came on, he procured a fine fat saddle of venison, and the whole party feasted with cheerful hearts that evening on the nice steaks of this delicious meat. Some they broiled on the coals, while Bruce showed them how to roast it, hunter fashion, on a hickory skewer filled full of pieces and stuck up in the earth before the fire; this, with a cup of not coffee, furnished a very comfortable meal. They slept undisturbed that night; though ever and anon, the sighing of the winds in the tops of the trees led the more timid of the females to fancy they heard the stealthy approach of Indians.

In the morning, the ground was covered with snow to the depth of several inches, which had fallen while they were asleep. The day following the storm was fine and pleasant, and the smooth, calm surface of the Ohio exhibited a striking contrast to the tumult and uproar which had agitated its bosom only a few hours before. From Fort McIntosh, at the mouth of the Beaver, to the new settlement at Muskingum, no white man had dared to plant himself on the Indian shore of the river, with the exception of a small blockhouse a few miles below Buffalo, which some hunters had built as a place to which they might retreat if attacked by their enemies, while out hunting in the region west of the river. Even here there was little or no clearing, and all else was unbroken wilderness. They embarked early in the morning and reached Buffalo that evening. In the course. of the forenoon they found the pereauger of Bruce lodged on the shore and filled with water. It still contained the barrel of flour, meat, axe, etc., with all the traps but one. The buoyancy of the light poplar wood of which it was made, prevented it from sinking, and the ballast of the traps, axe, etc., from upsetting; so that, quite unexpectedly, the old trapper recovered his boat and goods, which he had given up as utterly lost. At Buffalo, they were greeted with the loud laugh and boisterous welcome of Isaac, who, with Michael and Shaw, had been waiting one or two days with the horses for their arrival.

The women and children, still impressed with dread lest another storm should overtake them, concluded to lodge on shore, and accordingly took quarters for the night on the floor of a small log hut

that stood at the extremity of the point of land at the mouth of Buffalo creek. In the morning Mrs. Devoll came near losing a part of her bedding. A gaily ornamented new woollen blanket had attracted the attention of Mrs. Riley, the mistress of the cabin, as it lay spread over the sleepers in the night, and in the hurry and bustle of rolling up the bed clothes, she adroitly managed to secrete it among her own bedding, stowed away in the corner of the room. Mrs. Devoll soon missed it, and after a careful but fruitless search among her own things, did not hesitate to accuse the woman of secreting it. She roundly denied any knowledge of the blanket. Being a resolute woman, and determined not to give it up in this way, Mrs. Devoll made an overhauling of Mrs. Riley's chattels, when much to the chagrin and disappointment of the border woman, she pulled out the lost article, rolled up in her dingy bedding. Thinking they had recovered all the missing goods, they hurried aboard their boat at the exciting call of Isaac, who was ready to depart, and in no very good humor with the hospitality of Mrs. Riley At Wheeling, where they stopped for some milk, they discovered, much to their vexation, that they had also lost a new two-quart measure, which they had brought all the way with them for the purpose of measuring the milk they should need to purchase on the road. In a few years after this adventure, during the Indian war, this family of Rileys, who still lived in the same spot, were all massacred by the savages.

At Grave creek they took on board a stout, hearty old man, as a passenger, by the name of Green. He assisted Bruce and their crew, each, by taking turns at the oars and rowing all night, and with the music of Isaac and the old man, who proved an excellent singer, they made out to reach the mouth of Muskingum just at dark on Thursday evening, the fourth day after leaving Pittsburg. Ice had been making in the Ohio for the last twenty-four hours, and the trayellers were fortunate in arriving as they did, for the following morning the Muskingum river was frozen over from shore to shore. Great was the consternation of Mrs. Rouse, who had an instinctive dread of Indians, at seeing the woods and side hill, back of Fort Harmer,

lighted up with a multitude of fires, when she was told that they were the camp fires of three hundred savages. They had come in to a treaty, which was held the ninth of January following. It was early in December, and the emigrants had been more than eight weeks on the road. The news of their arrival was soon carried to Campus Martius, the name of the new garrison. Capt. Devoll hurried on board, delighted once more to embrace his wife and children, from whom he had been absent more than a year. Their goods and chattels were put into the "Mayflower," which was used as a receiving boat for the emigrants, and with the women and children, landed at the Ohio company's wharf. Devoll had built a comfortable twostory house in one of the curtains of the garrison, to which all were removed that night, and his happy family slept once more under their own roof, in the far distant region of the Northwest Territory.

The following spring, a company or association was formed to commence the settlement fourteen miles below, on the right bank of the Ohio, afterwards called Belprie. Capt. Devoll, Mr. Rouse, Michael, Capt. Haskell and Isaac, joined this association. The latter returned to New England, and moved out his family in the fall of 1789. By the time the settlers were about to begin to reap a little of the fruits of their hard labor, in clearing land, building cabins, etc., the Indian war broke out, and they were all driven into garrison for some five years. Many were the dangers and hardships they here endured, suffering most from the small pox and scarlatina maligna.

In the summer of 1790, Bathsheba Rouse taught a school of young boys and girls at Belprie, which is believed to be the first school of white children ever assembled within the bounds of the present State of Ohio. The Moravian missionaries had Indian schools at Gnadenhutten and Schönbrunn, on the Tuscarawas, as early as the year 1779, eleven years before this time. She also taught for several successive summers within the walls of "Farmer's Castle," the name of the stout garrison built by the settlers sixteen miles below Marietta. After the close of the war the colonists moved out upon their farms. Mr. Rouse and his family remained in Belprie. Bathsheba married, soon after the close of the war, Richard, the son

of Griffen Greene, one of the Ohio company's agents, and a leading man in all public affairs. Cynthia married the Hon. Paul Fearing, the first delegate to Congress from the Northwest Territory, and for many years a judge of the court. Elizabeth married Levi Barber, for many years receiver of public moneys, and member of Congress for this district during two sessions. The children of these emigrant females, for wealth and respectability, rank among the first of our citizens.

Thus closes this sketch of the early emigrants to Muskingum, whose adventures are only the counterpart of other families who crossed the Alleghany ranges in the year 1788. It is in fact a portion of the early history of Ohio, and should be preserved for the same reasons that Virgil has preserved the incidents of the voyage of Æneas from Troy to Italy-they were the founders of a new state. Those days of hardship cannot be reviewed with other than feelings of the highest respect for the individuals who dared to brave the difficulties and uncertainties of a pioneer life.*

* The foregoing memoir is much shortened from the original one by Dr. Hildreth.

XII.

SARAH SIBLEY.

SARAH W. SPROAT was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on the 28th of January, 1782. She was the only child of Col. Ebenezer Sproat, a gallant and accomplished officer of the Revolution, and the granddaughter of Commodore Abraham Whipple, who also repeatedly distinguished himself during that war by his activity and bravery. At the commencement of the struggle, Commodore Whipple was wealthy, but had impoverished himself by his advances to Government in fitting out vessels and men for the public service, for which he was never remunerated, and at its close found he could no longer sustain the style of living befitting his position in society, and to which he was accustomed. His son-in-law, Col. Sproat, was in the same situation, and both being too proud and high-spirited to conform patiently to their change of circumstances, they determined to join a party of their companions-in-arms, who were about to seek a new home in the yet unexplored wilderness of the West.

They were of the advance party who landed in 1788 at the mouth of the Muskingum, and commenced the settlement of Marietta. Burnet says in his notes-"The early adventurers to the Northwestern Territory were generally men who had spent the prime of their lives in the war of Independence. Many of them had exhausted their fortunes in maintaining the desperate struggle, and