Ashland Memories: Early commerce in the village of Uniontown
William Montgomery settled in what is now Ashland in the spring of 1815. He lived in a hewed log cabin on the corner where the Essex House is now. He laid out a single street in 1815 and called it Uniontown.
According to Knapp’s 1863 history of Ashland, Montgomery “was the keeper of the only house of entertainment for travelers, and was engaged in distilling whisky.”
In those first years, lots on Main Street could be bought for as little as $21, with most going for $25. The lot where Ohio Fire is now was an exception. It sold for $75 in 1815.
The land south of the town creek was farmland. The Markley family owned the southeast portion, while the Sheets family owned the land west of Center Street.
Joseph and Nancy Sheets came in 1817. They lived on the corner opposite William Montgomery, where Sheets plied his tailor’s trade and kept a store. There he also spent his time “keeping a house of entertainment, and making himself useful as a citizen.”
She cuts the horses loose, to clear the village of 'roughs'
Nancy Sheets told a story that conveys the rough edges of the town’s early days. On Saturdays and holidays, unruly visitors converged on the town, with five or six fights in an evening. Once, while the carousers were visiting a distillery, she took a butcher knife out to the hitching post and cut loose all the horses. “In fifteen or twenty minutes the village was cleared of roughs.” They were busy chasing down their transportation.
The Joseph Markley family arrived in 1815 with two daughters and seven sons. They also brought seven horses, six milk cows, and a covered wagon.
The Markleys were known for great size and strength. Both parents weighed over 200 pounds, and the boys averaged 6 feet, 3 inches when full grown. Son David conducted a distillery. Reportedly he could lift a full barrel of whiskey from the ground onto a wagon without extraordinary effort.
Elias Slocum arrived in 1817. He partnered with Alanson Andrews and George Palmer to buy three acres within the village and establish a distillery on Montgomery’s Run.
By the summer of 1817, numerous stumps and logs still marred the narrow main street. Business was sparse along the street.
A wagon store, blacksmith, carpenter and a hat maker (for a while)
David Markley sold a wagonload of goods from a log building, but you could hardly call it a store. Samuel Urie was the sole blacksmith. With no frame buildings in the area, the carpenter Nicholas Shaeffer mostly built doors and windows and hewed logs for cabins. There were not enough heads to keep the hat maker John Antibus busy, so he moved on.
Francis Graham arrived in 1821 and established a post office for the village. He found that Uniontown was already taken, so the town was renamed Ashland.
When Graham came, there were no stores in town. The problem was not that no one wanted to buy, but that cash money was very scarce.
At Graham’s store he accepted in trade any product that could be turned into money or bartered. Corn was valuable because, once turned into whiskey, it was relatively easy to transport. (Hence the multiple distilleries in the town.)
Graham recalled that corn became almost a legal tender in the absence of hard money. Pork was another commodity that he dealt in, as hogs could be driven to Pittsburg butchers.
Such were the modest beginnings of commerce in Ashland.
This article originally appeared on Ashland Times Gazette: Ashland Memories: Wagon store, blacksmith and a hat maker for a while
