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

CHAPTER II
HOME BUILDING IN OHIO
HEN our grandparents settled in Cincinnati
there was but one brick house in town, though
there were a number of small frame houses and
many cabins. Their tarrying in the settlement
was not long, but it gave them time for delibera-
tion. As James Watkins took a survey of the
rugged hills and deep, dark forest lands about
the new town of Cincinnati, he declared he would not give a
cent an acre for all the rough land about the new town site.
He lived to see the rugged hills cleared of their virgin forests
and literally hewn down to level building spots, and he could
not have bought the rejected land had he covered it with silver
dollars. They thus deliberated before they selected a place to
begin farming.
Southern Ohio was a heavily timbered country; the soil of
stiff yellow clay was well adapted to the growth of walnut,
beech, hickory, oak, ash, and maple, with an undergrowth of
pawpaw and elder bushes, and wild grapevines of vigorous
growth embowering many a noble monarch of the forest. In
this deep shade wild turkeys called to their flocks, while partridges
drummed on the hollow logs in the early hours of morning.
At night wolves howled, and occasionally a panther
screamed, like a woman in distress. Sometimes, we are told,
the early settlers had to snatch a blazing firebrand from the
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