300 - HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO Fairport Harbor saw a few years of prosperity before 1850. The trade declined in this part after the coming of the railroads. Fairport's harbor business has never since rivaled that of Conneaut and Ashtabula. A business which is most important as the beginning of a great industry in Lake County is the firm of Storrs, Harrison and Company. In 1854 Jesse Storrs established a small nursery. In 1858 James J. Harrison joined with Mr. Storrs, and the firm assumed the name it has borne ever since; still a prosperous firm, and one of the largest of the nurseries of Lake County. Madison, the northeast township of Lake County, had little growth until late years, when the delightful nature of the lake shore at this point began to attract summer residents. This little settlement has, however, one claim to distinction in its pioneer days. Here, in 1825, one Fuller built the first steamboat ever launched on the Lakes west of Buffalo. Fuller is said to have constructed the entire boat, including the engine, by his own hand. Some ten or eleven sailing vessels and scows were built by Captain Joel R. Norton and others during this period at Madison. Mentor has grown into one of the most beautiful suburban villages of northern Ohio. The story of their growth, however, belongs mostly to the later period of development. At the time of which we are now writing Mentor was a quiet country village. There was a small "pocket furnace" operated by Newell and Hart, opened in 1821, which cast plow shares as a principal business. Grandison Newell also opened a chair factory in 1829, taking Fairchild Smith as a partner. Later they sold out, and their successors, failing to make a success of it, soon closed the business. Willoughby, the northwestern township of Lake County, and up to 1840 part of Cuyahoga, has also become a thriving suburb of Cleveland in late years. The beautiful gorge of the HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO - 301 Chagrin River flows through Willoughby Township from south to north. This has in recent years become a region of beautiful homes. But from the time of the settlement by David Abbott until after the civil war there was little growth and less history in Willoughby. This chapter closes with a few brief biographical sketches. We have already briefly discussed the career of Governor Samuel Huntingden. Two other Geauga and Lake County men are entitled to consideration here : Peter Hitchcock and Seabury Ford. Peter Hitchcock in many ways deserves to be called the leading pioneer in this part of the Reserve. He was one of the Connecticut men—born at Cheshire, New Haven County, in 1781. His early life was hard, but he managed to put himself through Yale, although the operation took a much longer time than usual. He left college in 1801 with a diploma, started the study of the law, and in 1804 was admitted to practice. He opened his first office in his home town of Cheshire, but found times hard there, and moved to the Reserve, the Land of Promise to young Connecticut men, in 1806. In the meanwhile he had acquired a wife. In the Reserve he settled at Burton. Here he struggled for years, and built up a practice. In 1810 he entered politics. His first office was a seat in the lower house of the general Assembly. After two years in the lower house he was promoted to the State Senate, where he served four years more, the last two as Speaker. In 1816 he was elected to the House of Representatives at Washington, but before the expiration of his first term was chosen by the legislature as a judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio. He served two terms—fourteen years—in this capacity, then a political upheaval removed him. For the two succeeding years he was again in the state senate, and in 1835 went back on the supreme bench. After another short interlude he re- 302 - HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO turned for the last time in 1845, retiring finally in 1852, at the age of seventy-one, having spent nearly all of forty years in the service of the state and nation. Hitchcock was more than a judge, however, valuable as that position is. He was guide, counselor, friend and leading farmer in all of Geauga and Lake Counties. He spent his last days in Painesville, where he died March 4, 1854, then Lake's wand Geauga's leading citizen. Seabury Ford was the nephew of Peter Hitchcock. He was also born at Cheshire, Connecticut, in 1801. His father moved to Burton in 1807, so that young Seabury spent most of his childhood and youth in the Reserve. He attended the old Burton Academy, and from there went back to New Haven, to Yale. Seabury Ford graduated from Yale in 1825. His uncle Peter Hitchcock took him into his office to study law, and in 1827 he was admitted to practise. Like his uncle, he soon chose a political career. He became an uncompromising Whig, sticking by that party until the last. He served in the lower house of the legislature and the senate from 1835 almost continuously until 1848. In that year he old Whig party nominated him for governor. The split in the party made his majority small. It will be remembered that Zachary Taylor, elected that same year, was the second and last successful Whig candidate for the presidency. Ford served one term in the governorship, a term in which he served the people well. When he retired he was tired out, and shortly afterward suffered a stroke of paralysis. He lingered four years, and died on May 8th, 1855. Ford was not a genius, but was a painstaking public servant, and deserves to rank among the memorable men of the Reserve. Another great citizen of Ohio, James Abram Garfield, spent much of his life in Geauga and Lake counties, but his principal service begins with the Civil War Period. CHAPTER VII PORTAGE COUNTY Ravenna, as the county seat of Portage county, was not provided with permanent buildings until 1810, when a court house and jail were constructed. They were not very satisfactory. The court house, a frame building, was thus described in the local paper, the Courier, in 1826 : "Portage County can boast, on the score of public buildings, nothing but a shell, which is alternately occupied by bipeds and quadruped, and which, from its dilapidated state, is equally easy of access to both—and in which, we may, at times, hear the preachers of the Gospel, the expounders of the law, and the birch of the schoolmaster, and consequently the squalls of the children, the squealing of the pigs and the bleating of the sheep. 'Tis, in fact, occupied as a Court House and Meeting-house, and we all know it has become proverbial as the county sheep pen." Two successive early sheriffs also filed in turn formal protests concerning the condition of the county jail, one of them declaring that it would not hold a prisoner. A new court house of brick, one story high, later took the place of the old inadequate building, which, after various vicissitudes, burned in 1871. A new jail, as given in the contract specifications, is interesting, as showing what our ancestors regarded as a proper place of incarceration for prisoners : "The lower story, fourteen feet off one end to be built of good sound white oak timber, hewn fourteen inches square, without wane, and divided into two rooms, with a space-way - 303 - 304 - HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO between of four feet in the clear, and floored under and over with timber of the same description as the walls, with one fifteen-light window in the back end of the hall, in two sashes and very strongly grated with iron; one door out of the space-way into each of the prison rooms, and one into the other part of the house, all made double with two-inch white oak plank and covered on the inside with sheet-iron at least one-eighth of an inch thick, and doubled over the edge of the door and very strongly nailed with stout nails, and hung with large iron hinges suitable for doors of such weight and size, and one large and sufficient lock on each of the three doors." The only opening for air into these two cells was an iron grated hole, really a section of one timber removed, fourteen inches in height and three feet long, opening into the central passage way. This must have made a sufficiently gloomy dungeon. The sanitation was bad, also, all toilet arrangements being in or under the cells. It was not customary to pay much attention either to the comfort or the health of prisoners of those early days. Over the malefactors' cells, in the second story, were two more cells of equal size, for the debtors of the county. These were more comfortable, having a small grated window each, to the outside world, and a small fireplace. The other end of the building contained the apartments, upstairs and down, of the sheriff's family. A two story court house was built in 1826-30. It was what might be called western classic in style, having six two story wooden columns, and a cupola. Our ancestors loved cupolas which could not be ascended to, and balconies with no means of access from inside. The old jail was replaced by a new one of stone in 1840. It was nearly four years in building. As an example of early Portage County justice we quote from the Warner Beers "History of Portage County" a most HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO - 305 extraordinary suit for breach of contract; the case of Hiram Messenger vs. Thatcher F. Conant : "In going to Garrett's Mill, Messenger tracked an otter into its hole, and, as he supposed, fastened him in with a stone, and then on his way rejoicing. Meeting Conant he sold his claim to him for $3. The purchaser had no trouble in finding the hole, but if it ever had contained an otter the animal had vanished, and Conant, therefore, refused to pay for the empty hole. Messenger sued him before Squire Alford, and recovered judgment for the $3. Conant thereupon gave notice of appeal which the squire prevented by paying Messenger the money, and remitting the costs of the suit." The case certainly is not in accord with the customs of modern justices of the peace. Whether Squire Alford paid the bill out of pure generosity, or on account of a fear that his decision might not stand, and a consequent desire to protect his professional reputation, the records do not say. George Tod would probably have been the judge who reviewed the case, and his knowledge of the law was as profound as his integrity was unquestioned. It would have been interesting to get his decision in this extraordinary case. There were two practising lawyers in Portage County at the time of its origin : Benjamin Tappan and Asa D. Keyes. Tappan was a very successful attorney, who became a Common Pleas Judge, and afterward a United States District Judge. He was a Democratic United States Senator from 1838 to 1845. Tappan's later life was spent in Steubenville. Lawyers were scarce in Portage. In 1825 it is on record that only three were in residence. Tappan and Keyes had gone. In their places were Darius Lyman, Jonathan Sloane and Lucius V. Bierce. Portage County had the first conviction for murder in the eastern portion of the Reserve, probably, when one Henry 306 - HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO Aunghst was convicted and executed for the murder of Epaphras Matthews, in 1814. They had been traveling together as pedlers, and Aunghst, in order to rob Matthews of his money, brained him with a club. After Aunghst's execution, which occurred in public in the center of Ravenna, some excitement was caused by the attempt on the part of some medical men to secure the body for dissection. Such were the troubles which stood in the way of the work of early medical students. The scheme was frustrated, and Aunghst was properly buried in the end. Portage has always been an agricultural county. As originally organized it included Summit County, and the name of Portage is derived from the fact that the great divide between the Erie and Ohio basins runs diagonally across the two counties. The little West Branch of the Mahoning River has its source northeast of Ravenna in the corner of Shalersville Township, flows in a winding course south to a point a little east of Ravenna City, then turns east and flows through Charlestown and Paris Townships to join the main stream at Newton Falls, in Trumbull. The little Cuyahoga cuts across the northwest corner of the county, passes through the city of Kent, and continues its southwesterly course until it reaches Akron, whence it flows north to empty into. Lake Erie in the heart of Cleveland. From the Cuyahoga to either the Tuscarawas or the Mahoning was the easiest of all the Indian portages in the days when the aborigines dominated the Ohio scene, before the coming of the white man, and the early white settlers soon learned to follow the Indian's lead. The "Grand Portage," of course, is the crossing from the Cuyahoga to the Tuscarawas, through the west side of the present city of Akron. What curious natural upheaval caused the change in the course of the Ohio rivers in this neighborhood has been an interesting and puzzling problem for local geologists; whether HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO - 307 it was in the glacial age, pre-glacial or post-glacial. At any rate, it has left an interesting and beautiful country. Portage has neither the ruggedness of Columbiana on the south nor of Geauga on the north. Nor has it any such wide sweep of valley as the Mahoning has dug through her lower course. Portage is rolling, and quite hilly in places, especially in the northeastern corner, where nature has carved out the delightful and fantastic extravaganza of Nelson and Kennedy Ledges. But the crossing from the Cuyahoga to the Mahoning is marked by no noticeable elevations. The casual traveler would be very unlikely to notice anything which would call to his attention the fact that he was crossing the divide between two of the great drainage basins of a great continent. Yet the slight elevation on which Ravenna stands, for instance, is so situated that the flow of the casual water on one side of town is toward the Mississippi ; on the other, toward the St. Lawrence. Portage County has other qualities of charm. Between Ravenna and Kent are a group of beautiful little lakes and ponds. The most famous of these is Brady Lake, named for the great Indian fighter who found his refuge in its waters on that retreat glorified by his famous "leap" across the Cuyahoga at Kent. But others of the group are probably as beautiful. The early settlers in Portage, like their neighbors of Geauga, soon turned their attention to the raising of cattle and sheep. After the forests were cleared it turned out to be good grazing country, with an abundant water supply. There does not appear any early record of the development of blooded stock. The cattle were of no particular breed, and the hogs were generally "razor-backs," trained to gather their sustenance in the woodlands, and producing a nutritious but tough and sinewy quality of pork. Yet as the years went by the stock improved. Portage began to go into the cheese- 308 - HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO making business, and to furnish a share of that product for the southern market. By 1850 the county was making nearly two million pounds of cheese a year, most of which was shipped to outside markets. No large settlements grew up. Howe gives the population of Ravenna in 1846 as about 1,200, Kent about 400. The population of the county in 1820 was 10,093 ; in 1830, 18,792 ; in 1840, 23,107. In 1840 there were more cattle than human beings, the bovine population being 25,308. The first Portage County Agricultural Society was organized at the Ravenna Courthouse on May 9, 1825. The officers were as follows: Joshua Woodward, President; Elias Harmon, First Vice-President; Owen Brown, Second Vice-President; Frederick Wadsworth, Corresponding Secretary; Samuel D. Harris, Recording Secretary; William Coolman, Junior, Treasurer; Jonathan Sloane, Auditor. The first fair held by this society was at Ravenna on October 18, 1825. The only premium award at this fair which we have found recorded is one to Seth Harmon, three dollars for the best crop of corn. Harmon raised one hundred bushels and one peck on an acre of land. It would be interesting to know if a specimen or two of the Hubbard squash were exhibited at this fair. Local tradition ascribes the origin of this famous vegetable to Bela Hubbard, who was one of the original settlers of Randolph Township. The tradition is to the effect that Hubbard, on a trip to southern Ohio found some seeds, which he planted in his garden. The squashes became deservedly popular, both for baking and for pie making, and have since borne his name. This story is told in several old records, and has the ear-marks of truth. The original society continued to hold an annual fair in Ravenna until 1829. In 1830 officers were elected, but no fair HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO - 309 was held. In 1839 an act was passed by the state legislature "to authorize and encourage the establishment of agricultural societies in the several counties in this state, and to regulate the same." In accordance with this act a new organization, the "Portage County Agricultural Society," was effected. This society held its first fair in Ravenna on October 20 and 21, 1841. Then continued drouth caused a general crop failure, on account of which no fair was held. The society was reorganized under a new act of the legislature. They continued to hold an annual fair, from that time, and the institution became permanent. Portage County had the same educational difficulties as the rest of the Reserve, and, in fact, of all Ohio, during the early years. The almost purely rural and therefore sparse population, and the consequent distances between settlements made Portage's problem even more difficult. Teachers were supported by private subscription, and the lack of coin or paper money brought about some curious situations. Here is a copy of a school contract in Edinburg Township in 1823 : "Agreed with Austin Loomis, of Atwater, to teach school in Edinburg three months, for twelve bushels of wheat per month; one-half to be paid at the end of three months in grain, and the remainder in some other trade, such as cattle, sheep and whisky." How young Mr. Loomis worked out his problem of existence would be a fine romantic story, perhaps, if we knew the answer. Of the four commodities we know that the whisky was the commonest currency in Ohio, but how he got along with such cattle and sheep as he received is a question that the writer cannot answer. The academies which sprang up in various parts of the Reserve were either nonexistent or negligible. No record of any school which offered training beyond the three R's is 310 - HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO to be found before 1850. At that time an institution was incorporated which grew to an importance far beyond its physical size. The Disciples were by this time very strong in the Reserve. For some time there had been a feeling among them that there was needed some kind of institution for higher education, in this part of the world, which would be under the direction of the Disciple Church, and therefore free from the danger of heresy. The place they selected for a site was Hiram, a village "set on a hill" in the northern tier of Portage County townships. The school was originally known as the "Western Reserve Eclectic Institute." The purposes of the institution were two : first, to provide a "sound scientific and literary education ;" second, "to temper and sweeten such education with moral and scriptural knowledge." The Institute was opened under the auspices of A. S. Hayden, a well-known Disciple minister, as principal. Following the Reverend Hayden was James Abram Garfield, who progressed through the Institute a pupil, teacher and principal. Garfield left, as we know, to join the army, and the subsequent history of the Institute, as Hiram College, belongs to a later chapter on higher education. The Press of Portage was not voluminous in quantity, but seem to have excelled in quality. The changes and reorganizations, beginnings and failures, of the papers of Ravenna, for example, are almost an accurate history of the political controversies of the times. The first Ravenna newspaper was the Western Courier and the Western Public Advertiser. This tremendous name headed a little paper of four pages of five columns each, the pages being twenty by twenty-six inches in dimensions. The paper was organized and edited by a young Pittsburgher, J. B. Butler. The paper cost two dollars and fifty cents per year, or two dollars if paid one-half in advance, and the STORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO - 311 proprietor offered to accept in payment "most kinds of produce, if delivered at the stores of Mr. Z. Kent, or Perry and Prentiss, in Ravenna." The first number appeared in April, 1825. Butler was an ardent supporter of John Quincy Adams. In 1827 Butler sold out to William Coolman, Junior, and C. B. Thompson, who in 1828 sold a half interest to James B. Walker. The paper remained loyal to Adams in the campaign of 1828, and helped to carry Portage County, although Ohio went to Jackson that year by a comfortable majority—not gained, be it said, from any part of the Western Reserve. By 1829 Coolman was the sole proprietor, and it changed its politics, becoming the Democratic organ of the County. It survived the panic of 1837 to die in the following year. When the Courier, etc., became Democratic there appeared in Ravenna a new Whig organ, the Ohio Star. This paper had a remarkable career, surviving, after several combinations, as the Portage County Republican, into the Seventies. This paper, under its various names, was Whig until the end of the Whig Party, then grew into Republican by the Free-Soil and Know-Nothing route. It was established by Lewis L. Rice, a New York printer. To follow it through all its changes of ownership would require too much space. In 1854, under the management of Lyman W. Hall, the Star amalgamated with the Home Companion and Whig, the new combination being known as the Portage County Democrat although it became a staunch supporter of the new Republican Party. After the Civil War it changed its name, first to Republican-Democrat, and afterwards to Republican. The Democratic opposition in Ravenna was represented, from 1845 to 1862, by the Portage County Sentinel. This paper had as its original motto a quotation from Jefferson : "The Constitution—The Safeguard of our Federal Compact." In 1847 it changed to another typical Jeffersonian aphorism : "Opposition to Tyranny is Obedience to God." It is a well 312 - HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO known fact, of course, that the efficacy of a motto is in no wise impaired by an inability to comprehend its meaning. One might mention the Hickory Flail and Fusion Thresher on account of its threatening name. This little sheet was organized and published to help William Medill to the gubernatorial chair in 1853. Medill was defeated, and the Flail fell to rise no more. No other papers of importance appeared in the county before the Civil War. The history of the Portage County settlements is brief. By about 1820, the county seat, Ravenna, was a straggling village. There was a general store, kept by Seth Day; another opened a little later by Zenas Kent, a tavern, called "Kings Tavern," operated by a man named Greer. Jesse R. Grant, Father of the President, was here for a little while in the twenties, operating a tannery. From Portage County he went into southern Ohio, when U. S. Grant was born. The first of the Grants, Noah, Jesse's father, came into Deerfield Township in 1805. One might be interested in the price of ordinary groceries in this early day. Here are a few entries from the day book of Oviatt and Kent. of Ravenna. under date of March 2. 1818