USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Annals of the Early Settlers Association of Cuyahoga County, number I > Part 6
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Perhaps the man is alive who declares with a wonderful
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positiveness that when his father settled here he could have bought all that tract of land north of Superior street, and west of Bank street, extending to the lake and river for two plugs of tobacco, a pint of whisky and a Jew's harp. Such wonderful tales, when told in solemn earnest, only tend to dampen a man's ambition and make him provoked with himself to think that he was not born sooner, and been possessed of those valuable articles of commerce. Yet if he had the offer made him at the time with the goods on hand, he may have taken a look all round and imprudently 'wait until land went up or whisky went down.
As your cities grew up it was wonderful how quick yon put on metropolitan airs. From an overgrown village Cleve- land sprung out of her bounds in a single day to a first class city, from a line of municipal officers ranging in salaries in the aggregate to about three thousand dollars, she leaped into a liability of some thirty thousand at one bound, and it is yearly on the increase.
It has somewhere been said that God made the country and man the city. We are also told that cities are an un- natural fungus growth or wart on the body politic. Whether these propositions are correct or not, I have no present inten- tion to controvert them, yet we are all willing to concede that the city has vastly more art and cunning, more elegance and style, more applied art to beautify the human form and habi-
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tation, more applied sciences in the art of life than the country, but for honest purpose and sound common sense, for robust health and the true art of living to a Godly purpose in earning bread by the natural perspiration of the brow, and doing something as well for those who are figuring on the blackboard of imagination in cities to win a livelihood by the insensible perspirations of the purse, commend me to God's fields in the broad and open country.
You inhabitants of the city, pent up in limited bounds, who can tell what sauce your neighbors have for supper, are liable to boast of a numerous population and glory in the fact that you have outnumbered some other town which was once much greater than your own in the census roll. A city is great only when her people are virtuous, intelligent, healthy and happy, and have made marked progress in the substantial and elegant arts, made her schools of the best grade and her manufactories of a standard equal to any, and her jails and poor houses mere temporary expedients, and of little use.
Men will hazard a vast deal for wordly gain, they will locate at times, where the chances of life are greatly against them, and sometimes put their money where the chance to win is as one to many thousand; they will gather in cities or gulches, where one man in ten thousand has become a Cresus and the rest paupers, simply from the impulse thereof, per-
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haps they too may become the next lucky individual in point of dollars and cents.
Where two or three, or more houses, are gathered in close proximity in the name of civilization, the people around and about them begin to dream of city airs, whistling around the gables, and as soon as a few more buildings are added and a blacksmith shop, a grocery and shoe shop, perhaps a whisky shop, hang out their signs, an alley or lane becomes a "street" and a street is named an "avenue," and an avenue a "boule- vard," and a boulevard becomes "a park," and so on; every thing else moves along in the same ratio. We are now living in an age of progress-there was not quite so much of that sort of thing in our earlier days, and the word "æsthetic" was not invented until Webster came along with his unabridged.
The method in olden time, of building up cities and popu- lating the country, was somewhat different from that of our time. A mandate from a king or an emperor was enough to set the people adrift and at once gather around a given point, building up a permanent city as earnestly and faithfully as if it had been their choice. This American people have their own way in such matters and were likely to gather around a mill site, where there happened to be a water power for a grist mill or a saw mill, or a distillery, or an oil well, or some sort of a mine, and we can hunt up but few other reasons that make much of a village in the interior, while on the
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water courses a good harbor for vessels is enough to form quite a gathering of people in view of the commerce most likely to follow in the wake of labor to be performed. Forcing trade out of its natural channel is an uphill business, and if it should run for a time in unnatural grooves, it will be most certain to find its easiest course and follow it until a better one is opened. Mill dams and water power do not enter so much into the inducements to make a village as formerly. New and cheap power has been found in steam that can be carried to any convenient point, so that if water power was once the attraction, we can now set up a village in any desir- able spot; about all that is needed is a climate, soil and a people willing to dig with a prospect of something to come of it.
When you came to Cleveland you had the self-imposed assurance, that it was to be a successful grain market, and so it was for a time; the wheat and corn and oats that came here by canal and transhipped both east and west, appeared to be simply unequalled in quantity; when that trade left us, some of our best men fled to other fields, and we thought that the rise and fall of Cleveland could then be written for all time. New animation came, and the iron, the copper, the coal, the petroleum, the lumber, the stone, the mechanic arts and railroads have brought her to a proud eminence among the cities of the great west, and yet her history is unwritten.
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For my own part, secing so many who were here long before me, although my lot has been cast nearly a half century in this county, I do not claim to be a very early settler. If we form a line and place the older ones in the advance, my place would be well nigh the rear, unless there be some among you who are afraid to be called old. I can only look upon those venerable men and pioneers with a degree of reverence and respect, about every one of whom I have had more or less acquaintance during my time among you and the greater source for rejoicing when we get together is that there are so many who have survived so many perils and come looking so well. Some in other states and some in other nations, where- ever they may be it cannot change the fact that we have stuck tight to Cuyahoga County and are here yet.
In the year 1836 there was what would be called in the present day "a boom " in the West, it was emphatically a speculative boom, people went wild to some extent; lines of emigrant wagons were seen along the roads ranging east and west, anywhere from the southern borders of Pennsylvania to the northern point of Mane long before the northeastern boun- dary question was settled. The line of march extended as far as Ohio and " the Michigan," now and then you would hear of a family that had ventured as far west as the 90th meridian. There were some chums of mine and some other boys who slid out from our neighborhood on foot between two days. Not so 7
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much perhaps to seek a fortune, however, and following the Star of Empire, but obeying the spirit of liberty that broke out about that time, the boys thought that an indented apprentice was one of the twin relics of barbarism and did not care to hold allegience against their will to a boss until they were twenty-one and get nothing but their board and clothes. Some of those boys I am sorry and glad to say fled their country for its good, went west and forsook some of their sins, grew up with the country, became respected, made good citizens or went further west and joined the Mormons.
It may have been that I saved my credit, and what little desirable reputation I had, in consequence of my boss pulling up stakes in the east and emigrating, bag and baggage, to Ohio, when I followed suit, coming up the lake on the steamer "North America." which steamer had more pulmonaries, more cronies and more asthmatic beings than any craft afloat, it took twenty-six hours to make the voyage from Buffalo to Cleveland, and I have rejoiced about every day since that she came safe through. A very fine spoken gentleman met me as I landed on the dock with a beautiful town plat in his hand, which had many corner lots and water lots, with a church, a court house, a school house, and factories adorning the borders, nicely pictured out. He wanted to make me rich by selling me one-that is one of the maps-he said there was money in selling the lots for any one could buy a lot and pay a quarter
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down, he wanted a quarter for the chart and I only had left half enough to buy one, or I might have gone in and made a fortune by this time. The great idea in those days was to found a city, the spirit of Romulus was abroad in the the land. It was a big thing to have a franchise in an imaginary city with corner lots and water lots a plenty. Many people in a speculative way followed the course of streams in their chase for fortune, and looked for a sight for a dam or a good chance for a saw mill or a grist mill; the idea was to pitch in and make a fortune as quick as possible and let other people do the work; speculating on paper was one of the open gateways to wealth in that day.
The boom struck Cleveland between wind and water, she had it tolerably bad, but weathered it through rather better than most towns that were struck. In Cuyahoga County beside our own city that was sure to win in the end we had the city of Gilnett at the mouth of Rocky River, and St. Johns- ville at Chagrin, while plats and surveys were made for the mouth of Euclid Creek and Doan's Brook. As for the interior of the county cities in embryo were a plenty, and Tinker's Creek was said to have the finest water power anywhere between Niagara and St. Antony.
Railroads that had just been tested for utility in the east were being projected for us in the booming west. William B. Lloyd and John R. St. John, two of our most enthusastic
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citizens were the firmest advocates of this new means of transit, but they had more mind than money.
We had Pittsburgh connected with us by links and chains by grades and curves on paper, but we had to use the old mud roads long before the cars and rails were ready for use. Those enterprising gentlemen were only a score or more of years in advance of our necessities.
Speaking of railroads we had an unmistakable one in our midst which is worthy of more than a passing mention. The Cleveland and Newburgh Railway was an accomplished fact, had its day, carried its loads of human freight and blue stone combined, yielded up its dividends and the ghost simulta- neously, and where is it? Ahaz Merchant was one of the public spirited men of those days that not only projected improvements, but his enterprise brought many to a practical test; it was his head and hands that brought this Newburg road to completion, and if it was not financially a success it became no excuse to call Mr. Merchant a visionary man. . He was bound to test the practicability of bringing the blue stone of the Shaker quarries to a profitable purpose. The western terminus of that road was in the southwest corner of the Public Square and its eastern was in the midst of the blue stone of the Shaker brook at Doan's Corners, near where the famous spring of blue rock water has burst through its seams. The line of route was directly through Euclid street (now an
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"avenue,") and a single passenger coach carried all the human freight that sought transit; one horse was quite enough for any car load and we prided ourselves that we had a street railroad in real good earnest, and two trips a day was quite enough for all the travel, but the rails were of the stately forest oak and there was no fear of snake heads or of Ashta- bula holocosts nor yet of such mysterious and terrible water casts as that of the river Tay in Scotland.
You all know that the Cuyahoga is a crooked stream and that its present outlet is through a channel cut out by the hand of man; its waters once meandered westerly through the delta till it sluggishly reached the Lake about a mile west of where it ought to be, if nature is mistrusted to have made any mistake about the matter. That old river bed was rich in allusions, in flags and rushes, in muskrats and snipe, in bull frogs and water snakes, in wild ducks and sunfish, and it was one of the safest winter quarters for Lake craft anywhere to be found on the shore. The experienced eye of men of means saw what could be done with that "old river bed," and a com- pany set to work and dredged the channel and opened the mouth with a determined intent to make a roadstead that would eclipse the new channel in every essential manner. The work was completed to a degree, and the first steamer was to pass through the channel to the open sea on a given Fourth of July loaded with the beauty and chivalry of those who
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lent their favor towards the new enterprise. It was indeed a gay scene when that load of gay citizens steamed down the channel with flags above and flags below and shouts of trinmph all around. The steamer moved like a thing of a good deal of life for a while, but whether in consequence of too much delta or too much boat or too many happy people on board, she got stuck in the mud and never got out to sea with its gay load after all. Whatever you may say about that old river bed it is rapidly coming into use in spite of its early history, we may yet see immense fleets riding through it in safety and no sectional jealousies to question the practicability of the enter- prise in view of the coming breakwater.
You well remember what an effort was made to get a rail- way from Cleveland to Columbus. Sandusky had already formed a connection by rail with Cincinnati. It touched the pride and poverty of our Cleveland people to such a degree that they got just a little bit on their ear. Everyone wanted everyone else to go down into their pockets and bring up enough to secure the progress of the road. How they did beg and plead, pull and haul, tear, and perhaps swear, for a rail- road, but those things won't come withont a pretty loud call upon the purse.
In order to save the charter, which had lain dormant for a time, it was thought best to make a show of work on the line already surveyed. One bright autumn forenoon about a
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dozen men got themselves together near the ground now occu- pied by the A & G. W. Railway depot with the noble purpose of inaugurating the work of building the Cleveland, Colum bus and Cincinnati Railroad. Among the number was Alfred Kelley, the President, T. P. Handy, the Treasurer, J. H. Sargent, the Engineer, James A. Briggs, the Attorney, and H. B. Payne, Oliver Perry, John A Foote and others besides your humble servant. On that memorable spot one could look upon those vast fields of bottom land and nothing could be seen but unbroken wide meadows, the brick residence of Joel Scranton on the north, and the ruins of an old mill in the ravine of Walworth Run on the south, were the only show of buildings in all that region round about. These gentlemen had assembled to inaugurate the work on the railway, yet there was a sadness about them that could be felt, there was something that told them that it would be difficult to make much of a railroad without money and labor. Yet they came on purpose to make a show of a beginning. Alfred took a shovel and with his foot pressed it well into the soft and wil- ling earth, placing a good chunk in the tranquil wheelbarrow close at hand, repeating the operation until a load was at- tained and dumping it a rod or so to the south. We all shouted a good-sized shout that the road was really inaugura- ted. Then Mr. Handy did a little of the same work as well as Sargent and Briggs, while I sat on the nearest log rejoicing
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to see the work going on so lively and in such able hands. The fact was demonstrated that the earth was willing if man would only keep the shovel, the pick and the wheelbarrow moving lively according to this beginning.
All that fall and winter one man was kept at work on the great enterprise, simply to hold the charter with a hope that something would turn up to enable the directors to push things with a greater show for ultimate success. During the winter that followed any one passing up Pittsburgh street near the bluff could see day by day the progress this one man power was making in his work. Foot by foot each day tho brown earth could be seen gaining on the white snow on the line towards Columbus, and hope remained lively in the breast of everyone that saw the progress, that if the physical powers of that solitary laborer held out long enough, he would some day be able to go to state's prison by rail.
There was a serious hindrance in the progress of the work. which came in this wise. The laborer who had so great a job on his hands took a look and a thought at what he had to do -it was one hundred and forty miles to Columbus and it was best to hurry up or the road would not be ready for use for quite a spell to come, he set to work with renewed energy for a while, then threw himself quite out of breath on the ground for a brief rest when the rheumatism took hold of him and sciatica troubled his limbs so much that the great work was
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brought to a stand still; he struck for his altars and his fires at home, while the next fall of snow obliterated the line of his progress towards the south, and the directors got together to devise ways and means to keep the work moving onward. It was said that the best thing they could do under this stress of circumstances was to devise a method for drying and warming the ground so that a like calamity would not occur to their workman, wishing to encourage every freak he had to work a little faster, provided he would do so at the same wages.
Soon after this calamity befel the laborer and the road, a meeting was called at Empire Hall and it was a jam. Alfred Kelley discoursed on the subject of the railway and telling us that if we did not take hold of this opportunity to make an iron way to the center of the state Cleveland would only be known in the Gazeteers as a small town on Lake Erie about, six miles from Newburgh where steamers sometimes stop to wood and water. By a sudden stroke of generalship the exit doors of the hall were locked and the audience were held until all were converted to the faith and pooled in enough to secure the road and add a few more men to the work, when, after a reasonable time, the solons of our legislature came up here on the 22d of February and celebrated the completion of the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati Railroad, and the birthday of Washington all at once.
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Previous to the memorable period of Cleveland's first advance step towards popular favor we have endeavored to carry our memory back, to note what manufacturing interests she was engaged in, and the only establishment that could truly be called a "factory" was a one story building where fine teeth combs were made by machinery, the old comb factory opposite the head of Bank street. Messrs. Bartram and Dean and Lowman made wagons and carriages, and it is further true that Lowman continues to make them to this day and to all appearances he will continue to do so till the crack of doom, and it is further true that Duty made coffins then to ship away and he is at it now. D. A. Shepherd made furni ture and he is busy to-day in a better appointed factory. O. A. Brooks sold crockery then and he is at the same business to-day. Dr. Mckenzie sold pills and squills and febrifuge then and he is at it yet. C. C. Carlton was an active business man in our city forty-five years ago and he is now about as active and attentive to his calling as ever. W. T. Smith, the genial and always courteous and happy dealer in boots and shoes has been dispensing those pedal integuments to the third and fourth generation of them that loved him and he has kept at it it every day since, Sundays excepted. George Williams was then and is now in active life in the same line that found him engaged nearly fifty years ago. George Whitelaw forty- eight years ago thought there was nothing like leather to be
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engaged in and he thinks so yet. JJohn A. Vincent sold chairs, cradles and such like to the great grand parents of those he is dealing with to-day in the same line. T. P. Handy is as regular in his banking office to-day as forty-eight years ago. S. S. Lyon made tackling for horses and mules nearly a half century ago and he would not refuse to keep right on as he is doing now for another like term of years.
When the old comb factory had lived ont its day and abont everybody was in doubt whether Cleveland would boom to any considerable extent in the future, many of our nervous and eager citizens sought other fields for their genius and a sort of stillness set in and about our waters, and at one time it was proposed to fence the pond in for fear some one would fall in and get drowned. Something whispered in the ears of the inhabitants that they had better stay and weather it ont, all that they heard of other places was but wild rumor and many who had bitten at the shining bait came wrigling back to our own waters for more substantial food. Something also told us to stick to it, get up another comb factory or some sort of a manufacturing shop and Cleveland would some day come to be quite a town. About this time a new set of inhab- itants came among us, there appeared to be a spontaneous putting of shoulders to the wagon wheel, things moved more lively, and when our railway was opened up and people could
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get here in winter as well as summer it was the opening period of Clevelands prosperity.
The new comers joined hands with the old settlers, our railroads were built, manufactories were planted in the valleys and on the hills. And when the fleeey vapors came up from the thousand steaming boilers and the black smoke from vastly more seething furnaces it swept every vestige of ague from the atmosphere and the chill from every bone of an animate body, it gave new life to the people and it became a well settled fact that the boom of 1836 was a well shaped boomerang in 1856, and so on to the present day. The enter- prise of those who have been coming here since the days of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" have done wonders towards build- ing up a city of no mean proportions. Yet you old settlers have not been materially eclipsed by those new comers except in their overpowering numbers, whom all were glad to receive with open arms.
The power of steam was just being applied to machinery in our midst. There was a steam flonring mill on River street entirely destroyed by fire in 1837. Younglove and Hoyt suhse- quently erected a paper mill on the canal near Pittsburgh street. About the year 1846 M. C. Younglove set up the first power press (Adams') in Cleveland which press was placed in the Merchants Exchange Building, directly over where Luetke- meyer's hardware store now is. It did all the work for the
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Herald as well as the Plain Dealer and other rival daily papers at the time, and as they tried to work their, editions off at the same hour they never appeared to be any great amount of ill feeling among the proprietors whether they got their forms on the press for the matter of a halt of three quarters of an hour was all either would be compelled to wait on the other : the press did not throw off the sheets at lightning speed, perhaps two or three hundred, all told, would comprise the largest editions. One or two stout men were employed at first to manipulate the press but steam soon took their place. The Cuyahoga Steam Furnace Company which was not in the present corporate limits of Cleveland in 1840 was the first substantial enterprise in that line in our county, and up to that time there was not probably a half dozen establishments that had machinery propelled by steam within the corporation.
There was a manifest struggle among the cities of the Lakes in our day for commercial precedence, and when the doctrine of internal improvements was an article of faith that we held to ont of local interest or universal principle, we could not help but look with a degree of jealousy if Congress gave Ashtabula, Erie, Conneaut, Fairport. Vermillion, Black River or Huron any kind of a show in her appropriation bill and omitted Cleveland, but when Rocky River or Chagrin or even Euclid Creek was spoken of as asking for a pier we were all likely to go into spasms and give up all hope for the future ,
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