THE PIONEERS - 175 Water, built—but not here—by Captain Job Fish who had been an engineer for Fulton. Fulton is remembered as the builder of the Clermont, first steamboat anywhere, nicknamed "Fulton's Folly" by the conservatives who were unable to believe that steam could move wheels and make a boat go. The first post office was established in 1805, with Elisha Norton as postmaster. Receipts for the first quarter of 1806 amounted to $2.83. "As early as 1801," says Kennedy, "the mail was brought to Warren, the seat of Trumbull County, once in two weeks, by way of Pittsburgh, Canfield and Youngstown, and that was the terminus of the mail route for a couple of years, before it came to Cleaveland. The route from Warren was by way of Deerfield, Ravenna and Hudson, and from Cleaveland to Detroit along the old Indian trail to Sandusky, Toledo and so on to Detroit; from Cleaveland it went to Warren via Painesville and Jefferson. A collection district for the south shore of the lake was also established this year, called the `District of Erie' and John Walworth, of Painesville, was appointed collector." The first framed building of any sort hereabouts, was that of the offnce of mails and customs. It was built in 1809, and "regarded as a novelty with metropolitan suggestions." In 1809, the export trade with Canada was valued at fifty dollars. In 1909 the shipments from Cleveland to Canada amounted to 3,154,166 tons, and in 1929 to 2,626,000 tons. The receipts from Canada to Cleveland in 1909 were 7,717,277 tons; in 1929, 14,059,000. The first highway supervision was performed by a committee elected April 14, 1804, consisting of Lorenzo Carter, Timothy Doan, James Kingsbury and Thaddeus Lacy, who had charge of roads from Cleaveland to Hudson, and around back along the ridge to Doans Corners and down town again. Their apportioned tasks were as follows : Carter, the road from the City of Cleaveland to Hudson to Daniel Ruker's and the road from Cleaveland to Euclid, to the bridge near Tillotson's; Timothy Doan, the road from Isaac Tillotson's to the 176 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS east line of the town of Euclid; Kingsbury, the road from Nathaniel Doan's to Williams' Mills; Lacy, the road from Daniel Ruker's leading to Hudson, to the south line of the Town of Cleaveland. The first real road to the westward was along the trail to Detroit. The state legislature, in 1809, granted an appropriation for a road from Cleaveland to the mouth of the Huron River. The committee was Lorenzo Carter and Nathaniel Doan of Cleaveland, Ebenezer Murray of Mentor. This was first called the "Cleaveland and Huron Road," then the "Milan State Road," and as it advanced farther towards Detroit, finally "Detroit Road" which it still remains beyond Rocky River, being called "Detroit Avenue" through Cleveland and Lakewood. The mail to and from Detroit was first carried on foot by Edward McCartney. The whole mail in 1809 weighed from five to seven pounds, and the mailman walked about thirty miles a day. Joseph Burke carried it to Hudson, Ravenna, Mesopotamia and around back via Painesville to Cleaveland. From about 1812 on mails were carried on horseback, and by 1820 they had attained the dignity of transportation by stagecoach. The first bank was the Commercial Bank of Lake Erie, undertaken in 1816. It failed in 1820, but managed to pay off its liabilities and was reorganized in 1832. It ran from this time till the expiration of its charter in 1842. The first newspaper was the Cleaveland Gazette and Commercial Register, springing upon the world in 1818. The Cleaveland Herald was first published in 1819. Somewhere between April 12th, 1832, and June 8th, 1833, the Cleaveland Herald changed its name to Cleveland Herald, and the name of the town changed with it. There is a break in the files over that period so the exact date cannot be determined. Many stories are told of the reason for this change. One is that the paper furnished for one issue of the Advertiser was too small and the printer had to drop a letter of its title. Kennedy rejects this as not being very reasonable. More plausible, he says, is the theory that a "sheep's foot" struck THE PIONEERS - 179 the A and battered it out of shape and usefulness. The story most likely to be true, however, seems that told by Rufus P. Spalding before the Early Settlers' Association : "An act of piracy was committed on the word by a newspaper publisher, who, in procuring a new head-piece for his paper, found it convenient to increase the capacity of his iron frame by reducing the number of letters in the name of the city. Hence the Cleveland Advertiser, and not Moses Cleaveland, settled the orthography of the Forest City's name for all time to come. Generally this story is told in connection with the Herald rather than the Advertiser." At any rate, a book containing the records of the township of Cleaveland spells the word Cleaveland from 1803 to 1832, then wavers a bit and finally drops the A. ("This Cleveland of Ours" is trying to do as the Cleavelanders do—it carries the A through the Pioneer section, and drops it forever when, with the Canal Era, the village has definitely grown into the City of Cleveland). One of the most entertaining first things is the carriage. Alfred Kelley married his fair lady in Lowville, New York, bought a carriage in Albany, and they started out in style, in the year 1817, for their new home in Ohio. They drove to Buffalo but the roads were so difficult that they decided there to take ship for the rest of the way, and to drive to Niagara Falls while waiting for the schooner to sail. (Was this the origin of the future bridal trek in that famous direction, or were they following an already established custom) ? While they were gone, the schooner sailed without them. When were honeymooners ever conscious of time? They had to fall back on the carriage. It took them seven days to drive to Cleaveland, and the roads were so bad they walked most of the way, but even so, they arrived before the schooner did. It may be noted that bad as the roads were, it was at least possible to get the carriage over them. Twenty years before, there was only a trail, impracticable for oxen yoked in a team. The carriage, needless to say, caused a great sensation, 180 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS and was often borrowed for state occasions. Leonard Case brought his bride home in it. "In the midst of life, we are in death." The first burying ground was on Ontario Street, where Prospect now meets it. The Erie Street Cemetery was laid out later, and seemed then, in 1823, quite far from town. It was in 1820 that the first stage route was established. This ran to Columbus. In the fall of the same year another started to run to Norwalk, and wagon lines were soon running to Pittsburgh and Buffalo. The conveyance which made the trip to Pittsburgh, says Kennedy, was "a canvas top, set solidly on a springless wagon, with three plain boards for seats." The passenger by stage-coach, he states, had a comparatively easy time in the summer, but in spring or fall he was sure to have to walk part of the way, and often had to "shoulder a rail and carry it from mudhole to mudhole to pry out the vehicle in which he was supposed to be riding." The hotel business, naturally, was one of the earliest. A period of horse transportation required stopping places near enough together to fit the strength of the team. Lorenzo Carter, it will be remembered, "kept tavern" as soon as he had a cabin up. Rudolphus Edwards made a business of keeping tavern out on Woodland Hills about where the road from Doans Corners to Newburgh met the one from Cleave-land to Kinsman and Hudson. In 1820 Michael Spangler came to town and opened his "Commercial House," long a landmark. Peter Weddell came about the same time, but it was not until 1845 that the famous Weddell House was built, at the corner of Superior and Bank streets (now West Sixth Street). His first venture was in the dry goods firm of Peter M. Weddell and Co., Dudley Baldwin and Peter P. Weddell being the other partners. There are entertaining tales of old hotels and taverns in Post's "Doans Corners." In 1819 came Joel Scranton with a schooner load of leather, and John Blair of Maryland with three dollars saved to start his future fortune. Blair made a fortunate deal in THE PIONEERS - 181 pork, and was soon able to open a produce and commission store on the river. The first shipment of flour from the Western Reserve has an interesting story back of it, related by Avery. It seems that William A. Otis, a native of Massachusetts, direct descendant of James Otis, came out to Pittsburgh in 1818, worked in an "iron establishment" and put all his savings into the business, which failed. He then walked westward to Bloomfield, Trumbull County, Ohio, "where he cleared land, kept a tavern and established a primitive mercantile establishment, furnishing the settlers with goods in exchange for ashes, wheat and other produce. The ashes were used in the manufacture of a crude potash, 'which was the only strict cash article in the country'." "But it was difficult to get wheat, flour or potash to the eastern market. Mr. Otis, therefore, selected an oak tree and had it cut, sawed and split into staves from which barrels were made. A few miles from Bloomfield was a custom grist mill. Mr. Otis bought wheat for twenty-five cents a bushel, had it ground into flour, teamed the barrel flour and potash thirty-five miles to Ashtabula Creek whence it was carried by schooner to Buffalo and thence by canal and river to New York—the first such shipment of flour from the Western Reserve. "He later added pork and wool to his shipments; his business prospered and he served two years in the state legislature. In 1835 he moved to Cleveland where 'he was at once given rank with the foremost business men.' He still dealt in flour, pork and potash, but gradually concentrated his energies upon iron manufacture and thus became the pioneer iron-master of Cleveland. His increasing shipping interests naturally turned his attention to transportation facilities and he became an active advocate of railway building. He was also active in banking enterprises and served as president of the Commercial National Bank. He was a member of the State Board of Control, was one of the founders of the Cleveland Society for Savings and acted as its president for thirteen years. He was one of the originators of the Board 182 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS of Trade from which was evolved the present Cleveland Chamber of Commerce. He died in 1868." The business adventures of Mr. Otis are quoted in detail, not because he was any more important in the history of the city than many of these early men dismissed with a line, and many left unmentioned, but because in his one person and one life the transition was made from the first shipment of flour to the iron trade which was the foundation of Cleveland's wealth and high place, from the pioneering situation in which he had to pick out the tree to cut and make the barrels from in order to ship his flour, to the definitely commercial situation of the city with its banks, railways, ships and complicated business of the time of his death. One of the most interesting points about the early records of business beginnings is not a record at all, but the omission of one. The story of the fisheries is conspicuous by its absence. Only in 1892 was any effort made to prepare statistics as to the importance of the fish trade on the lakes. There may be various reasons for the lack of mention of fishing as a trade in the early days. This writer sat on a log in the Georgian Bay district one sunny day, listening to reminiscences of an old-timer in that country. The writer asked him about the food of his first year, remarking that it was always possible, of course, to catch fish. "Fish !" exclaimed the pioneer. "Not one of us so much as knew there was a fish in the whole Georgian Bay that summer. It was two years before we were far enough along with clearing the land so any man dared take a day off to go fishing !" Yet fishing is now the main industry in that region. Farming, as a money-making affair, is inconsequential beside it. Doubtless the first pioneers, coming from inland Connecticut, felt the same way. Fishing was lazy stuff—it wasn't done in working time by grown men. It was all right for small boys or Indians. The lack of ice was an important factor in the absence of a fishing trade and salt was expensive. Fish caught had to be eaten that same day or thrown away. THE PIONEERS - 183 By 1892, the annual product of Cleveland fisheries had reached a value of $250,000 to $300,000. By 1920, a normal catch for the season was worth $3,000,000. Since then pollution of the lake has been cutting it down. Cleveland is now in danger of losing its fish industry. This chapter is but a hint of the budding and blossoming activities of infant Cleaveland. In the forty years from 1796 to 1836, the pioneering settlement on the banks of the Cuyahoga, in almost wholly unorganized New Connecticut, part of the vaguely governed Washington County of the Northwest Territory, grew to a village in Trumbull County in the State of Ohio, and later to a city in the County of Cuyahoga, which it still remains. The next step will undoubtedly be the amalgamation of city and county in some sort of unified government. The concept now under consideration called the "Borough Plan," is not likely to be carried out in detail, but some simplified arrangement in which county and city shall become one is undoubtedly on the way. Bit by bit the little city built up—here a storekeeper came to town, there a doctor, again an Indian had to be executed for murder, here a boat was built, there a stage-coach started, a schoolhouse went up, a church was constructed, axes and hand-mills gave way to waterpower. Soon thereafter water heated to steam began to serve mankind. CHAPTER V THE DAWN OF CULTURE "Work," explained the small boy, "is what somebody tells you to do. Play is what you think of all by yourself." Business, according to that definition, is what people are obliged to do. Culture is what they want to attain. Culture is a being and becoming. The road to it may seem as diffncult as the road to business success, and the latter may prove even more interesting. Yet in their origins there is always that subtle difference : Business is what you must; Culture is what you want. Religion, education, art, the social graces —for these people begin to strive as soon as the fundamental primitive needs are met. Culture in Cleaveland, undoubtedly, then, begins with the first sermon, which was preached by the Reverend Joseph Badger, sent to the Reserve in 1800 by the Connecticut Missionary Society. The very first sermon on the Reserve was preached by William Wick of Washington County, Pennsylvania, at Youngstown, September 1st, 1799, but Cleaveland lived without spiritual ministration for nearly two years longer. Badger had been a soldier in the Revolution and was therefore somewhat inured to hardship, of which he found plenty during his life on the Reserve. He got to Cleaveland in August, 1801, riding horseback. He lodged at Lorenzo Carter's and left early in September, with a companion, swimming the horses across the Cuyahoga by means of a canoe, taking an Indian trail to Rocky River, where he and his fellow traveler killed a large yellow rattlesnake while cutting brush to make a way for the horses. Harvey Rice tells of him that he often rode from twenty-five to thirty miles a day, "carrying with him in saddle-bags - 184 - THE PIONEERS - 185 a scanty supply of clothing and eatables, often traversing pathless woodlands, amid storms and tempests, swimming unbridged rivers, suffering from cold and hunger, and at the same time, here and there, visiting lone families, giving them and their children religious instruction and wholesome advice, and preaching at points wherever a few could be gathered together, sometimes in a log-cabin or in a barn and sometimes in the open field or in a woodland, beneath the shadows of the trees." Mr. Badger was somewhat disappointed in the Cleavelanders. He relates : "Visited the only two families, and went on to Newburgh, where I preached on the Sabbath. There were five families here, but no apparent piety. They seemed to glory in their infidelity." Kennedy comments that "Badger and others who made note of ungodliness, and more or less of actual evil, on the Reserve, in those early days, were fully justified in all they said." B. A. Hinsdale, in the Magazine of Western History, also supports Badger's interpretation. He says that religion had reached a low ebb in New England at the time the Reserve was opened, that the first emigration from Old Connecticut "was largely made up of men who desired to throw off the heavy trammels of an old and strongly conservative community, where Church and State were closely connected, and where society was dominated by political and religious castes." Hinsdale thinks, moreover, that an epidemic of land speculation is not especially conducive to piety, and "the laxative moral influence of a removal from an old and well-ordered society to the woods produced its usual effects." If the earliest settlers were not quite up to the standard of formal religious conduct and creed Mr. Badger would have rejoiced to see, the fact remains that they were always glad to have him arrive and sorry to see him depart. And if they were not too good, neither were they very bad—they were too busy. Religion manifests itself definitely for the first time in Hudson, where a church was formed by Badger in 1802, the first on the Reserve. From then on church work gained year by year. Badger's Missionary Society, however, reduced his 186 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS salary from seven to six dollars a week. He settled with his family, on that salary, at Austinburg, and served his scattered people until his death in 1846. Various missionaries helped along the good work, and the later settlers on the Reserve were noted for piety and goodness. Among those who braved the diffnculties of those days were E. F. Chapin, and Thomas Robbins, both of the Congregationalist Church. Congregationalism was strong in the early Reserve, as the settlements which brought religion and learning intertwined to Tallmadge, Hudson, Oberlin, prove. But to the Episcopal Church goes the honor of establishing the first church organization in Cleaveland. This was Trinity, organized in 1816, with Timothy Doan, moderator; Charles Gear, clerk; Phineas Shephard and Abraham Scott, wardens; Timothy Doan, Abraham Hickox and Jonathan Pelton, vestrymen; Dennis Cooper, reading clerk. The church had occasionally the services of Rev. Roger Searl, but had to depend mainly on lay readers. It met in various places, first on one and then on the other side of the river. In 1826, the Rev. Silas C. Freeman of Virginia became rector of the parish, giving part of his time to the church then organized at Norwalk. Services were held at this time in the courthouse. In 1827 Mr. Freeman went east to raise funds for a church building, and did very well. In 1828 the parish was incorporated, and in 1829 Trinity Church was built on the southeast corner of Seneca (now West Third Street) and St. Clair streets. The edifice cost $3,070. The very first schoolhouse was built on the ridge in 1800, and Miss Sarah Doan, daughter of Nathaniel Doan, was the teacher, but the first school in Cleaveland proper was held where everything else took place, in the front room of Carter's cabin. Miss Anna Spafford was the teacher. This educational institution started in 1802, and continued three or four years. In 1806 Asael Adams, born in Moses Cleave-land's town of Canterbury, Connecticut, came to the village. He had migrated to Liberty township in 1802, and four years later entered into a contract in Cleaveland, which reads : THE PIONEERS - 189 "Articles of agreement made and entered into between Asael Adams on the one part and the undersigned on the other, witnesseth, that we, the undersigned, do agree to hire the said Adams for the sum of Ten Dollars ($10.00) a month, to be paid in money or wheat at the market price, whenever such time may be that the school doth end, and to make said house comfortable for the school to be taught in, and to furnish benches and fire-wood sufficient. And I, the said Adams, do agree to keep six hours in each day, and to keep good order in said school." Samuel Huntington, now Governor, sent four children to this school, George Kilbourne three, James Hamilton two, James Kingsbury five, David Kellogg three, and W. W. Williams four. The log schoolhouse stood near the foot of Superior Street. Kennedy regrets that Cleaveland's early chroniclers, who tell us so much about Bryant's distillery and the hanging of a young Indian, have left such meager details concerning their city's first modest ventures in schooling. "When the history of education in Ohio comes to be fully written, it will be found that out of these little educational gatherings, found here and there in the scattered settlements, was evolved that wonderful force that, in the hands of men like Harvey Rice and his helpers, was made a mighty power in our common school system of a later day." Neither religion nor education, however, was news to the New Englander. Both religion and education were taken for granted, and therefore often left unchronicled. The distillery, being the first business of any kind, was news, and so was the hanging. The latter was that of the Indian Poccon, son of Omic, sometimes called John O'Mic, who was said to have killed two trappers while they slept and stolen their furs and goods. He was tried and sentenced to death in the year 1812. Alfred Kelley was prosecuting attorney, Peter Hitchcock counsel for the defense. Samuel S. Baldwin was then "sheriff and county surveyor." The excitement caused by the whole affair was due partly to the fact that it was the first execution, partly to the morbid horror which it inspired and which made it memorable to every one who witnessed 190 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS it or heard about it. Dr. David Long fell heir to the skeleton —which tumbled out of its cupboard and across the bed of a guest a year or two later, much to the alarm of the guest at the time, to Mrs. Long's housewifely embarrassment, and to the guest's later amusement. If culture is a being and becoming, an attainment to be desired, hanging, surely, is the negative side of culture. Turning from this unpleasant episode to happier matters, the first party of which there is a record was a Fourth of July celebration and ball, held at—where else ?—the big room at Lorenzo Carter's. Gilman Bryant tells of it : "I attended the 4th of July ball, mentioned in the History of Ohio. I waited on Miss Doan, who had just arrived at the Corners, four miles east of town. I was then about seventeen years of age, and Miss Doan about fourteen. I was dressed in the then style—a gingham suit—my hair queued with one and a half yards of black ribbon, about as long and thick as a corncob, with a little tuft at the lower end ; and for want of pomatum, I had a piece of candle rubbed on my hair, and then as much flour sprinkled on, as could stay without falling off. I had a good wool hat, and a pair of brogans that would help to play 'Fisher's Hornpipe,' or 'Hie Betty Martin' when I danced. When I went for Miss Doan I took an old horse; when she was ready I rode up to a stump near the cabin, she mounted the stump and spread her under petticoat on 'Old Tib' behind me, secured her calico dress to keep it clean, and then mounted on behind me. I had a fine time." Charles Post, in "Doans Corners," adds the information that the young people danced all night, and those from a distance did not return home until the next day. It was Nancy Doan, daughter of Timothy and Mary Carey, whom Gilman Bryant took to the party. It was Sarah Doan, daughter of Nathaniel, who taught the first school at the Corners, and her sister Delia who taught the first school in Euclid township. Although Cleaveland has left scant records of its own schools, the chronicles of others on the Reserve indicate closely what ours must have been like. They state that log school-houses were like log homes of the period—no better and no worse. They were built of round logs, sometimes with the THE PIONEERS - 193 bark on, sometimes peeled, or of squared logs, in which case they were called block houses. The floor was of roughly hewn planks or half logs, called puncheons. There was a fireplace for heat. The teacher, usually, had a chair, handmade of hickory, with slat back and rush seat, and some kind of rough table. A board shelf running around the walls was used for desks for the older pupils. They sat on puncheon benches. Greased paper served for windows. Discipline was strict to the point of being spartan. James Harris Fairchild, later president of Oberlin College, relates of his early school days on the Reserve that as there was no money in the community, teachers had to be paid in barter. His father, who taught two winters, took his pay in chopping and clearing. The larger boys and their fathers gathered and gave a hundred days' clearing for one hundred days' teaching. "At other times the teacher drove around with an ox cart, and gathered up wheat, corn, potatoes and beans. The price for teaching estimated in money was seventy-five cents to a dollar a week for a woman, and eight to twelve dollars a month for a man, according to experience and reputation. Board was always thrown into the bargain, but the teacher must take it by dividing his time among the families according to the number of pupils they furnished. Where the children were most numerous there he must board the longest. The arrangement would seem to be hard on the teacher, but it was good for the families. The teacher became a sort of missionary of general intelligence and social improvement, and in most of the families the visit of the teacher was regarded as a special entertainment." Fairchild goes on to tell of the school books : "The primary book was a speller—not the elementary spelling-book of Webster which some of the present generation may have seen, but Webster's 'Easy Standard of Pronunciation' and marvelous were the treasures of wisdom it contained. The boy that had mastered that book had a good start in life. I have not seen the book for years, but I retain a profound impression of its exalted character. Its cover was frail—thin sheets of wood covered with blue paper for 194 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS its lids, and a strip of colonial cambric along its back. Its frontispiece bore in the background a temple on a towering summit—the Temple of Fame, and in the foreground a stately dame with a suggestion of divinity in her bearing, directing the attention of the two boys at her side to the distant temple. And this was the motto below,— `Honor and fame from no condition rise, Act well your part, there all the honor lies.' "Here we had no such trifling matters as 'A bad cat,' `A big dog,' but profound and stately truths like these :—`No man may put off the law of God' ; 'My joy is in His law all the day' ; '0 may I not go in the way of sin' ; 'Let me not go in the way of bad men.' As the discourse proceeded, however, it came down from this high plane to matters of present and practical interest : 'Play no tricks on the one who sits near you, for he who does so is a bad boy.' I remember seeing a tall boy twelve years old required to stand in the middle of the floor and read this admonition to the school. He had marked out a Morris board on the back of his seat mate with a piece of soft soap-stone." "But our spelling-book was not lacking in gentler sentiments. The reading lessons took on poetic form; and we had the 'Lament of the Dying Goldfinch' starved in a cage by neglect of its owner; and a touch of floral sentiment. To cultivate our sense of humor we had half-a-dozen fables, each illustrated by a woodcut to enforce the lesson." There were also mild specimens of fiction, and the last quarter of the book was a Britannica in miniature. They had, besides, as reading books the New Testament, the American Preceptor, and the English Reader. They had Pike's Vulgar Arithmetic, and Daboll's Arithmetic. Later they discovered Warren Colburn's Intellectual Arithmetic, which was, says Fairchild, a sensation in their school, and gave it an impulse which it never lost while he knew it. Grammar was reserved for the more mature scholars. "Geography was among the most stimulating of our studies, and it was the ambition of a good scholar to be able to give the situation of every lake, or river, or town, at a THE PIONEERS - 195 moment's call. The map of the United States as we knew it would be a curiosity to you today. There was no state west of the Mississippi but Missouri; and all west was the Missouri Territory, with the names of a few Indian tribes scattered over it,—like Sioux, Chippewas, and Pawnees. To the northwest lay the Territory of Michigan with its two only towns, Detroit and Michilimackinac, pronounced in a footnote, Mackinaw,—and then the Territory of Wisconsin, which because of its French spelling `Ouis' we pronounced `Owisconsin.' The minister came in one day and told us it was 'Ooisconsin.' Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona and California were all provinces of Mexico. The United States coast line on the Pacific was merely what is now the coast of Oregon and Washington. All our domain west of the Rocky Mountains was called in a lump Oregon Territory. East of the Rocky Mountains it was known or rather unknown—as the Great American Desert. At the south Florida was still a territory, and the Sabine River was our southern boundary. The population of the United States when I began the study of geography was 10,000,000. New York City had a population of 175,000; and Cleveland was a village of 500 people. Elyria was a little cluster of houses towards the East Branch, and Oberlin existed only in the plan of Providence." The school told of by Fairchild was at Brownhelm, and as he was born in 1817, this was probably the general situation of Northern Ohio schools, from about 1825 to 1850 or later. The quotations from Fairchild are taken from a biography by Albert Temple Suray. The two important colleges of this early time were Western Reserve, which laid its cornerstone in 1826 and Oberlin, which opened its doors in 1833. As early as 1801 the first settlers presented a petition to the Territorial Legislature that steps be taken towards founding a college, but nothing came of this effort. Two years later, however, when Ohio had become a state, the Erie Literary Society was incorporated and opened an academy at Burton, which ran along with more or less success for the next seventeen years. "One Hundred Years of Western Reserve," 196 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS by Helen H. Kitzmiller, from which many quotations in this chapter are taken, says that this academy never quite became a college, but in 1820 certain youths studied there under the auspices of a society "for the education of pious indigent young men for the ministry." In 1822, however, it was decided that the location at Burton was not suffnciently healthful and the trustees of this society decided to locate their own college elsewhere. Hudson was chosen partly because of its high and wholesome site, and partly because seven thousand five hundred dollars was subscribed to bring the college there. David Hudson put up two thousand one hundred and forty-two dollars of this amount, and donated one hundred and sixty acres of land besides. "Difficulties were almost tragic," writes Mrs. Kitzmiller, "and would have been disastrous to any but the hardy sons of New England who had undertaken the task of raising up a college in the Ohio wilderness. When the first fifty thousand bricks crumbled, they bought a brick-yard and proceeded to manufacture their own brick. The better brick for the chimneys was hauled by ox-cart from Cleveland. When their charter, asking for the establishment of a theological seminary, was so altered by the Legislature as to defeat the very purpose of the college, they rode to Columbus in the dead of winter to secure an acceptable one. When the money, which they thought entirely adequate for their purpose, gave out, they raised more. They drew their own plans for the college building, they planned the campus, and within the short space of two months after they had received their charter, were ready to lay the cornerstone." In the fall of 1826, there were three freshmen registered for college work, but as the building was not yet ready for occupancy, they studied that winter under David L. Coe at the Tallmadge Academy. Tallmadge was one of those centers, of which there were a good many scattered through Ohio, Indiana and elsewhere, established by a group for the purpose of following out, under new conditions, their own community ideas of freedom of thought and learning. New Harmony, Indiana, under the leadership of Robert Owen, that THE PIONEERS - 197 great and gentle Socialist, was perhaps the most famous of these, but the keen and advanced influence of Tallmadge has also spread far. Returning to the story of Reserve's Hundred Years: "Campus life began in Hudson in the fall of 1827, with eleven students in the College and eight in the academy or preparatory department. "It is almost impossible for us to realize how these early students lived. The school had practically no money. The students furnished their own rooms with such furniture as they could get. They took entire care of the rooms, from scrubbing floors and whitewashing walls in the fall to scrubbing again in the spring. They fired their own stoves. They cut their own wood and piled it neatly in their closets. They emptied their own ashes. In the morning they dashed out to the pump and filled their pitchers with water, for there were no bath-rooms. Did they bathe? Yes, heroically, says an old student, 'standing ankle-deep in snow, and splashing pails of icy water at each other from crown to heel as sturdily as ever Homer's warriors.' They cleaned and filled their own lamps—those who were fortunate enough to be able to do away with candles. Some cooked in their rooms, notably a colored student who insisted on having 'possum,' much to the distress of the other boys. Once a week the rooms were inspected by a member of the faculty. For years this so-called pastoral visitation fell to Professor Loomis and woe to the boy whose floor was not clean or whose room was not tidy. They arose very early. At one time there was a recitation and chapel before breakfast, which was at seven." Evening study hour was held, in perfect silence, from six-thirty to pine. Not all students did their own cooking. Some of them did chores for families in the village in exchange for meals. Others ran a commons. They not only managed the eating club themselves, but maintained a garden and grew their own vegetables. The college expenses of that period do not sound troublesome to the parents of today, but they were just as heavy and all but prohibitive for those sons and daughters of pio- 198 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS neers as those of modern colleges are now for many ambitious students. Then, as now, such students "worked their way." There were shops and farm work both at Hudson and Oberlin. Fairchild entered Oberlin with thirty whole dollars, painfully earned and saved, with which to go through his freshman year. It was considered quite a lot of cash. Many students came with less. He knew a little carpentry and went to work at first in the joiners' shop. It was not at all uncommon for a boy to go to college one year and teach the next, taking seven or eight years to get his degree. No wonder the college graduate was looked up to by his community. The attainment of that degree meant not only vast learning, but pluck and perseverance of a high quality. One point of ancient but abiding interest to any generation's youth and its elders may be quoted from the records of Reserve : "The trustees having seen with deep regret that a spirit of self-suffnciency and disrespect to the judgment and feelings of their superiors prevails to a fearful extent among the youth of this college, unanimously request the faculty to watch this spirit, and in their instructions, guard the students against it as an evil of an alarming and dangerous character." Another which may comfort some of those college aspirants now going up against the Comprehensive Examinations of the College Entrance Examination Board is this : "The examinations were cumulative. At the end of the first term students were examined on that term's work, at the end of the second term on two terms' work and so on till in the junior year there was a grand finale for the survivors styled the 'Junior Exhibition.' It occurred at the close of the second term of that year, and aside from the speakers being juniors, was much the same as a commencement program, often containing a Latin and a Greek oration." There was a rebellion against the classics in the early days, too. But not for the same reasons which banish them from the lives of so many modern students. A petition went to the trustees asking that "the Bible and other Christian THE PIONEERS - 199 authors be studied as classics instead of the heathen authors." The result of this was not a lessening of classic study, but the addition of two recitations a week in the Hebrew language. It is needful to remember, in any consideration of these early Ohio colleges, that they were started with the sole idea of training young men for the ministry. Eighteen out of the twenty members of Fairchild's class at Oberlin went on into the Theological School and were ordained. That is to say, those who encouraged the establishment of the colleges had the ministry in mind. But the Ohio Legislature very wisely refused to grant charters to institutions so limited in scope. To obtain a charter it was necessary to admit any young men who wanted knowledge. The principle of religious freedom was still jealously held, and in one of the opening addresses it was stated that students would be admitted to Western Reserve College without question as to their religious beliefs, and provision would be made for them to prepare themselves for the various occupations of life. No distinction was to be made between believers and infidels. It was, however, "obvious that we cannot pursue the same course in appointing guardians and instructors." These were required to be Christians. The closing paragraph of the Rev. Stephen I. Bradstreet's cornerstone address, says Mrs. Kitzmiller, "leaves no doubt as to the underlying principle on which Western Reserve College was founded : "In thy name, Almighty God, and in humble reliance on thine assistance, we have begun this work; and to Thee we consecrate all we have done. * And sooner let thine awful frown blast all our work in promiscuous ruins, than suffer this seminary to become an engine of Satan to oppose thy church, and to spread delusions and sin throughout thy moral kingdom." On July 2, 1834, John Buss, a Reserve freshman, wrote in his diary : "Wednesday. Studied as usual today. In the evening attended the debating society, the question debated was : Ought every pious young man in our college become a candi-