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

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ANNALS OF OUR ANCESTORS
"I was the youngest of twelve children, ten of whom
grew to maturity. My maternal grandparents, WiUiam Mc-
Lain and wife, were residents of Pennsylvania in what is now
known as the oil region. A small stream ran through their
place, the surface of which was covered with oil seepage from
the hills. I have often heard my mother tell how the people
came and camped by the creek, and secured the oil by spreading
blankets upon the water and then wringing out the oil
which had been absorbed; thus obtained it was used for
medical purposes, and afterward it came to be sold as a medicine
and was called Seneca Oil.
"In 1816 my grandfather sold his land in Pennsylvania,
which was mostly covered with pine timber, only reserving
enough of the timber to cut into logs to make a raft. Upon
this raft he placed his family and goods and floated down the
Monongahela River into the Ohio, and thence on down that
river to Cincinnati. In Cincinnati he sold his raft to the
original Nick Longworth, the grandfather of the present congressman,
and went back from the city about twenty miles to
the west, and bought one hundred and sixty acres of wild
land from the government, upon which he brought up his
family. I recollect my mother's telling that when he sold
his land in Pennsylvania it was paid for in silver, and that the
silver was paid out on a table. The man making the purchase
said he believed there was a half-bushel of it, so a half-bushel
measure was sent for, and it filled it full, rounding measure.
"My paternal grandfather, Adam Myers, was a Hessian
soldier from Hesse-Cassel, Germany. The German government
agreed to hire to the English a certain number of soldiers,
to be paid for, as I recollect, at the rate of four dollars each for
those not returned to their own country. The German government
procured these soldiers by sending out what was known
as a press gang, who caught every young man they found out
of employment or without friends in the vicinity and pressed
him into the service, and then sold him to the English to
join the army in America against the colonies. My grand-
father had been bound as an apprentice to learn the blacksmith
trade in a town some twenty miles from home, and had