Doctor, businessman, social organizer, lodge guru -- Zachariah had it all in the 1860s.
He owned the Grant House, the hotel named in honor of the man who was running for President that year. Then he sold the hotel to L.B. Doyle, who was in the army that Grant defeated. Name that tune, boys.
Ferguson was one of the first directors of the Three-County Asylum for the Poor, located north of Blooming Grove, in the 1830s. Much of the background on these topics is covered in the blog.
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Brookville American items about Fairfield residents and their businesses:
The 1868 Brookville American published these news items about the Universalist (left) and Fairfield Methodist Church. The Universalist church didn't last long after this. It was destroyed by fire and left little history. Church activities were a big deal in the small outpost villages.
The presidential election of 1860 is perhaps the most defining of our country's history at a time when half the nation was considering whether to start a new country or keep the current one intact.
As we know, it didn't work as well as we'd hoped and in April 1861, the civil rebellion began.
Prior to that, Illinois lawyer Abe Lincoln, campaigning as a pro-Union Whig (Republican) teamed up with Maine congressman Hannibal Hamlin to defeat Kentucky Democrat John Breckinridge and Illinois' Stephen Douglas in the presidential vote that leaned heavily on the slavery issue.
The North and the Lincoln Republicans favored abolition but only to the point where it preserved the union. Southern Democrats, called Copperheads, supported states' rights and, by extension, the right to own slaves. The South believed the 1842 ruling of Dred Scott preserved their right to own other people.
The war broke out and everything changed after that. That history has been written. This drawing appeared in the Brookville American, a pro-Union paper, on Oct. 19, 1860. With little background to call on, Franklin County was generally Democratic though not necessarily pro-South. Douglas got more votes than Lincoln did in Franklin County.
Lincoln succeeded James Buchanan, whose inconsistent position on the advent of the Civil War was considered quite damaging to the Union's strength. He did not strongly oppose slavery, nor did he support efforts to abolish it.
I found this doozy from the Rushville True Republican from July 15, 1842. The RTR copied it from the Franklin Democrat, which was published in Brookville. It appears a rather peculiar storm, possibly a tornado included, did some serious damage.
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Storm – A very destructive hail storm passed through this county on Sunday last, accompanied with wind and rain; we learn that great destruction of timber, fences, &c., was done, and that whole fields of corn, wheat and oats were entirely destroyed by the hail which fell in great quantities as large as hen's eggs, and in some places, we are told, they drifted up to the depth of three feet.
One gentleman from Springfield township, informs us that he had twenty acres of corn entirely destroyed, also his oats; of his wheat he will perhaps be able to save one third.
Mr. Glidewell, of Fairfield Twp., informs us that his entire crop, consisting of 160 acres, is destroyed so that he will not realize a single bushel of grain from it; his grass is also destroyed.
The farms clear through the county, as far as we can learn, N.W. To S.E., for the width of from one to two miles, has shared the same fate. So great a destruction of property has never been known in this section of country.
– Franklin Democrat, July 8.
Map of the Glidewell farm, 1855
