Centennial history of Summit County, Ohio and representative citizens, Part 14

Author: Doyle, William B., b. 1868
Publication date: 1908
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : Biographical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1150

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On the 11th of February, 1801. with his young wife, he started for Detroit, going through the wilderness of New York and Can- ada by sleigh, and arrived there Saturday. May 9. The bride. before she got out of Con- neeticut, had a new and painful experience. They stopped at a noisy country tavern at Canaan. There was a large company alto- gether, some drinking, some talking and some

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swearing, and this they found was common at all the public-houses.

Detroit at this time was the great empo- rium of the fur trade. Some of the Indian traders were men of great wealth for those days and of highly cultivated minds. Many of them were educated in England and Scot- land at the universities, a class today in Brit- ian termed "university men." They gen- erally spent the winter there, and in the spring returned with new goods brought by vessels through the lakes. The only Ameri- cans in the place were the officers and soldiers of the garrison, consisting of an infantry reg- iment and an artillery company, the officers of which treated Mr. Bacon and family with kindness and respect. The inhabitants were Englishı, Scotch, Irish and French, all of whom hated the Yankees. The town was en- closed by cedar pickets about twelve feet high and six inches in diameter, and so close to- gether one could not see through.

At each side were strong gates which were closed together and guarded, and no Indians were allowed to come in after sundown or to remain over night.

Upon his arrival in Detroit the missionary society paid him in all four hundred dollars: then, until September, 1803. he did not get a cent. Ile began his support by teaching school, at first with some success, but he was a Yankee, and the four Catholic priests used their influence in opposition. His young wife assisted him. They studied the Indian language, but made slow progress. and their prospect for usefulness in Detroit seemed wan- ing.

On the 19th of February, 1802, his first child was born at Detroit-the afterwards emi- nent Dr. Leonard Bacon. In the May fol- lowing he went down into the Maumee coun- try with a view to establishing a mission among the Indians. The Indians were most- ly drunk, and he was an unwilling witness to their drunken orgies. Little Otter, their chief, received him courteously, called a council of the tribe, and then, to his talk through an in- terpreter, gave him their decision that they would not have him. It was to this effect :

Your religion is very good, but only for white people; it will not do for In- dians. When the Great Spirit made white people he put them on another island, gave them farms, tools to work with, horses, horned cattle and sheep and hogs for them, that they might get their living in that way and he taught them to read, and gave them their reli- gion in a book. But when he made In- dians he made them wild, and put them on this island in the woods, and gave them the wild game that they might live by hunting. We formerly had a reli- gion very much like yours, but we found it would not do for us, and we have dis- covered a much better way.

Seeing he could not succeed he returned to Detroit. He had been with them several days and twice narrowly escaped assassination from the intoxicated ones. His son, Leonard, in his memoirs of his father, published in the Congregational Quarterly for 1876, and from which this article is derived, wrote:

"Something more than ordinary courage was necessary in the presence of so many drunken and half-drunken Indians, any one of whom might suddenly shoot or tomahawk the missionary at the slightest provocation or at none." The two instances mentioned by him in which he was enabled to baffle the malice of savages ready to murder him remind me of another instance.

"It was while my parents were living at Detroit, and when I was an infant of less than four months, two Indians came as if for a friendly visit; one of them, a tall and stal- wart, young man, the other shorter and older. As they entered my father met them, gave his hand to the old man, and was just extending it to the other, when my mother, quick to discern the danger, exclaimed, 'See! He has a knife.' At the word my father saw that. while the Indian's right hand was ready to salute, a gleaming knife in his left hand was partly concealed under his blanket.

"An Indian intending to assassinate waits until his intended victim is looking away from him and then strikes. My father's keen

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eye was fixed upon the murderer, and watched him eye to eye. The Indian found himself strangely disconcerted. In vain did the old man talk to my father in angry and chiding tones-that keen, black eye was watching the would-be assassin. The time seemed long. My mother took the baby (himself) from the birch-bark cradle, and was going to call for help, but when she reached the door, she dared not leave her husband. At last the old man became weary of chiding; the young man had given up his purpose for a time and they retired."

Failing on the Manmee, Mr. Bacon soon after sailed with his little family to Mackinaw. This was at the beginning of summer, 1802. Mackinaw was then one of the remotest out- posts of the fur trade and garrisoned by a company of United States troops. His object was to establish a mission at Abrecroche, about twenty miles distant, a large settlement of Chippewa Indians, but they were no less determined than those on the Maumee that no missionary should live in their villages. Like those, also, they were a large part of the time drunk from whiskey, supplied in abundance by the fur traders in exchange for the proceeds of their hunting excursions. They had at one time no less than 900 gallon kegs on hand.

His work was obstructed from the impos- sibility of finding an interpreter, so he took into his family an Indian lad, through whom to learn the language-his name was Singe- nog. He remained at Mackinaw about two years, but the Indians would never allow him to go among them. Like the Indians gen- erally, they regarded ministers as another sort of conjurors, with power to bring sickness and disease upon them.

At one time early in October the second year, 1803, Singenog. the young Indian, per- suaded his uncle, Pondega Kawwan. a head chief, and two other Chippewa dignitaries, to visit the missionary. and presenting him a string of wampum, Pondega Kawwan made a very non-committal. dignified speech. to the effect that there was no use of his going among them. that the Great Spirit did not

put them on the ground to learn such things as the white people taught. If it were not for rum they might listen, "but," concluded he, "Rum is our Master." And later he said to Singenog, "Our father is a great man and knows a great deal; and if we were to know so much, perhaps the Great Spirit would not let us live."

After a residence at Mackinaw of about two years and all prospects of success hopeless, the missionary society ordered him to New Con- necticut, there to itinerate as a missionary and to improve himself in the Indian language, etc. About the 1st of August, 1804, with his wife and two children, the youngest an infant, he sailed for Detroit. From hence they pro- ceeded in an open canoe, following the wind- ings of the shore, rowing by day and sleep- ing on land by night, till having performed a journey of near 200 miles, they reached, about the middle of October, Cleveland, then a mere hamlet on the lake shore.

Leaving his family at Hudson, he went on to Hartford to report to the society. He went almost entirely on foot a distance of about 600 miles, which he wearily trudged much of the way through the mud. slush and snow of win- ter. An arrangement was made by which he could act half the time as pastor at Hudson, and the other half as a missionary to the various settlements on the Reserve. On his return a little experience satisfied him that more could be done than in any other way for the establishment of Christian institutions on the Reserve, by the old Puritan mode of colonizing, by founding a religious colony strong enough and compact enough to main- tain schools and public worship.

An ordinary township, with its scattered settlements and roads at option. with no com- mon central point. cannot well grow into a town. The unity of a town as a body politic depends very much on fixing a common cen- ter to which every homestead shall be obvious- ly related. In no other rural town, perhaps. is that so well provided for as in Tallmadge. "Public spirit. local pride." writes Dr. Bacon. "friendly intercourse. general culture and good taste. and a certain moral and re-

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ligious steadfastness are among the character- istics by which Tallmadge is almost pro- verbially distinguished throughout the Re- serve. No observing stranger can pass through the town without seeing that it was planned by a sagacious and far-seeing mind.

"It was fit that he who had planned the set- tlement, and who had identified with it all his hopes for usefulness for the remainder of his life, and all his hopes of a competence for his family, should be the first settler in the township. He did not wait for hardier ad- venturers to encounter the first hardships and to break the loneliness of the woods. Select- ing a temporary location near an old Indian trail, a few rods from the southern boundary of the township, he built the first log cabin, and there placed his family.

"I well remember the pleasant day in July, 1807, when that family made its removal from the center of Hudson to a new log-house in a township that had no name and no hu- man habitation. The father and mother- poor in this world's goods, but rich in faith and in the treasure of God's promises; rich in their well-tried mutual affection; rich in their expectation of usefulness and of the comfort and competence which they hoped to achieve by their enterprise; rich in the parental joy with which they looked upon the three little ones that were carried in their arms or nestled among their scanty house- hold goods in the slow-moving wagon-were familiar with whatever there is in hardship and peril or disappointment, to try the cour- age of the noblest manhood or the immortal strength of a true woman's love. The little ones were the natives of the wilderness-the youngest a delicate nursling of six months, the others born in a remoter and more savage West. These five, with a hired man, were the family.

"I remember the setting out, the halt before the door of an aged friend to say farewell, the fording of the Cuyahoga, the day's jour- ney of somewhat less than thirteen miles along a road that had been cut (not made) through the dense forest, the little cleared spot where the journey ended, the new log-

house, with what seemed to me a stately hill behind it, and with a limpid rivulet winding near the door. That night, when the first family worship was offered in that cabin, the prayer of the two worshipers, for themselves and their children, and for the work which they had that day begun, was like the prayer that went up of old from the deck of the May- flower, or from beneath the wintry sky of Plymouth. One month later a German fam- ily came within the limits of the town; but it was not until the next February that a sec- ond family came, a New England family, whose mother tongue was English. Well I do remember the solitude of that first winter, and how beautiful the change was when spring at last began to hang its garlands on the trees.

"The next thing in carrying out the plan to which Mr. Bacon had devoted himself was to bring in, from whatever quarter, such families as would enter into his views and would co-operate with him for the early and permanent establishment of Christian order. It was at the expense of many a slow and weary journey to older settlements that he succeeded in bringing together the families who, in the spring and summer of 1808, be- gan to call the new town their home. His repeated absences from the home are fresh in my memory, and so is the joy with which we greeted the arrival of one family after an- other coming to relieve our loneliness; nor least among the memories of that time is the remembrance of my mother's fear when left alone with her three little children. She had not ceased to fear the Indians, and sometimes a straggling savage, or a little company of them, came by our door on the old portage path, calling, perhaps, to try our hospitality, and with signs or broken English phrases ask- ing for whiskey. She could not feel that to 'pull in the latch string' was a sufficient ex- clusion of such visitors, and in my mind's eye T seem now to see her frail form tugging at a heavy chest, with which to barricade the door before she dared to sleep. It was, in- deed, a relief and joy to feel at last that we had neighbors, and that our town was begin-

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ning to be inhabited. At the end of the sec- ond year from the commencement of the sur- vey, there were, perhaps, twelve families, and the town received its name, Tallmadge."

Slowly the settlement of the town proceeded from 1807 to 1810. Emigration from Con- necticut had about ceased, owing to the stag- nation of business fron European wars, and the embargo and other non-intercourse acts of Jefferson's administration. Mr. Bacon could not pay for the land he had purchased. He went East to try to make new satisfactory arrangements with the proprietors, leaving behind his wife and five little children. The proprietors were immovable. Some of his parishioners felt hard towards him because, having made payments, he could not perfect their titles. With difficulty he obtained the means to return for his family.

In May, 1812, he left Tallmadge, and all "that was realized after five years of arduous labor was poverty, the alienation of some old friends, the depression that follows a fatal de- feat, and the dishonor that falls on one who cannot pay his debts." He lingered on a few years, supporting his family by traveling and selling the "Scott's Family Bible" and other religions works, from house to house, and oc- casional preaching. He bore his misfortunes with Christian resignation, struggled on a few years with broken spirits and broken con- stitution, and died at Hartford, August 17, 1817. "My mother," said Dr. Bacon, "stand- ing over him with her youngest, an infant in her arms, said to him: 'Look on your babe before you die.' He looked up and said, with distinct and audible utterance: 'The blessing of the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, rest upon thee.' Just before dawn he breathed his last. Now he knows more than all of us, said the doctor ; while my mother, bathing the dead face with her tears, and warming it with kisses, exclaimed: 'Let my last end be like his.' "

There is little doubt that Rev. David Bacon was the first white person who made his home in this township. Other early settlers were George Boosinger, Justin E. Frink, Ephraim Clark, Jonathan Sprague, Titus Chapman.

William Neal, Elizur Wright, Moses Brad- ford, Salmon Sackett, John Caruthers, Reu- ben Upson, John Wright and Luther Cham- berlain. The township was named in honor of one of its early proprietors, Benjamin Tall- madge, of Litchfield, Connecticut. Nearly all the original settlers were from Connecti- cut. It was organized as a separate township in November, 1812. Elizur Wright was elected clerk and Nathaniel Chapman, justice of the peace. Tallmadge has from the very earliest days brought a very strong religious and educational influence to bear upon the surrounding communities. The average of culture is higher here than in any other com- munity in this vicinity-perhaps in Ohio. The purpose of its founder was religious. The Congregational Church was organized here in 1809. In 1810, a school-house was opened and Lucy Foster, who married Alpha Wright the next year, was its first teacher. In 1816 "Tallmadge Academy" was incorporated and opened to students. Among its teachers, Simeon Woodruff and Elizur Wright were the earliest, while later came Sidney Edger- ton. About 1835 Ephraim T. Sturtevant opened a private school and taught it suc- cessfully for several years. Tallmadge estab- lished the first public library in Summit County, opening it in 1813, and continuing and increasing it until the present writing. The Congregational Church edifice was built in 1822, and is a fine specimen of the New England church architecture of the period. With very few changes, it has continued to serve the society until now. In 1825 the Methodist established a church organization, and in 1832 erected a church building. In 1874 they built the present structure near the public square. Coal and potters' clay are ex- tensively mined in the township. In the early '40's several veins of iron ore were dis- covered and a furnace erected to smelt them. The attempt was unsuccessful and the enter- prise ultimately abandoned. Some manufac- turing has been successfully conducted. notably, carriage manufacturing, begun in 1827 by Amos Avery and William C. Oviatt. In 1836 they took in Isaac Robinson. In

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1841 Ira P. Sperry organized the firm of Oviatt & Sperry and later took in Samuel J. Ritchie. L. V. Bierce and J. E. Baldwin also manufactured carriages for many years. In 1868 Alfred Sperry, Charles Tryon and Ben- jamin D. Wright began the manufacture of sewer-pipe, Henry M. Camp later succeeding Mr. Tryon. In 1871 Samuel J. Ritchie and Ira P. and Willis Sperry bought them out and continued the business with success until the fire of 1878. In 1881 Ira P. and George P. Sperry rebuilt the works. The apple-butter factory of John A. Caruthers should also be noticed. Tallmadge gave her full quota of men to preserve the Union during the rebel- lion of 1861. Tallmadge claims two of the greatest names in Summit County history in Sidney Edgerton and William H. Upson.

HUDSON TOWNSHIP.

The original proprietors of Hudson town- ship were Stephen Baldwin, David Hudson, Birdsey Norton, Nathaniel Norton, Benjamin Oviatt and Theodore Parmalee. It consisted of 16,000 acres, and, in the distribution of the lands of the Connecticut Land Company, it was sold to the above mentioned proprietors at 32 cents per acre. In 1799 David Hudson organized a party of eleven persons for the purpose of inspecting the new purchase. They started overland from Litchfield, Connecticut, and, with their wagons, oxen and cows, made a very respectable looking caravan. They were nearly two months in making the jour- ney, reaching the present township about the latter part of June. The summer was spent in surveying ; erecting a bark hut and a more substantial log-house; clearing land of timber; planting and sowing crops, and platting the village, now called Hudson, after its founder. Early in October the survey of the township was completed and David Hudson, with his son Ira and the two surveyors, started back to Connecticut, leaving the remainder of the party as a nucleus of the future settlement.

By offering bounties of land and other in- ducements, Mr. Hudson succeeded in getting together twenty-eight colonists who agreed to

return with him into the wilderness and as- sist in the pioneer work of settling the new township. In this party were Heman Oviatt, Joel and Allen Gaylord, Joseph and George Darrow, Moses Thompson, Samuel Bishop and others. After enduring the usual perils and deprivations incident to pioneer journeys, they arrived safely in Hudson in May, 1800. Their first act was a public meeting to con- duct services of thanksgiving for their safe journey and deliverance from the perils of the way in the wilderness. On October 28, 1800, there was born to David Hudson and his wife, Anna (Norton) Hudson, a daughter, whom they named Anner Mary Hudson. She was born in Hudson and was the first white child born in what is now Summit County.

Early in 1802 the county commissioners of Trumbull County, of which this locality was then a part, organized Hudson township and arranged for the first election in April, 1802. There were elected at that time, He- man Oviatt, Ebenezer Sheldon and Abraham Thompson, trustees; Thadeus Lacey, clerk ; Rufus Edwards, Ebenezer Lester and Aaron Norton, constables, etc., etc.

On September 4, 1802, the first church or- ganization in what is now Summit County was made by David Hudson, with twelve of his fellow-colonists, who were members of Congregational Churches back in Connecti- ent. The first church thus established was a Congregational Church, and, from that day to this, not a single Sabbath has passed without public worship being held by the Congrega- tional Church of Hudson. In 1820 the so- ciety completed a fine church edifice on the site of the present Town Hall, which was used continnonsly until the splendid brick church on Anrora Street, next to the "Pentagon," was built in 1865. This has proved sufficient for the needs of the Congregational Society until the present day.

In 1828 Moses Draper, Daniel Gaylord and Perley Mansur organized a Methodist Epis- copal Church, the history of which is not a record of unvarying success.

The Protestant Episcopal Church was or- ganized in 1842 by Frederick Brown, Anson

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UNION DEPOT, AKRON

THE FISHER BROS.' PLANT, AKRON

HAMILTON BUILDING, AKRON

. .

THE AKRON BREWING COMPANY'S PLANT, AKRON

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Brewster, Henry O'Brien, Arthur Sadler and others. It is called the "Parish of Christ Church, of Hudson, Ohio." Its membership has never been large and, at times, the organ- ization has been maintained with difficulty.

St. Mary's Catholic Church was built in 1858 and has been maintained in connection with the church of that denomination in Cuyahoga Falls.

In 1890 an organization of the Disciples of Christ was effected and Rev. F. H. Moore was installed as its pastor.

From the very beginning Hudson led the intellectual life of the Western Reserve. What the influence of Western Reserve College has been has been told elsewhere in this work by Dr. Findley. The spirit of which that insti- tution is a product manifested itself the year after the founding of the first settlement. George Pease, of Enfield, Connecticut, estab- lished the first school in a log-house, about where the present Town Hall stands. The growth of the schools kept pace with that of the population. In 1868 the fine brick High School building was erected. In addition to the public schools many private schools have been condneted at various times. The first was the Nutting School for young ladies, es- tablished in 1827. Then followed the Hud- son Academy for boys and girls in 1834; Hudson Female Seminary in 1845; the Gros- venor Seminary and the Phelps "Seminary for Ladies," established a few years later; the J. W. Smith school in 1853; the Emily Met- calf school in 1860, and the Hudson Acad- emy, revived in 1874 by Rev. H. B. Hos- ford.

In the decade of the '50's Hudson was bad- ly smitten with the railroad fever. There was scarcely one of her citizens of means who did not invest every penny he could possibly raise in one or more of the railroad enter- prises undertaken at that time. Professor Henry N. Day, of Western Reserve College. seems to have been the moving spirit in all these schemes. The investors lost every cent they put in and the depreciation in Hudson business has been constant since that time. The town never rallied from the great finan-

cial losses brought about by the failures of these railroad projects. The Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad was completed from Cleveland to Hudson in 1852. The "Akron Branch" was built soon after. These were successful and improved business conditions in Hudson so much that when subsequent projects were broached no difficulty was en- countered in getting the support of every Hud- son citizen. In 1852 Prof. Day and his asso- ciates "promoted" "the Clinton Line Rail- road," which was to be part of a great trans- continental railroad. In 1853 the same par- ties organized a bankruptcy club, the mem- bers of which were allowed to contribute to "the Clinton Line Extension," to run from Hudson to Tiffin. In the same year Hudson citizens were asked to contribute toward de- fraying the expenses of another dream, iri- descent and alluring, called the "Hudson and Painesville Railroad," designed as an exten- sion of the "Akron Branch Railroad." The work on all these railroads was started and carried on to various extents. Much of the old grading, fills and culverts may vet be seen in the woods and pastures near Hudson. At least one of the roads was nearly half com- pleted, when, in 1856, the bubble burst. The dream was over, but the lapse from conscious- ness had cost the village every available nickel in it. These roads remain today just as they were left when work stopped in 1856. As a promoter, Prof. Day was a very great failure. Besides his railroad enterprises, which ended in disaster, might be mentioned his "Penta- gon" scheme and his book-publishing com- pany, both of which were wound up by as- signees.

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Centennial history of Summit County, Ohio and representative citizens, Part 14

Author: Doyle, William B., b. 1868 Publication date: 1908 Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : Biographical Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 1150

Author: Doyle, William B., b. 1868
Publication date: 1908
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : Biographical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1150