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 6
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One of the earliest settlers of old Trumbull County was Hon. Benj. Tappan, who arrived in June, 1799. and settled where Ravenna now stands. A Mr. Honey, as we have seen, had pre- ceded him, but there were few others. On the way from Con- necticut he fell in with David Hudson, and they came on together to the mouth of the Cuyahoga river. They went up that river as far as Boston. Mr. Hudson stayed at Hudson. Mr. Tappan
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left his goods and his family at Boston, and cut a road through to his new home. With the man who accompanied him he built a dray, yoked on his oxen, and took part of his goods from Boston to his eamp. When he went back for the second load The man who had been left in charge of the tent had joined Mr. Hudson's party. Mr. Tappan had all sorts of discouraging things happen him. The weather being warm and wet, one of his oxen died from fly bites, he was left with his goods in the wilderness, and he had no money. One of his men went to the commandant at Fort Erie, a hundred miles distant, to get a loan of money. He himself did what most people did who lived in this part of Trumbull County, went to James Hillman, at Youngstown, with his troubles. ITillman encouraged him, sold him an ox on credit at the usual price. All this made such delay that he had not time to plant a crop. He therefore had to depend upon his own gun for meat, except as he bought some of the Indians. He had to travel to western Pennsylvania for his supplies. He lived in a sort of a bark house until his log cabin was finished, which was Jannary 1, 1800. Mr. Tappan proved to be not only a good citizen for Ravenna and vicinity, but to the state as well. His later biography is given under Bench and Bar.
Mr. Hudson and his party, traveling by water, had a serions time. The Niagara river was filled with ice and their boat had to be pulled by ropes by men on shore to keep it from drifting down with the current. The lake was also dangerons from large cakes of ice. He had fallen in with Elias Harmon, and when the party was off the Ashtabula shore their boats were driven in and Mr. Harmon's badly damaged. They, however, repaired this, put baggage and supplies in it, and the party, including Harmon, Tappan, and Hudson, arrived in Cleveland June 8, 1799. The river was so low, because of the dronght, that they had to drag their boats over shallow places. The surveyors had described the water near the Indson purchase to be the depth they had found the water of the Cuyahoga. So when they began dragging the boat they thought they had reached their land. The party went ashore, tried to locate lines, and after wasting nearly a week, found they were a good ways from their destina- tion. The cattle belonging to Tappan and Hudson came over- land. They got out of their way, and instead of going direct to Hudson, went south to the Salt Spring tract, but, after many narrow escapes in their wanderings, reached the Cuyahoga. at
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Boston, where the boats were left. While they were fixing yokes for the oxen, and making a primitive road, the Indians stole part of their provisions from the boats. This gave Mr. Hudson grave fears of their being able to get through the winter. Ile therefore turned about. hoping to meet his man who was coming with stores, and did find him, on July 2nd, "lying at his ease near Cattarangus." He got back to his party in time to save them from suffering. His own account of that summer in old Trum- bull County, of his returning east for his family in the damaged boat which he had purchased of Harmon, and which was so leaky that it had to be bailed all the time it was on the lake; of his reaching his home, getting his family and his party, and returning the following year, reads like the most interesting romance. Ile was the founder of Hudson, had much to do with the Western Reserve College, and was a strong, able, honest man. He has direct descendants residing in Hudson now. His daughter Maria married Harvey Baldwin, both of whom were vitally interested in the college which lately became the Western Reserve University at Cleveland. The daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin married Edwin Gregory, who was an educator of a good deal of prominence, being principal of the Rayen School of Youngstown for many years.
David Daniels, of Salisbury, Connecticut, ought to be men- tioned in this list of pioneers, since he came to Palmyra in 1799, and made preparation for his family, which he brought the following year.
Ebenezer Sheldon, like Daniels, came in 1799, and prepared the way for his family. They started from Connecticut in the early spring of 1800, and came, as did most of the settlers of that year, in a wagon drawn by oxen. They led their horses. They had no special adventures in the beginning, but were overtaken by a storm in the woods west of Warren and miraculously escaped death. Timber fell all about them to such an extent as to hem them in. They had to stay all night in the woods and were not released the next day until they got assistance to ent the road. One of the Miss Sheldons became the wife of Amzi Atwater, whom we remember was one of the surveyors of the Connectiont Land Company.
Hon. John Walworth, a native of New London, Connecticut, who had spent several years in travel, was small of stature and supposed to have tuberculosis, visited Cleveland in 1799. He was then living in the neighborhood of Cuyuga lake, New York.
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Upon his return, he went to Connecticut, and bought 2,000 acres of land in muimber 11 in range 8 (Painesville). Late in February of 1800, he started for his new home. Others joined him, so that the party filled two sleighs when they reached Lake Erie. They drove on the ice, stopping on the shore at Cattaraugus creek for one night. They reported that women and children and all had a comfortable night. Just how this could have been in the wind and the snow, we do not understand. Leaving his family at Erie, he went back to Buffalo for his goods, and all came safely to their new home. Judge Jesse Phelps, Jared Woods, Ebenezer Merry, Charles Parker and Moses Parks were living in Mentor. It was about the 1st of April when the family was settled and General Edward Paine, who had made his head- quarters at Cleveland, took up his residence there.
One of the earliest townships settled was Atwater. Early in the spring, April, 1799, Capt. Caleb Atwater, Jonathan Merrick, Peter Bonnell, Asahel Blakesley, and Asa Hall and his wife arrived in Atwater. In the fall all of them except Hall and his wife returned to the east. For two whole years these people were the only white people in Atwater. Their nearest neighbor, Lewis Ely, lived in Deerfield. In the spring of the following year a child was born, Atwater Hall, who was the first child born inside of the present Portage county.
The first actual settler in Deerfield was Lewis Ely, who came with his family in July, 1799. A few months later. Alva Day, John Campbell and Joel Thrall walked from Connectient, arriv- ing in March of 1800. They suffered many hardships going over the mountains in the snow. It does not seem possible that they could have walked all that distance at that season, but they did. John Campbell did not know that his hard experiences were soon to be forgotten in his joy. In that very year he married Sarah, the daughter of Lewis Ely. This was the first marriage among white people recorded within the present limits of Portage county, although at that time it was in Trumbull. There were no ministers in that neighborhood, and Calvin Austin, of Warren, a justice of the peace, was asked to perform the service. Now, it happened that Justice Austin did not know any set form for marriage. Calvin Pease offered to teach him a proper service. They did not sit down by some good fire and prepare for this wedding. Somehow the people of this time had to do so much walking they continued it when they did not have to. So these two Calvins walked together through the woods in drear
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November twenty-odd miles, one teaching, one reciting as they went. Now, as we will see in the chapter on Bench and Bar, Calvin Pease had a great sense of humor and was a tease with all. When, therefore, Mr. Austin had in a dignified manner re- peated this service, concluding with "I pronounce you man and wife, and may God have merey on your souls," the assembled guests were astonished, and Mr. Pease suppressed his langh, too, with great difficulty. Iler great-granddaughter remembers this bride when she was nearly eighty. She was tall, straight for her age, wore a dark brown frontpiece of hair under her snowy cap and a dark brown delaine dress with pink roses, a fichu-like cape of the same material was abont her shoulders, with some- thing white at the throat. She was rather sober of face and never held or kissed this great-granddaughter. But people did not show inward love in outward expression then ; besides if she had held and kissed her grandchildren and her great-grand- children she would have had no time for anything else, for the age of race suicide had not begun.
It was the intention not to mention in the list of "the first settlers" any one arriving after 1800, but the family of Mills, which came very early in that year, have been so identified with the early settlement that exception is made with them. Three brothers, Delaun, Asehel, and Isaac, came in covered wagons, the usual way. The trip was more expensive than they expected and they had less than twenty-five cents among them when they arrived. At that time the northern part of Portage was being surveyed under Amzi Atwater, and these men engaged to work as ax-men under the surveyors. Isaae was not married and after a time went back to the east. Delaun and Asehel settled on the road running west from the center of Nelson, now Portage county. All the old diaries of early travelers who went to Burton. Painesville, ete., have this statement, "Stopped at Mills for dinner," or " Fed horses at Mills," or "Stayed several days at Mills." Delaun received the title of captain and was a great hunter, of both animals and Indians. He was the Daniel Boone of old Trumbull County. Wonderful, indeed, are the stories told of his adventures. Ilis children were Methodists, and it is not hard to close your eyes and hear the rather sweet voice of Albert Mills leading the Sunday school with "There'll be something in Heaven for children to do." The son Homer still lives on the old home farm.
CHAPTER X.
HOW THE FIRST SETTLERS CAME .- CARRYING CHILDREN IN APRONS. THE BABY'S CRY .- SEEDS AND PLANTS .- CHESTNUT STUMPS AS STOVES. - FIRST OVENS. - FIRST LAUNDRIES. - EARLY HOUSES .- WINTER EVENINGS .- DISHES .- BRIC-À-BRAC .- CHAIRS .- FINANCIAL DEPENDENCE .- BOOKS .- FIRST SCHOOLS. - PIES .- CLOTHING .- BIG FAMILIES .- WOMEN'S SHOES .- HORSEBACK TO CHURCH .- SLEEPING ON HUSBAND'S GRAVE .- BREAD- MAKING .- BEARS .- WHISKEY.
Before we proceed with the history of Trumbull County after 1800, let us take a look at the home life of the people who lived in New Connecticut in the first early days.
There were no steam cars, street cars, automobiles or coaches. No large boats came this way, since even on the lake there were no natural harbors to admit them. Men who had the most money and had therefore bought large tracts of land arrived during the summer days, located their land, cleared a spot for the house, and returned home. If they were very wealthy they left a man or two to stay through the winter to construct the cabin and care for a few domestic animals. The following spring they brought their families and began a new life. Such cases were few, because a small number of emigrants were rich. Most of the travelers came in family or neighborhood groups, with an ox cart for the baggage, and a horse or two. There was seldom place for all to ride and they took turn about. A large percent came by horseback. Sometimes a woman would ride, carrying a baby and utensils for cooking, while the husband would walk, leading another horse on which was piled the baggage. Often a husband and wife, newly married, would ride horses, or one horse, to the new home. Sometimes men used boats as far as streams were navigable, walking the rest of the way. Sometimes men walked all the way. Sometimes women
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came in pairs without men, walking the entire distance. Some- times women carried babies on their backs while the linsband carried the provisions on his. When it came night they would sleep on the ground, with no covering if it were pleasant, under the trees or large pieces of bark stuck on poles, if it were rainy. Record is given of women who came alone (except as they would fall in with parties now and then), carrying a baby or leading a child. In this latter case the trip was exceedingly hard. hu the beginning she was in civilization, where she could easily find shelter and lodging. However, as she proceeded, and grew more weary and more lonesome, hamlets were farther apart, until houses almost disappeared. It is recorded that several women carried their babies in their aprons all the way from New England. The apron was worn almost as much as the dress, colored cottons for hard work, white for home dress-up, and among the wealthy silk for visiting. They were used for many purposes for which we would never think of using them today.
When women came alone it was usually because they were exceedingly poor and had inherited land in the new country, or because the husband had preceded them to prepare a place for them. Many a pioneer mother, when she reached the spot of land belonging to her or to her husband, saw the wild country, remembered her abiding place "back home," covered her face with her hands, sat down on the fresh hewn logs, or made her way into the forests, and gave way to her feelings in floods of tears. As soon as this first disappointment was over, she turned her attention to her duty. If any women, anywhere, in all the wide world, ever did the courageous things. the right things, it was the women who came to New Connectient and helped to transform it from a wilderness to one of the most prosperous spots of the world.
As there were some women who came in rather comfortable ox-carts, so there were some women who had homes awaiting them, but this percent was so small that it is hardly to be con- sidered.
Mr. Ephraim Brown, of North Bloomfield, one of the early wealthy men, came one season, left men here to build his house, while he went back for the winter. There were no women in that neighborhood. One Sunday morning in June of the follow- ing year as his men, with some neighbors, were sitting in the sun in the opening about the house, they heard a sound. They all listened. They recognized a baby's ery. One of the men
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said afterwards, "That was the sweetest sound I ever heard in my life." Of course, he did not mean that the distressed baby's voice was so pleasant, but he knew that where a baby was, a mother was, and where a mother was a real home would be.
Great traveling preparations were made by the emigrants. One woman in Connecticut baked her oven several times full of bread, dried it, rolled it, and packed it in sacks that it might serve for food on the journey.
Upon arrival, families sometimes slept in the ox-cart, but more often slept under bark roofs, keeping their clothing and provisions near by in hollow trees. One of the first things these pioneers did, if they came in the early spring, was to clear a little patch and start a garden. Men struggled for a chance to make garden then as boys and men struggle now not to make them. Almost all of them brought seeds, and so carefully did they have to plan not to have heavy baggage, nor to be burdened with small bundles, that apple seeds were sometimes brought in the hollow eane which they used for a staff.
The second aet was preparing logs for the house. Some of these buildings had no chimney, no doors, no windows. It is surprising to find in how many cases this was true.
Women cooked meals at the side of chestnut stumps for weeks and months at times. In many cases men were so occupied in other directions that they gave little attention to domestic conveniences of any kind. Record is had of several women who, in despair, made ovens of elay and mud in which to bake bread. Before that, they had had to stir their bread on a fresh hewn log and wrap it around a stick or a corncob. Their children were set to holding it and watching it as it baked and browned. Children, in those days. were like children in these, and some of them carefully watched the bread, baked it evenly, while others who dropped it in the ashes or burned it were chastised for their carelessness. The result was the same in those days as now: the careless child did not grow any more careful, and the careful child did most of the bread-baking.
One of the sturdy foremothers in Trumbull County. a Farmington woman, who had a poor fireplace in her dingy cabin and who loved to prepare good things to eat for her family, became desperate because her husband procrastinated in build- ing an oven for her. She said she had baked bread and done all of her cooking in one big iron kettle and she was tired of it. She, therefore, fashioned some bricks of mud, burned them in
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some way, and constructed an oven which was such a success that people traveling her way stopped to see it.
Men and women, by temperament and environment, were the same in that day as they are now, and some husbands were thrifty, loving, temperate and just, and some were quite the opposite; some women were clinging, tender and childish, while the majority were not. The forefather was really the monarch of the family, and when the food was low it was he who braved the stormis and the cold to bring provisions from Pennsylvania; nevertheless, he was neglectful of the smaller things.
On many farms, in Trumbull and adjacent counties, until within a few years, there were no cisterns. All water had to be caught in tubs as it fell from the roof on a flatboard leading into barrels and tubs. These receptacles naturally must stand near the house, and the mosquitos hatched therein were con- veniently near their feeding grounds. Women carried their clothes to the nearby creeks and washed them, laying them on the grass to dry. The well was often far from the house. If there chaneed to be a spring, the stable was often put nearer to it than the house.
Within the recollection of the writer, a farmer who kept five men and whose wife did the work, either thoughtlessly or purposely neglected to keep her supplied with sufficient wood. Several times the housewife threatened to get no dinner unless wood was brought for her. This threat was not effective. She knew and the men knew that there was plenty of cold food in the pantry with which they could satisfy themselves. One day when the husband came to dinner with the hired hands he was obliged to step over two rails of his choice fence which were sticking out the doorway, the other ends being in the stove fur- nishing fuel for the dinner. As this rail fence was his pride and as rail splitting was hard work, he always thereafter dele- gated one of his men to keep the wood box full.
We have seen that most of the log houses had no doors or windows. Blankets and quilts often served the places of doors. Bears sometimes walked in under them; wolves some- times ventured so near that if there was a loft and the men were away, women took their children and climbed into the loft. Sometimes they built fires in front of these blanket doors, or stood outside and waved pieces of burning wood. or set fire to a little powder, to frighten these dangerous animals. Indians were especially attracted toward the quilt doorways. As we
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know, they walked very quietly, and many an early housewife has been badly frightened as she realized that Indians were examining her quilt from the outside.
It was not possible, often, to finish a house immediately. Sometimes the roof was not on for a long time in summer. The time in warm weather was precious and a settler could build his house when he had nothing else to do. As soon as possible they hung the doors. After a time they made windows, but not of glass,-only greased paper.
The chimneys were usually built outside and, under certain elimatie conditions, smoked badly.
After a time there was a floor, and women and children, on winter evenings, helped to stuff the craeks between the logs with anything suitable that they could procure, while the father, and sometimes the mother, smoothed with the adz the inside of the logs. As a rule, this primitive log house had but one room. Poles were stuck in between the logs and furnished the bedstead, while the cord for the same was made of strips of elm bark. Ticks were usually filled with straw. As soon as it was possible a loft was made, and here, in summer, and sometimes in winter, the children and the hired men slept. In reading of the early self-made men of this country, it is almost universally stated that when children they used to wake in the morning to find snow on their bed. Access to these lofts was had by ladder usually; occasionally by rude steep stairs. As a rule, there was a hatch door to keep the cold from the room below. Sometimes when there was no loft, a corner of the cabin was screened off by cotton curtains.
Dishes were often of wood. However, each foremother seemed to find a way to bring something to her new ernde home which she loved. The early German women, and the New Eng- land women as well, often brought a favorite bulb or a cutting from a plant at home, and these they nursed and nourished, and by exchanging with each other had some lovely gardens in this wilderness. A woman of Champion had some peonies which have bloomed in that town for seventy years.
Sometimes they brought a few pieces of silver, or a pieture. One of the plainest women in Portage county, who was a fore- mother, brought a looking glass. This her granddaughter still cherishes. They struggled to make the interior of their dingy cabins look homelike. Rude shelves were put over fireplaces, and upon these they set their pewters, which, despite all other
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hard work, they faithfully polished with wood ashes. They had no rocking chairs. The stools were made with three legs, since it was easier to adjust them on the rough floors. They could work at nothing in the evening which required close attention, since the flicker of the log or small tallow dip furnished meager light. However, every evening was full of duties, for they dipped candles, plaited straw for hats, shelled corn and cracked nuts. They also spun, sometimes far into the night. As Ilon. Thomas D. Webb, of Warren, observed his wife spinning one evening, he made a calculation of her steps, and when she had finished he told her she had walked as far as from Warren to Leavittsburg and back; that is six miles.
Most of the pioneer mothers who really clothed and fed the people of the Western Reserve had to beg for all the money they had, and the forefather took great pride in thinking how well he supported his wife. He did not know it, but the Yankee settler, when he married a young, virtuous, strong, capable woman. made the best bargain any man ever made. Sometimes a woman, inheriting a strong feeling of independence from her independent father, stood up, in what seems to us now, a feeble way, and demanded a small part of what was due her. Such a woman was said to "wear the breeches," and her husband was termed "hen-pecked." Next to drunkenness and infidelity, the women who first lived in greater Trumbull County suffered more from financial dependence than from any other one thing.
The pleasures were visiting, church-going and house-raising. There were no undertakers and no nurses. The housewives knew the medicinal valne of herbs, and when left alone did good service. The community was like a great independent family. one man ingeniously making ax helves, while another pulled, or rather serewed out the teeth with a turn-screw, and each helped the other when in trouble. If a man was sick, his neighbors raised his house or gathered his crop. A pioneer who had nursed the sick and shared the sorrows of his friends in the early days, died at extreme age, and some of his young neighbors could not leave plowing to go to the funeral. In the old days it was friendship first, money afterwards.
People were baptized in streams when the ice had to be cut.
Books were few and reading not indulged in to any great extent. In fact, it was considered almost wicked to waste day- light in study. Occasionally, a boy who had determined to become a professional man did most of his studying winter
Vol. 1-5
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evenings by the light of the log fire, and hunted the neighbor- hood for miles around for the worn and tattered volumes which were there.
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