age: 83y 2m

From 'Sketches and Statistics of Cincinnati in 1859' by Cist

... James, the younger brother, from whom I have these facts, recollects, when but five years old, planting the four acre lot alluded to, in pumpkins, which he dropped into the hills of corn, prepared by the old man, and planted by the elder brother.

'Ah!' said Mr. McCash, in narrating these things, 'we had to stir ourselves in those days. Hands were scarce, and boys were expected to do what I cannot get boys now to do for me. My father sent me, one day, to Grummon's mill, on Millcreek, a few rods above where Ernst's garden now is, with his mare. I was taking a bag of corn to be ground, and was not seven years old at the time. On this occasion I first saw Presley Kemper. He was at the mill, and when the corn meal was put on the beast, and such a bit of a boy riding it, he offered to go with me to the town, as Cincinnati was then called, and of as many houses as could now be put upon a single block or square of the city. But I was too proud to accept his offer, and started alone. Where the Brighton House now is, my bag slid off, and I was in a pretty fix. There was no human being nearer than an old fellow named Harkless, who lived in Wade's Woods, and there was no path opened to his cabin that I knew of. So I first sat down and cried, and then mounted the mare and returned to the mill, and got the miller to put the meal on the beast for me. This seems nothing now, but you must recollect that the whole region was grown up in weeds to that degree that a man might be within five rods of a hundred head of cattle without suspecting they were there. And the stories of Indians, who had visited the neighborhood within two or three years, stealing cattle and carrying off children, was enough to try the spunk of a little fellow like me - yes, and of older people, too.

'Another time, after we had removed to the country, and were living fifteen miles from Cincinnati, when I was about nine years old, my father sent me to hunt up a stray mare, which was supposed to be down the Millcreek bottoms. I hunted and hunted, and at last found her at Hobson's Choice. She was too lame to travel, so I staid at Cincinnati a week, until she got better, though not well, and started home with a man named John Hole. When I got where I had to cross Millcreek, there was ice with both her fore feet to break a passage, and I had hard work to keep my seat. The water was full belly deep to a horse. Hole was too cowardly to go first, and made me do so. If I had slipped off, it would have been a gone case with me.'

Such was the training which has reared up the grown men among the farmers of Hamilton County of the present day.