Joseph Heslip Sr. Bio-Sketch Source: The Semi-Weekly Age, Coshocton, Ohio
Tuesday, May 11, 1886; Vol 62, No. 38, Page 1
Transcription: Jonathan Moreland, 19 Mar 2013

A Linton Pioneer: Joseph Heslip

John Heslip and Elizabeth McKewon were married Dec. 25, 1776 in the town of Belfast, Ireland, the place of their nativity. Emigrated to the United States in the year 1782, and settled in the city of Baltimore, where their son, Joseph Heslip, the subject of this sketch, was born March 11 1793. He led the usual life of city children up to the age of ten, when a naturally roving disposition led him to leave home and become a sailor boy on board a merchantman. In spite of his father’s wishes he remained on the sea until he was eighteen. In 1808, while at Liverpool, he was impressed into the English service, hurried to Plymouth and shipped aboard a man-o-war bound for Spain. As an English sailor he participated in the siege of Cadiz, Spain. While there he contrived to get his case before the American Consul, and was soon after released. In 1811 he abandoned the sea and came to Linton township with his father, where they purchased a tract of 1600 acres of land on Will’s Creek on which his father hoped Joseph would settle. They returned to Baltimore, and Joseph served as militiaman in the war of 1812, for which service he now draws a pension of eight dollars per month. In the fall of 1814 he came to reside permanently in Linton township. He married Eleanor Wolgamott, of Wayne county, Dec. 27, 1814. The result of this union was ten children, four boys and six girls, of whom one son, Capt. John V. Heslip, of Linton, and four daughters are still living.
Mr. Heslip has always possessed remarkable vigor of body, never, with perhaps but one exception, having a physician for himself; and the mind of a statesman. An incessant reader, he stored away in this mind a fund of information rarely met. A lifelong Republican, he has been a politician not only interested in the politics of our Nation, but those of foreign nations also. He was a subscriber to the first copy of the first paper published in Coshocton county, and has never been without the organ of the party up to present date, welcoming now the visits of The Coshocton Semi-Weekly Age.
He has his old tax receipts preserved from the time when, 72 years ago, he paid $16 tax on 1600 acres of land, up to the present.
His first visit to Baltimore, with his wife, was made on horseback, both traveling the entire distance to and from on horses. When he first began raising wheat here, he concluded to have a windmill for cleaning it. He sent to Baltimore for the works, which came to Cambridge, over the National road by wagon, then hired a man near Zanesville to put up the mill. When he brought it home it was a great curiosity, and people came for far and near to see it.
Four generations are now represented beneath his roof: Mr. Heslip, his daughter, his grandson, T. J. McCartney, and great grandchildren, Edna and John McCartney.
Up to the fall of 1885 his mind and body were both vigorous, when a fall injured one of his hips and confined him to his room, and at present writing the old veteran is feeble.

Joseph Heslip Sr. Obituary
Source: The Semi-Weekly Age, Coshocton, Ohio
Tuesday, Sep 21, 1886; Vol 62, No. 76, Page 2
Transcription: Jonathan Moreland, 13 Mar 2013

Plainfield: Another Old Pioneer Gone.

Joseph Heslip, the oldest man in Linton township, and one of its earliest settlers, died at his home at Linton Mills on Thursday, September 16 at the ripe age of 93 years, 6 months and 5 days. Mr. H. had been feeble and ailing for some time past, and his death was not unexpected. Funeral services were conducted at the house, led by Rev. Wm. B. Scarborough, of the Presbyterian Church. Mr. Heslip, although friendly to religion, was not a member of any church.

He was ever a great reader and a man of more than ordinary intelligence for a farmer. His portrait, together with a biographical sketch of his early life, was not long since laid before the readers of The Semi-Weekly Age, hence it is not necessary here to repeat. He was a peculiar man in some of his traits of character, yet he was morally honest and scrupulously strict in the observance of that which he believed to be the duty of man to his fellow man. He was a faithful husband, a kind father, a warm friend to all who struggled for the right. But he had little sympathy for treachery and deceit.

The text from which the funeral discourse was preached may be found in I. Thess. ii: 11, 12.

He was placed in a fine silver-mounted casket. On the center of the lid was a large silver plate, on which was engraved a sickle and a large sheaf of wheat, signifying reaped and shocked; with these were the words, “My father.” The pall-bearers were the neighbors of the deceased: Messrs. J.T. Chadwell, Daniel Taylor, John Miller, James Cross, T.J. Hamersley and Thos. F. Magness, all gray-bearded men but Magness. A large concourse of people, children, grandchildren, friends and neighbors of the deceased, together with several from considerable distances, were present to see the remains of the old veteran laid away in their last resting place on the hill overlooking the town and the old homestead, where he has been monarch for many long and weary years.

In Mr Heslip’s declining years he was wont to speak of the first thirty years of his life as being exceedingly toilsome, far beyond anything that a casual observer could now believe, in looking over his large farm of creek bottom land without a tree or stump to impede the plow. Then it was thickly studded with sturdy forest, which had to be removed and burned up to give way to the cultivation of grain.

There is not now a single individual--man or woman--in Linton township to tell the story of its singing birds, its wild animals, and its little less wild Indians. Messrs. John R. Williams and Charles Baker still live to tell the story of their small boyhood in this region from about the years 1806-8, and Mr. V.J. Powelson can perhaps go back on memory’s page about 66 years; but when these three are gone—and one of them, Mr. Williams’, memory is much impaired by age and infirmity—the very early history of this section will have to be found written in a book or handed down from father to son in that more uncertain way, tradition.

There is many a thrilling story of these once wild woods that died and was forever buried in inscrutible oblivion with the actor.

Any man who has lived in this county sixty years or over must know that its unwritten history far exceeds the written history.

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Contributed by:Jonathan Andrew Moreland