150 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS swallowing them whole. I often wondered why father cried as he sat down at the table and looked at the food, as the johnny-cake and mush looked so attractive to my hungry eyes." There is a tale of a. mother, whose husband had had to make a long journey to replenish a dwindling stock of provisions, coming to the end of her food supply in his absence, and turning the straw of her mattress on the floor, picking it over to obtain what wheat she could, getting, at last, a handful, boiling it and giving it to her children. Bears, wolves, rattlesnakes, privations and the shakes range through the pages of "The Pioneer Women of the Western Reserve." Indians, sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile, but never understood by the whites nor understanding them, and hence always bearing an element of uncertainty and alarm, suddenly stand silently in doorways, or peer through chinks in cabins, or demand shelter for the night. Sometimes they come bringing gifts of venison or wild turkey; sometimes demanding whisky, getting it and then terrifying everybody. Sometimes squaws act as kindly and helpful nurses to sick mothers and tiny babies; sometimes, on the other hand, small children are stolen by them, never to return. Nobody ever knew, when the red men turned up, what was going to happen next. One commentator remarks that the pioneers would have suffered less from hunger had they known more about the wild foods. They considered all mushrooms poisonous and used only a few of the many varieties of nuts abounding. This is doubtless true, but lacking exact knowledge they probably also saved themselves a good many dangers by their conservatism. No, life was not easy in those days. Why did they stay, those pioneers? Some of the answers to that question are obvious enough. Some lie deep. The first one that occurs is that they had come, and in doing so had pretty well burned their bridges behind them. They had sold the home farm, put the money into equipment for the start, and it was gone. Going back meant a two or THE PIONEERS - 151 three months' journey through the forest. Coming out had been hard enough, on horseback or with a wagon or by trail and boat. There had then been clothing, food and high hopes. Taking the journey again, hungry, in rags, and with the certain knowledge of being obliged to ask charity when they got there, presented no pleasant prospect. Characteristic of the Ohio fever, raging at the time, were two pictures, mentioned in the Magazine of Western History, "one representing a stout, well-dressed ruddy man on a fat sleek horse, westward bound, bearing a banner with the words, 'Going to Ohio;' the other showing a pale and ghostly skeleton of a man in shabby apparel, riding the wreck of a horse, journeying eastward, bearing the ensign : 'Have been to Ohio'." A generation later, prosperous westward wagons bore the legend "Pike's Peak or Bust" and the worn eastward-moving caravan sported the one word, "Busted." Another reason for staying lies in those mysterious human springs of eternal hope. Surely this was the worst time. By another year there would be more food, better clothing, the cabin improved. This was a great and beautiful region —none better. Here were no rocky fields of New England, to be cleared not only of trees and stumps, but, after that, of one crop after another of small stones that made constant trouble for the plow; here was deep, gorgeous, fertile glacial soil. They did not call it glacial soil in those days, but they knew its richness. Here were waterways which would one day make easy the greater trade of the future. In a word, here was the Westerner—synonym for the pioneer. Here was adventure for him and for her—adventure turning into hard work, but none the less, adventure. The work itself was adventure, with its chance for greater years to come. The pioneer was seldom articulate. He was too busy to study words for the causes of his deeds. But the man and woman who wanted protection, sheltered life, quiet routine, remained at home. The reader who wants to know about these early folk 152 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS and their lives in detail can find quantities of facts and stories in the earlier books. Whittlesey's "Early History of Cleave-land" is a mine of such stuff. Kennedy, Orth, Avery, have each added a share. Post has found some more for "Doans Corners." The Magazine of Western History, the "Annals of the Early Settlers' Association," "The Pioneer Women of the Western Reserve," are other rich sources. This book can but touch lightly on the old stories. The experience of the Kingsbury family has been told in detail as type and pattern of the adventures of families. Lorenzo Carter is another person who stands out. Carter, with his family and that of his brother-in-law, Ezekiel Hawley, left New England in the fall of 1796, and spent that winter in Canada near the juncture of the two lakes Erie and Ontario. The next spring saw them settled' in Cleaveland. Carter, unlike most of the pioneers, knew where he was going. He had been born in Warren, Connecticut. His father died while he and the other five children were still very young. His mother married again when he was about eighteen, and removed to Castleton, Rutland County, Vermont. Soon after this he married and started to farm, but he is said to have been restless and self-willed, and the routine failed to satisfy him. "About this time the Ohio fever began to rage," says a statement of his half-brother, J. A. Ackley, "and Carter, in company with a man by the name of Higby, started for the western wilds. Their course was through Western Pennsylvania, to Pittsburgh, down the Ohio River as far as the Muskingum River. They then turned north, and struck the lake at Cleaveland, from thence by the nearest route home." "This excursion," says Kennedy, "determined his future." He had the Lake Erie sand in his shoes, and could be satisfied nowhere else. When he arrived, with his family, in May, 1797, he built a log cabin down near the river. Hawley decided to build on higher ground, so he went out to the ridge, but Carter kept to "the heart of the city." His cabin was a large mansion for those days—two rooms on the ground THE PIONEERS - 153 floor and a large second floor under the eaves. As soon as he got the cabin done, he began on a boat, and when that was built, he ran a ferry across the river. Lorenzo has become a sort of legendary hero. A strong suspicion arises in the student that his person, like that of all heroes and adventurers, has attracted to it many stories which belong, of right, to other men less famed. The tale is remembered vaguely as a deed of valor or humor told by Grandfather as performed by someone else. The name of the performer escapes. The name of the hero, for various other picturesque reasons, remains. The next generation tells the tale with the heroic remembered name as that of the performer. So Lorenzo has become a sort of Cleaveland Beowulf. He alone laughs at the fever and ague and continues in his cabin down by the river. Perhaps his family have developed antitoxins and become, finally, immune from the scourge? Anyhow, he remains and survives. Those who go to the ridge to live are no less brave, but they lack that last daredevil touch. It is he who brings in the deer when the others are unlucky and starving. It is he who finds the lost children, late at night, while the other parties are still searching. It is he who rescues Ben, the negro, from the cliffs west of the city, after a boat has capsized and thrown its five occupants on the rocks. "The wreck occurred on Friday, and the storm continued to increase that night. On Saturday there was no abatement, and the children, one a negro boy, died. Mrs. Hunter expired on Sunday and Mr. Hunter on Monday. Some traders were passing along the coast for Detroit on Tuesday, and discovering Ben, who was the only survivor, brought him back to Cleaveland. He was almost naked, having for three days and four nights kept his position on the cliffs, without a morsel to eat, by means of some bushes which grew in the crevices of the rocks. Major Carter took care of Ben, and treated him kindly, for a year or more, while he was an invalid. The flesh came off from his lower limbs, rendering him a very disagreeable object." 154 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS Then when two southern men, one claiming to be Ben's master, came and tried to take him back to slavery, Carter would not let Ben be taken unwillingly. He arranged for a meeting, where the owner could ask him, at safe distance, whether he was willing to return. Ben decided he might as well, and they started. A few miles on the trail, Ben heard a voice from the bushes calling, "Ben, you old rascal, dismount and run." Ben did. The southerners laughed and let him go. He was hidden in an old cabin and fed until he could get to Canada, where he finished his life. Before the law made definite appearance in these parts, it was Lorenzo who dispensed the only rude justice there was. He punished, or let go, the bad Indian or bad white man, as fitted his humor and good sense. His decisions were respected by the wise. The foolish tried to fight him and found themselves laid low. The Indians came to believe him in special favor with the Great Spirit, bearing a charmed life and that no arrow nor bullet could kill him. All these tales and more, many more, are told of Lorenzo. His brother-in-law, writing later, said, "Some of the stories told about Lorenzo are true, some are not true." They are good stories, and probably all the incidents happened to one pioneer or another. Let it go at that. What was Mrs. Carter doing all this time? Well, she had nine children, and Lorenzo "kept tavern," traded with the Indians, ran a ferry and one thing and another. Their house, with its big front room, was the scene of what gatherings there were in those first years. There praught the preacher and taught the teacher, and danced the merry villagers when they felt inclined. Mrs. Carter—Rebecca Fuller, daughter of Amos and Mercy, born in Carmel, New York, of New England stock—was twenty-eight years old when she and Lorenzo left Castle-ton, Vermont, for the wild west of New Connecticut. They had then three children, two, four and six years old. When they got to Buffalo, they decided to wait for spring before pushing on into the wilds. They crossed into Canada to find THE PIONEERS - 155 shelter, and spent the winter. There were four children when they moved on in the spring. When they got to Cleaveland, they built the cabin on the river bank and stayed there about four years. Then they built a new and larger log house on the northeast corner of Superior and what is now West Ninth Street. That had two large rooms downstairs and a big garret. Lorenzo died in this house of what is described as a lingering and painful illness, in 1814. Mrs. Carter, in "Pioneer Women of the Western Reserve," is spoken of as "spiritually minded, sympathetic, kindhearted, and open-handed. Very timid, she suffered much through fear of the Indians, who, harmless when sober, were a menace when aroused by drink, some of which Mr. Carter, with the custom of the times, dispensed to them. A drunken brave once chased her, hatchet in hand, around a wood pile, but was caught in the act by her husband, who put a sudden stop to the sport." Cannot the reader hear the shout and crash with which Lorenzo-Beowulf jumped into action on this occasion, the blow which knocked the menacing savage into a cowering weakling, slinking away under Lorenzo's wrath, and the huge laugh with which Lorenzo gathered the shrinking and trembling Rebecca into one arm and gave her a chance to let down her tenseness of terror into a good cry on his shoulder? And does one not acquire rather an idea that the timid Rebecca, living that sort of life, having nine children, always with one eye out for the bear, the wolf and the whisky-loving red man, but sticking it out like the hardworking helpmate, the kind-hearted and open-handed neighbor she was, might deserve a medal for courage quite as much as her brawny, big, danger-loving husband? The first woman to settle here, Tabitha—sometimes spelled Talitha—Cumi Elderkin Stiles, wife of Job Phelps Stiles, was only seventeen when she embarked on the great adventure. She and Job had been school teachers in Vermont. They came from Granville, Massachusetts. Her boy, Charles Phelps Stiles, born in 1799, was the first white child 156 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS to see the light of day in Cleaveland. Two Mohawk squaws attended mother and baby. The family lived hereabouts for something like fifteen years, and then went back to Vermont. Charles later lived in Illinois, and died there in 1882. It is pleasing to note that his father and mother both lived to advanced age. Mrs. Elijah Gun, Anna Sartwell, was older. She was thirty-seven that winter in Conneaut. Quoting from "Pioneer Women" :- "Mrs. Gun was best known as a competent nurse, who went in and out of fever-stricken homes, ministering to the needs of the sick and dying, attending to the dire necessities of young mothers or relieving the bereaved of the last offices for their dead. And all this without money and without price. Mrs. Gun had a large family of her own, and many household duties, while thus holding herself in readiness, by night or day, to respond to the call of duty or mercy." Life was not all hard work and trouble, however. There was laughter, too, and many neighborly good times. One great advantage of life's very hardness and long hours of physical labor was that everybody was ready to sleep at night. That was one of those less obvious reasons why the pioneers stayed. They had no time for morbid considerations of whether they were doing the right thing, or whether they might be better off if they had done something else. They were busy all day long and at night they slept the sleep of the just and hard-working, and tomorrow was always another day. If the prowling wolves came too near—and one family told in later days of wolves getting near enough to rest forepaws on the windowsill while the family were within—somebody got up and heaved a firebrand out the door or sent a shot in the right direction, and the wolves moved off to prowl and howl at a greater distance. The children probably did not wake. If they did, it was only to cower for a few minutes in the warm bedclothes and then sleep again. Such noises of the pioneer night were no more troublesome, after the first anxiety wore off, than those of automobile horns and trolley cars are today. THE PIONEERS - 157 Water, strangely enough, with all this blue depth to the north, was diffncult to obtain. The first families settled next to springs. The rest had to depend on rain-water or on the water-cart of an enterprising citizen who filled barrels at the lake and sold the water to housewives for their washing. The first well dug in Cleaveland was that of Nancy Doan Dodge, daughter of Timothy and Mary Carey Doan, whose husband, Samuel Dodge, built a cabin for her on what is now East Seventeenth Street, and dug the well. Stones used in shoring it were from Indian fireplaces. Anna Merrill Edwards, wife of Rudolphus, was another of the important pioneer women. She lived for her first two years in a log cabin at the foot of Superior Street. "She had two children at that time, one a young step-daughter, and the other an infant of her own. She was a woman of uncommon good sense and judgment, qualities much needed in those pioneer days. The family removed to what is now Woodhill Road, and for long years kept a tavern there. Six children were added to the two brought from Tolland, Connecticut, all born in the old tavern. "Besides the family of ten to care for, and the uncertain traveling public to entertain, there was spinning, weaving, soap making, candle dipping, and numberless other tasks which she performed faithfully and well. Not astonishing that she died in early middle age, when her youngest child was not fifteen years old." Henry Howe, mentioning the arrival of Rudolphus Edwards and Nathaniel Doan in 1799, says: "There were a few other names which might be mentioned as being on the ground during the year above mentioned, but Carter, Kingsbury, Edwards and Doan were the real primeval pioneers whose names are best known to the present generation as men of generous spirit, great endurance and noble deeds, the advance guard of civilization prior to the year 1800." What of the Company all this time? Turhand Kirtland made annual visits to Cleaveland in 1798, 1799 and 1800, as agent for the Connecticut Land Company, to see how matters were coming on. On July 17th, 158 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS 1800, he writes a letter to General Moses Cleaveland, then at Canterbury, Connecticut, in which he complains, on behalf of the settlers, of the treatment they have received from the Company : "On my arrival at this place, I found Major Spafford, Mr. Lorenzo Carter, and Mr. David Clark, who are the only inhabitants residing in the city, have been anxiously awaiting with expectations of purchasing a number of lots, but when I produced my instructions, they were greatly disappointed, both as to price and terms. They assured me that they had encouragement last year, from Col. Thomas Sheldon that they would have lands at ten dollars per acre, and from Major Austin at twelve at most; which they think would be a generous price, for such a quantity as they wish to purchase. You will please excuse me from giving my opinion, but it really seems to me a good policy to sell the city lots at less price than twenty-five dollars (two acres) or I shall never expect to see it settled. "Mr. Carter was an early adventurer, has been of essential advantage to the inhabitants here, in helping them to provisions in times of danger and scarcity, has never experienced any gratuity from the company, but complains of being hardly dealt by, in sundry instances. He had money to pay for about thirty acres, which he expected to have taken, if the price had met his expectation; but he now declares that he will leave the purchase, and never own an acre of New Connecticut. Major Spafford has stated his wishes to the company, in his letter of January last, and I am not authorized to add anything. He says he has no idea of giving the present price for sixteen or eighteen lots. He contemplated building a house, and making large improvements this season, which he thinks would indemnify the company fully, in case he should fail to fulfil his contract; and he is determined to remove to some other part of the purchase immediately, unless he can obtain better terms than I am authorized to give. Mr. Clark is to be included in the same contract, with Major Spafford, but his circumstances will not admit of his making any advances. I have requested the THE PIONEERS - 159 settlers not to leave the place, until I can obtain further information from the board, and request you to consult General Champion to whom I have written, and favor me with despatches by first mail. * * * "Mr. Edwards has gone to see the Governor. Crops extraordinary good and settlers here healthy and in good spirits. They are increasing as fast as can be expected, but the universal scarcity of cash, in this back part of the country, renders it extremely difficult to sell for money, and the vast quantity of land in market will prevent a speedy sale of our lands. The people have been encouraged that the Company would have a store erected and receive provisions in payment for lands, for money is not to be had. Mr. Tillotson, from Lyme, wants two one-hundred-acre lots, and would pay for one in hand if horses, cattle or provisions would answer, or would take them on credit, if he could have sufficient time to turn his property, but has no cash to advance. "I have given a sketch of these circumstances, in order that you may understand my embarrassments, and expect you will give me particular directions how to proceed, and also, whether I shall make new contracts with settlers, whose old ones are forfeited. They seem unwilling to rely on the generosity of the company, and want new writings. * * * "I have the pleasure of your brother's company at this time. He held his first talk with the Smooth Nation, at Mr. Carter's, this morning. Appearances are very promising. I flatter myself he will do no discredit to his elder brother, in his negotiations with the aborigines. "I am, dear sir, with much esteem, yours, etc., "Turhand Kirtland." The land had not sold so well as the members of the Company had hoped. In new allotments it seldom does. The people who see profits ahead see too far ahead, and the investors have to wait. Prices had been reduced but buyers were still too few. Whittlesey says of the conclusion of the Company's adventure : "By individual exertion the private owners disposed of limited amounts of lands, on terms which did not create very 160 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS brilliant expectations of the speculation. In truth, the most fortunate of the adventurers realized a very meager profit, and more of them were losers than gainers. Those who were able to make their payments and keep the property for their children, made a fair and safe investment. It was not until the next generation came to maturity that lands on the Reserve began to command good prices. Taxes, trouble and interest had been long accumulating. Such of the proprietors as became settlers secured an excellent home at a cheap rate, and left as a legacy to their heirs a cheerful future." CHAPTER IV BUSINESS BEGINNINGS A distinction has to be made somewhere along the line between trading with the Indians and commerce with the trader's own kind. Exactly how to make it is not easy to see. Conquering the populace, killing some inhabitants and making slaves of others for the purpose of grabbing off the gold was the Spanish method. The perpetrators saw nothing immoral in it. It had always been done. The only reason why it seems immoral today is that the Spanish Conquistadores who were so startlingly successful at it are so near in time to people of a different view of life. The French method shows an advance. The French were always more thrifty and foresighted than the Spanish. They took another step. Instead of making for gold, the finished product, they went after a source of gold. They were wise enough to want not only furs and fish for today but furs and fish for tomorrow also. So instead of killing off the Indians they gave them a sort of friendship along with their exploitation. The English moved still further in the direction of doing things for themselves. Gold in itself was not their main ambition, and with them trading for furs and fish was merely an incident. If they could get land, they could produce for themselves, not only this year and next, but forever, all the things that suited their more democratic needs. So in any story of the beginning of business by people of English descent, trading with the Indians counts little. It is comparable with cutting down trees for a cabin or planting wheat among stumps; it was not the beginning, but a prerequisite—what had to be done before they could actually - 161 - 162 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS begin. Like living in the one-room cabin and planting before the land is cleared, however, Indian trading lingers on and interweaves among the real beginnings. There was Indian trading in these parts pretty far back. A man named Meginnes had a cabin up the river near Newburgh some years before the Connecticut Land Company bought its land. A Frenchman had another. These are the ones known. Undoubtedly there were others before that. A little swapping went on the first summer, and Edward Paine made trading his business the first winter. Wherever a woman made white bread, Indians would give any amount of game for that delicacy. Squaws made a nuisance of themselves hanging around kitchens waiting for the bread to come out of the oven, even when it was made of "rye an' Injun" for lack of milled wheat. Pioneer women often endeavored to teach their Indian visitors how to make bread for themselves, and were sometimes fairly successful. One of these instances occurred in the family of the present writer. The woman felt it was not fair to the Indians to take so much of fur or game as they considered needful to give for what seemed to her such a trifle as a loaf of home-baked bread. She told a squaw that if she would come on a Saturday and watch a few times she could learn to bake for herself. The result was that she had to do her Saturday baking with not one but many squaws lining the walls of her kitchen. They learned in time, but their bread was seldom to be compared with her own. Perhaps it was a certain cleanliness in the preliminary processes, perhaps a racial deftness of touch that was lacking. Teaching them to make the desired things for themselves may perhaps be called the negative side of trade. At any rate, in these matters kindliness of the white women prevailed over any desire for gain by exploitation. The first four years of Cleaveland life were given up to the most primitive pioneering. There were but few colonists, and they were using up the goods brought with them and endeavoring to make a beginning of getting food from the land. By 1800, however, there was more wheat than enough to THE PIONEERS - 165 carry over, and no market for it. Then David Bryant came along, with a still which he had used in Virginia. He and his son Gilman built a still house under the sand bank on the side hill about twenty rods from Lorenzo Carter's cabin and about fifteen feet above the river. This first business establishment of the city of Cleaveland was a house of hewed logs a story and a half high, twenty feet by twenty-six in size. Water was taken in a trough from springs coming out of the bank, along into the second story of the house. At first the whisky was made from wheat. Later, when other markets appeared for the wheat crop, they used corn. The setting up of this still was a natural development. Whisky was considered an essential in every household. Wheat was going begging for a market, and whisky had to be brought in at a high price for transportation. Converting wheat into whisky was an obvious solution of both problems. Whisky also served as coin of the realm in trading for furs. The latter use had its disadvantages when the Injuns got too much, but that state of affairs, too, was taken for granted at that period in the world's history. Prerequisite to the distilling business was the mill which ground the wheat which was made into whisky, but it cannot be counted the first business of Cleaveland because it was built at Newburgh. Wheeler W. Williams and Major Wyatt erected it five miles east of Cleaveland on the trail to Hudson. David and Gilman Bryant got the stones for this mill from the Vermilion River and made them ready for use. The latter says : "The water was conveyed to the mill in a dugout trough, to an undershot wheel about twelve feet over, with one set of arms, and buckets fifteen inches long, to run inside of the trough, which went down the bank at an angle of forty-five degrees, perhaps. The dam was about four rods above the fall; the millstones were three and a half feet in diameter, of gray rock." One of these millstones has been preserved and is still in a place of honor in the Public Square. The first domesticated fowl were brought in 1799 by 166 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS Timothy Doan's family—a box of live geese. The boat overturned at Grand River and the geese were carried out into the lake, but the box burst and the geese swam back to shore and were captured. The first frame house built was Kingsbury's, on the ridge, referred to in a previous chapter. Theirs also was the first crop of apples. The second of Cleaveland's commercial institutions seems to have been a store opened by Elisha Norton in Carter's house in 1801. He carried staple dry goods and groceries for the white folk and giddy calicoes, beads and such matters of joy and desire for the reds. Three years later Oliver Culver—who had been with the surveying party of 1797—came to start a store. He brought in a boatload of dry goods, groceries and liquors, and paid three dollars a barrel for transportation from Black Rock, near Buffalo. He stayed only the one year, so apparently his venture did not pay well enough to be repeated. Nathan Perry, who had come with cattle in 1796, brought his family to Ohio in 1806. He bought a thousand acres of land in what is now Lake County at fifty cents an acre, and also five acres in Cleaveland, in the block bounded by Superior, St. Clair, Water and Bank streets. He added to these investments a farm near the corner of Broadway and Perry Street (now East Twenty-second Street) and another tract in what is now Lorain. In 1808 he decided Cleaveland was the best place to make a living, so he then started a little store with a Mr. Hanchet, next the post offnce. (This was Luke Hanchet, probably, of the surveying party of 1796) . Soon Perry built a combined home and store, and a few years later a brick store. The first brick store anywhere in the region, however, was built by J. R. and Irad Kelley at Newburgh in 1814. Elias and Harvey Murray came to town in 1810 and soon became leading merchants. Lorenzo Carter about this time built a warehouse on Union Lane. Some of the prices of this period are interesting. Muslin was fifty cents a yard, calico thirty-seven and a half. Salt THE PIONEERS - 169 and flour were priced alike, at fifteen dollars a barrel. Butter was six cents a pound and eggs four cents a dozen. One Anna McCullough of Canfield, Ohio, whose father had died, leaving several small children, went out to work as household helper at the age of thirteen. Her salary was fifty cents a week. This was in 1814. At a store in Windham, Ohio, in September, 1817, a bill of goods was sold by Deacon Isaac Clark, whose whole stock was valued at five hundred dollars, a great sum then, to John Seeley, as follows : To/2 lb. tea @ $1.50 - $ .75 "½ yd. cambric @ 80c - .40 "½ paper pins @ 25c - .121/2 Jeremiah Lyman was charged by Clark with goods purchased, to wit : To 5 ½ yds. calico @ 60c - $3.30 " 1 skein silk - .09 " 2 ½ yds. fulled cloth @ $1.75 - 4.37 " ½ lb. pepper @ 50c - .25 Apparently it was Mrs. Jeremiah who did the shopping, and it is evident that she was finishing her summer fancywork, preparing to do her fall sewing and putting up her autumn pickles in between. Almost everything purchased was paid for in barter of some kind. Elias Cozad built the first tannery, out at Doan's Corners, which was followed within a year by one put up by Samuel and Matthew Williamson. In 1801 there was a Constitutional Convention at Chillicothe, with Samuel Huntington as representative of Trumbull County. In February, 1803, Ohio was made a state, the seventeenth. The first state legislature met in Chillicothe, and Samuel Huntington was made judge of the Ohio Supreme Court. The first doctor was David Long, who came in 1810. When he arrived, the nearest physicians were at Hudson, Painesville, Wooster and Monroe. He was greatly needed, and his practice soon became large. He was interested, however, in other ventures, as nearly every pioneer who succeeded 170 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS had to be. He was candidate for county commissioner when the location of a new courthouse was in question. Cleaveland was then but "a small village six miles from Newburgh," and the settlers of the latter place naturally hoped to get the new building with the ensuing convenience and prestige. Dr. Long was elected, and his vote went to Cleaveland, which decided the matter. The doctor lost rather heavily on a contract for building a section of the canal, but he got on pretty well none the less. He moved in 1836 to a farm on Woodland Avenue. He built a stone house on this property, afterward occupied by Erastus Gaylord, and later he built the brick house on the corner of Woodland Avenue and Longwood Avenue (now East Thirty-fifth Street). Long was a director of the Commercial Bank of Lake Erie and was connected with the Cleaveland Pier Company. He was one of the organizers of Trinity, the first church. He was on a committee to buy a hearse, harness and bier. He was a member of the early fire department. These are but a few of his many activities. He married Juliana, daughter of Judge John Walworth. His daughter, Mary, married Solomon Lewis Severance, the first of the Severance family to make Cleaveland his home. Their son, Lewis Henry Severance, was the father of the John L. Severance of today. The benefactions of the Severance family to art and education in Cleveland and the Reserve have been many. The last beautiful gift, at the present writing, is that of Severance Hall. The first dentist, Benjamin Strickland, did not arrive until 1835. The first lawyer was Samuel Huntington, who came in the summer of 1801, but there was not much law business to be done, so he engaged in many other affairs, and soon moved on into public service, later becoming governor of Ohio. The first lawyer to do a real law practice was Alfred Kelley, who came on horseback in 1810, along with Dr. Jared P. Kirtland and Joshua Stow. It was in 1801 that Amos Spafford resurveyed the city streets and lanes, planted fifty-four posts of oak, one foot square, at the principal corners, at fifty cents per post, and THE PIONEERS - 173 charged fifty cents for grubbing out a tree at the northeast corner of the Public Square. "The original streets of the village," says Orth, "were Water, Ontario, Miami, and Erie streets running north and south, their course north thirty-four degrees west; and Bath, Federal, Lake, Superior, Huron and Ohio streets running east and west, and their course is north fifty-six degrees east. These streets surveyed were not, however, at once opened and cleared of trees and stumps. By 1812 the only street really cleared was Superior west of the Square. Ontario was barely passable for teams, north of the Square and south of the Square it was an open road, along the present Broadway to Newburgh. Water Street was scarcely more than a path. Lake and Huron streets were unopened while Erie Street was partly opened and cleared of underbrush. Superior Street was planned for the principal street of the city. It is one of the widest streets in America-132 feet. Originally it stopped at Erie Street. Fine houses were built on it between the Public Square and Erie Street and west of the Square it remained the principal retail district until recent years." Euclid was not in the original plan, but grew into a road because it was the most direct way of reaching the village of Euclid, the settlement laid out as extra pay for the surveyors. Prospect was surveyed by Ahaz Merchant in 1831. The first blacksmith shop was that of Nathaniel Doan. Blacksmithing was a necessity in a horseback age, and Doan was given a lot on Superior Street on condition that he open and conduct a blacksmith shop, that the surveyors' horses might be shod. After the surveys had been completed, and after a siege of fever and ague when all nine members of his family were down with the plague at once, Doan moved to the region known thereafter as "Doans Corners," now Euclid and East 105th Street. For a time the city itself was without a blacksmith. Then came Abram Hickox in 1808, who opened his smithy on the north side of Superior Street where the Johnson House later stood. At one time he had a shop south of Superior near 174 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS Seneca. Later he had a small smithy on the corner of Erie Street and Hickox Lane. Hickox was a picturesque person. Over the door of his shop hung a sign, "Uncle Abram Works Here" with the print of a horeshoe in wood. He is said to have been honest and patriotic. On the Fourth of July, lacking cannon, he rang his anvil, making a mighty noise. He was also the sexton and for years made all arrangements for burial of the dead. He wore, as a rule, "a homespun gray suit, wide-rimmed wool hat, steel-bowed spectacles and carried a stout hickory staff." He was quite a philosopher, and many earnest discussions went on in his smithy. Every pioneer was something of a builder—the rough carpentry necessary to put up log cabins, shelves, and build a boat that would float and in which one could get about a little in fair weather, was essential. But the first real builder, who had a knowledge of building as a trade, was Levi Johnson, who turned up in 1808. He built the log courthouse and jail combined, the gallows on which the Indian Poccon Omic was hung (which deserves special mention as the first execution) , the first frame house in Cleaveland proper, that of Judge Walworth on Superior where the American House later stood and under which trains now come in to the terminal. He built the Buckeye House in 1811, for Rudolphus Edwards, out on Woodland Hills Avenue, the schooner Ladies' Master in 1814, the schooner Neptune in 1817 and the first steamboat constructed in Cleaveland, the Enterprise. He sailed on the lake and in 1830 built the old stone lighthouse where the present one stands, then one at Cedar Point, and set buoys marking the channel in Sandusky Bay. He also built some seventeen hundred feet of the Cleaveland east government pier. The first boat built worthy the name was the Zephyr constructed by Major Carter in 1808. It was followed by the Sally—Joel Thorpe, Dove—Alex Simpson. A really pretentious boat, sixty tons, was the Ohio, built by Murray and Bixby in 1810. The first steamboat on the lakes was the Walk-in-the-