(RETURN TO THE TITLE PAGE) ENGLISH DOMINION - 25 on all the maps of this region, it is certainly strange if Major Rogers, a man of marked intelligence, did not know its name and location. At this point Rogers met a band of Attawawa (0ttowa) Indians, just arrived from Detroit. In Rogers' "Journal," published in 1765, nothing is said of Pontiac or any other celebrated chief as being present on this occasion, but in his "Concise Account of the War," also published in 1765, it is stated that Pontiac was the leader of the party and that he haughtily forbade the English from proceeding. Rogers was a good deal of an adventurer, and some have imagined that after Pontiac became celebrated the major added the account of their meeting to give interest to his story. It is, however, one of those discrepancies which indicate truth rather than falsehood. If Major Rogers had interpolated the account of Pontiac, he would have carefully made his two books harmonize on that point; they being both, as we have said, published in the same year. It has been suggested that, as the Cuyahoga was the eastern boundary of Pontiac's territory, he would not have halted Rogers at Grand river. But it should always be remembered that Indian boundaries are not as clearly defined as those of the white man; and though the Cuyahoga was generally considered the boundary between the Iroquois and the western Indians, yet the old maps show an Ottawa village on the east side of that stream, in the present township of Independence; so it may well be that the haughty Pontiac claimed as far east as Grand river or even farther. We may add that the great authority of Parkman is decidedly in favor of the credibility of Rogers' account. According to that account the first delegation of Indians informed the major that the great chief, Pontiac, was not far off, and requested him' to wait until that dignitary could see " with his own eyes" the Anglo-American commander. Accordingly Pon- tiac soon met Rogers, demanded his business, and asked him how he dared to enter that country without his, Pontiac's, permission. Rogers answered that he had no design against the Indians, but should remove the French, the common enemy of both, the whites and the Indians, at the same time giving a belt of wampum. Pontiac said: " I stand in the path you travel in until to--orrow morning ;" thus forbidding the Americans to proceed, and emphasizing the command by the presentation of a wampum belt. Rogers continues: " When he departed for the night he inquired whether I wanted anything that his country afforded, and he would send for it. I assured him that any provisions they brought should be paid for, and the next day we were supplied by them with several bags of parched corn and some other necessaries. At our second meeting he gave me the pipe of peace, and both of us by turns smoked with it, and he assured me he had made peace with me and my detachment; that I might pass through his country unmolested, and relieve the French garrison, and that he would protect me and my party from any insults that might be offered or intended by Indians; and as an earnest of his friendship he sent a hundred warriors to protect and assist us in driving a hundred fat cattle, which we had brought for the use of the detachment from Pittsburg by the way of Presqu' Isle [Erie]. He likewise sent to the Indian towns on the south side and west end of Lake Erie, to inform them that I had his consent to come into the country. He attended me constantly after this interview till I arrived at Detroit, and while I remained in the country, and was the means of preserving the detachment from the fury of the Indians, who had assembled at the mouth of the strait, with an intent to cut us off. I had several conferences with him, in which he displayed great strength of judgment and a thirst after knowledge." Rogers was detained at "Chogage" by contrary winds until the 12th of November, when he made a run, which he estimated at forty-one miles, to "Elk river." This was probably Rocky river, though the old maps show Elk river east of the Cuyahoga. Those maps were made from vague reports, and though they showed the names of the principal streams they frequently confused the localities. The distanoe from "Chogage" (Cheraga, Geauga or Grand river) was so great that Rogers' next stopping place could not possibly have been Chagrin river, and the Cuyahoga was too well known to be mistaken. From Rocky river the adventurous major, with his battalion of daring partisans, seasoned in a score of desperate conflicts with the savages, proceeded up the lake to remove the principal emblem of French dominion in the upper- lake region, while the Ottawa chiefs, preserving their friendly demeanor, continued in the somewhat unwonted task of escorting the detachment which drove the cattle along the shore:. Rogers reached Detroit in safety, and took possession of it in the name of King George the Second, and for a time it seemed as if all the tribes of the West were willing to acknowledge the supremacy of the British. The next year Sir William Johnson went to Detroit, to aid in attaching the western Indians to the English crown by the same arts by which he had 'gained such a powerful influence over the Iroquois. He returned by the south side of the lake, (which seems to have been a favorite route, although the one along the north side was the shortest), and mentions his preparations to stop at the Cuyahoga; showing, as before stated, that that was a well known point. It was in 1762, as near as can be ascertained, that the first British vessel sailed upon Lake Erie; a schooner called the "Gladwyn," designed to carry supplies to the posts on the upper lakes. Meanwhile the western Indians, including perhaps some of the westernmost tribes of the Iroquois, had been all the while growing more hostile to the English, partly on account of their attachment to the defeated French, partly from jealousy of the rapid 26 - GENERAL HISTORY OF CUYAHOGA COUNTY progress of the English, and partly, probably, from disgust at the haughty ways of the conquerors, never as adroit as the French in the management of bar-. barous tribes. A wide-spreading conspiracy was skillfully organized by Pontiac, which in the spring of 1763 developed itself in simultaneous attacks on all the principal English posts. While that able though ferocious leader fiercely assaulted Detroit with his Ottawas, other tribes dame hurrying *down the lake to attempt the capture of Fort Pitt, and still others united with the Senecas in besieging Fort Niagara. But, though nine smaller posts were surprised and their garrisons massacred, the three just named withstood all the attempts of their foes. In the summer Major Rogers, who had returned east, was again sent up the lake with a detachment of provincials, to aid the garrison of Detroit. Pontiac still maintained the siege, and in the autumn another force of some six hundred regulars, under Major Wilkins, proceeded to the relief of the beleaguered post. This force was wrecked on their way up, the artillery was lost, seventy-three officers and men were drowned, and the remainder returned to Fort Niagara. It has been strenuously argued that this mishap occurred near Rocky river, in this county, but after a careful examination of the facts,' we have no hesitation in deciding that it was on the north shore of the lake. The place mentioned in contemporary records as being the scene of the disaster was " Point aux Pius" (Point of Pines), a well known locality in the district of Kent, Canada West, which is mentioned on several of the old maps by the same appellation. Besides, if Bradstreet's disaster, which occurred the next year at that point, had been at the same place as that which befell Wilkins, some of the contemporary writers would undoubtedly have said so. Pontiac finally raised the siege of Detroit, but still maintained a hostile attitude toward the English. In the spring of 1764 it was determined to send a sufficient force up the lake to awe the western Indians into subjection. This expedition was placed under the command of Colonel (commonly called General) Bradstreet, a native of Massachusetts, who had been quartermaster-general of the Northern army in several of its most important campaigns, and who was generally considered one of the ablest and most enterprising officers in the service. After a long halt at Fort Niagara, to compel the adhesion of the reluctant Senecas, the command came up the lake, reaching the borders of Cuyahoga county in August. Colonel Bradstreet commanded the largest force of white men which had yet appeared on Lake Erie, besides a considerable number of Indians. They made a gay and formidable appearance as they swept up the lake, the white men in their great, open bateaux, holding forty or fifty men each, with sails spread to catch the favoring breeze; the red men in a cloud of light canoes, each burdened with but three or four warriors, and swiftly propelled through the water by the paddles of its inmates. It was one of those motley bat picturesque bands, so common in those early wars, which harmonized well with the wilderness through which they were often called to pass, and it presented more to interest the eye and the imagination than might a far larger and better disciplined army. Three hundred and fifty of the number were veteran soldiers of the seventeenth and fifty-fifth regiments of British regulars, clad in their brilliant, scarlet uniforms, officered by the elite of the aristocracy, and trained to obey every word of command with more than religious zeal. Beside them were three battalions of provincial troops from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, numbering nearly eight hundred in all, less brilliantly clad and less rigidly disciplined than their English companions, but by no means to be confounded with ordinary militiamen. Nearly all of them had seen hard service in the many campaigns of the previous ten years, had shown themselves no unworthy foes of the soldiers of King Louis, and in combats with the Indians were more than equal to the red-coated musketeers of England. At the head of the Connecticut battalion was that sturdy farmer-soldier, then a little over forty years of age, already renowned as one of the most valiant Indian-lighters on the continent, the companion or rival of Rogers in half a dozen desperate campaigns, and afterwards destined to still wider fame as Major General Israel Putman, of the army of the Revolution. Besides these soldiers of Caucasian blood, the water was covered by a swarm of bark canoes, where gleamed beneath the August sun the knives, the tomahawk s and the naked, copper-colored bodies of a thousand warriors, gathered from nearly all the tribes of the east to aid in the subjugation of their contumacious western brethren. Here were Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Tuscaroras, Conawagas, Nanticolces, Stockbridyes, Oquagas, and even a few Ottawas from Canada, ready to make war on their countrymen and their great chieftain, Pontiac. The largest body, however, from any tribe was composed of three hundred scowling Senecas, who had only been persuaded to join by the mingled threats of Bradstreet and persuasions of Sir William Johnson (who had accompanied the expedition as far as Fort Niagara), and who had only .the previous year perpetrated the terrible massacre of the "Devil's Hole," on the bank of the Niagara, when nearly a hundred English soldiers were surprised and slain in a few terrible moments. They could hardly have been very reliable allies of the British, and were probably required to accompany the expedition rather as hostages for their brethren at home than for any other purpose. Colonel Bradstreet, as has before been stated, had been considered one of the very ablest and most enterprising commanders in the service during the French war, but he was singularly unfortunate ENGLISH DOMINION - 27 throughout this expedition. He was believed to have been deceived by a treaty he made with the Indians at Presqu' Isle. When he reached Sandusky bay he could neither persuade the hostile Indians of the Scioto plains to come to him and make a treaty, nor could he, for lack of transportation, go to them and conquer them. He next proceeded to Detroit, whore perhaps the appearance of so large a force had a good effect on the lingering followers of Pontiac, and then returned to Sandusky bay. On the 18th of October he re-embarked his men to return east, refusing to wait even a few hours for some who were absent from camp. Within a day or two after leaving Sandusky bay the boats were drawn up at night along an open beach, on which the men made their bivouac. During the night a storm arose, drove the boats ashore, destroyed a large portion of them, and caused the loss of a great part of the provisions and ammunition. The locality of this disaster was, beyond all reasonable doubt, at "McMahon's beach," in the town of Rockport, in this county, stretching from one to three miles west of Rocky river, and being from eight to ten miles west of Cleveland. The description of the locality corresponds with that given in contemporary accounts, though these are not very -definite, and moreover there have been an immense number of military relics found in that vicinity which could not have coe from any other source than Bradstreet's unfortunate flotilla. The principal of these relics are described in an elaborate paper by the late Dr. J. P. Kirtland, which is published entire in Colonel Whittlesey's History of Cleveland, and of which we avail ourselves liberally and thankfully in this chapter. Some have attributed the disaster to the obstinacy of Bradstreet, who insisted on drawing up his boats opposite the beach and lauding there, in opposition to the protests of his more experienced officers. Sir William Johnson, in a letter" to General Gage, imputes the misfortune to Bradstreet's relying on French pilot, of Detroit, who was suspected of betraying -an English officer—Captain Dalzell into an Indian ambuscade the year before. The man may have been treacherous, but the fact is hardly proven by his failing to navigate Lake Erie with a fleet of bateaux and canoes. The wonder is that so many of those old navigators in such vessels escaped destruction. Parkman's account says the storm raged three days, but some part of this had probably spent its force before the flotilla drew up opposite McMahon's beach. If it had been beaten against the land during that period, there would hardly have been a single boat left. As it was, twenty-five bateaux (half of the whole number) were destroyed, and most of the ammunition and baggage was lost. Bradstreet proceeded to make the best arrangements he could for oontinuing his return home. His six brass field-pieces were buried on the shore, as Sir William complained, " in the sight of ye French villain," who, he feared, would cause them to be dug up by the Indians and used against Detroit. The remaining boats being too few to carry all the men, the commandant directed a hundred and seventy rangers, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Putnam, to march along the shore of the lake and river to Fort Niagara, while the main body of the army proceeded by boat to the same place. Among the numerous relics described by Dr. Kirtland, interesting of themselves, and also as proving beyond doubt the locality of Bradstreet's disaster, we will mention the following ; some being found at McMahon's beach, and some in the immediate vicinity of Rocky river, a mile or two farther down. The discovery of these at the latter point led Dr. Potter to believe that Major Wilkins' expedition was wrecked there, but, as before stated, there is no reasonable doubt but what that disaster occurred on the north shore of Lake Erie, and it is of course probable in the highest degree that some of Bradstreet's boats would be carried down to the mouth of the river before they broke up. An elaborately finished sword was thrown on the beach fronting the right bank of Rocky river in 1820, which was picked up by Orin Joiner, a member of the family of Datus Kelley. The top of the hilt was a large lion's head of pure silver, of which metal the guard was also composed. The silver was melted down by a Cleveland goldsmith to whom the sword was sold. Dr. Potter supposes the lion's head to have been an ensign of the naval service, but the dementailed report of the forces employed on the expedition does not show that any belonged to the navy. There were seventy-four "bateau-men," but these were landsmen hired by Bradstreet, and organized in a corps to navigate the vessels from which they took their name. In 1842, the bow-stem of a large bateau was thrown upon the beach, after a storm which tore up the sandbank that extends from the east side of the mouth of the river into the lake. The wood was thoroughly water-soaked and partly covered with aquatic moss, the irons were deeply rusted, and the whole had evidently been long imbedded in the sand. Numerous pieces of muskets, bayonets, guns, flints, etc., were also brought to the surface of the sand-bank, or thrown on shore, by the same storm. Mr. Frederick Wright drew in six bayonets with his seine in one night, a short time afterwards. At the mouth of "McMahon's run" the irons and the remnants of a bateau were found by the first settlers of the township. Several years later two six-pound cannon-balls and a number .of musket-balls became exposed by the action of the lake at the foot of a clay cliff at the west end of the bottom-lands. This is supposed to have been the place where Bradstreet buried his cannon and ammunition. About 1831, a young daughter of Datus Kelley found in the sand of McMahon's beach a silver spoon of heavy make and coarse workmanship, evidently 28 - GENERAL HISTORY OF CUYAHOGA COUNTY dating from the last century. It doubtless belonged to one of Bradstreet's officers, as did also another of the same description, found by Oscar Taylor in 1851. Numerous bayonets and pieces of muskets were also thrown by the surf upon the beach, which were collected by the families of Governor Wood and Colonel Merwin. Of still greater interest is a bayonet which remained until its discovery, some twenty years ago, imbedded in the blue clay of the bank of a gully on the farm of Colonel Merwin, where it had evidently been driven to its base by a soldier, to help himself and his comrades up the steep ascent. On the upland just above the beach, the early settlers found a stack of bayoncts covered with soil and vegetation, just as they had been piled by a squad of tired soldiers after they had ascended the bank. We are able, too, to follow the track of Putnam and his men for a short distance, with reasonable certainty, as they started on their tedious journey through the forest. They appear to have followed a ridge leading from the vicinity of McMahon's beach to the crossing of Rocky river, near the plank-road bridge. On this ridge, near the residence of Frederick Wright, one of the soldiers threw down nearly a peck of gun-flints, which were found there sixteen or eighteen years ago by the gentleman just named. By their being abandoned so early on the journey, it is probable that it was done by Putnam's order, who foresaw that his men were less likely to run out of flints than they were to fail in strength on the wearisome march. Farther cast, along the ridge, a silver teaspoon, rese-bling those already mentioned, was found at the first plowing of the ground afterwards occupied by the orchard of John Williams. Still farther on, in the garden of the Patchen Inn, Mr. Silverthorn in 1862 found three or four dollars in small silver pieces, of French and English coinage, all of earlier date than 1764. It is difficult to account for them except on the theory that one of Putnam's officers or men threw off some article of clothing there, and in his fatigue and perplexity neglected to remove this money from the pockets. In 1863, Mr. P. A. Delford also discovered, near the plank-road gate; two copper pennies, bearing the date of 1749 and the face of George the Second. In this account we have not only followed the description given by Dr. Potter, (condensing it to some extent), but have adopted his views in regard to the course of events thus far, except as to the wreck of Major Wilkin's expedition. We have more doubts, however, as to his theory that the contents of a mound in that vicinity were the bones of Bradstreet's soldiers, drowned in the disaster of October, 1764. All the contemporary reports say that no lives were lost, and this corresponds with the usual account of the event, according to which the boats were drawn up along the shore and the men landed, and then the storm destroyed the boats. This would certainly give the men a chance to escape, and there is no reasonable doubt that they did escape. Dr. Potter notices a memorandum that " the losses of officers and men by the wreck was made the subject of legislative action," and thence concludes that many were drowned; but this statement evidently refers to the "losses" of property by the officers and men. Otherwise the word "loss" would have been used. The mound in question was located a hundred and fifty feet east of the plank-road bridge across Rocky river, being, when the land was cleared, about a rod square and rising two or three feet above the adjacent ground. The covering was so thin that the bones could easily be reached by a spade, and many bones were scattered about the surface. About 1850 Mr. Worden attempted to plow through it, but found so many bones, and especially skulls, that he desisted. Mr. Eaton, who again plowed into the mound in 1861, brought to Dr. Potter two bushels of bones, including a dozen craniums, and there was a large amount left; the skeletons being piled in tiers on top of each other, and the bottom of the collection being two or three feet below the surface. Certainly, if so large a number of Bradstreet's soldiers had perished and been buried there, some of the numerous reports regarding that expedition would have said something about them. It is almost needless to add that white people do not bury their dead on the top of the ground, and heap up a thin covering of earth into a mound above them, especially when there was no greater reason for haste than there was then. Dr. Potter states that he explored the grave to the bottom; that the skeletons were all those of adult males; that he found several Indian relics among them; that he and "one of the most perfect craniologists of our country," pronounced the skulls_ to be those of Anglo-Saxons, except one, which he believed to be ,that of an Indian-adding, however, that he might be in error, and that "all may be Anglo-Saxon." But if such errors could be made, then all may have been Indian, which they probably were, judging from the character of the mound, the articles found in it, and the fact that there is no evidence that any sun number of white people ever died in that vicinity previous to the present century. On the 22nd of October Bradstreet camped at Grand river; so that he probably left Rocky river that morning. He arrived with the main army at Fort Niagara on the 4th of November, and proceeded thence to Oswego and Albany. Nothing is known of Putman and his gallant band after they plunged into the forest at Rocky river save that they, too, in time made their way to Fort Niagara, though after suffering numerous hardships. It was not until the latter part of December that the last of the provincials reached their homes. In May, 1765, the schooner "Victory" was sent to get the cannon left by Bradstreet near "Riviere aux Roches" (Rocky river), but was prevented by bad weather. As the authorities were evidently desirous to obtain them, there is every reason to suppose they ENGLISH DOMINION - 29 did so, though there is no direct evidence to that effect; for certainly there must have been plenty of weather during the season when half a dozen light field-pieces could be loaded on to a schooner. For many years after these events very little occurred within the territory of Cuyahoga county requiring the notice of history. The Iroquois used it as a hunting-ground, and their war parties occasionally made excursions over it, or coasted along its borders, to attack those whom they chose to consider their enemies living farther west, but very rarely, if ever, did the latter venture to return their visits and assail the fierce confederates of New York. Detachments of British soldiers also occasionally passed by here on their way to or from the upper posts. The freight of the lake consisted of supplies for the military posts, goods to trade with the Indians and furs received in return. It was carried almost entirely in open boats, or bateaux, similar to those which bore the commands of Rogers and Bradstreet; some of them going on the north side and some on the south side of the lake. Of course the navigation was very dangerous, and many were the hardships attending the traffic. The New York Gazette in February, 1770, informed its readers that several boats had been lost in crossing Lake Erie, and that the distress of the crews was so great that they were obliged to keep two human bodies, found on the north shore, so as to kill for food the ravens and eagles which came to feed upon the corpses. Certainly a most startling picture of the terrors attending the early commercial operations on Lake Erie. In 1774 an act of Parliament declared the whole territory northwest of the Ohio to be a part of the province of Quebec, though without prejudice to the rights of other colonies. Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia,, however, declared the act to be in derogation of the rights of his province, and proceeded to grant large tracts Of land northwest of the Ohio. For other reasons the patriot leaders of the colonies were strongly opposed to a law which transferred the whole Northwest to a province which had no constitutional government, and was arbitrarily ruled by the crown. This was the period of "Lord Dunmore's War," in which the Indians occupying the present territory of Ohio, western Pennsylvania and western Virginia, under the lead of the celebrated Logan, were defeated by the Virginians at Point Pleasant, at the mouth of the Kanawha. It does not appear to have changed in any respect the condition of affairs on the shores of Lake Erie. The next year the Revolution broke out, but this locality was too far from the frontier to be the scene of any portion of that conflict. The nearest American settlement was at Pittsburg, the village which had grown up around Fort Pitt, distant about a hundred and twenty miles in a straight line from the mouth of the Cuyahoga. Many of the western Indians, however, were persuaded to take arms in favor of the British, mainly by persuasion of the French leaders whom they had long been accustomed to admire and to follow, and who were employed by the English for that purpose. War parties accordingly frequently passed down the lake; some going on to join the English forces in Canada—others turning off at the Cuyahoga and going up its valley, whence they made their stealthy way to the Ohio and struck bloody blows at the settlers around Pittsburg. The inspiration of these expeditions came from the British post at Detroit, whence the Indians received arms, ammunition and presents of various kinds, to encourage them to continue in their bloody work. So numerous did these outrages become that in 1778 an expedition was projected against Detroit, intended to break up the nest where so many murders were hatched. As preliminary to this a force was sent out from Pittsburg against the Sandusky Indians, but it only went as far as the present county of Tuscarawas, where Fort Laurens was built, but abandoned the next year. The expedition against Detroit was given up. Other attacks upon the hostile Indians were made nearly every year. In 1782 occurred the celebrated murder of about a hundred peaceable Moravian Indians in the territory of Tuscarawas county, by a force of frontier militia under Colonel Williamson. After this shocking event the hostile Indians became more bitter than ever, and many who had previously been neutral now. united with the infuriated friends of the murdered Moravians. Meanwhile the English had been taught by a score of defeats that they could not conquer America, and in 1782 commissioners met in Paris to consider the terms of peace. One of the most important questions was that of the boundary between the British provinces and the United States. Commissioner Oswald, one of the representatives of Great Britain, proposed the Ohio river as the boundary line; claiming the northwestern territory as part of the province of Quebec under the law of 1774. This proposition was also secretly favored by Vergennes, the French • minister. It was vehemently opposed by the American commissioners, headed by John Adams, and the line was finally fixed in the middle of the great lakes and their connecting rivers. The definite treaty of peace, recognizing the independence of the United States, was signed in the fore part of 1783, and all this region ceased by law to be under English dominion. It will be seen that unquestioned British authority over the territory of Cuyahoga county only lasted from the surrender of Canada in 1760 to the peace of Paris in 1783-twenty-three years. 30 - GENERAL HISTORY OF CUYAHOGA COUNTY CHAPTER VI. THE PERIOD FROM 1783 TO 1794. Detention of Western Posts by the British—Dissensions Among the States About the Northwest— Origin of Conflicting Claims—The First English Charter—The Second Charter for Virginia—The Plymouth Charter—Annulment of the Virginia Charter—Grant of Massachusetts by the Plymouth Company--Grant of Connecticut to Earl Warwick by the same Company—Its Boundaries—Its Conveyance to Lord Say and Seal, Lord Brooke and others—The New York Claim—Views of the States without Claims -New York first cedes her Claim to the United States—Virginia follows—Also Massachusetts—Connecticut cedes her Claim to all but the Western Reserve—The Indian "Right of Occupancy "—The Iroquois cede all East of the Cuyahoga—Treaty with the Wyandots, Delawares and others—First Trade from Pittsburg— Primitive Engineering—First House in Cleveland—The Moravians in Cuyahoga County— Outline of their Past History—Their Conversion—Their Peacefut Conduct--The Massacre— Wandering of the Survivors—They arrive at the Mouth of the Cuyahoga—Locate in the present Independence—Call their New Home Pilgerruh —Their Course during the Year—Speech of an Apostate—Connecticut attempts to sell the Reserve—Wreck of the "Beaver "—The Crew winter on the Site of Cleveland—The Moravians Leave the County—Their Subsequent Fortunes— Organization of the Northwestern Territory—Formation of Washington County—Another Indian Treaty—An old French Trader—Defeat of Harmar and St. Clair—Conveyance of the " Fire- Lands "—Wayne's Victory and Treaty ON the conclusion of the treaty of peace the Americans expected, of course, to take immediate possession of the posts previously held by the British, lying south of the boundary line. The English government, however, refused to give them up, giving as an excuse the alleged unfair conduct of some of the States regarding debts owed by their citizens to British subjects. The posts at Fort Niagara, at Detroit and on the Sandusky river were thus retained. The Indians naturally locked on their possessors as the great men of the lake region, and thus the English maintained a predominant influence over this part of the country many years after any semblance of legal title had passed away. Meanwhile, even during the Revolution, dissensions had arisen between the States regarding the ownership of the vast country lying between the Alleganies, the great lakes and the Mississippi. Several of the States had conflicting claims, based on royal charters or other grounds, while those who had no such claims insisted that that unoccupied territory ought to belong to all the States in common, since it had been rescued from the power of Great Britain by their united efforts. We will endeavor to give a brief sketch of the principal pretensions put forth by the States, so far as they relate to this locality. An elaborate account of them all, with all their ramifications, would require a volume. In 1606, King James the First granted a charter to certain noblemen, gentlemen and merchants of England, conveying to them all the eastern sea-coast of North America, between the thirty-fourth and forty-fifth degrees of north latitude; that portion between the thirty-fourth and thirty-eighth degrees being granted to a company resident in London and vicinity, and that between the forty-first and forty-fifth degrees to a company resident in the west of England, while both had the privilege of establishing colonies between the thirty-eighth and forty-first degrees, and of occupying the land for fifty miles each way along the coast from the point of settlement, and fifty miles back. The western company failed to establish a colony in the territory granted to it. The London company, with great difficulty, succeeded in planting one in Virginia. So, in 1609, King James gave a new charter to the London company, under the title of " The Treasurer and Company of Adventurers and Planters of the City of London for the first colony of Virginia." In this charter his majesty granted to the company all Virginia, from Old Point Comfort, at the outlet of Chesapeake bay, two hundred miles northward and the same distance southward along the coast, " and all up into the mainland throughout, from sea to sea, west and northwest." It was on this charter, and this alone, that Virginia afterwards claimed the great northwestern territory, giving the terms "west and northwest" the widest range of which they were capable. In 1620, King James gave a charter to the " Second Colony of Virginia," commonly called the Plymouth Company, comprising all the territory between the fortieth and forty-eighth degrees of north latitude, under the title of New England, granting it to them " in length of and within all the breadth aforesaid, throughout all the mainlands, from sea to sea, together with all the firm lands, etc., upon the main, and within the said islands and seas adjoining," provided it was not actually possessed by any Christian prince or State. In 1624 the charter of the London or First Virginia company, covering Virginia proper, was set aside and declared void by the English courts, under a writ of quo warranto, on account of the misconduct or neglect of the proprietors. The next year King Charles the First declared that the territory previously covered by the forfeited charter should thenceforth be dependent on him, and it was treated and considered as a royal government; the right of granting vacant lands being vested in the crown. Maryland, Delaware, North Carolina, South Carolina and parts of Pennsylvania and Georgia were afterwards formed out of the territory covered by the forfeited charter, without any protest on the part of the people or government of Virginia. In 1628 the council of Plymouth, in whom, as before stated, had been vested the title of New England, granted to Governor Endicott and others all the lands from three miles north of the Merrimac river to three miles south of Massachusetts Bay, extending west "from sea to sea," except lands occupied by any foreign prince or State. This became the province of Massachusetts bay, which claimed a territory about seventy miles wide and four thousand miles long, running from the Atlantic to the Pacific. As, however, the strip in question would all go north of Cuyahoga county, we need give no farther attention to it. In 1630 the council of Plymouth also conveyed to its president, Robert, Earl of Warwick, the territory em- THE PERIOD FROM 1783 TO 1794 - 31 braced in the following description: "All that part of New England in America which lies and extends itself from a river there called Narragansett river, the space of forty leagues upon a straight line near the sea shore, towards southwest, west and by south, or west, as the coast lieth, towards Virginia, accounting three English miles to the league; all and singular, the lands and hereditaments whatsoever, lying and being within the bounds aforesaid, north and south, in latitude and breadth, and in length and longitude, and within all the breadth aforesaid, throughout all the main lands there, from the Western ooean to the South Seas." In 1631, the territory thus diabolically desoribed was conveyed by the Earl of Warwick to Lord Brooke and Lord Say and Seal, and their associates, who became the founders of Connecticut. It was on the ground of the above grant that Connecticut afterwards claimed the northern part of Ohio, and really, considering the extraordinarily puzzling nature of the description just given, we see no reason why that State should not have claimed all North America by the same title. The northern limit of Connecticut was, however, fixed by the English authorities at forty-two degrees and two minutes, and the southern one at forty-one degrees north latitude, and we believe the officials of the colony and State translated the unintelligible lingo of Earl Warwick's deed to mean that those northern and southern limits should be extended westward to the Pacific ocean. The deed to Earl Warwick and the subsequent charter confirming Connecticut in its political powers were never annulled nor forfeited, and were the foundation of Connecticut's claim, not only to northern Ohio, but to the celebrated Wyoming valley in Pennsylvania, where many bitter and even bloody contests took place before the Revolution, between the factions of the two States just named. Moreover, New York had a claim to northwestern Ohio nearly as good as that of Connecticut, and much better than that of Virginia. The nations of Indians who resided on the frontiers of its settlement, were always considered as particularly pertaining to her jurisdiction, and her colonial assembly had frequently been at considerable expense in keeping a commissioner among them and conciliating their good will. The State, therefore, claimed a pre-emptive title to their lands, and insisted that those lands reverted to her after they were forfeited by the hostility of the Iroquois during the Revolution. But it was generally admitted that the Iroquois lands extended to the Cuyahoga, river; consequently New York asserted her title thus far west, as the successor of those tribes. The claims of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Virginia were all interfered with by the actual possession established by the French and Dutch, but when the colonies founded by these nations were conquered by the English, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Virginia insisted that the crown should make good its original grants. But the king's ministers took no such view of the matter; they did not, when New York was acquired, extend the dominion of Massachusetts nor Connecticut over it, and when the Ohio country was acquired it was, as we have seen, made a part of the province of Quebec. Thus it was near the close of the Revolution numerous conflicting claims were put forth to the fair land between Lake Erie and the Ohio river, which it was easy to see would be the home of a thriving population. But all the other States than those named above were strongly opposed to the recognition of those claims. They argued, and with justice, that not only had some of those pretensions, particularly those of Virginia, been long since annulled by due course of law, but that, no matter what might be the technical title derived from some old yellow parchment, the valley of the Ohio and of the lakes had actually been conquered both from France and from Great Britain by the blood and treasure of all the colonies, and that all were equally entitled to share in the results. Maryland had been especially active in opposing the pretensions of Virginia on this subject, and had been with difficulty persuaded to enter the old Confederation (in 1777) by the pledge that she should be justly treated regarding the public lands. It was evident to every one that the only way to settle these disputes without violence was co cede the land west of the Alleganies, or the greater part of it, to the Confederation, and the patriotism of the day was equal to the occasion. New York led the way, in the forepart of 1780, by ceding to the general government all her claims to the territory west of a line drawn north and south through the westernmost part of Lake Ontario. In December of the same year, Virginia followed with a cession of all her right to both the soil and the jurisdiction of the whole tract northwest of the Ohio river. These cessions were confirmed after the treaty of peace, and accepted by the Congress of the Confederation. Massachusetts abandoned her claim to the country west of the west boundary of New York, as defined just above, and compromised with that State in regard to a large tract east of that line. Connecticut, however, being a very small State, was naturally more tenacious than the others regarding her land. Besides, she had been engaged in a long, bitter controversy with Pennsylvania regarding the colony she had planted in the Wyoming valley, a controversy in which much blood had been shed, and in which the passions of the people of Connecticut had been warmly aroused in favor of their title to the land lying west of them, from "sea to sea." Nevertheless, after much negotiating, in the year 1786 she ceded to the United States her claims to all the land west of a line a hundred and twenty miles west from the west boundary of Pennsylvania. The tract between that boundary and the line first mentioned she retained for herself, and the other States seem to have acceded to her position. The tract thus excepted from the 32 - GENERAL HISTORY OP CUYAHOGA COUNTY. general cession was thenceforth known as the Connecticut Western Reserved Lands, or, more briefly, as the Western Reserve. Meanwhile measures had been speedily taken to obtain a cession of the "right of occupancy" of the Indians. It should be understood that in all the dealings of Europeans with the Indians it was taken for granted that the absolute title to the land—what in law is called the fee simple—was vested in whatever European government could establish its power over it, by discovery, by building forts on it, or by conquest. But, as a general rule, tribes of Indians with whom the European nation might be at peace were considered as having a certain inferior title, called the right of occupancy. So long as they refused to sell the laud and remained at peace, it was oonsidered illegal to remove them by force, but they _were not permitted to sell to any one except the government or colony holding the title, unless the purchaser had obtained a grant from that government or colony. The same system prevails to the present day; the United States claiming the title to all the unoccupied lands within its boundaries, but not attempting to settle any given tract until it has first purchased the Indian "right of occupancy "—at the same time forbidding ony one else to purchase the Indian title. In colonial times, and perhaps at a latar day, it would appear as if speculators and frontiersmen had sometimes got up wars for the express purpose of driving the Indians from their lands. But the great confederacy of the warlike Iroquois was too powerful, and too good a guard of the colony of New York against the hostile French, to be treated in this manner, and down to the time of the Revolution they had hunted over their broad domain with rarely any moplestation. In that contest, however, they had, in spite of many pledges to the contrary, waged deadly and unsparing war against the colonists, and at the treaty of. peace had been abandoned by the British without a single stipulation in their favor. The United States did not directly confiscate any portion of the land the Iroquois had claimed, but they brought such a pressure to bear that the latter very well understood that some of it must be given up. Accordingly, at a council held at Fort Stanwix, in 1784, between commissioners of the United States and the chiefs of the Six Nations, the latter ceded to the former, besides a small tract in New York, all their laud west of the west bounds of Pennsylvania and of the Ohio river. But Indian titles are usually very indefinite, and notwithstanding the long established pretensions of the Iroquois it was thought best to obtain a distinct renunciation of the claims of the western Indians to the same tract. In January, 1785, a treaty was made at Fort McIntosh, by George Rogers Clark, Richard Butler and Arthur Lee, with those who called themselves 'the chiefs of the Wyandots, Delawares, Chippewas and Ottawas, by which those tribes were placed under the protection of the United States and a definite boundary of their territory was established. The boundary between the United States on the one hand and the Wyandots and Delawares on the other, was to begin at the mouth of the Cuyahoga river, go up that stream to the portage and across to the Tusearawas; thence down to the forks of the Muskingum; thence west to the portage of the Big Miami; thence to the Miami of the Lakesor Omee (Maumee); thence down that stream to its mouth. The United States allotted the lands thus bounded to the Wyandots and Delawares and to such of the Ottawas as then dwelt there, to live and hunt on. It was, provided that no citizen of the United States should settle on those lands, and if any did so that the Indians might punish them as they pleased. The claims of these tribes to all the lands east, south and west of those above described were formally relinquished. It was further provided that if any Indian should murder a citizen, his tribe should deliver him to the nearest military post. Three military reservations were excepted from the Indian territory by the United States, but none of them were within the present county of Cuyahoga. The territory of Cuyahoga county was thus, for the time being, divided by the Cuyahoga river into two sections; the western section being devoted to Indian occupancy, while the eastern part was intended for the home of Caucasian civilization. It was not, however, occupied for some time afterwards, on account of its distance from the settlements already established. Down to this time there had been only a slight trade in Indian goods and furs, back and forth between Pittsburg and the mouth of the Cuyahoga; In the spring of 1786, we find the first account of any considerable commercial operation between those two points. The firm of Duncan & Wilson, of Pittsburg, had made a contract with Caldwell & Elliott, of Detroit, to deliver to their agent at the mouth of the Cuyahoga a large quantity of flour and bacon. In May they began to forward it from Pittsburg, employing for that purpose about ninety pack-horses and thirty men. Mr. James Hillman, (afterwards known as Col. Hillman, of Youngstown,) was one of the men employed, and has given an interesting account of the transaction in a letter published in Col. Whittlesey's Early History of Cleveland. The long train of burdened animals followed the great Indian trail, leading from Pittsburg to the Sandusky, as far as " Standing Stone," on the Cuyahoga, near the present village of Franklin, passing thence along a smaller trail to the mouth of Tinker's creek, in the present town of Independence in this county. There the train forded the Cuyahoga and proceeded down the west side, passing a small log house, which a trader named Maginnis had lately left. At the mouth of the Cuyahoga the men found an Englishman named Hawder, sent thither by Caldwell and Elliott to receive the freight, who had put up a tent in which he resided. No one else was at the mouth of the river. THE PERIOD FROM 1783 TO 1794 As the freight was delivered, it was forwarded by the sail-boat " Mackinaw" to Detroit. The mouth of the Cuyahoga was then where it is remembered to have been by old residents before the opening of the present channel; the water running through what is now called the "old bed." There was, however, a pond, called by the packmen "Sunfish pond," lying still further west, and having been, apparently, a still older bed of the river. As the work of transportation was expected to last all summer, the men desired to establish themselves on the east side of the river, partly, perhaps, to get off from Indian ground, but principally on account of a fine spring of water which bubbled forth near the present foot of Superior street. But it was difficult to cross the river, and to sail up it in the "Mackinaw" was impracticable, because the mouth . was closed by a sand-bar. It was opened by a very simple piece of engineering. The men made some wooden shovels, waded out upon the sand-bar, and dug a ditch through which the water ran with sufficient force to clear a channel navigable for the "Mackinaw." Having sailed up to the desired locality, they made collars for their horses out of blankets; and tugs out of the raw elk-hide tent-ropes, drew together some small logs, and built a cabin near the spring before mentioned. This is the first house that is known with certainty to have been erected on the site of the city of Cleveland, though it is quite probable that there had previously been a temporary trading-post on one side or the other of the Cuyahoga at its mouth. The traffic described by Mr. Hillman continued throughout the season; six round trips being made by the trains. We infer from the language of a letter from Mr. Hillman, published in the Early History of Cleveland, that some other goods besides flour and bacon were taken to the mouth of the Cuyahoga, and that some furs were transported back to Pittsburg. Some of the upward-bound freight was taken to -Detroit by water and some by land. Meanwhile, and almost simultaneously with the beginning of this traffic, the first settlement was made in Cuyahoga county by people who designed to devote themselves to the arts of peace and civilization, though most of them were not of the proud Caucasian race. It was about the 7th of June, 1786, that a weary band of travel-worn men and women crossed the western border of Cuyahoga county, and made their way along the lake shore toward the mouth of the Cuyahoga river. They arrived there on the 8th, and almost at the same time a flotilla of canoes came down the lake, with the old men and women and somc of the children belonging to the households, whose more vigorous members had marched on shore. The schooner " Mackinaw" had just previously brought their heavy luggage and the most infirm of their members. All, save two leaders, were of unmixed Indian blood, yet they bore upon their tawny features an expression rarely seen among those fierce, relentless denizens of the forest—an expression of mildness, of patience, of resignation, lightened up only by occasional gleams of religious enthusiasm. Their principal leaders were two sturdy, broad-shouldered men, with the unmistakable round, German physiognomy, but whose fair Teutonic complexion had been bronzed by long exposure almost to the aboriginal hue. These were John Heckewelder and David Zeisberger, and their followers were the remnant of that celebrated band of Moravian Indians, whose cruel fate forms at once one of the saddest and one of the darkest pages of American history. Converted to Christianity by the efforts of the Moravian missionaries, they had established themselves in the fertile valley of the Muskingum before the Revolution, where, unmoved by the sneers of their brethren of the woods, they sought to live by agriculture and the chase, eschewing war, performing the duties of their religion, and manifesting every evidence of a sincere abhorrence both for the theoretical errors and practical crimes of paganism. During the Revolution they were objects of distrust to both parties, though, so far as can be ascertained, without cause on the part of either. As the war went on, numerous outrages were committed on the frontier of Pennsylvania by Indians, especially by Delawares, to which tribe a large part of the Moravian Indians had belonged. The fierce Scotch-Irish frontiersmen were furious for revenge, and they cared little on whom it fell. It was easy to concoct stories that the Moravian Indians harbored and aided the marauders, though all the circumstances showed that such was not the case. At the same time the pagan Indians and the British officers insisted that the Moravians should move back farther into the wilderness, where they could not be of any assistance to the Americans. This they in fact did in 1782, but a portion of them returned to the Muskingum to take care of their crops. In the summer of that year a battalion of militia, under Col. Williamson, marched swiftly to the Moravian towns, disarmed the hunters, got all of the people into their power under false pretenses, and then in cold blood murdered the whole number—over a hundred men, women and children. No more infamous atrocity was ever perpetrated by the worst of those who are commonly called savages. Yet those who had not returned to the Muskingum, together with some who were at another village and thus escaped the massacre, nearly all still adhered to their religion. A few, only, joined the hostile Indians and clamored fiercely for revenge—as might well be expected. But the main body gathered sadly together on the Sandusky, under the leadership of their devoted missionaries, Heckewelder and Zeisberger, and again devoted themselves to the arts of peace and the duties of religion. But here they were constantly persecuted by their kinsmen, the Delawares, and other savage Indians, and were taken under the pro- 34 - GENERAL HISTORY OF CUYAHOGA COUNTY. tection of the British commander at Detroit. They established themselves near that post, where they remained until the spring of 1786. They then determined to locate themselves on the Cuyahoga, apparently hoping to be allowed to establish themselves at their old home on the Muskrngum, for which they always manifested a strong attraction. The schooners "Beaver" and "Mackinaw," belonging to the Northwest Fur Company, were employed to bring them, but occupied so much time on account of adverse winds that the "Beaver" was ordered back from Sandusky. The "Mackinaw," as has been stated, brought the luggage and the infirm, while the rest came on foot or in canoes, under the leadership of Heckewelder and Zeisberger. They pitched their camp on the site of Cleveland. One of their number proceeded to Pittsburg to obtain provisions, and Zeisberger set forth to explore the river and find a suitable location. On the second day he came to a lofty plateau on the west side of the river, a little below the mouth of what is now called Tinker's creek, where had once stood the Ottawa village of which mention has previously been made. There being already some partially cleared ground here, and the locality being high and healthy, the missionary selected it as the proper place for his people. The latter immediately removed their camp thither, and began to erect huts and plant corn, expecting to go to the Muskingum after harvest. They named their temporary abiding place Pilgerruh. By the end of June they were, as they considered, quite comfortably housed. Congress had voted them five hundred bushels of corn, but it was to be delivered at Fort McIntosh in the vicinity of . the Muskingum valley, and thither they never went. They were almost destitute of provisions, but they devoted themselves assiduously to the chase, and with good success—numerous elks being especially named as among the victims of their skill. The man sent to Pittsburg also returned with an order from Duncan & Wilson, directing the agent in charge of their pack- train to sell Zeisberger, on credit, all the flour the Indians needed. A large quantity of goods also arrived, which had been devoted to their use by the Moravian churches at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, three years before, but had failed to reach them on account of their distant wanderings. Thus their immediate wants were relieved, and on the 13th of August they celebrated the Lord's Supper. But their friends at Pittsburg assured them that they could not return to their lands on the Muskingum without great probability of another bloody outbreak on the part of the frontiersmen. So they concluded to remain, at least through the winter, on the Cuyahoga. The good missionaries were sadly troubled about those Indians who had formerly belonged to their congregation, but who had apostatized to paganism. In September Zeisberger sent to the apostates some of his most trusty converts, bearing a very pathetic "speech," beseeching them to- return; but all in vain. Samuel Nanticoke, one of Zeisberger's delegates, met his brother, who had apostatized, and added his own entreaties to those of the missionary, but the son of the forest fiercely rejected his pleadings, saying: "By the waters of the Tuscarawas the whites gained the end for which they strove so long. There lie all our murdered friends. I avoid the whites and flee from them. No man shall induce me to trust them again. Never, while I live, will I unite with you Christians. If your town were near, I might perhaps visit you, but that would be all. Our forefathers went to the devil, as you say, and where they are I am content hereafter to be." In October the houses of the Moravians, rude but comfortable, were completed, and promised sufficient shelter through the coming winter. Heckewelder thereupon left the mission, with which he had so long been connected, for the East; leaving Zeisberger in charge, assisted by a lately arrived brother named William Edwards. Heckewelder oontinued to labor as a minister until his death, many years afterward, and was the author of a valuable work on the Indians, from which most of these facts, relating to the transient Moravian colony in Cuyahoga county, have been derived. Zeisberger was fearful lest the Indians under his charge should become a burden on the Moravian mission board, and, having labored beyond his strength to prevent it, fell seriously ill. The mission board heard of this with deep regret, and united in a remonstrance, urging him to draw on them for what he might need. After their cabins were completed, the Indians labored zealously to build a chapel, in which divine service might be held. It was .soon finished, and was consecrated on the 10th of November. As stated a short distance back, it was in this year (1786). that Connecticut ceded to the Confederation all the western lands which she claimed, except what now constitutes the " Western Reserve." This cession was made on the 14th day of September. About the same time the legislature of that State authorized three Of its citizens to sell all that part of the Reserve lying east of the Cuyahoga river and the portage path; that is, all to which the Indian title bad been extinguished. It was to be sold in townships of six miles square, at not less than three New England shillings .(fifty cents) per acre. Five hundred acres were to be reserved in each township for the support of ministers, and five hundred for the support of schools. The first minister in each township was also to receive two hundred and forty acres besides. Until a republican government should be established there, the law declared that the general assembly of Connecticut should provide for the maintenance of order among the settlers. It was evident that that State still claimed not only the title to the land of the Western Reserve, but the political jurisdiction over its inhabitants. But the land was so far from the older settlement that no sales of any extent could THE PERIOD FROM 1783 TO 1794 - 35 be made, the surveys were not executed, and the whole scheme fell to the ground. Late in the autumn of 1786, the two schooners of the Northwestern Fur Company, the " Beaver" and the "Mackinaw," were coming up the lake, on their way to Detroit. It was snowing fast when they arrived, late in the afternoon, in the vicinity of the Cuyahoga, and they both tried to run into that river for shelter. Both failed. The " Beaver," commanded by Captain Thorn, was driven ashore near the present foot of Willson avenue, in the city of Cleveland; but, so far as we can judge from the vague accounts which have come down to us, without loss of life. The captain and crew of the " Mackinaw " were not aware of the wreck of the " Beaver," and after they had ridden, out the storm sailed away to Detroit. This was the last trip of the season, and, the lake would soon be frozen up; so Captain Thorn and his men did not think it advisable to attempt escaping until spring. They accordingly built a cabin on the bank of the lake, opposite the wreck, and prepared to winter there. There were three small brass field-pieces on the schooner, as seems to have been the custom on the Fur Company's vessels, which frequently had to visit regions which might be infested with hostile Indians. These were taken ashore, greased, plugged up, wrapped in pieces of sail, and buried on the shore between the wreck and the cabin. From Captain Thorn's subsequent statements it appears there was then an Indian-trader by the name of Williams at the mouth of Rocky river, from whom he bought provisions when the stock taken from the vessel ran low. Mr. Williams is mentioned in no other account, and it is not known how long he had been at the point mentioned. From the fact that he is not spoken of by Mr. Hillman, who came to the mouth of the Cuyahoga six times during the summer of 1786, and would undoubtedly have heard of him if he had then been at Rocky river, it may be presumed that Mr. Williams did not locate there until the fall of that year-but this is quite uncertain. Captain Thorn also bought some provisions of the Moravians. He and his crew remained through the winter, but left with the opening spring. He continued to sail the lakes or to live near them all his life. He was a Canadian, but took the side of the United States during the war of 1812. He afterwards resided on the St. Clair river, in Michigan, until his death, which occurred about twenty years ago; he being then nearly a hundred years old. He was well known to many of the early settlers of Cleveland, especially to Captain Allen Gaylord, from whose manuscript statement, preserved in the archives of the. Historical Society, the above facts are mostly obtained. Meanwhile Zeisberger and his followers were in great perplexity as to what they should do next. Pilgerruh was not considered a desirable residence. They would all have been glad to return to the Muskingum, but feared attacks both from frontiersmen and hostile Indians. Their kindred Delawares offered them an abiding place at Sandusky. At length they determined to go to the mouth of Black river. They celebrated Lent and Easter at Pilgerruh, and then prepared for their journey. On the 19th of April the persecuted little band assembled for the last time at their chapel, and joined in prayer to God with hearts apparently still devoted to their religion, notwithstanding all they had suffered from those who called themselves the champions of that faith. Their simple service being concluded, they immediately set forth. One party went by land under Zeisberger, while the rest entered their canoes and followed the lead of Edwards down the river. Ere they could reach the lake a great storm checked their progress; so they remained to fish. The chronicler of their movements narrates that in one night's work with torch and spear they obtained three hundred fish of good quality, weighing from three to fifteen pounds each. What they did not want to eat they dried for future use. They then proceeded to their destination, where both parties arrived on the 24th and 25th of April, having dwelt in the territory of Cuyahoga county about ten months and a half. Their fortunes, after leaving our county, were almost as sad as before. Scarcely had they reached Black river when they were driven on to Sandusky by the hostile Delawares. They remained there till 1790, when, being again ordered by their jealous kinsmen to remove into the western wilderness, they besought the aid of the British commander, who took them to the banks of the Thames river, in Canada. In 1797 the lands they had occupied on the Muskingum were conveyed to them by the United States, and a part of them returned thither. These, too, subsequently sold their lands and improvements to the United States and returned to Canada, where their descendants still reside. In July, 1787, the Congress of the Confederation passed an ordinance organizing the vast district bementween the Ohio, the great lakes and the Mississippi, under the name of the "Northwestern Territory," and providing for civil government over it. They also elected General Arthur St. Clair as governor, together with a secretary and three judges. The ordinance was drawn by Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts, and provided that from all the territory thus organized slavery should be forever excluded. Connecticut protested against the inclusion of the Western Reserve in the new Territory, but without effect. It was not till the next spring (1788) that the first white settlement was planted in the present State of Ohio; the location being at Marietta, at the mouth of the Muskingum. When Governor St. Clair and the judges (in whom the temporary legislative power was vested) arrived in the new Territory, they proceeded on the 27th of July, 1788, to form the; county of Washington, of which Marietta was made the county seat, and which extended from the Ohio to Lake Erie, with the Cuyahoga river and the portage path as its west- 36 - GENERAL HISTORY OF CUYAHOGA COUNTY. ern boundary; thus embracing the eastern part of the present county of Cuyahoga. The section thus included was a hundred and fifty miles distant from the county seat, at Marietta, but as no one resided here that was of little consequence. In 1789 the first congress under the Federal Constitution re-enacted the ordinance of 1787; thus giving the Northwestern Territory a permanent position in the new political arrangement. The same year another treaty was made at Fort Harmer, by which the Indians again ceded to the United States the country west of the Cuyahoga and the portage path. About this period, or a little later, one Joseph Du Chatar had a trading post on the west side of the Cuyahoga, some nine miles above the mouth. Jean Baptiste Fleming and Joseph Burall were with him a part of the time. Du. Chatar, then in middle age, had been from his youth in the employ of the Northwestern company, and afterwards described the mouth of the Cuyahoga as having been one of their principal points for the sale of goods and purchase of furs. At the time mentioned, however, he was trading for himself. Large profits were usually made by the early fur- traders, but there were some serious drawbacks. At one time Du Chatar and his companions had a sharp conflict with some Indians over the ownership of a rifle. At another time a number of them demanded liquor, which Du Chatar refused to let them have, either because they could not pay for it or because he thought them already too well supplied. They attacked his cabin, which he and his men defended with their rifles. Some of the Indians were killed and the rest retreated. It would seem to have been very dangerous to remain in the country after that, but the French had ways of conciliating the savages which hardly any one else could imitate. In 1790, the western Indians engaged in open hostilities against the frontier, and General Harmer marched against them, only to be defeated. This was followed the next year by the defeat of Governor St. Clair, at the head of another army. ' The Indians became extremely elated, and it began to look as if the course of western emigration was to be permanently checked. Of course, under these circumstances, there was no sale for frontier land, and the Western Reserve remained on the hands of the State of Connectiout. In 1792, that State gave five hundred thousand acres off from the west end of the Reserve, for the benefit of those of her citizens who had suffered from the !mining of their property by the British during the Revolution. This tract was commonly called the "Fire Lands," and has been considered as a distinct section under that mime ever since, although a part of the original Western Reserve. Meanwhile, the administration of President Washington was making constant efforts to conciliate the Indians, and secure a permanent peace. In 1793, General Benjamin Lincoln, lIon. Beverly Randolph, and Colonel Timothy Pickering, postmaster-general of the United States, commissioners appointed by the President, passed up the south shore of Lake Erie, on their way to Detroit, still held by the British, to endeavor to make a treaty with the hostile Indians. This effort, like all the others, was in vain. But in 1794, Mad Anthony Wayne went out to the West, at the head of a well appointed army, and inflicted a terrible defeat on the horde of warriors who ventured to confront him. Another treaty was made, which, being authorized and sanctioned by victory, was well observed by the red men. So far as this part of the Territory was concerned, Wayne's treaty merely confirmed the line previously drawn along the center of the Cuyahoga. All the eleven tribes who joined in the treaty agreed to acknowledge the United States as their sole superior, and never to sell any of their land to any one else. CHAPTER VII. SALE AN D SURVEY. Connecticut sells Three Million Acres in a Body—Names of the Purchasers—Formation of the Connecticut Land Company—A Deed of Trust—The Excess Company—First Directors of the Connecticut Company— The plan of Survey and Division decided on--The first Survey Party—Its Leaders and Surveyors—British Annoyance—A Council at Buffalo —Arrival at Conneaut—Trouble among the Employees—How it was Settled—Beginning of the Surveys— Gen. Cleaveland comes to the Cuyahoga—The First White Family—Tracing the Coast Line— Laying off Townships—Chagrin River mistaken for the Cuyahoga— Organization of Wayne County—Directors Impatient—Laying out of Cleveland—A Bear in the River—The Party start east but return— Formal Agreement to let the Surveyors have Euclid—Rough Weather —The Return--Persons left at Cleveland— Gen. Cleavelandls subsequent Career—Porter's Later Life—Annual Meeting of the Land Company—Failure of the Excess Company—Alexander Henryls Claim— The urvey Party of 1797—Its Officers, etc—It goes to the Reserve— The First Funeral —Rations for the Surveyors— Kingsbury, Carter and Hawley--The First Marriage—D. & G. Bryant and R. Edwards—Formation of Jefferson County—Atwater's Adventure—Tinker's Creek Sicknesss—Heallh on the Ridge. WAYNE'S victory and treaty caused many eyes to turn toward the Western Reserve, as a more secure and desirable place of residence than it had previously been considered. At the session of 1795, the legislature of Connecticut abandoned the idea of dividing up the Reserve in small tracts and selling it out, and adopted a new system. A. commission of eight citizens was appointed, one from each county, who were authorized to sell three million acres adjoining Pennsylvania for not less than one-third of a dollar per acre; the whole to be sold before any part of it was conveyed. The purchasers were to take all risks, and were to receive their deeds by shares, not by acres; being then obliged to divide the hind among themselves as best they could. The scheme seems to have been quite popular, and the commission succeeded in selling the whole tract by the first of September, 1795, at forty cents per acre making the total amount one million two hundred thousand dollars. The purchasers were Joseph SALE AND SURVEY - 37 Howland, Daniel L. Coit, Elias Morgan, Caleb Atwater, Daniel Holbrook, Joseph Williams, William Love, William Judd, Elisha Hyde, Uriah Tracey, James Johnson, Samuel Mather, Jr., Ephraim Kirby, Elijah Boardman, Uriel Holmes, Jr., Solomon Griswold, Oliver Phelps, Gideon Granger, Jr., William Hart, Henry Champion, 2nd, Asher Miller, Robert C. Johnson, Ephraim Root, Nehemiah Hubbard, Jr., Solomon Cowles, Asahel Hathaway, John Caldwell, Peleg Sanford, Timothy Burr, Luther Loomis, Ebenezer King, Jr., William Lyman, John Stoddard, David King, Moses Cleaveland, Samuel P. Lord, Roger Newberry, Enoch Perkins, Jonathan Brace, Ephraim Starr, Sylvanus Griswold, Joseb Stocking, Joshua Stow, Titus Street, James Bull, Aaron Olmsted, John Wyles, Pierpoint Edwards. The subscriptions were of all sizes, from one of one thousand six 'hundred and eighty-three dollars, made by Sylvanus Griswold, up to that of Oliver Phelps, who subscribed one hundred and sixty-eight thousand one hundred and eighty-five dollars alone, and eighty thousand dollars in company with Gideon Granger, Jr., but were generally in sums of from ten thousand to thirty thousand dollars. Henry Champion, 2nd, was the second largest subsoriber, with eighty- five thousand six hundred and seventy-five dollars. The committee, in behalf of the State, at once deeded to the subscribers as many "twelve hundred thousandths" of the whole tract, as they had subscribed dollars respectively to the purchasing fund of twelve hundred thousand dollars. The deeds were recorded in the office of the secretary of state of _Connecticut, and subsequently in the recorder's office of Trumbull county, Ohio. They were of the character commonly called "quit-claim" deeds; the State • warranting nothing, but conveying all its rights, more or less, to the purchasers. There had, at this time, been no definite surrender of the State's political jurisdiction over the Reserve to the general government, (although that government had assumed jurisdiction by including the Reserve in the Northwestern Territory), and many of the buyers supposed they could establish a State of their own, and make such laws as they pleased for it. On the 5th of September, the purchasers proceeded to organize themselves into an association called the "Connecticut Land Company," but did not obtain an act of incorporation from the State. In law they were only a simple partnership. All the members of this association joined in a deed of trust to Jonathan Brace, John Caldwell and John Morgan, authorizing them to give deeds of various tracts to the owners, according to the division to be made by the officials of the Company. It will be understood that a large part of the three million acres purchased was known to be on the west side of the Cuyahoga, and it was, therefore, known that it could not be divided until the Indian right of occupancy was extinguished by purchase. It was supposed, however, that there was considerably more than three million acres in the Re-serve, exclusive of the "Fire Lands," and .several gentlemen proposed to take the balance from the State. They were commonly called the " Excess Company," and until the land was surveyed it was supposed they would secure a large tract. By the articles of association, the management of the company's concerns was intrusted to Seven directors, who were instructed to proceed as rapidly as possible to sell that portion of the tract east of the Cuyahoga. For the purpose of electing officers and making assessments, the whole was divided into four hundred shares of three thousand dollars each; distributed among the various proprietors in proportion to the amounts they had subscribed. The first board of directors consisted of Oliver Phelps, Henry Champion, 2d., Moses Cleaveland, Samuel W. Johnson, Ephraim Kirby, Samuel Mather, Jr., and Roger Newberry. The articles of association also provided that the tract should be surveyed into townships five miles square; that part east of the Cuyahoga as soon as possible, and the rest when the Indians were bought out. Six townships of the former portion were to be sold to pay the general expenses. Four more were to be divided into a hundred lots each, making four hundred lots of a hundred and sixty acres each, which were to be conveyed to the owners of the four hundred shares respectively. The remainder of the tract east of the Cuyahoga was to be divided into portions, of which the best township was to form the basis; other townships to be brought up to the standard by dividing sonic of them into fractions, and adding them to the rest. The part west of the river was subsequently to be divided in the same way. The- board of directors selected Gen. Moses Cleaveland, a lawyer f Canterbury, Windham county, then about forty years old, to act as the general agent of the company and manage the surveys east of the Cuyahoga, whioh it was expected would all be completed the next year. During the winter of 1795-6 further preparations were made, and in the spring of the hater year a large surveying party was organized. General Cleaveland was superintendent; Augustus Porter, who was a native of 'Connecticut but had been engaged for many years on important surveys in western New York, was the principal surveyor and -deputy superintendent; Seth Pease was astronomer and surveyor; Amos Spafford, John M. Holley, Richard M. Stoddard and Moses Warren were the surveyors; Joshua Stow was the commissary, and Dr. Theodore Shepard was the physician of the party. There were also thirty-six other employees, including chainmen, axemen, cooks, etc. The expedition set forth in May. General Cleave- land and most of the members came by way of Albany, Syracuse, Canandaigua, etc., to Buffalo. Mr. Stow, with several men, took the provisions, instruments and other freight in four large boats by way of the Oswego river, Lake Ontario and the Niagara 38 - GENERAL HISTORY OF CUYAHOGA COUNTY river. Oswego, like the other frontier posts, was still in the hands of the British, and their officers seemed anxious to annoy the Americans in every possible way. Mr. Stow applied to the commandant at Oswego for permission to pass with his boats, but was peremptorily refused. In vain be represented that without the instruments and provisions which he had with him the survey party could not begin work, and that the greatest inconvenience would be sure to result; the officer was inexorable. Finally, Mr. Stow apparently gave up the contest, and retired up the river with his boats. The first dark night, however, the flotilla sped quietly down the stream, glided undiscovered past the sleepy sentinels, and escaped into Lake Ontario. The detention, however, caused the boats to be caught in a severe storm :04 the lake, in which one of them was stove up and another of them seriously, injured. What made the affair more provoking was that both Fort Ontario, at Oswego, and Fort Niagara, at the mouth of the river of that name, were about to be delivered to the United States, under the provisions of Jay's treaty. Fort Ontario was thus surrendered on the fourth day of July following, and Fort Niagara still earlier; so that when the boats of the survey party approached the latter post the men saw with delight the stars and stripes floating over its ramparts. On the 21st of June the Six Nations held a council at Buffalo, at which General Cleaveland was present, together with some whom the surveyors called western Indians, but whom from the circumstances we ..should infer to have been Mohawks, who lived west of Buffalo, in Canada. Notwithstanding the numerous treaties by which the claims of these Indians to the country east of the Cuyahoga were supposed to be extinguished, they still put forth soe pretensions to it, and it was thought better to conciliate than to oppose them. The celebrated Joseph Brant, or Thayendenegea, was the principal manager on the part of the Six Nations, and gave General Cleaveland a " speech " in writing, but the equally distinguished Red Jacket was the principal orator. The council was adjourned over the 22nd, because the chiefs in, sisted on getting drunk. On the 23rd, after numerous speeches on both sides, Cleaveland agreed to give the Indians five hundred pounds, New York currency, ($1,250) in goods, as a present, and also agreed to use his influence to obtain for them an allowance of five hundred dollars a year from the United States; failing which the Connecticut Land Company was to give them an additional present of fifteen hundred dollars. The chiefs on their side agreed that the Indians should not interfere with the settlers on the Reserve, a stipulation which they appear to have faithfully observed. In fact, they could hardly avoid losing their hearts to General Cleaveland, for, after the counciling and bargaining was over, he gave them two beef-cattle for a feast, with an accompaniment of no less than one hundred gallons of whisky! The expedition then proceeded in boats up the lake to Conneaut, in the extreme northeast corner of the Reserve, where they arrived on the 4th of July. They celebrated the day by firing with their rifles a "federal salute" of fifteen rounds-one for each State then in the Union-and a sixteenth for "New Connecticut." The Reserve was frequently spoken of by the first settlers and surveyors as New Connecticut, and they evidently were not exactly certain whether it was a part of the Northwest Territory or a separate nation of itself. At Conneaut nearly all the surveyors and other employees manifested a very insubordinate disposition. Amzi Atwater, himself an employee, says they mutinied. At all events, they manifested a strong disposition not to go on with the work unless they could derive some compensation for it besides their wages. At that time it was thought that the ownership of land in "New Connecticut" was the sure road to fortune, and the men were anxious to become proprietors. General Cleaveland yielded, and informally agreed that if the men would go on and work through the season they should have a township of land at a dollar an acre: As soon as this question was settled, some of the surveyors ran south from the northeast corner of the Reserve, along the Pennsylvania line, to the forty- first parallel, and thence west along that parallel, making it their base line. From it, at intervals of five miles, they ran meridians north to the lake; the spaces between them constituting "ranges." These were to be subdivided into townships by east and west lines, also five miles apart. They depended entirely on their compasses, and as that instrument is subject to numerous variations the meridians were by no means accurately laid down. Some of them varied as much as half a mile from the true line before reaching the lake. The early government surveyors varied in the same manner, but they soon learned to correct each township line, as run by the compass, by measurement to the preceding one. While the surveyors were doing the work just mentioned, Superintendent Cleaveland came to the mouth of the Cuyahoga, reaching that point on the 22d of July, 1791, and established the headquarters of the party there, With him, among others, came Job P. Stiles and Tabitha Cumi Stiles, his wife, for whom a cabin was erected, and who were placed in charge of of the company's stores at that point. This was the first white family, and Mrs. Stiles was the first white women, who ever resided in the present county of Cuyahoga. Their cabin and the company's storehouse were on the low ground on the east side of the Cuyahoga, convenient to a spring which issued from the side of the hill. This was the same location that had been chosen by the freighters, in 1786, as described by Colonel Hillman, but the slight cabin then erected had probably entirely disappeared, having , very likely been used for fuel by Indians or travelers; at all events it is not mentioned in the notes of SALE AND SURVEY - 39 any of the surveyors. The more substantial structure, built by Captain Thorn and his crew, near the foot of the present Willson avenue, was still standing. Mr. Porter, the principal surveyor, took on himself the difficult task of tracing the coast line, so as to find where the west line of the Reserve would strike Lake Erie. The other surveyors, after running out the meridians, as before stated, began to run parallels from the Pennsylvania line to the Cuyahoga. Warren ran the line between townships six and seven (Bedford and Warrensville); Pease between townships seven and eight (Warrensville and Euclid); Spafford and Stoddard between townships eight and nine, (Mayfield and Willoughby);. and Holley still farther north. Pease's line ran through the present city of Cleveland. No one knew anything about the Chagrin river, and every surveyor, when he reached it in running his parallel supposed it to be the Cuyahoga and went down to the mouth before discovering his mistake. We may mention, in passing, that Wayne county was organized by the authorities of the Northwest Territory on the 15th of August in this year, nominally embracing the whole tract from the Cuyahoga westward and northward beyond Detroit, which place was made the county seat. Thus the county seats (Marietta and Detroit) of the two counties (Washington and Wayne) which then embraced the present Cuyahoga were over three hundred miles apart. As all of this county west of the river was still Indian land, the formation of Wayne county had no practical effect here; nor was any part of this county ever actually organized in connection with either Washington or Wayne. August and September passed rapidly away in the task of surveying the various lines. Holley and Pease left journals describing their labors, but of course only a small portion of them were performed in Cuyahoga county, and, moreover, the mere details of the distances and courses which they ran on successive days would hardly be interesting to our readers. As indicative of the primitive utensils employed in their traveling kitchen, we may notice Holley's memorandum that at the Chagrin river the cook got mad because the bark would not peel, so that he had nothing to mix bread on, and declared that he could give the party nothing to eat. One of the men, however, solved the difficulty by mixing the flour in a bag, thus restoring serenity to the cook and food to the party.. Meanwhile the board of directors at Hartford became impatient to have the land divided among the proprietors, and on the 26th of August wrote to Cleaveland, constituting him, Stow, Porter and the four other surveyors a committee to equalize and di, vide the land east of the Cuyahoga, according to the plan already mentioned, and urging him to accomplish the work that season if possible. This, however, was entirely impracticable. It had from the first been determined by the directors to lay out one "capital town," or city, at the most eligible place on the Reserve, the township around which was to be cut into smaller lots than the rest of the tract, which were to be sold to actual settlers. The selection was doubtless left to General Cleaveland, to be made on the ground. He selected the site at the mouth of the Cuyahoga. Porter ran out the streets of the embryo city, and left Holley to survey it into lots. Only twelve streets and lanes were then laid out, which might fairly be considered sufficient, as there was not a solitary permanent resident of the "city." Cleaveland bestowed his own name upon the place, and it was forthwith dubbed the "City of Cleaveland." The township around it, however, was at first called "Cuyahoga town." The locality at the mouth of the river is also sometimes mentioned in the surveyors' minutes as "Cuyahoga," but after September, 1796, is always "Cleaveland." The morning of the 21st of September the surveyors, to the number of about thirty, who had collected at the "city," found themselves without meat, and with only a little flour, two cheeses and some chocolate, in the way of provisions. It would not do to start into the woods again, nor even to wait long where they were. While they were wondering at the non- arrival of expected provisions from Conneaut, and debating as to what next should be done, a shout was heard, and a bear was discovered swimming across the river from the west side. Instantly every man was on his feet. Porter and Holley jumped into a canoe and paddled toward the shaggy visitor; another man went up the shore with a gun, and the rest of the shouting crowd assembled to stop the brute as soon as he should reach the land. They succeeded only too well, for the noise and confusion were such that the animal took the alarm, swam back to the western shore and escaped. As a compensation for this loss, Holley's journal notes immediately afterwards: "Munson caught a rattlesnake, which we boiled and ate." By noon they had become so well assured that no provisions were coming from Conneaut that they all set out for that place in two boats and a bark canoe. After sailing about eight miles, however, they met a party with cattle and provisions, and returned to the Cuyahoga with much lighter hearts than when they left it. On arriving after dark they saw a fire blazing on the western shore. As they passed it, they discharged a volley from their rifles by way of a salute, in honor of the sojourners who had built the fire, and in accordance with a custom whioh seems to have been quite common on the frontier, among both whites and Indians. The travelers were discovered to be a party of Grand river Indians, who had been west, hunting. After a week more of surveying in the vicinity of the river, the whole party assembled at its mouth on the 30th of September, when the informal agreement made at Conneaut, in the forepart of July, was reduced to a written contract, in which "Cleaveland " is first mentioned as the name of the embryo city at the mouth of the Cuyahoga. Moses Cleaveland 40 - GENERAL HISTORY OF CUYAHOGA COUNTY. signed the contract on the part of the company, while forty-one of the employees put their hands to it in their own behalf. Six of the employees, including Joshua Stow, were not parties to the arrangement. The township which they selected was number eight in the eleventh range, being the one next down the lake from Cleveland. With great propriety,. considering that they were all surveyors or assistants, and that surveying is eminently a mathematical procession. they gave to their new township the name of the great Greek mathematician, Euclid. The suggestion is credited by Mr. Holley to Moses Warren. Each of the men was to serve the company faithfully till the end of the season, and was to have an equal share in the township at a dollar an acre, on making certain improvements. These were carefully specified in the contract, and are more fatly set forth in the township history of Euclid. On the same day the employees held a meeting, at which they arranged the order in which they would make their improvements, and transact other busi ness.. The record of their proceedings was also dated at the "City of Cleaveland," and the locality has ever since retained that name, except that the "a" has been discarded. On the tenth of October, Surveyor Holley notes in his journal that he with his party "left Cleaveland at the mouth of the Cuyahoga, to finish dividing the east part of the township into lots." By the sixteenth the weather began to interfere seriously with their work. On that day Mr. II. mctions that they came into camp wet and cold, but after "pushing the bottle and getting a fire and some supper, all were as merry as grigs." But Gen. Cleaveland evidently thought that, considering the long journey before them, it was time to be starting homeward. He and the majority of the men appear to have left about the sixteenth, and on the eighteenth Porter, Holley, Pease, Stoddard, Atwater and nine others set out for their distant and much-longed-for homes. The only white persons left on the Reserve were Job N. Stiles and Tabitha his wife, and Joseph Landon. These were supplied with provisions for the winter, and then abandoned to a solitude almost as complete as that of Selkirk on his island. To be sure there were plenty of Indians and squaws, but considering that many of the former had been, not long before, rn arms against the United States, and were liable at any moment to break out again, it would seem as if their absence would have been more desirable than their company. The object in leaving Mr. and Mrs. Stiles in this isolated locality is not certainly known, but it was probably thought that the buildings would be less liable to be destroyed if some one was in charge of them, and if any tools or other property were left behind, it was absolutely necessary that some one should keep watch of them: for the noble red men, though civil enough in their ordinary intercourse with the surveyors, would certainly have been unable to resist the temptation presented by any thing they could conveniently carry off. Landon, who had been connected with the survey party, probably intended to trade with the Indians. He soon left, however, his place being taken by Edward Paine, afterwards known as General Paine of Painesville, who boarded with Stiles, and was certainly at that time an Indian-trader. He was the first resident in the county unconnected with the survey- party. The nearest white neighbors were at a settlement made that fall in the present town of Willoughby, Geauga county. Tradition asserts that the first white child born in this county came to light in the cabin of Job and Tabitha Stiles, in the winter of 1796-7, and that a squaw acted as its nurse, but there is no positive evidence. All the party, except those who remained at Cleveland, reached their distant homes without more serious difficulty than was necessitated by a journey of six or seven hundred miles, largely through the wilderness. Neither General Cleaveland nor Mr. Porter ever returned to the Reserve, unless possibly the latter may have done so as a casual traveler. General Cleave- land continued to practice his profession in his native town of Canterbury, sometimes representing it in the State legislature, and always occupying a prominent position among his fellow citizens, until his death in 1806. Though, as before stated, he never returned to the Reserve, yet he always manifested a warm interest in its welfare, and especially in the village which he had founded and which bore his name. One cannot but regret that he was not spared to see at least the beginning of its greatness as a city. Augustus Porter soon after settled at Niagara Falls, where he became one of the leading men of western New York. He erected extensive mills there, and was also the first man who built a bridge from the mainland to Goat Island. In 1808, he was appointed the first presiding judge of the court of common pleas of Niagara county, New York, (of which Buffalo was then the county seat), a post which he held for thirteen years. He died at Niagara Falls at a very advanced age. Judge Porter was an elder brother of Peter B. Porter, the distinguished general in the war of 1812, and secretary of war under President J. Q. Adams. In January, 1797, the members of the Connecticut Land Company held their annual meeting. There was much complaint of the large cost of the work of the past year, but after an investigation by a committee the proceedings of the directors and superintendent were entirely approved. Cleaveland's agreement with Brant and the other chiefs at Buffalo was also ratified. The stockholders were seriously discomposed by another matter. Mr. Porter, having during the season made a traverse of the line of the Reserve along Lake Erie, now reported that the total contents of the original tract were only three million four hundred and fifty thousand seven hundred and fifty- SALE AND SURVEY - 41 three acres, and that, after deducting the five hundred thousand acres granted to the sufferers by British spoliation, (commonly called the Fire Lands,) there remained only two million nine hundred and fifty thousand seven hundred and fifty-three acres for the Connecticut Land Company. This was about fifty thousand acres less Him they had bought. Moreover, the "Excess Company," the members of which had been paying fancy prices for a share in the surplus of the Western Reserve above three million acres, (besides the "Fire Lands") suddenly found that there was no surplus, and many of them became bankrupt on account of the discovery. Fault was found with Porter's survey, but subsequent work showed that the estimated amount was too large rather than too small; a very close computation by Leonard Case making the whole amount in the Reserve, besides the Fire Lands, two million eight hundred and thirty-seven thousand one hundred and nine acres. This great reduction from the amount estimated before the survey was caused by the fact that, in going west, Lake Erie trended much farther south than had been supposed before exact calculations were made. In the spring of 1797, the company again made preparations to send a party to finish the surveys. While they were doing so, Mr. Cleaveland received a letter from one Alexander Henry, who had been an Indian trader from Montreal to the upper-lake region ever since the treaty of peace between France and England, in 1763. He claimed that he and others had bought of the Indians a large tract west of the Cuyahoga and north of Wayne's treaty-line, which included all of the Western Reserve west of the river just mentioned. This he offered to sell to the company at one shilling per acre; guaranteeing a confirmation of the deed by the Indians. He stated that the deed was in the hands of Alexander Macomb, (father of the general of that name in the war of 1812,) a great land-speculator of that day and a co-proprietor with Henry. It is quite likely that some of the chiefs of the Delawares or Chippewas had made such a deed, but, as the United States had invariably refused to recognize sales made by the Indians to any one but the general government, no attention was paid to Mr. Henry's claim. He afterwards published an account of his adventures among the Indians, which is a valuable authorrty on the subject of aboriginal history. In the letter in question Mr. Henry mentioned that one John Askin, one of the proprietors under the alleged purchase, was then residing with his family "at Cuyahoga," but there is nowhere else any account of such a person. Among all the numerous statements made by surveyors and their friends, it is hardly possible that Askin would have been passed over if he had lived on or near either bank of the Cuyahoga. Henry may have falsified entirely, or may have mistaken Askin's location, or the latter may have moved away before- the surveyors came. The surrey party of 1797 was organized at Schenectady, New York, by Mr. Seth Pease, who had been selected as principal surveyor for the coming season, and who proceeded to that point during the forepart of April. After the company was formed, Rev. Seth Hart was made the superintendent. Besides the two officials just named, there were no less than eight surveyors: Richard M. Stoddard, Moses Warren, Amzi Atwater, Joseph Landon, Amos Spafford, Warham Shepard, Phineas Barker and Nathan Redfield. Dr. Theodore Shepard was again employed as the physician. There were, in addition, fifty-two other employees, to perform the numerous duties necessary in an extensive survey; the most prominent of these being Colonel Ezra Waite and Major William Shepard, who seem to have had charge of the others when the latter were not under the immediate direction of the surveyors. Nathaniel Doan, the blacksmith of 1796, was also a member of the present expedition. There were in all sixty-three members, of whom only twelve had been on the previous expedition; and, of these . latter, seven were surveyors. Evidently the work of carrying a chain or wielding an axe in the tangled forest, living on indigestible bread and sleeping on the wet ground, had lost all their romantic charms during one year's experience. The expedition took the usual route to the western world, by way of the Mohawk river, Onedia lake, Oswego river, Lake Ontario, Niagara river and Lake Erie, though a portion went by land, by way of Canandaigua, under charge of Major William Shepard. After leaving some of the men at work in the eastern part of the Reserve, the head of the main portion of the expedition arrived at Cleveland on the first day of June. Mr. Pease's journal mentions finding Mr. and Mrs. Stiles well, and also Mrs. Gun, who, with her husband, had moved from Conneaut that spring, though Mr. Gun was then absent. He says nothing of there being a child in the Stiles family, which it is exceedingly probable he would have done if one had been horn during the winter, at least if it had then been living. Boats belonging to the expedition kept coming for several days afterwards. In the afternoon of June 4th, one of them brought the body of David Eldridge, one of the hands, who had been drowned the same day, in attempting to swim his horse over Grand river. The next morning the north part of lots ninety-seven and ninety-eight, in Cleveland, were selected as a burial ground. There were a few boards in the vicinity, and a strong, rude coffin was quickly made. The body of Eldridge was placed in it, the coffin was fastened with cords to a stout pole, by which means it was supported on the shoulders of the comrades of the deceased, and the procession moved slowly to the burial ground. There the body was solemnly interred; Superintendent Hart reading the burial service. A rough fence was also built around the grave. This was, so far as known, the first funeral in Cuyahoga county. 42 - GENERAL HISTORY OF CUYAHOGA COUNTY. Parties were at once sent out in various directions to recommence the surveys. Mr. Pease mentions the articles furnished to each party, which certainly form a somewhat miscellaneous collection, viz. : Pork, flour, tea, chocolate, sugar, ginger, spirits, vinegar, cheese, pepper, empty bags, fire-steel, punk, candles, a tent, axes, hatchets, pocket compasses, measuring pins, salt, soap and horses. From a previous entry, we learn that the daily rations for a mess of six men were five pounds of pork, a pound of chocolate, a "small porringer" of sugar, a half bottle of tea, a bottle of rum, and flour without limit. The most noticeable difference between these rations and those issued to soldiers and explorers at the present day is the absence of coffee from the former. Modern campersout would hardly find tea, chocolate, or even a bottle of rum, a sufficient substitute. The main headquarters were established at Cleveland, but oh the tenth of June Mr. Pease with a small party went up the Cuyahoga, and soon after established the " upper headquarters," near Cuyahoga Falls, in the present county of Summit. On the 11th of June, 1797, James Kingsbury and his family arrived at Cleveland. He was a native of Connecticut, but had moved from New Hampshire to Conneaut the previous season. For a short time he lived in a dilapidated house on the west side of the river, which may have been the one occupied by John Askin. Early this season, also, Lorenzo Carter, of Rutland, Vt., and his brother-in-law, Ezekiel Hawley, came to Cleveland with their families. According to a statement made in his lifetime by Alonzo Carter, son of Lorenzo, his father arrived on the 2d of May; having stayed the previous winter in Canada. Carter and Hawley both located in Cleveland. One of the children of the latter was Fanny B., then five years old. She is still living, at the age of eighty-seven years, being now the venerable widow of Mr. Theodore Miles, of the eighteenth ward of Cleveland, formerly Newburg. She is unquestionably the earliest surviving resident of Cuyahoga county, and her memory spans the whole time and all the wonderful changes from the unbroken forest to the teeming county and the mighty metropolis. Mr. Carter, afterwards universally known as Major Carter, was well calculated to succeed in a new country; being an extremely active, enterprising man, an expert hunter, and withal peculiarly adroit in gaining an influence over the Indians, who were constant neighbors and frequent visitors. He at once began entertaining travelers, and his was the first hotel in Cuyahoga county. The first marriage followed quickly after the first funeral. Carter's hired girl bore the peculiar name of Chloe Inches. While Mr. Carter was residing in Canada, during the previous winter, she had formed the acquaintance of one William Clement, who speedily followed her to Cleveland. They were married by Rev. Mr. Hart, and, as no further mention is made of Clement in Cleveland annals, we presume he rementurned with his bride to Canada. In June David Bryant and his son Gilman (the latter being afterwards a well known citizen and one of the latest surviving pioneers) came to Cleveland by boat; being on their way to a grindstone quarry on Vermillion river. They made trips back and forth all that summer, carrying grindstones east, probably into Pennsylvania. Their stopping place was at Carter's tavern. Besides those already named, Rudolphus Edwards became a resident of Cleveland during the summer. Up to this time all that part of the Western Reserve east of the Cuyahoga had continued to be a portion of the county of Washington, created in 1788, with its county-seat at Marietta. No one in this vicinity paid any attention to its authority, and the directors of the Land Company were very anxious to have a "legal and practicable government." The legislature of Connecticut declined to assume any political authority. On the 29th of June, 1797, Washington county was divided; all the north part, including that portion of Cuyahoga east of the river, being formed by the legislature of the Northwest Territory into the county of Jefferson, with the seat of justice at Steubenville. The latter place was fifty miles nearer than Marietta, but still no attention was paid to the authorities there by the few inhabitants of the Reserve, nor did those authorities attempt to organize any townships within that district. The surveyors and their men were soon nearly all engaged in running the lines in the southern part of the Reserve; their headquarters in the field being, as before stated, a short distance below Cuyahoga Falls. A sad but interesting event, the last scene of which was in Cuyahoga county, is narrated by Amzi Atwater, then a youth scarcely twenty-one years old. While he and Warham Shepard were running the south part of the fifth meridian (now the line between Trumbull and Portage counties), in the latter part of July, Minor Bicknell, one of the assistants, was taken violently sick with a fever. There was no medicine and no comforts for the sick, and the only hope of saving the man was to get him to Cleveland or the upper headquarters as soon as possible. Shepard agreed to go on with the survey with one man, while Atwater with one or two others undertook to convey Bicknell to a more desirable location. Placing one horse far enough behind another to admit of a man's lying lengthwise between them, Atwater and his helpers put two long poles, one on each side of the horses, and fastened them to the pack-saddles with strips of bark. With other pieces of the same material they made a kind of net work between the poles. On this they made a bed of blankets, and laid the sick man upon them. On the 20th day of July they started out, with no guide but Atwater's compass and the marks made along the lines already run. After going a short distance south, they proceeded west along the third parallel. A SALE AND SURVEY - 43 man was sent ahead to have a boat ready at the upper headquarters, if there were any there. Bicknell was delirious a large part of the time, and so serious was the difficulty in advancing through the forest with such an unwieldy carriage, and so great was the necessity of moving the sick man carefully, that the cortege was only able to make about ten miles a day. Proceeding west to the present corner of Stow and Hudson townships, Summit county, Atwater turned south to the old Indian trail from the Ohio river to Sandusky. 'There he met his messenger, who said that the camp at upper headquarters was taken up, and all the boats had gone down the river. The same man was then directed to go to Cleveland and get a boat to comc up to the present south line of Independence, where the party would meet it. Atwater then went north, on the west line of Stow and Hudson, to the northwest corner of the latter township, where he again turned to the west. Plodding wearily along the faint track which went straight over hill and through valley, camping where night overtook him, listening to the occasional howl of the wolves in the distance, and burdened all the time with the care of a delirious invalid who was hourly growing worse, the young surveyor found his own nervous and muscular system subjected.to a terrible strain, and afterwards, no doubt truly, described this as the most exciting event of his life. At length, in the forenoon of the 25th of July, they reached the Cuyahoga, on the line between Independence and Brecksville, and rested to await the arrival of the boat from Cleveland. But no aid could come quickly enough to help the smitten man, who died within two hours of his arrival at the river. Soon after noon Joseph Tinker came with the expected boat, having Dr. Shepard on board. The only thing that could then be done was to bury the unfortunate Bicknell, and he was accordingly interred near the river, close to the south line of Independence. Exhausted as Atwater was by fatigue and anxiety, he was obliged almost immediately to retrace his steps, rn order to find Waltham Shepard and help him out with the surveys. Apropos of this last event, it may be remarked that Joseph Tinker, who came up in charge of the boat, scems to have acted as the principal master of transportation for the company; sometimes going back to Conneaut, and other points for supplies, with four or live noon and a boat, at other times transporting the needed articles on pack-horses to the various parties of surveyors. lIe was drowned in the lower part of Lake Erie while returning home the next fall, but his name is preserved in "linker's creek," which is the principal stream that flows into the Cuyahoga in this county; heading in Portage county and running through the townships of Solon, Bedford and Independence. The township lines were soon completed, and all the surveyors and their assistants returned to Clevelnd. A few remaining lots of Cleveland township were then run out, and Warrensville and part of Bedford were also divided into lots. Meanwhile the —equalizing committee," composed of the principal surveyors, was hard at work, exploring the townships and settling on the size of the fractious which should be added to other townships, so as to make them all of substantially the same value. Work progressed slowly, for sickness had become extremely prevalent. Fever and ague was the principal disease, but dysentery and bilious fever were also common. One of the workmen, named William Andrews, died in August, as did also Peleg Washburn, an apprentice to Nathaniel Doan, the blacksmith. On the 8th of August the sick list numbered seven; on the 27th it had arisen to eleven, and on the 12th of September the number who could not work was twelve. The men having almost none of the appliances and comforts of civilized life, the ague racked them with extreme violence. The fits often came on every day, and when they passed off it was all the poor, exhausted men could do to crawl from their blanket beds to the spring, and get water enough to last them through the next attack. On the 12th of September nine sick persons were discharged and sent east. About the first of October some of those who had acquired claims in Euclid, under the agreement of the year before, made improvements in accordance with that agreement. But the great anxiety to obtain land on the Reserve had passed away under the influence of hardship and ague, and very few of the original contractors performed their agreements and received their land. In the fatter part of October the surveyors and their assistants all left for the east. The families left at Cleveland were those of Carter, Hawley, Kingsbury and Edwards. These, like the surveyors, had been terrrbly afflicted by ague, and Mr. Kingsbury determined to seek a healthier location. e accordingly removed to the high ridge running from what has since been called " 1)oan's Corners" to Newburg, at a point, about five miles from time lake, where the present Kinsman street strikes Woodland Hills avenue, and where his descendants still reside. There he built him a cabin, which he occupied with his family on the 11th of December; being the first permanent resident in the county away from the immediate shore of the lake. 44 - GENERAL HISTORY OF CUYAHOGA COUNTY. CHAPTER VIII. THE PERIOD FROM 1798 TO 1800. The Best Townships—Annual Meeting of 1798—New Assessment—Report of the Equalizing Committee—Subsequent Career of Seth Pease-- Bounty on Gristmills—Road built to the Pennsylvania Line—Escaping the Ague—Carter’s Generosity -Settlement of Euclid —An Ague-Smitten Family—Description of a Plumping-Mill—Kingsbury's Hand Gristmill—Lack of Medicine—Annual Indian Hunts in Cuyahoga County— Annual Drunks—Carter's Quarrel with 1ndians—His Influence (wet' them —Fishing at Rocky River—The First Gristmill—The Surveyors give up Euclid—The First Sawmill—The First School—Formation of Trumbull County —First Election in it—First Court of Quarter Sessrons of Trumbull—First Justices of the Peace from the Present Cuyahoga —Organization of Civil Townships —Boundaries of Cleveland—First Constables—Kirtland's Remonstrance against High Prices. As before stated, it had been decided by the directors to take some of the most valuable townships as the standard, and bring the others up to that standard by. the addition of fractions. Those selected by the committee as the most valuable in the whole Reserve (outside of those chosen to be sold for the general benefit), were townships five, six and seven of range eleven, and township eleven of range seven; now, respectively, Middlefield ill Summit county, Bedford and Warrensville in Cuyahoga county, and Perry in Lake county. At their annual meeting on the 23d of January, 1798, the stockholders confirmed the action of the directors, in giving a city lot, a ten-acre lot and a hundred-acre lot to Mrs. Stiles, a hundred-acre lot to Mrs. Gun, and a hundred-acre lot to James Kingsbury; also a city lot to Nathaniel Doan, conditioned on his living on it as a blacksmith. At the same time another assessment of twenty dollars a share was ordered; thirty-five dollars a share having already been raised during the preceding summer. The question of political jurisdiction was still not quite decided, but the stockholders offered all their political authority, more or less, to Congress; at the same time requesting that the authorities of the Northwest Territory should form a new county, to embrace the Western Reserve. Some small donations of land were also offered to actual settlers. A committee reported in favor of building a road near Lake Erie from the Pennsylvania line to Cleveland,; with a branch to the salt springs in the present county of Mahoning. The stockholders voted that the fifteen hundred dollars promised to the Indians, through Brant, should be paid to the United States superintendent of Indian affairs, to be divided among the Six Nations as he should think just. On the 29th of the same month the stockholders were again convoked by the directors to receive the report of the committee on partition, consisting of Pease, Spofford, Warren and Holbrook. Six townships were to be sold for the general benefit; two of them being Euclid and Cleveland (then including Newburg) and four being outside of Cuyahoga county. Four other townships (Warrensville, Bedford and two outside the county) were drawn in four hundred parcels, one to each share. All the rest of the Reserve east of the Cuyahoga was drawn in ninety- three parcels; each consisting of a township or more. These, as before arranged, were received by the proprietors, who clubbed together in groups for the purpose; each group dividing its portion among its members as they could agree. This ended the direct connection of Mr. Pease with the Connecticut Land Company. He was afterwards employed by the "Holland Company " in surveying its land, which comprised six' or eight of the westernmost counties of New York. When his brother-in-law, Gideon Granger, became postmaster-general of the United States in 1801, Mr. Pease was made assistant postmaster- general. While holding that position he was employed by the government to relocate the south line of the Western Reserve, in 1806. The stockholders were still in trouble because Congress had failed to take any special action regarding their territory, and again petitioned the legislature of Connecticut to afford them relief, but that body wisely decided to make no movement which might bring it into collision with the national authorities. The company also voted to give two hundred dollars, or loan five hundred, to any one who would put up a gristmill near the Cuyahoga, and likewise to others, to do the same in other localities. Two more assessments were levied, of ten dollars per share each. In the spring of 1798 a party of eighteen came out to the Reserve and built a road from Cleveland to the Pennsylvania line, near the lake shore, which occupied them the greater part of the season. The same year Doan, (who had returned from the East to settle,) Edwards, Stiles and Gun followed the example of Kingsbury and located themselves four or five miles each from the mouth of the Cuyahoga. Doan made his home at the point long known as Doan's Corners, and the others along the ridge south from that point. The object of all of them was to escape the ague, then so terribly prevalent in the "city," and to a great extent they succeeded. Their removal left the " city" to the occupancy of Mr. Carter, Mr. Amos Spofford, (who came there the same year) and their families, and to Joseph Landon and Stephen Gilbert who cleared land and sowed some wheat. The early accounts speak frequently of the generous assistance afforded by Mr. Carter and his wife to the fever-smitten inhabitants. He seems to have escaped sickness to a considerable extent, and his expertness with his rifle enabled him to make frequent and most welcome presents of game to his afflicted neighbors. Deer were plenty, and could be seen forty, fifty or even sixty rods away, owing to the fact that there was very little underbrush in any part of the county. Mr. Carter also brought goods that year to trade with the Indians ; thus becoming the first merchant in the county after the settlement by the whites. The same year Mr. John Morse and others made a settlement in Euclid. As illustrative of the hardships. undergone by the early settler, it may be mentioned that Nathaniel Doan and his whole family, numbering nine persons, were sick during a considerable part of the season. The only one able to do anything was his nephew, THE PERIOD FROM 1798 TO 1800 - 45 Seth Doan, a boy of thirteen, and he had the inevitable shakes. For two months Seth went to Mr. Kingsbury's and got corn, which he then crushed in Mr. Kingsbury's hand-mill and took home to the family. When he was unable to go they had no vegetable food but turnips, though Carter and his hounds kept them pretty well supplied with venison. The mid spoken of, at least the first one built by Mr. Kingsbury, was of the form which was common in all the new country during the first years of settlement. An oak stump was hollowed out so that it would hold about half a bushel of corn. Above it a heavy wooden pestle was suspended to a " springpole," the large end of which was fastened to a neighboring tree. A convenient quantity of corn being poured into the hollow, the pestle was seized with both hands and brought down upon it. Then the spring-pole drew it up a foot or two above the corn, when it was again brought down, and thus the work continued until the corn was reduced to a quantity of very coarse meal. These machines -were commonly called "plumping-mills," mad probably each of the first-settled townships in the county had one or more of those rude but convenient articles. For three or four years there was no water-mill nearer than Pennsylvania. Mr. Kingsbury, however, being a particularly enterprising pioneer, soon constructed something more effective than his plumping-mill, though still unable to compass a regular gristmill. Getting a couple of large stones in the vicinity, he shaped them into some similitude to mill-stones and fastened the lower firmly in position. To the upper one he affixed a long lever, by which it could be rotated back and forth, and with this simple machinery he and his neighbors were able to grind their corn finer and more rapidly than with the discarded plumping-mill. The doctor who attended the surveyors having returned with them, there was no physician in all this part of the Reserve. It fact it was twelve years more before one located in Cuyahoga county. The people had to do their own doctoring and provide their own medicine. Instead of calomel they used an infusion of butternut bark; instead of quinine, a decoction of dogwood and cherry. These were crude remedies, yet, notwithstanding the extreme sickliness of the locality, which is admitted by all the early settlers, it does not appear that the mortality was much larger than in sections where there was an ample supply of physicians. Doubtless, however, a good physician would have stopped the prevalent fevers more quickly than they " wore themselves out," and would thus have prevented much suffering. The last three years of the eighteenth century were remarkable in this locality for the early appearance of warm weather. Pinks and other flowers bloomed in February each year, and peach trees were in full blossom in March. All along during the early years of settlement the Chippewas, Ottawas and other western Indians, to the number of several hundred, were in the habit of coming every autumn from their summer homes on the Sandusky and Maumee, where they raised their corn, and assembling at the mouth of the Cuyahoga. There they piled their canoes, and then scattered out into the interior to spend the winter in hunting and trapping. Having acquired an ample supply of meat for summer use, and a quantity of valuable furs, they would return in the spring to the point where they had left their canoes. Here they would sell their furs, and before returning home would indulge in a grand, annual drunk. For this festive occasion they prepared, with praiseworthy caution, by giving their tomahawks, knives, rifles and all other weapons to the squaws. These articles the latter would hide in some secluded place, carefully concealed from the warriors. Sometimes an ample allowance of whisky would be purchased " in bulk " of the nearest trader, with which the Indians would retire to some forest nook and there celebrate their frantic orgies. Sometimes they bought it by the drink; increasing the amount and the frequency as the hours progressed. Whichever way was adopted a terrific scene was the result. The warriors, as the whisky mounted to their brains, threw off all the usual stolidity of their demeanor; told with braggart shouts of the wars in which they had been engaged and the number of scalps they had taken; tore off even the scanty garment they generally wore; rent the air with bloodcurdling yells, and often fought among themselves with nature's weapons or such clubs and stones as they could pick up. At such times they frequently sought zealously for the knives and rifles of which they had previously dispossessed themselves, but the squaws generally performed their duty as custodians with great fidelity, and a severe pounding was the most serious injury the irate warriors received at each other's hands. Nor were the squaws entirely deprived of their share of amusement. After their lords had awakened from the sleep which followed their debauch, and had received back their weapons, the gentler sex were allowed (provided there was any whisky left or any fur to buy it with) to indulge in a lively drunk of their own. Their demonstrations were almost as frantic, but not usually as pugnacious, as those of the warriors. After all had satiated themselves with pleasure according to their ideas—they launched their canoes, loaded in their dried deer meat and bear meat, and those skins which, being unsalable to the whites, they destined for the furnishing of their lodges, and paddled swiftly away to their fertile cornfields at the head of the lake. In the spring of 1799, the Indians obtained the whisky for their annual celebration from Mr. Carter. After using up their first supply they sent him furs and obtained more, and this was often repeated. Doubtless thinking that the less liquor they drank the better off they would be, the worthy trader, as 46 - GENERAL HISTORY OF CUYAHOGA COUNTY. the tradition goes, diluted the whisky with larger and larger quantities of water, as his customers became more and more intoxicated. The result was that they became sober long before they expected, and knew that a fraud had been perpetrated. Nine of them came to Carter's cabin in a great rage; swearing vengeance because they had been cheated out of a part of their drunk. Luckily all their arms were still in the possession of the squaws. They quickly burst open the cabin door, but the burly trader, standing behind it, knocked down three or four of them as they entered, sprang over their prostrate forms, rushed upon those outside, and drove them, unaccustomed to fist-fights, in tumultuous disorder to their canoes. Ere he returned to the cabin, his other foes gathered themselves up and slipped quietly away. For a while Carter was somewhat anxious lest they should all return with their weapons, but instead of that, after a considerable time had passed, a deputation of squaws appeared and professed themselves desirous to make peace. The trader readily assented, walked over alone to the camp of his enemies, and easily succeeded in pacifying them. Whether he was able to convince them that it was a highly moral I transaction to water an Indian's whisky when he was getting too drunk, and then knock him down for resenting it, history saith not, but there is no doubt that he exercised an immense influence over the Indians, and could take liberties with them which no one else could. His bold, rough-and-ready ways, his great physical strength, and his expertness as a marksman and hunter, far superior to their own, were all attributes which naturally gained the intense admiration of the rude, untutored children of the forest. Some of them declared he was a magician, and could kill an animal with his rifle without breaking its hide. On their way to and from their summer residence, the Indians usually stopped at Rocky river to fish, and this was also a favorite resort of the whites. The former generally fished at night in their canoes, with torchlight and spears; the whites used these means, but also frequently resorted to the hook and line,: and sometimes managed to oonstruct a small seine. In the spring, summer and fall of 1799, W. W. Williams and Major Wyatt built the first gristmill in the present county of Cuyahoga. It was located at the falls of Mill creek, in what was long known as the village of Newburg, but is now a part of the city of Cleveland. The Land Company gave the proprietors a hundred acres of land and all the irons for their mill, in consideration of their putting it up. The irons were- the most important part of the structure, as it was absolutely necessary to bring them from the East, while all the rest of the appliances could be procured in the vicinity. The water was conveyed in a trough dug out of logs to an undershot wheel, "twelve feet over," which had but one set of arms, with brackets fifteen inches long, running inside the trough. David and Gilman Bryant, who were still engaged in their grindstone trade from Vermillion river, made the millstones out of material obtained by the side of the creek, half a mile below the mill. By this time it had become evident that almost all the surveyors had given up their idea of settling in Euclid, and about all that remains in evidence of their design is the name of the great mathematician, applied by them to their favorite township. Other settlers, however, came into that township and Cleveland, of whom more particular mention will be made in the township histories. The next year, 1800, Williams and Wyatt built a sawmill, near their gristmill, on Mill creek; the former, like the latter, being the first institution of its kind in the county. As in the case of the first mill, too, the irons for the sawmill were presented by the company. This year was also distinguished by the establishment of the first school in the county. It was kept by Miss Sarah Doan in the Kingsbury neighborhood, which, as before stated, was long a part of Newburg, but has now been absorbed in the omnivorous city. Some important movements were made regarding the fee-simple and the political jurisdiction of the Western Reserve. The United States at length formally conveyed all its title to the soil of that territory to the State of Connecticut (by which State it had been legally vested in the members of the Land Company and in the "Fire Lands" proprietors), while on the other hand the State formally released to the United States all its claims to the political jurisdiction of the territory in question. On the 10th of July, 1800, the legislature of Ohio formed a new county out of parts of Jefferson and Wayne, comprising all of the Western Reserve, including the "Fire Lands" and the neighboring islands in the lake. To this county was given the name of "Trumbull," in honor of Jonathan Trumbull, then governor of the State of Connecticut, and a son of the celebrated Revolutionary governor of the same name, who was the original '' Brother Jonathan." The county-seat was located at Warren; the most of the settlers, who were very few, being in the southeastern corner of the Reserve. On the 22nd of September, 1800, Gov. St. Clair issued his proclamation, directed to David Abbott, who had been appointed sheriff of Trumbull county, and who lived near the mouth of Chagrin river in the present county of Lake, requiring him to hold an election at Warren on the second Tuesday of October, for the purpose of choosing a representative in the Territorial legislature. The election was duly held at the time and place specified, when only forty-two votes were cast for the whole county of Trumbull; that is to say in the whole Western Reserve. As it was about sixty miles from the county-seat to Cleveland and the same distance to Conneaut, it is quite probable that some of the voters stayed at home. Edward Paine, whom we have mentioned as living THE PERIOD FROM 1801 TO 1806 - 47 with the Stiles family during the first winter that Cleveland was occupied by white people, received thirty-eight of the forty-two votes, and was declared duly elected. This was the first election in which the settlers on the Reserve had taken part, and they were highly pleased ,to find themselves once more performing the accustomed duties of citizens. Meanwhile, however, the first court of quarter sessions had been held at Warren, on the fourth Monday of August, 1800, by the judge of probate and the " justices of quorum" of the new county. The former was John Leavitt, The latter were John Young, Turhand Kirtland, Camden Cleaveland, Eliphalet Austin and James Kingsbury; the last named being the only member from the present county of Cuyahoga. The first justice of the peace not "of quorum," from this county, was Amos Spafford. The court appointed a commission consisting of Amos Spafford, David Hudson, Simeon Perkins, John Minor, A. Wheeler, Edward Paine and Benjamin Davidson, to report a proper division of Trumbull county into townships with convenient boundaries. On their report the county was organized in eight townships, of which Cleveland was thy westernmost. It comprised all of Cuyahoga county, together with the townships of Chester, Russell and Bainbridge in Geauga county. It also embraced the whole Indian country to the western boundary of the Reserve, (including the Fire Lands,) which was also the western boundary of the county. Its jurisdiction over the tract west of the Cuyahoga was, however, merely nominal; as there were no white men there to govern, and no one in those days thought of subjecting the Indians on their own ground to civil law. Thus the township of Cleveland had an area of about two thousand three hundred and forty square miles; of which, however, only about two hundred and sixty square miles were open to occupation by the whites. The next township cast of Cleveland was Painesville. The distinction between survey townships and civil townships should always be borne in mind by those studying the early history of this section. Thus, while the civil township of Cleveland embraced the immense territory above described, the survey township of the same name comprised only a small district about five miles by eight, out of which were afterwards formed the civil townships of Cleveland and Newburg. After the county had been thus divided into townships, the court appointed constables for them; those for Cleveland being Stephen Gilbert and Lorenzo Carter. In this year Turhand Kirtland, writing to General Cleaveland from the town which bore the name of the hitter, declared that the prices of land- were too high; objecting especially to the demand of twenty- five dollars per acre for city lots. He stated that the crops were extremely good, the settlers healthy and in good spirits, and their numbers increasing as rapidly as could be expected. There was a universal scarcity of cash, however, which of course 'made payments diffrcult. The settlers were anxious that the Company should build a store, and take grain and other produce in payment for their land. This, however, was not done. CHAPTER IX. THE PERIOD FROM 1801 TO 1806. Samuel Huntington—No Laws—Grand Fourth of July Celebration— Oilman Bryant and his Lady—The Ball--A Traveling Minister—First Town Meeting—First Township Officers—Mr. Huntington made Justice of the Quorum—His Polities—Attempt to sell Six Townships— Failure, and the Cause—The Townships divided—Huntington a Judge of the Supreme Court—First Indictment—The First Murder—" Me no 'frail "—A Treacherous Blow—Thre Its of Revenge—A Compromise— Two Gallons of Consolation—Organization of Militia—Carter elected Captain—A Useless Protest—The Captain promoted to Major—The Sloop Cuyahoga Packet—Purchase of the Land West of the Cuyahoga —Proposed Council at Cleveland-indians stay Away—Council at Sandusky—Terms of the Treaty—Silver in Payment—First Post-OffIce -Collection-District of Erie—Settlement of Mayfleld—Another Militia Election—List of Voters—Formation of Geauga County—Survey of West-Side Lands—The Perils of the Lake—A Terrible Scene—Rescue of "Ben "—Loss of the Schooner " Washington." EARLY in the spring of 1801, Samuel Huntington, of Connecticut (a nephew of the governor of that State of the same name), who had been examining the lands on the Reserve during the previous summer, and had at the same time obtained admission to the bar of the State, came to Cleveland and selected that point as his future home. He immediately employed workmen to build him a large, hewed-log house, which, notwithstanding its humble materials, appeared quite aristocratic in comparison with the cabins of the other settlers. He also employed Mr. Samuel Dodge to build him a framed barn; this being the first framed edifice in the county. The boards were of course obtained from Williams and Wyatt's mill at Newburg. Mr. Huntington was the first lawyer in the county. He did not, however, obtain any considerable practice; for the immigrants from the land of steady habits were not litigious, and were too few in number to make much business for an attorney. Huntington was evidently ahead of his time, as were many others, in expecting that Cleveland would soon be a large town. In fact no one could have appeared more incongruous among the rude settlers-, the red Indians, the log cabins and the frowning forests of this extreme frontier than the slight, dapper counselor, thirty-five years old, about five feet eight inches tall, highly educated, and having acquired in European travel not only a knowledge of the French language but a demonstrative affability of manner, described by Americans by the general title of " Frenchy." Yet so impartially were his bows and smiles distributed to all around, and so shrewd was his political management, that important public trusts were soon confided to him, and he rose in no long time to the highest honors of the State. His first advancement was an appointment as lieutenant-colonel of the Trumbull-county militia regiment. 48 - GENERAL HISTORY OF CUYAHOGA COUNTY Down to this time there had been no laws of any kind in the vicinity. There were no officials to enforce them, and in fact it had previously been some what doubtful whether the laws of the Northwestern Territory applied to the Connecticut Reserve. For a wonder, there had been no cases of lynch-law, and there had been but a single instance of what might be called club-law — the row between Carter and the hid ians. It might appear that there was now a prospect of more lively times, for in this year the first .distillery in the present county was erected at Cleveland by David Bryant. This, however, was entirely a matter-of-course proceeding; a distillery being invariably one of the first institutions of a new settlement, and being generally erected by one of the most respectable and responsible men in it. All the old chronicles speak enthusiastically of the grand celebration and ball in honor of the Fourth of July, in 1801. The writer was at first in doubt whether this should be included in the general history of the county or be relegated to the more restricted details of Cleveland local annals. But after duly considering that it was the first Fourth-of-July celebration in the county, (at least the first that has found its way into history,) and was likewise the first ball in the county, and was probably attended by almost all the citizens of the county, he has concluded to assign it a place among the county annals. Of the patriotic observances during the day no account has been preserved, but the grand ball has been described in glowing terms. Gilman Bryant, one of the participants, has narrated, in a letter published by Colonel Whittlesey, the appearance and mode of travel of himself and his lady, in terms doubtless applicable with some modifications to many others of the guests. The youthful knight, only seventeen years old, waited on "Miss Doan, who had just arrived at Doan's Corners four miles cast of Cleaveland," and who was probably the daughter of Timothy Doan, who came thither that year but afterwards removed to Euclid. The lady was but fourteen years old. The cavalier attired himself gorgeously, in what he assures us was the prevailing mode; wearing a suit of gingham, a good, wool hat and a pair of substantial, brogan shoes. His long hair was bound behind in a queue about as long and as thick as an ordinary corncob, tied round with a yard and a half of black ribbon, below which the hair extended in a small tuft. Those were the days of powdered wigs among the gentry, and the youth came as near the genteel standard as he could by annointing his hair with tallow, and then sifting on it as much flour as he could make stick. Thus arrayed, he mounted a horse and rode out to his lady's mansion of logs. She climbed upon a stump, and he rode up beside it; she kirtled her calico dress about her waist to keep it clean, spread her under. petticoat on the horse's back, mounted, and clasped her cavalier about the waist to steady herself, and away they went in splendid style to the double log-house of Mr. Carter, on the brow of the hill at tie west end of Superior street. Thither, too, came the whole elite of the Cuyahoga county which was to be. Wagons rolled in from the lake-washed shores of Euclid ; horsemen with dames behind them rode down from the mills of Mill creek, and young farmers came in high glee with their girls from the Kingsbury ridge, which had attracted so many settlers on account of its healthy location. No less than twenty gentlemen and fifteen ladies graced the festive occasion. John Wood, Benjamin Wood and R. H. Blinn were the managers ; Samuel Jones, afterwards quite noted as Major Jones, was the chief violinist and floor-manager. His ringing tones called off the figures in "Fisher's Hornpipe," " Iii, Betty Martin" and the " Virginia Reel," and cavaliers and dames, old and young, married and single, responded with a vigor which marked the rude floor with the dent of many a heavy brogan, while the rough ceiling was almost reached by the heads of some of the taller dancers. If their spirits flagged they were speedily renovated with a beverage concocted of whisky, water and maple sugar, and the 5th of July was well under way ere the jovial revelers returned to their homes by means of the same primitive conveyances which. had borne them to the scene of festivity. The first minister in the county, of whom there is any record, (aside from Seth Hart, whose business as superintendent of the Land Company was of a secular nature,) was the Reverend Joseph Badger, a missionary from Connecticut, who came along the lake shore about the middle of August, 1801. After lodging at Carter's he and a companion crossed the Cuyahoga in a canoe, (leading their horses which swam the stream,) and then. pursued the Indian path to Rocky river. There, while cutting brush, they were, as he says, saluted with a "sing," which on investigation proved to be that of a " large, yellow rattlesnake," which they immediately dispatched. In 1802, at the February term of the court of quarter-sessions for Trumbull county, it was ordered that the first town meeting of the township of Cleveland should be held at the house of James Kingsbury. It was accordingly so held, Rudolphus Edwards serving as chairman, and the following officers were elected: town clerk, Nathaniel Doan ; trustees, Amos Spafford, Timothy Doan and W. W. Williams ; appraisers of houses, Samuel Hamilton and Elijah Gun ; lister, Ebenezer Ayer ; supervisors of highways, Samuel Huntington, Nathaniel Doan and Samuel Hamilton ; overseers of the poor, W. W. Williams and Samuel Huntington ; fenoe-viewers, Lorenzo Carter and Nathan Chapman ; constables, Ezekiel Hawley and Richard Craw. While Mr. Huntington's neighbors were thus electing him to the honorable, but not very important, offices of supervisor of highways and overseer of the poor, Gov. St. Clair had in January appointed him one of the justices "of the quorum" for Trumbull county, and when the court of quarter sessions met, THE PERIOD FROM 1801 TO 1806 - 49 although he was the junior member, his attainments were such that all his colleagues gladly consented that he should act as chairman. This year an act was passed by Congress, providing for a convention to form a State constitution for Ohio. In November an election was held for members of the convention, and Mr. Huntington was chosen a delegate for Trumbull county. In the division of parties Mr. Huntington ranked himself among the Republicans, or followers of Jefferson, in opposition to the Federalists, who believed in the principles of Washington and Hamilton. The former party ere long took the name of " Democrat," which it has retained to the present time, while its own old name of " Republican " was adopted some twenty-five years ago by the new party formed to resist the aggressions of slavery. Mr. Huntington, however, was a moderate member of the Republican party, and the old Federalists, finding they had no chance of party success in Ohio, willingly contributed to the advancement of the ambitious Clevelander, who thus mounted rapidly to high honors. In July, 1802, Mr. Badger again visited this part of the Reserve. In his account of his former journey he makes no mention of preaching within the limits of Cuyahoga county, but this year he preached to the five families whom he found at Newburg, which name had already been given to the settlement around the mills on Mill creek. Even there, the reverend gentleman could find no apparent piety. In Cleveland he states there were but two families, though we cannot make out less than three. In Euclid, altogether, there were four or five families. About this period the six townships, reserved as before stated for the general benefit of the Land Company, were put upon the market. The company was grievously disappointed at the results, for only very little land was sold and very low prices were obtained. "City lots" also fell from fifty dollars each in cash to twenty-five dollars on credit. Emigration, at least into this part of the Reserve, was very slow—slower than into almost any other newly opened portion of the United States since the Revolution. The reason is evident. When the Connecticut Land Company made its great purchase, it was expected that large numbers of emigrants would go to New Connecticut by way of Lake Erie. But ere long the great tract of several millions of acres in western New York, known as the Holland Purchase, was bought from the Indians and opened to settlement at low rates. Consequently no one would go through that tract and two hundred miles beyond, unless he could obtain land at ruinously low prices. Add to that that in the early days this section had a peculiarly unfortunate reputation regarding fever and ague, and it is easy to see why settlement was extremely slow. Many of the Land Company were heavy losers by the speculation, and even the most fortunate gained but little immediate benefit. Those, however, who were able to make their payments to the State of Connecticut, and their numerous assessments to the company for necessary improvements, and to keep their property twenty or thirty years, either secured good investments for their old age or left handsome estates to their children. In December, 1802, it being found impracticable to sell the six townships, they were divided by draft among the shareholders; thus disposing of all the Company's lands east of the Cuyahoga, except a few city lots. After the adoption of the State constitution for Ohio, and the admission of the new State into the Union, Mr. Huntington, in the forepart of 1803, was elected a State senator for the county of Trumbull, and on the meeting of the first legislature he was made president of the senate. Even this rapid advancement was not all; on the second day of April, 1803, he was appointed a judge of the supreme court. His commission was the first one emanating from the governor of the State of Ohio. Civilization steadily progressed; about this same time the first indictment against any one in the present Cuyahoga county was found by the grand jury of Trumbull county against our active friend, the landlord, constable and Indian-trader, Lorenzo Carter, for assault and battery on James Hamilton, of Newburg. The same year the legislature divided the State into four military districts; Trumbull county falling into the fourth district, (under Major-General Elijah Wadsworth, of Canfield,) which also embraced Columbiana and Jefferson counties and included all that part of the State north of the south line of the latter county. It was also in this year, as near as can be ascertained, (some say 1802,) that the first murder of which there is any record took place in the county; though, as both the parties were Indians, it is not improbable that some similar transaction occurred here long before any white man took the trouble to write about it. The crime sprang partly from superstition and partly from alcohol; the latter cause could not operate before the advent of the whites, but the former had an open field before as well as after that epoch.. Although, as before stated, there were but two or three families at Cleveland, yet there were several persons, without families, in active business there. David Bryant was running his distillery, Elisha Norton and David Clark were trading with the Indians, and a Scotchman named Alexander Campbell also built a small trading-house for the same purpose. This little cluster of cabins around the distillery, under the hill, formed a constant attraction for both Indians and squaws, especially at the time of their annual return from their hunting expeditions up the river. The squaws bought the gaudiest calicos they could find and scarfs of the brightest hues, and were not averse while trading to exchanging amorous glances with the traders, who were great men because they had so much calico. The warriors, more simple in their desires, bought whisky.