USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > A history of Cleveland and its environs; the heart of new Connecticut > Part 17
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community of Avon in Lorain County. There he became an active leader in the anti-slavery movement. His home was one of the stations of the underground railway, where escaping slaves were harbored and forwarded to liberty and safety across the Canadian line. Sturges Lynes was a civil engineer and surveyed a portion of Michigan and Northern Ohio.
The nurse of Doctor Hobbs was an ex-slave, who subsequently became the wife of Hon. John P. Green. As a child Perry L. Hobbs' health was very delicate and his mother took him on a long tour of the Pacific coast and Pacific waters. They visited Honolulu, and his mother was the first white woman to look into the crater of the volcano Kilanea. They attended the burial service of King Kameha- meha, king of the Hawaiian Islands, and also the coronation of the new king.
On their return to Cleveland Perry L. Hobbs printed a little book "No Sect in Heaven," on a small hand printing press. Besides the family associations which were a constant in- centive to the development of his talents, he was fortunate in living next door to Colonel Charles Whittlesey, the pioneer Cleveland his- torian and the first president of the Western Reserve Historical Society. When a high school boy Perry Hobbs had some valuable training in copying the colonel's manuscripts. About the same time he also arranged the stamp and coin collections for the Historical Society.
He enjoyed exceptional educational advan- tages. After finishing the public schools he entered the Case School of Applied Science on a scholarship, and in 1886 was awarded the Bachelor of Science degree. His summer vaca- tions were spent working for the Star Oil Works of Cleveland. Going abroad, he pur- sued post-graduate work in the University of Berlin, from which he received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1889. While a student of that university he had the good fortune of working in the private laboratory of Prof. A. W. IIofman, one of Germany's greatest chemists. For nine months he had charge of the chemical laboratory in the Berlin Agri- cultural College. A tribute paid the young student by Professor Hofman contained the following: "Mr. Hobbs possesses the happy gift of conveying information to others, which will greatly assist him in successfully perform- ing the duties of a chemical professorship."
Doctor Hobbs was a pioneer in bacteriology. In 1887, when the study of that subject was then almost unknown in America, he took a
course under the famous Doctor Koch. Hc also studied toxicology and went on many botanical excursions with the professors and assisted them in making microscopical draw- ings. He had few peers in the skillful han- dling of the microscope. While in Berlin he was employed to make blood analysis during two murder cases. It is said that he fairly begrudged the hours he slept while aboard since there was so much he desired to learn. During vacations he tramped over Germany, the Black Forest, Switzerland and Northern Italy, and had all the abundant life and op- portunity of the German student.
On returning to Cleveland in 1889 Doctor Hobbs took the Chair of Chemistry in the Western Reserve Medical College. That posi- tion he filled thirteen years. But his reputa- tion and work were not confined to the college. He became widely known as an expert con- sulting chemist and he finally resigned from the Medical College to give his entire time to private work as an analytical and consulting chemist and chemical engineer.
Professor Hobbs was among the first chem- ists in this country to specialize and adapt scientific attainments to the real work of the world. He served Cleveland as gas inspector in 1894, and after 1896 was one of the experts with the Ohio Dairy and Food Commission and represented that commission in the annual congress in St. Louis in 1904. He was fre- quently employed as a chemical expert by the United States Government.
His private laboratory was one of the most modern and complete in the country. Many industrial organizations sought his advice and service. His knowledge of cement won for him a wide reputation in concrete trade circles as well as among chemists. Ile inspected the Pacific Portland Cement Company and advised in the operation and processes of the plant. During 1906-08 he superintended the design- ing, construction, equipment and early opera- tion of the Cowell Portland cement plant in California. He assisted in establishing one of the first sugar beet factories in the United States. He also formed the Cyan Chemical Company, making blueing and other materials from the waste of the Artificial Gas Company. Prior to his death he had been working on dairy products, making a new kind of culture for butter and cheese and had just established at his laboratory the Dairy Ferments Com- pany. He was also president of the Perfec- tion Cap and Can Company of Cleveland.
As an analytical chemist his advice and
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counsel were sought particularly in important legal cases. In fact in all kinds of litigation involving chemical questions he was regarded first anthority. If there was suspicion that poison had caused a mysterious death; when it was necessary to know just what deleterious substance had been added to otherwise pure food; when proof was needed through the science of real chemists in some insidious criminal case; when big property interests were to be determined through the test tube and microscope, the invariable requirements was "get Perry Hobbs." His testimony was often the deciding factor in such cases, He stood virtually and literally at the head of his profession.
By his pleasant congenial nature Mr. Hobbs won hosts of friends. He was a leader not only in his scientific attainments but in social and fraternal circles. His Masonic affiliations gave him much pleasure. He was especially fond of the Shrine and when Potentate of Al Koran Temple in 1906 he established the chil- dren's annual party. He held many positions in this order, and his last service, rendered just one month before his death, was as Prelate at the annual inspection of Holyrood Com- mandery, rendering his lines with impressive voice and perfect poise as one inspired. He was a member of the University and Masonic Club. He was also active in the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce and for a time chair- man of its Educational Committee. He was a charter member of the Cleveland Chemical Society, a member of the Civil Engineers' Club of Cleveland, the Ohio State Academy of Science and the American Electro Chemical Society, Society of Chemical Industry of London, Castalia Trout Club, and his favorite pastime was fishing. He was a founder and was president of the Anglo-American Stud- ents' Club of Berlin in 1886.
His versatile ability and enthusiasm made him a natural civic leader. He was optimistic, a hard worker, and demanded the best of him- self and of others, never being satisfied with half way results in his profession or in civic affairs. The outstanding features of his char- acter were optimism, enthusiasm, energy and love of friendship. He loved his friends, books, flowers, music, art and all the true and beautiful things of life. Thus it was a loss not only to the field of science but even more to the civic life and character of Cleveland when he died at the comparatively early age of fifty. His death occurred April 6, 1912,
at the home where he had lived over forty years.
On April 6, 1892, just twenty years prior to his death, he married Miss Mary Everett Marshall, daughter of Dr. Isaac Holmes Mar- shall and Mary E. (Everett) Marshall. Mrs. Hobbs is one of Cleveland's prominent wom- en. She is the mother of three children : Mary Antoinette, Katherine Marshall and Perry Marshall, who has volunteered in the Naval Aviation of the World's War. All were born in the old colonial homestead on Euclid Avenue, making three generations who had lived in that beautiful home.
CALEB SECUM HOBBS was a Cleveland resi- dent from 1848 until his death on March 5, 1870. He played a very active and influential part not only as a business man but as a citi- zen and his name is one that deserves some special tribute in this publication.
He was of old New England ancestry. The best accounts indicate that the progenitor Thomas Hobbs was in Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1657. Through the different generations they were distinguished as mathematicians and with a high degree of mechanical skill. Caleb Secum Hobbs was born at Dedham, Massachusetts, February 3, 1834, a son of Thomas Jefferson and Sarah Crosby (Mayo) Hobbs, a grandson of Joseph and Mary (Cressy) Hobbs and a great-grandson of Joseph and Elizabeth (Peabody) Hobbs of Londonderry, New Hampshire. His great- grandfather was a Minute Man and pensioner of the Revolution, while the great-great-grand- father, Abraham Hobbs, was a member of the Constitutional Convention that formulated the present Massachusetts constitution ; was in the State Legislature during the Revolution and had five sons who were Minute Men. The grandfather Joseph was a soldier in the War of 1812. Thomas Jefferson Hobbs, the father, was a millwright, a draftsman and an inventor. He assisted in building the first iron boat in America at Boston, Massa- chusetts. He followed his son out to Ohio and about 1850 located at East Rockport, Ohio.
On the maternal side Caleb Hobbs belonged to the Mayo family, which contained many interesting and prominent connections in old New England. One of its ancestors was Rev. John Mayo, the first ordained minister of the Old North Church in Boston, who delivered the Artillery sermon in 1658. Copps Hill, the historic cemetery at Boston, received its name from its first owner William Copp, also
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an ancestor. The preserver of Plymouth Rock in 1745 was Elder Thomas Faunce, and the first Pilgrim publication was issued by George Morton in London, England, in 1622. All these being among the Pilgrim and Puritan ancestors in the Mayo branch of the Hobbs family. There were others who were members of the ancient and honorable artillery com- panies of Massachusetts and were soldiers of the Revolution.
Caleb S. Hobbs grew up and received his education in Boston, and on locating in Cleve- land in 1848 entered upon a very active career. For a number of years he was paymaster of the Painesville and Ashtabula Railroad, now part of the New York Central system. Dur- ing the Civil war, when the operating officials were unable to run the pay train through, "Cale" Hobbs volunteered to take the engi- neer's place and reached the desired destina- tion without difficulty.
For many years he was one of the firm of the Hobbs & Savage Printing Company. He was also secretary of the Forest City Varnish Company. He was one of the first men in the country to master the art of telegraphy and imparted it to several of the early students in that art. One of his characteristics was a fondness for books and he was a great reader and a collector. He left a large library of rare editions, many of which had his name stamped on the binding. He served as a pri- vate in Company A of the Twenty-ninth Regi- ment, Ohio National Guards, in 1864, was also a member of the Old Cleveland Guards, was a lieutenant in the Cleveland Grays and in 1870 was elected an honorable member of this company. He served as secretary of the Fourth Ward Relief Association for the bene- fit of the soldiers' families during the Civil war. He was appointed a Guard of Honor while the funeral train of Abraham Lincoln was in Cleveland in 1865. On that occasion he wore a badge of black ribbon with narrow white edging, containing the words "Guard of Honor" printed in white. This badge is preserved in the family scrap book.
In Masonry he was affiliated with Iris Lodge, Free and Accepted Masons, and with the Oriental Commandery of Knight Templar. His son also joined Iris Lodge, and it is the ambition of the only grandson to become a member of the same organization, thus giv- ing three generations of the family to this order. Aside from the many interests which claimed his time and energies while in Cleve- land Caleb Hobbs should be remembered as
a man of perfect probity, genial disposition, exceptional generosity and a lover of the beau- tiful and artistic. He was an exceptionally fine penman.
On April 18, 1859, he was married at Avon in Lorain County, Ohio, to Miss Ada Antoin- ctte Lynes, daughter of Sturges and Betsey (Lindsley) Lynes. To this marriage was born one child, Perry Lynes Hobbs, whose career is sketched on other pages. The son was born in the old family home on Huntington Street but they afterwards removed to Prospect Street, where Caleb Hobbs died.
ISAAC HOLMES MARSHALL, M. D. The medi- cal profession in Cleveland has many reasons to remember gratefully and lastingly the life and services of Isaac Holmes Marshall. His services were those of a capable physician of advanced ideas and high attainments and he constantly made his profession a medium of broad and beneficent work to the community at large.
He was a Scotch-Irish descent. The founder of this branch of the Marshall family in Amer- ica was James Marshall, who came from County Tyrone, Ireland, about 1776 with his brother Robert. Both soon afterwards joined the Pennsylvania troops for service in the Revolutionary army. James Marshall and family located in Lancaster County, Pennsyl- vania, but in 1805 removed to the Western Reserve of Ohio, where they bought a section of land.
William Marshall, son of James and father of Doctor Marshall, was a soldier in the War of 1812. His wife, Rachel McElroy, was not behind him in patriotic devotion to her coun- try. She rode all the way to Pittsburg on horseback and brought salt in her saddle bags to the soldiers, who very much needed that commodity. While her husband was in the service of the country she planted the crops and tended them with the aid of her small children. The Marshalls were pioneers in Trumbull County and their home was the regular meeting place of the Methodists until a separate building could be erected for church purposes in that locality. Rachel McElroy's grandfather was Adam McElroy, a soldier in the Revolution. Her uncle John McElroy was also Fife Major in Washington's army.
Doctor Marshall, grandson of James and Lydia (Carson) Marshall and tenth and youngest child in the family of William and Rachel (McElroy) Marshall, was born Sep- tember 17, 1821, at Weathersfield in Trumbull'
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County, Ohio. He attended district schools in his native township until fourteen, after which he was sent to a select school in Girard, Pennsylvania, and was a student at the Acad- emy of Ellsworth in Trumbull County until about 1840. Some of his early experiences were as clerk in a grocery and provision store at Milwaukee and as teacher of a district school in Trumbull and Mahoning counties for five or six winters.
In 1845 he began the study of medicine with Doctor Loy of Liberty, Ohio, and then entered the medical department of Western Reserve University under Dr. Jacob J. Delamater and Dr. I. R. Kirtland. He graduated M. D. in February, 1847, and soon after taking his diploma began the practice of his profession, at first in Milwaukee, then in Oldtown, Ohio, and finally in Cleveland with his brother-in- law, Dr. Henry Everett. On coming to Cleve- land Doctor Marshall located on Brownell Street, opposite the Erie Street Cemetery. This was the family home until 1872, when they removed to 1012 Euclid Avenue, the house in which Doctor Marshall died after having practiced medicine forty-five years.
He found in medicine truly a life work, and in the profession he achieved success and more than local reputation. He was especially noted as a diagnostician of eruptive diseases. He had the distinction of being the first sur- geon in this country to cure insanity by castra- tion. That successful operation was made in 1864 and is reported in the Medical and Surgi- cal Reporter of Philadelphia in 1865.
Doctor Marshall served as president, as vice president and treasurer of the Academy of Medicine of Cleveland, was coroner of Cnya- hoga County in 1863, was member of the City Board of Health from 1863 to 1875 and its secretary in 1864, was health officer from 1863 to 1867, was infirmary and city physician from 1863 to 1875, and in 1871 was appointed sur- geon of the Travelers Insurance Company. A couple of sentences from the report he made as infirmary physician about 1864 has special interest as items in Cleveland's history : "I found there had been no means of conveying patients to the hospital but in an open express wagon. Believing to carry a person through the streets with smallpox endangered the pub- lic health, therefore I procured a covered vehicle.
"Recommend the system of sewerage be per- fected and urge the passage of an ordinance requiring the owners of property to make sewerage connections and to prevent families
from throwing their waste water into the street, thereby keeping up a constant mud- hole and stench."
Doctor Marshall was also a member of the City Council from 1859 to 1861. In 1864 he was treasurer of the Fourth Ward Relief As- sociation for the benefit of the soldiers. In 1872 he was elected president of the Mutual Savings Society and he also acted as president of the Fourth Ward Republican Club.
As he was unable to pass the physical ex- amination for surgeon in the Civil war he did what he could in sending troops to the front, in giving his medical services without charge to the soldiers' families and he had also been active in the conduct of the underground railway for the passage of fugitive slaves. While president of the Fourth Ward Repub- lican Club he presented a handsome banner to Captain MeIllrath's Company B of the Light Guards. He became affiliated with Iris Lodge, Free and Accepted Masons, in 1867.
Personally his distinguishing qualities were honesty of purpose, integrity, kindness and with all a great modesty. Doctor Marshall died at Cleveland March 30, 1895, and was laid to rest in the Lake View Cemetery.
On October 10, 1848, he married Mary E. Everett, of Liberty, Trumbull County, daugh- ter of Samuel and Sarah (Pheil) Everett. Mrs. Marshall died August 15, 1875. Their children are: Everett; Holmes; Sarah R., who married William M. Safford; and Mary E., who became the wife of Dr. Perry L. Hobbs.
MRS. WILLIAM M. SAFFORD, whose life and character are remembered by many friends in Cleveland, where she was born and where she spent much of her younger life, was one of the children of the late Dr. Isaac Holmes and Mary E. (Everett) Marshall. She bore the maiden name of Sarah R. Marshall and was born at Cleveland, April 9, 1853.
Of her father a sketch is found in this pub- lication. Her mother, Mary E. Everett, was a descendant of John Everett of Lynn, who located in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, in 1735. In the report of the Committee to Locate the Frontier Forts of Pennsylvania is found this item: "Fort Everett was on the property of John Everett, a man of promi- nence and of the same family as Edward Everett of Massachusetts, whence le came." A son of John was Thomas Everett, who 'served on the Committee of Observation for Northampton County, Pennsylvania, in 1774.
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Mary E. Everett's grandfather, Samuel Everett, was a captain in the Revolutionary war and for seventeen years filled the office of justice of the peace. In 1808 he removed to Liberty Township of Trumbull County, Ohio, and bought large tracts of land in Lib- erty and Vienna townships. The father of Mary E. Everett was Samuel Everett, who was one of the first American manufacturers of salaratus. In the carly '50s he removed to Cleveland, died in this city in 1859, and his body now rests in Lake View Cemetery. Mary E. Everett became a pioneer worker in the Women's Christian Temperance Union. In 1869 she served as first president of the Good Samaritan Society, the object of which was the relief of the worthy suffering poor.
Sarah R. Marshall was educated in the Cleve- land schools, attending Guilford Academy and graduating from the Central High School in 1871. The following year she finished a mu- sical course in the Ursuline Academy. From an early age she manifested talent in the art of expression and elocution, and she made that her life's calling. She received a diploma from the MeCutchen School of Expression in New York City.
When only a high school girl her literary talent attracted attention from her articles in the journal, The Camp Illuminator, and after her marriage she contributed weekly sketches to the Sunday Leader as its New York correspondent in 1886.
After returning from New York Mrs. Safford entered the Central High School at Cleveland and taught elocution and drawing for eight years. She then received a call from Wellesley College to instruct its pupils in elocution and some years later a similar position was offered her in one of the largest schools in Brooklyn.
On September 20, 1882. she married Wil- liam M. Safford of New York City. After their marriage they removed to Brooklyn, New York, Mr. Safford being a successful lawyer and writer. Her only child, Felice Marshall Safford, was born at Brooklyn and is now the wife of Cecil Sharp of London, who is an officer in the English army under Gen- eral Haig serving in France.
Mrs. Safford and her family in 1897 decided to make their home in England and they lived at St. Albans, where Mrs. Safford passed away February 8, 1900.
She was an exceptionally brilliant and scholarly woman and always a leader among her associates. At one time she was secretary
of the Brooklyn's Woman Club. She was a deep student of all questions involving the conditions and characteristics of American life and while in London she was frequently called upon to deliver addresses before organizations. Although she spent her last years abroad, she was thoroughly an American and always ex- pressed deep gratitude for the fact that she was born in this country. Her graces, ac- complishments and character endeared her to a host of friends, both here and abroad.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH OF CLEVELAND. Prior to 1835 the Catholic population of Cleveland was served largely by visiting priests and missionaries. The first resident pastor was appointed in 1835 and was the Rev. John Dillon, whose name stands promi- nent in the pioneer annals of the church in Northwest Ohio and who became pastor of the old St. Mary's on the Flats, located on Columbus Street. This was Cleveland's first permanent Catholic Church. Its site has long since been covered by factory buildings, but seventy years ago it was in the center of the downtown district.
The growth and development of Cleveland as a city has not been more remarkable than the growth of the Catholic Church and its varied institutions and activities. The Cath- olie community of Cleveland now comprises a population of between 200,000 and 225,000. There are 73 churches, about 200 priests, more than 400 nuns, and about 33,000 children in the parochial schools. Besides churches and parochial schools there are such institutions as hospitals, orphanages, homes for working boys and girls, a home for the aged poor, and hundreds of societies and other church or- ganizations.
It has been estimated that thirteen distinct nationalities are represented in the Catholic parishes of Cleveland. These include the fol- lowing national or racial stocks: German, Slovak, Polish, Bohemian, Maygar. Slovonian, Italian, Lithuanian, Croatian, Roumanian, Ruthenian, Syrian and the American born.
The largest parish in the city is St. Stan- islaus in the southeastern district, a parish with about 10,000 members and a parochial school with nearly 2,000 pupils. This church is under the direction of the Franciscan Fa- thers. In an educational way the Jesuits have been prominent in the city and have founded and maintained a great college on West Thirtieth Street. The college has an enrollment of 500. It is an institution which
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has educated many strong men for the secu- lar occupations and professions. There is also St. Mary's Seminary, a training school for priests of the diocese. It is located on Lakeside Avenue, Northwest. A new high school for boys, called the Cathedral Latin School, was established two years ago. A magnificent building is now in course of con- struction.
In earlier years the State of Ohio consisted of one diocese, under the direction of the archbishop of Cincinnati. The first resident bishop of Cleveland was Rt. Rev. Amadeus Rappe, who took charge of the diocese Octo- ber 10, 1847. The corner stone of the present cathedral at Superior Avenue and East Ninth Street was laid October 22, 1848. The church was consecrated November 7, 1852, by Arch- bishop Purcell of Cincinnati. Bishop Rappe continued in charge until his resignation on account of ill health in August, 1870. He died September 8, 1877. He not only built the present cathedral but also established a seminary for ecclesiastical students.
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