Hanging Rock, Ohio in the 1800’s

Missouri Letter
Backward, Turn Backward, O Time In Thy Flight – Letter from One who Left the Hanging Rock Region 43 Years Ago

Barry Clay Co., Mo. Aug 26
Mr. Editor: A copy of the Times of the 21st, accidentally — this way, and falling into the hands of a Buckeye Missourian, I thought perhaps a note from the old “Border Ruffian” grounds and the home of the “Jim Boys” might not be unacceptable to at least a portion of your readers.

I am back to childhood, living over the long ago, when I played, boated, and fished in “La Belle Riviere,” on whose banks I was born and raised. Nor is the “girl I left behind me,” with all the boys of the old playground, forgotten.

In Dreams:
“I wander to the village, Tom,
And All beneath the tree,
Upon the school house playing ground, That sheltered you and me-
In the years when “we went gypsying.”

Born at Hanging Rock, Ohio, before Ashland was, and when Ironton was called “Hill’s Landing” and consisted of one store, a wood yard, and three families, I was, with quite a lot of household plunder. A — of iron and salt moved on the good steamer Olive Branch, a Pittsburgh and St. Louis packet, to this, the then western border of the white man and civilization, forty-three years ago.

In his younger days, my father built Centre Furnace in 1835 and 1836 and was a representative from Lawrence county in the Ohio Legislature. Samuel F. Vinton, Congressman from the Gallia district for several terms, was his personal friend.

My first schooling was at the old log Baptist Church at the mouth of Storms Creek, under the instruction of Mr. McIntyre, where the seats were slabs from the sawmill and half-round logs hewn on one side. The teacher was succeeded by W.H.H. Riggs, who married Ca-ins Lambert, cousin to Ruben Lambert’s father of Ironton.

Among the scholars were the Koeff’s, Davidson’s, Kemp’s, Henry’s, and others. At Hanging Rock, Ohio, with the Roger’s, Ellison’s, Isaminger’s, Mean’s and others, we tried to ascend the hill of science in the half church and half schoolhouse built for the benefit of the children of the ironworkers in the old trip hammer bloom forge, under the instruction of Miss Nice, Knowlton and others.

Some of the Times’s names are familiar, such as Miss Chaffin. Jno. H? Chaffin kept a store for my father at Kelley’s Mills, not far from the old Union Furnace. John Means of the Ashland Coal and Iron Company was undoubtedly a schoolboy at the rock with me.

My father sold his farm, one mile above Hanging Rock, Ohio, in 1842 to Robert Hamilton of Pine Grove Furnace, whose daughter, Miss Mary Ann, was married to a young doctor in Portsmouth-name forgotten. If the doctor is living, he will remember a brother of mine (Benjamin), who was an intimate friend of his at school in your city about 1835 and died in California in 1850.

Your correspondent’s reference to the iron steamer Valley Forge calls up the wonder and astonishment she caused on her first trip to Pittsburg. Her escape was a peculiar, long, musical tone, and her two smokestacks were attached into one over the pilot house. As a boy, I knew nothing of steamboat men, but the S– sure was counted the crack boat of her time and was succeeded by Nos. 1, 2, and 3 of the same name.

I remember well the Champion Iron from the Hudson, intended to astonish the West with her speed and what a failure she made. The walking beam was a failure, and she went as she came.

I was the Visitor when she met General Harrison at Portsmouth and accompanied him to Washington to be inaugurated President of the United States.

The Bedford, a small craft, was a long-time U.S. Mail packet from Portsmouth to Guyandotte, and the Post Boy, a queer craft, one story, all cabin, machinery below deck, finished — and — alike, was packet to Catlettsburg.

I cannot recall the name of a nice small steamer, very high storied, deck and cabin, capsized just below the mouth of Big Sandy in a severe storm, with several lives lost, about 1837.

But perhaps you would prefer to read more about this country. Perhaps the forty years peregrinations of a Buckeye boy might be more interesting to one who had seen some of the West before railroads had crossed the Father of Waters, but they will be left for your approval.

The draught is on us. For sixty days, the heavens have been bear, vegetation is burning up, corn less than half a crop; water scarce; men driving stock four or five miles to it; pastures bare as February; business in the country flat; in Kansas City very good; fruit not over half a crop; cattle low; fat hogs good price; wheat 60 cents; hay abundant; money scarce and Democrats thick as flies in a molasses barrel.

This reminds me (I intend to stop there) that the Portsmouth Tribune was a regular visitor in my childhood home. My father was a Whig, and from the two, I learned as a child to believe that way, “when I was a child, I thought as a child and spoke as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things” and enlisted for late under the Democrat banner.

Allen’s speech in ’37 might be spoken today, with slight changes and little extension to include the Hayes fraud, and be just as appropriate and true now.

As a boy of fifteen, I took much interest in the “Tippecanoe and Tyler too” campaign of 1840, and I remember “Tom the Wagoner Boy” as he appeared at the Pine Grove Furnace at a great Whig rally. Tom was a little dark-skinned. Annoyed at someone trying to shield him from the sun by holding the stars and stripes over him, he said, “Never mind, friend; the sun will not tan me anymore.”

Yours, etc.,

Dan Carpenter

[NOTE-Our correspondent is mistaken about Miss Hamilton marrying a “young doctor in Portsmouth”-it was captain Sam Hempstead. The “old doctor” and his son are both dead-Ed]

Additional History about Hanging Rock, no source given

Hanging Rock -is located in Hamilton Township – Hanging Rock was the name given it from the overhanging cliff above the town, where the bold front of a huge rock juts from the hill, threatening the village below, literally with a “hanging rock.”  [Hardesty Atlas]

Another story:  The Indians called it “Heap Big Rock.”  When the white man arrived in 1794, they chased the Indians back and told them they’d hang the first red skin that peeped over the rock, and since then, it has been Hanging Rock.  Hanging Rock has also been known as the “Bend in the River.”

Another story: A rock in the river hung up the boats, thus calling it “Hanging Rock.”

The first forge was at Hanging Rock, built by Andrew Ellison, James Rodgers, and Robert Hamilton in 1830 and changed to the first rolling mill by Robert Hannah in 1840.  Peebles, Wood & Co. built the first foundry at Hanging Rock in 1844.  The Hanging Rock Railroad commenced in 1846 and finished in 1847, and the next year the locomotive Shawnee was placed on the track.

The 1880 census shows the population of Hanging Rock as 624.