USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Annals of the Early Settlers Association of Cuyahoga County, volume IV, no. I > Part 2
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old settler. Yet these reminiscences of early days are, I think, generally interesting, and one memory often preserves some things which have faded from others.
By your rules I can only be a member of your society by courtesy, yet I feel that I have a just right and title to be one of you in reality. I came to this city in 1832 and resided here until 1849. My parents are at rest in the Erie Street Cemetery. My paternal grandfather is buried on the shores of your lake, in an adjoining County, and now, having passed the three score years and ten, and having lived all my life, except four years, in the State of Ohio, I may fairly claim eligibility to a full membership in your "Early Settlers' Association."
The year 1832 was notable for the first visitation of the cholera to this Continent, and I well remember the terror this dis- ease occasioned in New York where we landed, all along our journey on the Erie Canal, and here on our arrival. The family stopped first at Abbey's Coffee House, corner of Ontario and Michigan streets. To my memory there were at that time but few houses beyond that point. The northeast corner
of that street-crossing was an orchard, the southeast one a grave-yard, then being abandoned for the Erie Street cemetery, which was at that time far out of town. We next occupied rooms in the Ross building, corner of Seneca and Superior streets. The walls of the stone church on the square were then half way up. The Episcopal Church, corner of Seneca and St. Clair, and the Bethel, near where the railroads now cross Vine street, were the only two churches in the city. Both were frame structures.
How many years afterwards I cannot say, but I remember distinctly being impelled by boyish curiosity to see some of the ceremonial services of the Catholic Church, I went to one of their meetings, held in the upper story of a building on Superior lane, as that part of Superior street below the hill was then called. At that time, then, a single hall, and that by no means a large one, sufficed for all the Catholic worship of the city.
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We passed the first winter in a log-house, where is now Saw- telle Avenue, and right on the edge of the ravine. It was then all deep woods about there. I went to school in a new frame school-house where Kinsman street forked into the Warrensville road and the "Dolf Edwards" road. You will pardon, I know, my ignorance of the names of the streets now. Some wild beast, wolf or bear, had been heard growling at night down in the ravine, so my morning trip to school was always a violent run from the little clearing in which the log-house stood until I came out on the open road near the school-house. From that school-house to the old rope-walk near Bolivar street there was little cleared land and but few houses. A frame house in which David Short lived, I remember well. A flock of wild turkeys, about forty in number, daily crossed Kinsman street during that winter, and my father with a shot gun, succeeded in getting two of them. In the spring of 1833, we moved to a farm of fifty acres which my father had purchased. It was situated on the Dolf Edwards road, just where the Pittsburg railroad now crosses it. As I picked up, piled and burned the brush on a part of that farm, and so helped to clear the original forest from a portion of your city, now so far inside its limits, I think I have another good claim to full fellowship with you. We did not live long on the farm, but came into the city to a house on Michigan street, next door to the residence of John W. Willey, your first mayor.
I have always read with great pleasure your annual publica- tions which have been sent to me by kind friends. In the con- tents of the last one is to be found the direct cause of this com- munication. There are some things there of great personal inter- est to me. In the list of departed worthies I do not find, it is true, so many friends and school mates as in the publications of former years. Yet there are names familiar to me "as house-hold words." Miller M. Spangler, Thomas Quayle, John Doane, Loring V. Ballou, Mrs. Dudley Baldwin. But these were not companions ; of such I find only two names, Solon Burgess and Stoughton Bliss. With the latter I went to school to John Stair on Academy
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lane, where, among other scholars were Edward .\. and Oliver Scoville, John and William Walworth, Myron and Alfred Coz- zens, Philander Johnson, Jabez Fitch, Silas Belden, and the Jones boys, whom you all know well, one of them formerly your post- master, another one of your judges, and a third U. S. Senator from Nevada. At that time the space from Academy Lane to Ontario street, and from St. Clair street to the bank of the lake was open common. The old academy stood on St. Clair street. There were a few small houses along the east line of Ontario street and these were all. On the bank of the lake, the outlines of the fort built by General Harrison were easily made out, and the base of some of the stockades still remained.
I afterwards went to school to a Mr. Phillips at a house on a street running out of Prospect street. Among the scholars there, I remember W. H. Hayward, Bolivar Butts and the two Fairchild boys, one of them since a general, governor of Wisconsin, and consul at Liverpool. I also attended a school in the third story of a building next west of the American House. It was kept first by one Pratt, afterwards by Sawyer. I only remember among the scholars George Whipple, the Kendall boys and John W. Sar- geant. If the latter is still with you, I know he can give you some lively reminiscences of school government in those days. I will never forget the severity of the corporal punishment he received from Pratt, and for nothing worse than boyish pranks. These schools I have named were all private schools, and in this con- nection I may be permitted to repeat a remark made to you when you admitted me to your society. It is, that of all the great changes that have taken place under my observation, there is none greater than those in educational methods, and especially in the position and character of free schools. It must be almost in- conceivable to the present generation, that there could be yet living a man who could remember snowballing or stoning boys because they went to a free school, I am that man. At the time of which I write, the only free school of your city was kept in the basement of the Bethel, down "under the hill." It was attended
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only by the boys of laborers who lived about there, and if one of those boys was seen up "on the hill," he was "run" after the manner of boys everywhere.
I remember well when Nathan Perry kept a store at the corner of Water and Superior streets, P. M. Weddell one at Bank and Superior, and on the other corner was the only Bank of the City. Irad Kelly's store was on Superior street opposite Bank street, and Benjamin Rouse occupied a one story frame building on the north-west corner of Superior street and the Square. The only meat market of the town stood in the middle of Bank street at its junction with Superior. The building was afterwards moved to Champlain street and served as the "No. 5" engine house.
What especially interested me in your last year's publication are the articles upon two institutions, with both of which I was for a time closely connected, and concerning which I have some clear recollections. These were the press and the postal service, and it is with these that I will occupy your time.
I began life in the early part of the year 1839 by entering the office of the Cleveland Advertiser. It was then edited and pub- lished by T. P. Spencer. The office was on Superior street oppo- site where the American house stands, directly over the post office, and Daniel Worley was then postmaster. I read with sur- prise in the full and excellent article in the last volume of your transactions, by the Hon. John C. Covert, that the "Advertiser" was started as "unalterably hostile to everything democratic." I cannot gainsay that statement, but at the time when I was in the office it was intensely democratic and the only paper of that faith. I have good reason to know, because I carried it to subscribers all through the "log-cabin" campaign ; as all the other boys were whigs I had often to run, when out on my "route," to save my head from stones. I have thought since that I came honestly by whatever democracy I may have indulged in later in life, on the principle that "the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church."
It would seem strange now to read the head-lines that I used
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often to put in type while in that office: "Arrival of packet-ship so-and-so"; "ten days," "twelve days" "later news from Europe!"
After about two years I went into the Herald office, then under the management of J. A. Harris. The Herald was a daily paper and the work was very different and the day's occupation much longer than in the weekly Advertiser office. I entered also at that time the household of Mr. Harris, and I had opportunity to become acquainted with, and to learn the many good qualities of Mrs. Harris. You all know her well; you have done your- selves honor in honoring her ; she is still among you, and, in my opinion, if length of days depended upon a kind heart and the exercise of benevolence and virtue, she would be with you yet many, many years. James A. Briggs, George A. Benedict and George F. Marshall were frequent contributors to the paper, and I often put their articles into type. The latter gentleman, still among you, is an esteemed friend, and his example, as a studious man and a writer, although not a professional man, had a dis- tinct influence upon my career. At the next "case" to mine Edwin A. Cowles set type, and he and I, every evening carried the daily edition of the Herald-what there was of it-I suppose might now be said. His "route" was all the city west of Bank street, mine all east of it. I distributed between sixty and seventy copies ; not more than half a dozen of them to houses east of Erie street. One was left at the residence of T. P. May, which then blocked Superior st. at Erie, two or three on Walnut and Chestnut streets, and as many on Euclid beyond the corner of Erie. Thence my course was up Erie to, and through Bolivar St., back by Ontario St. to the office. These limits then com- prised the eastern half of your city.
I also worked afterwards, for short periods, in the office of the "American" of Ohio City, in T. H. Smead's office, and set type on the "Gatherer," a literary paper, of short life, which is not mentioned in Hon. J. C. Covert's address.
I entered the post-office under my brother-in-law, T. P. Spencer as postmaster, on the first day of July, 1845. That was
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the day on which the letter postage changed from the rates of six and a quarter, twelve and a half, eighteen and three fourths, and twenty-five cents, according to distance, to uniform rates of five cents within three hundred miles and ten cents beyond that distance. The post office was then situated on the west side of Water St., a short distance from Superior. Not long afterwards it was moved to Levi Johnson's building on Superior St., just west of the Weddell House. We had then two mails from the East daily ; one from Pittsburg, bringing Washington news, and one from Buffalo with New York papers. I should have said that we had these two daily mails when they got here? In the fall and winter as the roads became bad, the stages could not get through on time, and very often we were as long as three days without an Eastern mail. Of course this was the case only in winter ; when navigation opened, we had a daily mail from the East by boat. At the time I entered the post office there was but one other clerk besides myself; the postmaster stood at the single delivery window a good part of the day, and the three did all the business of the office. Afterwards there was a third clerk but no more than four persons were employed there during my connec- tion with the office. There were no stamps in those days, letters could be sent unpaid, the postage to be collected on delivery ; to pre-pay a letter it was necessary to take it to the office during the hours it was open.
I left the post office when Mr. Haskell succeeded Mr. Spencer as postmaster, and began the study of my profession. which I had long had in view. While in the printing office I studied what few hours I could find, and I went to school a few terms under another of your citizens, still with you, who did good work in his day and generation-Andrew Freese. He did much to influence my future life by directing my reading, stimulating my efforts, and assisting me in many ways. So I fitted myself for teaching-at least George W. Willey, who examined me, gave me a certificate of competence. In the winter 1843-4 I taught my first school in the "Rice settlement" in Brecksville. As an
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incident well illustrating the times and the state of affairs then, both personal and public, I may say that Mr. Breck, postmaster at the "Center," trusted me for the postage of such letters as I received during the winter, until "I got my pay in the spring !" The next winter, that of 1844-5, I taught school in Newburg township. The school-house was situated just where the War- rensville road crossed the road from Doan's corners, passing Dolf Edward's place. My district began on the North at the house of Kingsbury, the pioneer, whose great grand- daughter was a pupil of mine, and took in, towards Newburg, the house of Lorenzo Carter, another of the pioneers. Both these winters I "boarded round" so many days or fractions of days to each scholar, in a family. This was then the general custom.
I began the study of medicine in the office of Prof. John Delamater, then situated on Superior St., opposite Bond St., and I continued my studies with him until I left Cleveland in the fall of 1849 to begin practice in the woods of Northern Wisconsin, where I lived for four years. My entrance upon professional study brings me down to a later period of time in the history of your city. Still, some items may be of interest. At the time of my arrival in the city, or soon after, the personel of the medical profession consisted of Doctors Long and Mills and Hicks. The latter was a London man and was our family physician. There was also a Doctor McIntosh, and I believe these to have been all.
I remember well the excitement, and many amusing scenes, connected with the transfer of the medical college from Wil- loughby. The establishment of that institution in your city was the influence which directed my course in life as to a profession. A pioneer institution as that was, there were some men of far more than ordinary ability connected with it. Three of them were especially noteworthy, and in my judgment would bear comparison with the occupants of chairs in the colleges of eastern cities or of Europe, and it has since been my lot to see and hear and witness the operations of many of them. These three were Professors St. John, Ackley and the elder Delamater. The
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former, Professor of Chemistry, was a fine scholar, a cultured and traveled gentleman, and if any fault could be found with his lectures, it was that they were sometimes above and beyond the students to whom they were addressed. Professor Ackley is doubtless too well imprinted in your memories to need any com- ment from me. He was pre-eminently a man of action-a man of powerful will and determination. If any thing was to be done he did it, and if the measure excited antagonism, woe be to the antagonists. He had the mental and physical qualifications of what he was-a good surgeon, and especially a bold and skillful operator.
Possibly affection and reverence for him who was my precep- tor, Prof. John Delamater, will lead me to say too much in his praise. But I think not. The subject would bear a good deal of laudation. A thorough master of his profession, he had oc- cupied perhaps more different chairs as a professor in different medical colleges of the country than any other man, and was a clear and excellent lecturer. Dignified in bearing, kind in manner, pleasant in conversation, taking every pains to instruct, he endeared himself to his students, and he remains, I doubt not, in the memory of all of them, as he does in mine, as the model of an upright, honest, conscientious and faithful physician, albeit of a time which has passed away.
It may interest the members of my profession to say I saw the first administration of an anæsthetic in Northern Ohio. It took place in the building on the south-east corner of Ontario and Prospect Sts., occupied as a medical college before the build- ing was erected on the corner of St. Clair and Erie Sts. I suppose it would be unjust to say that this was any more than an attempt at an administration, as, to my recollection, it was far from suc- cessful in abolishing the pain of the operation, doubtless on ac- count of the inferior quality of the ether, which was not then manufactured for inhalation. This was the beginning of a great revolution in surgery. I have since lived to see the art pass through another revolution, quite as great, that brought about by aseptic and antiseptic procedures.
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I trust you will pardon the draft that I have made upon your time and patience. The tendency of age to wander on when relating the occurrences of youth, is well known, but this time I will restrain it. I feel, too, that I ought to apologize for the per- sonal form in which I have written, yet this was scarcely to be avoided. I do not doubt that some things I have said have awakened slumbering memories and have interested you. May I not express the hope that some of the facts I have presented may help the generation now occupying the field to appreciate the changes which have taken place within a single life time. What mighty changes! Changes which have affected every phase of human life! We, who are passing away, may well express the doubt that any other generation will see such changes as we have seen.
In introducing Mrs. Dr. Henry Gerould, Judge Hamilton said :
We have with us to-day Mrs. Henry Gerould. She has very kindly, at the invitation of our Executive Committee, consented to say something to you upon the important question of the Country School 40 years ago. I take great pleasure in now in- troducing her to you.
RECITATION BY MRS. GEROULD.
THE COUNTRY SCHOOL OF FORTY YEARS AGO.
1 We cannot speak of hardships sore Nor this country's early foe,
Of the tawny red man we but guess,
Of the wild beast's tread know even less.
The courage and zeal the fathers showed, The mother's toil, the wearisome road Are to us but tales of the past.
We know their history first and last, And give to them the honor due Heroic souls who brought us through Privation and trial all the way To these better times and an easier day.
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2 When forests were leveled and fields were sown, When farms were fenced and orchards grown, The goodly farmer turned his gaze On the old log school house at the four cross ways, And he decided, this man of deeds, That a comelier building would meet the needs Of the boys and the girls who were just coming on In these country homes, so sturdy and strong.
3 So the old log house was replaced by the new, 'Twas larger and higher, more windows too, But can any one tell, could they ever do so, Why those blessed windows, three in a row, Were placed by the fathers near the ceiling so high? Not a thing could be seen, not even the sky, By the keenest of eyes though outward bent When wearied of books, and on mischief intent.
4 Not a shade shut out the glaring sun, Not one seat had a back, no, not one, Save the very front row, and those were so high That the little feet, though they often might try, Could not reach the floor, so they'd swing to and fro, Now backward, now forward, now fast and now slow, Till the dear little souls with nothing to say Would find in sweet sleep the work of the day.
5 The desks, hacked and hewed by the unruly few, Were a marvel of figures, some old and some new. But the strangest thing I call to mind Is the fact that no matter how many the kind Or shape of these figures, 'twas an unwritten creed That no one ever should own to the deed. And no one was found who had courage to say Whose hand marred the desk in this scandalous way.
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6 For three months in midsummer, in dust and in heat, The little folks sped with joyous, glad feet,
The sweet-faced young school-ma'am with pleasure to meet.
She faithfully taught them their P's and their Q's, Set copies in writing, but let each one choose How much or how little of this he would use. But the names of the presidents from Washington down, All sovereigns of England who e'er wore a crown, Every word in the speller from a-b to finis, Must be learned by these children, not one could be minus. And all in the school, both older and younger, Paid special attention to work in Numbers.
7 In winter for four months, be it more or less, A man took position as teacher, For no woman except of rare talent possessed, Could manage such troublesome creatures As the boys from ten to twenty or more, Who made for the master such continual uproar. 'Twas oftener a question of muscle than brain Before it was settled and quiet would reign.
8. This teacher had read one precept well Inscribed in the Holy Book. In "Spare the rod and spoil the child," Great pleasure always took. No child should be spoiled by his careless hand, He "would do his duty well." How he performed this imposed task I will leave for you to tell.
9. But memory brings up to view In shadows stern and dark, The cruel blows, the seasoned whip, The open knife, whose mark
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Would often be some careless lad Who, unconcerned, would stand As stubborn as the far-famed mule While blows rained on his hand.
10 But a striking feature of the old time school, And the hour that gave most pleasure, Was the time when, without precept or rule, Save the voice of the teacher in measure, The dear old reading class would rise and soar, Reading with accent and emphasis strong The words of the worthies o'er and o'er Which were given us in song.
11 'Twas the Roman soldier who was chained down, Or, Cassius accusing Brutus of wrong, Or, Rienzi pronouncing "the Roman a Slave," Or, our own Patrick Henry, earnest and brave, "Pleading for country, for war or for death," Or, Marco Bozzaris, who, with his last breath, Stands cheering his valiant band. We struck "till the last armed foe" expired, We even remembered their "altars and fires," The graves of their fathers, their valiant sires, "God and their native land."
12. You recall all this and very much more, Friday's weekly declamations, When the bashful boy would run away, (He was always sick on this special day,) When the rest would write essays, and "pieces speak," And the work of the busy, anxious week Would end in making a great display By spelling down in the old fashioned way.
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13 They tell us the teaching of bygone days Was poorly done, "no system, no plan," "Few text books studied," and in many ways No cramming process to make the man. Well, this may be so, I will never say "The old was better than the new," Or the haphazard method of earlier days Made better trained men, and women too.
14 But I would plead that justice be done To the teacher of forty years ago, For it sometimes happens that battles are won By the person who met his earliest foe In the country school house of long ago. When the world needs men they are not all In the temple of science or college hall, And the cultured person whom you and I know May have planted his standard long ago.
15 When grim visaged war appears on the scene A Dewey approaches the Isles Philippine ; When Spain's boasted fleet sails out of the bay It finds a Sampson not far away. A man is guiding the Councils of State Whose self control is making him great. Success on our banner is written to-day Because of the wisdom of men who pray, And the work of the world has been helped, I know, By the country schools of long ago.
In introducing the Hon. W. W. Armstrong, who spoke just before the close of the morning session, Judge Hamilton said :
The Executive Committee informs me that by error and mis- take one name was omitted from this program. It was intended
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and designed that you should be addressed by the Hon. W. W. Armstrong. It is getting near dinner-time, something appetiz- ing should be had, and I now present to you the Hon. W. W. Armstrong to make some remarks.
ADDRESS OF HON. W. W. ARMSTRONG.
Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, yesterday or the day before yesterday I received a communication from a gentleman whose name I made out at the end of the letter, whose name is Kerruish, but the body of the letter I could not make out ; I didn't know whether it was from a Spanish General or an Admiral, or from a Chinese man, or a call for me to appear before some Jus- tice of the Peace of the city, but I find on opening the letter that he wanted me to come down here and make a few remarks, and he limited me to fifteen minutes. Now, it took me longer than that to read his letter ; but I am going to beat the record by simply putting my speech down to eight minutes, and I will leave him the other seven to explain what he meant in his letter.
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