constituted on the last Saturday of March, 1790, by Rev. Stephen Gano, of Providence, Rhode Island. There were nine members who united in the constitution, viz. Benjamin and Mary Davis, Isaac Ferris, John Ferris, Elizabeth Ferris, Jonah Reynolds, Amy Reynolds, John S. Gano and Thomas C. Wade. During the Spring of 1790, the frame edifice was opened for worship. It was built on a beautiful eminence, and stood, for a half century, a suggestive relic of pioneer faith and enterprise. Many years after, when the venerable building was passing into ruins, some one gave utterance to his feelings in a poem, of which the two following stanzas only remain :

"Near where the Ohio winds its lonely way,

Through fields and flowers, and herbage richly gay;
There on a green, luxuriant sloping sod,

In ruined mantles clad, stood the lone house of God.

A strange sensation thrilled across my breast,
As its drear aisles my wandering footsteps pressed;
Their sounds alone disturbed the pensive scene,

That spoke what it was then, and told what it had been."

At the dedication of this church, which was the second erected in Ohio, in order to be protected from the attacks of the Indians, the militia appeared armed for defense, and Col. Spencer, long a venerable and honored citizen of Cincinnati, addressed them at the close of the sermon, on the danger the congregation was in if attacked only by a half dozen Indians; and on subsequent Sabbaths, this congregation of pioneer worshipers were dispersed in great haste for fear of the Indians. Thus the institutions of Christianity and of civilization, were planted by the perils and privations of our noble and self-denying pioneers. This Baptist church had the true missionary spirit, and labored to diffuse the blessings of the Gospel into destitute regions. Cincinnati then needed the ministrations of a Gospel minister; and in April, 1790, the

church formally passed a resolution "that in view of the entire destitution of preaching in Cincinnati, Bro. Smith, (afterward the celebrated John Smith, Senator of Ohio), be allowed to spend half his time in that place."

Rev. John Smith was the first regular pastor, and emigrated from Pennsylvania, in May, 1790. He was a remarkable man, possessed of varied talent, and a versatile genius. He was a successful merchant, an adroit politician, a sagacious legislator, and an able divine. A cotemporary, Judge Pollock, of Clermont county, said of him : "As an ox-driver, no man was his superior; at a log-rolling, or horse-racing, he was the foremost man; at the end of a handspike, few could outlift him. The Sabbath day would find him in the pulpit, an able advocate of the doctrines of Christianity and of the Baptist denomination. As a member of Congress, he stood among the great men of the nation."

In 1802, Ohio was admitted into the Union, and John Smith was elected one of her first Senators in Congress, which office he filled for one term. At the close of his Senatorial term, he became implicated with Aaron Burr in his treasonable project of forming a South-Western independent government. Smith, in 1807, resigned his Senatorship, fled from Ohio in disgrace, lost his great wealth, and ended his career in dishonor and poverty at Bayou Sara, Louisiana.

In 1795, Thomas Morris, a young and enterprising adventurer, nineteen years of age, from the mountains of Western Virginia, arrived in Columbia. He was immediately employed as a clerk in the store of Rev. John Smith, and became a great favorite with him. During this time his mind became deeply exercised on the subject of personal religion, and his feelings found utterance in in frequent poetic effusions, which are all lost. Rev. John Smith, and others, regarded these productions as of great merit for a youth of his age and limited education. For

several years he continued in the employ of Smith, improving, as he could, his mind by reading, and preparing for a wider sphere of action.

The plat of ground on which the great commercial city of Cincinnati now stands, was frequently traversed by Morris. His feet threaded the forest, then in the wild magnificence of nature, and the crack of his rifle brought down many a wild turkey from the tops of lofty trees which covered the very spot on which now is erected and established that noble building and institution, the Young Men's Mercantile Library Association. How wonderful the change in fifty years! Now, commerce, arts, science, education, Christian institutions, and the highest forms of a refined social civilization, and a prosperous, industrial population of over two hundred thousand people, cover with their peaceful and noble triumphs, and their monuments of taste and civilization, and happiness, the same forest where young Morris was accustomed to shoot his wild game.

"Peace has her triumphs no less than war."

CHAPTER IV.

MARRIAGE Incident in the girlhood of his Wife-Their DescendantsRemoves to Clermont County, in 1800-Location in Bethel — An Anti-slavery Incident-Studies Law-Bar of Clermont-Quoting the Scriptures Character as a Lawyer-Defends the Laboring Classes Incident in a Court-house.

AMONG the first emigrants to Columbia, was the family of Benjamin Davis; originally from Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, but direct from Mason county, Kentucky. The ancestors of this family were from Wales, worthy and honored. The children of Benjamin and Mary Davis consisted of five sons and three daughters, of whom Rachel was the youngest. On the 19th of November, 1797, two years after he reached the Columbia settlement, Thomas Morris and Rachel Davis were married.

She was reared in the midst of the privations of a pioneer life, and was the fitting companion of him who was to endure the hardships of a new country, and to achieve his own fortunes and character. The pioneer women of the West, were efficient and faithful participators in the great work of laying the foundations of the new empire, and endured with patient heroism the dangers and privations of a back-woods life. An incident, in the girlhood of Rachel Davis, will illustrate the daring and self-independence of the early females of the West. In 1796, she and her sister made a visit to the old family residence, in Washington, Mason county, Kentucky. The distance from Columbia was forty-five miles, and through an unbroken wilderness, unmarked, except by a horse-path. The Indians were roaming in the

forests, and travelers were in constant danger. Nothing daunted, these traveling girls started alone on their journey, on horse-back, and, without once alighting from their horses, safely accomplished their journey. A linen wallet with some shell corn in one end, and their dinner in the other, afforded refreshments for man and beast, at noon, when by the side of a running stream they stopped, poured the corn on the ground for their horses, and partook of their own refreshment on horseback.

The marriage life of Thomas Morris and Rachel his wife continued almost fifty years; she surviving her husband eight years, and dying at the age of seventy-four, on the 16th of January, 1853, near Cincinnati. They raised and educated eleven children, who lived to fill posts of usefulness and honor in society. The oldest son, after filling with ability for nearly twenty years the clerkship of the Supreme Court, and that of the Common Pleas, in Clermont county, represented, for four consecutive years, the Congressional District of Ohio, in the National Legislature, succeeding, in 1846, the distinguished and lamented Thomas L. Hamer; the second son held during twenty years, and during several administrations, the office of Post-Master, of Bethel, Ohio; the third son has been a minister of the gospel during the last seventeen years, in the New-School Presbyterian church; and the fourth son, a resident of Quincy, Illinois, engaged in the profession of law, has been for the past twenty years a prominent and active member of the Democratic party, and was honored with the office of Chief Commissioner of the Public Works of that State, and elected as a member of the Legislature, and is now a candidate for Congress.

There are now living about sixty descendants of Thomas and Rachel Morris, and scarcely one either dead or living, was openly infidel or irreligious. All the children were members of the Methodist or Presbyterian church, but two, and they firm in the faith of Christianity, and some