USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > A history of Cleveland, Ohio, Volume I > Part 29
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97 | Part 98 | Part 99 | Part 100 | Part 101 | Part 102 | Part 103 | Part 104
The officers were elected by congress until the adoption of the constitution, when they were appointed by the president. On the 5th of October, 1787, con- gress elected Major General Arthur St. Clair of Pennsylvania as the first gov- ernor of the northwest territory, and Major Winthrop Sargent as his secretary, and, on the 17th of October, General Samuel Holden Parsons, General James Mitchell Varnum and Colonel John Armstrong were elected judges. On Feb- ruary 19, 1788, Lieutenant Colonel Return Jonathan Meigs, Jr., was elected judge in place of Colonel Armstrong, who declined to serve.
t "American State Papers, Public Land Series," Volume I.
1 See Whittlesey's "Early Civil and County Jurisdiction South Shore of Lake Erie," "Annals Early Settlers Association," No. 3, p. 57.
2 The ordinance was drawn by Nathan Dane, a distinguished lawyer of Beverly, Massa- chusetts. See "North American Review," October, 1891, for claim that Manassah Cutler was the author of the ordinance. And also same magazine, April, 1876, for an article by William F. Poole on the same subject. Poole asserts that General St. Clair, then president of congress, was promised the governorship of the northwest Territory if he aided the passage of the ordinance. In 1792 Congress provided a seal for the territory. It represents a buck- eye tree, felled by the ax of a settler, and near it an apple tree in full fruitage, giving signif- icance to the legend "meliorem lapsa locavit" [the fallen (tree) has made way for a better]. The buckeye thus became the state emblem. To the settler it was the token of good, rich soil. Ohio apples have always been a noted crop.
229
HISTORY OF CLEVELAND
An interesting "provisional government" preceded that established by Gov- ernor St. Clair. On April 7, 1788, forty-seven New England pioneers landed on the Ohio at the mouth of the Muskingum and established the town of Mari- etta. Finding themselves in advance of the governor and his court they re- quested Colonel Return Jonathan Meigs, father of the newly appointed terri- torial judge, to draw up a code, which he did on a sheet of ordinary foolscap paper, and the colony published these rules by nailing them to the trunk of a sturdy oak.
On Wednesday, July 9, 1788, Governor St. Clair arrived at Mari- etta with two of his judges and his secretary, and on Tuesday, July 15, with such pomp and ceremony as his federalistic principles dictated and pioneer limitations allowed, the governor formally entered into the duties of his office. The ordinance and the commissions of the governor, secretary and judges were publicly read before the assembled pioneers and the governor made a brief address.
On September 2, 1788, the first common pleas court in the territory con- vened at Marietta. It was inaugurated according to the aristocratic ideas of the governor, by a procession of judges, the officers of the militia, the soldiery and the populace, all headed by the sheriff (with drawn sword) of the newly estab- lished county of Washington.3 This was in marked contrast to the informal open air courts held soon after, under the shelter of trees and in the shadow of barns and corn cribs in the rural county seats. The first territorial legislature was composed of Governor St. Clair; Judges Parsons and Varnum, and Secretary Winthrop Sargent. It met at Marietta in the summer and autumn of 1788. Its first published legislation is dated July 25, 1788, and pertains to the regulation and establishing of the militia, a fact significant of the turbulent Indian tribes that harassed the settlers in every valley. On August 23 the general court established "general courts of quarter session and common pleas" and provided for the appointment of sheriffs. On August 30, probate courts were estab- lished and the terms of the general court fixed. Several other laws were passed and all were signed by the governor and Judges Varnum and Parsons, and Judge Symmes signed the one establishing probate courts.
Thus was finally established the authority of the United States over the Northwest Territory. When Washington became the first president he nomi- nated, on August 18, 1789, the same officers for the territory, naming William Barton in place of Judge Varnum, who died early in 1789. The senate promptly confirmed these appointments. Judge Barton refused to serve and the presi- dent named Judge Turner in his stead. The first of these officers to visit the Western Reserve was Judge Parsons, who came to the Reserve to attend a treaty council with the Indians.4 He was drowned in 1789, while crossing a ford in the Muskingum river. General Rufus Putnam, Jr., of Marietta, was named in his place. He served until 1796, when he was appointed surveyor general of the United States by President Washington. He was succeeded by Joseph Gilman of Fort Harmar. Judge Turner resigned in 1798 and was suc-
3 See S. P. Hildreth "Pioneer History," p. 232.
4 See S. P. Hildreth "Pioneer History," p. 232.
230
HISTORY OF CLEVELAND
ceeded as chief justice by Return Jonathan Meigs, Jr. There was no fixed seat of government. In 1790 the council sat at Vincennes and later at Cincinnati.
In 1798 Governor St. Clair, having satisfied himself that the necessary five thousand white male electors were in the territory, issued a proclamation calling for the first election held in the territory. The people were to elect represen- tatives to the first general assembly, to be convened at Cincinnati on February 4, 1789. The ordinance provided that the assembly should consist of a house of representatives elected by the people, and a legislative council of five mem- bers appointed by the President of the United States from ten nominations made to him by the house. The house of representatives met in Cincinnati on the appointed day, nominated ten men for the council and adjourned to meet in Cincinnati on the 16th day of the following September. Thus the second phase of the territorial government was inaugurated.
It was not until September 24, 1799, that the two houses actually convened. They were addressed by the governor, who still possessed great influence in the territory. The legislature was practically under the guidance of Jacob Burnet of Cincinnati, a member of the council, who prepared virtually every law that ^ was passed. He later became distinguished as a judge and senator and holds an honorable place among the law makers of early Ohio. The legislature en- acted thirty-seven laws. On October 3, 1799, it elected William Henry Harri- son as the first delegate from the territory to congress. His rival in the election was Arthur St. Clair, Jr., a son of the governor and the attorney for the ter- ritory. Harrison's election was by a majority of one vote.
The second session of the first territorial legislature was held at Chillicothe, November 3, 1800. Twenty-six laws were enacted and signed by the governor. Captain William Henry Harrison was appointed governor of the newly erected territory of Indiana.
The second and last territorial legislature for Ohio met at Chillicothe on November 23, 1801, by proclamation of the governor. Forty laws were enacted and signed. By this time the growing antipathy between the governor and the legislature broke into open warfare. General St. Clair was a federalist gentleman of the sedate and conscientious school of John Adams. He had the federal- ists distrust for the ability of the masses to rule themselves. His tendencies were aristocratic and his temperament autocratic. While these characteristics suited the military commander, they were entirely unsuited to the frontier governor. His arbitrary assumption of the legislative functions, such as the establishing of counties by proclamation, the prodigal use of the veto power, his presump- tion that he was a part of the legislative branch, his propensity for convening and proroguing the legislature without consulting its members, aroused the frontiersman, used to self-assertion, trained in self-sufficiency and imbued with an extreme individualism. Added to this autocratic action was a strange ob- stinacy born of his mistrust of the advocates of statehood that displayed itself in his antagonism to the forming of a state. He advocated the division of the entire territory into three parts: the eastern with Marietta as the capital, the central with Cincinnati as its capital, and the western as Indiana territory. The combined antagonism aroused by his personal obduracy, his advocacy of cen- tralized power and by the political machinations of his enemies, finally led to
Samuel Huntington 1765-1817
Reuben Wood 1792-1864
Seabury Ford 1801-1851
David Tod 1805-1868
George Hoadley 1825-1902
John Brough 1811-1865
GOVERNORS OF OHIO WHO HAVE LIVED IN CLEVELAND
231
HISTORY OF CLEVELAND
mob violence, which, in December, 1801, he barely escaped in Chillicothe. Writ- ten charges were preferred against him by the delegates to President Jefferson, who was entirely in sympathy with the state party and ready to remove the friend and appointee of Washington. And in 1802 the first democratic presi- dent removed the first governor of the Northwest Territory, for the reason that the governor was reported to have used "intemperate and indecorus language toward congress" and had "manifested a disorganizing spirit." t
A democrat, Charles Byrd, secretary of the territory, was appointed gover- nor. But his incumbency was brief. The territory was ripe for statehood and soon, with the assurance of vigorous youth and the fore-knowledge of the proud place she would occupy, Ohio entered the councils of the nation.
In these important territorial matters the Western Reserve had almost no voice. Three jurisdictions claimed her, none molested her. There was first the claim of Connecticut. She maintained that her reservation included juris- diction as well as territory, that the two under the American system went to- gether. But she never erected counties, never appointed sheriffs nor even sent a company of militia hither to maintain her assumption. Secondly was the claim of the Connecticut Land Company, which purchased the land. Connec- ticut seemed to have acquiesced to the opinion that the deed to the land con- veyed the prerogatives of government to the grantees. This mode of transfer- ring sovereignty was not novel to English law and English colonial usage. But the United States never subscribed to it, although the facts in this instance are unique. For we find that Connecticut did not relinquish all her claims of politi- cal jurisdiction to the United States until 1800 .* The Reserve was settled, as we have seen, in 1796. During the four years intervening neither the Company nor the state nor the nation made any effort toward civil government in the sparsely settled community. We find the Company delegating a Mr. Swift to ask Governor St. Clair to make a county of the Reserve in 1798, and for at least three years, 1797, 1798 and 1799, annual petitions were sent by the settlers to the assembly of Connecticut praying them to organize some sort of civil gov- ernment. In October, 1798, Connecticut appointed an agent to bear the facts upon congress. Finally in 1800 the anomalous situation ends. This is probably the only instance in our political history where a private corporation, patently vested with governmental power, tries to shift the burdens of political preroga- tive upon a commonwealth, which in turn thrusts them upon an unwilling fed- eral government. And thus for four years these claimants to sovereignty allow a vast area to remain without other government that the natural self-restraint of the New Englander.
In 1800 Governor St. Clair by proclamation created the county of Trumbull embracing the entire Reserve, and on September 22d the governor issued a proclamation directed to David Abbott, the sheriff, commanding "that on the second Tuesday of October he cause an election to be held for the purpose of electing one person to represent the county in the territorial legislature." On the given day the electors convened at Warren, the county seat, to attend the
t It is probable that Governor St. Clair visited the Western Reserve only once, when he came to Youngstown to attend the trial of McMahon, charged with the murder of the Indian chief Tuscarawa George at Salt Springs, in the summer of 1800.
* Whittlesey's "Early History of Cleveland," p. 155.
232
HISTORY OF CLEVELAND
first election held in the Reserve. The elections were after the old English model, not by ballot but viva voce. The electors, presided over by the sheriff, announced their vote orally. Only forty-two electors attended this election. The widely separated little frontier communities could send only a few men so great a distance. There was no one present from Cleveland. General Edward Paine received thirty-eight votes and was declared elected. He sat in the last territorial legislature in 1801. This was the first and last election held in the Reserve after this model.
During the territorial period the county was the unit of local government. This was after the pattern of Pennsylvania and the south rather than of New England, where the township was the unit. The governor created the counties by proclamation and appointed all its officers, which were a sheriff, a court of quarter sessions, composed of justices of the peace of the quorum. The court of quarter sessions had administrative and judicial care of the county. It created the townships and appointed the township officers, namely: justices of the peace and constables, a clerk and overseers of the poor. There was thus very little local autonomy in this first system of local government.
At Warren, the first court of quarter sessions, in Trumbull county, "was held August 25, 1800, at 4:00 o'clock p. m., between the corncrib of E. Quinby, on Main street, fronting the Brooks house, just south of Liberty street. These cribs had regular clapboard cabin roofs."5
It proceeded to divide the county into eight townships : Youngstown, Warren, Hudson, Vernon, Richfield, Middlefield, Painesville and Cleveland. The town- ship of Cleveland included all the present Cuyahoga county east of the river and the townships of Chester, Russell and Bainbridge, now in Geauga county, as well as the unsurveyed western portion of the reserve from the Cuyahoga river to the Firelands. James Kingsbury was appointed the first justice of the quorum, . Amos Spafford the first justice not of the quorum and Stephen Gilbert and Lorenzo Carter, the first constables in Cleveland township.
In January, 1802, the last session of the territorial legislature succeeded finally in wresting from the unwilling governor a law permitting the townships to elect their own trustees, supervisors of highways, fence viewers, overseers of the poor, and constables. The quarter sessions at the February term ordered an election in "Cleaveland, Trumbull county," to be held in the house of James Kingsbury. The record of this first town election in Cleveland reads : "Agreeably to order of the Court of General Quarter Sessions the inhabitants of the town of Cleaveland, met at the house of James Kingsbury, Esq., the 5th day of April, A. D. 1802, for a town meeting and chose Chairman, Rodolphus Edwards ; Town Clerk, Nathaniel Doan; Trustees, Amos Spafford, Esq., Timothy Doan, William W. Williams; Appraisers of Houses, Samuel Hamilton, Elijah Gun; Lister, Ebenezer Ayrs; Supervisors of Highways, Samuel Huntington, Esq., Nathaniel Doan, Samuel Hamilton; Overseers of the Poor, William W. Wil- liams, Samuel Huntington, Esq .; Fence Viewers, Lorenzo Carter, Nathan Chap- man; Constables, Ezekiel Hawley, Richard Craw. A true copy of the proceed- ings of the inhabitants of Cleaveland at their town meeting examined per me.
NATAHANIEL DOAN, Town Clerk."
5 Leonard Case "Early Settlement of Trumbull County," Western Reserve Historical Society, Tract No. 30, p. II.
233
HISTORY OF CLEVELAND
This first election under the new territorial law was also the last, for the territory soon became a state. On November 1, 1802, the first state constitu- tional convention met at Chillicothe, and in the surprisingly short time of thirty days it completed a constitution and ratified it for the people, the document never going to the electorate for popular approval, although it was framed to suit an extreme democracy.
Trumbull county was represented by two delegates, David 'Abbott of Geauga and Samuel Huntington of Cleveland. Both were mild federalists, although Huntington had rather decided leanings toward Jeffersonianism, and their in- fluence was not preponderating in the deliberations. The convention was a ram- pant Jeffersonian body in complete control of the Chillicothe group of democrats who had brought the bitter strife with St. Clair to a fatal focus.
The new national administration, the first of the republican or democratic party, lent its potent influence toward radicalizing the constitution through Speaker Macon of the National House of Representatives, who wrote Thomas Worthington, one of the leaders of the convention, the wishes of Presi- dent Jefferson, which included legislative supremacy in all appointments, universal manhood suffrage, the election of militia officers by the. militiamen, and limited terms of all officers .* These ideas were all embodied in the new constitution, only Jefferson's suggestion that the governor be elected by joint ballot of the legislature was rejected. So it came about that Ohio, the first of the great states of the new northwest, threw aside the conservatism of the New England pioneers and followed her Virginians and' Kentuckians far into the fields of radicalism. It gave to the legislature elected by the people, supreme power over courts and governors; over courts, because it appointed all judges for a limited term of seven years, and when in 1805 the Supreme court declared a law of the legislature unconstitutional, the legislature promptly pro- ceeded to impeach the judges; over the governor, for it deprived him of the veto power and emasculated his office so that Tom Corwin could say "the re- prieving of criminals and the appointing of notaries are the sole powers of the prerogative." All property qualifications for voters were abolished, excepting that the voter must be a tax payer and a road tax that could be paid in work fulfilled this requirement. The militia chose its own commanders. For its day, it was a radical document. But it suited the ideals of the rough, individualistic frontiersman.
STATE JURISDICTION.
Edward Tiffin, of Ross county, was elected the first governor ; Thomas Worth- ington, of Ross county and John Smith, of Hamilton county, the first United States senators, and Jeremiah Morrow, of Warren county, the first congressman, all from the dominating southern part of the state.
The Reserve participated in the legislature by sending Samuel Huntington, of Cleveland, to the senate and Ephraim Quinby to the house, that convened in 1803. The first election under this constitution held in Cleveland was on October II, 1803, for the choice of representatives to the legislature. There were only twenty-two votes cast. Ephraim Quinby received nineteen; David Abbott, twenty-two; Amos Spafford, one; David Hudson, one; Timothy Doan, Nathaniel Doan and James Kingsbury were the judges of election; Rodolphus
"St. Clair Papers" II, p. 590-I.
234
HISTORY OF CLEVELAND
Edwards and Stephen Gilbert, clerks; Timothy Doan, justice of the peace, swore in the officers.6
The state passed safely through the vicissitudes that legislative omnipotence brought upon it and entered, in 1825, into a career of profligate public expendi- tures on canals and turnpikes. When the developing railway lines antiquated these modes of transportation, the state found itself on the verge of bank- ruptcy, and in 1850 an election was held for choosing delegates to the second constitutional convention. The convention met at Columbus, May 6, 1850. Cuyahoga county was represented by two distinguished lawyers, Sherlock J. Andrews and Reuben Hitchcock. After four and one-half months deliberation the convention submitted its work to the people and by a majority of sixteen thousand, two hundred and eighty-eight it was ratified. The new instrument was radical only in its reaction against the prevailing policy of public improvements and special legislation. It prohibited both, authorizing only a very limited an- nual expenditure to maintain the state public works. In May, 1873, a third con- stitutional convention met in Columbus, Cuyahoga county being represented by Sherlock J. Andrews, Jacob Mueller, Amos Townsend, Martin A. Foran and Seneca O. Griswold. The new constitution, a voluminous document the result of many months' deliberation, was rejected by the people.
CHAPTER XX.
CLEVELAND MEN IN STATE AND NATIONAL GOVERNMENT.
During her first half century, northern Ohio had but a small share in state and national political affairs. Southern Ohio was settled much more rapidly than the northern counties. From Pennsylvania, Virginia and Kentucky came a vast immigration, passing through the Ohio valley into the rich rolling country adjacent to the Miami and other rivers. These people were Jeffersonian in politics and their southern sympathies developed as the New England federalists of the Reserve became whigs and abolitionists. There is, therefore, a distinct line of cleaveage between the politics of the two sections. It was not until the Great Issue assumed its menacing attitude that the northern and southern counties united in the republican party.
Since the development of lake traffic the lake cities have grown with mar- velous rapidity and Cleveland as the metropolis of the state has, in more recent years, secured her proper prestige in state and national affairs.
STATE GOVERNMENT.
Governors .- Samuel Huntington, elected in 1808, served one term, 1809-10; lived in Cleveland from 1803 to 1806; removed to Newburg in 1806 and to Painesville in 1807. He was born in Connecticut, received a college education and a good legal training and traveled in Europe. He first came to Ohio in 1800 on a tour of investigation, visiting the principal settlements and going as far south as Marietta, where he met Governor St. Clair and evidently made a
ยท Whittlesey "Early History of Cleveland," pp. 389-90.
SENATOR MARCUS A. HANNA
235
HISTORY OF CLEVELAND
favorable impression. He returned to his home in Norwich, Connecticut, not far from the home of Moses Cleaveland, and the following spring brought his wife and two sons and their governess, Miss Margaret Cobb, to Youngstown, where they remained until his removal to Cleveland. During his first visit to the Reserve in 1800 he kept a diary and this is what he says of Cleveland: "Left David Abbott's mill (Willoughby) and came to Cleveland. Stayed at Carter's at night. * Explored the city and town; land high and flat, covered with white oak. On the west side of the river is a long, deep, stagnant pool of water, which produces fever and ague among those who settle near the river. There are only three families near the point and they have the fever. * * Sailed out * of the Cuyahoga along the coast to explore the land west of the river. Channel at the mouth about five feet deep. On the west side is a prairie where one hun- dred tons of hay might be cut each year. A little way back is a ridge, from which the land descends to the lake, affording a prospect indescribably beautiful. In the afternoon went to Williams' grist and saw mill (Newburg), which are nearly completed."*
When he came to Cleveland to live he had Amos Spafford build him a house of hewn timber on the rear of the lot on Superior street where the American house now stands. His house overlooked the river valley and was the most pretentious place in Cleveland. He lived in this mansion only a few years. It was too near the malarial "stagnant pool," and in 1806 he purchased the mill at Newburg, where he lived only one year. From his contemporaries we learn that Governor Huntington was a cautious, honorable, industrious man, possessed of tact and patience.
Huntington was a mild Jeffersonian, unlike most of the New Englanders, and occupied many public offices, including that of supervisor of the highway in 1802. Governor St. Clair appointed him a justice of the quorum in 1802 and a lieutenant in the militia. He was Trumbull county's delegate to the first state constitutional convention and the county's first senator in the first state legis- lature. In 1803, Governor Tiffin, appointed him the first member of the first state supreme court, which place he resigned in 1808 to become the first Western Reserve governor of the state. After serving his term he retired to Painesville, where he had a splendid estate. After Hull's ignominious surrender of Detroit, in the War of 1812, Governor Huntington came to Cleveland to meet General Lewis Cass and others and proceeded to Washington with a letter to the war department, describing the precarious situation in northern Ohio and asking for arms and equipment. He soon, thereafter, became a member of the staff of General Wm. Henry Harrison. He died on his farm at Painesville, in 1817.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.