Pictured is the ca. 1806 log home of Samuel and Patsey Wright as it appeared in the 1920’s. Courtesy Patrick Duffey of Lebanon, Ohio. Also shown is another view of this old home taken in the Winter of 1973 just months before the structure burned. It was located beside the Harshaville Pike just north of the Harshaville Covered Bridge.
(By Stephen Kelley from the People’s Defender 1984)
In last week’s column we mentioned that Nathaniel Kirkpatrick had married a second time to America Kerr. She was the widow of Robert Kerr and the daughter of William Wright, her grandfather John Wright was one of five brothers who had moved from Virginia about 1787 into the rich Bluegrass Region of Kentucky.
According to family tradition, in 1799 the five Wright brothers again pulled up the stakes and moved, this time to Ohio. The above-mentioned John, settled near present-day Decatur in Brown County whereas his brothers James, William and Alexander moved into what is now Liberty township in Highland County. The fifth brother, Samuel boughtseveral large tracts of land in Adams County and settled on Cherry Fork Creek just west of where the village of Cherry Fork was later platted. Samuel is credited as the first permanent white settler in Wayne Township moving there in March, 1799. Samuel and his wife, Mary were members of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church and helped organize the Cherry Fork congregation in 1805. Wright was one of the first four ruling elders to serve in that church.
In 1810, Samuel and Mary began giving generous parcels of their forty-six hundred acres of land to their children. In April of that year, they deeded the five hundred sixty acres to their son, Samuel Wright Jr. This land was at the junction of Grace’s Run and Cherry Fork Creek which eventually became part of Oliver Township. Although Samuel Jr was deeded this property in 1810, according to one source, he had been living there as early as 1806. He was apparently a rugged individual with a true pioneering spirit. Historian Jacob Leamon wrote of Samuel , Jr. stated that he, “was a man of stout frame, and a great hunter”. Leamon went on to describe Adams County “in the early days” as an area where, “wild beast and game of all kinds fairly swarmed through the forests. It was a perfect paradise for hunters and daring spirits who delighted in wild, dangerous adventures. Wolves and bears were often caught in traps.”
Historian Leamon then wrote that Samuel Wright Jr, “one morning , found a wolf caught in a trap. This animal, for some reason, he desired to take home alive. In cogitating upon some way to do it, he approached too near to it, and was attacked by it. With a tremendous blow of his powerful fist, he knocked the animal down, ” After describing how Samuel Jr eventually got the wolf home alive, Leamon wore that, “Mr. Wright, on another occasion, attached an old bear with two cubs, and single handed, with an axe killed them all.”
Samuel Wright Jr was an enterprising man as well as adventurous, and in 1817 erected the first grist mill in Oliver Township. This mill was powered by water dammed on the Cherry Fork Creek. The first mill structure was built of logs but was replaced by Wright in 1824 with a larger and more modern frame building. Even this was evidently a small structure outfitted with only one set of stone buhrs for grinding grain. Wright also built a wool carding shop near the mill in 1819. Records are scant but apparently there was not much need for wool carding in that area and the business was discontinued by Wright in 1833.
In 1846, Samuel and his wife, Martha (Patsey) Finley Wright, sold their acreage with their home and mill to Pennsylvanian, Paul Harsha. More about him next week.
