The Circuit Rider

In her colorful history written in 1914, Mary Salome Eaton (1826-1917) wife of Rev Matthias Myers Eaton (1816-1878) painted a view of daily life in Georgetown in 1861.[1]   Rev Eaton was a Circuit Rider, as intinerant Methodist Episcopal preachers were known in those days.  A circuit was portrayed by the amount of time it took to cover one round and by the number of miles on horseback.  For example, Rev Eaton served the “Harrisonville Circuit” in 1848.  It was a circuit covering six weeks while riding 500 hard miles to minister to the far flung faithful.  He would preach every day save Wednesday and three times on Sunday.[2]

 

Georgetown Circuit Contribution Card 1865 (Anna L and John F Nash Collection)

Georgetown Circuit Contribution Card 1865 (Anna L and John F Nash Collection)

In 1861, Rev Eaton was assigned to the Georgetown Circuit.  His previous charge had been West Elizabeth, a boat building town along the Monongahela River.   Fittingly, the Eatons moved their household from West Elizabeth to Georgetown  by steamboat.  They spent their first night in Georgetown as guests of “Brother Calhoon and his daughter”. [3]   According to the US Census of 1860, Charles Calhoun, one of the merchants in Georgetown, had one daughter named Amanda and no wife which satisfied the reference.   Charles Calhoun was not related to the steamboating Calhoons of Georgetown until his daughter, Harriet Amanda, married Capt Thomas S Calhoon in 1867.

 

The description of Georgetown in the Eaton journal was not all positive.  It was a “pretty little town” populated largely by steamboat captains and pilots who were often away from home.  They had “plenty of money and fine furnished homes”.  However, the church was “not up to the times nor equal to the wealth of the people”.  Pigs, cows, horses, and dogs “roamed at will”.[4]

 

Their rented home in Georgetown was described as generally satisfactory.  The Eatons were “pleasantly situated” and shared a garden with “Old Lady Poe”.  Her garden was “an old fashioned garden”.[5]  I wonder what a modern garden would have been in 1861.  The garden had a fine bed of asparagus and contained all types of herbs such as tansy, rue, sage, thyme, wormwood, etc.  The flower gardens, bordered with chives, contained names of plants I do not recognize.  Old Lady Poe was Elizabeth Hephner Poe, wife of Thomas Poe Sr and mother of Nancy Ann (Poe) Ebert.  Although Mary S Eaton claimed the owner of the property was a son of Old Lady Poe, I assume Capt George W Ebert and his wife were the landlords.  From the property deed,  George W Ebert bought the property from Jacob Poe in 1845.   That property is now owned by Judy, my sister,  and Nick Maravich.  Some years ago, a large asparagus bed existed on the property which supports the argument that the small house next to the Ebert home was the property rented by Rev Eaton.  A second supporting argument is that Elizabeth Hephner Poe was credited with starting the Methodist community in Georgetown in 1834 so she would have been interested in supporting the new minister.  Lastly, Elizabeth Hephner would have been age 75 in 1861 and living with her daughter’s family.  As the oldest Poe in town, she earned the title – Old Lady Poe.

 

When the Eatons arrived in Georgetown, it was the first year of the Civil War.  Mary S Eaton wrote in her journal “It was a pretty site to see the fleet go down the river.”  The decks were crowded with soldiers.  The banks of the Ohio were lined with men, women, and children cheering.  Several Georgetown boys went to war, among them “two sons of the widow Mahaffy”.[6]   Most if not all the men from Georgetown, enlisted or drafted, served in the Eastern Theater of the Civil War.   Most of the other men worked on steamboats which served as civilian transports for Union troops and supplies on the inland rivers in the Western Theater.  The captains and pilots were in their late forties when the war started.  They were not young and their work was dangerous.

 

The next year,1862, a diphtheria outbreak raged in Jul and Aug.  Although there were many deaths according to the journal, I did not recognize the names of the victims.  Maybe Georgetown was not affected.  Other places on the Georgetown Circuit included Hookstown, Jones, New Cumberland, and Green Valley.  One of those places may have suffered the diphtheria epidemic.   At that time doctors were powerless to save victims of diphtheria.  And to compound that helplessness, there was no undertaker in Georgetown so funeral arrangements were made by family and friends.

In 1863, the Eatons were assigned by the Pittsburgh Conference to Shawtown (Shousetown known for its boatyard) a short move up the Ohio River and less distant from Georgetown than some of the points on the Georgetown Circuit.  Like their first night in Georgetown two years earlier, the Eatons stayed their last night with their “dear old friends Brother Calhoun and his daughter. [7]

 

 

 

References.


[1] Mary Salome Eaton, Memories of the Wife of an Itinerant Methodist Preacher, (The Commission on Archives and History Western PA Conference United Methodist Church, 1989), p 22.
[2] Mary Salome Eaton, Memories of the Wife of an Itinerant Methodist Preacher, (The Commission on Archives and History Western PA Conference United Methodist Church, 1989), p 1.
[3] Mary Salome Eaton, Memories of the Wife of an Itinerant Methodist Preacher, (The Commission on Archives and History Western PA Conference United Methodist Church, 1989), p 23.
[4] Mary Salome Eaton, Memories of the Wife of an Itinerant Methodist Preacher, (The Commission on Archives and History Western PA Conference United Methodist Church, 1989), p 23.
[5] Mary Salome Eaton, Memories of the Wife of an Itinerant Methodist Preacher, (The Commission on Archives and History Western PA Conference United Methodist Church, 1989), p 24.
[6] Mary Salome Eaton, Memories of the Wife of an Itinerant Methodist Preacher, (The Commission on Archives and History Western PA Conference United Methodist Church, 1989), p 24.
[7] Mary Salome Eaton, Memories of the Wife of an Itinerant Methodist Preacher, (The Commission on Archives and History Western PA Conference United Methodist Church, 1989), p 27.

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