The Strong Survived

Call to Liberty Fall Encampment October 21-23, 2005

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      Money was little known and seldom seen among the early settlers.  There was little use for it.  They could transact all their business about as well without it using the barter system, wherein great ingenuity was sometimes displayed.  When it failed in any instance, the tradesmen and shopkeepers for the convenience of the citizens established long credits.

                However, for property taxes and postage neither the barter system nor the credit system would answer, and often letters were delayed a long time in the post office for the want of the twenty-five cents demanded by the government to receive it.  With all this high price on postage, by the way, the letter had not been transported 500 in a day or two.  It had probably been weeks on the route via a lone horseman.  The long-awaited news was delivered at the pioneer’s post office, several miles from his cabin, only once every week or two.

                Animal pelts were used to purchase necessities.  Peltries, as they were called, were the item most easily traded and it came to be the custom to estimate the value of everything in peltries.  A length of calico was worth a certain number of peltries.  Even some tax collectors and postmasters were known to take peltries and exchange them for the money required by the government.

                The first settlers in Ohio were generally from the east with its “modern ways.”  Not knowing what to expect when they first came into the wilderness some assumed that their hard struggle would be principally over after the first year.  Looking for “easier times next year” for many years before realizing them, caused much disappointment.  The easier times came in so slyly as to be almost imperceptible.  The lot of the pioneer was a hard life.  The sturdy pioneer learned to bear hardships, deprivation and hard living.  As the ability to make money was not great, they learned to be satisfied in an atmosphere of hardship and compensated with good, social, friendly feeling among their neighbors.  “Being right down neighborly” took on a more important meaning.

                Among the early settlers who came to the frontier were many who accustomed to the advantages of an older civilization, to churches, schools, and society became homesick and dissatisfied.  Their enthusiasm would remain perhaps one summer and by the end of the second growing season, they felt forlorn and defeated.  Selling their claim with its improvements, they would return to the older states spreading reports of the hardships endured by the settlers here and the disadvantages that they had found on the frontier.  Often it was the women who were the most unhappy and would coax her pioneer husband to return to civilization.

                The slight improvements they had made were sold to families of sterner convictions who were able to surround themselves more quickly with the necessities of life.  Those who returned east spread unfavorable reports that deterred weaklings from coming.  The families who stayed and were willing to endure the deprivations belonged to a different guild.  They were heroes every one—men and women to whom hardships were things to be overcome.  Their work and simple pleasure were welcomed for the sake of posterity, and they never shrank from the duty.  Yes, the strong survived.

~Compiled by Rachel Meyer