ghosts of yesterday,
the wraiths of the people of the past
who made Ohio and nurtured it
through its century and a half-and
more. Unseen, unheard and unsens-
ed the old shades will mix among the
people, mingle in the milling crowds
land wonder at the millions they find
and so will marvel at the greatness
of the state they have made. Ghosts
of the old Onions, they, too, will be
celebrating.
People, like us, they toted the mus
ket, swung the axe, dug the bitches
ana HeWeQ the logs.
Their sons weighed out the beans
and wrought iron nails; measured off
the calico and sold the store clothes
of shoddy; shod the saddle and
plough horses; sharpened the harrow
teeth and pillow shares-then wonder
ed what to do about it when some
customers White Steamer wouldn't
run. Their daughters rocked the
cradle, spun the wheel, knitted the
sox, patched the britches, washed,
ironed, cooked and in their hours off
stopped the pigs and helped with the
corn.
1t was the pioneer women who
wore the calico and linsey-woolsey
and whose first acquaintance with
silk or velvet came with the lining in
her coffin. The men wore the shod-
dy so long as the suit lasted but at
that preferred it to the breeches
made from nettle-cloth that his wife
had spun when the flax crop failed,
Nettles are a member of the flax
family, worked into cloth the same
way and the woods were full of them.
Yes, the old ghosts will be there
in every city, town, village and ham
let. Forgotten, barely remembered
from tradition but countless, they
dwell in old ~graveyards, family buri-
al-grounds, in long lost lone graves
beneath some tree and in other spots
no longer known to the Ohio they
built. They were the Ohioans of
long ago.
The Ohio story is not of COVER
nors, county lines, political parties
mol fortune, fame and elegance. 1t
is a tale made out of people and the
things they did-or tried to do but
failed. These folk were like all of
us and like us they worked, worried,
loved, laughed and were lost in the
oblivion of bygone years. What they
did were strange, quaint things and
often we're difficult to analyze but
out of them came the great Ohio of
today.
1t isn't easy to visualize the Ohio
of 1761 with only one log cabin put
up by a white mar on the land-th'
hut at Bolivar, Stark County, almos
on the Tuscarawas County line. Ane
the echo of the first walls of Johr
Roth, the first white child born in
what now is Ohio, have long died
away-he died, too, September 25,
1S41, at Bath, Pennsylvania. But
Roth was born July a, 1873, at Gnad-
denhutten, still existant in Tuscara-
was County.
There was the three-hour hand-to-
hand fight John Minter had with a
bear in the early 1905 in Delaware
County-Minter's last bear hunt,
though he lived 90 years longer; the
wild turkey Sarah Tharp killed in
August, 1899, in Ashtabula County,
and so gave her three starving chill
dren a Thanksgiving dinner - yes,
Thanksgiving Day then fell on "the
second Tuesday in August in honor
of the end of the Indian wars"
And away back in Ohio's past -
and the states beginning-there was
Michael Baldwin, who wrote the first
state constitution during November,
1902, in the barroom of Keys tavern,
C%hillieothe. He was sued by William
Key in the June term of court, 1904,
for the bar bill he had III up while
writing the constitution under which
Ohio was governed for its first so
years.
What most of US learned about
Ohio is the lore we learned at school
dry, sketchy outline history, mostly
forgotten after the struggle came to
make a living and to keep on exist
ing. But the real story of the state
ALA - -