ably done after 1830, and contemporaneously with the erection of the two story brick edifice at the Northwest corner of Main and Paint streets, which latter had a frontage of probably forty feet on Paint street, and fifty feet on Main street, the lower story being occupied on Paint street by the office of the Clerk of Courts and the County Auditor, and the frontage on Main street by a wide hall and stairway and the office of the County Recorder. The upper story was occupied by lawyers' offices.

I was admitted to the bar of Ohio in March, 1840. I remember the court room as it was then, and doubtless had been from the beginning. The Judge's bench was in the curve at the west side, about six or eight feet above the floor, with space for the Presiding Judge and his three associates in the Common Pleas ; the Clerk's desk in front, about four feet lower, with juror's seats on either side, on the same level; the Sheriff's box and the witness stand on the south side, and the lawyer's desks arranged in front, the whole enclosed by a bar, so as to shut it off from the crowd of spectators who thronged the room on the opening day of the court or when causes of general interest were being heard. Four tall, fluted pillars were interspersed at equal intervals for the support of the upper floor.

The room was heated in winter by a wide open fire-place, inside the bar, on the north side of the house, and by an old-fashioned tin plate stove in the center, outside the bar.

The stairway started near a door on the north side of the house, and extended upward with the wall on that side, about half way, when it turned to the right along the East side, to the upper floor, which was occupied by a large room for the use of the grand and petit juries as occasion required, with two smaller rooms for witnesses and other purposes. In this large upper room were also held the meetings of literary societies, with lectures on literary subjects, and otherwise by the citizens, when not occupied for public purposes.

Later a two-story building of limited dimensions was erected south of the court house, fronting directly on Main street, the lower story of which when I returned from college in 1837, was occupied by a volunteer fire company, the "Citizen's" of which I was a member, and the upper story for the Mayor's office. This

building was not removed until 1853 or 1854, prior to the erection of the present court house.

In 1840, the bench was occupied by the Hon. John H. Keith as Presiding Judge, with his three associates, from the business walks of life. Col. Wm. Key Bond had removed to Cincinnati and Gen. John L. Green had taken his place as the partner of Mr. Creighton. The firms Creighton & Green and Allen & Thurman had the largest practice. The other lawyers were Thomas Scott & Son, Henry Brush, Benjamin G. Leonard, Frederick Grimke, Richard Douglas, Joseph Sill, William S. Murphy, Jonathan F.. Woodside, Henry Massie, John L. Taylor, Robert Bethel, Gustavus Scott, James Caldwell, Amos Holton, and perhaps others, not now recalled.

Mr. Theodore Sherer, who had read the law with Messrs. Allen & Thurman, and I, with Creighton & Bond, were admitted to the bar by the Supreme Court on the circuit in Scioto county, Ohio, in March, 1840. From that time we continued to fight our legal battles in the old court house until the spring of 1852, when one day in March of that year, I was passing through the court house yard on the way to my office upstairs in the building I have heretofore described as on the corner of Main and Paint streets, I heard Charles Martin, then Sheriff, of the county, crying off, under the order of the County Commissioners the court house for sale. "Who bids?" said he. In jest,. I said "Seventy-five dollars," and passed on to my office, forgetful. of my jest, and was soon absorbed in the study of some case. What was my surprise, when some minutes later the Sheriff appeared to inform me that I was the purchaser of the court house. What was I to do with it? It ought to have been allowed to stand as a monument of the early days in Ohio history, but the Commissioners were inexorable, and the terms of sale required it to be taken down and removed without delay. Unfortunately for the city, but very fortunately for me, “the great fire" occurred on April 1st, 1852, and a demand for stone, brick and lumber sprang up for rebuilding, and so the old court house vanished into cellar walls, stables, etc., and became a thing of the past save a few relics which curiosity lovers preserved.

The court house square was soon covered with stone and lumber for the present building, but the corner stone was not laid until July 12th, 1855, when the Hon. Thomas Scott and myself had the honor of delivering addresses on the occasion from a point where the northeast pillar of the portico now stands.

Such was my personal connection with the building, on whose frontage we have this day placed a tablet commemorating

"The site on which stood the first state house of Ohio wherein was adopted the original constitution of the commonwealth."

THE FIRST CONSTITUTION.

WHAT INFLUENCED ITS ADOPTION AND ITS INFLUENCE ON OHIO.

Hon. Daniel J. Ryan was introduced by. Judge J. C. Douglas, and spoke as follows:

Fellow citizens of Ohio:

In order to appreciate intelligently the event which we celebrate here to-day it is necessary that we have a clear conception of the principal actors concerned

therein, and of the times and surroundings of a century ago in the Scioto Valley. The first constitutional convention, from an intellectual standpoint, is the greatest, as well as the most picturesque episode in the history of our State, and the events which led up to it read like a romance. The conversion of a wilderness into a garden; the invasion of the Virginians; the overthrow of the great Arthur St. Clair; the struggle for statehood; the victory of the people over the aristocracy; the framing of the constitution for a people without their consultation or consent, are all events that form a background for a picture that has no parallel in American history. And all these scenes were enacted in a theatre of intellect; the

only weapons were tongues and pens, but they were directed by men who for brains and bravery are worthy of every tribute of admiration and respect that the people of Ohio can to-day bestow upon them.

Six years prior to 1802, there came into the Scioto Valley a young Virginian named Nathaniel Massie. He had served in the Revolutionary War from his native State at the age of seventeen, and at nineteen started to Kentucky to pursue his vocation of surveying the public lands and placing warrants for soldiers of the Revolution. He founded Manchester in Adams county, and in 1796 penetrated the Scioto Valley, which was then a beautiful but savagely wild territory. He located in the region about us to-day and laid out Chillicothe. It is easy to understand how he was attracted to this glorious land, which, then, as now, bore all the evidence of the richnes of nature.

One of his companions in his tours of surveying and exploration was John McDonald, afterward of Poplar Ridge in this (Ross) county, and sixty-two years ago he wrote a description of the land about Chillicothe as he saw it with Massie in 1796. His little volume"McDonald's Sketches" is now exceedingly rare and on that account I take the liberty to repeat in his plain style what he wrote. His description of the surroundings of the site selected by Massie for his town, and the condition of the same territory to-day shows a wondrous transformation from a land of savagery to the garden spot of a commonwealth of the highest civilization. Here is his picture of the Scioto Valley in the spring of 1796; "About four or five miles above the mouth of Paint Creek, the river (Scioto) suddenly makes a bend, and runs a short distance east, thence southeast to the mouth of Paint Creek. That stream, the largest tributary of the Scioto, for four or five miles above its mouth, runs almost parallel with the Scioto. Between these two streams there is a large and beautiful bottom, four or five miles in length, and varying from one to two miles in breadth, and contains within the space upwards of three thousand acres. This bottom (as also the bottoms of the Scioto and Paint Creek generally), is very fertile; the loam of alluvial formation being from three to ten feet in depth. These bottoms, when first settled, were generally covered by a heavy growth of timber, such

as black walnut, sugar tree, cherry, buckeye, hackberry and other trees which denote a rich soil. A portion of them, however, were found destitute of timber, and formed beautiful prairies, clothed with blue grass and blue sedgegrass, which grew to the height of from four to eight feet, and furnished a bountiful supply of pasture in summer and hay in winter, for the live stock of the settlers. The outer edges of these prairies were beautifully fringed around with the plum tree, the red and black haw, the mulberry and crab apple. In the month of May, when those nurseries of nature's God were in full bloom, the sight was completely gratified, while the fragrant and delicious perfume, which filled the surrounding atmosphere, was sufficient to fill and lull the soul with ecstacies of pleasure. The western boundary of this valley, between the two streams, is a hill two or three hundred feet in height. Its base to the south is closely washed by Paint Creek, and where this stream first enters the valley, it terminates in an abrupt point, and then extends up the valley of the Scioto, in a northwest and north course, for many miles, and forms the western boundary of the bottoms along that stream. From the point where the hill abruptly terminates at Paint Creek, running north-northeast at the distance of about one mile across the valley, you reach the bank of the Scioto, at the sudden bend it makes to the east. The valley between this bend of the Scioto and Paint Creek, immediately below the point of the hill, was selected as a site for the town. This part of the valley was chosen, as it consisted of high and dry land not subject to the floods of the river, which frequently inundated the valley towards the mouth of Paint Creek:"

It was amid these natural surroundings that Massie selected the site that was to be the standing point, of a great, powerful, wealthy and patriotic State.

The territory of the Scioto Valley had for centuries been the selected living place of divers races of men. In the very dawn of human knowledge it was populated by the mysterious race of mound-builders and was the seat of their cities, camping places, fortifications and altars. Attracted, doubtless, by the magnificent soil, beautiful scenery and natural resources, both of the animal and vegetable kingdom, they filled this valley in great numbers