This and That

By Helen Kaverman, The Delphos Herald
Published:  Monday, May 12, 2008 (3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Part II

Samuel and Martha (Wamsley) Hall came to Putnam County in 1832 and settled in Blanchard Township. Their full biographies can be found in Putnam County Pioneer Reminiscences 1878-1887. Pioneer life was tough but Martha said “To think back how we had to live, it seems as though we had a very hard time, then it did not seem hard.” They just didn’t know anything different. It’s just the way it was for nearly everyone.
The forests were thick so they had plenty of wildlife for meat such as fish, coon, venison, turkeys, quail, rabbits, squirrels and pheasants. The fish in the river were very large but when the milll dams were put in, the fish could not come up the river. Martha added: “But we would rather have the mills than the fish.”
Martha continued: “We often had to grate corn for bread and eat potatoes for bread and for pies would take meal and make it short, take a spoon and put in a pan, then take our pumpkins and make our pies, which would eat very nice to us when we could get no better, sometimes I would take buckwheat flour and make pie crust. Mr. Hall (she always referred to her husband as Mr. Hall) would often have to go to the hand mill or go to a horse mill to get a few bushels of corn or buckwheat ground, which made it very lonesome for the children.
After we got to raising wheat, Mr. Hall had to go to Perrysburg to get flour and would be gone two or three days before he would get home. We would save our bran and get the fine that would go through the sieve and make pancakes and fritters. We had plenty of milk and eggs so I could make pretty good cakes of the bran, and it would taste quite well when we had to work very hard and we would be hungry.”
The first barn of any size that they built took 30 or more men to raise. It was a double barn, two bins and the threshing floor between it. The men came for four or more miles around and from every direction in order to have enough hands to raise it, since the settlers were so few in those days. Martha held quilting bees and would invite ladies in four miles around in order to get enough women to get the quilting done, “so that you can see that the inhabitants were very scarce then.”
Some two years after they came into the county, they had a “preaching”, which was the first sermon preached in the county. It was delivered by Elam Day, a Methodist minister and the father of Dr. Day of Pendleton. (Pendleton was the early name for Pandora). The sermon was preached in the log cabin home of the Halls. The pioneers had a preaching every two weeks and had two ministers on the circuit. There was a young man by the name of Brown and Brother Day, who was rather elderly. The people came from two or three miles to the meeting “with pleasure”, The preachings took place in the Hall home for 10 to 12 years. After that the services were held in the first school house until a church was built.
Martha finished her recollections with “The new country is a hard place to live, there is so much hard work for farmers to clear their ground, pick brush and roll logs, which I have done some little of when Mr. Hall would have considerable to do. We had to keep a good many travelers that were coming to the county to select homes. Mr. Hall would take his pocket compass and go out through the woods, it being a dense wilderness, to show the land to them, he would go for miles with them. Sometimes they would stay two or three days looking for land. There were no taverns from Findlay here, which is sixteen miles, from here west some forty or fifty miles.”
Samuel Hall gave a brief biography. He said his forefathers cultivated the soil for their bread. His father left the State of Virginia to get away from the sight of slavery. Samuel told of owning 175 acres in Muskingum County that he purchased in 1831. When they moved to Blanchard Township, Putnam County in 1832 they found just one other settler, Mr. O.W. Crawfis, living there. Samuel said, “The county in most directions for 10, 20 or more miles was without any inhabitants, except our red brethren, the Indians.”
Samuel gave his recollections of the past to the Putnam County Pioneer Association in 1886, as they were compiling their book of “Pioneer Reminiscences, Number Two.” He said very few of the present inhabitants of the county could imagine what life was like in the back woods fifty years ago but the many thrilling incidents were still very fresh in his memory, just like it happened the day before.
He remembered such things as grating corn for bread and grinding corn and buckwheat on a hand mill. They had to go 10 to 15 miles to the horse mill, and stay over for one or two days to get two or three bushels of corn ground. Samuel told how “The best thing to fetch money was coon skins, which was called a legal tender, and was said to go to in the land office in the purchase of land; this much for bread and money.” He added “As to society, we were all on equality, no one thinking himself better than his neighbor, and the settlement was made up of hardy, industrious men and women, who would clear the ground, cultivate the corn, bake the bread and eat it with a good appetite and enjoy life as well perhaps as an older settlement.”
So it was for those pioneers who were brave enough to enter this dense forest and clear the land to make it for us to call home today.

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