Lou’s View – May 1, 2014

by Lou Bernard

Thrilling Incidents

My co-worker Barb Williams has been organizing the index files lately. She’s going through, making sure everything is in order and correctly listed. And, every few days, she turns up a mention of some historic incident in the index that she thinks I might like. So she makes a copy of the card, and drops it on my desk.

One of these has really caught my attention. It was about Chapman Township, and listed as “An Interesting Collection of Thrilling Incidents that have Occurred in the Vicinity.”
Well. There’s no way I can resist that.

The article, which was published by the Record on February 4, 1875, was written about Chapman Township. Specifically, the Youngwomanstown area, which today is North Bend. Before Renovo, this was the biggest, busiest community in the township. It had the biggest population. And, apparently, about half that population was composed of wild animals, because most of these thrilling incidents involved them.

In the first incident described, there was this bear. Two locals managed to mildly wound it, but not enough to keep it from chasing them. They came close to getting caught, but jumped a fallen tree, at which point the bear gave up and wandered off.

Another time, some dogs on a farm had chased down a buck. They had him cornered, but couldn’t finish him off. (Dogs against a deer—It’s one of those situations where PETA wouldn’t know who to root for.) One of the workmen on the farm tried to help them, but the deer gored his hand before making an escape.

These days, that would likely end in a lawsuit. Back in the 1800s, the article simply reported,”He received such a thrust from the buck as to produce a wound in his hand that disabled him for several weeks.”

I notice that none of these people are named in the article. Maybe that’s for their own protection, them being consistently attacked and all. Maybe early Chapman Township had a thing like the Witness Protection Program. Except with bears.

One of the people in the article was named, actually—Sort of. He was listed as the father of Jacob Hammersley, a prominent hunter in the area after whom Hammersley Fork was named. They didn’t list his first name, just mentioning his story. But they told all about that.

Hammersley happened to see a bear one night stealing a hog from the pen on his farm. The bear took the hog and retreated into the woods with it. I personally have encountered bears, and I think I’d let him have the hog. But Hammersley grabbed a gun and chased the bear, with no pants.

Yep. No pants. I mean Hammersley, not the bear, though now that I think of it, it’s unlikely that the bear was wearing pants either.

So Hammersley chased the bear down the road without pants, which may have been the beginning of our modern drunken fraternity pranks. Actually, it’s probably best if I let the Record speak for itself on this one.

“A large bear came down in the night and took a fat hog from the pen and carried it a considerable distance only to let it down when pursued by the owner with his dogs.” So far, so good. Normal story. “After which this citizen, in as nude a condition as Adam in the Garden, except his shirt, continued the pursuit for several miles until the bear was safely treed in a large oak.”

Uh-huh.

My personal thought on chasing a bear half-naked is,”You first, buddy.” But apparently this didn’t even occur to Hammersley. Or maybe it did, at some point.

“The above incident, Hammersley, if he were yet living, could abundantly testify to,” said the article,”And that it occurred on a cold, frosty morning in November.”

(After this incident, I assume Hammersley was happily married. I further assume, after this, Mrs. Hammersley was not. If you catch my subtle, family-paper drift.)

Normally, when I find an interesting incident from the past, I suggest a reenactment. But I think I’ll pass on this one. It’d be the first performance where a wardrobe malfunction is the best-case scenario.