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McDonald, Sampson Taljiott, Justis Jones, George Croft and others. 

 A Supreme Court and a jury and the common Law! "There were 

 giants in those days." 



In the year 1817 Chanipaign^connty was shorn of much of her ter- 

 ritory, Logan county on the north and Clark county on tlie south 

 being established in that year. Amongst the first settlers in what is 

 now Champaign county was Gen. Simon Kenton. He was familiar 

 with it and with almost every part of Ohio before he came to settle in 

 it. lie first went to Kentucky in the year 1771, when but a boy, and 

 soon became associated with Daniel Boone in his expeditions against 

 and encounters with the Indians in Kentucky and Ohio. In 1778, 

 when on one of his first expeditions through. Ohio, he was taken pris- 

 oner by the Indians on the north bank of the Ohio river, and lashed 

 on the back of a wild horse, witb his hands tied, and a rope around 

 his neck fastened under the horse's toil and around the horse's neck 

 and his feet fistcned under the belly, the horse let loose in the woods 

 kicking and plunging through the bi'ush, but escaping from death 

 marvelously. He was then taken to Chillicothe and there compelled to 

 run the gauntlet, and was then brought to the Mac-n-cheek towns and 

 Wapatomicn (the latter town was about where Zanesfield, Logan 

 county, now is) and was compelled to run the gauntlet at each place, 

 and was then condemned to a horrible death, but by the generous con- 

 trivance of the Mingo Chief, Logan, he was taken on to Detroit and 

 there afterwards escaped and returned to Kentucky. This was in the 

 midst of the Revolutionary war. He was afterwards taken prisoner and 

 again escaped after great sufferings. It is said of him that he was 

 probably in more expeditions against the Indians, encountered greater 

 peril and had more narrow escapes from death than any man of his 

 time. In the year 178G the Mac-a-cheek towns and other towns at 

 the head of Mad river were destroyed by a body of Kentuckians under 

 General Benjamin Logan. In this attack Col. Daniel Boone and 

 Major (afterwards General) Simon Kenton commanded the advance. 

 He finally settled in Urbana in 1802, and from that time until after 

 the war of 1812, was identified with the intei'ests, the perils and the 

 strifes of the people of this county. He had possessed large quanti- 

 ties of land in Kentucky, but generous and kind hearted as he was 

 brave, he incurred obligations for others which gave him much annoy- 

 ance. With every opportunity for being rich, the owner of valuable 



