|
||||||||||
| Spouses | ||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
| Notes for George William RENICK | ||||||||||
| In 1805 George Renick made livestock history by leading the first overland cattle drive to a major eastern city from Ohio, then the American western frontier, traveling through the Appalachian mountains. In the spring of that year, George drove 68 head of fed cattle from the Scioto valley of Ohio to Baltimore, Maryland. The cattle reached Baltimore in reasonably good shape and were sold at a nice profit. It marked the first extended overland drive of cattle in America, and was the beginning of many such overland drives in future years. Against all odds, George Renick had established the practicability of the overland drive and for some 50 years after that first cattle drive to Baltimore, that is the way it was done, cattle driven on hoof from Ohio and other points in the then far western perimeter of America to the great beef consuming markets of Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York. George Renick had first arrived in Ohio from Hardy County, VA in 1797. Within a year he had located land in the Scioto river valley near Chillicothe. In the fall of 1802 George, who had just married the former Dorothy Harness (daughter of George Harness and Elizabeth Yoakum) in Indiana, opened a general dry goods store in Chillicothe, just for insurance in case his plans to raise corn, and feed it to fatten cattle, didn't quite pan out. Earlier that year George, accompanied by a Dr. McAdow and Nathan Gregg, had set out on horseback from Chillicothe to Baltimore to purchase a stock of medicines for Dr. McAdow to establish a drug store in the Ohio town. They also bought a stock of dry goods for Renick and Gregg's dry goods store. The purchases were hauled back to Chillicothe by way of the Ohio river to Portsmouth, and then up the Scioto river to Chillicothe by keel boats. George Renick was far more interested in cattle than he was in running a dry goods store. Early on, he used some of the money he got from selling his cattle to purchase supplies for his dry goods store in Chillicothe. By late 1802 he was involved, along with his brother Felix, in raising pure blood cattle (probably Bakewell or Longhorns). Later he would become involved with his brother in breeding and feeding Shorthorns in Ohio and in so doing, strengthening that breed in America. By 1808, George had accumulated enough money and real estate to give up merchandising altogether and devote all of his time to raising cattle. George Renick's farm, built about 1804, was called Paint Hill farm. The Renick home on Paint Hill in Ross County was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 for its architectural design. There is also a flag located at the old Renick farmstead, signifying the farm as an Ohio Underground Railroad Historical site. Beverly Gran, southern Ohio coordinator for the Ohio Underground Railroad Association, says in an article on the Association's web site that the Renick family was among those who provided safety for runaway slaves as they made their way north to Canada and freedom. (The above information on George Renick and his family is based in part on information from the book about his brother, "Felix Renick-Pioneer" published in 1924 by Charles Summer Plumb, at the time a professor of Animal Husbandry at Ohio State University. Additional information comes from "Notes on the Ante-Bellum Cattle Industry from the Mcneill Family Papers", by John Edumund Stealey III, an instructor at the West Virginia Center for Appalachian Studies and Development, West Virginia University. Other information comes from the Ohio Underground Railroad Association). | ||||||||||
| Last Modified 12 Jun 2002 | Created 12 Feb 2005 by Reunion for Macintosh |