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1862–1865 · the township's own war paragraph
Chapman's whole account of Olive Township in the war is one paragraph, and it contains a small riot. "During the last war it did its duty," the chapter says. "The draft was executed here, and the township voted to raise money by taxation to fill her quota. A few men thought to resist this tax, particularly George W. Woods, who was quite obstinate. Some roughs, thinking to bring him to terms, put him under a pump spout and pumped water upon him to a damaging extent. Since that time they say he has never 'rebelled.'" The episode is printed as Chapman tells it — a draft-resistance tax revolt of one, suppressed by neighbors with a pump — because it is the only act of wartime disorder the record attributes to this ground, and because its tone (the chapter finds it funny) is itself a fact about how the township remembered the war fifteen years on. The crime leg's file cross-carries it: a mob ducking is a crime the record chose to print as a joke, and both readings stand.
Sources
- Chapman (1880), Olive Township chapter, p. 766, verbatim in substance.