Tuesday, September 10, 2019

Early Clark County, Ohio History by Joanna Smith Miller

1887 Newspaper Article 
Early Clark County, Ohio 
by Joanna Smith Miller


 Joanna Smith Miller (1806-1891), the daughter of Samuel Smith and Elizabeth McCleave, was married to John Miller.  John Miller was the brother of Mary Miller Leffel, our 3rd great-grandmother, and son of Frederick Miller, our 4th great-grandfather.  When Joanna was 80 years old, her son Samuel Smith Miller interviewed her for a newspaper article, which was published in the Springfield Daily Republic on 17 January 1887.  The article was titled "Clark County's Infancy," with a subtitle: "An Intensely Interesting Chapter of Early History - The Ways of Our Forefathers Charmingly Described."


In order to enlarge the newspaper article to a size big enough to be easily read, please go to Chronicling America.  The above newspaper article can be found on the Library of Congress website, Chronicling America.
 Springfield daily republic. [volume] (Springfield, O. [Ohio]), 17 Jan. 1887. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. 
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87076917/1887-01-17/ed-1/seq-2

Joanna's history includes information about the Smith, Miller, and Leffel families, as well as many others.  At the bottom of the second column is an excerpt about Joanna's father-in-law, Frederick Miller, and brother-in-law, Anthony Leffel.


I love the part about the Indians living in their wigwams near Anthony Leffel's cabin -- 
"While Mr. Leffel lived there the Indians had a dozen or so of wigwams, built of bark, a short distance west of their cabin, and Samuel, Mr. Leffel’s son, who is yet living and not very old, used to play with the Indian children.  When a tall, good looking Leffel of eighteen years would go to see the Indians, a comely young squaw always came out and sat on a log as if to court the young man into an attachment."

Birch-Bark Indian Wigwams
loc.gov
at

2 comments:

  1. AnonymousSeptember 12, 2019 at 10:13 AM

    Thanks for the link to the Chronicling America site. It seems easier to zoom/scroll in to read the paper than on the Newspapers.com site. I would like to print the article but it is so large I am not sure how to do that?

    ReplyDelete
  2. clmOctober 3, 2019 at 12:24 PM

    The original newspaper article was the size of full newspaper sheet. If that's what you want to print, you will need to download a pdf of the article and take to a print shop. Otherwise you can go to the loc.gov site and copy/print sections of the article until you have copied the whole paper.

    ReplyDelete