THE CANAL ERA - 225 enterprise. But more and more the roads became really public. Citizens were obliged to work out a "poll tax" in road improvement. The state began to furnish aid. Roadways were straightened. Sharp curves and dangerous grades were modified. Even the Federal government eventually took a hand, building an excellent highway from Pennsylvania westward through the more populous southern and central Ohio, but paying no attention to the northern half. By 1838 it was said that "the best common roads are now in New Connecticut. The roads in that part of Ohio are straight, and much labor is expended upon them by the people." The first important road laid out in the Western Reserve was almost contemporaneous with the beginning of Cleveland. It was projected by the Connecticut Land Company and was known as the "girdled road," because, while the cleared roadway itself was only twenty-five feet wide, the trees were girdled by the axe to a width of thirty-five feet. That was a broad highway for the time. It ran from Cleveland to Willoughby, thence into Warren, which was long Cleveland's county seat, and on into Pennsylvania. Samuel P. Orth, writing in 1910, said that there were trees along the route still showing the old girdle marks. The state government, being then seven years old, in 1809 voted funds for a highway from Cleveland westward to the mouth of the Huron River, the same being a part of the Detroit Road referred to above, following the old lake ridge. The work was handled mainly by two prominent Cleveland citizens, Lorenzo Carter and Nathaniel Doane. It was intended primarily as a post road. The postman at that time carried a satchel and traveled on foot between Cleveland and Detroit, making about thirty miles a day. Beginning in 1812 there was a "pony express," until the stage coach appeared in 1820. During this period mail for points east was carried between Cleveland and Warren by two young men of Euclid village, traveling "on horseback in summer when the weather permitted, and on foot the rest of the time." Fortunately for the carriers, the mail never weighed more than a few pounds. It must have required considerable courage for new set- 226 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS tiers to attempt the journey hither in those early years. One historian speaks feelingly of the tedious days on "sled or springless wagon, drawn by oxen or horses and loaded with household goods, farming implements, weapons of defense and food, with wife and children stowed in corners," over roads that were often so narrow that the traveler had to cut trees to get through, and streams that had to be crossed by fords, by raft or on the ice. Then, with better roads, came the stage coach and a transformation as great as the one, a century later, from buggies to automobiles. In 1818 a stage began running between Cleveland and Painesville, making the trip each way in eighteen hours once a week. An advertisement in a local paper emphasized the economy of such transportation, in both time and money, as compared with riding a horse. In 1820 a similar stage line connected the city with Columbus and Norwalk, and soon afterward there was another to Pittsburgh. Four years later the Pittsburgh stage was running twice a week and there was one to Buffalo three times a week. Cleveland was establishing contact with the world. These coaches, having a terrible time getting through the mud with teams of four to six horses, nevertheless represented speed, glory and civilization. One could travel as a lady or gentleman, in one's best clothes, with comfort and companionship. One could travel in state from Cleveland to Buffalo, two hundred miles, for six dollars, with such eclat as one's grandchildren were never to realize on a Pullman car. Travel was ceasing to be a hardship and becoming a recreation. In 1828 the Ohio Journal printed what looks suspiciously like a piece of vacation publicity matter on the theme of "Summer Traveling." It told in glowing terms of a happy trip from Cincinnati to New York, whither "the great mass of summer traveling from the South, and from the Mississippi Valley, trends." It laid out a fascinating route through Ohio, from Cincinnati through Reading, Lebanon, Waynesville, Xenia, Yellow Springs, Springfield, Urbana, Upper Sandusky, Oakley and Lower Sandusky, to Sandusky City, with two or three alternate routes to choose THE CANAL ERA - 227 from, and a choice of stage or lake from Sandusky to Cleveland, or of stage and canalboat in other parts. There must have been merry tourist parties in those days, reminiscent of old England. In Cleveland the Franklin House was the stopping place for most of the coach lines. So much for the passenger traffnc. As for freight, there were the "Pennsylvania wagons" with their headquarters at Spangler's tavern, on the north side of Superior Street, west of the Square. These vehicles are described by Judge James D. Cleveland as "covered with painted canvas and carrying many tons of nails and iron from beyond the Alleghany Mountains, each drawn by six or eight enormous horses—with big bear skins on the collars, and many bells on their saddles—and driven by a single rein from the leader to the teamster, seated on the high wheel horse. The horses were unharnessed in the street before some teamster hotel, and baited from the mangers hanging from the hulks of the old arks. They remained camping on the spot all night. These great wagons were as strong as ships and carried five to ten tons of goods, and on a mountain road, coming down grades were as terrible as an avalanche to the small craft that disputed the right of way." Here was obviously the ancestor of our present motor truck. With eight horsepower and iron tires six inches wide, such mighty cars feared neither steep hills nor bad roads. Another name for them was "Conestoga" wagons—immortalized in the modern Pittsburgh "stogie," which originated in the teamsters' practice of rolling for themselves rude cigars while driving. CHAPTER II TWO FAMOUS WATERWAYS The eighteenth century has been described as pre-eminently the century of transportation. For several hundred years transport by sea had been steadily improving, with the development of modern sailing ships, but land transportation had remained almost at a standstill since the breakdown of the Roman Empire. The Revolutionary War was fought in the mud; it was largely bad roads that beat the British. Roads were beginning to improve in Cleveland's infancy. But not for another century, and more, would they begin to rival those of the Romans, whose foundations still serve as the bases of motor roads in England and on the Continent, running straight as a string over plains, hills and valleys. Better roads awaited better vehicles and better vehicles awaited better roads. John Macadam, the first modern road engineer, to whom a deserved monument stands in his native Scottish village, had as yet no converts in America. Rounded roadbeds of dirt, tho with plank surfacing had their limitations. Thus there were limits to the capacity and range of even those great Conestoga wagons of Pennsylvania for the hauling of freight. Canals were being talked of. The land was full of rivers and also full of horses. It was a simple and obvious thing, when pioneer society once began to think about the matter, to combine the horses and the rivers. It was necessary also to join the rivers to each other, where their headwaters thinned out; but that was a fairly simple problem when the watershed provided water for locks. With a canal once built, the advantages were obvious. If six or eight horses could haul a load of six or eight tons in a big wagon over a road which was always going to pieces, - 228 - THE CANAL ERA - 229 three horses could haul sixty to eighty tons in a canal boat on a body of water that stood up better than the road, and was pleasanter to travel on, and provided good fishing en route. Thus came a new form of transportation to the new world. The first canal in America was a short one built around the falls of the Connecticut River at South Hadley, Massachusetts, in 1793. At the same time the state of New York began discussing a continuous water route from the Hudson to the Great Lakes by way of the Mohawk and Oswego rivers. But the idea was familiar long before that. And for more than half a century the muddy, winding Cuyahoga had been in the picture. "As early as 1749," says Whittlesey, "the Cuyahoga was regarded by geographers as a point destined to be of commercial importance. Franklin pointed to its future value in 1765, recommending that it be occupied for military purposes." Moreover "Washington foresaw its consequence, while discussing a project for water communications between the lakes and Chesapeake Bay." With his practical engineering mind, Washington was so much interested in canals that later he became president of a company which aimed to build the inevitable New York waterway. He long cherished a project for uniting the Ohio River to the Potomac, by way of the Monongahela, and both he and Franklin played with the idea of continuous waterways from Lake Erie to the Atlantic through Pittsburgh. Pownall, writing in 1756, mentioned the possibility of conveying batteaux from Lake Erie by way of the Cuyahoga and Mahoning or the Conneaut and Shenango, forcing them by locks up the branches into the Pennsylvania mountains and thence easing them down to the Atlantic. It is not generally realized how early the Western Reserve began to think seriously about such an outlet. In 1807 there was much talk of improving the Cuyahoga and Tuscarawas rivers. It was estimated that for $12,000 the channels of these streams could be cleared of logs, trees and shallows and the portage path made passable for loaded wagons. Batteaux—long, light river boats, wide in the middle—could then 230 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS ascend the Cuyahoga, laden with goods, to the Old Portage, transfer their freight by wagon to the New Portage, seven miles distant, to descend the Tuscarawas in other batteaux. The plan contemplated egress from the Tuscarawas into the Muskingum and thence into the Ohio, joining Cleveland and Cincinnati. Complete canalization through locks would await future development. Permission of the legislature was obtained to raise the money by means of a grand lottery, with tickets selling for five dollars and the prizes running from ten dollars to five thousand dollars. The drawing was to begin at Cleveland the first Monday of January, 1808. The tickets were printed on paper made in Ohio. Unfortunately not enough were disposed of to finance the project, and the money was returned. But the seriousness and respectability of the enterprise may be judged by the list of Clevelanders who composed the board of commissioners for the lottery. They were Samuel Huntington, Bezaliel Wells, Jonathan Cass, Seth Adams, Amos Spafford, John Walworth, Zaccheus A. Beatty, Lorenzo Carter, John Shorb, James Kingsbury, Turhand Kirtland and Timothy Doane. It need not be held against them that the plan failed. The audacity of the undertaking may be realized from the fact that Cleveland, which sponsored it, contained at that time about fifty people, and all its real and personal property together probably amounted to little more than the desired $12,000. In 1814 Alfred Kelley of Cleveland was elected to the Ohio legislature, where he became almost a fixture, and from the first he agitated steadily for an Ohio canal. To him, more than any other man, that great work must be credited. Interest in waterways had been kept alive by the Erie Canal project in New York. A state commission headed by DeWitt Clinton had been created by the New York legislature in 1810, to procure Federal aid. The cooperation of Ohio was sought and given. The more Ohio urged a canal for New York, the more she realized that she needed one herself. Finally New York State, giving up hope of help from Washington, started building her canal at her own expense. It THE CANAL ERA - 233 was completed in 1825. And so great had been the growth of Ohio population, resources and ambition, and so impelling the example of populous and wealthy New York, that the Ohio Canal was started in the same year. Like New York, Ohio built her own canal, because she had to. By 1820 the legislative labors of Alfred Kelley had succeeded in getting a commission appointed "for locating a route for a canal between Lake Erie and the Ohio River" and having it authorized to appoint the necessary engineers. From force of habit the Federal government was asked for aid, and in vain. Two years dragged on without action. Then the governor appointed a commission and an engineer and the survey started. It was instructed to explore the following routes : From Sandusky Bay to the Ohio River; from the Maumee River to the Ohio River; from the lake to the Ohio by way of the Cuyahoga or Black River and the Muskingum ; and from the lake to the Ohio by way of the Grand and Mahoning. Two years' conscientious work by Samuel Geddes, one of the engineers of the Erie Canal, resulted in a choice of the Cuyahoga, Tuscarawas and Scioto for one route, and the Maumee and Miami for another, serving respectively the eastern and western halves of the state. Both were accepted. The Cleveland to Portsmouth canal was started first, as the more important, and the northern end was built first because it was the more important part. A big consideration was the plentiful supply of 'water in Summit County to float traffic over the divide. The Black River was turned down because, the engineer said, it had no good site for a city at its mouth. Thus the judgment of Moses Cleaveland was vindicated. Alfred Kelley, as a member of the canal commission, continued his labors on a salary of two dollars a day. He went to New York to inspect the Erie Canal and employ engineers. The state had not yet authorized the building of the Ohio canal. In 1824 there was still argument about the routes and some legislators were still dubious about the value of canals. At this juncture Mr. Kelley obtained, and 234 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS presented to the doubters, this eloquent and expansive letter from the great De Witt Clinton, "Father of Interior Waterways" : "The projected canal between Lake Erie and the Ohio River will, in connection with the New York canals, form a navigable communication between the Bay of New York, the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of St. Lawrence ; of course it will embrace within its influence the greater part of the United States and the Canadas. The advantages of a canal of this description are so obvious, so striking, so numerous and so extensive that it is a work of supererogation to bring them into view. The state of Ohio, from the fertility of its soil, the benignity of its climate and its geographical position, must always contain a dense population, and the products and consumptions of its inhabitants must forever form a lucrative and extensive inland trade, exciting the powers of productive industry and communicating aliment and energy to external commerce. But when we consider that this canal will open a way to the great rivers that fall into the Mississippi, that it will be felt not only in the immense valley of that river but as far west as the Rocky Mountains and the borders of Mexico, and that it will communicate with our great inland seas and their tributary rivers, with the ocean in various routes and with the most productive regions of America, there can be no question respecting the blessings that it will produce, the riches it will create and the energies that it will call into activity." After that there was nothing to do but go ahead with the canal. The Cuyahoga route was approved officially in May, 1825 with special regard to its harborage possibilities. A canal fund was created, with provision for borrowing $400,000 for the year 1825 and as much as $600,000 per year thereafter until the work was completed. The widespread confidence in the venture, and also the youthful self-confidence of the State of Ohio, were shown by the fact that the first installment of bonds sold at ninety-seven and one-half and the others above par. The total cost of the two waterways to which Ohio was committed in that year was about THE CANAL ERA - 235 $15,000,000. The total value of Ohio real estate at that time was estimated at $45,000,000. What state or city in America today would pledge one-third of its real wealth to any public work? Yet events proved the wisdom of this plunge. Let it be noted that Cleveland's population in 1825 was about five hundred. Also that this little group of villagers raised and contributed $5,000 of their own money to bring the canal terminal to the vicinity of Superior Street, near the site of the present high-level bridge, instead of leaving it three miles up the river where the engineers' plan had placed it. The state added $15,000 and made a basin "of sufficient dimensions to admit the passage of sloops and schooners of the largest size now navigating the upper lakes." Thus facilities were provided for the easy interchange of cargoes between canal boats and lake carriers. The Federal government thereupon, perhaps by way of amends for its stinginess about the canal, granted $5,000 for harbor construction, building two parallel piers 200 feet apart to make an artificial mouth for the river and getting rid of the sand bar which had always been a barrier to large vessels. No longer need ships anchor outside and lighter their cargoes into the river. Thus began the great port of Cleveland. Several times July 4 has played a prominent part in the city's history. The national holiday was celebrated fervently by Moses Cleaveland and his party in 1796 on the southern shore of Lake Erie, on their way to establish the capital of New Connecticut. The start of this canal, the biggest event in the next twenty-nine years, was on July 4. And the canal was formally opened on July 4 two years later. The initiation of the job was certainly auspicious if dignity and oratory could make it so. Governor Clinton had been invited to attend the ceremony and dig the first spadeful of earth. He' came by water, attended by his staff in gorgeous uniforms and a large retinue of notables. The population of the city gathered around the lighthouse and watched the stately steamship Superior come to anchor at the mouth of the river and the no less stately governor come ashore in the captain's yawl. He was escorted to the Mansion House by 236 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS Governor Morrow of Ohio and formally welcomed to the city by Judge Samuel Cowles. The crowd was tremendously impressed by this majestic bulk of a man, his immense forehead crowned with jet-black hair, his brilliant black eyes and his ponderous speech. He was the god of waterways! Also a highly receptive candidate for the presidency. It is hard to find, in the history of the state, anything comparable with Clinton's majestic progress on this visit. He journeyed by stage coach to Newark, and on the morning of the Fourth repaired with his entourage and the assembled population to "Licking Summit," three miles out, where the work was to begin. He was not the orator of the day, but it was his day nevertheless. Overwhelmed with attention and honors, as he performed the simple ceremony, the great man wept, and the crowd wept with him. He was overcome, as Atwater remarks, by such "demonstrations of respect and gratitude, sponstaneously given." Pure-hearted adoration of this sort was a new experience. "Surrounded as he had always been by the politicians of his own state, such tokens had never before been tendered him." So pleasant was it that he remained in the state for several weeks, moving magnificently from county to county, attended everywhere by the most distinguished men of the locality and, at the close of his visit, escorted by them to similar receiving parties beyond. "In this manner he passed across the state. As soon as he appeared in sight of any town, the bells of all the churches and public buildings rang their merriest peals; the cannon roared its hundred guns, and a vast crowd of citizens huzzaed, 'Welcome, welcome, to the Father of Internal Improvements !' Every street where he passed was thronged with multitudes, and the windows were filled with the beautiful ladies of Ohio, waving their snowy white handkerchiefs and casting flowers on the pavement where he was to pass. Every town where he went gave him a public dinner." Julius Caesar himself never had a better time. The presidential boom grew. But we must get back to our canal. It went forward with remarkable speed. By fall from fifteen hundred to two thousand men were working on the ditch, THE CANAL ERA - 239 but many of them were laid low by malaria. There was no General Gorgas on that canal job, and the ague was still regarded as an act of God. By July of 1827 the northern section, the most expensive and difficult part of the line, was finished all excepting the locks to connect with the river to Cleveland. So on the glorious Fourth came another visitor, eagerly awaited and warmly welcomed—not a statesman this time, but a spectacle of no less dignity and honor—the first canal boat west of the Appalachians. Governor Trimble paid tribute to it in his annual message that year, telling how the craft "descended from Akron, a beautiful village at the Portage summit," which village had been born of the canal and peopled with its workers. "She was cheered in her passage by thousands of our delighted fellow-citizens, who had assembled from the adjacent country at different points on the canal to witness the novel and interesting sight. The gentle descent of a boat of fifty tons burden, from an eminence of four hundred feet, consummating on the day of American independence the union between the waters of the north and the south, presented a scene grand beyond description, and could not but have awakened in all who beheld it feelings of the most exalted patriotism and devotion to the cause of internal improvements." Let there be no jeers from a generation that cannot wax poetical about canal boats. It was a great day in Cleveland, celebrated, as the Herald said, "as becomes a free people." A second boat, the Pioneer, left Cleveland on the same day, bound for Akron with a band of music, and the two met six miles up the canal. There were people and flags and music and guns everywhere, celebrating "the enterprise and spirit of 'Young Ohio' which but a quarter of a century since was terra incognita to the rest of the world." A parade formed at the foot of Superior Street and marched to an arbor erected on the Square. The Declaration of Independence was read and Reuben Wood delivered an oration. There was a "sumptuous dinner" served to the aristocrats at Belden's tavern, at three o'clock, and "the 240 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS residue of the day was spent with great good feeling," with fifteen regular toasts and "many volunteer toasts." Meanwhile hoi polloi, the "mechanics and farmers," made merry in like manner at the Franklin House. Among their toasts is recorded this gem : "To Lake Erie—on thy expansive bosom shall be borne the luxuriant products of the Mississippi Valley." The work was pushed with enthusiasm worthy of the inaugural celebration. In 1830 the northern section, creeping southward, reached Newark. Two years later it arrived at its southern terminal, Portsmouth, on the Ohio River, justifying another great oratorical outburst and technically, at least, realizing Governor Clinton's prophecy. The Atlantic was joined with the Gulf of Mexico by an internal waterway of which the successive links were the Hudson River, the Erie Canal, Lake Erie, the Ohio Canal, the Ohio River and the Mississippi River. The length of this devious ditch through Ohio was 309 miles. With its various branches the system extended for 500 miles. The twin route farther west, the Miami and Erie Canal, was started before the Ohio Canal was finished. It began at Cincinnati, ran up the Miami River and through Dayton and along the Maumee to Toledo. That made another 300 miles of river, ditch and lock Another waterway long contemplated was soon added to this pair. It was the Pennsylvania and Ohio Canal between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, following in much of its course the primeval route on which, for years before the founding of Cleveland, supplies for British military posts bordering on Lake Erie were carried by pack horse. It branched from the Ohio Canal at Akron, following the upper Cuyahoga to Kent, then crossing the portage to the upper Mahoning and following that stream eastward to the state line, continuing through the Beaver and the Ohio to the western Pennsylvania metropolis, just as Washington had foreseen. Ohio was now well waterwayed, with a big lake for its northern border tapping a vast lake system, a big river for THE CANAL ERA - 241 its southern border tapping a vast river system, and one thousand miles of canals in between. No other inland state has ever been so well equipped with water transportation facilities. If water could transform a wilderness quickly into a rich and populous state, here was the opportunity. And it was realized to the full. The Pennsylvania and Ohio Canal was built two-thirds with private capital and one-third with state capital. The state by that time was beginning to suspect that perhaps it was a little over-canalled, and had lost its first enthusiasm for unlimited construction. What happened to this waterway seems symbolic of the eventual fate of American canals in general. After fourteen years of operation the Mahoning Railroad bought control of it, obtaining the state's interest very cheaply. The railroad agreed to keep the canal navigable. It also charged tolls so high that business, already dwindling, shrunk to almost nothing. Finally the waterway was abandoned and most of it became a railroad bed. The other canals built in this era of widespread canal-craze served better and lasted longer. Tolls on Ohio canals rose from $800 net in 1828 to $227,000 in 1838 and half a million dollars in 1848. The canal climax came just before 1850. The railroads became real competitors and the canals declined. In 1856 receipts failed to meet expenditures. The war struck them a heavy blow. Rapid transit was demanded, and the railroads were leagued against them. They were leased to private interests and the lease was continued after the close of the war. They were allowed to fall into disrepair. The lease was abandoned in 1877, and the state took them back into its hands, tinkering with them and trying to get them once more on a paying, or at least a non-losing, basis. So they doddered along until 1904, when new public interest in waterways developed. Several million dollars were poured into improvements, and the system seemed almost ready for a new lease of life. But somehow the canals could never quite get up circulation again. Railroad opposition, politics, trouble over terminals, litigation, and above all, lurking doubt in the public mind 242 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS as to whether canals were still feasible, delayed the revival. It was hard to decide whether to complete the various sections once more for navigation on a larger and better scale, or to use them merely to provide water for manufacturers, or to abandon and sell them. Thus these historic ditches still stretch across the state, sad reminders of a great past. Some of them are filled with water, others empty and dry. There are great concrete locks and dams built a couple of decades ago, and able to give excellent service, and there are locks and spillways broken down. Some parts of the system are used for public parks. Strips have been sold or given to cities, railroads, companies and individuals. Most of it is still owned by the state. It is a melancholy situation. Yet even within the last three years there has been another flare-up of interest in canals, particularly for heavy transportation between manufacturing centers. There has been more surveying of routes, with talk of another waterway, bigger and better than its predecessors, between Lake Erie and the Ohio River. The great steel-manufacturing district in the Mahoning Valley has talked hopefully of a canal to the Ohio to bring coal more cheaply from the West Virginia mines, and one from Cleveland to bring Lake Superior ore likewise. Whether anything will come of this re-awakening is doubtful. It may indicate an old solution of a modern industrial problem, or it may merely reflect current interest in greater waterway systems like the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence project, which would make Cleveland a seaport and bring the world's ships to our waterfront. CHAPTER III SAILING VESSELS (Includes Harbor before War) Canal traffic inevitably tied in with lake traffic; each supplemented the other and developed with it. The lake traffic, even the white man's part of it, long antedated Cleveland. For centuries the lake had been traversed in open batteaux, paddled by Indians and trappers. These were long boats, narrow at the ends and wide amidships, with flat or slightly rounded bottoms, staunch and seaworthy, capable of carrying several tons, but fairly easy to beach or slide over a sand bar. Whittlesey says they weathered the lake gales as well as the sailing craft and steamers of later times. They were used to bring furs down the Lakes and carry provisions up, before the sailing era. There was a considerable traffic in them along the south shore of Lake Erie, centering at Presque Isle (Erie) toward the end of the eighteenth century, and they lasted for river use until well into the following century. In them, supplies brought overland from Fort Pitt were often transported from the Cuyahoga to the Maumee or Detroit. Such craft were used by the original Cleaveland surveying party. Sailboats started early to drive them out, as steam did a little later to drive out sails. Moses Cleaveland on his way from Buffalo met with several small sloops and schooners. Some of the old authorities say that he actually found sailboats in the Cuyahoga River. One mentions two schooners in the river, called the Beaver and Mackinaw, hailing from Detroit. These were the ships lent to the Moravian missionaries by the Northwestern Fur Company, to take their "praying Indians" to Canada and back again. - 243 - 244 -THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS The first ship on the Great Lakes was the Griffin, built by the heroic adventurer La Salle, launched at the mouth of Cayuga Creek, New York, in 1578 and lost with a 60-ton cargo of furs the following year on her way down from Green Bay, Wisconsin. The first Cleveland-built vessel was half as large, a small schooner constructed in 1808 by Lorenzo Carter—that alert pioneer responsible for so many of Cleveland's beginnings. Completed in a makeshift shipyard "on the hill" somewhere near where the Rockefeller Building stands, she was hauled down to the river by oxen. She traded out of Cleveland for several years, taking east furs and grindstones to pay for the salt, iron, leather, groceries and drygoods she brought back. There followed the next year a little schooner named Sally built by Joel Thorp, and the similar Dove built by Alexander Simpson, and the year after a vessel as large as La Salle's named the Ohio, by Murray and Bigsby. The village was beginning to develop a shipping industry. The movement was accelerated by the War of 1812 which, while touching Cleveland lightly, brought many eastern ship carpenters into the Lakes in anticipation of naval employment. The Ohio herself gained a war record, though not a glorious one. She was sold to the Federal government and changed into a gunboat of Perry's fleet, but was not present at the battle of Lake Erie, and was subsequently captured at Fort Erie. Soon afterwards came the Pilot, built by Levi Johnson on the spot in the woods long afterward dignified by the Euclid Avenue Opera House, and hauled to the river by twenty-eight yoke of oxen ; then the Lady of the Lake, showing by her name that Clevelanders were reading Scott's epic poem published three years before ; a 65-ton schooner by Levi Johnson called Neptune which came into the employment of the American Fur Company and thus helped open a new business era; the Prudence, built by Philo Taylor, and in 1822 Noble H. Merwin's fine schooner Minerva, which deserves more than a passing word. It is told of this ship that her chain cable was forged in a Cleveland blacksmith THE CANAL ERA - 247 shop, first notable product of a new local industry. Also that its strength was tested by fastening one end of it to a big butternut tree and hitching twelve yoke of oxen to the other end. The oxen won, but the chain, with a new link to replace the parted one, was judged fit for its purpose. "When she was launched," related George B. Merwin, "I stood on the heel of her bowsprit, and as she touched the water, christened her by giving her my mother's name, `Minerva,' and broke a gallon jug of whiskey over her bows, as was the custom on similar occasions in those times. She was dispatched to Mackinac, loaded with provisions for the garrison on that island, and made the round trip in four weeks, which at that time was regarded as a wonderful achievement." She was the first vessel registered under the new Federal revenue laws. Came then in 1824 the big Enterprise of 220 tons, which was indeed what her name signified. For she was the first Cleveland-built steamship, constructed by Levi Johnson and the Turhooven brothers. Her engine, nearly seventy-horsepower, came from Pittsburgh. Johnson himself was her master for several years, trading between Buffalo and Detroit. The first steamer on Lake Erie had been Walk-in-the-Water, built near Buffalo in 1818. Thus opened a new era, that of steam, without seriously infringing upon the province of sails. The latter were to hold their own for three-quarters of a century more, cleanly supplementing the mechanical traffic that came to smudge the blue lakes. By 1841 there were two hundred and fifty sailing vessels on Lake Erie, ranging from fifty to three hundred and fifty tons and earning three-quarters of a million dollars a year. They were mostly schooners and brigs. A few years later came the clippers, modified from the sea type to suit the shallow channels, choppy waves and variable winds of the Lakes. The ships were built of native white oak, with white pine for spars and decks. Their decline is said to have been due as much to the exhaustion of good ship timber as to the superior efficiency of steam engines. 248 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS The catalogue of ships given above may appear trivial ; but so is Homer's, if you ignore the poetry. Anyone with imagination that lends interest to the small beginnings of great things may be trusted here, perhaps, to supply the poetry for himself. Before this subject is laid aside—to be resumed in another part of the history—let us turn to an idyllic picture of Cleveland City in 1835, as it appeared to James D. Cleveland when he wrote his reminiscences sixty years later : "As the steamer came up the river, the boy read the signs on the warehouses—Richard Winslow, Blair & Smith, Foster & Dennison, W. V. Craw, Robert H. Backus, Gillett & Hickox, C. M. Giddings, N. M. Standart, M. B. Scott, Griffith & Standart, Noble H. Merwin—and passed scores of steamers, schooners and canalboats, exchanging wheat and flour from interior Ohio for goods and salt to be carried to the canal towns all the way to the Ohio River. Walking up Superior Lane, a steep, unpaved road, you passed the stores of Denker & Borges; Deacon Whitaker's, full of stoves ; George Worthington, hardware; at the corner of Union Lane, where Captain McCurdy had lately retired from the drygoods business ; Strickland & Gaylord, drugs, etc. ; Sanford & Lott, printing and book store ; and T. W. Morse, tailor. "On reaching the top, Superior Street, 132 feet wide, spread before you—the widest of unpaved streets, with not a foot of flagged sidewalk except at the corner of Bank Street, in front of a bank. It was lined with a few brick, two and three-story buildings. A town pump stood at the corner of Bank Street, near the old Commercial Bank of Lake Erie, on the corner, of which Leonard Case was president, and Truman P. Handy, cashier. There were three or four hotels. Pigs ran in the street, and many a cow browsed on all the approaches to it. Dr. Long had a fine two-story residence on the corner of Seneca Street. Mr. Case, C. M. Giddings, Elijah Bingham, William Lemon, John W. Allen, and a few others, had residences dotted around the Public Square, upon which the Old Stone Church occupied its present site, and in THE CANAL ERA - 249 the southwest corner stood the courthouse. The post office occupied a little ten-by-fifty feet store room in Levi Johnson's building, below Bank Street, and you received your letters from the hand of Postmaster Daniel Worley, and paid him the eighteen pence, or twenty-five cents, postage, to which it was subject, according to the distance it had traveled. "The great majority of the best residences were on Water, St. Clair and Lake streets. A few good houses had been built on Euclid Avenue, but the Virginia rail fence still lines it on the north side, from where Bond Street now is to the Jones residence, near Erie Street, where Judge Jones and the Senator (John P. Jones) lived in their boyhood. There were groves of fine black oaks and chestnuts on Erie Street, between Superior and Prospect streets, and a good many on the northeast part of the Public Square, and between St. Clair Street and the lake. "With its scattered houses, its numerous groves, its lofty outlook upon the lake, its clear atmosphere, as yet unpolluted by smoke, Cleveland was as beautiful a village as could be found west of New Haven." We turn now to the harbor, for ships must have shelter. The river was naturally the first harbor, and long the only one. It sufficed for canoes and batteaux and such small sailing craft as could enter the river mouth at high water. But vessels of larger size were obliged to anchor in the open lake and transfer their cargoes to and from the shore or the river on flatboats. This was troublesome in rough weather, and none too safe for the ships. When Moses Cleaveland planned the town, he arranged for two boat landings in the river, an upper one for small craft and a lower one for larger craft, but for the latter there was little use most of the time. It is a peculiarity of all the Lake Erie rivers that they tend to form sand bars across their mouths. In the spring the loosened ice gorges and freshets clear a channel ; but later in the season, as the water level subsides, the mouth is filled up again. The early settlers, driving westward from Buffalo in wagons or ox carts, discovering this phenomenon, made an odd practical use of it. Instead of fording the rivers,