CHAPTER 08 THOMAS SCOTT
CHAPTER 8 THOMAS SCOTT The sketches or Western Methodism would be incomplete, at least so far as pioneer preachers are concerned, without a biography of Judge Scott, who is the oldest living preacher now in the west, being one or two years the senior of the venerable Burke in the itinerant ranks. This aged minister is now engaged in writing a history of his life and times in the Western Christian Advocate, which will serve as a valuable monument of the past, and be read with interest by present and future generations. We are happy in being able to furnish our readers with an interesting sketch, drawn up by Samuel Williams, Esq., of Mount Auburn, an old and intimate friend of the Judge. In the sketch the young reader will see vividly portrayed the trials and struggles which young men had to encounter in the early settlement of the west; and young men of the present day may draw from these scenes of trial and discouragement incident to border life, courage and hope from the example furnished, that "labor et perseverantia omnia vincet." But to the sketch.
"Thomas Scott, familiarly called Judge Scott, from having been several years a judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio, has been a resident of Chillicothe more than fifty-one years, where he still resides, enjoying a green old age, having just completed the eightieth year of his earthly pilgrimage. He was born at Skypton, near the junction of the north and south branches of the Potomac river, Allegheny county, Maryland, October 31, 1772. His father’s parents were Scotch-Irish, and emigrated from Ireland and settled in Berks county, Pennsylvania, shortly after the battle of the Boyne, in 1690. They were Protestants, and had sustained heavy losses by the Catholics previous to that battle.
"Before the age of fourteen years Mr. Scott embraced religion, and became a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, when there were only a little over twenty thousand members in its communion, and about one hundred and seventeen preachers. He has, therefore, been a member of the Church more than sixty-six years. At the conference at Leesburg, Virginia, in April, 1789, when only sixteen and a half years old, he was admitted on trial in the traveling connection, and appointed to Gloucester circuit, Virginia, together with those distinguished ministers, Lewis Chasteen and Valentine Cook. The following year he was appointed to Berkely circuit, with Lewis Chasteen preacher in charge. Soon after they commenced their labors, Mr. Chasteen was seized with the small-pox, which injured one of his eyes so much that he could labor but little till near the close of the year. This devolved nearly the entire labor, as well as the administration of discipline, upon the youthful Scott, yet only eighteen years old. At the conference in May, 1791, he was received into full connection, and ordained deacon by Bishop Asbury, who appointed him in charge of Stafford circuit, Virginia, with Samuel Hitt, late of Champaign county, Ohio, as his helper. In 1792 he was appointed to Frederic circuit, Virginia, with Thomas Lyell as his helper.
Mr. Lyell, although young, and only in the second year of his ministry, had already acquired great fame as a very eloquent and popular preacher. This, together with his amiable disposition, his polished manners, his fascinating conversation, and his fine personal figure, conspired to make him a great favorite, both with the preachers and people. For many successive years he was stationed in the most populous cities, and caressed, and, perhaps, flattered wherever he went. In 1804 he located, and afterward took orders in the Protestant Episcopal Church, and was settled in the city of New York as rector of a populous and wealthy parish, which he served with great acceptance till his death, at an advanced age, a few years since. It is said that he preserved, to the last, a friendly attachment to the Methodist Episcopal Church and her ministry. But to return from this digression.
"At the conference held at the place of Mr. Scott’s nativity, in June, 1798, he was ordained elder by Bishop Asbury, and appointed to the Ohio circuit, in charge, with the Rev. Robert Bonham as his helper. This circuit was of great extent, and much of which lay along the frontier settlements on the Ohio river, in Western Virginia and Pennsylvania, and exposed to the attacks of the Indians.
"In the spring of 1794, in pursuance of instructions from Bishop Asbury, Mr. Scott descended the Ohio river to join the Kentucky conference, which convened on the 15th of April. Embarking at Wheeling, on a flat-bottomed boat, ladened with provisions for General Wayne’s army, he descended the Ohio river to Brook’s landing, above the mouth of Limestone creek, where Maysville now stands. The settlements along the Ohio river, at that period, were few and far between, and the intervening wilderness was occupied by hostile tribes of Indians, to whose attacks descending boats were continually exposed. Floating with the current, the voyage was necessarily tedious, and the boat often passing along very near to the shore, those on board were in great danger from the unerring rifle of the Indian. But Mr. Scott, unconscious of his danger, was accustomed daily to sit, for hours together, on the top of the boat, reading, even while the boat was floating along close to the shore covered with bushes, from which the savage tomahawk of the practiced Indian might have been hurled to his destruction. He has oftentimes since reflected with surprise upon his own imprudence, and ascribed his preservation to a merciful and overruling Providence.
Having sent his horse on to Kentucky a few days ahead, Mr. Scott, on landing there himself, immediately proceeded to the home of his parents, on the head waters of Bracken creek, Mason county, with whom he spent a few days, and then repaired to the seat of the Kentucky conference, near Bethel Academy, Jessamine county, where he received an appointment to Danville circuit, on which he continued to labor during the conference year. At the conference in May, 1795, he located for the purpose of attending to important temporal business in Pennsylvania. But sickness and other circumstances prevented his going to Pennsylvania. To accustom himself to hard labor, he turned in to cut down and strip the bark from large trees for his brother James, who was a tanner. When the season for this work was over, he went to school about a month to acquire a better knowledge of arithmetic. Every Thursday afternoon he walked three miles to meet a class, of which he was leader, and had his appointments to preach on Sabbath, one of which places was in Maysville, and it is probable he was the first Methodist minister who ever preached the Gospel in that town. In the latter part of the summer, at the request of the Rev. F. Poythress, the presiding elder, Mr. Scott took charge of the Lexington circuit, in place of the Rev. Aquilla Sugg, whose health had failed, and he continued on that circuit till the meeting of the Kentucky conference in the spring of 1796, from which time his labors as an itinerant minister in the Church ceased.
"On the 10th of May, 1796, Mr. Scott married Miss Catharine Wood, a pious young lady, whose parents had long been Methodists, and soon after settled in Washington, Mason county, Ky., where he obtained employment as a clerk in a dry goods store. In a few months the merchant failed in business, and Mr. Scott thereby lost nearly half his earnings. After this he devoted a small portion of his time to reading the elementary principles of law, and copying and memorizing the forms of entries in civil and criminal proceedings in the courts. This he did in expectation of being appointed clerk of the courts in a new county about to be set off from Mason; but which office, although his superior fitness for it was admitted by all, was, through the treachery of pretended friends, given to another. He now determined upon the study of law, with the view of practicing at the bar, and, therefore, declined several very favorable offers of eastern merchants to engage in the mercantile business. But in what way he was to support himself and family, while pursuing his legal studies, was now the question. Various plans were considered; and as ’necessity is the mother of invention,’ he finally resolved upon opening a tailor’s shop in Washington, so soon as he could gain sufficient practical knowledge of the business to follow it. His father was a tailor, and when a boy he had often assisted him on long winter nights, and wet or stormy days, and was expert in the use of the needle, but was ignorant of the art of cutting, and of joining the parts of garments together. To acquire this knowledge, he worked awhile as a journeyman in an extensive shop in Washington. But the proprietor, aware of Mr. Scott’s intention to commence business himself, never allowed him to be present when he took the measure for garments or cut them. He was obliged, therefore, to get the requisite knowledge from a tailor in the country.
"He had never yet had any practice in measuring, or cutting, or fitting garments, and might well have been deterred, by his fears, from attempting to open shop and commence. But relying upon his own native genius, and his patient, untiring perseverance in whatever he undertook, he did open a shop and commence business. He spoiled the first coat he attempted to cut. But, nothing daunted, he tried again and succeeded. His neighbors kindly encouraged him, and work soon came in so fast that he had to employ journeymen. The late Mr. John Watson, well known in Chillicothe and elsewhere as an able hotel-keeper, worked some time for Mr. Scott as a journeyman.
"Anxious to proceed in his legal studies, and yet having no time that he could devote to it, he adopted an expedient which none but an indomitable spirit, like his, would have thought of resorting to. Mrs. Scott was an excellent reader, and as she had a hired woman to do the domestic work, she devoted her leisure time to reading to Mr. Scott, while at work on his shop-board, Blackstone’s Commentaries, and other law books; and as she read, he treasured up in memory, and reflected on the contents read. The reading was often succeeded by singing, as they were both good singers; and while both were busily engaged in plying the needle, they would beguile the time by singing some of the sweet songs of Zion, and thus they cheerily passed the day.
"In the fall of 1798 Mr. Scott removed, with his family, to Lexington, where he commenced a regular course of law-reading under the late honorable James Brown, deceased. In the winter of 1800, before he had completed the extensive course of legal studies which he had anxiously desired, he was obliged, from pecuniary necessity, to desist; and having obtained license to practice law, he removed to and settled in Flemingsburg, Fleming county, where he was appointed prosecuting-attorney. Here, and in the counties of Mason and Bracken, he obtained some little practice, but did not succeed well in either of those counties. Although well versed in the principles of law, he had never yet read any book which treated of practice either in courts of law or equity. While at Flemingsburg he commenced a course of mathematical studies.
"In March, 1801, he visited Chillicothe, by advice of the late General Nathaniel Massie and other friends, and upon consultation with his old friend, Dr. Edward Tiffin — whom he had known and taken into the Church eleven years prior to that time, in Virginia — he concluded to remove to and settle in that town, which he did the following month, and has continued to reside there to the present time — a period of over fifty-one years.
Before leaving Kentucky he went to Cincinnati and was examined before the General Court of the North-Western Territory — Judge Burnett, Mr. McMillen, and Attorney-General St. Clair examiners and admitted to the degree of counselor at law. During the summer of 1801 he wrote in the clerk’s office for Doctor Tiffin, and engaged in such other business as he could to obtain a scanty subsistence, as he could not practice as counselor at law till he had resided two years in the territory. The succeeding winter he was employed as engrossing and enrolling clerk during the session of the Territorial legislature. On the assembling of the convention for forming a constitution for the state, Mr. Scott was elected Secretary to that body. Dr. Tiffin being a candidate for governor, under the new constitution, he resigned the clerkship of the several courts which he then held, and Mr. Scott was appointed in his place by the acting governor. At the first township election in Chillicothe, under the constitution, he was elected a justice of the peace, and was the first one commissioned under the state government. At the session of the first General Assembly, under the constitution, Mr. Scott was elected Secretary of the senate, to which office he was annually appointed till 1809, in February of which year he was elected, by the Legislature, one of the judges of the Supreme Court, and the year following was re-elected and commissioned chief judge of that Court. This office he held till July 1815, when, finding the salary insufficient for the support of himself and family, he resigned his seat on the bench and resumed the practice of law.
"In October, 1815, Judge Scott was elected one of the representatives of Ross county, in the Legislature, and in 1822, he and the late Judge Francis Dunlevy and Thomas Ewing, Esq., were commissioned by Governor Morrow, under a law of the state, as a board of revision, to revise the general laws of the state, and to report the same to the General Assembly at its ensuing session. The Board had not quite completed their work when the legislature met; and one of the first things done by that body was to dissolve the Board, so that no report was made. In March, 1829, he was appointed, by the President and senate, Register of the Land-Office at Chillicothe, which office he held, by successive appointments, till March, 1845, when he was removed by President Polk. "The foregoing sketch of our old friend and neighbor is condensed from a more extended one recently drawn up by himself, and kindly furnished to us. We have devoted more space to it than we can well spare, and yet have been obliged to omit many incidents and facts which would have lent additional interest to the narrative. Many of his friends have, with us, regretted that the Judge ever exchanged his high and holy calling of an ambassador of Christ for the bar, or the bench, or political life, with its turmoil and strife. ’Tis true, he possessed superior qualifications for the bar, and the bench, and the various other offices he has held. But his fitness for the ministry was of a still higher order. And had he remained at his post therein, he would, doubtless, long since have ranked with the most talented and distinguished ministers in the Church; nay, might possibly now be filling the dignified office of its senior superintendent. It is but justice, however, to add, that he considered himself forced, by ’dire necessity,’ to take the course he did. ’For,’ said he, ’had the Church at that period been able to support myself and family, I would have spent my whole life in the ministry. But the Church was then too poor to do it. It is much to be lamented that many others of the ablest and most useful