Annals of our ancestors; one hundred and fifty years of history in the ...

THE GREEN TREE TAVERN 179
active old man who was very decided in his opinions. He had
various pet aversions, one of which was beards; he declared
men with beards looked like baboons. A fashion of women
he particularly disliked was the wearing of hoops. Though
so pronounced in his opinions, he was ever kind and hospitable,
generous and obliging, an upright and honest citizen. Brother
William puts it on record that he was a quiet and peaceable
man. He was born in Morris County, New Jersey, February
20, 1774. He helped to build the block house at Fort Washington
when but sixteen years old. It is told of him that he could
load logs a foot over his own head. Benjamin Morris served
as a packhorse man in Wayne's army about 1795. Mary
Spinning, his wife, was born in Elizabethtown, New Jersey.
She was a woman of small stature, not larger than her granddaughter,
Julia Morris. Indeed, my brother William has
recorded that his wife, her father, grandfather, grandmother
and great-grandfather were all small, so it is not difficult to
account for the short stature of the Morris-Watkins children.
Our maternal grandfather Skeels was also under medium
height. Mary Spinning was brought up two miles west of
Lebanon on the Green Tree Road. She was not the first wife
of Benjamin Morris, he having married, while very young, a
girl by the name of Ticknor. This first wife and their one
child died early from smallpox. It was the second wife, Mary
Spinning, who became the mother of his ten children. It
might be well to note right here that upon the Watkins side
our great-grandfather, Joseph Watkins, married Elizabeth
Spinning, valso of Elizabethtown, New Jersey, as related in our
first chapter, and my father always said the Morris and
Watkins families must be at least distantly related.
Isaac Morris' grandfather, Matthias Spinning, and his
brothers fought all through the Revolutionary War, and after
it was over Matthias Spinning came to Ohio with his family.
This was in 1791 or 1792, and near Lebanon he purchased from
the government a farm which is now known as the Thompson
Farm. He lived and died on this place. His daughter
Jerusha, known to us as "Aunt 'Rusha," was born in the
Block House (Fort Washington) at Cincinnati. Mary Spin-