USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > A history of Cuyahoga County and the City of Cleveland, (Vol. 1) > Part 44
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The next family of settlers was that of Ezekiel Hawley. The daugh- . ter, Fanny, was then five years of age. In 1879 she was Mrs. Theodore Miles, and was living in the eighteenth ward, the oldest survivor of the residents east of the river. James Kingsbury and family came next. They first "squatted" on the Indian country west of the river, living in a log building that had been occupied by the agents of the Northwestern Fur Trading Company. While living there Kingsbury built his log cabin in Cleveland on the site now occupied by the Federal Building, on the pub- lic square, and moved his family in. The raising of this building, like all in the early days, was an event, and as the settlers were so few the sur- veyors were invited. This home was not established on the 100 acres given to the family by the Connecticut Land Company, but on a city lot secured by Kingsbury.
The first wedding in Cleveland and in Cuyahoga County took place in this year of 1797 when William Clements was married to Chloe Inches. Miss Inches was a hired girl and was not ashamed of the fact. Clements
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took his bride away, and the settlement of Cleveland was reduced by one. In the fall of this year the surveyors completed the survey. In the spring of the next year Nathaniel Doan moved his family into a cabin built on his city lot given him by the Connecticut Company. He opened a black- smith shop on the south side of Superior, near where the Cleveland Hotel now stands, but he did not stay long. The privations of pioneer life were augmented by fever and ague that was no respecter of persons. The Kingsbury and Stiles families had moved out on the Ridge to avoid it, then the Guns moved. Rudolphus Edwards came from Chenango County, New York, and sought the healthier locality. He engaged in the manufacture of wood thills. In the "city" the only families left were the Doans, Carters, and Hawleys. Then Joseph Landon came back, and with him came Stephen Gilbert. They cleared some land and sowed wheat. Carter planted two acres of corn on Water Street, near the lake. All the men and women of Cleveland, that is the city, not the township, were sick with the fever and ague. Between chills Carter and his hounds would go out and get a deer and thus provide food for the families. Nathaniel Doan's family of nine were all sick. Seth, a boy of thirteen, was the only one who could get around, but he had shakes every day. He cut wood, got water, and went out to Kingsbury's for corn. The people on the Ridge had found health, but in Cleveland there was no doctor and no quinine. The people used dogwood bark as a substitute for quinine. About the middle of November four men, weak from ague, started in a boat for Walnut Creek, Pennsylvania, for flour. Between Euclid Creek and the Chagrin River the boat was wrecked and they returned empty handed. Throughout the winter of 1798 all in the "city" and at the Ridge depended on Mr. Kingsbury's hand gristmill, which as was said, ground flour coarse enough to satisfy Graham himself.
The next spring of 1799 Nathaniel Doan abandoned his city lot and moved out four miles to the place afterwards designated as Doan's Cor- ners. The Hawley family also left the sickly place at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River for the Kingsbury neighborhood. These were still in the township but the "city" had only two families left, the Carters and Spaf- fords. Carter stuck and Spafford stuck because he did. Carter said you must fight disease like anything else and he proposed to stay until he be- came acclimated. Carter and Spafford kept a sort of tavern and traded with the Indians. Their principal articles of barter were salt and whiskey. In this year of 1799 the gristmill was built at Newburgh and soon the families were provided with good wholesome flour and a better era was at hand. One of the millstones from that mill, the first turned on the West- ern Reserve, rests opposite the Old Stone Church on the Public Square at Cleveland and the other is on Broadway near the site of the first mill.
We have spoken of the building of the mill in the chapter on Newburgh. Its stones turned before the beginning of the nineteenth century brought a blessing to the pioneers, whose value it is hard to measure.
In 1797, while the "city" existed only in the far seeing vision of a few, Surveyor Warren began the survey of three highways leading out into the country. A survey of the town had been made and the city streets only extended to the city limits or westward to the river and eastward about a quarter of a mile east of the present East Ninth Street. He first began at the eastern end of Huron Street, which was in its present locality, and ran the lines due east. This was to be a road, not a city street, and being outside of the city limits it was called Central Highway. As it soon became the main highway from Cleveland to Euclid it was called Euclid Road. Then it was extended west to the Public Square and it became Euclid Street. Finally lined with palatial residences it took on the name of Euclid Avenue,
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and while so named was pronounced by Bayard Taylor, the famous trav- eler, the finest street in the world. Now commercial Cleveland is taking over the avenue and it is fast becoming a great business street. But we are getting ahead in our history as the present chapter has to do with Cleveland Township. Warren laid out other roads, among them North Highway, which became St. Clair Avenue. The original city surveyed in the northeast corner of range 12, number 8. Cleveland Township, had no Euclid Street. Huron was laid out and its eastern terminus at the Hanna Building was the eastern limits of the surveyed city.
A Christmas incident of Cleveland in 1799 appears in the early annals. The scene is laid out on the Ridge, but just the same Lorenzo Carter was as usual the hero. Mr. Kingsbury's eldest daughter Abigail, seven years old, and two younger brothers, Amos and Almon, together with Fanny Haw- ley, afterwards Mrs. Miles, and her younger brothers all went to visit the children of Job Stiles, who lived only half a mile or less away. The dis- tance was not far and there was a woods road or path along the Ridge. Childlike, they stayed late and it became dusk before getting home and they lost their way. They wandered as lost children will. The older ones carried the smaller ones as they became tired and then they gave up, as the little ones went to sleep in their arms. What could they do? They laid the sleepers on the ground and covered them with Abigail's cloak. Two alternatives seemed to be facing them, either they would be eaten by the wolves or frozen to death. In the meantime the parents began a wild search but fruitless for a while. As luck would have it, Lorenzo Carter, who had been out hunting, happened along and with him his faithful hound. He set out and came near enough to the Seth Stiles house to find the trail of the lost children. The dog had some trouble at first but soon led him to the sleeping children. A wild scream greeted his coming in advance of Carter. The waking children thought a wolf had come for a meal but Carter came up at once, silenced their fears, and fired his gun in the air to notify the searchers.
In 1800 Cleveland Township had a population of about sixty souls while the "city" part had only twenty, one-third of the total population. We have in the story of this year to record the establishment of the first manufacturing plant in Cleveland. David Bryant and his son Gilman brought a still from Virginia and built a log distillery on the flats. They carried water in a trough from the hillside into the second story of their quite pretentious plant. At this time this new enterprise was hailed with delight. The first business enterprise of Cleveland was a respectable busi- ness. The settlers were increasing their acreage of grain and the product of the field could be reduced to a small compass and marketed without its costing its entire worth for transportation. This new industry soon attracted the Indians from their country the other side of the river. They had a ferry opposite St. Clair Street and kept canoes there for crossing and re-crossing. After getting a supply of fire water they would congregate at a point where Detroit Street now meets West Twenty-fifth Street. Here they would hold many of their pow wows. The settlers on the east side could hear them in their ball games at which they were expert. It is quite likely that baseball and football are aboriginal games. Oratory, too, was heard, not soap box oratory, for the dusky denizens of the forest did not include soap in their family supplies. They would recount the deeds of their fathers ere the white man came to grasp their land. Gilman Bryant was invited to one of their feasts over there. He said all Indians consid- ered white dogs sacred. Among the six nations white dogs were offered as sacrifices to the Great Spirit, the God Manitou. Demoralized by the white man's whiskey they compromised in this religious rite. Gilman
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Bryant says they placed a large bowl of the stew on a scaffold as a sacri- fice to Manitou and ate the rest, applying it to wordly uses, so to speak. They offered young Bryant a dish of the stew containing a forepaw to which much of the hair remained, which he declined, whereupon they ate it themselves, saying a good soldier could easily eat that.
In this year of 1800 Samuel Huntington came to Cleveland. He was thirty-five years of age and was a nephew of the governor of Connecticut of the same name. He built a large house on the south side of Superior Street near the top of the bluff. It was constructed of hewn logs and was the most aristocratic residence in the town. We have already related how he participated in the township government, then was chosen to the state senate, supreme judge, and then governor of the state. Besides building his fine log mansion he hired Samuel Dodge to build for him the first frame building in the town, a barn. Another settler who came this year was Elisha Norton. He was a trader and not so much a wielder of the ax and battler with the forest.
The first school, the beginning of the educational system in Cleveland, was opened in the house of Lorenzo Carter by Ann Spafford in 1802. She had about a dozen scholars (not pupils) and the three R's included the course of study.
Just across the river from the Indian country the small settlement had little trouble with the red man. The influence of Lorenzo Carter had much to do with this. He spoke the Indian language fluently and his tact and courage gave him a remarkable influence over them. Each fall they would come to the mouth of the river, haul their canoes ashore, and sepa- rating into small parties would hunt and trap up the river. In the spring they would return and hold a sort of reunion in which feasting and drunk- enness was a prominent feature. These occasions were similar in the fall and spring. The summers found them returned to their cornfields on the Sandusky and Maumee rivers. In the winter of 1800 Gilman Bryant and his father cleared five acres of land on the bank of the river above the city plat. In the spring Timothy Doan and his brother Nathaniel came to Cleveland but their stay was short as they went to Euclid in the fall.
In these early years Cleveland was not devoid of many tragic incidents connected with the inhabiting of the forest city. Governor Huntington to be, returning from a trip to Painesville on horseback was attacked by a pack of wolves. His good horse kept out of their reach until entering a muddy swayle in the road where Euclid and East Fifty-fifth Street cross at the Pennsylvania Railway station. There they closed in and Mr. Hunt- ington fought them off with his only weapon, an umbrella, until firmer ground was reached and the horse distanced his pursuers.
In the year of 1802 Carter and Spafford, who had continued to enter- tain strangers, were regularly licensed as tavern keepers by the Court of Quarter Sessions. The following year Ohio was admitted into the Union as a state and Samuel Huntington was speaker of the first House of Repre- sentatives. Even when a judge of the Supreme Court he kept his resi- dence in Cleveland, making the journeys to the various sessions of the court at Chillicothe on horseback. In 1803 Lorenzo Carter built the first frame house in Cleveland near the foot of Superior Street. It was just completed when a fire which started in a pile of shavings destroyed it. Carter immediately rebuilt but with hewn logs instead. This was seven years after the first settlement and it was seven or eight years more before Cleveland had a frame house. The settlement of this section was slow, about one family a year was the increase. Oliver Culver, one of the sur- veyors, came as a trader. He brought salt, calico, tobacco and whiskey to trade with the Indians, but his venture did not pay. The freight from
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COLUMBUS STREET BRIDGE
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Buffalo was $3 a barrel. As soon as Ohio became a state, militia com- panies were organized for the defense of the commonwealth. A militia company was organized in Cleveland with Lorenzo Carter as captain, Nathaniel Doan as lieutenant and Samuel Jones as ensign. The same season Carter was chosen major of the second battalion of the First Regi- ment, Second Brigade and Fourth Division, and Doan and Jones became captain and lieutenant, respectively. In 1805 came the purchase of the land west of the river from the Indians. . Previous to this time the town of Cleveland seemed to be falling back. The activities of this section centered about the gristmill in Newburgh. Samuel Dodge, who married a daughter of Timothy Doan, built a log house away from the river bank with its springs, and has the distinction of having dug the first well in Cleveland.
THE ACADEMY BUILDING
It was walled up with stones which the Indians had used for fireplaces in their wigwams. Cuyahoga County was erected in 1810 with Cleveland as its county seat and Cleveland Township as one of its townships. Cleve- land was regarded as a city long before it had an organization as such, for on February 15, 1802, a plat of the City of Cleveland was filed in Record A, page ten of the Trumbull County records. A record plat was filed later, after the dream became a reality, in Record number two of the records on file in the office of the County Recorder of Cuyahoga County. In 1812 the first courthouse was built in Cleveland. It was built of logs and stood on the Public Square. The hanging of Omic, the Indian, for the murder of two white trappers near Sandusky, Ohio, occurred that year, but before the building of the courthouse. This first execution in the county has been frequently mentioned in local histories, but an incident connected with the early life of the culprit in which Major Carter took a hand has not been so often told.
After the sale of the lands west of the river by the Indians many of them lived more or less of the time on the old ground and had cabins like
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the whites. Among these was an Indian by the name of Omic, who had a son called Omic. The whites called the son John Omic to distinguish him from his father. John Omic was from boyhood of an evil disposition and generally bad. It was in 1805 when he was sixteen years old that he crossed the river and began stealing vegetables from Major Carter's gar- den. Mrs. Carter ordered him away when he drew a knife and chased her and did not stop until a young man of the neighborhood happened along and drove him away. If his only intention was to scare her he succeeded. When Major Carter came home and heard of the incident he was furious. He put a rope in his pocket and started for old Omic's cabin on the other side of the river. He told old Omic what his son had done and declared he was determined to hunt up the young man and hang him and exhibited the rope as evidence of his intention. Carter spoke the Indian language fluently. He was known as a fighting man among the whites and had a great influence over the Indians. Old Omic was terribly frightened, he begged the major not to hang his boy and pleaded as best he could. Carter, who had a kind and tender heart under a rough exterior, finally agreed to spare the boy on condition that he stay on the west side of the river. "Now remember," said Carter, "if I ever catch him on that side of the river, I'll hang him to the nearest tree." "He no come, he no come," was the old Indian's reply in English. It is recorded in the early annals that the young rascal kept his side of the stream and did not cross it until several years after when he was on his way to his trial and execution.
In a former chapter we have related the tragic death of a settler, his wife and child on the rocky shore of the lake during a storm and of the rescue of the colored man Ben on a rocky cliff of the shore just east of Rocky River after clinging there from Friday until the following Tuesday. Some French traders rescued Ben from his dangerous perch on the rock and took him to Major Carter's tavern, which always was open to the unfortunate. Rheumatism drew Ben's limbs out of shape following his terrible experience and he was unable to work but the kind hearted major kept him all summer. In October two Kentuckians came to Carter's tavern and claimed Ben as a runaway slave. The major told them how he had boarded Ben for nothing because of his misfortune and his answer to the slave hunters was this: "I don't like niggers but I don't believe in slavery and Ben shall not be taken away unless he wants to go." The owner declared he had always treated Ben well and asserted that he had been coaxed to run away and would probably be willing to go back and he desired to talk with him. The major who at that period was practically the law in Cleveland would not permit that unless Ben was willing. Ben agreed to a conference and a parley was agreed upon but to avoid treachery Carter arranged to have Ben on one side of the river and the slave hunters on the other and this programme was carried out. They talked across the stream. Ben after much discussion finally agreed to go, many interesting inducements were held out. It is not in evidence that Carter had anything to do with the final denouement, but when the party had started for the South, the negro Ben riding a horse and his master walking by his side, the two slave hunters having their pistols in the holster, two hunters, not slave hunters, stepped out of the woods and with their guns presented said : "Ben, you d -- fool you, jump off and run," which order was complied with. The owner and his aid gave up the search and never came back for the slave. It is asserted that Ben did not go to Canada but some years later was living in a cabin near the line of Brecksville and Independence. This was the first slave rescue but not the last in the history of this new country.
It has been said that Cleveland was a tough place at this stage of its
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history but as we cite instances of Major Carter's unusual code of ethics we see only a rough exterior. We will give one of many by way of illus- tration. To a great extent his personality was reflected in the community. On a morning of 1807 a man, who had been working for the major sud- denly disappeared. He had taken nothing but his own and the major owed him. Spafford, a brother-in-law of Carter's, informed him that the man had gone. Carter said no one should run away from Cleveland and shoul- dered his rifle and started in pursuit. He overtook the man at what is now Fifty-fifth Street. The man said he had stolen nothing and owed nothing. Carter ordered him to return in language that coming from him was extremely terrifying. "Go back," said he, "or I will kill you and throw you to the wolves." The man sullenly obeyed and Carter led him
LEVI JOHNSON
back to town. On returning he told Spafford that he was a rover and after working for a while in a place got a travel bee in his bonnet and must move on. "Well have some breakfast and we will pay you what we owe you and then you can go." After a good breakfast the man declared he had decided to stay and he did.
This was a rather rough civilization in the main this "city" of Cleveland in those days but it was honest if not God fearing. Preachers who came complained of the rough talk, of the infidelity, of the wickedness of the inhabitants, their profanity. They killed hogs on Sunday, etc., but crime of every kind was rare. It was a border town without the border ruffian. Daniel Parker attempted to organize a new religious sect called the Halcy- onites here but it faded notwithstanding its attractive name. During the War of 1812 there was little civic progress. Irad and J. R. Kelly built a brick store in 1814. This was the first brick building in the town. When this was built there were thirty-four buildings of all kinds in Cleveland. A rather unique start in the shipbuilding industry was made by Levi John- son, who built the schooner Pilot. For convenience in getting timber he built it in the woods. The extremely dry dock was a little way out Euclid
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Avenue. When it was finished he made a bee and farmers came from all around with twenty-eight yoke of oxen and it was hauled and launched in the river at the foot of Superior Street. Thus began an industry that developed rapidly and in later years grew to enormous proportions.
A big jollification when peace was declared was the last and greatest event in the history of Cleveland as a township before it was broken into by the forming of the Village of Cleveland. The ending of the War of 1812 was an event that gave security to the settlers in their titles to land, a respite from anxiety as to the raids of hostile Indians and con- sequent danger to the family and home. This celebration was a most enthusiastic one and not equalled perhaps by any in later years except in point of numbers. Whiskey was free, a government cannon was used to make the noise, and everybody participated. Abram Hickox, the town blacksmith, was much in evidence and carried the powder in a pail. In the wild excitement a spark found its way to the somewhat diminished pail of powder and an explosion not on the programme occurred. Abram blackened and torn declared he was killed but he lived to continue the "Village Smithy" for many years.
CHAPTER XXV
THE VILLAGE OF CLEVELAND
On December 23, 1815, the Legislature passed an act incorporating the Village of Cleveland, and on the first Monday of June in the follow- ing year the first village election was held. At this election there were twelve votes cast. Alfred Kelly was elected president, as the chief officer of the village was then called; Horace Perry, recorder; Alonzo Carter, treasurer ; John A. Ackley, marshal; George Wallace and John Riddle, constables ; Samuel Williamson, David Long and Nathan Perry, Jr., trus- tees. We are now entering upon an era that brings to our notice pioneers of a different variety than those who felled the forest and brought it into productive beauty. We are to discuss to some extent the pioneers of indus- try, but before we do that it seems appropriate to pay a deserved tribute to one who represented the first class and who died just before the village was organized and was buried in the Erie Street (East Ninth Street) Cemetery, Lorenzo Carter. We have suggested that it would be appropri- ate to erect a monument to him as an ideal type of the Western Reserve pioneer and place it beside that of Moses Cleveland, one the architect and the other the builder. Lorenzo Carter was identified with the township alone, his son, Alonzo, being one of the first officers of the village. Harvey Rice in his biography of Lorenzo Carter says of him: "It is not so much what a man thinks or believes as what he does that gives him character. It was physical strength and a fearless spirit that distinguished the brave and the bold in the heroic age of the Greeks. It was these traits of char- acter that gave Lorenzo Carter his renown as a valiant pioneer in the early settlement of the Western Reserve." The pen picture by Mr. Rice could be duplicated in marble or bronze. "The Indians found in him an overmatch as a marksman and a superior in physical strength. He had the muscular power of a giant and not only knew his strength, but knew when and how to use it. He stood six feet in his boots, and was evidently born to command. His complexion was somewhat swarthy and his hair long and black. He wore it cut square on the forehead and allowed it to flow behind nearly to the shoulders. He had a Roman nose and the courage of a Roman. Yet he was as amiable in spirit and temper as he was brave. He dressed to suit himself and as occasion required. In times of danger he always found in his rifle a reliable friend. He not only enjoyed life in the wilderness, but soon became master of the situation. He loved adventure and encountered dangers without fear." Mr. Rice relates an incident that was not given in the previous chapter, when Mr. Carter returning from a hunting trip found that a band of Indians had broken into his warehouse of logs, knocked in the head of a barrel of whiskey and drank so much as to become drunk and dangerously belligerent. Carter marched in among them, drove them out, kicked and cuffed them about in every direction and rolled several of them who were too drunk to keep their feet into the marshy brink of the river. The next day the Indians held a council and decided to do away with Carter. They selected two of their best marksmen and directed them to follow his foot- prints the next time he went into the woods to hunt and to shoot him at
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