Monroe County Anecdotes

In December of 1880, the Catholic Columbian carried a long letter written by J. V. Reid of Pittsburg. This man was a nephew of Rev. James Reid, who had been pastor of Beaver St. Dominic and its missions and stations early in the century. (See the Bulletin, Vol. XIII (1988), page 70.) The letter does not contribute much to the history of the church, in a "technical" sense, but it does contain some anecdotes that are worth our notice. (With our thanks to the Catholic Times.)

From the December 9, 1880 issue:

"St. Dominic’s was, even at this time, pretty well filled of a Sunday, many coming 12 to 15 miles or more and thinking lightly of the journey, so as to be able to attend at the Holy sacrifice. There was no other church near, in any direction, save one small one, on the land of a Mr. Dorr, near Malaga.

Prominent among the members of this little congregation was the patriarch who did so much himself, to collect the flock around him – I refer to Mr. Edmund Gallagher, who moved West at an early day, from Chester County, Pa., in which he had spent a few years after coming from the old country. The next deserving of mention was, also, a man of note, -- Col. John DeLong. He was tall and of fine address, a man of mark anywhere. He had served (I think, under ‘Mad Anthony’ Wayne) in several campaigns, and was one of the numerous native-born citizens received by the Dominican Fathers into the True Church."

From the December 16, 1880 issue:

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"..were not rugged and after clearing they could be cultivated to their summits. The bottom lands along the creek they found to be wide and very productive, for an abundance of limestone mixed naturally with the soil, rendering it fertile. The country still abounded in deer, wild turkey, and other game, but the presence of bears and wolves made it difficult for the settlers to keep hogs or sheep.

The earliest records of these settlers are the entries in the government land office books of their down payment for land. George DeLong is on record in 1806 for 160 acres in southeastern Wills Township; James DeLong for 160 acres in the same area in 1807; and Joseph DeLong for 160 acres on the Creek one mile east of the present Batesville in 1812. John DeLong and his wife Sarah and their children settled at the forks of the creek before the War of 1812; he became one of the leading men of the vicinity.

For Ohioans, the War of 1812 was but a continuation of the contest which the British had been waging for some time through the Miami and other Indians. In the autumn of 1812, after the surrender of Detroit to the British, war fever was at its height. "Every man ran to arms None waited for the formality of orders." In 1813, when Governor Meigs called for 5,000 volunteers, three times that number responded. The American campaign of 1813 was only a defensive success in northwestern Ohio, where the posts of Fort Meigs, on the Maumee River, and Fort Stevenson withstood sieges of the British and Indians. In the fall of 1813 we find John DeLong a Colonel, leading the First Regiment of the Ohio Militia toward the front. Under his command were 738 men, primarily from Belmont and Fairfield Counties, and eleven wagons. They marched through Lancaster, Franklinton, and Delaware, reaching Upper Sandusky about September 22. Somewhere along their line of march the news of Commodore Perry’s victory on Lake Erie must have reached them. The regiment marched on to camp at Lower Sandusky while the troops which had been in that area were ferried across the lake to Canada to pursue the retreating British army and Tecumseh with his Indian warriors.

By early December, Colonel DeLong was in command of Fort Meigs. By January 14 of 1814, however, the Colonel was a prisoner and he soon faced a Court Martial, charged with various infractions of rules of military conduct. Such charges were common among the untrained officers of the Ohio Militia. The record of the Court is incomplete and we do not know the outcome of the trial, but Colonel DeLong’s name was not struck from the Militia rolls.

It was in the years following the war that Rev. Edward D. Fenwick, O.P. began visiting Ohio on a regular basis, seeking out Catholic households and making many converts. In the Beaver Valley, George DeLong seems to have been the first of his family to become a Catholic; his son James was baptized in 1820. Colonel DeLong soon followed George’s example and within a few years some seventy of their relatives had followed them. That one such as Col. DeLong would renounce his former beliefs and embrace the Catholic Faith speaks volumes about the faith and example of his Catholic neighbors, the Gallagher and McConnaghy families, and of the Apostle of Ohio, Father Fenwick."

Note: Later records show many decendants returned to Protestantism.

Transcribed by Todd Reeves, 1997