THE CANAL ERA - 275 the lighting of Superior Street from the river to the public square. Licensed dealers were allowed to sell liquor at the race track for five days, upon paying an extra fee of $10. A bond issue of $50,000 was voted, "for the erection of a market or markets, the purchase of grounds whereon to build schoolhouses and the erection of schoolhouses." A plan was approved for the publication of a city directory. A year later the council voted financial aid to a railroad to connect Cleveland with Pittsburgh. Of all these undertakings, it may be agreed that the school legislation was most important. There had been schools, almost from the first, private and semi-public, but nearly always of uncertain quality and status. The "free school" in existence at the time seems to have borne a poor reputation. It is recorded by Samuel L. Mather that "a Sunday school was organized in the old Bethel Church, probably in 1833 or 1834, a kind of mission or ragged school. The children, however, were found so ignorant that Sunday school teaching was out of the question. The time of the teacher was obliged to be spent in teaching the children how to read. To remedy this difficulty and make the Sunday school available, a day school was started. It was supported by voluntary contributions, and was a charity school, in fact, to which none were sent but the very poorest people." All this was changed. The city in 1836 assumed the expenses of the school, which was teaching 230 children at a cost of about $300 a year and prepared to establish an adequate, self-respecting public school system. Definite action was taken to this end the following year, coming, as so many other civic enterprises did, at the climax of the great business boom. School buildings were leased and soon new ones were built. There were "two schools for the sexes respectively" opened in each school district. There were employed three male and three female teachers, changed a little later to three male and five female teachers to care for eight schools. Apparently girl pupils were outnumbering the boys. There were, in that first year of the new plan, 840 pupils listed, with an 276 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS average attendance of 468. The school income was $2,830. Education was entirely free. The teachers were "critically examined" before they were hired, and the schools carefully inspected. The female teachers were paid $5 a week and the males $10. Uniform books were prescribed, and were furnished at wholesale prices. That was the beginning of Cleveland's great school system. CHAPTER VI DIRECTORY OF 1837 It is well to pause here, in the climacteric year of 1837, to observe what progress had been made in the forty-one years of Cleveland's history. Fortunately the survey is easy to make, because the infant city itself had self-consciously determined upon a general stock-taking, authorizing one Julius P. Bolivar MacCabe to prepare a joint directory of Cleveland and Ohio City. From the interest shown in that little yearbook by later generations, one gains a new sense of the historical value of city directories. Let us see how Cleveland stood at that particular peak of youthful glory. PEOPLE. What doubtless interested the citizens most then, as it does now, however mistakenly, is population. Consider this jubilant statement from Mr. MacCabe's Directory. "According to the census taken in the year 1825, Cleveland contained only 500 souls; in 1831, the population was not more than 1,300; in 1832, it amounted to 1,500; in 1833, to 1,900; in January, 1834, it was found to have increased to 3,323; in November, 1834, it was 4,250; and in August, 1835, it was 5,080. The number of inhabitants of the City of Cleveland at present exceeds 9,000, and judging from the rapid increase to that number, and the flattering prospects of this infant city, we anticipate its being doubled in less than three years." That rash expectation may be forgiven. Surely it was enough to turn any town's head, after acquiring only 500 citizens in a whole generation, to multiply its population by 18 in the next dozen years, and almost to double itself in those last two years. Boom psychology in America, and perhaps in any pioneer country, works peculiarly along this line. - 277 - 278 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS Population is inflated along with prices, particularly land prices. Riding on the crest of the wave, buoyant builders of new eras believe that the future will be all crest. Hardly was MacCabe's prophecy in print when the wave broke. In those next three years the population, instead of doubling, dropped to 6,071. MONEY. It is impossible to say what the wealth of the city was in 1837, but some notion of its growth may be gained from the banking facilities. There were two flourishing banks and an insurance company. The leading financial institution was the Commercial Bank of Lake Erie, on West Superior at the corner of Bank Street, with a capital of $500,000. Its president was Leonard Case, perhaps the city's biggest business man of his time and one of the ablest of all time. Its cashier was Truman P. Handy, its teller James Rockwell, its assistant teller J. L. Severance. The board of directors is a list of notable names. Besides Mr. Case, there were John W. Allen, Charles M. Giddings, Edmund Clark, T. M. Kelley, P. M. Weddell, Samuel Williamson, Truman P. Handy, Daniel Worley, S. J. Andrews, Richard Hilliard, John Blair and David Long. The Bank of Cleveland, with Norman C. Baldwin president, Alexander Seymour cashier, and T. C. Severance teller, had a capital of $300,000. The Cleveland Insurance Company was capitalized at $500,000 and had a perpetual charter. Its president was Edmund Clark and its secretary Seth W. Chittenden. THE PRESS. Four newspapers are listed in the Directory. They are the Daily Herald and Gazette, the Cleveland Daily Advertiser, the Cleveland Journal and the Cleveland Liberalist. The first of these papers, originally the Cleaveland Herald, was born in 1819 and loyally preserved the spelling of its founder's name for fourteen years. It was probably the most heroic journalistic enterprise ever launched in the city, for it started without one subscriber. It was delivered for many years once a week by Eber D. Howe, its founder, on THE CANAL ERA - 281 horseback, over a route extending to Painesville and points southeast over terrible roads in all weathers. The subscription price was 50 cents a year. The publisher-newsboy carried an average of sixty papers in its early years, blowing a tin horn to warn patrons of his approach. There had been a short-lived predecessor, the Gazette and Commercial Register. Newspaper mortality is always high, especially among pioneers. The Herald had been rather conservative in politics, but gradually swung over to "Jacksonianism" and thereby invited rivalry. It absorbed the Daily Gazette, founded in 1836 by Col. Charles Whittlesey. The Advertiser was started in 1832 by Madison Kelley as a pure Whig organ, published once a week. It had an interesting fate. Two years after its origin it was sold and transformed into a Democratic paper, becoming a daily in 1836. Five years later it came into the hands of J. W. and A. N. Gray and its name was changed to the Plain Dealer, under which title it has been published continuously ever since. The Herald, in the meantime, soon swung back to the support of the Whigs, and thus the political balance was maintained. The Journal was a Presbyterian weekly, started in 1836, which seems to have been short-lived. The fourth paper, the Liberalist, deserves a little more attention, despite the fact that it died an early death. It did its best to live up to its name. The editor, Samuel Underhill, announced on his editorial page, over a woodcut of a sturdy newsboy trotting along with an open newspaper and tooting a horn, that the publication was "devoted to free enquiry." He added this statement of principles : "Opposed to all monopolies—in favor of universal, equal opportunities for knowledge in early life for every child; discourager of all pretensions to spiritual knowledge ; teaches that virtue alone produces happiness; that vice always produces misery; that priests are a useless order of men ; that school masters ought to be better qualified, and then should have higher wages; that the producing classes are unjustly fleeced ; that nobles by wealth are as offensive to sound democracy as nobles by 282 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS birth—both are base coin ;—and it inserts [arguments] on the other side of the question, when furnished in well written articles." Fair-minded, though radical ! This Bolshevik publication failed in less than a year. Cleveland believed in a free press, but discouraged complete frankness. There was no City Club yet. INDUSTRIES. The industrial record is not so complete as one wishes it were. Its contents, however, are impressive. The editor proudly announces: "There are four very extensive iron foundries and steam engine manufactories in this city; also three soap and candle manufactories, two breweries, one sash factory, two rope walks, one stoneware pottery, two carriage manufactories and two French Burr millstone manufactories, all of which are in full operation. The flouring mill now being erected by Mr. Ford will, when finished, be the largest and most complete establishment of the kind in the state of Ohio." Numerous small and less organized industries missed in the catalogue are doubtless taken for granted. TRANSPORTATION. There is natural and pardonable boasting of the extensive traffic handled by the Ohio Canal and the lake shipping. Canal freight transshipped during the year 1836 is valued at $2,444,708. The most important exports listed are wheat, flour, corn, pork, tobacco and coal. There were 911 sailing vessels and 90 steamboats arriving and cleared, with an aggregate tonnage of 401,800. Water transport is not yet, but soon to be, supplemented by railroads, of which four projects are mentioned. An ambitious route to Pittsburgh is as yet only in the prospectus stage. Three lines are already incorporated to connect Cleveland respectively with Cincinnati, Newburgh and Bedford. The short Newburgh line is already surveyed and construction is about to start. Of more immediate interest are the canal packets and stage lines actually in operation. Luxurious canal-boats for passengers plying between Cleveland and Portsmouth, a dis- THE CANAL ERA - 283 tance of 309 miles, arrive and depart every day, stopping at all important points and making the trip from the lake to the Ohio in eighty hours. Connections are made with canal branches and stage lines for Columbus and other interior towns. The Pioneer Fast Stage Line conveys passengers from Cleveland to Pittsburgh by stage to Wellsville and thence by steamship, in the short time of thirty hours, "being the shortest route between the two cities, and affording a pleasant trip through a flourishing part of Ohio, on a good road, and in better coaches than on any line running to said place." There are connections with the Good Intent Fast Mail Stage (surely an inspired name) in combination with the Pioneer Packet and Railroad Lines for Philadelphia, New York and Washington. There are other through stage lines running to Pittsburgh, Detroit, Columbus and Cincinnati. Travel, one gathers, has grown easy. PUBLIC BUILDINGS. The architectural pride of the city was the courthouse, standing on an eminence on the south side of the public square near the present site of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. It had an imposing front with "pilasters of the Dorick order supporting a Dorick entablature, the whole crowned with an Ionic belfry and dome." Near by on Champlain Street was the county prison, a handsome stone building of two stories. There was the City Hospital on Clinton Street, "in the easterly part of the city and upon the most elevated ground in it," about half a mile east of the square. The hospital had several acres of grounds used as a public cemetery, and the institution was maintained at an expense of $4,000 to $5,000 a year. There were a few church spires rising from among the trees where, three generations later, skyscrapers would rise from treeless wastes of flat-roofed business blocks and paved streets. Of public parks there were none, as yet; but one private venture in this direction, warmly described by the Directory, deserves commemoration. This was Clinton Park, fronting on the lake at the present Lakeside Avenue and East Six- 284 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS teenth Street, which "although a wilderness of unsightly stumps and girdled trees two years ago, is already encircled with some suburban villas embosomed in gardens of the most picturesque beauty. It is intended to be laid out in the landscape style of gardening, comprising lawns, shrubbery, ornamental trees and flowers, which with the Mineral Spring adjacent will be open to the public." At this suburban watering place was a "Spring Cottage and Bathing Establishment, decidedly a summer retreat from the bustle and care of business, of no ordinary character, combining utility and gratification with pleasure." Thither the tired business man and his family were expected to repair, far from the roar and rush of the busy down-town. CHURCHES. The city, though not particularly religious in its origins, was fairly well churched by this time. First in time and apparently also in dignity came the First Presbyterian Church, at the northwest corner of the public square. Its minister was the Rev. Samuel C. Aikin, who held services at 10:30 a. m. and at 3 and 7 p. m. These were the regular hours for nearly all the churches. There was a Second Presbyterian congregation which was building a church and in the meantime holding services in the Commercial Building, its minister being the Rev. Joseph Whiting. There was Trinity Episcopal Church, at the corner of Seneca and St. Clair streets, with the Rev. E. Boyden as rector. It had the distinction of an organ, the organist being H. J. Mould. The Baptist Church, on Seneca Street at the corner of Champlain, was presided over by the Rev. Levi Tucker. The Catholic Church, with a "congregation of about one thousand souls, under the direction of the Bishop of Cincinnati," was housed in Superior Hall on Superior Lane, temporarily without a priest. It expected the Bishop to provide one soon, and also "to make arrangements for the erection of a splendid church for his flock in Cleveland and Ohio City." The Methodist Episcopal Church was using the courthouse, and the Protestant Methodist Church was meeting at Reed's School House, THE CANAL ERA - 285 pending the erection of substantial brick edifices to be finished during the year. There was also the Bethel Church, a Presbyterian offshoot, on Diamond Street, and the German Protestant Church, at the Academy on St. Clair Street. Evidently religion was prospering along with the city's material interests. HOTELS. The leading hostelries were the American House on West Superior, where it and its successor endured until swept away by the Terminal development; the Cleveland House on the Public Square, about where the present Cleveland Hotel stands; the Cleveland Centre House in the block of the same name, the City Hotel on Seneca Street, the Clinton House at Union Lane and St. Clair, the Eagle Tavern at Water Street and St. Clair, the Franklin House on West Superior, the Farmers' and Mechanics' Hotel at Ontario and Michigan, the Globe Tavern on Merwin Street and the Washington House on Water Street. CIVIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL. The associations and institutions grouped under this head give intimate glimpses into the life and thought of the thriving young community. Notable among them, as showing a reaction against the liberal drinking of early years, was the Cleveland City Temperance Society, with Alexander Seymour president and Samuel Cowles and David Long vice presidents, supported by an impressive group of leading citizens. It stood for "teetotalism," but apparently sought no prohibition except the voluntary, self-imposed sort. Interest in the slavery question was shown by the existence of the Cleveland Anti-Slavery Society, organized in 1833, with 200 members, presided over by David Long. There was also a Cuyahoga Anti-Slavery Society. Literary needs of the community were ministered to by the Cleveland Reading Room Association, which by voluntary subscription provided newspapers, pamphlets, reviews, etc., from various parts of the country, on matters of general interest; also by the Young Men's Literary Association, which 286 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS had a reading room and a growing library of 800 volumes that might be taken home on Wednesday and Saturday evenings. Here, evidently, was the ancestor of the Cleveland Public Library. Very appropriately, the head of this organization was Charles Whittlesey, who might be called the Benjamin Franklin of Cleveland, later distinguished as a historian and scientist. The musical needs of the city were ministered to by the Cleveland Mozart Society, formed for "the promotion of musical science and the cultivation of a refined taste in its members." Its president was T. P. Handy, its conductor George W. Pratt. There was also, perhaps for those less susceptible of musical refinement, a Cleveland City Band of seventeen pieces. The Cleveland Maternal Association was "composed of benevolent ladies, parents or guardians of children, united together for the purpose of providing for the religious education of the children under their care." Samuel Cowles was president of a Western Seaman's Friend Society. A newly organized military company, the City Guards, had sixty-four members. There was a Cleveland Female Orphan Asylum, a Cleveland Female Seminary and a Young Ladies Seminary. PART TWO The City's Work SECTION V STEAM Chapter I. Walk-in-the-Water Chapter II. Steam on Wheels PART TWO SECTION V STEAM CHAPTER I WALK-IN-THE-WATER It was a strange and welcome sight that brought the population of Cleveland to the bluff overlooking the river mouth on August 25, 1818. Eleven years before, they had been thrilled by the news that an American named Fulton, in New York, had accomplished the miracle of adapting steam power to navigation. Now here, in the wild and remote West, was a virtual replica of the Clermont, moving majestically up the lake under her pillar of cloud and coming to anchor beyond the river bar. It was Walk-in-the-Water, first of power craft in Lake Erie and mother of a multitude. Most of the extant pictures of this steamship are probably inaccurate. Some of them, if not frank caricatures, are surely slanderous. There were real shipbuilders on the Lakes in those days. It is inconceivable that, even for a novel purpose, a vessel could have been designed for these choppy waters so crudely after the style of a Greek sponge-diver's boat, pointed fore and aft, high in bow and stern and low amidships, with the lumbering pitch and roll to which such craft are liable. Be this as it may, here was an auxiliary schooner, or if you prefer, an auxiliary steamer, with a towering smokestack amidships and the smoke sullying her cordage, with two side paddle wheels and a walking beam that made the queer craft live up to her name. On her decks were swarms - 289 - 290 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS of passengers wildly waving a salute, and from shore thundered a welcome of artillery that had been provided for the War of 1812 and fortunately had never found a military use. She was of 300 tons burden, 135 feet long, 32 feet beam, 8 ½, feet draught, a complete passenger ship with first cabin, steerage and forecastle, made 8 miles an hour under power alone, and could accommodate, in some manner or other, as many as 400 people. Now, on her first trip from Buffalo to Detroit, she had put into Cleveland for publicity purposes. The voyage had started under difficulties. The vessel was built at Black Rock, on the Niagara River below Buffalo, because at the time there was no harbor at Buffalo deep enough to accommodate so large a craft. To reach the lake she had to fight a current too swift for her power. There was no favoring breeze to assist. So the captain invoked a "horn breeze," in the form of 10 yoke of oxen at the end of a long cable. Between the engine and the oxen, with an occasional breaking of the cable, the vessel laboriously entered Lake Erie and began her maiden trip. Now for a close-up view, presented by one of the passengers, Eber D. Howe, a pioneer printer of Painesville : "We arrived off Cleveland near the close of the second day, under a heavy northwest gale and a heavy sea. At that time there was no entrance to the harbor, except for very small craft and lighters. It was soon discovered that the boat could proceed no farther against the wind, and could not put back without great peril. Finally all the anchors were cast, with the alternative of riding out the gale or going onto the beach, and I think the latter was most expected by all on board. The gale continued for three nights and two days without much abatement, and on the morning of the third day the passengers were taken ashore in small boats, among them the late Governor Wood, wife and child." The steamer soon continued on her way, and reached her destination in eight days from Buffalo. After that she usually made better time. But she was obviously not the last word in Lake Erie navigation, for she lasted only three years and was fortunate to last that long. Her end came near the STEAM - 293 close of navigation in November, 1821. Let us present a contemporary account of her demise, full of life and color, by a Clevelander named George Williams. Homeward bound with two friends, Orlando Cutter and John S. Strong, preferring steam to wind, he had boarded the vessel at Black Rock, working upstream to the lake as usual with the help of the oxen. Everything was serene. "As she cast off her tow-line and moved unaided into the broad waters of Lake Erie there was no anticipation of the terrible gale we were soon to encounter. The boat had a full complement of passengers and a full cargo of goods, mostly for western merchants, one of whom, Mr. Palmer of Detroit, was on board with his bride. There was also a company of missionaries, several of whom were ladies, on their way to some western tribe. As the winds rose, friends grouped themselves together, and as the storm grew more and more furious, there was great terror among them. The young bride was frantic, shrieking and calling on her husband. The missionaries sang hymns and devoted themselves to soothing the terrified. There was a Mr. Strong on board, a cattle dealer and farmer, after whom Strongsville, near Cleveland, was named. He had in his saddle-bags the proceeds of a drove of cattle he had just sold in the East. Through the night and during the height of the storm he lay in a berth near the companionway, his saddle-bags under his head. When asked how he could lie there so quietly, he nonchalantly replied, if he was drowned, he might as well be drowned there as anywhere. We lay tossed of the tempest, the big seas sweeping over us all the long night. Just as the first gleam of daylight appeared, our anchor began to drag. The captain, seeing the impossibility of saving the steamer, ordered her beached. With skilled seamanship she was sent broadside on. A rope was stretched from boat to beach, and the passengers were ferried to shore in the small boat. They reached it drenched and exhausted, but all [were] saved." As all beginnings are important, this birth of the steamship, which has been called the only real advance made in navigation since the time of the Carthaginians, calls for a little closer consideration. The evolution of the steam en- 294 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS gine had dragged through the eighteenth century, with accelerating speed toward its close. James Watt had wonderfully improved the crude stationary engine by his steam jacket, stuffing box, separate condenser, double action of steam and vacuum, the throttle valve, governor, pressure indicator and other revolutionary improvements, and in partnership with Matthew Boulton was manufacturing and selling his engines in Birmingham, mainly for pumping water out of mines. Arthur Woolf in 1804 developed the compound engine with two cylinders of different sizes, furthering Watt's expansion system, especially suited for adaptation to marine use. Many engineers were seeking to fit steam to oars. Five years before Fulton's triumph was built the first practical steamboat. It was the tug Charlotte Dundas constructed by William Symington and tried out in the Forth and Clyde Canal in 1802. Symington used a Watt double-acting condensing engine placed horizontally, acting directly by a connecting-rod on the crank of a shaft at the stern, which carried a revolving paddle-wheel. Thus canal boats were to be towed. The real effectiveness of this invention may be seen from the fact that it was abondoned for fear of injuring the canal banks. Then came Robert Fulton, one of the most glamorous characters in American engineering, and turned the trick with an engine of his own design, made for him by Boulton and Watt in the Birmingham plant. Fulton the jeweler's apprentice. Fulton the portrait and landscape painter. Fulton the civil engineer, authority on canals and improver of canal locks. Fulton who introduced panoramas to Paris. Fulton who built the first submarine boat in 1803, and called it the Nautilus, and showed Napoleon how by its aid he could use torpedoes to blow up enemy warships. Fulton who in that same year propelled a boat by steampower on the Seine, and was unable to persuade the great Napoleon of the value of steam, submarine or torpedo, just as he subsequently failed to convince the British and American governments. Finally back home again with an improved engine, and boat and waters of his own choosing, he ran the Clermont from New STEAM - 295 York to Albany amid general acclaim, and the steamship had arrived. Progress was rapid. In 1809 there was the Accommodation, a crude imitation of the Clermont, on the St. Lawrence between Quebec and Montreal, seeking those waters because they were considered safer than the lakes, though they lacked charts, lights, buoys, ranges and all the other appurtenances of modern navigation. In 1811 there was a steamer on the Mississippi. In 1812 Henry Bell built the Comet, a passenger boat with side paddle wheels, on the Clyde in Scotland. In 1816 came the first steamship on the Great Lakes, the Ontario, built in Sacketts Harbor and plying between Lewiston and Ogdensburg. This boat was 110 feet long, 24 feet beam and 81/2 feet depth, of 237 tons burden, with a low-pressure engine of 34-inch cylinder and 4-foot stroke. Immediately after it came the Frontenac of 700 tons, 170 feet over all, with paddle wheels 40 feet in circumference and three masts carrying fore-and-aft sails. Each of these craft made about five miles an hour. Steam was moving up the lakes, and so Walk-in-the-Water came in due order. The spirit of that pioneer craft lived on. Her engine was salvaged and was placed the following season in the hull of Lake Erie's second steamer, the Superior. The latter served for several years as the only steamship on the lake, under Capt. Jedediah Rogers. When she had grown obsolete, in 1831, her obsequies were celebrated by setting her adrift in the Niagara River to float over the Falls. Spectators were disappointed; she stranded on Goat Island and was long a landmark there. A notable event of those stirring years was the construction of the first steamship produced in the port of Cleveland, in 1824, by Levi Johnson and the Turhooven brothers. The Enterprise was 220 tons, with a 70-horsepower engine built in Pittsburgh. Like others of the period, it was of shallow draft, with pointed bows, and carried sail. Captain Johnson himself commanded her, in the Buffalo-Detroit trade, until his retirement four years later. He built a similar vessel on the Chagrin River in 1830. 296 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS Lake traffic was growing rapidly, stimulated by the completion of the Erie and Welland canals and the progress of the Ohio Canal, along with the wave of migration westward that characterized the time. People brought commerce and commerce brought people. By 1830 there were a dozen steamers plying Lake Erie, and in another decade there were three times that many. Shipbuilding, henceforward of great importance in Cleveland's history, was now developing into a regular industry. It was still possible to build sailing vessels almost anywhere in improvised shipyards, whose location might be determined largely by the local supply of timber, accessibility of labor or the personal convenience of the builder. It was thus that Perry had built his fleet. There were primitive shipyards in Sandusky, Vermilion, Huron and other rival ports. But steamships, wedding steel to wood, could not be produced so casually. Thus the opening of a shipyard by Seth W. Johnson in 1835 when he built his steamer Robert Fulton, may be said to have begun an era. He not only built boats but repaired vessels made by others. Eventually he added a partner, and Johnson and Tisdale were known on the Lakes as builders of staunch steamers until near the close of the Civil war. Thomas Quayle, another notable shipbuilder, had come to Cleveland from the Isle of Man in 1827, learned this promising trade and formed a partnership twenty years later with James Cody. Luther Moses was added to his busy and prosperous firm. Later it became Quayle and Martin, and still later Thomas Quayle and Son, building about a dozen vessels a year for many years. They led in the construction of large wooden propellers, as the stern screw vessels were called. So persistent was this Quayle breed of shipbuilders that on the retirement of the head of the firm, it became Thomas Quayle's Sons, the latest addition being the founder's third son, William E. Quayle. Captain Alva Bradley, a pioneer shipmaster on the lakes, settled down in Vermilion, giving up navigation for construction, in 1852. He moved to Cleveland seven years later, bringing his shipyards with him, and STEAM - 297 built here nearly a score of vessels in his old age. An important accession was the floating dock, serving the purpose of a dry dock, built by Stevens and Presley in 1847. Another well known shipbuilding firm was Peck and Masters, which launched more than fifty boats. When this firm dissolved, Mr. Peck, continuing alone, built revenue cutters for government use on the Great Lakes, and private vessels of more pretentious size. Naturally production was overdone for a time, and slackness ensued; but about 1853 came a new boom in the industry and Cleveland forged ahead. The opening of the Sault Ste. Marie to Lake Superior in 1855 gave new impetus to the industry. In the year 1856 there were thirty-seven vessels built in this port, with a combined tonnage of nearly 16,000. Steamers were growing in size. In the twenty years from 1849 to 1869 there were nearly 500 vessels of all types turned out in the Cuyahoga district, with a total of more than 84,000 tons. So this leading industry grew, before the Civil war and during the war, until in 1865 the Cleveland Herald proudly announced : "Cleveland now stands confessedly at the head of all places on the chain of lakes as a shipbuilding port. Her proximity to the shores of Michigan and Canada affords opportunity for the selection of the choicest timber, while the superior material and construction of the iron manufacturers of the city give an additional advantage. Cleveland has the monopoly of propeller-building. Its steam tugs are the finest on the lakes, while Cleveland-built sailing vessels not only outnumber all other vessels on the lakes, but are found on the Atlantic Coast, in English waters, upon the Mediterranean and in the Baltic." RIVER WHARVES. Ships must have docks and warehouses as well as harbors, and private enterprise usually provides them. From the records of Col. Charles W. Whittlesey, Samuel P. Orth and other sources is compiled this brief account of ante-bellum wharves. The first docks were naturally primitive landings, built 298 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS to provide mooring places and solid footing for loading and unloading on the clay river banks. They consisted of log cribs filled with rock, and later of log piling covered with logs or planks. Near them were set up the first warehouses, crude log structures a little higher up the hillside to avoid floods. As early as 1810 Lorenzo Carter built a warehouse near the site of his first cabin, about the foot of present Main Street, adjacent to the river mouth, conveniently situated to accommodate the traffic of flatboats that lightered cargoes between lake and river over the shallows. For lack of adequate rock or piling foundation this building was undermined and wrecked a few years later. Pettit and Holland had a warehouse near by at the same period, likewise Elias and Harvey Murray. A little farther up the river, near the foot of Superior Street, there was still another log building for storage. The first frame warehouse, proving the existence of an accessible sawmill within reasonable distance, was set up in 1816 by Leonard Case and Capt. William Gaylord, just north of St. Clair Street. There followed similar buildings by Dr. David Long and Levi Johnson, and by John Blair nearer the lake. Between Blair's and the Murrays' warehouses, says Whittlesey, was "an impassable marsh," which was filled up before very long and covered with docks. The first community effort of this sort was the project of the Cleveland Pier Company, already referred to, a chartered corporation composed of the leading shipping men and merchants of the village, to erect a pier for general use in 1816. The incorporators were Alonzo Carter, A. W. Walworth, David Long, Alfred Kelley, Datus Kelley, Eben Hosmer, Daniel Kelley, George Wallace, Darius E. Henderson, Samuel Williamson, Sr., Irad Kelley, James Kingsbury, Horace Perry and Levi Johnson—nearly all noted pioneer names. Their light pier on the lake front, subject to the battering of storms, was soon wrecked. The shipping business again retired to the river, for a third of a century. A well known warehouse of the period was that of Noble H. Merwin, later Merwin and Giddings and afterward successively Giddings and Baldwin, Giddings, Baldwin and Pease and Griffith,