Those earlier days

We are as a coun­try head­ing for hard­ships, we are told, and per­haps now is a good time for a tonic from the past to remind our­selves of the hearty stock from which we emerged. The Wolfe Fam­ily His­tory pub­lished in 1964 includes inspir­ing tales of early pio­neers into south­east Ohio and beyond to Indi­ana and Wisconsin.

The story I like best began back in West­more­land County, Pa., with George Wolfe and his wife Jane Pisor Wolfe and their neigh­bors, Christo­pher Har­rold, his wife and two young sons. They arrived in Pitts­burgh, boarded a flat boat, floated down the Monon­ga­hela River to the Ohio, land­ing in Mari­etta in the spring of 1800. From there the two men loaded bar­rels of flour and some house­hold goods into two canoes, along with the tod­dler whom they strapped in with a bed cord.

The two young women, Jane, my 17-year-old ances­tor, and her friend, who was 17 years as well, with her sec­ond son, only 6 months, went over­land with one ox (a horse hav­ing died that win­ter on their way to Pitts­burgh), two cows, two sheep, a colt and a few gar­ments — quilts, cloth­ing and diapers.

The Greenville Treaty signed in 1797 had moved the Indi­ans far­ther west to Wabash coun­try less­ened that threat to their trav­els from Mari­etta to what is now Ames Town­ship on the Athens/Morgan County line in south­east Ohio. How­ever, 50 miles through thick forests full of bear, wild­cats and wolves with only notched trees every 100 yards to guide them was not easy.

Their first night on the trail, each cow calved along with the two ewes. The young women did not panic but rather took out nee­dle and thread and sewed pock­ets into one of the quilts, threw it over the ox’s back and stuffed a calf into each side. Then they took Harrold’s Sun­day best suit coat, sewed up the ends of the sleeves, put a lamb in each sleeve and hung it over one of the cows. They met up with their hus­bands who in their canoes had pad­dled down the Ohio from Mari­etta to the Hock­ing River to the Fed­eral Creek to Amesville such as it was then. Together again, they walked to their 100 acres pur­chased three years ear­lier from the Ohio Company.

Now that’s a real­ity show! Was it a hard­ship? Of course and life is, con­trary to much cant we hear oth­er­wise and are so loudly warned against. I say, start sewing.

Sylvia Zim­mer­man is the owner of Ful­ton Creek Jer­sey Cheese in Rich­wood. She holds two grad­u­ate degrees and, when not work­ing on her farm or pur­su­ing her inter­est in sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, writes her own blog.

Posted by Sylvia Zimmerman on Aug 26 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.