Contributing Columnist
                                Joyce Wilson

Contributing Columnist

Joyce Wilson

CHAPTER 12

This week we will look at a snapshot of what life on “The Ridge,” was like in the spring of 1860 before the Civil War had taken many of the young men of the community.

It was a beautiful spring day on “The Ridge.” The redbud trees, known farther south as Judas trees, were always a mass of redbuds before the leaves appeared. The dogwood with its cloud of white blossoms, and the lovely bluebells, so plentiful in early days, all displayed their color as if Heaven was declaring this Scotch settlement under her own flag.

Fifty years later, small patches of those beautiful bluebells were sometimes found in deep woodsy places. Perhaps they were brought from Scotland by some Scotch Covenanter. At least I fancied that when I listened to the pretty music on our old “roller” organ, “The Blue Bells of Scotland.”

It was grinding day at Park’s mill down on George’s Creek. This day was looked forward to by the children for “Granny” Parks, the miller’s wife seemed always to have enough red cinnamon drops for each to have a small handful. Candy of any kind was a rare treat.

They liked, too, to hear the miller talk. He was supposed to be English but spoke some kind of jargon that could hardly be called even cockney English. A sample that came down to me; “Hep moose ze vigon, muzer Williams, bleas.” “Zee, ye bush en ell bull en et as moze en blasé.” Interpreted: Help move the wagon Mr. Williams, please. See, you push and I’ll pull and it is moved in place.

Going to the mill was a reward to the small children for their help in shelling the corn, a tiresome job on small hands.

The procession of a couple of ox carts, three pairs of horses drawing wagons and a lone horseback rider with a bag of shelled corn across his horse, pretty well represented the neighborhood of the east end of The Ridge. They plodded along slowly for a near a mile, then turned to the right onto the road to the mill.

I once asked an old-timer of that vicinity how it was that a mile down there seemed so much longer than were marked off in sections. His reply was that the first surveyors measured with a coonskin and threw in the tail for good measure.

The land is level down past the stone house. Then you come to a long rocky hill stretching down to George’s Creek, then up the creek a little way to the site of the watermill.

The children watched the upstairs windows on either side of the huge chimney as they passed the stone house, then, looking back, watched the windows on either side of an identical chimney on the east end. They sat very still and whispered, imagining they could see frightened black faces peering from the shadows.

The Covenanter children all know of the Underground Railroad but any secret about its operation was safe with children reared on stories that children played in keeping secret the hiding places of the hunted Covenanter ministers of Scotland back in days of persecution. Every child knew the stone house was a station.

Most of them had played hide-and-seek upstairs, hiding in the big old clothes presses. One place the plaster had been clawed from the wall by a poor hunted creature in her fright.

It was fun to watch the water spill over the mill dam and watch the water wheel in the mill race. The upper and the nether stones that ground the grain were big stone wheels about two feet in diameter and about four inches thick. The stones were fluted by hand chiseling.

The afternoon sun was getting low as the two yokes of oxen toiled slowly up the long rocky hill. A young man, Jim, rode his big dapple-gray mare alongside the driver of the front oxen. The two men chatted as they rode.

The children were holding whispered conversations, probably about the same topics yet viewing the situation from opposite angles. One wagon was of the Steelites, the other of the Gaileyites.

Jim was Rhoda’s beau and he was a Gaileyite. It was getting around that he was climbing down a ladder from his upstairs bedroom and going to Steelite parties. In any event, he was by no means the only young man to attend forbidden parties by the ladder route. The pastors were unaware of these goings-on.

When nearing the stone house, Jim turned off into a bridle path that was a shortcut to the east end of The Ridge Road. The children sitting on meal sacks and looking back, saw Jim turn off the bridle path and onto a cow path that led to the barn at the foot of the hill back of the stone house.

Down the path from the house to barn came Rhoda wearing a pretty red calico dress and sunbonnet. She quickly mounted the “upon” block as Jim reined in his horse beside it.

Gaileyite Society met the next afternoon at Thomas Ralston’s house. The usual quiet of the gathering was disturbed by covert whispers as the people gathered for this mid-week prayer meeting. But on entering the living room every whisper ceased. Quietly, everyone was seated on benches or chairs. For the time being this was a place of public worship and not until the last amen was said was there even a whisper of irreverence.

Now they were talking again – of Rhoda and Jim’s elopement. Elopement was a new word for those children who soon began to realize it had something to do with what they had seen the evening before.

One lady remarked, “Just like young Lochinvar!” Then they understood. For every schoolchild knew all the stories of the McGuffey Readers. The reader story poem referred to was about young Lochinvar who “came out” of the west.” How he danced to the door with his lady love who was soon to become a bride of his parent’s choice. How they dashed out the door, mounted his horse and galloped away. Many pursued but none could overtake them.

Rhoda’s father had given chase down the woods path but was soon outdistanced; thus, the similarity to young Lochinvar of poetical fame.

A Gaileyite yoked to a Steelite may have been considered a sin by the pastor, but from the conversations, the greater number of the ladies were more concerned about the impropriety of the calico dress and sunbonnet as a trousseau. At any rate, it was said they lived happily ever after, eventually receiving their parent’s blessing.

So, what did happen to Rhoda and Jim? Rhoda’s parents were Daniel (1791-1875) & Elizabeth (Keel) (1808-1853) Sharp. They lived in the old stone house (a station on the Underground Railroad). Born in 1830, Jim was 30 years of age and Rhoda 20. After their elopement, James (Jim) Mitchell and Rhoda moved to Belle Center, Logan Co., Ohio and had 9 children. Jim’s parents were Robert & Rebecca (Miller) Ramsey Mitchell, who also moved to Belle Center. Jim died of Diabetes in 1893, at age 63, and Rhoda in 1904, at age 64. Rhoda’s brother was David Sharp (1849-1930). David Sharp married and had a daughter, Lulu Belle Sharp. Lulu Belle married Wm T. Washburn. They had a daughter, Mary (Washburn) Newman, who was a hairdresser and lived on Main St. in Seaman. Today, Mary’s daughter, Carla Sue (Newman) Huber continues to live in the home where she grew up which is just a short distance from the old stone house and “The Ridge.”