Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Historical Collections of Ohio, Vol. 1 of 2: An Encyclopedia of the State: History Both General and Local, Geography With Descriptions of Its Countries, Cities and Villages, Its Agricultural, Manufacturing, Mining and Business Development, Sketches of Eminent and Interesting Characters, Etc
A once aged friend of mine, now no longer aged, was wont to refine a verr beautiful life with golden scraps of philosophy that seemed to fit in with the varying incidents of seeming good or ill that he or his friends met on their path way. One of his expressions was: We don't know what is before us.
When, in 1847, I had written the preface on the preceding pages I could little imagine that forty years later I should make a second tour over Ohio and put forth a second edition Not a human being in any land that I know of has done a. Like thing. It is in view of what I have been enabled to do for a great people I regard myself as having been one of the most fortunate Of men. A spot is now reached which even in my dreams could not have been visioned, and I here rejoice that in the year 1839, now just half a century, I turned my back on Wall Street, with its golden allurements, where I had passed more than a year, to follow an occupation that was congenial with my loves and would widely benefit my fellow-men. He that hasteth to be rich shall not be innocent, but he that labors to spread knowledge in the form of good books that will reach the humblest cabin in the wilderness will feed his own soul, and earth and sky be a delight in his eyes all his days through.
When, in 1846, my snow-white companion, Old Pomp, carried me his willing burden on his back entirely over Ohio it was a new land opening to the sun. Its habitations were largely of logs, many of them standing in the margins of deep forests, amid the girdled monsters that reared their sombre skeleton forms over a soil for the first time brought under the benign in?uence of human culti vation.
SO young was the land that in that year the very lawmakers, 84 out of 107, were born strangers. The list of the nativities of the members of the legisla ture, which I have saved from that day, is as follows: Pennsylvania, 24; Ohio, 23; Virginia, 18; New York, 10; all the New England States, 18, of whom 6 were from Connecticut; Maryland, 7; Europe, 6; Kentucky 1, and North Caro lina, 1. Only four years before had the State grown its first governor in the per son of Wilson Shannon, born in a log-cabin, down in Belmont county, in 1802, and to be soon thereafter a fatherless infant, for George Shannon, whose son he was, in the following winter, while out hunting, got lost in the woods in a snow storm, and, going around in a circle, at last grew sleepy, fell and froze to death. The present governor, J. B. Foraker, that very year of my tour, was born in a cabin in Highland county, July 5th, the day after the American ?ag had been thrown out joyously to the breeze while booming cannon announced the seven tieth anniversary of that great day when the old bell proclaimed liberty and independence throughout the land.
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