Joshua HEDGES

                   History of Franklin and Pickaway Counties Ohio
Walnut Township
Page 274
Joshua Hedges, with his wife, and eleven children, came into the country in 1804. They came with team and wagon from Berkeley County Virginia, their native place, to Brownsville, Pennsylvania, a town on the Monongahela River. There they loaded everything on to a flat-boat, and traveled thus to Marietta, and thence by wagon, over the rough and almost impassable roads, to Zanesville. Their household goods, which were packed in eight or nine large trunks, were left at Marietta, to be shipped up the Muskingum. The shipping agent neglected to send them for several weeks, leaving them exposed to the weather, and the goods were utterly destroyed. The family went to Lancaster in Fairfield County, where they made a temporary location, arriving the seventeen day of May, of the above year. Mr. Hedges died there the same summer, and in the fall the family came to Walnut. They put up a cabin on section nine, which, with other lands, the father had entered, and moved into it on Christmas day. In 1812, Mrs. Hedges married Henry Dreisbach, of Pickaway Township, and moved with him to Bloomfield, where they kept a tavern. The children of Joshua Hedges were Joshua Jr., John, Obed, Jabez, Cynthia, Phebe, Rhoda, Julia, Cyrus, Morgan and William. All are now dead but Jabez. He was born December 28, 1789, near Martinsburg, Virginia. He married Maria Williamson, and first settled on Walnut Creek, but in 1829 moved to his present location on section sixteen. His wife died May 13, 1868, and he now lives with his son Joshua. Mr. Hedges was a volunteer for a few months, in the War of 1812, but lay sick most of the time at Fort McArthur.