Let’s take a walk into the past of Milford & Miller townships

MILFORD TOWNSHIP — History is often the chronicling of significant events, some of which are grand, others of which are disturbing. 

As a relief from such portentous happenings, slice-of-life stories can bring the reader in touch with times long past, even if those times had no particular drama.

I recently stumbled across just such a slice-of-life in an October issue of the Democratic Banner, a paper which existed during the heady days of the late 19th and early 20th centuries when Mount Vernon boasted not one but two newspapers.

The piece was a letter to the editor written by a Knox County old-timer, W.H. Smith. He writes in to the newspaper for no other reason than to share the memories and musings he had while taking a trip to visit the southern part of the county, where he grew up. 

By his own commentary, he appears to have been in his 70s. He cites Milford Township as being where he grew up, but says that he started his day trip on this occasion by venturing to Brandon, which is in neighboring Miller Township. His first stop was at the church graveyard.

“I first went to the place where loved-ones sleep,” Smith wrote, “and then walked around reading the names on gravestones of persons who were once my friends.” 

It’s sad that Mr. Smith has clearly outlived most of the people that he grew up with, but it serves as a springboard into his past. 

He stops to visit “Aunt Sally Simons,” who was his school teacher, starting in 1849. He says that she was then known as Miss Sally Gates, and that the one-room schoolhouse that she taught in was built on her father’s farm, where she still lived in 1910, at the age of 83.

Those details make it possible to track down the location Smith was describing.

Looking in the 1871 Caldwell & Starr atlas of Knox County, and knowing that Smith will be describing living near Sycamore Creek in another part of his letter, I conjectured that his path from Brandon toward Milford would have been along Sycamore Road, adjacent to the creek.

Sure enough, around the spot where the road briefly curves north before returning to a more-or-less straight east/west direction, there once stood a schoolhouse on the north side of the road, not far from the intersection with Possum Road. The schoolhouse is on the farm property of one Cyrus Gates, matching Miss Sally’s maiden name.

A little digging tells us that Leander Cyrus Gates was a Revolutionary War veteran from Rutland, Vermont, who moved to Knox County in 1816. That parcel of land his farm was originally government property, so it may well be that he was offered the first chance to buy that land because of his veteran status. 

According to Smith, Aunt Sally still had the original deed, signed by U.S. President James Madison, and dated Sept. 15, 1815. I can’t help but wonder if any descendants of the family still have that paper today.

Census records tell us that Sally (who preferred that nickname to her given name “Sarah”) was the sixth of nine children, and she went on to live to the ripe old age of 99 before passing away in 1926. At that grand age, she may have outlived all of her students.

Continuing west on Sycamore Road, Smith got to the farm where he grew up, which was just before the road shifts slightly to the north, before it reaches the intersection with Johnstown Road. 

He tells the story of how his father came to Knox County. In 1824, William H. Smith, Sen., left his home in Virginia to look for a home in the west. He traveled on foot and alone. 

He crossed the Ohio river in a Ferry boat, and walked on over the newly made roads through the woods; went south through Mount Vernon on Main street, and on to Milford Township, where he located a tract of government land; went to Chillicothe and entered it; then went back and cleared off a spot large enough to start a tanyard.

Smith says that his father at first lived with the family on the neighboring property, that of Judge W.L. Simons. Smith Sr., lived with them until he built a log cabin, and later a timber-framed farmhouse. 

He married Esther Dill of Franklin County and began raising children. 

The farm included a hide-tanning operation, which Smith described as big deep holes that were dug in the ground and walled with heavy planks for the lime, a pool, tanning vats, and a “bark house” where an old horse would circle, moving the grind stones that would pulverize oak bark, which would be used to make the “liquor” used for tanning leather. 

At the time of Smith’s 1910 visit, no trace of the tannery remained.

The current residents of the farm invited Smith to come inside the house, which brought on a rush of memories:

“How quickly memories of former years began to appear. I could see the old clock standing in the corner, so tall that it almost reached the ceiling, and the old  looking glass hanging on the wall, the large wide fireplace and the long crane hanging over the fire with hooks hanging on it. 

“I could see children hanging their stockings on the old wooden mantelpiece on Christmas and New Year’s Eve, and many other incidents of former years. 

“I went into the pantry where I used to go so often with mother to get a piece of pie or bread and butter, then into the parlor and parlor bedroom, then upstairs into the rooms where we used to sleep, and down into the cellar where the apples and potatoes used to be piled up in big bins for winter use.”

Smith then went out into what remained of the orchard that once stood on the farm and sat down beneath an apple tree and ate his lunch. He noted that when he was a child, the tree was a sapling. 

Now, “[t]he years that have gone by since then have brought gray hairs to me, and to the old sweet tree, withered branches.”

He noted that there had once been a pond on the farm where he used to slide on the ice in his shoes because he was afraid to try ice skates, but that the pond was now part of a plowed field.

He noted that even Sycamore Creek had changed its course in some spots. He let his imagination drift, and saw his earlier days:

“As I sat there, what a throng of memories passed before me. I could see a little boy in his bare feet, with straw hat and cotton shirt and pants, with suspenders made from strips of white cotton cloth, with the limb of a beech tree for a fish pole, a line made of thread, and a bent pin for a fish hook, trying to catch fish that were so plentiful in this creek. 

“I fancied I could see him a few years later hoeing tobacco in a field with other boys with a hoe that a blacksmith in Brandon had-made, and plowing corn with a single shovel plow that the same blacksmith had made, and reaping and cradling wheat and mowing grass with a scythe. 

“I could see him a few years later at the age of 18, starting away to school to the academy in Martinsburg to spend three happy years, the happy memories of which will never fade, and at the end of that time, going West to begin life’s battles.”

Finding the days shadows beginning to lengthen, Smith continued on down Sycamore Road toward the intersection then known as Milfordton, pausing to visit another of his former school teachers, Miss Sally Ann Hawkins, who still lived on the farm where she had taught in a one-room schoolhouse on the south side of Sycamore Road, in 1844. 

Smith notes that his father was the only Democrat in the predominantly Whig neighborhood, and that the other students called his family the “Polkberries,” after U.S. President James K. Polk.

Continuing northeast up Johnstown Road, Smith stopped to visit a former classmate of his, L.H. Burgess. While it’s not an exact match, the 1871 map shows a Lidia G. Burgess on that road, so it seems likely that Lidia is either the woman Smith is talking about, or perhaps her mother. 

It’s rare to find so many names match up so closely to the stories Smith tells, so these glimpses into the long-ago daily life of Knox County are rare treasures.

Smith closes his letter poignantly: 

“What would I not give as I sit here in the silence of this night, if I could lift the curtain the veils the past just for a little while and see father and mother and brothers and sisters dressed in their simple attire, as they were in that old home 60 years ago. It would be the dearest picture my eyes ever beheld.”

And how amazing for him, 114 years later, to share those images with us.