A private memoir of Thomas
Worthington, esq. of Adena, Ross County, Ohio / by his daughter,
by Sarah Ann Worthington King (1800-1877).
Cincinnati : Robert Clarke & Co., 1882.
Pages 60 - 63:
To my mother he writes, June 17, 1812: “The measure alluded to in
my last (the declaration of war) has been decided. I have done my
duty and satisfied my conscience. Thousands of the innocent will
suffer, but I have borne my testimony against it, and, thank God, my
mind is tranquil. What a comfort there is in having done our duty
conscientiously. I care not for popularity, and only desire to
know that I have acted for the best. Now that the step is taken,
I am bound to submit to the will of the majority, and use my best
exertions to save my country from ruin,” etc. The disasters of
the war in its early stages, and the ill success of almost every
department, realized all my father's forebodings, and drove back the
tide of popular opposition which at first had been arrayed against him
with marked bitterness; but soon discovering their mistake, his
constituents rallied around him with unbound confidence. The
horrors and fearful sufferings of the first year of the war can never
be forgotten by the people of that generation. The country was
depopulated of men, and the farmer-women, weak and sickly as they often
were, and surrounded by their helpless little children, were obliged,
for want of bread, to till their fields, until frequently they sank
exhausted and dying under the toil to which they were unequal. In
another memoir I have attempted some feeble description of sufferings
that can never be fully known. My blessed mother was incessantly
occupied in giving such aid as her abundant means afforded; but the
common misfortune was too widely spread to be reached by any thing like
adequate succor. During the disastrous summer of 1813, we
suffered terrible apprehensions for our own personal safety; for,
destitute of protection the State now possessed but one military post,
which held the combined forces of the British and Indians in check, and
it was already besieged. Fort Meigs captured, there was
positively nothing to obstruct the further inroads of the enemy, nor
hindering them from ravaging the State at will. My father, then
at Washington, wrote to my mother directions to have all her valuables
packed in readiness for flight beyond the Ohio river, and hastened home
himself. Fort Meigs held out with great gallantry, but reports
reached us that the want of provisions might oblige its garrison to
yield. My father, with his usual forgetfulness of all personal
considerations, resolved at all hazards to communicate with the
beleaguered forces. From prudential reasons, he concealed the
design he had formed from all except the individuals he had engaged in
this dangerous service. These were his brave and tried friends,
Major William Oliver and a friendly Indian named Logan, who was bound
to him by former obligations. Accompanied by these two men, and
all disguised as Indians, they lurked around the fort until he had
contrived to throw into it a letter carefully wrapped around an arrow,
which gave assurance of speedy relief, and infused new courage into the
hearts of the dispirited troops. My father had disappeared so
mysteriously (no one, not even my mother, having been informed in
advance of this perilous enterprise) that the worst reports were rife
concerning him. The greatest alarm existed, and his family was,
as it may well be imagined, overwhelmed with anxiety, when he
reappeared unhurt. Major Oliver, in conversation with me,
frequently referred to this most daring adventure. How often the
most heroic acts of modest and unselfish men are “unhonored and
unsung.”
