This was the life of the early settler in every county in Ohio, as each in its turn was organized and opened to settlement. A life so hard, was yet so attractive that many pioneers, when a few neighbors gathered around them, preferred to sell their clearings and push further into the wilderness. In the meantime the older settlements attracted newcomers. Mechanics and tradesmen came along them. Then towns sprang up, and incipient cities, with corner lots and hopeful speculators, tempted eastern capitalists to invest their money in Ohio. Ohio, in these early days, was the only outlet of the population of the northern and middle states. Emigrants from the south, following lines of latitude, went into Kentucky and Tennessee. The great west, with its vast prairies and plains, was not then accessible. Had it been so, the forests of Ohio might have been left in solitude for many years to come. During all this period, which we may properly call the pioneer stage, the settlers had no market for their produce, except to supply the demand of incoming immigrants. Grain and fruit would not bear the expense of transportation. The only way to obtain ready money was to convert corn and grain into hogs, horses and cattle, which were driven on the hoof to Pittsburg and eastern cities. But little money circulated, and that was chiefly irredeemable bank notes. The clothing of the people was mainly of linsey-woolsey, home-made. The spinning wheel, big and little, was to be found in every household. Settlers near the banks of the Ohio River, and its tributaries, had the advantage of floating their surplus products in rough barges down the Ohio to New Orleans for a market, so that the southern part of the state advanced rapidly, while the northern part was still in the possession of the Indians. When the Indian title was extinguished settlers came from Pennsylvania into the counties immediately west of it, which are still, in the habits of the people, in the location of houses and barns and the cultivation of the soil, the precise counterpart of the region from which the settlers came. The "Connecticut Reserve" was slowly filled by the northern route of the lakes, almost exclusively from New England, and the habits and customs of that region were transported to their new homes, so that the "Western Reserve" to- day is a striking type of old Connecticut in habits, and with the same ideas. The lakes became the highway of commerce, and the inhabitants of the interior carried their surplus grain and produce in long lines of wagons to the new towns along the lake shore, where it was exchanged for the necessaries of life and enough money to pay taxes. All trade in the interior was by barter with merchants, who became the bankers of the people.