This account of four generations of the Huston family of Hamilton County, Ohio, was written by Elizabeth Huston (1832-1917), sister of Simeon Atchley Huston, and daughter of Paul C. Huston and Esther Phillips. From the mention of the devastating floods that struck Dayton in March 1913, the document can be dated to 1913-17.
The location of the original memoir is unknown. This electronic version was produced from a typewritten copy, which had been in the possession of S. Arthur Huston, using an Epson flatbed scanner and optical character recognition (OCR) software.
My great grandfather, John Huston, lived in Bucks County, Pennsylvania during the Revolutionary War, early in the Eighties of Seventeen Hundred. He enlisted as a private. He seemed to think it his duty to do his part in that great struggle for freedom, and we take it for granted that he was a patriotic man to leave his wife and six children. His wife's name was Mary Watson. He was never well after the war. Taking cold repeatedly from exposure incident toward, he went into what they called then the hasty consumption and died.
Paul Huston, my grandfather, was the oldest child. He seemed to have a care over his mother and the rest of the children, and having heard much of the rich countries of the far West, which meant Ohio and all her beautiful rivers and valleys, the frontier that was rapidly being settled up, where the Indians no longer lurked, and nature was teeming with promises to civilized man, they sold their little farm in Pennsylvania and was paid in Continental money, and all went down and was lost save two or three hundred. Nothing daunted, he got married to Miss Jean Charters, and they all started. This was in 1792.
The two next oldest brothers, John and David, liked the town and surroundings of Dayton so well, they concluded to settle there. John lived and died a bachelor there, but David, who seemed to make up the shortcomings of John, married twice and had a large family by each wife. He was a very religious man of the strict Presbyterian type, reprimanding his children on Monday morning for their tricks on the Sabbath day. He was Judge twenty-one years in Montgomery County. He was aristocratic, but he was a good man, and his word was as good as his bond. Many of his children died when young. A very few of his name remain in Dayton to this day. A granddaughter of his told me her recollection of him was sitting at one end of a long table, while her grandmother was seated at the other end, and a well ordered family in between, her grandfather with his white vest on, and the grandmother with her lace cap and silk dress. While he did not leave any great fortune to his children, some of them married wealthy. One family was especially congenial to us. We spent many happy days visiting and romping with them. When I was eighteen years old, I made my first visit there, and took a young lady friend with me. We went by stage, as there was no railroad then. We thought we had accomplished a long trip as the tired horses slowly walked on the sandy short of the river and the sun was almost down. Brother George was doing business there then, and we went to his hotel. He was very glad to see us. The next morning, we went out to Cousin Elizabeth's. She was the widow of Cousin Israel, and while there, Cousin Mary asked us to go with her to her Aunt Beckle's and spend a week. She was her mother's sister, and her husband was in New York. Here my friend and I got a glimpse of high life. The Beckles lived in great style. Solid silver candle sticks were on the drawing room mantle, and everything else accordingly. When Mr. Beckle came home, he told us about Jenny Lind landing in New York the first time. He said they made a canopy of roses for her to pass under and strewed flowers for the great songster to walk on. I wonder if there is any one who knows of that incident to-day. There was a great deal of wealth in Dayton at that time. Men made fortunes in the marble business and distilleries and woolen factories. The streets were wide and clean with handsome residences. It was truly a 'Gem City'. The last time I was there I could see a great change. The suburbs were built up with the cheap homes for the laboring people. I wanted to visit the cemetery once more. Mrs. Gunckle took us out "Will you please drive past Vallandigham's grave," I asked. It was just a grassy mound without a stone. "I wouldn't look at it," said my cousin. I looked at it all the same and thought what a great man lies here, a great orator for I had heard him. He had the courage of his convictions, and as we drove on, Mrs. Gunckle pointed out the Gypsy lot. "I will see that," I said, and as the rest were not interested they waited for me. How remarkable it is that the Christian Faith flickers dimly among some strange people. Here stood a tall red granite monument full of inscriptions, some of them ungrammatical, it is true. Some one had died. "She sleeps in Jesus", it said. Others I cannot remember, but there was the Faith inscribed on stone. Where did they get it? From tradition or books, this knowledge, I am not able to say. They had never walked down fretted aisles or worshipped under vaulted roofs, or had the Gospel preached to them by learned theologians, yet this dirty, unkempt, sometimes dishonest people knew that Christ died for men.
Poor Dayton! All of my visits to her were so sunny and delightful. Now, she is shaking her wet garments from a terrible flood, her dead are still found in the sand pile. "Why is there not a guiding hand to these awful forces in nature," some had said. We do not understand the Wisdom of God. It is given to some to come up through great tribulation and some to wear the martyr's crown. When we sing the song of redemption, we may know something.
My grandfather and the rest of the family came down and settled between Hamilton and Cincinnati. They were small towns then. He could have done much better by going to Cincinnati as far as money goes, but land, land was his delight. The two sisters soon married. Nancy married Samuel Martin and moved North. They visited her for a time, but have since lost sight of her descendants. Martha married William Hunter. She was the grandmother of the Mills family. Uncle Samuel, the youngest son, settled near Grandfather. He was not a religious man but like his brothers, not even a Church member that I know of, but he was a good man. We liked him. My girlish recollections of him was seeing him drive in to see us, and we were always glad. He was genial and talkative, a Jeffersonian Democrat like my Grandfather, but Uncle David was a Whig. My brother David was named after him. Uncle Samuel accumulated quite a fortune for those days, and his descendants today are all well to do.
My grandfather and grandmother had eleven children. Three died early and one son, who lived to manhood, died in 1832 with the cholera. He was very bright, and Grandfather doted on him, and when the neighbors went in to console him, "I've lost my son," he would say, as though he had no other. My grandfather himself was a bright man. I've been told so by old people outside of the family, who lived in his day but were younger. He had a commanding presence and was looked up to in his church and in his neighborhood. His place of worship was at Springfield and they would go over the long, sometimes muddy road, once a week without thinking anything of it. "We had a fine sermon today, Jean," he would often remark on the way home. He reverenced Grandmother and often appealed to her. He was able in prayer and in controversy for a plain farmer, sometimes even epigrammatic, saying things you would be apt to remember. When a little girl eight years old and brother Aleck ten years old, Father took us over to attend school, as there was no school in our own neighborhood, hence I have a childish memory of my grandparents that I would not otherwise have had. They had a girl living with them and a man and Uncle John. The Man's name was Spring, and they had a dog which I shall never forget. He had such a beautiful bark, such a deep musical bark. He could be heard all around the neighborhood. Everybody knew old Cuff. Sister Sarah remembers old Cuff's voice too. Grandfather had left his original homestead and built a smaller house for him and grandmother down by the crossing of the road. He also built a little store there, and I never shall forget the glass jars of stick candy and sugar kisses with verses in them and a few bolts of calico and beaded work pockets and many trinkets besides the groceries, and underneath was a basement, and every morning I was sent down to the basement to get a dish of apple butter, and it seems to me there never was such apple butter as grandmother made, so fine and smooth. Spring and Uncle John went a fishing one Saturday, and Father and Mother were coming over. We were all so glad. They came home with great baskets of fish, for the Miami was full of fish those days. I was nearly all the afternoon looking for Father and Mother on top of the hill for we could see so far from the hill. I watched till it began to grow dark and I had to go home a poor little homesick girl. I wanted to see Mother and the baby so bad. Brother Paul was the baby. Grandfather scolded too and said when they did come they should have no fish. Poor Mother felt so sorry. She said Father had to go to a sale that day and there were no telephones those days.
When I was a young lady, I went to see the old homestead. Uncle William had lived in it and renters so long it was very old now. My aunt had told me about the mantelpiece. A man, she said, had worked on it one whole winter. He carved the rising sun, a round center in the middle and small fluted rays proceeding in every direction and much fancy work on the cornices and shutters. We would call it all gingerbread work nowadays. The walls of the parlor were painted blue and the border like curtains festooned, not at all artistic, but gloomy in the extreme. The stairway was very shaky so we did not go up.
As the years crept along, Grandfather had prospered, his land was rich. He had now every one of his children a farm, besides the homestead. He had three sons and three daughters besides Uncle John who never married. Poor Grandmother now took sick and died. I never shall forget her funeral. I was then eleven years old. When we entered the living room, a cloud of black crepe was being cut into strips and a woman was putting mourning scarfs on the hats and otherwise trimming for the family. The two younger daughters came in and threw their arms around Grandfather and all wept together. "We met when our heads were black and parted when our heads were white," said Grandfather in his epigrammatical way. Dear Grandmother! She was a thorough Christian, true to her Scotch ancestors. My uncle told me she use to go in the little room next to the stairs to pray. It was her closet. Her sweet gentle forbearance often reproved Grandfather, for he was high tempered and hasty, but " Jean was always right." But in a few months, he talked about a second marriage. This was a great and unexpected sorrow to his children. A woman, who had lived in the house, had encouraged him in the step. They sent her away. This enraged him. They went each one and talked to him. At last my father went. He said he dreaded Paul more than all. "Why do you consider it such a dreadful thing for me to marry the second time and have a companion in my old days." "Well Father, we none of us have deeds for our farms, and it might make great trouble " "I will give you a deed", said grandfather then, "but none of the rest. They have been too sassy." "I will not accept it," said Father. "I will sink or swim with my brothers and sisters." Grandfather saw the honor and justice of his son's words and gave in for once, "So get your deeds then, and I'll sign them, but be quick about it. I might change my mind," said he. Father hurried home and went to a squire and had all the deeds made out and started back and there was a terrible storm on and through the long dark piece of woodland that lay those days between the places, my Father could not see his way save from the flashes of lightning which were almost continuous. His horse fell three times with him. At last he arrived safely, and Grandfather signed the deeds. "We worked so hard," my Father said. "My brothers and I have thrashed grain till midnight and shipped the produce on flatboats to New Orleans and it is so hard to think that a strange person should come in and take it away from us." Grandfather married, and they had two children. They inherited the homestead and money. They were educated. When they grew up, they sold the homestead for $20,000. They invested and lost it all. They died early, so the money and children passed away. Grandfather died three years after he married. He was sorely penitent for what he had done. He told my aunt that there was nothing in common, no congeniality between them. We can hardly imagine a man who had erected the family altar in his house and the incense of prayer and worship had gone up for fifty years to upset all the good he had done in this foolish act. He was a man of prayer, and I think he was forgiven. I would not dare write anything else. Poor Grandfather! He had placed a chasm between himself and his children. They had always been obedient and loyal to him. They had stood up every Sunday evening when they were young and been catechised. They had been instructed to be good. He was now paralyzed and old. The inevitable hour was coming. He was grieved and penitent and afflicted in his closing hours. Poor Grandfather!
Uncle William and Uncle James lived near Grandfather. Uncle William occupied the homestead a long time. Uncle John did not get it as Grandfather had promised, so Father sued the estate. He employed Mr. Strait and Mr. Bellamy Storer. They were young lawyers at that time. They got something like two thousand dollars and Uncle John was happy after that. He was peculiar. He liked astronomy and religion. He seemed never to have emerged from the realm of childhood. His faith was so simple and unquestioning. "We'll see him," he would say, "when we go there", meaning Christ. He took great delight in talking and whispering to himself, and the children in every house would have fun watching Uncle John. He lived with Aunt Mary and Uncle James and died when he was fifty-six years old. Uncle William was fifty-six when he died and Uncle James, sixty-eight.
Aunt Jennet was Father's oldest sister. She married Thomas Burns. They had a large family. She was a great business woman. She could spin more in a day than any one in the neighborhood. Grandfather would always give her a silk dress when she would do the spinning. She had seven silk dresses when she was married: A quilt was made of them afterward. She was a noble woman. I loved her dearly. She was sixty-six years old when she died in 1869.
Nancy Huston, my father's second sister, married David Carroll. They had four children. Her little eccentricities and ways kept her nieces laughing all the time. She always wanted one of them with her. I stayed with her a year while going to school. We would go shopping Saturdays. I had to carry the purses. She had one plain one for the change. The other was a pearl back with the picture of a church and steeple on it, very pretty. She prized it highly. When she took the pearl back pocket-book, I was pretty sure to get something. Once she bought me a lovely fan. Many times a dress and other trinkets. On one of the trips, we missed the pearl back purse with the church on it. "O grief," I thought, "We'll have to go back." She said, "Elizabeth, you have certainly been very careless." When we reached home we found the darling old purse on that chair. "O joy! joy!" I thought. We laughed heartily. "It was my fault," she said, "for I often lay things on that chair." It was a split bottom chair with a velvet cushion on it. Sometimes she and Uncle Carroll would come up to the school at noon, and we would go to the United States Hotel and get our dinner. She was sixty-five years old when she died in 1875. With her little peculiarities, she was a good woman, and we missed her so when she was gone. She loved to tell over the past and talk of old times. She could remember all the weddings from Uncle William down and I often regret that I did not give more attention to the things she could relate.
Father's youngest sister Elizabeth married David Williamson. The family had always called her Betsy (I was named for her). They had four children. She was an animated, attractive young lady from what they tell me. She was tall and always dressed pretty and was queenly looking. She had many admirers, among them was a young lawyer in Cincinnati. They were engaged to be married but grandfather had heard that he was not an honorable young man and opposed the match. My father and mother were his friends and they often met at our house. They planned to elope. I would not lay bare this early romance of my aunt but for one beautiful thing. She did not go away with him but obeyed her parents and gave up her lover. "As dearly as I loved him," she told me once, "I could not bear to leave my mother." My father and mother named one of their sons after him. It was found our afterward the stories that had been told of him were untrue. He went West and settled. Aunt Betsy showed me once a little silver ink stand and an ivory handled riding whip and a bundle of letters, all from him. She cherished them yet. One of grandfather's friends told him he had better let his daughter marry Mr. Botkin. Yes grandfather said he regretted it. Aunt Betsy died when she was sixty-two years old in 1876. She has been dead many years, but we miss her yet. My dear namesake aunt, with her silver hair done up in puffs, I miss her yet.
There was but one of grandfather's children that adhered to his church and kept up family worship, and that was Aunt Jennet and her husband. They raised their children in the Presbyterian school.
I am now done with the Huston ancestors, three generations. It seems a short sketch for so long a period of time. Just a touch here and there in their lives, some things so far away and dim, but they are there and they are indelible. My sister has aided me. She is interested. She is more of a link to the past.