The Sherrard family of Steubenville - Google Books: "OUR JOURNEY HOMEWARD.
Having completed all my business in town, we left Fremont and came as far as Ballville, opposite Tiffin, where we staid all night, and the next day, November 5th, we passed on through Rome, some twenty miles out from Ballville, and from there we came to Findlay, the county seat of Hancock County. From there we went four miles northwest to visit the family of Absalom Hall, who had moved out there from Harrison County the fall of 1834.
He was married to a cousin of my first wife, a daughter of old John Cunningham. We remained over Sabbath with the Halls, and went to church with them at Findlay, where the family attended the Presbyterian Church. The services were conducted by the pastor, the Rev. Mr. Van Eman, formerly from Washington County, Pa. After sermon we returned to Absalom Hall's where we spent the remainder of the Sabbath in that old-fashioned manner of Sabbath-keeping so common among Presbyterian families in olden times, but I fear that such strictness in the way of Sabbath-keeping will never return again. That old manner of keeping the Sabbath was to refrain from vain and idle conversation ; to refrain also from reading newspapers and vain story books, and to confine the family to the reading of the Old and New Testaments, to sermon books or only good books that treated upon religious subjects, • such as Boston's ' Fourfold State,' ' The Afflicted Man's Companion,' ' The Travels of True Godliness,' ' The Pilgrim's Progress,' or 'The Holy War,' by John Bunyan, not forgetting to learn the Shorter Catechism and the Psalms and Hymns by Dr. Watts. Before we left Absalom Hall's on Monday we learned that his son Aaron was to be married the next Thursday to a daughter of their pastor, the Rev. Mr. Van Eman, and they gave us a pressing invitation to remain- for the wedding, but we had to decline because it would detain us too long. But I suppose one motive they had was to pay back a debt of gratitude, as it will be remembered that when I was married to Jane Hind
man, May 24, 1827, I had Absalom Hall and his wife at our infare on the 25th, and they staid with us till the following day after dinner. And upon leaving me that day Absalom Hall observed to me that I had got a wife now who to all appearance would hold out as long as I would.
As proof that Absalom Hall guessed pretty nearly right, thirty-eight years and six months have rolled by since that time, and I and Jane Hindman are both living after the lapse of all these years, and thank God we are both in good health and the enjoyment of each other's company and fellowship, and not a wave of trouble rolls across our peaceful breasts, and naught to break our rest.
(And just here, November 22, 1889, I have read to mother a few of the foregoing pages, and she has greatly enjoyed them, her mind being perfectly clear, and all her faculties remarkably preserved, sixty-two years and six months after her marriage above mentioned, and she will be eighty-five years of age December 14th, next month.—T. J. S.)
It was in the afternoon of Monday, November 7, 1836, when we left Hall's, for Joseph Hill had that forenoon purchased from Absalom Hall two lots of land in the vicinity of Findlay, and I drew up the deeds for them, one of forty acres and the other of eighty, and we went into town and had the deeds acknowledged and recorded."
No comments:
Post a Comment