100 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY and remained there for two or three years when he again located near Pittsburgh and became an independent trader with the Indians and served also as a guide up the Beaver and Mahoning rivers. Remaining at this work until 1797, Hillman acquired not only a thorough knowledge of the country, but became likewise familiar with the characteristics and the language of the Indians, which, together with the confidence that the Indians reposed in him and their knowledge of his fearlessness, proved most valuable to the white people in later years. In the new settlement Hillman became immediately a leader. When Trumbull County was organized in 1800 he was made constable of Youngstown Township and later served as tax collection, justice of the peace, tavern keeper in the village, sheriff of Trumbull County and member of the legislature from that county in the session at. 1814-15. During the War of 1812 he served as a volunteer under Col. William Rayen. Not only in actual term of residence but in leadership, Col. James Hillman was the first citizen of Youngstown in its youthful days. Alfred Wolcott, Young's surveyor, was instrumental in founding the pioneer settlement but did not remain to witness its growth. On February it, 1800, he was married to Mercy Gilson, daughter of a pioneer family of Canfield, but a short while later returned to the East. Phineas Hill, one of the original purchasers from John Young, likewise was but a temporary resident. Like Wolcott, Hill married while residing at Youngstown but a few years later removed elsewhere. Daniel Sheehy was born in Tipperary County, Ireland, in 1759. He was given a classical education, having been destined for the law or the priesthood, but early in life left his native land to carve out a fortune in the New World. His decision was hastened by the fact that he was an outspoken, enemy of the British government, and, impulsive in temperament, plunged wholeheartedly into the movement for Irish freedom. With two of his near relatives executed for opposing British domination and his own life certain to be forfeited if he remained in Ireland, Sheehy came to America and enlisted in the Revolutionary Army. Serving until the end of the. Revolution, Sheehy located in Connecticut or New York State and met John Young at Albany, New York, in 1796. Sheehy had $2,0oo in gold which he wished to invest in land and he accepted John Young's proposal to emigrate to the Western Reserve. He contracted with Young for 1,000 acres of land, a contract that later caused difficulty between Sheehy and Young. Not having a title himself until 1800, Young could not give title at that time to sub-purchasers and Sheehy alleged that in 1799 Young made a second sale of part of Sheehy's land at an advance of 50 cents an acre. To prove his rights Sheehy was forced to make two trips to Connecticut, both of these being made afoot through the wilderness in the dead of winter. An adjustment was finally reached by which Sheehy retained title to 400 acres of land but relinquished his claim to another boo acres. For threatening Young's life during this controversy Sheehy was arrested and fined $25, but that their differences were later settled amicably is apparent from the fact that Sheehy's second son was named after the founder of the city. According to one account this was a YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY - 101 feminine wile adopted by Sheehy's wife, and really brought about the adjustment of the dispute instead of, following it. This pioneer woman was born at Ligonier, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, in 1775, a daughter of Robert McLain, an early settler of Central Pennsylvania. Having accompanied Hillman, Young and the others to Beavertown to celebrate the Fourth of July, 1797, Sheehy there met Jane McLain and later he journeyed to Beavertown on horseback for the wedding ceremony. Sheehy died at Youngstown on January 20, 1834, and his widow in 1856, leaving numerous descendants here. Isaac Powers was the youthful member of the Young party. He western-bound emigrants at Beavertown. Powers apparently had was but twenty years of age in the spring of 1797 when he joined the visited what is now known as the Mahoning Valley prior to this and his father, Abram Powers, had been here several times, usually on hunting trips, although on, one occasion, in 1778, he had headed a party of white men from the Ligonier Valley of Western Pennsylvania who had come here in pursuit of a band of murderous Indians. Knowing the county so well Abram Powers agreed to purchase some of Judge Young's lands, and Isaac Powers was sent along with the Young party to make the selection. He also acted as assistant to the surveyors. On his arrival here the younger Powers selected boo acres of land for his father, zoo acres of this lying in the south part of the township, across the river from Sheehy's land, while the remaining 400 acres lay west of the Mahoning River in the northern part of the township. Subsequently the younger man purchased land from Young on his own account. Abram Powers came here soon after the land purchases had been made for him. Isaac Powers was married to Leah Frazier of Poland in 1801 and died in Youngstown in 1861, at eighty-three years, the last survivor of the founders of Youngstown. Powers was a substantial citizen and left a numerous posterity. It is to one of his sons, William Powers, and to John M. Edwards, that a great measure of the credit must go for collecting and preserving in later years much of the data relating to the founding of Youngstown and its early history, without which the story of the city might be forever lost. Their work, and the work of those who labored with them, was undertaken at a time when there were still survivors of the days of the pioneers living in Youngstown, men and women who have long since passed away and whose voices are now silent. Little work was done in Young's settlement in 1797. The first house, mention of which has been made, was occupied by James Hillman and wife, while cabins were built for the remainder of the party. One Sun day morning in August, 1797, Isaac Powers and Phineas Hill left their cabin on an exploring trip, and after proceeding from the tiny settlement for some distance up the Mahoning River came to a large creek that they decided to follow. A trip of two miles or more brought them to the falls of Mill Creek, they being the first of the settlers to gaze upon this cataract. As sawmills and gristmills were the most important industries in any community at that day, and as a fall of water was 102 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY essential to their operation, the explorers immediately realized the value of this great supply of water. Powers had already selected the land on which he proposed to locate, so Hill immediately chose this site, and on his return opened negotiations with Young for the purchase of the ground on which the falls was located. His anxiety awakened a curiosity in Young and the latter refused to sell until he had determined for himself just what made this ground so' especially attractive. Hill then told of the existence of the falls, and YoUng consented to the sale, with the provision that Hill was "to erect a sawmill and something that would grind corn, within eighteen months." Under contract with Hill, Abram Powers and his son Isaac, assisted by John Noggle, then erected a combination sawmill and gristmill at the falls. While this contract was taken in 1797 it was probably the next year, or perhaps even as late as the year 1799, that the work was completed, as the men were compelled to quarry the stone and fell the trees to get material for the structure. "Raising" a mill was somewhat of a ceremony in those days, and as there were not enough workmen in the settlement to carry on the work. Abram Powers sent to. Darlington, Pennsylvania, for men to complete the crew. This mill was probably what was contracted for, "something that would grind corn," and was not an adequate grist mill, since Youngstown lacked this facility for some years after its founding. This structure later gave way to a more pretentious mill built on the same site. The mill finally erected is still standing at the falls but has long since fallen into disuse for the purpose for which, it was originally intended. The building eventually put up passed some years later into the ownership of German Lanterman and the mill and the picturesque falls were given his name. The latter still retains the title of Lanterman's Falls. In 1798 the partitioning of the Connecticut Land Company's holdings in the .Western Reserve made possible the settlement of all the Reserve east of the Cuyahoga River, yet the tiny settlement increased but little in size during that. year. New cabins, of course, were built. James Hillman and wife, who had occupied the first structure of this kind, purchased a farm on the west bank of the Mahoning River and removed to their new holdings. And the settlement had acquired a definite name. When purchased by John Young it was merely township two, range-two, of the Connecticut Reserve, but automatically it became Young's township, or Young's town, the designation being naturally blended into Youngstown. This appellation, it should be understood, did not apply merely to the collection of primitive homes that marked the early site of Youngstown. In the early days "town" was merely a contraction of township, on the Western Reserve, and Young's town there-.fore applied to the entire township. It was many years later, in fact, when Youngstown became, an actually incorporated municipality aside from the township of, the same name. In the first three years of its existence the township occupied the peculiar status of a settled subdivision without a legal government of any kind. To the Federal Government, however, the settlement was in the Northwest Territory, and in 1797 Governor Arthur St. Clair of YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY - 103 the territory included all the Reserve east of the Cuyahoga River in the newly created Jefferson County, with the county seat at Steubenville. To the settlers Youngstown was part of New Connecticut, and under the jurisdiction of old Connecticut. When Jefferson County attempted to assess taxes against them in 1798 the tax collector sent here was beset with ridicule. The one experience in attempting to govern from Steubenville was sufficient. The settlers paid no taxes and had no law except their own home-made law—which, it might be observed, was sufficient in a community of men who had come to make homes for themselves. Settlements were made in four nearby townships in this year 1798, pioneers building their cabins in Canfield, Liberty, Vernon and Brookfield. John Young built a cabin at what is now the site of the city of Warren in 1798 but does not appear to have had any intention of settling there, the building being probably a storage place for grain he had raised on a few acres of cleared ground up the river from Youngstown. Ephraim Quinby and Richard Storer came on from Washington County, Pennsylvania, in 1798, and made the first purchases of land in Warren Township, but it was the following year before they began the actual settlement. Meanwhile Youngstown acquired new residents until the records give it a population of ten families in 1798. Nathaniel Dabney, a native of Boston, located here in 1797 on land he had purchased prior to coming to the Western Reserve. The same year he was married to Miss. Mary Keifer of Pennsylvania. Titus Hayes, Uriah Holmes and Henry Brown are recorded as having come to Youngstown in 1797 or 1798, and in the latter year we find among the settlers, Martin Tidd, the parents of Philip Kimmel, and also Robert and Hannah Stevens, John Swager, William Potter, John Swazy and Frederick Ague. In this year, too, John Young achieved his ambition of laying out an embryo village in the heart of his township. In this work he was fortunate in having the assistance of Turhand Kirtland, agent for the Connecticut Land Company, who had contracted to open a road through the wilds from Grand River to Youngstown. On August 3, 1798, Kirtland reached Youngstown and, with John Young, laid out the new town. The town plat describes Federal Street as 100 feet in width and 1,752 feet in length, beginning at a corner post in front of Caleb Baldwin's house a little west of his well, and running east through the middle of the plat and through the public square. Two streets paralleling Federal are provided for, known as North Street and South Street, now Wood Street and Front Street. North and South streets are described, the entire tract providing for too lots of which two were set aside as burying ground. These two lots later became the sites of the old courthouse and the Elks' Club, both being at Wick Avenue and Wood Street and now destined to be lost to the map makers entirely with the completion of the grade crossings elimination work. Adjoining the town, lots of a few acres each were laid out while the remainder of the township was set aside for farms. Today Youngstown includes within its corporate limits the entire, township of Youngstown and overlaps into 104 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY Boardman and Coitsville townships. The town plat was not recorded until August 19, 1802, and, as we have explained before, was not an incorporated municipality. The marks by which the original village were described are long since lost to sight but even to the present generation the limits of John Young's town are easy to visualize. It began a few hundred yards west of Hazel Street and ended just east of Walnut Street, the two points ORIGINAL TOWN PLAT OF YOUNGSTOWN AS LAID OUT BY JOHN YOUNG IN 1798 This drawing was made from the original map about 188o and gives the names by which the streets were then known. North Market Street is now Wick Avenue, and Wick Street is now Commerce Street. where Federal Street narrowed being the eastern and western extremities of the town. It is rather singular that while this history is being written (in the summer of 1919) workmen are engaged in widening West Federal Street and removing the last visible sign of the limits of Young's original town in that direction. That John Young had the vision to provide for a public thoroughfare 100 feet in width through the heart of his village is an act of wisdom for which Youngstown will YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY - 105 be indebted to him forever. It is highly regrettable that his successors did not have the same foresight as the village expanded. In providing for a public square the old pioneer likewise showed judgment that proved to be a blessing. Turhand Kirtland, the early day surveyor who acted for Young in running out the new town, likewise had land interests here. While engaged in this survey he disposed of two lots and a mill site near the mouth of Yellow Creek, to John Struthers, this land being located in Poland Township in what is now the city of Struthers. Judge Kirtland was a prominent figure of pioneer days, being state senator f rom Trumbull County in the session of 1814-15 and for many years justice of the peace, obtaining his title as an associate justice of the court of quarter sessions, In the two .years following the location of the village more hardy pioneers came to make Youngstown their home. In the spring of 1799 James McCay (or McCoy), a native of Maryland, emigrated to Youngstown with John S. Edwards. McCay resided here for three or four years and achieved considerable prominence, but later removed to New Orleans. In 1829, however, he returned to Youngstown where he became a substantial citizen. John S. Edwards located in Warren and later was destined to exercise a great influence on the Western Reserve. Camden Cleaveland located in Youngstown between 1798 and 1800. No more typical example of hardy pioneer can be found than Capt. James Gibson who also made Youngstown his home in 1799. Born in Ireland in 1740, Captain Gibson came to America while still a boy and eventually located in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. Indian tighter and captain of company in the Revolutionary war, Gibson saw all the hardships of life on the frontier, but with courage undiminished we find him at fifty-nine years of age, and with a wife and large family, selling out his farm in Cumberland County and coming over the mountains to New Connecticut. The trip was made in wagons, and in passing through Youngstown Gibson's attention was attracted to a profusely flowing spring in the eastern part of the township. The objective of the family was Warren, but after reaching that locality Captain Gibson responded to the lure of the clear spring. Returning to Youngstown he purchased 30o acres of land surrounding this natural water supply and erected thereon a pioneer cabin. The city has now built itself up about the Gibson farm but the original homesite is still in the possession of the family, and Gibson's Spring down along Poland Avenue is one of the familiar spots of the city. As the father of four boys and six girls, Captain Gibson became the progenitor of a family that is numerous and prominent in Youngstown today. In 1799 or 1800 came David Randall and Caleb Baldwin, the latter a native of New Jersey and later resident of Washington County, Pennsylvania, Revolutionary war soldier, farmer, tavern keeper, a justice of the first court established for Trumbull County and man of prominence and influence. Married to Elizabeth Pitney in New Jersey, Caleb Baldwin and wife were the parents of twelve children and left many descendants in Mahoning County. 106 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY Early in 1800, George Tod, native of Connecticut, Yale graduate, and practicing lawyer in his home state, visited Youngstown with a view to locating here. The location meeting his expectations he brought his family to Youngstown the following year. As the first lawyer to settle here he was destined to become a most influential figure in the upbuilding of Youngstown and the Western Reserve. He served successively as prosecuting attorney of Trumbull County, secretary of the Northwest Territory, township clerk of Youngstown, stale senator from Trumbull County, judge of the common pleas and supreme courts and president judge of the latter court. In the later years of his life Judge Tod turned to the care of his farm at Brier Hill. He stood out prominently in the pioneer days, not only as a public official but as a citizen, and his mantle was worthily assumed after his death by his son, the late Governor David Tod. When George Tod was admitted to the practice of law in Ohio, at a special court held at Warren on September 17, i800, fellow counsellors admitted with him were Calvin Pease of Youngstown and John S. Edwards, Benjamin Tappan and David Abbott of Warren. Elisha Whittlesey, Homer Hine and Samuel Huntington also rank with Judge Tod among the pioneer lawyers of Youngstown. Previous to 1800 Youngstown, and indeed the entire Western Reserve, offered but a limited field for members of the bar. Legally this territory was a No-Man's-Land, without courts or means of prosecuting either criminal or civil suits. The residents did not know whether they were under the jurisdiction of Connecticut or of the Northwest Territory, but happily, about the time of the arrival of George Tod, this vexatious situation came to an end. The agreement reached between Connecticut and the Federal Government in the spring of 1800 made the Western Reserve definitely a part of the Northwest Territory under the jurisdiction of Governor St. Clair. His proclamation of July 10, 1800, created the county of Trumbull out of the Western Reserve, the county seat being Warren, and John Young, Camden Cleveland and Caleb Baldwin of Youngstown were numbered among the judges of the first court of quarter sessions and common pleas named by the governor. The opening of this first court at Warren on August 25, 1800, was a gala occasion for the entire eastern part of the Reserve and from all the townships the hardy pioneers came on horseback for the memorable event. The court appointed George Tod prosecuting attorney of Trumbull County, named James Hillman constable of Youngstown Township and granted a license to Jonathan Fowler to keep "a publick house of entertainment," at Youngstown, this institution being of course a tavern, or pioneer hotel, and actually located at Poland. The "township" over which James Hillman was named first custodian of the law did not include merely the surveyor's township known as Youngstown. It was an artificially created civil township embracing Poland, Boardman, Canfield, Ellsworth, Coitsville, Youngstown, Austintown and Jackson townships in what is now Mahoning County and Liberty and Hubbard townships in Trumbull County, ten townships in all, embracing a territory of approximately 25o square miles. It is needless to say that Colonel Hill- YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY - 107 man not only patrolled this district capably but that he had no hesitation at taking in additional territory when the occasion demanded. The veteran woodsman who spent much of his life in pathless forests inhabited by wild animals and Indians was not concerned about distances. At a succeeding term of the court, in May, 18(31, the county was divided into districts for the purposes of collecting territorial taxes on land and was also divided into two election districts. The lower districts included the civil townships of Youngstown, Warren, Hudson and Vernon, elections being held at the home of Ephraim Quinby at Warren. But if there had been no need of courts and constables heretofore, an incident occurred during the summer of i800 that showed the necessity for some lawful protection for the settlement. This incident is also notable because it was the one occasion when the white settlers, not only of Youngstown but of the other settlements in the Mahoning Valley, faced that horror of frontier life—trouble with the Indians. For three years the settlers had been unmolested, and, on their part, if they had little respect or liking for the red men, they at least did not molest the aborigines. On Sunday, July 20, 1800, however, an armed clash came between white man and native that resulted in the killing of Captain George and Spotted John, two of the Indians, by Joseph McMahon and Richard Storer, white men. The white men charged that the direct cause of the outbreak that brought these two deaths was that the Indians had threatened the lives of McMahon's wife and children during his absence. The Indians charged that the ill-feeling went back still further and was traceable to that fruitful source of trouble on many another occasion—whisky. According to this version the Indians had gathered in mid-July at an old Indian camping ground near the Salt Spring, in what is now Weathersfield township, and an outcome of their reunion was a drunken frolic in which they were joined by white men. McMahon, who lived on ground near the Salt Spring that was owned by Richard Storer, was one of this party. When the Indians' supply of whisky, which they had shared with the white men, was exhausted, the whites sent to Warren and obtained a new supply, but refused to reciprocate by inviting the Indians to join with them in consuming it. The result was a natural feeling of resentment. Whether the white men were guilty of this or not, it is certain that McMahon's family became an object of persecution on the part of the Indians. That they were selected as especial target for the red men's spite appears to have been due also to their isolated position, some distance removed from neighboring settlers, since the McMahon family was living at that time in an old cabin that had been abandoned by the early salt makers. Terrified by the threats against her life and the lives of her children, Mrs. McMahon gathered her children together and hastened to Storer's house, her husband being employed at that time by Storer. McMahon and Storer returned to the spring with them and remonstrated with the Indians, who promised to molest the family no further. This was on Thursday, July 17. Friday when McMahon returned to Storer's to work the Indians reappeared at the McMahon 108 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY cabin and renewed their threats, even going to the extent of strikin one of the children on the head with a tomahawk. On Saturday the terrified mother again started to Storer's with her children, but on her way met her husband. Accompanying his family to the Storer home, McMahon told his story, and in anger he and Store at first decided to inflict private vengeance on the red men. On debating the matter, however, they resolved to seek the counsel of Captain Ephraim Quinby of Warren, a man of judicial mind and calm reasoning powers. Quinby proposed a council with the Indians in the hope that he would be able to exact a promise from them that McMahon's family would be left unmolested. While it was his intention to deal peaceably with the natives, he mustered all the available men in Warren as a precaution, and with his armed force started on Sunday, July 20, for the Indian encampment. Reaching a ravine a short distance from the camp Quinby counseled the remainder of the party to halt until he had counseled alone with the Indians. Encountering the Indians Captain Quinby asked the cause of the trouble between McMahon and the red men. Captain George, who spoke English, dismissed the difficulty lightly. "Oh, Joe damn fool," the Indian assured Quinby. "The Indians don't want to hurt him or his family. They drank up all the Indians' whisky and then wouldn't let the Indians have any of theirs. They were a little mad but don't care any more about it. They (McMahon and•his family) can come back and live as long as they like. The Indians won't hurt them." Feeling satisfied that the trouble had been adjusted Captain Quinby started back to join his party. In the meantime, however, Quinby's followers had left the ravine and reached the high ground on which the Indians were located. On meeting Quinby all the other members of the party halted to hear the outcome of the conference, but McMahon passed on toward the Indian camp and failed to stop when Quinby called to him to do so. While Quinby was relating his conversation with Captain George he and the remaining members of the party ascended the hill until they were in plain view of 'the Indians. McMahon and two boys of the party, Thomas Fenton and Peter Carlton, who had meanwhile hurried on, were already at the Indian camp. McMahon saluted Captain George with "Are you for peace? Yesterday you had your men, now I have mine." Captain George, who was lolling at the foot of a tree, sprang to his feet, seized a tomahawk which was sticking in the tree and was swinging it when McMahon whipped his rifle to his shoulder and fired. Captain George fell dead. Turning to the white men McMahon commanded that they shoot. The Indians had by this time seized their guns and taken refuge behind trees. Several shots were fired from each side but the morning was damp and the guns missed fire. Spotted John had shielded himself behind a tree, with his squaw and papooses, and aimed at Storer. Storer fired, killing the Indian, the same ball grazing the squaw's neck YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY - 109 and injuring two of her children, a boy and a girl, all four of the Indians being in the direct path of the missile.* The news of the clash between the Indians and the whites caused a panic in the settlements along the Mahoning. The settlers had little fear of the Indians encamped hereabouts but the knowledge that the red men had departed hastily in the direction of the Indian villages at Sandusky created uneasiness as the natives on the western part of the Reserve were more warlike in character. McMahon was placed under arrest and hurried to Fort McIntosh, at Beavertown, where the nearest jail was located, while Storer evaded a like fate by escaping to the woods. The following day Mrs. Storer and her children started for their former home in Washington County, Pennsylvania. It was at this juncture that the coolness, courage, woodmanship and knowledge of the Indians possessed by Colonel James Hillman saved the settlers from a possible visitation of red man's vengeance. Hillman had not yet been named constable of Youngstown township and had no authority other than the natural bravery of a hardy frontiersman who was respected by the Indians. Hurrying to Warren on Monday, Colonel Hillman learned that the Indians had taken the trail to Sandusky, and on the same evening he started alone through the wilderness to overtake the red men and offer them friendship. Hillman appears to have had little sympathy with McMahon and Storer, believing the killings to have been unnecessary and unjustifiable. Hillman overtook the Indians on Wednesday morning and found them at first suspicious and hostile but finally succeeded in making * The version of the McMahon story which credits the Indians with a promise to molest the McMahon family no further is the generally accepted one. It is given full credit by Leonard Case in his manuscripts. According to another version, however, Quinby had left John Lane in command of his men in the ravine and had instructed Lane that if he (Quinby) did not return in a half hour Lane would be justified in believing that the Indians had killed him and should march on and battle with the Indians. Quinby not returning at the appointed time, Lane and his men, all of them armed, emerged from the ravine and found Quinby and Captain George in conversation. Quinby informed his party that the Indians had threatened to kill McMahon and Storer, having a grievance against the latter because he had punished the red men for stealing his whisky. The white men reached the camp with McMahon and Storer in the lead. Captain George grasped his tomahawk, and flourishing it in the air walked up to McMahon, saying, "If you kill me, I will lie here—if I kill you, you will lie there," and then ordered his men to prime their guns. The different versions of the killing of Captain George and Spotted John agree thereafter. Dealing with occurrences after the killings, one account relates that, "The whole Warren party then hurried away at a quick pace, while the Indians were terror-stricken but remained to bury their dead," while another version assures us that, "After the killing, the Indians fled with horrid yells; the whites hotly pursued them for some distance, firing as fast as possible, yet without effect. * * * The party then gave up the pursuit and returned and buried the dead Indians." That the white men showed this latter consideration seems improbable. Judge Kirtland, a most reliable and fair-minded man, records in his diary that on July 23, 1800, he was in Youngstown on a business trip, adding that, "I found that Joseph McMahon and the people of Warren had killed two Indians at Salt Spring, on Sunday, 20th, in a hasty and inconsiderate manner ; that they had- sent after a number (of Indians) that had gone off, in order to hold a conference and settle the unhappy and unprovoked breach they had made on the Indians." Judge Kirtland's impatient comment indicates that he believed the white men were at least seeking trouble, even if they did not actually start it. 110 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY known his mission. Yielding to Hillman's diplomacy the Indians conferred with him, but were deaf to persuasion when he asked them to return and make an immediate peace with the white men. Even promises that McMahon and Storer would be tried, and offers of money, were futile. The Indians would not be dissuaded from their purpose of going to Sandusky and holding a council with their chiefs there. "You will hold a council there, light the war torch, rally all the warriors throughout the forest, and with savage barbarity come and attempt a massacre of all your friends, the whites, throughout the Northwest Territory," Hillman is credited with bluntly telling the Indians. They disclaimed any possibility of such treachery, declaring they would lay the case before the council, "and within fourteen days four or five of their number would return with instructions on what terms peace could be restored." Hillman returned to the settlements with this message. His failure to persuade the Indians to return with him is said to have been accepted by the settlers as a sign that a general massacre was possible, and some versions of the McMahon affair credit the whites with having repaired to Ephraim Quinby's cabin at Warren where they garrisoned themselves to repel the red men's attack. That all the settlers thus fortified themselves at Warren while awaiting the Indian messengers is improbable, although it is likely that at Youngstown and Warren the whites suffered dread and anxiety and worked with their rifles near at hand. Within a week the Indian delegation had returned with the message from their chiefs at Sandusky, and in keeping with their agreement met the white men in conference at Youngstown on July 30, i800. Ten, red men represented the natives while almost all the whites in the Mahoning Valley assembled to learn the result of the council. Colonel Hillman, John Young, Ephraim Quinby, Judge Calvin Pease and Samuel Huntington, the latter afterward governor of Ohio, were spokesmen for the white men, with Hillman as the chief representative of the settlers. The Indians asked that McMahon be turned over to them to be taken to Sandusky and tried by Indian tribal law. If found guilty he was to be punished according to the red man's code. Apparently there was less resentment toward Storer, as his victim, Spotted John, was an outcast Indian and not a favorite among his own people while Captain George was highly regarded. The Indians were told that this settlement was impossible as McMahon had been arrested by the white men and was now at Fort McIntosh, out of reach of the settlers of Youngstown and Warren. The red men were assured, however, that McMahon would be given a fair trial by white man's law and that he would be punished if guilty. The Indians finally accepted this decision. While tradition generally makes it appear that the council held at Youngstown on that July day more than a century ago was long and protracted and marked by impassioned speeches on both sides, Judge Kirtland, who was present, dismisses it briefly. In his diary he says: "Wednesday, July 30, 1800, I went to Youngstown (from his home at Poland) to attend the conference with ;the Indians on account of the YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY - 111 murder of two of their men at Salt Spring, on Sunday, 20th, by Joseph McMahon and Storer. We assembled, about three hundred whites and ten Indians, had a very friendly talk, and agreed to make peace and live as friends." Meanwhile Trumbull County of the Northwest Territory had been organized by proclamation of Governor St. Clair on July io, 1800, with the county seat at Warren, and the way was open to redeem the promise made to the Indians that the slayers would be given a legal trial. Late in July or early in August the governor appointed a court of quarter session and common pleas for the county at the first session of this court, held at Warren, on August 25, 180o, George Tod was appointed prosecuting attorney for the county, bills of indictment for murder were brought against McMahon and Storer, and Benjamin Davidson, John Bentley, John Lane, James Hillman, Ephraim Quinby and William Hall were required to file a $500 bond each as material witnesses in the case. By proclamation of Governor St. Clair a special session of court was held at Warren to try McMahon. The prisoner was brought from Fort McIntosh under guard of twenty-five troops from Pittsburgh and placed on trial on Thursday, September 18, 1800, with George Tod as prosecutor and Benjamin Tappan, John S. Edwards and Steel Sample, the latter of Pittsburgh, as counsel for the prisoner. The trial attracted not alone all the settlers from up and down the river but from most remote points. Great uneasiness prevailed and nerves were strained to the utmost for there was still fear of an outbreak on the part of the Indians, or even an outburst from McMahon's friends. Friday was devoted to taking testimony arid Saturday, September 20, the jury brought in a verdict of not guilty. According to published versions of the trial testimony was introduced in McMahon's defense that he had retreated a step or two before firing on Captain George and that Captain George had met with the challenge that "If you kill me, I will lie here—if I kill you, you shall lie there." According to the testimony of a white girl who had been a prisoner among the Indians and understood their language and customs, this meant that if Captain George were killed the Indians would consider that he had been slain in a fair fight and feel no hostility toward McMahon, while on the other hand the whites should ask no restitution if McMahon were slain. For some strange reason, it is generally accepted that the McMahon trial took place at Youngstown. This error is probably due to the fact that the McMahon trial has been confused with a trial held at Youngstown in 1804, when an Indian was arraigned for killing a white man at these same Salt Springs. The McMahon trial was held at Warren. Pioneers, in fact, were wont to relate incidents relating to the removal of McMahon from Fort McIntosh to Warren by way of Youngstown. According to these stories McMahon was not only accompanied by a guard of soldiers but, further to impress the Indians, his hands were bound with hickory thongs. "Do they hurt, Joe? If they do we'll take them off," was one assur- 112 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY ance given McMahon while the prisoner was passing through here en route to the trial. McMahon signified that they were no incumbrance, and it is likely that they were not. While it has often been intimated that McMahon's trial was not fair to the Indians there seems little evidence to sustain this view. McMahon was undoubtedly guilty of over-aggression in interfering with what promised to be a peaceful solution of the difficulty between the whites and the Indians, but it is equally true that he actually fired in self-defense. Storer, apparently was still absent at the time of the trial, although he subsequently returned to Warren. Little is known of McMahon's life after his acquittal. -According to popular tradition he served in the War of 1812, was wounded in the Battle of the Peninsula in September of that year, and while returning home through the wilderness after being given a disability discharge was slain by the Indians. Although this story is generally accepted it is subject to serious doubt. A man of somewhat similar name served in a Trumbull County company in this war, but the company roster gives the name as "John McMahon" and Brigadier General Simon Perkins lists a "John McMahon" among the wounded in the peninsula fight. And finally a "John McMahon" or "John McMahan" of Jackson Township served as a Trumbull County soldier in the War of 1812 and, according to his descendants, was wounded and slain in the manner recorded above. While the outcome of the McMahon trial was a complete victory for the white men, the result was accepted without protest by the Indians. They had given their word that they would abide by the verdict and the promise was kept. The red men returned to Youngstown and never constituted a menace thereafter, although there were occasional individual quarrels between white men and aborigines. Meanwhile the settlement grew slowly but steadily and life settled down to the established and ordained routine of work and frontier pleasures, of births, marriages and deaths, of welcoming new immigrants and of churchgoing. While there have been various claims as to the identity of the first white child born in Youngstown, the first that can be found recorded in written annals was a daughter, Betsey Dabney, born to Nathaniel Dabney and wife in, 1798.. She was married to Ransly Curtis of Farmington in 1818. Betsey, Dabney was not the first white child born on the Western Reserve, however. The story of the birth and tragic death of the first white native of the Reserve is told in the preceding chapter of this volume. Other records of early births in Youngstown show that a daughter, Catherine Sheehy, was born to Daniel Sheehy and Jane McLain Sheehy on February 17, 1799, this child later becoming the wife of Neal Campbell. William C. Young, son of John Young and wife, was born here on November 25, 1799. Prior to 1800 a son, Isaac Swager, was born to John SWager and wife, and daughters were born to Phineas Hill and wife and Robert and Hannah Stevens. For two year the settlers here had existed without religious services, YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY - 113 but on September 1, 1799, the first clergyman appeared in the person of Rev. William Wick, who held services and preached a sermon in Youngstown on that day. This was probably the first sermon ever delivered to an audience of white residents on the Western Reserve, as well as being the first in Youngstown. Reverend Wick was but a visitor here on that occasion, having been ordained but a few days before. From 1799 to 18o1 he was pastor of the churches at Hopewell and Neshannock, in Washington County, Pennsylvania, but in 18o1 he returned to Youngstown to become pastor of the Presbyterian congregation that had been organized here the year before. In 18or, or 1802, MAP SHOWING DEVELOPMENT OF OHIO COUNTIES-1799 the Presbyterian Society erected the first meeting house for religious services in Youngstown, this building being a log structure that stood at Wick Avenue and Wood Street, on the southeast corner of the present Rayen School lot, and directly across the street from the present First Presbyterian Church, whose progenitor it was. The First Presbyterian congregation was therefore the pioneer church organization of Youngstown. The first burial here took place in 1799, when Samuel McFarland, a native of Worcester, Massachusetts, and a teacher of vocal music, was interred in the old burying ground on the west side of Wick Avenue. His death took place on September 20, 1799, at twenty-eight years of age. The entire population of the township turned out to attend the funeral ceremonies. Naturally there is lively interest concerning the first marriage in Youngstown. There is a tradition that the Rev. Seth Hart, sur- Vol. I-8 114 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY veyor for the Connecticut Land Company, performed a marriage ceremony at Cleveland in 1797, but if this wedding took place it is not recorded. In Youngstown marriages began almost with the life of the settlement, Daniel Sheehy, Phineas Hill and Alf red Wolcott having taken brides within two years of their arrival here. As there was neither clergyman nor magistrate at Youngstown, however, these marriages took place at Beaver Town, Pennsylvania. The first wedding ceremony in Youngstown, and the first on the Western Reserve of which there is any record, was performed on November 3, 1800, when Rebecca Rush and Stephen Baldwin were married by the Rev. William Wick. With the growth of family life came the need of educating the young. Coming from a part of the country where great stress was laid upon education, the settlers did not long neglect this important duty, but looked about for a means of giving them at least the rudiments of learning. The first school was not a pretentious affair but was ample for that day. This school building was a log structure of one room, erected on the southwest corner of the Public Square about the year 1802, or perhaps a year later. The first schoolmaster was Perlee Brush, afterwards a Trumbull County lawyer. At this school some of the men and women who were afterward prominent in Youngstown life received their early schooling. The first industrial plant in the village of Youngstown proper was launched about this time by Caleb Plumb, a miller and millwright from New York, who erected a sawmill and gristmill on the Mahoning River. The site selected by him has been used for flour mill purposes ever since, being the location on which the Baldwin mill just south of the Spring Common bridge now stands. Youngstown, too, had increased sufficiently in importance by 1801 that it craved better communications with the outside world, something it seriously lacked, since the day of the steam railroad had not yet arrived, there was not even stage communication with the East, and the nearest postoffice was at Pittsburgh. In that year Gen. Elijah Wadsworth of Canfield succeeded in having a mail route established for easterly towns of Trumbull County, the route beginning at Pittsburgh and passing through Beavertown, Georgetown, Canfield, and Youngstown to Warren, a distance of eighty-six miles. Eleazer Gilson contracted to carry the mail for two years, one delivery each two weeks, for $3.5o a mile, counting the distance one way. The route was actually traveled most of the time by his son, Samuel Gilson, the trip being made frequently on foot, we are assured. Calvin Pease was named postmaster at Youngstown, General Wadsworth at Canfield and Simon Perkins at Warren. Youngstown township had by this time attained a population of perhaps 200 to 300 and was attracting settlers with a fair degree of rapidity. In 1798 or 1800 Joseph Williamson bought land in the south part of the township and built a cabin thereon. He farmed in a small way, and here five generations of the Williamson family have been born. Warren P. Williamson is of the fourth generation, and his residence at Warren Avenue and Market Street is located on the old YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY -115 Williamson farm. In i800 Joshua Kyle came here from Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, and settled on lands he had bought along Mill Creek, and in i800, or perhaps previously, William Wilson and his wife, Temperance Wilson, came here from Maryland. In 18o1 Dr. Charles Dutton, perhaps the first physician and surgeon, emigrated from Connecticut to Youngstown, and Moses Crawford, of Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, a cabinet maker by trade and the first undertaker in the village, located here. In 1801, or at an earlier date, Josiah Robbins, John Rush and John Bissell purchased lands in Youngstown Township and became permanent residents here. Among the settlers who located here in 1802 there were two who were destined to have a profound influence on the community, one of these William Rayen, the other Henry Wick. Rayen, known to the pioneers as Judge Rayen and Colonel Rayen, since he held both titles, was a Maryland man and a merchant by profession. Here in Youngstown he was a man of amazingly numerous activities, serving during a useful business life of more than fifty years as a keeper of a public house, merchant, postmaster, township treasurer, township clerk, colonel in the War of 1812, justice of the peace, judge of the court of common pleas, member of the state board of public works, organizer and first president of the first bank in Mahoning County, farmer, canal builder and railroad builder. Dying childless, in 1854, he left no heirs to bear his name, but in his bequest for the founding of Rayen School he left a legacy that will forever preserve his memory in Youngstown. Henry Wick, who arrived here at the same time as Colonel Rayen, was not the first of his name to locate in Youngstown. His brother, Rev. William Wick, had located here a year earlier and his father-in-law, Caleb Baldwin, preceded him to Youngstown by three years. Henry Wick, too, was a merchant by profession and engaged in the mercantile trade immediately after arriving here from Washington County, Pennsylvania. Early in 1802 he purchased the square now bounded by Federal, Hazel, Wood and Phelps streets, and thirty-seven acres of land outside the village for a consideration of $235. the purchase being made from John Young. On the village land he erected a store room and residence and embarked in trade. These were not the only settlers in Youngstown Township, however, in the first five years of its existence. There is no complete record of the pioneers of that day, but the records of resident taxpayers filed by the tax collectors of 1801 and 1803 show the names of John Ague, Lineas Brainard, William Burr, Samuel Calhoun, Alexander Clarke, James Caldwell, Joseph Carr, Christopher Coleman, Aaron Clarke, Thomas Dice, James Davidson, John Dennick, Nathaniel G. Dabney, John Duncan, Thomas Farrell, Michael Fitzgerald, James Gibson, James Hillman, Henry Hull, Samuel Hayden, Joshua Kyle, John Kyle, Thomas Kirkpatrick, Andrew Kirkpatrick, Moses Latta, John Musgrove, James McCoy, John McCrary, John McDowell, John McWilliams, Daniel McCartney, Jesse Newport, Jeremiah Norris, Isaac Powers, Philip Kimmel, David Randall, Josiah Robbins, Caleb Baldwin, Benjamin Ross, John Rush, William Rayen, John Swager, Robert M. Scott, Matthew 116 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY Scott, Daniel Sheehy, Robert Stevens, John Swager, Henry Swager, Sefford Thompson, George Tod, Henry Wick, Joseph Williamson, James Wilson, Joseph Wilson, Alfred Wolcott, John Young, Henry Brown, Aaron Clarke, Samuel. H. Duncan, William Potter, Martin Tidd, John P. Bissell, Samuel Bryson, Michael Crammer, Samuel Davenport, Andrew Donaldson and Daniel Gray. The first contracts for the purchase of land from John Young were made in 1796, prior to his removal to the Western Reserve and direct purchases from Young's holdings continued until 1844, or almost twenty years after his death. Until he had received the deed to the township from the Connecticut Land Company in 180o, however, he could not give title to land buyers, but among those who received titles for land in Youngstown Township directly from Young between 1800 and 1810 we find the following: 1800—Benjamin Applegate, Henry Champion, Lemuel Storrs. 1801—John McDowell, et al., Abraham. Powers, Abner Lacock, James Gibson, Thomas Kirkpatrick, James Applegate, Isaac Powers, John Kinsman, Benjamin Dilworth. 1802—John McMahon, Aaron Clark, Robert M. Scott, et al., Andrew Willock, Jeremiah Sturgeon, James Matthews, William Cecil, Joseph Eddy, Matthew. Scott, Christopher Martin, George Tod, William Rayen, Hannah Stevens, Caleb Baldwin, Henry Wick, Nathaniel Dabney, Henry Brown, Robert Campbell, John McGonigal, Andrew Donaldson, William Potter, Samuel Huntington, James Alexander, Josiah Robbins, Isabella Menough, Samuel Menough, Henry Hull, Samuel Calhoun, Robert Stevens, William Thom, James White. 1803—William Rawland, John P. Bissell, Hugh Bryson, Ephraim Quinby, William Wilson, James Davison (or Davidson), John Farizena. 1804--Sarah Randall, Samuel Hayden, Benjamin Ross, Isaac Kimmel, Turhand Kirtland, John Rush, Samuel Bryson, Caleb Plumb. 1805—David Parkhurst, James Hillman, Robert Kyle, John Sherrodle. 1806--Abraham Kline, John Burkhart. 1807—Jane Sheehy, John Stewart, John Young Sheehy, George Hays, Elijah Wadsworth, Home Hine. 1808—John Gibson. 1809 - Richard Holland. 1810—William Stewart, Christopher Erwin, William Smith. Many of these purchasers, of course, 'had actually contracted for their lands at an earlier date than the year in which the transfer was made, some of these contracts being made as early as 1796, while there were more in 1797 and even a greater number in 1798 and 1799. Also many settlers here purchased from original settlers even prior to 181o, although they do not figure in the direct transactions with John Young. In the transfers are also found a number of titles re-transferred by Young to the Connecticut Land Company. By 1802, in fact, Youngstown had become such a sizeable settlement and the northern townships of what is now Mahoning County had become so well populated that the court of common pleas and quarter sessions, at its February meeting of that year, ordered that a YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY - 117 township government be formed. The Village of Youngstown was the place selected for this first township, or town, meeting. The civil township referred to here was not identical with the single township of which the Village of Youngstown was the center. As we have explained before, it included the townships of Austintown, Coitsville, Youngstown, Jackson, Poland, Boardman, Canfield, Ellsworth, Hubbard and Liberty. On April 5, 1802, residents of these townships, or their representatives, met at the public house conducted by Judge Rayen at Youngstown and organized in conformity with the order of the court. John Young presided as chairman of the meeting and George Tod acted as clerk. The record of the meeting, in the handwriting of Judge Tod, shows that the following business was transacted : "Voted, that there be five Trustees chosen. Accordingly, James Doud, John Struthers, Camden Cleveland, Samuel Tylee and Calvin Pease were duly elected. "Voted, that there be three overseers of the poor chosen. Accordingly, Archibald Johnson, James Matthews and John Rush were duly elected. "Thomas Kirkpatrick and Samuel Minough were duly elected fence viewers. "James Hillman and Homer Hine were elected appraisers of houses. "George Tod was chosen lister of taxable property. "William Chapman, Michael Seamore, James Wilson, Benjamin Ross, William Dunlap, Amos Loveland, John Davidson, William Service and Thomas Packard were elected supervisors of highways. "Calvin Pease and Phineas Reed were elected constables. "Voted, that the next stated town-meeting be held at the house now occupied by William Rayen, aforesaid. "The meeting then adjourned without day. "GEORGE TOD, Town Clerk." The trustees, of course, constituted the important township body. They met at the home of William Rayen on April 18, 1802, and the meetings of these first trustees and their successors were generally held at the same place for the next ten years, Judge Rayen being the township clerk from 1805 to 1813. Youngstown had now reached a position of considerable importance and prominence in the new State of Ohio. Its only rivals on the Western Reserve were Warren and Canfield, as Cleveland was not yet a serious contender for the position of metropolis and trade center of what had been New Connecticut. At. Burton, Harpersfield, Mentor, Poland, Vernon and in other scattering settlements, between the Mahoning Valley and the lake, there were prosperous communities, but the center of activities was at the first settlement in the valley. Its importance can perhaps be gauged by the fact that the major share of the offices at this first town meeting went to Youngstown Township. Of the five trustees, two, Calvin Pease and Camden Cleveland, were Youngstown men, while John Struthers was from Poland, James Doud from Canfield and Samuel Tylee from Hubbard. From the lake to the southern boundary of the Reserve Youngstown held first rank in the estimation of the pioneers. CHAPTER VIII PIONEER DAYS OF THE WESTERN RESERVE WHO THE PIONEERS WERE AND WHAT THEY DID-THEIR JOYS AND SORROWS IN TRANSFORMING A WILDERNESS The resident of Youngstown, or of any other part of the Mahoning Valley, today, finds it almost impossible to visualize this country in the pioneer days of a century to a century and a quarter ago. In the mind, one cannot transpose the miles of industries, the villages and towns as well as the cities, and the improved highways that stretch web-like across the country, into a forested and almost silent wilderness. What manner of people then, were they who came into a virgin country and made it into a home for millions of prosperous people? Who were they, whence did they come, by what process of alchemy did they accomplish this marvel? To know the early story of Youngstown, of the Mahoning Valley, or of the Western Reserve, one must go back to the farms, the villages and the little cities of the East ; preferably back to Connecticut, from whence the Reserve largely drew its strength. For almost two hundred years the Atlantic seaboard had been settled, this populated area stretching from rugged Maine to balmy Georgia. The immigrants from the old world had multiplied by more immigration and by births, for those were days of large families. They had thrown off the British yoke and had become a free people. But in New England the land was not kind, and a living was wrought from the soil by hard labor alone. The lands, too, were limited in area, and rising generations longed for a field in which they would not be cramped for space. Land owning and home ownership was a passion with these people. Agriculture was America's great industry in the eighteenth century and in the opening years of the nineteenth century, and land was the one great investment. From New England ambitious young men worked westward into Central New York State, from other Atlantic coast states and from Eastern Pennsylvania they crossed the mountains into Western Pennsylvania, and from the South Atlantic states they emigrated to Kentucky and Tennessee. But ever the movement continued westward. That Connecticut should have been so instrumental in settling the Western Reserve was but natural. The Connecticut folk were thrifty—thrifty to parsimoniousness if anything—and in seeking an outlet for hoarded dollars it was but natural that a half hundred or more of them should have grasped the opportunity of purchasing the millions of acres of western lands to which Connecticut claimed not only title but the right of jurisdiction. That Connecticut bidders should have been given - 118 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY - 119 the preference when the sale was made was but natural, too, for the government of Connecticut meant to make the territory beyond the Pennsylvania line part of the old home state, or at least to insure that it would be sold to purchasers in sympathy with Connecticut's claim to title to the ground. There was the knowledge, too, that these Connecticut people were as honest and trustworthy in keeping a bargain as they were shrewd in driving one. The Connecticut Land Company's members were. in fact, the shrewdest of tradesmen, and, with their purchase ratified, they lost not a moment in awakening interest in the lands they had f or sale. Their home state and adjoining states were liberally placarded and circularized in 1797 with advertisements relating to the wonders of New Connecticut. To the unencumbered and ambitious youth ; to the young man and wife about to make their start in the world, to the elders of the family who were dissatisfied with the inhospitable soil of New England or who were willing to ,sacrifice comfort and old associations for the sake of their children; to the wealth seekers and to those who had an inherited instinct for land but no hope of gratifying that instinct at home in the old settled parts of the East, this literature had a distinct appeal. They read, pondered, debated, and decided to go. The few, of many, belongings were sold and lands in the Western Reserve were bought or contracted for, or perhaps the prospective home builder went forth with his gold tucked away in his belt, prepared to buy if the West came up to his expectations. The scanty goods to be taken along were packed into a canvas-covered wagon, drawn by two or four oxen, of horses, or perhaps by mixed teams of oxen and horses. A few head of cattle were perhaps driven ahead on foot. As likely as not, the trip was made on horseback, without the accompaniment of wagons, or even on foot, for many of these homeseekers of one hundred years or more ago made this weary trip without either wagon or mount. It is recorded that even women with babes in their arms walked the entire distance. It was a toilsome journey, yet one that was repeated year after year for more than a century as civilization moved ever westward, until the land between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans had been finally bridged with settlements. Emigration across the Rockies after Civil War days did not differ greatly from emigration across the Alleganies. three-quarters of a century earlier. Frequently several of these canvas-topped wagons started out together; more frequently wagon trains were made up as the emigrants met along the road. Crossing. the Alleghanies was the most wearisome as well as the most dangerous part of the journey, yet the southern route through Pennsylvania was usually selected in .preference to the triii by way of New York State. In the opening, years of the Nineteenth century there was but one highway from the East, the road leading from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. It professed to, be a turnpike, but the term was most flattering as applied to it. "The roads over the Alleghanies to Pittsburgh were rude, steep, and dangerous, and some of the more precipitous slopes were strewn with the carcasses of wagons, horses, carts and oxen, which had been shipwrecked in their perilous 120 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY EMIGRATING TO NEW CONNECTICUT, 1817-1818. Front an engraving in Peter Parley's Recollections THIS PICTURE ENTITLED "EMIGRANTS WESTWARD BOUND!! IS FROM "PETER PARLEY'S RECOLLECTIONS," AND SHOWS THE MANNER IN WHICH MOST OF THE PIONEER FAMILIES MADE THE LONG JOURNEY FROM EASTERN POINTS TO THE WESTERN RESERVE, YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY - 121 descent," writes one chronicler of the hardships of the pioneers. "The scenes on the road—of families gathered at night in miserable sheds, called taverns, mothers frying, children crying, fathers swearing—were a mingled tragedy and comedy of errors." Richard Iddings, of Warren, who made the trip over the mountains in 1809, or a dozen years after the earliest of the pioneers, wrote in later years the story of his trip. "We (Iddings and his bride of a few weeks) started from Reading, Pennsylvania, for Ohio, in a two-horse sleigh, with our household furniture, for which there was plenty of room. When we reached the top of the Alleghany Mountains the snow was four feet deep ; but we learned there was no snow at the foot of the mountains, nor westward to Ohio. Therefore we went to the house of an uncle to my wife, who resided in Fayette County, some twelve miles from Brownsville. Leaving my wife, the sleigh, and one horse, I proceeded to Warren on horseback. Here I hired a canoe, and, engaging Henry Harsh to assist me, I went down the Mahoning and Beaver rivers to Beavertown, and up the Ohio and Monongahela to Brownsville. Taking my wife and a few household fixings on board, we floated down to Pittsburgh, where I purchased a barrel of flour and went on to Warren. The weather was quite cold, and the settlers few and scattering. Some nights we lodged in houses near the 'river, and sometimes on its banks, without shelter. Sometimes we had plenty to eat, and sometimes we went without food for a whole day. We were two days getting over the falls of the Beaver River. Mr.. Harsh and myself were most of the time in the water (frequently up to our waists), pulling up the empty canoe, while my wife sat on the shore watching the goods which we had landed. At the mill dams on the Mahoning the same process was repeated. We reached Warren on the loth day of April, having been twenty-one days coming from Brownsville." Yet the homeseekers went on. Only the fainthearted turned back. That they persevered was due to the natural willingness of human beings to undergo hardships, disappointments, and disillusionments when there is hope of gain in the end. These New Englanders were bred to the soil and accustomed to hardy, outdoor life, yet they came from a settled country where the cruder hardships of the frontier had disappeared, so that even to them this was a .new and rude life. A private carriage across the Alleghanies—affected by a few—was considered a badge of aristocracy. In the East such conveyance earned deference, but on the road to the Ohio country . its presence was often resented. Such a vehicle was in fact often crowded off the road by the wagoners. Later there sprang up professional wagoners who transported westward bound settlers from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh in great wagons capable of carrying three to four tons, or even more. These wagoners charged by the pound, and one early day emigrant records that members of the family were weighed along with household goods, for mothers and children were taken on board the wagons while the father of the family journeyed along on horseback, or .even afoot. To the Western Reserve the road lay along the Ohio River from 122 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY Pittsburgh, up the Beaver River past the Town of Beaver, and thence south of the Mahoning River to Youngstown, whence the settlers radiated to the various parts of the Reserve. From Maryland the journey was made through Somerset, Fayette and Westmoreland counties to Pittsburgh and thence along the Beaver River path. Some early day pioneers from New England even chose this route through Maryland and Southern Pennsylvania in preference to negotiating the mountains of Central Pennsylvania. Circumstances, of course, varied with different parties of pioneers. Sometimes a band of young men made the journey from the East to the Reserve, or to other parts of Ohio, on horseback, with light hearts and song and story and a careless disregard of all hardships. In general, however, the route the pioneers followed, the motives that actuated them, the procedure they pursued in leaving their old homes, the hardships they underwent on the road, were much the same in every party that made the trip to the Western Reserve in the first quarter of a century or more of its existence. There were compensations, even on the way West, that offset, but did not balance, the hardships. It was a free life, the emigrants were accompanied by neighbors or were going to join old neighbors, and there was exhilaration and excitement in the journey to the western wilds. Unlike the process followed in most newly opened country, the settlement of the Western Reserve was not a gradual movement onward a few miles farther each year. The method selected for apportioning the Connecticut Land Company's holdings was responsible for this. Each stockholder drew his allotment of land, and it was to his interest to move thereon at once, or to procure settlers to move thereon. The settlement, therefore, of the townships of the Reserve—east of the Cuyahoga River at least—was dependent on the eagerness of the land owner to take possession of his ground, or on his ability to sell it to bonafide settlers. This explains why settlements were made at random in what are now interior townships of Geauga, Ashtabula, or Portage counties, when the next human habitation might be miles away. Originally it had been expected that the extreme northern townships of the Reserve would be settled first, but circumstances changed this program. The inhospitable winds of Lake Erie chilled the enthusiasm of many a settler who hurriedly moved southward, although often settling, curiously enough, along the high watershed between the lake and the Mahoning Valley where the'snow piles up in winter to depths unknown along the lake and where the thermometer registers lower than in any other part of Ohio. This high ground was also preferred for the sensible reason that it was free of the swamps that then marked a great deal of Northeastern Ohio. Regardless of their ultimate destination, however, the preference shown by the early homeseekers for the route from the East that lay through Pennsylvania made Youngstown the center from which all the colonists began .the final leg of their journey to their new homes. Youngstown was the first settlement in the Mahoning River valley across the Pennsylvania line, it was the first settlement founded on the YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY - 123 Western Reserve, and, except for Warren, the most important village on the Reserve. Back in their eastern homes the settlers directed their steps toward Youngstown, and probably three-fourths of the newcomers to the Reserve halted here to adjust their 'affairs preparatory to moving on to their new homes. The name, "New Connecticut," that was selected for Northeastern Ohio before the jurisdiction of the federal government and the Northwest Territory over this great territory was acknowledged, would not have been a misnomer, for the Western Reserve was almost a transplanted Connecticut. Connecticut blood was overwhelmingly in the majority. The settlers were of that Scotch, Irish and English stock that had helped colonize the Atlantic coast, win freedom for the colonies in the Revolution, and extend American jurisdiction westward. In temperament they were serious, and yet lovers of pleasure—lovers at times even of dancing and other unorthodox pastimes. In religion they were Congregational, or Presbyterian, for in their home state of Connecticut the Congregational church was almost akin to the state church until the political revolution of 1818, each person there being taxed for its support unless he professed adherence to some other denomination. They were the type of men who had written freedom of conscience into the constitution of the United States, and yet in practice they were often intolerant of the religious beliefs of all dissenters. In this, however, they had no monopoly, as intolerance of all kinds was the rule rather than the exception in that day. They followed the rigid New England observance of the Sabbath Day, to extremes we would think today. One Western Reserve settler, we are assured, was arrested and fined in the early days for hunting on the Sabbath, although he had merely hurried forth with his rifle and slain a marauding bear that was making way with one of his hogs. The offender, it is related, thereupon joined the Mormon church, an organization that may have faults but that does not fine a man for protecting his stock, even on the day of rest. This story, in itself, of course, is open to question, but that the New Englanders came here with their strict religious ideas is not to be doubted. Yet, as is customary in a new country, religion naturally suffered by removal of its adherents from accustomed surroundings and accustomed influences. Rev. Joseph Badger, pioneer missionary for the Presbyterian church on, the Western Reserve, sometimes expressed discouragement at the irreligion into which settlers and their children had fallen. They were painfully indifferent to church, he said, and in literature Voltaire sometimes vied with the Bible. It is doubtful, however, if there have been many newly settled parts of this country where churchgoing persisted as it did on the Western Reserve. If Voltaire was read it is not surprising, for the opening days of the nineteenth century witnessed an era when atheism was for a time fashionable and affected by those who believed themselves super-endowed intellectually. The West saw far less of this than the East. This Connecticut atmosphere on the Western Reserve was also emphasized by comparison. In the Cincinnati neighborhood New Jersey 124 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY natives predominated. In Southern Ohio were the Virginians and Kentuckians who had crossed the Blue Ridge to the West. They were English in descent and Episcopalian in religion, less strict in their ways than the Connecticut men. South of Trumbull County was the "Seven Ranges," peopled by Pennsylvanians of Quaker and "Pennsylvania Dutch" stock. In the Marietta settlements New Englanders were in the majority, but Massachusetts men vied with Connecticut natives there in representation, and both around Marietta and in the land peopled by the Pennsylvanians the Virginia element was strong. The convention at Chillicothe that gave Ohio its first state constitution in 1802 was a gathering dominated by men of Virginia blood. It should not be understood, of course, that the Western Reserve was peopled by natives of Connecticut alone. Next to Connecticut, the chief contribution came from Pennsylvania, Washington and Westmoreland counties being drawn upon heavily. Outside a limited emigration.from Massachusetts there was little New England blood other than that of the Connecticut folks. New York was well represented and New Jersey and Maryland in a lesser degree, while few Virginians or Kentuckians came so far northward. From the old world too came emigrants from England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Germany. Warren, long the seat of justice for the Western Reserve and the most New England in character of any of the larger communities on the Reserve, was founded by Pennsylvanians, while religious denominations other than the Presbyterian flourished here even at an early day. It will probably be surprising to know that Lake and Portage counties were once strongholds of Mormonism. One hundred years has altered the character of the population in the cities of the Western Reserve, but in all of them the "Scotch-Irish" Connecticut strain is still strong and influential, while many rural townships of Northeastern Ohio are today more thoroughly New England in strain than New England itself is.. More than fifty years after the Western Reserve was settled William Dean Howells was struck by the contrast between the Pennsylvania and Virginia people of his native county of Belmont, on the one hand, and the New England characteristics of the people gf Ashtabula County, where he located just prior to the Civil war, on the other. Howe, the historian, says of the people of the Reserve: "When the Reserve was surveyed in 1796 by General Cleaveland there were but two families on the entire lake shore region of Northern Ohio. By the close of the year 1800 there were thirty-two settlements on the Reserve, though no organization of the government had been established. But the pioneers were a people who had been trained in the principles and practices of civil order, and these were transplanted to their new homes. In New Connecticut there was little of the lawlessness which so often characterized the people of a new country. In many instances a township organization was completed and a minister chosen before the pioneers left home. Thus they planted the institutions of old Connecticut in their new wilderness home. "The pioneers who first broke the ground here accomplished a work YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY - 125 unlike that which will fall to the lot of any succeeding generation. The hardships they endured, the obstacles they encountered, the life they led, the peculiar qualities they needed in their undertakings, and the traits of character developed by their work stand alone in our history. "These pioneers knew well the three great forces which constitute the strength and glory of a free government are—the family, the school and the church. These three they planted here, and they nourished and cherished them with an energy and devotion scarcely equaled in any other quarter of the world." This is the type of venturesome homeseekers who crossed the Alieghany Mountains and came up the Mahoning River to the Connecticut Reserve in the closing years of the eighteenth century and the opening years of the nineteenth. Although pioneers by inheritance, the change was not a slight one for them. Most of them came from country that was fairly well settled, to find the land to which they had emigrated one of dense and almost impassable forests, covered with a growth of oak, elm, hickory, maple, walnut, butternut, basswood, locust, cucumber, beech, buckeye, and birch timber, and even trees of other varieties. Eastern Ohio is a favored land in one respect at least. Lying between mountains and plains, it has none of the harsh, though sometimes beautiful, ruggedness of the former and none of the flat monotony of the plains, or the prairie lands that begin in Western Ohio and extend onward to the Rocky Mountains. There were few open spots here when the first white settlers arrived. Forest fires were not common in Indian days for the red man seldom shows that criminal fecklessness in the woods that too often distinguishes the white man. There were fires of this kind occasionally, of course, but a new growth of timber supplanted whatever was destroyed. It was small foliage and underbrush that generally suffered on such occasions, and brush grows rapidly in this land of plentiful rainfall. Forests today are valuable merely because they are forests, but in pioneer days deep timber meant only back-breaking work for the settlers. Not only must the ground be cleared before crops could be raised, but heavy foliage had other disadvantages. The trees and undergrowth shut out the warmth of the sun, winter snows lingered long in the spring and moisture remained long in the ground even after the winter snows had melted. Winter came early too, for the frost was a frequent visitor when the sun had little chance to penetrate through the trees. The rainfall and the melting snows found their way slowly to the streams, and in consequence the rivers and creeks of the Western Reserve were uniformly higher a hundred years ago than they are now, while floods were infrequent. In 1806 the Ohio Legislature declared the Mahoning River a navigable stream to Newton Township in Trumbull County. In 1829 it was declared navigable to Warren, as the clearing of the timber in the meantime had reduced the volume of the river to that extent. Flat boats were poled up the stream from Beavertown to Warren without difficulty except at the shoals. Technically the Mahoning is still a navigable stream for part of its course; a pleasant fiction that fools no one. 126 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY Swamp land was frequent, even in this rolling country between Lake Erie and the Ohio River, providing breeding places for the malaria-carrying mosquitoes. "Fever and ague" was a common ill, and a disheartening and distressing one to the pioneers. This affliction, in fact, disappeared in Ohio only in comparatively recent years, with the reclamation of the swamps, the draining of farm lands and the installation of sewerage systems in the cities. To the early settlers the raising of crops, primarily corn, was an utmost necessity. Game might furnish meat, but grains were essential to the welfare of the white man and wild meat palls on all but savages and half-civilized persons. The forests were an enemy to soil-tilling, and the forests, therefore, had to go. The first requirement of a pioneer, however, was a home, and the first work undertaken by him was the clearing of an acre or two of land and the construction of a cabin for himself and his family. These pioneer cabins, crude as they were, represented a great amount of labor. "Raising" a cabin was also quite a ceremony in its day. Obviously it was work that one man could not do alone, so that this construction, or "raising" was a task that enlisted the services of every man within call. Usually the number was great enough that one of the party was made leader, or perhaps automatically filled this place by reason of experience or especial skill. Under his direction smaller trees were cut down, or small-sized logs selected if the occupant-to-be of the cabin had already cleared the ground, and these were cut into proper lengths for the walls of the building. Heavy flat stones were placed at each corner of the proposed structure and logs of somewhat heavier weight were laid on these, one at each side of the building. These were notched at intervals of three or four feet and smaller timbers fitted into these notches, joining the two logs together. These were the joists to support the floor. The logs to form the sides and the front and the rear of the cabin were then raised one upon another to a height of eight or nine feet, when another row of supports were laid across for the upper floor of the cabin. These logs, of course, were notched at the corners of the cabin to fit into each other. One or two more logs made sufficient space for this small second story of the building. The primitive architects could not hope to bring the logs together even by notching, so the space between the tiers in the walls of the cabin were filled with mortar made from clay. Clean grained trees were split for puncheons and clapboards out of which the floor and roof of the building was made. The puncheons for the floor were split to perhaps three inches in thickness and one side was hewn flat with a broad ax. Perhaps even both sides were dressed this way. The roof and ceiling were made of clapboards, a form of pionee lumber resembling barrel staves before they are dressed, but split longer and wider. The roof was weighted down with logs. With an ax the rough logs were dressed down inside and an opening cut in one end of the cabin for a fire place, while a second opening perhaps 6 feet high and 4 feet wide was cut in one side of the building for a door. The door was made of the same material as the floor. YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY - 127 Oftentimes a door was not an immediate adjunct, *a quilt or the dressed hide of an animal serving instead while the weather was mild. One window at least was cut in the walls. To complete this, glass was a distinct luxury. A few of the pioneers brought window glass with them from the East, but only the more fastidious or the most affluent attempted this. Usually paper treated with lard or bear's grease sufficed. Reinforced with narrow laths and properly oiled, this form of window pane resisted the rain fairly well and gave a soft, mellow light to the interior of the cabin. The chimney for the great fireplace was built on the outside of the cabin, being made of split lath or puncheons, well mortared. Nails were almost unknown, of course, as they were made by blacksmiths who hammered them out, one nail at a time. Wooden pins were substituted whenever necessary. The settler seldom aspired to TYPE OF PIONEER HOME This drawing, made many years ago from a description by an old settler, illustrates the cabin erected by Daniel Sheehy, who came here with John Young in 1798 and built the cabin in that year or the year following. more than a one-room cabin at first. When a second room was added this was in reality but another cabin separated from the parent building by a corridor, or hallway, perhaps six feet in length. Here the saddles, tools and both farm and household implements were hung or stored. With the advent of a sawmill better homes were possible. Sometimes these were frame buildings ; at other times they were log cabins but built of squared logs instead of the rounded ones. The interior of the cabin boasted only the plainest necessities, and these of home construction, unless a small table had been brought along from the East with the scant household belongings, Bedsteads were made of round poles for the sides and puncheons for the bottom, the poles being driven into the sides of the cabin between the logs or supported on blocks. A mattress made of straw, husks or leaves sufficed and the skins of wild animals constituted the covering until something better was available. Shelves were made of clapboards set on wooden pegs that had been 128 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY driven in between the logs. Dishes were of wooden, pewter, or earthenware. For cooking, a spider and a "Dutch" oven were generally used. Cooking utensils varied, of course, with the circumstances of the home maker, but one pot, a kettle and a frying pan were indispensable. Home made stools and benches were the chief articles of household furniture aside from the table and bed, split bottom chairs being a luxury not possible for all pioneers. Food was coarse and limited in variety, corn being the great staple, as even wheat was often impossible to obtain. For heat there was only the great fireplace with its stone fire chamber to protect the wooden structure of the building and its great fore log and crackling smaller logs. Often this fire furnished the only light too, as candles, that very primitive form of illumination, were unobtainable. Blazing pine knots too were used at times. There was perhaps little need of lighting as books were few in those days and reading was a pleasure almost denied. The cabin, of course, housed a spinning wheel and perhaps even a loom if one were fortunate. If there was a baby to rock a well rounded log was cut into a four-foot length and hollowed out to form a primitive cradle. With his home built and his family installed therein, the next work of the pioneer was to clear off the forests. Creating grain fields in this manner was a work of years, although an energetic worker sometimes cleared off eight or ten acres in a single season. In clearing off the timber much of the chopping was done in winter. The trees were razed one at a time with a trusty, ax if the homemaker were working alone, the underbrush was cut and piled, the dead timber perhaps fired on the spot, while the timber fitted for rails was felled and cut into lengths and hauled to the place where the fences were to be built. The remaining timber was cut into lengths suitable for hauling; the rail timber was split and the zig-zag fence that is now disappearing from the landscape was built. When the warm days of summer had dried out the brush and logs sufficiently, the brush was fired and the logs hauled by oxen, or horses, into heaps and burned, the smoke of the burning timber blending with the Indian Summer haze. These "log rollings" were conducted in much the same manner as "raisings." Usually the space to be "rolled" was divided between two parties, each in charge of a captain, who in turn divided his men into gangs, placing with each a man specially skilled in piling the logs. There was great rivalry between these main parties as to which could finish first, and they worked with great energy. Piling the logs in such a way that they would burn up was a highly skilled business. One man could direct the building of a heap so that it would burn completely up, while another, less skillfully arranged would burn only partially, leaving large half-burned timbers which were difficult to handle. The victor in the log-rolling contest won his laurels as -much by the skill with which his heaps were piled as in the amount of land cleared. After the logs were rolled, they were usually permitted to lie for some time to still further dry, and then fired. From time to time YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY - 129 they were "stirred" during the burning, and this was also a job always entrusted to a man familiar with the work, as it required skill. "Log rollings" were always accompanied by apple butter boilings, quiltings and carpet rag sewings at which the girls applied themselves while the men piled the timbers. The women, too, prepared the hearty food for the workers. These "log rollings" were social events in their nature as well as hard labor and therefore never lacked for men. Even the shirkers were on hand—usually among the earliest arrivals—for generous quantities of whisky were always provided for a "rolling" or a "raising" and the liquid was dispensed openhandedly. Affairs of this kind, in fact, were popular and were common in the early days when settlements were of sufficient size to permit a large body of men to congregate for mutual assistance. This waste of timber may appear now to have been wanton but at that day it was an absolute necessity. Without fields there could be no crops, with the trees standing undisturbed there could be no fields, and burning the timber, was the only recourse for the settler. A market for lumber did not exist outside the immediate neighborhood and logs were too plentiful to justify hauling them more than a short distance to the sawmill. Much of the work of burning off the logs and brush was done at night to economize on time, and the light of these woods fires illuminated the pioneer settlements in a day when candles were a luxury. When cleared ground was not an immediate necessity the scheme of killing the trees by "girdling" them was sometimes resorted to. This process saved much labor, but it had its inconveniences too and was not a generally accepted method of forest clearing. "Slashing" timber, still a third method of destruction, was the work of an artisan. It was a scheme that could be employed only when the wind was from the right quarter and other considerations were favorable. The "slasher" first surveyed with his eye the tract of ground that had to be cleared or estimated the extent of the tract that he believed himself able to clear. With his ax he then chopped each tree on the tract part way through, and, reaching the end of the area, selected the tree that was to begin the holocaust. This was felled by sturdy blows. In falling it struck the tree next in line and started that one toppling. The weakened trees, responded in turn to the crashing timber, the entire strip gradually succumbing with a fearful roar. An expert, it is said, could clear an acre a day in this manner, whereas a single ax-man attacking one tree at a time required nearly a month to lay bare the same area. But it was a work that required skill and judgment beyond that of an ordinary chopper. The pioneer's barn was a necessary adjunct, of course, just as necessary as his house. It might be said in fact that it was even more of a necessity, for life on the frontier was absolutely dependent on draft animals and live stock and these had to be cared for to the best of the settler's ability. The early barn was built of logs, too, and was as large as the circumstances of the pioneer farmer would permit. "Barn raisings" were events that ranked with "log rollings" and "house raisings" in the life of the early day residents of the Western Reserve.. Vol. I-9 130 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY With the trees and underbrush cut and destroyed the ground was considered ready for grain growing, although pioneer agriculture was even then carried on under wearisome disadvantages since the fields were merely stump-filled areas after all. In corn planting the ground was raised with a hoe, the seed thrown in and the ground stamped back into shape. Wheat was sown in harrow scraped soil and the seed carried beneath the surface by the teeth. Grass and clover were sown with the wheat, to come up after the grain had been harvested, and cut with scythes as winter feed for the stock. Wheat was cut with a sickle, the cradle coming into use in later years and harvesting machinery at a still later period. Threshing was done with a flail, that implement so cumbersome to the uninitiated and yet an effectual instrument in the hands of an expert. Sometimes the grain was tramped out by horses on the barn floors, as in Biblical days. Plowing, of course, was not possible in the clearings at first as the stumps and the green toots were successful barriers. The original plows, when it became possible to resort to these, were made with wooden mold boards and iron plow points. All labor was manual. Even the simplest of labor-saving agricultural implements were unknown to the pioneers. Clearing the fields of stumps was a labor of years. Smaller ones were rooted, dug or pulled out, but for the larger ones the only means of relief was to wait until time had rotted them or until they had been **slowly burned away. Many summers might pass before the field was cleared of roots and converted into a clean grain field or meadow. Oxen were the chief beasts of burden and plodded along before the plow or hitched to the great wide-wheeled wagons of the pioneers. As corn was the great staple, a generation of great Ohio men and women were raised on corn pone, dodgers, johnnycake and mush and milk. Meat was not as plentiful as one might believe. There was unlimited game in the forests in the early days, but white men and women did not care for..a steady diet of wild meat. Cattle, the chief stock animal, grazed in the forests. Hogs, when a settler was fortunate enough to own any, also ran wild in the woods and sometimes lived luxuriously and without human care for months at a time. They were subject, however, to depredations from predatory beasts. Sheep raising came into fashion only after the country was fairly well settled. They were beset even more than hogs by the beasts of prey and raising sheep was oftentimes a profitless work. Home made Yankee cheese helped vary the diet in the early days of the Reserve. Soap was made from ashes and fats, maple sugar and wild honey were substitutes for cane sugar, and salt, now the cheapest of all food commodities, and yet one of the most necessary, was scarce, and often sold at $6 to $8 a bushel. Grist mills were the one great essential industry in pioneer settlements. Settlers might clear the ground with a grubbing hoe and erect habitations with the aid of the ax and trowel alone, thus living in a fair degree of comfort while waiting for a sawmill to come into being; but every settlement and every individual settler felt the crying need of a mill where he might take his corn and wheat to be ground. YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY - 131 Mill sites were snapped up quickly along the streams, and yet grist mills were not always available for the settlers. Sometimes, indeed, corn was carried many miles on horseback to be ground, and trips of even thirty, forty, or fifty miles were often made through the woods to the nearest store for even the plainest of provisions. One of the first grist mills on the Reserve was that built at Lanterman's Falls in Youngstown, and this. was not available until several years after the settlement had been founded and then did not fill all the requirements of the settlers. Lacking mills to grind the corn, however, the settler's family was not wholly deprived of the meal for making cornpone or mush. They might be handicapped severely, but they were too resourceful to sit down and pine for the unattainable. Women of the family resorted to the corn grater when nothing else was available, this instrument being purely a homemade affair and not unlike a huge modern nutmeg grater. In making it, one side of an old tin bucket was commandeered, holes were punched in this that left the raw projections outward, and the grater was nailed to a board for use. Another device was made on the principle of a pharmacist's mortar and pestle, a stump being hollowed out, the shelled corn fed therein and the grain pulverized with a crude pestle. Sometimes a sapling at a proper distance from the stump was requisitioned for service. It was bent over and the pestle attached and worked up and down, the advantage being that the sapling gave that perpendicular play 'to the pestle that would otherwise have to be furnished by main strength. This was a man's work, one may be sure, although much of the labor of preparing grains and meats for food was done by the pioneer women, who truly underwent even greater hardships than the men. The commonest substitute, however, when a grist mill was lacking, was the "hand mill," which was a miniature grist mill right in the home. These devices varied in construction, but one pioneer leaves a description of one of these mills that will suffice for all. "The stones in a hand mill,"- he. says, "were of common sandstone grit, four inches thick and twenty inches in diameter. The runner was turned by hand, with a pole set in the top of it, near the verge. The upper end of the pole went into another hole inserted into a board, and nailed on the under side of the joist, immediately over the hole in the verge' of the runner. One person turned the stone and another person fed the corn into the eye with his hands. It was very hard work and the operators alternately changed places." The unceasing toil required of the pioneers in wresting a living from the soil and in rearing a family can be judged by the fact that the writer of the above reminiscence assures us that, "it took the hard labor of two hours to supply flour enough for one person for a single day." Since families in pioneer "days were uniformly large, grinding meal for them by the handmill process was almost a continuous process. Potatoes were a crop generally plentiful after the first year or two, and figured largely in the diet of the pioneers. Pastries were luxuries denied the habitants of the wilderness. 132 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY These early days, of course, were not wholly devoid of diversions, although there was little except what was self-created. Debating clubs for the men where ponderous subjects, chiefly scientific and political, were discussed, were organized in the Western Reserve whenever a settlement had grown to sufficient proportions. This tendency was marked in Northeastern Ohio because the settlers were, as a rule, of better education than the average of pioneers. Dances, .singing school and churchgoing were events looked forward to with pleasure. Militia mustering day each year was a period of intense interest to the pioneers of the Reserve, for the martial spirit ran high here and war was alwa a possibility. Independence Day was the one great holiday of the year, and unrestrained twisting of the lion's tail featured the program, for the anti-British feeling kindled by the Revolutionary war was fanned into renewed flames by the War of 1812, and it ran higher in the West than in the East, because American ownership of lands west of Pennsylvania was never fully acknowledged until after this second war and the country was harassed constantly in the meantime by British-inspired Indians. Home diversions consisted mostly of work, for the women spun and wove in those days, making not only their own clothes but the clothes of the men folks too. Rags also were worked into warm quilts to replace the skins of animals first used for bedding. Log "rollings," house "raisings" and similar gatherings when a mill or a barn was to be put-up were hard work but always partook of the nature of a holiday. Needles clicked and tongues clattered 'to the accompaniment of the smell of cooking viands, coarse yet tempting to these outdoor workers. There was ample to eat, and to drink too. A dance in the evening always terminated these events, despite the stern religious scruples of these New Englanders. Rough puncheon floors were not especially adapted to dancing, yet they constituted no great impediment to the "square" dancing of those days, and to the accompaniment of violin, or even a good whistler in the absence of a musical instrument, men and maids joined hilariously in the scamper-down, double shuffle, western swing and the half moon. Men and their wives, lads and their sweethearts, traveled horseback, one horse usually sufficing for a twain. This in fact was the only means of transportation, aside from farm wagons and sleighs, for the early settlers. Stage coaches came into being on the Western Reserve only in 1824, when a stage route was established between Ashtabula and Wellsville, on the Ohio River, by way of Youngstown and Warren, with daily service. This line at first actually ran only to Poland. The running :time between Ashtabula and the Ohio River was twenty hours. The stage driver was an exalted being then, and it might be added that he remained an envied figure, around whom romance clustered, until the recent years when the railroad and the motor vehicle ended his career in his last stand in the far West. The canal came fifteen years after the stage coach and the railroad at a still later date. Horse racing in the summer and sleighing in the winter were royal sports. In his reminiscences, Roswell M. Grant tells of the existence of a club of Trumbull County blades in the early days much given to both YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY -133 of these sports. In this club were numbered Judge George,,Tod, Judge William Rayen, John E. Woodbridge and Col. James Hillman, of Youngstown; Gen. Elijah Wadsworth and Comfort Mygatt, of Canfield; Simon Perkins and Calvin Pease, of Warren; Doctor Tvlor, of Tylortown, and Robert Montgomery and David Clendennen, of Coitsville. When the Mahoning River froze over the challenge would go forth for a race on the ice from Youngstown to Warren. They would start in their two-horse sleighs, all abreast, for the winding trip of fifteen miles, the Mahoning River being passable then for sleighs all along its lower course. The men in the last sleigh to reach the destination of the party were assessed for dinner for all the party. As interesting evidence of the changes that have come with the passing years is the fact that the Mahoning River now never freezes between Warren and its mouth, on account of the waters being pumped so many times through the steel plants and used so frequently for cooling purposes that their temperature never goes below 4o degrees, even in the coldest weather, while in the summer the temperature is so high that for long distances in the neighborhood of the steel mills, the boys cannot even swim in it. It is not so many years ago that ice cutting was a winter industry on the Mahoning River in Youngstown. It is scarcely twenty years since thousands of skaters glided on the ice from Baldwin's darn northward and when swimming and even fishing in the backwater of this darn were still possible, but all this is gone today, and it is hard even to imagine a day when bobsledding from Youngstown to Warren was a pastime. From the same authority we get a thrilling account as well of one of the horse races of pioneer times. The stakes were a county seat, $i,000 and about everything else in sight. The race took place during the heat of the contest between Youngstown and Warren for the honor of being the county seat of Trumbull County, and occurred at some time prior to i8ro. Warren, in addition to boasting of superiority to Youngstown in other ways, announced that it also had a horse that could outrun anything in the village down the river. Judge Tod accepted the challenge on behalf of Youngstown and to uphold the honor of his home town selected a bay mare named Fly, the property of Colonel Hillman. Tod took charge of the horse personally and curried and trained it to perfection. Warren had enough confidence in its horse, Dave by name, to wager $5oo on the outcome and Tod covered this bet. The course selected for the race was along the main highway that followed the river valley—now Federal Street—and the stretch to be covered extended from Judge Rayen's residence in the western part of the village to Crab Creek in the eastern part, a distance of approximately a mile. On the day of the great contest Warren and Youngstown alike suspended work and turned out en masse. Those who were in favor of fixing the county seat at Youngstown ranged themselves on the south side of the highway while Warren boosters lined up on the north side. "They bet what money they had, then bet their watches, 134 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY penknives, coats, hats, vests and shoes," says the scrupulous chronicler of the event, who was an attendant himself. His description continues: "Alexander Walker rode Fly, and under his tutelage the Youngstown horse forged ahead in passing Henry Wick's store. At Hugh Bryson's store Dave came alongside, but the spurt was unavailing as Walker plied his whip and gave a few Indian warwhoops and Fly shot ahead once more. Dave's chance vanished then and there, for Fly reached Crab Creek six lengths ahead. In fact Fly had entered so thoroughly into the spirit of the affair by this time that she refused to stop at all and was brought up only at Daniel Sheehy's cabin, a mile beyond the goal." Youngstown was richer that night in money, glory, penknives and clothes, but somehow the courthouse was built at Warren. Horse racing has not diminished greatly in popularity in a hundred years, and sleighing is still a common outdoor joy on the Western Reserve, although the motor driven vehicle has cut into both pleasures. In the olden days, however, sleigh racing was a sport of first magnitude. One such contest—preserved in Ohio history because it probably outranked anything of its kind ever held before or since—occurred after the Reserve had been fairly well settled, or in the winter of 1855-56, to be exact. In that year there was a sleighing season of wo days in Northern Ohio. During the height of this season farmers in Solon Township, Cuyahoga County, organized a party that traveled to Akron in seven four-horse sleighs, and to signalize their trip carried a good sized American flag with the regulation number of stars and stripes, also giving oral demonstration in true American fashion to the fact that they were out for a lark. Whether it was intended as a challenge or not is uncertain, but the people of neighboring townships, villages and towns accepted it as such. The farmers of Twinsburg Township refused to remain quiescent under the defi; instead they mustered a party in fourteen sleighs drawn by four horses each and the flag was surrendered to them. Solon Township folks were not so easily vanquished, however. Appearing at Twinsburg with thirty-eight four-horse sleighs they easily won hack the lost banner. The competition was now on in earnest, but it was converted into a rival county, instead of township, affair, with Cuyahoga, Medina and Summit counties competing. On March 14, 1856, they rallied at Richfield, Summit County, for what was supposed to be the final muster, and so keen had become the rivalry that Medina County appeared with 144 sleighs, Cuyahoga County with 151 and Summit County with 171, each sleigh being a four-horse affair, a total of 466 sleighs, drawn by 1,864 horses. Naturally these were the commodious old bob-sleighs, and with their liberal seating capacity no less than 6,500 persons engaged directly in the contest. Brass bands enlivened the occasion and hundreds of nonparticipants came to witness the grand roundup, for work was generally suspended far and wide over the Western Reserve to witness this remarkable spectacle. In fact the contest was so unique that newspaper YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY - 135 readers throughout the entire United States followed it closely, and even in Europe it was commented on by Old World people who marveled at the strange ways of the Americans. But the rivalry was not yet over by any means. Medina County folks were much chagrined. They not only had not captured the flag, but they had finished up in last place in the procession. This was a disgrace that sturdy Medina County farmers could not endure. Four days later, on March 18th, they appeared at Akron with 182 four-horse sleighs and one sleigh drawn by four mules, and claimed the flag. In fact they did more than this. They brought along brass bands and banners galore and made their appearance with cheers that almost shook the, earth. Far from being jealous, Akron declared a general holiday and gave the visitors a welcome with the firing of cannon and the ringing of bells. They won back the flag and kept it. "No accidents occurred and no one got drunk," records Capt. Milton P. Peirce, the chronicler of this remarkable event. Women's pleasures were more limited than men's, but women were just as earnestly concerned about dress too years ago as they are today, all preachments to the contrary notwithstanding. Their tastes were as fully developed as those of their great-granddaughters ; necessity merely modified fashions in their wearing apparel. A patch of flax was planted each year, and when the harvest was ready was pulled, dried, bleached and hackled. When properly beaten into a tow it was spun by the women. Cotton was imported in its raw state and had to be picked, carded and spun like flax. Cotton, flax and wool alike were spun or woven into cloths, flannels and blankets, while some portions of the yarns were dyed madder red, indigo blue and more modest colors for weaving into plaids for wear or for bed coverings. The women made their own clothing, and likewise the clothing for the men folks and the children, until opportunity or affluence brought them "store" clothes. For summer clothing cotton was mixed with the flax, for winter wear wool was used for the mixture. "Fine coats, boots, and hats were then unknown; the settlers used to go to meeting, the best of them,. in their shirt sleeves, in the summer with clean shirts of their own manufacture, (the women's manufacture, rather); and many a time I have seen our most respectable farmers make their appearance on Sunday barefoot, wrote one Youngstown pioneer in his reminiscences of early days here. "And often," he adds, "I have seen our ladies carry their shoes and stockings for miles, going barefoot until within sight of the church, and then put them on, feeling that they could, not afford to wear such luxuries on the road." Which is a rather convincing refutation in itself of the oft-repeated assertion that pioneer women set no great store on dress. We would admire them less if we believed they were careless in this respect. Every day clothing was much plainer, of course, than the Sunday dress. Men's trousers, or "pantaloons," were made of deerskin tanned by hand. They were not altogether comfortable articles of wearing apparel. In wet weather they would stretch and become sloppy ; in dry weather they shrank and became stiff and hard. It is recorded that a 136 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY pair of these trousers could stand up unassisted when thoroughly d out. Coonskin caps were common, too, among the earliest of pioneers. The women with their humming spinning wheels and thudding loo were the real manufacturers of the early days. Aside from these home workshops, manufacturing was almost non-existent on the Western Reserve in the first half century of its existence, agriculture being the one great industry. The United States, in fact, was not a manufacturing country for many years after its founding, and it appeared to make no great effort to become one. The American policy was rather to become the great shipping nation of the world, and energies were devoted to acquiring ship tonnage to haul the world's goods, instead of making the goods to ship. This ambition was successfully attained and American clipper-built ships became famed throughout the world. Yet it was a shortsighted policy for American raw materials were hauled to Europe, made into manufactured products, and then brought back and sold to Americans at fat profits for foreign manufacturers. The mistake that America was making in pursuing this course was made even more serious by the fact that the Jeffersonian party that was in power in the first quarter of the nineteenth century opposed any extension of either naval or land defense, so that American merchant ships could expect little or no protection in event of war. The War of 1812 came on and closed the seas. Unable to get manufactured goods from abroad Americans were forced to turn to making their own goods. Under the spur of necessity manufacturing plants sprung up along the Atlantic seaboard and America flourished industrially. The stupidity of England in educating Americans into the knowledge that they could get along without British-made goods was on a par with the course that Germany obstinately followed just too years later in making Americans realize that they did not need German chemicals, dyes and other commodities as they had been led to believe. Unfortunately America did not grasp the opportunity fully. The peace of 1815 came on, the seas were reopened and foreign goods began to flow in at prices that America could not duplicate. The fires of industry here died down and manufacturing almost ceased until the tariff bill of 1824 was passed. This measure of 1824 was framed with the double purpose of raising funds to pay off the war debt and to revive the languishing manufactures of the country, and its effect was soon seen in a moderate increase in the number of blast furnaces, woolen mills and similar establishments in this part of the country. Here on the Western Reserve, however, manufacturing was negligible until well along toward the middle of the nineteenth century. Sawmills began to dot the landscape soon after the arrival of the settlers but they were local in their patronage and made no attempt to turn out anything but rough lumber. The grist mills were patronized only by residents of the immediate neighborhood. The first attempt to make iron in the Mahoning Valley was about 18o3, but the tiny furnaces here at the opening of the War of 1812 had to suspend when their workmen enlisted YOUNGSTOWN, AND THE MAHONING VALLEY - 137 or were drafted for service,in that conflict. A carding and cloth dressing plant, an ax works and a woolen factory were built along Mill Creek but these gradually passed out of existence. The possibilities of the Mahoning Valley as a great manufacturing district were not foreseen. Making a living was probably a great enough problem, for in the early days there was little money in circulation in the West, business being confined almost entirely to barter. Education, on which these transplanted New Englanders prided themselves, was carried on only under the greatest difficulties. Presumably the state was to assist and foster a school system, but in other parts of Ohio less store was placed in, education so that there was little real effort made in this direction until after the school code of 1825 was enacted. Prior to that education was left largely to local fancy, and in no other part of Ohio did the people acquit themselves as well as in the Western Reserve. The soil being their chief reliance the settlers naturally turned to it industriously. The ground on the. Western Reserve was generally fertile, but, as we have shown, required, herculean efforts to reduce it from forests to fields, and even when the clearing had been made for grain fields there was wild animal life to contend with, the denizens of the forests having a liking for domestic grains and barnyard stock.. Because of its forested areas the Reserve was rich in animal life, not only in number but in varieties. The buffalo once ranged over the territory that is now the State of Ohio, but if its habitat ever extended to this northeastern area this great animal had disappeared before the advent of the white man. Birds and animals of all other kinds were found here, however, in great profusion, and were freely hunted in the early days, sometimes for sport, but more often merely for the bounties, for the meat and furs, and even in reprisal for depredations committed. The elk, the largest of native game animals, was not plentiful, but deer, bears, wolves, panthers, wildcats, gray foxes, squirrels and the fur-bearing beaver and otter, together with the small mammals that are still existent—the raccoon, opossum, skunk, mink and similar animals—were abundant. Wild turkeys and other game birds were indigenous and ducks and geese and acquatic fowls of all kinds came in countless' numbers. The black bear did not long survive the coming of the white man. His meat was much sought, his fur made fine robes, and he was accused of robbing the pioneers' hog pens, although in this respect the bear is often blamed for the sins of fellow animals. The bear is a herbiverous animal and lives comfortably without meat if there is none easily available. The deer held on for many years, until the '30s or later, in what is now Mahoning County, being driven gradually into the swamp. lands and finally exterminated. In Northwestern Ohio they were found until just before the Civil war, and it is rather remarkable that they are now reappearing in Eastern Ohio, coming from Pennsylvania and West Virginia where rigid protection has caused them to multiply. Wolves and panthers, especially the former, were obnoxiously plentiful. Being unfit for human food they were not molested by the Indians, 138 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY and therefore they not only multiplied rapidly but were unusually bold. They were deadly enemies to the cattle; hogs, sheep and horses of the white man just as they had been to the deer and smaller wild animals of Indian days. While a good word must be said for the bear, the indictment against wolves and panthers, or "catamounts," is well founded —and the earliest settlers were hard put to save their stock from the depredations of these marauders. So well was this recognized that the first territorial legislature of the Northwest Territory passed a law in 1800 requiring county officers to offer bounties for the killing of wolves. In accordance with this act we find a record of the court of quarter sessions of Trumbull County of the May, 1801, term, reading: "Ordered by the court that the sum of two dollars shall be paid out of the treasury of the county as a reward for each and every wild wolf, of the age of six months and upwards, that shall be killed within this county, to the person killing the same ; and the sum of one dollar for each and every wolf under six months, that shall be killed in this county, to the person killing the same ; under the restrictions and regulations of an act entitled, 'An act to encourage the killing of wolves.' "CALVIN PEASE, Clerk." This law was directed against the wolf alone because he was holder than the panther, the latter leaving the fastness of the forest only under the spin- of great hunger. In 1805 the State Legislature took cognizance also of the depredations of beasts of prey, properly including the panther with the wolf. An act passed in this year ordered county authorities to offer bounties for the killing of these animals, providing that for wolves and panthers less than six months old the bounty was to be not more than $3 nor less than 50 cents, and for the scalps of animals more than six months old the bounty was to be not more than $4 nor less than $1. Since a dollar in real money, and not mere barter, was a valued possession in those days, this law was vigorously enforced and very conscientiously observed. The panther disappeared rapidly before the campaign waged against him, but the crafty wolf hung on for many years and was found on the Western Reserve in the '40s or '50s. Even yet an occasional wolf is killed in Ohio. While tradition of pioneer days on the Western Reserve and in every other locality is replete with stories of attacks made on human beings by ravenous wolves and panthers, it is extremely doubtful if there is an authentic instance on record of any human being undergoing an attack from an animal of either of these species. If wounded and cornered, a wolf, a panther, or almost any being will fight back, but animals seldom, or never, attack humans. Wolves and panthers will follow man at times, but they 'are often actuated by the hope of killing an accompanying dog or horse, or perhaps are attracted by the scent of fresh meat being carried by the person followed. At times they have even less incentive—being buoyed up merely by the hope "that something will turn up." The bear is even more grossly maligned in this respect, nursery rhymes to the contrary notwithstanding. The American black bear never deliberately attacks a human being. YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY - 139 Squirrels were pronounced the greatest pest of all. They were charged—and the evidence is strong against them—with raiding grain fields in a most demoralizing fashion. So general, in fact, was the damage done by them that the State Legislature was appealed to, and hit upon an effective method for curbing the inroads of these busy and destructive little rodents. At the legislative session of 1807-08 an act was passed requiring that every male person of military age should annually turn in to the clerk of the township in which he resided at least Imo squirrel scalps, for which a receipt was to be given. If he turned in less than that number, or none at all, he was required to pay 3, cents a scalp for each scalp below the required number. If he turned in more than this number he was given a receipt for the excess, and this excess was credited on his next year's quota or he was given a bonus of 3 cents a scalp. The fines assessed against those failing to comply with the law were divided among those who turned in the excess scalps. Naturally everyone complied with this law, since it gave an opportunity of making some money or at least saving some. Great organized squirrel hunts were sometimes conducted to make a season's killing all at once. In one of these early Ohio roundups a total of 20,000 squirrel scalps were turned in while many more of the little animals were probably slain and not accounted for. The slaughter appears shameful now in the days of strict game law enforcement but it appears to have been necessary at that time or at least the farmers believed it was necessary. Coitsville Township gave a unique demonstration of the operation of the law against squirrels. On the township records may be found the following entry : "At a meeting of Wm. Huston, Joseph Jackson, and Wm. Stewart, trustees for the Township of Coitsville, at the dwelling house of Joseph Bissel, of said town, on April 27, 1808, ordered that every person subject to pay a county tax, according to the act passed by the General Assembly of the State of Ohio, December 24, 1807, to kill ten squirrels, and in addition to the ten squirrels, each person to kill two squirrels for each cow and four for each horse, and if a person has but one cow she is exempt. "JOSEPH BISSEL, Township Clerk." The relation between cows, horses and squirrels is not explained but is perhaps easily understood. The crusade against the squirrels was begun because of the charge that they were inveterate grain destroyers, and the Coitsville trustees probably believed that those who kept stock that subsisted upon grain should be charged with the duty of protecting that grain. The final sentence in the trustees' edict should not be accepted as an indication that the cows were required by law to engage in squirrel-killing expeditions themselves. The exemption was for the cow's owner, not for the cow. A game drive of startling proportions is described by Captain Peirce, the Medina County authority previously quoted. This great hunt occurred in Medina County on December 24, 1818, and was projected by 140 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY New England settlers in one of the townships of that county, who had attempted to follow the sheep-raising industry to which they had been accustomed and had been thwarted repeatedly in their efforts by the depredations of wolves. Weeks were consumed in arranging the hunt. As the second war with Great Britain had ended less than four years previously and the law required every able-bodied man between eighteen and forty-five to own a musket, there was an abundance of weapons, even though many of the settlers did not care for hunting as a sport. Yet there were not enough to go around the 600 men and boys who assembled, and some of the hunters carried axes, hatches, butcher knives, home made lances and even clubs. The hunting ground was to include the entire township of Hinckley. Surveyors blazed a line of trees in a circle half a mile around in the center of the township. The hunters lined up around the entire township and when the word to go ahead was given they moved in on all sides, with horn blowing and great clatter, until the blazed circle was reached. The frightened animals had meanwhile retreated to the area within this circle. At another signal the dogs that had been brought along were released and they soon drove the wild animals from cover, The deer that tried to break between the lines were killed, and when all the outer animals in sight were slain the circle of hunters moved on in and mowed down the game. The hunt began at daylight and lasted until later afternoon. Refreshments, both eatables and drinkables, had been sent for and several hundred of the hunters camped out for the night. An enumeration of the game collected showed seventeen wolves, twenty-one bears and goo deer, with a few wild turkeys, foxes and raccoons. Whether the Medina County sheep dwelt in safety thereafter the chronicler does not say, although it is not apparent that they profited greatly, since the fruits of the hunt were mostly deer, and deer do not harm live stock. Rattlesnakes were common in the swamps and among the rocks of Mahoning County and adjoining counties in the early days, but they were small and not very venomous. They appear to have awakened no fear on the part of the settlers. According to the early settlers, rabbits and red foxes were not known here when the white men came, making their appearance only about 1815, when Mahoning County was fairly well settled. This, if the pioneers were not mistaken, offers curious proof of the strange predilection these animals show for the presence of human beings. It is a fact, of course, that the rabbit thrives in settled communities while the red fox is perhaps more numerous in Ohio today than he was moo years ago, but it has never been generally accepted that these animals shun completely the unpopulated wilds. During the many years that the settlement of the United States was under way, trouble with the Indians was the bane of the frontiersman's life. Scarcely thirty years have now elapsed since the red man definitely gave up the struggle against the encroachments of the pale faced YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY - 141 strangers who moved ever westward, driving the Indians ahead and converting the game-filled forests and prairies into tilled farm lands. Ohio was no exception to this rule. As a fighting man the Indian has been highly overestimated by tradition, since he seldom possessed the courage that has been imputed to him, but in bitter opposition to the spread of white man's rule few Indians have excelled those who peopled Ohio in the closing years of the eighteenth century and the opening years of the nineteenth. The Shawnees, the Ottawas, the Miamis, the Wyandots (of the Huron tribe) and the Delawares were as bloodthirsty as the Sioux or the Pawnees or any other of the "horse" Indians of the plains west of the Mississippi. Tecumseh, probably the ablest and the most remarkable Indian that ever lived, was a Shawnee, born within the present State of Ohio. In Southern Ohio and in Northwestern Ohio the red men contested for the ground that they believed theirs by right of ownership. The land was not won until lonely settlers, and even entire families at times, had fallen before the Indian's tomahawk, and Crawford and St. Clair found that even organized bodies of white men could fail in battle against the crafty children of the forest. Pioneers often related i to their chil- dren in after years the stories of the anxious days spent n blockhouses when men, women and children of a struggling settlement had assembled to ward off an expected assault from the painted red men. As a rule the savages feared an open fight. Their killings were almost invariably cowardly; they fought only when they outnumbered the enemy. To run from an enemy incurred no disgrace on the part of an Indian. On the side of the white man, however, the record is far from clean. Too many of them considered the Indians merely a species of "varmint," like the wolf or the. panther ; something that should be exterminated. And they had no compunctions whatever about the methods used in exterminating them. The story of the founding of Ohio is stained with several foul crimes perpetrated by white men against the natives. One of these was the Yellow Creek massacre of April 30, 1774, a wholly indefensible act on the part of the white men. This slaughter occurred on Yellow Creek in what is now Muskingum County, and its victims were Mingo Indians whose entire village was wiped out by the whites under the command of John Greathouse. Among the victims was the family of Logan, noted Indian chief and friend of the white men, who became thereafter one of their bitter enemies. The massacre appears to have been the work of whisky-crazed men rather than a movement in retaliation for any actual wrongs. Even more brutal was the Gnadenhutten massacre of March 7, 1781, described in a previous chapter, when more than ninety Christian Moravian Indians were murdered by ruffians. Because of its character as a sort of no-man's-land the Western Reserve, or at least that part of it east of the Cuyahoga River, was free from the worst of Indian troubles. The natives here were a spiritless lot ; their presence was tolerated by the Iroquois claimants to the ground merely because they were considered too impotent to be treated as rivals. In the Mahoning Valley and adjacent places they resented the intrusion 142 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY of the whites, but only in a weak way. They had a wholesome respect for the white man, and the white man had little fear of them. Sometimes they stalked silently into white men's cabins and made themselves at home ; again they annoyed women and children in the absence of the men of the family, but usually they went no further than threats that they never meant to fulfill. At times they showed an actual fondness for the white children and even brought gifts to the settlers. Ugly actions on their part could be traced as often as not to indulgence in white man's whisky. Colonel Hillman was highly regarded and feared as well by the red men, and for some years after the settlement of Youngstown Township parties of Indians came down the Mahoning River frequently in canoes and camped in the orchard on his farm, just above where the Baltimore & Ohio passenger station now stands. The red men often invoked the advice of Colonel Hillman in their disputes and complexities. The McMahon affair was the one serious break in relations between the white men and the red men in the Mahoning Valley, but it was not the sole quarrel between the races here. In his reminiscences of early days in Youngstown, Roswell M. Grant tells of other incidents in the life of Colonel Hillman dealing with this racial strife. One of these concerns a murder committed at the ill-fated Salt Spring tract in Weathersfield Township in 1804. Even at this date there was no permanent settlement at the spring but settlers from the entire Mahoning Valley and even from across the line in Pennsylvania came up the trail to make salt, carrying their evaporating kettles on horseback and camping. in the old cabins at the spring while at work. Usually these saltmakers traveled in parties, but on one occasion in the above year one man passed through Youngstown by himself en route to the spring. Two weeks later Colonel Hillman was riding by the spring when his dog began to bark and scratch at the ground, showing strange excitement that indicated lie had found something aside from the mere hiding place of a wild animal. Colonel Hillman investigated and uncovered the body of a man buried about one foot deep and covered with brush. A large body of Indians who had been about Youngstown, Canfield and Ellsworth but a few weeks previously had disappeared, and as it was reasonably presumed that they knew the circumstances of the murder Colonel Hillman was deputized to round them up. He started out alone and near old Chillicothe overtook the party and told them they had to return to Youngstown and answer for the crime. After a day's-deliberation they agreed to do this, the chief having admitted in the meantime that one of his men had committed the murder. The Indian, the chief said, had stopped at the saltmaker's cabin and the latter had given the red man a drink of whisky from a jug he had in his possession. The Indian demanded more whisky, and when this was refused killed the saltmaker and took the jug of liquor. Digging a hole with knife and tomahawk, he buried the body and drew brush over the spot to conceal the grave. Fearing the consequences of the crime the entire party of Indians then hurried away. Colonel Hillman brought the Indians back to Youngstown and the murderer was arraigned, the trial taking place on the bluff overlooking the YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY - 143 Mahoning River south of Spring Common. Simon Perkins officiated as judge with George Tod as prosecutor and Calvin Pease as counsel for the defense. The Indian was acquitted, although the chief was required to give security for the good conduct of his men in the future. In 1806 a killing at Deerfield attracted even greater attention. A band of Indians, variously described as Mohawks, Senecas and Onondagas, who had come westward on a hunting trip, camped near this settlement and John Nickshaw, one of the band, traded horses with John Diver, a Deerfield settler. The Indian, believing that Diver had overreached him in the trade, later demanded his horse back, but Diver refused to annul the bargain. The Indians received this refusal sullenly. At a subsequent gathering at the home of Daniel Diver, a brother of John Diver, or at the home of Judge Lewis Day, they attempted to lure John Diver from the house, but instead attracted Daniel Diver, who was treacherously shot by John Mohawk, one of the band, the shot destroying the sight of both eyes. Colonel Hillman, according to the narrator, was sent for and joined the party of Deerfield men who started in pursuit of the murderous band. That Colonel Hillman went alone on this mission, as Mr. Grant says, is improbable, but that he accompanied the pursuers is very likely as his services were widely sought on such occasions. The Indians were overtaken just west of the Cuyahoga River and Nickshaw was shot in resisting the whites, while Mohawk escaped. The remaining Indians were brought back to Warren and placed under guard but were subsequently released, as Nickshaw and Mohawk were the guiltiest of the party. Omick, or "Old Omick," said to be a Chippewa, was an Indian of more or less note in the Mahoning Valley in the first decade of the nineteenth century and was generally disliked by the whites. He had, or was credited with having, an ugly and troublesome disposition. Omick was the father of a young brave who rejoiced in the name of-Devil Poc-con, although sometimes derisively called "Tom Jefferson," from the fact that he had made a trip to Washington during Jefferson's administration. Devil Poc-con and two other Indians killed two white trappers, Buell and Gibbs by name, at Pipe Creek, and for this crime Devil Poc-con was tried by white man's law and condemned to be hanged. Death by hanging is a penalty that is rare in the history of the Indian people, and on this occasion Devil Poc-con's tribesmen are said to have offered to shoot him to prevent the disgrace of having him die on the gallows. Poc-con was equally hostile to dying at the end of a rope. The white men were inexorable, however, and on June 26, 1812, he was hanged on the Public Square at Cleveland, having been given a liberal supply of whisky beforehand, it is said, to prevent resistance that might excite the congregated Indians to reprisals. From notes gathered during a period of many years in the early days of the Reserve, Rev. H. B. Eldred, once resident pastor of Kinsman, gives an insight into life among the Indians of the Mahoning Valley for the first few years after the coming of the white man. The Indians that came into the settlements of what was then Trumbull County, he says, were from different bands. The Senecas from 144 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY New York State came here only to hunt, other Indians came from th vicinity of Sandusky and the Delawares came from Tuscarawas County. Also bands came from Canada, among these being the Chippewas, late known as the Ojibways, and some who were called the Massasaugas. Although there were no permanent resident Indians in the vicini of Kinsman, small straggling bands frequently visited the settlement fo the purpose of hunting and trapping and also to trade at John Kinsman's store. Furs, skins and various articles of their manufacture, such as baskets, wooden trays, ladles, curiously worked- moccasins, maple sugar, and various trinkets were the commodities in which they dealt. They also brought in native fruits—June-berries, strawberries, raspberries, whortle-berries, haws, plums and crabapples, to exchange for milk, flour, meal bread—always wanting equal measure, no matter what was brought or what was asked in return. Calico, blankets, powder and lead, flints, whisky, tobacco, skins and some little finery, stich as beads and the like, comprised their purchases at the store. Some of the Indians were sharp at driving a bargain. Many could talk broken English, and often showed themselves good judges of the character of those with whom they dealt. They were jealous of their rights, and shy of those white men in whom they lacked confidence. The Indians were generally friendly, withal, and gave the settlers but little trouble, even when intoxicated. Their drunken revels, however, were not infrequent. They had some religious beliefs that seem to have been held in common by all members of their race. They believed in the Great Spirit, who was good; also in an evil state and a future state. Dancing was one of their religious ceremonies. Efforts to Christianize the Indians of the Western Reserve were unsuccessful; and in, truth there was no great disposition on the part of the white men to perform this service. Col. John May, of Connecticut, who visited the Ohio country even before the Western Reserve was settled, expresses in his diary the general opinion that the white men entertained of the Indians. He describes a visit of a band of red men to the settlement where he was temporarily located, as follows : "I was introduced to Old Pipes, chief of the Delaware nation, and his suite, dressed and acting like the offspring of Satan. They did not stay long before they went to their camp in the woods. I went to bed at 12 but got little rest. The Indians made one of their hellish pow-wows, which lasted till the hour of rising. I have no doubt psalmody had its origin in Heaven; but my faith is just as strong that the music of these savages was first taught in a place the exact opposite. About 2 o'clock I got some sleep, when I suppose the damnable music ceased." Settlers who located in some of the more remote parts of the Reserve and who, coming from a settled country in Connecticut, were unprepared for the privations of the first winter of pioneer life in the wilderness, found the Indians Good Samaritans in time of need but prone to become over friendly after too long an acquaintance. "The Indians rendered valuable aid to us during our first winter," one settler writes, "sharing with us game taken during their hunting YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY - 145 expeditions and bringing much elk, deer and bear meat, for which they wished no compensation. In some respects, however, they did not prove to be agreeable neighbors. They were accustomed to practice all sorts of unceremonious liberties. They pulled the latchstring and walked in the door unannounced, either in the day or the night, whenever they chose, stretching themselves at full length on the floor in front of the fire, or helping themselves to food. It was no unusual thing to have three or four loafing there uninvited. We managed to live in peace and friendly relations with them, however. When they were under the influence of liquor they were treacherous and disagreeable. On one occasion we found our cabin filled with drunken Indians when we returned home, the women having fled in terror and taken refuge in a cave." Pioneer history is filled with stories of white children carried away into captivity by the Indians. Sometimes these were returned many years later, sometimes they were never heard of again. When taken in extreme youth they usually acquired Indian ways and had no desire to accept the place among white men that belonged to them. After the advent of the white man, however, the life of the Indians was short on that part of the Reserve east of the Cuyahoga River. In the first dozen years after the apportioning of the eastern townships by the Connecticut Land Company settlers came in with a fair degree of rapidity and the consequent conversion of forest land into tilled farms was fatal to nomadic life. The defeat the Indians suffered at the hands of Gen. Anthony Wayne at the battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 gave them a wholesome respect for the white men, although it likewise left them embittered. They remained on in Northeastern Ohio in diminish-: ing numbers until about 1810, when smallpox broke out in the Indian camps, killing many of the inhabitants. The Indians accepted this affliction as a visitation from the Great Spirit who was displeased with them because they had not removed to western lands allotted to them by the whites. Needless to say, the whites fostered this superstition. Shortly afterward the Indians incurred the dislike of the white men by allying themselves with the British in the War of 1812. They were not in good favor in Ohio afterward. Their defeat at Tippecanoe by Gen. William Henry Harrison, in 1811, broke their spirit still further. After 1812 few red men were found on the eastern part of the Reserve, although small bands occasionally visited here as late as 1820. In Western Ohio they remained until 1840 or later. The years that saw the settlement and the early development of the Westetn Reserve were years of great political rivalry and Ohio was in the midst of all political warfare then, just as it is now. Politically the early residents of the Reserve were naturally predisposed toward the Federalist party, or the party of Alexander Hamilton and the early Adams. New England was the stronghold of Federalism, and Connecticut was perhaps the most Federalistic of even these New England states. The creed of this, the home state of so many of the Western Reserve pioneers, was ultra-conservative. ItS policy, as one authority says, "was to avoid notoriety and public attitudes ; to secure privileges without attracting needless notice ; to act as intensely and as vigorous_ly Vol. I-10 146 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY as possible when action seemed necessary and promising ; but to say as little as possible, and evade as much as possible, when open resistance was evident folly. In other words. Connecticut used cold reason instead of moving with enthusiasm, and frowned on impulsiveness. In the Revolutionary war Connecticut was intensely loyal and uncompromisingly for resistance. Tories received little consideration. In the War of 1812 Connecticut was lukewarm. From the organization of the state in 1776 until 1818 the state was governed uninterruptedly by the Federalists, and the members of this party had little patience with the Democratic-Republican followers of Thomas Jefferson, whom they looked upon as mentally inferior persons, advocates of governmental destruction, and little better than infidels in religion. On their side the Democrats hated the Federalists with equally devout fervor, for this was an era of political as well as religious intolerance. With the major share of its immigration coming from Connecticut it would naturally be presumed that. Federalism would be similarly in trenched on the Western Reserve, but this does not happen to have been the case. In its early days the Reserve was inclined toward the party of Jefferson, now known as the Democratic Party. Several circumstances contributed to this reversal of sentiment. It so happened that among the Connecticut meri who came to the Reserve were some who were staunch Democrats and left their home state just because of its Federalistic control. Party feeling ran so high at this time that an ardent party man was often made uncomfortable in a neighborhood dominated by his political opponents, and on his own part many a party man emigrated rather than reside among fellow beings whom he believed were politically depraved, if not actually dishonest. There were Pennsylvanians and New Yorkers and New Jersey and Maryland men among the emigrants who were not influenced by Connecticut's conservatism or who were Democrats by tradition. Some, in fact, may have become Democrats through resentment at Connecticut domination, The settlers were mostly young men, too, and the Democratic party—then known as the Republican Party—appealed to youth, while the conservative Federalist party drew men of more mature years and calmer judgment. The customary American procedure of blaming the party. that happens to be in power for all real or fancied injustices also influenced political sentiment on the Reserve. St. Clair, governor of the Northwest Territory, was an appointee of the Federalistic administrations of Washington and Adams, and St. Clair was generally unpopular throughout the entire West. This dislike appears to have been engendered by an unfortunate temperament on the part of Governor St. Clair, rather than by any actual wrongful offenses on his part. He was a non-resident governor ; something intolerable to the American mind. He was an easterner in thought and by instinct ; with little sympathy with the aspirations of western pioneers and no understanding of them at all. He acted on the principle that he was governing for the administration * Johnson's, Connecticut. YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY - 147 at Washington, rather than governing merely in conjunction with the residents of the territory. He was a brave but unfortunate soldier in a day when successful fighting men were much esteemed. The low regard in which St. Clair was held was exemplified in the session of the first Territorial Legislature, that of I799-1800, when he was beaten for delegate to Congress by the sturdy, bluff old Gen. William Henry Harrison, who understood the westerners thoroughly and was their idol. St. Clair did not make these self-reliant pioneers incline toward Federalism by any means. Perhaps the "chief influence, however, in alienating the Western Reserve from the Federalist party was its general tendency to consider the western pioneers as mere wards of the government, or unlettered persons incapable of governing themselves, and the accompanying disposition to confine the United States to the original thirteen colonies. It was the same mistake that England made in trying to govern those selfsame colonies. The Jefferson party, on the other hand, was for expansion and local self government. One who was a lifelong disciple of Alexander Hamilton and had little patience with the Jeffersonians, says : "The Jeffersonian Republican party did very much that was evil, and it adopted governmental principles of such utter folly that the party itself was obliged immediately to abandon them when it undertook to carry on the government of the United States, and only clung to them long enough to cause serious and lasting damage to the country ; but on the vital question of the West, and its territorial expansion, the Jeffersonian party was, on the whole, emphatically right, and its opponents, the Federalists, emphatically wrong. The Jeffersonians believed in the acquisition of territory in the West, and the Federalists did not. The Jeffersonians believed that the Westerners should be allowed to govern themselves precisely as other citizens of the United States did, and should be given their full share in the management of national affairs. Too many Federalists failed to see that these positions were the only proper ones. In consequence, notwithstanding all their manifold shortcomings, the Jeffersonians, and not the Federalists, were those to whom the West owed most. "Whether the Westerners governed themselves as wisely as they should mattered little. The essential point was that they had to be given the right of self-government. They could not be kept in pupilage. Like other Americans, they had to be left to sink or swim according to the measure of their own capacities * * * Many of the Federalists saw this, and to many of them, the Adamses, for instance, and Jay and Pinckney, the West owed more than it did to most of the Republican (Democratic) statesmen; but as a whole, the attitude of the Federalists, especialy in the northeast (New England) toward the West was ungenerous and improper, while the Jeffersonians, with all their unwisdorn and demagogy, were nevertheless the western champions." * It was but natural, therefore, that even the Western Reserve should * Roosevelt, Winning of the West. 148 - YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY have inclined toward the party of Jefferson. Outside the Reserve, Ohio, after its organization, was even more Democratic. The Democrats who framed the state constitution at Chillicothe in 18o2 showed their determination to place all authority in the hands of the people by declining to give the governor the veto power. For too years thereafter Ohio held to this curious rule. Oddly enough, however, the men who drafted the Chillicothe document declared that constitution ratified without referring it to the people of the state at all. These combined circumstances swung Trumbull County away from Federalism. The county gave a majority to the Democratic-Republican candidate for governor at each election from the formation of the state dates for this office, as the so-called federalist' who carried the county in until 1822. In fact the Federalists usually did not even put forth candidates for this office, as the so-called Federalist who carried the county in 183o, who were also given majorities in Trumbull County, were anti-Jackson Democrats rather than Federalists. The latter party virtually passed out of existence after the War of 1812, due to its mistaken attitude toward that war. Ohio as a state was consistently Democratic in all presidential elections from its organization to 1836 when it gave its vote to William Henry Harrison, the Whig candidate, although it supported Henry Clay in 1824. when he was the anti-Jackson candidate. The one governor Trumbull County furnished to Ohio in the early days was Samuel Huntington, a Democrat, who served from 1809 to 1811. He was for a short while a resident of Youngstown but was a Cleveland man when elected, Cleveland then being in Trumbull County. With this exception Northeastern Ohio gave no governor to the state in the first forty-five years of its existence, or until Seabury Ford of Geauga County was elected on the Whig ticket in 1848. Renewed immigration from Connecticut following the New England drouth of 1817-18 and the political revolution that turned Connecticut over to the Democrats in the latter year, probably accounts for the anti-Democratic majority recorded in 1822. When Trumbull County swung away from the Democratic party in that year, however, the parting was final. It remained anti-Jackson, Whig and abolitionist until the formation of the Republican party when it went wholeheartedly over to this new organization. The remainder of the Western Reserve followed the same course, with lesser fervor in the case of some counties but even greater fervor in the case of others, until Northeastern Ohio became famed throughout the entire United States for the stunning Republican majorities it rolled up. It is only with the last decade that the strength of Republicanism has been shaken here, and this has been due in part to the growth of independent voting. Republican majorities have fallen off or have been wiped out, but a similar condition exists in Northwestern Ohio—always the stronghold of the' Democratic party in this state—just as Northeastern Ohio was the bulwark of Republicanism—where Democratic majorities have shown a similar slump. In local politics party lines were not so closely drawn in the early days' of the Western Reserve. This was due, perhaps, to the fact that county seat contests and similar struggles were often given precedence YOUNGSTOWN AND THE MAHONING VALLEY - 149 over partisanship. Men of high type were invariably selected to represent Trumbull County. In the first Legislature of the Northwest Territory, that of 1799-1801, Trumbull County was unrepresented because the people here did not acknowledge territorial jurisdiction. In the second Territorial Legislature they were represented by Gen. Edward Paine, after whom Painesville was named. Samuel Huntington and David Abbott were Trumbull County members of the Chillicothe convention of 1802 that drafted the constitution under which the State of Ohio came into existence. Among the Trumbull County men who sat in the early Ohio Legislatures—from 1803 to 1820—were Samuel Huntington, Benjamin Tappan, George Tod, Calvin Cone, Calvin Pease, Daniel Eaton, Turhand Kirtland, John W. Seeley and Eli Baldwin in the State Senate, and Ephraim Quinby, Aaron Wheeler, David Abbott, Homer Hine,- Amos Spafford, James Kingsbury, James Montgomery, John W. Seeley, Richard J. Elliott, Robert Hughes, Thomas G. Jones, Aaron Collar, Samuel Bryson, Samuel Brown, Benjamin Ross, Samuel Leavitt, James Hillman, John P. Bissel, Wilson Elliott, William W. Cotgreave, Henry Lane, Eli Baldwin, Edward Scofield and Dr. Henry Manning in the House of Representatives, Trumbull County remained identical with the Connecticut Western Reserve from its organization in 1800 until 1805 when Geauga County was formed from within it. Portage County was organized in 1807, Cuyahoga in 181o, Ashtabula was created in 1807 and organized in t81 1, Lake County in 1811 and the counties west of the'Cuyahoga River at a later date. Summit and Mahoning, the two most important counties in Northeastern Ohio outside Cuyahoga County, were among the last to come into existence, the former being organized from Medina and Stark aunties in 1840 and the latter from Trumbull and Columbiana counties in 1846. As might be expected from the character of its population, the Western Reserve was intensely anti-slavery. It is doubtful indeed if any section of the United States contributed more to abolishing serfdom in the United States than this northeastern corner of Ohio. In the first half of the eighteenth century when the question of slavery or freedom agitated the entire country this neighborhood was anathema to believers in slavery. They frankly believed that the Western Reserve harbored and bred the country's most uncompromising opponents of their system, and their belief was fully justified. There was no quarrel over slavery or no slavery in Ohio as the constitution of 1787 prohibited human slavery forever in the Northwest Territory or in the states that should be carved from it. But the New Englanders who came here inherited and brought with them disbelief in slavery anywhere. Some of them, even in the earliest days, were open enemies of this system, while even those less severe in their opinions had no sympathy with it. Dislike ripened into open enmity as the slave question became more and more paramount until Western Reserve residents became contemptuous of both law and court decisions that blindly attempted to stem agitation or settle the slavery question by compromise. Even in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, when anti-slavery