this vicinity." The famed apple tree was destroyed by a gale in the fall of 1886. It was judged to be 150 years old, and was much dilapidated. It has produced in some seasons 200 bushels of apples. In the war of 1812 Fort Defiance was an important point for the concentration of troops, under Gen. Harrison, against the British and Indians on the frontier. On one occasion a revolt took place in the Kentucky regiment of Col. Allen. Gen. Harrison was not present, but luckily arrived that night in camp, and had retired, when he was suddenly awakened by Col. Allen and Maj. Hardin with the bad tidings. The outcome illustrates the knowledge of his men and the inimitable tact which Gen. Harrison appears to have possessed in his management of them. The details are from Knapp's "History of the Maumee Valley :' Col. Allen and Major M. D. Hardin informed the General that Allen's regiment, exhausted by the hard fare of the campaign, and disappointed in the expectation of an immediate engagement with the enemy, had, in defiance of their duty to their country and all the earnest impassioned remonstrances of their officers, determined to return home. They begged the General to rise and interfere, as the only officer who could bring the mutineers to a sense of their duty. Gen. Harrison informed the officers that he would take the matter in hand, and they retired. In the meantime, he sent an aid to Gen. Winchester to order the alarm, or point of war, to be beat the following morning instead of the reveille. The next morning, at the roll of the drum, every soldier sprang to his post, all alert and eager to learn the cause of the unexpected war alarm. Gen. Winchester formed them into a hollow square; at this moment Gen. Harrison appeared upon parade. The effect on the assembled troops of this sudden and unexpected appearance in their midst of their favorite commander can be easily imagined. Taking advantage of this Gen. Harrison immediately addressed them. He began by lamenting that there was, as he was informed, considerable discontent in one of the Kentucky regiments; this, although a mortification to himself, on their account, was happily of little consequence to the government. He had more troops than he knew what to do with at the present stage of the campaign; he was expecting daily the arrival of the Pennsylvania and Virginia quotas. It is fortunate, said this officer, with the ready oratory for which his native Virginia is so famed, that he had found out this dissatisfaction before the campaign was farther advanced, when the discovery might have been mischievous to the public interests, as well as disgraceful to the parties concerned. Now, so far as the government was interested, the discontented troops, who had come into the woods with the expectation of finding all the luxuries of home and of peace, had full liberty to return. He would, he continued, order facilities to be furnished for their immediate accommodation. But he could not refrain from expressing the mortification he anticipated for the reception they would meet from the old and the young, who had greeted them on their march to the scene of war, as their gallant neighbors. What must be their feelings, said the General, to see those whom they had hailed as their generous defenders, now returning without striking a blow and before their term of plighted service had expired? But if this would be the state of public sentiment in Ohio, what would it be in Kentucky? If their fathers did not drive their degenerate sons back to the field of battle to recover their wounded honor, their mothers and sisters would hiss them from their presence. If, however, the discontented men were disposed to put up with all the taunts and disdain which awaited them wherever they went they were, General Harrison again assured them, at full liberty to go back. The influence of this animated address was instantaneous. This was evinced in a manner most flattering to the tact and management of the commander. Col. J. M. Scott, the senior colonel of Kentucky, and who had served in the armies of Harmar, St. Clair and Wayne, in the medical staff, now addressed his men. These were well known in the army as the "Iron Works" from the neighborhood from which they had come. "You, my boys, said the generous veteran, "will prove your attachment for the service of your country and your general by giving him three cheers. The address was attended with immediate success, and the air resounded with the shouts of both officers and men. Colonel Lewis next took up the same course and with the same effect. It now became the turn of the noble Allen again to try the temper of his men. He begged leave of the general to address them, but excess of emotion choked his utterance. At length he gave vent to the contending feelings of his heart in a broken but forcible address, breathing the fire which ever burned so ardently in his breast. At the close of it, however, he conjured the soldiers of his reg iment to give the general the same manifestation of their patriotism and returning sense of duty which the other Kentucky regiments had so freely done. The wishes of their high-spirited officer were complied with, and a mutiny was nipped in its bud which might, if persisted in, have spread disaffection through the Kentucky troops, to the disgrace of that gallant State and the lasting injury of the public cause. No troops, however, behaved more faithfully or zealously through the remainder of their service till the greater part of them offered up their lives in defence of their country on the fatal field of Raisin. HICKSVILLE is twenty miles west of Defiance, on the line of the B. & O. & C. R. R. It has two newspapers: Independent, Republican, T. G. Dowell, editor; News, Independent, W. C. B. Harrison, editor. Churches: 1 Catholic, 1 Christian, 1 Methodist, 1 Episcopal, 2 Presbyterian, and, in 1880, 1,212 inhabitants. Hicksville was laid out in 1836 by Miller Arrowsmith for John A. Bryan, Henry W. Hicks, and Isaac S. Smith. The next spring the Hon. ALFRED P EDGERTON (born in Plattsburg, N. Y., in 1813) came out here in 1837 and assumed the management of the extended landed interests of the "American Land Company" and of the Messrs. Hicks, their interest being known as the "Hicks Land Company." He revised and added to the layout of the town, built mills, and made extensive improvements, and was a generous contributor to every good work or thing connected with the welfare of the community. In his land-office in Hicksville, up to October 5, 1852, he sold 140,000 acres, all to actual settlers. In 1857 he removed to Fort Wayne, Ind., but remained a citizen of Ohio until 1862, and now, late in life, is Civil Service Commissioner under the general government. Mr. Edgerton is a man of remarkable intellectual and physical vitality, and his life has been strongly and usefully identified with the history of this region and the State. In 1845 he was elected to the State Senate from the territory embraced by the present counties of Williams, Defiance, Paulding, Van Wert, Mercer, Auglaize, Allen, Henry, Putnam, and part of Fulton, where he became the leader of the Democratic party, and electrified the Senate by his clear, logical speeches in opposition to some of the financial measures advocated by the late Alfred Kelley, the Whig leader. It was stated that "while the debate between the two was one of the most noted of the times, that the respectful deference shown by Mr. Edgerton to Mr. Kelley, who was the senior, won for him the respect of the entire Whig party of the State and secured to him ever after the warm friendship and respect of Mr. Kelley, which he often exhibited in kind and valuable ways." This was during the period of our original tour over the State, and we well remember seeing him in his place in the Senate, being impressed by the keen, sharp, intellectual visage of the then young man. That memory has prompted us to this full notice. ALFRED P. EDGERTON. He was elected to Congress in 1850 and again in 1852, and during the latter term, with several others of the more sagacious members of the Democratic party, opposed the rescinding of the Missouri Compromise. On closing up the affairs of the land company Mr. Edgerton bought a large amount of land of them at a merely nominal price. We terminate this account of him by the relation of a very pleasant incident of honorable history, as related by Mr. Frank G. Carpenter: Along early in the seventies Mr. Edgerton was worth between $800,000 and $1,000,000, and he was helping his brother, Lycurgus Edgerton, who was doing business in New York. His brother had only his verbal promise for surety, and when the panic of 1873 came around and caused him to fail to the extent of $250,000, Edgerton was not legally responsible for his debts. Nevertheless, he paid every dollar of them, though in doing so it cost him the larger part of his fortune. In order to get the ready money he had to sell valuable stocks, such as the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago railroad stock, and others which are now away above_par, but which went then at a sacrifice. Upon Edgerton's friends urging him not to pay these debts of his brother, stating that he could not be held for them, he replied that the legal obligation made no difference to him. He had promised his brother that he would be his surety, and had he made no such promise he would have paid his brother's debts rather than see his notes dishonored. Such examples as that above instanced by Mr. Carpenter of a fine sense of honor on the part of public men are of extraordinary educational value to the general public, especially so to the young. Hence it pleases us to here cite another illustrative instance on the part of one of Ohio's gallant officers, Gen. Chas. H. Grosvenor, the member of Congress from the Athens district. He made claim for an invalid pension, which was allowed. Later. finding he could attend to business so as to support his family, he felt it wrong to accept of his pension, and ordered the check in his favor, which was about $5,000, to be cancelled. DELAWARE. DELAWARE COUNTY was formed from Franklin county, February 10, 1808. lies north of Columbus. The surface is generally level and the soil clay, except the river bottoms. About one-third of the surface is adapted to meadow and pasture, and the remainder to the plough. The Scioto and branches run through north and south-the Olentangy, Alum creek, and Walnut creek. Area, 450 square miles. In 1885 the acres cultivated were 108,277; in pasture, 98,488; woodland, 43,371; lying waste, 1,009; produced in wheat, 279,917 bushels; corn, 1,410,875; wool, 606,665 pounds; sheep, 107,895. School census 1886, 8,487; teachers, 196. It has 72 miles of railroad. The population of the county in 1820 was 7,639; in 1840, 22,060; in 1860, 23,902; in 1880, 27,381, of whom 21,890 were Ohio-born. The name of this county originated from the Delaware tribe, some of whom once dwelt within its limits, and had extensive corn-fields adjacent to its seat of justice. John Johnston says: "The true name of this once powerful tribe is Wa-be-nugh-ka, that is, 'the people from the east,' or 'the sun rising.' The tradition among themselves is, that they originally, at some very remote period, emigrated from the West, crossed the Mississippi, ascending the Ohio, fighting their way, until they reached the Delaware river (so named from Lord Delaware), near where Philadelphia now stands, in which region of country they became fixed. About this time they were so numerous that no enumeration could be made of the nation. They welcomed to the shores of the new world that great lawgiver, William Penn, and his peaceful followers, and ever since this people have entertained a kind and grateful recollection of them; and to this day, speaking of good men, they would say, 'Wa-she-a, E-le-ne,' such a man is a Quaker, i. e., all good men are Quakers. In 1823 I removed to the west of the Mississippi persons of this tribe who were born and raised within thirty miles of Philadelphia. These were the most squalid, wretched, and degraded of their race, and often furnished chiefs with a subject of reproach against the whites, pointing to these of their people and saying to us, 'see how you have spoiled them,' meaning they had acquired all the bad habits of the white people, and were ignorant of hunting, and incapable of making a livelihood as other Indians. In 1819 there were belonging to my agency in Ohio 80 Delawares, who were stationed near Upper Sandusky, and in Indiana 2,300 of the same tribe. Bockinghelas was the principal chief of the Delawares for many years after my going into the Indian country; he was a distinguished warrior in his day, and an old man when I knew him. Killbuck, another Delaware chief, had received a liberal education at Princeton College, and retained until his death the great outlines of the morality of the Gospel." In the middle of the last century the Forks of the Muskingum, in Coshocton county, was the great central point of the Delawares. There are yet fragments of the nation in Canada and in the Indian Territory. The following historical sketch of Delaware county and its noted characters was written for the first edition by Dr. H. C. Mann: The first settlement in the county was made May 1, 1801, on the cast bank of the Olentangy, five miles below Delaware, by Nathan Carpenter and Avery Powers, from Chenango county, N. Y. Carpenter brought his family with him and built the first cabin near where the farm-house now stands. Powers' family came out towards fall, but he had been out the year before to explore the country and select the location. In April, 1802, Thomas Celler, with Josiah McKinney, from Franklin county, Pa., moved in and settled two miles lower down, and in the fall of 1803 Henry Perry, from Wales, commenced a clearing and put up a cabin in Radnor, three-fourths of a mile south of Delhi. In the spring of 1804 Aaron, John and Ebenezer Welch (brothers) and Capt. Leonard Monroe, from Chenango, N. Y., settled in Carpenter's neighborhood, and the next fall Col. Byxbe and his company, from Berkshire, Mass., settled on Alum creek, and named their township Berkshire. The settlement at Norton, by William Drake and Nathaniel Wyatt ; Lewis settlement, in Berlin, and the one at Westfield followed soon after. In 1804 Carpenter built the first mill in the county, where the factory of Gun, Jones & Co. now stands. It was a saw-mill, with a small pair of stones attached, made of boulders, or "nigger_heads,' as they are commonly called. It could only grind a few bushels a day, but still it was a great advantage to the settlers. When the county was organized, in 1808, the following officers were elected, viz.: Avery Powers, John Welch and Ezekiel Brown, commissioners; Rev. Jacob Drake, treasurer; Dr. Reuben Lamb, recorder, and Azariah Root, surveyor. The officers of the court were Judge Belt, of Chillicothe, presi dent; Josiah M'Kinney, Thomas Brown and Moses Byxbe, associate judges; Ralph Osborn, prosecuting attorney; Solomon Smith, sheriff, and Moses Byxbe, Jr., clerk. The first session was held in a little cabin that stood north of the sulphur spring. The grand jury sat under a cherry-tree, and the petit jury in a cluster of bushes on another part of the lot, with their constables at a considerable distance to keep off intruders. Block-houses.-This being a border county during the last war, danger was apprehended from the Indians, and a block-house was built in 1812 at Norton, and another, still standing on Alum creek, seven miles east from Delaware, and the present dwelling of L. H. Cowles, Esq., northeast corner Main and William streets, was converted into a temporary stockade. During the war this county furnished a company of cavalry, that served several short campaigns as volunteers under Capt. Elias Murray, and several entire companies of infantry were called out from here at different times by Gov. Meigs, but the County never was invaded. Drake's Defeat.-After Hull's surrender, Capt. Wm. Drake formed a company of rangers in the northern part of the county to protect the frontier from maurauding bands of Indians who then had nothing to restrain them, and when Lower Sandusky was threatened with attack, this company, with great alacrity, obeyed the call to march to its defence. They encamped the first night a few miles beyond the outskirts of the settlement. In those days the captain was a great wag, and naturally very fond of sport, and being withal desirous of testing the courage of his men, after they had all got asleep, he slipped into the bushes at some distance, and, dis charging his gun, rushed towards the camp yelling Indians! Indians! with all his might. The sentinels, supposing the alarm to proceed from one of their number, joined in the cry and ran to quarters; the men sprang to their feet in complete confusion, and the courageous attempted to form on the ground designated the night before in case of attack; but the first lieutenant, thinking there was more safety in depending upon legs than arms, took to his heels and dashed into the woods. Seeing the consternation and impending disgrace of his company, the captain quickly proclaimed the hoax and ordered a halt, but the lieutenant's frightened imagination converted every sound into Indian yells and the sanguinary war-whoop, and the louder the captain shouted, the faster he ran, till the sounds sank away in the distance and he supposed the captain and his adherents had succumbed to the tomahawk and the scalping-knife. Supposing he had been asleep a few minutes only, he took the moon for his guide and flew for home, but having had time to gain the western horizon she led him in the wrong direction, and after breaking down saplings and running through brush some ten miles through the woods, he reached Radnor settlement just at daybreak, bareheaded and with his garments flowing in a thousand streams. The people, roused hurriedly from their slumber and horrified with his report that the whole company was massacred but him who alone had escaped, began a general and rapid flight. Each conveyed the tidings to his neighbor, and just after sunrise they came rushing through Delaware, mostly on horse-back, many in wagons, and some on foot, presenting all those grotesque appearances that frontier settlers naturally would, supposing the Indians close in their rear. Many anecdotes are told, amusing now to us who cannot realize their feelings, that exhibit the varied hues of courage and trepidation characterizing different persons, and also show that there is no difference between real and supposed danger, and yet those actuated by the latter seldom receive the sympathy of their fellows. One family, named Penry, drove so fast that they bounced a little boy, two or three years old, out of the wagon, near Delaware, and did not miss him till they had gone five or six miles on their way to Worthington, and then upon consultation concluded it was too late to recover him amid such imminent danger, and so yielded him up as a painful sacrifice! But the little fellow found protection from others, and is now living in the western part of the county. One woman, in the confusion of hurrying off, forgot her babe till after starting, and ran back to get it, but being peculiarly absent-minded she caught up a stick of wood from the chimney corner and hastened off, leaving her child again quietly sleeping in the cradle! A large portion of the people fled to Worthington and Franklinton, and some kept on to Chillicothe. In Delaware the men who could be spared from conveying away their families, or who had none, rallied for defence and sent scouts to Norton to reconnoitre, where they found the people quietly engaged in their ordinary avocations, having received a message from the captain; but it was too late to save the other settlements from a precipitate flight. Upon the whole, it was quite an injury to the county, as a large amount of produce was lost from the intrusion of cattle and the want of hands to harvest it; many of the people being slow in returning and some never did. Capt. Drake, with his company, marched on to Sandusky to execute the duty assigned him without knowing the effect produced in his rear. He has since been associate judge and filled several other offices in the county, and is still living, respected by his neighbors and characterized by hospitality and good humor and his strong penchant for anecdote and fun. Early Customs.-During the early period of the county the people were in a condition of complete social equality; no aristocratic distinctions were thought of in society, and the first line of demarkation drawn was to separate the very bad from the general mass. Their parties were for raisings and log-rollings, and the labor being finished, their sports usually were shooting and gymnastic exercises with the men, and convivial amusements among the women; no punctilious formality, nor ignoble aping the fashions of licentious Paris, marred their assemblies, but all were happy and enjoyed themselves in seeing others so. The rich and the poor dressed alike; the men generally wearing huntingshirts and buckskin pants, and the women attired in coarse fabrics produced by their own hands. Such was their common and holiday dress, and if a fair damsel wished a superb dress for her bridal day, her highest aspiration was to obtain a common American cotton check. The latter, which now sells for a shilling a yard, then cost one dollar, and five yards was deemed an ample pattern. Silks, satins and fancy goods, that now inflate our vanity and deplete our purses, were not then even dreamed of. One The cabins were furnished in the same style of simplicity; the bedstead was homemade, and often consisted of forked sticks driven into the ground with cross poles to support the clapboards or the cord. pot, kettle, and frying-pan were the only articles considered indispensable, though some included the tea-kettle; a few plates and dishes upon the shelf in one corner was as satisfactory as is now a cupboard full of china, and their food relished well from a puncheon table. Some of the weathiest families had a few split-bottom chairs, but, as a general thing, stools and benches answered the place of lounges and sofas, and at first the green sward or smoothly levelled earth served the double purpose of floor and carpet. Whisky toddy was considered luxury enough for any party-the woods furnished abundance of venison, and corn pone supplied - the place of |