it was incorporated by the state legislature in 1835, Bishop went on a lengthy out-of-state fundraising trip, returning in September 1836 with donated money and other valuables. But he and the trustees had a falling out, and Bishop apparently decided to go it alone. His erstwhile collaborators demanded an account of the donations he had collected for the seminary, but he refused. With the bonds of Christian fellowship now torn asunder, the trustees sued the elderly minister for damages in 1839. Years of litigation dogged Samuel after that, as first the Athens County Common Pleas Court and later the Ohio Supreme Court ruled against him. (By 1845 Homer Township had been portioned off from Athens County and made a part of Morgan County, but the case remained in Athens County.) The high court ruled that “there was in the hands of the said Samuel G. Bishop after deducting a competent amount to him for his services in collecting the same, for the use of the complainants the sum of $1,369.60.” As no payment to the victors was forthcoming, an 80-acre chunk of Bishop’s property was sold at public auction in 1849. But the litigation was destined to drag on, a nettle in what might otherwise have been a comfortable old age for 80-year-old Samuel and his wife, Abigail, five years his junior.
* * *
JONATHAN Koons’s ancestors had been blessed with the gift of longevity, with one forebear surpassing the century mark and several others living well into their eighties and nineties. Back in Pennsylvania, his father Peter died in 1847 at the age of 87 or 88. Peter’s second wife agreed to allow his son Lewis to administer the estate. Lewis had his father’s 385 acres in Monroe Township auctioned off to pay his creditors, putting the estate in the black. Lewis wrote to Jonathan that the exact amount of Peter’s legacy, $263.39, would be divided equally among the 10 heirs. Whether Peter ever saw any of his grown children after they crossed into Ohio is not known. However, a few years later Jonathan would come to believe that his father had sent him an affectionate poem—mysteriously rendered in Jonathan’s journal by the spirits—as a token of Peter’s survival in the afterlife.
* * *
AS Ohio had continued to fill up with settlers, time had shown that the land in southwestern Ohio was superior for farming; the hilly acres of the Ohio Company purchase in the southeast, prone to erosion and packed with clay, had proven a poor match for the loamy plains of the state’s breadbasket farther west. Nonetheless in 1849 the Ohio Cultivator, an agricultural journal, was predicting a prosperous future for Athens County farmers. “The time will come when the hills of old Athens will not be numbered among the least of those tributaries to your laudable agricultural exertions in Ohio,” it said. “The vast mineral resources of the county, consisting of Salt, Coal, Iron and Lime, (not yet wrought) will bring and are bringing in a large number of miners and manufacturers. The population has to be fed, insuring to the farmer here a home market, and good prices for all the products of a farm.”
Such prognostications must have been welcome news to Jonathan and Abigail, who by 1850 had a family of seven children to support. Their two daughters were 11-year-old Filenia and 8-year-old Quintilla. Nahum, 12, was the oldest son, followed by Samuel, 9; Sanders, 6; Daniel, 5; and John A., 4. In just a few years, some newspapers would call Jonathan Koons a “well-to-do” farmer, while others would describe him as poor. In truth he seemed to be a typical farmer in Dover Township with real estate valued at $2,000. In addition to the farm, Koons had $90 worth of “farming implements and machinery” and livestock valued at $200. But Abigail stood out among the women of her neighborhood in that she owned land valued at $1,000—the Sunday Creek acreage near Bishopville that her father had given her.
By now Jonathan and Abigail had sold off more of their sprawling farm, paring it down to a more manageable 160 acres—100 acres they had improved and 60 that were unimproved. Like farmers’ lives everywhere, the Koonses’ revolved around the cycles of planting and reaping, as well as the birthing and slaughtering of animals. From their ridgetop fields they produced 130 bushels of wheat, 100 bushels of Indian corn, and 10 bushels of Irish potatoes while harvesting 6 tons of hay for the livestock. Some of the children were old enough to help tend to the two horses, four “milch cows,” 30 sheep, and 9 pigs that the family owned. From the sheep they collected 100 pounds of wool; from the cows’ milk they made prodigious quantities of butter and cheese. They also kept honey bees. It was a lifestyle that made trips to town largely unnecessary.
Koons and other ridgetop farmers in the area found the higher ground well suited to growing fruit trees, with the higher altitude maintaining higher temperatures during cold spells. He was especially proud of the orchards that he called the Koons Fruit Farm. In addition to selling fruit and other produce as a cash crop, the Koonses sought more ways to bring in money. In 1850 they created $31 worth of unspecified “homemade manufactures,” and Koons performed marriages and other services as a justice of the peace. It is also possible that his wife’s property in Morgan County was producing income in some way, perhaps supplying timber for a nearby sawmill.
Jonathan and Abigail were comfortably settled on Mount Nebo among the Koons clan, but their lives were soon to be upended. They would become entangled in religious quarrels that would sweep their community—and even divide their own extended family.
* * *
AT dusk on April 20, 1850, Jonathan Koons walked steadily up the path, scarcely noticing the white object bobbing 10 to 15 paces ahead of him. His thoughts were heavy as he considered his youngest brother, George, to whom he had ministered day and night on his sickbed. After several days of such duty—perhaps spelling George’s wife, Chloe, as she tended to the couple’s four little boys—Jonathan needed to return home to see about his own family. With his dwelling just a half-mile away, he cut through a strip of woodland and reached the top of Sand Ridge, where several roads intersected at a clearing. Coming out of his reverie, he noticed that the object—more of a form, really—was still in front of him. Now he really began to pay attention. He walked faster, making a beeline for a clump of bushes that the form had darted behind. When Koons finally reached the spot, the shadowy image was gone.
He shrugged off the incident as an optical illusion and hurried home, eager to see if the farm was being kept up in his absence. Once he had satisfied himself that all was well outside, he went in and joined his children by the fire. They were anxious to know how their uncle George was doing. As Jonathan began to describe his brother’s condition, a deafening crash ripped through the upper story of the log house right over their heads.
“George is dead,” Jonathan blurted out, surprising even himself. The youngsters wanted to know how he knew.
“Did you not hear the token?” their father exclaimed.
Koons instantly wished he could recall the words. He would later write: “Of this I immediately repented, for two causes. First: I feared it would cause the children to be timid in case they believed in tokens and omens. Second: It was not in accordance with my general faith. Had I been asked ten minutes previous to the occurrence, if I believed in omens, I would have candidly told them I did not.”
As the children continued to bombard their father with questions, he recovered and began to assure them that a board must have fallen on the second story. They all trooped up the stairs to inspect, but nothing out of the ordinary revealed itself. “Not feeling prepared to reply to further inquiries on the present subject, I, instead thereof, entered a list of orders to the children, relating to their ordinary duties, and retraced my steps to my brother’s residence,” Jonathan recalled. “About two-thirds of the distance, I met a messenger on his way to inform me of my brother’s decease. I immediately inquired for the precise time of his departure, which corresponded very nearly, if not quite, to the minute the crash at my house was produced.”
George was dead at age 36. His family buried him in a high meadow near his home. Once Jonathan’s grief had subsided, he began to reflect on the meaning of George’s untimely passing. He even wondered if the otherworldly signs given to him had been real after all. Jonathan soon became “profound[ly] skeptical,” discounting
