D. Farber account

Oliver James Farber married Mariah Kimmel. Linden Tree was her home.

"DEVIL'S HEADQUARTERS"

Garnett E. Mottice         Dr. KcKinnon               May 28, 1942

Peter Mottice was born in 1793, somewhere in Pennsylvania.  When he was quite small, he was brought by his parents into the Northwest Territory.  His pioneering parents founded a borne and raised their family; how large a family is not known.

In the spring of 1796, Nathaniel Massie led a party of Kentucky emigrants who were seeking a place for new homes on free soil, into the interior of the Virginia Military District.  This party of sturdy people laid out a settlement and named it Chillicothe.  It was situated at the junction of Paint Creek and the Scioto River.  Then the General Government took an important step which went far towards building the foundations for a new state.  It hired Ebenezer Zane, a contractor, to lay a road across southern Ohio from Wheeling, West Virginia to Maysville, Kentucky.  As payment for his work, Zane received certain Ohio lands. This road which for a long time was known as Zane's Trace, primitive though it was, gradually became the post-route between Washington and Kentucky.  The road brought life to many small, scattered settlements.

Adams and Jefferson counties were formed in 1797, and Ross in 1798.  As soon as the people within this virgin land began to feel their power, they resolved to assert it, not only on their own behalf but to make themselves heard in the national councils.  In this year the Territory was found to have five thousand inhabitants, and so the right to hold a general election for members of an assembly was carried into effect.  The members elect of this first legislative body met at Cincinnati in September 1799.  About this same time Zane with the help of John McIntire, began building Zanesville on his land grant at the crossing of the Muskingum.  New Lancaster was founded the next year by emigrants from Pennsylvania.  By 1800 and 1801 Clermont, Fairfield, and Belmont counties were created; thus, making nine subdivisions in the twelve years since the founding of Marietta in 1788.  Few states enjoyed more rapid growth and none cleared the way to local self-government so soon.  And though there were factions for and against the admission of Ohio as a state into the Union, it finally was admitted on March 1, 1803.

Stark County was established February 13, 1808 and was organized in January, 1809. It was named after General .John Stark, an officer of the Revolution.  It was within the limits of this new born state and county that Peter Mottice's father had located. His land laid about ten miles southeast of what is now Canton, Ohio.

In 1825, a law was passed by the legislature of Ohio, which levied a tax in every county at a uniform rate of one-half mill on the dollar for school purposes and which law being compulsory and with the additional amount levied by local township authorities and districts, resulted in the establishment of a uniform public school system open to all children of the state.  This compulsory system of education, free and open to all, brought about an increased interest among the early settlers in the forming of these schools. They took it upon themselves to see that adequate means and facilities were provided for the learning of the youth of that day.

The settlers near the Mottice home in what is now Sandy Township in Stark County, searched about in the community just north of Waynesburg for a place where their first school might be erected.  Finally on the 15th day of October, 1827, George Stoner, John Koontz, and William Hammer, the school directors for District No.2, bought for twenty-five cents, a triangular piece of ground which contained one-half acre.  On the summit of a hill in the center of this tract, a log structure was constructed.  Hillgrove, the name which the school still maintains, though it is not the same building, commanded a view of the surrounding country and of the primeval forest which then existed.  To the youth of that day who trudged through the forest and came up out of the valley, Hillgrove was an educational center.  This building was used until 1853. It then was moved to a nearby farm and was still standing in 1927.  It has been used both for a dwelling and for a stable.  A brick building which still stands was built to replace the old log structure.  The first flag was bought for the school in 1890.  J. T. Hewitt and George McCall a late resident of Elbow City the former Devil's Headquarters, presented the staff for the flag.  R. E. Welker, clerk of the district, received the staff and Sam Hissem, the oldest person of the community pulled the flag to the top of the pole.

Two miles across the country to the southeast was an Indian trail now known as Indian Run Road. This trail ran north and south. Near the southern end of this trail Stark McCall, grandfather of George McCall, donated a plot of ground on which the settlers of the community built a brick structure, the Chapel Church in 1867.  On a hill just north of the church he donated a second plot for a burial ground.  Both the church and the cemetery still stand and are used.

Peter's son John married Elizabeth Cahill.  They had a family of ten children.  From the oldest to the youngest there were Peter, John, James, Milton, Abigail, Jane, William, Kmsey, Calvin, and Nancy.  John's James married Louisa Marker.  James took a tract of land to clear, which was located one mile north of the Chapel on the Indian Run trail and then one mile west.  This tract of land was about halfway between the Indian Run trail and the future location of the community which came to be called Devil's Headquarters.  James and Louisa had five children.  There were John, Elmer, William, Ollie, and Tillie.  John married· Ella Vanvoorhis, Elmer married Lucy Hartenstein, Ollie married Albanus Kinney, and Tillie married a man by the name of Ake.  William, who was born February 23, 1862 and is my grandfather, married Sarah Caroline Farber.

About 1840 Marie Agnes Kimmel was born near Lindentree, Ohio, now a mere ghost town.  She had a sister Elizabeth who married Sam Dolvin, a farmer near Mineral City; a second sister Jane who married James Miller from Lima, Ohio.  These girls had six brothers. John, Sans, and Joe served in the Hundred Days Service during the Civil War.  The Hundred Day Service was for the duration of three months, .July, August, and. September in the summer of 1864.  It made all the possible man-power of the country available for·Sherman's march from Chattanooga to Atlanta , and yet released them in time that a large amount of the same man-power would be backing and making certain that Lincoln would be renominated in the fall election.  Wesley read the books required by the conferences of the United Brethren Church denomination, in order to become a minister at that time.  When he completed his course, he went to Colorado.  While in charge of a church there, he married.  Elec went to Chicago where he became a minister for a Church sect known as Zion City.  He married and had two daughters, Jenny and Margaret. William H. died at the age of eighteen from tuberculosis.

In 1862 Marie married Oliver Farber, the son of a well to do farmer who lived in the southern part of Sandy Township but about fifteen miles southwest of Hillgrove.  During the administration of President George Washington, Hutchins was sent to this part of the country to survey public lands.  Placing his Jacob staff on the north bank of the Ohio on the Pennsylvania state line, he ran a line west over what is now Columbiana and Carroll counties along the south line of Sandy Township, to a point which is near the Farber Cemetery.  A stone was placed there which is supposed to have been the first set by the United States Government in the Northwest Territory.  This stone marks the junction of three counties, four townships, and four farms. One of these farms was the property of the father of Oliver Farber.  The Farber Cemetery was given by the Farber family as a burying ground for the community as well as the immediate family.  The mausoleum which was built by Mr. Farber still stands and is the resting place of his immediate family including his son Oliver and Oliver's wife Marie.

After Mariah Kimmel and Oliver Farber had married, they moved farther west to a farm near East Sparta.  Here a little girl was born but she lived only about two years.  Sometime later on .January 2, 1866, a second girl was born.  The parents called her Sarah Caroline.  Shortly following the birth of Sarah Caroline, the Farbers bought and moved to the Crawford farm which was a very small distance south of Devil's Headquarters.  As Mariah was going what seemed to be a long distance from home, her father gave her Jop, a fine riding horse as well as a girlhood pet.  Mr. Kimmel was a breeder of magnificent riding horses.  He knew his daughter and horse were growing older, they both thrilled to a long and hard ride.

In the new home three more children were born, Cora Belle, .James, and Hattie.  Then on Easter Sunday the children stood silently by as their mother was laid to rest in the mausoleum in their grandfather's cemetery.  Mentally they saw their mother riding like the wind in the land to the bam as she did so often.  Then without any warning, Jop stumbled. Mother was thrown but her riding skirt had caught on the pommel of the side saddle so that she was not only thrown but dragged along the path in a cruel way.  The children's wild screams only served to  excite the horse.  It wasn't until mother's skirt tore loose that she rolled free of the frightened horse into the dust.  They returned to a house that was deadly quiet.  Their father always had been good to them but mother was the jolly one.  There would be no more merry quiltings, and no more evenings of apple snittsing for the gallons and gallons of sweet brown butter.

Callie as Sarah Caroline was called, tried to be mother to Cora Belle, Jimmy and Hattie.  But uncle .John was married now and so they took Hattie, the youngest, and raised her.  Callie was only thirteen but with the help and counsel of Granny Oglethorpe, she was very successful as mistress of her father's house.  Granny, who lived at the bend of the road in the little log house in Devil's Headquarters, often with cane in hand made her way down the sandy road to the Crawford homestead ­just to make sure that Callie was getting along alright.  Of course Granny wasn't sure how it would go when school opened in May for the six week summer term just before harvest. It would make a good bit for Callie to go to school and do the work at home.  Callie was a good scholar too - she was always bringing home a prize for getting the most headmarks in spelling or for reading the best in her fourth reader.  And Ollie Welker who was teaching Callie to play the organ, wouldn't hear to Callie giving up her lessons.  Granny couldn't understand why Oliver didn’t get a housekeeper.  But within about a year Granny knew why - Oliver married the school teacher,  Lib Silvers who lived just at the edge of Devil's Headquarter's on the other side of Little Brick School.  She didn't why they called it Little Brick when it was log.

And before Granny realized what had happened, Oliver moved his family into the new house recently built by 'Lib's father.  Well, she wouldn't be able to get up there - her old joints ached too much but she wouldn't need to worry now about the children for surely 'Lib would be good to them even if she didn't know how to do anything but teach the three R's.

However, Oliver was soon moving his three children back to the Crawford homestead.  But where was 'Lib?  Then to Granny's surprise and still it was no surprise at all, 'Lib had proved to be just a step-mother.  Now Oliver and 'Lib would live in the new house, while the three children would live by themselves in the old home.  Well, they probably would be happier there and they were close enough to the village that they could be watched.  But Granny still rebelled against the three children living alone - no matter how watchful Oliver Farber intended to be.  So Granny took up her cane again and daily visited the story and a half brick house that stood deep in a sickle-cut yard, beyond the white paling fence.

Each visit Granny made was rewarded by finding everything in good order. Sometimes Callie was just pouring the beef tallow into the dozen candle molds, the same molds Callie's mother had used when she was living - and the child did pretty well with fixin’ the wicks in the proper position.  Or maybe she was standing on the little three-legged footstool to make her high enough to plunge the dasher up and down in the wooden churn.  Granny had warned the child never to attempt to make the soap by herself.  Callie was to be sure that plenty of wood ashes were put into the ash barrel in the cellar and water poured through them.  Then Granny would see that the soap was made.

Thus five years rolled by. Then on March 8, 1885 Granny stood at the door of her humble home and watched Callie in her blue homespun dress rode by in the buggy of young Bill Mottice.  They were going toward Canton and Granny knew that when the two youngsters reached preacher Herbruck's parsonage on East Tuscarawas, they would be married.  Granny wiped her wet cheeks with her calico apron, as she stared after them.  She was remembering the day when she and her Bill had rode horse back to the log cabin of preacher Smith on jut such a mission.  Thank God she had had a mother, her own mother, and she didn't have to pare ten bushels of apples to fill the dry house so that when the dried apples were sold she could buy the material for her wedding dress.  Callie was not having the wedding that her step-mother had had.  When Oliver and 'Lib were married, Oliver had given her a paisley shawl to wear over her new brown cashmere dress, and he had bought a new shiny black top buggy in which to drive 'Lib to the preachers.

Young Bill and Callie lived in the old brick house for awhile.  Cora Belle and Jim stayed with them.  Callie continued about her house work.  Played the organ on Sundays at the Chapel and seemed very happy.  Two years later Bill and Callie were blessed with a baby boy.  Callie caned him Oliver James after his granddad.  About this time Callie's father gave her and Bill a farm which was located a mile north of Devil's Headquarters.  Not long after Callie moved, she was called to the bed side of Granny and she soon lost what to her had been a second mother.

Callie had a second son, Harry, and a daughter who died at the age of three.  Callie's two sons went to Little Brick School and it was really brick now for the old log was now torn down and a new brick building put up.  It was a simple affair forty feet wide and eighty feet long.  It had four windows on each side and one door in the front.  One end inside, consisted of a raised portion for the teacher's desk and the blackboard.  In one corner a hickory oxgad leaned against the wall.  A long bell rope dangled from the ceiling over the teacher's desk.  In order to keep the rope out of the way, the teacher hooked the end of it on a nail above the blackboard.  In opposite corners of the room sat an old "burn side" stove, which in the winter was kept red hot, roasting the pupils who sat near it, while the ones further away sat shivering.  The McGuffey readers were used.  Though it was a simple affair, the people of Devil's Headquarters were proud of it.  And too, on the sulfur creek just below the village a big sawmill had started to operate.  Right in the heart of the village, two new houses with clap boards were being built.  Devil's Headquarters was really growing.

While Ohio was advancing as a state and within its borders families were growing, exploring, and pushing westward, Isaac Cavin of Pennsylvania, received a patent for eighty acres of land from Andrew Jackson, President of the United States, on September 2, 1.834.  May 1st ,1835, about one year before the organization of Noble county, Isaac Cavin laid out the village of Ligonier, Indiana.  Ministers had come into the vicinity as early as 1831.  The first church was built in 1846.  It was the Methodist Episcopal and was erected on the site where the present church of that denomination now stands.  The first school building was a small hewed log structure built in 1837.  Miss Ascha Kent was the first teacher.  She received her pay by subscription and by boarding around among the parents of the pupils that she taught.  This building was used until 1851 when a small frame building which was known as the "Red Schoolhouse" was erected.  Isaac Spencer who later became the first clerk of Noble County, opened the first store in Ligonier.  Spencer handled general merchandise.  By 1840, two or three families had established residence in Ligonier.  In the Autumn of 1844 Henry Treer of Fort Wayne, opened a general store and a third was started by Hugh Miller.  In 1847, Taylor Vail became the owner of a foundry which had been in operation in the village of Rochester, a short distance east of Ligonier.  This foundry engaged in the smelting of iron from deposited of bog iron found at various places in the county.  After Vail moved the foundry to Ligonier, be manufactured plow castings, cookstoves, pots and kettles.  This was one of the more important first industries of Ligonier.  It was destroyed by fire about 1860 and was not rebuilt.  In 1848, the first post office was established. This was a continuation of the Good Hope office which had been the first in Noble County.

During this same year on the 28th of October a boy was born in one of the few homes of Ligonier.  His name was Samuel Heckaman.  Three years later on the very same date a brother was born.  They called him Bill.  By the end of the following year the boys were orphans for both of their parents had died within this time.  The boy's uncle George Rinehart had a family of four but he took Sam raised him.  Bill was reared by neighbors there in Indiana.  Sometime during Sam's youth, he was brought with his uncle's family in an old prairie schooner to Ohio.  Bill later made his way to Ohio and lived for a while in Alliance.  While in Alliance he secured a job of driving team for a circus.  When the circus started west, Bill who was of a roving disposition went with it.  He drifted into Iowa where he married and settled down.  He had a family of about four girls.  One of the girls, Jessie married a ranchman and until about three years ago lived on a ranch near Butte Montana.  She now lives in Lincoln, Nebraska.

While Bill was roaming over the country, Sam was mastering the blacksmith trade under the approving but critical eyes of his uncle George.  A few years in the future, Sam owned a shop in a small community known as Sandyville.

When Sam was ready to go to Sandyville, he married Phyann McKlain, a girl from Magnolia.  Phyann's brother continued to live in Magnolia where he made harnesses.

Magnolia is now a small village which is situated 41 degrees North Latitude along the Sandy Valley.  Then as now, it was about one-half mile south of the "Great Trail", the most important Indian trail in the Central West. The trail began at Fort Pitt and ended at Sandusky, Ohio, going by way the Big Sandy Creek.  It was very narrow and was sunk several inches below the level of the earth, due to the continual passing of many feet.  Portions of the Delaware Indian Tribe, the principal tribe in this section of the state, through all the bloody Indian Wars, were steadfast friends of the whites.  However, there was one conflict between the Delawares and a band of Government scouts from Pennsylvania.  The band had been sent out to rang through the country north and west of the Ohio, as a precautionary measure, after Genera! Anthony Wayne's army had broken camp at Legion Fields, Pennsylvania, and had proceeded down the river.  It is the only fight between the Indians and whites known to have taken place within the present limits of Stark County.  These same five scouts Captain Downing, Isaac Miller, John Cuppy, George Foulke and John Dillon helped to settle Magnolia in 1805.  The village was finally laid out in 1834 by Richard Elson and John Smith. It had been surveyed by John Whitacre, Sr.  This section of land was purchased from Benjamin Tappin of Steubenville, Ohio for $1200.  He had purchased the land from the United States Government.

The sheepskin issued by the Government covering the sale of this land and having the signature of James Monroe, President of the United States, is now in the hands of the Elson family in Magnolia.  The portion of the village that lays in Carroll county was known at first as Downingville.  This is supposed to have been laid out by Isaac Miller in 1836.  He named it in honor of his famous father-in-law.  The two towns became one on February 1, 1846, when Magnolia and Zoar became incorporated.  But long before it became incorporated, mail came into it over the stage coach line from New Philadelphia to Waynesburg, a village about seven miles to the northeast of Magnolia.

It was in this frontier town of Magnolia that Phyann with her brother Henry had been raised by their mother.  Mr. McKlain had died when the children were quite small.

Phyann McKlain and Samuel Heckaman who were married in 1873 in Magnolia, went directly to Sandyville where Sam had already set up his blacksmith shop.  Sandyville was not quite the prosperous village it had been a few years before but it was a growing place.  At one time its future had seemed made because of the shipping facilities made possible by the Sandy and Beaver Canal.  It was fed by the Beaver Dam below Sandyville.  This dam was built by men but during the night, the. mill's work was greatly supplemented by the industrious help of a little animal, the beaver. They cut down trees, tied them together, and reinforced them with mud.  Of course the beavers were diligently building the dam for their own habitation.  But eventually the little helpers were trapped, killed and skinned - beaver fur at that time was very valuable.  Too, the little helpers living habits would· in time tend to weaken the dam.

When the canal was in operation, the land around Sandyville was very productive and bumper crops were produced everywhere.  Farmers from Mineral City, East Sparta, and the surrounding country hauled their grain and other produce into Sandyville.  Here in a large warehouse, the grain and produce was tagged and prepared for shipping.  The boats were loaded and unloaded at this warehouse.  The village built a large school house and two churches.  It appeared to be a growing village.

When this canal was built, Richard Elson of Magnolia secured the water rights of running his flour mill which used an undershot water wheel, by the waters of the canal.  This mill which was erected in 1834 still stands and is used, although many additions have been made to the original building.  Baked goods made from this flour by a wholesale baker in Trenton, New Jersey, received Gold Medals at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, 1876, and also in the Paris Exposition in 1900.  The canal started at Beaver Dam below Sandyville, and from here it led passed Sandyville to Hanoverton.  From here it flowed to Minerva, at which place it was taken through a tunnel; the boats frequently dragged on the sandy bottom of the canal so much that it was with great difficulty they continued their course.  From Minerva it flowed on to Malvern, to the outskirts of Waynesburg, and then to Magnolia past the Elson Mill.

Locks were built above and below the mill to raise and to lower the boats as they went through. There were three warehouses in Magnolia.  One where the park is now, one where Nick Leper now lives, and the largest where Lewis Kemp's blacksmith shop now stands.  The basin was large enough at this time that the canal boats could turn around.  Whiskey was free to customers at this warehouse.  From Magnolia the canal continued to Bolivar where it entered the Ohio Canal.  This canal followed on through Columbus to Portsmouth where it joined the Ohio River.

The first boat to come to Magnolia was the "Live Yankee" which was captained for some time by Bill Knotts, a resident at that time of Magnolia.  Then in 1853, the Cleveland Terminal and Valley Railroad laid their tracks and took the business away from the canal.  Later this railroad was taken over by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

Due to a better position, Sam sold his business and took his family, for a son George had been born in 1882, to Louisville.  Here he did blacksmithing for James Smith. In 1885 a son Paul was born and a son Henry in 1887.

About this time Mineral Points which was in 1900 called Mineral City, was becoming quite a prosperous town due to the coal mining and the Holden Clay Products Company brought in by Mr. C. E. Holden of New York.  Sam Heckaman obtained the job of blacksmithing for the mines and for the clay products company.  Here in 1889 twins were born into the Heckaman family; a boy and a girl.  The boy died but the girl lived.  This girl they called Hazel.

In 1891 Sam secured a better blacksmith job at Henry Bearwearths in Canton. They moved to Canton. Shortly after this move Paul who was still quite small, caught his foot between the rails of a railroad.  Mrs. Todd a neighbor saw him and realized suddenly that a train was approaching.  She ran to him, ripped open the buttons of his shoe and released his foot.  She pulled him from the track just as the train whizzed by.  When she had recovered from the fright, she took him to his mother.  Paul was promptly paddled with a small fire shovel.

Canton the county seat of Stark County, is 120 miles northeast of Columbus.

Canton which is situated in the forks of the Nimishillen River, a tributary of the Muskingum, was laid out in 1906 by Bezalel Wells of Steubenville.  Canton was a solid and substantial appearing town.  A marked feature was its public square where during the very days there was a market.  The square was about two hundred feet wide and four hundred feet long.  It was paved quite early with cobble stone.  Tuscarawas, a street which is now the Lincoln highway through Canton, crossed thru the center of the square.  Tuscarawas was for a long time just a sand and gravel street.

On west Tuscarawas, not far from the square, was built the First Methodist Episcopal Church.  This was the church where Major McKinley, who later became President of the United States, worshiped while he was in Canton. About two blocks further west, the Presbyterian and Lutheran Churches were built.  The Lutheran Church was built of cream tinted Massillon sandstone.  Over its front stained windows was carved the heart-wresting line, which opens Luther's famous battle hymn "A mighty fortress is our God".  All three of these churches are still being used, while many more have been added to the city.  One of these was the First Christian Church, the largest Christian Church Bible school in the world.  P. H. Welshimer is the pastor-superintendent of this church.

It was at the old building of this church that Oliver Mottice and Hazel Heckaman met each other in there early teens. Six years later they were married in New Philadelphia, Ohio.  They too, now have raised their family in the vicinity of Devil's Headquarters, which name has been changed to Elbow City.  Oliver built the present home in which they are now living. As a boy, he looked forward to building a home which he himself would design. Now, as the children of Oliver and Hazel Mottice, we live in that very home.