USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > A history of the city of Cleveland: its settlement, rise and progress, 1796-1896 > Part 8
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Reserve; and some of the pioneers who were spared for more prosperous days, have told us touching tales of the sufferings they, as children, regarded as matters of course-like the rains and snows and chills of winter.
Among the first to settle in these northeastern Ohio forests was Amos Loveland, who had been a soldier in the Revolution, and was engaged in surveying on the Reserve as early as 1798. He selected a piece of land in what is now a corner of Trumbull County, and decided to locate upon it. He returned to Vermont in the fall of the year, and in December started westward with his family of seven, and all his worldly goods packed on two sleds, each of which was drawn by a team of horses. They traveled days, and encamped at night when better accommodations did not offer. They crossed the Susque- hanna River on the ice, and when the snow disappeared soon after, the sleds were traded for a wagon for the rest of the journey, which occupied altogether four months. It was April before he arrived at the piece of woodland he expected to transform into a farm. Jacob Russell came from Connecticut to Cleveland with an ox-team, his wife riding their only horse. Leaving her here, he re- turned for their children, and one of these, in recently relating their adventures, said: "Our journey was at- tended with the greatest suffering. My youngest sister was sick all the way, dying three days after her arrival. Father was then taken down with ague, so our house was built slowly. With the greatest difficulty mother hewed with an adze the stub ends of the floor boards, and put them down with the little help father could give her. We moved in, toward the close of November, our house possessing neither door nor window. At that time, two of the children were sick with ague. Father worked when the chills and fever left him for the day, putting poles together in the form of bedsteads and a table."
The Morgan family came in a covered wagon, drawn by a yoke of oxen and a span of horses. A girl eight years of age rode one of the horses, and guided the lead-team
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the greater part of the way between Albany and Cleve- land. The road was simply a trail through the woods, the underbrush between the trees having been cut away sufficiently to allow a wagon to pass. Three months were consumed in this journey, including a two weeks' stop because of sickness.
Other families came in two-wheeled carts, some in small wagons to which but one horse was attached, while occasionally the horse, without the vehicle, would be the style of transportation employed. Streams had to be crossed by any means that could be improvised, dangers guarded against, and much suffering endured. It was not unusual for a team to give out, and a week or even a fortnight be allowed for recuperation.
When the rough journey from the east was completed, the next thought was for providing a shelter. The log- house, for so many years the only structure seen or at- tempted in pioneer settlements, has often been described.
In one recorded instance, the family dwelling contained one room eighteen feet square, with greased paper for windows, a door of split boards with strips across, and wooden hinges-not a nail in the whole building; a puncheon, or split-log floor covered about one-half the ground included in the four walls, no upper floor, and no chimney, except a stone wall built up five feet to keep the fire from the logs. The protection against intrusion from the outside world in one cabin is thus graphically pict- ured by the pen of one of its inmates: " We hung up a quilt, and that, with a big bull-dog, constituted the door." When the four walls of the home were up, the settler proceeded to " chink " the openings between the logs, using pieces of wood on the inside, and plastering them with mortar on the outside. During the leisure of the even- ings, the inner sides of the logs would be hewed smooth, and the bark removed from the joists above. Sometimes there was an upper loft, and even stairs leading to it, but usually a ladder was the means of communication. In rare cases a sleeping-room would be partitioned off on the
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ground floor, but generally the bed stood at one end of the sole room, concealed behind chintz curtains, which would often disappear as the question of clothing became more and more pressing. The bedstead was made of smooth, round poles, while elm bark served as cords. Seats, tables and shelves were made as time would allow, and according to the skill of the occupants; occasionally some of these articles had been saved from the breaking up of the old home in the east.
The domestic economy within this family temple was of the most primitive character. A Dutch oven, a couple of kettles and a spider were considered essentials, al- though many an outfit fell far short even of this idyl of completeness. Judge Robert F. Paine, of Cleveland, once used these words in describing the home accommo- dations of his boyhood in Portage County: " We possessed few dislies of any kind. There was a man in Trumbull County who made them of wood, and his advent into a neighborhood would cause more excitement than the es- tablishment of another national bank in Cleveland to-day. We ate on what we called trenchers, a wooden affair in shape something like a plate. Our neighbors were in the same condition as we, using wooden plates, wooden bowls, wooden everything, and it was years before we could secure dishes harder than wood, and when we did they were made of yellow clay."
Theodore Wolcott and Gad Hart spent the winter of 1806 in Farmington township. Desiring straw with which to fill their beds, they marched to Mesopotamia, five miles away, and as the woods were so dense that their bundles could not be carried through, they were compelled to travel out of their way a long distance, going along the Warren path to Grand River, and then coming back on the open highway afforded by the ice. The first bed on which Heman Ely, the founder of Elyria, slept, on his arrival in this section, was made of the cloth covering of the wagon in which he came, and filled with straw brought, with the greatest difficulty, from a barn located miles away.
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The question of food was naturally one of great mo- ment, and much could be written of the privations ex- perienced in that direction. The skill, with which the pioneer mother made the means at her command fill the place of those to which she had been accustomed, was re- markable. " The first mince-pie I ever ate on the Re- serve," once said Joshua R. Giddings, " was composed of pumpkin instead of apple, vinegar in place of wine or cider, and bear's meat instead of beef. The whole was sweetened with wild honey instead of sugar, and seasoned with domestic pepper pulverized instead of cloves, cinna- mon and allspice, and never did I taste pastry with a bet- ter relish."
While such makeshifts were possible in some directions, there was one in which they were not.
Salt they had to have, at any price, or any cost of dar- ing or toil. There was a salt spring nine miles west of Youngstown, where people would repair from all parts of the Reserve and manufacture their own article, carry- ing a kettle with them, or trusting to good-fortune for the
obtaining of such an article at the spring. The Old Salt Road, as it is yet called, that leads from the mouth of Conneaut Creek at Lake Erie into Trumbull County, was so named because the demand for this staple article was one of the causes of its being laid out. The salt from the manufactories of Onondaga, N. Y., was brought to Buffalo by the lake, and then transported onward by ox-team. By the time it reached Trumbull County it cost twenty dollars a barrel. It was also brought from Pitts- burg on pack-horses, at great trouble and expense.
Sugar was costly, and had to be used sparingly, but the maple variety could be made easily and cheaply, and there was little privation in that line. Corn-bread was the staple article of diet, and one pioneer, who has traveled in many lands, and partaken of great varieties of fare, has been heard to lament, " Would that it still were." The meal dough was spread on a clean board, kept especially for that purpose, and then placed before a roaring fire,
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CLEVELAND IN 1833.
(West of Court House.)
I. Stone Residence of Dr. Long, corner of Superior and Seneca. 2. Commercial Bank and Market, Bank Street. 3. Cleveland Hotel. 4. Lighthouse. 5. Governor Woods' Office. 6. Trinity Church.
THE HISTORY OF CLEVELAND.
and one of the younger members of the family detailed to watch it. When the side next the flame was well baked, it would be turned around, and careful tending soon finished the process. When beautifully browned and smoking hot, it was placed on the table, in company with a bowl of milk and a wooden spoon. In contemplat- ing this picture, a hungry man can somewhat understand the mournful outburst quoted above.
The grinding of the grain was a matter of no small difficulty and labor. A hollow in an oak stump, and a rude stone pestle dependent from a spring-pole, was the simplest machine employed. Then came the rude hand-mills that most of the settlers used prior to 1800, which took two hours of steady grinding to supply one person with food enough for the day. In a sketch of the Doan family, it is recorded that for two or three months all their food was supplied by the young son, John, who had two attacks of fever and ague daily. He walked to the house of a neighbor five miles distant, with a peck of corn, ground it in a hand-mill, and then carried it home. He adjusted his labors and his shakings to a sys- tem. In the morning, on the ending of his first attack, he would start on his journey, grind his grist, wait until his second spell was over, and then set out on his return. One of the children of that day, while recently relating her experiences, drew this touching picture: " The only flour we could get had become musty, and could not be eaten unless one were driven by extreme hunger. I was eight years old, and not sick, and was therefore compelled to satisfy my hunger with it, and give to those of the family who were suffering a better chance at the corn- meal rations. The bread made from this flour was hard as well as unpalatable. I could only eat it by crumbling it into pellets and swallowing them whole. I often won- dered why father cried as he sat down at the table and looked at the food, as the johnny-cake and mush looked so attractive to my hungry eyes."
The venerable John Doan once said: "In those days
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we ground corn in little hand-mills. There were two stones about two and a half feet in diameter, one above the other, the upper one being turned with a pole. The corn was poured in through a hole in the upper stone. When a larger quantity of meal than could be ground in one of these mills was wanted, I was sent to Willoughby, ten miles away, to mill. I began when eight years old. Three bushels of corn and myself would be placed aboard a horse, and I would start early in the morning and get back late at night." In 1799, Joel Thorp's family found themselves out of provisions, and he started to a point in Pennsylvania twenty miles distant, to replenish his stock. While he was absent, his wife and three small children were reduced to a condition of dire necessity. They fed on such roots as they could find. The eldest son remem- bered to have seen some kernels of corn in a crack in one of the logs of their cabin, and passed several hours in an unsuccessful search for them. The mother emptied the straw of her bed on the ground and picked it over to ob- tain what wheat she could, and that little handful she boiled and gave to the children. She had been taught to handle the gun, and when she saw a wild turkey provi- dentially approach her cabin door, she took down her hus- band's rifle, and discovered there was but one charge in the house. With her heart beating high in the excitement of hope and fear, she crept near the fowl and luckily killed it, thus providing means to keep her little ones alive until their father's return.
In 1797, the first settlers of Canfield, Mahoning County, brought all their provisions and other necessities from Pittsburg, being guided on their way solely by marked trees. When William Sager, a pioneer of Bristol, Trum- bull County, desired to purchase some wheat, which could not be had at home, he rode to Mesopotamia to ob- tain two bushels, and consumed a whole day in doing so. On the next morning he started for the nearest mill, at Warren, and spent the day in getting there. His grist was ground in the evening, and the next day occupied in
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the return home. Ichabod Terrell tells of purchasing salt in Cleveland at forty dollars a barrel, and hauling it to Elyria at the rate of three miles per day, cutting a road through the woods a large portion of the way. In 1807, one family was compelled to subsist for three days upon boiled beech leaves, while the father was away after food. " On the fourth day," relates one of the sons, "my brother, twelve years of age, came hurrying in and cried, ' Give me the gun! I believe I can shoot a deer!' From its high place on the wall, mother handed it to the eager boy. She bade us hush and listen. Soon came the re- port, and the boy's shout of joy told us of his success.
Then mother and children ran out to see. There was the quivering, prostrate form of the deer." At one time, the few families living in Harpersfield were so reduced that but six kernels of parched corn were allowed daily to each person, and life was only saved through the heroic efforts of two young men, who tramped through deep snow and over frozen rivers, to Elk Creek, Pennsyl- vania, where they obtained two sacks of corn, which they carried home on their backs, making several like journeys during the winter. The grain grown was at the expense of much trouble and care. The spot of woods once chosen for a cornfield, the large trees would be girdled and left standing, while the smaller ones were cut down and burned. Holes were then made in the ground by means of a hoe or pickaxe, and into each of these a few kernels of corn were dropped; no cultivating or hoeing followed, except to cut down the largest weeds. Where buckwheat was sown, the boys of the family, in many cases, were compelled to watch it all day long, to keep the wild tur- keys from destroying it.
The next gradation in the scale of necessity was that of clothing. The Eastern cotton and woolen fabrics were too expensive, and beyond the reach of the pioneers, who had little money, and practically no market for their pro- duce. Home ingenuity was called into play, and flax and buckskin were the bases upon which it built. Flax was
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early introduced, and the loom set up. Sometimes the fiber of the nettle was gathered, and on being spun could be woven into garments that might be worn with comfort until after they had been washed, when they would rasp any portion of the body with which they came in contact. To remedy this annoyance, the boys would often roll their clothing into a ball, when unseen, and laying it upon a stump, pound it back to the desired softness. " A buckskin suit over a flax shirt, was considered full dress," declares one of the pioneer authorities. When the coat of hide became hard and stubborn from long usage, it was washed, scraped and pounded to the requisite pliabil- ity. A small patch of land would be planted with flax, and at the proper time the crop would be pulled, dried, bleached and hackled. It was then beaten into shape for the spinning wheel. Raw cotton was imported and ex- changed for flax or wool. This had to be hand-picked and carded, and then, like the flax, given to the women of the household for spinning. Many of the settlers had a few sheep, whose wool was treated in a manner similar to the cotton. Summer clothing was made of cotton mixed with flax, while in winter wool was used in the filling. Leather was expensive and difficult to obtain; therefore the men went barefoot when they could, while the women carried their shoes to church, sitting down on a log near the meeting-house to slip them on.
With all these hardships, and the lack of so much that in these later days are regarded as essentials, there never was a people, even in the most polished age the world has witnessed, whose hearthstone so well illustrated the right meaning of hospitality. Wherever the wanderer through the forest found a cabin, there he found a home. When white man met white man, each hailed the other as friend, and made good his profession in his deeds. The latch-string on the heavy wooden door was out in literal truth, and he who touched it and came in was welcome to all the humble cabin could command. Settlements a score of miles apart drew close to each other in a union of fra-
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ternity. And the story of mother or babe sacrificed to the brutal wrath of the red foe, would cause a hundred resolute men to spring forth with sturdy purpose to follow to the death, and die themselves if necessary, in defence of their homes and loved ones. The forests, yet standing, could whisper the names of brave men, in homespun and buckskin, who beneath their branches gave up life as grandly as did their fathers on the fields of the Revolution, and many dark legends are yet told us by men and women who received them from the lips of those who had part therein, or on whom a portion of their shadow fell.
There was a moral force behind these New Englanders who came into the wilderness to subdue it, and make it the habitation of civilized man. " The civilization of the Western Reserve," says Harvey Rice,63 " though comparatively of modern origin, is characterized by peculiarities that have been inherited from a renowned ancestry. It is a civilization scarcely less peculiar in its elements than it is progressive in its instincts. It aims high, and has already achieved high aims. It began its career a little less than a century ago by conquering the rude forces of nature, and securing for itself a land of beauty, of wealth and of social refinement. The spirit of enterprise that transformed within so brief a period an unbroken wilderness into a land of refined civilization, must have been not only invincible, but a spirit that has rarely, if ever, been excelled in the annals of human ad- vancement. This can only be accounted for on the basis of inherited traits of character. The civilized life of the Western Reserve has Puritanic blood in its veins, or, in other words, has a New England parentage. One age not only modifies another, but differs from another in its thought and in its aspirations as one star differs from an- other in its brilliancy and in its magnitude."
The Hon. Henry C. White touches even a little more closely upon this thought of the Western Puritan: " The
63 " Footprints of Puritanism," by Harvey Rice, Magazine of Western History, Vol. II., p. 88.
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Connecticut Western Reserve is the last home of colo- nized Puritanism. In individuals and families it has been carried into the Mississippi Valley, and beyond it, up the slopes of the Rockies, and down the western slopes, but in no other locality of the West does its organizing quality appear, in no other place has its social flavor so perme- ated, as here upon this Western Reserve. It was actually colonized here. The settlement of North-Eastern Ohio at the beginning of this century was unprecedented. It was not the straggling immigration of a few families; it was the veritable exodus of a colony. The grand elements of Puritan civilization are Land, Law, Liberty. These fundamental interests, as they found lodgment in the set- tlement, and development in the growth of the Western Reserve, are worthy of our consideration. . The . little company which landed at the mouth of the Cuya- hoga on the afternoon of July 22nd, 1796, was a band of New England surveyors. They brought with them from the far-off Saxon forests, through a long line of Puritan colonists, the idea of the ' arable mark,' and the ‘ village community.' ''64
Hon. F. J. Dickman65: "It is not our office, in the light of historic truth, to exalt to the stature of heroes all who carried the compass or chain, or plied the settler's axe in the forests of New Connecticut. But during the first sixteen or seventeen years following the 22nd of July, 1796, when the surveying party entered the mouth of the Cuyahoga from the lake, there came to the West- ern Reserve, and settled within the present limits of our county, a class of men whose characteristics we may well admire and commemorate. They did not leave their homes because they were there the victims of intolerance, and could not there follow the dictates of a tender and en- lightened conscience. They came here to improve their
64 " The Western Puritan," by Henry C. White, Magazine of Western History, Vol. II., p. 619.
65 " Life and Character of Deceased Pioneers," by F. J. Dickman, " Annals of the Early Settlers' Association," No. I, p. 26.
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material condition -to better their worldly fortunes. Like the rest of us, they had an eye to the main chance in life; but they richly earned and paid a hundred-fold, for all they received."
James A. Garfield 66: " The pioneers who first broke ground here accomplished a work unlike that which will fall to the lot of any succeeding generation. The hard- ships they endured, the obstacles they encountered, the life they led, the peculiar qualities they needed in their undertakings, and the traits of character developed by their work, stand alone in our history. The materials for a history of this Reserve are rich and abun- dant. Its pioneers were not ignorant and thoughtless ad- venturers, but men of established character, whose opin- ions on civil and religious liberty had grown with their growth, and become the settled convictions of their ma- turer years. These pioneers knew well that the three great forces which constitute the strength and glory of a free government, are the Family, the School and the Church. These three they planted here, and they nourished and cherished them with an energy and devotion scarcely equaled in any other quarter of the world. On this height were planted in the wilderness the symbols of this trinity of powers; and here let us hope may be maintained forever the ancient faith of our fathers in the sanctity of the Home, the intelligence of the School, and the faithfulness of the Church."
In lighter vein, but with the same elements of philo- sophic truth as their foundation, are these reflections of Hon. Robert F. Paine,67 with which this series of quota- tions from men competent to speak may well be closed : " I suppose that God had such confidence in the self-re-
66 Address delivered by Hon. James A. Garfield before the Historical Society of Geauga County, at Burton, Ohio, on Sept. 16th, 1873, on the " Discovery and Ownership of the Northwestern Territory, and Settlement of the Western Reserve." Western Reserve Historical Society, Tract No. 20, p. II.
67 Annual Address, by Hon. R. F. Paine, "Annals of the Early Settlers' Association," No. 4, p. 18.
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liant power of our Western Reserve emigrants that he saw no necessity of giving them title to their land, or furnish- ing them quail or manna to eat while they were prepar- ing it for crops. But the emigrants were adequate to the occasion. They generally, by the exchange of their prop- erty in New England, secured evidence of title to a small portion of the wilderness on the Reserve; by marshaling the balance of their assets they generally possessed them- selves of a span of horses, or yoke of oxen and wagon, loaded in the wife and children, and such household goods as room could be found for in the wagon, and thus equipped the devoted husband and wife bade farewell to all the associations, and scenes of childhood and youth. They had but little more idea of what awaited them than Paul had when he went bound to Jerusalem. Sometimes a New England young man had concluded the delightful business of courting a wife, and found himself without well-settled plans for the future, and but little to support a wife and rear a family; consultation with her he loved would result in an agreement to postpone the marriage, and that the lover should go to New Connecticut, and if he thought best, secure a piece of land, and if possible clear off a patch and sow it to wheat, and returning, make title to his wife, and with her visit his little farm on the Reserve, and enter upon the real substantial business of life. The early settlers, men and women, were honest, industrious and generous to a fault. The men felled and cleared off the towering and thickly-studded forest. The women came up fully to Solomon's description of a good wife, 'She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff,' and none went hungry from her door, if there was anything within to eat."
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