Samuel Prescott Hildreth ~ Part III

You are all your distant ancestors who survived for you to be born ~ Bremer Acosta

In this post we continue the story of our cousin Samuel Hildreth (4C6X) and his life in Marietta, Ohio.

the Marietta flood

Samuel was prospering in Marietta. In 1810, he had purchased four city lots and planted orchards on some of them. In 1811, he was able to buy eight more lots on which he planted hay. He wrote that "[f]or many years the crop averaged a ton of hay to each lot. In addition to his orchard and hay endeavors, Samuel also kept bees and "for many years took not less than a hundred pounds of honey annually." It was during this time of plenty for Samuel and the citizens of Maritta that a new war began in the United States.

The War of 1812 was unpopular with most of the populace and Marietta was no exception. With a British fleet ensconced on Lake Erie, "[c]learly Ohio was very much in harms way." There was also concern among those living in frontier states that"the British would rekindle the 'Indian menace.'"

Then, not long after the war began, Mother Nature put in her own two cents.

To add to this came a flood on the Ohio River such as no one had yet imagined. . .The water began rising at Marietta in late January 1813. . .The river had been covered in ice, the ground in snow, when the weather suddenly turned warm and rain fell in torrents.

Samuel Hildreth, with his unceasing fascination with nature, was to take close notice of it all. "In twenty-four hours after the commencement of the rise," he would record, "the water was over the banks and rising at the rate of 8 inches per hour."

It was a spectacle such as he had never seen and he was thrilled to behold:

"The interest and grandeur of the scene was greatly augmented by the immense bodies of ice which covered the river from shore to shore, and of a thickness varying from 12 to 18 inches. . . .

In the night, the rushing of the waters and the crashing of the ice against the dwelling houses in the streets near the river was truly alarming and terrific. The water continued to rise until Thursday, 6 o'clock A.M, the 28th, when it ceased; and about 12:00 or one o'clock P.M., began falling slowly. . .The banks of the river were left piled up with ice, to the height of six or eight feet."

The sufferings of the whole community were much increased. With the rising of the water, many had fled to higher ground and built make-do temporary camps. When the waters subsided and they could return to their homes, the destruction they saw was like that left by an invading army.

The height of the flood was estimated at about 45 feet above the low water mark.

 It appears that Samuel was one of the lucky ones to make it though the flood with his house unscathed.

a trip back home

By December of 1814, the War of 1812 was, for all intents and purposes, over. Samuel decided the time was right for a trip back to see his family in Massachusetts. It had been nine years since he had seen them. In February of 1815, a "lull in his professional demands" made the trip possible. The season wasn't ideal to cross the Pennsylvania mountains but Samuel saddled his horse and set off. The trip was difficult and he rode the last eight miles in "a blinding snowstorm."

I reached my father's house just at dusk, went in and asked if I could stay all night would them. Not one of the family recognized me. . .as I had not written to notify them of my visit. My father said there was a tavern not far off and that they did not entertain travelers . . .I replied, that it was so stormy I disliked going out again and thought they had beeter keep me. He then asked where I was from. I said Ohio. "Oh, I have a son there, living in Marietta." I replied , "I know him well," and began to smile at the curious blind play going on; this smile recalled some slight recognition of who it might be, and mother said it must be cousin Warren Hildreth, whom I resembled. . .At length my father said it must be their son "Sam" but mother thought I looked too old and dark complexioned for him."

Samuel's mother finally said that the true test would be to see if this man in their house had a scar on the top of his head.

I submitted my head to her inspection. . .at the sight of this, all doubts vanished and I was heartily welcomed to the bosom of the rejoicing family.

Samuel stayed with his family for two months. While there, he purchased all of his father's Ohio lands, almost 1,500 acres. And to add to the satisfaction of the trip, Samuel's brother Charles (4C6X) decided he would like to go to Ohio and maybe even study medicine.

Samuel and Charles arrived back in Marietta in early May "and found the family all well and greatly rejoiced to see me and my brother."

a fateful visit

Seven after the disastrous Marietta flood, a drought of epic proportions began. The summer of 1821 began fared no better and by the summer of 1822, "the 'mighty' Ohio River had bcome a mere brook, lower than ever known. The stagnant water caused a "noxious" smell to permeate the town. Samuel wrote that in this "poisonous gas, no doubt, the seeds of fever were contained." He was right.

By the end of June, 1822, typhoid had infected the community. Then followed an influenza epidemic "a terrible visitation of burning fever, wild delirium, and deathly chills." Samuel wrote about his experience with the epidemic:

Marietta suffered greatly, losing as many as 250 person in two years. A full account of it was written by me and published in the American Journal of Medicine. . .In the first year, I attended more than 600 patients and lost but about 30 of that number. I was employed from sixteen to eighteen hours every day for four months. Charges that year $5000. The next year $3500.

When it was believed the epidemic was finally over, Samuel's father decided to come out to Ohio to see his son. From McCullough's book:

The epidemic had proved so dreadful that it became widely assumed that, once over, nothing like it would strike again for a long time. Even Samuel Hildreth, when his father, expressed a desire to come out to Ohio for a first visit the following spring of 1823, saw no reason for him not to.

Samuel wrote about his father's trip:

My father concluded to make a visit to Ohio, not only to see his son in Marietta, but also to view the rich valleys of the west which had for many years excited his curiosity. His journey out was performed very comfortably in a small covered one horse wagon. The visit was very pleasant to him, and the time passed rapidly away until the fore part of August, when the country became the seat of a violent epidemic fever. The year before had been very sickly, but this year it was worse.

Sadly, Samuel Hildreth, Sr. turned out to be one of the victims of the scourge. He died on August 6, 1823 at age 73. Samuel, Jr. wrote of his father that "[h]is health was generally firm and good and but for this attack he might in all probability have lived a number of years." The elder Samuel was buried in Marietta's Mound Cemetery.

a growing family and a new home

By 1824, Samuel and Rhoda's family had increased to five children and they felt the need for a larger house. Samuel had become good friends with Joseph Barker, who he employed to design and build a new home on Putnam Street.

The Hildreth project was a major undertaking, one of the largest houses in Marietta and located becide the new courthouse. The cost would be covered in large part by labor donated by patients of Hildreth's unable to pay for the care he had provided during the epidemic. . .The house was to have much the look of Barker's other houses built of brick in the Federal style. . .It was three stories with a two-story wing in the rear. Grander in scale than any of his (Barker's) previous in town house, it more than qualified as a mansion.

Below is a photograph of the home taken in 1900.

The last of the Hildreth's to live in the house on Putnam Street was Samuel's grandson, Dr. George Hildreth (6C4X) who died in 1903 at the age of 90. The house at that time was next door to the Marietta Courthouse.

Over the years the structure served as home for a dry cleaning business, auto service store, dentist office, apartments, office space, "county welfare department and the county board of education." The Hildreth home was razed the summer of 1965 making way for the courthouse annex we see today.

At his new home, Samuel "greatly enlarged the number of flowering shrubs, plants bulbs, etc." that grew in his garden. He wrote that "partly by exchanges of Ohio indigenous plants with eastern gardeners and partly by purchase; so that my collection was superior to any one in this part of Ohio." A visitor to his garden wrote "at length" about the joys of his garden:

It is filled with peach, quince, pear and apple trees loaded with fruit, a great profusion of grapes of ten different kinds, flowers of indigenous and eotic origin, composing a variety of 200, and under the shade of the grapevines, a number of beehives.

McCullough wrote that:

As time went on the house was also to become known as a center of medical and scientific collectiions and innovative ideas, the production center of countless medical and scientific articles by the doctor, as well as works of history, not to say a professional medical office. But primarily it was a home where Hildreth was to live for almost forty more years.

In 1826, one last child, Harriet Eliza (5C5X), was born to the Hildreths in their new home, bring their total to six. Below is a portrait of Rhoda with Harriet shortly after her birth.

a trip back east

In the spring of 1839, Samuel and Rhoda decided to make a trip back east to visit friends and relatives they had left so many years ago. It had been 24 years since Samuel had been back to see his family. Luckily, his twenty seven year old son had become a doctor himself and could take care of the practice in his father's absence. In their journey, they would make use of five different transportation modes: private carriage, river steaboat, canal boat, railroad car and an oceangoing steamboat. One of their first stops would be in Cleveland where Samuel was to speak at a convention of the Physicians Society of Ohio, of which he was the president.

The route to Zanesville (their first stop) was "highly picturesque and much changed." What used to be covered with dense forest was completely devoid of trees and "the view reached as much as twenty miles to the horizon." On May 10, Samuel recorded in his journal:

Early this morning, we passed the site of the massacre of the Moravian Indians at Gnaden- hatten by the white savages from Wheeling, under Col. Williamson, in March 1782.

McCullough continues Samuel's story:

Cleaveland was dazzling. If ever evidence was needed of Ohio's transformation, he felt, here it was, with its 8,000 or 10,000 inhabitants and buildings equal in splendor to those of any other city of its size in America, its wharves swarming with life and the bustle of an active seaport.

Samuel wrote:

In the short space of 55 years, the gloom and silence of the wilderness have given place to civilization, with the arts of agriculture and commerce which follow in its train. . .To a person unacquainted with the grandeur of the sea, the first view of the lake has a sublime and imposing appearance. The wind blew strongly from the north-east and heavy surf was breaking on the shore with all the tumult of the ocean.

In his speech to the convention, Samuel discussed the diseases of Ohio, the history of medicine in early settlements and described the founding of Marietta in 1788 and the dense forest that covered the entire region. The next morining, the travelers took a steamship across Lake Erie to Buffalo, NY. They then took a rail car to Niagra to see the falls. Samuel wrote:

As we apprached the falls the noise of "many waters" was heard in awful majesty. The view of the cataracts is fully equal to all that has been said of them. . .I expect the time will come when the plodding Yankee will get possession here and divert the whole of the stream for the purpose of manufactures, and spoil the beauty of these grandest of all grand water falls, as they have diverted and ruined the falls of my own dear little native Spickett, in Methuen.

From the falls, Samuel and Rhoda traveled by boat on the Erie Canal to Utica, NY and then boarded a train to Albany. Samuel described the 30 mile an hour train ride as "a little like flying." From Albany, another steamboat took them down the Hudson River to New York City, then across Long Island Sound to New Haven, CT.

For Hildreth, the stop at New Haven figured as one of the highlights of his life: The chance to visit Yale, by then the largest university in the county and one with a curriculum that included geology, chemistry, theology, art, and medicine -- all that so mattered to him -- meant the world. Even more important he would, at last, meet Benjamin Silliman. If he, Hildreth, ranked among the pioneers in American science at the time, Silliman, "The Path Finder," was the most prominent and influential scientific American during the first half of the nineteenth century.

.. .In 1835, after six years of intensive research and field management, Hildreth had written a major paper for the (American) Journal (of Science) on bituminous coal deposits in the valley of the Ohio. It was a subject certain to appeal to Silliman. . .

In 1836 another treatise appeared in the Journal, this titled, "Ten Days in Ohio; from the Diary of a Naturalist," which placed him among the nation's foremost geologist. He put forth a highly important theory, his belief that it had taken a "vast period of time to hollow out the local valley between this hill, in which the Ohio now meanders, and to deposit that vast bed of alluvial earth which constitutes its present fertile and riche bottoms.: In fact, as would be acknowledged by later-day geological scholars, Samuel Hildreth was the first American geologist to "recognize the enormous amount of sub-arial [on the surface of the earth] erosion that had taken place throughout the region and that the Ohio River had carved out its own channel." Among those of his own time who immediately grasped the importance of what he had written, and told him so, was Benjamin Silliman.

. . .Professor Silliman greeted the Hildreths at their lodgings and. . .took them on a stroll through the lovely, historic Grove Street Cemetery, just off the campus. ("Death loses half its terrors" Hildreth wrote, "when we reflect that our bodies are to be laid quietly in such a beautiful spot."). When the Sillimans invited the Hildreths to spend the rest of their time in New Haven as their guests, the Hildreths happily accepted.

The next leg of the Hildreths journey took them through Hartford, CT. and on to the town of Worcester. Samuel had received a letter of introduction from Professor Silliman to Dr. Woodard, the Superintendent of the Hospital for the insane in Worcester. On his vist to that institution, Samuel ran into an old friend who happened to be a cousin of ours:

Amongst the inmates, I met with an old acquaintance, Mrs. ---- once Nancy Kimball (4C8X) of Bradford, Mass. She was dressed very neatly, but rather fancifully; looked in good health. She recognized me at once, calling me by name, although it is more than thirty yeas since I saw her. She appears sane on all subjects but one, and that is the one of appropriating to her own use, every little article that comes within her reach, or an inveterate habit of stealing.

In Boston, Samuel visited his brother Charles (4C6X) who he found "in good health." Charles' son had died at age 3 and was buried in a cemetery in Boston.

For the next two months, Samuel and Rhoda were continually "on the move" visiting friends and relatives throughout Massacusetts and even as far as Portland Maine to visit his sister Harriet (4C6X).

On a vist to Methuen, his birthplace, they found the old family home much as he remembered it. "Examined with much interest the room in which I was born and the one where I slept when a boy, for many years. . .Happy, happy days, never again to return."

Samuel's story will conclude in our next post.