The $1,200,000 received in payment was placed by Connecticut in its school fund and has always
there remained.
Connecticut having obtained her western land by grant, having retained it by diplomacy and
persistence, and having sold it to her satisfaction, watched with pride its development. Even at
this writing a large part of the Western Reserve, particularly the eastern section, is quite as much
like New England as Connecticut itself.
12 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE
THE RESERVE OF THE PRESENT.
The width of the Western Reserve is the same as the widest part of Connecticut ; that is,
seventy-one and a half miles. It is nearly six per cent greater than the state of Connecticut.
When all the lines were drawn and the townships laid out, the Reserve did not divide into full
and exact counties. Three townships of Ashland county are north of the forty-first
parallel—Ruggles, Troy and Sullivan. This county is a large and prosperous one, but, as so much
of it lies outside the Reserve, little in connection with it appears in this history.
The township of Danbury and part of the Islands belonging to Ottawa county lie east of the west
line of the Fire Lands, and are a part of the country of which we are writing. The Southern tier of
townships of Mahoning county are below the southern boundary of the Reserve, and they, do. not
figure in this history. They are Springfield, Beaver, Green, Goshen and Smith.
THE NATURE OF NEW CONNECTICUT.
What was the nature of this new Connecticut ? It was heavy with excellent timber, oak, elm,
maple, hickory, walnut, beech, etc. It was bounded on one side by a great blue lake deep enough
to carry the trans-atlantic steamers of today, and containing more fish in proportion to its size
than any known body of water in the United States.
It had several navigable rivers and numerous creeks and rivulets. The climate was temperate, a
little colder in winter perhaps than the home state and possibly warmer in summer.. The surface
soil was a rich sandy loam in the northern portion, running a little heavier with clay at the
southern part.
Within this territory was fine sandstone for building purposes and excellent flagging for walks, as
the towns of today will testify.
Bituminous coal (now nearly exhausted) of the finest quality lay waiting to be mined.
The soil was adapted to fruit growing and the very strip. of land over which the Cleveland
surveyors passed is now almost covered with vineyards. The maple tree stood ready for service
and today, in the northeastern portion, is made the finest maple syrup in the world.
The woods abounded in game and the streams in fish.
The land in some places is low and wet, and, in others, flat and uninteresting, while there were
rolling, hilly spots with touches of exquisite scenery.
Nature had done well by this part of the world and now man was to demonstrate what he could
do on such a foundation. "The folks back home"—the land company—had bought this territory
as the boys trade marbles, "unsight, unseen." New Englanders knew nothing of .the flat fertile
middle west. Their country was a stony one and to them trees meant fertility. The Western
Reserve was a forest ; that satisfied them.
Some writers of the New Connecticut history say that into this vast forest, into this wild region,
through whose woods and over whose hills no. white man's foot had passed, came the advance
guard, the surveyors of the Connecticut Land Company.
This statement is an exaggeration. White men were here when the first 'surveyor arrived, and had
been here, as travelers, missionaries, soldiers and traders long before.
Possibly La Salle with his , party, going east and west, in 1682-83, walked the shores of Lake
Erie (French forts were at Niagara, Presque Isle (Erie), and at the mouth of the Maumee) ; it is
more probable that he took the north shore, however, since the Indians of that region were his
friends.
The journals, diaries, survey books, etc., which are now being brought to light, show that in many
parts of the Reserve timber was felled by a white man's ax 'at a very early day. In 1840 Colonel
Charles Whittlesey, who wrote an early history of Cleveland, says he examined a stump of an oak
tree, in Can-
HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 13
field, which was two feet ten inches in diameter and "about seven inches from the center were
marks of an ax, perfectly distinct, over which 16o layers of annual growth had accumulated." Mr.
Whittlesey procured a portion of the tree extending from the outside to the center on which the
ancient and modern marks of the ax are equally plain ; the tools being of about the same breadth
and in equally good order. "The Canfield tree must be considered a good record as far back as
1660.” This block may be seen now in the Western Reserve Historical Society, in Cleveland.
Mr. Jason Hubbell, of Newburg, reported the finding of like marks which he estimated to have
been made in 1690.
Mr. Lapham, of Willoughby, felled a tree in 1848 which was seen by many people of that time
and the stump of which was in 1867 standing near the railroad track one mile and a half west of
Willoughby. This showed 400 rings outside the cut, indicating it to have been chopped in 1448 or
forty-four years before Columbus' landing at San Salvador. Mr. Whittlesey says some trees form
two terminal buds a year and if this we're so it would bring the date about 1648 or near the time
of the other marks.
The early surveyors and settlers were usually good woodsmen ; while not expert with the ax
themselves they appreciated the good work in others. Being able to make the cleanest cut in
felling a tree in the early days of the last century called forth as much admiration as the
management of a huge industrial plant, or the forming of a great trust. There was no chance,
therefore, of these ax marks being confused with those of the Indians. The "squaw axes" given
the Indians between 1608-20 had different length of bit and the marks the red men made were
entirely different in character. In fact, no matter how much we may sympathize with the Indians
in the loss of their hunting grounds and the destruction of their tribes, we must admit that they
did not take kindly to agriculture or manual labor, and few, if any, ever excelled in these
directions. If they had, some of us who now have blue eyes might have had black ones, or we
might now be wearing feathers in our hair instead of on our hats.
"In 1815," says Mills, "a human jawbone was found in a roadway which had been cut through a
mound. Near the bone was an artificial tooth of metal which exactly fitted a cavity in the jaw."
Jesuits were among the Iroquois Indians in New York as early as 1656, but it does not seem, even
if they penetrated as far as the Reserve, that they could have chopped so many trees, because the
number found 200 years later was too great for travelers to have made. Just why the Norsemen
landed on our New England coast, when they were there, how long they really- staid, will never
be known positively, neither will the time when the white men visited the Ohio Lake region be
determined, how long they staid, why they came, when they left. But we know that they, like the
Norsemen, were here.
A. T. Goodman in a tract of the Western Reserve Historical Society says : "The earliest known
occupation of the territory embraced within the limits of the state of Ohio by any collective body
of white men was by the French in 1680." From that time until the conquest of Canada by the
French, French traders were scattered throughout the territory, building a post, station or store at
almost every Indian town. English traders first made their appearance in the Ohio country in
1699-170o. From that time until 1745 we hear of them at various towns and stations. In 1745
they built a small fort or blockhouse among the Hurons on the north side of Sandusky Bay, near
the extreme western edge of the Reserve.
For many years previous to the coming of the surveyors of the Connecticut Land Company, men
who made a business of trading with the Indians, bringing to them provisions, trinkets and
whiskey, taking in exchange furs,
14 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE
hides, etc., were staying—one could hardly call it living—between Pittsburg and the mouth of
the Cuyahoga. Some of those men had married squaws and had children. The traders who
brought their wives with them did not remain long. The Indians preferred to trade with squaw
men, as they were at least connected with the tribe, and the hardships attending a frontier life and
the lack of companionship were a double burden which white women were not willing to endure
when there was no promise of home. Some of the diaries of the first settlers which the author has
examined state that the travelers came upon a cabin in the lower part of the Reserve, and saw a
white woman at work. She gave a cry of joy at the sight of men coming from civilization. With
trembling lips and moist eyes she begged them to partake of refreshments, saying she had not
seen the face of a white woman, in three years.
The Moravians were now and then in northern Ohio, at Sandusky, on the Lake islands, and for
about a year, 1786-87, on the east side of the Cuyahoga river. They were forced to leave during
hostilities.
The presence of the French in the Northwest Territory was distressing to the English. The
Frenchman, principally because he was an explorer and not a colonizer, attached himself to the
Indians. He did not buy land for beads and spoil the hunting grounds. He was no menace to the
roving red men, and hence became an ally, not an enemy.
CLARK AND THE NORTHWEST..
Just here the author wishes to introduce an interesting. bit of history which applies only indirectly
to the Western Reserve. James A. Garfield, when a representative in Congress, made an address
for the Historical Society at Burton, Geauga county, in which he said :
"The cession of that great territory under the treaty of 1783 was due mainly to the foresight, the
courage and the endurance of one man, who never received from his country any adequate
recognition for his great service. That man was George Rogers Clark; and it is worth your while
to consider the work he accomplished. Born in Virginia. he was in early life a surveyor, and
afterwards served in Lord Dunmore's war. In 1776 he settled in Kentucky, and was in fact the
founder of that commonwealth. As the war of the Revolution progressed, he saw that the
pioneers west of the Alleghanies were threatened by two formidable dangers ; first by the
Indians, many of whom had joined the standard of Great Britain ; and, second, by the success of
the war itself. For, should the colonies obtain their independence while the British held
possession of the Mississippi valley, the Alleghanies would be the western boundary of the new
republic, and the pioneers of the west would remain subject to Great Britain.
"Inspired by these views, he made two journeys to Virginia to represent the case to the authorities
of that colony. Failing to impress the house of burgesses with the importance of warding off
these dangers, he appealed to the governor, Patrick Henry, and received from him authority to
enlist seven companies to go to Kentucky, subject to his orders, and serve for three months after
their arrival in the west. This was a public commission.
"Another document, bearing date Williamsburg, January 2, 1778, was a secret commission,
which authorized him, in the name of Virginia, to capture the military posts held by the British in
the northwest. Armed with this authority, he proceeded to Pittsburgh, where he obtained
ammunition, and floated it down the river to Kentucky, succeeded in enlisting seven companies
of pioneers, and in the month of June, 1778, commenced his march through the untrodden
wilderness to the region of the Illinois. With a daring that is scarcely equaled in the annals of
war, he captured the garrisons of Kaskaskia, Saint Vincent and Cahokia, and sent his prisoners,
to the governor
HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 15
of Virginia, and by his energy and skill won over the French inhabitants of that region to the
American cause.
"In October, 1778, the house of burgesses passed an act declaring that 'all the citizens of the
commonwealth of Virginia, who are already settled there, or shall hereafter be settled on the west
side of the Ohio, shall be included in the District of Kentucky, which shall be called Illinois
County.' In other words, George Rogers Clark conquered the Territory of the Northwest in the
name of Virginia, and the flag of the Republic covered it at the close of the war.
"In negotiating the treaty of peace at Paris, in 1783, the British commissioners insisted on the
Ohio river as the northwestern boundary of the United States; and it was found that the only
tenable ground on which the American commissioners relied to sustain our claim to
the Lakes and the Mississippi as the boundary was the fact that George Rogers Clark had
conquered the country, and Virginia was in undisputed possession of it at the cessation of
hostilities.
"In his 'Notes on the Early Settlement of the Northwest Territory, Judge Burnet says: `That fact
(the capture of the British posts) was confirmed and admitted, and was the chief ground on which
the British commissioners reluctantly abandoned their claim.'
"It is a stain upon the honor of our country that such a man—the leader of pioneers' who made
the first lodgment on the site now occupied by Louisville, who was in fact the founder of the
state Of Kentucky, and who by his personal foresight and energy gave nine great states to the
republic—was allowed to sink under a load of debt incurred for the honor and glory of his
country."
CHAPTER III.
THE PIONEERS OF NEW CONNECTICUT.
Although the French (both Protestant and Roman Catholic), the Spanish, the Dutch, the Quaker,
and the English (Cavalier and Puritan) colonized the new world, we are apt to think of the early
inhabitant as. the Massachusetts Puritan alone. Somehow the Puritan, especially the Pilgrim, with
his plain, dark clothes, his high hat and his determined countenance, impresses itself deeply upon
our sub-consciousness. Just so do we give all the credit of the successful settling of the Western
Reserve to the' Connecticut emigrants, which is entirely incorrect.
There were two ways to enter New Connecticut, namely, through New York state to Buffalo and
along Lake Erie, or through Pennsylvania to Pittsburg, up the rivers. From the state of
Pennsylvania came the Pennsylvania Dutch and the Scotch-Irish ; these, with the New Yorker,
joined with the Connecticut Yankee in the making of the new state. Some of the truest and most
helpful citizens were. the Scotch-Irish ; some of the most frugal and industrious were the
Pennsylvania Dutch. The Yankee considered himself superior to his neighbors, who said "du
bish" or had a brogue. His education as a rule was better, his family longer established in these
United States, and he believed himself responsible for the development of the country. On the
other hand, the early Dutch Pennsylvanian saw faults in his Yankee neighbor, and commented
upon the same. The early Dutch housewife would say to her neighbor, When inviting her .to stay
to a meal, "It's not
Vol. I-2
much we have, but anything is better than the weak tea and crackers of the Yankees." The
"Dutchmen" were frugal, neat, industrious, but liked good living. Early settlers in Pennsylvania
uniformly testify to the excellent cooking of. Pennsylvania Dutch women. A Trumbull County
man, now fifty years old, who as a boy taught school in western Pennsylvania, refers with
pleasure to those days when he boarded around. A prominent citizen of Warren, whose
grandparents were Pennsylvania Dutch, and whose mother and wife were both excellent
housekeepers, gives credit to both for being successes as homemakers, but usually ends with "but
no one ever quite came up to grandmother's cooking."
It was the Scotch-Irish who made the mirth for the pioneers, particularly at "frolic times," as
house-raisings, log-rollings, and like occasions were called. They cared less for money than did
the Yankee or the German, and did not leave land fortunes to their descendants. They did,
however, one thing for which they are never given credit. They, and not the men from the state of
the Blue Laws, were first in establishing and maintaining churches.
Lest we may be tossing our heads in pride, we who trace back to the Connecticut forefather, let
us see what others thought and think of us. W. H. Hunter, of Chillicothe, in an address at
Philadelphia, on "Influence of Pennsylvania on Ohio," says :
"The claims made for the Puritan settlement at Marietta give us an example of Puritan audacity ;
the New England settlements on
- 17 -
18 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE
the Western Reserve give us examples of Yankee ingenuity. In Connecticut he made nutmegs of
wood ; in Ohio he makes maple molasses of glucose and hickory bark. In New England the
Puritan bored the Quaker tongue with red-hot poker ; in Ohio he dearly loves to roast Democrats.
The Reserve was the home of crankisms. Joseph Smith started the Mormon church in Lake
county. And there were others."
COLONIZED BY THE COLLEGE MAN.
The Connecticut pioneer impressed himself on the Western Reserve history because he was' a.
college man. He became the surveyor, the lawyer, the judge, the legislator, the governor, because
he was mentally equipped for such positions. Almost every leading jurist of that day was a Yale
graduate.
It is known that for many years before the organization of the Connecticut Land Company, as
early as 1755, people had traveled from Pennsylvania to Salt Springs, between Niles and Warren,
for the purpose of making salt. Long vats and kettles showing much Wear and little care were
early found by traders and explorers. Men who were identified with the early times have written
of seeing travelers with kettles thrown over the back of a horse on their way to the springs. Salt
was expensive, costing, according to some authorities, six dollars a bushel ; others, sixteen
dollars a barrel. The water here was only brackish and cost of making too expensive to be
profitable. Some of the Salt Spring kettles were later found in a spot near Braceville, where the
Indians used them for making maple sugar, and within the last few years one of them still
existed.
SALT SPRING REGION.
So far as we know, nothing very good ever, came out of the Salt Spring region. The first man
who owned the tract—Judge Parsons—was drowned. A ;man stationed in one of the cabins to
watch the goods belonging to a Beaver firm was killed. The white men who
constructed cabins there were in constant fear of the Indians, and were not financially repaid for
their trouble. "The Pennsylvanians who had recourse to it during the Revelation erected cabins
there. In 1785 Colonel Brodhead, commanding the troops at Fort Pitt, had orders to dispossess
them, and did so. The Indians soon burned the cabins they had erected." Here occurred the first
murder on the Reserve, and here, time and again, in the latter part of the nineteenth century,
people have had hope of making fortunes from the mineral water, only to give it up in despair
later. In 1906 or 1907 the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad acquired the land, and now, where once
men, white and red, boiled water into salt, while they drank whiskey and fought ; where women
and children suffered from fear of the red man ; where men invested time and money to no
purpose, runs a great trunk line, and men and women sleep and eat as they pass over that spot
where so much unhappiness existed, and never think of Indian's or murder or even salt, for the
latter served them in the diner by black men without cost.
FIRST LAND PURCHASES.
General Samuel H. Parsons, of Connecticut, whose father was a distinguished clergyman, and
whose mother (a descendant of Henry Wolcott) was a strong character, was the first lawyer, and
the first purchaser of land on the Western Reserve. He was an early friend of John Adams, a
graduate of Yale, took an --active interest in colonial politics, and became one of the boldest of
America's generals. Old records in the hands of the family attribute to him the planning of the
siege of Ticonderoga, which was the first hostile move in the war of the Revolution. Congress,
in 1785, appointed him as one of the commissioners to treat with the Indians for cessions of land.
Cincinnati stands on one of the portions ceded. Two years later he was appointed judge for the
territory of the United States northwest of the Ohio river, and in 1789 became chief justice of the
Northwest Territory. Having
HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 19
traveled through this county, he was familiar with the land, and finally bought from the
commissioners appointed by the Connecticut legislature to sell land, a tract situated in the
townships now known as Lordstown, Weathersfield, Jackson and Austintown. The deed to this
twenty-five thousand acres is now on record in the Trumbull county court house, and all records
and maps agree as to its boundaries. He chose this spot, undoubtedly, because the Indians and
traders had cleared land round about, because the springs found there contained brackish water
from which he hoped later to manufacture salt, and because Pittsburg was comparatively near at
hand and stores could be gotten at Beaver and other points on the river. He, however, never
occupied this purchase. He was drowned, as above stated, in the Beaver river, probably at the
falls, when returning east. Little or no money had been actually paid down for the land, but his
heirs claimed it nevertheless. From Webb's manuscript we learn :
"And although the Connecticut Land Company ran their township and range line regardless of
this claim, and although they in their proceedings at the time called it only a 'pretended claim,'
yet, in making partition of their lands, they reserved land enough in the townships Nos. 2 and 3,
in the third and fourth range, to satisfy this claim, which they never aparted and which they
ultimately abandoned to the heirs and assigns of General Parsons."
FIRST LAND PURCHASER.
The rules and regulations of the Connecticut Land Company are of great interest. Every
possibility of misunderstanding is provided for, minor details are mentioned, and the document
shows the workmanship of the careful, conservative New England mind.
The directors of the company were Oliver Phelps, Henry Champion, Roger Newberry, and
Samuel Mathews, Jr.
Following is a list of the surveying party of 1796:
General Moses Cleaveland, Superintendent. Augustus Porter, Principal Surveyor and Deputy
Superintendent.
Seth Pease, Astronomer and Surveyor.
Amos Spafford, John Milton Holley, Richard M. Stoddard and Moses Warren, Surveyors.
Joshua Stow, Commissary.
Theodore Shepard, Physician.
EMPLOYEES OF THE COMPANY.
Joseph Tinker,
DanieLShulay.
Boatman.
Joseph McIntyre.
George Proudfoot.
Francis Gray.
Samuel Forbes.
Amos Sawtel.
Stephen Benton.
Amos Barber.
Samuel Hungerford.
William B. Hall.
Samuel Davenport.
Asa Mason.
Amzi Atwater.
Michael Coffin.
Elisha Ayers.
Thomas Harris.
Norman Wilcox.
Timothy Dunham.
George Gooding
Shadrach Benham.
Samuel Agnew.
Wareham Shepard.
David Beard.
John Briant.
Titus V. Munson.
Joseph Landon.
Charles Parker.
Ezekiel Morly.
Nathaniel Doan.
Luke Hanchet.
James Halket.
James Hamilton.
Olney F. Rice.
John Lock.
Samuel Barnes.
Stephen Burbank.
We are told in several original manuscripts that this party consisted of fifty, but as the above
numbers only forty-six, Gun, who was to have charge of the stores at Conneaut ; Stiles, who was
to have like position at Cleveland ; Chapman and Perry, who were to furnish fresh meat and trade
with the Indians, must have made up the number. In some of the original records the full list of
the men are given with these words, "and two females." So unused were makers of books and
keepers of records to giving a woman's name, unless she were queen or a sorceress, that this
seemed nothing unusual.
These "two females," who made the first real homes on the Reserve, were Ann, the wife of Elija
Gun, and Tabiatha Currie, the
20 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE
wife of Job Stiles. Not only did they keep house, one at Conneaut and the other at Cleveland, but
they kept them so well that the surveyors took themselves there upon the slightest pretext. They
also had an oversight and care of the company:,
INSTRUCTIONS TO MOSES CLEAVELAND.
Here is given the instructions of the directors to their agent :
[Drawn for the History of the Western Reserve]
PIONEERS' ROUTE FROM OLD TO NEW CONNECTICUT.
To Moses Cleaveland, Esq., of the County of Windham, and State of Connecticut, one of the
Directors of the Connecticut Land Company, Greeting:
We, the Board of Directors, of said Connecticut Land Company, having appointed you to go on
to said land, as Superintendent over the agents and men, sent on to ,survey and make locations on
said land, to make, and enter into friendly negotiations with the natives who are on said land, or
contiguous thereto, and may have any pretended claim to the same, and secure such friendly
intercourse amongst them' as will establish peace, quiet, and safety to the survey and settlement
of said lands, not ceded by the natives under the authority of the United States. You are hereby,
for the foregoing purposes, fully authorized and empowered to act, and transact all the above
business, in as full and ample a manner as we ourselves could do, to make contracts in the
foregoing matters in our behalf and stead ; and make such drafts on our Treasury, as may be
necessary to accomplish the foregoing object of your appointment. And all agents and men by us
employed, and sent on to survey and settle said land, to be obedient to your orders and directions.
And you are to be accountable for all monies by
HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 21
you received, conforming your conduct to such orders and directions as we may, from time to
time, give you, and to do and act in all matters, according to your best skill and judgment, which
may tend to the best inter: est, prosperity, and success of said Connecticut Land Company.
Having more particularly for your guide the Articles of Association entered into and signed by
the individuals of said Company.
Pittsburg and Canandaigua were the outlying posts for travelers to the Western Reserve. The
Connecticut Land Company instructed the surveying party to gather at Canandaigua and proceed.
Several of the journals of these young surveyors are in the possession of the Western Reserve
Historical Society; and the entries in some of them which have never been published are curious.
Mr. Seth Pease says under several dates in close succession : "I began my journey, Monday, May
9, 1796. Fare from Suffield to Hartford, six shillings ; expenses four shillings six pence. * * * At
breakfast, expense two shillings. Fare on my chest from Hartford to Middletown, one shilling, six
pence." In telling about his trip Lo New York, he says : "Passage and liquor 4 dollars and three
quarters. When he arrived in New York we find the following entry : "Ticket for play 75c ;
Liquor 14c ; Show of elephants, 50c ; shaving and combing, 13c." Apparently Mr. Pease was
seeing New York.
USUAL ROUTE TO THE RESERVE.
It will pay the reader to take a map and follow their route from. Connecticut to Schenectady, up
the Mohawk river into Oneida lake, on to the Oswego river, into Ontario lake, along the southern
shore of this lake to Canandaigua, and then to Buffalo, from there touching at least once at
Presque Isle (Erie), on past the Pennsylvania line. They rowed, sailed and walked the shore.
Sometimes part of them turned back to help bring up those delayed, or went ahead of the party to
counsel with military officers or to make necessary preparations for the party. It was a tedious
trip.
The four batteaux filled with provisions; baggage and men were heavy, and most of the men
were unused to river boating. One of them records that pulling up the Mohawk was as hard work
as he ever did in his life. It was a relief when they began going down the Oswego and came to
Fort Stanwix (Rome, N. Y.). Here Mr. Stow procured the necessary papers to allow the party to
pass Fort Oswego, which was in the hands of the British. At this very time an agreement had
been reached which provided that Americans could have access to the Lakes. The party therefore
rapidly proceeded only to find they had been too sanguine. The officers in charge of the fort had
no new orders from Fort Niagara ; the old orders allowed no Americans to pass. The party,
somewhat disappointed, put into a little bay in the river. The land was low, the soldiers at the fort
were many of them ill and dying, and the surveyors, ready and anxious for work in the far west,
were not pleased at the thought of lying idly in this unwholesome spot until a messenger could go
to Niagara and return. The directors of the Land Company had anticipated this trouble, as said
above, and had instructed Mr. Stow, who was the commissary, not to pass the fort if there was
opposition. The situation was trying to Mr. Stow. Since he disobeyed orders and brought the
party through successfully, we consider him an intelligent, faithful employee. Had the winds been
a little stronger, the waves a little higher, conditions a little less favorable, so that the boats and
the passengers had been lost, he would always have been referred to as a guilty, incompetent
hireling.
The officers of the fort at Oswego knew that the party arrived in four boats ; consequently, when
Mr. Stow, with one boat, went by the fort, he was not disturbed. These officers did not observe
he carried provisions ; they only thought he was going to Fort Niag-
22 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE
ara to obtain permission for the party to move on. The guard not being on the outlook, the three
other boats passed the fort under the protection of night. Thus the party safely reached Lake
Ontario. They had been hindered and bothered in many ways, but now they believed their
troubles to be over. However, as is often the case when people are sanguine, the worst they were
to see was near at hand. A storm came up quickly and violently, throwing the three boats into
Sodus Bay, where one of them was utterly disabled and where the whole party, almost
miraculously, escaped drowning. One can imagine the anxiety of Mr. Stow, who had gone on to
Irondequoit (the port for Rochester) when he learned that the three boats following him had been
lost and nothing saved but an Oar and a gun, thrown on shore at Sodus Bay. Either he or
Auguster Porter (accounts disagree) with some men, turned about from Irondequoit to go to
Sodus, hoping to learn how the shipwreck occurred. They were overjoyed to meet Captain Beard,
who told them that instead of all being lost except the oar and gun, the oar and gun were the only
things which really were lost. One of the boats, however, which was useless, was abandoned, and
the party proceeded on its way to Irondequoit, Canandiagua and the new home.
The Indians at Buffalo were expecting them, and like all traders they were wondering what they
dare demand ; that is, how much they could get for their right to the land. It's a wise man who
offers neither too much nor too little. A man who preceded the party with the horses was forced
to pay three dollars for pasture. Since the grass was neither cared for nor used by anybody, this
was exorbitant.
BARGAINING WITH THE INDIANS.
It exasperates the reader of today to watch the slow movement of this party of surveyors. When
they arrived at Buffalo, some of them went to Fort Niagara, possibly on business ; some took a
look at the Falls, while Holly, under the date of June 18th, says : "Porter and myself went on the
Creek (Buffalo) in a bark canoe a fishing and caught only three little ones." How could people
with such uncertainty ahead of them stop to angle ?
Finally, the council with the red men was had, and a picturesque scene it was. On the shore of the
lake, under the starry June sky, the white men, forerunners of the Western Reserve citizens, with
joy in their faces and hope in their hearts, sat around the blazing fire prepared by the red men.
Speeches were made on both sides, diplomatic messages exchanged, and while part of the
Indians performed a swinging dance, the rest grunted an accompaniment from their sitting
position on the ground. Negotiations were not completed then—not at all ; it was too soon. The
Indian was "long on time" and short on whiskey. They must get drunk, of course. What was the
good of a treaty without a pow-wow ? What was the good of the white man except for his
whiskey? So pow-wow and whiskey it was, fortunately with no bad results.
On June 23rd, "after much talking on the part of the Indians, Cleaveland offered Capt. Brant 50o
pounds New York currency, which equals $i,000, provided he would peacefully relinquish his
title to the western land. This sum was not large enough to please the captain, but after much
parley he finally agreed to it, provided Cleaveland would use his influence with the United States
and obtain from the government the sum of $500 annually for his tribe: In case he could not
accomplish this he was to promise that the Land Company would pay an additional $1,500 in
cash."
Whether this agreement was kept, and whether either the government or company paid this sum
is not known to the author, but as white men were treating with Indians, we presume this money
is the last they saw.
HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 23
TITLE BOUGHT OF THE RED MAN.
Cleaveland then gave two beef cattle and 100 gallons of whiskey to satisfy the eastern Indians,
and a feast followed. The western Indians were also given provisions to help them home and all
had been entertained during the council. It is greatly to the credit of the Connecticut Land
Company, and a source of much satisfaction to the residents of the Western Reserve today that
the title to the land was not stolen, but was bought and paid for, even if the price was low ;
further, that possession of the new country was given and taken under the best -of feeling and
without one drop of bloodshed. To be sure, our forefathers must have had a little larger supply of
whiskey than the sentiment of today would allow them, when we remember they gave away one
hundred gallons and had plenty for all summer. History must be studied from its own time.
EARLY DRUNKENNESS.
Whiskey was as plentiful during the early days of the colonization as was food. To be sure, it was
not our adulterated stuff of today, but it was whiskey, and it did what alcohol always has done
and always will do to men. Its stimulating qualities for a time relieved the lonesomeness and
fatigue, but the depression following surely more than overbalanced the good. All of the
misunderstandings among travelers and .early settlers and Indians were caused more or less by
whiskey. The women in the early settlements abhorred it. They feared to have their husbands take
it, lest trouble should follow. Anxiously these women in their own .cabins, with wolves howling
near outside, and babies huddled close within, awaited the coming of the husband who had been
to an adjoining clearing, not knowing what animal or savage might have made way with him
because of his drunkenness. These women saw their neighbors succeed and become prosperous
because of their self-control, while they remained poor because of the "fruit of the corn." Many
and many an over-worked wife who had looked forward to a log-rolling for weeks went home
from the same with weeping eyes and heavy heart, her husband too drunk to guide the horse or
act as her protector. Some people believe that there was not as much drunkenness then as now,
and will bring proof to bear upon it. This is not the place to discuss the temperance question, but,
when we know that in range one, number one, Poland, there were eighteen stills ; that in many
settlements ministers were paid in whiskey, we can scarcely believe that the drunkenness of
today is greater. Then, as now, women were temperate ; then, as now, they suffered from
drunkenness and its consequences ; then, as now, they persuaded and begged their very own to
desist ; then, as now, they wept and prayed, and then, as now, a few were heeded, while more
were not.
One woman of this section, whose husband took too much at stated intervals, when he came
home in that condition, obliged him to sit in a straight-back chair till he was sober. If he started
to move, she raised a stick of wood as if to strike him, when he immediately resumed his seat. He
finally declared there was no use in drinking if one had to sit still until sober, and he reformed.
As a rule, however, the stick, in a real or metaphorical sense; was, and is, in the hand of man.
FIRST INDEPENDENCE DAY.
At last the surveyors had reached their destination. Even though they were adults, they had said
good-bye to their home friends with thick throats and heavy hearts. They had paddled slowly the
New York rivers, had outwitted the British officers, had suffered shipwreck, had endured the
discomforts of long, slow travel, had successfully treated with the Indians, and now, in the
afternoon of a summer day, they had come upon the "promised land." The blue waters of the lake
lapped the shore, the creek sluggishly sought its bay, the great forest trees were heavy with bright
24 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE
green leaves, the grass was thick and soft, the sky was blue, and the lowering sun bathed the
landscape with delicate reds and yellows. It was the Fourth of July, Independence Day, for which
their fathers, twenty years before, had fought, and for which they themselves held holy reverence.
They had double reason to rejoice, and they shouted, sang, fired guns across the water, adding an
additional salute for the new territory. They drank water from the creek and wiskey from the jug;
they named the spot Fort Independence, and drank toasts to the president of the United States, the
state of Connecticut, the Connecticut Land Company, the Fort of Independence, and "the fifty
sons and daughters who have entered it this day." When the camp fires had died down, and the
stars above were thick and bright, they went to sleep in the new land which was shortly to be
broken up into thirteen counties, or parts of counties (Ashtabula, Geauga, Cuyahoga, Lake,
Trumbull, Mahoning, Portage, Summit, part of Medina, part of Ashland, Erie, Huron and
Lorain). If anyone had dreamed that night that in one hundred and fifteen years these thirteen
counties would have almost as much influence in the world as the thirteen original colonies had
at that time ; that most of the huge forests would be supplanted by cultivated fields and
prosperous towns ; that Indian paths would be macadam roads ; that over tiny wires one could
talk to any part of this New Country as easily as they could talk to each other that night on the
lake shore ; that school houses and churches would be thick throughout that region ; and that
both would be free ; that over the very spot where they lay sleeping, powerful engines would
carry sleeping passengers at the rate of sixty miles an hour ; that vehicles without horses would
spin along the lake front from Buffalo creek to the Cuyahoga in less time than it took them to put
their camp in order ; that mountains of ore would lie in the lake ships a few miles from than ; that
no man wilder than they would be east of the Mississippi ; that the wildest animals would be the
youthful bull or the aged house-dog ; that in the nearby valleys would be some of the most
wonderful industrial plants in all the world, and that hundreds of men would have sufficient
money to buy and pay for the whole Western Reserve without inconvenience ; that on this
territory would stand the sixth largest city in the United States ; that slavery would not exist ; that
women would have a voice in making the school laws, and that men would float or fly through
the air above their heads in machines made for flying,—if any one of the party had dreamed any
or all of these things, and related them in the morning, he would have been declared untruthful or
as suffering, too much from that taken from the gurgling jug.
CHAPTER IV.
SURVEYS OF THE WESTERN RESERVE.
On the morning of the 5th of July, two boats put back to Fort Erie for some supplies which had
been left there, while the surveyors began preparations for the field. On the following day the
Indians, who naturally liked pow-wows, and to whom a party of settlers was a curiosity, asked
for another council. Both sides were in a happy mood. The Indians made speeches full of praise
to General Cleaveland, and Paqua presented him with a pipe of peace. This pipe is still in the
possession of the family. Although it is hard for a New Englander to "roll out honied words," still
the general did the best he could, and made up his deficiency by flattery and the giving of
presents. He gave them a string of wampum, silver trinkets, besides twenty dollars worth of
whiskey.
On July 7th, the members of the surveying party left Conneaut. They were ambitious not only to
do their work quickly, but well. Joyously they started into the unknown wilderness. Porter, Pease
and Holley ran the first east line. They found the north corner of Pennsylvania, and ran down five
or six miles west of that line.
NEW CONNECTICUT, NOT HEAVEN.
Moses Warren and party had a line farther west. Before the summer was over, it is written of
Warren, sometimes, "he was a little less energetic," and other times, "he is indolent." He was
either ease-loving or slow. However, the author owes him a debt of gratitude because he wrote a
full, clear hand and was a good speller. Manuscripts of long ago try the patience of the readers of
today. Both Pease and Holley left copious notes, and from them we learn that the first line they
ran caused them much trouble and many vexations, as the land was not only covered with. huge
trees, but with small ones and with thick underbrush ; it was impossible to sight at long range.
The spring had been a wet one, the streams swollen, and the swamps sometimes impassable. The
land lay flat, and on the whole was uninteresting. The horses often wandered off at night and
precious morning time was spent corralling them. Sometimes the surveyors waded the swamps
and streams, sending the cooks, supplies, horses, and laborers around. This always brought about
delay and more or less distress. As the surveyors took the shortest route, they arrived first, and,
wet, tired, and hungry, they were obliged to wait for the rest of the party, who were sometimes
hours late. Mr. Stow, the commissary, had his trials, first, in finding it hard to obtain fresh
supplies, and second, in reaching the various parties in the field. Very often we find notes like
these : "Ate our last breakfast," or, "Only one more dinner left," or "Had less than a half of a pint
of rum left."
The mosquitoes and gnats were troublesome. The surveyors complained of "earth gas," and they
attributed the fever and ague which came later to this gas, but almost always at the same time
mentioned the presence of mosquitoes.
The plan was to find the 41st parallel at the Pennsylvania line, and then run west one hun-
- 27 -
28 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE
died and twenty miles. From this base line, five miles apart, lines were to be run north, and later
cross lines, parallel with the base line, thus making twenty-four townships across and twelve in
the deepest place.
These townships were numbered as ranges, and from the base lines up as towns. Before towns or
hamlets were named, they were called by number. Poland was range 1, number 1, Cleveland
range 12, number 7. Again and again do we read in diaries and papers : "Went to number 4 ;
stopped at Quinby's." Number 4 was not only township 4, but it was range 4.
As the Porter-Holley-Pease party proceeded south they, or their workmen at least, realized that
New Connecticut was not a Paradise. The monotonous records show occasional changes. Only
when they reached the middle-east of the present Trumbull county and could see the
Pennsylvania hills with the valleys in between, they wrote that it was the first time they had seen
"over the woods," and they felt cheered. The rest of the route south was a little less troublesome
and more interesting. Once they thought they heard the tinkle of a cow bell, and hastened to find
it, without success. They believed they had imagined the sound ; not so, for there was then a
family living in that vicinity. When they reached the Mahoning river they saw some traders in a
boat, near the present sight of Youngstown. They talked with them and learned that supplies
could be had at Beaver, and that these traders were on their way to Salt Springs, whose praises
they sang.
PART OF FORTY-FIRST PARALLEL SURVEYED.
Finally, on July 23rd, they set up a wooden post at the intersection of the 41st' parallel and the
Pennsylvania line, southeast corner of Poland.
They had been seventeen days running this line. Surely, they had not been idle, and they had
overcome grievous obstacles. Their poor instruments showed variations, and they did not have
time to prove their work. When the whole survey was finished, they were half a mile out of the
way. It was intended that each township should have sixteen thousand acres of land, and not one
of theirs has just exactly that amount.
Moses Warren and the other surveyors came up with the Pease-Porter party on the 23rd, and they
then separated, beginning five miles apart, and ran the line back to the lake. The return trip was
about the same, except that the laborers showed less inclination to work, and the cooks became
more irritable.
On the 5th of July the laborers began the erection of a crude log house on the east side of
Conneaut creek, which was used for a storehouse. It is referred to in the early history as "Stow
Castle." A second house was later erected as a dwelling for the surveyors. It was then expected
that Conneaut would be the headquarters.
MOUTH OF CUYAHOGA RIVER.
As soon as all was under way, General Cleaveland started by lake for the Cuyahoga river. He
reached his destination the day before the corner post was set in Poland, July 22nd. Among those
accompanying him were Stow, the commissary, and Mr. and Mrs. Stiles. There is no record of
how this spot pleased the party, although Several .writers have drawn imaginary pictures and
noted possible thoughts. So far as the writer. knows, Moses Cleaveland did not commit to paper
his first impression. True it is, that many a purchaser of New Connecticut land, who intended to
settle near the present site of Cleveland, when he saw the desolate sand of the lake shore and felt
the chilly winds, retraced his steps onto the Hiram hills, to the Little Mountain district, or the
ridges of Mesopotamia, Middlefield or Bloomfield.
The running of the parallels was trouble-. some, the work was not finished the first summer, as
there was not time to do that and to plat the Cleveland vicinity. The Chagrin river, not being on
any of the maps, gave most of the surveyors some trouble, and they all took it for the Cuyahoga,.
of course. The
HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 29
field work was destructive to shoes and clothes, and, as said before, food was not always certain.
Part of the laborers early became dissatisfied with only hard work and little pay, and the
company, to ease things, promised them pieces of land and other rewards. Some of them were
early discharged, and others left.
On September 16th, Holley writes : "Encamped a little east of the Chagrin river. Hamilton, the
cook, was very cross and lazy. Was on the point of not cooking any supper, because the bark
would not peel and he knew of nothing to make bread upon. Davenport wet some in the bag."
Thursday, September 22nd : "He discovered a bear swimming across the river." "Munson caught
.a rattlesnake which was boiled and ate."
September 28th : "I carved from a beech tree in Cuyahoga town, Myron Holley, Jr., and on a
birch, Milton Holley, 1796. September 26, 1796, Friendship.' " Apparently the young man was
getting homesick.
October 16th : "Came to camp in consequence of hard rain ; found no fire ; were all wet and
cold, but after pushing about the bottle and getting a good fire and supper we were as merry as
grigs."
FIRST HOUSES ON CLEVELAND'S SITE.
During the summer a cabin was put up for Stiles on lot 53, east side of Bank street, where the
store of Kinney & Leven now stands. A house for the surveyors and a house for stores was
erected near the mouth of the Cuyahoga. These were the first houses built within the present
district of Cleveland for permanent occupancy. There had been a number of buildings erected by
traders, by companies, by missionaries, and so forth, but they were put together for temporary
purposes and were destroyed either by the wind and weather or by the Indians. The latter seemed
always to rejoice when a chance was offered to burn a vacant building. Colonel James Hillman,
who figured conspicuously in the early history of Trumbull county, said he erected a small cabin
on the river near the foot of Superior street in 1786. This was ten years before Cleveland was laid
out. A party of Englishmen who were wrecked on the lake built a cabin in which they lived one
winter, probably '87. In 1797, as we shall see, James Kingsbury occupied a dilapidated building,
put up before '86, for protecting flour which was brought from Pittsburg for Detroit people.
WORK STOPPED FOR THE YEAR.
The cold fall days warned the party that they must stop work. They were not satisfied with the
results, and neither was the Land Company. The latter had spent $14,000 and apparently had
little to show for it. The southern boundary of their territory had not been run west after the
fourth range. A large tract had not been surveyed at all. All of the territory "east of Cuyahoga,
west of the fourth meridian, and south of the sixth parallel" was still not touched. None of the six
townships intended for sale were ready except in the neighborhood of Cleveland. However, the
surveyors had done the best they could under the conditions, and one can read between the lines
of their ordinary surveyor notes an intense desire to be at home.
Holley says : "Tuesday, Oct. 18th, we left Cuyahoga at three o'clock and seventeen minutes for
home. Left Job Stiles and wife and Joseph Landon with provisions for the winter." Porter, Holley
and Shepard rowed along the lake shore by moonlight. Pease walked, taking notes of the coast.
(Pease was a poor sailor.) The pack horses were to go back to Geneva. Atwater and others took
them by land. So anxious were these young men to reach home that they arose one morning at
2:00 a. m. and another 3:00 a. m., and arrived at Conneaut on Friday, the 21st. They left Fort Erie
Octobers 23rd at I :30 a. m. and arrived at Buffalo at 10:30, where they struck a fire "and were
asleep in less than thirty minutes." As they proceeded and their desire for home increased, their
hours of travel were longer. Once they rowed all night. They reached Irondequoit Friday, the
27th. Here
30 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE
somehow they got out of the channel and had to jump into the water up to their waists and push
the boat thirty rods. Wading in water waist deep the last of October is neither pleasant nor safe.
On the 29th they separated at Canandaigua. When we remember that Holley was only .eighteen
years old, and all of them were young men with education, or older men without experience or
education, we believe that most of them did their duty "in that state of life in which it shall please
God to call them." Porter was the thief surveyor, as we have seen. Neither he nor Holley returned
with the party the next year. They became brothers-in-law later. Holley settled at Salisbury,
Connecticut, and his son, Alexander H., became governor. Moses Cleaveland did not return,
either, though he retained his interest, more or less, in the Western Reserve. At one time he
purchased an interest in the Salt Spring Tract, of Parsons. His brother, Camden, married a Miss
Adams, and
(Photo loaned by Fred Byard, of Warren.)
THE UPPER DAM AND WATER WORKS, WARREN.
On the right is the site of the first Van Gorder mill, owned by Justus
Smith, and also of the oil mill. On the left, further up the
bank, was the Dally farm, where the first white
child in old Trumbull County was born.
many of their descendants and connections live
in Trumbull county.
When the winter in its wanton fury set in, there were in Cleveland only Job Stiles and his Wife.
Richard Landon, one of the surveying party, had expected to spend the winter with them, and it is
not known why he left. Edward Paine, for whom Painesville
HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 31
was named, took his place in this cabin. It is a tradition that in this cabin, during the winter, a
child was born, the mother being attended only by a squaw, but this has never been fully verified.
Supplies had been left in Cleveland, and the Indians were exceedingly good to the settlers, so
even if it was a hard winter for. the three, there were some mitigating conditions. Mr. and Mrs.
Stiles were there until 1800, and Mrs. Stiles, who is described as a capable, courageous woman,
lived to a good old age.
FIRST INDEPENDENT ADVENTURER.
Aside from a few people at Fort Erie, there were no white people between Buffalo and the French
settlement on the River Raisin," except those at Cleveland and Conneaut. Soon after General
Cleaveland and party arrived at Conneaut, James Kingsbury, his wife and three children,
appeared. He was the first "independent adventurer" who took up his residence on the Reserve.
They had come from New Hampshire, stopping possibly in New York for a little time. His wife
was Eunice Waldo, a woman of strong and pleasing personality. In the early fall, the Land
Company cleared about six' acres of land, sowed it to wheat, and this was probably the first
wheat raised by white men on the Western Reserve, and Kingsbury is credited as being the first
to thrust a sickle into the wheat field, planted on the soil of the new country. Just what Kingsbury
did through the summer, we are not told, but when all the surveying party had disappeared, he
and his family occupied one of the cabins, presumably "Stow Castle," Mr. and Mrs. Gun, the
other. Mr. Kingsbury found it necessary to go back to New Hampshire,. and he went on
horseback to Buffalo. He expected to be gone, at the latest, six weeks. His trip was uneventful,
but as soon as he reached his destination he was taken with a fever, probably the kind with which
the surveyors had suffered, and it ran a long course. He had left with his family a nephew thirteen
years old, a cow and a yoke of oxen. During the early part of his stay; the Indians furnished the
family with meat, and Mr. and Mrs. Gun were kind to them. Even when the husband's fever
subsided his great weakness rendered it impossible for him to travel, and his anxiety as to his
family retarded his progress. There being no communication at any time, Mrs. Kingsbury had the
same anxiety for him, and in addition she was starving to death. At this crisis a son was born to
her, Mrs. Gun being with her at that time. As this child is reported to be the first child born on
the Western Reserve, we are led to think that the families of Kingsbury and Stiles became mixed
in the minds of some recorders, and that there was no child born during that winter at Cleveland,
and that this was the first.
Before Mr. Kingsbury was able to travel, he set out and reached Buffalo the 3rd of December.
This winter was a severe one, and the snow was over five feet deep in the lake region. However,
Mr. Kingsbury, with an Indian guide, traveled toward his family as fast as he could. His horse
became disabled, but still he staggered along and reached his cabin Christmas eve. Mrs.
Kingsbury had recovered enough to be up and had decided to leave with her family for Erie
Christmas day. "Toward evening a gleam of sunshine broke through the long-clouded heavens,
and lighted up the surrounding forest. Looking out she beheld the figure of her husband
approaching the door." So weak was she that she relapsed into a fever, and her husband, nearly
exhausted, was obliged, the first minute he could travel, to go to Erie for provisions. The snow
was so deep he could not take the oxen, and he drew back a bushel of wheat on the sled. This
they cracked and ate. Presently the cow died and the oxen were killed eating poisonous boughs.
The low state of the mother's health and the death of the cow caused the starvation of the
twomonths-old baby. Tales have appeared in newspapers in regard to this incident which stated
that as Mr. Kingsbury entered his door
32 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE
on his return trip he saw the baby dead on its little couch, and the mother dying. The child did not
die until a month after Mr. Kingsbury reached home.
THE SAD FIRST BURIAL.
A reliable old man, who was about eighty-four years old in 1874, in talking of the hardships of
the people of New Connecticut, said : "But the hardest day's work I ever did was the one in which
I got ready to bury my boy." There were then no hearses, no coffins, no undertakers, no
grave-diggers, but there were tender, loving friends, all of whom were ready to do all in their
power. But the first family of the Reserve was without such comfort. Mr. Kingsbury, entirely
alone (when the Guns left, we do not know), was obliged to do everything there was to be done
for his dead baby. He, and his thirteen-year-old nephew, found a box, and, laying the body in it,
carried it to the top of a hill, where Mrs. Kingsbury, on her bed, could raise herself enough to see
the body lowered to the grave. When this sad duty had been performed, and Mr. Kingsbury
returned to the house, he found his wife unconscious, and for two weeks she took no notice of
anything going on. Mr. Kingsbury, still feeble, was nearly discouraged, when suddenly the severe
north winds were supplanted by southern breezes, and in the atmosphere was a slight promise of
spring. Early in March, when he was hardly able to walk, he took an old rifle which his uncle had
carried in the War of the Revolution, and went into the woods. Presently, a pigeon appeared. He
was no marksman. He was so anxious, however, to get something which was nourishing for his
wife that the tears fairly came to his eyes when he shot and saw the bird fall. He made a broth
and fed her, and saved her life.
From this on, the family grew slowly better, and when the surveying party came back in the
spring, all were well enough to accompany it to Cleveland. Mr. and Mrs. Kingsbury occupied a
cabin earlier referred to and later built a cabin on the east side of the public square. In the fall of
that year a more comfortable cabin was built, further to the east. Here his family was well,
decidedly better than the settlers who dwelt near the mouth of the Cuyahoga. Some time
afterward he built quite a nice frame dwelling. The first crop he raised was on the ground. near
the public square. He had three children : Mrs. Sherman, Amos, and Almon. He lived to be
eighty years old, and his wife seventy-three He had a military commission in New Hampshire,
with the rank of colonel. In i800 he was appointed judge of the court of quarte sessions of the
peace for the county of Trum bull, and in 1805 he was elected, a member of the legislature. His
letters written to Judge Kirtland of Poland at this time, now in the possession of Miss Mary
Morse, are most dignified and business-like. He was a close friend of Commodore Perry and
General Harrison.; It is said the day before the battle of Lake Erie, he was with Perry, and the
latter asked him what he thought ought to be done. The judge replied : "Why, sir, I would fight."
From all accounts it seems that Judge and Mrs. Kingsbury were exemplary citizens and that the
sufferings and distresses which came, to them their first winter in the new land were wiped out
by the happy, joyous years which followed.
THREE HEROINES REWARDED.
It is a pleasant fact to record that the three women who came to. the Western Reserve the first
winter of its existence courageously bore the hardships, shared. the sorrows and conducted
themselves in a heroic manner. The Connecticut Land Company realized this and presented to
Mrs. Gun one one-hundred-acres lot ; to Mrs. Stiles, one city lot, one ten-acre lot and one
one-hundred-acre lot. The. company also gave to James Kingsbury and \\if-one one-hundred-acre
lot.
THE SURVEY, OF 1797.
The principal surveyor of the party of 17 was Seth Pease, who had occupied the position;
HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 33
of astronomer and surveyor the year before. He was born at Suffield, 1764, married Bathsheba
Kent, 1785, died at Philadelphia, 1819. From Pease Genealogical Record we learn : "He was a
man of sterling worth, accurate and scientific. He was surveyor general of the United States for a
series of years and afterwards was assistant postmaster general under Postmaster General Gideon
Granger (his brother-in-law) during the administrations of Jefferson and Madison." He has
descendants of his own in the central part of the state, and the sons of Frederick Kinsman, of
Warren, are his grand-nephews.
Early in the 'spring he organized a party and proceeded west. Of those who accompanied him, the
following had been with him the year before : Richard M. Stoddard, Moses Warren (who despite
the report of his easygoing ways must have satisfied the company or he would not have been
re-employed), Amzi Atwater, Joseph Landon, Amos Spafford, Warham Shepard, as surveyors.
Employed in other capacities, Nathaniel Doan, Ezekial Morley, Joseph Tinker, David Beard,
Charles Parker. Mr. Pease not only had the management of the party but the care of the funds as
well. He left his home on the 3rd day of April and had more inconvenience than the party of the
first year, because the company was not so willing to keep him in funds. He says but for the
financial help of Mr. Mathers he would have been many times greatly embarrassed. Six boats
started up the Mohawk on April 20th, and on April 25th were re-enforced at Fort Schuyler by
Phideas Baker and Mr. Hart's boat. They received other recruits at several places, and on April
30th Mr. Pease obtained his trunk, which he had left at Three River Point the year before.
Arriving at Irondequoit, May 4th, others joined the party. On May 6th he interviewed Augustus
Porter, hoping to induce him to take charge of the party for the summer. In this he was not
successful. One of his men on the following day deserted because of homesickness, They
proceeded from Can-
Vol. I-3
andaigua in two parties, one going by land and the other by the lake, and arrived at Fort Niagara
on May 14th. The following day boats went back to Irondequoit for the rest of the stores. When
the lake party reached Buffalo on May 19th, they found the land party had been there two days.
They reached Conneaut on May 26th and put the boats into the creek. In the night a cry was
raised that during the storm the boats had broken loose and gone out into the lake ; fortunately,
this proved to be a mistake. On May 29th Spafford began surveying, and reached the Cuyahoga
June 1st. The Kingsbury family was found in a very low state of health at Conneaut, but the
Stiles and Gun households were very well at Cleveland. Mr. Gun was at that date back in
Conneaut. On the third day of June, in attempting to ford the Grand river, one of the land party,
David Eldredge, was drowned. We find the following entry : "Sunday, June 4th. This morning
selected a piece of ground for a burying ground, the north parts of lots 97 and 98 ; and attended
the funeral of the deceased with as much decency and solemnity as could be expected. Mr. Hart
read church service. The afternoon was devoted to washing." Thus have life and death always
gone hand in hand.
SURVEY COMMENCED IN EARNEST.
When a garden had been made, the surveying began in earnest, headquarters at Cleveland. The
commissary department of the party was much more satisfactory the second year than the first,
but there was much more sickness. On the 25th of June Mr. Pease began running the unfinished
line, marking the lower boundary of the Reserve.
Amzi Atwater, in speaking of the second trip, makes this curious and interesting notation : "In
passing down this stream (Oswego), which had long been known by boatmen, we passed in a
small inlet stream two large, formidable looking boats or small vessels which reminded us of a
sea-port harbor. We were told that they were, the season before, conveyed from the Hudson river,
partly by water
34 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE
and finally on wheels, to be conveyed to Lake Ontario ; that they were built of the lightest
material and intended for no other use than to have it published, in Europe that vessels of those
dimensions had passed those waters to aid land speculations." Thus early did some Yankees
attempt to interest ( ?) Englishmen in western commercial enterprises.
AMZI ATWATER.
Amzi Atwater, born in New Haven in 1776, was early thrown upon his own resources, as his
father lost his health in the war for Independence. He learned to read and write, but was early
"hired out" to an uncle for sixty dollars a year. At one time he went to visit this uncle, Rev. Noah
Atwater, who was a successful teacher of young men. Upon invitation he spent the winter there,
studying surveying. His title in the first Connecticut Land Company's employees was that of
"explorer's assistant." He started from Connecticut, on foot and alone, to meet Shepard at
Canandaigua. He had charge of the cattle and the pack horses and went the entire distance by
land. He served in almost every capacity. When the survey was finished here, he worked at his
profession in the east, and in 1800, accompanied by his brother, came to Mantua. He bought i
farm on the road between Mantua and Shalersville, on the Cuyahoga, and there he lived and died.
Judge Ezra B. Taylor, of Warren, now in his eighty-seventh year, remembers Judge Atwater well,
having first seen him when he was a boy thirteen years old. He describes him as a gentle,
dignified, influential person, who was known to almost all the early residents of Portage county.
He died in 1851, at the age of seventy-six.
THE WARREN FIELD NOTES.
The author of this work has been able to secure from Mrs. Julia Warren, of Rockford, Illinois,
whose husband was the grandson of Moses Warren, some heretofore unpublished
notes from his field book. Mrs. Warren has the entire record, and an important collection of facts
it is.
"Moses Warren, Jr., left Connecticut May 1, 1796, on the schooner 'Lark,' for the Connecticut
Reserve. The party reached Schenectady May 12th ; there loaded forty-four boats',: under the
order of Mr. Porter for 'Fort Stanwix.' On July 4th, the boats reached Walnut] creek,. three miles
from the neck, with a fine 1 beach all the way to Coneought. Plenty of `1 springs of good water.
About Elk creek the land is high and is called Elk Mountain. We found the shore line of
Pennsylvania twenty-five miles from Delaware, and after traveling about four miles found the
west line, passed it. Eight in our company, and gave three cheers for New Connecticut. About
two miles farther is Coneought creek, at which place we arrived at 5 P. M. At 6 the boats and
cattle arrived and a federal salute is fired and a volley for 'New Conn.' The enlivening draughts
went round in plenty, five or six toasts were drank, 'The President,' The Conn. Land co.,'Port
Independence,' and the `Sons of Fortitude that by perseverance have entered it this day,' &c. ; and
in future this place is to be called 'Port Independence.'
"The land looks well, the timber is plenty, here we encamp and conclude to make our first
storehouse. On July 6th they laid the first log of the first house in New Connecticut." [This is
what they thought, but we have seen that they were mistaken.]
On Sunday, July10,, 1796, is the following entry : "General Cleaveland, Mr. Stow and Captain
Buckland go to Ash de Bouillon [notice the spelling of Ashtabula Creek on discovery and all
hands at rest once more ; the hands seem more inclined to whist and all fours than the Gospel."
On Saturday, June10th,, 1797: "Started from Cleveland to run the E and W line No. 5 from the
corner left by Mr. Pease last year, to Pennsylvania, being forty miles ; then to run the E and W
line No. 2 from Penn to
HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 35
Cuyahoga. Have three pack horses with stores of various kinds ; pork 100 lbs., flour 320 lbs., etc.
With me is Col. Wait, Solomon Giddings ; chainmen John Hine and Samuel Keeney ; axe-men
John Doran and Eli Canfield ; pack horseman Thomas Green ; also to return in ten days with the
grey mare. The horses Hannah and Peggy remain with me. Went east with Shepard and his party
to the east line of Cleveland ; then south to ,No. 6, l0th range ; then east till past the Sugar
Orchard, and camped on Sugar creek. Good feed for the horses, and the land hereabout is
excellent, being No. 7, nth range. Northern and middle part of the line between Cleveland and
No. 7 is strong beach land, but not very tempting."
Under date June 12th is a note, as follows : "The post that I set last year in the 9th meridian was
thrown down and all the marks cut out with a Tomahawk. I set a new one and remarked it
yesterday."
Under date of Aug. 15th, while they were near Mahoning hill and creek : "The muskitos are the
plentiest I ever found them and, like the furnace of . the King of Babylon, heated with 7-fold
rage. I never was so tormented with them before. (Their wrath increases as their time grows
short.) So greedy were they as to light on the Company's glass and try to pierce it with their bills ;
I suppose deceived by the agitation of the. needle and expecting blood instead of magnetism."
The records of the second party of surveyors are more distressing than those of the first. Nearly
every entry mentions illness. Mr. Pease is obliged to discontinue his journal because of his
fearful chills and fever. War, ren seems to have escaped, or, at least, he does not mention it.
During this summer occasional prospectors appeared at Conneaut, at Cuyahoga, and the places in
between. "The three gentlemen we saw the other day going to Cleveland hailed us. As they
contemplated becoming settlers, we furnished them with a loaf of bread." Generous !
Sunday, October 8: "Opened second barrel of pork. Found it very poor, like the first, consisting
almost entirely of head and legs, with one old sow belly, teats two inches long, meat one inch
thick."
The party was at Conneaut October 22nd, on their way home. There they met Mr. John Young, of
Youngstown, who brought them word of the drowning of three acquaintances at Chautauqua, the
murdering of a man on Big Beaver, and like news. The party, in several divisions, then proceeds
eastward, arriving in Buffalo November 6. The winter snows had begun. The party continued to
Canandaigua and dispersed, Mr. Pease remaining some time to bring up the work.
The survey was practically finished.
The facts in. regard to the distribution of land, the Connecticut Land Company, and so forth, are
of great interest, but there is not space to tell of them here. How, and when, and by whom these
lands were purchased will, in part, be told later.
In the unpublished journal of Turhand Kirtland is a letter written by Samuel Huntington, under
date of April 12, 1806, in which he says : "At town meeting I am told there was much abuse of
the Land Company. * * * A harrange from C. * * * and sent them and all their agents to the
D—e—l. Those who were mad were in the majority. * * * I think you will have a warm time
when you come here."
SOME FACTS ABOUT THE RESERVE.
With the close of this narrative which so vividly portrays the numerous difficulties attending the
survey of the Western Reserve, it may be well to call attention to a few facts. The territory of the
present counties embraced in the old Reserve has an area of 5,280 square miles. It is narrowest at
the east end of Huron and Erie counties. The extreme northwest land of the Reserve is the Isle of
St. George, which is seventeen miles farther north than Cleveland, and very near to the
36 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE
parallel that passes through the villages of Painesville and Jefferson, and over the spot famous for
Perry's victory. As a rule, the townships on the Reserve are five Miles square,
but this is not true of those bordering 0n the Lakes. There were two hundred and eighteen
townships on the Reserve—more than one-seventh of the number in the State of Ohio.
CHAPTER V.
RESERVE SETTLED AND MAPPED.
James Kingsbury may be considered the first permanent settler in old Trumbull county. Stiles
and Gun were ahead of him with the party, but Gun only stayed a little while, three or four years,
and it is not sure that Stiles intended to stay when he came. It is undoubtedly true that the
Kingsbury baby that starved to death was the first white child born to permanent settlers.
JUDGE KINGSBURY'S HOUSE. BUILT IN 1800
That Kingsbury proved later to be a valued citizen, we have seen. There is now in the possession
of Miss Mary L. W. Morse, of Poland, the following, which was found among the papers of
Judge Turhand Kirtland, Miss Morse's great-grandfather :
"May 18, 1811. Rec'd, Cleveland, of Turhand Kirtland a deed from the trustees of the
Connecticut Land Company for 100 acres, lot No. 433, being the same lot of land that was voted
by said company to be given to said Kingsbury and wife for a compensation for early settlement,
and sundry services rendered said company with me.
"JAMES KINGSBURY."
After the Connecticut Land Company had withdrawn its surveyors, the emigrants who appeared
settled in isolated spots. This was because they bought their land in large amounts and because
the Connecticut Land Company scattered them as much as possible. Settlers were thus lonesome,
far away from the base of supplies, and obliged to grind their own corn and grain, found trouble
in procuring domestic animals, in having implements repaired, or in securing the services of a
physician. No wonder they became sick and discouraged or, as metaphysicians say today,
discouraged and sick, and returned to their old homes. They lived quiet, uneventful lives, and
when they were gathered to their fathers the world knew them no more. The number of those
coming in 1798 and 1799 was small. Unlike the surveyors when they went East, it was not to
write reports for directors of a land company, but to get their families, and after they were in their
new homes they were too much occupied to write diaries by the firelight, and, having few or no
mails, wrote few or no letters. Summer days were too precious to be used in letter writing, and
winter ones, in dark cabins, too dismal to want to tell of them. It was expected that the northern
part of the Western Reserve would be settled before the southern, but the opposite was true. The
road from Pittsburg was less hard to travel than the one from Canandaigua ; the lake winds were
too severe to be enjoyed ; the bits of land cleared long before, lying in the lower part, seemed
very inviting to those who had attempted to remove the huge trees cover-'
- 37 -
38 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE
combined to draw settlers nearer the 41st parallel.
Of the first settlers, some men walked the entire way from Connecticut ; some rode horseback
part way, sharing the horse with others ; some rode in ox carts ; some drove oxen ; some came
part way by land and the rest by water ; some came on sleds in mid-winter ; some plowed
through the mud of spring, or endured the heat of summer ; some had bleeding feet, and some
serious illnesses. Sometimes it was a bride and a groom who started alone ; sometimes it was a
husband, wife and children ; sometimes it was a group of neighbors who made the party.
Children were born on the. way, and people of all ages died and were buried where they died. But
after they came, their experiences were almost identical.
JOHN YOUNG.
John Young, a native of New Hampshire, who emigrated to New York and in 1792 married Mary
Stone White, daughter of the first settler of the land on which Whitestown now stands, came to
the lower part of Trumbull county in 1796; this was the year Kingsbury was at Conneaut. He
began his settlement, calling it Youngstown. He removed his family, wife and two children, to
the new house in 1799. That year a son was born to them, William, and in 1802 a daughter,
Mary. His oldest son, John, says :
"In 1803 our mother, finding the trials of her country life there, with the latch-string always out
and a table free to all, too great with her young family, for her powers of endurance, our father, in
deference to heR earnest entreaties, closed up his business as best he could and returned with his
family to Whitestown and to the home and farm which her father had provided and kept for
them."
He therefore spent but seven years in the town which bears his name and which is known
throughout the United States as a great industrial center. He, however, returned occasionally .for
a visit, probably the last time in his own sleigh in 1814. It is supposed that. Mr. Young's
brother-in-law, Philo White, and Lemuel Storrs were equally interested in the land purchased.
However, the contract with the Connecticut Land Company was made alone to Mr. Young.
JAMES HILLMAN.
James Hillman was early at Youngstown. Three different stories in regard to the friendship of
Young and Hillman are in existence. The most common one is that Hillman was on the river in a
canoe, and, seeing smoke on the hank of the river, landed and found Mr. Young and Mr. Wolcott.
He visited with them a few days (people were not in such a frantic hurry as they are now), and
then he persuaded them to go down to Beaver, where his headquarters were, to celebrate the
Fourth of July. This they did, and upon their return Mr. Hillman came with them, and from that
time they lived in close friendship.
Another tradition is that Hillman brought Young up the river from Pittsburg and that Hillman
was induced to take up his residence with Young. Still another, that Young stopped at Beaver on
his way west for Supplies or rest, and that Hillman, whose business was transporting passengers
and trading with Indians and frontiersmen, carried Young up the river, and that from their
acquaintance came a friendship which resulted in Hillman locating. there. The first story seems to
be the generally accepted one.
FIRST DWELLING IN MAHONING VALLEY.
The first house erected as a settler's dwelling in the Mahoning Valley was Youngs. This was in
the neighborhood of Spring Common, probably Front street in Youngstown. Young also erected
a cabin on the river bank in Warren back of the present residence of Chas. Wannemaker, on
South Main. This stood in a clearing made by the Indians. Here he sowed a crop, harvested it and
stored it in the cabin and transported it to Youngstown by sled in the winter.
Roswell M. Grant, the uncle of Ulysses
HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 39
Grant, under the date of September 7, 1875, sent a letter to the Pioneers Association of
Youngstown for its celebration on September loth, which contained some facts in regard to
James Hillman. He says that Hillman, was a native of Northumberland county, Pennsylvania,
although his father lived on the Ohio river. James was in the Revolutionary war and was captured
at Georgetown. "After his return he went to a corn-husking, where he met a Miss Catherine
______. After dancing with her for some time he proposed marriage. A squire being present, they
were married the same night. I have heard Mrs. Hillman many a time say she never had a pair of
shoes or stockings until after her marriage, and I have often heard :them both say that she had
neither shoes nor. stockings when they were married." Mr. Grant then tells a story of Mr. Young
being carried up from Pittsburg by Hillman. "Mrs. Hillman went with them. After they arrived at
Youngstown, John Young offered Mrs. Hillman her choice of six acres, any place she would
choose it in the town plot, if she would remain. She did so. Mrs. Hillman took her six acres east
of the spot where William Rayen's house stood. James Hillman helped John Young to lay out the
town. He understood the Indians and they understood him. When trouble arose between the white
and the red man he would volunteer to settle it provided he could go alone to do it. In this way he
did efficient service to both, and did for the pioneer what no other settler seemed able or willing
to do."
FIRST SETTLEMENT IN GEAUGA COUNTY.
The first settlement in present Geauga county was at Burton in the year 1798 when three families
came from Connecticut.
As we have seen, Job Stiles and his wife and Edward Paine spent the winter of '96 at the mouth
of the Cuyahoga. The next year James Kingsbury and his family were there, together with Major
Lorenzo Carter and Ezekiel Holley and their families. In 1798 Rodolphus Edwards and Nathaniel
Doan and family were added to the colony.
THE DOAN FAMILY.
The early manuscripts show that it took Mr. Doan ninety-two days to make the journey from
Chatham, Connecticut. The fever, and fever and ague, were if anything worse during this year of
'98 than in '97. The Doan family consisted of nine persons, and only one of them had strength
enough to bring water to the others. This was Seth Doan, a boy of thirteen. The fever and ague
which prevailed in many parts of the Reserve in the '50s and '60s was intermittent. Chills would
occur every other day for a stated period, and then cease, beginning again on their every-other
day schedule at the end of a certain interval. But among the Cleveland people a patient was
considered fortunate if he had only one attack a day ; most patients had three.
At one time none of the Doan family could leave the house and they had only turnips to eat. It
was about this time that Judge Kingsbury and his family did great good in nursing and caring for
the sick. The Carter family did not seem to suffer as much as did the family of Mr. Doan. Howe
says, "destitute of a physician and with a few medicines, necessity again taught them to use such
means as nature had placed within their reach. For calomel, they substituted pills from the extract
of the bark of the butternut, and, in lieu of quinine, used dog-wood and cherry bark." Probably
because of this malarious condition, and because of the severe winds, the colony at the mouth of
the Cuyahoga did not grow, and from January, 1799, to April, 1800, Major Carter's family was
the only one living there. The others had moved back onto the hills and into the country.
When John Doan came west he had six children, the youngest three years old. They separated at
Buffalo, the father and one son taking the Indian trail and carrying part of the goods on the backs
of the horses and oxen. They followed the first road made along the lake shore, but there were no
bridges. "The mother with the other children made the trip from Buffalo by water. She was
accompanied
40 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE
by an Indian and several white men who had been engaged to assist her on the journey. They
came in a row-boat propelled by oars at times, and again by a tow-line carried on the bank.
Besides their furniture and household goods, they carried a box of live geese, which were
declared to be the first domesticated birds of the kind ever brought into Ohio.' This of course
must mean northern Ohio. At the mouth of the Grand river the boat was over-turned, throwing
mother, children, goods and box overboard. By good fortune, the water was shallow, and while
the red men carried the children ashore, the white men and Mrs. Doan saved the goods. The
geese floated out into the lake, but in some way became freed from their prison and swimming
ashore were recaptured. At Grand river Mr. Doan met them and the boat was taken on to
Cleveland without further adventures.
HON. BENJAMIN TAPPAN.
One of the earliest settlers of old Trumbull county was Hon. Benjamin Tappan, who arrived in
June, 1799, and settled where Ravenna now stands. A Mr. Honey, as we have seen, preceded
him, but there were few. others. On the way from Connecticut he fell in with David Hudson and
they came on together to the mouth of the Cuyahoga river. They went up that river as far as
Boston. Mr. Hudson stayed at Hudson. Mr. Tappan left his goods and family at Boston, and cut a
road through to his new home. With the man who accompanied him he built a dray, yoked on his
oxen, and took part of his goods from Boston to his camp. When he went back for the second
load the man who had been left in charge of the tent had joined Mr. Hudson's party. The weather
being warm and wet, one of his oxen died from fly bites, he was left with his goods in the
wilderness, and no money. One of his men went to the commandant at Fort Erie, a hundred miles
distant, to borrow money. He himself did what most people did who lived in this new country,
went to James Hillman, at Youngstown, with his troubles. Hillman encouraged him, and sold
him an ox on credit "at the usual price." It seems then as now men took advantage of other men
in distress and in several records is this fact stated to show Hillman's character. This unfortunate ,
occurrence delayed him in the planting of crops. He had to depend upon his own gun for meat,
except as be bought some from the Indians. He had to travel to western Pennsylvania for his
supplies. He lived in a sort of a bark house until his log cabin was finished, which was January 1,
1800. Mr. Tappan proved to be not only a good citizen for, Ravenna and vicinity, but to the state
as well. His later biography is given under Bench and Bar.
DAVID HUDSON AND PARTY.
Mr. Hudson and his party, traveling by water, had a serious time. The Niagara river was filled
with ice and their boat had to be pulled by ropes by men on shore to keep it from drifting down
with the current. The lake was also dangerous from large cakes of ice. He had fallen in with Elias
Harmon, and .when the party was off the Ashtabula shore their boats were driven in and Mr.
Harmon's badly damaged. They, however, repaired this, put baggage and supplies in it, and the
party, including Harmon, Tappan, and Hudson, arrived in Cleveland June 8, 1799. The river was
so low, because of the drought, that they had to drag their boats over the shallow places. The
surveyors had described the water near the Hudson purchase to be the depth they had found the
water of the Cuyahoga. So when they began dragging the boat they thought they had reached
their land. The party went ashore, tried to locate lines, and after Wasting nearly a week, found
they were a good ways from their destination. The cattle belonging to Tappan and Hudson cam
overland. They got out of their way, and instead of going direct to Hudsoh, wen south to the Salt
Spring tract, and, afte many narrow escapes in their wanderings
HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 41
reached the Cuyahoga, at Boston,. where the boats were left. While they were fixing yokes for
the oxen, and making a primitive road, the Indians stole part of their provisions from the boats.
This gave Mr. Hudson grave fears of their being .able to get through the winter. He therefore
turned about, hoping to meet his .man who was coming with stores, and did find him, on July
2nd, "lying at his ease near Cattaraugus." He got back to his party in time to save them from
suffering. His account of that summer of his going east for his family in the damaged boat which
he had purchased of Harmon, and which was so leaky that it had to be bailed all the time it was
on the, lake ; of his. reaching his home, getting his family and his party, and returning the
following year, reads like a most veritable romance. He was the founder of Hudson, had much to
do with the Western Reserve College, and was a strong, able, honest man. He has direct
descendants residing in Hudson now. His daughter Maria married Harvey Baldwin, both of
whom were vitally interested in the college which lately became the Western Reserve University
at Cleveland. The daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin married Edwin Gregory, who was a
prominent Ohio educator, being principal Of the Rayen School of Youngstown for many years.
David Daniels, of Salisbury, Connecticut, ought to be mentioned in this list of pioneers, since he
came to Palmyra in 1799, and made preparation' for his family, which he brought the following
year.
Ebenezer Sheldon, like Daniels, came in 1799, and prepared the way for his family. They started
from Connecticut in the early spring of 1800, and came, as did most of the settlers of that year, in
a wagon drawn by oxen. They led their horses. 'They had no special adventures in the beginning,
but were overtaken by a storm in the woods west of Warren and miraculously escaped death.
Timber fell all about their to such an extent as to hem them in. They were obliged to stay all
night in the woods and were not released the next day until they got assistance to cut the road.
One of the Miss Sheldons became the wife of Amzi Atwater.
HON. JOHN WALWORTH.
Hon. John Walworth, a native of New London, Connecticut, who had spent several years in
travel, was small of stature and supposed to have tuberculosis, visited Cleveland in 1799. He was
then living in the neighborhood of Cayuga lake, New York. Upon his return, he went to
Connecticut, and bought 2,000 acres of land in number II in range 8 (Painesville). Late in
February of 1800, he started for his new home. Others joined him, so that the party filled two
sleighs when they reached Lake Erie. They drove on the ice, stopping on the shore at Cattaraugus
creek for one night. Just how men, women and children could camp in the snow with heavy wind
blowing we do not understand, but they did and declared themselves comfortable. Leaving his
family at Erie, he went back to Buffalo for his goods, arid all came safely to their new home.
Judge Jesse Phelps, Jared Woods, Ebenezer Merry, Charles Parker and Moses Parks were living
in Mentor. It was about April 1st when the family was settled and General Edward Paine, who
had made his headquarters at Cleveland, took up his residence there.
ATWATER TOWNSHIP, TRUMBULL COUNTY.
One of the earliest townships settled was Atwater. Early in the spring, April, 1799, Capt. Caleb
Atwater, Jonathan Merrick, Peter Bonnell, Asahel Blakesley, and Asa Hall and his wife arrived
in Atwater. In the fall all of them except Hall and his wife returned to the east. For two whole
years these people were the only white people in Atwater. Their nearest neighbor, Lewis Ely,
lived in Deerfield. In the spring of the following year a child was born, Atwater Hall, who was
the first child born inside the limits of the present Portage county.
42 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE
SETTLERS OF DEERFIELD.
The first actual settler in Deerfield was Lewis Ely, who came with his family in July, 1799. Alva
Day, John Campbell and Joel Thrall having walked from Connecticut, arriving in March of 1800.
They suffered many hardships going over the mountains in the snow and that they made the :trip
successfully seems astonishing. John Campbell did not know that his hard experiences were soon
to be forgotten in his joy. 'In that very year he married Sarah, the daughter of Lewis Ely. This was
the first marriage among white people recorded in the present Portage county. There were no
ministers in that neighborhood, and Calvin Austin, of :Warren, a justice of the peace, was asked
to perform the wedding service. Justice Austin did not know any set form for marriage. Calvin
Pease offered to teach him a proper form. They did not sit down by some good fire and prepare
for this wedding. Somehow the people of this time had to do so much walking they continued it
when it was not necessary. So these two Calvins walked twenty-one miles together through the
woods in drear November, one teaching, one repeating' as they went. Calvin Pease had a great
sense of humor and was a tease with all. When, therefore, Mr. Austin had in a dignified manner
repeated this service, concluding with "I pronounce you man and wife, and may God have mercy
on your souls," the assembled guests were astonished, and Mr. Pease suppressed his laughter,
with great difficulty. The great-granddaughter of the frontier bride remembers that when she was
nearly eighty she was tall, straight for her age, wore a dark brown frontpiece of hair under her
snowy cap. Her dress of dark brown delaine had pink roses, a fichu-like cape of the same
material was about her shoulders, with a touch of white at the throat. She was rather sober of face
and never held or kissed this great-granddaughter. people did not show inward love in outward
expression then ; besides if she had held and kissed his grandchildren and her
great-grand-children she would have had no time for anything else, for the age of race suicide
had not begun.
DANIEL BOONE OF TRUMBULL 'COUNTY.
It was the intention not to mention in the list of "the first settlers" any one arriving after 1800, but
the family of Mills, which came very early in that Year, having been so identified with the early
settlement that exception is made of them. Three brothers, Delaun, Asehel, and Isaac, came in
covered wagons. The trip was more expensive than they expected and they had less than
twenty-five cents among them when they arrived. At that time the northern part of Portage was
being surveyed under Amzi Atwater, and these men engaged to work as ax-men under the
surveyors. Isaac was not married and after a time went back to the east. Delaun and Asehel
settled on the road running west from the center of Nelson, now Portage county. All the old
diaries of early travelers who went to Burton, Painesville, etc., have this statement, "Stopped at
Mills for dinner," or "Fed horses at or "Stayed several days at Mills." Delaun received the title of
captain and was a great hunter, of both animals and Indians. He was the Daniel Boone of old
Trumbull county. Wonderful, indeed, are the stories told of his adventures. His children were
Methodists, and it is not hard for the author to close her eyes and hear the rather sweet voice of
Albert Mills, a son of one of these men, leading. the Sunday school with "There'll be something
in Heaven for children to do." The son Homer Stilt lives on the old home farm.
FIRST MAP (PEASE) OF THE RESERVE.
Albion Morris Dyer, curator of, the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland—and a
close student of history, lately contributed the following to the Cleveland Plain Dealer and with
his consent it is reproduced here: "There has recently turned up among a lot of unclassified letters
and papers in the Western Reserve Historical Society four letters
HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 43
bearing date of 1798, that have an interesting connection with the beginning of civilization on the
Connecticut Western Reser.ve. The four letters tell of the making of the first map of the Western
Reserve and disclose as a fact the source of the family names sprinkled over the geography of the
lake counties of Ohio.
"As the reader may have observed the names of the townships in northeastern Ohio read like a
list of epitaphs in a Connecticut town grave-yard. Some of the names point to the classics, and no
doubt may be traced to the sanctum of the Greek department of Yale College. Others follow the
town names of Connecticut, which do themselves, but repeat the local names of Old
England—Norwalk, Canterbury, Groton, Windsor, Hartford, etc. But the most of the townships
of the reserve bear names that indicate the proprietary nature of the foundation of society in this
part of the west—Pierpont, Kinsman, Trumbull, Hubbard, Boardman, Leffingwell, Randolph,
Granger, Townsend, Perkins, Sherman, Bronson, Jessup, Parkman, etc., reminders of the
'millionaires' of that day.
* * * * * * * * * * *
"Several copies of the map in the possession of the Historical Society, tell the story of the zeal of
the proprietors to secure undying fame by attaching their family names to the townships—they
wanted their own names on the map and they besieged the workshop of the engraver while the
map was being made to secure that distinction.
"The letters were written at New Haven soon after the return of the first company of surveyors
from Cleveland, and before the draft of lands was negotiated at Hartford. It happened that there
dwelt at New Haven, and worked at his art, a famous engraver and rinter of views and maps and
to him applied the surveyor to prepare a plate for the map of the Connecticut Reserve: This
engraver was Amos Doolittle and his workshop and home stood at the northwest corner of the
college green opposite the campus where the Yale Divinity school is now located.
* * * * * * * * * * *
"The engraver made some famous plates here—of early Yale—of events of the revolution, and of
maps for the New York and Boston publishers. He made maps of the early states and of the
North American Continent—some of which are in the cartography collection of the Historical
Society. They show a technical ability of engraving and printing equal to that of the map makers
of the old world. He worked on a polished copper plate with the wax process and his lines are
clear and sharp. He used the simple wooden press with the platen coming down to strike on
points and no doubt mixed his own ink of real lamp black and linseed oil so that the lines have a
rich velvety appearance as if cut with a steel die and placed applique out of depths of Nubian
darkness as clear and black and glossy today as when first printed over a century ago.
"Doolittle was a self-developed engraver and something of a local hero. He went to the front at
the outbreak of the Revolutionary war al9ng with his fellow townsman Col. Benedict Arnold,
and he turned up at Boston in time to witness the famous engagement at Concord. He used this
historic scene as the subject of his first engraving. This picture appeared in all the early
illustrated histories of the American war and besides it stands at the head of the list as the first
engraving on metal made and printed in America. This and other historical scenes made by
Doolittle won for him the title of Father of American Engraving—all of which is duly enshrined
in the classics on this subject, Stauffer's American Engravers on Copper and Steel, and Dun-lap's
History of the Art of Design.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"The four letters were found among papers of Seth Pease, chief of the surveyors of the reserve, to
whom they were addressed. Pease had finished the survey and returned to his home in Suffield,
where he drew off his notes
44 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE
and made the beautiful manuscript plat on the reserve now on exhibition in the museum of the
historical society. He wished to publish the map and wrote to the engraver asking his price. The
letters written by Doolittle in the correspondence that followed tell the story. Here is one, with
the peculiarities of orthography and punctuation characteristic of the time :"
Sir : I here with send you a Maps, of the Connecticut Reserve ; hope they will answer your
expectations.—There has a number of Gentlemen sent in name to certain Towns in which they
were concerned and trust it will meet your Aprobation—I am now printing the Maps and shall
have the 500 ready for delivery next week would thank you to enform whether I shall dispose of
any of the maps and send you an account, also the price you propose to sell them at.
The paper which is made for the maps weigs 35p pr Reem which is charged at 2S pr lb.
I am Sir with Esteem your most
humble servant,
AMOS DOOLITTLE.
Newhaven, April 19, 1798.
Seth Pease, Esqr.
HOME LIFE OF THE PIONEERS:
Before we proceed farther with the history of the -Western Reserve after 1800, let us take
CENTENNIAL LOG CABIN.
a look at the home life of the people who lived in New Connecticut in the first early days.
There were no steam cars, street cars, automobiles or coaches. No large boats came this way,
since even on the lake there were no natural harbors to admit them. Men who had the most
money and had therefore bought large tracts of land arrived during the summer days, located their
land, cleared a spot for the house, and returned home. If they were very wealthy they left a man
or two to stay through the winter to construct the cabin and care for a few domestic animals. The
following spring they brought their families and began a new life. Sikh cases were few, because
the number of rich emigrants was small. Most of the travelers came in family or neighborhood
groups, with an ox cart for the baggage, and a horse or two. There was seldom place for all to
ride and they took turn about. A large percent came by horseback. Sometimes a woman would
ride, carrying a baby and utensils for cooking, while the husband would walk, leading another
horse on which was piled the baggage. Often a husband and wife, newly married, would ride
horses, or one horse, to the new home. Sometimes men used boats as far as streams were
navigable, walking the rest of the way. Sometimes men walked all the way. Sometimes women
came in pairs without men, walking the entire distance. Sometimes women carried babies on
their backs while the husbands carried the provisions on his. When it came night they would
sleep on the ground, with no covering if it were pleasant, under the trees or large pieces of bark
stuck on poles, if it were rainy. Record is given of women who came alone (except as they would
fall in with parties now and then), carrying a baby or leading a child. In this latter case the trip
was exceedingly hard. In the beginning such a traveler was in civilization, where she could easily
find shelter and lodging. However, as she proceeded, and grew more weary and more lonesome,
hamlets were farther apart, until houses almost disappeared. It is recorded that several women
carried their babies in their aprons all the way from New England. The apron was worn almost as
much as the dress; colored cottons for hard work, white for home dress-up, and among the
wealthy silk for visiting. They
HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 45
were used for many purposes for which we would never think of using them today.
When women came alone it was usually because they were exceedingly poor and had inherited
land in the new country, or because the husband had preceded them to prepare a place for them.
Many a pioneer mother, when she reached the land belonging to her or to her husband, saw the
wild 'country, remembered her abiding place "back home," covered her face with her hands, sat
down on the fresh hewn logs, or made her way into in .forests, and gave way to her feelings in
floods of tears. As soon as* this first disappointment was over, she turned her attention to her
duty. If any women, anywhere, in all the wide world, ever did the courageous things, the right
things it was the women who came to New Connecticut and helped to transform it from a
wilderness to one of the most prosperous places of the world.
As there were some women who came in rather comfortable ox-carts, so there were some women
who had homes awaiting them, but this percent was so small that it is hardly to be considered.
SWEET CHILD VOICE IN THE WILDS.
Mr. Ephraim Brown, of North Bloomfield, one of the early wealthy men, came one season, left
men there to build his house, while he went back for the winter. There . were no women in that
neighborhood. One Sunday morning in June of the fallowing year as his men, with some
neighbors, were sitting in the sun in the opening about the house, they heard a sound. They all
listened. They recognized a baby's cry. One of the men said afterwards, "That was the sweetest
sound I ever heard in ow life." Of course, he did not mean that the distressed baby's voice was so
pleasant, but he knew that where a baby was, a mother was, and where a mother was a real home
would be.
Great traveling preparations were made by the emigrants. One woman in Connecticut baked her
oven several times full of bread, dried it, rolled it, and packed it in sacks that it might serve for
food on the journey.
Upon arrival, families sometimes slept in the ox-cart, but more often slept under bark roofs,
keeping their clothing and provisions near by in hollow trees. One of the first things these
pioneers did, if they came in the early spring, was to clear a little patch and start a garden. Men
struggled for a chance to make garden then as boys and men struggle now not to make them.
Almost all of them brought seeds, and so carefully did they have to plan not to have heavy
baggage, 'nor to be' burdened with small bundles, that apple seeds were sometimes brought in the
hollow cane which they used for a staff.
The second act was preparing logs for the house. Some of these buildings had no chimney, no
doors, no windows. It is surprising to find in how many cases this was true.
Women cooked meals at the side of chestnut stumps for weeks and months at times. In many
cases men were so occupied in other directions that they gave little attention to domestic
conveniences of any kind. Record
A CABIN FIRE-PLACE.
is had of several women who, in despair, made ovens of clay and mud in which to bake bread.
Before that, they had had to stir their bread on a fresh hewn log and wrap it around a stick or a
corncob. Their children were set to holding it and watching it as it baked and
46 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE
browned., Children, in those days; were like children in these, and some of them carefully
watched the bread, baked it evenly, while others who dropped it in the ashes or burned it were
chastised for their carelessness. The result was the same in those days as now : the careless child
did not grow any more careful, and the careful child did most of the bread-baking.
One of the sturdy foremothers, a Farmington woman, who had a poor fireplace in her dingy
cabin, and who loved to prepare good things to eat for her family, became desperate because her
husband procrastinated in building an oven for her. She said she had baked bread and done all of
her cooking in one big iron kettle and she was tired of it. She, therefore, fashioned some bricks of
mud, burned them in some way, and constructed an oven which was such a success that people
traveling her way stopped to see it.
Men and women, by temperament and environment, were the same in that day as this, and some
husbands were thrifty, loving, temperate and just, and some were quite the opposite ; some
women were clinging, tender and childish, while the majority were not. The forefather was really
the monarch of the family; and when the food was low it was he who braved the storms and the
cold to bring provisions from Pennsylvania; nevertheless, he was neglectful of the smaller things.
On many farms even in late days there were no cisterns. All water had to be caught in tubs as it
fell from the roof on a flatboard leading into barrels and tubs. These receptacles naturally must
stand near the house, and the mosquitos hatched therein .were conveniently near, their feeding
grounds. Women carried their clothes to the nearby creeks and washed them, laying them on the
grass to dry. The well was often far from the house. If .there chanced to be a spring, the stable
was invariably put nearer to it than the house.
Within the recollection of the writer, a farmer who kept five men and whose wife did the Work,
either thoughtlessly or purposely neglected to keep her supplied with sufficient wood. Several
times the housewife threatened to get no dinner unless wood was brought for her. This threat was
not effective. She knew and the men knew that there was plenty of cold food in the pantry with
which they could satisfy themselves. One day when the husband came to dinner with the hired
hands he was obliged to step over two. rails of his choice 'fence which were sticking out the
doorway, the other ends being in the stove furnishing fuel for the dinner. As this rai
(Courtesy of Samuel P. Orth.)
SPINNING WHEELS FOR WOOL AND FLAX.
HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 47
fence was his pride and as rail splitting was hard work, he always thereafter delegated one of his
men to keep the wood box full.
EVILS OF THE QUILT DOORWAY.
We have seen that most of the log houses' had no doors or windows. Blankets and quilts often
served the places of doors. Bears sometimes walked in under then.; wolves sometimes ventured
so near that if there was a loft and the men were away, mothers took their children and climbed
into the loft. Sometimes women built fires in front of these blanket doors, or stood outside and
waved pieces of burning wood, or set fire to a little. powder to frighten these dangerous animals.
Indians were especially attracted toward the quilt doorways. As we know, they walked very
quietly, and many an early housewife has been badly frightened as she realized that Indians were
examining her quilt from the outside.
It was not possible, often, to finish a house immediately. Sometimes the roof was not on for a
long time in summer. The time in warm weather was precious and a settler could build his house
when he had nothing else to do. As soon as possible doors were hung. After a time windows
were made, but not of glass,—only greased paper.
The chimneys were usually built outside and, under certain climatic conditions smoked badly.
After a time there was a floor, and women and children, on winter evenings, helped to stuff the
cracks between the logs with anything suitable that they could procure, while the father, and
sometimes the mother, smoothed with the adz the inside of the logs. As a rule, this primitive log
house had but one room. Poles were stuck in between the logs and furnished the bedstead, while
the cord for the same was made of strips of elm bark. Ticks were usually filled with straw. As
soon as it was possible a loft was made, and here, in summer, and sometimes in winter, the
children and the hired men slept. In reading of the early self-made men of this country, it is
almost universally stated that as children they used to wake. in the morning to find snow on their
beds. Access to these lofts was had by ladder usually; occasionally by rude steep stairs. As a rule,
there was a hatch door to keep the cold from the room below. Sometimes when there was no loft,
a corner of the cabin was screened off by cotton curtains.
The early plows were of wood with points of steel. The harrows used at first was made of tree
crotch with wooden pegs set in. Dishes were often of wood. However, each fore-mother seemed
to find a way to bring something to her new crude home which she loved. The early German
women, and the New England women as well, often brought a favorite bulb or a cutting from a
plant at home, and these they nursed and nourished, and by exchanging with each other had some
lovely gardens in this wilderness. A woman of Champion had some peonies which have bloomed
in that town for seventy years, and one of these roots still lives on the old Rutan farm.
Sometimes they brought a few pieces of silver, or a picture. One of the :plainest women in
Portage county, wh0 was a fore-mother, brought a looking glass. This her granddaughter still
cherishes. They struggled to make the interior of their dingy cabins look places, and upon these
they set their pewters, homelike. Rude shelves were put over fire-which, despite all other hard
work, they faithfully polished with wood ashes. They had no rocking chairs. The stools were
made with three legs, since it was easier to adjust them on the rough floors. They could work at
nothing in the evening which required close attention, since the flicker of the log or small tallow
dip furnished meager light. However, every evening was full of duties, for they dipped candles,
plaited straw for hats, shelled corn and cracked nuts. They also spun, sometimes far into the
night. As Hon. Thomas D. Webb, of Warren, observed his wife spinning one evening, he made a
calculation of her steps, and when she had finished he told her she had
48 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE
walked as far as from Warren to Leavittsburg and back ; that is six miles.
THE BEST BARGAIN OF THE YANKEE.
Most of the pioneer mothers who really clothed and fed the people of the Western Reserve had to
beg for all the money they had, and the forefather took great pride in thinking how well he
supported his wife. He did not know it, but the Yankee settler, when he married a young,
virtuous, strong, capable woman, made the best bargain any man ever made. Sometimes a
woman, inheriting a strong feeling of independence from her independent father, stood up, in
what seems to us now, a feeble way, and demanded a small part of what was due her. Such a
woman was said to "wear the breeches," and her husband was termed "hen-pecked." Next to
drunkenness and infidelity, the women who first lived in new Connecticut suffered more from
financial dependence than from any other one thing.
The pleasures were visiting, church-going and house raising. There were no undertakers and no
nurses. The housewives knew the medicinal value of herbs, and when left alone did good service.
The community was like a great independent family, one man ingeniously making ax helves,
while another pulled, or rather screwed out the teeth with a turn-screw, and each helped the other
when in trouble. If a man was sick, his neighbors raised his house or gathered his crops. A
pioneer who had nursed the sick and shared the sorrows of his friends in the early days, died
recently at extreme age, and some of his young neighbors thought they could not leave plowing
to attend his funeral. In the old days it was friendship first, money afterwards.
People were baptized in streams when the ice had to be cut.
Books were few and reading not indulged in to any great extent. In fact, it was considered almost
wicked to waste day-light in study. Occasionally, a boy who had determined to become a
professional man did most of his studying winter evenings by the light of the log fire, and hunted
the neighborhood for miles around for the worn and tattered volumes which were there.
RESERVE SCHOOL HOUSES.
When the schoolhouses began to appear, the smaller children attended in summer, and most of
the smaller ones, and the older ones, in winter. They walked miles to school, wore no woolen
underclothing, the girls cotton dresses, the boys no overcoats. They carried their dinner in a pail
or basket, and often ran most Of the way. They studied or not, learned .or. not, got whipped or
not, as they cared to and deserved, but at noon they ate their half-frozen dinners in front of the
blazing logs. The only thing the early settlers of Trumbull county had was plenty of firewood.
Neighbors would sometimes gather in schoolhouses where the men held debates. No one any
more thought of asking a woman to debate a question than they would have thought of urging her
to become a candidate for governor. In some communities these debates were on a religious
subject. The question of atonement, fore-ordination, sprinkling, immerson and like topics were
debated to such a degree that friendships were broken and communities divided and disturbed
temporarily. Other questions less serious were "Which is the worst, a 'scolding wife or a smoking
chimney ?" or "How many angels can stand on the point of a needle?"
And here in this new country, where all started nearly equal, some men became leaders, others
were lost sight of. Some accumulated property and assumed a certain superiority (as most
moneyed men are bound to do), while others, struggle as they might, never held to that which
they bought and died owning nothing, or worse, owing much. Stories are told how some of the
original land owners became rich by pressing hard men who owed them, and how the same bits
of land cam back to them, 'time after time, with pionee improvements, because payments could
not be
