AKRON AND SUMMIT COUNTY
CHAPTER I
AKRON AND SUMMIT COUNTY
Summit County, at the crest of the highlands separating the tributaries of the Ohio from the waters draining into Lake Erie, owes much of its historic and prehistoric interest to its location. In glacial and pre-glacial times it was the cosmic stage on which a vast drama of Nature was enacted. Its seat of government, Akron, is built upon drift deposits which filled the valley of a majestic river "that no man ever saw," one of the streams that in pre-glacial times drained the waters of Erie into the Mississippi basin. Summit is rich in antiquity having to do with human affairs.
In the deep valley of its principal river, the Cuyahoga, which makes its great bend at what is now the north limit of growing Akron, are remnants of Mound Builder culture. Because of its topography, which gave easy traverse to the tribes ranging from lake to river, it was at the crossing of great trails. The Mahoning Trail, extending from the junction of the Ohio and Beaver rivers, intersected the more renowned Portage Trail in the Summit water gap. They were the courses followed by the Red Men, the colonial armies, the settlers who moved into the Northern Ohio region from the east. Their influence is written in the story of battlefield and treaty, in the memorials which the community has erected to its past, and in the ever growing prestige of the great industrial city which has expanded upon the secure foundations laid by Akron's pioneers. In every phase of Akron and Summit County progress this advantage of natural location has had its impulse, and it is a factor that endures to this day.
It was the existence of clay beds in Akron and vicinity that gave to the city and county its first economic development. The clay products industry remains one of the county's important producing concerns. Its fertile fields supplied the grain which made Akron the milling district of Ohio in its early days. The existence of an abundant source of water power in the Big. and Little Cuyahoga valleys made both these industrial efforts possible, and gave them a momentum which has carried them forward as giant enterprises in the city's current business life. Summit County has an average elevation of about five hundred feet above the lake, and, except that it is deeply excavated, almost centrally, by the valley of the Cuya-
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hoga, its topography would be without marked features. Owing to this cause, however, it presents much more variety of surface than most of the counties of the state. The Cuyahoga River, rising in the northern portion of Geauga County, runs for forty miles in a southwesterly direction ; then, in the center of Summit County, turns sharply to the north and pursues a nearly straight course to the lake. In Geauga and Portage, the Cuyahoga flows on the surface of a plateau composed of the Carboniferous Conglomerate. At the town of Cuyahoga Falls, in Summit County, this plateau is cut through in a series of cascades which give rise to much beautiful scenery. The river here falls two hundred and twenty feet in two miles, so that from the vicinity of Akron to the north line of the county, it flows through a narrow valley or gorge more than three hundred feet deep. At frequent intervals the Cuyahoga receives tributaries from both the east and west, and the valleys of these streams contribute their part to give variety to the topography of the central portion of the county.
The highest lands in Summit County are the hills most distant from the channels of drainage, in Richfield, Norton, Green, Springfield, Tall madge and Hudson. In all these townships summits rise to the height of six hundred and fifty feet above the lake. The bottom of the Cuyahoga Valley, in the northern part of Northfield, is less than fifty feet above Lake Erie, itself five hundred eighty feet above sea level, so that within the county we have differences of level which exceed six hundred feet.
The soil of Summit County is somewhat varied. In the northern part, even where underlaid by the Conglomerate in full thickness, the soil derived from the Drift contains a great deal of clay, and Northfield, Twinsburg, Hudson, etc., are, as a consequence, dairy towns. The southern half of the county, however, has a loam soil, and in past years the attention of the farmers had been directed more to grain growing than stock raising. This difference of soil was clearly indicated by the original vegetable growth. In Hudson and Twinsburg the forest was composed, for the most part, of beech, maple, basswood and elm, while in Stow, Tallmadge, and southward the prevailing forest growth was oak. In Franklin and Green the soil is decidedly gravelly ; the original timber was oak, in groves and patches, and these townships form part of the famous wheatgrowing district of Stark and Wayne.
In the central part of the county, between Akron and Cuyahoga Falls, a few thousand acres, called The Plains, now the solidly built North Hill of Akron, formerly presented a marked contrast to the rolling and densely timbered surface of all the surrounding area. This is a nearly level district, of which the peculiar features are mostly obliterated by civilization's uses. But when in the state of nature it had the aspect of the prairies of the West. It was almost destitute of timber, was covered with grass and scrub oak (Quercus Banisteri) and in spring was a perfect flower garden; for a much larger number of wild flowers were found here than in any other part of the county. The origin of these peculiar features may be traced to the nature of the substructure of the district. This area forms a triangle between the two branches of the Cuyahoga and the coal hills of
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Tallmadge; the soil is sandy, and this is underlaid by beds of gravel of unknown depth. It seems that there once existed here a deeply excavated rock basin, which was subsequently partly filled with drift deposits and partly by water ; in other words, that it was for a time a lake. The waters of this lake deposited the sand which now forms the soil, and in its deeper portions a series of lacustrine clays, which are well shown in the cutting made for North Howard Street on the north side of the valley of the Little Cuyahoga near Akron.
In another section, exposed near by in the valley of the Little Cuyahoga, the beds which have been enumerated are seen to be underlaid by about sixty feet of stratified sand and gravel, to the bed of the stream. To what depth they extend is not known.
On the opposite side of the Little Cuyahoga, on the main road leading into Akron, the banks of the old valley present a very different section from either of those to which reference has been made above. There we find a hill composed of finely washed and irregularly stratified sand, quite free from pebbles. About ten or twelve feet of the upper part is yellow ; the lower part, as far as exposed, white; a waved line separating the two colors. East and north of the locality where the detailed section given above was taken, heavy beds of gravel are seen to occupy the same horizon; from which we learn that these finely laminated clays were deposited in a basin of water, of which the shore was formed by gravel hills. A portion of the City of Akron is underlaid by thick beds of stratified sand and gravel. These are often cross-stratified and show abundant evidences of current action. They also contain large angular blocks of Conglomerate and many fragments of coal; some of which are of considerable size. We apparently have here some of the materials which were cut out of the valleys that separate the isolated outliers of the Coal Measures which are found in this part of the county.
Beds of gravel and sand stretch away southward from Akron, and form part of a belt, which extends through Stark County, partially filling the old, deeply-cut valley of the Tuscarawas, and apparently marking the line of the southern extension of the valley of the Cuyahoga, when it was a channel of drainage from the lake basin to the Ohio. The line of the defunct Ohio canal—of which the summit is at Akron—was carried through this old water gap, because it still forms a comparatively low pass. In the western part of the state, the Miami canal traverses a similar pass ; and another, having nearly the same level with those mentioned, in Trumbull County, connects the valleys of Grand River and the Mahoning.
The thick beds of gravel and sand which underlie the plain and stretch eastward up the valley of the Little Cuyahoga through southern Tallmadge, perhaps form part of the great gravel belt. It seems quite possible that in former times the Cuyahoga passed eastward of its present course, froth Kent or Monroe Falls to Akron ; that the falls of the Cuyahoga were then near the "Old Forge," and that this excavated basin beneath the "Plains" (North Hill) was scooped out by them. We know that the position of the falls has been constantly changing ; that they were once in Cuyahoga
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County, and have gradually receded to their present position. When they had worked back to the great bend of the Cuyahoga, they seemed to have swung round the circle for some time before starting on their present line of progress. In this interval the river appears to have flowed over a broad front of the Conglomerate, and, cutting away the shales below, to have produced the rock basin which has been described.
When the falls of the Cuyahoga were at the north line of the county, they must have had a perpendicular height of at least 200 feet, for the hard layers in the Cuyahoga shale which produce the "Big Falls" do not extend so far north. The entire mass of the Cuyahoga shale there is soft argillaceous material, which must have been cut out beneath the massive Conglomerate, producing a cascade at least equal in height to that of Niagara.
The north-south portion of the Cuyahoga valley seems to have been once continued southward, and to have been connected with the old valley of the Tuscarawas, which is excavated far below the bed of the present stream, on the present southern limits of Akron. At the north line of the county, the valley of the Cuyahoga is cut down 220 feet below the present river bottom; as we learn by wells bored for oil. The bottom of the valley of the Tuscarawas is, at Canal Dover, 175 feet below the surface of the stream, and there, are many facts which indicate that there was once a powerful current of water passing from the lake basin to the Ohio through this deeply excavated channel. Subsequently this outlet was dammed up by heavy beds of Drift, and the Cuyahoga, cut off from its connection with the Tuscarawas, to which it had been a tributary, was forced to turn sharply to the north, forming the abrupt curve that has been always regarded as a peculiar feature in the course of this stream, The courses of the tributaries of the Maumee are not unlike that of the Cuyahoga, and are probably dependent upon the same cause, namely, the depression of the lake level, and the diversion of the drainage from the Mississippi system—with which it was formerly connected—into the lake basin.
The Drift clays, which underlie the northern part of Summit County, are plainly of northern origin, as they contain innumerable fragments of the Huron, Erie and Cuyahoga shales, and no such mass of argillaceous material could be derived from the Conglomerate and Coal Measures which underlie all the country toward the south.
The direction of the glacial striae in the county is nearly northwest and southeast, and these clays are plainly the result of glacial action. It is interesting to note, however, that in the Drift clay at Hudson a large number of masses of coal have been found, some of which were several inches in diameter. This fact, taken in connection with the character and history of the Drift clays, proves—what we had good reason to believe from other causes—that the coal rocks once extended at least as far north as the northern limits of the county, and that from all the northern townships they were removed and the Conglomerate laid bare by glacial erosion.
A considerable portion of the Drift gravels in the southern part of the
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county are of foreign and northern origin. These gravels and the associated lands show distinct marks of water action, and have apparently been sorted and stratified by the shore waves of the lake when it stood several hundred feet higher than now.
The boulders which are strewn over the surface in all parts of the county are mostly composed of Laurentian granite from Canada, and their transportation is attributed to icebergs. In Northampton many huge boulders of Coniferous limestone are found, and these evidently came from the islands in Lake Erie.
One of the most striking of the surface features of Summit County is the great number of small lakes which are found there. These are generally beautiful sheets of pure water enclosed in basins of Drift gravel and sand. They form part of the great series of lake basins which mark the line of the water shed from Pennsylvania to Michigan. When a resident of Summit County, Mr. J. S. Newberry, Chief State Geologist, mapped and visited nearly one hundred of these little lakes within a circle of twenty miles radius drawn around Cuyahoga Falls.
Aside from the variety and beauty which these lakelets give to the surface, they afford many objects of scientific interest. They are usually stocked with excellent fish, and many rare and peculiar plants grow in and about them. They also contain great numbers of shells, some of which are rare. Springfield Lake, for example, is the only known locality of Melania gracilis, and Congress Lake contains two species of Linnea (L. gracilis and L. stagnalis), both of which are found in few if any other localities in the state.
Many of the lakes referred to have been gradually filled up by a growth of vegetation that ultimately forms peat. In all those lakes where the shores are marshy and shake under the tread, peat is accumulating. We have evidence, too, that many lakelets have been filled up and obliterated by this process ; for we find a large number of marshes in which there is now little water, but the surface is underlaid by peat and shell marl, sometimes to the depth of twenty or thirty feet. Every township contains more or less of these, and some of them are quite extensive. The larger ones are usually known as whortleberry swamps or cranberry marshes, sometimes as tamarack swamps, from the growth of larch which frequently covers the surface. Among the largest of these is that west of Hudson on Mud Brook, in which the peat is fifteen feet deep. Another lies east of Hudson, near the county line. In Stow, on Mud Brook, is a long peat swamp in which the depth of the peat is not less than thirty feet. In Coventry is one in which the peat is said to be thirty or forty feet deep, and from this considerable peat of excellent quality was extracted in the Eighties by Mr. J. F. Brunot. These peat bogs have excited some interest as possible sources of supply of fuel, and yet where coal is as cheap and good as in Ohio it seems hardly probable that peat can be profitably employed as fuel. The best of peat, when air dried, contains nearly 20 per cent. of water and 20 per cent. of oxygen, and has a heating power not greater than half that of our coals,
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while it occupies double the space. Peat is, however, an excellent fertilizer, and many, even of the smaller peat bogs, may be made very valuable to the agriculturist. In some localities such deposits of peat have been cleared up and cultivated for many years, without a suspicion that there was anything of interest or value below the surface.
Deposits of shell marl are frequently found underlying peat in "cat swamps" and filled up lakelets. This marl is composed of the remains of the shells of mollusks, which after the death of the animals that inhabited them, have accumulated at the bottom of the water. In some instances these marls are white, and nearly pure lime; in others they are mixed with more or less earthy and vegetable matter. Such deposits occur in nearly every township of the county, but they have attracted little attention, and their valuable fertilizing property have been very sparingly made available. The deposit of shell marl on the road between Hudson and Stow on land of Charles Darrow is at least twelve feet deep and very pure. Similar marl-beds, though less extensive, are known in Hudson, Northampton and other parts of the county. Usually a sheet of peat or muck covers the marl, and it is not likely to be discovered unless by ditching or special search.
From the Beacon Journal
The most historic ground in Akron is that known vaguely to its citizens as the Portage Path. Most of us are familiar with it in three places : On West Market Street, where the Indian statue erected by Gus Kasch stands, in Perkins woods where a boulder bearing a bronze plate was placed by the Cuyahoga Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, in 1914, and at the Norton, High, Cornell and Hunsberger intersection in Barberton where a statue of Chief Hopocan was erected by the residents of that city.
The action of the local chapter of the D. A. R. in placing two more markers, one near Louis Young's at the south or Tuscarawas River end of the trail and the other at Old Portage, the north of Cuyahoga River end, as a feature of Centennial week is another step towards the completion of a project long dreamed by patriotic citizens of the county. That is to erect markers and life size statues of Indians all along the trail and to locate it unmistakably for the casual observer.
EIGHT-MILE PATH
Myth, legend and history, all cluster around this eight-mile path, which with the exception of the northerly and southerly end now lies entirely within the corporate limits of the city of Akron. Many books have been written around this stretch of ground and many more remain to be written. Within these limits it is hardly possible to attempt an extended history on so important a subject and one which it is possible that much more will ultimately be learned. Men have devoted their lives to research concerning the Ohio Indian trails.
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It is possible though to recapitulate the high spots of the findings of these students, investigators and even romancers in a manner that should be of general interest especially in view of the reawakening of concern with local history. The real story of the path, though, goes back before the dawn of history.
Centuries before the beaked galley of Leif Ericson or the wandering vessel of Christopher Columbus sighted the coastline or the islands of America and long before the early Indians had first realized the possibilities of the great system of forest highways that was later to cover the middle west in a complicated network, the Portage Path was in the making. The pounding hoofs of the buffalo herds first scarred out the route in their stampede across the summit of the state.
BUFFALO PATHS
The valleys were choked and almost impossible of passage and instinctively the bison followed the ways of least resistance that lead across the hilltops. The theory has been advanced that originally the Indians traveled only by water. When they did come to travel by land, they found their route ready made for them. There was no question of their breaking their own trails. The buffalo paths were the driest and easiest routes. Water drained from them rapidly, and the snow could not drift on their windswept lengths.
More important even than this the hilltops which they followed were ideally adapted for the keeping of a lookout and for signaling by columns of smoke. Archer Butler Hulbert, authority on Indian roads of the middle west, twenty-five years ago, observed : "A new road has been building between the Tuscarawas and the Cuyahoga, and in August '98 it had crossed the old path seven times in seven miles and for some distances the two courses are identical. Thus the tripod has been as successful in finding the path of least resistance as was the instinct of the buffalo."
MOUND BUILDERS
The giant Eries, the mighty warriors of the Cat tribe, were the oftenest in this vicinity of any of the early Indian tribes. Before the Eries, the mound builders were here, but of them no more is known than of Lilith, the first wife of Adam. The history of their ways of life and of the manner in which they were wiped from the earth is so shrouded in the mists of antiquity that no one has ever been able to obtain a glimpse beyond the veil. The ruins of their forts are scattered about the county and perhaps these fragments are the key to that cryptic history, but the answer still remains a sealed and unsolvable riddle.
The Eries knew as little of their mysterious predecessors as do we, but the Eries were not in the habit of living in the past. They knew themselves as the mightiest race of warriors on the North American
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continent and the owners of the richest lands and fishing spots this side of the Happy Hunting Grounds, and that was sufficient.
LIVED NEAR LAKES
Mostly they were scattered along the southern shores of Lake Erie, the Lake of the Cat, but the Indian tribes were all migratory by nature. The Eries ranged as far south as Kentucky in their quest of the buffalo and strange tribes from the east and west also knew the Portage Path on their travels to the same Kentucky bison lands.
The path was the connecting link in a great highway from the lakes to the rivers leading to the gulf, and it was respected as a neutral highway. The flying feet of the Indian runner, the moccasined tread of the solitary canoe bearer or the scuffling march of a whole village on the move wore deeper the tracks of the herds that had vanished westward never to return, but the savage warwhoop never sounded among the giant trees that crowded in on the Portage Path. That came later.
The strength and the pride of the Eries was the cause of their own downfall. Curious tribes had attempted to pierce the mysteries of the Cat domain in the earliest days, but the Eries were unconquerable in warfare. So redoubtable was their prowess and so widely heralded their reputation that for countless years they were permitted to dwell in peace and security in their secret kingdom.
WHITE MAN CAME.
Then the white man came and conquered the vague country to the eastward in his immemorial manner. With the Five Nations beaten and broken, the English began to cast nervous eyes towards the country of the Eries. Their aloofness had given rise to a suspicion that they were friendly to the French, although as a matter of fact Frenchmen would never have been tolerated in their territory any more than the English or Shawnees would have been.
The English had mastered the Five Nations once and knew that they could do it again. Accordingly it was decided to arm these eastern warriors with guns and turn them loose on the Eries whom they had always envied. Whether the Cat nation or the federation won the English were certain that the victors would be reduced to such a weakened pass that their resistance would be negligible.
WAGED GREAT WAR
Outfitted with the white man's weapons the federated tribesmen poured into Ohio and the greatest war in Indian annals raged up and down the Western Reserve for years. Driven from the shores of Lake Erie the Cat warriors retreated down the Cuyahoga and Rocky rivers, fighting desperately all the way. Sometimes in the late '60s or the early '70s, the last great battle took place in the valleys of the Killbuck, Chippewa and Mohican. It was a conflict without quarter that ended only with the
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extermination of the Eries. They fell in the reddened meadows chanting their boasts of prowess as loudly and triumphantly as ever they had done in their days of forest lordship.
Now the fair Ohio country became the stamping ground of the Hurons, Delawares, Shawnees, Mingoes, Chippewas, Ottawas and Miamis, and the Portage Path was not only a highway for all tribes, but a boundary between nations as well. West of the path, the old tribes of the west still held sway and east of it that earliest league of nations that had grown to be the six nations were undisputed rulers.
PLENTY OF GAME
The elk and the fish and the wild fowls were still plentiful, although the bison were gone and the tribes might have lived in comparative peace, if it had not been for the inevitable slow encroachment of the white men. In the long war of the reds and whites for the possession of the Ohio country the Portage Path played a tremendous part.
According to P. P. Cherry, Akron historian, "Portage Path lay about half way between Lake Erie and the Muskingum Indian towns. It was the center of communication not only for the Ohio country furnished but three portages on the Gulf to the Great Lakes route, and of these three the Portage Path was the most central, the best known, easiest, shortest and driest."
The Central east and west Indian trail passed the northern end of the path, the Lake Shore trail crossed the mouth of the Cuyahoga a half day's journey to the north and the Scioto war trail had its very start to the Portage Path.
THREE GREAT HIGHWAYS
The central, north and south trail connected with all the other principal paths that zigzagged across the state and completed a system of three great highways that tapped east, west, north and south. The four great centers of this system, according to Cherry, were Pittsburgh, Portage Path, Sandusky and Upper Shawnee town. The greatest of the land highways that formed a part of the central north and south route had the beginning of its 160-mile southwest run at about the middle of the Portage Path. It was down these great trails and highways that fierce, marauding war parties swept on their way to carry fire and blood to the frontier homes of Pennsylvania.
No longer was the Path a peaceful roadway, it was now the principal link in a maze of war-paths that laid the whole white frontier open to torture and sudden death. Too, it was the stage on which some of the greatest chieftains of Indian history strutted their bloody hour. The melodramatic life of Hopocan was played out in these surroundings, and it was in the Cuyahoga River territory that the meteoric career of the great Pontiac had its beginning.
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KING OF NEW PORTAGE
Hopocan, better known to history as Captain Pipe, styled himself King of New Portage, a title which he jealously maintained throughout the whole part of his mysterious life. More than any other Indian chief his life is closely interwoven with the history of Portage Path.
No one knows of his birth or his death, but the legend is that he was born on the Susquehanna in the early days of, the eighteenth century. He was a member of the Delaware tribe, known to its warlike contemporaries as "the old women," but the Wolf clan, of which he was a member, resented the aspersions cast on them by reason of the peaceful character of their three brother clans.
The date of his coming to Ohio is another of the mysteries that punctuate the staccato narrative of his life, but it is known that by 1764 he was a famed character on the Cuyahoga, Tuscarawas and Muskingum rivers. His own village was at the end of Portage Path on the Tuscarawas River and in what is now designated as Coventry Township, Summit County. This was the center of the web of warpaths that covered the middle west, and Hopocan was the spider in the web. Up to and including 1774, he was actively engaged in treaty making and diplomatic efforts to secure justice from the whites, but from that date on until the Greenville treaty of 1795 his tomahawk was never laid down.
KILLED MANY WHITES
He leveled Fort Laurens, the first stockaded fort in Ohio ; he wrought havoc with the forces of Lewis and McIntosh and Brodhead and he annihilated the force of Colonel Lochry. He was the torturer of Colonel Crawford and led the expedition that slaughtered St. Clair's command. It was in relation to this last massacre that he later made the boast that on that day he had "tomahawked whites until his arm ached."
He was an old man at the time of the treaty of 1795 and it may be that his thought had turned towards sleep, but whatever the reason may be the signing of "Hopocan, King of New Portage," to this document was the signal for the ending of his enmity to the whites. He appears at intervals in the history of the Ohio country as late as 1812, although about the whole of the later years of his life there rises a cloud of confusion. Another Captain Pipe, presumably a son, had appeared on the scene, and the historians are at odds in partitioning the Captain Pipe exploits between the senior and junior.
At any rate one persistent tale has it that the original Captain Pipe was in the Ohio country until his mysterious disappearance in 1812. Whether he was slaughtered by Indian fighters or crept off to die alone, will never be known, but the unsolved riddle of his death appropriately rounds out the epic story of his life. There is a wonderful opportunity to build a magnificent legend about this heroic figure who apparently was never born and never died as was the way with many champions in early mythology.
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NOTED INDIAN WARRIORS
The names of Pontiac, Seneca, Logan, Tecumseh, and Black Hawk are writ large in the history of Ohio and the Western Reserve but the stories of those chieftains are passed over here as their careers were not so closely intertwined with the history of Portage Path.
One of the earliest paths known to the Indians, Portage Path was also one of the first landmarks of the Ohio country known by the exploring whites. European maps of the 17th century show the "Cuyahogo" River and the Portage Path although the Ohio River and Lake Erie were not yet depicted upon them. Legend has it that La Salle traversed the path in his Ohio explorations and Joliet passed near it.
As the path had been the boundary between the Indian nations it early became a part of the line that separated the young United States from the country of the Indians. The 1785 treaty between the United States and the Wyandot, Delaware, Chippewa and Ottawa tribes moves the western boundary line of our country to the Tuscarawas and Cuyahoga rivers and the Portage Path. Other treaties followed endorsing this line and it was not until 1805 that the lands west of the path became a part of the United States.
AIDED SETTLERS
To the early settlers the path was as important as it had been to the savages. Goods from the inland settlements were brought up the Cuyahoga River and the Portage Path and down the Tuscarawas. In 1819 William Laird located on the Tuscarawas banks at New Portage and established himself as a maker of flat-boats that started down the Tuscarawas reaching New Orleans with their cargoes of produce after a voyage of approximately two months.
Cherry contends that Perry's boats, the "Trippe," "Tigress," and "Porcupine," were built at Old Portage, but O. E. Olin has advanced facts to disprove this legend. At any rate it is entitled to an honored place in the mythology if not in the history of Portage Path.
It is not a matter of wonder that Medina and Portage and Stark counties objected so strenuously to being deprived of the townships which were taken from them to form the new county of Summit in 1840. By that process they lost the fairest portion of their domain.
BATH TOWNSHIP
Of the early settlers of Bath Township there are two families which stand out preeminent—the Hales and the Hammonds. The influence of the Hale family during the years subsequent has been stronger and wider felt that that of perhaps any other family in the county. It has been of incalculable benefit, exerted, as it always has been, in behalf of high thinking and clean living. The fact that for a long time this region was called "Hammondsburgh" shows the prominent part Jason Hammond played in
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the performance of its early affairs. The Hamlet of Hammond's Corners still bears the name of this first settler. The first real settlement of the township was made in 1810. During the summer of that year, Jonathan Hale and Jason Hammond, both Connecticut men, came to Ohio to settle upon the land they had recently purchased. They were obliged to dispossess other white men whom they found living upon their land without color of title. A survey of the township had been made in 1805, and the name "Wheatfield" given to it by Rial McArthur, the surveyor, probably because his eyes had been gladdened that day by a sight of a waving field of that grain. It is a pity the name did not survive. Fine fields of wheat may be seen on all hands, today, in season, and it is one of the successful crops of the township, while the name of Bath is of no significance, locally, whatever. It is said the name was given to the township in joke. It is now firmly affixed and "Bath" this township will ever be. Bath was organized as a township in 1818, and Jonathan Hale was made the first trustee ; Jason Hammond, supervisor ; Henry Hutson, justice of the peace, and Eleazer Rice, constable. Bath sent nearly one hundred men into the Union Army during the Civil war and many of her citizens have occupied prominent places in the county and state. Among them may be mentioned Gen. A. C. Voris, Peter Voris, R. 0. Hammond, J. Park Alexander, Sumner Nash, C. 0. Hale, Jared Barker and 0. W. Hale. The principal places in the township are Botzum, a station on the Cleveland and Terminal Valley branch of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad ; Montrose (formerly called Latta's Corners and sometimes Ellis' Corners) ; Hammond's Corners and. Ghent. At the picturesque village last mentioned there were extensive sawmills, grist mills, a general store, etc.
BOSTON TOWNSHIP
Boston Township contains three villages—Peninsula, Boston Mills and Everett. The earliest settlers were also from Connecticut. In 1805, the purchasers of the holdings of the Connecticut Land Company sent many surveying corps into Summit County for the purpose of alloting the lands. In this year Alfred Wolcott, James Stanford, John Teale and Samuel Ewart came into Boston Township for the purpose of making a survey. In 1806, Wolcott and Stanford both purchased land surveyed by them the summer previous and located upon it at once. They thus became the first settlers in the township. The Wolcott family afterward became very prominent and influential. The township was organized in 1811, as a part of Portage County. Its first officers were Timothy Bishop, Andrew Johnson and Aaron Miller, trustees ; William Beers, clerk; Launcelot May, treasurer ; Alfred Wolcott and Moses Cunningham, justices of the peace, and James Jordan, constable. More than one hundred and forty men of Boston Township fought for the Union in the war of 1861-65, the most distinguished of whom was Col. Arthur L. Conger. On July 4, 1889, Colonel and Mrs. Conger presented to Boston Township the fine soldiers' monument which stands in the village of Peninsula at its
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western border. Peninsula has an extensive flour mill and, in the southern part of the village, a large stone quarry of a fine-grained, white sandstone, from which mill-stones are made. Boston has sawmills and the great paper mills of the Akron-Cleveland Paper Bag Company, the power for which is partly secured from a large dam thrown across the Cuyahoga River. Col. A. L. Conger and Hon. S. P. Wolcott are the Boston citizens who have earned for themselves the greatest fame.
COPLEY TOWNSHIP
Copley Township came to us from Medina County when our county was created in 1840. It is well watered by Pigeon Creek, Wolf Creek and Chocolog Creek, besides having within its confines White Pond, Black Pond and Chocolog Pond. Formerly a great swamp called Copley Swamp occupied a large part of it, but by judicious draining it has been reduced to an insignificant area. It is now one vast garden—the old peat and muck beds furnishing the best kind of soil for raising celery, onions, etc. In early times it was the great game preserve of the whole region. Copley was first settled in 1814 by Jonah Turner, who came from Pennsylvania. Six additional families arrived during the next five years. It was set apart as a township of Medina County in 1819, and was named Greenfield at first by Garner Green, who originally owned a large part of its territory. He afterwards changed the name to Copley, the maiden name of his wife. When the Northern Ohio Railroad, now the A. C. & Y., was built, in 1891, it gave Copley an outlet, and was the means of starting a new hamlet—Fairlawn—now one of Akron's finest residential suburbs, its area including the Fairlawn and Rosemont Country clubs. Copley sent nearly one hundred and fifty men into the Union Army.
COVENTRY TOWNSHIP
Coventry Township lies to the north of Franklin and Green and just outside of the City of Akron. It is also the southern line of the Western Reserve. Its physical features are unusual in that it is dotted by numerous lakes and in early days was traversed by a considerable stream, the Tuscarawas. In addition to this, about 1840, the East and. West Reservoirs were built, composed partly of natural and partly artificial bodies of water. Long Lake is the largest of these natural bodies of water. The Indians seem to have made this their headquarters and naturally so, for New Portage was at the head of the Indian Trail. These Indians were Delawares and the most important of their chiefs was Hopocan. The first white settler of the township was Daniel Haines, who came from Pennsylvania about the year 1806. After him, in 1811, came the Allens, from New York State. The township grew at an amazing pace and a great future seemed before it. The Tuscarawas was then an immense stream capable of floating large boats, and many a boatload went from Coventry to New Orleans. A glass factory started and for some time many articles of value and profit were turned out. A distillery was started by Adam
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Falor. Sawmills and grist mills started up. A lawyer by the name of Van Humphreys settled there and the "State of Coventry" began to be. The now well known "State Mill" arose in this fashion. At the time of the construction of the Reservoir it was necessary to destroy the mill formerly there, and to replace it the State built a large mill at that point. For a long time it was the center of the mill business of that district, and of late years has become valuable, chiefly as a summer resort. With the advent of the canal the township continued to flourish and for a time seemed to rival Middlebury. However, its prospects died down and it settled down to the regular way of a township. Still it is to be remembered that with the last increase of territory to Akron, Kenmore and Barbertown, a large part of Coventry was annexed to the city, and the old cities spirit of Coventry survives possibly in another form.
The township organization occurred in 1808, and at that time Coventry was a part of Springfield and they were a part of Portage County, till the organization of Summit in 1840.
With the rapid growth of Akron, Barbertown and Kenmore, it seems that it will be only a short time till the township will disappear within municipal lines. Among the prominent families in the township have been the Brewsters and the Falors. From Coventry township also came John R. Buchtel, the founder of Buchtel College, and William Buchtel, who represented Summit County in the State Legislature from 1901-3. The present judge of Summit's court of domestic relations, Howard C. Spicer, is also from Coventry township.
HUDSON TOWNSHIP
The original proprietors of Hudson Township were Stephen Baldwin, David Hudson, Birdsey Norton, Nathaniel Norton, Benjamin Oviatt and Theodore Parmalee. It consisted of 16,000 acres, and, in the distribution of the lands of the Connecticut Land Company, it was sold to the above mentioned proprietors at 32 cents per acre. In 1799 David Hudson organized a party of eleven persons for the purpose of inspecting the new purchase. They started overland from Litchfield, Connecticut, and with their wagons, oxen and cows, made a very respectable looking caravan. They were nearly two months in making the journey, reaching the present township about the latter part of June. The summer was spent in surveying; erecting a bark but and a more substantial log house ; clearing land of timber ; planting and sowing crops, and platting the village, now called Hudson, after its founder. Early in October the survey of the township was completed and David Hudson, with his son Ira and the two surveyors, started back to Connecticut, leaving the remainder of the party as a nucleus of the future settlement.
By offering bounties of land and other inducements, Mr. Hudson succeeded in getting together twenty-eight colonists who agreed to return with him into the wilderness and assist in the pioneer work of settling the new township. In this party were Heman Oviatt, Joel and Allen Gay-
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lord, Joseph and George Darrow, Moses Thompson, Samuel Bishop and others. After enduring the usual perils and deprivations incident to pioneer journeys, they arrived safely in Hudson in May, 1800. Their first act was a public meeting to conduct services of thanksgiving for their safe journey and deliverance from the perils of the way in the wilderness. On October 28, 1800, there was born to David Hudson and his wife, Anna (Norton) Hudson, a daughter, whom they named Anne Mary Hudson. She was born in Hudson and was the first white child born in what is now Summit County.
Early in 1802 the county commissioners of Trumbull County, of which this locality was then a part, organized Hudson township and arranged for the first election in April, 1802. There were elected at that time, Heman Oviatt, Ebenezer Sheldon and Abraham Thompson, trustees; Thaddeus Lacey, clerk ; Rufus Edwards, Ebenezer Lester and Aaron Norton, constables, etc.
On September 4, 1802, the first church organization in what is now Summit County was made by David Hudson, with twelve of his fellow-colonists, who were members of Congregational Churches back in Connecticut. The first church thus established was a Congregational Church, and, from that day to this not a single Sabbath has passed without public worship being held by the Congregational Church of Hudson. In 1820 the society completed a fine church edifice on the site of the present Town Hall, which was used continuously until the splendid brick church on Aurora Street, next to the "Pentagon," was built in 1865. This has proved sufficient for the needs of the Congregational Society until the present day.
In 1828 Moses Draper, Daniel Gaylord and Perley Mansur organized a Methodist Episcopal Church, the history of which is not a record of unvarying success.
The Protestant Episcopal Church was organized in 1842 by Frederick Brown, Anson Brewster, Henry O'Brien, Arthur Sadler and others. It is called the "Parish of Christ Church, of Hudson, Ohio." Its membership has never been large and, at times, the organization has been maintained with difficulty.
St. Mary's Catholic Church was built in 1858 and has been maintained in connection with the church of that denomination in Cuyahoga Falls.
In 1890 an organization of the Disciples of Christ was effected and Rev. F. H. Moore was installed as its pastor.
From the very beginning Hudson led the intellectual life of the Western Reserve. What the influence of Western Reserve College has been has been told elsewhere in this work. The spirit of which that institution is a product manifested itself the year after the founding of the first settlement. George Pease, of Enfield, Connecticut, established the first school in a log house, about where the present Town Hall stands. The growth of the schools kept pace with that of the population. In 1868 the fine brick high school building was erected. In addition to the public schools many private schools have been conducted at various times. The first
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was the Nutting School for young ladies, established in 1827. Then followed the Hudson Academy for boys and girls in 1834; Hudson Female Seminary in 1845 ; the Grosvenor Seminary and the Phelps "Seminary for Ladies," established a few years later ; the J. W. Smith School in 1853 ; the Emily Metcalf School in 1860, and the Hudson Academy, revived in 1874 by Rev. H. B. Hosford.
In the decade of the '50s Hudson was badly smitten with the railroad fever. There was scarcely one of her citizens of means who did not invest every penny he could possibly raise in one or more of the railroad enterprises undertaken at that time. Professor Henry N. Day, of Western Reserve College, seems to have been the moving spirit in all these schemes. The investors lost every cent they put in and the depreciation in Hudson business has been constant since that time. The town never rallied from the great financial losses brought about by the failures of these railroad projects. The Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad was completed from Cleveland to Hudson in 1852. The "Akron Branch" was built soon after. These were successful and improved business conditions in Hudson so much that when subsequent projects were broached no difficulty was encountered in getting the support of every Hudson citizen. In 1852 Professor Day and his associates "promoted" "the Clinton Line Railroad," which was to be part of a great transcontinental railroad. In 1853 the same parties organized a bankruptcy club, the members of which were allowed to contribute to "the Clinton Line Extension," to run from Hudson to Tiffin. In the same year Hudson citizens were asked to contribute toward defraying the expense sof another dream, iridescent and alluring, called the "Hudson and Painesville Railroad," designed as an extension of the "Akron Branch Railroad." The work on all these railroads was started and carried on to various extents. Much of the old grading, fills and culverts may yet be seen in the woods and pastures near Hudson. At least one of the roads was nearly half completed, when, in 1856, the bubble burst. The dream was over, but the lapse from consciousness had cost the village every available nickel in it. These roads remain today just as they were left when work stopped in 1856. As a promoter, Professor Day was a very great failure. Besides his railroad enterprises, which ended in disaster, might be mentioned his "Pentagon" scheme and his book-publishing company, both of which were wound up by assignees.
It is a pleasure to turn from these business failures to some other enterprises which were built upon a more substantial basis and thus became successes. The most conspicuous is the immense business built up by S. Straight & Co., established in 1867. Their business was the manufacture of butter and cheese and at one time they operated fourteen factories. In 1870 E. A. Osborne erected his butter-tub and cheese-box factory. Other mills were those of Erastus Croy, built in 1878; E. B. Shields, 1890; E. J. Tobdell; the Oviatt Manufacturing Company, in 1878, and the G. H. Grimm Manufacturing Company. Hudson's mercantile status is better today, perhaps, than at any time in the past. The great fire of some years ago, which wiped out the entire western portion of the
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business part of the town, has been the means of bringing about a great change for the better. Fine brick blocks have taken the place of the antiquated frame buildings in which business was formerly done and merchants have filled these modern rooms with larger stocks of finer goods. The Cleveland Bank failure, which brought so much loss upon Hudson merchants, through its Hudson branch, has been largely forgotten. After the fire above mentioned, Hudson possessed but one hotel, "The Delta," located near the depot, the old "Mansion House," located on the west side of Main Street, having been destroyed in that conflagration. In 1907 a fine, new hotel was opened up in the old Beebe Mansion, on the north side of the square, and called the "Park Hotel." Among the prominent merchants of the past and present should be mentioned Charles H. Buss, Edwin S. Bentley, John Whedon, George V. Miller, Dennis J. Joyce, R. H. Grimm, Sebastian Miller, James A. Jacobs, Henry Wehner, John G. Mead, C. A. Campbell, C. H. Farwell, J. N. Farrar, P. N. Shively, J. L. Doncaster, W. M Beebe, Charles Kilbourn and others.
Hudson village was incorporated April 1, 1837. At the first election, held that year, Heman Oviatt was chosen mayor ; Lyman W. Hall, recorder ; Frederick Baldwin, Harvey Baldwin, John B. Clark, Jesse Dickinson and Daniel C. Gaylord, trustees.
Hudson was one of the centers of anti-slavery sentiment in Ohio. Like Oberlin and Tallmadge, her citizens took an open and active part in attacking the great evil and arousing public opinion against it. Many fugitive slaves found an asylum here. When the Civil War broke out Hudson did her full duty and furnished more than one hundred and fifty men for the Union Army. Today, nowhere in the county is Memorial Day more reverently celebrated.
Hudson Township has given us Judge S. H. Pitkin, M. C. Read, W. I. Chamberlain, and James W. Ellsworth.
NORTHAMPTON TOWNSHIP
In the drawing of lands of the Connecticut Land Company the present township of Northampton fell to W. Billings, David King, Ebenezer King, Jr., F. King, John Leavitt, Jr., O. P. Holden, Luther Loomis, Joseph Pratt, Timothy Phelps, Solomon Stoddard and Daniel Wright. It was first settled in 1802 when Simeon Prior, a veteran of the Revolutionary war, brought his wife and ten children overland from the beautiful village of Northampton, on the Connecticut River, in the Green hills of Hampshire County, Massachusetts. Other early settlers were Justus Remington, David Parker and Samuel King. Later came Rial McArthur, David Norton, Nathaniel Hardy, Sr., Daniel Turner. Northampton Township was very slow in being settled. The Indians remained here longer than in any other part of the country. It was not until the American forces began to assemble here for the War of 1812 that the last of the red men departed. Many of their village sites, mounds, etc., may be seen at the present time. Here was a rendezvous for militia during the second war with England,
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and three vessels of Commodore Perry's fleet are said to have been built in Northampton and floated down the Cuyahoga to Lake Erie.
In 1836 the village of Niles, at the mouth of Yellow Creek, was platted. It never grew to anything more substantial than a vision in the minds of its projectors, Peter Voris and his associates. The site is now called Botzum. Other hamlets are Northampton Center, Steele's Corners, Mc-Arthur's Corners and French's Mill. Northampton did far more than her share in furnishing men for the Union Army in 1861-65. More than one hundred and forty of her citizens responded to the call of the nation.
NORTHFIELD TOWNSHIP
Northfield was first settled in April, 1807, when Isaac Bason brought his family from Massachusetts and built a log house for them about a mile and one half from the present Town Hall. Other early settlers were Jeremiah Cranmer, George Wallace, Orrin Wilcox and William Cranny. The township was organized May 24, 1819, when an election was held, at which Jeremiah Cranmer, John Duncan and George Wallace were elected trustees ; Henry Wood, clerk ; Watrous Mather, treasurer ; and Abraham Cranmer and Edward Coyne, constables. In 1840 the township had a population of 1,041. It furnished more than one hundred and twenty-five men to the Federal Army in the Rebellion. Its centers are Northfield, Little York, Macedonia and Brandywine.
NORTON TOWNSHIP
Norton Township was originally a part of Wolf Creek Township, but was organized as a separate township in April, 1818. It was named for Birdsey Norton, one of its Connecticut proprietors. It was first settled in 1810 by James Robinson, who came from New York and built a cabin for himself on Wolf Creek. Other early settlers were John Cahow, Abraham Van Hyning, Henry Van Hyning, John D. Humphrey, Charles Lyon, P. Kirkum, Seth Lucas, Charles Miller and Nathan Bates. At the organization in April, 1818, the following officers were elected : Clerk, Joseph D. Humphrey ; justice of the peace, Henry Van Hyning, Sr. ; trustees, Charles Lyon, Abraham Van Hyning and Ezra Way ; supervisors, John Cahow, Elisha Hinsdale and Joseph Holmes. Norton possesses some of the richest land in the county and many of her citizens have amassed much wealth from agriculture and mining of coal. The township also possesses some of the most prosperous hamlets, like Norton Center, Western Star, Loyal Oak, Hametown, Johnson's Corners, Sherman and Dennison.
It is also fortunate in having within its limits that marvel of the closing years of the nineteenth century, the "Magic City"—Barberton.
FRANKLIN TOWNSHIP
Green and Franklin are the southern townships of the county, and originally were part of Stark County, being inhabited by the descendants
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of the Germans of Pennsylvania, or, as they are familiarly called, "Pennsylvania Dutch." Summit County is made up of fourteen townships from Portage, and Franklin and Green from Stark, the formation taking place in 1840. Vigorous opposition arose on the part of Stark to this separation, both because of natural affection for the parent Dutch stock and on account of the geographical location of the new county seat at Summit. At the time it was said that the Dutch and Yankees could not mix, but, like all idle assertions, time has shown the absurdity of that remark.
Franklin is noted in natural features for the possession of numerous small lakes. The Tuscarawas, in early days a much larger stream than at present, offered a water supply apparently unfailing, and Turkeyfoot Lake seemed to hold out large promise. The coal deposits have always been large, and during the first settlements the cranberry crop was an unfailing source of revenue, great quantities of this berry being sent east. The peach crop was also large, and from this a compound known as peach brandy was made, and thoroughly tasted before shipment abroad. In 1833 distilleries were established but flourished for a comparatively short time. The more stable product of lumber enriched the possessors of forest, and great quantities of it were shipped up to Cleveland, and thence to the more distant lake ports.
The early settlements of Franklin were Cartersville and Savannah. The first was named for a Wheeling Quaker, who owned large tracts of land on which his town was located. Inability to withstand the encroachments of the rivers made this place speedily uninhabitable, and shortly after its founding, 1806, it was abandoned. In 1816 David Harvey planted and planned the town of Savannah, but after a struggle of ten years, this settlement yielded to the superior merits of Clinton. The latter had all the advantages resulting from proximity to the canal. Clinton was originally laid out in 1816, and from the first was a consistent business mart. It became the center of business for several adjoining counties. Large storehouses for grain were erected, doctors, lawyers and merchants settled there, and the increased shipment of coal made the town a veritable emporium. After flourishing till about 1850, Clinton declined in influence and owing to the encroachment of Akron and several allied towns, decreased in power and influence. The passing of the railroad beyond its borders consigned it permanently to the role of the rural village. The town of Manchester was started in 1815, and, being inland in location, never rose to anything like the business gait of Clinton, but, nevertheless, has had a steady, substantial growth.
The township organization took place in 1817. Previous to that, in 1811, it, with Green and Lake and Jackson townships of Stark, had had one set of officers. In matters of education and religion Franklin has been second to none. While it is somewhat uncertain as to the first teacher, yet it seems that a Mr. Mishler has that honor. Rev. J. W. Hammond was the first preacher and varied the language of his sermons according, as the majority of his hearers were German or English-speaking. The
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township has an honorable Civil War record, and was very active in the promotion of the celebrated "Underground Railroad."
The township has given to public life Hon. Hugh R. Caldwell, judge of common pleas ; Hon. John Hoy, judge of common pleas ; Hon. Jacob A. Kohler, representative, 1883-85 ; attorney general of the State of Ohio, 1886-88, and judge of common pleas, 1900-1906.
GREEN TOWNSHIP
Green, the sister township of Franklin, has had a varied experience. In the first place, her Indian history, like that of all early settlements, has . been full of romance. Turn as we may from time to time to the old stories, as we read that of Green the thought of the sufferings and hardships of those pioneers in conflict with the red man must absorb our attention. What battles were fought there we may not know, but from time to time great masses of flint arrow-heads have been turned up, also an old mass of stones with its awful suggestion of an altar for human sacrifice—these are matters that divert our minds from the prosy life man has been condemned to live with only work as a mitigating circumstance. However numerous the Indians were, they were driven out shortly after the War of 1812, supposedly because the aborigines sided wish the British. With them gone, the "Dutch" were allowed to turn their energies to the cultivation of their farms. At first there was some promise of coal, but this failed and at this time the township is experiencing a boom from clay found there, which is worked up in the village of Altman. As is often the case there is some question as to who was the first settler, but the consensus of opinion gives that honor to John Kepler, with others claiming that it was either William Triplett or John Curzen.
A distinct township organization was effected in 1814, and in 1840 occured the separation from Stark County with the promise that there should be no tax on public buildings in the township till 1890. Probably the nearest Green ever came to a boom was the event surrounding the organization and upbuilding of the Seminary. This was a Methodist school, started in 1854, with a capital of $2,000, divided into shares of $50 each. At one time some one hundred and thirty students attended the seminary and it passed through various stages till its final decline about 1875.
The towns of Green are : Greensburg, founded in 1828 by David Baer ; East Liberty, founded in 1039 (as might be expected these towns have been rivals in a quiet way, but this feeling has shown itself chiefly in political contests) ; Myersville, founded about 1876, has importance chiefly because it has railroad facilities and has shown some elements of steady and vigorous growth.
George W. Crouse was reared in Green Township. He served as county treasurer, State senator, 1885-87, and federal representative, 188790. Former Mayor I. S. Meyers also is a son of Green township.
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RICHFIELD TOWNSHIP
Richfield, like the other townships of the Western Reserve, became the separate property of individuals upon the drawing of lands conducted by the Connecticut Land Company. It was settled soon after by families who came from Connecticut and Massachusetts. The first settler was Launcelot Mays, who came in 1809. The township was organized in April, 1816, and John Bigelow was elected clerk; Isaac Welton, treasurer ; William Jordan, Daniel Keys and Nathaniel Oviatt, trustees, and Isaac Hopkins, constable. The population then was in excess of 150. In 1840, it had grown to 1,108. In 1818 a Union church organization was effected, which, in a few years, became the First Congregational Church. The Methodists, Baptists and United Brethren also organized societies very early in the history of the township and have been uniformly prosperous, thus indicating the sound basis upon which society in Richfield is built. The influence of Richfield has always been exerted in behalf of the personal and civic virtues. Her schools are among the best in the county. In 1836 the Richfield Academy was opened and attracted many pupils from outside the township. Some of its graduates afterwards acquired a national fame. It afterwards became the East High School, was burned in 1887 and replaced by a fine modern building. There is also a brick high school building at the West Center. Richfield Center is composed of two parts—the East Center and the West Center, situated about a mile apart. Each of the centers had a hotel and a post office. The West Center has now a fine hotel which is the equal of any of the rural hotels in the county. Of late years Richfield has been gaining prestige as a summer resort, many wealthy Cleveland and Akron families coming here to spend the summer. Owing to the lack of transportation facilities, Richfield has never had any manufacturing industries. In mercantile life, however, many of her citizens have been successful. Among such may be mentioned William C. Weld, Everett Farnam, George B. Clarke, Frank R. Brower, Henry C. Searles, Baxter H. Wood. The hotels have been successful in the hands of Lewis P. Ellas and Fayette Viall. Other village enterprises which have been successfully conducted, some of them for many years, owe their success to John Ault, Peter Allen, Seth Dustin, T. E. Ellsworth, Z. R. Townsend, C. P. Townsend, S. E. Phelps, Henry Killifer, Michael Heltz, C. F. Rathburn, Henry Greenlese, Percy Dustin, Samuel Fauble, George D. Dustin, Julius C. Chapman, Asa P. Carr and E. D. Carr. Mention should be made of the tile factory built by Ralph Farnam and Berkly S. Braddock. The former was an expert in ceramics, and a large factory and pottery was built upon the old Farnam farm about 1890. About the same time, these two gentlemen equipped the finest stock farm in Summit County for the raising of fine horses and cattle. One stallion alone cost them $5,000. The tile industry proved unremunerative, owing to the long distance from a railroad. Both men sunk their large private fortunes in these enterprises. Ralph Farnam afterwards went to New Jersey and was very successful in the tile business. The
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old farm finally passed into the possession of Charles F. Brush, of Cleveland. Richfield gave over 150 men to the cause of the Union in 1861-65. Two men of national fame have gone forth from Richfield in the persons of Russell A. Alger and Samuel B. Axtell.
SPRINGFIELD TOWNSHIP
Springfield Township was first settled in 1806, when Ariel Bradley moved from Suffield to what is now the village of Mogadore. Other early settlers were Thomas Hale, Benjamin Baldwin, John Hall, James Hall, Nathan Moore, Reuben Tupper, Abraham DeHaven, the Ellet family, the Norton family, Patrick Christy, James McKnight and William Foster. The township was organized in April, 1808. The manufacturing of the township is all in the pottery line, as great beds of potter's clay are found here. Coal is also mined. Mogadore is the principal village. North Springfield, Brittain, Thomastown, Millheim, Krumroy, Lakemore, Sawyerwood, Ellet and Springfield Center are also flourishing hamlets. Springfield furnished nearly 150 men to the Federal armies in the Civil War.
STOW TOWNSHIP
Stow Township is named after Joshua Stow, the original proprietor by grant from the Connecticut Land Company. The first settler in this township was William Walker, who in 1802, came from Virginia. He was followed in 1804 by William Wetmore, who built a house at what is now called "Stow Corners." Other pioneers were Gregory Powers, John Campbell, John Gaylord, Adam Steel, George Darrow, Erastus Southmayd, James Daily, Isaac Wilcox and David Ruggles. The township was organized in 1808. It is now best known as the location of Silver Lake, now a fine residential suburb including the Silver Lake Country Club and Silver Lake Village.
Near by are two other beautiful lakes—Wyoga and Crystal Lake. Stow Township also contains Munroe Falls, a village on the Cuyahoga River a few miles above Cuyahoga Falls. This village was founded in 1836 by Edmond Munroe, a wealthy capitalist of Boston, Mass. A number of mills had been erected there to make use of the water-power afforded by the falls in the river. Up to the advent of the Munroes it had been called Florence. Mr. Munroe organized the "Munroe Falls Manufacturing Company," and built a large store, many residences and the mill which is now used for the manufacture of paper. The township furnished 104 men to the country when our national life was threatened in 1861. Akron Airport formerly known as Stow Field—is located east of the village of Stow on the Akron, Kent Road.
TWINSBURG TOWNSHIP
The first settlement of Twinsburg Township was made in April, 1817, and the honor of being the first settler belongs to Ethan Ailing, who was
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then a mere boy of 17 years, sent on by his father to prepare for the later coming of the Ailing family. Moses Wilcox and Aaron Wilcox, twin brothers, were also among the very earliest settlers. They were also among the original proprietors, as was Isaac Mills, who gave the township the first name "Millsville." The Wilcox twins afterwards persuaded the settlers to let them name the township, which they did, calling it Twinsburg in honor of their relationship. The township was organized in April, 1819. The first officials were Frederick Stanley, Lewis Ailing, Luman Lane, Samuel Vail, Elisha Loomis and Elijah Bronson. Ethan Ailing died in 1867, and by his will left eight shares of the stock of the Big Four Railroad Company to the mayor of the city of Akron for the purpose of having the dividends, declared thereon, being used to buy clothing, so that destitute children might be enabled to attend Sunday-school. These dividends are being used for this purpose at the present day, being turned over to the city charities department by the mayor upon their receipt. As early as 1822 both the Methodists and Congregationalists organized churches in Twinsburg. The latter built a church in 1823 and the present one in 1848. The Methodists built churches in 1832 and 1848. The Baptists organized in 1832 and built a church in 1841. In 1843 "The Twinsburg Institute" was opened by Samuel Bissell, which was one of the most successful educational institutions in the county. The beautiful soldiers' monument on the Public Square was dedicated July 4, 1867. One hundred and twenty-eight men of Twinsburg went to the front during the Civil War. From 1856 to 1870 "The Twinsburg Fair" was one of the great features of agricultural life in this vicinity.
TALLMADGE TOWNSHIP
Tallmadge was founded in 1806 by David Bacon, minister, missionary and colonizer. His experiences in the wilderness and the difficulties he had to contend with in establishing his little colony are typical, and for that reason are here set forth in full according to the excellent narrative of his son, Dr. Leonard Bacon, as published in Howe's Historical Collections (Ohio). It may readily be believed that the labors and dangers incident to the settlement of Tallmadge were no greater than those attending the settlement of the other townships of the county.
Rev. David Bacon, the founder of Tallmadge, was born in Woodstock, Connecticut, in 1771, and died in Hartford in 1817 at the early age of forty-six years, worn out by excessive labors, privations and mental sufferings, largely consequent upon his financial failure with his colony. He was the first missionary sent to the Western Indians from Connecticut. His means were pitifully inadequate, but with a stout heart, reliant upon God, he started, August 8, 1800, from Hartford, afoot and alone through the wilderness, with no outfit but what he could carry on his back. At Buffalo Creek, now the site of the city of Buffalo, he took vessel for Detroit, which he reached September 11, thirty-four days after leaving Hartford, and was hospitably received by Major Hunt, commandant of
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the United States garrison there. After a preliminary survey he returned to Connecticut, and on the 25th of December was married at Lebanon to Alice Parks, then under eighteen years of age ; a week later, on the last day of the last year of the last century, December 31, 1800, he was ordained regularly to the specific work of a missionary to the heathen, the first ever sent out from Connecticut.
On the 11th of February, 1801, with his young wife, he started for Detroit, going through the wilderness of New York and Canada by sleigh, and arrived there Saturday, May 9. The bride, before she got out of Connecticut, had a new and painful experience. They stopped at a noisy country tavern at Canaan. There was a large company together, some drinking, some talking and some swearing, and this they found was common at all the public-houses.
Detroit at this time was the great emporium of the fur trade. Some of the Indian traders were men of great wealth for those days, and of highly cultivated minds. Many of them were educated in England and Scotland at the universities, a class today in Britain termed "university men." They generally spent the winter there, and in the spring returned with new goods brought by vessels through the lakes. The only Americans in the place were the officers and soldiers of the garrison, consisting of an infantry regiment and an artillery company, the officers of which treated Mr. Bacon and family with kindness and respect. The inhabitants were English, Scotch, Irish and French, all of whom hated the Yankees. The town was enclosed by cedar pickets about twelve feet high and six inches in diameter, and so close together one could not see through.
At each side were strong gates which were closed and guarded, and no Indians were allowed to come in after sundown or to remain over night.
Upon his arrival in Detroit the missionary society paid him in all four hundred dollars ; then, until September, 1803, he did not get a cent. He began his support by teaching school, at first with some success, but he was a Yankee, and the four Catholic priests used their influence in opposition. His young wife assisted him. They studied the Indian language, but made slow progress, and their prospect for usefulness in Detroit seemed waning.
On the 19th of February, 1802, his first child was born at Detroit—the afterwards eminent Dr. Leonard Bacon. In the May following he went down into the Maumee country with a view to establishing a mission among the Indians. The Indians were mostly drunk, and he was an unwilling witness to their drunken orgies. Little Otter, their chief, received him courteously, called a council of the tribe, and then, to his talk through an interpreter, gave him their decision that they would not have him. It was to this effect :
Your religion is very good, but only for white people ; it will not do for Indians. When the Great Spirit made white people he put them on another island, gave them farms, tools to work with, horses, horned cattle and sheep and hogs for them, that they might get their living in that way and he taught them to read, and gave them their religion in a book.
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But when he made Indians he made them wild, and put them on this island in the woods, and gave them the wild game that they might live by hunting. We formerly had a religion very much like yours, but we found it would not do for us, and we have discovered a much better way.
Seeing he could not succeed he returned to Detroit. He had been with them several days and twice narrowly escaped assassination from the intoxicated ones. His son, Leonard, in his memoirs of his father, published in the Congregational Quarterly for 1876, and from which this article is derived, wrote :
"Something more than ordinary courage was necessary in the presence of so many drunken and half-drunken Indians, any one of whom might suddenly shoot or tomahawk the missionary at the slightest provocation or at none." The two instances mentioned by him in which he was enabled to baffle the malice of savages ready to murder him remind me of another instance.
"It was while my parents were living at Detroit, and when I was an infant of less than four months, two Indians came as if for a friendly visit ; one of them, a tall and stalwart, young man, the other shorter and older. As they entered my father met them, gave his hand to the old man, and was just extending it to the other, when my mother, quick to discern the danger, exclaimed, 'See ! He has a knife.' At the word my father saw that, while the Indian's right hand was ready to salute, a gleaming knife in his left hand was partly concealed under his blanket.
"An Indian intending to assassinate waits until his intended victim is looking away from him and then strikes. My father's keen eye was fixed upon the murderer and watched him eye to eye. The Indian found himself strangely disconcerted. In vain did the old man talk to my father in angry and chiding tones—that keen, black eye was watching the would-be assassin. The time seemed long. My mother took the baby (himself) from the birch-bark cradle, and was going to call for help, but when she reached the door, she dared not leave her husband. At last the old man became weary of chiding ; the young man had given up his purpose for a time and they retired."
Failing on the Maumee, Mr. Bacon soon after sailed with his little family to Mackinaw. This was at the beginning of summer, 1802. Mackinaw was then one of the remotest outposts of the fur trade and garrisoned by a company of United States troops. His object was to establish a mission at Abrecroche, about twenty miles distant, a large settlement of Chippewa Indians, but they were no less determined than those on the Maumee that no missionary should live in their villages. Like those, also, they were a large part of the time drunk from whiskey, supplied in abundance by the fur traders in exchange for the proceeds of their hunting excursions. They had at one time no less than 900 gallon kegs on hand.
His work was obstructed from the impossibility of finding an interpreter, so he took into his family an Indian lad, through whom to learn
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the language—his name was Singenog. He remained at Mackinaw about two years, but the Indians would never allow him to go among them. Like the Indians generally, they regarded ministers as another sort of conjurors, with power to bring sickness and disease upon them. At one time early in October the second year, 1803, Singenog, the young Indian, persuaded his uncle, Pondega Kawwan, a head chief, and two other Chippewa dignitaries, to visit the missionary, and presenting him a string of wampum, Pondega Kawwan made a very non-committal, dignified speech, to the effect that there was no use of his going among them, that the Great Spirit did not put them on the ground to learn such things as the white people taught. If it were not for rum they might listen, "but," concluded he, "Rum is our Master." And later he said to Singenog, "Our father is a great man and knows a great deal ; and if we were to know so much, perhaps the Great Spirit would not let us live."
After a residence at Mackinaw of about two years and all prospects of success hopeless, the missionary society ordered him to New Connecticut, there to itinerate as a missionary and to improve himself in the Indian language, etc. About the 1st of August, 1804, with his wife and
two children, the youngest an infant, he sailed for Detroit. From there they proceeded in an open canoe, following the windings of the shore, rowing by day and sleeping on land by night, till having performed a journey of near two hundred miles, they reached, about the middle of October, Cleveland, then a mere hamlet on the lake shore.
Leaving his family at Hudson he went on to Hartford to report to the society. He went almost entirely on foot a distance of about six hundred miles, which he wearily trudged much of the way through the mud, slush and snow of winter. An arrangement was made by which he could act half the time as pastor at Hudson, and the other half as a missionary to the various settlements on the Reserve. On his return a little experience satisfied him that more could be done than in any other way for the establishment of Christian institutions on the Reserve, by the old Puritan mode of colonizing by founding a religious colony strong enough and compact enough to maintain schools and public worship.
An ordinary township, with its scattered settlements and roads at option, with no common central point, cannot well grow into a town. The unity of a town as a body politic depends very much on fixing a common center to which every homestead shall be obviously related. In no other rural town, perhaps, is that so well provided for as in Tallmadge. "Public spirit, local pride," writes Dr. Bacon, "friendly intercourse, general culture and good taste, and a certain moral and religious steadfastness are the characteristics by which Tallmadge is almost proverbially distinguished throughout the Reserve. No observing stranger can pass through the town without seeing that it was planned by a sagacious and far-seeing mind.
"It was fit that he who had planned the settlement, and who had identified with it all his hopes for usefulness for the remainder of his
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life, and all his hopes of a competence for his family, should be the first settler in the township. He did not wait for hardier adventurers to encounter the first hardships and to break the loneliness of the woods. Selecting a temporary location near an old Indian trail, a few rods from the southern boundary of the township, he built the first log cabin, and there placed his family.
"I well remember the pleasant day in July, 1807, when that family made its removal from the center of Hudson to a new log house in a township that had no name and no human habitation. The father and mother—poor in this world's goods, but rich in faith and in the treasure of God's promises; rich in their well-tried mutual affection ; rich in their expectation of usefulness and of the comfort and competence which they hoped to achieve by their enterprise ; rich in the parental joy with which they looked upon the three little ones that were carried in their arms or nestled among their scanty household goods in the slow-moving wagon —were familiar with whatever there is in hardship and peril or disappointment, to try the courage of the noblest manhood or the immortal strength of a true woman's love. The little ones were the natives of the wilderness—the youngest a delicate nursling of six months, the others born in a remoter and more savage West. These five, with a hired man, were the family.
"I remember the setting out, the halt before the door of an aged friend to say farewell, the fording of the Cuyahoga, the day's journey of somewhat less than thirteen miles along a road that had been cut (not made) through the dense forest, the little cleared spot where the journey ended, the new log house, with what seemed to me a stately hill behind it, and with a limpid rivulet winding near the door. That night, when the first family worship was offered in that cabin, the prayer of the two worshipers, for themselves and their children, and for the work which they had that day begun, was like the prayer that went up of old from the deck of the Mayflower, or from beneath the wintry sky of Plymouth. One month later a German family came within the limits of the town ; but it was not until the next February that a second family came, a New England family, whose mother tongue was English. Well do I remember the solitude of that first winter, and how beautiful the change was when spring at last began to hang its garlands on the trees.
"The next thing in carrying out the plan to which Mr. Bacon had devoted himself was to bring in, from whatever quarter, such families as would enter into his views and would cooperate with him for the early and permanent establishment of Christian order. It was at the expense of many a slow and weary journey to older settlements that he succeeded in bringing together the families who, in the spring and summer of 1808, began to call the new town their home. His repeated absences from the home are fresh in my memory, and so is the joy with which we greeted the arrival of one family after another coming to relieve our loneliness ; nor least among the memories of that time is the remembrance of my mother's fear when left alone with her three little
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children. She had not ceased to fear the Indians, and sometimes a straggling savage, or a little company of them, came by our door on the old portage path, calling, perhaps, to try our hospitality, and with signs or broken English phrases asking for whiskey. She could not feel that to `pull in the latch string' was a sufficient exclusion of such visitors, and in my mind's eye I seem now to see her frail form tugging at a heavy chest, with which to barricade the door before she dared to sleep. It was, indeed, a relief and joy to feel at last that we had neighbbeginningthat our town was beginnitg to be inhabited. At the end of the second year from the commencement of the survey, there were, perhaps, twelve families, and the town received its name, Tallmadge."
Slowly the settlement of the town proceeded from 1807 to 1810. Emigration from Connecticut had about ceased, owing to the stagnation of business from European wars, and the embargo and other non-intercourse acts of Jefferson's administration. Mr. Bacon could not pay for the land he had purchased. He went East to try to make new satisfactory arrangements with the proprietors, leaving behind his wife and five little children. The proprietors were immovable. Some of his parishioners felt hard towards him because, having made payments, he could not perfect their titles. With difficulty he obtained the means to return for his family.
In May, 1812, he left Tallmadge, and all "that was realized after five years of arduous labor was poverty, the alienation of some old friends, the depression that follows a fatal defeat, and the dishonor that falls on one who cannot pay his debts." He lingered on a few years, supporting his family by traveling and selling the "Scott's Family Bible" and other religious works, from house to house, and occasional preaching. He bore his misfortunes with Christian resignation, struggled on a few years with broken spirits and broken constitution, and died at Hartford, August 17, 1817. "My mother," said Dr. Bacon, "standing over him with her youngest, an infant in her arms, said to him : 'Look on your babe before you die.' He looked up and said, with distinct and audible utterance : 'The blessing of the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, rest upon thee.' Just before dawn he breathed his last. Now he knows more than all of us, said the doctor; while my mother, bathing the dead face with her tears, and warming it with kisses, exclaimed : 'Let my last end be like his.' "
There is little doubt that Rev. David Bacon was the first white person who made his home in this township. Other early settlers were George Boosinger, Justin E. Frink, Ephraim Clark, Jonathan Sprague, Titus Chapman, William Neal, Elizure Wright, Moses Bradford, Salmon Sacket, John Caruthers, Reuben Upson, John Wright and Luther Chamberlain. The township was named in honor of one of its early proprietors, Benjamin Tallmadge, of Litchfield, Connecticut. Nearly all the original settlers were from Connecticut. It was organized as a separate township in November, 1812. Elizure Wright was elected clerk and Nathaniel Chapman, justice of the peace. Tallmadge has from the very earliest days brought a very strong religious and educational influence to bear upon the surrounding communities. The average of culture is higher
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here than in any other community in this vicinity—perhaps in Ohio. The purpose of its founder was religious. The Congregational Church was organized here in 1809. In 1810, a schoolhouse was opened and Lucy Foster, who married Alpha Wright the next year, was its first teacher. In 1816 "Tallmadge Academy" was incorporated and opened to students. Among its teachers, Simeon Woodruff and Elizure Wright were the earliest, while later came Sidney Edgerton. About 1835 Ephraim T. Sturtevant opened a private school and taught it successfully for several years. Tallmadge established the first public library in Summit County, opening it in 1813, and continuing and increasing it until the present writing. The Congregational Church edifice was built in 1822, and is a fine specimen of the New England church architecture of the period. With very few changes, it has continued to serve the society until now. In 1825 the Methodists established a church organization, and in 1832 erected a church building. In 1874 they built the present structure near the public square. Coal and potter's clay are extensively mined in the township. In the early '40s several veins of iron ore were discovered and a furnace erected to smelt them. The attempt was unsuccessful and the enterprise ultimately abandoned. Some manufacturing has been successfully conducted, notably, carriage manufacturing, begun in 1827 by Amos Avery and William C. Oviatt. In 1836 they took in Isaac Robinson. In 1841 Ira P. Sperry organized the firm of Oviatt & Sperry and later took in Samuel J. Ritchie. L. V. Bierce and J. E. Baldwin also manufactured carriages for many, years. In 1868 Alfred Sperry, Charles Tryon and Benjamin D. Wright began the manufacture of sewer-pipe, Henry M. Camp later succeeding Mr. Tryon. In 1871 Samuel J. Ritchie and Ira P. and Willis Sperry bought them out and continued the business with success until the fire of 1878. In 1881 Ira P. and George P. Sperry rebuilt the works. The apple-butter factory of John A. Caruthers should also be noticed. Tallmadge gave her full quota of men to preserve the Union during the rebellion of 1861. Tallmadge claims two of the greatest names in Summit County history in Sidney Edgerton and William H. Upson.
Officials of Summit County and its political subdivisions in 1928, are the following:
Judges of Appellate Court in Summit County District
W. E. Pardee, Akron
Ross W. Funk, Wooster
Chas. G. Washburn, Lorain
Common Pleas Judges
E. D. Fritch
L. S. Pardee
Scott D. Kenfield
Edward H. Boylan
Court of Domestic Relations
Howard C. Spicer
Probate Judge
Lewis D. Slusser
Clerk of Courts
James Dillian
County Auditor
Jacob C. Mong
County Treasurer
D. C. Cooper
County Recorder
Mary Paul
County Surveyor
Hal G. Sours