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As its title-page indicates, this book is intended as a record of the leading features and events of Wayne county from the period of its first settlement to the present time. To every thinking mind, the necessity of such a work must have been obvious, and it was but due to the intelligence of our citizens that it be produced at the earliest possible opportunity. Wayne county, in view of her conspicuous prominence in the sisterhood of the State, demanded that her traditions and her history be written. In the name of her pioneers and that their memories be not lost; of her first white inhabitants of the forest and stream, and to secure from oblivion a chronicle of the most important events of her first settlers and first settlements, furnishing withal, a continuous narrative of her wonderful strides from wilderness-life to the imposing spectacle of her present position, the writer undertook the work. Her history is emphatically worthy to be written, and while it has involved immense labor and research, he has never shrank from the task, difficult and uninspiring as, at times, it has been. The toil of collecting and adjusting the material has occupied considerable time, but he is sanguine enough to believe he has produced such a work as, under the circumstances, will commend itself with favor to the reader.

While the relations of the different townships to the county-seat, or in fact to each other, are as the members to the body, and while the annals of all are interlaced, like the limbs of ancient wrestlers, the plan of the work is such that each township will have its own separate and specific history. He indulges not the hope that he has prepared a perfect history, or a complete one in all particulars, but trusts he has presented the leading features of Wayne county, and her past and present people, in such a way as to obtain the approval and considerate appreciation of a generous public.

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INTRODUCTION.

A HISTORY Of Wayne County, Ohio, in the more tangible form of a bound volume has long been a desideratum of an intelligent public-spirited class of our citizens. To wrench from "dumb forgetfulness" and recover from the dim and shadowy past the story of the struggles and privations of the pioneers; of their trials, hardships and suffering; of their bitter experiences and victories of hope and faith; of their disappointments and triumphs, and crystallize the same upon the printed page, is certainly worthy of an honorable ambition.

With the single exception of cursory reference, no chronicle of our county has been given, save that collected and published in eighteen hundred and forty-eight, by Henry Howe, of Cincinnati, in his "Historical Collections." Valuable and cheerful as is this little sketch, it is but a "gleamy ray"-a glint of light falling from an unsettled mirror,

"Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be,

Ere one can say it lightens."

In eighteen hundred and fifty-two, John Grable, of Paint Township, an erratic, eruptionary genius, full of the vegetating vigor of philosophy, attempted the enterprise, but for reasons unknown to the writer, it was not prosecuted to an issue. A portion of his manuscript we obtained through the courtesy of G. W. Fraze, of Paint Township, which we have appropriated as best subserved our purpose.

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Subsequently the project elicited the thought of John P. Jeffries, Esq., of the city of Wooster, who expended some time in search for material for such a volume. We have no reason to assign for his abandonment of the work, unless the urgent and multiplying duties of the legal profession interfered with its completion. Be that as it may, we do not hesitate to pronounce it a misfortune, in view of the time in which he commenced the labor, and his manifest competency and fitness for its performance, that he did not prosecute it to a conclusion. More than to any other citizen of the county are we indebted to him for the serviceable interest he has shown in our undertaking, and it affords us no vain pleasure to here acknowledge his substantial and effective co-operation.

Later, and finally, the "truth-speaking Briton"-a wise growth of the island where the House of Commons adjourns over the "Derby Day"-*Thomas Woodland, Esq., in strains heroically poetic, invoked the Muse of History to breathe upon the enterprise and cause it again to live.

Under the inspiration of Mr. Woodland, a society was organized in eighteen hundred and seventy for the distinctive purpose of procuring for publication a history exclusively of the city of Wooster. The scheme was indorsed by many of the best citizens of the city; but a maturer thought suggested the propriety of compassing within the proposed book a history of the county.

This proposition was heartily approved and seconded by Hon. John Larwill, Hon. Martin Welker, E. Quinby, Jr., Leander Firestone, M. D., Hon. John P. Jeffries, Hon. John K. McBride, Hon. Benj. Eason, Hon. Joseph H. Downing, Ohio F. Jones, Esq., Angus McDonald, Constant Lake, David Robison, Jr., James C. Jacobs, John Zimmerman, Thomas Woodland, and many others that might be enumerated. Thereupon an organization was effected under the name of "The Wayne County Historical Society." Its purpose and aim being enlarged, the organization was adjusted and leveled to the new order of things. A Constitution and By-Laws were adopted, officers under the provisions of the same were chosen.

*Since dead.

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