A Little piece of Paradise… College Hill, Ohio - SELFCRAFT

destroying the outside rows, especially if near the woods. ‘Coon 12 and opossum hunting at night furnishedrare sport. The turkeys were very abundant, were large and fat, and were of finer flavor than whendomesticated. This, no doubt, must be attributed to the mast upon which they fed. They were very wild,and seemed instinctively to know when the hunter was near, and at the slightest noise would run with thespeed of a horse, or fly beyond the reach of the rifle. They were often caught in traps...Quails were often caught in nets constructed for the purpose. Thirty or more were sometimes takenat a single haul...Flocks of unnumbered millions of pigeons, by which their numbers darkened the sky,and by their movements produced a roaring like the waves of the sea, were often seen. Day and night theair was black with them. Occasionally a flock would alight in the woods in such numbers as to break largebranches from the trees. In Kentucky and Tennessee there were roosts to which they habitually resorted.In such places the trees were so broken down by them as to lead an observer to conclude that a tornadohad passed by. They could be killed in such numbers as to fatten hogs upon their carcasses. In the springof the year they passed here going northward, and in the fall they made their way to the south,occasionally pausing to feast upon the acorns and beach nuts of our forests.I remember of felling a large hickory tree near our residence late in the evening without anysuspicion that it was inhabited. Returning in the morning more than a barrel of honey was upon theground. In falling, the tree split open in the hollow part, and the honey had been displaced. The flowers ofbasswood or linden and the locust furnished the bees with material for the manufacture of a winter’ssupply of provisions. Almost every pioneer had his hives of bees, which were usually sections of hollowlogs.Wild grapes, pawpaws, persimmons, wild plums, mulberries and May apples were the native fruits ofthis region. Hickory nuts, black walnuts, butter and hazel nuts were abundant. The heavy mast of beechnuts and acorns in their season invited a large migration of squirrels, turkeys and pigeons, and enabled thepioneer farmer whose corn crop was limited to fatten his hogs. Considerable attention was given by thesettlers to the growing of apples, cherries and peaches. The first orchards were very thrifty in theirgrowth, and bore large quantities of delicious fruits. Peach trees grew almost spontaneously, and althoughof native growth, the fruit was larger and more luscious than any of the budded or grafted fruit of thepresent day....We had to share our cherries with the woodpecker and the blue jay, which were thennumbered by the thousands....the supply of peaches was enormous, far beyond the demand of our limitedmarket. My Father, during the peach season, sent, six days in the week, a large two-horse wagon loadedto the Cincinnati market. Those of superior size and quality would retail at four cents a peck, whileinferior ones, like the best of the present day, could hardly sell off at any price. We took thousands ofbushels to Jessup or Brown’s distillery... College Hill was known for its maple syrup, molasses andhoney. ‘Peach and Honey’ was a beverage considered second only to the fabled nectar of the gods.Cincinnati, then a place of a few thousand inhabitants, was our only market, and it was easily gotten withprovisions of all kinds. The prices were extremely low. Pork was one dollar per hundred pounds; turkeys,ten cents; chickens, fifty cents per dozen; eggs, two and three cents per dozen; corn, ten and twelve centsper bushel; cider from fifty to seventy-five cents per barrel; butter from five and ten cents per pound.In wet and springy places logs were laid across to keep teams from miring. These causewayswere exceedingly rough. Rough and bad as the road 13 was between the creek and the hill and theMillcreek, it was much better than between the creek and the head of Main street. I can well rememberGen. Anthony Wayne’s Trace as it was called, being the road out through the wilderness for the passageof his army in 1792. It could be identified by the absence of large trees and the undergrowth along theline. The route from ‘Ludlow’s Station’ north was on the ridge east of Z. Strong’s residence, thence along12 While raccoons were eaten, the opossum flesh was a delicacy.13 The roads of that time were based on Indian trails and geography that permitted the easiest passage. Huston or Hill Road was thename of Hamilton Pike back then, still later to be named Hamilton Avenue. It also was named Mt. Pleasant Road as it wound its way toHamilton, Ohio. At one time Hamilton Avenue was also called ‘dug hill and it passed to the west of where it is now located, near the site ofSamuel Caldwell’s stone house.21