USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > A history of Cuyahoga County and the City of Cleveland, (Vol. 1) > Part 41
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Abram Garfield, the father of President Garfield, came to Newburgh in 1820. He was married in Zanesville to Eliza Ballou, and the newly wedded pair settled in a log house on a new farm of eighty acres in that part of Newburgh that was first annexed to Cleveland. Thomas Garfield, a son, was born in October, 1822. The father remained here for six years and until the birth of three children. The family moved away, but Thomas returned to the place of his birth. Just what year he came we do not know, but he was one of the early trustees of the township. We find him in Orange assisting the widowed mother after the death of his father, and helping to get together the money to send James to the Chester school. Again we find him trying to raise the money to send him to college, but as we have related, the money was finally advanced by Doctor Robinson. Thomas must have prospered to some extent, for the Cleveland State Hospital owes its origin to a gift of a tract of land of 100 acres, now within the limits of the City of Cleveland, given by Thomas Garfield and wife for the purpose of establishing a hospital for the insane. In 1852 the Legislature authorized the erection of an asylum and the building was completed in 1855. In 1872 it was partially destroyed by fire and at once rebuilt in a more substantial manner. It has been from time to time enlarged. Its site has for many years been absorbed by the municipal area of Cleveland. In 1896 a portion of land belonging to the asylum was traded for an equal amount of land near the buildings and the relinquished land attached to Garfield Park. This institution now has 1,300 acres of land, 100 with the present buildings in Cleveland and the rest in Lorain County. There are at present 1,870 patients in the hospital and it began receiving patients in 1855. The superintendent is Dr. Guy H. Williams. It is located on a high spot of ground and surrounding the buildings on all sides are attractive grounds with the noble ornament of trees and flowers.
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CHAPTER XXIII EAST CLEVELAND
This township, which is classed with the early Survey townships of the Reserve, does not appear on the early maps of Cuyahoga County and does not appear on the present maps. It has been said of it that it has had more varied municipal relations and more irregular boun- daries than any other township in the county. Today it has no existence as a political entity. Its territory was first taken from Cleveland Township, Euclid Township, Newburgh Township, and Warrensville Township. Cleveland and Euclid furnishing the larger portion, and Newburgh and Warrensville contributing fragments. It was so formed in 1846 and its western boundary was the present East Fifty-fifth Street of Cleveland, and its southern boundary Newburgh. As this township, newer than the rest, but still a pioneer township, continued, a flourishing settlement grew up within its boundaries, but it was undisturbed in its political relations until certain territory was added from the Township of Euclid, as shown by the record of the county commissioners. In August, 1866, East Cleveland Village was established. It may be stated in passing that the organization of the township has usually been given as in the year of 1845, but the final order establishing the township was made in June, 1846. In 1867 the Village of East Cleveland was annexed to Cleveland. This left a territory nearly six miles long and five miles in its greatest width but so irregular that it had an area of only fifteen square miles. In giving its early history as to annals and officers we may overlap some of the townships already recorded in our history. The first white resident was Timothy Doan, a Connecticut sea captain, who was forty-three years old when he brought his family to Cleveland in 1801. He left them there while he built a log cabin and made a small clearing on his farm on the west line of Old Euclid. In the fall he moved his family into the new house. His youngest son, John Doan, was living on the old farm in the '80s. For several years Timothy bent to the task of reclaiming the forest while yet his nearest neighbor was his brother Nathaniel at Doan's Corners, now the City of Cleveland. Timothy was a man of high character and good ability, strong mentally and physically. He believed in the old adage that he who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before is entitled to the gratitude of mankind. He was justice of the peace in the terri- tory that was later the Township of East Cleveland, and then served as judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Cuyahoga County. He died at the age of seventy on the old farm, where he built his log cabin in 1801. It may be interesting to note that Mr. Doan was elected by the Legislature of Ohio to the position of common pleas judge and at the first legislative session after the County of Cuyahoga was formed. It was the Eighth Legislative Session of Ohio. The capital of Ohio was Zanesville and the judges elected for Cuyahoga County were Augustus Gilbert, Nathan Perry, and Timothy Doan. This was the second session of this Legislature and Cuyahoga County was not represented until
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Edward Tiffin resigned as senator and Stanley Griswold was appointed by Governor Huntington in his place.
In August, 1803, John Shaw, John Ruple, Thomas McIlrath, Garret Thorp, and William Coleman, all from Washington County, Pennsyl- vania, visited this section. Two of the party selected land in East Cleve- land. Shaw chose the lot where Shaw Academy was built and where Shaw High School now stands. McIlrath settled at what was later Collinwood. Ruple located in the northeast part of Euclid, all on the main road from Cleveland to Pennsylvania. This was called a road, but it was hardly passable with ox teams. All who traveled in that way carried an axe to clear away the road from fallen timbers. These men went back to Pennsylvania and did not begin work on their forest farms until the next season. The second actual settler, after Timothy Doan, was Asa Dille, a brother of David Dille of Euclid. He came in March of 1804, put up his log cabin near the southwest corner of Old Euclid, cleared and planted, raised a large family, and there lived out his life. Soon after in the same year Shaw and McIlrath began work on their property and Benjamin Jones, a relative of McIlrath, settled southeast from them near what was afterwards the Asa Dille farm. Shaw brought his family that spring and is recorded as the third actual settler in the township. Shaw was a native of England, brought up in a woolen factory and entirely unfamiliar with the pioneer's most effective instrument, the axe, but he mastered the situation, cleared his farm and brought it into excellent productiveness. He was a man of good natural gifts, had a fair education, and is reputed to have taught the first school in Cuya- hoga County. He held various civil offices in the township and was the founder of Shaw Academy. McIlrath and Jones brought their families in the fall of 1804. Then there were five families in the terri- tory that later became East Cleveland. Only one family, that of Timothy Doan, had breadstuffs sufficient to last through the winter. The others depended principally on hunting, both to obtain meat for the family rations and skins and furs to barter in the rude markets of Newburgh and Cleveland, for articles of household and farm necessities. Coon skins were legal tender and hundreds were harvested. Mr. McIlraith was especially noted as a hunter and he had several sons grown nearly to man's estate, so that they formed a strong hunting battalion. The next year John Ruple settled on the line between East Cleveland and Euclid as these townships were afterwards related. He, too, was a noted hunter and was credited by William Coleman with killing the first panther slain in the old township of Euclid by a white man. He raised a large family and lived out his life, a long one, on the old farm. The next year Samuel Ruple settled at Nine Mile Creek in the eastern part of the territory afterward called Collinwood. Later in that year Caleb Eddy located in the southern part of the township on a stream which they named Dugway Brook. The same year Abraham Norris came and began work on his farm on the ridge back of Collamer. Mrs. Myndert Wemple, a daughter of Norris, some years ago related many interesting incidents of the pioneer experience of the family, some of which are preserved. The family were two miles from their nearest neighbor, David Hendershot. They had a puncheon floor and in summer a coverlid answered for a door. Mr. Norris worked hard from daylight to dark and soon had a good sized clearing, that is, he had felled the trees and trimmed the brush. Then, according to pioneer custom, he invited his neighbors from five or six miles around to a logging bee. Soon the company had several piles ready for burning and Mrs. Norris, who was watching the logging, ran into the house to get a shovel full of coals to
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fire the first log heap. The fire was burning low in the fireplace and on the warm hearth lay a griddle, which had been used for baking pancakes. The first thing Mrs. Norris saw as she entered the cabin was an enormous yellow rattlesnake curled up on the griddle. She screamed and fainted. Her husband ran in, but had no weapon. He called for his father-in-law, Mr. McIlrath, who was driving the oxen among the logs, and he despatched the intruder with his ox goad. The snake proved to be a very large one with twenty-four rattles.
It was the rule that men, who traveled through the woods, invariably carried a handy weapon, either a gun or a stick for snakes. Several wholesale killings were related in former chapters, where the air became impregnated with the poison and caused sickness. Mrs. Norris, who
DOAN'S CORNERS CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH
fainted at sight of the big rattler in the frying pan on the hearth, was braver in the presence of bears and wolves. When she heard the pigs squealing one night, when her husband was away, she ventured forth and as a bear was carrying away a pig in its arms like a crying baby, she carried a shovel of coals and threw them on a pile of dry bark and the quick bright blaze frightened the bear and it dropped the pig and loped into the woods. The pig was not seriously hurt.
Mrs. Wemple said that at this period of settlement there was no church in the neighborhood and people went to Doan's Corners on Sundays, where Squire Nathaniel Doan would read a sermon. The family would make the trip to meeting with oxen, not with horse and buggy, for they had no buggy and the roads would not warrant that sort of a conveyance if they had had one. Mr. Norris would walk beside his horse on which his wife was riding with one child riding in front and another behind her. Luxuries came slowly to the early settlers. Mrs. Norris once sent to Pennsylvania by a couple of young men, who were making the trip, for a pound of tea and two yards of calico, the latter to make the baby a dress, and the former for special occasions. We are writing of a period about five years before Cuyahoga County was organized. There were at this time only two or three gristmills within ten miles of the Norris home and except the Newburgh mill they were
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very inferior flouring establishments, often out of repair. In dry times the water would run low and these mills could do very little grinding. John Shaw at one time took his oxen and cart and loaded up with a grist for every family in the township, driving eighty miles to Erie to get grinding done. He was scheduled to be back in two weeks and on the day fixed for his arrival home Mrs. Shaw invited all the people in the town to cook and eat of the new supply at her house. Bad roads delayed Shaw on the return trip and he did not arrive on schedule. Mrs. Shaw was determined not to disappoint her guests altogether so she gave a dinner of roast venison and baked pumpkin.
At this time Indians, squaws and papooses were frequently seen passing to and fro in the neighborhood. They had a camping place back of where Shaw High School now stands. Their presence frightened the children, but no instances are recorded of their having done any harm.
The first church in the township, and it must be understood that reference is made to the territory afterwards comprising East Cleveland, was organized in 1807. It was Congregational. This was the first church organized in the county as well. The meetings were held in the houses of the settlers until 1810, when a log meeting house was built at a point called Nine Mile Creek, afterwards Euclid and after that Collamer. This was the first church built in the county and preceded all others by some ten years. In 1809 Caleb Eddy built a gristmill, the first in the township, on a brook above the site of Lake View cemetery. These early settlers were not old settlers. They were mostly young people. This remark is interlarded that we may fully appreciate the following incident : Late one day in the fall, Mrs. Timothy Eddv, expecting her husband home, but not until dark, went after the cows. They had strayed a long distance. but she heard the bell and guided by that finally found them. When she tried to drive them home she found she had lost the way and the animals seemed more inclined to lie down than to assist in helping her find it. It was their bed time. After working for some time in a vain effort to locate her home, she gave up the thought and slept through the night, finding a warm place between two of the cows. As one expressed it, she occupied a living boudoir. In the meantime, the husband on returning home had roused the neighbors for a search. All night they wandered through the woods, shouting and carrying torches of bark, but in all the search they did not come near her sleeping place. When daylight came she made her way home and it is quite probable that she brought the cows.
The first tavern keeper in the township was David Bunnel, who opened a tavern before the War of 1812. It was located southwest of the site of Collamer. In 1811 Abijah Crosby, father of Deacon Thomas D. Crosby, came to the township. He was one of the earliest of those in the township, who settled near the lake shore. Benjamin Thorp, who located first at the mouth of Euclid Creek, did not come until 1813.
When the War of 1812 broke out the sensation among the settlers was intense all over the county as we have related in the various chapters covering the townships. The pioneers bent to the task of clearing with such intensity that it required much to detract their attention, but all recognized the vital importance of the conflict. When the news of Hull's surrender came to this township and with it various tales, from time to time, of the murderous exploits of Indians, the few residents several times left their homes in alarm, but after awhile they returned to begin again their work. Their families must be fed and they went on clearing and planting as before. It is, however, true that immigration practically ceased. On the day of Perry's victory the people of the township and
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from other townships, were busy raising William Hale's log barn below Collinwood. Cornelius Thorp, who at one time was the oldest living resident, was at this raising and it is from his story, given in the '80s, that we get this description and the facts of the occurrences in East Cleveland. Men came to this raising from Warrensville and other nearby townships. The severe labor of the pioneers was lightened by some sort of amusement that did not detract from swift accomplishment. The raisers were divided into two rival squads and there was a strife to see which one would get the log up the faster. At each corner was an expert axman making notches and saddles to fit the logs together. Neither side could actually go faster than the other, as all sides of the building must go up together, so there was a contest at every course. While this spirited contest was on and men were exhibiting their prowess, and labor and amusement were combined, there came to the ears of the workers a dull thunder from the northwest. Again it came more distinct, rolling slowly over lake and land and forest, then another and another. Now every ax and every log was dropped and men simply looked into each other's faces. "That's Perry," said one, "a fight," "a fight," "a battle" went from mouth to mouth, and the twenty or thirty men raced to the lake hoping to catch a view of the conflict or get some inkling of the probable outcome, which as one expressed it was to decide the supremacy of Lake Erie. They watched upon the shore, looking in the direction of the sound, but the fight was seventy-five miles away and they could see neither smoke nor sail and only the ominous succession of shocks told them that a battle was on. Hour after hour they listened. It would be a single shot and then a broadside, then scattering shots, and after a while the shots died out and all was still. It was over, but what was the outcome? The anxious listeners from the East Cleveland log raising returned slowly to their homes to pass a restless, sleepless night. The next morning a swift riding express, a Paul Revere express, brought the news that Perry had won and that invasion from the white and the red foe need no longer be feared.
Of the men at that raising Cornelius Thorp outlived them all and for many years was the sole survivor of the group at the erstwhile jolly raising of William Hale's log barn. Benjamin Thorp, the father of Cornelius, moved to the Coit tract of 1,000 acres on the lake shore, later known as "Coits." Immediately after the close of the war the settlers came in great numbers and soon they were in full tide. Now there was a slight appearance of a village where Collamer was located but it was called Euclid then. After the War of 1812 Enoch Murray started a store there, David Crocker a tannery, and like Newburgh with its gristmill it became a little trade center. The tannery continued in operation for twenty years. This point was variously called Collamer, Nine Mile Creek, and Euclid. In 1817 a frame church was built on the site of the old log one and then the little settlement could boast, for there was not another one in the county. In 1818 Benjamin P. Beers and Myndert Wemple settled in the township and the same year Enoch Murray was keeping store at Collamer. He sold to McIlrath in 1820 and he in turn sold to John Gardner. Taverns appeared along the main roads after the war. Benjamin S. Welch kept one at Nine Mile Creek and Enoch Meeker one farther west and Seth Doan another. Still, as the old annals put it, "rattlesnakes still hissed from their dens, and deer bounded past the clearings." But the game was falling before the bullets of the pioneers. It was in 1820 that the big elk, already referred to, was chased from the Chagrin River and killed, some say in East
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Cleveland. This hunter's prize weighed 500 pounds and had horns seven feet long.
By 1825 the character of the township by the patient labors of the pioneers was rapidly changing. One-half of the log houses, thanks to the sawmills, had been replaced by frame ones. In the north part every lot had a settler. In the south part there were not so many. There were a few frame houses, somewhat scattered, and quite a widespread wilder- ness yet remained. In the old voting list of the Township of Euclid many names of East Cleveland settlers appear as they are credited to both townships. The immigration was checked by the War of 1812, but continued following the war in increased proportions. This continued until 1837, when for three years there was another check due to the hard times. At Nine Mile Creek, Sargent Currier kept store, ran a sawmill, and later built a steam gristmill. There Abner McIlrath opened a tavern in 1837 and Samuel Lenter operated a tannery. When R. H. Strowbridge came in 1840 he had it recorded that Sargent Currier was still keeping store, and Alvin Hollister the tavern; the wild game-at least the large game, was practically all gone, as were the rattlesnakes. He also bore witness to the fact that the west part of the township was the last to settle.
From this time a change came over the trend of settlement, for Cleve- land began to be a real growing city and spread out over the outlying territory. At the June session of the county commissioners in 1847 the Township of East Cleveland was formed from the territory of Euclid and Cleveland, principally, but Warrensville and Newburgh at this time or later added some territory to the new township. If as we have stated at the opening of this chapter, the township was really erected in 1846, the first town meeting was not held until June 26, 1847. The first officers of thé township were : Trustees, Theron Woodworth, Ahimaz Sherwin and Samuel Erwin; clerk, Ansel Young; treasurer, Joel Jones; assessor, Freeman Whitman. Joel Jones declined to serve and N. Pittsbury was appointed in his stead. For many years after the township was formed it had a thriving village. It became inconvenient to call it Euclid being so near the township of the same name, so it was called Collamer. In 1852 the Cleveland, Painesville & Ashtabula Railroad, later the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, and now the New York Central Railway, operated from Cleveland to Erie through the northern part. This would naturally attract a population, but the beauty of the locations at the foot of the ridge between Cleveland and Collamer were quickly observed by citizens of Cleveland and purchases were made especially around Collamer. Thus began the extension eastward of Euclid Avenue, which finally rivalled in beauty the streets of the world. Some years following the period of which we are writing Bayard Taylor, the famous world traveler, pronounced this street the finest in the world. Its change toward a great industrial thoroughfare will be more properly discussed in the chapters on Cleveland.
We are now approaching the period of the Civil war and will only say before taking up the history of the township following that the record of this township takes rank with the best. In the history of Cleveland more attention will be given to the general record of the townships in the war. In 1862 James Haycox opened a valuable quarry of sandstone in the southern part of the township on the farm cleared by John Welch. The character of the stone is similar to much in the county. The most important upheaval in the political fortunes of the township occurred in 1867 when the village of East Cleveland was annexed to Cleveland. Collamer seemed to take on new life as if the loss of the other village must be made up.
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The records of the county commissioners under the heading of East Cleveland have a number of entries: June, 1846, application for the formation of East Cleveland township filed. Afterwards application granted. In 1847 certain territory added to the township of East Cleve- land taken from the Township of Euclid. August 6, 1866, East Cleve- land Village established. November 6, 1872, Glenville Village established. February 3, 1878, a portion of East Cleveland Township annexed to Cleveland. June 4, 1883, Collinwood Village established out of East Cleveland and Euclid townships. June 16, 1892, a portion of East Cleve- land Township annexed to Cleveland. May 22, 1895, Lake Hamlet estab- lished out of East Cleveland Township. April 18, 1896, Collinwood Township established out of the Village of Collinwood. October 12, 1900, Cleveland Heights Hamlet established. These entries do not run in chro- nological order for the next entry is October 11, 1866, East Cleveland Vil- lage established. Then comes February 3, 1872, the Village of Collamer incorporated. October 19, 1872, East Cleveland Village annexed to Cleveland. August 6, 1890, the Hamlet of East Cleveland established. December 6, 1894, the Hamlet of East Cleveland advanced to a village. East Cleveland Village, the second, has since been advanced to the grade of a city, which entry does not appear on the commissioners' records and is not necessarily a part thereof.
The old annals before the '80s give a survey of the municipalities of East Cleveland, in this wise: "Collamer has churches, one academy, four stores, one postoffice, one doctor, two meat markets, one cider mill, one shoe shop, one tannery, and 1,000 inhabitants. On the rail- road, one mile north, is Collinwood. Here are the roundhouses of the Lake Shore Railway. Collinwood is laid out on a liberal plan with streets enough for a small city, which it promises to become. It has churches, three schools, six stores, four doctors, two drug stores, one hardware store, two boot stores, one clothing store, two millinery stores, one hotel, The Warren House, two livery stables, two news depots, one wagon and blacksmith shop, one harness shop, three meat markets, and a population of 1,500. The repair shops and roundhouses, the building of which began in 1873, were finished in 1875. In the latter year a post office was established." The old account goes on to say that "Lake View, near the Lake View Cemetery, is another location where there is a prospect of another fine suburban village. The Lake View & Collamer Railroad, called the Dummy, gives access to the city along the main road. On the ridge grape growing flourishes. The soil is equally productive with Euclid. The grapes are generally sold in bulk but some wine is made. J. J. Preyer's Lake View wine farm is one of the most celebrated wine producing places in the county. The Village of Glenville on the lake shore includes about three square miles of territory, but only a part is built up. The Lake Shore Railway passes through it and has a depot there, while the Lake View & Collamer Dummy skirts its southern boundary. The Northern Ohio Fair Grounds are a little west of the center of the village. This was incorporated in 1872 and W. J. Brassie and R. M. N. Taylor are its trustees. Of the village, William J. Gordon was the first mayor, and he was followed by W. H. Gaylord. Glenville has three stores, three hotels, one blacksmith shop, one shoe shop, and one carriage shop. It has a population of 500. The whole of East Cleveland, except Glenville, and a few farms, is incorporated for special purposes, having the powers of a village as to road improvements, etc."
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