USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > A history of the city of Cleveland: its settlement, rise and progress, 1796-1896 > Part 10
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On the 15th of November, 1800, he mounted his horse, and set out for his far-away field of labor. He passed through Pennsylvania, crossed the Allegheny Mount- ains in a snow-storm, and reached Pittsburg on De- cember 14th. After a couple of days of rest, he again pushed on through the woods, and late on a Saturday night reached Youngstown. His first sermon on the Reserve was preached on the Sabbath following to almost the entire population finding shelter in the half-dozen log-cabins of which the town was composed. He soon pushed on to other settlements, visiting Vienna, Hart- ford, Vernon, Cleveland, and elsewhere in turn. “In this way," says his biographer,"5 " Rev. Mr. Badger vis- ited, in the course of the year 1801, every settlement and nearly every family throughout the Western Reserve. In doing this, he often rode from five to twenty-five or thirty miles a day, carrying with him in saddle-bags a scanty supply of clothing and eatables, and often travers- ing pathless woodlands, amid storms and tempests, swim- ming unbridged rivers, and suffering from cold and hunger, and at the same time, here and there, visiting lone families, giving them and their children religious instruc- tion and wholesome advice, and preaching at points wherever a few could be gathered together, sometimes in a log-cabin or in a barn, and sometimes in the open field or in a woodland, beneath the shadows of the trees. At about this time he preached the first sermon ever heard in Cleveland."
He was a visitor at this city on the 18th of August, 1801, and lodged at Lorenzo Carter's. On the 6th of Sep- tember he enters this record: " We swam our horses across the Cuyahoga by means of a canoe, and took an Indian path up the lake; came to Rocky River,
15 " Joseph Badger," by Harvey Rice, " Sketches of Western Life," p. 59.
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the banks of which were very high, on the west side almost perpendicular. While cutting the brush to open a way for our horses, we were saluted by the song of a large yellow rattlesnake, which we removed out of our way." In the year following, 1802, he again visited Cleveland, and did not receive a favorable impression con- cerning the religious desires of its people. He says: " Mr. Burke's family in Euclid, had been in this lone sit-
uation for over three years. The woman had been obliged to spin and weave cattle's hair to make covering for her children's bed. From thence I went to Cleveland, visited the only two families, and went on to Newburg, where I preached on the Sabbath. There were five fam- ilies here, but no apparent piety. They seemed to glory in their infidelity."
In the fall of 1801, Mr. Badger visited Detroit on horse- back, laboring by the way with both white and red as they came across his path. It is not a specially engaging view of the moral condition of the day, when we read his statement that he found no one in all the region whom he could regard as a Christian, " except a black man who appeared pious." On his return he paid a visit to Hud- son-a little later the seat of learning of north-eastern Ohio-where he found material from which to organize a church, the membership of which consisted of ten men and six women. To Hudson, therefore, belongs the credit of the first church organization on the Reserve.
In October, he returned to New England, where he made arrangements to return to the west with his family, on a salary of seven dollars per week. On February 23rd, 1802, he loaded his household effects and family into a wagon drawn by four horses, and started upon his long journey, covering the six hundred miles in sixty days. He decided to make his home in Austinburg, where he purchased a small lot of land and put up a log-cabin. He soon resumed his labors in the field, traveling from point to point as before. A little later a revival season of con- siderable power was commenced as the result of his min-
1
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istrations. He organized many churches and schools and continued still in the field, although his eastern sponsors reduced his pay to six dollars per week. In 1809, he re- turned to Connecticut, made a final settlement with the missionary society, and worked no longer under its direc- tion. He came back to the Reserve, and labored as a missionary among the Indians between the Cuyahoga and Detroit. He took an active interest in the War of 1812, and at the command of General Harrison filled the posi- tion of chaplain. He afterwards settled as the pastor of a church at Austinburg; held various charges in other loca- tions, and died at Perrysburg in 1846, at the advanced age of eighty-nine years.
" In personal appearance," to again quote from his bi- ographer, " Rev. Joseph Badger was tall, slim, erect, had blue eyes, brown hair, and a pleasing expression of face. In temperament and action, he was quick and somewhat impulsive, yet he was considerate and slow of utterance, rarely, if ever, uttering an imprudent word. In his so- cial intercourse, he was sedate or facetious, as the occasion seemed to require. He enjoyed hearing and telling amusing anecdotes. In his style of preaching, he was apostolic, plain, simple and logical. In creed he was an orthodox Presbyterian. He had but one grand aim in life, and that was to do what he could to advance the moral and spiritual welfare of mankind. In a word, Rev. Joseph Badger, though dead, still lives and will ever live in memory as the early western missionary whose philan- thropic and life-long labors were prompted by the spirit of a true Christian manhood." 76
The arrival of Samuel Huntington and Mr. Badger near the same period, and their connection in the beginning
16 A brief mention of other early missionaries is permissible here. Na- than B. Darrow lived in Vienna, Trumbull County, where he supplied a church for a portion of the time, and performed missionary labor for the remainder. Another was Jonathan Leslie, whose home was in Harpers- field. Joshua Beer made his home in Springfield, now Summit County, was of Scotch-Irish descent, and "preached very acceptably." Thomas Barr lived in Euclid, Cuyahoga County, and was " one of the most ardent
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of this chapter as Cleveland's first bodily exponents of the law and the gospel, recall a reputed experience of each, in illustration of the fact that life and travel in the early days were not without bodily danger. It is told of Mr. Huntington that, while a resident of Cleveland, he came near being devoured by wolves, as he rode in from Painesville, on the Euclid road. He was on horseback, alone, in the dark, and floundering through the swamp near the present corner of Willson and Euclid avenues. A pack of hungry wolves fell upon his trail, and made a combined attack upon horse and man. The former, in desperate fright, made the best possible use of his heels, while the latter laid about him with the only weapon at command-an umbrella. Between speed and defense, both were saved, and brought up in safety at the log- house down near Superior street.
The experience of Mr. Badger was of a similar charac- ter. He was urging his faithful horse through the woods of the Grand River bottoms, while the rain was pouring down in torrents, and a place of shelter was one of the uncertain possibilities of the future. There came to him after a time the knowledge that some wild animal was on his trail, and raising his voice, he sent up a shout that would have frightened many of the smaller denizens of the forest. But it had no such effect on the big bear that was on his trail. On the contrary, the brute was aroused to immediate action, and made a rush for the missionary, with hair on end and eyes of fire. The only weapon Mr. Badger had about him, if such it might be called, was a large horseshoe, which he threw at the bear's nose, and missed. Then he rode under a beech tree, tied his horse
and energetic men to be found." Giles H. Cowles, of Austinburg, was " a man of good sense and fine education; a fine example of a Connecticut pastor." John Seward preached in Aurora, and filled in his spare time in missionary labor. William Handford, Harvey Coe, Caleb Pitkin, Joseph Treat, Mr. Bacon and Joseph Merriam must be added to this honorable list .- See paper on "Pioneer Clergymen," by Samuel Bissell, " Annals of Early Settlers' Association," No. 4, p. 42. Mention should also be made of Rev. Thomas Robbins, whose labors are described elsewhere.
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to a branch, deserted the saddle with celerity, and climbed upward. He kept on for a long distance, found a con- venient seat, tied himself to the tree with a large ban- danna, and awaited results. The bear was meanwhile nosing about the horse, as though preparing for an attack. The wind came up, the thunder rolled, and the rain fell in torrents. The occasional flashes of lightning showed that the horse was still safe, with the bear on guard. And there the poor missionary clung all night, cold, wet through, tired and sleepy; and there the bear waited for him to come down. But at daybreak he made for his lair, while Mr. Badger worked his way down as well as he could, and rode for the nearest settlement.
As a matter of historic good faith, it must be admitted that Mr. Badger and others who made note of ungodli- ness, and more or less of actual evil, on the Reserve, in these early days, were fully justified in all they said. In Cleveland, for instance, they managed to exist until 1816 without a church organization, and possessed no church building until 1829, while constables, and courts, and the machinery for the conduct of civil affairs, made their ap- pearance at a much earlier day. * It has become a popular impression that the pioneers of not only the Western Re- serve, but of all western sections where New England elements predominated, were pious and God-fearing men, who had little need of courts or the officers of the law. This impression is too often strengthened by those who talk of " the good old times " in a strain that would indi- cate that all of the early times were good, and nothing but good.
On the other hand, it is a fact that the strong arm of the law was needed in early north-eastern Ohio as else- where. There was no lack of the hardy virtues of cour- age, hospitality, comradeship and backwoods chivalry, nor was there an absence of qualities of a less attractive character. This view is well supported by one writer,"7
17 " Rev. Dr. Robbins on the Western Reserve," by B. A. Hinsdale, in " Magazine of Western History," Vol. X., p. 358.
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who points out the fact that " the first settlers were not generally godly men, such as founded Plymouth, Massa- chusetts, and Connecticut, or even Marietta and Gran- ville, Ohio. The men who have created the traditional view of the early history of the Reserve have either been ignorant of the following facts, or they have accorded to them little weight: First, the Reserve was opened to set- tlement at a time when religion in New England was at a low ebb. Secondly, Old Connecticut did not at first send, as a rule, what she considered her best elements to New Connecticut. At a later day, the character of the emigration improved in respect to religion and morals; but the first emigration was largely made up of men who desired to throw off the heavy trammels of an old and strongly conservative community, where Church and State were closely connected, and where society was dom- inated by political and religious castes. Still further, the east was at this time swept by an epidemic of land specu- lation; while the laxative moral influence of a removal from an old and well-ordered society to the woods pro- duced its usual effects."
This view is supported by the comments made by Rev. Dr. Thomas Robbins,7 a missionary whose labors upon the Reserve were contemporaneous with those of Mr. Badger. He came to Ohio in 1803, reaching Poland in November, where his first sermon was preached. He traveled all over the Reserve, making notes of his im- pressions by the way, and describing affairs as they pre- sented themselves to his vision. There is little doubt that his observations were made from an unusually high moral standpoint, and that he saw evil where others might have noted only an absence of religious interest. His language is plain and to the point. There was inattention to spiritual matters everywhere. At Canfield the people "appear very stupid," in matters of religion and are not "disposed to attend lectures;
75 " Diary of Thomas Robbins, D. D., 1796-1854." Edited and anno- tated by Increase N. Tarbox: two volumes. Boston, 1886.
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many people held bad principles in religion, and some were much inclined to infidelity." At Warren they " were careless about religious affairs;" and later he adds the surprising statement that " the greater part of the New England people in the country are pretty loose characters.'
In Poland they are " pretty stupid in regard to the ex- cellency and spirit of religion;" in Hudson even " the serious people " were " dull and worldly." In Cleveland he found the people " loose in principles and conduct," and " few of them had heard a sermon or a hymn in eighteen months." According to his rigid views, there are few serious persons in Middlefield; in Mesopo- tamia they are " much in- clined to infidelity;" in Mentor they traded on the Sabbath. It is only fair to assume that in all this Mr. Robbins spoke from an extreme standpoint, and meant simply that all that which was not directly re- ligious needed his condem- nation.
JOHN DOAN.
The year 1801 was not eventful, so far as the fortunes of Cleveland were con- cerned. Elisha Norton opened a store in Carter's house. Mr. Spafford re-surveyed the streets and lanes of the city in November, and " planted fifty-four posts of oak, about one foot square, at the principal corners," for which he charged a half-dollar each, "and fifty cents for grub- bing out a tree at the north-east corner of the Square." Local improvements were certainly not progressing at a promising rate. It is a comfort to learn that the health of the people was good.
Among the arrivals was that of Samuel Hamilton and family, who settled in Newburg. Another notable ac-
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cession was that of the family of Timothy Doan, a brother of Nathaniel Doan, whose location in Cleveland and subsequent removal to Doan's Corners has already been recorded. Timothy was a resident of. Herkimer County, N. Y., but was "seized with the western fever," as we are told by his son, John Doan." The family consisted of father, mother and six children-Nancy, Seth, Timothy, Jr., Mary, Deborah and John, who was then but three years old. They traveled with ox teams, and one pair of horses. The father and one son pushed on ahead from Buffalo, by way of Indian trails, carrying a part of the household goods on the backs of horses and oxen, as there were no roads for wagons. "In 1799, a road had been surveyed from the Pennsylvania line to the Cuyahoga River," to quote from the son's narrative, " but no bridge had been built over the intervening streams. They pushed through to Uncle Nathaniel's house in East Cleveland, and were soon enjoying their first attack of ague."
The mother and the four children left with her at Buf- falo, made the trip by water. She was accompanied by an Indian, and several white men who had been engaged to assist her on the journey. They came in a row-boat propelled by oars at times, and again by a tow-line car- ried on the bank. Besides their furniture and household goods, they carried a box of live geese, which were de- clared to be "the first domesticated birds of the kind ever brought into Ohio." At the mouth of Grand River the boat was overturned, throwing mother, children, goods and box overboard. By good fortune the water was shallow, and while the red man carried the children ashore, the white men and Mrs. Doan saved the goods. The geese were carried out into the lake, but becoming in some way freed from their prison, swam ashore, and were recaptured.
79 " Sketch of the Doan Family," by John Doan, " Annals of the Early Settlers' Association," No. 6, p. 51. We sometimes find the name of this pioneer family spelled with a final "e." The author has followed the spelling almost universally used in the records.
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At this point, Timothy and Nathaniel met them, and the boat was taken on to Cleveland without further ad- venture. Mrs. Doan, however, had no further desire for marine traveling, and insisted upon coming overland. " As none of the men could be spared to accompany mother," says the son, John, " Uncle Nathaniel came with her. They came on horseback, having two horses, and bringing three children. Polly and Deborah rode with Uncle Nathaniel on one, and mother riding the other carried me. The first clearing we reached was at Men- tor, where there were two or three houses. The next break in the woods was at Willoughby, where 'Squire Abbott, who had arrived in 1798 and built the first mill in this section, lived. For another six miles we saw no houses. Then we passed the log residence of Joseph Burke, one of the earliest settlers on the Reserve, who had a brother living in Newburg. After traveling nine miles further west, without passing or seeing a single house, we arrived at Uncle Nathaniel Doan's log- cabin, in April, 1801. It may be considered by some a rather remarkable fact that in the eighty odd years since my advent into East Cleveland, I have always lived within two and a half miles of the spot where Uncle Nathaniel's house then stood."
Timothy purchased two one hundred and sixty-acre sections of land, for which he paid a little over one dollar an acre. He built a log-house under a hill south of the Euclid road, six miles east of the Public Square, into which they moved in November. " The location," adds the son, " which was in the midst of a large hickory grove, proved very desirable that winter, for we were able to get little but hickory nuts to eat. There was a camp of Indians within forty rods of the house, and my only playmates for several years were Indian pappooses. We lived in this log-cabin about six years, father and the older boys clearing away the timber and raising corn and potatoes among the stumps. They did not plow the ground, but dragged it."
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THE HISTORY OF CLEVELAND.
It was in this year 1801 that Cleveland celebrated the Fourth of July with the first grand social gathering it had attempted. It was regarded as a success in all essential features, and was held in Major Carter's double log- house, on the hill, near the corner of Union and Superior lanes. It is related in the manuscript collections of Judge Barr that John Wood, Ben Wood and R. H. Blin acted as managers; Major Samuel Jones was chief musician and master of ceremonies; while about a dozen ladies and twenty gentlemen constituted the company. " Notwith- standing the floors were of rough puncheons, and their best beverage was made of maple sugar, hot water and whisky, probably no celebration of American independ- ence was ever more joyous than this."
The arrival of Timothy Doan's family in the preceding spring afforded one young man an opportunity of show- ing his gallantry, by a ride of six miles and back as escort, and has given us a pleasant little picture of the social life of the day. Gilman Bryant, whose father had cut Newburg's first mill-stones, and set up Cleveland's earliest whisky still, has described his part in this ball, in the statement already quoted: "I waited on Miss Doan, who had just arrived at the Corners, four miles east of town. I was then about seventeen years of age, and Miss Doan about fourteen. I was dressed in the then style-a gingham suit-my hair queued with one and a half yards of black ribbon, about as long and as thick as a corncob, with a little tuft at the lower end; and for the want of pomatum, I had a piece of candle rubbed on my hair, and then as much flour sprinkled on, as could stay without falling off. I had a good wool hat, and a pair of brogans that would help to play 'Fisher's Hornpipe,' or ' Hie, Bettie Martin,' when I danced. When I went for Miss Doan I took an old horse; when she was ready I rode up to a stump near the cabin, she mounted the stump, and spread her under petticoat on Old Tib behind me, secured her calico dress to keep it clean, and then mounted on behind me. I had a fine time!"
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THE HISTORY OF CLEVELAND.
In 1802, the administration of territorial affairs had so changed that citizens of the townships were permitted to elect their trustees, appraisers, supervisors of highways, fence-viewers, overseers of the poor and constables, by viva voce vote, although the choice of their justices of the peace and militia officers was not yet permitted them. It was ordered, in the February preceding, by the Court of Quarter Sessions that the first town meeting for Cleve- land should be held at the house of James Kingsbury. The following is the official report of that gathering :
" 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, Wm. W. Williams.
" Appraisers of Houses, Samuel Hamilton, Elijah Gun. " Lister, Ebenezer Ayrs.
" Supervisors of Highways, Sam'l Huntington, Esq., Nath'1 Doan, Sam'1 Hamilton.
" Overseers of the Poor, William W. Williams, Samuel Huntington, Esq.
" Fence Viewers, Lorenzo Carter, Nathan Chapman.
" Constables, Ezekiel Hawley, Richard Craw.
" A true copy of the proceedings of the inhabitants of Cleaveland at their town meeting, examined per me,
Nathaniel Doan, Town Clerk."
At the August sitting of the court that had ordered the above election, Amos Spafford and Lorenzo Carter were each granted a license to keep a tavern, on the payment of four dollars. Carter put up a frame house"0 on the hill, west of Water street and north of Superior lane, which was burned down almost as soon as finished. Amos Spafford also built himself a frame house, near
80 The date given in Whittlesey's " Early History of Cleveland," p. Io, is ISO2. Lorenzo Carter's son, Alonzo, places it in 1803.
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the west end of Superior street, on the south side. Amos further proved his enterprise in the year following by the erection of yet another frame house, on the brow of the hill, between Superior and Vineyard lanes, at the end of Superior street. This building is identified to the re- membrance of the older settlers by a memorandum in the Barr manuscripts,"1 to the effect that Daniel Worley, postmaster, once occupied it as a residence.
The public instruction of the young was inaugurated in Cleveland in the year now under consideration, by Miss Anna Spafford, who made effective use of the well known " front room " of Major Carter's, where she gath- ered perhaps a dozen youngsters of the settlement, and taught them the simplest forms of book knowledge.82 It is really to be regretted that the early chroniclers, who tell us so much about Bryant's distillery, and the hang- ing of a young Indian, have left such meager details con- cerning this modest venture. When the history of edu- cation in Ohio comes to be fully written, it will be found that out of these little educational gatherings, found here and there in the scattered settlements, was evolved that wonderful force that, in the hands of men like Harvey Rice and his helpers, was made a mighty power in our common school system of a later day.
Education was, even in that day, a matter of almost re- ligious duty with the New Englander, and when the sons of Connecticut and Massachusetts brought their small possessions and large ambitions into the wilderness, they
61 Col. Whittlesey in his preface to " Early History of Cleveland," says: "The materials for this work have been accumulating many years, but were far from complete, when Judge Barr turned over to me his historical col- lections without reservation. He has been engaged, with much assiduity, more than a quarter of a century, in reclaiming the personal history of the pioneers; a labor which I trust their descendants will appreciate. The extent of the obligations I am under to him will appear frequently in this volume."
? It seems necessary to state that in the Barr manuscripts (" Early History of Cleveland," p. 360), we find this statement, under date of 1800 : " A school-house was built this season, near Kingsbury's, on the ridge road, and Miss Sarah Doan, daughter of Nathaniel Doan, was the teacher."
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brought, also, their faith in knowledge, and set up the school-house as soon as the log-cabin and the church were completed. A most potent fact in illustration of this is found in a comparison of those settlements in the new west which were settled from the south, with those whose population came from New England.
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