Bishop did not explain why he had decided to locate the seminary within Abigail’s land. Could he have expected that she, as the unmarried schoolteacher daughter, would play a role in the new school? Or was it simply the best location on which to build? Whatever her father’s intention, Abigail soon leased the 40-acre plot surrounding the proposed school grounds back to her parents for their lifetime use, “in consideration of the love good will and affection” she had for her “honored Father and Mother.” The rent was to consist of “one ear of corn to be paid to me my heirs or assigns from year to year on the first day of January” and only “when demanded.” After her marriage Abigail would sell this land back to her parents, retaining a separate tract of over 100 acres as her inheritance.
* * *
SHORTLY after Koons’s move to Ohio, his mother, Margaret, fell gravely ill back in Pennsylvania. Though he was far away, Koons felt a close tie to her, writing that she was “as honest, amiable, kind and affectionate a mother as ever graced the earth.” As she lay dying, Margaret told the family she could not go peacefully without one final visit with Jonathan, to whom, in his words, she had always extended “one of the most tender threads of her affection.” There was not enough time to send a letter bidding her son to come home, so it appeared her final wish could not be granted. As friends and relatives gathered around the unconscious woman to witness her final breath, Jonathan Koons was having a synchronistic vision. As he later wrote: “Her spirit left its senseless tenement a sufficient length of time to pay me a visit in Ohio, three hundred miles distant, and then returned back, and reanimated her frail remains, that had been partially adjusted with the funeral habiliments, and delivered the unexpected tidings of her visit, in the relation of which she announced that she had now seen me, and was prepared to depart in peace. She even related what I was engaged at, and the condition of my person, which proved to be strictly true.”
Jonathan’s brother Lewis wrote to him soon after their mother’s death. He was curious to confirm Margaret’s account—seemingly gained by clairvoyance. Jonathan swore to Lewis that his mother’s information was correct in all respects.
* * *
UPON their marriage in October 1836, Jonathan and Abigail, both 25, set up housekeeping in Amestown, a farming settlement some 10 miles distant from the patch of virgin forest in Dover Township that they would eventually call home. Koons continued to work as a carpenter for paying customers while slowly carving out a working farm on their own land, which by now had swelled to 522 acres, the result of a second real estate purchase he had made that summer.
Except for floods along Federal Creek, Amestown and the surrounding Ames Township had much to recommend to the young couple. Pioneers arriving there in 1798 in dugout canoes had brought with them progressive values that included an emphasis on education. One of the earliest schools had Harvard graduates on the faculty and students reciting the words of Cassius and Brutus at a school assembly. According to the 1833 Ohio Gazette, the township “contains two stores, a number of mills, a handsome brick Presbyterian meeting house, two brick school houses, [and] an incorporated circulating library.” Before the end of the decade the village of Amesville would be officially established, but even that designation did not relieve women of the necessity of crossing the main street on horseback when the thoroughfare was muddy, thus keeping their skirts and pantalets dry.
The idea of a circulating library might have been especially appealing to Abigail, the former schoolteacher, and to her husband, given his love of books. As early as 1803 or 1804, settlers in Ames Township (the western part of which would become Dover) had created the Western Library Association to have a circulating book collection in their community. Residents bought shares or memberships in the WLA in exchange for the opportunity to borrow books. The money was used to purchase the library’s volumes. Cash was hard to come by on the frontier, so some of the founding members had paid with raccoon or bear pelts instead, earning the enterprise the colorful moniker Coonskin Library.
Along with a desire for literacy, a strain of antislavery sentiment ran through Amestown, one probably shared by Abigail, whose father was noted to be a “strong Abolitionist.” One Ames resident recalled that when he was a small boy, his father instructed him to take food to a certain rock deep in the woods and leave quickly. When the coast was deemed clear, escaped slaves would emerge from their hiding place in a cave to claim the provisions. The boy’s father would eventually escort them to the next station on the Underground Railroad.
The extent of Jonathan and Abigail’s involvement in the activities of the Amestown community is not clear, but while living there in October 1837, they welcomed their first child, a little boy they called Nahum Ward Koons. The baby was given the name of Nahum Ward of Marietta, the man from whom Koons had bought his second tract of land. Ward was a philanthropist as well as Marietta’s former mayor and a successful land speculator; his name is scattered through the deed books of several counties. Not only did Jonathan and Abigail’s baby bear the name of one of the area’s luminaries, he had a Bible name: Nahum was a visionary prophet of the Old Testament. Perhaps this combination of worldly success and heavenly guidance resonated with the young couple.
In June 1838 they moved to their Dover Township property with little Nahum. Over time the family would clear about 60 acres, plant 500 fruit trees, and build a sturdy log house, barn, and other outbuildings. But for now this high ridgetop on the lower end of Sunday Creek—crowned with a knoll that would later be called Mount Nebo—was still a place given over to wildness; only one neighbor could be found within 2 miles. In these solitary environs survival would depend on their resourcefulness—and, upon occasion, a touch of divine intervention.
* * *
ONE cold morning that December, a young man named E. Johnson ran to Koons’s house calling for help. Johnson and his coworker, M. Linscott, both of whom were boarding with the Koons family, had been out making rails. Linscott had struck himself in the foot with an ax and lay badly injured. Could Koons bring a horse and some bandages? While gathering up the supplies, Koons remembered a form of old folk magic practiced by his father back in Bedford. “Having a theoretic knowledge of the modus operandi in the ‘witch’ system of treatment, I thought this was a good opportunity for experimenting,” Koons wrote. “I accordingly applied the remedy, as previously directed, simply by invoking the impelling agents that actuated Christ, for their special care and protection in behalf of the afflicted.”
Johnson led Koons into the woods, where he found the helpless Linscott lying on a steep bluff, his blood staining the frosty ground. The young boarder was so weak that he could not stand. Strangely, though, his wound had stopped bleeding. They took him to the Koons house and placed him on a mattress on the floor. When his shoe and stocking were removed, Koons was horrified to see that Linscott had chopped his foot nearly in half. Nonetheless the foot was bandaged without stitching together the severed blood vessels, and in the process only a single spurt of blood hit the wall of the cabin. Linscott spent just a week recovering, with no further blood loss or complications, and experienced a pain-free convalescence at the Koons home. “I do not claim, however, that I was instrumental in producing these happy effects,” Jonathan Koons wrote. “I simply give the facts.”
When Koons reflexively used the chants of white magic to staunch the flow of blood from Linscott’s foot, he was following a tradition long established among the Pennsylvania Dutch. Jonathan’s father, Peter, as well as a cousin on the Koons side, had been called powwow doctors back in Bedford. This term had nothing to do with Native Americans but was a system of European folk magic dating back hundreds of years. The overwhelming majority of its practitioners considered themselves Christians, believing that divine aid could flow through them to help stop bleeding, heal burns, or cure other ailments.
Of his father Jonathan Koons wrote: “He was possessed of powerful magnetic forces, and many wonderful cures were