1816-1916 Cedarville Centennial Souvenir

spring of 1801 he went back to Kentucky and assisted his brother John to move his family to this township. They arrived in due time, and Thomas shared with John the land, corn crop, garden, potato patch, and cabin. These · two brothers were born and married in Sherman's Valley, Cumberland County, Pa., where their father, William Townsley, was an early settler. Aqout the fall of 1776, Thomas, John, and George moved to Ken– tucky and settled near Cynthiana. They lived here twenty-five years amid all the dangers of the war with the Indians, and became the very fir:,t pioneers in Cedarville Township. Their neighbors and friends in Kentucky, being dissatisfied with slavery, resolved to move to Ohio's free soil, and they came in great numbers to all parts of southeastern Ohio, and so many to Cedarville Township, that if we would mention all the names, the greater part of this booklet would be filled. Hence we can mention the names of only a few of them, for special reasons. We can truly say of all of them that they were a hea'.thy, hardy people, capable of enduring much hard labor and exposure to the ele– ments while clearing the forests which covered the whole face of the bnd, that they might cultivate the soil. Those from Kentucky were soon joined by families from the east and south, and all went to work to remove the "deep tangled wildwood," in which were found forest trees many of them four and five feet in diameter, viz., oak, walnut, pop1ar, hickory, elm, ash, beech, sugar tree, wild cherry, ironwood, dogwood, rnssafras, and hazel brush, with grape-vines intertwining,-a mass so dense that a footman with diffi– culty could penetrate and pass thru. It was a dangerous and difficult work to remove the Indians, and now before they could cultivate the soil and sow and plant and reap, this hard and stupendous work of removing the forests stared them in the face. But the pioneers were brave, and great hustlers. They had endured hardships and faced dan– gers in clearing the land of the Indians, and so were prepared for clearing the land of the forests. Had they not lived in the iron age, they never would have accomplisht the work. Nothing but iron axes in their hands could ever have felled those big trees. So the first tree that Thomas Townsley cut down sounded the first note of a chorus in which the pioneers beat time with their axes, and the giant oak and walnut trees came crashing thru the tops of those of a smaller growth and struck the ground with a dull thud. It was the roar of cannon or heavy artillery in battle. It was· the battle with the forest. As each tree fell, it told the final doom of the rendezvous and sy!van home of the deer and buffalo which had roamed these for– ests for ages. It was the tocsin to bear and panther, the knell that sounded their doom, and they, like the poor Indian, forever bade fare– well to Cedarville Township and Massies Creek's rocks and rills. Open– ings were made in the woods, cabins were built, and the blue smoke curled up thru the treetops as the good wife was preparing the evening meal. It was frontier life, but they were happy, for there were no savage Indians roaming the forest to fill them with terror of losing their scalps, as many of their friends in Kentucky and elsewhere had done.