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The First Settlers and Earliest Settlements
of Licking County, Ohio
(Source: Centennial History of Licking County,
Ohio by Isaac Smucker
Publ. Newark, Ohio: Clark & Underwood, Book and Job Printers - 1876)
The first permanent white settlement made within the present
limits of Licking County was effected in 1798, by Elias Hughes and
John Ratliff. They came to the Bowling Green, (now in Madison
Townshp, on the Licking, from Western Virginia and were the only
settlers until early in the year 1800. The two families spent
the preceding year at the "Mouth of the Licking," and in the Spring
of 1798 they ascended said stream some twenty miles, and there
squatted, both families numbering, upon their arrival, twenty-one
persons. During the year 1799 a son was born to Elias Hughes,
thus increasing the colony to twenty-two.
Captain Hughes had been a frontiersman all his
life, and had attained a good degree of prominence, in his native
State, before leaving it, as a skilful hunter, a brave soldier, a
reliable spy, and as a most daring and successful Captain of Scouts.
He had been in the most sanguinary battle of Point Pleasant, in
1774, and for more than twenty years thereafter he had served
efficiently, on the Western borders of Virginia, in the hazardous
employment pf Spy or Scout. In 1796-7 he was attached, as a
hunter, to the surveying party that run the Range and Township lines
of the United States Military lands in this section. He lived
until 1844, dying at the age of about ninety years and had been for
a long while, the last and only survivor of those who actively
participated in the hard-fought battle of Point Pleasant, between
about one thousand Virginians, commanded by General Andrew Lewis,
and perhaps as many Indian warriors under the leadership of the
celebrated Cornstalk, a Shawanese Chief.
John Ratliff's wife died in 1802, and was
probably the first white adult person whose death took place within
our county. During the same year, October 22, 1802, the wife
of Mr. John Jones, who lived near the Raccoon creek, four
miles West of Newark, died. The first death was that of an
infant child of John Stadden, whose birth and death occurred
in the latter part of the year 1801. The first marriage within
the limits of Licking County, was that of the parents of the
aforesaid child, (John Stadden and Elizabeth Green,) which
took place on Christmas day in the year 1800. John Ratliff
died on the South side of the Licking, near the mouth of the Brushy
Fork, about or in the year 1811. A few of the descendants of
Hughes and Ratliff still reside in Licking County. |
