486 - HISTORY OF PORTAGE COUNTY.
CHAPTER XXV
NELSON TOWNSHIP.
COMING OF THE PIONEERS-THE MILLS BROTHERS-TWO LONESOME FAMILIES- IMPORTANT ARRIVALS-HEADS OF FAMILIES IN 1815—FIRST BUILDINGS- FIRST ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES-CHURCHES AND SCHOOLS-TAVERNS, MILLS AND ROADS— Fiat Justitia, Ruat Coelum —EXPLOITS OF CAPT. MILLS - SUMMARY- TOWNSHIP OFFICERS-THE LEDGES-STATISTICS.
NELSON, when the first settler arrived in it, and for seventeen years thereafter, was included in the territory comprised in several of the adjoining townships under the name of Hiram, but in the surveys was laid off as Town 5, Range 6. The original proprietors, who purchased from the Connecticut Land Company were Urial Holmes, Ephraim Root, Timothy Burr and Appolos Hitchcock, Holmes being the principal owner.
In the spring of 1800, three sons of Deacon Ezekiel Mills, of Becket, Mass., started out to seek their fortunes in the Western Reserve. They were Delaun, aged twenty-four, who had married at the age of sixteen, and had three children; Asahel, who had been married two years, and had one child; and Isaac, nineteen years of age and single. These three men with the two wives and four children started out in two covered wagons, each drawn by a yoke of oxen. Several weeks elapsed before they reached Youngstown, then a very diminutive hamlet, containing only a few log-cabins. By this time the money of the brothers had dwindled down to less than 25 cents, so they had to seek employment, and, as luck would have it, Urial Holmes, the principal proprietor of Nelson, happened to be on his way to his land for the purpose of having it surveyed, so the brothers were engaged as ax-men to the surveyors, who were led by Amzi Atwater, afterward one of the most noted citizens of the county, and Roger Cook. Leaving their families at Youngstown, the brothers went forward to their work, and returned in the following September. Delaun immediately removed his family to a cabin on 100 acres of land given to him by Holmes as a reward for his settling thereon, which land was on the north side of the road, just west of the Center; Asahel remained in Youngstown till the following spring (1801), and then settled on 100 acres on the north and south road, which, it is thought, was also a gift from Holmes; Isaac returned to the East. Asahel in after years became a Methodist preacher and died in Deerfield. Delaun had an extremely adventurous life, and some of his exploits and experiences will be given in this sketch further along. He was a man of not only great physical strength, but of unusual sturdiness of character, as brave as a lion, and perfectly fearless of consequences, having withal a coolness of temper that to a foe was exasperating. It is said that one of the blandest of smiles would overspread his features when drawing a bead on some cowardly savage who had waylaid and missed him. He was a man of little education, but possessed of extraordinary common sense and correctness of judgment.
Delaun and Asahel Mills and their families were the only inhabitants of the township till the spring of 1803, when quite a number arrived from Mas-
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sachusetts and Connecticut and made settlement. Among those were Stephen Baldwin, Benjamin Stow and his two sons, Daniel and Caleb, John Bancroft with four sons, Rudolphus, John, Artemus and David, Daniel Owen, two brothers, Stiles and William, Thomas Kennedy and Asa Truesdale, making seven families in all, which constituted the entire population of Nelson in 1804. In this year came Isaac Mills, the father of Mr. Albert Mills, of the Center, who is now seventy-eight years of age, and well preserved in all his faculties. The old gentleman has been a great singer in his day, and led the singing in his church for over forty years, having only within the past two or three years ceased to do so. Isaac, in company with a friend, Origen Adams, both being single men, made the journey on foot from Connecticut, but the former, doing quite well the first year, returned to Connecticut and on November 27, 1805, married his pretty little sweetheart, Miss Polly Adams, a damsel of only fifteen years. It was a fearful undertaking for the child-wife to come to this far-distant wilderness, but of such stuff were some of the women of those days made, that the little girl became a splendid pioneer wife, equal to all emergencies, content and happy, a blessing to all who knew her, and the mother of stalwart sons and buxom daughters.
In July, 1804, also settled Col. John Garrett, from Delaware, for whom was named Garrettsville. A German from Delaware, named Johann Noah, came about the same time as Col. Garrett;' also Abraham Dyson, from Delaware, who settled near Col. Garrett, on the spot that afterward became the village of Garrettsville. In 1805 came John Tinker and Nathaniel Bancroft, sons- in-law of Benjamin and Daniel Stow, Martin Manly and Daniel Wood.
In 1806 Asahel having fitted up accommodations for his aged father and mother, brought the old couple out, but the Deacon died in 1809 and his widow followed him several years later. Oliver Mills, a brother of the above, also settled in the township about 1809, and about the same time came Charles May, the Rudolphs and Rev. William West, a Baptist minister.
In 1810 or thereabouts came Charles Johnson, from Connecticut, bringing three sons, Erastus, Alanson and Charles, Jr.
In 1811-12 a large company, mostly Presbyterians, came in from Connecticut, prominent among whom were Deacon Joshua B. Sherwood, Wells Clark, Bridsey Clark, Theron Colton, David Beardsley, Titus Bonney, Hezekiah Bonney, John Hannah, David Goodsell and a large connection of the Hopkins family. Emigration then ceased almost entirely till the close of the war, 1812-14.
In 1815 an enumeration of the settlers of the township resulted in a showing of thirty-three heads of families, as follows: Hezekiah Higley, John Bancroft, Jr., Adolphus Bancroft, Titus Bonney, Benjamin Stow, John Bancroft, Sr., William Kennedy, Thomas Kennedy, John Hannah, Rossitter Hopkins, Stephen Baldwin, Delaun Mills, John Tinker, Alanson Johnson, David Beardsley, Benjamin Pritchard, Theron Colton, Rev. William West, John Rudolph, Widow Garrett, Joshua B. Sherwood, Isaac Mills, Robert C. Bennett, Sylvanus Hewlett, Elisha Taylor, Sr., Martin Manly, David Stow, Johann Noah, Asa Truesdale, Erastus Johnson, Bridsey Clark and Wells Clark.
From he date of the above enumeration till 1820, the township rapidly settled up, and among those who came in were, to give a good heading to the list, Jeremiah Earl Fuller, who was six feet foar inches in height, bringing two sons. Charles Whiting, Charles Hewlett, Marcus and David Morris, Thomas Barber, Thomas Perry, Benjamin Brown, one of whose sons was Probate Judge, another a prominent lawyer, and another a well-known physician; also, came
490 - HISTORY OF PORTAGE COUNTY.
the Merwins, Eatons, Merritts and others. From 1820 onward, emigrants from the East still came in till the price of land began materially to advance. Among those coming about this time were Harry Spencer, Jacob and Ashbel Haskins, Jr., sons of Ashbel Haskins, Sr., Jared W. Knowlton and family, Ira Fuller, who lived to be ninety-four years of age, and a number of the Pritchards and Taylors.
As soon as the surveying party under Atwater arrived in Nelson, they set to work and erected a log-cabin for their use whilst in the township. It was, of course; a rude affair, built of unhewn logs, and stood just east of the present house on the land afterward donated to Capt. Mills. This was the first human habitation in Nelson; and was erected in the early spring of 1800. When Delaun returned with his family in the fall, he made considerable improvements in the surveyors' cabin, and put it in the best condition pos-sible for wintering his wife, and her three young children. Capt. Mills afterward erected a double log-cabin, quite a commodious affair, and it was the admiration of the whole settlement. Asahel Mills eroded the next cabin after his brother, and was soon followed by many others. But one of the most noted events of the time was the erection by Thomas Kennedy, about 1811, of a frame house. It was located about three-fourths of a mile north of the Center, and when it was finished some of his neighbors said that Thomas was getting too proud. The father of Thomas Kennedy was William Kennedy, who was ninety years of age when he came. The old gentleman was considerable of a drinker, and on one occasion came to his son and told him that the spring back of the house was not water but Santa Cruz rum.
In the spring of 1804 Enoch Judson, of Mantua, married Anne Kennedy, this being the first marriage in the township, but the married life of the unfor-tunate lady was short, for in June following she became slightly sick, and applying to Mrs. Rufus Edwards for an emetic, was given, through mistake, arsenic, which caused her death. The second marriage was that of a sister of Anne Kennedy, Mrs. Norton, to Joseph Nourse, a lawyer of Burton.
It has been generally supposed that Harmon Mills, son of Delaun Mills, born in November, 1801, was the first child born in the township, but we are sorry to annul that claim by stating that the reputed " previous " Harmon had a little girl cousin named Dianthea, who antedated him by almost a month, she having made her appearance on the 14th day of October, 1801. She was the daughter of Asahel Mills.
The first death in the township, like the first birth, has been wrongly stated. A son of Col. Garrett died in September, 1804, and to this youth has usually been given the honor of departing the earliest, but an infant of Asahel Mills died a year or two before the date of young Garrett's death, as is proven by the Mills' family record. The first man to die in the township was Col. John Garrett, who departed this life in January, 1806, at the age of forty-six years, after a career of usefulness to his fellow-men and honor to himself. He left a widow, who survived him forty years, and four children who became honored and distinguished citizens.
About the first preaching ever listened to in Nelson fell from the lips of Asahel Mills, who at the time he settled in the township had made up his mind to be a Methodist preacher. His sermons may have simply been exhortations in the Methodist sense, but we have the word of Albert Mills that he was the earliest preacher who lifted up his voice in the township. Rev. Will-iam West, a Baptist minister, came in very early, probably 1807 or 1809, and. of course delivered a sermon to the settlers occasionally, but the first church organization occurred in 1807, at the house of Johann Noah, the services
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being conducted by Rev. Thomas G. Jones, of the Baptist denomination. Mr. Jones was afterward a member of the Ohio Legislature, and President of a bank in Wooster. Rev. R. R. Roberts, afterward a leading Bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church, was a circuit rider in those early days, and preached every two weeks at the cabin of Capt. Mills. A preacher by the name of George Lane, a noted singer, came in an early day. He had a powerful voice and always led the singing. William West, the minister spoken of above, became the first settled pastor in 1809 or 1810, he having preached irregularly for the settlers some time before. The original proprietors donated him fifty acres of land.. Mr. West was an excellent man and much beloved. He has no descendants in the township, but one of his daughters married Prof. Brainard, of Cleveland. The large company that came from Connecticut in 1811-12, organized a Congregational Church in 1813, all of the members having belonged to the same church before they came West. In 1822 the Presbyterians erected a very fine church at the Center, and it stands there to-day. Rev. Benjamin Fenn was the first regular preacher to occupy the pulpit, he coming there in 1823. The first Methodist Church was built in 1832, and the first minister to preach in it was Rev. J. W. Davis. The church still stands in good condition at the Center.
The first school opened in the township was taught by Hannah Baldwin, at the Center, in 1804. Not one of those who attended this primitive educational institution is now alive. The next school was taught by Oliver Mills, in. 1806. He was a brother of the famous Captain, and is said to have monopolized all the " school larnin' " of the early Mills family; he was a farmer, mechanic, teacher and doctor, all combined. Nelson Academy Association was permanently organized January 6, 1852; Charles Goodsell, D. Everest, David Hanners, Josiah Talbot, C. C. Fuller, Silas Clark, John Martin, A. J. Eldred and Albert Mills were elected Trustees. At the annual meeting, January 3, 1853, W. R. Knowlton, J. W. Spencer and G. B. Stow were elected Trustees. C. C. Fuller was Clerk of the first annual meeting. The condition of the township schools at the close of 1884 is shown by the following statistics: Revenue in 1884, $3,947.10; expenditures, $2,344.62; eight school buildings valued at $5,000; average pay of teachers, $36 and $22; enrollment, 88 boys and 91 girls.
Capt. Mills for many years kept his house as a stopping-place or tavern. It being located on the route to the farther western country, it was very convenient, especially as he always had on hand a supply of whisky and rum. Another tavern was kept on the road north of the Center by Artemus Bancroft.
The first mill was erected by Col. Garrett, at Garrettsville, and it was the greatest convenience with which the settlers had been supplied, as previous to its erection long journeys had to be made to get their little grists ground. The mill was both saw and grist, and was built in 1805.
This same year Amzi Atwater surveyed a road from his place in Mantua, along the south line of Hiram Township, to Col. Garrett's mill, and in 1800 another was cut out to Aurora, westward, and one through Windham and Braceville, to Warren. Abraham Dyson, who came in at the time Col. Garrett did, was the first blacksmith, and had more than he could do repairing guns for the Indians. The first wheat raised was forty-three bushels, from three pecks of seed, sown in the turnip patch of Capt. Mills in 1801. It was threshed out on a sheet in the wind. An epidemic of a fearful nature prevailed in 1842, and carried off many persons. The patient would be taken with something like the ague, after which a peculiar fever would set in, when death would shortly ensue. It baffled the skill of some of the best physicians..
492 - HISTORY OF PORTAGE COUNTY.
Mr. Pike, the oldest man in the township, now ninety-one years, was in the war of 1812. Capt. Mills commanded a company at the battle of Mackinaw under Col. Croghatt. He was the first militia Captain, also.
The township was organized in September, 1817, and named Nelson. The first Justices of the Peace elected were Daniel Stow and Elisha Taylor, Jr., the latter declining to serve. One of the first cases was Delaun Mills vs. James Knowlton, action to recover the price of a bear. Mills had a bear trap, Knowlton. baited it, caught a bear and took it home. Mills claimed the bear, as it was caught in his trap. Judgment, 25 cents, awarded gills for the use of trap; plaintiff and defendant to divide costs.
Before the township was regularly organized, and while Benjamin Stow was Magistrate, Thomas Kennedy and Wareham Loomis got into a fight, and the one who was whipped had the other arrested. When the case tame up for trial, the prosecuting witness, defendant and spectators were all greatly surprised at the decision of the Judge. He fined both parties $5 apiece, and made each pay half the costs. Being remonstrated with by a friend of the prosecuting witness at the apparent irregularity of the proceeding--that it was not law—he replied, "I am Chief Justice of this domain, and am here to deal out justice; I don't care a fig for the law."
Another case, showing that in those early times justice, rather than the strict technicalities of the law, prevailed, occurred during the time Capt. Mills had his tavern. The accommodating Captain, as has been stated, sold whisky, but he forgot to get out a license. He was arraigned before the Trumbull County Court for selling liquor without a license, and plead guilty to the charge. Judge Kirtland, who had often been refreshed at the hostelry of Mills, remarked to Judge Pease that he did not think the defendant guilty within the meaning of the statute, whereupon Pease asked Mills if he could not change his plea.; "May it please the Court, your Honor, I am not guilty," promptly replied the accommodating Captain, and he was as promptly discharged.
Many stories have not only been told orally, but have found their way into print, about Capt. Delabn Mills and the Indians; they have been added to from time to time sb abundantly that one would be led to believe that the exclusive business of the redoubtable Captain was to hunt and kill Indians. According to some authorities he would shoot a couple of redskins and throw them on his burning log-pile, just as he would perform any other ordinary work; then he pursues a party of them into a swamp and dispatches half a dozen or so, before breakfast; again, he would kill one, put him under the upturned root of a tree, cut the top of the tree off, and let the balance fly back and thus effectually bury the brave; or again, he would stick the carcass of one of his wily foes into a spring, and ram and jam it down with his rifle. There is no doubt about the extraordinary bravery of this pioneer, no doubt about his skill with the rifle, and no doubt about his hatred of the red sav-ages, but he was a humane man, with a loving wife and a number of children at his fireside, which prevented his being an Indian-slayer by profession, as a man of his good common sense would know that such careers are short. Notwithstanding the many accounts of his deeds of blood, the only really authentic one is that written by his son Urial, of Salem, Ill., who in a letter dated August 22, 1879, states: "About 1803 an Indian got mad at my father and said he would kill him. Father was in the habit of hunting through the fall. One day in crossing the trail made in the snow the day before, he found the track of an Indian following him; this put him on his guard. He soon saw the Indian. They both sheltered themselves behind trees. Father put
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his hat on his gun stock and stuck it out so that the Indian could see it. The Indian shot a hole through the hat, and when it fell he ran toward father with his tomahawk in his hand; father stepped from behind the tree, shot him and buried him. He told my mother and she told me. About the same time the Indians were in camp near the cranberry-marsh, afterward owned by Benjamin Stow, Asahel Mills was hunting cattle and came past their camp; an Indian' snapped a gun at him, but the Indian's squaw took the gun away from him. Asahel came home badly scared and told his story. We soon saw ten Indians coming painted for war. They came into the house; all shook hands with father but the last, who uttered an oath and seized him by the throat. Father caught him by the shoulders, jerked him off the floor, and swung him around. The calves of his legs hit the sharp leg of a heavy table; he then dragged him out doors, took him by the hair and pounded his head on. a big rock and left bim. The Indians scarified the bruised parts by cutting the skin into strips about one inch wide; they then tied a blanket around him, put a pole through the blanket, took the pole on their shoulders and carried him to camp. They said that if he died they would kill father. While he was confined they shot Diver of Deerfield. This created quite an excitement, and the Indians all left for Sandusky, leaving the crippled one in camp. Some time after, when father was away, he came to the house in the dusk of the evening and asked if he could stay. Mother told him he could. She did not sleep any that night, believing he had come to kill us. In the morning he got up, built a fire and cooked his breakfast of bear's meat; he then went out and soon returned wih the hind-quarters of a fine bear which he gave to mother, then bade her good-by and left. She was as glad to see him go as any visitor she ever had." He was appointed Captain of the Big Hunt in 1818, Capt. Mills was bitten by a rattlesnake in the summer of 1812, and it very nearly ended his career. Soon after being bitten the blood began to flow from his nose and eyes, and he became partially paralyzed. The usual remedy, filling the patient with whisky, saved him, but he always felt the effects of the terrible virus. He died April 20, 1824.
The township is strictly agricultural, and cheese making is one of the principal industries. The country is rolling throughout its whole extent, but the land is excellent. Considerable fine stock is raised and handled, and'some sheep and their product marketed. Originally the'entire face of the country was covered with a heavy growth of the finest timber, and game being plentiful it was really one of the best hunting-grounds for the Indians, and some of the well-known chiefs often bunted here. Big Cayuga, Snip Nose Cayuga, both of whom Capt. Mills is said to have killed, Seneca, Nickshaw and John Mohawk, who shot Diver, were among the more noted. White hunters, also, more skilled with the rifle than the Indians, stalked those old woods, and many an adventure with bears and wolves is told of the grandfathers and fathers of the present inhabitants.
A beautiful monument stands in the square at the Center, erected to the memory of the brave boys who so nobly laid their lives down on the altar of their country, and it is an honor to the patriotic citizens who thus remember the martyrs who died that they might enjoy the benefits and glory of an undivided country. It cost $1,225, and was made at Ravenna. Nelson furnished 109 soldiers; twenty died and eight were disabled.
The township is well watered with several small streams, and an excellent market and shipping point is afforded in Garrettsville.
There are eight good schoolhouses in the township, besides a fine academy at he Center; also one Congregational Church, Rev. Fowler, pastor; one
494 - HISTORY OF PORTAGE COUNTY.
Methodist Episcopal Church, Rev. E. B. Wilson, pastor, and a small church in southeast corner of township.
Three cheese factories are nearly all the time in operation. There are two general stores, one blacksmith shop and postoffice at the Center, S. M. Alger, Postmaster.
Township Officers.—Trustees, A. J. Paine, A. F. Hannah, Edwin Taylor; Clerk, W. W. McCall; Treasurer, William J. Fuller; Assessor, Charles Allen; Constables, Leon Bancroft, Benjamin Paine; Justices of the Peace, L. S. Nicholson, Benjamin Knowlton.
The "Ledges," as they are called, in the northern part of the township, have always been a noted place of resort for pleasure-seekers and curiosity-hunters, and there is a good hotel at one of the principal points of interest for their accommodation. This singular freak of nature is attributed to various causes, but there is no doubt of their being the result of some terrific internal upheaval, when the fierce volcanic fires burst forth, and possibly shot out through the crevices that now appear in all directions, but which through the lapse of unnumbered ages have been mostly filled with rock and lava debris, pulverized in after ages to ordinary soil and sand. Carious upheavals of this character are to be found all over the world, but they generally occur on mount-ain tops, and are called in two or three localities "the devil's back bone." The Nelson Ledges are well worth a visit.
The general statistics of this township for 1884 are; Acres of wheat, 607, bushels, 11,802; bushels of rye, 88:from 7 acres; of buckwheat, 32 from 3 acres; of oats, 20,155 from 603 acres; of corn, 7,603 from 605 acres; of meadow, 8,237 tons of hay from 2,050 acres; of clover hay, 209 tons and 23 bushels of seed from 127 acres; of flax, 61 bushels of seed from 5 acres; of potatoes, 11,035 from 85 acres; of butter, 67,855 pounds home-made; of cheese, 131,710 pounds; of maple sugar, 32,222 pounds, and 7,381 gallons of syrup from 84,402 trees; of honey, 2,115 pounds from 69 hives; of eggs, 23,862 dozens; of apples, 10,605 bushels; peaches, 995 bushels; pears, 44 bushels; cherries, 6 bushels from 370 acres of orchard; pounds of wool, 11,074; mil& cows, 781; stallions, 1; dogs, 111; animals died of disease, 100 sheep, 11 cattle and 2 horses; acres cultivated, 4,228; pasture, 7,339; woodland, 2,821; waste, 108; total, 14,296 acres. Population in 1850 was 1,383, including 561 youth; in 1870, 1,355; in 1880, 890; in 1884 (estimated), 950.