USA > Ohio > Trumbull County > A twentieth century history of Trumbull County, Ohio; a narrative account of its historical progress, its people, and its principal interests, Volume I > Part 5
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to them their first winter in the new land were wiped out by the happy, joyons years which followed. It is a pleasant fact to record that the three women who came to the Western Reserve the first winter of its existence courageously bore the hardships, shared the sorrows, and conducted themselves in an exemplary manner. The Connectiont Land Company realized this and pre- sented to Mrs. Gun one one-hundred-acre lot, to Mrs. Stiles one city lot, one ten-acre lot and one one-hundred-acre lot. The com- pany also gave to James Kingsbury and wife one one-hundred- acre lot.
CHAPTER VHI.
SETH PEASE .- SURVEYING PARTY OF 1797 .- TRIP OUT .- SUMMER SURVEY .- MUCH SICKNESS .- FIRST HARVEST .- AMZI ATWATER .- RETURN HOME.
The principal surveyor of the party of 1797 was Seth Pease, who had oeeupied the position of astronomer and surveyor the year before. He was born at Suffield, 1764, married Bathsheba Kent, 1785, died at Philadelphia, 1819. From Pease Genealogi- cal Record we learn : "He was a man of sterling worth, accurate and scientific. He was surveyor general of the United States for a series of years and afterwards was assistant postmaster general under Postmaster General Gideon Granger (his brother- in-law) during the administration of Jefferson and Madison." He was a brother of Judge Calvin Pease, of whom we shall hear mueh later. He has descendants living in the central part of Ohio.
Early in the spring he organized a party and proceeded west. Of those who accompanied him, the following had been with him the year before: Richard M. Stoddard, Moses Warren (who despite the report of his easy-going ways must have satis- fied the company or he would not have been re-employed), Amzi Atwater, JJoseph Landon, Amos Spafford, Warham Shepard, as surveyors. Employed in other capacities, Nathaniel Doan, Eze- kial Morley, Joseph Tinker, David Beard, Charles Parker. Mr. Pease not only had the management of the party but the eare of the funds as well. He left his home on the 3rd day of April and had more inconvenience than the party of the first year because the company was not so willing to keep him in funds. He says but for the financial help of Mr. Mathers he would have been many times greatly embarrassed. Six boats started up the Mohawk on April 20th, and on April 25th were re-enforced at Fort Schuyler by Phideas Baker and Mr. Hart's boat. They received other recruits at several places, and on April 30th Mr.
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Pease obtained his trunk, which he had left at Three River Point the year before. Arriving at Irondequoit, May 4th, others joined the party. On May 6th he interviewed Augustus Porter, hoping to get him to take charge of the party for the summer. In this he was not successful. One of the party got homesick on the following day and deserted. They proceeded from Canan- daigua in two parties, one going by land and the other by the lake, and arrived at Fort Niagara on May 14th. The following day boats went back to Irondequoit for the rest of the stores. When the lake party reached Buffalo on May 19th, they found the land party had been there two days. They reached Conneaut on May 26th and put the boats into the ereek. In the night a cry was raised that during the storm the boats had broken loose and gone out into the lake. Fortunately, this proved to be a mistake. On May 29th Spafford began surveying, reaching the Cuyahoga June 1st. The Kingsbury family was found in a very low state of health at Conneaut, but the Stileses and Mrs. Gun very well at Cleveland. Mr. Gun was at that date back in Conneaut. On the third day of June, in attempting to ford the Grand river, one of the land party, David Eldredge, was drowned. We find the following entry: "Sunday, June 4th. This morning selected a piece of ground for a burying ground, the north parts of lots 97 and 98; and attended the funeral of the deceased with as much deceney and solemnity as could be expected. Mr. Hart read church service. The afternoon was devoted to washing." Thus have life and death always gone hand in hand.
One of the first things they did was to make a garden, and clear and fence a bit of land. The surveying then began in earnest, with headquarters at Cleveland. Provisions seem to have been delivered more promptly and carefully than the year before, but there was more sickness among the men. On the 25th of June Mr. Pease and his party began the survey of the lower line of the Reserve, which was not finished the year before.
We find this curious and interesting notation of Amzi Atwater: "In passing down this stream (Oswego), which had long been known by boatmen, we passed in a small inlet stream two large, formidable looking boats or small vessels which re- minded us of a sea-port harbor. We were told that they were, the season before, conveyed from the Hudson river, partly by water and finally on wheels, to be conveyed to Lake Ontario; that they were built of the lightest material and intended for no other use than to have it published in Europe that vessels of
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HISTORY OF TRUMBULL COUNTY
those dimensions had passed those waters to aid land specu- lation."
Mr. Atwater was one of the surveyors who took up his home on the Western Reserve and proved to be a helpful eitizen. He was born in New Haven in 1776. His parents were poor and his father lost his health in the Revolutionary war. He learned to read and write, but was early hired out to his unele for $60 a year. At one time he went to visit his uncle, Rev. Noah Atwater, who was a successful teacher of young men. Upon invitation he spent the winter there, studying surveying. His title in the first Connectieut Land Company's employees was that of "explorer's assistant." He started from Connecticut, on foot and alone, to meet Shepard at Canandaigua. He had charge of the cattle and the pack horses and went the entire dis- tanee by land. He served in almost every capacity. When the survey was finished here, he worked at his profession in the east, and in 1800, accompanied by his brother, eame to Mantua. He bought a farm on the road between Mantua and Shalersville, on the Cuyahoga, and here he lived and died. Judge Ezra B. Taylor, of Warren, now in his eighty-sixth year, remembers Judge Atwater well, having first seen him when he was a boy thirteen years old. He deseribes him as a gentle, dignified, influ- ential person, who was known to almost all the early residents of Portage county. He died in 1851 at the age of 76.
From the beginning of August, about half the record is given to the sickness of the party. Mr. Pease is obliged to dis- continue his journal because of his fearful chills and fever. Warren seems to have escaped, or, at least, he does not mention it. During this summer, occasional prospectors appeared at Conneant, at Cuyahoga, and the places in between. "The three gentlemen we saw the other day going to Cleveland hailed us. As they contemplated becoming settlers, we furnished them with a loaf of bread." Generous!
Sunday, October 8. "Opened second barrel of pork. Found it very poor, like the first, consisting almost entirely of head and legs, with one old sow belly, teats two inches long, meat one inch thick."
The party was at Conneaut October 22nd, on their way home. There they met Mr. John Young, of Youngstown, who brought them word of the drowning of three acquaintances at Chantauqua, the murdering of a man on Big Beaver, and like news. The party, in several divisions, then proceeds eastward,
HISTORY OF TRUMBULL COUNTY
arriving in Buffalo November 6. The winter snows had begun. The party continued to Canandaigua and dispersed, Mr. Pease remaining some time to bring up the work.
This practically finished the survey. The facts in regard to the distribution of land, the Connecticut Land Company, and so forth are of great interest, but there is not space to tell of them here. How, and by whom, and when, these lands were purchased will, in part. be told later.
CHAPTER IX.
KINGSBURY'S DEED .- SOUTHERN PORTION OF COUNTY SETTLED FIRST .- PIONEERS OF '98-'99 .- JOHN YOUNG .- JAMES HILL- MAN .- EDWARDS .- DOAN .- CARTER .- HONEY .- HARMON .- LOVELAND .- MORGAN .- HARPERSFIELD .- CONNEAUT .- THORP .- TAPPAN .- HUDSON .- CANFIELD .- SHEL- DON .- WALWORTH .- PAINE .- ATWATER .- HALL .- CAMPBELL. - MILLS.
James Kingsbury may be considered the first permanent settler in old Trumbull county. Stiles and Gun were ahead of him with the party, but Gun only stayed a little while, three or four years, and it is not sure that Stiles intended to stay when he came. It is undoubtedly true that the Kingsbury baby that starved to death was the first white child born to permanent settlers.
That Kingsbury proved later to be a valned citizen we have seen. There is now in the possession of Mr. H. K. Morse, of Poland. the following which was found among the papers of Judge Turhand Kirtland, Mr. Morse's grandfather :
"May 18, 1811. Rec'd, Cleveland, of Turhand Kirtland a deed from the trustees of the Connecticut Land Company for 100 acres, lot No. 433, being the same lot of land that was voted by said company to be given to said Kingsbury and wife for a compensation for early settlement, and sundry services rendered said company with me. "James Kingsbury."
After the Connectiont Land Company had withdrawn its surveyors, the emigrants who appeared settled in isolated spots. This was because they bonght their land in large amounts and the Connecticut Land Company scattered them as much as possi- ble. Old Trumbull County, therefore, was not settled in the
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usnal way, a few people gathering in a little hamlet and working out from there. That this was true worked great hardships. Settlers were lonesome, far away from the base of supplies, had to grind their own corn and grain, found trouble in proenring domestic animals, in having implements repaired, or in securing the services of a physician, became siek and discouraged or, as metaphysicians say to-day, discouraged and siek, and returned to their old homes; others kept no records, wrote few letters to those in the east, took no interest in polities or religion, and hence their names are not preserved. They lived quiet, unevent- ful lives, and when they were gathered to their fathers the world knew them no more. The mimber of those coming in 1798 and 1799 was small, and of these little is known. Unlike the sur- veyors when they went back, it was not to write reports for directors of a land company, but to get their families, and after they were in their new homes they were too much occupied to keep diaries and, having few or no mails, wrote few or no letters. Summer days were too precions to use in writing and winter ones, in dark cabins, too dismal to want to tell of them. It was expected that the northern part of the Western Reserve would be settled before the southern, but the opposite was true. The road from Pittsburg was less hard to travel than the one from Canandaigua; the lake winds were too severe to be enjoyed; the bits of land cleared long before, lying in the lower part, seemed very inviting to those who had attempted to remove the huge trees covering almost the entire section. All these things combined to draw settlers nearer the 41st parallel.
Of the first settlers, some men walked the entire way from Connecticut ; some rode horseback part way, sharing the horse with others; some rode in ox carts; some drove oxen; some came part way by land and the rest by water; some came on sleds in mid-winter; some plowed through the mud of spring, or endured the heat of summer; some had bleeding feet, and some serions illnesses. Sometimes it was a bride and groom who started alone; sometimes it was a husband, wife and children; sometimes it was a group of neighbors who made the party. Children were born on the way and people of all ages died, and were buried where they died. But after they came, their experi- ences were almost identical.
John Young, a native of New Hampshire, who emigrated to New York and in 1792 married Mary Stone White, a daughter of the first settler of the land on which Whitestown now stands,
Vol. 1-4
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came to the lower part of Trumbull County in 1796; this was the year Kingsbury was at Conneaut. He began his settlement, calling it Youngstown. He removed his family, wife and two children to the new house in 1799. That year a son was born to them, William, and in 1802 a daughter, Mary. His oldest son, John, says :
"In 1803 our mother, finding the trials of her country life there, with the latch-string always ont and a table free to all, too great with her young family, for her powers of endurance, our father, in deference to her earnest entreaties, closed up his business as best he could and returned with his family to Whitestown and to the home and farm which her father had provided and kept for them."
He therefore spent but seven years in the town which bears his name and which is known throughout the United States as a great industrial center. He, however, returned occasionally for a visit, probably the last time in his own sleigh in 1814. It is supposed that Mr. Young's brother-in-law, Philo White, and Lemnel Storrs were equally interested in the land purchased. However, the contract with the Connectient Land Company was made alone to Mr. Young.
James Hillman was early at Youngstown. Three different stories in regard to the friendship of Young and Hillman are in existence. The most common one is that Hillman was on the river in a canoe and seeing smoke on the bank of the river landed and found Mr. Young and Mr. Wolcott. He visited with them a few days (people were not in such a frantic hurry as they are now), and then he persuaded them to go down to Beaver, where his headquarters were, to celebrate the Fourth of July. This they did, and upon their return Mr. Hillman came with them, and from that time they lived in elose friendship.
Another tradition is that Hillman brought Young up the river from Pittsburg and that Hillman was indneed to take up his residence with Yonng. Still another, that Young stopped at Beaver on his way west for supplies or rest, and that Hillman. whose business was transporting passengers and trading with Indians and frontiersmen, carried Young up the river, and that from their acquaintance came a friendship which resulted in Hillman locating there. The first story seems to be the generally accepted one.
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The first house erected as a settler's dwelling in the Mahon- ing Valley was Young's. This was in the neighborhood of Spring Common, probably on Front street. Mr. Young also erected a cabin baek of the residence of Mr. Charles Wanamaker on South Main street, in Warren. In this neighborhood the Indians had cleared land and here he sowed a crop, and when it was harvested he put it into this cabin and left it until the snow eame, when it was easily transported by sled.
Roswell M. Grant, the unele of Ulysses Grant, under the date of September 7, 1875, sent a letter to the Pioneers Associa- tion of Youngstown for its celebration on September 10th, which contained some facts in regard to James Hillman. He says that Hillman was a native of Northumberland county, Pennsylvania, although his father lived on the Ohio river. James was in the Revolutionary war and was captured at Georgetown. "After his return he went to a corn-husking, where he met a Miss Catherine After dancing with her for some time he proposed marriage. A squire being present, they were married the same night. I have heard Mrs. Hillman many a time say she never had a pair of shoes or stockings until after her mar- riage, and I have often heard them both say that she had neither shoes nor stockings when they were married." Mr. Grant then tells a story of Mr. Young being carried up from Pittsburg by Hillman. "Mrs. Hillman went with them. After they arrived at Youngstown, John Young offered Mrs. Hillman her choice of six acres, any place she would choose it in the town plot, if she would remain. She did so. Mrs. Hillman took her six acres east of the spot where William Rayen's house stood. James Hillman helped John Young to lay out the town. He understood the Indians and they understood him. When trouble arose between the white and the red man he would volunteer to settle it provided he could go alone to do it. In this way he did efficient service to both, and did for the pioneer what no other settler seemed able or willing to do."
The first settlement in present Geauga county was at Burton in the year 1798 when three families came from Connecticut.
As we have seen, Job Stiles and his wife and Edward Paine spent the winter of '96 at the mouth of the Cuyahoga. The next year James Kingsbury and his family were there, together with Major Lorenzo Carter and Ezekiel Holley and their families. In 1798 Rodolphus Edwards and Nathaniel Doan and family came. The early manuscripts show that it took Mr. Doan ninety-
-
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HISTORY OF TRUMBULL COUNTY
two days to make the journey from Chatham, Connecticut. The fever, and fever and agne, were if anything worse during this year of '98 than in '97. The Doan family consisted of nine persons, and only one of them had strength enough to bring water to the others. This was Seth Doan, a boy of thirteen. The fever and ague which prevailed in Trumbull County in the '50s and '60s was intermittent. Chills would ocenr every other day for a stated period, and then cease, beginning again on their every-other-day schedule at the end of a certain interval. But among the Cleveland people a patient was considered fortunate if he had only one attack a day; some had three.
At one time none of the Doan family could leave the house and they had only turnips to eat. It was about this time that Judge Kingsbury and his family did great good in nursing and caring for the sick. The Carter family did not seem to suffer as much as did the family of Mr. Doan. Howe says, "destitute of a physician and with a few medicines, necessity again taught them to nse sneh means as nature had placed within their reach. For calomel, they substituted pills from the extract of the bark of the butternut, and, in lien of quinine, used dog-wood and cherry bark." Probably because of this malarions condition, and because of the severe winds, the colony at the mouth of the Cuyahoga did not grow, and from January, 1799, to April, 1800, Major Carter's family was the only one living there. The others had moved back onto the hills and into the country.
When John Doan eame west he had six children, the youngest three years old. They separated at Buffalo, the father and one son taking the Indian trail and carrying part of the goods on the backs of the horses and oxen. They followed the first road made along the lake shore, but there were no bridges. "The mother with the other children made the trip from Buffalo 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 carried on the bank. Besides their furniture and house- hold goods, they carried a box of live geese, which were declared to be 'the first domesticated birds of the kind ever brought into Ohio.' At the month of the Grand river the boat was over- turned, throwing mother, children, goods and box overboard. By good fortune, the water was shallow, and while the red men carried the children ashore, the white men and Mrs. Doan saved the goods. The geese floated out into the lake, but in some way
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HISTORY OF TRUMBULL COUNTY
became freed from their prison and, swimming ashore, were recaptured. At Grand river Mr. Doan met them, and the boat was taken on to Cleveland without further adventures. Mrs. Doan, however, had no further desire for marine travel and came by land."
One of the very first settlers in old Trumbull County was Abram S. Honey, who came to Mantua in 1798. He erected a log cabin, cleared a spot of ground, put in a small crop of wheat which was next year harvested by his brother-in-law, Rufus Edwards. He was about midway between the Cleveland and Youngstown settlements.
Elias Harmon arrived at the clearing which Honey had made, in 1799. He, however, did not stay long, but moved on to Aurora. He suffered great privations on his trip (see Hudson's Story) and this continued until he had been in Aurora some little time, when conditions were made easier for everybody. When Portage county was set off he became its first treasurer.
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 accommoda- tions did not offer. They crossed the Susquehanna 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 they arrived at the piece of woodland which he expected to transform into a farm.
James Kennedy in his " A History of the City of Cleveland" says :
"Jacob Russell came from Connecticut to Cleveland with an ox-team, his wife riding their only horse. Leaving her, he returned for their children, and one of these, in re- cently relating their adventures, said: 'Our journey was attended with the greatest suffering. My youngest sister was sick all the way, dying three days after her arrival. Father then was taken down with ague, so our house was
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HISTORY OF TRUMBULL COUNTY
built slowly. With the greatest difficulty mother hewed with an adz the stub ends of the floor boards and put them down with the little help father could give her. We moved in, towards the close of November, our house possessing neither door nor window. At that time two of the children were sick with agne. Father worked when the chills and fever left him through the day, putting poles together in the form of bedsteads and tables.'
"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 the greater part of the way between Allegheny and Cleveland. The road was simply a trail through the woods, the under- brush between the trees having been ent away sufficiently to allow a wagon to pass. Three months were consumed in this journey, including a two weeks' stop because of sick- ness."
The first to settle in what became afterwards Ashtabula county were Alexander Harper, William MeFarland, Ezra Gregory. They established themselves and named the new home Harpersfield. They left (Harpersfield, Conn.) the 7th of March and arrived the last of June. Their trip was one of the most tedious ones of which we have record. Why they did not at several different points turn round and go home, we cannot see. The following winter, that of '98 and '99, they suffered great hardships, and came near perishing from hunger. At times they only had six kernels of parched corn for each person. How- ever, Colonel Harper had two strong, willing boys, James and William, who went to Pennsylvania for bags of corn, earrying them on their backs. Onee the ice broke through, wetting the provisions and themselves, but William resened the grain, ear- ried it into the woods where he had ordered his brother and friends to precede him and build a fire. When he reached them with the provisions, his clothes stiffly frozen, he found they had succumbed to the cold and were lying down, asleep. He built a fire, aroused them, dried the grain and himself, and all reached home safely.
"Thomas Montgomery and Aaron Wright settled in Con- neaut in the spring of 1799. Robert Montgomery and family, Levi and John Montgomery, Nathan and John King, Samuel Barnes and family came the same season." Howe tells us that
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HISTORY OF TRUMBULL COUNTY
twenty or thirty Indian cabins were standing when the settlers arrived. If this were true, they were built in the winter of '97, because none of the surveyors mention any buildings except those constructed by the company. Howe also tells the story of an Indian girl saving the life of a young white man prisoner by pleading for him as he was tied to the stake. She not only pled, but paid furs and a small sum of money as well. Ile ob- serves, "An act in the lowly Indian maid which entitled her name to be honorably recorded with that of Pocohantas among the good and virtuous of every age." The author is inclined to believe that this visionary tale was exactly like that of Poeo- hantas.
In May, 1799. Joel Thorpe and his wife Sarah came to the Reserve from Milford, Connecticut. They came in an ox cart, and cleared a bit of ground in a very rich valley. Like all the other emigrants of that year, they fell short of provisions, and the father started for a settlement about twenty miles distant in Pennsylvania for food. The oldest Thorpe child was eight years old, and there were two younger. Mrs. Thorpe dug roots, upon which they subsisted for a time. The oldest son, Basil, having seen some kernels of corn between the logs, spent honrs of time trying to secure them, without success. Mrs. Thorpe opened up a straw bed, and the few grains of wheat she found there she boiled and ate. She had learned to shoot at a mark, and it was well she had. Standing in the door one day in utter despair, she saw a wild turkey flying near her. Procuring her gun, she quietly waited until the bird began wallowing in the loose dirt of the potato patch, when she crept over logs until she was near it. Raising her trembling arm, "she fired; the result was fortunate; the turkey when cooked saved the family from starvation. Mrs. Thorpe married three times." As society believed in the early days that women who were not married were disgraced, we conclude that Howe, the historian, added this last sentence to show that she received her reward of merit.
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