both members of the Baptist Church, and lived and died exemplary Christians. The father was a minister in that denomination, and during sixty years preached the Gospel, never failing in a single appointment, nor never took a dose of medicine. At his death, occurring at the ripe age of ninety-one, in 1830, there were three hundred descendants. His descendants, living and dead, now number about a thousand persons.

The mother forms the character and directs the destiny of the child. Thomas had a Christian mother, who gave him the first lessons in education, and trained him in the school of virtue and freedom. In those early days, the privileges of the common schools were rare, and hence the entire education of most families was received at home. This was so of the Morris children. It was the habit of their mother, whenever in her log cabin she sat down to sew or knit, to have one of her children by her side reading the Bible; for all of her children could read well before they were six years of age. The historical portions of the Bible were selected as the most interesting to the juvenile mind. This home education, the stool at the mother's knee, is the first round in the ladder of advancement. Here the young soul drinks in the first draught of wisdom, and is schooled in motives drawn from the fountain of perfect and eternal truth. Here the first aspirations for knowledge are formed, and the first inspirations for freedom and virtue are received. It was in the home school, and from a mother's lips, that Thomas Morris was trained to love truth and freedom. Here the elements of a character were planted which, becoming the radical convictions of his nature, made him, in the manhood of life, strong and fearless in the resistance of slavery and wrong.

The library of the Morris family consisted of three Bibles, four Testaments, and as many Hymn books and Spelling books, a Dictionary, Dillworth's School-Master's

Assistant, the Young Man's Companion, an Arithmetic and an Outline of Astronomy; Scott's Lessons on Elocution, part of Bunyan's and Baxter's writings, and twelve volumes of sermons. These were the only facilities that Thomas Morris had for his early education. Three months at a common school completed his scholastic education. His college was the mountain wilds of Virginia, and there he graduated with a diploma from nature, and a blessing from a Christian mother. He early developed strong natural powers of intellect, an eager thirst for knowledge, and a manly self-reliance. At fourteen, he made a full hand in the harvest field; at sixteen, he shouldered his musket to repel the aggressions of the Indians on the frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania; at seventeen, he served several months in Captain Levi Morgan's company of wood rangers, stationed in the wilderness, in what is now the eastern part of Ohio. He was endowed with a strong mind and a vigorous body, and the carly training of his mother imbued him with the elements of a character marked with boldness, self-reliance and fearless independence.

An incident in the life of his parents will reflect honor on their anti-slavery sentiments, and show how early their children were taught, by precept and example, in the school of freedom. His mother, in girlhood, held frequent conversations with a number of native Africans, kidnapped and brought in slave-ships to Virginia, the slave-trade then being sanctioned by law. Her father was a slaveholder, and at his death left, by will, one female slave, all he had, to his wife during her lifetime. At her death, this slave, with her increase, was to be the patrimony of the two daughters. In 1798, the wife of Henton died, and eight "human chattles " was the inheritance of the two daughters. The executor of the will gave information of these facts, aud desired to convey to Morris

and his wife their share of the slaves. The proposition was rejected as an outrage on their sense of justice, and they declared that they would do no act that would recognize the right of one man to make another man chattel property. It was a matter of regret to the Morris family that they did not receive them and give them the boon of freedom. This noble act of the parents of Thomas Morris was one of the home lessons he received in the school of freedom.

CHAPTER III.

EARLY History of Ohio-Settlement at Marietta-Ordinance of 1787Settlement at Columbia—The early Pioneers-The first Baptist Church -Supply of Cincinnati with preaching-John Smith, Preacher, first United States Senator, implicated with Burr-Morris emigrates to Columbia-Employed by Smith-Hunts in the forest where Cincinnati stands-A Contrast.

IN 1795, the territory now constituting the State of Ohio became the permanent home of Thomas Morris. The great North-western Territory, out of which the five States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin have been formed, was ceded by Virginia to the United States. In 1787, Congress passed an ordinance which consecrated forever this vast domain to the reign of freedom. Slavery was forever prohibited. The wisdom of that great act has been most signally vindicated in the present prosperity and greatness of the State of Ohio. In her material wealth, in her noble systems of education, in her agricultural and commercial prosperity, in her political power and influence, and in all that constitutes the best types of a Christian civilization, Ohio presents a noble monument of freedom, and the most unanswerable evidence of the wisdom of that policy that forbids the foot-prints of a slave to tread the soil of a free nation. This noble ordinance of freedom was, on the 4th of July, 1788, made the special topic of eulogy and thanksgiving by the emigrants who, on the 7th of April, 1788, made their settlement at Marietta, on the banks of the Ohio river. In the groves of nature, and in the midst of the enchanting scenery that surrounded them, breathing

an air made fragrant with freedom, did the pioneer emigrants from New England celebrate the anniversary of their national independence, by an oration of thanksgiving to God for that ordinance that had forever consecrated the soil of Ohio to freedom.

In November, 1788, seven months subsequent to the settlement at Marietta, a colony of emigrants began another settlement at Columbia, Hamilton county, five miles above Cincinnati. Among others, these emigrants consisted of Goforth, Stites, Major Gano, Col. Spencer, Rev. John Smith, Francis Dunlavey, and John Reily. Judge Burnet, himself an early pioneer, and a distinguished actor in the history and legislation of Ohio, in his Notes on the North-western Territory, says of the settlers in Columbia: "They were all men of energy and enterprise, and were more numerous than either of the parties who commenced their settlements below them on the Ohio." The village of Columbia, it was thought, would become the great commercial town of the Miami country, and for many years maintained a vigorous rivalry with the rising settlements of Cincinnati and North Bend. Cincinnati, however, became the center of commerce and population, and so rapid has been her progress, that she now almost includes within her corporate limits Columbia, once her rival and superior.

The Indians were numerous and hostile, and hence it became necessary for the emigrants to erect a fort, called Fort Miami, for their protection, and which afforded to the families a place of safety and refuge. Farms were opened and agriculture prosecuted under a military police. While one part of the emigrants were working in the fields, another must be watching lest the Indians should attack them by surprise.

Several of the early emigrants were Baptist preachers, and one of the first acts was to organize a church, and to erect a house for the worship of God. The church was