Tope Family Page

Chapter IV (continued)

The grist or flour mill was a log affair, which George Tope and his sons and one of his nephews, Jacob Tope, built themselves. They had to feed the bolt by hand. Of course, as the country settled up more and more improvements were added. A good many years ago a great dam was constructed about a quarter of a mile above the mill and a mill-race from it past the mills was made for the purpose of better regulating the water power and giving steady grinding. A few years ago this was all abandoned and a change made from the buhr-stone process of grinding to the more modern process of patent rollers and steam power. The mill is now owned by W. N. Cory.
 After he had lived at the mills for a number of years, George Tope built a great, long log house and kept a little store and a post-office in one end of it. Mrs. Milo Edie (nee Ellen Vankirk) told us recently that she has been in this store a number of times. Mrs. Edie also thinks that when Jacob Tope'sdaughter, Lucinda, was killed by lightning they lived about a mile east of Tope's Mills, instead of at New Rumley; and that it was Mary Ann that was with Lucinda instead of Barbary, and that they were in a piece of woods nearly home when the lightning struck them.
This place was known by the name of Tope's Mills until about thirty years ago, when it was changed to Petersburg by Cornelius Brackin. Several years ago the post-office name was changed to Algonquin.
Some of George Tope's youngest children were born here. A number of his sons at different times have attended the mills. Hiram was the last one who did duty as miller at the old place until a very few years ago. It is not a large place. There has nearly always been since its establishment a store there. There is a blacksmith shop, a school-house, and quite a number of other fine dwellings. The only family of the Tope name living there now is that of Dr. Jasper Tope. Like many other places, it was a great point at which to meet to muster.
This place was formerly in Harrison county. But the Legislature of Ohio in their session of 1832-33 formed a new county out of slices off of the old counties of Jefferson, Stark, Columbiana, Tuscarawas and Harrison, and called it Carroll, in honor of Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, Md., the last survivor of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Tope's Mills thus came to be described as being in Carroll county after that date. This explanation will make it plain, we think, why Tope's Mills are said to have been both in Harrison and Carroll counties. Younger generations might wonder at it, were this explanation not given.     George Tope never went to school but one day in his life. Yet he could read and write both German and English. He would sit down on the floor and learn from ''Katy," as he familiarly called his first wife.
Such were some of this man's life work. Nothing wonderful, but surely creditable. He died at the home he well earned at a ripe old age, the particulars being recounted in Chapter I.