USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Annals of the Early Settlers Association of Cuyahoga County, number I > Part 18
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43
At the time of my visit the place was in ruins, but enough remained to enable me to judge of its past splendor and magnifi- cence. The learned Dr. Hildreth, in his " Lives of Early Set- tlers of Ohio." has given a faithful picture of this " classical retreat," as it stood before the torch of the incendiary was applied, and it is well worthy of examination.
In 1:93 John Armstrong lived on the Virginia side of the Ohio river, opposite the upper end of this island of Blennerhas- sett. A party of Indians crossed the Ohio from the month of the Little Hocking, and in the night season approached Arm- strong's house, killed Mrs. Armstrong and her three youngest children, and carried into captivity three older children, the youngest of whom was Jeremiah, a lad then about eight years old. They were adopted into the Indian nation as their ehil- dren, and lived for some years at Lower Sandusky, near Fre- mont. Jerry was afterwards recovered, by an older brother, from the hands of Billy Wyandot, an Indian chief, with whom he lived. When I was first a member of the Ohio Legislature, in the winter of 1839-40, I boarded at the house of this same identical Jeremiah Armstrong, who was, for many years, a well known and highly respected citizen of Columbus,
51
EARLY SETTLERS' ASSOCIATION.
We have many of us, in our school-boy days, admired the eloquent strains of the youthful declaimer, as he recited the plaintive speech of Logan, the Indian Chief, made before Lord Dunmore, in the war of 1794:
" I appeal to any white man to say if he ever entered Logan's cabin hungry and he gave him no meat; if he came naked and cold and I clothed him not. * Col. Cressup, last spring, in cold blood, and unprovoked, murdered all the re- lations of Logan, not sparing even my women and children. There runs not one drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature." Etc., etc.
It is not generally known that the famous speech was read to Governor Dunmore under an oak tree, upon the soil of Ohio, some seven miles from Circleville. In the winter of 1818 I vis- ited Caleb Atwater, at Circleville, and he asserts this fact in his History of Ohio, page 116.
In 1799 the settlement of Deerfield, in Portage county, com- menced; Lewis Ely and family moved in in July of that year. On the 7th of November, 1800, the first marriage in the county took place between John Campbell and Sarah Ely. They were joined in wedlock by Capt. Austin, Esq., a Justice of the Peace, of Warren, in Trumbull county. He came through the woods, on foot, a distance of twenty-seven miles, accompanied by a young lawyer of the name of Calvin Pease, who instructed the justice in regard to the formulary, while on the road.
In February, 1819, this same John Campbell, then a State Sen- ator, accompanied me in my journey on horseback, from Columbus to the Western Reserve, on my first visit to this section of the State, and I have ever felt indebted to him for many courtesies. In October, 1821, Calvin Pease, then Chief Justice of Ohio, admitted me to the practice of the law.
But I am transcending my limits, and must make my bow.
52
ANNALS OF THE
RESPONSE BY GEORGE H. ELY, ESQ.
MR. PRESIDENT: The story of the Western Reserve has been often told. Again have its great events and its thrilling scenes been rehearsed by surviving actors, who can say concern- ing them, ". All of which I saw and part of which I was."
This is a theme which will never grow old. To you, at least, venerable fathers and mothers, whose eyes have followed the sun. almost to its setting, and to whom, looking now into the West. the glow of evening brings peace; it contains the fruitage of character and earthly life. The significance of these events and your relations to them will only deepen with the passage of your remaining years.
The settlement and the advancement of the Reserve consti- tute one of the finest passages of recent American history. Here is a conspicuous instance of the successful transplanting of ideas, principles and habits of a people, and the making of them a positive force in the subjugation of the wilderness, and the rearing of a new community.
This was not done to any large extent by organization and combined effort for the movement of population. There was no exodus from New England for the planting of its counter- part west of the Alleghanies. Individual emigrants with wife and children, joined, perhaps, by a neighbor. took the path through the wilderness to the "Far West," and they gathered here upon the principle of natural selection. It is true that the Reserve attracted settlers also from other sections of the country, but the majority came from New England, and to reach their future home they passed the falls of the Genesee and crossed the garden of the Empire State. It followed that New England ideas and principles had a controlling influence in molding social and political conditions here.
The party sent out by the Connecticut Land Company to sur- vey its newly acquired domain, arrived at Conneant Creek July
53
EARLY SETTLERS' ASSOCIATION.
4th, 1796. From that point the work was immediately begun. one party running the line of its eastern boundary southward and another going northward. The mouth of the Cuyahoga was laid out, and honored with the name of the leader of the expe- dition-General Moses Cleaveland.
But the arrival at Conneant Creek is worthy of mention. General Cleaveland made of this the following record: " On this creek (Conneant), in New Connecticut land, July 4, 1796, under General Moses Cleaveland, the surveyors and men sent out by the Connecticut Land Company to survey and settle the Con- necticut Reserve, were the first English people who took posses- sion of it."
He further says: " We gave three cheers and christened the place Fort Independence, and after many difficulties. perplex- ities. and hardships were surmounted, and we were on the good and promised land, felt that a just tribute of respect to the day onght to be paid. There were in all, including women and children, fifty in number. The men under Captain Tinker ranged themselves on the beach and fired a federal salute of fif- teen rounds, and then the sixteenth. in honor of New Connecti- cut; drank several toasts, closed with three cheers, drank several pails of grog, supped and retired in good order."
Notice in this record the claim to first English occupation, and the loyalty that would not let them forget in the wilderness the birthday of the Republic, and that quaint but honest declar- ation, that " after several pails of grog. they supped and retired in good order."
The arrival of this party on the shore of Lake Erie, and con- temporaneous events, mark an important epoch in the history of the new nation.
During the two and a half centuries previous to this time the continent had been penetrated by Spanish and French ex- plorers from different points on the Atlantic coast. In the south Ponce de Leon and De Soto had sought gold and the "Fountain of Perpetual Youth," and in the north French missionaries and
-
54
ANNALS OF THE
explorers had ascended through the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes to the far northwest. But the object was discovery. with a view to military occupation and religious propagandism. One hundred and seventeen years before the event at Conneaut Creek (in 16:9). a solitary sail had passed that spot. but it bore no intending settler. It carried cannon. It was La Salle seek- ing the pathway to China across the continent, and to plant the arms and the faith of France in the valley and at the mouth of the Mississippi. This he accomplished in the following year.
There had been a long and doubtful struggle between the French and the English for supremacy in the new world. but long before this it had ended in favor of the English. This and the final subjection of the Indian tribes prepared the way for the new nation of the new world. The issue of the Revolution- ary war afterwards settled the further question of infinite im- portance. that the control of this continent by the English- speaking race was to be administered under the highest conditions for success-free institutions.
With the close of the Revolutionary war came rapidly on the settlement of many questions preliminary to the growth and ex- pansion of the national life westward.
Several of the seaboard States had claims. through royal grants. to extensive territory west of the existing State bound- aries. The extinguishment or adjustment of these claims. often conflicting. was among the first duties of the new Federal Gov- ernment. A few years saw this mainly accomplished.
The claims of Connecticut to land in the new northwest ter- ritory. however, were measureably defined. at least on three sides. The royal charter in 1662 gave to her a strip of land. bounded on the east by Naragansett river. on the north by Massachusetts, and on the south by Long Island Sound. and extending west- ward between the parallels 41° and 42° 2" north latitude to the mythical "South Sea."
That portion of the charter lying immediately west she could not obtain. it having been previously granted to New York and
55
EARLY SETTLERS' ASSOCIATION.
in possession. The "South Sea" she could never find. and that portion of her charter lying between it and the Reserve, we sup- pose, she rather reluctantly abandoned. In 1286 Connecticut relinquished to the United States all elaims to territory outside of a line one hundred and twenty miles west of the boundary line of Pennsylvania and parallel with it. In 1192 she granted five hundred thousand acres (the Fire Lands) from the western side of this Reserve to citizens whose property had been burned in the war. The remainder of her lands she sold in 1795 to the Connecticut Land Company for twelve hundred thousand dol- lars.
This. I believe, was the final transaction which brought the entire domain of the new northwest territory under the jurisdic- tion of the United States. But I must not detain you with even these brief allusions to the events and influences which prepared the way for the Western Reserve of to-day. Here she is in her glory and strength. a beautiful creation. Your life- work. my friends, has been done upon it, and I know that now, at last. with the whitened hair and the trembling step. there has also come into your hearts the joy and the pride of successful achievement. The Reserve that we see might well have been predicted from the happy confluence of so many favor- ing elements in its origin and progress.
The location central, and at the foot of the Great Lakes, was a guarantee of future commercial influence. The climate was good, the soil was fertile and the country well watered. while the heavy forest with which it was covered, evoked and chal- lenged, as no prairie land bright with flowers could ever do, those sturdy qualities of manhood that are essential to the building of a state. These high material advantages have been pushed to their highest utility, it is needless to say. in the hands of a sober, industrious, intelligent and God-fearing peo- ple, and so they have been made tributary to the highest ob- jects of social and political organization. Naturally, the first endeavor was to utilize to the fullest extent the water comnin-
56
ANNALS OF THE
nieations by the lakes. Then came the construction of canals, connecting the Ohio river and the Pennsylvania canal system with Cleveland harbor. Cleveland was now asserting herself as the metropolis of Northern Ohio. But about 1850 com- meneed that marvelous advance which followed the construc- tion of railroads upon the Reserve. The track of commerce between the East and the West and the Southwest lay across the Reserve, and within ten years several roads reached out to the interior from this harbor. But railroad construction, with ship building, assumed vastly increased importance when the iron ores of Lake Superior were brought to the coal deposits of the Reserve.
This lighted the fires around onr harbors and throughont our valleys, and the Reserve has rapidly become the seat of immense and varied manufacturing industries.
But, my friends, what shall we say of the social, political and religious characteristics of the Reserve, underlying all this material progress? They are, thank God, what might have been expected from the early seed.
The school-house at the cross-roads, and in the city the acad- emy and college, and the church and the home where faith in God and the qualities of a true manhood are nourished and vi- talized, these are the grand insignia of the inheritance we have received, venerable and beloved friends, from you.
The exercises of the day were now closed by singing to the tune of " Old Hundred" the " Early Settlers' Hymn," in which the audience joined with the Quartette Club, followed with the Doxology.
57
EARLY SETTLERS' ASSOCIATION.
COMMUNICATIONS.
EARLY CIVIL AND COUNTY ORGANIZATIONS, SOUTH SHORE OF LAKE ERIE.
HON. HARVEY RICE, PRES. EARLY SETTLERS' ASSOCIATION : It has occurred to me that the members of your Association would be interested in a review of the successive civil jurisdic- tions which have attached to the soil of this county.
While the French occupied the south shore of Lake Erie there was not the semblance of courts or magistrates for the trial of civil or criminal issnes. This occupation ended in 1760, but it is an open historical question when it began. La Salle was in the Ohio country from 1669 to 1641 or 1672, though he estab- lished no posts, and the records of his occupation are lost. There are, on the Western Reserve, quite a number of ancient ax marks upon trees, over which the growth of woody layers corres- ponds to those dates, and which appear to me to have been made by parties of his expedition. The French had posts at Erie. Pa .. on the Cuyahoga, on Sandusky bay, on the Maumee and Great Miami rivers as early as 1749 and 1752; and probably ear- ier at some points in Ohio and Pennsylvania. In 1748 the English colonists from Pennsylvania had a trading post at San- dusky bay, from which they were driven by the French.
Pennsylvania had, however, no civil authority west of her boundary, which is described as being five degrees of longitude west from the Delaware river. The Colony of Virginia had claims, under varions charters and descriptions, to a part of Pennsylvania, and all the territory to the west and northwest as far as a supposed ocean called the South Sea. Immediately
58
ANNALS OF THE
after the peace of 1763 with the French. the Province of Canada was extended by act of Parliament, southerly to the Alleghany and Ohio rivers. Great Britain promised the Indian tribes that the whites should not settle north of the Ohio river.
So far as I am now aware, the first civil organization under the authority of Virginia covering the Western Reserve, was that of the County of Botetourt, erected in 1769, with the county seat at Fincastle, on the head waters of the James river, between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies. But before this, there must have been a Virginia county covering the Forks of the Ohio. and extending, probably, to Lake Erie; for the troops captured at the Forks. now Pittsburgh. by the French in 1749, were Virginia militia, under Ensign Ward. It is probable that he was. or supposed himself to be, within the county of Au- gusta. Settlers from that colony located on the Monongahela and the Youghiogheny. In 1776 three counties were erected on those waters, some parts of which possibly included a part or all of the Reserve. These covered a part of Westmoreland county, Pa .. which was settled from that State. This conflict of author- ity brought a miniature civil war, which was soon overshadowed by the war of the Revolution, in which both Virginians and Pennsylvanians heartily joined.
In 1228. soon after the conquest of the British forts on the Mississippi and the Wabash, by Gen. George Rogers Clark, Vir- ginia erected the county of Illinois, with the county seat at Kas- kaskia. It embraced the south shore of Lake Erie, Detroit, Mackinaw, Green Bay, and Prairie Duchien; but for practical purposes, only Kaskaskia. Cahokia, and St. Vincent or Vin- cennes. The British held possession of the Ohio country and all the lakes. For the English forts on both shores of the lakes there was no county or civil organization during the Revolu- tionary war. The government of this almost unlimited region was exclusively military, of which Detroit was the central post. British soldiers and officers were at all the trading forts in Ohio, exercising arbitrary authority over the Indians and the white
59
EARLY SETTLERS' ASSOCIATION.
traders, including the Moravian settlements on the Tuscarawas and the Cuyahoga.
After the treaty of peace in 1783, the same state of affairs continued, until, by successive campaigns against the Indians, the United States drove them off by military force. All the lives lost, the forts built, and the expeditions made in the North- west, from 1785 to 1794, were a continuation of the war of the Revolution against England. Even after the second treaty, in 1792, she built fort Miami, on the Maumee, within the State of Ohio. The result of the battle of the Rapids of the Maumee, mn August, 1:94, put a stop to her overt acts against us for a time; but it was not until after the war of 1812 that she abandoned the project of recovering the American Colonies. While in her possession, until 1796, there were at the posts on the lakes, jus- tices of the peace or stipendiary magistrates, exercising some civil authority, but none of them resided on the south shore of this lake.
This subject of early eivil jurisdiction is a very obscure one, owing to indefinite geographical boundaries. I have received the assistance of Judge Campbell, of Detroit, of Silas Farmer, the historian of Detroit City, and of MR. H. C. Gilman, of the Detroit Library, in the effort to trace out the extent of the Canadian distriets and counties, with their courts, from 1:60 to 1796. Their replies agree, that it is difficult to follow the progress of civil law on the peninsula of Upper Canada west- ward to the Detroit river and around the lakes. In 1778, Lord Dorchester, Governor General of Canada, divided Upper Canada into four distriets for civil purposes, one of which included De- troit and the posts on the upper lakes. Early in 1792 the Upper Canadian Parliament authorized Governor Simcoe to lay off nineteen counties, to embrace that province. It is presumed that the county of Essex, on the east bank of Detroit river, in- cluded the country on the west and south around the head of Lake Erie, but of this the information is not conclusive. Some form of British civil authority existed at their forts and settle-
60
ANNALS OF THE
ments nntil Detroit was given up, and all its dependencies. in 1:96. When Gov. St. Clair erected the county of Washington, in Ohio, in 1788, it embraced the Western Reserve east of the Cuyahoga. West of this river and the Tuscarawas was held by the Indians and the British.
The State of Connectient claimed jurisdiction over the Re- serve, but made no movement toward the erection of counties. When she sold to the Land Company, in 1795. both parties im- agined that the deed of Connectient conveyed powers of civil government to the company, and that the grantees might organ- ize a new State. As the United States objected to this mode of setting np States, this region was, in practice, without any mag- istrates, conrts or other organized civil anthority until that ques- tion was settled, in 1800. Immediately after the British had re- tired, in 1796, Governor St. Clair erected the county of Wayne, with Detroit as the county seat. It included that part of the Reserve west of the Cuyahoga, extending south to Wayne's treaty line, west to the waters of Lake Michigan and its tributa- ries, and north to the territorial line. Its bonndaries are not very precise, but it clearly embraced abont one-third of the pres- ent State of Ohio. The question of jurisdiction when Wayne connty was erected, in 1796, remained open, as it had under the county of Washington. In 129; the county of Jefferson was es- tablished, embracing all of the Reserve east of the Cuyahoga. When Trumbull county was erected. in 1800. it embraced the entire Western Reserve, with magistrates and courts having full legal anthority under the territorial government. Before this, although no deeds could be executed here, those executed else- where were, in some cases, recorded at Marietta. the county seat of Washington county. Some divines had ventured to solemnize marriages before 1800, by virtue of their ministerial office. Du- ring the first four years of the settlement of the Reserve there was no law the force of which was acknowledged here, but the law abiding spirit of New England among the early settlers was such that peace and order generally prevailed. By the organi-
61
EARLY SETTLERS' ASSOCIATION.
zation of Geauga county, March 1, 1806, what is now Cuyahoga county, east of the river, belonged to Geauga, until 1809, when this county was organized.
Very respectfully, yours, CHAS. WHITTLESEY.
MEMORIAL OF AHIMAAZ SHERWIN.
BY HIS DAUGHTER, MRS. E. G. ROSE.
During the past year many of those whose names appear in the " Annals of Early Settlers' Association." have passed from among us, and with them is laid away volumes of unwritten his- tory of rare interest, relating to the early days of Cleveland and surroundings.
One of these. AHIMAAZ SHERWIN, than whom none took greater interest in all that concerned the times, past or present, departed this life on the 24th of January, 1881, after a few hours' illness, at the ripe old age of 89 years. He retained, up to his last day, the perfect enjoyment of a most active and ver- satile mind, that was a complete storehouse of interesting and amusing reminiscences of Cleveland pioneer life.
Mr. Sherwin was born on the 5th of February, 1792, in the town of Baltimore, in the southeastern part of Vermont; after- wards living in Hartland and Middlebury till his marriage and subsequent removal. He left Middlebury for Cleveland, Febru- ary 10th, 1818, making the entire journey in a two-horse sleigh, accompanied by his wife and little daughter (now Mrs. J. D. Carlton, of Elkhart, Ind. ), and bringing some household goods. The sleighing was excellent all the way, and the weather very severe, the thermometer standing for ten days below zero, mod- erating, however, as they reached Buffalo.
An incident of the journey which illustrates the hardships of traveling in those days, occurred between Buffalo and Dunkirk.
62
ANNALS OF THE
As they crossed the lake on the ice between those points, they came, early in the evening. unexpectedly upon a sink-hole, into which the horses plunged, thoroughly wetting the occupants of the sleigh: but soon righting themselves, they rode on with fro- zen clothes, but with ardor undampened, to find a stopping place for the night. They arrived in Cleveland the 1st day of March, making an eighteen days' journey; a little snow covered the ground. but soon disappeared. Could find no place in the city to stop, was therefore obliged to go out to East Cleveland, then known as Doan's Corners, consisting at that time of the Doan Hotel. kept by Job Doan, a log house opposite. and a one story house on the corner of Doan street and Euclid avenue. oc- cupied by Judge John H. Strong. Richard Blinn owned a farm on the Newburgh road; there Mr. Sherwin made his first home, and his first employment was to finish the inside carpenter work of Mr. Blinn's house, which enabled him to return to Vermont on the 26th of August, 1818. with a two-horse team, to bring to Cleveland his parents and two sisters.
On the return trip, upon reaching Buffalo, he left his parents . to continue the journey with the team, while he and his sisters took passage on the sloop Huntington, commanded by Capt. Dav, of Black River. Left Buffalo on a clear, pleasant evening. but when near Erie, a most perilous storm arose, and they were driven back to Point Abino, where they remained until the storm abated, reaching Cleveland on the morning of the seventh day out of Buffalo. A flat-boat came out to the sloop and took off the baggage and passengers, landing them on the side-hill near the foot of Superior street. "Foot & Walker's Line" was the only accommodation in those days, so they were obliged to continue their journey to Doan's Corners on foot, the interme- diate distance being then an almost unbroken wilderness, with but two or three openings between. The pathway through the the woods and brush was delightful at that season; the trees in beautiful foliage and laden with nuts, many bushels being gath- ered that fall. Peaches were also abundant that season. They
63
EARLY SETTLERS' ASSOCIATION.
arrived at the "Corners" just in time to meet the other mem- bers of the family driving in. The journey consumed six weeks from time of leaving Cleveland.
Mr. Sherwin's first purchase of property was a piece of tim- ber land, fifteen aeres, of Jno. H. Strong, where the Enelid Av- enue Congregational Church now stands. There his parents lived several years, till his father's death. The first large piece of work undertaken in this city was the finishing of the inside of the Johnson House, kept by Levi Johnson. The next was building a large two-story house for Horace Perry, now standing, corner of alley and the Square, occupied at present as a market; considered in those days a fine building. About this time he also built a steam flouring mill at the foot of St. Clair street, for Wm. G. Taylor, the first in the city. Finished the home of Nathan Perry, on Enclid avenue, now occupied by N. P. Payne; then did the wood work of the Weddell stone dwell- ing, for Peter M. Weddell, now owned and occupied by Horace P. Weddell. These houses were the only ones on the avenne at that time, except Orlando Cutter's. The residence where Henry H. Dodge lives being built soon after.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.