Chapter III.
From
the foregoing it is seen that there
were three tribes of the Tope family in the second generation. In
regard to the one, as
explained, there is comparatively nothing known. While what is known to
us of the house of John can all be told in one single chapter. This we
shall do now.
As
we understand it, John Tope always lived on the farm about two miles
east of Salem, in Jefferson county, 0., from the day he first "entered"
it, as it is called, until his death. And we presume that when the Tope
brothers, and all that were with them, cut their road through and
landed at that place, they went to work, as all early
settlers did, by camping for a time, making fires on the ground and
securing the best shelter they could, until they had hastily con-
structed a log cabin without any floor except the ground, or any
windows but cracks between the logs, by the side of some good spring of
water. In this kind of habitation, with puncheon floors and greased
paper windows as improvements, perhaps, they would live for
years, happily,---much more so, it seems, than many persons do nowadays
in their fine dwellings and palaces. After getting into their rude
houses, the next thing would be to clear off some land for
the crops, and the mattocks and axes were freely used in uprooting and
felling grubs and trees to be made into brush-heaps and log-heaps and
burnt.
To
be sure, the early settlers had their hardships and hard work, the
wolves and Indians to guard against, their scanty and coarse diet and
poor
clothes, &c., but they had their pleasures in hunting game
that
was abundant, in unalloyed and whole-souled friendships, in domestic
mutuality, intercourse and felicity, in the possession of
vigorous health and strength, etc., the mere mention of which almost
makes one wish he had lived in those days. But I must not become
romantic. John Tope had a farm of 160 acres. A number of years
before he died he built a fine, large brick dwelling house, which still
stands in very good condition. In the fall of 1892 the writer was on
this farm, was in the big brick house, got a drink out of
the spring, and secured some notes for this narrative. We found there
also one of those what is now called old-fashioned hewed log barns,
sixty or seventy feet long, which had been put up by John
Tope and his sons. Some time before the old man died he sold a strip of
ten acres off of one end of his farm, or traded it rather, for a
valuable horse. He was always a great man for hard physical
work and had lots of valuable stock and farming utensils; in short, he
was one of the men who was well fixed in his day.
We
have been told that he made a will, leaving the farm and all the
chattles to his youngest son, Joseph, who was to have the care of the
widowed
mother until her death. But this son was of rather a dissolute
disposition and the old lady preferred to live with her other son,
Jacob, at whose home she died when he lived in New Rumley, Harrison
county, Ohio, and her remains were interred in the Lutheran cemetery at
that place. She was blind for several years and died of old age, well
on to a hundred years. No tomb-stone marks her grave. The
old house in which she died still stands. It was once a great "tavern
stand," and is occupied at this writing by Mrs. Jane Lyle. This
information has been obtained recently, and since Chapter I was
printed, from Mrs. Brice E. Betts, of Bowerston, and Catherine Guthrie
and others, of New Rumley, who were personally acquainted with the
facts. This clears up the unfinished history of John Tope's
wife. (See
Chapter I.)
p. 21
The above
text is from History
of the Tope Family, by Melancthon
Tope, 1896, revised by A. D. Maddux, Copyright ©
1981, 1989 (used with
permission)
Go to TOP
Note:
John TOPE
was born on 16 November 1767 in Frederick County, Maryland, near
Harpers Ferry, and died 26 October 1844
in Carroll County, Ohio, at the age of 77 years, 11 months and 10 days.
He married Mary HELMICK
about whom little information is known, except that she lived and died
at the
home of their son, Jacob,
in New Rumley, Harrison County, Ohio.
Updated Friday, 25-Jul-08 08:41:18 PDT by
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