Eleven years later, when travel writer John Melish traveled through Fairfield County he wrote, At the west side of town we passed over a swampy meadow, by a very good turnpike road, on which we paid a toll of 6 cents, at a wooden bridge erected over the Hockhocking river...New Lancaster is a handsome little town...It is regularly laid out, the streets crossing one another at right angles: the principal buildings are upon one broad street. Lancaster court records document he did some legal work in Lancaster but returned to his wife in time for the birth of their first child, Charles Taylor, on Feb. 3, 1811.